The Murder of Meredith Kercher (3 page)

I
n any investigation of great intensity, and this case certainly fitted that bill, the police typically interview persons of interest, witnesses and suspects, multiple times, in part to flesh out additional details just in case something had been missed or overlooked earlier, and in part to find discrepancies in the answers of those being questioned. The Meredith Kercher investigation was no different, except, perhaps, with regard to the increased intensity of the questioning, and the fact that the so-called discrepancies that surfaced during the interrogations would eventually centre on the changing of stories regarding what had occurred in the hours preceding Meredith’s death.

Amanda Knox typically kept in touch with her mother, Edda Mellas, 46, back home in Seattle, via
email
. However, with a nine-hour time difference between Perugia and Seattle, Amanda had instead
telephoned her mother on November 2, waking her up during the early morning hours to tell her how she had returned to her apartment to take a shower after spending the night at Raffaele Sollecito’s apartment, only to find things amiss at her own place. For example, she had told her mother that she had noticed that the door to the flat had been open, and, once inside, she had noticed some of the issues in the bathroom – someone had left a bowel movement in the toilet, for instance. It had not been a long telephone call because Amanda had told her mother that she was returning to Sollecito’s apartment straight away. What seemed unusual about this account of the events was that it had made it appear, if one could believe the media reports, that Amanda had first returned to the villa alone to take a shower, before going back to Sollecito’s apartment, only to retrace her steps to the villa – with Sollecito – a short time later. Amanda would also later tell the police officers that she had noticed the spots or drops of blood in the bathroom.

Apparently, Amanda had also called one of her roommates, Filomena Romanelli, that morning, and had repeated much of what she had told her mother – that the front door had been open, and that there were bloodstains on the bathroom floor. She had also purportedly told Filomena that she was returning to her boyfriend’s apartment to bring him back to the villa, but that she was going to take a shower first.

When the police had arrived at the villa to return Meredith’s mobile telephones, Amanda had said in her first statements that she had received a text message from Patrick Lumumba, owner of the Le Chic pub where she worked, telling her that she did not have to report for work that evening. Le Chic was popular with students and other young people, and Amanda worked part-time waiting at tables. She had responded by writing, ‘See you later. Have a good evening!’ As a result of not having to go in to work, she said that she and Sollecito had spent the evening of November 1 together at his flat, smoking pot and watching the French film,
Amelie
, starring Audrey Tatou. They had also made love, and had eaten a late dinner. She also said that she had read part of a Harry Potter book at Sollecito’s flat. However, the investigators had seen the book at the villa, not at Sollecito’s, and noted that she had not said anything about bringing it there from Sollecito’s. Sollecito, meanwhile, had told the police that he had worked at his computer most of the evening, and said that when he and Amanda had returned to the villa shortly before the police arrived with Meredith’s telephones, that he had been attempting to call the police to report what he believed had been a break-in at the villa after noticing the shattered window. Up to that point, with a few exceptions, Amanda’s and Sollecito’s accounts of the events appeared to corroborate each other’s whereabouts on the night Meredith was killed.

However, over the next few days – between Friday, November 2 and the following Tuesday – the police would bring in Amanda and Raffaele for questioning a number of times, and they would also examine Raffaele’s computer and begin looking at each of their mobile phone records with a fine-tooth comb, after which the inconsistencies began to mount.

Recalling that Raffaele had said that he had used his computer most of the evening of November 1, the investigators naturally examined it in an effort to validate his statement. However, they found that it had not, in fact, been used most of the evening as Raffaele had stated. Investigators also noted that both Amanda’s and Raffaele’s mobile phones had been turned off sometime between 8.00 and 8.30 p.m. on November 1, and had remained turned off until the next morning, which was not consistent with their normal phone usage routines.

Raffaele’s phone records showed another inconsistency. When the police had arrived at the villa to return Meredith’s phones, Raffaele had told them that he had been trying to call the police to report what he considered a break-in; however, the records showed that he had begun making those calls to the police
after
the officers arrived to return Meredith’s phones. Both Amanda and Raffaele had also insisted in their initial statements to the police that they had no idea that Meredith lay dead inside her locked bedroom.

