Taking Amanda step-by-step through what she had told the detectives and Mignini about the murder, Pacelli said: ‘Signorina Amanda, you heard poor Meredith scream on the evening of 1 November.’
‘No.’ From then on, Amanda switched to the fluent, often colloquial Italian she’d learnt in prison.
‘In your statement of 6 November 2007 at 5.45 a.m. you said that you heard Meredith scream. How did you know that Meredith screamed before she was killed. Who told you?’
‘So, when I was with the police they asked me if I’d heard Meredith’s screams. I said I hadn’t and they said: “How’s it possible that you didn’t hear Meredith’s screams if you were there?” I said: “Look, I don’t know, maybe I had my hands over my ears,” and they said, “OK, let’s write it like that, that’s OK.” ’
‘On the sixth of November, the police didn’t know that Meredith had screamed before she died.’
‘I imagine they might have imagined it, God knows!’
‘You said you were in the cottage when Meredith died, you were in the kitchen?’
‘No.’
‘Who said that to you, who suggested it to you?’
‘It was suggested to me; they were following a line of reasoning. So they asked me if I was in Meredith’s room when she was killed, I said no, they said to me: “But where were you?” I told them: “I don’t know.” They said: “Maybe you were in the kitchen,” I said: “OK, fine.” ’
Pacelli turned to the note Amanda had written in English just after her arrest at midday on 6 November 2007, and which she’d given the detective Ficarra as ‘a gift’: ‘When you wrote that memorandum, were you hit by the police?’
‘No.’
‘Were you badly treated?’
‘No.’
‘Did the police suggest its content?’
‘No.’
‘You wrote this memorandum freely?’
‘Yes.’
‘Of your own free will?’
‘Yes.’
‘Look, in this memorandum you say: “I confirm the statements made the previous night concerning the events which may have happened at my house with Patrick.” You freely and spontaneously confirmed these circumstances, these statements.’
‘Because I wasn’t sure what was my imagination and what was reality, and so I wanted to say that I was confused and I couldn’t know, but at the same time I knew I’d had to sign these statements, so I said: “OK, fine, I said these things, but I’m confused and I’m not sure.” ’
Amanda looked a little less tense when Ghirga’s turn to question her came. He began by asking Judge Massei’s permission, which was granted, to question his client using the familiar ‘tu’ form of address – perhaps an attempt to give their exchanges a more informal, reassuring, tone for the court.
As Ghirga took her through the days leading up to the murder, and her relations with Meredith, Amanda looked and sounded self-assured. Her tone was even chatty at times – jarring with her surroundings – as when she played down her clash with Meredith over cleanliness: ‘There’s no doubt I wasn’t the cleanest in the house, but for example the only times that Meredith had said something to me, the toilets here are a bit different from the ones in the United States and often you’ve got to use this kind of brush to clean the toilet after you’ve flushed it and often I didn’t remember to do it, so once she told me [about that]. It was a bit embarrassing and then fine, cool!’
If Amanda’s testimony was a stage performance as the prosecutors believed, her most polished turn was her account of the evening of the murder. Guided by Ghirga, she rarely faltered as she gave a lively description of how she and Raffaele had gone to his flat to watch the film Amélie – ‘Bellissimo [wonderful], my favourite film,’ she said, adding: ‘We thought: come on, let’s watch this one.’
When Patrick sent her the text message saying she shouldn’t come to work, she’d been delighted because she wanted to stay with Raffaele – ‘I jumped up saying: “Hey, I don’t need to work!” ’
That evening they’d also read Harry Potter in German, which Raffaele was learning, and listened to a bit of music. They had dinner – ‘fish and a salad’ – at about 9.30 p.m. and afterwards, while Raffaele was washing the dishes, water had leaked from under the sink. Raffaele didn’t have a rag to mop it up so Amanda said she’d bring one from the cottage the next morning. They’d then smoked a joint together and gone to sleep – ‘We made love first,’ Amanda clarified, unprompted.
