When the words Femme Fatale are said, my mind immediately goes to Jodi Arias. Her relationship with Travis Alexander would prove to be deadly and her toxic, obsessive traits would soon be open for the world to see. This murder is brutal and disturbing, so I do warn you before you begin to read, that somethings will be very hard to absorb.
It was June 9th, 2008. Travis and a friend, Marie Hall, were scheduled to be flying out soon for a trip to Cancun, Mexico. Marie had been trying to reach him for days prior to June the 9th but, was unsuccessful. Travis had missed an important conference call on June 4th. Concerned that no one had been able to reach him, Marie and a group of Travis's friends went to his house to try and connect with him. His roommates had not seen him in several days but had just assumed he had already left for Mexico. They knocked on the door and no one answered so they gained entry to Travis' house through the garage. Nothing in the home seemed amiss and they started to beat on Travis's bedroom door. After a few moments, they went to the door of one of the roommates. He was watching a movie with a headset on and had drifted off not hearing the knocks on the door. After explaining that Travis was not answering anyone, the roommate found a spare key to his bedroom. When the group entered the master bedroom, they were met with large pools of blood and Travis' dead body in the shower. In the 9-1-1 call (not heard by the jury), the dispatcher asked whether Alexander had been suicidal or if anyone was angry enough to hurt him. Alexander's friends mentioned Arias by name as a possible suspect, stating that Alexander had told them that she had been stalking him, accessing his Facebook account and slashing his car's tires.
Jodi Arias was born on July 9th, 1980, in California. According to Jodi Arias: An American Murder Mystery, Jodi was a very attention seeking teenager that always needed to be the center of attention. Travis, on the other hand, was a devout Morman, and was raised mostly by his grandparents due to severe abuse brought on by his mother. His grandmother brought Travis to the Morman faith. Travis worked for a company called PPL as a motivational speaker (PPL is short for Pre-Paid Legal Services).
Travis and Jodi met in 2006 at a PPL convention in Las Vegas. There was an obvious attraction, but the biggest issue was that Travis could not date outside of his Morman religion. Knowing this, Arias decided to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, being baptized by Travis himself on November 26th, 2006. They began dating in February of 2007. Many of Travis's friends said after his death that they all got a strange vibe from Jodi. In 2007, Jodi moved to Mesa Arizona to be closer to Travis until 2008 when she moved to California to live with her grandparents.
Alexander and Arias dated intermittently for a year and a half, often in a long-distance relationship, taking turns traveling between their respective Arizona and California homes. Alexander's friends who knew Arias and observed them together, tended to have a negative opinion of her, stating that the relationship was unusually tumultuous, and that Arias' behavior was worrying. In early 2008, Alexander told acquaintances that Arias would join him for a work-related trip to Cancún, Mexico scheduled for June 15. In April, Alexander asked to change his travel companion to another female friend, Marie Hall. On May 28, a burglary occurred at the residence of Arias' grandparents, with whom Arias was living. Among the missing objects was a handgun chambered in .25 caliber, which was never recovered. This later became significant as a shell casing from a spent .25 caliber round was found near Alexander's body at the murder scene.
On June 2 between 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., Arias called Alexander four times but did not appear to reach him, as the longest of the calls' durations was 17 seconds. After 3:00 a.m., Alexander called Arias twice, the first time for 18 minutes, the second time for 41 minutes. At 4:03 a.m., Arias called Alexander again, and the call lasted two minutes, 48 seconds. Neither these calls nor their transcripts were presented in Arias' trial. At 5:39 a.m., Arias drove south to rent a car for a long trip to Utah, as evidenced by a gasoline purchase in Yreka. On June 2 at 8:04 a.m., Arias rented a car in Redding, California and indicated that she would return the car to the same location. Arias visited friends in southern California on her way to Utah for a PPL work conference and to meet with Ryan Burns, a PPL co-worker. By late evening on June 3, Arias had apparently set out for Salt Lake City.
The following day, Arias met Burns in the Salt Lake City suburb of West Jordan and attended business meetings for the conference. Burns later said that he noticed that Arias' formerly blond hair was now dark brown and that she had cuts on her hands. On June 6, she left Salt Lake City and drove west toward California. She called Alexander several times and left several voicemail messages for him. She also accessed his cell-phone voicemail system. That's not creepy at all. When Arias returned the car on June 7, it had been driven about 2,800 miles. The rental clerk testified that the car was missing its floor mats and had red stains on its front and rear seats. However, it could not be verified that the car had floor mats when Arias had picked it up, and the red stains could not be analyzed as the car was cleaned before police could examine it.
While searching Alexander's home, police found his recently purchased digital camera damaged in the washing machine. Police were able to recover deleted images showing Arias and Alexander in sexually suggestive poses taken at approximately 1:40 p.m. on June 4. The final photograph of Alexander alive, showing him in the shower, was taken at 5:29 p.m. that day. Photos taken moments later show an individual believed to be Alexander "profusely bleeding" on the bathroom floor. A bloody palm print was discovered along the wall in the bathroom hallway; it contained DNA from both Arias and Alexander. Prior to this, Jodi had been stalking Travis by gaining access to his house through his dog door and sleeping on his couch! She would break in and get into his bed naked and waited for him to come home. She seems like she was more than just obsessed....
