In early September of last year, Amanda Knox, an American college student from the University of Washington, arrived in Perugia, Italy, and joined the ranks of the 40,000 students, Italian and foreign, who flock there annually. This is a mixed blessing for the majestic town of 160,000, which has endured a number of invasions through the ages: first, the Etruscans, who built their elaborate tombs there, followed by the Romans, Goths, and, much later, Napoleon. But nothing has ever hit Perugia quite like Amandaâ??or, more accurately, the unspeakable crimes for which she was arrested: inciting two men to commit a sexual assault so brutal that it left her British housemate deadâ??and, in the wake of this murder, the media and judicial circuses that now engulf her.
When she arrived from Seattle, Amanda was just 20 years old and newly beautiful. Her heightened appeal had evidently come as a welcome surprise, a piece of luck she didnâ??t know quite how to handle. â??Very short, kind of mousy brown hairâ? is how her high-school drama teacher recalls her. â??Letâ??s lay it out: she wasnâ??t a dazzler.â?
But by November, when she achieved international notoriety, she was perceived as irresistibleâ??â??Luciferina with the face of an angel,â? as an Italian newspaper described her. Even before thatâ??in the relatively anonymous first weeks of her Italian sojournâ??she had been attracting attention from the locals. Her light, wide-spaced eyes are set in a finely boned face framed by sandy hair. Her firm, athletic body had grown slimmer and more seductive over the summer. Evenings, wearing a white miniskirt, Amanda strolled with boyfriends along the Corso Vannucci, a wide avenue of shops, cafés, and halls dedicated to the bankers and merchants who had made Perugia a Renaissance power. At the mouth of the avenue is an elaborate three-tiered fountain carved in white and pink stone.
Twice a week she worked at Le Chic, a dark, dank local bar, where, her exasperated Congolese boss, Diya Patrick Lumumba, recalls, â??she spent most of her time chatting up the guys and flirting.â?
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