Sentencing and beyond- JA General Discussion #8

[Wing Ding]

Am I the only one who thinks one of the reasons why Jodi killed Travis is because this was another relationship that Jodi was in that was nearing the end and she was pissed because none of her other relationships worked out and this one was not going to work out either?

When this trial began, I think the prevailing thought was that Jodi killed Travis simply because he was taking Mimi to Cancun and not her. After all, didn't she buy two bottles of sunscreen on her way to Mesa? Or was that just her everyday sunscreen to use on her one-week road trip? But I digress... The Cancun trip seemed to be such a nice, simple and tidy reason for the murder. But then towards the end of the trial, as we learned more about her manipulative behavior towards him, I think people began to think she wanted to kill him to prevent him from telling everyone about all of her manipulative behavior throughout their wacked-out relationship.

But I'm sure knowing Travis rejected her as wife material the year before was still stuck in her craw. She wasn't happy with a 12 month supply of floor wax as a parting gift from someone she believed would provide her with all the finer things in life she thought she deserved, but had no interest (or means) in achieving for herself.

 

[Wing Ding]

Oh, darn. Nothing really new that comes to mind, except for (I think it was) Chris Hughes saying Travis was set up on a blind date at the convention with this 'blonde bombshell', I did miss some bits and pieces of it here and there so anyone else here who watched all three parts, please chime in with anything I missed that wasn't known previous.

I think it was Dave Hall that said that. But isn't that what happened? Travis and Hodi were introduced at lunch at the MGM Grand and that's when Travis invited her to the banquet later that night?

One thing I learned from the program is that the gunshot was not first. I was on the fence with either theory, but after hearing Dr. Horn say that Travis would have been incapacitated had he been shot first, and he would not have been able to defend himself from being attacked with a knife. Yet he had defensive wounds on his hands. So the shell casing did in fact land in a pool of blood (gunshot last theory) as opposed to being kicked into the pool of blood from all the commotion in the bathroom (gunshot first theory).

Of course I now realize the most important reason the gunshot had to have been last; because Jodi said she shot first.

 

[TrialWatcher]

Welcome to the case, Natsound. Fresh eyes are indeed a good thing. I've enjoyed reading your posts.

 

[TrialWatcher]

I’ve always thought she turned the license plate upside down near RB’s home to purposely get a police citation or something because she needed to get caught to establish she was in Utah.
She really wasn’t (isn’t) that smart, looking back. She made many boo boo’s.
She is her own worst enemy. CMJA is a psychopath & is where she belongs.

Why would she need to establish she was in Utah when there were a number of solid witnesses who would place her there? Arias made many mistakes, I agree. It always looked to me that in her haste to get away she made another and placed the plate incorrectly. The last thing she needed to do was draw attention to her car.

 

[TrialWatcher]

My thoughts on part 1 of the ID show:
1–not learning anything new so far
2–the infamous foot pic was really clear on my HD tv, probably the clearest I’ve ever seen.
3–Jane Velez Mitchell is still so loud. Why must she scream at me?
(I was here for every thread up until the sentencing was over; I just rarely posted.)

One or two tiny points were new to me. They were so irrelevant that I have forgotten what they were already The foot pic was very clear. Juan Martinez also published an extremely clear photograph in his book.

 

[TrialWatcher]

I haven't been able to watch it so far, but:

I have questions about that foot pic. If JA is dragging him at this time, I don't understand why the bathroom is in the background. Unless, after the pic was taken, she spun him around and dragged him back to the bathroom. (If this has been discussed at length months ago on these boards, I wasn't here for that.)

I agree about Jane Velez. She tries too hard. I watched a couple of old clips of her show on Youtube regarding the JA trial, and she had a segment called the "Truth Lab" where she had a couple of experts dissecting different elements. So hoky! I always considered Jane Velez to be Robin to Nancy Grace's Batman.

Some of the best sleuthing work on the photographs I have seen is by Grey Hughes. Before the publication of Juan's book the 'foot' and dragging pictures were not very clear. This video explains his impressions after the publication of a clearer image of the foot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FZsNR4sLmU

He also has 360 degree videos of the bathroom and hall on his YouTube channel.

 

[natsound]

Welcome to the case, Natsound. Fresh eyes are indeed a good thing. I've enjoyed reading your posts.

Thanks!

 

[Wing Ding]

Why would she need to establish she was in Utah when there were a number of solid witnesses who would place her there? Arias made many mistakes, I agree. It always looked to me that in her haste to get away she made another and placed the plate incorrectly. The last thing she needed to do was draw attention to her car.

Ok, so I'm trying to remember a few things about the license plate.

She was pulled over in Utah because the rear license plate was upside down, right?

