Woman convicted of killing pro cyclist Anna ‘Mo’ Wilson gets 90 years in prison. What happened?
AUSTIN, Texas — The murder trial of a Texas woman charged in the May 2022 shooting death of rising professional cyclist Anna “Mo” Wilson has ended with a guilty verdict and a 90-year prison sentence.
It took jurors only two hours to convict Kaitlin Armstrong on Thursday and just over three hours to decide her sentence on Friday.
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Investigators said Armstrong fled the U.S. shortly after Wilson was killed and underwent plastic surgery in an attempt to evade authorities.
“Find her guilty of shooting Mo Wilson in the heart and the head and taking away this prodigy at the age of 25,” Travis County Assistant District Attorney Rick Jones told the jury in closing arguments. “Justice for Mo Wilson.”
Wilson — a Vermont native and former alpine skier at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire — was an emerging star in gravel and mountain bike riding when she was killed in a friend’s apartment in Austin. She had been preparing to participate in a Texas race that she was among the favorites to win.
In the hours before she was killed, Wilson went swimming and had a meal with Armstrong’s boyfriend, former pro cyclist Colin Strickland, with whom Wilson had a brief romantic relationship months earlier.
Investigators say Armstrong gunned down Wilson in a jealous rage, then used her sister’s passport to escape the U.S. before she was tracked down and arrested at a beachside hostel in Costa Rica.
Armstrong attorney Rick Cofer pressed jurors on the lack of a witness to the shooting or video evidence, and said Armstrong had been unfairly portrayed “as a jealous psycho.”
“Kaitlin Armstrong has been trapped in a nightmare of circumstantial evidence. How do you prove a negative?” Cofer said, urging the jury to reject an “easy” story of a jealous lover.
“It’s a simple case, a beautifully easy story,” Cofer said. “But it’s wrong.”
There were no witnesses to the shooting or videos that place Armstrong in the apartment when Wilson was gunned down on May 11, 2022. Prosecutors built their case on a tight web of circumstantial evidence.
Strickland testified that he had to hide Wilson’s phone number from Armstrong under a fake name in his phone. Two of Armstrong’s friends said she told them she wanted to — or could — kill Wilson.
Vehicle satellite records, phone-tracking data and surveillance video from a nearby home showed Armstrong’s Jeep driving around the apartment and parking in an alley shortly before Wilson was killed. Data from Armstrong’s phone showed it had been used that day to track Wilson’s location via a fitness app that she used to chart her training rides.
Investigators also said shell casings near Wilson’s body matched a gun Armstrong owned.
Jurors heard the frantic emergency call from the friend who found Wilson’s body, saw the gruesome police camera footage of first responders performing CPR, and heard audio from a neighbor’s home surveillance system that prosecutors said captured Wilson’s final screams and three gunshots.
