Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias

by Velez-Mitchell, Jane

  They were a thousand miles apart, but by the sound of his own comments, he was in need of a binge. On May 2, Travis sent Jodi this text: “There’s not a day where I haven’t dreamt about driving my shaft long and hard into you,” he wrote. “You are the ultimate slut in bed . . . you’ll rejoice in being a whore, whose sole purpose in life is to please me any way I desire.”

  But their dirty pillow talk was not limited to texts and emails. In the early morning hours of May 10, 2008, Jodi and Travis had one of their signature late-night phone calls. Like other late-night calls they’d supposedly had, this one was explicit in nature—a phone sex session between them in which each climaxes—but this time something was different. This time Jodi recorded all the words and sounds of their intimate discussion. While Jodi would go on to claim that Travis was aware of the taping, there was no proof anywhere on the tape itself that this was the case. For Travis, his behavior on the call did not betray any hint of the self-consciousness that one would expect from such an outwardly modest man; indeed his words on the call were as uninhibited as his text messages. It was unclear why after months of sexual discussion between them this call would be singled out, why this call would be the one to remember. Even harder to discern was Jodi’s true motivation for recording this conversation. And yet, its larger significance was immediately apparent: now no one could deny just how sexually involved they’d been. Jodi held the proof of the explicit nature of their relationship in the form of Travis’s voice. That tape was her “Monica Lewinsky blue dress,” the smoking gun that documented some of the acts that had occurred between them. After listening to the charged language from both of them, no one could ever doubt the extent of their sexual relationship.

  Perhaps it was that call she was thinking about on Saturday, May 10, when she wrote the final entry on her blog: “I cannot ignore that there is an ever-present yearning and desire that pulses within me. It throbs for gratification and fulfillment,” she wrote in a very long entry filled with flowery passionate language.

  It was unclear what Travis’s interpretation of that was or if he believed it to be for another man. Either way, on the same day Travis was angrily texting Jodi with cryptic comments that hinted of jealousy and resentment: “Why don’t you have him come and f—k you in the woods, I can only imagine you are so worried about me reading. You are paranoid because you have no respect for people’s privacy and you dare insult me of all people . . . Through your actions you hate more than love by denying me a human right of privacy countless times. You have a lot of freaking nerve. We are all not like you in that aspect.” The volatility was hitting the upper ranges of the relationship Richter scale.

  Ten days later, Travis posted his last blog entry, “Why I Want to Marry a Gold Digger.” The blog talked about how he used to love being single, but now he wanted to find an “eternal companion.” He wasn’t using the term “gold digger” in a stereotypical sense, but in a metaphorical sense. “I want someone to love me for the Gold that is within me and is willing to dig with me to extract it,” he wrote. He continued with great reflection. “I did a little soul searching and realized that I was lonely . . . I realized it was time to adjust my priorities and date with marriage in mind . . . This type of dating to me is like a very long job interview and can be exponentially more mentally taxing. Desperately trying to find out if my date has an axe murderer penned up inside of her, knowing she is wondering the same about me.”

  Ultimately, sexual phone calls and text messages could not pave over the unmovable issues between them. As May progressed, Travis became increasingly frustrated with Jodi’s behavior. On Monday, May 26, Jodi and Travis got into a nasty fight. The following day, Travis called Taylor to tell him about the confrontation with Jodi the night before. He had been on Facebook and had gotten bounced off, a sign that someone else had logged on with his name. He was livid. He logged back on, and there was Jodi. She had hacked in again, but this time he caught her red-handed. “Did you just log in?” he wanted to know. Travis got her to admit it and started unloading on her. “You are the worst thing that ever happened to me,” he wrote. He also told her that her grandparents would be ashamed of her. Taylor let him go on. When he settled down, Taylor took a deep breath.

  “That’s brutal,” Taylor said. “You just let her have it. Aren’t you afraid that she’s going to try to hurt you or something?” Travis said she got the message to stay away from him, and it was over. While he’d told at least one friend he was really afraid of her, others said Travis didn’t think Jodi could actually, physically hurt him, especially now that she lived so far away.

