Killer Girlfriend: The Jodi Arias Story (6 page)

He didn’t.

“I’m gonna tie you to a tree and put it in your ass, by the way,” he said.

“Oh my gosh, that is so debasing. I like it,” Jodi responded lightheartedly.

Travis then described that he wanted her to be blindfolded during the encounter, and how he wanted to make an amateur porn video out of it. Jodi was now getting turned on.

“Oh my gosh, you are full of ideas,” she said.

Travis clearly viewed Jodi as a girl who could bring his pornographic fantasies to life. She had everything he wanted: fake breasts, a petite body, dyed platinum blond hair, and an unfettered desire to do whatever he wanted in the sack.

His vision for the amateur movie went like this: He wanted to put on a park ranger outfit and bust Jodi for some only-in-a-porno type of infraction such as being nude in public, Travis explained on the call.

The only way out of a ticket would be for Jodi to please him sexually. Travis also wanted to get pictures of him ejaculating inside her in what he envisioned as “legitimate porn.”

Jodi was really getting turned on by now. He talked about her body, her nipples, her genitalia, how she was the “prototype of sluttiness” and “made to fuck.”

Jodi feigned masturbation during the call, commenting on how Travis made her feel like the “most freaking beautiful woman on the whole planet.”

Jodi did draw some kind words out of Travis and she talked about her MySpace profile photos and how she doesn’t look good in some pictures.

“No, you’re pretty,” Travis replied.

“You are just so attractive … I’ve never seen you look bad in my life,” he said, prompting Jodi to play the modesty card. She said that’s not true, she has looked unattractive plenty of times during their relationship.

“There have been many times when you looked miserable and, I like, raped you,” Travis replied.

At one point, Jodi got off, and Travis loved every bit of it. She later claimed she was faking the orgasm, testifying in court that it would have been impossible to achieve climax with only one hand. Her other hand was holding the phone.

“You make me feel so dirty,” she said on the call.

Travis commented on how hot it was to hear Jodi getting off, noting how she sounded like a 12-year-old girl achieving her first orgasm.

“What are we gonna do with ourselves,” Jodi said. “We are just horny toads.”

She had another apparent orgasm later in the call that occurred simultaneous to Travis apparently doing the same.

“If I had a sperm bank I could retire off this load,” he told her.

The talk then pivoted to music, pop culture, film, and some spirited debate about superhero movies, Spider-Man vs. Batman, that kind of thing. Travis and Jodi both liked to sing, so he broke out into the Grateful Dead favorite “Truckin’” and they belted out the Alanis Morissette number “Head over Feet” together.

The whole of the conversation really encapsulated their relationship together. It was a mixture of sex, laughs, jealousy and obsessiveness, social media, marriage talk and reminiscing about their times together.

The good times, the not so good times, the upcoming trip to Cancun that Travis would never make.

The call eventually became a key piece of evidence at Jodi’s trial, including the part where she and Travis recalled how he once woke her up in the middle of the night and began administering oral sex not long after she had gotten a Brazilian bikini wax.

One of Jodi’s defense lawyers insisted at her trial that his comments on the call were not those “of a man who was being relentlessly stalked and does not want to have any contact,” as authorities contended in their case against Jodi.

In addition, the last three minutes of the call effectively summed up what was going on between Jodi and Travis — firmly in the category of “you can’t make this stuff up”:

She made one last attempt to draw some affection out of Travis by telling him he was cute, but he didn’t go there. Travis became distant once their long-distance sexual liaison was finished.

As his yawning grew more incessant, Jodi suggested that they try to “astral project” to find each other in their sleep - a reference to an out-of-body experience in which people believe they can be transported to a different place through their minds.

And Jodi did a rendition of “You Oughta Know,” the Morissette song that has become an anthem for an entire generation of scorned women. It was a prescient reminder of Jodi’s own anger toward Travis that would rear its head a few weeks later.

“Now every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back I hope you feel it,” she sang. ”I hope you feel it.”

