Travis was one of many children. His parents were on drugs and finally he ended up in the care of his grandparents. Travis had a close-knit group of friends and family who described him as driven, outgoing and full of life. Religion was a center piece of his life. He was very generous and giving in the community. He was a salesman, but he also drove a bus for elderly people and school children. The Mormon community helped him succeed in life.
Many challenges marked her early life, including a troubled home environment. Her parents were divorced when she was young and she was left in the care of her mother, who struggled with addiction. Jodi has said that she was sexually abused by her older brother and experienced emotional abuse from her mother.
But when she became a teenager, she started to get a little bit more rebellious, and that’s not uncommon for a teen. But her parents would eventually tell detectives that she was caught growing marijuana in her room. As a teenager Jodi had dreams of success. And while she tried her hand at various careers, she struggled to find stability. Despite these difficulties, those who knew her saw a determined and resourceful individual. Jodi dropped out High School in the 11th grade and later attended College, just for a brief period. She had worked as a waitress and a receptionist, and a salesperson, before starting her own business.
Even with technology it’s hard to maintain a long-distance relationship, but that’s what they did. She was in California. He was in Arizona. But they met in California frequently. They talked a lot. They evidently had sex a lot, and this of course, the basis of very sexually intense relationship. This went on for perhaps 5 months. Good Mormons are encouraged to keep journals and Travis Alexander kept a Blog which was a kind of journal about himself, what he aspired to be, what his childhood was, the obstacles he had to overcome. He was very candid about it. It was on that blog that he divulged and admitted that he had betrayed his faith, and that he had crossed the line and had premarital sex.
Still, Travis said that she hadn’t been a marriage material. He wanted to lean into his religion, into the Mormon faith. Jodi Arias pictured a future with him, but he wanted a woman who had Mormon’s morals and values and wanted to break up with Jodi Arias. That became a bit of a strain in their relationship.
With Travis’s death, investigators were on the verge of uncovering something far more sinister. What they soon would learn about Jodi Arias would leave them questioning everything they thought they knew about the case. The investigation into Travis Alexander’s death began peeling back the layers of his relationship with, 28-year-old, Jodi Arias. As Detectives uncovered new details, what seemed like a troubled romance, started to expose much darker intentions, ones that pushed the case into terrifying new territory. With each revelation, it became clear that this was more than just a passionate affair gone wrong, but the prelude to a deadly obsession. He broke up with her, but they were still having a sexual relationship. She decided to move to Mesa, Arizona to be closer to Travis. Once Jodi Arias moved to Arizona, she began to exhibit stalking behavior. Travis’s tires were slashed. No one knew who did it, but they all suspected that it was Jodi. He met a potential wife and she couldn’t stand it. His friends told that Jodi would show up at his house unannounced and let herself in through the garage door, because she knew the code or she couldn’t get in the door and she went in the doggy door. They eventually broke up again. She left town and moved back to California where her family lived. It was not a clean break again. Travis was still in touch with Jodi Arias. They were still sexting, so having a sexual relationship virtually. He was telling his friend it was over, but it wasn’t. Travis met a Mormon girl whom she wanted to marry. They arranged a trip to Cancun. It was a trip that they did yearly. The company chose a location and then they went. She was jealous and furious. Jodi Arias was arguing by phone, presumably, with both of them.
Jodi Arias went to her ex-boyfriend’s and he gave her gas cans for a road trip. She was going to be driving from California to Utah to actually visit another man, but without using gas stations, because she decided to stop in Arizona and payed a visit to Travis. She didn’t want any record that she was getting gas, transactional or surveillance cameras, because it would show that she was in Arizona. She bought gas in California. She bought gas in Utah. In Arizona she used the gas cans.
She came and they had a crazy hours long sessions. They were filming it. They were taking pictures of it.
A final encounter between Jodi Arias and Travis Alexander led to a brutal crime.
