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

by Follain, John

  The lead prosecutor, Costagliola, asked only a handful of questions of Rudy – just enough to have him deny ever telling his fellow prisoner Alessi anything at all about Meredith’s death. The two had only ‘chit-chatted’, Rudy said.

  When Mignini’s turn came, he played a card he had been keeping close to his chest. He held up a copy of a letter which Rudy had sent his lawyers in May of the previous year after Alessi’s account first emerged; it had been leaked by a private TV network. A clerk carried the copy over to Rudy, who curtly confirmed he had written it.

  Mignini went on to read the letter out. A virulent rant against Alessi, the letter denounced ‘blasphemous insinuations’ and slammed the child-killer as ‘a foul being with a stinking conscience’, ‘an ogre who had no pity on a little boy’. Mignini read the letter through to the end; what mattered was the final sentence in which Rudy wrote of ‘the horrible murder of a splendid and wonderful girl by Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox.’

  Amanda and Raffaele just sat and stared as Mignini took his time in sitting down again. For the first time in court, Rudy had unreservedly accused the two of killing Meredith.

  Dalla Vedova tried to make Rudy tell the court exactly what part Amanda and Raffaele, according to him, had played in the murder. But Rudy refused to say more.

  ‘You confirm this part [of the letter] about Amanda and Raffaele?’ Dalla Vedova insisted.

  ‘I decided to write it after hearing absurd things and feeling like a puppet being manipulated by other people. It’s not up to me to decide who killed Meredith. I’ve always said who was in the house that damned night,’ Rudy said.

  As he sat listening, Mignini turned to beam broadly at the Kerchers’ lawyers behind him – the defence questions were backfiring on Amanda and Raffaele.

  ‘Rudy involving Amanda and Raffaele is news. Why did he never say this before?’ Dalla Vedova persisted.

  Visibly irritated, and with a slight sweat shining on his forehead, Rudy shot back: ‘It’s not as if there is my truth, and the truth of Tom, Dick and Harry. What there is is the truth of what I lived through that night, full stop.’

  Moments after Rudy was led out, Amanda tried to demolish what the court had just heard. ‘I just wanted to say simply that the only time Rudy, Raffaele and me have been together in the same place is in court. I’m shocked and anguished’ – her voice broke and tears came to her eyes – ‘by his testimony. He knows we weren’t there then,’ Amanda said.

  The Kerchers’ lawyer Maresca was jubilant after the hearing. ‘The defence did us a huge favour. They should never have kept going at Rudy about his statement that Amanda and Raffaele are the killers,’ he said.

  If Amanda’s mother Edda was feeling in any way discouraged, she didn’t show it. She played down Rudy’s attack, saying he’d been vague. ‘It’s unfortunate that Rudy didn’t take the chance to redeem himself … Amanda just wanted to say to him: “You know the truth, you know I wasn’t there, speak up, tell the truth.” ’ Edda said.

  How did she feel the appeal trial was going?

  ‘I think the appeal is going great, very well. I think that when the DNA [review] comes out, it will be even better,’ she replied firmly.

  60

  25 July 2011

  For once, the TV crews allowed into the Hall of Frescoes for the start of each hearing focused not on Amanda but on two academics busying themselves with a laptop and piles of files as they sat side by side at a desk in front of the judges and jurors.

  Carla Vecchiotti and Stefano Conti – specialists in forensic medicine from the University La Sapienza in Rome – had finally completed their independent review of the DNA evidence on the kitchen knife and on Meredith’s bra clasp. Today, they would brief the court on their findings.

  Their review was a blow for the prosecution. They accused the forensic police of violating international guidelines on the collection of evidence at the crime scene. The attribution of the DNA trace on the knife blade to Meredith was ‘unreliable’ because Patrizia Stefanoni, the lead biologist, had failed to follow international standards on testing such a small sample which could have been the result of contamination, they said. But they confirmed that Amanda’s DNA was on the handle.

  The experts also confirmed that one of the traces on the bra clasp was indeed Raffaele’s, but again cautioned that it too could be the result of contamination – especially since the clasp was retrieved from the floor of Meredith’s bedroom forty-six days after the murder.