Interestingly, it was not long before investigators
produced a witness, Marco Quintavalle, who operated a small shop. Quintavalle told them that a young woman, who he identified as Amanda Knox, had come into his shop early on the morning of November 2, during the time-frame in which she had claimed to have been at Raffaele’s flat. Police noted that Raffaele’s apartment had smelt of bleach that morning, and they had reportedly found a receipt from Quintavalle’s shop at his flat. Although the police did not say if the receipt showed what had been purchased at Quintavalle’s shop that morning, the implication was that they believed bleach and possibly other cleaning supplies had been purchased there and may have been used by Raffaele and Amanda to clean themselves up, and possibly to clean a murder weapon.

Now that the villa had been completely sealed off and designated as a crime scene, Amanda Knox, along with her two Italian roommates, was essentially homeless, at least in Perugia. By Sunday, November 4, Amanda’s mother was already en route to Italy from her home in Seattle so that she could be with her daughter, who had said that she wanted to remain in Perugia to finish her term at the university and to assist the police in their investigations. Believing that she was travelling to Italy to help her daughter find a new place in which to reside, Edda Mellas would be in for a shock upon her late-night arrival in Perugia when she would learn that Amanda was, by then, being regarded as a possible suspect in Meredith’s murder. She would later
tell a reporter for
Radar
magazine that the news about her daughter’s predicament had made her physically ill. She spent her first morning there searching for an attorney to represent Amanda but, of course, had no idea of just how bad things would become over the coming hours, days, weeks and months.

In the meantime, as police activity was gearing up in Perugia, Meredith’s family back home in England released a statement on Monday, November 5, through London’s Metropolitan Police. It read in part: ‘Words cannot even begin to describe how we feel right now, other than utterly devastated at the tragic loss of our daughter and sister, Meredith. Nothing can prepare you for the news we received on Friday evening and it has taken this long for us to feel able to express our thoughts.

‘Mez was someone very special – a 21-year-old who was into her studies, worked hard and enjoyed spending time socializing with her friends and family. She was one of the most beautiful, intelligent, witty and caring people you could wish to meet. Nothing was ever too much effort for her – a loving daughter and sister and a loyal friend.

‘Meredith went to Italy at the end of August as part of her undergraduate degree course and was excited at the prospect of spending the year there to improve her language skills, make new friends and immerse herself in the culture. She was pursuing her dream and we can take some comfort in knowing that she has left us at
what was a very happy time in her life. We feel it is no exaggeration to say that Meredith touched the lives of everyone she met with her infectious, upbeat personality, smile and sense of humour.’

In closing their statement, the family said: ‘We appeal to anyone who may have any information, no matter how trivial it may seem, to contact their police and help us bring to justice the person who destroyed so many lives.’

When the Italian media, and later news outlets all over Europe, began reporting that Meredith had been lured into a sexual rendezvous with one or more of those responsible for her death – allegations made in part because of the partially nude manner in which her body had been found and because of speculation voiced to the press by certain members of the police – Meredith’s father, naturally, as any father would, downplayed the reports, stating publicly that Meredith would never have been involved in such things. Her character was viewed by those who knew her as a wholesome young woman and not someone who could have been drawn into any kind of sexual tryst. She had clearly been victimized, and her death had been caused by the violent actions of ‘an unidentified person or persons’, according to Nicola Miriano, the magistrate involved with her case. The cuts and bruises found on her body as reported by the pathologist who conducted the autopsy, Luca Lalli, also served to bolster the theory that whatever had
occurred to Meredith that night, she had been an unwilling participant who had died while fighting off what appeared to have been a sexual attack. Lalli had determined that there was evidence of sexual activity prior to her death, but he stopped short of saying that she had been raped.

As the investigation went on, homicide detectives continued in their efforts to identify and question Meredith’s known friends and acquaintances in Perugia. Investigators also examined her diary and her laptop computer in their search for evidence and, according to press reports, were looking at an employee of a local bar as a potential suspect. Detectives also continued to scrutinize the route that Meredith had taken home alone, through Piazza Grimana, the night she was killed. A basketball court in the piazza was a known hangout for drug addicts at night, and they had to consider the possibility that perhaps one or more of the addicts had followed her home that evening. Although closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras can be found throughout Perugia, there are none in the piazza, making the location a favourite haunt for addicts and other undesirable types – particularly at night.

One aspect of the piazza that initially caught some attention was the fact that a known drug dealer, himself an addict, had been seen a few hours prior to the discovery of Meredith’s body, covered with blood and bearing a large cut to one of his hands. He was
reportedly seen washing himself off in a public water fountain where he was heard screaming on a telephone, ‘
I killed her. I killed her.
’ Although a television reporter had successfully substantiated the reports about the addict, and had found a number of witnesses – including an ambulance driver and an emergency medical technician who had been dispatched to the piazza to treat the man’s injury and whisk him off to a hospital – the incident was ultimately dismissed by the police and prosecutor Mignini.

