Jodi Arias Trial Watchers Thread #1

[manzana]

What was Travis seeing at that moment? That pic captures him caught unaware while he's taking a shower, IMO, and yet it seems to catch the exact moment Jodi got his attention big time. I haven't decided what to call that look on his face.

To me it is like he is looking at his end and knows it is near. That is what his eyes say to me.

 

[Steely Dan]

To me it is like he is looking at his end and knows it is near. That is what his eyes say to me.

That's what I thought too. Like she wanted to get the final moments of his face as he died.

 

[Chanler]

Couple things...

One about the order in which the injuries were sustained-the prosecutor explained this in his opening argument. Travis was stabbed first, in the heart, which would have been a fatal wound but not immediately fatal. This happened 44 seconds after that final picture was taken of him in the shower. She continued stabbing him, and at one point they ended up by the sink-he bent over the sink, probably to steady himself, and while he was doing that Jody was stabbing him repeatedly in the back. At some point he collapsed onto the floor, just outside the doorway leading from the bathroom to the bedroom, and Jody straddled him and slit his throat ear to ear, nearly decapitating him. This would be a rapidly fatal wound and he would have quickly lost consciousness. Jody then dragged him (accidentally snapping a picture while doing so, I'm not sure how that happened) back to the shower stall, and shot him at point blank range in his temple. This would have also been a rapid, if not immediately fatal wound, and he may have already been dead at that point.

Another thing I wanted to bring up, because I haven't seen it discussed much-whatever flaws Travis may have had as a human being, he had a terrible start in life. Both of his parents were meth addicts, he lived in poverty and squalor and was abused by both of them. He ended up moving in with his grandmother, and that is when he was introduced to the Mormon faith...it played a huge role in his life for that reason, IMO. Many abused children turn to the church to fill the empty parts of their lives where loving parents should be. I think he had a lot of conflict about his relationship with Jodi. I think that she was probably the sexual aggressor initially (she was certainly more experienced than him, it appears he was a virgin when he met her) His emails, while verbally abusive, also show someone who is hurt and angry, who feels like HE has been used and manipulated (treated like "a dildo with a heartbeat" by Jodi-his words, not mine) and that he has been violated by her. He shows a lot of anger. He does not show the typical behavior of a controlling, abusive partner though. I think people are just writing him off as some kind of dirtbag, and that's unfortunate IMO. He was neither choir boy angel or abusive monster but a complex human being, a young man just starting out his life, before it was snuffed out by Jodi. I think he deserves a lot more respect than what he is getting.

Hi, TreeClimbingGirl. My thanks to you and JSR from illuminating the first issue in very clear detail.

And your second point is very well-taken. Travis was a good man, deeply beloved by a surprisingly wide circle of friends. That he broke a 19th century edict against premarital sex might make him a "bad Mormon," but if so, it is a "sin" that he shared with a surprising percentage of male LDS members. (I keep remembering the female ex-Mormon blogger who wrote that her years at Brigham Young University were like a four-year graduate education in foreplay.)

 

[manzana]

Thanks for bringing that into the equation, he did have a very troubled childhood, I guess that is why I do not see any of the attacks on his personality, I believe he overcame many obstacles and really was an example for many to try to achieve the same level. He really had a great attitude and it showed in his writings. BTW he had a blog in which he wrote quite a bit before this happened. I remember reading it back in 2008, I am sure his writings have been preserved somewhere because his friends really wanted to get them published back then.

Quoting myself because I wanted to include his writings

http://travisalexander.blogspot.com/

He also referred to himself as Alexander the Great and was very deserving IMO

 

[Jaykayelle]

In that photo, maybe it's just me, but it looks like his eyes are red. Was he crying? This may be far-fetched but, what if she stabbed him, but he had his senses still (perhaps it was shallow or just a cut) that he was bleeding over the sink, but moved to the shower because it was so much blood. He turns on the water to help rinse it away. JA had left the bathroom (perhaps to get the gun?). She returns and sneaks up on him in the shower and catches this photo. After that, the bloodbath begins.

I agree with the poster that the gunshot was because he was still alive.

As far as victim blaming...I don't think anyone here is intentionally trying to do this. We are trying to understand what his personality was like. To me, I see a "fatal attraction" type of relationship. Maybe he was going against his religious beliefs by having premarital sex but maybe it was "just that good" with her that he couldn't help himself. Who knows. I'm guessing there was an unbridled sexual attraction between them, even if perhaps they didn't get along in any other relationship kind of way. Regardless, I believe we will NEVER fully know the nature of their relationship. What ever the issue was however, cannot justify murder.

