Murder: True Crime Stories - SOLVED: Moriah Wilson 2 featuring Katie Ring

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

In Part 2 of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy and Katie Ring, host of America's Most Infamous Crimes, follow the case against Kaitlin Armstrong in the 2022 murder of rising gravel racing star Mo... Wilson. Digital forensics revealed months of obsessive surveillance, but a clerical error let Armstrong walk out of the police station before the murder warrant was ready. Within days, she had sold her Jeep, stolen her sister's passport, and fled to Costa Rica, where she paid cash for plastic surgery and assumed a fake identity. What followed was a 43-day international manhunt, a forensic goldmine hidden in her vehicle's GPS, and a trial that ended with a guilty verdict and a 90-year sentence. Listen to and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes: https://pod.link/1882861002Head over to our Murder True Crime Stories YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@MurderTrueCrimeStoriesIf you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder True Crime Stories to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosYouTube: @murdertruecrimestories

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, listeners, it's Carter Roy. Before we get into today's episode of Murder True Crime Stories, I want to tell you about another show I think you'll love, Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bot. Every Monday, Dr. Bot goes where history gets mysterious. Vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. Dr. Bot treats these moments like open case files.
Starting point is 00:00:30 Not myths, not superstition, just incomplete explanations waiting for a closer look. Hidden history drops every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. So you never miss a mystery. This is Crime House. There's a difference between suspecting someone of a crime and proving it. And there's an even bigger gap between getting that evidence and actually getting them into a courtroom. In May of 2022, investigators in Austin, Texas were building a case against a suspect in the murder of 25-year-old cyclist Anna, Mariah, or Moe, Wilson.
Starting point is 00:01:23 They had a vehicle placed at the scene. They had bullets that matched the type of gun the suspect owned, and the suspect made a key mistake. The evidence was coming together. It felt like only a matter of time, but the suspect wasn't going to wait around for the handcuffs. Within days of most death, she had sold a key piece of evidence, flown across the country under a stolen identity, and disappeared into Central America. By the time the murder warrant was issued, she was already gone. What followed was a 43-day manhunt across three countries, a fugitive who literally changed her face to avoid being caught, and a trial that finally revealed the full scope of what had been building behind closed doors for months. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories, the Crime House original powered by Pay Studios.
Starting point is 00:02:26 Today, I'm back with Katie Ring, host of America's most infamous crimes. Just in case you didn't subscribe on YouTube or follow the audio podcast, make sure to do it now. You'd be glad you did. Like last time, Katie will introduce today's episode. We'll also have an extended conversation about the case at the end, so be sure to stick around. Happy to be back and can't wait for a discussion later. This is the second of two episodes on the murder of 25-year-old Anna Mariah or Mo Wilson. Last time Carter introduced us to Mo, a rising star in the gravel racing world
Starting point is 00:03:01 that traveled to Austin, Texas for a race in May of 2022. After hanging out with a fellow cyclist named Colin Strickland, Mo was found dead in her friend's apartment. She'd been shot three times. Colin was quickly cleared, but soon, a new suspect emerged, his girlfriend, Caitlin Armstrong. Today, Carter will take you inside Caitlin's world and the relationship that fueled her obsession.
Starting point is 00:03:26 He'll walk you through the forensic evidence that locked the case down, the procedural mistake that let her walk free, and the international manhunt that followed, and he'll take you through the trial that ended it all. All of that and more coming up. To understand how this case unfolded, you have to understand who Caitlin Armstrong
Starting point is 00:03:57 was, and not just as a suspect, but as a person. Because what happened to Mo Wilson didn't start on the night of May 11th. It started months earlier in a house where two people were living together, but barely holding it together. Caitlin was born on November 21st, 1987, and grew up in Livonia, Michigan, a suburb outside Detroit. She went to Eastern Michigan University, worked in finance for a while, and eventually got her realtors license in Texas. She was also a certified yoga instructor who'd done her training in Indonesia. On the surface, she had it together, and she was looking for a partner to share her life with. She and Colin Strickland met on a dating app in October of 2019.
Starting point is 00:04:47 Things moved quickly. When Caitlin's Austin apartment flooded in 2021, she moved in. into Collins' house. What started as a temporary arrangement turned into something much more intertwined. She managed his finances. She ran his LLC. She helped operate a trailer restoration business he'd started called Wheelhouse Mobile. She had access to his bank accounts, his phone, his social media logins, his email. Their lives were tangled up in every possible way. It would have been hard for either them to walk away cleanly, even if they'd wanted to. And the people around them noticed something strange about their dynamic early on.
