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NANCY GRACE

The Steubenville Rape; Bombshell Beauty Murder Trial

Aired January 7, 2013 - 20:00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


NANCY GRACE, HOST: Breaking news tonight, Mesa, Arizona. They meet at a conference in Vegas and fall hard for each other, but when the flame burns out and they break up, she moves 300 miles to pursue him, even converting to Mormonism to get her man. Then 30-year-old Travis Alexander`s dead body found slumped over in the shower of his five-bedroom luxury home, shot, stabbed 29 times and beaten to death, the violence so brutal, it resembles a mob hit.

Bombshell tonight. The Jodi Arias jury needs an extra day off after seeing horrific digital camera photos actually snapped during the grisly murder, including a blood-drenched crime scene, detailing the very last moments of Alexander`s life. This as bizarre details emerge about Arias and Alexander`s sex lives, as Arias cries buckets in front of the jury.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The dramatic trial that we`ve been covering of the woman charged with the brutal murder of her ex-boyfriend.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The state of Arizona versus Jodi Ann (ph) Arias.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: "Travis, what can I say to you that I haven`t already said? I am so grateful for the endless hours of conversation and the amazing experiences we`ve shared."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She had sex with him to put him into a powerless state.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rewarded that love of Travis (INAUDIBLE) Alexander by sticking a knife in his chest.

JODI ARIAS, CHARGED WITH MURDER: I heard that he was -- he passed away and that it was -- I don`t know. I heard all kinds of rumors. I heard there was a lot of blood.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Covered in blood, like (INAUDIBLE) lots of blood pooling and smears.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now her story is she killed Travis in self-defense.

ARIAS: He works out really, really hard. He`s so strong.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jodi had to make a choice. She would either live or she would die.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With 29 stab wounds?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But then Jodi...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Good evening. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us.

Bombshell tonight. The Jodi Arias jury needs an extra day off after seeing horrific digital camera photos actually snapped during the grisly murder, including a blood-drenched crime scene, detailing the very last moments of Travis Alexander`s life. This as bizarre details emerge about Arias and Alexander`s sex lives, as Arias insists on crying buckets in front of the jury.

Now, first of all, let`s go live to Steubenville, Ohio. It`s right there on the West Virginia line. Outrage after a teen keg party turns horrific, and at this hour, and joining us live, why is Roseanne Barr somehow involved?

I want to go straight out to Marylynne Pitz with "The Pittsburgh Post- Gazette." Marylynne, what happened at the party?

MARYLYNNE PITZ, "PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE" (via telephone): What happened, Nancy, was that a young woman became really intoxicated, and two football players are now charged with raping her at two later parties that they dragged her to. She became so intoxicated that they dragged her out of the first party by her ankles, and you know, arms.

GRACE: So she was dragged out of a party, ankles and arms. I know that I`ve got some SOT, sound, that was discovered by somebody or something called Anonymous Online, where a lot of people were knocking the girl, saying she`s a whore and a slut and she deserved to be raped and she deserved to be peed on.

I`m not exactly understanding what`s happening. Clark Goldband, fill in the gaps.

CLARK GOLDBAND, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: Well, Nancy, we`re not talking about one or two but three separate parties are involved. It was all in the same night. The boys are star football players. One`s a quarterback. One`s a wide receiver. They had a scrimmage earlier in the day.

Later that evening, they go to a party. The 16-year-old girl also goes to an end of summer party, if you will. There was a lot of alcohol involved, according to reports.

GRACE: Clark, Clark, just stop, all right? This ain`t no tea party, all right? Don`t make it sound like an end of summer party where they`re all dressed in white and they`re having tea cakes. That`s not the way it went down, all right?

Wasn`t there some kind of makeshift vodka, rum and hard whiskey bar set up? These are 16-year-olds.

GOLDBAND: According to "The New York Times," yes.

GRACE: Everybody was drunk. And they`re dragging a girl around, either naked or half naked, by her wrists and her ankles. She`s so passed out, she doesn`t even know what`s going on. Is that the kind of party you`re referring to as the end of the summer party?

GOLDBAND: According to reports, that is what took place at that party.

GRACE: Yes. All right. Go ahead.

