A Long Way From Home

Amanda Knox, a 20-year-old honors student from the University of Washington, followed her dream when she moved to Perugia, Italy, to study abroad and learn Italian. But that dream turned into a nightmare when just weeks after Amanda's arrival her roommate was found murdered.

Within days of the November 2007 murder, Amanda and her boyfriend were arrested as suspects in the killing and found themselves at the center of a media frenzy.

Do Italian investigators have a solid case against Amanda, as they claim? Or is she being "railroaded" - as one American private investigator put in - in a blind pursuit of justice?

Growing up in Seattle, Wash., Amanda Knox was an all-American girl. She excelled in athletics and academics, as her father Curt remembers: "Dean's list in high school, dean's list in college, soccer player since she's been five…all the way to the premiere level."

Amanda's parents, Curt Knox and Edda Mellas, divorced when she was three, but family bonds remained tight. "She loves her family. She talks about that in her blogs, and in her MySpace. That what's most important to her is her family, her close friends," Edda tells correspondent Peter Van Sant.

After graduating with honors from an elite Jesuit high school, Amanda went on to the University of Washington where she discovered her passion. "She loved going to other cultures and learning about them. And she's really drawn to languages. She really knew she wanted to study abroad," Edda explains.

Amanda worked three jobs to get to Perugia, a medieval hill town north of Rome. She rented a room in a house and began taking classes.

Amanda's years of dedicated study and hard work were paying off. Just a few weeks after arriving in Perugia, she e-mailed some of her friends back home, writing "I'm actually at one of my happiest places right now."

Amanda's good fortune also included a new romance. She'd met a young, handsome Italian engineering student named Raffaele Sollecito, the 23-year-old son of a doctor from Southern Italy.

Amanda had three roommates: two Italian girls and Meredith Kercher, a 20-year-old student from England.

Amanda even got a job in a local bar. "She told me she must work because she need the money," says bar owner Patrick Lumumba, who hired her. Lumumba is well known around town for his music and generous spirit.

Asked what he thought when he first saw Amanda, Lumumba tells Van Sant, "Good person…and friendly."

But just six weeks into Amanda's Italian adventure, everything changed. It was Nov. 2, 2007.

"I got a phone call early in the morning and it was Amanda. And the first thing she said was, 'I'm at home and I'm all right. But, I think somebody's been in my house," Edda remembers.

Amanda told her mother she had spent the night with Raffaele. That morning, when she came home to take a shower and change clothes, she found the front door was open. No one was home.

"When she got out of the shower she noticed some blood. She thought maybe somebody had gotten injured and left quickly and that's why the door was open," Edda explains.

Amanda started phoning her roommates; she found the Italian girls, but according to Edda couldn't track down Meredith, even after calling her several times.

Asked how she learned that something terrible had happened in that house, Edda says, "She called me back and told me that the police had come. Because one of the things she said was 'We can't find Meredith and her door is locked.'"

Two officers arrived at the house to investigate and found Amanda and Raffaele standing outside.

"Police enter the house, start searching it," explains Paolo Sfriso, an Italian investigator who 48 Hours hired to examine this case. "Meredith's door is locked. They knock on the door, nobody answers. Nobody knows where she is. They decide to break in her door."

Inside, there was blood everywhere. And on the floor, covered by the blanket from her bed, was Meredith's body.

The last time anyone had seen Meredith alive was 9 p.m. the night before, when she walked home alone after leaving friends.

Asked what he believes-based on his investigation-happened after Meredith got home, Sfriso tells Van Sant, "That is the million-dollar question. Meredith arrives home. Maybe somebody was already inside the house waiting for her. Maybe somebody arrived after. There are signs of what appears to be a break-in."

Because Amanda and Meredith had been roommates, Amanda quickly became a key witness. "She said they had a lot of questions for her because she was the first one that had come back to the house. And she wanted to help," Edda says.

Four days after the murder, there were still no arrests. The students of Perugia organized a memorial service for Meredith. Noticeably absent were Amanda and Raffaele: they had been summoned to police headquarters.

"When the two them went down there they separated them into different interrogation rooms. And began a questioning process that lasted for a very long time over night," Amanda's father Curt says.

Police were questioning the two because they suspected they were hiding something.

After 14 hours of intense police interrogation, with no sleep, no food, and no lawyer, Amanda dramatically changed her story. "She says that she thinks she was here, that she hears Meredith scream," Sfriso says.

