Killer Girlfriend: The Jodi Arias Story (5 page)

“I love him. I could not possibly love him not, though I wish I could stop. Turn it off like a lightswitch. Duct tape it down so it can’t turn back on. Or better yet, just cut the circuit. Cut off its life source. Make it dead in a second. Lifeless. A meaningless network of wires that do and mean nothing.”

In another entry, she wrote:

“Well it’s a good thing that nobody else reads this because I write right now that I love Travis Victor Alexander so completely that I don’t know any other way to be. I wish I did because at times my heart is sick and saddened over all that has come to pass, I don’t understand it and at times still have a hard time believing it. He makes me sick and he makes me happy. He makes me sad and miserable. And he makes me feel uplifted and beautiful. All in all I shouldn’t be wording it as though he makes me feel those things. It all originates from within, all of my darkness is a result of my own creation, it is the fruit of my thoughts planted continually and with too much repetition.”

“I just wish I could die. I wish that suicide was a way out but it is no escape. I wouldn’t feel any more pain.”

She also fretted about her financial situation in the diary — and how she kept giving money to Travis even though she was short on money.

If you believe Jodi, Travis needed the cash because he was having financial troubles. His checking account was depleted, and she loaned him about $900 in January 2008 alone, she said.

There is some evidence of this in real estate documents in Maricopa County as he refinanced that year for extra cash.

Travis bought the house at 11428 East Queensborough in 2004 for $250,000, a nice deal for a new place with a stucco roof, three-car garage, two levels and located in a quiet neighborhood.

The value of his house soared in the real estate boom in the three years that followed - so much that Alexander was able to pocket about $80,000 through a mortgage refinance just two months before his death.

By late March 2008, Jodi was sure that she wanted out of Mesa _ and away from Travis. She packed up her belongings into a U-Haul truck to move back home to Northern California.

She went to see Travis one last time, then drove away from his house in the dark of night. But she started getting sleepy and pulled off to the side of the road. She turned around and went back to Travis’ home, unable to leave him just yet.

She needed a new car at this point, but Travis was trying to get rid of his BMW in favor of the more environmentally friendly Prius. He and Jodi worked out a deal where she would take the car back to California and either sell it to a friend in the restaurant business or buy it from Travis. She was really going to move this time.

She placed her houseplants in the passenger seat of her U-Haul truck, fastening them with the seatbelt to make sure her proud possessions were secure. She hitched the BMW to the tow dolly and hit the road.

As she reached the freeway, something was wrong with the truck. She couldn’t get any power; it felt like the BMW was a huge drag. Cars were whizzing past her, honking their horns as she bogged down the pace of the freeway. Smoke was pouring from the BMW. She exited off a ramp and found oil spraying everywhere from the engine compartment. She had left the car in first gear. It was now basically worthless - a used BMW with a destroyed engine or transmission that would cost thousands of dollars to fix.

She couldn’t let Travis go emotionally or leave his orbit.

She went back and spent another night with Travis, then tried to leave again the next day. There was yet another problem: She forgot about the houseplants and left them in the truck. These were the same plants she had owned since she lived in Palm Desert. They blossomed during her time with Travis, and she even moved them into his Mesa house because she didn’t have the space at her apartment.

She opened the door to the U-Haul and the plants were wilted in the front seat. She left town and didn’t see Travis again until the day she killed him.

Chapter 8

A New Beginning

“Desperately trying to find out if my date has an axe murderer penned up inside of her …” —Travis Alexander.

The year 2008 was supposed to be a turning point for Travis. He was trying to put the Jodi period of his life behind him and find a nice Mormon girl he could settle down with. He was thrilled about the prospects of what the year would bring.

At the time, Travis was 30, a key turning point for people in the Mormon church. That is because 31 is an important age for those of the faith.

