Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir (21 page)

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 under 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

C
lutching 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?”

It turned out there was another possible explanation.

On December 18, forty-six days after the Polizia Scientifica first swept the villa for evidence, the Rome-based forensic police returned to No. 7, Via della Pergola.

Luciano and one of Raffaele’s lawyers watched a live feed of the search from a van parked outside the villa. The investigators were dressed in white suits, shoe coverings, and gloves to protect the crime scene from contamination—but it was too late for that. The Squadra Mobile, or “Flying Squad,” had already ransacked the house, tramping from room to room. While looking for Meredith’s credit cards, keys, and other nonforensic clues, they’d dragged Meredith’s mattress into the kitchen. Her unhinged armoire doors were on the floor. Her clothes were in heaps. The forensic team found the bra clasp under a rolled-up carpet, lying beneath a sock.

I wasn’t implicated by the clasp, but I knew that the prosecution would never believe that Raffaele had acted without me. They’d say I gave him access to the villa. I was the reason he’d met Meredith. We were each other’s alibis. If they could show that Raffaele was directly connected to the crime, I would, at the very least, be charged as his accomplice.

The bra clasp wasn’t the only incriminating news the prosecution leaked to the press that day. “CSI Technique Leads Italian Police to Bloody Footprint in Foxy Knoxy’s Bedroom,” the London
Daily Mail
wrote. The article quoted Edgardo Giobbi, an investigator for the police, who said, “This is a crucial discovery and very important.”

Luciano told me the low points. “They say your feet were ‘dripping with blood’—that you tracked blood while you were trying to clean it up.”

The forensic team used luminol, a chemical that glows blue when sprayed on even trace amounts of hemoglobin. It revealed two footprints in the hallway outside the bathroom and one in my bedroom.

“How can they say I had Meredith’s blood on the bottoms of my feet?” I asked.

“Please don’t worry, Amanda,” Carlo said, giving me a sympathetic look. “I’m sure it’s not as simple and straightforward as the media are portraying it. We’ve already spoken with our experts, and they say that you might have stepped on the blood splotch on the bathmat and tracked it down the hall. That could do it. And it’s not just blood that shows up in luminol. It reacts the same to household cleaners, soil, juice, and rust from the faucet—anything that contains iron or peroxides. To know for sure what they’re looking at, forensic scientists have to test separately with another chemical”—tetramethylbenzidine (TMB)—“that’s sensitive only to human blood.”

“Well, did they?” I asked anxiously.

“It’s frustrating, but we’ll have to wait until the investigation phase ends so we can see how the Polizia Scientifica reached their conclusions,” Carlo answered.

Perhaps it was better that we didn’t know then it would be twenty-two nerve-rattling months before we found out how the forensic scientists had made this misleading call.

This new claim was another barricade separating me from my real life—one more accusation on a growing list. Too many impossible things were being served up as “truth”—Meredith’s DNA on Raffaele’s kitchen knife, Raffaele’s DNA on Meredith’s bra clasp, and now Meredith’s blood on the soles of my feet.

It was crazy enough to be told that “investigative instinct” had convinced the police I was involved in Meredith’s murder—that I was dangerous and evil. Now forensic science—the supposedly foolproof tests I was counting on to clear me—was turning up findings I knew were wrong. I, like most people who get their information from TV crime shows, was unaware that forensic evidence has to be interpreted, that human error and bias can, and do, upend results.

“I don’t get it,” I told my dad at his next visit. “How can this be happening? Raffaele and I weren’t there, so how can there be
any
evidence pointing to us?”

I felt so weighed down, so helpless and sad, that all I could do was cry while Dad held me. “Are the police just really bad at their jobs?” I wailed. “They’re getting further and further away from the truth. How can the investigators make three incriminating errors in a row? What will they find next?”

But I tried not to think too far ahead. I’d already had to tell Mom good-bye. She’s an elementary school teacher who had used all her vacation and sick days to be with me. My defense was costing far more than my parents had. She had to get back to work. Thank God Dad was there for me. I couldn’t fathom how I would get through this without my parents.

Incensed by the stream of falsehoods, I concluded what my lawyers and my dad already knew: the police and the prosecutor couldn’t afford to admit they’d made a mistake. They’d announced, “Case closed,” at the press conference the day Raffaele and I were arrested. They would stick to their story at all costs.

I always liked seeing my lawyers, but now I had to brace myself for each visit. I didn’t have to wait long before they brought more devastating news.

Less than a week later, investigators reported that they’d found my DNA mixed with Meredith’s blood ringing the drain of the bidet in our shared bathroom. The implication was that I’d rinsed my hands and feet in the bidet after slashing her throat. They said that my skin cells had shown up—not Raffaele’s or Rudy Guede’s—because I was the last person to wash up in that bathroom.

The other update that day was something my lawyers had learned about when an Italian reporter held up his cell phone to show Luciano a series of photos in that day’s
Daily Mail
. “Chilling Pictures of Meredith Murder Scene Reveal Apartment Bloodbath Horror,” read the headline.

When I’d come home from Raffaele’s on November 2 there were two dots of blood in the sink and a tiny smear on the faucet. In one of the
Daily Mail
photos, the bathroom where I’d showered appeared to be drenched in blood. Police released the photo with no explanation. They didn’t say that the room had been sprayed with phenolphthalein, a chemical that, like luminol, is used as a first screen to detect the presence of blood. Also left out was the fact that phenolphthalein immediately turns certain bases and acids, including hemoglobin, a pinkish red. Thirty seconds after that, everything touched by phenolphthalein—every wall, every floor tile, every fixture, every towel—turns that lurid shade. I could only conclude that the police had distributed the pictures of the bathroom knowing that most people would never have heard of the chemical and would, naturally, believe the red was blood.