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The alleged murder weapon, a twelve-inch kitchen knife found in Raf’s apartment, proved to be the most contested exhibit in the case. It only matched one of the three wounds on Meredith’s neck and did not match the bloody knife print left on her bed sheet, suggesting that a second knife had been used in the crime. Also, the knife was mishandled on its way to Stefanoni’s lab, transferred from a plastic bag to a box. Stefanoni testified that the knife had tiny scratches on the side “consistent with scrubbing” and said that she had found traces of bleach on it. At the top of the handle, she detected Amanda’s DNA profile, as if it had been left by a thumbprint. She also found seven traces of human biological matter—flesh, not blood—between the grooves at the tip of the blade. But the samples were small, and there was only enough to run one test. She notified the defense’s forensic experts, who were invited to join her in the lab in accordance with the protocol for criminal investigations in Italy. They all declined, saying they felt sure there would be no match and traveling to the lab in Rome would be a waste of their time.

“But your experts had the opportunity to be there, as was their right,” Judge Massei scolded the lawyers for Amanda and Raffaele. “They chose not to go, they were given ample notice.”

So Stefanoni tested the blade sample alone in her lab. Her notes indicated that her initial finding was, as she wrote in English on the report, “too low.” But then she amplified the settings of her equipment to the very limit of Italian and international forensic guidelines. Only then did she find a match to Meredith’s DNA. Because she had no material left to double-test, that result should have been thrown out—no forensic protocol allows for single-tested evidence. But the prosecutors took it anyway and built their case around it. On cross-examination, the defense had a heyday.

After getting Stefanoni to admit that she had written “too low” at least four times on her report, Bongiorno, Raffaele’s lead lawyer, turned to the crime scene video that documented the collection of evidence and pointed out Stefanoni’s diamond tennis bracelet on the outside of her surgical gloves.

“Is that your beautiful bracelet?” asked Bongiorno.

“Yes,” said Stefanoni slowly.

Bongiorno then watched the video as Stefanoni moves to another sample. Her diamond bracelet is in the same location outside the glove.

“Look! Look! There it is. You didn’t change gloves at all, did you?” Bongiorno gloated. “Did these mistakes happen in your lab, too?”

Stefanoni admitted her mistakes, but insisted that her results were still valid. “If the blood evidence is a positive match, it is not always important how much there is. A match is a match, and the material on the blade matches the victim.”

Throughout the trial, Giuliano Mignini, the lead prosecutor, was described by the Seattle-fed U.S. press as a hot-tempered monster who had abused author Douglas Preston years earlier and was inclined to wild theories. But it was his co-prosecutor, Manuela Comodi, who proved the real hothead. The dark-haired, beautiful woman clinging aggressively to her youth wore tight Max Mara pantsuits and designer sneakers under her black court robe and sported dangling bracelets and a giant diamond ring that added a touch of sparkle to the courtroom. When she heard the defense’s Dalla Vedova questioning his paid consultant Sara Gino about Stefanoni’s mistakes at the crime scene and again in the laboratory, she slammed her fists on the table and stormed out of the courtroom, returning a few minutes later with an elaborate black lace fan to cool herself.

“Pardon me, your honor, but it is hard to keep calm when the defense is insulting the state’s forensic expert,” she said, smiling. “They are calling her a liar. I could easily say the same about them, but it’s not professional.” A chain smoker, Comodi often finished her questioning with a cigarette in one hand and her lighter in the other, barely waiting