With only the odd interruption by Ghirga, Amanda talked at length about her return to the cottage the following morning. She’d thought, ‘That’s strange!’ when she saw the front door open – ‘But I thought that if someone hadn’t closed it properly then of course it would open, so perhaps someone went out quickly or went to the flat downstairs to fetch something or they went to take out the rubbish – boh!’
She again thought ‘That’s strange!’ when she saw drops of blood in the sink – ‘I had these piercings, I had so many of them and I like piercings … At first I thought they came from my ears but then when I scratched them I saw they were dry.’
And she yet again thought ‘That’s strange!’ when she saw blood on the bathmat after having a shower – ‘Maybe someone had a period and hadn’t cleaned up, OK.’
But the strangest thing was seeing the excrement in the big bathroom used by Filomena and Laura – ‘They were very clean but I thought, “Well, who knows?” Fine, I didn’t know what to think but it was a bit strange so I took this mop and I went to Raffaele’s flat.’ She wanted to tell Raffaele about what she’d seen and she took the mop with her to help him clean up the previous evening’s leak.
Ghirga then gave Amanda an opportunity to explain her reactions after the body was found. At the police station on the afternoon Meredith’s body was discovered, she’d talked of it being in the cupboard, covered with a blanket – it was in fact lying on the floor – because, she said, that’s what she’d heard from her flatmates and their friends just after they’d all been ordered out of the cottage.
A few days later, on the night she’d accused Patrick and again at the police station, she’d asked detectives: ‘Shouldn’t I have a lawyer now?’ She only said it, she explained to the court, because of the films she’d seen on TV – but ‘a detective told me that it would make things worse for me, because it would show I didn’t want to collaborate with the police, so I said no.’
The judges and jurors looked surprised when Ghirga asked about the red mark on her neck which witnesses had seen just after her arrest and Amanda replied bluntly: ‘It’s a love bite.’
Like Ghirga, Dalla Vedova also talked to his client using the familiar ‘tu’ form of address. He asked Amanda why she’d switched off her mobile on the evening of Meredith’s murder.
‘Because I didn’t want to be called again to go to work, I didn’t want to be bothered,’ Amanda said. She added that she didn’t usually turn her mobile off at night, because she used it as a watch.
Dalla Vedova asked Amanda whether she had cried after Meredith’s body was found, as she sat in a car outside the cottage to keep warm.
‘Yes, yes I cried but always while I was hugging Raffaele. First he gave me his jacket and then he cuddled me, because I was really trembling. I didn’t know what to think. I was really in shock so he cuddled me, he kissed me, he told me not to worry and so I cried, practically inside this protection that he offered me.’
After Dalla Vedova had finished, Judge Massei asked Amanda whether she was tired.
‘If it’s not a nuisance, I am a bit tired,’ Amanda answered politely.
Six hours after she had first started speaking, Judge Massei declared the day’s hearing at an end. The next morning, Amanda would face a cross-examination by Mignini.
49
13 June 2009
The swifts were again screaming in the sunshine as Mignini, dressed in jeans and a light beige jacket and looking flustered, walked into the courtroom. Apparently impatient to
get started, he lost no time in taking his jacket off and slipping on his black prosecutor’s robe with a gold tassel on each shoulder. ‘Leave Amanda to me,’ he’d told his colleague Comodi.
This, he hoped, would be his chance to prise what he was convinced was the truth out of Amanda. He still felt frustrated that she had put a stop to his interrogation in prison seven months earlier just when he felt sure she was about to crack. No doubt her lawyers would do all they could to protect her from any pressure the prosecutor tried to put on her this time, but he was confident that she was bound to make some mistakes at least.
Amanda, dressed in a white and patterned top and jeans, with a pink elastic band holding her neat ponytail in place, nodded several times at the court before sitting down at the witness box. She sat with her forearms resting on the desk in front of her, hands clasped, staring steadily at Mignini as he began by asking her what she had done on the day of Meredith’s death.
