The Murder of Meredith Kercher (8 page)

Because analysis of the fingerprints in question had been matched to 20-year-old Rudy Hermann Guede – a small-time drug dealer and petty thief who held dual citizenship from Italy and Cote d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast) – reports identifying him as a suspect began circulating in Italy and wider afield. According to police, one of the fingerprints made in Meredith’s blood had matched a fingerprint in Guede’s file at the registry of foreign residents at Perugia’s town hall. Investigators were not saying much about Guede
except that an international warrant had been issued for his arrest, and that officers were closing in on him.

B
y Monday, November 19, 2007 news reports about the international manhunt for Rudy Guede began to appear in the press and on television after it was revealed that police believe he left Perugia on the day that Meredith’s body was found. Police were saying little at this point, only that they had matched one or more fingerprints left in Meredith’s blood, and that Guede was suspected of participating in her sexual assault and murder. As police hunted for Guede across Europe, including France and Germany by some accounts, newspaper reporters were doing their own research to obtain as much information as they could about the new mystery man.

According to
La Repubblica
and other sources, Guede had moved to Italy with his father from the Ivory Coast when he was five. When his father returned to the West African country, Guede was taken
in and raised by wealthy businessman Paolo Caporali and his family in Perugia. However, he proved to be rebellious, and the Caporali family had little to do with him after he had grown older. Although Guede had found work at a rural bed-and-breakfast, he eventually began to dabble in drugs as he started exploring Perugia’s widespread student party scene.

‘Guede was a difficult type,’ said Simone Benedetti, a member of his adoptive family. ‘He spent a lot of money, told lies, and did not behave well. If I had to judge him, I would say he was a boy who could not take care of himself. But no way is he a murderer.’

When he was about 16 he was injured during a knife fight over drugs, which left him with an abdominal scar. In time he became a well-known but small-time drug dealer and was referred to around town as ‘The Baron’. He also became known as a petty thief.

At one point he moved to Milan for a while, but returned to Perugia a few days before Meredith was murdered. He had, in fact, been seen by a local barman walking in Perugia on Halloween night, and detectives began showing his photograph around the city’s bars, with swift results. Pasquale Alessi, one of the owners of the Merlin pub, told police that Guede was a frequent visitor to another bar, the Domus nightclub where, investigators learned, Meredith had gone dancing the night before her death. But the potential connections between Guede and Meredith did not merely end at the Domus.

Police eventually learned that Guede had become friendly with the four men who shared the bottom half of the cottage where Meredith and Amanda resided, and was frequently seen at the Piazza Grimana basketball court, only a few metres away and on the route that the students habitually took to and from classes.

He apparently liked to play basketball at the open air court there, hence one of the reasons he liked to hang out at the dimly lit Piazza Grimana – the other being his involvement in illicit drugs, both in the capacity of their sale and usage. A list for a Perugia basketball team shows that Guede played guard in 2004 and 2005.

Rudy Guede also maintained a Facebook page, where he had posted photographs of himself in a number of Perugia bars. He listed his interests as ‘arts, computers, basketball and girls’. Guede’s Facebook page was still active after Meredith’s death, with new message and posted entries. For example, on November 3 someone left Guede a message that read, ‘You still in Perugia? I heard what happened with the English girl. Very crazy.’ Another public message, also addressing Guede, asked, ‘How are you doing in Sweden?’

In another development, after word began circulating about Guede being wanted by the police in connection with Meredith’s death, another Perugian bar owner came forward and said that he had found
Guede in his house with a knife one night a few weeks before Meredith’s murder. The bar owner, however, had declined to press charges against the intruder.

As the police continued their search for Guede, a disconcerting YouTube video of him materialized. Guede was obviously high on some illicit drug or substance when he made the video, as he continuously repeated, ‘Oh my God. I’m an extraterra.’ As the video continued, Guede rolls his eyes back and says, ‘Oh mama, I’m a vampire, I’m Dracula. I’m gonna suck your blood.’

After learning that he was wanted by the police in connection with Meredith’s murder, Guede apparently contacted the British
Guardian
newspaper via e-mail. He wrote: ‘I didn’t do nothing, but I won’t talk with a policeman, ’cause I’m not a killer. See you in Perugia.’

