Collateral damage in all this was Travis’s relationship with Lisa Andrews. In fact, part of Travis’s inability to resist Jodi’s body was rooted in the fact that Lisa and Jodi could not have been more different from each other sexually. Lisa was a strong adherent to the Law of Chastity, and she struggled with Travis’s apparent lack of commitment to leading a chaste life. Already, she was having Mormon guilt about kissing Travis to the point where he had an erection. She was so naïve about the situation inside his pants, she assumed it was something he could control, not an act of nature. She also thought it was somewhat her fault that she had not done enough to keep his thoughts clean.
It was a difficult situation for Travis. He was torn between the path of chastity with Lisa and the lingering temptation of Jodi. On at least one occasion, Travis spoke to his friend Taylor Searle about it.
“What should I do?” Travis asked Taylor one day. “Should I keep dating Jodi or should I light-speed go pursue someone like Lisa? Jodi is hot, and she is what I want if I’m pursuing my physical desires, or should I give all that up and go date the little Mormon girl and have something that has a possible future?”
According to Taylor, Travis was super-attracted to Jodi, but he didn’t think his physical attraction to her was enough to make her an appropriate choice for a wife. Once again, the importance of Travis’s age came up. “The reason Travis was asking the question was because he was approaching the age of thirty, which is kind of the significant age in a young Mormon’s life, where he all of a sudden feels old, and realizes that he hasn’t gotten married yet. So, he was approaching that age and realized that he needed to stop being a playboy who just dated a whole bunch of girls without an eye to the future,” Taylor said. Travis raised his dilemma several times with Taylor, showing just how aware and preoccupied Travis was about the trajectory of his relationship with Jodi. He was torn between dating Jodi, who represented his old life, or dating someone like Lisa, who represented the direction in which he wanted to go.
Unable to sever ties with his past, that September Travis and Jodi went to Havasupai Falls in Arizona, another region of stunning natural beauty near the Grand Canyon. They went with Dan and Desiree Freeman, the brother-and-sister team they had traveled with that past spring. This trip was also not without uncomfortable arguments, at least at the outset. In one antagonistic confrontation, Jodi had filled a backpack with ten pounds’ worth of beauty products, everything from lotions to hand sanitizer. Travis and Dan wanted to make it lighter, and as they started taking items out of the bag, Jodi began crying and ran upstairs, with Travis close at her heels. Dan described how the two barely talked to each other at the start of the trip, although within a half hour everyone was joking and happy again.
Of course, lost in all this was the fact that Travis was still dating Lisa. Finally, later that month, Lisa decided that she’d had enough. For a while Travis’s communications with other women had been concerning her, as it seemed either Jodi, Deanna, or both were always trying to get in touch with him. What made it worse, though, was that Travis was always responding. The behavior made her very uncomfortable. However, when Lisa learned from one of Travis’s former roommates that he had been cheating on her with Jodi, she knew enough was enough, ending things with him less than twenty-four hours after hearing about his infidelities. Lisa had been under the impression the two were exclusive, but Jodi made sure that didn’t happen.
A prevailing question might be, why didn’t Jodi just walk away? She was a young lady with incredible tenacity, always managing to scramble out of dire circumstances and land on her feet. She was funny, smart, and extremely attractive. She was stylish and easygoing. She was artistic, creative, and clever, and yet she had her sights on one man only. She had been a monogamous person. She didn’t have a track record for being a classic black widow, going after rich men to secure their wealth for herself and discarding them in the process. According to Jodi, she didn’t want to completely abandon the relationship with Travis, despite how he treated her, because she loved him. However reasonable it would have been to move on and find someone else, she held on to her fantasy that he was her prince, even though he didn’t know it yet. Eventually, it got to the point of being delusional.
