Breaking Down Jodi’s Secret Testimony – Part 2

October 30, 2014

SCHOOL YEARS

Willmott: What kind of interests did you have when you were in middle school? Did you have any kinds of things that were special to you?

Jodi: Yeah.

Willmott: Tell us what that was.

Jodi: I became interested in art very early on. I took art class at school.   When I was younger, I wanted to learn Spanish. I couldn’t wait to get to high school to take Spanish. In 8^th grade they offered it as an elective so I was very excited to take that so I did.

Willmott: So were those two things special to you?

Jodi: They were.

Willmott: And what kind of grades were you getting in middle school?

Jodi: Mostly As and Bs for the most part until the last semester of 8^th grade.

Willmott: Was there a problem your last semester of 8^th grade?

Jodi: Yeah.

Willmott: What was the…

Jodi: There were a few problems.

Willmott: Let’s start with your family. What was your home life like at that point?

Jodi: Well, it was… it wasn’t as warm anymore. My mom… well. My little brother and sister [Joey and Angela] were born. I was close with them. My brother [Carl] was doing his own thing. We weren’t really hanging out anymore. My mom was working full-time. My dad was working full-time. I was baby sitting a lot…

Willmott: Jodi, who were you baby sitting?

Jodi: My little brother and sister. If they were home, the focus was on the babies. We weren’t really having dinner anymore or hanging out or going to the movies, things that we had done when we were little.

Willmott: Could you tell a difference in your household as far as your family dynamic was working?

Jodi: Could I tell the difference?

Willmott: Yes, from the time you were a little girl.

Jodi: Yes, I could see a difference.

Willmott: Was it getting any better… better than it was or was it getting worse?

Jodi: It wasn’t getting better. It was kind of sliding as far as just quality, general quality of our relationships we have in the family.

Willmott: What was going on as far as the discipline was concerned? Were your parents still disciplining you?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: Was your mom still hitting you?

Jodi: She was.

Willmott: And what about your dad?

Jodi: He was still aggressive. He wasn’t using the belt so much. He began to shove me into furniture and scream and yell and things like that.

Willmott: Continued screaming and yelling at you?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: Was your home something that was calm and serene or was it more chaotic?

Jodi: It was very chaotic. If no one was home, it was calm but it was chaotic.

Willmott: With you… we were talking about some of the problems by the end of 8^th grade. So your family dynamic… that’s what we were just talking about… was there another problem?

Jodi: I think so, yes.

Willmott: Did you meet friends… did you have a particular friend who you think was helping you along with the problems?

Jodi: Kind of, yea. I met somebody… a girl [Patty Womack] that we were hanging out with… a few girls actually and we… she introduced me to marijuana so I started smoking that.

Willmott: And about how long did you do that for?

Jodi: Five months in 8^th grade, January through May pretty much.

Willmott: And so that was the end of your semester… end of your 8^th grade, right?

Jodi: Yes, right.

Willmott: Were you able… did you stop on your own?

Jodi: I did.

So the pot use was Patty’s fault. She wouldn’t have used it if somebody didn’t tell her to do it. But of course, Jodi does give herself credit for quitting on her own.   Anything she’s done that was bad is a result of somebody else’s prompting or example. Anything that she’s done right is a result of her own initiative.   She has no problem whatsoever bolstering herself, but is chronically critical of everybody around her.

Willmott: And did it… did you ever get arrested for that or anything like that?

Jodi: No.

Willmott: Did you ever have any kind of criminal charges or ever have to go to juvenile hall?

Jodi: No.

But we do know that her parents called the police on her when they found her growing pot on their roof. According to her parents, this was a turning point in their relationship. From that point on, at the age of 14, Jodi completely closed herself off to her family. This was her retribution for them trying to parent her.

Willmott: After 8^th grade, did you move again?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: Where did you guys move?

Jodi: My entire family… the immediately family, we moved up north to Yreka.