Just putting this out there...my best guess is she'll get second degree. I agree that she planned something, but the fury of that bloodbath...

This is all JMO

 

[PrincessSezMe]

Quoting myself because I wanted to include his writings

http://travisalexander.blogspot.com/

He also referred to himself as Alexander the Great and was very deserving IMO

Wow, thanks so much for that link. This is a particularly chilling passage from his blog considering this particular relationship with JA. Was he thinking of her when he wrote it?

"I was a different type of homeless, one with just as few legitimate excuses as the other type bumming for change at a freeway off ramp. Around then I realized it was time to adjust my priorities and date with marriage in mind. Not to ask some one on a date because I planned on marrying them, but to date someone to look for the possibility of marriage with them. This type of dating to me is like a very long job interview and can be exponentially more mentally taxing. Desperately trying to find out if my date has an axe murderer penned up inside of her and knowing she is wondering the same thing about me. That’s usually when I think myself into a panic and start acting weird in consequence to trying so hard to act normal."

Sounds like he was doing some real soul searching prior to his murder.

 

[mrsu]

Quoting myself because I wanted to include his writings

http://travisalexander.blogspot.com/

He also referred to himself as Alexander the Great and was very deserving IMO

Wow...that last blog post. A little creepy in retrospect. :what:

I also found Jodi thru his blog. Her last posts are also :what:

http://jodiarias.blogspot.com/

 

[PrincessSezMe]

In that photo, maybe it's just me, but it looks like his eyes are red. Was he crying? This may be far-fetched but, what if she stabbed him, but he had his senses still (perhaps it was shallow or just a cut) that he was bleeding over the sink, but moved to the shower because it was so much blood. He turns on the water to help rinse it away. JA had left the bathroom (perhaps to get the gun?). She returns and sneaks up on him in the shower and catches this photo. After that, the bloodbath begins.

I agree with the poster that the gunshot was because he was still alive.

As far as victim blaming...I don't think anyone here is intentionally trying to do this. We are trying to understand what his personality was like. To me, I see a "fatal attraction" type of relationship. Maybe he was going against his religious beliefs by having premarital sex but maybe it was "just that good" with her that he couldn't help himself. Who knows. I'm guessing there was an unbridled sexual attraction between them, even if perhaps they didn't get along in any other relationship kind of way. Regardless, I believe we will NEVER fully know the nature of their relationship. What ever the issue was however, cannot justify murder.

Just putting this out there...my best guess is she'll get second degree. I agree that she planned something, but the fury of that bloodbath...

This is all JMO

BBM - I agree. Dan Abrams said on GMA this morning that he didn't think this would be a death penalty case. But then look at Scott Peterson? You never know with a jury.

 

[mrsu]

Interesting they both started their blogs around the same time.

 

[manzana]

Wow...that last blog post. A little creepy in retrospect. :what:

I also found Jodi thru his blog. Her last posts are also :what:

http://jodiarias.blogspot.com/

And if you look at her writing it almost mirrors Travis's with frequency of entries and date of entries. Seems like she was trying to appeal to his liking aka as stalking.

 

[Lucylu7]

Did I hear, right, that the trial won't be back again until Tuesday?

Yes,Tuesday morning,this trial could take a while.

 

[TreeClimbingGirl]

Here's something written by one of his best friends...very interesting and insightful.If this is not ok to post please let me know-it was on his sisters Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/tanisha.sorenson/posts/479297458778106:

For those of you who are interested in the Travis Alexander Murder Trial, here's an update….

Several years ago (5 in June), my good friend and business partner, Travis Alexander was brutally murdered by his x-girlfriend, Jodi Arias. She has been sitting in an Arizona jail awaiting trial. Finally, after all these years of waiting for justice to be served, the trial starts on January 2.

Because of the dynamics of the story, this trial is being hailed as, "The Murder Trial of 2013." The story has already been on 48 Hours (Google 48 Hours Picture Perfect), and a whole slew of other TV and news programs. CBS News, The Nancy Grace Show, The Dr. Drew Show and several others have, and will be, covering this story. HLN/truTV will be covering the entire trial, live on their network.

Jodi has changed her story 4 times, and will have a heck of a time disproving the fact that she savagely murdered the one and only "T-Dogg."