By mid-fall, the reality of Jodi’s place in Travis’s life had grown impossible for her to ignore. In October, she and Travis traveled to a balloon festival in New Mexico together, but instead of the trip being a sign of Travis’s renewed interest in Jodi, it was merely a precursor to Travis getting back together with Lisa a couple of weeks later. As it turned out, Travis worked his charm, calling and texting Lisa to ask her for another chance, trying to convince her that things between him and Jodi were over. Travis and Lisa began dating again, breaking up once more a few weeks before Christmas. This time the breakup was not because of Jodi, but because Lisa felt that Travis was getting too serious for her. Like their previous breakup, though, it did not last long, and soon Travis and Lisa were back together.
And all the while, Jodi was poking around, making sure Lisa knew that he still had the hots for his ex. She’d come over after a shift at P. F. Chang’s bearing to-go containers of the restaurant’s honey chicken, claiming she knew it was a favorite of Travis’s roommate. One night in January 2008, as she entered the house with her carry-out, there was Travis standing in the kitchen with Lisa. Jodi turned around and ran out the door, but at least she had interfered with their evening together.
As Travis tried to pull away from Jodi emotionally, these unannounced drop-ins became Jodi’s signature—and they weren’t always through the front door. According to some of Travis’s friends, if the front door was locked, she’d come in through his doggie door and sleep on a couch or even jump into his bed naked.
Still, his text messages with Jodi during this time make it clear that, despite his renewed relationship with Lisa, he continued to talk with Jodi about sex. That very month Jodi sent this text to Travis: “Ahhh!! I fell asleep! But to answer your question, yes I want to grind you. And I want to be LOUD. And I want to give you a nice, warm ‘mouth hug’ too. :)” About a month after walking in on Travis and Lisa in the kitchen, in February 2008 Jodi sent Travis a raunchy text message, saying, “Maybe u could give my ass a much-needed pounding,” apparently inviting him to engage in anal sex with her, the very anal sex she would later paint as degrading.
Finally, later in February 2008, Lisa broke off the relationship with Travis for a third and final time. Unlike the previous breakups, this one was more mutual, with both of them acknowledging that there were problems. For one thing, Lisa again thought he was getting too serious about his marriage agenda. Although he had worked for months on issues that upset her—she had blamed him for getting erections during their make-out sessions, she didn’t want him to grab her butt in public, and she wanted him to be more supportive of her aspiration to be a teacher—there were still issues, namely, Jodi Arias and his lingering relationship with her.
In Travis’s final months with Lisa, Jodi had become a huge problem, and she seemed to be growing more and more unhinged. Travis and Lisa had been in Barnes & Noble one afternoon, and the next day Lisa received an email from an unknown sender that referred to them being in that store. It was clear from the content of the email that the person had been watching them. Travis told Taylor he was sure it had been Jodi. “She must have been outside in the parking lot watching us through the window,” Travis reported. He also told Taylor that Jodi had stolen some of his journals from his bedroom. There were no other suspects. For years, he had been keeping journals devotedly, chronicling his journey through life. He hoped to publish them in a self-help memoir titled Raising You. The pages that were missing were the dates of his relationship with Jodi. Lisa was not exempt from Jodi’s relentless stalking. Someone had hacked into her Facebook and email accounts, and Travis was sure it had been Jodi.
Then, also in December, there was vandalism against Travis’s car when his tires were slashed. Even more strange was the fact
that, the next day, Jodi called him nonchalantly on his cell phone, and when he told her about his four tires being slashed, she came right over to pick him up for the trip to the mechanic, sort of like the arsonist phoning in about the fire. When Travis’s car was ready, Jodi followed him on the freeway only to watch him get off at Lisa Andrews’s exit again. Jodi then had the audacity to call him on his phone, saying that she had seen him get off at the “wrong” exit. That night the doorbell rang and the tires had been sliced, again. Travis and Lisa had tried off and on for a year, and their relationship had reached its natural conclusion. At least for the time being, it appeared that Jodi was victorious—Travis Alexander was hers.