Members of the faith belong to wards based on where they live, and the wards are broken up into ones for singles and families. The distinction is pretty straightforward, but there is an exception. Once you turn 31, whether you are still single or not, you automatically join a family ward. So Travis was coming up on this date at the end of July 2008, and he was giving every indication he was ready to settle down.

Three weeks before his death - on May 18, 2008 - Travis wrote a blog post called “Why I want to marry a gold digger,” a provocative headline that no doubt raised eyebrows among his friends in the Mormon church and at Prepaid Legal.

Travis didn’t see the “gold digger” phrase as a negative. He noted that it wasn’t about material wealth. He wanted something deeper.

“I couldn’t think of a better phrase to describe what I desire in an Eternal Companion,” he wrote. “I want someone to love me for the Gold that is with in me and is willing to dig with me to extract it.”

It was an introspective post in which he reflected on his single years, joked about how he had become one of the most eligible Mormon bachelors around, looked ahead to married life and noted how his grandmother was only 5 years older than his current age when she had grandchildren.

There were even some delusions of self-grandeur as he imagined himself as some “dangerously handsome tycoon in ‘Time’ magazine as one of the world’s most eligible bachelors.”

“Then I turned 30. As I tend to do, I did a little soul searching and realized that I was lonely. A quote from David O. McKay kept haunting me. ‘No success can compensate for failure in the home.’ I was a different type of homeless, one with just as few legitimate excuses as the other type bumming for change at a freeway off ramp.”

He continued writing.

“Around then I realized it was time to adjust my priorities and date with marriage in mind. Not to ask someone on a date because I planned on marrying them, but to date someone to look for the possibility of marriage with them.

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 …”

To Travis, Marie “Mimi” Hall epitomized the type of woman who was marriage material. They met after she gave a talk at a Sunday service, and Travis approached her afterward to compliment her on the sacrament.

They went on three dates in early 2008 while Travis was still seeing Jodi on the side. Mimi and Travis and hung out at Mormon church events for young singles, such as ice-skating and trips to a lake for a barbecue. They went to dinner and sipped hot chocolate at a Barnes and Noble on their first date. They went to a pottery class. They went rock-climbing at a gym in Tempe. They saw each other at church events, including a book and movie club that Hall organized.

They were part of a group of 20-something Mormons who once went on an overnight camping trip _ women slept in cabins, men stayed outside. No chance for any shenanigans that way.

It was about as wholesome of a relationship as Travis could have ever imagined - really the antithesis of his rocky romance with Jodi. Mimi was a lifelong Mormon and a BYU graduate. Jodi was a high school dropout and a convert to Mormonism. Mimi had a good relationship with her mother. Jodi did not. Mimi ended up working in banking at JP Morgan Chase. Jodi once waited tables at Denny’s. Mimi was a more conservative brunette whose physical appearance was strikingly different from the often-platinum blonde vixen Jodi presented herself to be.

But Hall was the first to admit that there was no real spark in her relationship with Travis, and it became mostly platonic. They stayed in touch via email, text messages and phone calls and saw each other at various church events.

In the months before his death, Travis then reached out to Mimi with a tempting offer. He had a free work trip to Cancun coming up on June 10, and he invited her to come along. Mimi thought about it, and was a little apprehensive. Travis assuaged her concerns by reminding her that they would be staying with a Mormon family, and that Mimi would be sharing a room with the family’s daughter.

So she took him up on the offer and booked the trip. They talked on June 2 about the vacation — excited at the prospect of escaping the stifling Arizona summer heat for a beachside paradise.

According to authorities, Jodi had already begun plotting his murder, fuming with jealousy.

She and Travis got in a vicious fight on May 26. The exact nature of the spat is not completely known, but it’s clear that by this point Travis was really becoming fed up with Jodi’s erratic behavior and stalking. The feud played out largely over text message as Travis fumed over Jodi making a comment on a friend’s Facebook page that referenced the Will Ferrell movie “Anchorman.”

He called her a “sociopath,” “evil” and a “whore” and said she was the worst thing that ever happened to him.

