Fellow student ‘convinced’ Knox murdered Meredith

ONE OF Meredith Kercher's best friends, who studied with her at Perugia's University for Foreigners, is convinced that the American student Amanda Knox did kill Meredith in November 2007 and does not deserve to win an appeal against her conviction for murder.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, 25-year-old Natalie Hayward says she "can't believe" Amanda Knox will win her appeal and be freed from her Italian jail in the coming days. "From all that we know it would be crazy, insane," she says. "I just hope it won't happen."

Natalie, who left Perugia soon after her friend's death and is still recovering from the trauma, says a number of factors have persuaded her of Amanda's guilt, including her strange behaviour and apparent "inside knowledge" of the details of the murder in the immediate aftermath of Meredith's body being found.

Natalie also cites the increasing tensions between Meredith and Amanda which, she says, had been building for weeks before Meredith died.

She says Meredith was "frustrated" by Amanda's refusal to do her share of the cleaning in the hillside apartment the two girls shared. Meredith also felt "uncomfortable" that Knox kept a vibrator in a transparent wash bag in the bathroom. And Amanda's constant strumming on her guitar grated on the English girl.

"She was clearly a powerful person," Natalie says of Amanda, who has broken a four-year silence to speak to the Sunday Telegraph. "She talked about herself a lot. She talked about her friends as though they couldn't live without her. She was very different to Meredith. She was used to being the centre of attention."

The last time Natalie saw Meredith alive was on Hallowe'en, October 31, 2007. All three girls went out for drinks and dancing at the Merlin in central Perugia. Natalie went home early, leaving Meredith and Amanda partying until the small hours.

Meredith's body was found at the shared apartment on the morning of November 2. She was only partly dressed and her throat had been slit.

Natalie and Amanda were among a group of Meredith's friends to be called in for questioning at the police station. "She [Amanda] was acting very differently to everyone else," says Natalie. "We felt shell-shocked, half dead. She seemed a bit too OK. It wasn't normal. That in itself doesn't mean she's the culprit, but when you put it with everything else..."

Natalie and Meredith's other friends were surprised that Knox seemed to have detailed knowledge of the crime scene, even though the Perugia police said she had not seen inside the bedroom, where Meredith lay in a pool of blood.

This issue has been raised before, and Knox's family have always said that Amanda knew some of the details because they were openly discussed by people at the crime scene.

But Natalie says: "I remember her talking to her stepfather on the phone and saying that she had found the body and it was in the cupboard and it was in a blanket. It was odd because she hadn't been in the room. We were so traumatised we didn't take it in at the time."

Natalie also recalls how, when talking to Meredith's other grief-stricken friends at the police station, she said she hoped Meredith had not suffered too much. To which Knox apparently replied: "What do you think? She fucking bled to death."

In another interview published today, Amanda's father, Curt Knox, tells the Sunday Mirror that the murder trial at which his daughter was found guilty was "more about emotion than evidence" and that the evidence presented "was a character assassination of Amanda".

He says Amanda is optimistic that her conviction will be quashed in the next 10 days and she will be free to return to Seattle. He said his daughter hopes to make a career out of helping victims of miscarriages of justice. ·