The Deadly Obsession That Drove Jodi Arias To Murder Her Lover

The case of Jodi Arias, the woman who murdered her former lover, Travis Alexander, in 2008, captivated audiences around the world. When the trial began in 2013, media coverage intensified, driven by a disturbing question: what could compel a young, attractive woman to kill so violently? To shoot, stab, and nearly decapitate a man she claimed to have loved? These are just some of the questions journalist Briana Whitney set out to explore in her True Crime Arizona documentary, Obsessed: Unravelling Jodi Arias. Whitney has even been in direct contact with Arias herself, who continues to blog and exchange emails from inside her prison cell. Watch Obsessed: Unravelling Jodi Arias here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt4EHxymIlg. CREDITS Guest: Briana Whitney https://www.instagram.com/brianawhitney/?hl=en https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0533976/Host: Gemma Bath https://www.linkedin.com/in/gemmabath/?originalSubdomain=au Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman https://www.linkedin.com/in/tahli-blackman-205a891b7/?originalSubdomain=au Group Executive Producer: Ilaria Brophy Audio Engineer: Jacob Round GET IN TOUCH Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @truecrimeconversations https://www.instagram.com/truecrimeconversations/?hl=en Make sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple & Spotify to let us know how you're liking the episodes. Want us to cover a case on the podcast? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] or send us a voice note. https://help.mamamia.com.au/en-US/send-a-podcast-voice-note-467960 If any of the contents in this episode have caused distress, know that there is help available via Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  It's June 5, 2008, and Jodi Arias has just arrived in West Jordan, Utah. She's an entire day late. She was supposed to be arriving yesterday after road tripping from California to meet her former colleague and potential new love interest, Ryan Burns. He gave up calling her when it just kept ringing out. But now she's finally here, and Ryan, who's been messaging with Jodi for a couple of months now, is taken aback by her change of appearance. Her blonde hair has been dyed brown and she has bandages and cuts on her hands. "I got lost," she tells him when he asks why she was so late. "I didn't hear the phone ring," is her excuse for all the missed calls.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  "I cut myself on a glass while working as a bartender," she says of her injuries. Ryan moves the conversation on. Jodi is completely normal. She's chatty, flirty, laughs along to his jokes, all seems fine. But Jodi is hiding a secret. There is a gruesome, horrifying reason she is a day late, and pretty soon the entire world is going to find out about it.

• 1:18Speaker 00

  I'm Gemma Buff and you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. A day after killing her former lover, Jodi Arias was already pursuing a new potential love interest, because that was what she'd been doing on June 4. The then-27-year-old drove to Travis Alexander's home and inflicted such violence on him that she would find herself being tried for the death penalty.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  I didn't commit a murder. I didn't hurt Travis. I would never hurt Travis, would never harm him physically. I may have hurt him emotionally, and I'll always regret that. I was on the road that week. I don't know a lot about that, but I do, I did hear that there was quite a struggle. I really don't remember the day at all. I just remember when I got the phone call. I need to be honest, and the evidence is very compelling, but... And none of it proves that I committed a murder.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  This is a case that captivated worldwide audiences. Jodi's trial in 2013 was one of the most sensational and widely publicized criminal trials in US history. The media was obsessed. What drove a young, attractive woman to kill so violently? How many lies and mistruths did Jodi tell over the course of her arrest, imprisonment, and sentence? Was she really attacked and abused by Travis as she claims? Or was she the only aggressor in this relationship? These were just some of the questions journalist Brianna Whitney was hoping to explore in her documentary for true crime Arizona, Obsessed: Unravelling Jodi Arias.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Last year, she revisited the case that, at the time, was being described as a real-life soap opera. Brianna joins us now.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  Brianna, what fascinated you about this case? Why did you want to tell this story?

• 3:19Speaker 02

  You know, I have seen so many true crime cases that are unfolding currently, that are in the past, that are cold cases. And I think something that I've noticed, as far as long-form true crime storytelling goes, there is definitely a fascination now with cases that happened that were very high-profile, just even due to the changes now versus then. So with Jodi Arias, she was a huge name. It was a wildly salacious case. And things that happened then, like her having a Twitter manager and the kind of rhetoric that was going down in the courtroom, I don't think that would have happened now in the same way. And so I thought, what could we do to look at this case again? It's a big name.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  People who are interested in true crime want to learn more about these cases. There's a whole nother generation of people coming up who are interested in true crime, who maybe weren't, you know, old enough at the time that Jodi Arias happened, that want to learn about it. So we thought, let's, let's look into this, but it's been done a lot. How can we do this differently? And I think for us now... With everybody's fascination with kind of the criminal mindset of things, we thought doing a deep dive into her psychology would really be something that was a little bit different. And when I got the police report and was able to look at her journal entries and her emails and her IM messages and really go through all of them,

• 4:41Speaker 02

  it became this clear pattern of somebody and the writings that I hadn't seen a ton of about there, out there about everything. And so when I was able to do that and then learning she was running a blog from prison now, it kind of set up this psychological look at the case that was a little bit different than what had been out there before.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  I want to start with Travis, the victim in this story. Can you paint us a picture of who he was, where he was living, what he was doing with his life?

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So Travis Alexander was 30 years old. He was super outgoing. He was a devout Mormon of the LDS faith. And he was living in Mesa, Arizona. And just to kind of give people a geographic location for that, Phoenix is pretty big and Mesa is also a very large city here in Arizona in the valley, just outside Phoenix. It's east of Phoenix. So it all kind of functions as one big part of this Phoenix metropolitan area. Mesa's heavily populated. Travis was a big part of his faith. He was a big part of his business. And so he would go to these conventions, had a lot of friends, was almost like a motivational speaker of sorts. And he was kind of a pillar for his family.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  The siblings, the Alexander siblings, lost their parents not a lot before this happened. And Travis was kind of the one they described and the friends described that really kind of held the family together. And so you could kind of tell he was that natural born leader. He was funny. I mean, I think people described him, and they did in our documentary, as being very drawn to him. You wanted to be his friend. You wanted to be in the room with him and he would command a room. And so I think he had that kind of reputation with the people that he surrounded himself with.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  How did he meet Jodi?

• 6:31Speaker 02

  So they both were working for a company called Legal Shield. They met in two thousand six at a work conference in Las Vegas. And that is an interesting part of all of this because nobody knew her before. He liked to date different women. He was trying to find his forever wife. And he was very instantly attracted to Jodi when he met her. She was very alluring, very pretty. She seemed to share a lot of the same values. And so he actually ended up bringing her to a dinner that night at the conference with his friends. It was a dinner for basically like people who had performed well in the company, had made a lot of sales and had had done well, and it was to celebrate their accomplishments.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  And he brought Jodi after meeting her that day. And then that's kind of where everything started.

• 7:20Speaker 00

  And the friends immediately thought she was a bit off, didn't they?