Willmott: When you say your entire immediate family, who is that?

Jodi: My three younger siblings and my parents and myself.

Willmott: Did anyone else live in Yreka at that time, any other family?

Jodi: Yes, almost all of my mom’s immediate family; all of her siblings and her parents were either in Yreka or in the area.

Willmott: So in Yreka, did you start high school there?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: So you were starting into a new school?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: How did that go? What did you think of the high school there?

Jodi: I liked the school. It was smaller. Well, at first as a teenager I hated being in Yreka. It was a small town. There wasn’t a lot to do. My mom… my mom went to high school there, and my grandfather went to high school there. They all knew people. So a former friend of hers from high school and a daughter my age. A daughter going into her senior year and she… so I had a friend and…

Willmott: So you had some comfort. So you had somebody to kind of…

Jodi: Right, a few people.

Willmott: … to know right when you got there?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: All right. Tell me about your home life once you moved to Yreka. What was going on at home?

Jodi: At home it just seemed to slide even more. Home life was kind of dark. It was cold. We weren’t hugging. We weren’t saying I love you. We weren’t really even talking.

Willmott: What was the relationship between you and your mother at that point?

Jodi: It was quite distant at that point. It was… we didn’t get along. I love her, of course. I have always… I love her but it was painful because we just don’t mix.

Willmott: And what about in… as far as working? So when you start high school, how old are you?

Jodi: I am 15.

Willmott: And are you working at this time?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: Actually, did you start working in Santa Maria, when you lived in Santa Maria?

Jodi: I did.

Willmott: Let’s go back for a second. What did you do in Santa Maria?

Jodi: I worked at my dad’s restaurant. I was a hostess.

Willmott: And how old were you when you started working for your dad?

Jodi: I was either 13 or 14. I think I was 13.

Willmott: And did you do that the whole time? Once you started 13, did you keep working as a hostess until you moved to Yreka?

Jodi: Yes, until I moved to Yreka, yes.

Willmott: All right. And when you moved to Yreka… we were talking about your home life… what about jobs, did you have a job in Yreka?

Jodi: I did.

Willmott: What did you do?

Jodi: I also worked at my dad’s restaurant.

Willmott: And what did you do there?

Jodi: When I started working at that restaurant, I was waiting tables.

Willmott: Which restaurant was that?

Jodi: It was called Claim Jumper’s Family Restaurants.

Willmott: Is that Claim Jumper like a chain?

Jodi: No, it is not part of the chain.

Willmott: Is that something that your dad… that your family owned?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: What did you do… so you were getting paid obviously?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: What did you do with that money?

Jodi: I saved it.

Willmott: For what?

Jodi: Mostly. I bought little things here and there.

Willmott: For what?

Jodi: For a car.

Willmott: You were saving for a car?

Jodi: Yes.

So, first she says she is saving and then she says she is buying little things here and there, which on a hostess’ salary is probably all she could afford. But then Willmott asks her again what the money was for and she says a car.

At times throughout her trial she has tried to portray herself as a hard worker, and somebody who is building towards a future, but evidence to the contrary seems to exist. She hopped from job to job – working at many different restaurants. In my opinion, when you look at her pattern of jumping from guy to guy, job to job, and consider her history with Darryl who was almost 20 years her senior, and Travis, who was leaps and bounds beyond her in an established life, it suggests she was looking for somebody to latch onto. Somebody who could give her a life. Not just money, not just marriage, but an entire life.  Meanwhile, in her reality, she kept having to crawl back to the tiny bedroom at her grandparent’s house where her failures were no doubt constantly festering in her mind. Her anger at her parents for giving her a shitty life, continuing to boil.

Willmott: In high school what kinds of interests did you have? You told us about Spanish and art in middle school. What about high school? What were you doing then?

Jodi: Those interests continued. I was interested in a lot of subjects. The only one I didn’t like was math but I liked school. I liked being in school. I liked the classroom. I liked the teachers. The students, the setting, the learning. Art and Spanish were my favorite.

