Today’s post is about Jodi Arias, who is known for murdering her boyfriend Travis Alexander on June 4, 2008. The two had been dating since September 2006 until Travis’s murder.
Travis Alexander was born in 1977 on July 28 in Riverside, California to Gary David Alexander and Pamela Elizabeth Morgan Alexander. He and his seven siblings moved in with their paternal grandparents when their father died when Travis was about 11 years old. He later grew up to become a salesman and motivational speaker.
Jodi Ann Arias was born in 1980 on July 9 to her parents, William and Sandra Arias, in Salinas, California. She met Travis Alexander at a PPL conference in Las Vegas, Nevada in September of 2006. Jodi eventually converted to a church that Travis was a member of, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and was even baptized by Travis on November 26, 2006. The pair eventually began dating in February of 2007. Jodi then moved to Mesa, Arizona to live closer to Travis, but later moved to Yreka, California in April of 2008 to live with her grandparents.
Travis and Jodi dated on and off throughout their whole relationship; their relationship was never really committed, much to Jodi’s dismay. They traveled back and forth to visit each other during their time together. Lots of Travis’s friends observed Jodi when they were together, and they stated that her behavior worried them.
In early 2008, Travis told his friends that Jodi would be joining him on a work trip to Cancún, Mexico on June, 15, 2008, but he later changed his travel companion to another female friend. On May 28, 2008, a burglary at Jodi’s grandparents house and a .25-caliber automatic Colt pistol was missing (and has also never been recovered). A shell from the same pistol was found near Travis’s body.
On June 2, Jodi and Travis apparently called and missed each other’s calls all throughout the night. At around 5:39 a.m., Jodi drove out and purchased gasoline and then arrived in Redding, California at about 8:04 a.m. and rented a car, planning to drive to Utah for a PPL work conference and to meet a coworker. She finally set out to Salt Lake City, Utah, on the evening of June 3, 2008.
On June 4, 2008, Travis Alexander was murdered by his then on-again-off-again girlfriend Jodi. He had about 27 to 29 stab wounds all over his body and a gunshot wound to his head. The medical examiner stated that Travis’s jugular vein, carotid artery, and trachea were slashed and his hands sustained defense wounds, showing he tried to protect himself. The medical examiner also stated that Travis might have been already dead when he was shot it the head.
WARNING ⚠️ graphic crime scene images below
Jodi arrived in Salt Lake City on June 5, 2008. She met up with her coworker, Ryan Burns, and they attended their work meeting. Ryan later stated that he noticed Jodi had dyed her previously blonde hair dark brown and she had multiple cuts on her hands. She later left Salt Lake City and drove west to California. During this, she called Travis and left multiple voicemails for him, while also accessing his voice mail system. Jodi later returned the car in Redding, California on June 7, 2008.
After missing an important conference call on June 4, 2008, a group of friends went to Travis’s home on June 9. They believed he had been out of town, but they were concerned about him. After finding a key to Travis’s master bedroom, they entered the room and found large pools of blood and followed it to the master bathroom, where they found Travis’s body. His friends called 911 and the operator asked if Travis was possibly suicidal or if there was anyone they knew that could possibly want to hurt him, to which they responded that Jodi was possibly a suspect. They stated that prior to his murder, Travis stated that Jodi had been stalking, accessing his Facebook without his consent, and slashing his car’s tires.
While searching Travis’s home, investigators found a camera that had been damaged in the washer machine. Police were able to recover what was on the camera, and found several photos of Jodi and Travis in sexually suggestive positions. They also found a final photograph of Travis taken at 5:29 p.m. while he was taking a shower. There were several photos taken moments later of an individual bleeding on the bathroom floor, whom was obviously Travis.
While recovering evidence, a bloody hand print was found along the bathroom hallway, which contained DNA from both Jodi and Travis. On July 9, 2008, Jodi was indicted in Maricopa County, Arizona for first-degree murder. Jodi pleaded not guilty on September 11, 2008. She gave multiple statements about her involvement in Travis’s death. In these statements, Jodi claims that she was not in Mesa on the day of Travis’s murder and had last seen him in March earlier that year. She claimed that intruders probably broke into Travis’s house and killed him. However, two years later, Jodi claimed that she killed Travis in self defense, stating that he was physically abuse toward her.
On May 18, 2009, the court ordered for Jodi to take an IQ and competency test. Years later in January 2011, a defense filing gave details of Jodi’s attorneys trying to gain access to text messages and emails from Travis Alexander. Originally, the prosecution claimed that there were no available text messages or emails, but were later forced to turn over about 8,000 messages to the defense. However, there were no out of the ordinary messages found on Travis’s phone.
Jodi’s trial against the State of Arizona began on December 10, 2012. It received a mass amount of media attention and was seen nationally. During the trail, multiple people testified against Jodi, including her coworker Ryan, Travis’s friends and past partners, and expert witnesses. They claimed that Jodi stalked and days before his murder, Travis called her a sociopath. Travis’s ex partners also testified against Jodi’s abuse claims. Jodi testified as her own defense during the trial. She described her relationship with Travis, and claimed that he was both physically and emotionally abusive toward her. She claimed that she killed him in self defense after Travis became enraged because she dropped his camera. The prosecution testimonies against Jodi rebutted her claims.
In a September 2008 interview with Inside Edition, Jodi stated “No jury is going to convict me….because I am innocent. You can mark my words on that.” Jodi addressed these statements at her trial, stating that at the time of the interview, she had planned to commit suicide. She said, “I was extremely confident that no jury would convict me, because I didn’t expect any of you to be here.” During a cross-examination with the prosecutors, the prosecutors were able to point out several of Jodi’s lies and inconsistencies, and finally she admitted to stabbing and shooting Travis.
On October 21, 2015, Jodi’s sentencing retrial began. Several pieces of evidence were used to prove that Jodi killed Travis in cold blood and it was not self-defense. Finally on April 13, 2014, Judge Stephens sentenced Jodi to life in prison without the chance of parole. She was ordered to pay more than $32,000 to Travis’s siblings. She is now imprisoned at the Arizona Department of Corrections. Jodi’s trial cost was estimated to be about $3 million.
This is honestly one of the craziest modern murder cases that I’ve known about. Of course it is great that justice has been served for Travis’s brutal murder. If this case interested you, I definitely recommend watching the movie documentary on the case called Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret. It shows the relationship between Jodi and Travis leading up to his murder and Jodi’s trial.
Resources-
TRUE CRIME REPORT 