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

by Hogan, Shanna

  Unfolding the paper, the clerk spoke. “The state of Arizona versus Jodi Ann Arias, verdict count one.” She paused. “We the jury duly impaneled and sworn in the above and titled action upon our oaths do find the defendant as to count one—first-degree murder—guilty.”

  Jodi blinked hard, her lips parted as she sucked in a deep breath.

  Travis’s friends and family cried and consoled each other. Outside, as word spread to the public and the crowd, they cheered loudly.

  Jodi’s eyes welled with tears; her face reddened. She glanced back at her mom, who was softly sobbing. Beside her, Willmott rubbed Jodi’s arm in a comforting gesture.

  The clerk polled each juror, asking if they agreed to a guilty verdict—five jurors had found her guilty of only premeditated murder; seven had decided she was guilty of both premeditated and felony murder.

  As each of the jurors spoke the word “guilty,” Jodi’s face contorted with emotion, while fighting back tears.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes after the verdict was read, Jodi granted an interview with a local Phoenix television reporter. Calm and collected, she expressed shock at the decision of first-degree murder.

  “It was unexpected for me, yes, because there was no premeditation on my part,” she said. “I can see how things look that way.”

  When asked about her sentence, Jodi said she actually hoped to get the death penalty. “Longevity” had run in her family, she said, and the worst possible outcome for her would be a life sentence without parole.

  “I said years ago that I’d rather get death than life, and that still is true today,” she said. “I believe death is the ultimate freedom, so I’d rather just have my freedom as soon as I can get it.”

  Jodi’s comments prompted authorities to temporarily place her on suicide watch.

  Following the guilty verdict, Jodi’s relationship with her attorneys grew increasingly hostile. Jodi blamed her lawyers for her conviction, saying in multiple television interviews that they hadn’t done enough to prove her innocence.

  Following the verdict, both Nurmi and Willmott attempted to withdraw from the case several more times, but the judge denied their motions.

  * * *

  A week after the verdict the jury decided the murder was exceptionally cruel, making Jodi eligible for the death penalty.

  On May 16, during the penalty phase, two of Travis’s siblings gave tearful statements about how their lives had been torn apart since their brother’s murder.

  “I thought my brother couldn’t be knocked down or cut down,” Steven Alexander said, standing in front of the jury. “He was unbreakable.”

  Choking back tears, he spoke of the nightmares that had plagued him since learning of Travis’s death.

  “Why him?” Steven asked. “Unfortunately I won’t ever get the answers to most of my questions. Questions like, how much did he suffer?”

  Sobbing through her statement, Samantha Turbeville described the torment her family had endured throughout the trial, learning the heinous details of Travis’s death.

  “He was full of life,” she said. “To have Travis taken so barbarically is beyond any words we can find to describe our horrific loss.”

  Finally, Samantha told the jury what Travis had meant to their family.

  “Travis was our strength, our constant beacon of hope, our motivation. His presence has been ripped from our lives,” she said. “Our lives will never be the same. We’re never getting him back.”

  * * *

  Two weeks after telling the world she’d prefer to be sentenced to death, Jodi Arias had an abrupt reversal.

  During the penalty phase, standing calmly in front of the jury, she said she “lacked perspective” when she claimed she wanted to die. She begged the jury to spare her life, if only for the sake of her family.

  “I couldn’t image standing in front of you asking you to give me life. To me life in prison was the most unappealing outcome. I can’t in good conscious ask you for death because of them.” She pointed to her family. “I’m asking you to please, please don’t do that to them. I’ve already hurt them so badly, along with so many other people.”

  In a bizarre, nineteen-minute statement she spoke of all the “positive contributions” she could make in prison. Locked behind bars for life, she planned to start a recycling program, create a book club, and donate her hair to be made into wigs for cancer victims.

  “I didn’t know then that if I got life there were many things I could do to affect positive change and contribute in a meaningful way,” she said. “In prison there are programs I can start and people I can help.”

  While she said killing Travis was “the worst mistake of my life,” she maintained she was a victim of domestic violence. At one point she held up a shirt printed with the word SURVIVOR, saying she was selling the T-shirts to raise money for victims of domestic abuse.

  “To this day I can hardly believe I was capable of such violence, but I know that I was. And for that I’m going to be sorry for the rest of my life, probably even longer,” Jodi said. “I want everyone’s healing to begin and I want everyone’s pain to stop.”

  * * *

  As the jurors deliberated Jodi’s fate, she conducted a series of media interviews, expressing little remorse.

  Two days passed and late on the afternoon of May 23, everyone filed back into the courtroom for what should have been the sentencing verdict.

  Judge Stephens addressed the jury. “I understand you have reached a verdict.” Glancing at the verdict form, Stephens’s voice cracked as she said, “The clerk will now read and record the verdict.”

  The clerk spoke, “No unanimous agreement.” The jury was deadlocked, unable to decide on a sentence. Eight favored the death penalty, while four voted for life.

  Jodi put her hand to her cheek and smiled slightly.