Willmott: Did you have any particular teachers that made an impact on you?

Jodi: Yes, my art teacher, Mr. Rangle made an impact on me.

Willmott: How did he do that?

Jodi: He was… I think he saw talent in me and he recognized that and he praised my art.

Willmott: Was he supportive of you?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: Did he encourage you?

Jodi: Yes, he did.

Willmott: And were you getting any type of support or encouragement at home like that?

Jodi: No, not that kind at all.

Willmott: Did your parents support your love for art at this point? Did they do anything to help you?

Jodi: Not at this point, no.

Willmott: What kind of grades were you getting in the beginning of high school?

Jodi: In the beginning I was getting As and Bs mostly. It wasn’t… I wasn’t 4.0 but I was in the high 3, whatever grade average.

At this point, Willmott does a bit of a rehash on Jodi’s mom and dad and the state of their relationship. Him being nice at times, then conversely degrading her, and her mom just accepting it. Jodi says her dad was a body builder; a man with huge biceps and shoulders. There can only be one reason to describe his size and that would be to enhance his intimidation. They move back to the topic of discipline.

Willmott: And what kind of discipline was going on in your house during high school? Was your mom still hitting you with the wooden spoon?

Jodi: No, by that point she had broke it on my brother. Sometimes she would smack me with a hair brush. My brother got it with a wire hanger a few times. Sometimes she would use a belt.

Willmott: And at a certain point were you getting old enough that you were trying to stop her?

Jodi: Yeah, I was trying to… well, there was a few times when I would try to grab her hands and prevent her from hitting me.

Willmott: Was it kind of getting different from when you were smaller in the sense that you were able to try to do something about it?

Jodi: Right. I mean, it was a bad idea because there would be repercussions, but you can’t help it. When you are being attacked, you kind of grab, you know.

Jodi goes on to talk about her after school and babysitting duties. She says in her house, school was not a priority, chores were. There was no encouragement with her schoolwork.

The way she talks about her family is very indicative of a person who is constantly shifting blame. She is the perpetual victim. Her parents didn’t encourage me, therefore she amounted to nothing.

Willmott continues to harp on Jodi’s love of Spanish, and now it’s apparent where she was going with that – she shifts focus to Jodi’s Costa Rica trip.

Jodi: Well, my sophomore year in September at the beginning of the year there were fliers up advertising for an exchange program; and it was only a three-week deal in the summer. So I saw that as something I could do. So I decided I was going to do it.

Willmott: You decided you were going to do it?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: How is it that you did it?

Jodi: I just came home. My parents were vegging on the cough, and I told them I’m going to Costa Rica this next summer. They looked at me and didn’t argue.

What Jodi describes here is exactly how I envision her household – she is the one telling her parents what they’re going to do, and if they don’t, she’ll unleash her fury on them. They likely went along with a lot of things to avoid the anger and tears that would follow these episodes. How many 15 year olds do you know that walk into their house and tell their parents they’re traveling out of the country? The fact that she even did that in the first place, or felt it appropriate to dictate what she was going to do to her parents, just shows her bravado and desire for control. And when she doesn’t have it, she manipulates people to gain it.

Willmott: Did they help you at all?

Jodi: A little bit, yes, they did.

Willmott: And did you save money for that?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: Did you pay for most of the trip yourself?

Jodi: I did.

The trip to Costa Rica lasted for three weeks and was in the summer of 1997, when Jodi was 17 years old.

Willmott: Tell us then at this point is your family life getting any better?

Jodi: No, it is getting worse.

Willmott: How is it getting worse?

Jodi: My relationship with my dad was getting more hostile, I guess. He was getting a little bit… it did not increase in frequency but it increased in severity.

Willmott: Tell me what you mean by it increased in severity.

Jodi: He was yelling and angry, and I remember getting shoved into the piano. One time I was shoved into a door frame, and I hit my head on the side here and I passed out.

