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

by Follain, John

  4 April 2009

  A crowded courtroom watched in tense silence as, looking meek despite his athletic build, Rudy was escorted by guards to the witness box. He didn’t look at either Amanda or Raffaele. Over the past few days, newspapers had furiously debated whether he would agree to give evidence and make a stunning revelation, or whether, as was his right, he would refuse to say anything. It took Rudy just a few seconds to end the suspense.

  Judge Massei asked him whether he would answer questions or not.

  Rudy glanced at his lawyers and then said simply: ‘I exercise my right not to answer questions.’

  The judge immediately dismissed him and Rudy walked out, again without a look at either Amanda or Raffaele.

  The Kerchers’ lawyer Maresca had been hoping for much more. ‘Rudy’s lost another opportunity to clarify his situation. He’s going down the wrong road,’ he commented afterwards.

  18 April 2009

  At the request of Raffaele’s lawyers, the court abandoned the Hall of Frescoes for a couple of hours to visit the scene of the crime they were trying to reconstruct. Raffaele’s defence team wanted to show the court that Meredith’s killer – they hinted heavily this could only be Rudy – had indeed broken into the cottage through the window of her flatmate Filomena’s bedroom.

  The request surprised Maresca. ‘I don’t see the point of it. The Supreme Court has already said the thief would have had to be Spiderman to climb a dozen feet up a bare wall, and more importantly Judge Micheli acquitted Rudy of theft – so there was no break-in, only a fake one,’ he said before the visit began.

  Outside the cottage, the jury was divided in half – men in one group, women in the other – and the men went in first led by Judge Massei. The prosecutor Comodi tagged on to the men’s group, along with the lawyer Bongiorno and the detective Napoleoni.

  The floor was such a mess – it was strewn with clothes, papers, books and CDs – that they all had to pick their way through. The flat was filthy and the air inside smelt stale. It was almost completely dark in the flat – the only light came from the doorway – so Comodi borrowed a small electric torch from a police officer and opened a couple of windows to let in both light and air.

  At first, no one spoke as they just stood in the sitting room and looked around. Comodi found the silence in the cottage deafening.

  Bongiorno broke the silence to ask Judge Massei if a clerk who had a video camera could film the drawers where kitchen utensils were kept. He agreed, and Bongiorno tried to open what looked like the first drawer. She pulled and pulled but with no success, and finally gave up. Napoleoni had known all along the first drawer was a fake one – the handle was purely decorative – but she was damned if she was going to help Bongiorno.

  Holding her torch up by her head, Comodi led the group down the corridor. The others followed her gingerly and stopped briefly to look inside Amanda’s tiny room. Then Comodi went next door into Meredith’s room. Using her torch, she walked across it avoiding the pool of blood on the floor and opened the window and shutters. The sunlight streamed in. The view over the rolling hills was at its spring best – a view Meredith had never seen.

  The blood on the floor had caked completely dry. It was a dark colour. The splashes and streaks of blood on the walls had also darkened with time. The judges and jurors gazed for a long time at the photographs of Meredith and her friends still on the walls.

  Looking around the room, a juror commented: ‘But this isn’t a small room like Amanda’s. How many of us are in here now?’

  Quick as a flash, Comodi replied: ‘Seven.’ She was secretly delighted by the question, as the defence had claimed Meredith’s room was too small for three killers to attack her in it.

  Bongiorno said nothing.

  Another juror asked Comodi where the body had been found, and she gestured with her hands to indicate its position. As she spoke, the jurors looked from her to the bloody floor and she felt they fully realised the horror of what Meredith had been through.

  But soon, that horror proved too much for Comodi herself. Just as on her first visit to the cottage the previous summer, she again felt as if she was going to suffocate. Excusing herself she walked out of the cottage, asking Mignini to replace her inside.

  Later, the judges and jurors walked slowly round the cottage. One juror stared at the iron grating outside the door to the semi-basement flat, then up at the terrace above.

