A Death in Italy: The Definitive Account of the Amanda Knox Case

by Follain, John

  An experienced judge, the fifty-five-year-old Massei was known for conducting his trials – particularly when questioning witnesses or the accused – in a kindly, sometimes even shy manner. He never raised his voice. Short and bespectacled with wispy hair, he was in fact one of Perugia’s most incisive judges. His attention never wavered and he would constantly reprimand lawyers if they failed to stick to the rule book. Married with three children, he was a practising Catholic and liked to duck into the neighbouring Church of Jesus to pray for a few moments before hearings.

  The verdict would be decided not only by Judge Massei but also by a secondary judge, Beatrice Cristiani, and a six-member jury. Chosen at random by a computer programme, the three men and three women who made up the jury were between thirty-five and fifty-seven years old, and included a lawyer and a secretary in a primary school. Their verdict would be based exclusively on what they saw and heard in the courtroom, and on documents such as witness statements or experts’ reports which the prosecutors and defence lawyers submitted. Under Italian law, they could convict only if they believed the accused were guilty ‘beyond every reasonable doubt’. If they decided the evidence was insufficient, or contradictory, they would have to acquit them.

  When armed prison guards led Amanda into the courtroom through heavy double doors only a few feet from the public gallery, the only sound was of camera shutters clicking open and shut as photographers took as many shots as they could. Dressed in jeans and a striped grey tracksuit top, with her straight brown hair drawn tightly back in a ponytail, Amanda had an oddly bashful expression on her pale face but she looked straight ahead, despite the flashlights. She smiled and nodded at Judge Massei as she was guided past him and then flashed a brighter smile at her lawyer Ghirga.

  ‘What a lot of people!’ a startled Amanda exclaimed to Ghirga as he briefly put his hand on her shoulder before she sat down in one of the black leather chairs in the front row. Ghirga and Dalla Vedova sat in their black lawyers’ robes on either side of her, and two guards went to stand behind her, arms folded and bright blue berets on their heads.

  Amanda looked relaxed, even cheerful at times. She turned to wave, smile and silently mouth ‘Hi!’ to her aunt sitting two rows behind her. She smiled at her lawyer, at the guards standing behind her, and at an interpreter who came to sit down next to her. The interpreter was rarely needed, as Amanda’s Italian had become fluent in prison.

  Raffaele, looking drawn and paler than Amanda, sat chewing his nails and his lower lip only a few feet away to her left, with only two lawyers separating them. But Amanda ignored him, and he ignored her. They were following their lawyers’ instructions. ‘I told Raffaele not to say hello to Amanda, and not even look at her, because otherwise you hacks would just blow it up out of proportion,’ Raffaele’s lawyer Maori confided later. They both sat still, staring intently as each of the six jurors, wearing sashes in the green, white and red of the Italian national flag, took their oaths, and as a clerk read out the accusations against them, describing in detail the wounds Meredith had suffered.

  No witnesses were called that first day, which was taken up with procedural matters. The Kerchers’ lawyer Maresca asked for the media to be banned from the trial. ‘We request this to safeguard Meredith’s memory and because witnesses will testify more freely if they’re not required to do so in front of long lines of journalists and TV cameras. Meredith’s family doesn’t want excesses by the media to ruin the trial,’ Maresca told the court. The last thing they wanted was for photographs or film of Meredith’s body shown in court to end up in newspapers or on TV, as they had in March when an Italian channel had broadcast film of the crime scene.

  Amanda and Raffaele’s lawyers however argued justice would be best served by an open trial. They were quite willing to ban the media when pictures of Meredith’s body had to be shown, out of respect for her. After withdrawing briefly to discuss the issue with the jury, Judge Massei announced that the trial would be open to the public and the media, but that he would order them out whenever images of Meredith’s body were shown.

  During breaks that day, Amanda’s behaviour shocked many in the courtroom. She chatted to her lawyers or to her guards, gesticulating Italian-style, smiling and giving a few short laughs as she did so. ‘Bravo!’ she exclaimed at one point, jabbing a finger towards the chest of one of the guards standing behind her.

