RedHanded - Episode 151 - Jodi Arias: The Sexed-Up Mormon Murder Trial

Episode Date: June 11, 2020

On 4 June 2008, 30 year old Mormon businessman Travis Alexander was found dead in his shower. He’d been shot in the head, stabbed 27 times and his throat had been slit from ear to ear. The only person any of his friends could think that would want to hurt him was his ex-girlfriend Jodi Arias. She maintained her innocence, but the murder trial that followed was filled with scandals, secrets and sordid details.   Vote: www.britishpodcastawards.com/vote Merch: www.redhandedshop.com Sources: YouTube Dr Grande on Jodi Arias: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wKVy8z5rQs&t=653s https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/controversial-jodi-arias-prosecutor-juan-martinez-fired-amid-ethics-probe/ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jodi-arias-conviction-ex-s-murder-upheld-arizona-appeals-court-n1168091 https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jodi-arias-retrial-updates_n_6032282?ri18n=true https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10049/does-a-suspects-psychological-state-after-arrest-correlate-to-guilt-or-innocenc https://abcnews.go.com/US/shocking-moments-jodi-arias-trial/story?id=19135206 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3k94wj/psychology-of-stalking-treatment   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-eYbvWOoTo https://abcnews.go.com/US/jodi-arias-trial-timeline-events-arizona-murder-case/story?id=18123295 https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/mesa/2015/03/03/jodi-arias-trial-timeline/24326127/ https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/news/a47623/jodi-arias-now/ https://abcnews.go.com/US/jodi-arias-denied-guilt-told-sex-photos-palm/story?id=18211547 https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/mesa/2020/03/25/arizona-court-of-appeals-rules-despite-juan-martinez-behavior-jodi-arias-wont-get-new-murder-trial/2451994001/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah.

And welcome to Red Handed. Firstly, just want to say a massive thank you to all of you guys for the way in which you received last week's George Floyd episode. I mean, I don't know about you, Hannah, but I was scared. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And it's a sad indictment that we were scared about saying what we said, which is everything we obviously we obviously stand by everything we said, but we were. So I just want to say thank you to you guys for continuously allowing us to talk about things that are important to us, to you and to the world in which we live. It's very much appreciated.

Yeah. And it can't be a flash in the pan either. Like everyone will be doing loads of Black Lives Matter stuff for about two weeks and then it'll all fizzle off and it'll be like nothing ever happened. It's important for each and every one of us to make sure that that doesn't happen. We've got the momentum now, we just have to keep going. Definitely. And actually, to follow on from that

and how Red Handed is going to remain committed to not just allowing this to be a flash in the pan on our platform. Hannah and I have been talking about this a lot since the George Floyd episode and there are just so many, many, many cases of injustice and we couldn't obviously fit them all in that one episode. It wouldn't have done them justice. So for the rest of the year, Hannah and I are going to be releasing an extra episode every month that highlights the case of an innocent black man or woman in the US or elsewhere in the world who was killed as a result of police brutality.

This is our way in which we want to keep the conversation going. So yeah, watch out for those episodes coming to you very, very soon. Other than that, if you haven't yet voted for us in the British Podcast Awards, guys, please take two seconds. The link is in the episode description below. I'm hearing from a lot of you that sometimes a link doesn't work on different podcast apps. There's nothing I can do about that. I don't know why that's happening. So if it isn't working, the URL is britishpodcastawards.com slash vote. That is britishpodcastawards.com slash vote. It takes two seconds. Give us a vote and be sure to verify the email after you've done that. And again, people are still asking me, guys, you do not have to be

British or living in Britain to vote. In fact, we need all of you non-Brits to vote because you are the majority of our listeners. So please go give us a vote. It would mean the world to us. And merch is available until Friday. So if you're listening on Thursday, the day of general release, 24 hours, that's all you've got. So make sure you get your hands on it because we don't know when we might be bringing it back. We'll see go and have a look get some merch uh have a look at our instagram seb's modeling them adam's modeling them you know all sorts you guys are fucking look last week we were like who's gonna send us some burnt edged letters didn't get any but seb got so many fucking thirsty requests from you spooky bitches for his fucking Instagram handle. Adam doesn't even fucking work on the show. No. He just lives in the same house as me. Yeah, cool. Thanks

for that. Anyway, moving swiftly on. We've got quite a large case, I would say, to cover today. So everybody get ready. This is going to be your hour and a half or so distraction from all the craziness that's going on in the world outside. So let's go. And our story today starts on the 4th of June 2008, when 30-year-old Travis Alexander, a Mormon businessman, did something very out of character. He missed an important business conference call. His friends and colleagues were surprised. This wasn't like him at all. So they tried repeatedly to contact Travis and see what was going on, but they had no luck. So finally, after five days of no word from him,

on the 9th of June, a group of Travis's friends decided to go to his house and check up on him. They were all meant to be going on holiday the next day, so at this point they really did need to know what was going on. So five of his friends arrived at his place in Mesa, Arizona at 10.30pm. They had the code to the garage, so they opened it up, and using a spare key that one of them had, they went into the house. Excellent garage pronunciation from you there, well done. Thank you very much, thank you very much I have been practising We said farage so many times I had to remind myself not to say garage

As the group entered the property they saw what looked like blood on the floor Carefully a couple of them edged towards Travis's bedroom And when they went inside they could hardly believe what they were seeing The carpet was completely soaked through with blood It was everywhere Travis's bedroom and when they went inside they could hardly believe what they were seeing. The carpet was completely soaked through with blood. It was everywhere. Outside of the bedroom the blood seemed to have been dragged all along the hallway. It was all over the floor and bloody smudged handprints covered the walls. The friends followed the trail and it led them to the master bathroom. Here, they found another complete bloodbath. And in the shower, to their horror, they found Travis's dead body. He was completely naked, covered in wounds and bruises,

and the body showed signs of serious decomposition. Arizona's a fucking hot place, hey? And it was June? Mm. Travis's traumatised friends rushed out of the house and called 911. What's going on? A friend of ours is dead in his

bedroom. We hadn't heard from him for a while. We think he's dead. His roommate just went in there and said there's lots of blood. I didn't go in, but I can give you the phone to someone who went in there. Yes, please can you? Hello? Hi. So what's going on? He's dead. He's in his bedroom in the shower. Okay. How did this happen? Do you have any idea? No, we have no idea. Everyone's been

wondering about him for a few days. She said that there was blood. So is it coming from his head? Did he cut his head? No, it's all over the place. Is there any weapons around? No, I don't know. Not that I saw. How many people are in the house? How many are in the house right now? Just the five of us? Five of us.