When she signed a statement, Amanda was no longer a witness - she was under arrest.

Four days after Meredith's murder, Amanda was paraded in front of the press on her way to jail. Police believe Amanda took part in the murder of her roommate.
Raffaele was also arrested, and surprisingly Amanda's employer, Patrick Lumumba, was also picked up after she named him as Meredith's murderer.

The arrests came after Amanda dramatically changed her story. 48 Hours obtained Amanda's stunning statement. "I met Patrick at the basketball courts and we went to my apartment…Patrick had sex with Meredith…I confusedly remember that he killed her."

Amanda's statement came after that all-night, 14-hour interrogation.

Next, Italian police developed a theory: that Meredith was murdered after refusing to join Amanda, Raffaele and Patrick in kinky four-way sex.

Like the Italian police, journalist Nick Pisa began searching the Internet to learn about the suspects. "They had entries on Facebook…and we were getting an unimaginable amount of information about these people," he says.

Like most college students these days, Amanda and Raffaele shared their lives through the Web; Amanda boasted about alcohol use and casual sex.

"She even posted pictures of herself outside a dope shop in Amsterdam. We discovered how she'd been on a train and she'd admitted having sex with a guy she'd met on the train. We discovered that she'd written some very bizarre essays on her Web site which talked about rape," Pisa says.

"They jumped on that. They saw the word rape and they are like, 'Yeah, that's a great headline,'" says Madison, a friend of Amanda's from Seattle.

On Raffaele's pages, they learned he collected knives.

"His expression of admiration for a serial killer," Van Sant remarks.

"Exactly. And then we have him with the meat cleaver. Then, we have Amanda behind the machine gun as well," Pisa says, describing pictures of Raffaele posing with a cleaver and Amanda posing behind a machine gun. "It was all just grist for the mill. It was more information than you can ever imagine on a story."

And the "mill" was the Italian and British press corps that was all over the story.

Perhaps what damned Amanda most was the name she gave herself on her MySpace account: "Foxy Knoxy." Some of the headlines in the British press included "The Twisted World of Foxy Knoxy," "The Dark Angel of Seattle," "Orgy Of Death," and "Amanda Was A Drugged-Up Tart."

"You know, I have not read the British press just because I knew that was out there," Edda reacts, crying. "And that's not my daughter. And that's not, I mean in…they never met her."

Asked why Amanda called herself "Foxy Knoxy," Madison explains, "She got that name from other people. She didn't make that up herself. She was a soccer player. And when she ran on the field, her teammates said that she looked like a fox."

But the Italian police aren't basing their case on a nickname. They were looking at Amanda and Raffaele's public behavior after the murder; police brought Amanda and her boyfriend back to the crime scene the day after the murder to see how they would react.

Nick Pisa was there. "They both were sort of stroking each other and petting each other. And then they were kissing each other. And they seem to be whispering to each other."

What some see as simple comforting was interpreted by Italian police as something sinister.

Why is it significant?

"The police are more pointing to the fact that it's just very odd and unusual behavior. There didn't seem to be any sadness," Pisa says.

The next day, the couple was caught on a security camera buying underwear for Amanda. "The shop owner distinctly remembers them being quite excited and aroused by the purchase. And promising each other a night of frenzied sex with this new G-string," Paolo Sfriso says.

"Based on your experience, what do you think of that?" Van Sant asks.

"Not only is there insensitivity and inappropriateness, it could be seen as arousal. As in getting your kicks out of this," Sfriso says.

But the police theory that Meredith was killed during a sex frenzy has a problem, according to private investigator Paul Ciolino. "That's a great theory until the science comes rolling in, until the fingerprints show up, and they go, 'Oops, oops, we made a mistake.'"

With a British girl murdered, her throat slashed, and an American girl held as a suspect, Italian investigators spared no expense, bringing in the country's best forensic teams to Perugia. Police say they have recovered hard evidence linking Amanda to the murder.

"There are traces of her blood mixed with Meredith's blood in the bathroom. In the house where Meredith was murdered," Sfriso explains.

And the boyfriend?

"We have Raffaele's shoeprint in her blood, in the room where she was murdered," Sfriso says.

Police do extensive testing on a knife found in Raffaele's kitchen drawer.
Amanda's DNA is on the handle, no surprise. But investigators are stunned when Meredith's DNA is detected on the blade. Police think it could be the murder weapon.

