Self-defense or jealous rage? Jodi Arias on trial for brutal murder of ex-boyfriend

Produced by Josh Gelman and Jonathan Leach

It was one of "48 Hours"' most astonishing interviews: beautiful, young Jodi Arias describing how her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, was murdered in cold blood during a home invasion and how she managed to barely escape with her life.

Now, four years later, it's Arias who's on trial for that very same murder -- fighting for her life in a Phoenix, Ariz., courtroom.

"48 Hours" takes you inside the trial that has captured national attention and inside the mind of an accused murderer with Arias' first interview, done with "48 Hours" shortly after her arrest in 2008 -- an interview so important that it has been obtained as evidence by both the prosecution and the defense.

For the last two-and-a-half weeks, Jodi Arias has been sitting quietly in a courtroom, patiently listening to the evidence against her.

But Arias is no stranger to patience. She has spent the last four years in jail, waiting for her trial to start and wondering just how she ended up here in the first place.

"I've been sitting a lot in my cell ... thinking what a waste," she told correspondent Maureen Maher. "You know, I did have my whole future ahead of me ...I had everything to lose and nothing to gain if I killed Travis. I loved him and I still love him".

Travis Alexander and Jodi Arias seemed, by all appearances, to be a perfect match.

Photos: Jodi Arias behind the lens

Chris and Sky Hughes thought their good friend had struck gold when he found Jodi Arias -- even thinking, that they'd get married one day.

"One of the -- questions we asked him, just totally kidding around, you know [was], 'Is she really this nice?'" Sky Hughes recalled. "He's like, 'I've never met anyone nicer.'"

"You couldn't not like Travis. He was a really cool guy," said Arias.

Living just outside of Phoenix in Mesa, Ariz., Travis was single, successful and as a devout Mormon, spiritual as well. It was a good life -- a long way from the life he had as a young boy.

"You know, his upbringing was terrible. Nobody would want to be raised like he was raised," said Chris Hughes.

Growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in Riverside, Calif., Travis was one of seven kids being raised by parents addicted to crystal meth.

"Both our parents are -- pretty poverty-stricken, and our parents divorced when we were pretty young," said Travis' sister, Samantha Alexander.

"At times, I've lived in a tent on -- at a campground with my mom," said Travis' brother, Steve Alexander.

The children were rescued by their grandmother, Norma, who took them in and introduced them to the Mormon community.

"He raised himself from this - really, a terrible place - of darkness. And he became, like, this bright star," said Chris Hughes.

Hughes, a fellow Mormon, was so impressed with Travis that he offered him a job.

"I liked him," Hughes explained, "... brought him on board. Started to teach him, train him, mentor him."

Hughes added Travis to his sales team at Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc., a company that sells legal services insurance to people who can't afford lawyers.

"He was such a powerful motivational speaker that, you know, he could move us to tears," said Arias.

On the surface, it seemed they had little in common. Arias was raised in the quiet community of Yreka in Northern California, describing her childhood as "almost ideal. I have a big family. We're all very close."

But they found a strong connection in their drive to succeed.

"We both had a desire to - to -- really do amazing things in our lives," she explained.

In no time, Arias began to make his world her own.

"He gave me a copy of the "Book of Mormon" ...and challenged me to read it," she said.

Following Travis' lead, Arias converted to the Mormon faith.

"You know we grew closer and closer and it was a natural progression," she said. "It was a serious relationship."

But this couple had a big obstacle to overcome -- 400 miles of open road. Travis lived in Mesa, Ariz., while Arias was a five-hour drive away in Palm Desert, Calif.

But Travis overcame that obstacle as well; he took his relationship with Arias on the road.

"He called me up one day. He said, 'There's this great book that I found, and it's "1,000 Places To See Before You Die,"' Arias said. "And so we began to check those places off the list one by one."

But it turns out that Travis and Jodi were doing a lot more than just sightseeing.