Okay, I need all of you outside. Okay. Hold on just a moment. Okay, you're a good friend of Travis's, correct? Yes, I am. Okay, has he been depressed at all, thinking about committing suicide, anything like that? I don't think he's been thinking about it. He's been really depressed because he broke up with this girl,

and he was all upset about that. But I don't think he would actually kill himself over that. Has he been threatened by anyone recently? Yes, he has. He has an ex-girlfriend that's been bothering him and following him and flashing tires and things like that. And do you know the ex-girlfriend's name? Her name is Jodie. So when the police arrived, it was quickly determined that this was no suicide. Travis had one.25 caliber gunshot over his right eye, 27 stab wounds to his back, the back of his head and his chest, and his throat had been slit from ear to ear. The cut was four inches deep. It was so bad that Travis had almost been

decapitated. One of the friends would later describe it as a slaughter. And looking at the crime scene photos, which we obviously aren't going to share, but if you want to find them, you easily can, it's hard not to agree. It was such a savage crime that investigators knew they had to move fast. And as we heard on that 911 call, according to Travis's friends,

the first and only person they could think of who might have had a motive to hurt him was his ex-girlfriend, Jodie. And the story these friends told investigators certainly caught their interest. Travis had met a woman named Jodie Arias at a work conference in Las Vegas in September 2006. He'd always been telling his friends that he was ready to meet a woman, settle down and get married. He was seemingly a devout Mormon, and marriage is, of course, a very important part of Mormon life.

So when he met Jodie, a saleswoman and aspiring photographer, he seemed thrilled. She was fun and outgoing, and as far as looks were concerned, she was just Travis's type. They hit it off immediately, and there was an instant powerful physical attraction. So powerful, in fact, that despite living 600 miles apart with Jodie in California and Travis in Arizona, they stayed in touch and started officially dating in February 2007.

They went back and forth spending all of their free time together, and after a few weeks, Jodie even converted to Mormonism for Travis. Weeks before full conversion seems aggressive. I know. You've really got to be fucking sure and suddenly be sure about this other whole religion to make that kind of a leap. It seems wild.

Yeah, it does. It seems like your motivations to converting to that religion aren't really converting to that religion. It seems like it's to do with wanting to bang. You know. It does appear that way. Can you learn everything about Mormonism in six weeks? Isn't there some sort of course you have to take?

I don't know. I don't know. I feel like different religions have different, and I don't know what it is for Mormonism, but they have different standards, don't they, for how much you need to know before. Or you can just get a letter from Father Neil. He does that all the time. You could just write a letter be like i spoke to god and he

says it's fine they can get married in a church everyone needs a neil to negotiate the religious space without going through all of the hoops you're definitely supposed to jump through i know but when it's for love hannah yeah true true but despite all of their love and Jodie's conversion into Mormonism for Travis, it soon all fell apart. And in June 2007, they broke up. Apparently, Travis was the one who ended the relationship. And he told his friends that Jodie just wasn't marriage material. And his friends, well, they weren't all that sad about the news.

None of them had ever really liked Jodie. They found her incredibly intense and possessive. A couple of Travis's female friends even said that they had been aggressively confronted by Jodie when she felt that Travis was spending too much time with them. However, the breakup was far from the end of things, because Travis and Jodie carried on sleeping together. But Travis hadn't seemed to actually have changed his mind regarding their future as a couple, because in December 2007, while he was still sleeping with Jodie, he began dating another woman, Lisa Day-Done. According to Travis's friends, when Jodie found out, she was livid. Travis had told them that Jodie had slashed his tires, sent threats to his new girlfriend, hacked into his

social media accounts and even broken into his house on multiple occasions and stolen personal items like his diaries. However, none of this was reported to the police. Travis clearly thought that he could handle it. But from everything his friends told the police, it seemed as if Jodie had very much been stalking Travis. So the police brought Jodie in for questioning, and she confirmed that she and Travis had indeed broken up. She said that she hadn't been anywhere near Mesa or Arizona in months,

and also claimed that she hadn't even seen Travis in person since March that year. So that's at least two months, she claims, to have not have seen him before he was found dead. But the police soon discovered evidence that suggested otherwise. They found a digital camera in the washing machine at Travis's house and it had gone all the way through a wash cycle. Do you remember, remember like taking a camera out with you? Doesn't that seem so like archaic now? Oh my god I used to take out a little pink

Canon camera that I used to take all of my like clubbing pictures on to upload to Facebook. My god what? It just seems so totally, because I remember the phones I had at school were so utterly shit. Like they're one of the ones that like, if you accidentally went on the internet, your heart fell out of your bum because it was going to be so expensive.

So like taking pictures on those was just impossible. I don't think I even had a BlackBerry till I was at uni. And even then the picture quality was shit on them. God, I never had a BlackBerryerry I never even had a decent phone I think my first phone was like a Motorola brick with a giant aerial I don't even know god I didn't even have a Nokia oh I had a 3310 that was my first foray into the mobile world I do miss being able to switch phone cases though like I know you can now but like they're not as frivolous anymore because it's actually about protecting your incredibly expensive and very destructible phone whereas

like the old ones like you couldn't fucking break them so you could just have like a Britney Spears like very flimsy plastic cover on it oh yes and don't forget all of the polyphonic ringtones that you could program into your phone oh god yeah I did a first bit of survivor I got the the code for that out of the back of Girl Talk, I believe. Oh, my God. Do you remember that? It used to be such a little project. Oh, God. What times. These kids will never understand. Oh, God, no. Right. Sorry. Back to this big, chunky camera that had gone through the wash. And it didn't just accidentally fall in the washing machine. Someone was clearly trying to destroy it. And while the camera itself was indeed totally fucked,

the memory card was perfectly fine. And on that very clean memory card, they found some very dirty photos. Photos featuring Travis and Jodie. And the timestamp on the images placed Jodie at the house on the day that Travis had last been seen alive, the 4th of June, 2008, five days before he was found dead. So 10 days after the discovery of Travis's body, with this evidence now in hand, the police brought Jodie in for questioning. And during this interview, she stuck to her story. She said she hadn't seen Travis in months. So the detectives showed her

the photos. To which she replied, and this is a direct quote, are you sure it's me because I wasn't there? You got him, Jodie. Good work. And obviously, maybe one could make the argument that perhaps the camera had been set up with a wrong time and date. So the pictures could have been taken actually months ago. But it does seem very coincidental that if this was the case, that it would be set up wrong and now be showing it to be the very last date that Travis was seen alive. It's a little bit too convenient. Exactly. And when we say that, we say one could make that argument. But that isn't the argument Jodie makes.

She just says, you sure it's me? Sure it's not some other girl that looks exactly like me that was there? Like, fucking hell, mate. She's, yeah, this is just the beginning. Just you guys wait. But also, there were way more than just sexual photos on this camera. So this is a list of the photos found on that camera that went through the wash cycle with the camera's timestamps. At 1.40pm there was a photo of Jodie

naked. At 5.22pm there was a photo of Travis showering. This photo was then deleted. But at 5.30pm, there was another photo taken of Travis in the shower. It's of his back and it's very clear that he is very much alive at this point. But the very next photo on the memory card that was taken just two minutes later, so at 5.32pm on the same day, Travis Alexander is clearly dead. In this photo, you can see him laying on the shower floor. So within two minutes of the photo that was taken of him standing in the shower, he was dead. So that's a very important part of this timeline. Yeah, it kind of puts the timestamp theories out the window, isn't it? Because it can't just be like, oh, well, he died on another day. Forensics had also discovered at the scene of the murder a long hair stuck in the blood in the bathroom. And they also found a bloody palm print that didn't belong to Travis. Both of these things were a match for Jodie. You can't really

get much more careless than leaving an entire handprint of blood at a murder scene and claiming you weren't there. I think that's how the first ever fingerprint analysis was done with someone who had left a fingerprint in blood. It makes sense. I'm pretty sure that's true. It's literally the perfect medium to capture a fingerprint. It's so sticky and it's at a crime scene. It's perfect. And it's not just a fingerprint.