"And from their point of view, Amanda and Raffaele staged the crime," Sfriso says. "Patrick physically committed it, maybe with some physical assistance, either from Raffaele or from both Raffaele and Amanda."

But there is a problem: Patrick Lumumba, the man Amanda named as the killer, had an airtight alibi for the night of the murder. He was at his bar.

After an exhaustive search, police could find no evidence linking Lumumba to the murder and in a stunning reversal released him.

"We couldn't understand why Amanda Knox would accuse her boss. We don't know why she pulled out Patrick's name," says Nathan Abraham, an American and a former student who now works in Perugia.

Abraham says Amanda's lie about Lumumba shocked everyone. "He has a beautiful wife and baby. He's the most famous guy in Perugia, and everybody loves him…everybody from the mayor down."

Police believe Amanda implicated Lumumba as part of a well-planned, calculated move to hide the identity of the real killer. Within days of Lumumba's release, the case took another dramatic twist.

"They had found a fingerprint. It didn't match with Raffaele, with Amanda or with Patrick," Pisa explains.

The fingerprint belonged to 20-year-old Rudy Guede, who was a fixture-and often a nuisance-on the local bar scene.

A dropout, Rudy had no regular job. He played basketball on the courts near Amanda and Meredith's house. And he smoked dope with the boys who lived one floor below the girls.

"We know that Rudy was quite friendly with the guys downstairs," Pisa says.

The day after the murder, Rudy ran. He hopped a train out of Perugia, heading north. Two weeks later, after a European-wide manhunt, Rudy was tracked down in central Germany, arrested, and returned to Perugia.

"We have his fingerprint on the pillow. We have his DNA in the bathroom. We have his admission that he was there at the time," Pisa says.

Rudy told police Meredith invited him over for a date and they had sex. "Although his story does seem rather fanciful - that he was in the bathroom and that he came out and he found Meredith, saw Meredith had been stabbed. And that some guy was running out of the room," Pisa remarks.

Rudy said he couldn't identify the killer. But he admitted he left a dying Meredith lying in a pool of blood. He said he went home, changed his clothes, and went dancing at a disco until four in the morning.

48 Hours brought Chicago private detective Paul Ciolino to Italy to look into the case against Amanda.

"She's been getting railroaded since the day they took her into custody, since November 5th, 2007. The railroad started and it continues today as we sit here right now," says Ciolino, who reviewed police reports, Meredith's autopsy, crime scene photos, and talked to witnesses.

He says everything points to Rudy Guede: "We know one thing for certain in life that when you're dead, the last guy who was with you is usually responsible for you being dead. And the last person that was with Meredith, from the horse's mouth, is Rudy."

Ciolino doesn't buy Rudy's story that he was dating Meredith. Rudy told police he met Meredith the night before the murder at a Halloween party at the bar Merlin's. Meredith was there, dressed as a vampire. But no one saw Rudy.

Did Meredith hang out at all with Rudy at the Halloween party?

"Meredith did not hang out with Rudy Guede. Meredith and Rudy are not contemporaries. They're not buddies," Ciolino says. "They didn't have a relationship of any kind on any level."

Ciolino, talking to the owner of the bar, learned that Rudy had even been banned from Merlin's because he tried to rob a bartender at knifepoint. "We know that Rudy has no visible means of support and is able to pay rent, go to clubs, and do all kinds of things," he says.

"Why would Rudy have targeted that house, of all places, to look for money? These are a bunch of college student," Van Sant asks.

"Rent is due at that time of the month. It was the 1st. And rent's due. So everybody knows college students are gathering up the rent at that time," Ciolino theorizes.

Police told Ciolino Meredith took out 250 euros the day she was murdered and the money is missing. Rudy's fingerprints were found on her purse. "It's really that simple. There was no Raffaele. There was no Amanda, okay? Jesuit educated high school girls who are high honors students 18 months ago don't participate in orgies and homicides. They don't do it, and if you could tell me one that does, I sure like to see her," Ciolino says.

Ciolino wants justice for Meredith as well, but not at the expense of Amanda. "She's a 20-year-old kid who has been ripped out of everything that she knows and placed in jail. Amanda Knox is sitting in a maximum security prison in Italy wondering when she's gonna get out," he says.

Amanda and her boyfriend have been in jail since early November, now more than five months. Yet Ciolino believes police have no convincing evidence they had anything to do with Meredith's murder.