GOLDBAND: And there`s more, Nancy. In fact, according to some allegations, there may have been people urinating on this 16-year-old girl, and far worse, according to authorities. They allege that two of the football players raped this 16-year-old girl that evening. One allegedly took place inside a Volkswagen Jetta. The other allegedly took place inside one of the homes.

GRACE: Wait, wa-wait, wa-wait! Why don`t we just put -- put the whole thing to rest and get some DNA, Clark?

Everybody, you`re seeing a picture posted anonymously on line showing a girl, appears unconscious, being carried by hands and feet by two males. It`s allegedly from the night of this attack.

Now, we can`t verify it is the alleged victim in this case. But you know what? If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck and it looks like a duck, it`s probably a duck.

All right, Clark, where`s the DNA?

GOLDBAND: There is no DNA that we know of. Based on reports, the girl was not examined for at least 24 to 48 hours after the alleged incident. Authorities were not able to uncover any DNA that we know of.

GRACE: Wa-wait! Wa-wait! Wa-wait! Right there! Right there! Marylynne Pitz, "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette," in 24 hours -- now, it`s been a while since I tried a rape case, but sperm lives a good 72 hours at least.

PITZ: Right, but it wasn`t that...

GRACE: So what happened?

PITZ: ... kind of a rape. It wasn`t that kind of a rape, Nancy. They`re accused of putting their fingers into this young woman`s body.

GRACE: OK, so you`re telling me, in a nice way, that this was digital vaginal penetration, all right?

PITZ: That`s right, yes.

GRACE: All right. OK. I got it Marylynne. I want to go right now to Roseanne Barr, activist, supports Occupy Steubenville and the efforts of Anonymous.

Roseanne Barr, thank you for being with us. And explain to me how you are connected to this case.

ROSEANNE BARR, COMEDIAN, SUPPORTS "OCCUPY STEUBENVILLE": Well, Nancy, you know, I let you know about it on Twitter, and that`s how I found out about it. People sent me information. They tweeted me information, and it sickened me. And so I just -- you know, in order to support the rape victim, I, you know, just became more and more involved, reading more and more.

And then I thought, Well, there`s a way for me to help. So I contacted -- you know, I know a lot of people in the press and that kind of thing, and I tried to do everything I could to bring some, as it turns out, international attention to things that happen in the United States at the same time where everybody`s talking about rape in India.

I felt like, Well, this is just international. And I think that a shift is happening, a shift in the way people view things. And I`m very glad to be part of that, along with anybody and any group who wants to do the right thing for the right reason at the right time, and I think that time is now.

I`d like to say two things, though, Nancy, that have been left out of the people talking before me. The girl, it seems, was roofied. She was drugged. And she was also, some say, set up by her ex-boyfriend and a girlfriend of hers at a whole other, you know, typical teen party. And these parties intersected.

After she was allegedly roofied and passed out unconscious is when she was put into the trunk of a car and moved to two other parties, one of them across state lines, to be raped at those parties, too. So this is really huge.

And what`s really disturbing about it is that it is a small town and everybody seems to know everybody. But prosecuting attorney, I think -- I may be wrong, but I think her son might be involved.

That`s why I wanted to get involved and why I just wish the FBI would come down there and get involved, too, because I think it`s huge. And I think it`s -- you know, there`s just too many things, too many people knowing too many people.

GRACE: Roseanne, what is amazing to me -- I mean, after prosecuting so many just horrific cases, Roseanne, including rape cases, I`m never surprised when somebody commits a crime. I`m always surprised at the other people who just stand around. This was a party of, like, 50 people, and here is a naked or semi-naked girl being dragged around by two guys. She`s obviously unconscious. And everybody just stands around.

And you know what, Roseanne Barr? You didn`t just stand around. You did something. You did something.

BARR: Well, I`m a grandmother, Nancy, and you`re a parent, and a lot of people are parents. And I want to say to the people in Steubenville who came out, they didn`t just stand around, either. And I think a fire has been lit and I think that that spark is going to keep growing, and I hope it does. I hope we keep this in the public mind. I hope we look at a culture of bully-dom, where adult males and females are bullying (INAUDIBLE)

GRACE: Well, there`s more than just her -- her testimony, Roseanne, because, obviously, if the photo is accurate -- and I see no reason why it would not be accurate -- she`s out of it. She may not even remember what happened.

