her arms being held back. There were also small, finger-size bruises on her body consistent with a female hand and, on her pillow, a small, bloody shoeprint that could never be positively identified beyond the range of Italian sizes 36-38. Amanda wears size 37.
Rudy was convicted of sexual assault and murder and acquitted of theft. He was sentenced to thirty years, which, because he chose the fast track, was essentially guaranteed to be reduced on appeal. Although he has steadfastly denied murdering Meredith, by the time he got to court he admitted being in the house, no doubt because the proof of that was irrefutable.
In essence, Rudy changed his story three times. When he was arrested, he said simply that “some Italian guy” had done the killing; during his fast-track trial, he said that unknown assailants had beaten him up; at his appeal hearing, he said that it was Raffaele and that he heard Amanda’s voice and saw her silhouette through a window. His reward for placing them both at the scene would be a substantial reduction in his sentence.
MIDWAY THROUGH the Knox trial, while Rudy sat in prison waiting on his appeal, Biscotti threw himself a fiftieth birthday party. The invitation for the April 23, 2009, event declared the theme to be “Don’t Look Back in Anger”; the venue was listed simply as “The Red Zone,” no address needed. This faded disco down the hill from Perugia’s city center is a wildly popular spot with the university students. But it also attracts Biscotti’s crowd, the generation that christened the club when it opened about twenty-five years ago, which explains the pulsating, red-neon palm trees and Heart’s “Barracuda” screaming from the sound system. By choosing The Red Zone, Biscotti was making a
statement about his celebrity as a player in the Knox drama. The guest list made a statement of a different kind about the small, insular world of Perugia’s legal establishment.
As Biscotti, wearing a white bandana to match his bell-bottom pants, played lead guitar on a true-to-original rendition of “Smoke on the Water,” Paolo Micheli, the judge who convicted Rudy of Meredith’s murder, sat on a red sofa tapping his foot in time. Monica Napoleoni, head of the Perugia homicide squad, stood nearby with her sidekick Lorena Zugarani, the burly policewoman whose karate kick broke the window to the downstairs apartment in via della Pergola. (That kick, caught on video, became infamous among Amanda’s Seattle supporters, who used it as an example of shoddy police work, wrongly asserting that Zugarani was breaking a window in the girls’ apartment, not the one downstairs.) Various other faces from the Knox trial—legal assistants, Mignini’s briefcase man, and a couple of guards—mingled in the wings. Because it had been one of those rare days when the hearing ended early, only a few members of the foreign press were still around: John Follain of the London Sunday Times, Chapman Bell of NBC,
Andrea Vogt of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and me. But the reporters had certainly all been invited; Biscotti made a point of knowing every journalist by first name.
“You were a little bit hard on Rudy in your last piece,” he would often say to me, laughing. “I could file a defamation suit, but I won’t this time.” (He has lodged suits against Joe Tacopina and Doug Preston for saying publicly that Rudy is the lone killer.)
“How’s Rudy doing?” I would ask frequently.
“ Tranquillo, ” Biscotti always says. “He’s studying, just like Raffaele. He’s writing, just like Amanda. He will come out with an education. A degree. He is using this time to better himself.”
ON NOVEMBER 18, 2009, just two days before closing arguments began in Amanda and Raffaele’s trial, Rudy stood before an appeals judge and for the first time spoke publicly about the night of the murder. He said he knew Meredith; they had met in the basement apartment on via della Pergola
Rudy was convicted of sexual assault and murder and acquitted of theft. He was sentenced to thirty years, which, because he chose the fast track, was essentially guaranteed to be reduced on appeal. Although he has steadfastly denied murdering Meredith, by the time he got to court he admitted being in the house, no doubt because the proof of that was irrefutable.
In essence, Rudy changed his story three times. When he was arrested, he said simply that “some Italian guy” had done the killing; during his fast-track trial, he said that unknown assailants had beaten him up; at his appeal hearing, he said that it was Raffaele and that he heard Amanda’s voice and saw her silhouette through a window. His reward for placing them both at the scene would be a substantial reduction in his sentence.
MIDWAY THROUGH the Knox trial, while Rudy sat in prison waiting on his appeal, Biscotti threw himself a fiftieth birthday party. The invitation for the April 23, 2009, event declared the theme to be “Don’t Look Back in Anger”; the venue was listed simply as “The Red Zone,” no address needed. This faded disco down the hill from Perugia’s city center is a wildly popular spot with the university students. But it also attracts Biscotti’s crowd, the generation that christened the club when it opened about twenty-five years ago, which explains the pulsating, red-neon palm trees and Heart’s “Barracuda” screaming from the sound system. By choosing The Red Zone, Biscotti was making a
statement about his celebrity as a player in the Knox drama. The guest list made a statement of a different kind about the small, insular world of Perugia’s legal establishment.
As Biscotti, wearing a white bandana to match his bell-bottom pants, played lead guitar on a true-to-original rendition of “Smoke on the Water,” Paolo Micheli, the judge who convicted Rudy of Meredith’s murder, sat on a red sofa tapping his foot in time. Monica Napoleoni, head of the Perugia homicide squad, stood nearby with her sidekick Lorena Zugarani, the burly policewoman whose karate kick broke the window to the downstairs apartment in via della Pergola. (That kick, caught on video, became infamous among Amanda’s Seattle supporters, who used it as an example of shoddy police work, wrongly asserting that Zugarani was breaking a window in the girls’ apartment, not the one downstairs.) Various other faces from the Knox trial—legal assistants, Mignini’s briefcase man, and a couple of guards—mingled in the wings. Because it had been one of those rare days when the hearing ended early, only a few members of the foreign press were still around: John Follain of the London Sunday Times, Chapman Bell of NBC,
Andrea Vogt of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and me. But the reporters had certainly all been invited; Biscotti made a point of knowing every journalist by first name.
“You were a little bit hard on Rudy in your last piece,” he would often say to me, laughing. “I could file a defamation suit, but I won’t this time.” (He has lodged suits against Joe Tacopina and Doug Preston for saying publicly that Rudy is the lone killer.)
“How’s Rudy doing?” I would ask frequently.
“ Tranquillo, ” Biscotti always says. “He’s studying, just like Raffaele. He’s writing, just like Amanda. He will come out with an education. A degree. He is using this time to better himself.”
ON NOVEMBER 18, 2009, just two days before closing arguments began in Amanda and Raffaele’s trial, Rudy stood before an appeals judge and for the first time spoke publicly about the night of the murder. He said he knew Meredith; they had met in the basement apartment on via della Pergola
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