Sentencing and beyond- JA General Discussion #8

[TrialWatcher]

The discussion on the forgeries is interesting with strong points being made by PocketAccent, Hope4More and others. My view is that Arias thought she had planned the perfect murder. As forcefully as she insisted her innocence, she knew that others were pointing the finger firmly at her before her arrest.

Regarding blackmailing Travis, that was the point of taping the phone sex. Everyone here must have heard her asking TA to repeat the line about her being like a 12 year old girl. The lost Helio phone was both her way of introducing the subject to Travis and providing an insurance - proof (in her eyes) that TA liked young children. My feeling is that she planned to harm Travis as early as the tyre slashing incident. As her rage built, the plans took shape. She took the journals for a several reasons. Having access to so much of Travis' writing seems like a strong one.

Did she write the letters - or start to compose them - before arrest? She had time to do so here. Her own journal entries demonstrate a determination to fake journal records. It also gave her the opportunity to get these safely to someone (just as she had stored the Helio safely).

Re the Index card. Could she have got this from another inmate via the library? It was a huge risk to have this in her cell, I agree. To her it must have been worth it. Perhaps to correct sections given to a third party as new information emerged? Without seeing all of the letters it is especially difficult to assess the evidence. Maybe one day we shall know more?

 

[Hope4More]

I don't see how anyone can see anything on a phone! I have a laptop with a 17" screen and still need to make it 120% bigger! :lol:

:clap:: Niner.

Hope4More and I have disagreed on some key areas. Nonetheless, my admiration for her ability to type huge responses on a smart phone is considerable. I struggle on a MacBook Pro. The site also makes demands to type and edit quite quickly. Doubly impressive!

Actually, for most things most of the time, one finger tap typing is easiest, because I'm blind as a bat, bifocals can hinder instead of aid, and unlike a computer, I can hold a phone right up to my face.

The other reason typing on a phone can be preferable is it prevents me from going very deep down into rabbit holes because I can't link on it or cut and paste.

Case in point. Immediately after I dug up my computer to retype what I'd lost here, instead of retyping, I pulled up the transcripts of her pre-arrest calls with Flores, noting the dates of those calls. Then, after cut and pasting and editing large & relevant sections, it was necessary to pull up her journals, looking for the entries she so obviously wrote not only pre-arrest, but definitely after those calls with Flores.

The connection between the calls & her journal tampering is plain as day. After WS comes back up (if not before), I'll get back on the computer and post those cut & pastes and more as references for the discussion of the possibility she forged the letters pre-arrest.

Another thought/possibility did strike me as I was deep down this rabbit hole...

 

[Hope4More]

The discussion on the forgeries is interesting with strong points being made by PocketAccent, Hope4More and others. My view is that Arias thought she had planned the perfect murder. As forcefully as she insisted her innocence, she knew that others were pointing the finger firmly at her before her arrest.

Regarding blackmailing Travis, that was the point of taping the phone sex. Everyone here must have heard her asking TA to repeat the line about her being like a 12 year old girl. The lost Helio phone was both her way of introducing the subject to Travis and providing an insurance - proof (in her eyes) that TA liked young children. My feeling is that she planned to harm Travis as early as the tyre slashing incident. As her rage built, the plans took shape. She took the journals for a several reasons. Having access to so much of Travis' writing seems like a strong one.

Did she write the letters - or start to compose them - before arrest? She had time to do so here. Her own journal entries demonstrate a determination to fake journal records. It also gave her the opportunity to get these safely to someone (just as she had stored the Helio safely).

Re the Index card. Could she have got this from another inmate via the library? It was a huge risk to have this in her cell, I agree. To her it must have been worth it. Perhaps to correct sections given to a third party as new information emerged? Without seeing all of the letters it is especially difficult to assess the evidence. Maybe one day we shall know more?

I agree with you 100% that she considered the phone tape her masterwork for blackmail (or torment), whatever form she planned for that to take. I agree just as firmly about her pre-arrest state of mind, which is central to the theory I'm laying out: that she manufactured evidence (fact), possibly including those forged letters, after the calls with Flores and before she was arrested.

I don't necessarily agree that she had already plotted a pedo lie & connived to get that on the phone tape. TA brought it up. She didn't. From the texts, it seems her thing, not his, and on the tape, it sounds like he is just trying to accommodate fantasies of hers. To believe she set him up for pedo, yep, one would have to believe she began that planning no later than January, 2008.