Amanda’s lawyers soon tried to block Mignini’s cross-examination, interrupting him with objections to his questions as he pressed Amanda on why she had switched her mobile phone off after receiving Patrick’s text message that evening. Visibly irritated by the lawyers’ interventions, Mignini pushed on.
Amanda explained she was on Raffaele’s bed in his flat at the time, and that she didn’t want to risk Patrick calling her to tell her to go to work if customers turned up unexpectedly.
Mignini pointed out that when he interrogated her in prison, she’d said she switched it off both to save the battery, and to prevent Patrick calling her again.
Mignini then focused on her accusation that Patrick had raped and killed Meredith. Why had she stated the previous day: ‘Patrick’s name was suggested to me, I was beaten, I was put under pressure’? He asked her to tell in as much detail as possible what had happened at the police station on the night she made the accusation.
Amanda had hardly begun her reply when Mignini interrupted her with another question. Amanda snapped: ‘Can I go on?’
Mignini apologised to her, but Dalla Vedova jumped in to reprimand Mignini, which prompted more tense exchanges between the prosecutors and defence lawyers, and an appeal for calm from Judge Massei.
Speaking rapidly and gesturing with her hands, Amanda repeated her accusations against the police, saying they’d threatened to jail her if she didn’t tell the truth and had told her Raffaele had said she’d left his flat on the night of the murder. They told her she must try to remember something she had forgotten.
Amanda spread her hands over her cheeks as she went on: ‘I was thinking: “What have I forgotten? What have I forgotten?” and they were going: “Come on, come on, come on. Do you remember? Do you remember? Do you remember?”, boom, on my head’ – she mimed being hit on the back of the neck – ‘“Remember!” I went, “Mamma mia!” and then boom, “Do you remember?” Those were the cuffs on the head.’
Mignini told her curtly that she had failed to demonstrate that detectives had ‘suggested’ Patrick’s name to her – a remark which prompted more protests from her lawyers, who pointed out that he wasn’t allowed to comment on her replies.
As her lawyers quarrelled with Mignini – he grew so frustrated that he shouted, ‘I will complete the cross-examination!’ – Amanda looked on the verge of tears, bowed her head and stayed that way for a dozen seconds.
Ghirga leapt up from where he had been sitting, which was out of Amanda’s field of vision, and hurried down the front row to his left, apparently wanting Amanda to catch sight of him. He asked for a five minute break.
But when Judge Massei asked whether Amanda wanted to stop testifying, she said she would go on.
Judge Massei gave Amanda another opportunity to explain herself. ‘Did they say to you: “Say it’s him”?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Amanda replied.
‘They said to you: “Remember, remember, remember.” ’
‘They didn’t say it was him, but they said to me: “Ah, but we know who it is, we know you were with [someone], that you met that person.” ’
‘That’s what the suggestion amounted to?’
‘Yes.’
Mignini challenged her, saying what she had just said contrasted with what she’d told him when he interrogated her: at the time, she’d said, ‘A moment before I said Patrick’s name, someone was showing me the message I’d sent him.’
Amanda replied simply: ‘I explained better today.’
‘What happened next?’ Mignini asked.
‘First I started to cry. Then, when all these policemen were saying to me: “But you have to say why, how it happened,” – they wanted all the details but I didn’t know how to give them – I started to imagine a scene, images which maybe could have explained the situation. Patrick’s face, Piazza Grimana, my house, a green thing which they said could be the sofa … It was always “I don’t know”, “maybe”, imagining …’ Amanda said, waving and flapping her hands as she talked.
Later, Mignini asked Amanda why she had cried when he and several detectives escorted her to the cottage to check on the knives in the kitchen, three days after the murder.
‘It’s true that I cried when looking for the knives because having to see if something was missing, it shocked me, because it was as if all the time I couldn’t accept the fact that Meredith had been killed,’ Amanda said.
As she spoke, Amanda raised her hands and put them over her ears. Mignini noticed the gesture – she had done the same gesture when he’d interrogated her, and he was sure it was an unconscious attempt to blot out Meredith’s screams, which he was convinced she’d heard.
