While spending months outside of the Arizona courthouse where Jodi Arias was being tried for murdering her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander HLN personality Jane Velez-Mitchell talked to people who knew the killer to research for her new book "Exposed: The Secret Life of Jodi Arias," which will be hitting bookstores this week, according to the Arizona Republic.

"I was standing outside the courthouse a lot," Velez-Mitchell told the Arizona Republic. "All throughout the day, I would see friends of Travis Alexander coming and going, and I would whip out an old-fashioned tape recorder from RadioShack."

Arias was convicted of the savage murder of Alexander after a lengthy trial that exposed the kinky sexual relationship between the two former lovers and captured the attention of America. Alexander was shot in the head, stabbed 29 times and had his throat slit in the attack that the jury judged was "sufficiently cruel" to warrant the death penalty.

"How does a beautiful, demure, articulate woman end up committing such a savage crime?" Velez-Mitchell said. "Just thinking about cutting someone's throat...it's really horrific. How does somebody get to that point of moral degeneracy?"

Velez-Mitchell focused on more than just the savagery of the murder; she also explored the complicated and highly sexual relationship between Arias and Alexander, according to the New York Daily News.

"She was not simply placating Travis with sex; according to Travis, Jodi was a woman with a voracious sexual appetite," Velez Mitchell writes in "Exposed." "One of Travis' best friends, Taylor Searle, said Travis revealed to him that Jodi was a sexual dynamo who could achieve numerous orgasms in a row."

Velez-Mitchell contacted both the Arias family and the Alexander family to participate in the book, both declined. Velez-Mitchell will be donating a portion of the proceeds from the book to the Travis Alexander Legacy Fund, according to the Arizona Republic.

"It's kind of funny, but as I got to study Travis, I learned we had so much in common," Velez-Mitchell said. "I'm an environmentalist; he as an environmentalist. He traded in his luxury car for a Prius, which is what I did. He saw the movie 'Earthlings' and was horrified by the treatment of animals, and so did I."