Amanda Knox boyfriend maintains innocence in new book
SEATTLE (AP) — Raffaele Sollecito, whose budding love affair with American exchange student Amanda Knox helped land him in an Italian prison for four years, maintains the couple's innocence in a new book but acknowledges that their sometimes bizarre behavior after her roommate's killing gave police reason for suspicion.
The pair was imprisoned for the November 2007 death of Meredith Kercher at Knox's apartment in Perugia, north of Rome. An appeals court overturned their conviction and freed them last fall, issuing a 143-page opinion that blasted the utter lack of evidence against them. Rudy Guede, a petty criminal who was convicted separately, remains imprisoned and is serving a 16-year-sentence.
Sollecito's book, "Honor Bound," is due out Sept. 18. The Associated Press purchased a copy Tuesday.
In it, he describes how the early days of their relationship became a nightmare: the horror of Kercher's slaying; the misunderstandings that swept them up in the case; their tabloid portrayals as two suspects unrecognizable to themselves.
Knox became "Foxy Knoxy" and received the brunt of the attention as she shopped for underwear after the killing and turned cartwheels in front of investigators. While police investigated the crime scene, Sollecito caressed her and they kissed, unaware of the television news cameras across the street.
Later at the police station she climbed in his lap and draped her arms over him, making Sollecito uneasy, he said.
Police found their behavior "odd" and he acknowledged they had no "real alibi the night of Nov. 1 except each other."
Knox is also writing a book, due out next spring. Her deal, with HarperCollins, is reportedly worth $4 million.
The couple were arrested several days after Kercher's death and later convicted in proceedings that made headlines around the world. Prosecutors portrayed the case as a drug-fueled sexual assault, and Knox and Sollecito were sentenced to 26 years and 25 years, respectively.
The appeals court found the prosecution's theory to be unsupported by any evidence. Prosecutors have appealed the acquittal, and Italy's highest court will hear their arguments next March.
Sollecito frequently criticizes the police for their handling of the case, reaching for a far-fetched conspiracy instead of the simpler explanation that Guede had on his own committed a burglary gone wrong.
Sollecito, then finishing his undergraduate studies in computer science, writes that he met Knox at a classical music concert at the Universita per Stranieri, the University for Foreigners, on Oct. 25, 2007 — a week before Kercher's death. He asked for her number, and she told him to come by the bar where she'd be working later that night. At the end of the shift, he writes, they took a walk, held hands and kissed. She accepted an invitation to come back to his apartment and spent the night.
Soon the couple became inseparable. She began spending the nights at his apartment. They shopped for groceries together, and took a sightseeing day trip to Assisi.
Sollecito wrote about his first night in prison, saying he wavered between "great waves of indignation and a nagging sense of guilt." He said that while he knew he was innocent, he was angry at himself for having a foggy memory of the night of the killing because he and Knox had smoked marijuana.
When they were finally acquitted, Sollecito writes that he felt "indescribable joy." He remembers looking at the police, hoping to see them appear defeated, but they wouldn't look at him. He saw Knox sobbing, and they later had a private moment in the basement of the courthouse, waiting to be taken back to prison one last time. According to Sollecito, she squeezed his hand and said she couldn't wait to see her home and friends.
Knox moved back to Seattle. It's not clear where Sollecito is living.
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AP writers Manuel Valdes and Rachel La Corte contributed to this report.
The pair was imprisoned for the November 2007 death of Meredith Kercher at Knox's apartment in Perugia, north of Rome. An appeals court overturned their conviction and freed them last fall, issuing a 143-page opinion that blasted the utter lack of evidence against them. Rudy Guede, a petty criminal who was convicted separately, remains imprisoned and is serving a 16-year-sentence.
Sollecito's book, "Honor Bound," is due out Sept. 18. The Associated Press purchased a copy Tuesday.
In it, he describes how the early days of their relationship became a nightmare: the horror of Kercher's slaying; the misunderstandings that swept them up in the case; their tabloid portrayals as two suspects unrecognizable to themselves.
Knox became "Foxy Knoxy" and received the brunt of the attention as she shopped for underwear after the killing and turned cartwheels in front of investigators. While police investigated the crime scene, Sollecito caressed her and they kissed, unaware of the television news cameras across the street.
Later at the police station she climbed in his lap and draped her arms over him, making Sollecito uneasy, he said.
