Report: Suspect in Italy slaying says police hit her on head
ROME - A University of Washington student suspected in the slaying of her British roommate wrote in a jailhouse statement that police hit her on the head during questioning and that her sometimes-conflicting statements were prompted by stress and exhaustion, Italian media reported Thursday.
Police in the central Italian city of Perugia declined to comment on the allegations by student Amanda Knox, of Seattle, one of three suspects being held in connection with the sexual assault and fatal stabbing of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher.
An investigator said Thursday that DNA tests show that the latest man arrested in connection with the slaying had sex with the victim the night she was stabbed to death.
The man, Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast-born Italian citizen, was arrested in Germany on Tuesday. He has denied involvement in the slaying.
His attorney, Valter Biscotti, said he has not yet spoken with his client and could not comment on the DNA development.
Genetic samples taken from Guede’s possessions matched fluids taken from the body of Kercher during an autopsy, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
Authorities began tracking Guede after a bloody fingerprint indicated there was another suspect in the killing of Kercher, whose body was found in a rented apartment in Perugia on Nov. 2. He was arrested in Germany while riding a train without a ticket.
Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, who also is jailed in Perugia, have denied wrongdoing.
“I was told that I would be arrested and put in jail for 30 years,” Knox wrote in the three-page handwritten statement the day of her Nov. 6 arrest. “When I didn’t remember things I was hit in the head, but I understand the stress of the police.”
The statement was obtained by the Italian daily newspapers Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica and La Stampa, which published excerpts translated from English. Knox’s lawyer did not answer telephone calls seeking confirmation, and the newspapers did not say how they obtained the statement.
Knox said she had “serious doubts” about statements made to investigators before her arrest because she spoke “under the pressure of stress, shock and because I was exhausted.” She did not elaborate.
Among the confusing statements that have emerged is one regarding Knox’s whereabouts at the time of the killing. A judge’s order upholding Knox’s detention noted that she was confused about the events because she had smoked hashish that night.
Knox said she had spent the night with Sollecito at his flat and only returned to the place she shared with Kercher the following morning, Nov. 2. But she later told investigators that another man killed Kercher while Knox was in another room, and that she covered her ears so she wouldn’t hear the victim’s screams.
She had identified the man as Congolese bar owner Diya “Patrick” Lumumba. He was arrested largely based on Knox’s recollections but released Tuesday for a lack of evidence.
“I know I didn’t kill Meredith. I see Patrick in flashes as the murderer, but I can’t verify the truth the way it appears in my mind, because I don’t remember with certainty if I was there,” Knox wrote in the Nov. 6 statement.
The autopsy found that Kercher likely died slowly from a stab wound to her neck, and prosecutors said she was killed resisting a sexual assault. She was found half-naked on the floor of her blood-splattered bedroom.
Authorities have said they found Knox’s DNA on the handle of a knife believed to have been the murder weapon and Kercher’s on the blade. The knife came from the kitchen of Sollecito’s Perugia apartment.