Latest / Luke's English Podcast / Jodi Arias Is Innocent_ I Went Through the Appeal and Evidence

Transcript

Jodi Arias Is Innocent_ I Went Through the Appeal and Evidence · Luke's English Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I remember being in Phoenix, Arizona, to sit down with
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: a group called Jody Arius Is Innocent. The name and
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the mission are self explanatory. They believe that Jody Arius,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: one of the most infamous murderers in America, should be
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: released from prison.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Police announced the arrest of Jody Arius today and I'm here.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: With Jody Arius.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Jody Arius was convicted of murdering her ex boyfriend Travis
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Alexander in his home. His body was discovered on June ninth,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, in the shower of the master bedroom,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: four days after he was killed.
• 0:41
  Speaker 4: You know, I'm not an evil person. I don't know you,
• 0:45
  Speaker 4: and I'm not a promiscuous person.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: What followed was chaos, an obsessed lover filled with jealousy
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: and rage, NonStop speculation.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: According to friends, Arias stalked Alexander for months, and.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: A trial that unfolded in real time before a national audience.
• 1:03
  Speaker 5: This case became a public spectacle.
• 1:08
  Speaker 6: Everyone was talking about it, new stories, twenty four hour news,
• 1:10
  Speaker 6: things for picking it up, and you know, all around
• 1:12
  Speaker 6: the clock.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: And at the center of it a twenty eight year
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: old woman. Her story shifting, fracturing, reshaping itself every time
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: it was told, and then.
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: When her friend's color told her that, she totally freaked out,
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: like she knew nothing about it. I mean, how can
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: somebody do that?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Now? Nearly every convicted killer that I've ever spoken with
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: claims they're railroaded. But this group Jody Arius is innocent.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Isn't arguing that she didn't kill Travis Alexander. They're arguing
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: something more complicated.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Arius's legal team has filed a new appeal alleging prosecutorial misconduct.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Arius now claims newly surfaced evidence supports her defense and
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: is asking to be released.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: I've reviewed her entire appeal more than three hundred pages.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I've spoken with her supporters, I've gone back through the evidence,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: and now I'm questioning whether or not Jody Arius should
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: still be in prison.
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: The defendant shall be incarcerated in the Department of Corrections for.
• 2:14
  Speaker 7: The rest of her natural life, with no possibility of parole.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna lay out what I found. We'll walk
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: through the case, examine the evidence that Jody has provided me,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: and in the end you can decide for yourself. I'm
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: James Buddy Day. This is unmarked for more than a
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: decade I've tried to convince Jody Arius to speak with
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: me on the record. She hasn't. Since her trial and incarceration,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Jody no longer trusts anyone to tell her story. She
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: believes that the truth can only exist in one place,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: the court. I told her what I was planning to do,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: that i'd go back to the evidence, read the appeals,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: speak to her supporters, that I would tell the story
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: with or without her participation, and if I got something wrong,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I'd own it. The last time I asked her to
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: speak on the record, she wrote me back in an email.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: She said, quote, you can do all of that without me.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: If you believe as you say, then my inability to
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: participate won't stop you. Thanks for your persistence, buddy. I
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: really hope she means it. I hope this episode sparks conversation,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and I hope when I go back to her again
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: that she'll decide to speak. Until then, here's what you
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: need to know. Travis Alexander's body was found in his Mesa,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Arizona home on June ninth, two thousand and eight. Police
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: found blood spatter across the bathroom and down the hallway.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Palise also found the killer's fingerprints in the washing machine,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: they found Travis's camera still intact, containing time stamped photographs
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: taken minutes before his death. The images were graphic. The
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: fingerprints and the photographs belonged to Alexander's ex girlfriend, Jodyarius.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: She initially denied any knowledge of the crime, despite forensic
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: evidence placing her at the scene. During her interrogation, she laughed, sang,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: and did headstands. When confronted with the evidence, her story changed. First,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: she claimed a home invasion.
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: He just held the gun to my head and he
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: was like, you don't go anywhere, and she told, oh,
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: finish it.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: It's just so far fetched.
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: I can't believe it.
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: Why would they do this down? What were they arguing about?
