On the night in 2011 when Amanda Knox and her former lover Raffaele Sollecito were finally acquitted of murdering Meredith Kercher, an angry mob spilled four deep across the cobbles outside Perugia’s ancient stone courthouse and chanted ‘Assassini e la vergona’ – murderers and shame.
Knox says she barely noticed the hostility, so relieved was she to be free after nearly four years of incarceration.
But once she was back home in Seattle and the verdict had sunk in, she could hardly avoid the avalanche of venomous comment on the internet questioning her innocence, and repeatedly suggesting that she’d got away with murder. She was deeply affected.
Jail ordeal: Amanda Knox leaves the court for a break during her appeal trial session in Perugia, September 30, 2011, with prison guard Raffaele Argiro who she claims harassed her
Today, she is quietly studying at Washington University. But neither the animosity nor the questions about her involvement have gone away. Indeed the vast differences of opinion, the fanatical support and the hatred, are bursting out into the open once again, now that the Italian supreme court has scheduled a retrial of the whole case into the murder of Meredith, 21, from Coulsdon, Surrey, who was on a student exchange from Leeds University.
The hearing will take place in Florence, rather than the cauldron of Perugia, the Umbrian hill town where, in November 2007, Meredith’s body was discovered in the villa she shared with Knox.
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This time, after two years of silence and attempted anonymity, Knox has taken the initiative and will address the court of public opinion with a book billed as the publishing sensation of the year. Waiting To Be Heard, her first full account of her four years in Italy, will be published in two weeks’ time.
Harper Collins won the bidding war to print her story with an offer of £2.6 million for her 400-page account and Knox’s Washington-based lawyer is promising a story that will ‘shock to be core’.
We will, for the first time, get her unalloyed defence, an unreserved account of what went on in Perugia before, during and after the murder of Meredith, who she has always claimed was her friend. It has taken Knox six months to prepare the manuscript, and during that time she has made it clear that she is determined to confront the myths, rumours and carefully planted lies that have bedevilled the case – and which became matters of fact for many.
Murdered: Student Meredith Kercher, 21, was found semi-naked with her throat cut in a bedroom she shared with Amanda Knox in February, 2007
The book’s description of her four years spent in Capanne Prison, set in farmland a half- hour drive south of Perugia, will be harrowing, including a detailed account of sexual harassment by a senior guard and confrontations with aggressive fellow inmates.
She will tell how a female inmate repeatedly offered to start a lesbian affair with her. And how, soon after her arrival at the jail, she was told, falsely, that she was HIV-positive.
The alleged sexual harassment was at the hands of one of Capanne’s senior guards, Raffaele Argiro, who was accused of sexually assaulting another female prisoner and has now retired.
Knox accuses Argiro of asking her for sex, soon after she was arrested. He denies the allegations in both cases.
In a written note to a close friend, Amanda said that the man ‘accompanied me to almost all my medical visits – two times a day – and at night he called me up to the third floor in an empty office for a “chitchat”.
‘He was fixed on the topic of sex – who I’d done it with, how I liked it . . . if I would like to do it with him. I was so surprised and scandalised by his provocations that sometimes I thought I hadn’t understood the things he said to me. When I realised he wanted to talk about sex, I would try to change the subject.’ Meanwhile, Italian police are suing Knox for defamation after claims that she was physically assaulted during an interrogation.
Knox will also reveal her reaction to the hate campaign that has followed her release as well as the astonishing attacks from the prosecution in Italy, which labelled her a ‘she devil’ and a ‘witch’.
There are many questions to be answered, both in Knox’s book and the trial that follows. I have investigated and reinvestigated the case, interviewing witnesses who had not been spoken to by a less-than-competent police force, as well as reinterviewing many who had.
I met Argiro, the prison guard, on numerous occasions. When I interviewed him, he admitted that he had indeed discussed sex with Knox, but claimed that it was she who had initiated the conversation. ‘I talked to her a lot, but only to calm her down. I did ask her about how many boyfriends she had . . . and it was always she who started talking about sex,’ he said.
