Picture Perfect: The Jodi Arias Story: A Beautiful Photographer, Her Mormon Lover, and a Brutal Murder

by Hogan, Shanna

  But there was no weapon near the body. A thorough search of the house would reveal no gun, bullets, or holster.

  Flores followed the blood path toward the adjacent wall where two windows faced the street. The white wood blinds were speckled with crimson drops. Some of these droplets were below waist level; others were as high as the very top slat of the blind—over six feet.

  The blood spatter continued low on the adjoining walls, trailing toward the doorjamb of the enclosed toilet room. Flores entered the cramped room, crouched down, and cocked his head, discovering blood speckled even on the underside of the toilet bowl.

  Stepping out of the toilet room, Flores followed the blood trail out of the bathroom and into the long tiled hallway toward the bedroom. On the carpet, near the entryway was the largest blood pool—several days old.

  At some point during the struggle Travis broke away from the killer and headed toward the bedroom. The blood had pooled in large puddles as he fled. The killer had likely continued to stab Travis as he attempted to escape, preventing him from breaking through the double doors and running for help. The large blood pool at the edge of the carpet may very well have been where the killer dealt the fatal blow and possibly where his neck was slit.

  Glancing back down the hallway, Flores noted blood on the tile floor and smeared down the entire length of both walls. Narrowing his eyes, Flores looked closer at the tile—down the center of the path was a section void of blood. For a moment, Flores was puzzled. What could have caused that sort of pattern, he wondered.

  Flores examined the varied blood trail. Large, thick puddles of dried blood textured parts of the tile floor; other areas were diluted.

  Flores opened the linen closet, next to the sink. The shelves were filled with towels, toilet paper, and soap. On the floor in the closet sat a large box of copy paper. On the outside of the box were reddish watermarks about three inches high.

  At some point, likely after the attack, there had been a large amount of water on the floor, diluting some of the blood. It appeared as though the murderer had flooded the bathroom in an attempt to destroy evidence.

  The absence of blood in the path was likely caused as the body was dragged back into the shower. Perhaps the water on the tile floor had helped the killer slide the dead weight toward the stall.

  Flores approached the shower stall, crouched down, and examined the corpse. There were several visible wounds—the most prominent the deep laceration to the throat, spanning from ear to ear.

  Blackish body fluid trickled from a puncture wound in the center of the chest. The flow pattern was consistent with the position the body was sitting.

  The rest of the chest was clear of blood and body fluid. The other wounds on the torso and hands were clean. It appeared as if Travis’s body had been washed postmortem. On the shower floor, next to the body, was a clear plastic cup, which had very little blood on it. The cup may have been used to clean blood from the body.

  Travis’s corpse was photographed where it lay—each visible wound on his torso, neck, and head documented.

  In addition to the blood and bullet casing, the forensic investigators located several items of interest. On the floor and baseboards near the shower were multiple hair fibers. One of the strands was long and could not have come from the victim. The hair would be tested for DNA comparison, which could later possibly be linked to a suspect.

  During the search by the latent print examiner, a bloody palm print was found near the entrance of the bathroom hall. The print was at waist level alongside several bloody smudges on the wall. The print may have come from Travis as he was attempting to break free. It could also have come from the killer.

  The forensics’ team cut out and removed the section of the wall containing the latent print. The rectangular piece of drywall was seized so that it could later be analyzed at the crime lab.

  At about 11 A.M. investigators from the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner arrived to remove the body. The coroner noted the numerous injuries on torso, hands, head, and throat—all of which appeared to be stab wounds. Shifting the remains forward revealed several additional gashes on the Travis’s upper back. As the corpse was lifted, body fluid dripped thickly from the wounds.

  All his injuries could not be accurately documented at the scene because of the amount of trauma, dried blood, and decomposition. The coroner carefully scooped up the body and zipped it inside a black body bag. Travis’s remains were wheeled out of the house on a gurney and secured in the back of the coroner’s van.

