October 14, 2024 • 41 mins
Jodi Arias is creating a cottage industry for herself behind bars. With a little help from her family, Arias is selling artwork online and has a website and an Instagram account promoting and selling her artwork. She begins selling her artwork through her brother and his Ebay account. Arias claims when her art begins to gain recognition, eBay bans it quote "on the grounds that I was a felon."
Jodi Arias claims, "random opportunists" are exploiting her by making money on a "postcard I may or may not have written", so, with the help of her family, Arias sets up her own online store and art gallery where she offers up paintings from $28 to $40 and a set if collectible postcards for $34.95. Her website claims an acrylic painting titled "Beyond the Horizon" is selling for $2,500.
Joining Nancy Grace Today:
- Derek Smith - Criminal Defense Attorney, website: dwsmithlegal.com
- Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst Author "Deal Breaker, https://www.drbethanymarshall.com/, Instagram & TikTok: drbethanymarshall, Twitter:@DrBethanyLive
- Andy Kahan - Director of Victim Services and Advocacy at Crime Stoppers of Houston, crime-stoppers.org
- Joseph Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics: Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet", Host: "Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan", @JoScottForensic
- Susan Hendricks - Journalist, Author: “Down the Hill: My Descent into the Double Murder in Delphi”, IG @susan_hendricks X @SusanHendicks
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crime Stories with Nancy Greece. Incredible. I thought I had
misread when I learned convicted killer Jody Arius. Remember her?
Jody Arius stabbed her boyfriend Chavis Alexander. There's an argument
(00:26):
about how many times she stabbed him dead because there
were so many stab wounds close to thirty that they
were overlapping each other and you couldn't tell if it
was one stab or two or three, and then capped
it off by shooting him in the head, leaving him
to decompose in a showerstall. Why because he dared to
(00:46):
ask another woman on a date after a marathon sex
session with Arius. She just couldn't take it. Jody Arius
is selling her artwork for one thousands. One of her
pieces of art is going for let me check this,
Maybe I need glasses for twenty five hundred dollars nearly
(01:12):
three thousand dollars. Hey, you know she's just getting a
magazine and tracing over it. Right that said, have you
ever heard of blood money? I need see Grace. This
is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
A WorldWind romance between aspiring photographer Jody Arius and salesman
Travis Alexander turns sour the explosive pair is on and
off again, but this time Travis swears they're done for good.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
And there's a reason. He swore to his friends he
was done with her for good. When we say a stalker,
we normally picture a husband or boyfriend and ex looking
in your wind, calling you non stop, following you around,
putting a GPS tracker on your vehicle. You don't normally
(02:06):
think of a woman. Jody are areas like Jody Arias
as being a stalker. But oh boy, she was a stalker.
And then some you don't believe me. Listen, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
A friend of ours is dead in his bedroom. We
hadn't heard from him for a while. We think he's dead.
His roommates just going in there, and so they bought
some blood. I didn't go in, but I can give
you this songe to someone who went in there.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Can yes, please?
Speaker 5 (02:36):
Can you hello?
Speaker 6 (02:37):
Hi? What's going on?
Speaker 1 (02:39):
He's dead? He's in his bedroom in the shower.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Okay, how did this happen?
Speaker 7 (02:46):
Do you have any idea?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
We have no idea.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Everyone's been wondering about.
Speaker 8 (02:50):
Him for a few days.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
She said that there's blood, so is it coming from
his head?
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Did he.
Speaker 7 (02:56):
It's all over with me.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Renowned expert Joseph Scott Morgan, death investigator who has conducted
thousands of death investigations, be the natural causes accidents, suicide
or homicide. Author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon,
and start of a Hitting You series podcast Body Bags
(03:21):
with Joseph Scott Morgan, Joe Scott, You and I went
round and around and round about how many times Travick's
Alexander was murdered, and we're about to do it again.
It's a rematch. But one thing you said at the
time of the murder that's stuck with me and I'll
(03:41):
never forget it. You described some drops. I don't mean throwback,
I don't mean a transfer drops of blood on Travis
Alexander's sink the way you described it. I had so
(04:03):
many wounds, but these were drops, like around circular drops.
And you described how he would have looked into his
bathroom mirror and seeing himself dying, hit.
Speaker 5 (04:18):
The nail on the head. Nancy, and I remember this
after all these years thinking back to this, you know
those droplets that you're referring to are in fact some
are droplets. But Nancy, here's the really ghastly thing about this.
Many of these are projected droplets, and it's what's referred
to as bloody aspirit. And I'm going to break that
(04:40):
down for you, just so people can understand what this
man went through after he was initially attacked in the shower.
He is aware of this. He leans over the seineking
see the contact, the contact points where his hands were
on the sink. He's leaning forward looking himself in the mirror,
and Nancy, he aspirated blood down into his airway and
(05:03):
spit it back out, So he's aspirating blowing it out,
and you get these fine little dots of blood that
were all all over the place at this point in time.
And it's a horrible event to imagine. This guy's just
taking a shower. Can you imagine suddenly you're getting stabbed
in the back by this demon and name Jon And.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
You know he was found decomposing in the shower. But
I'm looking at the sink and I will never forget
this photo. And if you look to the left of
the faucet, toward the front of the sink, you see
two of the dropped drops you were describing. And then
if you go right, you see another drop. Now it's
(05:45):
amazing to me that you, as a death scene investigator,
could distinguish the difference between those drops and all the
other blood. But now that you told me about it,
I see it. I'm looking up at the stars and
if you don't know what you're doing, you can't see
the constellations. Looking at this blood tells a story, and
(06:08):
you can even determine which blood was aspiration. In other words,
he was bleeding. When he breathed out of his mouth
or nose, you would get a fine spray, especially from
the nose of blood.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Yes, yeah, you're absolutely right with this, Nancy, and he
would be bearing witness to this. This is one of
the issues with me, after we've covered this for so
many years. He's actually eyeballing himself in the mirror. He
has not lost his sight, his ability to see. If
you can imagine, he's slowly bleeding out, he has an
awareness he's getting lightheaded, but he's also regurgitating blood and
(06:45):
blowing it out. At the same time, you've got passive droplets,
which like a bloody nose, kind of dropped downward, and
then you have these projected droplets that are very far
hold on.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Scott it's just I compare it to the scene and
arson where accelerant is used. You can tell where the
fire started because you'll see excellerant or you'll see the major,
major portion of the burning, the most destruction in that
spot where the fire started. And here in the shower,
that's where we see an abundance of blood. So would
(07:19):
you agree that's where it started or what would you
what do you think?
Speaker 5 (07:24):
Well, what you're seeing here is passive blood flow and
a lot of this is decomposing as well. But draw
your attention to the right aspect to the shower wall.
There when he was placed into that shower, that's actually
probably where his shoulder was resting, that kind of swipe
that you have right there, and then the settling of
(07:45):
the dark blood headed down the drain. That's a combination
of the seepage of the blood and also combination of
decompositional fluid. She left this guy to literally decompose in
his own bathroom, Nancy.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
There are very few people that can follow an explanation
by Joe Scott Morgan. But before I go to Andy Cohn,
I want you to hear what pops up immediately in
the nine one one call.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
You're a good friend of Travis's. Okay, Has he been depressed.
Speaker 6 (08:14):
At all thinking about any suicide anything like that.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
I don't think he'd been community to say he's been
really depressed because he broke up with this girl and
he was allset about that, But I don't think he
would actually kill himself over that.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Has he been threatened by anyone recently?
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Who he has? He has an ex girlfriend that's been
bothering him and following him and flashing tires and things
like that.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
As you know, the ex girlfriend's name.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
His her name is Jody.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
And there you go, right then, and the nine to
one one called doctor Bethany Marshall. There you're hearing doctor
Bethany Marshall, renown psycho analyst, joining us out of la
at Dr Bethany Marshall dot com. She appears in the
show Paris in Love on Peacock. She's everywhere. Her book
deal Breaker, When to work on a relationship and when
(09:03):
to walk away, specifically pertinent to today's material, today's case. I
cannot believe this woman is selling artwork for nearly three
thousand dollars per sketch. That's a whole nother cannel can
I talk to you about the stalking. Remember those photos
(09:26):
of Jody Arias warning everybody just go ahead and buckle
your seat belt. The jury saw this, as did I.