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: What did they say? They didn't say a lot. They
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: were white Americans from what I could tell.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Later, she said she acted in self defense.
• 5:03
  Speaker 6: You kill Travis Alexander On June fourth, two thousand and eight, Yes,
• 5:08
  Speaker 6: I did.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: Why The simple answer is that he attacked me and
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: I defended myself.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: And the image of a young, attractive killer ex girlfriend
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: willing to speak publicly is what drew national media attention.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: While in custody, Jody Arius appeared on Inside edition, coverage exploded,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Celebrity commentary followed. Even Donald Trump weighed in, tweeting she
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: was quote as guilty as it gets. CNN built a
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: channel around the case called the Headline News. Viewership climbed
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: into the millions. Before jurors had even heard the case,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Nancy Grace declared Jody Arius unequivocally guilty.
• 5:58
  Speaker 5: Ariususe after why trying to convince the media she's innocent.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: The striking thing about the case is that it depends
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: entirely on perspective. Scene one way, Jody Arius looks calculating, manipulative,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: capable of extraordinary violence, but seen another way, she looks unstable,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: emotionally trapped, and deeply human. The facts don't change, but
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: the interpretation does so. From here on, we're going to
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: examine this case through both lenses. The best place to
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: begin is two thousand and six, when Jody Arius and
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Travis Alexander meet at a conference in Las Vegas for
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: a company called pre Paid Legal Services. But to understand
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: what that meeting meant to her, you have to back
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: up from Jody's point of view. She she's twenty six
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: years old and still trying to assemble a stable sense
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: of who she is. She doesn't arrive in Las Vegas
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: grounded or settled.
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess me coming from Salina's, my boys doctors
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: face to go to sleep at night, and I hear gunshots.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Throughout this episode, you'll hear from Jody in her own
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: words from multiple interrogations she willingly took part in after
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: her arrest.
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: Our neighborhood, neighbor and another neighborhood. Wasn't that great in gunshots, Carrie,
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: And there were because Selina's agriculture when there a lot
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: of fields. Nice to think that there were hunters in
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: the field.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: To separate fact from fictions, I've arranged to speak with
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Alice Leviolet. She's one of America's leading experts on domestic
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: and intimate partner violence. In twenty thirteen, she was retained
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: by the defense team to evaluate Jody Arius in prison.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: If you want the full conversation with Alice Leviolet, including
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: her personal account of what it was like to testify
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: in one of the most watch trials in America, it's
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: available inside our Patreon called Unmarked case Files, the archive
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: behind this podcast.
• 8:09
  Speaker 5: I went and I spent eight hours the first day,
• 8:12
  Speaker 5: no food, no water. We sat and talked for eight hours.
• 8:17
  Speaker 5: The next day I went in for six and I
• 8:22
  Speaker 5: found her to be credible.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Prior to two thousand and six, there are allegations of
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: abuse in the area's household, but the picture is unclear.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Conflict is documented, however, yelling in volatility confirmed by her siblings.
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: When she got involved in pre paid legal Yes, she
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: came from a certain amount of trauma. I would say
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: her father was emotionally abusive to mom and even to Jody.
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: He was a guy taking a lot of steroids. And
• 8:55
  Speaker 5: she was also one of four children, and she was
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: different than the other three kid She's very artistic. She
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: was more kind of woo woo if you will. She
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: was just a different person. She was odd man out
• 9:13
  Speaker 5: in the or odd girl out in the family.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: As a teenager, Jody's relationship with her parents is strained.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: She's arrested at one point for growing marijuana. She's reportedly
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: highly secretive, easily provoked, and increasingly isolated.
• 9:31
  Speaker 5: If you deal with untraded trauma, you got a problem.
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: When you've got that degree of trauma.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Jody drops out of high school and leaves home to
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: live with her boyfriend. She works odd jobs and drifts
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: At twenty three, she begins dating Darryl Brewer, her former
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: manager at a luxury resort where they both work. Brewer
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: is forty two years old at the time. The relationship
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: escalates quickly. They buy a house together in Palm Desert, and,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: as Jody recalls, her parents never visit.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: I had a house with a free bedroom and a
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: bed and a pool and everything you could want, and
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: they never came to visit me once.
