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when she was stabbed. But then her body was dragged a few meters to the side of the bed, her long hair leaving on the floor a swirl of blood that is clearly visible in the crime scene video. That’s where she died of asphyxiation, literally suffocating on her own blood. A pile of Perugia postcards that Meredith had written to friends sat on her night-stand next to a paperback book and a glass of water. The bra that had been sliced from her body was crumpled at her feet. But most notable to detectives was that someone had covered Meredith with her duvet after the blood on her body dried. The only bloodstains on the duvet came from her neck wound, not from the small drops that had splattered over her torso when she was stabbed. Criminologists agree overwhelmingly that covering the body is almost always the mark of a woman, especially if it is done after the murder. That simple detail and the fact that Amanda described Meredith’s body in front of the closet, where she was murdered—not by her bed, where she was found—would stick in the mind of the prosecutors throughout the investigation.

At 1:30 P.M., Italo Carmignani, a longtime journalist for the Messaggero newspaper in Perugia, received a cryptic text message from a trustworthy source close to the police: “Ragazza morta via della Pergola, forse omicidio —Dead girl via della Pergola, might be murder.” It was the first of hundreds of leaks to various journalists eager to understand this complicated crime. ERT experts arrived from Rome that afternoon, and two videographers and a still photographer documented their painstaking collection of evidence throughout the house. On the soundtrack to the video, investigators can be heard discussing the evidence and swapping hypotheses about the crime. Patrizia Stefanoni, a biologist with the ERT, personally collected many of the samples she would later test in her pristine lab in Rome. Dressed in a white jumpsuit, she picked up Meredith’s bloodied bra from the floor by the tiny elastic band between the cups.

“This was cut right off her body,” Stefanoni said, shaking her head. “Imagine. And look, we’re missing a piece of the bra clasp.”

The police collected the lacy black underwear that was rolled up at Meredith’s feet and checked the button and zipper of her blue jeans, but failed to find any evidence that these had been forcibly stripped off her body. They then lifted the comforter to look at Meredith’s slender body, nude except for the blood-soaked long-sleeved white T-shirt that was pushed up over her small breasts. Her skin was purple and red with bruises, and her chest showed the outline in small droplets of blood where her bra had been. Meredith’s right leg was bent slightly, and her left leg was straight. She had recently had a Brazilian—her pubic hair completely waxed. There were more bruises on her hips, knees, and thighs. But her face was still beautiful, her lips slightly parted in a Mona Lisa smile.

An examination of her vagina revealed a hair that the police removed and put into a plastic bag. “It’s blonde,” Stefanoni said, directing the collection officer to note that the hair was not Meredith’s. Police also noted the evidence of recent sexual contact, both vaginal and anal, but no blood or internal tears that would suggest rape—thus the theory of a sex game was formed. Multiple autopsies would later fail to prove sexual assault, while at least one autopsy suggested that the sexual assault took place postmortem.

On a pillow that had been shoved under Meredith’s hips, police found both a bloody shoe print and two spots that might have been dried semen. Testing for one would compromise the other, Stefanoni believed, so she would later have to decide which was potentially more important to the case. Concluding that the droplets seemed old and were probably those of Meredith’s new lover, Giacomo, Stefanoni decided to focus on the bloody footprint. In the end, she could not link the footprint to anyone beyond a reasonable doubt, because it was indistinct, smudged at both heel and toe. All she could establish with certainty