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And while Jones' story is tragic, a close friend says she often wasn't careful enough enough with the company she kept. Cherisse Halsall has the story.

This serene almost picturesque apartment block became a crime scene over the weekend. That's because this was the home of 31-year-old American national Arianna Iris Jones. Jones was murdered in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Neighbours say that around 1:30 they were winding down a quiet night with friends when they heard what they called weird screams coming from her apartment. And while they were loathe to get involved in an argument, they were alarmed enough to call one of Arianna's friend's. Little did any of them know that those screams were the sounds Arianna fighting for her life.

Darielli Groutsche
"While this was happening, while the police were showing up, my friends, they are also close friends of ours, they were upstairs giving me a kinda play by play about it."

"They said that they were upstairs having a talk with each other and they heard a noise and he says it sounded horrible but that when he said to shush and he tried to hear the sound that it cut off right then so he didn't hear anything else and then that her vehicle drove off shortly right after because he would have felt a way about it if the vehicle didn't start. He thought that she left the house you know maybe she had an argument, and then that's when the police came and he started realizing that something bad had happened."

Something terrible had happened, and at 5:57 San Ignacio Police received a 911 call from a man who claimed to have found his girlfriend face down in a pool of blood but the call dropped. Minutes later the same man walked into the San Ignacio police station to report Arianna Jones's murder.

He had driven there in Arianna's car, he hadn't driven next door to alert any hospital personnel about Arianna's body.

Police found her in the bedroom, face down in the pool of blood that had been described but also naked and with multiple stab wounds.

On her windowsill, a funeral programme for her late husband Lloyden Bejerano who last year had himself been murdered in his home.

Cherisse Halsall:
"So do you think that after her husband was killed she feared for her life at all?"

Darielli Groutsche, Friend of the deceased
"I think Arianna never really feared for her life because she had a turbulent relationship with her ex-husband and she still, I told her to move away and stuff like that after their breakup. I told her to hide from him and she was like no Cayo is my home. I'm going to live here. She wasn't fearful."

Perhaps, she should have been.

Darielli Groutsche, Friend of the deceased
"This new guy is just somebody who was there filling the void at that time, he was just some new guy there and that's what everybody says, everybody calls him the new guy because nobody knew about him much but she was smart and she did tell her mom about him because when I spoke to her mom she asked me do I know if it's the Ladyville guy and that's how things started to come together because who else, you know?"

And if there were any doubts they have since been resolved. Police say that on Saturday Moody was seen suffering from a cut wound to his little left finger but that wasn't all, blood was seen on his ears and in his hair and even worse, his bloody clothes were found discarded near the body.

Joseph Myvette, ACP
"Police launched an investigation into the matter and as a result, they detained one Javan Moody 23 years old of Lords Bank Village, Belize District where later on during the investigation he have since been arrested and charged for the crime of murder committed upon Arianna Irish Jones."

Many say that the self-proclaimed Cayo Gyal cruelly cut off in the prime of her life, was open-minded, fun-loving, and always in search of the next adventure.

Darielli Groutsche, Friend of the deceased
"Arianna was somebody who came to Belize and made Belize her home. She always wanted to rent and be around the locals. She never wanted to go to the "white people bars". She wanted to be with us. Arianna knows the mixup she knows to knock knock, she knows Sue just like we do. She took a lot of joy in inviting her foreign friends to Belize and taking them to pine ridge to the river in Bullet Tree where she spent a lot of her days, she built a house in Bullet tree. She worked hard on the land by herself manual labour clearing the land to put her house on it. She worked half the time in the states and lived here half the time."

And Yesterday in Arianna's hometown of Lopez Island Washington a memorial where dozens of community members gathered to honour one of their own.

A memorial service for Arianna Jones will be held this week in San Ignacio at a date yet to be determined.