Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars (10 page)

The information Bill shared next was of particular interest.
He indicated that Arias had not been honest with her parents since she was fourteen. “You know, she doesn’t trust us ’cause we’re parents. And when she was in eighth grade, she got busted for growing marijuana with our Tupperware, putting it on top of the roof.

“We found it, and we called the sheriff’s department, and they busted her, and then, I don’t know . . . we searched her room. And after that, she was kind of like, uh, something turned in her head that we were nosy parents and we were gonna search everything she had. So she hid everything from us . . . and she has never been honest with us since then.”

Bill also told Flores that Jodi asked him to pick her up at her grandparents’ house at 7:30
A.M
. on the morning of July 15 and give her a ride to the rental car place. “And I thought it was gonna be for good, you know, and I’m thinking, hmmm . . . And then when I was talking to her, she goes, ‘Oh, don’t worry, Dad, I’m only gonna be gone for three days.’”

According to Arias’ father, her plan was to visit with friends in the Monterey area of California. He told Flores that Jodi had indicated she was planning to visit a couple of ex-boyfriends, Darryl Brewer and Matthew McCartney. But police were never able to establish her true destination based on what she had packed into the car.

Jodi’s mother, Sandy, was also of the belief that her daughter was only intending to leave Yreka for a short jaunt, something her parents had come to expect from her.

“That’s Jodi,” she told Flores during a painful interview. Sandy Arias, a pleasant-looking brunette who had just turned fifty that past March, entered the interview room in tears. She was visibly distraught over her daughter’s circumstances and broke out sobbing the moment she sat down at the table with Flores.

The biggest hurdle for Sandy was her inability to reconcile Jodi’s seemingly ordinary behavior with the police’s accusations that she had taken a life. She described her daughter’s de
meanor in the days after her trip to Utah in June as completely “normal.”

Jodi’s “normal” behavior was in sharp contrast to what Sandy experienced at other times, when she described her daughter as someone with “mental problems” who would “freak out all the time.”

“I had quite a few of her friends call me and tell me that I needed to get her some help,” she said, weeping. “She would call me in the morning all happy and call me an hour or two later in tears, crying and sobbing about something she didn’t want to talk about, and it happened constantly.”

Like her husband, Sandy seemed to harbor her own initial suspicions about Jodi’s involvement in Travis’ death, saying that was the first thing she asked her about when she came home. She went on to describe how on the day Jodi learned of Travis’ death, she went not to her mother but to her younger sister for comfort. “She was totally in tears. She cried for two or three, four or five days. And, um, that’s the first I asked her. I said, ‘Did you go to Arizona?’ And she said, ‘No, I was nowhere near Arizona and I have gas receipts and everything to prove it.’ So, of course, I believed her. You know, but I questioned her about it.”

The significance of what Sandy was saying—that she, Jodi Arias’ own mother, had her suspicions about Jodi’s involvement in the murder—was not lost on Flores. “But you had enough suspicion to ask her?”

“Well, yeah.”

Sandy Arias explained that her daughter guarded her privacy so vehemently that she wouldn’t even let her and her husband stay with her when she lived in Palm Desert with a previous boyfriend, Darryl Brewer. “She was afraid I would snoop through her stuff. That’s the kind of relationship we had.

“I told her one day, ‘You need some help, Jodi.’ I said, ‘You’ve got this fantasy in your head that you had a rotten
childhood and that we searched your room all the time and we did all this stuff, and we didn’t. And you need some help,’ I said, ‘because that didn’t happen . . .’”

Sandy told Flores about a late-night visit she had with Jodi the previous evening. She couldn’t sleep and had called her daughter to ask if Jodi could borrow her grandfather’s car to drive over to the house, so they could spend some time together. Instead, Sandy ended up driving to her parents’ on Pine Street, where they sat outside in the car and talked. “In the last couple of weeks, since Travis’ death, we’ve had the best relationship we’ve had in our whole life, and I said, ‘Maybe this death has made her see that life is short and, you know, you can’t be this way, and it’s changing her.’ So, the last few weeks . . . I didn’t spend a lot of time with her, but I talked to her more than I have ever talked to her since she left the house at eighteen. . . .”

At certain moments during the interview, Arias’ mother appeared willing to entertain the idea that her daughter might have killed Travis. “I don’t know, maybe she did do it,” she conceded, wiping tears from her eyes, before continuing, “I just cannot imagine her doing it.”