Fortunately, the search for the African had not taken long to bring results and he was tracked to Germany through a friend – under police guidance – who had contacted him via the Internet. He and his friend chatted for several hours using Skype, with his friend, unknown to Guede, sitting in front of a computer at police headquarters as police listened in and passed him notes telling him what to say or which questions to ask.

‘They are after you for the murder of Kercher,’ said his friend, who the police declined to identify. ‘What have you done?’

‘I wasn’t there that night,’ Guede replied. ‘If they
found my fingerprints, it must have been from before… I have been in the house. I knew Amanda and I knew Meredith, but I didn’t kill her.’

The entire conversation, which lasted more than three hours, was monitored by the police. As a result, Italian police contacted German authorities and passed along information about Guede, including his photograph, and asked the Germans to be on the lookout for him.

At another point that same night Guede effectively did an about turn, telling another friend in an e-mail – also monitored by the police – that he had sex with Meredith on the night she was killed, but insisted that a stranger had killed her, not him. Guede explained during this e-mail exchange that Meredith had invited him to her bedroom on the night of November 1, and that they’d had consensual sex. He said that he had left her room to go to the bathroom and that while there he had heard the doorbell ring. Shortly afterwards, he said that he heard Meredith screaming from her room.

Guede claimed that he came out of the bathroom upon hearing Meredith’s screams where he confronted a man that he could only describe as a ‘brown-haired Italian’. He claimed that he scuffled with the man, and then fled the cottage after being injured. The e-mail exchange with the second friend clearly conflicted with the earlier Skype conversation in which he said that he was not there that night.

The results were swift, even though a bit of luck had been involved on the part of the police. Officers in Mainz, Germany, told Italian investigators that Guede had been arrested by transit police on Tuesday, November 20, after being detained on a train bound for Frankfurt. Apparently he had been caught travelling without a ticket, and he had no identification documents in his possession. He first gave officers a false name, and later attempted to claim political asylum, to no avail – it had not taken long for his true identity to surface. The German police in Germany said he would remain in custody while they checked for any outstanding warrants against him in their country and, if none were found, he would be returned to Italy within a matter of days, as long as he did not fight extradition.

Italian authorities were, naturally, elated over such a swift arrest and Arturo De Felice, Perugia’s police chief, said that ‘we had been in contact with our German colleagues for days,’ and that Guede would be returned to Italy as soon as possible. The revelation by the police chief indicated that Italian police had known about Guede longer than had been indicated in the press. It was noted that none of the three suspects already in custody had ever mentioned Guede’s name to police.

Although Guede’s father said that he had not seen his son for more than a year, he believed he was innocent: ‘Rudy was a lad who always loved others.
We all have faith in him. He cannot be responsible for such an atrocious crime.’

Meanwhile, on the same day that German authorities had arrested Guede, it was announced by the Italian news agency ANSA that Patrick Lumumba had been freed from jail due to lack of evidence. His release came about with little advance public notice and just as little fanfare, but after being held in jail for two weeks and unsure what the future held for him, Lumumba expressed his gratitude for the fact that all charges against him, pending or otherwise, had been dropped.

‘I am happy to be going home… I very much thank God who had helped me to return home,’ Lumumba said after his release. Later he would sue the police for 516,000 euros (about £458,000), for which an Italian court would eventually award him 8,000 euros (£7,100). He also began making plans to sue Amanda Knox for defamation of character and other damages.

After enjoying a night of freedom, Lumumba said the next day that he would never be able to forgive Amanda for falsely implicating him in Meredith’s murder. ‘I still don’t understand how I finished up in all this,’ Lumumba said. ‘Because I’m black? Because I’m the perfect guilty one? Why didn’t the police ask me anything before putting handcuffs on me? Why didn’t they ask me where I had been that evening? Why didn’t they investigate further? Why did Amanda blame me? I had offered her a job. I don’t think I can forgive her.’

