bringing voice to so many men and women who have suffered in silence. >> [speaking spanish] . that's all for this edition of "dateline", i'm andrea canning, thank you for watching. >> i'm craig melvin. >> and i'm natalie morales. >> and this is "dateline. " >> jodi became travis's drug. he very much recognized how bad she was for him. but she kept showing up in his life, and just like a drug addict he kept letting her right back in the door. >> her trial riveted the country. >> we the jury find the defendant as to count one, first degree murder, guilty.

>> jodi arias, who brutally murdered her lover, was facing a possible death sentence. >> did he ever think that she would do what she did? who would think that? >> it was a steamy story of sex. >> we'd hang out, we'd have sex. >> lies. >> she's able to tell a lie. she believes the lie. >> and murder. >> he attacked me and i defended myself. >> after one of the most sensational and bizarre trials ever, hear the chilling details from her friends. >> did you see any cuts on her? >> tiny. little cuts. >> and his. >> he was very afraid of her. but every time he tried to break things off with jodi she'd threaten to kill herself. >> inside the jodi arias trial. >> this isn't a ride at disneyland. this is somebody who was tragically murdered. >> hello and welcome to "dateline. " when travis alexander was murdered, friends

immediately suspected his former girlfriend, jodi arias. graphic evidence found at the scene pointed to jodi as well. and soon she was arrested. her trial captivated the nation with months of lurid testimony. through it all there was a fascinating mystery at the heart of the crime. who was jodi arias? here's josh mankiewicz with "along came jodi. " >> mr. alexander was dead. you worried about that, right? >> yes. >> it would be you that did it, correct? >> yes. >> the jodi arias trial never played as a murder mystery. jodi, after all, had admitted to 12 jurors in open court and a few million viewers on tv, that she was the one who shot, stabbed, and then stabbed some

more her former boyfriend and secret sex partner. >> as to count one, first degree murder, guilty. >> why, then, did so many millions of trial followers stick around for the final act? [cheers] and why did so many leave home and work to gather on the courthouse steps to await the final verdict? we'll take an in-depth look at the case, into why jodi arias became so obsessed with travis alexander, and so many of you became obsessed with this trial. >> hello. >> we start with this home video, played for the jury. it shows travis holding court amid a circle of friends. look a little closer and you'll see a blond tenderly nestled in his lap. that's jodi, in much happier times, when she and travis first started dating. no hint then of what was coming.

>> we were excited for travis finding somebody that he was interested in. >> chris hughes was travis's mentor at work. that's him on the couch with travis and jodi. chris and his wife, skye, were there when the two met. >> when we met her that first night, we liked her. >> yeah. >> right off the bat i thought she was someone that would be a good match for travis. >> aaron dewey was a roommate of travis's. >> aside from the physical chemistry that was already there there seemed to be a lot of emotional chemistry right off the bat as well. >> jodi arias has been described as seductive, sexy, sultry. and travis alexander when they first, met probably felt he was every bit her counterpart. he was a successful insurance salesman, handsome, charismatic. dave hall worked with travis and was close to him. >> good friend? close friend? >> very good friend. >> best friend? >> you know, it's funny because i've seen recently numerous

people come forward and say hey, he was my best friend. and that's just the type of guy travis was. he made everybody feel like you were his best friend. >> according to his friends, travis was more than a bit of a ladies'man. but this time travis was out of his league. >> jodi became travis's drug. he was able to get something from her that he couldn't get anywhere else with the good wholesome mormon girls that he typically dated here in arizona. >> which was what? not just sex but crazy sex or -- >> yeah. >> sex that -- >> over the top. over-the-top stuff. >> jodi used sex to control travis. at first she tried to be like this good girl with morals and values, and then that didn't work, and so then she turned on the sex. >> and that had travis, a devout mormon, tied up in knots, breaking the church's law of chastity, that is, having sex before marriage, is serious stuff. mormons believe the

sinner risks an eternity in hell if he or she fails to repent before death. the result seems to have been that travis kept his relationship with jodi in the closet. >> he wanted people to believe, especially the girls that he was dating, that he was still a virgin, that he was still worthy to have a healthy long-term marriage with a good mormon girl. >> so this was a guy leading a double life. >> yeah. >> jodi tried to resolve that conflict by converting to mormonism, only to find it wasn't good enough for travis. he summoned his will and broke it off with her. the moral equation may have been cruel, but to travis it was undeniable. jodi's lust, her willingness to have sex in all sorts of ways before marriage, might have made her the perfect secret girlfriend. but it simultaneously disqualified her as a wife. >> she was not going to be the one he was going to spend the