Mignini went to great lengths to get the reporter to back away from her story, largely by charging her with attempting to inflame fear and panic throughout the community by writing and publishing bogus information. Mignini’s team and the police, it seemed, had ascertained that the young man had been screaming at his girlfriend over the telephone, but they failed to adequately explain why he had thought that he had killed a woman, or even
who
he thought he had killed. Although the paramedics had removed him from the piazza and had taken him to a hospital, he was later transferred to a facility for drug addicts where he was kept under near-constant observation.

It appeared that Mignini and the police were far more intrigued with Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, especially after learning that Sollecito, a wealthy doctor’s son from the southern Italian city of Bari, on the Adriatic coast, allegedly liked to carry
knives on his person, and perhaps because investigators had found a number of violent comic books, such as Japanese
manga
comics, as well as other violent reading material, in Raffaele’s apartment. Some of the comics had featured illustrated stories about killing female vampires on Halloween night, prompting recollections of how Meredith had dressed up as a vampire for Halloween and had attended a number of parties prior to her murder and how, police would later contend, some of the comics’ illustrations and descriptions were in some ways similar to the murder scene in Meredith’s bedroom.

As the weekend came to a close, as Mignini and the police continued to look for ways to solve and build their case, local residents who had known Meredith planned a candlelight vigil outside Perugia cathedral, and had draped a banner bearing her name from the nearby town hall. Several people handed out flyers announcing the vigil, which read: ‘With greatest love from all your friends in Perugia. Addio, Meredith.’

The fact that Meredith was so well-loved by people in a country so far from her own only served to add to the mystique surrounding why anyone would want to kill her with such unleashed savagery. It just did not make any sense.

A
lthough many of the participants in the case did not know it yet, by the afternoon of Monday November 5, 2007, the Meredith Kercher murder case was on the verge of taking a dramatic turn. Amanda Knox, dressed in the typical vintage-style clothing that she liked so much, along with her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were hauled into a Perugia police station for what the two starry-eyed lovers thought would be simply another round of routine questioning. This time, however, was different. They were each placed in separate rooms, and the questioning lasted throughout the night. Amanda’s mother, Edda Mellas, had been in the Italian city for only a few hours and as the evening wore on she was increasingly aghast at what was happening to her daughter. In the midst of an aura of disbelief, she had not yet found a lawyer for Amanda
and probably would not be able to do so until the following day.

Since they had been placed in separate interrogation rooms, Amanda and Raffaele could neither see nor hear each other during the questioning by police, who were speaking in Italian and utilizing typical interrogation techniques used by police around the globe – the interrogators told Amanda that Raffaele had placed her at the crime scene, and vice versa. Although the pair had initially told investigators the same story regarding their activities and whereabouts the night Meredith was killed, at various points during the long night of questioning the police would convince them that each had turned against the other. In fact, before the night was over, Amanda and Raffaele would each change their stories, and the new accounts that they provided would be markedly different from what they had said at the outset of the investigation.

The interrogation rooms at the police station were dingy, cold and dismal, with a smell of stale cigarette smoke. The lighting felt intimidating, made all the more so by the uncomfortable institutional chairs and the pacing back and forth of the tireless inquisitors. It was intended to be that way, an aid to help the interrogators wear down the suspects.

The police learned a lot during the questioning which lasted over the Monday evening and into early Tuesday morning. Although the investigators had
brought the pair in for questioning several times over the previous couple of days, the interrogation that began on Monday afternoon had been the longest and most intensive and, many would later say, the most telling. By the time it was over, a number of those who had been critical of the tactics being employed by Mignini and the police began to wonder whether the controversial prosecutor may have been on the right track after all in going after Amanda and Raffaele to the exclusion of other potential suspects. In fairness to the police and the prosecutor there were many details, of course, that had not yet been made public and would later weigh heavily in their decisions regarding how they handled the case.