As for taking the journals for his handwriting. She stole the Lisa- time journal in mid-March,2008, iirc. When did Travis give her his HANDWRITTEN book chapter notes to type up? Those notes would have provided her a treasure trove of his writing to work with.

Last. Yes, I sure do wish we could see all 10 letters, but I don't believe they will ever be available. They weren't introduced into evidence, and even if Nurmi manages to use them against her in his civil case, we'll never know, because arbitrated civil cases aren't recorded or transcribed, and given her ongoing appeals, would likely be sealed anyway.

(I'd want to know for each letter: content, date, and how TA addressed and signed them).

 

[Hope4More]

Not the theory I've been working on and will complete & post later, but the one that struck me while reviewing her May journal entries and parts of JM's book.

Is it possible she forged them BEFORE she killed Travis, but for an entirely different reason than blackmailing him?

Try this thought on. Around the 3rd week in May, she began actively gathering what she needed from others to murder TA, outside whatever she may have thought or planned or plotted or lined up entirely on her own.

1. She chose to involve Brewer, by asking to borrow his gas cans. Why not just buy them for herself and leave no trace or mention of gas cans, an element crucial to her plot?

2. She involved Ryan, as alibi and very likely, a lie to tell TA before she set out on her murder trip. Ryan asked her for a trip date the first week in May. She didn't give him one until the last week in May.

3. And...then there is MM. Then there is a visit to MM the night before she murdered TA, and a story about what they did and where they were for many, many, hours that was complete rubbish.

There is the fact that the spoke to MM in fall 2007, when he advocated she take psych meds. Is it believable that she did NOT blame TA and lie to MM about what was actually going on?

The visited MM on her way back to Yreka, from Mesa, that UHaul in tow. Post-murder, the called him first, though she didn't reach him.

MM was willing to lie for her, at trial, both about TA physically abusing her, and about the pedo letters.

What if the wanted or needed MM to do something for her on her way to murder TA, but she wasn't sure he would do it? And needed convincing? Especially on the point that Travis was a genuinely terrible and dangerous man, and not just because he had abused her? And...she had the letters TAs had sent her to prove what she was saying?

She would have owned him after that, having made him an accomplice of whatever sort.

And, later, when that arrest she never believed would happen did, and after Flores showed her photos he had lied to her about and claimed destroyed, and after the Alexanders weren't intimidated into a "plea bargain" that would allow her to essentially walk, and after Nurmi scorned her ninjas into oblivion, and after not being able to keep all her stories straight about DV, and realizing she had no documentation to back up her lies- and perhaps no witnesses that Nurmi agreed to call...perhaps then she was ready to haul out those pedo letters.

Why via Bob White, and not MM? Maybe because either she or MM (or both) didn't want to risk having it exposed that the transferral of the letters to MM dated to just before the murder? Possibly implicating MM, to whatever degree?


Adding: forgot to mention an interesting line from JM's (master editor of facts, includer of only the relevant) book.

JM notes that the journal entry stating who she planned to visit on her murder trip was the only undated entry in ANY of her journals, those we've seen and those not introduced into evidence).

 

[TrialWatcher]

"When did Travis give her his HANDWRITTEN book chapter notes to type up?" Hope4More

If I recall correctly, she asked Travis to give her credit for her work in that letter she sent a few weeks into May. So, it must have been fairly near that date (maybe within weeks/months?) in order for it to be so raw and for her to make a demand that he posts something very soon.

"I don't necessarily agree that she had already plotted a pedo lie & connived to get that on the phone tape. TA brought it up. She didn't. From the texts, it seems her thing, not his, and on the tape, it sounds like he is just trying to accommodate fantasies of hers. To believe she set him up for pedo, yep, one would have to believe she began that planning no later than January, 2008."

I think you have provided an explanation in the above paragraph. I have bolded the section above. I agree that she was into the fantasy. The court evidence shows this clearly. The sex tape was very stilted. It seemed to me that she had prompted this discussion before the taped call. This would have been easy to do in the interactions they had by phone that were not recorded. Travis sounded like he had been primed to talk about her fantasies. Arias was ready to catch the relevant words and get him to repeat them.

The period before her arrest is very interesting. From the fabrications in her journals to analysing when she created the forgeries I look forward to further discussion and ideas around this.

