Knox’s ex bolts, then returns
He turns himself in, she vows never again to set foot in Italy
FLORENCE, I ta ly — Amanda Knox’ sex-boy friend left Italy and drove to Austria while an appeals court deliberated his fate, police said Friday, but he eventually returned to Italy and surrendered his passport following their joint conviction for murdering British student Meredith Kercher.
Raffaele Sollecito’s travels were revealed on the same day that Knox made clear she would never voluntarily return to Italy to serve the 28-1/2-year sentence handed down by an appeals court.
“I will never go willingly back to the place,” she said on ABC’s Good Morning America. “I’m going to fight this until the very end. It’s not right, and it’s not fair.”
Lawyers for the pair have vowed to appeal the conviction, which upheld the 2009 verdict in the murder of Kercher, Knox’s roommate in Perugia.
Kercher was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit on Nov. 2, 2007, in their apartment. Knox and Sollecito were arrested a few days later and served four years in prison before an appeals court acquitted them in 2011. Italy’s high court later threw out that acquittal and ordered a new trial, resulting in Thursday’s conviction.
Sollecito’s lawyer, Luca Maori, insisted his client was in the area of Italy’s northeastern border with Austria on Thursday because that’s where his current girlfriend lives. He said Sollecito went voluntarily to police to surrender his passport.
But the head of the Udine police squad, Massimiliano Ortolan, said police were tipped off that Sollecito had checked into a hotel in Venzone, on the Italian side of the border, and they went to find him there, waking him and his girlfriend up Friday morning and bringing him to the police station in Udine.
At the police station, Sollecito told investigators that he had driven into Austria on Thursday afternoon after attending the opening session of the trial in Florence. After the court began deliberating, Sollecito said he travelled the 400 kilometres from Florence to Udine on Italy’s northeastern border with Austria and crossed the frontier, Ortolan said.
In Italy, adults checking into hotels must hand over ID upon check-in. Hotels then communicate the information to local police.