Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars (14 page)

In particular, what caught my attention was Julie’s recollection of a phone call she received from Jodi on her way home from the airport following her return from Mesa. Jodi wanted to stop by and asked what time dinner would be served. She told Julie she would be at the house in a few minutes, but more than an hour passed before she finally arrived.

Julie was “shocked” and “upset” when Jodi told her that she had been out shopping for bikinis and lost track of time, finding her indifference to Travis’ death especially disturbing in light of the fact that she had just attended his memorial service. Even more strange was Jodi’s admission that she had exchanged phone numbers with a man named Nick, who was seated next to her on the flight from Phoenix to Sacramento. Julie said she was bewildered that her sister would so freely give her contact information to a stranger and mortified when she heard them talking on the phone later that evening. Even more puzzling was that Julie never saw Jodi cry after Travis’ memorial service. Instead, she appeared “agitated” and “nervous” and was “always” on the phone.

That Arias chose to go bikini shopping on her way home from Travis’ memorial service raised obvious questions about what she was thinking and how she was reacting. If she had killed Travis in self-defense, it appeared she had not been upset or fazed by it, and had moved on in more ways than one.

Arias’ younger sister, Angela, also provided some insight. Because she was a minor, she spoke to the defense investigator in the company of her parents. Angela proudly described herself as “just like Jodi,” explaining that they both liked to sing, they were both very musical, and they both preferred to be alone rather than with people. But there was one important detail that caught my attention, as it related to Ryan Burns, the man Arias claimed to have been meeting in Utah on the day of Travis’ death. Though Arias had only met Ryan once, Angela recalled Jodi telling her how much she liked him, that he was her “soul mate,” and that she was convinced the two would get married.

Arias’ strange behavior following Travis’ death didn’t end there. Even after her arrest in Yreka, Julie found her half sister’s demeanor peculiar for someone who was facing murder charges. She said Jodi was always “upbeat” and “happy,” beginning all of their jailhouse calls with a cheerful “What’s
up?” She next described a postcard she received from her sister in April 2009, thanking her for “saying a few kind words to
The Californian,
” referring to an article that had appeared in a Salinas newspaper. “Everyone else in the family stands by and lets me get slaughtered by ignorant, hateful judgmental people,” Arias wrote.

Bill and Sandy Arias also referenced their daughter’s strange contentment when they had first visited with her at the Siskiyou County Jail. “She was happy as hell,” Bill recalled. Bill recounted a phone call he received from his daughter when she was told that a psychiatrist would be evaluating her in jail as part of her defense claim. He related Jodi’s excitement at learning that she would undergo an IQ test as part of the examination and was eager to see how close her IQ was to Albert Einstein’s. “She thinks she is close to his IQ,” Bill told the investigator.

Her father’s comment reminded me of Arias’ bravado in the days after Travis’ body had been discovered, when she thought she could outwit the police by offering to help with the investigation. She’d clearly had a lot of faith in her intelligence, but comparing herself to Einstein showed just how much faith she really had.

Looking back over the statements of her family, it seemed clear that Arias reveled in her newfound celebrity status and seemed to enjoy being the center of attention, even if it was behind bars. She acted as if the television interviews and newspaper stories were a just reward for a major accomplishment, even if that accomplishment was killing Travis.

Four hours had passed since I’d started reading and I had missed lunch, so I was beginning to feel hungry. I have never fallen into the habit of eating or drinking at my desk when reviewing paperwork, not even a sip of water, as I have seen too many attorneys spill liquids or leave food smudges on shirts, ties, and important documents that then can’t be wiped clean.
I always eat away from my desk, whether it be at our office lunchroom, downstairs at the tables outside the Change of Venue café on the second floor or at one of the restaurants near my office in downtown Phoenix, depending on how pressed I am for time.

It was already past 4:00
P.M
. when I decided to give myself a break. My body was beginning to cramp from sitting hunched over the desk, so I took the stairs down two levels to get the blood circulating. I was still feeling frustrated when I reached the vending machines on the second floor and bought a snack. While the information I had read thus far had been enlightening in terms of presenting another side of Arias, none of it would be useful in disproving her allegation of self-defense, and I was nearly halfway through with my read.

When I got back to my desk, I moved on to the conversations the investigator had summarized with two of Arias’ former boyfriends. Based on what I had already read, it was clear that her family members knew very little about her life in the eleven years since she had left home, so I looked to her boyfriends to provide the best window into what happened to her during that time.

In reading these interview summaries, I learned that Arias had been involved in three significant relationships before Travis. The first was with Bobby Juarez, the young man she had met in the eleventh grade. Her parents told the investigator that Jodi stayed with her grandparents until her eighteenth birthday, when she moved in with Bobby and his parents in a neighboring town. There was no interview with Bobby included in the materials provided by Arias’ defense counsel, and by all accounts, Arias appeared to have lost touch with Bobby after that.

Also according to the summaries, Arias’ brother Carl told the investigator that his sister’s next relationship was with Matthew McCartney, an individual he described as “strange,”
with “long black hair” who had an interest in the martial arts. He remembered their relationship as volatile, with the two constantly fighting, breaking up, and getting back together.

The investigator followed up by speaking with McCartney, who was living in Big Sur, California, and working as a waiter at the Ventana Inn & Spa, an upscale resort where Arias had once been employed. He told the investigator that Arias had been hired to work at the Ventana Inn before he followed and was also hired. He said they lived together in a tent on the resort’s campground for a short period of time.

McCartney said he met Arias through her ex-boyfriend, Bobby Juarez. He and Bobby were roommates, sharing an apartment in Medford, California, when she showed up there one afternoon. He saw her as “perfect,” “perfect body, very creative, very intelligent.” Apparently the fact that McCartney and Juarez were roommates did not bother Arias, as she and McCartney subsequently went on to date for about two and a half years. The two remained friends after the breakup. He described her as having “two different sides,” “a serious side” and an “innocent, fun, and sweet side,” acknowledging that she could be emotionally volatile and had high expectations of others.

