Kaitlin Armstrong Murder Trial: Evidence, Bombshells Mount In Pro Cyclist's Killing
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“The last thing Mo did on this Earth was scream in terror,” prosecutor Rickey Jones told a jury about the final moments of 25-year-old Moriah ‘Mo’ Wilson, a champion off-road cyclist who he said was gunned down last year by the romantic rival now on trial for her murder.
Those screams were followed by two gunshots, Jones said in opening statements on Nov. 1, and then silence. Seconds later, he said, “Kaitlin Armstrong stood over Mo Wilson and put a third shot right into Mo Wilson’s heart.”
The sounds of those screams and gunshots were captured by a neighbor’s security camera, said prosecutors, who played a recording for the jury assembled in an Austin, Texas, courtroom.
Mariah "Mo" Wilson competes at the Rock Cobbler gravel bike race in 2022.
Armstrong was consumed with jealousy over Wilson’s relationship with her boyfriend, professional cyclist Colin Strickland, Jones said. He and Wilson, who was visiting Austin from her home in San Francisco for a competition, had met up to go swimming and grab dinner on the early evening of May 11, 2022. Forty minutes after Strickland, riding his motorcycle, dropped Wilson off at her friend’s apartment, Armstrong allegedly barged in and shot Wilson to death.
Using her sister’s passport, Armstrong then fled to Costa Rica, where she lived under an assumed name and had plastic surgery to change her appearance, authorities said. She pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder after she was arrested June 29 in a small beach town popular with surfers and yoga enthusiasts. She is also charged with attempting to escape federal custody after running away from corrections officers during a medical appointment on Oct. 11.
Armstrong continued to maintain her innocence, with her defense attorney saying in opening statements that she had been “trapped in a nightmare of circumstantial evidence,” The Messenger reported.
The trial is ongoing, but this is what we know so far based on court testimony and arrest warrants:
Kaitlin Armstrong enters the courtroom during the first day of her trial at the Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center on Nov. 1, in Austin, Texas.
May 11, 2022: Mo Wilson’s Last Day On Earth
Wilson, a Vermont native, was a competitive skier who took up mountain biking and gravel racing after being sidelined by an injury. In a gushing profile published shortly before her death, the competitive cycling magazine VeloNews called her “the winningest woman in the American off-road scene,” who notched 10 victories even before she decided to devote herself full-time to racing. In her journals, quoted by the foundation her family created in her name to support her legacy, Wilson wrote that she wanted “be the kind of person that picks other people up when they fall down, who’s there for people when they need support, encouragement, and inspiration,” to “inspire people to ride bikes and be active” and “promote positive body image awareness for women, and female athletes in particular.” She had just launched a cycling-oriented Substackcalled Mail from Mo!, writing about her training and interviewing people involved in her sport.
Strickland has said publicly and told authorities that he and Wilson had a brief fling in the fall of 2021, when he and Armstrong were broken up. Strickland and Armstrong later reconciled, and he said that he and Wilson were just friends when they arranged to meet up for a swim while she was in town to compete in the 157-mile Gravel Locos race on May 14. He picked her up on his motorcycle at the East Austin apartment of her friend, Caitlin Cash, at around 5:45 p.m., he told police, according to an arrest affidavit. He took her to Deep Eddy Pool, and after their swim they walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner.
Earlier in the day, authorities said, Wilson had gone for a long bike ride. She recorded her route on the fitness app Strava, which authorities said Armstrong was monitoring, so she knew she was in Austin even though Strickland didn’t tell her. An Austin Police Department detective testified Nov. 8 that a Google map of where Wilson was staying was deleted from Armstrong’s iCloud account the day after she was killed.
Strickland testified on Nov. 3 that Armstrong called and texted him several times while he was with Wilson, but he ignored her — and then lied about where he’d been when he texted her on his way home.
At the time when Strickland and Wilson were still at the restaurant, a police forensics specialist testified that GPS data and security cameras showed that Armstrong’s 2012 black Jeep Cherokee — distinctive because of its rooftop luggage rack and hitch-mounted bike rack — was circling Cash’s neighborhood. It stopped and parked near her apartment just after Strickland dropped Wilson off.