  When Amanda, who had had her twenty-fourth birthday the previous month, first heard news of the review she was watching TV in prison. She laughed and cried with joy; fellow prisoners came up to her and hugged her. ‘For the first time, someone believes me,’ she told her lawyer, Ghirga.

  For the first time in months she looked almost buoyant as she sat in court waiting for the experts to testify, smiling frequently as she chatted with her lawyers.

  With the courtroom plunged in semi-darkness as images of the knife and the bra clasp were projected on a large screen, the moustachioed Conti, a rotund, balding figure, quoted guidelines on crime scene management from a host of police and forensic manuals – chiefly from American states such as New Jersey, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

  Screening extracts from videos made by Stefanoni’s forensic team while it was gathering samples at the cottage, Conti then listed more than fifty alleged failings – several of which drew gasps from the public gallery. The team failed to put on new gloves after bagging each sample; it used plastic bags for samples instead of paper bags which prevent condensation; the officer who picked up Meredith’s bra clasp passed it to a colleague before placing it back on the floor, and then bagging it; there was a smudge on the fingertip of one of the gloves which touched the clasp, so the glove was dirty; an officer wore no gloves when he picked up Meredith’s bra; an officer shook Meredith’s knickers over the floor before bagging them …

  Dressed in a light summer dress and sitting with the prosecutors a few feet away, Stefanoni scribbled furiously, or did quick searches on her laptop, as Conti worked his way down his list.

  The prosecutor Comodi sprung to Stefanoni’s defence, interrupting Conti repeatedly and suggesting that he was going beyond his brief.

  But Comodi was herself interrupted by a roar of ‘Silence!’ from the usually unflappable Judge Pratillo Hellmann, which made many in court jump in their seats. Comodi apologised and promised to let the expert finish without any more interruptions.

  Conti’s list went on and on. One person dressed in jeans and a sweater entered Meredith’s room and touched the body; another touched the edges of one of her throat wounds; Stefanoni’s gloves were smudged with blood and split over her left index when she picked up a sample; the officer filming the police video walked in and out of Meredith’s room without changing his shoe covers; an officer was recorded saying: ‘It’s absurd, I’ve complained about how incredibly disorganised this is’; at Raffaele’s flat, officers took empty shopping bags from his kitchen to bag the objects they seized …

  Conti’s colleague Vecchiotti, a stern-looking figure with straight black hair speaking in a clear, clipped tone, followed up with another broadside, this time on Stefanoni’s laboratory work. Stefanoni, she alleged, had failed to specify the size of the DNA sample she found on the blade of the kitchen knife; that sample was too small – technically, it had a ‘low copy number’ – and the risk of contamination was too high for it to produce a convincing result. This meant Stefanoni had been wrong to attribute it to Meredith.

  ‘Contamination is always possible,’ Vecchiotti kept repeating.

  She criticised only mildly Stefanoni’s analysis of the DNA traces on Meredith’s bra clasp, agreeing that Raffaele’s Y chromosome was on the clasp; there were also traces of Meredith and several, unidentified males.

  But again, Vecchiotti cautioned: ‘This piece of evidence [the bra clasp] was recovered forty-six days after it was first found in a context which strongly suggests contamina
tion.’

  After the hearing, Amanda’s mother smiled broadly with relief. ‘I’m not celebrating until she walks out, but it’s definitely looking better. A lot of this stuff was brought up in the first trial but it wasn’t accepted then. Now it’s got more importance because it comes from court-appointed experts,’ Edda said.

  But Maresca, the Kerchers’ lawyer, turned against the two experts, saying their attacks were ‘inquisitorial’. He added: ‘The Kercher family is very worried about what’s happening. The forensic police did a serious job, but what’s being alleged is that we’ve just been playing around until now.’

  A tense Comodi rolled her eyes upwards when a journalist asked her whether the prosecution’s case could collapse because of the experts’ testimony. ‘Are you joking? Are you joking? Don’t make me get mad!’ she exclaimed.