Chapter 10

The Road Trip

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.” —Jack Kerouac

Three weeks later, Jodi took a road trip. It was a bizarre excursion, covering 2,000 miles, spanning four states and including visits to four of her current and former lovers. One of them would be Travis.

The trip began in Yreka, Calif. The first leg of the journey was to the airport in Redding, Calif.

At Budget Rent A Car, she told the man at the counter that she was embarking on a small, local trip. It was the first of many lies. He offered a red car, and she refused, saying she didn’t want anything too bright in color that might attract attention - and speeding tickets.

She accepted a white Ford Focus, an unassuming compact car that would blend into the rest of the traveling public, and drove away. She headed south toward the Pacific Coast, winding past the breathtaking views of redwoods, ocean and mountains.

Her first order of business was to visit her old boyfriend, Darryl Brewer. He was living in the Monterrey area at the time and Jodi dropped in to say hello, saying she was on a trip to visit friends. She had breakfast with him and his son while making a strange request that seemed completely out of the blue: She needed gas cans. Jodi also said she went to a Wal-Mart, where she bought another buy gas can for about $12, but later returned it. Authorities said there was no proof of such a return.

Brewer lent her two 5-gallon containers, and she was on her way. To this day, Brewer has never fully explained why he provided her the cans, or if he asked her why she needed them in a state like California that is dotted with thousands of gas stations. Jodi also spent time with Matt McCartney on her trip, as he lived in the Monterrey area at the time.

She kept driving south, to the Los Angeles area. She slept in her car when she got tired and eventually made it to an Arco station in Pasadena. She not only filled up the car, but also filled up the gas cans.

A few hours later, Jodi’s cell phone went dead - no activity at all for more than 12 hours. This is a woman whose cell phone was practically attached to her hip; she was a prolific texter, she recorded entire conversations with her phone and even shot self-portraits during her road trip, but she says she misplaced her charger around the time she got to Arizona. Prosecutors say it’s a lie. They contend that she turned her phone off so that law enforcement could not track her whereabouts during her murderous trip through the Southwest.

Jodi arrived at Travis’ house at about 4 a.m. on June 4. But this was not a normal trip where the traveler calls ahead and lets their friend know what time they are arriving. Jodi showed up completely unannounced, according to police. She says Travis begged her to come.

She didn’t bother knocking on the door or ringing the doorbell.

She knew his garage code - 0187 - so she opened the door and went into the house. She walked quietly, not knowing if Travis was sleeping or if his roommates were around. She crept up on Travis as he was in his office watching goofy YouTube videos of people with tin foil on their heads, oblivious to the fact that Jodi was there staring at him. She stood there for about 30 seconds, and finally called attention to her appearance.

Travis was clearly surprised. But they had done this before, and Jodi had a good enough cover story about her road trip that it didn’t register to Travis what was really going on in her head.

Over the next roughly 14 hours, the two would surf the Internet, nap and have sex, punctuated by her both taking nude photos of each other. She then killed him, hurriedly cleaned up the scene and got the hell out of there, leaving behind a gruesome scene that wouldn’t be found for five days. Yet she didn’t behave like a traumatized victim of a brutal attack. Instead, she continued on her unusual road trip and began working on an alibi.

But her license plate was her first issue. Authorities say she removed the back plate at some point during her trip, presumably to avoid detection given the abundance of surveillance cameras along the route. In her haste to place the plate back on the car, she put it on upside down, prosecutors say. Jodi had a different story. She said that during a stop at a Starbucks, an unruly group of skateboarders messed with the plates.

Jodi was still carrying the gun that she fired at Travis during their altercation. She said she dumped it in the desert somewhere, but only vaguely recalls any other details of the attack and aftermath.

From there, it was on to Salt Lake City to see her budding love interest, Ryan Burns. Jodi met Ryan at a Prepaid Legal conference, and they struck up a long-distance relationship in their few months of knowing each other, exchanging hundreds of instant messages during lengthy Internet chats.