Jody aria is all sprawled down. I can't remember she
had on underwear or was naked, but anyway, on his
bed they had Oh dep is that her I had
to turn upside down? Is that the day of the
marathon sex session. There's some a lot more racy than that. Anyway,
(09:49):
she has a marathon sex session with Travis Alexander, not judging,
don't care. But it's only after all day in the
South that she says, so you're still taking that woman
to CanKan on that trip? He goes, yeah, these two
were broken up. She had no right to demand he
(10:12):
not date other people. They were broken up over her stocking,
slashing his tires, showing up at his house, leaving cinnabon
on his car at five o'clock in the morning, under
the pretext of getting him breakfast bs. She's trying to
find out he might spend the night over at his place.
He goes on and on and on.
Speaker 8 (10:32):
Bethany, you know, Nancy, he's doing what.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Abuse victims do.
Speaker 8 (10:36):
He's welcoming the abuser right back into the home because
she convinces him that she's not going to hurt him.
So all of this marathon sex. She probably has borderline
sociopathic personality disorder, and women who are borderline you was
sex to hook the other person in to have control
over them. She probably had what we call merger fantasies
(10:59):
in my feet. This is somebody who's so disturbed they
want to merge into the love object. They want to
be one with that person. Any separation between them and
that person, even if that person picks up the phone
or calls their mother or goes away with somebody else,
feels like a under abandonment and a betrayal. And when
(11:19):
they feel abandoned, they feel deflated. And when they feel deflated,
they become enraged. Women with orderline personality disorder, they have
this oceanic rage that leads to plotting and planning, and
plotting and planning. She was probably planning this for a
long long time, and I'm imagining that marathon sex session.
(11:42):
She probably thought that they had an unique and special relationship,
that he was going to come back to her, and
then when he was honest, which I admired him for
and said, I'm going on this vacation. She just snapped.
Her emotions outpaced her ability to think. What's interesting about
the sand you just played. The roommates knew that Jody
(12:05):
Arius was going to do this. Remember that party, Nancy,
We all covered this where they were all hanging out,
I think at the apartment and she either had her
head in his lap or his legs across his lap.
They say she was marking her territory. She belonged to
her and nobody else in her mind.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And it's always amazing to me that people can name
the killer in the nine on one call. It's like
everybody knows. Of course that's not evidence, can't come in
as evidence. But when I have ten people saying she
did it, I listen crime stories with Nancy Grace joining
(12:54):
me right now. Is a very special guest, a longtime
colleague that has become a friend. And as weird as
it may sound, we bonded over toenails, not his toenails,
not my toenails, but the toenails of on Hell on
(13:16):
Hell Ramirez. Correct, wasn't that his name? Or on Hell
Resendez Ramirez. What I know is he's a serial killer
selling his toenails from behind bars and people actually paid
for it. When you told me that, I said a
technical legal term BS, I don't know, come to my office.
I followed you, and your office at that time was
(13:39):
like a treasure show trope. Now let me say a
Pandora's box, okay of evils of all these people around
the country that were selling murder rebelia and you you
coined that phrase. I stole it, but you made that
up and now oh Arius is doing it.
Speaker 9 (14:02):
Yeah. I mean, you had this giant industry that's sprung
up primarily from the Internet, in which you have serial killers,
mass murders, school shooters, high profile killers like Yoda Areas
who like it or not, has a big name, she
has a following, and they have found a way to
continue to enable their narcissistic behavior. I mean, obviously she
(14:22):
has a giant ego and she is simply selling her artwork.
No one should be able to rob, rape, and murder
then turn around and make a buck off it.
Speaker 7 (14:31):
I don't care.
Speaker 9 (14:32):
You know, if you're a firm believer in capitalism or whatever,
this is where you've got to draw the line and
the buck has to stop here. You cannot continue to
allow a convicted murderer to essentially operate a business behind
prison bars. I'm just absolutely shocked because most of the time,
in my research and dealings, most of the time prisons
(14:53):
are not aware that a particular inmate is selling their
goods through third parties. But the Arizona Department the Corrections
is completely complicit because they're aware of it, and they're
just shrugging their shoulders saying, there's nothing we can do
to quote you, Nancy. That's bs because most prisons have
(15:13):
policies in the prison that state you cannot operate a
business unless you have their permission.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
I cannot believe.
Speaker 9 (15:24):
That the Arizona Department of Corrections would give their permission
to allow Jody Arius to profit from killing Travis Alexander.
That is absolutely absurd. I've not seen that in my
twenty five years of researching this industry.
Speaker 8 (15:39):
His bedroom is ware in the house.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
It's upstairs, and if you go up the stairs, it's
on the left. It's the first door on your left.
It's the only door on your left, okay, and it's
just a big master sweet paging that day.
Speaker 10 (16:00):
And.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
She's talking to his friend right now and there's a
girl that sends stocking him and then and she's trying
and he's trying to, uh, you might know with some information.
I hope my phone doesn't. I'm on like one bar
of battery.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Okay, Well, I'm just going to keep you on the
phone until.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Officers are right, either officers or pyramids arrive. Okay, okay,
I think I can hear the same.
Speaker 11 (16:29):
Where he is.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Travis Alexander. Friends haven't heard from him for days. They're
supposed to take off for Cancun in only a matter
of hours, but Travis is nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
What happened to Travis Alexander we know now his then
lover spurned, who had been stalking him, murdered him in
a brutal fashion. The brutality I've seen a lot of murders,
and the murder Travis Alexander is one of the most
brutal murders I've ever seen. Now she's selling her artwork online. Wait,
(17:10):
this is her artwork, not mine. Here you go. There's
a lady straddling a man. I'm not the church lady.
I don't care, but I don't like Arias making money
off of it. Take a look at her. Oh, there's
a self portrait at PERivale prison. Guess that's what she thinks.
She looks like, Okay, there you go. I didn't know
(17:30):
they had fingernail polish. But behind bars see the nature
of her art. Check it out Jody Arius's art work.
Now you heard Andy Kahn joining us saying that the
jail is turning a blind eye. And I agree. She's
(17:50):
not creating art for her own enjoyment or fulfillment. She's
creating it to sell it. Now what she's doing the
money that, I don't know, but she is selling this
art and it is blood money. What happened? Listen to this.
Speaker 12 (18:09):
I was actually watching a movie with my girlfriend at
the time or my wife now, and.
Speaker 11 (18:17):
I remember getting a knock on my door and.
Speaker 12 (18:21):
Travis's friends came to the door and they said, have
you seen Travis? And I said, well, no, I haven't
seen Travis. He's supposed to be in CanCon or out
on vacation right now. And they said, yes he is,
but he's supposed to be here with me with Mimi,
And so I said, well, have you checked his bedroom?
Speaker 11 (18:39):
And that was my first thought.
Speaker 12 (18:42):
So they said, well, no, we have in the doors locked,
and I said, I think he keeps a spare set
of keys downstairs.
Speaker 11 (18:47):
So I went downstairs and I searched for him.
Speaker 12 (18:49):
And grabbed a few sets of keys and came back
upstairs and tried a few different sets of keys, and
one of them happened to be his bedroom key.
Speaker 11 (18:56):
And as soon as the door was opened, my heart
just seeing.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
And listen to more of what Travis's friend Zach billings
tennels me.
Speaker 12 (19:08):
She came up to me and gave me a big
hug and just said, I'm you know, isn't this just horrible?
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. And
she asked me where I was living at the time,
and that was about the extent of our interaction after
that point.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Did she ask you any questions regarding your discovery of
the body?
Speaker 12 (19:30):
She asked me, just a brief of what happened, as
far as my interaction with as far as my interaction
with anybody else. Had the police talk to me? And
she already knew at that point that I had seen
the body, and just asked what the process was going through,
(19:50):
what I was going through.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Joining me now. Susan Hendricks, investigative journalist, author of a
brand new book, Down the Hill Mine Descent to the
double murder in Delvi. Susan, thank you for being with us.