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, they thought she was really nice at first. But pretty quickly after that, they realized she was pretty needy. She just seemed, yeah, that there was something more, more there. And, and I think at first they didn't quite know what that was. They, they sensed something was off, kind of like that gut feeling that you have when you know something's kind of wrong, but you can't quite pinpoint what it is. That seemed to be the, the way that they felt about Jodi. And then as time went on, I think they were able to determine that there was a neediness and a clinginess that was unhealthy. And that's, that's where things kind of unraveled from there. But yeah, at, at first they thought she was nice, she was pretty, but something was off.

• 8:06Speaker 00

  How did their relationship evolve? What did it look like? Because they lived quite a fair way apart, so it was a long distance relationship at the beginning at least.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, most of the relationship was long distance because by the time she actually moved to Arizona, they had broken up. So really their whole relationship was long distance. So she was living in California and eventually in very northern California, like a remote wooded small part of California, not like a metropolitan area. So it was even harder for her to get from there to Phoenix Mesa here where he was. They would often meet up at their friend Skye's house, who lived in Southern California. It was kind of like a halfway-ish point between. And then they would go to work conferences and they would, you know, go to these kind of trips together and, and things like that. But a lot of their relationship, honestly, there was a lot of, um, you know, Yahoo Messenger, AIM Messenger,

• 8:57Speaker 02

  that was very popular at the time, um, and phone calls and things like that. But it was very much, uh, you know, she was trying to get him to, I think, commit more to her. She wanted him to invite her out to, to live in Arizona. I think she always was looking for more and I think as they evolved, she kind of had him, hmm, under her finger a, a bit in terms of controlling the situation. She's very manipulative and so I think that she used sex and sex appeal as a way to keep him on his toes because she and Travis had this secret that they were having a sexual relationship, which was very against the Mormon faith.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  And Travis knew that and he was kind of perpetuating that too. I mean, prior to the murder, these two had a very tumultuous, toxic relationship that both of them played a part in.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  So Travis, he was obviously partaking in this sexual relationship, but he felt bad about it or was keeping it a secret from his community? What was happening there?

• 10:03Speaker 02

  You know, it's a good question because I think there was, I think both of those statements you just said were true. I think he did feel bad about it, knowing that that wasn't part of his faith and he shouldn't be doing it. But he liked it so much and he, you know, I don't want to say he was addicted to it, but I think there was an allure there that he couldn't escape and Jody knew it. And so I think the two of them often would, would get in these spats and then, you know, Jody would be like, well, you're not going to get this from others. And, and, and Travis would fall in line with that too. You know, he had told her at one point, "I don't think that I will ever be sexually fulfilled ever again because you're so good." And she was able to use that time and time again.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  And to be clear, Jodie isn't Mormon, so having sex is fine as far as her religion is concerned.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Yes and no. So she was not Mormon. So yeah, at that time it was, but she ended up getting baptized to be Mormon by Travis.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  Right. Okay.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  So, so yeah, she also knew that, but I think, you know, she was, at that point, she was in the anything for Travis. I'm gonna do anything. She wanted to be his forever person. And I think Travis knew that because of what they were doing, she wasn't ever going to be that forever person. Because ultimately, even though he was partaking in all of it, he was looking for a woman of Mormon faith who had the same values that he believed to, even if he wasn't following them at the time.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  On a surface level, hearing you talk about her, she sounds like a normal woman in love who wants to be intimate with her partner, who wants to be close to him, who wants to move, to be around him. So where does this toxicity come from? Is there any violence or abuse or anything like that that we know of within the relationship?

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. There was a lot of cat and mouse, kind of taunting each other, breaking up, getting back together. You did this, you're horrible, but I love this about you. Things like that, that a lot of 180, back and forth, flip flop, flip flop about, you know, how they felt about each other. But I think where the action started coming into play was this neediness that turned into almost stalking. So when Travis would be in like a closed door conversation with his friends, Jodie would wait outside the door listening. She would show up at his house in the kitchen when he was with other girls after they broke up, or when he was dating other women, which Jodie knew about.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  She would crawl into his doggy door and into his bed naked.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  She would, you know, she would come to a party that she wasn't invited to at his house and There was no room for her to stay and Travis told her that and Jody was like, "Oh, I'll just sleep under the Christmas tree." Weird, weird things that are concerning. And I think, once Travis decided, "This isn't for me," Jody never really let that go. She was always there, trying to be like, "Pick me, pick me, I'm here, I'm here." And that's where things, I think, started to go really downhill, from, from just like neediness to concerning behavior.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  Can we back up a bit? Take us back to Jody's life pre-Travis? Because this behavior you're talking about, the more stalker tendencies, you found evidence of that happening a lot earlier with other people.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we didn't know that. You're right, yeah. Before we did the documentary, there wasn't a ton out there on Jody's life before. And, and part of that was because her family has not been overly media-friendly. And I mean, I get it, right? This is a horrible crime. So, there wasn't a lot that we knew. I mean, we, we knew that there was some discourse with kind of her family. I think there was, you know, she claimed that they would hit her with a spoon. And, and there was definitely some allegations there that things weren't, weren't perfect by any means. But we didn't know a ton about her. Until, we learned from a high school classmate of hers up in Waikiki, California, that there was some, I don't know, history repeating itself, so to speak.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  So, in high school, she had had a boyfriend as well. And they broke up. And then, a lot of people from high school called her popping up outside his window, stalking him with other people as well. And, and that's, you know, a little disturbing in and of itself, but it's exactly what happened with Travis. I think, the way that I kind of deduced that after we learned it, was just, this is somebody who, if she's into somebody and she's rejected, or it doesn't work and she still wants to be with them, she will stop at nothing to...

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Be still part of their life and try to make her way back in. And I, I think when we learned, she, she had other boyfriends too. In fact, there was one that ended up testifying in the trial. It was somebody she dated before Travis. But I think that that guy was fully in it with her and that may have been boring to her. And eventually they broke up, but it was probably amicable because she, she didn't have the interest in that. And I don't think that he ever fully like rejected her as maybe this high school boyfriend did in Travis. So it does seem that she, she had a real issue with, with rejection or, or loss of somebody she really wanted to be with. And just had some control problems with, with maybe processing and, and self-soothing on that.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  Can you tell us a bit more about moving to be near Travis? Because you mentioned that she did that when they weren't in a relationship. So that's a pretty full on thing to do. She moves basically across the country and pops up around the corner from him and they're not together. How long did that last and what, what did that look like?

