Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias (32 page)

Just as the prosecutor did, Willmott displayed photographs, showing jurors several of Jodi and Travis posing together, snuggling and smiling for the camera on some of the trips they had taken. There was another photo from Jodi’s baptism, which showed Jodi and Travis dressed in the white baptismal clothes of the Mormon faith. Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, Willmott began to pivot toward Travis’s character, taking baby steps toward her full-fledged strategy to blame the victim.

“On the outside, looking in, it really appeared like they were involved in a very loving and healthy relationship. But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, behind the smiles in these photographs there was a whole other reality for Jodi. A reality that Travis created. Because, in reality, Jodi was Travis’s dirty little secret.”

Dirty little secret:
The catchy phrase was immediately picked up for news headlines. It would become so associated with the trial that, months later when Lifetime network aired a made-for-TV movie on the case, they called it
Dirty Little Secret.
“Despite projecting himself as a good and virginal Mormon man,” Willmott continued, “someone who is a Temple member, from the moment he met Jodi he was pushing and pushing her to have a sexual relationship with him.” Pacing just a few feet from where the murder victim’s family sat sobbing, she accused their dead loved one of hypocrisy, arrogance, rage, and intimidation. “As Travis would explain to Jodi, oral sex really isn’t as much of a sin for him as vaginal sex. And so he was able to convince her to give him oral sex. And, later on in their relationship, Travis would tell her that anal sex wasn’t as much of a sin as vaginal sex and so he was able to persuade her to allow him to have anal sex with her.”

Shock rippled through the courtroom. While those who’d followed the case closely for months knew about the sexual nature of their relationship, many people were caught off guard by these explicit sexual details. It turned out that Jodi’s defense was just getting started.

“And so, while he continued this façade of being a good and virginal Mormon man, he was inwardly dealing with his own sexual issues . . . In Jodi, he found somebody who was easily manipulated and controlled, someone who would provide him with that secretive sexual relationship that he needed while, on the outside, he could still pursue the appropriate Mormon woman.” Portraying Jodi as a meek, frightened, submissive female eager to obey her abusive dominant male partner, Willmott continued, her flat voice and nasal tone belying the provocative content of her words. “Jodi wanted nothing but to please Travis . . . at some points during their relationship he would tell her you know you really ought to see, date somebody else. But, the moment she would even text another man or talk to another man Travis would instantly degrade her, yell at her, embarrass her, and humiliate her. So, Jodi learned very quickly how to deal with Travis’s temper . . . by being humble, compliant, and agreeable.” What she left unsaid was why Jodi, if she were so put upon by Travis’s behavior, would keep tracking him down to get another dose of it.

Willmott then moved on to paint Travis as a womanizer saying, despite all the sex he and Jodi had, he still pursued other women on the side, which prompted Jodi to break up with him in June 2007. “He begged her for forgiveness . . . Travis sent Jodi a poem that apologized for his behavior . . . Travis showered her with attention, he was nothing but sweet and kind.” Making it seem as though Travis cajoled Jodi into moving from California to Mesa after their official breakup, Willmott kept upping the ante.

“You’ll hear how Travis degraded Jodi to his friends. . . . You’ll hear that he often referred to her as a stalker or claimed that she was crazy. And if she did anything like speak with another man or text another man he would further degrade her by calling her names, names like slut, and whore.” However, Willmott’s big theme was the sexual secrecy. “The more Travis distanced himself from Jodi to his friends the easier it was for him to keep control of her . . . for his own sexual needs.”

From there, she turned to domestic violence, promising to deliver an expert who would explain how “a lot of times domestic violence comes from control through verbal abuse.” The defense attorney explained that, because victims are ashamed of what happens to them, and believe it will get worse if they take action, domestic violence often goes unreported. This was designed to address Jodi’s failure to ever mention being battered by Travis in either her journals or conversations with friends.

In Willmott’s sweeping opening statement, she also accused Travis of having had a possessive nature, citing the T-shirt that Jodi claimed Travis made for her which stated “Travis Alexander’s.” In her remarks, Willmott spoke about the T-shirt as though it were fact that Travis had made it; yet, once again, Jodi was the only source of that information. Those close to Travis later insisted that he would have written “T-Dogg’s” and not “Travis’s,” saying that Jodi probably had it printed herself.

Willmott had now gotten to the late history of the two. She said by April 2008, “Jodi had had enough because she found out that once again Travis was pursuing other women even though he was having her in his bed.” So, she said, Jodi moved from Mesa back to California, settling in her old hometown of Yreka. “Even though she moved, Travis didn’t let her go. He continued emailing, texting, and calling. He guilted her about leaving him. And, the thing is, with the type of relationship they were in, the minute Travis was nice to Jodi and caring to Jodi, she fell right back into that relationship with him.” As Willmott explained, they weren’t even in the same state, but Travis continued to “use Jodi for his own sexual desires through the phone and phone sex.”

Jennifer Willmott then dropped the bombshell that would propel this case into a new stratosphere of public interest. “You’ll actually hear a recorded phone call . . . between Travis and Jodi that’s very explicit,” Willmott explained, alluding to the graphic sex tape Jodi had recorded just a couple of weeks before she had killed Travis. “Travis talks about how he’s going to Cancún with somebody else. Jodi knew that, and she expresses absolutely no dismay about it whatsoever, and this was just weeks before he dies.”

