US Student in Italy Jailed in Slaying

By MARTA FALCONI

PERUGIA, Italy – An American student has accused a Congolese pub owner of knifing her British roommate to death, saying she covered her ears to drown out the screams, according to a judge’s ruling Friday ordering the woman, her Italian boyfriend and the pub owner kept in jail.

The judge said Amanda Marie Knox of Seattle was hazy about the events from smoking hashish before the slaying and that the murder weapon was a knife that belonged to Knox’s boyfriend.

Knox, 20, Raffaele Sollecito, 23, and Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, 38, have been detained since Tuesday as suspects in the sexual assault and killing of Meredith Kercher, 21, who was found dead Nov. 2. All three deny involvement in the death, their lawyers say.

No charges have been filed, but Judge Claudia Matteini ruled there were “serious indications of guilt” that warranted keeping the three in jail for up to a year while the investigation continues.

The 19-page ruling said that Knox, in her meetings with prosecutors, accused Lumumba of killing Kercher.

Knox has “confused memories, since she had taken hashish in the afternoon,” the ruling read. But it said she told prosecutors Lumumba “had a crush” on her roommate and he and the victim had gone into a bedroom to have sex.

“She added that she could not remember if (Meredith) had been previously threatened but that it was Patrick who killed her,” the ruling read. “She made clear that in those moments … she heard Meredith scream so much that she, being scared, covered her ears.”

A lawyer for Knox, Luciano Ghirga, told reporters Friday that his client had given “three versions and … it is difficult to evaluate which one is true.”

He also said he had warned Knox against making unfounded accusations. “We told her that it would be worse than assassination to accuse an innocent person. We explained to her what slander means in Italy and we’ll see,” Ghirga said.

Lumumba’s lawyer, Carlo Pacelli, maintains his client was at his pub and accuses Knox of making “slanderous statements.”

“She repeatedly changes her story,” he said Thursday.

One of Sollecito’s attorneys, Tiziano Tedeschi, previously told reporters his client “wasn’t at the crime scene.”

Under Italian law, suspects can be held without charge if a judge rules there is enough evidence to jail them and there is a chance they might flee, repeat the crime or tamper with evidence. Prosecutors may later seek to indict the suspects and put them on trial.

The judge said in her ruling that the suspects might try to flee Italy if released.

“They could easily leave the territory of the state to escape the investigation,” the judge wrote, noting that Lumumba is from Congo, Knox is American and Sollecito could enlist his girlfriend’s help to flee.

Kercher’s body was found in the apartment she shared with Knox, and police said she died fighting off a sexual attack. The coroner said Kercher was stabbed in the neck.

The judge said it was not yet clear who inflicted the fatal wound, but her ruling said Sollecito’s footprints were found in Kercher’s room and identified the murder weapon as a knife with a 3.3-inch-long blade that the Italian usually had with him.

In her reconstruction of the incident, the judge said Knox, who worked for Lumumba at his Perugia bar, let the two men into the apartment with her keys.

“Then something went wrong,” Matteini wrote. “The two (men) demanded some kind of sexual act, which (Kercher) refused to do. She was then threatened with a knife, which Sollecito always carried with him, and with which Meredith was stabbed in the neck.”

Another of Sollecito’s attorneys, Luca Maori, said he planned to appeal the decision. “We didn’t expect it,” he said.

Perugia, a city of 150,000 people about 105 miles north of Rome, is home to two major universities. The University of Perugia has an enrollment of 20,000 and the University for Foreigners has a few thousand students.

Knox, who was studying Italian while in Perugia, is described by people who knew her in Seattle as a bright, amiable student. She made the dean’s list last spring at the University of Washington.

Knox’s mother and father, who are divorced, have traveled to Perugia, but they were not expected to be able to speak with their daughter until Saturday, said Mike James, head of the Seattle-Perugia Sister City Association.

“Events that have unfolded in Perugia, Italy, over the last few days regarding our daughter, Amanda, have shocked and devastated our family,” the family said in a statement. “We love our daughter very much and certainly stand by her through this ordeal. We know she is probably frightened and upset about what has happened, and needs all the support her family can give her.”

European newspapers have feasted on the details Knox offered on social networking Internet sites – a silly, drunken video common to college students and short stories reportedly written for class assignments – in purporting to show she had a “darker” side.

One of the short stories contemplates stalking, and another ends with two brothers fighting because one suspects the other of drugging and raping a girl.

In her profile on the MySpace.com social networking site, Knox wrote that she was majoring in Italian and German and minoring in creative writing. She listed her mom as her hero, and rock-climbing and yoga among her long list of hobbies.

She wrote on her blog last month that she was in “one of my most happiest places right now” and mentions her apartment, her language classes, her work at Lumumba’s bar six nights a week, and her observations on Italian life.

“Everything shuts down in the middle of the day so everyone can have a 3 hour lunch break. I love it,” she wrote. “I wish we had that in America. … Having that time in the middle of the day reminds you that life really isn’t all about going to work and making money. It’s about who you are and what you choose to do and who you choose to spend your time with.”

She signed off by wishing her friends well in Italian: “Vi voglio bene.”