Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias (33 page)

THE PROSECUTION

T
he courtroom was pulsing with anticipation as Juan Martinez called his first witness. It was not lost on anyone that the prosecutor chose Mimi Hall as witness number one; after all, she was the woman that Jodi Arias probably considered her biggest rival at the time of Travis’s death. It had been Mimi who Travis had invited to Cancún instead of Jodi; Mimi was the one he had a crush on.

As Mimi strode to the stand it was clear why Travis would have been attracted to her. With a slender build, tasteful clothes, good carriage, refined features, and curly brown hair, Mimi Hall had good looks and a classy demeanor. Mimi told the court that she had met Travis during a church service in early 2008. “I gave a talk, and he commented on how well I did.” The two went on three dates that couldn’t have been more G-rated and wholesome. First, they went to Barnes and Noble where they had some hot chocolate; next to a place to paint pottery; and finally for an afternoon of rock climbing in Tempe. After the third date, Mimi let Travis know she just wanted to be friends. “He understood and thanked me for telling him directly,” she recalled. “We continued to see each other at church and had a book and film club. A fun friendship.”

“Did he ever berate, scream at you?” Martinez asked.

“No,” was her instantaneous reply.

In response to questions about sex before marriage in the Mormon faith, Mimi said it was a serious sin that could be punishable with excommunication. As far as she was concerned, Travis had been a perfect gentleman. “I felt very safe with Travis,” she explained. “An awkward hug goodnight was the extent of anything.” It couldn’t get more Mayberry than that.

“How often did you and Travis speak? Did he ask you to go somewhere?”

Mimi recalled that the two communicated virtually every day via text, phone, or email. “He invited me to go to Cancún,” she recounted. “When he first asked, I wanted to think about it. I knew he liked me more than I liked him. There were probably a couple of days between being asked and actually saying yes.” Mimi agreed to go to Cancún as a friend, because she would be rooming with another single female on the trip. Mimi said she and Travis had been in contact until the week before they were scheduled to leave for Mexico. Then, it just went silent. “I didn’t see him at church on Sunday, so I texted him. He didn’t respond. I began to get worried . . . I was scared something might have happened to him because he had a stalker.”

Mimi went on to recount the night of Monday, June 9, 2008, when she went to Travis’s house to check on him because they were supposed to be leaving for Cancún together the following morning. She explained how she noticed there was a “real bad smell” inside Travis’s house, detailing the horrific moment when Travis’s roommate, who’d opened Travis’s bedroom door with a spare key, ran back out and said, “He’s dead.” Mimi also revealed that, at Travis’s memorial service a week later, the defendant had approached her, introduced herself, and commiserated with her over the tragic events.

Martinez thanked Mimi for her cooperation and turned over the questioning to defense attorney Kirk Nurmi. Mimi was clearly a strong prosecution witness, but defense attorneys always try to use cross-examination of state witnesses to make their own points. Given that Mimi was born into the Mormon faith, the defense attorney’s point of focus was how her religion handles sex and sin. He wanted to expound on the LDS view of sex before marriage. He asked Mimi how a person could repent for a sin in the Mormon faith. Mimi said she didn’t know the process, as she had never known anyone who had gone through it. When asked about the seriousness of sex before marriage, she said it was the third most serious sin, after murder and adultery.

“Can you describe what temple worthy means?”

“Someone who has gone through a couple of interviews and repents when he makes a mistake. Serving in their calling.”

When asked if Travis was temple worthy, Mimi said she didn’t know. “I assumed he was since he was an active member. He was also a priesthood holder.”

Then, Nurmi asked several questions about Mimi’s decision to accompany Travis to Cancún. “Did he tell you he was dating Jodi Arias?” he asked.

“No,” Mimi replied.

“He told you he had a stalker?”

“He didn’t say a name at all, but said she followed us on a date. I suggested he get a restraining order.”

“You said you gave him advice about a restraining order. You said you were scared of this stalker?”

“I’m scared of any stalker,” Mimi responded.

“He never said Jodi Arias was his stalker?”

“No,” Mimi said.

On redirect, Martinez asked Mimi what Travis had told her about his stalker.

“She slashed tires, sent emails, followed us on a date. She’d sneak into his house through the doggie door.”

“Do you know whether he was temple worthy or a priesthood holder?” Martinez posed.