In yet another development, a preliminary forensic report leaked to the press showed that Raffaele Sollecito had not been using his computer on the night of the slaying, contrary to what he had claimed. An examination of his computer showed that it had been switched on that night, but remained unused between 9.10 p.m. and 5.32 a.m. He had previously insisted that he was online that night and had hoped that he would be able to use that fact as an alibi.

‘Nothing was downloaded or uploaded to suggest Internet activity that night,’ said Edgardo Giobbi, a detective working with Rome’s Serious Crime Squad that had been assisting Perugia investigators.

However, Emilio Lucchetta, a private investigator hired by Raffaele’s lawyers, said that Raffaele’s Macintosh computer and the type of web browser he used made it difficult to analyze and said that ‘there was Internet activity’ on Raffaele’s computer ‘between 6.27 p.m. and 3.33 a.m.’

In light of the fast-changing circumstances and the turns that the case was taking, particularly Lumumba’s release and exoneration and Guede’s apprehension in Germany, Amanda’s and Raffaele’s families held onto renewed hope that they might soon be released. But there were plenty of troubling issues that remained, as well as a new one: why hadn’t either of them ever mentioned to the police that they knew Rudy Guede? All anyone could get out of Amanda regarding the new suspect was that she may have vaguely recognized
Guede, that she may have seen him associating with the downstairs neighbours. She insisted that she never knew his name.

On Wednesday, November 21, Rudy Guede made a courtroom appearance, in Koblenz, Germany, where he was brought before a judge. He claimed he was innocent, and that he had nothing to do with the crime. He also agreed that he would not fight extradition.

I
n the aftermath of Rudy Guede’s apprehension in Germany and Lumumba’s release in Italy, investigators in Perugia kept going over Amanda Knox’s so-called confession – one of her accounts of what had occurred on the evening of November 1. If she had gone back to the cottage she shared with Meredith after having spent the prior evening at Raffaele’s flat and had seen the blood in the bathroom, why would she have gone ahead and taken a shower as she had claimed? There was, after all, a considerable amount of blood in the bathroom, judging from the crime scene photos, and Amanda had merely said that she had thought the blood was ‘a bit strange.’ But had it not been ‘strange’ enough to prevent her from taking a shower? The photos taken by investigators had, after all, depicted something that looked rather more than a woman’s menstrual bleeding, which is what Amanda
had claimed. Her statements, as they were
re-examined
, were beginning to give the appearance of being contrived. Her so-called memory issues, purportedly caused because she had smoked cannabis and hashish, also did not seem believable.

‘I find it hard to remember these moments,’ Amanda had said, ‘but Patrick had sex with Meredith. I can’t remember whether Meredith was threatened first. I remember in a confused way that he killed her. Patrick and Meredith went into Meredith’s room while I stayed in the kitchen. I can’t remember how much time they were in the room. I can only say that at a certain point I heard Meredith scream and, frightened, I covered my ears with my hands. Then I don’t remember anything.’

She claimed that because Patrick Lumumba’s name had been in her head during questioning, she had seen him in ‘flashbacks’ as the killer. ‘I’m very confused,’ she had said. ‘My head is full of contrasting ideas and I know I can be frustrating to work with for this reason… all I know is I didn’t kill Meredith, and so I have nothing but lies to be afraid of.’

Whose lies, the police wondered. Her own? Much of the time during questioning, Amanda’s statements had been rambling and at times incoherent. ‘There is something inside me which I believe to be true. But there is another possibility that could also be true and, honestly, I can’t say with any certainty which one is correct. I am trying to work it out because I fear for
myself… I know I did not kill Meredith. That is something I know for sure.’

What was it that she was trying to work out? The police wondered. A way to shift the blame or responsibility for what happened that night onto someone else? It certainly seemed that way to her interrogators. And if she was being truthful, why did she ‘fear’ for herself?

‘I’m not sure of these things and I know that it is important to help my case, but the truth is I don’t think we did very much,’ she had said to officers.

What did ‘I don’t think we did very much’ mean? Had that statement been difficult to discern because of the rambling manner of her comments? Or had it been some kind of Freudian slip that may have alluded to her and Raffaele’s involvement in what had happened to Meredith?