Travis travelled a lot and his friends thought he was on the road. Probably for work. He had missed an important call, but beyond that there seemed to be no grounds for suspicion. But after 5 days, on Jun 9, 2008, they thought something was wrong. They went to his house. They got in. They got a key to the master suite and found blood everywhere. Travis body was very grotesquely propped up in the shower. The crime scene was gruesome. Travis had sustained 27 stabbed wounds, a slash throat and a single gunshot wound to the forehead. His friends mentioned Jodi Arias. It was a very bloody crime scene and the likelihood of finding some sort of DNA or fingerprint evidence was very high. Generally, when there is a bloody crime scene, there is an abundance of evidence. The key is to preserve that evidence and collect it properly, which was what the police did.
In the meantime, Jodi Arias took her rental car drove to Salt Lake where she met up with a man that she had been seeing, who noticed that she looked different. Her hair was no longer blonde, but brown and she had lots of cuts on her hands. She called Travis, pretending to believe that he was alive.
Police didn’t suspect her immediately. Jodi called a police to inform them that she was happy to help.
Police started looking into her and she would come down and they would do these interviews with her, and she’d almost turn on that flirtatious charm with them, laughing and things like that. She started doing head stands and yoga. She started singing to herself, and even asked if she could touch up her makeup before taking her mug shot. They had to present her evidence as they gathered it, but it was hard because she did not seem concerned for what was going on. She didn’t think that they were about to arrest her for murder.
Despite her initial cooperation and seemingly innocent demeanor, police began to uncover a different story, one marked by jealousy, manipulation and a calculated effort to cover her tracks. A bloody palm print was discovered along the wall in the bathroom hallway. It contained DNA from both Jodi Arias and Travis that tied her directly to the crime scene. Perhaps the most significant piece of evidence that frame the nature of the crime, as well as the time, was that Travis had just bought a digital camera, and police found it in the washing machine. There was evidently an attempt to destroy it and with good reason. Jodi had a digital camera with them during that, and there was evidence of the two of them in sexual positions, in pictures that they were taking of each other. She was taking pictures of him posing in the shower. The unique thing about that camera was it had the date and the time stamp. The evidence against Jodi Arias was overwhelming. From a bloody palm print to a digital camera hidden in the washing machine. It all paints a chilling picture of premeditated brutality. About 5:30 that same day, a span of several hours of sexual encounter, a photo accidentally taken by camera lied on the floor of his murdered body, and her foot was captured.
On July 9, 2008, Jodi Arias was indicted by a grand jury in Maricopa County, Arizona, for the first-degree murder of Travis. She was arrested at her home 6 days later in California, and was extradited back to Arizona September 5. Jodi Arias pleaded not guilty on September 11.
This beautiful young woman is about to go on trial for her life, accused of the savage, frenzied murder of her ex-boyfriend. – I know that I’m innocent. God knows I’m innocent. Travis knows I’m innocent. – She’s talking about Travis Alexander, a popular motivational speaker, she dated for five months. The steamy affair with Jodi Arias came to an end last year when she says she discovered he was cheating. – It wasn’t very pretty. Breakups are never easy, but that sort of signified the end of our relationship. – Last June Travis was brutally murdered. Travis Alexander was found dead in his shower, here at his luxury home in Mesa, Arizona. He was shot in the face, stabbed 27 times and his throat was slit from ear to ear. Police found a camera here at the crime scene. On it provocative naked photographs of Jodi Arias and Travis Alexander, taken the day he was viciously murdered. Another photograph shows Travis seriously wounded and bleeding. Prosecutors say 28 year-old Jodi went to her former boyfriend’s home for a final tryst, took the provocative photographs, then murdered him. They even have Jodi’s palm print in his blood. – Did you kill Travis Alexander? – I absolutely did not kill Travis Alexander. I had nothing to do with his murder. I didn’t harm him in anyway. – I met Jodi Arias for a jailhouse interview. Her hair now light brown and she dropped a bombshell, describing for the first time what she says happened the day of the murder. – I witnessed Travis being attacked by two other individuals, who I don’t know who they were. I couldn’t pick them up in a police lineup. – So what happened? They came into his home and attacked us both. – She says a man and a woman wearing masks burst into the home and attacked both of them. Jodi claims she fled but was too terrified to call the police. – I’m not proud that I just left my friend there to be slaughtered at the hands of two other people. I’m not proud of that at all. – You understand you look guilty here? – I understand that everything, all of the evidence against me, right now is very compelling. What really happened in there, in a nutshell, two people took Travis’s life. Two monsters. – You did not shoot Travis? – No, I’ve never even shot a real gun. – You did not stab him 27 times? – I’ve never… That’s heinous. I’ve never… – Slit his throat from ear to ear? – I can’t imagine slitting anyone’s throat. – Jodi Arias is sticking to her story that two mystery killers murdered her former boyfriend and she’s convinced a jury will believe her. – No jury is going to convict me. – Why not? – Because I’m innocent and you can mark my words on that one. No jury will convict me.