  ‘Presidente,’ he called out to the short Judge Massei, using his formal title, ‘even you could manage to climb up here.’

  The judges and jurors then went to examine the smooth wall under Filomena’s window.

  One woman juror remarked: ‘If you ask me, anyone trying to climb that wall would have come to a sticky end.’

  Comodi noted with satisfaction that this juror clearly didn’t buy the claim that a burglar had broken in through Filomena’s window. For Comodi, the defence had scored an own goal.

  23 April 2009

  Back in the Hall of Frescoes, as Comodi questioned Claudio Cantagalli from Perugia’s forensic police, the judge allowed the public and the media to remain while a film of the crime scene was screened.

  Amanda ignored the film at first, chewing gum and doodling on a piece of paper with her head down. Looking up suddenly, she flashed a big smile to Raffaele, making a gesture with her right hand over her stomach as if she was about to vomit, then laughed silently – a joke, according to one of his lawyers, about the stomach cramps Raffaele was suffering from.

  Moments later, Amanda’s face tensed as she stared at her bedroom on the screen. When the images switched to Meredith’s room – the quilt, the foot sticking out from under it, the bra nearby – Amanda suddenly leant forward over her desk and put her left hand over her brow as if covering her eyes.

  But from then on she would occasionally steal sideway glances from under her hand at the screen to her left. She looked away when the quilt covering Meredith, or traces of blood on the walls of Meredith’s bedroom, appeared. Raffaele, in contrast, stared steadily at the screen throughout, chewing gum all the time.

  Later, as the court reconvened after a lunch break, Raffaele and Amanda again smiled at each other. Raffaele held up a Bacio chocolate – the name also means ‘kiss’ in Italian – signalling that he wanted to give it to her. But guards stopped him.

  ‘AMANDA AND RAFFAELE’S BANNED BACIO’ a local paper headlined the next morning.

  27 April 2009

  Thin rain fell on what was once his daughter’s home and leaden clouds hung low over the hills behind it as a bare-headed and grim-faced Curt waited outside the cottage, carrying a large blue suitcase and a big, empty shopping bag. A detective waved him in and he strode through the gate and up to Napoleoni who was sheltering under the porch.

  Judge Massei had lifted the order sealing off the cottage and it was now time for Curt to retrieve some of Amanda’s belongings before it was handed over to the owner, a wealthy elderly woman who lived in Rome and was preparing to rent it out again.

  Guided by Napoleoni, Curt walked through the flat, which smelt unpleasantly dank with the rain, and turned into his daughter’s room. Someone had opened the window. No one spoke as, watched by a couple of detectives, Curt pulled a handwritten list out of his pocket and picked out the items Amanda had asked him for – rock-climbing equipment and language-learning books. The only sounds were of the wind and the rain, and the swishing of car wheels on the wet road a few yards away.

  Curt packed the suitcase and then the shopping bag, while an estate agent accompanied by a painter and a builder inspected the flat, estimating the cost of repairs and a new coat of paint.

  The rain was still falling as an emotional Curt walked away from the cottage, carrying Amanda’s belongings. ‘The flat’s a disaster, everything’s been thrown around or broken,’ he said as he walked to his car. ‘It’s a very sad situation in there. It’s the house where a young lady lost her life. But being able to take Amanda’s things out today, I ki
nd of feel it’s a step towards her coming home.’

  Asked how his daughter was, Curt replied: ‘She feels less free with every day that passes; she says it’s as if she has less and less air to breathe.’

  After Curt had left, a couple of police officers stuffed everything he had left behind into black rubbish bags, which they threw into a van parked in the garden. All that was left of Amanda’s stay in the room was a small mess of spilt, dark tea leaves on her wooden desk.

  Next door, Meredith’s room was also stripped bare and her belongings placed in the boot of Napoleoni’s car. Two workers sent by the city council quickly cleansed the room of the stains left by her murder. Moments later, the only trace of the killing was a damp grey smudge on the wall between the bed and the cupboard, where they had to rub particularly hard to get rid of the bloody streaks which Mignini thought were left by Meredith, trying to steady herself.