"There was an attraction. And, you know, it -- it found an outlet on occasion," Arias said with a laugh.

"That's a very creative way of saying it," Maher laughed. "It found an outlet."

Most young couples would call that "outlet" sex, but for Travis and Jodi, as devout Mormons, sex outside of marriage was taboo.

""I loved telling all my friends ... my brother is a 30-year-old virgin," said Steve Alexander.

Celibacy is one of the basic tenets of the Mormon faith -- one that, as far as his friends and family knew, Travis took very seriously.

"It was a core piece of Travis' belief to not have any kind of sexual relations with anyone that you're not married to," said Taylor Searle.

Searle, Brint Hiatt and Aaron Mortenson knew and respected Travis as a close friend and fellow Mormon.

"We all looked out for Travis. You know, we wanted him to find ...and settle down with a great girl," said Hiatt.

"It was important for him to be married to a Mormon, and to have children, and remain in the church?" Maher asked.

"That was always a goal of his - absolutely," Mortenson replied. "...to find a girl that was gonna be a good match for him and -- marry her."

"When I met Jodi," Searle said, "she kind of announced herself as his girlfriend. And -- that was a surprise to me at the time 'cause I thought he, you know, had interest in some other girls."

"He definitely played the field," added Hiatt.

Jodi Arias was beginning to realize that as well. "There's sort of a distinctive feeling that comes when you're in a relationship and you have that sneaky suspicion that somebody might be not so -- monogamous. And so --"

Arias suspected Travis was cheating on her.

"I grabbed his phone while he was taking a nap, and I just started reading his text messages. And I was really shocked with what I found," she told Maher.

"That's what basically ended his relationship, whatever it was ... with Jodi," said Searle.

Well, not exactly. Shortly after their breakup, Jodi made a surprising decision. She packed up her belongings and moved right under Travis' nose, to Mesa, Arizona -- a move, she says, Travis strongly encouraged.

"There were also some innuendos, I think, as far as we could still hang out," said Arias.

"Does 'hang out' translate to have sex? Friends with benefits?" Maher asked.

"Sort of," she replied.

As far as anyone could tell, Jodi and Travis were just friends. Their true relationship was still their "little secret."

"Nobody really knows what was going on behind closed bedroom doors, except him and I," Arias told Maher.

"This relationship was about sex?"

"It eventually became sex," she replied.

Arias says that she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with a sexual relationship that seemed to be going nowhere.

"You know you love someone and - you -- it makes -- you know, it's hard to think. And I really love this person, but I know I'm never gonna be with him. And I know I'm not gonna marry him," Arias said. "I knew that I needed to make some changes."

Early in 2008, Jodi did just that. Doing them both a favor, she moved back home to Yreka, leaving Mesa and Travis Alexander behind.

"When she moved back to California, that's when it really seemed to him to be a closing point. Where, 'OK, finally that chapter of my life is over,'" according to Searle.

But as it would turn out, the story of Travis and Jodi was far from over. With Jodi Arias a thousand miles away back home in Yreka, Travis Alexander's friends believed that he was finally done with her once and for all.

"Travis, like, he -- he seemed genuinely excited when he told me that she had moved to California. He said, 'You -- you know, Jody finally left,'" friend Taylor Searle told Maureen Maher. "He was telling me about the conversation he had with -- with Jodi where he told her, 'You know, it's over. I never wanna see you again. You know, this is it.'"

But according to Arias, there was a big difference between what Travis said and what Travis did.

"He would call me at night," she said. "And he would tell me the things the things that he would like to see happen when he came up to visit me, to put it in a G-rated manner."

It would seem that, for Jodi and Travis, old habits died hard.

"He was originally going to come to see me at the end of May," she continued. "We were gonna see Crater Lake and the Oregon coast and hopefully catch a Shakespearian play."

"You're saying you want to end this unhealthy relationship. And yet, A, you're still making plans to get together and travel, and B, you're still showing' up for sex?" Maher asked.