Long periods of my time were spent in the company of the Knox family and Amanda’s close friends, listening to their complaints and cataloguing their version of events – and their firm conviction that she has nothing to do with the murder.
I also spent many long hours with the Italian prosecutor Dr Mignini, who secured the conviction of Knox and Sollecito in the first trial, before that verdict was overturned on appeal in October 2011. I questioned forensic experts, and sought answers to questions left unanswered by a less than inquiring court. My conclusion was unequivocal: Knox and Sollecito were innocent and had not been involved in any part of the murder – and here is the case that Knox will set out in a fortnight’s time in her book:
HOW DID AMANDA COME TO 'CONFESS'?
In the statement she made to police four days after the murder, Amanda ‘confessed’ to having been present in the house when the killing of Meredith took place.
If she wasn’t there, why admit it? The various versions of how the so-called ‘ confession’ was reached will be a major feature of the Knox book and it will include a description of what she believes took place.
She will publish a letter written the day after the ‘confession’. In it Knox says: ‘In regards to the “confession” that I made last night, I want to make it clear that I’m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressure of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion.’
So what did happen in the many hours of questioning through the night of November 5, 2007, involving Knox alone with 12 members of the Italian police?
According to Italian law, the interviews should have been recorded. They were not.
Knox should have been represented by a lawyer. She was not.
House of horror: Forensics officers at the property in the central Italian city of Perugia where Meredith's body was found
At a time when her Italian was, at best, rudimentary, she should have been accompanied by a recognised translator.
The police relied on a police employee who later admitted being part of the investigation team.
Does the recording of the interviews exist at all?
Was it convenient to lose it because it supported Knox’s version of events that include how she claimed to have been twice slapped by a police officer demanding she ‘tell the truth’, and was badgered for a confessional statement?
A further dimension to the accusation of police officers eliciting a false confession followed a year after the murder, when the one of the senior officers involved in the questioning was discovered to have a history of acquiring such ‘confessions.’
He was never recalled at the appeal to be cross-examined.
THE SHOPKEEPER WHO 'SAW' KNOX BUY BLEACH
Much was made of the shopkeeper, Marco Quintavalle, who claimed he saw Knox and Sollecito the morning after the murder in his shop buying cleaning materials. He was one of the so-called ‘super-witnesses’, but his testimony, when tested in court, proved to be less than reliable.
When Quintavalle made his statement, it was more than a year after the murder but at a time when the prosecution needed to place Knox in a closer proximity to the murder scene and to explain why there was a lack of her DNA in Meredith’s bedroom.
Knox, declared Quintavalle, had appeared in his small shop at 7.45 the morning after the murder and he remembered her from her ‘vivid blue eyes, her blue scarf and grey coat’.
The shop was close to where Knox and Meredith lived and, according to Quintavalle, Knox was among the cleaning prodcucts. ‘She looked as if she had seen a ghost, she was so pale,’ he added.
It took me more than several months to track down Quintavalle, for he had moved soon after giving the testimony. I asked him how he had remembered the details so clearly. ‘This I can tell you was the truth,’ he said. ‘I recognised Amanda from the pictures of her.’
When I confronted him with CCTV evidence that he had not entered his shop until later than 7.45 he stumbled and claimed he might have had the time wrong.
When I told him I’d also interviewed a second person in the shop who worked part-time and who actually knew Knox – and was definite that the American had not appeared at all, Quintavalle terminated the interview.
Despite police claims that a till receipt existed for bleach found at Sollecito’s home, none was produced in court. Knox said she had never owned a blue hat or grey coat.
THE PROSECUTOR WHO CHANGED HIS TUNE
From the earliest moments of the investigation the prosecutor Mignini, who does not have any recognised training to investigate a murder, fancied that Knox was involved and took a keen personal interest.
I made it a point to get to know the Rumpole lookalike prosecutor and would meet him regularly, always recording every conversation.