rest of his life with. and he communicated that to her. >> that would make anybody feel pretty bad and pretty hurt. >> what travis kept secret from his friends was he and jodi were still having sex. what he didn't keep secret were his concerns that jodi was stalking him. >> he was very disturbed by her behavior. but every time he tried to break things off with jodi she would threaten to kill herself. >> clearly jodi wasn't serious about suicide. we know that now because at the time she was making those threats, she was prowling sales conventions and on the phone at night, flirting with a guy named ryan burns. >> she seemed like a cool girl. we exchanged numbers. about two or three weeks after that we started talking on the phone. four or five times a week. >> during one of those calls jodi promised to visit ryan in utah. and one morning in june 2008 she came knocking at his door. he had no idea what had

just happened at travis's house in arizona. and he didn't know jodi had been there just one day before. >> how did she look? >> she looked fine. she just looked normal. >> did you see any cuts on her? >> tiny. little cuts. she had a couple little bandages on one of her hands. it wasn't a moment where i thought, you know, are you okay, is anything wrong. we were laughing about simple little things. she seemed totally into the moment. >> back in arizona travis's friends found him dead, his home a bloody crime scene. in the washing machine police found a waterlogged camera that would come to mean everything in this case. some of travis's friends like chris and skye hughes suspected jodi from the start. >> i knew in that very moment that jodi arias did it. >> he turned to me and said, "jodi did this. " >> ryan burns thought he knew jodi and the girl he knew was no killer.

>> i honestly and genuinely didn't believe that she could have had anything to do with it. i just thought there's no way. this girl wouldn't even let me kill a spider on the wall because she didn't want to hurt god's creature. >> but then you started hearing from other friends of yours and people who were friends of travis that they suspected her. >> right. people told me not to take her calls. people told me not to talk to her. but at that point, she had become either a very good friend that this is a horrible time to turn your back on her. or it was just this situation where am i really talking to a murderer. >> aaron dewey wasn't sure what to believe. jodi, he said, played the role of the innocent perfectly. 13 days after travis's murder she volunteered to talk to the mesa police. asking dewey for a ride to the station. tell me what happened in the car that day. >> ironically, nothing out of the ordinary. she was acting like nothing was going on. >> and she came out and said what? everything's fine? >> we're good. let's go home. >> what else did she say about travis's murder?

>> she claimed to know nothing about it. you know. she was saying that she wasn't there, that she hadn't seen him in months. >> that's the story jodi told police as well, and the one she stuck with for weeks. up until the day police took her away in handcuffs. and that's when jodi's story started changing. >> coming up -- love and death, caught on camera for all the world to see. >> were there some that involved mr. alexander in the shower? >> yes. >> when "dateline" continues. there can be some not-so-pretty stuff going on, on the inside. it's true, if you have diabetes, you know high blood sugar is the root of the problem. but that excess sugar can cause the blood vessels to be seriously damaged. and when that happens, this could happen, vision loss or even blindness. that's right, diabetic retinopathy is a leading cause of blindness for adults in the u.s.

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love with. >> on january 2nd, 2013, 4 1/2 years after the slaughter of travis alexander, the prosecutor opened the first-degree murder trial of jodi arias by talking about a love that had gone very, very wrong. >> she rewarded that love by sticking a knife in his chest. >> ron martinez laid out his case for jodi's guilt, as detectives, technicians, and analysts one by one took the stand and connected jodi to the crime. her hair and dna at the scene. >> so this hair that you examined, would it not match? >> the root matched jodi arias. >> a crime scene specialist testified she found jodi's bloody handprint on the wall. martinez had that part of the wall brought in to court. >> what is it? >> this is the piece of wall that was cut out and collected as item number 77 lb. >> and this is what we're looking at in this photograph? >> while it's still in the wall,

yes. >> perhaps the most damning evidence came from this sony camera, discovered in travis's washing machine. after weeks of work technicians restored photos that were once deleted. >> and with regard to the items that were deleted, were there some that involved mr. alexander in the shower? >> yes. >> what made these pictures key to the case had to do with a feature built into the camera. >> these images when you take them with this camera, it embeds the date and time that the camera has set on it to the file itself. >> meaning for the prosecution those photos along with the other evidence told a story. that jodi showed up at travis's home around 4:00 a. m. on june 4th, 2008. they had steamy sex until about 5:00 p. m., photographing each other as they did so. between 5:22 and 5:29 jodi took these time-stamped photos of travis

