Was A Vulnerable John Douglas Hijacked By ‘First Generation Crackpots’ To Lie About The Case?

Posted by Cardiol MD

First-generation crackpots Doug Preston, Michael Heavey, and Steve Moore

1. Overview Of This Post

In these four magnificent posts the Machine shows in devastating detail HOW John Douglas mis-stated the case.

Click for Post: How With Myriad False Claims John Douglas Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots #1

Click for Post: How With Myriad False Claims John Douglas Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots #2

Click for Post: How With Myriad False Claims John Douglas Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots #3

Click for Post: How With Myriad False Claims John Douglas Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots #4

Here I would like to examine one good possible reason WHY he mis-stated the case.

In this context, please take special note in Posts 2 and 3 of how the Knox PR shills and to a lesser extent the Sollecito PR shills increasingly misled in 2007-2010 about AK and RS and the evidence against them.

This helped to drown out genuine news of what was a very fair and decisive trial and the blatant corruption of the 2011 appeal court that came next.

Who were those shills? The list became very long but Doug Preston and Michael Heavey began large-scale lying from 2007 (to such an extent that even the defense counsel complained) and Steve Moore noisily picked up the load from 2009.

2. John Douglas: The Public Persona We Already Knew

Douglas was born on June 18, 1945, in Brooklyn, New York City, so he is now aged 73. In 1995 John Douglas turned in his FBI badge and he retired at the tellingly early age of 49.

In the subsequent 23 years he wrote some books on past profiling cases which won some respect, even though not everybody marvels at the science of profiling and its so-so results and some even consider them something of a fraud. He gained a loyal readership and saw his alter ego repeatedly recreated in crime shows on TV.

But since 2004 Douglas does not seem to have written any books exclusively by himself. Much of what he wrote since was recycled, and he adopted some seemingly dogmatic and badly argued positions, for example on the JonBenet Ramsey and West Memphis Three cases.

In 2011-2013 John Douglas first wrote about Meredith’s case and, with Heavey, Moore and others, entered into a major lobbying campaign in the US. To quote from the Machine’s third post:

Douglas came late to the case and the “beautiful” Amanda Knox seems to have turned him into something of a whirling dervish. He has made false claims in several books, in postings on his own and other websites, in interviews, in a pitch to a near-empty room at the Congress, and in one or two forays into the State Department.

Peaking in 2013 before the Nencini appeal (the repeat of the annulled Hellman appeal), they were seemingly made to (1) poison the jury pool of an ongoing legal process and (2) inflame American public opinion to create pushbacks at the political level.

In his four posts so far, the Machine has meticulously demonstrated how John Douglas became detached from the realities of the case. He has been misleading millions on a grand scale. Literally dozens and dozens of his findings are flat-out wrong.

And Douglas did this with a remarkably angry and inflammatory contempt for the Italian investigators and judiciary.

In what the Machine examined John Douglas comes across as defamatory (against especially Dr Mignini), racist (against Rudy Guede), and xenophobic (against Italy in general) and utterly callous toward Meredith’s long-suffering family.

3. John Douglas: Telling Mental Signs In Public Domain

On October 13, 2017 an article by Ed Power about John Douglas’s mental health appeared in the British newspaper The Telegraph: The real Mindhunter: inside the head of FBI ‘serial killer whisperer’ John E Douglas.

The article was never questioned or rebutted. The sourcing is specific. The Telegraph, a respected source in itself, published this Article 10 months ago & it has apparently not been challenged since then even by his family.

And there is independent corroboration in an already-screened movie series, that addressed the subject of Douglas’s mental health, which was offered on Netflix beginning in December 2015.

The Telegraph article is well worth reading in its entirety and includes the following passage:

“...the ghoulish nature of the job eventually wore Douglas down. Nightmares and sleepless nights were increasingly frequent and he found it hard to communicate with his family….

Under immense pressure at work, he contracted viral encephalitis ““ a fever which doctors said “fried his brain”. His family were warned he would likely be left in a vegetative stage.

He recovered however,.........but the psychological trauma never quite lifted and he turned in his badge for good in 1995 aged just 49.”

So he was not aged more than 49 when he contracted viral encephalitis at least 23 years ago.

Complete recovery from viral encephalitis of this severity is unusual. Any implication that it was “immense pressure at work” that caused his viral encephalitis is misleading.

Only a virus could have caused viral encephalitis. However, stress could have lowered his physiological resistance.

To size him up with confidence we really need to know more about this viral episode, but the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) will almost certainly be enlisted to hinder fulfillment of that need.

Common sense tells us that Douglas’s fall from his former excellence into his current incompetence and gross negligence is probably a late consequence of his viral encephalitis,

This late consequence is analogous to Shingles as a late consequence of Chickenpox.

4. John Douglas: Was He Hijacked By The Knox PR?

The evidence for this seems pretty clear.

The last book with Douglas as sole author was in 2004. The AK Book “The Forgotten Killer” was published in 2013. His chapter was co-written with Mark Olshaker.

The co-authors of other chapters were the PR shills Douglas Preston, Michael Heavey, Steve Moore, and Jim Lovering. All have been exposed by us here over the years.

The Introduction was by Thomas Lee Wright, and the malicious grandstander Bruce Fischer introduced at least some of this team to one another; his fingerprints seem on the book as well as those of Marriott and the Knox-Mellases.

Let us allow a few of our past exposures to show how they originated almost all of Douglas’s false claims .

1. Doug Preston

Click for Post: Doug Preston’s Nasty Ant-Italy Anti-Mignini Campaign To Stir Bigotry Hits A Wall

Click for Post: New Mignini Interview Makes Doug Preston Look Increasingly Incompetent And Vindictive

Click for Post: How Doug Preston’s Wrong Claims In His MOF Afterword Were Often Contradicted In The Past

2. Michael Heavey

Click for Post: Why Prominent Knox Supporter Judge Heavey Faces An Uphill Task

Click for Post: Prominent Seattle Knox PR Puppet Michael Heavey Might Be About To Take A Fall

Click for Post: FOA’s Michael Heavey Sends A Pretentious Dishonest Letter To President Obama Copied To Congress

3. Steve Moore

Click for Post: How With Myriad False Claims Steve Moore Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots

4. Thomas Lee Wright

Click for Post: Fervent Knox Supporter Tom Wright Seemingly Strongarms Knox High School Into “Honoring” Her

5. Bruce Fischer

Click for Post: Disarray And Decay In The Pro-Knox Parade: Bruce Fischer’s Epidemic Of Malicious Claims

5. My Own Conclusion

It will be easy for the media to take this further. John Douglas needs to speak up. In shilling for Knox… did he jump, or, was he pushed?

Posted by Cardiol MD on 09/18/18 at 11:44 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (19)

How With Myriad False Claims John Douglas Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots #4

Posted by The Machine

Muddled mindhunters Mark Olshaker, John Douglas, and Jim Clemente

[Long post. Click here to go straight to Comments]

1. Post And Series Overview

In the previous posts, I used the official court reports and court testimonies to prove John Douglas has made numerous demonstrably false claims.

They addressed false claims about (1) Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s questioning on 5-6 November 2007; (2) the personas and backgrounds of Knox and Sollecito and some of the evidence against them; and (3) the persona and background of Rudy Guede and some of the evidence against him.

In this post, I will analyse a number of specific claims that John Douglas makes in his analysis of the crime scene in The Forgotten Killer. Note that the police processed the whole of the apartment for evidence and as it was distributed throughout they defined that as the crimescene.

All the courts accepted that, and the witness testimony and the judges’ reports make that overwhelmingly obvious. But bizarrely without any attempt at an explanation John Douglas redefines it as merely Meredith’s bedroom, and so all evidence elsewhere is ignored by him. For ex-FBI he sure adopts very strange methods.

Further reading: TJMK/Wiki Evidence Points Masterlist: 400 points In 25 Parts

Further reading: Totality of Evidence Suggests Knox And Sollecito Guilty Just As Charged

2. Some False Claims On Crimescene Evidence, Rebutted

Douglas’s claims incessantly contradict the definitive judgments of the Italian Supreme Court here.

Examples of his overarching claims include (1) there was proof of only one attacker and no proof of multiple attackers, (2) there is no indication of a female attacker, and (3) the break-in at the cottage was genuine and not staged to mislead investigators.

I will focus on rebutting these overarching claims in this post.

Devastatingly convincing closed-court recreation ignored by Douglas

1. False Claims By Douglas On Number Of Attackers Involved

“Had there been any specific indication of a female offender or multiple offenders, the pronouns would have been adjusted accordingly.”

But there were multiple indication of multiple offenders. Many hours at trial were devoted to this evidence, and in Post #3 in this series I explained how even the defenses had to fall back to accepting and trying to explain this. .

John Douglas clearly hasn’t read the official court reports, court testimonies or any of experts’ reports and he wasn’t in the court to hear the prosecution’s experts explain why they believe there were multiple assailants.

So he’s in no position to flatly claim Meredith killed by a lone attacker or address let alone refute the evidence for multiple attackers.

In fact, leaving aside the annulled Hellman, all courts up to and including the Supreme Court definitively ascertained that there were indeed multiple attackers, and that it’s a proven fact Amanda Knox was at the cottage when Meredith was killed and the break-in was staged.

All the judges involved in the case from 2007 through 2015 concluded this after examining the medical reports and listening to the testimonies and cross-examinations of numerous forensic experts, including those who actually examined Meredith’s body and those who recreated the pack attack.

The fine journalist Barbie Nadeau was in the courtroom when these experts testified at trial in 2009 and explained why they concluded there were multiple attackers.

“Countless forensic experts, including those who performed the autopsies on Kercher’s body, have testified that more than one person killed her based on the size and location of her injuries and the fact that she didn’t fight back””no hair or skin was found under her fingernails.”

And here is more testimony on the certainty of multiple attackers.

“countless prosecution witnesses, including two coroners who did examine Kercher’s body, testified that the 47 cuts and bruises indicated that “more than two hands” were at work.”

Further reading: Supreme Court Confirms All Three Were There And Lied, RS & AK Apologists Desperate To Downplay That

Further reading: Why Final AK & RS Appeal Against Guilty Verdict May Fail: Multiple Wounds = Multiple Attackers

One of many exhibits on the knives not mentioned by Douglas

2. False Claims By Douglas Denying Multiple Knives Involved

One of the main reasons why these forensic experts believe there were multiple attackers is there were different-sized knife wounds on Meredith’s neck.

The fine journalist Andrea Vogt who was also in court reported more details about this evidence.

“Injuries on Kercher’s body ‘consistent with attack by more than one person…. Wounds were from two different knives, Perugia courtroom is told…. Professor Gianaristide Norelli testified that the multiple lesions on Ms Kercher’s body were consistent with being held and attacked by more than one person. He said she died of suffocation and interpreted her stab wounds as having been inflicted as threats during a struggle. The wounds, mostly on the side of her neck, were possibly inflicted by two different knives, he said, but noted that one of the stab wounds was compatible with the alleged murder weapon.”

It’s worth noting the credentials of some of these forensic experts whom are about the best Italy has to offer and certainly on a par with any American expert:

Professor Norelli is the Chief of Legal Medicine at Firenze University and the President of the Italian Conference of Professors of Legal Medicine; Mauro Bacci is a Professor of Forensic Science and Director of Forensic Medicine at the University of Perugia. Giuseppe Codispoti is the Assistant Chief of the Scientific Police.

The Italian Supreme Court has repeatedly acknowledged the certainty of two knives having been used in the attack on Meredith.

“expert results that because of the morphology of the injuries, attribute them to two different cutting weapons used by different individuals” (Judge Giordano’s Supreme Court report).

“the numerous wounds inflicted on the unfortunate victim, very probably with two knives.” (Judge Chieffi’s Supreme Court report).

“Firstly, testifying in this direction are the two main wounds observed on the victim’s neck, on each side, with a diversified path and features, attributable most likely (even if the data is contested by the defense) to two different cutting weapons.” (Judge Marasca’s Supreme Court report).

Judge Chieffi in his report presents a concise summary of why the Supreme Court ascertained from the wounds that there were multiple attackers.

“From the examination of the stab wounds and the bruises found on the victim, a picture of massive injury in terms of number, distribution, and diversity emerged, especially with regard to the injuries inflicted on the face and neck (where the wounds were 4”8 centimetres deep), a picture which contrasted with the absence of defensive wounds; [7] a circumstance that was at odds with the fact that the young British student was equipped with a strong physique, trained in self”defence through a course in karate which she had taken; all of which led to the conclusion that the criminal action was necessarily carried out by several people acting together against the victim, who was placed in the position of being unable to defend herself or shield herself with her hands to avoid the repeated striking of vital parts such as the neck.

Also considering the type of activity undertaken by the attacker, it turned out to be very difficult to hypothesize an isolated and individual action, because it included acts aimed at disrobing the victim (who was unquestionably dressed when the attacker appeared), violating her private parts, and stabbing her with a knife; the victim was certainly seized by her wrists to prevent a reaction, so that GuedeÊ¹s DNA was found on the cuff of the young English woman’s sweatshirt; but the diverse morphology of the wounds, their number, and their distribution led to the conclusion that there was more than one attacker.

In particular, it was found that many injuries were caused by activities of grasping, others by a pointed and cutting weapon; they were extremely different in size and degree of injury, and had reached the victim sometimes from the right and sometimes from the left. All of which led to the conclusion that more than one attacker, together, held the girl, limited her movements, and struck her from the right and from the left, depending on their position with respect to her, but above all they covered her mouth in order to prevent her from repeating the scream that was heard and reported by the two witnesses mentioned above.” (Judge Chieffi’s Supreme Court report).

John Douglas doesn’t address any of this evidence on multiple attackers presented at great length in great detail in court.

Further reading: Strong Proof That Raffaele Sollecito Also Stabbed Meredith Kercher Causing The Lesser Wound.

Further reading: Multiple Attackers and the Compatibility of the Double DNA Knife (Exhibit 36)

Knox DNA profile outside bedroom not mentioned by Douglas

3. False Claims By Douglas On Locations And Implications Of DNA

Douglas erroneously claims that is scientifically impossible for the other attackers to have left none of their DNA at the crime scene - which he wrongly defines as merely Meredith’s bedroom.

“It is scientifically impossible for one offender to leave extensive DNA evidence and for others involved in the same assault to leave none.

But as I’ve already pointed out in the previous posts, Rudy Guede did NOT leave many DNA samples in Meredith’s room - he left just four samples. And it is flat-out wrong that the other two left none at the rest of the real crime scene: the complete apartment. .

It’s an indisputable fact that Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA was found on Meredith’s bra clasp. Of the 17 loci tested in the sample, Sollecito’s profile matched 17 out of 17. Sollecito’s DNA was identified by two separate DNA tests.

