Law & Disorder

Given that they were “flight risks,” as well as apparently highly dangerous individuals who might kill “again,” the court ruled Amanda and Raffaele had to remain in jail pending trial. Even a subsequent plea from Amanda’s mother, Edda, that Amanda be placed under house arrest in Perugia was denied because Amanda hadn’t shown any remorse for her crime. Sound familiar? They would have to remain imprisoned, in legal limbo, until the creaky wheels of Italian justice finally rolled around to trying them.

Forty-seven days after the murder, police went back to the crime scene to look again for evidence. How anything collected this long after the fact could even be considered evidence is beyond me. The bra clasp they retrieved was not in the same place on the floor that video of the original crime scene showed it to be. Remember, just as with the kitchen knife: The difference between evidence and garbage is chain of custody.

I think the reason for this strangely timed evidence hunt is clear. Once the Nike shoeprint was proven to belong to Rudy Guede, the prosecution had nothing to tie Raffaele Sollecito to the scene, and they needed it in a hurry, just as the WM3 prosecution needed the knife from the lake. Whatever the logic, they found a metal bra clasp, presumably Meredith’s, and brought it to the lab for processing. Subsequent analysis, they said, revealed a trace amount of Raffaele’s DNA.

It also revealed the DNA of three other unidentified individuals, but now the prosecution had the “scientific” evidence it was looking for.

Between Edda, her husband Chris Mellas, her ex-husband Curt and their daughter Deanna, Amanda’s family tried to make sure some member was always there in Perugia for her. Her grandmother Liz Huff, Edda’s sister Christina Hagge and Christina’s husband Kevin, Edda’s brother Mick and his wife Janet also spent time in Italy emotionally supporting Amanda. So did Curt’s wife Janet and Amanda’s younger half-sisters Ashley and Delaney. And it wasn’t just family. Amanda’s close friend Madison Paxton spent considerable time in Perugia. The fact that they were allowed visits of only a few hours a week made their lives all the more torturous.

About half a dozen other friends came over to visit her in prison, including David Johnsrud, Jessica Nichols and Andrew Seliber.

Back in Seattle, an important ritual during Amanda’s imprisonment was the weekly telephone call. Each Saturday morning family and friends would gather at Edda and Chris’s house for the allotted ten-minute conversation during which they’d all try to lift each other’s spirits and make Amanda feel as if she still had some connection to back home. There were usually a bunch of people present and sometimes the modest kitchen where the speakerphone was located was packed to overflowing.

The ordeal was proving not only emotionally harrowing but also financially ruinous. The Knox and Mellas families were going through their collective savings and had mortgaged everything they had, but they were dedicated to bringing their girl home.

Several people stepped up to help in any way they could. Thomas Lee Wright is a former motion picture executive for such studios as Paramount and Disney who became a prominent film producer and writer. He and his wife had moved to Mercer Island, Washington because they didn’t want to raise their daughter and son amidst “all of the Hollywood craziness.” Their daughter Sara had been close to Amanda at Seattle Prep, sharing mutual passions for theater, writing and athletics. When Tom heard about the charges against Amanda in Italy, he was distressed but felt it must have been a misunderstanding that “would be cleared up in a matter of days.”

“Ten days in was when I realized it was not going to clear up and [Amanda and her family] were in a heap of trouble. So I called Edda and dove in with both feet.”

Judge Michael Heavey, whose daughter Shana was another of Amanda’s friends at Seattle Prep, partnered with Tom in establishing Friends of Amanda (FOA). They recruited attorney and media commentator Anne Bremner as an advocate for the cause and were joined by Jim Lovering, a retired businessman who became the organization’s archivist and Internet wizard. Together they created two websites: “Friendsofamanda.org” would post up-to-date information regarding the case for her supporters and the media. “Amanda-defensefund. org” would be run by the family and accept contributions for her defense. FOA mobilized a wide array of resources and received hundreds of thousands of hits from around the world. Among other tasks, they eventually collected hundreds of thousands of documents and pieces of evidence.

As was true with West Memphis and the effort spearheaded by Lorri Davis, Wright, Heavey and Lovering’s work demonstrates the Herculean undertaking that any legal defense represents. And this one was complicated by a trial and imprisonment that took place 6,000 miles and nine time zones away.

Despite his media background, Tom made the decision early on that he would not approach the case as a writer or a filmmaker because he didn’t want any of his decisions to be clouded by story considerations or the prospect of personal gain. He only wanted to be a friend and felt he needed complete objectivity to be effective. He was the one who brought my old colleague Steve Moore into the case after Steve sent an email to Friends of Amanda volunteering his services. Tom took it upon himself to vet all volunteers carefully to make sure they had competence and no ulterior motives or hidden agenda. After lunching with Steve near Pepperdine in Malibu, Tom showed him crime scene footage the police had taken. Steve was aghast at the apparent incompetence and cavalier attitude.

Their influence reached not only far, but high as well. On her way to the airport to attend the 2008 Democratic Convention, Washington Senator Maria Cantwell stopped off at the Heavey home in West Seattle and met with Edda for more than an hour, pledging to do everything she could. Her support was both public and behind-the-scenes and didn’t let up until Amanda was freed.

Senator Cantwell had searing personal experience that allowed her to empathize with the Mellas and Knox families. In 1977, when she was nineteen, her twenty-one-year-old brother Daniel was charged with the murder of a twenty-six-year-old woman who had rented an apartment from his and Maria’s mother. The case went on for three years with three prosecutors, two sets of defense attorneys, two changes of venue and two trials before a jury took only twenty minutes to acquit Daniel. Maria Cantwell knew the devastation a false charge brings to a family.

Ultimately, along with Cantwell, who remained a vociferous public advocate, personages as diverse as developer Donald Trump and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would call for justice for Amanda.

Everything about the case against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito was based on supposition, preconceived ideas and questionable testimony. Near the end of March 2008, as both defendants cooled their heels in Italian prisons awaiting an appeal by the Corte Suprema di Cassazione (Supreme Court of Cassation) in Rome regarding their imprisonment before trial, Rudy Guede asked to speak to Giuliano Mignini. It seemed he had just remembered that the intruder he’d run into the night of the murder was, in fact, Raffaele. He also remembered hearing Amanda’s voice.

Rudy gained himself no credibility with his shifting story, but it wasn’t enough to get the other two out. The Italian Supreme Court upheld Mignini’s satanic ritual/sex orgy theory and even cited the Nike shoeprint as evidence, even though Rudy later admitted the print was probably his. Raffaele also had a pair of Nikes.

Amanda spent her twenty-first birthday, July 9, 2008, in Capanne Prison. Her mother was allowed to visit, but not to bring a cake.