Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias

by Velez-Mitchell, Jane

  Detective Flores spent hours trying to convince Jodi to confess, but he made little headway. As he entertained her denials and excuses, he countered each one with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Finally, he surrendered. All they had left to discuss was what was going to happen next. The detective told Jodi she would be taken across the street to the county jail, where she would be processed and brought before a judge within twenty-four hours. He informed her that the bond was already set at $2 million, and eventually she would be extradited and brought back to Arizona to await trial. At that point, Jodi worried about how the story would play on the evening news and exactly what the Alexander family was going to find out. The detective said they didn’t provide much to the news media, but since everything was part of the public record, and because a grand jury had indicted her, her arrest making the national networks was certainly a possibility. As far as the Alexander family, he spoke to them every day.

  Flores promised Jodi that someone would be in to handcuff her and escort her out of the interrogation room within a framework of five to fifty minutes, no promises how soon beyond that, only that it would be sometime after he had talked to his associates. Handcuffs were mandatory, a requirement for someone accused of murder or of writing a bad check, he told Jodi, nothing to do with that person’s potential for violence. Her obligatory one phone call could be made as soon as she reached the county jail. With that, he left the room.

  Whether Jodi was aware the cameras were still rolling or not, the next few minutes were captured on video. Jodi, alone in the room, strolled over to a far wall, got down on both knees, placed her head between her knees, flipped her legs up and over, and assumed a headstand position against the wall. When she was back on her feet, she gazed around and criticized her makeup. She started to sing softly to herself, and was just at the “O night, divine” part of the popular Christmas carol “O Holy Night” when an officer could be seen entering the room.

  “Here are your shoes. Why don’t you go ahead and put those on . . .

  “Step right there and just turn around. Put your hands behind your back . . .”

  With that, the officer led Jodi, cuffed and mellow, out into the hall.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE CHAMELEON

  Even though they’d been fooling around with each other since the fall of 2006, it wasn’t until February 2007—five months after they’d met—that Jodi and Travis came out as an official couple.

  Years later, it was still not entirely clear why it took so long for Jodi and Travis to make their relationship public, but it most likely had something to do with Travis’s reservations. Because of his weight loss and his success at PPL, Travis was no longer struggling to get the attention of beautiful women—women, like Jodi, who had previously been out of his league. As a result, friends seemed to think that, for those first several months after they met, Travis was flattered by Jodi’s attention, but more interested in casually dating her, so he could keep his options open for other women. In addition, there remained a lingering closeness between Travis and his ex-girlfriend Deanna that was hard to ignore. They’d been broken up for nearly a year, but Travis and Deanna spoke often, and despite Travis’s insistence that his friendship with Deanna involved nothing physical anymore, his emotional connection to her was palpable to everyone. Meanwhile, Jodi was apparently growing impatient and pressing for more—more than Travis was initially willing to give.

  Another barrier to making their relationship official could have been the physical distance between them. Travis and Jodi didn’t see each other that often, so the doubts about the relationship being based on love were always confounded by the imperative of a sexual reconnection after a long absence. For Jodi especially, the emotional muddle of it all may have left her feeling lost and desperate. Travis may very well have used the word marriage in casual conversation—Mormons say it a lot, nothing strange about that—but Travis probably didn’t realize how seriously Jodi would interpret those casual references. She was a woman extremely anxious for a man to want to be with her for the rest of his life. She had never dated a Mormon, and she quickly jumped to false conclusions, in no way based on reality.

  Early on, part of how Travis expressed his ambivalence toward Jodi was by encouraging her to date other men. She took him up on it and went on two dates, one a platonic lunch date with a guy named John Dixon and another, an outing with someone named Abe Abdelhadi. Abe was older and interested in her, saying in an interview that he thought she was hot. He made a first-base sexual advance, followed by a comment about her undergarments. He reached toward her panty line to feel if she was wearing a thong.

