Crime Weekly - S3 Ep368: Meredith Kercher & Amanda Knox | A Murder, a Villa, and a Storm to Come (Part 1)

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

In September 2007, 20-year-old American college student Amanda Knox moved to Perugia, Italy to study abroad and experience life on her own. She settled into a stone villa with three other young women and quickly began building friendships with her new roommates, forming a particularly close bond with 21-year-old British exchange student Meredith Kercher. Just weeks later, on November 2, Amanda would find herself standing outside that same home as police and paramedics rushed inside. Not fluent in Italian, she didn’t fully understand what was happening - only that Meredith had been found murdered in the villa they shared.  Despite having no clue what was going on, Amanda became the focus of the murder investigation within hours. And what followed would become one of the most controversial criminal cases of the modern era, marked by intense scrutiny, global media coverage, and sharply divided opinions about guilt, innocence, and how justice is pursued when the world is watching. Try our coffee! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. 'Crimes Of...' - Check out the latest podcast from 'Two Girls One Ghost' hosts Sabrina Deana-Roga and Corinne Vien, where they cover crimes of a different theme every season - and this season is crimes of passion. For unsolved murders, mysterious disappearances and more, listen to 'Crimes Of...' wherever you get your podcasts.

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Lavasar. So today we are diving into a new series. I know both Derek and I have wanted to cover this series. I have never covered this series. I've never covered this case in depth on my YouTube channel person. I've touched on it here and there and done some coffee and crime times, but never in depth. So I've really been looking forward to diving into the Amanda Knox case and the Meredith Kircher case in depth. And that's what we're going to do here on Crime Weekly. We've also had a lot of requests to talk about Amanda Knox. So some people said, oh, only talk about Amanda Knox

if your conclusion is that she's not guilty. We don't actually have a conclusion yet. This has been one of those cases that I've gone back and forth about. And I, like we, we usually do. Oh, you have gone back and forth. I've gone back and forth. I don't know how I feel about it. And so I'm hoping that diving deep with Derek, together we can sort of formulate at the end how we feel about it and what we think happened here. So I was getting nervous when we do cases like this because I know me too. I can't lie. I'm not going to lie about how I feel just for the sake of like appeasing a certain group. So I get nervous because I hope that I fall in line with the majority, but there's a chance we might not. Yeah. Needless to say, if there was a popularity contest, Derek and I are not

winning it. No, we just, but I think, I think that's important because that way when you do say something, people know that it's how you truly feel. Yes. But I mean, with this case, I know the, like I said, just the summary of it where we stand today, but it is something that I think after this new recent, I don't know if it was a documentary or like a series came out about Amanda Knox. Recently? Yeah, I think it was on Hulu. And now I'm seeing more requests to cover Amanda Knox since that release. See, if there's been one recent, then I've missed it because I watched the one from like, I think it was like 2016, 2018, something like that.

No, I think there was something. So I have to watch that. Oh, so this isn't a new documentary. It's a major biographical drama. series called The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, starring Grace Van Petton, premiered on Hulu in Disney Plus in August of 2025. All right, I'm going to have to watch it. I'm going to do that tonight.

You're going to have to watch it. And so that's something where right after that, you always, I can always tell when there's been a new documentary or a movie or something that or some type of new announcement in the case because we'll start getting a spike in emails from you guys for that specific case. So that came in. I added it to my list. I mentioned it to you a couple, maybe a month or so ago. You've been mentioning to me for several months, actually.

I know time is weird and it suspends for us, but it actually has been since the summer. So that's probably when you started getting requests. Is it weird that in Amanda Knox biographical drama series is on Disney Plus? They kind of do everything over there. Yeah, I guess. They have like Taylor Swift stuff. Yeah, I guess. And it's all under the same umbrella.

I mean, they have the whole Paramount Netflix Warner Brothers debacle right now. Everyone's kind of like merging and Disney does everything. They do everything. They got Hulu. They get all the stuff over there. So no, I think it's pretty normal. But I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to getting into it and diving into the details because I've never researched this case.

And I've always thought it was pretty straightforward that she was innocent, to be honest. So I'm. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, it's pretty split. Yeah. Okay. So we are going to sort of jump in.

I'm going to just kind of give a little teaser about what the case is about. So in September of 2007, 20-year-old American college student Amanda Knox moved to Perugia, Italy. I'm trying to pronounce things correctly. This is an Italian case, and we all know I'm not the best at pronouncing things outside of the English language. Okay. But she moved to Perugia, Italy, to study abroad and experience life on her own. She settled into a stone villa with three other young women and quickly began building. friendships with her new roommates, forming a particularly close bond with 21-year-old British

exchange student, Meredith Kircher. Several weeks later, on November 2nd, Amanda would find herself standing outside that same home as police and paramedics rushed inside. Not fluent in Italian, she didn't fully understand what was happening, only that Meredith had been murdered in the villa they shared. Despite having no clue what was going on, Amanda became the focus of the murder investigation within hours. And what followed would become one of the most controversial criminal cases of this modern era, marked by intense scrutiny, global media coverage, and sharply divided opinions about guilt, innocence, and how justice is pursued when the world is watching. I can't believe it was this long, that long ago. I know, right? I am very excited

to talk about this because Amanda Knox has often talked about how she was perceived as not only an American, but just like as who she is. And she's kind of like a weird person. You know, she described herself as like a weird person. She's not normal. She's not like other girls. And when she went to Italy, she was like, I quickly could see like my personality was not, was not like accepted or really indulged in as much as it would have been in the United States. I was definitely like weird, different, like loud. And people in Italy just kind of looked at me like, what the hell is going on with this girl? She's a weirdo.

And I kind of like relate, relate to that a little bit because you know I'm weird. No, not at all. I have things and I'm, you know, I have ADHD and I do a lot of stimming stuff and I'll just randomly like sing a song out or I'll just scream randomly for no reason. We did get you away from the slime on camera though, which is good. Is it good? Yeah, for me. It was distracting.

For you. It's not good for me. sitting there watching you pour slime on yourself. I dealt with the same thing when I was in school because I would, in order to pay attention to what the teacher was saying, I'd have to like sketch or do something with my hands. And they'd be like, you're not paying attention. And it's like, no, this is how I can pay attention to you. And now I see my kids going through the same thing in school.

Like my youngest daughter, Bella, her teacher was like, Bella has issues paying attention when we're all sitting and having to listen to a book. She's playing with a thread on her sock. And I'm like, so what? Let her freaking play with the thread on her. stock, man. They're in third grade. It's okay. But yeah, I'm dealing with this, you know, with them. So I kind of really want to focus on Amanda and like how her reactions were looked at and how she would explain them later to just kind of be like, I'm quirky. I'm weird. I'm not like

other girls. And to see kind of what you think about that, Derek. Well, this does come back to interrogations. And that's something that a lot of people make the mistake of, of, of, of watching an interrogation and saying all this person is acting strains, that's not normal, this is suspicious. And the reality, and I've said it a million times, whenever you're conducting an interview or an interrogation, the first 10, 15, 20, maybe even 30 minutes is spent developing a baseline on that specific person because, as you just mentioned, everyone is different. Everyone responds to stressful situations differently.

Some people are weird. Some people are really weird. Sometimes people are weird and their mannerisms just are different than maybe you or the people you hang around with. So you have to sit there. Culturally as well, right? Because we're talking about an American girl in Italy. Yep. Yep. Of course. But even as Americans watching it, we may say, oh, that's a little odd that she did it that way. Well, she may be different. And so you have to spend some time looking at these people in their natural environment when they're not under these high stressful situations to see how they normally, air quotes for them, act.

and then you compare that as your baseline to how they're reacting in these more stressful, more, I guess you could say intense situations because of what's on the line. And then you can say, yes, they're acting normal based on how they normally act or there's something off here where this isn't how they usually behave. So that is something I think a lot of people make the mistake of where they're like, oh, that's not how I would react. So therefore it's suspicious. And that could get you in a lot of trouble.

Yeah. And I mean, I also feel like spending 20, 30 minutes trying to get a baseline isn't even always effective. It's not enough. I think it took you, what, a year to get a baseline on me? Yeah. I'm still learning. You're still trying. You're still trying. There's a learning. I switch it up. So, let's talk about this case. Very excited. Obviously, as always, the first episode is spent kind of building the foundation. We have to understand what happened to the beginning to. understand what happened at the end. So let's talk about Amanda Knox. Amanda Marie Knox was born on July 9, 1987 to her parents, Edda and Kurt. She grew up in West Seattle. You know, pretty middle class, normal childhood, not any issues. Her parents did split up when Amanda was young, just one year old. And at the time of the separation, her mother was actually pregnant with Amanda's younger sister, Deanna. So after the divorce, Amanda and Deanna primarily lived with their

mom and they would spend weekends with their dad. So the mom, Edda, she worked as a math teacher, and she's been described as kind of like a more chill person, a free spirit. She encouraged her children to be themselves, followed their dreams. Edda was actually born in Germany. She moved to Seattle with her parents as a child. And so growing up, Amanda and Deanna often heard their grandmother speak German around the house, which left them partially fluent, as fluent as you can be just hearing, you know, a different language. being spoken around the house. My dad, his first language is French.

