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Authors: Barbie Latza Nadeau
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was there that night, but she says she remembered waking up at his place the next day with no idea of how she had gotten there.
Detective Napoleoni agrees with Amanda about what was said that night, but she denies the police ever hit her. She says that while the interrogation was tough, there was no physical contact. When Amanda took the stand in June, the young woman repeated the accusation that she was hit. When the judge asked her to identify who hit her, she looked around the room and said she didn’t know, even though Napoleoni and all the officers present at her questioning were in the courtroom. Amanda maintains that the police badgered her until she confessed. The officers say they were firm but polite, and even offered her chamomile tea and sweets from the vending machine. Amanda and her parents would later be sued for slander for accusing the police of brutality.
Amanda’s lawyers maintain that the police either destroyed the tape of this questioning or seriously
erred in not making one. Mignini says that investigators don’t usually tape interrogations of witnesses unless they are sure they are going to get something. And, because Amanda had not been officially called in as a suspect, the room they took her to wasn’t equipped for such surveillance. But if the interrogation had been taped and played in court, it could have hurt both sides. If police were heard cuffing her, they could be charged with assault. But if the jury had heard Amanda describe being in the house and hearing terrible screams, it would have been even harder to believe her later story—that she had spent the entire evening at Raf’s.
AT 5:45 A.M. on November 6, Amanda signed a written statement, in Italian, and was arrested. Because she did not have a lawyer present, that statement was never admissible in the criminal case against her. But it was used in the civil case filed by Patrick Lumumba for defamation—a case that ran in tandem with the criminal trial. His lawyers translated it back into English:
Raffaele and I had smoked a hashish cigarette and so I felt confused, as I neither use drugs nor heavy drugs
frequently. I met Patrick just afterwards, at the basket place of Piazza Grimana and I went home with him. I do not remember if Meredith was there or if she came after. I have trouble remembering those moments but Patrick made sex with Meredith, with whom he was infatuated, but I can’t remember well if Meredith had been threatened first. I remember confusedly he killed her.
Patrick sat in jail for two weeks while the police tried hard to find evidence against him. The only thing they could come up with was the presence of his cell phone in the area around via della Pergola the night of the murder. But that ping was later determined to be a technical anomaly. As the police eliminated evidence against Patrick, however, they became ever-more sure that another person was involved in the crime. The fingerprints in Meredith’s room did not belong to Patrick, Amanda, or Raffaele. They ran a cross-check and quickly matched them to Rudy Guede, who, like all immigrants in Italy, had been digitally fingerprinted as part of his legal alien residency status. After a further DNA match was made to Rudy, he was found and arrested in Germany, and Patrick was released from prison. The day’s headline read simply: “One Black for Another.”
AMANDA’S MOTHER, Edda Mellas, arrived in town November 6, the day of her daughter’s arrest. Edda had already made plans to come, at Amanda’s request, to help her resettle after the murder. By the time she arrived, Amanda was in prison, and Edda found herself scrambling to put together a legal team and battling the reporters who had gathered outside Capanne prison. It would be her first taste of the media circus, and she proved to be a producer’s dream; she slammed the car door and wept in plain view of the camera. The court had already assigned Amanda a local attorney, Luciano Ghirga, a
Detective Napoleoni agrees with Amanda about what was said that night, but she denies the police ever hit her. She says that while the interrogation was tough, there was no physical contact. When Amanda took the stand in June, the young woman repeated the accusation that she was hit. When the judge asked her to identify who hit her, she looked around the room and said she didn’t know, even though Napoleoni and all the officers present at her questioning were in the courtroom. Amanda maintains that the police badgered her until she confessed. The officers say they were firm but polite, and even offered her chamomile tea and sweets from the vending machine. Amanda and her parents would later be sued for slander for accusing the police of brutality.
Amanda’s lawyers maintain that the police either destroyed the tape of this questioning or seriously
erred in not making one. Mignini says that investigators don’t usually tape interrogations of witnesses unless they are sure they are going to get something. And, because Amanda had not been officially called in as a suspect, the room they took her to wasn’t equipped for such surveillance. But if the interrogation had been taped and played in court, it could have hurt both sides. If police were heard cuffing her, they could be charged with assault. But if the jury had heard Amanda describe being in the house and hearing terrible screams, it would have been even harder to believe her later story—that she had spent the entire evening at Raf’s.
AT 5:45 A.M. on November 6, Amanda signed a written statement, in Italian, and was arrested. Because she did not have a lawyer present, that statement was never admissible in the criminal case against her. But it was used in the civil case filed by Patrick Lumumba for defamation—a case that ran in tandem with the criminal trial. His lawyers translated it back into English:
Raffaele and I had smoked a hashish cigarette and so I felt confused, as I neither use drugs nor heavy drugs
frequently. I met Patrick just afterwards, at the basket place of Piazza Grimana and I went home with him. I do not remember if Meredith was there or if she came after. I have trouble remembering those moments but Patrick made sex with Meredith, with whom he was infatuated, but I can’t remember well if Meredith had been threatened first. I remember confusedly he killed her.
Patrick sat in jail for two weeks while the police tried hard to find evidence against him. The only thing they could come up with was the presence of his cell phone in the area around via della Pergola the night of the murder. But that ping was later determined to be a technical anomaly. As the police eliminated evidence against Patrick, however, they became ever-more sure that another person was involved in the crime. The fingerprints in Meredith’s room did not belong to Patrick, Amanda, or Raffaele. They ran a cross-check and quickly matched them to Rudy Guede, who, like all immigrants in Italy, had been digitally fingerprinted as part of his legal alien residency status. After a further DNA match was made to Rudy, he was found and arrested in Germany, and Patrick was released from prison. The day’s headline read simply: “One Black for Another.”
AMANDA’S MOTHER, Edda Mellas, arrived in town November 6, the day of her daughter’s arrest. Edda had already made plans to come, at Amanda’s request, to help her resettle after the murder. By the time she arrived, Amanda was in prison, and Edda found herself scrambling to put together a legal team and battling the reporters who had gathered outside Capanne prison. It would be her first taste of the media circus, and she proved to be a producer’s dream; she slammed the car door and wept in plain view of the camera. The court had already assigned Amanda a local attorney, Luciano Ghirga, a
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