Starting point is 00:05:34 Colin went to races and almost never mentioned he had a girlfriend. He was well known in the cycling community for having a lot of female friends. Well, that wasn't necessarily unusual. The gravel racing community is small, and everybody knows everybody. but Caitlin didn't see it that way. She monitored all of his female friends. She kept tabs on who Colin was talking to, who he was texting, who he was spending time with, and she confronted him about it over and over.
Starting point is 00:06:08 Colin's own behavior made the situation worse. He told friends more than once that he didn't see a long-term future with Caitlin, but he never pulled the trigger on leaving for good. He'd end things and then they'd drift back together. He'd pull away and then he'd let her stay. It was this cycle that just kept going and neither of them seemed capable of breaking it. There's one detail that captures the dynamic perfectly. In early 2022, Colin posted a video from a race and Moe appeared briefly in the background of the frame.
Starting point is 00:06:48 Caitlin texted him afterward and said to, send her love to Mo. Colin later said it felt extremely passive-aggressive. But that was the tone of their relationship by that point. Everything was loaded. Everything carried a threat underneath the surface. And that was the life Colin was living at the time of Mo's death. Under constant close surveillance from a woman who had access to every corner of his digital world.
Starting point is 00:07:18 When investigators dug into King, Caitlin's digital footprint after the murder. What they found went way beyond a jealous girlfriend keeping tabs on her boyfriend's phone. Caitlin had access to Colin's iPad, which was synced to his phone. That meant every text he sent or received showed up on a device she could check at any time she wanted.
Starting point is 00:07:43 She'd been reading his messages for months. She knew about Mo. She knew about their texts. She knew about the fake contact name. And in the weeks before Mo came to Austin, Caitlin had been logging into Collins' Instagram and email accounts. Investigators would later describe her behavior as active systemic surveillance of his digital life.
Starting point is 00:08:07 She'd also been tracking Mo directly through Strava, the fitness app that cyclists and runners used to log their workouts and share routes publicly. Mo posted her rides to help build her brand as a professional athlete. It was standard practice. But through those public posts, Caitlin could see that Mo had recently completed a ride in Austin. And that's how she knew Mo was in town before Colin told her anything about it.
Starting point is 00:08:38 One investigators examined Colin's phone. They found 71 blocked contacts. Colin said he didn't remember blocking most of them. At least four were women he could identify by name, including Mo. It was pretty clear what had happened. Caitlin, who had full access to his devices, had been going through his contacts and removing women from his life one by one. She wasn't just watching him.
Starting point is 00:09:09 She was controlling who he could talk to. And Colin, who had to have known on some level, didn't stop it. He just kept hiding things, kept lying to both women, kept building workarounds instead of dealing with it. There was another incident that came up at the trial. In early 2022, Caitlin saw that Mo's Strava activity placed her in Austin. She confronted Colin about it. Colin denied any contact with Mo. But because of the iPad, Caitlin could already see that he was lying.
Starting point is 00:09:46 She had the texts. She had the proof. And still, Colin kept denying it. That cycle of deception and discovery of lies, layered on top of more lies, had been escalating for months. And then there were the threats. At least two of Caitlin's friends came forward and told investigators that in the months leading up to Moses, death in May 22, Caitlin had literally said that she was so jealous of Mo, she could kill her. One friend, Nicole Mertz, said Caitlin told her directly that she'd kill anyone who started a
Starting point is 00:10:27 relationship with Colin. The people who heard those words, assumed she was blowing off steam, just venting. Nobody took it literally. But prosecutors would later argue that Caitlin, meant exactly what she said. And on the evening of May 11th, everything Caitlin had been tracking converged. Through the synced iPad, she could see Mo's text to Colin. She saw the Cherrywood address Mo sent him. She knew he was lying when he told her he was going on a solo motorcycle ride. She even called him while he was sitting at Poolberger with Moe, and he let it ring. There is surveillance footage from the restaurant showing the moment that the call came through. So Caitlin grabbed her yoga mat, which would later serve as both a cover story and an alibi prop, and left the house.