"Yeah. It was hard to tell Travis no," said Arias.

But when Travis postponed his trip, Arias planned a road trip of her own: first to Los Angeles to visit some friends and then, on to Utah to spend time with potential new love interest Ryan Burns.

Like Travis, Burns worked with Chris Hughes at Pre-Paid Legal and he was also Mormon.

"He was another rising star, you know -- just like Travis," Hughes explained. "[He and Jodi] met at a -- breakout session we were doing. ... And they had created this phone relationship."

When Arias hit the road on June 2, she says she hadn't heard from Travis and had no plans to see him. As it turned out, no one else would see or hear from him for nearly a week.

911 call: A friend of ours is dead. We hadn't heard from him for a while. His roommate just went in there and said there's lots of blood.

On June 9, Travis Alexander was found by his friends, dead in his shower.

"We got a phone call about four in the morning," Chris Hughes said. "He said, 'Travis is dead.' And -- ya know, I remember just going -- going numb..."

"The majority of the crime scene -- seemed to be inside of the master bedroom suite, and the master bathroom," said lead homicide detective Esteban Flores.

Detective Flores said it was clear when he first entered Travis' house that he was going to have his hands full.

"There's obvious signs of - of blood on the carpet. As you go in further -- we found other signs of ... maybe a struggle or something in the hallway, leading into the master bathroom," he explained. "And once you go inside the bathroom is when you can see the body of Travis in the shower."

Months after Travis Alexander was murdered, there was still clear evidence of the savage attack that took place -- evidence that was gathered during an intensive crime scene investigation which included the discovery of a bloody palm print on a hallway wall. Police removed that section of the wall because they are convinced that print belongs to the killer.

"We spend three full days in that house, because we did not want to miss anything," Flores told Maher.

"What type of evidence did you find in the master bedroom, the bath, that hallway?"

"Well, obviously, we found blood ... And we also found hair fibers. We found fingerprints. And ... we found a shell casing -- from a bullet," Flores explained. "We believed that ... Travis had been shot ... and that shot was in the face."

Asked what specifically killed Travis, Flores said, "Well, the autopsy report says that -- he had one single stab wound -- direct center to his chest which -- hit his heart. And then he had a cut across his throat as well."

It would take Mesa Police Department's state-of-the-art forensics lab weeks to process all the evidence gathered at the scene. It only took a few days for the news to reach Jodi Arias.

"A mutual friend called us," she said. "He didn't tell me about Travis' state. He just said, 'Something is wrong. And I don't know what it is yet but there are some police at Travis' house.'"

But Jodi Arias already knew what was wrong, because she says whoever killed Travis also tried to kill her: "It's like everything just stops when you -- when someone else is sitting there with a gun pointed to your head, deciding your fate."

When Mesa, Arizona, police responded to a 911 call at the home of Travis Alexander, they discovered a scene of unimaginable horror and a puzzling collection of clues that would take years to unravel.

"The police now know what happened. They know that on June 4th of 2008 ... the defendant was there with Mr. Alexander, even though they'd broken up, even though she's in Yreka, somehow she's there in his house in Mesa, Arizona," prosecutor Martinez addressed the court in his opening statement of Arias' murder trial.

In 2008, Jodi Arias had a very good explanation as to how she ended up in Travis' house that day.

"Even to this day, I don't know that I've even fully processed everything," she told Maureen Maher. "I have nothing but time on my hands to think. And that's when I really begin to try and remember and relive that day."

Arriving in Los Angeles on the first leg of her road trip, Arias found herself once again in familiar territory and once again, faced with a familiar dilemma.

"I called Travis ... He, of course, said, 'Well, you could always swing by Arizona and come see me, too.' And I thought, 'No, I'm not gonna do that,'" she said. "And then, I thought, 'What the heck, you know, it's not too far out of my way.'"

