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By Root 249 0

a jacket; Amanda was not. A mop and bucket stood propped against the tiny porch at the front of the house, and Amanda told the police that she was taking these to Raffaele’s apartment to clean up a leak under his kitchen sink. The police, accustomed to dealing with foreign students and their imperfect command of Italian, were sympathetic to Amanda. With no idea that they had stumbled onto a serious crime scene, the police were at first not particularly puzzled to find the pair standing in the yard, looking bleary and slightly ill at ease. Later, they would testify that the couple acted “startled and nervous.”

Raffaele immediately told the police that something seemed to be wrong in the house. Amanda had seen blood in the bathroom and later found a broken window in Filomena’s room, so they suspected a burglary. When the police asked if he had dialed the emergency number, 112, Raffaele said yes, although phone records would later show that this was a lie—instead, he had called his sister, a police officer in Puglia. If Raf had in fact called 112, the switchboard would certainly have forwarded the call to the Carabinieri (military police) and the investigation into Meredith’s murder might have gone very differently under the auspices of their crime scene unit, the RIS (Reparti Investigazioni Scientifiche). Instead, the postal police called the Polizia (state police), who called in their own crime scene experts, known as the ERT (Esperti Ricerca Tracce). The RIS and ERT are fierce competitors. The more sophisticated RIS tends to investigate Italy’s most violent crimes and Mafia hits. The ERT generally handles domestic violence cases, but is eager to prove that it is every bit as good as the RIS.

While they waited for the state police to show up, Amanda called her Italian roommate Filomena and urged her to get home quickly. Raffaele made a late call to 112 in which he described the suspected break-in in whispered tones—that tape would later be played at trial. But by then, the state police were already on their way to via della Pergola. And the state police were far more constrained than the Carabinieri in what they could do without a warrant. They were also quick to trust Amanda and Raffaele and allowed them to lead investigators through the house. Carabinieri officials later said they would have made them wait outside.

Amanda told police that she had returned home from Raf’s apartment at midmorning and noticed blood in the bathroom, where she proceeded to shower. Raffaele showed police the broken window in Filomena’s room and explained that they had tried to open Meredith’s door, but it was locked from the inside. By then, Filomena had returned home with another friend, Paola Grande, along with their boyfriends. With Meredith missing and her two phones now on the kitchen table, Paola’s boyfriend, Luca Altieri, argued that they should not wait for a warrant. The police suggested that because they were on private property, the young men could break down Meredith’s door without repercussions.

“With the police, we decided to break into the room,” Luca later testified. The police stood back, and Filomena and the others huddled behind him as Luca attacked the door. “I kicked the door in, and then I heard a scream. At that moment I saw a pool of blood with streaks coming away from it.”

The scream was from Filomena, who had caught a glimpse of Meredith’s bare left foot. Amanda and Raffaele were also in the kitchen when the door came down; they were the first to run out of the house when the group in front turned and bolted, screaming, from the kitchen. But from their position at the back of the crowd, there was no way that Amanda or Raffaele could have seen Meredith’s position inside the room. A few hours later, though, Amanda told the police and onlookers who had gathered outside the house that Meredith had been found in front of her closet.

That was not the case. Police investigators would later determine—according to the trajectory of blood when her throat was cut—that Meredith had been in front of the closet on her knees