But take a listen to this. Roll what we`ve got, Liz. This is what is being said on line, on Facebook, on Twitter, people that were involved in this incident on YouTube. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They peed on her. That`s how you know she`s dead because someone pissed on her!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just go over there. Go over there and be, like, Why you raping a dead girl? It isn`t really rape because you don`t know if she wanted to or not.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She might have wanted to. That might have been her final wish.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That`s, like, rape. It is rape. They raped her.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the funniest thing I`ve ever seen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They raped her harder than that cop raped Marcellus Wallace (ph) in "Pulp Fiction."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She`s deader than Obi-Wan Kenobi after Darth Vader cut his head off! That`s how dead she is. I`m going to get real. She`s deader than Andy Reid`s son, that`s how (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She`s deader than Chris Henry.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She`s deader than O.J.`s wife.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She is -- she is -- she is deader than Caylee Anthony!

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There has never been someone this dead. She`s deader than Harvey Dent (ph) after Batman tackled him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She`s deader than they thought Gandalf was.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She`s (EXPLETIVE DELETED) deader than JFK, dude!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Their shockingly lighthearted conversation appears to be about the alleged sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl at a series of parties.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The recent leak on the Internet of a video where a group of teens are heard joking about...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: We are live in Steubenville. It`s right there on the West Virginia border. I think the population -- the population -- Clark, what is it, 18 -- how big is it?

GOLDBAND: Nancy, the population is 18,000. The football stadium holds about 10,000.

GRACE: Now, this is what I don`t get. All these people are on line talking about this girl getting raped. She`s apparently either drunk or was roofied. Are they still playing football? Who`s in jail?

GOLDBAND: Nancy, the two 16-year-olds who were charged in this crime were originally sent to juvenile hall. They`ve been out on bond. Now, they are going to classes at the local jail and they`re allowed to leave for church.

Now, the other football players on the team -- there are some athletes who allegedly posted on line and commented on this -- they, Nancy, as far as we know, have not received any sanctions. In fact, the head coach has been quoted as saying that they didn`t think they did anything wrong, so he`s not going to take out any sanctions on them. That report coming from the...

GRACE: Wa-wait! The football coach said what?

GOLDBAND: That these sports players, these students, didn`t feel they did anything wrong, so he`s not going to take any action against them, this coming from "The New York Times."

GRACE: Let`s hear -- everybody, I`ve got a stack -- come to me full, please. I have a stack of what was said on YouTube by the people that were at the party and observed this, but I`m not allowed to tell you what all -- to play it. I can`t play it for you. You keep seeing a picture that was posted anonymously on line, and it shows a girl that looks like she`s unconscious being carried by hands and feet by two males.

Now, this is allegedly from the night of the attack. We can`t verify if it is the alleged victim.

Listen to this. Rachel Kent, listen to this. This is one of my team that`s investigating the story. "You`re about to go to jail. Her" -- blank, I`m going to leave that out because it`s filthy talk about a woman`s vagina -- "is about as dry as the sun right now, Mars, dude. If you try to take a sip from it, you`ll die. If you need water, you`ll be out of luck. Bro, he raped a girl and Ma`lik raped somebody with Trent F`ing egging him on."

What -- wha -- why aren`t these people in jail? What -- what is happening, Rachel? What do you know?

RACHEL KENT, NANCY GRACE SOCIAL MEDIA PRODUCER (via telephone): Well, Nancy, the fury was ignited because, literally, the night this is allegedly taking place, tons of Twitter accounts are basically providing a gruesome play-by-play of the crime.

For example, "Some people deserve to be peed on." That`s from one Twitter account. Another Twitter account tweeted, "Song of the night is definitely `Rape Me` by Nirvana." Another one, "Finally saw a dead person. Whoa." "It wasn`t rape. They were just making love."

These are coming from multiple different Twitter accounts. And we know that only two people are behind bars.

GRACE: Jean Casarez, legal correspondent, "In Session," why are these two guys out of jail? Yes, I know it was just a digital penetration. Is that -- what, That makes it not a rape? Not under the law. That`s a rape. Why are they out from behind bars?

Now, Jean, I understand what Roseanne was saying about everybody standing by and not doing anything. I agree. They should all go to jail. But that`s not the law. The law is you don`t have to help. You can stand by and let something like this happen and you don`t go to jail.

But what about the guys that were actually observed doing this?

