From the Chapter:
Bad Boy, Bad Girl
While Travis is sexting with his buddy Maria, and hoping that Mimi says yes to Cancun, there’s something more ominous going on with Jodi. Her snooping has graduated to a whole other level. The email, text and social media hacking was bad enough, but this time she’s gotten into Travis’ personal journals. Jodi’s dark tree, nourished on the ashes of failed relationship misery is coming into its full shadowy extent. But look closer. Are those branches? Are those leaves? Or is that jagged outline something far more monstrous? A cunning beast of many forms is rippling through her skin, trying to emerge. Something alien, and evil, and almost reptilian is stirring, expanding through her from the inside. It infiltrates every cell like a cancer. Some unutterable rage, like a black ink, like some invisible chimera claiming its host, moves through her, making her able change her colours with each passing sentiment. She’s morphing into her true self; a cunning chameleon and a killer.
Jodi’s plot is simple. She’ll take her time and gather the information she needs, and then she’ll watch Travis go nuts.
April 23, 2008 Text Message
19:25:10 TRAVIS TO JODI: I just noticed that in addition to my last journal that I lost my journal before that are missing too. The 2 journals encompass all the time I was with you. Jodi please, if you have anything to do with this, if you ever had any ounce of love for me you’ll give them back. Out of all things in my life that I hold precious, my journals are near the top. It is my life that I wanted to pass down to posterity. Please Jodi, these mean everything to me. So much of my life has vanished without them. To lie about this would be the sickest thing so far. To take away so much of some body for personal interest is something that should haunt someone forever. It is killing me and could neve[r] completely get over it. Please Jodi, I am begging you. From the bottom of my heart please. I’ll do almost anything.
What’s Jodi response to this?…
VANITY is now available on Amazon.
You don’t need a Kindle to read the book, you just need to download the Kindle Reading App for your devices.
Visit us on Twitter and share your thoughts!
Juror13 
I have read audacity, mendacity and I think one other escaping my mind at the moment. I’m hesitant about Vanity not because it delves deeper into Travis’s life, not because I’m afraid to look at myself. I’ve made more relationship mistakes than both of them put together. I’m a happily married morher now. It’s because Jodi and her supporters love all of the texts messages and other documentation coming out. They’ll use your books, possibly this one even more, to satisfy their sick agenda. We know Travis pursued lots of women. He was single. I blame the Mormon religion more than Travis. He tried to be true to the religion that saved his life as a young man. Only to be utterly choked by it’s law of chastity. The rule that states men must be married by age 30 or he’s shunned to the family ward. I’ve read the texts. Everyone except Maria and Chatanya. The important ones to me were Jodi, Skye, Deanna, Lisa, and Chris. I’ve read Jodi’s ridiculous manifesto.
I’ve read with great disgust the forged pedophile letter. I’m reading the books Behind the Words a satirical look at Jodi’s testimony. As a fraud examiner, it greatly helps me sharpen my reading non-verbal communication skills watching the direct examination of Jodi and matching up what is written in the book. I know these aren’t your books. Why the desire to justify anything Jodi has said or done? Travis deserves peace doesn’t he? What about his family and the women you’re including in your book? Have you asked them if they mind? They are innocent in this. They didn’t ask for their lives to be scrutinized and out for their friends, families and employers to read
I hope you’ve considered that
I’ve loved your other books you are truly an amazing author.
Hi Geri,
Thank you for your thoughtful email. I appreciate you reaching out and being honest with your thoughts. I respect where you’re coming from and I have considered all that you mention.
I think the uniqueness of what Nick and I do is that we don’t discuss true crime from a clinical viewpoint. It’s not simply – this is the crime and this is the evidence. We want to understand the people involved, what drives them, what motivates them. We want to know how their lives came to a dead end. Often we find these cases, and people, are far more complex (and darker) than we ever imagined. From a global view, there is much to be learned, and real value in it for all of us.
The Jodi supporters will always find a way to be a thorn in our side and I can’t worry about what they may or may not use. If they choose to be hateful simply for the sake of hating, which is how they usually operate, then so be it. That’s a reflection on them and I simply ignore them.
Vanity, for me, and I believe Nick too, was the hardest book in this series for us to write for a number of different reasons. It’s also the one that resonated the deepest with us. We could see ourselves, and people we’ve been involved with, in both Jodi and in Travis. And we wanted to tell the story honestly. It’s difficult to say out loud the things that people don’t want to hear – whether it’s about ourselves or about someone else. But the gift in doing that is it reminds us we all are flawed, we are all beautiful in our own ways and we don’t need to be stuck in a place of despair. I can’t tell you how many times people have written to us to say how much these narratives have moved them because it resolved something inside of them, or it simply made them feel not so alone. Brutal honesty sucks, but it’s also the impetus of healing.
