Jodi Arias, 32 is accused of murdering Travis Alexander, in Mesa, Arizona. Alexander was stabbed and slashed nearly 30 times in the heart, back, hands, torso and shot in the head, throat and ears in his suburban Phoenix home.
Arias is being tried for first-degree murder. Over the course she has given 3 different versions of what she claimed happened the day of the crime:
1) The first story Arias presented in 2008 claimed that she was not in Arizona at the time of the crime.
2) The second story Arias gave to the police is that two strange men had entered Alexander’s home and killed him. Both men attempted to go after her but she managed to escape.
3) The final story Arias has presented on the stand is that Alexander attacked her after she had accidentally dropped his phone. She then ran into the closet where she managed to take Alexander’s gun. “Somehow” both Arias and Alexander ended up in the shower where the gun went off.
For over six weeks Arias has described her abusive childhood, cheating boyfriends, dead-end-jobs, and her sexual relationship with the victim. Arias claims months before Alexander’s death he had grown physically abusive. Arias is attempting to save her-self from the death penalty by using self-defense. Arias’s story is becoming more difficult to follow much of the arising evidence is making her seem “guilty”. The constant trips to Arizona from California to visit an “abusive” Alexander, carrying gas in canisters to her trip to Arizona to avoid contact from others, the voicemails left in Alexander’s cell phone after the killing, the same 25-caliber hand gun used in the crime is similar to the 25-caliber handgun that was reported stolen in Arias’s grandmothers home a week before Alexander’s death.
So far Arias has answered about 220 questions from the panel under an uncommon Arizona law that allows jurors to quiz defendants through written questions read aloud by the judge.