Explain to me where is Jody Arius and how is
she enabled to sell her art for a profit online?
Speaker 6 (20:13):
Yeah, Nancy, good to be here. I couldn't believe it
when I heard it. And I remember covering with you
the Jody Arias trial day in and day out, and
the day she was called to that stand, and everything
she said on the stand. I put nothing past her,
revictimizing his family has seven siblings, over and over again.
(20:33):
Remember this, Nancy, the headstand. I would put nothing past her.
I also remember her walking in claiming she was an
abuse victim, holding up a T shirt that said survivor
on it, then begging the jurors for her life, and
showing a slide show of her artwork. So I put
nothing past her. I just wish she would donate the
(20:53):
money to the family members of Travis. I remember her saying,
I'll help people, please spare my life. I'll do good.
And well, what is she doing that's so good except
benefiting herself off the murder of.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Travis and Susan having a string of love lorn men
trying to get her affection. Why I do not know,
but I guarantee you this much. They all send her money.
Derek Smith joining me high profile criminal defense attorney and
you can find him it d WS. D W Smith Legal,
(21:24):
repeat d W Smith Legal. Derek, you know your way
around the courtroom. What and the hate went wrong? Because
you know, I guess you have to play the cards.
That's delcha because her attorney and I've spoke many many times.
At first she claimed she had no idea what happened,
(21:47):
what I wasn't there. Then she was tracked across the desert.
She actually filled up big tanks of gas put them
in her trunk so she would be spotted at a
gas station. She goes all the way across the desert
to get to Travis Alexander. She gets there, then she
(22:09):
waits for it. Derek Smith, I could just see you
doing a backflip when you find out about this elence
it it's your client. She had a digital camera that
she was using to take naughty photos off herself during
their sex marathon, and Ding Dong put it in the
washing machine. The digitkam and the cops find it and
(22:30):
guess what it survived, and they actually see a picture
of her foot and leg in the photo, and then
those clothes she was wearing in that photo are traced
back to her. So first she says, I went there.
I don't know anything about it. Then the digikim shows
up in the washer and she goes, okay, I was
(22:51):
there and two ninjas. I think it was too just
all in black. Of course for dramatic flare broke in,
they kill him, I run for it. And then by
the end she climbed, Oh it was self defense. What
do you do with that? Derek Smith?
Speaker 13 (23:07):
Oh, you've seen this many times before, dealing with you know,
victims and on the prosecutorial side, and of course on
the defensive side, stories change all the time. When you
have just mountains of evidence against the defendant, in this
case self preservation. You know, the first thing is deny, deny, deny,
(23:29):
and then the second thing is okay, I'm caught.
Speaker 8 (23:31):
How am I going to get out of this?
Speaker 13 (23:32):
And you can tell the rabbit hole that these defendants
dig themselves deeper and deeper, and then once they get
to me or someone.
Speaker 8 (23:38):
Like me on the defense, what are we going to do?
Speaker 13 (23:41):
You've already pretty much buried yourself, and all we can
do is try to mitigate at this point, you know,
work with the prosecution, work with you know, the detectives,
the police officers, and I mean they do a good
enough job to find this evidence that these defendants think, Hey,
I'm smarter than them. I'm going to be able to,
like you say, throw this but it's in the washing
machine and the driver get rid of it. No, sorry,
(24:02):
it doesn't work like that. Our detectives in our law
enforcement are much better than the defendants.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Derek Smith is joining US high profile lawyer in Ohio's
tried a lot of cases. Is at d W Smith
Legal dot com. Derek, can I just get you to
confess to a common defense tactic, and that is you say, no, no,
we had nothing to do with it, and you're kind
(24:30):
of stalling waiting to see what the state's evidence is
going to be. And then let's just pretend you find
a fingerprint. Then you go, okay, yeah, you know what,
I was there, but not the day of the murder.
Oh no, I was dating him, and so my fingerprints
are all over that place, all right. Then you find
(24:51):
out about the digikim with the date and the time
stamp on it. Then you say something like oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's not my digit caam. Then you see her face
on it, and you know, okay, that is my digitcam.
But those pictures were from a different time and obviously
the time and date stamp are wrong. Okay, then that's
(25:12):
disproved that. I mean, do you tailor your defense based
on the state's evidence as in Unfolds?
Speaker 13 (25:21):
Of course, you know that. I mean, ideally, we tell
our clients not to speak. They have a right to
not talk. The more they talk, generally, the more they
can damage the case. It is our job as defense
attorneys to sort through the evidence to make sure that
everything was done constitutionally, and then speak with our clients
(25:44):
to figure out, you know what, how did this evidence
get there? How are your fingerprints there? Why are these
videos of you there? And then Taylor defense accordingly, Andrew.
Speaker 11 (25:57):
How did this happen?
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Do you have any idea?
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Yeah, that girlfriend's been bothering him. He's following him and
shouting hired and things like that.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
There is a Jill that sends doctor who he's bringing
to Jody.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
And now Jody Arius who stabbed Travis Alexander unarmed Travis
Alexander while he's in the shower. Joe Scott, what's your
final tally? Now, after many discussions with me about how
many times he was.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
Stabbed, it has to me at least thirty. It's hard,
it's indeterminate, but there's injuries you're missing here, Nancy, if
you want to go down this brutal road, he wasn't
just stabbed. He had his throat cut from ear to ear.
Oh and by the way, I don't know folks notice this,
but those pictures of his ankles, I've often held that
(26:48):
while he was trying to escape from her, when he's
in that hallway, that little walkway there, she stomped on
this man's ankles while he was there to try to
keep him down. Oh and by the way, if that
wasn't enough, she takes a pistol and after he's dead.
And I still hold that this was a postmortem shot,
because there's no hemorrhage in the wound track, she shot
(27:10):
him in the head and then drags him back to
the shower and leaves like the coward.
Speaker 11 (27:17):
That she was.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
I started to comment on one of the aspects of
your answer, but just the brutality, the brutality that she
inflicted upon him, and now she wants us to buy
her art and line her pockets. I don't know what
she's Susan Hendricks joining US investigative journalist and author. What
(27:41):
does she spend it on?
Speaker 6 (27:43):
I know I was wondering that too. At first I
thought it maybe would fall under the son of Sam law,
but maybe because it's not directly connected to the crime.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
But it's just horrific.
Speaker 6 (27:55):
I wonder if she has that money and has extra
I don't know, commissary some money in prison to do
what she wants to do. And I did hear that
one of the guards even bought one of them of
the cow I believe.
Speaker 8 (28:08):
So it's just it's.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Yes, I was reading about that. I think one of
the guards quote inspired it because under her prince she
explains what inspired the art. Okay, everybody get your barf
bag ready, because not only is she quite the artiste
making a lot of money, she's also a singer. Now
(28:31):
hold on, let's see if she hits the high note. Listen, oh.
Speaker 8 (28:36):
Angels, oh no.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Dee bite.
Speaker 6 (28:48):
When Christ was.
Speaker 8 (28:51):
Oh no.
Speaker 9 (28:54):
Dee.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I guess she hit it in a way. To you,
Andy Kahn, this woman, this woman think about it, Andy,
looks are deceiving. Have you seen that string of photos
that are being shown of her looking really pretty? She's
not really pretty because the way I imagine her, the
(29:20):
way I envisioned her, is the truth of her leaving
the scene of the murder literally dripping and blood, and
then hopping in a car as the blood dried under
her fingernails, and driving to the next lover where she
literally hopped on him and straddled him, which is evocative
(29:43):
of one of her photo one of her paintings so called.
I mean, just.
Speaker 9 (29:49):
What, Here's what's missing from this, Travis Alexander. This is
all about Jody Arius. Can you imagine what family members
friends of Rabs Alexander are now going through. It is
probably one of the most nauseating and disgusting feelings in
the world when you find out the person who murdered
your loved one now has items being hot on the
(30:13):
world Wide Web for pure profit, simply because she murdered him.
That is the only reason why she is relevant. And
all this does is feeds into her insatiable ego for
the life of me Arizona Department of Corrections and I
hope you hear me loudly and clearly. You have powers.
