New documentary explores story behind Amanda Knox’s trial over housemate’s murder
THE bloody handprint on the wall, the ripped bra and a leg protruding out from underneath a doona. The crime scene will never be forgotten.
GIULIANO Mignini will never forget the crime scene.
The streaky, bloody handprint on the wall, the ripped bra and a leg protruding out from underneath a doona.
It looked like something from those forensic movies Mignini loved so much; they were the reason he became a public prosecutor.
But this was a truly horrifying and traumatic scene that would start his almost decade-long fight to prosecute the person who was guilty of this cold-blooded crime.
“I asked is a monster responsible for this?” Mignini said.
The crime scene he found himself in the middle of in November 2007 was the murder of Meredith Kercher.
She was a young and beautiful British exchange student who moved to Perugia in Italy to study.
Her life ended in a bloodbath and the hunt for her killer would become a saga filled with rumours, lies and terrifying truths.
In a new documentary to be released by Netflix, Amanda Knox, Mignini reveals his fixation on finding the killer.
Amanda Knox was his main suspect. She was Meredith’s roommate and an American beauty who thought moving to Europe would hurl her into adulthood.
She went from being perceived as a cute all-American 20-year-old to being portrayed as a sex-crazed, vicious psychopath who Mignini wanted to tear down.
Amanda and her Italian boyfriend of one week, Raffaele Sollecito, had their ordinary lives blown up when they were found guilty of Meredith’s murder in 2009.
The pair was later acquitted in 2011 after an independent forensic investigation found DNA from the crime scene had been contaminated.
In 2013 the Italian Supreme Court ruled the couple had to stand trial again. Knox was only 25 at this stage.
They were again convicted over the murder before Italy’s highest court finally acquitted them and the case was closed last year.
In the documentary, Mignini talks about the evidence and his gut feeling that made him point the finger at Amanda and her boyfriend and he helped fuel lies and speculation that hungry media splashed across front pages.
Amanda claimed she was at Raffaele’s house the night of the murder and when she returned the next morning she found a smashed window and Meredith’s door locked.
Knox and her boyfriend called the authorities.
Mignini told the documentary when he looked at the crime scene, he began to speculate what happened to Meredith.
“Why was the girl covered with a blanket? A woman who has killed tends to cover the body of female victims, a man would never think to do this,” he postulates.
The thing he said stuck out most to him at the crime scene, was the smashed window.
“Nothing had been stolen and there was no evidence somebody climbed the wall (to get to the window).
“Immediately I could tell it was a staged break-in. It could have no other function than this. To throw off suspicion from someone who has a connection to the house.”
Mr Mignini began to suspect Amanda was guilty of the crime when he saw her cuddling her boyfriend outside the crime scene.
“They were comforting each other with an affection inappropriate for the moment,” he told the documentary.
Two days after the murder Amanda went back to the house with Mignini and he said she lost it.
“She started hitting the palms of her hands on her ears as if there was the memory of a noise, a sound, a scream — Meredith’s scream. Undoubtedly, I started to suspect Amanda.”
Mignini became even more suspicious when Amanda blamed the murder on her boss, Patrick Lumumba, who gave her a job at his bar.
He was held in custody for two weeks before being released after his alibi checked out.
Mignini said in the documentary, the only reason to blame Lumumba “would be to divert the investigation away from her”.
Amanda has a specific weakness, according to Mignini.
He said she couldn’t stand being questioned by authorities and had an attitude, hostility and rebellion against police.
One of the main bits of evidence against Amanda was a knife found in her boyfriend’s house.
On the handle was Amanda’s DNA and on the blade, Meredith’s.
Mignini concocted this idea of what happened in Meredith’s final hours and it involved three killers and a number of unidentifiable fingerprints.
“When the trial started I thought everything would be easy, there was direct evidence like DNA proof,” he told the documentary.
“But there is not only DNA. Amanda was a girl that was very uninhibited. She would bring boys home and hearing Meredith’s friends, if you could imagine a girl different from Amanda in every imaginable way it would have been Meredith.”
Mignini went on to imagine the night Meredith was killed.
He sees Amanda in her house with her boyfriend and Rudy Guede.
The Italian court found Rudy was involved in Meredith’s murder, with his bloodstained fingerprints found at the murder scene.
He was convicted of sexual assault and murder in 2008.
In Mignini’s imagined version of events, Meredith sees Amanda with the boys and possibly “scolded her for her lack of morals”.
“Amanda must’ve felt humiliated. Irritated. ‘So you want to judge my morals so harshly, now I’m going to show you what will happen.’ She was a proud girl,” Mignini said in the documentary.
“And then there’s a crescendo of attacks. I am convinced Raffaele and Rudy were trying to indulge Amanda in every possible way that night.
“Pleasure, at any cost, this is the heart of most crimes.”
It appears in the documentary Mignini did not think much of Amanda and worked hard to get a guilty verdict put upon her.
But Amanda appealed her first conviction and there was an independent forensic investigation that found DNA evidence could not be relied on.
Independent forensic experts told the documentary DNA could be easily moved and the crime scene was not kept completely sterile.
The independent investigation found there was chaos at the crime scene, people coming and going and rarely changing their gloves.
The knife, which had DNA from both Amanda and Meredith, was also tested alongside 50 DNA samples of Meredith’s.
Because there was such a small amount of Meredith’s DNA on the knife blade, the experts believed contamination was likely.
Mignini became the subject of a barrage of attacks from the media and people in the community.
“During the trial there was a woman who said I was the devil. I can say that I’ve made mistakes, even things that I have had to confess,” Mignini told the documentary.
“But we are all between good and evil. It’s in our human nature.
“Amanda and Raffaele, if they are innocent I hope they’re able to forget the suffering they’ve endured.
“If they’re guilty, if earthly justice didn’t get to them, I hope they own their guilt because I know that life ends with a final trial, a trial with no appeals, no second chances and no revisions.”
Despite the documentary showing other interviews with a journalist, Amanda and Raffaele, you don’t get any more clear answers about the circumstances around Meredith’s death. That we may never know.
But the documentary shows you there is a human behind the headlines, and that human is Amanda Knox.
Amanda Knox will be released exclusively on Netflix September 30.
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