  “These aren’t magic underwear,” he joked, to which Jodi replied, “but there is magic in them,” not exactly the reaction of an insecure wallflower.

  He hoped that her reply was a come-on, and called her the next day for another date. She didn’t call him back right away, and when she finally reached him, she told him she was getting back together with her ex. Abe and Jodi stayed in touch on the phone, but all Jodi did was talk about Travis to the point where it seemed almost obsessive, Abe said. According to Jodi, she felt like she was cheating on Travis, even though he had been the one to recommend it. Jodi said Travis couldn’t ignore the dates, and even wanted to know about them after the fact, almost testing his own level of jealousy. He wasn’t angry, but he was upset, and his mood changed, according to Jodi.

  While it remains a mystery what changed in Travis and encouraged him to make their relationship official, one possibility stemmed from Jodi’s budding friendship with Chris and Sky Hughes, two people whom Travis held in high esteem. After that first weekend that Jodi spent at their house, Chris and Sky had gotten to know Jodi better, and they initially liked what they saw. Sky began to see how deeply Jodi cared for Travis, but it also became increasingly apparent to her that Travis was not treating Jodi well.

  During one conversation with Sky, Jodi voiced her frustration with Travis’s lack of commitment, complaining that Travis took her for granted. She also told Sky about Travis pushing her to date other men and how he frequently wouldn’t call her until late at night. Despite all this, Jodi confided in Sky that she’d experienced “a vision” that she was going to marry him. Bolstered by tips she had learned from The Secret, Jodi was certain that through the power of positive thinking she could manifest Travis Alexander as her knight in shining armor. Once he rescued her, he would transport her to a new life of financial security, marriage, children, and social status. Yet the reality that Jodi was confronted with fell far short of this vision; instead of becoming the wife of a brilliant motivational speaker, she was getting sexual trysts at a motel and breakfast at a truck stop.

  Though she would come to regret it later, explaining she was actually manipulated by Jodi, Sky was moved by her appeal, and in response, she sent a difficult, impassioned email to Travis, scolding him for how he was treating Jodi. In the email, Sky elaborated on how much she liked Jodi, even going so far as to say she would love for the two of them to get married. To Sky, the root of Travis’s indecisive behavior toward Jodi was his relationship with Deanna—he was interested in having an emotional relationship with Deanna and a physical one with Jodi. Sky encouraged him to confront whatever feelings he still had for Deanna because it wasn’t fair to string Jodi along if he still had feelings for Deanna.

  Understandably, Travis’s reply was defensive. He responded that Jodi worked late and he called Jodi after she got off her shift, because he wanted to let her know he was thinking about her, despite the late hour. He denied being a jerk and insisted he adored Jodi, expressing concern that Sky had jeopardized his relationship with her.

  It’s difficult to say what the impact of this testy exchange was on Travis; however, he did put a lot of weight on the opinions of both Chris and Sky. Though Sky had been critical of Travis’s behavior, her email could have influenced him in more ways than one. Sky had given Jodi her seal of approval. Since Travis idolized Chris and Sky, it’s
easy to see how this endorsement of Jodi could have motivated him to take things with Jodi to the next level.

  Ultimately, it wouldn’t matter what Travis’s rationale was; a month later he and Jodi were officially an item.

  The first “real” date began with a trip to Travis’s house during the first weekend of February. The visit was cozy and comfortable, with Travis and Jodi watching a movie, hanging out, reading books, and sitting in an oversized chair next to the bed. Travis seemed eager to show off his hot new woman to the world. He started calling her on a more regular basis, and the two would see each other about twice a month. This distance was one of the biggest challenges, with Travis almost three hundred miles from Jodi’s house in Palm Desert. Another problem was Jodi’s worsening financial crisis—in fact her Palm Desert house went into foreclosure the very month her relationship with Travis became official.