Did she tell the cop that the skate punks at Starbucks in Pasadena flipped the plate around on her?

If so, it was because of the Starbucks story she told in court that I always assumed that was where she, herself, flipped the rear license plate around. But five years later it now sounds to me like her story about the skate punks was just a lie she told to the Utah cop, and she did all the license plate shenanigans in Mesa and in Kingman all by herself, right?

Was is ever theorized that she may have stopped somewhere in Arizona to steal a set of license plates off of a local car to use for her rental, and then when changing back to the California plates when she stopped near Kingman at night is when she mistakenly put the rear plate on upside down? Or was stealing Arizona license plates too risky even for her?

Either way, she must have brought her own screwdriver to do all the license plate switch-a-roos. That also indicates more pre-planning on her part.

Finally, after watching Dr. Horn testify that Travis would have been incapacitated very quickly from being shot in the head and he would not have been able to defend himself, Jodi then testified that after she shot Travis, he was still able to say "...f'n kill you, biotch" and then chase her around in the bathroom. I would have loved it if Juan had asker her, "ma'am, if I were to shoot you in the head right now with the same gun that was stolen from your grandparents' house, do you think you would still be able to say "f'n kill you, Juan, and then chase me around inside this courtroom? Yes or no?" lol The door was already open for the sort of question, right? I would have loved to have heard her response!

 

[natsound]

Some of the best sleuthing work on the photographs I have seen is by Grey Hughes. Before the publication of Juan's book the 'foot' and dragging pictures were not very clear. This video explains his impressions after the publication of a clearer image of the foot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FZsNR4sLmU

He also has 360 degree videos of the bathroom and hall on his YouTube channel.

I watched this once before, but didn't pay attention to all of the detail. Another question presented in the picture is why TA's right arm is raised as it is. I believe JA was holding his wrist or the lower portion of his arm to drag or position him. In the 3-D photos, TA's arm looks like it's raised on its own.

The video answered the question about why the camera was taking these inadvertent photos; because if it's in an upside down position, even the slightest movement would trigger the picture-taking button.

Was JA dropping the camera? Putting it down? Why was she holding it in the hallway at all?

I'm going to snoop around more on that Youtube page. Pretty interesting stuff.

 

[natsound]

Ok, so I'm trying to remember a few things about the license plate.

She was pulled over in Utah because the rear license plate was upside down, right?

Did she tell the cop that the skate punks at Starbucks in Pasadena flipped the plate around on her?

If so, it was because of the Starbucks story she told in court that I always assumed that was where she, herself, flipped the rear license plate around. But five years later it now sounds to me like her story about the skate punks was just a lie she told to the Utah cop, and she did all the license plate shenanigans in Mesa and in Kingman all by herself, right?

Was is ever theorized that she may have stopped somewhere in Arizona to steal a set of license plates off of a local car to use for her rental, and then when changing back to the California plates when she stopped near Kingman at night is when she mistakenly put the rear plate on upside down? Or was stealing Arizona license plates too risky even for her?

Either way, she must have brought her own screwdriver to do all the license plate switch-a-roos. That also indicates more pre-planning on her part.

Finally, after watching Dr. Horn testify that Travis would have been incapacitated very quickly from being shot in the head and he would not have been able to defend himself, Jodi then testified that after she shot Travis, he was still able to say "...f'n kill you, biotch" and then chase her around in the bathroom. I would have loved it if Juan had asker her, "ma'am, if I were to shoot you in the head right now with the same gun that was stolen from your grandparents' house, do you think you would still be able to say "f'n kill you, Juan, and then chase me around inside this courtroom? Yes or no?" lol The door was already open for the sort of question, right? I would have loved to have heard her response!

She told the Utah officer her friends must have been playing a trick on her. I suppose that was her on-the-spot answer, and when it got down to brass tacks with investigators and attorneys, she thought up something less believable but more fitting for her alibi.

 

[TDoc72]

Was JA dropping the camera? Putting it down? Why was she holding it in the hallway at all?

Fact: We know she had the camera in the bathroom, taking pics of Travis in the shower and we know the ‘foot’ pic was taken near the end of the bathroom hallway. (I don’t have a link to a pic or drawing but his hallways was very long and tiled. Big pool of blood right were the bedroom carpet meets the tile. Long assumed by many to be the spot where his neck was slashed.)

I’ve always assumed that during the murder it was either around her neck or lying on the floor. Maybe it got kicked or moved around all the tile on the floor. Or maybe she took it off hastily when she realized he wasn’t dead and had crawled to the end of the hallway and she rushed over to stab him some more.