Data extracted from Armstrong’s cellphone was consistent with the GPS and surveillance video, a crime analyst who also studied Strickland and Wilson’s cellphones testified Tuesday. At about 8:28 p.m., a reporter in the courtroom noted Armstrong’s Jeep was traveling west one block away from where Strickland and Wilson were riding east — virtually crossing paths on parallel streets.
Cash, who was out to dinner with other friends, received a notification that her front door had been unlocked at 8:36 p.m. If Wilson had locked the door behind her, Cash testified, she would have received another notification, which she did not.
When Cash arrived home just before 10 p.m., she found the front door unlocked and Wilson’s body lying face-up on the bathroom floor covered in blood, she testified. Jurors heard the 911 call she placed, telling the dispatcher as she tried to perform CPR, “Her brain is leaking,” according to a reporter in the courtroom.
The medical examiner who performed the autopsy testified Tuesday that Wilson had been shot twice in the head and once in the heart. Wilson also suffered a wound to her index finger, which the medical examiner said “could be” characterized as a defensive wound.
Cash noticed that Wilson’s bike was missing, she later told police, who found it hidden in bamboo bushes just over 20 yards from the apartment. A DNA expert testified Tuesday that there was a “strong likelihood” that DNA recovered from the bike belonged to Armstrong.
Armstrong returned home at around 9:45 p.m., according to GPS data and Strickland’s testimony.
Caitlin Cash (right) is embraced during the first day of Kaitlin Armstrong's trial at the Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center. Armstrong is charged with murder in connection with the shooting death of pro cyclist Anna Moriah Wilson.
‘I Do Know The Words “Kill” And “Gun” Were Used’
Strickland testified on Nov. 3 that he met Wilson, who was 10 years younger than him, at a gravel bike competition in September 2021. He and Armstrong, who started dating in 2019, were broken up at the time but still living together, he said. In late October, Wilson traveled to Austin, where Strickland later said in a statement they had a “brief romantic relationship” that “spanned a week or so.” About a month after Wilson returned to San Francisco, Strickland said, he and Armstrong — with whom he shared a trailer renovating business — reconciled.
Strickland said he continued to see Wilson at races, but that their relationship was “platonic and professional.”
“It was not my intention to pursue along an auxiliary romantic relationship that would mislead anyone,” Strickland insisted — but it’s possible he did just that.
After Wilson’s fall 2021 visit, Armstrong contacted Wilson a number of times, the last time telling her she was in a relationship with Strickland and she needed to stay away from him, a friend of Wilson’s told police, according to court documents. Armstrong, who, as Strickland’s business partner, had access to his phone, email, Instagram account and financial accounts, he testified, blocked Wilson’s number from his phone. He later saved her number with an alias, he said, so Armstrong wouldn’t know he was talking to her, and deleted their text messages to each other.
In January 2022, Strickland, Armstrong and Wilson all attended the Cyclo-Cross World Championships in Bentonville, Arkansas, Outside reported. The magazine noted that at one dinner during the roster of events, the three ended up sitting together, with each woman on either side of Strickland.
Wilson texted Strickland at the event asking about their relationship status, according to the arrest affidavit, writing, “Hey! Sooo I would like to talk to you at some point. This weekend was strange for me and I just want to know what’s going on. If you just want to be friends (seems to be the case) then that’s cool, but I’d like to talk about it cause honestly my mind has been going circles and I don’t know what to think.”
Strickland’s response, which he sent the following day, was ambiguous. Instead of telling Wilson that he and Armstrong had reconciled, he said that Armstrong “came along” to attend a work meeting.
“Hey Mo,” he texted. “I feel very shitty for putting you in a position where you don’t feel comfortable,” noting that “in hindsight,” bringing Armstrong along “was not a good idea.”
Just a month earlier, in December 2021, Strickland had purchased two guns, one for himself and one for Armstrong, who he testified had been worried about her safety. A ballistics expert testified Monday that bullets found by Wilson’s body were consistent with those they test-fired from Armstrong’s handgun.