  Unfortunately, Travis Alexander was wrong. He was wrong about Jodi Arias, wrong about what she was capable of, but mostly he was wrong about just how deep her obsession with him had taken hold.

  Much mystery remains about the lives of Travis and Jodi during the first few days of June 2008, but some facts are indisputable. On June 2, Jodi packed an overnight bag with some clothes, a cell phone and charger, and most likely the .25-caliber pistol she had allegedly stolen from her grandfather. She put it all into the car she had rented in Yreka. She drove south to Monterey to borrow two gas cans from her ex, Darryl Brewer, then set off for Mesa via Pasadena. Having the gas cans with her meant that she could get through the state of Arizona without having to stop for gas, but more important, it meant that there would be no evidence of her journey popping up at a gas station. There would be no receipt from an Arizona gas station or security camera footage of her standing by a pump. Along with the gas cans, she calculated an alibi story, which would allow her to go to Mesa and still arrive in Salt Lake City without being suspicious.

  At about 4:30 A.M. on June 4, she rolled up in front of Travis’s house. Based on the evidence recovered at the scene, the two spent several hours together, much of it in bed. The photographs from the camera in the washing machine show Jodi and Travis quite relaxed and very naked for much of the day. However, just after 5:30 P.M. something changed. Suddenly Travis was on the receiving end of twenty-nine stabs and slashes and a gunshot to the head. Jodi had killed him, and while the extraordinary overkill and excess of the crime pointed to a killer harboring extreme personal rage, the question that remained was why.

  PHOTOGRAPH SECTION

  From a young age, Jodi was fixated on art, and it was an outlet to which she would turn for the rest of her life.

  Jodi’s childhood best friend, Patti, explained that Jodi was a good kid when they were friends. She never expected Jodi would become a killer.

  Jodi was happiest with her friends in Santa Maria.

  From an early age, Jodi was always preoccupied with her appearance, trying to keep herself as perfect as possible.

  Jodi’s financial troubles began before she and Travis met. Jodi reportedly could not afford to buy her own bridesmaid’s dress for her friend’s wedding, so the bride’s dad bought it for Jodi. But about a year later, Jodi got a mortgage on a house with her then boyfriend Darryl.

  Travis with one of his first loves, Linda Ballard, whom he met years before Jodi. He was head over heels in love with Linda and wanted to marry her—even going so far as to buy her a ring. But while she cared for him, she decided he was not the one. (Courtesy of Linda Ballard Boss)

  Travis with his longtime friend and ex-girlfriend Deanna Reid. When Travis and Jodi met, he and Deanna had been broken up for about a year, but the two still shared an incredibly close connection. Despite Travis and Deanna’s mutual Mormon faith, both admitted to having a sexual relationship together. Friends later felt that Travis was still emotionally in love with Deanna when he was dating Jodi. (Courtesy of Sky Hughes)

  When Deanna and Travis were dating, her job led her to move near Phoenix, and Travis decided it was a good opportunity for him to move as well. He eventually bought a five-bedroom home in Mesa, Arizona. (Courtesy of Joe Conrad)

  Travis outside his house in Mesa, Arizona. He rented out some of the other bedrooms to men he met through either the Mormon church or his j
ob at Pre-Paid Legal. It was in this house that he was found dead in the bathroom shower. (Courtesy of David Hall)

  Though Sky Hughes (left, with Deanna Reid) initially supported Travis and Jodi’s relationship, she and her husband, Chris, quickly became uncomfortable with Jodi. Sky was one of the first of Travis’s friends to voice concerns about Jodi to Travis. (Courtesy of Beth Karas)

  Chris (right) and Sky Hughes initially welcomed Jodi into their home at the start of her relationship with Travis. But they soon revoked their support and banned Jodi from their home, warning Travis there was something very wrong with her. (Courtesy of Sky Hughes)

