Original subtitles

Tonight, we're learning the victim of a deadly shooting

in East Austin was a well-known cyclist.

The idea that the killer stood over her is just

chilling to me, chilling.

This could have been the last person to see the victim alive.

A lot of people in the community believe

that he was quite the playboy.

Immediately when I walk in-- very, very cold,

heartless, blank stare.

There really are no winners here.

This is a time for prayer.

The suspects' whereabouts were completely unknown.

I remember thinking, like,

"Innocent people don't run away."

I heard this story on the news, and what really struck me was

this really amazing cyclist getting murdered in cold blood.

There were so many bizarre elements to this case.

And the case kept escalating.

It was like a real mystery, at first, about

what happened to her.

And it turns out it's about sex, betrayal,

jealousy, and murder.

In 2022, Anna Moriah Wilson is 25 years old,

and known to her friends

and family as Mo.

She's a single woman

and an up-and-coming professional cyclist

living in San Francisco.

We're joined with Moriah Wilson.

You came down from Northern California.

What do you think so far?

The course seems sweet.

It's great. I'm stoked to be here.

Moriah grew up in Vermont, and she went to Dartmouth.

She was this incredible athlete

pretty much her entire life.

I spoke to one of her high school friends,

and she had said that Mo was the type of athlete that,

it was really all about, like, the camaraderie.

She was just so encouraging to everyone.

She was very outgoing and had a bubbly personality.

She kind of lifted the people up around her.

She came from a family of athletes.

Her father was on the U.S. ski team.

She wanted to be an Olympic alpine skier,

but unfortunately,

she had a number of ACL injuries.

Being in Vermont, you're skiing during the winter,

and then in the summer,

it's typical for those trails to still be open

without snow for bike races.

And so when she got injured, she ended up switching over

to gravel racing.

Gravel racing is-- it's almost like an extreme sport.

They're not just doing a regular cycling, like,

in the neighborhood or anything like that.

They're out in the mountains, they're going up and down these

huge hills, and you're doing it at really fast paces.

- You enjoy the climbs? - Yes.

- You enjoy a 10,000-foot day? - Yes.

I probably won't be thinking that when I'm out there

riding tomorrow, but, yeah.

Immediately after picking up gravel racing,

she started winning races.

She was deemed as being one of the best in the U.S.

Every race that she would compete in, she would win,

but not only just win, she would win by a lot.

Mo Wilson, phenomenal race! Congratulations, first of all.

Thank you so much.

I cannot wait to see what you're able to do

at the next stop in Emporia,

and I hope you can just really soak up this win.

In May of 2022,

just before her 26th birthday,

Mo goes to Texas to participate in the Gravel Local Road Race.

It's a 157-mile bike race.

She stops in Austin for a couple of days

to visit friends before heading to Hico.

But in a dark twist of fate,

her weekend trip turns into a nightmare.

Austin, police!

Hey.

Do I stop?

I don't know what happened, I just walked in on her.

OK.

She was pronounced deceased,

so officers immediately called

the Austin Police Department Homicide Unit.

While the patrolmen wait for homicide to arrive,

they talk with the 911 caller who resides at the apartment

and is friends with the victim.

Her name was Kaitlin Cash. She goes by Cash.

She seemed distraught.

She was very concerned for her friend,

and she was very forthcoming about information

to try and help.

We learned that her real name is Anna Moriah Wilson,

but she actually goes by Moriah,

and most of her friends actually refer to her as Mo.

Kaitlin Cash is taken to the station,

while Homicide detective Tim Price is notified

that he's caught a case.

So, when I arrived at the scene,

the patrol officers that had already responded

had taped off the crime scene.

They had the entrances and exits to the alleys sealed off.

Looking at the apartment from the alleyway,

it looked very normal.

I didn't see anything from outside that led me to believe

that somebody had forced their way into the apartment.

Inside the apartment, all the possibilities are going

through my mind.

Is this some type of burglary or robbery,

an attempted assault?

You could see the victim from the front door.

About half her body was sticking outside

of the bathroom area.

She did have what appeared to be shot wounds.

There are two gunshots to the victim's face,

and blood surrounds her head and neck.

