Killer of pro cyclist Mo Wilson was captured with help of want ad for yoga instructor in Costa Rica

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Federal investigators say a local want ad for a yoga instructor in Costa Rica helped them capture the woman who killed rising pro cyclist Anna Moriah Wilson in 2022.

Kaitlin Armstrong was convicted and sentenced to prison for 90 years in November for gunning down Wilson in Austin, Texas in a jealous rage. Investigators had been searching for Armstrong for more than a month and believed she was moving around Costa Rica looking for work as a yoga instructor.

In an interview with the CBS crime program “48 Hours,” Deputy U.S. Marshals Emir Perez and Damien Fernandez said they had run into dead ends in the beachside town of Santa Teresa before placing the ad on a local Facebook page seeking an instructor “as soon as possible.”

After several days of getting no responses, a woman finally answered and set up a meeting. That person turned out to be Armstrong.

She had cut and darkened her hair, and she had plastic surgery on her nose to change her appearance. Armstrong was still wearing a bandage on her face when Perez met the woman at a hostel and recognized Armstrong’s eyes from photographs. Local police made the arrest, and she was returned to Texas for trial.

“I noticed that she had a bandage on her nose and possibly her lips were swollen, and I saw her eyes,” Perez said. “The eyes are the exact same ones that I saw in the picture. And this is her 100 percent.”

Wilson, a Vermont native and former alpine skier at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, was an emerging star in gravel and mountain bike riding when she was killed in a friend’s apartment in Austin. She had been preparing to participate in a Texas race that she was among the favorites to win.