Starting point is 00:11:24 She drove the Jeep straight toward the address she'd pulled from Collins' texts. On May 12, 2022, the day after the murder, police brought 34-year-old Caitlin in for questioning. but they didn't have a murder warrant yet. The forensics hadn't come back, and while the circumstantial evidence was strong, it wasn't enough on its own. They needed something to hold her on while the lab work caught up. So they dug into her background and found an old warrant.
Starting point is 00:11:58 In 2018, Caitlin had gotten a Botox treatment at an Austin medical spa, told the staff she'd left her card in the car, and walked out the front door. She never came back to pay for the $650 worth of Botox she'd gotten. She'd been charged with theft of service at the time, but was never arrested. The warrant had been sitting there dormant for four years. The detectives used it. They arrested Caitlin on the old charge and brought her into an interrogation room.
Starting point is 00:12:31 The footage from that interview is striking. The detective tried everything, empathy, logic, anything you could think. of. He told Caitlin he understood this was a difficult situation. He explained that if she walked out without talking, investigators would only have one side of the story. He laid out what they already knew and gave her every opening to respond, to explain herself, to offer an alibi. Caitlin's response was the same every time. I'd like to leave. She said it four times, same flat tone, same blank expression each time. She asked for a lawyer.
Starting point is 00:13:14 At one point, the detective brought up Mo's connection to Colin. Caitlin turned her head and rolled her eyes. She gave them absolutely nothing. No emotion, no explanation, no reaction. She just sat there like a wall. And then there was a knock on the door. A detective stepped in and passed a note to the lead interviewer. The date of birth on the theft of service warrant didn't match the date of birth in their system.
Starting point is 00:13:46 The discrepancy meant the warrant was technically invalid. Just like that, the one thing keeping Caitlin Armstrong in that room evaporated. They had nothing to hold her on. The murder case was building, but it wasn't ready yet. And the old Botox charge, the only... card they had to play had just been pulled out of their hand by a clerical error. Caitlin Armstrong walked out of the police station a free woman. She gathered her things, walked through the front door, and disappeared into the Austin afternoon.
Starting point is 00:14:23 And that procedural mistake set off everything that came next. The night 34-year-old Caitlin Armstrong walked out of the police station, she went home and asked Colin whether he thought the house was bugged. The next morning, they went to a coffee shop. When Colin pressed her for her alibi for the night of May 11th, she didn't say it out loud. She wrote it down on a piece of paper, yoga, and a visit to a healer. No mention of Cherrywood, no mention of Mo, no mention of any of it. Meanwhile, the forensics were coming back and they confirmed, what investigators already suspected. The shell casings recovered from the bathroom floor
Starting point is 00:15:22 were a match for the casings fired from Caitlin Sig Sauer P-365. The gun Colin had bought her in December 2021. Her gun was the weapon that killed Moe Wilson. Then there was the bicycle. Mo's bike, the one that had been found tossed in the bushes outside the apartments, was processed for DNA. The comparison to Caitlin's sample came back positive. Her DNA was on Moe's bike.
Starting point is 00:15:56 When that bicycle was later wheeled into the courtroom at trial, Moe's helmet was still hanging off the side, like she'd just parked after a training ride and stepped away for a moment. It quieted the entire room. The defense could try to poke holes and the rest of the evidence, but they couldn't explain how Caitlin's DNA ended up on Mo Wilson's bicycle. And the prosecution didn't even need to spell out exactly how it got there. The facts were enough.
Starting point is 00:16:28 On May 17th, 2002, six days after the murder, a warrant was issued for Caitlin Armstrong's arrest for the murder of Mariah Wilson. The forensics were in. The case was solid. But Caitlin was nowhere to be found. found. Police scrambled. They pulled her recent activity and pieced together what she'd been doing since she walked out of the interrogation room five days earlier, and it turned out she'd been moving fast. Two days after the murder on May 13th, Caitlin had sold her Jeep to CarMax. She drove
Starting point is 00:17:09 it in and got $12,200 for it. Security cameras at the dealership caught the whole thing. She was even setting up a new iPhone while she signed the paperwork. It took investigators until late June to track the vehicle down at the CarMax lot. It hadn't been sold yet, which was lucky, because what was inside it turned out to be one of the most important pieces of evidence in the entire case. Detective Richard Spittler had remembered something from the original search warrant. The Jeep had a factory infotainment system and the kind that science, violently collects GPS data in the background.