“Both by the quantity of DNA analyzed and by the fact of having performed the analysis at 17 loci with unambiguous results, not to mention the fact that the results of the analysis were confirmed by the attribution of the Y haplotype to the defendant, it is possible to say that it has been judicially ascertained that Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA was present on the exhibit; an exhibit that was therefore handled by the defendant on the night of the murder.” (The Nencini report, page 267).

John Douglas is entitled to make the far-fetched claim that Sollecito’s DNA on Meredith might have been due to contamination. However, it is deeply dishonest of him to pretend that Sollecito’s DNA was not found on Meredith’s bra clasp in the first place.

Douglas is not a forensic biologist and he has no special expertise in DNA evidence. He seems to be labouring under the misapprehension that DNA is like wet paint and that if the forensic police swabbing does not provide evidence of someone in a room, that is definitive proof they haven’t been in that room.

But no DNA expert ever claimed this. For one thing the priority given to the processing of Meredith’s room was for fingerprints, and not for DNA

Professor Peter Gill contradicts John Douglas with the following observation.

“Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.”

Meredith had bruises around her neck, but the Scientific Police didn’t find any DNA of her attacker on her neck. If one adopts John Douglas’s strange logic, does he mean that nobody strangled Meredith?

The Scientific Police didn’t find any of Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA in his car. Does the strange logic of Douglas mean that Sollecito never drove his car or was even inside it at all?

Many, many crimes and many many crimescenes come up short on DNA. In a UK Crime Ian Huntley admitted killing Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in his house. However, there were no traces of them in his house.

Further reading: Omitted - How The DNA Processes And Evidence Points Were Deliberately Misrepresented

Further reading: Ways To Rebut The Drive-By Critics Of The Case On The DNA Dimension

Mixed Knox and Meredith DNA’s not mentioned by Douglas

4. False Claims By Douglas On Presence Of A Female Attacker

John Douglas’s claim there is no specific indication of a female offender at the cottage is contradicted by multiple pieces of evidence implicating Knox.

The Italian Supreme noted that it’s a proven fact Amanda Knox was at the cottage when Meredith was killed because (1) she herself repeatedly admitted she was; (2) she knew specific details about the murder; and (3) the DNA evidence in the small bathroom provided “eloquent proof” that she washed Meredith’s blood off.

Explaining this further:

(1) The Italian Supreme Court noted that Amanda Knox repeatedly admitted she was at the cottage when Meredith was killed.

“Given this, we now note, with respect to Amanda Knox, that her presence inside the house, the location of the murder, is a proven fact in the trial, in accord with her own admissions, also contained in the memoriale with her own signature, in the part where she tells that, as she was in the kitchen, while the young English woman had retired in the room of same Ms Kercher, together with another person for a sexual intercourse, she heard a harrowing scream, so piercing and unbearable that she let herself down squatting on the floor, covering her ears tight with her hands in order not to hear more of it.”

Amanda Knox admitted she was at the cottage in her 1:45am witness statement, her 5:45am witness statement and her handwritten note to the police on 6 November 2007.

(2) The Supreme Court concluded that it is proven fact Amanda Knox was at the cottage when Meredith was killed as she knew specific details about the murder.

“About this, the judgement of reliability expressed by the lower [a quo] judge [Nencini] with reference to this part of the suspect’s narrative, [and] about the plausible implication from the fact herself was the first person mentioning for the first time [46] a possible sexual motive for the murder, at the time when the detective still did not have the cadaver examination, nor the autopsy result, nor the witnesses’ information, which collected only subsequently, about the victim’s terrible scream and about the time when it was heard (Nara Capezalli, Antonella Monocchia and others), is certainly to be subscribed to.

We make reference in particular to those declarations that the current appellant [Knox] on 11.6.2007 (p.96) inside the State Police headquarters. On the other hand, in the slanderous declaration against Lumumba, which earned her a conviction, the status of which is now protected as a final judgement [giudicato] [they] had a premise in the narrative, that is the presence of the young American woman, inside the house in via della Pergola, a circumstance which nobody at that time - except obviously the other people present in the house - could have known (quote p.96).”

Judge Chieffi also highlighted the fact that Amanda Knox knew specific details about the murder in his Supreme Court report and he criticised Judge Hellmann for not addressing this evidence.

“actual statements by the defendant demonstrating knowledge of details of the murder which turned out to coincide with what was later found by investigators. The court of first degree highlighted how Knox always stated that neither she nor Raffaele saw MeredithÊ¹s room when the door was broken down, as they were both near the living room at that moment and did not enter the crime room, a fact which was confirmed by [other] testimony.

It was, however, noted that, on the other hand, all the English girls testifying at the hearing of 13 February 2009, stated that Knox “ on the evening of 2 November “ had told them that she was the one who found the body of her friend, that it was in front of the closet, covered with a quilt with a foot sticking out, that her throat had been cut and that there was blood everywhere, whereas in her testimony of 13 June 2009, Knox had denied having seen anything.

The fact of the multiple details given to her friends, potentially demonstrating knowledge gained prior to the intervention of the police “ even if she denied this in the interrogation “ was neglected without any explanation on why these elements were deemed irrelevant.

Judge Nencini noted in his report that Amanda Knox placed herself near the basketball ball in Piazza Grimana which was corroborated by another witness.

(3) The Supreme Court concluded it’s a proven fact Amanda Knox was at the cottage when Meredith was killed because her DNA was mixed with Meredith’s blood in the small bathroom.

“Another element against her [Amanda Knox] is the mixed traces, her and the victim’s one, in the “˜small bathroom’, an eloquent proof that anyway she had come into contact with the blood of the latter, which she tried to wash away from herself.”

According to the Scientific Police and renowned DNA expert Luciano Garofano, there were five samples of Knox’s DNA or blood mixed with Meredith’s blood in three different locations in the cottage.

Forensic police biologists testified about five spots where they had detected samples of “mixed blood” genetic material””spots of blood of both Knox and Kercher’s””in the bidet, on the sink, on the drain tap, on the Q-tip box in the bathroom and in a spot where prosecutors argued Knox and Sollecito staged a break-in. (Andrea Vogt, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 29 May 2009).

The mixed-blood evidence convinced Dr Stefanoni that Amanda Knox was involved in Meredith’s murder because they both must have been bleeding at the same time. John Douglas hasn’t addressed the mixed-blood evidence, presumably because he is completely unaware of it.

Further reading: Beyond Massei: On The Seemingly Insuperable Mixed Blood Evidence By All The Expert Witnesses

Further reading: Questions For Knox: Why So Many False Claims In Accounts Of Your Visit To The House?

Guede’s shoeprints in red head straight to front door, ignored by Douglas

5. False Claims By Douglas On The Footprints & Shoeprints

In post #3 I quoted Douglas claiming Guede was wandering around the apartment, as if the shoeprints and footprints prove that.

But they don’t. Rudy Guede couldn’t have tracked Meredith’s blood into the small bathroom because he didn’t even go into the small bathroom after Meredith had been stabbed.

His bloody footprints led straight out of Meredith’s room and out of the cottage. This something that has been noted by multiple judges and the Supreme Court.

“As a consequence, the shape of the bare footprint on the sky-blue mat in the little bathroom cannot be attributed to Rudy, who, on leaving Meredith’s room (according to what the shoe prints show), directed himself towards the exit without deviating or stopping in other rooms.” (The Massei report, page 379).

Judge Nencini stated it would have been impossible for Guede to leave the bare bloody footprint on the bathmat.

“...the person who left the apartment without deviating from a straight path was wearing shoes on both feet, and it would thus have been objectively impossible for him to leave a bare footprint on the mat in the small bathroom.” (The Nencini report, page 76).

The Supreme Court also noted there is no evidence that Rudy Guede went into the small bathroom after Meredith had been stabbed.

“Not only that, but the above assumption also clashes with the available evidence regarding the bloody shoe prints which indicate that he left the room where the crime was committed to proceed directly to the exit door of the flat.” (Judge Chieffi’s Supreme Court report).

The bloody footprint on the bathmat in the small bathroom completely debunks the PR lie that there was only one attacker because it couldn’t possibly belong to Rudy Guede.

Judge Nencini pointed out that there were irreconcilable differences between the bloody footprint on the bathmat and Guede’s foot.

“Guede’s foot presents irreconcilable differences with the bathmat imprint” (The Nencini report, page 275).

Some of the individual measurements of Guede’s imprint are as much as 30% too small, but the relative proportions of length and breadth measurements are entirely wrong as well, both undershooting and overshooting by a large margin - 70% to 150%.

The bloody footprint is a near-perfect match for Sollecito’s foot with seven out of twelve individual measurements having a 100% correlation to Sollecito’s foot.

Andrea Vogt pointed out that the bloody footprint on the bathmat matched the precise characterisitics of Sollecito’s foot in a report for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

“All the elements are compatible with Mr. Sollecito’s foot,” Rinaldi said, pointing with a red laser to a millimeter-by-millimeter analysis of Sollecito’s footprint projected onto a big-screen in the courtroom. He used similar methods to exclude that the footprint on the bath mat could possibly be Guede’s or Knox’s.

“Those bare footprints cannot be mine,” said Sollecito in a spontaneous statement”¦. But the next witness, another print expert, again confirmed Rinaldi’s testimony, that the print, which only shows the top half of the foot, matches the precise characteristics of Sollecito’s foot”.

Judge Giordano noted in his Supreme Court that one of the reasons why the appeal judges were convinced there were multiple attackers is there were different-sized footprints in Meredith’s room.

Barbie Nadeau reported:

“footprints not attributable to Guede on the floor of the room where Meredith’s body lay, convinced the appeal judges that several people acted together.” Judge Giordano’s Supreme Court report, page 19).

According to two imprint experts from the Scientific Police - Rinaldi and Boemia - there was a woman’s bloody shoeprint on the pillow under Meredith’s body that matched Knox’s foot size, but was incompatible with Meredith’s foot size.

Worse for Knox, when the judge asked Rinaldi the size of an unidentified bloody shoeprint found on the pillow below Kercher’s body, he responded, “Between 36 and 38.” The judge then asked Rinaldi what size shoe Knox wears. “The Skecher shoe we sequestered belonging to Amanda Knox corresponds with size 37.”

Also Barbie Nadeau reported:

A bloody footprint from a smaller shoe was found on the pillow beneath Kercher’s head but it could not be positively identified as a match to any of the suspects.”

Forensic expert Luciano Garofano also believes there was a woman’s bloody shoe print in Meredith’s room.

“Now is the question of the small shoeprint in the pillow. There is neither the heel nor the toe, so it’s hard to say the size of the shoe. You could estimate that has been made in the area of size 37 or 38, which of course, is Amanda’s size. Hard to prove, though.” (Luciano Garofano, Darkness Descending).

Further reading: The Incriminating Bathroom Evidence: Visual Analysis shows the Footprint IS Sollecito’s

Further reading: Experienced Trial Lawyer: There’s Far More Evidence Than UK/US Courts Need For Guilt

No Guede DNA or prints outside or inside window, ignored by Douglas

6. False Claims By Douglas Denying Rearranged Crime Scene

These are the very narrow grounds on which Douglas attempts to base his claim:

“Perugia police officials believed the rock and broken window might have been indicators of staging””that is, making the crime look like something other than what it actually was. We reject this conclusion based on crime-scene photos of the exterior window. Photos reveal that prior to breaking the window, the rock first struck the inside edge of the exterior shutter, indicating it was thrown from outside. Freshly exposed wood under chipped paint and mineral fragments imbedded in the wood surface substantiate this finding. Glass-fracture examination of the window would prove this.”

It’s typical of John Douglas’s simple-minded and superficial approach that he doesn’t address the Supreme Court’s specific reasons for ascertaining the break-in was staged.

The only reason he puts forward for the break-in being genuine is there is allegedly a mark on the inside of the exterior shutter. Predictably, he doesn’t substantiate this claim with the crime-scene photo.

One of the main reasons why multiple judges and the Supreme Court concluded the break-in was faked was that four witnesses, including two police officers, testified that there were shards of glass on top of the clothes and objects strewn on Filomena Romanelli’s floor.

The courts considered that this proved the window was broken after the room had been ransacked and that the break-in was staged.

“Picking up the computer I noticed that I lifted some glass, in the sense that the glass was on top of things. I remember very well [the glass] on top of the computer bag because I was careful as it was all covered with glass. We mentioned this, saying, the burglar was an idiot, he did not take anything”¦ the jewelry is here, the computer is here”¦and in addition to the fact that he didn’t take anything, the pieces of glass are all on top of the things.” (Filomena Romanelli).

“The fact that the glass fragments from the window wound up on top of the strewn clothing and objects”¦ is surely incompatible with a breaking of the glass in a phase preceding the ransacking inside the room of the apartment. The window glass evidently was broken after entry into the cottage, by someone who was already inside and had already arranged the disorder that was then seen by the witnesses.” (Judge Nencini’s report).

Judge Chieffi summarises the reasons why the Supreme Court ascertained the break-in was staged in his report.

“The conclusion that the crime had been simulated was based on a series of facts with a high level of probative value constituting a valid inferential basis, on the strength of which the first instance statement of reasons produced a logical dissertation (pages 35”42) anchored in the facts that:

(1) nothing (not even jewellery or the computer) was missing from Romanelli’s room, which was the focal point;

(2) there was no evidence of climbing on the outside wall of the house over the distance of 3.5 meters from the ground to the window through which the phantom burglar supposedly entered, nor was there any trace of trampling on the grass on the ground underneath the window;

(3) there were no traces of the blood of the climber on the window sill, which he would have had to grip among the glass shards in order to sneak inside the room;

(4) the glass shards were found on the inside but not on the outside of the window, a sign that the rock was thrown with the outside shutters closed, forming a shield that prevented pieces of glass from spraying to the outside;

(5) the shards were found in abundance on top of the clothes and objects ransacked by the alleged intruder, proving that this ransacking had occurred before the window was broken;

(6) the sound of the rock, hypothetically thrown from the ground had not startled the young English woman so as to make her call for help outside the house before being attacked (given the lapse of time between the throwing the stone and the climbing up the wall).” (Judge Chieffi’s Supreme Court report, pages 63-64).

Further reading: Understanding Micheli: The Staged Scene - Who Returned To Move Meredith?

Further reading: Explaining The Massei Report: A Visual Guide To The Staged Break-In Via Filomena’s Window

3. My Conclusions On How Douglas Misleads On Hard Evidence

John Douglas’ analysis of the crime scene - and I use the term “analysis” loosely - is such a dishonest and misleading piece of work.

He removes all the incriminating pieces of DNA evidence against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito from the crime scene and exaggerates the DNA evidence against Guede. He actually states “all the crime-scene DNA came from a single source: him” - which is demonstrably false.

He accepts everything Amanda Knox says as the gospel truth despite the fact she is a self-confessed liar and claims her alibi was she was at Sollecito’s apartment. He doesn’t address the computer and telephone records which provide irrefutable proof that Knox and Sollecito lied repeatedly about 1 and 2 November 2007.