Despite the fact that she was expected in Utah the next day, just after midnight on June 4, 2008, Jodi Arias was on the road to Mesa instead.

"So I arrived around 4:00, 4:30 a.m. And he was in his office watching some videos on YouTube," she told Maher.

They talked for a bit and then, both exhausted, Arias says they went straight to sleep.

"We woke up around -- I'd say, 1:00 in the afternoon," she recalled. "When we woke up, we had sex twice; once in his bed and once in his office downstairs."

And then, just like old times, they pulled out the camera.

"We decided to do another photo shoot where we were going to just get him in the shower, but these were waist-up shots. You know, tasteful shots," Arias explained. "He was in the shower ... The shower's on. It looked really cool because the water was frozen in the image."

Apparently it was just a lazy afternoon of fun and games, until, Arias says, all hell broke loose. "I heard a really loud -- pop. And the next thing I remember, I was lying next to the bathtub and Travis was -- was screaming."

Without warning, Jodi Arias says someone or something had knocked both of them to the floor, leaving her dazed and confused and Travis badly wounded.

"I looked up and I just -- I saw two other individuals in the bathroom. And they were both coming toward us," she explained.

According to Arias, she was suddenly face to face with two intruders -- a man and a woman disguised from head to toe.

"They were both taller than me," she said. "They were covered -- her hands, the gloves, they had long-sleeved shirts on. They were in all black. He was wearing jeans. But they all -- they had ski masks on.

"I saw Travis was on the floor in his bathroom, on all fours," she continued. "As soon as this guy left, I just got up and I -- I charged her ... And she fell over him."

Asked if the woman had a weapon, Arias told Maher, "She had a knife in her hand."

"Had he been stabbed?"

"I could only assume yes," Arias replied. "But I didn't see her stabbing him. He had some blood. All over the floor. And there was some just coming down on his arms.

"I started pulling on Travis. And I said, 'Come on, come on, come on.' "He finally just said, 'I can't.' ... And then -- he said, 'I can't feel my legs.'"

Before Arias could do anything to help Travis, she says that she was suddenly outnumbered again.

"The guy came back in and got really angry. At me, I -- I guess," she continued. "Eventually, he -- was holding the gun at my forehead. ... They just kept arguing back and forth [about] whether or not, you know, to kill me."

It was a terrifying scene. And if what Arias says is true, what happened next is nothing short of a miracle.

"He pulled the trigger. And nothing happened with the gun. And so -- I just grabbed my purse, which was on the floor at that point, and I ran down the stairs and out of there and I left him there," she said.

It was an unbelievable getaway.

"You get in the car. No one's followed you. And you drive away. And where do you go?" Maher asked.

"I drove forever and ever, until I was in the middle of the desert," said Arias.

But what is truly unbelievable is that Arias says she left Travis, who was critically injured, to fend for himself.

"Did you call 911?" Maher asked.

"No," Arias replied.

"Did you go to a neighbor?"

"No."

"Did you call a friend?"

"I didn't call anybody or tell anybody," she replied.

"Why would you do nothing, nothing to help him?"

"I was terrified. And I was scared for my life," she said. "And I think there was a naïve belief that I could pretend like it didn't really happen."

That is just what Jodi Arias did when she got back on the road and headed off to Utah. She did finally call someone. It was Ryan Burns -- not for help, but to say she was on her way to keep their date.

She made one other call to the one person who was in no position to help anyone.

"I thought, 'I'm gonna call Travis," she explained. "And it just went to voicemail. And I called him again, and it went to voicemail."

Arias says Travis was alive when she left.

"How do you know? Maher asked.

"He was still sort of on his hands and knees, the whole time, until I ran from the room. That's the last that I saw him."

Arias spent less than 24 hours in Utah with Ryan Burns and others before heading home to Yreka, never telling anyone about her horrific ordeal. To this day, Jodi claims that she is consumed with guilt for leaving Travis behind.

