Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir

by Amanda Knox

  That night I was able to call home. Mom, Chris, and Madison were in Perugia, but I called Seattle each week to talk to my dad and stepmom, my sisters, Oma, my aunts, uncles, and cousins, and assorted college friends. After a chorus of “hellos,” everyone asked, “How’d it go?”

  They’d seen the news but wanted to hear firsthand from me.

  “Curatolo didn’t know what he was talking about, poor guy. If my life didn’t depend on his being wrong, I’d just feel bad for him,” I reported.

  “The broadcasts here are saying that he’s a confused drug addict!” someone cried.

  It was ironic that I learned from my family in Seattle what the journalists in the courtroom were thinking. “The media are really figuring it out this time,” my family reassured me. “It’s going to be okay.”

  The media, yes. But what about the judges and jury? I wondered. Curatolo hadn’t been convincing in the first trial, either, but his testimony had contributed to our conviction.

  Everything hung on the independent review.

  On the phone, during prison visits, in my letters, buoyed by the people I loved, I allowed my confidence to gain over my doubt and fear. But I spent most of my time on my own. I was a prisoner. Until someone unlocked my cell and told me I was being let out of this suffocating hell, I could only hope. But for the past three-plus years, hope had let me down.

  Back in January, when Judge Hellmann swore in the independent experts, Conti and Vecchiotti, he gave them ninety days to analyze the forensic data and submit their conclusions to the court. The clock would start when the prosecution handed over the evidence.

  Before the first trial, the defense began requesting forensic data from the prosecution in the fall of 2008, but DNA analyst Patrizia Stefanoni dodged court orders from two different judges. She gave the defense some of, but never all, the information. Now it was Conti and Vecchiotti’s turn to try to get the raw data that Stefanoni had interpreted to draw conclusions about the genetic profiles on the knife and the bra clasp. Stefanoni continued to argue that the information was unnecessary. Not until May 11, under additional orders from Judge Hellmann, did she finally comply.

  Now the independent experts needed more time. My lawyers said judges always grant leeway when experts ask. Before the court withdrew to decide whether to approve the delay, I made a statement. “I’ve spent more than three and a half years in prison as an innocent person,” I told the court. “It’s both frustrating and mentally exhausting. I don’t want to remain in prison, unjustly, for the rest of my life. I recall the beginning of this whole thing, when I was free. I think of how young I was then, how I didn’t understand anything. But nothing is more important than finding the truth after so many prejudices and mistakes. I ask the court to grant the extra time, so that the experts may complete a thorough analysis. Thank you.”

  I knew in advance from my lawyers that the independent experts were going to ask for more time, so I tried to imagine what that meant to me. An extra forty-five days meant the appeal would likely last through the summer. I dealt with the wait by reminding myself that another month and a half was tolerable as long as it meant that I wouldn’t spend my life in prison. I thought it was critical to get this idea across to the judges and jury.

  Judge Hellmann and the court retired to chambers, only to return shortly afterward, agreeing to give the forensics experts until June 30 to deliver their report.

  About a week later came a reminder not to get overconfident. Police Holiday is an annual event in Umbria, when awards are traditionally handed out for outstanding police work. Perugia is the region’s capital.

  When Luciano came to Capanne for our weekly Wednesday meeting, he told me that a special award had been given to officers in the Squadra Mobile for its work on Meredith’s murder investigation.

  The citation read: “To recognize elevated professional capabilities, investigative acumen, and an uncommon operative determination. They conducted a complex investigation that concluded in the arrest of the authors of the murder of the British student that had taken place in the historic center of Perugia.”

  Four of the sixteen police officers receiving the Police Holiday award were named in the police’s slander charge against me. They included Vice Superintendent Marco Chiacchiera, whose “investigative instinct” led him to randomly select Raffaele’s kitchen knife from the drawer as the murder weapon; Substitute Commissioner and Homicide Chief Monica Napoleoni; and Chief Inspector Rita Ficarra.