– Nice to meet you. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself when everybody’s like… – What network are you with? – CBS out here. – I’m already speaking with CBS. Oh, you’re the one… – I’m the one you were supposed to be speaking with. – Okay. – So you’re flying to Vegas. – No, it’s actually a producer that does freelance out there. She’s the one that you were talking to and I’m helping her out, kind of confusing. Different states, different people… – Sounds exciting either way! – Oh, I already wiped it (it?). – Oh, you did? Okay, I guess that’s really all I needed (powder, powder). Sorry… Don’t roll the tape yet! Ha! Ha!
Jodi Arias changed her story three different times. At first she told investigators she was never there. She wasn’t in Travis’s apartment. She wasn’t in Arizona. As they started to present her with the evidence, she changed her story. Masked Intruders came into the home and they killed Travis. They threatened to kill her. She hid in the closet. She then conceded and said she did it, but it was in self-defense. According to Jodi Arias, Travis was abusive and looked at her like a prostitute.
Her arrest marks the beginning of a legal battle that will captivate the nation, in which Jodi Arias will continue to weave an intricate web of lies in an attempt to escape justice. Her claim about domestic abuse was the one that her attorneys would pick up and take into the courtroom in her murder trial. Court TV came along and you could bring cameras inside the courtroom and then they devoted a whole 24-hour channel to televised trials. The first-ever televised trial in the US was the Pamela Smart case in 1990. It’s all surrounding jealousy and rage, and a relationship gone wrong. Also, a Mormon man who was living a double life, having this crazy sexual relationship. People were interested and came to sit in the gallery to watch this trial. It became international sensation. Jodi Arias took the stand, spinning tales of self-defense and abuse. She spent 18 days in the witness stand. It was unprecedented. The prosecution’s evidence and the testimony from those who knew Travis painted a starkly different reality. Her demeanor on the stand was very different from the behavior that Travis friends had seen – a sexually aggressive, outgoing, lively person. She wore a pair of glasses, which as we know often happens with defense attorneys – putting glasses on defendants to make them look studious or younger or more serious about it. She came off as timid, but maybe this was part of the presentation of the defense as her as a victim of domestic violence at Travis Alexander’s hands. She alleged that he had pedophilic fantasies. So the defense had a hard time proving a self-defense claim. Because even if it was self-defense at first, the reality is 27 stab wounds and shooting somebody in the head after that is overkilled that’s beyond self-defense. And there was really no way for them to say that was enough or needed to protect herself. Prosecution presented time stamped photos from Travis’s own digital camera, including pictures of Alexander in the shower, moments before his death. And images accidentally taken during the attack, pointing towards Jodi’s presence at the scene. Prosecution could prove premeditation. She was living with other family members at the time in California and conveniently a gun went missing from their home that Jodi was staying at in the week before Travis was murdered. The casings of that gun matched the casings that were at the Travis Alexander crime scene, among other evidence. Another element of the prosecution’s case were the texts and emails, showing evidence of Jodi’s jealous nature. Hundreds of text messages, thousands of emails. The prosecution was putting on that this was a jealous woman, that this was a premeditated revenge murder of the man who had spurned her.