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: It's my first home. I'm sorry. This is all stupid
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: in its irrelevant.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: The relationship doesn't last. By two thousand and six, Arias
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: and Brewer break up. She's working three jobs, but loses
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: the house and tells her parents she's planning to file
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: for bankruptcy. At this point, the pattern is becoming clear.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Years later, Jody Arius will be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: a condition defined not by violence, but instability, unstable identity,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: unstable relationships, intense emotions, and an overwhelming fear of abandonment.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: What matters here is not the it's what the diagnosis
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: helps explain. Someone with bipolar personality disorder doesn't experience the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: world in gradients. They experience everything in extremes. Connections, feel
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: like survival and rejection feels existential, and that's why Jody
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: is drawn to the Prepaid Legal Services Convention in two
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: thousand and six. PPL is a legal subscription service. How
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: it works is you pay a monthly fee for access
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: to legal help, but the business relies heavily on multi
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: level marketing. These companies thrive on ambition and aggressive sales, culture,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: motivational audio, personal reinvention, a constant hustle. It's not Wolf
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: of Wall Street, but it's close prepaid Legal.
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: The focus was on power, positive thinking, kind of you know, tension.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: When Jody finds PPL, it offers exactly what she's been missing, certainty, identity, validation,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: and a community that rewards intensity. But the PPL convention
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: means the opposite to Travis Alexander.
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: When she met Travis had Prepaid Legal. She was with
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: friends and he was one of the speakers. He was
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: already kind of up the pyramid, if you would.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: His upbringing has made him the kind of hustler that
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: thrives in these types of organizations. Charismatic, outgoing, charming, and
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: not afraid to push limits. Now, Travis had a very
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: troubled childhood. His parents struggle with crystal meth addiction. This
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: according to Chad Perkins, one of Travis's closest friends, who
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: told us about those early days.
• 12:57
  Speaker 6: He was raised in a really rough part of town,
• 13:01
  Speaker 6: and just going to his house kind of freaked me out.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Because it was a really scary, sketchy place.
• 13:07
  Speaker 6: His mom had some substance issues and would leave when
• 13:11
  Speaker 6: he was younger, before he went to his grandma's. She
• 13:13
  Speaker 6: would leave for like a week or two at a time,
• 13:17
  Speaker 6: And I remember Travis saying that he had to like
• 13:19
  Speaker 6: eat dog food and whatever was whatever was around, he
• 13:22
  Speaker 6: had to scrounge, and there was just everything was covered
• 13:25
  Speaker 6: in cockroaches a rest.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Records show that many of Travis's seven siblings did not
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: escape their home life unscathed convictions for controlled substances, theft,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: met amphetamine manufacturing. It continues to plague the family for years.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Travis Alexander's father dies in nineteen ninety seven during Travis's
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: teenage years, during an adolescence marked by violence and instability.
• 13:52
  Speaker 6: I think, like talking to him about his pre church life,
• 13:57
  Speaker 6: he would tell me that he would fight all the time.
• 14:00
  Speaker 6: He used to fight all the time, like before he
• 14:02
  Speaker 6: came to church, he would just get in fights for
• 14:03
  Speaker 6: the sake of getting in fights, Like someone would agitate
• 14:06
  Speaker 6: him and he would just want to go and fight.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Eventually, Travis is taken in by his grandmother, but even
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: then he continues to struggle with anger and impulse control
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: until he finds something that offers structure and meaning, the
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.
• 14:25
  Speaker 6: Travis and I were in a church pre missionary program,
• 14:29
  Speaker 6: Like they have a little program to like help missionaries
• 14:31
  Speaker 6: get ready to be missionaries, and so we met in
• 14:34
  Speaker 6: that class. I remember he was trying really hard to
• 14:39
  Speaker 6: be more like churchy.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: He really wanted to be better.
• 14:43
  Speaker 6: His grandma was religious, and he really really loved his
• 14:46
  Speaker 6: grandma because his grandma basically raised him, so he wanted to,
• 14:50
  Speaker 6: you know, be better for her.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: For Travis, the Mormon Church and PPL offer the version
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: of himself he's trying hard to live up to, but
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: even then he's divided between who he had been and
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: who he's trying to become.
