Likewise, Jodi quickly fell for the handsome and successful Travis Alexander. And why not? He was a good man. A boy that grew up in poverty with drug addicted parents. He was among eight children of the late Mr and Mrs Alexander. The Alexander children definitely did not have it easy, sometimes going to bed hungry. This made the siblings very close. Eventually they were taken in by their grandmother or 'mom mom'. She introduced the siblings to the Mormon faith. This was something that was very prevalent in Travis's life. He tried to live his life to the standards of the Mormon religion and the LDS church.
Like I said before, Travis had made it into the big leagues at PPL. He lived his life to the fullest and very much enjoyed spending his money. He was a man who had it all. Looks, money, faith, compassion, full of life and love.
Jodi converted to Mormonism just 8 weeks after meeting Travis. This was Jodi's way to get closer to the magnetic Mr Alexander. The Mormon religion has very strict rules regarding chastity. That was not enough, however to stop Jodi and Travis from quickly becoming lovers. They actually had anal intercourse shortly after he baptised her into the faith.
Travis, it seems, was addicted to Jodi. She became his sexual fantasy. Doing anything Travis wanted in the bedroom. While Travis became addicted to the sex, Jodi became obsessed with Travis.
Their official relationship lasted only four months. After they broke up, for some unknown reason, Jodi (who lived in Yrica,CA) moved just minutes from Travis in Mesa, AZ. Even though they had broken up, they remained friends...and continued their raunchy sexcapades.
Many of Travis's friends saw something in Jodi that they were not comfortable with. This made Travis take his relationship, for lack of a better word, underground. He purchased the book '1000 Places to See Before you Die'. They began checking places off the list. Jodi, an aspiring photographer, documented their trips with hundreds of photos. Jodi eventually moved back to CA and into her grandparents home as her finances as well as her relationship with Travis deteriorated.
In the Mormon faith, it is expected that you marry and 'settle down' by the age of 31. Unfortunately for Jodi, Travis did not view her as marriage material. "She represented everything that he was ashamed of"...he was not proud of his transgressions of his Mormon faith and Jodi was a reminder of the sins he had committed. This did not, however, stop his sexual relationship with Jodi. His goal was to find a nice Mormon virgin to make his wife. He met Mimi Hall and decided that she could be the one. He and Mimi dated and he ended up inviting her on a trip to Cancun. This did not sit well with Jodi. What Jodi didn't know was that Mimi was only interested in being Travis's friends. Travis, however, made Jodi believe that this was the girl he would eventually marry. In early May of 2008 Jodi secretly recorded a phone call between the two of them in which they had graphic phone sex.
Lets back up a little bit. Travis was a flirt. A ladies man. He loved women and women loved him. He also dated a girl by the name of Lisa before Jodi moved back to CA while still continuing his sexual relationship with Jodi. Jodi couldn't stand the fact that Travis was seeing other women, even though they were not a couple at the time and she also was talking to and seeing other men. I believe she did this as an attempt to make Travis jealous. She followed Travis and Lisa on dates, slashed their tires ( his more than once). She hacked into his email accounts, his MySpace and Facebook accounts and even into his bank account. She sent threating emails to the women she believed Travis had been with calling them immoral whores and telling them basically that the only way to 'purge' themselves from these sins was to stop seeing Travis. There are reports that she would sneak into his house through a doggie door that he had installed for his dog, Napoleon. She was even caught hiding behind his Christmas tree in 2007. (MAJOR red flags if you ask me...the doggie door???). She had become extremely obsessed. Sadly, the warning signs were there. Travis, unfortunately did not see Jodi as a real threat. Although he often referred to her as his stalker.
Back to May 2008...it is unclear what happened between the 11th, the day of their phone sex session which Jodi secretly recorded and May 26th, when Travis sent a series of text messages to Jodi where he called her a 'sociopath that only cared about herself'. He told her that she had hurt him worse than he had ever been hurt...that she was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. My theory is that Jodi was blackmailing him with the recorded phone sex. Remember, Travis was a high member of the Mormon church or the LDS church. Premarital sex is the ultimate sin in the Mormon religion. We may never know what made Travis that angry at Jodi. It's a complete mystery that only Jodi knows the truth about. And Jodi and the truth are complete strangers. She is a pathological liar, amongst other things. It is believed that Travis ending it once and for all and the fact that Jodi believed that Travis was not only taking Mimi Hall to Cancun with him but also wanted to make her his wife, sent Jodi over the edge.