I have always thought that it probably ended up with some blood on it (since that end of the hallway was extremely bloody) and that was another reason (besides deleted photos & trying to ruin the camera) that it ended up in the washing machine.
MOO.

 

[Wing Ding]

She told the Utah officer her friends must have been playing a trick on her. I suppose that was her on-the-spot answer, and when it got down to brass tacks with investigators and attorneys, she thought up something less believable but more fitting for her alibi.

That's right. I remember now. Thanks.

I do remember when she testified she made a big deal about the Pasadena Starbucks skate punks, but I guess that was just another story to explain what she didn't do (the same logic that says keeping all of her receipts from California, Utah and Nevada explains how she wasn't in Arizona). At any rate, she must have done all the license plate shuffling around within the state of Arizona.

I still want to know if she thinks she could chase Juan around the courtroom if he were to shoot her in the head first.

 

[geevee]

There's a Greyhuze thread here with discussion, pics, etc.:

https://www.websleuths.com/forums/s...Scene-Animation-by-Websleuths-Member-grayhuze

Had she shot Travis first, with the path the bullet took, he never would have been able to speak any intelligible words, much less chase her anywhere, imo. But I'd also have loved to have heard JM ask her that question, Wing.

I studied the pics extensively and came to my own conclusions about their content, unfortunately my computer was destroyed in the Harvey flood and I lost most of that work.

 

[salberg7]

I think now the gunshot was first while he was in the shower. I don’t think she expected him to get out of the shower, but he did, and that fueled her killing frenzy.
I often think of when in the sequence of events she delivered the knife thrust deep enough to pierce his vena cava or aorta (can’t remember which blood vessel offhand). It may have been right after she shot him in the right temple (that makes sense because of how he was sitting & she is left handed) - the seconds after - and then she was able to deliver that particular knife stab. That’s a pretty deep cut. Maybe she did it when he got up out of the shower when he was in a daze being just shot in the face. She could have been standing in front of him and holding a knife and she took advantage of his confusion to stab him near the heart.
What a ruthless psychopath she is. Re: the ID special, I didn’t think there was anything new presented that seasoned trial watchers didn’t know. I hope this is the last “special” done involving the killer because she doesn’t deserve any more attention. I hope she suffers every day looking at steel bars the rest of her life.
I don’t even think Cancun was the biggest motivator for her to kill Travis. I think she knew from the May 28 texts/fight that he was absolutely through with her & she would most likely never see him again. That’s what set her off. She brewed for two months after moving back to Yreka in April.
I believe the seeds of pre-meditation were planted in April when she knew in her heart he was lost to her.
She is not like a “normal” person. She is incapable of caring thoughts, incapable of remorse,
She needed Travis to complete her life. He wasn’t perfect, granted that, but geez, who hasn’t had relationships similar to theirs in our youth? I have. You break up and move on because you have your friends, your family or career to keep you moving forward. But The killer’s entire LIFE was tied to Travis & she had to snuff him out b/o his ultimate rejection of her in late May 2008. It was classic “if I can’t have you, no one can”. She had no support from friends or family and no career.
Again, she does not think like we do. I have always been interested in examing the minds and behaviors of sociopaths & psychopaths, which is why when I watched the trial and the killer’s interviews prior to trial, I was (and still am, to a degree) fascinated by her ability to absolutely lie with ease, no remorse, again and again and again. The Flores interrogation tapes are still interesting to me. How she could spew out lies. How she never asked what she was charged with (per the Yreka detective). Her calculated answers. How she basically shut down the interview with the female detective Rachel and asked to continue with Flores. So manipulative!
Her “manifesto”; her letter to the Alexander family On Travis’ Birthday for heavens sake, her calling Ryan Burns an outright liar for stating they “grinded ” less than 24 hours after she slaughtered another human being. Purchasing a 9mm gun after the murder. Taping it to the engine! Many condoms in her rental car on her arrest.
She really belongs in jail for rest of her life. If she ever got out, she would still be a huge threat to society.
I still follow this tragedy. From every stupid RadarOnLine article (which are all mistruths) to legal briefs filed by Ms Clark. It’s just a footnote in the periphery of my brain now but nonetheless it has my interest.
Gray Hughes has done awesome work on this trial, agreed.
Hope4More & Steve44, glad to see you, as well as geevee. Did Niner ever move to Europe? Wonder about TexMex? Cayley’s Advocate?
When H4M went to Mesa, I checked the site 2x a day!
We had many great discussions and look!.....the saga continues.
Well done sir & madam, lol

 

[TrialWatcher]

Was is ever theorized that she may have stopped somewhere in Arizona to steal a set of license plates off of a local car to use for her rental, and then when changing back to the California plates when she stopped near Kingman at night is when she mistakenly put the rear plate on upside down? Or was stealing Arizona license plates too risky even for her?