• 15:05
  Speaker 6: He had a really difficult time having a real genuine relationship.
• 15:09
  Speaker 6: Once someone was interested in him, he just kind of
• 15:12
  Speaker 6: like lost interest. It wasn't it was. It was very
• 15:15
  Speaker 6: like a game ish thing for him, a very cat
• 15:18
  Speaker 6: and mouse. He really loved flirting, but once it came
• 15:22
  Speaker 6: to actually opening his heart to somebody and settling in,
• 15:25
  Speaker 6: he really really struggled with that.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: To Travis, Jody embodies an escape from rules, from expectations,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: from consequence. But for Jodi, Travis represents structure, status, certainty,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: and someone worth anchoring.
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: To Most women just fall all over themselves for Travis
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: because he's nice and he seems like the whole package.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: They fulfill something in each other that neither one has
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: on their own.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: A weed mixed really well for a time, and I
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: really did see he was an amazing person. He was
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: a good person. He's a generous person. He he gave
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: so loud.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: In that first week. Everything moves quickly. The relationship becomes
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: intimate almost immediately, even as Travis tries to reconcile his
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: faith and public life.
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: They do okay as long as the energy for new
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: love covers up the fear. But when the fear starts showing,
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: then you wind up seeing what happens.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: For Jody, she's attaching for her. Intimacy is not casual,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: it's anchoring, its identity, forming where Travis is compartmentalizing. He's
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: trying to keep parts of themselves separate, and that tension
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: has to be resolved, and they arrive at a solution
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: that serves them both. On November twenty sixth, two thousand
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: and six, Jody Arius is baptized into the Church of
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.
• 17:05
  Speaker 6: He mentioned that he had met Jody and that he
• 17:07
  Speaker 6: was teaching her the gospel or baptized her or something
• 17:10
  Speaker 6: like that. I'm not sure where that was, and the
• 17:12
  Speaker 6: point I don't recall exactly, but I know that she
• 17:14
  Speaker 6: was coming to church and she was like working with
• 17:16
  Speaker 6: him a little bit, and he was really smitten by
• 17:20
  Speaker 6: how beautiful she was.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: For Jody, the baptism isn't a gesture, it's a vow,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: a way of proving she belongs in Travis's world. She
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: later testifies that after her baptism, the intimacy becomes more extreme.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: For Travis. It's desire colliding with discipline, a line he
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: keeps crossing then pretends isn't there.
• 17:45
  Speaker 6: Travis was very honest, more than most about being curious.
• 17:50
  Speaker 6: But when it comes to sharing what you're going through
• 17:54
  Speaker 6: as far as like sexual experience is there any kind
• 17:56
  Speaker 6: of sin at all in the church is very taboo
• 17:59
  Speaker 6: to share and talk about that.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: I've looked through all the text messages presented at trial,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: and they're intense, sometimes romantic, sometimes explicit, sometimes degrading, and
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: sometimes very aggressive in tone. On paper, the exchanges appear consensual,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: but consent, control, and power can look very different depending
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: on where you're standing. And Jody and Travis break up
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: within about six months. Over the next two years, Jody
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: continually travels back and forth between California and Arizona.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: He's so generous when I wre you let me store
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: all my stuff there because I went from I went
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: from a house to a brown and so I had artwork,
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: I paved, our supplies, photos, books and books and books
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: and books.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: It's in this time period that the relationship evolves into
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: something else, a carefully guarded secret.
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: You guys had a different kind of relationship.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: Guys were happy to see each other, but for some reason,
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: he couldn't outwardly show it in public.
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he was afraid of his image, and to him,
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: his image was everything.
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: This is a guy who cared very much about his image,
• 19:20
  Speaker 5: a guy who had a secret relationship. Obviously, they were both.
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: You know, Jody describes it as addictive, and I would
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: say it is very addictive relationship, real highs, real lows.
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's like an adrenaline junkie.
