Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 27

Argir stared and shrugged, like it was no big deal-that it was my fault for not drawing the line in the first place.

Chapter 17

November 1516, 2007

Vice-Comandante Argir broke the news. Instead of his usual greeting-a lecherous smile and a kiss on both cheeks-he stayed seated behind his desk. His cigarette was trailing smoke. His face was somber. Something was wrong.

He pushed a printout of an Italian news article toward me. It took me a minute to translate the headline: "Murder Weapon Found-With DNA of Victim and Arrested Suspect Knox." Beneath was a fuzzy photograph of a kitchen knife and the words "A knife has been found in Sollecito's apartment with Knox's DNA on the handle and the victim's DNA on the blade. Investigators believe it to be the murder weapon."

That doesn't make sense. I must have read it wrong.

I made myself start over, slowly rereading the story, checking each word as I went. By the end I knew language wasn't the barrier.

Argir glared at me cruelly.

"Do you have anything to say?" he asked.

"It's impossible!" I blurted. "I didn't kill Meredith! I'm innocent! I don't care what the article says! It's wrong!"

"It's proof," Argir said, smirking. "Your fingerprints. Her DNA."

"I don't know anything about a knife," I said. "You can't prove that I'm guilty when I'm innocent."

The short conversation ended in a stalemate. I glowered at him.

"Why don't you go back to your cell and think about what you want to say," Argir said.

I didn't have any words for my anger-or fear. They were roiling inside me as the agente led me away.

Maybe I shouldn't have been shocked by the accusation about the knife. I'd been in jail for nine days, and I'd already been billed as a murderer.

My lawyers had to keep coming to Capanne to relay the ever-changing story of my supposed involvement and ask me if there was truth to the reports.

Investigators were claiming that I'd been responsible for holding Meredith down while either Patrick or Raffaele cut her throat, that I'd pressed so hard on Meredith's face during the attack I'd left an imprint of my fingers on her chin. The police said that because the bruises were small, they'd come from a woman's fingers, even though that's not how it works. "It isn't like a fingerprint," Carlo explained. "You can't tell the size of the hand by the size of the bruise. It depends on the circ.u.mstances and the pressure."

This was another example of the prosecution misinterpreting evidence so it would put me at the murder scene and discounting the things that didn't fit into their explanation. They had done the same thing a few days before, when they circulated the idea that only a woman would have covered Meredith's ravaged body with a blanket. A few years later I learned that this is something first-time killers also often do. The detectives didn't mention how improbable it is for a woman to commit a violent crime, especially against another woman. Nor did they acknowledge that I didn't fit the profile of a violent woman. I'd never been in a gang; I had no history of violence.

The untruths kept coming-seemingly leaked from the prosecutor's office.

In mid-November the press announced that the striped sweater I'd worn the night of the murder was missing, implying I'd gotten rid of it to hide bloodstains. In truth I'd left it on top of my bed when I came home to change on the morning of November 2. The investigators found it in January 2008-in the same spot where I'd taken it off. It was captured in photos taken of my room, which my lawyers saw among the official court doc.u.ments deposited as the investigation progressed. The prosecution quietly dropped the "missing sweater" as an element in the investigation without correcting the information publicly. Convinced that arguing the case in the media would dilute our credibility in the courtroom, Carlo and Luciano let the original story stand.

Things that never happened were reported as fact.

The tabloids said I'd met a nonexistent Argentinian boyfriend in a Laundromat to wash my bloodstained clothes. False.

The Italian news channel reported that cameras, mounted on the parking garage across the street from the villa, captured a girl dressed in a colored skirt or blouse, presumed to be me, emerging from the garage at 8:43 P.M. the night of the murder. False.

The police leaked this to the local press, and it rippled out from there. If true, it would have contradicted my alibi: I hadn't left Raffaele's apartment that night. The local headlines in those days often read "Amanda Sment.i.ta"-"Amanda Found in a Lie." It bolstered the prosecution's characterization of me as a depraved, deceitful person capable of murder.