Starting point is 00:17:49 He went to CarMax, researched how to pull the unit, extracted it himself, and sent it to the Austin PD Digital Forensics team. What they recovered was extraordinary. They were able to reconstruct Caitlin's exact movements on the afternoon and evening of May 11th, turn by turn. At 4.49 p.m. Mo had texted Colin the address where she was staying in Cherrywood. Caitlin, monitoring his messages through the synced iPad at home, now had the address too.
Starting point is 00:18:26 The GPS showed Caitlin leaving the house and heading west toward deep Eddie pool where Colin and Mo were still swimming. Then she stopped, turned around. She headed east instead, pulled into a parking lot and sat there for about a minute. Investigators believe this is the moment she powered off her phone to avoid being placed near the scene by cell tower records. But she didn't know her Jeep was keeping its own record of everywhere she went. The GPS showed the Jeep driving directly to the Cherrywood address, then circling the block again and again, stopping at three different positions around the building. She was watching. She probably sat in that Jeep and watched as Colin drop Mo Off at the base of the stairs and rode away on his motorcycle.
Starting point is 00:19:23 She watched him leave, and then at some point after he was gone, she went inside. Caitlin had done everything to avoid detection in the moment. She turned off her phone. She circled the block to make sure no one was watching. She waited for Colin to leave. She planned this. But she didn't think about the car. The car was keeping its own record the entire time, silently tracking every turn, every stop,
Starting point is 00:19:52 every minute she spent sitting outside that apartment building. The prosecution would later call the GPS data another witness. When they walked the jury through the route reconstruction at trial, took about three minutes to lay it all out, and it removed just about every reasonable doubt in the room. But before this case would ever get to a prosecutor's desk, detectives still had to find Caitlin. They learned that after she sold her car,
Starting point is 00:20:23 she flew from Austin to Houston, then from Houston to New York. Airport cameras at Austin Berkstrom caught her heading through the terminal, long red hair, backpack, yoga mat slung over one shoulder. She looked like any other young woman catching a flight. Nothing about her screamed a fugitive. Her sister Christy picked her up at LaGuardia Airport and drove her to a remote cabin about 100 miles north of Manhattan. Caitlin told her she just needed to get away for a bit.
Starting point is 00:20:54 She said nothing about Austin, nothing about Moe, nothing about the police. As far as Christy knew, her sister was just visiting. From that cabin, Caitlin watched the news obsessively. Reports were starting to mention Colin's name. he'd been publicly cleared, but Austin PD still hadn't named a suspect. Caitlin had no way of knowing how close investigators were or how much they'd already found. So she watched, waited, and planned her next move. On May 17th, the arrest warrant went public.
Starting point is 00:21:32 Her name and photo were everywhere. That evening, when Christy came home, Caitlin told her she was heading back to Austin. It was a lie, of course. She had no intention of going back to Texas, but Christy drove her to Newark Airport the next morning. They hugged at the curb, and Caitlin told her she'd be in touch. Then she walked into the terminal and vanished. Investigators searched for flights booked under Caitlin's name and found nothing,
Starting point is 00:22:03 but working with Interpol, they confirmed that Christy's passport had been scanned at Newark on May 18, with a destination of San Jose Costa Rica. Caitlin had gone through the cabin while her sister was out, found the passport, and booked the flight under Christie's identity. When police showed up at Christy's door, she cooperated immediately. She had no idea what any of it meant.
Starting point is 00:22:33 She told him Caitlin had taken the passport without her knowledge. A review of Caitlin's internet search history from the cabin, and showed she'd been researching yoga retreats, surf towns, and hostels in Costa Rica. One place kept coming up. Santa Teresa, a small beach community on the Nicaoya Peninsula, popular among American expats for its laid-back culture and warm water. It was the kind of place where a person could disappear into the surf and yoga scene without raising too many eyebrows.
Starting point is 00:23:06 After that, Caitlin's online trail went cold. She'd installed a VPN and gone completely dark. Investigators would later piece together what she did once she landed. She checked into a hostel in Santa Teresa under the name Ari Martin. She started working shifts at the front desk to help pay for her room. She went to a bar in town a few nights a week, social enough to not seem to. suspicious, but careful not to invite too much attention. She cut her long red hair short and dyed it dark brown. She went to a surgical center in San Jose and paid $6,350 in cash for a browlift,
Starting point is 00:23:53 a nose job, and lip fillers, all under yet another fake name, Allison Page. When the surgeon reached for a camera to take pre-op photos, she refused. They compromised. by letting her take the photos herself on her phone, and then she deleted them and started dating a local. She was building a new life, a new identity. She was trying to become someone else entirely, and for a while it was working. But the U.S. Marshals were already on their way. In late June of 2022, Deputy U.S. Marshals, Dan, Damien Fernandez and Amia Perez flew to Costa Rica.