“I think he told me he was not worthy to go to the temple. I actually remember him talking about how he used to work in the temple. He said he was no longer worthy to go. I didn’t ask why, that’s private . . .”

The next witness was Sterling Williams, a patrol officer with the Mesa Police Department. In a familiar strategy, the prosecutor seemed to be alternating personal accounts with forensic and police testimony. Officer Williams had been summoned to Travis’s home on June 9, 2008. He described going directly upstairs upon his arrival that day, and leading fire personnel to the body. “They didn’t work on him,” he recalled. “They visually inspected him and were able to declare that he was deceased.”

Officer Williams said the body was “crammed in the bottom of the shower stall” and appeared to have “a neck wound from ear to ear.” In a grisly aside, the officer said Travis’s “neck wound would bubble, gasses escaping from the body,”

During the officer’s brief testimony, Martinez introduced three gruesome crime scene photos of the body that had been taken at the scene. Travis’s sister Tanisha immediately began to sob and leaned forward in her front row seat to avoid even a glimpse of the graphic photos displayed on monitors all over the courtroom. Other siblings silently cried and turned their heads away from the screens. The pictures depicted Travis’s nude body crumpled in the shower stall, clean of blood despite the gaping neck wound. At the sight of her handiwork, Jodi covered her nose and mouth with her hand. Occasionally, she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. Many observers remained convinced that Jodi was faking her sobs, and in their coverage of the case,
Dateline NBC
even referred to being unable to spot actual tears. Prosecutor Martinez contended that Jodi had attempted to stage the scene, possibly to delay detection. When the defense had no questions for Officer Williams, the judge declared the proceedings officially over for day one.

The prosecution’s case continued for eight more days. Day two was filled with the testimony of two law enforcement witnesses from the Mesa Police Department, Homicide Detective Esteban Flores and Heather Conner, a crime scene technician and latent fingerprint examiner. Flores, the lead investigator, was there to testify to the very lengthy phone call he had with Jodi on June 10, 2008, the very day after Travis’s body was found. He said Jodi had called the Mesa police department twice right after the news of Travis’s death broke, but he had not actually spoken with her until then. The entire call, just over thirty minutes long, was played for jurors, who could hear Jodi’s phony ignorance of Travis’s death. “I heard a lot of rumors, and that there was a lot of blood,” Jodi could be heard saying to Flores.

During the call, Jodi appeared to pump Flores for information to see what the cops knew, and where their investigation was headed. She asked about what had happened, but the detective couldn’t oblige. She denied she had even been with Travis, claiming she hadn’t seen him for months and hadn’t spoken to him for days. At one point, she sounded emotional when the detective told her that people were pointing the finger at her. “Gosh,” she had responded with feigned hurt and surprise.

In addition, Jodi had countered by volunteering a false suspect, suggesting the detective should check out one of Travis’s former roommates, a guy Travis had kicked out, and even giving the cop his name. “He got kicked out because he was considered like borderline sexual predator, not like a rapist, but coming onto girls and it is just really looked down upon in the church.” She suggested this ex-roommate was big and dumb and “a little bit thuggish.”

She told Flores she and Travis kept their relationship secret from people, and that she had moved to Mesa because of Travis and she had moved away because of him. When the detective had challenged her with a question about jealousy issues, she said both she
and
Travis were jealous and that he would send her “mean emails” when he got upset with her. Still, she expressed regret at not having been with him when he was attacked.

For the detective’s cross-examination by the defense, Kirk Nurmi focused on things Jodi had said that bolstered her claim of being victimized by Travis. In particular, there was the French maid’s outfit, the “ropish material,” found at the scene, and emails that had already been put into evidence by the prosecution.

He began with the French maid’s outfit. “Do you remember seeing an email where [Travis] provides [Jodi] a picture of the French maid’s outfit that he would like her to don while she cleans his home?” he posed.

“No,” Flores replied.

As for the rope, Nurmi wanted to bolster his co-counsel Jennifer Willmott’s claim during her opening remarks that Travis liked to tie Jodi up. Flores told Nurmi that police had recovered short “pieces of fabric rope” from the master bedroom and on the stairs leading to the bedroom, but he described them as tassels and pieces of fabric, and added that no ropes had been found at the house.

Shifting gears, Nurmi grilled Flores about email exchanges between Jodi and Travis that had already been entered into evidence by the prosecution and had derogatory sexual terms in them. “Do you recall her saying he [Travis] had said several mean things to her?” Nurmi wanted to know.

