Amanda Knox Testifies

At her trial, Knox insisted the last time she saw Kercher was the afternoon of November 1. Knox and Sollecito had stopped by the apartment to eat lunch. Knox recalled that Kercher, her face still colored by the make-up of her vampires costume from a Halloween party the night before, came out of her room, called out a goodbye, and left the apartment.

Knox and Sollecito soon left to watch a movie at his apartment. They fixed dinner. In the written statement she provided police on November 7, she said she'd noticed blood on his hands, and now wondered whether it really was from the fish he'd prepared, as she'd assumed; on the stand she said that this was just her imagination running away from her due to all the stress of the persistent police attention.

Her testimony stuck to the bare details: After dinner that night, she had checked her email, then she and Sollecito had smoked a joint, had sex, and then fallen asleep.

She had not returned to the apartment until the next morning, she testified. Their apartment door had been open, but she said she hadn't thought much of that at first. Then she had noticed blood on the bathmat and the bathroom sink. Thinking one of her roommates had been menstruating but hadn't cleaned up, she took a shower as planned. Then, rather than knocking on Meredith's door, which she'd noted was locked, she had gone back to Raffaele's.

He had decided they should call the police. Or, rather, he had called his sister, a member of the Carabinieri, the Italian national police. The pair had then headed back to her place; she says they had wanted to make sure nothing had been stolen. When they got there, roommate Filomena Romanelli had returnedand the Italian communications police were there. Police found Kercher dead in her room, stabbed in the throat.

This account contradicts forensic evidence that prosecutors have said places both Knox and Sollecito at the murder.

Six crime scene inspections revealed more than 228 pieces of evidence against the pair, prosecutors have contended. Forensic investigators say traces of Knox's blood were on the murder weapon with Kercher's, and that they found footprints matching Knox's in Meredith's blood in Meredith's bedroom. They also testified that they found Sollecito's DNA on Kercher's bra clasp. Sollecito and Knox's defenders dispute the quality of this evidence, suggesting it resulted either from the sort of contamination bound to happen when people share close quarters or from police misconduct, since the clasp was discovered weeks after the discovery of the body and the initial investigation.

At one point during the extended pre-trial investigation Knox had said she'd spent the night at home and heard Kercher's screams. Sollecito had once suggested he wasn't sure if Knox had been with him the entire night. Unsurprisingly, Knox blames these inconsistencies on confrontational and high-pressure police tactics. And those highly publicized cartwheels and yoga exercises she had performed at the police station during questioning in the days following the murder? Just to reduce stress and lighten the mood.