He doesn’t say anything about Sollecito categorically stating Knox wasn’t at his apartment on the evening of the murder in his witness statement and this claim being corroborated by the mobile phone evidence. He doesn’t acknowlege that Sollecito admitted lying to the police.

He doesn’t say anything about Amanda Knox repeatedly admitting she was at the cottage when Meredith was killed and this being corroborated by the mixed-blood evidence and the fact she knew specific details about the murder.

He doesn’t say anything about the bloody footprint on the bathmat that matched the precise characteristics of Sollecito’s foot, but couldn’t possibly belong to Guede.

The fact John Douglas has airbrushed every single piece of incriminating evidence against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito out of his analysis and pretends there is no evidence against them speaks volumes. If he had the tiniest modicum of honesty, he would at least acknowledge the fact Knox and Sollecito gave multlple false alibis.

John Douglas’ so-called analysis of the crime scene in The Forgotten Killer is nothing more than PR propaganda. It’s so ridiculously biased, one-sided and dishonest that it’s almost comical. It’s something you would expect from Goebbels or Pravda - not a respected FBI profiler.

It defies belief that anybody takes this dishonest charlatan seriously.

Posted by The Machine on 09/10/18 at 05:18 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (6)

How With Myriad False Claims John Douglas Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots #3

Posted by The Machine

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1. Post And Series Overview

My previous posts exposed John Douglas’s misrepresenation of the Amanda Knox “interrogation” and the personas of Knox and Sollecito.

This post exposes Douglas’s misrepresentation of Rudy Guede, and the next post will expose Douglas’s misrepresentation of the true crime scene and the hard evidence.

Douglas came late to the case and the “beautiful” Amanda Knox seems to have turned him into something of a whirling dervish. He has made false claims in several books, in postings on his own and other websites, in interviews, in a pitch to a near-empty room at the Congress, and in one or two forays into the State Department.

Peaking in 2013 before the Nencini appeal (the repeat of the annulled Hellman appeal), they were seemingly made to (1) poison the jury pool of an ongoing legal process and (2) inflame American public opinion to create pushbacks at the political level.

Note that Douglas again and again accused his Italian counterparts (counterparts the FBI trusts and heavily relies on) who he never once consulted or checked with.

And unsurprisingly for an obvious PR shill and mafia poodle, note that Douglas never mentions the Knox & Sollecito PR or the Heavey-Bremner FOA or the several blatant attempts to bend Italian courts.

2. WHY Rudy Guede Morphed 2007-2011

This quote from my previous post starkly revealed Douglas’s illusion about the real Amanda Knox.

Mark and I have spoken with many people around Amanda. It became clear to us that the Amanda Knox the prosecution and the media described did not exist in real life. She was a creation designed to serve their very specific needs and purposes.

No she wasn’t. As I showed, the prosecution and media (and around 30 judges)(and the Italian public) had a very clear-eyed and accurate view of the 2007-2010 Knox and Sollecito which John Douglas sure does not.

I noted that the PR had morphed Knox from loose cannon on drugs with zero work permit and zero academic intention in Perugia in 2007 to widows-weeds “I am the real victim here” Knox in 2010.

It was the infatuated Douglas who swallowed a PR creation as “the real deal” (as he did Steve Moore who like Knox had been practicing a fake act for several years).

It was the same with Rudy Guede (and Giuliano Mignini which I will address later). Guede morphed - or was morphed - also.

And once again Douglas swallowed a PR creation.

From late 2007 to late 2008 Italians saw Guede as a mild quite popular basketball player with zero criminal record who had been enticed into a hazing of Meredith by two others whose close-ups were considerably less lovely.

In 2008 both the defense lawyers, and the Knox and Sollecito public relations (led by Curt Knox and the late David Marriott), and the Friends of Amanda (led by the mafia poodles Doug Preston and Michael Heavey from very early on) set about demonizing him.

The lawyers mainly demonized him in court (see below) and the PR demonized him in a huge onslaught in the American media (kept largely below the Italian radar).

Here are posts providing a good picture of the incendiary Knox & Sollecito PR campaigns.

Click for Post: Knox PR Campaign: Have The Dishonest Talking Points Now Become A Trap?

Click for Post: How The Strongarm Public Relations Resulted in Most Of The Media Getting It Wrong

Click for Post: Powerpoints #16: We Now Examine The Compelling Evidence For The REAL Railroading From Hell

Click for Post: Knox Public Relations Manager Starts Premature Crowing Years Before Legal Process Ends

Click for Post: Fifty Of The Most Common Myths Still Promoted Without Restraint By The Knox PR Campaign

Click for Post: From David Marriott’s Parrot: Latest Talking Points To Be Beamed At The Unbelieving

Profiler Douglas makes zero mention of all of this.

3. HOW Rudy Guede Morphed 2007-2011

From late 2007 after his return from Germany Guede sat in prison and assumed a fairly low profile. In the same period both Knox and Sollecito sought far higher profiles, not so much a team as frustrated mutual accusers.

In November 2007 Knox framed Patrick. Then Sollecito damaged Knox, not only with police and prosecution but with the supervising courts.

In December 2007 Knox sought to win a major break from Dr Mignini but made no mention of Sollecito. Also in December 2007 each appealed to the Supreme Court for at minimum house arrest; in spring 2008 each appeal was rejected. Stays in prison continued. Tense relations continued.

Then in September 2008 the Knox and Sollecito defense teams both turned their guns on Rudy Guede.

Claims have been made of a pact between Knox and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 24. It is alleged their lawyers have agreed to work together to blame the murder on Rudy Guede, 21, a part-time gardener from the Ivory Coast and the third accused.

Now, Guede’s lawyers are threatening to call for a separate trial for him alone - well away from the legal teams of the other two whom they fear could prejudice his case. It is a pact, says Guede’s lawyer Walter Biscotti, that can be traced back to July when Sollecito sent Knox a bouquet of yellow flowers on her 21st birthday which both celebrated in prison. “˜There is a clear desire to make Rudy the guilty party, and it’s clear they will try anything,’ Biscotti said.

There were three direct effects of this shafting of Guede.

So much for “the forgotten killer”. How did that go again?

Here is an example of the incendiary tone now adopted by the public relations (and Michael Heavey) as channeled by the PR shill Peter Popham.

Two weeks after the murder, scientists found bloody fingerprints on a cushion under Mez’s body which belonged to a drug dealer and serial house-breaker called Rudy Guede, who had gone on the run right after the murder.

In contrast, here is the outcome of the Guede trial late in October 2008, note the cool-headed official tone not intimidated by the PR.

[Judge] Micheli agreed with prosecutors that more than one person took part in the sexual assault and murder, dismissing claims that the 47 bruises and knife wounds on Kercher’s body could have been made by a single attacker.

He upheld the testimony of a neighbour who heard more than one person fleeing Kercher’s house, adding that while footprints there might not definitely belong to Knox and Sollecito, they did indicate more than one attacker.

He stood by forensic evidence indicating Kercher’s and Knox’s DNA on a knife found at Sollecito’s house…. which investigators suspect is the murder weapon, and ruled Sollecito’s DNA on Kercher’s bra strap as reliable evidence.

He dismissed as “fantasy”, the claim that Knox, Sollecito and Guede planned to involve Kercher in an orgy inspired by “Halloween parties” instead describing the fatal encounter as unplanned.

In 2009 the prosecution laid out a vast array of evidence all of it pointing to several attackers: the autopsy, the DNA, the recreation of the attack, the obviously-adjusted crime scene, the computer and phone records.

The defense portion of the trial was loaded with anti-Guede innuendo but all their attempts to prove he was a burglar and lone-wolf killer failed markedly. The “best” shot was the attempt to tie Guede to a break-in at a lawyers’ offices.

Click for Post: The Serial-Burglar Arm Of The Rudy Guede Hoax: Testimony 2009 In Court Provided ZERO Proof

Late in 2009 Judge Massei set out at more length the very clear case for a pack attack, subsequently agreed-to by the Nencini appeal court (2014), and also three times by the Supreme Court of Italy (2010, 2013, 2015).

In 2010 as the previous post and this fine series by Cesare Beccaria shows, Knox and Sollecito were seemingly STILL blaming one another as much as they ever were Rudy Guede.

Click for Post: How Each of The Three Subtly But Surely Pushed The Other Two Closer to The Fire

In 2010 the defenses finally split from the increasingly absurd public relations stance on Guede and they went their different ways.

(1) The defense finally caved in to the overwhelming proof of a pack attack. They dropped lone-wolf arguments with Guede as sole perpetrator and attempted other tactics, not successfully.

Hellman appeal witness Aviello was a failed attempt of the defenses to prove that Guede attacked Meredith with others.

Hellman appeal witness Alessi was a failed attempt of the defenses to prove the attack was by another group entirely.

Neither could produce even an ounce of evidence. Never once in court 2007-2015 was the pack-attack evidence pointing to the three charged shaken.

At the outer edge of my timeline (when the PR was morphing Guede more and the defenses morphing him less) Cardiol wrote of the defense headache he represented. (Read also the 44 comments that Cardiol’s inspired, complex post sparked).

Click for Post: How Much Or How Little To Blame Rudy Guede? The Defenses’ Immense Headache Coming Up

That was after the Hellman appeal but before his annulment by the Supreme Court. And even later, after the Nencini appeal (and the Douglas books) but before the bent Marasca-Bruno outcome (the macho Sollecito had made his second visit to the Dominican Republic at this point) SomeAlibi picked up the threads .

Click for Post: Spitting In the Wind: Sollecito News Conference Backfires On Him AND Knox - What The Media Missed

(2) Meanwhile the PR and FOA crackpots are STILL denying the pack attack, as avidly promoted by, among others, John Douglas.

See Grahame Rhodes’s very telling sendup of Heavey on his quixotic mission to save his little angel, and PatAz’s Heavey expose.

Click for Post: To Create Points With More Traction For His Yawnfests, Mr Heavey Convenes A Mock Court”¦

Click for Post: After 6 Years Heavey Is Still Heedless Of His Errors Pointed Out Again & Again & Again

In their books Knox and Sollecito both demonized Guede and tried to sell him as a lonewolf killer.

In these posts Marcello explains just how far short they fall, and Chimera derides Knox at greater length in the huge Knox-book series.

Click for Post: Questions For Knox and Sollecito: Why Claim Rudy Guede Did It Alone When So Much Proof Against?

Click for Post: The 518 Lies In “Waiting To Be Heard” by Amanda Knox.

Profiler Douglas makes zero mention of all of this.

4. False Claims By Douglas Re Rudy Guede

1. False Claim By John Douglas on Guede’s Alleged Criminal Background

“Guede has the history; he was an experienced criminal”

John Douglas hasn’t substantiated the claims above and he can’t because Rudy Guede didn’t have any criminal convictions for breaking and entering or any other crimes at the time of Meredith’s murder.

Very extensive investigations by police of Guede’s past are described at length in the Micheli report on our Case Wiki.

Read those and you will know they had not heard of him before and he was not secretly working for them. They show him as mild, funny, popular, well-funded, and diligent in activities he liked. The real Guede had zero reason to break in, steal money, deal drugs, or attack anyone.

2. False Claim By John Douglas on Guede’s Alleged Criminal Background

“Rudy had committed other breaking-and-entering crimes and often used a knife.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Guede didn’t ever break into any properties, but as Judge Micheli noted, there is no proof that he ever committed any break-ins anywhere in his life.

On this Guede has been much lied-about. See more on this in Part 3 above and also this post, and this post.

3. False Claim By John Douglas on Guede’s Alleged Criminal Background

“He’s a sadistic individual with a violent past.”

John Douglas hasn’t substantiated his claim that Rudy Guede had a violent past. He can’t refer to any criminal convictions for violence because Guede didn’t have any at the time of the murder. Guede was only on the police radar because of a minor incident in Milan just before.

4. False Claim By John Douglas on Guede’s Actions At The Crime Scene.

“He put the blanket over her because he was wandering around the apartment and didn’t want to see her.”

John Douglas’ claim that Rudy Guede was wandering around the apartment is contradicted by the forensic evidence. His bloody shoe prints led straight out of Meredith’s room and out of the cottage. The Massei report, page 379:

“As a consequence, the shape of the bare footprint on the sky-blue mat in the little bathroom cannot be attributed to Rudy, who, on leaving Meredith’s room (according to what the shoe prints show), directed himself towards the exit without deviating or stopping in other rooms.”

5. False Claim By John Douglas on Guede’s Alleged Criminal Background

“You should be able to find other “canvases” of his like that ““ not necessarily homicide, but you should find a violent past in this person’s background. I know that he committed some robberies, but I’ll bet money there are more cases that he may have been involved in which remain unsolved. I don’t know, maybe before he came to Perugia ““ whatever he may have been escaping previously.”

Sure, do foolishly bet some money. John Douglas doesn’t seem to be aware of the fact that Rudy Guede came to Perugia when he was five years old and that he clearly hadn’t been involved in unsolved crimes before his arrival at that age.

John Douglas seems intent on over-egging the pudding in order to portray Guede in the worst possible light i.e. an experienced criminal with a violent past in order to persuade the public that he is the lone killer.

6. False Claim By John Douglas on Guede’s DNA At The Crime Scene

“On top of everything else, his DNA was all over the crime scene.”... “Rudy’s DNA is all over the crime scene in Meredith’s bedroom and Amanda and Raffaele’s is absent”

The claim that Rudy Guede’s DNA was all over the crime scene must be one of the widely-propagated PR lies in the media.

In fact there was only one sample of Guede’s DNA on Meredith body and just four samples of his DNA in Meredith’s room. In total, there were only five samples of his DNA at the cottage.

His DNA was found on a vaginal swab, on the sleeve of Meredith’s tracksuit, on her bra, on the zip of her purse and on some toilet paper in the bathroom that Filomena and Laura shared.

Judge Giordano sentencing report, page 5:

“”¦also a genetic profile, from the Y haplotype on the vaginal swab, in which no traces of semen were found; DNA on the toilet paper in the bathroom near the room of Mezzetti, where unflushed faeces were found; on the bag found on the bed; on the left cuff of the blue sweatshirt (described as a “zippered shirt” in the first inspection, discovered smeared with blood near the body and partly underneath it); and on the right side of the bra found by the foot of Kercher’s body”¦”

“No-one disputes that Rudy Guede was at the cottage when Meredith was killed. However, John Douglas exaggerates the DNA evidence against him. Saying Rudy Guede’s DNA “was all over the crime scene” sounds more damning than saying the Scientific Police found five samples of Rudy Guede’s DNA at the crime scene, less than Knox’s.

5. My Conclusions On This Area

The burden of proof is invariably lowered when it comes to Guede, and inevitably raised when it comes to Knox and Sollecito.