Police found their behavior "odd" and he acknowledged they had no "real alibi the night of Nov. 1 except each other."
Knox is also writing a book, due out next spring. Her deal, with HarperCollins, is reportedly worth $4 million.
The couple were arrested several days after Kercher's death and later convicted in proceedings that made headlines around the world. Prosecutors portrayed the case as a drug-fueled sexual assault, and Knox and Sollecito were sentenced to 26 years and 25 years, respectively.
The appeals court found the prosecution's theory to be unsupported by any evidence. Prosecutors have appealed the acquittal, and Italy's highest court will hear their arguments next March.
Sollecito frequently criticizes the police for their handling of the case, reaching for a far-fetched conspiracy instead of the simpler explanation that Guede had on his own committed a burglary gone wrong.
Sollecito, then finishing his undergraduate studies in computer science, writes that he met Knox at a classical music concert at the Universita per Stranieri, the University for Foreigners, on Oct. 25, 2007 — a week before Kercher's death. He asked for her number, and she told him to come by the bar where she'd be working later that night. At the end of the shift, he writes, they took a walk, held hands and kissed. She accepted an invitation to come back to his apartment and spent the night.
Soon the couple became inseparable. She began spending the nights at his apartment. They shopped for groceries together, and took a sightseeing day trip to Assisi.
Sollecito wrote about his first night in prison, saying he wavered between "great waves of indignation and a nagging sense of guilt." He said that while he knew he was innocent, he was angry at himself for having a foggy memory of the night of the killing because he and Knox had smoked marijuana.
When they were finally acquitted, Sollecito writes that he felt "indescribable joy." He remembers looking at the police, hoping to see them appear defeated, but they wouldn't look at him. He saw Knox sobbing, and they later had a private moment in the basement of the courthouse, waiting to be taken back to prison one last time. According to Sollecito, she squeezed his hand and said she couldn't wait to see her home and friends.
Knox moved back to Seattle. It's not clear where Sollecito is living.
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AP writers Manuel Valdes and Rachel La Corte contributed to this report.
Knox has been out of the public eye for awhile ... now I suppose this'll start up the media circus all over again and we'll be bombarded with all the old, familiar pictures of the suspect and her boo-hoo story. What we won't see ... still ... is one glimmer of sorrow for the death of Meredith Kercher. My heart goes out to the Kercher family. I've got nothing for anybody else in this saga.
 @glynes You still honestly believe she's guilty when she's been proven innocent?
I got bored with this case about a year ago. I'll take a pass on the book.
 @Shelly I think Knox and Sollecito were "bored" with this case nearly FIVE years ago, but that did not give them any relief then. They are still paying the cost$ of this false and malicious prosecution.
DON'T GIVEÂ THIS POS HEADLINES....ONE BOOK I WOULD NOT MIND SEEING BURNED....
 @Freespeech ha ha ha you call yourself 'freespeech' and you are against a persons right to free speech!!!! what next a vegetarian that loves to eat meat?
 @Freespeech You, Mr. "Freespeech", would want to burn the book of someone who was wrongly accused and convicted of murder? How ironic.
 @KieferSkunk  @Freespeech Thinks only HIS speech should be free...
Why are they advertising this crud?
Honor Bound...must be a comedy book.
Oh please just when everyone thought their 15 minutes was over and done with...
 @Windowseat Their 15 minutes lasted nearly four years in a hellhole and a couple of million EU each. I wonder what you would do in such circumstances...?
 @Windowseat Yeah, I know, right? How dare these people who lost four years of their lives because they were wrongly accused and convicted of a crime they didn't commit even THINK of telling their side of the story? :P
These two are out of prison and have been for months now. In the mean time, another person lost her life. There is much more to the story than we are being told.
 @HallandOates Actually, two other people lost their lives: Meredith Kercher - whom I strongly feel was mistaken for "the American" by Rudy Guede - and American student Allison Owens who was murdered on an Italian highway on the very eve of Knox's and Sollecito's release, by a man who seems to be related in some way to the discredited lead "scientific" investigator, and who was immediately represented by the same vicious anti-Knox attorney who called her a "witch" and a "she devil" while displaying a video loop of Kercher's tormented, naked and spread-eagle (front-view) dead body to the public in open court. Owens' confessed hit-and-run killer was sentenced to 38 months.
