RedHanded - A Rising Cyclist Shot Dead | Presenting Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

She was days away from a major race. A rising star in cycling. Then, she was found shot to death in a friend's apartment.We're sharing an episode of Clues, a true crime podcast hosted by Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore. Each week, Morgan and Kaelyn take you deep into the world of the most notorious crimes, uncovering the hidden details, analyzing the overlooked evidence, and following the trail of clues behind some of the biggest cases in history.New episodes of Clues drop every Monday. Clues is a Crime House Original, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube. Listen here: https://pod.link/1792283951

If you're loving red-handed, then we have something special to share that we think you'll really get into. It's an episode of a podcast called Clues, hosted by Morgan Abshar from Two Hot Takes and Kalyn Moore from Heart Starts Pounding. Each week, Morgan and Kalin take you on a deep dive into the world of the most notorious crimes ever, where a single clue can crack a case wide open. From shocking murders to serial killers, they uncover the hidden details, analyze the overlooked evidence and follow the trail of clues behind some of the biggest cases in history. In this episode, they're talking about the murder of Mo Wilson, a rising cycling star, found shot to death days before a major race.

At first, nothing made sense. No forced entry, no robbery, no clear suspect, but as investigators followed the evidence, the case unraveled into something far more disturbing. If you like what you hear, make sure to follow clues on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or you can watch it on YouTube. There's also a link to the show in this episode description. This is Crime House. A promising young cyclist goes to Austin, Texas for a race. Mariah Mo Wilson is dominating in her sport,

poised to become the next big star. Except she never makes it to the starting line. The investigation that follows is something you can hardly believe. Twisted jealousy, an international manhunt, a killer who almost escaped multiple times, waiting for justice for Mo was beyond nerve-wracking. Hi, welcome to clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases. I'm Kailen Moore, and I'm going to be the one digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories, and the court files released on these cases. And I'm your internet sleuth, Morgan Absher.

I'm the one who's diving into anything I can find online to talk about those lesser-known details and pull the threads that just don't add up. Don't forget to share your thoughts on social. Want ad-free listening and early access? Subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. And make sure to go back and listen to our previous episodes wherever you get your podcast. Now, let's get into Anna Mariah Mo Wilson's case and the clues that defined it. I don't know if I've ever been so moved by a true crime documentary as the one Netflix just put out on Mo's case. Yeah, it was really emotional.

I just applaud them. I think it's one of the most victim-centered docks I've seen. Yeah. Especially recently that's coming to mind. And we're going to get into this case. It is an insane case. But the person at the center of this, Mo, was just so incredible. And I think that's why we wanted to make this episode.

If you saw the Netflix documentary, you saw Mo's story, you heard from her family. But there's a lot more to the story that they couldn't fit in a 90-minute documentary, obviously. And so we're going to get a little bit more into the week. on some of the stuff that was left out of the documentary. Yeah. To present kind of like a more comprehensive, I guess, view of the case. Especially in terms of the investigation. Yeah.

A lot of Sherlock moments. Yes. Some botched moments. Which is great because we got a, last week we got a comment from on YouTube from Sidney Little 9-822. And she specifically asked for more Sherlock cases. I know. I know.

She was like, we've been getting a lot of botched so far. And so are there more like Sherlock cases you can provide in this? is definitely one of those. I think it's good to have that comparison too of like, okay, this is how it's done. And if you have any cases that come to mind, please put them in the comments. We see them all because we definitely want to get into it. I would love to have an episode where it says Sherlock instead of botched here. Yes. And we really just go to town. But I do have fresh markers. We'll see how they work. I've been seen a lot of comments about, hey, your markers suck. We know that they're a little dry. We got it. It's been used quite a bit. And now I have a green one for

the Sherlock. So we'll see how it goes. But let us know what your tallies are at the end, too, if you're keeping count at home. And just a reminder, if you're watching this on YouTube, you're going to see some pictures, images, you're going to see some videos too that will help you visualize this case. And if you're listening to this episode, you can follow us on socials and see all those same things at Clues Podcast on Instagram. And you should just follow us there anyways. All right. And with that, should we get into it? Let's dive in. This case today is going to start just before 10 p.m. on Wednesday, May 12th, 2022 in Austin, Texas. There, a young woman named Caitlin Cash is walking back to her apartment in the Cherrywood neighborhood, which is on the east side of the city. She's been out for the evening.

Her friend Mo Wilson has been staying with her all week, though. She's a 25-year-old cyclist who's in town for a race called Gravel Locos, and it's scheduled for that Saturday. Before she left earlier that day, Cash sent Mo's mom, Karen, a short video. And in this video, Mo is laughing. She's getting ready for a training ride. And the text that she sent with it says, quote, your girl's here safe with me. Cash unlocks the door. The apartment is quiet when she walks in. And she wasn't really expecting that having a friend in town. So she calls out. But there's no answer from Mo. So she goes around the corner of her apartment and she sees that her bathroom door is actually open, which kind of strikes her as being odd. So she goes inside and in there she finds her friend, Mo Wilson, lying on her

back on the floor and she's unconscious. And there is blood everywhere in this bathroom. So Cash, thinking quickly, she goes and she grabs the phone and dials 911 immediately. The dispatcher who, you know, we've had some really bad 911 dispatchers on the show. In this 911 call this dispatcher, I thought was amazing. I was going to say, I'm so glad you brought it up because this is one of the best dispatchers I think I've ever heard. Yeah. He immediately like locks in is like we're going to do chest compressions, teaches her how to do chest compressions and is constantly reassuring her like the police are on their way. I've dispatched the police. Well, and you can hear the shock, the trauma in

Cash's voice. Yes. He does such a good job keeping her calm and focused on CPR. And when Cash is counting out loud to the dispatcher, she gets to 26. And that's when she hears that there's officers knocking at the door. That's how fast they get there. And the first responders take over doing chest compressions and they lead Caitlin Cash outside. And when Caitlin's outside, she starts wondering why there's not a little bit more urgency. She saw the first responders go in, but they're not rushing out with Mo to get her to the hospital. And so she ends up asking, like, hey, what's going on? Why aren't you bringing my friend out right now? And that's when the first responders have to basically tell her that it seems like your friend didn't make it. And that's when Anna Mariah Wilson was pronounced dead at the scene at just 25 years old, a week shy of her 26th birthday. Now, this goes on to be one of the twistiest investigations that we've covered. But before we get into it, I want to take a quick step back and describe Mo Wilson a little bit because you need to know. who she was to really understand how this investigation unfolded. Anna Mariah Wilson was born on May 18th, 1996 in Littleton, New Hampshire.

She grew up in Kirby, Vermont, though, and everyone who knew her called her Mel. She grew up in a family of athletes. Her father, Eric, was a champion skier and a coach, and her aunt is actually a two-time Olympic skier. And almost before she could walk, she was on skis and riding bikes. She dreamed of competing in the Olympics as an alpine ski racer, and soon, that dream became a reality. By her junior year at Burke Mountain Academy, this is a prestigious Vermont prep school for competitive skiers, she was ranked third nationally in her age group. But

before she was able to compete in the Olympic, she blew out her ACL. She didn't let that stop her though. She recovered and she got into Dartmouth and she goes on to study engineering and made the Alpine ski team. And then she blew out that same ACL again. After her second tear, she realized her Olympic skiing path was pretty much over. So instead of giving up, that was definitely not the type of person she was. She pivoted. And she wanted to get into something that she'd always loved alongside skiing. And that was cycling. Specifically, this thing called gravel racing, which I didn't really know much about until I watched this documentary. But it's cool. It's basically like off-roading biking. You're like on those little gravel paths in the woods.

It's intense. Writing really fast. You're going far. Yeah, it's kind of scary. And these events can cover 100 to 300 miles of unpaved terrain through farmland and forest roads and also in extreme conditions. There's no support crew and there's no guarantees when you're doing these rides. And Mo took to it almost immediately and she was excellent at it. By 2022, Mo Wilson was 25 years old and she was ranked in the top tier of American gravel racers. She had this really intense in her strength and work ethic combined with a focus that made her a dominant force in the sport. journalists and professionals in the gravel racing industry were saying that she was bound to be the best in the country and probably the world eventually. She was fully sponsored and she was beloved by everyone in this community.

