As Jodi’s paranoia grew, it became harder for her to contain, and later, in April 2007, a couple of weeks after the eavesdropping incident, Jodi revealed her true colors to another member of Travis’s inner circle. Travis and Jodi were attending a Pre-Paid Legal convention at Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City with a large group of friends. Busy networking, Travis paid little attention to her, and she became more insecure, complaining that he was treating her like just another conventiongoer, not his girlfriend, and that he had a tendency to treat her more affectionately when no one else was looking. It was as though he was comfortable with her being the companion in his bed, but not in his everyday life, she complained. This attitude toward Jodi was something that had also been noticed by some of Travis’s friends, who said that he seemed less affectionate toward her whenever they were in a group. Dan Freeman observed that the smaller the group, the cozier he was to her. But others disputed that and even produced a videotape that got a lot of airplay on national news showing Travis hugging Jodi as she cradled up against him, while he spoke to a sizable group of people. Travis’s friends asked rhetorically, if Travis was hiding his relationship with Jodi, why was the Internet awash with photos of them hugging?
Suffice it to say at the convention and at the convention’s executive banquet, Jodi was unhappy and lonely. Travis was ostensibly ignoring her, and seeing him chatting in a group that included the vivacious but happily married Clancy Talbot didn’t help Jodi’s mood. Clancy had had a couple of glasses of wine and stumbled, grabbing on to Travis’s arm for support. The two were laughing and enjoying the embarrassing moment, but Jodi took deep offense, calling a friend and crying hysterically that Travis was flirting with another woman. She was already suspicious of Clancy, having spied email exchanges between the two that she considered “flirtatious.”
Clancy said she was flabbergasted when the following day, Jodi followed her into the ladies’ room and confronted her. As Clancy recalled recently, Jodi “comes in and says, ‘I just want you to know Travis and I are an item now. We’re a couple. We’re together. And I’m not upset with you as much as I am with him. I’m mostly upset with him.’ And she’s shaking and she’s angry . . . and she kept saying it over and over.” Clancy said she felt intimidated as Jodi tried to block the exit door. “I couldn’t leave, and she was standing really close to my face. She was talking and while she’s talking, she’s really angry and shaking. And she just kept saying over and over that I just want you to know that Travis and I are boyfriend and girlfriend. We’re a couple. We’re an item. We are together.” Clancy stared back at Jodi, before brushing past her. “I just thought you are so crazy. And, then, I left.”
In addition to Jodi’s distrust of Travis and other women, her finances may have fueled some of her insecure behavior. Because of the foreclosure on her home back in February, she knew that she would soon be forced to find a new house. With that, there was likely a new urgency in her interest to move things forward with Travis, but it looked less and less like Travis was going to swoop in and offer her a place to live anytime soon.
Finally it got to the point where Jodi had to do something for herself, and in April she called the Ventana Inn in Carmel to inquire about being rehired. When she learned there was an opening, she packed up her belongings and headed north for Big Sur. She found a room in a historic house off Highway 101 in Monterey that her ex-boyfriend Matt was sharing with other roommates.
According to Jodi, Travis was not jealous that she was going to be under the same roof as Matt. However, he did have his jealous moments at other times. One time, Travis and Jodi were planning a trip. The idea was to rendezvous in Anaheim and go to Disneyland. Before Jodi took to the road, she wanted to shower, but the water had been turned off at the Ventana Inn. She showered at a friend’s house instead. The friend was a male, and when Travis called her to find out if she had left yet, she told him where she was. She said he started yelling at her, saying she had put herself at risk, that she should have showered later. When she arrived in Anaheim just before sunset, Travis was still angry. Jodi claimed it didn’t lead to a fight, but that Travis wouldn’t let it go.
Although Monterey was farther from him, Jodi and Travis continued to date, traveling frequently and visiting Mormon holy sites in Illinois and Missouri. They also took suggestions from 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, visiting Niagara Falls and the Finger Lakes in New York State, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Apparently, Jodi’s dire financial straits didn’t deter her from splurging on vacations.
