'They Had No Reason Not to Get Along'
Knox murder trial witness describes bond between U.S. exchange student, victim.
Feb. 7, 2009 -- "Luca kicked down the door and went white, and Marco yelled 'sangue, sangue -- blood!'" said a key witness today in the trial of American student Amanda Knox, who is accused in the murder of her former housemate, British exchange student Meredith Kercher.
One of four residents of the house in Perugia, Italy, where Kercher was slain, Filomena Romanelli recalled watching her boyfriend, Marco Zaroli, and a friend, Luca Altieri, breaking into the locked bedroom where Kercher lay dead.
"I recall seeing a blurry image of a comforter and a foot," Romanelli told the court in Perugia. "And then Marco grabbed me and said 'via, via!' and we were ushered out of the house by the police."
Knox, 21, a student from Seattle, and Rafaelle Sollecito, 24, her Italian boyfriend at the time, are accused of sexual violence and murder in the death of Kercher, 21, who was found stabbed to death in a pool of blood on the morning of Nov. 2, 2007. A third person, Rudy Guede, was convicted last October to 30 years in prison for his part in Kercher's murder.
Romanelli shared the little cottage in the picturesque hills town of Perugia with Knox, Kercher and another young Italian woman, Laura Mezzetti.
Knox watched and listened to her former roommate and friend -- Knox has written that she looked up to Romanelli -- without any visible emotion. Dressed in a purple sweater and jeans, she leaned toward her English interpreter and listened carefully, her demeanor serious. Curt Knox, Amanda's father, was also in court today, as was Sollecito.
In a cross-examination that lasted almost five hours, Romanelli, 29, a law student who works as an apprentice in a Perugia law firm, told the court how she and her good friend Laura had rented a four-bedroom cottage on the edge of the old town of Perugia in August 2007.
After posting ads around town, they quickly rented out the two vacant rooms in the house to Knox, who was in Perugia for a year abroad from the University of Washington at Seattle, and to Kercher, an exchange student from the University of Leeds, England. The two students moved in around the middle of September.
The two "girls," as Romanelli called Knox and Kercher, bonded immediately, she said. "They were of the same age, they had interests in common, and both spoke English," she explained.
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