I've always thought the the whole "he tied me to the bed" scenario was a pretty feeble attempt to account for the presence of the knife. Feeble, but I guess she thought people would buy it. Whenever I have to tie anything, what matters is whether or not the rope/ribbon/twine/shoelace/whatever is long enough, not whether it's short enough. Well, OK, I guess if I'm trussing a turkey or tying a roast, I do cut off the excess string, and heck, now that I think of it, I sometimes use a knife. But even if Travis did tie Jodi to his bed, if the rope was longer that it needed to be, jeeze he'd surely just tie an extra knot or two and not cut the rope. With a knife.
Jodi is a very experienced liar, but some of her lies are just plain ridiculous and juvenile. A lot of them, actually. "Oh, the knife? Well, um, that was Travis' knife. He tied me to his bed, for, you know, sex, and the rope was like too long so he had to cut it, and even though it was a soft rope he cut it with a kitchen knife, not scissors. So that's why when I had to kill Travis in self defense there happened to be kind of a biggish knife in the bathroom, or his bedroom, or just somewhere upstairs, I really don't know where the knife was when I had to start stabbing Travis after his gun, which I didn't even think was loaded, accidentally went off and shot him in the head, which made him even more homicidal than he already was because of me dropping his camera. And I don't know where the knife is now. Or the rope. Or Travis' gun. Or my bloody clothes. Or even the floor mats from my rental car. Have I told you about my fog?"
If there was a rope, it was Jodi's, just like the knife was Jodi's and the gun was Jodi's (or her grandfather's). Maybe she thought Travis would let her tie him up? That would have made him easier to murder.
Who knows.