If Jodi thought Travis would come running back to her after he broke up with Lisa, she was quite mistaken. He may still have had sex with her, but now his more “innocent” affections moved to Marie “Mimi” Hall. She was foxy and brunette, “smoking hot,” he told a friend, and she had confidence that the younger women in the Desert Ridge ward lacked. His friend Taylor said Travis was infatuated with Mimi. “He’d never really even talked to her more than once, but for some reason, he was super-drawn to her, and he really wanted to pursue her.” Taylor cited Bambi when he said his friend was so lovestruck, he was “twitterpated,” weak in his knees at first glance. “He just had a crush on her right away. He saw pursuing Mimi as pretty much his way of starting over, getting over the Jodi baggage.”
Meanwhile, the Jodi baggage was still in the front hall. He was having sex with her, but he had never been more emotionally distant. The sex was becoming more and more outrageous, according to Jodi. Travis was even making a long list of sexual fantasies he wanted to fulfill with her. For him, however, the sex was where the relationship began and ended. The whole thing was so poisonous, it was almost lethal.
In early March, Travis invited Mimi out on a date. He was thrilled when she accepted. Two dates later, however, Mimi said she wouldn’t mind being friends, but there was no romantic interest on her part. Travis still pursued her anyway, even though she never really reciprocated or showed interest back. He said they started doing nonsexual things together. They started a movie watchers’ club, where they and a few others from the church would watch an old movie and then talk about it, like a book club for movies. Travis was disappointed that the relationship had turned platonic, but he was not completely deterred. He may have even been motivated by the fact that Mimi had started seeing someone else, and he loved the challenge of besting a rival to win her over. Dating Mimi would mean he and Jodi could finally be through. Mimi seemed to have the combination of sex appeal and sensibility that he had been searching for. And, being in her late twenties, she was age-appropriate. He had put up with Jodi’s antics for the nine months she had been in Mesa, from the tire slashing to the inappropriate phone calls, to her possessiveness and outright stalking. He was done with her stealing his stuff and cornering his female interests.
Luckily for him, Jodi had decided she was leaving town to go back to Yreka, and not a moment too soon. Jodi’s mental state was deteriorating. At one point, a friend who cared about her had phoned her mother to let her know he thought Jodi needed help. Sandy Arias also worried about her daughter’s nomadic lifestyle and seesawing mood swings. Her daughter would call the house in a great mood, and she and Sandy would chat for a while, but after the call ended, Jodi would unexpectedly call again minutes later, this time crying hysterically. The fast-changing tenor of her calls both confused and upset her mother. Sandy didn’t understand what was happening with her daughter and became increasingly anxious, especially after several of Jodi’s friends began calling the house, pleading with Sandy to get her daughter some help. Whatever concern the Ariases may have had about Jodi, pundits have debated why her parents didn’t try to get her into treatment. Perhaps it was because they were old-fashioned and knew little of mental illness and interventions. They may have also felt a sense of shame that their promising, beautiful, now adult daughter seemed to be in a downward spiral. Whatever the case, her parents watched helplessly as Jodi became more and more uncontrollable. With not much coaxing, Jodi had agreed to move to California to live with her maternal grandparents.
At the news, Taylor said, Travis was jumping for joy. “It was like a big burden was lifted off his shoulders, where he felt like he could actually move on with his life and not have to deal with her,” he said. Despite Travis’s euphoria, the drug was still in him. Taylor recalled in the midst of his excitement he was still talking to Jodi. “We were driving in his car, and Jodi called him, and he answered it, and he was talking to her. I said, ‘Why are you talking to her? I thought you were done with her.’ He says, ‘I’m done with her, but she really needed help with something, so I’m helping her out.’ He just couldn’t not help somebody, was the feeling I got, like he was in need of saving somebody. He talked to her even though he wanted nothing to do with her, because he didn’t want her to be in trouble.”
Two weeks before Jodi moved, Sky invited Travis to Murrieta to spend time with Chris and her. He didn’t go, saying to Sky something along the lines of “She’s leaving town in two weeks; everything will be fine.” Soon, it was “She’s leaving in one week. I know this is bad; I know she’s bad for me.” Sky was concerned that Travis had messed up. “Travis was in turmoil over his relationship. He wanted it to end. He wanted Jodi to move home. But, at the same time, he’s a guy. Sex is fun, and when a good looking girl comes over at three in the morning and jumps on you naked and starts rubbing all over you, stuff’s going to happen . . . She ensnared and controlled him with sex.” His friends worried that when he detoxed from Jodi, he might be in a bad place, and they were there for him.
