Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias (35 page)

Michael Melendez, also a Mesa police officer, analyzed the camera recovered from the washing machine. He was responsible for the smoking gun evidence in the case. In fact, without the incriminating photos that Jodi deleted and he recovered, Jodi may not have faced a first-degree murder charge. Melendez took the jury through the five steps one must take to delete a photo. There were approximately ninety pictures still on the camera. Only the ones from the crime scene and of the nude photos of Travis and Jodi earlier on the same day had been deleted. The deleted photos had been taken over about four hours, beginning with the sexy poses earlier in the afternoon. They ended with the shower photos and the pictures clearly taken accidentally during the course of the killing. Melendez also analyzed Travis’s laptop collected from the office inside his home. He had found no pornography—adult or child—on the computer. There were also no pornographic websites on Travis’s browser history.

On cross-examination, Jennifer Willmott noted that the last activity on the computer took place at 4:54
P
.
M
. on June 4, 2008. (The last
email
activity, however, was at 4:19
P
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M
. This later usage at 4:54
P
.
M
., Melendez said, could have been from Internet surfing or playing a CD.) This was corroboration that the laptop was used just half an hour before Travis’s murder. The defense would argue that it also supported Jodi’s story that the two had rough sex in his office around that time by at least placing them in the office.

Throughout the prosecution’s nine days of testimony, Detective Esteban Flores was repeatedly called back to the witness stand to testify about various pieces of evidence. During one cross-examination by Kirk Nurmi, Flores had to acknowledge that he had given incorrect testimony about the sequence of Travis’s fatal injuries at a critical hearing on August 6, 2009. At that time, he had testified that Travis was shot before he was stabbed. This was a hearing to establish if there was probable cause to go forward with the case as a capital case.

“So, your testimony that the gunshot occurred first was inaccurate . . . Your testimony was a mistake,” Nurmi suggested.

“No, my testimony wasn’t a mistake,” Flores countered, saying that at the time, he had misunderstood what Dr. Horn’s determination had been.

The defense attorneys moved for a mistrial, arguing that another judge’s 2009 ruling that probable cause was established for the aggravating factor of “especially cruel” was based on false testimony. Nurmi argued that Flores had flip-flopped. Therefore, Jodi’s due process had been violated, the defense argued. “We have an aggravating factor founded on testimony that was inaccurate. There can be no dispute about that because Flores testified about it this afternoon. It stands in complete violation of the fifth, eighth, fourteenth amendments,” Nurmi spouted. “We ask that it be dismissed or a new trial be submitted.” The court ruled that regardless of which wound came first, there was enough evidence to find the crime especially cruel either way and denied the defense’s motion for a mistrial. There would be other points along the way where the two defense lawyers, dedicated to the cause of their client, would again and again move for a mistrial, always to no avail.

Jodi’s PPL friend, Leslie Udy, was the last witness on the prosecution’s list. She took the stand on day nine of the trial, January 17, 2013. She was one of the people at the Chili’s restaurant with Jodi, Ryan Burns, and others the day Jodi had arrived in Salt Lake City. When Martinez questioned her about Jodi’s demeanor, she said she hadn’t noticed anything unusual. “She was acting like Jodi,” was her reply. The two had spent several hours together, and had talked about photography and Jodi’s ex-boyfriend, Travis. Jodi told her the two had broken up amicably. She told Leslie that Travis and she planned to remain friends, and had even joked that one day their children would probably play together. Such a drift into this kind of hopeful fantasy after she had just butchered him could only be considered extremely odd and cold-blooded.

Leslie said Jodi called her on June 10, crying and upset. Jodi claimed that she had just learned that Travis had been murdered, and she couldn’t fathom anyone wanting to hurt him, saying he was such a wonderful person. In the wee hours of the morning, Jodi called Leslie a second time. Again, she was really upset. She said this was the hour that she and Travis usually talked and with him gone, she didn’t know who else to call or what to do.

Nurmi was in charge of the cross-examination. In a nutshell, he wanted to know if Leslie could imagine Jodi committing such a horrible crime. “The person I know was a very quiet, soft-spoken, gentle person,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine her doing something like that.” When prompted, she also recalled a night spent at Travis’s house, when she had overheard him talking on the phone around 1
A
.
M
. She had even jokingly said to him, “Say hi to Jodi.” Nurmi’s final question had to do with Leslie’s knowledge of the relationship. She admitted that she thought it was sexual.

For redirect, Martinez, with his usual enthusiasm, jumped up and approached the witness. He showed her a photo of Jodi nude, the ones taken just hours before the murder. “Do you know her?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered, looking very worn out.

“Who is it?” Martinez continued.

“Looks like Jodi,” Leslie said shaking her head, tired that she had to answer such an obvious question.

Martinez showed her another nude picture with the same question, and again she responded it looked like Jodi. “I don’t mean to be indelicate with you, but you say you know her? Do you know anything about that aspect of her life?”

“No.”

“You said that you knew her really well . . . is it your belief that she would have confided in you in certain things?” Martinez posed.

“Yes.”

“Objection, calls for speculation,” Nurmi interrupted.

“Overruled,” said Judge Stephens. “You may answer yes or no.”

“Yes,” Leslie answered quietly.

“She confided in you about the relationship, right?” continued Martinez.

“Yes.”

“She never confided in you that she killed him, did she?”

“No,” Leslie said, shaking her head.

“I don’t have anything else,” Martinez said. With that, the prosecution rested. Everyone in the courtroom rose to their feet, as the jury was excused and court was recessed until January 29, when the defense would begin its case.

