Killer Girlfriend: The Jodi Arias Story Read online

  This guy is going somewhere, literally and figuratively, she thought. She was a little taken aback when he extended his hand to introduce himself.

  “I’m Travis Alexander.”

  They immediately had a connection, and Travis gave Jodi his undivided attention as they walked through the casino and chatted. After exchanging some small talk and tidbits about Prepaid Legal, Travis invited her to an executive banquet that night.

  He was an executive director at the time, entitling him to exclusive tickets to the event that Jodi could not have gotten given her newbie status in the organization.

  The affair was intoxicating to her. She was no stranger to high-end dinners, but for most of her life, she was the one serving the meals, not receiving them.

  On top of that, the discussion of wealth was a little dizzying for Jodi. To succeed at Prepaid Legal, you needed to be an aggressive salesperson — always closing, the mantra goes - and the company wasn’t shy about heaping honors on the most successful employees.

  If you make $100,000 in a year, you get a ring. Pull in $250,000 and you get a diamond embedded in the ring. A half-million dollars and you get two diamonds.

  It was a fun weekend for Jodi as she was introduced to a guy who clearly was into her. She and Travis talked about his love of Ultimate Fighting Challenge and the San Francisco 49ers. Even though Travis grew up in Southern California, where the San Diego Chargers and the Raiders were popular, he rooted for San Francisco because Steve Young was the star quarterback. Young is a Mormon who starred at BYU and is actually a descendant of Brigham Young.

  They parted ways after the weekend but made sure to exchange numbers to meet up again, even though Jodi was still living with Brewer in what she said was a platonic arrangement. They talked on the phone for hours on end in the month or so that followed, then decided to meet up in Ehrenburg, Ariz., along the California-Arizona border, to see each other in person. Travis was living in Mesa at the time, and Jodi was still in California, so Ehrenburg was a good meeting point.

  They went to a movie in nearby Blythe, Calif., watched game shows on the TV in their hotel room and had dinner at Sizzler.

  They also hooked up for the first time.

  They started kissing from the minute they walked into the hotel room. It escalated to grinding on each other fully clothed - what Jodi called the “Provo push,” a maneuver that gets its name from the predominantly Mormon city in Utah that is home to BYU. The faith discourages sexual intimacy of any sort out of wedlock.

  At this point, Travis was already trying to get Jodi to join the Mormon church, even sending missionaries to her house in Palm Desert.

  By the end of the weekend, their intimacy had escalated far beyond just rubbing their bodies together. They performed oral sex on each other. They had breakfast at a truck stop restaurant and went home to their respective cities.

  Jodi claimed at her trial that she felt used by Travis during the weekend, “like a prostitute.” But at the same time, she could have just written Travis and the whole weekend off as a silly, passion-filled mistake. Of course, she didn’t.

  She called him Saturday when she was driving home. No answer. She called him again Sunday. No answer. She sent text messages on Monday. Travis was starting to see another side of Jodi, an obsessive one that would rear its head again.

  Chapter 5

  The Mormon Courtship

  “No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” —Nathaniel Hawthorne.

  An overlooked fact about the relationship between Jodi and Travis is that they knew each other only for 21 months. They met in September 2006, and he was dead by June 2008.

  The relationship between Jodi and Travis can essentially be broken up into three acts. The first was the initial courtship that included an introduction to the Mormon church and Prepaid Legal. That lasted from September 2006 until February 2007.

  The second act was Travis and Jodi as boyfriend-girlfriend, a period that covered five months, from February 2007 until late June 2007.

  The final act — reminiscent of a Shakespearean tragedy — was the breakup period, during which they continued to see each other for sexual trysts. It ended on that fateful, violent June 4, 2008, day in Travis’ bathroom.

  Each facet of their relationship was intriguing in its own way, but the Mormon saga was especially fascinating. The story is a clash between the chaste values of the Mormon church and the innate sexual desires of a couple finding it increasingly difficult to resist each other.

  Travis began talking up the Mormon church to Jodi almost immediately after they met at the Prepaid Legal event in Las Vegas. As they began their months-long courtship through a series of phone calls, text messages and hotel hookups, Travis slowly began convincing Jodi that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the right religion for her. She considered herself an Evangelical Christian growing up, but was drawn to the church — never mind the fact that at the time she was unmarried and living with Darryl Brewer, loved Starbucks and was performing oral sex on Travis. All three would be considered violations of church doctrine _ no living with a person of the opposite sex out of wedlock, no caffeine and certainly no sex of any kind.

  Jodi said Travis would always bring up anal sex to her. To him, anal and oral sex were acceptable under the Mormon faith because they did not involve vaginal intercourse. Jodi said that Travis had the “Bill Clinton version,” where oral sex, well, wasn’t really sex.

  It was an utterly false rationalization. Chastity means chastity in the Mormon faith. No exceptions. Jodi also said Travis started sending photos of his erect penis to her via text message, causing her embarrassment on one evening as she had dinner with friends in California.

  By November 2006, Jodi had decided she wanted to join the church. She said her parents, siblings and extended family cautioned against the move, urging her to not jump so quickly into a religion that required so much dedication and commitment. It’s not the type of religion that you dabble in, they warned.

