PERUGIA, Italy, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- The parents of a U.S. student charged with killing her housemate in Italy are under investigation for allegedly defaming Perugia homicide detectives.
Curt Knox and Edda Mellas, who are divorced from each other, were notified of the investigation Friday, The Daily Telegraph reported. They could be fined and jailed.
"This is an old trick," Knox's lawyer, Carlo Della Vedova, said Saturday. "It has been played six days before the verdict and then the prosecution's case is collapsing."
The parents told a British newspaper in an interview 18 months ago that their daughter, Amanda Knox, had been threatened during police questioning and hit by a police officer.
Knox, 21, a University of Washington Student when she came to Perugia in 2007 for a year abroad, and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 25, are charged with killing Meredith Kercher, 21, a student at the University of Leeds who lived in a London suburb. Prosecutors say the couple and Rudy Guede, an African immigrant already convicted of the crime, killed Kercher during a drug-fueled sex game.
Sollecito's lawyer gave his closing statement Saturday.