  For Valentine’s Day, Jodi said Travis sent her a gift package, which included chocolates, a gray T-shirt with the words “Travis Alexander’s” printed across the chest, a pair of pink shorts that said “Travis’,” and a package of boys’ Spider-Man underwear. The significance of the personalized gifts was the apostrophe at the end of Travis’s name. The possessive form broadly hinted that Jodi was Travis’s possession or sexual property. The boys’ Spider-Man underwear wasn’t completely weird. At the time, boys-cut briefs were trending at Victoria’s Secret. However, being for boys, Jodi described them as too tight, but she said Travis really wanted her to wear them, so she would adjust them as needed to make them comfortable. Even if she felt silly, she claimed Travis told her they made her look hot. Whether Travis actually gave her the personalized T-shirt would ultimately become a subject of heated debate. A photo of the T-shirt was taken by Jodi on July 12, 2008, more than a month after Travis was murdered and the very time police were closing in, and there were no pictures of her wearing it before that. No images of the Spiderman underwear have ever surfaced.

  Despite the suspect nature of the supposed Valentine’s Day gift, one thing seemed indisputable: Jodi and Travis had a relationship that was super sexually charged. Because extramarital sex is a sin in the Mormon world, there was a great deal of speculation about who was to blame for the fact that they were breaking their religious vows. Because Jodi had not been a Mormon when she met Travis, she wasn’t initially restricted by the Law of Chastity. Also of note was the fact that Travis had already been censured by the church for his sexual behavior with Deanna, after he admittedly lost his virginity. However, many of Travis’s friends said Jodi gradually became like a drug to him, and he progressed into an addiction that he felt powerless to resist. The two had a sexual chemistry that may have melted any willpower either of them had. The attraction was mutual and the sex consensual.

  Jodi’s account of events had Travis and her engaging in vaginal sex for the first time in May 2007. She said she had fallen asleep in his bedroom and woke up to find him already penetrating her. “I wore cotton shorts and they were gone, and my shirt was pulled up pretty high,” Jodi explained. She said she was on her stomach, and he was on top of her. When he began to quicken his pace, she maneuvered herself out from beneath him, at which point she said he pushed her head down under the covers to perform fellatio on him. Jodi said Travis complained that the torment of “blue balls” and a “sustained erection” needed release.

  Skeptics found her story doubtful. The idea that Jodi would not have woken up while Travis pulled off her shorts, pulled up her shirt, and inserted his penis inside her struck most as absurd. Even though Jodi did not describe the incident as an unwanted and aggressive act of rape, she often seemed determined to portray herself as a meek, submissive woman who often just endured sex because Travis liked it, and she wanted to please him.

  Jodi claimed she thought that the relationship would be more blessed if she and Travis were less sexual. Even when she took some of the responsibility, it was in a passive manner. “I was partially responsible, fell asleep next to him, in his bed. It wasn’t entirely his fault, maybe it seemed invited,” she said about the vaginal intercourse. She also blamed it on her “cute shorts,” saying they might have been enticing.

  Travis’s friends said that Travis gave them a completely different portrait of Jodi. She was not simply placating Travis with sex; according to Travis, Jodi was a woman with a voracious sexual appetite. One of Travis’s best friends, Taylor Searle, said Travis revealed to him that Jodi was a sexual dynamo who could achieve numerous orgasms in a row.

  Taylor said, “We were driving one day and he was talking about Jodi and was describing how she was a nymphomaniac. He was explaining that Jodi had gotten herself off eight times in one day. It might have been nine or it might have been thirteen. It was a high number. But he was just using that as an illustration of how over-the-top she was. He was like, ‘She’s crazy. She’s a nymphomaniac.’ And we were like, ‘Whoa!’ And he was just explaining just how big of a nympho she was.” While Travis was clearly bragging and might have exaggerated, others said they saw Jodi behave in a sexually aggressive manner in their presence. One of Travis’s friends, Shaun Alexander (no relation), recalled Jodi’s sexually aggressive behavior the first time he met her. Shaun said he was talking to Travis at an LDS wedding reception in the spring of 2007 and watched as Jodi came up from behind and began sucking on his ear, seductively wrapping her arms around him. Shaun was flabbergasted, given that they were in a church, but Travis did not seem surprised.

