Killer Girlfriend: The Jodi Arias Story (9 page)

If the story sounds a little ridiculous, that’s because it was. Jodi made it up. And she told the story to the world after her arrest, including friends, family and journalists with “48 Hours,” “Inside Edition” and The Arizona Republic.

“No jury is going to convict me … because I’m innocent, and you can mark my words on that one: No jury will convict me,” Jodi told “Inside Edition.”

The masked intruder scenario was one of the three stories Jodi would tell since killing Travis.

Faced with mounting evidence against her and major holes in the intruder tale, Jodi changed her tune again. She did it, but it was self-defense.

As part of her new tale, Jodi started leveling a series of accusations during against Travis that cast him as a quick-tempered, physically abusive, sexual deviant.

Authorities believe she made it all up, pulling it out of thin air when she realized it was her only out, the only way to possibly avoid being convicted of first-degree murder: Demonize Travis.

Jodi claimed Travis was a violent man who had beaten her on at least four occasions, once even choking her into unconsciousness. Her defense attorneys would later depict these attacks as the beginning of Jodi’s spiral into erratic behavior not uncommon among abused women.

She went on to explain Travis’ many perversions: She fell asleep on a chair in his bedroom one night and awoke to find Travis aggressively performing oral sex on her.

She said other times he coerced her into tawdry acts, and on numerous occasions caved to his desire for anal sex. He grabbed her butt once at a convenience store while waiting in line in front of a bunch of truckers to make a point that she was his girl. He asked her to find a spot in the forest near Yreka where she could dress up like Little Red Riding Hood and make an amateur porn film. He also once smacked her with the back of his hand while she was driving a car.

As her story went, it all reached a tipping point on the day she killed him. She was already tired of Travis’ demeaning behavior, the name-calling, the beatings.

She said he attacked her one last time, and she killed him.

Chapter 15

Travis Alexander: In Memoriam

“I can honestly say that I awake every single day happy. I am motivated by it.” —Travis Alexander

The death of Travis was an unbelievable nightmare to everyone who knew him - church members, Prepaid Legal associates and family members.

At his memorial service in California in June 2008, his family and friends played a montage of photos from Travis’ life from his childhood until his death.

The presentation opened with the following quote from Travis:

“I’m a simple man really. Smart, successful smashing good looks, a real suitor. I love nature, helping the homeless, and cooking with my grandmother just to create memories”

The presentation included music from Neil Diamond’s “Man of God,” “We’re going to be Friends” and “Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World.” There were tears and smiles in the audience as they looked at dozens of photos: family portraits with siblings; childhood images of him riding a motorcycle, pushing a lawnmower and fishing; his senior and prom pictures from high school; photos of him and friends at Halloween parties, his Mormon baptism and Prepaid Legal events.

There were also several photos of him with girlfriends and other women in his life. One person was noticeably missing.

He and Jodi photographed practically every aspect of their lives, hundreds of pictures from their trips and time together. But there was no image of Jodi in the montage.

“I can honestly say that I awake every single day happy. I am motivated by it. To make it a day better than the last. To go to bed better than I woke up and to do it all over again the next day. I feel as if it is the way to live. To have purpose, to have righteous desire to make this world a better place because you are in it.”

His obituary ran in the Riverside Press-Enterprise on June 17 and 18. His family paid tribute to him with the following statement: “Travis lived each day as if it were his last, with many accomplishments, dreams, travels, and successes. He was an amazing individual who sought out to save the world with his positive influence, his motivational speaking and his writing. He was well on his way to making all his dreams a reality. Travis has touched so many lives and will continue in our hearts forever and always. We can never express the unbearable pain from this tragedy. We love him so much, and cherished every precious moment with him. We will miss his smile, the way he made us laugh and everything about him!”

Chapter 16

“The Person Who Done it … Sits in Court”

After about a month of jury selection, a panel was seated that included seven men and 11 women.

