Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir (38 page)

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

W
hat 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 holding 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.

I remembered Don Saulo. I’d just burdened him with my angst.
I have to tell him!
I ran to the bars of my door. “
Assistente!
” I bobbed on my toes while I waited for the
agente
who’d opened my cell five minutes before. I knew asking her to unlock the door again was a no-no.
I don’t care! I have to tell Don Saulo!

The
agente
approached the door looking bored. “What is it, Kuh-nox?” she asked sourly.

“I know I was just down to see Don Saulo,” I said breathlessly, “but I have to go back down—just for a second. I have to tell him the news. The forensic report came back, and everything is okay. I have to tell him, because I didn’t know before. Okay?”

My hands were on the bars and I was leaning into the
cancello
as though willing it open.

The
agente
eyed me with confusion. “You want to see Don Saulo again?”

“Please. Just for a second!”

She looked perplexed as she turned the key and swung the barred door open. I rushed out, jogging down the hallway, even though it wasn’t permitted. I called back to the guard, “I’ll be back in a second!”

Don Saulo was in the chapel leading a group of prisoners in Bible study. I rushed inside, beaming, and hugged him. “It came out!” I whispered. “It’s good!”

When I pulled back, I saw that he’d teared up. The women stared. They’d seen Don Saulo cry plenty of times, but they’d never seen me excited. “What happened?” one asked.

“The forensic report came out. It supports the defense,” I said. “I might actually be freed!”

“You see! There is God! There is God!” exclaimed Tessy, one of the Nigerian women I’d help write letters to her family. She jumped up and hugged me. So did Beauty, another Nigerian.

I said good-bye and went back upstairs. At the gate to the hallway, the
agente
saw me and glared.

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I had to tell Don Saulo the news about my case.”

“You could have told him tomorrow,” she grumbled.

The rest of the evening I flipped channels, watching news report after news report, wanting to hear the words again and again—“
Svolta giudiziaria. Nuova speranza per Amanda e Raffaele
”—“Judicial turning point. New hope for Amanda and Raffaele.”

Chapter 34

June 30–October 2, 2011

T
he next morning I arrived at the Hall of Frescoes with a lighter heart. The journalists called out, “Amanda, what do you think of the new findings?” “Are you excited?” “Do you think you’re going home?”

I didn’t answer, but I liked the tone of these new questions.

I could see my mom trying to suppress her glee. When I got to the table, Carlo squeezed my hand. Raffaele nodded and smiled. We were all trying to contain ourselves. We weren’t in the clear yet, but we were closer than we’d ever been. And I think we all had the deep-seated fear that somehow the prosecution would flip the findings and convince the judges and jury that the old report was the right report. I knew they’d try. They’d been publicly embarrassed.

This time the trial was going our way. I was delighted—I hoped it wasn’t obvious—when the experts criticized the Polizia Scientifica’s procedures. My DNA was on the knife handle, but the DNA trace on the blade was “unreliable,” because Patrizia Stefanoni had ignored international protocol in testing such a tiny amount. It could have come from contamination, they said.

Professor Stefano Conti showed the video of the Polizia Scientifica collecting evidence when they returned to the villa six weeks after Meredith was killed. The professor zoomed in on the dirty latex gloves the investigators wore. The police’s own recording showed them passing the bra clasp back and forth and then putting it back on the floor to photograph as evidence. “There are a number of circumstances that don’t follow protocol or proper procedure,” Conti said in something of an understatement.

By the video’s end, he’d identified more than fifty mistakes the forensics team had made, including waiting six weeks to collect the evidence, using the wrong type of bags to collect evidence, wearing gloves dotted with blood and dirt, and picking up Meredith’s bra and underwear and touching her body barehanded.

“Today was a profound, clear, and unequivocal analysis of the DNA on the bra clasp,” said Raffaele’s attorney Giulia Bongiorno. “DNA on the bra clasp attributed to Raffaele Sollecito was the only evidence on which he was convicted. This so-called evidence has fallen apart.”

As the weeks went by, I was starting to have faith that this judge wouldn’t overlook the mistakes the police had made.

As expected, the prosecution and the civil attorneys tried to delegitimize the experts by saying they were biased in favor of the defense and complaining that neither expert was qualified.

They were reaching.

The co-prosecutor, Manuela Comodi, said Conti and Vecchiotti were lying. Show us the exact moment when the bra clasp was contaminated, she said. If we couldn’t prove it was contaminated, we couldn’t claim it.

Vecchiotti and Conti’s response: Following protocol is the way a forensic scientist proves that contamination doesn’t happen. The forensics team picked up the bra clasp that was found in a different part of the room, put it down, photographed it, and picked it up again, and you’re saying there wasn’t a high likelihood that it was contaminated?