"You never called anybody. You never told anybody. You never did anything. And it wasn't until five days later that anyone even knew the guy was missing." Maher remarked.

"I know that people will look at me and say, 'Oh, yeah. He really meant a lot to you, didn't he? By the way that you just left him there.' Not only that. ...they don't even think that this -- they think that this is a fabrication," she said.

Arias would soon discover that she couldn't have been more right.

"I knew that it was murder. I knew it was. I knew something in my heart," Travis' sister, Samantha Alexander said.. "And I immediately thought, 'Jodi.'"

Over the course of the Jodi Arias trial, dozens of witnesses are expected to testify for both the prosecution and the defense.

But from the beginning of this case, every question about who killed Travis Alexander seemed to have the same answer: Jodi Arias.

When the Mesa Police Department began its investigation of Travis Alexander's murder, they had a house full of evidence and one very strong lead.

"The first cop I saw, I pulled out my computer. And I said, 'This girl -- I would check her right away," Travis' friend, Taylor Searle, said with a laugh.

That is exactly what Det. Esteban Flores did.

"I received information that she was on a road trip [and] it just happened to be around the same time period that Travis was killed," he said.

Detective Flores tracked Arias down at her grandparents' house in Yreka.

"I called her in for an interview and asked her to come in for fingerprints and DNA samples," he said.

"Did you tell him the story?" Maureen Maher asked Arias.

"No," she said, taking a deep breath "I think I was wise enough to know that -- coming to him with that story at this point would be like implicating myself."

"She had told me that she was never here. She had told me the last time she'd seen Travis was in April. Well, I had obvious proof in my hands that she was here during that time on the day that he was murdered," said Flores.

That proof was found by investigators in, of all places, Travis' washing machine.

"One of the items that we recovered from the house was a digital camera," Flores explained. "It still had a digital card in it ... that had been erased."

But there's erased and then there's erased. The memory card was sent to the Mesa Police Department crime lab to see if any information could be recovered.

"Our computer forensic unit called me up, and said, 'You've got to come down here. I have some photos you need to see.' And we were just all amazed," said Flores.

What they found were dozens of pictures -- each one worth more than a thousand words.

"Those photos showed Jody Arias and Travis Alexander in a sexual encounter," said the detective.

But that wasn't the only thing investigators found on the memory card.

"There were several photos which were out of focus, dark," Flores explained. "We were surprised to find out that those photos were of the victim, Travis Alexander, during the time he was being killed or soon after."

"You can't see his face," Flores continued. "But the injuries on that person ... match the injuries that were on Travis."

Another shocking discovery? Every image was electronically stamped with the time and date it was taken: June 4, 2008, the date of Jodi's visit.

"This gave us an actual time -- when he was last seen alive, and when he was dead," said Flores.

Investigators gathered a lot more on Jodi Arias than a couple of fuzzy photos. All the physical evidence -- fingerprints, blood and hair -- point to the same person: Jodi Arias.

"Well, theory is that Jody Arias showed up ... They had some type of rendezvous. A sexual encounter. During that time, they took photographs of each other," Flores told Maher.

And then investigators say Arias viciously attacked Travis with a knife, stabbing him repeatedly.

"There was obviously a struggle inside of that bathroom. Somehow, he got into -- close to the bedroom area, which is down a long hallway," Flores continued. "That's when the last photograph was taken of him."

"How does he end up back in the bathroom where you find him?" Maher asked.

"Well, we believe that he was dragged from that area, back into the shower," Flores replied. "And we believe at that time, that's when the palm print was left on the wall. ... It's obvious that the print was left -- with somebody having blood on their hands ...and it's not just his blood, it's a combination of her blood as well."

Investigators say that blood, which was matched to Arias' DNA, definitively connects her not only to the scene of the crime, but to the crime itself.

"In many situations where -- a knife is used, somebody has blood on their hands," Flores explained. "And -- it's not uncommon for somebody to cut themselves as well."

