Convicted love-triangle killer Kaitlin Armstrong, who escaped to Central America after undergoing plastic surgery to alter her face, was caught by authorities after they lured her back to the United States with an ad for a yoga instructor.
US Marshalls recently revealed that Armstrong who fled the US after she shot professional cyclist Anna Moriah Wilson in May 2022 was caught that summer.
According to CBS News, the Marshalls chased the fugitive killer across the US and into Costa Rica, believing she was hiding near the coast. However, she was using multiple names and plastic surgery to deceive authorities.
So instead, the feds forced her to come to them by seizing her love of yoga, posting an ad for a yoga teacher on a local Facebook page in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica.
Armstrong, now serving 90 years for killing Wilson in a jealous rage, took almost a week to bite but just as the Marshals were about to return to the US, they received a message from someone who identified themselves as a yoga instructor.
“We got a bite, somebody that, um, identified herself … as a yoga instructor and said they wanted to meet with us at a particular hostel,” Deputy US Marshal Emir Perez told CBS News. “And we said … ‘This is, this is our chance!’”
Perez and Deputy US Marshal Damien Fernandez raced to Santa Teresa from San Jose. They found her at a hostel, speaking in Spanish while examining her bandaged nose and swollen lips, which were part of her identity concealment surgeries. However, her eyes matched those seen in an earlier photograph.
“He gets in the car, and he is like, ‘That’s her. She’s in there,’” Fernandez told CBS News.
Local cops arrested her, and the feds brought her back to Texas where she was charged and held in jail. She managed to escape again — but didn’t get far before deputies caught her.
Wilson, a Vermont native and an emerging star in pro gravel and mountain bike racing, was found dead on May 11, 2022.
She’d been in Austin ahead of a race in Texas where Armstrong tracked her to an apartment and shot her three times, according to the accusations.
A Jeep matching Armstrong’s was caught on camera outside the crime scene, and the 43-day international manhunt ensued.
A Texas jury took just two hours to convict Armstrong and a day later, a judge put her behind bars for nine decades.