You can’t prove that the glove touching the bra clasp was contaminated, Comodi told the experts.

Conti and Vecchiotti said, “We have a picture of the glove. You can see the dirt.”

The prosecution said you have to prove that the glove had Raffaele’s DNA on it.

Conti and Vecchiotti’s final words on the subject: No, we don’t. It’s enough to show that the glove was dirty and that the bra clasp was moved from one place to another, that it wasn’t picked up for six weeks—that protocol was violated.

That day, July 30, was the last hearing before the August break. Judge Hellmann announced that he wanted the court to return to session on September 5. The co-prosecutor objected. “I was hoping to still be on vacation with my daughter then,” she said.

On vacation with your daughter!
I screamed in my head.
I wish I could be on vacation with
my
mother! You’re worried about extending your vacation and you don’t care that I’ve missed out on almost four years of my life!

Judge Hellmann set the next hearing for September 5.

I didn’t know when the verdict would come, but the closer we got, the more nervous I felt. I couldn’t eat, my hair was again falling out in clumps, I was covered in hives, and my hands shook involuntarily. I often burst out crying. Mainly I couldn’t relate to the uninhibited enthusiasm of my family, friends, and supporters. When Corrado visited in August, he asked, “Why are you so worried, Amanda? Everything’s going to be fine. You’ll see. Just relax.”

I couldn’t even draw a full breath.

The closest I came to unwinding was the time I spent playing music and talking with Don Saulo. The weather was too hot to walk in the afternoons, too hot to move during the day, almost too hot to think. I wrote lots of letters to James and others in Seattle, and to Laura in Naples. I read. I daydreamed about the four possibilities that awaited me when Judge Hellmann read out my verdict. Life imprisonment? Twenty-six years? A lower sentence? Acquittal? I broke my own rule and counted the days until September 5. I knew I shouldn’t. It made the thirty-seven days between court dates crawl by.

When September finally arrived, being back in the courtroom helped me regain a tiny bit of control over my hypernervousness. It meant that things were happening again. It was better to focus on the momentum than the waiting.

The prosecution hired two other forensic experts to testify that contamination can be said to occur only if you can prove precisely where, when, and how.

One of our DNA experts, Sarah Gino, emphasized that Patrizia Stefanoni had been withholding data from the very beginning.

The defense’s next expert, Carlo Torre, testified that the police’s DNA testers had found no blood on Raffaele’s kitchen knife. What the independent experts had found were traces of potato starch. If the knife had been cleaned with bleach, as the prosecution claimed, the starch wouldn’t be there—and bleach wouldn’t have entirely diluted the blood, if blood had ever been on the knife in the first place.

The prosecution asked for a new, independent review of the knife, but Judge Hellmann rejected the request. Instead he announced the schedule for closing arguments and the verdict—October 3.

Then there was yet another short break before closing arguments began.

In a fit of optimism, I decided what belongings I’d leave behind if I were acquitted. I didn’t want the jeans and sweatshirts that I associated with prison or any of the day-to-day stuff I needed to exist—my camping stove, pots and pans, pens, paper, markers. I gave Chris books each time he came to visit. Over the weeks, he took away twelve boxes, each holding twenty to thirty books.

Packing made me nervous. I’d done this before and then had had to return to prison. It was embarrassing to sort my things in front of guards and other prisoners who probably thought it was futile. Some people were excited for me; others pulled away. Guards and prisoners kept telling me, “Promise you’ll write to us. Promise you’ll remember us.”

I’d stay in touch with Don Saulo and Laura, but I didn’t want to take the prison with me.

If my hopes were finally to come true, I’d be prepared. My belongings sat in a canvas bag in my cell. But I kept my pictures of family and friends out. I needed to look at them in my lonely moments—and I’d really need them close if things didn’t go well in the end.

C
losing arguments began on September 23 with Perugia’s chief prosecutor, Giancarlo Costagliola, and Mignini insisting, “All clues converge toward the only possible result.” The men asked the jury to ignore the hype in the media that favored Raffaele’s and my acquittal, to uphold our conviction, and to keep the Kerchers in mind. Mignini said, “If you want, go ahead and believe that Rudy Guede is the only one, but we don’t believe in fairy tales, and neither does the court.”

I’d steeled myself for his detailed description of what I would have said to Meredith and how I’d killed her, but it still hurt. Every word jabbed me like a sharp stick.

Mignini added that as further evidence of my guilt, I was “ready to flee Italy” if I were acquitted.

He was not quite right. After four years of wrongful imprisonment, I’d kayak home if I had to. But if I were acquitted, my leaving was hardly “fleeing.”