CHAPTER 17

THE DEFENSE

M
aking Jodi into a sympathetic person was going to be a tall order, especially after the gruesome details that had been presented in the state’s case. Jodi and Travis moved in the same social circles in Arizona, so it was no surprise that the defense witnesses included mutual friends and even a PPL colleague. On Tuesday, January 29, the first defense witnesses took the stand in an effort to show another side to Jodi and Travis’s relationship.

Jodi sat in her usual seat nearest the far wall of the courtroom, with Jennifer Willmott in the middle of the defense table, and Kirk Nurmi closest to the prosecution. Wearing a shirt so pale it was either the faintest shade of blue or straight-up white, along with her big glasses and long bangs, Jodi almost looked too conservative and naïve to have murdered someone so brutally—almost. The first witness was Gus Searcy, a balding, middle-age gentleman with far more hair on the sides than on the top. He was impeccably dressed in a dark suit and golden tie. A friend of Jodi’s at PPL, he seemed to be something of an informal mentor. He had worked with the firm long enough to have a special ring awarded to the company’s top earners of $100,000 and above, and he held the position of executive director.

Gus knew both Jodi and Travis. He, too, had been at the convention in Las Vegas in September 2006, which was where he believed he’d first met Jodi, although he wasn’t one hundred percent certain. In his approximately one hour on the stand, he described Jodi as responsible, well mannered, and conservative when it came to her appearance. He had met her several times during the course of their platonic relationship, and he never saw her being slutty. “She was always dressed feminine, but very conservative dresser—long sleeves, high neck, long dresses, or slacks—nothing provocative in any way. She was very professional.” She did not act sexually inappropriate or out of control, either, in those times, which included company parties. As a PPL trainer, he took professional image mistakes very seriously, knowing that a woman who projects a sexy appearance may not be taken seriously in the business.

Also important to the defense, Gus Searcy had knowledge of a phone call between Jodi and Travis, one that left Jodi shaking and crying. He wasn’t able to elaborate, as hearsay objections by the prosecution were almost always sustained, but the point was made that Travis had said something negative that upset Jodi.

During his cross of this first witness, Martinez blew his cool; however, the reason for his hot-and-bothered posturing wasn’t clear. Gus Searcy wasn’t that much of a threat to the prosecution, yet Martinez started to pace and raise his voice. “You don’t get to ask the questions, I do,” Martinez scolded the witness during one heated exchange. Searcy, too, turned up the sarcasm and antagonistic behavior, saying he knew how to speak English when Martinez made the same point in slightly different words. At a hearing out of the presence of the jury, the two really went at it, when Martinez suggested Searcy was far more interested in making this trial about him, rather than Jodi, because he had an agenda of self-promotion. Eventually, the defense and the prosecution both finished with the witness, and Judge Stephens read the jury’s questions for Mr. Searcy as the dust settled. She then called for a well-deserved lunch break before the next witness, Jodi’s former boyfriend Darryl Brewer, took the stand.

Darryl specifically asked the court not to show his face during the broadcast of the trial, so television audiences never got to see the tall, very handsome man in a dark gray suit who took the stand. The wrinkle lines on his face and his slightly graying hair confirmed the fact that he was substantially older than Jodi, but his chiseled good looks were enhanced by a broad, charismatic smile. Jodi stared forlornly at the man she had dated exclusively for almost four years and who had clearly loved her. Occasionally, she could be seen wiping away tears.

Darryl had a gentle, gracious manner of speaking, markedly less confrontational than the previous witness. He began his testimony recalling when and where he had met Jodi nearly a decade earlier. As for her personality, he said she was never jealous or possessive, but was a wonderful, hardworking woman, who often held two jobs. “She was a responsible, caring, loving person,” he revealed, clearly holding no anger toward her. He said she was great with his son who was only four or five years old when they met. Darryl, however, said they had no plans to marry.

Darryl described a marked change in the relationship, especially in their sex life, after she began working for PPL in the spring of 2006. By the fall, she became more and more interested in the teachings of the Mormon faith and she no longer wanted to be intimate. According to Darryl, she was now saving herself for a future husband, so they began to live apart within their home. Jodi said she didn’t want any more cursing in the home, either. Not long after, Mormon missionaries began coming to the house, where they sometimes had prayer sessions. When Darryl was asked if he remembered Jodi’s September 2006 trip to Las Vegas, he said he did. Pre-Paid Legal is not affiliated with the Mormon Church, but it has a large group of employees who are members.

There was never a formal break-up conversation between the two. Darryl said his ex-wife relocated from southern California to Monterey in the fall of 2006 and took their son with her. The nine-to-ten hour drive north was onerous, so he focused on developing a strategy to get back to Monterey and closer to his son. Meanwhile, Jodi was changing and becoming less financially responsible. She stopped paying household expenses and, after the fall, she didn’t even pay her share of the mortgage. Darryl moved north to Monterey in December and couldn’t carry the mortgage past February 2007. The house went into foreclosure.

The couple left it open that they might get together again in the future, but at that moment, their lives were taking different paths. In fact, Darryl told the jurors that he hoped Jodi would be back with him after they resolved the house issue. They remained friends on good terms, who talked to each other once in a while on the phone.

U
nfortunately for the defense, Darryl’s rosy portrait of Jodi did not last.

On cross-examination, Mr. Martinez dropped a bombshell. Picking up where Mr. Nurmi had left off, that Jodi and Darryl were friends who talked to each other by phone, he asked Mr. Brewer if there had been a conversation with Jodi not long before the murder. “Isn’t it true that in May of 2008, you received a telephone call from the defendant, Jodi Arias?”