Details surrounding the Jodi Arias murder case, including excerpts from Arias' personal journal and victim Travis Alexander's blog, and new interviews with Alexander's friends and family. Originally aired 02/14/2020 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the shocking allegations against the Alexander Brothers?
Hi, I'm Brad Milkey. I'm the host of The Crime Scene Weekly, a new show from ABC Audio about the latest headlines in true crime. This week, I'm talking about the shocking allegations against the Alexander Brothers, once the golden boys of luxury real estate, now facing serious sex crime charges. Listen to The Crime Scene Weekly on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, everybody. It's Deborah Roberts, co-anchor of 2020. We're bringing you more 2020 each week with the 2020 True Crime Vault. That's right. You're going to hear a story pulled from our archives. Shows that we just can't seem to get out of our heads. And we think you're going to be drawn in, too. Thanks for listening.
She's the sanest, crazy person you've ever met. The public was obsessed because this was a case that was drenched in sex and lies and religion and sex. That is so debasing. I like it. Travis was addicted to Jodi. He's had a little taste, but he wants even more.
Chapter 2: How did Jodi Arias and Travis Alexander meet?
she was his kryptonite she was his dirty little secret he made me feel like a very beautiful person on the inside she became very possessive of him very possessive i said travis i'm afraid we're gonna find you chopped up in her freezer it was a fatal attraction definitely a fatal attraction here what's going on um our friend of ours is dead in his bedroom the amount of blood all over all over it was everywhere
He was slaughtered. There's no other way to describe it. She arrived at the house. She's having sex with him. They're taking the pictures. The camera accidentally fell and took a couple shots. Photos of Travis in the shower. Even as the homicide occurred, the camera is continuing to click photographs. It's almost like having somebody videotape your murder. The final picture of him alive.
Jodi is taken into the interrogation room, and what she does there stuns the world. If it's wrong, then I don't want to be right.
I am an artist. I'm a photographer. It started off that way when I was younger. I got a little 110 camera, which is kind of that old, cheap film. I took pictures of everything from my foot to a tree or a leaf or my cat. Over the years, it developed into something that I became really passionate about. Jodi Arias had a very normal upbringing. She grew up in the middle of California.
I have a large family. We're all pretty close. In high school yearbook photos, Jodi appears to be a happy, innocent, carefree kid. Her family moved around a little bit in California. She spent some time in her childhood in Salinas, and then they moved up near the Oregon border to Huayrica. Jodi Arias' parents owned a Mexican food restaurant where Jodi worked as a waitress when she was a teenager.
Moving to a new town while she was a teenager was really tough on Jodi, and she started documenting this in a journal. I often ask myself why I'm here. I'm completely aware that I dwell in the past all too often to a time of pure fun and true friendships. I don't belong here. I shouldn't be here in Huayrica.
Huayrica is a small California town. The main street has little shops, a lot of family-owned businesses. There's a lot of beautiful mountain ranges. I've always been drawn to nature and things like that. I think that inspires a lot of my art and a lot of my photography as well. Jodi never makes a big name for herself as a photographer. She never makes a lot of money, but she shoots weddings.
She eventually just picked up and grabbed everything she owned and moved to a resort town in California. Jodi was looking to make more money and to be more successful in life. So she decides to get involved in a network marketing company called Prepaid Legal Services.
She thought, wow, this looks like interesting work, selling legal services to people where they would pay a fee and they would have these lawyers on call for them. And she decided to go to a conference that Prepaid Legal had. The company was having a convention in Vegas, and it was a big deal. And so everybody was beating the drum. You got to go to Vegas, got to go to the convention.
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Chapter 3: What was the nature of Jodi's relationship with Travis?
We got to know each other through hours upon hours of phone conversations. We just discovered a lot of common interests and grew close. Travis lives in Mesa, Arizona. Jodi lives in California. So they're having a long-distance relationship, and they begin meeting at Travis's friend's house. It's a convenient rendezvous point.
She was really excited about the relationship. She loved how funny he was, how much fun they would have together. Travis loved to take adventures and do different things. Jodi documented their time together online by posting photos on her MySpace page.
