Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars (8 page)

“The reason I care about that is because he was adamant about that, and a couple times we prayed about it. It didn’t work or we didn’t stick to our, you know, guns on it and um, one time a girlfriend of mine just said, ‘Why don’t you just go to the Bishop and talk and ask Travis the same?’ And I talked to him about it and he got really angry. He said, ‘I’ve already had problems with this in the past. I’m embarrassed by it, I don’t want to go to the Bishop.’ And so we just kind of stopped
for like a few weeks, and then that must have been in, I think it was August and then it just resumed.”

As I watched the video over the course of several hours, I came across numerous things that would be helpful in my preparation of the case—ranging from small incongruous details in her story to Arias’ ability to maintain her composure. More than anything, though, I was able to discern how she attempted to manipulate the situation to her advantage and buy herself time to respond to Flores’ questions.

Detective Flores wanted Arias to know that as part of the police investigation, he’d read Travis’ journals, and he told her that they indicated that Travis felt his relationship with Arias was unhealthy. “Maybe you didn’t understand why he didn’t believe it was healthy?”

“No, I didn’t think it was healthy, either, spiritually at least and probably emotionally, but mostly spiritually. . . . And once you have something that’s not healthy spiritually, it filters through all aspects of your life.”

Arias continued, saying that while that was one of the reasons she moved back to Yreka, it was not the primary reason. Instead, she cited financial hardship, followed by a desire to be closer to her family, particularly her younger siblings, as her number one and two reasons. But also, as she put it, “too much of my nightlife was about” Travis.

She went on to describe Travis’ supposed late-night requests to see her, saying that “he would text me and, ‘Hey, I’m getting sleepy,’ dot, dot, dot, and a bunch of Zs, and that was code to, like, come on over kind of thing . . .”

As I listened to her describe the relationship, it was easy to see the routine that their relationship had apparently taken. As Arias described it, “I lived five minutes away to maybe ten, depending, and it was just too convenient and too easy, and it was fun and we had fun when we were together, and so it wasn’t healthy and I totally agree with that.”

At different points during the interview, Arias talked about
how she and Travis struggled with the sexual dynamic of their relationship. When she was trying to find work, Travis offered her a job cleaning his house to help her pay her bills, and she grew animated as she described a photo of a French maid’s outfit that he purportedly e-mailed to her, instructing her to wear this kind of ensemble on her first day of work. For a tumultuous period of time, the two of them had carried on a secret sexual relationship, characterized by fits of jealousy and deceit. According to her, Travis’ friends warned Arias that he was actively dating and looking elsewhere for a mate, and she recalled how one of his friends in particular had even confronted Travis about his behavior, asking, “Why do you kiss Jodi in the dark and then act like you guys aren’t even together in the daytime?”

Throughout the two days of interviews, it seemed clear to me that Arias was playing the part of the victim, whether it was crying about her father’s failing health, expressing her love for her family, or complaining of Travis’ infidelity. But that was not a role that was written for her, at least not under these circumstances. It appeared she thought her sob story would go a long way in making things easier for her, but given the accusations being leveled, it showed remarkable self-centeredness. She seemed to exude a confidence that she could control the interview, and by extension Detective Flores, if she came across as sympathetic.

Flores remained undeterred, digging into each facet of Arias’ relationship with Travis as he tried to have his questions answered. I found it interesting that she was evasive with Detective Flores as to why she moved to Mesa after the breakup. Rather than address her stalking behavior, she chose to ramble about different living arrangements she had worked out that would allow her to be in Mesa, but within a safe and appropriate distance of Travis and his church ward. She even claimed that it had been Travis who had talked her into moving back to Arizona, suggesting that when she entertained the idea of
moving to Southern California, he had offered up a litany of reasons why Mesa would be the more desirable location. “And he’s really, he’s, he’s really persuasive,” she said, smiling.

“He persuaded you to stay there in Mesa?” Flores asked, a tone of disbelief in his voice.

