Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars (7 page)

If sentenced to death, Jodi Arias would be the third woman on death row in the state of Arizona.

T
he period of time between the arraignment and trial can be a lengthy one. Following Arias’ arraignment, roughly four years would pass before the trial would actually get underway. And while that may seem to be “dead time,” with little happening in the courtroom, much work is being completed behind the scenes. This preparation time allows both sides to review documents, interview potential witnesses, and formulate strategies they will employ at trial.

It has always been my practice to start the case review as soon as I receive a copy of the police report, which was delivered to me shortly after Arias’ arrest. As a prosecutor, I am not a part of the police investigation and rely on periodic updates from the lead detective, in this case Detective Flores, to keep me apprised. While I am alerted to important developments, there are things the investigators do that I am not privy to as they happen. Reading the police reports allows me to see what they have done in their investigation on a day-to-day basis, including the items they have seized, witnesses they have interviewed, and any photographs and other materials they have collected.

I always try cases alone without the assistance of other lawyers, which are normally referred to as “second chairs.” I favor this single prosecutor approach although it may mean more work. Because of this, it falls on my shoulders to read every document associated with the case from any source, such as those provided by defense counsel. I sit through every interview of any potential witness, whether or not I believe they are going
to be called to testify at trial. I also view every video created at any point of the investigation, including statements made by a defendant to the police.

Preparing the case for trial without the assistance of another prosecutor requires that I make decisions regarding which witnesses to call at trial and the order of their appearance. I am solely responsible for the documents, photographs, or other items to be introduced for the jury’s consideration. Of course, any cross-examination of witnesses called to testify by defense counsel will likewise be left to me. Opening statements and closing arguments are strictly my province. This approach requires me to be versed in every aspect of the case.

In addition to reading the police reports Flores provided me, I began by creating a more detailed portrait of the victim. I learned that Travis was born on July 29, 1977. He was five feet, nine inches tall, weighed 180 pounds, and had green eyes. He was one of eight children, four boys and four girls. He grew up near Riverside, California, in an area commonly referred to as the Inland Empire. According to a book he was writing about his life called
Raising Me
, which was posted on the internet, Travis’ parents were methamphetamine addicts, and at a young age, he went to live with his grandmother Norma Sarvey, who introduced him to the Mormon faith. He embraced its teachings and attempted to live by church doctrine. After high school, he went on a church mission to Denver, Colorado, and ultimately settled in Mesa, Arizona, because of its strong Mormon community.

I looked into Travis’ employment at Pre-Paid Legal Services, which today is called LegalShield. Travis worked from home, but he was also a motivational speaker for the company, and appeared periodically at meetings to help encourage sales of new memberships. Although Travis portrayed himself as financially successful, it seemed that he was struggling to maintain the lifestyle he had built for himself. He had taken
in two roommates to help with his mortgage and sometimes borrowed money from an ex-girlfriend to pay his bills.

One of the first things I did was check whether Travis Alexander had ever been in trouble with the law, and I found that he hadn’t. The only contact he had ever had with police was when he called the Mesa Police Department in February 2008 to report that the tires on his BMW had been slashed while his car was parked outside his house. Although there was only that one call, I learned from Detective Flores’ police report that his tires had been slashed on consecutive nights. While all of Travis’ friends pointed the finger at Arias, Travis himself vacillated between blaming her and saying he didn’t know who had done it.

From all that I had read in the police reports it seemed that Jodi Arias had been obsessed with Travis. But, as her interviews with Flores made clear, the irrational nature of her behavior was not reflective of her ability to maintain her composure in the most dire of times. Because Flores had told me that Arias had been so in control during the two days of interrogation in Yreka I needed to look for myself at those interviews to see if she’d made any missteps, however slight.

Detective Flores provided me copies of the videotaped interviews he had conducted with Arias on July 15 and 16, after her arrest in Yreka. I had a transcript of the tapes prepared, which I checked for accuracy by reading while listening to the actual words being spoken, because it had been my experience that transcriptions always contain mistakes by the transcriber. Even though the transcript is not admissible at trial, I still wanted to make sure it was as accurate as possible, so that I could use it in my trial preparation. Closing the door to my office, I turned on the videotape of the July 15 interview on my computer.

The first image on the video showed Arias shortly after her arrest still dressed in white pants and a gray top, resting her head on a small table at the center of the room, her long brown
hair falling forward onto the tabletop. She remained in that repose for several minutes, never flinching, to the point where it appeared she was asleep.

She then stood up, and shook out her arms, and seemingly angry that police had left her in handcuffs, plopped down on the floor with her back to the wall. “Can you take my handcuffs off, please?” were the first words she spoke when Siskiyou Sheriff’s detective Rachel Blaney pushed open the door to check on her.

I found it telling that she was so focused on her own comfort, when faced with a much bigger issue—that she was in police custody and accused of first degree murder.

Arias appeared irritated when Blaney advised that she’d have to wait for Detective Flores to remove the handcuffs. She lodged her next complaint as soon as Blaney left the room.
It’s so fucking cold in here,
she mumbled, her shoulders shuddering.

The arrival of Flores appeared to mollify Arias, who immediately rose to offer her handcuffed wrists so he could remove the cuffs.

Flores’ offer of a bottle of water was met with several requests, “Any chance you could get my purse? . . . Any way they can turn the heat up in here? Or like do you have a sweater I can borrow or something?”

In his relaxed, casual manner, Flores, dressed in a blue button down shirt and tie, agreed to look into adjusting the temperature and the whereabouts of her purse, which had been taken during her arrest. “So you remember me?” he asked once she had finished her litany of requests.

“Of course I do,” Arias acknowledged.

