“Okay, how did this happen?” the operator asked. “Do you have any idea?”
“No, we have no idea, everyone has been wondering about him for a few days.”
“Okay, she said that there is blood. Is it coming from his head? Or…”
“It’s all over the place.”
The operator asked if Travis had been displaying signs of depression.
“I don’t know Travis,” Dallin told the operator. “I’m the wrong person to be asking.”
“Okay, please put someone on the phone who knows Travis,” the operator requested.
As Dallin passed the phone to Michelle, he noticed that Zachary had reappeared on the lawn with another man—Enrique Cortez. The roommates and Amanda stayed huddled together, a few yards away from where Dallin, Mimi, and Michelle were standing.
Haltingly, Zachary explained the situation to Enrique. Dallin overheard him mutter something about the master bathroom.
“That’s why the light has been on for so long,” Enrique exclaimed.
Mimi called out to the roommates, “When was the last time you saw Travis?”
“It was either Wednesday or Thursday,” Enrique said.
Zachary nodded in agreement. “Wednesday. Maybe Thursday.”
“Had you checked his room since the last time you saw him?” Dallin asked.
Zachary shook his head, mumbling about “Cancún” and a “business trip.”
“His car was in the garage,” Enrique said. “I thought someone drove him to the airport.”
Dallin explained that the 911 operator had asked if Travis was suicidal.
“I didn’t know Travis well enough to know if he was self-destructive,” Dallin told the roommates.
They discussed Travis and his recent relationships with Lisa and Mimi. Neither roommate thought he appeared depressed.
“Who could want to hurt him?” Dallin asked.
Only one name came to mind: Jodi Arias.
Travis hadn’t been scared of her, but those close to him found her behavior unsettling. Standing outside Travis’s house that night, talk turned to Jodi. They each shared stories about stalking, stolen journals, and slashed tires. Many close to Travis believed Jodi was fixated on him. But had her obsession turned deadly?
Before Travis’s death could even be declared a homicide, his friends would identify Jodi as a strong potential suspect. Tales of her obsession would fill the pages of the police report.
* * *
A few blocks away, Taylor Searle was racing toward Travis’s house. He had been on the phone with Michelle during the search and was the first person, outside the house, to learn Travis’s fate.
Taylor had just arrived back at his house on his bike when Zachary had retrieved the key to Travis’s bedroom. As Dallin and Zachary searched the room, Taylor spoke with Michelle.
Suddenly, Michelle had begun to scream. “There’s blood on the carpet. A lot of blood!”
Seconds later Zachary had come out of the bathroom, telling Michelle what he had found. “He’s not alive!” she cried into the phone.
Taylor went numb.
She killed him, he thought. Jodi killed him. She did it.
Grabbing his laptop, Taylor jumped in his car.
He raced toward Travis’s house, going nearly a hundred miles an hour. On the way, he ran every stop sign and red light.
Taylor had something urgent police needed to see. He believed Travis had known his killer. Taylor had warned Travis about her just a week prior to his death.
* * *
Through a fog of tears, Michelle spoke with the 911 operator.
“You’re a good friend of Travis’s, correct?” the operator asked.
“Yes, I am,” she said. “Yeah.”
“Has he been depressed at all? Thinking about committing suicide? Anything like that?”
“I don’t think he’s been thinking about committing suicide. He’s been really depressed because he broke up with this girl. And he was all upset about that. But I don’t think he would actually kill himself over that.”
“Has he been threatened by anyone recently?”
“Yes, he has. He has an ex-girlfriend that’s been bothering him. And following him and slashing tires and things like that,” Michelle said.
“Do you know the ex-girlfriend’s name?” the operator asked.
“Her name is Jodi.”
“Do you know if he’s ever reported it to police?”
“No, he hasn’t reported anything about Jodi’s behavior,” Michelle said.
Michelle handed the phone back to Mimi.
“There’s a girl who has been stalking him and she might have some information,” Mimi told the operator.
“Okay. I’m just going to keep you on the phone until officers or paramedics arrive,” the operator said.
“Okay, I think I can hear the sirens now.”
* * *
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder with each passing second. As police cruisers and paramedics surrounded the house, Dallin’s gaze drifted to the light shining in the upstairs window. He closed his eyes, yearning to erase the image of Travis’s naked corpse from his memory.
Detective Scott Molander, a seven-year veteran of the Mesa Police Department with dark hair and a strong build, approached Dallin and requested to take a statement. Other detectives isolated Michelle, Mimi, Zachary, and Enrique for interviews. Later, they would all be taken to the Mesa Police Department to give official statements.
Still in shock, Dallin explained to Detective Molander his relationship to Travis—that he had only met him a few times and knew him mostly through Michelle. He couldn’t provide much information about Travis’s relationships, aside from what he had heard about Jodi.
“I heard random talk tonight about some crazy girl that I don’t know, I’ve never heard of,” he said. “I just picked up some random talk tonight about her slashing his tires and breaking into his house.”
“But this is what other people were telling you?” Molander asked.
“This is just things I heard tonight about, you know, some crazy stalker girl,” he said.
