9.4 Now, a fact of assured relevance in favor of the current appellants, in the sense of excluding
their material participation to the homicide, even in the hypothesis of their presence in the house
of via della Pergola, lies in the absolute absence of biological traces referable to them (apart from
the hook of which we will discuss later) in the room of the homicide or on the victim’s body,
where in contrast multiple traces attributable to Guede were found.
It is incontrovertibly impossible that that in the crime scene (constituted by a room of little
dimensions: ml 2,91x3,36, as indicated by the blueprint reproduced at f. 76) no traces would be
retrieved referable to the current appellants had they participated in the murder of Kercher.
No trace assignable to them has been, in particular, observed on the sweatshirt worn by the
victim at the moment of the aggression and nor on the underlying shirt, as it should have been in
case of participation in the homicide (instead, on the sleeve of the aforementioned sweater traces
of Guede were retrieved: ff. 179-180).
The aforementioned negative circumstance works as a counterbalance to the data, already
highlighted, on the absolute impracticality of the hypothesis of a posthumous selective cleaning
capable of removing specific biological traces while leaving others.
9.4.1 Given this, we now note, with respect to Amanda Knox, that her presence inside the house,
the location of the murder, is a proven fact in the trial, in accord with her own admissions, also
contained in the memoriale with her signature, in the part where she tells that, as she was in the
kitchen, while the young English woman had retired inside the room of same Ms. Kercher
together with another person for a sexual intercourse, she heard a harrowing scream from her
friend, so piercing and unbearable that she let herself down squatting on the floor, covering her
ears tight with her hands in order not to hear more of it. About this, the judgment of reliability
expressed by the lower [a quo] judge [Nencini, ed.] with reference to this part of the suspect’s
narrative, [and] about the plausible implication from the fact herself was the first person
mentioning for the first time [46] a possible sexual motive for the murder, at the time when the
detectives still did not have the results from the cadaver examination, nor the autopsy report, nor
the witnesses’ information, which was collected only subsequently, about the victim’s terrible
scream and about the time when it was heard (witnesses Nara Capezzali, Antonella Monacchia
and others), is certainly to be subscribed to. We make reference in particular to those
declarations that the current appellant [Knox] produced on 11. 6. 2007 (p.96) inside the State
Police headquarters. On the other hand, in the slanderous declarations against Lumumba, which
earned her a conviction, the status of which is now protected as final judgement [giudicato],
[they] had themselves exactly that premise in the narrative, that is: the presence of the young
American woman inside the house in via della Pergola, a circumstance which nobody at that time
– except obviously the other people present inside the house – could have known (quote p. 96).
According to the slanderous statements of Ms. Knox, she had returned home in the company of
Lumumba, who she had met by chance in Piazza Grimana, and when Ms. Kercher arrived in the
house, Knox’s companion directed sexual attentions toward the young English woman, then he
went together with her in her room, from which the harrowing scream came. So, it was
Lumumba who killed Meredith and she could affirm this since she was on the scene of crime
herself, albeit in another room.
Another element against her is the mixed DNA traces, her and the victim’s one, in the “small
bathroom”, an eloquent proof that anyway she had come into contact with the blood of the latter,
which she tried to wash away from herself (it was, it seems, diluted blood, while the biological
traces belonging to her would be the consequence of epithelial rubbing).
The fact is very suspicious, but it’s not decisive, besides the known considerations about the sure
nature and attribution of the traces in question.
Nonetheless, even if we deem the attribution certain, the trial element would not be unequivocal,
since it may show also a posthumous touching of that blood, during the probable attempt of
removing the most visible traces of what had happened, maybe to help cover up for someone or
to steer away suspicion from herself, but not contributing to full certainty about her direct
involvement in the murderous action. Any further and more pertaining interpretation in fact
would be anyway resisted by the circumstance – this is decisive indeed – that no trace linkable to
her was found on the scene of crime or on the victim’s body, so it follows – if we concede
everything – that her contact with the victim’s blood happened in a subsequent moment and in
another room of the house.
