Angel Face_ Sex, Murder and the Inside Story of Amanda Knox - Barbie Latza Nadeau [17]
Another mistake involved the bloody footprint from a sneaker found near Meredith’s body. A few days later, it would be falsely attributed to Raffaele after police asked him to remove his shoes during an interrogation to measure them against the print. A match in size and brand became the basis on which Raf was taken into custody. But investigators failed to notice the telltale pattern left by a tiny piece of glass wedged in the bottom of the shoe at the murder scene, which would later allow the print to be positively attributed to Guede. Except for that oversight, the police would never have been able to detain Raffaele while they built a case for filing charges against him, even though he and Amanda provided conflicting alibis. In Italy, flawed alibis don’t weigh as much as hard forensic evidence, and the police needed that shoe to remand Raf without a judge’s order.
When they began examining other parts of the house, police found reason to believe that someone had tampered with the scene. The evidence of a break-in in Filomena’s bedroom was particularly suspicious. A rock had been thrown through the window, apparently to gain entry, and the room was ransacked, with clothes pulled from the wardrobe and scattered on the floor. But the broken glass lay on top of the clothes, not under them, which suggested that the window was broken after the room was tossed. Police were also puzzled by the lack of bloody footprints leading out of Meredith’s room. Whoever killed her had to have been covered with blood, yet there were only a few faint sneaker prints outside the room and one partial bloody footprint on the bath mat in the girls’ bathroom, but no footprints leading up to it. Also, the rest of the house was oddly devoid of fingerprints.
After Meredith’s body was removed and all the obvious forensic evidence was collected, the investigators began to spray the apartment with Luminol, a chemical that can uncover blood even after the blood has been wiped clean. Sure enough, there were a woman’s bare footprints, Amanda’s size, outside Meredith’s room. These prints would be positively matched to Amanda, but in a serious procedural oversight, they were never tested to show conclusively that they were made in Meredith’s blood. Luminol also reacts to certain acidic substances, so without additional testing, these prints—of someone who lived in the house—could not be directly linked to the murder. The Luminol also revealed more blood in the bathroom and a stray drop in Filomena’s room, where the break-in occurred. That drop would prove the most incriminating; it had Amanda’s DNA mixed with Meredith’s blood. At the time, however, police made no connection between the evidence of a clean-up in the house and the mop propped against the front porch. Several days later, when Raffaele was arrested, police searched his apartment and found a receipt for Ace brand bleach, purchased the morning of November 4, 2007, at 8:15. That bleach was probably used to clean his shoes and maybe even the knife. The clerk at a different store would later testify that he saw Amanda in the cleaning supplies section shortly after he opened on November 2, 2007, at 7:45 A.M.
While the scientific police collected crucial forensic evidence inside the house, the media were gathering equally damaging circumstantial evidence from the rooftop of the nearby parking garage. That’s where the growing number of reporters from Rome and London joined the local press in setting up cameras aimed at the tiny villa below. They saw the police, dressed in white jumpsuits, comb the garden area and move quickly into and out of the house, taking bags of evidence to the waiting van. At the end of the garden, a group of young people were huddled on the gravel—friends of Meredith and of her Italian roommates. At the other end of the driveway, Amanda