Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back With Amanda Knox (31 page)

We may have beaten him, but in an important and deeply depressing sense he has emerged a winner too. At least so far.

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Amanda and I steered clear of any legal discussion; we’d avoided talking about the case in prison, and we weren’t about to depress ourselves by starting now. Instead, we shared many of the normal, joyful things that had instinctively brought us together in the first place: our noisy, rambunctious, warmhearted families, and our love of friends, good food, and large gatherings. On my last night in Seattle, Chris and Edda threw a big party to celebrate our freedom and our reunion. We ate king crab and other delicious seafood, and I was presented with an all-American cheesecake to celebrate my twenty-eighth birthday.

Amanda’s younger sisters and cousins were there, and so was her best friend, Madison Paxton, whom I’d seen many times in court. We took a lot of photos; unlike so many of the shots of the two of us taken at trial, we were smiling in every one.

I did manage to have snippets of serious conversation with Amanda amid the celebration. She told me she now relied on a small handful of close friends but otherwise did not go out much. It made her too nervous. She was recognized almost everywhere she went, and while most people were supportive, she dreaded the times when she would hear someone shout out hateful, negative things. She had even received anonymous threats.

I told her I sympathized. I’d gone through much the same thing. I, too, had days or weeks when I didn’t feel like seeing old friends. I was dismayed, if not surprised, to realize that my family was as
volatile as ever. Vanessa was still boundlessly opinionated, only more depressed now that she was living back home, her career in tatters, and tending horses to make ends meet. My father would alternate between infinite patience and understanding, and explosions of indignation at the choices I was making and the company I kept. Both Amanda and I were contending with contradictory experiences. We had to get reacquainted with normal life, with its frustrations and banalities as well as its pleasures and prospects for future happiness; but at the same time we had to acknowledge we were ourselves still far from normal.

I told her that when I was confronted with people haranguing me about the case, either to attack me or to presume more knowledge than they had, I ignored them. As a general rule, I tried to give as little weight as possible to the opinions of others. We had to focus on living our lives, I said, because nobody could live them for us. “If I had had that attitude,” I said, “if I’d allowed other people to dictate what I should do and think and feel, I wouldn’t be eating seafood here with you. I’d still be in prison.”

She agreed, and as our conversation continued, she looked visibly moved. “I want only good things for you, Raffaele. I’m very glad you came.” She gave me a monster hug, the sort that only close friends or siblings give each other, people who share a special, unbreakable bond.

Amanda and I will forever be associated, for better and for worse, because of what we went through. I’ll never be entirely comfortable with that, because of the memories it inevitably dredges up. But Amanda herself will always be a treasure. She was good to me from the beginning, and she stood by me when I needed her most, just as I stood by her. We are free today because of the support we were able to offer each other in our darkest moments. The
romance that made headlines around the world was a fleeting thing, but that deeper trust, the inherent faith we had in each other even as others dragged us endlessly through the mud, defines us as human beings.

It’s what kept us sane for four long years in prison. And, I am quite certain, it will endure.

M
y lawyer Luca Maori, who stayed on the case despite the opposition of many members of my family.

M
e in court, speaking to my lawyer, Donatella Donati, with two police officers standing guard. My father is in the background, looking at his computer.

A
manda in court, speaking with her attorney, Carlo Dalla Vedova, and several paralegals from his practice.

V
ia della Pergola, 7. The window immediately to the left of the taped-up front door was Filomena’s. The parapet at the far left of the shot is where Rudy Guede most likely threw the rock that broke her window on the night of the murder—a scenario the prosecution and judges in four different courts could not accept.

M
y attorney Delfo Berretti demonstrates (in August 2008), contrary to the opinion of Judge Massimo Ricciarelli, that it wouldn’t take a Spider-Man to clamber up the wall of the murder house to enter Filomena’s window.

P
ublic prosecutors Giuliano Mignini (left) and Manuela Comodi (right) display the kitchen knife taken from my apartment to reporters at my trial, September 2009.

M
y sister, Vanessa, and my father in court, November 2009.

I
look with ill-concealed contempt at Monica Napoleoni, the homicide chief of Perugia’s Squadra Mobile, during one of the last hearings of my lower-court trial. To the left is Armando Finzi, the policeman who pulled the kitchen knife out of my drawer using only his “investigative instinct.”

G
iulia Bongiorno, my lead lawyer, in an exchange with chief prosecutor Giuliano Mignini on the day she delivered her closing statement in my first trial, November 2009.

T
he gates of Capanne prison, outside Perugia, where I spent six months in solitary confinement.