Travis Victor Alexander (July 28, 1977 – June 4, 2008) was an American salesman who was murdered by his ex-girlfriend, Jodi Ann Arias (born July 9, 1980), in his house in Mesa, Arizona, United States, while in the shower. Arias was convicted of first-degree murder on May 8, 2013, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on April 13, 2015.
Alexander sustained 27 stab wounds, a slit throat and a single gunshot wound to the forehead. Arias testified that she killed him in self-defense, but she was convicted by the jury of first-degree murder. During the sentencing phase, the jury deadlocked on the death penalty option, and Arias was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Alexander's death and the subsequent investigation and trial attracted widespread media coverage in the United States.
Background
Travis Victor Alexander
Alexander was born on July 28, 1977 in Riverside, California, to Gary David Alexander and Pamela Elizabeth (Morgan) Alexander. He had three brothers and four sisters. At the age of eight, he moved in with his paternal grandparents. After his father's death in July 1997, his seven siblings were also taken in by their paternal grandmother. Alexander told a friend that, prior to joining an LDS church, he would frequently engage in fights. He performed stand-up comedy under the alter ego "Eddie Snell". Alexander was a salesman and motivational speaker for Pre-Paid Legal Services (PPL).
Jodi Ann Arias
Arias was born on July 9, 1980, in Salinas, California, to William "Bill" Angelo Arias and Sandra Dee (Allen) Arias. At the age of twelve, Arias and her family moved to Yreka, California. She attended school until 11th grade, at which point she dropped out of Yreka Union High School. As a young adult, Arias ventured through her early 20s as an aspiring photographer and worked other odd jobs as a model, waitress, and hospitality worker until she got a sales position with PPL.
Arias and Alexander met in 2006 at a work conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Arias converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which Alexander was a member, and was baptized by him on November 26, 2006 in a ceremony in Southern California. Alexander and Arias began dating in February 2007, and Arias moved to Mesa to live closer to Alexander, but in April 2008, she moved back to Yreka and lived there with her maternal grandparents. Alexander and Arias dated intermittently for a year and a half, in a long-distance relationship fashion, chatting with each other on the phone for hours at night, partaking in frequent phone sex as well as taking turns traveling between their respective Arizona and California homes.
Alexander's friends who knew Arias and observed them together reportedly had a negative opinion of her, stating that the relationship was unusually tumultuous and that Arias' behavior was worrying.
Murder
Alexander was murdered at his house in Mesa, Arizona on Wednesday, June 4, 2008 while taking a shower. He sustained 27 stab wounds, a slit throat, and a gunshot wound to the head. Medical examiner Kevin Horn later testified that Alexander's jugular vein, common carotid artery, and trachea were slashed and that he had defensive wounds on his hands. Horn further testified that Alexander might have been dead when the gunshot was inflicted and that the cluster of stab wounds on his upper back were shallow. Alexander's death was ruled a homicide. He was buried at Riverside, California’s Olivewood Memorial Park cemetery.
Discovery and investigation
Alexander missed an important conference call on the evening of June 4. The following day, Arias met Ryan Burns in the Salt Lake City suburb of West Jordan and attended business meetings for the conference. Burns later said that he noticed that Arias's formerly blonde hair was now dark brown and that she had cuts on her hands. On June 6, she left Salt Lake City and drove west toward California in a vehicle rented from Budget Rent-A-Car. She called Alexander several times and left several voicemail messages for him. She also accessed his cell-phone voicemail system. When Arias returned the car on June 7, it had been driven about 2,800 miles (4,500 km). The rental clerk testified that the car was missing its floor mats and had red stains on its front and rear seats. However, it could not be verified that the car had floor mats when Arias had picked it up, and the red stains could not be analyzed as the car had been cleaned before police could examine it.
On June 9, having been unable to reach Alexander, a concerned group of friends went to his home. His roommates had not seen him for several days, but they believed that he was out of town and thus did not suspect that anything was amiss. After finding a key to Alexander's bedroom, the group entered and found large pools of blood in the hallway to the master bathroom and Alexander's body in the shower. In the 9-1-1 call (not heard by the jury), the dispatcher asked whether Alexander had been suicidal or if anyone was angry enough to hurt him. Alexander's friends mentioned Arias by name as a possible suspect, stating that Alexander had told them that she had been stalking him, accessing his Facebook account, and slashing his car's tires.
While searching Alexander's home, police found his recently purchased digital camera damaged in the washing machine. Police were able to recover deleted images showing Arias and Alexander in sexually suggestive poses taken at approximately 1:40 p.m. on June 4. The final photograph of Alexander alive, showing him in the shower, was taken at 5:29 p.m. that day. Photos taken moments later show an individual believed to be Alexander "profusely bleeding" on the bathroom floor. A bloody palm print was discovered along the wall in the bathroom hallway; it contained DNA from both Arias and Alexander.