Either way, she must have brought her own screwdriver to do all the license plate switch-a-roos. That also indicates more pre-planning on her part.

I would have loved it if Juan had asker her, "ma'am, if I were to shoot you in the head right now with the same gun that was stolen from your grandparents' house, do you think you would still be able to say "f'n kill you, Juan, and then chase me around inside this courtroom? Yes or no?" lol The door was already open for the sort of question, right? I would have loved to have heard her response!

Wing Ding, it's easier to remember the theories that haven't been covered on this forum Stealing plates would have been unnecessarily risky for her, as your question points to.

Heh, I'll add your final question to the list I would have liked Juan to have been able to ask.

 

[TrialWatcher]

I watched this once before, but didn't pay attention to all of the detail. Another question presented in the picture is why TA's right arm is raised as it is. I believe JA was holding his wrist or the lower portion of his arm to drag or position him. In the 3-D photos, TA's arm looks like it's raised on its own.

The video answered the question about why the camera was taking these inadvertent photos; because if it's in an upside down position, even the slightest movement would trigger the picture-taking button.

Was JA dropping the camera? Putting it down? Why was she holding it in the hallway at all?

I'm going to snoop around more on that Youtube page. Pretty interesting stuff.

NatSound, Gray Hughes projects why the arm looked raised here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB7DbaZ6qXs

Check out from 40 seconds in.

Holding the wrists does seem like a reasonable assumption to me.

 

[TrialWatcher]

I have always thought that it probably ended up with some blood on it (since that end of the hallway was extremely bloody) and that was another reason (besides deleted photos & trying to ruin the camera) that it ended up in the washing machine.
MOO.

Good point. A camera covered in blood from them both needed to be cleaned. Aside from destroying the photographic evidence of what had taken place that afternoon, she must have thought she had covered all bases. There is a poetic justice about her being caught through her camera work. Sloppy until the end.

 

[Hope4More]

Wing Ding, it's easier to remember the theories that haven't been covered on this forum Stealing plates would have been unnecessarily risky for her, as your question points to.

Heh, I'll add your final question to the list I would have liked Juan to have been able to ask.

Huh? Did we miss presenting & arguing about ANY theories here?

About the license plates. Exactly when she switched plates around- likely not just once but twice, and perhaps even 3 times, will remain a mystery, alas.

I'm not so positive that she didn't have one Arizona plate on hand to put on the rental just before or right after she crossed into Arizona on her way to Mesa.

The odds of that being true are increased if she already planned on returning to kill Travis when she was forced out of Mesa & returned to Yreka.

Having been to his house & driven all over his neighborhood, I'm fairly sure I know where she parked when she arrived in the early AM to kill him.

A missing front plate on a generic white car wouldn't have attracted attention, imo.

The folks who regularly drove on that sidestreet to exit the neighborhood for their AM commute, though, might well have noticed a car they hadn't seen before/wasn't typically parked in that spot, that was missing both front & back plates.

I don't think she would have dared park without plates, it's impossible for one plate to have been upside down if she never took off the CA plates, and I don't believe she would have taken the risk of switching plates on that sidestreet after killing Travis & cleaning up, just when neighbors would have been returning from work.

Doesn't leave many possibilities.

 

[RickshawFan]

I’m so glad you went on that trip, Hope4More. Remember us having live forum discussions while you were driving around Kingman and the Nevada border? And Travis’s neighborhood, while you posted up-to-the-moment photos? And how we all conferred about what to investigate next? That was the best Websleuths fun ever. Made my summer...

 

[Hope4More]

I’m so glad you went on that trip, Hope4More. Remember us having live forum discussions while you were driving around Kingman and the Nevada border? And Travis’s neighborhood, while you posted up-to-the-moment photos? And how we all conferred about what to investigate next? That was the best Websleuths fun ever. Made my summer...

I'm very glad I made the trip (forgot who it was here that convinced me it wasn't a bizarre thing to want to do), and am even more glad to have had the company and input and sleuthing power of so many here, literally every step of the way. It was for sure the most amazing sleuthing experience I've ever had, in large part because of that sharing of it with y'all.

Among other moments I'll never forget is parking on that sidestreet near Travis's house after I'd driven all over his neighborhood & realized it was the only place where she could have parked & slept in her moving van before leaving Mesa.

And immediately after parking there, experiencing that deeply disturbing & creepy sense of certainty I was parked where she had parked that AM, sitting where she had been, thinking about her in the place where she had been thinking about and anticipating killing Travis.

Man, was I especially grateful then to have not felt alone.