Podcast Script 

What do killers look like in recent years? 

Podcast Script 

Alyssa Clark 

1. Welcome to today’s episode on 60 Minutes. I am your host, Alyssa, and today I  will be talking about the infamous case in June of 2008, which was the murder of Travis Alexander. Who was killed by his stalker ex-girlfriend in his Arizona home. Was she so scared that he would move on and leave her in the dust that she murdered him in cold blood?  (Picture of Travis Alexander and Jodi Together). 

1. Information on the Victim and Murderer 

   1. Now, let’s get right into it because today’s true crime is going to be a long one. Jodi Ann Arias was born on July  8, 1980, in Salinas, California. She was the youngest child, and she has an older brother. (Picture of Jodi and her family).  She was raised in a fairly strict Catholic family. Jodi would later claim that her family was abusive toward her by hitting her with a belt or with wooden spoons, but her bother and parent deny this claim. Jodi growing up was very artistic. She loved to paint, draw, and take photos. When she entered high school, she loved photography and would take pictures of her everyday life. (A photo of Jodi in her teenage years doing art). Her family and friends noted that Jodi was very boy crazy during high school and was constantly bouncing from One relationship to another. Jodi would drop out of high school and run away at 16 at Yreake High school. Then she went to work at Inn in  Yreake, California. There she would meet 40 years old Darryl Brewer. Brewer was Jodi Arias’s manager at the Inn, and staff noticed that he and Jodi had become flirty and were always around each other. Shortly after, the two started dating and eventually would purchase a home together. Jodi would quit her job at the Inn, work for Prepaid Legal Services, and work a part-time job as a waitress at a local restaurant. She even got involved in the  Moron faith due to many of her coworkers at Prepaid legal services being a Moron. Arias and Brewer’s relationship started to go downhill in December of 2006; Arias had become financially irresponsible and was not paying her part, so the couple decided to split but remained friends. 

   2. Travis Alexander was born on July 28, 1977, in Riverside, California. After his father’s death and his mothers, endless battle with addiction, Travis and his siblings were put in custody of his grandparents, and Travis found faith in the moron religion. Travis became a very strict moron, and he swore by the book of morons (Rae). 

   3. Travis and Jodi's Relationship 

   4. (show photo of Travis and Jodi b88ffd1b232be13fc9a79c7bb44649b4a7-07-jodi-arias-main.2x.rsocial.w600.jpg) Travis and Arias met in September 2006 for a Prepaid Legal Services conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. According to Arias, it was love at first sight. Before meeting Travis, she was in a serious relationship for four years, and they even lived together. When her relationship came to an end, Jodi was set up with Travis, and they hit things off and were inseparable. Due to Jodi and Travis Being two hours away from each other, the couple decided to start a long-distance relationship. She lived in California, and Travis resided in Mesa, Arizona. She would always be the one to drive out to Travis and spend the weekend or just pop up to check on him. Jodi and Travis started this book called 1000 places you need to go in North America before you die and go on plenty of trips and getaways. Travis would even email his friends saying that he plans on marrying her and she is the girl of her dreams, and anyone who marries her wins the bride lotto. Travis’s friends noticed some red flags with Jodi, and they said that she was very possessive, controlling, and manipulative. 

   5. Jodi and Travis’s relationship was very heavily based on sexual relations. According to Arias, since Travis was a Mormon, he was not supposed to participate in sexual relations, but he was sexually active and adventurous (Rae). 

   6.  Travis’s friends said that Jodi was very controlling about which women he talked to and wherever Travis was Jodi. What if she saw a woman she did not know at an event they were at? She would make them aware that she and Travis were together. Whenever Jodi was with Travis and his friends, she would always try to make out with him or touch him. His best friend at the time, Chris Hughes, said that he and his wife sat Travis down and said that they are concerned about him and that Jodi is not the person for him and that she has some major red flags. (Show video clip of Travis friends talking about his and Jodi’s relationship https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHjvo9bD9Es&t=432s) Hughes said he got this feeling that she was eavesdropping and told Travis to check the door and Travis didn't believe him, so he went to go check, and she was standing there with “evil in her eyes” according to Hughes, and he thought she was going to hurt him and his family. She would even go as far as follow him into the bathroom or eavesdrop on his convos. She would even forward herself emails that Travis had with other women (Rae). 