I paused the video on those words and turned them over in my head. It is always difficult to watch parents of the accused struggle with their children’s crimes. No matter how strained the relationship, few parents can really believe that their child is capable of taking a life. Sandy Arias was no different.

But conflicted as Sandy may have been about Jodi’s possible involvement in Travis’ death as well as her apparent mental instability, one thing that Sandy was not conflicted about was Jodi’s intelligence.

“Jodi is a very intelligent person,” she told Flores confidently. Her mother’s words echoed what I’d already come to observe, that I was dealing with a highly intelligent woman who happened to be a killer. It was apparent from her conver
sations with Flores that Arias brought a level of careful forethought to each response, even though she had limited time to formulate her answers.

“She’s extremely intelligent, and the more I’ve talked to her over the last month and a half, I know she’s intelligent,” Flores said.

The detective’s comment elicited a response from Arias’ mother that shone a light on an aspect of Arias’ personality that I would encounter again, an inflated sense of intelligence, a belief that she was smarter than everyone else. “She gave us a hard time because I never went to college and she kept telling me, ‘Mom, you need to read. You need to do this. You need to better your life.’” Arias had made these criticisms although she herself had not graduated from high school.

“I don’t know. I just can’t even imagine. My God, I can’t. I just can’t even think about it,” Sandy said, trying to absorb the significance of the allegations against her daughter.

“Unfortunately, the evidence that we have is completely convincing to me. . . . I mean, we have everything from fingerprints at the scene of the crime . . .” Flores told her.

“Well, I know her fingerprints are there . . .”

“Her DNA, things like her hair . . .”

“Well, you know she spent time with him, you know . . . so, does that prove that she killed him? She cleaned his house.”

It was symbolic that Arias’ mother was ending her interview in the same place as her daughter, by trying to excuse away what police had found at the crime scene.

F
or the July 16 interview, it had been decided that Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Detective Rachel Blaney would conduct it, while Detective Flores waited outside the room monitoring what was being said. Looking back and now knowing Jodi Arias, it is obvious that she would never have bonded with a female detective because she seemed to know that she would have a more difficult time manipulating a woman.

During her nearly two hour interrogation with Detective Blaney, Arias twice asked to see the crime scene photos that Flores had declined to show her the previous day, and once again, her requests were denied. For her part, Blaney made little headway and it got to the point in the interview where Blaney asked if Arias would prefer to continue with Detective Flores.

“. . . If you want to speak to Detective Flores as opposed to me, you can do that. . . . I thought it would be easier for you to talk to a woman who could relate to some of these feelings,” Blaney told her.

“I kind of do want to talk to him because he’s always been in contact with Travis’ family a lot,” Arias replied, without actually knowing what Flores’ contact with the family had been. When Flores arrived a few minutes later, dressed in a brown button-down shirt and a pair of slacks, Arias greeted him with a “hey” and a smile.

“Rachel said something about you wanting to see some photos, but I don’t think I can show you any more photos,”
Flores told her, obviously uncomfortable with the idea of tipping his hand any further by allowing her to see the remaining photographs. He had called me after the first interview and expressed concern that Arias undoubtedly wanted to see the pictures to learn what police had observed at the scene. Her next statement confirmed his suspicions.

“The reason I asked was because I just feel like it might help me piece some things together . . . and this is more of a selfish reason. I think it might give me some sense of closure. I know it’s kind of morbid. I don’t even think I really deserve closure. His family does. But I wasn’t able to attend his funeral. And it’s just, I don’t know, that’s just why mostly.”

“What is it you want to know about the photos?” Flores asked her. “Do you want to see the room? You want to see the bathroom, or do you want to see him, or is it the photos before it happened that you want to see?”

She told him she wanted to see the pictures of everything, but the ones she was really interested in were the ones in the bathroom, the ones of Travis’ body in the shower.

“I don’t want to show you those, not in good conscience.”

“Okay, is there any that you can?” By this point it was clear that Arias’ interest in the photographs was beyond an obsession.

When she realized that Flores was not going to let her view the crime scene photos, she turned the conversation back to Travis’ family. She wanted to know which relatives he had spoken to, showing particular interest in Travis’ grandmother Norma Sarvey. She’d already told Flores about Travis’ close relationship with his grandmother, who had raised him since he was a boy. It was as if she wanted Flores to see how close her relationship with Travis had been, otherwise she wouldn’t know so much about his family and those closest to him. She even went so far as to ask if Flores would be willing to deliver a message from her to them.