in his shower. about one minute after this picture was taken the repeated stabbing of travis alexander began. maricopa county medical examiner kevin horn testified that cuts on travis's hands help explain what happened, as he was stabbed 27 times, nearly decapitated, and shot in the head. >> i believe the wounds to the hands must have occurred before the fatal injuries either of the head or of the throat. >> at 5:31 the camera snaps what seems to be an accidental photo of the bathroom ceiling. the next photo, taken at 5:32, shows travis on the floor, bleeding profusely around the neck. in the foreground is what looks like a woman's pant leg. according to the prosecutor, it could only be jodi's. ryan burns testified, telling the court the same story he told us

about how jodi visited him in utah one day after killing travis. >> she got on top of me pretty aggressively, and we were kissing. >> martinez then played for the jury powerful video of jodi lying outright to mesa police detective esteban flores just before her arrest. >> why won't you admit to it? >> i just can't. i didn't kill travis. >> you killed him. >> no. >> jodi, you did. >> i did not. >> an accusation that would make many people crumble. but jodi persistently stuck to her story. >> were you at travis's house on wednesday? >> absolutely not. i was nowhere near mesa. >> what's so remarkable looking back at this police interview tape is even in the face of immutable evidence jodi can lie, seamlessly and deftly and very creatively. because the next day, after being booked and charged with travis's murder,

jodi had a completely different story to tell the police, admitting she was there that night. >> travis was screaming. >> but that masked intruders had burst in and killed travis and that she'd been too afraid to say anything. >> and i turned around and two people there. one was a guy and one was a girl. >> and it was through these videotapes the jury heard in jodi's own words how her story had evolved. but it's the outtakes from these recordings, the parts the jury didn't see, that may also give insight into how jodi operates. let's go back to the exchange between jodi and detective flores. just before he confronted her with the photos from travis's camera. >> i was like, no. >> typical. >> if jodi was nevrvous, she didn't show it. maybe because a

giggle and a head toss had worked on so many guys so many times before. >> i'm christian. i just live my life by the 10 commandments and those are my rules. da, da, da, da, da. you know, thou shall not this or that. but it doesn't say thou shall not fornicate. i always used to joke about that. >> then after her flisht ashs routine fell flat and she was about to be arrested, jodi still seemed completely unworried. facing murder charges many of us would see our world turned upside down. but for jodi arias it was a chance to get into headstand. in yoga it's called "salamb salamba shirshasan", a cure for whatever may be ailing you. then before being led away she made one last request. >> this is a really trivial question and it's going to reveal how shallow i am. but before they move me can i clean myself up a little bit? >> she wanted to look good

apparently. for this cheerful mug shot. in control and out to win over an audience, no matter how big or small. which may explain why when the defense was ready to put on its case the first witness they called -- >> you may come forward. take a seat, please. >> -- was jodi arias. >> coming up -- jodi's new defense. self-defense. as she takes the stand and almost won't get off. >> he gets a hotel room. i show up. we hang out, we have sex. >> when "dateline" continues.

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of her hair, jodi arias's color of her hair, jodi arias's account of the death of her account of the death of her boyfriend changed over time. boyfriend changed over time. first she told police she wasn't there. >> were you at travis's house on wednesday? >> absolutely not. first, she told police she >> next, that masked home wasn't there. >> were you at travis's house invaders had killed travis. on wednesday? >> absolutely not. >> next, that masked home then in court came version number three. invaders had killed travis. then in court came version number three. >> do you solemnly swear -- >> do you solemnly swear -- >> this time she swore she was >> this time she swore she was telling the whole truth. telling the whole truth. >> did you kill travis >> did you kill travis alexander on june 4th, 2008? alexander on june 4th, 2008? >> yes, i did. >> why? >> yes, i did. >> why? >> the simple answer is that he >> the simple answer is that he attacked me and i defended attacked me and i defended myself. myself.