So I would hear him and his family speaking French around the house. Am I partially fluent? No, no, I'm not. I could recognize a few words. So as fluent as you can be. They're getting that duolingo. Yeah, if I did duolingo, I'd have, Bella's actually using duolingo right now to learn Japanese.

So that's funny. I know. She was learning Russian a few months ago. Then it was Ukraine. Now it's Japanese. So she'll be part. Yeah. She'll be partially fluent in several things. Jesus. She's eight? Yeah, she'll be nine in January 3rd. My God. My kid's on Roblox right now. Oh, she's on Roblox, too. Don't get it twisted.

Okay. Okay. She'll switch it up. She's talking in different languages on Roblox. I just, I heard some weird song coming from my bedroom the other day. And it was like, and I was like, what is that song? She's a Japanese song. I'm learning Japanese. Because you know, Duolingo has like games and songs and things. Wow. Yeah. That's impressive. She played that song 15 times, man. All right. So Amanda's dad, Kurt, on the other hand, he worked as a finance executive at Macy's. So we can kind of see like a little bit of a dichotomy here because according to Amanda, her dad, Kurt was more of a linear thinker, practical, organized, structured in the way he approached both work and family life where her mom was a little bit more like, you know, do what makes you happy, like be yourself, march to the beat of your own drum. So after the divorce, Amanda's parents actually bought houses that were just two blocks apart from each other. So that Amanda and Deanna could move easily between them. But despite the physical closeness, Edda and Kurt, they were not huge fans of each other. They rarely spoke to each other, even on the phone. And Amanda later said that while they never openly criticized one another, they also didn't interact, which is fine, I think. Because as long as you're not talking to your kids about each other, you don't like each other.

You get divorced for a reason. You don't really want to be in each other's lives, but you want your kids to still have access. to both of you easily and they're not you know they're not doing a lot of negative talk about each other they just don't want to talk to each other both parents attended school events and activities but they never sat together and Amanda described it by saying quote they were invisible to each other end quote so I wonder what happened in that marriage man I mean listen it could be a lot worse it could be a lot worse but what happened in that marriage where you're getting they're able to be in the same room you're separating when you're pregnant you don't even want to sit next

to each other. You act like the other person's invisible. There's some bad blood there. I mean, when is there not bad blood with a divorce? You're not getting divorced because you're on good terms. I've seen divorces where like it's pretty mutual and, you'd be amicable, but it's not because things are going well. You don't get married to get divorced. So obviously something changed. But I think the fact that they're able to put their differences aside for their daughter, it's admirable. Like, you know, I mean, that's what you want to try to do. Oh, of course. Yeah. That's why I'm saying. It's like they didn't like each other, but they still made sure that they were like physically close so the houses were there, Amanda and Deanna could

easily go back and forth and kind of see each parent whenever they felt like it. Yep. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what I have in there. I would like to know. I would like to know. I don't know why, but I'm nosy.

Okay. So both of Amanda's parents did eventually remarry. Edda married a man named Chris. He played a big role in Amanda's life. Kurt married a woman named Cassandra and together Kurt and Cassandra had two daughters, Ashley and Delaney. Because Kurt and Cassandra now had two additional daughters to raise, Amanda and Deanna no longer had their own shared bedroom at their dad's house. Instead, they slept on pull-out couches in the playroom. And over time, Amanda stopped feeling like that space was really her home, which that makes complete sense.

I mean, Amanda and Deanna are only there on the weekends, but still, if you're going to have your daughters there and you want them to feel like that you're their family and this is their home, you need to give them their own space. And I think that that was probably not the best way to handle that. We talked a little bit about that with the recent case we covered. Anna Kepner was found dead on the cruise ship and how she was living with her father. And then her father remarried and all these stepchildren came in. And all of a sudden, Anna's sleeping in the living room. And she's not going to feel super welcome there. And that's not the best thing.

I don't care how old you are. So Amanda later explained that she felt her real home was with her mom. At Ada's house, she and Deanna were free to wear whatever. they wanted. They could build forts in the backyard. They could just be themselves. They were encouraged to. But at their dad's house, things were more rigid. They had to use coasters, organize movies and CDs and alphabetical order. Sometimes even they were forced to wear matching outfits. So by the time Amanda was 14, she told her father that she no longer wanted to stay with him on the weekends. She said she was too busy with extracurricular activities and her friends.

But of course, it wasn't the full truth. The real reason was that she didn't feel comfortable at her dad's house anymore. And I mean, looking at that huge personality difference, it seems like Kurt was kind of type A. Yeah. And it was a little, you know, type B more loose and maybe just the incompatibility of having their living spaces, not, you know, comfortable for either one of them because he was very strict. That could definitely be part of it. Yeah. It could also be like we're seeing right here, the, their opinions on how to raise their children. Yeah, that's a big thing. They could, they could have been okay with each other's differences because it wasn't affecting them. But when it came to their daughter, they wanted to raise her a certain way.

And they couldn't agree on that. I don't think that was the sole reason, but I'm sure it was part of it. So at this time, when Amanda was like, I don't want to come to your house anymore, dad, on the weekends. She was attending Seattle Propertory School where she didn't feel like she fit in with many of her peers. Now, in her book, waiting to be heard, she described herself as, quote, the quirky kid who hung out with the sulky manga readers. the ostracized gay kids, and the theater geeks, end quote. She said, quote, I took Japanese and sang loudly in the halls while walking from one class to another. Since I didn't really fit in, I acted like myself, which pretty much made sure I never did, end quote.

Oh no, is this going to be Bella? She took Japanese and sang loudly in the halls. So apparently Amanda said that she, you know, she was socially kind of weird, where she would sometimes and often use humor and physical comedy to break the tension. So she would walk down the street like an Egyptian or imitate an elephant intentionally making herself the butt of the joke to lighten the mood and put others at ease. Amanda also dressed differently from many of the girls around her. She wore old jeans and was she described as boyish t-shirts. She didn't wear makeup or straighten her hair and she didn't really date. In fact, Amanda didn't kiss anyone until she was 17. Her best friend

encouraged her to open up, but Amanda struggled and then made her feel less mature than the people around her. One of the places Amanda felt comfortable and at ease was on the soccer field. She was fast. She was a good soccer player, reliable, skilled at spotting openings and stealing the ball, and her teammates named her Foxy Knoxie. Now, this is a name, a nickname that will come up again later and one that will haunt Amanda Knox. So after graduating from high school in 2005, Amanda enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle to study linguistics. She had a natural knack for languages, and she thought one day she might become a translator or a writer. Many of her friends left for college, hundreds or even thousands of miles away, but Amanda didn't

think she was ready for that kind of independence yet. Instead, she made a deal with herself. If she stayed close to home for college, she would study abroad during her junior year. So at the University of Washington, Amanda found a close group of friends. They played sports together, talked about life, smoked pot, and they went out in search of the best food they could find, which is the ultimate college experience. Amanda also began dating and eventually lost her virginity. But sex was deeply emotional for her, and she struggled to have casual sex like her peers. This was something she struggled with. She didn't seem to like about herself, actually, the fact that she couldn't sort of disconnect her emotions from sex. Now, unfortunately, as many people know,

Amanda's sex life is going to be a recurring theme in this series. She's going to be painted by the Italian media and in her trial as a very sexual person, promiscuous, like a seductress, you know, somebody who is dangerous, like a femme fatale kind of thing, even though that really wasn't who Amanda Knox was at all. So as a sophomore at UW, Amanda signed up for Italian 101. She was hoping to learn another language. And around that same time, she began thinking seriously about where she wanted to spend her junior year studying abroad. Obviously, Germany was an option, but Amanda wanted to choose a country and a language that didn't already feel tied to her family history. Ultimately, she decided on the University for Foreigners in Perugia, Italy. Now, Perugia is an ancient city that predates the Middle Ages.

It's located in central Italy, about halfway between Florence and Rome. It's beautiful there. It has a population of roughly 160,000 people. About a quarter of them are students, so it would definitely be considered a college town. But Italy had fascinated Amanda Knox for years. Going back to middle school, she had studied Latin and learned about Roman and Italian history, and those lessons really stayed with her. Her love of the culture and the history, it stayed with her.

So when Amanda was 14 in late 2001, she actually traveled to Europe with her family. They drove through Germany and Austria to visit relatives and celebrate. Octoberfest in Munich before heading south into Italy to see multiple cities and areas. Amanda later wrote in her book that the trip took place about six weeks after September 11th. This would have been 2001. And she remembered Italians being especially warm and sympathetic to her and her family from America, that they, you know, they were like really sad and sorry about what it happened in New York City and what it meant to the people of the United States. Amanda said she came away, quote, thinking Italy was a welcoming, culturally, and historically rich country, end quote. So once Amanda decided that Italy was where she wanted to go,

she got to work, taking on three jobs to save money. She worked at a coffee shop at a catering company and trained a girl's soccer team. After she'd saved enough, Amanda asked both of her parents for permission to go abroad. They agreed. She was overjoyed. Everything's working out. God, that just gives me anxiety, the idea that Tenley or Payton could come to me and say, I want to go study abroad. Yeah, I know. I'm going to do everything in my power to deter that ambition. Well, especially now, 2007, I think, was different.