“Yes,” Flores responded, his voice monotone, his face expressionless.

“Do you remember an email from Mr. Alexander referring to Miss Arias as a three-hole wonder?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“As a slut?”

“Yes,” said the detective.

“As a whore?” Nurmi asked. There was another affirmative.

There was a shock value to those words as they rippled through the courtroom. Nurmi must have sensed the impact they had, because he would go on to repeat those three terms many, many times during the course of the trial to the point where it became something of a
here we go again
joke to the reporters covering the case.

This first usage, however, showed just how much of this trial would be about the X-rated texts and instant messages between Jodi and Travis; as it turned out, each side had plenty of vulgar quotes to choose from in order to make their points. On re-cross, the prosecutor had Flores read from the very same instant message exchange that Nurmi had used. With each word enunciated equally, in the style of a grade schooler, Flores read Travis’s words, “I think I was little more than a dildo with a heartbeat to you.” Using this powerful counterpoint, Martinez demonstrated that Travis felt sexually exploited by Jodi and “used” for sexual purposes in the same way that Jodi accused him of using her.

Martinez then tried to convince the jury that Jodi was lying when she said Travis tied her up to his sleigh bed with rope. The prosecutor showed Flores the photos of the purported rope, which Nurmi had hinted was a remnant of their bondage games. Flores said the item looked more like “a small thread.” Martinez then showed him Exhibit 63, a photo of Travis’s bedroom. The detective identified throw pillows on a loveseat against the wall. The large, square dark brown pillows were bordered with an inch of gold-colored fringe. The prosecutor then returned to the photo Nurmi had used, which was a bunch of these fibers. He offered up that Nurmi’s “rope” was nothing but decorative pillow tassels. Flores was excused for the time being. He would be recalled to testify a number of times about many other aspects of his investigation.

Heather Conner’s testimony revisited the crime scene by way of crime-scene photos and disturbing evidence found there, including Travis’s undergarments, a T-shirt, and a bleach-stained towel found in the washing machine. It began with Juan Martinez putting up pictures of various rooms in Travis’s house, and Conner elaborating on anything relevant. The guided tour of the home ended in the master bathroom. The photos that ended the day were of a blood-spattered sink that looked like something out of a slasher movie, a bullet casing that had landed in a pool of blood on the floor near the sink, and another large blood stain on the carpet at the entrance to the bedroom from the hallway leading to the bathroom. The Alexander family was one more time visibly traumatized. Jodi, watching the photos displayed on her own monitor in front of her on the defense table, hid her face in her hand.

Day three of the prosecution’s case had Heather Conner back on the stand. Prosecutor Martinez used the crime-scene technician to conduct a blood-soaked tour. Every bloody photo introduced as evidence popped up simultaneously on several large screens scattered around the courtroom, enhancing the horror of the image and provoking a visceral response in the gallery. He asked her to elaborate on the blood on the bathroom walls, the pool of blood on the carpet, and items of clothing. The Alexander family in the front rows of the public gallery appeared shaken, but stoic. Also a latent print expert, Conner discussed her conclusions about the bloody left palm print Jodi left on the hallway wall, which contained a mixture of Travis’s and Jodi’s DNA. The photo of Jodi’s palm and fingers, etched in blood, was also projected on the monitors for the jury to see. The pictures were hard to look at, but what made them truly difficult was the story they told—a story of how Travis bled and stumbled to his final breath.

However, none of the crime scene photos were as horrifying and disturbing as the ones about to be displayed during the testimony of Dr. Kevin Horn, the Maricopa County Medical Examiner. He had performed the autopsy eight days after Travis died, though, at the time, no one knew his exact date of death. An abhorrent, ghastly autopsy photo of Travis’s face, which, like the rest of his body, was bloated and beginning to mummify, was projected on the screen for the jurors, who winced at the image. Travis’s teeth were visible and his now dark lips had receded. Jodi’s head immediately went to her hands, where they remained until the photo went away. It was Dr. Horn’s opinion that Travis had fought for his life, and the cuts on the palms of his hands looked like classic defensive wounds. The official cause of death was loss of blood, but Dr. Horn had the opinion that one of the knife wounds was primarily responsible, in that it hastened his death. The gunshot would have killed him, too, had he not already been mortally wounded.