Starting point is 00:24:49 If Caitlin's search history was telling the truth, that's where she'd gone. They arrived in Santa Teresa on June 22nd, carrying pre-surgery photos of Caitlin and a stack of wanted posters that read, armed and dangerous with a $5,000 reward. Santa Teresa is small. One main road, a handful of surf shops and yoga studios, hostels, and restaurants that catered a backpacker, and expats. The kind of town where a new face gets noticed eventually, but not right away.
Starting point is 00:25:22 If you kept a low profile and paid in cash, you could blend in for a while. The marshals started canvassing. They sent a female operative into three local yoga studios to ask around. No sign of Caitlin. Wanted posters went up around town. Nothing came back. Then one of the deputies had an idea. They knew Caitlin was running low on money and would need work. So they coordinated with a local studio and posted a job listing online for a yoga instructor. For days, nobody bit. The marshals were running out of leads and getting ready to fly home empty-handed when they finally got a response.
Starting point is 00:26:08 Someone applied. The name on the application was Ari Martin. Through the submission, they traced the applicant to Don John's Lodge, a hostel in Santa Teresa. On the afternoon of June 29th, agents walked into the lobby. A woman was sitting in the corner on her laptop. She had dark hair, a different nose, and fuller lips than Caitlin. They spoke to her in Spanish. She fumbled for her phone and held up a translation app.
Starting point is 00:26:38 When one of the agents leaned in closer, he noticed bloody nostrils, a bandage still on her nose. and the swelling of someone who'd recently had worked on. Then he looked at her eyes. He knew those eyes. It was Caitlin Armstrong. They stepped outside and called the local police, and once Caitlin was in custody, they searched her room. Inside a lockbox, they found two things,
Starting point is 00:27:10 her sister Christy's passport, and the surgery receipt from a clinic in San Jose. The receipt was made out to Allison Page, $6,350 for a brow lift, a nose job, and lip fillers. Down at the station, she gave yet another fake name and stopped talking. It didn't matter. The 43-day manhunt for Caitlin Armstrong was over. Within days, she was on a plane back to Texas in handcuffs, with reporters and cameras waiting on the tarmac.
Starting point is 00:27:44 Caitlin was booked into Travis County Jail on July 5th, 2022. Bond was set at $3.5 million. At her arraignment, she entered a plea of not guilty. Over the next 14 months, while prosecutors built their case, Caitlin worked out obsessively in jail, running in place, doing squats, practicing yoga and herself. Well, jail personnel documented it. It seemed relentless, almost like she was training for something.
Starting point is 00:28:17 Three weeks before trial, on October 11, 2023, she told officials her leg was injured and needed medical attention. The jail arranged to transport her to a doctor's office off site. Because of the reported injury, her lower body was left unshackled during the trip. Her wrists were cuffed in front. when she walked out of the medical building, she took off running. She sprinted across the parking lot, one correction officer trip trying to chase her down. Caitlin scaled the perimeter fence, dropped to the other side, and kept going.