Yeah. You know, obviously tensions are high everywhere around the world. It's not a safe place that it once could pretend to be, I guess. But, yeah. Any of the parents in the comments who have kids studying or. or did have kids studying abroad. I'd love to hear your opinion on that because it had to have been even back then a stressful, a stressful time because if something goes wrong, there's really not much you can do. Yeah, it's like if you want to go to Europe, let's take a family trip.

Yeah, exactly. Let's go together. Then we can come back home. And obviously what happened to Amanda Knox in Italy is, you know, hopefully a rarity of what you would be afraid of your of your child getting into, but a lot of other things can happen, obviously. So it's, it's a lot of. It's, scary. So in late August of 2007, Amanda, who had just turned 20, packed her bags and traveled to Italy with her sister, Deanna. Now, Amanda's classes weren't actually scheduled to start until October 1st, so the plan was to arrive early, find a place for Amanda to live, then head to Germany to vacation with their cousins before Amanda returned to Italy in mid-September. That stresses me out. Your classes are starting October 1st, and at the end of August, you don't even have a place

to live. You're going to go to Italy and just be like, let's find a place. you would do. No. See? That's where you have it wrong. See? I guess I got you wrong because I feel like you would just be like, yeah, we'll figure it out. So in my normal everyday life where I'm comfortable and I know everything, I'm a wild card.

You know, I'm very unreliable. But if I'm like traveling someplace, I plan it to the tea because I'm nervous and I don't like surprises and I don't like when things change and I don't like being like hit with something that I'm not prepared to handle. So that would stress me out. I mean, maybe if I was like a college kid and didn't have a responsibilities, but I feel like even now, nowadays in 2025, you're going at the end of August to Italy to find a place to live when your classes start in October. You aren't even going to find a place to live. Like there's, I don't know, times have changed.

That stresses me out. So they're going to go to Germany after they find a place for Amanda to live. And then they're going to return to Italy or Amanda, at least, is going to return to Italy in mid-September so she can get ready to settle in and start her classes. So while Amanda and Deanna were in Perugia searching for housing, Amanda noticed a woman hanging signs, advertising two rooms for sub-lease in her rented home. What are the odds? This is very lucky. So Amanda approached the woman and the woman whose name was Laura Metzetti, she invited Amanda and Deanna to come see the place. She led them to a cream-colored stone villa with a terracotta roof that Amanda described as, quote, fit for a fairy tale, end quote.

now the home known as number seven via della pergola that was in the middle of downtown perugia and close to the university so i'm trying to get everything right here now this sounds to me almost like a netflix tv show you know like emily and paris like amanda and her sister show up they're walking around the streets of perugia and they happen to see this nice woman hanging signs saying, oh, I have a room for rent, you know, and my beautiful villa with a terracotta roof that's fit for a fairy tale. And they just walk in. And she's like, do you want to come see it now? And they're like, wow, this is perfect. Let's get it. And everything just seems to be falling into place. It sounds like the start of a horror movie.

The start of a horror movie or some romantic comedy. Yeah. Yeah. So this home, it was in the middle of downtown Perugia. It's close to the university. Laura and her roommate, Filomena Romanelli, they lived on the top floor, which had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a terrace, and then the basement was rented out to a group of four Italian men. Well, that's dangerous. So Laura and Filomena were both Italian, but they spoke English. They were in their late 20s, and they worked at law firms. Amanda described Laura as more offbeat, while Filomena seemed more girly, but like Laura, relaxed very funny. So to Amanda, they did feel familiar.

They reminded her of her friends back in Seattle, and she felt like the living situation would be a good fit. Amanda told them she wanted a room. They happily agreed. All right, we're settled. We got a place to live. So about a week later, Amanda heard from Laura and Filomena. They emailed her to say that the second bedroom was going to be rented to a 21-year-old British exchange student named Meredith Kircher. Now, this is perfect, right?

Because now you know you have two roommates already that you kind of get along with Filomena. and Laura, they're great, they're Italian, but they speak English. And your other roommate is going to be a British exchange student who definitely speaks English. And so you're not going to have a hard time communicating with your roommates while you're learning the Italian language while you're in Italy. So we're going to spend more time talking about Meredith's background in the next episode. Trust me, we will talk about it. Let's take our first and only break this episode and we'll be right back. Power. Fame, obsession, betrayal. These are more than headlines. They are the forces behind

some of the most unforgettable crimes in history. We're Sabrina DeAnna Roga and Corin Bien, the hosts of two girls' one ghost and our newest show, Crimes of, a crimehouse original powered by Pave Studios. Crimes of is a weekly true crime anthology series that explores a new theme each season from Unsolved Murders, Mysterious Disappearances, and more. And since it's a Valentine season, we're exploring crimes of passion. When love turns into obsession, passion twists into paranoia, and jealousy pushes people beyond the edge of reason. From suburban acts murders to interstellar love triangles, these are the stories where I love you becomes I'll kill you. Listen to and follow Crimes of on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music, new episodes out every Tuesday.

Can we go over just the layout of this house a little bit more of this and say this villa? Just so I'm making sure I'm on the same page with you and everyone else is. What it looks like is because Perugia is built on steep terrain, many houses will appear to be two stories from the front, but then three or even four levels from the back. And so depending on how you count it, the house would have three main levels plus a partial lower level. level. So that lower level, often called the basement, it's partially underground on one side, but fully above ground on the downhill side. And so it would have exterior windows, a door leading outside. And this is where the Italian men lived. And apparently the Italian men were friends of one of the roommates. And so it's not a dark, subterranean basement, like in the American

sense, like we're familiar with. It functioned more like a ground floor apartment due to the slope of the hill. So on the main floor, that would be the street level entrance. The front door opened onto this level. It contained the kitchen and the common areas. This was the primary shared living space. And then the upper floor was where the bedrooms for Amanda, Meredith, Laura, Philomena. That's where they kind of lived there. So, well, the only thing I'm going to say, and I'm sure there's going to be some people who have studied this case religiously, but I just sent you a link from the BBC. You want to look at that real quick. And to me, and I want everyone who's on YouTube to weigh in as well, But to me, it seems like all three bedrooms, maybe even all four, are on the same floor.

Yeah. So there's the main level that's like the living, the shared living areas, like the kitchen, the common areas. And then upwards, all four bedrooms would have been on the same floor, but sort of like spread out. Earlier, I was thinking, and I think it's going to come into play here in the story, is that Amanda and Meredith were sleeping on what would be the main floor or the middle floor. And then you had Philomena and Laura sleeping above them. But as you can see from this diagram, this three-dimensional diagram, you have essentially in a row, Meredith, Amanda, Philomena in one set of bedrooms. And then like across the hallway, there's like a bathroom there and stuff for the three bedrooms. And then across the hallway, you have another bedroom, which would be Laura's.

So they're all on the same floor. Top floor has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and then that terrace. Yep. And then the basement, which is technically like the lower level but built into the hill. That was where the Italian men lived. Well, it makes sense, right? Because when you look at that image like from the street where like the vehicles are parked in that parking lot area, that's like the main floor, right? Yes. And then you have off that hill much lower is that quote unquote basement floor. So now seeing it, I have a better understanding of what we're looking at here. And I think that's going to. help everybody, especially when we start to get into the details. Yes, because this is where the murder happened. This kind of reminds me of the Idaho four. I agree. I was thinking the same thing. Understanding that house is like half the battle. Once you do, everything starts to make more sense. Yeah, you can visualize it. Yeah. I was thinking the Idaho four as well, but I didn't want to say it. I'm trying, I'm kind of on a Brian Coburger fast. I don't want to think about that

asshole anymore. Like it's one thing to envision it. It's another thing to actually see it. And that's why I know there's a lot of people who just listen to us on audio, always recommend when you're trying to fully comprehend what we're talking about when we get into the actual crime. Take a second when you get home, you know, and just pull up these timestamps, make a note of them in your phone or something and just pull up, or just Google it yourself. But it's going to give so much more dimension to the story as we're telling it because now you'll be visualizing it properly and not asking yourself, well, how is that possible? Because you're thinking of the house a certain way. And in reality, it's something else. I do it all the time. It's kind of like when you

read a book and you envision the area and the people and then they make a movie about it and you watch it and you're like, whoa, this is not what I was thinking at all. And you're completely like out of the story and you can't, you can't kind of like get into it. So yes. Well, even think when people first started listening to us, well, you were on YouTube. But for me, I remember a lot of people being like, I did not think that's what you guys were going to look like. Because they are envisioning something for a year of listening to us and then they watch a YouTube episode and they're like, whoa. So yeah, your mind, your mind can definitely play tricks on you and lead you down the wrong path. It's always good to go look for yourself because now that three

dimensional scan, that graph is, that tells exactly what you need to know. I think that we might look into, especially with cases like this, we might look into having like a sort of companion show notes area where we can put in relevant pictures, documents, things like that. So I will look to that. It'll help everybody. Let me know in the comments if that would be something helpful to you. But all right, let's continue on. So on September 20th, Amanda wrapped up her Germany vacation. She said goodbye to her sister and then she officially moved into the Italian villa. That same day, she met Meredith Kircher for the first time and immediately found her to be quite friendly. So in her book, waiting to be heard, Amanda says, quote, the newest and youngest of four roommates,

