Angel Face (14 page)

 

 

THE ANIMATION BEGINS with events that happened late in the afternoon of November 1 and shows Amanda and Raf meeting up with Rudy at the basketball courts. It then jumps from scene to scene according to the time points that were established by witness testimony and logs from the cell phone carrier; a phone that’s turned on sends periodic pings to the base station, which can pinpoint its location. There is no dialogue in the video, because the girls would have presumably been speaking English. Instead, prosecutor Comodi reads a narration that includes the time of each segment and an explanation of each scene backed up by courtroom testimony. At 8:18 P.M., Amanda is on the
via Ulisse Rocchi in downtown Perugia when she receives a text message from her boss, Patrick, telling her that she didn’t have to come in to work. At 8:30, she goes to Raf’s apartment on corso Garibaldi nearby. At 8:38, she sends a text to acknowledge Patrick’s message. Meanwhile, Meredith is finishing dinner with her English friends. At 8:45 P.M., she and Sophie leave Robyn’s house, then split up at the via Roscetto. At 8:46 P.M., Raf turns off his cell phone. At 9 P.M., the video shows, Meredith is eating a mushroom out of the fridge back at her apartment. (There were no mushrooms on the pizza at Robyn’s house, yet it was the last food she ate, according to autopsy reports. But there was no sign that this could have been a hallucinogenic.) Raffaele makes the last keystroke on his computer at 9:10 P.M. At 9:45, the video shows, Amanda and Raffaele leave his apartment and head toward the basketball courts on Piazza Grimana to reach via della Pergola. At Amanda’s house, they meet Rudy to work out a prearranged drug deal. At 11:20, Amanda opens the door on via della Pergola, and the three enter the apartment.

Meredith is in her room. Rudy 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 that they were so blasted that they had lost touch with their own rational selves—and truly cannot recall exactly what happened that night. This could have been the dangerous side effect of their budding romance: According to Amanda’s prison diaries, Raf had been reminiscing about his incredible highs on heroin and cocaine, and she may have been eager to try it; she in turn might have introduced him to “hard A”—the high-proof mix of liquors popular with college students in the Pacific Northwest. By sharing their knowledge, two experienced thrill seekers could have found a way to get higher than ever—with lethal consequences.

Consider this scenario: Although they never admitted it in court, it is entirely plausible that Amanda and Raf saw Rudy at the basketball courts during their late afternoon walk on November 1. They placed an order for drugs, which Rudy then delivered to via della Pergola around 9 P.M., just as Meredith was getting home. But she was tired from her late Halloween night and had no interest in getting high. Amanda and Raf,
however, were planning to be higher than usual—too high to take phone calls, particularly from Raf’s dad, who’d already threatened him with rehab. Records show both their phones were turned off around 8:30.

Between 9:15 and 11:15, Amanda, Raf, and Rudy got themselves seriously messed up; Amanda asked Meredith if she could lend her money to pay Rudy, and Meredith reluctantly did so. (This explains why three hundred euros Meredith had withdrawn to pay her rent was missing and there was a trace of Rudy’s DNA mixed with her blood on the zipper of the handbag but only her fingerprints on the wallet. She got the money out herself. Later, after the murder, Rudy, covered in her blood, probably moved her purse from the floor onto the bed. But he and Amanda and Raf were all acquitted of robbery.) Meredith was angry about having to lend Amanda money and retired to her room. Things were tense between the two roommates, and at a certain level of intoxication, it seemed like a good idea to Amanda to start baiting her. She prodded Rudy to go see Meredith; he went to her bedroom and started trying to kiss her and fondle her until she called out. Amanda and Raffaele went back to see what was going on, and instead of helping Meredith fend off Rudy, joined in the taunting. Actual rape was never
confirmed in this case, but Rudy did violate Meredith with his fingers before, during, or after the murder. His DNA traces were found inside her vagina, but they were not from semen or blood.

By this point, Amanda, Raf, and Rudy were beyond the control of conscience. Raf took a switchblade out of his pocket and started teasing Meredith with it. Rudy had a knife in his backpack, and that came out as well. They had no intention of killing Meredith, but they were taunting her with knives on each side of her neck and she, in essence, impaled herself on the larger knife as she twisted in the grip of someone holding back her arms. Her final scream was the one Nara heard. When they realized what they had done, the three assailants panicked. They first tried to save her, taking a towel and putting it on the biggest wound, but they all freaked out and ran out of the apartment and up the metal steps in the parking garage below Nara’s apartment. Rudy headed out into the night, taking Meredith’s cell phones and his knife with him. A young couple would later testify that they had seen a frantic black man running away from the direction of the via della Pergola that night. Rudy threw the cell phones over a hedge and kept the knife, eventually dumping it when he was on the lam in Germany.
Amanda and Raffaele ditched the pocketknife and eventually went back to the house, first looking at the villa from the basketball courts where Antonio Curatolo, the homeless man, saw them. They went to Amanda’s room and passed out.