‘At this moment my head is full of contrasting ideas and I don’t like being unable to figure them out,’ she had said in the interrogation room.

It seemed a bit strange that Amanda could remember smoking pot and that she was certain that she had not killed Meredith while being unable to remember much of anything else that occurred that night. None of what she had done or was doing seemed to be helping her or Raffaele’s case. It certainly had not helped her when she reverted back to her original story of not being there during the visit with her mother.

‘I stick by what I said originally,’ she had maintained during the prison visit. ‘I wasn’t there. I’m innocent.’

As had been the case with many of the documents related to this investigation, Raffaele’s jailhouse letter to his father was also leaked and made its way into the public domain before the third week of the police investigation was over. In it he seemed more in control about what he wanted to say, and his statements seemed more well thought out than anything that Amanda had said so far. He also accused Amanda of not being truthful in certain instances.

In the letter, Raffaele explained to his father that he had met Amanda at a concert, and that his first impression of her was that she was an interesting girl. He said that she looked at him ‘over and over again’ and ‘seemed to be searching for something in my eyes, like a particular interest.’ At one point during the concert he moved near her so that they could talk, and one of the things that stood out about her were her odd opinions about the music that was being played. It seemed to Raffaele that she had not been concentrating on the emotions that the music evoked, but rather on its rhythm – ‘slow, fast, slow.’

He told his father that during the time that they were together, Amanda had been elusive and Raffaele had thought that ‘she was out of this world’. She seemed to live her life like a dream, he said, and seemed detached from reality, as if she was unable to distinguish dreams
from what was actually happening. Amanda’s life ‘seemed to be pure pleasure,’ as if she had a ‘contact with reality that was almost nonexistent.’

‘In the middle of this sad and depressing world,’ Raffaele wrote, ‘through the window on the other side of the watchtower, on the horizon I can see a small house. And that house on the plain brings out in me a bashful smile of hope.

‘I don’t know if it’s fair that I have to pay such a high price for not paying more attention to the seconds and minutes of November 1. But after this experience, believe me, Dad, I will never smoke another joint in my life. I can now say that I know what it means to take a walk in Hell. And I pray to God not to leave me alone any more. I wait with faith for the results of the investigation which, I know for certain being innocent, will demonstrate what really happened: that I was not in that room when poor Meredith was killed.

‘Poor Meredith. A quiet girl who exchanged few words with people, who I had little to do with, but who certainly did not deserve the end she met. I hope that her parents will soon have justice, to know why and how and by whose hand their daughter was killed.’

Raffaele went on to explain how the experience had opened his eyes. He pointed out how he was accustomed to living in a house that was always clean, and that the central heating was on when it was cold.
He wrote of his warm bed, his dream car, and of ‘eating the best of the best that the earth has to offer,’ and of ‘having the best computer on the market and a family that loves me.’

‘Here in prison there are people who have none of that,’ his letter continued. ‘There is a filthy sponge bed, a tiny bathroom with hot water, central heating that is only on for a few hours a day, two quilts and a 13-inch TV. Even the smallest thing in prison can appear precious.’

He explained how he found it all difficult to take in, but that he would be trying to repay everything that he had been given in life. Although he said that he realized that was not enough, he expressed the need to work hard to do something for others as well as for himself.

‘I think the key is to love and to love yourself,’ he wrote. ‘Because everything we have is not anyone’s just by right. This experience has at least taught me that.’

Raffaele went on to say that he passed his time in jail by speaking to doctors, psychologists, teachers, guards – anyone that he could engage in conversation – in an attempt to understand ‘what could possibly have happened that night in the absolute certainty that I did nothing wrong.’

He said that he tried to understand what Amanda’s role was in the terrible ordeal.

‘The Amanda I know is an Amanda who lives a
carefree life,’ his letter continued. ‘Her only thought is the pursuit of pleasure at all times. But even the thought that she could be a killer is impossible for me. I have read her version of events. Some of the things she said are not true, but I don’t know why she said them. For example, it wasn’t that night that we were in the shower together.