  In the front few rows, Travis’s loved ones wept in anguish. Tears running down her cheeks, Samantha dropped her head in her hands. Dazed, Steven stared vacantly at the jury. Travis’s friends sobbed, wiping away tears.

  In Arizona, a mistrial in the penalty phase meant that the guilty verdict remained, and the state had the option of accepting a life sentence or convening a new jury to retry the penalty phase.

  The lack of courtroom closure was devastating—Travis’s family so yearned to end this horrifying chapter of their lives.

  They found peace in the knowledge that regardless of the ultimate punishment, Jodi Arias had been held accountable for the murder of Travis Alexander.

  Over the last five agonizing years, in times of great despair, Travis’s siblings had sought strength in remembering their brother’s remarkable spirit.

  In life, one of Travis’s sayings had been: “The difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone is the character of the individual walking the path.”

  In this case, the road to justice was long and paved with many stumbling blocks. Walking that path many others would have faltered, but those who loved Travis refused to fall.

  AFTERWORD

  May 8, 2013

  Today the house on East Queensborough Avenue bares little resemblance to the crime scene it was on the day Travis Alexander’s decomposing remains were discovered upstairs in the master bathroom shower.

  Absent are the red and blue revolving lights reflecting off the glossy yellow crime scene tape. Police officers no long swarm the property among the weeping, distraught witnesses standing by the curb.

  Sold and occupied since 2009, the interior of the house has been remodeled—the carpet replaced, the walls repainted, the hole in the bathroom hallway covered with fresh drywall.

  Still, every once in a while one of Travis’s friends will drive by the house and see the windows glowing brightly from outside on the street, sparking memories of how it appeared when Travis was still alive.

  I first passed by the house in 2009, around the time I began covering the case as a writer for a Phoenix-based magazine. I was curious to get a
glimpse of the property that had served as Travis’s mausoleum for five long days in June 2008.

  When I first heard about the case, I was immediately intrigued by the tale of the attractive aspiring photographer who was apprehended because she had accidentally photographed her victim.

  As I began researching the background of both Travis and Jodi, however, I quickly learned the story ran much deeper. Searching online, I discovered their blogs and respective MySpace pages, and was amazed by how much of this case played out through social media.

  Online, Travis and Jodi’s lives seem frozen in June 2008. Travis’s childhood—written in his own words—remains posted on his blog. Photos from their many trips are displayed on their respective MySpace accounts. And most haunting is Jodi’s final MySpace status update, which remains in cyberspace: “Jodi Arias misses Travis Alexander.”

  In a twist unique to the Internet age, the story has continued to develop online. During the trial, hundreds of Web sites, blogs, and Facebook groups were established where people dissected each detail with rapt attention—some describing it as an obsession.

  Today, even after the verdict, Travis’s memory continues to live on through social media. The memorial group established for Travis has attracted thousands of members—most of them strangers who felt somehow connected to his story.

  As the trial progressed, however, I believe the story became detached from its foundations. Instead of a tale of obsession and murder, it devolved into a debate over domestic violence and sexual deviancy. Many people lost sight of the story’s real victim.

  Travis wasn’t a saint, but he also wasn’t a deviant. Throughout his life he tried to be a good person and I don’t think he ever fully realized the effect he had on Jodi. To maintain the closeness in their relationship, Jodi tried to seem so at ease with their nonmonogamous sexual relationship. She feigned tolerance of the fact he was dating other women, all the while desperately in love and seething with jealousy.

  The intense chemistry that brought them together festered inside Jodi to the extent she could no longer imagine a life without Travis—an admission she made in her own diary.

  Sometime in the spring of 2008, I believe that Jodi decided Travis had to die. And so she began planning her crime.

  Meanwhile, Travis had begun to see Jodi for what she truly was—a liar and a sociopath. It is possible Travis’s blog also contributed to Jodi’s breakdown. In his last entry he had written about how after he turned thirty he decided to date with “marriage in mind.” For Jodi, it must have been like a knife to the heart to realize she was never marriage material—that she was just someone to keep his bed warm until a nice Mormon girl came along.

  By late May, Jodi had begun plotting the murder—taking special care to rent a plain colored vehicle, outside of Yreka, to avoid detection. Then, she began establishing an alibi, stopping to see her ex-boyfriend and borrowing gas cans to prevent being captured on surveillance videos making any purchases.

  When she arrived at Travis’s home in Mesa at 4 A.M., she didn’t kill him right away, likely because his roommates were home. It was possible she wanted one last night with the man she loved, one more chance to say good-bye.

  The next evening she lured him into the shower with a photo shoot, possibly as a ploy to get him naked and vulnerable. While snapping photos, she may have even held the knife and gun behind her back, in the waistband of her pants.

  Jodi directed him to the shower floor and snapped one more picture before plunging the knife into Travis’s body. As he was being attacked, if even for a split second, I imagine it finally dawned on Travis—for maybe the first time—how truly dangerous Jodi had become.

  By the time he was shot and his throat was slit, Travis was already a dead man. Somehow he made it all the way to the edge of the bathroom hallway, where he collapsed and died.