 

 

THE NEXT MORNING, Amanda and Raffaele wake up around 6:00 A.M. with crippling hangovers and no memories of the night before. They peek into Meredith’s room to find her battered and lifeless body, but they still can’t remember anything. The broken glass on Meredith’s floor that no one was ever able to explain was from liquor bottles. Amanda and Raf have blood on their hands, and they begin to panic. First, they both turn on their cell phones about 6:30 A.M. to see if their messages offer any clues. They do not; Amanda’s last text is to Patrick Lumumba about work the night before, Raf’s phone shows both a missed call and a text message—both from his father. Rudy is nowhere to be found, and in fact, they don’t remember that he was there. Amanda had a hazy recollection of a black man, but the only person she can think of is Patrick.

Although they can’t remember exactly what happened the night before, obviously a dead body means trouble. If the police suspect Raf and Amanda had anything to do with it, they will surely be drug-tested, which risks not only charges for serious drugs but also the wrath of Dr. Sollecito. Not thinking clearly, they convince themselves that they can clean up the house, stage a break-in, retreat to Raf’s apartment, and claim total ignorance—which, given their blackouts, isn’t entirely a lie. At some point, Raffaele goes to shower, leaving his bloody bare footprint on the bathmat and another in the hallway. Amanda doesn’t shower at all. In the photos from that morning, her makeup is smudged, and the cops whisper about her body odor. She changes clothes and puts her bloody socks and other clothing in a plastic shopping bag to throw away. Amanda’s bare footprints, most likely left in blood, were later turned up in the hallway with Luminol. Around 7:30 A.M., the couple leaves the apartment to buy cleaning supplies. Raffaele wants to change his clothes, so he goes home while Amanda goes to the store. Marco Quintavalle, the owner of the Conad store near Raf’s house, testified that Amanda was waiting at his store when he opened at 7:45.

RETURNING TO Amanda’s apartment, Amanda and Raf start cleaning up. To simulate a break-in, Raf pulls the clothing out of Filomena’s drawers and then opens the casement window so he can throw a rock through it from inside the room. He forgets to open the shutters, which first tips off the officers to the idea of a staged break-in. Amanda, who had been cleaning the bathroom, comes into Filomena’s room at some point, leaving the incriminating drop of mixed DNA and blood on the floor. Raffaele notices it and wipes it up, but Luminol will bring it back to light. They start the washing machine, adding some of Amanda’s clothes to the pile in Meredith’s laundry basket—although Amanda would later testify that she never used the house washing machine. The machine is still warm when the police arrive after noon. Amanda and Raf do a pretty good job of wiping the house clean—police note an unusual absence of fingerprints—but in their haste, they neglect several drops of blood in the bathroom the girls shared.

When they go back to Meredith’s room, however, they are overwhelmed. They know better than to leave tracks there, so they put on shoes and stand on towels to scoot into the room, which explains the smudges on the floor. Amanda, in her testimony, actually described
this ruse in response to a prosecutor’s question about why there were no bare footprints in her own bedroom even though she said she was in there after her shower. She explained that she had not wanted to get the floor wet, so she used her towel as a sort of magic carpet. The defense later maintained that the few bare footprints and sneaker prints in Meredith’s room all belonged to Rudy, without adequately explaining why he would have one shoe on and one shoe off. It makes more sense to think that Rudy had his shoes on and Raf, who was more comfortable in the house, had his off.

This may be when Amanda decides she can’t look at Meredith’s open eyes any longer. Meredith’s corpse is between Amanda and the bed. She is uneasy as she reaches over Meredith and pulls the duvet off the bed to cover her; in doing so, Amanda loses her balance and steps off the towel, putting an unstable foot on the pillow underneath Meredith’s body—how else explain the bloody footprint on the pillow consistent with Amanda’s shoe size? There are no similar prints elsewhere in the room, only smudges on the floor. Amanda and Raf then wipe most, but not all, of the surface prints around the room—including everything on the outside door handle, which raises the question
of how anyone exited the room and locked it from the outside. A few of the missed fingerprints in Meredith’s room are later matched to Rudy, but there are only a few; the remaining fourteen unidentifiable fingerprints inside the room are probably his and Amanda’s and Raf’s.