Everyone was just so impressed by her. Mo was known in the gravel racing world, not just for her talent though, but also for her warmth and generosity toward other competitors. She was the kind of athlete who would genuinely celebrate a rivals win. And the people who knew her described her as being just full of light and light. after. She smiled more than anyone around her. Every picture you see of her in the documentary, every interview, she's always like laughing and smiling. She was someone who made you feel like the most important person in the room. She remembered details about everyone's lives. She showed up for them and she brought genuine enthusiasm to every interaction. Yeah. When you hear her friends

talk about her, you just can tell how loved she was. And I did a deep dive into some of her blog posts that are on the website the family has now established. And her personality shines through these blog posts. I mean, absolutely incredible. And I want to read a quote here that the family did share from her journal too. Quote, I want to be the kind of person that picks other people up when they fall down, who's there for people when they need support, encouragement, and insight. I want to be the type of person that people can't help but smile when they're around.

I want to be the type of person who fills their minds and thoughts with more. more worthwhile things. I mean, she had friends everywhere and was so beloved. And again, her blog posts, I feel like more motivated after reading them. Yeah. How she talks about risks and taking risk. And she interviews her friends and talks about their passion and, oh, you're into art. What does art mean you? What about, you know, community? What does that mean you? Yeah. She even gives wine recommendations. Oh my gosh. She does it all. She does it all. Just such a light. And despite being, so busy deep inside of this world. She still took a lot of time to slow down and spend quality time with everyone she knew. So she was scheduled to compete in the migration gravel race in East Africa

that summer. It was one of the most coveted events in the sport. People who followed gravel racing believed 2022 was going to be Mo's year. And we're going to play some clips of Mariah racing just to show you absolutely how dominant she was in the sport. I mean, it's just podium finish after podium finish. She's like on fire. On fire. All the time. Holding up those big checks. And when you watch the clips of these hills, like, I'm going to be honest, like, I got a little nauseous watching, like, how hard this looked. Yeah, I know. It's intense. I could never do anything because she was remotely close.

She was such an insane athlete. So 2022 was definitely going to be a breakout year for her. She had this Africa trip. But before that, she was going to do a trip in Austin. And that was to race the gravel locos. She'd be staying with her friend, Caitlin Cash. She was going to be in town a little bit early to train. And while she was there, she was going to catch up with another friend, Colin Strick.

who was a fellow gravel racer. She was five days away from the starting line when her career and her life was cut tragically short. With friends and family left devastated and just reeling, investigators needed to get some answers and fast. Mo didn't have any enemies, according to her friend Cash. She didn't really know anyone in Austin, except for that one other friend, Colin Strickland.

So they needed to evaluate our first clue, the crime scene, stat, and see what they could really gather to get any idea of where to go. Detectives quickly arrived at Caitlin Cash's apartment on the night of May 11th, and they immediately started assessing the crime scene. There's no signs of a break-in or forced entry, no furniture is damaged, the room hasn't been torn apart. There's nothing noticeably missing to detectives immediately,

and very quickly, they're able to locate shell casings. There's three 9-millimeter shell casings on the bathroom floor. However, no murder weapon was left. behind and isn't clearly visible anywhere nearby. The landlord who lived in the unit below, David Harris, was home at the time and said he heard nothing unusual. What Harris did here was footsteps running down the stairs and the sound of bicycle spokes clicking through the back alleyway behind the building. And that's when police realize Mo's bike, one of her most prized possessions, her livelihood, essentially like an extension of

herself, her identity as an athlete, is missing from the apartment. A quick search of the area around the complex shows that it didn't go far, though. Please find it in the bushes approximately 60 feet away from the building, clearly not stolen. It's thrown, tossed haphazardly in the shrubbery. So with the one item that appeared to be stolen now accounted for, what's the motive here? Investigators quickly began canvassing the neighborhood collecting any eyewitness statements, any evidence that they can. And that brings us to our second clue, the doorbell camera footage. Detective Richard Spittler found the exact moment that Moe was shot on a neighbor's continuously recording doorbell camera that also captured audio. While this recording just showed the front porch, he was able to hear screams.

thus indicating Mo's last moments. He heard a scream, two shots, a six-second silence, and then a third and final shot. And these audible shots line up with those three casings that were found in the apartment. This video also gave Detective Spittler a very specific time of death, 9.15 p.m. Just an hour before her friend Caitlin Cash got home. The security camera audio, along with Mo's examination, put together a clearer picture of how things likely played out between Mo and her attacker. The next description of Mo's injuries are a bit graphic, so please skip ahead a little bit if you can't handle that today. Detectives learn that Mo Wilson had been shot those three times, shot one to the front of the head, shot two to the side of the head, which also passed through Mo's right index finger as it traveled, and also left a cut on her hand.

almost as if her hand was up to block. Investigators believe Mo was on the ground after those first two shots. Then there was a six-second pause, six seconds. One, two, three, four, five, six, before a final shot was fired through her heart. Whoever did this stood over Mo after she had already been down and fired that final time to make sure she was not getting. back up. That six second pause told police a lot. This wasn't a panic killing. That pause meant it wasn't

just a quick reaction. This was a very deliberate choice. And I counted them out because when you count them out, like, you realize how long six seconds can be in that moment. Yeah, when you're standing over someone who's laying on the floor can't hurt you and you count to six, that person is fully aware of what they're doing. You know what you're doing. After this, investigators know, like, we've got a can't canvas harder. So they go all around the block for more footage, and they actually locate another neighbor's doorbell camera that catches something really important. This doorbell camera was positioned to cover the front of Cash's building, and it captured an unknown vehicle. In the time between when Mo returned to the apartment and when Cash discovered her body, a black Jeep Cherokee with a bike

rack on top is seen driving by. It actually circles the block multiple times, and And it never fully stops or parks, but it's clear that it's watching. It's almost like stalking. And it does disappear shortly before Cash's 911 call. Investigators can't get a clear read on the car's license plate, though. So they're going to have to keep digging deeper to be able to even identify who this could be. Investigators start retracing Moe's steps to narrow down potential suspects. On the night of the murder, Caitlin Cash tells police that Mo texted her before she left

afternoon. It read, quote, just FYI, I'm going to go swim and eat dinner with Colin tonight, which is clue number three for us, the date. Now, Colin Strickland is Mo's friend, but he's also one of the best known names in American gravel cycling. He's a professional racer who's based in Austin, and by 2021, he was kind of beginning to phase out of the sport, just as Mo was rising and really coming out on top of it. By some accounts, Colin was one of the of the original stars of the sport. He kind of put it on the map in the U.S. And he and Mo actually first met at a race in Idaho in September 2021. He and Mo clicked immediately. But here's a quote from Colin that kind of describes the relationship and how it first started. Quote,

I had met Mariah at Rebecca's private Idaho. She just smashed the race. At the end of the event, I invited her out to get a beer. I had a girlfriend. We didn't have any romantic conversations at all. We just talked about her future career. I told her, you were going to win so many events. Definitely was attracted to her, but also just wanted to be helpful. And at that point, it was totally inappropriate to be dating. They spent time together as friends, and Colin was seemingly going to help Mo get sponsors. But come October, Colin and his girlfriend, who were kind of on again, off again, they ended up being off. So Mo went to go visit him in Austin. It seemed like it was a let's see if there's more here kind of trip and during this time they did become

intimate but things were extremely confusing for Mo. I have some quotes from her where she's just trying to describe the situation and you just like get the confusion of like this situation ship and I think a lot of us have been there where you're like you're kind of interested but you don't know if they're interested and you have a short amount of time and you're like what is this? Yeah. Help. So Mo says this, quote, I think I like him more than I'd like to admit, but was worried he didn't feel the same way. Quote, I want to know his cards first before playing my own. I'm terrified of expressing feelings and being rejected. And before they were able to really explore things further or define

what they were, Colin was kind of breaking things off, taking a step back, and putting Mo back back in that friend zone seemingly. By May 2022, Colin was back together with his girlfriend. And while he stayed in touch, he saved her number under a fake name in his phone, that fake name being Christine Wall. Yeah, he saved Mo's number in his phone under a fake name. Yeah. Yeah, you're clearly, if you have to save someone's name under a fake number,

there's something wrong with that situation. So again, Mo is extremely confused. She's unsure of what and where things stood between them. While reviewing Mo's phone during the investigation, Detective Spittler found voice memos that she had actually recorded to some friends trying to help make sense of it all. In one, she described arriving in Bentonville, Arkansas, her race, and hearing nothing from calling, total silence,

just kind of getting ghosted. She did end up running into him that night at a bar with his girlfriend and a group of friends. He did hug her briefly, but barely said anything and then kind of moved on. On the day that she was killed, Mo texted him, quote, my mind has been going in circles and I don't know what to think. She wanted that evening to be just where they would talk, kind of figure things out where they actually stood between them, like, hey, we're friends.