Dallin filled the detective in on the events of the evening, carefully walking through the details about how the three friends met outside the house, encountered Zachary upstairs, and made entry into the master bedroom.
“I looked down and could see blood on the carpet,” he recalled. “It wasn’t like blood when you get cut. It looked really dark, it looked chunky. It looked like mud, almost like an odd color of mud.”
It was then that Dallin said he began to panic.
“I’m kind of hesitant,” he recalled. “I’m freaking out and, you know, I turn the corner and see the bloody footsteps. Huge blood puddles like footsteps.”
“Take your time. This isn’t something that people run across every day, okay?” said Detective Molander.
The glass door to the shower stall was open, Dallin said. The smell and sight were sickening.
“It looked like his body was halfway sitting,” Dallin recalled. “It looked, from what I saw, that the neck and face was really blue, or purple, even.”
* * *
Meanwhile, Zachary Billings explained to another detective how Travis’s disappearance went unnoticed. Zachary said he hadn’t been in the house that much, having spent most of the week at his girlfriend’s place. Wednesday or Thursday was the last time he saw Travis. Both he and Enrique assumed he was out of town.
Earlier in the evening the doorbell had rung repeatedly, but neither he nor Enrique answered. This was not unusual because neither roommate answered the door unless they were expecting company, Zachary said. For the most part, the three men kept to themselves.
“Can you think of anyone who would want to harm Travis?” the detective asked.
Zachary immediately mentioned Jodi. When he first moved into the house in January, Jodi had been around constantly. She often showed up at odd hours. This was something that had fueled many argu
ments between Travis and Jodi, Zachary said.
“How would she get into the house?” the detective asked.
“She would just walk in,” Zachary said. “Travis never locked his doors. She would just let herself in and make herself at home.”
“What was security like in the house?”
“There really wasn’t any,” Zachary said. “When Travis is home the front door is almost always unlocked. I don’t even have a key.”
Zachary explained Jodi had moved to Arizona only after her breakup with Travis. He felt Travis was helping her out since she didn’t have any friends in town. Over time, however, Travis became upset by her behavior.
Zachary also told police about Travis’s relationship with Lisa. To Zachary, it seemed Jodi’s interference had doomed the relationship. Lisa didn’t like the fact that Jodi was always hanging around. Finally, in April, Jodi moved back to Yreka.
It was the last time Zachary could remember seeing Jodi. As far as Zachary knew, Jodi was still in California.
Detectives also interviewed Enrique, although he didn’t have much to add. Enrique had only lived there a few weeks and knew little about Travis. During the two weeks he rented his room, Enrique said he had never even had a meal with Travis.
Neither he nor Zachary remembered any strangers at the house or unusual cars parked in the neighborhood.
In separate interviews, Mimi and Michelle also spoke with the police. Mimi explained her relationship with Travis, their breakup, and the Cancún trip. Michelle told the police about Travis’s previous romantic relationships.
Both women also told stories of Jodi. Neither had met her personally, but had heard much about Travis’s “stalker” ex-girlfriend. They reiterated stories of her obsessive behavior to the investigators.
“I was worried because he had told me about an ex-girlfriend who had done some pretty serious, psychotic, obsessive things to him and his friends,” Mimi said in a statement. “I was actually afraid that girl would be at his house.”
As the witnesses were being questioned, Taylor Searle arrived at the house. He approached the nearest detective and opened his laptop. The image on the screen was a picture of Jodi from her Facebook page.
“This is the girl who did it,” Taylor told the detective.
“When he showed up dead, I knew it was her right away,” Taylor later recalled.
Since his breakup with Jodi, Taylor said that Travis had caught her stealing his journals, taking pages of the new book he was writing, and hacking into his Facebook page, he told detectives. On one occasion, Travis caught her breaking into his house. Travis had also been convinced that it was Jodi who slashed his tires and sent harassing e-mails to a girl he was dating, Taylor said.
Travis had spoken to Jodi last week. He confronted her for hacking into his Facebook account. In the conversation, Travis had scolded Jodi.
“Aren’t you afraid she’s going to hurt you?” Taylor had asked Travis.
“That was a week before his death,” Taylor now told the detective.
* * *
Word of Travis’s death spread quickly. Within moments of the discovery, many of his friends and family had learned of his death through a series of macabre phone calls and text messages.
A revolving group of friends gathered outside Travis’s house that night, some staying until the early-morning hours. At any one time nearly a dozen stunned, teary-eyed people sat on the curb desperately seeking answers.
Among those gathered near the house was Aaron Mortensen, who had watched movies with Travis just about a week prior. At first he had only heard that a body was found at Travis’s residence and that it looked as if it was a possible suicide. When he arrived on the scene he began to learn more details.
“I went over to his house and saw the police there,” Aaron later said. “I just kind of sat there on the curb, across the street from his house, with everyone else, till probably five thirty in the morning, just sitting there. We were all just in shock. I was a wreck.”
One thousand miles away in Yreka, Jodi got a phone call from her and Travis’s friend and former travel companion, Dan Freeman. She was at her grandparents’ house in the living room when her phone rang.