First, she denied having been at his home the day of the murder, and that she hadn’t seen him since April. Then, when time-date stamped photos of the two of them proved otherwise, she told a story about how two intruders came into the home and attacked she and Travis, but that she luckily escaped (after they tried to kill her, but the gun mis-fired).

Interesting, that she would watch the man she spent the night with be brutally murdered, but never tell anyone. Not cops, not family, and not even the guy she was hooking up with hours after she ended T's life.

Once that story was shown to certainly land her on death row, and another story she completely made up didn’t stick, she changed the story again this time to self defense. She says the T-Dogg was roughing her up, and is claiming “battered women’s syndrome.” I'll spare you the details, but when you see Travis’ injuries, the crime scene, and learn what led up to it, there is no question, this was a crime of passion and she planned the whole thing ahead of time. She was obsessed with him. This was not self defense. This was all out destruction. She wanted to destroy him, and she did- she slaughtered him.

Here's the bottom line ACCORDING TO ME.

She was rejected in her previous long term relationship. She wanted to get married. He didn't. She gets swept off her feet by the T-Dogg, and dumps the other guy and pursues T.

She was a chameleon. She would be whatever she thought you wanted her to be. She changed her persona with every group she was with.

T-dogg wouldn't commit to her, and she was beside herself. She had a very high opinion of herself, and was stunned to be on the brink of being rejected again. So she began working hard to be what she thought might be more appealing to him.

She learns he wants a good Mormon girl, so she joins the Mormon church. He showed no more commitment to her after she was baptized, then he did before. The Mormon thing apparently wasn't enough, so she puts on her Sister Spiritual face and goes around the house reading the Bible and talking softly. That didn't work, so she resorted to the basest of all attractants, sex.

T believed in premarital abstinence, but being a single guy, never married and nearly 30 added to the fact that she was putting on the full court press to get him to go there, he does.

But even this didn't work, and she couldn't take a hint. She laughed at all his jokes, she joined his church, she put on the Holy Sister act, the tossed her hair this way and that, she smothered him and was very attentive, but nothin'. He was amused, but she was not "the one," and T and everyone else knew it.

When this failed to work, she reverted back to 8th grade, and tried to use other guys to make Travis jealous. It drove her bananas that this did not make him commit. Nothing she tried was working. She was being rejected again, and was starting to unravel. She was obsessed with Travis, and her behavior began to alarm all his friends.

Not only would he not commit to her, he hid the on again - off again relationship from his closest friends, none of whom approved of Jodi, and almost all of whom were cautious about her.

This is about the time that Travis' journals began to vanish, his tires were slashed multiple times, his girlfriend’s tires were slashed, and some “anonymous” woman began to haunt his girlfriend via email, and knocking on doors and windows while Travis was at her house, and run away. Jodi even snuck into his house to spy on he and his girlfriend (they caught her).

Over the several months that they were on and off, they would travel a lot. They were big fans of the book, "1000 Places to See Before You Die." They had been to several of these places together, and had plans to see many more of them, or at least she did.

Several of these places are in Mexico. Travis & I had both won a trip for two to Mexico from our company, and Jodi quietly, arrogantly and presumptuously assumed she would be Travis' traveling companion. Not so. Travis invited another person… a woman.

Jodi tried so hard to get the T-Dogg. She failed. She tried to be all that she thought he wanted her to be. One major problem. He didn't want her. Yes, they were friends with sporatic after dark benefits, but he didn't want to commit to her. And he didn't want to marry her. She flat out could not compute the fact that he didn't find her desirable as a wife. And further, he wasn't going to take her to check off a few more places from their 1000 Places list. He was taking someone else…another woman. How dare he.

It was more than Jodi could take. So, rather than telling him she was not going to see him anymore, that she was done, finished, outie 5,000, she mutilated him. But she did what she thought was even worse than murder.

Knowing his spiritual beliefs about the afterlife, or at least assuming she knew his beliefs about the after life, and her imagined result of him engaging in unrepentant premarital sex, she thought if she could seduce him, then kill him before he could ask God for forgiveness, she could send him to hell and then they could be together forever…. in hell. And anyone who knows the Mormon theology knows T's all good, and Jodi's toast.

So having felt powerless for so many years, she balanced the scales in the only way an evil person knows how. Murder. Cold blooded murder. She robbed T of his life in a brutal, barbaric, disgusting, inhumane fashion.