John Douglas clearly isn’t interested in hard facts - he just wants to lay all the blame at Guede’s feet.

As far as John Douglas and Amanda Knox’s supporters are concerned, the presumption of innocence doesn’t apply to Rudy Guede.

So there is no need for him to stand trial for the crimes he has allegedly committed. Straight to prison and case closed.

Posted by The Machine on 08/29/18 at 10:27 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (14)

How With Myriad False Claims John Douglas Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots #2

Posted by The Machine

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1. Post & Series Overview

In Part One I used the official courts reports and court testimonies to show how John Douglas made at least a dozen demonstrably false claims about Knox’s and Sollecito’s questioning on 5-6 November 2007.

It is extremely obvious that he did zero real investigation, zero real fact-checking, zero reading of the official court reports and court testimonies. Instead he mindlessly simply repeated the PR lies propagated in the media by Amanda Knox’s family and supporters.

In this post, I’ll analyse the ill-researched John Douglas’s claims about the personas and backgrounds of Knox and Sollecito and the evidence against them, and I’ll compare those claims to the official court reports and accurate media reports to ascertain their accuracy, veracity, and honesty.

I shall also provide a summary of how Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were portrayed in the mainstream media to see whether John Douglas’ claims have been influenced by the PR campaign.

In the next post I will do the same for so-called “Forgotten Killer” and supposed lone-wolf Rudy Guede

2. WHY Knox And Sollecito Morphed 2007-2010

Both Knox and Sollecito have morphed considerably. Their families and PR and a very strong case were primary causes of this.

Those who missed the 2007-2009 happenings (as John Douglas and the Netflix production team did) can get fanatically sold on a fake Knox and fake Sollecito which are really only PR designer creations. This morphing was to become quite deliberate as part of the attempt to poison public opinion against the strong case.

It is well-documented (though Douglas is unaware) that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito mostly did not get along. Same wth Curt Knox and Edda Mellas. Same with Francesco Sollecito and Raffaele Sollecito. Often each pair has been close to open war.

The nature of Curt Knox V Edda Mellas can be read about in this post and the nature of Francesco Sollecito V Raffaele Sollecito can be read about in this post. In both cases lots to hide. This was probably the decisive factor in going for hardline and dishonest public relations (which repeatedly irritated the defenses).

The nature of Amanda Knox V Raffaele Sollecito can be read about in this post and there is much much more in both this series and this series.

Profiler Douglas makes zero mention of all of this.

3. HOW Knox And Sollecito Morphed 2007-2010

On 1 November 2007, the night Meredith died, Knox and Sollecito were essentially low-achieving druggies with few friends and limited financial resources. Knox had a drug-dealer in tow (see False Claim 5 below.)

Knox is sold as an “exchange student” but as this post explains she was not even enrolled at the university - a very rare occurrence, one that left her supervisor-less and largely fund-less - a loose cannon with no way those around her could seek her control.

On 5-6 November 2007, as I explained in the previous post, Knox and Sollecito each broke explosively and unexpectedly under minimal pressure at the Central Police Station. On that night Sollecito blamed Knox, and so Knox blamed Patrick.

(Thereafter for EIGHT YEARS through 2015 Sollecito never ever even once in court supported Knox’s final alibi, despite her chronic and often-obvious desperation. The nearest Sollecito ever came was this instance which of course was not in a courtroom. Knox had already aired her considerable irritation to all of Italy!)

In Nov and Dec 2007, despite the ill-researched John Douglas’s claims (see False Claim 2 below), Knox and Mignini were not at loggerheads. He had been at the house three times with her prior to 5-6 November and had concluded that with the help of drugs (probably cocaine on the night as Sollecito’s defense said at trial) a hazing of Meredith with knives was fully intended but the death blow may possibly have been spontaneous.

On 6 November 2007 Mignini patiently heard her out and on 17 Dec he gave her quite a break: very unusually he acceded to her request to interrogate her - actually her first-ever interrogation - in a long session which could have resulted in her going home.

Through early 2008 this relatively naive trusting Knox persisted. But then as Knox describes in her book she was taught by her lawyers and parents to actively distrust a fictionally hardline Mignini and aggressively scramble the truth.

From then on through 2008 Knox tried to charm a cold, hard Sollecito remotely, and in September 2008 this truce was agreed. All blame from now on was to be Guede’s. Drugs were more or less to be denied and a bid for lesser charges went out the window.

Throughout trial in 2009 all Italy observed two more Knoxes. The really daffy bubbly one and the really callous and meanspirited one.

Finally from 2010 we saw the widows-weeds “I am the real victim here” Amanda Knox retooled by the PR.

The one who wrote a massively dishonest book, and barked at the Nencini appeal from a distance, and makes blood-money out of killing Meredith, and encourages stalking of Meredith’s family and justice officials in Italy. The one that wails to gullible paying crowds and on TV “I am the real victim here”.

Profiler Douglas makes zero mention of all of this.

4. False Claims By Douglas Re Knox & Sollecito

1. False Claims By Douglas On Personas

Douglas was a profiler? Really? You’d never know it from his way-off-base portrayals of Knox and Sollecito.

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s high-profile supporters in the media constantly drew attention to and expressly highlighted the differences between Knox and Sollecito’s privileged middle-class backgrounds and Rudy Guede’s less fortunate background.

It was often pointed out that Amanda Knox had attended a Jesuit high school in Seattle and claimed (probably falsely) that she was an honors student and her parents were professionals - Curt Knox is an accountant and her mother is a maths teacher.

Mark and I have spoken with many people around Amanda. It became clear to us that the Amanda Knox the prosecution and the media described did not exist in real life. She was a creation designed to serve their very specific needs and purposes. Teachers and fellow students at Seattle Prep described Amanda with terms such as “bright,” “sweet” and “kind.”

Actually the restrained prosecutors and restrained Italian media mostly got the 2007-2010 Knoxes correctly sized up. Italians could repeatedly see and judge Knox for themselves. They knew about the drugs (see False Claim 5) and saw Patrick framed. Demonization of the “beautiful” Knox (as Douglas calls her repeatedly) by jealous little people and bigoted cops is a figment of a xenophobic and ill-informed mind. Nothing else.

Raffaele Sollecito’s advantaged background was also repeatedly referred to in the media. He was an IT student and the son of a wealthy urologist who had set him up with his own apartment in Perugia, and provided him with a black Audi A3, and an expensive Apple laptop.

They were essentially putting forward the argument that Knox and Sollecito are innocent specifically because they were two middle-class “kids” from respectable backgrounds.

In sharp contrast Rudy Guede is “clearly guilty” because he came from a disadvantaged background. He was often referred to in the media as a “drifter”, “drug dealer” and “petty criminal” with a history of breaking and entering despite the fact he had lived in Perugia since the age of five and he had zero convictions for drug dealing, breaking and entering or any other crimes (see my next post).

Any inconvenient facts about Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were brushed under the carpet and were conspicuous by their absence in the PR narrative.

Highlighting the privileged backgrounds of Knox and Sollecito was a proven successful strategy on the part of PR consultant David Marriott and early legal supporter Anne Bremner. Many people don’t want to believe that young people from respectable middle-class backgrounds are capable of committing horrific murders.

Vincent Bugliosi - the chief prosecutor in the Charles Manson trial - pointed out that many people in killer Tex Watson’s hometown refused to believe that he could have been involved in the murders because of his background.

“Tex Watson, Manson’s “˜chief lieutenant’ at the murder scene, was from Farmersville, Texas, hometown of World War II hero Audie Murphy. Watson was a football, basketball, and track star. He had almost an A average in high school. And when the people in Farmersville learned he was being charged with these murders, the general consensus was this is absolutely impossible, it must be a case of mistaken identity.”

Many people in Seattle refused to believe that Amanda Knox could have been involved in Meredith’s murder because of her middle-class upbringing. Time and time again, her high-profile supporters in the media claimed she was incapable of murder because of her background.

Disgraced legal talking head Anne Bremner - who was a co-creator of the Friends of Amanda - said she couldn’t accept what was being printed in the press about Amanda Knox because she had attended a Jesuit school.

“Her relatives and I, who saw her grow up as a regular student at the Jesuit Seattle Prep. School couldn’t accept it.”

Disgraced former CBS consultant Paul Ciolino claimed that Jesuit-educated high school girls don’t commit murder.

“Jesuit-educated high school girls who are high honors students “¦ don’t participate in orgies and homicides. They don’t do it. And if you can tell me of one that does, I’d sure like to see her.”

Steve Moore argued that Amanda Knox isn’t a violent person because she was an honor student (as mentioned above we have never seen proof of that.)

“This was an honor student; she is not a violent person.”

If someone’s guilt or innocence could be determined by their backgrounds, there would be no need for criminal trials. Lady Justice is symbolically depicted as wearing a blindfold. The blindfold represents impartiality and the ideal that justice should be applied without regard to wealth, power or any other status.

There’s a very good reason for this - killers, sex offenders and other criminals really do come from all walks of life. Nobody with an ounce of common sense assumes someone must be innocent or guilty of murder or sexual assault because of their background, their status or their wealth.

If you assume that nice girls from respectable backgrounds don’t commit murder a la Anne Bremner, Paul Ciolino and Steve Moore, you would be mistaken.

There have been a number of high-profile murder cases where seemingly normal girls have committed horrific and senseless murders with little or no motive e.g. Laurie Ann Swank, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel, Amy Bishop, Karla Homolka, Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker, Kelly Ellard, Anna Maria Botticelli and Mariena Sica, Erika de Nardo, Jasmine Richardson, Rachel Shoaf and Shelia Eddy.

John Douglas interviewed Charles Manson and knew of his “family” mostly of girls so Douglas has no excuse for assuming that middle-class girls from respectable backgrounds are incapable of murder.

Leslie Van Houten was an honors student and a homecoming queen. She came from a middle class background; her father was an auctioneer and her mother was a school teacher. She took part in the savage murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. She along with Patricia Krenwinkel attacked and stabbed Rosemary LaBianca. Van Houten tied the electrical cord from a lamp around La Bianca’s neck and put a pillow case over her head before stabbing her 16 times in the lower back.

Patricia Krenwinkel came from a fairly normal background. Her father was an insurance salesman. She graduated from high school and then attended a Catholic college for a semester before moving in with her sister. Krenwinkel participated in the Tate and LaBianca murders. She stabbed Abigail Folger more than 70 times. When the police found Folger’s body, they thought she was wearing a red dress.

Profiler Douglas makes zero mention of all of this.

One of the numerous knives in Sollecito’s collection

2. False Claims By Douglas On Motive

Again and again John Douglas and colleagues repeat the PR myth that Mignini described a satanic murder, proving yet again that he has unquestioningly believed whatever he has been told by Amanda Knox’s dishonest supporters without doing any fact-checking for himself.

How, in the name of all that is rational, could Amanda and Raffaele have participated in this satanic orgy of sex and murder Mignini so imaginatively described?

But this team and this prosecutor came up with a bizarre criminal conspiracy involving satanic sex orgies and rituals. And this crime, according to the prosecutor, was perpetrated by people never before involved in Satanism or violence or group sex.

Both [this and the West Memphis case] were rushes to judgment, prosecuted as satanic ritual murders on the basis of fear and superstition rather than solid evidence and analysis.

Since there was a strong satanic component it was supposed to take place on Halloween. But since that didn’t work out, the Day of the Dead would be just as auspicious.

He doesn’t substantiate his claims or refer to any of the official court reports or court testimonies. Did it not cross his mind to actually check to see whether Mignini had ever claimed Meredith had been killed in a satanic ritual? If he had bothered to have checked, he would have realised there are NO quotations from Mignini himself claiming Meredith had been killed in a satanic ritual.

In fact Italy knows Mignini is a satanism skeptic and he often propounds that on TV.

He has repeatedly DENIED claiming that Meredith was killed in a sacrificial rite (a deliberate false rumor from the defense) and has strongly questioned satanism as a motive for other crimes.

For example in his letter to the Seattle reporter Linda Byron:

“On the “˜sacrificial rite’ question, I have never said that Meredith Kercher was the victim of a “˜sacrificial rite.’ “

For example in his interview with Drew Griffin on CNN:

Drew Griffin: “You’ve never said that Meredith’s death was a satanic rite?”

Mignini: “I have never said that. I have never understood who has and continues to say that. I read, there was a reporter ““ I don’t know his name; I mention it because I noticed it ““ who continues to repeat this claim that, perhaps, knowing full well that it’s not like that.

“I have never said that there might have been a satanic rite. I’ve never said it, so I would like to know who made it up.”

For example in his published statement in Corriere

Mr. Spezi’s text says: “”¦ a strangely similar background, for two different cases, behind which the magistrate thought he could see satanic orgies on the occasion of Halloween for Amanda, and ritual blood sacrifices as a worship to the Devil in the Monster of Florence case”¦”.

This is an assertion that Mr. Spezi and crime-fiction author Douglas Preston have been repeating for years, but does not find the smallest confirmation in the documentation of the two trials, nor in the scenario put forward by the prosecution in which the Meredith murder (which didn’t happen on Halloween but on the subsequent night) was the consequence of a sex hazing to which Meredith herself did not intend to take part, and, above all, it was the consequence of a climate of hostility which built up progressively between the Coulsdon girl and Amanda because of their different habits, and because of Meredith’s suspicion about alleged money thefts by Knox.

Profiler Douglas makes zero mention of all of this.

3. False Claims By Douglas On DNA Evidence

“How, in the name of all that is rational, could Amanda and Raffaele have participated in this satanic orgy of sex and murder Mignini so imaginatively described and yet not leave any of their own DNA on the scene?”

It’s untrue that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA wasn’t found at the crime scene. John Douglas limits the crime scene to Meredith’s room despite the fact that the Scientific Police collected significant DNA and forensic evidence from the whole cottage, including the small bathroom, the large bathroom, the hallway and Filomena’s room.

There were more incriminating pieces of DNA evidence against Amanda Knox (6) than there were against Rudy Guede (5). According to the Scientific Police, there were five instances of Knox’s DNA or blood mixed with Meredith’s blood in three different locations in the cottage.

After the trial, the Kerchers’ lawyer, Francesco Maresca, said the mixed blood evidence was the most damning piece of evidence against Amanda Knox. The jury agreed that it was a damning piece of evidence. Barbie Nadeau points out in Angel Face that the jurors accepted the mixed blood evidence.

The defense’s other biggest mistake, according to interviews with jurors after the trial, was doing nothing to refute the mixed-blood evidence beyond noting that it is common to find mingled DNA when two people live in the same house. (Barbie Nadeau, Angel Face, page 152).

It’s also untrue that Sollecito didn’t leave any of his DNA in Meredith’s room. It’s an indisputable fact that Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA was found on Meredith’s bra clasp. His DNA was identified by two separate DNA tests. I won’t address the knife, the bra clasp and the mixed-blood evidence in this post for the sake of brevity.

