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“Listen, you know I knew those girls, I knew them both, Meredith and Amanda, but nothing more, you know that,” Rudy told Giacomo. “I’ve been to their house twice, the last time a few days before all this business, but I didn’t do anything. I have nothing to do with this business. I wasn’t there that evening. If they have found my fingerprints it means I must have left them there before.”

Giacomo told Rudy that the police were looking for him. So when Rudy was stopped for fare-beating on a train between Mainz and Wiesbaden, in a panic he confessed to the train cops that he was wanted for murder in Italy.

Rudy’s flight to Germany counted against him at trial. Even though Rudy was taken into custody in Germany as a murder suspect, the authorities there did not interrogate him. But his father, Roger Guede, who hadn’t seen his son in more than five years, flew to Germany and was able to visit him and give him the latest news from Italy, where rumors were swirling about Amanda and Raffaele’s possible involvement in Meredith’s murder. Il Messaggero’s Carmignani also traveled to Coblenza prison and spoke to Roger Guede after his visit. “He keeps repeating that he didn’t kill her,” Rudy’s father said, shaking his head. “That’s all he says. I’m his father, but what can I do? Nothing. I wasn’t there for him before, he doesn’t want me to be there now.”

VALTER BISCOTTI ALSO DASHED to Germany to offer Rudy legal services, free of charge; he is always eager to insert himself into headline-making cases. A small, hunched man with closely cropped, graying hair, he constantly walks up and down Perugia’s corso Vannucci in quick, short steps, drumming up business and looking for reporters. His suits are loose and his shoes are scuffed. Known as “the Jackal” to Italians and as “Cookie Man” or “Biscuit Man” to the Anglo press—a play on his last name—Biscotti has made his career defending public enemies and unlikely victims. In one of his reputation-making cases, he won a civil judgment for the family of an undercover police officer killed by Red Brigades terrorists. He is also currently representing the family of “Brenda,” a Brazilian transsexual whose mysterious death is linked to an admitted affair with a prominent Roman governor. Biscotti brought Brenda’s mother from the Amazon to make the TV rounds, and he is famous for selling access to his clients—reputedly charging Universal, the parent company of NBC, sixty thousand euros for a jailhouse chat with Rudy. (NBC denies making this payment. Biscotti says the interview is scheduled to take place in March 2010.)

That is roughly the amount of his fee for defending Rudy, but Biscotti took the case pro bono immediately after Guede’s arrest. He frequently charges media outlets for “photocopies” of documents and “secretarial fees” related to long, on-camera interviews. Because he feared racial bias if Rudy was tried with Amanda and Raf, Biscotti requested the fast-track trial, which involved only a few witnesses in addition to the forensic evidence. At that proceeding, in October 2008, prosecutors demonstrated that most of the DNA samples from Meredith’s room, including incriminating traces on her body and his bloody handprint on the pillow underneath it, belonged to Rudy. Nevertheless, the state’s autopsy results showed that more than one person killed her. Luca Lalli, the coroner who first examined Meredith, would testify during Amanda and Raffaele’s trial that the size, shape, and location of Meredith’s dozens of cuts and bruises could only be explained by more than one assailant. She had finger bruises around her neck. She had a bruise on her chin and over her mouth, as if someone pressed a palm to her chin, covering her mouth and scratching her nose. She had identical bruises on each of her inner elbows, compatible with her arms being held back. There were also small, finger-size bruises on her body consistent with a female hand and, on her pillow, a small, bloody shoeprint that could never