It's not even like a partial transfer, it's her entire hand. It's just like she just slams her bloody handprint against the wall. When confronted with the photo of Travis dead and the forensics, Jodie, realising that she couldn't lie her way out of this one, decided she was going to tell another story.

And she now told the police that she had actually been in Mesa at Travis's house that day, the day that he died, because he had texted her and asked her to come and see him. So she agreed. She'd rented a car, driven all the way down to his house from California. Then they had sex and they took the photos found on the camera. They were just hanging out. When all of a sudden, two intruders burst into the house and attacked them.

So she's claiming that happens in the two minutes after the picture of Travis is taken in the shower. These two strangers barrel into the house and fuck everything up. Basically. Jodie said that they murdered Travis and then they argued between them about whether or not to kill her as she was the witness. And she managed to get away and get to her car and drive off. And she said she hadn't told anyone what had happened

because she was scared of the two men finding her. I think it is quite clear from the tone of my voice what I think about that story. Exactly. And that would be the exact same feeling that the investigators had because nobody believed her. Like Hannah said, the probability seemed very, very slim that within two minutes, somebody has burst into the house, killed Travis, and then everything else has happened within that time. Jodie is the only one that can be confirmed to be placed there on that date. So, which seems more logical, really. And also, yeah, she couldn't offer enough details to really make this story convincing.

So on the 9th of July, which was incidentally her 29th birthday, Jodie Arias was indicted on first degree murder charges. But it didn't matter to Jodie that nobody believed her because she stuck to her story. She even went on multiple TV programs and gave candid interviews as to her innocence, saying, and this again is a direct quote, I didn't kill him. I could never hurt Travis and no jury will ever convict me. You can mark my words on that one. I mean, that's bold. I'll give her that.

And also such a like TV show line. She's so TV show. I feel like the entire time she's speaking to the press, to reporters, because she does this a lot. This is a big theme of this episode. Jodie Arias loves being in front of a camera and she loves talking to reporters because she does this a lot this is a big theme of this episode Jodie Arias loves being

in front of a camera and she loves talking to reporters I feel like she really enjoys the attention she looks really smug like she thinks she's manipulating people and she almost looks like she's constantly setting herself up to be in a a biopic setting herself up to be in an audition for a potential role in a tv drama but yeah you're right like maybe also like she's building up to be in an audition for a potential role in a TV drama. But yeah, you're right. Like maybe also like she's building up to one day this will be memorialized in a biopic. So I better give them great lines. Yeah, I think it's absolutely that. She's like, oh, well, when I'm, you know, found not guilty and I'm released and like the law is changed because of me and Scarlett Johansson plays me in the story of my life. I want these moments to be super impactful. You're so right.

It's like she's scripting her biopic as she is standing trial for murder. Totally, man. But despite all of her protests as to her innocence, the investigation continued and the police had more than enough to build a case. On the camera, they found yet more photos. Photos that seemed to have been taken accidentally from the camera maybe being dropped or something. So one of the photos taken after the one in which Travis is clearly already dead. The police claimed that it looked like Jodie's

leg over Travis's body as if she was dragging him. And I don don't know, it's hard to tell. I've seen these photos. It's pretty blurry. It's hard to tell. If you told me that and made me look at that photo, I could be convinced. I don't know. But this did fit the police's theory.

Basically, they believed that Jodie had attacked Travis in the bathroom when he's in the shower. He had then fled into his bedroom and she had followed him. He was already injured at this point and she continued the attack, stabbing him repeatedly and then slicing his throat and finally shooting him. She then dragged Travis's body out of the bedroom and back into the bathroom where she left it in the shower cubicle. Obviously from everything we've discussed, the way in which this murder was carried out, it's complete overkill. And the police, they don't specifically say this, but I think the reason they never really look at this intruder story, partially because

like, why would you when there's so much evidence pointing at her? This fits more with a personal attack, don't you think, than some random home invasion? The level of brutality, the level of overkill, it's personal. Yeah, it feels very emotional. With the mounting evidence against her growing, in 2010, Jodie once again changed her story. Now she decided that she had killed Travis, but that it had actually been in self-defence. The police and the prosecution didn't believe this, though.

Travis had serious defensive wounds and bruises all over his hands and arms but Jodie did not or at least was not able to prove ever having had such marks or injuries because remember they caught up with her just a few days after Travis was murdered. And also about this the fact that she's not able to prove having any defensive wounds. Firstly Jodie is quite small and Travis is quite a big guy. Like he looks like he would play like American football or maybe rugby or something. So if you're saying it's in self-defense, I find it hard to believe that she walked away with no injuries. And after Travis was found dead, Jodie started posting all these pictures of him saying things like in loving memory of Travis Alexander all over social media. When the police questioned her about this she said I'm a photographer

and I communicate best with photos. If she had been covered in any kind of marks or injuries why didn't she ever photograph them then? Why is she never able to prove anything like that? She says she did have injuries but she can never prove it. I also just don't buy that if you have serious defensive wounds that they're completely gone without trace in a few days. No way. No. I got scratched by a bramble in my garden three weeks ago and it's still fucking there. Exactly. Let alone like stabbing a man 27 times. But despite all of this and our narcissisms, Jodie was completely confident and even applied to represent herself in a first-degree murder trial.

Jesus God, Jodie. The level of disconnected, overconfident narcissism that she exhibits is in some places quite frankly awe-inspiring i'm like bitch fucking represent yourself in a first degree murder trial where the death penalty is on the table cool go nuts and apparently the judge even allowed this so she was allowed to represent herself until she royally fucked it when uh jodie wanted to submit several letters written by travis as evidence these letters are written from travis to her but actually these letters were discovered to be fake and jodie's defense council was

reinstated in december 2012 do you know where she got that idea from no chicago the musical that is what billy flynn, is he fakes diary entries. And then he's like, well, never lost a case. Wow. And there's also, I can't wait. I've got two musical references in this episode. The other one's coming up in a minute. I'll keep it to myself.

Oh, they went straight over my head then. The only references I can make is that in the photos that she's taken of Travis when he's in the shower before the one of him in which he's clearly dead, somebody has made like a montage on Pinterest of all places comparing the pictures of Travis that she took side by side with stills from Psycho and the shower scene ah yep and she stabbed him hideous I know but I was like is this just this person's coincidental ability to put that together or did Jodie actually mean to do that?

