True Crime Time Hop ep. 26: Jodi Arias

Finally caught up so I can actually regard it as the day it actually IS today. June 4th. Granted, by the time I record myself reading all 3 of these episodes I just wrote and editing them, it WILL still be late but at least the blog portion is on time, right? I'm having flashbacks to the pressure of college and papers and deadlines. Then I have to remind myself: I'm doing this for fun, mostly. And because it's something I enjoy and I am passionate about. If I am able to monetize it in the long run, great! But I can't be too rigid with my deadlines because when it stops being enjoyable, I have a tendency to taper off with my enthusiasm. So! I'm gonna forgive me when my uploads are late and just keep doing my best. I hope you can vibe with that and I hope you hit like and subscribe. Been awhile since I got some interaction from viewers. It is going to take a lot of interacting, along with relative consistency on my part to get the algorithm back on my side so please, help me make this a more legitimate thing.

Tonight, we are taking our little true crime time machine back to the year 2008. But first, lets travel back a little further, to September 2006. Jodi Arias and Travis Alexander first met when they had a work conference for Prepaid Legal Services in Las Vegas, Nevada. They were immediately infatuated with each other but Travis had reservations because he was a devout Mormon and she was not. On November 26 of that same year, Arias converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which was the church Travis belonged to. He, himself, baptized her.

Just a few months later, in February of 2007, the two made their relationship official. Ish. They were on and off, as their relationship was mostly long distance. They often sexted, even when Travis was seeing other women. Jodi was obsessed with him and his friends noticed her lack of respect for his personal space, advising him that she didn't seem stable. At first, he didn't want to hear what they had to say but then he began to realize they were right. He broke it off with Arias for good and moved on to date someone else. Arias did the same, but she was never truly over Travis.

She paid him a visit on this day in 2008, presumably for one last hook-up, or so he thought. 5 days later, a concerned group of friends decided to pay him a visit after they discovered none of them had heard from him in several days. They arrived to find a bloody scene. The poor man had been stabbed 27 times, had a slit throat, and had a gunshot wound to the head.

It wasn't long before police were hot on the perpetrator's tail. Upon investigating Travis's home, they found a mangled digital camera in his washing machine. The images saved to it were thankfully able to be recovered and Jodi was instantly incriminated by them. First the images appeared to be sexually suggestive shots of the two of them in the shower. Then a few blurry shots were revealed with a figure laying on the floor, bloody. It was speculated that these photos were taken by accident during Jodi's frenzied attack on her ex. There was also a bloody hand on the wall that contained Jodi and Travis's DNA so the courts were confident when they arrested her for the murder. When his friends dialed 9-1-1, they mentioned Arias as a suspect right away. They let the dispatcher know that Travis told them just days previous to this that she had been stalking him, accessing his social media accounts, and she even slashed his tires at some point.

Jodi drove a long way from where she lived in California to where she attacked her ex in Arizona. When she returned the rental car she used for the trip on June 7, the car was found to have had 2,800 miles put on it. There were red stains discovered on the upholstery and the floor mats were missing.

I'm gonna skip going into all the detail about the trial and appeals processes because honestly it was a shit show. Bottom line is Jodi Arias was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole at the Arizona Department of Corrections. Her legal team attempted several times to appeal and get mistrials but at the end of the day nothing could dispute the undeniable evidence.

Rest In Peace to her victim, who had such a promising future ahead of him. I hope she's suffering in lock-up just as she deserves.