(30:33):
She is an inmate in your prison. How in that
hell can you allow her to ship out artwork and
have prison guards also coming abye for visits, commenting and
buying her artwork. Shame on you, Arizona Department of Corrections,
because you're the one that's allowing her to continue to
feel relevant by having her name in the public. And
(30:56):
why we're doing this show, I don't care. You just
shouldn't be able to rob, rape and murder and turn
around and make a buck off. It's that simplistic. And
Jodi eras this should be the last time we talk
about her.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
I know for a fact, Andy that the jail, the prison,
the CI Correctional Institute in which she's being held does
know about her artwork. I mean, if you can believe
anything she says, and I guess you got to take
it with a box assault because she writes underneath the
cow painting, an officer interested in the painting's progress kept
(31:30):
asking how it was coming along. She said it several
times and it.
Speaker 9 (31:37):
Years ago when jeff Years ago, when Jeffrey Dahmer was
killed in prison, a prison guard cleaned out his prison
well and then sold his shaving kit online. That prison
guard was fired.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
You know, we're looking at so called artwork. I think
what she does is gets stock photos and then traces them.
But that said, what more do we know, Sysan Hendricks.
I know that she also stated that she gets hungry
behind bars and wants more commissary money. I know that
(32:10):
she has a long list of lonely hearts that write
her and she strings them along. They also send her money.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
Yeah, who cares most about Jody is Jody Arius And
she's able, maybe because of the way she looks. Her
demeanor very different than the monstrous crime scene that we saw,
and she's able, it appears to get what she wants,
saying please. I remember during the trial she didn't want
the death sentence. At first she did, then she didn't
say please, don't do this. My family will hurt, projecting
(32:41):
onto them. Meanwhile, all she cares about is herself and benefiting.
She's hungry in prison, eat prison food. I'm sorry, that's
what a convicted murderer should eat, not benefiting and having
the families hurt. Once again, she seems to get away
with a whole lot even in prison.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
A WorldWind Romance between aspiring photographer Jody Arius and salesman
Travis Alexander turns sour. The explosive pair is on and
off again, but this time Travis swears they're done for good.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Joining me renown psychoanalyst doctor Bethany Marshall joining us from
La not only author but also appears regularly in Paris
in Love on Peacock. Doctor Bethany listened to this.
Speaker 7 (33:37):
You would complain about her, you know, little things here
and there. He never told me about the big things.
Because if he told me about the big things, like
flashing his tires and stealing things from his house, you know,
I would have been like I told you, did I
tell you?
Speaker 6 (33:52):
Didn't?
Speaker 7 (33:52):
I tell you? She was nuts? So he wouldn't. He
would never tell me about the big like really violating
psychotic things.
Speaker 11 (33:59):
That she was.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Now you're hearing Travis's roommate Chris Hugh speaking to me.
Listen to more.
Speaker 7 (34:05):
He was saying things to her like, you hurt me
worse than the passing of my own father. You're a
terrible person, You're despicable, You're the devil daughter. I mean,
he was so angry about something and we don't know
what exactie what that was. She just sat there and
took it. And later she comes back online and says
two things that you're wrong about. I didn't steal your
(34:27):
journals and I didn't slash your tires. She didn't defend
herself against all the other things that he said about her.
And when I saw that, I just said to myself,
you know what, that's her trying to cover up for
what she's about.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
To do to doctor Bethany. Apparently the roommates noticed that
she would follow him to the bathroom, that she would
then when he would go to the restroom, she would
follow him out of the room and then go and
rifle through his stuff in his bedroom. Eves drop on
his car conversations. I mean, it never ended with this woman.
Speaker 8 (35:03):
You know, Nancy. She was pathologically jealous. That's why she
killed him because she knew he was about to go
on the vacation with another woman. So she was rifling
through all of his journals because she wanted to get intel.
She wanted to get information. You know, she may have
stopped or even contacted the other women. You know, she
manipulated him with sex before she killed him. And I
(35:24):
see this artwork as one big manipulation to the public.
She minimizes the painous nature of what she did. The
cow is in a pastoral scene. She looks like she's
on vacation behind prison bars with this cute little bucket
cap and you know, madging orange shirt. In one scene
she's walking into like almost like a Mendeala type setting
(35:47):
that's very spiritual. She looks like Barbie in another picture.
And she also cares skulls with flowers. Now I know
that sort of.
Speaker 14 (35:56):
View of Del Martees, which is very typical if that
selebration in Latin America.
Speaker 8 (36:01):
However, when you pair flowers.
Speaker 14 (36:06):
With a skull, it's like your favorite phrase, my favorite
phrase that you always say, dancing putting perfume on the pig.
It's really minimizing what a skull looks like and what
gets a person to the point where their flesh has
decomposed and they are nothing on a skull.
Speaker 8 (36:23):
So she's turning the heinous nature of the crime into
its opposite, like it's just rainbows and unicorns. And I
think that even seeing a Christmas ham, which happens to
be one of my favorites, that's really manipulative, as she's
like choir girl. So look at that picture right there,
doesn't that have a spiritual quality? Like she's just the
(36:45):
most spiritual person on the baby plant.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
You know what's really crazy is everybody seemed to know
what Areas was up to, including Travis Alexander.
Speaker 7 (36:55):
Listen, guy, passionately, you're saying, Travis, you'll understand, I think
she's dangerous, and he was saying dangerously kidding she wouldn't
hurt a fly, You guys, she's so sweet, she's so nice,
and right as he's defending her, Sky put her finger
to her lips just to tell us to be quiet,
and then she pointed at the door and she lips
(37:16):
she's out there, and Travis rips the door open, and
there's Jodyarius with her face to the door, listening to
our conversation at midnight upstairs on the opposite end of
the house.
Speaker 11 (37:28):
Where he is.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Travis Alexander friends haven't heard from him for days. They're
supposed to take off for Cancun in only a matter
of hours, but Travis is nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
There were so many aerie warnings from friends and family
about what was to come. Listen, and we caught her again.
Speaker 7 (37:51):
I said, Travis's case in point bro, Like, that's what
I'm talking about.
Speaker 6 (37:54):
Who does that?
Speaker 7 (37:56):
Who does that? Normal people don't do that. If you
don't get it, there's nothing I mean, there's nothing more
I can do. But what guy said was she said, Travis,
we're afraid we're going to find you chopped up in
her freezer joining me.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Andy Kahn, director of Victims Services at Crime Stoppers in Houston. Andy,
how many times have we seen murder victims where their
friends and family would say, you got to get out
of this. She he is going to kill you, or
murder victims that before they died said if I go missing, Hey,
(38:31):
she did it.
Speaker 10 (38:32):
I just worked on a case where we had a
young woman that ended up getting stuffed and refrigerator by
her then husband who actually put out, if I go missing,
he is the one that is.
Speaker 8 (38:43):
Basically going to kill me.
Speaker 9 (38:45):
And she sent out so many warning signals on that.
So when other people start to recognize warning signals, I
think you got to pretty start stating taking it seriously
because they're the ones who actually see the truth picture. Unfortunately,
you know, Travis perhaps might have been caught this little
france or whatever with her, but the real story about
(39:06):
this right now is how in the heck can Joey
Areas sit in a prison cell paint, draw, scratch, smith, doodle, whatever,
and then ship items out to be sold on the
open market. And the only reason people buy them is
(39:28):
because she's received some higher proficiency because she is a
high profile killer, without anybody thinking about who she killed,
why she's in prison. And I'm sorry, but you just
you should be able to profit from committing crimes, especially murdered.
It's that simplistic. And why that's the First Amendment allowed
(39:51):
to happen is beyond my comprehension.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
To Derek Smith, high profile criminal defense attorney joining us
out of Ohio. Why are inmates criminals allowed to profit
from their crimes?
