Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 30

"Yes, Rudy. You know him?"

"Vaguely," I answered, shrugging.

"Vaguely, huh? We'll see what he says about that," the cop said.

I didn't respond but tried to act confident so he wouldn't think he was getting to me. I was thinking, Guede won't have anything to say about me. He doesn't know me.

On November 20, German police found Guede in Germany, where he'd fled on November 3, the day after Meredith's body was discovered. He was riding a train without a ticket when he was picked up and taken into custody as a murder suspect.

Within hours, I learned that, before his arrest, he told a friend over Skype, as Perugian detectives listened in, that he'd been at the villa the night of the murder. "I was in the bathroom when it happened," he said. "I tried to intervene, but I wasn't able. Amanda has nothing to do with this ... I fought with a male, and she wasn't there." Neither was Patrick, he said. "The guy was Italian, because we insulted each other and he didn't have a foreign accent."

When his friend asked if it was Raffaele, "the one from TV," Guede said, "I think so, but I'm not sure."

After his arrest, Guede told German police that Meredith had invited him to meet her at the villa, and that they'd been fooling around when he felt sick from a kabob he'd eaten earlier. He said he was in the bathroom listening to his iPod when he heard Meredith scream. A brown-haired Italian man he couldn't identify committed the murder. Guede had tried to help Meredith as she was dying, staunching the blood with towels, but fled when he realized there was nothing he could do. He said he was afraid that because he was black, he'd be condemned for a crime he hadn't committed.

Guede apparently tried to establish an alibi by changing clothes and heading to a downtown dance club hours after the murder. His lawyers later said he'd been so frightened by the murder that he'd gone there to calm himself down. He went to Domus again the next night-attracting attention when he continued dancing during a moment of silence for Meredith. He left town the following day. Carlo and Luciano told me he probably got spooked by the media's attention to the case and decided it was best to leave and take his b.l.o.o.d.y clothes and shoes with him. They guessed that Guede had probably been in the middle of robbing the villa when Meredith came home, and he had attacked her. As soon as they suggested this scenario, it made perfect sense to me. I hadn't been able to put all those pieces together before. Meredith's murder had been so horrific, and my arrest too absurd, it had been impossible for me to think logically about it.

I saw it as a momentary problem that Guede was fingering Raffaele, but this was huge! Guede had backed up my alibi: I hadn't been at the villa. And since I hadn't been there, since I'd been at Raffaele's apartment, Raffaele would be cleared, too. We would both be freed.

Seeing how the prosecution treated Patrick in the two weeks since his arrest should have given me insight into how they worked. My lawyers told me it had been widely reported the week before that Patrick had cash register receipts and multiple witnesses vouching for his whereabouts on the night of November 1. A Swiss professor had testified that he'd been at Le Chic with Patrick that night from 8 P.M. to 10 P.M. But even though Patrick had an ironclad alibi and there was no evidence to prove that he'd been at the villa, much less in Meredith's bedroom at the time of the murder, the police couldn't bear to admit they were wrong.

Patrick went free the day Guede was arrested. Timing his release to coincide with Guede's arrest, the prosecution diverted attention from their mistake. They let him go only when they had Guede to take his place.

Watching the footage of Patrick walking out of prison and standing with his wife and baby, I flashed back to the awful hours in the middle of the night on November 6 when I was being interrogated: I was weak and terrified that the police would carry out their threats to put me in prison for thirty years, so I broke down and spoke the words they convinced me to say. I said, "Patrick-it was Patrick."

I dreamed about the interrogation almost every night during these early days in prison. I would be back in the crowded, close interrogation room, feeling the tension, hearing the officers yelling, reliving the primal panic. I'd wake up sweating, my heart banging. Nothing in my life up to then had compared to that experience. What had happened to me that night? How I could I ever have named Patrick?

As I watched his release, I felt an enormous emotional burden lift from my heart. Justice had been done. The police had cleared him of any wrongdoing. He would no longer have to suffer from my irrational mistake. I clapped my hands together almost gleefully.

Then I immediately felt embarra.s.sed, self-conscious that, in one way or another, the few prisoners and guards who happened to see this would misread my actions as selfish. I didn't know whether the guards were reporting directly to the prosecution, but I knew that everyone thought I was a liar and that anything I said and did would be viewed from that angle-that I was trying to make people think I was innocent by acting happy for Patrick. The police would almost certainly think this was one more instance of Amanda Knox behaving inappropriately-one more example of me as a manipulative, depraved person.

Even if my cellmates didn't see my reaction as putting on an act, I didn't want anyone to know what I was actually thinking and feeling. I was protective of myself in that environment. I felt vulnerable and scared, and I didn't want anyone to see that, even if that's how I really felt.

In truth, I did see Patrick's release as my vindication. By writing my two postinterrogation statements-my memoriali-I had tried to convince the police that Patrick was not Meredith's murderer. And now the prosecution knew that when I retracted my declarations from that night, I was telling the truth: Patrick was innocent. Raffaele and I had been together at his apartment the whole time.

Obviously Mom, Dad, and I wouldn't make it to Seattle for Thanksgiving-which was just two days away-but I did think I would get out of prison and be allowed to stay with my parents while the investigation continued. Christmas in Seattle seemed likely.

