In creating an alternative killer/killers, Jodi was not particularly unique in the phenomenon of blaming someone else. Her masked intruder story, morphed into the “ninja story” in the press, would become particularly infamous, more for her steadfast devotion to it in the face of it being totally ludicrous than anything else. Nonetheless, she showed that she was willing to take a lie as far as she could, eventually holding on to this story—one that she’d made up on the spot with Detective Flores—for the next two years.
On September 5, 2008, Jodi was extradited to Mesa, Arizona, to face charges of first-degree murder in the death of Travis Alexander. Her new home would be Maricopa County’s Estrella Women’s Jail in Phoenix. The dormitory-style jail on Durango Street was relatively new, having been built in 1991, and housed about one thousand inmates. As part of the booking process, Jodi was required to pose for a mug shot, which she did with great camera comfort, tilting her head and coyly smiling. The resulting picture could easily be mistaken for a yearbook photo, save for the orange jumpsuit. She was given a seven-by-eleven-foot room with a locked door in the maximum-security wing of the facility. The cell was fitted with a stainless steel toilet, a vanity/shelf bolted securely to the wall, a rusty stool, and bunk beds, two slabs jutting out from the rear wall. Though it was a far cry from Travis’s sleigh bed with the expensive mattress, Jodi accustomed herself to her little bunk, with its thin, ill-fitting mattress and ugly pink linens, to sleep in. She managed to use her small space to maximum efficiency, storing court documents, art supplies, and miscellaneous other things, including her spare white and gray striped uniform, as all the inmates wore.
She received two daily meals, with a nutritionally adequate standard of 2,600 total calories. The first meal was a “sack,” served between 6 and 8 A.M. It typically contained a protein like peanut butter, two pieces of fruit, two rolls, and a dessert, cookies being the usual offering. The second meal was served between 6 and 8 P.M. This was typically a hot meal, a stew or a casserole, accompanied by mashed potatoes and fruit.
Six days after her arrival in Arizona, Jodi entered a plea of “not guilty” at her arraignment at Maricopa Superior Court in downtown Phoenix. A two million dollar bond was set. Just days before her arraignment, Jodi sat down for an exclusive interview with Jim Walsh, a reporter with the Arizona Republic. This would be her first jailhouse interview in Arizona. In response to questions, she maintained her innocence, but declined to address the DNA evidence that tied her to the crime.
“God knows I’m innocent. I know I’m innocent. One day, when I am before God, I will not be held accountable by God for Travis’s death,” she proclaimed. “I would never hurt him. He was my friend.” Jodi used the opportunity to perpetuate the theory/lie she had started during her interrogation, that two intruders had killed him. She claimed that Travis’s physical strength alone dictated that more than one person had been responsible for his death.
On the day of her arraignment, Jodi scheduled a press conference from jail with several local news stations, including KTVK and at least one national network. Even captive, she had the ability to make herself look like a prison-stripes women’s wear model, appearing totally put together and composed. Jodi called the murder story far more complex than what was being portrayed, using the word multifaceted to describe it. “I need to be honest, it is very compelling, but none of it proves that I committed murder.” A question from the background asked how she was managing to stay so calm. “Through my faith and through the knowledge of my own innocence” was her quick answer, without so much as a pause to think about it.
The public was intrigued with the murder, and the coverage in the media began to balloon. It had all the makings of a media sensation. According to the “National Data on Intimate Partner Violence” for the complete year 2007, there were more than two thousand “intimate homicides,” or homicides involving people who were either in or had been in an intimate relationship. In 25 percent of intimate murders in 2007—more than five hundred in all—the victim was the male partner or ex-partner. What propelled the Jodi and Travis doomed relationship into such a disproportionate headline grabber, beyond the “ex-girlfriend murders ex-boyfriend” scenario? Travis and Jodi were a couple that appeared to be ideal—good-looking, smart, savvy, personable, sensible, religious—appealing in every way. Added to that was a relationship undercurrent that most of us can relate to on some level—insecurity, jealousy, flirting, and desire. Then add the forbidden love, the raunchy sex, the stalking, and the web of lies, with a twist of Mormonism, and the press could not resist. The fact that the murder was so brutal, bloody, and partially documented in accidental photos added to the fascination of the red-hot story, and crime junkies could not get enough.
As if the raw materials for the case weren’t incendiary enough, Jodi herself kept fanning the flames by venturing further into the media circuit for a jailhouse sit-down with a correspondent from the nationally syndicated TV show Inside Edition. The interview took place in a holding cell, and Jodi was allowed to wear street clothes. She showed up looking pretty and composed in a blue three-button top and dark colored pants. Her long brown hair was neatly combed and parted to one side, her eyebrows were perfectly tweezed, and her makeup was flawlessly applied. Responding to questions, she insisted she had not been involved in Travis’s murder, although she did admit to being in the house at the time of the attack. This was the first time that Jodi paraded her ninja theory to the public. “I don’t know who they were,” she said matter-of-factly. “I couldn’t pick them out in a police lineup. They came into the home and attacked us both.”