JEAN CASAREZ, "IN SESSION": It was determined by a judge that they could have house arrest and that they could go to school and do certain things. So that was because of a judge.

But you know, Nancy, the social media aspect of this -- that`s why that now there are two people charged because the family of this 16-year-old alleged victim -- they got a picture of their daughter that was comatose, basically, and they got ahold of that YouTube video. They took it to law enforcement, and that`s why two people are charged today.

GRACE: So the family got this photo and they went to law enforcement?

CASAREZ: Yes, they did. A family member of theirs saw it and took it to them. And two days later, they went to law enforcement with it.

GRACE: To Sheriff Fred Abdalla, a special guest joining us from Steubenville. He`s the Jefferson County sheriff. Sir, thank you for being with us. What`s happening in the case?

FRED ABDALLA, JEFFERSON COUNTY SHERIFF (via telephone): First, thank you, and God bless you for what you`re doing.

GRACE: Thank you.

ABDALLA: Let me say this. I`m not the one that investigated this case. I had a small part in it. Steubenville Police Department is the one that investigated the case. I sent some information there to you to look at.

GRACE: I got that. I got the warrants. You`re actually trying to get cell phones and computers of people there at the party because you think it has valuable evidence.

Sheriff, I can`t tell you how upsetting this is to many of us -- I`m a crime victim myself -- that it seems like if we weren`t screaming right now, nothing would be done!

ABDALLA: Well, let me say that there`s so much information out there on Twitter and the Internet that is totally false. Now, when our prosecutor, Jane Hanlon (ph), her son`s name was brought up that he was part of this. As soon as his name surfaced, she recused herself, as did the judge. And the documentation that I sent to you is from the (INAUDIBLE) police court where she requested the attorney general`s office to come in, prosecute anybody and everybody that was involved in this case.

GRACE: Well, praise the Lord. I`m glad to hear it, Sheriff.

ABDALLA: That was done in August. And since August, there has been no new evidence to surface in the case. Now, Steubenville police chief, as well as myself, kept asking people, Please come forward. Please come forward, anybody that knows anything. Nobody come forward.

Steubenville Police Department in the early days of this investigation interviewed between 50 and 60 individuals that were at these parties. Of that many interviewed, there were three people that testified or gave statements as to what did they witness.

And what they witnessed was -- and it was testified at the court hearing and the detention hearing -- they witnessed that they saw three individuals having sexual contact with this young girl.

GRACE: Well, the girl, to me, Roseanne Barr, looks like she`s totally comatose.

BARR: Sheriff, the cell phones and all were already confiscated shortly after the crime, and everything deleted. And what about those videos? What about prosecuting people for sending basically violent child porn over their devices? Have you looked at that at all, Sheriff?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: I just hate to see a 16-year-old girl called a whore and a slut on line because she was either drunk or roofied. That`s Georgia home boy. That is the date rape drug.

You know, Roseanne Barr, other than us publicizing this and begging, begging for justice, what do you believe people should do?

BARR: I think people can contact people on Twitter, specifically KYAnonymous (ph) and Just Back Cat (ph) and Printyfied.com (ph) and Printydivot (ph) at Twitter and Roseanne -- the real Roseanne on Twitter, too.

We think that Sheriff Abdul -- what`s his name -- Abdalla could be doing more. And we -- like, I would personally like to see the FBI come in and break up what seems to be an old boy network that protects rapists and not the victim. Yes, I think it`s a witch burning, and it upsets me. Thank you so much for taking it on, Nancy.

GRACE: Well, you know, Roseanne, I`m just so distraught, especially now that I have my children, to think that this could happen to one of them, this girl was obviously unconscious, and that now people are saying she`s a whore and a slut, deserved to be raped, deserved to be peed on. It`s heartbreaking and disgusting.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that was around April that you last saw him, right?

JODI ARIAS, ACCUSED OF KILLING BOYFRIEND TRAVIS ALEXANDER: Early April.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You haven`t -- you haven`t been back in town since then?

ARIAS: No, I haven`t at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But you have physically been here since you left?

ARIAS: Since I moved, no, I haven`t.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Jodi now admits that was a lie.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On that horrible day, Jodi believed that Travis was going to kill her. He threatened to kill her.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was it because of self-defense? There`s no way in hell it was. And not one person that knows Travis has come out and said, yes, he was -- he was that person.

