A Death in Italy: The Definitive Account of the Amanda Knox Case by Follain John

Author:Follain, John [Follain, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2012-08-20T22:00:00+00:00

Fois went back to Curatolo again and again and the tramp gradually told him the full story as they sat side by side on ‘his’ bench. He’d seen Amanda and Raffaele until sometime after 11 p.m., when the last buses taking people to nightclubs outside Perugia had gone. The pair sat on a low wall in the corner of the basketball court closest to the cottage. They talked, hugged and kissed each other. Every so often, one of them would get up, walk to the railing a few yards away and look towards the gate of the cottage.

‘I had the impression they were checking on something,’ he said. Their manner was sometimes agitated. They left shortly before midnight, walking down the staircase that leads to Via della Pergola and the gate of the cottage a few yards across the street. Curatolo himself left the square a short time after.

‘How do you know it was the night of the murder?’ Fois asked.

‘Because it was a holiday, the buses on the square were waiting to take kids to the nightclubs,’ Curatolo said.

‘But there are buses on other nights too,’ Fois pointed out.

‘Yes, but I remember that the next day the carabinieri asked me if I’d seen something strange the previous night,’ Curatolo said.

Fois made some checks on Curatolo. He found out that the tramp had paid several visits to a centre for drug addicts just behind the university and sometimes got drunk. But Fois was convinced that he’d seen what he described. Together with his editor Castellini, who wanted to make sure for himself that Curatolo was reliable and not just a crank, Fois kept on going back to talk to him.

When Castellini, impressed by the precision of Curatolo’s account after a few meetings, was satisfied that the tramp was speaking the truth, he told him: ‘I believe you. But you’ve got to talk to the prosecutor, it might be important.’

Curatolo grimaced. ‘I want to stay out of this. Besides, I’m a tramp. No one will believe me.’

‘If you tell the truth, no one can prove you wrong. It’s important: a girl was killed,’ Castellini insisted.

But Curatolo feared for his own skin: ‘I could get killed. I’m out here on the street; it’s easy to kill me.’

Castellini reassured him: ‘If you talk to the prosecutor, you’ll become an official witness. That will protect you more than if there’s just a rumour flying around, as there is now. Making a statement to the prosecutor would be like taking out an insurance policy.’

But Curatolo was worried, and it took almost a month to persuade him. ‘Amanda and Raffaele say they weren’t there, but a girl died and I saw them,’ Curatolo said when he agreed to go at last. He then asked how long it would take.

Fois pulled his leg: ‘What’s the problem Antonio, have you got a business appointment?’

Castellini tipped off Mignini, and they agreed Curatolo would go to him on a Saturday, because the prosecutor’s offices would be almost deserted then. The

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