Profiler Douglas makes zero mention of all of this.

4. False Claims By Douglas On Other Evidence

“Suffice it to say that there is no evidence ““ repeat, NO EVIDENCE ““ to indicate that Amanda and Raffaele were even present at the crime scene”

Suffice it to say? In fact there was a MOUNTAIN of evidence. See here for 400 evidence points, which between them at trial in 2008 and again at appeal in 2013 were devastating. .

In final judgment even the Supreme Court disagrees with John Douglas. It noted that it’s a proven fact Amanda Knox was at the cottage when Meredith was killed because (1) she repeatedly admitted she was (2) she knew specific details about the murder and (3) the DNA evidence in the small bathroom provided “eloquent proof” she washed Meredith’s blood off.

“Given this, we now note, with respect to Amanda Knox, that her presence inside the house, the location of the murder, is a proven fact in the trial, in accord with her own admissions, also contained in the memoriale with her own signature, in the part where she tells that, as she was in the kitchen, while the young English woman had retired in the room of same Ms Kercher, together with another person for a sexual intercourse, she heard a harrowing scream, so piercing and unbearable that she let herself down squatting on the floor, covering her ears tight with her hands in order not to hear more of it.

About this, the judgement of reliability expressed by the lower [a quo] judge [Nencini] with reference to this part of the suspect’s narrative, [and] about the plausible implication from the fact herself was the first person mentioning for the first time [46] a possible sexual motive for the murder, at the time when the detective still did not have the cadaver examination, nor the autopsy result, nor the witnesses’ information, which collected only subsequently, about the victim’s terrible scream and about the time when it was heard (Nara Capezalli, Antonella Monocchia and others), is certainly to be subscribed to.

We make reference in particular to those declarations that the current appellant [Knox] on 11.6.2007 (p.96) inside the State Police headquarters. On the other hand, in the slanderous declaration against Lumumba, which earned her a conviction, the status of which is now protected as a final judgement [giudicato] [they] had a premise in the narrative, that is the presence of the young American woman, inside the house in via della Pergola, a circumstance which nobody at that time - except obviously the other people present in the house - could have known (quote p.96).

“According to the slanderous statements of Ms. Knox, she had returned home in the company of Lumumba, whom she had met by chance in Piazza Grimana, and when Ms. Kercher arrived in the house, Knox’s companion, directed sexual attentions toward the English woman, then he went together with her to he room from which the harrowing scream came. So, it was Lumumba who killed Meredith and she could affirm this since she was on the scene of the crime herself, albeit in another room. (p.97)

“Another element against her [Amanda Knox] is the mixed traces, her and the victim’s one, in the “˜small bathroom’, an eloquent proof that anyway she had come into contact with the blood of the latter, which she tried to wash away from herself (it was, it seems, diluted blood, while the biological traces belonging to her would be the consequence of epithelial rubbing). “The fact is very suspicious, but it’s not decisive, besides the known considerations about the sure nature and attribution of the traces in question.”

John Douglas clearly hasn’t read any of the official court reports, so he hasn’t addressed let alone refuted the evidence the Supreme Court cited which led it to conclude that it’s a “proven fact” Amanda Knox was at the cottage when Meredith was killed.

Profiler Douglas makes zero mention of all of this.

5. False Claims By Douglas On Drug Use

For the most part, John Douglas sticks closely to the PR narrative about Rudy Guede being an experienced criminal whilst completely ignoring the fact that Amanda Knox and Raffaele both had previous brushes with the police and other inconvenient facts that portray them in a negative light.

He reluctantly acknowledges the fact Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito used marijuana. (Anne Bremner refused to go even this far. She categorically stated Amanda Knox didn’t use marijuana, despite not being in a position to make firm assurances.)

“They used marijuana, but that’s not some hard core drug that will change a normal personality.”

Really?! And Knox and Sollecito had both admitted they had used drugs - as part of their defense - and these admissions were widely reported in the media. It was also established in court in 2009 that they had smoked marijuana.

“Both Amanda and Raffaele were using drugs; there are multiple corroborating statements to this effect (page 19, statements of Romanelli, hearing of February 7, 2009; statements of Mezzetti, hearing of February 14, 2009; page 164, hearing of March 27, 2009, statements of Antonio Galizia, Carabinieri [C.ri] station commander in Giovinazzo, who testified that in September 2003 Raffaele Sollecito was found in possession of 2.67 grams of hashish; in the tapped intercepts, Amanda had several times made reference to marijuana use).” (Massei report, page 62).

However, Douglas is simply assuming with no proof that they didn’t take any hard drugs. According to Amanda Knox, Sollecito had taken heroin and cocaine.

“According to Amanda’s prison diaries, Raf had been reminiscing about his incredible highs on heroin and cocaine”¦” (Barbie Nadeau, Angel Face, Kindle edition, page 163).

More damning, Mignini knew Knox started sleeping with a dangerous cocaine dealer even before she arrived in Perugia. He stated at the trial that Sollecito and Knox ran with a crowd who often used stupefying drugs. Here’s Barbie Nadeau, The Daily Beast, 20 November 2009:

“He also hinted that Knox and Sollecito might have been in a drug-fueled frenzy when they allegedly killed Kercher. He outlined the effects of cocaine and acid, and told the judges and jury how Knox and Sollecito ran with a crowd that often used these “stupificante,” or stupefying drugs.”

That Amanda Knox was mixing with people who used hard drugs was widely known in Italy even before the trial.

According to police and trial reports from 2007-2008 and Italian media accounts, Knox had a sexual relationship with the cocaine dealer, and was in contact him in the days before and even after Meredith’s murder. (That helped to put him away.) She even invited him home and slept with him there, with Meredith in the next room.

Read about it here and there’s more here. In English the Daily Telegraph also reports.

Profiler Douglas makes zero mention of all of this.

6. False Claims By Douglas On Prior Police Record

“Amanda and Raffaele had no history of any sort of violence or sexual perversion.”

If John Douglas had actually bothered to read the Massei report, he would have known Sollecito was monitored at university after being caught watching hardcore pornography featuring bestiality:

“”¦and educators at the boy’s ONAOSI college were shocked by a film “˜very much hard-core”¦where there were scenes of sex with animals with animals,’ at which next they activated a monitoring on the boy to try to understand him. (Pages 130 and 131, hearing 27.3.2009, statements by Tavernesi Francesco).” (Massei report, page 61).

He would have also known that Raffaele Sollecito had a previous brush with the police in 2003.

“...Antonio Galizia, Carabinieri [C.ri] station commander in Giovinazzo, who testified that in September 2003 Raffaele Sollecito was found in possession of 2.67 grams of hashish.” (The Massei report, page 62).

John Douglas seems to be unaware that Amanda Knox also had a previous brush with the police. According to Andrew Malone in an article on the Mail Online website, Amanda Knox was charged with hosting a party that got seriously out of hand, with students high on drink and drugs, and throwing rocks into the road, forcing cars to swerve. He claimed the students then threw rocks at the windows of neighbours who had called the police. Knox was fined $269 (£135) at the Municipal Court after the incident (crime No: 071830624).

Barbie Nadeau also reported on the same incident and claimed Knox had been arrested:

...and her only brush with the law was a disturbing-the-peace arrest for a house party she threw.” (Barbie Nadeau, Angel Face, Kindle edition, page 6).

According to the police ticket written by Seattle Police officer Jason Bender, Knox was issued with an infraction for the noise violation and warned about the rock throwing:

“I issued S1/Knox this infraction for the noise violation and a warning for the rock throwing. I explained how dangerous and juvenile that action was…. There’s no history or experience related to violence or mental illness in their backgrounds.”

A number of judges, who presumably saw their psychological reports, commented on Knox and Sollecito’s characters and made it clear they thought they were psychologically disturbed and dangerous.

Judge Massimo Riccarelli stated:

[Knox was] “privy of any refraining inhibitions and could reoffend. “From the reconstruction there is the concrete possibility of reoffending and the [alleged] role of Amanda Knox was by no means secondary,”

He also described her as “crafty and cunning” with a “multi-faced personality, unattached to reality with an elevated, one would say fatal capacity” to repeat her offence.

Judge Claudia Matteini made the following comments about Amanda Knox:

“Meredith was a girl full of life and enthusiasm, who for the sole purpose of having some pleasure and sensation during a boring day spent smoking joints, was subjected to acts of brutality and cruelty that are disgusting to any normal person. In such a situation the danger of repetition of the crime is certainly very high and can’t be considered to have diminished due to the mere passage of time, during which as a reminder you have never shown any sign of remorse or reconsideration of your life.”

“Even the behaviors you mention in your motion requesting release, which are presented as being in your favor, could be read differently in the opinion of this judge…. Your conduct after the murder is symptomatic of a personality which, considering your young age, provokes no small measure of dismay and apprehension, considering how extremely easy it was for you to control your states of mind.”

The Italian Supreme Court said the following to Raffaele Sollecito:

“You are a flight risk because of the gravity of the charges. Your danger to society matches your weak character and your personality, which we can’t define in terms of harmless juvenile stereotypes, since the context includes the habitual use of drugs.”

A number of psychologists believe Amanda Knox has exhibited the traits of a psychopath. Dr Coline Covington wrote an article Signs that suggest Amanda Knox is a psychopath in which she explained that Amanda Knox’s behaviour in the courtroom showed the signs of a psychopathic personality.

Dr Covington is a highly experienced American psychotherapist. She was the former Editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychology as well as the former Chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council and she has also worked for the London police.

Kate Mansey in The Sunday Mirror reported that Sollecito had bragged about idolising a serial killer and also hinted at his depression.

Suspect’s killer idol by Kate Mansey

“A PRIME suspect in the killing of British student Meredith Kercher bragged about idolising a notorious serial killer just days before her murder. “Italian Raffaele Sollecito used his online diary to praise the “Monster of Foligno”, a convict serving a life sentence for the murders of two young children.

“The discovery came after Sollecito appeared in court last Monday to give prosecutors the password to his computer. “The 23-year-old student and his American girlfriend Amanda Knox are being held on suspicion of murdering Meredith, 21, a fellow student in Perugia on November 1 last year.

“He read about killer Luigi Chiatti when he found out he had studied at the town’s ONAOSI college years before. On October 13 Sollecito wrote on his blog about previous students. “The one I admire the most is the Monster of Foligno,” he said. “I know there have been salacious goings-on at the college but the one common denominator is depression.”

The IT student also wrote of his interest in “extreme experiences” and hinted at his depression, saying he felt he was “entering a dark tunnel without an exit”.

Profiler Douglas makes zero mention of all of this.

5. My Conclusions On This Area

In his interview with Krista Erickson, John Douglas claimed he had all the information necessary to analyse the case and conclude that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are innocent.

“I won’t do an analysis unless I am provided with all the information necessary. In this case, I had everything I needed. In fact, more than I’ve had in other cases.”

He didn’t specify that all the information he had been given came from Amanda Knox’s supporters and it clearly didn’t include any of the official court reports or court testimonies.

So far, I’ve analysed John Douglas’ claims about Knox and Sollecito’s questioning on 5 November 2007, the personas and backgrounds of Knox and Sollecito, and some of the DNA evidence and other evidence against them. Douglas hasn’t cited even ONCE any of the official court reports or court testimonies - not even once - or provided any verbatim quotations from anyone directly involved in the case.

Tellingly John Douglas doesn’t cite any sources for the specific claims he makes - which suggests he knows his sources aren’t trustworthy or reliable. Unsubstantiated claims from anonymous sources are not acceptable in academia, science or law.

John Douglas has just repeated many of the PR lies that have been widely propagated in the media with regard to the backgrounds of Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede and some of the DNA evidence against without doing any real fact-checking at all.

Posted by The Machine on 08/22/18 at 01:57 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (7)

How With Myriad False Claims John Douglas Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots #1

Posted by The Machine

Muddled mindhunters Mark Olshaker, John Douglas, and Jim Clemente

[Long post. Click here to go straight to Comments]

1. Overview Of This Series

This is the first in a series on the myriad claims John Douglas has made about Meredith’s case starting early in 2013.

That was from after the bent Hellman appeal in 2011 to after the Supreme Court annulled Hellman’s outcome in mid 2013 but before the Nencini rerun of the appeal in 2013-14. All of the besotted Knox apologists in 2013 went from deep joy to despondence and desperation.

At that point, there were numerous court translations on our Wiki, the prosecution had given some excellent interviews, and there were several very good books out. The mafia poodles Heavey, Preston, Moore, Hampikian and Fischer had been thoroughly exposed. It really was about time the unhinged conspiracy theories were put to rest.

So what happens? A new mafia poodle, John Douglas, explodes out of nowhere, with MORE fabrications, MORE defamations, and MORE condescending hate talk!

Douglas has made further abusive and inaccurate claims about law enforcement (amazingly, he never contacted any of them), about the crime scene, the hard evidence, the witness evidence, the time-lines, the police and prosecution, and so on.

His bizarre claims (illegal if made in Italy) were pushed hard in several books, in postings on his own and other websites, in interviews, in a pitch to a near-empty room at the Congress, and in one or two forays into the State Department.

2. Who Exactly Is John Douglas?

Douglas is a former crime specialist long retired from the FBI and best known for being one of the first criminal profilers. In 1996 he published the popular Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, which inspired the popular Netflix series. The two FBI profilers - Jason Gideon and David Rossi - in the long-running TV series Criminal Minds are explicitly based on him. He has also written other books about criminal psychology.

He apparently coined the term “serial killer” and is credited with helping to expand our understanding of murderous psychopathy. He was a consultant to Thomas Harris when the crime writer was researching Silence of the Lambs and to Peter Jackson on the film Lovely Bones.

Most quotes will come from his long sections on the case in (1) Law and Disorder with colleague Mark Olshaker; another colleague, Jim Clemente, propagates their nonsense a lot in podcasts and YouTubes; and (2) the absurdly titled Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher, written with Knox fans Douglas Preston, Steve Moore and Michael Heavey.

As Douglas was pretty wildly wrong in his takes on the hard facts and psychologies of every one of the main characters (the three charged, prosecutors and police, several others) which is supposedly his main area of expertise, I will start with that area.

Then in the next several posts I will examine other Douglas claims. I’ll conclude with the amazing number of red flags Douglas ignored, going back to Knox’s time in Seattle. They may not faze a PR shill, but they should give pause to any competent, honest investigator.

Obvious red flags include Knox’s reputation at high-school and college, her heavy drug use starting in Seattle, Knox’s reason for being in Perugia (hint: it was not to study), her financial situation, the chronic antagonisms between Knox and Sollecito (who Douglas barely mentions), the breaks she was given in 2007-08, her disastrous stint on the stand at trial in 2009 (touched on below), the mountain of evidence, the devastating official reconstructions, the bent appeal court in 2011, and the mid-2013 Cassation annulment report.

