Mother visits jailed daughter from Seattle in Italy murder case

ROME — The mother of a U.S. student suspected in the murder of her British apartment mate comforted her daughter in jail today, the prison's chaplain said.

Amanda Marie Knox, 20, of Seattle and student at the University of Washington, is being held in the Umbria town of Perugia while authorities investigate the slaying of a British student with whom she shared living quarters. Also in jail are Knox's Italian boyfriend and the Congolese owner of a bar she frequented in Perugia, where she attended university.

All three have denied involvement in the slaying.

Authorities say Meredith Kercher, 21, was stabbed in the neck in her bed as she resisted sexual assault. Police who came to the apartment Nov. 2 to return Kercher's cell phone, which had been found in a neighbor's garden, discovered her seminude body in a pool of blood.

The Italian news agency Ansa reported today that Kercher's body had been flown to Rome and was expected to be flown to Britain on Sunday.

The prison chaplain in Perugia visited Knox today.

"As far as I can ascertain, her mother was able to give her comfort, despite the atmosphere," the Rev. Saulo Scarabattoli said after visiting Amanda Knox.

The Roman Catholic priest said he didn't meet with Knox's mother, Edda Mellas.

Italian news reports said Mellas did not talk to reporters when she arrived at the prison Saturday morning.

Scarabattoli said Knox had received visits from him "with joy" and was writing down her thoughts.

"It's not a diary in a formal sense as we know it, but she is recording sensations, memories, her account," the priest told The Associated Press by telephone. Scarabattoli said she gladly accepted a selection from the Gospel of St. Luke about the resurrection that will be read at Sunday's prison Mass.

Knox and her mother would have sat face-to-face in the visitor's room, said the priest. Inmates usually are allowed hour-long visits about four times a month, he said.

Francesco Sollecito, the father of Knox's boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, visited his 23-year-son in prison. He described his son as "tranquil enough, although obviously tried by the atmosphere."

He is also "a bit perturbed. He's reviewing his impressions of this girl," the father said, referring to Knox. Raffaele Sollecito had been seeing her for about two weeks before the slaying.

Investigators have said Kercher was stabbed with a knife similar to one the boyfriend was known to carry.

But Francesco Sollecito dismissed any link. "I, too, collect weapons. I collect rifles and other things," he said. His son, he said, "collects knives -- nothing more, nothing less."

The father, a doctor, contended the wound suffered by Kercher, was "compatible with several kinds of knives."

In a ruling upholding the detentions, Perugia Judge Claudia Matteini described Knox as confused about the events, since she had smoked hashish before the slaying.

The third suspect, Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, 38, was accused by Knox of the killing, according to the judge's ruling. Lumumba's lawyer, has maintained that his client was at his pub at the time and accused Knox of making "slanderous statements."

Sollecito's attorney has also told reporters that his client was not at the crime scene, although the judge wrote that Sollecito's footprints were found in Kercher's room. The Italian news agency Apcom quoted Sollecito's father as saying that the footprints were of a "very common" kind of shoe and that the defense would press for new scientific tests on his son's shoes.