Federal authorities have filed new charges against love triangle murder suspect Kaitlyn Armstrong, accusing the Texas yoga teacher of using someone else’s passport to flee the country.
The complaint doesn’t say whose passport Armstrong used, but CrimeOnline previously reported that she had her sister’s passport in her possession when she was arrested at a hostel in Santa Teresa Beach, Costa Rica, last week.
Armstrong has already been charged with first degree murder in the death of Mo Wilson, a 25-year-old professional cyclist and Armstrong’s romantic rival. She’s also been charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution and an unrelated theft of services charge over an unpaid botox bill from several years ago.
On the night Wilson was shot to death, she had gone swimming and out to dinner with Armstrong’s boyfriend, fellow pro cyclist Colin Strickland. Strickland told police that he’d had a brief fling with Wilson last fall when he and Armstrong were split up, yet he lied to Armstrong about who he was with that day and disguised Wilson’s name in his phone contacts so Armstrong wouldn’t see it.
Austin police interviewed Armstrong after the murder, but let her go, and she used the opportunity to get out of town. She sold her Jeep and flew from Austin to Houston and then to New York. She and her sister were reportedly seen at a remote campsite north of New York City. Investigators lost track of her temporarily after someone gave her a ride to a New Jersey airport but she wasn’t booked on any flights.
After investigators determined she had flown to Costa Rica using a passport belonging to “someone that was closely associated with her,” authorities there tracked her down, Deputy US Marshal Brandon Filla told Fox News.
“She took a bus from the San Jose airport in Costa Rica, hours away,” he said, adding that Costa Rican investigators tracked her route with “old-fashioned police work.”
Officials in Costa Rica took Armstrong into custody on June 29 on an immigration charge. She initially gave the investigators a fake name but eventually “confessed her true identity,” Filla said.
Filla said Armstrong had been using the aliases Beth Martin, Liz Martin, and Ari Martin, and had died her hair and cut it shorter.
Armstrong is due in court on the murder charge on July 20. A court date for the passport misuse has not been set. The latest federal charge carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Armstrong is being held on a $3.5 million bond.
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[Featured image: Kaitlin Armstrong/handout]