3. Bizarre Precursor A Year Earlier

Hard to believe! But exactly one year prior to Douglas exploding himself into the case ANOTHER mafia poodle, Saul Kassin, a profiler with John Jay College of Criminal Science in New York, did the same thing. He retreated whiny and discredited. Take a look.

Click for Post: Saul Kassin: An Example Of How The Knox Campaign Is Misleading American Experts And Audiences

Click for Post: Rebutting Saul Kassin’s Substantive Claim Of Forced Confession

Click for Post: Correcting Saul Kassin’s Massively Inaccurate Description Of Amanda Knox’s So-Called Confession

Click for Post: How Saul Kassin Framed Many Fine Italian Justice Officials - And Then Played Victim When Corrected

4. AK and RS Sessions with Police On 5 November 2007

In this post I’ll analyse some of the claims (there are more) he has made about Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s questioning on 5 November 2007, which he based almost exclusively on their own misleading accounts and the absurd inventions of Steve Moore, and I’ll compare those claims to the official court reports and court testimonies to ascertain their accuracy and veracity.

See here for just how well we understand this area. We finally have full knowledge of it almost minute by minute and word by word. There was zero interrogation as Italy defines it prior to arrest, her behavior had made investigators curious but not made her a witness, let alone a suspect, and she was never “targeted” before she broke under zero pressure. All four discussions are on record, and Knox signed every page of all four reports.

John Douglas’s claim #1

“On the evening of November 5, police asked both Amanda and Raffaele to come to the station to discuss apparent inconsistencies in their accounts.”

Untrue. This claim is demonstrably false. Neither the police nor the prosecutors brought Knox in for questioning on 5 November 2007.

Amanda Knox herself testified in court that she wasn’t called to come to the police station on 5 November 2007.

Carlo Pacelli: “For what reason did you go to the Questura on November 5? Were you called?”
Amanda Knox: “No, I wasn’t called. I went with Raffaele because I didn’t want to be alone.”

Monica Napoleoni, the head of Perugia’s homicide squad, said they told Knox she should go home to rest, but Knox insisted on staying:

Amanda also came that evening, the evening of the 5th. We said to Amanda that she could go home to rest. Since, during those days, she was always saying, always complaining that she wanted to rest, wanted to eat, we said: “˜Look, you’ve eaten; you can go and rest yourself. If there’s a need, we’ll call you.’

John Douglas’s claim #2

“During that time, according to the police, he [Raffaele Sollecito] began wavering on his story that Amanda had slept over with him and that they’d been together the entire night of the murder. Maybe she had gone out for a while””around 9:00 P.M. or so””and hadn’t come back until 1:30 A.M.; he wasn’t sure.”

Untrue. John Douglas presents the above comments as if they are verbatim quotations from Sollecito. They are not. He makes no reference to any sources to substantiate his claim.

In fact Sollecito categorically stated Amanda Knox wasn’t with him that evening in his witness statement.

“At 9pm I went home alone and Amanda said that she was going to Le Chic because she wanted to meet some friends. We said goodbye. I went home, I rolled myself a spliff and made some dinner.”

“I remember Amanda wasn’t back yet. I surfed on the Internet for a couple of hours after my father’s phone call, and I stopped only when Amanda came back, about one in the morning, I think.”

Sollecito’s claim that Amanda Knox wasn’t at his apartment that evening is corroborated by the mobile phone evidence. From the Nencini report, 2014, page 132.

“At 8:18 pm and 12 seconds, Amanda Marie Knox received a text message sent to her by Patrick Lumumba, in which he informed her that it would not be necessary for her to go to the bar to carry out her usual work. At the time of receipt, Amanda Marie Knox’s handset connected via the sector 3 mast at Torre dell’Acquedotto, 5 dell’Aquila, as shown by phone records entered in evidence. This mast cannot be reached from the vicinity of 130 Corso Garibaldi, the home of Raffaele Sollecito. According to the findings of the judicial police entered in evidence, this mast could be reached by anyone in Via Rocchi, Piazza Cavallotti or Piazza 4 Novembre, all locations in Perugia which are intermediate between 130 Corso Garibaldi, the home of Raffaele Sollecito, and Via Alessi, where the “Le Chic” bar is located

“From this set of facts established in the case, Amanda Marie Knox’s claim, according to which she received Patrick Lumumba’s text message while she was at 130 Corso Garibaldi, appears false. Given the mast connected to and the time, it is reasonable to assume that, when Amanda received the message, she had already left Raffaele Sollecito’s home and was on her way to the “˜Le Chic’ bar. Presumably, she then turned around and went back.”

John Douglas’s claim #3

John Douglas talks as if RS and AK never lied and for example he doesn’t address the fact that Raffaele Sollecito admitted lying to the police and blamed Knox for his lies.

Untrue. There is overwhelming proof theiy both lied. For example:

“In my former statement I told you a load of rubbish because I believed Amanda’s version of what happened and did not think about the inconsistencies.”

This inconvenient fact has been brushed under the carpet by Amanda Knox’s supporters for years. The fact Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito lied to the police before they were questioned on 5 November 2007 is critically important for a couple of reasons: (1) their lies can’t be attributed to police coercion or brutality and (2) it clearly indicates they were both trying to hide another inconvenient truth. This begs the question: what inconvenient truth were they trying to hide?

John Douglas has never answered this question, probably because he is blissfully ignorant of all the lies Knox and Sollecito told the police and others. Amanda Knox’s high-profile supporters don’t address the lies that Knox and Sollecito told before and after 5 November 2007. For example, the filmmakers responsible for Amanda Knox on Netflix only focused on Amanda Knox’s false and malicious allegation against Diya Lumumba - not on any of the lies before and after 5 November 2007.

It’s easy to understand why they don’t address these lies - there isn’t a plausible innocent explanation for them. Instead they pretend or insinuate that Knox and Sollecito only lied because they were coerced and/or beaten by the police on 5 November 2007 and that’s the approach John Douglas adopts.

Judge Marasca from the Supreme Court couldn’t pretend that Knox and Sollecito didn’t lie repeatedly to the police. He had no choice but to address them because Judge Massei and Judge Nencini detailed their lies in their own reports. He acknowledges that Amanda Knox lied, and claimed she had lied to cover for Rudy Guede.

Judge Marasca’s Supreme Court report:

“Elements of strong suspicion are also in the inconsistencies and lies which the suspect woman [Amanda Knox] committed over the statements she released on various occasions, especially in the places where her narrative was contradicted by the telephone records which show different incoming SMS messages”.

“However, the said calunnia is another circumstantial element against the appellant, insofar as it can be considered a strategy in order to cover up for Mr. Guede, whom she had an interest to protect because of fear of retaliatory accusations against her.”

Guede was of course Douglas’s solitary “forgotten” lone-wolf killer. How does he explain that one?

John Douglas’s claim #4

John Douglas also resorts to another common tactic used by Amanda Knox’s supporters to explain her multiple contradictory accounts of what she was doing and where she was on 1 November 2007 and her false and malicious accusation against Diya Lumumba: he provides a detailed and categoric eyewitness account of what happened at the police station on 5 November 2007, even though he was not even present.

“A policewoman called her “stupid” and a “liar” and slapped her on the back of her head. They repeated the blow every time she didn’t give them an answer. They gave her nothing to eat or drink and didn’t allow her to go to the bathroom. It was as if they were going to keep punishing her until she remembered.”

Untrue. Of course, John Douglas can’t substantiate any of his claims above because he wasn’t present when Knox was questioned. Furthermore, he is contradicting what Knox testified in court - she admitted she was given something to eat and drink.

Reported by Richard Owen, in The Times, 1 March 2009:

Ms Napoleoni told the court that while she was at the police station Ms Knox had been “˜treated very well. She was given water, chamomile tea and breakfast. She was given cakes from a vending machine and then taken to the canteen at the police station for something to eat.’

Reported by Richard Owen, in The Times, 15 March 2009:

Ms Donnino said that Ms Knox had been “˜comforted’ by police, given food and drink, and had at no stage been hit or threatened.

John Follain in his book Death in Perugia, page 134, also reports that Knox was given food and drink during her questioning:

During the questioning, detectives repeatedly went to fetch her a snack, water, and hot drinks, including chamomile tea.

From the relevant court transcript:

Monica Napoleoni: Amanda was given something to drink several times. She was brought hot chamomile; she was taken to the bar of the Questura to eat. First she was given brioches from the little [vending] machine.
Carlo Pacelli: These methods of treatment, how did they translate into practice? With what behaviour/actions [were they carried out] in actual fact? Earlier, you recalled that they actually brought her something to eat”¦
MN: It’s true. That morning, I remember that Inspector Ficarra actually took her to the bar to eat as soon as it opened. But before [that], we have little [vending] machines on the ground floor, and she was brought water, she was brought hot drinks, she was brought a snack. But also Raffaele, he was given something to drink; it’s not as though they were kept “¦ absolutely.

Giuliano Mignini: Had types of comfort been offered to her?
Anna Donnino: Well, during the evening, yes, in the sense that I remember that someone went down to the ground floor; it was the middle of the night, so in the station at that hour there are those automatic distributors; there’s nothing else; someone went to the ground floor and brought everybody something to drink, some hot drinks and something to eat. I myself had a coffee, so I believe that she also had something.

John Douglas doesn’t substantiate his claim that Amanda Knox was slapped. According to the corroborative eyewitness testimony of the people who were actually present when Knox was questioned - Anna Donnino, Monica Napoleoni and Rita Ficarra - she wasn’t hit.

The witnesses who were present when Knox was questioned, including her interpreter, testified under oath at the trial in 2009 that she wasn’t hit. (Under Italian law, witnesses must testify under oath, while defendants do not, so are not required by law to be truthful on the stand.)

From the relevant court transcript:

Giuliano Mignini: Do you recall, shall we say, that night between the 1st and then the spontaneous declarations and then the order for arrest, who and what was with her, other than you, whether there were other subjects that spoke with us, how they behaved? Did [she] undergo/experience violent [sic: NdT: “violente” in Italian, probably typo for “violenze” = “violence/force/assault”] by any chance?
Rita Ficarra: Absolutely not.
GM: Was she intimidated, threatened?
RF: No. I, as I said earlier, I came in that evening and there were some colleagues from the Rome SCO, I was with Inspector Fausto Passeri, then I saw come out, that is come out from the entry-door to the offices of the Flying [Squad] the Assistant Zugarini and Monica Napoleoni, who appeared for an instant just outside there, then we went back in calmly, because the discussion we had with her was quite calm.

Giuliano Mignini: [was there] violence “¦?
Monica Napoleoni: But absolutely not!

Mignini: You remember it”¦ you’ve described it; however, I’ll ask it. Was she threatened? Did she suffer any beatings?
Anna Donnino: Absolutely not.
GM: She suffered maltreatments?
AD: Absolutely not.
Carlo Pacelli: In completing and consolidating in cross-examination the questions by the public prosecutor, I refer to the morning of the 6th of November, to the time when Miss Knox had made her summary information. In that circumstance, Miss Knox was struck on the head with punches and slaps?
Anna Donnino: Absolutely not.
CP: In particular, was she struck on the head by a police woman?
AD: Absolutely not!
CP: Miss Knox was, however, threatened?
AD: No, I can exclude that categorically!
CP: With thirty years of prison”¦ ?
AD: No, no, absolutely not.
CP: Was she, however, sworn at, in the sense that she was told she was a liar?
AD: I was in the room the whole night, and I saw nothing of all this.
CP: So the statements that had been made had been made spontaneously, voluntarily?
AD: Yes.
Carlo Della Valla: This”¦
Giancarlo Massei: Pardon, but let’s ask questions”¦ if you please.
CP: You were also present then during the summary informations made at 5:45?
AD: Yes.
CP: And were they done in the same way and methods as those of 1:45?
AD: I would say yes. Absolutely yes.
CP: To remove any shadow of doubt from this whole matter, as far as the summary information provided at 5:45 Miss Knox was struck on the head with punches and slaps?
AD: No.
CP: In particular, was she struck on the head by a policewoman?
AD: No.

Even Amanda Knox’s lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, distanced himself in the Italian media from these allegations, and never ever lodged any complaint which he would have been required to do under Italian law if he believed her.

There were pressures from the police, but we never said she was hit.

John Douglas’s claim #5

What seems to have happened is that in his fear and fatigue, Raffaele eventually confused and transposed the nights of October 31 and November 1.

Untrue. Although John Douglas doesn’t specifically refer to Sollecito’s unequivocal claim that Amanda Knox wasn’t at his apartment on the evening of the murder or the fact he blamed her for his lies, he is clearly trying to account for his conflicting statements.

His claim that Sollecito was suffering from fatigue is laughable - Sollecito was literally questioned for a couple of hours before he stopped providing Knox with an alibi.

His pathetic excuse that Sollecito seems to have confused the nights of 31 October and 1 November is ridiculous beyond words. Sollecito was clearly referring to 1 November 2007. His witness statement is a chronological account of what he claims he and Knox did on the evening of 1 November and the morning of 2 November 2007. He was being questioned specifically about the night of the murder and the following day..

John Douglas’s claim #6

“Both hinged on a questionable confession after many hours of police interrogation without a lawyer present””one by a scared and confused seventeen-year-old boy; the other by a girl just out of her teens who barely spoke the language being shouted at her.”

Untrue. The only one reported shouting - wailing and beating her head - was Knox herself. And Raffaele Sollecito wasn’t 17, he was 23 years old. I don’t know how it’s possible for Douglas to get such basic facts wrong. Did it even cross his mind to actually research the case?

Douglas’s intention is clear - he wants to infantilise both Knox and Sollecito by referring to them as a “boy” and “girl” in an effort to emphasize their naivety and immaturity in order to explain away their lies and inconsistent statements.

John Douglas’s claim #7

Douglas seems to be labouring under the misapprehension that Amanda Knox was questioned only in Italian and all night. This is almost certainly due to the fact that Amanda Knox’s family and supporters initially claimed she wasn’t provided with an interpreter for an all-night session.

Untrue. According to Barbie Nadeau in The Daily Beast, Amanda Knox’s session began at about 11:00pm.

“Since Knox was already at the police station [in the company of Raffaele Sollecito], the head of the murder squad decided to ask her a few questions. Her interrogation started at about 11pm.”

It was not in fact interrogation: Knox was invited merely to build a list of visitors to the house, which exists and is in evidence. There was little progress till the interpreter arrived. After Amanda Knox had made her witness statement at 1:45am, she wasn’t questioned again that evening. She herself decided to made another witness statement at 5:45am, with the same interpreter, but she wasn’t asked any questions. She herself refused a lawyer.

