Every week Madison Paxton takes the bus from the centre of Perugia for the 20-minute ride to the new jail on the outskirts of the city where her friend Amanda Knox is incarcerated for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher .
They sit across a bare table in the visitors' room for an hour. Knox is telling Paxton of her hopes for freedom and talking about the prison life she believes will soon be over. From the windows of the cell she shares with three other women Knox can glimpse the lush Umbrian countryside and dreams of walking through the hills.
After months of making weekly visits to Perugia's Capanne jail, Paxton has seen Knox transformed. She knows her well from university days in America and recognises that the dark moods that followed her conviction have been replaced with bubbling optimism. The nickname of "Bambi" given to Knox by her jailers now seems very appropriate.
"When people are writing books about you, about the flaws you had when you were 20, you either fall apart or get stronger," said Paxton, a 24-year-old, who gave up her life in America in November to be close to her friend.
"But Amanda has had four years to really reflect on who she is, a time no one else gets. Her character is really honed and she is more confident now than she everwas. It is strangely beautiful."
Knox, 24, needs all the confidence she can muster as she awaits the start of summing up this Friday in her appeal against a 26-year sentence for murdering her flatmate, Kercher, in November 2007, with her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who received 25 years.
The work of local prosecutors and police is also under the spotlight after a court-ordered review of DNA evidence in June deemed unreliable a key trace of Kercher's DNA located on the alleged murder knife found in Sollecito's kitchen, which also contained Knox's DNA on the handle.
The review, which has sent hopes of an acquittal soaring in the Knox family, also cast doubt on a fragment of Sollecito's DNA found on Kercher's torn bra clasp, not least because police forgotto bag it until 47 days after Kercher was found on 2 November in her bedroom, partially undressed with her throat slashed.
For Paxton, the review has exposed a "clannish" climate in Perugia wherecracks in the case have been ignored by investigators.
"When prosecutor Manuela Comodi questioned the defence experts over the alleged mistakes in the DNA testing she seemed to be saying, 'Why would we do this? Just what are you accusing us of?'" she said.
After graduating in photography at the University of Washington in Seattle, Paxton has found work at a local paper in Perugia, riding local trains to photograph outlying Umbrian towns in a bid to build up the paper's photographic archive, when she is not paying one of her six-a-month hourly visits to Knox.
Her take on the closed ranks among Perugia's investigators was backed by Giangavino Sulas, an Italian journalist who has fiercely criticised the investigation in the pages of the Italian magazine Oggi . He singled out the regular presence in court of Perugia police officer Monica Napoleoni, who can be seen glowering at Knox's mild-mannered lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova.
"Doesn't the flying squad have better things to do than spend so much time in court?" he said. "If there is an acquittal, there are four or five officers here who could be demoted to directing traffic, while action should be taken against magistrates who spent millions on this case," said Luca Maori, a lawyer who is defending Sollecito.
According to one local journalist with decades of crime reporting experience, the descent of American and British reporters on Perugia in the days after the killing "put pressure on local investigators to go too fast".
When Knox, at the end of all-night questioning, said she had witnessed local barman Patrick Lumumba kill Kercher, police arrested her, Sollecito and Lumumba and announced the case was closed, only to free the barman when his alibi stood up.
Days later, a bloody palm print near Kercher's body led them to local drifter Rudy Guede, who was sentenced in a separate fast-track trial. Knox, in the meantime, had withdrawn her statement but was charged and jailed.
"Guede's hand print was analysed late," said the crime reporter. "If they had got round to it sooner, would they have focused less on Knox?"
Forensic investigators arriving from Rome have also come in for criticism after they prevented the local coroner from checking Kercher's body until hours after she was found, meaning the exact time of her death has never been known, complicating all subsequent investigations.
In Perugia, the small-town atmosphere is most tangible on its main street, Corso Vannucci, where journalists are accustomed to running into prosecutor Giuliano Mignini at the newsstand or meeting Knox's lawyers in a local restaurant. When British director Michael Winterbottom stopped in a bar while researching a film on the Kercher case, Patrick Lumumba, who was arrested and released in connection with the murder, happened to be DJ-ing. Colin Firth, who is tied to the film project, popped in to see Mignini when he was in town.
One of the jury members who convicted Knox and Sollecito is a Perugia-based lawyer whose penal work ensures he has crossed paths professionally with local law enforcers.
For two other local lawyers, Walter Biscotti and Nicodemo Gentile, the Kercher case has been a springboard to national fame after they defended Guede.
"They were smart to ask for a fast-track trial, which cut his sentence, before they got it down to 16 years on appeal," said the local reporter. "With good behaviour, Guede will be back on Corso Vannucci within seven or eight years."