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I think your violin is a bit out of tune.
 @HallandOates Or, perhaps it isn't really all that complicated. Perhaps Knox and Sollecito really are innocent and deserve to tell their story. Have you considered that?
Foggy memory of that night? There is your answer, he cannot say that he wasn't involved . Druggies have no clue what they did.
 @Commonsense And I suppose you have all the details? Might be nice to apply a little of that stuff in your username.
I don't know what his role is in this. If she's out, he should be too, imo. Of course after she changed her story a lot and did that cartwheel in the police station, I've always considered her guilty. Still for consistency shouldn't he be out if she is?
 @super Sollecito IS out. He was freed at the same time as Knox. He is just as innocent (or guilty, if you prefer) as she is.
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I am truly amazed at how bloodthirsty this community is. So quick to jump to conclusions and not even consider all sides to the story. Only hear what you want to hear and disregard the rest. I sincerely hope people like you never serve on a jury.
@super a cartwheel of guilt? haha
What else is he gonna say........oh she's a liar and me too? The book is just to pay legal bills. So what else is new.....slow day?
Well, I wouldn't expect him to confess to anything....
 @Smashquail What would he confess to?
He can't confess to murder because he was to drugged up to even remember what they did to Meredith!
 @Duhg P  @glynes  @Commonsense Funniest story I ever heard was of a local (Bainbridge Is.) soldier in Paris during WW-II who looked up his mom's beloved old school chum on a promise during a coveted pass, and then spent the next 36 hours wandering aimlessly on the streets of Paris in a daze. Weeks later, his mom received a letter which said, e.g.:
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'Dear _____, We had a lovely visit today from your son ____. He is a fine young man... blah-blah-blah... We talked for an hour before sending him on his way in good health - and Miss Toklas gave him some cookies." --(signed) Gertrude Stein
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I got to handle the original letter during a college class back in summer of 1977.
 @Commonsense It seems to me that it requires a peculiar kind of psychosis and sociopathy to continue to ascribe "guilt" to someone based on "evidence" which has been proved in open court to have been fabricated, imagined or simply made up out of whole cloth, and who has been proved innocent by a court which literally ruled "Not Guilty because they did not commit the crime".
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Must require a very insecure person to have such insatiable need to find fault in another.
 @Duhg P @Commonsense In any event, there's still no evidence that either Knox or Sollecito were anywhere near Kercher when the murder happened, and the appeals court bore that out. The Italian appeals court said flatly that there was absolutely no evidence to support police and prosecutor "theories". So it's still an awfully extreme jump to conclude that either of them was responsible for Kercher's death just because they had difficulty remembering minute details of that night.
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Seriously. You should try remembering every detail of what you were doing at 10:23pm last Saturday night. I know I can't, and I don't smoke pot or drink heavily or anything like that.
 @glynes  @Commonsense There's that.  As with anything, I'm sure there are exceptions where someone smokes and blacks out, so maybe this IS what happened, but it would be unusual.  For what it's worth, it's possible to have a WAY more intense experience when eating the stuff.  I think you can get more THC into yourself at one time than you can via smoking.  An extreme experience is more likely, with paranoia, self-consciousness, odd breathing, visual and audible hallucinations...be careful, it can be quite the opposite of a nice time.
 @Duhg P  @Commonsense Actually, I once missed the entire King Tut exhibit because someone baked pot into brownies. I walked the exhibit for 2 hours, but have never remembered a minute of it. So apparently, some people do black out, but still function.Â
 @Commonsense , you seem to think that pot has the potential to cause a "blackout," which strongly suggests that you have a lack of experience in the matter.  Which is fine, but your judgmental tone, coupled with your ignorance, bears calling out.  His "foggy memory" was an impediment to recalling the sort of mundane details (e.g. "I peeled a potato and noticed it was 10:12pm," "I took a walk to the store after a tv show and passed a man in a white fedora"...) one needs when presenting an alibi.  I've never heard of anyone blacking out on pot.  Passing out, yes.  A hazy memory of details (i.e. short-term memory loss)?  Yes.  Becoming a murderous zombie?  That's bath salts, right?  Nobody mentioned bath salts!  At any rate, I'm sure that pot fuels the murder rate about as well as it lowers unemployment rate.
 @Commonsense And your proof of this is...?