While no one doubted that Travis went to Jodi’s room that night, the story seemed bizarre to a lot of Travis’s friends. Sky Hughes said it was a lie, and based her opinion on a conversation she had with Travis in the kitchen the following morning. She was in the kitchen when Travis came downstairs with a huge smile on his face and what Sky described as an “I’m cool” walk.
“Oh gosh, what did you do?” Sky asked.
“I left her wanting,” was Travis’s sly response.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sky asked.
“Well,” Travis responded, “I went in there, we were talking and we started kissing and it got a little more heated. And I said, ‘I want you to know that I respect you, and I don’t want you to regret anything and let’s move slowly.’ ”
And then, Travis told Sky, he left the room, which was what he thought was so funny. Sky took that to mean no sexual activity beyond kissing had occurred. Still, while it’s hard to know whether or not Travis’s words to Sky were the whole story, it seemed pretty clear that an intense make-out session had occurred. Others noted that Jodi’s story seemed odd in another respect: the idea that a man would aggressively insist on performing cunnilingus on a woman he’d just met didn’t ring true to many people. Ultimately it was anybody’s guess how far things went, but something had happened, as Travis boasted that Jodi “wanted the T-Dogg.”
As Sky and Travis chatted that Sunday morning, Jodi and Chris eventually joined them in the kitchen. The four were going to go to the LDS church for the Sunday morning service, even though Jodi wasn’t a Mormon. On the way to the service, Travis rode with Jodi in her car, and on the way back Sky rode with them. During the return trip, Sky found a binder of Jodi’s drawings in the backseat. There were drawings of butterflies, and of lots of people. One was of her sister, and another was of Darryl. Travis asked to see the picture, and complimented her talent. The party ended soon after church. Travis walked Jodi to her car, kissed her goodbye, and she drove off for Palm Desert.
The following Wednesday, Jodi and Travis met at a Starbucks near her home. Travis was driving back to Mesa from California and wanted to meet Jodi to give her The Book of Mormon. He was interested in having her learn about the religion that meant so much to him. Jodi couldn’t invite him to come to her house, because Darryl still lived there, so they agreed to meet at a Starbucks. Over a caffeine-free chai tea, Travis gave her the sacred book, and the two spoke about the Word of Wisdom, Mormon doctrine that bans the consumption of caffeine and alcohol.
According to Jodi, Travis also told her he was horny, and they decided to act on it, driving separately to a local park. There, Travis got into her car and she said she performed oral sex on him. When it was over, Jodi recalled that Travis readjusted the car visor he had pulled down and then put his pants back on. Jodi recalled that he refused to kiss her afterward, saying it was gross. He kissed her on the cheek and left.
Jodi later said she felt “maybe just a little deflated.” She was also a little disappointed in herself, having never been intimate that quickly before. She later said she got a voice mail from Travis, in which he expressed misgivings about the experience.
Travis’s friends believed Jodi twisted her tale to make Travis the sexual aggressor when in reality, they believed, it was actually the other way around. While by all accounts Travis had been a virgin well into his twenties, Jodi had lost her virginity as a teenager and had been sexually active ever since. Josh Denne, a good-looking friend of Travis’s, said he met Jodi around the very time Travis did and couldn’t help but notice she gave off a very sexual vibe. Josh said, “She would just put out that Look, I’m available . . . how ya doin’? I’m interested type of energy about her.”
Josh, who was single at the time, said he realized he didn’t ask for Jodi’s number because, while he thought she was attractive, her nonverbal cues made him uncomfortable. “The energy that I got from her, it’s almost like a stripper-type of energy,” Josh recalled. “She had that look like, Hey . . . you know, I’m willin’ to do whatever.” Josh said Travis was “a babe in the woods” sexually. He had never been exposed to women who used sex as a tool, so he was likely blind to what Josh was picking up on. On the other hand, Travis was the one who first approached Jodi in the casino, so whatever vibe he was getting from her, he had liked it enough to spend the rest of the weekend with her, and then invite her to the exclusive banquet to show her off to his friends.