Like, we're good. Stop letting this be awkward. And Colin texted her back and said, quote, want to go swimming? Maybe swimming in a beverage. And Detective Spittler, when analyzing all of this, you know, between her and Colin, between her and her friends, he kind of said, like, it looked like Mariah was just constantly question and everything and like just wanted to sort the status of this relationship. And so on the afternoon of May 11th, Colin picked up Moe on his motorcycle. They swam at DeBetty Pool, which is this

public spring fed spot in Austin. And then they had dinner at Pool Burger across the street. He dropped her off at the base of the stairs to her friend Cash's apartment around 8.30 p.m. And rode away on his motorcycle. So pretty quickly, the police are like last person to see her alive. Yeah, and also had a girlfriend, like, did he kill her to shut her up? Like, what's going on? What's going on? We already know he has some loser behavior, so he's looking pretty suspect. Yeah.

So they go to his house the next morning. So this is a point a lot of people will bring up on Reddit where they're like, we can give him a botched mark here. The detective's a little confused by the name. And they go, do you know Anna? Anna, Anna Moe, Monique, Monique, Mon, last name Wilson? like not even getting Mariah's name right as you're going to a potential suspect. And they're like botched. Like if they would have said her name right, you could have gotten a genuine reaction from him about being confronted.

Yes. And so we're going to give it a little mark there. But I will say once the detective does get Mo's name right, Colin's face just looks shocked. Yes. He looks ill. Ill, but let us know what you think in the comments. But something else that the detective does notice there is a vehicle sitting in the driveway, a black Jeep with a bicycle rack, just like the one that was spotted in that footage.

So after this discovery, Colin Strickland spends six hours in the police station on May 12, 2022. He answered every single question he was asked. He walks detectives through every part of his evening with Mo. he's very forthcoming with information. He talks about the swim. He tells him about the dinner that they had together. What drop-off was like. He said that he went straight home on his motorcycle afterwards. He never went inside the apartment and he didn't see anyone else around when he left. And a detective leaves him alone in the room for over an hour and a camera is recording that entire time and you just watch him slump against the wall. He wraps his arms around himself. It doesn't seem like he's

feigning panic and you hear him just repeat over and over again. no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. When the cops return, they show him doorbell footage of that black Jeep that was in his driveway, driving around the neighborhood, and they watch his face really carefully to see if they can catch anything. And what Colin says when they show him this footage

kind of surprises the investigators. He says, that's not my Jeep. It belongs to my girlfriend. Now, just to be clear, this is a different Caitlin than most friend that she was staying with, Caitlin Cash. we'll just call her cash and we'll refer to Caitlin Armstrong as Caitlin Armstrong. Colin's girlfriend, Caitlin Armstrong grew up in Livonia, Michigan.

She attended Eastern Michigan University. She had a finance background and she was a licensed realtor in Texas. She was also on top of that, a certified yoga instructor from a program that she trained in in Indonesia. And she and Colin met on a dating app in October of 2019. By 2021, after her Austin apartment flooded, she moved into his house. And you know, this started as just kind of a temporary living situation, but eventually it becomes this whole life that they're living together. She starts managing his finances. You know, he has all these brand deals coming in. She's really helping him with that with her finance background. He also is starting a trailer restoration business called Wheelhouse Mobile. And she's basically like running the books for that company. She had access to his bank accounts, his phone, his social media logins, also his email. These two people were very very very. very entangled in each other's lives in every sense of the word. And people in Colin's Cycling Circle group noticed that it was kind of an odd dynamic from the beginning

because when Colin would go to races, he would barely ever talk about the fact that he had a girlfriend. I mean, there's a lot of quotes. And in the Netflix doc, they do interview a lot of other racers. And a lot of them are like, oh, yeah, we kind of knew we had a history of manipulating women in relationships. There's one quote here from Libby Caldwell who says, quote, he didn't go to bike races and act like he had a girlfriend. He wouldn't talk about her or bring her around. And there's a journalist in The Doc 2 that jokes and they're like,

yeah, Caitlin was the woman standing next to Colin that he wouldn't introduce you to. Yeah. Have you ever had those people in your life where you're like, it almost feels like they have a fake girlfriend? Like you know that they have a girlfriend, but they never, ever, ever talk about her. I knew someone who had a whole wife and never told us, was like part of our friend group sort of. But it's just like so, it's so weird to me.

It's so weird. And like, I've been in like awkward situationships where like I'm not officially dating the person. We go out. We're at the same bar at the same time. And like, you get kind of ignored. And it's like, oh, you're keeping me as an option. But like, this was his girlfriend.

Yeah, who mind you, has access to all of his social media accounts and his financial information. They're intertwined in every way. So to not even break her up. It's so wild to me. It's insane. But Colin was known to have. many female friends in the sport. However, it seems like Caitlin really monitored all of these

women and sometimes would confront him about them. Collins' behavior did not help the situation. He told his friends multiple times that he wasn't sure that their relationship was going to work long term, which if that's what you're feeling deep down, maybe untangle that person from your financial information. Just a word to the wise. In October of 2021, after a race in Bentonville, Arkansas, he ended things with Caitlin while they were driving home together. Mo had actually seen Colin at this race and she thought that he was acting weird. But even though they broke up when they got home, Caitlin didn't move out of the house right away. He decided he was going to let her stay there and she just ended up moving into another bedroom in the house. So they were technically

broken up, but they were living together in the same house and they were still running a business together. And it was during that break while Caitlin was still living with Colin that Mo came and visited Austin for a week. Colin introduced Moe to his friends, something that he never really did with Caitlin, and together they went out to a couple local spots. Now, it appears that Caitlin was out of town during this time, but Word did get back to her about Mo's visit. And she texted Colin, quote, I know you know better than to show up at the meteor with that girl. And the meteor is a local spot in Austin. When Mo went back to California afterwards, Colin hid her in his phone under that alias, Christine Wall, and this was all in an effort to keep Caitlin from finding out

that they were still talking. He eventually did get back together with Caitlin, and he told her in some form, in some version, what had happened with him and Mo. And Caitlin didn't leave. Instead, it seems like after this, she just became even more controlling. And we know that kind of because when investigators were looking at Colin's phone, he had 71 blocked contacts. And Colin later told them that he didn't recall blocking most of them himself. So it seems like- 71. Seems like Caitlin was blocking numbers for him. At least four of them were women that he could identify, including Mo Wilson. But the implication was clear. Caitlin, who had full access to his phone, had been systematically deleting women and blocking them from his contact list. It seems like she

wasn't just monitoring his life. She was trying to actively edit it. And then there's the Instagram text. So in early 2022, Colin posted a video from a race. And Mo does appear briefly in the background of the frame. You can kind of see her. And Caitlin said to detect him immediately after she sees this. And she says to send her love to Mo. Colin said that it felt extremely passive, aggressive. But I tell you all of this to kind of build some context around how Colin was living his life at the time of Mo's death. It was in this weird, almost like enmeshment with Caitlin Armstrong, which is why she was now being put under the microscope by police. Just so toxic. And so throughout Colin's interview with the police, they began pressing him if he thought Caitlin could have been

capable of doing something like this. And they ask him, Colin, knowing Caitlin's vehicle is there, what do you think took place? And Colin appears to be pretty shocked by this. He doesn't respond for what feels like forever as you're watching it. He's like really thinking about it. He's like, oh, car was there. What does that mean? And he eventually responds, I don't know. I just can't imagine.

And eventually he goes on to say, I know both of these people and I can't imagine it. It's just so far beyond the realm of reality that I live in or I thought. They again, like, just keep asking him and asking him. They rephrase it. They go at it in different ways. And he seems so sure that this is impossible. Yeah.

And he says, quote, I don't believe she. I wouldn't be living with a fucking person who I thought is capable of doing this. The answer is no, I don't believe it. That's my perspective of the world. Like, he's like, no, I wouldn't live with this person. I wouldn't let this person like be around my mom. Like he's like, there's no way. If I thought that she was capable of doing this.

No. And like, at this point, he's like, no, she's kind. She's so caring. What? Like, she's so docile. He's like, there's no way. Very interesting. Investigators keep probing from all angles, though.

