Amanda Knox Cocaine Connection: Alleged Drug Ties Could Force Knox Back To Italy
Amanda Knox and an Italian cocaine dealer were closely linked and may have even had an ongoing sexual relationship, as the man also supplied the American exchange student with cocaine and other drugs, according to new reports that may be used to force Knox back to Italy where she could be imprisoned for 28 years.
The revelation by prosecutors who maintain that Amanda Knox brutally murdered her British housemate — 21-year-old Meredith Kercher — on October 31, 2007, comes just two days after Rafaelle Sollecito, the boyfriend of Amanda Knox at the time of the murder, announced that he could could no longer vouch for Knox’s whereabouts that night.
A 26-year-old Seattle native, Knox was re-convicted in absentia of Kercher’s killing in January. But Knox has vowed never to return to Italy, where if her conviction is upheld by that country’s highest court, she would be sent to prison to serve a sentence that could keep her behind bars there well into her 50s.
Whether she goes back or not may no longer be up to Knox if Italian prosecutors can make the cocaine allegations stick.
They say that phone numbers found in Knox’s cell phone led police to a local drug ring that specialized in servicing “university students and young professionals” in Perugia, where Knox lived, sharing a small cottage with Kercher.
The Italian authorities also claim they have phone records showing that Amanda Knox called a local drug dealer both soon before and after the murder of Kercher, and that this “Italian person from time to time replenished Amanda Knox’s narcotic substances, as well as having allegedly had with her the relationship of a sexual nature.”
During the first Amanda Knox trial in 2009, prosecutors claimed that Knox and Sollecito, along with a small-time drug dealer Rudy Guede, murdered Kercher “under the fumes of drugs and alcohol.”
Guede was convicted of the murder and is now serving time in prison. Amanda Knox and Rafaelle Sollecito are set to hear their cases appealed to Italy’s highest court, which will either uphold or set aside their January guilty verdicts. In either case, the court’s decision will be final. The hearing is expected to happen sometime in 2015.
According to the United States tabloid The National Enquirer, Amanda Knox spent money at a rapid rate in the weeks leading up to the murder.
The tabloid reported that a check of Knox’s financial records showed that during her final month in Seattle before leaving for Italy, Amanda Knox spent just $638. But as soon as she got to Italy, her spending zoomed skyward. She blew through $2,765 in August and withdrew $2,452 from ATMs in September. She also took out $1,637 in October, the month that ended with the Kercher killing.
That is a total of $6,854 spent by Amanda Knox during her three months in Italy before Meredith Kercher was killed. But did she spend it on cocaine? Or is such spending normal for a young student out of the country on her own for the first time?
