Meredith’s Birthday: By Now She Could Have Risen Far And Fast, In A Career Of Great Implication

Comments

Happy Birthday, Meredith. She would have done something helpful. She had a servant’s heart and also a leader’s power to inspire.

Meredith was a great giver in her short stay on earth, always thinking of others yet not neglecting her own talents. She was wonderful.

She’s still a light to those who know her story and her good example. Her radiant smile and the charm of her kind, witty personality still warm our hearts.

December 28th was her birthday.

I have no doubt with her grasp of Italian, politics and history, she would have been well at home in Brussels.  Even as a stay-at-home mum, she would have been a shining star.

She was everything they are not.

HaPpY bIrThDaY, mErEdItH

Ch Ch Ch Chilly cold here today. May all TJMK posters survive the polar vortex or the extreme heat of Australia or whatever harsh weather you face. Meredith did like the snow, she was born in a cold season in England.

Meredith was a:

Tutor
Tourguide
Dancer
Karate kicker
Poet
Hard worker while student at Leeds
Inveterate reader
Erasmus scholar
Devoted sister
Devoted daughter
Caring and supportive friend
Good money manager
A traveler to the Lake District, to Brighton
A lover of Italian culture
A serious fan of chocolate
Modest about her sharp mind and academic talent

Meredith was many things.

The kindness of strangers. Read this story and try not to say awww…!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/fashion/weddings/bride-is-walked-down-aisle-by-the-man-who-got-her-fathers-donated-heart.html?_r=0

It’s published again in tomorrow’s NY Times (that part of the Sunday Times is delivered to home on Saturday) as one of the most read and viewed stories of the year.

<iframe width=“640” height=“360” src=“https://www.youtube.com/embed/jGNKNQP8icM” frameborder=“0” allowfullscreen></iframe>

Did Meredith know too much? Was she killed because of things she had overheard Knox saying? Did Knox spill Raffaele’s secrets about his dad’s possibly corrupt business dealings, or Raf’s own misuse of his dad’s prescription pads for fraud to obtain drugs for Raf’s use or to sell for profit?

Did Raf’s mom as accountant find out Dr. Sollecito was committing major fraud, did that cause the divorce? Did Raffaele over hear this in his parents’ arguments years before the divorce, but never forgot it? If Dad was a little bit dirty, did that give Raf the right to be a bit dirtier still, with immunity?

Had Raf told Knox some very very damning information about the Sollecito family, their Mafia ties, and in her excitement Knox couldn’t suppress the urge to crow to Meredith?

Perhaps the doctor had been coerced into giving someone drugs to use to knock out a guard or to poison somebody or worse, so a crime could be committed, and Raf and his Dad dared not let sister Carabinieri know any of this stuff.

Perhaps it was merely tax fraud, or a patient who had spilled the beans to Dr. Sollecito about corrupt government contracts, offered him in on the deal.

Perhaps the doctor was being bribed or paying bribes to local officials in Bari.

Maybe the doctor was being blackmailed himself. Maybe he had affairs with prominent women before his marriage to Mara, or flirted with a Mafioso’s wife. More likely the money is the big issue, fraud and corruption that the doctor was involved in, perhaps not willing but he was forced to compromise, and the doctor let some of this slip in arguments with his wife or had even hinted later to his adult son, or bragged about as the case might have been.

Now Raffaele wants to impress his daring American girlfriend with the pillowtalk, where Knox hears some heavy stuff. She probably said about Curt, “He hid money so mom couldn’t get it.” And Raf added a bigger tale of his own about his father and mother’s doings.

Then, in late night girltalk with Meredith waked up by Knox banging door to get in after work, a half drunk Knox, perhaps ranting about her low wages job or drunk and messed up on coke, runs her mouth to Meredith to vent.

Later when Knox pilfers from the cottage or from Meredith, Meredith demands that Knox move out or she will tell Raffaele or tell the police. “Pack your bags and be out of here by Monday! You’re endangering all of us, we can’t have heroin here, we can’t have coke here, get out.”

Another possibility (all this is sheer speculation) could Knox and Raf have been planning to sell drugs for quick cash so Knox could remain longer in Perugia until he got settled at his next university where he was planning to do graduate work?

Had Knox dared Raf to pull a break-in stunt with her for kicks and for profit?

Maybe they’d already pulled a job like that, using his car to drive to some nearby village, and returned the night Kokomani saw them wave a knife in street with ski masks on, and wanting his car. Knox’s stunt at UW included a faked robbery, was it a practice run?

Maybe RS told her in pillow talk that he had stolen from his own father’s medical office in years past, or had given a friend the security code to get drugs for both of them, to use or sell. Maybe RS told Knox, “If you did any crimes over here in Italy, you could jump on a plane and get out of the country, no sweat, wish I were so lucky.”