Not long after the weekend at the Hugheses’ house, Jodi began getting visits from Mormon missionaries. They came for “discussions,” the Mormon way of introducing potential newcomers to the church, on average twice a week. Jodi and Travis had only met a few weeks earlier, but already Travis wanted her to become a member of the Mormon church, and Jodi was willing. This way they could carry forward with their relationship. Jodi had no objection to the visits from the missionaries; in fact, she enjoyed them.
Meanwhile, Travis and Jodi spoke on the phone for hours every night. The calls now typically occurred after 11 P.M. and sometimes as late as 3 A.M. Jodi described them as long heart-to-heart conversations, during which the two talked about everything from Travis’s dog, Napoleon, to religion to spirituality to her interest in the arts and photography. Jodi felt the two were really connecting.
After a month of telephone talk, the two met again in person. It was October, and the plan was for a romantic interlude in Ehrenberg, Arizona, a spot chosen because it was approximately equidistant between their two houses. Travis had even rented a motel room in town for the rendezvous.
Jodi said they were physical from the moment she walked through the door, that they started passionately kissing, and soon they were both naked on the bed, doing the “Provo push”—the equivalent of grinding, something Mormons aren’t supposed to do. According to Jodi, the rest of the weekend was spent in mutual oral sex, watching television, eating at Sizzler, and going to a movie, far more casual than the romantic kind of tryst she had in mind.
Travis also shared scripture from The Book of Mormon with Jodi. She said he taught her about the church’s Law of Chastity: vaginal sex was off-limits, but everything else—oral and anal sex—was okay. Jodi later spelled out what she saw as Travis’s interpretation of the Mormon code, saying, “It seemed like Travis kind of had a Bill Clinton version of sex, where oral and anal sex were also sex to me, but not for him.” Travis’s friends wondered how anyone would be so gullible as to believe that their deeply conservative religion would condone oral and anal sex, especially someone getting regular visits from Mormon missionaries, who were eager to answer every question. In The Book of Mormon, it said plain as day, do not “touch the private, sacred parts of another person’s body, with or without clothing” unless you’re married. Travis’s buddies scoffed at the suggestion that their friend, who never so much as cursed, would try to pull that whopper over on a girl he’d just started dating.
According to one of Jodi’s accounts, despite the sex that weekend, she didn’t feel they were very connected with each other. To her, they had seemed to be much more in tune with each other on the phone calls. Other accounts of hers had her having a really glorious time, so a lot of the highlights and low points of the story depended on her frame of mind. However, that being said, their lack of romance left her disappointed. It could have been an eye-opener for her that Travis might not be the prince of her dreams. It could also have been an indication of what was going on in Travis’s head. If Jodi’s description of the weekend is even true, being intimate in a hotel room, whether they were doing nothing or everything, was likely creating a lot of guilt and angst for Travis. Perhaps there was a part of him that was trying to discern if Jodi was the girl for him. The next morning, the two had breakfast at a neighboring truck stop, but there wasn’t a lot of conversation. After the meal, they went their separate ways, she back to Palm Desert, and he to Phoenix for a PPL meeting.
Jodi started to replay the weekend in her mind when she didn’t hear from Travis for two d
ays. She had called and texted him, but he hadn’t responded. She started to feel a little used, so she was happy to get the voice mail from him later that week. His message was kind and reassuring, and everything seemed to get back on track. The two started talking again on the phone every night, usually about both spiritual and sexual things.
According to Jodi, on November 11, 2006, Travis sent her a photo of his erect penis via cell phone. Jodi was in a restaurant when her phone beeped, announcing that a picture had arrived. She had never received a photo on her new phone, and thought Travis must be sending her a file. After seeing the photo, she slammed her phone closed immediately, being in a public place with the waitress approaching. Some people doubt this photo is of Travis’s penis, although the prosecutor did not dispute it later at Jodi’s murder trial. Based on the two fingers in the photo, which don’t resemble Travis’s, some suspect Jodi used a penis photo she already had and claimed it was Travis’s. Jodi explained that the two had been text-flirting for hours before the photos arrived, with each trying to top the last one’s comments.