Speaker 13 (40:06):
Well, Nancy, in a lot of states, they're not. This
goes back to something we said earlier, the Son of
Sam law that originated from the David Berkowitz murders in
New York, that was brought up on First Amendment all
the way up to the Supreme Court, and they deemed
that was unconstitutional as a violation of their First Amendment rights,
and then the states, you know, tweaked some of those
(40:28):
laws to make it, you know, applicable for that in
many states, but Arizona is not one of them. So
Arizona does not have any laws against inmates in this
situation being able to profit.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Wow, well, maybe after tonight they will. And you know, Derek,
you mentioned Son of Sam laws regarding Berkowitz. You know,
it goes all the way back to the movie Goodfellows,
where there was a lawsuit that went to the US
Supreme Court over profiting from Goodfellows. I mean, this is
a valiantly fought battle and states have the power to
(41:05):
stop this. We wait as just as unfalls. Goodbye friend,
Crime Stories with Nancy Greece. Incredible. I thought I had
misread when I learned convicted killer Jody Arius. Remember her?
Jody Arius stabbed her boyfriend Chavis Alexander. There's an argument
(00:26):
about how many times she stabbed him dead because there
were so many stab wounds close to thirty that they
were overlapping each other and you couldn't tell if it
was one stab or two or three, and then capped
it off by shooting him in the head, leaving him
to decompose in a showerstall. Why because he dared to
(00:46):
ask another woman on a date after a marathon sex
session with Arius. She just couldn't take it. Jody Arius
is selling her artwork for one thousands. One of her
pieces of art is going for let me check this,
Maybe I need glasses for twenty five hundred dollars nearly
(01:12):
three thousand dollars. Hey, you know she's just getting a
magazine and tracing over it. Right that said, have you
ever heard of blood money? I need see Grace. This
is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
A WorldWind romance between aspiring photographer Jody Arius and salesman
Travis Alexander turns sour the explosive pair is on and
off again, but this time Travis swears they're done for good.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
And there's a reason. He swore to his friends he
was done with her for good. When we say a stalker,
we normally picture a husband or boyfriend and ex looking
in your wind, calling you non stop, following you around,
putting a GPS tracker on your vehicle. You don't normally
(02:06):
think of a woman. Jody are areas like Jody Arias
as being a stalker. But oh boy, she was a stalker.
And then some you don't believe me. Listen, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
A friend of ours is dead in his bedroom. We
hadn't heard from him for a while. We think he's dead.
His roommates just going in there, and so they bought
some blood. I didn't go in, but I can give
you this songe to someone who went in there.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Can yes, please?
Speaker 5 (02:36):
Can you hello?
Speaker 6 (02:37):
Hi? What's going on?
Speaker 1 (02:39):
He's dead? He's in his bedroom in the shower.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Okay, how did this happen?
Speaker 7 (02:46):
Do you have any idea?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
We have no idea.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Everyone's been wondering about.
Speaker 8 (02:50):
Him for a few days.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
She said that there's blood, so is it coming from
his head?
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Did he.
Speaker 7 (02:56):
It's all over with me.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Renowned expert Joseph Scott Morgan, death investigator who has conducted
thousands of death investigations, be the natural causes accidents, suicide
or homicide. Author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon,
and start of a Hitting You series podcast Body Bags
(03:21):
with Joseph Scott Morgan, Joe Scott, You and I went
round and around and round about how many times Travick's
Alexander was murdered, and we're about to do it again.
It's a rematch. But one thing you said at the
time of the murder that's stuck with me and I'll
(03:41):
never forget it. You described some drops. I don't mean throwback,
I don't mean a transfer drops of blood on Travis
Alexander's sink the way you described it. I had so
(04:03):
many wounds, but these were drops, like around circular drops.
And you described how he would have looked into his
bathroom mirror and seeing himself dying, hit.
Speaker 5 (04:18):
The nail on the head. Nancy, and I remember this
after all these years thinking back to this, you know
those droplets that you're referring to are in fact some
are droplets. But Nancy, here's the really ghastly thing about this.
Many of these are projected droplets, and it's what's referred
to as bloody aspirit. And I'm going to break that
(04:40):
down for you, just so people can understand what this
man went through after he was initially attacked in the shower.
He is aware of this. He leans over the seineking
see the contact, the contact points where his hands were
on the sink. He's leaning forward looking himself in the mirror,
and Nancy, he aspirated blood down into his airway and
(05:03):
spit it back out, So he's aspirating blowing it out,
and you get these fine little dots of blood that
were all all over the place at this point in time.
And it's a horrible event to imagine. This guy's just
taking a shower. Can you imagine suddenly you're getting stabbed
in the back by this demon and name Jon And.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
You know he was found decomposing in the shower. But
I'm looking at the sink and I will never forget
this photo. And if you look to the left of
the faucet, toward the front of the sink, you see
two of the dropped drops you were describing. And then
if you go right, you see another drop. Now it's
(05:45):
amazing to me that you, as a death scene investigator,
could distinguish the difference between those drops and all the
other blood. But now that you told me about it,
I see it. I'm looking up at the stars and
if you don't know what you're doing, you can't see
the constellations. Looking at this blood tells a story, and
(06:08):
you can even determine which blood was aspiration. In other words,
he was bleeding. When he breathed out of his mouth
or nose, you would get a fine spray, especially from
the nose of blood.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Yes, yeah, you're absolutely right with this, Nancy, and he
would be bearing witness to this. This is one of
the issues with me, after we've covered this for so
many years. He's actually eyeballing himself in the mirror. He
has not lost his sight, his ability to see. If
you can imagine, he's slowly bleeding out, he has an
awareness he's getting lightheaded, but he's also regurgitating blood and
(06:45):
blowing it out. At the same time, you've got passive droplets,
which like a bloody nose, kind of dropped downward, and
then you have these projected droplets that are very far
hold on.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Scott it's just I compare it to the scene and
arson where accelerant is used. You can tell where the
fire started because you'll see excellerant or you'll see the major,
major portion of the burning, the most destruction in that
spot where the fire started. And here in the shower,
that's where we see an abundance of blood. So would
(07:19):
you agree that's where it started or what would you
what do you think?
Speaker 5 (07:24):
Well, what you're seeing here is passive blood flow and
a lot of this is decomposing as well. But draw
your attention to the right aspect to the shower wall.
There when he was placed into that shower, that's actually
probably where his shoulder was resting, that kind of swipe
that you have right there, and then the settling of
(07:45):
the dark blood headed down the drain. That's a combination
of the seepage of the blood and also combination of
decompositional fluid. She left this guy to literally decompose in
his own bathroom, Nancy.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
There are very few people that can follow an explanation
by Joe Scott Morgan. But before I go to Andy Cohn,
I want you to hear what pops up immediately in
the nine one one call.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
You're a good friend of Travis's. Okay, Has he been depressed.
Speaker 6 (08:14):
At all thinking about any suicide anything like that.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
I don't think he'd been community to say he's been
really depressed because he broke up with this girl and
he was allset about that, But I don't think he
would actually kill himself over that.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Has he been threatened by anyone recently?
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Who he has? He has an ex girlfriend that's been
bothering him and following him and flashing tires and things
like that.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
As you know, the ex girlfriend's name.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
His her name is Jody.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
And there you go, right then, and the nine to
one one called doctor Bethany Marshall. There you're hearing doctor
Bethany Marshall, renown psycho analyst, joining us out of la
at Dr Bethany Marshall dot com. She appears in the
show Paris in Love on Peacock. She's everywhere. Her book
deal Breaker, When to work on a relationship and when
(09:03):
to walk away, specifically pertinent to today's material, today's case. I
cannot believe this woman is selling artwork for nearly three
thousand dollars per sketch. That's a whole nother cannel can
I talk to you about the stalking. Remember those photos
(09:26):
of Jody Arias warning everybody just go ahead and buckle
your seat belt. The jury saw this, as did I.
Jody aria is all sprawled down. I can't remember she
had on underwear or was naked, but anyway, on his
bed they had Oh dep is that her I had
to turn upside down? Is that the day of the
marathon sex session. There's some a lot more racy than that. Anyway,
(09:49):
she has a marathon sex session with Travis Alexander, not judging,
don't care. But it's only after all day in the
South that she says, so you're still taking that woman
to CanKan on that trip? He goes, yeah, these two
were broken up. She had no right to demand he
(10:12):
not date other people. They were broken up over her stocking,
slashing his tires, showing up at his house, leaving cinnabon
on his car at five o'clock in the morning, under
the pretext of getting him breakfast bs. She's trying to
find out he might spend the night over at his place.
