Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias (9 page)

But the stabbing assault continued; it was vicious and furious. Travis wasn’t dying fast enough for his killer. He stumbled away from the sink and down the twelve-foot-long hallway that led to his bedroom. He knew the door that led out of the master suite was just to the left at the end of the hall. It was just a few feet away. If he could just get out of the bedroom, maybe a roommate would be home to save him. Maybe he could get downstairs and out the front door—to safety. But his killer knew not to let him leave the bedroom for these same reasons. Travis had already lost a lot of blood. He was dying as he neared the end of that bathroom hall. He left an arc of smeared blood on the wall of that hallway as he fell, maybe to his knees, unable to make the last few feet out of his bedroom. Was he conscious when his killer drew the knife across his throat for the final, brutal coup de grâce?

I
t was precisely 11
A
.
M
. when Detective Flores gave the two investigators from the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office the go-ahead to enter the bathroom and help with the removal of Travis’s body. Photographs were taken to document Travis’s exact position, and then he was carefully prepared for transport. It was at this time that the extent of Travis’s injuries became glaringly apparent to everyone in the room as the cluster of stab wounds to his back and head were now visible.

As the investigators from the ME’s office began the process of removing the corpse from the shower, Detective Flores and his team continued their evidence collection in the master bedroom. They noticed that there were no sheets or blankets on Travis’s king-sized bed. A search of the entire bedroom, including the walk-in closet and dresser, yielded not a single sheet, blanket, or pillowcase, which the detectives found extremely odd.

The answer to the puzzle was downstairs in the laundry room, where investigators discovered a set of brown-striped sheets in the dryer. Apparently, someone had washed them after the murder and then run them through the dryer. A reddish stain on the inside rim of the washing machine tested positive for blood. Inside the drum, detectives found a Sony DSC-H9 digital camera mixed in with several articles of Travis’s clothing, undergarments, sweatpants, shorts, towels, and T-shirts. They determined the camera had been run through a wash cycle and had severe water damage. Remarkably, the digital card was still intact. Little did anyone know how critical to the case the photos on the digital card would become.

Detective Flores was able to determine that the camera had belonged to Travis. In an interview with Travis’s roommate, Zachary Billings, he learned that several months before the murder, Travis had consulted Zach on the purchase of the camera, and its box was found in the downstairs office. Investigators found the camera bag and unused strap in the upstairs loft near the master bedroom door.

During an inspection of the home office, detectives recovered Travis’s laptop computer. Members of the Mesa police Computer Forensic Unit were able to determine that it had last been used to access email at 4:19
P
.
M
. on June 4. Travis’s cell phone was also located in the room. A cursory review of the call log showed his last communication was made at 12:13
P
.
M
. on June 4. It was a text to his close friend Chris Hughes. There had been other incoming calls and texts to the phone after that, but they had all gone unanswered. Detective Flores spoke to Chris and confirmed that he had received the text message. Chris said it had been a confirmation of the important conference call that Travis was supposed to be hosting in the evening of June 4. The call was scheduled for 7
P
.
M
., but nobody had heard from Travis and no one could get a hold of him.

Chris mentioned that he and his wife, Sky, were supposed to meet Travis in Cancún on June 10 for the Pre-Paid Legal seminar and business vacation. Before departing, he had tried to reach Travis, but his cell phone mailbox was full and he had not been answering. Chris assumed that his friend was probably busy, and that they would catch up once they were together in Mexico. It wasn’t until he and his wife were in bed in their Cancún hotel room that they got the call that Travis was dead. Sadly, Travis’s last known communication had been his noontime text message.

It was close to 4:30
P
.
M
. when the crime scene investigators concluded their search of 11428 East Queensborough Avenue. Detective Flores’s final chore was to secure the premises and turn them over to Travis’s next of kin. Police had been able to locate one of Travis’s sisters, Samantha Alexander, a police officer with the Carlsbad Police Department in Carlsbad, California. But it wasn’t until the following day that Detective Flores was able to meet with a member of the Alexander family. Travis’s two older half brothers, Greg and Gary, had traveled from Riverside, California, after learning of their brother’s death. While Travis was always in their hearts, both men confided that they hadn’t been keeping up with their kid brother’s day-to-day life since his move to Mesa. More important, neither man had any inkling of who could have perpetrated this horrific crime.

T
he morning of June 12, 2008, Detective Flores arrived at the office of the Maricopa County medical examiner to attend the autopsy of Travis Victor Alexander. The office was located in the Forensic Science Center, a state-of-the-art facility on West Jefferson Street in downtown Phoenix. Dr. Kevin Horn, a medical examiner for the county, would be conducting the postmortem exam. Blessed with movie-star looks, the slim, dark-haired doctor was nevertheless pensive and somber. He had been with the ME’s office since 2001, joining the staff six years after his graduation from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, in Baltimore. His role as ME was to examine deceased individuals and certify a cause and manner of death.

As is protocol, Dr. Horn was present when the seal of the zippered body pouch containing Travis’s body was broken and the body was laid onto the steel table. Dr. Horn’s general examination found a “slightly heavy-set” Caucasian male, “69 inches in length and weighing 189 pounds.” There was evidence of “moderate decomposition” as indicated by “bloating, green discoloration, and multifocal skin slippage with purge exuding from the nose and mouth.” A visual examination of the body did not yield any scars, tattoos, or other identifying body features. A modified sexual assault kit was collected. However, no trauma or other abnormalities of the mouth, anus, or genitalia were observed.