Nick and I are fully aware that some people who read this book will not be happy. We never write with the intention of hurting people, it’s actually the opposite. Our intention is to be authentic and to learn. It would be very easy for us to just sugarcoat the story to keep people appeased, but nobody gains anything from that. That in itself is vanity and fraud. In a world where so many people are afraid to be themselves and speak their minds in fair and objective ways, we feel it’s crucial to tell these stories in the manner that we do.
With all of that said, I do respect your decision to not read this book. You need to remain true to yourself as well. Thank you for reading the other stories and being a conscientious believer in justice. I hope you continue to comment here in the future. I wish you all the best, Lisa.
Thank you for your comments. I also think there is much more to relationships than emails and text messages but that’s all we have to work with don’t we? I agree about PPL. They were taken to task for recording salesman commissions as assets instead of expenses. I think they rectified that. I guess where Travis came from he embraced his religion, friends, and career without realizing the emotional and psychological pitfalls of his past. It took me years in therapy but I’ve rectified mine. His life mattered and Jodi hurt scores of people. She’s where she belongs and I hope she never gets out. But this case has been very unpredictable
so, that is why he got so mad at her , who would’nt? the day she moved out of Mesa with his journals and the ‘ring’ , he should have called police to make a report. It is clear the killer began her planning of evil actions to her ex-lover.
Yes, she stole his journals because I believe her planning began when she moved back to her Grandmother’s humble home but a tiny cluttered room compared to his 4,000 square foot home. If you read her journals once she moved she talks about losing her Helio phone then says gee hope no one sees the pictures etc. then of course the phone turned up during trial and was given to her defense team. She talked him into being his housekeeper so she could continue spying on him.
when did Travis allow her to clean his apt? was it after she slashed his tires in late Nov 2007?
I’m confused about all of the timing of the stalking behavior. This is what I know from trial and what MiMi and Lisa testified to: slashed tires twice (Samantha Alexander confirms this during sentencing), Jodi admitted to breaking into his cell phone reviewing text messages, Facebook, MySpace, email. In the May 26 Gchat Travis confronts her about Facebook and says why not ask for the password you’re getting in anyway.
Mimi testified to hearing about crawling through his doggy door, sleeping under his Christmas tree, following them on their first date. Lisa testified to knocking at the door and no one being there and then both of their tires are slashed. Scared Travis spent the night at Lisa’s at her request. Next day an anonymous letter emailed to Lisa. Calling her a whore and all sorts of terrible things.
Deanna spoke out on Dr Drew about Travis asking her to go to his house and take care of Napolean. Upon her arrival, there’s Jodi baking cookies and using Travis’s computer. Travis did not give her permission to be there
Came out at trial that Jodi tried to get into Travis’s house but front door was locked so she goes around back and looks through the sliding glass doors watching him with Lisa. In fact, I heard that she was in the house because someone turned a light on but Travis didn’t actually see Jodi just suspected it was her.
Lisa testified that Jodi walked in on Lisa and Travis in the kitchen but Jodi bolted out of there. There is so much more. I think he didn’t turn her in because she could go to his Bishop and try to ruin him. With the sex they were having that could have ruined him. Plus she would lie and call him a pedophile. He was trying to slowly back off from her but it was too late
Lisa and Travis dated off/on from Aug 2007 to Feb 2008. The slashed tires happened in Feb 2008, along with the anonymous hate letter to Lisa. There’s no question at all that blackmail/threats was taking place by Jodi, and we’ll never know the full extent of it. But it’s very apparent in their communications that she was threatening Travis, and he was very much trying to get her to admit exactly what she was doing on the May 26 gmail chat, but she wouldn’t bite. Her responses to him in that chat are cold and calculated.
Yes, the infamous g-chat used by the defense as proof he was abusive to her. What is obvious to me is that he was trying to placate her. Not ruffling her feathers hoping she would quietly move back to Yreka. She did that and he was elated. BUT, that was a false impression unfortunately. After reading and watching all of the direct and indirect testimony keeping an open mind, he knew he was finally in too deep. I feel so sad for him. Yes, he lost it in that g-chat. She’s so lucky it wasn’t my brother she was doing that too. I would’ve opened up a crazy on her that that would’ve sent her running to Yreka.
I’m Italian, it’s my nature. Those who know me know what I’m saying is true. This is why I am fiercely protective of Travis and any negative views of him. I see exactly what happened here. I still need to know one thing….the last set of jurors mentioned something about her saying she would be calling her attorney on Monday. Did you come across anything like that? Then one other thing Beth Karas mentioned in one of her BK Live videos. Jodi did something wrong in PPL and whatever it was I’m thinking it might have something to do with Travis saying “if everyone knew what I know about you, they’d spit in your face” notice at that point she NEVER mentions the hateful pedophile claim in response