NANCY GRACE, HLN HOST: She is claiming that he was verbally abusive. The first time we hear any physical abuse claim by her is the incident where she slashes him, a smiley face slash, from ear to ear.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Were you here in town or were you --

ARIAS: I was in Yreka, California.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About 12 hours after Travis was murdered, she was up here in Utah and out to eat with us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: We are live and taking your calls.

Jodi Arias crying buckets in court in front of a jury. But I noticed -- out to you, Beth Karas, legal correspondent, "In Session," joining us there on the scene, that when she was speaking to police, one of her several stories she gave or when she talked on "Inside Edition" or "48 Hours" she never cried during that. But she was in front of this jury she`s really the -- she`s a sob sister.

BETH KARAS, LEGAL CORRESPONDENT, IN SESSION: Good point, Nancy. I`m not aware of her showing emotion like that unless it`s in court, and she started crying right with the opening statements. I suspect that she`ll be emotion almost every day.

GRACE: You know, Jean Casarez, legal correspondent, also "In Session," the medical examiner poised to take the stand, and it`s perfectly set up because the last testimony the jury hears is from a crime scene tech. We`re going to hear a little more from her. But the crime scene tech is laying out where the bloody fingerprints were, where the blood spatter was, and the sequence of events that forensically they can determine. The medical examiner is going to shore all that up.

JEAN CASAREZ, LEGAL CORRESPONDENT, "IN SESSION": That`s right. And he`s - - it`s going to take a long time, too, because there were so many wounds and he is going to go through all of the stab wounds, where they were, and then probably recant what we heard in opening statements of --

GRACE: Good lord. Jean, Jean, look at your monitor. Are you seeing this?

CASAREZ: I am, Nancy.

GRACE: Are you seeing -- good lord. And that`s the shell casing right there. The -- I believe it was a .22 or a .25 caliber, was lodged in his - - went in through the right -- above the eyebrow, landed and lodged into the left cheek, showing he was already down at the time. And this.

Beth Karas, walk me through how they think the order of the attack went.

KARAS: OK. They`re about the same height, Jodi and Travis. And so she had to get him -- but he`s much stronger -- in a vulnerable position. She was taking photos of him naked in the shower, from the waist up, but then the final photo she took of him, he`s crouched down in the shower. It`s not a very revealing photo but it was displayed to the jury. And once he`s in that vulnerable position crouched down --

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: Beth, Beth, we`re showing one of those right now. Hold on, Beth. Hold on, Beth. I know you can`t see this, right there in front of the courthouse.

KARAS: Yes.

GRACE: But right now we`re showing part of his body in the shower crumpled up in the foot of the shower. There are others that we`re not going to show. They`re extremely grizzly.

Go ahead as to the order of the attack, Beth.

KARAS: OK. So once she has him down and she takes a photo, she stabbed him in the heart. That is what the prosecutor said in his opening statement. But it was a fatal wound but not immediately fatal, so he`s fighting with her. He has wounds on his hands that look as though he has grabbed the blade of the knife and then there`s some, perhaps a struggle, there`s blood all around the bathroom. He was in the shower stall.

There`s a tub then there`s a little toilet area and there`s blood all around there. And then across from the tub is sink, there`s a right and a left sink. And at the right sink the prosecutor said he stood over that sink. And now we do have photos of that bloody sink and he`s dripping into the sink. He`s probably spitting. He`s being stabbed at that point and then he crawls down the hall, or walks down the hall, collapses and she slit his throat.

You know, one thing I don`t understand, Matt Zarrell, is why Jodi Arias, the defendant on trial for murdering -- stabbing 29 times, shooting, beating her boyfriend. Here is the reality. I`ll tell you what happened, Matt Zarrell. She comes over, uninvited, I think. They have sex all day. They have sex all night. Then he tells her, yes, I`m not canceling my trip to Cancun with the other woman and she went off.

I mean, it`s really not any more complicated than that in my mind. But this is what I don`t understand, Matt Zarrell, why are they referring to Jodi Arias as his dirty little secret? What`s secret about Jodi Arias? I don`t understand that.

MATT ZARRELL, NANCY GRACE STAFFER, COVERING STORY: Well, Nancy, the big secret was that they were having sex because, according to the Book of Mormon, they are not allowed to have sex until they are married. So because of --

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: Whoa, whoa. So the big secret is they had sex? That`s the secret? That`s the big secret?