Later, investigators decided the video image wasn't sharp enough to decipher, that it would be too easy for the defense to knock down. But the damage had already been done.

The press reported police claims that Raffaele and I had destroyed the hard drives on four computers-his, mine, Filomena's, and Meredith's. False.

Later, when a computer expert examined the computers, he discovered that the police had fried the hard drives. Whether it was on purpose or out of extraordinary incompetence, I never learned. But it's hard to see how they could inadvertently have wiped out four computers, one after the other. My computer wouldn't have given me an alibi. All investigators would have found was evidence of Meredith's and my friendship-pictures from the Eurochocolate festival and of our hanging out at home.

Journalists reported that the police had confiscated "incriminating" receipts for bleach, supposedly from the morning of November 2. False.

The receipts were meant to show that Raffaele and I had bought bleach-what Americans call household cleaner-and spent the night of the murder cleaning up the crime scene.

Four of the receipts were dated months before I arrived in Perugia, and bleach wasn't among the items purchased. The last one was from November 4, two days after Meredith's body was found. And it wasn't for bleach. It was for pizza. But no press corrected the story or reported the truth.

There seemed to be an endless chain of headlines, like new pieces of candy to wave in front of people. New evidence! Amanda said this! As soon as the police fed them a new tidbit of unfounded news, the earlier headline would be replaced. The media seemed less interested in investigating the claims than in just hanging them out there. And the tabloid sensationalism of one country was recycled to become legitimate news in another.

Still, none of the investigators' claims was as unfathomable to me, as d.a.m.ning, as the reports about the knife.

When I read the article in Argir's office, it seemed as fake as a grocery store tabloid claiming "Martian Baby Born in 7-Eleven Has Three Heads."

Sitting in his cold office, staring at the printout, I could think of only two ways the knife news had come to be. Choice one was that the website had fabricated it. As dishonest and unprofessional as the media had been, I was pretty sure they wouldn't go this far. Choice two was that the investigators had made a mistake.

I went over what I knew, step by step.

A knife from Raffaele's kitchen with DNA from both Meredith and me wasn't possible. In the week I'd known him, I'd used Raffaele's chef's knives to cook with, but we had never taken them out of his kitchen.

Meredith had never been to his apartment.

But I could present my argument only to myself and to Argir.

I could tell that Argir didn't believe me. I knew the knife could not be the one used by Meredith's killer. My heart felt as if it were being squeezed.

Back in my cell, I was quiet and withdrawn, spending the rest of the night venting to my prison diary. (That would end up being a mistake.) I told Gufa I was too tired to talk. I couldn't sleep.

Luciano and Carlo arrived the next morning. "Are the police really claiming they found a knife in Raffaele's apartment with my DNA on the handle and Meredith's DNA on the blade?" I asked, desperate for them to say no.

"The police are saying that the knife is the murder weapon," Carlo said. "Their forensic experts believe that it was capable of inflicting each wound on Meredith's body. They've given up the idea that it was Raffaele's pocketknife. Amanda, they're saying you're the one who stabbed Meredith. Is there something you need to tell us?"

Both men looked at me intently, gauging my reaction.

I couldn't believe what they were asking me. "No! It's impossible!" I shrieked, my body starting to shake. "The police have made a mistake. I never left Raffaele's that night, I never took a knife from his apartment, and Meredith never visited me there. I didn't have any reason to be angry with Meredith. And even if we'd had a fight I would have talked to her, not killed her!"

"We believe you, Amanda," Carlo said immediately. "Don't worry."

Investigators apparently had confiscated the knife-a chef's knife with a black plastic handle and a six-and-a-half-inch blade-when they searched Raffaele's apartment after our arrest. It was the only knife they considered out of every location they'd impounded, the top knife in a stack of other knives in a drawer that housed the carrot peeler and the salad tongs. I'd probably used it to slice tomatoes when Raffaele and I made dinner the night Meredith was killed.