There's another reference to a movie I have later on, but we'll wait for that. But yeah, basically at this point, it's just further lying and further deception that she tries to do. And with that, after her defense counsel's reinstated, in January 2013, the actual trial of Jodie Arias began. The prosecution was going for first-degree murder, with the death penalty front of mind. To win this, they were going to have to show that not only had Jodie killed Travis in cold blood, but that it had been premeditated. Jodie's defence was arguing self-defence, and for this they were going to have to show that she was an abused woman who had reached breaking point. And in this trial everyone is a character to say the least. Jodie is obviously

the biggest of all the characters but it's not just her because both the lead defense attorney Kirk Nermy as well as the lead prosecutor Juan Martinez stand out very much so and very quick side note to drop in here we actually did an interview with Kirk Nermy Jodie's defense attorney so if you want to check that out um we are going to be putting it up for ten dollar and up patron so if you want to check that out you can do so today right back to the story yeah, when we say that they were characters, we're not exaggerating because there were so many wild moments from this trial that it truly feels like, again, just this kind of outlandish, made-for-TV kind of storyline. And it's probably actually because of this trial and the notoriety that it gained that most of you listening right now will probably already have heard the name Jodie Arias. Her story dominated the headlines around the world as she was labelled some sort of angel-faced murder vixen. When this happened, the US was absolutely obsessed. It was the sexed-up Mormon murder trial of the century.

I think we talk about this in our interview with Kirk, but yeah, she's attractive. She's very conventionally attractive. She's a woman, it's a very brutal crime, and there's a shitload of sex in it. People were obsessed. And proceedings at the trial kicked off very much as things would go on, with the prosecution showing the court graphic photos and sex tapes that Jodie and Travis had made together. The court was also shown the photo of Travis after he was dead, curled up on the floor of a shower cubicle, his eyes closed, his face covered in blood, his hands black with bruises and lacerations, and his slit throat gaping wide.

Travis's sisters, in all the video footage of the trial, you can see them in the gallery. They spend most of the trial sobbing. The prosecution's plan was simple. They needed to show Travis as a good man and paint Jodie Arias as a deranged stalker who had lost it and killed him. They were creating a narrative in which Jodie had seduced Travis

and then killed him in a jealous rage when he told her that he was dating another woman. To say that this trial was wild would be a massive understatement, and it wasn't just the grisly murder or all of the sex photos. There were all sorts of dramatics during the prosecution's case. At one point, Juan Martinez, who's the lead prosecutor, threw Travis's camera on the floor. And after this, there was a 10-day hiatus

taken to decide on how and if the trial would continue. He's a real fucking bulldog, this guy. But continue it did, and Mr Martinez's antics were just the amuse-bouche of the scandals this trial would kick off. He is very much a bulldog, but I would say like a bulldog with rabies. That's the way he behaves in court. Of course, everyone was waiting for Jodie to take the stand. And to their surprise, she did so much earlier than anyone expected. From the moment Jodie began to speak, it was clear what the plan was. She needed to be the victim. And given that it was a self-defence case,

she needed to drag Travis. And given how brutal the killing was, Jodie was going to have to go as far as possible to destroy Travis's reputation if she stood even a chance of the jury sympathising with her. So Jodie told the court how she had loved Travis deeply, but that he was incredibly abusive towards her. She described herself as his quote dirty little secret. Travis was a Mormon elder and he had to maintain his standing within the church and according to Jodie this was hard for him because she claimed he was quote sexually depraved. She claimed that she had endured months and months of sexual and physical abuse from Travis. Jodie focused her testimony on undermining Travis's good Mormon persona, telling the jury that the day she had been baptized, because remember Jodie converted

to Mormonism for Travis, that he had taken her home and made her have anal sex while still wearing her white baptism robes. Jodie said that although she didn't enjoy it, Travis always made her have anal or oral sex, saying that it was a workaround for the Mormons' strict no-sex-before-marriage rules. In court, Jodie described it as the, quote, Bill Clinton view of sex. Jodie. Yeah. Hot takes. Hot takes from Jodie. Jodie Harris.

So Jodie also told the court that Travis would constantly sexually humiliate her. She claimed to have been manipulated and trapped by him saying that after their sexual encounters, which were always about Travis dominating her, that she felt like, quote, a prostitute or a used piece of toilet roll. The defence even showed the jury a T-shirt with the words Travis Alexanders written across it and photos of Jodie wearing it. As in like a property of? Yeah, as in like a a with an apostrophe meaning possessions. Okay. So they basically claimed that the t-shirt was a perfect example of how Travis treated Jodie like property. But I will point out in the photo I saw of her wearing this t-shirt

she's got a big smile on her face and she's pointing at it it kind of just seems like a a joke it also seems like there's no way of proving that he bought it for her she might have just bought it and shown up at his house being like look exactly it's like when people buy their partners like necklaces with letters on and it's like the other person's initial do i mean like i don't think there's any proof that he instigated that no i'm not saying if you bought your husband an identity bracelet that you're abusing him before you all jump all over that. No, that's a good point to make

because even if Travis had bought this T-shirt for her, it can just be a joke. Yeah. And Travis's friends agree with us. They took the stand for the prosecution and refuted every single word, saying that there was no way that Travis was ever abusive. So the defence brought a witness from Travis's church

to tear down the image of him as a good Mormon man even further. They asked this person from the church if Travis was a virgin and the witness said that he was not. And the witness confirmed that if people had known the truth, it would have hurt Travis's standing in the church, his business and his social life. I know it's like a religious thing, but I can't imagine thinking any less of someone just because they weren't a virgin as an adult. It's obviously such

a religious thing in this case. But I think also like if you go to other places, depending on the culture, like I can see how that would be so pervasive within this community. But yeah, it's crazy because he's a 30-year-old man, these are all adults, and literally the shame of him having had extra marital sex would have been enough to, according to this witness, have brought down his entire life. The defence were painting a picture of a man who spent his time hiding who he really was. And if he could hide being very, very sexually active from his church, surely he could be hiding being an abuser from his friends. And then Jodie took it a step further, like she likes to. Jodie claimed that in January 2008, she had walked in on Travis

masturbating in his bedroom. According to her, there had been papers on the bed. And when she walked in, Travis had looked panicked and tried to grab them. But she got hold of one. It was a picture of a young boy in just his underwear. Jodie said that at this point, Travis confessed to her that he was sexually attracted to children. She also said that once he even sent her a package in the mail containing a pair of Spider-Man-themed children's underwear.

She was, however, never able to present this as evidence to the court. sent her a package in the mail containing a pair of Spider-Man themed children's underwear. She was, however, never able to present this as evidence to the court. And when asked why, if she had discovered that Travis had a sexual predilection towards children, had she stayed with him? Jodie claimed that Travis had told her he couldn't help it and that he had never actually touched a child. And he had begged her to stay with him and sleep with him to cure him of his, quote, deviant urges. Again, it's very much Jodie playing the virtuous victim of her saving these children from being abused. Because she basically says, if I was there and sleeping with him,

I felt like it would have stopped him going out to abuse kids. Like, it's always about her as the victim and the sa the savior and the good one and Travis as the evil one. But she still stuck around because she was so good. It's a lot. So this story, unsurprisingly, of course, given that Travis's family is in the courtroom, sparked gasps and crying. I think this is the first time any of them had even heard that this was going to be part of the defence. But the defence did not back down. They played a phone sex session between Jodie and Travis, in which Travis can be heard saying, quote, touch yourself. That was so hot. I like the way you moan. Sounds like a 12 year old girl having her first orgasm. So hot.

