Jodi Arias Found GUILTY

Jodi Arias has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the brutal stabbing and shooting of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander, who was found dead in a pool of blood in his shower in 2008.

In what marks the end of a sensational case wrought with sex, lies and jealousy, a jury in Phoenix, Arizona delivered the verdict on Wednesday afternoon, four months after the trial began.

Arias, 32, became emotional as the jury announced the first-degree murder charge.

The jury, which took two days to reach the verdict, will convene for the next stage in the case tomorrow to decide on Arias' sentence. She could face life in prison or the death penalty.

The bloodied body of Travis Alexander, a Mormon motivational speaker and salesman, was found by friends in the shower of his Mesa, Arizona home five days after he was killed in June 2008.

In grisly scenes that were photographed and shown in court, he suffered nearly 30 knife wounds to his body, was shot in the head and had his throat slit so deeply he was almost decapitated.

Arias then dragged his body into his shower before dumping it for his friends to find.

Testimony in the trial began in early January, with Arias later spending 18 days on the witness stand.

The trial quickly snowballed into a made-for-the-tabloids drama, garnering daily coverage from cable news networks, and spawning a virtual cottage industry for talk shows, legal experts and even Arias, who used her notoriety to sell artwork she made in jail.

Arias and Alexander had dated for only several months after meeting at a conference in Las Vegas in 2007, but they continued a sexual relationship after their breakup.

Prosecutors claimed that Arias had planned the brutal attack in a jealous rage after being rejected by Alexander as he planned to head on a trip to Mexico with another woman.

Arias initially any denied involvement - even calling Alexander in the days after the killing and leaving friendly messages on his voicemail - and later blamed the killing on masked intruders.

But two years after her arrest, she eventually admitted to killing him - but said it was in self-defense. She said she recalled Alexander attacking her in fury for dropping his camera after a day of sex at his home.

She said Alexander came at her 'like a linebacker', body-slamming her to the tile floor. She said she managed to wriggle free and ran into his closet to retrieve a gun he kept on a shelf.

She said she fired in self-defense but had no memory of stabbing him.

But throughout the trial, prosecutor Juan Martinez attempted to paint Arias as a manipulative liar and said her account did simply not line up with the facts and how she had appeared to plot the killing.

'It's like a field of lies that has sprouted up around her as she sat on the witness stand,' Martinez said of Arias. 'Every time she spat something out, another lie.'

Martinez sought to show how Arias had planned out her attack weeks in advance, explaining how she stole the .25 -caliber gun used in the attack from her grandparents' home where she was staying in Yreka, California, two days after a heated text-message exchange between Arias and Alexander.

During the text exchange, Alexander described her as a 'sociopath' and 'evil.'

'How absolutely prophetic,' Martinez had said to the court.

She rented a car at an airport in Northern California to drive to Alexander's home, but refused a red car as she thought it might attract tickets, Martinez said.

She then filled up three gas cans in Pasadena and turned off her cellphone before she reached Arizona, Martinez said, suggesting these decisions were so that there was no proof she was in Arizona at the time she killed Alexander.

He said such actions are those of someone committing first-degree, premeditated murder.

Throughout the trial, the prosecution repeatedly showed grisly crime scene photographs of Travis Alexander, including blood-splattered walls and images of his deep knife wounds.

The images were too much for Arias and Alexander's relatives, who buried their faces in their hands or otherwise looked away as the photos were displayed on a giant screen.

In a bizarre twist, a camera, which she apparently dropped, also snapped photographs of her dragging his body. It was later found in a washing machine and water-logged but authorities were able to retrieve the images. Others showed Arias and Alexander on the day before his death.

Arias acknowledged trying to clean the scene of the killing, dumping the gun in the desert and working on an alibi to avoid suspicion.

She said she was too scared and ashamed to tell the truth, and didn't want to sully Alexander's name by revealing their raunchy sex and his violent episodes.


After her arrest in June 2008, she displayed bizarre behavior, such as singing, laughing, talking to herself and doing a 20-minute headstand while alone in the interrogation room. Footage of the strange behavior was deemed too prejudicial to show the jury.

Arias and her defense team had argued that Alexander had grown physically abusive in the months before she killed him, once even choking her into unconsciousness, yet she loved him.

The defense sought to portrayed Alexander as a cheating womanizer who used Arias for sex and abused her physically, sexually and emotionally while keeping her hidden from his friends.

Arias testified for 18 days and described her abusive childhood, cheating boyfriends, dead-end jobs, a shocking sexual relationship with Alexander, and her contention that he had grown physically abusive in the months leading to his death, once even choking her into unconsciousness.

She claimed she felt ashamed following sex with Alexander - even though prosecutors played voicemails where she told of how much she enjoyed their dalliances and named her favorite types of lubricants.