Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 43

Chapter 26

MarchJuly 2009

After I was accused of murder, people read new meaning into everything about me. A hickey on my neck became a scratch from Meredith in her last, desperate moments. An awkward encounter about a dirty toilet became a murder motive. Male friends I brought home became mysterious lovers of questionable character. Rudy Guede's aside to the guys downstairs about my being cute became proof that he would do anything to earn my attention and approval.

People who never met me were as judgmental as those who had. The runaway media coverage meant that everyone in Perugia-the whole of Italy, really-saw my picture several times a week. They heard the prosecution disparage me just as often.

One of the prosecution's key witnesses said they'd seen Raffaele and me out together on the night of November 1, and another said he saw me on the morning of November 2-at the time we said we were at his apartment. Another of their key witnesses, Kokomani, was sure he'd seen us with Rudy Guede on Halloween, indicating that we knew each other. I was 100 percent positive that he couldn't have.

It wasn't necessary for any of these people to be right. It was enough for them to raise doubts, to make it seem that I was lying. They had to be only marginally convincing.

The thought that these witnesses might wow the jury and judges terrified me.

Marco Quintavalle, a storekeeper who lived near Raffaele's apartment, told the court that he saw a girl waiting for the shop to open at a quarter to eight on the morning of Friday, November 2. "She had a hat and scarf obscuring much of her face but what struck me was how pale she looked and the color of her blue eyes ... she went to the section at the back of the supermarket on the left, where there are the cleaning products. I can't remember if she bought anything."

But when he saw my picture in the paper a few days later, his memory was precise. "I recognized her as the same girl," he said.

When asked if the girl was in the courtroom, Quintavalle pointed at me. "It's her," he said. "I'm sure of it."

I'd gone to the little store once to pick up milk and cereal. Once. I'd never been in the back, where the cleaning products are apparently shelved.

I don't know how it would feel to be "identified" in court when you're guilty, but hearing those words when I wasn't made me flinch as if I'd been struck. The ache was physical. It took maximum self-control for me to stay seated. Unlike the police, who I thought must be lying to cover their mistakes, I knew the shopkeeper believed what he said. Would the jury?

It came down to who was more credible-him or me?

Under cross-examination, my lawyers asked Quintavalle why he hadn't revealed this information when the police came to question him right after our arrest. He said he hadn't remembered. He hadn't wanted to get involved in the murder case and had come forward only at the urging of a journalist friend in August 2008. I relaxed a little. The jury would see what was true and what wasn't.

The media purposely did not. "A New Hole Appears in Amanda Knox's Alibi" and "Witness Contradicts Amanda Knox's Account." News stories like this infuriated my family and friends.

But strangers, no doubt, would think, There goes Amanda, lying again.

Nara Capezzali was a widow in her late sixties who lived in an apartment building behind the parking lot across the street from our villa. She testified that she heard a scream between 11 and 11:30 P.M. "It made my skin crawl, to be honest," she said.

She was certain of the time because she took a nightly diuretic and always woke up around 11 P.M. to use the bathroom.

Before falling back asleep, she said she heard footsteps running up the metal stairs by the parking lot. "At almost the same moment," she heard the crunching of feet on gravel and leaves coming from the direction of our driveway. Never mind that our driveway wasn't gravel; it was mostly dirt.

Meredith's room was on the back of our house, as far as possible from Capezzali's. The defense doubted that anyone could have heard these noises across a busy road and behind closed windows with double panes. But the prosecution clung to Capezzali's account, which was a linchpin used to approximate Meredith's time of death.

One of the few points on which the prosecution and defense agreed was that the police had made an inexcusable blunder shortly after the body was found. They prevented the coroner from taking Meredith's temperature for hours, squandering the best chance to gauge her time of death. The second option-a.n.a.lyzing the contents of Meredith's stomach-was far less reliable. The third-Capezzali's memory-wasn't reliable at all.

There were many bad days during my trial. The worst was the afternoon when evidence was presented to establish the time of Meredith's death. Since the judge had ruled that to protect Meredith's privacy the press and public couldn't see her autopsy photos, he cleared the courtroom of everyone who wasn't directly involved in the trial. Pictures of Meredith's dissected stomach were projected onto a screen like the kind used for home movies. I knew that if I looked, I'd have the same reaction as the juror who bolted for the ladies' room. Even more devastating than the actual image of the stomach was knowing it was my friend's.

Throughout the display, the prosecution delivered a primer on the human digestive system. We learned it takes about two to four hours to digest a meal. Meredith's friends had said that they'd started dinner around 6 P.M. Since the food hadn't yet pa.s.sed into Meredith's small intestine, my lawyers said she died between 9 and 9:30 P.M.-10 P.M. at the latest.

