Crime author Doug Preston admits that at first, he thought Amanda Knox was guilty of murdering her British roommate in what Italian prosecutors said was a sexual misadventure gone awry.
Then, he heard the name Giuliano Mignini, the assistant prosecutor leading the case against the University of Washington student studying abroad.
Preston met Mignini in 2004, when the prosecutor questioned him in connection with the "Monster of Florence," a case involving the gruesome murders of eight couples between 1968 and 1985. Preston said the encounter spooked him to the point that he decided to leave the country out of fear that he falsely might be implicated in the grisly murders.
The case also left its mark on Mignini, who was convicted and received a 16-month suspended sentence for abusing his office over law enforcement tactics - such as the wiretapping of offices -- in the "Monster of Florence" investigation.
Preston also thought the evidence against Knox and Sollecito seemed overwhelming. Then, he remembered his own encounter with Italian law enforcement.
He had once been interrogated as part of a murder investigation in Perugia, by none other than Mignini himself. The subject of the inquiry? The so-called "Monster of Florence," the topic Preston was investigating for his book.
"I felt like I had fallen into one of my own books. Now the funny thing is, I'd written many interrogations in my books -- you know, I write thrillers where people get interrogated -- I had never understood how brutal, psychologically brutal, an interrogation is. You feel absolutely helpless," he said.
Crime author turned subject of interrogation
To Preston, it sounds suspicious, and all too familiar.
He had moved to Italy in August 2000 in search of inspiration for the perfect thriller. Instead, he found a true crime story more outrageous than any work of fiction he could dream up.
"The Monster of Florence" turned out to be a damning assault on the investigation into the gruesome murders of eight couples in Tuscany between 1968 and 1985.
Over the years, police made seven arrests, according to Preston and other reports on the killings, only to learn that the killer was still out there.
When authorities were unable to find the lone killer whom crime scene analysts said was responsible for the killings, they came up with a theory involving a satanic cult.
After that didn't pan out, Preston says they set their sights on new targets: him and Spezi.
He said he was told he had a right to a lawyer but that because he was not a suspect he did not need one. When he showed up to Mignini's office, Preston said he asked for a translator but was told it would take hours, and proceeded without one.
He didn't expect to be there long, but he said he ended up staying for two hours.
"They'd read it back to me, 'Is this your answer?' And I'd say, 'No, that isn't quite what I said.' And then I'd have to rephrase it," he said. "And at a certain point I realized to my absolute horror that they were narrowing down on me as if I were a criminal and had committed a crime and that they were trying to trap me into confessing."
He asked Mignini if he was, in fact, a suspect to a crime.
"That's when Mignini said, 'Yes. We don't think it. We know it. We know you have committed a crime. We have the proof. And you are going to confess to it," Preston said.
"They have techniques that could get you to confess to murder. I am not kidding. One of the techniques that they used on me was to ask me to speculate. 'Oh, well, if Mario didn't commit the murder... why don't you tell us, if he had committed the murder -- let's just assume that he had -- can you speculate how he might have done it? Can you speculate this? Can you speculate that? Tell us what you think.' And they get you speculating."
Preston said he did not sign the statement in Italian that was written for him. Neither he nor Spezi were charged with a crime, but he still thought it best to leave the country in February 2006.
But Preston and Knox's supporters maintain that the theory of the crime was made to fit around Knox and Sollecito, based on thin forensic evidence, regardless of the fact they had Guede -- the person whose DNA was found inside Kercher's body.
"To save face... because they had made this public declaration of guilt of this American and her boyfriend, they had to retroactively link her and her boyfriend to this real killer and claim that all three did it," Preston said.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/07/01/amanda.knox.author/
