The Murder of Meredith Kercher (7 page)

O
n her return to Britain following the terrible events in Perugia, Meredith’s friend and fellow student Robyn Butterworth provided a statement to the police who forwarded it to the team of investigators in Perugia. Much of it centred on her observations of Amanda Knox and things that Meredith had said about her flatmate. At some point during the process, Robyn’s statement was leaked to the press. Stating that Amanda was ‘over the top’ and ‘strange’, Robyn’s statement included details of how Amanda appeared abnormally unfazed by what had happened to Meredith.

‘I remember Amanda also kept going on about how she found the body,’ Robyn said. ‘It was as if she was proud to have been the one who found it.’

She recalled thinking while at the police station on Friday evening, November 2, the day Meredith’s body was found, how Amanda’s behaviour had seemed very
strange, ‘as if she wasn’t bothered at all.’ Her behaviour was also noticed by other friends who were there being questioned by investigators. She also told of how a group of those being questioned had assembled in the police waiting room, and that when she entered the room Amanda had been speaking loudly in English to everyone present.

‘She described how she had come back to the apartment at around 11 a.m.,’ Robyn said. ‘She said that she had found the front door open, and that she had gone into the bathroom that she and Meredith shared. She was saying how she had seen blood on the floor. I remember her saying that it was menstrual blood. She also said she had taken a shower.’

Robyn recalled Amanda saying that the toilet ‘was full of shit’.

‘She kept saying the word “shit” over and over again,’ Robyn added. ‘This behaviour seemed a little strange to me.’

Robyn also told of how she had heard that Meredith argued with Amanda because Amanda never flushed the toilet after using it. It was a sore point with Meredith, and it had become somewhat confrontational. She said that Meredith had also told her about discussions that she’d had with Amanda about bringing men back to the cottage – a practice of which Meredith had not approved.

Even prior to that Friday evening inside the police waiting room, Robyn said that she had always
considered Amanda strange, someone who appeared to be an extravagant type.

‘I remember the first time we met,’ Robyn said. ‘We were in a restaurant having something to eat when all of a sudden she got up and started singing at the top of her voice. It was very strange and out of place.’

Robyn also revealed how she had been one of the last people to have seen Meredith alive. She had met up with her at the home of their mutual friend, Sophie Purton, early on Thursday evening, and all three girls had watched
The Notebook
together. Robyn’s statement to the police corroborated other accounts, including Sophie’s, namely that Meredith had left at approximately 9 p.m. to go home to bed.

Meanwhile, back in Italy, details of the prison visit between Raffaele and his father a day earlier began to emerge. His father expressed confidence that his son was innocent of involvement in Meredith’s murder. His comments were brief, but seemed to centre on how Amanda had been responsible for bringing Raffaele into the situation.

‘He is rather upset by the fact that a girl who he had only just met and who he treated so well has drawn him into this terrible episode,’ Raffaele’s father said. ‘The sooner the truth comes out, then the sooner I can embrace my son again.’

Was Raffaele now blaming Amanda for getting him involved? It certainly seemed so as evidenced by his lawyer’s comment.

‘Raffaele doesn’t talk about Amanda,’ Luca Maori said. ‘She has ruined his life.’

Despite the assertions of Raffaele’s legal team that no traces of blood had been found on two knives seized from him by police, or on his trainers in which a bloody footprint had allegedly been made, it was revealed that investigators were in the process of examining his Audi car for signs of blood on the vehicle’s pedals.

Investigators had already examined some of Raffaele’s
manga
comic books with titles such as
Entitled Blood, Mad Psycho,
and
The Immortal
. Some of them were particularly violent, and seemed to glorify women being killed with swords and knives – one in particular depicted a woman who was killed on a bed. While he could not be convicted on his preference of reading material alone, possession of such material did nothing to help the case of the
self-proclaimed
knife collector.

Conducting interviews with the Italian media from his jail cell, Raffaele remained steadfast that he would be cleared of any involvement in Meredith’s murder despite the mountain of evidence, circumstantial and otherwise, piling up against him. Describing himself as ‘thoroughly honest,’ he talked of returning to his studies when the case was over. One reporter asked him if he would do anything different if he could go back in time and change things.