  After the murder, Jodi dragged Travis to the shower, cleaned up the crime scene, and deleted the photos from the camera. She thought she was smart enough to get away with the crime. Instead, every measure she took to ensure she wouldn’t be caught left a trail of evidence that proved premeditation.

  At some point after years in jail, I believe Jodi started to transfer blame onto Travis, continuing the assault on his character in an attempt to paint herself as the victim.

  Through it all, Jodi maintained an almost peculiar interest in her reputation. She said as much in court—admitting she lied to the police and the media because she cared about how she was being perceived.

  In my personal encounters with Jodi, I experienced this firsthand. Before the trial, I had sent postcards to Jodi in jail, informing her I was writing a book. Before granting an interview, she requested a copy of my first book, which I sent to the Estrella Jail.

  Weeks later, during a preliminary hearing, I was in court when Jodi gave me a double take, apparently recognizing me from my photo on the back inside cover of my book. Soon after, she delivered a message to me: “If you ever want an interview, you are sitting on the wrong side of the courtroom.”

  At the time I was sitting where the media was permitted, which I explained to Jodi in a subsequent postcard. But the encounter made me realize something surprising about Jodi. Even as an accused murderer, and a documented liar, she still cared deeply about how she was perceived. It bothered her that someone writing a book on her case would be “against her,” on the other side of the courtroom.

  While I once considered interviewing Jodi for this book, after she took the witness stand I realized it would have been futile—I would have never learned the truth. Speaking for hours in television interviews and in court, Jodi publicly said all I needed to know to fairly convey her perspective.

  For me, only one question remains unanswered. If I spoke to Jodi I would want to know, during the last five years, how many days have gone by where Travis hasn’t consumed her thoughts? Back in 2008, Jodi was so fixated on Travis that she couldn’t imagine a future without him. After years in jail, have the daily comings and going of a life in confinement erased the deep imprint Travis left on her heart?

  Anyone who has ever experienced unrequited love can understand the pain of heartbreak, although most people walk away. As difficult as it is to believe at the time, eventually the pain and attachment subside.

  If only Jodi had moved on when she moved away; if only Travis realized how crazed she had become—both their lives would have turned out much differently. Instead, Jodi decided to slaughter Travis in one of the most monstrous ways imaginable. And in doing so, she tossed away her own life.

  Locked away in prison until the day she dies, time will stand still for Jodi. While she will certainly make new memories, experiences, and interactions with other inmates, as the years pass, she won’t move forward in life. Her life will never exist outside those looming prison walls. She’ll never be a wife or mother—goals she once cherished.

  If in life we are defined by our actions, then Travis and Jodi will leave behind very different legacies.

  Jodi will be forever haunted by her most unpardonable actions, permanently linked in history to the man she killed.

  To the thousands of lives he touched, however, I don’t believe Travis will be defined by the way he died, but by how he lived.

  In the end Travis’s memory will extend far beyond that of a murder victim. But Jodi Arias will never be more than a cruel, calculating killer.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When I first started this project in 2010—years before Jodi Arias became a household name—I had no idea where this story would take me or the level of exposure the trial would garner.

  Throughout 2013, as the publicity grew, I often gave commentary on TV about the case. During many of these interviews I was asked to give my opinion—one which I tried to leave out of the pages of this book until the final chapter. For the story I tried to show just the facts and let the readers decide for themselves.

  I would like to thank those who helped me give Travis a voice, including his many frien
ds who interviewed with me for this project. First and foremost I would like to express my gratitude to Taylor Searle, for trusting me exclusively with personal audio recordings, text messages, and instant message conversations he had with Travis. Because of these, Travis was able to tell much of his own life story in the pages of this book.

  I would also like to thank Chris and Sky Hughes, who worked closely with me over two years to help form an accurate portrayal of the relationship between Travis and Jodi.

  In addition, I’d like to express my appreciation to Juan Martinez, Esteban Flores, and the dozens of other police officers and detectives who were involved in Jodi’s arrest and conviction.

  Thanks to Travis’s siblings who supported this project. I have tremendous sympathy for your loss and my condolences are with you and your loved ones.

  I owe special gratitude to my literary agent, Sharlene Martin, for her continual support of my career. Additionally, my gratitude goes out to my superb editors at St. Martin’s Press: April Osborn and Charles Spicer.

  On a personal note, thank you to Kimberly Hundley for your editing advice. To my beloved Mimi, Carol Hogan, for being my first reader—I send my love. To my entire family, namely my parents, Dann and Debbie Hogan, as well as my mother-in-law, Joann LaRussa—I truly love and appreciate you.

  Most important, I would like to thank the one person who has made my career possible and my life remarkable, my husband, Matt LaRussa.

  As a motivational speaker for Prepaid Legal, Travis used his own background to encourage others to achieve their ultimate potential. Courtesy of Prepaid Legal

  After discovering the book, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, Travis and Jodi began traveling the country, crossing off destinations on the list. In 2007, they visited the Sacred Grove, a forested area near the border of western New York, across from the former home of Joseph Smith, the prophet founder of the Latter-day Saints movement. Courtesy of the Alexander family