Two weeks later, on November 26, 2006, Jodi was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She hadn’t been approved for baptism right away, because she was still cohabitating with Darryl Brewer. During her pre-baptism interview, the branch president asked if she was obeying the Law of Chastity. “Based on a technical sense, yes,” she replied. She had been invited to become a member by the missionaries. She found the Mormon acceptance of all faiths in the world extremely appealing and in line with the faith she already had. She loved their strong emphasis on family and marriage. Her only objection was their rule against caffeine, as she typically enjoyed a cup of coffee every morning, but she could live with that.
At Jodi’s request, Travis, who was an elder in the Church, agreed to perform the ceremony. Jodi even invited her ex Darryl Brewer, but he didn’t attend, nor did her family. Jodi said that even if her family could have teleported, they wouldn’t have come. The baptism took place at the LDS church in Palm Desert. Travis was already in the baptismal font when Jodi arrived in her white baggy jumpsuit, the traditional baptismal outfit. He said a blessing, she dipped into the water, and she came back up. She described the emotion afterward as a very peaceful feeling. After the ceremony, the two went back to her house, began to kiss, and got intimate again.
The way Jodi remembered it, she and Travis were in her bedroom kissing when Travis spun her around, bent her over, unzipped his pants, and began having anal sex with her. Jodi said she endured it as long as she could but that, eventually, it was so painful she had to stop him, after which he ejaculated on her back. At the end of her spiritual day, Jodi said she ended up feeling like “used toilet paper.”
Sky Hughes was at the baptism that day and said it was an awkward ceremony, with not many people in attendance. But, more than that, she doubted Jodi’s recollection was accurate. She seemed to recall Travis going back to her house after the ritual, contradicting Jodi’s version. Sky noted that Jodi’s vivid juxtaposition of religious and sexual rites seemed designed to inspire anger against Travis and sympathy for her. Jodi’s absurd anecdote wasn’t just about anal sex; it was anal sex after a baptism, a sacred ceremony. Indeed, Jodi was no stranger to anal sex. She and Darryl had done it once or twice, something Darryl later acknowledged.
The next month, Darryl moved out of the house in Palm Desert and back to Monterey, where his ex-wife, with whom he shared custody of their son, had relocated. He was done and ready to leave. The final piece of Jodi and Darryl’s breakup seemed to go without incident, and they remained on friendly terms.
Jodi would continue to live in the Palm Desert house as long as she was financially able. Already, she had missed her half of several mortgage payments, and Darryl had been carrying the full financial load. This was the first time since they had taken ownership of the property that Jodi had failed to meet her financial obligations. Her goal of turning her job with PPL into a full-time career was not happening as quickly as she had hoped. While she was realizing some income from the company, sometimes between $1,000 and $1,300 a month, it was hardly enough to cover all her household bills. When Darryl tried talking to her about it, she would tell him not to discuss anything negative. Since reading The Secret, Jodi had been trying to employ the power of positive thinking to change reality by making only positive statements.
Yet she continued to connect with Travis. That Christmas season, Jodi went to Arizona for a corporate event that was taking place in Phoenix. Travis was putting up about thirty people at his place so he told her that because of the guest load, he had no room for her. One of the friends invited to stay there, a curvy blonde named Clancy Talbot, said she overheard Travis on the phone with Jodi explaining to her that there was no room for her to stay. He ended the call by saying he would see her at the event the next day. Several hours later, Jodi appeared at the house uninvited. Her unexpected arrival was particularly awkward, because Travis’s ex-girlfriend Deanna was one of the invited guests, and there were still tender feelings between them. Clancy said Jodi announced herself to the room as Travis’s girlfriend right in the middle of a motivational presentation Travis was giving, and that he tried to make light of it. “He says ‘wait . . . no. We’ve gone on a couple of dates, but we’re not like hitched or anything.’ He tried to be nice to her, but at the same time make sure everyone knew . . . that she was not his girlfriend,” Clancy recalled.