‘Yes, one thing,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t smoke joints
anymore. And then knives, I wouldn’t carry one with me like I have so far.’

It was revealed that he had carried knives on his person since about the age of 13.

As he reflected on having spent the past week in jail, Raffaele said that he had spent his time reading books, writing and watching television. When a reporter asked him about Amanda Knox, he said that he never wanted to see her again.

‘If I am here, it’s her fault above all,’ he said through his attorney. ‘I am conscious that contrary to what I thought, our paths have diverged profoundly.’

When asked what he would like to say to Amanda, he responded: ‘Nothing. I have absolutely nothing to say to her.’

Meanwhile, Lumumba’s wife, Ola, broke her silence about her husband as the case entered its second week. She was in tears as she spoke about her husband: ‘He is well and he has nothing to do with this. Patrick said to me that he was missing his friends, family and work… he strongly believes in justice, and I hope that in the next few days all this will be resolved… I just want my husband back – my baby and I are waiting for him at home.’

During this time-frame, officials at Capanne prison said that Amanda had been moved out of solitary confinement and into a cell with an older female inmate. The new cell was five metres by five metres and equipped with a cupboard, bathroom, kitchen
area and a wardrobe. While not the comforts of home, the arrangement was considerably more than would typically be expected by a prisoner in a U.S. penal facility.

It was also reported that Amanda had found religion in jail, perhaps because of her contact with the chaplain and a number of nuns. Claiming that she was now a changed person, she said that she had previously been ‘out of control’ and that she ‘bitterly regretted’ her prior lifestyle. She said that there would be ‘no more drugs and no more sex’ if she was cleared in the case and got out of jail. She kept a copy of
The Gospel According to St. Mark
by her bed, and claimed to read from it every day. She reportedly had become fond of the adage, ‘The future is what you make of it’.

By Thursday, November 15, 2007, specifics regarding the massive forensics tests began to appear in greater detail than had previously been reported, including additional information on the 7-inch,
black-handled
kitchen knife, initially said to have been seized from Raffaele’s apartment. Although the police had previously said that it contained both Amanda’s and Meredith’s blood on it, they were being more specific now – Amanda’s DNA had been found near the knife’s handle, and Meredith’s DNA had been found on the tip of its blade. However, investigators were now saying that they were unsure whether the knife came from Raffaele’s kitchen or from the cottage that Amanda and Meredith had shared. They also said
that it was not the knife that had been seized from Raffaele at the time of his arrest. The DNA finding was made by forensic scientists working in Rome, 100 miles south of Perugia.

‘The DNA is a match for Amanda Knox and Meredith Kercher,’ said Giacinto Profazio, who was involved in the investigation. ‘It was DNA, not blood, which is very significant – and the DNA match for Meredith was on the top part of the blade, and the lower part, near the handle, was Knox’s.’

The police also said that the knife in question had been cleaned with bleach. In fact, according to detectives, there were signs of bleach found all over Raffaele’s flat, an indication to them that someone had meticulously cleaned his residence. A blood-soaked sponge had also been found there, and rags containing DNA from both Amanda and Raffaele had been found at the cottage where Meredith was killed.

At one point during the murder probe, Raffaele’s underwear had been confiscated by police after spots of blood had been noticed. It was determined, however, that the blood belonged to Amanda and that it was probably menstrual.

When news of the DNA match found on the knife reached Raffaele, he never wavered, remaining steadfast that he was innocent of any wrongdoing. His legal team also continued to support his insistence that he had nothing to do with Meredith’s murder.

As information about the bizarre case continued to
circulate from a variety of sources – some official, others not so official – on Sunday, November 18, Meredith’s boyfriend, Giacomo Silenzi, spoke publicly about the case for the first time, recalling how he heard about Meredith’s death.