Convinced by his interrogators that Amanda had placed him at the scene of Meredith’s murder, Raffaele at one point told the police that it was possible that Amanda could have left his apartment, perhaps around 9.00 p.m., killed Meredith in her bedroom, and returned afterwards to his apartment and pretended that all was well and that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred that evening. He thought that she had been gone for about four hours, but his statement seemed less than convincing. After all, he had said that his memory was clouded from smoking marijuana and hashish with Amanda, and it was difficult for him to remember precise details about the evening. However, here is part of what he purportedly told the police during questioning:

‘I don’t remember how she was dressed, or if she was dressed differently from before when we said goodbye. I don’t remember if we had sex that evening.’

This seemed to contradict his original story that he and Amanda had watched
Amelie
, ate dinner, and made love the night Meredith died.

‘The next morning, we woke around ten and she told me she wanted to go home to have a shower and change her clothes,’ he continued. ‘She told me that when she got home she had found the door open and traces of blood in the small bathroom. She asked me if it seemed strange. I said to her it was.’

Raffaele said that when he returned to the villa with Amanda, the room of another housemate had been in disarray, while he noticed that Amanda’s room had been neat and tidy.

‘Then I went to Meredith’s door and saw it was locked,’ he said. ‘First, I checked to see if it was true what Amanda had said about the blood in the bathroom, and I noticed drops of blood in the basin. On the mat there was something strange, a sort of mixture of water and blood, while the rest of the bathroom was clean and tidy. Amanda came into the bathroom and she hugged me tight. I tried to force the door, but couldn’t, and at that point I decided to call my sister for advice because she is a Carabinieri officer. She told me to dial 112 [the Italian emergency number] but at that moment the police arrived.’

Raffaele reportedly indicated that his previous
statement to the police had been a ‘load of bollocks because she had convinced me of her version of the facts and I didn’t think anything different.’

Similarly, when confronted with portions of Raffaele’s statement, Amanda had told the investigators that it was possible that Raffaele had awakened during the night, slipped out of his flat and murdered Meredith, only to return to his own bed where Amanda presumably was fast asleep.

As the questioning continued and investigators asked her about other possible scenarios that may have occurred the night Meredith was murdered, Amanda, by now growing tired and weary, said that she could have been at the villa that night and may have heard someone screaming. It was during this
so-called
admission that the case took a very different turn – Amanda implicated her Congolese boss at Le Chic, Patrick Diya Lumumba, 38, by saying that she and Lumumba could have gone to the villa that evening together. The police, aware of the text messaging that had occurred between Amanda and Lumumba on the night of Meredith’s murder, had been pressing her for additional information about the bar owner, in part because the hair from a black man had been found in one of Meredith’s hands – a fact that previously had been kept from the public.

‘I don’t remember if my friend Meredith was already there or whether she came later,’ Amanda said during questioning. ‘We were all separate. What I can
say is that the two of them [Lumumba and Meredith] went off together… into Meredith’s room while I think I stayed in the kitchen… he wanted her… yes, we were in the house… that evening we wanted to have a bit of fun. We were drunk. We asked her to join us. Diya [Patrick] wanted her. Raffaele and I went into another room, and then I heard screams. Patrick and Meredith were in Meredith’s bedroom while I think I stayed in the kitchen. I can’t remember how long they were in the bedroom together – I can only say that at a certain point I heard Meredith screaming and I was so frightened I put my fingers in my ears… In my mind, I saw Patrick in confused images… I don’t remember anything after that. My head is really confused… there is such a lot going on in my head… I don’t remember if Meredith called out or if I heard thuds because I was upset, but I can imagine what was happening… I want to tell you what has happened because it’s left me really shocked and I am really scared of Patrick, the African guy who owns Le Chic where I sometimes work… I’m not sure whether Raffaele was there too that evening, but I do remember waking up at his house in his bed and that in the morning I went back to where I lived, where I found the door open.’

The investigators could not help but wonder why Amanda had changed her story regarding Raffaele. First she had said that he had been at the house with her, Patrick and Meredith, but a little later on she had contradicted her earlier statement. Was she truly
confused about the events of that evening? Or had she contradicted herself to further confuse the situation?

Portions of the statement found their way into a number of newspapers in Italy including
Corriere Della Sera
. The news, of course, travelled quickly, and the details of what Amanda purportedly told the police also appeared in newspapers in the UK, the European continent, as well as the United States.

According to a police interpreter, Anna Donnino, Amanda had seemed somewhat relieved after she had changed her story to the admission that she had been at home and had heard Meredith’s screams. Amanda had also reportedly told the police that Lumumba had been infatuated with Meredith, but the reality of what may or may not have been said was not immediately known, because the police refused to release any of the tapes recorded during the interrogations.