– Where were you taking the photographs when this happened? I wanna see on this exhibit. – Outside the shower. – Pardon? – Outside the shower. – Why don’t you put a mark on there? – Madam, were you crying when you were shooting him? – I don’t remember. – Were you crying when you were stabbing him? – I don’t remember. – How about when you cut his throat? Were you crying then? – I don’t know. – So take a look then. And you’re the one that did this, right? – Yes. – And you’re the same individual that lied about all this, right? – Yes. – So then, take a look at it.
The Judge called for early recess. It’s actually a break, because judges in general call for a break if someone doesn’t feel well on the stand.
People with this personality profile tend to experience a lot of aggressiveness, hostility, defensiveness. But interestingly, these individuals do a relatively good job on a day-to-day basis of not displaying it to people. So this isn’t someone who’s walking around consistently hostile, throwing things where it’s visible to other people. But they’re still experiencing those emotions inside. In times when they feel like they’ve been wronged in some sort of way, or when someone has done something to hurt them, that they perceive as hurting them in any kind of way, the way that it’s described in the literature is, they have these violent outbursts that are described as seething as very angry. And what they tend to do with this profile suggest is that these individuals tend to externalize blame. So, for example, I acted out this way because that person deserved it. So they externalize it. They say it’s not my fault, I didn’t act this way because I have these strong emotions inside, I act this way because someone did something to me. That’s how they’re able to conceptualize it and justify it in their mind. When I first started reviewing the records, there was indication in those records that there was a sense of immaturity that was present. For example, in Ms. Arias’s booking profile. The way that she took the picture. She kind of smiled as though it was a high school photo rather than a booking picture that you would typically see. This to me was strange. I found it to be strange and immature. There were also the things that happened surrounding that that suggested that there was again some immaturity there. Such as her parents had indicated that she was described as being ‘happy as hell,’ when they came to visit her in jail. There were behaviors like this that were aberrant, that were strange, and it made me wonder whether there was some sort of intellectual deficit there, that could be contributing to this, which is why I gave the intelligent test. I diagnosed her on access to as borderline personality disorder. What does that mean? Generally, borderline personality disorder, you can think of it similar to what we see in teenagers often. This sense of immaturity and emotional, what’s called emotional lability, and I’ll talk about that in a little bit. But generally, it’s about instability. There’re unstable interpersonal relationships, unstable emotions and an unstable sense of identity, meaning ‘Who am I as a person.’ There’s this constant fluctuation. There’s a lot of manipulation that’s involved with people who have borderline personality disorder, and a large sense of immaturity. You can again think about a teenager. What we see in people with borderline personality disorder is that they engage in behaviors to try to keep people close to them, but ironically these kinds of behaviors often push people away. So in the case of Ms. Arias, this was demonstrated throughout her relationship, throughout life. And also with Mr. Alexander, for example, after they broke up, when they broke off their relationship, she then moved to Mesa, to be closer to him. This fear of abandonment, this tendency to overstep boundaries, to be intrusive, Ms. Arias herself notified me, that she had checked his Facebook without his permission, read text messages without his permission. Engaging in these kinds of behaviors of don’t leave me, let me see what you’re doing, I want you to be near me. There was indication from friends that highlighted her tendency to engage in this intrusive behaviors, by spying on him, by being intrusive with his space in general. She had a very strong tendency to go from boyfriend to boyfriend one after another, which is also another example of fear of abandonment that I just highlighted. What I found is in these relationships there was a very strong tendency to idealize the men that she was with. For example, she had indicated to me that Mr. Alexander was not faithful to her during the relationship, but nonetheless she still had this devout love for him. And you can see even within her journals the way that she talks about her boyfriends, and her partners in general. It has this very adolescent immature, for lack of a better word, a sacran kind of feel to