All the while this was being played, Jodie sat in the courtroom and sobbed. Okay, that doesn't help, Travis. No, no it does not. But in the conversation, Jodie is very much into it. It's not him sort of being weird and imposing it on her from what it sounds like she's cooing along she's going along she seems like she enjoys it maybe it fits into her narrative that she's saving real life children being abused but this is literally the only line that is ever presented to back up the claims that Travis is some sort of pedophile so where did these phone sex calls come from well they had been

recorded by Jodi. And the defense, of course, as they would do, were very much cherry picking the parts that they wanted to play. The prosecution, however, played the full sex tape. And when you listen to it, like I said, it does throw a significant amount of doubt onto the claim that Jodi was being sexually oppressed. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudia and Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's

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from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. I don't know. It's... She seems 100% involved and game in all their sex chat. But now that the defense had done their best to undermine Travis's character and show him to be some sort of evil, sexually dominating paedophile, Jodie went into the story of the actual attack. She said that Travis had started to have anal sex with her and that she didn't want to, but he made her do it anyway. Then they had gone to the shower and started

taking photos of each other in the bathroom. And according to Jodie, this is what happened. I dropped his new camera and he flipped out. He stood up and was screaming at me. He body slammed me against the tiles and told me that a five-year-old could hold a camera better. I was scared, so I ran away and got into a closet and slammed the door shut. I knew there was a gun in there so I grabbed it and ran out. Travis was chasing me and so I ran back into the bathroom. He followed me and I pointed the gun at him. I thought it would stop him but he kept running. He came in low like he was tackling me.

He shouted, I'll fucking kill you, you bitch. And as he grabbed me, the gun went off. I didn't mean to shoot him. I didn't even know I was holding the trigger. However, the gun went off. I didn't mean to shoot him. I didn't even know I was holding the trigger. However, the problem with Jodie's story was that there wasn't much evidence for anything she was saying and a lot of it could be easily challenged. Firstly, she claimed that the gun that has to this day never been discovered was Travis's. But there is no evidence at all anywhere that

Travis had ever even owned a gun. And yes, I'm sure you can probably get guns like on the black market or like on the DL. But like, why would you do that when they're legal in the US? It wasn't like some random gun. It's just a 25 caliber gun. Why would he go by that secretly and not have proof that it was his? So if the gun wasn't Travis's, where had it come from? Well, interestingly, one week before Travis was killed, Jodie's grandparents' house, where she lived, was broken into. And guess what? A 25 caliber gun, just like the one used to shoot Travis, had been stolen. And as if this wasn't enough, the other problem with Jodie's story is that she only ever talks about the shooting, the one shot. She doesn't explain how Travis was stabbed 27 times and how his throat had been slit.

Jodie claimed at trial that she had absolutely no memory of anything after the gun had gone off. She said she had no recollection whatsoever of stabbing Travis, much less of almost cutting his head off. She told the court that after the gunshot, quote, the next memory I had was of the knife falling from my hand and hitting the floor, then me screaming. So the defense's case was that Jodie shot Travis out of self-defense and then apparently grabbed a knife and stabbed him multiple times and then slit his throat. They claim that this must have been because Travis hadn't been incapacitated by the gunshot

and had carried on attacking her. But she couldn't remember. The prosecution went after this hard, saying that Jodie was not only pretending not to remember, but the entire attack had been completely unprovoked through any violence or aggression on Travis's part. They pointed out how many cuts and slices were present on Travis's hands, but Jodie seemed to have suffered no significant injuries. In fact, the only injury Jodie was able to point to was that one of her fingers on her left hand had been broken. But the problem was that she changed her story twice during the trial as to how the finger had actually been broken. And the prosecution pointed out that her finger was much more likely to have been broken as she stabbed Travis 27 times.

But, of course, it's very hard for the prosecution to definitively prove certain things one way or another, seeing as Travis was now dead. And all they could do was continuously point out Jodie's lies and inconsistencies. And they needed to push back on her claims of Travis being an abuser, so they took apart her journals. In all of Jodie's diaries, she wrote almost exclusively about Travis,

good things and bad things, but she never once wrote a word about him being abusive. Or presumably a pedo. No, none of that ever seems to come up in her diaries that she religiously fills in and, like you said, basically only writes about Travis in. So although the prosecution, like you said, basically only writes about Travis in. So although the prosecution, as Hannah said, couldn't show what actually happened during the attack, they did have a

witness who could testify as to Jodie's behaviour pretty soon after. After Travis had died, Jodie left Mesa and drove straight to another man's house in Utah. This man was her ex, Ryan Burns. At the trial, Ryan testified that Jodie's demeanour when she had turned up at his house was totally fine. She wasn't acting like there was anything wrong. She was laughing and joking around. But Ryan did notice some things. He noticed that her once bright blonde hair was now a dark brown colour.

He also spotted that her hands had been cut up. She just told him that she'd cut her hand on a glass in a cocktail bar called Margaritaville. In court, it was later discovered when a detective testified as to the fact that no such bar existed in the place that she claimed it did. It's time for my second musical theatre reference. Oh, do it, do it. Return to Margaritaville is a jukebox musical about Jimmy Buffett. Oh. Arguably, it only opened on Broadway a couple of years ago,

so arguably it wouldn't have existed. But Margaritaville is very present in Jimmy Buffett's musical catalogue, so I literally think she just plucked it out of a Jimmy Buffett song. I would not be even remotely surprised and it's the weird like compulsive lying that Jodie does because the place that she says this bar is in she it's somewhere she's been right it's somewhere she lives so why why lie why make up a random bar why the compulsive lying why not just say it actually happened in a normal bar obviously when she'sulsive lying? Why not just say it actually happened in a normal bar? Obviously, when she's lying to Ryan, she's not thinking about one day having to defend

herself based on that lie in court. But it's so bizarre that she even lies about the tiniest things. Guess how much Jimmy Buffett's worth? I looked it up. Is it more or less than Dr. Phil? I think it might be more. Okay. 600 million. 560. 560 million. Wow, that is more than Dr. Phil. I think he was 500 million.

Wowzers. Wowzers trousers. Wowzers trousers. Oh, God. Right. Okay. Good. Good. More musical theatre references in done tick so you're welcome

not that musical theatre will ever make a comeback after covid19 oh no probably true though i think a lot of theatres won't make it it's really sad but i think so too i even wonder if like cinemas will ever come back people will just be like i can just do this in my own house without having to be massively irritated by all of the people around me and pay 500 million pounds for a bag of popcorn. But the ice blasts. I know, I know. That is the only sad thing. So back to Ryan and his testimony in court. Basically, even though he noticed a couple of weird things about her, like he said, her demeanor was pretty normal. so he didn't really question jody too much so the two hung out they chatted and they watched movies he told the court that several times during her stay with him jody had suddenly got on top of him and pretty

aggressively started kissing him ryan when you're watching his testimony he kind of just does a little like yeah smile and i'm like you are talking about kissing somebody who's standing trial for first degree murder but he's still like yeah and still got it still got it so according to Ryan though this pretty aggressive kissing that Jodie did started within 24 hours after she had killed Travis so let let's get this clear. Let's get these ducks in a row. There is a lot of sort of contradictory information out there on the internet about Jodie's hair colour. So for years and years and years in all the photos you'll see of Jodie, she has very bright blonde platinum hair. But when you look at the photos of her on the notorious camera that was found at the

