Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 56

After that, we were back to waiting again. The independent experts, Dr. Carla Vecchiotti and Dr. Stefano Conti, forensic medicine professors at Rome's university, La Sapienza, were sworn in, and Judge h.e.l.lmann charged them with figuring out whether a new a.n.a.lysis of the DNA on the knife and bra clasp was possible. If not, he wanted to know if the original results of the prosecution's forensic expert were reliable: Were the interpretations of the genetic profiles correct? Had there been risk of contamination? The experts were given three months from the day the prosecution turned over the evidence.

While the experts were working, Judge h.e.l.lmann moved ahead with the new testimony he'd granted. During the first trial, Prosecutor Mignini had called the witness Antonio Curatolo, a homeless man referred to as "the stepping-stone leading us up to the murder." Curatolo had testified that he'd seen Raffaele and me arguing on the basketball court in Piazza Grimana. It was key evidence in our conviction, because it contradicted our alibi that we'd never left Raffaele's apartment. But it had been left unclear which night Curatolo was describing-Halloween or November 1?

Curatolo was recalled as a witness, but he came under different circ.u.mstances. The onetime homeless man was now in prison himself, on drug charges. He arrived in the courtroom flanked by two guards, just as Raffaele and I were. As he took the stand he said that the night he saw Raffaele and me, "there were a lot of young people in costume" joking around. "There were other people who were messing around. It was a holiday." Buses were there to take young people to discos outside town.

Raffaele's lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, asked, "So you're saying, the night that you saw Raffaele and Amanda, there were people wearing masks and in buses?"

To the defense it was obvious this description matched Halloween, not November 1, a religious holiday, when the clubs were closed and no buses had been hired for the night.

Curatolo had also testified that the day after seeing Raffaele and me in Piazza Grimana, he saw Carabinieri and men dressed in white-"Martians," he called the Polizia Scientifica in their anticontamination suits. Since the Polizia Scientifica came to the villa on November 2, this meant that Curatolo must have seen Raffaele and me on November 1.

"So the very next day that you saw Raffaele and Amanda, there were police officers and people in white suits at the villa?" Prosecutor Mignini asked.

"I am as certain of that as I am sure that I am sitting in this chair now," Curatolo told the appeals court.

The prosecutor and civil lawyers insisted that some of the discos were open on November 1, 2007, and that there were buses in Piazza Grimana.

Fortunately the court allowed our defense teams to call new witnesses, the managers of Perugia's large discos, to the stand. Halloween, they said, is "the biggest night of the year." A witness from Red Zone, where I'd gone with Meredith and the guys downstairs, added, "There were no buses" on November 1.

"I'm certain," she said, "because discos focus on Halloween, which is a big draw. It's like New Year's Eve."

Under the judges' questioning, Curatolo talked about his personal history: "I was an anarchist, then I read the Bible and became a Christian anarchist," he said. He confirmed that he was now in prison, adding, "I haven't quite understood why yet." Asked if he'd used heroin in 2007, he answered, "I have always used drugs. I want to clarify that heroin is not a hallucinogen."

I'd prepared notes for a statement but abandoned them. Curatolo was doing a good enough job muddling his witness statement and making a fool of the prosecution, who still claimed him to be a "decisive"-aka "super"-witness.

That night I was able to call home. Mom, Chris, and Madison were in Perugia, but I called Seattle each week to talk to my dad and stepmom, my sisters, Oma, my aunts, uncles, and cousins, and a.s.sorted college friends. After a chorus of "h.e.l.los," everyone asked, "How'd it go?"

They'd seen the news but wanted to hear firsthand from me.

"Curatolo didn't know what he was talking about, poor guy. If my life didn't depend on his being wrong, I'd just feel bad for him," I reported.

"The broadcasts here are saying that he's a confused drug addict!" someone cried.

It was ironic that I learned from my family in Seattle what the journalists in the courtroom were thinking. "The media are really figuring it out this time," my family rea.s.sured me. "It's going to be okay."

