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Jodi Arias Has ‘Always Been Very Manipulative,’ Former Cellmate Donavan Bering Says
Jodi Arias remains behind bars for the gruesome slaying of ex-boyfriend Travis Victor Alexander in June 2008 and her former cellmate, Donavan Bering, tells In Touch exclusively the convicted killer has “always been very manipulative.”
Bering speculates Arias, now 40, was always capable of murder ahead of Lifetime’s true-crime documentary, Cellmate Secrets: Jodi Arias.
Donavan and Tracey interviewed together.
“When Jodi first came into the pod, which is the cell where she was going to … she came across as this prim and proper, young lady, very well-spoken like we thought she was in there for something very simple,” Bering, who previously ran Arias’ social media, exclusively tells In Touch. “We had no clue what she was in there for. People really thought that she might’ve been planted in there as a snitch to try to get information out of people. She was just very arms crossed, walking very stoic. We had no clue.”
When police found Alexander’s body, he had been stabbed 27 times, his throat was slit and he also had a gunshot to the head. Although Arias initially denied any involvement, she later changed her story, claiming masked intruders were to blame before stating that she attacked him in self-defense.
She was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder on May 8, 2013, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on April 13, 2015. Prosecutors said she killed him in a jealous rage. Despite later appealing the ruling, the Arizona Supreme Court declined to review her conviction in 2020.
“[Arias] has always been very manipulative,” Bering tells In Touch. “She used her sexuality, she used her charm and she had always been like that. She always, if she didn’t get what she wanted, there was that other side to her.“
Jodi Arias and Donavan Bering.
Arias allegedly previously told cellmates she had an accomplice in the murder of Alexander. “I don’t think that she told anybody else, because she didn’t think she was going to be convicted, she thought she was going to be let off,” Bering says, revealing why Arias may have kept that information under wraps during trial. “So, nobody else would have gotten in trouble with her. It could have been anybody that she was talking to at the time or that she really seriously believed that she was going to be going home.”
Bering says she wanted to go public with her story because she couldn’t live with it in her conscience. “An individual’s life was lost,” Bering continues. “There was a family out there who needed to know the truth, needed to know that, that things weren’t the way that she made it look like that. You know, he wasn’t this person that she was making him look out to be, because she wanted to get away with this. I just couldn’t, I could not live with that anymore.”
Cellmate Secrets: Jodi Arias (enhanced encore) will air on Friday, July 2, at 10/9c following the enhanced edition of the original Lifetime movie Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret at 8/7c.
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