Still, traveling couldn’t mask the tension that was growing between them. That June, Travis and Jodi went on a short trip to Sedona, Arizona, and the Grand Canyon with the brother/sister duo named Daniel and Desiree Freeman. According to the Freemans, Travis and Jodi’s relationship showed signs of strain. Travis pretended to be ditching Jodi when she got out of the car to take a photograph, something that didn’t sit well with her. They screamed at each other about the childish behavior on one side, and the lack of ability to take a joke on the other. Again, if one were to look at the photos from these scenic pit stops, some of them posted on Myspace pages for anyone to browse, one would more than likely see an extremely handsome couple enjoying each other as much as the sights behind them.
Not long after the trip to the Grand Canyon, Travis and Jodi traveled to Daniels Summit Lodge outside Heber City, Utah, where they were meeting friends, including Clancy Talbot and her husband, Chad. The setting was the epitome of romantic, high in the Rocky Mountains on the edge of Uinta National Forest, and a gem of a wilderness destination. The rustic log cabin lodge was known for its amenities, everything from snowmobiling to horseback riding to a full-service day spa. Still, the jealousy issues traveled with them. When Jodi was convinced Travis was flirting with Clancy and other women, she once again became rabidly insecure. In her eyes, the love of her life was unquestionably pulling away. She was one hundred percent sure he was cheating on her, and she confronted him.
According to Jodi, Travis became angry when she made her accusations. To her, his anger was an indication of his guilt, not innocence, because she had clearly touched a nerve. Either way, the entire relationship was becoming extremely toxic, with little to sustain it except jealousy and sex. After the lodge, the two went to the home of one of Travis’s friends in Park City. Travis fell asleep on the couch with his cell phone between the couch cushions. Jodi saw it and eased it from its location, snuck into the bathroom, and read the text messages.
There were no names by Travis’s texts, only phone numbers, but based on what she claimed she uncovered, she concluded her instinct was correct: Travis was being unfaithful. Though it was unclear if he’d done anything physically, in the text messages she saw a trail of verbal bread crumbs that showed he had been coming on to other women in ways that were not innocent. She thought his behavior was emotional two-timing, even if nothing physical had occurred.
In retrospect, it’s hard to say how much of this was in Jodi’s head, how much she fabricated outright, and how much legitimate reason she had for suspicion. While Jodi was obviously prone to paranoia, Travis did like to flirt. Even his close friends said that Travis was flirtatious by nature, laughing that he would flirt with an eighty-year-old woman if given the chance. It’s easy to see how this tendency could be misunderstood, especially in Jodi’s eyes.
In addition, Travis’s personal history may have been playing a role. For one thing, he didn’t have the best role models for a healthy relationship. Emotionally unavailable, his mother had never offered him affection, and her idea of human contact was to rage after her kids if they woke her from her comatose slumber. While Travis’s grandmother had been a great role model, unfortunately her benevolence came after many difficult years with his mother. Furthermore, as Sky Hughes had mentioned before Jodi and Travis had started dating officially, Travis still shared a connection with his ex-girlfriend Deanna that went beyond mere friendship, and even though Travis did not se
e a future with Deanna as his wife, understandably that would have bothered Jodi.
But just as Travis knew that Deanna was not the right partner for him, he was also increasingly aware that Jodi was not right for him, either, and these texts may have been a reflection of that. The connection between Travis and Jodi was wearing thin, and sadly, the sex seemed to be the only remaining common denominator. Jodi elicited Travis’s reckless forbidden passion, which was what he craved about her. Unfortunately for her it was also what he loathed, as it came with more and more guilt each time. She was the vehicle of his moral corruption, and over time, the sexual fire sale that she offered him didn’t increase her value in his eyes—if anything, it brought her worth to an all-time low.
