They saw surveillance showing Strickland and Wilson together before the killing. They saw data clearing Strickland from the murder window and evidence placing Armstrong’s Jeep beside Cash’s residence.
They heard that the Jeep’s electronics went inactive next to the alley and resumed movement minutes after the shots. They heard that Armstrong’s phone was off through much of the same period.
They heard about the unusual iCloud note containing the nonexistent “1704 Maple Ave.” address that mapped to Cash’s garage apartment, and that the note was deleted the next day.
They heard ballistics evidence connecting Armstrong’s SIG Sauer P365 with fired cartridge cases from the scene. They heard the competing interpretations of DNA recovered from Wilson’s bicycle.
And they heard about the flight to Costa Rica using her sister’s passport, the alias, the cosmetic procedures and the later escape attempt from custody.
The defense challenged the strength of the circumstantial case. Armstrong’s attorneys emphasized that no witness had seen her shoot Wilson and disputed the prosecution’s interpretation of several forensic and digital details.
The jurors nevertheless concluded that the combined evidence proved murder beyond a reasonable doubt. On November 16, 2023, they found Kaitlin Armstrong guilty of murdering Anna Moriah Wilson.
THE SENTENCE
The case moved into the punishment phase the following day. Wilson’s family and friends described a life that had been expanding in every direction before it was abruptly ended.
Mo Wilson had been only 25. She was widely regarded as one of the most talented emerging riders in American off-road cycling and had built relationships throughout a sport that expected to watch her compete for years.
Her parents, Eric and Karen Wilson, and her brother, Matt, spoke about the family they had lost. Caitlin Cash described the continuing impact of returning to and living with the memory of the apartment where she had found her friend.
The defense presented evidence about Armstrong’s own family ties and argued against the harshest possible punishment. Jurors ultimately assessed 90 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and a $10,000 fine.
The sentence meant Armstrong would spend most, and potentially all, of her remaining life in prison. It was not the end of the legal case, however, because her attorneys pursued a motion for new trial and a direct appeal.
THE APPEAL
Armstrong’s appeal raised three principal issues. She argued that the trial court should have held a hearing on her motion for new trial, that the motion itself should have been granted, and that statements from her May 12, 2022 police interview should have been suppressed.
The new-trial claims focused partly on testimony from the DNA expert and partly on whether trial counsel had failed to investigate and present enough mitigating evidence during sentencing. The appellate court examined the affidavits and the trial record but concluded Armstrong had not established grounds requiring a new trial.
The court also examined the police-station interview in detail. It distinguished between the period when officers initially believed Armstrong was being held on a valid warrant and the later period after Detective Conner told her the warrant was invalid and she was free to leave.
Even assuming any statements should not have been admitted, the court concluded they did not contribute to the verdict in a way requiring reversal. Stronger evidence concerning jealousy, flight, the Jeep, the ballistics, digital records and other circumstances had been introduced independently.
On January 23, 2026, the Texas Third Court of Appeals affirmed Armstrong’s conviction and sentence in full.
WHAT THE EVIDENCE ESTABLISHES
The Wilson case became widely known as a “love triangle murder,” but that phrase can oversimplify both Wilson’s life and the evidence. Wilson was not simply a romantic rival; she was a professional athlete with her own career, family and future, and her brief relationship with Strickland had ended months earlier.
The state’s case against Armstrong was not based on one dramatic clue. It was built from a sequence of mutually reinforcing facts: her relationship with Strickland, witness testimony about jealousy, the Jeep near the apartment, the vehicle’s travel logs, the timing of her phone being turned off, the iCloud address note, the firearm evidence, the bicycle DNA and her flight.
Some individual pieces were open to interpretation. DNA can move indirectly. A person can turn off a phone for innocent reasons. A vehicle near a location does not, standing alone, identify who was driving it.
But criminal trials do not require each piece to independently prove the entire case. Jurors were asked to decide whether all of the evidence, viewed together and tested against the defense’s arguments, proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Armstrong killed Wilson.
They decided that it did.
THE FIRST HOURS OF THE INVESTIGATION
The early body-camera footage shows how uncertain the scene was before investigators knew anything about Armstrong. Cash could offer only fragments: Wilson had been with Strickland, they had gone swimming, and Cash had left the house earlier in the evening. Officers asked repeatedly about a firearm, a wallet, identification and the bicycle because they did not yet know whether they were looking at a targeted attack, a burglary or something connected to Wilson’s social life.
Cash told them Wilson had been staying at the apartment because of the upcoming race. She was from Vermont, had been living in the San Francisco area and had come to Texas specifically because cycling brought her there. Cash’s answer to the most important question was simple: the last person she knew Wilson had gone out with was Colin Strickland.
The missing bicycle briefly gave detectives an apparently concrete direction. Cash normally expected Wilson to keep it just inside the apartment door, and officers could not find it there. Because the bike was worth thousands of dollars and professional cyclists depend on highly specialized equipment, theft was a rational possibility to examine.
Then an officer found the bicycle outside, discarded nearby. The discovery did not prove why it had been moved or who had moved it, but it changed the investigation because the expensive item had not actually been taken away. Detectives therefore had to consider whether moving the bike was part of the killer’s actions before leaving the scene.
The cartridge cases recovered inside were immediately protected because they could potentially be compared with any firearm later seized from a suspect. At that stage, however, officers had no murder weapon, no direct eyewitness and no confirmed suspect.
Cash voluntarily cooperated with investigators and allowed them to collect evidence needed to document her movements. Police also wanted to prevent a future defense from arguing that investigators had ignored the person who lived in the apartment, so they treated elimination evidence seriously even when they did not believe she had killed Wilson.