On May 26th a .25 cal handgun was reported stolen from Jodi's grandparents home, where she was living at the time. Jodi had planned a trip to Utah to see a man by the name of Ryan Burnes (another successful PPL salesman) in early June. She was to arrive in Utah on June 4th. In preparation for her trip, she borrowed two gas cans from Daryl Brewer, another ex boyfriend of hers. She also stopped at a Walmart in Selinas, CA for a third gas can which she later claimed to have returned to the store. However there was no record of that return. Her reason for the gas cans? Well, first she claimed that it was to save money, as gas was more expensive in CA. But then she filled the gas cans IN CA. Her reason...she was driving through the desert and didn't want to run out of gas. It sounds silly considering that, although it is a desert, there are ample gas stations easily accessible off of the highway. If it was a matter of safety, having a trunk full of full gas cans seems extremely unlikely. It is like traveling with a bomb in your trunk. It's known that she stopped at some friends house (to borrow money, it's believed), the bank to deposit the borrowed money and even for a manicure. She rented a car at a Budget rental center a good distance from her home. She also dyed her platinum blond hair to a dark brown. According to her, Travis begged her to stop and see him. Also according to her, she stopped at a Starbucks on her road trip and when she came out a group of skateboarders had turned her back license plate upside down and removed her front license plate. She claimed she had no idea that the back plate was turned upside down and she only noticed the front plate when she was backing out of the parking spot and her headlights caught the reflection of something which she then discovered was her front plate. If this story sounds a little fishy that's because it was a lie. Just one of many of Jodi's lies. Upon entering AZ, her cell phone mysteriously lost reception. There was absolutely NO evidence, as far as she thought, of her even being in AZ. Only upon entering Utah did her cell send singles to towers proving where she was.
It's believed that she arrived at Travis's home in the early morning hours of June 4th. It is unclear whether or not he expected her or if she just showed up. She knew the code to his garage and entered through the garage door. Travis was sitting in his den watching a video on YouTube. She claims that they were both sleepy, being that it was nearly 5am and so they went to sleep. They slept until about 1pm and then engaged in a marathon sex session. Graphic photos were taken of both of them in various sexually explicit poses. Later in the day, Jodi convinced Travis to let her take photos of him in the shower. She wanted to have 'the effect of the water falling on him' in the photos. It's believed that Jodi lured Travis into the shower making him more vulnerable and, in my opinion, thinking it would be easier to clean up after herself. No one really knows what happened. There are different opinions about what order the following events took place. Ultimately it was the end for Travis Alexander. He was found five days later at around 11pm by concerned friends who had been unable to reach him. He was scheduled to leave for Cancun with Mimi Hall and other friends the following day. What they found in the master bedroom of the home that he shared with a few roommates was a bloody, horrific crime scene. The 911 call states that there was blood everywhere. Photos of the crime scene can be found all over the internet.
He had a gunshot wound (.25cal) to his forehead, 27 stab wounds, one hitting an artery near the heart which would have alone been fatal, although not immediately incapacitating. His throat was slashed from ear to ear, severing his jugular vein, windpipe and arteries. It was immediately obvious that Travis had suffered a brutal death. Travis's friends and family were heartbroken, to say the least. Who would do this to their friend, brother, grandson, mentor? Immediately people began pointing the finger at Jodi.
An investigation started. Memorials were held, with Jodi present, playing the role of the mourning ex girlfriend. Travis's family was shattered. His grandmothers health began to deteriorate and she ultimately passed away late last year, just before jury selection began in the 'trial of the century'.
Ironically, it was Jodi who reached out to police to offer her help with the investigation. Jodi maintained that she had not seen Travis since April 2008. She claimed she hadn't been there on June 4th and knew nothing about his murder, even wishing the death penalty to the person that had committed this 'heinous crime'. The detectives working the case (namely, Esteban Flores) found evidence of Arias's lies. In the washing machine was the camera that they had used for their 'photo shoot'. The photos had been deleted and the camera run through the wash. Unbelievably, the aspiring photographer had inadvertently snapped photos of the murder itself. This was the last photo of Travis Alexander before his horrific murder.
There were a series of photos that were snapped accidentally during his murder that were time and date stamped. In a matter of two minutes you can see, in the following photo that he was already dead or at least very close to it. Two minutes....