ZARRELL: Is that they were having a sexual relationship and, meanwhile, while they were having a sexual relationship, he in public could date good Mormon women as opposed to Jodi Arias who was, as the defense put it, his dirty little secret.

GRACE: Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Jean Casarez, didn`t she become a Mormon? As a matter of fact, didn`t Travis Alexander actually baptize her in the Mormon faith? I don`t know how that works. But --

CASAREZ: He introduced her to Mormonism. He had missionaries go to her home and he baptized her. You better believe it. That was right at the beginning.

GRACE: OK. Now back to you, Matt Zarrell. What`s this business about him convincing her that vaginal sex was a sin but anal and oral sex is not a sin?

ZARRELL: Well, what the defense said in their opening statement --

GRACE: I never heard anything like that in the Book of Mormon.

ZARRELL: Well, what the defense said in their opening statement is they claim that Travis would explain to Arias that all sex was not as much of a sin as vaginal sex so he convinced her to have oral sex. He used the same mode for anal sex telling her it wasn`t viewed as much of a sin in the church and that way he was able to convince her to perform those sex acts.

GRACE: OK. Hold on just a moment. Wait. The defense is trying to claim, are they not, Beth Karas, that he treated her like a sex slave? But she was the one, after they broke up, that moved about 300 miles to try to get him back.

KARAS: Absolutely. You`re right. That is what they`re trying to say and she did move after they broke up. She eventually left and moved to Yreka, California, 1,000 miles away. And it is from 1,000 miles away that she drove heading there two days before killing him. So if he was an abuser, the defense needs to explain why she drove 1,000 miles to visit her abuser.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARIAS: I came over and I cleaned his house a lot. He sort -- he paid me a little bit every month to keep his house nice and clean, sort of like a housekeeper.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you remember seeing an e-mail from Mr. Alexander to Miss Arias where he provides her a picture of the French maid outfit that he would like her to don when she cleans his apartment or his home, excuse me?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: If every man who dreams of somebody wearing a French maid costume committed a crime, there`d be no men left. They`d all be in jail right now.

I want to go out to a special guest joining me right now live at the courthouse. Taylor Searle, who`s a very dear friend of Travis Alexander`s.

Mr. Searle, thank you for being with us. You know, I`m a crime victim. I thought I knew all about representing criminals until I had children, a boy and a girl, and I cannot even imagine all the love, the time, the energy, the money, the backbreaking effort to raise Travis Alexander into a fine young man. I mean, he was handsome, he was a motivational speaker, he was a hard worker, he was getting successful, and then here comes Arias.

Did you know Arias before the murder?

TAYLOR SEARLE, CLOSE FRIEND OF MURDER VICTIM, TRAVIS ALEXANDER: Yes, I had met her a few times.

GRACE: In what context? How did you meet her and what was your impression?

SEARLE: The first time I met her was at Travis` house actually. He had a group of people over and we were making cookies together. And I remember being pretty put off by her because she seemed very possessive of Travis and possessive of his house. And it was the first time I had met her. And as one of his bros I had assumed that I would have known if there was someone that should lay claim to his house and his time, but -- so I didn`t really like her because she seemed super possessive and --

GRACE: Like what? What did she do?

SEARLE: Because that was my first thought.

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: To be possessive? What did she do to give you that impression?

SEARLE: She -- I had been his former roommate. I had lived there for a while and had been there a lot and spent lots of time with him. And when I walked in it was kind of like, hi, I`m Jodi, welcome to my home, kind of a feeling. I don`t remember the exact words, but that`s kind of the gist of what she said. And my thought was, who are you? I`ve never met you.

GRACE: You know what, I get it. I get it because I spoke at length with another of Travis` friends and they said basically our mind was totally open, but after we spent time with her we let him know we want to see him but don`t bring Arias along.

I`m just trying to figure out how she got it over on Alexander that she could actually kill him. She obviously was not his physical match and, also, all this -- this is about treating her like a sex slave. He obviously wanted to marry within his religion. And I get it. That`s one of the top 10 things that married couples fight about. Religion. How are you going to raise your children?

I don`t know enough about the Mormon religion to understand all this. What`s this business he`s telling her that vaginal sex is a sin but anal and oral sex is not a sin?