John Douglas’s claim #8

Altogether, Amanda was interrogated over a forty-hour period (an average workweek) by twelve detectives. This is known as “tag teaming.” The interrogators remain fresh and at the top of their game while the suspect grows increasingly exhausted and isolated.

Untrue. None of that happened. All four sessions as a person with possible useful information (not a witness, let alone suspect) over 4 days were quite brief, Knox signed all pages of the 4 reports, and a mere several officers were listed as present at each.

On 5-6 November, according to Anna Donnino, who arrived at the police station at about 12:30am, there was a total of three people in the room with Knox:

Anna Donnino: “I had been made to enter a room where in fact there was Inspector Ficarra at a small table, another colleague from SCO (I only remember his first name; he was called Ivano), a police officer, and there was Miss Knox seated. I seated myself beside her.”

That makes Knox, two small Italian women, and a kindly Rome officer who was essentially an onlooker. Not exactly terrifying.

John Douglas’s claim #9

“Though she said it was dreamlike and she couldn’t tell if it had actually happened, she “˜recalled’ Patrick having sex with Meredith, but she didn’t remember whether he had had to force her.”

Untrue. Yet again John Douglas repeats a popular PR lie and he doesn’t substantiate his claim with a verbatim quotation from Amanda Knox. She makes no mention of a dream or vision in her two witness statements.

She categorically stated that she met Diya Lumumba at Piazza Grimana and that they went to the cottage on Via della Pergola. In her first witness statement, she claims that Lumumba killed Meredith.

This is from the 1:45 am statement.

I responded to the message by telling him that we would see each other at once; I then left the house, telling my boyfriend that I had to go to work. In view of the fact that during the afternoon I had smoked a joint, I felt confused, since I do not frequently make use of mind-altering substances, nor of heavier substances.

I met Patrik immediately afterward, at the basketball court on Piazza Grimana, and together we went [to my] home. I do not recall whether Meredith was there or arrived afterward. I struggle to remember those moments, but Patrik had sex with Meredith, with whom he was infatuated, but I do not recall whether Meredith had been threatened beforehand. I recall confusedly that he killed her.

This is from the 5:45 am statement.

I wish to relate spontaneously what happened because these events have deeply bothered me and I am really afraid of Patrick”¦ I met him in the evening of November 1st 2007, after sending him a reply message saying “I will see you”. We met soon after at about 21.00 at the basketball court of Piazza Grimana. We went to my apartment in Via della Pergola n. 7.

I do not clearly remember if Meredith was already at home or if she came later, what I can say is that Patrick and Meredith went into Meredith’s room, while I think I stayed in the kitchen. I cannot remember how long they stayed together in the room but I can only say that at a certain point I heard Meredith screaming and as I was scared I plugged up my ears.

John Douglas’s claim #10

In an interview with American journalist and Amanda Knox fan Krista Ericksson, John Douglas mindlessly repeats more PR lies.

KE: What about Amanda’s confessions during the interrogations?

JD: To be interrogated from 10 pm until 6 am in the morning? These are not sophisticated young people ““ it would not take a dozen interrogators to break them. I know the tricks, I know what they do in there; I’ve done it. No one could hold up. I couldn’t hold up - especially over 5 days.

Untrue. The PR myth that Amanda Knox was subjected to an all-night session or any arduous sessions previously was debunked a long time ago.

According to Barbie Nadeau in The Daily Beast, Amanda Knox’s impromptu session began at about 11:00pm.

“Since Knox was already at the police station [in the company of Raffaele Sollecito], the head of the murder squad decided to ask her a few questions. Her interrogation started at about 11pm.”

Again, it was not in fact interrogation: Knox was invited merely to build a list of visitors to the house, which exists and is in evidence. After Amanda Knox had made her witness statement at 1:45am, she wasn’t questioned again that evening. She decided to made another witness statement at 5:45am, but she wasn’t asked any questions.

John Douglas’s claim #11

In the same Krista Ericksson interview, yet again John Douglas alludes to Amanda Knox being tag-teamed by 12 police officers on 5 November 2007. The infamous lie that Steve Moore has tried so hard to spread very widely among the gullible.

KE: Amanda, while under interrogation accused another man, Patrick Lumumba. Why would she have done that?
JD: The police knew they had negroid hairs at the crime scene. Amanda exchanged texts the night before with Patrick Lumumba, who’s of African descent, like Guede (Note: Lumumba owned the bar where Amanda worked as a waitress. He told her she wasn’t needed for work that night). Because the DNA evidence had not come back yet, they jumped to the conclusion the hairs belonged to Lumumba. They interrogated her accordingly. The tactics used was to have Amanda say what the police wanted. You get people to confess under this psychological torture.

Untrue. What torture? Douglas sounds dangerously deluded here and should perhaps be banned from the central police station.

There is a written record entered into evidence and a signed statement Knox insisted upon. The single subject of this voluntary, spontaneous discussion (Knox building a list of visitors to the house) was described above, as were those few present (two small women and a male onlooker from Rome).

There is zero proof that any of them jumped to conclusions or that they “interrogated” Knox “accordingly”. Knox simply cracked spontaneously when a message she denied sending was spotted on the cellphone she shared with the officers.

There is no mention of negroid hairs in the official court reports.

John Douglas’s claim #12

He repeatedly implies the interrogators had foreknowledge of the Knox-Lumumba text exchange.

They brought her into an interrogation room… They had checked the records of Amanda’s mobile phone. The last exchange was a text from Patrick Lumumba saying she didn’t have to come to work that night because business was slow and a texted reply from her:

Untrue. It was ascertained in court that the police didn’t know that Diya Lumumba had sent Amanda Knox a text message. Here is the relevant trial testimony/

GCM: In this message, was there the name of the person it was meant for?
AK: No, it was the message I wrote to my boss. The one that said “Va bene. Ci vediamo piu tardi. Buonata serate.”
GCM: But it could have been a message to anyone. Could you see from the message to whom it was written?
AK: Actually, I don’t know if the information is in telphone”¦
GCM: But they didn’t say it has him, but they said it was him!
AK: No, They didn’t say it was him, but they said “We know who it is, we who it is. You were with him, you met him.”

All courts of course disbelieved that last part, they had no idea who Patrick was, and Knox served three years for maliciously framing him. The Supreme Court twice ruled that all appeals were concluded. Knox is a felon for life, though Douglas never ever mentions this.

5. An Assessment Of Douglas’s Claims So Far

John Douglas hasn’t substantiated any of his claims about Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s questioning on 5 November 2007. He hasn’t referred to any of the official court reports or court testimonies. He never bothered to listen to both sides of the story by speaking to the prosecutors or some of the police officers involved in the case. Instead he has mindlessly repeated the PR lies that were widely propagated in the media by Amanda Knox’s family and supporters.

To say his articles and books about the Meredith Kercher case lack academic rigour would be a massive understatement. He is like a dim-witted high school student who is too lazy to do any of his own research and just copies the work of other dim-witted and lazy students. His standard of work with regard to the Meredith Kercher case isn’t acceptable for teenage high-school students let alone at undergraduates at university. It seems that he has plagiarised the work of the class dunce i.e. Steve Moore without bothering to fact-check any of his claims. It’s hard to believe that John Douglas actually went to university and has a degree and doctorate.

As for Steve Moore and Michael Heavey, Douglas’s constant companions in 2013, they tried hard to use their respective backgrounds in the FBI and law to bolster their credibility and underline their expertise and trustworthiness when trying to persuade the public that Amanda Knox is innocent.

However, their effect on the case was minimal. They really proved only that being a former FBI agent or a judge counts for absolutely nothing if you don’t bother to read a single page of any of the official court reports and court testimonies, and instead unquestioningly believe whatever Amanda Knox and her PR, her family and her supporters say, without bothering to do any fact-checking.

This simple-minded and superficial approach is the reason why Steve Moore and Michael Heavey have got so many basic facts about the case wrong.

Expecting an expert to substantiate their claims is not unreasonable. Providing proof is essential in academia, science and law. It’s one of most basic skills taught in schools. Any high school history student knows it’s important to support their points with evidence and analyse and evaluate the trustworthiness and usefulness of sources.

It should be self-evident even to a half-wit that the accused, their family and supporters might not be trustworthy and reliable sources and nothing they say should be taken at face value and accepted as the gospel truth. That’s the reason why it is critical to fact-check their claims and listen to the other side of the story i.e. read the official court reports and court testimonies or speak to the prosecutors or some of the police officers involved in the case..

Knowing there are two sides to every story and being mindful of the importance of reserving judgment before hearing both sides is not some hitherto unknown truth. This piece of wisdom has been around for over two thousand years:

“The first to speak in court sounds right”” until the cross-examination begins.” (Proverbs 18:17).

It defies belief that so many of Amanda Knox’s high-profile supporters and journalists have accepted what Amanda Knox and her supporters say as the gospel truth, especially as she is a self-confessed liar who has been convicted of lying by all courts, including the Italian Supreme Court.

Posted by The Machine on 08/16/18 at 06:10 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (17)

How With Myriad False Claims Steve Moore Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots

Posted by Peter Quennell

Steve Moore

1. Steve Moore’s Interrogation Hoax

You can see proofs of mafia poodle Steve Moore’s multiple misstatements of the case in Part 2 below.

What Moore is really, really short on is hard proofs. Instead he makes things up. No court has ever sided with him. Not even the defense teams sided with him. Some claims are at flat-out variance with what Knox herself conceded on the stand.

Moore has never released his curriculum vitae, despite prodding, and we have questioned before whether he has any training or experience at investigations. Tellingly, he seems to know nothing of the extensive FBI/Italy cooperation he puts at risk. See the posts below and previously.

Here is a key claim from Steve Moore.

Amanda Knox was interrogated for 8 hours. Overnight. Without food or water. In a police station. In a foreign country. In a foreign language. By a dozen different officers. Without being allowed a lawyer…

The Inquisition Amanda Knox experienced in Perugia was no more legally or morally defensible than the Salem Witch Trials. No rational person should believe that the results of what she went through are reliable evidence.

What 8 hours? What dozen officers? She was there against the wishes of police. She had an interpreter. She refused a lawyer. And at trial (long before Moore wrote) she confirmed she was given refreshments, and treated well.

So none of those claims is correct. Moore made them all up.

To nail this hoax that Moore has propagated hardest, one of our truth promoters (we are not sure who) has kindly put together this timeline for Knox at the Questura the first week.

It is now being tweeted. Greatly appreciated.

However, from recent translations, we can now with great confidence go beyond that on the first week.

We know more of the four session timings, and precisely what was discussed, and precisely who were the few investigators that were present at each of the four.

And that Knox signed every page of the record of all four sessions, so every one of those quite short discussions of leads WAS recorded.

And that Knox’s status along with that of many others was a simple “person with possible useful information”. She was not even a witness, let alone a suspect, as the defenses conceded at trial.

See posts 19 to 21 here in our Interrogation Hoax series.

See this post and this post by KrissyG.

So, day by day, despite the numerous contradictory claims first initiated by Knox herself, this was her highly provable situation at Perugia’s central police station.

Only on the first day was Knox and the others in the house asked to hang on late at the Questura until the questioning of all of them was done

On the second and third days Knox was asked to be there for the questioning periods and visits to the house but at all other times she was free to leave.

On the fourth day Knox was not even required. She turned up very late with Sollecito and then, contrary to police advice, insisted on remaining there.

The ONLY officer in discussion with Knox when she framed Patrick was Rita Ficarra - and she is smaller than Knox (see posts 2 to 4 and 12 here).

All the Italian courts had those same documents. They had THAT picture. Not one, including the Supreme Court, accepted Knox’s version or Steve Moore’s.

Accordingly Knox is a convicted felon for life for maliciously framing Patrick, with no chance of reversal, and she rightly served three years.

Those translated documents blow right out of the water Moore’s endless shrill promotion (see also numerous YouTubes) of “54 hours” and “tag-teams of interrogators” and “premature targeting of Knox” and “forced confession” and “no sleep” and “no bathroom breaks”.

Moore always leaves out Sollecito’s arc that led to him turning against Knox on the record at least twice in the early days. Media should push him to explain that.

2. How Steve Moore Misleads

These posts are in chronological order over more than seven years, pointing to how unaccepting of numerous corrections Steve Moore has been in his unsound flame wars against Italian justice.

1 Click for Post: Steve Moore Is Baffling Informed Case Observers On Both Sides Of The Atlantic

2 Click for Post: Steve Moore Really, Really Believes Amanda Knox’s Alibi #5! Or Was That Alibi #7?

3 Click for Post: Newsweek Report From Italy On Damage From Knox/Marriott Campaign To Knox Interests & US Image

4 Click for Post: Ten Examples Of How The Former Campus Cop Steve Moore Serially Mischaracterizes The Case

5 Click for Post: Michelle Moore Lets Slip How Conspiracy Nut Bruce Fischer Brainwashed Steve Moore

6 Click for Post: Scientific Statement Analysis: Claims Made By Steve Moore About The Investigations In Italy

7 Click for Post: Scientific Statement Analysis #5: Analysis Of Michelle Moore Protesting Steve Moore Is Not A Phony

8 Click for Post: The Seattle University Panel: Some Of The Ways In Which Steve Moore Got His Analysis Wrong

9 Click for Post: Why The FOA’s Increasingly Hapless Steve Moore Should Probably Stay Well Away From TV

10 Click for Post: “Million Dollar Campaign” To Try To Influence The Jury Is Being Widely Reported To A Startled Italy

11 Click for Post: With Diffamazione Complaint Against False Claims In Oggi Knox’s Legal Prospects Continue To Slide

12 Click for Post: Dr Mignini Pushes Back Against His Demonizers Trying To Ascribe Non-Existant “Satanic Theory”

13 Click for Post: Knox Apologists Attempt To Bend Congress; But Nobody Important Turns Up

14 Click for Post: Fifty Of The Most Common Myths Still Promoted Without Restraint By The Knox PR Campaign

15 Click for Post: Netflixhoax 22 Omitted - State Department Monitored Knox 2007-11; Zero Ill Treatment Reported

16 Click for Post: Why Did The Mainstream Media Enable A Takeover By The Conspiracy Nuts?

17 Click for Post: Trashing Of Italian Justice To Bend Trial Outcomes And How The Republic Pushes Back

18 Click for Post: With Sollecito’s First Plea For Mitigation Seen As A Flop, His Behavior Seems Extremely Suspect

19 Click for Post: Being Reported: Significant Developments In The Sollecito Crime Family

20 Click for Post: “Americans Are Paying Knox $10,000 A Gig To Trash Italian Cops - Smart Move Liberating Her”

Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/15/18 at 04:52 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (16)

Knox & ECHR: How Abysmal Researcher Avrom Brendzel Raises False Hope In The Knox Sheep

Posted by The Machine

1. The Real ECHR Context

Our previous post explained Knox’s slim-to-zero chances of winning at the ECHR.

