Free Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars by Juan Martinez Page A

November 6, 2008, indicating that the State would be seeking the death penalty should Arias be convicted of first-degree murder. The basis for my request was that the killing was especially cruel. In Arizona, “especially cruel” describes the infliction of physical or mental anguish upon the victim before death. It also requires that a defendant know or should have known that suffering would occur.
    The killing in this case was especially cruel because Travis Alexander suffered as he staggered in the bathroom and made his way down the hallway trying to escape Arias as she carried out her relentless attack. Travis suffered with each stab wound to his back, chest, hands, and head. He didn’t die immediately. It was a slow and painful death.
    Arias’ excessive use of force reminded me of another case in which I’d sought the death penalty some years earlier. The victim in that case had been a man by the name of Joseph Andriano, who had been killed in October 2000. The similarities between Joe Andriano’s murder and Travis Alexander’s were uncanny, even though they were not related. Both murder scenes were bloody, both men were killed by more than one means, and both had been found with gaping wounds to their throats, the result of being sliced with a knife.
    In the case of Joe Andriano, he had been killed by his wife, Wendi, a cute thirty-year-old blonde. The two had been married only a few years and had two children when Joe learned that a lump on his neck, once thought to be benign, was malignant and terminal. Wendi saw his misdiagnosis as an opportunity to make money and contacted a lawyer about initiating a medical malpractice suit. She even attempted to obtain a life insurance policy on Joe after she learned he had incurable cancer.
    She began dating other men soon after they were told of his cancer and almost immediately fell in love with Rick a tenant in an apartment complex she managed. The complex was in the Ahwatukee section of Phoenix, and once their relationship started, she let him live in the apartment rent-free. Somehow Rick found out that Wendi’s husband was dying, and he was unnerved enough to end their relationship.
    The breakup did not sit well with Wendi. She would randomly show up unannounced at Rick’s apartment, but he still wouldn’t take her back. So she hatched a plot to kill her husband. She started the process by creating the fictitious name of Anne Newton, which she used to buy some sodium azide, a propellant for air bags. Sodium azide is not immediately fatal if ingested but can cause respiratory failure leading to death.
    Wendi began implementing her plan to kill Joe by emptying some of her husband’s medication capsules and refilling them with the poison, intending to give them to him to end his life. Apparently, she could not wait the six or so months it would take for his cancer to kill him.
    On the last night of his life, Wendi took Joe to a barbecue at his parents’ house in Casa Grande, a city in Pinal County halfway between Phoenix and Tucson. It was the fourth day of Joe’s chemotherapy regimen and he was not feeling well. Once they returned home after midnight, Wendi gave him the capsules laced with the sodium azide. Wanting to make sure it was enough, she also added sodium azide to the stew that she was warming up for him. The dose wasn’t immediately fatal, but Joe started throwing up and asked her to call 911.
    Moments later, Wendi told Joe she had placed the call, but claimed that emergency responders were too busy to come out. In truth, she hadn’t called at all. She later phoned a female friend Chris to come over, hoping she would then have a witness to her husband’s death. When Chris arrived, Wendi was waiting for her outside the apartment and admitted that she had not called 911. After the two finally entered the apartment, Chris saw Joe lying on the floor, conscious but very ill and literally begging for help. He told Chris that he had been lying there for