We noticed two fired cartridge cases in the kitchen area,

so it appeared from first glance that somebody had stood

near the doorway and possibly shot the victim

from a few feet away.

We collected those cartridge cases,

and both of them were 9-millimeter rounds.

We can try to match those cases

if we end up recovering a fire arm

while working the case.

Then, police discover a third gunshot wound and a bullet.

And the bullet actually went right through her

and wedged itself into the floor.

The only way to receive that type of injury is

for a person to stand directly over that person and shoot them.

That is just a very cold-blooded,

evil thing to do.

To shoot somebody, then to walk across and stand over them

and shoot them again.

The killer wanted to make sure that the victim was dead.

Whoever did this, it was a very personal act.

I believe that most likely the suspect knew the victim.

It was an execution-style killing.

Somebody wanted her dead. The question was, why?

Why would somebody want this young cyclist dead?

Cash told us that Moriah met up with an individual

named Colin Strickland that night.

He potentially could be a suspect,

so it was extremely important to locate Colin.

If he was the last person to see her alive,

we needed to talk to this guy right away.

In the Homicide office,

Cash indicated that Moriah didn't really know many people

in the Austin area.

Colin Strickland was another really well-known gravel racer

that was kind of a celebrity

in that realm of the cycling community.

Colin Strickland is a 35-year-old cyclist,

he had a lot of sponsors, but he wasn't winning

as many races as he had when he was younger.

A lot of people in the community believe

that he was, you know, quite the playboy.

Their relationship was only about a week.

And this was back in October.

They were still communicating every now and then.

But at this point, they were just friends.

Cash was able to give us a pretty good timeline

of what took place the night before.

Cash told Moriah that she was going to be out

with other friends.

Cash ended up leaving,

and Moriah was still at the house.

Cash arrived back to the apartment

around 9:55 PM.

And that's when Cash saw that Moriah was unresponsive

and was bleeding.

Although Kaitlin Cash wasn't home most of the night,

she knew when her front door was locked or unlocked.

Cash was able to tell me that Moriah had locked the door

at 5:55 PM.

When she was leaving.

Cash then got an alert at 8:36 PM

indicating that the door was unlocked

and Moriah had probably just arrived home.

This told me that the murder had to have occurred

somewhere between 8:36 PM

and 9:55 PM.

Cash also told us that Moriah's bike was missing.

I told that to the deputies at the crime scene.

It was a really expensive bike,

and so police wondered,

you know, is robbery the motive here?

Detectives at the crime scene began canvassing the area,

looking for surveillance video, witnesses, and any evidence

that could have been left behind.

While canvassing the neighborhood,

one of the patrol officers located a bicycle

down the alleyway from the apartment.

It appeared that it had been thrown into some bushes.

432, I located the bike.

I did know right away that

we wanted that bicycle preserved till we could collect it,

swab it for prints, DNA.

I Googled the brand of the bicycle

and learned that it was probably a $10,000 or $12,000

professional racing bike.

Detectives wondered, like, "Why wouldn't you take

a $12,000 bicycle?"

Why would you just discard it?

I felt after observing that, that a property crime wasn't

at play here, that somebody didn't come in here

to steal some stuff.

Then the neighborhood canvas also produces another lead.

We did find one resident, probably about 15 feet

from where the stairs go up to the apartment,

who had video footage from their front door.

And so we're really zoned in on video from about 8:00 PM

to approximately 9:50 PM.

That's when detectives spot a suspicious vehicle driving by

repeatedly on the street near Kaitlin Cash's apartment.

It was a dark-colored SUV. It appeared to be a Jeep.

The Jeep Cherokee has a luggage rack on the top,

but also a bicycle rack on the back,

and then, chrome windows.

The driver didn't appear to be

driving like they were going somewhere,

we could see that they kept stopping and slowing down.

So that stuck out right away.

Unfortunately, what they don't see is the driver

of the vehicle or the license plate

because the bicycle rack is covering

the license plate numbers.

That resident also had a camera

that faced the alleyway.

At 8:37 PM., this black SUV begins slowing down,

almost coming to a stop

right next to the door of Cash's apartment.