 

[Hope4More]

"When did Travis give her his HANDWRITTEN book chapter notes to type up?" Hope4More

If I recall correctly, she asked Travis to give her credit for her work in that letter she sent a few weeks into May. So, it must have been fairly near that date (maybe within weeks/months?) in order for it to be so raw and for her to make a demand that he posts something very soon.

"I don't necessarily agree that she had already plotted a pedo lie & connived to get that on the phone tape. TA brought it up. She didn't. From the texts, it seems her thing, not his, and on the tape, it sounds like he is just trying to accommodate fantasies of hers. To believe she set him up for pedo, yep, one would have to believe she began that planning no later than January, 2008."

I think you have provided an explanation in the above paragraph. I have bolded the section above. I agree that she was into the fantasy. The court evidence shows this clearly. The sex tape was very stilted. It seemed to me that she had prompted this discussion before the taped call. This would have been easy to do in the interactions they had by phone that were not recorded. Travis sounded like he had been primed to talk about her fantasies. Arias was ready to catch the relevant words and get him to repeat them.

The period before her arrest is very interesting. From the fabrications in her journals to analysing when she created the forgeries I look forward to further discussion and ideas around this.

The tied-to-a tree " fantasy" was a set up, start to finish. She suggested the idea to him post-Mesa, in late April, iirc. It was that "fantasy" of hers that TA referred to, when in anger, after she "accidentally" sent TA the text she said was intended for Steve Carroll (another set up), TA told her -why don't you have HIM go there and tie you to a tree?

I believe it was one day later, on May 2, that the sent herself the email? IM's stitched together? that spelled out the tree thing, the one later found on the Helio, and supposedly sent by TA .

That set up can be documented .

The 12 year old girl thing? Not so much, or at least, not so straight forwardly. I don't think she primed him on that specific for the call. My sense is that was always or usually the one to up the kinky stakes, and that TA at least sometimes tried to play the kinky role to please her. Honestly, I thought he sounded completely AWKWARD saying what he did about a 12 year old, and that she sounded surprised at her good luck that he said it.

Was she thinking pedo then, though? Or, "just" sexually deviant," the line she pressed the first time she tried to intimidate his family into a plea bargain?

Thanks for replying about his book notes . She whined about credit, etc. in May, but I'm trying to remember if she left town with the notes (less or no reason to steal journals for forgery practice if so, if already planning).

 

[TrialWatcher]

Good catch re the handwritten book notes. My take is that they had enough interaction to play out fantasies - like the pigtailed schoolgirl ones before. It would have been easy for her to tell him how much it turned her on in phone sex when he talked age.That she liked to feel younger. I feel it was definitely intended to cause the most damage and give her the most leverage over him. She wanted to pin him as a pedo in my opinion. She also pinned herself as one - by that reasoning. This was all pure fantasy, it is important to stress. I agree that he sounded awkward - almost like he was keying himself up to say the words that she wanted to hear.

Re the tree tying incident - that is a fitting illustration of her manipulations. I don't think it takes many more steps to see her doing the same re the schoolgirl script. I think she hated TA long before the killing. Dreamt of revenge and harming him. The thought of her at Lisa's house - slashing tyres - still creeps me out.

 

[Pasasana]

I agree with so much of your theories. And I wonder if pre murder she used his hand written chapter to forge the letters, then photographed them and put them on a flash drive. She could have "accidentally" left them at MM's, just in case she needed them in the future.

 

[pocketaccent]

Not the theory I've been working on and will complete & post later, but the one that struck me while reviewing her May journal entries and parts of JM's book.

Is it possible she forged them BEFORE she killed Travis, but for an entirely different reason than blackmailing him?

Try this thought on. Around the 3rd week in May, she began actively gathering what she needed from others to murder TA, outside whatever she may have thought or planned or plotted or lined up entirely on her own.

1. She chose to involve Brewer, by asking to borrow his gas cans. Why not just buy them for herself and leave no trace or mention of gas cans, an element crucial to her plot?

2. She involved Ryan, as alibi and very likely, a lie to tell TA before she set out on her murder trip. Ryan asked her for a trip date the first week in May. She didn't give him one until the last week in May.

3. And...then there is MM. Then there is a visit to MM the night before she murdered TA, and a story about what they did and where they were for many, many, hours that was complete rubbish.

There is the fact that the spoke to MM in fall 2007, when he advocated she take psych meds. Is it believable that she did NOT blame TA and lie to MM about what was actually going on?

The visited MM on her way back to Yreka, from Mesa, that UHaul in tow. Post-murder, the called him first, though she didn't reach him.