Starting point is 00:28:59 She made it about a mile before backup cut up and brought her to the ground. She fought with officers and came away with minor injuries, along with a new felony charge, escape causing bodily injury. All that training in her cell suddenly made a lot more sense. The trial began on November 1st, 2003. The prosecution laid out the full picture piece by piece. They showed the jury the doorbell camera footage from the night of the murder. They walked through the GPS reconstruction from the Jeep's infotainment system minute by minute,
Starting point is 00:29:39 tracing Caitlin's route to the Cherrywood address, and how she'd circled the block, waiting. They presented the ballistics match on the Sig Sauer and the DNA found on Mo's bicycle. They played the Strava tracking data and walked through the evidence from Collins' synced accounts. And they put Caitlin's own friends on the stand. They testified about the threats Caitlin had made
Starting point is 00:30:04 and the comments about wanting to kill Mo, the jealousy that had been building for months before it finally boiled over. Colin Strickland testified for eight hours over two days. He was slumped over the microphone for much of it. Eyes closed and physically angled away from the defense table. Prosecutors later described him as reluctant on the stand. He wore a mask and sunglasses when entering and exiting the courthouse each day
Starting point is 00:30:33 and shoved a photographer's camera away during a break. At one point, when asked if he knew the defendant, he said no. People in the courtroom took that to mean something like, I thought I knew her, but I didn't. He clearly didn't want to be there. The defense argued that Caitlin wasn't a jealous killer, but a frustrated partner who'd been lied to repeatedly. They pointed out that roughly 30 people had the door code
Starting point is 00:31:02 to Caitlin Cash's building, and that no camera ever captured Caitlin arriving at or leaving the apartment. They raised chain of custody questions about, the DNA evidence. They said Caitlin fled to Costa Rica not to escape justice, but out of fear. That was their case and then they rested. The jury deliberated for two and a half hours. In a case with this much evidence, that's not a long time, but for the people in the gallery waiting for the answer, every minute felt like an hour. On November 16th, 2003, the jury came back with a verdict. Guilty of murder. Moe's family and friends cried openly
Starting point is 00:31:51 in the courtroom. Caitlin sat completely still, staring straight ahead, expressionless. She was sentenced to 90 years under Texas law. She's eligible for parole after serving 30, which would set her first review for 2005. If she serves her full sent, sentence, she won't be released until 2112. Moe's mother, Karen Wilson, gave her victim impact statement directly to Caitlin. She said Mo was a caring, empathetic person. That if Caitlin had let herself actually get to know Mo was a human being, she never would have wanted to hurt her. Karen said, quote, when you shot Mariah in the heart.
Starting point is 00:32:40 You shot me in my heart. You shot Eric and Matt in their hearts. Most father Eric was measured and deliberate. He called the case a perfect example of why integrity and honesty matter in relationships and how dishonesty can lead to consequences nobody anticipates. He said there were no winners in that room. And then he asked for prayer, for their family. for their friends and for the Armstrong family too.
Starting point is 00:33:17 After sentencing, the questions didn't stop. Caitlin filed for appeal 10 days later, claiming inadequate representation and alleging she'd been pregnant at the time of her arrest. Her father submitted an affidavit supporting the pregnancy claim, but no medical documentation was ever provided. The appeal was denied. She filed again in September of 2024, and in January of 2006, the Texas Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed her conviction. Moe's family filed a wrongful death suit in May of 2024.
Starting point is 00:33:58 When Caitlin failed to appear, a judge issued a $15 million default judgment. The family's attorney was direct about the purpose. If Caitlin Armstrong ever has the opportunity to profit from this crime, whether through a book deal, a paid interview or any media appearances, that judgment will intercept it. As for Colin Strickland, his life after the trial will look nothing like the one before it. He lost nearly all his sponsors. He stopped racing entirely.
Starting point is 00:34:33 In an interview with Cycling News in June of 2025, He described what the aftermath had done to his relationship with the sport. He said, quote, every aspect of it was just horrific and wasteful. I immediately had no interest in cycling. Everything was burning, like my whole world was on fire. He restores vintage cars and Spartan trailers now. He still rides around Austin, but he hasn't competed since 2021. And then there's the question about Colin's role in all of this. He didn't pull the trigger. Nobody disputes that.
Starting point is 00:35:13 But the prosecutors said it plainly at trial. Collins' dishonesty created the conditions that led to Mo's death. He kept Caitlin in a relationship that wasn't working. He kept his feelings about Mo deliberately ambiguous. He lied to Caitlin about where he was on the night of May 11th, and years of deception gave a possessive, controlling person just enough fuel to convince herself that the only solution was violence. Moe's friend Kimmy Bolsinger said in the Netflix documentary that she held Colin responsible for manipulating both women. Another friend noted that
Starting point is 00:35:53 Colin had a documented pattern of dishonesty in his relationships. None of that excuses what Caitlin did, but it is part of the story, and the people closest to Mo believe it deserves to be said. Mo's friend, Caitlin Cash, moved back into the Cherrywood apartment after the trial. No one expected that, but Cash said she felt a strong pole to stay. She wanted the space to feel intentional and full of life, not abandoned. She found a print at a thrift store, small bike riding out of the frame, a bloom in one corner, and the words with you all the way. She hung it on the wall. I feel her there, Cash said.