>> having a client that's lied in the past makes it very difficult for a defense attorney. you're trying to play catch-up the entire time, trying to prove that your client's credible. >> ulysses farragut is a phoenix defense attorney who's tried death penalty cases but wasn't part of the arias trial. he said jodi's defense team was right to put jodi on the stand, risky as it was, to try to connect with the jury. >> they do need to have the jury feel some sense of sympathy, some sorrow for her. it was very important to humanize jodi. >> the defense started with the claim that jodi had suffered long-term physical and emotional abuse. first around the age of 7 from her parents. >> i think that's the first year my dad started using a belt. my mom began to carry a wooden spoon in her purse. >> jodi's parents, who were

there for much of her testimony, won't say whether her claims are true. the defense theme of jodi as a victim continued, with her accusations that she felt used and debased by travis alexander. >> what do you mean, though, that you felt used? >> he gets a hotel room, i show up, we hang out, we have sex. i'm getting a lot of attention but only while we're engaging in sexual activity. i kind of felt like -- like a prostitute sort of. >> the graphic sexual testimony really goes to the heart of the question as to whether travis was physically and emotionally abusing her through the sexual relationship they had. >> the jury heard a recording jodi made, she said, at travis's request of a steamy phone call. >> you're bad. you make me feel so dirty. >> you are dirty, baby. >> did you and travis ever videotape yourself while having sex?

>> yes. >> and whose desire was for that to take place? >> his. >> defense expert alyce laviolette who co-authored a book about battered women, suggested e-mails from travis's friends to jodi show travis took advantage of women. >> they advised her to move on from the relationship, that mr. alexander has been abusive to women -- >> that testimony, heard by millions and the jury, was stricken by the judge. jodi's defense lawyers never called to the stand the authors of those e-mails, chris and skye hugh hughes, who say their words were twisted by the defense. >> it doesn't exist. the abuse does not exist. >> what's it like to see your words used as a murder defense when the victim was your friend? >> it's gut-wrenching. they're using our words to make travis something he absolutely was not.

>> he called me a bitch and he kicked me in the ribs. >> during her marathon 18 days on the stand, 11 coming under friendly defense questioning, jodi said travis had once become enraged after they'd argued over money. >> he went to kick me again and i put my hand out. >> what happened after that second kick? >> i screamed really loud. i think i yelled out "my finger" or "my hand" something to that effect. >> jodi showed the jury the misshapen finger she claimed was the result of travis's outburst. but whatever concern she may have had about violence, she and travis didn't stop seeing each other. >> he seemed very happy to see me. >> jodi came to travis's house early one morning in june 2008. that day, the day he died, there was sex. lots of it, she acknowledged. after all, there was no denying all the photos they took. >> we were trying out different poses -- >> jodi herself described a

happy, playful erotic day until travis's brand new camera slipped out of her hands. >> he was screaming that i was a stupid idiot, and he body-slammed me again on the tile. >> jodi testified that she remembered travis kept a gun in his closet and ran to get it. >> i grabbed the gun. i ran out of the closet. he was chasing me. >> she described travis lunging at her, the gun going off without her even knowing it. she said travis then kept coming, even with a bullet in his head. >> and we fell and i got up. and he's just screaming angry. and after i broke away from him he said [bleep] you, [ bleep ]. >> do you remember stabbing travis alexander? >> i have no memory of stabbing him. >> do you remember dragging him across the floor? >> no. >> do you remember placing him

in the shower? >> jodi had lied so many times before that she must have hoped she'd get away with it one last time with the 12 people who mattered the most, the jury. but so many people watching, on tv and the internet, had by now heard enough of jodi's stories that they'd already reached their own verdict. >> the jodi arias trial goes viral with its own twitter account, ticket scalpers, and an unexpected new cable star. coming up -- >> people ask you for your autograph, right? >> yes, they do. >> they want to take their picture with you. >> they do. >> when "dateline" continues. never knew what a dog could do for you. and with resolve, you never worry about the mess. love the love, resolve the mess. we're carvana, the company who invented car vending machines and buying a car 100% online.