This is one after Moriah had just walked inside.

As dawn approaches,

the next order of business is speaking to the last person

who potentially saw Moriah alive--

Colin Strickland.

When officers arrived to Colin's house,

they notified me that there was a black SUV in the driveway.

It had a luggage rack on the roof,

it had chrome around the windows,

and it had a large bike rack that was mounted

onto the back trailer hitch.

This vehicle matched the exact description of what I had seen

on video surveillance one minute after Moriah had entered

into her residence.

At this point, we're starting to think we might actually

have our suspect. This might be our guy.

I thought maybe Colin had gotten into

a fight with Moriah.

And after he dropped Moriah off,

he couldn't get over this argument,

circled around the block,

and then returned to Cash's apartment.

Suspicious of Colin Strickland from the get-go,

detectives wanna see how he reacts to the news

of her death.

Detective Spitler finds Colin working in his garage.

He was definitely a person of interest at that point,

so he was brought into the Homicide office

for an interview.

During Colin's interview, he stated that he knew Mo

from the cycling world.

He seemed to speak really highly of her.

Colin indicates that he lives with his girlfriend,

Kaitlin Armstrong, but the couple was on a break

in the fall, when he was sleeping with Moriah.

Him and Kaitlin got back together

a few months later,

but he was still talking to Mo.

It did seem that he was maybe playing both sides.

After learning about Colin's complicated relationship

with both Kaitlin and Mo,

Detective Spitler turns the conversation back

to the night of the murder.

Colin tells Detective Spitler that they wrapped up

at Pool Burger around 8:00 PM.

While this interview was ongoing,

officers were able to locate video from Pool Burger,

indicating that Colin's story about him and Moriah

at Pool Burger was actually correct.

We left Pool Burger...

Colin Strickland told detectives that he dropped her off

around 8:30, and that was it.

Colin indicated that he had been messaging Moriah

throughout the day.

If I could see those messages.

What I found interesting, though,

the messages weren't from Moriah,

but it was from someone named Christine.

I asked Colin about this.

Colin said to them that his girlfriend,

Kaitlin Armstrong, was very jealous.

He said that any time that he speaks with Moriah,

that Kaitlin would become angry.

In the interview, Colin is trying to show that

there's some jealousy issues on Kaitlin's side.

But there's also the question of whether or not Colin was

starting to get in too deep and maybe something happened

and he needed to get rid of Moriah.

Yeah.

When Colin started talking about Kaitlin Armstrong,

he didn't talk about her in kind of a way

that you would typically think a boyfriend would talk

about their girlfriend.

Colin tells police,

in addition to running and operating

an RV renovation business together,

Kaitlin Armstrong also works in finance and real estate,

and she teaches yoga on the side.

They've been together for a couple of years,

but Kaitlin has a jealous side.

We learned at one point that after the relationship

that him and Moriah had,

that Kaitlin had actually called Moriah

and told her to stay away.

Moriah was shocked.

I don't think Moriah knew

that Kaitlin and Colin were back together.

Then, detectives asked Colin Strickland

about the Jeep that they find in his driveway.

I'm thinking he's distancing himself from the Jeep.

He's trying to demean her or speak poorly of her.

Is he trying to possibly pin it on Kaitlin?

I told Colin that there was video showing Kaitlin's Jeep

in the neighborhood.

This raised some red flags because the casings

and the cartridges at the crime scene were also 9 millimeters.

He stated that he had bought two guns a few months before.

One of them was his,

and he had given one of them to Kaitlin.

I started thinking, "OK, who's Kaitlin Armstrong?"

What does she have to do with this?

We're gonna need to talk to her as well.

She's brought in.

They place her in the interrogation room.

Kaitlin's boyfriend was brought in hours before

about a homicide investigation,

and she's not asking any questions about Colin,

which was odd to us.

I asked her, have you heard what happened

in the past 24 hours?

I think you'll see with people that are innocent,

they're asking a lot of questions. - Right.

"What am I doing here? Why am I talking to you?"

Mmm...

If you're guilty, you're probably gonna

sit there and say nothing.

- Yeah. - She just sat there

and would barely say anything to you.

