dramatic trial for an arizona woman charged with the brutal murder of her boyfriend. It opened yesterday. Prosecutors are calling jodi arias a jealous woman who rewarded her victim's love with a knife...
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dramatic trial for an arizona woman charged with the brutal murder of her boyfriend. It opened yesterday. Prosecutors are calling jodi arias a jealous woman who rewarded her victim's love with a knife in the heart. Now, she could face the death penalty. And ryan owens has the latest on the case. Reporter: Jodi arias cried through most of the opening statements of her capital murder trial. This is not a case of whodunit. The person whodunit sits in court today. Reporter: Prosecutors say she stabbed her former boyfriend, travis alexander, 27 times. Shot him in the head as he showered in his mesa home. They argued thas was a devout mormon, seduced and stalked by arias. And ultimately killed by her in a jealous rage when she found out he was dating other women. She rewarded that love, by sticking a knife in his throat. Reporter: Arias' attorney told the jury, her client was force to kill, in self-defense. ♪ O, holy night ♪ Reporter: She says her client was abused and controlled by travis, who she claims was a sexual daeviant hiding behind his religion. That shirt is a perfect example of how travis treated jodi. Reporter: The two only dated for months. But continued a sexual relationship, including the day of the crime. In the washing machine, pictures of their final sexual encounter. Shots of travis in the shower, seconds before he was killed. And a couple of pictures that appear to have been taken accidentally, when the camera was dropped. One showing travis' bloody body. Another, arias actually dragging it. I would never hurt travis. Reporter: Jodi first denied being at travis' house the night of the murder. Two weeks later, she told the show "inside edition" she was there. But -- I witnessed travis being attacked by two individuals. Who? Reporter: Now, she admits to killing him, but said she had to. He attacked her when she dropped his new camera. Jodi ariasd travis alexander. The million-dollar question is what would have forced her to do it? And throughout this trial, you will hear that jodi was, indeed, forced. Reporter: For "good morning america," ryan owens, abc news, dallas. All right. And for more on this, let's bring in "gma's" legal analyst, dan abrams. First of all, you came out yesterday and said you thought that the prosecution would make a lot of jodi's changing stories. Her changing version. We have three different versions of events. This is a very powerful case. You've got her initially saying I wasn't there. Then, you have her saying, it was intruders. And you don't just have her saying it. You have her saying it on camera, in a television interview. Saying there were these intruders there. I don't know who did it. And describing how it happened. And now, she's saying, well, no. Actually, what really happened is, that it was self-defense. Yes, it was me because they have an enormous amount of evidence linking her to the crime scene, including a photograph of her dragging the body. They had no choice but the chan the defense. And both sides in opening arguments are making a lot of the murder victim's faith, of the morgan religion. I think it's more important to the defense here. The defense is saying he was using it as a sword. He was trying to control her by referring to tenets of the religion, et cetera. Trying to get her to do things that she wouldn't ordinarily do, et cetera. A double-life. That's all part of the defense here. Is that he was controlling her. But in part, because of her -- of the religion they shared. Okay. And finally, everybody who hears about this case is struck by the extraordinary violence in it, which usually means a deeply personal, vengeful motive when a killer kills. What do you read into this? She killed him three times. It's a domestic violence case. That's what you see in cases where people know each other very well. And that's why, probably, when the authorities came on the crime scene, and there was talk of intruders, et cetera, they probably looked at that crime scene and said, this doesn't make a lot of sense, considering how brutal and grisly that crime scene was. Did she think the camera was going to erase the pictures in the washing machine? Who knows? It seems that the last picture was taken by accident. Right. Dan abrams. To be continued. Thanks so much.
