By ninemsn staff
An American woman accused of murdering her English flatmate during an alleged group sex assault has told police she covered her ears to block out the screams of the dying woman.
Amanda Knox, 20, told detectives in the northern Italian city of Perugia that she sat in the kitchen of the house she shared with 21-year-old Meredith Kercher as the woman was allegedly being killed by co-accused Patrick Lumumba.
Knox's boyfriend Raffaelle Sollecito is also in custody on murder charges.
"I can't remember how long they were together in the bedroom but the only thing I can say is that at a certain point I remember hearing Meredith's screams and I covered my ears," she told police in a statement.
"Then I don't remember anything else.
"There is such a lot going on in my head."
The claims are the latest in a series of backstabbing accusations made by the trio, who have turned on each other while being interrogated separately by investigators.
Lumumba has professed his innocence while being led away by police while Sollecito's parents claim their son was drawn into creating an alibi for his girlfriend.
The murder of Ms Kercher, whose bloodied body was found in her bedroom in the apartment she shared with Knox, has caused a sensation throughout Europe.
The attractive American exchange student originally told police she discovered blood in the bathroom and could not open the door where Ms Kercher's body was positioned when she came home last Saturday after a night out with her boyfriend.
Officers broke down the door and soon found a wealth of evidence pointing to the involvement of Knox and her associates, with fingerprints and DNA traces at the scene and phone records linking the trio at the time of the incident.
They also found an article posted on her MySpace website in which two brothers discuss drugging and raping a girl.
Investigators cracked down on Knox and, following her confession, immediately arrested her boyfriend Sollecito, 23, and Lumumba, a 37-year-old musician who ran the bar at which she worked.
While police are still establishing the order of events, Perugia police chief Arturo de Felice confirmed the incident appeared to begin as a sexual assault.
"The motive appears sexual but Meredith was morally innocent," he told assembled media.
"She was the victim, not a participant."
Overnight, police confiscated a three-inch penknife from Sollecito's home that was consistent with the fatal wound to Ms Kercher's throat.
Detectives also said the wound was most likely made by a man, due to the depth of the cut.
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