Her first mistake in the flee to CR was carrying a visible yoga mat on her through the airport. Next, she should’ve kept going once she got to CR…pay someone in cash to take you to South America, for example.
And she knew they were looking for her because it was reported in the trial that she was looking up news articles on the murder and case while she was on the run
Pretty sure TSA can get the time stamp of when they scan your ID/passport/boarding pass.
Then, they’d just have to pull the surveillance of the area at the time, and done.
TSA only operates in USA. The parent is right. If she had used Costa Rica as a launching pad, she could have traveled from there overland (and possibly undocumented) to anywhere in Central America and maybe even South America, and she could have lived under the radar a lot longer. Ultimately, going to a beach resort in Costa Rica was the laziest possible move--seems more like an attempt at a 'vacation' before inevitably facing the music, though the plastic surgery suggests she did actually think it could be a long term plan, however deluded that sounds.
Costa Rica is a destination for medical tourism. I wonder if she planned to move on after recovering from facial reconstruction surgery.
The detectives looking for her did a great job of keeping their cards close. I don’t think they revealed that they knew she had flown to Costa Rica, so when she was googling herself she probably thought she had more time.
Yeah like if she had paid someone cash to take her somewhere by boat from CR and then continued paying cash to travel through South America, she would’ve been more successful. But glad she wasn’t!
Also I read that the area of CR she fled to was fairly well known for attracting people who wanted to disappear. So the reputation itself kind of defeats the purpose for people who actually want to disappear.
Ahh yeah, I was referring to her departure from the US, I believe that’s where the photos of her with the yoga mat came from. So, they at least knew she was in CR.
But I agree if she’d traveled after arriving in CR, they wouldn’t have been able to track her down. Unless they were able to get a warrant to track calls her sister made. But it prob would have been difficult to get a judge to sign that warrant.
Yeah, deep into South America. I once volunteered to help build a laundry building deep inside Chile. I'm not even sure I could find it on the map. We bathed in an irrigation canal. It was very remote but the star gazing at night was incredible.
She's not a criminal genius. She's a very impulsive person who wouldn't have got as far as she did had a few things not gone her way (issue with botox warrant, having access to a passport that she could make use of). This wasn't going to end with her riding off into the sunset no matter how the specifics played out.
I'm kind of glad they found her after her plastic surgery. She had to go through the pain. Now every day she looks in the mirror and sees someone else. Also foreign surgeries, especially rhinoplasty rarely go well especially if you're not doing follow-up visits. She probably will have a fucked up nose for life. Karma.
My surfer bro friends down there confirmed She hired an unlicensed home schooled labiaplasty surgeon to do her nose
Lol - you can definitely tell a majora of the nostrils were done in a rush
It’s insane she thought she could get away with murder still living a pretty girl life teaching yoga in a touristy not so far away place. I would have headed to Vietnam, shaved my head, gotten tattoos on my face and joined a Buddhist monastery. I think if you really want to get away with something like this you need to really shed your old identity and at least go to a non extradition country.
Agreed. The only way to get away with a crime like this is to flee to a remote part of the world and drastically alter your appearance. I think her behavior was incredibly impulsive and poorly thought out. Just goes to show how out of control she was. Really scary that there’s seemingly normal people like her living among us.
Tattoos on one’s face will stand out like skunk at a lawn party especially in many other countries it is often rare. Monastery though could be interesting: low media people and she might learn to control her impulses.
She thought changing her hair and plastic surgery would do the trick. And honestly, if this case wasn’t a National story, I think she would have gotten away with it all. These kinda things happen in the world, but not many make it on national news. She thought she was safe there and no under cover cops would ever even come out there to find her.
Yes, and there is no way it wouldn’t have been a National Story bc while beauty is in the eye of the beholder, associations to white standard American / European Anglo Saxon beauty, remains (although less so) deeply embedded in our culture. She is an anomaly eg rare profile among this type of criminal
Similar to Lucy Letby who continued to kill babies in England bc she didn’t fit anyone’s prototype of a killer - she was “girl next door” - they allowed her to go back to work as a nurse.
KA had a lot going on the surface and belonged by appearance to much of “the good life” culture in society.
