Hateful, manipulative, and a stone-cold killer. Those were all words used to describe Jodi Arias by her former friend and ex-cellmate Donovan Bering. And that's not all Bering had to say about the convicted killer.
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00:00Hateful, manipulative, and a stone-cold killer. These are all words used to describe Jodi Arias
00:05by her former friend and ex-cellmate Donovan Baring. And that's not all Baring had to say
00:10about the convicted killer. On June 4, 2008, Jodi Arias killed her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander.
00:16The crime drew attention from the media, as did Arias, who didn't fit the mold of the typical
00:20killer. In 2008, Donovan Baring shared a cell with Arias in Phoenix, Arizona's Estrella Jail,
00:26along with her late wife, Tracy Brown, and she claims to have gotten to know the killer quite
00:30well. In the 2021 Lifetime doc Jodi Arias' Cellmate Secrets, Baring recalled Arias'
00:35angelic voice and said she gave off the appearance of a sweet person. She said,
00:39"[She was this very quiet, soft-spoken, articulate artist who drew a lot.
00:43She was very easy to talk to and she made you feel comfortable quickly. I mean,
00:46I was floored. We all were. We had absolutely no idea she was being accused of murder."
00:52There was just no signs that she was capable of doing that."
00:57Arias is a talented artist, and as the trio grew close, Baring and Brown let her tattoo them.
01:02But the pair eventually saw the dark side of Arias, one more closely aligned with her
01:06image on the outside, which Baring said she was not aware of while behind bars.
01:11Baring said she and Brown didn't press Arias too much about her case.
01:14After Baring was released in March 2009, she even helped Arias run a social media account.
01:19She said in the documentary,
01:21"[I did it because I supported her at the time and it kept me busy.
01:24She would have called me all day long if she could, just to get things out there."
01:27Arias' story changed multiple times after her arrest. She initially denied any involvement
01:32in the death of her former flame, Travis Alexander. Later, she claimed to have witnessed
01:36two masked intruders kill him. Arias and her lawyers eventually settled on arguing that she
01:40killed Alexander in self-defense, and then the trial started. The jury didn't buy it,
01:45and neither did her former cellmate.
01:48"'Because of all the evidence, and just all that I knew about,
01:50with all the different stories and stuff, and the way that she acted, and she had no remorse."
01:54It seemed that Arias might never have truly reckoned with what she did to Alexander,
01:58but Baring has no guilt. She said in the 2021 doc,
02:01"'I can hold my head up high now because I was able to tell the truth.
02:04She had a completely different side to her that I didn't expect.'"
02:07Baring said she eventually realized the meek and innocent person she described to CBS affiliate
02:12Arizona's Family was not the real Arias. Baring alleged in the 2021 Lifetime doc,
02:17"'The way she spoke to her mother, she would always scream and holler and hang up the phone
02:21and say horrible things. If she got mad, she wanted horrible things to be posted on social
02:25media. Just things that were destructive and hurtful. She had a lot of hate.'"
02:29At one point, when Baring refused to post horrible things about Arias' family,
02:33the killer set her sights on her former cellmate. Baring explained,
02:36"'She tried to lash out at me and have people she knew attack me and my family.
02:40It made me feel really bad. I felt betrayed. I couldn't understand it.
02:43I was floored to see that come out of her.'"
02:45During her trial, Arias said her parents started abusing her when she was 7 years old.
02:50In her first public comments about her daughter with Feminine Collective, her mother, Sandra,
02:54did not mention the allegations of abuse. According to the Daily Mail, after Arias' arrest,
02:58her parents told an investigator that she had mental problems and, quote,
03:02"'would freak out all the time.'"
03:04Arias' appearance became a focal point of the media coverage around her case.
03:08"'She's beautiful. She's friendly, has long blonde hair, cute figure.'"
03:13Some speculated that the attention she received in the news was largely due to her appearance,
03:18and the fact that women rarely commit murder. According to Gale, women are responsible for
03:22about 10 percent of U.S. killings, and it seems in prison, Arias has leveraged her sexuality for
03:28her own gain. "'Oh, she was very sexual, very sensual. So, I mean, she would always pose in
03:33certain ways. She got a lot of stuff that most families didn't get.'"
03:36In 2013, legal expert Matt Zerell told CNN's Nancy Grace that Arias used her charm to enter
03:42another relationship behind bars, this time with a woman. He said,
03:46"'Arias has the ability to charm her way into any relationship and charm her way out of any
03:50relationship. And again, we see here a source close to Arias telling us she has charmed again
03:55into another relationship, but this time with the same sex, with a female.'"
03:59Baring left prison before Jodi Arias' trial began in December 2012,
04:04and was a vocal supporter of her former cellmate. The killer was convicted of
04:08first-degree murder in May 2013 and sentenced to life in April 2015.
04:13In the Lifetime doc, Baring spoke about how she now views Arias. She said,
04:17"'There was no self-defense. She's a cold-blooded killer and would do it again.'"
04:21Baring said it was when she began to talk to Arias' mother that she began to piece together
04:25a different picture of her former friend. She said in the doc,
04:28"'When I started speaking to her mom way more than Jodi, I started seeing stuff that didn't
04:32add up, like the stories of her relationships and how her parents treated her. She didn't
04:36really care about anything or anyone but herself. You crossed her in any way and you suffered.
04:40She didn't know what a true friend was, only someone to use to get what she wanted.'"