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Not super long. So she, she moved here. I, I think it was in like April that she had moved here. She wasn't here super long, but she had, yeah, they had broken up. She moves here and Travis is like, why are you moving here? We, we broke up and I think she was, you know, Jody's smart. She's really smart. And I think she knew, hey, I've got this thing that I can hold over Travis and that's sex. And that's a relationship that he's not, this type of relationship he's not going to have with somebody of his faith. And I think she thought the closer she was in proximity, the better chance she had about getting back with Travis. And nothing was going to stop her.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  So she moves here and, you know, that really stressed him out because I think they were still hooking up, but they, they weren't ever in a relationship. And I think it was kind of the, he, she was never going to let him get away type thing. But because they weren't back together and they didn't get back together, she ended up moving back to Wyrika, California, um, a few months before the murder happened. So she wasn't here very long and I don't think it worked out in the way that she wanted in her favor. And so when it didn't work out that way, she was like, I guess I'll go back. But when she moved back to California, it wasn't super long after that, that the, the murder took place.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  And they were still communicating during that time.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yep, there was some back and forth. She wanted Travis to visit her in Waikiki. And he even said, I don't know, this is a good idea. You know, I just know that there's probably many fights that we would have. I mean, they were constantly fighting. And I think too, in addition to him not visiting her, he was also taking another girl to his Cancun trip, which was like a half fun trip, half work trip. And it wasn't Jodi, and Jodi knew that, and they were messaging about that in the days leading up to the murder too. So I think he had moved on. I don't think Jodi liked it.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  And they had a big blow up about that, right? Because you guys talk about this big fight that they have in kind of late May. Was it about Cancun? Was it about this lady?

• 18:04Speaker 02

  I don't think so. We don't know. And that's kind of part of this issue. There's a lot of back and forth in that that late May fight about, you know, you're a horrible person, this and that. But the way that Travis's friend describes that fight is that there was something that Jodi was gonna tell Travis in person. She wouldn't put it in writing. There was possible legal implications. It was odd. And we don't know if that conversation ever was had. We don't know what exactly it was about. Was it, you know, did she think, or was somebody gonna expose their relationship? Was there something she had done that was, you know, not not legal? We don't really know. And so that fight specifically is kind of a question mark.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  But Travis's friend described that as everything really started going downhill with more fights and everything like that after that fight. And she's right. She described that fight on May 26th, and you can clearly see in emails and IM messages, back and forth in the days after that and before Travis was killed, there was definitely some discontent going on there. So, yeah, we don't know. We don't know if that was in relation to Cancun or not. We know that they'd had some conversation about Cancun because he said he was going and she was asking and clarifying the dates, which I also think was, you know, clarifying the dates to know when he was gonna be in Arizona and when he wasn't. And she knew when he was gonna be here and when he was supposed to go to Cancun.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  So I think that once she learned that information, she did plan some of her her visit and then ultimate murder here because of it.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  It brings us to the road trip that she's taking or takes in early June. And the plan is to head to Utah to meet another man, not Travis. Can you tell us about what that road trip was supposed to look like?

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the the journal that Jodi wrote in was very detailed, leading up to the murder too. And ultimately, now we believe that she was trying to set up an alibi for herself. So we knew based on her journal that she was supposed to leave from Juarez, California, so way north, and kind of go down the California coast before she was gonna head east to Utah. So that was going to include some stops in, I think, Redding, Pasadena, California. She stopped in the, like, the Monterey area, visited with an ex-boyfriend, Daryl. That was named in the journal as well. And then she would be going over to Utah to meet up with a guy named Ryan Burns, who also was with the company. The friends knew Ryan Burns. They thought maybe they'd be a good match.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  She had been talking to Ryan. You could also see that in the journal. And that was the plan. There was also a work conference that was going on in Utah as well. So basically, it was like a hit two birds with one stone. I'm gonna hang out with Ryan. I'm gonna see how that goes. And I'm also gonna be there for the work conference that all of these friends were all a part of. So that's how the road trip was supposed to go.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  When she eventually turns up in Utah, a day late, which is a very important part.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  What do the friends and Ryan notice about her? Because she looks very different.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Yes, so she had dyed her hair. She used to be blonde. She was now brunette. But maybe even more shocking than that was that she came with a long-sleeved shirt on and Band-Aids all on her fingers. And they asked her, like, Jodi, one, where were you? Two, why do you have all these Band-Aids on your fingers? And her response there was that she was bartending or something and, you know, had gotten cuts on her fingers, which that's a weird response in and of itself.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  Because she's not a bartender.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Well, right, yeah, she's not a bartender. And and what was she doing? Like, and again, even if you did hit something, why would you have Band-Aids on multiple fingers? It just didn't make any sense. And the friends thought that was super weird, but they also knew she could be weird. So they were kind of like, okay, weird, but whatever. On the road trip part of it, though, she said that she, you know, she broke down and she got lost and her phone wasn't charged and, you know, she had to get gas cans to fill up the gas in the car and she had to sleep on the side, you know, all of that. She, she had an excuse for, for all of this and that's why she was late. But what was also weird about this was not only was she late and had the Band-Aids on her fingers, but Jodi wants to be included in things, right?

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Like that's her, her MO is like, I want to be part of it. I want to be this person that everybody wants to be with, that they want to be around, especially, especially the guys. So when they were supposed to go four-wheeling the next day in the conference, or after their conference meetings were wrapped up, she, she leaves. She doesn't do the activity and the friends immediately clocked that as weird too. Like she would normally jump at the bit to be included and then spend more time with Ryan. So there was three weird things off the bat, right? The Band-Aids on the fingers, the long sleeve shirt, and it was hot, it was summer. She's a whole day late and has this whole excuse for what's going on with this road trip and why she was late. And then she leaves early, which is unlike her too.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  And all of that happens and in her journal, she ends up writing, Utah was amazing with a bunch of exclamation points, wish I could have stayed longer. So it was a lot.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Gemma Bath. I'm speaking with true crime journalist and host of the True Crime Arizona podcast, Brianna Whitney. Up next, we learn when Travis's body was finally found, the strange way it was discovered, and what the brutal crime scene looked like. You know the drill. You pick the couch, pay the deposit, then wait 12 weeks praying it matches the living room. Let's skip that. Mamma Mia is giving one lucky subscriber a $5,000 voucher for B2C furniture to spend on pieces that are in stock and ready to ship right now. High-end style, zero weight.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  To enter, head to mamamia.com.au/subscribe. You'll unlock all our subscriber-only podcasts, articles, and our fitness app, Move. Already subscribed? You're already in the running. Off. For ends October 31st, Ts and Cs apply. So this is around the 5th of June that she arrives in Utah.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  When is Travis's body found? And how is his body found?

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, so his body wasn't found for five days after that.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  Five?