In Arizona, the final 12 who would ultimately decide Jodi’s fate were chosen at the conclusion of closing arguments to be sure the six alternates pay close attention, too. After all, this case couldn’t get more serious. Jodi was on trial for her life.

In early January — about 4 1/2 years after Jodi killed Travis — the trial of the year finally began.

Prosecutor Juan Martinez immediately launched into his narrative, clearly ready to get the trial going after months of hearings and legal wrangling over what evidence would ultimately be presented to jurors.

“This is not a case of who done it,” Martinez told jurors. “The person who done it, the person who committed this killing sits in court today, the defendant, Jodi Ann Arias.”

He went on to describe the couple’s steamy relationship and how Jodi was clearly more into Travis than he was into her, how she was in love with him and had described Travis as one of the greatest blessings in her life.

“And this love, well, she rewarded that love for Travis Alexander by sticking a knife in his chest. And … he’s a good man … And with regard to being a good man, well, she slit his throat as a reward for being a good man,” Martinez told the jury.

“And in terms of these blessings,” he continued, “well, she knocked the blessings out of him by putting a bullet in his head.”

Martinez went on to describe how the two met, their stormy relationship. He eventually came to the events that led up to the killing, a brutal attack he said was at the hands of a scorned lover in a fit of jealous rage.

He detailed the stabbing, Travis’ fight for his life, the slitting of his throat and the gunshot to the head. And he explained how Travis suffered a painful death.

“Mr. Alexander did not die calmly.”

***

It was now defense attorney Jennifer Willmott’s turn to tell jurors an entirely different story, yet one that begins in much the same way.

“Jodi Arias killed Travis Alexander,” Willmott said. “There is no question about it. The million dollar question is what would have forced her to do it?”

Willmott then laid out the alternate scenario. Travis attacked Jodi in a rage. It was killed or be killed.

“Jodi had to make a choice,” Willmott said. “She would either live or she would die.”

The attorney explained how Travis abused Jodi, but admittedly kept coming back for more because she loved him.

“In Jodi he found somebody who was easily manipulated and controlled, someone who would provide him with that secretive sexual relationship that he needed, while on the outside he can still pursue the appropriate Mormon woman.”

She described for jurors the duality of Travis’ life — that of an outwardly devout Mormon saving sex for marriage while simultaneously being a private pervert using Jodi as his personal sex toy. She detailed how he told friends and family Jodi was stalking him, but continued beckoning her to meet him for trysts.

Willmott then moved on to the crux of the case — premeditation — and explained how the time stamps on photographs taken by Jodi on the day of the killing did not bear out a calculated attack. Travis is alive in one photograph, then clearly injured, the attack already underway, in another just about a minute later.

“Now, that very brief moment of time, a minute, is not the result of premeditation. It is not the result of a planned attack.”

The prosecutor objected. Sustained.

“The evidence will show that this is not the result …” Willmott argued.

Martinez objected again, cutting her off.

“Counsel approach,” Judge Sherry Stephens said.

This would begin the never-ending series of objections and private bench conferences between the judge and attorneys, their voices each time drowned out by a recording of static to prevent them from being heard by jurors and spectators in the gallery.

These very first objections and private meetings would foreshadow the long months ahead, dragged out by one objection and one bench conference after another as the attorneys argued over the minutia of even individual words.

Premeditated. That’s how it began.

“The objection is she can’t make the argument that this wasn’t premeditated. That’s just for closing arguments,” Martinez told the judge.

“The evidence is going to show this wasn’t premeditation,” Willmott fires back. “I don’t think I’m saying that the facts are going to show it wasn’t planned.”

“Argue the facts, OK, and the evidence, and don’t talk about premeditation,” Judge Stephens told her.

Willmott was confused.

“I just want to clarify. I think I can say that the evidence will show … that this is not premeditated,” she said.