By this point, Jodi was willing to leave her stuff behind in Mesa and just get herself out of there, but her father talked her into renting a U-Haul and bringing everything with her. Travis sold her his car with the generous offer of letting her make nominal payments of $100 a month to him on a monthly schedule, according to Jodi. He was already getting rid of it and replacing it with a Toyota Prius, proactively supporting his newfound environmentalism. Jodi packed her boxes into the U-Haul and hitched the BMW to the back end. Off she drove, behind the wheel of her rented truck only to make it about twenty miles before she blew the transmission on the car she was pulling behind her. She had been towing it in first gear and hadn’t raised the two front tires off the ground, so the car was ruined. What a way to go out.
With Jodi gone, Travis thought a lot of his problems had gone with her. He had qualified for an all-expense-paid trip for two to Cancún, Mexico, based on his PPL sales. The winners were going to make the trip the first week of June, and Travis invited Mimi to be his guest. Taylor remembered Travis’s excitement when Mimi agreed to go. “He texted me and he’s like, ‘I just called up Mimi and said, “Hey, I know we’re just friends and all, but do you want to go to Cancún?” She said, ‘Sure.’ He’s like, ‘I’m so stoked. It’s going to be awesome.’ ” Mimi had to be sure Travis understood it was going to be platonic. She liked the arrangements, where she and Travis would be staying in separate rooms. The flight was scheduled for Tuesday, June 10, Phoenix to Cancún direct.
There has been some discussion that Travis initially invited Jodi to be his guest on the trip and then took her off. One friend said that Travis may have been asking around about how to make a change on an airline ticket for the Mexico trip and he suspected Jodi’s name was being changed to Mimi’s. But Taylor Searle said he didn’t believe that Jodi’s name had ever gotten as far as the ticket, even if the two had talked about taking the trip together. In his opinion, “Travis doesn’t want to pick anyone from his past, and Mimi is the only thing he has on his plate for the future. She was pretty much the only answer.” If Jodi had been invited initially, she had now been officially replaced.
Travis took the two months before the trip to really work on himself. He met with his bishop to try to get himself temple-worthy again. The bishop knew about the sexual behavior with Jodi,
so Travis was working on rectifying that. Some of Travis’s friends said Jodi had taken it upon herself to confess for both of them about their violating the Law of Chastity. Others said Travis himself had gone to confess. Either way, Travis was embarrassed and ashamed that his Temple Recommend had been pulled once again. He especially didn’t want Mimi to find out.
On church days, Mormon men carry what they call a “temple bag” with them. In it they keep a shirt and tie and other temple garments, which they change into before entering the sacred hall. He wanted Mimi to think that he was temple-worthy, so he invited everyone, including Mimi, to come back to his house after a particular service. According to Taylor, Travis’s plan was to leave his temple bag on the kitchen counter, where he knew Mimi would then see it. He could then say, “I was about to go out to the door to the temple with you guys, but I was too late.” Taylor said he staged it to hide his shame. Travis desperately wanted to get back in good standing with his faith.
On his new self-improvement campaign, Travis went to the gym regularly and was proud of his weight loss and bodybuilding. He was putting his guilt and his unchaste life behind him. “This year will be the best year of my life,” he affirmed in a blog post that April. “This is the year that will eclipse all others. I will earn more, learn more, travel more, serve more, love more, give more and be more than all the other years of my life combined.”
In late April 2008, as Travis was celebrating his new self and his metamorphosis, he sent Jodi a text message that showed his detox from his drug of choice was not going as well as he was projecting.
“I am at a night club right now and it helped me to come to the conclusion that you are one of the prettiest girls on the planet,” he wrote. The very next day, he texted her: “Send me a naughty picture.”
Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias Page 19