Willmott: Sorry. Tell me what happened when you got hit into the door frame.

Jodi: I lost consciousness briefly and I slid down the wall.

Willmott: What was going on? Were you arguing with somebody?

Jodi: I was arguing with my mom. I don’t remember why, but she started trying to hit me. I don’t remember with what. I grabbed her hands and we locked hands like this (indicating), and she was digging her acrylic nails into my skin and it hurt and my dad got involved. Got up and…

Willmott: What did your dad do? You said your dad got involved. What did he do?

Jodi: He got up from the chair he was sitting in and came over, and somehow. I guess, he separated us and… well, he didn’t throw me but he shoved me into the door frame.

Willmott: All right. And your head hit the door frame. Is that what you remember?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: And you said you lost consciousness?

Jodi: Yes

Willmott: What happened when you woke up or when you…

Jodi: I’m sure it was brief because the next thing I remember was I was sitting slumped like on the floor and my mom was holding my chin up.

Willmott: What was your mom doing when she was holding your chin up?

Jodi: She was continuing to yell at me, whatever she was…

Willmott: Did you hear her say anything to your dad?

Jodi: Yeah, I did. I heard her say “Be careful, Bill”

Willmott: How did that make you feel when you get to this point of supposed discipline with your family?

Jodi: I was stunned because my dad had never done… it was reaching a level of dangerousness that it had never reached before. So it was… I don’t know. It was just odd to me because even though there had been a violent type of discipline in my house, it had never reached that kind of level.

It’s the same type of escalation she describes when she talks about Travis being an abuser. Her lies seem to be built on the same formula.

Willmott: How did it make you feel inside as far as the way your mom… were your mom and dad… did your mom get upset with your dad for doing that?

Jodi: She didn’t really seem to, no, she didn’t.

Willmott: How did that make you feel?

Jodi: Well, it drives the wedge even farther between us. I felt more distanced than ever between my parents. I just didn’t feel like we were a family. We were a family but we weren’t acting that way. There were no warm feelings between us. There was no ill-will; but like I said, there was no hugging. There was no I love you. It just became worse and more distant and more cold and just a little bit… it just felt darker in the house.

Jodi frequently shows cracks in her stories. She did the same when testifying about Travis. Her allegations of abuse come across as suggestions, not as accusations, and she certainly doesn’t appear to be a person in pain remembering deeply disturbing times. Her reactions and words don’t match. Then she backtracks. “There was no ill-will”. How can there be no ill-will when you were supposedly beaten? She has to somehow balance and explain her on-going relationships with these people who have supposedly wronged her terribly – her parents wronged her, Travis wronged her, Bobby wronged her, Matt wronged her… yet, she maintained relationships with every single one of them. Why? Because Jodi is a victim and what she has created in her head is a fantasy about them abusing, cheating and lying to her. Interestingly enough, that’s exactly what she’s done to all of them but in her mind she sees it in reverse.

What did Jodi’s parents have to say about their relationship? The only time we’ve heard from them was when the cameras were rolling anonymously at the police station. When they spoke with Detective Flores, they described a Jodi who was out of control and for no reason that was apparent to them, constantly at war with them.

MOVING OUT

Willmott: After junior… did you finish your junior year?

Jodi: Not really. I guess I finished with Ds and Fs and almost no attendance towards the end.

Willmott: Did you go back to school for your senior year?

Jodi: No. I turned 18 that summer and stayed in the work force.

Willmott: You kept working?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: Now at the time… in your junior year, were you dating anybody?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: Who was it that you were dating?

Jodi: When I first started my junior year, I was dating a guy named Victor. I broke up with him sometime in the fall, not too long.

Willmott: Let me take you back before… Victor is somebody you met in Costa Rica, right?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: Let’s talk… let’s go before that a little bit.

Jodi: Okay.

Willmott: Had you met somebody named Bobbie Juarez?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: How old were you when you first met him?

Jodi: 15.