Whether it was because of his upbringing, Deanna, or Jodi’s skills in the bedroom, Travis clearly had a difficult time deciding what he was going to do about Jodi. The flirtatious texts with other women that Jodi had discovered by snooping while he was sleeping reflected his ambivalence about Jodi, but they also demonstrated another reality for Travis: if he was going to move on from Jodi, he had to do it soon. The fact that Travis was getting older meant that there was a different urgency for him. Because it was highly unusual for an eligible man in the Mormon church to still be a bachelor at the age of thirty, Travis found himself in a conundrum—he wanted to find the right balance of sexuality and personality in a future wife, but he was running out of time. There seemed to be a pattern with Travis’s women—the ones he wanted didn’t want him, and the ones who did want him, he didn’t want. As his friend Dave Hall put it, “I think he just didn’t have enough experience and freedom to find out the different types of love there were, and he just wasn’t quite ready to settle down.”
For Jodi, there did not appear to be any ambivalence. In Travis, she saw a man who had everything. He had the home with five bedrooms, plenty of room for children. He had the career, the six-figure income, and the upward mobility. He loved to travel and to read. He had religion, and he had a great group of friends, something Jodi both lacked and envied. He was only missing a wife, and she was more than willing to fill in that missing piece. Unfortunately, Travis needed to feel the same way, and the more desperate Jodi became to keep him, the more uncertain he was about her, which led him to start looking for other potential women. It was a dangerous cycle, and now that Jodi had the text messages, she had to wallow in self-pity and righteous indignation.
As angry as she was, she put the phone back where she found it and sat on the information. She and Travis were scheduled to fly together to Rochester, New York, on June 18, for their vacation to Niagara Falls, the Finger Lakes, and the Sacred Grove of Palmyra. The trip was already paid for and was nonrefundable, and she wasn’t about to cancel it. She would finally be alone with Travis without the Mormon women she considered to be her competition.
The trip went off as planned. Jodi and Travis paid a visit to the Sacred Grove of Palmyra, the site where Mormons believe Joseph Smith Jr. received his first vision while praying in the grove of trees on his family’s farm. According to Mormon history, two heavenly beings appeared before him, the Father and Jesus Christ, and they offered him spiritual guidance. At the sacred site, Jodi and Travis snuggled close to take a “selfie,” a portrait snapped by one of them holding the camera. They next went to Niagara Falls. The photo of them on the Canadian side shows two people appearing to be very happy and content in each other’s arms, beaming while a distant waterfall cascades behind them. The reality was, this was the last time they would be together as an official couple. They would terminate the relationship within two weeks.
Jodi said while the two were acting like a couple, it was all a pretense. She now was convinced that Travis was cheating on her, but she just needed to get through the week without letting on that she was hurt. Her version had her biding time until they were back at their respective homes. The reality was probably closer to neither party was happy with the state of things, and save for being sexually addicted to each other, the official relationship was about to be over as fast as it had begun.
On June 29, 2007, Jodi says, she broke up with Travis over the phone but that he called her back the next day to apologize. He was at the Hugheses’ house, but he wanted to say he was sorry for how things worked out, and he promised to change. The two even joked about marriage and children, before the conversation then turned sexual in nature. They did not reconcile, but left it open that they could possibly get back together again in the future.
However, it wasn’t long before the regular late-night calls resumed. The sex picked up again just as quickly.
Less than a month after the breakup, Jodi moved to Mesa. She hadn’t been making the kind of money she had hoped at the Ventana Inn, and when considering her options, she liked Mesa best. Travis had painted his town as a great LDS community, and her friend Rachel had offered to let her live in her house there until she got her footing. Soon Jodi was exactly where she shouldn’t have been, had she had even a morsel of self-respect.
