Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir

by Amanda Knox

  Unless Raffaele decided to get up after I fell asleep, grabbed said knife, went over to my house, used it to kill Meredith, came home, cleaned it off, rubbed my fingerprints all over it, put it away, then tucked himself back into bed, and then pretended really well the next couple of days, well, I just highly doubt all of that.

  But I didn’t have the luxury of explaining what I’d written to everyone who read it. After my passage was translated into Italian and then retranslated back into English, it bore little resemblance to the original—and a great resemblance to the prosecution’s theories about what had happened the night of November 1:

  That night I smoked a lot of marijuana and I fell asleep at my boyfriend’s house. I don’t remember anything. But I think it’s possible that Raffaele went to Meredith’s house, raped her and then killed her. And then when he got home, while I was sleeping, he put my fingerprints on the knife. But I don’t understand why Raffaele would do that.

  Once I had my meeting with the prosecutor I’d correct all the confusion about me. I thought my upcoming interrogation would tie up all these loose strands.

  Carlo and Luciano warned me once again that it might not be so simple. “Mignini will ask pointed questions to snare you,” Carlo said, his face serious. “He will try to paint you as a liar. He wants to show that you have a connection to Rudy Guede. He’ll try to prove that you lied about Patrick on purpose. Are you prepared for that, Amanda?”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  But I didn’t—and I wasn’t.

  As the date for the interrogation approached, Luciano and Carlo offered me a few pointers. “Don’t let him get to you. Don’t say anything if you don’t remember it perfectly. It’s okay to say, ‘I don’t remember.’ You don’t have to be God and know everything. It’s better to say, ‘I don’t know,’ and move on.”

  I was a jumble of emotions—eager to set the prosecutor and the public straight on who I really was and nervous about putting myself out there. But the night before Interrogation Day, my nerves overtook my excitement. I couldn’t eat much of the pizza my roommates and I made for dinner on our camp stove. I turned and tossed most of the night, thinking about what I wanted to tell the prosecutor. As I was being escorted to the prison compound’s center building at 10 A.M. the next day, I was humming my prison anthem, “Let It Be,” trying to calm some of my jitters.

  The meeting took place in the same makeshift courtroom as my hearing to confirm my arrest five weeks earlier. The setting wasn’t that much more pleasant than the questura office where Mignini had interrogated me the first time. Separate tables for the defense and the prosecution faced each other from opposite sides of the small, dim, bare room, with two barred windows set close to the ceiling so no one could see in or out.

  The tension was instantly obvious. Mignini was sitting at his table with two police officers. Like Carlo and Luciano, he was wearing a black robe. The three men had come ready for a fight. I felt awkward and out of place, as though I’d stepped into the middle of a feud that had nothing to do with me.

  But I was the reason for the feud—and the only person who could set things right.

  I stood near Carlo and Luciano with an interpreter, waiting for Mignini to give me permission to speak. That never came. Instead of asking what I had to say, he started firing questions at me immediately.

  What has stuck with me the most is that he never looked me in the eye. He stared down at the paper in his hand, on which his questions were written out. It’s as if I didn’t merit the effort it would have taken to look up.

  “Do you have any Spanish friends?” he asked—Rudy Guede said he hung out with Spanish friends on Halloween.

  I was calm and assertive. “No,” I answered.

  “What’s the meaning behind your name Foxy Knoxy?”

  “It’s just a nickname,” I said.

  “But what is the meaning behind it?”

  “There is no meaning behind it. It’s a play on my last name, Knox. My soccer teammates started calling me that as a teenager.”

  “Why do you use it to identify yourself?”

  “I don’t. I don’t introduce myself as ‘Foxy Knoxy.’ ”

  “Did you have problems with Meredith?”

  “No. We didn’t know each other long, but we were friends.”

  “Do you know Rudy Guede?”

  “I met him,” I said, “but I didn’t remember his name until he was arrested.”

  Mignini grilled me about my drug use, the people I knew in Perugia, the friends I’d invited over to the villa. He asked me when I’d found out that Meredith had been stabbed, hoping to prove that I knew the details of her death before an innocent person would have had the chance to.

  It bothered me that as I answered him as fully as I could through an interpreter, Mignini would usually repeat the question. I was afraid I wasn’t making myself clear. At first, Carlo, acting as a second interpreter, spoke in measured tones. He would interrupt and say, “What she is really saying is . . .” or “She’s already answered that question!”

  My lawyers listened intently to Mignini’s wording, to his repetitions, to the interpreter’s translation of his questions and my responses, and jumped up to object to suggestive phrasing and misinterpretations. They came prepared to protect me from what they’d warned me against: aggressive and insidious questioning by a prosecutor whose interest wasn’t to hear me out but to get me to say something incriminating. Luciano and Carlo grew less measured as the interrogation dragged on.

  After five and a half hours of standing and fielding questions, I was tired, but I thought everything was going okay. During the short breaks, Luciano would put his hand on my shoulder, and Carlo would say, “You’re doing well.”