And one question really starts amplifying their suspicions. And they ask, quote, Do you know if Mo or Cash owned any firearms or anything like that? And he responds, I would highly doubt it. So they ask him, well, do you own any firearms? And he tells us that he actually bought a pistol. last fall, though he's never shot it. And they ask him what type of gun it was, and he says,

it's a 9mm. And remember, it was 9mm cartridge casings that were found near Mo. It turns out that he's not the only one, though, with a 9mm. He had also bought Caitlin one as well. He had taken her to McBride's, which is a family-run gun shop in Austin in December 2021. The reason was that Caitlin had been expressing fear about road rage and writing her bike alone. And she specifically picked out a SIG sour P-365, which is a compact 9mm.

It's built specifically for concealed carry. Then she went out to a shooting range with her sister Christine afterwards because she wanted to learn how to use it. So, you know, after hearing all this, sirens start really blaring for detectives. They just needed to figure out how to close in. Did they have enough yet to justify a search warrant? Well, while Colin was at the police station on the morning of May 12th, a friend named Lance actually went to their house to borrow a bike part, like, wasn't communicated like, hey, I'm at the station, like still goes over there. And Caitlin is there waiting for him, essentially. She mentions Mo's death to him. And then she asked something that brings us to our next clue, number four, quote, is Cherrywood a bad neighborhood?

But yeah, she specifically brings it up unprompted to him and asks about the neighborhood. And this is really significant because, like, This is the name of the neighborhood where Mo was killed. This has not been made public yet. It's not a part of any news report. Austin PD hasn't released the location. The only people who should have known Mo died in Cherrywood are law enforcement and whoever was in that building. At that point, does Colin know the specifics of how she was killed or where she was found?

I don't think so. I'm trying to replay that initial clip when detectives approach him in his garage. Yeah. They do say they're investigating as a homicide. Right, right. But I don't think they... They just say she passed away last night. It's being invested as a homicide.

So Colin knew where she lived. But no way would Colin have told Caitlin and been like, I was at Mo's friend's place in Cherrywood. He's hiding that they were even together. Yeah, that's also true. And he's been in the station the whole time. He hasn't gotten a chance to kind of connect with Caitlin. So how would she know?

Yeah. And Lance, the friend, that was... went over there realizes the implication of this pretty much immediately after he leaves. Sherlock. Sherlock moment for Lance. Paying attention. Listening to women. So Lance does go forward, later reports it.

And so if police weren't on to Caitlin already, they are definitely on to her now. So with all the circumstantial evidence mounting, investigators execute a search warrant on Colin and Caitlin's house later that day on May 12, 2022. There they find clue number five confiscated items from Colin and Caitlin's home. Investigators seize two guns, two cell phones, two computers. They DNA swab the steering wheel and other areas of the Jeep where main things would be touched or located. And now investigators are sure that when they start comparing ballistics to those found at the crime scene to those guns, one of those guns that was confiscated, they're pretty certain they're going to match.

Now, what we've talked about, so that's the Jeep footage, the cherry would slip up, the surveillance footage, and the mention of owning the same kind of guns from Colin. That's all pretty powerful circumstantial evidence. They don't feel like it's quiet enough to get an arrest warrant. And they need a reason to bring Caitlin in because I think they're thinking at this time, like, if they ask her to come in for a voluntary interview, she's probably going to say no. Yeah, I want a lawyer immediately. Exactly. She'll know what's off. They need a reason to bring her into the station. So they dig into Caitlin's background a little bit just to see if there's anything they can bring her in on and they find it. And I want to hit this on the Sherlock for this. So there's a 2018 misdemeanor in Caitlin's past and it's for a theft of service. And that theft of service is not covered in the documentary, but I think it's really important. This is insane. So Caitlin had received a Botox treatment at an Austin Medical Spa. She said she left her.

her card in the car and she walked out of the front door and she never came back to pay. It was $650 worth of Botox. I'm just thinking back to our Mitrease episode where she was charged with defrauding an innkeeper for about $90. Yes. And this is $600. This is, yeah, it's $650. And also it's a 2018 misdemeanor, which means for four years, no one's tried to hunt her down for

this money, necessarily. It feels a little Sherlock, but a little botched at the same. time. It's probably, yeah, yeah. No, it's a good, yeah. It's a good point. I think probably the med spa was like not trying to hunt her down either, even though it's very annoying. So she was charged at the time, but she was never arrested. And the warrant had just been sitting dormant for those four years. So then on May 12th, though, they arrest her on the old theft charge and they bring her into an interrogation room. And footage from that interview is included in the Netflix documentary. The detective works multiple approaches. Empathy, logic, evidence. She's this really cool investigator who has like tattooed arms

and is just trying to like sit with Caitlin and be like, listen, we've heard call inside of the story. Can we just hear yours? Just so we have both. If you don't give us your story, we're just going to have one side. And Caitlin's response every time she's asked anything about Mo Wilson is I would like to leave. And, you know, the investigator says it again. If you leave, you are allowed to leave, but if you go, we're only going to have one side of the story. And Caitlin says, still, I'd like to leave. She says it four times. And every time is the same cadence. It's super flat. It's emotionless and it's serious. You can't even tell if she's nervous or anything. She even says that she'd like a lawyer. Okay. So you guys are going to be very proud of me. I know I say all the time, like I need a phone a lawyer button. I did phone a lawyer for this. Oh, nice. So a lot of people on Reddit call this detective dumb. They say, she was very inappropriate and the way she interviewed Caitlin and tried to go about this. Like the minute that Caitlin was like, I'd like to leave. I'd like a lawyer, the question should have stopped. And that is where it gets really dicey. Because I was like, is that necessarily

true? Like, because the detective kept going on and being like, well, we're only going to get one side then. Like, and she was trying to make it really personal too. Like, he's a guy. I get it. You know, guys say things. And so I asked my friend, Reb, Mazel. She is a lawyer and has a podcast called Rebuttal. And I was like, is this wrong? How the investigator went about this? Like, would this have been inadmissible because she said, I would like a lawyer. And what the investigator did? Not botched at all. So Reb says this. In order for police to be required to read Miranda warning to a person, the person must have been subject to custodial interrogation. custodial interrogation typically means under arrest and in police custody, but can also mean that a

reasonable person would believe they were not free to leave. So Reb basically said, she failed to clearly and unambiguously request a lawyer as required by Miranda precedent. Long answer explanation in a perfect world, yes, but case law is wildly pro-police and anti-defendant. Miranda precedent has evolved to make it extremely difficult for a defendant to properly invoke their Miranda rights with respect to an attorney and extremely easy for a police officer to give half-baked Miranda warnings and get away with it. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Under Miranda, a suspect's request for an attorney must be clear and unambiguous.

Even when a clear and unambiguous request for an attorney is made, which requires the police officer stop the interrogation immediately until lawyer is present, if the suspect continues talking and keeps initiating questioning with lawyers, that can serve as a waiver of the right they invoked. She goes, exhausting, I know. And it wasn't clear and ambiguous. So the detective was trying to fish and get her to reengage. Yeah.

And she would reengage and have these responses where she's like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, that's not how it went. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And so she was reengaging every time. Yeah. If she would have just stayed silent, that would have been very clear then. Yes.

Yes. So it's just crazy how a lot of people are like, that should be botched. I mean, she does keep telling her you can leave. Yeah. We're only going to have one side of the story, but if you leave. You're free to leave. Yeah, and Caitlin just doesn't get up, but the investigator does say you can leave. Yeah, I just found it so interesting that a lot of people had problem with it, but not botched.

And that is really interesting. Well, when she's talking to Caitlin, at one point there's a knock at the door and a detective answers and passes this investigator a note. And it says that the birth date of the theft of service warrant does not match the date of birth in their system. So the warrant is actually invalid and they have nothing to hold Caitlin there on. And that's where we get a botched. And you can hit that on the botch board because that was probably a clerical error, I'm imagining. They just typed in the birth date wrong. But because of this, Caitlin Armstrong is officially free to walk out of the building.

Not only she doesn't have to be interrogated, but she also can just leave because she's not being held on that warrant. And this is what happened after Caitlin walked out. So that night, Caitlin asked Colin whether he thought their house was bugged by police. Yep, because they came in, executed that search warrant. Yeah, and she thought that they maybe planted some microphones or cameras. Bugged it, yeah. The next morning, together, they go to a coffee shop. And when Colin pressed her for her alibi on May 11th, she wrote it out for him.