Travis may not have wanted her to come to Mesa. A close friend overheard Travis talking to Jodi on the phone. Even though he didn’t hear both sides of the conversation, he clearly heard Travis telling Jodi that he didn’t want her to live in Mesa and put down roots so near him. Jodi’s relationship history with Bobby was now repeating itself with Travis. In both cases, her story didn’t pass the smell test. Both times Jodi used espionage and claimed she discovered cheating via emails or texts. Both times she claimed to be the one who was dissatisfied in the relationship. But, both times, Jodi followed the ex a considerable distance, across state lines, and proceeded to repeatedly initiate contact, in some cases uninvited. Many suspected the truth was more likely that Jodi was rejected by both men and, each time, refused to take no for an answer and followed them to try to win back the relationship with sexual favors. When that failed to achieve the desired result, then she turned vengeful.
Rachel’s place did not work out for very long. Jodi was only there for two and a half weeks when Rachel and her boyfriend eloped and needed the house back for the two of them. Jodi found her next accommodation from a church website called LDShousing.net. She found a room in a house in Gilbert, about ten minutes from Travis’s house but in a different LDS ward. Jodi insisted separate wards were exactly what she had in mind, not wanting to be obligated to run into her ex if they weren’t getting along. She didn’t want to have him treat her poorly or outright ignore her in front of their mutual friends.
Travis didn’t want Jodi in his ward, either, but for different reasons. He was already in the process of moving on. In July 2007, not even two weeks after the official breakup with Jodi, he was dating a fellow church member by the name of Lisa Andrews. Lisa was exactly the kind of nice Mormon girl that Travis was convinced he wanted. At only nineteen, she wasn’t in quite the same hurry to get married that Travis was, but it didn’t take long for him to raise the topic of marriage. Lisa told him she was in no way ready to make such a commitment. Once again, Travis was in his all-too-typical dilemma: the one who wanted him was waving her arms madly and screaming “marry me,” while he was offering up his devotion to someone who was probably going to say no.
Meanwhile, Jodi was settling into Mesa life. She got a job at a P. F. Chang’s restaurant, and according to Jodi, when Travis offered to pay her to clean his house, she accepted, needing the supplemental income. He was going to pay her $12.50 an hour for sixteen hours a week, giving her an additional $200 weekly. It is unclear if Travis ever paid Jodi, as some of his friends said that it was Jodi who had offered to clean his house for free. One of his friends recalled how on one occasion Travis told him that no matter what Travis did, he couldn’t get rid of Jodi, explaining how she’d even offered to clean his house for free just to be around him. Another friend, Sky Hughes, said Travis was often too busy to see Jodi, which was why she offered to clean—just to be near him.
Regardless of whose idea it was, her cleaning at the house gave the two of them a
way to be together legitimately but clandestinely, and they took advantage of the situation often, according to Jodi. Unfortunately, giving Jodi access to his house meant Travis was able to keep his addiction to his guilty pleasure full-blown. The pusher was right there serving him his drug on a silver platter.
It was going to be hard for either one to move on when they were completely enmeshed in each other’s business and watching each other’s every move. Clancy Talbot was on an out-of-town PPL group trip with Travis around the time that Jodi moved to Mesa. “Every time we’d come back into cell phone service his phone would just go off. And you could tell by the look on his face he was frustrated and it was her. She was calling and texting and texting,” she said.
But, when the PPL excursion ended and he got back to Mesa, the sexual feeding frenzy started again and continued for months. Now that the two were in the same town for the first time, the situation couldn’t have been messier. It almost became impossible to tell what the dynamics were. For all intents and purposes, each one was using the other at will, be it sexually or manipulatively, and the energy between them was becoming more and more toxic. On one hand, Travis seemed to be having Jodi fulfill his wildest sexual fantasies, and she in turn would later interpret that as her being “used like a doormat.” On the other, her own behavior could easily be seen as manipulative—going to bed with Travis to remind him that sexually, it couldn’t get better than her, so he’d best marry her. Therefore, she was the one selling herself short for self-serving purposes, no matter how she might describe herself later as the passive player in their sex games. It was always a possibility that Jodi enjoyed the taboo sex more than she was ever willing to admit, their kinky games supercharging her sexual pleasure. A straight shooter would say they were both using each other.
Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias Page 18
