PERUGIA, Italy -- An American jailed in connection with the slaying of her British roommate is passing the time reading and writing letters, and remains "serene" after three weeks in custody, a lawmaker said Thursday.
Amanda Knox, 20, a University of Washington student from Seattle studying in Italy, was arrested Nov. 6 -- four days after her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, was found dead in their Perugia apartment, her throat slashed.
Knox remains calm, Italian lawmaker Osvaldo Napoli said after visiting her in Perugia.
"She told me: 'I am extremely serene and tranquil. I have faith in the Italian courts; I await the judgment serenely,"' Napoli told The Associated Press on Thursday. Napoli also quoted Knox as saying her first days in custody were difficult, according to Turin daily La Stampa.
On Friday, a judge is to determine whether she and her Italian ex-boyfriend, 23-year-old Raffaele Sollecito, should remain behind bars during the investigation. A third suspect, Rudy Hermann Guede, was arrested in Germany and will be extradited to Italy.
Knox has given conflicting statements about the night Kercher was killed during what prosecutors said was a sexual assault. First, Knox said she wasn't home the night of the slaying, but later told prosecutors she was in the apartment and had to cover her ears to drown out the Briton's screams.
Her lawyer, however, is expected to go back to the original version Friday -- that Knox was not at home, according to Italian reports citing a defense document.
In a document prepared for Friday's hearing and obtained by The Associated Press, Sollecito's lawyers dismissed prosecutors' allegations that he was at the crime scene the night of the slaying. Sollecito says he was at his own Perugia apartment, working at his computer.
Sollecito "from 20:30 of Nov. 1, 2007, until the morning of Nov. 2 was always at home and therefore did not have any role in the murder of the poor Meredith Kercher," the defense document says.
The defense says analyses on Sollecito's computer show he had been logged on. Prosecutors say police have proven that the computer was connected to the Internet but without anybody accessing it overnight.
According to the defense, a bloody footprint found near Kercher's body is not clear enough to match to Sollecito's shoes, as prosecutors maintain.
The top investigating prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, says the body of evidence against Knox has only grown as the probe continued.
Knox's and Kercher's DNA were found on a knife that investigators believe may have been the murder weapon; the knife was found in Sollecito's home.
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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