She said, yoga and a visit to a healer. She never mentions Cherrywood. She never mentions Mo. Luckily, investigators don't have. have to wait long for another reason to arrest Caitlin Armstrong, because soon they get clue number six. Forensics that directly connect Caitlin to Mo's murder. Circumstantial no more. The shell casings recovered from Moe's bathroom floor, go to the ballistics lab. Result, they are a significant match. Two casings fired from Caitlin's Sigsauer P-365, the gun that Colin bought her back in December.

proof that Caitlin's gun had killed Mo Wilson. I hadn't seen a comparison up close like that, but it's almost like a fingerprint. Like each gun fires in a specific way and leaves a trace on the bullet. It's such a fascinating science to me. And let's not forget, too, we have Mo's bicycle that was recovered. It was processed for DNA. Results come back.

The comparison to Caitlin Armstrong's sample is a, positive match. Her DNA is on Mo's bike. So whether she made contact with the bike on the way in, or if it was in her way as she was going to hurt Mo or she grabbed it on the way out as like a final act of disrespect and terrorization. Yeah. It put her in that apartment at the time of Mo's murder. She touched that bike. It puts her at the scene of the crime. So on May 17th, 2022. That's just six days after the murder. The Austin Municipal Court issues a murder warrant for Caitlin Armstrong. The forensics are back and the case they have is pretty solid. But Caitlin is nowhere to be found. And police start scrambling for her because they need to know what she's been up to

since they released her from their interrogation room. Which botched. How did we not have her under surveillance? Well, how many times have we covered cases too where people just run? The second they're released from police custody, they just run. They run. And like, I don't know if they just underestimated her because she's a woman and like this yogi namaste lady, but like, you're not going to have her surveillance? Yeah. You just confiscated her gun that is the same model that you found casings at the scene. You have a very clear motive from this person. And no tail? No surveillance. Batched. They start looking into what she's been doing since she left. It turns out that two days after the murder on the morning of May 13th, she drove that Jeep that we've talked about, the one that was seen on surveillance.

Yeah, her car. Car Max, and she sold it for $12,200. Security cameras caught this entire interaction. She was even seen setting up a new iPhone while she was finalizing that paperwork. And after that, she flew from Austin to Houston to New York. Airport cameras at Austin Bergstrom Airport captured her. She has her long red hair, a backpack. and a yoga mat over her shoulder.

Her sister Christy picked her up at LaGuardia and drove her to a remote cabin about 100 miles north of the city. And Caitlin told her that she just needed a visit. She mentioned nothing about the crime. And from that cabin, Caitlin monitored news coverage obsessively. She saw that the reports that were talking about Colin

mentioned that he had been cleared. And Austin Police hadn't necessarily publicly named another suspect yet, so she was just kind of watching and waiting. On May 17th, she saw that there was an arrest warrant that went public with her name on it. Christy came home that evening, and that's when Caitlin told her sister that she was going to head back to Austin. So Christy drove her to Newark Airport that next morning. Caitlin gave her a hug, promised that she would be in touch, and she walked into the terminal.

And then she called Christy shortly after to tell her she was actually, you know what, changed her mind and she was going to drive back to Austin. Which you're going to drive with what car, first of all? Yeah. It almost to me seemed like she was telling her. sister that. So if her sister talked to investigators, she would be like, oh, well, she was driving back. Yeah. And then they wouldn't even look for like flight stuff or anything like that. Yes. They didn't let that fool them, though, because they did start looking for any flight records for Caitlin Armstrong. Yeah. But nothing was popping up under her name. Nothing popped up. Even though they had

her on video. They did then find her on video, but nothing under her name. Yeah, it's weird. They could see her in the airport, but they were like, there's no ticket that she bought. So what happened? Maybe she did leave and drive away. Yeah. Well, while working with Interpol, because now they're trying to see if her passport may be pinged with her leaving the country. Because they're like, of course, she's not going back to Austin. She's wanted for murder. Investigators confirmed, though, that her sister Christy's passport was used at Newark on that same day, May 18th.

But the destination was San Jose Costa Rica. Which that feels Sherlock-y. Like, to put two and two together, we found sisters' passport was used, stolen. Sister has never been charged in anything. So, sister. She doesn't know. Still to this day says she didn't know anything. Says it was stolen.

So that feels like a big Sherlock. And then to put it together and find her, yeah. And when the police showed up at Christy's door, she cooperated fully with them. She told them that Caitlin had taken her passport. She didn't hand it over willingly. And it turns out that Caitlin had searched the cabin for her sister's passport. She found it and she booked a flight from Newark under Christy's name.

A review of Caitlin's internet search history showed that she looked up yoga retreats, surf towns, hostel listings, but all in Costa Rica. And one location kept coming up. Santa Teresa, which is a small beach community on the Nicaa Peninsula, known among Americans for kind of like expat culture. There's also like yoga and surfing there. But after that, her online activity stopped. It seemed like she had installed a VPN and then went dark.

And investigators may have just let their number one suspect slip. out of their fingers and across country borders. Back in Austin, investigators are trying to build their case so that if they do get Caitlin Armstrong back in custody, they're just ready to go. They begin combing through mass amounts of digital information, and this is so Sherlock-y for me, and that's our seventh clue, an app called Strava.

You see, they found out that Caitlin had actually been stalking and keeping tabs on Mo through her Strava app. Sherlock. Yeah. I've always had, I mean, I don't know if any of our listeners use this app. I have friends that use it. I've always gotten a bad feeling from it. So, Jocelyn uses it for marathon training.

You can just see where people are all the time. And, like, their roots that they take to run. Yeah. So for those that don't know, Strava is basically a fitness tracking app. It's a place where you can actually go and record your rides, your runs. You can share them with your friends, followers. Like, I have people that use Strava and, like, they'll compete with their friends. It's kind of like another social media for them.

And so Mo posted her rides publicly, which this is kind of a standard practice for a competing athlete that's building a brand. She's becoming a little bit of a celebrity. Like, people want to know where she's riding and stuff. Yeah. I mean, this is good for sponsorships. It's something that isn't out of normal for someone in her position as a public. as a professional athlete. And she's probably not thinking that anyone is stalking her because you never are.

She did not have enemies. Yeah. Like, no. So through that, Caitlin saw that Mo had recently completed a ride in Austin. That's how she knew Mo was in town. But that wasn't the only surveillance Caitlin was doing. Nine days before the murder on May 2nd, Caitlin had logged into Collins' Instagram and email accounts.

Turns out she'd been running a pretty active systematic surveillance on his digital life for weeks in the lead-up to Mo's arrival in Austin. And so when Mo and Colin were texting, Caitlin saw everything come through on the iPad. She had it right at home. And that's how she knew Colin was lying to her. You see, he had even told Caitlin that he's going on a solo motorcycle ride that evening when in reality he was out with Mo getting those burgers. and she actually did call him while he was at Pool Burger with Moe eating. There's actually footage of them at Pool Burger showing him getting the call. He picks it up, looks at the phone, doesn't answer, puts it down. And I think at this point, she's read the iPad.

She knows he's lying. Oh, you're not going to answer my phone call? She's cracking. And at that point, investigators can kind of gather that. she grabs her yoga mat, her alibi prop, gets in her car, and starts heading towards the very address that Mo had texted Colin under that secret name. So at this point, investigators are really trying to narrow down Caitlin's movements. How was she stalking Mo? How did she end up from her house to Caitlin Cash's apartment that night to murder Mo?

Police look at her cell phone data, and they do see her head over near the apartment. apartment. But at a certain point, she either shuts her phone off or puts it on airplane mode. So investigators are like, well, how else do we trace her steps? How do we know where she went? And they think about the Jeep. But at this point, when investigators are putting this together, the Jeep's been sold to CarMax. The vehicle wasn't able to be located until June 23rd. Wow. She had sold it on the 13th. Like 10. days to locate that vehicle. And they should know where it is, right? If it gets sold, it feels a little botched. It feels botched, especially because what happens if that car would have been factory reset?

What happens if the data would have been wiped? Yeah. Yeah. And now you have another person's fingerprints all in there. Maybe potential other DNA that they missed. It just, it could have been botched. But investigators do get the Jeep back in their possession. And that becomes clue number eight for us. Now, Detective Spittler did notice during the original search that the Jeep had a factory infotainment system and he looked into it on his own and went to the forensic tech team and was like, does this thing collect GPS data? And they're like, yeah, it could. And so he came up with the idea that like, okay, if I get this Jeep back and I harvest this infotainment system out of it, I can bring it back to the team and I can get the data, which I'm going to give him a Sherlock moment there because he's, He seems like he was really doing that himself. He even goes on YouTube himself and figures out how to take it out of the Jeep console, like the dash console, and then brings it to the Austin PD Digital Forensics team.