The conversation could be interpreted two ways, and lawyers on both sides sought to use the fight to their advantage at the trial. Prosecutors said it was the tipping point that drove Jodi to kill him. The defense said it showed how much Travis verbally abused Jodi and used her for sex.

Two days later, on May 28, police in Yreka responded to a report of a burglary at the home of Sonny and Caroline Allen - Jodi’s grandparents and where she was living at the time.

Police later came to believe that it was an inside job, carried out by Jodi to secure a handgun for the killing as she made it look like some random burglary. No one has ever been arrested in the theft, and Jodi to this day denies having had anything to do with it.

The same caliber gun was used to shoot Travis in the head. The weapon has never been found.

Chapter 9

Bubble Baths, Porn and Phone Sex

“Is she perverted like me? Would she go down on you in a theater” —Alanis Morissette

One month before Travis’ body was found, he and Jodi had a late-night phone call that provides one of the most revealing glimpses into their relationship, while also portraying the duality of Travis. He was clearly a man conflicted and torn internally, overcome with his sexual urges for Jodi while at the same time trying to be a good Mormon.

Jodi was in a bedroom in her grandparents’ house in Yreka, Calif., and Travis was home in Mesa. Jodi made sure to record the conversation, she says, at Travis’ urging. The entire call was played in open court during her trial, eliciting several cringes from the gallery and Jodi herself during the raunchy, hour-plus chat. Jurors squirmed uncomfortably in their chairs.

The call contained no outward signs of tension or strife in their relationship. In fact, just the opposite. Travis was telling friends at the time that he had grown frustrated with his “stalker ex-girlfriend,” but he gave no sign of any issues he had with Jodi on this particular night, on this particular raunchy call.

Jodi later portrayed herself as a victim of Travis’ unwanted and deviant sexual advances, but on the phone call seemed absolutely into every kinky pornographic fantasy that Travis wanted to play out with her. Both appeared to have their own perversions.

The conversation is also insightful because it is a rare case where the world got to hear Travis’ own words after his death - not just the many one-sided accounts from Jodi that were broadcast over the last five years in TV interviews, news accounts and during her trial.

While there is little doubt that Travis was serious about the Mormon religion and an inspiration to people at his church and job, the call makes it clear that he had a weakness for sex that ran counter to his religious beliefs.

The call was basically a summation of their sex life as they reflected on everything they did together. It included their recollections of passionate grinding in a hotel room in Ehrenburg, Ariz. It went on to include: Jodi introducing lubricant to Travis to ease the pain of their anal sex encounters; his “superhuman” stamina during intercourse; lovemaking during a candle-lit bubble bath; kinky acts such as him giving her oral sex with a tootsie roll in his mouth; and makeup sex that veered into the angry side but was incredibly satisfying no less.

There were also some subtle hints of jealousy and obsessiveness on both of their parts during the call - and plenty of irony. At one point, Jodi talked about how she was blossoming sexually as she approached her 30s, but how she was still a little shy.

“I’m all for the wild streak, but I don’t broadcast it to the whole world,” Jodi says on the call that ultimately was heard by thousands of people around the globe.

It also seemed like Jodi was fishing at various points in the conversation. She asked about Cancun, his other planned trips, and how they hoped to spend some time together visiting Crater Lake and a Shakespeare festival in the near future. Travis complimented her on what an “A-plus ass” she has.

“You’re an A-plus,” Jodi promptly replied, seemingly hoping to elicit something from Travis about his similar feelings for her.

Travis didn’t take the bait. Instead, he responded with a raunchy reference to an act of anal and oral sex: “I’d love doing it to you.”

Later, Jodi turned the conversation to marriage. She commented on how the two were eventually going to marry other people but that it would be difficult for many other Mormon men and women to match the kinkiness they had enjoyed together. She teed it up perfectly for Travis, who had every opportunity to say something like: ‘You’re right - I won’t find a Mormon girl like you, Jodi. I want to be with you.”