Fugitive's Downfall: She Answered Yoga Ad

That's how authorities captured killer Kaitlin Armstrong, who was on the run in Costa Rica
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 29, 2024 11:11 AM CST
Fugitive's Downfall: She Answered Yoga Ad
Kaitlin Armstrong leaves a courtroom in Austin, Texas, last year after receiving a sentence of 90 years for the murder of Anna Moriah Wilson.   (Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman via AP, Pool)

Now that Kaitlin Armstrong is serving a 90-year sentence for murdering another woman, authorities have revealed how they caught her when she went on the run. It all came down to a yoga ad, they told CBS' 48 Hours on Friday. US marshals had tracked Armstrong—then sought as a suspect in the murder of 25-year-old pro cyclist Anna Moriah Wilson—to a tourist beach town in Costa Rica but soon hit a dead end. They knew Armstrong worked as a yoga instructor in the US and was probably short on money, so "we decided we were gonna put an ad out for a yoga instructor and see what would happen," Deputy US Marshal Emir Perez told the show, per the Washington Post.

After about a week, Armstrong did indeed reply to the ad, and police arrested her at a hostel on the beach in Santa Teresa. Armstrong had gone on the run from Austin, Texas, after the 2022 killing of Wilson in what police described as a love triangle gone wrong. Armstrong used her sister's passport to flee the country and managed to elude authorities for more than a month, per the Guardian. She had plastic surgery along the way and, in fact, had a bandage on her nose when arrested, Perez says, per CBS News. (More Kaitlin Armstrong stories.)

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