Day of reckoning beckons for Amanda Knox

Following a murder that gripped the world, will Amanda Knox walk free after nearly four years in jail?

A CRUCIFIX hangs on the wall of the small courtroom in Perugia where Amanda Knox’s fate is set to be announced tomor-        row. The Catholic symbol – testament to the role religion continues to play in Italian society – seems apt in a case which has been characterised by an obsession with sin, sex and Satan.

Ever since 2 November, 2007, when British student Meredith Kercher was found sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in the bedroom of a cottage in the Umbrian hilltown, the world has been captivated by Knox, the beautiful but allegedly evil American, who has served more than 1,000 days of a 26-year sentence for the murder.

With dozens of books, films and documentaries already produced about the sensational case, the interest in the outcome of the appeal is likely to be enormous not only in the US, UK and Italy, but across the globe.

Such is the fascination with “Foxy Knoxy”, who has been branded a “deceptive witch” and a “demonic, she-devil with a dirty soul” by lawyers – her alleged accomplices, former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede, and, indeed Kercher herself, have been virtually erased from the public consciousness.

On one level, this is hardly surprising: according to the prosecution, Knox is guilty of a crime so heinous it defies all preconceptions about womanhood. Harbouring a grudge against her housemate, the student is supposed to have joined in efforts to coerce her into a frenzied sex game, before plunging a knife into her neck.

The trial prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, a man who was later convicted of abusing his position while leading prosecutions related to the infamous Monster of Florence case, even suggested the three were engaged in some sort of Satanic ritual.

Yet Italy’s conflicted attitude towards female eroticism means the country is also attracted to Knox; vilified on a daily basis, she may be, but she was also voted its Woman of the Year – ahead of Carla Bruni – in a 2009 poll.

Throughout the trial and appeal process, Knox was portrayed as emotionally dysfunctional and sexually deviant; in a concerted attempt to smear her character, the 24-year-old student had her love life scrutinised, her private journals exposed and her reactions analysed.

Like Joanne Lees, whose boyfriend Peter Falconio disappeared in the Australian outback, her alleged promiscuity was held up as evidence of moral laxity. Like Lindy Chamberlain, the mother falsely accused of murdering her baby at Ayers Rock, she was accused of not showing enough emotion in the days after Kercher’s body was discovered.

The incriminating evidence used to create this image includes a list of men she claimed to have slept with and a story she once wrote about a vicious rape (she was a creative writing student). Friends told how Kercher had been surprised at the way she left condoms and a vibrator on view in her bathroom and footage of her and Sollecito kissing outside the murder house was shown again and again on Italian television.

Yet family and friends, who have spearheaded a campaign to free her, insist Knox is an all-American girl next-door, while Sollecito’s lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, said she was like Jessica Rabbit – “not bad, just drawn that way”. In their view, Knox is the victim of the kind of sexual stereotyping which has afflicted women since the days when witches were burned at the stake.

So who is the real Amanda Knox? Is she a ruthless femme fatale who killed her flatmate for sexual kicks? Or a hapless innocent whose good looks, naivety and slightly eccentric take on life made her easy prey for the misogyny and superstition still prevalent in parts of Italy? And, either way, what does the way she has been treated reveal about society’s continued prejudices about women and crime?

On the night of Meredith Kercher’s murder, All Saint’s Day, the Leeds University student had dinner at a friend’s house, heading back to the pretty whitewashed cottage she shared with Knox and others at around 9pm. Her body was found the following day after friends of one of their Italian housemates, alerted by Knox and Sollecito, who had found spots of blood and a shattered window, broke down her locked bedroom door. But exactly what happened in between is still a mystery, deepened by a trail of false leads, anomalies and contradictory statements.

What is indisputable is that, in the days that followed, Knox and Sollecito were questioned at length. They claimed to have been at Sollecito’s, smoking marijuana and then going to bed. But, on 5 November, Sollecito contradicted his girlfriend’s alibi saying she could have left his home while he was sleeping. When Knox “confessed” she had been in the cottage when the owner of the bar at which she worked, Patrick Lumumba, killed Kercher, police were confident their investigation was almost over.

But, just days later, there were unexpected developments. First, witnesses came forward to confirm Lumumba had been at his bar all night, so he could not be the killer. Then DNA tests revealed a bloody handprint in Kercher’s room belonged to a fourth person, Rudy Guede, a labourer from the Ivory Coast who had fled to Germany.