  46

  9 May 2009

  Comodi, who had agreed with Mignini that she would take on the forensic part of their case, sat peering at her laptop and muttering to herself as the court waited for her to start screening a film of the crime scene. Raffaele, sitting a couple of yards away to her right, offered to help and a stunned Comodi accepted.

  The computer science graduate swiftly found out that Comodi’s laptop couldn’t play her DVD because it lacked the right program, so he slipped the DVD into a laptop on his desk, connected it to the giant screen in the court, and told her to go ahead.

  The film Raffaele was helping to screen for the court included key evidence against him – it showed the forensic police finding Meredith’s bra clasp on her bedroom floor, and on which DNA belonging to her as well as Raffaele and Rudy was later found.

  Comodi couldn’t have been more amazed by Raffaele’s gesture. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d just given her a mocking smile as if to say: ‘I could help you, but I’m a defendant, so tough!’ His kindness made her think he was at heart a good, well-brought-up boy. But at the same time it was another sign that, like Amanda, he hadn’t understood anything about the trial or what was at stake for him. It was as if the pair were merely observers, watching the trial as if it was a film they had no part in.

  Didn’t they realise, Comodi wondered, that barely two weeks from now, the biologist Patrizia Stefanoni of the Rome forensic police would be presenting what she saw as even more damning evidence against them both?

  18 May 2009

  In the week leading up to Stefanoni’s testimony, Comodi drove to Rome for long discussions with her and her colleagues. It was Stefanoni who’d found the DNA traces on the kitchen knife and on Meredith’s bra clasp.

  The two prosecutors had left the forensic witnesses until last on their list, as they felt this was the strongest part of their case. The forensic experts were the crucial witnesses; they were the ones who would give the court objective, irrefutable evidence – stronger than an eyewitness who could fail to make a convincing appearance in court, and be dismissed as unreliable.

  The case against Amanda and Raffaele could stand or fall on whether the court not only understood the work done by the forensic experts, but also accepted it as scientifically above reproach. The defence lawyers would try to discredit all the results the teams had obtained, and the prosecutors were not going to leave anything to chance.

  In the Rome offices of the forensic police, opposite the Cinecittà film studios, Comodi gathered the experts who had worked on the case, including those who had taken and analysed traces of blood and fingerprints. As they began to talk about the trial, Comodi realised they were nervous. They were confident they had done their jobs properly but they were worried about the grilling the defence lawyers would give them, and about being dragged under the media spotlight. To help them prepare for their ordeal, for almost an entire morning Comodi fired at them all the questions she thought the defence might put to them.

  Why, she asked, was Meredith’s bra clasp not taken from her bedroom until forty-six days after it was first spotted just after the murder? There was no doubt this was a serious mistake, and she expected Raffaele’s defence lawyers to throw as much doubt as they could on Stefanoni’s discovery of their client’s DNA on the clasp. They would be sure to suggest that the clasp had been contaminated. They might go so far as to accuse the forensic police of manipulating the evidence.

  ‘DNA doesn’t have wings!’ Stefanoni exclaimed. ‘How can anyone say that we manipulated tests to throw the blame on Raffaele or Amanda? Do people really think we’re monsters who want to crucify kids we’ve never met?’ She didn’t like the idea that her professionalism or her integrity could be called into question – her lab was internationally respected, and she’d been sent to join the investigation team struggling to identify victims of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

  Of course, Stefanoni said, in an ideal world no one would have entered the cottage between her first search just after the murder and her second on 18 December. Police searches had disrupted the crime scene but that didn’t mean the DNA of any of the accused had entered the cottage. The detectives themselves, or even Mignini, would have been much more likely to leave fingerprints or their DNA behind, and this simply hadn’t happened.