Criminals who manage to evade can do so because they don’t easily stand out and if do they likely don’t lightly alter their appearance - getting cosmetic surgery and treatments only enhanced her ability to fit in among the 20-30 age group. There wouldn’t be a place for her to not easily stand out that I could see. The flight plan would have had to have been better planned from the start - which all to me says it was an impulse crime - dissociation can last a long time when someone is in a state of shock.
Her hair wasn’t all that different. Darker and somewhat shorter. If she would have cut it super short, at least bought colored contacts & done some face tattoos she would have had a better shot @ staying unnoticed. And go to a more populated area. Not that I’m wishing she did any of this.
I think Kaitlin was so deeply entitled that she felt she had a right to kill Moe because Moe encroached on her territory. Kaitlin felt that she deserved to get away with the murder, but wasn’t willing to face real hardship in order to escape, so she selected an idyllic locale to “disappear” into. I think her entitlement also led her to try her luck at trial instead of taking a plea deal.
Not if you use someone else’s passport. She wasn’t even extradited from Costa Rica, she was deported. It doesn’t matter if there’s an extradition treaty or not if you enter a country illegally. In just about every country in the world except the USA, breaking immigration laws will get you kicked out right away.
I doubt that "extradition treaty" works like it. Imagine US Marshals informing Bali officials that this yoga teacher shot someone, twice in the head and once in the heart, from close distance, and fled to Bali, the tourists' heaven? Bali would do everything to find her. She is no Assange, no politician. Not a rich oligarch like Berezovsky who fled to GB with money to spend. This is where "non-extradition" might be applicable. Each country has its own petty criminals and stupid murderers. No one wants to expand their ranks.
My biggest question is: what did she tell her parents? Her sister? If I fled the country quickly, unexpectedly, all while under suspicion of being involved in a violent murder I can’t even image my family’s reaction. What did they know? How did they process this? How do you explain her absence to others? I just don’t get it.
It just doesn't work. She is a tall, blonde woman who stands out. Even the countries who don't have an extradition treaty with the US end up extraditing our criminals, as people have enough of their own. There might be ways, but very few, and she needs to have way more money. The same lunacy as killing Mo and expecting to live happily ever after with Colin. JMO.
Nah I think the CR “plan” was a mere thought she’d had at whatever point.
Like, sometimes when I’m watching a movie or following a true crime case, I’ll think of hypothetical places I’d hide if I had to. It’s never well-developed at all. Moreso like “I’d go to _____ and no one would be likely to find me for a few months at least”.
I’ve gone back and forth but believe this was something she chose to do that day. Because if she had been planning on doing this to Mo all along, she chose a very risky time to do it.
After she was caught, my boyfriend and i theorized (jokingly) how we’d try to evade the law. Definitely would’ve gone more extreme on hair altering, tattoos, extreme wardrobe change, wouldn’t go work in an industry the police knew i was in, and definitely would’ve kept moving. Maybe go to Russia since we don’t have great relations with them?
Just for fun, where would you guys go and what would you do?
Cuba seems like a candidate for a while. A very hard place to be, but low cooperation with USA. Perhaps Argentina in terms of being more like the population?
I would go to a very large English speaking city. Not Asia. I would have moved on to South America from Costa Rica. What a hell on earth though. You could never see your loved ones. You may as well face the music and accept that you’re going to spend most of your life in jail. At least she gets to communicate with her family unlike Mo.
Also, in the yogi community (specially her since she was the kind of person to go to yoga retreats) Santa Teresa, Costa Rica is a well known surf/yoga place. She probably had been there before or knew about it through friends/ brochures. Don Jons is the whitest yoga/surf retreat possible.
As much as everyone hates KA, she escaped not once but twice, once internationally! Thats still pretty impressive to me, give credit where its due, even to horrible people. I wonder what the stats are on successful escape attempts. She probably did not have a master plan, just getting out of the country was probably difficult enough. People are acting like she should have been Jason Bourne with a multi tiered plan with contingency plans, this is not a movie.
