* * *
In Yreka, Jodi learned about the change in Travis’s vacation plans. As Travis explained it, however, he was going to Cancún alone. He told Jodi that he was paying off a debt to a friend by bringing the family’s babysitter as his guest, so they would have someone to watch their kids.
With Travis, Jodi seemed understanding but disappointed. Cancún held special significance to her. Approximately one hour inland of Cancún were the ancient Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza and Tulum, Mexico’s most visited archaeological sites. The highlight of Chichen Itza was the Kukulkan Pyramid, an eighty-foot-tall step pyramid.
Rated as one of the “seven wonders of the world” in 2007, the ruins of Chichen Itza were also noted in the book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die.
While in Cancún, Travis made plans to see Chichen Itza. But he would not be with Jodi. For this trip he would be with another woman.
* * *
Outwardly, Jodi seemed to be moving forward with her life. Her long-distance relationship with Ryan Burns appeared to be progressing.
They had been speaking several times a week, often for hours at a time. They also exchanged flirty text messages, e-mails, and instant messages.
“Hey hottie-biscotti. What’s new?” Jodi wrote in one instant message.
In text messages, Ryan encouraged Jodi to come up to Utah for a visit.
“Just come and stay,” he wrote.
On May 3, he sent another text. “So I’m getting close to talking you into it?” he wrote. “What do I have to do to seal the deal?”
In another set of messages, Jodi talked about being a “snuggler,” and wanting to cuddle up with Ryan while they watched movies.
“You promise not to play hard to get when you get here,” Ryan wrote.
By mid-May, Jodi agreed to come see him and began making plans to travel to Salt Lake City, Utah. There was a Prepaid Legal business briefing in June, and Jodi told Ryan she was making plans to attend.
In subsequent conversations, Jodi discussed her dating history with Travis. She admitted she had “trust issues,” stemming from the relationship.
“Do you mind me asking what it is that caused the trust issues?” Ryan asked.
Jodi explained how she discovered Travis was talking to other women while they were dating. For weeks she did not mention the infidelity to Travis, she told Ryan.
“So he probably never figured it out that you knew,” Ryan wrote. “He was getting away with it.”
“But it got to the point where I couldn’t keep it in anymore,” Jodi replied. “And I told him and we broke up and I kind of wish that was the end of the story. But we continued to see each other even though we were no longer boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“Oh man, that is intense,” Ryan wrote.
While their sexual relationship continued, Jodi said she believed Travis was not dating anyone else. Then, she learned about Lisa.
“I asked him gently about it and he got really angry and it led to an argument,” Jodi told him.
Jodi also admitted to Ryan that she had spied on Travis.
“Gosh, I’m making myself look so bad,” she wrote.
When she discovered the text messages from Lisa, she knew Travis had been lying. She said she was so upset she was trembling.
“I’m sorry you had to feel that. It hurts me to think you were so hurt you were shaking,” Ryan wrote.
“I wanted to tell her but that would have caused a lot of unnecessary drama,” Jodi said.
“I love how honest you are,” Ryan said. “You did not hide anything.”
Despite the pain, despite the lies, Jodi seemed to harbor no hatred toward Travis. In fact, she said she was still fond of him.
“He’s a great person. I wouldn’t want to say anything else. We all have our character flaws,” Jodi wrote. “We have seen each other at our worst and at our best. We are just fundamentally different.”
* * *
Even with the progress he had made in the relationship with Mimi, Travis missed the companionship he had with Lisa, who still wanted nothing to do with him.
While Travis lamented her loss to his friends, he also knew it would be inappropriate to pursue her during his blossoming relationship with Mimi.
“It would be unfair of me to try and go after Lisa right now, if I could get her or not, if I am still going to be hung up on Mimi,” he told Taylor in an online chat. “Because eventually I would come back to the same line of thinking that led to our breakup. It would take the complete death of the Mimi option or any other ‘Mimiesque’ option for us to have a fair chance.”
