RedHanded
A Rising Cyclist Shot Dead | Presenting Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
25 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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 Absher from Two Hot Takes and Kaylin Moore from Heart Starts Pounding. Each week, Morgan and Kaylin 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, analyse 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.
Chapter 2: What led to the murder of rising cyclist Mo Wilson?
At first, nothing made sense. No forced entry, no robbery, no clear suspect. But as investigators followed the evidence, the case unravelled 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 Moe 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 Moe 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 Kayla 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 CrimeHouse Plus on Apple Podcasts.
And make sure to go back and listen to our previous episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Now let's get into Anna Mariah Moe 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 docs I've seen. Yeah. Especially recently, that's coming to mind.
Yeah.
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.
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Chapter 3: What clues were found at the crime scene of Mo Wilson's murder?
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 Sydney Little 9822. And she specifically asked for more Sherlock.
cases i know i know she she was like we've been getting a lot of botched i know so far and so are there more like sherlock cases you can provide and 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 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
I've been seeing a lot of comments about, hey, your markers suck. We know that they're a little dry. It's 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 11th, 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.
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Chapter 4: How did investigators track down Mo Wilson's last movements?
Anna Maria 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 Olympics, 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. Riding 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 inner 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.
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Chapter 5: What role did Colin Strickland play in Mo Wilson's life?
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 rival's win. And the people who knew her described her as being just full of light and laughter. 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 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 to you? What about, you know, community? What does that mean to you?
Yeah.
She even gives wine recommendations.
Oh, my gosh.
She does it all. She does it all.
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Chapter 6: What evidence linked Caitlin Armstrong to Mo Wilson's murder?
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 Spitler 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 Moe'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 Moe's examination, put together a clearer picture of how things likely played out between Moe and her attacker.
The next description of Moe'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, 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 to 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 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.
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Chapter 7: How did Caitlin Armstrong attempt to evade capture after the murder?
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 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 for a race and hearing nothing from Colin. 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,
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 and 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 questioning everything and like just wanted to sort the status of this relationship. And so on the afternoon of May 11th, Colin picked up Mo on his motorcycle.
They swam at Deep Eddy 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.
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Chapter 8: What were the outcomes of Caitlin Armstrong's trial?
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, too, 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. It's just, like, 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 group.
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. Colin's 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.
Moe 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.
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