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sent a letter to treasury secretary, asking her to prevent the misuse of funding. overseas, to the philippines, president duterte and now she is retiring from politics. a surprise move that will speculation, he is clearing away for his daughter to try and succeed him. and now back to dateline. dateline >> welcome back to "dateline. " i'm craig melvin. jodi arias took the stand at her own murder trial, spinning a graphic tale of sex and abuse. she admitted she killed travis alexander but said it was self-defense. millions watched her testimony live on tv and the internet. and some would take their obsession further. here again is josh mankiewicz with "along came jodi. " >> the many faces of jodi arias. and a steamy four-month saga of sex, lies, and

videotape. quickly made her trial the hottest show in town. every morning at daybreak people would line up, hoping to get a seat for a close-up look at moments like these. >> mr. martinez -- >> my question is are you talking, yes or no? >> mr. martinez, are you angry at me? >> ma'am, is that relevant to you? is that important to you? >> please refrain from laughing in the courtroom. >> one early-rising regular even sold her spot in line to a latecomer for 200 bucks. >> ladies and gentlemen -- >> the judge, unhappy to hear tickets to her trial were being scalped, ordered the money refunded. and this juror, dismissed for reasons unknown, returned to court the following day. apparently, she was hooked on the action. >> i knew that my life was pretty much over. >> as were millions of people who just couldn't get enough of a story of boy meets girl, girl kills boy. it wasn't just

televised but streamed live, raw, unfiltered, across the internet. >> people aren't content to just watch. they want to participate. they're doing research on the players. >> arizona republic reporter michael kiefer covered the trial and said many were ready with their verdicts long before the testimony was over. >> anyone who takes less than an approach of she deserves the death penalty and she deserves it now is considered biased. >> and any perception of bias for the defense, even by defense witnesses, could bring a hostile reaction from jodi haters. this all became dangerously interactive. when psychotherapist alyce laviolette testified for the defense, supporting jodi's claim she'd been sexually used by travis. >> and what does he do after he gives her the book of mormon? >> he tells her that he's horny and they have oral sex. she performs oral sex on him. >> while laviolette's testimony

was calm and measured, the vitriol thrown at her on the internet was anything but. she was personally and professionally attacked. a petition was started to stop her from speaking at conferences. and her book, about why battered women stay with their accusers, was hit with hundreds of online mud-slinging reviews. >> she got hundreds and thousands of those kinds of remarks over the internet. people calling her office, threatening her. they had to call the police. if i were to walk up to her in the hallway of the courtroom and say you know, i don't like your testimony and i may hurt you and i'm going to try to ruin your career, that's a felony. >> and she wasn't the only target. michael kiefer reported jodi's lawyer, jennifer willmott, also received threats. jodi herself also took to social media with a twitter account that drew more than 51,000 followers. she did it through a friend she met in jail. donovan baron became

jodi's unofficial spokeswoman and twitter administrator. >> you actually operate the twitter account. >> yes. >> but those are jodi's words? >> everything that's on there comes from jodi. those are her thoughts. those are her opinions. >> jodi used twitter to sell her own original artwork and to make points she couldn't make on the witness stand. in one she needled prosecutor martinez. "hmm, anger management problems, anyone? " another tweet was more snarky. intimating that martinez was afflicted with little man syndrome. that comment has since been deleted. but all of this attention helped elevate the public persona of ron martinez. a once anonymous bulldog of a prosecutor. now a prominent co-star in the jodi show. just ask some of the trial tourists, the mostly women who traveled from around

the country to witness the trial firsthand. >> ron martinez, you never know what he's going to pull out of his hat. >> he's travis's voice and we admire him for that. >> oh, yeah. >> sisters amy markham and dawn johnson both took the week off from their jobs in st. louis in hopes of getting a ringside seat here and maybe meeting some cable tv celebrities. >> once you go into the courtroom, it's so surreal. like you've been seeing all these people on tv and -- >> and here they are in person. >> yeah. this is like hollywood. >> one of the stars the sisters were hoping to spot was katie wick. >> oh, dr. drew, what a crazy day. >> every night katie gave her take on the trial. during hln's "dr. drew" show. >> i have a lot of respect and admiration for ron martinez. >> she wasn't an anchor, reporter, or an attorney. just a regular spectator who caught the eye of a cable news booker.

and voila. >> people want to take a picture with you. >> they do. >> i mean, to the audience that is fixated on the jodi arias trial you're a celeb. >> what i have people tell me issatie, i love that you're just -- i don't want to say average person but in essence that i'm not going in there as a lawyer or doctor, i'm going in there as just a person. >> just a regular person in the jodi arias shore. >> this is not like jersey shore. this is not like did you see it last night when jwoww popped mike the situation in the eye. this is life and death. this is a death penalty case. >> and america's reacting to it like it's a reality show. >> like it's a reality show. >> this reality show was about to get real. >> "dateline" returns after the break. " got unbeatable relief from your worst cold and flu symptoms. so when you need to show your cold who's boss, grab mucinex all-in-one... and get back to your rhythm.

