Kaitlin Armstrong, convicted of killing Anna Moriah Wilson, sentenced to 90 years in prison

A Travis County jury sentenced Kaitlin Armstrong on Friday to 90 years in prison for the fatal shooting of Anna Moriah "Mo" Wilson on May 11, 2022, in East Austin.

The jury had found Armstrong, 35, guilty of murder on Thursday. She faced up to 99 years and the jury deliberated sentencing for about 3½ hours on Friday, more than an hour longer than they did in finding her guilty.

Eric Wilson, Mo Wilson’s father, spoke outside the courthouse after the trial. “This is not a time for celebration but a time for prayer,” he said. “This sad story is a perfect example of why integrity and honesty are crucial in our personal behaviors and how dishonesty can lead to unintended consequences.”

He also said that with the challenging ordeal of the trial behind them, his family was ready to continue healing. “We will do this with Moriah’s strong, determined, gentle and kind spirit for we know this is what she would want us to do,” he said.

Defense attorney Rick Cofer said in a written statement after the trial that “the loss of Moriah Wilson is a tragedy, and our hearts go out to the Wilson family and to the family of our client, Kaitlin Armstrong.” He said Armstrong will be eligible for parole in 30 years.

Caitlin Cash, who administered CPR to Wilson at Cash’s apartment after finding her shot, spoke to Armstrong in the part of the trial after the sentencing that allows for victim impact statements. “I'm angry at you at the utter tragic nature, at the senselessness, at not being able to hear Mo’s voice again,” Cash said. “I feel deep sadness for the road ahead.”

She also said that while she was at the Police Department after Wilson died, she went to the bathroom to wash Wilson’s blood off her hands. “I’ll never forget that moment in the police bathroom, watching the sink turn red and wanting to put it back on my hands because it was the only thing I had left of her,” Cash said.

Karen Wilson, Mo Wilson’s mother, also addresses Armstrong. “I hate what you did to my beautiful daughter,” said Karen Wilson. “It was very selfish and cowardly that violent act of May 11. It was cowardly, because you never chose to face her woman to woman an in a civil conversation. She would have listened. She would have cared about your feelings.”

Karen Wilson also said Mo was in the presence of God’s “pure light and love and nothing can ever hurt her again. “You killed her body, but her spirit is still very much alive,” she said to Armstrong.

During closing arguments of the punishment phase on Friday morning, prosecutor Guillermo Gonzalez asked the jury to consider sentencing Armstrong to a minimum of 40 years. He said Armstrong was a sophisticated adult who had time to think about and calculate her actions, as well as the consequences. "Ultimately, that calculation really comes from an age-old, beginning-of-time motive, and I'm talking about jealousy," he said.

Prosecutor Rickey Jones told the jury that Armstrong was "utterly selfish." He asked the jury to not consider Armstrong's silent demeanor during the trial — she did not testify — but to think about the mile she ran Oct. 11 when she tried to escape from Travis County deputies after a doctor's visit.

Defense attorney Rick Cofer told jurors he wasn't going to recommend a sentence length for Armstrong. He asked them to think about forgiveness.

"Forgiveness doesn't mean suspending judgement and doesn't mean not holding people accountable," he said.

Prosecutors said during the trial that Armstrong, jealous that Wilson had briefly dated her boyfriend, shot Wilson twice in the head before standing over Wilson while she was on the floor and shooting her in the heart.

Friends and relatives of both women also testified Thursday afternoon during the trial's punishment phase before the jury deliberated on the sentencing.

Kaitlin Armstrong, who sat quietly during the trial, did not testify during the punishment phase. Tensions rose after Christie Armstrong testified that Kaitlin Armstrong was her best friend and had always "been a loving, caring, beautiful bright light."

"She's always been extremely thoughtful and empathetic and very caring of others," said Christie Armstrong.

Prosecutor Rickey Jones then spoke to Christie Armstrong with his voice rising.

More: Kaitlin Armstrong found guilty in 2022 shooting death of cyclist Anna Moriah Wilson

"You do know she murdered Moriah Wilson?" he asked.

"I respect the verdict of the jury," Christie Armstrong said.

Jones then said that Christie Armstrong's best friend, Kaitlin Armstrong, was alive and sitting in the courtroom while Mo Wilson's brother had lost his sister, who was his best friend. Jones also said to Christie Armstrong that her sister had stolen her passport to flee to Costa Rica. "She took it," Christie Armstrong said.

Kaitlin Armstrong flew to Costa Rica on May 18, 2022, using her sister's passport, witnesses testified. She was arrested June 29 at a hostel in the Central American country after getting plastic surgery on her nose, officials said. Witnesses also testified during the trial that Armstrong was jealous of Wilson, 25, who had dated Armstrong's boyfriend, Colin Strickland, briefly when Armstrong and Strickland had broken up for a short time.