This photo shows Travis being dragged by Jodi Arias. That is Jodi's pant leg and Travis's shoulder covered in blood. Not only were the detectives from the Mesa PD able to retrieve the deleted photos, but Jodi also left behind a bloody palm print which consisted of a mixture of his blood and hers. Jodi then left Travis's home and continued on with her planned trip to see Ryan Burnes in Utah, dumping the weapons somewhere in the dessert). To cover herself, she even called Travis and left him a lengthy voicemail. Once she arrived in Utah witnesses state that she acted "like the same old Jodi". She had bandages on her right hand that she claimed were to cover a cut that she received when she broke a glass bartending at her job (there were quite a few different excuses she gave about her injured finger). She claimed to have gotten lost and stopped to sleep, making her a day late in arriving. She attended a series of business meetings, dinner dates and heavy make out sessions with Ryan Burnes.
On July 15, police arrested Jodi and charged her with first degree murder. They found Jodi ready to leave, her car packed...including a 9mm handgun and various knives. She knew that they were coming for her, apparently. But, even faced with the evidence, Jodi maintained that she had not been there. She told detective Flores that if she had killed Travis she would 'beg for the death penalty'. Jodi was taken into custody despite her strange attempts to dazzle the detective with her giggles and hair tossing. The following day, after realizing that there was a plethora of evidence showing that she was, in fact, at Travis's home on that fateful day, she decided to change her story. This time she claimed that she was at Travis's house on June 4th...that they were in the bathroom, Travis in the shower with her taking photos (at his request, of course), when two masked intruders (one man, one woman) broke in and attacked Travis. She thought the intruders were surprised to find her there. She claimed that she was miraculously spared as the gun did not go off when the intruder attempted to shoot her. According to her, the man got her address from her car registration, which was in her bag, and told her that he would kill her family if she told anyone what she had witnessed. She somehow managed to not only escape but to take everything that belonged to her with her as she ran away in fear. This was the story she stuck with for two years while awaiting her trial.
On what would have been Travis's 31st birthday, Jodi sent Travis's grandmother 20 white irises along with an 18 page letter detailing her lie about Travis's death. She says she sent the irises because Travis had once told her that he wanted to name his daughter Iris (umm creepy??). She also began giving interviews to local news outlets, Inside Edition and 48 Hours. 48 Hours collected seven hours of raw footage in which Jodi Arias spoke about how wonderful Travis was and how the world was a darker place without him. She also infamously stated that although the evidence was very compelling, she was innocent. That no jury would ever convict her. "and you can mark my word, no jury will ever convict me".
My next blog will cover the trial. This story is almost unbelievable. It plays out like a movie....in fact, Lifetime is airing 'Obsession; The Jodi Arias Story' next month.
Rest In Peace Travis Alexander. In death you touched millions. Your legacy will forever live on in the hearts of those that loved you as well as in the hearts of the millions that never had the opportunity to meet you but have been touched by your story.
Thanks for reading!!! Working on part 2, The State of AZ vs Jodi Arias, now.
she is most definitely a psycho! what she did was horrendous and heartbreaking to his family! i hope she spends the rest of her life in jail!! solitary confinement sounds good to me!!!
ReplyDeleteShe is evil. I feel so bad for his poor family...and even for her family. I agree with you, the death penalty is too easy for her. She is a total narcissist and not having and audience would be much worse for her then death....have you been following this case? I'm going to start my blog about the trial. Its crazy, the details of this case.
ReplyDeleteSee that's why you have to watch the pretty ones (they cray!)and know how to fight unarmed against a knife/gun like me! They would love her fine ass in prison that's why she wants the death penalty so bad, to take the easy way out.
ReplyDeleteLoL...Sean, have you followed this trial at all? She may say she wants death but that is yet another of her uncontrollable lies. I know this because if she DID want the death penalty, she would not appeal. She has already made it clear that she is going to appeal. As a matter of fact, in AZ, once you are convicted of first degree murder you actually can waive the penalty phase and ask for death, thereby sparing the victims family even more pain. This woman does NOT want to die. She is a celebrity in jail. She said herself in her interview that when new prisoners arrive they ask her for her autograph. She feels as though she is being unfairly persecuted because society needs hate someone. She believes that she has done nothing wrong.... despite the countless lives that she has destroyed.
ReplyDeleteWith that said, she is definitely pretty. She's every mans nightmare....sexy, charming, flirtatious, promiscuous and deadly. Its hard to imagine that there are more Jodi Arias' out there. I am working on the trial part of the story now. Its far too much to put into one blog. I think I'm going to do it in 3 parts. Thanks for reading it Sean :)