‘I can accept that part of the reason we all ended up in prison is my lack of clarity with regards to the events that night. I am paying the price for my own superficiality, and I want to say that I will keep paying down to the last cent. The reality is that my life has changed forever and there is no way back. All I can do is collect the broken pieces and try to put them back together.’

Raffaele’s letter was released in its entirety to the Italian press, and detectives combed it, along with Amanda’s statements, to try to read between the lines and see if they could discern or eke out anything additional that they could use. Meanwhile, they learned that the results of DNA tests had, in fact, shown that their latest suspect, Rudy Guede, had engaged in sexual contact with Meredith prior to her death. The forensic results were based on a DNA sample taken from a toothbrush at Guede’s sleeping room in Perugia and compared with evidence retrieved from Meredith’s body. One of his attorneys, Vittorio Lombardo, was quick to point out that the test results did not necessarily mean that Guede was guilty of the murder.

‘Rudy has not denied being in Meredith’s house, and the tests do not say that the sex was not consensual,’ Lombardo said. ‘Rudy maintains he was in the bathroom when Meredith was killed, and these tests do not show anything which contradicts that.’

When Guede had appeared before a judge in Koblenz to establish his identity, he told of how he had gone with Meredith to her house. He said he had developed a stomach ache that required him to go to the bathroom and that it was while he was in the bathroom that he had heard Meredith scream. He further stated that Meredith had been killed by ‘an Italian guy I don’t know,’ who fled the residence. He reportedly said that Meredith had whispered the initials ‘AF’ to him as she expired. He said that he had attempted to save Meredith, but gave in to fear and panic and ran away.

‘I took Meredith in my arms,’ Guede reportedly told the judge. ‘I tried to resuscitate her, but then I panicked and I ran away.’

Lombardo, upon hearing of Guede’s statements to the German judge, said that they were given without the presence of legal representation and as such carried no weight in a court of law.

By now, Perugia investigators were also aware of another finding from Edgardo Giobbi of Rome’s Serious Crime Squad. Apparently Giobbi had determined that a fingerprint found on the
inside
of Meredith’s door matched Raffaele’s, despite the fact
that he had insisted that he had not gone into her room prior to when he followed police inside on the day her body was discovered. Also troubling was the footprint in blood found inside her room – it matched the size 42 Nike trainers Raffaele owned.

‘Rudy Guede wears size 45,’ Giobbi said.

However, Giovanni Arcudi, an expert for the defence who planned to argue for Raffaele’s release in the coming days, countered with: ‘That footprint does not possess clear and definite characteristics.’

On Saturday, November 24, additional CCTV footage damaging to the defence somehow made its way into the media. This time the photos showed Amanda and Raffaele laughing and kissing the day after Meredith’s body was found. The latest photos were from the store where Amanda had shopped for lingerie and they had been overheard discussing having ‘wild sex’ with each other. One of the photos depicted them in a kissing embrace in which they were in full view of other shoppers – shortly after detailing to the police and others how distraught they were over Meredith’s murder only a day earlier. Along with the photos came the additional comments from the shopkeeper.

According to Bubbles shopkeeper Carlo Maria Scotto di Rinaldi, Amanda and Raffaele had come into the store on November 3 and were there for about 20 minutes. He recognized them from having seen them on television news programmes.

‘The girl bought a camisole and G-string,’ di Rinaldi said.

He repeated what he had said earlier, that he had heard them discussing going home to have ‘wild sex’ as they were getting ready to pay. He said some of the other customers had considered their behaviour in the store ‘exhibitionistic’.

‘Their behaviour struck me as very odd,’ di Rinaldi continued. ‘They were laughing and joking as they were holding up the underwear and the girl kept saying she was going to wear it before they had sex. When I realized it was them, and the fact that the poor girl had only been found the day before, their behaviour struck me even more as unusual.’

Meanwhile, soon after learning about Guede’s arrest in Germany, Raffaele asked through his attorneys if he could provide new evidence to the prosecutor.

‘The situation has changed, and the investigation, now that Rudy Guede has emerged, has changed a great deal,’ said one of Raffaele’s lawyers, Marco Brusco. ‘Our client wants to clarify certain things, but I cannot tell you what they are.’