PERUGIA, Italy (AP) — A key prosecution witness testifying in Amanda Knox’s appeals trial gave conflicting reports Saturday about whether he saw the American near the crime scene the night her British roommate was murdered.
The contradicting testimony and confused dates offered by Antonio Curatolo, a self-described drug addict and homeless man now in prison for an unrelated conviction, cast doubts on his credibility.
The defense called him flat-out unreliable, while the prosecution maintained that, despite some lack of precision, the witness was lucid and clear in what he remembered.
Knox has been convicted of the sexual assault and murder of Meredith Kercher in the house they shared as exchange students in Perugia and is serving a 26-year-prison sentence.
In the first trial, Curatolo placed Knox and her co-defendant and ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, in a square near the house on the night of the murder. He said the two were chatting and added that he remembered seeing buses in the square.
On Saturday he repeated that he saw the two “talking excitedly” in the square and said he thought it was Halloween night — which would be the night before the Nov. 1, 2007, murder. He was unclear when Halloween night actually is, saying he thought it was Nov. 1 or 2. Despite the date confusion, he repeatedly said that he saw young people dressed up in costumes.
But, at another point he also said he clearly remembers seeing police at the house the morning after he saw Knox and Sollecito in the square. Police went to the crime scene on Nov. 2, when Kercher’s body was found, stabbed to death and lying in a pool of blood.
“Police and Carabinieri were coming and going, and I also saw the ’extraterrestrials’ — that would be the men in white overalls,” Curatolo told the court with a smile, referring to forensic experts gathering evidence.
The 54-year-old also confessed to a long-lasting drug habit, including in 2007, saying: “I have always done drugs, … heroin, which is not a hallucinogen.”
The witness has directly contradicted Knox and Sollecito’s claim that they were at Sollecito’s house the night of the murder.
Giulia Bongiorno, a lawyer for Sollecito, said the hearing “marked an important step forward for the defense’s arguments.” Chris Mellas, Knox’s stepfather, said that “it couldn’t go any better today.”
But prosecutors insisted he remained reliable, if not very precise.
Prosecutor Manuela Comodi said the confusion between Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 is a moot point as it has already been ascertained that Knox was somewhere else — in a pub where she worked — on Oct. 31 and so could not have been seen in the square.
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