Jodi spent the night anyway. Her recollection of the evening had Travis joking quietly to her that he wanted oral sex, but he didn’t want to be affectionate with her in front of Deanna. She claimed he had even told her that Deanna was “emotionally unstable,” so she tried to steer clear of her. Jodi said Travis was hypervigilant about any public display of affection. Even after Deanna left, they slept on separate couches. After lights were out and the house was quiet, she reached for his hand, and he sat up abruptly to see if anyone was awake.
Clancy’s account was a complete contradiction to that. She said that she had come downstairs during the night to find Jodi asleep under the Christmas tree. Travis had a portable wrought-iron gate so that Napoleon, his dog, could not get to the tree, and Jodi was sound asleep in the secured area behind the gate, curled up under the tree. Clancy said she and some of the others were really put off by Jodi’s odd behavior. “It just gave me a stomachache. It just gave me the creeps . . . a yucky feeling, like something’s not right.”
CHAPTER 11
JODI SPINS
Picking out the strangest moments in Jodi Arias’s July 15 police interview is difficult, but everyone seems to have his or her personal favorite—the headstand against the wall, the slow, seductive backbend, the low lilting rendition of Dido’s song “Here with Me,” the stuffing of sheets of paper down into her pants, or the trifling self-criticism as she ponders her appearance while in the interrogation room. It had been just a few hours since she’d been formally arrested for the savage murder of the love of her life, yet in the windowless room, Jodi didn’t appear concerned with her accused crime. “You should have at least done your makeup, Jodi, gosh,” she says during a moment alone, as if she is waiting in the wings in the final moments before taking the stage and is not pleased with what she sees.
Dressed in white pants, a formfitting gray V-neck shirt, and a pair of flip-flops, Jodi appeared lifeless as the cameras in the tiny interrogation room began to roll. She sat completely motionless, her head lying on the round table in the small room, her hair neatly combed but falling wherever it may in her pose. There was no option of pushing it back out of the way—her hands were handcuffed behind her back, and therefore unavailable for primping. She alternated between sitting at the table and sitting on the floor, back pressed against the wall and legs extended straight out. At one point, Jodi whispered to herself, “It’s cold in here,” but little other action took place until five minutes in, when Detective Flores entered the room.
The detective, in dark blue pants and a lig
hter blue dress shirt without a tie, hid his fatigue well. As he extended his hands toward her handcuffs to unlock them, he offered her anything she needed to help with her comfort, from a bottle of water to more heat in the small, chilly room. He warmly reintroduced himself as the detective on Travis’s case, and Jodi politely told him she remembered him well.
After the niceties were complete, he got right to work. “I know exactly when it happened, when he was killed,” he told Jodi in a matter-of-fact, nonaggressive manner. Jodi was completely without hysteria or confusion, listening with an affect so flat that the only way to know she was hearing anything was by her occasional “okay” or “uh hunh” to a statement. “I know a lot of details, and just recently we found quite a bit of evidence that I’ll discuss with you. The main thing I’m looking for, though, is answers on why certain things happened and why they went so far.” He explained that many of the details were known only to the killer, not even to Travis’s family, and Jodi offered her total cooperation. He then read her her Miranda rights. After she acknowledged that she understood them and agreed to talk, the questioning began.
“Let’s start with this: what have you been up to since Travis’s death?” the detective asked; hopefully, fewer confrontational questions like this would produce fewer defensive responses and make the interview that much more productive than going straight into the crime scene. Jodi talked about both her jobs, PPL and the Mexican restaurant in Yreka, but added that she had been in a daze for the last few weeks. She deviated almost immediately to Travis’s Facebook page and the flood of memorial entries that had been posted since his death. She called her own entry and its “my dear Travis” sentimental tone “immature,” so she had taken it down. In reality, Travis’s friends had been aghast by its over-the-top nature, with dozens of pictures of the couple in happier times. Even after Travis’s brutal murder, she had the nerve to enshrine him like her saint, although she had most likely butchered him. It was a postmortem stalking in the most tasteless manner, with Travis, even in death, unable to shake her or defend himself.
Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias Page 13