He goes on and on and on.
Speaker 8 (10:32):
Bethany, you know, Nancy, he's doing what.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Abuse victims do.
Speaker 8 (10:36):
He's welcoming the abuser right back into the home because
she convinces him that she's not going to hurt him.
So all of this marathon sex. She probably has borderline
sociopathic personality disorder, and women who are borderline you was
sex to hook the other person in to have control
over them. She probably had what we call merger fantasies
(10:59):
in my feet. This is somebody who's so disturbed they
want to merge into the love object. They want to
be one with that person. Any separation between them and
that person, even if that person picks up the phone
or calls their mother or goes away with somebody else,
feels like a under abandonment and a betrayal. And when
(11:19):
they feel abandoned, they feel deflated. And when they feel deflated,
they become enraged. Women with orderline personality disorder, they have
this oceanic rage that leads to plotting and planning, and
plotting and planning. She was probably planning this for a
long long time, and I'm imagining that marathon sex session.
(11:42):
She probably thought that they had an unique and special relationship,
that he was going to come back to her, and
then when he was honest, which I admired him for
and said, I'm going on this vacation. She just snapped.
Her emotions outpaced her ability to think. What's interesting about
the sand you just played. The roommates knew that Jody
(12:05):
Arius was going to do this. Remember that party, Nancy,
We all covered this where they were all hanging out,
I think at the apartment and she either had her
head in his lap or his legs across his lap.
They say she was marking her territory. She belonged to
her and nobody else in her mind.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And it's always amazing to me that people can name
the killer in the nine on one call. It's like
everybody knows. Of course that's not evidence, can't come in
as evidence. But when I have ten people saying she
did it, I listen crime stories with Nancy Grace joining
(12:54):
me right now. Is a very special guest, a longtime
colleague that has become a friend. And as weird as
it may sound, we bonded over toenails, not his toenails,
not my toenails, but the toenails of on Hell on
(13:16):
Hell Ramirez. Correct, wasn't that his name? Or on Hell
Resendez Ramirez. What I know is he's a serial killer
selling his toenails from behind bars and people actually paid
for it. When you told me that, I said a
technical legal term BS, I don't know, come to my office.
I followed you, and your office at that time was
(13:39):
like a treasure show trope. Now let me say a
Pandora's box, okay of evils of all these people around
the country that were selling murder rebelia and you you
coined that phrase. I stole it, but you made that
up and now oh Arius is doing it.
Speaker 9 (14:02):
Yeah. I mean, you had this giant industry that's sprung
up primarily from the Internet, in which you have serial killers,
mass murders, school shooters, high profile killers like Yoda Areas
who like it or not, has a big name, she
has a following, and they have found a way to
continue to enable their narcissistic behavior. I mean, obviously she
(14:22):
has a giant ego and she is simply selling her artwork.
No one should be able to rob, rape, and murder
then turn around and make a buck off it.
Speaker 7 (14:31):
I don't care.
Speaker 9 (14:32):
You know, if you're a firm believer in capitalism or whatever,
this is where you've got to draw the line and
the buck has to stop here. You cannot continue to
allow a convicted murderer to essentially operate a business behind
prison bars. I'm just absolutely shocked because most of the time,
in my research and dealings, most of the time prisons
(14:53):
are not aware that a particular inmate is selling their
goods through third parties. But the Arizona Department the Corrections
is completely complicit because they're aware of it, and they're
just shrugging their shoulders saying, there's nothing we can do
to quote you, Nancy. That's bs because most prisons have
(15:13):
policies in the prison that state you cannot operate a
business unless you have their permission.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
I cannot believe.
Speaker 9 (15:24):
That the Arizona Department of Corrections would give their permission
to allow Jody Arius to profit from killing Travis Alexander.
That is absolutely absurd. I've not seen that in my
twenty five years of researching this industry.
Speaker 8 (15:39):
His bedroom is ware in the house.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
It's upstairs, and if you go up the stairs, it's
on the left. It's the first door on your left.
It's the only door on your left, okay, and it's
just a big master sweet paging that day.
Speaker 10 (16:00):
And.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
She's talking to his friend right now and there's a
girl that sends stocking him and then and she's trying
and he's trying to, uh, you might know with some information.
I hope my phone doesn't. I'm on like one bar
of battery.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Okay, Well, I'm just going to keep you on the
phone until.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Officers are right, either officers or pyramids arrive. Okay, okay,
I think I can hear the same.
Speaker 11 (16:29):
Where he is.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Travis Alexander. Friends haven't heard from him for days. They're
supposed to take off for Cancun in only a matter
of hours, but Travis is nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
What happened to Travis Alexander we know now his then
lover spurned, who had been stalking him, murdered him in
a brutal fashion. The brutality I've seen a lot of murders,
and the murder Travis Alexander is one of the most
brutal murders I've ever seen. Now she's selling her artwork online. Wait,
(17:10):
this is her artwork, not mine. Here you go. There's
a lady straddling a man. I'm not the church lady.
I don't care, but I don't like Arias making money
off of it. Take a look at her. Oh, there's
a self portrait at PERivale prison. Guess that's what she thinks.
She looks like, Okay, there you go. I didn't know
(17:30):
they had fingernail polish. But behind bars see the nature
of her art. Check it out Jody Arius's art work.
Now you heard Andy Kahn joining us saying that the
jail is turning a blind eye. And I agree. She's
(17:50):
not creating art for her own enjoyment or fulfillment. She's
creating it to sell it. Now what she's doing the
money that, I don't know, but she is selling this
art and it is blood money. What happened? Listen to this.
Speaker 12 (18:09):
I was actually watching a movie with my girlfriend at
the time or my wife now, and.
Speaker 11 (18:17):
I remember getting a knock on my door and.
Speaker 12 (18:21):
Travis's friends came to the door and they said, have
you seen Travis? And I said, well, no, I haven't
seen Travis. He's supposed to be in CanCon or out
on vacation right now. And they said, yes he is,
but he's supposed to be here with me with Mimi,
And so I said, well, have you checked his bedroom?
Speaker 11 (18:39):
And that was my first thought.
Speaker 12 (18:42):
So they said, well, no, we have in the doors locked,
and I said, I think he keeps a spare set
of keys downstairs.
Speaker 11 (18:47):
So I went downstairs and I searched for him.
Speaker 12 (18:49):
And grabbed a few sets of keys and came back
upstairs and tried a few different sets of keys, and
one of them happened to be his bedroom key.
Speaker 11 (18:56):
And as soon as the door was opened, my heart
just seeing.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
And listen to more of what Travis's friend Zach billings
tennels me.
Speaker 12 (19:08):
She came up to me and gave me a big
hug and just said, I'm you know, isn't this just horrible?
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. And
she asked me where I was living at the time,
and that was about the extent of our interaction after
that point.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Did she ask you any questions regarding your discovery of
the body?
Speaker 12 (19:30):
She asked me, just a brief of what happened, as
far as my interaction with as far as my interaction
with anybody else. Had the police talk to me? And
she already knew at that point that I had seen
the body, and just asked what the process was going through,
(19:50):
what I was going through.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Joining me now. Susan Hendricks, investigative journalist, author of a
brand new book, Down the Hill Mine Descent to the
double murder in Delvi. Susan, thank you for being with us.
Explain to me where is Jody Arius and how is
she enabled to sell her art for a profit online?
Speaker 6 (20:13):
Yeah, Nancy, good to be here. I couldn't believe it
when I heard it. And I remember covering with you
the Jody Arias trial day in and day out, and
the day she was called to that stand, and everything
she said on the stand. I put nothing past her,
revictimizing his family has seven siblings, over and over again.
(20:33):
Remember this, Nancy, the headstand. I would put nothing past her.