  One prosecutor put Amanda’s behaviour down to her personality. ‘Amanda’s laughing because she feels the star of the show, and because she’s confident things will go her way. She probably doesn’t realise what she’s risking,’ the prosecutor confided.

  Whatever the reason was, Amanda’s smiles and laughs exasperated Maresca. ‘Let’s see if either of them will still be laughing when it’s all over,’ he remarked.

  A few days later, the prison chaplain Father Saulo mentioned Amanda’s behaviour in court to her. He told her that he’d heard she’d been smiling and laughing.

  ‘It’s my way of reacting. In a situation like that, I’m so nervous I can only laugh, or cry. I can’t help it,’ Amanda said.

  Both Amanda and Raffaele faced a long and agonising wait for a verdict. Unlike murder trials in Britain or America, trials in Italy often last many months with long gaps between hearings. Judge Massei decreed that the next hearing would be in three weeks’ time. From then on, the trial would take place on two days a week, three weeks a month.

  6 February 2009

  The Amanda who walked in to the courtroom on the second day of the trial had little of the cheery Amanda of the first day. She sat looking grim-faced and concentrated, her mouth turned down at the corners, fidgeting with her hair. During breaks, she chatted only a little with her lawyers; they confided later that they had warned her against appearing too relaxed in court.

  Raffaele needed no such advice. He looked even paler than on the first day and sat nervously pinching his chin. When he got up to make a short statement before the first witnesses were called – with Judge Massei’s consent, he and Amanda were allowed to do so at any time – he spoke in a weak, hesitant voice and coughed nervously. Amanda sat hunched forward, staring at him with a furrowed brow – the first time she had looked at him since the trial began.

  The situation he found himself in felt ‘unreal’, Raffaele said, because he was innocent. ‘I’m not a violent type and the thought of hurting someone has never crossed my mind. People who know me well know I have trouble even killing a fly.’ He barely knew Meredith, and he had never met Rudy. He ended with a direct appeal to the court: ‘I humbly ask you to examine everything that will be said with extreme care to establish what is in fact the truth.’

  The prosecutors Mignini and Comodi called as their first witnesses the ones who could tell the story not only of how Meredith’s body had been discovered, but also how Amanda and Raffaele had hugged and kissed each other in the hours that followed both at the cottage and at the police station when they were taken for questioning. They included the neighbours who had found Meredith’s mobile phones on the morning after the murder, the postal police officers who had then gone to the cottage, and the student who had knocked Meredith’s door down.

  The jurors listened in attentive silence, one of them – a young lawyer – taking a stream of notes on his laptop as Mignini led his witnesses through what they had to tell. From two rows behind Amanda, her father Curt, who couldn’t speak Italian, was silently struggling to understand what was going on. No one translated for him and he was left to stare at each speaker in turn for hours on end; Amanda’s lawyers would brief him only during breaks.

  Amanda stayed silent that day, but Raffaele got up a second time to say he was the one who had asked the postal police officers to come into the cottage. ‘If I’d had something to hide, I wouldn’t have asked him to go in. And besides, I wouldn’t have been so stupid as to allow myself to be found there at that moment,’ he said. It was true he’d been close to Amanda at the cottage and then at the police station, but this was
only because she was very upset, and cold. ‘Often she just stayed silent, she stared into space. I wanted to comfort her. I think that’s normal; if someone thinks it isn’t, that’s their problem,’ he said.

  When the hearing ended, Judge Massei granted Amanda permission to hug her father.

  ‘Be strong. Love you,’ Curt told his daughter as he embraced her and kissed her on the forehead.

  Both of them had tears in their eyes as guards led Amanda away, holding her firmly by the arms. She held her head down as she walked, looking at no one.

  42

  12 February 2009

  For the first time since the month Meredith was murdered, Sophie Purton flew back to Perugia. The following day she, Amy, Robyn and Meredith’s other English friends were to testify at the trial.