Still, he longed for her friendship.
“My goal with Lisa is to somehow become friends again,” he told Taylor. “I wish I had at least an open door with Lisa. Nothing to push just an open door.”
Meanwhile, Travis continued speaking to Jodi. He even began discussing a possible visit to Yreka, during which they planned to drive up the Oregon coast to check places off “the list.”
On May 10, Travis and Jodi had a conversation, which she recorded, and that would later be played in court.
“Are you coming up here before Cancún?” Jodi asked. “We’ll go up the Oregon coast and to Crater Lake.”
“Yeah, that’s my plan,” he said. “You’re at the top of my list.”
On the phone they were flirty, speaking like a couple. They talked about songs and superhero movies. At one point they sung to each other.
Travis complimented her like a boyfriend.
“You are pretty. You’re just so attractive,” he said. “Seriously I’ve never seen you look bad in all my life.”
“Yes you have, when I have puffy eyes and I’ve cried off all my makeup,” Jodi said.
“You don’t look bad then, you just look miserable,” Travis responded.
In the conversation, Jodi made reference to the fact that they would not end up together. When she married, she wanted to find someone equally as sexual as she was, she said.
“Eventually we’re both going to marry other people,” Jodi said. “I’d really like to marry a return missionary but like you someone who can be freaky. I feel like I may feel like a wilting flower that may not blossom to my full potential, sexually.”
As they began to reminisce about sexual encounters, Jodi and Travis’s flirtations turned erotic.
“You have the most incredible stamina that I’ve ever dreamed of,” she said.
“We’ve had more than two-hour sessions many times,” Travis replied.
The conversation evolved into phone sex.
“Are you touching yourself? I am already,” Jodi moaned. “You make me so horny. I seriously think about having sex with you every day.”
While her reasoning for taping the phone call remained unclear, Jodi kept a copy of the recording. It was possible she wanted a memento from their relationship. Or perhaps she planned to use the tape to expose Travis’s secret sexual life.
Or maybe her motives were even more malevolent.
* * *
Even long distance, Jodi and Travis continued their familiar pattern of fighting and then becoming sexual. In addition to the phone sex, Travis and Jodi sent sexually charged text messages.
At times, his messages were vulgar.
“You are the ultimate slut in bed,” he wrote in early May.
“It is my only desire to be your muse designed for your most vile and lustful pleasures,” he wrote in another.
Despite the physical separation, Travis and Jodi could not seem to create distance. Jodi later admitted in court she knew it was an unhealthy situation.
“It’s complicated. I still loved him,” Jodi said. “I was making a string of bad choices during that time in my life.”
Meanwhile, Jodi felt tortured. When he was sexual, Travis paid her a lot of attention. In between encounters, he was withdrawn. When they were not being intimate, they argued. Only now, their fights seemed more vicious.
“He got meaner after I moved,” Jodi
said.
On May 10, Travis caught Jodi logging onto his Facebook page. Furious, he confronted her through text.
“You have no respect for people’s privacy and you dare insult me of all people,” Travis texted. “Someone you show 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.”
* * *
In mid-May, a second roommate moved into Travis’s house. Enrique Cortez was an acquaintance of Travis’s from church. He was a twenty-seven-year-old Mormon with dark eyes and closely cropped black hair. Like Zachary Billings, Enrique had a serious girlfriend, named Kim, with whom he spent most of his free time.
Enrique moved into the room next to Zachary’s—down the hallway, off the loft on the second floor of the house. Under the same roof, the three lived very separate lives. They didn’t talk much or socialize, basically keeping to themselves.
The roommates came and went as they pleased. Travis hardly ever locked his front door and neither roommate had a key. When the doors were locked, they entered using the keypad on the garage door.
There weren’t any set cleaning duties in the house, and all just cleaned their own messes. Each did their own laundry and dishes. Enrique and Zachary cleaned the upstairs bathroom, while Travis cleaned the downstairs guest bathroom.