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's one of the more perplexing parts of this case because he does have roommates. And they were home and they didn't realize what was going on. And a lot of people have said, wait, wouldn't he, you know, wouldn't there start to be a smell? And I think they all thought that the smell that seeped in eventually was Travis's dog, like maybe having an accident. They just didn't put two and two together. And they've received a lot of flack for that. Part of the reason that they didn't put two and two together was because they thought Travis was supposed to be in Cancun. So that's what ends up playing the part here. Travis doesn't show up in Cancun. He's not even answering his phone for the work conference call. And his friends immediately are like, that's not like Travis. This is really weird.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  So when he doesn't answer the call and then he doesn't show up in Cancun, they're super concerned. Understandably so. So the friends call other friends back in Arizona saying, hey, can you go check on Travis? This is odd. So they go to the house and the roommate answers the door and they're like, have you seen Travis? Like, where's Travis? And he's like, he's in Cancun. And the friends that went to the door were like, no, he's supposed to go to Cancun with me. And he's not answering. We can't find him anywhere. So eventually, one of the friends is able to gain access to Travis's bedroom door. I don't know if he had an extra key or he was able to like figure out how it was locked.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  But they go in there and they find a horrific scene. Travis is dead in his shower. He is completely bloody, stabbed 27 times. He's shot. And just a horrific scene. He's naked in the shower. And they are just absolutely stunned. I mean, at this point, they're like, this is one brutal overkill of a murder. But on top of that, who would have wanted to do that? And so pretty quickly after police get there.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  A lot of the friends start saying, oh, Jody, it's how to be Jody. But when you look at Jody, this petite, you know, young, beautiful woman, and, and then you look at the crime, it is very hard to compute how that person could pull off that crime on their own. And so, of course, you know, police are taking in this information, like, okay, they're giving us this name, Jodi Arias, but there was gonna have to be a lot more evidence collected to be able to prove something like that.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  While combing through that crime scene, a camera was found. Tell me about that.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  A lot of questions were answered with that camera. So the camera's found in the washing machine. And it's like one of those digital cameras from, you know, back in 2008. And it's not working because it's in the washing machine. But what I don't think was realized was that you could extract the card from that, try to put that through forensics and see what you could find. And what they found was very damning evidence. So on this digital camera, there are pictures from that day that are time stamped. The date is June 4th. So this gives us now a, a day of when something occurred.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  So on the pictures, there are naked pictures of Travis and Jody. So clearly now you know that Jody and Travis have seen each other, and they were having some fun sexual photo shoot, whatever they were doing, in Travis's room. And that's all fine and dandy until the pictures then, in time stamps minutes later, then show pictures accidentally taken, where Travis is bleeding, you see the crime scene, there's a few of those. And then there's this weird picture of a pant leg that was clearly accidentally taken, either dropping the camera or hit the button, something like that. And they're able to recover all of those.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  And not only does that put Jody there at the crime scene minutes before Travis is seen bloody, but it also was confirmed to be Jody's pant leg. And so now you have a person at the crime scene who's the only person allegedly there. And that became key for figuring out when Travis was killed and sort of what happened. Then after that, they were able to collect DNA evidence and the DNA also matched Jody's at the crime scene as well. And so those two things combined really completely changed the investigation.

• 29:15Speaker 00

  Well, that's pretty damning evidence. Were they able to arrest her pretty quickly?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  So, yes, but it did take some time. So she was still journaling after. They had to wait for a bit for the DNA evidence to come back. And that took some time, especially when you're thinking, I mean, we know DNA nowadays takes some time anyway to come back to, and this is 2026 and that was 2008. So they had to wait for that to come back, but they definitely knew that she was there and they were going to use that to question her. Meanwhile, she was still journaling. And, and, and the journal after the murder is astonishing. It's like, oh my God, I learned something happened to Travis. Oh my, this is heartbreaking. I'll never be able to go on. Oh Travis, I hear your voice. Who could do this? I want the people to get the death penalty.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  I mean, just acting as if she, you know, was anyone else learning about her friend getting killed? Not that she was the killer.

• 30:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  And that, when you look at it now and you know everything in hindsight, you're like, oh my God, I mean, you're trying to give us an alibi, sure, but you were just playing it up too. So, once they get the DNA back and everything, they then send detectives up to Waikiki, California to question her. And she denies, denies, denies. She's like, I don't know how that's my handprint on the wall and the blood. I, I wasn't there. That's not my pant leg. Why would I ever want to kill Travis? I could never do such a thing. She even has this one line in her interrogation video where she's like, if I, if I wanted to kill him, I would use gloves. I have so many of them. It's like, okay, I, sometimes I just think Jody was functioning in her own world and

• 30:54Speaker 02

  really thought that she could convince anybody of, of her own version of things, her own truth. Didn't work. She was eventually arrested for, for first degree murder.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  That interrogation video, I have watched it and she does look very convincing for some of it in terms of she's very sad, she's kind of spinning her side of the story. And then the only way to describe it is it gets a bit weird. Can you help articulate what I mean by that? Because would you agree? It just gets a bit weird?

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Oh, it's extremely strange. Yeah. So Detective Flores, you know, he's the one doing the questioning. But sometimes, and I've seen this before in interrogations and investigation techniques, they'll leave the suspect by themselves in a room just to see what happens, right? You know, will they write anything? How will they act? Is there, do they talk to themselves? You know, anything like that, just to see what happens. So when he leaves the room, Jody goes to like some other level where she is singing. She's singing multiple songs and, and like one of them has the lyrics, it's like, I, I didn't hear you breathe. I wonder how you're still here. Like it's just weird lyrics that just are creepy with the case itself.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  But then she's also singing Christmas carols and then she's laughing to herself. And then she at one point gets up and does a headstand on the wall and then gets back and is singing. It is very odd. It's as if she was just left to her own accord in her own living room, not a police interrogation where you're being questioned for a brutal murder. It was very bizarre behavior. Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  When I first watched that behaviour, I thought, oh, that's really strange.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there was definitely some narcissism there and there was also some personality disorder there. And I think that that might help account for what was going on in that interrogation, because I think that she would almost go into her own world and that's how she would view the world. So, you know, if she could convince herself that she was this person and, oh, I'm just a girl and, you know, I'm just like anybody else and all that. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's played a huge part here. Definitely unwell to the rest of us. I think it begs the question at that point in the case, whether she

• 33:58Speaker 02

  knew what she was doing and was trying to set up that she was unwell, or if she really felt that was normal behaviour at the time.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  So, police had pretty solid evidence with the camera than the DNA. There was also a gun involved that they were able to link back to her.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, they believe, although I don't believe they ever recovered it, but the gun that was used, they were able to match the casings, though, to a gun that her grandparents had that went missing not long before the murders. The same type of gun.

• 34:31Speaker 00

  Once Jodie was behind bars, she was quite happy to talk to the press, wasn't she? She was.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  Well, tell me about that. She was, usually when someone's been charged with a crime that serious, they kind of go to ground because it might affect their court proceedings. But she was quite open with media.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I, I laugh because like, this is where the case really just starts to heat up in salacious and like, almost unbelievable things that unfolded next. This is really where it started. So, yeah, she gets, she gets arrested for first degree murder and immediately starts doing jailhouse interviews, which, yes, you're right, we don't typically get defendants, I mean, defence lawyers never want their defendants to do interviews before a trial because, yeah, you could compromise the case and what they say then could be used in the trial against them. But she's like, no, I'm doing it. So she does all these different jailhouse interviews. And at first, she starts with her first version of the case, which is, I wasn't there that day.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  I wasn't there. It wasn't me. I was told about it. I'm sad about it, but no evidence will show that that was me and that I killed Travis. That was version number one. Then she went to a different version, which was, well, I was there, but I got away. And unfortunately, two masked intruders killed Travis. And it was awful. And there are two killers out there on the loose. And this was a horrific thing that happened to him. So then we had that version of events for a bit. And then ultimately, she changed her story for a third time once the trial started. And that was, I killed him in self-defense.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  He abused me. I was worried for my life. And I had to kill him in order to survive. Yeah.