I also remember her walking in claiming she was an
abuse victim, holding up a T shirt that said survivor
on it, then begging the jurors for her life, and
showing a slide show of her artwork. So I put
nothing past her. I just wish she would donate the
(20:53):
money to the family members of Travis. I remember her saying,
I'll help people, please spare my life. I'll do good.
And well, what is she doing that's so good except
benefiting herself off the murder of.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Travis and Susan having a string of love lorn men
trying to get her affection. Why I do not know,
but I guarantee you this much. They all send her money.
Derek Smith joining me high profile criminal defense attorney and
you can find him it d WS. D W Smith Legal,
(21:24):
repeat d W Smith Legal. Derek, you know your way
around the courtroom. What and the hate went wrong? Because
you know, I guess you have to play the cards.
That's delcha because her attorney and I've spoke many many times.
At first she claimed she had no idea what happened,
(21:47):
what I wasn't there. Then she was tracked across the desert.
She actually filled up big tanks of gas put them
in her trunk so she would be spotted at a
gas station. She goes all the way across the desert
to get to Travis Alexander. She gets there, then she
(22:09):
waits for it. Derek Smith, I could just see you
doing a backflip when you find out about this elence
it it's your client. She had a digital camera that
she was using to take naughty photos off herself during
their sex marathon, and Ding Dong put it in the
washing machine. The digitkam and the cops find it and
(22:30):
guess what it survived, and they actually see a picture
of her foot and leg in the photo, and then
those clothes she was wearing in that photo are traced
back to her. So first she says, I went there.
I don't know anything about it. Then the digikim shows
up in the washer and she goes, okay, I was
(22:51):
there and two ninjas. I think it was too just
all in black. Of course for dramatic flare broke in,
they kill him, I run for it. And then by
the end she climbed, Oh it was self defense. What
do you do with that? Derek Smith?
Speaker 13 (23:07):
Oh, you've seen this many times before, dealing with you know,
victims and on the prosecutorial side, and of course on
the defensive side, stories change all the time. When you
have just mountains of evidence against the defendant, in this
case self preservation. You know, the first thing is deny, deny, deny,
(23:29):
and then the second thing is okay, I'm caught.
Speaker 8 (23:31):
How am I going to get out of this?
Speaker 13 (23:32):
And you can tell the rabbit hole that these defendants
dig themselves deeper and deeper, and then once they get
to me or someone.
Speaker 8 (23:38):
Like me on the defense, what are we going to do?
Speaker 13 (23:41):
You've already pretty much buried yourself, and all we can
do is try to mitigate at this point, you know,
work with the prosecution, work with you know, the detectives,
the police officers, and I mean they do a good
enough job to find this evidence that these defendants think, Hey,
I'm smarter than them. I'm going to be able to,
like you say, throw this but it's in the washing
machine and the driver get rid of it. No, sorry,
(24:02):
it doesn't work like that. Our detectives in our law
enforcement are much better than the defendants.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Derek Smith is joining US high profile lawyer in Ohio's
tried a lot of cases. Is at d W Smith
Legal dot com. Derek, can I just get you to
confess to a common defense tactic, and that is you say, no, no,
we had nothing to do with it, and you're kind
(24:30):
of stalling waiting to see what the state's evidence is
going to be. And then let's just pretend you find
a fingerprint. Then you go, okay, yeah, you know what,
I was there, but not the day of the murder.
Oh no, I was dating him, and so my fingerprints
are all over that place, all right. Then you find
(24:51):
out about the digikim with the date and the time
stamp on it. Then you say something like oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's not my digit caam. Then you see her face
on it, and you know, okay, that is my digitcam.
But those pictures were from a different time and obviously
the time and date stamp are wrong. Okay, then that's
(25:12):
disproved that. I mean, do you tailor your defense based
on the state's evidence as in Unfolds?
Speaker 13 (25:21):
Of course, you know that. I mean, ideally, we tell
our clients not to speak. They have a right to
not talk. The more they talk, generally, the more they
can damage the case. It is our job as defense
attorneys to sort through the evidence to make sure that
everything was done constitutionally, and then speak with our clients
(25:44):
to figure out, you know what, how did this evidence
get there? How are your fingerprints there? Why are these
videos of you there? And then Taylor defense accordingly, Andrew.
Speaker 11 (25:57):
How did this happen?
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Do you have any idea?
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Yeah, that girlfriend's been bothering him. He's following him and
shouting hired and things like that.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
There is a Jill that sends doctor who he's bringing
to Jody.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
And now Jody Arius who stabbed Travis Alexander unarmed Travis
Alexander while he's in the shower. Joe Scott, what's your
final tally? Now, after many discussions with me about how
many times he was.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
Stabbed, it has to me at least thirty. It's hard,
it's indeterminate, but there's injuries you're missing here, Nancy, if
you want to go down this brutal road, he wasn't
just stabbed. He had his throat cut from ear to ear.
Oh and by the way, I don't know folks notice this,
but those pictures of his ankles, I've often held that
(26:48):
while he was trying to escape from her, when he's
in that hallway, that little walkway there, she stomped on
this man's ankles while he was there to try to
keep him down. Oh and by the way, if that
wasn't enough, she takes a pistol and after he's dead.
And I still hold that this was a postmortem shot,
because there's no hemorrhage in the wound track, she shot
(27:10):
him in the head and then drags him back to
the shower and leaves like the coward.
Speaker 11 (27:17):
That she was.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
I started to comment on one of the aspects of
your answer, but just the brutality, the brutality that she
inflicted upon him, and now she wants us to buy
her art and line her pockets. I don't know what
she's Susan Hendricks joining US investigative journalist and author. What
(27:41):
does she spend it on?
Speaker 6 (27:43):
I know I was wondering that too. At first I
thought it maybe would fall under the son of Sam law,
but maybe because it's not directly connected to the crime.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
But it's just horrific.
Speaker 6 (27:55):
I wonder if she has that money and has extra
I don't know, commissary some money in prison to do
what she wants to do. And I did hear that
one of the guards even bought one of them of
the cow I believe.
Speaker 8 (28:08):
So it's just it's.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Yes, I was reading about that. I think one of
the guards quote inspired it because under her prince she
explains what inspired the art. Okay, everybody get your barf
bag ready, because not only is she quite the artiste
making a lot of money, she's also a singer. Now
(28:31):
hold on, let's see if she hits the high note. Listen, oh.
Speaker 8 (28:36):
Angels, oh no.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Dee bite.
Speaker 6 (28:48):
When Christ was.
Speaker 8 (28:51):
Oh no.
Speaker 9 (28:54):
Dee.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I guess she hit it in a way. To you,
Andy Kahn, this woman, this woman think about it, Andy,
looks are deceiving. Have you seen that string of photos
that are being shown of her looking really pretty? She's
not really pretty because the way I imagine her, the
(29:20):
way I envisioned her, is the truth of her leaving
the scene of the murder literally dripping and blood, and
then hopping in a car as the blood dried under
her fingernails, and driving to the next lover where she
literally hopped on him and straddled him, which is evocative
(29:43):
of one of her photo one of her paintings so called.
I mean, just.
Speaker 9 (29:49):
What, Here's what's missing from this, Travis Alexander. This is
all about Jody Arius. Can you imagine what family members
friends of Rabs Alexander are now going through. It is
probably one of the most nauseating and disgusting feelings in
the world when you find out the person who murdered
your loved one now has items being hot on the
(30:13):
world Wide Web for pure profit, simply because she murdered him.
That is the only reason why she is relevant. And
all this does is feeds into her insatiable ego for
the life of me Arizona Department of Corrections and I
hope you hear me loudly and clearly. You have powers.
(30:33):
She is an inmate in your prison. How in that
hell can you allow her to ship out artwork and
have prison guards also coming abye for visits, commenting and
buying her artwork. Shame on you, Arizona Department of Corrections,
because you're the one that's allowing her to continue to
feel relevant by having her name in the public. And
(30:56):
why we're doing this show, I don't care. You just
shouldn't be able to rob, rape and murder and turn
around and make a buck off. It's that simplistic. And
Jodi eras this should be the last time we talk
about her.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
I know for a fact, Andy that the jail, the prison,
the CI Correctional Institute in which she's being held does
know about her artwork. I mean, if you can believe
anything she says, and I guess you got to take
it with a box assault because she writes underneath the
cow painting, an officer interested in the painting's progress kept
(31:30):
asking how it was coming along. She said it several
times and it.