Meredith and I had a lot in common. We were both children of middle-class divorced parents, and at 21, she was just a year ahead of me in school. We'd each pushed ourselves hard to make this year in Italy happen. Now that I was finally here, the hours and hours I'd worked in Seattle, early in the morning as a barista, laid into the night for a local catering company, and training a girls' soccer team in between, seemed unquestionably worthwhile. Meredith, a longtime Italiofile, had been crushed when her British University turned her down for the program abroad. but she fought the decision and won. Maybe that's why we each brought once in a lifetime determination to our experience, end

quote. So I like to put these quotes in because I want you guys to see the way that Amanda talks about Meredith, because when she's talking about Meredith, whether you believe her or not, she seems to have no malice towards her. She seems to remember her fondly and sort of look at her as somebody that she related to. They had things in common, and she felt kind of an instant bond with her. Meredith was majoring in European studies, and she'd already been in Perugia for about a month, taking a summer course on Italian.

Amanda and Meredith bonded quickly. They realized they had a lot in common. They spent a lot of time together, sunbathing on the terrace and talking. And Amanda later wrote, quote, I loved our easy togetherness, end quote. But then we will find that the day that Meredith and Amanda met, which was September 20th, Meredith came in and she was like, oh, really friendly, you know, come out and meet my friends tonight, like, because she's been there for a while, so she's already made friends. And so they go out to dinner with Meredith's friends.

And this is when Amanda starts to kind of feel a little bit like a fish out of water. She said, quote, at dinner, I discovered that Meredith's friends, fit the reserved British profile. I'm sure I struck them as a stereotypically loud American. I was energetic and outspoken, even by nonconformist Seattle's standards, and I was probably louder than I meant to be. While we were sitting around the restaurant table, sipping wine and eating pizza, I started singing some song that was popular then, but what drew laughs in Seattle got embarrassed looks in Perugia. It hadn't dawned on me that the same quirks my friends at home found in Deering could actually offend people who were less accepting of differences.

A person more attuned to social norms would probably have realized that immature antics didn't play well here. So, end quote. Amanda's saying, if I was more socially aware, if I was more, you know, kind of picking up on the energy that they were putting down, I would have realized, hey, the same tactics, the same tools that I used to get people to let their guard down and laugh in America. That's not working with these people here. She said that she was glad she could hang out with Laura, Philomena, and Meredith at home.

She said Meredith was definitely more mainstream and demure than she, Amanda, would ever be. Laura and Filomena were older and more sophisticated, but she still felt comfortable in their company. They seemed to accept her right from the start. So all of her roommates are accepting her. And she said that during her first month in Perugia, she spent more time. with Meredith than anyone else. She said, quote, I liked her a lot and she seemed to enjoy being with me. I could already see us keep in touch by email when our year abroad was over. Maybe we'd even end up visiting each other in our hometowns, end quote. So yeah, it seems like Amanda was, you know,

thinking this is somebody who could be a lifelong friend. We're going to make memories here while we study abroad. We're going to take pictures. We're going to laugh. And then we're each going to go on to our own lives, finish school, get jobs, start families. But hopefully this is a friendship that that endures for a lifetime and we can, you know, see each other and travel with each other and keep in touch. So yeah, it seemed like they were getting along. So Meredith and Amanda were actually going to different schools. So Meredith was going to the University of Perugia and Amanda was going to the University for foreigners and the University of Perugia, their classes started earlier than the college that Amanda was going to. So Meredith was actually already in class the first day that Amanda

spent in Perugia once she moved in September. And that was kind of an understanding that Amanda was sort of exploring the city alone. But when Meredith got back, they would all spend time together and, you know, they would hang out. So on October 1st, Amanda began classes at the University for foreigners. And her schedule was actually pretty light, just two hours a day, five days a week. which is crazy. Like, can I go study abroad and only have to go to class for two hours a day so that the rest of my time I'm allowed to just, you know, wander around the streets of Prussia? Obviously, this very light class schedule, it left Amanda a lot of free time to explore and have fun, yes, but also Amanda wanted to fill her time. She wanted some extra money. So she took a job as a waitress

at a newish bar called Le Sheik. This bar was owned by a man named Patrick Lumumba. These pronunciations, man, they're going for you. Yeah, they're trying to really throw me. Trying to get you. And it's working. I can't wait. I can't wait to see these I know. There's going to be a list in the comments of like you said Lumumba wrong.

Patrick Lumumba. We're going to talk about him later too. So just over three weeks later on October 25th, Amanda and Meredith went together to a concert at the University for foreigners. And while they were there, Amanda met a young man named Rafael Soletchito. He came across as nerdy and quiet, and he stood out to Amanda right away.

Amanda would soon learn that Raphaelie was 23 years old and originally from southern Italy. He was just weeks away from a graduation with a degree in computer science. Now, during the concert, Meredith actually left it intermission, but Amanda stayed behind. You know, she wanted to see where things went with Raphaelie. So when the show ended, Raphaelie asked Amanda for her phone number, and instead of Giving it to him, she told him she had to work that night and suggested he stopped by the bar. She's playing coy. So he did stop by the bar and after her shift ended, the two went back to his apartment.

And they connected easily at a good time. They eventually had sex. And Amanda stayed the night. So this is night one that she's met him. So after that, though, they were kind of inseparable. They spent. Okay, but let's not skate over that. Let's not skate over that because you're telling me it's going to become a bigger part of the story down the road, which is the only reason that.

that I'm saying, let's explore it. But on one hand, Amanda was saying how she was someone who it would take a lot for her to open up. She didn't have sex until she was 17 years. Or she didn't kiss someone until she was 17. Until she was 17. And then she didn't have sex until she was in college. And she had a hard time having casual sex because everything was really connected to like an emotional aspect to her. But it sounds like here, whether it was alcohol, whether it was the vibe, whether it was Rojali.

whatever it was, this would, in fairness, be out of character for her, yes. It's out of character, would contradict that. But is it out of character? Because- Well, that's the thing, right? The Italian authorities are going to tell you from what you were telling me that she, this is the norm for her.

She's a femme fatale, right? Okay. Okay. So, but is this out of the norm because, okay, yes, she did have sex with him, the first, the first day they met, true, out of character. But then after that, Raphaelie and Amanda are inseparable, right? They spend all their time together. So there was an emotional connection there that.

Yes. So apparently. It wasn't a one-night hookup. No, it was kind of like a, I would say if I'm in my 20s and I'm in a meet a man like this and then I want to spend all my time with him after, it's kind of a love at first sight. Yeah. A cute little thing where it's like, oh my God, I'm obsessed with you now. I can't be away from you.

So there is emotion tied. So what you're saying is it could still be true where she had a hard time having sex without an emotional connection. But here, her argument would be there was that instant emotional connection. There was that instant chemistry, that instant connection. They felt like they knew each other. They're having sex. And now all they want to do is spend their time together after. Okay, fair. Now, just conversely, from from the outside looking in, this is probably part of the story why law enforcement is going to paint her a certain way. Absolutely. With these things. So it's just, that's the two ways to look at it. So just three days later, Raphaelie asked Amanda to be his

girlfriend, and she said yes. So then they continued on being inseparable. They're connected at the hip. So they're already dating. So apparently the chemistry and feeling like there was strong emotions, that was there for both of them because Raphael is like, will you be my girl? She's like, yeah. Yep. So October 31st was, of course, Halloween. And in Italy, Halloween is celebrated with costumes, just like in America. And that night, Amanda's boss asked her to stop by Le Sheik for a few hours. That's the bar she works at. Now, Amanda didn't want to go alone. So she texted Meredith to ask, quote, what are you doing tonight? Want to meet up? Got a costume. End quote. So she's asking Meredith, do you have a costume? She's not saying she has a costume. And Meredith replied,

quote, yes, I have one, but I have to go to a friend's house for dinner. What are your plans? X, end quote. So the X was signifying a kiss. X O XO, X. So later, this text conversation would become very important. So that night, Amanda dressed as a black cat. She went to lay sheet. for a short time, but she wasn't having a good time, so she left. At around 12.30 a.m., she met up briefly with a. But again, she wasn't feeling very social. So at around 1.45 a.m., Raphaelie came to meet her and walk her home. The following day was November 1st, All Saints Day, which is a national holiday in Italy meant to honor, believe it or not, all Saints. It's pretty straightforward.