  As part of their preparations for the next hearings, Comodi, together with Stefanoni, watched the films the forensic police had made at the crime scene. As the prosecutor watched the pathologist Lalli uncover the body, she was deeply moved by Meredith’s gaze. Comodi had seen a dozen or so bodies in murder cases, but she had never seen eyes that expressive in a victim. For Comodi, Meredith’s stare was one of surprise, as if she was thinking: ‘No, it’s not possible.’

  Comodi was also struck by the beauty of Meredith’s features; somehow, she looked more beautiful than in the photographs of the Halloween party.

  ‘Thank God I wasn’t on duty that night,’ Comodi thought to herself.

  22 May 2009

  ‘THE LONGEST DAY FOR AMANDA AND RAFFAELE’ was the headline of the local Corriere dell’Umbria newspaper on the day Stefanoni appeared before the court. Tall and slender with long dark hair, and dressed in an olive green trouser suit and a beige shirt with a frilly collar, she strode confidently into the courtroom, a computer bag slung over her shoulder.

  At Comodi’s prompting, Stefanoni launched into a long, precise explanation of the nature of DNA, its relevance to police investigations, and the rigid testing procedures adopted in her laboratory. She spoke in a self-assured tone of voice with a slight, warm Neapolitan accent, pointing to the charts she displayed on the screen using a red laser pen – as if she was giving a presentation at a science conference.

  Her explanation was sometimes so technical it was difficult for the court to grasp. Comodi glanced at the jury. She saw that their attention was waning but it was vital to establish in the minds of the court that this was rigorous science, not guesswork.

  Stefanoni then described, room by room, the 460 biological traces which included the bloodstains and traces of footprints, found not only in the cottage but also in Raffaele’s and Rudy’s flats.

  Amanda and Raffaele sat as usual facing the two judges and jurors, their lawyers beside them and two prison guards in jaunty blue berets standing behind each of them. They looked so young and slight the guards seemed unnecessary. Raffaele wore a pink T-shirt and Amanda a plain mauve top, her hair scraped back in a ponytail secured with a blue bobble, a little-girl slide on each side of her head.

  She sat pale and tight-lipped as Stefanoni talked, occasionally turning to see the screen, her face serious and intent as if she were back at university, listening to a complicated lecture. She looked away from the screen when it showed the quilt covering Meredith’s body, and glanced only briefly at shots of the kitchen knife found in Raffaele’s flat. Occasionally, she’d reach under the desk to squeeze Ghirga’s hand.

  When her turn came to question Stefanoni, Raffaele’s lawyer Bongiorno focused on the trace of his DNA which the biologist had found
on one of the hooks of the bra clasp, quizzing her relentlessly on the methods she and her team had used to collect evidence in the room.Who had entered it? Had anyone walked out and then gone back in again? How often had they changed their gloves and shoe covers?

  ‘Is it correct to say, in general terms,’ Bongiorno asked with mock humility, ‘that if I’m wearing a glove which already has someone’s DNA on it and I touch this microphone, I can transfer the DNA to it?’

  ‘Only if this DNA is part of a fresh, watery trace, because if the DNA is in a substance which is completely dry, such as dried blood or saliva, I won’t transfer the DNA when I touch something. The fact is, I got negative results from lots of samples, like the second time I scratched traces on the wall, which were clearly blood and had DNA in them. The traces had deteriorated, and I didn’t get anything out of them,’ Stefanoni replied.

  Bongiorno then screened film of Stefanoni and her colleagues examining the flat, continually pausing it to challenge her about their work.

  As images of Stefanoni taking hold of the bra clasp in Meredith’s room a month and a half after the murder came up on the screen, Bongiorno gave a short running commentary: ‘That’s you. There, look at this point you take the … you see the hooks?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Stefanoni replied.

  ‘Right now you’re touching the strap.’

  ‘Yes, and then I turn it round.’

  ‘There, the hooks, the hooks, can you see? Can you see the hooks?’ Bongiorno exclaimed excitedly, pointing at the screen.