Speaker 9 (31:37):
Years ago when jeff Years ago, when Jeffrey Dahmer was
killed in prison, a prison guard cleaned out his prison
well and then sold his shaving kit online. That prison
guard was fired.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
You know, we're looking at so called artwork. I think
what she does is gets stock photos and then traces them.
But that said, what more do we know, Sysan Hendricks.
I know that she also stated that she gets hungry
behind bars and wants more commissary money. I know that
(32:10):
she has a long list of lonely hearts that write
her and she strings them along. They also send her money.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
Yeah, who cares most about Jody is Jody Arius And
she's able, maybe because of the way she looks. Her
demeanor very different than the monstrous crime scene that we saw,
and she's able, it appears to get what she wants,
saying please. I remember during the trial she didn't want
the death sentence. At first she did, then she didn't
say please, don't do this. My family will hurt, projecting
(32:41):
onto them. Meanwhile, all she cares about is herself and benefiting.
She's hungry in prison, eat prison food. I'm sorry, that's
what a convicted murderer should eat, not benefiting and having
the families hurt. Once again, she seems to get away
with a whole lot even in prison.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
A WorldWind Romance between aspiring photographer Jody Arius and salesman
Travis Alexander turns sour. The explosive pair is on and
off again, but this time Travis swears they're done for good.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Joining me renown psychoanalyst doctor Bethany Marshall joining us from
La not only author but also appears regularly in Paris
in Love on Peacock. Doctor Bethany listened to this.
Speaker 7 (33:37):
You would complain about her, you know, little things here
and there. He never told me about the big things.
Because if he told me about the big things, like
flashing his tires and stealing things from his house, you know,
I would have been like I told you, did I
tell you?
Speaker 6 (33:52):
Didn't?
Speaker 7 (33:52):
I tell you? She was nuts? So he wouldn't. He
would never tell me about the big like really violating
psychotic things.
Speaker 11 (33:59):
That she was.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Now you're hearing Travis's roommate Chris Hugh speaking to me.
Listen to more.
Speaker 7 (34:05):
He was saying things to her like, you hurt me
worse than the passing of my own father. You're a
terrible person, You're despicable, You're the devil daughter. I mean,
he was so angry about something and we don't know
what exactie what that was. She just sat there and
took it. And later she comes back online and says
two things that you're wrong about. I didn't steal your
(34:27):
journals and I didn't slash your tires. She didn't defend
herself against all the other things that he said about her.
And when I saw that, I just said to myself,
you know what, that's her trying to cover up for
what she's about.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
To do to doctor Bethany. Apparently the roommates noticed that
she would follow him to the bathroom, that she would
then when he would go to the restroom, she would
follow him out of the room and then go and
rifle through his stuff in his bedroom. Eves drop on
his car conversations. I mean, it never ended with this woman.
Speaker 8 (35:03):
You know, Nancy. She was pathologically jealous. That's why she
killed him because she knew he was about to go
on the vacation with another woman. So she was rifling
through all of his journals because she wanted to get intel.
She wanted to get information. You know, she may have
stopped or even contacted the other women. You know, she
manipulated him with sex before she killed him. And I
(35:24):
see this artwork as one big manipulation to the public.
She minimizes the painous nature of what she did. The
cow is in a pastoral scene. She looks like she's
on vacation behind prison bars with this cute little bucket
cap and you know, madging orange shirt. In one scene
she's walking into like almost like a Mendeala type setting
(35:47):
that's very spiritual. She looks like Barbie in another picture.
And she also cares skulls with flowers. Now I know
that sort of.
Speaker 14 (35:56):
View of Del Martees, which is very typical if that
selebration in Latin America.
Speaker 8 (36:01):
However, when you pair flowers.
Speaker 14 (36:06):
With a skull, it's like your favorite phrase, my favorite
phrase that you always say, dancing putting perfume on the pig.
It's really minimizing what a skull looks like and what
gets a person to the point where their flesh has
decomposed and they are nothing on a skull.
Speaker 8 (36:23):
So she's turning the heinous nature of the crime into
its opposite, like it's just rainbows and unicorns. And I
think that even seeing a Christmas ham, which happens to
be one of my favorites, that's really manipulative, as she's
like choir girl. So look at that picture right there,
doesn't that have a spiritual quality? Like she's just the
(36:45):
most spiritual person on the baby plant.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
You know what's really crazy is everybody seemed to know
what Areas was up to, including Travis Alexander.
Speaker 7 (36:55):
Listen, guy, passionately, you're saying, Travis, you'll understand, I think
she's dangerous, and he was saying dangerously kidding she wouldn't
hurt a fly, You guys, she's so sweet, she's so nice,
and right as he's defending her, Sky put her finger
to her lips just to tell us to be quiet,
and then she pointed at the door and she lips
(37:16):
she's out there, and Travis rips the door open, and
there's Jodyarius with her face to the door, listening to
our conversation at midnight upstairs on the opposite end of
the house.
Speaker 11 (37:28):
Where he is.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Travis Alexander friends haven't heard from him for days. They're
supposed to take off for Cancun in only a matter
of hours, but Travis is nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
There were so many aerie warnings from friends and family
about what was to come. Listen, and we caught her again.
Speaker 7 (37:51):
I said, Travis's case in point bro, Like, that's what
I'm talking about.
Speaker 6 (37:54):
Who does that?
Speaker 7 (37:56):
Who does that? Normal people don't do that. If you
don't get it, there's nothing I mean, there's nothing more
I can do. But what guy said was she said, Travis,
we're afraid we're going to find you chopped up in
her freezer joining me.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Andy Kahn, director of Victims Services at Crime Stoppers in Houston. Andy,
how many times have we seen murder victims where their
friends and family would say, you got to get out
of this. She he is going to kill you, or
murder victims that before they died said if I go missing, Hey,
(38:31):
she did it.
Speaker 10 (38:32):
I just worked on a case where we had a
young woman that ended up getting stuffed and refrigerator by
her then husband who actually put out, if I go missing,
he is the one that is.
Speaker 8 (38:43):
Basically going to kill me.
Speaker 9 (38:45):
And she sent out so many warning signals on that.
So when other people start to recognize warning signals, I
think you got to pretty start stating taking it seriously
because they're the ones who actually see the truth picture. Unfortunately,
you know, Travis perhaps might have been caught this little
france or whatever with her, but the real story about
(39:06):
this right now is how in the heck can Joey
Areas sit in a prison cell paint, draw, scratch, smith, doodle, whatever,
and then ship items out to be sold on the
open market. And the only reason people buy them is
(39:28):
because she's received some higher proficiency because she is a
high profile killer, without anybody thinking about who she killed,
why she's in prison. And I'm sorry, but you just
you should be able to profit from committing crimes, especially murdered.
It's that simplistic. And why that's the First Amendment allowed
(39:51):
to happen is beyond my comprehension.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
To Derek Smith, high profile criminal defense attorney joining us
out of Ohio. Why are inmates criminals allowed to profit
from their crimes?
Speaker 13 (40:06):
Well, Nancy, in a lot of states, they're not. This
goes back to something we said earlier, the Son of
Sam law that originated from the David Berkowitz murders in
New York, that was brought up on First Amendment all
the way up to the Supreme Court, and they deemed
that was unconstitutional as a violation of their First Amendment rights,
and then the states, you know, tweaked some of those
(40:28):
laws to make it, you know, applicable for that in
many states, but Arizona is not one of them. So
Arizona does not have any laws against inmates in this
situation being able to profit.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Wow, well, maybe after tonight they will. And you know, Derek,
you mentioned Son of Sam laws regarding Berkowitz. You know,
it goes all the way back to the movie Goodfellows,
where there was a lawsuit that went to the US
Supreme Court over profiting from Goodfellows. I mean, this is
a valiantly fought battle and states have the power to
(41:05):
stop this. We wait as just as unfalls. Goodbye friend,
Host
Nancy Grace
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