I'll give it a shot.
He gets out of the shower after that last picture and head to the toilet. He's gotta pee. When he comes out of that room she hands him the camera so he can look at he pictures she took of him, and hits him with the knife. The element of surprise with a knife, which hurts, is significantly overlooked. A quick hard blow that she intended to hit the heart. She missed a little, but he was completely unprepared. He drops the camera (the ceiling picture), and stumbles back a few steps toward the toilet area as his brain tries to catch up to what happened. She after him again. She is coming at him from the right, so he is trying to go left. He goes down half in front of the toilet and the scale area. He manages to get up, and knocks her back, possibly down. He stumbles near the sink and catches himself and remains uprigth with the aid of the sink. This is when he starts coughing. She comes at him again at the sink, hitting the wounds to the back of the head and/or the cluster in the upper back. He is trying to clear his airway. He manages to get to the r hand wall in the hallway. He turns his back to the wall so it will support him. He is trying to fight of the stabs, but he is getting weak and is having trouble staying upright. The anterior neck wounds and the scalp wound occur during this volley of stabs. He reaches the end of the hall. Near the outlet at the bedroom end of the hall, there are two large smears of blood on the wall. He went to the ground for the last time here. He is trying to crawl into the bedroom and presumably to the stairs. She cuts his throat at the tile-carpet juncture and he fall forward onto the carpet. She feels she has killed him so she starts dragging him back to the shower (during this dragging, she hits the camera with her foot and we get the pic from the top of the head. The camera ). Near the light switch she either slips or has to put her hand on the wall for leverage, leaving her palm print on the wall. She gets him drug back to the area in front of the linen closet. She is exhausted. She steps back to catch her breath for a second. He has been making noises and convulsing the whole time so she is unsure what is going on, he should be dead. His body starts making noises and the neurlogical system fires off a few last involuntary contractions (because blood flow has been cut-off). She misinterprets this as him trying to get up. She pulls the gun out and fire one shot hitting him in the forehead. The bullet passes through the Frontal Lobe, causing the "Cerebral Shock" the ME described thus causing him to finally go limp. She gets him in the shower. Rinses herself off, then drys. Grabs the clothes she had on (maybe the bloody clothes found in the washer) and takes all the stuff found in the washer to the washer. Comes back upstairs with the gun and the towel she used, picks up the knife near the end of the hallway, and puts the knife and gun in her purse (maybe wrapped in towel) accounts for the drops found in the bedroom. Gets dressed and locks the bedroom door behind her as she leaves.
Thanks for stepping up to the challenge and giving it a shot. A few comments:
Why would Jodi have let Travis get up from a vulnerable seated position an a small enclosure before initiating the attack? This is the biggest problem with your theory. Travis is a physically imposing man to Jodi. Seated in a small shower stall puts him an ideal position for Jodi to initiate the attack. She is now standing above him, and he is trapped without any leverage. But I think knife-firsters need the attack to start
outside of the shower because it would make no sense to start trying to stab Travis in the shower while he was sitting down. This does not represent an ideal target at all for a knife attack, as vital organs are not exposed. However, it represents a
very nice target for a sudden gunshot to the head. And of course the bullet trajectory matches this scenario perfectly. In the final shower photo, Travis' right side is toward Jodi. Travis is shot in the right forehead. The bullet trajectory is
down through the face. Travis is sitting down, Jodi is standing up with the gun. It is simply a perfect fit.
In your scenario, Travis gets himself up and out of the shower before the attack begins. He would likely have dried off prior to using the toilet in your scenario. Then he uses the toilet. Then Jodi approaches him with the camera to show him the photos. He takes the camera, Jodi suddenly stabs him. All this in
45 seconds? What is Jodi doing, standing by with the camera while Travis dries off and takes a pee?
After Travis picks himself up near the toilet (following the initial attack and knocking Jodi back/down), he travels to the sink, faces the sink for several seconds coughing blood. If he had an advantage over Jodi with her off her feet or knocked back, why would he not take advantage of this and try to fully subdue her? Instead, you have him turning around to face the mirror, leaving himself completely vulnerable to another attack from behind?
Ok, my turn.
I again go back to the video which shows the photos in real time:
[video=youtube;pEEW7S16o0c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEEW7S16o0c[/video]
The death scene, according to Travis' camera, goes like:
Photo#/time stamp (YouTube video time)
1) 5:29:20 - Travis looking at the camera (video time 6:13)
2) 5:30:30 - Travis lower half seated (video time 6:24)
3) 5:31:14 - Bathroom ceiling (video time 7:09)
4) 5:32:16 - Travis with neck slashed (video time 8:14)
5) 5:33:32 - Travis being dragged (video time 9:29)
Watching the photos in real time helps convey how much time Jodi had to conduct the mayhem. What fits for me is:
Jodi has Travis just where she wants him: seated in the shower where he represents the least threat possible short of him being tied up. Travis' right side is facing Jodi. She waits for exactly the right moment, perhaps while Travis is wiping water from his eyes with his right hand (which is not visible in photo #
2. She shoots Travis at, or immediately after, photo #
2. This might have been the exact moment the gun went off. As she pulls the trigger and the gun fires, the recoil causes her other hand to unknowingly snap photo #
2.
Travis reacts, and Jodi immediately tries to fire another round to the head. The gun jams. Jodi tries to again to get the gun to fire, but no luck. To her horror she sees that Travis is anything but dead. She knows she must now finish the job. She retreats from the bathroom to retrieve the knife (perhaps in the bedroom). There is a significant pause prior to photo #
3 (~45 sec) This would be the time that both Jodi and Travis realize the gun is jammed. Jodi departs the bathroom to get the knife. Travis, stunned by the gunshot, doesn't just continue to sit in the shower and bleed. He manages to up himself, and before trying to get help for himself, instinctively moves to the sink to assess the wound. He may have thought Jodi was leaving the scene at that point and was not an immediate threat. He was probably shaky and a bit disoriented, and had to prop himself with wet hands on the front of the sink. Blood is dripping from his nose from the sinus wound, leaving a trail of blood droplets on the counter in front of the sink pointing back to the shower. Clearly Travis was facing toward the mirror, so Jodi was not engaged in knife slashing at that point because she left to retrieve the knife.
Jodi returns. Travis may have seen her in the mirror and turned to face her. She may have partially concealed the knife and pretended to be concerned about the wound so Travis would lower his guard (I can just hear her feigning concern at this point to gain advantage again.) She lunged with a straight-on knife thrust to the chest, aiming directly for his heart with the one really clean shot she had before Travis started defending himself. Travis, mortally wounded, was still able to attempt to fend off subsequent knife thrusts, incurring defensive wounds. Jodi still had the camera in her hand, and photo #
3 was snapped during the start of the knife attack (this might also have been an unconscious reflex of her right hand as she lunged at him). Travis realizes that he is overcome and must flee, and attempts to escape toward the bedroom. Jodi continues stabbing, Travis falls, and Jodi finishes him off with additional stabs and finally the coup de grace.
Total time for the murder: about one and three-quarters minutes (between photos #
2 and #
4). Total time for the knife attack: about a minute (between photo #
3 and #
4).
Between photo #
4 and #
5, another minute and 17 seconds elapses. What is Jodi doing during this minute? I'm guessing she was assessing the unplanned horror in front of her, grabbing the duvet cover, and maneuvering Travis' body back toward the still-running shower.
Dave