• 19:36
  Speaker 6: You know.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: From Travis's point of view, this is not his future.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: He wants to marry a good Mormon woman. For Jody,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: being Travis's secret is temporary, a speed bump. She believes
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: they'll eventually move past. She excuses his behavior, She reframes it.
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: He told me on several occasions it saddened him, and
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: it bothered him to friends in particular, that gave him
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: a very hard time about her friendship. But I think
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: they did it out of concern for his his future,
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: his marital status.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: When speaking with Arius's supporters, this is the period that
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: they point to as evidence of abuse. They argue that
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Travis Alexander used isolation, shaming, and control to manipulate Jody
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: maintaining intimacy while withholding commitment. And they're not just talking
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: in abstractions. They point to a discernible pattern in their
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: electronic communication messages that are harsh, demeaning at times and
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: intentionally withholding. I won't read them here, but the tone
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: is unmistakable.
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: I started reading the things he'd write to her. He
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: called her names, he put her down, and she didn't
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: have anybody to talk to. One of the things I
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: would say is they both lived in isolation, and isolation
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: is a really well, it's pernicious. Travis had this side
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: of his life completely secret, so he was isolated in effect,
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: and you know that doesn't bode well for anybody.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Not that this justifies any subsequent violence, but it does
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: show a relational dynamic built on control and emotional asymmetry. Eventually,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Travis begins to date another woman, most notably a fellow
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Mormon named Lisa Andrews. This is Jody's father, Bill ariis
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: telling investigators what he remembers.
• 21:54
  Speaker 6: She called me crying hysterically.
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: When she decided to move to Masa, Arizona.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: She snuck up his house and she looked in the
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: window and she saw.
• 22:02
  Speaker 7: Them how to couch with another woman, and here they
• 22:05
  Speaker 7: She was planning on marrying this time, so she just left.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: What happens next remains unexplained, and I've scoured the court records,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: police reports, and trial testimony to try and put it together.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Lisa Andrews reports that her car tires are slashed multiple
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: times in two thousand and seven. Now, from Travis's point
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: of view, he believes Jody is responsible for this, and
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: he notes other suspicions about her escalating behavior to his
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: friends and family. This again is Travis's close friend Chad Perkins.
• 22:42
  Speaker 6: In January of that year, we had a phone conversation
• 22:45
  Speaker 6: and I asked him, like, what about the girl you
• 22:46
  Speaker 6: were dating? And he was like, Oh, it's crazy. It's
• 22:49
  Speaker 6: like this fatal attraction stuff, and like I'll tell you
• 22:52
  Speaker 6: all about it when I see you in person.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: But it was crazy. Now, this sentiment wasn't limited to
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Chad Perkins. Investigate later confirmed that Travis Alexander described Jody
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: as a quote stalker to multiple people in his life.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: That matters, but it's also difficult to know how much
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: weight to give that characterization. Even as he pulls back publicly,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Travis remains in regular contact with Jody through phone calls, emails,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: and texts. He sustains emotional and at times sexual intimacy
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: in private.
• 23:29
  Speaker 6: In June, they were still having a sexual relationship. So
• 23:32
  Speaker 6: like I and that seems very Travis. He was very
• 23:35
  Speaker 6: human to me that he really didn't want to be
• 23:38
  Speaker 6: with her. He knew it was unsafe, but it was
• 23:40
  Speaker 6: very pleasurable and very gratifying.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: From Jody's perspective, the contact never really stopped. The calls, emails,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: and texts signaled that the relationship still matters.
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: The only person that said she was a stalker was
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: Travis telling people, yeah, because I think I think he
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: was really hiding the relationship. But I had emails saying, Hey,
• 24:06
  Speaker 5: come on over to the house. I'm not at home yet,
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: there's stuff, there's guak in the fridge, you have a key.
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: None of the stuff that supports the stalker allegations.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: The tipping point is a trip to can Kun. Travis
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Alexander is scheduled to leave on June tenth, two thousand
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: and eight, a reward he earns for a strong sales
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: performance with PPL. On paper, it's a business incentive, but
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: in reality, it throws a harsh light on the tension
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: that's already building between him and Jody, because it becomes
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: clear that Travis plans to take another woman on the trip.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: From Jody's point of view, it's hard to imagine this
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: landing softly for someone with borderline personality disorder that kind
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: of rupture can feel catastrophic, but Joe the Areas denies
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: being upset about can Kuhn. Listen to how she explains it.