  The news infuriated me. I knew it was just another face-saving ploy. How could they commend the officer who had hit me during my interrogation and those who had done so much wrong?

  But I wasn’t surprised. It was completely in line with the prosecution’s tactics to discredit my supporters and me. Mignini had charged my parents with slander for an interview they gave to a British newspaper in which they told the story of my being slapped during the interrogation. He was the one who had charged me with slandering the police.

  Journalists had started cataloguing the mistakes in the investigation. Most were made by the Squadra Mobile, which relied on intuitive judgments instead of evidence. It was the same haste-makes-waste argument that Luciano and Carlo had made in their closing arguments for the first trial, focusing on the pressure police had been under to arrest a suspect and how that had led to police errors.

  British journalist Bob Graham interviewed Mignini for an article in The Sun that came out on Police Holiday. Mignini confided in Graham that he chose the parts of my interrogation that suited his purposes. He also said that my interpreter at the questura that night was “more investigator than translator.” When Graham asked the prosecutor why there was no evidence of me in Meredith’s bedroom, Mignini told him, “Amanda might theoretically have instigated the murder while even staying in the other room.”

  Mistakes or not, the police’s message was crystalline: We’re not backing down now.

  My focus was on the courtroom, where there was more new testimony to hear.

  Mario Alessi was a brick mason given a life sentence for murdering an infant boy in 2006. He was in the same prison as Rudy Guede, and had written to Raffaele’s lawyers that he had information for our defense:

  Alessi said he went outside for exercise with other prisoners, including Rudy Guede, on November 9, 2009. “Guede told me he wanted to ask me for some confidential advice,” Alessi said in his court deposition. “There wasn’t a day that Guede and I didn’t spend time together . . .

  “In this context, on November 9, 2009, Guede told me that in the following days, and in particular on November 18, 2009, he had his appeal and he was reflecting over whether to . . . tell the truth about Meredith Kercher’s murder. In particular, he asked me what the consequences could be to his position if he gave statements that reconstructed a different truth about what happened the night of the murder.

  “I responded that I wasn’t a lawyer, and I didn’t know what to say, but that I believed it would be useful to tell the truth. So he confided in me, describing what happened the night of the murder.”

  Guede told Alessi that he and a friend had run into Meredith in a bar a few days before the murder. On the night of November 1, Alessi said, the two men surprised Meredith at the villa and, “in an explicit manner,” asked her to have a threesome.

  Alessi said that Meredith “rejected the request. She even got up and ordered Guede and his friend to leave the house. At this point Guede asked where the bathroom was, and he stayed in the bathroom for a little while, ten to fifteen minutes at most. Immediately after, reentering the room, he found a scene that was completely different—that is, Kercher was lying with her back to the floor and his friend held her by the arms. Rudy straddled her and started to masturbate. While Guede told me these things, he was upset and tears came to his eyes . . .

  “The second part of his secret came out while we were in our respective cells . . . at a certain point he and his friend changed positions, in the sense that his friend attempted to ha
ve oral sex with Meredith while Guede was behind. He specified in particular that his friend was in front of Meredith, who was on her knees, while Guede was behind Meredith, with his knee on her back. Kercher tried to wriggle out . . .

  “Kercher tried to get away, and at this point Guede’s friend took a knife with an ivory-colored handle out of his pocket. While Kercher tried to get away, turning around, she was wounded by the blade. At this point, seeing as she began to bleed, Guede, finding his hands covered in blood, let her go. While Guede tried to staunch the wound with clothes, his friend reprimanded him, saying, ‘Let’s finish her. If not, this whore will have us rot in prison.’ At this point, his friend killed her, stabbing her various times while Guede gathered clothes to staunch the wounds. Then, realizing that she wasn’t breathing anymore, he left.”

  After the murder, Guede went to a club and met his murderer friend, who gave him money and told him to flee Italy.

