Killer Girlfriend: The Jodi Arias Story (12 page)

Their task was daunting. Here is a defendant who had admitted to lying, to creating an alibi to avoid suspicion and arrest, who lied repeatedly about her involvement, who fled the scene of the killing without calling police, without ever checking to see if Travis could be saved.

The self-defense claim, too, would be an enormous challenge. At the heart of it all was convincing jurors that Travis was a violent man, an abusive womanizer who had attacked Jodi at least four times in the past, kicking her in the ribs, breaking her finger and once even choking her into unconsciousness.

The problem was that no evidence or testimony supported her claims. She never called police to report the abuse. She never took photographs to document her injuries — something one would think an aspiring photographer would do without even thinking about it. And she never even wrote about any of the abuse in her detailed diaries.

She would later explain it was because of her belief in the law of attraction, a notion made popular by the movie, “The Secret.” The idea was simple — only put out to the world the sort of energy you want in return. Talking, writing or even thinking negatively only begets more negativity. Jodi insisted she lived by this rule.

But the lack of documentation of Travis’ abuse would haunt the defense. Their only hope was to portray Jodi as the victim, Travis as the perpetrator.

Their case would rest largely on demonizing Travis and portraying him as a liar and a cheat who used Jodi to fulfill his raunchy fantasies, berated her publicly and privately, beat her when things didn’t go his way, and ultimately, tried to attack her one last time on the day of his death.

The defense tactic throughout the case was clear — introduce the jury to Jodi, give them the opportunity to get to know her, through multiple witnesses and eventually, through her own words during 18 days on the witness stand.

It was not an unsurprising approach. The case against Jodi was damning. At the very least, defense attorneys hoped that if the jury did convict her of first-degree murder, they would spare her life after coming to know the gentle person she was deep inside.

And with that, the case went in slow motion, and continued that way for weeks, one day dragging into another as reporters and spectators grew bored with the seemingly never-ending tale of Jodi’s life.

The first defense witness talked mostly about his business mentoring relationship with Jodi through PrePaid Legal, and described her as feminine but conservative.

Next up was ex-boyfriend Daryl Brewer, who told jurors how Jodi had become more involved with the Mormon church after meeting Travis. Brewer also explained that he never saw Jodi become violent or jealous toward other women in his life. But he described her as sexually aggressive — something that did not work in the defense favor — and said she once took a nude picture of him in the shower.

An ex-girlfriend of Travis later testified that he cheated on her with Jodi and lied to her about being a virgin, which played right into the defense case that Travis was just out for sex. However, the same woman said Travis had never been physically or emotionally abusive to her.

Another friend of Travis told jurors about their involvement in the Mormon faith, and again repeated claims that Travis had portrayed himself to be a virgin.

Another dilemma for the defense was the gun — the very weapon she acknowledged disposing of somewhere in the desert as she fled the scene of the killing, and the very same caliber used to shoot Travis.

How could it could such a coincidence that Travis was shot with a .25 caliber pistol, and the same caliber was stolen from the Northern California home of Jodi’s grandparents — where she had been staying — just a week before the killing?

The defense never even tried to explain away the gun. Jodi simply denied that she took it, and insisted that she shot Travis with his own gun that he kept in his closet — coincidentally, a .25 caliber pistol. But again, there was a problem. There was no evidence, no spare bullets, no holster, no gun box, nothing at Travis’ home to prove he ever even owned the weapon.

And no one testified throughout the trial that Travis owned a gun. No one. Not a shred of evidence. But the defense stuck with this story.

At the time, pundits, trial watchers and lawyers following the case everywhere thought surely the defense would have a better explanation. Nancy Grace railed about the case every night, condemning Jodi as a murderer.

Jodi had admitted to lying so many times in the past, blaming it on fear and shame, that one more lie couldn’t have made a difference. She could have easily acknowledged she took the gun, if only for self-defense against a man she claimed had been abusing her. But she didn’t.