Again, Willmott reverted to her motif that Travis led a double life. “Most importantly, when you hear this call, it’s crucial to understand the difference, the difference between the type of person that Travis portrayed himself to be versus the things that he said on this recorded call. Because while he was supposed to be this virginal Mormon man who didn’t want to have any type of relationship with Jodi and she just wouldn’t leave him alone, in this phone call he talks about his fantasies, his fantasies with Jodi of tying her to a tree and putting it, forgive me, in her ass all the way. That’s Travis. And, then, when Jodi pretends to climax during this phone call, Travis tells her that she sounds like a twelve-year-old girl who is having an orgasm for the first time. And then he tells her ‘it’s so hot.’ These comments are not comments of a man who is being relentlessly stalked and who does not want to have any contact with Jodi. These are comments of a man who has a real problem with the comparison to the person he portrays himself to be and who he’s supposed to be versus . . . his own private reality and the person who he really was.”

Willmott’s explanation of what would be on the sex tape caught even the most seasoned trial watchers off guard. While plenty of people knew that Jodi and Travis had broken Mormon laws and had premarital sex, few, if any, were aware of just how graphic the content of the phone sex tape was. From this opening it was clear that their sexual relationship and Travis’s apparent hypocrisy over it would be used as evidence to an extent that no one could have predicted.

However, Jodi’s defense attorney knew she could not argue that Jodi killed Travis over hypocrisy. “So, what would have forced Jodi? It was Travis’s continual abuse. And on June 4 of 2008, it had reached the point of no return and, sadly, Travis left Jodi no other option but to defend herself.” Willmott had finally gotten to her version of motive. “On that horrible day, Jodi believed that Travis was going to kill her. He threatened to kill her, and—given her experience with him—she had no reason to not believe him.”

The final summary of the defense attorney’s thirty-five-minute-long remarks gave jurors a window into Jodi’s version of the killing itself. Willmott claimed it was Travis who had beckoned Jodi to Mesa and then, after arriving at Travis’ home at about 4
A
.
M
. and sleeping until around noon the next afternoon, Jodi woke up with Travis, and they had sex.

While both sides agreed they had sex, Willmott’s narrative couldn’t have been more different than what the prosecution laid out. Even the kind of sex they had was in dispute, with the defense alleging that bondage had played a role. “Travis always had wanted to tie Jodi up and he had done it before,” Willmott said. “He had tied her up with rope before but the rope he had used had really hurt her. So, this time he was prepared. . . . He had rope that was soft . . . and he was ready. And, so Travis tied Jodi up, tied her to the bed with this rope. He used a knife to cut the rope when it was at the appropriate length. They engaged in sexual activity.” Left unsaid, of course, was that this story also conveniently placed a knife at the scene.

Jennifer Willmott then got to the part of the trial that she acknowledged would make most everyone cringe with embarrassment, but especially her client who dropped her head down and sighed because she clearly knew what was coming. Willmott explained that Travis was playing around with his new camera. “These are the photos Travis took of Jodi, very up close.” Indeed, the jury would see gynecologic photographs, tight shots of Jodi’s vagina and anus. In one Jodi is on all fours and he is aiming the camera at her from behind, very up close. Willmott was getting closer to the killing, but first she described how Jodi and Travis went downstairs and got on the computer. However, there was a problem, because Travis was not able to upload pictures.

“Well, Travis’s temper flared and he took the CD and he threw it up against the wall in the den. Jodi went immediately into protective mode . . . ‘I’ll fix it, don’t worry about it.’ And, as she was telling him, she knew the one thing that calms his temper the quickest is sex . . . Travis grabbed her and spun her around. Afraid that he was going to hurt her, Jodi was actually relieved when all he did was bend her over the desk, pull her arm up behind her back, pull her pants down and have quick and rough vaginal sex with her, ejaculating all over her back. When Travis was finished, Jodi was allowed to go to the restroom.” Travis’s family, some with their arms folded, listened silently, their faces contorted with derision and frustration.

Jodi’s attorney said the two then went upstairs and Travis, now sexually sated, became charming again, convincing Jodi to take some photographs of his newly buffed physique while he was naked in the shower. Willmott did not address how this claim directly contradicted what Jodi had told Detective Flores about Travis’s shyness over being photographed in the nude or her earlier insistence that it was her idea for him to pose in the shower because she had been inspired by a Calvin Klein ad. Willmott said Jodi began taking tasteful, waist-up photos of a dripping wet Travis. “She was snapping picture after picture after picture . . . These pictures are ultimately found and time stamped.” She went through the prosecution’s most powerful evidence, the photos taken during the killing itself, and tried to spin it. “The next picture is taken when Jodi accidentally drops Travis’s camera. You can see it’s not an intentional picture ’cause, one, it’s blurry and, two, it’s of the ceiling . . . Jodi accidentally drops Travis’s camera and as that camera was falling that was enough for Travis because he lunged at Jodi in anger, knocking her to the ground in the bathroom where there was a struggle. Jodi’s life was in danger . . . In just a minute, from this picture we go to the next picture, where it’s Travis’s body. He’s clearly injured already, in a minute. Now that very brief moment of time, a minute, is not the result of premeditation. It is not the result of a planned out attack.”

With that prosecutor Martinez dove in calling, “Objection. Argument.”

The judge refereed, “Sustained.”

Willmott tried again. “The evidence will show it is not the result . . .”

Martinez interrupted again. “Objection, argument.”

The judge hit pause. “Counsel approach.”

As the two sides argued at the judge’s bench, Jodi’s mother sat expressionless, whispering occasionally with her twin sister. Travis’s family huddled together. Tanisha, in particular, revealed her anguish through her body language, hanging her head, then looking up and staring at the courtroom, as if to ask:
Who is on trial here? My brother?
Soon, Willmott was back with a very short wrap-up. “In that one minute, had Jodi not chosen to defend herself, she would not be here. Thank you.”

With that, opening statements were done. The war between truth and lies had begun.

CHAPTER 16