MM was willing to lie for her, at trial, both about TA physically abusing her, and about the pedo letters.

What if the wanted or needed MM to do something for her on her way to murder TA, but she wasn't sure he would do it? And needed convincing? Especially on the point that Travis was a genuinely terrible and dangerous man, and not just because he had abused her? And...she had the letters TAs had sent her to prove what she was saying?

She would have owned him after that, having made him an accomplice of whatever sort.

And, later, when that arrest she never believed would happen did, and after Flores showed her photos he had lied to her about and claimed destroyed, and after the Alexanders weren't intimidated into a "plea bargain" that would allow her to essentially walk, and after Nurmi scorned her ninjas into oblivion, and after not being able to keep all her stories straight about DV, and realizing she had no documentation to back up her lies- and perhaps no witnesses that Nurmi agreed to call...perhaps then she was ready to haul out those pedo letters.

Why via Bob White, and not MM? Maybe because either she or MM (or both) didn't want to risk having it exposed that the transferral of the letters to MM dated to just before the murder? Possibly implicating MM, to whatever degree?


Adding: forgot to mention an interesting line from JM's (master editor of facts, includer of only the relevant) book.

JM notes that the journal entry stating who she planned to visit on her murder trip was the only undated entry in ANY of her journals, those we've seen and those not introduced into evidence).

I can kind of go along with this scenario. There's nothing that doesn't make sense.:thinking:

Very sorry though. When I came up with the pre-murder forgery theory, I really didn't mean to thrust you into the deep deep rabbit hole once again.

I watched the interrogation late last night, I caught something I hadn't before, but was half asleep in some parts so I need to rewatch.(in rabbit hole myself) I think there was a time when she was going to go with self defense, before she created the sloppy ninja story. I plan to rewatch while Websleuths goes down the next 3-4 days.

Also:
I know you think deeply and leave no stone unturned when you go down the rabbit hole. So consider the following possibility, too. (which is my belief that she wrote the letters to hurt TA, to revenge, to blackmail if necessary.)

In addition to her knowledge of TA's friends pointing fingers at her and warning TA of her, IMO she also fully understood that pedophiles hide behind the normal perceived self, suffer silently behind door and when they get caught, everyone is surprised, most never suspect.

Evidence of that knowledge is shown in the forged March 2008 letter, her testimony, and Jan 2007 confession letter. (TA begs her not to tell, The hughes didn't know T was after their boy, No one knew, He wants to marry her to control his deviancy, His suffering in silence, etc.)

 

[TrialWatcher]

2. I think it possible that until Flores told the about these suspicions, she was absolutely convinced she had committed the perfect murder (especially after Flores told her the camera and photos on it had been destroyed). As she replied to her mother when asked if she had been involved in TA's death- "no, and I have the receipts to prove it."

I have no doubt that she thought she had planned the perfect murder. The interview tapes with Flores show breathtaking smugness and confidence. Stupidity too. She played her 'I was never in Arizona' card way too soon. Yet we know that Ryan Burns had been telling her that people were pointing to her. She also must have known the mess she left at the murder scene. Time to make a contingency plan and hide the letters? She has plenty of time to do this. Interesting that her family found the Helio and delivered the forgeries.

Re the forging the letters before the murder? My instinct says no but I'll have to give my head some time to catch up with this theory. 🙂

 

[pocketaccent]

I agree with so much of your theories. And I wonder if pre murder she used his hand written chapter to forge the letters, then photographed them and put them on a flash drive. She could have "accidentally" left them at MM's, just in case she needed them in the future.

My speculation is that as she was no longer able to hack TA's Facebook, email, and texting after May 22 - 26, she branched out to other social media sites. YouTube and Flickr.

The circumstances and timing surrounding those account openings make me suspect that she was ready to 'expose' him with the pedo letters and sex tape (maybe IMO) if her murder plan failed for any reason. She had to win and he had to lose.

 

[pocketaccent]

I agree with so much of your theories. And I wonder if pre murder she used his hand written chapter to forge the letters, then photographed them and put them on a flash drive. She could have "accidentally" left them at MM's, just in case she needed them in the future.

Now that you mentioned flash drive, this is just a pure speculative thought but one of the crime scene photos was a picture of T's linen closet. In it, there was a flash drive. Odd. People don't really keep flash drives in their linen closet right?