  Then the conversation turned to my November 6, middle-of-the-night interrogation and how I could have said something without meaning to. I explained how much pressure the police put me under and how confused I was by their claims that I’d met up with someone, that I’d been to the villa that night. Mignini became defensive. “I was there,” he said, referring to the questura the night of my interrogation. “I heard you saying these things.”

  I said, “You were telling me these things. I was saying, ‘I’m not sure. I’m confused.’ ”

  This interrogation was becoming more and more like the one I’d meant to correct. It wasn’t a do-over at all. Mignini would ask a question, and when I answered, he would reject my response and ask again. He was trying to intimidate me, spewing words at me.

  Luciano and Carlo were leaning forward in their seats.

  “Where did the name Patrick come up?” Mignini demanded.

  “From my cell phone,” I said. “Because I’d texted a message to Patrick. I wrote, ‘See you later.’ ”

  “What did you mean by your message?”

  “In English, it means ‘Goodbye. See you later, as in sometime.’ It’s not like making an appointment to see someone. And I wrote, ‘Buona serata’—‘Have a good evening.’ I had no plans to meet up with him.”

  “Why did you erase Patrick’s message?”

  “I sometimes erased the messages I received. I didn’t have enough memory in my cell phone to keep them.”

  “Why did you say you didn’t remember writing that message?”

  “Because I didn’t remember.”

  “Why did you name Patrick?”

  “The police insisted I’d met the person I had sent the text message to.”

  “No. Why did you name Patrick?”

  “The police had been asking me about Patrick.”

  “No! Why did you name Patrick?”

  “The police insisted it was Patrick.”

  He was more and more aggressive about it. “Why Patrick?”

  “Because of my message.”

  “That doesn’t explain why Patrick.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Why did you say Patrick killed her?”

  “Because I was confused. Because I was und
er pressure.”

  “NO!” he insisted. “Why did you say Patrick?”

  I was more frustrated than I’d ever been. “Because I thought it could have been him!” I shouted, starting to cry.

  I meant that I’d imagined Patrick’s face and so I had really, momentarily, thought it was him.

  Mignini jumped up, bellowing, “Aha!”

  I was sobbing out of frustration, anger.

  My lawyers were on their feet. “This interrogation is over!” Luciano shouted, swiping his arm at the air.

  Carlo and Luciano sat me down and huddled around me, saying, “It’s okay, Amanda, it’s okay. You did a good job, and we’ll talk about it the next time we come.”

  Then a guard walked me out. I was sobbing hysterically. I had done my best to explain everything, and I had failed completely.

  As he left, Mignini apparently told waiting reporters that I hadn’t explained anything or said anything new. All I did, he said, was cry.

  That day changed everything for me. I understood that the prosecution’s goal was not about trying to find out who had killed Meredith. I was left with the horrible certainty that I’d made a mistake and there was nothing I could do to fix it. There was nothing I could do that would make any difference to the prosecutor. In Mignini’s hands, everything was distorted and bent to seem like more evidence of my guilt, and I was devastated.

  Back in my cell, the Italian news channel was replaying a scene from the previous weekend, of Meredith’s family, dressed in black, walking into her funeral service in England. I knew about the funeral from Don Saulo, and my spirit had been with Meredith all that day. As I watched her heartbroken family, I could only think, With all I’m going through, I’m the lucky one.

  Chapter 21

  January–May 2008

  Clutching a garbage bag stuffed with my clothes and books, I stood at the gate of my third cell in nine weeks. The agente cranked the key in the lock and pulled. “What do you think this is?” she sneered. “A hotel?”

  “No,” I said, knowing that she saw my relocation requests as diva behavior.

  I’d asked for the changes for solid reasons. My first cellmate, Gufa, had been erratic and difficult to live with. My next cellmates were three middle-aged gossips who criticized my cooking and cleaning. They called me a snob because I liked to read and write. “What good are your studies now, when you’ll be spending the rest of your life in prison?” one asked.

  They gave me a nickname: Principessa sul Pisello—the “Princess on the Pea.” The reference to the fairy-tale title was a two-sided jab: pisello is a colloquialism for “penis,” a reference to my supposed sexual depravity.

  Now I was moving in with Cera. Young, with the tall, lean looks of a model, she worked as a portavito, delivering meals from a rolling cart. She was also in my weekly guitar class, another prison “rehabilitation” activity like movie time. But I was still secluded from the main prison population—a special status to protect young, first-time suspects. The downside was that it prevented me from participating in group activities or talking to anyone but my cellmates. Thankfully, Don Saulo convinced prison officials to let me attend the guitar lessons, just as he had weekly Mass.

  One Wednesday, as Cera and I walked back to our cells from our lesson, I asked, “Would you be willing to let me live with you? We’re around the same age and we both study. I could help you with your English.”

  She waited a few beats before saying, “Sure. I’ll write a request tonight.”

  Cera had managed to make her cell homey, clean, and organized. There were bright colored sheets on the beds, postcards taped to the walls, and a colorful curtain tied to the bars at the window. We had a heart-to-heart talk while I unpacked. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed closest to the window. “I should probably tell you right off, I’m bisexual,” she said.

  “That’s cool,” I replied. “I’m not, but I’m definitely live-and-let-live.”