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have played like entertainment to millions of devoted viewers hooked on the daily drama unfolding on cable. >> miss arias, you may come forward and take a seat, please. >> but this wasn't a tv show. it was a murder trial. the stakes were literally life and death. >> what are you trying to say? >> i'm about to tell you what i'm trying to say. >> looking back, the four-month trial really came down to this,

a showdown between the bulldog prosecutor and the woman whose image changed at trial from sexy wannabe photographer to plain jane admitted killer. prosecutor martinez set the tone from the beginning of his cross-examination. he found a crack in jodi's trademark composure when jodi appeared to have a perfect memory of her sexual escapades, but not of stabbing travis 27 times. >> i have no memory of stabbing him. >> at first, jodi gave as good as she got in sparring with the prosecutor. >> what factors influenced your having a memory problem? >> usually when men like you are screaming at me or grilling me or someone like travis doing the same. >> so that affects your memory problems, right? >> it does. it makes my brain scramble. >> and then there was the matter of the gun jodi used to shoot travis. she testified she found it at his house. >> because now he's in the closet -- >> martinez presented evidence that a gun of the same caliber was stolen from the home of

jodi's grandparents in yreka, california just before the killing, while jodi was living there. >> you brought the gun from yreka, didn't you? >> no. >> the implication? this was premeditated murder. after all the lies and the tweeting by jodi arias, finally after days of cross-examination prosecutor martinez seemed to break her down. >> you would acknowledge that that stabbing was after the shooting according to you, right? >> i don't -- yes. i don't remember. >> i'm not asking you if you remember, ma'am. i'm asking if you acknowledge that it would be you that did it, correct? >> yes. >> so if he is being stabbed in the back, would you acknowledge at that point that he's no threat to you, right? >> i don't know. >> well, if he's already been shot according to you and he's facing away from you, how could

he have possibly been any threat to you? >> i could only guess. i don't know what you're asking me. >> jodi's claim of self-defense was being whittled away. >> would you agree that you're the person who actually slit mr. alexander's throat from ear to ear? >> yes. >> would you also agree that you're the individual that stabbed him in the upper torso? >> yes. >> and you're doing all of this according to your version of events, you're doing this to this individual after you have already shot him, right?

>> yes. >> jodi initially tried to lie her way out of this jam. but was she now trying to cry her way out of it on the witness stand? >> she's manipulative. she's cunning. and i suspect she can be extremely seductive. >> forensic psychiatrist steve pitt, who was familiar with the case but did not examine jodi arias, saw a woman good at manipulating others but not so good with being rejected. >> i saw her diagnosed by the prosecution's expert witness as having borderline personality disorder. what does that mean? >> what could be the understatement of this particular case. they do not do real well with rejection or abandonment. jodi arias is essentially the 21st century version of the character that glenn close played in "fatal attraction. " >> if there was any time during the trial when jurors tipped

their hand about how they felt about jodi arias, it came over the course of two days when they questioned her directly. arizona is one state where jurors can actually ask questions of the defendant. the judge reads them. >> did police ever find your grandfather's gun -- >> while the tone was not as biting as that of the prosecutor, those jury questions were overwhelmingly full of skepticism and disbelief. >> why did you place travis's body back in the shower? >> why not just tell the police the truth from the start? >> after all the lies you have told, why should we believe you now? >> the lies that i've told in this case are -- can be tied directly back to either protecting travis's reputation or my involvement in his death in any way. because i was very ashamed. >> and that's what this would all boil down to. all of jodi's lies.

>> she was a chameleon. she read people really well. really well. and she would adapt to whatever situation she was in. >> jodi's old friend aaron dewey. >> she would reflect back to you whatever it was you that wanted to hear. whatever -- whoever it was that you wanted her to be. >> jodi arias spent 18 days on the stand, an almost unheard of stint for a defendant in any murder trial. but was that part of the defense's grand strategy? keep arias on the stand so long that jurors would never vote to execute someone they'd gotten to know so well, in such intimate detail? phoenix criminal defense attorney ulysses farragut followed the arias case. >> i think that was the defense strategy, the longer we keep her on the stand, the more we hear from her, they will hopefully ingratiate themselves with her to a certain extent and hopefully spare her life. >> jurors had four months to think about all the questions.

now it was time for answers and a verdict. >> "dateline" returns after the break. you don't know how much pressure you put on your septic system. but rid-x does. in a 21 month study, scientists proved that rid- x reduces up to 20% of waste build up every month. take the pressure off with rid-x. kidney alert for type 2 diabetes! forty percent of people with type 2 diabetes will develop chronic kidney disease, or ckd. did you know ckd can lead to kidney failure and dialysis? kidney alert! ckd often has no symptoms until it's too late! help protect your kidneys. call your doctor for a uacr test.