With the addition of Enrique’s rent money, Travis’s finances began to improve.
* * *
On May 15, a few weeks before the Cancún trip, Mimi called Travis. She told him she felt they were better off remaining friends.
“He understood,” Mimi later said. “He actually thanked me for telling him directly.”
As for the upcoming trip to Cancún, Mimi said she thought it would be fair if he wanted to take someone else on the trip.
“There is no one else I want to take,” Travis told her.
It was too late to change the reservations—the trip was in less than four weeks. They discussed and decided they would go to Mexico together as friends. They were scheduled to depart at 9:25 A.M. on June 10.
After the breakup, Travis was deflated. He sent Taylor a text message.
“Mimi just gave me the ‘I just want to be your friend talk,’” Travis wrote. “I want to kill myself. I have f’d up my life.”
Travis’s relationship with Mimi did not end with a bang, it had simply fizzled out. Part of the reason for the breakup with Lisa was the prospect of a relationship with Mimi. Now, Travis had lost them both. He felt foolish.
For the next few weeks, Travis was depressed over losing both Lisa and Mimi. He seemed to be lacking a bit of his usual vigor, as if something were weighing heavily on him. When he spoke with friends, they heard the sorrow in his voice.
After the breakup with Mimi, Travis’s thoughts drifted once again back to Lisa. He checked her relationship status on Facebook to ensure she was still single, which she was.
On May 19, he sent a text message to Taylor. “I think I want Lisa back. I need to figure out a plan.”
* * *
On May 18, Travis wrote his last blog entry. The post, humorously titled “Why I Want to Marry a Gold Digger,” concerned his personal quest to find an eternal companion.
In it, he lamented his single status. His thirtieth birthday—eleven months prior—had been a turning point, he wrote.
He described the qualities he was looking for in a future wife: spirituality, mutual physical attraction, the ability to communicate effectively, and the desire to have children.
“But there is one thing that I have come to appreciate as much or more than all the others. I don’t know how to label this quality except to say that it is the quality to appreciate the qualities in me,” he wrote. “I want someone to fall in love with me because I am a man of ability and achievement.”
In other words, Travis wasn’t looking for someone who loved him for his money, but because of his drive, ambition, and ability to earn a lot of money. He didn’t want to find someone who was attracted to his accomplishments, but because he was a person who worked to achieve great things out of life. He believed this so strongly, in fact, that he wrote that he wouldn’t want to be with a woman if these weren’t at least some of the reasons she loved him.
“There is a phrase with a stigma attached I find interesting, ‘gold digger.’ Now, I obviously don’t like the stereotypical gold digger,” he wrote. “However, I couldn’t think of a better phrase to describe what I desire in an eternal companion. I want someone to love me for the gold that is within me and is willing to dig with me to extract it.”
To attract such a woman, Travis needed to be “worthy of such a woman,” he wrote.
Appraising his life, Travis made a list of qualities he was looking for in a future spouse. Then, he rated himself on a scale of one to ten on how he was doing in those categories.
“It is an eye opener. I realized the reason I wasn’t married wasn’t because the type of person I was looking for doesn’t exist but that the type of person I wanted wouldn’t be interested in me,” he wrote. “Doing this has given me more purpose in my personal development. It has given me a stronger ‘why’ for the things I do every day. It has also helped me to weigh in opportunity costs on the decisions I make and how it affects the person I am and the people I attract. It really has in my biased opinion, made me a better person. Or in other words has increased the goldmine inside of me.”
* * *
Reading Travis’s public posting about his future wife must have been torturous for any woman in love with him. Travis was ready to find his eternal companion. Whether it was Mimi or Lisa or someone he had yet to meet, it was not Jodi Arias.
If Jodi had checked her calendar after reading that post, she would have surely realized that Travis had dumped her right before he turned thirty—the age he started dating with marriage in mind.