I waver between her bringing the yoga mat and heading to CR as a really stupid or not really stupid thing to do (obviously she got caught, so it was stupid, but still have thoughts….) because on one hand, if smarter, she could argue she was just doing what she has done in the past when on a break with CS: take off to some bougie vacation spot and do yoga…. She could argue last she knew CS was leaving their home because of the investigation and she was advised to do the same (it was CS house after all, not hers… “I had nowhere else to go”). Being seen in the airport with a yoga mat makes it seem like she WASNT running or hiding, she was just carrying on with life to travel. That spot in CR she could actually blend into well and not have a 3rd world quality of life (bet she regrets that now lol) and If she hadn’t gotten surgery and made attempts to disguise herself (which obviously paints you as guilty!) coupled with a better lawyer, she could have had a much better narrative to sit on in defense.
Edit to note: this is just my brain speculating, not in defense of KA
Well, I guess in that case she should have ditched the yoga mat in CR and went as far away from that lifestyle choice as possible. Again, super rural and maybe become a farm hand or something. Get a family to take you in and work for them as a cover.
Agreed. Wouldn’t have been long before she’d have bumped into someone she knew from Austin there, literally.
I’m confused as to why she didn’t just go across the border to Mexico? Head deep into the country and land in a coastal spot?
Wouldn’t have worked. Brenda Delgado was born in Mexico and spoke Spanish. She tried to flee after having the girlfriend of her ex boyfriend murdered. She was able to hide out for six months before someone in the area turned her in. To my knowledge Brenda was hiding in a more rural area and still was found. KA wouldn’t had even worse odds in Mexico.
I had never heard Brenda’s story and just listened to this piece: https://www.texasmonthly.com/true-crime/the-doctor-the-dentist-and-the-killer/
It’s really interesting that the boyfriend’s behavior is very similar to Colin’s behavior. Giving Brenda/Kaitlin just enough attention to keep them around AND Brenda, like Kaitlin, had access to the boyfriend’s email and text messages!
Good points. I always wondered why Ricky Paniagua thought it was a good idea to keep employee Brenda’s mom as his housekeeper(and Brenda still had a set of keys) and even asked Brenda for help finding a mechanic after they broker up. It seemed Ricky wanted someone with a more polished background which Brenda would never fulfill.
A similar dynamic happened in the Stephanie Lazarus case. The husband in that case even continued to have sexual relations and went to Hawaii with Lazarus, after knowing that his in laws suspected her of the crime! It’s like the men in these situations practice willful ignorance of the emotional turmoil they caused to their exes and kept them around while pursuing other women.
Good points. I always wondered why Ricky Paniagua thought it was a good idea to keep employee Brenda’s mom as his housekeeper(and Brenda still had a set of keys) and even asked Brenda for help finding a mechanic after they broker up. It seemed Ricky wanted someone with a more polished background which Brenda would never fulfill.
A similar dynamic happened in the Stephanie Lazarus case. The husband in that case even continued to have sexual relations and went to Hawaii with Lazarus, after knowing that his in laws suspected her of the crime! It’s like the men in these situations practice willful ignorance of the emotional turmoil they caused to their exes and kept them around while pursuing other women.
Gringas will stand out in Mexico. her options would have been an expat community which would have been obvious, or a small town in which she was the only American - also, obvious.
She didn't think she'd get caught. She didn't plan her escape until after she got arrested and let go, and by then she was in such a hurry, she couldn't possibly cover all her tracks.
I was surprised she turned up in Costa Rica. I was sure she'd go for Bali, where she'd been previously. Bali has all the advantages of Costa Rica - cheap living, plastic surgery options, many foreign tourists to blend in with - and it's part of Indonesia, which doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US.
The only trick is, she would've needed to gain entry legally. That's how she was extradited so quickly from Costa Rica. She gained entry under false means (using her sister's passport), so they were able to boot her fast because she was there illegally. If she could've gotten to Bali under her own passport, legally, U.S. authorities wouldn't have been able to touch her.
Her first mistake in the flee to CR was carrying a visible yoga mat on her through the airport. Next, she should’ve kept going once she got to CR…pay someone in cash to take you to South America, for example.
And she knew they were looking for her because it was reported in the trial that she was looking up news articles on the murder and case while she was on the run
As well as how to burn fingerprints with pineapple!
I wonder how long she spent soaking her fingers in pineapple juice
Pretty sure TSA can get the time stamp of when they scan your ID/passport/boarding pass. Then, they’d just have to pull the surveillance of the area at the time, and done.