They were able to reconstruct Caitlin's movements on the afternoon and evening of May 11th from that recovered GPS data. So again, like, this is a pretty big Sherlock moment. Yeah. And here is what they found specifically within that data. At 4.49 p.m. on May 11th, Mo sends Colin the Cherrywood address. Caitlin monitoring his text through the iPad. Now has it. Caitlin leaves the house and heads west towards downtown, towards deep-eddy pool where Colin and Mo were swimming. Then she kind of stops and turns around and heads east.

Pulls into a parking lot, stops for approximately one minute. This is where her phone goes dark, almost certainly to prevent the cell tower records from placing her near the scene. but she did not realize that her Jeep was also recording all of that GPS data too. The Jeep then drives directly to the Cherrywood address. She does not go inside immediately. This is where she is circling that block repeatedly. And I love how Netflix puts it together. They literally just like show her little trail just going around.

She had so much time there. So much time to think. And yeah, she's just really. Remeditating and yeah. Circling, circling. She actually is seen on this GPS data waiting at three different positions. She was very likely sitting in the Jeep and watching as Colin dropped Mo off at the base of those stairs in that alleyway. Likely saw Colin ride away on his motorcycle.

And that is when shortly afterwards she goes in. Now, this is a massive, massive breakthrough for the investigative team. or it would be if they had Caitlin in custody. So while all of this is going on, Caitlin is still missing. So in June, Deputy U.S. Marshals, Damian Fernandez, and Amir Perez traveled to Costa Rica and hopes that Caitlin's internet searches were telling the truth. Yeah, because she could have been searching Costa Rica to, like, throw them off. As a red herring, she's clearly, like, thinking through ways that she can escape. So who knows if she's trying to throw them off?

They take a big swing. They're like, we're going to go down there. And they arrive in Santa Teresa. on June 22nd, and they have with them photos of Caitlin. And this is something I never would have guessed, but they get there and they're like, oh, crap, we're going to have a lot of trouble finding her because as they're like going down the streets of this city, they see like person after person after person that looks super similar to Caitlin. White yoga ladies. It's like expats. It's a big expat community. So it's all just women like

Caitlin. So they start posting these photos around with as basically wanted ads. And it says armed and dangerous and it notes that there's a $5,000 reward for any information on her. And when they're down there, they actually, there's this one female operative. Her whole job is to go to different yoga studios in the area, take classes and look around and try to see if she can find Caitlin, which I want that job. Also, that feels Sherlocky. Yeah. To like send a woman in, someone who's like going to be undercover, looks like a yogi. Yes. It's giving Sherlock. But even while she's down there, she doesn't see Caitlin. She's going to all these classes. She doesn't see Caitlin. Then one of the deputies gets an idea. He thinks that she's maybe looking for work down there. And, you know,

before she left, the investigators were pretty sure that she had access to a lot of money. There was like tens of thousands of dollars that had been transferred to her from Colin as like investment capital in their business. And that was all before the murder had taken place. Yeah, I mean, their finances were so intertwined in one article. I think they said like she had access to over $400,000. Right. So she could have just lived the rest of her life down there. And she got $12,000 from selling her Jeep.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. She has some money. And so they're thinking maybe she's looking for a job, not because she needs money, but maybe she's trying to set up roots in Costa Rica and is fully planning on just living her life there for the rest of her life. So what they decide to do is that coordinate with a local hot. and post an ad online saying, we're looking for a yoga instructor. Again, another Sherlock moment because that was just genius.

A real shot in the dark to see if anyone replies. No one is biting on their ad, though, and they're about to give up and head home. This is really like the last thing that they're going to do before they go home. Yeah, so they actually flew back up to like San Jose and they had like kind of given up on that area down there. And they were like, nothing's shaking out. And they get one bite and they're like, oh, this could be her. But that applicant's name is Ari Martin. And they're like, okay, let's look into this submission.

So they go through this job application and they find that this Ari girl is also working at Don John's Lodge. So on the afternoon of June 29, 2020, the agents walk into Don Johns, which is a hostel, they go into the lobby. And they see that there's a woman sitting in the corner on her laptop. And this girl, she has darker hair than Caitlin. It's kind of the same texture. But looking at her face, she just doesn't look like Caitlin. But one of the guys gets a sense that it actually might be her, even though her features look a little different. She has a different nose and her lips are a little fuller.

But he thinks that if he goes up and he starts talking to her in English, she's going to scare her. So he's like, I'm just going to start talking to her in Spanish. Like I'm a local. And we'll have a conversation. So he goes up to her, starts speaking in Spanish. and she immediately goes for her phone and tries to get up a translation app. And while she's doing that, you know, he kind of leans in to start talking into the app. And he can see that around her nose is a little bit of dried blood and that there's a bandage on her nose that's still actively healing.

And it looks like someone that has had a nose drop. Yeah. And he could see like her lips were super swollen too. Yes, as if someone has had a little bit of work done. A little filler. And then he looks into her. her eyes and that's when he just knows. This is Caitlin Armstrong. They've got her. So they step outside and they get back in their car and they just call the local police. Those police swoop in

and get Caitlin and after they have her in custody, they go into the hostel and they search her room and they find a lockbox that has only two items. And it's her sister Christy's passport and a surgery receipt for $6,350 made out to Allison Page at the AVA Survehers. Center in San Jose. Four, you guessed it, plastic surgery. Yeah, she had a few aliases to Allison, Ari, and I think Beth was the other one that she went by. Yes, yes. Down at the station, she gave another fake name to the police, but then she stopped speaking entirely. Detectives know that it is Caitlin and the 43-day manhunt for her is officially over. And after this, we learn a little bit more about what Caitlin was doing down there during her hideout time. She had

checked into that hostel, Don John's Lodge, under the name Ari Martin. She started working shifts at the lodge to help pay for her stay. And that's when she started looking for a more permanent role as a yoga instructor in town. She goes to the town's only bar a few nights a week. She's social enough that she doesn't really seem suspicious. No, the bartender at the place she went said like, yeah, she was nice. Seemed like she was just setting down roots. Everyone in the area kind of thinks she's just this typical girl that came down as an expat and is living her life.

Yeah, and she even said to the guy to when she got the surgery afterwards, he approached her and was like, oh my gosh, what happened? And she was like, oh, I got hit in the face with a surfboard. And no one questioned it because that's something that would have happened. That's what he literally said. Yeah. She even starts dating a local while she's down there. But then meanwhile, she's making all of those like little changes to her appearance in real time. She like cuts her hair from super long to shorter. She dyes at a dark brown from that fiery red that it is. And then she goes to that. that surgical center and she pays $6,350 in cash under the name Allison Page and she gets a nose job lip fillers and a brow lift. And when the surgeon reaches for a camera because they want to take some pre-up photos, she refuses. But they come to a compromise. She says she'll take photos of herself on her own phone, but after she does that, she deletes them. You can see in those like before and after photos, she, you know, it suggested that she was trying to get the surgery to look more like her sister. Yeah, and then easier to travel on her passport that she had. I also heard in, I think it was the 48-hour doc with the marshals that found her. They asked the yoga deputy that went in undercover

if she would have recognized her, if she would have seen her in class. And she literally was like, no. No, and honestly, looking at the photos of her, I wouldn't have recognized her. Her face looks totally different. It's so subtle, yet. so different. It's so different. I would not have recognized her. And I'm so curious how many of you guys listening would say the same thing when you look at the side by side before and after. Even the eyes, like when the investigator said that he recognized her eyes because of that brow lift, I thought her eyes looked totally different. I mean, you can see the incision line at her scalp. Like, she got pulled back tight. Yeah. I thought she had a bluff. But like it was, you're like,

analyzing the type of surgery she might have had done. Yeah. It was like, it was, I would, I, I, truthfully would not have recognized her. Right. I totally agree. Which is so scary and also feels like another Sherlock moment because to just see this woman in the cafe and be like, oh, that's her. That's her. And before long, the U.S. Marshals close in on her. They've found their girl. Within days, Caitlin is back on a plane to Texas, this time in handcuffs, and she arrives to reporters and cameras already waiting for her on the tarmac. And that is when Caitlin is booked into Travis County Jail on July 5th, 2022. Her bond is set for $3.5 million.