• 36:30Speaker 00

  Obviously, that version of events becomes her story. Can we just go back to the evidence for a minute? Was there any evidence that it could have been self-defense?

• 36:41Speaker 02

  I mean, no. Her defense team needed to look for something, right? It's very hard to defend against your DNA and photographic evidence of you at a crime scene. I mean, that's right, like nail in the coffin for a defense team. So they had to come up with something. And I think there was a toxic enough back and forth between Jody and Travis that they could try to point to that Travis was just as bad as Jody. And had, had she not acted in that time, you know, it was either going to be Travis or Jody that died. And Jody fought back. The problem with that defense is that you can't really convince a jury ever,

• 37:24Speaker 02

  even if you want to say that she was abused, really hard to convince a jury or anybody with a sound frame of mind that self-defense was 27 stab wounds and a shot to the head.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  Because it's a very vicious, horrific murder. And I guess what you're saying is if someone is fleeing for their life and terrified, they're not going to go to that extent. Is that what you mean?

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah. I mean, if you're really fighting for your life and you have a gun, I think one gunshot would do the trick into the head. But even if you're stabbing somebody in self-defense, again, 27 times was far past what it would take to defend yourself from him. He would have been subdued well before that level of overkill. And I think too, you know, they really played this abuse factor up and they had to try to convince the jury. And the jury did, you know, consider that. They did think about it. They did look at it. They did talk about it. And there were some people that felt there might have been some emotional abuse,

• 38:36Speaker 02

  some verbal abuse, but nobody ever found any signs of physical abuse. And I think that also too played a massive part in what the jury would ultimately decide.

• 38:50Speaker 00

  In your documentary, you do a really damning interview with the cellmate of Jody, who Jody basically confessed to in terms of murdering Travis.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  Can you describe that chat? Because she said some wild things about the way Jody described that.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Oh, totally, yeah. I thought our interview with Donovan was really interesting. So Donovan was a cellmate of Jody's at the time she was in the jail. So that's an important timeframe because that's when Jody was doing those jailhouse interviews. It was before the trial ever began. So it wasn't like she was in prison after. This was before everything leading up to the salacious trial. So yeah, Donovan described Jody as being very nice, very sweet. They had both never been in trouble before, so I think they kind of bonded over that. But she described what Jody said as Travis being the Terminator, that he wouldn't die. And Jodi did tell Donovan, you know, he was horrible to me and this and that.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  And so Donovan, as her friend at the time, had a very negative reaction to Travis as well. But yeah, she described it as he was a Terminator, he wouldn't die. And she always wanted to be so perfect for the media cameras and TV and always wanted kind of to be this well-known person out there. And so I think that's how those two forged a relationship, so much so that Donovan ended up becoming what they called Jodi's Twitter manager during the trial. And Jodi would call Donovan on the phone mid-trial and have her write these things on behalf of her on Twitter, like about the prosecutor.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  And like calling him a, like, you know, little man syndrome and things like that. And so that just also took everything to a whole new level as well, because not only did she confide in Donovan about, you know, hey, he wouldn't die and he was this and that. But then she also was having Donovan play this role of basically aiding in this trial, becoming even more salacious with what she was wanting to put out there to the public.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  Let's talk about the trial because it's been described as a live soap opera or the Super Bowl of court.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  In terms of media attention, it was insane.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Insane.

• 41:27Speaker 00

  There are people everywhere. Can you paint that picture for us? Because if people haven't seen the footage, there are hundreds of people waiting outside court. Like they're going to a concert.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Oh, totally. I've really never seen anything like it. The only thing I can really compare it to recently in recent times is the Karen Reed trial outside of Massachusetts where there were so many people that were out there supporting her, kind of lining the streets for her. But and that's pretty rare too, even with high-profile cases now. There's typically not like groves of people outside, you know, like that's not where everything is. But with this, yeah, oh, my gosh. Looking at the footage, so you know, I was in high school at the time this happened and I'd heard of it. But I wasn't paying attention like like I would be now as a as a true crime journalist.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Going through that footage is some of the more shocking things I've seen in this career. Yes, there were. So first off, there were cable news shows were really popular at the time. Nancy Grace, HLN, things like that. So those cable shows that would run, you know, a lot of hours in the day. Were setting up nearby with what was like a concert, like stages, bleachers, big lights that you would see if there was like a singer, spotlights, all of that. They were getting ready for full show productions. Because there was so much interest in the case. So you had that side of things. So you had all this media there. And they were lined up everywhere, outside the courthouse, the street, across the street, the courtyard nearby.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  And then you just had all these people who wanted to be there for history and watch this unfold. And I guess the way that I would describe that is you don't have it now where, you know, there's a live stream options all the time and you could just do that. You had to either watch on TV or you were there in person, I guess. And so, yeah, there was people running all over and waiting in this lottery line to get into the courtroom. Like, people really viewed this as like a top-tier exclusive show. And they all wanted to be part of the action. I've never really seen anything like it. And there were people who were like, oh, my gosh, just to be here and to even be chosen,

• 43:45Speaker 02

  to go into this lottery, even to go through security, that would have been enough for me. I've never, I've just not seen anything. You would have thought you were talking to people who had just gotten chosen to be front row at a Taylor Swift concert. Unreal. And it only got bigger and bigger and crazier and crazier as this went on, especially eventually when Jodi took the stand herself. Because typically, a defendant doesn't take the stand. And so then you really had people coming. I mean, they wanted to watch what was going on. And what would happen too is if they weren't chosen to be part of the audience, this group of people who would come from wherever would then go to a nearby restaurant, watch this trial live on HLN or whatever else on the TV and talk about it

• 44:27Speaker 02

  and have like a lunch gathering to hang out and be part of it that way. It was so crazy.

• 44:34Speaker 00

  I can't help but think of Travis's family, as you described that, because at the end of the day, like this is something horrific that has happened to someone they love. And they're arriving at a courtroom to see the person that they think killed their loved one, see justice. And they've got groupies and people kind of frothing to hear the latest information. That must have been really bloody hard.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  I think, I think it was almost a catch 22 for them. Yeah. Here, here they are showing up to court. And I mean, not just showing up for a couple of weeks. This trial went on for months and months and then continued on for years after that in the penalty phase. So this was agonizing, having to go in and to see all this evidence and be a part of it. Yeah. So then this wasn't a show. This was real life. And so on one hand, you had them dealing with that. However, there was something to it where they felt that Travis had such a magnetic personality that there were people out there supporting him. I mean, they were so anti-Jodi.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  They were, yeah, they were in it for the salacious details, but they were anti-Jodi. And so his friends and family were at least able to look at that and say, wow, look at all this support for Travis. Look at all of these people who want justice for Travis. And I think at least among something that was so incredibly uncomfortable to be part of that, they could at least see the fact that these people all wanted the same thing that they wanted, which was justice for their brother.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  After the break, we hear exactly what Jodi said when she took the stand to speak at her trial.