The prosecution would understand how, under pressure during my interrogation, I had pictured a scene that wasn't true. I had faith that my lawyers could prove the knife with Meredith's and my DNA was a mistake. My confidence was bolstered by Guede's arrest. I didn't know him. If he was Meredith's murderer, I was sure people would see that Raffaele and I had had nothing to do with it.

Soon I'd be cleared as a suspect.

When Carlo and Luciano came for their next scheduled meeting I was happier than I'd been since before Meredith's murder. We sat in the office where we met each week. Luciano held my hand while Carlo said, "The prosecution has no intention of releasing you, Amanda. They're just subbing Guede in for Patrick."

The prosecution could have redeemed themselves. Instead, they held on to Raffaele and me as their trophies.

I learned that when he signed the warrant for Patrick's release, Giuliano Mignini said that I'd named Patrick to cover up for Guede. It was his way of saying that the police had been justified in their arrest of three people and that any confusion over which three people was my fault. I was made out to be a psychotic killer capable of manipulating the police until my lies, and the law, had caught up with me.

Patrick gave only one interview condemning the police for his unfounded arrest before his lawyer, Carlo Pacelli, advised him to side with the prosecution, who had taken him away in handcuffs, humiliating him in front of his family, in the intimate hours of the morning. After that, he announced that he would never forgive me for what I had done, that I'd ruined him financially and emotionally. He talked about my behavior in his bar, saying that he'd fired me for flirting with his customers. He called me "a lion," "a liar," and "a racist."

The truth is that he had hired me not just to serve c.o.c.ktails but to bring in customers. He had cut back on my days because I was a mediocre waitress and not enough of a flirt to add to his bottom line. Then, after Meredith's murder, I quit because I was afraid to be out alone at night.

I absolutely understood why he was angry with me. I'd put his reputation, his livelihood, and possibly even his life at risk. I felt sick with guilt. I thought he deserved an explanation and an apology from me. When I asked my lawyers if it would be okay for me to write him, they shook their heads no. "I'm afraid it's not as simple as that anymore," Carlo explained. "Patrick's lawyer will hand over anything you send Patrick to the press."

Any communication with Patrick would be publicized and scrutinized and played to my disadvantage, especially if I explained why I'd said his name during my interrogation. I'd have to go into how the police had pressured me, which would only complicate my already poor standing with the prosecution. If I said I'd imagined things during the interrogation, I'd be called crazy. If I said I'd been abused, it would be seen as further proof that I was a liar.

I know my lawyers' interest was to protect me from the prosecution and the media, but I wished then and I wish today that I'd taken the risk of writing to Patrick anyway. I owed him that.

Chapter 20

December 2007

When I first told Carlo and Luciano I wanted to talk to Prosecutor Mignini, I didn't think of it as a rematch between opposing sides. I saw it as a chance to set the record straight. Finally.

"I'm sure if I talk to him in person, I can show him I'm sincere," I told my lawyers. "I can convince him he's been wrong about me. It bothers me that everyone-the prosecutor, the police, the press, the public-thinks I'm a murderer. If I just had the chance to present my real self to Mignini I'm sure I could change that perception. People could no longer say I'm a killer."

Carlo and Luciano looked at me doubtfully. "I'm not sure it's the best idea," Carlo said. "Mignini is cagey. He'll do everything he can to trick you."

"I feel like it's my only hope," I said. "My memoriali didn't change anyone's mind-they just made the prosecution and the media portray me as a liar. I didn't get to tell the judge what happened before she confirmed my arrest. I think I have to explain face-to-face why I named Patrick. I've got to make Mignini understand why I said I'd met Patrick at the basketball court, why I said I'd heard Meredith scream."

"He can be intimidating," Carlo said.

"The thought of meeting with Mignini makes me incredibly anxious," I said. "I know what it's like to be bullied by him. But I have to try."

My thought was that I had misled the police. I needed to take responsibility for my mistake. It seemed like the right, and adult, thing to do.

"Nothing good is going to come of this," Luciano grumbled.

But when my lawyers came to Capanne the following week, they told me that they'd decided, reluctantly, to arrange a second interrogation.

"It's risky," Carlo said. "Mignini will try to pin things on you."

"He already has," I told them.

The first time I met Mignini at the questura, I hadn't understood who he was, what was going on, what was wrong, why people were yelling at me, why I couldn't remember anything. I thought he was someone who could help me (the mayor), not the person who would sign my arrest warrant and put me behind bars.

This time I was ready. This time my lawyers would be there. I'd be rested. My mind was clear. I was going in knowing what I was getting into. I'd take my time and answer all his questions in English. I didn't think I'd be released immediately, but I hoped that giving the prosecutor a clear understanding of what had happened would help me. Then, as new evidence came forward proving my innocence, Mignini would have to let me go.

I now had a standing Wednesday morning appointment with my lawyers. Each week, as I walked into the prison office that doubled as our meeting room, both men would stand up and say, "Ciao, Amanda." Then Luciano would tilt his head back, look up at the ceiling, and say, "Ciao, polizia," before he'd look back at me: "Teniamoci conto degli altri ospiti alla festa"-"Let's keep in mind the other guests at the party."

Luciano's jaunty greeting was not my only clue that the room was almost certainly bugged. My lawyers had been clear: "Never repeat anything about your case to anyone," Carlo said. "I'm sure you're being watched and listened to. I understand your need to talk freely with your parents, but the police will take advantage of anything they can to build their case against you. Please be careful."