Could it have contained the letters that she was planning to plant in T's computer? I wonder if LE analyzed the drive. Is that why she begged and begged Flores to show the crime scene photos? She took the drive out of her pocket while taking shower after killing him, then left it inadvertently in the linen closet?

Watch from 2:53:00 to 2:53:40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpcc37rmk4A

 

[Hope4More]

I can kind of go along with this scenario. There's nothing that doesn't make sense.:thinking:

Very sorry though. When I came up with the pre-murder forgery theory, I really didn't mean to thrust you into the deep deep rabbit hole once again.

I watched the interrogation late last night, I caught something I hadn't before, but was half asleep in some parts so I need to rewatch.(in rabbit hole myself) I think there was a time when she was going to go with self defense, before she created the sloppy ninja story. I plan to rewatch while Websleuths goes down the next 3-4 days.

Also:
I know you think deeply and leave no stone unturned when you go down the rabbit hole. So consider the following possibility, too. (which is my belief that she wrote the letters to hurt TA, to revenge, to blackmail if necessary.)

In addition to her knowledge of TA's friends pointing fingers at her and warning TA of her, IMO she also fully understood that pedophiles hide behind the normal perceived self, suffer silently behind door and when they get caught, everyone is surprised, most never suspect.

Evidence of that knowledge is shown in the forged March 2008 letter, her testimony, and Jan 2007 confession letter. (TA begs her not to tell, The hughes didn't know T was after their boy, No one knew, He wants to marry her to control his deviancy, His suffering in silence, etc.)

Pocket- once upon a time, like a week or so ago, I believed with as much certainty as it's possible to have, given the incomplete record available to us, that the pedo letters were forged after her arrest, and post-ninjas.

Thanks to you- sincerely- and the case you've presented, I am no longer certain when she forged them. Diving into a few rabbit holes to try to figure out the full range of possibilities is well worth the time.

I don't have to rethink anything to know & agree that she hated him well before she killed him, and definitely before she left Mesa. And I know that she ACTED on that hatred well before she left Mesa, including by gaslighting him, slashing tires, and so much more.

I've always been convinced that several of her fall 2007 journal entries suggest she was actively thinking of horrible revenge, perhaps even of murder. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the journal pages she tore out from that time expressed such violent & very dark thoughts.

And I definitely believe she manufactured "evidence" post Mesa she believed would destroy him if it were revealed.

I'm just not convinced (though yes, I'll definitely try to keep an open mind as I rethink what's possible) that she would have reached to pedo in order to destroy him. I don't think she would have thought she would NEED to go that low, especially if going that low involved attaching her name to the accusation.

There were "friends" of Travis who in fact didn't forgive him when they found out post-murder that he wasn't a virgin, that he'd been sexually active, that he wasn't who they thought he was.

She could have accomplished depriving TA of any chance to find a good Mormon wife if she had simply made the sex tape public ...though of course, the tape would have (as it did at trial) exposed her too, as a manipulative *advertiser censored* (sorry for harsh language).

Two quick last things for now, however loosely connected.

1. I think I might have to sign up to Beth's site again, for a month, to review the texts YET AGAIN. Can't believe I never printed the darn things out, but was almost always on my phone reading then posting about them.

The number #1 thing I need to look at again and think hard about are the NA55 texts. Maybe I was completely wrong, and that wasn't a trap Travis set, but a hack by her to plant evidence, including the line about a 12 year old girl? She would have had to hack the texts at the time they were dated, though...I think? Not sure how that would have been possible, but...

2. To toss this in...during trial, on the stand, JM crossing her, JM trying to bring in that TAYLOR S. had told him (JM) that TA had told him (Taylor) he had told the to go home in mid-late January, after TA had come clean to his Bishop.

The context in which JM tried to bring that in (over Nurmi's objections) were her pedo accusations, and the timing of them, which JM attached to the actual date of Jan 21.

I remember JM suggesting (one of his putting it out there & letting it float away) the possibility that the might have invented the pedo lie BACK THEN- and that she might have done so to use the lie against TA, to prevent him from forcing her out. Maybe will try to find that on YouTube. (EEK!!!!!!)

 

[Hope4More]

Now that you mentioned flash drive, this is just a pure speculative thought but one of the crime scene photos was a picture of T's linen closet. In it, there was a flash drive. Odd. People don't really keep flash drives in their linen closet right?