  Alessi said, “Guede, at my questioning, responded that he couldn’t say whether or not it was the money that was stolen from Kercher. I also asked Guede how he could explain the broken window and the rock that was found in Kercher’s house, but Guede responded that while he was in the house he hadn’t heard a sound and didn’t know anything about that window.”

  Alessi said that when he suggested that Guede tell the truth, “because there were two innocent people in prison . . . Guede responded that he certainly wasn’t the one to put those two in the middle of everything but rather the prosecution . . .

  “I can also refer to an episode in Cell No. 11 in the presence of Antonio De Cesare, Ciprian Trinca, and Rudy Guede”—all prisoners.

  “We were playing cards and, once again, in the course of a television program, Meredith’s murder was brought up, and at that point Luca Maori, Raffaele Sollecito’s defense counsel, was being interviewed. Guede made a comment against Sollecito . . .”

  Guede said that since he didn’t have the same opportunity to defend himself as Raffaele, he was the victim.

  Listening to Alessi testify, I felt frozen in my chair, my limbs numb. Alessi was a calm, direct, convincing speaker. Is this possibly what happened the night of November 1? Is this the horror that Meredith experienced? For three and a half years, I’d tried to imagine Meredith’s murder and had to push it out of my mind. When the prosecutor had put Raffaele and me into the scene, it hadn’t bothered me nearly this much. We weren’t there, so Meredith’s murder couldn’t possibly have unfolded the way Mignini described. His story was so far-fetched, and it was so painful to hear myself described in bloodthirsty terms, that I couldn’t help but focus on the verbal attack on me rather than the physical attack on Meredith.

  Alessi’s story, however, sickened me when I heard it and haunted me long after. I knew it was only hearsay and that even though two of Guede’s other prisonmates corroborated it, it couldn’t be used as direct evidence. Real or not, it forced me to focus on the torture that Meredith was put through. And it opened up a question I’d never seriously considered and could barely handle: Had there been someone with Guede?

  My lawyers once told me that investigators had found unidentified DNA at the crime scene, but I’d never dwelled on it. The prosecution had never presented it. Wouldn’t there have been signs of another person in the room and on Meredith’s body? I didn’t know. This is what I was sure of: Guede was there, Guede lied about us, Guede tried to escape his responsibility for the crime.

  Guede would have to confess.

  I desperately hoped he’d be honest when he took the witness stand. With the Supreme Court’s seal on his conviction, his sentence couldn’t be extended no matter how he incriminated himself. Since he truly had nothing to lose, I thought he might admit his crimes—and the fact that Raffaele and I weren’t there that night.

  I planned to make a spontaneous declaration directly to him, either challenging him to tell the truth or thanking him for doing so. For a week I thought about what I should say, pacing in my cell as I tried out different words. I’d written Guede a letter I’d never sent. I wove that into my declaration just as I’d done with my statement to Patrick and the Kerchers.

  In the meantime, I was agitated. I had no reason to expect that Guede would admit what had happened—anyone who can kill is already lacking a conscience. Even if Guede acknowledged Raffaele’s and my innocence, it still wouldn’t be enough on its own to free us—his statements were compromised since he’d lied before and wasn’t impartial. But it would be a huge step in the right direction—and an even bigger comfort to me.

  Taking the witness stand, Guede said he wouldn’t speak about the murder, that he was there only to respond to his former prisonmate’s accusations. Mignini read a letter to the court that Guede had supposedly written to his lawyers after Alessi’s claims surfaced. I found it so unsettling that I could hardly listen. The letter didn’t remotely correspond with Guede’s education—he wasn’t a model student and, in fact, had dropped out of school. The language was sophisticated. Calling Alessi “a vulgar being with a foul conscience,” the letter condemned his “blasphemous insinuations.” It ended with a comment on “the horrible murder of a splendid and wonderful girl by Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox.”

  When Carlo tried to pin him down, Guede told an attentive court, “It’s not up to me to say who killed Meredith. I’ve always said who was in the house that damned night.”