Jodi claimed that the last time she saw Travis, he was on all fours on the bathroom floor with the female assailant lording over him with a knife. She said blood was dripping from his arm, although she hadn’t seen the woman actually stab him. She said she’d tried to rescue Travis during a brief moment when the assailant had left the bathroom. “I grabbed his arm and said, ‘Come on, come on, come on,’ and he said, he couldn’t,” she explained. “I am not proud that I just left my friend there to be slaughtered at the hands of two other people. I am not proud of that at all.”
Jodi claimed her responsibility in Travis’s death lay in the fact that she had been too afraid to call anyone on his behalf, a bystander who maybe could have helped. But that had been her only crime, as she had not killed him. “I know that I am innocent,” she said emphatically. “God knows I am innocent, Travis knows I am innocent, and no jury is going to convict me. And you can mark my words on that.”
On October 8, 2008, not long after her public campaigns on her own behalf, Jodi learned that the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office had filed a “notice of intent” to seek the death penalty, accusing her of committing first-degree murder “in an especially cruel, heinous or depraved manner.” If convicted, she was facing execution by lethal injection.
In order to seek the ultimate sanction of death, the state was required to prove at least one “aggravating circumstance” that qualified a particular murder for the death penalty. In Arizona, the law sets out fourteen aggravators, which include scenarios such as the killing of a police officer or a witness, killing for monetary gain, and killing in an especially cruel, heinous, or depraved manner. Since Travis was stabbed and sliced more than two dozen times and shot in the head, the state concluded that he suffered physical and mental anguish, and was conscious long enough to know that he was going to die. That qualified the murder to be considered for the aggravating circumstance of especially cruel, heinous, and depraved.
Nearly a year later, in August 2009, Maricopa County Superior Judge Sally Duncan conducted a probable cause hearing to determine if there was enough evidence for the aggravating circumstances to go to the jury. Perhaps surprising to some, she found that the murder of Travis was not heinous or depraved, but that it was especially cruel. Hence the jury would only consider “especially cruel,” a third of the statutory circumstance, when determining whether or not the death penalty was app
ropriate.
However, even with the stakes so high, Jodi did not back down from her crazy story. If anything, Jodi’s talking so much was only working against her, but she seemed to like the spotlight. She had already conducted another television interview, this one with probably more national exposure than anything she had done to date. She was interviewed by CBS News’ much-respected 48 Hours, where one hour was devoted to her interview alone, interrupted by minimal backstory. Her derring-do with the masked murderers deviated from prior stories, however. In this one, Jodi added a detail so brand-new, anyone who knew the case closely picked up on it immediately. She told her interviewer, correspondent Maureen Maher, that the male intruder who had been threatening her had actually pulled the trigger while he had the gun pointed at her head, but it had not gone off. Never before had Jodi said Travis’s murderer had initially tried to kill her, too. Jodi had to have been a legal team’s worst nightmare. The more she blabbered, the more she dug her own grave. She kept making the state’s case easier and easier each time she felt the pull of the stage lights. All her various stories, with more and more inconsistencies added each time she tried to promote herself, were becoming embarrassing.
After a furiously fast first few months following Travis’s death, Jodi’s path to trial slowed to a crawl, as the arduous pretrial filings for both sides took years. This was partly due to the death penalty aspect to the case; however, that alone was not enough to justify the delay. In fact, the real delays came from Jodi’s defense team, who in 2010—after nearly two years of sticking by Jodi’s story of the masked intruders—made it clear through court filings that Jodi’s account of June 4, 2008, was about to change.
This shift in Jodi’s version of events began rather obscurely with a disclosure of some letters. On June 1, 2010, as part of the defense’s obligations to share evidence with the prosecution—a process known as “discovery”—Jodi’s attorneys disclosed to the state copies of ten handwritten letters, letters they claimed were written by Travis between November 2006 and May 27, 2008—basically the time Jodi and Travis knew each other. In these letters, which have never been widely published and which would later be the subject of an explosive forgery controversy, the writer describes his fantasies, as well as his feelings for Jodi, and in one admits an attraction for boys. For a defense that up until this point had been focused on a tale of masked intruders, these allegations against Travis’s character were pretty explosive stuff, and it was not initially clear what purpose these letters could serve. On June 10, the state filed a motion to preclude the letters, arguing that they were hearsay and not relevant evidence in the case. The state also argued a week later at a court hearing for the original letters, but Jodi claimed she had received her copies of the letters electronically from a third party, and procuring the originals was impossible. As it turned out, the letters were just the beginning, a precursor to a shift in defense strategy that no one saw coming.
Four days later, the case exploded after Jodi’s attorneys stunned everyone by filing a “notice of intent” that Jodi would assert self-defense at trial. With this filing, Jodi had finally admitted that her story about masked intruders had been fabricated. The defense abandoned the “alternative killer/reasonable doubt” strategy and went full-blown “Jodi was being attacked by Travis when she managed to defend herself.” The defense would now lay out its case with what they said was past evidence of Travis’s abusive behavior, using the letters as evidence to support these allegations. Since these letters would now be relevant to Jodi’s newfound claims of abuse, the defense continued its fight to have the letters introduced at trial. The prosecution dug in its heels. “The fact that the defendant now apparently regrets certain acts that she consensually engaged in with Mr. Alexander does not elevate those acts to abuse or domestic violence,” it contended, and also added the letters might have the effect of tainting the victim’s character, which did not justify his murder. Ultimately, the court ruled with the prosecution, that the letters could not be admitted at trial.
