My thought is: she tells Travis the last shots will be with his eyes closed.. she's getting ready to pull the knife...she is slipping the camera into her pants pocket quietly (a strap possibly leads to her getting hit in the face by a swinging camera or him grabbing it and choking her during a struggle) while it slips into her pocket she hits shutter, 1st pic. 5:31:14
She's now in chaos for the next minute. Travis fought for his life and didn't just stay in the shower and die like she planned. He tries grabbing the knife. He's out, to the sink, hands bleeding on the vanity as she knifes him in the back, blood everywhere. He's staggering down the hall and she's following him. He slides down the wall and she goes for the throat. He's dead. She begins getting him off the carpet, down the hall. As she does the camera falls from her pocket and captures the 5:32:16 pic of her foot. Travis is dead so that threat is over. She still knows she cannot lose track of the camera. The evidence mine t must be deleted. So she reaches down, picks it up and puts it back in her pocket.
She continues dragging 180 pounds back to the shower. It's difficult and again the camera falls out taking the 5:32:33 image.
it could definately have been on a strap but if it was wouldn't it have captured her hair in the photo if she was bent over, close enough for the shutter to hit the ground? Not so if falling from a pocket...
The only points that aren't speculative, IMO, are that JM believes Travis was still alive when she began dragging him back to the bathroom, and that she still had the camera on her...iirc, he said the accidental pics were right side up, and either LE or he had experimented to figure out how high off the floor the camera was in each of the accidental shots.
As for what was said and done in the shower up until the first stab. Can't be known, and there's quite a range of opinions here on this forum for virtually every second and movement in his bathroom that day.
In broad strokes, mine are: that he didn't give her permission to take the pics, and that when she surprised him with the camera she immediately began talking to him.
She either already had the gun pointed at him, or she "soothed" him enough with flattery (and he knew he was vulnerable, naked, trapped) that he didn't immediately step out of the shower.
I think she talked at him non-stop. She said so on the stand- and I believe it anyway.
For myself I will never believe he sat down in the shower willingly. She forced him to. How? Either with the gun, OR...a whole different form of coercion.
Maybe she was telling him how good he looked for Cancun (hence her chortling in her letter to family--who knows what would have happened if he wasn't so proud of his toned body?). then starting going off, slowly at first, then not, and shortly before she tells him to sit down she points the gun. At her own head. And tells him she's going to kill herself unless he does what she tells him to do.
I've always thought he looked angry in that last photo. One interpretation is that he looks angry because he thought he was done with her and instead she is playing out her suicide drama, once again, this time going so far as to lie to him about why she's there, waiting until he's helpless to walk away or wrestle with her, and then pulling out a GUN.
JM and Flores believe that Travis was moving towards her when the first accidental photo was taken, of the ceiling. Maybe she'd thrown the gun on the floor to distract him and he was reaching for it when she stabbed him.
Who knows. One version or another. My scenario is definitely influenced by my immersion in the May 26 chat, in which she mentions suicide (no reason for me to be alive, etc) no fewer than 3 times.
I've asked and thought and asked....why the May 26 confrontation if she already planned to kill him..
Maybe...maybe she was laying the groundwork for the shower scene, so when she threatened suicide there he wouldn't find it unbelievable?