"The police chief of Perugia looked me in the eye and said, 'We have evidence,'" Van Sant remarks.

"He knows there's not a shred of evidence putting this girl at that murder scene," Ciolino says.

Edgardo Giobbi is the lead investigator. He told 48 Hours that the case against all three suspects is solid. The DNA found on the victim's bra, he says, DNA which belongs to Rudy and Raffaele, proves Rudy didn't act alone. And if Raffaele was involved, so was Amanda, because they both claim they were together that night.

"I don't believe it's there. I don't believe Raffaele's DNA is on Meredith's bra," Ciolino says.

Why? Because Ciolino says evidence leaked in this case has often turned out to be wrong. A prime example: the witness police say heard three people running from the house that night.

"Peter, high police officials told you they had a witness who heard stuff that night, indicating they had interviewed her and they owned her. Now, we go interview the witness, and what happened?" Ciolino wonders.

The witness, Nara Capezzali, said she heard a scream in the night, then the sound of running, from her apartment across the street from the crime scene on the night of the murder. She told her story in an Italian television interview.

"I heard a big scream, a chilling scream," she told an Italian reporter.

TV and tabloids had already been reporting the police theory that three people, including Amanda, were all involved in the crime.

Asked by the reporter if she had heard three different movements, Nara said, "Yes. Three different things. One went up, one went that way."

Ciolino wanted to talk to this key witness himself. He took 48 Hours' translator, Julia Alagna, to the woman's door.

"She heard a scream and somebody run away," the translator said after speaking with Nara.

The windows, Nara told the translator, were closed at the time.

Ciolino wanted to see-or hear-for himself. Nara's upstairs neighbor let Ciolino into her apartment to find out what he could hear.

Outside, 48 Hours got some local kids to do some running to see if the sounds were audible inside the neighbor's apartment, with the window's closed.

The result: Ciolino says he heard something but couldn't tell if it was footsteps; the neighbor, Christine, says she didn't hear anything.

At the very least, the unscientific test raises serious questions about what Nara really heard that night, and even she isn't as certain as police have suggested.

"She didn't know what it…she couldn't tell if it was one or two or three," Nara told Ciolino through the translator.

Nara also didn't know what time it was that she heard the sounds. But she is very clear about one thing: she says she was never interviewed by the police.

As hard as it is to believe, police only saw the witness on television. "This is fascinating to me because not one cop in this town has ever knocked on this woman's door, not one time," Ciolino says.

Ciolino says if Amanda had actually been involved in Meredith's murder, police should have a lot more evidence to prove it. "When you or I walk into a room and we mess it up with blood and DNA and sweat we're going to bring a whole lot of stuff home with us. And we're going to leave even more there. But we have a problem in this case. Because they can't put Amanda and Raffaele in that crime scene," Ciolino says.

"But you know who put Amanda at the crime scene? Amanda put Amanda at the crime scene. Who signs a statement that implicates them and their friends to murder? Who does that? Why would Amanda sign that?" Van Sant asks.

"Let me tell you, Peter, a confused 20-year-old girl, 6,000 miles from home, and all of a sudden they're telling her she's a prime suspect in a murder, that they're gonna put her in prison for the rest of her life in an Italian jail, unless you pony up baby, and sign this," Ciolino says.

That's what the case against Amanda boils down to, says Ciolino: a police theory that formed the basis for a coerced confession.

How does this work?

"This is real easy, okay? 'Amanda, you know what happened and I know what happened. And you better sign this statement because if you don't, young lady, you're never gonna see your mom again. You're never gonna see your daddy again.' 'Sir, it didn't really happen like that.' 'Bip, yes, it did happen like that, Amanda. And this is how it happened. You were with Patrick. And you and him went over there and he murdered your roommate. Now, maybe, maybe you didn't know that was gonna happen. But you certainly were there and you helped make it happen. Now, you better get writing or sign this or bad things are gonna happen like we're gonna charge you with the murder.' That's why there's no video. There is no audio. There is no independent party. There's Amanda and there's the cops. That's it. And who's gonna believe Amanda?" Ciolino says.

Amanda's signed statement helped form the backbone of the original police theory of the crime: that Amanda and Raffaele assisted Patrick Lumumba when he killed Meredith.

"And that's a great theory until the science comes rolling in, until the fingerprints show up," Ciolino says.

When Lumumba proved he had an alibi, and police matched DNA to Rudy Guede, the original theory didn't work anymore.