Got it, got it. It's typically a very quiet day, and that day was no difference. So at around lunch, time, Meredith woke up. She'd been out the night before at a dinner party. Then she went dancing. She didn't get home until around 5 a.m. After she showered and threw some clothes into the washing machine, Meredith went back out to meet up with friends. Around that same time, Rafaeli, he came over to spend some time with Amanda. So after a bit, the two of them went back to his apartment and they watched Amanda's favorite movie, Amil. Is it Amel? Is it Amel? I don't know. I am the wrong person to ask. I think it's probably Amelie. Like you said, it's a 2001 French romantic comedy drama directed by Jean-Pierre Junet and starring Audrey Tatou.

Amelé is whimsical, styled character study about a shy young woman in Paris who decides to secretly improve the lives of people around her while struggling to connect romantically herself. Interesting that this would be Amanda's favorite movie because according to the synopsis, Amil is a socially awkward but observant waitress living in Montmart. So after discovering, yeah, it kind of sounds like Amanda could relate to this. She can help others, but fears being seen herself, things like that. So that's interesting. This is allegedly the movie that they watched, which was Amanda's favorite movie. So while they were there at Raphael's house, one of his friends stopped by briefly. Later, Amanda and Raphael A made dinner together, and Raphaelie tried to clean up some water that had leaked from a pipe.

I know you're probably like, what are we talking about all this for? It's important. So he didn't have a mop, so Amanda told him she would bring one over from her house the next day. After dinner, they smoked a joint, and then they laid in bed talking. Later, they had sex. They went to sleep. They had plans for the next day to drive out into the countryside and spend the weekend there together. So when Amanda woke up on the morning of November 2nd, she let Raphaelie sleep in while she walked back to her house to shower and pack.

Because remember, they're driving out to the country. When she arrived to the villa in Perugia, Amanda noticed the front door was open. She thought it was strange at first. She explained it away in her head by assuming the wind had blown it open. Amanda walked inside, called out to her roommates. No one answered. As she walked through the house, she noticed all of the bedroom doors were closed. When she went into the bathroom that she shared with Meredith, because remember there's two bathrooms, Laura and Filomena are sharing one.

Meredith and Amanda are sharing the other. Amanda noticed in the bathroom two pea-sized flex of dried blood in the sink along with another smear on the faucet. Amanda assumed Meredith must have nicked herself, maybe shaving, whatever. Now, it wasn't until Amanda got out of the shower that she noticed a reddish-brown splotch on the bath mat about the size of an orange. At first, she thought maybe Meredith started her period, but then she began to wonder how blood had ended up in the sink as well. Her confusion grew. As she got dressed, she found herself distracted thinking, you know, what should she bring with her on her trip with Raphael. A. Amanda then went into the larger bathroom near the kitchen to use Filomena's blow dryer. As she put it back against the wall, she noticed something else that immediately unsettled her. There was feces left in the toilet. Now Amanda knew that no one who lived in that house would have left the toilet unflushed. She lives with three other women who are all. kind of prim and proper and girly, and she's like, no, my roommates are not the type to do this. Now, at that point, Amanda's thoughts started racing.

She wondered, could there have been a stranger in the house, had someone been there while she was in the shower? Amanda later wrote in her book, quote, I felt a lurch of panic and the prickly feeling you get when you think someone might be watching you, end quote. She grabbed her purse and her coat, and almost as an afterthought, remembered the mop she had promised to bring back to Raphaelis. As she left, she forced herself to push the key into the lock and turn it before running up the driveway. So we're going to pause and I'm going to ask you, Derek, you're Amanda, you go in, you're going to shower quick, grab some stuff. You promised

Raphaelie, you'd bring a mop. And you see blood kind of in various areas around the bathroom, but you're not thinking too much of it. And then you go into the other bathroom and you see somebody used the bathroom to do number two, didn't flush. That's kind of not, yeah, that's kind of out of, I guess out of character for your roommates, but would it be that weird to you that you would all of a sudden feel like a prickly feeling like someone was watching you and like, was someone here, what's going on? Would you immediately feel suspicious and unsettled? No, but I think it's also anecdotal for me because she'll kill me for saying this five years from now, but Pete has a tendency not to flush. So does Bella, dude. So does Bella. Okay, okay. And I have to constantly be like,

Bella, remember, we have to flush. I'm like, dude, come on. You're, you know, I don't want to walk in. I don't want to see it. So it wouldn't be weird in my house, but to give Amanda the benefit of the doubt, I'm taking it in totality. I'm looking at it being the open door, which he thought could have been blown open by the breeze, the spots of blood. And now this huge, you know, number two, or I don't even know if it was huge. I don't know why I'm saying that.

I don't know why I had to say that. That's the way you envisioned it. Yeah. So did I. Yeah. But because of the theatrics of the story, I'm thinking it has to be like, you know, a massive shit in the toilet. I don't know. The theatrics of the story is a perfect way to describe the way that Amanda Knox relates things.

Yes. Okay. So that, I don't know if that was like the tipping point where she's like, oh, something's off here. But even then, I don't know if my head would go to, oh, man, someone broke into this place and they decided to use the restroom. I would think maybe one of my roommates, because I have three female roommates. Maybe they brought a man back last night, right? I wasn't here. I was at my boyfriend's house.

Yeah, that's another. You got roommates. Maybe they had a friend, yeah. You would think, and you correct me if I'm wrong here, but for young women living in a home together, I would assume there were other men that were going in and out of the house. I'm not saying it was just like a revolving door, but I'm assuming they had a lot of, not even men. Let me just open that up a little bit more. But I'm assuming there were a lot of people, friends coming over who were, free, free. I think about college for me, and it's like, we had a dorm, but our floor, I mean, it was constantly people coming in and out of there who were other college, you know, students or just friends from home, boyfriends, girlfriends, like, you'd go in the bathroom, which was like a common area.

And I, every day I saw, like, random people that I had never seen before. So you just become desensitized to it. So, yeah, if I went to the bathroom in an area that was kind of everyone got. to use it. There was only the two bathrooms on that floor, right? Or the one bathroom on that floor. I don't know if that would be the final thing that would get me going, oh, something's wrong here. I feel like the door being open would be more. Yeah, I agree. I wouldn't feel super comfortable getting in the shower, calling everyone's name, nobody's answering, and then getting in the shower and taking a shower when the door had been left open. Because at that point,

I'd start thinking, like if my roommates were home and they're like, hey, everything's fine. I'd be like, what happened to the door? Oh, you know, it got blown open or we left it open our bed. But I go in there, the doors already open, which means anybody could have come in. Am I jumping right in the shower? Am I jumping right in the shower? Am I going to kind of take a look around because all the bedroom doors are closed, which also didn't sound like it was something that was normal because Amanda noticed that all the bedroom doors were closed. I'd probably open some bedroom doors and make sure no one was hiding in there while I got undressed and got in the shower. That would be the most suspicious thing.

I could see it both ways where they're like, I don't want to find out who's in the bat. Like if there's someone in here that I interrupted something I shouldn't have, I don't want to bring. it to their attention that I know they're here. I just want to get out. Would you get in the shower? No. No. I think you're right.

I think that contradicts that. So that's a little weird. And then on time- What about the blood as a woman? So I'm going to be honest with you, I cut myself shaving almost every time I shave. And I shave almost every day. And I have anemia. So when I cut myself shaving, I bleed everywhere.

All right. And I sometimes don't even. That wouldn't raise any eyebrow. Not for me. But that's just for me. Sometimes I don't even know I'm bleeding when I get out of the shower and I'm walking around, getting my towel, get in the clothes. And then I look and there's like a blood trail through multiple rooms that I left. I have to tell you we're about me, I don't almost three

quarters away done with this episode. And this is goes to show you that I know. I feel like I've said so much about myself. You, you know, you haven't said a lot. But I feel I feel like I did not see this going this direction where we'd be talking about a number two in the toilet for Amanda Knox. I did not see this one coming. Well, it's important. So don't forget about it. Don't forget about it. I mean, I'll tell you my first thought is like DNA. Yeah. That's my first thought. Did she flush it? Oh, okay. You're foreshut. Okay. I'm going to shut up. All right. Let's see. Did she flush it? Let's see. So the blood wouldn't have been a big thing for me. Even the number two in the toilet, not a big thing for me. Could have had some guy there. The door being freaking open. Right. Why is it got to be a guy? Wait. Why is it got to be a guy?

Because only a guy would do that. That's not true. A guy or a little girl. Okay. All right. But for me, the door being open when I got. there would be the first red flag for me that would make me feel not comfortable being there, right? Especially when you have men and live in the basement. Like, yeah, there's a lot of things that would, that would scare. And just in general, it's right on the street. Anybody could have walked in. Some random crazy person could have walked in. So now, she's all stressed out about this. And then she still remembers to grab the mop that she promised Raphaelie. So what do you think about that? She still grabs the mop? Yeah. She still grabs the mop. I got to put myself in her shoes.