  Sophie believed that, as far as seemed possible to her, she had learnt to cope with Meredith’s loss. Initially she’d given up on her studies and spent the first five months after the murder at home, going out only rarely. She saw a therapist at her local GP’s a few times, but it was a week’s holiday her parents took her on which gave her the impetus to pick herself up and look for a job. The job she found in early 2008 was a menial one – entering data into a computer for a utility company – but she felt that in a way it saved her; it got her out of the house. In September, she went back to finish her chemistry course at Bristol – she dropped the Italian course – and from then on stopped her daily search on Google for articles about Meredith.

  But if Sophie saw an article about the case in the newspaper, she always read it. It annoyed her to see articles which were all about Amanda, and not Meredith, and which carried a photograph of Amanda, and not Meredith. Why did people care what Amanda was going through? Sophie wondered. No one seemed to remember Meredith; on TV and in the newspapers, she was just the person Amanda killed. Surely this was insensitive towards Meredith’s family?

  For Sophie, it was thanks to Meredith that she had managed to get on with her life. In the long months she’d spent closeted at home, she often thought that unlike Meredith she still had her life and that she shouldn’t waste it. Doing nothing all day wasn’t fair to Meredith.

  But Sophie didn’t think she would ever get over Meredith’s loss. All she could do from now on, she thought, was remember Meredith. She thought of her every day.

  Sophie believed Amanda was guilty, but she wasn’t completely certain because she couldn’t work out why or how Meredith had been killed, and she felt there wasn’t enough DNA evidence against either Amanda or Raffaele. She couldn’t decide whether Amanda was in the cottage when Meredith was killed, or whether Amanda was involved in some other way. Nor could Sophie understand why Amanda, Raffaele and Rudy had killed Meredith, because she simply couldn’t imagine why anyone would carry out such a murder. What motive could prompt anyone to kill a person as lovely as Meredith?

  But Sophie was certain that Amanda knew more than she was letting on. The fact that Amanda was in the cottage on the morning after the murder, the way she acted after the murder, and the way she had behaved in court all told her that.

  Sophie’s doubts didn’t stop her hating Amanda. Even if Amanda were innocent, Sophie would hate her simply because of the callous way she had behaved at the police station and at the trial. Sophie knew she would never forgive her.

  Sometimes, Sophie thought about what she’d say to Amanda if the two ever met again. She told herself she would beg Amanda to tell her the truth. Strange as it sounded, she felt that Amanda would break down and confess everything to her, because Sophie was Meredith’s friend. But then again Sophie was afraid she’d just feel sick if she had Amanda in front of her, and wouldn’t be able to say anything.

  Now she was going to see Amanda in court the next day. ‘Will I be able to look at her?’ Sophie wondered. The prospect of facing Amanda frightened her.

  Called as a witness by both the prosecution and Amanda’s lawyers, Sophie worried about what she would be asked to say. She wanted to give as accurate and fair an account as possible, and she was anxious not to be seen as someone who was there to have Amanda convicted. She hoped she wouldn’t be reduced to saying ‘Amanda did this’ and ‘Amanda did that’.

  Before flying off to Perugia, Sophie had talked to Amy and Robyn about what lay ahead. Amy and Robyn were more certain of Amanda’s guilt than Sophie was. The three had dissected what they saw of Amanda’s behaviour after the murder again and again. They’d all been struck by what Amanda had chosen to wear on the morning after the murder – a white skirt, a blue sweater and thick grey socks which went up to her knees. The three friends all thought the socks and the skirt were a strange combination; why hadn’t she just put some jeans on? Robyn guessed that she’d chosen the long thick socks to cover up scratch marks.

  On the evening before their testimony, Sophie, Amy and Robyn, who were staying with their families at a hotel outside Perugia, were summoned to the police station. They were told they had to fill in their bank details on some forms in order to get refunds for their flights – the Italian State would pay for the flights, but not for the hotel nights.

  At the police station, several officers spoke to Sophie and her friends about the case. They told them they believed Amanda had killed Meredith. One officer made unflattering remarks about the lawyers acting for Amanda and Raffaele, criticising the looks of Bongiorno, Raffaele’s lawyer.

