The Murder of Meredith Kercher Read Online Free PDF Page A

also said that she had read part of a Harry Potter book at Sollecito’s flat. However, the investigators had seen the book at the villa, not at Sollecito’s, and noted that she had not said anything about bringing it there from Sollecito’s. Sollecito, meanwhile, had told the police that he had worked at his computer most of the evening, and said that when he and Amanda had returned to the villa shortly before the police arrived with Meredith’s telephones, that he had been attempting to call the police to report what he believed had been a break-in at the villa after noticing the shattered window. Up to that point, with a few exceptions, Amanda’s and Sollecito’s accounts of the events appeared to corroborate each other’s whereabouts on the night Meredith was killed.
    However, over the next few days – between Friday, November 2 and the following Tuesday – the police would bring in Amanda and Raffaele for questioning a number of times, and they would also examine Raffaele’s computer and begin looking at each of their mobile phone records with a fine-tooth comb, after which the inconsistencies began to mount.
    Recalling that Raffaele had said that he had used his computer most of the evening of November 1, the investigators naturally examined it in an effort to validate his statement. However, they found that it had not, in fact, been used most of the evening as Raffaele had stated. Investigators also noted that both Amanda’s and Raffaele’s mobile phones had been turned off sometime between 8.00 and 8.30 p.m. on November 1, and had remained turned off until the next morning, which was not consistent with their normal phone usage routines.
    Raffaele’s phone records showed another inconsistency. When the police had arrived at the villa to return Meredith’s phones, Raffaele had told them that he had been trying to call the police to report what he considered a break-in; however, the records showed that he had begun making those calls to the police after the officers arrived to return Meredith’s phones. Both Amanda and Raffaele had also insisted in their initial statements to the police that they had no idea that Meredith lay dead inside her locked bedroom.
    Interestingly, it was not long before investigatorsproduced a witness, Marco Quintavalle, who operated a small shop. Quintavalle told them that a young woman, who he identified as Amanda Knox, had come into his shop early on the morning of November 2, during the time-frame in which she had claimed to have been at Raffaele’s flat. Police noted that Raffaele’s apartment had smelt of bleach that morning, and they had reportedly found a receipt from Quintavalle’s shop at his flat. Although the police did not say if the receipt showed what had been purchased at Quintavalle’s shop that morning, the implication was that they believed bleach and possibly other cleaning supplies had been purchased there and may have been used by Raffaele and Amanda to clean themselves up, and possibly to clean a murder weapon.
    Now that the villa had been completely sealed off and designated as a crime scene, Amanda Knox, along with her two Italian roommates, was essentially homeless, at least in Perugia. By Sunday, November 4, Amanda’s mother was already en route to Italy from her home in Seattle so that she could be with her daughter, who had said that she wanted to remain in Perugia to finish her term at the university and to assist the police in their investigations. Believing that she was travelling to Italy to help her daughter find a new place in which to reside, Edda Mellas would be in for a shock upon her late-night arrival in Perugia when she would learn that Amanda was, by then, being regarded as a possible suspect in Meredith’s murder. She would latertell a reporter for Radar magazine that the news about her daughter’s predicament had made her physically ill. She spent her first morning there searching for an attorney to represent Amanda but, of course,