She ain't going nowhere. And at her arraignment, she enters the plea of not guilty, which is a choice. Over the next 14 months, while prosecutors billed their case, Caitlin works out obsessively in jail. She's known to, like, run in place. Like, she'll just stand there and, like, run. And she's also doing squats and lifting, practicing yoga in her cell. And jail personnel, it's so. excessive that even the people at the jail are like, this is strange. Like people work out and get

kind of ripped in jail, but this is really odd to see her just like doing her little in place runs. I didn't see any videos of that and I would. They take a note of it and they just like write it down because it just is so relentless is a way they described it. It almost feels like she's preparing for something. Three weeks before her trial on October 11th, 2023, she tells officials that she has a leg injury and she needs medical attention. So they arranged to transport her to a doctor's office that's offsite. And now because of the reported injury, her lower body has to be left unshackled, even though her wrists are still cuffed in the front. They put her in the van. They drive her to this medical facility. They get her out of the van and she immediately books it straight

across the parking lot. One correction officer trips chasing her. It's actually kind of, it's like a comedy of errors to watch them trying to get her. She's literally shackled and they are off, like correction officers and they're just kind of fallen over themselves trying to get after her. She ends up scaling the perimeter fence and gets approximately a mile before the backup that they called is able to catch her. Yeah, this is definitely going on the botched board. Like, you let her get away.

You weren't close enough to where she starts booking it. Like, I don't know. Her legs aren't shackled. Maybe put a leash on her. They need to do some more like in place jogging in their own offices to like. like get as in shape as her level. She does struggle with officers on the ground, and she walks away with only a few minor injuries, but she also gets another felony charge, and that's for escape leading to bodily injury.

Her trial begins on November 1st, 2023, and the prosecution presents the full case. They show the doorbell camera footage and the GPS route that they reconstructed from the Jeep's infotainment center. They show the digital tracking through Strava and Collins' synced accounts. They also show the ballistics match on those bullets and the DNA that's on the bicycle. I mean, they have a substantial amount of evidence. It's a lot of stuff. They even include testimony from Caitlin's own friends about her explicit comments and on the record threats against Mo. And it turns out that in the months between the gun purchase and the murder, Caitlin told at least two friends separately that she was so jealous of Mo she could kill her.

She told people that. And the fact, too, that her friends came forward and immediately ratted her out was, like, really great to hear, I know. One of the friends in the Netflix stock was like, I thought she was kidding. Yeah. One of her friends, Nicole, told the jury that Caitlin directly told her she would kill anyone who started a relationship with Colin, which I'm sorry, is loser behavior. I mean, if you're this upset with someone that you're dating, you, like, break up with them. The one thing I don't understand about this mindset is what does killing the romantic partner of your terrible boyfriend? Like, what does that do? Is he just going to keep coming back to you because there's no one left to date?

Like, because you've killed them all? I just, I really don't understand it. I mean, I just, I can't imagine. I can't imagine being so botched in the head that that is your train of thought. Like, oh, I'm going to take her out. Once she's out of my way, then I won't have a problem. Like, no, this man has kept you as an offer. He doesn't like you. If he liked you, he wouldn't treat you this way. Like love is not manipulative, deceitful, toxic. Move on and find someone that genuinely likes you. You're running his company's finances and he kicks you out of your bedroom and you have to sleep in the guest bed in your own house. You're easy to be around and convenient and you do shit for him. That's why you're still there. Loser behavior. Yeah. Find your person. Don't take out someone who's not even a threat at this point. They were friends. This whole fling, like, when she went to Austin, like, it was a week long. I know. And then they were friends at this point.

Yeah. They're in the same industry. Mm-hmm. You're nuts. Yes. I mean, that's an understatement, but yes. The people who heard these statements all assumed that Caitlin was just blowing off steam. It seemed like no one really took any of the things that Caitlin said all that seriously.

No. Even though she was like this deep and dark, I don't think people read that on her right away. She hid it very well, apparently. Colin ends up testifying for eight hours over two days. There's documentary footage of this from Netflix and also it's shown on the news. And when he's on the stand, he's slumped over the microphone. His eyes are closed. His body is always like angled away from the defense table.

And it's often said that it was probably so that he couldn't see Caitlin as he was doing this. Like sometimes he'd keep his hand over his face. He could not see her. He like couldn't even look at her. And also some of the rest of the rest of him. responses that he gave were pretty confusing. Like, at one point, he's asked point blank if he knows the defendant, if he knows Caitlin. And he says no.

And Moe's mom thinks that it was him saying, like, oh, I thought I knew her, but I don't really know her. Yeah. But it's still just kind of an odd response to give to a courtroom where everyone knows that you guys were dating. Also, like, you're under oath, like. Yeah, you can't really just like answer like that. You could say, I thought I knew her, but I don't. But he just said no. Now, the defense argues that Caitlin was not a jealous girlfriend, but rather a, quote, frustrated partner who had been lied to repeatedly.

The defense says that she actually fled to Costa Rica not to escape justice, but out of fear that the real killer would come for her next. They even go so far as to say that the DNA evidence had a chain of custody problem that was worth examining. They talk about how certain parts of the bike were swabbed for DNA but not others. So they mentioned that like the frame of the bike between the handlebars and the seat was never swabbed. And the attorney that she has basically takes the bike in court and is like, here's how you pick it up. This is how you pick it up. And he's just hoisting this bike around. And Mo's dad in the Netflix doc was like, I found that so disrespectful.

It's so sad. It was so. They're like manhandling it. Yeah. Yeah. It's not sacred as it should be. And it's like, okay, chain of custody, there was another profile that was found. Could have been from contamination from a detective.

I mean, this bike was also thrown in the bushes. Who knows. But how do you explain away the fact that her DNA was still on that bike? Yeah, exactly. Come on. Yeah. Sorry, I'm having a really hard time being unbiased during this part for you guys. The defense does also go on to say that 30 people had the,

the door code to her house, and any one of them could have taken the keys to her Jeep that night. They say, no camera ever captured Caitlin arriving or leaving the Cherrywood apartment. And after that, case rested. The jury deliberates for two and a half hours. And on November 16th, 2023, they returned with a verdict. Guilty of first-degree murder. Mo's family and friends cry openly in the courtroom. I mean, Caitlin Cash.

took the stand and she says in the Netflix doc, like, I felt it up there. I felt Caitlin Armstrong staring at me. And I felt that what I was doing was the most important thing I will ever do in my life. Which she's amazing in the entire documentary. She's such a good friend. I literally just got the chills. Like you saying that. I'm like, it was, there was a moment in the dock. And I kept it together so well. But like she's like, you know, they, I also want to give them credit. Like, they analyzed her as a suspect. They swabbed her hands. They took DNA from her. which so freaking traumatic to go through that. Yeah.

But she says like after they swabbed, I was able to go to the bathroom and I watched her blood come off my hands and I just wanted it back. Yeah. I'm like, oh. And when she asks, when she starts kind of panicking and she's asking, like, is she still there? Is she alone? Yeah. She's not going to be left alone, right? Yeah.

She's like worried about her friend being left alone after she's passed away. And it's just like so gut-wrenching. It's just devastating. a good friend. Caitlin Armstrong at this point is just sitting completely still, staring straight ahead, expressionless. She is sentenced to 90 years. However, under Texas law, she is eligible for parole after serving 30 years. So that means her first review is for July 252. If she does serve her full sentence, it would be until July 3rd, 2112. And I hope she's there until she dies. Yeah, 90 years. I mean, she's not going to be 120 years old in jail. Now, Mo's mom, Karen Wilson, gave her a victim impact statement directly to Caitlin Armstrong. She said Mo was a caring, empathetic person and that if Caitlin had allowed herself to actually know Mo as a human being, she never would have wanted to hurt her. Karen said, quote, when you shot Mariah in the heart, you shot me in the heart, you shot Eric and Matt in their hearts.

And that's Mariah's brother and father. Her father, Eric's statement, was measured and deliberate. He called the case, quote, a perfect example of why integrity and honesty are crucial in our personal relationships and how dishonesty can often lead to unintended consequences. And I thought that was so perfect. And it summed up exactly how I was feeling about this case because at the end of the day, one person pulled the trigger. That was Caitlin. But it's hard to ignore everything that led up to it. And you know that, like, Colin didn't kill anyone.

And he was being like a bad boyfriend. You cannot go to jail for being a bad boyfriend. He's being a player. But her father, I think, was able to kind of sum up, like, integrity and our personal relationships is important and dishonesty can have unintended consequences. It was so measured and so beautifully said. I know. I got the chills when I saw that.

