By all accounts, the relationship between convicted murderer Jodi Arias and her victim Travis Alexander started as a passionate romance. Nonetheless, one of the man’s friends said she warned him about his new lover.
“I started seeing things that were just disturbing,” Sky Lovingier Hughes told ABC’s 20/20 in an episode that will air on Friday night. “I said, ‘Travis, I’m afraid we’re gonna find you chopped up in her freezer.'”
Arias, she said, was “completely obsessed with him.”
That obsession ended in murder. Arias was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life behind bars for fatally shooting and stabbing Alexander at his home in 2008. She remains at an Arizona state prison in the city of Goodyear, records show. Her defense is seeking a new trial. The prosecution has said there was “some” misconduct by the state in the original proceedings, but not enough to warrant a do-over.
Arias exhibited strange behavior before the relationship fell apart and ended in violence, Lovingier Hughes said. For example, she, Alexander, Lovingier Hughes, and Hughes’ then-husband Chris Hughes were hanging out in a hot tub just hanging out. Arias started climbing on Alexander’s lap, and sucked his neck, according to this story.
“And Travis just kept pushing her off and he’s like, ‘Jodi…get off me. Like, what are you doing?'” Lovingier Hughes said. “And I look at Chris and I’m like, ‘Does she not realize we’re sitting here?'”
Other behavior included Arias following Alexander to the bathroom and standing outside the door, eavesdropping on his conversations, and snooping through his phone, email, and social media, Lovingier Hughes said.
Chris Hughes backed up his ex-wife’s story. He said he and Lovingier Hughes brought their worries to Alexander, and they told him they believed Arias was dangerous. Lovingier Hughes said she sensed that Arias was outside at the time. Alexander checked, and there Arias was.
Another friend reported red flags in the relationship.
“She just had to sit right by him,” Clancy Talbot said. “She didn’t appreciate when he was talking to another female. She didn’t like the fact that if there was anyone that didn’t know that they were together. She wanted to make that clear.”
20/20 airs Friday from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. on ABC.
[Mugshot via Arizona Department of Corrections]