scene of the crime, she has brunette hair. And like we said, when she turns up at Ryan's house, he's surprised to see that she has brown hair. But the people who rented her the car in California, right before she drove to Mesa to see Travis that day, they said that she had bright blonde hair. So between the time she rented the car, and remember, asking for a car that wouldn't draw attention to her, she also changed her hair colour to one that arguably would make her stand out less. It just again feels very premeditated why would you do that but also it wasn't just the hair dying because on the way a few hours after she had left Travis Jodie called his phone and left a voicemail this voicemail message when you hear it it's just chit chat she's super casual super calm super

jokey she's like making little in jokes she like, I know you told me you were always right. Ha ha ha. She's fucking killed him and driven off. And she's leaving this voicemail on his phone. So obviously when this is brought up at trial, prosecutor Juan Martinez confronted Jodie with this saying, you did that for it to not be connected to you. Obviously talking about the murder. To which Jodie really at this point had no choice but to confirm that yes, that is why she had done it. I also think that's why she dyed her hair because if you've ever done like a dramatic hair dye situation, for like days afterwards, you do catch yourself in the mirror

and you don't feel like yourself. So I think it's a way of distancing herself from it internally as well. When I went from blonde to brown for the first time, I couldn't handle it at all. For about a week afterwards, it was awful. Oh my God, you were blonde at one point? Oh yeah, from like year eight to year 11, I think. I only went red when I left school.

Why have I never seen the photos? No, never. No, do it. Let's share school photos photos I have like three I had to wear a kilt to school so I don't think anyone needs any kilt content no and also I destroyed a lot of the photos of me as a teenager and that's why we don't have them because I had rampant facial acne uh not a good time I'm not laughing at your rampant facial acne. I'm laughing at your delivery. No, it was a tough time. We have to laugh through it now. Not good times.

So the pieces were falling into place of showing Jodie to be a liar. And it didn't help her case that she had changed her story about what happened on the night of the murder three times as well. On top of all the lies, the prosecution wanted to show what an odd and cold person Jodie Arias was. And once again, she made this very easy for them. The prosecution showed the jury footage of her first police interview. Before the detectives come in, Jodie is either asleep or just resting with her head on the table.

And it's a trope that we often see quoted and thrown around that only guilty people sleep after they are arrested. I'm not sure if I'm 100% on that, but think about how that might have impacted the jury's opinion of Miss Arias. She also does other weird things in the interview room, like go through the rubbish bin and do yoga. At one point, she goes into a full headstand.

Who does that remind you of? I don't know. Amanda Knox. Amanda Knox does cartwheels. Oh, I forgot about that, mate. And she even sits there in the interview room singing Here With Me by Dido. Surely she knows she is being watched and recorded. There is no way she cannot know she's being recorded. I don't think the way she cannot know she's being recorded. I don't think the camera in a police interview room is hidden. I think it's just there, probably blinking red

to show you're being recorded. And she's got a television. Don't tell me that this bitch has never watched CSI. Like, come on. I have no clue because part of me is like, is she doing it to seem totally chill because she thinks that that will make her look like she's not worried and like she's innocent? in fact when you're on trial for murder and that footage

is shown it makes you look fucking cold as fuck or is she doing it as the prosecution attests that she's doing it to calm herself down she's doing yoga she's doing the headstand she's singing to herself so that when the police come and interview her, she can be at like a calm baseline. I don't know. Though, when I did read that in the research, I did stop for about a good 15 minutes and just go listen to Dido songs. She had some bangers, I'm not gonna lie. Anyway, when the police are in the room, I feel like Jodie, and you can see this really clearly in the footage, she's constantly like working them. That's what it feels like. And it's not just them, to be fair. Whenever Jodie's speaking to anyone, whether it's

at the trial in the interview footage that she gives to various reporters or whoever, she always seems like she's trying to come across as really vulnerable and soft and seductive. She speaks so sweetly all the time. And I think it's all a bit of an act to come across like this kind of total victim she's painting herself to be. But when the detectives come in, and you can see this in the footage,

she's immediately like, can we please turn the heat up? I'm so cold. Who does that remind you of? Um... Don't know. Luca Magnotta. Oh, yeah. Fuck.

Well, and he takes it from, what's her face? Sharon Stone from, what's that film? Fatal Attraction. No. Fatal Attraction is Glenn Close. I'm going to have to look it up. Basic Instinct. Basic Instinct. That's the one. I'm going to have to look it up. Basic instinct. Basic instinct.

That's the one. But yeah, again, it's very much that whole play, like they say in Don't Fuck With Cats, of being like, I'm so vulnerable. Help me. Look after me. And then when Jodie's answering the police's questions during this interview,

again, it just is hard not to feel like she's trying to manipulate them. She leans right forward across the table. And the only just is hard not to feel like she's trying to manipulate them. She leans right forward across the table. And the only way I could think to describe it is she's up to her armpits in table. And I just mean that's how far she has like extended herself across this table. And it's like she's getting super close up to the investigators. It really comes across when you watch it like a very false attempt to seem open, transparent and like you've got nothing to hide, like you're being super cooperative. The detectives also testified at

trial as to how surprised they were by Jodie's unusual behaviour. One example they gave is that when they told Jodie that she was about to be arrested for first degree murder, she had asked them whether she could have her purse back so that she could do her face before she had her mugshot taken. Yikes. I keep thinking about what I would be like in this situation. Obviously not having murdered someone, but if I got myself in some sort of trouble

where I was in an interrogation room, what would I do? And I'd probably just pace and pace and pace and pace, and I'd probably cry. And that would make me look so guilty. I wouldn't be able to handle it at all, even if I knew I'd done nothing wrong. It's really hard, because we talk about this all the time, like there is no universal response

that a person would give to show deception. But that trope that Hannah mentioned is obviously that, oh, well, when guilty people get arrested, they're so relieved that they've been caught that they'll be super calm and they'll maybe even fall asleep and that it's actually innocent people that all look super stressed out. Like she said, I don't put much weight behind that, but this is the point. It's like, however you behave, it's probably going to be picked apart. But she does behave in a very odd way. Asking for makeup before your fucking mugshot. Mate, like, chill.

Again, Hannah, you're right. It comes back to her building up for, like, some sort of biopic, isn't it? She's like, this mugshot's going to become iconic. Yeah, I can't remember which case it was, but I'm sure there was... Oh, you know what it was? It was Holly and Jessica. And that woman who was, like, involved but didn't actually murder them oh yeah the police went to the house to arrest her and she brushed her hair before she came out because the press were there and she got absolutely savaged for that so all of these antics seem to show jodie to be both cold

and a liar but if the prosecution wanted first degree murder they needed to show Jodie to be both cold and a liar, but if the prosecution wanted first-degree murder, they needed to show premeditation as well. As we've discussed, this can be extremely hard to prove, but there are a few things that they could point to. Jodie had rented the car that she used to drive to Mesa back in California. The people who had rented her the car told the prosecution that Jodie had specifically requested not to have a red car because she'd read that they stood out more. Also, she must have her own car. I think like renting one is especially if she's doing the 600 mile trip all the time, she would have her own car. So like renting one is in itself a bit of a red flag.

