A tearful Jodi Arias shrank on the stand Tuesday as jurors listened to a salacious 40-minute phone call between the accused murderer and her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander fantasizing over lewd sex acts such as rape, torture, and porn, the New York Daily News reported.
A 32-year-old photographer, Arias is charged with the the gruesome first-degree murder of her ex-boyfriend Alexander in his Arizona home in June 2008, in which she allegedly stabbed the then 30-year-old man 27 times, before slitting his throat and shooting him in the head. After first claiming she was never at Alexander's home that day, she then said masked intruders were to blame for his death, and then eventually backtracked to say she killed the victim in self-defense when he attacked her in the shower, forcing her to fight for her life. Arias faces the death penalty if convicted, the Associated Press reported.
The defense continued to build on its twisted portrait of Arias and Alexander's relationship Tuesday, playing the raunchy phone call as evidence to support Arias' claim about her lover's supposed double life: a devout Mormon virgin on the surface, but a "sexually deviant" abusive control freak underneath. She's claimed Alexander was aroused by young boys and that she had once discovered him pleasuring himself to pictures of them, according to ABC News. The defense has also told a story of Arias once waking from sleeping in Alexander's bed to find him having sex with her, according to the Associated Press.
Recorded by Arias just weeks before the murder, the phone call showed Arias giggling and fawning over Alexander while he described his sexual fantasies, ABC News reported.
"I'm going to tie you to a tree and put it in your a**," Alexander said on the tape, according to ABC News.
"Oh my gosh, that is so debasing, I like it," responded Arias.
"You're pretty, you're so attractive," Alexander later said in the phone call. "I've never seen you look bad in my life. There are times when you've looked miserable and I've still, like, raped you."
Arias has testified throughout the trial about the couple's equally violent and volatile relationship, claiming he abused her and was "emotionally detached." But the man she's described is nothing like the Alexander his friends knew, according to the Associated Press.
Julie Haslem, one of Alexander's friends who has been watching the trial, claimed Arias' allegations that he was abusive were entirely untrue.
"It's bad enough that she took his life. Now she's trying to take his reputation, too," Haslem said outside court.
Alexander's friends claim that Arias was stalking him and was "possessive and jealous." The prosecution has alleged that the pair had become distant in the weeks before the killing, and Alexander was trying to get Arias to leave him alone.
Arias later claimed she played along with Alexander's crude suggestions because she didn't want to insult his sex fantasies, ABC News reported.
Eventually during the phone call, Arias orgasms. Alexander then tells her, "You sound like a 12-year-old having an orgasm, that's so hot, like little girl."
"You're bad, you make me feel so dirty," Arias responded, according to ABC News.
The long conversation meanders between the lewd and banal, with the two eventually singing to each other until Alexander falls asleep.
Arias will resume her testimony again Wednesday.
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