So Jody and Travis, they shared a lot of interests together, key being traveling. They had a book called A Thousand Places to See Before You Die, just traveling around to these places in the book together.
We went to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. We saw Sedona. We saw the Grand Canyon. It was a mutual goal to check things off that list. I'm always pointing the camera in every direction, and he was always a very enthusiastic and willing subject. In emails that Travis sent to Chris and Sky, he actually talks about how deeply he cared about Jodi.
I went from intrigued by her to interested in her to caring about her deeply to realizing how lucky I would be to have her as a part of my life forever. She is amazing. It's not hard to see that whoever scores Jodi, whether it be me or someone else, is going to win the wife lotto.
The biggest problem, however, when it came to any kind of romantic relationship was one of religion. Travis Alexander was Mormon and Jody Arias was not. He was a storming Mormon. He was deeply involved in the Mormon church, devout. He was very open with how he wanted his life to be and how he wanted his marriage to be. And so, you know, there would be no compromises.
Jody was the first person I ever heard of that he was dating that was not a Mormon. She was very sensual and very sexual and Travis was extremely attracted to that because he was not used to that with the women he had dated in the Mormon faith before. If anyone is even remotely familiar with the Mormon beliefs, no sex before marriage. She was his kryptonite. Their relationship was white hot sex.
Travis Alexander started a blog called Travis Alexander Being Better Blog, in which he was writing very honestly and candidly about his life and his struggles. I used to imagine myself as some dangerously handsome tycoon in Time magazine, as one of the world's most eligible bachelors. Then I turned 30. As I tend to do, I did a little soul searching and realized that I was lonely.
Travis is getting older. Being a devout Mormon, typically when you're 30, 31, you're expected to have a family, have children, be settled down.
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Chapter 4: What led to the demise of Travis Alexander?
I love him so greatly that my love is bigger than even I can grasp. It fills me and explodes through me. So within months of meeting, Jodi is attached to Travis beyond belief. They were dating long distance, and Jodi was going to a lot of work for this relationship. Jodi desperately wanted not just to be Travis's girlfriend, she wanted to be Travis's fiance and Travis's wife.
Travis's friends didn't embrace Jodi the same way Travis did. They saw her a little differently. As they get to know her better, they get more and more creeped out by her behavior.
Very, very early on, she was completely obsessed with him. I started seeing things that were just disturbing, you know, her following him to the bathroom and standing outside the door without him knowing or eavesdropping on his conversations, freaking out if he was out of her sight. She went through his cell phone on multiple occasions. She went through his emails. She went through his Facebook.
She went on his email and forwarded every email message to or from a woman to herself. There was this one time where she said that she was getting these messages from some strange man who says that he watches her.
Travis came to me. He goes, let me read you this email. It's really scary. And it was like, Jodi, you're so beautiful. You're so amazing. Travis doesn't deserve you. Travis lives in Mesa, and you live in California, and he's too far away. He can't protect you, and I know where you live. And I'm laughing at this point. And Travis is like, Sky, this is serious. She's very scared.
And I said, Travis, she wrote the email. She wants you to ask her to move to Arizona. I said, this is fake. Like, she made this up. We finally decided, like Chris and I were like, okay, this is ridiculous. Like there's something wrong with her. And so we're like, hey, let's chat. So Sky, Travis and myself were all sitting on my bed.
We were just telling him all the things that we were worried about with her. And I said, she's scary. There's something wrong with her. We started to tell him how we think she's not only not good for him, but she's dangerous. He said, gosh, guys, she's so good. You don't know she's so good.
She's so sweet. She doesn't have anybody else. I really like her. And I said, Travis, I'm afraid we're going to find you chopped up in her freezer. And all of a sudden I got this cold feeling over me and I knew she was outside our door. And I mouthed to them and pointed at the door and I said, she's out there. And Travis was like, no way. And Travis rips the door open and she's there.
And the look on her face was just, it was evil. There was a rage in her eyes. So Skye and I are very frightened at this point. She might burn down our house, you know, with all of us in it.
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Chapter 5: How was Travis Alexander murdered?
I said, T-Dog, you better be dead, bro. Yeah, like I was joking. Call me back. You know, why are you dissing me? Why aren't you calling me back?