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: We found out about kan Koon a year prior, right
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: at the time it broke up, and so like, I
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: never really assumed that I had a ticket there.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: Months leading up to the trip, Jody and Travis were
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: speaking on the phone for hours at a time. It
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: strains belief that can Kuhn, scheduled just days after his
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: death never came up.
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: And you know, those things went on, it was just
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: never discussed, so there was never any discussion.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Then shortly before the trip, something changes. Jody attends another
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: PPL conference and meets someone new. If can Kuhn represented
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: rejection or replacement, PPL once again offers what it had before, certainty, identity,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: and a community that rewards Jody's intensity. This is Ryan Burns,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the man Jody met at that conference, recalling their first encounter.
• 26:01
  Speaker 7: I went to the conference for the company we were
• 26:04
  Speaker 7: working with. I went there with a few of my buddies.
• 26:06
  Speaker 7: Most of us were single guys, so of course we
• 26:08
  Speaker 7: were at conventional learn business, but we're also scoping out,
• 26:10
  Speaker 7: you know, what's going on, because this is probably a
• 26:12
  Speaker 7: better place to meet somebody, you know, than at the
• 26:14
  Speaker 7: bar or something. We saw her and a friend that
• 26:17
  Speaker 7: she was walking with, and instantly, you know, my buddy
• 26:20
  Speaker 7: Michael was like, dude, let's go talk to those girls.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Like many of Jody's relationships, it escalates very quickly at eleven.
• 26:29
  Speaker 7: O'clock, almost like I could put my phone down on
• 26:31
  Speaker 7: the coffee table and I could tell somebody like watch
• 26:33
  Speaker 7: eleven oh one.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Every night, four or.
• 26:38
  Speaker 7: Five times a week. She'd call and then we'd talked
• 26:40
  Speaker 7: for a long time. Travis came up a few times
• 26:43
  Speaker 7: in our conversations, and I had never really known their history,
• 26:47
  Speaker 7: so any conversations about Travis was just positive things.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: He was a great guy.
• 26:51
  Speaker 7: Just didn't work out. You know, we had different goals
• 26:53
  Speaker 7: in mine, and so we just learned that it just
• 26:54
  Speaker 7: wasn't a good fit. That was the entire relationship that
• 26:57
  Speaker 7: I knew of with Travis and Joe.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: At this point, we're three days before the murder. Jody
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Arius tells both her parents and Ryan Burns that she's
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: planning a road trip from California to Utah before attending
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: another sales convention in Los Angeles.
• 27:17
  Speaker 7: I was in Salt Lake City. She was in northern
• 27:19
  Speaker 7: California somewhere, and she said, guess what. I said. What
• 27:23
  Speaker 7: she said, I'm going to be going on a little
• 27:24
  Speaker 7: road trip and I want to stop Uya, Utah and
• 27:28
  Speaker 7: come and see you. And I was like, awesome, that'd
• 27:31
  Speaker 7: be great.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Jody did end up in Utah, but before that, she
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: ends up somewhere else. Entirely. She goes to Mesa, Arizona,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: to Travis Alexander's house, where the murder takes place. Now,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: the question is why On Monday, June second, two thousand
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: and eight, Jody set out, But why did she change
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: her destination from Utah to Arizona.
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: She changed her plans, and she changed your plans because
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: Travis kind of said, please come out. He contacted Jody
• 28:05
  Speaker 5: and he said, don't you love me anymore? And he sorry,
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: guilt tripped her, and that's when she changed her plans
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: to actually stop there before she went to Utah.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: At trial, the prosecution scrutinizes this trip in extraordinary detail.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: They argue that her actions reflect intent, that she's concealing
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: her movements in order to murder Travis Alexander. But another
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: reading is much more mundane. Jody Arias made planned stops,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: visited friends, and used a debit card to pay for gas.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: She created a trail that was easy to follow, and
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: even if she does intend to arrive at Travis's house discreetly,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: that alone would not have been unusual. The relationship had
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: been kept private for years. This again is Ryan Burns,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: who was a first person witness to Jody's plans. It
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: was about that time, around nine or ten.