“I traveled all the way up here to come talk to you because—you know, I’ve been working on Travis’ case ever since it happened. And I know exactly when it happened, when he was killed. I know a lot of details and just recently we found quite a bit of evidence and I’ll discuss that with you. The main thing
that I’m looking for though is answers on why certain things happened and why they went so far, and also to get your statements.

“Um, a lot of details on this case haven’t been released to the public and not even to Travis’ family. And those details are known only by us and the person who did it, okay, and that’s one of the reasons I’m here is because I believe that you know some of those details.

“And, I think you can help us.”

“I would love to help you in any way that I can,” Arias responded, leaning in toward the detective, her pale, thin arms, crossed at the elbows and stretched on the table.

She appeared to be listening as Flores read her the
Miranda
rights and set out the purpose of the interview. “What I’m gonna do is just ask some questions, ask you what you’ve been doing . . . kind of clarify some things . . .”

As I watched this interview what struck me most was Arias’ ability to be so controlled and devoid of emotion right from the start. Most people get extremely apprehensive just being stopped by police for a traffic infraction. Yet, Arias demonstrated no reaction as her
Miranda
rights were read and she was advised, amongst other things, that she had the right to remain silent. But as I was going to see, remaining silent was not something she would ever do.

“Is this recorded at all,” she asked, looking behind her. “Or should we, I mean?”

Before the detective could respond, she reached behind her to retrieve two tape recorders from a small wooden table in the corner of the room, placing them on the table in front of Flores. “I don’t know if these are voice recorders, I noticed them, if they have video cam, or they have audio . . . or batteries or what.”

Arias was so aware of her surroundings that she noticed two small recorders lying on the table in the corner behind her. I took note of her acumen and concluded that she would prob
ably never lose her composure, whether it be in an interview room or a courtroom.

Flores lifted the recorders and looked at them as if to be checking their status. “I don’t think they are on,” he assured her. To which Arias again complained of being cold and reminded the detective that she had asked that the heat be turned up.

Flores sidestepped the temperature issue, bringing the conversation back around to the homicide. “What have you been up to since Travis’ death? What have you been doing?”

“Um, well I’ve been working,” Arias replied. “I haven’t been really working for Prepaid Legal. There’s not a whole lot here in this marketplace . . .” she said, referring to her hometown of Yreka.

“It’s small here and really that could be seen as an opportunity rather than a hindrance, because that just means the market is untapped in a large way, so I could have it if I wanted to, but I have—I’m kind of like a deer in the headlights when it comes to Prepaid Legal and I kind of, I just have a fear of approaching people.

“So, I’ve been working in a Mexican restaurant on the north end of town. Um, I’ve been, I’ve been in kind of a daze, at least for the first few weeks.”

“Like everybody, you know,” Flores concurred, obviously trying to keep her talking.

Without prompting, Arias turned the conversation to the online tributes and news coverage surrounding Travis’ death. “I know that a lot of people have been posting on Facebook really nice things, and memories, and at one point I was like well maybe I should do that, so I posted this thing and I just said all of my memories and I realized looking back on it that it was kind of, it kind of sounded immature, it’s more like my ‘Dear Travis’ kind of letter. And so I took it down because . . .”

Arias was referring to her June 14 comment posted on the Internet site called 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 it’s
[sic]
course for the better. I love you, my friend, and always will.—Jodi Arias, Yreka, California.”

Responding to Arias’ decision to remove the post, Flores suggested that he understood that she likely felt her tribute should probably have been less personal.

“Yeah, some of it was details that were a little more personal, not too personal, nothing inappropriate . . . I just felt funny, I think because I’m a photographer I tend to communicate more through pictures, so I posted a ton of pictures that I had of him, and I have a ton more that I just can’t access right now, and videos and things that I know his family would want,” Arias answered.

“I’ve been on Facebook and MySpace, looking at his profile, looking at his pictures, reading things, um, about his obituaries and um, any news updates and, you know, there’s Legacy.com, right, you can write something about him.”

“I’ve seen a lot of those postings,” Flores admitted.

Arias indicated that since Travis’ death, she had also been spending a good deal of time speaking to Ryan Burns, whom she described as her “potential possible maybe person that you might start dating.” She explained that she and Ryan tried not to speak about what happened to Travis, “’cause it’s kind of like, ‘oh,’ And plus, Travis is my ex-boyfriend at the same time he’s my friend, so while I’m mourning my friend, how do you talk to your new potential, possible maybe person that you might start dating about your friend, even if he was your ex-boyfriend, so it’s kind of a gray area. I try not to talk about him too much, but he comes up a lot.”

Arias told Flores that it was through Burns that she first learned that she was emerging as a suspect in Travis’ killing. “He said, ‘you know, if you come out to Utah things are really
weird ’cause everyone is, everyone thinks that you could have had a hand . . .’”

Flores took the opportunity to interject, “And I’ve talked to a lot of people, and everybody’s pointing the finger at you. You know, everyone is saying, ‘I don’t understand what happened to Travis. I don’t know who killed him, but you need to look at Jodi.’ And sometimes the simplest answers are the correct ones, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve started looking at you a little bit closer. . . . So one of the reasons I am here is to talk to you to figure out what was going on between you two. I know the relationship that you guys had was of convenience sometimes. Obviously, you weren’t boyfriend/girlfriend anymore.

“But you were still having a sexual relationship, which you know . . .”

Flores’ declaration appeared to stir something in Arias. “Does his family know about that?” she asked, the first time in the interview she expressed concern over something. She claimed it was because she wanted to protect Travis and how he was remembered.

Even after Flores assured her that Travis’ family didn’t know anything, Arias continued to steer the interview in this direction. She seemed overly concerned with the photos police had recovered from their afternoon sexual encounter on June 4th, 2008. Her preoccupation led me to think that perhaps there were more than six photographs taken that afternoon during their sexual romp.