  * * *

  While still at the crime scene, executing the search warrant, Detective Flores got a message from a dispatcher at the Mesa Police Station. A woman had called several times wanting to speak to the investigator in charge of the Travis Alexander’s homicide. It was Jodi Arias.

  By then Flores had been briefed on the witness statements and the name Jodi Arias had become familiar. Jodi was described by Travis’s friends as being completely obsessed with her ex-boyfriend. If these allegations were true she had a strong motive for murder.

  Flores was anxious to nail down her statement. She wasn’t yet considered a suspect, but she was a strong investigative lead. Breaking temporarily from the scene, Flores stepped outside the house and returned her call early that afternoon.

  “I got a message from one of my patrol officers that you needed to talk to me about something?” Flores began the conversation.

  “Well, I just wanted to offer any assistance. I was a really good friend of Travis’s. And I don’t know a lot of anything,” Jodi said.

  “What have you heard so far?” asked Flores.

  “I heard that he was—that he passed away,” she said. “I heard all kinds of rumors that there was a lot of blood. I heard that his roommate found him, people were … I’m sorry. I’m upset. I heard nobody has been able to get ahold of him for a week.”

  Jodi told the detective that she had dated Travis, explaining the relationship and eventual breakup. The cause for the breakup, she said, was jealousy.

  “Even though we broke up, we’re no longer boyfriend and girlfriend, we decided to remain friends,” Jodi said.

  “Okay, so you guys were not, like, romantically together?” Flores asked.

  “We were intimate, but I wouldn’t say romantic as far as the relationship goes,” Jodi said.

  The last time she spoke to Travis was on Tuesday, June 3, at 11 P.M., or 11:30 P.M., she said. The week of the murder Jodi said she was in Utah visiting friends. Jodi said she knew of Travis’s business trip to Cancún and had wanted to stay at his place while he was away.

  “That was around April that you last saw him, right?” Flores asked.

  “Early April.”

  “You haven’t been back in town since then?”

  “No, I haven’t at all.”

  Jodi explained that she had heard about his death through mutual friends.

  “I heard a lot of rumors, and that there was a lot of blood,” she said.

  “I can tell you that we’re investigating it as a homicide,” Flores said. “It’s important for us to find out who would want to harm him.”

  Flores asked if she could think of anyone who might want Travis dead.

  “He got his tires slashed. It was last year,” she said calmly. “I was worried about that. He never locked his doors. And I told him—I would tell him, ‘Lock your doors.’ And he’d be, like, ‘You’re not my mom,’ you know?”

  In preparation for his trip to Cancún, Travis had been working out to be able to look slim in his “boxer shorts or swim trunks,” Jodi said.

  “He’s so strong. I don’t see how anyone could overpower him,” she said.

  “Well, yeah. It would take two people, maybe more to overpower him,” Flores said. “So no ideas come to mind on who might want to hurt him?”

  She brought up one of Travis’s former roommates, explaining that he had been kicked out of the house after it was discovered he had been preying on women i
n the ward. Other than that Jodi said she had no idea who would want Travis dead.

  Flores then confronted her with what he had heard from Travis’s friends.

  “We did talk to certain people,” he said. “And they didn’t have the best of things to say about you.”

  He explained stories of her stalking, breaking into his house, and hacking his Facebook and MySpace accounts.

  “He gave me his Facebook password and MySpace password,” Jodi interrupted, explaining that it had been done to reestablish trust in their relationship.

  It hadn’t worked and he had changed his password, she said.

  “We had a conversation where he made it clear he was not comfortable with that anymore,” Jodi said. “We’re both trying to move on.”

  “Why would they start pointing fingers in your direction right away?” Flores asked.

  “Oh gosh,” Jodi said. “I don’t know. Maybe because I’m the ex-girlfriend, we’ve had lots of fights.”

  “Well,” Flores said. “I’m glad you called because there were a lot of concerns.”