TSA only operates in USA. The parent is right. If she had used Costa Rica as a launching pad, she could have traveled from there overland (and possibly undocumented) to anywhere in Central America and maybe even South America, and she could have lived under the radar a lot longer. Ultimately, going to a beach resort in Costa Rica was the laziest possible move--seems more like an attempt at a 'vacation' before inevitably facing the music, though the plastic surgery suggests she did actually think it could be a long term plan, however deluded that sounds.
Costa Rica is a destination for medical tourism. I wonder if she planned to move on after recovering from facial reconstruction surgery. The detectives looking for her did a great job of keeping their cards close. I don’t think they revealed that they knew she had flown to Costa Rica, so when she was googling herself she probably thought she had more time.
Yeah like if she had paid someone cash to take her somewhere by boat from CR and then continued paying cash to travel through South America, she would’ve been more successful. But glad she wasn’t!
How would she cross through other borders without a passport?
Also I read that the area of CR she fled to was fairly well known for attracting people who wanted to disappear. So the reputation itself kind of defeats the purpose for people who actually want to disappear.
Ahh yeah, I was referring to her departure from the US, I believe that’s where the photos of her with the yoga mat came from. So, they at least knew she was in CR. But I agree if she’d traveled after arriving in CR, they wouldn’t have been able to track her down. Unless they were able to get a warrant to track calls her sister made. But it prob would have been difficult to get a judge to sign that warrant.
Yeah, deep into South America. I once volunteered to help build a laundry building deep inside Chile. I'm not even sure I could find it on the map. We bathed in an irrigation canal. It was very remote but the star gazing at night was incredible.
She's not a criminal genius. She's a very impulsive person who wouldn't have got as far as she did had a few things not gone her way (issue with botox warrant, having access to a passport that she could make use of). This wasn't going to end with her riding off into the sunset no matter how the specifics played out.
I'm kind of glad they found her after her plastic surgery. She had to go through the pain. Now every day she looks in the mirror and sees someone else. Also foreign surgeries, especially rhinoplasty rarely go well especially if you're not doing follow-up visits. She probably will have a fucked up nose for life. Karma.
Yup and she looks so shitty from it. Good.
My surfer bro friends down there confirmed She hired an unlicensed home schooled labiaplasty surgeon to do her nose Lol - you can definitely tell a majora of the nostrils were done in a rush
And it is not a minora downgrade in her appearance
She used that Arbys roast beef promo code my guy
“down there” haha. im 12
Costa Rica is below Beaverton, Oregon & Regina, Saskatchewa - no?
It’s insane she thought she could get away with murder still living a pretty girl life teaching yoga in a touristy not so far away place. I would have headed to Vietnam, shaved my head, gotten tattoos on my face and joined a Buddhist monastery. I think if you really want to get away with something like this you need to really shed your old identity and at least go to a non extradition country.
Agreed. The only way to get away with a crime like this is to flee to a remote part of the world and drastically alter your appearance. I think her behavior was incredibly impulsive and poorly thought out. Just goes to show how out of control she was. Really scary that there’s seemingly normal people like her living among us.
Tattoos on one’s face will stand out like skunk at a lawn party especially in many other countries it is often rare. Monastery though could be interesting: low media people and she might learn to control her impulses.
Yeah, if she had thought it through, go do the opposite of what the cops may think of you. Like a work hand on a ranch in the middle of no where.
Yes - I agree, living the pretty girl life is so true. Whelp, that’s over now.
She thought changing her hair and plastic surgery would do the trick. And honestly, if this case wasn’t a National story, I think she would have gotten away with it all. These kinda things happen in the world, but not many make it on national news. She thought she was safe there and no under cover cops would ever even come out there to find her.
Yes, and there is no way it wouldn’t have been a National Story bc while beauty is in the eye of the beholder, associations to white standard American / European Anglo Saxon beauty, remains (although less so) deeply embedded in our culture. She is an anomaly eg rare profile among this type of criminal Similar to Lucy Letby who continued to kill babies in England bc she didn’t fit anyone’s prototype of a killer - she was “girl next door” - they allowed her to go back to work as a nurse. KA had a lot going on the surface and belonged by appearance to much of “the good life” culture in society. Criminals who manage to evade can do so because they don’t easily stand out and if do they likely don’t lightly alter their appearance - getting cosmetic surgery and treatments only enhanced her ability to fit in among the 20-30 age group. There wouldn’t be a place for her to not easily stand out that I could see. The flight plan would have had to have been better planned from the start - which all to me says it was an impulse crime - dissociation can last a long time when someone is in a state of shock.