  Comodi refused to predict the verdict. ‘No one can get inside the heads of the judges and jurors. And frankly I don’t want to,’ she said.

  Over a decaffeinated coffee in the late afternoon sunshine at a bar opposite the cathedral, Amanda’s lawyer Ghirga looked exhausted, stunned and quietly delighted by that day’s hearing. He usually slept well before a hearing, but that morning he had been up at 5.30 a.m., too nervous to sleep any more. The only thing that had surprised him today, he said, was the image of the smudge on the glove which touched the bra clasp.

  ‘The rest was in the video of the forensic police, but why were we accused of lese-majesty [high treason] when our experts said the same things?’ Ghirga asked rhetorically as he waved a couple of pigeons off the next table.

  Did he think Amanda might be acquitted on the basis of the experts’ review? ‘I can’t even begin to imagine that happening. I don’t know what I would do, whether I’d laugh or cry,’ he said. ‘One thing’s certain: if Amanda’s acquitted, she won’t hang around. She’ll swim to America if she has to.’

  30 July 2011

  Five days after their first testimony, it was now the turn of the two experts, Vecchiotti and Conti, to be ‘in the dock’ as they braced themselves for questioning by Comodi. As the prosecutor entered the courtroom, looking strained at the start of what would no doubt be a marathon session, she joked: ‘I’ve stuffed myself with camomile.’

  Before the prosecutor began, the two experts were taken to task by Piero Angeloni, the head of the national forensic police. In a letter read out by Judge Pratillo Hellmann, Angeloni accused the two experts of attacking ‘the professionalism and dignity’ of his staff. The latter, he wrote, worked on no fewer than 25,000 crime scenes a year, were highly trained, had the latest technology at their disposal, and were regularly monitored and approved by the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI). Never before, Angeloni concluded, had his staff come under criticism such as the two experts had levelled at them.

  Clad in her black robe, and briskly fanning herself with a fan of white lace in the hot courtroom, Comodi got to her feet and started by asking the two experts about their qualifications – a clear attempt to undermine their credibility.

  Sounding slightly piqued, Conti described himself as a forensic medicine specialist and listed a string of credentials from work for the civil aviation authority to mass disasters, medical computer science and microphotography. Vecchiotti fired off a longer list. She too was a forensic medicine specialist and taught forensic haematology at a school for police superintendents. She had worked on many high-profile Italian murder cases, and carried out more than seventy studies on forensic genetics.

  Comodi tried to probe the two experts about their experience but the judge stopped her. ‘Keep to the review,’ he told her.

  Comodi complied by challenging the experts’ methods, making Vecchiotti acknowledge that she had not asked to visit the laboratory of the forensic police, nor had she asked what cleaning routine they followed in order to reduce the risk of contamination.

  ‘How could you talk about the staff failing to clean their work surface if you didn’t check their procedures?’ Comodi asked.

  ‘I based myself on the files of the case,’ Vecchiotti replied.

  ‘Does a surgeon write about putting on his green mask and his cap before an operation?’ Comodi exclaimed, theatrically miming the gestures she described.

  ‘I don’t know the procedure in operating theatres,’ Vecchiotti replied.

  Judge Pratillo Hellmann intervened to ask about the DNA trace attributed to Meredith on the knife blade. ‘I would like to be enlightened,’ the judge said graciously. ‘Is there a trace which can be attributed to Meredith?’

  ‘It was never established how much DNA there was. We don’t know anything, we don’t know if Meredith’s DNA was there … There’s a complete profile but it isn’t reliable,’ Vecchiotti replied. The profile wasn’t reliable because the test should have been repeated two or three times, she said.

  To chuckles in court, Vecchiotti kept calling Comodi ‘avvocato ’ (lawyer). Comodi kept correcting her, and exclaimed after yet another ‘avvocato’: ‘Please concentrate. Does my face look like that of a lawyer or of a prosecutor?’

  Sitting next to Comodi, the lead prosecutor Costagliola tugged at her robe, whispering to her to keep calm.

