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By Root 226 0

goes into the bathroom while Amanda and Raffaele confront Meredith, teasing and taunting her. Suddenly, Amanda turns aggressive. A physical fight breaks out between the two girls, and the video shows Amanda first grabbing Meredith’s throat and then shoving the palm of her hand against Meredith’s chin to push her head against the wall, knocking her unconscious—and here the video superimposes actual shots of Meredith’s bruises to show how they match the size and shape of Amanda’s animated hand. Rudy enters the room just before Meredith falls to the floor. Amanda, Raf, and Rudy undress her, first pulling down her blue jeans and underwear and then pushing her T-shirt above her breasts. Then Meredith comes to. Raf pulls his switchblade out of his pocket, and a few minutes later, Amanda runs to the kitchen to get another knife. Meredith uses her right hand to fight back, which causes the tiny knife wounds on the palms of her hands. Raf tries to unhook Meredith’s bra but fails to work the clasp; he slices it off her later, after she’s been stabbed. Meredith falls to her knees. Amanda then directs Rudy and Raffaele to hold Meredith’s arms back. Rudy reaches down to touch Meredith’s vagina. Amanda holds the larger knife to Meredith’s neck, teasing her with it and dancing it across her neck, leaving fine cuts. Raffaele holds his knife against the other side of her neck from behind. Amanda then plunges the knife into Meredith’s neck and she utters the scream heard by elderly neighbor Nara Capezzali. Blood sprays on the wardrobe, and Meredith falls to the ground. Then the three assailants pull Meredith to the side of her bed, and again, the avatar’s movement is superimposed over crime scene photos of the blood smear left by her hair across the floor. Rudy ministers to Meredith, who is coughing and spitting blood. Amanda and Raf grab Meredith’s phones and run from the apartment, leaving Rudy and the dying Meredith.

The video was compelling about the mechanics of the murder, but less convincing on the subject of motive. This has always been the weakest link in the prosecution’s case, and in fact their theory of the crime changed several times over the course of the investigation. In the days right after the murder, there was talk of a Satanic ritual because of the Halloween paraphernalia found at the girls’ villa and Raf’s apartment. That hypothesis was soon discounted, however, and replaced with the idea of sex games gone wrong in a fog of drugs and alcohol. Unfortunately, no alcohol or drug testing was immediately done on Amanda, Raf, or Rudy, and Meredith’s initial toxicology reports showed that she had had no more than a glass of wine. (Later toxicology reports showed that she may have been very drunk, but the prosecution wrote those off as bad forensics—they said her body had not been stored properly, so the blood alcohol levels were due to fermentation, not intoxication. As for Amanda and Raf, when they were finally arrested, on November 6, only the slightest unidentifiable trace of narcotics was found through hair samples—not even enough to identify the substance.) By the time the case reached court, however, the idea of sex games with Meredith as a willing participant had evolved into a notion of conflict between the two roommates that provoked Amanda and the two men to sexually taunt and assault her. This was the motivation assumed in the video reenactment, with a voiceover by prosecutor Comodi explaining that the narcissistic Amanda had total control of the situation.

MY OWN VIEW IS THAT the video is too harsh, because it does not credit the role of drugs and alcohol in the events of that night. Although prosecutor Mignini mentioned drugs in his closing arguments—specifically, heroin, cocaine, and acid in addition to the superenhanced cannabis common on the back streets of Perugia—the prosecution video never shows Amanda, Raf, and Rudy getting high, and the avatars appear to be in control of themselves, acting with intentional cruelty. The more likely scenario, if Amanda and Raf are truly guilty in Meredith’s death, is