You could tell she was, she was done.

She wanted to get out of that room.

So at that point, I kind of throw out this Hail Mary.

She doesn't make any denials.

She doesn't explain why her vehicle was over there.

And that was the turning point of the interview

that I was like, "OK, we are on the right track."

This was 100% her vehicle.

There's no doubt in my mind at this point.

At this point, Kaitlin and Colin are both suspects,

so Detective Connor collects their phones

while Detective Price gets a warrant to search their house.

At the residence, detectives found

two 9-millimeter handguns,

and both of them were seized as evidence.

That morning, news breaks that Mo Wilson has been murdered.

Tonight, we're learning the victim of a deadly shooting

in East Austin earlier this week was a well-known cyclist.

25-year-old Moriah Wilson was shot multiple times

late Wednesday night.

The cycling community was devastated when they found out

about Moriah's passing.

She just seemed to float around like an angel,

and everyone's just sort of reeling from it.

It's just tragic, and it's sad for Austin

and all of the Austin bike community.

The moment we cease to hold each other,

the moment we break faith with one another,

the light goes out.

I spoke with Moriah's family and expressed

my condolences to them.

It was difficult for them to accept that their daughter

had been killed.

While police are investigating the murder of Mo Wilson,

back in Vermont, her family is putting together a memorial

and they put out a statement about the race.

Ahead of today's Gravel Locos race in Hico,

her family published a statement saying she was, quote,

"Always pushing tirelessly to reach her goals."

The family adding,

"We know Moriah would want the event to carry on."

Around this time, detectives returned

to the neighborhood where the murder occurred

to see if they can find any additional video

to confirm that Colin did actually drop Moriah off

on his motorcycle, and leave.

At one of the houses in particular,

they had actually opened the door to the carport

at 8:36, which activated the motion sensor camera.

At that same time,

Colin's motorcycle can be seen

driving in the alleyway,

leaving from Cash's residence.

And we saw the black Jeep a minute later.

This confirmed that Colin was, in fact, telling the truth

about being on his motorcycle, and he was not driving

Kaitlin's black Jeep.

Not long afterwards,

police get a two hour long tape,

and it turns out to be one of the most frightening

pieces of evidence in the entire case.

It was a continuously recording doorbell camera

that was across the street from where this murder occurred.

I was typing my report, and I had this video playing

in the background.

Any time that I heard a vehicle passing by,

I would review the camera, see if it is the vehicle

that was in question,

and the video continued to play.

On the video,

at approximately 9:15 PM,

I heard a female screaming.

There were two gunshots,

a six-second pause,

and a third and final gunshot.

I now had the exact moment of when this murder occurred.

I listened to it, and it was heartbreaking.

In that moment, I kind of felt

like I was standing in her shoes.

The following day,

Colin Strickland and Kaitlin Armstrong's

cell phone data comes in.

Colin's phone was pinging away from the scene

when we knew the murder occurred.

So we started to focus on Kaitlin's phone records.

Those records indicated that she had left her residence

around 7:00 PM,

traveled into downtown Austin,

and then was driving around through the area

before beginning to head into East Austin,

where this murder occurred.

At about 7:30 PM,

her device is no longer communicating

with the network towers.

Kaitlin's phone did not reconnect to a tower

until 9:55 PM.

Showing to be at her residence.

It appears that Kaitlin's phone was turned off

during the time the murder took place.

And although this is suspicious,

there still isn't enough evidence to arrest her.

But that all changes six days after Mo's murder.

On May 17th, we actually received

a ballistics report back,

saying that the ballistics did match the bullet fragments

from the scene.

The handgun that it matched was Kaitlin's Sig Sauer.

From the phone data, we knew that Colin was at home

using his phone

at the time of the murder.

And Kaitlin's black Jeep was seen on surveillance footage

outside of Cash's apartment.

And only these two people had access to the firearm

that was used to commit the murder.

So we believe that we had enough probable cause

to issue an arrest warrant for Kaitlin Armstrong.

Once the arrest warrant for Kaitlin Armstrong was issued,

we went to arrest her,

but we realized that Kaitlin Armstrong was

nowhere to be found.