The savagery of the victim’s injuries was not lost on Dr. Horn, or Detective Flores, who was standing off to the side and anxious to learn if the doctor’s findings would reveal any helpful pieces of evidence or other information that would aid in his homicide investigation. Dr. Horn found that Travis had multiple lacerations and punctures, as well as a single gunshot wound to the head. He also observed numerous sharp-force injuries of the head, neck, torso, and extremities.

An examination of the head revealed two “oblique linear full thickness incised wounds of the right and left posterior scalp.” Each measured two inches in length. There was also a 1¼-inch stab wound on the lower scalp, just below the right earlobe, and a 1¼-inch shallow incised wound on the upper left forehead, within the hairline.

The wounds on Travis’s neck were the most severe, with a number of shallow stabs around his upper neck along with a gaping incision that stretched across the upper neck. The slit of Travis’s throat measured six inches across. It was determined that this incision both transected and perforated the entire upper airway, the strap neck muscles, the right jugular vein, and the right carotid artery. Basically he had been cut ear to ear, and all the way down to his spine. Dr. Horn determined that Travis was still alive when his throat was cut, because of the large amount of hemorrhage, which requires a beating heart.

A number of sharp-force injuries were also discovered on the torso. Of particular interest was a cluster of nine stab wounds on the upper right and left side of Travis’s back that ranged in size from three-quarters of an inch to 1½ inches. The wounds were all concentrated within a 6-×-5½-inch area, with blunt and sharply incised ends that penetrated the soft tissue of the back and impacted the ribs and lateral aspects of the vertebral bone, but stopped short of penetrating the chest cavity. They were clustered together between his shoulder blades; were similar in size, depth, and direction; and appeared to have been done in rapid succession, likely when Travis had his back to his attacker.

Stab wounds also littered Travis’s upper and lower chest, the most severe of which was a 1½-inch gash to the right chest that both penetrated and perforated the area near the sternum at the third and fourth right ribs. This wound was about 3½ inches deep and penetrated a major vein near the base of the heart.

An examination of Travis’s hands, which had been enclosed in paper bags to preserve any evidence, tested negative for gunpowder residue. His fingernails were short, and none appeared to be broken, except for the right thumbnail, where an incised wound approximately of one-quarter inch had clipped off a portion of the nail. A 1¼-inch deep incision had penetrated the group of muscles at the base of the thumb, near the wrist, partially severing the muscles and tendons at the base. Horn determined a “sharp-edged object” had made the injuries, all likely defensive wounds. The presence of hemorrhage associated with some of the wounds led him to determine that the injuries had occurred while the victim was still alive.

Moving on to the gunshot wound, X-rays of the head were performed to determine the location of a bullet that had entered the body just above Travis’s right eyebrow. Dr. Horn noted a one-eighth-inch circular gunshot entrance wound. There was no apparent exit wound. Dr. Horn determined the wound trajectory was right to left and downward, with the track of the bullet indicating that it had perforated the front skull, then reentered the facial skeleton near the midline, terminating at the left cheek. He was able to recover the small-caliber projectile where it had lodged behind Travis’s face. The medical examiner photographed it and retained it as evidence to be turned over to police.

In his initial report, Dr. Horn concluded that the lacerations and puncture wounds found on Travis’s body were consistent with a single-edged weapon at least five inches in length. The lack of stippling, gunshot residue, or soot around the gunshot wound indicated the gun was fired from no closer than two to three feet away. The knife wounds to his back had not entered the chest cavity, so they also were not fatal. Obvious defensive wounds to his hands showed that he had attempted to protect himself during the attack. According to Dr. Horn’s report, the fatal wounds inflicted on Travis were the single stab wound to the center of his chest, which punctured his superior vena cava, a major vein, and the final throat slicing. The official cause of death was determined to be “sharp force trauma of the neck and torso.” The manner of death was homicide.

CHAPTER 6

T-DOGG

T
ravis Victor Alexander was unlike any man Jodi had ever encountered. All of her previous relationships had been with men who were either unconventional, uninterested in marriage and children, or unable to offer financial stability. Travis appeared the antidote to all that; he had looks, charisma, confidence, solid religious beliefs, an interest in finding a wife and starting a family, and he was financially successful. Being someone who wanted to help others, he seemed willing to share himself with Jodi. He managed to be conventional, almost princelike, yet he was exciting and energetic.

Part of Travis’s need to help those in trouble came from his own difficult and abusive upbringing. He was born on July 28, 1977, the first child of Gary David Alexander and Pamela Elizabeth Morgan Alexander. Pamela was Gary’s third wife. She was twenty-four and Gary was twenty-nine, with two children from a previous marriage, when their beautiful green-eyed boy arrived, joining half brothers Gary and Greg. Pam and Gary Alexander would go on to have two daughters, Samantha and Tanisha. The family lived in Riverside, California, a large inland city in Southern California, about sixty miles east of Los Angeles, with the reputation of being one of the nation’s most polluted “smog belt” communities.

By all accounts, this was not one big happy family. Travis’s parents were both drug addicts, hooked on methamphetamine, one of the hardest addictions to treat. Pam and Gary were both self-absorbed and controlled by their addictions, and their children suffered tremendously in their care. In the self-help memoir Travis was in the process of writing at the time of his death, titled
Raising You,
he spoke of a father who was rarely around, and who eventually abandoned the family. He described his mother as a woman who, despite good intentions, had started a family too young. Once she became addicted to drugs, she was incapable of providing reliable, loving care for her children, not even able to meet their most basic needs. The children had no one to cook a hot meal, do the laundry, clean the house, shop for food, help with hygiene, or care for them when they were sick. Pam would go on weeklong drug benders, then crash in bed for days. Meth turned her into a monster.