• 46:17Speaker 03

  Did you kill Travis Alexander on June 4, 2008?

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Yes, we did.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  Why?

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Um, the simple answer is that he attacked me and I defended myself.

• 46:41Speaker 00

  You mentioned that Jodi took the stand, which a lot of defendants don't do. They're often advised not to do. Jodi was on the stand for 18 days. What did she talk about? What is the biggest takeaway from her being on that stand?

• 46:54Speaker 02

  What didn't she talk about, really, I think, ends up being the question. So that's still, to this day, longest a defendant's ever taken the stand in their own trial in US history. That is, wow, pretty crazy when you think about how long ago that was to now. Yeah. You know, it's, yes, typically defendants do not take the stand. And typically, defense attorneys don't want them to take the stand, right? Because now they could say anything and that could completely compromise the case. But in this specific case, if they wanted the jury to believe that Jodi suffered from abuse, the most powerful person to try to convince them of that was going to be Jodi herself. And they knew it. It was like a hail mary.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Like, if we're going to have any shot at this at all, throw her on the stand. So, you know, she talked about her past relationships and how it was with Travis and how she was sad and this and that. And she described the murder. But where it really got fiery was when the prosecutor, Juan Martinez, who was fiery in and of himself, got up there and cross-examined her. I mean, and he had her acting out how she, you know, how Travis was a linebacker attacking her and she had to get away. And he had her acted out in court. And, you know, he would really question her on her lapses in memory that she seemingly had, according to her. You know, you remember these things, but you can't remember stabbing him. You can't remember shooting him.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  You can't remember driving away from the scene. And so he was really trying to poke holes in the fact that she selectively was choosing what to remember, what not to remember, what she claimed she did, what she claimed she didn't. And and that's where people, I mean, people were tuning in to see the back and forth between Jodi and Juan Martinez.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  Do you think her evidence that she gave helped her case? Was she convincing?

• 48:46Speaker 02

  No, you know, she might have been convincing if she had been on the stand for less days. But I think the longer you're up there, the almost more comical and and more TV soap opera-y it got because it was it was you can't do yourself a lot of favors when you're going over and over on all this. And then ultimately it ends up kind of becoming more about the showdown between her and Juan bickering with each other and trying to one up the other rather than the actual trial itself and the actual issue itself, which for Jodi was, hey, I was abused and I was defending myself. So, no, I don't think that it helped. I think that they should have taken her off the stand far sooner. And I that was probably an error

• 49:31Speaker 02

  on the defense's part. But I think they thought, look, if if anybody's going to convince the jury of anything emotional, like abuse, it was gonna have to come from Jodi herself.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  I ask that because the jury deliberated for a long time. They asked a lot of questions from the judge. So it wasn't a clean cut decision for them. It took them a long time, really.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, you're right. It did. And I don't think they nobody, nobody seemed confused on whether or not she did it. I think that was obvious. And even the defense, I mean, even in their opening statements, they said, look, there's no doubt Jodi did this. So that was never really the issue. It was more so the intent and what happened that day. And they would need to decide whether they were going to, you know, convict on a first degree murder charge. Were they going to lessen it to second degree? Were they going to lessen it to manslaughter? That's really what they had to figure out. And I think she was successful.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  And at least putting some reasonable doubt in some of the jurors' minds that there may have been abuse, at least verbal abuse, based on the toxicity of the relationship. And that's what, I mean, at the end of the day, that is what the defense was trying to do. Can you give any sort of reasonable doubt to the prosecution's story? And I think that that was what they were going for. So there were some jurors who were considering that. And yes, they asked a lot of questions of the judge, which is also pretty rare. Usually those are more clarifying questions, if anything, like can we use this for that or that for this? Almost more protocol-based, but they asked like 100 questions. And that was interesting, too.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, so the judge would read them to Jody. Jody would answer, and then they would listen from there. And I think they wanted Jody to know that they were like, why should we believe your story now? You've lied about X, Y, and Z. That's been proven in the trial, so why should we believe you now? Questions along those lines. But ultimately, yeah, they described, the two jurors we interviewed described putting all these post-its all around the room and really getting in there in the deliberation room to say, okay, here's what evidence we have, here's what we think. And yes, ultimately, I think they wanted to make sure that they were making the right decision. They also knew by convicting her of first-degree murder and finding her guilty of that, that now they were going to have to figure out if this was a death penalty case or not, if she would be executed or not.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  And I think all of them, when they were deliberating, even in the guilty phase, knew what was on the line with this case overall, and that was death or not.

• 52:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. Which is something that is foreign to us here in Australia. We don't have the death penalty. We haven't for many, many decades. So it is, you know, quite shocking to hear that this is what's next in this case. She is found guilty of murder one, and then they do need to deliberate and do basically a whole new trial in sentencing to work out whether she's going to die for it.

• 52:45Speaker 00

  Can you take us through that phase? Because it was basically like a mini trial in terms of impact statements from both sides, her pleading her case as to why she should get life and not the death penalty.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:01Speaker 00

  And then the jury, the same jury has to decide that.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  Correct. Yeah, I guess I didn't even think about that in Australia. This, this part of it probably never happens. So, yeah, here, when you're found guilty of first degree murder and it's a capital case, and not every first degree murder case is a capital case. In this specific case and with death penalty cases, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office must give a notice of intent to seek the death penalty if they feel that that's just and if they want to go forward with that.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  So that was sought first and they went forward with that. So we knew going into this trial that this was a death penalty case. So, once she's found guilty, then yes, it's like a second mini trial, just like you said. And the reason for that is because the, the first burden of proof that they had in the first one was whether she did it or not. But now the question at hand is, does she deserve to die or not? And there's a lot more at stake with that when you're talking about a human life in that regard. And so the, the burden of proof then is on the prosecution to prove to the jury that she should deserve to die based on all of these, what would be aggravating factors in the case.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  And the penalty phase also deals with the more emotions of, of who somebody is, the character of somebody. And that's where things can get a lot more emotional on our end here in the United States, because you have family members who will give victim impact statements. The defendant can also talk more freely. So, right, Jodi has to answer the questions at hand in the, the guilty phase of this, when she's on the stand, but she also has an ability in the sentencing phase to kind of give her impact statement as well. And so Travis's family felt that she should die. And, and that was based off of the set of legalities here in Arizona of, you know,

• 54:55Speaker 02

  what meets the, the, the burden of a death penalty.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Proof or death penalty case. And legally, based off of the evidence at hand, it fit a lot of those parameters. So those include, like, was the crime unusually cruel and depraved? Yes.