What
was
known at this juncture was that Lumumba had first met Meredith at Le Chic in October, when she had told him that she knew how to make
mojitos
, a Cuban cocktail that normally consists of lime juice, sugar cane sticks, mint and rum, after seeing that he stocked Polish vodka in the bar. He had purportedly invited Meredith to return at some point to make the vodka variation of the drink.

Amanda had also told police interrogators that she had met Lumumba at a basketball court on the evening of Meredith’s murder, and that they had arrived at her villa at approximately 9.00 p.m.
Lumumba, however, would later insist that he had spent the evening at his bar.

At dawn on Monday, November 6, with Mignini and Perugia’s chief of police, Arturo De Felice, believing that they now had sufficient evidence, arrested Amanda and Raffaele and made a grandstand appearance before the press to announce the arrests. Naturally, the story quickly became the biggest news item to hit Perugia in years, and it did not take long for news broadcasts to proliferate around the world. The police chief named Amanda as the ringleader of the brutal crime, and said that Meredith’s murder ‘was probably a sexually motivated killing.’

De Felice was quick to add that the trio – Amanda, Raffaele and Patrick Lumumba – had killed Meredith because she had refused to participate in an orgy that had involved the use of drugs. He praised the work of his detectives as ‘magnificent’, and said that the case was now closed after barely five days’ worth of work in which investigators had ‘worked around the clock’ to solve it because ‘the city needed a result quickly’.

‘It’s an ugly story in which people which this girl had in her home – friends – tried to force her into relations which she didn’t want,’ Italian Foreign Minister Giuliano Amato told the news conference.

Whether Amanda had seen the line of questioning about Lumumba as an opportunity to shift suspicion away from her and Raffaele, or whether the events that she had described were true, was not immediately
known. The case was under judicial seal, at least officially, though it was obvious that the information that was making its way into the press was being leaked. The detectives had a summary of Amanda’s statement typed up and asked that she sign it, although it would later be ruled inadmissible because she did not have a lawyer present to represent her and also because the questioning had occurred in Italian. Nonetheless, it was deemed sufficient cause for investigators to arrest Lumumba and bring him in for questioning, which they did early on Wednesday, November 7. Before Lumumba’s arrest, however, some time on the evening of November 6, Amanda changed her story again and recanted her confession in a statement she wrote to the police.

‘In regards to this “confession” that I made last night,’ Amanda wrote in her statement, ‘I want to make clear that I’m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressures of stress, shock, and extreme exhaustion… These things seem unreal to me, like in a dream, and I am unsure if they are real things that happened to me or are just dreams my head has made to try to answer the questions…’

Amanda returned to the original version of the events that she had related to police during her first interviews, and stated that during the later, all-night interrogation she had been confused because investigators had asked her to imagine certain
scenarios, such as other people who may have been interested in Meredith. She also alleged that she had been struck by the police during the latest round of questioning, which would serve to introduce charges of police brutality. As far as her accusations against Lumumba were concerned, the police interrogators had appeared angry and Amanda had struggled to find answers to their queries. It had been the police, after all, who had brought up the line of questioning regarding Lumumba as they focused on the text messaging that had occurred between him and Amanda the night Meredith was killed.

It was later learned that Lumumba, described by the locals as ‘very educated’ and as a ‘gentle’ person who was ‘willing to help anybody’, had been one of the people passing out flyers announcing the candlelight vigil in honour of Meredith’s memory. He had also done a lot of volunteer work at the University for Foreigners, and was known for being very generous with his time, even when it meant reduced hours for his own recreation. It transpired that he was well-known in Perugia, in large part because of his bar, which he had opened in August 2007 (the same month that Meredith had arrived in town). Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1969, and believed to be related to the Congolese Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba (who was assassinated in 1961) he immigrated to Italy in 1988. The student community also knew him because of his involvement in helping
organize concerts and other musical experiences – he frequently performed in his own band, which had a repertoire of reggae and contemporary music.

Lumumba, who wore his hair in short, tight dreadlocks, was in a loving relationship with a young Polish woman, named Ola, whom he had met while she was studying Italian at the University for Foreigners, where Lumumba had also studied nearly twenty years earlier. After deciding that she would remain in Italy, Ola worked as a waitress in a busy restaurant and the couple moved into an apartment together. They had a child, who was barely a year old at the time of Lumumba’s arrest.