Willmott: Did you date him a little bit?

Jodi: Not initially we were just friends. Then eventually, like, I met him in the summer; and I think by the new year or slightly after the new year, sometime in January, we decided to be boyfriend and girlfriend.

Willmott: How old were you when that happened, when you decided to be boyfriend and girlfriend?

Jodi: I was still 15.

Willmott: Okay. How old was Mr. Juarez?

Jodi: He was 18.

Willmott: So was he in school with you?

Jodi: No. He was out of high school.

Willmott: How long did that last?

Jodi: I don’t recall but it didn’t last until the school year. It didn’t last very long.

Willmott: What happened?

Jodi: He was getting very serious and so I felt it was a little bit heavy. He was saying “I love you” and he wanted to spend forever with me and that sort of thing. So it just seemed a little bit intense and serious. So I broke up with him.

Willmott: So you broke up with him. Is that what you said?

Jodi: Yes.

So this evidence is supposed to illustrate that Jodi can walk away from men, she doesn’t automatically obsess over them. It was him that wanted her more and she didn’t want that, so she broke it off. No obsessing, no stalking, she just walked away.

Willmott shows the court a picture of Jodi with Bobby, as well as a family picture from when Jodi was a teenager. They revisit the Costa Rica trip and Jodi explains how she stayed with a host family and began to date their son while she was there. After the trip, they kept in touch by phone and via letters. He came to visit her in the US. But the relationship didn’t last long.

Willmott: What happened to it?

Jodi: It got to a point where… I mean, he is a nice guy. He is good looking but he was… we argued a lot. He was… he didn’t like me to… he didn’t like for me to talk to other people. How do I say? He was kind of possessive and it was just not my thing.

Willmott: And at this point you were only 17?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: And did you… obviously the relationship broke up, right?

Jodi: Right.

Willmott: Who did the breaking up?

Jodi: I broke up with him.

Again here, Willmott is prompting her to demonstrate how she was able to walk away from yet another man. Ironically, she considers him to be possessive. She didn’t like that so she ended the relationship. The situation with Travis has to stand apart from her other relationships… having a pattern of clingy, obsessive relationships where she can’t let go definitely would not bode well for mitigation.

Willmott: How did you…

Jodi: Yeah, I called him and broke up with him.

Willmott: And you are kind of wincing when you say that you called to break up with him. Was that something difficult for you?

Jodi: Yeah. It just seems kind of messed up to break up with somebody on the phone. It is something I think… I knew he loved me. It was difficult. I heard him crying on the other end of the line, and I felt like at least I owed it to him to break up to his face; but we were in different countries so.

Willmott: After you broke up with Victor Arias, did you end up meeting or… had you been friends with Mr. Juarez after you broke up?

Jodi: Yeah, we reconnected and were talking for a while at that point.

She recounts that she broke up with Victor in the fall of that year and her and Bobby started dating on the first of the new year, 1998. Things continued to deteriorate at home.

Jodi:   Well, things had gotten just to a point where I didn’t want to live there anymore. I began… Bobbie and I began to make plans to move in with him and his parents/grandparents.

Willmott: When you say “parents/grandparents”, what do you mean?

Jodi: They were an elderly couple. I believe they were his grandparents like biologically but he called them mom and dad.

Willmott: How did you effectuate those plans? What were you doing?

Jodi: Well, little by little I began to pack up some things that I had and whenever I was visiting. I would take them over to his house and he had a shed in the back; and we would put all my things… I had dishes and things that my dad had given me when he closed the restaurant this year, household stuff my books things like that.

So she’s secretly moving out of her house. She’s not sharing these plans with her parents, she’s gradually moving out on her own. This is in line with what her parents said to Flores; she kept her life secret and wouldn’t tell her family anything. I think this goes beyond Jodi just not liking her parents. The need to hide your life and be secretive indicates you are engaging in something (or someone) that you know to be wrong. She wanted ultimate control over everything she was doing and didn’t want her parents’ input, so she left.