• 29:00
  Speaker 7: She was going to be leaving southern California to come
• 29:02
  Speaker 7: straight to Utah, which I was trying to talk her
• 29:04
  Speaker 7: out of that because it was like, that means she's
• 29:06
  Speaker 7: going to be driving at two am, three AM, four
• 29:08
  Speaker 7: and five and six am, and like in the middle
• 29:09
  Speaker 7: of night, and she's like, no, I'm good.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: What we know is that at approximately four AM, Jody
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: arrives at Travis Alexander's home in Mesa. At the time,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Travis has two roommates, and Rique Cortes and Zach Billings
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: both are asleep.
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: Zach was there Jack Enrique.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: There's no evidence of forced entry, and roommates later testify
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: that Travis sometimes let people in through the garage using
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: the keypad rather than keys. This is on Rique Cortes,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: who is in the house on that night.
• 29:45
  Speaker 7: Some people knew Trows's garage code like I did.
• 29:49
  Speaker 6: Like if he was going to be gone and used
• 29:51
  Speaker 6: somebody to feed Napoleon, they could just let themselves in
• 29:54
  Speaker 6: and out to the groad.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Time stamps on the digital camera found at the scene
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: tell us that Arius and Alexander took a series of
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: nude photographs of each other in the early morning hours.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: The last known image of Travis alive is timestamped at
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: approximately five twenty nine am. There are several photos just
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: before that, around five twenty four am, and they show
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Travis inside the shower.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: So to learn with him in the shower, you'd water
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: all over his face. He took a nice picture of him,
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: and you would never let me take pictures of him
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: in the showers.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Sometime after the final photograph, Travis Alexander is killed, and
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: this is where perspective collapses.
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: She said that he wanted her to take pictures of
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: him from the waste up from the shower because he'd
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: been working out, and she dropped the camera and that
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: he got really pissed off about that.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: According to her account, Travis became enraged. They struggle. She
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: went to his bedroom and retrieved a gust again went off.
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: I didn't mean to shoot him or anything.
• 31:13
  Speaker 8: I didn't even think I was holding the trigger. It
• 31:17
  Speaker 8: just was pointing it at him, and I didn't even
• 31:20
  Speaker 8: know that I shot him. It just went off, and
• 31:23
  Speaker 8: he was He lunged at me and we fell really
• 31:26
  Speaker 8: hard against the tile towards.
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: The other wall.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: There is no competing narrative because Travis is no longer alive.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: From this point forward, the only account of what happens
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: comes from Jody and from the physical evidence left behind.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: So to understand what unfolded in those final minutes, we
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: have to set testimony aside and look instead at the
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: blood evidence. That's where the sequence becomes clear. Inside the bathroom,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: investigators documented a U shaped blood pooling pattern that begins
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: near the shower and culminates at the sink. The sink
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: itself is covered in active blood flow, along with Travis
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Alexander's pom prince clearly visible. It indicates that Travis was alive,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: upright and bleeding heavily. When he reached the sink. He
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: had enough strength to brace himself and look into the
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: mirror with his back to Jody its evidence of a
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: pause in the violence. Now, this pause could indicate confusion, shock,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: or a moment when the danger felt temporarily contained. And
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: whatever the explanation, the blood evidence tells us that Travis
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: moves from the sink into the hallway, where the confrontation escalates.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: The autopsy later confirms that Arias stabbed Alexander three times, fatally,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: while his body bears more than two dozen superficial wounds.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: What the evidence shows is not a clean, singular act.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: What a frantic, chaotic struggle, one that unfolds across multiple spaces,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: one that neither person appears to have fully anticipated.
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: Frankly, you know, James, I think when somebody starts stabbing somebody,
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: I don't think they stop because stabbing is very personal,
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: and I think you'll lose your cortex. I think you
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: go right into your primitive brain and it's all about survival.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: And this is further illustrated by Jody's behavior after the murder.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Jody's actions are not especially careful or sophisticated. They're clumsy
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: and disorganized. She places Travis's camera inside the washing machine,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: where it's later found by police. She leaves fingerprints she
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: leaves behind ample evidence that ultimately lead investigators straight to her,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: And that matters because it complicates the idea of a
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: meticulously planned crime.
