Judge to decide Friday whether UW student should continue to be held in slaying in Italy

The fate of a University of Washington student held in Italy in connection with the murder and sexual assault of her British housemate has been pushed back for another day, a defense lawyer told The Associated Press.

Judge Claudia Matteini said she would decide Friday whether Amanda Marie Knox, a 20-year-old from Seattle who was studying in Perugia, should remain in jail pending further investigation into the death of Meredith Kercher, Knox's attorney, Luciano Ghirga, told reporters outside the courthouse.

At the hearing today, Matteini was still weighing whether to continue to hold Knox's Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 24, and a Congolese resident, Lumumba "Patrick" Diya, 38, Ghirga said. The three were detained Tuesday.

Police said Kercher, 21, was found with her throat cut and had died fending off a sexual assault.

Ghirga said Knox was well but stressed by the experience.

"We maintain her innocence, and the prosecutor maintains she contributed to the crime," Ghirga said. Sollecito's attorney, Tiziano Tedeschi, said his client was innocent and "he wasn't at the crime scene," The Associated Press reported.

The Seattle Times generally does not name people suspected of a crime until they have been charged. But Knox is being named because her friends have spoken openly to reporters at The Times and other media about her situation.

Details of the slaying, including allegations that it may have been sexually motivated, have helped push the story into the realm of international sensation. It has been played and replayed on CNN and the BBC, in mainstream daily newspapers and in tabloids around the globe.

In an online world where "friends" are strangers and rumors from a small Italian city are accessible with a click, Madison Paxton, a close friend of Knox, found herself in a MySpace maelstrom.

Nearly all day on Wednesday, the University of Washington student fielded phone calls and e-mails from national and international media clamoring for an interview.

She hadn't done anything particularly newsworthy. Instead, she was in demand simply because she was listed as a "friend" on a MySpace.com page belonging to Knox.

Because Knox had posted information about herself, along with diarylike entries and short stories on MySpace and other sites, the story began to mushroom even more. Some news reports included links to YouTube.com video in which Knox appears drunk. In any other context, it might be viewed as a rather ordinary, if foolish, college stunt, but the reports suggest it is evidence of her depravity.

"Inside the twisted world of flatmate suspected of Meredith's murder," screamed a headline in a British paper, The Daily Mail of London. The story homed in on one part of Knox's MySpace site — a fictional short story that included a rape accusation which she wrote for a college assignment — to paint a sensational portrait.

In a flash, Paxton and others were drawn into the Internet's house of mirrors.

They found themselves not only turning to the Internet for news on their friend and classmate. They themselves became part of the story thanks to a media hungry for details on a young, attractive U.S. student accused of a ghastly crime in a foreign country.

Knox, like many MySpace users, had designated dozens of people as "friends" on her Web page, meaning they were allowed to post comments and create links, among other things. As is typical, many of these friends barely knew Knox, and instead were more like Internet acquaintances.

No matter. In this sensational story, each "friend" can become a media target.

Dominick Balsoma, who went to Seattle Prep with Knox and remained friends when they both went on to the UW, was one of Knox's MySpace friends. He said he learned about the slaying via e-mail from a British reporter — who had found him through Knox's MySpace page. The reporter wanted to know more about Knox. Balsoma wonders how many others were contacted.

"When you have hundreds of 'friends,' it's hard to know who's been contacted and who hasn't," Balsoma said.

It wasn't just the media that went to Knox's site, however; the news frenzy has led many to log on. One friend was threatened by a stranger on MySpace. Hate mail has scattered throughout other people's pages on the site and a similar site, Facebook.com.

Paxton said she believes people have used MySpace to "misconstrue" her friend's character.

She and others describe Knox as smart, caring and a joy to be around. Knox did well in school, even while working two jobs and playing varsity soccer in high school at Seattle Prep. Yet some news reports focused only on things like the disturbing short stories Knox had written for college assignments and posted on her site. The international media have "taken words of hers and photos and given no context ... and that has hurt a lot," Paxton said.

Indeed, a number of people initially posted supportive comments on Knox's MySpace page, expressing disbelief about the accusations and telling her to "be strong." But by Wednesday, the tone had changed.

Postings included obscenity-laced accusations and calls for her execution.

Paxton says they're wrong.

"I strongly believe this is a circumstance in which a good person got swept up in something they didn't even know was going on," she said. "This is not something she would do."

Maureen O'Hagan: 206-464-2562 or mohagan@seattletimes.com

Christina Siderius: 206- 464-2112 or csiderius@seattletimes.com

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report