Just outside the town walls in the modern magistrates' offices, prosecutors Mignini and Comodi are working hard on their summing up speeches to ensure Knox and Sollecito's convictions stick.
They will seek to convince the jury " as they did in the first trial " that exchange student Knox and IT undergraduate Sollecito joined Guede in forcing Kercher, 21, into a sex game that degenerated into a fatal assault, leaving the girl from Coulsdon, Surrey, dying in a pool of blood with 47 knife wounds and bruises.
Knox and Sollecito then staged a break-in, they will state, fled to Sollecito's nearby apartment and called the police when they returned the next morning to "discover" Kercher's door locked.
Mignini claims he is "satisfied" with the disputed forensic work, finds the triumphalism of the Knox camp "questionable", and also has a new legal argument up his sleeve. "The legal code states that any review of evidence must be requested immediately, not two years later." If the couple are acquitted, he added, the verdict could yet be annulled if Italy's high court decides the recent DNA review was illegal.
Francesco Maresca, the lawyer representing the Kercher family, who is backing the prosecution, will challenge Sollecito's claim he spoke to his father from his flat that night, as well as other aspects of his alibi, and will also argue that blood traces in the bathroom Knox and Kercher shared in their Perugia apartment contain both girls' blood.
"But that's not Amanda's blood, it's just her DNA, and it's not datable " she lived there after all," said Luciano Ghirga, a lawyer defending Knox.
Maresca said he was fed up with articles by Oggi magazine " which sells 600,000 copies " calling for Knox's release. "It's all organised with Sollecito's defence team to influence the jury," he said. He admitted that an open letter from Kercher's sister, Stephanie, challenging the DNA review, which he sent to newspapers this month, could have the same effect, "but that was one letter against a barrage of articles, like David v Goliath". Stephanie, he added, may fly in to hear the verdict.
The climax to the appeal " with a verdict expected in the first days of October " will draw attention away from the numerous slanging matches and law suits that have erupted in the wake of the Kercher case. After Knox was charged with defamation for claiming she had been slapped by police, her parents were hit by the same charges for repeating her claim in an interview, while members of Sollecito's family are also being prosecuted for allegedly leaking crime scene images to a TV station. Mignini has also sued for defamation " and successfully shut down " a Perugia blogger critical of his work.
The vitriol is also flowing online as contributors to a site calling for Knox's acquittal accuse the organiser of a pro-guilt site of harassing women. That site, in turn, claims it is fighting lies put out by "the Knox family PR supertanker".
In Rome, politicians close to Silvio Berlusconi are keenly linking Knox's situation with the Italian prime minister's to show they are both victims of a corrupt Italian legal system. "The cases are different, but if she is acquitted it will show that the charges against Knox, like those against Berlusconi, are spectacular but have little substance," said MP Rocco Girlanda, who has written a book about Knox .
At the centre of it all, the woman who has spawned thousands of column inches, blog entries, chatrooms and websites continues to communicate with the outside world by posted letter.
"It is a beautiful process, one of the less terrible aspects of all this," said Paxton, who regularly corresponds with her. "You learn about yourself and the other person when only one of you can speak at a time."
Paxton said Knox had asked her to bring into jail articles about false confessions and wrongful imprisonments as she considers a future career helping other inmates if " and Paxton carefully stresses the "if'" " she were released.
She continues to devour books, currently Kurt Vonnegut, Dave Eggers and A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, when not playing chess games by post with friends, one move per letter.
Paxton said she and Knox had learned to time their one-hour talks during visiting time precisely. "If she is freed we won't know how to talk to each other for more than one hour. We just can't imagine saying 'let's sit around for a few hours'," she said.
"Amanda now speaks to me in Italian during visits and only writes to me in Italian, to test me," said Paxton. "I try to write to her in Italian and she sends me back corrections."
In the meantime, visiting hours have been made easier as the guards warm to Knox. "Four years ago it was difficult to see Amanda," said Paxton. "People thought she was guilty and the prison made it hard. But after the DNA review one guard asked me what we will do in Seattle when Amanda is released, and another hugged me."
Paxton said Knox was acutely aware of how her plight had changed the lives of her friends and family. "She always talks about when 'we' will get out, not when 'I' will get out. She said this experience means we are all in different types of prison."
If Knox is freed, news organisations will beat down her door to get her first interview, with million-dollar offers rumoured and talk of private jets being laid on to get her back to Seattle.
But Paxton said the papers that were quick to condemn Knox four years ago were now the ones offering the most money. "It feels slimy, since no one has apologised or admitted they were out of line," she said. "Amanda has said she couldn't look at her friends if she started a bidding war."
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