  I couldn’t contain my anger another second. I had to denounce his lies. Just as Guede was about to be dismissed, I asked to make a spontaneous declaration. Judge Hellmann said I’d have to wait until Guede had left the courtroom.

  I felt cheated as I watched him walk out of the courtroom in handcuffs. I was disgusted. I’d truly hoped and believed that Guede would do the right thing, because, damn it, he was human. How could he not, ultimately? As the double doors closed, I quickly reorganized the statement I’d prepared. “I just want to say that the only time Rudy, Raffaele, and I have been together in the same place is in court,” I said. “I’m shocked and anguished by his testimony. He knows we weren’t there.”

  Then I sat down, crying.

  Chapter 33

  June 29, 2011

  What if?

  Twenty-four hours before the court-appointed experts were to present their findings on the DNA, only two words were going through my mind. What if? What if their review somehow—impossibly—confirmed Meredith’s DNA on the knife blade? What if they found that the bra clasp couldn’t have been contaminated?

  Or what if the experts risked telling the truth and sided with the defense?

  I knew the prosecution’s DNA testing was flawed. But so little had gone right in this case, why would this go right?

  Science was on our side. The knife blade had tested negative for blood, and there was a high likelihood that the bra clasp had been contaminated while it sat on the floor for six weeks. But I had no faith in facts anymore. They hadn’t saved me before.

  It was terrifying to hope—and impossible not to.

  Over the summer, there were moments when I could escape the pressure and just be me—a twenty-three-year-old girl. Most afternoons Don Saulo called me down to his office, and we spent an hour together. It was precious time for me.

  I’d gotten used to telling him everything on my mind. I appreciated his intelligence, compassion, and intuition. Don Saulo had lived a sheltered life, but his empathy was strong and unreserved.

  I talked to him about my family and friends, my ideas and doubts.

  We also talked about music. Don Saulo had invited me to play guitar at Saturday afternoon Mass. Now he was teaching me basic music theory and how to play an old electronic keyboard he had in his office. We’d listen to a song on his portable CD player, and then we’d learn it together on the guitar or piano. I drew a paper keyboard so I could practice in my cell at night—ear buds in, playing the silent chord progressions.

  But I was too nervous to play the day before the experts’ announcement. Don Saulo sat across from me ho
lding my cold hands in his warm ones as I plodded through my “what if” possibilities.

  “No matter what happens,” he said, “live your life to its fullest.”

  I looked down. “Yeah, no matter what happens, I can only make the best of it.”

  When the hour ended, I went back to my cell as dejected as ever. My current cellmate, Irina, was sitting on her bed smiling.

  “What’s up with you?” I asked.

  “Oh, just a little news,” she purred.

  She must know something about the review. I imagined the news must be good. She has that maddening smile. But what if she’s mocking me?

  “Everyone’s saying it,” she burst out. “You’re going home!”

  “The report is out?!” I screamed. “It’s okay?! I’m going home?! Says who?”

  “The TV! The news. The forensic report came back! You’re cleared! They said you’ll be freed!”

  I had to hear the words myself. I went to the TV, madly changing channels until I found the news. “Svolta Giudiziaria”—“Judicial Turning Point,” the headline read, behind an announcer who was talking about my case. The crawl at the bottom read: “DNA damning Knox and Sollecito deemed unreliable by court-appointed experts. New hope arises for the defendants.”

  Suddenly my heart was filling my whole chest. I couldn’t breathe. From the moment I’d been arrested, I’d never heard good news about my case on TV. It’s finally happening! I jumped up and down and spun around in a little dance, whooping and yelling, “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!

  Stefanoni, the prosecution’s forensic DNA expert, was finally recognized as being wrong.

  I was crying, my face flushed and hot.

  Irina opened her arms, and I squeezed her as tightly as I could.

  “Ah, Amanda!” she said, laughing. “You’re going to pop my implants!”

  It was the first time in three and a half years at Capanne that I could truly jump for joy.