New arrest in Italy slaying
PERUGIA, Italy - A new suspect in the slaying of a British university student was apprehended Tuesday in Germany just hours before the case’s first suspect - 44-year-old Congolese bar owner Diya “Patrick” Lumumba - was released.
Lumumba had been implicated by University of Washington student Amanda Knox, 20, in the Nov. 1 slaying of Meredith Kercher. Knox, Kercher’s housemate, and Knox’s 23-year-old boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, are also being held in connection with Kercher’s death.
Italian prosecutors asked a judge to release Lumumba because of a lack of evidence.
“He was jailed with the shame of being a monster, and today he comes out with his head held high,” lawyer Giuseppe Sereni was quoted as saying.
Tuesday’s events represented the most intense flurry of activity in the case in several days, and legal experts said they could be a turning point in the investigation.
German police said Tuesday that they had arrested 21-year-old Rudy Hermann Guede, an Italian citizen originally from the Ivory Coast who has lived most of his life in Perugia. He was tracked down on a train between the German cities of Mainz and Koblenz, where he was questioned for traveling without a valid ticket. He is being held in Mainz awaiting Italy’s extradition request to be translated and processed.
Italian investigators have said for several days that they were looking for a new suspect, a man whose bloody fingerprint was found on a pillowcase and again on some refuse in the house Kercher and Knox shared in Perugia.
The fingerprint was connected to Guede last week, and the case against him was bolstered by eyewitness accounts that placed him in the area the night of the slaying. On Thursday, police issued an international arrest warrant for Guede, whose name first appeared in the media four days later.
Guede - a former semipro basketball player for the Perugia team - reportedly left Perugia soon after Kercher’s body was found, reportedly sending a text message to friends saying he planned to travel to Milan to “go dancing.”
According to a statement released Tuesday, police were able to place Guede in Germany after monitoring his account on the social-networking site Facebook.com.
The suspect reportedly sent a message to a British newspaper Sunday night to say he wanted to clear his name. Police in Perugia were able to trace the computer he used to Germany. They alerted German officials, who tracked him down Tuesday morning.
“We captured [Guede] in a joint Italian-German operation,” the brief statement from police in Perugia said. The statement said they expected Guede to arrive in the city before the end of the week.
The arrest of the man Italian newspapers had taken to calling “the missing puzzle piece” is being treated as a major break in the case, which in recent days appeared to be in danger of bogging down as authorities constructed a case and the other suspects languished in jail. The new development led evening newscasts in Italy on Tuesday and sparked speculation that the pieces could start falling into place quickly.
“If it is true that he is the final suspect they are looking for, then this is the end of the beginning,” said legal commentator Alesandro Aquari, a professor of jurisprudence at Roma Tre University. “Now comes the hard part: A case has to be made.”
A spokesman for the Caribienieri national police agreed: “This is when the investigation really begins.” No charges have been filed in the slaying of Kercher. But the Italian judge who upheld the detentions of Knox and Sollecito said there are enough “serious indications of guilt” to keep them behind bars for up to a year.
Both have denied involvement in the killing.
Knox moved to Perugia from Seattle earlier this year to study at the University for Foreigners, where Kercher and Sollecito were also students.
Lumumba had been the main suspect in the case, after Knox reportedly told investigators she thought the well-known bar owner, a 17-year Perugia resident, was responsible for the killing. But Knox changed her story a few days later and Lumumba’s alibi for the night of the murder checked out.
Lumumba’s lawyer called the release “historic” and said he was unsure if his client would seek damages for wrongful arrest. Lumumba did not issue a statement upon his release, but told Italian reporters: “I am thankful to God for helping me.”
Eric J. Lyman is a freelance writer based in Rome.
Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.