Another element against her is certainly constituted by the false accusations [calunnia] against
Mr. Lumumba, afore-mentioned above.
It is not understandable, in fact, what reason could have driven the young woman to produce such
serious accusations. The theory that she did so in order to escape psychological pressure from
detectives seems extremely fragile, given that the woman [47] could not fail to realize that such
accusations directed against her boss would turn out to be false very soon, given that, as she
knew very well, Mr. Lumumba had no relationship with Ms. Kercher nor with the Via della
Pergola house. Furthermore, the ability to present an ironclad alibi would have allowed
Lumumba to obtain release and subsequently the dropping of charges.
However, the said calunnia is another circumstantial element against the current appellant,
insofar as it can be considered a strategy in order to cover up for Mr. Guede, whom she had an
interest to protect because of fear of retaliatory accusations against her. This is confirmed by the
fact that Mr. Lumumba, like Mr. Guede, is a man of colour, hence the indication of the first one
would be safe in the event that the latter could have been seen by someone while entering or
exiting the apartment.
And moreover, the staging of a theft in Romanelli’s room, which she is accused of, is also a
relevant point within an incriminating picture, considering the elements of strong suspicion
(location of glass shards – apparently resulting from the breaking of a glass window pane caused
by the throwing of a rock from the outside – on top of, but also under clothes and furniture), a
staging, which can be linked to someone who – as an author of the murder and a flatmate
[titolare] with a formal [“qualified”] connection to the dwelling – had an interest to steer
suspicion away from himself/herself, while a third murderer in contrast would be motivated by a
very different urge after the killing, that is to leave the apartment as quickly as possible. But also
this element is substantially ambiguous, especially if we consider the fact that when the postal
police arrived – they arrived in Via della Pergola for another reason: to search for Ms. Romanelli,
the owner of the telephone SIM card found inside one of the phones retrieved in via Sperandio –
the current appellants themselves, Sollecito specifically, were the ones who pointed out the
anomalous situation to the officers, as nothing appeared to be stolen from Ms. Romanelli’s room.
Elements of strong suspicion are also in the inconsistencies and lies which the suspect woman
committed over the statements she released on various occasions, especially in the places where
her narrative was contradicted by the telephone records showing different incoming SMS
messages; by the testimonies of Antonio Curatolo about the presence of [the same] Amanda
Knox in piazza Grimana in the company of Sollecito, and of Mario Quintavalle about her
presence inside the supermarket the morning of the day after the murder, maybe to buy
detergents. Despite this, the features of intrinsic inconsistency and poor reliability of the
witnesses, which were objected to many times during the trial, do not allow to attribute
unconditional trust to their versions, in order to prove with reassuring certainty the failure, and so
the falsehood, of the alibi presented by the suspect woman, who claimed to have been at her
boyfriend’s home since the late afternoon of November 1st until the morning of the following
day. Mr. Curatolo (an enigmatic character: a clochard, drug addicted and dealer) [48] besides the
fact that his declarations were late and the fact that he was not foreign to judiciary showing-off in
judicial cases with a strong media impact, he was also contradicted about his reference to young
people waiting for public buses to leave in the direction of disco clubs in the area, since it was
asserted that the night of the murder the bus service was not operational; and also the reference to
masks and jokes, which he says he witnessed that evening, would lead to believe that it was on
Halloween night, on October 31., and not on Nov. 1. instead. The latter point apparently balances
– still within a context of uncertainty and ambiguousness – the witness’ reference to (regarding
the context where he reportedly noticed the two suspects together) the day before the one when
he noticed (at an afternoon hour) an unusual movement of Police and Carabinieri, and in
particular people wearing white suites and head covers (as if they were extra-terrestrials) entering
the house in Via della Pergola (obviously on November 2., after the discovery of the body).
