“I love talking about her,” Karen Wilson says about her daughter Moriah and the new Netflix documentary about her life.
Around the time of her daughter Moriah’s 2022 murder, approximately 2000 miles away in Austin, Texas, Karen Wilson, unaware of the tragedy unfolding, read a poem about hope.
“The well-known maxim, ‘While there is life, there is hope’ has deeper meaning in reverse: ‘While there is hope there is life,'” Wilson tells USA TODAY, reading from a book, “I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes” that she keeps by her bed. “Hope comes first, life follows. Hope gives power to life. Hope rouses life to continue, to expand, to grow, to reach out, to go on. Hope sees a light where there isn’t any….God clearly was putting that in my heart and preparing me for the next day of when I was going to hear [news of Moriah’s death].”
May marks four years since accomplished 25-year-old cyclist Anna Moriah Wilson, known affectionately as “Mo,” was murdered by Kaitlin Armstrong. Armstrong worried that something simmered between Moriah and her longtime boyfriend Colin Strickland, whom Armstrong lived with. Moriah and Strickland had a short romance in the fall of 2021, when Armstrong and Strickland were on a brief break.
Moriah’s parents say when Moriah returned to Austin for a bike race the following spring, she and Strickland were only friends. But a jealous Armstrong shot and killed Moriah on May 11, 2022. The events are chronicled in Netflix’s documentary, “The Truth and Tragedy of Moriah Wilson” (now streaming).
“The first thing I did, when the officer told me she had died, was I screamed up into the sky to God, and I said, ‘You are going to do something good with this,'” Karen recalls.
Filmmakers had approached Wilson and husband Eric about movie ideas, Wilson says, but nothing felt right until they met with Oscar-winning producer Evan Hayes (“Free Solo”). Wilson says when Hayes shared how Moriah lived “could be a positive influence on his daughter” Wilson thought “OK, if that’s what you’re really looking for, that’s awesome.”
The documentary captures Moriah’s dedication to racing and zest for life, as recalled in interviews with her family, friends and an ex-boyfriend.
“For years, at the end of every day, she would write out what she wanted to try to accomplish the next day,” Eric tells USA TODAY of his daughter, “and the three things she was thankful for.”
The details of her death and recalled by members of law enforcement. “The district attorneys, the police officers, everyone was so invested in this story,” says director Marina Zenovich (“I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not,” “Lance”). “I felt like Austin really rallied as a city to try to bring justice for Mo.”
Hearing the Wilsons talk about their child moved the crew from their very first day of filming, Zenovich says. They filmed the pair walking in their garden where a plaque honoring Moriah’s life rests.
“It was like my whole crew was crying, and I’m talking about grown men,” Zenovich says. “It was like, ‘Oh wow this is something. This is something deeply, deeply emotional.'”
The film begins with home movies capturing Moriah’s early years. “It was as if I always had known her. It was so familiar,” Wilson says in the documentary, her voice beginning to crack.
And just days after Moriah’s birth, on May 18, 1996, Wilson was hit with the heartbreaking notion that Moriah would leave her someday. At the time, Wilson envisioned an adult Moriah simply moving out of the house or getting married. “But then after she died, when I thought back about that − because it was so powerful, the emotion, I was sobbing and sobbing − it was like I was mourning,” she tells USA TODAY.
The day of Moriah’s death, she and Strickland went swimming and for a bite to eat, before he returned Moriah to her friend’s apartment where she was staying around 8:30 p.m., according to reports. Armstrong fired the first shots around 9:15 p.m.
“The Truth and Tragedy of Moriah Wilson” shows how investigators pieced together the case and arrested Armstrong in Costa Rica after a 43-day hunt. She used her sister, Christine Armstrong’s passport to leave the States. (According to NBC News, Christine had not been charged with a crime.) Kaitlin Armstrong was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 90 years.
Zenovich says she reached out to Armstrong in prison and her sister about the documentary that premiered at Austin’s South by Southwest in March, but didn’t hear back from either. Strickland agreed to be filmed, Zenovich says but not interviewed. “But I think how he looks and his demeanor really speaks to what this did to him,” she says.
Viewers have expressed appreciation to the Wilsons “for sharing her life because they felt like they really got to know her,” Karen Wilson says. “And as a mom, I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the reasons [I’m] so happy that this film is made is that she’s remembered. People die, they get forgotten and sometimes you never really talk much about them because it’s painful or whatever. But I love talking about her, and it keeps her in our life.”
Moriah’s legacy is also continued through the Moriah Wilson Foundation, which annually hosts the “Ride For Mo” event, happening this year on May 9.
The foundation is “a good place to put our energy rather than sitting around moping about being sad,” Wilson says. “There’s definitely those moments, and there will always be those moments, but we’ve just got to live life. She wants us to live life.”