“Uh, he’s, he kind of was playing up all the advantages if I did come to Mesa . . . you know, ‘It’s a great place. We could still see each other and hang out on occasion. Um, this church is very strong, you know, you’ll probably make a lot of friends.’ And I already knew all this stuff prior because I had, we’d talked about that. So I went ahead and just made the move. It sounded at the time like a good idea.”

No more than five minutes later, Arias contradicted herself when she told Flores that when one of her roommate situations in Mesa didn’t work out and she moved again to a place that was closer to Travis’, “he freaked out about it.” This was the kind of discrepancy that revealed how she could meld a story to her benefit.

Other inconsistencies in Arias’ story were revealed when Flores began to question the route that she claimed to have taken to Utah. He began his questions by talking about the car she rented for the trip. At first, Arias tried to stymie the investigation altogether by failing to name the rental car company that she used to reserve a car for the drive, as if withholding it would make it impossible for the police to track her movements. Despite not remembering the rental car company itself, she did recall every other detail about the car she rented, including that she had rented it at the Redding Airport, that it was a white Ford Focus, and that it didn’t have cruise control.

“Instead of going to Utah, you went straight out to the Los Angeles area?” Flores asked.

Arias’ voice was soft and steady as she recounted her movements for the detective. “I went to Santa Cruz first . . . I stayed the night in Monterey, and the next day I drove to Pasadena.” She explained that she had arranged to meet the sister of an
ex-boyfriend to do a photo shoot of her new baby. She said when she first arrived in town, she left a voice message on the woman’s answering machine, but she didn’t get a call back until she’d already left the Los Angeles area.

“And which route did you take from there?” Flores asked. He already knew the route she claimed to have taken from their previous conversations, but now he was prepared to dispute her story. The detective listened intently as Arias recited her itinerary.

“I was supposed to get on the 15 and go all the way up . . . and I somehow got off the 15,” she explained.

“And where did you end up?”

“Um, for a while I was lost, and I’m not above sleeping in the car, so I slept for a while . . . I’m a heavy sleeper and I sleep a lot, so . . .”

“But you were on the 15 for a while and you ended up getting off the 15 somewhere?”

“Yeah, I looked at a map and I’m pretty sure I know where I went . . . Can I draw you a map?”

Detective Flores offered Arias the yellow legal pad he had been using to take notes, and she sketched the circuitous route that took her to Las Vegas and then south into Arizona. She said she first took Interstate 15 North toward Las Vegas on the way to Utah. She then began talking about another freeway, Interstate 40, which runs east and west through northern Arizona.

“Did you actually cross over into Arizona? Is that how far you went?”

“I crossed over twice, I think,” Arias said with a giggle.

She next provided an elaborate account of traveling on various freeways, starting with Interstate 15, which runs north from the Pasadena area to Salt Lake City. She claimed that once she arrived in Las Vegas, she mistakenly began driving south on Highway 93 past the Hoover Dam and into Arizona. She said she became disoriented and further lost her way
when she ended up on Interstate 40 driving east towards Flagstaff. She said she finally turned around on that interstate and made her way back to Highway 93, heading north back toward Las Vegas, where she finally was able to be reunited with Interstate 15, allowing her to head north toward Salt Lake City.

“I have a problem with this trip,” Flores declared. “I’ve gone over this trip over and over in my mind and on paper, and even if—there’s still twenty-some-odd hours, even if you pulled over to sleep a couple of times . . .”

The detective’s inquiry appeared to be a warning that Arias’ alibi was not airtight, but she remained impassive and revealed no sign of anxiety. “Did I tell you I got stranded?” she asked, harkening back to her earlier claim.

“Yeah, you mentioned that . . . but if you slept for ten hours . . . it would still leave eighteen-some-odd hours for something else, okay.”

Flores then shifted his line of questioning to a discussion of Arias’ cell phone.

“I pulled your cell phone records,” he said, referring to a cell phone tower report that police had obtained. “Your cell phone was turned off between here and here,” he told her, indicating a stretch of land east of Pasadena, California, to a location south of the Nevada border. “The next place it was turned on was here,” he said, pointing to a site on Highway 93. “What does that show me?”

