Amanda's family says she's scaredThey're calling it the "Trial of the Century" in Italy. Seattle exchange student Amanda Knox is the so-called "angel-faced" centerpiece of a murder mystery.
And now, the Knox trial is coming to a head in a courtroom in Perugia after the two-month summer break.
I traveled to Perugia this summer for a first-hand look at the trial and the players involved. Perugia is a beautiful city, deep in the hills of Italy's Umbria region.
It's well-known for its jazz festival and its university, a magnet for exchange students like Knox, who came to study like thousands of college students from around the world.
But she'd only been in Perugia for about a month when her Italian adventure turned into a nightmare.
Knox now finds herself at the center of a very different world. In the basement of an old Perugia building, a six-member jury and judge consider her fate and that of her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaelle Sollecito.
They had only been dating for about a week.
In the courtroom, I watched them both smile, looking calm and confident like normal young college students. But the judge and jury are struggling to uncover the real story: Could they really be murderers?
That's what Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini believes. He says the couple sexually assaulted, then tortured and stabbed Amanda's British roomate, Meredith Kercher, in the cottage the girls shared.
A third man, Rudy Guede has already been convicted for his part in what was called a "drug-crazed sex game" gone wrong.
Disputing the evidence
The Knox/Sollecito defense is trying to convince the judge and jury that Guede acted alone. He and Meredith Kercher had been at the same Halloween party the night before. The girls' cottage window was broken, and a rock found inside. Two witnesses testified that Guede used a rock before to break a window and steal from 'them.'
The defense insists that his DNA was on Meredith's body and his bloody handprint was on her pillow.
"His was the only DNA found in that room besides Meredith's. His are the only fingerprints. He's the only other person they have definitive evidence of at the crime scene," says Knox's mother, Edda Melles. "So I'm hoping the jury will see there's no evidence of Amanda there so she couldn't have been part of it"
Melles told me that "Amanda's lawyers say unequivocally that there is no objective evidence that connects her to this crime -- none. There is no physical evidence, there are no eyewitnesses. There's nothing that connects her to that crime."
But prosecutors argue Guede was not alone. They say Knox and Sollecito helped kill Kercher, then staged a burglary to cover it up.
Prosecutors claim six pieces of physical evidence place Knox and Sollecito at the murder scene.
But her defense is trying to pick that evidence apart. Their forensics experts, including Francesco Vinci, have testified the knife recovered from Rafaelle's apartment was too big to have been the murder weapon.
They say bloody footprints don't match Amanda and Rafaelle and that bits of Rafaelle's DNA on Meredith's bra clasp were tainted. They argue the evidence was compromised.
Vinci testified that DNA recovered on the blade of the knife recovered at Sollecito's apartment, and DNA mixed with Meredith Kercher's blood in her house, is not a match with Knox as the prosecution contends.
"The prosecution has presented little bits of evidence that Amanda's DNA is in her own bathroom -- well, 'duh.' She lives there," Melles says. "They've presented all this weird circumstantial stuff that doesn't prove she's connected to the crime. But that's the picture they're trying to paint."
Melles spent much of her summer in Perugia watching the trial inch along. But she is back in Seattle now where she teaches school. Amanda's father, Curt Knox, is in Perugia and will be there until October 4th. Her parents try to have a family member there whenever court is in session.
'Confession' at issue
Knox told police she came home after spending the night and smoking some pot at Rafaelle's apartment. She says the front door was ajar and she went inside, and after a shower noticed blood spatters in the bathroom.
Police found Meredith's body in her locked bedroom. Her throat had been slit, and her bloody bra was on the floor. There were bloody handprints on her pillow and furniture.
Barbie Nadeau, a journalist who writes for Newsweek and the online newspaper The Daily Beast, has covered the Knox-Sollecito trial from the beginning. She believes Knox's own words and behavior after the murder are the real reason she's on trial.
"It gives you pause that she has no idea about what happened in that house," Nadeau says.
"She initially said she was in the house, that another man killed Meredith Kercher. That works against her. Probably the only reason Amanda Knox is on trial right now is because of that confession -- that 'false confession,' as they call it, where she said 'I was in the house, I heard the screams'.
"And they describe in great detail how she held her hands over her ears. That is basically why we're on trial, why we're having this hearing right now, why all this is happening..that is the bottom line."
But Amanda testified her statements were "coerced" in a grueling interrogation. Her defense team will present an expert to explain how she could have been pushed into saying she was there.
"When you think about that fact she had no lawyer present, she was young, she didn't speak the language, they were threatening her, they were hitting her, I think all that comes into play," her mom said.
Knox's father, Curt Knox told me, "Rudy fled. Amanda and Raffaelle stayed. We asked Amanda: 'Do you want to come home?' She had a chance to come home. She said 'No, I want to stay and help police.'"
Extensive local coverage
The people of Perugia have endured months of tabloid trial coverage, some of which may have influenced their opinions. That's a concern for the Knox team.
The judge and jury are not sequestered. They're able to see all the coverage that the family calls "character assasination."
"This is an Italian court case, it's not an American court case and, so, in the Italian system the jury's not sequestered, and the jury pays a lot of attention to what's happening, other than the testimony," said Nadeau.
When Amanda's family posed for photos in an Italian women's magazine, there was a flurry of articles about whether their clothes were appropriate.
"It's really hard on me and on the family to read that kind of garbage journalism, but hopefully it's not affecting the trial," Melles said.
"They've said things about Amanda that were totally untrue. They've said things about a lot of us in the family, talked about what we're wearing, instead of focusing on the evidence in this case.
"Maybe they do that because there is no evidence in this case, so they find something else to report on. I hope the few journalists that think it's more important to report on what I'm wearing, or where her sisters get their picture taken in town, I'm hoping the jury's not reading that."
The Knox family says their daughter is a normal kid from Seattle Prep high school and UW honor student. They insist she is incapable of the horrors the night Meredith Kercher was killed.
They say they've been financially ruined, and emotionally devastated.
"Well we're sick, you know, just sick with worry," says Amanda's mom. "Any parent of a child who's been accused of a horrific crime they didn't commit, I think they could understand how we're doing."
And, her mother tells me despite her smiles, Amanda is scared. They are certain she is innocent, but they are all afraid that if she's found guilty, an appeal could take years. And the nightmare will never end.
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