“Something is wrong. There are some police at Travis’s house. He … he is.…,” Dan stuttered. “They’re saying he’s dead.”
Doubling over, Jodi began to sob uncontrollably. Jodi began making phone calls to anyone she knew who knew Travis. Several of the friends outside of Travis’s house saw her number on their phone.
As one of those friends was telling an officer about Travis’s slashed tires, his phone rang. It was Jodi. He showed his phone to detectives.
“Don’t answer it right now,” the detective said.
After midnight Jodi called Travis’s bishop, confirming the news that Travis was dead.
Jodi appeared desperate to know what was happening, what police had discovered. That night Jodi also called the Mesa Police Station. She wanted to speak with a detective.
* * *
In Cancún, Chris and Sky Hughes were asleep in their hotel room when the phone rang. Sky answered groggily.
“Hello,” Sky said. “He’s asleep. Okay.”
She passed the phone to her husband. “It’s Dave Hall.”
As he reached for the phone, Chris knew the news would be bad.
“I hate to tell you this, Chris,” he said. “Chris, Travis is dead.”
The color drained from Chris’ face. It can’t be true. Travis can’t be dead. How can this be?
“I went numb,” Chris later said. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. My friend, my brother, my business partner is gone.”
* * *
Late that night, after being briefed on the situation, Detective Esteban Flores got his first glimpse at the victim. Immediately, it was clear: this was a homicide.
“Let’s get out of here,” Flores told the other detectives, “and come back with a warrant.”
CHAPTER 21
Sunlight cut through the slats of the blinds, spilling onto the tile floor. The blood drops slathering the master bathroom on East Queensborough Avenue glistened in the light of day—slick and shiny.
From the doorway of the bathroom, Detective Esteban Flores observed the scene as one of the forensic investigators photographed the body. Squatting at the end of the shower stall, the investigator framed a photo with his digital camera. The flash brightened the room.
“How long do you think he’s been there?” Flores asked.
The investigator leaned in to frame a close-up of the hacking wound across the victim’s throat.
“Three or four days, at least,” said the investigator. “He’s well into decomp.”
Detective Flores had spent the morning of June 10—the day after the body was discovered—obtaining a warrant and assembling a team of detectives and forensic investigators to execute a search of the house. They arrived at 9:53 A.M. and relieved the officer on guard by the front door. Throughout the night police had been stationed at the house for security purposes.
The initial focus of the investigation that morning was on Travis’s body and the surrounding areas, including the master bedroom and bathroom. After preliminary photos were complete, the team entered the house, wearing protective footwear and gloves to minimize contamination.
Flores and a fellow detective documented the scene and searched for evidence. Meanwhile, two forensic chemists collected and photographed biological evidence. In addition, two latent print examiners looked for fingerprints. Bright yellow numbered placards were placed around the bathroom as evidence was photographed and collected.
The shower stall where Travis’s body was discovered sat alongside a stand-alone tub. Hanging on the wall above it was a framed painting of a tropical paradise—palm trees swaying in the wind at sunset. Three candles sat on the corner edge of the tub.
A long mirror was affixed to the adjacent wall, above a white countertop with double sinks. On the op
posite wall was a linen closet and enclosed toilet room.
Blood and castoff spanned the entire width of the bathroom. Such a large amount indicated a savage attack—one where the victim had fought back.
In many knife attacks, Flores knew it was not uncommon for the assailant to accidentally cut themselves. It was possible that not all the blood in the room was Travis’s; some may very well have come from the killer.
Standing in the doorframe, Detective Flores examined the blood pattern. Each stain—every drop—told a story. Each time the knife was plunged into Travis’s body—every droplet that flung from its blade—created a coded missive. It was Detective Flores’s job to decipher it.
Carefully stepping over the puddles on the floor, Flores approached the bathroom counter. Dried blood coated the mirror and sink. The spatter was heaviest near the sink closest to the shower. Some of the blood appeared diluted, as though water had been spilled on it for a period of time. On top of the diluted areas were fat, chunky blood drops.
Flores recognized the pattern as heavy arterial spurting—the intermittent gush of blood that occurred when an artery is cut. In this case, it may have come from any number of the wounds.
The sink had a combination of both diluted blood and heavy spatter on top of it. When the attack began, the faucet in the sink may have been running. The water was possibly turned off as Travis continued to bleed for a few seconds.
Glancing around the countertop, something caught Flores’s eye—a glint in the sunlight. Flores’s stare shifted from the counter to the floor, where a small brass object was resting in a tacky gob of blood. It was a spent bullet casing.
“Was he shot?” Flores asked the investigator photographing the body.
“It’s hard to tell, there’s so many wounds. It’s possible.” The camera lit up the bathroom as the investigator snapped another photo. “Why?”
“There’s a shell casing over here,” Flores said. “It looks small caliber. A .22, possibly .32.”
The casing was photographed and marked for collection. With a gloved hand, Flores then picked it up. A closer examination revealed it was a Winchester .25 caliber shell casing.
Picture Perfect: The Jodi Arias Story: A Beautiful Photographer, Her Mormon Lover, and a Brutal Murder Page 19