That key piece of evidence was good enough for the state of Arizona to issue a warrant for Jodi Arias' arrest.

"You are a hundred percent certain that she got in her car in California and drove to Arizona with the intent of killing this man?" Maher asked Flores.

"Yes," he replied.

Investigators believe that Arias left her home in California with the gun and the knife that killed Travis, although neither was found at the crime scene.

"In a crime of anger such as this one, there were calculations that were taken beforehand," said Flores.

As for motive, investigators believe it couldn't be clearer.

"Jealousy is one of the main motives in a lot of homicides," said Flores.

"Is this girl crazy?" Maher asked.

"No, she's not crazy. No, she calculated this completely," he replied.

Five weeks after finding Travis' body, Detective Flores showed up on her doorstep in Yreka. He said Arias was not surprised.

"One of the things she said to me as soon as she saw me was, 'Is there any way I can get my purse, so I can get my makeup on?'" he recalled.

Video: Arias on threatening notes received in Calif. jail

"It was all very surreal. It was nothing like you see on a show like 'Cops,'" Arias said of her arrest. "It was almost like an out of body experience. Like, it wasn't really happening to me."

But it was happening. And it was just the beginning. Even after four years in jail awaiting trial, Jodi Arias had little trouble keeping herself in the spotlight. Once again, she caught the attention of the media when she won a jailhouse Christmas singing competition.

But two-and-a-half weeks ago, when her trial finally got under way, Arias' defense team stunned the courtroom in opening arguments with a very different tune.

"Jodi Arias killed Travis Alexander. There is no question about it," defense attorney Jennifer Willmott told jurors.

No masked intruders, no death threats and no desperate escape into the desert; it was all a lie.

"Jodi did not always tell the truth about what happened that night. She was scared ... scared about what she had done," said Willmott.

What Arias had done, according to the prosecution's parade of witnesses, was commit an unthinkable act of vicious brutality.

Even though Arias now admits to killing Travis, the prosecution still has to make its case for murder.

"The million dollar question is what would have forced her to do it?" Willmott addressed jurors.

Arias' answer? An accusation of her own. "It was Travis's continual abuse," Willmott continued. "And on June 4th of 2008, it had reached a point of no return."

Arias now claims there was a dark side to her relationship with Travis -- that he was often abusive and quick to anger and when she accidentally dropped his new camera after taking portraits of him in the shower, it set him off.

"As that camera was falling, that was enough for Travis because he lunged at her in anger, knocking her to the ground," Willmott said in court. "Sadly, Travis left Jodi no other option but to defend herself. On that horrible day, Jodi believed that Travis was going to kill her."

It's a challenging defense -- one that, in addition to her story of intruders, Jodi Arias may have been considering when she spoke with "48 Hours" just after her arrest.

"Was he ever abusive to you in any way?" Maureen Maher asked Arias in 2008.

"Um -- you know, I -- I don't want to ever say anything bad about his -- him, or - or -- or hurt his reputation at all. He -- he lost his temper a few times, and it wasn't -- anything that would really -- required me to -- you know, that -- that I felt -- I never felt my life was in danger, I'll say that," she replied.

"Did you show the physical signs of it?"

"Yes -- but I was able to hide it pretty well, I think," Arias said. "Arms, legs,torso."

"And yet, you still were drawn to him in some way?"

"One thing about Travis is, you know, after we would argue, he was always extremely apologetic," said Arias.

But there is no record anywhere of Arias reporting this abuse, and his friends say that's not the Travis they knew.

"We've never seen him be violent to anyone or anything in that entire time," said Chris Hughes.

"You ask any of his other girlfriends, never a sign, never a out of control temper. Never-- I mean, never even the thought to raise a hand," Sky Hughes said. "I mean, nothing."

In fact, "48 Hours" did ask Travis' former girlfriend Deanna Reid.

"Was there ever anything like that that you saw in Travis?" Maher asked.

