Provided things move along as scheduled, three weeks from tomorrow, Arias will be sentenced to natural life in prison by JSS. I cannot believe that the judge will give Arias anything less than the maximum allowed and I hope that the sentencing hearing is one in which the Alexander family speaks out on all they have endured since the death of their brother and that JSS does not mince words and speaks freely and harshly to Arias.
This will be a long post, in which I try to give a history of Arias' support and communications.
On top of the crime itself, what makes Arias stand out is her narcissism, along with her need for power, control and her voice to be heard. She is an attorney's worst nightmare, first freely speaking to LE, then writing a letter, a manifesto and interviewing with the media all in the first few months after her arrest. She has never stopped using people or speaking out. When she was first jailed in Maricopa County, she did have some friends visit her, but these gradually dwindled down until trial began and the JAII site was born. Before that, Donavan was released from jail in March 2009 and started posting on a number of social media websites under the name karma4ever. The PR campaign was thus launched to besmirch Travis' character, alluding to his dark side. Arias also was able to manipulate Matt McCartney and Ann Campbell, with Ann carrying out coded magazines with a message for Matt.
I've been absent from this forum for a while because I have been gathering information to better understand Arias and her supporter, and how information flows. I'll share some of what I know with you.
As best I can tell, Arias most likely had a number of very lonely years at Estrella, until the trial began. Dr. Samuels testified that Arias and her mother would argue during jail calls; everything I have heard says that the relationship with family is estranged. Even Aunt Sue, who is an apparent supporter on SM, was upset when Arias tweeted in November 2013 about the family filing for bankruptcy and communication between Arias and the family lessened even more. Once trial began with jury selection in 2012, the website JAII was formed and over time, a cult following has developed. From what I can tell, very new people wrote to her during the early months of trial, but towards the end of the trial and post verdict, quite a number of people did start to write to her.
Donavan was tweeting for Arias starting in February 2013. What people may not realize is that this same twitter account was being used in 2009 for a very brief period of time (source MyDeathSpace). In early 2013, media reported on Arias selling her art via EBay and again, MyDeathSpace has a first reference to her art sales on EBay in August 2012. Once the art sales got national attention, EBay shut the account down. It is believed that Arias' brother, Carl, was responsible for establishing the financial accounts associated with the sales. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the person handling the physical sketches scammed Arias around August 2013 by keeping her drawings, forcing Arias to regroup.
Summer of 2013 was when Arias' communication system and network really started to crystalize and grow. A supporter from Florida, Heinz Frick, designed a website for Arias to showcase her art and to promote the bookclub that she had promised in her allocution. In addition to JAII, there were a number of pro Arias support groups on FB which were still public. Her family was working to start an appeal fund for her that was protected from any damages awarded in a civil suit and Arias expressed frustration to a supporter about the length of time this was taking. Finally, in October 2013, the appeal fund was launched via the FB account the aunt had been running. As soon as the fund was announced, the FB account kept getting shut down. With that, a new page on her website was devoted to the appeal fund.
Arias continued to tweet during this time, but Donavan was no longer the tweeter. Arias had also added a blog page to her website and had vented on her blog over the release of Jane Velez Mitchell's book. In other words, Arias was both very vocal and very visible on SM, just as things were heating up for her retrial. November 2013 included hearing addressing media coverage in which David Bodney cited Arias' use of the media. During this same time, Arias submitted a hand written motion to dismiss Nurmi as counsel and this motion was leaked to Michael Kiefer who posted the document online.
With a scheduled trial date of February 2014, hearings were being held more frequently and things kept getting leaked to the media. Because things are still under seal, an exact date cannot be pinpointed, but it seems that in December 2013 JSS placed a gag order on all trial participants. Despite this gag order, Arias kept tweeting for almost two full months. Late December 2013 included a series of three very angry tweets from her about a XMas message attributed to her which she neither authored nor approved. She singled out Edd as being the responsible party and banished him for almost a year.
Somewhere along the line, her web developer added a mailroom feature to her website. With this, a supporter could type in a message for Arias, up to a certain number of words. The message would be assigned a control number and it was promised Arias would respond back. I can only imagine the file system for this! This seemed to work well for a while, but then ran into a period of time where mail from this source was not being delivered to Arias as per her unofficial twitter account.
The extent to which MDLR has been involved and facilitated communications for Arias is not fully known, yet she has played a role. In February 2014, she was banned from jail visits for smuggling out a pinwheel drawing. I do not know if she played any role in delivering the website mailroom messages to Arias, but I suspect that she did. I do know of several individuals who received letters from Arias which were handwritten during court, then passed to MDLR who emailed scanned copies of the letters to recipients. This happened during the first trial and the retrial.
What is very clear is that Arias does know how to figure ways to get around rules, either breaking them or bending them. While she was acting pro per this summer, she made personal calls under the guise of legal calls and thus these calls were not recorded. During video visits, she would get relay information by writing messages on her skin and wash them off after the calls. She currently has had jail privileges revoked and has found a way around that as well. Once of her supporters is a licensed California attorney and she is in regular contact with this individual under protected legal visits, so these video visits and phone calls cannot be monitored.
Like it or not, when Arias goes to prison, she will still have right and privileges. It is my hope that AZ DOC can limit her influence with supporters so that she fades into nothingness.