Let me digest that for a second. She's like, I felt a shiver go through me when I saw that poop. And then I knew. I knew I was, I felt like I was being washed and something was wrong. But then I still remember to grab the mop for Raphaela. I'm going to put it in a way that I would kind of relate to it where the building that I'm in right now is haunted. Okay? That's from what everyone tells me.

And I, you know how I feel about ghosts, right? We've talked about it. You guys have made fun of me. There have been times where I've heard or felt something. where I'm like, I don't want to be here anymore and I'm panicking a little bit. Like I got to get out of here. But there's still things I have to accomplish before I go, like get my book bag, you know, put my laptop away, send files, whatever I got to do.

And so I do it with a sense of urgency. But I'm still, I still have a little bit of a speedwalk going as I'm leaving here. So I'm trying to look at it from that perspective where she maybe over exaggerated the feeling she got when seeing the poop. But at that point, she no longer. felt comfortable in there and was like, I got to get out of here as soon as possible. I know what I came here for. Let me grab it and let me go.

So I'm going to say to answer your question, I don't find it that big of a deal. All right. So for me, like even just the basement in my own house, if I go down there and I get a weird feeling and I'm like, I'm out. I don't care. I don't care if I was there for ice cream. I don't care what I'm there for. The second I feel like scared, I'm like, ah, and I'm running up the stairs.

I'm done. That's just me. Let me get, let me. Let us know what you think in the comments, guys. Like, do you think it's weird that she then felt all scared once she saw the poop and then still grabbed the mop? Could have been on her way out, though. She's grabbing it and she's going. Like, she's not going to spend any extra time there and, like, kind of lounge around.

She's going to get what she needs and she's out of there. Okay. So she grabs the mop. And then after she left, or as she left, Amanda forced herself to push the key into the lock and turn it before running up the driveway. So now she's locking the door. She locked the door on her way out. Okay. So by the time Amanda made it about a block away, she started second guessing herself.

She's like, maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe there's a simple explanation for the toilet being left unflushed. So Amanda decided to call her mom. She often does this. Like Amanda and her mom have a very close relationship. She kind of looked at her mom as somebody who kind of would have the answers to everything, as you should, look at your mom. So she calls her mom. She's like, what do I do?

and her mom suggested that Amanda continue on to Raphaelie's apartment and then call her roommates once she was there to check in. So Amanda then called Philomena and explained what she had seen at the villa. And Philomena immediately sounded concerned. She told Amanda she hadn't been at the house the night before because she was with her boyfriend and that Laura was away on a business trip. So Laura and Filomena, not even at the villa, okay, that night. And also when we're talking about alibis,

she's with her boyfriend, so we're going to be able to confirm that. And Laura's on a business trip. I'm assuming not anywhere close to the villa. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter. She's on a business trip, easily, easy to prove. And Amanda is at her boyfriend's house tonight before as well, which would mean the only person there if she was there was Meredith. Yeah.

So Philomena asked if Amanda had spoken to Meredith yet. Amanda told her she hadn't and that she had called Philomena first. So Philomena told Amanda to call Meredith and then go back to the house to see if anything was missing. Amanda then tried calling Meredith on her British phone, but a recorded message said the line was out of service. That immediately struck Amanda as strange. She then tried Meredith's Italian phone, but that call went straight to voicemail. By that point, Amanda was back at Raphaelie's apartment. She told him everything she'd seen and what was happening with Meredith's phones. He agreed it was

concerning and suggested they go back to the house together to check things out. So Amanda later wrote in her book that when they returned to the villa, she felt sick to her stomach. She was deeply unsettled. She unlocked the front door and called out, is anyone here? There was no response. The house was completely quiet. Amanda first looked into Laura's room. Nothing seemed out of place. Then she went into Filomena's room and quickly noticed the window had been shattered and there was glass scattered everywhere. Clothes were piled across the bed and the floor, drawers, and cabinets were open. The room had clearly been ransacked. Now, I have another question for you. You know that Laura and Philomena are not around, right?

Laura's on a business trip. Philomena's with her boyfriend. The only person you can't contact and talk to is Meredith. Why would you not check Meredith's room first? It's a great question. And as you were talking about it, I had re-pulled up the image from the floor plan of the layout of the house or of the villa.

And from what I can see, it looks like the entryway, if I got this right, off the street, yeah. would be on the left side of the building kind of like parallel with the bedroom. So you'd come into the apartment and you'd make a left. And the first bedroom that you would enter to your left would be Philomena and to the right, it would be Loras. So this to me is not odd at all.

So she was just doing it on her way. You're going sequentially, right? So you're not going to, even as police officers, you always check the room before you pass it because if the person's in there, now they're behind you. So to me, if you had told me Philomena's room was the last room in that corridor, I'd be like that's... Or Meredith's was the first, yeah. Yep, that'd be a problem. But it's not the case.

It looks like the entryway you come in, you can, there's a little couch there. You can go left into Philomena's room or you can go right into Laura's room. And from what you just conveyed to us, she checked both of those rooms before moving on. So it's kind of like Philomena's room where the glass was broken, room, if you walked in, there's the living room, the kitchen, and then Philomena's room is on one side of the living room and kitchen, Laura's room is on the other side. And then after Filomena's room, they're kind of all in a row, Philomena, Amanda, and then Meredith. Correct. Exactly. So that, to me, makes total sense where you're coming in that entryway. You're turning left into that little living room area where the couch is. And you can go straight ahead towards Laura's room or, you know, by the couch into your left, which would have been a Philomina's room. room, which in this diagram, which I didn't even notice initially, you can see it says windows smashed out from the outside.

So, and also that's important right here in this diagram is saying window smashed from the outside, which would be important because if this were staged, and it still could be, the fact that the window, the glass fragments are inside the residence would indicate that it was someone from the outside who broke it. Okay. So then Amanda noticed something that didn't make sense. Filomena's laptop and camera were sitting out on the desk. So Amanda's thinking, why would someone break in and ransack Filamina's room?

But not take the most valuable items? Yeah, but you're not stealing any of her belongings. Like these very expensive items that were sitting out in the open, not hidden. So at that moment, Amanda's phone rang. It was Filomena. Amanda's like, I'm in your room right now. There's a broken window. There's a mess.

It's been ransacked. Filomena said, okay, I'm on my way back. I'm rushing back to the house right away. So Amanda then left Filomena's room. She went to check out Meredith's. Yes, but her bedroom door was still closed, just as it had been earlier that morning. So now I'm going to ask you another question. Filomena's room is checked.

Laura's room is checked. Now, as, you know, Amanda, do you not open the door and check your room as well? Or did you already go into your room and get stuff so you know nobody's in there? So you're moving on to Meredith's room? Okay. That's what I'm thinking that. She was there earlier. Everything looks like it was the way she left it.

And also she locked the door. The door was still locked when she got there, presumably. so she's assuming that whatever happened and that residence happened before she got there earlier and it's just in the same condition that it was that more than likely the perpetrator is no longer there unless the perpetrator is still there and was there while you were showering and left and then is hiding in your room now because you left could be i mean maybe her door was still open would you check yeah maybe their door was still open so she just happened to peer in these rooms are not big from what it looks like in these diagrams i'm sure they're not to scale but there there's probably something to explain that

Everything's on the up and up, right? Like, let's be honest. We're kind of, like, beating around the bush here. There is a group of people who believe Amanda's guilty, right? Yes, there are. And so if you're in that camp, then you're not believing any of this, and that's fine. But if we're just for this purpose right now, taking everything at face value, I could absolutely see a world where she just kind of peered into the room quickly and, you know, the door was still open because she didn't shut it after she left and everything looked normal. So she continued down to Meredith's room.

So Amanda calls out to Meredith, you know, Meredith, are you here? No answer. So she wondered, maybe is Meredith out with her boyfriend or out with friends? Now, I guess that's not the first thing I would be wondering, knowing that somebody had already broken in and nobody can reach Meredith. Okay, I'd kind of be concerned about Meredith because someone broke in. They didn't steal anything. So clearly that wasn't their reason for being there. Nobody can reach Meredith. One phone's not working. The other phone's going right to voicemail. if Meredith was out with her friends or a boyfriend, she's probably charging her phone.

So that would not be the first thing I'm thinking of. But trying to be sure, Amanda did not go into Meredith's room. She ran outside to see if the men who lived in the bottom apartment were home and if they'd heard anything, but no one was there. So she didn't go into Meredith's room. She didn't go into Meredith's room. That's weird, right? Can't explain everything that people do because we always talk about trauma.

But if you went to the extreme of looking into everyone else's room. Philomena's room and Laura's room and yeah, that's... Even though you know where Philomena and Laura are, but you can't get a hold to Meredith. That would probably be the room you'd want to check. So Amanda, when she finds out the Italian men aren't there, she runs back upstairs. She knocked on Meredith's door again. Still, there was no response. Okay.