“I’ll allow you to make that statement at the end,” the judge replied. “Do you see what I’m saying? You can talk about specific facts you believe the evidence will show and talk about how they should interpret those facts.”

“OK,” Willmott replied before continuing her opening statement.

“In that one minute, had Jodi not chosen to defend herself, she would not be here.”

The trial would continue for more than four months in downtown Phoenix at the Maricopa County Courthouse as it snowballed into one of the most watched and talked about cases of a generation.

Chapter 17

#
Jodiarias

“They’re selling postcards of the hanging. They’re painting the passports brown. The beauty parlor is filled with sailors. The circus is in town.” —Bob Dylan

Even Jodi had a Twitter account.

The defendant on trial for her life made a series of Twitter posts, at times even waxing poetic, in a testament to the influence of social media on the case.

“We own nothing but the talents God have given to us to improve upon, to show Him what we will do with them,” Jodi posted in one Tweet from early April, citing the words of Brigham Young.

She took subtle jabs at the prosecutor, posting: “Hmm … Anger Management problems anyone?”

“HLN is an acronym for Haters Love Negativity,” she railed in another post, referencing Turner Broadcasting’s cable network, where Nancy Grace and other shows covered the trial practically nonstop day and night.

A woman in the gallery claimed to be tweeting on Jodi’s behalf, gathering the comments from her during jail phone calls.

“She’ll call and say ‘I have a quote.’ We’ll talk about it. Sometimes she says ‘Let’s tweet.’ And then she’ll say ‘No, let’s not do it,’” Donavan Bering told Fox affiliate KSAZ in Phoenix.

“I think it’s a way of her getting out her frustration, because she doesn’t have a chance to say much,” said Bering.

Jodi gathered nearly 35,000 followers.

Meanwhile, she was hawking her artwork drawn with colored pencils from jail, some pieces, according to her website, fetching more than $1,200. The site,
www.jodiarias.com
, was being operated by a third party, selling the items such as a drawing of Frank Sinatra for $1,075, and another offered for $2,000. Shipping was included.

Her mother told the AP during the trial that the money was being used to help pay for the family’s expenses while attending the proceedings each day for four months.

Jodi’s behavior encapsulated the tone of the circus that would envelop the proceedings from start to finish.

This trial, after all, was as much about the case as it was about the times. The era of cameras in the courtroom had come of age during O.J. Simpson, but this time it would be streamed live via the Internet, carrying the entirety of each day’s events unedited to viewers around the world.

Interest soared with each day of testimony as the public became virtual participants with their own interactions through Facebook, Twitter and any number of websites, including Wild About Trial, whose reporter in the courtroom spent hours on end conversing with enthusiasts.

The year-old company epitomized the changing climate in which the public wanted to consume information about such salacious cases. They no longer seemed satisfied with sound bites on the evening news. They wanted to watch every second. They wanted to interact. They wanted to be part of the action.

Entire online communities revolved around the trial. There was a Facebook page called Justice4Travis that posted all things inflammatory about Jodi, and some really nasty comments. The page had more than 41,000 likes.

Then there was
www.Jodiisinnocent.com
that advertised itself as “The #1 Jodi Arias Support Site.”

The Twitter page @KirkNumri was set up to mock the large defense attorney dressed daily in loosely-fitting suits that hung from his large frame like drapes. Sites emerged about prosecutor Juan Martinez, too, some attacking him, some heaping praise.

The Arizona Republic reported that defense attorney Jennifer Willmott had received death threats, but declined to pursue police investigations.

A transcript of one voicemail left for the lawyer was provided to the newspaper during the trial:

“You don’t have to return my call, but I’m just telling you: If Jodi, if you get her off of the death penalty, we will find you, we know where you’re at, we will kill you,” the caller said.

The newspaper also reported that psychotherapist Alyce LaViolette, a defense expert witness who testified that Jodi suffered from battered woman’s syndrome, was being attacked in phone calls, emails and over the Internet by people fuming over her support for Jodi.