SEARLE: Well, in the -- in the Mormon religion, especially when you graduate high school and start to find people to court, the religion`s pretty strict about not having sex until marriage. And so there`s a lot of room for people to try to find gray areas so that they can explore sexuality with whoever they`re dating without actually breaking the rules, and, I mean, the religion really doesn`t say, oh, that`s OK and this is sex and that`s not sex, and it`s kind of open to everyone to try to find rationalization. To do whatever they want. No one is going to defend his rationale but everyone has been there before, everyone has tried to find a line that they won`t cross or will cross. Trying to --

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: Well, are you saying that -- is that true? Is what she said is true? Because I find it so hard to believe that a guy would say that --

SEARLE: It`s definitely not true that --

GRACE: -- and that somebody would actually believe it.

SEARLE: Well, and I don`t know the context of where he said that or how.

GRACE: Or if?

SEARLE: I could imagine him saying that as a joke, I could imagine him seeing it serious. Or if. I mean, everything she says seems to be a lie. But I mean it`s completely imaginable that every Mormon guy has those same questions of what`s OK and what`s not OK, trying to follow the religious beliefs.

GRACE: Question, Taylor. Were you in close contact with Travis when he found out, for instance, that his bank account and his Facebook had been hacked into? His bank account was hacked into by Jodi Arias. I think that`s out there. That`s not even -- they haven`t even contended that that`s not true, contested it in court. I mean, that`s pretty damning.

SEARLE: Well, Travis is --

GRACE: I don`t know that I would even let her --

(CROSSTALK)

SEARLE: Well, Travis has -- he had open arms to everyone. Everyone was his friend. And he never assumed that someone would try to take advantage of him. And when he had found that she had stolen journals, slashed tires, broken into Facebook, bank accounts, all that, it was just like him to try to give more chances to be a good friend to him or to forgive and forget or -- and it just seems that she was the wrong person to be that way with.

GRACE: Did you ever have an inkling or a premonition or a fear that she could become violent with Travis?

SEARLE: You could call it premonition if you want, but the rationale thought -- the rationale mind never wants to assume something like this could actually happen. So I doubt I actually thought that she would hurt him, but I did mention to him at one point right before he was killed that he -- I mean, I asked him if he should be afraid of her, that she might try to hurt him because of the escalation.

GRACE: Wow. What did he say?

SEARLE: I mean, I`m sure he just brushed it off. I don`t remember the exact words. It was just like, she`s harmless.

GRACE: OK.

SEARLE: What`s she going to do?

GRACE: Unleash the lawyers. Randy Kessler, Atlanta, Joe Lawless, New York.

All right, Kessler, what`s your defense?

RANDY KESSLER, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, Nancy, a lot of --

(CROSSTALK)

JOE LAWLESS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY, AUTHOR OF "PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT": Go ahead, Randy.

KESSLER: Look, she might be accused of being a liar, a cryer, overconfident the jury is not going to convict her. But the problem is going to be if she testifies. If she doesn`t testify, they still have the burden of proof and they don`t have it yet locked up. She`s a bad person, is she a murderer? That`s a lot to prove.

GRACE: OK --

LAWLESS: A lot of this goes to the question of state of mind.

GRACE: Joe Lawless, I think that the DNA evidence, her bloody palm print on the scene and her taking digital camera photos of herself having sex with him about a couple of minutes before he`s dead pretty much sums it up that she did it.

LAWLESS: Well, it shows she did it, Nancy, but you don`t know the degree of the crime. First-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter. I don`t know if she`s been examined by a psychiatrist yet. There`s no question she killed him. The question is going to be the when, the why and the how, and that`s something the evidence is going to have to show. The rest of this stuff is garbage. It`s going to be the forensics and the psychiatric that`s going to determine the degree of guilt.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: We are taking your calls. Lori, California. Hi, Lori, what`s your question?

LORI, CALLER FROM CALIFORNIA: Hi. First, let me say, Nancy, that I think you`re an awesome lady for what you do.

GRACE: Thank you.

LORI: Very much, I mean that a lot. My question is, do you know anything about her past relationships or her ex-boyfriends? Was she stalking them? Did she have --

GRACE: You know what, Lori, I`ve been wondering the same thing, because, you know, there`s just got to be another guy in her background that she stalked.