‘I was on a train heading back to Perugia from my parents’ house when I got a call from Meredith’s other flatmate, Filomena, who told me what had happened,’ Silenzi told a reporter for the
Daily Mail
. ‘My stomach dropped. I just could not believe it. I had spoken with her for the last time just a couple of days earlier and she had sent me a text saying she was looking forward to me coming back.’

He said that when he arrived at the Perugia train station, police picked him up and drove him to the police station. Describing Meredith as ‘beautiful and innocent,’ he said that he first suspected Amanda while they waited to be questioned by detectives at the police station on the day Meredith’s body was found.

‘I had a cast-iron alibi because I had been at my parents’ house since the Monday [before the killing],’ he said. ‘It was a bank holiday in Italy. I was taken to a waiting room and Amanda was there.’ He described how Amanda had hugged him and had told him how sorry she was about Meredith. She also introduced him to Raffaele, who Silenzi had never met before that day.

‘I couldn’t help thinking how cool and calm Amanda was,’ Silenzi continued. ‘Meredith’s other English friends were devastated and I was upset, but Amanda
was as cool as anything and completely emotionless. Her eyes didn’t seem to show any sadness and I remember wondering if she could have been involved.’

Silenzi said that he had spoken with Meredith’s British friends, Robyn Butterworth and Sophie Purton, that day, and they had offered similar feelings and opinions about Amanda. In fact, he said, none of them could understand how Amanda was able to deal with everything that had happened so calmly.

‘I knew that Amanda didn’t get on with Meredith,’ Silenzi said, ‘but I didn’t think that would lead to Amanda killing her.’ Tearfully, he described how he and Meredith had only just begun their relationship.

‘Maybe it was too early to talk about love,’ he said, ‘but we really had an affection for each other. She moved into the flat above mine at the end of summer, and we would pop into each other’s places just to say hello or have a cup of coffee, the things that neighbours do. She was very pretty, and I was also impressed with her Italian. We would share CDs and play music together.’

He said that his birthday was at the end of September and that a party had been planned in honour of it. Meredith, however, had been unable to attend because she was flying back to England to spend the weekend with her family.

‘She gave me a bottle of rum as a present,’ he said. ‘Most of it was drunk at the party, but there is a drop left that I will now keep forever… a few weeks after
that, around the middle of October, we kissed for the first time at a student party. Then we made love a couple of days later in my flat.

‘I’m still having trouble taking this all in,’ he continued. ‘If I could see Amanda, I would just ask her, “Why? Why did she kill Meredith?”’ Silenzi added that he had not been in touch with Meredith’s parents, but indicated that he would like to attend her funeral and meet them, and then say goodbye to her.

As the second week of the investigation came to a close, a judge ruled that additional tests should be conducted to establish the exact time of Meredith’s death, in response to a request by Lumumba’s attorneys. These could involve another autopsy. The new development was the result of evidence from Lumumba’s legal team. His lawyers apparently had found several witnesses who could place him at Le Chic at the time Meredith was killed.

Another revelation that pointed toward Lumumba’s innocence had been DNA found on Meredith’s body and in faeces that had been left in the toilet, neither of which matched Lumumba’s DNA. The evidence, combined with the fact that Lumumba had never had even a minor infraction with the law, led people – including the police – to wonder if his arrest was in fact a horrible mistake. An American student, Allegra Morosani, who had studied for a semester in Perugia – and who had come to know Lumumba fairly well – said that Amanda’s accusations against Lumumba had
actually served to work against her in the court of public opinion.

‘I was outraged that he had been considered a suspect,’ the student said. ‘Like, God, that bitch – how stupid of her to accuse him, because everyone would know that he couldn’t have done it. He was the sweetest guy.’

Italian police, it seemed, may not have been entirely convinced themselves that Lumumba had been involved in the murder, because they had been working intently towards developing leads pointing toward a fourth suspect. Forensic investigators, it turned out, had discovered a bloody fingerprint on a pillow in the cottage where Meredith was killed, as well as another on a toilet-paper roll, neither of which had matched the three suspects already in custody. Although they were not saying much at that time, they did say that they believed the man being sought was of African origin and that he might be linked to selling drugs.