Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias Read Online Free PDF Page A

to Yreka, California, near Mount Shasta and the Oregon border. According to Patti, the news devastated Jodi. First, she was betrayed by her parents when they called the cops, and now they were ripping her away from her tight circle of friends, especially her very best friend, Patti.
    Recalling that difficult time, Patti said, “The last night Jodi was in town . . . she was crying and she said, ‘The reason I’m moving is because me and you get into too much trouble together,’ and I was just absolutely heartbroken because we were good kids. We didn’t do anything to get in trouble.”
    This was the third home in several years, a difficult situation for any teenager who wanted to be part of her school crowd. Jodi had to redefine herself with each move to fit in to the new culture and community she had been transported to.
    Yreka was a big change from both Santa Maria and Salinas. Santa Maria and Salinas were ethnically mixed agricultural towns, while Yreka, predominantly white and Anglo, was a more upscale tourist town for visitors interested in the historical period of the California gold rush. If her parents thought they were improving their lifestyle, it was an intimidating environment for the new teenager in town. The problems in the family would at least be inside the house and not be apparent or visible from outside the family’s white two-story home on Oregon Street, with the nice yard and gravel driveway in a well-kept neighborhood near the village.
    Jodi began the ninth grade at Yreka Union High School. People who knew her during that time had only nice things to say about her. They saw her as a good girl, kind and caring. According to her friend Tina, Jodi had a good sense of humor and wasn’t the least bit violent; in fact she actually had a kind and gentle spirit. Some who were students at the time said Jodi was not only accepted but even became popular at the school.
    Apparently that’s not how Jodi saw it. In Jodi’s telling of events, she never fully adjusted to life in Yreka. A while after arriving in town, Jodi wrote a letter to Patti, spilling out on paper how miserable she was and how she couldn’t make new friends in a small town where everybody else seemed to have known each other since birth. Jodi had just turned fifteen when she wrote the letter, dated September 16, 1995. It reads: “My dearest Patricia, I miss you so much. Nobody up here could ever take your place. No one up here listens like you do . . . Everyone here is pretty much the same as down there, except for one thing: I don’t feel like I belong . . . I can’t even join in the conversation because I don’t know what they’re talking about. They’ll say something to me like ‘can you believe so and so’s going with so and so, and they look so funny together’ and I’ll be like ‘no.’ I don’t even know who the hell they are. So it doesn’t matter to me. And that brings up another complaint. The only thing people do around here—I figured out—2 different groups or types of people: getting stoned—the stoners—and the gossips . . . preppy snobs.”
    “The move broke her,” Patti said years later, pausing as she recalled the letter.
    Jodi ended the letter by telling a story about the family van overheating. She painted a portrait of an average family juggling everyday challenges, but as a team, taking on obstacles in optimistically good spirits. There was no hint of an abusive family; rather, a loving family in it together for the long haul. In the midst of these moves and adjustments, another stress may have been weighing on Jodi: her father had been struggling with serious medical issues. He would later get a kidney transplant, but his persistent illnesses could have been very hard on Jodi and the rest of the family, as the man of the house was preoccupied with saving his own life.
    One friend said Jodi’s father was warmer than her mother. The friend said Bill liked to laugh, while Sandy was quieter and