“I’ll let you decide what to say and I’ll relay it exactly how
you want me to,” he assured her. His willingness to oblige her desire to reach out to the family seemed a calculated effort to gain her trust.

As frustrating as it must have been to indulge Arias’ many deflections, I admired Detective Flores’ single-mindedness as he pressed on.

“So, were you there that day? Please tell me. Did you just miss him? Did he call you? Did he miss you? The only explanation I can think of is that you went there for one purpose, and that’s to hurt him . . . Were you guys alone? . . . Answer that for me. Should I be looking for somebody else? Was there anybody else with you besides you and Travis? Are you protecting somebody else?”

Flores’ questions were met with a lengthy silence.

“Jodi?”

“I’m sorry, I’m just—I just don’t know what to do. I’m just trying to figure things out.”

It was obvious by her statement that she was trying to work out a new story and buying time so she could concoct it.

Arias maintained that it was all a blur, before again requesting to see the photos to help her bring it into focus. Flores didn’t close off the possibility, telling her detectives had taken them to Redding when they went to pick up the rental car, and that perhaps she could view them once the investigators returned to Yreka.

“Oh, because there’s something in the rental car,” Arias suggested.

“Like what?”

“Maybe blood,” she said matter-of-factly.

“In the trunk? In the backseat? That’s what we are going to look for, so . . .”

“I was thinking maybe the handle, the steering wheel, and things that get touched.”

It appeared Arias was almost confessing when she alluded to the possibility that there might be blood in the rental car.
But investigators were never able to recover any biological material to be used for DNA testing because the car had been cleaned by an employee after she returned it. She had also removed the floor mats before returning the car.

Even though Arias continued to deny being in Mesa on the day of the murder, Flores began to premise his questions as if she had been. He asked her whether she’d been worried that Travis’ roommates would find her there, how long she was in the house after it happened, why she threw the camera in the washing machine.

“Do you remember those things?” he asked.

“Mmm, no,” Arias replied.

They started to talk about the white Ford Focus that Arias had rented for the drive. The investigation into the car had determined that Arias had actually rejected the first car the rental company had given her, another Ford Focus, but a red one, and he wanted to find out more about it.

“I know they were going to rent you another car, but then something happened with the first car, either you didn’t like it or I don’t know if it had problems.”

This was a detail that I considered important because it spoke to her planning. She claimed she hadn’t wanted a red car because it would be more noticeable, akin to a red flag—that police were more likely to stop someone in a red car, but I suspected she chose a more neutral color to blend in.

After discussing the fact that Travis had apparently canceled plans to see her at the end of May, Flores returned to his questions.

“Did Travis know you were coming?” Flores watched for a reaction. “He knew?” he coaxed. “I saw you kind of shake your head a little bit.”

“This is hard,” Arias said, her voice cracking. For the first time, she looked away from the detective, her gaze fixed to a point on the wall. It appeared she was trying to buy time to come up with her next line.

“That’s okay,” he said as he tried to coax her along, peppering her with questions. “Did he know you were coming? Did you guys talk on the phone? What was the discussion about? Did you guys talk when you were en route to Phoenix?”

Arias’ reply was barely audible. “Yeah,” she mumbled, looking down at her feet. And with that she had placed herself at the crime scene, finally succumbing to the evidence left behind in Travis’ camera. “Just briefly. I told him my phone was dying, which was true. I thought I left my charger in Monterey. I really honestly thought I left my charger there and I had been talking all day, just on the phone.

“I take a lot of pictures of myself,” she smiled.

“I noticed,” Flores replied with a laugh, referring to several selfies police had found on the cell phone they seized from her at the time of her arrest.

“I am kind of picky about it. I take like twenty, and I am like delete, delete, delete, and I keep two or three.”

“So he knew you were coming. He was expecting you?”

Arias did not respond, instead remaining quiet, with her hands folded in her lap.

“Obviously you guys had a little encounter. Is that when those pictures were taken?” Flores asked, referring to the six photographs of their sexual rendezvous. “Did he even show you those pictures?”

This was the longest silence I had seen from Arias since the start of her two-day-long interview. Unlike other times, when she would close herself off in the fetal position or hide her face in her hands, this time she looked off toward the corner, apparently thinking about how much she was going to reveal and the style with which she was going to deliver the line. She’d already put herself at the house, and was on the brink of having to explain what happened inside.