He said that there were no winners in this room and he asked instead for prayer for their family, for their friends, and also for the Armstrong family as well because they, you know, lost a daughter too. Yeah, and that kind of brings us to where we are. There's not many loose ends here, except the fact that Caitlin does keep appealing. Yeah, which was something that wasn't covered in the documentary either. No, so 10 days after sentencing, she actually filed for appeal. She said it was because of inadequate representation. She also had an alleged pregnancy at the time of her arrest and trigger warning, you know, for mentions of miscarriage here. Her father did submit an affidavit claiming that she had likely been pregnant and miscarried in custody.

There was no medical documentation or supporting details ever provided by any party. That appeal was denied. She filed again in September 2024, again challenging the DNA evidence, and again raising the pregnancy claim. In January, 26, the Texas Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed her conviction and found no reversible error. However, I imagine she'll keep trying. Yeah. And then there were also a couple of civil lawsuits. So most family filed a wrongful death suit in May of 2024.

And a judge issued a $15 million default judgment after Caitlin failed to appear. Attorney Randy Howrie was direct about the purpose of this. If there was ever an opportunity for Caitlin Armstrong to financially benefit from this crime. So say she got a book deal or maybe she did like an interview or had some media appearance. and made money from it, the judgment will intercept that. So she was not going to be able to make any money from it. And this is where I need to phone rep again because I'm like, would the son of Sam law prevented that or does this just make it extra locked and airtight?

Right. I know. I'm like confused about that too. There was also a second lawsuit that was filed in July of 2024. And this one was filed against Armstrong's relatives and Colin, alleging fraudulent transfer of assets. And that's because he transferred Caitlin's family. family, a lot of money. Yeah, her share of the business or something like that. And I would imagine given the first lawsuit, any funds of Caitlin's should have gone to Mo's family. But again, not a lawyer.

Not a lawyer. That's why we call him. Yeah, wild. I'm curious how that one will shake out. A lot of people ask, you know, where Colin Strickland is today. He did lose pretty much all of his sponsors except Red Bull. and then stopped racing entirely. In an interview with cycling news in June 2025,

he described what the aftermath did to his relationship with the sport. 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. There's a quote here that is shared in the documentary, and I don't know. I'm going to read it, and let me know what you think about it.

Quote, I regret everything. I'm ashamed of everything I've ever done. I would have never started bike racing, not ever met Caitlin, not ever met Mariah, not ever spoken with Mariah in private, every single thing, because it all led to this. It kind of takes me back to what Mo's dad said, where just the unintended consequences of things. Yeah. It's an unfortunate part of this case, even though, I mean, Colin wasn't the one that killed anyone, but he's definitely feeling it too. like he played some part in this. To speak to Mo's dad quote, too, like a little more integrity. And he is now just restoring vintage cars and Spartan trailers. He still rides around Austin, but hasn't competed since 2021.

And yeah, like you said, I mean, he did not pull the trigger, but he definitely created a lot of the conditions that did lead to Mo's death. Caitlin Cash ended up moving back into her Cherrywood apartment after the trial. And everyone who knew her thought that she wouldn't do that. But she ended up telling the Netflix documentary that she felt this really strong pull to stay. She wanted the space to feel intentional and full of life rather than abandoned. And she found this print that was in a thrift store. It was a small bike writing out of frame and there was a bloom in one corner.

And the words, with you all the way, were written on it. I got the chills when I saw this piece of art. Yeah. I know. It's so sweet. And I forget how many pieces of art that she said were in this thrift shop with this. But there was a lot of other art. And to find that piece, that's so just called to her.

I mean, it's so Mo. Like a bike halfway out of the frame of the art. Yeah. And the bloom, like something new being reborn. When you guys see it, let me know what you think. I mean, it is just such a touching piece of art to find. And I understand why she took it as a sign. Yeah.

Mo's brother, Matt, coaches young skiers at Burke Mountain Academy now. The same school where Moe trained in the same train. in the same trails where she first learned what she could really do on a bike. And he named a trail there Mariah's Ascent. And when things get hard, he thinks about what Mo would say. She would say things like, get on your bike, one step at a time. And since her death, her family has established the Mariah Wilson Foundation. Their mission is to, quote, promote healthy living and community building by supporting

organizations dedicated to expanding access to recreation, sports, and educational programs. And they host an annual ride for Moe event every May. And if this case makes you think about the patterns that preceded the murder, like a partner monitoring your location, your accounts, your phone contacts, your social media, there is the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. Those patterns don't always look like what we've been taught to recognize as danger, which I think is evident in this case, but they are dangerous. Surveillance, isolation, and control are the architecture of intimate partner violence,

and that is even when it hasn't turned physical yet. If you are an athlete using public fitness tracking, you should know your privacy settings, know what you're making visible and to whom. I know after this case, a lot of athletes started setting their Strava app to private. They didn't even realize that they were in public, I think. Mo wasn't doing anything wrong.

She shouldn't have had to hide at all. But you should always have the fully informed choice about who can see your data, so you should check your settings. Yeah, check it out. I mean, I checked in with my husband just to make sure I'm like, It's private, right? And just knowing, knowing what you're sharing is so important. So always check. And it's one of those apps, too, where you can add someone and forget that you've had them added. So someone from, like, five or six years ago that you were like sharing walks with or hikes with.

Yeah. You know, that person can still see your data. So just make sure even if you are on private, you know exactly who's looking at your stuff. Yeah, close stories too on things like Instagram. Like, oh my gosh. I'm thinking about that just now. Popped in my head. I'm like, I should check who's on my close friends. Yeah, because we all post sensitive stuff. Like, I'll post pictures of my. baby and only to close friends, but you want to make sure you know exactly who those people are. Exactly. And it's easy to forget. Yeah. And with that, now we want to highlight a missing person this week. This week, we are highlighting Amina and Belal Candil. The FBI Norfolk field office is asking for the public's assistance in locating Amina and Belal Candle, missing from James City

County, Virginia since August 29, 2014. At the time of their disappearance, Amina was 10 and Belel was eight years old. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released these age-progressed photos displayed here. The children were last seen on August 30th, 2014, in the company of their father, Ahmed Abdullah Tahakhandil, leaving the United States on a flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. They were bound for Ukraine and Turkey. The children may be living in the Alexandria, Cairo, or Giza areas of Egypt. They may also be residing in Hattay region of Turkey. Amina is described as a white female with blue eyes and brown hair. She's approximately 5'2 and weighed 82 pounds. Amina was born September 1st, 2003 in Augusta, Georgia. Belal is

described as a white male with blue eyes and blonde hair. At the time of his disappearance, he was approximately 4 feet 5 inches tall and weighed approximately 55 pounds. Belal was born on January 4, 2006 in Augusta, Georgia. Their father, Ahmed Kaddiel, is described as a 46-year-old male with brown hair and green eyes, he's six feet tall and weighs approximately 170 to 180. He's a naturalized U.S. citizen with dual Egyptian citizenship. If you have any information about the location of Amina and Belele, please contact the FBI Norfolk field office at 757-45550 or tips.fbi.gov. Or you can contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-843-678.

You can also contact your local FBI office or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate. And that is all we have for today's episode. And now we turn it over to you guys. Your thoughts, your theories, did we get it right on the botched slash Sherlock slash loser behavior board this week? We have a lot for all of them. I'm very impressed with the Sherlock's in this case. It does feel like a good change up. I know we have had a lot of botched.

Yeah. So I do appreciate that. And if you want to just know more about Mo and how amazing she was, on the Mariah Wilson Foundation website, there's a lot of different tabs about Mo. There's mail from Mo, which has a couple of her blog posts with the wine recommendations. And I think it's just amazing to see her thought process and how motivated she was. And like, I truly, I read some of her blog posts and these mail letters. and I was like, oh my God, like it changed the chemistry in my brain a little bit. Yeah.

I was like, it's so inspiring. The ride is May 9th. So maybe a little short notice for this year, but maybe you put it on your calendar for 2027. There's a ride for the kids, too. Love it. It's just, it's really amazing. That's so cute.

It's amazing. They're doing amazing work to honor her, her legacy, and the foundation's doing amazing work. And I just, I really appreciate how involved the family was in the dock, too, and really, just telling Mo's story. Definitely. I know that there's a lot that goes into how they caught Caitlin, but you could tell in the documentary they really wanted to focus on who Mo was and her story

and really making it about her. And I thought it was really beautifully done. Yeah. Watch the doc. It's really powerful and just all of her family and friends. Yeah. It's really cool. Really good doc.

But that's all we got. So until next time, guys. See ya. Bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of Clues. To hear more cases like this one, follow Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaylin Moore on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or watch on YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday.