Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir (22 page)

The pictures of the chemical-stained bathroom did what, I have to assume, the police wanted. The public reaction proved that a picture—especially a “bloody” picture from a crime scene—is worth a hundred thousand words. At least. I knew what people were thinking.
Who but a knife-wielding killer would take a shower in a “blood-streaked” bathroom? Who but a liar would say there had been only a few flecks of blood? The answer? Foxy Knoxy.

The bathroom photos were released along with pictures of Meredith’s room, both before and after her body had been taken away. There were photos of the bloody shoeprint that was still being attributed to Raffaele, even after his family had proven it couldn’t be his. One photo offered an almost complete view of the room from the doorway; another showed Meredith’s naked foot sticking out from under her comforter. Close-ups showed the tremendous amount of blood Meredith lost, choked on, and died in. Seeing these shots made me weep.
She must have been so scared.

The public doesn’t usually have the right to see the prosecution’s documentation until the defense does. But the photos were out, and there was no way to dampen the effect. It struck Luciano as another attempt by the prosecution to win public favor.

My lawyers complained to the judges that the prosecution was using the media to our disadvantage, but the judge said that whatever was reported in the press wouldn’t be held against us. The flow of information between the prosecution and the media was an accepted but unacknowledged fact.

P
laying elite soccer as a teenager had taught me that to beat the opposing side, I’d need maximum endurance, perseverance, and tenacity. I started thinking of myself as part of a team led by my lawyers; I had to help them succeed. Drawing on the little reserve I had left, I willed myself through the emotional pain. When I was seventeen, I played for a month on a broken foot before admitting it to my coach. I felt like that now: determined but vulnerable.

The denial, fear, and bafflement I felt in the beginning of this nightmare had turned into quiet indignation and defiance. I finally accepted that I was my only friend inside Capanne. I clung to my dad at every visit. The rest of the time, I used the only coping tool I knew: I retreated into my own head.

The natural reaction to having no control over your own life is to grab on to ways to feel that you do. In prison the only thing you’re in charge of is your body. You can overexercise. You can hurt it. You can overeat. You can starve. You can decide what goes in and what stays out. I refused to let antidepressants or sedatives cross my lips. And I went silent.

After nearly five months at Capanne, the only people I talked to consistently were my family on visiting days and Don Saulo, when I saw him (my only stress-free moments in prison). Otherwise I answered questions; I didn’t ask them. I didn’t comment. Memories of my real life at home were my sanctuary. I didn’t want to mix it up with this miserable faux life I was living behind bars.

Cera’s sense of control came from cleaning. When I moved in I liked that her cell was spotless. I didn’t understand that it was her obsession, until she demanded that I dry off the walls of the shower before I dried myself; place the shampoo and lotion bottles in a perfect line on the counter, equally spaced apart; tuck in my bedsheets with military precision; arrange the apples in the fruit bowl stem up; and avoid using the kitchen sink.

I tried hard to get along with Cera. I helped her with her schoolwork and either cleaned alongside her or stayed out of the way. My job, after she was done mopping and drying the floor, was to take a
panno spugna
—a spongelike cloth—and clean the baseboards on my hands and knees. I complained bitterly to Mom about these things when she came to Italy over her spring break.

One morning, when I was walking into the bathroom to put something away, I bumped into Cera, and she kissed me on the lips. I just stood there staring at her, too surprised to know what to say. “Your face is telling me that was not okay,” she said quickly. “I’m really sorry.”

She never made physical advances after that, but she did once ask if I was curious what it was like to have sex with a woman, like her. My stock answer—an emphatic no—made her feel bad.

I told Mom about that, too.

“Amanda, we need to talk,” Cera said one day. She was leaning in the kitchen doorway, watching me stare at the wall, her arms crossed over her thin torso. “Look, I don’t feel like we have a relationship. Why don’t you talk to me?”

“I honestly don’t have anything to say,” I said. “Everything I think about is really personal,” I stammered, my eyes starting to tear up.

I no longer trusted the authorities. They were against me. I was continually under surveillance. I read. I practiced Italian. I spent most of my time writing letters to the people I desperately missed—my mom, my dad, Madison, Brett, DJ, Oma, my sisters. It was the only way I felt connected to anything outside prison.

How could I explain this to Cera?

“When I look at you I see myself four years ago,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re guilty or not, but I worry about whether you suffer. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did. In the years I’ve spent in prison, I’ve screamed, fought, starved, and cut myself, and no one cared or made the effort to help me. Please come out of your shell before it destroys you. If you’re always hiding inside yourself, you won’t ever be able find your way back out.”

M
y only hope and constant thought during that winter and spring was that the judge might allow me to live with my family in an apartment, under house arrest. My first plea had been rejected, but my lawyers had another hearing scheduled for April 1. Even though Carlo and Luciano weren’t confident about the outcome, I was sure it would happen. I was counting the days.

Less than a week before the hearing, I heard on TV that Mignini had interrogated Rudy Guede again. I listened to the newscast, hoping Guede would tell the truth.

My heart started pounding as I listened. “Amanda and Raffaele were at the house that night,” Guede reportedly said. “I saw them. When I came out of the bathroom, I saw a male figure. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he had a knife in his hand. I also heard Amanda Knox. She was at the door; I saw her there. The two girls hated each other. It was a fight over money that sparked it off. Meredith accused Amanda of stealing three hundred euros from her drawer.”

“That’s a total lie!” I burst out. I’d never felt so much hatred for another person as I did toward Guede in that moment.

Cera looked over at me with a pitying glance. “Now you’re really screwed,” she said. “Once defendants start blaming each other, it’s all over—for him and for you. That’s what the prosecution wants. That’s how they make it impossible for you to defend yourself.”

Luciano and Carlo came to see me the next day. They reassured me that no one, not even the prosecution, believed Guede. “He ran away, he’s a liar, a thief, a rapist, a murderer,” Carlo said. “No one could ever consider him a reliable witness, because he has everything to gain from blaming you. The prosecution is making a big deal about it because it incriminates you.”

“Please, Amanda,” Luciano said. “This is not what you need to worry about. You need to stay strong.”

Still, I couldn’t be consoled. With Guede’s testimony against me, there was absolutely no chance a judge would free me from prison.

In early April, Carlo came to Capanne. His face gave away his worry. “Amanda,” he said, “the prosecution now says there’s evidence of a cleanup. They contend that’s why there’s no evidence that you and Raffaele were in Meredith’s bedroom—that you scrubbed the crime scene of your traces.”

“That’s the most ludicrous reasoning I’ve ever heard!” I screeched.

“Amanda, the investigators are in a conundrum,” Carlo said. “They found so much of Guede’s DNA in Meredith’s room and on and inside her body. But the only forensic evidence they have of you is outside her bedroom. Raffaele’s DNA evidence is only on the bra hook. If you and Raffaele participated in the murder, as the prosecution believes, your DNA should be as easy to find as Guede’s.”

“But Carlo, no evidence doesn’t mean we cleaned up. It means we weren’t there!”

“I know,” Carlo said, sighing. “But they’ve already decided that you and Raffaele faked a break-in to nail Guede. I know it doesn’t make sense. They’re just adding another link to the story. It’s the only way the prosecution can involve you and Raffaele when the evidence points to a break-in and murder by Guede.”

J
udge Matteini sent me her decision about house arrest on May 16: “Denied.” By then the prosecution had stacked so much against me that Guede’s testimony hadn’t even figured in her decision. Even though I hadn’t left the country before my arrest, the judge was certain that Mom would have helped me leave when she was to have arrived in Perugia on November 6. That, she said, is why the police planned to arrest me
before
Mom could get to me. It turned out that they’d gotten her itinerary the same time I did—by bugging my phone.

Before concluding, the judge criticized me for not showing remorse for Meredith’s death.

When Carlo and Luciano came to tell me my request for house arrest had been denied, my mind rolled back to the
questura
on the morning of November 6. After my interrogation had ended, I was distraught and whimpering, sitting in the empty office with the lead interrogator, Rita Ficarra. My cell phone started ringing, vibrating loudly against the desktop, and I’d begged Ficarra to let me answer it. I was sure that it was my mom, and I knew she’d be undone with worry if I didn’t pick up.

This new setback conjured up all the desperation, the nauseating helplessness, I’d felt that morning. I could hardly breathe thinking about it. I remembered how relieved I’d been that my mom was flying over, how much I needed her. As soon as she said she was coming to Italy, I realized I’d been stubbornly, stupidly insistent that I could help the police find Meredith’s killer on my own.

I’d been tricked.

I understood that this regret went beyond me. My mom was eating herself up with guilt for not having come sooner. When I saw her over her spring break, she’d lost twenty pounds. She wept at every visit.

A
fter the judge’s decision, everything seemed darker. I talked to Don Saulo a lot about how claustrophobic I felt with the possibility of house arrest off the table. I couldn’t concentrate on reading, Italian grammar, or even on writing letters home, for all the anger, disappointment, and sadness I felt.

Cera started trying to prepare me for the chance of another fifteen years in prison. “I think you should say you’re guilty,” she advised me one day, “because it will take years off your sentence.”

“I will not lie!” I yelled, spitting out one word at a time. “I’m not scared of Guede or the prosecutor! I’m ready to fight! I don’t know anything about this murder, and I will go free!”

Luciano and Carlo tried to steel me for what they knew would eventually happen.

“You have to be ready to take this case to trial,” Carlo said one day in May, his finger poised over the mouse pad of his laptop. “The prosecution is going to say things about you. You’re going to see and hear all the horrible details of Meredith’s murder. It’s going to be tough on you, Amanda.”

With that, he turned his computer around for me to see. He scrolled down. Meredith’s face, tilted upward, showed up yellow and wide-eyed on the screen. A grotesque, dark, gaping gash seemed to burst from her neck.

Ah!
I gasped and turned away. I felt as if I were choking.

Carlo half-rose and said, “Amanda, calm down.”

I struggled for breath that came in painful hiccups. “I can’t!”

“We should call it a day,” he said, standing. He knocked on the door. “
Assistente!
”

I could not stop wailing.

Carlo helped me out of my chair. He held his hand gently against my back when the
agente
opened the door.

“It’s a rough day,” he explained.

The
agente
grasped my shoulders firmly and steered me around the corner, almost into the
ispettore
—“supervisor”—who was walking down the hall.

“What’s wrong with you? What happened?” she asked.

“I saw Meredith’s autopsy photo.”

“What?”

“Meredith’s autopsy photo,” I mumbled.

The
ispettore
looked at me bewildered. “But you’ve already seen her dead!”

I wanted to break away from the
agente
’s grip. The
ispettore
thought I had killed Meredith. Everyone thought I’d killed Meredith.

I wanted to go back to my cell, to be by myself. I wanted everyone to stop looking at me. I wanted to breathe. I couldn’t get Meredith’s face out of my mind—the complete absence of expression, the grayish yellow tone of her skin, the dark and vivid red of the wound. I couldn’t reconcile the Meredith I knew with the image I’d just seen.

Instead of walking me to my cell, the
agente
led me into the infirmary and directed me to sit down in front of the doctor on duty.

“What happened?” he asked, leaning forward.

“Meredith’s autopsy photos,” I said, my hysteria having dwindled to a sniffle. “I just saw them for the first time.”

“I can prescribe a sedative for you.”

“No. Please, I just want to go back to my cell.”

He paused a moment, then met the
agente
’s eyes. “As you wish,” he said.

Chapter 22

June–September 2008

E
verything—and nothing—changed the morning in late June when I was called downstairs to sign yet another document. The guard barely raised his eyes while pulling out the paperwork and pointing to the line awaiting my signature. When I finished, he handed me the last copy from the stapled pile. I recognized Mignini’s illegible scrawl and Judge Matteini’s loopy cursive that always made the
M
look like a
W. Watteini
.

It was only after I went back upstairs and sat down on my bed that I read:

—NOTICE OF THE CONCLUSION OF THE PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATIONS—

The Prosecutors Dr. Giuliano Mignini and Dr. Manuela Comodi;

considering the documents in the proceedings indicated in the epigraph registered on 6/11/2007 in regard to:

KNOX, Amanda Marie, born in Seattle (the state of Washington—USA) on 7/9/1987 . . . presently detained in the Casa Circondariale Capanne of Perugia;

SOLLECITO, Raffaele, born in Bari on 3/26/1984 . . . presently detained in the Casa Circondariale of Terni;

GUEDE, Rudy Hermann, born in Agou (the Ivory Coast) on 12/25/1986 . . . presently detained in the Casa Circondariale of Perugia;

persons subject to the preliminary investigations all, for having, in collaboration, murdered Kercher Meredith by strangulation and a profound lesion by a pointed, cutting weapon . . . and taking advantage of the late hour and the isolated position of the apartment . . . and having committed the act for trivial reasons while Guede, in collaboration with the others, committed rape; Knox and Sollecito, for having, in collaboration, carried out of Sollecito’s apartment, without justifiable reason, a large, pointed, and cutting knife; Guede for having, in collaboration with Knox and Sollecito, forced Kercher Meredith to suffer sexual acts, with manual or genital penetration, by means of threat and violence; all because, in collaboration, for having procured for themselves an unjust profit by having taken possession of a sum of 300 euro, two credit cards, and two cell phones, all belonging to the same Meredith; Sollecito and Knox, for having, in collaboration, simulated an attempted robbery with the break-in in the bedroom of Romanelli Filomena, breaking the window with a rock found around the house and left in the room, near the window, all in order to assure themselves impunity for the crimes of murder and rape, attempting to attribute the responsibility to strangers having entered the apartment.

Events having occurred the night between 1 and 2 November 2007.

Knox, for having, with further acts executed in the same criminal design, knowing him to be innocent, in declarations made to the Police Flying Squad of Perugia on 6 November 2007, falsely blamed Diya Lumumba, called “Patrick,” of the murder of Kercher Meredith, in order to assure herself impunity for everyone and in particular Guede Rudy Hermann, also of color like Lumumba, in Perugia the night between 5 and 6 November 2007.

NOTIFY

the persons subject to the preliminary investigations: that the preliminary investigations are concluded.

Oh my God. I’ve been formally charged with murder
.

I wanted to scream, “This is not who I am! You’ve made a huge mistake! You’ve got me all wrong!”

I was now fluent enough in Italian to see how ludicrous the charges were. Along with murder, I was charged with illegally carrying around Raffaele’s kitchen knife. It was galling. Real crimes had been committed against Meredith; the police owed her a real investigation. Instead, they were spinning stories to avoid admitting they’d arrested the wrong people.

I shouldn’t have been thrown when I received these formal charges. For nearly eight months, I’d been jailed as a suspect. I’d been expecting my indictment to be sent down since the awful day when Carlo had made me face up to the gruesome autopsy photos.

But a tiny part of me had held out hope that when Mignini spread all the evidence before him, he would see that his theory didn’t hold up.

Luciano and Carlo came to see me soon after.

“Now’s our chance to stand up and fight,” Luciano said, punching the air. “This is what we’ve been waiting for.”

Finally we could combat all the misinformation leaked to the media. We could explain that the knife had never left the kitchen, the striped sweater had never gone missing, the receipts weren’t for bleach, the underwear I bought wasn’t sexy. We could describe how the prosecution had come up with the bloody footprints. We’d explain why Meredith’s blood had mixed with my DNA in our shared bathroom, how my blood got on the faucet, and correct the notion that the crime was a sex game gone wrong. We could object to the prosecutor painting me as a whore and a murderer. My lawyers would finally get to see the prosecution’s documents.
No more surprises.

“Our forensic experts are already reviewing the files to prepare for the pretrial in September,” Carlo added. “Now that the investigation’s over, we’ll have a different presiding judge. We hope whoever it is will have a better sense of logic than Claudia Matteini.”

“You have to be kidding me! We have to wait all summer?” I moaned.

That’s when I found out that the Italian courts shut down almost completely for the last half of July and all of August.

I spent that afternoon jogging alone: round and round in small, dizzying circles in the courtyard outside the chapel. I’d long ago figured it took about eighty laps to make a mile. Suddenly, Argirò opened the door. “Kuh-nox,” he called, waving me inside.

Odd.
Prison is all about routine, and this had never happened before.

“What’s going on?” I asked, confused.

“We’re taking you off your restricted status.”

Just like that. While I was being investigated, I was under judge’s orders to be kept separate for my own safety. But now, as an accused criminal, I passed from the judge’s responsibility to the prison’s.

Up to that moment, I didn’t believe this would ever happen. Only a few days had passed since I’d been moved out of Cera’s cell due to mutually agreed-upon incompatibility—I wasn’t fastidious enough for her, and to me, she was intolerably controlling—and switched to a cell with two big-bosomed, middle-aged sisters named Pica and Falda, who defined themselves with the politically incorrect word
zingare
—the feminine for “gypsies.” They were kind and uneducated—neither had learned to tell time, and when I tried to explain that Seattle was on the other side of the globe, they didn’t know what I was talking about. Finally, I realized they didn’t know the earth was round.

Prison officials had always claimed I was kept separate—I had cellmates but, with the exception of a few prescribed events, couldn’t interact with the broad population—because other inmates would probably beat me. Now, with only the mildest caution—“Be careful of the other girls!”—Argirò opened a second door. Instead of having
passeggio
by myself, I was in the company of fifteen sweaty women
.

As soon as I walked outside, the gaggle of prisoners started hooting and hollering, “She’s out! She’s with us! Way to go!”

I was in a concrete-walled area about a third the size of a football field. The ground was covered with hard, orangey-purplish-red rubber. It was the angriest red I’d ever seen—and bare except for a few white plastic benches and dozens of cigarette butts. I didn’t care. This was the most open space I’d seen since coming to prison. I took off in a sprint, making wide loops, skipping, and whooping, “I’m out! I’m out!” My fellow inmates stared, probably thinking I was just as incomprehensible as the media made me out to be.

I introduced myself to women I’d seen around Capanne—at movie time or Mass or guitar class—but hadn’t been able to meet. I’d had only my cellmates for company before, and those relationships were ultimately frustrating and upsetting.

At 3
P.M.,
when
passeggio
ended, we lined up to be patted down by an
agente.
A girl I didn’t know came up to me. “I’m Wilma,” she said. “Will you buy me two packs of cigarettes?”

“I guess,” I mumbled. Caught off-guard, I didn’t know what to say.

I amended. “I’ll buy you one pack.”

That night, I went to my first
socialità
full of pent-up energy I didn’t even know I had. Being thrust in with all these new people—talking and playing Foosball and cards—reminded me of my freshman year in high school.
All I have to do is find my clique and get along.

My excitement didn’t last long. A couple of women came up and started heckling me. “Why are you buying cigarettes for Wilma?” they demanded. “She doesn’t deserve anyone’s help.”

That started a chorus of grumbling: “Fricking
infame
.”

Infame
—“infamous person” or, in prison, “snitch”—was the worst label you could have there. At best you’d be ostracized. At worst you’d be abused by other prisoners.

Wilma, it turned out, was an outcast in this small circle of prisoners. I didn’t know her story, but I felt bad for her. Just as in high school, when I hung out with the less popular crowd, I instinctively sided with her. I spent hours listening to her mope about how sad and confused she was. One day she said, “Amanda, can you explain why everyone hates me?”

By then I’d heard enough of the gossip to figure it out. “It’s because you talk about people behind their backs and tell on prisoners to the guards,” I explained. “Maybe you can change your behavior and people will start liking you.”

Just like high school.

I didn’t expect her outburst at
socialità
that evening. Wilma screamed, “All you people talk badly about me.”

Another prisoner came up to me and demanded, “Why did you tell Wilma everyone hates her?”

I said, “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but you’re not supposed to talk to her! Why did you side with her?”

Wilma’s behavior wasn’t that different from that of other prisoners—most were manipulative and liked to stir up drama—but she wasn’t smart enough to recognize this and to fake loyalty to the other women. People were able to see through her actions.

R
affaele was charged the same day I was. But I was so consumed by figuring out how to navigate this new larger prison world, I hadn’t given him much thought outside of the facts of the case. Within days of our indictment an envelope with his name printed on the back arrived for me. I had never seen his handwriting before, and at first I suspected it was a nasty joke.

As soon as I read the letter, I realized it was real. I was shocked that he was writing me. I’d felt betrayed by the months of silence and by his comments in the press distancing himself from me. And of course there was the issue of his previous claim that I had left his apartment the night of the murder and asked him to lie for me.

He wrote that he’d been aching to contact me, and that it was his lawyers and family who hadn’t permitted him to get in touch. He said everyone had been afraid when we were first arrested, but that now he realized it had been a mistake to abandon me and wrong to submit to police pressure and acquiesce to their theory. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I still care about you. I still think about you all the time.”

I understood. My lawyers had given me the same strict orders.

I felt completely reassured by his letter. It wasn’t lovey-dovey, and that suited me fine. I no longer thought of us as a couple. Now we were linked by our innocence. It was a relief to know we were in this fight together. It was only much later that I learned how his interrogation had been as devastating as mine.

I wrote him back the next morning. I was explicit about not wanting a romantic relationship anymore but added that I wanted the best for him and hoped he was okay. I knew I shouldn’t write about the case, so I only said I was optimistic that our lawyers would prove the prosecution wrong.

As soothing as my correspondence with Raffaele was, I got another letter that summer that undid me, making me realize again how much my situation was affecting my family. My youngest sister, Delaney, who was nine, wrote, “Dear Amanda, I was at the pool a few days ago with Mom, Dad, Ashley, and Deanna. A boy came up and asked if they were my sisters. I said, ‘Yes, but there’s Amanda, too.’

“The boy said, ‘That sister doesn’t count.’

“It made me so sad. What should I say when someone’s mean about you?”

Delaney’s letter had taken two weeks to reach me. My reply wouldn’t get to her for another two. I was as low as I’d been since my first days in prison.

Still, it meant a lot that she’d asked my advice. As the oldest, it meant the world to me that my sisters came to me when they were upset. I was afraid that connection had been lost. I was terrified my family would stop being honest with me for fear that it would somehow wound me.

B
esides the prison
vice-comandante
, Argirò, men were rarely allowed in the women’s ward. One exception was the workers who came on Fridays to fix plumbing and electrical problems. When I was living with Cera, the guard in charge, Luigi, told her he thought I was cute. He often stopped to chat. Once, he sat on my bed and waved in his workers to have their cigarette break in our cell.

On July 4 the shower in my new cell was clogged. I didn’t know how to say “drain” in Italian, so I said, “The hole in the shower won’t let the water down.”

“What hole?” Luigi asked.

I was alone—Pica and Falda were at their prison jobs—and Luigi followed me into the bathroom. As soon as the door closed, he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me to him, leaning forward as if to kiss me. I ducked my head and went stiff, as though a steel rod had been jammed down my spine. Somehow I managed to wriggle out of his grasp. I stumbled out of the bathroom, sat on my bed, and pulled my knees to my chest, shaking.

He didn’t look at me as he came out of the bathroom. He just mumbled that his guys would fix the shower and left.

I knew I couldn’t tell anyone. Luigi could turn this incident against me. What if he called me a liar? Or said I’d come on to him, that I was obsessed with sex—as the prosecution was saying? No one would believe me.