   7. Travis broke up with Jodi because he felt as if she was way too possessive, and she would hack into his phone and emails to see who he was messaging and respond to emails (Rae). 

   8.  He had enough and broke things off with her, and Jodi did not take that too well; she slashed his tires, slashed the women’s tires that Travis was seeing, and send threatening emails and voicemail messages. She would even hide in his bushes to see what he was doing or who he was with. She would break into his House naked and get into bed with him. Travis couldn't resist Jodi; he said that she was his kryptonite. So he continued to sleep with her and let her come out to see him. She even went as far as moving to Mesa, Arizona, right down the street from Travis, and would even clean his house for extra money. In April of 2008, Jodi moved back to California Jodi had moved in with her grandparents. Travis told his friends that he was happy to get his life around and move on from her. Travis remained in contact with Jodi, and they would even engage in phone sex. In May of 2008, one of Travis’s friends revealed that he and Jodi were in a huge fight, and Travis was texting him asking for advice (Rae). 

   9. In early June 2008, Travis was planning on going to a company retreat in Cancun, Mexico, and bringing along with him a girl he was interested in whose name was Mimi. Travis and Mimi had met through a mutual friend. Travis was super into Mimi because she was a strict moron, and he could see him marrying her.  His friend Hughes called Travis several times, asking him for ideas of what to do while down in Mexico. He got no response, and Hughes worried because Travis missed a business call and never did that. Then on June 9th, 2008, it had been five days at that point since anyone had contact with Travis and his friend went to check on him, and his roommate thought he had left from Mexico already, and the friend said no, he was supposed to leave the next day. The roommate unlocked the door, and the most horrific scene was there; the friend rushed in and found Travis dead, and the wife of Hughes went to call the police. During the 911 call, Hughes’s wife stated that she thought Jodi could have done this. Shortly after it got out that Travis was murdered, Jodi reached out to the investigators, asking them that she spoke to Travis that day and that she is more than willing to help in any way possible. Even after Alexander's death, she continued to leave voicemails and text messages, and emails for him (Rae). 

   10. Day of the Murder 

   11. Arias’s whereabouts changed that night several times during the interrogation. Her first story was that she was not home at the time of his death. She later told police that two masked intruders had broken into the home of Travis while she was there, and they said to her that if she were to ever talk about this murder, they were going to murder her and her family. Then her final defense was she killed Travis in self-defense, and she was a victim of domestic violence (Rae). 

   12. A couple of days before the murder of Travis, a burglary took place at the home of Arias’s grandparent’s house at which she was staying, and the only thing taken was her grandfather’s gun. Investigators later discovered that this gun was the gun used to kill Travis. Weeks before the death of Travis, Jodi got in contact with her ex-boyfriend Darryl Brewer. She asked him to borrow two gas cans for her trip to meet her new love interest in Utah, and she said she needed the gas cans to get through Arizona without stopping for gas. A  couple of days Before the murder of Travis, she had rented a car. She stated that the vehicle would be staying local to the rent a car, but the rent a car found it a couple of days later, 2,800 miles away. All the floor mats were gone and looked like Kool-Aid stain in the front and back seats, but the police could not be able to could not because the Rent a car had already cleaned it. The gun was found in Travis's bathroom next to the sink. Then the detectives found a washed camera and bedsheets in the washer. Due to the camera still containing the sim card, the police could recover the photos and discovered that Jodi was with Travis the day of the murder due to the images having a timestamp. Investigators even theorized that she took pictures of the actual murder as it was happening. The other photos on the camera were photos of Jodi and Travis doing a “sexy” photoshoot, and she even took pictures of him in the shower. Then there was a bloody handprint that contained both Travis and Jodi's blood. Also, Jodi denied that she saw Travis that day even after the interrogator presented all this evidence against her (Rae).

   13. Ryan Burns, the guy who Jodi saw at the time, said that Jodi was a whole day late; she was supposed to arrive on June 8th but arrived on June 9th. (Show photo of a driving route that Jodi took the day of Travis’s death join-trip-a-copy.png).  He said that she had bandages all on her hands and was wearing long sleeves on days it was hot and came up with a story on her injuries and said she got hurt while working at a restaurant called “Margaritaville” and it was later discovered that a restaurant like this never existed in her area and that she worked at Casa Ramos (Rae). 