Strickland testified that he and Wilson were just platonic friends when they went swimming and out to eat in Austin the day she died. Strickland said that he and Armstrong were back together when Wilson was killed. He was never accused of any wrongdoing in the case.

More: Analyst: Kaitlin Armstrong's DNA found on Mo Wilson's bike, along with third person's

Wilson's brother, Matt Wilson, buried his head in his hands and cried during his testimony Thursday in the punishment phase. He said Mo was his only sibling and closest confidante. He said they had talked to each other almost every day in the winter and spring of 2022.

"I was going through a pretty severe depression at that time," he said. "At one point she told me, 'Let's try something. Let's try to text each other the three best things that happened to you that day,' and we did that for weeks."

More: Kaitlin Armstrong's former boyfriend Colin Strickland testifies in her murder trial

He said his parents arrived at his college and knocked on his apartment door to tell him Mo had died. "My dad said, 'We lost Moriah,'" said Matt Wilson. He said he "freaked out," ran out of the apartment, started punching walls and fell over on the sidewalk before his mother grabbed him. "She said, 'It gets worse,'" he said. He said his mother then looked at him and said, "She was murdered."

Karen Wilson also cried as she testified, saying Mo had grown up in a small town in Vermont riding bikes and skiing with the family.

"She lived her life as if every day were her last day, and she lived it so fully that she never wasted any time, as if she knew her life would be short," said Karen Wilson.

Mo Wilson was on the ski team when she attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where she was studying engineering, her mother said. She was close to qualifying for the U.S. ski team in the Olympics but decided to focus on bicycling after she suffered a second knee injury, Karen Wilson said.

Wilson said that after her daughter was killed, she had to quit her job as a child educator because she couldn't focus on it.

"I miss her so much," Karen Wilson said. "I would have done anything to stand in the way of the bullet. She died alone on the floor at a friend's house. She did not deserve a death like that. She was someone so kind and brave, and she cared for others."

Eric Wilson also testified that after Mo Wilson graduated from college, she would get up at 5 a.m. every day to bicycle three hours before going to work at a job in California. He said she had talked to him about giving up her job and becoming a professional cyclist. In his last conversation with her, he said, he told her he was proud of her decision and that she was doing what she was meant to do.

"She said, 'Yeah, Dad. It just feels so right,'" said Eric Wilson, a former high school ski coach.

Her life was taken away from her in a "senseless, premeditated plan," he said. He said her family would never get to see her bicycling career or get to see her get married and have a family.

Cash testified on Thursday that she had met Mo's family one summer when she lived in Vermont. She said she later met Mo at a bike race. Mo had come to Austin to prepare for a race and was staying with Cash when she was killed.

Cash said she had taken a picture of Mo and shot a video of her before she was leaving for a bike ride that morning.

"I texted her mother that day and said, 'Your girl is in safe hands here in Austin.' … I had no idea of what was coming."

Cash said that after she came home that night from dinner with a friend, she performed CPR on Wilson.

"Did you know you gave her chest compressions over 100 times?" Jones asked Cash. "No," she said.

Cash said she was so traumatized after Wilson died that she temporarily lost her peripheral vision, had trouble speaking and still suffers from panic attacks.

"It's been 554 days since she was killed, and I can't tell you how many times I've relived that night trying to figure out how I could have protected her," Cash said. She said she still lives in the apartment where Wilson was killed because she thinks it is a "sacred place."

"I feel her there," Cash said.

Armstrong's father, Mike, testified that Kaitlin went to high school in Michigan, where she was a popular athlete who "fiercely stuck up for her friends." He said she never got upset easily while growing up and was a strong person.

She went to business school at Eastern Michigan University and worked in banking and real estate, said Mike Armstrong, who is an engineer in Michigan. He said that what his family was going through was "horrible," but what the Wilson family was going through was "far worse."

Christie Armstrong also said in her testimony that her parents got divorced when she was a baby and that she and Kaitlin lived with her mother. She said Kaitlin was like a second mother to her.

"She was always there to teach me how to be a good person," Christie Armstrong said. Kaitlin Armstrong moved to Austin in 2012 and was a yoga teacher, her sister said.

Judith Knox testified that she first met Kaitlin Armstrong when she visited the Travis County Jail as part of a chaplaincy program for Catholic women. She said Armstrong was always "extremely" positive and very kind and empathetic. She said Armstrong told her she had gotten a fellow prisoner to stop screaming by teaching her how to meditate.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Kaitlin Armstrong sentenced to 90 years for killing Anna Moriah Wilson