• 33:56
  Speaker 5: If it was premeditated, she could have shot him at
• 33:59
  Speaker 5: the door. They were having sex, he was asleep. She
• 34:03
  Speaker 5: could have killed him. Then I don't think it was premeditated.
• 34:08
  Speaker 5: Batter women's defense is not again out a jail free card.
• 34:12
  Speaker 5: But I never thought it should have been first degree.
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: I thought it should have been second degree murder or
• 34:17
  Speaker 5: voluntary manslaughter.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: But all this is why I've come to question whether
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Jody Arius should still be in prison, because the trial
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: is where all of these perspectives and interpretations are supposed
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: to be weighed, and they weren't. From the beginning. During
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: one of the most salacious trials in American history, Arius's
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: legal team argued that the prosecution delayed the handover of evidence,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: prejudiced the jury, and made improper arguments that went way
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: beyond the evidence.
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: I didn't know what a media circus was, and this
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: was absolutely a media circus. I was stunned by it,
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: and I was stunned, and I started getting death threats
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: the second week.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: And for years these allegations were dismissed.
• 35:11
  Speaker 5: They would throw anything and see if it's stuck. They
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: said I would be arrested for perjury. And I didn't
• 35:18
  Speaker 5: perjure myself.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: But something happened. In twenty nineteen, something changed. The State
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Bar of Arizona filed a formal disciplinary complaint against Juan Martinez,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: the lead prosecutor in the Areas case.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: The State Bar of Arizona announced today that Juan Martinez
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: consented to disbarment, effective immediately.
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: Juan Martinez had me called into chambers with the judge
• 35:45
  Speaker 5: and said I was leaking information on the case, which
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: I didn't He was though at the time he was
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: leaking information.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: On the case. Bar investigators concluded that there was probable
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: cast that Martinez violated professional rules governing attorneys. The complaint
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: alleged that Martinez leaked confidential, non public information during the
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: Arias trial, that he lied to bar investigators about those leaks,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: and he repeatedly sexually harassed women working in the Maracopa
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: County Attorney's office. And get this, not only has the
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Jody Arius prosecutor been disbarred, her own defense attorney was
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: also disbarred after the case. Kirk Nurmi, the attorney who
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: defended Arius agreed to be disbarred for writing a tell
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: all book and violating numerous legal ethics and client confidentiality.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: This doesn't answer all the questions of guilt, but it
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: explains why we're still talking about the Jody Arius case,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: and why Jody Arius is innocent even exists in the
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: first place. There's no closure here. It's all a matter
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: of competing perspectives.
• 37:02
  Speaker 5: I mean, what she did that's terrible, That Travis was
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: killed is terrible. Did the criminal justice system give her
• 37:10
  Speaker 5: a fair trial? I don't think so.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: So is Jody Arius really innocent? We don't know. And
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: that's the problem, not because the evidence is thin, not
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: because the facts aren't disturbing, but because this case doesn't
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: turn on a single truth. The whole thing turns on interpretation.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: And because the courtroom, where those interpretations are supposed to
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: be tested slowly, carefully, fairly, where evidence is weighed without spectacle,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: where process protects truth even when that truth is uncomfortable,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: the question at the center of this case will remain open,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: not did something terrible happen? But did we get this right?
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: And that may be the most unsettling verdict of all
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: but there's more to this conversation that what made it
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: into this episode. The full extended interview with Alice Leviolet,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: including the portions where we go deeper into the relationship
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: between Arius and Alexander, is now available inside our Patreon
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Unmarked case files. That's where the longer calls, primary documents,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: and ad free episodes live. If you want to continue
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: this discussion, it's linked across our socials. This episode of
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Unmarked was produced by John Dede and edited by Dave Alderson.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Our additional producer is Jesse Demery. We've got much more
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: coming soon, and if you're still here, you're already part
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: of what is making this work.