What the cameras saw
Detectives had pulled footage from the doorbell and security cameras on the streets around Maple Avenue.
They showed a dark Jeep Grand Cherokee with a bicycle rack on the back and a luggage rack on top moving through the neighborhood that night. One neighbor’s camera filmed it driving past about a minute after Colin dropped Mo off. Kaitlin owned a black 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Police found it parked at the house she shared with Colin.
Data from the Jeep put it in the area by about 8 p.m. A prosecution analyst later testified that it had circled the block in the hours before the killing, and then left the area shortly after it.
Another neighbor’s camera had picked up sound. At about 9:15 p.m., two minutes after Mo’s last text, it recorded a scream and then gunshots. “The last thing Mo did on this earth was scream,” a prosecutor later told the jury.
The rest came quickly. An anonymous tipster told police that Kaitlin had found out about Colin and Mo, was furious, and had talked about killing her. Colin told investigators he had bought two handguns, one for himself and one for Kaitlin. Police seized both from their house. According to a search warrant, a casing from Kaitlin’s SIG Sauer P365 pistol was a “significant” match for a casing found at the scene.
On May 17, a judge signed a warrant for Kaitlin Armstrong’s arrest for first-degree murder.
By then she was gone.
Forty-three days
The U.S. Marshals pieced together what she had done after she walked out of the interview room.
On May 13, she drove her Jeep to a CarMax in South Austin and sold it for $12,200. On May 14, cameras at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport filmed her heading for a flight. She flew through Houston to New York’s LaGuardia Airport and went to her sister’s home in upstate New York.
On May 18, she boarded a United Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey, to San José, Costa Rica, using her sister’s passport. Her sister told authorities she had not given it to her, and she was never charged.
In Costa Rica, Kaitlin cut her hair short and dyed it brown. She used other names. When she was finally caught, the first name she gave police was “Ari Martin.” Receipts in her belongings, made out to yet another name, were for cosmetic surgery: work on her nose and a brow lift at a clinic in San José, about $6,425 in total, paid for days before her arrest.
She ended up in Santa Teresa, a small surf town on the Pacific coast with one main street, living in a hostel and looking for yoga students.
The yoga ad
Two deputy U.S. Marshals, Emir Perez and Damien Fernandez, followed her trail to San José and found nothing. They learned she had probably moved to Santa Teresa, but in a town full of travelers, nobody matched her photo.
After more than a month, with the team preparing to give up and fly home, they posted an ad on a local Facebook page looking for a yoga instructor. For a few days, nobody answered. Then someone did.
The marshals had also worked out which hostel she was likely staying in, and local tourism police helped watch it. Perez walked in alone and found a woman working at the front desk. She had a bandage on her nose and swollen lips. He spoke Spanish and acted like a tourist. He was not certain it was her until he looked at her eyes. They matched the photo.
On June 29, 2022, Costa Rican police arrested her. She told people the marks on her face came from a surfboarding accident.
Costa Rica deported her. In early July, U.S. Marshals flew her back to Texas.
One more run
Back in Austin, Kaitlin Armstrong pleaded not guilty to murder. A judge set her bond at $3.5 million, and she stayed in the Travis County Jail.
Her lawyers tried to have the police interview thrown out, arguing that it was really an interrogation and she had never been read her rights. The judge refused. The jury would see it.
Then, in October 2023, less than three weeks before her trial, she was taken to a medical appointment at an orthopedic clinic in South Austin. As two corrections officers walked her out the back door, she ran. They chased her on foot through the neighborhood for about ten minutes, never losing sight of her, until she was caught. Investigators later said she had planned it. She was charged with escape, but that charge was later dropped.
The trial
Jury selection began on October 30, 2023, before Judge Brenda Kennedy.
Jurors heard Caitlin Cash’s 911 call. They watched the body camera footage, the neighborhood camera clips of the Jeep, and the hour-long interview from May 12. They heard from friends who said Kaitlin had talked about wanting to kill Mo, and they saw the surgery bills from Costa Rica.
Kaitlin’s lawyers argued that the case was circumstantial. None of the videos showed Kaitlin herself, they said, only a car. Nobody had seen her pull a trigger.
On November 16, 2023, the jury deliberated for about two hours. They found her guilty of murder.
The next day, after just over three hours, the same jury decided her sentence: 90 years in prison. The judge also fined her $10,000. She will not be eligible for parole for 30 years.
After the verdict
Kaitlin Armstrong appealed, and the appeal was denied. She is serving her sentence at the Dr. Lane Murray Unit, a women’s prison in Gatesville, Texas.
In June 2024, a judge ordered her to pay $15 million to Mo Wilson’s parents in a wrongful death lawsuit. The lawsuit was also meant to make sure she could never profit from the crime. The family set up the Moriah Wilson Foundation in their daughter’s name.
On the afternoon after Mo died, Kaitlin Armstrong sat in an interview room and said she didn’t know anything. A neighbor’s doorbell camera already knew where her Jeep had been. She was gone before anyone could ask her again.