  The more questions Comodi asked, the more sombre Amanda became. She sat quietly for much of the hearing, head bowed forwards, shoulders hunched.

  Again and again, Comodi pressed Vecchiotti on her statement that both the trace attributed to Meredith on the knife and Raffaele’s on the bra clasp could be the result of contamination.

  Vecchiotti said she had no idea that Stefanoni had carried out so-called ‘negative tests’ intended to exclude the possibility of contamination. The tests had been filed with an earlier judge, and Judge Pratillo Hellmann later admitted them as evidence at the trial.

  Nor did Vecchiotti know that Stefanoni had analysed the traces on the knife in her laboratory six days after last handling Meredith’s DNA.

  ‘Are six days enough to guarantee that a test tube doesn’t come into contact with another test tube?’ Comodi asked.

  ‘They’re sufficient if that’s the way things went,’ Vecchiotti replied stubbornly.

  ‘You can’t cast doubt on everything the forensic police writes!’ Comodi fired back.

  In a similar exchange, Comodi got Vecchiotti to agree that laboratory contamination of Meredith’s bra clasp had also been avoided, as Stefanoni tested Raffaele’s sample twelve days after last handling his DNA.

  Turning to the other expert, Conti, Comodi then tried to show contamination away from the laboratory was also extremely unlikely, if not impossible. She questioned Conti about the search of Raffaele’s flat, and he quoted the veteran police officer Armando Finzi’s testimony that he had used just one pair of gloves during the entire time.

  Comodi pointed out that the police had seized only a couple of newspapers in the flat before Finzi took the knife from a kitchen drawer, and that Meredith had never been in the flat.

  ‘There was no DNA of Meredith’s on the newspapers. Is it reasonable to say there was no DNA of Meredith’s on the handle of the kitchen drawer?’ Comodi asked.

  Conti conceded it was.

  ‘You agree Amanda’s DNA was on the knife handle?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Conti replied.

  Comodi drove her point home. ‘So only the blade was contaminated by Finzi, not the handle?’

  Comodi also challenged Conti on his assertion that dirty gloves were used to handle Meredith’s bra clasp.

  ‘Is it possible those gloves were dirty with Raffaele’s DNA?’ Comodi asked.

  ‘Everything’s possible,’ Conti replied.

  An exasperated Comodi burst out: ‘And that Martians …’

  Raffaele’s lawyer Bongiorno jumped up to object, but the prosecutor turned to the judge and protested: ‘An expert’s answer can’t be that everything is possible.’

  Judge Pratillo Hellmann chided Comodi with a joke: ‘Let’s keep to the review, otherwise these two [experts] will
end up accused of something themselves!’

  Comodi moved on, and challenged Conti over his numerous criticisms of the handling of the crime scene at the cottage.

  The person dressed in jeans and sweater who touched Meredith’s body and one of her wounds was the forensic pathologist, she informed him. The officer who was recorded complaining about the lack of organisation was not in Meredith’s flat but in the downstairs flat below, which had a separate entrance.

  ‘We agree that the semi-basement flat is not the crime scene?’ Comodi asked.

  ‘I can ask you a rhetorical question: if it isn’t, what reason did the police have for going there?’ Conti retorted – a comment which drew him cries of derision from police detectives attending the hearing.

  During a break from the hearing Stefanoni, who was the experts’ main target, voiced her frustration at their allegations. ‘If there was contamination, how come our forensic team’s DNA was found only on some bloody handkerchiefs outside the cottage, when we took a total of 460 samples in all, including at the cottage and at Raffaele’s flat? I didn’t leave my DNA anywhere!’ she exclaimed indignantly.

  ‘At the cottage we took 136 samples, and only two of them had Raffaele’s DNA on them – one was on the bra clasp in Meredith’s bedroom, and the other was on a cigarette end in the kitchen which also had Amanda’s on it. So how could contamination have happened?’ Stefanoni protested.

  Towards the end of her questioning, Comodi asked Vecchiotti about the alleged contamination of the bra clasp: ‘Is it possible for [Raffaele’s] DNA to end up only on the clasp?’