  This shot was taken at the Pre-Paid Legal conference in Las Vegas when Jodi and Travis first met. Shortly after Jodi returned home, she broke up with her longtime boyfriend Darryl and began her conversion to Mormonism for Travis. (Courtesy of Sky Hughes)

  During the five months during which Jodi and Travis openly dated, they remained long-distance, with Jodi often traveling to Mesa to see him. (Courtesy of Sky Hughes)

  Travis baptized Jodi into the Church of Latter Day Saints. What followed the baptism remains a subject of fierce debate, with Jodi alleging that the two engaged in anal sex, while Travis’s friends maintain that he never would have engaged in a sexual act following such a sacred occasion.

  This photo of Travis (left) and his friend Taylor Searle (right) was taken on Travis’s personal camera around May 26, 2008, the day of a heated fight between Jodi and Travis. While the exact cause of the fight remains a mystery, many people believe it was that fight that set Jodi’s murderous plan in motion. This photo is believed to be from the same camera that took the infamous shots during the murder. (Courtesy of T. Searle)

  These photos of Travis in the shower were taken by Jodi, and they are the last images of Travis Alexander alive. Documenting Travis’s final moments, these images became key evidence in Jodi Arias’s murder trial.

  This final photo depicts Travis’s bloody shoulder being dragged and Jodi’s foot in the forefront.

  On July 9, 2008, exactly one month after Travis’s body was found, Jodi was indicted for his murder. Her mug shot poses caught the public’s eye and became infamous. (Courtesy of Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office)

  While awaiting her murder trial, Jodi won a singing competition in jail for her rendition of “O Holy Night.” (Courtesy of Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office)

  The Maricopa County courthouse was the epicenter of the national media firestorm during Jodi Arias’s murder trial. (Courtesy of Joe Conrad)

  After Jodi claimed for two years that masked assassins attacked Travis, her lawyers, Kirk Nurmi and Jennifer Willmott, entered a surprise plea of self-defense. (Courtesy of Joe Conrad)

  Though Jodi’s father’s health prevented him from being in court every day, her mother was there faithfully and her family often walked solemnly to the trial together. (Courtesy of Joe Conrad)

  During the months of her trial, Jodi was housed in this tiny cell. (Courtesy of Chris Hrubesh)

  Of all the things that Travis Alexander’s family had to endure during the trial, the eighteen days during which Jodi was on the stand were likely some of the most difficult. In that time, Travis’s sister Tanisha—pictured here with her husband—and some of Travis’s other siblings had to listen to Jodi’s allegations about Travis’s sexual behavior. (Courtesy of Joe Conrad)

  Travis’s death crushed his brother Steven, who told the jury during his impact statement that his older brother’s death still haunts his dreams. (Courtesy of Joe Conrad)

  Samantha Alexander, Travis’s sister, also made an impact statement about the traumatizing nature of her brother’s death and the unspeakable loss they all suffered. (Courtesy of Joe Conrad)

  (Courtesy of HLN)

  (Courtesy of HLN)

  (Courtesy of HLN)

  Deanna Reid, Lisa Andrews, and Mimi Hall all testified to Travis’s kindhearted nature in their respective relationships with Travis. While Mimi had only wanted her relationship with Travis to be platonic, the stories that all three told were drastically different than the portrait of Travis that Jodi offered in her testimony.

  (Courtesy of HLN)

  Domestic violence expert Alyce LaViolette was publicly criticized after speaking in support of Jodi Arias and claiming that Travis committed acts of domestic abuse against her. (AP Images)

  This diagram depicts the outline of Travis Alexander’s bedroom, where the murder took place, and the bathroom adjacent to Travis’s bedroom where his body was found. (Courtesy of Bree McCool)

  Infuriating many people, Jodi often smiled, giggled, and expressed herself with hand gestures while addressing the jury. (AP Images)

  Jodi reenacted the alleged body slam that she said motivated her to kill Travis. (AP Images)

  Prosecutor Juan Martinez led the powerful case against Jodi Arias. His fiery questioning often led to impassioned arguments between Martinez and the witness in question. (AP Images)