   14. Arias was indicted on July 9, 2008, and she was arrested at her grandparent’s house on July 15, 2008. She was exiled to Arizona on September 5, 2008. She pleaded not guilty on September 11, 2008. (Show a video clip of her weird moments while in the interrogation room https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N274EurzpAA&t=10s). When this video first hit the public, everyone was shocked and surprised at how Arias acted while in the interrogation room. During her interrogation, people were creeped out about how, during her interrogation, and smelling the carpet (Rae). 

   15. Jodi Arias Trial 

   16. The trial started on January 2, 2013, with opening arguments the prosecutor Juan Martinez sought the death penalty. Arias’s counsel was L.Kirk Nurmi and Jennifer Willmott; they argued that Travis’s death was in self-defense. A man testified against Jodi saying that on June 5th, he saw her with bandages and had cut herself while at work on broken glass. The prosecution claimed that Jodi had staged the break-in at her grandparent’s house in order to get the gun without any questions. Arias took the stand for her defense on Feb 4, 2013, she was on the witness stand for a total of 18 days. She spent numerous days describing to the prosecution her “self-defense” claim. A reporter said that her testimony was “sad and useless” On her second day on the witness stand, she went into detail about her and Travis’s “crazy sex” life and that Travis would skip around the moron rules by not putting the hot dog into the bun but by doing other things. She even claimed that he was attracted to young boys and girls and was helping him “fight” his urges. Starting on March 14th, many psychologists came onto the witness stand and tested Jodi’s credibility of being a domestic abuse survivor and if everything was working upstairs. The prosecution accused the first psychologist Richard Samuels of getting too “personal” with Jodi and being blinded. The second psychologist specializing in PTSD and domestic violence states that Jodi has PTSD and might have been an abuse survivor. The jury was allowed to ask questions and most of the questions about the credibility of Jodi. Then the prosecution put on the stand Janeen De Marte saying that she suffers from PTSD or amnesia and has a borderline personality disorder and cannot find her true identity, and hates the feeling of being abandoned by others. (Show a clip of her on the witness stand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRW-o2mdqwQ)

   17. In closing arguments on May 4, 2013, the arias team argued that Jodi did not commit premeditated murder, Travis. And that is why she would want to kill the person that she cared most about. The prosecution came back and said if she loved Travis and much as she is saying, why would she cause this much damage to the boy and stab him often and slash his throat and then shoot him in the head. On May 8n2013 Jodi was found guilty of first-degree murder. Due to the first-degree murder conviction, the prosecution had to convince the jury that the murder was cruel and intentional for Arias to get the death penalty. The aggravation phase started on May 15, 2013, and the only witness used in this trial was the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Alexander. Arias’s attorney repeatedly asked to step down from the case. Still, the judge denied it, so the council just gave brief opening and closing statements and open-ended arguments and said that maybe Travis's Adrenaline was running so much that he didn't feel that much pain. Self-defense to a conclusion that arias were eligible for the death penalty. OnMay 23,2013, the sentencing phase of Arias’s trial resulted in a hung jury which made the judge announce a mistrial; the jury was 8 to 4 in favor of death. On May 30th, the judge decided that Jodi would be sent to live in prison without the possibility of parole.  She then went on to do many interviews and specials and even got books written about her on her case (Rae). 

   18. In the end, Jodi Arias was a girlfriend that went crazy and killed her ex-boyfriend out of jealously. She was not able to let Travis move on without him in her life. I guess there is such thing as a “fatal attraction.”

 

Bibliography

 

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ABC News, director. Wrath of Jodi. YouTube, YouTube, 24 Dec. 2020, 

Accessed on May 14, 2021. 

ABCNews, director. Travis Alexander's Friends Warned Him about Jodi Arias before His Murder | Nightline. YouTube, YouTube, 15 Feb. 2020, Accessed on May 14, 2021. 

Alexander, Jace, director. Jodi Arias Dirty Little Secret 2013 FULL MOVIE. YouTube, YouTube, 30 Dec. 2020, Accessed on May 14, 2021. 

Rae, Kendall, director. Travis Alexander: Murdered By Stalker Ex-Girlfriend Jodi Arias. Travis Alexander: Girlfriend Turned Stalker, YouTube, 2 Dec. 2020, Accessed on May 14, 2021.