Angel Face_ Sex, Murder and the Inside Story of Amanda Knox - Barbie Latza Nadeau [31]
Rudy was no stranger at via della Pergola. All of the guys downstairs knew him well, both as a friend and as a drug supplier. He had met Amanda and Meredith downstairs as well, and by Amanda’s own admission, he had chatted with her in the center of Perugia among a group of friends. Rudy had even asked one of the guys downstairs if Amanda was dating anyone. Born in the Ivory Coast, Rudy came to Italy with his family illegally by boat when he was five years old. His father left the family when Rudy was sixteen, and the teenager spent the next several years with a wealthy Perugian family who helped him legalize his status. He studied hotel management but lost interest in school and supported himself with odd jobs, working in gardens, on local farms, and at the student bars. He lived on the periphery of the university scene in Perugia and could easily pass for a student. He was known to be a small-time drug dealer, and as a registered immigrant, he had fingerprints on file with local police. In his own instance of ill-considered social networking, he posted a YouTube video of himself as Dracula saying, “I want to suck your blood.” Rudy was a good basketball player who spent most afternoons on the Piazza Grimana courts near the via della Pergola. Although when Amanda-friendly sources described Rudy as “an African man,” they seemed to imply—accessing subliminal racism—that he was a big, powerful guy, the truth is that he has a slight build, with narrow shoulders and sunken eyes.
Police believed from the beginning that several people were involved in Kercher’s death. They felt relatively certain that Amanda and Raffaele had some role, but also suspected that these two were covering up for a third person. Amanda was pressed on that point in her late-night interrogation when, under intense questioning, she finally fingered a different black man, Patrick Lumumba, who was quickly arrested. But a Swiss professor named Roman Mero came forward to say he had been at Patrick’s bar the night of the murder, giving him an ironclad alibi, and the police eventually let the bar owner go. But for months, they tormented Patrick, auditing his books and checking his financial and residential status. In an attempt to save face—and to avoid a false imprisonment suit—the police had hoped to charge Lumumba for something, but they never could. Yet they still had evidence of a third killer: feces in the toilet did not match any known person with access to the house, fingerprints in Meredith’s bedroom did not match either Amanda or Raf, and a black hair was consistent with someone of African descent but was not Patrick’s.
The fingerprints produced a sure match to Rudy, then twenty-one, who had left town. Police proceeded to take DNA samples from a hairbrush at his Perugia apartment and issued an international warrant for his arrest. Within a few days, his DNA was matched to the fecal matter at the villa. And after his name was released, a number of witnesses came forward to describe Rudy’s strange behavior the night of the murder, reporting that he had been at the Domus nightclub around 2:30 A.M. on November 2. No one recalled seeing blood on his clothing, but at least three people testified that he had “extremely bad” body odor.
BY THEN, Rudy was in Germany, staying in touch with some Perugia friends via the Internet. Police convinced his friend Giacomo Benedetti to start up a Skype conversation, which they monitored, and they then traced the IP address to Dusseldorf. Prompted by police, Giacomo asked Rudy about Amanda. Rudy said, “Amanda doesn’t enter into this,” and her supporters quickly seized on the fact that Rudy initially admitted