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spectacle that was the jodi arias trial spilled out of the courtroom and off the flat screens and onto the street. >> did you kill travis alexander -- >> this trial started with jodi

arias admitting she killed travis alexander. and yet she testified in her own defense for weeks. as if she still thought she could talk her way out of trouble. >> we saw her crying on the witness stand. the reason she was crying is because she cries for herself. >> there was one point juan martinez wanted to drive home in his closing arguments to the jury. >> she's such an ornate liar. >> it was that jodi arias had spent the last four months running a con on them. >> are you going to buy the lies? are you going to believe what she tells you? >> if his summation defense lawyer kirk nurmi didn't ask for an acquittal. even he seemed to acknowledge that jurors were likely to convict jodi of something. >> if miss arias is guilty of any crime at all, it is the crime of manslaughter and nothing more.

>> and he pointedly reminded the jury that this wasn't a reality show, that their decision shouldn't be whether they approve of the woman whose sexual escapades had been part of their daily routine for four months. >> nine days out of ten i don't like jodi arias. >> it was a phrase that resonated. if not with the jury then certainly with his client, who responded via twitter, "nine days out of ten? that sounds about right. " if you think it's strange that a murder defendant would laugh it up via social media, even while a jury deliberates her fate, then you don't know jodi arias. but of course that was kind of the issue throughout this trial. who was she? >> i don't know. >> look closely at jodi arias during cross-examination. no matter how much she sobs while strategically perhaps covering her face, there seemed to be no teardrops falling from her eyes. forensic psychiatrist steven pitt was struck by her

ability to lie with confidence. >> it's a terrific sociopathic skill. she's able to tell a lie. she believes the lie. and she's narcissistic enough and entitled enough to believe that she's so good that she's going to pull the wool over someone else. >> if that's true, this jury didn't fall for it. in their assessment of jodi's state of mind. >> ladies and gentlemen, i understand you have reached a verdict. >> their judgment? that it was premeditated. >> we the jury do find the defendant as to count one, first-degree murder, guilty. [cheers] >> outside, the crowd erupted in cheers. >> justice for travis! >> inside, a much different mood. jodi arias sat in silence as each juror was individually polled. this time her tears were definitely real. and while travis's family quietly cried and hugged, his old friend dave hall took to the courthouse steps. >> i'm just glad that the jury

realized jodi is a pathological liar and gave her what she deserves. >> while travis's friends were relieved jodi would be held accountable, they also held fast to their mormon faith. >> i'm required to forgive her. it's going to take me some time. >> forgiveness will come but it has nothing whatsoever to do >> i believe death is the ultimate freedom. so i'd rather just have my freedom as soon as i can get it. >> after those words the sheriff's department announced it was placing arias on suicide watch. her family members left the jail that night in stunned silence. and the next phase of her murder trial, to determine if the level of brutality met arizona's death penalty standards, was unexpectedly postponed. no explanation. although the maricopa county sheriff's office confirmed she'd been transferred to a

jailhouse psych ward. turns out two juries deadlocked on whether arias should be executed, leaving the decision to a judge. in april 2015 jodi arias was sentenced to life without parole. she's appealing her conviction. as for the man who prosecuted her, in march 2019 juan martinez was hit with a misconduct complaint filed by the state bar of arizona. it alleged in part that he leaked information to a blogger during the penalty phase of the arias trial. he was also charged with having inappropriate communications with a dismissed juror. martinez has denied the allegations. jodi's wisecracks on twitter ended. her account was taken down. after being the

center of attention for so long jodi arias is serving her sentence, living her own reality far from the spotlight that once captured her. >> well, that's all for this edition of "dateline. " i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. >> i'm andrea canning and this is "dateline". >> she and her son danny were in the basement of their home when the doorbell rang. danny bounded up the steps to answer the door. and then the shots rang out. danny was hit, mark was shot in the abdomen. >> i saw my son holding his chest. i nearly was going to make. it >> why daniel out of all people? one of the sweetest kids i've ever met. >> her husband was rushed to the emergency room for surgery.