it, very strong sweet wanting to make them happy, feel to it doing anything possible, keeping them idealized, despite what was going on in their relationship. Her ex-boyfriend, Daryl, was talking about her pattern of behaviors. He indicated that there was a point in which she had changed the color of her hair, bought a certain car and acted a certain way, to be consistent with his ex-wife. Again this tendency to shift who she is. We find that people who have borderline personality disorder tend to have this prolonged sense of just feeling empty, just feeling like there’s nothing there. Despite the fact that there’s all this emotional turmoil that does go on inside, they have the sense of just being empty, and I specifically asked Ms. Arias about that, who indicated that she’s felt that way since adolescence. Just this sense of emptiness. I fortunately had access to Ms. Arias’s diary. And throughout her diary, beginning in 1995, there was consistent notations about the desire to not be alive, to engage in suicidal behavior, thoughts about it. She did meet that criteria. Several of her boyfriends described her… In fact, all of them, of the information that I have had access to. They all described her, ‘It’s having very quick shifting emotions, going from happy to mad to sad very quickly,’ and interestingly I saw that myself within her journal entries. Within the same day I could see a person who was very happy, to shifting to be very upset, very sad in within one day, very quickly. Inappropriate intense anger… in her emails to Mr. Alexander: “You already know the secret. I don’t need to remind you. But you are so powerful and you can turn the situation around at any time. I found out much to my regret that my anger is very destructive. I’ve never beaten up anybody over it, but I’ve kicked holes in the walls, kicked down doors, smashed windows, broken things. It hurts people. And it hurts me. It lowers my vibration and attracts unwanted lower vibrational situations, and people into my life. So I strive every day to be the bigger person and be a living example, and choose the right. And see everything through a filter of love. But it doesn’t always work that way. I mess up sometimes. I forget who I am. But I will never stop striving to be Christ-like, as much as I possibly can.”
In 2013, the jury delivered a verdict – guilty.
The prosecution was seeking the death penalty.
1:42 You said today you want to give Travis’s family closure. You know they want you dead. So why don’t you give them that closure? – What do you mean by that? Why don’t I kill myself? Is that what you’re asking? – No. Why don’t you accept the fate of the death penalty, if you know that’s what they want, if you truly care about their closure? – I’ve caused them a lot of pain. I’ve caused my family a lot of pain. And, I think that by asking for death I’m only going to cause more pain to my family. – Why didn’t you apologize to them? – I did apologize to them. – You never said ‘I’m sorry.’ – I said that. I said that I’m sorry, that I’ll never be able to make up for what I did, and that i can never replace their loss. – But you didn’t use the word ‘I’m sorry’. – Well, then, I’m sorry I didn’t say that, because certainly I am sorry. I think in a sense the words ‘I’m sorry’, just seem meaningless, especially since nobody believes what I’m saying anyway. – You said it right there. No one believes a word out of your mouth. Why do you keep talking? – Because I know that I’m not just… I’ve lied before. That doesn’t mean that I’m a liar by definition, by character. – To a lot of people, they think this switch from I want to die to now I want to live is just another lie from Jodi Arias. – I don’t know what that means. Was I lying when I said I want to die, or was I lying when I say ‘Please, spare my life’? You know… Whatever happens I’m going to take it, and deal with it. – You’ve said that sort of thing a lot before, including right after you were arrested you said: “My goodness, If I did something this horrible to Travis, I would beg for the death penalty.” – Right. – You did it. So what changed? – My family changed my mind.
Some of Arias’s last words to the jury were downright bizarre. She argued for life in prison by essentially presenting a political platform for the rest of her life behind bars. “There are many things I can do to affect positive change and contribute in a meaningful way. In prison there are programs I can start and people I can help.” She almost sounded like she was running for student council president. She told the jury she wanted to start a recycling program in prison, a book club, Spanish lessons for other inmates. “This is the t-shirt.” She was kind enough to bring a sample of the t-shirt she designed to raise money for domestic violence victims. She wants to keep selling those. She told the jury if she lives, she can keep donating her hair to cancer patients who need wigs.