The media, yes. But what about the judges and jury? I wondered. Curatolo hadn't been convincing in the first trial, either, but his testimony had contributed to our conviction.

Everything hung on the independent review.

On the phone, during prison visits, in my letters, buoyed by the people I loved, I allowed my confidence to gain over my doubt and fear. But I spent most of my time on my own. I was a prisoner. Until someone unlocked my cell and told me I was being let out of this suffocating h.e.l.l, I could only hope. But for the past three-plus years, hope had let me down.

Back in January, when Judge h.e.l.lmann swore in the independent experts, Conti and Vecchiotti, he gave them ninety days to a.n.a.lyze the forensic data and submit their conclusions to the court. The clock would start when the prosecution handed over the evidence.

Before the first trial, the defense began requesting forensic data from the prosecution in the fall of 2008, but DNA a.n.a.lyst Patrizia Stefanoni dodged court orders from two different judges. She gave the defense some of, but never all, the information. Now it was Conti and Vecchiotti's turn to try to get the raw data that Stefanoni had interpreted to draw conclusions about the genetic profiles on the knife and the bra clasp. Stefanoni continued to argue that the information was unnecessary. Not until May 11, under additional orders from Judge h.e.l.lmann, did she finally comply.

Now the independent experts needed more time. My lawyers said judges always grant leeway when experts ask. Before the court withdrew to decide whether to approve the delay, I made a statement. "I've spent more than three and a half years in prison as an innocent person," I told the court. "It's both frustrating and mentally exhausting. I don't want to remain in prison, unjustly, for the rest of my life. I recall the beginning of this whole thing, when I was free. I think of how young I was then, how I didn't understand anything. But nothing is more important than finding the truth after so many prejudices and mistakes. I ask the court to grant the extra time, so that the experts may complete a thorough a.n.a.lysis. Thank you."

I knew in advance from my lawyers that the independent experts were going to ask for more time, so I tried to imagine what that meant to me. An extra forty-five days meant the appeal would likely last through the summer. I dealt with the wait by reminding myself that another month and a half was tolerable as long as it meant that I wouldn't spend my life in prison. I thought it was critical to get this idea across to the judges and jury.

Judge h.e.l.lmann and the court retired to chambers, only to return shortly afterward, agreeing to give the forensics experts until June 30 to deliver their report.

About a week later came a reminder not to get overconfident. Police Holiday is an annual event in Umbria, when awards are traditionally handed out for outstanding police work. Perugia is the region's capital.

When Luciano came to Capanne for our weekly Wednesday meeting, he told me that a special award had been given to officers in the Squadra Mobile for its work on Meredith's murder investigation.

The citation read: "To recognize elevated professional capabilities, investigative ac.u.men, and an uncommon operative determination. They conducted a complex investigation that concluded in the arrest of the authors of the murder of the British student that had taken place in the historic center of Perugia."

Four of the sixteen police officers receiving the Police Holiday award were named in the police's slander charge against me. They included Vice Superintendent Marco Chiacchiera, whose "investigative instinct" led him to randomly select Raffaele's kitchen knife from the drawer as the murder weapon; Subst.i.tute Commissioner and Homicide Chief Monica Napoleoni; and Chief Inspector Rita Ficarra.

The news infuriated me. I knew it was just another face-saving ploy. How could they commend the officer who had hit me during my interrogation and those who had done so much wrong?

But I wasn't surprised. It was completely in line with the prosecution's tactics to discredit my supporters and me. Mignini had charged my parents with slander for an interview they gave to a British newspaper in which they told the story of my being slapped during the interrogation. He was the one who had charged me with slandering the police.

Journalists had started cataloguing the mistakes in the investigation. Most were made by the Squadra Mobile, which relied on intuitive judgments instead of evidence. It was the same haste-makes-waste argument that Luciano and Carlo had made in their closing arguments for the first trial, focusing on the pressure police had been under to arrest a suspect and how that had led to police errors.