What do we know, Jean Casarez?

CASAREZ: We know through opening statements that she was in a relationship when she met Travis Alexander. They had been going together for four years. They actually were living together. They had actually together made a down payment on a home, and once she met Travis, then she broke it off with that guy. But it seems that it was a normal relationship.

GRACE: To you, Dr. Leslie Austin, psychotherapist, New York.

Dr. Leslie, it`s hard for me to believe that if he was as awful as she says he was, she moves away, then she -- they break up. She moves 300 miles to get back to him?

DR. LESLIE AUSTIN, PSYCHOTHERAPIST: Right. You know, there is battered woman syndrome, Stockholm`s syndrome. All that`s true, except that her behaviors here don`t fit those profiles. All the evidence that you`re listing about her behavior show that she had choice and volition, and I don`t think her crying in the courtroom is going to help her one bit, because ultimately the jury will see through that.

GRACE: And to you, Woody Tripp, former police commander. Woody, how hard is it for a woman to actually stab a guy to death? A lot of people say that`s physically impossible, but not if you catch then unawares. I mean, about two minutes before the stabbing goes down literally two minutes, he`s in the shower, taking a shower. The next thing you know, he`s dead.

WOODROW TRIPP, FORMER POLICE COMMANDER, POLYGRAPH EXPERT: Well, Nancy, if you couple the intense anger, when you have someone stabbed over 20 times and shot, there is an anger there that was unleashed. And when you couple that with the surprise -- you know, we had an Atlanta police lieutenant back in the early `90s, and you may recall this, coming out of the shower, very significant, very similar.

And his wife literally shot him as she came out, racked him up in the shower curtain and ultimately dumped him in a lake. And again, he was about to leave her. This appears from the situation that she definitely had an anger and I think that`s where it was coming from. It was over, and she didn`t want it to be.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: Tonight we remember American hero, Army Lieutenant Col. Paul Bartz, 43, Waterloo, Wisconsin, killed Afghanistan. Bronze Medal, Purple Heart, Defense Meritorious Service medal, Army Commendation medal, parents Robert and Darlene, brother James, sisters Beth and Debbie. Widow Michelle. Son Logan.

Paul Bartz, American hero.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now you say intimate, does that include like a sexual relationship with him?

ARIAS: Yes. Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Jodi`s attorneys argued Travis Alexander, a devout Mormon, was actually --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Back to a very dear friend of Travis Alexander`s, Taylor Searle.

Taylor, how did you discover that your friend had been murdered?

SEARLE: Well, a lot of people had been calling me and asking me where Travis was, and I had mixed up time and I assumed that he was in Cancun. When it came to my attention that he was not in Cancun, because Mimi, who he was going to Cancun with, was calling me and asking where he was, we all headed over to his house to see what was up, and eventually Mimi and some other friends found him, as I was driving there, so we all found him that night and called everyone we knew and gathered around and just consoled each other.

GRACE: Could you tell me what Jodi Arias was like at the funeral, at the memorial?

SEARLE: She approached me and was somber and said it was unfortunate that we met again under these circumstances, and she was looking for a program that showed the speaker arrangement and the picture of him, and she was -- she was the first person that I thought had done it on my list, so I was really -- didn`t want to really talk to her, so I kept it short, and went on my way.

But she seemed to -- she seems like she was trying to act sad like the rest of us. And even attended some additional memorial services with small groups of friends on the days that followed.

GRACE: I want to go very quickly to Dr. Bill Manion, medical examiner joining me out of Philadelphia.

Dr. Manion, I believe that the medical examiner in this case is going to be a star witness. What will we learn?

DR. BILL MANION, M.D., MEDICAL EXAMINER, BURLINGTON COUNTY, NJ: Well, he`s going to talk about the size of the -- of the knife that was used. It looks to me like it`s a butcher knife. It has at least a blade at least 6.5 inches long, an inch wide.

He`s going to talk about the fatal injuries that took place. The fatal injuries are the stab wounds to the superior vena cava, that`s the large vein going into the heart, and the second fatal would would be the inception of the carotid artery on the right side. So those are the two main fatal --

GRACE: Right. With me, Dr. Bill Manion out of Philly.

Everyone, Dr. Drew up next. I`ll see you tomorrow night, 8:00 sharp Eastern. And until then, good night, friend.

END