The story of Jodi’s entire defense would largely rest on her words, her accounts, her assertions. Sure, the text messages, the phone recordings, the emails, all showed that Travis was clearly not the man he presented himself to be publicly. He was a Mormon. He was looking for a good wife of faith, but he also liked the sex with Jodi. There was just no question about it. Travis’ own words proved it.

But just who was the sexual aggressor in the relationship always remained unclear.

And for the jury to make the leap to self-defense, they would have to believe that not only was Travis very much into sex with as many women as he could get into bed — and some pretty kinky sex at that —but that he was a physically violent man toward women. None of his past girlfriends or acquaintances described him as such a person.

A defense expert testified that Jodi suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and amnesia, explaining why Jodi couldn’t recall much from the day she killed Travis.

Another expert told jurors Jodi was indeed abused by Travis and suffered from battered woman’s syndrome. Enter the prosecution expert who later countered it all, saying Jodi suffered from none of the diagnoses and instead had borderline personality disorder, a severe mental illness marked by unstable moods in behavior and relationships that can lead to brief psychotic episodes.

These dueling expert witnesses would become crucial to the defense case aimed at saving Jodi’s life.

But the key to it all was for jurors to hear directly from Jodi herself. In many death penalty trials, the defendant never takes the stand. It creates too many chances for an aggressive prosecutor to poke holes in their stories, and catch the person off guard, creating a “Perry Mason”-style gotcha moment that could clinch the case for a conviction.

In the U.S. justice system, defendant’s are innocent until proven guilty, meaning it’s not the job of defense attorneys to prove their client didn’t commit the crime. Prosecutors must prove that they did.

Defense lawyers merely have to create enough confusion in the prosecution case to raise reasonable doubt.

And that’s exactly what Jodi had hoped to do for herself.

***

“Ms. Arias, you may come forward and take a seat please,” the judge said to stunned whispers in the gallery.

Jodi got up from the defense table and walked gingerly across the courtroom to the witness stand. She was dressed in a black shirt and khaki pants. Her stringy bangs were combed straight down over her forehead, almost touching her glasses. She looked homely. Bland. Childish. Innocent.

In their haste to get her to the stand before the jury entered the room, court officials forgot to swear her in. Defense attorneys had requested she be seated before the panel was present so jurors couldn’t see her electronic ankle bracelet placed on her by authorities each time she leaves jail for trial.

Now the formality.

“The defense calls Jodi Arias,” said her attorney, Kirk Nurmi.

Jodi stood and raised her right hand to be sworn in, then sat again. The jury was now in the room.

“Hi Jodi,” Nurmi said in a gentle voice, as if speaking to someone at a funeral.

“Hi,” she replied, a smirk appearing for just a split second before her lips shrank back into an emotionless line across her face.

“How are you feeling right now?” Nurmi asked.

“Um, nervous,” Jodi said, shifting around in her chair.

“Is this a position you ever thought you would find yourself in, testifying here today?”

Martinez objected. Relevance. Attorneys approached the bench to argue with the judge privately. Jodi’s mother sat in the gallery stone-faced. Travis’ family watched from the front row just across the room.

Nurmi moved on to another line of questioning.

“Let me ask you a couple of important questions before we get back and start talking about who you are and why you’re here, OK?” he said.

Jodi nodded. “OK.”

“Did you kill Travis Alexander on June 4, 2008?” Nurmi asked slowly, practically stopping after each word.

Jodi swiveled in her chair and looked to the jury.

“Yes, I did,” she said

“Why?” Nurmi prodded.

“Um,” Jodi started, again turning her chair to face the jury. “The simple answer is that he attacked me.”

She paused.

“And I defended myself,” Jodi continued.

Nurmi wanted to get some of the most problematic things out first before he spent the ensuing days questioning Jodi about the minutia of her entire life, from childhood to now.

He asked her about an interview she did for “Inside Edition” after being arrested and charged in Travis’ death. At the time, she was sticking to the story of the intruders, though it wouldn’t be long before she changed the tale once more.