Good point. Jodie simply refuted this in court, saying that she just didn't want to get a ticket. But she also took the license plates off this car before she drove to Meta. Why? The prosecution alleged that it was to keep her trip a secret. No one else knew that she was going to see Travis. And if she hadn't left DNA and those photos behind, perhaps the police might never have been able to prove that she was there. Jodie, however, claimed that she'd only removed the plates to avoid the speed cameras. So the prosecution also pointed out that she'd filled the boot of the car with several jerry cans full of petrol, enough to get her all the way to Mesa and back without having to stop.

And again, they claimed that this was so no one could place her during that journey. She didn't want to stop at a gas station and be on CCTV, essentially. To me, it's the gun, the gun going missing from her grandparents' house. I know the gun that was used to shoot Travis has never been found. So you can't definitively say it was her grandparents' one. But like, come on, there's so much circumstantial evidence there. And I feel like that going missing a week before really, really feels so premeditated. And also, I think taking the plates off your car, if police, if they're on the side of the road and they see that, they're pulling you over anyway. Like it is an absolute extreme to avoid a speeding ticket. Just slow down when there's a camera like the rest of us.

So of course, like we said, a lot of this information that the prosecution was pointing to, it is quite circumstantial. But when you put it all together, along with the next bit of the story, Jodie was starting to look less and less like an innocent victim. During the trial, a copy of Star magazine and another magazine about digital cameras were intercepted by guards. It seemed that they were being passed from Jodie to a friend and supporter of hers named Anne Campbell. Along the bottom of one page of the Star magazine was a random set of numbers. It appeared that each number corresponded to a page from the other magazine. Basically, when you worked out this kind of code, the entire message, according to prosecutor Juan Martinez, it read, quote, you fucked up. What you told my attorney the next day directly contradicts what I've been saying for over a year. Get down here ASAP and see me before you talk to them again and before you testify so we can fix this. Interview was excellent, exclamation mark,

must talk ASAP. So this is reported in a lot of places. I was skeptical about whether this was even true but like we said we talked to Kirk Nermy, Jody's defense attorney and he did not deny that this existed. He just said like a lot of people have said that who this coded message had been written by and who this message was intended for remains a mystery. But was it a coincidence that this was found just a few days after another ex of Jodie's had testified for her defense? So it seems like if it was written by Jodie she's telling this person you fucked up, you've contradicted everything I've been saying. I don't know and when Jodie was confronted with it at trial she just said no, that she had nothing to do with it again. But I think, again, it was just another layer of

questionable actions around Jodie and it didn't help her case at all. A few weeks into the trial, it was time for the mental health portion of the proceedings to begin. The defence called three mental health experts to testify. The first, Dr Richard Samuels, a psychologist. He told the court that he believed that Jodie had disassociative amnesia and PTSD. He claimed that the more intense the trauma, the more intense the memory loss, so it was no surprise that Jodie couldn't remember stabbing Travis after the gunshot. Juan Martinez yelled at Dr Samuels in open court court accusing him of having feelings for Jodie and that was why he was lying.

Isn't that helping her, Kate? What? What? Yeah, he's just completely wild. I mean, what are you doing? And I've watched the footage. You can really easily find this footage. He's just like questioning him, questioning, questioning, and then just suddenly erupts and accuses him of having feelings for Jodie.

Like, what the fuck are you doing? The defence also had a psychotherapist named Alice Lavillette testify. She said that in her opinion, Jodie Arias was the victim of domestic abuse. Juan Martinez yelled at her too. The prosecution then had their mental health expert take the stand. She was psychologist Dr Janine DiMatte and Dr DiMatte claimed that she could see no evidence for abuse, stating that the reports of abuse that Jodie had claimed had changed multiple times and the key points of the story never matched up. She also claimed that Jodie's story of memory loss

was inconsistent with that of amnesia stemming from PTSD. She said claimed that Jodie's story of memory loss was inconsistent with that of amnesia stemming from PTSD. She said that there were huge gaps in Jodie's memory and that's just not how memory loss works when it comes from PTSD. As far as Dr. De Marte was concerned, Jodie did not just snap, she'd planned this. And to conclude, the doctor diagnosed Jodie with BPD, which is obviously, as we know, borderline personality disorder, and said that that was why Jodie had killed Travis. To counter this point that Dr. DeMatte had made, the defence called another psychologist to refute all of Dr. DeMatte's assessments.

This doctor said that he did not believe that Dr. DeMatte had an adequate understanding of the clinical tests one might use to diagnose BPD, much less their interpretations or the way in which those tests are meant to be used. And I have to agree with him. This is the problem, is that Dr. DeMatte makes lots of very good points about how memory loss from PTSD actually works and how that doesn't fit Jodie's story and how also she doesn't really have much evidence to signify that she was being abused. But she goes and undermines herself by saying this diagnosis of BPD because basically she's pushing this idea that BPD is what made Jodie do what she did,

that somehow it made her evil. But let's be clear, the majority of people who have BPD will never ever even come close to doing what Jodie Arias did. I tried to look into the psychology of a stalker because that was the predominant behavior that Jodie was engaging in before the murder and Travis unknowingly seems to have been making a huge mistake in continuing a sexual relationship with someone who was stalking him. We're not victim blaming here. I'm not in some way saying that he had this coming because he was doing that. He didn't know how dangerous the

situation was. I think that is the key point. And essentially, when we tried to look into the psychology of the stalker, what came up is that the research shows that there isn't really a typical stalker. Sometimes people just do bad shit and this link between bad behaviour and mental illness, as we have said time and time again on this show, is a harmful and often illogical one. We are of course not mental health experts, can't stress that enough, but I would urge you guys to check out a YouTube video by a psychologist called Dr Grande. We'll link it below so you can easily find it. And he goes into this case and Jodie's mental state in, I think, fantastic detail. And he says that in this case, equating mental illness with criminal behaviour

does little to explain why what happened, happened. Dr. Grande in his video points out that this kind of thing only serves to offer a completely over simplistic answer while simultaneously perpetuating stigma around mental health especially conditions that are already massively stigmatized like bpd and you may be saying but maybe she does have bpd she may well do we don't know if you look at the characteristics of bpd jody doesn't really seem to fit into many of the boxes but the point is that we agree with, and that is also pointed out really well by Dr Grande, is the defence experts saying that the way in which the prosecution's doctor

uses her assessment of Jodie is not how mental health assessments are meant to be used. Firstly, a diagnosis depends on the person being assessed, being honest with the person assessing them, and Jodie, as as we know lies all the time. Secondly assessing someone in the wake of a murder trial piles on quite a lot of stress and this is bound to produce inaccurate results anyway. I'd probably argue that people who suffer from BPD are under quite a lot of stress quite a lot of the time but it's certainly a large one a murder trial.