So Amanda tried the doorknob, finally. And she found out that the room was locked. So Amanda knew Meredith only locked her door when she was changing or gone for the weekend. So this was very concerning. Amanda was very distressed at this point. Raphaelie tried to force the door open. He couldn't. Come on, dude.

You can't kick this door open. Come on, Raphael. These doors don't look to that. I mean, you can see the images of the rooms. But yeah, okay. Okay, let's just go with it for now. Maybe he doesn't know. A door was locked, which would mean,

is this like a key lock where you could lock it from the outside, like where they basically had their own little locks on their doors with separate keys where they could lock their individual door after leaving it so no one would go into their room? I've seen that a lot in places like this. It's got to be because if Meredith locks her door when she goes away for the weekend, how the hell is she going to get back in? I'm assuming because they're roommates, but they're not, you know, they still barely know each other.

It would make sense that not that they're like subletting the villa, but like they all have their own little apartment space within their room. Yes. So you want to lock it when you leave for the weekend and you obviously need a key that you would, you know, and yes, it looks like each individual bedrooms in the villa had locks. Each bedroom had its own key. Yep. A little bit of privacy where you don't have to worry about random neighbors or friends coming in and going into your room. Yes. These were mechanical locks, not electronic. They would be operated with a small metal key. And obviously, the bedrooms could be locked from the outside. They could also be locked from the inside. And the lock was independent of the main house door. So this is pretty common. Each roommate had a key to their own room. And it sounds like, you know, somebody either locked this door from the inside or the outside. But Amanda's conclusion.

concerned because she's like, well, Meredith only locks it if she's in there changing or if she's gone for the weekend. Now, I don't know why you're concerned all of a sudden because before you were like, well, maybe she's out with her friends or her boyfriend. So why would her being out of town for the weekend, just like you were about to go out of town for the weekend, be alarming to you all of a sudden? I don't know. So then Raphael couldn't get the door open. Amanda called her mother again, explained what was happening, and her mom told her to call the police. Raphaelie also called his sister. She was a police officer in another area, and she said, yes, call the police.

That's what I would advise. So Amanda and Raphaelie called the Italian equivalent of 911, then they went outside to wait. As they were heading out, Amanda glanced into the larger bathroom near the kitchen and saw that the toilet had been flushed. The feces was gone. The poop's gone. She immediately thought someone must have either been hiding in the house while she was there or had come back while she was gone. Well, that could be, I suppose, because she did lock the door, but maybe they escaped through the broken window.

But Amanda's claiming she did not flush the toilet. Either way, it was super creepy. Amanda couldn't wait to get out. She had Rafael rushed outside and they waited near the driveway for the police. So while they were waiting out there, officers from the postal police arrived. Italy. The postal police aren't like regular police officers. They handle technology-related crimes. They actually weren't there for the call. Amanda and Raphaelah had placed. They were there because of two phones that had been turned in earlier that morning, and one of the phones was registered

to Filamina, one of the roommates. So the officers asked Amanda if she recognized the name, Filamina. She said yes, but she explained that the phone couldn't be Filaminas because they had just spoken. Amanda told them that they had been trying to locate Meredith all morning, and they asked how the phones had been found. The police wouldn't tell Amanda anything, but she later learned that a neighbor had heard phones ringing in her garden when Amanda was trying to call Meredith. The phones had been tossed over the high wall that separated the neighbor's property from the street, and then the neighbor had turned the phones into the police. So both of Meredith's phones, it looks like, were thrown over into a neighbor's garden. So while the postal

police were still speaking with Amanda and Raphaelie, Philomena arrived at the house along with her boyfriend and one of his friends. Filomena immediately went upstairs to her room to see if any of her belongings were missing. Once again, none were. The postal police then showed Filamina the two phones that had been turned in earlier that morning. Filomena identified them right away. One was Meredith's British phone.

The other was Meredith's Italian phone. Filomena explained that she'd given Meredith the Italian SIM card herself, and that's why it had showed up in her name. Okay, that makes sense. There's a lot to digest there. So Amanda wrote in her book that at that point, the postal police seemed like they were done with the whole situation. They'd figured out the phone issue. That's all they were there for.

Amanda spoke up and said, you know, I'm still worried about Meredith. Where is she? Now, Amanda's Italian wasn't the best, and the officers weren't understanding her concerns. So Filomena took over the conversation. She demanded that the postal police break down Meredith's bedroom door to see if she was okay. The officers told her, hey, we can't do that because it's not within our authority. but we can watch as someone else breaks the door down. So everyone moved into the hallway outside Meredith's bedroom.

Filomena's boyfriend's friend stepped forward and forced the door open, which had to have been a little embarrassing for Raphaelie. Well, maybe he wasn't trying hard because he didn't want to break the door down and be the bad guy in case Meredith walked in. Maybe he wasn't trying to. Come on. Give Raphaelie a little bit of a break here, okay? Amanda couldn't see what was going on,

but she heard Philomena immediately yell out, that she could see a foot. So Filomena began crying and screaming hysterically as the police yelled for everyone to get out of the house. Amanda was deeply confused at that moment. She doesn't speak Italian that well. She could only make out fragments of what was being said. She believed she heard someone say there was a body inside the wardrobe, which is like a closet, with a foot sticking out, while Filomena continued screaming, Meredith, Meredith, oh God, over and over again. So Amanda described her own reaction by writing, quote, my mind worked in slow motion. I could not scream or speak. I just kept saying in my head, what's happening? What's happening? End quote. Amanda talks a lot

in her book about how difficult it was to decipher what was going on since she wasn't fluent in Italian. She'd been there for less than two months. She's only taken Italian 101, which is nothing. She found it difficult to try and translate what was being said, especially through this, like, stress that was happening. But yeah, she's basically saying, my mind's not picking up what's happening. It's moving in slow motion. I'm just very confused about all of this. Everyone, around me seems very stressed out, devastated even. I don't really understand what's happening. So outside, Amanda clung to Raphaelé as paramedics, detectives, and forensic scientists arrived at the scene. No one would tell them what was happening. At that point, all Amanda knew was that

someone, possibly Meredith, had been killed. She struggled to understand what she was seeing in hearing. She later wrote, quote, I was slowly absorbing and rejecting the fractured news that Meredith was dead. I felt as if I were underwater. Each movement, My own and everyone else's seemed thick, slow, surreal. I willed the police to be wrong. I wanted Meredith to walk down the driveway to be alive. What if she'd spent the night with one of her British girlfriends or gotten up early to meet friends? I held the near impossible idea that somehow the person in Meredith's room was a stranger, end quote.

So she's, I think she's saying in a way, like, I understood that somebody was in there and there was a body in there and that person was dead. But I refused to accept and believe that it was my new friend, Meredith. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, we know the person in Meredith's room was not a stranger. It was Meredith Kircher. She'd been brutally assaulted and murdered. Amanda would eventually learn the graphic details of what had been done to Meredith and that the police believed she of all people was responsible. But we're going to talk about that in part two. But let's kind of go over where we are so far, what we think here. Yeah, I mean, my first, my first thought is a lot of what you conveyed to us today is from the perspective of Amanda not. right so if you are again in the camp that she did it your your response right now during this episode is of course she's going to say that it gives her an alibi it makes her look innocent she looks like she was just a victim in her own right and i hear you guys but this was just the first

perspective and i'm interested to hear how this story unfolds because i know it's not this clear cut it can't be uh it can't be with what i know about this case and i'm not going to say everything because maybe some of you don't know but how this kind of played out in the courts and all that stuff. So we'll get there. I'm interested to hear if the versions of what occurred the day before that night and the day of the actual finding of Meredith are all the same from different parties. My belief is that they won't be and that there's a much different narrative that's going to be conveyed to law enforcement, which is going to lead them down this path that Amanda's responsible for Meredith's murder. But on the surface, what else can

I say. If we're going in chronological order of how you're telling us the story, Amanda seems like she just is at the wrong place at the wrong time. Right now. So we've got Laura, Laura's in Rome on a business trip, by the way. Then Philomena's at her boyfriend, Marcos. Nobody's there, but Meredith. Nobody can get a hold of Meredith. So there's really nobody to dispute or confirm what Amanda is saying when she got to the villa that day. But it also seems like, I will say, to be fair, it also seems like, at least according to Amanda, when she called her friend and roommate Filomena, she didn't know that Filomena was at Marcos and she didn't know that Laura was on a business trip in Rome. So it seems like that was news to her. Yeah. So it kind of is like, you know, how would she be planning something if she didn't know that she would be able to get away with it? nobody would be home. Right. Unless, unless there was something that led Amanda to go over to Raphael's house that nice because something happened between her and Meredith earlier. You know,

that this was her reason to get out of the home, right? You could easily say that Amanda is responsible for what happened to Meredith, either by herself or with other people. And in order to separate herself and give herself a window where she's innocent, she has to go sleep at Raphaelie's house. she has to spend the night there so she can say I wasn't here either. Whatever happened to Meredith may have already occurred if you're looking at it from the angle of Amanda's guilty. So these are all things we have to explore. I got so many questions.