U.S. Marshals are searching for this woman,

Kaitlin Marie Armstrong,

charged with the murder of Anna Moriah Wilson.

She knew she was gonna be wanted for this.

She probably had a five-day head start.

Kaitlin cannot be found.

She has gone off the grid.

So we asked Colin about Kaitlin.

Colin had hired an attorney until this case was resolved,

and the attorney had recommended that until

everything was settled, to no longer speak with Kaitlin.

So Colin had not even been in contact with Kaitlin,

and her whereabouts were completely unknown.

After searching the city, we soon realized that

she wasn't anywhere in the Austin area.

Detectives reach out to the Austin airport

to see if there's any surveillance footage

of Kaitlin getting on a flight.

We actually discovered video of Kaitlin

at the Austin airport,

and she had on a blue-jean jacket, a yoga mat.

They confirmed through the flight manifesto

that Kaitlin Armstrong took a flight from Austin to Houston,

and from there, she boarded a plane to Newark, New Jersey.

Police wonder if she's there to catch a connecting flight

out of the country.

So we're looking at Kaitlin's passport to see if anything

comes back as having taken a flight out of the country.

And nothing comes back.

We started kind of thinking, did she go to family?

Like, why the New York area?

And we learned that she had a sister named

Christine Armstrong

that lived up in the New York area.

Her sister looks a lot like her,

and they're very close.

And so we started to see if she's used her passport.

The U.S. Marshals confirmed

that Christine's passport had been used to fly

from New York to Costa Rica.

And they confirmed Christine was still currently

in New York.

So this is raising red flags that now Kaitlin has

left the country and she's now in Costa Rica.

While the U.S. Marshals head down to Costa Rica

to try to locate Kaitlin,

in Vermont, Moriah's family holds a memorial

at her old school.

As the U.S. Marshals are trying to track down

Kaitlin Armstrong,

a woman who is friends with Kaitlin Armstrong

contacts the Austin police.

OK.

Based on that information, we knew that

this had been going on for several months.

The jealousy had started months before.

Around this time, the lab results come back

from the swab taken from Moriah's bike,

and there is female DNA present

that does not belong to Moriah.

We're thinking, hopefully, that's Kaitlin's DNA on the bike.

And so they have to get a DNA swab of Kaitlin Armstrong

to see if that will match.

But the only problem is, is where is Kaitlin Armstrong?

She's in the wind.

U.S. Marshals figure that after more than a month on the run,

she must be working in some capacity to survive.

Since Costa Rica is a popular spot for yoga retreats

and she's a licensed yoga instructor,

the Marshals wonder if she might be looking for employment

as a yoga instructor.

We had intelligence indicating that she was staying in hostels

in Costa Rica.

They had local Costa Rican authorities start looking

around at yoga studios where she could be staying,

living, or even possibly teaching.

We decided we were going to put an ad out

for a yoga instructor.

The Marshals put an ad out

on the local Costa Rican websites

looking for a private yoga instructor

from the U.S., and shockingly, Kaitlin responds

with the address of the hostel where she's living.

- So one of the U.S. - Marshals actually went in

to look for her, and she had actually

changed her appearance.

She dyed her hair, and it's obvious she's had

some kind of work.

But they know this is her.

The Marshals placed Kaitlin Armstrong into custody

and prepared to bring her back to the U.S.

I was extremely happy.

I could not wait to tell Moriah's family

that the person who killed their daughter

was finally found.

Seven weeks after Mo Wilson was murdered

Kaitlin Armstrong is deported back to the U.S.,

and she ends up in Houston.

We drive down there.

We go try and interview her at the Houston Homicide Office,

and immediately when I walk in,

very, very cold, heartless,

blank stare,

and she immediately lawyered up this time,

so we weren't able to ask her any questions.

But I collect her DNA, and then we turn it over

so it can be analyzed and compared

to the other DNA that we had from Moriah's bike.

We compared her DNA, and it proved to match

DNA found on the handlebar and the seat of the bike.

The DNA coming back on the bike was huge.

There is no reason that Kaitlin's DNA should be

on Moriah's bike.

There's no explanation for that.