There was a woman out there that would have been perfect for him, and he for her. He had children yet unborn to bring into this world and love and nurture. He had a career ahead of him and ambitions that could have changed the planet. Jodi murdered T, and robbed us all of the treasure that he was.

The trial starts January 2. It's slated to go through April. Justice is coming T-Dogg. Justice is coming.

 

[Steely Dan]

Yes,Tuesday morning,this trial could take a while.

That's actually good. I have stuff to do tomorrow.

 

[PrincessSezMe]

Wow...that last blog post. A little creepy in retrospect. :what:

I also found Jodi thru his blog. Her last posts are also :what:

http://jodiarias.blogspot.com/

Wow, her blogspot is way creepier. She sounds a lot like Casey Anthony. She even has Casey Anthony's penchant for using hyphens "It makes me want to wander this entire globe in search of this in-definitive "something," that I might suddenly experience it, discover it, or some other sort of quickening to quench this thirst I've had since childhood." Merriam-Webster doesn't even include the word "indefinitive" in their regular published dictionary. She throws around a lot of big words but doesn't say much of anything. Very familiar.......

This a strange person.

 

[MsCharlieChan]

Sorry but I am not hearing that, Travis imo enjoyed her company, there is no way she would have been around that long if he did not want her to be there. She showed up at three am, stayed way over twelve hours to when it happened. If her presence was annoying, she would have been gone or it would have happened much earlier. They spent time together, taking photos of each other. Travis's emails mean little or nothing if one believes he sent them, so he referred to her as a , how many men see prostitutes and are able to separate this from their wives? I think he did see her as a , but one who gave it up for free. Travis was not interested in Jodi and had interests elsewhere but sometimes a good bootie call is just that.

Totally agree... I don't recall if it was in the "48 Hours" interview vs. a news article, but Travis' good (married) friend said that Travis really wanted to find that special woman, and marry her. This friend & his wife were Travis' best friends.

I got the impression from the friend that Travis was aggressively searching for his Mrs. Right, too. Meaning he wasn't shy about trying to get to know a variety of women. I think Jodi inadvertently took herself out of consideration...

I've known guys who'll kind of "test" a girl. He, by human nature, will try to have sex with her. BUT: If she's worth having, it's her JOB to prove it by saying NO! These guys rarely keep the weak ones who give in to them. Like many young women, Jodi may have confused hot sex and passion with love.

As for Travis' sexual expressions, he's just like most guys. This "dual life" business the defense keeps talking isn't so unusual...

There are church-going, single men all over America who're sexually active. They have weaknesses sometimes, despite their attempts to portray themselves as holier than thou. But the guilt of sinning always eats away at them. They rarely want the easy girl who made them feel like dirt.

Unfortunately, Travis initially gave Jodi the impression she might be The One. But once she became so sexual and his friends told him she made them uncomfortable, she had to go. She, however, was still high on that love-lust. That didn't match her new reality of being dumped and feeling disrespected.

 

[all4justice]

That's because she used the clothes she washed to clean up some of the blood. There were no punctures in any of his clothes and they were at one point covered in blood. I would venture to think that he was wearing only a towel when the attack began and she used the towel and the shirt to clean up the blood.

And you would be surprised how strong someone is when they are filled with that much rage. She clearly had to be completely filled with rage to inflict that many wounds on him. This wasn't a quick attack, this had to have taken a decent amount of time.

BBM

I'm so glad there were pictures of Jodi dragging Travis [I'm taking the word of other WS'ers on those pictures though - I'm too chicken to look at them myself] because it shows how a much smaller assailant is capable of carrying out a murder against a much larger victim. So often in cases where there's a small female defendant, the defense argues that she couldn't carry out such a murder because she was too "little." Here's proof that it is quite possible when the female defendant is filled with rage. JMO, MOO

 

[Straitfan]

O/t sorry. Margins blown on here, is it something I can fix? TIA

 

[Jaykayelle]

And if you look at her writing it almost mirrors Travis's with frequency of entries and date of entries. Seems like she was trying to appeal to his liking aka as stalking.

She was totally obsessed with him. TOTALLY.

 

[Steely Dan]

O/t sorry. Margins blown on here, is it something I can fix? TIA

email Kimster and she'll fix it.

 

[Straitfan]

TA had a blog speaking of his life, great-grandfather, marriage, etc (Sorry if already discussed, will post link if ok)