Could it have contained the letters that she was planning to plant in T's computer? I wonder if LE analyzed the drive. Is that why she begged and begged Flores to show the crime scene photos? She took the drive out of her pocket while taking shower after killing him, then left it inadvertently in the linen closet?

Watch from 2:53:00 to 2:53:40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpcc37rmk4A

Even for that dimwit, what a stupid idea that would be, to think anyone would believe TA would make and keep PDF copies of handwritten letters he had supposedly sent the , letters which exposed him as a pedophile?

As for what else might have been on that flash drive.. there was lots of speculation about that here, way way back, during trial itself, iirc.

 

[RickshawFan]

Now that you mentioned flash drive, this is just a pure speculative thought but one of the crime scene photos was a picture of T's linen closet. In it, there was a flash drive. Odd. People don't really keep flash drives in their linen closet right?

Could it have contained the letters that she was planning to plant in T's computer? I wonder if LE analyzed the drive. Is that why she begged and begged Flores to show the crime scene photos? She took the drive out of her pocket while taking shower after killing him, then left it inadvertently in the linen closet?

Watch from 2:53:00 to 2:53:40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpcc37rmk4A

Great catch on the thumb drive! Whose biz card was right next to it? Significance?

 

[RickshawFan]

Pocket- once upon a time, like a week or so ago, I believed with as much certainty as it's possible to have, given the incomplete record available to us, that the pedo letters were forged after her arrest, and post-ninjas.

Thanks to you- sincerely- and the case you've presented, I am no longer certain when she forged them. Diving into a few rabbit holes to try to figure out the full range of possibilities is well worth the time. ******

Here's my problem, which I brought up a few posts back. Post-ninjas would have been in jail. It is extremely unlikely that she had a sample of TA's handwriting in jail. How was she going to forge his handwriting without a sample?

If she could maybe perhaps forge the writing from memory, consider that post-ninjas was a loooong time after she had had a sample of TA's writing in front of her. I realize her obsession and ease of lying made her exceptionally observant of detail, but this lapse of time to recreate someone's handwriting from memory, IMO, is a bit much.

Okay, a counter-possibility is that MM held up TA's journal during video conversations with . But presumably, the evil one didn't have a record function on the video machine, and what would it have been recorded to, anyway? She's maybe writing on index cards from the journal MM is holding up, and he keeps holding it up until she's had a bunch of practice?

Then, after a little finessing, she has another chat with him while holding up the jury-rigged (no pun intended) cards?

Finally, my golf pencil theme. IIRC, JA didn't have any way to erase. She was condemned to golf pencils even through the trial. She'd have to instruct MM (if he) to cut around a crossed-out word/phrase before he pasted?

 

[pocketaccent]

Even for that dimwit, what a stupid idea that would be, to think anyone would believe TA would make and keep PDF copies of handwritten letters he had supposedly sent the , letters which exposed him as a pedophile?

As for what else might have been on that flash drive.. there was lots of speculation about that here, way way back, during trial itself, iirc.

Your reponse made me break out in laughter.:lol: Yah, that would have been a stupid idea. I've over speculated.

 

[pocketaccent]

Here's my problem, which I brought up a few posts back. Post-ninjas would have been in jail. It is extremely unlikely that she had a sample of TA's handwriting in jail. How was she going to forge his handwriting without a sample?

If she could maybe perhaps forge the writing from memory, consider that post-ninjas was a loooong time after she had had a sample of TA's writing in front of her. I realize her obsession and ease of lying made her exceptionally observant of detail, but this lapse of time to recreate someone's handwriting from memory, IMO, is a bit much.

Okay, a counter-possibility is that MM held up TA's journal during video conversations with . But presumably, the evil one didn't have a record function on the video machine, and what would it have been recorded to, anyway? She's maybe writing on index cards from the journal MM is holding up, and he keeps holding it up until she's had a bunch of practice?

Then, after a little finessing, she has another chat with him while holding up the jury-rigged (no pun intended) cards?

Finally, my golf pencil theme. IIRC, JA didn't have any way to erase. She was condemned to golf pencils even through the trial. She'd have to instruct MM (if he) to cut around a crossed-out word/phrase before he pasted?

BBM - I agree!

Her phone calls and video calls (if allowed. IDK) would have been recorded and listened in. So highly unlikely they did what you described.

And yes, she was condemned to golf pencils for life, but during trial she did have a knub of eraser with her. I don't know if eraser is allowed in her cell though.