Jodi: Well, at that point I stayed up all night packing and…

Willmott: Tell me what point this is.

Jodi: This is three months before I was 18.

Willmott: So you would have turned 18 in July of 1988?

Jodi: 1998

Willmott: Sorry.

Jodi: I would have turned 18 that July. So roughly April. I think it was sometime in the spring. I packed up all my things all night long, and then I picked up my cat and walked out the door about 7:00 in the morning and drove everything… drove out to his house; dropped everything out and…

Willmott: When you walked… sorry… when you walked out the door, were your parents there?

Jodi: My mom was in the kitchen.

Willmott: Did anybody say anything?

Jodi: You can see the front door from the kitchen and she saw me with my cat and she said “what are you doing?” and I said “nothing”. And I just shut the door and I took off in my car and then I called her.

Willmott: You went over to Bobbie’s?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: Did you call your mom later?

Jodi: I called her when I got there that morning just so they were aware of what I was doing at that point.

Willmott: Is that when you told them that you were moving out?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: Did they do anything to stop you?

Jodi: No.

Willmott: Did they come over to Bobbie’s house and pack your things up and make you come back?

Jodi: No.

Willmott: Did they try to convince you to come back?

Jodi: No, to come back, no.

Willmott: After you moved your stuff into Bobbie’s house… grandparent’s house, did you go to school?

Jodi: I did that day, yeah.

Again, making her parents out to be the bad guys in the situation. Jodi wasn’t loved enough so she was forced to move out and they didn’t beg her to stay.

Willmott: That is the end of your junior year or the beginning of the end of your junior year, right?

Jodi: Pretty much. Things were already getting difficult, but I think that was sort of a turning point where things really began to go south where I couldn’t salvage my grades anymore at that point.

Willmott: During this time when you lived with Bobbie, that’s when you think you were working at a couple of different places?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: And what about Bobbie, was he working?

Jodi: No. He had never had a job.

Willmott: And so where was your money going?

Jodi: Well, eventually it was going to him and I. We were living… it was kind of a 50//50 team.

Willmott: Were you helping to support him?

Jodi: Yeah, food, clothes, that sort of thing.

It sounds like Bobbie was using Jodi just like Jodi uses everybody else. The guy never worked a day in his life yet in Jodi’s delusional mind they are a 50/50 team. She describes the living conditions of the home. She says it was dirty and the front room had tar running down the walls from cigarettes. There was dusty clutter all over and the floors and carpeting were in very bad shape. In telling the court how awful Bobbie’s home was, she’s also making the statement that her home life with her parents was so deplorable that she’d rather live in a dump with a guy who has zero work ethic.

Willmott: Was there a certain point in time when you broke up?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: About when did that happen?

Jodi: I think that was in May I broke up with him. [1998]

Willmott: What happened that you broke up with him?

Jodi: I found out he was cheating on me so I broke up with him. I found out that he was seeing someone else so I broke up with him.

Willmott: How did you find that out?

Jodi: Well, he had been talking with this woman for a while on the phone; and she was out of state; but they spoke very frequently. My understanding was that he had an interest in her previously but they were just friends now.

Willmott: Are these things he would tell you?

Jodi: Yes, uh-huh. So I saw them talk and friendship is fine. So I didn’t think much about it. I kind of had a weird feeling. We would go to the public library to check out e-mails.

Ok, here we go… If Jodi needs to explain their process of checking their messages, you can pretty much bet she hacked into his email and she’s trying to justify it here.

Willmott: Let me stop you there. So back in that day, 1998… Did you have a computer in the house?

Jodi: No. No computer, no cell phone, nothing like that.

Willmott: You had email?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: You said you had to check your email at the public library?

Jodi: Right.

Willmott: Did you both go and do that?

Jodi: Right.

Willmott: What happened?