Although the letters couldn’t be used at trial, they were still a controversial issue. Outside the courtroom, there was much speculation that Jodi had actually forged the letters, and at a hearing, the state had presented evidence that challenged their authenticity, leading the defense to withdraw its request to use the letters. This withdrawal was significant as it meant that the letters were officially out of the case, at least for now. Despite the court ruling not to admit them, the defense could still revisit the issue during the trial and could potentially use them depending on how other evidence came in.
The letters never came into evidence, and the theory that they were forged gained credence in the court of public opinion, as it seemed plausible that Jodi forged them during her two years in jail. Sorting through all the communications in this case was monumental, between journals and written letters and the Internet. Some estimates were that Jodi and Travis exchanged something like eighty thousand messages, including emails, texts, and IM’s from the time they met until his death.
With the emails and the text messages that the court was allowing, the outlines of Jodi’s defense were beginning to take shape. Like the letters, many of the emails and text messages were of a sexual nature, and part of Jodi’s self-defense claim would clearly be tied to a strategy of character assassination. In an attempt to prove that Travis was an abuser and that Jodi would have needed to defend herself from him, she would reveal the most intimate details of their sexual relationship. In the process, Jodi was all too willing to shatter the perception of Travis as a chaste Mormon churchgoer. However, the question remained: would anyone believe a word she had to say?
Still, no trial date was in sight. Jodi had been in jail more than three years, and had moved through three different defensive positions—one, that she had never been in Mesa the night Travis was butchered, in fact, hadn’t seen him since the day she left town in April 2008; two, that a male/female team dressed in ski masks came upon them in the bathroom and the bloodbath began; and three, that Travis had come at her, and she needed to defend herself or lose her life. Changing the defense from “innocent because she did not do it” to “she did it, but in an act of self-defense” took time and added years onto the pretrial. The defense most likely spent months and months preparing for the first defense, filing the motions and preparing for court on those grounds. When the story was changed, most of those preparations had to be abandoned, and it was back to the drawing board. Because either of the stories was going to be exceptionally challenging to defend, the work preparing for trial was extraordinary. The back-and-forth in an incredible number of evidentiary hearings was lengthy and heated.
Jodi’s time in jail was not entirely wasted with waiting and more waiting. In December 2010, with a splendid rendition of “O Holy Night” in the jail’s American Idol–like competition, aptly called Inmate Idol, a Christmas carol talent contest, Jodi came in first place and won a dinner for all the inmates in her pod.
Finally, in June 2011, three years after Travis’s murder and one year after Jodi’s bombshell revelation that she was going to use a self-defense tack, Jodi’s defense team put on the table that its client would be willing to enter into a plea bargain. She would plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a term of years. In 2011, second-degree murder carried a sentence of as little as ten years and as much as twenty-two years. The prosecution had absolutely no interest in accepting an offer to plead guilty to a lesser crime, as it felt it had more than enough evidence to prove that the murder was premeditated. This case would go to trial.
Further delays followed, though, with changes to the legal team. At one point, Jodi even defended herself. It was short-lived, from August 8 to August 15, 2011. She had told Judge Sherry Stephens she no longer needed counsel, and Stephens granted her request. Still, Victoria Washington, a Maricopa County public defender and Kirk Nurmi, who had left the public defender’s office earlier that year and was now in private practice, were being paid by
the state of Arizona to defend Jodi, and they would remain as advisors. However, Jodi soon learned that, though she often considered herself the smartest person in the room, she was no legal match for her adversary in her own capital murder case. (Even Jodi understood she was in no way skilled enough to be her own advocate.) She then wanted to return to her original team of defenders. When one of them, Victoria Washington, petitioned to withdraw from the case later that year, the court granted permission, and the trial was delayed yet again. Jennifer Willmott then joined Kirk Nurmi. The two became the team that would handle the trial.
After rejecting the plea, the case continued on track. On December 10, 2012, four and a half years after the murder of Travis Alexander, the jury selection for the State of Arizona v. Jodi Ann Arias case began. The media was ready to capture it, every step of the way.
CHAPTER 14
BETWEEN LOVE AND MADNESS
In the aftermath of the eavesdropping at the Hugheses’ house, it became harder for Travis to ignore some of the signs that Jodi’s jealousy was beginning to take over their relationship. Indeed, the eavesdropping that weekend was just one of many questionable snooping tactics that Jodi seemed to be using, and whether it was listening in person or digitally through his email, she seemed to be growing more suspicious of him. While Travis said his text exchanges with other women and his phone calls with Deanna were harmless, Jodi didn’t feel the same way, and her distrust of Travis had her playing amateur detective at every turn.
Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias Page 17