“I understand all the evidence is really compelling,” Jodi said in the TV interview. “In a nutshell, two people came in and killed Travis. I’ve never even shot a gun. That’s heinous. I can’t imagine slitting anyone’s throat.”

Then came the kicker.

“No jury will convict me and you can mark my words on that,” Jodi told “Inside Edition.” “I’m innocent.”

Nurmi asked her if she remembered saying that.

“Yeah, I did say that,” Jodi replied.

“Why?”

“At the time, I had plans to commit suicide,” Jodi said.

She paused to sigh, rubbing her hands on her legs nervously as her gaze dropped down. She lifted her head and looked to the jury again.

“I was extremely confident that no jury would convict me because I didn’t expect any of you to be here,” she told the panel.

“I didn’t expect to be here, so I could have very easily have said no jury would acquit me either,” she continued, explaining that she couldn’t tell the interviewer for the TV show that she was going to commit suicide because a jail guard was nearby.

“I would have been thrown into a padded cell, stripped down and that would have been my life for a while until I stabilized,” she said. “So I was very confident that no jury would convict me because I planned to be dead.”

Jodi went on for more than a week recounting in precise detail one life event after another — from a troubled childhood marred by abuse at the hands of her parents, a string of bad relationships, and how Travis belittled her, cheated on her, call her derogatory names like whore, skank and “three-hole wonder” and used her to fulfill his sexual fantasies.

She explained that she continued to see Travis for sex even after they broke up and she learned he had been cheating on her because she had low “self-esteem.”

“I was kind of a doormat, “Jodi said, staring sheepishly at jurors, a pure look of innocence in her eyes.

She explained how Travis once beat her, pushed her to the ground, kicked her in the ribs and broke her finger, then in a theatrical moment for the jury, raised her hand to display her crooked digit. She later detailed three more accounts of abuse at the hands of Travis, including once when he choked her into unconsciousness.

She told jurors she never sought medical treatment because she was worried authorities would get involved, and that Travis’ name would be sullied. She said she was later ashamed of herself.

“I used to think that women in situations like that, that it was partially, if not equally, their fault because they kept staying there,” Jodi said.

“Great, now I’m one of those people,” she told jurors she thought to herself.

Her testimony was aimed at setting up the defense expert who would explain the realities of battered woman’s syndrome, how they rarely report the abuse and feel as if the violence against them was a result of their own actions.

Jodi then continued to detail Travis’ perversions as she described how she once awoke from sleeping in his bed to find him having sex with her, an incident for which she felt responsible.

“I went to sleep next to him. I was wearing a T-shirt, cute shorts,” Jodi said, repeating over and over how Travis made her feel like a prostitute, and how she fulfilled his fantasies, including wearing boy’s underwear and having sex with him in public.

She also told jurors how she once walked in on Travis masturbating to photographs of young boys. It was a bombshell revelation, but an account that would never be proven. Authorities would find no child pornography, or pornography of any kind, on Travis’ computer or anywhere in his home.

In the courtroom, Travis’ family wept as Jodi kept portraying him as a pervert. Outside court during breaks, friends fumed over her testimony as they gathered in the hallways awaiting her return to the stand.

“She can say whatever she wants, but Travis isn’t here to speak for himself,” said Julie Haslem, a friend of Travis. “It’s bad enough that she took his life. Now she’s trying to take his reputation, too.”

Her defense attorneys’ plan was clear. Build sympathy with jurors. Portray Travis as a cold, emotionless womanizer. Jodi was the victim, Travis the perpetrator.

“What they’re doing is trying to elicit sympathy from the jury, to show, look at what this poor person had to go through throughout her life,” California criminal defense lawyer Michael Cardoza said during the trial.

It’s a good technique, he said, but also noted it could backfire if her testimony dragged on too long into the minutia of her life.

“They could start losing some jurors,” Cardoza said. “They should really step it up and move it along because if jurors get bored, they could stop paying attention.”