British journalist Bob Graham interviewed Mignini for an article in The Sun that came out on Police Holiday. Mignini confided in Graham that he chose the parts of my interrogation that suited his purposes. He also said that my interpreter at the questura that night was "more investigator than translator." When Graham asked the prosecutor why there was no evidence of me in Meredith's bedroom, Mignini told him, "Amanda might theoretically have instigated the murder while even staying in the other room."

Mistakes or not, the police's message was crystalline: We're not backing down now.

My focus was on the courtroom, where there was more new testimony to hear.

Mario Alessi was a brick mason given a life sentence for murdering an infant boy in 2006. He was in the same prison as Rudy Guede, and had written to Raffaele's lawyers that he had information for our defense:

Alessi said he went outside for exercise with other prisoners, including Rudy Guede, on November 9, 2009. "Guede told me he wanted to ask me for some confidential advice," Alessi said in his court deposition. "There wasn't a day that Guede and I didn't spend time together ...

"In this context, on November 9, 2009, Guede told me that in the following days, and in particular on November 18, 2009, he had his appeal and he was reflecting over whether to ... tell the truth about Meredith Kercher's murder. In particular, he asked me what the consequences could be to his position if he gave statements that reconstructed a different truth about what happened the night of the murder.

"I responded that I wasn't a lawyer, and I didn't know what to say, but that I believed it would be useful to tell the truth. So he confided in me, describing what happened the night of the murder."

Guede told Alessi that he and a friend had run into Meredith in a bar a few days before the murder. On the night of November 1, Alessi said, the two men surprised Meredith at the villa and, "in an explicit manner," asked her to have a threesome.

Alessi said that Meredith "rejected the request. She even got up and ordered Guede and his friend to leave the house. At this point Guede asked where the bathroom was, and he stayed in the bathroom for a little while, ten to fifteen minutes at most. Immediately after, reentering the room, he found a scene that was completely different-that is, Kercher was lying with her back to the floor and his friend held her by the arms. Rudy straddled her and started to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e. While Guede told me these things, he was upset and tears came to his eyes ...

"The second part of his secret came out while we were in our respective cells ... at a certain point he and his friend changed positions, in the sense that his friend attempted to have oral s.e.x with Meredith while Guede was behind. He specified in particular that his friend was in front of Meredith, who was on her knees, while Guede was behind Meredith, with his knee on her back. Kercher tried to wriggle out ...

"Kercher tried to get away, and at this point Guede's friend took a knife with an ivory-colored handle out of his pocket. While Kercher tried to get away, turning around, she was wounded by the blade. At this point, seeing as she began to bleed, Guede, finding his hands covered in blood, let her go. While Guede tried to staunch the wound with clothes, his friend reprimanded him, saying, 'Let's finish her. If not, this wh.o.r.e will have us rot in prison.' At this point, his friend killed her, stabbing her various times while Guede gathered clothes to staunch the wounds. Then, realizing that she wasn't breathing anymore, he left."

After the murder, Guede went to a club and met his murderer friend, who gave him money and told him to flee Italy.

Alessi said, "Guede, at my questioning, responded that he couldn't say whether or not it was the money that was stolen from Kercher. I also asked Guede how he could explain the broken window and the rock that was found in Kercher's house, but Guede responded that while he was in the house he hadn't heard a sound and didn't know anything about that window."

Alessi said that when he suggested that Guede tell the truth, "because there were two innocent people in prison ... Guede responded that he certainly wasn't the one to put those two in the middle of everything but rather the prosecution ...

"I can also refer to an episode in Cell No. 11 in the presence of Antonio De Cesare, Ciprian Trinca, and Rudy Guede"-all prisoners.

"We were playing cards and, once again, in the course of a television program, Meredith's murder was brought up, and at that point Luca Maori, Raffaele Sollecito's defense counsel, was being interviewed. Guede made a comment against Sollecito ..."