The prosecutor switched to the day Meredith’s body was discovered: ‘Raffaele tried to break down Meredith’s door. Why did you say it was normal that the door was locked when Filomena arrived?’
‘When the police arrived, they asked Filomena if the door was ever closed. She said: “Never.” I said that “never” wasn’t true, I thought it was strange that the door was closed but sometimes Meredith locked it. Normally it was open. I just wanted to explain it wasn’t always open … I was worried she could be inside and had hurt herself, there were so many strange things in the house, the door closed with the window broken.’
Two hours into the cross-examination, Judge Massei asked Amanda whether she wanted a break and Amanda said yes. It was only a short respite, but Mignini paced around, looking irritated; he believed that Amanda was lying to herself, and of course her lawyers were out to stop him getting to the truth.
When the hearing restarted, Mignini asked Amanda: ‘Did you try to break down Meredith’s door to fetch your desk light?’ The prosecutor suspected that Amanda had brought her light into Meredith’s room soon after the murder; it was found there by police when the body was discovered.
‘We didn’t know the light was in there,’ Amanda said in a disapproving tone.
Mignini ended his cross-examination.
The Kerchers’ lawyer Maresca was the first to ask Amanda what Meredith’s death had meant to her. ‘You said yesterday that you had many friends, both in America and in Perugia. Did you consider Meredith Kercher a friend?’ Maresca began.
‘Yes.’
‘And did you suffer for the loss of this friend?’
‘Yes, to be precise I was more … I was very shocked, I couldn’t imagine a thing like that.’
‘Do you ever remember her in your everyday life? Do you ever think of this friend who lived in the same house as you?’
‘Yes, I remember her, but in the end I knew her for a month and first of all I’m trying to go on with my life’ – several journalists muttered in disapproval – ‘so, yes, I remember her, I’m very sorry for what happened, sometimes it seems it doesn’t seem real, but I really don’t know what to think about it. Yes, I suffered.’
‘So, yesterday you answered questions about some of your behaviour at the police station, the wheel, gymnastics, stretching and so on.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think t
his behaviour was suitable, given a tragedy of the kind?’
‘I think everyone deals with a tragedy their own way and as I’m used to trying to feel normal in difficult situations, that’s my way of feeling more secure. Because in the end I was very, very scared by this thing, very shocked. I didn’t know how to deal with the situation and so for me it was surreal, I still had to accept the fact that it had happened. So my behaviour, yes, I know I’m a bit like that, carefree, but that’s the way I am.’
‘But in that moment were you scared or sad, or both?’
‘I was so … I was very disoriented.’
Maresca asked Amanda about what she had told Meredith’s friends about the way she had died. ‘You told Meredith’s friends at the police station that she had died slowly. Why on earth did you say this?’
‘I heard that she’d had her throat cut, and from what I saw on CSI, these things are not quick or pleasant. So, when they said: “Let’s hope that she died quickly,” I said: “But what are you saying? She had her throat slit.” But, dammit, not … Bleargh … This brutality, this death … bleargh … it really did shock me. That’s the thing which struck me, the fact of having your throat slit, it seemed something really yucky and so I imagined it was a death that was slow and very, very scary, a really shocking death … really yucky, disgusting, really …’ Amanda said, crossing her hands repeatedly in front of her chest.
The court looked surprised at her use of expressions like ‘bleargh’ and ‘yucky’, and one woman juror held her head in her hands as she listened.
The last to question Amanda was Judge Massei. ‘There are a few little questions which I’m afraid will be put to you in a disorganised way, because they occurred to us when we met during breaks [in the hearings],’ he said.
‘Certainly,’ Amanda said.
The judge’s words were deceptively reassuring – the ‘little questions’ he fired at Amanda were in fact so brief and incisive that the whole courtroom listened very closely; no lawyer daring to interrupt.
A Death in Italy: The Definitive Account of the Amanda Knox Case Page 31