Or could there have been bigger corruption? Could RS have offered to get bogus passports and false ID for both Knox and himself, so they could leave the country if the crimes they hoped to commit did endanger them?

Was the holding of Meredith’s arms and placing knives to her throat not the first attempt at this, but had they mugged somebody and held them at knifepoint like Meredith in the days before November 1, 2007?

Often Knox came home often very late at night, did she bring a guy home from the bar to walk her home, but then asked the guy to spend the night and maybe Meredith had been awakened more than once seeing Knox with a strange guy, and in anger Meredith had threatened to tell Raffaele?

Or could Knox have been weeping in her beer so to speak and one night confessed to Meredith that she had told Raffaele she was using birth control but that she really was trying to get pregnant to force his father to cough up finances for them, or future child support payments to her, and to have a child who would be a natural Italian citizen.

Then if Raffaele married her, she would be a citizen of Italy and with daddy’s money from medical practice and all those houses Raf bragged his family owned, they would be able to live happily ever after in Italy, and travel, and Knox would never have to return to Seattle.

Could the two lovebirds have been planning a pickup of heroin in Gubbio or some other place, maybe some harbor where ships brought it in, near Bari, as soon as Raf graduated. Maybe he planned to return home for a few months in transition to his next university?

He might have been planning to use Knox’s newfound Federico Martini and Rudy Guede or others Knox had met at the bar, and started a little profitable drug trade of their own.

Maybe all their plans were sabotaged by Knox’s compulsion to talk, and Meredith was very frightened by this side of Knox and pressured her to leave the cottage by Monday or she would go to the police and tell Raffaele.

Maybe Knox had picked the lock and practiced on Silenzi’s apartment while the boys downstairs were in Marche. Maybe she said, “They’ll blame you, Meredith, you had the key to water his plants.”

Maybe Knox was planning to mail drugs back to Seattle to sell there?

The pillow talk between two addicts, kids desperate for money both of whom feel they have no great home of their own, who don’t know what to do with their lives, they might have been planning great mischief real or imagined.

Raffaele’s hero Sailor Moon comes to mind, maybe Knox wanted to disguise herself as a cat burglar, as a male, for stealth reasons and to experience the high of deception and intrigue.

Maybe Meredith saw Knox sneaking into Molly’s or Laura’s bedroom one night, looking for valuables, and Knox lied to her, so Knox made excuses and put back the jewelry or whatever. She thought she had convinced Meredith she was in there to “borrow” something. Meredith was too smart for that, although she might have let it go for the moment if Knox returned the items.

Maybe this seeming passivity of Meredith later emboldened Knox to confide in Meredith about her other thefts and schemes to sell drugs or to ensnare Raffaele, thinking for blind compassion, but Knox crossed a line and Meredith’s honesty prevailed. She didn’t realize how dangerous Knox really was.

Maybe RS would be turned off to Knox if Meredith told him what she knew, so that all of Knox’s plans would dissolve.

Maybe the “Honour Bound” book title is a nod to Sollecito saving his daddy’s honour from past offenses, in exchange for dad helping him get past his son’s crime. Maybe Sollecito Senior had been forced by Mafia to do things, and maybe Knox was Raffaele’s Mafia who forced him to do stuff, a likely sob story to daddy. Neither of them wanted big sister Vanessa to know of any of this. 

Let us speculate a moment on these possibilities.  Remember Knox said after the Perugia trial, “You got it all wrong.” Maybe we did, and the motive to kill Meredith was much stronger than a drunken envy over men? Maybe Meredith knew too much and could ruin lives.

Interesting speculation. From all we ever heard, Knox had become a real handful, and coke can drive psychotic paranoia, and this kind of speculation (and more!) persists in Italy.

Many can imagine Meredith threatening to call the police and thus threaten a whole lot of unraveling. She certainly knew of the drug dealer and the heavy drug use. Everybody did.

As we have often mentioned, the mafia angle and defamation laws have so far chilled some needed hard reporting.

And also theres a general sense (pushed by a Porta a Porta program early in 2015) that Knox was the crazy ringleader from hell here. And that Sollecito and Guede for all their sins had never signed up for murder. This situation is so ripe for someone like, well, Nick Pisa, to really investigate, and then to get the hell out of there!

It would be nice to clear the air in Seattle too. There are certain ex-UW students who were with her at the university and parents of kids with her at her school who have told us they regard her mistrustfully.

If Guede is granted a mini-trial that could be the key to public allegations finally flying.

And Sollecito seems terminally grumpy as his saint act flounders. Remember this, a mere six weeks before the Supreme Court’s final verdict?

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/sollecito_on_italian_tv_seems_rs_and_ak_selling_out_one_another/

Where next:

Or to next entry Understanding Why Guede’s Appeal For A New Trial Was Declined By The Florence Court

Or to previous entry Prospects For Guede’s Attempted Appeal, On Which Clemente & Richards Are Short On Hard Facts