Nobody can reach Travis. Nobody has seen Travis. They know something is wrong. There's a company retreat coming up in Cancun, Mexico. All expenses paid. Travis is going with Mimi. Travis's friends have gone ahead a few days before Travis was supposed to fly out. Once they get to Cancun, they keep calling Travis. But it's very strange. They can't reach Travis.
Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice... His phone just kept going to voicemail. We kept trying to call again and again, and all of a sudden the voicemail was full. At the same time, Mimi is getting concerned because they're supposed to leave to Mexico the next day.
By June 9th, it has been five days since any of Travis's friends have heard from him. A few of Travis's friends, including Mimi, go to Travis's house.
They knock, but nobody's answering the door. So they call another friend to get the garage code. Travis has rented out bedrooms in the house, so he's got two roommates. They hear music on in Zach's room, who is one of Travis's roommates. And they ask him, hey, have you seen or heard from Travis? He said, no, he's in Mexico. And Mimi said, he's not in Mexico.
I'm supposed to go with him to Mexico tomorrow. So that roommate gets the key to Travis's bedroom. I found the key to Travis's bedroom, and so I unlocked the door. When they first cast open the doors from the master bedroom, there's this smell, this horrendous foul odor, something that appears to be rotting.
At this point, my heart was pounding. just because I feared for the worst. I opened the door, and immediately as soon as I opened it, there was a puddle of blood on the carpet. And so as soon as I saw that, I walked in, walked past it. I looked down the hallway to his bathroom, and so I could see the blood all over the ground, all over the walls.
And as he turns the corner, he spots Travis curled up in the shower, and he's clearly dead and has been dead for several days. The friends frantically exit the bedroom and call 911.
What's going on? Our friend of ours is dead in his bedroom. We hadn't heard from him for a while. We think he's dead. His roommate just went in there and killed him. He said there's lots of blood. I didn't go in, but I can give you the phone to someone who went in there. Yes, please, can you?
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Chapter 6: What evidence was found at the crime scene?
He made me feel unique and special. The trial was a circus. It was Arizona's version of the O.J. Simpson trial. Jealous, devious killer shooting her boyfriend, stabbing him. Raunchy graphic pictures. This was the classic, can't live with you, can't live without you. You know, it was a fatal attraction. Definitely a fatal attraction.
He was murdered. They're all thinking, she did it. She had gone from blonde bombshell, sex pot, boom. Now she's walking into court looking like a librarian. And we're like, that's it? Are you kidding me? You sliced this guy up and stabbed him. And you don't remember any of it? None of it proves that I committed a murder. But Jodi is still fighting, and she has a pending appeal right now.
So is this case ever going to be really over? Who knows? Love is a battlefield. Within hours of the body being discovered, Jodi calls the homicide detective to ask what was going on. I mean, I got a call last night, but She asks questions, but she doesn't seem to be overly stressed or overly concerned. She wanted to know how he died, and she was probing for information.
It's almost like I was being interviewed by her.
She's explaining to him that she had been on a road trip to see this Ryan Burns, her newest love interest in Utah, and that she in fact broke up with Travis some time ago and hadn't seen him for months. I know people were saying that she wasn't in town, but her name is coming up. She was an ex-girlfriend. She wouldn't leave Travis alone.
Oh, gosh.
Detective Flores says, hey, people are saying that you guys had a fatal attraction. Jody immediately denies ever being in Arizona or anywhere near Travis's house on the night he was killed.
How would you describe your relationship with him?
We dated for, like, five months. And we broke up, and we continued to actually see each other. I'm kind of so embarrassed talking about this, but it wasn't boyfriend and girlfriend. It was more like kind of buddy.
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Chapter 7: What was Jodi Arias's response to the investigation?
I contacted her and said, look, if you're ever in town, please get a hold of me. We're getting fingerprints and DNA from everybody who has been in the house. And she said, absolutely. I'm coming down for his memorial service. I just remember there being tons and tons of people It was a great service. My siblings, a lot of my siblings spoke.