Accusing the defense teams of slandering Patrizia Stefanoni’s forensic scientists, Mignini quoted the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who famously said, “Slander, slander, something will always stick.”

Manuela Comodi tore apart the independent experts’ testimony. “They betrayed your trust with false facts,” she said. “Their whole manner was aggressive when they should have been impartial.”

She added, referring to Raffaele and me, “They are young, but Meredith was also. They are young, but they killed. They killed for nothing, and it is for this reason that they must be condemned to the maximum sentence, which, luckily, in Italy isn’t the death penalty.”

Carlo Pacelli, Patrick’s lawyer, again emphasized that I was a “sorceress of deceit.”

Intentionally or not, Francesco Maresca, the Kerchers’ lawyer, ended with a shock tactic. Although the Kerchers had asked that no pictures of Meredith’s naked, wounded body be shown without clearing the courtroom of reporters, Maresca projected the images on a screen. He said he wanted to show how Meredith had suffered, so the court wouldn’t let us off on a “technicality.”

Though they couldn’t afford the airfare to attend the appeal, Meredith’s mother and sister would be in Perugia for the verdict, he said. “They will look you in the eye . . . and with their look they will ask you to confirm the earlier sentence.”

It was painful to hear the prosecution and civil parties suggest that justice could be rendered for Meredith and her parents only by putting us in prison for life.
That’s not justice! Please don’t confuse the two!
And justice had already been denied by the prosecution itself, when they let Guede get off with a lesser sentence than he merited.

Raffaele’s lawyer Giulia Bongiorno brought up another way that justice had not been done. She spoke of the phenomenon of false confession, saying, “This is what happened to Amanda Knox.”

She compared me to Jessica Rabbit in the movie
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
: “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.”

Luciano, who referred to me as “this young friend,” said, “Amanda isn’t terrified. Her heart is full of hope. She hopes to go back home. I wish her that,” he said. “I feel I’m going to cry . . . She is so brave, Amanda.”

Not knowing what would happen was driving me mad.

I wanted to go to James’s senior guitar recital at UW; to be at my twin cousins, Izzy and Nick’s, sixth birthday party; and to see my little sister Delaney graduate from middle school. I wanted to go outside whenever I wanted, to feel the grass, to eat sushi.

In my journals I’d draw lines down the pages. On one side, the things I’d do if I got out now. On the other, things I’d do if I got out when I was forty-six. On the left, I wrote:

Move into an apartment with Madison.

Graduate from UW.

Visit Laura in Ecuador.

Write.

Become fluent in German so I can talk with Oma.

Go camping and hiking with my family.

Pay my family back for everything they’ve spent on getting me out of here.

One day get married and start a family of my own.

On the other side of the line:

Request a transfer to Rome, where living conditions for prisoners with long sentences are better.

Prepare for my Supreme Court hearing and try to have the trial restarted from the beginning in a different venue.

Try to graduate from UW at a distance (even possible?).

Write.

Stay in touch with family and friends as much as possible.

Earn five years off my sentence for good behavior.

Get prison job as a cleaner, librarian, or grocery distributor.

Send earnings home to help pay my parents back.

Hardest was my life-imprisonment list. It was the same as the twenty-six-year list, except:

Stop writing letters home.

Ask family and friends to forget me?

Suicide?

The appeal had gone so well. Losing would be all the more devastating. I was afraid I might stop breathing in a claustrophobic panic. I wondered if I’d ever be happy again.

The appeal was my last chance. If I were to be condemned again, I didn’t think the Supreme Court would exonerate me.

I knew that my mother’s perpetual optimism masked her real feelings. She’d be even more distraught than I if I were convicted. I imagined her going home without me, completely broken, and I knew that, in that moment, when I couldn’t be there, I would want somehow to comfort her.

Dearest Mom,

I love you. I’m writing this letter in case you come home and I’m not there with you to receive it, just in case we didn’t win and I won’t be coming home for a long time.

I want you to know that I’m okay. I love you and I know you love me. I’m okay because I’m not dead inside, I promise, and I don’t want you to be dead inside. The shit we can’t control, the things that make us suffer, challenge us to be stronger, give us the opportunity to survive and be stronger, smarter, better. We are the only ones who know just how much we and our lives are worth, and we must choose to make the most of every passing moment, no matter where we are.

I’ve thought of ways to make my life worth it, and I want you to remember exactly what makes your life worth it. Don’t be lost—don’t lose yourself. Read, walk, write, dance, breathe, because so will I.

I’ll be seeing you tomorrow in court. I’m ready. I’ll be paying attention and reflecting on what to say in the end. You’ll have to tell me, now that it’s over (by the time you receive this) what you thought.