  According to his friends, Travis was oblivious to her inappropriate, even weird behavior, failing to see the danger signs others picked up on. Because Travis had been trying for years to land a bombshell like Jodi, her sex appeal insulated him from the true nature of her character, so much so that, in the words of Shaun Alexander, Travis “failed to see a lot of the red flags that everybody else could see.”

  But it wasn’t just about Jodi’s good looks or her overtly sexual nature; Travis also found himself drawn in by Jodi’s neediness. Shaun Alexander saw shades of Travis’s difficult upbringing in his relationship with Jodi, explaining that “Travis felt a constant need to pay it forward to somebody. He really wanted to help everybody else.” As Shaun saw it, Travis himself had been rescued from his tough life, and so he in turn wanted to try to rescue Jodi from hers. She was a wounded bird that he was going to save—and she was attractive.

  “She fit both bills,” Shaun said as he remembered Travis’s infatuation. “She was good-looking, but also somebody who’s damaged emotionally that he could help.”

  This combination of vulnerability and sexuality proved exceptionally potent for Travis, and once they were together he struggled to determine where her neediness ended and her manipulation began.

  One person who was no longer blind to Jodi’s behavior was Sky Hughes. It had only been a few months since Sky had reached out to Travis on Jodi’s behalf, but already she was second-guessing her decision to help bring the two of them together. As Travis’s relationship with Jodi progressed, Sky as well as her husband Chris became concerned about Jodi Arias.

  For one thing, Sky felt increasingly uncomfortable with what she saw as Jodi’s calculated attempts to make Travis jealous. Sky got the impression that Jodi wanted Travis to think that other men were pursuing her, so that Travis would know he had competition and commit to marrying her before she got away. Sky said one time, at a hotel, Jodi kept walking past an open door where a group of men were involved in a business meeting. “She goes down to where the door’s open, flips her hair, primps in front of the mirrors and walks back and she does it like a couple of times,” Sky recalled. “And I’m like ‘What’s she doing?’ This is bizarre. And she’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, that guy won’t leave me alone. I think he’s going to talk to me . . . If he talks to me, tell him I’m Travis Alexander’s girlfriend.’ So a guy comes out, talks to her, and she looks at me and I say, ‘Oh, she has a boyfriend.’ And, then after he leaves she says, ‘Why didn’t you tell him I am Travis Alexander’s girlfriend?’
Why would it matter? It was just really weird. She was so possessed . . . If he left the room, she would ask, ‘Where’s Travis? Where’s Travis? Where’d Travis go?’ It was disturbing.”

  The more time Sky spent around Jodi, the more suspect she became of how Jodi conducted herself. During the first couple of months of their relationship, Travis and Jodi often used the Hugheses’ home for a rendezvous point, since it was somewhat convenient to each of them. In that time, Sky had plenty of opportunity to observe Jodi, and she’d grown concerned by the obsessive and downright strange behavior she’d witnessed.

  Jodi seemed to be growing more and more suspicious of Travis and jealous of other women. On one occasion, Sky and Chris caught Jodi listening at the guest room door while Travis talked on the phone to Deanna. They had also found her lingering outside the bathroom, waiting for Travis to emerge. When they surprised her, she threw her hands up in the air and told them she was just about to knock. What really disturbed them, though, was Jodi’s admission that, not only had she found emails from other women to Travis, but she had taken the liberty of forwarding them to her own account, presumably so she could have more time to read and scrutinize them.

  Finally, one night in April 2007, when Jodi and Travis were staying with them, Chris and Sky confronted Travis. That night Jodi was angry with Travis for not looking her in the eyes, so she announced she was going to bed early. At that point Chris and Sky told Travis they needed to talk.