IMPORTANT CORRECTIONS AND VERIFICATION NOTES
The victim’s full name was Anna Moriah “Mo” Wilson, a 25-year-old elite cyclist from Vermont. The friend who discovered her was Caitlin Cash, and the woman ultimately convicted of Wilson’s murder was Kaitlin Marie Armstrong.
Wilson was killed on May 11, 2022, inside Cash’s garage apartment on Maple Avenue in Austin, Texas. A Travis County jury convicted Armstrong of murder on November 16, 2023, and on November 17 the jury assessed 90 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
The original narration overstates several points. A negative gunshot-residue test is not, by itself, proof that a person could not have fired a gun, and Wilson’s bicycle being found nearby was evidence to be investigated rather than proof that it had been planted as a deliberate “red herring.” Likewise, the police interview of Armstrong on May 12, 2022, became a major appellate issue, but the Texas Third Court of Appeals ultimately affirmed the conviction on January 23, 2026.
The appellate record also confirms that Armstrong fled the United States using her sister’s passport, lived under the alias “Allison Paige,” underwent cosmetic procedures while in Costa Rica, and was captured there on June 29, 2022. She was charged with murder, not attempted murder.
THE NIGHT ON MAPLE AVENUE
Just before 10:00 p.m. on May 11, 2022, Austin police received a frantic 911 call from Caitlin Cash. Her friend Mo Wilson had been staying with her while in Texas for an upcoming cycling event, and Cash had just returned home to a scene she could barely process.
“My friend is staying with me,” she told the dispatcher. “I just walked in and she’s laying on the bathroom floor and there’s blood everywhere.” Cash said Wilson was not responding, and the dispatcher kept her on the line while police and paramedics rushed toward the Maple Avenue address.
Officers arrived to find Wilson critically injured inside the small apartment. They immediately treated the home as a major crime scene and began trying to understand who had been with Wilson during the final hours of her life.
Cash had been out for dinner. Wilson, meanwhile, had spent part of the evening with professional cyclist Colin Strickland, someone she knew through the cycling world and with whom she had previously shared a brief romantic relationship.
Cash told police that Wilson had gone swimming with Strickland earlier that evening. That information made him an obvious person investigators needed to locate quickly, because he appeared to have been among the last people known to have seen Wilson alive.
Wilson had come to Austin ahead of Gravel Locos, a major race in Hico, Texas. She was already recognized as an exceptional young competitor whose career appeared to be accelerating rapidly, and she had brought one of her valuable racing bicycles with her.
At first, investigators noticed the bicycle was missing from the apartment. In a case with no clear suspect and no obvious explanation, the missing bike raised the possibility of theft or a confrontation connected to robbery.
Officers searched the area around the residence. Before long, they located Wilson’s bicycle discarded in vegetation nearby.
That discovery weakened the simplest robbery theory. If someone had entered the apartment primarily to steal an expensive racing bike, abandoning it almost immediately did not fit neatly with that explanation.
Investigators therefore shifted toward the people in Wilson’s personal orbit. They collected physical evidence, documented the apartment, recovered fired cartridge cases and began reconstructing the timeline minute by minute.
CAITLIN CASH
Cash was understandably one of the first people police had to eliminate as a possible participant. She lived at the residence, had access to it, and had discovered Wilson shortly before calling 911.
Investigators brought her to the station and collected gunshot-residue samples from her hands. The procedure was an investigative step, not a definitive test of guilt or innocence by itself, and detectives also compared her account with phone records, her activities that evening and the physical evidence.
Cash’s timeline was consistent with her having been away from the apartment when Wilson was killed. Nothing investigators developed made her the focus of the homicide case, and attention quickly moved elsewhere.
The more useful information Cash supplied was that Wilson had spent the evening with Strickland. Detectives now needed to know exactly what the two had done, when he had dropped her off and whether anyone else had reason to follow them.
A DOORBELL CAMERA AND A BLACK JEEP
The surrounding neighborhood contained doorbell and security cameras, giving investigators a way to reconstruct events even though no eyewitness had seen the shooting itself. One neighbor’s system recorded activity around the time Wilson returned home.
The footage and later vehicle data became among the most important pieces of the case. A black Jeep Grand Cherokee was seen near the alley adjoining Cash’s residence around the critical time.
The court record later established a precise sequence. Surveillance showed Strickland and Wilson eating at Pool Burger after swimming at Deep Eddy, and shortly after 8:00 p.m. they left on Strickland’s motorcycle.
At approximately 8:36 p.m., Strickland dropped Wilson off at Cash’s apartment. The two hugged goodbye, and Strickland left the area.
At 9:13 p.m., Wilson’s phone sent what became its last recorded message. At approximately 9:15 p.m., a neighbor’s doorbell camera captured a high-pitched scream followed by three gunshots.
Cash returned later and called 911 at 9:54 p.m. Wilson was pronounced dead shortly afterward.
Those times would become critical because investigators could compare them against Strickland’s location data and against electronic records generated by the black Jeep.
COLIN STRICKLAND
The morning after the killing, detectives went to Strickland’s home. At first, their questions were cautious because they were still sorting out what had happened and because Wilson had spent the evening with him.