"But now we have another problem, because Amanda didn't know him. And Raffaele don't know him," Ciolino explains.

Ciolino learned that police have no phone records linking Amanda and Raffaele to Rudy. "There's no connection. So, we have a big problem. This is all a police generated fairy tale," Ciolino says.

The police have been revising that "fairy tale," says Ciolino, but they seem determined not to let Amanda live happily ever after. "They've put so much into Amanda, they've gotta convict her now or they look like fools. In their minds they look like fools," he says.

Every Tuesday and Saturday morning, family members are allowed a brief visit with Amanda at a prison just outside Perugia where she has been held since last November.

On a Tuesday in February, Curt joined his ex-wife in Italy; 48 Hours brought Curt to Europe in order to interview both parents together.

Asked what Amanda's life is like right now in jail, Curt says, "Well, she is let out of her cell for one hour a day. She basically spends an hour a day, you know, trying to exercise in the yard."

Since Amanda's arrest her parents take turns staying in Italy, away from Seattle for weeks at a time. "It's a lot of waiting, it's just a lot of waiting…it's hard," Edda says.

During her months in prison Amanda has kept a diary. In it she wrote about the overnight interrogation that led to her arrest and imprisonment.

"She said, 'The statements were made under the pressures of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion. Not only was I told I would be arrested and put in jail for 30 years, but I was also hit in the head when I didn't remember a fact correctly.' Is that true?" Van Sant asks.

"She wrote that and we believe that everything that she has said is true," Edda says.

But the lead investigator says not true - that no one ever hit Amanda. He expects all three suspects will be charged and tried for murder.

Police say Raffaele's bloody shoeprint will be important evidence at trial. But defense lawyers and Ciolino say it's not conclusive. "Now, experts have looked at that footprint and it's not Raffaele's. They've got Raffaele's shoes, there's no blood on 'em," Ciolino says.

"They have mixed blood, Amanda and Meredith's blood in the bathroom," Van Sant remarks.

"They have Amanda's blood in a bathroom that they shared commonly. Meredith is killed in the bedroom, not in the bathroom," Ciolino says.

"There is a report that a knife has been recovered at Raffaele's house that has Amanda's DNA on the handle and reportedly, Meredith DNA on the blade, sounds like a murder weapon, doesn't it?" Van Sant asks.

"No one has determined that's the murder weapon. Not the government or the defense. Nobody knows," Ciolino says.

Police agree it may not be the murder weapon but think it may have been used in some way during the crime. And the motive? Police have changed their theory: they now believe Meredith was murdered by Rudy, Amanda and Raffaele during a robbery, not an orgy.

"There's never been a motive. They could never explain a motive in this case. There is no motive," Ciolino says.

"What might happen now that could harm Amanda Knox's chances in a trial?" Van Sant asks.

"There's a number of threats. She's got two defendants, both of whom have said she didn't do anything wrong. The longer this thing goes on, the longer everybody sits in jail, somebody's gonna figure out sooner or later: my best chance escaping this nonsense is to hang Amanda out to dry," Ciolino says.

And that's exactly what happened just two weeks ago: after months of silence, Rudy asked to speak to the prosecutor. Before, Rudy had said he could not identify Meredith's killer. Now he says he saw Raffaele with a knife in the apartment, and that Amanda was there, too.

Amanda's parents are frightened. They fear their daughter may soon be on trail for murder in Italy. "But, we have to believe in the system. It's the only choice that we have," Curt says.

"Because the other option is to believe that, you know, she's gonna be in prison for something that she didn't do. And that's just unimaginable," Edda adds.

Meredith Kercher's was buried by her family in southeast England in December. Amanda's parents sympathize with Meredith's family and pray that their daughter doesn't become another innocent victim in this tragedy.

"Are there words to describe what this is like for a parent?" Van Sant asks.

"I don't know that I could. It's literally gut wrenching. It's a physical, almost sick response to the whole situation…almost constantly," Edda explains.

"It's nothing you ever wish, even on your enemies," Curt says.

Paul Ciolino says he's worried about Amanda and worried that the Italian justice system is out to get her.

"And if you had the power to do, to act right now, what would you do?" Van Sant ask.

"I would hop in my car and I'd go to that prison and I'd get them two kids out of there, and I'd take them home to their parents," Ciolino says. "That's what I would do. And that's what should be done. And until that's done, this case is gonna be a disaster."