I want to know if Amanda had been sleeping over at Raphaelie's house a lot, if this was a common occurrence, is this a one-off? Yeah, it kind of seemed like, yes. And it almost seemed like all the girls kind of had boyfriends, but they would stay at their homes or their apartments and maybe not. have their boyfriends over at the shared apartment that often. And I get that. And I, you know, I think that goes for a lot of people because also you have, you have

the kitchen, well, you have the living room, right? So if you're looking at the overview in that same kind of image that I have here that you had sent initially where it was like the two-dimensional image, you can see that they're coming into the apartment. And I don't know if there's a TV in there or not. I can see the couch. I can't see a television. So maybe they had to go to Raphael's place.

to watch the movie. That's possible. But I'll also say just to trying to get everything out that I was listening to, the crime itself, right? Like the motive behind the crime doesn't really make sense because we have to learn more about the specifics involving Meredith's death. Was she sexually assaulted? What was the nature of how she was killed? Like all these things will matter. But just from what we know right now, the idea of a robbery gone wrong where Meredith just happens to be home when this is occurring. Yeah, it's kind of off the table here. Doesn't make sense because you have valuable items still there. You have cell phones that were left, quote unquote, left behind, but not take, not left at the house.

Like they were taken where they could have been tracked, but yet at the last minute, the offender decides, nope, I'm just going to throw them over the fence or the wall. That doesn't make sense to me. Also, when you think about the possibility that Meredith while walking home or maybe out for the night had met up with someone or was followed by someone. or invited somebody there or invited someone over but that would explain the door being open because this person would have left in a hurry but how did how did someone flush a toilet then let's not even go there yet i'm talking about the door being open right because you would think that that whoever it was left in a hurry but let's say they came in there invited or or just walked into the apartment because they knew they could that doesn't explain the broken window from the outside why would this

person whether they were invited over or went in unannounced why would they go to the length of staging a fake robbery. Why would they break a window? They know they committed a crime. To make it seem like she didn't know them and then there was a stranger. I don't know. Maybe they were seen with her that night. I don't know.

They would have to run out of the apartment or I guess break the window out and then run out of the apartment or run out the apartment, break the window. They'd have to leave the apartment, break the window from the outside. Yep. Take her phones, throw them over the thing. I mean, it seems like when you think about these predators that come into this, right, where they followed her. home where they went there under a false impression for Meredith where they acted like a

friendly but really they were a foe they go in there they do what they want to do they get out as fast as possible they know that there's no previous connection to this person therefore they don't really have to stage the crime and run the risk of being seen by someone because you have to think about that every second that you spend there is a second where someone could come home or a neighbor or a passerby could see you there breaking out the window and now you're screwed so you would just want to walk out of there and pretend like nothing happened so this to me all of it the evidence that we do have doesn't align it doesn't it doesn't show a clear picture of what happened and the one thing that i'm leaving part one with is that more

than likely this is staged this crime scene has been staged and the poop thing to go back to it i don't know what to think of it i don't know what to think of it did amanda accidentally flush the toilet on her way out just you know creature of habit where she was kind of like she really was concerned and nervous and in a haste flushed the toilet and didn't realize she did it stressful situations can cause a lot of things but I have a hard time believing that if there was another person and it wasn't Amanda that this person was still in the apartment at this time of day whatever happened to Meredith more than likely would have happened overnight and this was how they found her the next day so I have a hard

time believing that if someone had killed Meredith, that they were still just sitting in the apartment because while Amanda showered, they would have probably gotten out while she was in the shower and couldn't see them. Why would they stay? Or worse, they would have killed her too. Yeah. So I do want to talk. I do want to talk about something that we're going to discuss next week. So it was the way Amanda and Raphaelie were acting outside of the villa when the first responders and everybody showed up. This is going to be something that consistently comes up. So, Amanda said that when they went outside, she was like, I was completely flattened. I was in despair. She said she clung to Raphael's arms. That was the only thing that felt real. She was

being held by him. He was keeping her from collapsing. She said she was unable to understand most of it was being said. She felt cast adrift. And then she said, I was flattened. I was in despair. I cried weekly on and off into Raphael's sweater. I never sobbed openly. I'd never cried publicly. perhaps like my mom and my Oma, her grandmother, who had taught me to cry when I was alone, I battled up my feelings. It was an unfortunate trait in a country where emotion is not just commonplace, but expected. And she said Raphaelie's voice was calm and reassuring. He said, Andre Tutobanei, it's going to be okay, he said.

He pulled me closer, stroked my hair, patted my arm. He looked at me and kissed me, and I kissed him back. These kisses were consoling. Raphaelie let me know that I wasn't alone. It reminded me of when I was young and I had. a nightmare. My mom would hold me and smooth my hair and let me know that I was safe. Somehow Raphaelie managed to do the same thing. Later, people would say that our kisses were flirtatious, evidence of our guilt. They described the times I pressed my face to Raphaelie's chest as snuggling.

Innocent people, the prosecutor and media said, would have been so devastated they would have been unable to stop weeping. Watching a clip of it now, my stomach seizes. I'm gripped by the same awful feelings I had that afternoon. I can only see myself as I was. young and scared, in need of comfort. I see Raphaelie trying to cope with his own feelings while trying to help me. So next week, when we talk about this a little bit more, I'm going to play you. We're going to play you both Derek and I. We'll play you that clip of Amanda and Raphaelie outside of the villa when the police

and the first responders and the investigators were in there. And we will discuss from there. But this is a big thing that Amanda's saying, I don't cry openly. And I get that. I don't typically like to cry in front of people either. But she's saying in Italy, this is a culture where emotion is not frowned upon. It is expected. And if you don't show it, you're considered to look guilty or suspicious.

Yeah, there's so much to impact here. I'm even replaying some of the things that you said to me in this episode. You talked about that text message where Amanda had reached out to her and asked what she was doing on Halloween. Yeah, you have a costume. Yeah. Yep. But that was on the 31st, right? So there's a day between. There's all Saints Day, which is November 1st, and then this happens on November 2nd. Correct. So there's a full day of stuff. And you had described some of Meredith's behavior on the first. And I don't know where you're getting that from. But you talked about her waking up late because she had been out dancing the night before.

She didn't get home until 5 a.m. Yep. And then having lunch or whatever. And then she showered and threw some clothes in the washing machine before she went back out to meet. friends. That's the last time Amanda saw her, allegedly, yeah. Yeah, there's so many holes right now. Where did she go? Who was she with? What are their accounts of what happened that night? Do they recall her saying that she was going to meet up with her roommate Amanda? These are all questions that need to be answered. And I have a feeling we're going to get to it. Oh, we will. Yes. Of course well. Okay. Any final words from you. This is fascinating, part one. Every time I think about whether or not to cover certain cases and I'm like, do we do this one. It's been covered a lot. As soon as we dive into it, all my concerns are relieved

because I'm like, now I want to do part two, three, four, five right now and just get it done because I want to know more. I agree. This is a very interesting case and there's so much to talk about. Yeah, you're kind of leaving us on a cliffhanger, but glad we're doing it. Hope you guys feel the same. This is something where you can kind of see how we're approaching it right now. we're not coming from the perspective of Amanda's innocent or Amanda's guilty. We're just trying to give you everything so that you can develop your own opinions. And we're going to go on this journey together. Yeah, I'm highlighting things only because I know it's not like I'm saying like,

do you find that suspicious, Derek? I'm not necessarily giving my opinion. I know that other people have pointed these things out as things they find suspicious and that they don't necessarily understand. So that's why I'm bringing it up and I'm shining a light on those things. Yeah. I can see why. And if you were listening to kind of like segue here, if you were listening to our crime weekly news, we had talked about the sense of community that we're going to try to build for 2026. And this episode, this part right here kind of is the exact reason we need to do it. We need to have a place where we can get together and talk about these cases after we're done recording. And that announcement's going to be coming soon, but we think you're going to be excited about it. Any final words from you? No, I can't wait to get together next week and keep going. do it. I'm ready to do it. Guys, that's going to do it for us. We hope everyone had a great holiday.

Please let us know what you think about this in the comments. Yeah, there's a lot here. And I am, both sides of it. If you think she's guilty or you think she's innocent, keep it respectful, but I want to start hearing your opinions. And I also want to kind of gauge our audience. Yeah, I agree. You had said that in the live, someone's like, don't cover it unless you think she's innocent. Which, by the way, if you know us at all, then you know that's not how we operate. You know, so, but, but that said, was one person. I'm interested to hear what you guys think, whether or not she's guilty or innocent. And like we do with a lot of these major cases, we take that pull at the end to see if that perception or that opinion has changed. So can't wait for next week. We'll be back.

Until then, as always, I feel like we got to keep it going. Stay safe out there. That's the most important. And we'll see you guys next week. We'll see you guys soon. Bye. Thank you.