  At the end of the conversation, Flores reiterated how important it was to know who had such hatred toward Travis.

  “It was an angry situation. Somebody went in there to hurt him and they did—hurt him really bad,” Flores said. “When we see things like this we know people hate each other.”

  Throughout the conversation, Jodi seemed cool and collected. She asked questions about Travis’s death and seemed genuinely upset.

  Is she a distraught former girlfriend? Or an obsessed, jilted lover?

  As Flores ended the conversation with Jodi, he wondered: Have I just spoken to Travis’s killer?

  * * *

  While Flores was on the phone with Jodi, the forensics’ team had completed the initial search of the second floor. Flores stepped back inside the house and began to investigate the downstairs.

  In the den, Flores located Travis’s cell phone, which was plugged into the charger. He switched it on and reviewed the activity.

  The last outgoing text was made at 12:13 P.M., on June 4, the last day Travis had been seen alive. The message was sent to Chris Hughes. Five minutes later, at 12:18 P.M., someone called the phone and checked the voice mail.

  There had been other incoming calls and text messages, but none had been answered.

  Also in the den, detectives found Travis’s Dell laptop computer, which they impounded. Computer forensic detectives with the Mesa Police Department would later examine the computer, determining the last activity was at 4:19 P.M. on June 4. Someone had checked Travis’s e-mail.

  Based on the computer and phone information, Flores would later roughly estimate the day of death as June 4. Evidence and witness statements would further narrow that time frame to between 5:30 and 5:35 P.M.

  As he glanced around the office, Flores noticed an empty box for a black digital SLR Sony camera. He remembered the camera bag he had discovered in the loft. So far the camera hadn’t been located.

  After combing the remainder of the ground floor, Flores moved the search to the laundry room. As he was exiting the house the night prior, he had spotted a reddish brown stain on the washing machine, which appeared to be blood.

  Earlier this day a forensic chemist had swabbed the machine, confirming it was indeed blood. A sample was taken for testing.

  Flores opened the door of the dryer while another investigator photographed the rumpled knot of brown and beige sheets, blankets, and pillow cases—the missing bedding from Travis’s room. The evidence was photographed, marked, and bagged for collection.

  Next, Flores turned his attention to the washer. Tangled inside were towels, sweat pants, shorts, T-shirts, and underwear—Travis’s Mormon undergarments. Sitting on top of the clothing was a digital camera.

  “This is interesting,” Flores said. It was a black digital SLR Sony—the same make and model camera as the box he found in the den. It appeared water damaged, as if it had been run through a wash cycle with the clothes.

  What is a camera doing in the washing machine? he thought.

  Once it was photographed, Flores picked it up and opened the slat on the side of the camera’s body. The memory card was still inside, although it also likely had severe water damage.

  Both the camera and digital card were seized as evidence and sent to the Mesa Police Department crime lab to see if any information could be recovered. It was a curious discovery. There was no innocent reason for a new digital camera to wind up in the washing machine.

  Whatever images this camera had captured, someone had wanted them destroyed.

  * * *

  Detectives would ultimately spend three full days in the house searching for evidence. Fingerprints would be processed from the master bathroom, bedroom, and laundry room, as well as the front and back doors. A bloody shoe print near the bathroom was also photographed as evidence. Additionally, the faucets and drain traps were removed from the master bathroom to be tested for DNA.

  Detectives would also confiscate various electronics from the house, including multiple USB drives, two Toshiba laptops, hard drives, and a black laptop bag containing a Dell Inspiron1200 laptop. In Travis’s home office, a Compaq Presario V2000 laptop, CDs, DVDs, and a Verizon Pocket PC phone were also seized.

  Detective Michael Melendez, a computer forensic detective, would be placed in charge of recovering data from the electronics.

  Melendez would spend weeks poring through Travis’s e-mail, Facebook, and MySpace accounts.

  By examining the dead man’s final correspondence he would piece together the disturbing final hours of Travis Alexander’s life.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Travis is dead,” Jodi scribbled in her diary on June 10, 2008. “What happened?!? Travis, what is this?”