On July 9, 2008, Arias was indicted by a grand jury in Maricopa County, Arizona for the first-degree murder of Alexander. She was arrested at her home six days later and was extradited to Arizona on September 5. Arias pleaded not guilty on September 11. During this time, she provided several different accounts about her involvement in Alexander's death. She first told police that she had not been in Mesa on the day of the murder and had last seen Alexander in March 2008. On her second day of interrogation, Arias admitted she had been in Mesa, and that two intruders had broken into Alexander's home, murdering him and attacking her. Two years after her arrest, Arias retracted her story of the two intruders and said instead that she had killed Alexander in self-defense, stating she had been a victim of domestic violence.
Criminal action
Pre-trial
On April 6, 2009, a motion to reconsider the defendant's motion to disqualify the Maricopa County District Attorney's office was denied. On May 18, the court ordered Arias to submit to IQ and competency testing. In January 2011, a defense filing detailed Arias's attorneys' efforts to obtain text messages and emails. The prosecution initially told defense attorneys that no text messages sent or received by Alexander were available, but the prosecution was then ordered to turn over several hundred such messages. Mesa police detective Esteban Flores told defense attorneys that there was nothing out of the ordinary among Alexander's emails; about 8,000 were turned over to the defense in June 2009.
Trial
Arias was represented by appointed counsel L. Kirk Nurmi and Jennifer Willmott.
Jury selection
The trial commenced in Maricopa County Superior Court before Judge Sherry K. Stephens. The voir dire proceedings began on December 10, 2012. On December 20, Arias's attorneys argued that the prosecution was "systematically excluding" women and black people; prosecutor Juan Martinez said that race and sex were irrelevant to his decisions to strike certain jurors. Stephens ruled that the prosecution had shown no bias in the jury selection.
Guilt phase
In opening arguments on January 2, 2013, the prosecution portrayed Arias as a jealous person who attacked Alexander, a "good man," after he attempted to end their relationship. Arias' defense, conversely, said that Alexander had been violent and abusive, and that Arias had killed him only after he had "lunged at [her] in anger."
The prosecution alleged that Arias had premeditated the murder. They contended that Arias had staged a robbery at her grandparents' residence, where she was staying, in order to take a handgun to kill Alexander. A police detective who investigated the putative robbery testified that the gun was of the same caliber (.25 ACP) used in Alexander's shooting. They said that Arias had used a gas can and purchased gas in advance in order to hide her trip to Alexander's. The prosecution called Ryan Burns, who testified Arias was acting "normal[ly]" when she visited him the day after Alexander's death. Burns said that Arias told him that she had cut her hands on broken glass while working at a restaurant called Margaritaville, though a detective later testified that no such restaurant existed. Arias took the stand in her own defense on February 4, 2013, testifying for a total of 18 days, a duration described by criminal defense attorney Mark Geragos as "unprecedented". Arias detailed the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her parents and described her sex life with Alexander. A phone sex tape was played in court in which Alexander described wanting to tie Arias to a tree and sodomize her, and Arias responded, "[T]hat is so debasing; I like it." Arias testified that Alexander harbored pedophilic desires and that she tried to help him with those urges. She also said that her relationship with Alexander became increasingly physically and emotionally abusive. After detailing one argument in which she held out her hand to block Alexander from kicking her, she held up her left hand in the courtroom, showing that her ring finger was crooked. Arias said that she killed Alexander in self-defense after he had attacked her when she dropped his camera, forcing her to fight for her life.
Alyce LaViolette, a psychotherapist who specializes in domestic violence, testified for the defense that Arias was a victim of domestic abuse, and that most victims do not tell anyone because they feel ashamed and humiliated. During LaViolette's testimony, the defense team alluded to email between Alexander and his friends, Chris and Sky Hughes. The defense tried to enter the emails into evidence, but the trial judge ruled that they were hearsay. A court filing revealed the contents of some of the emails the DV expert alluded to, including one in which Alexander expressed anger that Hughes had discouraged Arias from romantically pursuing Alexander. In a response email, Chris Hughes said that he believed that Arias "would be [Travis's] next victim ... and that [she] was just another girl [Travis] was playing." Alexander allegedly responded by saying, "I am a bit of a sociopath." Hughes testified during the trial, saying that, while he knew Alexander was seeing multiple women, he and his wife had been manipulated by Arias, and that they had had a falling out with Arias just months after the emails when they twice caught her eavesdropping on their conversations with Alexander. The prosecution called rebuttal witnesses, included several of Alexander's other girlfriends, who stated that they had never seen him exhibit problems with anger or violence.