This was kind of the nail in the coffin.

For more than a year, the Travis County DA prepares

to try the first-degree murder case.

And then, just as the trial is about to begin,

in October of 2023,

Kaitlin Armstrong injures herself while in prison.

Kaitlin had told the staff that she had a leg injury,

and she didn't believe that the doctors at the jail

were competent enough.

She wanted an outside doctor

to be able to give their opinion.

Her request was granted,

and she was sent to an outside doctor.

Then we're all sitting around the table

in the Homicide office,

and someone comes out, and yells that Kaitlin

just escaped from Travis County Jail.

While at that doctor's office, Kaitlin fled the scene.

She broke away from the deputies and ran.

There's video footage of her running down the street,

wearing her prison garb with handcuffs on her wrists.

It's very interesting to see her in the black-and-white-striped

jail outfit, running away, trying to jump over a fence.

I remember thinking, like,

"Innocent people don't run away."

Watching that video was rough,

because I think all of us are just

in this mindset of like,

"Please, God, do not let her escape again."

That would just be heartbreaking

for the family.

She ran for approximately one mile before she was found

and taken back into police custody.

Two weeks after her failed attempt to escape,

her trial begins.

Kaitlin is being charged with first-degree murder.

The last thing Mo did on this earth

was scream in terror,

followed by-- pow, pow!

Two gunshots.

Kaitlin Armstrong...

stood over Mo Wilson,

and put a third shot

right in Mo Wilson's heart.

Although the prosecution presents evidence

that the murder weapon belonged to Kaitlin Armstrong,

that her DNA was on Moriah's bike

and her Jeep was at the crime scene,

the defense pointed to the fact that they could not see

who was driving that Jeep Cherokee.

Not one witness saw Kaitlin Armstrong allegedly

commit this murder.

Not one.

After two weeks of trial, the jury came back

with a verdict.

Breaking news tonight, a jury finds Kaitlin Armstrong

guilty of murdering Anna Moriah "Mo" Wilson back in May 2022.

Jurors deliberated for only two hours before returning

with the verdict.

There really are no winners here.

This is not a time for celebration,

but a time for prayer.

Both Caitlin Cash and Moriah's mother, Karen Wilson,

give emotional, victim impact statements at the sentencing.

I fought for Mo with everything I had that night.

It never actually crossed my mind,

in the chaos of that night,

that she would die,

that she was already dead when I arrived home.

The ripple effect is almost incomprehensible.

So many people in this room have lost so much.

I hate what you did to my beautiful daughter.

It was very selfish and cowardly,

because you never chose to face her woman-to-woman.

She would have cared about your feelings.

If you'd allowed yourself to actually know her,

you never, ever would've wanted to hurt her.

The jury gave Kaitlin a 90-year sentence.

I think what struck me about the story in particular

was Kaitlin's rage and where it took her.

I found that deeply shocking and disturbing.

The idea that she stood over Moriah in that sort

of formal execution style and just...

shot her in the heart was just...

chilling to me, chilling.

Moriah was young. She was only 25 years old.

She had this massive, promising career.

Her life was taken from her.

And whatever made Kaitlin do this,

it was very trivial.

I have worked a lot of different murders,

and they're all terrible.

But this one really stands out to be gunned down

because somebody's upset

that their boyfriend's talking to her.

I mean, it's just so senseless.

After the trial, the Wilson family starts

a foundation called the Moriah Wilson Foundation

in Moriah's memory.

They raise money to expand access to sports education

and recreation, and they host a race every year

around Moriah's birthday in May

called Ride for Mo.

Welcome to the first annual...

Ride for Mo.

Thank you for coming to spend this beautiful day with us,

where Moriah grew up and where the love of biking

was nurtured.

Moriah was a wonderful daughter, sister, and friend

to many of you.

Moriah lived her life in a very intentional manner.

She knew what she wanted. She pursued her dreams.

And I know she was an inspiration to all of us.

She would want us to feel joyous today.

So let's be together, and let's ride some bikes.

9-1-1, where is your emergency?

There were no obvious signs of struggle.

He kept saying "I didn't harm her."

He was clearly trying to throw detective off of his trail.