McCartney told the investigator that Arias had a lack of grammatical tolerance. He explained that she couldn’t accept the way he communicated and directed him to be “impeccable” with his words, because she needed “exact communication” to understand him. He corroborated this to me later when he told me during an interview in Seaside, California, in July 2011, that Arias was “a grammar Nazi” who would constantly correct him.

McCartney admitted that he would always love Arias, but said they could never be more than friends. He explained that toward the end of their relationship, he felt they needed to spend time apart, so he moved to Crater Lake in Oregon. He
broke off sexual relations before he moved out. Although he tried to end the relationship, Arias was very resistant to breaking up, even going behind his back and confronting Bianca, a woman with whom he already had a nascent relationship.

McCartney knew Arias’ next boyfriend, Darryl Brewer, because Brewer was his supervisor at the Ventana Inn. Brewer was also the food and beverage manager who interviewed and hired Arias in 2002. He was twenty years older than Arias and had a young son from a first marriage that had ended in divorce.

Even though it was getting late, I pulled out the interview summaries with Darryl Brewer. It was already after 8:00
P.M
., and from what I could tell, I was the only person still in the office, as not even the janitorial staff are permitted to be in the building after hours. Staying late was something I had grown accustomed to over the years. The stillness of the rooms and hallways is almost meditative and provides a tranquil backdrop that enables me to concentrate more fully. But I had an early court hearing the next day, and I was pretty much at the end of my energy stores, so I promised myself I would skim only the first few pages of the interview summaries with Darryl Brewer before calling it a night.

The defense investigator documented three separate conversations with Brewer. During their initial phone call, which had been brief, Brewer indicated that he was still in touch with Arias, and revealed that he had advised her not to speak to anyone, particularly the media. But he said she does “what she likes,” and she was encouraging friends and family to sit down with producers from
48 Hours
on her behalf.

Brewer’s second conversation with the investigator provided a little more insight into his relationship with Arias. He admitted being impressed with her during her job interview in 2002. “She carried herself well, had great presence, dressed well, was very well spoken and respectful,” he recalled.

Brewer recounted that he and Arias began dating about a year after her arrival at Ventana Inn, when he was no longer her manager. But after dating for some time, he decided that he couldn’t get too involved with her. He had previously been married and didn’t want to be exclusive because of a son from a previous marriage. Although they decided to pull back for a while, Arias kept showing up and calling him. He described her as “needy at times and whiny” and sometimes “she was clingy.” He eventually capitulated, and the couple moved in together. They left their jobs in Northern California and bought a three-bedroom, twenty-five-hundred-square-foot house in Palm Desert complete with in-ground pool, for $360,000. The mortgage was $2,800 per month, which they agreed to split evenly. Arias began working two jobs and according to Brewer faithfully paid her half until September 2006, when Brewer said she suddenly “just stopped working.” “I saw her change in front of my eyes,” he recalled.

Brewer complained that Arias started to spend all her time going to Pre-Paid Legal Services motivational seminars and meetings, leaving her no time for her restaurant jobs at California Pizza Kitchen and another restaurant, Cuistot. Soon, she had maxed out all her credit cards on car payments and cash advances.

That September, according to Brewer, she went to a Pre-Paid Legal convention in Las Vegas, where she met Travis. “She drove in the middle of the night to get there, just like she was in high school,” he said, recalling that upon her return, she cut off all sexual contact with him, claiming she was now going to save herself for marriage.

Arias evidently still felt comfortable enough to call him and ask for a favor less than two years later, in May 2008. Her favor was related to a trip that she planned to take to Mesa in June.

I sat up in my chair.

This statement was at odds with what she had told every
body else—including Detective Flores. As tired as I was, a surge of excitement coursed through me.

According to the summary, during that phone call in May, Arias told Brewer that she was driving to Mesa, Arizona, and she wanted to borrow two gas cans for the trip. Arias got “testy” with him when he asked why she needed them. Her irritation with his inquisitiveness did not stop Arias from calling him a second time during the last week of May, when she repeated her request to borrow the gas cans for her trip to Mesa.

As I read this description, I wasn’t thinking about her asking for a favor or the gas cans; I was too focused on the fact that as early as May she knew she intended to go to Mesa in June. I remembered that in her second interview with Detective Flores, Arias had mentioned that before she and Travis had sex for a second time on June 4, they had attempted to look at photographs from their recent travels that were on a CD that
she
had brought with her to show him. She had the CD with her in the car, which meant she’d planned this trip. All at once, I realized her trip wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment jaunt. The whole thing had been preplanned. The fact that she’d brought the CD to show Travis
and
told Darryl Brewer about the trip spoke to premeditation and called into question her self-defense claim.

I wanted to continue reading, but my excitement, coupled with the exhaustion I was feeling from my long day of reading, called for me to make my way home. For the first time in months, I would be able to drive home leisurely and enjoy the sounds of traffic as I merged from one freeway to another.

But as I walked to my car, in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about the gas cans. At first, I hadn’t thought much of them because her request to borrow them seemed innocuous, and I wasn’t sure what to do with the information. The more I focused on them, though, the more significance they seemed to hold. As I pulled my car out of the parking garage, I was already trying to figure out how I was going to fit in more reading time when I returned to the office the following day. I had
a court appearance in the morning and knew that I wouldn’t get back to my desk until around eleven. I was anxious to look into why Arias had asked to borrow two gas cans for her trip to Mesa. After all, there were countless gas stations dotting the route from California to Arizona, so I could think of no reason why Arias would even need gas cans in the first place.