Kaitlin Armstrong Captured and Arrested for Alleged Murder of Cyclist Anna Moriah Wilson

After a more than month-long manhunt, Texas fugitive Kaitlin Armstrong was detained overseas for her alleged involvement in the killing of elite cyclist Anna Moriah "Mo" Wilson.

By Corinne Heller Jun 30, 2022 7:01 PMTags
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Authorities have arrested Kaitlin Marie Armstrong, a Texas female fugitive wanted for the suspected murder of elite cyclist Anna Moriah "Mo" Wilson, who previously dated her boyfriend.

Armstrong, who is 35 and from Austin, Texas, was captured in Costa Rica on June 29, more than a month after the athlete's death at age 25.

"The U.S. Marshals Office of International Operations, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Department of State Diplomatic Security Service, working with authorities in Costa Rica, located and arrested Kaitlin Marie Armstrong June 29 at a hostel on Santa Teresa Beach in Provincia de Puntarenas," the U.S. Marshals Service said in a statement. "Armstrong, 34, will be deported and returned to the U.S."

The office said that the woman used a fraudulent passport to board a flight from New Jersey's Newark International Airport to Costa Rica on May 18, a week after a friend of Wilson in Austin found the athlete fatally wounded after being shot multiple times and a day after the city's police issued a homicide warrant for Armstrong's arrest.

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Last month, Texas authorities also issued her an arrest warrant for alleged unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. The U.S. Marshals Service said in their recent statement that last week, they located Armstrong's Jeep Grand Cherokee, which she had sold to a CarMax dealership on May 13, a day before she left Austin. They said investigators believe she flew to Houston before boarding a connecting flight to New York.

Instagram; U.S. Marshals Service

According to an arrest affidavit posted by the Austin American-Statesman, fellow cyclist Colin Strickland, 35, told police he and Wilson were briefly romantically involved in fall 2021 while he was temporarily broken up with Armstrong, his live-in girlfriend. Strickland, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, said he and Wilson remained friends after their own split and spent time together hours before her death, which he did not witness.

Wilson's family said in a statement to CNN last month, "We do feel it's important to clarify that at the time of her death, those closest to her clearly understood, directly from Moriah, that she was not in a romantic relationship with anyone."

Following Wilson's killing, police located two handguns in the home Strickland shared with Armstrong. A new federal warrant issued against her this month stated that "laboratory test-firing of Armstrong's pistol confirmed that it fired the spent shell casings that [Austin police] found at the scene of the murder," Fox News reported.

"There is no way to adequately express the regret and torture I feel about my proximity to this horrible crime," Strickland told The Austin American-Statesman last month. "He also said he has "cooperated fully with investigators" and will "continue to do so until some form of justice is served."

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