Jodi Arias Reads Torn-Out Diary Pages About Suicide, Rocky Relationship

Jodi Arias insists that Travis Alexander was trying to kill her.

ByABC News
March 4, 2013, 12:55 PM

March 4, 2013— -- Accused murdererJodi Arias tore out pages of her diary in which she complained about her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, and said she wanted to commit suicide, she testified today. She said she was afraid he would snoop and read them.

Arias showed the court the torn pages of her journal and read the full excerpts to the jury, just a week after prosecutor Juan Martinez used her partial diary entries to show that she never wrote about the alleged abuse he inflicted on her.

Martinez has accused Arias of making up the allegations that Alexander was abusive. She is charged with murdering her ex-boyfriend at his home in Mesa, Ariz., on June 4, 2008.

Arias, 32, claims she was forced to kill Alexander in self-defense during a violent confrontation. She could face the death penalty if convicted.

"Who besides yourself had access to your journals?" lead defense attorney Kirk Nurmi asked Arias today, on the first day of redirect.

"Well, Travis would read them," she testified. "There was the potential that Travis could read something in there, and also the biggest reason was the law of attraction, which was a huge philosophy at that time in my life."

Arias said that she believed thinking positive thoughts would bring positive change to her life, and thinking negative thoughts would bring about negativity.

"How would writing about Travis being violent in your journal violate this law of attraction?" Nurmi asked.

"One thing it encourages is that if you're in a relationship to focus only on their good qualities, as opposed to harping on somebody's faults," Arias said.

Martinez pointed out last week that Arias never detailed in her diary the violent fight the couple had in which Alexander allegedly threw Arias to the ground in January, 2007, and kicked her in the ribs and hand. She also never wrote about an alleged incident in which she saw him masturbating while looking at pictures of young boys.

Today, however, she did read an entry in which she said Alexander made her "sick," after an incident in which she went to Alexander's house and saw him kissing another woman.

"I don't understand it and at times have a hard time believing it. He makes me sick and happy, makes me feel sad and miserable, and makes me feel uplifted and beautiful. I shouldn't be wording it as if he makes me feel those things. It all originates from within. All of my darkness if fruit of my own creation, it originates within," she wrote.

Arias said that she was referring to the law of attraction when she said that negative thoughts were her own fault. She also read an entry about suicide, one of what she claimed were many entries she wrote about wanting to die and later tore out of the journal.

"I just wish I could die. I wish that suicide was a way out but it is no escape. I wouldn't feel any more pain," she wrote.

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial CoverageTimeline of the Jodi Arias Trial

The testimony came as Arias and Nurmi tried to counteract some of Martinez's claims from cross-examination, including his accusation that she planned to murder Alexander and then lied without remorse to dozens of people after the killing in order to cover up what she had done.

Arias took the stand to mount her final defense to the jury today, after nine days of direct testimony and four days of withering cross-examination by Martinez. She began the day by insisting that she killed Alexander because "he was trying to kill me."