 

[pocketaccent]

Pocket- once upon a time, like a week or so ago, I believed with as much certainty as it's possible to have, given the incomplete record available to us, that the pedo letters were forged after her arrest, and post-ninjas.

Thanks to you- sincerely- and the case you've presented, I am no longer certain when she forged them. Diving into a few rabbit holes to try to figure out the full range of possibilities is well worth the time.

I don't have to rethink anything to know & agree that she hated him well before she killed him, and definitely before she left Mesa. And I know that she ACTED on that hatred well before she left Mesa, including by gaslighting him, slashing tires, and so much more.

I've always been convinced that several of her fall 2007 journal entries suggest she was actively thinking of horrible revenge, perhaps even of murder. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the journal pages she tore out from that time expressed such violent & very dark thoughts.

And I definitely believe she manufactured "evidence" post Mesa she believed would destroy him if it were revealed.

I'm just not convinced (though yes, I'll definitely try to keep an open mind as I rethink what's possible) that she would have reached to pedo in order to destroy him. I don't think she would have thought she would NEED to go that low, especially if going that low involved attaching her name to the accusation.

There were "friends" of Travis who in fact didn't forgive him when they found out post-murder that he wasn't a virgin, that he'd been sexually active, that he wasn't who they thought he was.

She could have accomplished depriving TA of any chance to find a good Mormon wife if she had simply made the sex tape public ...though of course, the tape would have (as it did at trial) exposed her too, as a manipulative *advertiser censored* (sorry for harsh language).

Two quick last things for now, however loosely connected.

1. I think I might have to sign up to Beth's site again, for a month, to review the texts YET AGAIN. Can't believe I never printed the darn things out, but was almost always on my phone reading then posting about them.

The number #1 thing I need to look at again and think hard about are the NA55 texts. Maybe I was completely wrong, and that wasn't a trap Travis set, but a hack by her to plant evidence, including the line about a 12 year old girl? She would have had to hack the texts at the time they were dated, though...I think? Not sure how that would have been possible, but...

2. To toss this in...during trial, on the stand, JM crossing her, JM trying to bring in that TAYLOR S. had told him (JM) that TA had told him (Taylor) he had told the to go home in mid-late January, after TA had come clean to his Bishop.

The context in which JM tried to bring that in (over Nurmi's objections) were her pedo accusations, and the timing of them, which JM attached to the actual date of Jan 21.

I remember JM suggesting (one of his putting it out there & letting it float away) the possibility that the might have invented the pedo lie BACK THEN- and that she might have done so to use the lie against TA, to prevent him from forcing her out. Maybe will try to find that on YouTube. (EEK!!!!!!)

Wow!
:rockon: :detective: :yourock:

 

[Hope4More]

Here's my problem, which I brought up a few posts back. Post-ninjas would have been in jail. It is extremely unlikely that she had a sample of TA's handwriting in jail. How was she going to forge his handwriting without a sample?

If she could maybe perhaps forge the writing from memory, consider that post-ninjas was a loooong time after she had had a sample of TA's writing in front of her. I realize her obsession and ease of lying made her exceptionally observant of detail, but this lapse of time to recreate someone's handwriting from memory, IMO, is a bit much.

Okay, a counter-possibility is that MM held up TA's journal during video conversations with . But presumably, the evil one didn't have a record function on the video machine, and what would it have been recorded to, anyway? She's maybe writing on index cards from the journal MM is holding up, and he keeps holding it up until she's had a bunch of practice?

Then, after a little finessing, she has another chat with him while holding up the jury-rigged (no pun intended) cards?

Finally, my golf pencil theme. IIRC, JA didn't have any way to erase. She was condemned to golf pencils even through the trial. She'd have to instruct MM (if he) to cut around a crossed-out word/phrase before he pasted?

In jail, the forged TA's handwriting on 3 x 5 cards she wasn't allowed to have, using a blue pen she wasn't allowed to have, and iirc, was caught with other writing utensils as well.

We all assume she was closely monitored, but maybe that is giving the jail folks too much credit and the too little.

Remember learning, after she was supposely in isolation post verdict, that she had been allowed to do video calls literally all day long, every day?

Remember learning that she had been using her money on the books to buy other inmates stuff? Did we find out or did we speculate, I don't remember, that she bought that stuff as bribes, and that other inmates had made calls to the outside for her?

The is resourceful, devious, and a world class manipulator and liar. I really don't doubt that she COULD have found a way to smuggle forged letters out. Nurmi didn't doubt that either, and said so.