Flores was alluding to the fact that a cell phone cannot be traced if it is powered off. While this piece of evidence alone did not prove anything about where Arias had driven, it would become important to the case because it helped shed light on her plan. Turning off the cell phone was a deliberate way for Arias to avoid being tracked. It seemed too much of a coincidence that her phone lost power as she approached the western part of the Arizona border only to have it powered on as she reached Nevada.

Still, Arias didn’t budge.

“Oh, well, I began—oh, no, no, no . . .”

“Is there plenty of time for you to do that? Yes. And I, do I believe that you had come to visit Travis? Yes, I truly believe it. Did you have the opportunity? Yes, you were traveling alone; there are no other witnesses. Your phone just happened to turn off from here to here?”

“Well, I didn’t turn it off physically, but it died.”

“And then it magically, you found your charger here?”

“I got it, it was, it was under the, back under the seat of the passenger side, and it was when I was . . .”

“When you were lost, you couldn’t have maybe pulled over and found it or . . .”

“Well, I did finally start looking when I was stranded. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have pulled over when I was lost,” she answered, parsing out that she would only stop if she were stranded.

“I’ve been focusing on this and going over and over in my mind why this happened, why your phone turns off here, outside of Los Angeles,” the detective posed, indicating a location on Arias’ makeshift map.

“What city is that? ’Cause I got this far . . .” she responded, pointing to a similar area on the map.

“. . . It’s not cities, there’s towers,” Flores explained, referring to the cell towers that had pinged with Arias’ locations. Flores was trying to show her that based on the data from the cell phone tower, she had eventually turned her phone on as she approached the Nevada border, but while she was still in Arizona. “There’s towers dotted all over this place. . . . One tower hit here,” he said, highlighting various spots on the map. “The other tower here on the 93. There is no way somebody can get on that 15 and magically get on that 93, ’cause the 15 goes right through Las Vegas, right there, and continues this way. It never goes through Arizona again. . . .

“This tower here, it’s not just over the border in Arizona, it’s
quite a distance inside of Arizona that it hit, because there is a mountain range all along here, and if you are on this side of the mountain range, a pretty good distance, that signal is not gonna come, not gonna hit Utah or Nevada or California. It’s only gonna hit in Arizona.”

After going back and forth on her impossible route, Arias again went to the map, but when Detective Flores confronted her about the freeways, and the impossibility of her trip, she started to lose composure and for the first time, admitted that she took Interstate 10. In her haste to cover up, she mistakenly said she traveled west on Interstate 10, which, if true, would have taken her to the beach in Santa Monica.

“I honestly got lost. It’s—it’s bad timing,” Arias said, hiding her face in her hands.

“Were you at Travis’ house on Wednesday?”

“Absolutely not, I was nowhere near Mesa . . . I was nowhere near Phoenix . . .”

Detective Flores let out an audible sigh in apparent frustration. Her unwillingness to surrender even in the face of compelling proof showed just how much it would take to get her to concede a point. It was becoming clear that I would need tangible evidence contradicting her statements when the time came for me to cross examine her at trial. But I was about to see that even approach that would not shake Arias.

“What if I could show you proof you were there? Would that change your mind?”

“I wasn’t there . . . I was not at Travis’ house . . . was not.”

“You were at Travis’ house, you guys had a sexual encounter, which there are pictures, and I know you know there’s pictures because I have them. And I will show them to you, okay? So, what I’m asking you is for you to be honest with me. I know you were there.”

“Are you sure those pictures aren’t from another time?”

“Positive. Absolutely positive.”

Arias’ body language did not change. She sat hunched over the table, her arms folded in front of her, and in a soft voice recited her mantra: “The last time I had any kind of sexual contact with Travis was in April.”

Detective Flores reminded her of the camera police had found in the washing machine during the initial investigation at the crime scene, the one she had offered to help police retrieve items from the memory card. “Remember I told you about the camera?”