• 55:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  But some of them, it didn't hit. You know, oftentimes, it might be like, was there multiple victims? In this case, no. So they have to look at those set of factors, and each side has to prove why or why not somebody should, you know, be executed or have their life spared and life in prison. There was no other option other than death or life in prison for a first-degree murder conviction here in Arizona. And so there was a lot more, so to speak, on the line for the jurors when looking at this case and deciding what they were going to have to do. And they deliberate, again, just like they do in that first phase, to decide whether or not it's going to be death.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  Well, it ended up taking them two goes. The first time wasn't unanimous, and the second time, it also wasn't unanimous, but 11 to 1. And she ended up getting life in prison.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 56:11Speaker 00

  What does life in prison look like in Arizona? Is that your natural life? Is that, like, how many years is that? What does that look like?

• 56:18Speaker 02

  So she got life in prison without the possibility of parole. So that would be, in this case, until the end of her life, unless she wins something on appeal. So as far as her case goes now, she is appealing. She lost one appeal. She's in the middle of another appeal. She has been writing in her blog recently, in the past week, about how she isn't happy with attorneys, and she's looking for new counsel, and she's going to seek a habeas case as well. And to kind of put that in perspective, explain what that means. In Arizona, when you get a life-in-prison sentence and you are appealing... That's called post conviction relief or PCR.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  And typically you'll exhaust as many appeals as you can if you are trying to get out or trying to change things. And if that doesn't work and all of those fail, then you can move on to what could be a habeas case. People most recently have probably heard that with the Menendez brothers who claimed that there was new evidence. And so if there was a habeas case, they would request a new trial. In this case, she's using the habeas to say that evidence was destroyed or gotten rid of by the prosecutor and the lead detective and that her constitutional rights were violated through the trial. Therefore, because of this, she should be granted a new trial. And she's going to point to the fact that both the prosecutor and the defense attorney

• 57:47Speaker 02

  in this case were both disbarred after this trial over things that happened during or after the trial that related to this case. So that's what she's working on from a legal front, from a day to day front. We know what she's doing because she runs a Substack blog called Just Jody where she's detailing her life and her thoughts and her feelings and all of that. And honestly, I'm surprised she has as much access to things as she does. As far as the blog goes, when she is posting it, she doesn't have access to the actual site of Substack, but she can email people back and forth, which is how she was able to email me. And that's through like a secure prison email chain, email program.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  And she sends that to somebody on the outside who then posts the blog. But she writes about doing a lot. I mean, she has access to a lot of baking ingredients and utensils and things. She's baking elaborate desserts. She's researching. She says she listens to podcasts. She talks in great detail about how she's using AI and ChatGPT to do certain things. She reads a lot. She has worked in the library for many years in there, so she reads a lot. I mean, she's definitely paying attention to what is happening in the outside world and seems to have a fair amount of access to research things. In prison, a lot of them have a tablet and that's how they're able to get online in

• 59:14Speaker 02

  some form or fashion when it's allowed. She has a pet pigeon named April that she writes about. I don't know if she, I'm sure it's just like a bird that exists in there and she calls it hers, but she writes about that. So, I mean, She's definitely doing things in prison. I know she's led some singing competitions in there. She's done some, yeah, some singing. She even did singing competitions in the jail before she was, went to trial. She did like something called inmate idol, where they like sang for judges like American Idol. Very, very odd. But yeah, she still sings. So yeah, that's the, you know, we know about what her life is like, kind of from a day to day, because she's writing about it.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  She's putting it out there for people who want to still follow her life. I mean, she did have a fair amount of fans too, who either don't think she deserved this, don't think she did, or still want to follow her because they, I mean, think she's pretty and alluring and they, they, you know, free Jody is a thing. So that's what we know kind of about where she stands in terms of what her personal life is like in prison and then also where her legal life is in prison too.

• 1:00:24Speaker 00

  I do want to back up a second because there was a particular moment that I found quite shocking and probably everyone would find quite shocking, was that after that sentence came down and she was given life in prison, she said something to Travis's family who were there. The family and friends were there to hear what would happen to her. What did she say to them?

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, they relayed that she looked at them after the sentence and said, "He was alive when I slit his throat."

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Awful, awful, shocking, hurtful, spiteful. Yeah, I think, I think that was said with some, some intent. And that's why people are so frustrated with these appeals and, you know, her pointing to even trying to get a habeas case out of this because it's hard for people to understand that she could, you know, even potentially get a reduced sentence or anything, or try to point to a new trial solely based on the trial itself, protocols and what happened and what, you know, what other attorneys did, given the fact that she admitted she killed him and then she said something like that. I mean, no one looks at that comment and says, oh yeah, that's somebody that we should

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  review it and see if everything went as planned. Like, that's an evil comment, it's an evil person, it's an evil act. And there's not one person that looks at that and says, "Oh yeah, let's, let's relook at that case, make sure everything went according, because maybe she should be out, out from behind bars."

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  That comment was obviously off record, though. So do you think she has a chance with these appeals?

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  So I interviewed an attorney unrelated to the case, at least the trial portion of it, about this. Because I asked the same thing. I mean, Jodi can say what she wants from behind bars and blog.

• 1:02:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  But is any of it really legit? And is there a chance? There's always technically a chance. Yes, it doesn't help that the attorneys were disbarred over different things. Kirk Nirmey, her defense attorney, wrote a tell-all book about him and his relationship and things that were said in client confidentiality. So that violates the attorney-client privilege. So that's why he was disbarred. Juan Martinez had a slew of different issues. He reportedly committed prosecutorial misconduct by feeding a blogger at the time of the trial information and then allegedly having a relationship or some sort of sexual relationship with that blogger.

• 1:02:53Speaker 02

  He also reportedly talked to a dismissed juror on the case. And he ultimately agreed to be disbarred over everything. So, yeah, I mean, does she have a chance on that front specifically? Maybe. But the reality is it's really hard to prove intent that the detective and the prosecutor would have intentionally gotten rid of damning evidence that would have saved her, X, Y, and Z. And it's hard to prove that what happened during the trial and right after would have changed the outcome of her conviction.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  So the likelihood of her, given what happened, right? Given how this went, given that she admitted to killing him. Yeah, the likelihood of her getting out, slim to none. But you never know. And that specific aspect of you just don't know is what has people very concerned, that there could be a chance. High chance, no. A chance, sure.

• 1:04:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. You snuck in there that you had contact with her. You did try and get an interview with her. How did that go?

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  I did. So I had actually emailed her before too, even before I pursued the documentary. I think I I knew we had a couple of high-profile inmates here. And as as a true crime journalist and reporter, I always want to hear all sides of the story. And especially given now that true crime is such a a genre that interests so many people. I think it doesn't really matter how old a case is. People want to hear how people involved in the case feel now. And and there is a fascination, whether people like it or not, with hearing what a defendant, a killer, has to say about a case. And I truly believe too that we can learn from these people to, you know,

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  things to look for, certain personality traits, certain beliefs that we then can, you know, learn from and hopefully study so that we can prevent these things from happening in the future. The only way we can learn that is to actually ask them their side too. So I knew I wanted to interview her for this. If I was going to do a whole documentary about her and her psychology, of course I wanted to talk to Jodi. And of course, I wanted to be there with her either in person or over the phone. Now, that's part of this too. I knew that interviewing Jodi was going to be a bit of a different kind of interview, if I even could here in Arizona. While while we can do jailhouse interviews, depending on who's heading up the jail in the county,

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  prison interviews here are not allowed on camera in person. And they typically don't even grant video visits, though that's a little different now because these inmates have these tablets, they can just reach out to people. So I knew my only options were going to be either visit Jodi in person in the prison, like a visitation, and take notes, no recording, no camera, no audio, nothing. And that would have been my number one choice. Even though I couldn't record it, I wanted to get, you know, in front of her in person. I could at least relay what I had learned and what I had noticed and picked up. But the other option would have been a phone interview, and that was my other goal. And she didn't respond for a while, and I knew, I had reached out to her defense team that's conducting the appeal now to first go through that channel, right?