“It’s going to be all right, Jodi.”

“I feel really powerless in here,” she whimpered, appearing to finally realize that she was caught and for the first time
couldn’t figure out how to explain that she’d been merely present at the crime scene but had not committed the crime. Her repeated requests to see the photographs had been denied, so she had been unable to craft a story based on the evidence police had gathered. Her only way out was to change the subject.

The detective let enough time pass to demonstrate his concern before moving ahead with his inquiry. After talking to her about whether Travis’ roommates were home when she arrived, Arias explained that she got in at three in the morning.

“Did you guys spend all day together then? . . . Did you go anywhere, did you stay in the house?”

“Slept,” Arias said.

“Well, after a long trip I would sleep, too.”

Arias recalled that when she got there, Travis was watching some stupid music video with people dancing with foil boxes on their heads. Suddenly, she grew animated, mimicking the characters’ hand movements. She was speaking to Flores as if they were friends, sharing stories about a mutual acquaintance. “It was weird. It was robotic kind of music. It’s just like stupid, pointless stuff. Being as driven and deep as he is, it is just funny that he watches stuff like that.”

The detective laughed along, obviously hoping that this somewhat bonding experience would give her the impetus to share what really happened. He redirected her to the afternoon photographic session. “Is that when those were taken that day?”

In a barely audible whisper, Arias shared with Flores something that he didn’t know. “We also made a video, and we deleted it.”

“On that camera?”

“On his camera,” Arias confirmed.

Her admission came as a surprise to me. She hadn’t said much of anything up to that point and now she was volunteering information that was not even known to the detective.
I wondered what her motivation for this new disclosure was, and the only thing that seemed logical was that in her mind she and Flores were sharing a moment. It was clear to me now that her preoccupation with the photos was partially an effort to try to find out if their sex video had been recovered.

If Flores was surprised by this revelation, he didn’t show it.

“Videos are hard to get when they are erased,” he told her. “They take up so much room, whereas pictures are a little different.” The video would not have offered any clues that the pictures hadn’t already given him, so it was not surprising that he moved on to the bigger question of motive.

“What happened after that? What went wrong? I know that the last photos of him were taken at 5:20, 5:30. And you said he doesn’t like you to take pictures of him.”

“He was very private about the shower,” Arias disclosed and added that so was she.

Laughing, Flores asked, “Is that why you were taking pictures of him in the shower? Trying to get back at him?”

Arias denied that was the reason.

“I am surprised he allowed you to take pictures of him in the shower. The first few looked like he wasn’t that comfortable, but obviously whatever you were saying to him appeared to make him a little more comfortable. . . .

“What went wrong? Did he say something to you?”

Arias took several deep breaths and turned her face away as the detective pressed her for an answer.

“Were you angry about something? Were you frustrated? What was it?”

Her face was almost completely hidden behind strands of her long brown hair, but I could tell she was listening closely. It appeared she was weighing her options and had come to a place where she was finally ready to free herself of the tremendous burden she had been carrying around for the past month. It looked as though she was about to say something when suddenly the sound of Flores’ pager going off interrupted the pin-
dropping silence. Sixteen seconds ticked by as Flores checked his phone and looked at the message.

It appeared the short reprieve allowed her to collect herself enough to sit up in her chair, push her hair back away from her face, and take a breath as she waited for the detective’s attention to return to her. “What are you going to do with the rental car?” she asked, immediately redirecting the focus of the questioning away from the precipitating incident to something completely unrelated. “Are they gonna bring it here?”

“There were several photos of him,” Flores continued, trying to return the conversation to the moments before the killing. But Arias was now focused on the present and the search of the rental car currently under way.

I could feel Flores’ frustration as he inhaled deeply and let out a sigh. Still, he did his best to bring Arias back to the scene in the bathroom. “There were several photos of him, and the last one is of him sitting in the shower. That’s when I think it happened.

“What did you do? What happened, Jodi? We’ve come this far. . . . Did you plan on doing that the whole time?”

“No,” she answered, clearly disengaged, as she began running her fingers through her hair and staring blankly as the staccato of Flores’ questioning increased.

“Then why? Tell me. I don’t believe you planned it,” he told her. I was familiar with the interrogation technique Flores was now employing, where the officers are taught to minimize the suspect’s involvement in hopes that they will admit something. “But then I don’t understand why, why you took a gun with you?”

“I didn’t,” Arias insisted.