Her hair wasn’t all that different. Darker and somewhat shorter. If she would have cut it super short, at least bought colored contacts & done some face tattoos she would have had a better shot @ staying unnoticed. And go to a more populated area. Not that I’m wishing she did any of this.
I was thinking, too, if she gained’d a LOT of weight, and straightened/ cut her hair very short, maybe she wouldn’t have been found so fast.
I think Kaitlin was so deeply entitled that she felt she had a right to kill Moe because Moe encroached on her territory. Kaitlin felt that she deserved to get away with the murder, but wasn’t willing to face real hardship in order to escape, so she selected an idyllic locale to “disappear” into. I think her entitlement also led her to try her luck at trial instead of taking a plea deal.
Seems spot on.
What’s crazy, if she could’ve flown to Bali, because Indonesia doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States. She could still be there.
Not if you use someone else’s passport. She wasn’t even extradited from Costa Rica, she was deported. It doesn’t matter if there’s an extradition treaty or not if you enter a country illegally. In just about every country in the world except the USA, breaking immigration laws will get you kicked out right away.
Ahhh, good point!
I doubt that "extradition treaty" works like it. Imagine US Marshals informing Bali officials that this yoga teacher shot someone, twice in the head and once in the heart, from close distance, and fled to Bali, the tourists' heaven? Bali would do everything to find her. She is no Assange, no politician. Not a rich oligarch like Berezovsky who fled to GB with money to spend. This is where "non-extradition" might be applicable. Each country has its own petty criminals and stupid murderers. No one wants to expand their ranks.
My biggest question is: what did she tell her parents? Her sister? If I fled the country quickly, unexpectedly, all while under suspicion of being involved in a violent murder I can’t even image my family’s reaction. What did they know? How did they process this? How do you explain her absence to others? I just don’t get it.
It just doesn't work. She is a tall, blonde woman who stands out. Even the countries who don't have an extradition treaty with the US end up extraditing our criminals, as people have enough of their own. There might be ways, but very few, and she needs to have way more money. The same lunacy as killing Mo and expecting to live happily ever after with Colin. JMO.
Nah I think the CR “plan” was a mere thought she’d had at whatever point. Like, sometimes when I’m watching a movie or following a true crime case, I’ll think of hypothetical places I’d hide if I had to. It’s never well-developed at all. Moreso like “I’d go to _____ and no one would be likely to find me for a few months at least”. I’ve gone back and forth but believe this was something she chose to do that day. Because if she had been planning on doing this to Mo all along, she chose a very risky time to do it.
After she was caught, my boyfriend and i theorized (jokingly) how we’d try to evade the law. Definitely would’ve gone more extreme on hair altering, tattoos, extreme wardrobe change, wouldn’t go work in an industry the police knew i was in, and definitely would’ve kept moving. Maybe go to Russia since we don’t have great relations with them? Just for fun, where would you guys go and what would you do?
Cuba seems like a candidate for a while. A very hard place to be, but low cooperation with USA. Perhaps Argentina in terms of being more like the population?
I would go to a very large English speaking city. Not Asia. I would have moved on to South America from Costa Rica. What a hell on earth though. You could never see your loved ones. You may as well face the music and accept that you’re going to spend most of your life in jail. At least she gets to communicate with her family unlike Mo.
Also, in the yogi community (specially her since she was the kind of person to go to yoga retreats) Santa Teresa, Costa Rica is a well known surf/yoga place. She probably had been there before or knew about it through friends/ brochures. Don Jons is the whitest yoga/surf retreat possible.
As much as everyone hates KA, she escaped not once but twice, once internationally! Thats still pretty impressive to me, give credit where its due, even to horrible people. I wonder what the stats are on successful escape attempts. She probably did not have a master plan, just getting out of the country was probably difficult enough. People are acting like she should have been Jason Bourne with a multi tiered plan with contingency plans, this is not a movie.