Reading between the lines, it seemed to imply Travis had never been serious about their relationship—she was just someone to keep his bed warm until he met his true love.
Jodi had done everything possible to become Travis’s ideal woman. When she learned he would not marry outside his religion, she converted to Mormonism. When the distance between them strained their relationship, she moved to Mesa. Nothing she did was enough.
All the while, Travis had no intention of ever marrying her.
In Yreka, Jodi’s behavior abruptly shifted. For nearly a year after the breakup, she had been consumed with Travis. Now, Jodi was chillingly quiet.
If she was bothered that Travis was taking someone else to Cancún, she told no one. If she felt used, she didn’t speak of it.
* * *
In considering a plan to win Lisa back, Travis weighed his options. He knew that Lisa would be skeptical because of the timing of his breakup with Mimi.
He wanted to go big—to make a grand gesture—rather than waiting by patiently. But he worried that if he presented it as win or lose, he might never get a second chance.
“I need a foot in the door,” Travis told Taylor.
“I think I might be a fan of just calling her up and telling her everything, start to finish,” Taylor said. “See what she says.”
Travis decided to mull it over. But by May 19, he couldn’t get Lisa out of his head.
“I physically can’t take it. I don’t sleep anymore,” Travis said. “I need to get to the bottom of it with Lisa.”
Two days later Travis decided he was “going big or going home.”
At 5:20 P.M. on May 21, Travis called Lisa and left a voice mail.
“The voice mail has been left,” Travis wrote in a text message to Taylor. “With a pounding heart I sounded positive and slightly casual I think. I’m sure she is listening to it right now. Now time to wait.”
He received no response.
On May 22, it was raining. As Travis peered out the window, the murky skies mirrored his melancholy mood. His thoughts were of Lisa. Travis was always proactive when it came to problem solving. But
with this particular problem he had no control.
He wanted to sit down and talk with Lisa face-to-face and tell her everything.
“I am going to do whatever I can to get her back, no matter how bad it hurts, I’ll take the risk,” he said. “I don’t know how but I need to sit down with her. It must happen.”
“Keep your posture,” Taylor said. “Just go to where she is.”
But Travis no longer knew her schedule, and he was worried if he just showed up he would “creep her out.” He wanted to arrange a time to meet with her.
“I made a mistake, but I’ve learned from it and I love her,” he told Taylor. “Everyone should be as loved as I do her.”
The last two weeks of his life, Travis continued to mope about Lisa. He loved her passionately and considered Lisa the “one that got away.”
“Up until the day he died, he was completely heartbroken by Lisa,” Taylor later recalled. “I always imagined that she was the last thing he thought about while he was dying.”
* * *
On Saturday, May 24, Travis hosted his last UFC party. He sent out an invitation that referred to his house as Casa del T-Dogg.
He ordering several takeout pizzas, and more than a dozen of his friends gathered around his big-screen television to watch the battle in the Octagon between UFC Lightweight Champion BJ “the Prodigy” Penn and former champ Sean “the Muscle Shark” Sherk. UFC 84 was being broadcast live from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
The main fight that night went three rounds. Travis cheered loudly as BJ Penn landed a flying knee to win the fight in the last seconds of the round.
For the next week, Travis worked, went to church, and spent time with his friends. One night in late May he met Taylor Searle for sushi.
“He and I were talking about our lives, and our girl situations, and what we wanted to make of ourselves,” Taylor recalled.
Travis also mentioned the Cancún trip he had been planning all summer. Taylor knew it was in a week or so but wasn’t exactly sure of the dates.
Two days later, he met with Aaron Mortensen to watch the movie The Sandlot, which was one of Travis’s favorites. Afterward they read each other’s blogs and commented on them. That night Travis was his old self. He was jovial and seemed positive about the future.
Picture Perfect: The Jodi Arias Story: A Beautiful Photographer, Her Mormon Lover, and a Brutal Murder Page 16