  Throughout the trial, Jodi often appeared to be crying dramatically, but as the media and public noted, her tears were almost never visible. (AP Images)

  Steven, Tanisha, and Samantha Alexander, Travis’s younger siblings, were visibly heartbroken throughout the trial. (Courtesy of HLN)

  As she begged the jury for a chance at life in prison, Jodi fit in one final jab at her victim. Jodi held up the SURVIVOR T-shirt she claimed to have created to raise money for victims of domestic abuse. (Courtesy of HLN)

  The Arias family appeared worn down while hearing Jodi’s explicit testimony throughout the trial. (Courtesy of HLN)

  Crowds of media and supporters of murder victim Travis Alexander swamped the exterior of the Maricopa County courthouse while awaiting the verdict. (Courtesy of Joe Conrad)

  Travis’s sisters reacted with a mixture of raw emotion and relief to Jodi Arias’s guilty verdict. (Courtesy of HLN)

  PART II

  CHAPTER 15

  JODI’S TRIAL

  It had taken four and a half years to get to this point, but the prosecution and the defense were ready. Because of the huge amount of publicity surrounding the trial, both sides were equally worried about being able to seat a fair jury. They began with a pool of three hundred and seventy five potential candidates, from which they needed only eighteen—twelve jurors and six alternates—who had heard so little about the case that they would have no opinion.

  Veteran prosecutor Juan Martinez was used to high profile cases like this. He had never shied away from a challenge during his twenty-five years with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. In fact, he would be accompanied at the prosecution table by only Detective Flores; no attorney would assist him in handling the witnesses, something that one doesn’t typically see in a death penalty case. However, he was the exception, preferring to work alone. Determined, methodical, and highly aggressive in the courtroom, his bulldog style and unwillingness to plea bargain had made him public enemy number one among the local defense attorneys, who despised his relentlessness and tenacity. Not only did he avoid cutting deals, but he usually won anyway.

  For such a huge personality, Martinez was small in stature—only five foot four—although when he took on a tough witness, he seemed infinitely taller. He came from very humble beginnings; his parents were Mexican farm workers who came to the United States when he was a young boy, settling in Victorville, California, just north of Los Angeles. Determined to make a better life for himself, Juan learned English and worked hard in school. His hard work paid off when he made it through Arizona State University and Arizona State University Law School. He was licensed to practice law in 1984 and joined the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in 1988. In a short time, he made a name for himself in the legal community. For the last seventeen years, his focus had been prosecuting homicide cases.

  The case he was now trying was not his first death penalty case involving a woman. Among the numerous capital cases that he had tried was that of Wendi Andriano, whom he’d sent to death row in 2004. I
n that case, Andriano had murdered her thirty-three-year-old cancer stricken, terminally ill husband Joseph Andriano. She had asked male friends of hers to pose as her husband so she could get life insurance on Joseph, then ordered poison to carry out her plot. On the morning of October 8, 2000, she started serving him capsules of sodium azide with his breakfast. Later, she beat him with a bar stool and stabbed him in the neck, then claimed self-defense. Martinez won the death penalty conviction in that case, based on cruelty.

  Opposing Martinez on the defense side were Kirk Nurmi and Jennifer Willmott and, like Martinez, both were graduates of Arizona State University Law School. Jodi was unable to pay private attorneys, so both Nurmi and Willmott had been appointed by the court. Nurmi was a huge man with a very gentle voice, kind of the polar opposite of his opponent, Juan Martinez. He specialized in sex crimes and DUIs, but typically defended people accused of being the aggressor rather than the victim. His co-counsel, Jennifer Willmott, was a petite powerhouse prone to wearing well-tailored skirt suits and high heels. A career public defender, she had quickly established herself on the defense side of the law, joining the public defender’s office in 1995, the same year she graduated law school. Since then, she’d defended major felonies of all types, including death penalty cases, and was in private practice by the time she joined Arias’s defense team.