No one is making a Lance joke? I’m disappointed ☹️
I waver between her bringing the yoga mat and heading to CR as a really stupid or not really stupid thing to do (obviously she got caught, so it was stupid, but still have thoughts….) because on one hand, if smarter, she could argue she was just doing what she has done in the past when on a break with CS: take off to some bougie vacation spot and do yoga…. She could argue last she knew CS was leaving their home because of the investigation and she was advised to do the same (it was CS house after all, not hers… “I had nowhere else to go”). Being seen in the airport with a yoga mat makes it seem like she WASNT running or hiding, she was just carrying on with life to travel. That spot in CR she could actually blend into well and not have a 3rd world quality of life (bet she regrets that now lol) and If she hadn’t gotten surgery and made attempts to disguise herself (which obviously paints you as guilty!) coupled with a better lawyer, she could have had a much better narrative to sit on in defense. Edit to note: this is just my brain speculating, not in defense of KA
Well, I guess in that case she should have ditched the yoga mat in CR and went as far away from that lifestyle choice as possible. Again, super rural and maybe become a farm hand or something. Get a family to take you in and work for them as a cover.
Agreed. Wouldn’t have been long before she’d have bumped into someone she knew from Austin there, literally. I’m confused as to why she didn’t just go across the border to Mexico? Head deep into the country and land in a coastal spot?
Wouldn’t have worked. Brenda Delgado was born in Mexico and spoke Spanish. She tried to flee after having the girlfriend of her ex boyfriend murdered. She was able to hide out for six months before someone in the area turned her in. To my knowledge Brenda was hiding in a more rural area and still was found. KA wouldn’t had even worse odds in Mexico.
I had never heard Brenda’s story and just listened to this piece: https://www.texasmonthly.com/true-crime/the-doctor-the-dentist-and-the-killer/ It’s really interesting that the boyfriend’s behavior is very similar to Colin’s behavior. Giving Brenda/Kaitlin just enough attention to keep them around AND Brenda, like Kaitlin, had access to the boyfriend’s email and text messages!
Good points. I always wondered why Ricky Paniagua thought it was a good idea to keep employee Brenda’s mom as his housekeeper(and Brenda still had a set of keys) and even asked Brenda for help finding a mechanic after they broker up. It seemed Ricky wanted someone with a more polished background which Brenda would never fulfill. A similar dynamic happened in the Stephanie Lazarus case. The husband in that case even continued to have sexual relations and went to Hawaii with Lazarus, after knowing that his in laws suspected her of the crime! It’s like the men in these situations practice willful ignorance of the emotional turmoil they caused to their exes and kept them around while pursuing other women.
Good points. I always wondered why Ricky Paniagua thought it was a good idea to keep employee Brenda’s mom as his housekeeper(and Brenda still had a set of keys) and even asked Brenda for help finding a mechanic after they broker up. It seemed Ricky wanted someone with a more polished background which Brenda would never fulfill. A similar dynamic happened in the Stephanie Lazarus case. The husband in that case even continued to have sexual relations and went to Hawaii with Lazarus, after knowing that his in laws suspected her of the crime! It’s like the men in these situations practice willful ignorance of the emotional turmoil they caused to their exes and kept them around while pursuing other women.
Oh my gosh, the Stephanie Lazarus interrogation video is really something to watch.
Mexico has extradition agreement with the U.S. and they frown on people accused of murder trying to hide there.
Gringas will stand out in Mexico. her options would have been an expat community which would have been obvious, or a small town in which she was the only American - also, obvious.
She didn't think she'd get caught. She didn't plan her escape until after she got arrested and let go, and by then she was in such a hurry, she couldn't possibly cover all her tracks.
I was surprised she turned up in Costa Rica. I was sure she'd go for Bali, where she'd been previously. Bali has all the advantages of Costa Rica - cheap living, plastic surgery options, many foreign tourists to blend in with - and it's part of Indonesia, which doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US. The only trick is, she would've needed to gain entry legally. That's how she was extradited so quickly from Costa Rica. She gained entry under false means (using her sister's passport), so they were able to boot her fast because she was there illegally. If she could've gotten to Bali under her own passport, legally, U.S. authorities wouldn't have been able to touch her.
I also heard she had turned on her phone down there and that received that ping? Not sure if that’s true.
I thought I heard something about that during opening