Starting point is 00:36:43 I feel her joy there. Mo's brother Matt now coaches young skiers at Burke Mountain Academy, the same school where Mo trained on the same trails where she first learned what she could do on a pair of skis. He named a trail there, Mariah's Ascent. When things get hard, he thinks about what Mo would say. She would say, get on your bike. One step at a day. time. Since her death, the Wilson family has established the Mariah Wilson Foundation. Their mission
Starting point is 00:37:16 is to promote healthy living and community building by supporting organizations that expand access to recreation, sports, and educational programs. They host an annual ride for Moe event every May. Mo Wilson was 25 years old. She was a week away from her birthday. She had a race that Saturday, a season ahead of her, and the whole life she hadn't gotten to live yet. She deserved the chance to race in Africa that summer. She deserved to see how far her talent could take her. She deserved to grow old. She didn't get any of that. But the people who loved her are making sure the world remembers who she was, not as a headline, not as a case number. as Moe, the girl from Vermont who rode her bike into the hills every morning and didn't come home till dark.
Starting point is 00:38:13 The woman who made everyone around her feel like they mattered. The athlete who turned a broken knee into a second dream and chased it with everything she had. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy and this is Murder, True Crime Stories. Come back next time for the story. story of a new murder and all the people it affected. Thanks again to Katie Ring for joining me. And remember, we're not done yet.
Starting point is 00:38:53 I've been waiting for this moment. We're going to get Katie's take on this case. Man, this case is so tragic. And I mean, every murder case is really tragic, but this one hit hard for me. And I don't know if she's a young athlete, but she had so much promise ahead of her. And did you watch the Netflix, the new Netflix documentary? I haven't seen it yet, no. It was actually great.
Starting point is 00:39:17 I think, you know, I covered this case before and I didn't have access to, you know, her diary and interviews with her parents. And I think in that it was really powerful. I really liked the way they did it because it was very victim forward. They did interviews with her parents, her brother, her ex,
Starting point is 00:39:36 but like you can really tell the hole that she left in her parents and family's life and, like, how big of an impact she had. and that she was just such an amazing young woman with so much promise. And, you know, you hear in these diary entries how even her internal struggles of, you know, having such success in gravel racing so fast. And in these diaries, she would talk about how she almost felt like an imposter because she had gotten so good so fast. But then she also felt this very big sense of confidence from what she was doing.
Starting point is 00:40:10 To be on the pinnacle of that size of success, to be, you know, potential Olympian, just the amount of dedication it takes to do that to begin with. And then to face the kind of setback that two ACL tears can do. Yeah, I was interesting how she was saying, I'm going to be an Olympian. And, you know, that's a lot of people's dreams. But to be an Olympian, you have to have raw talent and athleticism. I found myself wondering with Caitlin Armstrong, like, in a different situation, would this have ever happened? I don't know that she was fated to be a killer no matter what.
Starting point is 00:40:42 If she was in a relationship that was mutual, would it have been healthy? Like, clearly she had obsessive tendencies, clearly controlling, and all those things can be the foundation for violent acts. And also, if they're in a different, healthy relationship situation, are they fine? In which case, she never gets to that point, which is in no way to excuse her action. I know.
Starting point is 00:41:03 It's so hard in these cases reflecting. There's a lot of discourse online, especially around her and Collins' relationship, and I would never blame Colin directly for the actions of Caitlin. If you watch the trial footage when she's on the stand, even when she's sitting there, she has zero remorse. On the other end of that, I don't think Colin Strickland's a good guy. From the documentary and from what I've read, he was kind of just using her.
Starting point is 00:41:30 She was very smart. She was running his company or the company they shared together. And I'm sure she was doing stuff for him at home, cooking, cleaning, you know, whatever. And this guy didn't care about her. So there is a cavalierness to his duplicity that I did find shocking. I get 34 to be like, oh, you literally are like not treating either one with a lot of respect is pretty clear. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah, thank you.
Starting point is 00:41:57 Good to have you. And hopefully come back again anytime. I would love to. All right. A reminder to everyone listening, go follow America's most infamous crimes wherever you get your podcasts. Murder True Crime Stories is a crime house original podcast. powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support.
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Starting point is 00:42:41 on Friday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy, and is a crimehouse original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team, Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Pritzofsky, Alyssa Fox, Cassidy Dillon, and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening.

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