  She met with a church elder to discuss her willingness to adhere to the faith, including acceptance of the Book of Mormon, her belief that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and her understanding of the law of chastity and other LDS tenets such as giving up alcohol, coffee and tea.

  There was a hitch, however. Jodi was still living with Darryl at the time, and Mormons are discouraged from living in the same house as someone of the opposite sex who isn’t a family member or a marital partner.

  They ran the situation by a church official, who made sure that she and Darryl were living in separate bedrooms and not intimately involved. She was allowed to join, and the induction was scheduled for Nov. 26, 2006.

  It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and the day Travis would baptize her.

  Jodi described being nervous as hymns were sung and prayers were read, and a white-clad Travis stood in waist-high water in a font at the front of the church.

  She entered the water, herself dressed in white. Travis dipped her down to perform the baptism. She was now a member of the Mormon church.

  Jodi would later tell the jury at her trial what happened next, but the exact nature of the encounter and the veracity of the story is impossible to corroborate. She says she and Travis drove back to a house of a friend where they were staying. As they entered the bedroom, they began passionately kissing.

  It became more intense with each intimate touch of their lips. Jodi says Travis then spun her around and bent her over the bed and lifted up her skirt, eventually removing her church clothes. He slid off her panties and proceeded to engage in anal sex. She says he ejaculated on her back, they kissed, and the tryst was over as suddenly as it had begun.

  Their sexual relationship was not exclusive at this point as Travis wanted to see other women, so Jodi carried on with her life in California. She went on a couple dates with other men, but nothing serious came of them.
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  The LDS component of their relationship served as a juicy subplot throughout the entire case - at times playing out like a Mormon soap opera as young church members engaged in wholesome activities while simultaneously gossiping about friends fooling around in bed and breaking the law of chastity.

  Some of the stories ended up being broadcast for a global audience during her trial. Travis dated a fellow Mormon named Deanna Reid before he met Jodi and they remained close until his death, with her adopting his dog after he was killed. Deanna and Travis dated from 2002 to 2005 but broke it off because he wasn’t ready for marriage and she wanted to settle down.

  During Jodi’s trial, defense lawyer Kirk Nurmi pressed Reid for details about their level of intimacy. Reid was forced to uncomfortably admit in open court that she and Travis had sex several times. They confessed to their bishop, asked for forgiveness and moved on with their lives.

  Travis made it seem to friends that he was a loyal follower of the church’s strict moral code, a virgin saving himself for marriage, but he clearly had sexual urges.

  He tried to keep up the appearance with the series of Mormon women he dated over the years even as he lusted for what he called his “dirty little secret” - Jodi Arias. She was the femme fatale who caused him to stray from his Mormon values, and who would ultimately cut his life tragically short.

  Chapter 6

  Lighting the Fuse

  “Is this a lasting treasure, or just a moment’s pleasure?” -The Shirelles

  When looking back at Jodi and Travis’ relationship, think of a stick of dynamite. The fuse gets lit and slowly burns, crackling with greater intensity as it approaches the dynamite, then a thunderous explosion ending in a blood bath.

  The fuse was lit during that glorious weekend in Las Vegas in 2006. It only burned faster as the months pass on.

  It was now early February 2007. Jodi had known Travis for about five months - a period in which she was baptized into the Mormon faith, joined Prepaid Legal and fell so hard for Travis that she was willing to engage in all sorts of sexual acts. Again, no one but Jodi and Travis know who was the sexual instigator throughout their time together. Jodi would claim Travis coerced into the raunchiness, but it appeared clear both enjoyed it equally.

  She was ready to take the relationship to the next level.

  Jodi finished her restaurant shift in Palm Desert and got in her car and drove to Mesa. No phone calls, texts or emails to say she was coming - this was a completely unannounced trip.

  She was going to surprise Travis. Jodi testified that Travis made a similar trip earlier, so she wanted to do the same.

  They fooled around in his bedroom most of the weekend, watched TV, hung out with Travis’ roommate and surfed the Internet. The conversation eventually turned to dating - and doing so exclusively. They had seen other people in the early months of their courtship, and there was jealousy on both sides over the thought of either person being intimate with anyone else.

  “When we became what I believed was exclusive it just seemed like the natural next step,” Jodi would later say.

  While they surfed the Internet, Jodi hit the back button to look at something again. Then she kept hitting the button on the browser until she went all the way back to Travis’ MySpace page. It’s not known if it was an accident or the work of a woman who was an admitted snoop, but she found some things she didn’t like.

  She saw an old email exchange between Travis and another woman, but it was before they started getting serious, so she ignored it. They were a couple now, no need to mess up a good thing with a guy she was already thinking about marrying.

  Over the next couple months, Travis and Jodi carried on a long-distance relationship between Mesa and California, about four hours apart, seeing each other on a regular basis.

  They couldn’t spend Valentine’s Day together because of their geographic limitations, but Travis sent her a gift, she says: a package containing some melted chocolate and a T-shirt and pink shorts inscribed with Travis’ name.

