Quote · Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder
Ep. 114 | This Murder Case Took a Turn Nobody Expected | Moriah Wilson
Where this was said
Capture, Deportation, and the Road to Trial
At 1:06:03 · chapter starts 1:06:00
Costa Rican authorities detained Armstrong on an immigration violation — entering the country on someone else's passport — on June 29, 2022. She refused to give her real name for six hours on the road to San José before finally relenting. Inside her hostel locker: two passports (her own and Christine's), a Newark boarding pass in Christine's name, and the receipt for her cosmetic surgery. She was deported rather than extradited — a deliberate legal distinction to avoid the formal negotiation process — and landed in Houston on July 2nd. By July 5th, she was in Travis County jail facing first-degree murder and theft of service charges, with bond set at $3.5 million. Mo's family released a statement expressing relief that the uncertainty was finally behind them.
Three weeks before her murder trial, Armstrong escaped a corrections escort by fashioning a homemade handcuff key from a thin piece of metal she'd stashed in her cell. She peeled off her jail uniform mid-sprint, climbed a tree, then a six-foot fence — and was caught at the top after a 10-minute chase.
On October 11, 2023, just three weeks before her murder trial, Armstrong escaped from a corrections escort by fashioning a makeshift handcuff key and was recaptured after a 10-minute foot chase covering about a mile.
Prosecutors turned GPS data from Armstrong's Jeep infotainment system into an animation for the jury, showing the vehicle loop the same stretch of Maple Avenue again and again before stopping behind Mo's apartment for 37 minutes. It pulled away two minutes after the gunshots.