He just loved to be with his family and his friends and just bring joy to everybody's life. He truly loved life. Memorial service, I think, looking back on it, would have been something that he would have really liked, and they honored him in a very, very good way. She showed up at the memorial for Travis down in Arizona as if she's some grieving widow.
They look across the room, and there is Jody Arias. He was murdered. They're all thinking, uh, His family members were there, some family members, and there's a part of me that wanted to reach out to them. I don't think that they would have felt comfortable with me approaching them as much as I wanted very much to express my condolences.
While Jody's in town and the investigation is ongoing, police are collecting evidence from everybody. Jody volunteers to go down to the police station and be fingerprinted. She got her fingerprints done. I had a DNA sample from her, and that's all I needed.
The detectives wanted Jody's DNA because there was a bloody palm print at the murder scene and they wanted to see, does it match Jody Arias's? Well, until the forensics come back, there's a waiting game. What doesn't take long to analyze is the memory card in that camera found in the laundry room. That took just a matter of days.
Peter Forensic, investigator. He's in office just below me. He called me up and said, you're not going to believe what I just found. To their shocking surprise, there are photographs on this digital camera that are date stamped from the day of the murder.
He asked me, who is this girl? Because she was there the same day that he was killed. And I took one look at it, and I said, oh my goodness, that's Jodi Arias. She lied to me. She was there. They find photos of both Travis and Jody in sexually provocative positions. Photos of Travis in the shower looking directly at the camera.
I believe that's the last photo that was taken of him before something happened. The camera apparently accidentally somehow fell and took a couple shots during the course of the killing. Unbelievable. One of the photos is of the back of Travis's head with blood running down. And in the foreground is a leg and a foot wearing blue pants.
It is one of the most astounding pieces of evidence in the history of jurisprudence. The idea that even as the homicide occurred, the camera is continuing to click photographs. It's almost like having somebody videotape your murder. The photographs are a huge deal in the case, but they're just one piece of the puzzle. They need that DNA to come back.
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Chapter 8: How did the trial unfold for Jodi Arias?
That's right, people actually standing in long lines.
The public was obsessed because this was a case that was drenched in sex and lies and sex and religion and sex. People quit their jobs to attend this trial. This is the time set for trial to begin. When Jodi Arias first came into the courtroom, it was quite different from the image we had of her in photos with Travis.
She had gone from blonde bombshell, sexpot, boom, now she's walking into court looking like a librarian. What a makeover. Please be seated. They don't sell Clairol hair dye in jail, so this is my natural hair color. My eyes deteriorated in here, my vision, so I got glasses. It just seemed like it was all a ploy to manipulate the jury.
All right, this is the state of Arizona versus Jody and Arias. Is the state ready? Juan Martinez, the prosecutor, was seeking the death penalty against Jody. They wanted to see Jody Arias face the same fate that Travis Alexander faced. And they felt they had plenty of evidence to back that up.
This is not a case of who's done it. The person who done it sits in court today is the defendant, Jody Ann Arias. In Prosecutor Juan Martinez's version of events, she had carefully planned this murder of Travis as an act of rage from a woman scorned. She had planned or thought about killing Travis Alexander before she actually killed him.
Jody was telling other people a story that she was going to visit Ryan Burns, who lives in Salt Lake City. That was her alibi. She was going to drive down to L.A. first, and then from there, she was going to come and see me. The prosecution claimed that Jody had stolen the gun that was taken from her grandparents' house.
Police believe she then engaged in what became known as the killer road trip. She knew at the start of this trip that she was going to kill him. She dyed her hair so that if anybody spotted her in the neighborhood, she wouldn't be that blonde that was seen a lot at Travis Alexander's home. She borrowed two gas cans from her ex-boyfriend and bought a third.
That seemed strange because why would she want to take gas cans on a trip? Last time anybody was in California, the place is dotted with gas stations. Her cell phone was conveniently off from the time she crossed over into Arizona. I tried to call her at 9, but her phone went straight to voicemail, so I couldn't get through.
She knew that we were going to track her phone. She knew, and she did not want to leave a trail. It seemed that she thought of almost every little detail. It was clear that this was premeditated. She arrived at the house. She was having sex with him. They're taking the pictures. You know, she's just waiting for a moment to kill him.
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