Jodi Arias and her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander,, had increasingly violent sex in which he tied her to his bed, twisted her arm, bent her over a desk for anal sex, and made sex videos with her in the hours leading up to the stabbing and shooting frenzy that left Alexander dead.
It was a day in which Arias, 32, inched closer to telling the court how the killing of Alexander took place, but after several hours of increasingly emotional testimony the court was adjourned until Wednesday.
In her sixth day on the stand, Arias tearfully described the sex-filled hours that led to Alexander's death on June 4, 2008. She is charged with murder for killing her former boyfriend, but claims she was forced to kill him self-defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted.
"He tied me up, (on) the bed. It's not my favorite but it's not unbearable," Arias told the court.
She said he used a kitchen knife in the bathroom to cut the rope to the proper length, but she didn't remember whether he left the knife in the bathroom or brought it back to the nightstand in the bedroom.
"There are a lot gaps that day... a lot of things I don't remember that day," she said.
Arias and Alexander then took graphic sexual photos of one another and made a sex video, both of which Arias said were Alexander's ideas. Arias has girlish braids in the pictures.
But the mood of the afternoon turned, she said, when Alexander became angry over a scratched computer disk of photos she gave him. He threw the CD and Arias said she became "apprehensive" of his rising temper.
"I know he's getting angry because Napoleon [Alexander's dog] got up and left the room and he always leaves the room when he gets mad." she testified.
"I don't know that I was consciously thinking (of violence) but I was more tense. I stood up, went to walk over to him, to rub his back and make sure he was okay," she said. "But he grabbed me on the upper arms, spun me around and grabbed my right arm and twisted it behind my back, and bent me over the desk, and pressed up against me."
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"I was scared he was going to throw me or something, kick me," she continued. "He pressed his groin up against my butt, did a few thrusts and then started pulling my pants down."
The pair then had anal sex, which Arias said pacified Alexander.
"I was very relieved. I felt like we had avoided catastrophe. It could have led to another fight," she said.
Instead of a fight, Alexander, who was 27 and a devout Mormon, and Arias decide to go upstairs and take more nude photos of one another. Arias said she hoped the photos would satisfy Alexander over his frustration with the scratched CD.
Evidence introduced earlier in the trial show that Alexander was killed while Arias was photographing Alexander in the shower.
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Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial
Earlier, Arias explained that she wasn't planning to visit Alexander during her roadtrip from her home in California, but was convinced by him to spontaneously take a detour to his house for sex and to hang out.
"The very last time I called Travis it was kind of like, I don't know how to describe it, he had been very sweet and was guilting me and making me feel bad that I was taking this big trip without going to see him," Arias said this afternoon.
"When I called him last time it was just like all right, I'm going," she said. "(Sex) was our thing at that time. I wasn't going to go there, stay the night and not do that."
Arias' attorney, Kirk Nurmi, asked her repeatedly on the stand if Arias brought a gun or knife with her on the roadtrip and to Alexander's house. She said that she did not.
She also denied a series of allegations made by the prosecution that she dyed her hair, rented an inconspicuous car, borrowed gas cans, turned off her cell phone, and switched money around her bank accounts as she left for Alexander's house because she was planning to murder him when she got there.
Arias said that her hair remained the same color, auburn-brown, throughout May and June, that she rented a car because her own car was not stable enough for highway travel, that she requested a white car instead of a red one because police pull red ones over more often, and that she transferred money to a business banking account for a tax write-off to classify it as a business trip.
The testimony about the road trip and Arias' planning could be key to the jury as they decide whether the killing was pre-meditated, as the prosecution claims. Arias could face the death penalty if convicted of murder with aggravating factors such as pre-meditation.
Arias said that she "didn't sleep at all last night" before testifying about the dramatic incident today. Her comment was stricken from the record.
Arias also described a barrage of threatening text messages sent by Alexander in which he told her he would exact "revenge" on her soon and called her a "sociopath."
She told the court that Alexander's temper would make her "cower."
The messages show a growing discord between the pair in April 2008, less than two months before Arias killed Alexander.