  Jodi thought it was funny because Travis had joked he might do something like that. The package contained another surprise, Jodi claims: little boy’s Spider-Man-themed underwear. Photos of the T-shirt and shorts with Travis’ name on them were shown to jurors at her trial. The jury, however, never saw the mysterious comic book underwear that Jodi’s defense lawyers hoped to bolster their claim that the victim was a pedophile.

  In the spring of 2007, Jodi and Travis took a trip to the Midwest to visit Mormon holy sites in Missouri and Illinois before they went to a Prepaid Legal convention in Oklahoma City.

  Despite the fact that they were an official item at the time, Jodi says Travis was closed-off during the trip and refused to give her much attention, in what she perceived as his unwillingness to be seen as her boyfriend in public. She said he continued to refuse to introduce her as his girlfriend as the weeks went on.

  Her jealousy grew later in the trip when a drunken woman started causing a scene at the Sheraton where they were staying during the convention. She was bombed out of her mind, draping herself all over random men and cracking jokes. It was such a scene that Jodi pulled out her phone to capture some video of it.

  The woman was eventually drawn to Travis and started hanging on him. Jodi says Travis went along with it, and Jodi got mad. She retreated to a bathroom stall and cried.

  They made up and went back to their respective homes.

  Despite Jodi’s perceived slights at the hands of Travis, the relationship moved along like most relationships do. There were more trips, even meeting the family.

  Jodi got to meet Travis’ grandmother Norma Sarvey during a visit to Riverside. He still wouldn’t introduce her as girlfriend, she said.

  Jodi and Travis shared a desire to travel together. They were both big fans of a book called “1,000 Places to See Before You Die,” and they tried to cross off the easy ones on the list in their geographic area such as Sedona, Ariz., Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and the Grand Canyon.

  Chapter 7

  The Breakup: Jodi Unravels

  “I love him. I could not possibly love him not, though I wish I could stop.” - Jodi Arias

  Jodi and Travis broke up in late June 2007. She says he was cheating on her so she ended it. Travis’ friends say he felt she was becoming increasingly obsessive and jealous.

  In most breakups, couples want to get away from each other. They move out, avoid public places where they might see the other person, sometimes even relocate to different cities for a fresh start.

  Not Jodi.

  A few weeks after they broke up, she actually moved from California to Mesa to be closer to him.

  She lived there until the spring of 2008 - a tumultuous period of her life that she later described as a roller coaster of emotions. Passionate lovemaking sessions, followed by nasty fights. The fuse was burning real fast by now.

  “I was making a string of bad choices during that time in my life,” Jodi would tell jurors at her trial.

  Jodi had all sorts of hard luck while in Mesa. She had a roommate right after moving to Arizona, but then the roommate ran off to Las Vegas with her boyfriend and got hitched. Jodi had to find a new place to live, and just so happens, she found one just a few minutes from Travis.

  He was a little upset and caught off-guard by the decision because such a move might put her in the same Mormon ward. How could he possibly move on and find a nice companion at church events if Jodi was always lurking? Jodi made sure she ended up in a different singles ward, so everything was fine in that regard.

  She was making questionable financial decisions at the time, struggling so badly to make payments on her 2004 Infinity G-35 that she relinquished it to the dealership. Her restaurant jobs weren’t paying much and she was running up debt with her parents and other family members.

  To earn extra money, she would clean Travis’ house.

  Travis began dating a girl named Lisa Andrews after Jodi. He first met Lisa at church. She wa
s Mormon, too. They talked at ward gatherings and later started texting and talking on the phone. They started dating in July, right after the breakup with Jodi. Lisa was 19 at the time, about 10 years younger than Travis.

  They dated off and on for roughly seven months, and drama seemed to follow them every step of the way. Travis had just turned 30 and kept telling Lisa that he wanted to get married - he was ready to give up the single life and settle down with a nice Mormon girl. Lisa wasn’t quite ready for that, still less than two years out of high school.

  She didn’t know quite what to think when she heard a rumor going around her circle of Mormon friends and family: Travis was seeing someone else. It turned out to be Jodi. On top of that, he and Jodi had been taking out-of-town trips together in what Travis brushed off as innocent little excursions.

  Lisa broke it off, but the always-persuasive Travis convinced her that they should give it another shot. They got back together but broke up again after Lisa said she became uncomfortable with Travis’ unrelenting talk of marriage. She dumped him a second time, but again, they got back together.

  Then, on Dec. 8, Lisa got a disturbing email from an anonymous sender.

  It read:

  “You are a shameful whore. Your Heavenly Father must be deeply ashamed of the whoredoms you’ve committed with that insidious man. If you let him stay in your bed one more time or even sleep under the same roof as him, you will be giving the appearance of evil. You are driving away the Holy Ghost, and you are wasting your time. You are also compromising your salvation and breaking your baptismal covenants. … You cannot be ashamed enough of yourself. You are filthy, and you need to repent and become clean in the eyes of God. Think about your future husband, and how you disrespect not only yourself, but him, as well as become clean in the eyes of God. Is this what you want for yourself? Your future, your salvation and your posterity is resting on your choices and actions. “