And finally and most importantly mental health diagnoses were not designed for this purpose. The DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, was written for treatment, not to explain why people commit crimes. And the problem here is that it feels like the prosecution, as Dr Grande says in his video, are weaponising BPD. And it's also quite a weird dichotomy that's set up by the prosecution and the defense that the prosecution is saying she's got BPD and why she did this and that makes her evil. And the defense is saying, well, she's got PTSD and that's why she deserves

all of our sympathy and that's why she did what she did. Like, why don't people with BPD deserve our sympathy? I think it's just like, this is a non-starter for me. This isn't a reason as to why somebody did this. This is an oversimplification of a very complex issue. And the fact also is that Jodie comes out of almost every assessment she has with a psychologist with a different diagnosis. And this proves how ineffective all these trial assessments are in doing anything but propping up a case and narrative put forward by either the prosecution or the defense like for as many people as they could have chucked at her to do assessments she could have come out with a different diagnosis so it really doesn't prove anything and also as dr grande puts it in his video quote the intersection of mental health

and the law is a dangerous place and also there are so many holes in this case when it comes to the mental health assessments. We honestly, we'd be here forever if we went into pointing them all out. But one moment that definitely stood out during the trial was when the defense psychologist testified that Jodie had PTSD. Juan Martinez pointed out that this diagnosis had been made before Jodie's third and final account of killing Travis in self-defense. So this psychologist had diagnosed Jodie of having PTSD based on her story about intruders that she later admitted was a lie. When this came out in court, the psychologist had to humiliatingly just say,

perhaps I should have re-administered the test. So after the prosecution and the defence were done, the jurors were allowed to ask Jodie their own questions. I'd never actually seen this before, but apparently at the time of the trial, at least three states in the US had this rule, and Arizona was one of them. The jury asked Jodie 150 questions, and they were all a dead giveaway as to what was still playing on their minds. Here are some of them. How could you kiss another man having killed Travis? Why did you cover it up? Were you worried about the consequences of killing in self-defence? And after all the lies you've told, why should we believe you?

If you were scared of people finding out, why you speak to 48 hours and the other news channels after your arrest why did you wait so long to tell the truth would you have told the truth if you hadn't been arrested i think it's pretty clear what they think yikes yeah it's quite a clear theme developing jodie just replied that she lied about the murder because she was scared and ashamed and she said that she regretted what she did after the murder had happened, but it gave the defence a clear idea that people didn't like Jodie very much at all. So in his closing statement, Jodie's defence attorney, Kirk Nermy, focused on telling the jury that their decision had to be based

not on whether they liked Jodie or not. The jury were told that they could go for first degree murder or go all the way down to manslaughter or they could acquit if they believed that Jodie had killed in self-defence. The trial had gone on for four months but the jury took just 15 hours to deliberate and they came back with a unanimous verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. Jodie, as ever, when this was read out, stayed measured. She looked surprised, but she didn't waver. In fact, just a few minutes later, after the verdict was read aloud, she went straight to talk to the news. And she told them something that I thought

was quite weird. She said, quote, I'd rather get death than life. If I had my choice, I'd take death. Questions. Would an innocent person who claims to be innocent, who's just been found guilty of murder, choose death straight away? Surely in life there is still hope. Hope that you could have an appeal, hope that new evidence could come out. I found that quite a strange statement. Yeah, I think I'm probably dramatic enough to say something like that in that situation, to be honest. She is very dramatic. Again, I can just, I feel like I see her writing it down in her head for

some actor to deliver it. Yeah, totally, totally. And then someone runs through the door just as she's about to be strapped to the chair. Stop! I did it, it was me all along. However, despite Jodie's eagerness to be put to death, the jury deadlocked on whether to send her to death row. And in the end, Jodie was given a life sentence. She's currently serving her time in an Arizona prison.

There was a lot of other weird stuff that occurred in and around this case as well. Two jurors were dismissed from the trial during proceedings because of their inability not to talk about it outside the courtroom. One of them apparently even tried to get in touch with Nancy Grace of all people. I mean, why? Nancy Grace doesn't need your leads, my friend. She's everywhere. And the craziness didn't end there. The prosecutor, Juan Martinez, was fired earlier this year, so that's February 2020, due to an ethics investigation stemming from accusations of prosecutorial misconduct

and, ding, ding, ding, sexual harassment. Kel surprise. There was a complaint filed that he had had an affair with a trial blogger during the Arias trial. I know we are very close to being trial bloggers. Like, I can't really scoff at it. But what an occupation. Oh, mate. It's so, like, early 2000s, isn't it?

Because a blog, I don't know. If you are out there writing a blog, full power to you. But my friend the other day was like, oh, I need to send you this really a blog I don't know if you if you are out there writing a blog full power to you but my friend the other day was like oh I need to send you this really interesting blog I read and I was like sorry what um can you just send me a voice note where you read it out loud to me and I'll just listen to that because I'm not going to read a fucking blog the only blog I care about is dino blog exactly god damn it this is how bad my level of like lack of reading is these days i opened up my laptop this morning just to do one final check of the notes before we recorded and i think i was just like really tired and my eyes were a bit blurry so i hit the volume up button on my laptop

help it's like when you see like toddlers trying to make images bigger on picture books oh dear no i need you louder writing i don't know i have no answers oh wow despite uh juan martinez's um what's the word, philandering. Jodie has been denied her appeals for mistrial. And in March 2020, once again, her first degree murder conviction and life sentence were upheld. And it wasn't just Juan Martinez's life that was totally changed by this case. Kirk Nermy, Jodie's defence attorney, also agreed to be debarred after he wrote a book on his experience of defending

Jodie Arias. You can check out our interview with him for all of the information you would like on that. It's about an hour long, really interesting guy. So hop on over to Patreon to check that out. You can also, I'm sure we're doing another Red Haunted soon. We're doing all sorts of stuff. Get your t-shirts, vote for us in the awards, fight the power, smash the patriarchy. Just all of those things, please. That would be really good of you guys. Like I said at the start, if the link isn't working, it is britishpodcastawards.com slash vote. And obviously ending on a thank you to all of our wonderful patrons, of whom there are so many, but let's kick into it. So thank you so much. Leah Goff, go. Justina Seminate, Victor Garcia, Faye Cronin, Ines Christie, Michelle Birchall,

Sarah Bushnell, Paige Ahern, Grace Sally Hendegate, Emily Hughes, Lucy Craswell, Is that a hern? Thank you. Aidy, Carrie-Anne, Cynthia Cooper, Beth Wilson, Amber Jones, Chloe Morley, Beth Greaves, Natasha Zinso, Fabiola Javaskas, Becky Lofthouse, Lynn Caldwell, Noel Anders-Peterson, Daria, Dora Rector, Rebecca Feidler, Cheyenne Raunick-Karndacker, Maria Peterson, Paige Ruiz, Hannah Lynch, Kim Greybert, Sean Herskovitz, Jessica Gilbon, Brian Smiley, Britt, Grace Meehan, Nicola Quinn Mahood, Mia Meyer McCarthy, Alistair Crowley, I highly doubt it, Tisha Wells, Eve Sherman, Charlotte Collins, Margaret Eporstotter, Margaret maybe, Donnybrook71, Josh M, Jill Hanna, Zoe Peck, Zoe Burke, Amy Biscoe, Samantha A. Valentine, Thank you so much for your support of the show as we continue to forge our way through this pandemic from our bedrooms. Absolutely. You guys are the best and we will see you very soon. Goodbye. Bye. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle

Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life.

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