How an Inside Edition Interview Became a Key to Prosecuting Jodi Arias

The trial of Jodi Arias gripped the nation as she was charged with the murder of her boyfriend Travis Alexander in June 2008.

While in jail as she awaited trial, she spoke to Inside Edition to make a case for her innocence and said she did not kill her 31-year-old boyfriend. Alexander was found stabbed 27 times and shot in the head inside his Arizona home. His throat was slit so deep that he was nearly decapitated.

“No jury can convict me,” she told Inside Edition in her first jailhouse interview in September 2008. “I am innocent.” 

She said that people with masks broke into the home and attacked the couple. She told Inside Edition she managed to get away, but Alexander was killed. She said she was unable to identify who the people who she said attacked them were. 

“I am not proud that I just left my friend there to be slaughtered at the hands of two other people," she said, claiming she was too terrified to call the police the night of the attack, but asserting she had nothing to do with the killing.

“I know I am innocent, God knows I am innocent, Travis knows I am innocent,” she added. 

Her jailhouse interview with Inside Edition would later play in court. 

Arias was 27 when she was arrested in Alexander's murder. She and Alexander had an on- and off-again, long-distance relationship for a-year-and-a-half, as Alexander’s work as a motivational speaker required he travel around the country. 

On June 9, 2008, friends of Alexander’s checked on him at his home after not being able to get in touch with him and found his body. Cops arrived at the scene and during the discovery found photos of Arias and Alexander in sexually suggestive poses on a digital camera. The time stamp of the photos showed they had been taken in the early morning hours of June 4, 2008. 

Photos also showed Alexander profusely bleeding on the floor from the same night. 

On July 9, 2008, Arias was arrested and indicted by a grand jury for homicide. 

Arias told police she fled the scene because masked people broke into the home and attacked them. But cops said they found her palm prints in Alexander’s blood at the scene. 

The trial began in January 2013, during which the prosecution played her Inside Edition interview in court, where she told her story about the masked intruders and professed her innocence. 

During her testimony, Arias addressed the Inside Edition interview.

“At the time [of the interview], I had plans to commit suicide," she said. "So I was extremely confident that no jury would convict me, because I didn't expect any of you to be here.”

As the trial progressed, Arias did eventually admitted she killed Alexander, testifying that it was in self-defense. 

In April 2015, Arias was found guilty. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At her sentencing, she apologized to Alexander’s family and the judge. 

“I am truly disgusted and I am repulsed with myself,” she said. “I am horrified because of what I did and wish there was some way I could take it back.”

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