  In Yreka, Jodi seemed to be in deep mourning. She took to her diary to express her grief.

  “I’ve been numb, mostly. But last night was extremely hard,” she wrote on June 11. “I broke down as I finally brought myself around to going to bed. It was 2:30 A.M. I wanted so badly to call Travis, but knowing he wouldn’t answer was too much to bear. And knowing he wasn’t calling me anytime soon was just killing me. I broke down as I climbed into my bed and cried and cried until I fell asleep.”

  Jodi spent the next few days walking around in a trance.

  “It feels like he hasn’t called me in too long. I hear him singing, I hear him laugh,” she wrote.

  Jodi didn’t have many friends, and even fewer close friends. But over the next few days she reached out to some of the people in her life, including Leslie Udy.

  “I can’t imagine why anyone would do that to Travis,” Jodi cried to Leslie. “How could anyone do that? He was such a wonderful person!”

  To Leslie, Jodi seemed distraught, crying and sobbing. They spoke for several hours. Leslie told Jodi that she would be there for her if she wanted to speak.

  “If you need someone to talk to I keep my phone by my bed,” Leslie said.

  At 2 A.M. the following morning Jodi called Leslie. Through tears Jodi told Leslie that this was the time at night that she and Travis would always talk.

  “I’ve lost my best friend,” Jodi cried. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Over the next few days she wrote poems to Travis. She posted a letter directed at Travis on her MySpace page. Later, she took it down.

  Just days after the murder she transformed her MySpace page into a digital shrine to Travis. Creating an online photo album, she posted twenty-five photographs that seemed to tell the story of their relationship.

  In it were photos of Travis at Prepaid Legal conferences and various images from their trips. The cover was an overexposed black-and-white photograph of Travis and Jodi. In the picture they were sitting close together, their heads touching. Both were softly smiling. Jodi titled the photo “Friends Forever.”

  Jodi also changed her MySpace status, listing her mood as “melancholy,” represented by a frowning face. On her stat
us she wrote she “misses Travis.”

  “See you soon, my friend, but not soon enough,” she wrote.

  The following day she signed his online obituary guest book.

  “Travis, what can I say to you that I haven’t already said? I am so grateful for the endless hours of conversation and amazing experiences we’ve shared. Thank you for having the courage to share the Gospel with me. You’ve had one of the greatest impacts on my life, and have forever altered its course for the better. I love you, my friend, and always will.”

  As she appeared to grieve, Jodi reached out to Travis’s family, sending his sister, Tanisha Sorenson, a direct message through MySpace to express her condolences. Tall and thin, with long reddish-brown hair, Tanisha was a mother of four who lived in Southern California.

  On June 13, Jodi also sent twenty white irises to Travis’s grandmother Norma. The flowers held special significance to Jodi.

  “Travis always told me he liked the name Iris for a girl,” Jodi wrote in her journal. “If I ever have a son I’ll name him Alexander.”

  * * *

  Travis’s family had suffered many tragedies. The Alexander children had lost both their mother and father. Now, they had the agonizing task of burying their thirty-year-old brother.

  Late on the night of June 9, a church friend had called Travis’s grandmother Norma Sarvey, in Riverside.

  “I hate to have to tell you this,” he said, “but Travis has been killed.”

  In despair, Norma phoned Travis’s sister Samantha Turbeville. Thin, with deep-set eyes and dark hair, Samantha worked for the police department in Carlsbad, California. When Samantha later spoke with Detective Flores, he confirmed the worst.

  “We’re investigating it as a homicide,” Flores told Samantha.

  The rest of the family learned of the murder through a series of agonizing phone calls. All the siblings were in a state of shock and disbelief.

  “Everyone loved Travis,” said Samantha, the week Travis’s body was discovered. “His life was about helping other people and making the world a better place. He was a great person and very religious. This doesn’t usually happen to people like him.”