Each discussion, either in his sprawling, untidy office overlooking the Umbrian valleys, or in a local coffee bar, was punctuated by the name ‘Amanda, Amanda, Amanda . . .’ It was as if Raffaele Sollecito or Rudy Guede (who was convicted of Meredith’s murder), or others in the case, did not exist.
Guilty: Rudy Guede during his trial where he was found guilty of Meredith's murder, a sentence which was reduced to 16 years
Throughout the course of the case Mignini and his team had proposed a variety of possible motives.
The most eye-catching was that there had been a satanic ritualistic orgy, carried out the day after Halloween. Coincidentally, Mignini had made similar, unsubstantiated allegations in a previous case, unsuccessfully levelling charges at 20 people he claimed were involved in a satanic sect.
There was a claim that Meredith was a ‘cult sacrifice’.
Then it was suggested a sex game had gone wrong or the victim had refused to take part in an orgy.
Next, there was the claim of jealousy, that Knox was resentful of her housemate.
Then came a proposition that Knox stole €300 from Meredith’s bedroom to buy drugs.
On another occasion the prosecution speculated that Knox had flown into a rage ‘caused by smoking marijuana’ and she’d taken to disliking Meredith because of several alleged disagreements.
In a final attempt to provide a reason for the seemingly motiveless murder, Mignini said: ‘We live in an age of violence with no motive.’
I was puzzled, and focused my questioning of Mignini on the lack of any reliable evidence, fingerprints, footprints or DNA linking Knox or Sollecito to the bedroom where the murder took place. After all, I pointed out to Mignini, Guede’s DNA was all over the place, including inside Meredith’s lifeless body. Ah, he finally blustered, perhaps Amanda was not in there at all.
It was an extraordinary suggestion from a man who had demonstrated in graphic detail in the courtroom how Knox had plunged the fatal blow into Meredith’s neck.
Now he was telling a different version. He paused, his voice distinct. Amanda, he said, had ‘instigated the murder . . . by remote control’. In other words, by remaining outside the bedroom but ‘directing’ the killing.
This, then, was the latest in the long list of Mignini theories – and the most far-fetched. When I wrote about this theory, Mignini later claimed to have been misquoted, although my digital recording proved otherwise.
WAS THE CONVICTED MURDERER BRIBED?
Based on all the facts of the case there was no doubt the killer was Rudy Guede, a 27-year-old native of the Ivory Coast who arrived in Italy at the age of five with his father. His lawyers managed to get a separate trial which kept him away from public and media scrutiny.
There was absolutely no doubt Guede had been involved in the murder: his fingerprints and DNA were all over Meredith’s bedroom and her lifeless body.
From the moment of his arrest in Germany in late November 2007 – he fled Italy the day after the killing – and for almost two years, Guede failed to implicate either Knox or Sollecito. He finally pointed the finger of blame at the other two, claiming they were with him, when he was seeking a reduction in his original 30-year jail term.
Perhaps one of the most important questions to face the retrial judges will be to inquire into any possible deal struck between the prosecution and Guede and his legal team. Guede’s jail time was reduced to 16 years.
One example of many issues that went unexamined was the role of Guede as a small-time police informer, which was never detailed or questioned in court.
The reduction of his original 30-year sentence, on appeal, to 16 years, passed without murmur from the prosecution. In contrast, they squealed in horror when Knox was given only 26 years and Sollecito 25. Mignini wanted more. Even at the appeal that eventually freed the pair years after they were convicted, in December 2009, Mignini demanded an increase in the sentences.
My enquiries reveal that Guede’s history of break-ins and burglaries was never fully detailed to the courts. A week before Meredith was slashed and stabbed to death, Guede had been arrested inside another property while carrying a knife.
In accordance with indulgent Italian parole rules, Guede will be eligible for release in May next year, having served eight years.
