Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias Read Free

County Superior Court judge Sherry Stephens was on the bench, and she would be the reader of the jury’s questions. Over the course of the trial, Judge Stephens had turned neutrality into an art form, her monotone voice and bland expression studiously avoiding any hint of what she might be thinking. Given the barrage of questions that the defense and the prosecution had already asked of Jodi Arias, the number of new questions the jury had for her was astounding. More than two hundred additional inquiries had been picked from the hundreds in the basket of jury questions. The eleven men and seven women on the panel, with no one identified as “alternates” until after closing arguments, had been busy. Without much emotion, the judge turned to Jodi, seated in the witness box, and read the first question.
    “Did Travis pay for a majority of your trips?” she asked.
    The juror’s question was referring to the many small trips the two had taken together over the almost two years they had known each other. Jodi listened carefully, seeming to want to process the question before making a snap response, which she might later regret. She swiveled her chair to look at the jury face-on. There were no signs of fatigue or stress in her face, despite her often-emotional testimony during the previous three and a half weeks. Many days on the stand, she doubled down with her head in between her hands. Today she was much more composed. Her puffy, short-sleeved blouse was starch white, like the top half of a schoolgirl’s uniform. Only the top of her hair was pulled back in a scrunchie, the rest of it falling down straight to her shoulders.
    “Fifty-fifty,” she replied, indicating that, at least for travel, she and Travis were on equal financial footing.
    After two more follow-up questions about the trips they took, the line of inquiry from a juror went right to the murder. A juror wanted to know why Jodi had put Travis’s camera in his washing machine right after she killed him. Again, Jodi paused to consider the question carefully. She relied on the answer she had repeated so often during her time in the witness box, namely that she couldn’t remember. She claimed she had no memory of anything that happened after Travis lunged at her and she shot him. Throughout the long period of jurors’ questions, she answered over and over that she couldn’t remember. Finally on the seventy-fourth question, the issue of her memory loss was dealt with head-on.
    “Why is it that you have no memory of stabbing Travis?” the judge asked, reading from a juror’s question.
    Jodi took a long pause. She looked at the jury, prepared to answer, then hesitated again before any sound came out. She raised her hands from her lap, lifted them into the air, spread her fingers, and began using her hands to help her with her emphatic points.
    “I can’t really explain why my mind did what it did,” she said in a tone no more emotional than if she had been asked where she had last seen her car keys. A pause of at least three seconds ensued. “Maybe because it’s too horrible. I don’t know.”

CHAPTER 1

    DEAD AT HOME
    O n June 9, 2008, at just before 10:30 P . M ., officers for the Mesa Police Department in Mesa, Arizona, responded to a 911 call at 11428 East Queensborough Avenue. It came from a five-bedroom, well-maintained Spanish-style house in a quiet residential area of town where the homes were variations of each other, based on a handful of tasteful models. The owner of this particular home had been found dead in the shower of the master bathroom. The caller stated she had no idea how long he had been there.
    “A friend of ours is dead at his home,” the young female voice told the dispatcher, her words shaking in her throat. “We hadn’t heard from him in a while and came to check on him. We think he is dead. His roommate went to check on him and said, ‘There is blood everywhere.’ ”
    Responding officers found the man, later identified