  Sophie didn’t want to know, and wished she could just fill in the forms and go back to her hotel. She felt uncomfortable and was sure it wasn’t right for her to be in the police station on the eve of her testimony. She felt the police were trying to convince all the girls that Amanda and Raffaele were guilty.

  13 February 2009

  Shortly after leaving her hotel with her parents early in the morning, Sophie stood in the street talking to other English students who were also due to testify that day. A British photographer came close up to her and took a picture, his camera a few feet from her face. Sophie turned away and started crying.

  ‘You haven’t done anything wrong, why don’t you want your picture taken?’ the photographer asked her.

  Sophie, Amy, Robyn and a couple of other students came across more photographers shortly afterwards when they left the Caffè di Perugia off Corso Vannucci, where they had been having a coffee, to walk to the law courts. Sophie, Amy and Robyn held hands and stared at the ground as they hurried through falling snow in silence, the photographers scurrying a few feet in front of them. Two detectives of the Homicide Squad walked on either side of the group of students but some distance away, not wanting to be photographed.

  Sophie felt as if she and her friends were being paraded for the press by the police. It was strange that the detectives had forbidden their parents to walk with them, saying they would go back and fetch them afterwards.

  Just inside the entrance to the law courts, Sophie saw Curt standing at the top of the stairs which led down to the Hall of Frescoes. She recognised him immediately as she had often seen him on television; now the sight upset her and nearly made her cry again. Sophie had long been sickened by the campaign waged by Amanda’s family; she felt it was all about Amanda as the victim. To her, there seemed to be no thought for Meredith, the real victim, and no respect for Meredith’s family.

  Downstairs, Sophie and the other students were told to wait in a small room off a corridor leading into the courtroom. Sophie expected to be called first, because early on in the investigation the police had questioned her first as the last person to see Meredith alive. She felt pretty confident she would manage to answer questions properly. But to Sophie’s surprise, Robyn was called first; Sophie felt nervous about having to wait.

  Sitting at a wooden desk on the raised platform a couple of yards from Judge Massei, Robyn read the oath each witness had to take: ‘I am aware of the moral and juridical responsibility that I assume in giving my testimony and I pledge to say the whole truth and not to hide anything that I am aware of.’ In a quiet, forceful tone, she spoke of
her friendship with Meredith, her friend’s criticisms of Amanda’s exuberant character and her failure to keep the bathroom clean, and Amanda’s coldness after the murder.

  Jurors listened almost open-mouthed as Robyn recalled Meredith’s surprise at seeing Amanda leave her beauty case in the bathroom with a vibrator and condoms clearly visible, just after her arrival in the flat.

  ‘Meredith said it was quite strange to leave these there where they could be seen. She found it quite uncomfortable,’ Robyn said.

  Dressed in jeans and a green woollen sweater, Amanda sat still as she stared fixedly at Robyn, her lips pressed tightly shut.

  When Robyn described the last time she had seen Meredith at the dinner in her flat on the night of the murder, Amanda looked across at Raffaele, smiled and appeared to silently mouth the words ‘Che palle!’ (What a pain in the arse!) at him.

  Raffaele, who had been swinging slightly in his swivel armchair from side to side, grinned back at her.

  During the rest of Robyn’s testimony, Amanda glanced twice more at Raffaele, smiling at him and shrugging her shoulders.

  After Robyn was dismissed, Ghirga announced that Amanda had something to say. Her cheeks a little flushed, she stood and hitched up her jeans. Because of her short size, the microphone used by her lawyers was too high for her and had to be lowered. The court hushed and Judge Massei, a stickler for the rules, asked her to give her name first.

  Her voice was deep, clear and firm as she spoke in fluent Italian, gazing steadily at Judge Massei: ‘Ah, Amanda Knox. Um, good morning, Signor Judge. I wanted to give a very brief explanation about the question of the beauty case which should still be in the bathroom at my house, I don’t know.’