A juror in the Jodi Arias murder trial fell head-over-heels in love with the convicted killer during the proceedings, according to a new book by one of the prosecutors in the sensational case.
Prosecutor Juan Martinez does not name the lovesick juror in his book, “Conviction: The Untold Story of Putting Jodi Arias Behind Bars,” which is due out in January.
But an alternate juror who also served on the case fingered foreman Bill Zervakos, 71, one of the holdouts who voted against the death penalty for Arias.
“I’ve never seen this book, but just based on what I felt at the time, I believe it was Bill. Absolutely,” Tara Harris Kelley, 32, told The Post Monday from her Arizona home.
“Whenever we had to go to the principal’s office, as I called the judge’s chambers, he would make eye contact with her, going in and coming out. The rest of us didn’t even want to look at Jody,” she said.
“We’d have lunch together and he’d tell me how back in the day he was a womanizer. He thought she was young and attractive and he didn’t see how somebody that young and attractive could kill
anybody,” she said.
Asked if the lusty senior ever put the moves on her, Kelley laughed and paused before answering, “I’m just going to say no on that one.”
Zervakos, meanwhile, adamantly denied he had the hots for Arias.
“I’m 71 years old, for God’s sake, I’m not going to have a crush on her or anybody. Of course not. That’s ridiculous,” he told The Post. Zervakos accused Martinez, whom he said he “never liked,” of sensationalizing the case to make a buck.
“People can say what they want to say. I haven’t read it, I’m not going to read it. I don’t have a whole lot of respect for him,“ he said. “I just want it to be over.”
Arias was convicted in 2013 of the murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander, 30, whom she shot dead and stabbed repeatedly at his home in suburban Mesa, Arizona, five years earlier.
Prosecutors called her obsessive and said she murdered him in a jealous rage after he told her he wanted to play the field.
The jury the pair served on could not agree on the death penalty, and a second jury that did not include them voted the same way. Arias is now serving a life sentence while appealing her conviction.
On Amazon, a preview of the book promises that “Martinez will unearth new details from the investigation that were never revealed at trial, exploring key facts from the case and the pieces of
evidence he chose to keep close to the vest.”
But the publication has stirred controversy in Arizona legal circles, with some experts questioning Martinez’s ethics for spilling the beans while her conviction is being appealed.
But Jerry Cobb, a spokesman for Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, Martinez’s boss, defended the prosecutor.
“We received appropriate assurances that Juan Martinez’s off-duty activities will not violate state statutes or restrictions on attorney conduct,” he told the Arizona Republic.