  “You’re not my type, anyway,” she said. “I thought you might be gay when you asked to live with me, but I decided you weren’t.” She hesitated. “You know, your former cellmates said you’re spoiled.”

  Wow. Why hadn’t I realized they would trash me behind my back? They gossiped about everyone else. Cera read my disappointment. “They’re fake. Almost everyone in prison is fake. You’ll see.”

  “But it sounds like you have friends, that you have fun with people.”

  “What made you decide that?”

  “I hear laughter coming from socialità.” I wasn’t allowed to go to the evening social time.

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s all bullshit. It’s lighthearted, but everyone’s fake.”

  How could everyone be fake? People are people.

  “Prison is bad. You’ll see.” She leaned toward me. “Wait until you’ve been here awhile.” She laid out the facts: “Prisoners and guards are in different worlds. The guards are the enemy. They’re only here to judge us.”

  “They don’t seem so bad,” I said.

  Cera scoffed. “You don’t know what they say about you when you’re outside—‘Who does Kuh-nox think she is? She’s saving worms from the rain but killing people.’ Even Lupa says you’re guilty.”

  I knew the prosecution didn’t believe me, but I’d assumed the people I interacted with every day would see me for who I was and not imagine the worst. As soon as Cera said this, it seemed obvious—of course the guards would assume I was a murderer. Everyone did.

  “The way to get along here is to appease the guards,” Cera said. “Instill confidence in other prisoners. But mind your own business. And don’t trust anyone.”

  I changed the subject. “Do you mind if I ask how old you are? And how long you’ve been in prison?”

  She looked at me with the exaggerated patience of an adult speaking to a child. Until then, I didn’t know that prisoners consider personal questions off-limits.

  “I’m twenty-three,” she said. “I’ve been in prison almost six years—of a twenty-five-year sentence. They say I murdered my boyfriend.”

  Oh my God. Hearing that made my heart hurt.

  She continued. “I know how you feel, being the center of attention right now. Don’t worry. They’ll forget about you once the next sensational crime comes along.”

  As much as I wanted to be out of the limelight, the word forget terrified me, and hearing “twenty-five years” made my stomach lurch. I wanted to cry for her—and for myself. “Was the media tough on you?” I asked.

  She flashed me another condescending look. “Journalists fixate on something and turn you into a symbol of evil,” she said. “They say you have ‘an angel face but a demon’s soul.’ Did you hear about Alberto Stasi?” He was accused of killing his girlfriend in August 2007. “Remember how the media reported that he has ‘eyes of ice,’ because they’re blue. It was ice for me, too. They made me sound like a psychopath, because I like to chew on ice.”

  How am I still this naïve?

  “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it,” she said. “Save yourself the indignity.”

  Cera was right. When she talked she seemed angry and bitter. I didn’t want to go there with her.

  At twenty, I still had a childlike view of people. I looked for the saving graces in everyone. I thought people were naturally empathetic, that they felt ashamed and guilty when they mistreated someone else. That faith in humanity was being picked away, but I held to the belief that people were basically good. And that good people would believe me and set me free.

  Part of the growing up I did in prison was learning that people are complicated, and that some will do something wrong to achieve what they think is right. Since my second interrogation with Mignini, I knew the prosecution was intent on undermining my alibi. Over the coming weeks and months, I would learn just how far they would go to try to prove me guilty.

  In early January, Raffaele’s father went on a popular Italian news program to convince viewers that his son had had nothing to do with
Meredith’s murder. “The bloody shoeprints in the villa were made by Rudy Guede,” he said. The pattern of eleven concentric circles on the sole of Guede’s Nike Outbreak 2s matched the prints on the floor. Dr. Sollecito produced a duplicate pair of the Nikes so TV viewers could see. A corresponding shoebox was found in Guede’s apartment, he added.

  The prints couldn’t have been made by Raffaele’s newer Nike Air Force 1s, he said. “They had just seven concentric circles.” By show’s end he had removed the possibility that Raffaele had been at the murder scene and put another strike against Guede. Raffaele’s family must have felt euphoric.

  But their elation didn’t last twenty-four hours. The next morning, the prosecution announced new “evidence.” The killer had slashed Meredith’s bra off her body, slicing off a small strip of fabric that included part of the clasp. Raffaele’s DNA was on the clasp.

  “There’s no way!” I said loudly. “It’s impossible.”

  “I’m sure the police timed their announcement about the bra clasp to win the public back to their side after the show,” Luciano said. “It’s not a coincidence. Raffaele’s lawyers made a terrible mistake going through the media instead of bringing their findings directly to the court.”

  I knew this “evidence” could hurt us. I also knew that Raffaele had as much chance of coming into contact with Meredith’s bra as Meredith had meeting up with a knife from Raffaele’s apartment. Neither could be true, but the prosecution would use both these findings to tie us to the crime.

  “Raffaele’s DNA must have been transferred to the clasp somehow,” Carlo said. “Did you ever wear Meredith’s clothes or share a load of laundry?”

  “I borrowed tights and a shirt but never her bra,” I answered. “And we washed our clothes separately. But we did dry them side by side on the same rack. Do you think that could be it?”