The Texas yoga teacher charged with shooting a romantic rival to death and then fleeing to Costa Rica to avoid responsibility once had a monumental meltdown over a suspected food allergy while at a yoga retreat in Bali.
Kaitlin Armstrong, who was a real estate agent when she travelled to Indonesia’s top tourist destination in January 2018, spent four weeks in Canggu, Bali, studying to teach Vinyasa yoga — the same technique she was teaching at a surf hostel in Santa Teresa when she was arrested last week by Costa Rican authorities.
Armstrong has been charged with murder in the death of pro cyclist Mo Wilson on May 11. Armstrong’s boyfriend, another pro cyclist named Colin Strickland, told investigators that he had a fling with Wilson last October during a break in his relationship with Armstrong, as CrimeOnline previously reported. But he used a fake name for Wilson in his phone contacts and lied to his girlfriend about where he was the day Wilson was killed: He and Wilson had gone swimming and then out to dinner. Strickland dropped Wilson off at a friend’s where she was staying after dinner, but Armstrong had reportedly tracked her wayward boyfriend using a cycling app and showed up at the home moments later.
Wilson was found dead an hour after Strickland dropped her off.
A fellow attendee at the retreat told The US Sun that Armstrong arrived at the retreat with a “pain in her eyes,” tearfully telling the attendees that she’d fled to Bali because she wanted to “change something back home.” She didn’t reveal what it was, the attendee, who wished to remain anonymous, said.
The meltdown happened early on in the four week course when some of the group went out to dinner and then returned to a house one of them had rented.
“She had some sort of minor panic attack because she was having a small allergic reaction to some of the food … she really overreacted,” the attendee said.
Armstrong had been quiet and reserved up until then, they said, but when a small rash appeared on her chest, she began shaking and hyperventilating.
“[It] seemed like a bit of an overreaction to what was happening,” they said. “She was quite anxious … just kind of shaking and breathing heavily.
“It was just unnecessary to react like that … everyone knew what was happening. It was, you know, a whole scene.”
The source said they kept Armstrong at arm’s length after that, having labeled her somewhat overdramatic.
Armstrong did seem to be a happier person at the end of the retreat, the source said.
Investigators say Armstrong fled Texas after detectives interviewed her about Wilson’s murder and then inexplicably let her go. She went to New York, then flew to Costa Rica from a New Jersey airport using someone else’s passport — believe to be her sister’s. When detectives tracked her down, she was living at a hostel and teaching yoga four time a week under the name Arie.
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