After the event in Bentonville, Armstrong was furious, two of her friends said in separate anonymous calls to police after Wilson’s death, and talked about wanting to kill Wilson, according to an arrest affidavit. Both women recounted their conversations with Armstrong when they testified for the prosecution on Nov. 3.
“I do know the words ‘kill’ and ‘gun’ were used,” one of Armstrong’s former friends testified Nov. 8, saying that she was “trembling and shaking” because she had found out Strickland had “cheated” on her with Wilson.
After Strickland released the statement about his relationship with Armstrong, in which he also expressed the “regret and torture” he felt about his “proximity to this horrible crime,” he was dropped by most of his sponsors. He is not considered a suspect in Wilson’s death, although a photographer is reportedly pressing charges against him, saying he deliberately stepped on his foot and tried to knock down his camera in two separate incidents at the courthouse.
Armstrong’s First Arrest
The day after Wilson’s death, police interviewed Strickland, who they said confirmed that Armstrong owned the Jeep Grand Cherokee they had seen on the couple’s driveway, and seized the handguns from their home. Also that day, detectives arrested Armstrong on an outstanding warrant for leaving an esthetician’s office without paying for her Botox treatment, and briefly questioned her about Wilson’s killing. Investigators told Armstrong her Jeep was seen near Cash’s home when Wilson was killed and that Strickland told them she was angry about his relationship with Wilson, according to the arrest affidavit and video of the interview played for the jury. When a detective said this didn’t “look too good” for Armstrong, she nodded, according to court documents, which her defense attorneys argued in a pretrial hearing should not be interpreted as agreement. Authorities couldn’t detain her because of a clerical error and let her go when she asked to leave.
The next day, May 13, Armstrong sold her Jeep to a south Austin CarMax dealership for $12,200. On May 14, she flew from Austin to New York City’s LaGuardia Airport. Austin police issued an arrest warrant for Armstrong on May 17, so she was considered a fugitive when U.S. Marshals said she was dropped off at Newark airport on May 18. Prosecutors said that from there, she flew to Costa Rica using her sister’s passport — which they found in Armstrong’s possession, along with her own, when marshals arrested her on July 7.
Kaitlin Armstrong before and after her arrest on a first-degree murder charge.
‘Can Pineapples Burn Fingerprints?’
Online searches Armstrong made when she was on the run included, “Can pineapples burn fingerprints?” “Moriah Wilson murder,” her own name, and questions about rhinoplasty, or nose jobs, a forensics detective who analyzed iCloud accounts connected to Armstrong testified on Nov. 7.
When marshals caught up with Armstrong on June 29 at a hostel in the Costa Rican town of Santa Teresa, where witnesses said she taught yoga classes, her hair was darker and shorter, and she had a bandage on her nose, they said. Investigators later found receipts and email correspondence relating to plastic surgery, which were presented in court. Using the alias of Allison Page, authorities said, Armstrong got plastic surgery on her nose and got a brow lift in a procedure on June 23 in Costa Rica, according to copies of bills and emails between the surgeon and patient that the jury saw on Thursday.
In an email the day before the surgery, “Page” said she was anxious to have the procedure as soon as possible and told her surgeon, “I believe in the last few days I have aged significantly,” the Austin-American Statesman reported.
Despite her incarceration, Armstrong has remained physically fit. In fact, before she made a daring escape attempt, sprinting away from Travis County corrections officers after an off-site medical appointment Oct. 11, authorities said she had been “exercising vigorously” as part of her escape plan. She didn’t get very far and now faces an additional felony charge.
Prosecutors are expected to call more witnesses on Wednesday, the ninth day of testimony. Kaitlin Armstrong is not expected to testify. So far, the jury has not heard from her younger sister, Christine Armstrong, whose passport she used to flee to Costa Rica.
Wilson dreamed of “traveling to new places, meeting people, racing new races, and learning more about this sport (and myself) and where in the world I want to go with it,” she wrote in the first issue of her newsletter, two months before her death.
“I don’t quite know where this journey will lead, and there’s something beautiful about that.”