On June 9, 2008, Alexander's body was found in a pool of blood in the shower of his Mesa, Arizona, home by friends who had become increasingly worried about his whereabouts. Almost immediately after entering the residence, the young men began taking in the heinous crime scene. In the bathroom, they found Alexander with a gunshot wound to the head, more than two dozen stab wounds and a deeply and widely slit throat. Investigators later determined that the murder had occurred five days before his body was found, on June 4, 2008.
Arias quickly became the focus of investigations. She was indicted on first-degree murder charges on July 9, 2008 and arrested in California soon after. Arias initially denied any involvement in the killing, despite the discovery of her DNA mixed with Alexander's blood at the crime scene, but she later changed her story, claiming that she and her ex had been attacked by two masked intruders. After killing Alexander, the criminals decided to let her live, she told the police, adding that she chose not to alert authorities at the time because she feared the intruders might seek revenge.
Testimony in Arias's trial began in early January 2013, which was aired live to the public and became a media uproar. The following month, the alleged killer took the witness stand in her defense, from where she would testify for 18 consecutive days. Already infamously known for her different accounts of Alexander's murder, Arias stated that she had killed her ex in an impassioned act of self-defense. She testified that Alexander had frequently abused her and that she killed him after he came at her in a fit of rage when she dropped his camera. She also claimed to have suffered memory loss as the result of emotional trauma experienced during the incident, with a psychological expert corroborating that she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
On May 7, 2013, after 15 hours of deliberation, Arias was found guilty of first-degree murder. All twelve jurors found her guilty of first-degree premeditated murder, of which seven additionally found her guilty of felony murder. As the verdict was read, Alexander's family smiled and hugged one another. Crowds outside the courtroom began cheering and chanting.
The penalty phase began on May 16, 2013, when prosecutors called Alexander's family members to offer victim impact statements in an effort to convince the jury that Arias' crime merited a death sentence. Which in my humble opinion, would have been perfect.
On May 21, Arias offered an allocution, during which she pleaded for a life sentence. Arias acknowledged that her plea for life was a reversal of remarks that she made to a television reporter shortly after her conviction in which she had said that she preferred the death penalty. "Each time I said that I meant it, but I lacked perspective," she said. "Until very recently, I could not imagine standing before you and asking you to give me life." She said that she changed her mind to avoid bringing more pain to members of her family, who were in the courtroom. At one point, Arias held up a white T-shirt with the word "Survivor" written across it, (EYE ROLL) telling the jurors that she would sell the clothing and donate all proceeds to victims of domestic abuse. She also said that she would donate her hair to Locks of Love while in prison and had already done so three times while in jail. Um, why would you want her hair? Just what the fuck was the reason for that?
On May 23, the sentencing phase of Arias' trial resulted in a hung jury, prompting the judge to declare a mistrial for that phase. The jury had reached an 8–4 decision in favor of the death penalty. After the jury was discharged, jury foreman Zer Vakos stated that the jury found the responsibility of weighing the death sentence overwhelming but were horrified when their efforts ended in a mistrial. "By the end of it, we were mentally and emotionally exhausted," he said. "I think we were horrified when we found out that they had actually called a mistrial, and we felt like we had failed."
On October 21, 2014, Arias' sentencing retrial began. Opening statements were given, and a hearing on evidence was held. Prosecution witness Amanda Webb, called in the first trial to rebut Arias' testimony that she returned a gas can to Walmart on May 8, 2007, admitted she did not know if all records were transferred after the store relocated. After a holiday break, the retrial resumed in January 2015. Mesa police experts admitted that Alexander's laptop had viruses and pornography, contrary to testimony in the first trial in 2013.Jury deliberations began on February 12, 2015. On March 2, 2015, the jury informed Judge Stephens that they were deadlocked. Arias' attorneys requested a mistrial. Stephens denied the request, read additional instructions to the jury, and ordered them to resume deliberations. On March 5, 2015, Stephens declared a mistrial because the jurors, who deliberated for about 26 hours over five days, deadlocked at 11–1 vote in favor of the death penalty. The 11 jurors in favor of the death penalty indicated that the sole holdout juror was sympathetic to Arias and had an agenda. And this, ladies and gentlemen, could have caused that murdering bitch to get a new trial.
Sentencing was scheduled for April 7, 2015, with Stephens having the option to sentence Arias to either life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, or with the possibility of parole after 25 years. On April 13, Stephens sentenced Arias to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. By March 5, 2015, Arias' trials cost an estimated $3 million.
In an interview on April 8, 2015, Arias' attorney Jennifer Willmott discussed the social media furor, death threats she received, Arias' statements at the sentencing, the holdout juror, and stated that she believed that Arias testified truthfully.
In June 2015, following a restitution hearing, Arias was ordered to pay more than $32,000 to Alexander's siblings. Her attorney stated this was about one third of the amount requested.
As of 2022, Arias is housed at the Arizona Department of Corrections #281129, which is located at Arizona State Prison Complex - Perryville. She started her sentence in the complex's maximum-security Lumley Unit but has since been downgraded to the medium security level.
I have written Jodi. I have not as of yet received a response. I will probably never get one. I thought long and hard about it and there were just so many things I had to say and so many questions I wanted answers to. If she ever responds, I will post an update to this blog. Travis was stabbed 27 times, shot, and left to rot in his bathroom. The cut in his neck was so deep he was nearly decapitated. All because (in my opinion) she was not going to let anyone else have him if she could not. She wanted to be Mrs. Travis Alexander and frankly that, was never going to happen.
Resources:
Wikipedia- Jodi Arias
Wikipedia-The Murder of Travis Alexander
ID-An American Murder Mystery, Jodi Arias
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