All of this might have been expected to put Knox, who insisted her “statement” had been extracted under duress, and Sollecito in the clear, but instead it just made things murkier. When Guede was arrested, he claimed he had gone to the toilet after having consensual sex with Kercher and returned to find her being stabbed by a burglar, who then ran off. Later, however, he changed his story, saying he had heard Knox and Kercher arguing over money, and that the man who stabbed her was Sollecito. Yet though there was strong DNA evidence linking Guede to the crime scene, there was very little to incriminate Knox and Sollecito – just a tiny bit of Sollecito’s DNA on a clasp from Meredith’s bra (which was not found and tested until six weeks after the murder) and some bloody footprints which may or may not have been made by them.

The couple’s original trial also heard about Knox’s DNA on the handle of a knife found at Sollecito’s flat (which had Meredith’s DNA on the blade). But all the DNA evidence was discredited on the grounds of possible contamination, and several experts said the knife in question did not match Kercher’s wounds.

In the absence of hard evidence, the prosecution relied principally on their and the press’s tarnishing of the couple’s reputations. Sollecito’s obsession with knives – he had one hanging above his bed – was highlighted. And then there was Knox. Much was made of her supposed cartwheeling round the police station and of her “smirking” in court.

Before her trial, excerpts from her prison journal were published. She had compiled a list of seven lovers she had in the US and Italy and written about the fan letters she received from young men since her arrest.

It is clear, from everyone who has met her, that Knox is an unusual person, lacking in everyday social skills; her demeanour in the hours after the murder did not endear her either to the authorities or the public. Shortly after the murder, for example, Knox wrote: “The strange thing is after all that has happened I want to write a song about all this.” But some of what has been held against her is a result of a cultural misunderstanding. When she wrote in her diary that “she could kill for a pizza”, Italian papers responded: “If she can kill for a pizza what else would she kill for?” And much more is sexist and unfair; would a man be branded as promiscuous for sleeping with seven women? Even her nickname, Foxy Knoxy, has been twisted; given to her because of her skills on the football field, it has been used to consolidate an image of her as flirtatious and capricious.

Dr Lizzie Seal, a lecturer in criminology at Durham University and author of the book Women, Murder and Femininity, says the way Knox has been portrayed is typical of women caught up in the criminal justice system. “Sexuality is often one of the things the court and popular representations tend to focus on with women accused of violent crime,” she says. “The way in which promiscuity has been emphasised – probably a man would not be represented in the same way.”

The same applies to concerns over the passive way Knox responded to the killing. “It’s not necessarily the case that in a criminal trial of a man there could never be the question over him responding to things appropriately,” Seal says. “But I think in the case of Lindy Chamberlain or Amanda Knox you can see there is a gender-specific dimension to the criticisms – that they seem insufficiently emotional, that they don’t care. While people don’t like that in men they find it far more troubling in women, who are supposed to have an automatic capacity for feeling and demonstrating emotions.”

But Dr Seal says the fact media representations of Knox have been contested also demonstrates cultural shifts which are taking place in society. “I think 20 or 30 years ago, [Knox’s behaviour] probably would be accepted as promiscuous in a woman, but there has been a change in what’s seen as acceptable in terms of gender roles and there is now a perception that Amanda Knox’s student life, which many would understand as normal and not deviant, has been portrayed that way.”

Those women who do kill – or are at least convicted of killing – attract disproportionate attention because they are seen almost as an aberration of nature. “If it’s not, they’ve killed a male partner, not a crime of passion, not they’ve killed a child in difficult circumstances, they are seen as being even more culturally troubling,” says Seal.

“Those who commit sex crimes seem especially shocking because they don’t tend to fit in with what people expect of women, such acts not seen as part of the spectrum of female behaviour.”

Certainly, Knox is continuing to attract plenty of headlines as the appeal nears its conclusion. In contrast, the Kerchers – who continue to believe in Knox’s guilt – feel their daughter has been overlooked.

Speaking on the Italian TV show, Porta a Porta, recently her sister Stephanie said: “There’s not much of Meredith in the media. The focus has completely moved away from Meredith to Amanda and Raffaele. I’m scared of forgetting what she looked like, I’m scared of forgetting how she was to cuddle or what her hands were like, or anything really.”

The iniquitous gap in the respective attention these two women have garnered was brought home last week, when it was revealed a US TV network has put a private jet on standby to whisk Knox home to Seattle if she wins her appeal. The Kercher family, in contrast, were struggling to get air tickets to be in court to hear the verdict.

The True Justice for Meredith campaign continues to raise questions about Knox and Sollecito, pointing to evidence that the break-in at the house was staged and presenting the Knox family’s campaign as one of deliberate misinformation. But, in the past few weeks, one plank after another of the prosecution’s case seems to have collapsed; with no convincing DNA, no witnesses and no motive, many people believe she and Sollecito will walk free.

If so, there will be scenes of celebration in the Knox camp. Still, with all she has gone through, the Amanda Knox that boards the plane home will be very different to the hopeful young woman who set off four years ago in search of adventure.