Jodi was supposed to meet Burns in Salt Lake City sometime Wednesday — the same day she had just killed Travis. But by Wednesday night, when she still wasn’t there, he called her on her cell phone and it went straight to voicemail. He was a little worried; it was strange for her not to show up like that.

He finally got a call from a disoriented and frazzled Jodi around 11 p.m. Wednesday. She had all sorts of excuses. She lost her cell phone charger, and then bought one at a gas station. She went the wrong way on the freeway and drove for several hours. She slept in her car. She finally showed up the next morning.

Jodi was going to accompany Burns for a Prepaid Legal meeting, and she agreed to follow him in her rental car. After she pulled away from his house, Jodi saw the flashing lights on a police car. She was already jittery and now she was being confronted by a cop. Had she already been caught? Was he going to arrest her in Travis’ death?

A West Jordan police officer walked up to the car. He started asking about why her license plate was upside down. Jodi explained it as a goof by her friends - they must have been playing a prank on her. She got off with a verbal warning.

Later in the trip, Jodi and Ryan ended up in his bedroom. It got a little hot and heavy as they made out. He commented on her bandaged hands as she caressed his body. He kissed her stomach, noticing that the “six-pack abs” she had been boasting in their Internet chats were no joke. When she climbed on top, he finally pulled back, telling her that as a Mormon, he couldn’t take it any further.

Ryan said later that several things nagged at him during the sexually charged encounter.

“What happened to your hands?”

She said she cut them on a broken glass at her job at Margaritaville in California. She kept saying she had to get going to make it in time for her shift.

Yet there’s not even a Margaritaville in Yreka. She did have a job in there, but at a different Mexican restaurant, so why lie?

The visit was so quick, Ryan didn’t think much of it. Jodi stayed a little while longer and finally headed back home to return the rental car.

She gassed up in Winnemucca, Nev., got some food at an In-N-Out Burger and dropped off the car at the Redding airport. She had put 2,834 miles on the car.

A few things seemed out of place for the Budget staff. Jodi was supposed to be taking a local trip, but traveled nearly 3,000 miles. She rented the car as a blonde, but returned it as a brunette. She had changed her appearance.

The car had some suspicious signs as well. The worker noticed red stains on all the seats - he thought it might be Kool-Aid. And all of the floor mats were gone.

Chapter 11

‘Her Name Is Jodi’

Many murder cases require months of stealth detective work to determine the culprit. It’s never as easy as it seems on TV, where cases are conveniently solved by the end of an hour-long “Law and Order” or “CSI” episode.

But in the death of Travis, it took only minutes to pinpoint Jodi as a prime suspect.

The new woman in Travis’ life, Mimi Hall, helped figure it out. It was just days before their trip to Cancun and she hadn’t heard a word. She repeatedly texted him, but heard nothing back. Calls went straight to voicemail. She was scared for Travis, even more so when she heard from friends that some mysterious woman was stalking him. The days came and went.

Here it was, one day before their trip and she hadn’t heard a peep from him. Something was up.

Friends and work colleagues of Travis were also puzzled. The first sign of trouble came at 7 p.m. on the evening he was killed. It was an hour and a half after Jodi jabbed a knife in his heart and shot him in the head, and Travis was supposed to lead an important conference call for Prepaid Legal.

Chris Hughes, a Prepaid Legal colleague and one of Travis’ best friends, was scheduled to be on it, but Travis never called in. In the next few days, Travis’ cell phone was flooded with text messages and voicemails, from friends, roommates, and even Jodi as she concocted her alibi.

Mimi decided she had to go to Travis’ home in Mesa. She was so worried that she called her mother on the drive over to calm her nerves.

She arrived at the home and repeatedly pounded on the door and rang the doorbell. She saw his pug-mix dog Napoleon excitedly jumping up and down at the entryway, but no sign of Travis.

She went home and emailed Travis. Her fears grew with each minute. She then contacted her friend Michelle Lowery and they went to his house again, this time around 10 p.m. They knocked together. Nothing.

They reached out to more of Travis’ friends and finally tracked down one who had the code to his garage.