Jodi: We would go to the… sometimes we would just each use a terminal or if the terminals were being used, we would each take turns using the same terminal. We would check our emails right in front of each other. It didn’t seem like he was hiding anything, and I would see emails in his inbox from her.

Willmott: Wait. You would see emails in his inbox from who?

Jodi: From this woman.

Willmott: This woman that he was supposedly just friends with?

Jodi: Yes, right. I never read any of them. He never read any in front of me. Just the way he spoke to her seemed a little bit more than just friends.

Willmott: How did you hear him speak to her?

Jodi: He was very sweet to her. He laughed a lot.

Willmott: How is it that you would hear him?

Willmott has to ask this question because she knows darn well that Jodi snoops. So one can imagine that while Bobbie was on the phone in the other room, Jodi was probably standing at the door listening.

Jodi: He would speak on the phone when I was home. It seemed like when they were on the phone, it was their own world. You could just tell, you know. He seemed kind of… tune everything out, not in a bad way. More like in a way that you could see that someone had feelings for someone, almost an in love kind of feeling.

Willmott: How did that make you feel?

Jodi: It was uncomfortable. I mean, I took his word for it at first; but it was uncomfortable.

Willmott: What happened during the time you broke up with him?

Jodi: The day we checked our emails I was headed to the Purple Plum to work and before going there, I dropped him off at his friends so he could hang out there. He didn’t have a car.

Willmott: What happens?

Jodi: Well, my feeling was very strong by that point. So I decided I wanted to check. So I went back to the library and I checked the emails that he had been writing her the ones he had sent her and they were very loving. They were more than friends clearly. So…

Willmott: What did you do?

Jodi: I printed them all out and I drove to the house we were living in. I packed up all my things; threw them in my truck. Asked my grandma if I could stay with her. She said, yes, and then I drove… I called in sick for work. I was sad. I was upset. I drove back to the friend’s house where Bobbie was and I pulled him aside so we could talk privately, and I handed him the letters and showed him.

Jodi describes Bobbie as being very shocked to see the letters. He wanted to go somewhere with her to talk but Jodi claimed to be too hurt. She says he was very sweet and loving toward the other girl and she felt he treated the other girl better than he treated her. Jodi and Bobbie had only been back together for about four or five months at this point. She says that when Bobbie discovered she had moved her belongings out, he felt really bad and apologized. But Jodi still moved out.

Jodi: He promised he would not talk to her [the other woman] anymore. There was nothing going on between them. He cared about me. He loved me. He won’t talk to her, that sort of thing. He was very apologetic, and I believed he was sincere.

Willmott: Did you accept his apology then?

Jodi: Yes.

Willmott: Did you believe his apologies?

Jodi: I did.

Willmott: When you moved back in, what was your relationship like after that?

Jodi: At that point it was… it wasn’t that great. I mean, it just seemed to get emotionally more chaotic. There was turmoil as far as that goes.

Willmott: Turmoil between the two of you?

Jodi: Yeah, emotionally like he as a little more upset all the time. I can’t really describe it. He would kind of play mind games.

Willmott: Was your relationship rocky after that?

Jodi: Yeah. It wasn’t super rocky but it got rocker as time went on.

Willmott: What… when you stayed with him after you came back, why did you do that?

Jodi: You mean why did I continue to stay?

Willmott: Right.

Jodi: I loved him. In fact, I was in love with him; and he told me he loved me. So we were two people that love each other. We were young but we loved each other. I figured we could work through our problems that’s how I thought.

It’s the same cycle – Jodi is with somebody she loves and she claims they betray her. But she stays because she’s a good person, so we should all pity her. The intensity and chaos of this relationship, just like her others, only increases as time goes on. Yet, the blame is always pointed at the other person, it’s never her that’s done anything wrong. When every single relationship in your life involves turmoil, at some point don’t you think you need to look at yourself and wonder what part belongs to you?

PART 3 WILL CONTINUE WITH THE CONCLUSION OF THE BOBBIE SAGA