Any later and her stomach contents would have shown up in her small intestine. According to Meredith's friends, she had gotten home at around 9 P.M. On the only computer the police hadn't fried, Raffaele's laptop, the hard drive showed that we'd finished watching Amelie and clicked Stop-the last "human interaction" with the computer-at 9:15 P.M. The tight timing gave us an alibi that even the prosecution didn't try to disprove.

Instead they glossed over these facts and used Capezzali's testimony to determine what time Meredith had died. Based on the scream, they decided that she died at 11:30 P.M. Even though Meredith's digestion indicated an earlier time of death, they were fixated on that scream. Meredith had been murdered by 10 P.M., based on her stomach contents, but the prosecutors invented a scenario in which Meredith was home alone between 9:30 P.M. and 11:30 P.M. According to their argument, the sphincter between the stomach and the small intestine tightens at the moment of trauma, and digestion temporarily stops. Left unanswered was what trauma in that two-hour s.p.a.ce interrupted her digestion-the same two hours when the prosecution said she was relaxing on her bed with her shoes off, writing an essay due the next morning. They were ignoring basic human physiology and hanging Meredith's time of death on an older woman's urination habits.

What made their theory even weaker was Capezzali herself. She testified that the morning after she heard the scream, some kids ran by while she was cleaning her apartment and told her a girl in the villa had been killed. Then, at around 11 A.M., when she went out to buy bread, she saw posters with Meredith's face at the newsstand.

The problem: Meredith's body wasn't discovered until after 1 P.M. on November 2. When Mignini asked Capezzali if she might have heard the scream on Halloween and not on November 1, she snapped, "I don't remember these things, these hours, these things. I don't remember them anymore."

I was sure there was no way the jury would put their faith in someone who said she didn't remember.

Antonio Curatolo was a gray-bearded homeless man who appeared in court as bundled up as if he were on the park bench where he spent most of his time. Like Quintavalle, the storeowner, Curatolo didn't come forward until months after our arrest-and then only at the urging of a local reporter. But the media were billing him as Prosecutor Mignini's "super testimone"-"super witness."

I'd been surprised and discouraged when I first heard that a homeless man was claiming he'd seen Raffaele and me at the basketball court in Piazza Grimana on November 1-another story the police had leaked to the media long before the trial began. Impossible claims like this kept popping up out of nowhere, putting me under constant attack. And I didn't feel any better when, during a break, Luciano whispered to me, "He's Mignini's personal 'serial-witness.'"

It turned out that this was the third trial in which Mignini had used Curatolo.

Raffaele and I were, Curatolo said, animatedly talking or arguing with each other and occasionally looking over the fence in the direction of the villa. When was this? From 9:30 P.M. to a little before midnight on November 1, Curatolo answered.

I was surprised by his rambling, and frustrated that the court was giving his testimony credence.

The basketball court was made to order for the prosecution. The most direct walk from Raffaele's apartment to my villa was through Piazza Grimana. It was also the place where Rudy Guede was known to play pick-up games and hang out. It was where I'd once tried to shoot hoops with the guys from downstairs and ended up watching from the sidelines. I hadn't argued with anyone there, and I'd never been back, but what if the jury bought this guy's story?

And why was the prosecution bringing it up? If the story was true, we would have had an alibi. If Curatolo had seen us in the piazza that early, we couldn't have committed the murder between 9:30 P.M. and 10 P.M., when the defense believed Meredith died. And if he'd seen us as late as midnight, we couldn't have made Meredith scream at 11:30 P.M., as Nara Capezzali had reported. His account undermined the prosecution's theory.

That's why Mignini wound back the time that Curatolo had last seen us.

"How did you know what time it was?" an obviously irritated Mignini asked.

"It was shortly before midnight when I left Piazza Grimana to go sleep in the park on the other side of the university," the witness said.

"And you left before midnight?" Mignini pushed.

"Yes, between eleven thirty P.M. and midnight."

"And the last time you saw them was before you left Piazza Grimana?"

"Yes."

"So before eleven thirty P.M.?"

"Yes."

Hekuran Kokomani had appeared at our pretrial, where the judge deemed him unreliable. But his testimony was critical to the prosecution. He was the lone person who claimed to have seen Raffaele and me together with Rudy Guede.

Mignini asked Kokomani to point me out in the courtroom. Later, under cross-examination, Carlo asked him how he could be sure it was me he recognized. He'd gotten a good look at my face, Kokomani said, and he remembered me because of the gap between my front teeth. With a look from Carlo, I turned to the court and parted my lips like a child showing newly brushed teeth. Before Carlo could point out that there was no gap, Kokomani muttered in bewilderment, "Oh, she doesn't have it anymore."

One jury member tried to m.u.f.fle laughter.