THE BRA-CLASP AND UNRELIABLE FORENSICS
Much of the factual evidence against Knox was based on the forensic examination of the flat where the murder took place. But the collection, storage and analysis of the evidence has been condemned as ‘highly unreliable’ by an independent team of Italian scientists who revealed to the Appeal Court they had discovered 54 errors in the results.
The bloody footprints said by the prosecution to belong to Knox and Sollecito were picked up by a police investigative tool, the chemical luminol.
The prosecution failed to explain to the court that the sensitive chemical can react in the same way with various household cleaners, types of soil, rust in tap water and several other substances frequently found on the soles of bare feet.
Then there was the bra-clasp ripped from the body of Meredith as she was assaulted, and said to contain the DNA of Sollecito. This was an example of the most shoddy and unprofessional forensic-gathering.
Coming Soon: Amanda Knox's tell-all book Waiting to be Heard, is on the way
The clasp was filmed in the murder room on the day the investigation began. But it wasn’t collected for a further 47 days, by which time the room had been virtually ransacked, and the clasp picked up and dropped a number of time by various investigators.
The prosecution said their ‘smoking gun’ was a knife randomly plucked from the kitchen of Sollecito and said to have Knox’s DNA on the handle and Meredith’s blood on the blade.
The detective who chose it said he picked it up ‘because it looked unusually clean’ and he had a ‘gut instinct’ about it.
Though he considered it to be the murder weapon, the detective first kept it in an envelope and it was later transferred into a shoe box. How it was transferred to the Rome laboratory for testing was never documented.
Not only did the knife blade not match the wounds on Meredith’s body, it also failed to match a bloody imprint of the murder weapon left on a pillow.
Independent analysis revealed that the DNA said to belong to Meredith on the blade was of such an infinitesimal amount that it was impossible to re-examine and verify.
THE MAELSTROM OF OUTSTANDING QUESTIONS
The new prosecutor in Florence must seek to tease out the truth about numerous troubling questions:
Why did the Perugian police chief Arturo de Felice tell the public five days after the murder that his officers had solved the case and arrested those responsible (Knox, Sollecito and a third man, Patrick Lumumba), only to be proven wrong later when forensic evidence was analysed?
Why was the police interrogation of Knox, in which she is said to have admitted being in the house at the time of the murder, not recorded as was required by Italian law?
Why was she not provided with a lawyer, or a recognised independent translator?
How does the prosecution explain the 54 errors in gathering forensic evidence at the scene?
And how do they explain the destruction of four computer hard drives that would have supported Knox and Sollecito’s alibi that they were at his flat at the time of the murder?
MEREDITH DESERVES JUSTICE...
SO DOES KNOX
Despite the first two trials – lasting a total of 102 days – the truth of who killed Meredith Kercher has been obscured by pettiness, posturing and distortion.
It is little wonder the protesters outside the Perugian courtroom voiced anger at the acquittal of Knox and Sollecito on appeal. Equally, it is understandable that Knox feels aggrieved at the manner in which she has been portrayed and treated for the past five-and-a-half years.
The need for an authoritative determination of what took place on the night of November 1, 2007, at No 7 Via della Pergola where Meredith was murdered has remained uppermost in the minds of the her family.
oHer sister Stephanie, 29, said: ‘There are a lot of unanswered questions still. We are not happy about going back to court and it will not bring her back but we have to make sure we have done all we can for her. We just want justice for Mez.’
The Kerchers’ pleadings for answers to the many inconsistencies and factual conflicts from the evidence presented in court have frequently been drowned out by the uproar from either team Knox or the Italian prosecution.
My investigations have made it clear to me that throughout the entire case the level of investigation was sloppy and at times downright substandard.
The new trial will be handled by a different prosecutor, who must now examine the original investigation in detail and provide answers to the contradictions and unsatisfactory explanations provided in past trials.
Given what I have seen of the Italian justice system, you might expect me to say that Amanda Knox should never go near Italy again, never mind to stand trial once more. Yet the opposite is true. I believe she – and Sollecito – should return and face their accusers, stand up for their rights and clear their names for good.