When love goes bad, things can get bloody. Travis Alexander could probably tell you all about that, unfortunately, he’s not able to do that because love went wrong for Travis, and things got bloody. Here’s the twisted story of Travis Alexander and Jodi Arias.
Travis was born July 28, 1977. At 11 years old he moved in with his paternal grandparents. He became involved in his grandmothers church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Despite his tumultuous beginnings, Travis worked hard and became a successful salesman for Pre-Paid Legal Services (PPL), and also a motivational speaker.
In September, 2006, during a conference in Las Vegas for PPL, Travis met Jodi. And the couple were immediately smitten with each other. Jodi converted to the LDS Church and was baptized in November of 2006. They began officially dating in February, 2007.
As they maintained a long distance relationship, Travis living in Mesa, AZ, and Jodi resided in California. They often travelled to visit each other, and Travis’s friends who knew Jodi, observed them together and tended to have a negative opinion of her. They stated her behavior was worrying.
At one point, Jodi moved to Mesa to be closer to Travis, however this didn’t work out well and she moved back to California and lived in Yreka, with her grandparents. They had planned to go to Mexico for Travis’s work trip in June, but he asked to change his companion in April to another female friend.
While living with her grandparents, Jodi and her grandparents claimed a burglary occurred. One of the missing items was a handgun, .25 caliber, which was never recovered.
Jodi and Travis may have no longer been a couple, but they kept in touch, and Jodi attempted to call Travis on June 2, but didn’t reach him all four times. After 3am, Travis called her twice and they talked for almost an hour between the two calls. The transcripts of these calls were not released in court.
After their conversations, Jodi rented a car to go to Utah, she was going to visit some friends in Southern California first and then go to Utah for a PPL work conference, and to meet with Ryan Burns, a co-worker. It is believed she went to Utah late on June 3rd.
On June 4, 2008, Travis was murdered. He had up to 29 stab wounds, a slit throat, and a gunshot wound to the head. A shell casing from a .25 caliber round was found on the scene. There were defensive wounds to his hands.
On June 5, Jodi met Ryan in Utah, and attended business meetings for the conference. Ryan noticed that her hair was now dark brown and that she had some cuts on her hands. June 6, Jodi left Utah to travel back to California. She called Travis several times, but didn’t get an answer. She even accessed his cellphone voicemail system.
Jodi returned her rental car from where she had gotten it on June 7. The car had been driven about 2800 miles. Which doesn’t compute if she went from Yreka, CA to Southern California and then to Salt Lake City. It would make more sense if she drove from Yreka, to Mesa, to Salt Lake City.
After returning the car, the rental clerk noticed it was missing floor mats, and there were red stains on the front and rear seats. However, the company could not verify if it had floor mats when it was picked up.
By June 9, when nobody had heard from Travis, a group of his friends went to his house. His roommates had not seen him for several days, but believed him to be out of town and didn’t suspect anything. Even though he had roommates, Travis owned the house and kept his master bedroom locked.
After finding a spare key for the bedroom, his friends unlocked it and went inside. They found large pools of blood in the hallway to the master bedroom, and then they found Travis. His body was in the shower. They called 9-1-1.
While searching the home, police found his digital camera that was damaged in the washing machine. Police were able to recover deleted images, the images showed Jodi and Travis in sexually suggestive poses, taken at approximately 1.40pm on June 4. A photo taken at 5.29pm shows Travis alive and in the shower. The next several images, show him profusely bleeding, a bloody palm print was discovered. It contained DNA from both Travis and Jodi.
Jodi was charged with first degree murder of Travis Alexander.
Jodi plead not guilty. She later admitted that she did kill Travis but it was in self defense. She was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole.
Be ever alert, make good choices, stay safe
Amateur Connoisseur 