– In your final statement today you talked about all sorts of things you might be able to do in prison. Teach other prisoners Spanish, donate more of your hair, start a recycling program. Do you know how trivial that sounded in the face of what you did? – Well, there isn’t a whole lot that I know about prison, and these are only things that I’m able to ascertain from having never been there. So I believe that when I get there, I will find ways, better ways to contribute and pay back. – But can’t you grow out your hair on death row and donated? – Yeah. It’ll be less wigs if I get executed. I mean, I know that sounds trivial, but that’s the only way that I can contribute. I’m limited. I’m going off to prison. There are so many things that I’m no longer going to do, so in a sense I was grasping extras. But these are things that I can do and at this point that’s what I’m holding on to. – If you were on that jury and you had heard what they have heard, would you kill you? – I don’t believe in capital punishment. So, the answer would be no. – One thing that surprised a lot of people is that no one from your family got up to say anything nice about you when you were facing the possibility of the death penalty. – Well, that was a defense decision and one that I was somewhat in agreement with. My mother wanted to. She had a letter written out that she wanted to read. And my dad was fired up. He wanted to talk. And my defense team didn’t call either of them. – But the impact of that is that you’ve lived on this planet for 32 years and you have no one other than yourself to come up and vouch for your character as a person when you’re facing death. – Well I did have people and they were not called. – One of the other things you did say today is ‘Look, I don’t want to drag Travis’s name through the mud,’ and at the same time you say that you’re up on that stand, accusing him of abusing you and being a pedophile, and all sorts of terribly awful things. What does that say about the kind of person that you are? – That I was truthful. I didn’t want to do it but I was obligated to do it. I was under oath. So the only other option was to lie and say he was perfect. – And to people who say you shot him you, stabbed him, you slit his throat and then you killed him a fourth time when he was already dead, by making up things about him to ruin his reputation, you say what? – Nothing was made up. Nothing was made up at all. I mean, it was a defense strategy for me to take the stand, and once I was on the stand, I was obligated to answer the questions that were posed to me. And that’s what I did. – But you know no one believes you, right? – That’s not true. Maybe a majority of people don’t, but I know plenty of people that believe me. – If you get life in prison, you could conceivably get out someday. Do you deserve freedom? – All I know is that if I were given freedom again, I would handle it very, very responsibly. – So you think people should feel safe if Jodi Arias is out of these four walls at some point. – I think so, yes. If you’re not abusing me and attacking me and threatening to kill my life, there’s no reason to fear. – You really are still sticking with that story? – It’s not a story. It’s the reality. And it’s unfortunate, but it is the reality. – Okay. – I didn’t know that you were a hater when you came to interview me.
Arias seemed surprised by the tough questions. By her own admission, she lives in a bubble behind bars.
– We talked to a lot of your friends, some of whom said that Jodi is the most hated woman in America right now. Do you feel that? – No, I don’t feel like… I’m so incubated in here. I hear things and, you know, a lot of what gets to me is the positive. They filter out the negatives. – But you did know there were hundreds of people cheering outside of the courthouse, when you were convicted. – I did hear of that, yes. – And what do you make of that? – I don’t know. I really don’t. – A lot has been made about your appearance and your change in appearance. Was going from blonde bombshell to sort of the mousy church librarian look in court, was that a defense strategy? Was that your idea? What was that? – No, they don’t sell clairol hair dye in jail, so this is my natural hair color. – But there was more than just the hair color. The glasses, overall the demeanor is very different than the person that you were before this crime happened. What about that? – Well, this is a court of law. It’s not a place to go and act crazy, or, I shouldn’t use that term, but it’s not a place to go and just let loose. It’s a court of law.
If someone being sentenced to death, once you’re convicted, then there’s a separate trial with the same jury to decide whether you’re going to be sentenced to death or sentenced to life in prison under certain conditions. Although she said to a reporter that she would like the death sentence, in the court she asked for a life sentence. She said that she could do something with her life.
They deliberated and came back hung. They could not decide on a verdict for sentencing. That meant they had to do the entire sentencing portion of this trial again. They came back months and months later and this jury comes back hung again. Mistrial again in the sentencing phase. The thing about Arizona is after the jury is hung twice on a death penalty case, that’s it for the prosecution. Eventually the judge sentenced Jodi Arias to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Many psychologists appeared on TV shows explaining Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Jodi Arias asked for makeup before interviews and she didn’t seem to understand the gravity of her situation. Therefore, public confusion regarding Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder is understandable. Jodi Arias was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and her behavior meets criteria for this disorder.