"Yeah, we had a couple of fights while we were dating. And -- just normal fights ... and he was able to control, you know, his temper, and you know, calm down, and we would talk about it. And so we never stayed mad at each other very long," said Reid.

Another challenge for the defense is explaining how Arias chose to drive to Utah to meet her potential new boyfriend, Ryan Burns, knowing she had just finished killing her last boyfriend:

Prosecutor Juan Martinez: "When you go back to your house, what do the two of you do?
Ryan Burns: We talked for a while. ...You know, at some point -- she was kissing my neck, I was kissin' hers. But clothes never came off. ... She was -- definitely seemed -- to be into the moment.
Prosecutor Juan Martinez: Did you notice whether or not she had any injuries or cuts to one of her hands?
Ryan Burns: She had two small bandages, it seems like, on one of her fingers. Her -- couple of her fingers.
Prosecutor Juan Martinez: And what did she tell you about the -- those cuts?
Ryan Burns: She told me she broke a glass and cut her finger.

It's clear now that Arias was lying -- just one of the many lies she has told since killing Travis:

Jodi Arias: I didn't kill him. I didn't take his life.
Det. Esteban Flores:Did you have anything to do with it?
Jodi Arias:I had nothing to do with his death at all.

Lies told during her 2008 police interrogation which the prosecution showed in court, hoping to prove that nothing Jodi says, including her claim of abuse, can be trusted:

Det. Esteban Flores: What did you do with the gun?
Jodi Arias: I don't have a gun.
Det. Esteban Flores: Were you at Travis' house on Wednesday?
Jodi Arias: Absolutely not. I was n-- I was nowhere near Mesa.
Det. Esteban Flores: I have pictures of you in Travis' bedroom with Travis. Pictures of him. And it's obvious you guys are having sex, taking photos of each other.
Jodi Arias: Are you sure it's me in that -- 'cause I was not there.
Det. Esteban Flores: There's so much evidence in that house and it all points to you.

Det. Esteban Flores: Do you have any recent cuts that are healed?
Jodi Arias: Well, my cat scratches me. Little things. These are all her work. You can see. This is her. That's her. I've got scars.
Det. Esteban Flores: Well, enough about your cat. But why is your palm print in blood?
Jodi Arias: How can that be my palm print?
Det. Esteban Flores: Because you were there.
Jodi Arias: If I was ever going to try to kill somebody, I would use gloves. I've got plenty of them.
Det. Esteban Flores: You killed him.
Jodi Arias: No.
Det. Esteban Flores: Jodi, you did.
Jodi Arias: I did not. ... If Travis were here today, he would tell you that it -- wasn't me.
Det. Esteban Flores: "No? My job is to speak for Travis right now. And everything Travis is telling me is that Jodi did this to me.

Finally, on Thursday, Jan. 17, after calling 20 witnesses, the prosecution, rested.

Crimesider: Complete coverage of Jodi Arias trial

Arias' defense team is now scheduled to present its side of the story in the coming weeks, and then her fate will be in the hands of the jury. But if what she told "48 Hours" four years ago is any indication, regardless of the verdict, Jodi Arias will always believe in her innocence.

"If a conviction happens, I know that I won't be the first person to be wrongly convicted, and possibly sentenced for either life in prison or the death penalty. Personally if I had my choice I would take the death penalty because I don't want to spend the rest of my life in prison," she told "48 Hours."

But Travis' sister has a warning: "Don't be fooled by Jodi's -- sweet demeanor and her public speaking skills," Samantha Alexander, said. "She's a liar. And she's evil."

"When I am judged for all the things that I've done, there's just -- there's a really -- deep sense of comfort to know that you know, that -- ultimately it's God's opinion that counts," Arias continued. "Ultimately it's His justice system that nobody can escape ... And He knows. And I know. And Travis knows."

The trial of Jodi Arias is expected to conclude sometime in February. She is facing the death penalty.