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  Like, I was going to ask them, I wanted to do everything right, and they were very like, "No, no, no, she will not be doing anything, we will not be doing anything, we have no comment, don't contact her," you know, "shut it down," basically. They didn't want us even doing the documentary. Obviously, that's not their choice, but I thought I was gonna, I'd message her personally, too, and just see. And she did eventually email me back and said, you know, was very friendly and said, "Hi, I'm so glad you reached out, I'm so sorry I didn't respond sooner, you know, I would love to tell you about my life in Perryville Prison and, you know, about everything here, but my attorneys won't allow me, they're protecting me as attorneys do, I'm so sorry."

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  And I told her I had read her blog, and she was like, "Thank you so much for subscribing to my blog, I think it's a great place to get exclusive content about my life that no one else can get, I appreciate you reading, you know, if you have any questions or want me to write about anything, let me know and I'll consider those topics in the future, and if anything changes with my attorneys, I'll let you know, thanks again for reaching out, take care." Jody.

• 1:07:30Speaker 00

  So very courteous.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Oh, she was very polite, very friendly, yeah. I ended up responding back, and I asked her a few different things, I actually, I had a couple of questions in mind already, just knowing how she operates, knowing that she wasn't probably going to address the case itself. So I came up with some questions, and then I also asked AI, "What would be the best questions to ask a narcissist?" And I ended up, yeah, I ended up emailing her back some topics, like, "If you could go back and redo something in your life, what would it be? What are your greatest accomplishments in life? And on the other side of that, what do you feel like have been your biggest downfalls or your biggest failures?

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  What would be advice to yourself now?" You know, things like that. And to this day, she still has not addressed, she did not email me back, and she still has not addressed my specific questions in her blog, but she's writing more. She's, I've already, there's already been a couple entries, just even in the new year. So I'm hopeful that at some point... We might hear answers to those questions. And I also, I recently just emailed her because she's been complaining about her attorneys and wanting new counsel. So I thought, well, if she fires them or if they leave the case, maybe there's an in-between time there where she's gonna wanna say something. Yeah. You just never know. You never know. But she likes attention and she likes sharing her life. So I'm hopeful maybe still down the road. Yeah.

• 1:09:02Speaker 00

  With your documentary, you aimed to look at the psychology. That was what you were looking at with Jodi. What did you conclude? We touched on earlier, you know, there's a bit of, there's a few different personality disorders potentially in there. But looking back at it all through a 2026 lens, what did you conclude about the psychology of Jodi and what she did?

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think from the 2026 lens, clearly there's a personality disorder there. And she could not handle rejection and she could not handle somebody, a man that she wanted choosing somebody over her. And I think that that was so dangerous that she could not control herself and thought, well, I'm gonna be the last person he was with and I'm gonna, I'm gonna take action here. You know, did she go to his house with the intent to fully kill him like she did in this way? I will never know. I don't think she'll ever talk about that.

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  But she has such a strong personality disorder and a strong sense of narcissism that I think she convinced herself that this was the best plan and that he will never be with somebody else. And if he's gonna reject me, then I'll be the last person he's gonna be with. And, and I think that that is the kind of person that she is. I think she, she feels that. She can convince anybody of her beliefs and that they'll believe her. And she writes in this very specific tone, this very specific

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  style that's a bit like holier than thou, kind of picking apart holes at everybody else. And it very much still resonates that in a lot of instances in her life even now, that she is really the victim. And I don't think she's capable, because of her personality disorder,

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  of seeing the true reality of the situation. And that makes her a really, really scary person in a different way than people, you know, might think scary, you think scary and you think big.

• 1:11:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  You know, you'd attack, but she's incredibly smart. She's incredibly manipulative and highly, highly intelligent, but couldn't get out of her own way on a personality side of things. And I think that that's ultimately where this all lies.

• 1:11:39Speaker 00

  I wanted to end with Travis's loved ones. His friends and family, obviously with such a big case with her name being at the center of it all, and she's still getting attention with this blog. Have they been able to move on in the years since the sentence? And since everything died down a little bit?

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that that's a kind of a two-pronged answer. You know, obviously, when we reach out, I mean, and I'm keenly aware of this too, as a journalist, right? When you reach out to family and friends who were very affected by a horrific crime, you know that reaching out to them could trigger those emotions for them, could be a bit upsetting. To counteract that, though, a lot of times victims, family and friends want to share more about their loved one. And it's almost cathartic and healing for them to know that their loved one is not forgotten. I think that exists here. There's been some family dynamics within the Alexanders where some of them would like

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  to do more interviews and some of them would not. And that's caused some family strife for sure. So I think while while it's hard to see these things happen and they're, I mean, everybody is pissed about the blog, no doubt. And the friends didn't know that she had a blog until we told them. So not that it's a secret, but just some didn't know that. So I think that's really upsetting for sure. There is definitely, you know, to be able to remember Travis and to share, again, the kind of boisterous person, infectious smile, laughter, personality, person he was, that brings them joy still in remembering him. But I think there's been a lot of sadness with all of them growing up and going through

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  the life phases of getting married and having kids and knowing that Travis didn't get that opportunity. That is heartbreaking and they now see it as they go through the different phases in life. But I do think they've been able to move forward some for sure. And I think people got a lot of therapy. They they knew they had to move on and that Travis would want them to live their lives big. I mean, he lived his life big and they know that Travis would want them to do the same. But is there lasting impacts in all of their lives? Yeah, there's trauma there that has affected many aspects of their lives, both the family and the friends. And I don't think that ever goes away, but I think that there's a part that they want

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  to live in Travis's honor, the way that he would have lived his life. And and I think that that's something that they try to live for every day.

• 1:14:27Speaker 00

  Thank you to Brianna for helping us to tell this story. You can find a link to the True Crime Arizona documentary, Obsessed, hosted by Brianna, at the link in our show notes. If you want to see images related to this story, head over to our Instagram page, at True Crime Conversations. For in-depth case explainers, follow us on TikTok under the same name. True Crime Conversations is hosted by me, Gemma Bath. Our senior producer is Thali Blackman. The group executive producer is Alaria Brophy, and there's been audio design by Jacob Brown. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.

• 1:15:09Speaker 04

  True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast was recorded on.