Her lawyers, knowing how much and how inconsistently Knox lies, and with zero paper trail in support of her claim that she was forced to frame an innocent man, had really only pulled a PR stunt. As thousands of Italian lawyers are known to do every year.

But ignorant of the highly documented facts, and the ECHR’s admission rules, and Cassation’s final ruling which shut the ECHR out, the gullible Knox sheep still spend hours and hours misleading themselves into thinking their cherub is home free.

And that her three-year felony conviction will be wound back.

2. Avrom Brendzel’s False Claims

The non-lawyer Avrom Brendzel promotes Knox ardently on Twitter. And he has written at enormous length, very misleadingly, twice on Knox and the ECHR.

Ground Report

debunked by Kermit here.

serially inaccurate sites

That second one (The Next Legal Step in the Amanda Knox Case: The European Court of Human Rights) is again riddled with rudimentary errors and PR myths.

Brendzel clearly hasn’t read many or even any of the official court reports and court testimonies - as of course the ECHR will have done.

Instead he has bought into the lies and misinformation by Amanda Knox’s supporters and, too lazy to do any fact-checking, has regurgitated them with bells and whistles here.

He has relied only on these people for his information for way too long, and it explains why he gets so many basic facts wrong.

1. Wrong on conviction overturn

His long rambling article addressed at them explains why he thinks it’s highly likely that an advisory from the ECHR will result in

...the eventual revision of Knox’s conviction for false accusation, meaning an acquittal or other dismissal of the conviction.

He doesn’t seem to understand that the ECHR has zero power to reverse or quash any convictions, let alone that they will recommend that to Italy.

“The Court does not act as a court of appeal in relation to national courts; it does not rehear cases, it cannot quash, vary or revise their decisions.”

(The European Court of Human Rights)

Judge Marasca stated in his Supreme Court report that Amanda Knox’s conviction for calunnia is protected as a final judgement:

“On the other hand, in the slanderous declarations against Lumumba, which earned her [Amanda Knox] a conviction, the status of which is now protected as final judgement.”

In other words, Amanda Knox’s conviction for calunnia is final and can’t be changed.

2. Wrong on rights violated

Brendzel also falsely claims:

...the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation agreed that Knox’s rights under Italian law had been violated during the questioning and ruled that her statements from the questioning could not be used against her.

The Italian Supreme Court has never stated that Amanda Knox’s rights were violated. That’s the reason why he is unable to substantiate his claim with a verbatim quotation from the Supreme Court.

Amanda Knox’s witness statements could be used against her in the slander trial. They couldn’t be used against her at the murder trial because she wasn’t represented by a lawyer when she made them.

She was warned repeatedly about that but chose to press on. That was not her rights being violated. She chose that.

3. Wrong on Knox “questioning”

Brendzel also repeats the PR lie that Amanda Knox was continually questioned until about 6:00 am:

“The questioning of both lasted until the morning of November 6. Knox’s statements, written out by computer printer in Italian by the police, were indicated as generated at 1:45 am and 5:45 am.”

In fact she was barely questioned all night. She herself insisted on both statements, and she signed. She wasn’t ever questioned after she had made her spontaneous, unforced statement at 1:45am.

She chose to make another witness statement at 5:45am, but she wasn’t questioned at that time and had even been warned she should have a lawyer present at all statements, which she chose to ignore.

4. Wrong on Knox coercion

Brendzel also claims that Amanda Knox was “seemingly being subjected to some form of physically or emotionally painful coercion”. But there is no credible evidence that she was beaten or coerced.

On the contrary, according to the corroborative eyewitness testimony of the two women who were present throughout (Rita Ficarra and Anna Donnino) and one who looked in (Monica Napoleoni), when Amanda Knox was helping them by listing possible perps she wasn’t hit or threatened. At trial Knox admitted this.

5. Wrong on prior suspect

In line with his kneejerk blaming of the investigators, Brendzel also claims this:

The Italian police and prosecutor did not disclose to Knox during the November 5/6, 2007 questioning that she had become a suspect prior to the beginning of the questioning.

But no, Knox had not.

The police didn’t have anywhere near enough evidence to make her an official suspect when she voluntarily showed up at the police station that evening and they were still hunting hard for others.

Amanda Knox was there co-operating only as “a person with possible useful information” or possible witness - not as an official suspect - on 5 November 2007. On that night she built a list of visitors to the house at Rita Ficarra’s request. A mere list. Which is in evidence. That’s hardly a request for a suspect - and the list pointed away from her.

Giobbi’s gut feelings about Amanda Knox being guilty were quite frankly irrelevant, and they conflict with every other testifier at the trial. (He was from Rome and seemingly grandstanding as Knox’s conniption had had nothing to do with him.)

It wasn’t until Amanda Knox spontaneously admitted she was at the cottage when Meredith was killed and claimed she brought the killer back to the cottage that the investigators had anything to provisionally charge her for - and then only of withholding evidence, not murder or calunnia.

6. Wrong on court findings

Brendzel doesn’t mention any of these damning findings of the Supreme Court: (1) she had said she went out multiple times and Sollecito repeatedly said she did; (2) there was overwhelming proof of multiple attackers, (3) it’s a proven fact Amanda Knox was at the cottage when Meredith was killed, (4) she washed Meredith’s blood off in the small bathroom, (5) she knew specific details about the murder, (6) she provably lied to the police, and (7) the break-in was staged.

Cassation also concluded Raffaele Sollecito was present when Meredith was killed. It’s not difficult to work out who Rudy Guede’s co-attackers were - there is no evidence of anyone else being at the cottage on the evening of the murder.

7. Wrong on trustworthiness

The gullible Brendzel regards Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito as credible and trustworthy witnesses and quotes them a lot. That is despite the fact they have both admitted lying to the police.

For felony lying Knox rightly served three years.

Knox’s numerous lies have been noted in multiple official court reports by the judges who presided over her trial in Perugia and her appeal in Florence and by the Supreme Court.

Judge Massei and Judge Nencini both noted that the computer and telephone records prove that Knox and Sollecito lied repeatedly. Judge Chieffi and Judge Marasca both noted that Amanda Knox lied in their Supreme Court reports.

Judge Martuscelli comprehensively detailed Raffaele Sollecito’s numerous lies and false alibis in his report - which explained why Sollecito was denied compensation:

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s multiple false alibis and numerous lies remain an Achilles heel of their supporters. Nobody has ever provided a plausible innocent explanation for their lies.

Brendzel, like Peter Gill - another unworldly academic - has chosen not to address them. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s not even aware of them.

3. My Conclusions

There is no justification for Brendzel’s absolute certainty that Knox and Sollecito are innocent. There is no exculpatory evidence whatsoever e.g. verified alibis or CCTV footage that proves Amanda Knox and Sollecito were not at the cottage at the time of the murder.

Surely, as a scientist he should want proof of their innocence. Brendzel is clearly a good academic and intelligent. His scientific contributions are listed here,

However, he clearly lacks emotional intelligence. Nobody with an ounce of common sense would unquestioningly believe and trust two self-confessed liars. This naivety and gulliblity is too common a denominator amongst the Knox sheep.

Posted by The Machine on 05/30/18 at 05:05 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (11)

How With Myriad False Claims Nina Burleigh Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots

Posted by Chimera

Nina Burleigh, over-exposed and under-informed, not a serious reporter

1. The Fatal Gift Of Superficiality

This may come to be seen as the best-documented murder investigation and court process in legal history.

In any country. For example the Wiki archive now exceeds 2500 documents, with a large fraction now in English, and a further 1000-plus other files, and even those will not be the final totals. In the first week of the investigation alone many dozens of reports were done.

Recent posts on TJMK have started showing how, when one adopts a birds-eye view of any area of the case, evidence points now seen together as a whole become impossible to argue with. Those series are increasingly making the army of case critics nervous and quiet.

I recently found mafia poodle Nina Burleigh’s Fatal Gift of Beauty (FGOB) on the used book shelves, and decided to give it a read. This is her 2011 book with a very Pro-Knox slant. and it is a great Exhibit A of superficiality.

2. Comparing FGOB with the Knox Book

To be fair, Burleigh’s book is nowhere near as excessive in making the false and malicious accusations as Knox’s did, nor is it as grotesquely illogical.

So I am not going into the detail as I did with Revenge of the Knox. That 2013 book was both (1) extremely accusatory; and (2) extremely non-sensical. For comparison here are a few commentaries on the Knox/Kulman book.

Click for Post: How Knox’s Tide Of Malicious Demonization Now Threatens Real Pushback #1

Click for Post: How Knox’s Tide Of Malicious Demonization Now Threatens Real Pushback #2

Click for Post: How Knox’s Tide Of Malicious Demonization Now Threatens Real Pushback #3

Click for Post: Revenge of the Knox, Series 4: Exposing The Tortured Logic That Permeates Her Book #1

Click for Post: 48 Tortured Logic Instances In Knox’s Book #21 To #48

3. TJMK Heavily Criticized Burleigh

Burleigh’s amateurism and bias - she is neither a career reporter or crime expert or Italian speaker - have been rebutted repeatedly here on TJMK.

The sloppy style of reporting in US weeklies and on TV of Burleigh paled in comparison with the excellent reports of the Italian-speaking Rome group of foreign reporters.

Click for Post: Knox Groupie Nina Burleigh Posting The Nastiest And Least Accurate Reports

Click for Post: How The Strongarm Public Relations Resulted in Most Of The Media Getting It Wrong

Click for Post: Nina Burleigh: View From A Broad Who Doesn’t Seem To Like Broads Or Being Abroad

Click for Post: Media Starting To Take A Closer Look At The Knox PR Shills With Nina Burleigh Exhibit One

Click for Post: What’s Nina Burleigh Got Against Women? A Bizarre Time Report Suggests Deep Problems In Her Psyche

Click for Post: More On The Ill-Considered Campaign of Vilification By The Knox Adulator Nina Burleigh

Click for Post: One Final Word On Nina Burleigh In Response To Those Still Hoaxed By Her

Click for Post: Why Claim Rudy Guede Did It Alone When So Much Proof Against?

Click for Post: Mignini And Giuttari Win Final Round In Spurious 2010 Conviction By Rogue Prosecutor And Judge

Click for Post: Much-Admired Feminist On Knox As Ice-Cold In Capanne And Media’s Mixed Performance On The Case

Click for Post: Why Smart Feminists Much Prefer To Keep Amanda Knox At Arms Length

4. General Problems With Burleigh’s Book

(a) The Fatal Gift Of Beauty was actually written in 2011

True, this fact alone is not enough to discredit the book, as much did happen from 2007 to 2011. However, so much has happened since then with zero updates that the book feels extremely incomplete.

There is no mention of (I) the Hellmann/Zanetti ruling; (II) the Cassation 2013 annulment of H/Z; (III) Knox’s media campaign(s); (IV) New appeal at Florence 2013 and Nencini’s report 2014; (V) Bruno/Marasca throwing the case out against AK/RS 2015, while still placing them at the scene; (VI) Sollecito’s 2017 failed attempt at compensation; (VII) Book trial against Sollecito; (VIII) Guede’s attempts to re-open his case.

(b) Despite claims, Burleigh didn’t interview authorities on the facts

See FGOB, Notes, Page 307. There Burleigh claims to have consulted Italian authorities, and Italian legal experts on the matter, but does not list any of them. Almost all the names given are American.

She also claims to have listened to wiretaps and read through the ‘‘digital archive’’ but avoids specifics. In the acknowledgment section (Page 317), AK and RS lawyers are listed as contributors, but given that they are paid to promote their innocence, they are hardly objective.

Burleigh does list American books and media, and US ‘‘experts’. But what is really lacking is hard information from the Italians.

Burleigh does list Mignini and Comodi, which is surprising. However, FGOB does more to give PR-filtered background on them than to actually address Meredith’s case

(c) Most of the book has nothing to do with Meredith’s case

Burleigh goes on at length about the backstory of Knox, historical information about Italy, and much of the media attention. In fact, is fair to assume that Burleigh has little to no grasp of the actual factual record. It is flowerly and exotic, but largely irrelevant. FGOB could have been written as a brochure and no hard facts would have been left out.

(d) Burleigh glossed over the hard truths of the case

Burleigh does include bits and pieces of the case, like how the police suspected a break in, and how Knox did act differently. However, it is lacking in the hard facts and evidence and truth that would have totally stood her slant and conclusions on their head. Better idea would have been to dump the filler (which was most of the book), and go with some of those facts. See Part 5 below.

(e) Burleigh more or less accepts wholesale the PR version

She does this without doing much in the way of critically analyzing anything. She also promotes the myths that police and prosecutors jumped to conclusions, and suspected Knox because she was different. Of course, if Burleigh had more hard truths, then the book would look quite different.

5. Hard Facts Missing From Burleigh’s FGOB

It is difficult to whittle down a list of Burleigh’s omissions, but these in particular permitted her superficiality and bias.

(1) Multiple False Alibis

Click for Post: Amanda Knox”¦ Trapped, In Her Own Words

Click for Post: Raffaele Sollecito”¦ Trapped, In His Own Words

(2) False Accusation of an Innocent Man is Minimized

Click for Post: True Justice Is Rendered For Patrick Lumumba (Sort Of)

(3) The ‘‘Interrogation’’ Really was a Hoax

Click for Post: The Knox Interrogation Hoax #1: Overview Of The Series - Multiple Knox Versions v One Stark Truth

(4) Minimization of How Bad Knox was on Witness Stand

Click for Post: Knox Testimony Does Not Seem To Have Gained Much Traction Here In Italy

Click for Post: Italy Shrugs: Why Amanda Knox’s Testimony Seems To Have Been A Real Flop

(5) The Actual Transcripts of Knox’s Questionings

Click for Post: Interrogation Hoax #19: ALL Knox Q&A Sessions 2-6 November 2007 WERE Recorded #1

Click for Post: Interrogation Hoax #19: ALL Knox Q&A Sessions 2-6 November 2007 WERE Recorded #2

Click for Post: Omitted - This Very Telling Knox Questioning By Dr Mignini #1

Click for Post: Omitted - This Very Telling Knox Questioning By Dr Mignini #2

Click for Post: Omitted - This Very Telling Knox Questioning By Dr Mignini #3

Click for Post: Omitted - This Very Telling Knox Questioning By Dr Mignini #4

(6) How Conclusively Footprint on the Bathmat Nails Sollecito

Click for Post: The Incriminating Bathroom Evidence: Visual Analysis shows the Footprint IS Sollecito’s

(7) The Break in Was in Fact Staged

Click for Post: A Visual Guide To The Staged Break-In Via Filomena’s Window

(8) Staged Break In by Knox in April 2007 Just 7 Months Earlier

Click for Post: Amanda Knox Confirms She Staged A Break-In in Seattle Long A Sore Point To Previous Victims

(9) Cellphone Activity Disproves What AK/RS are Saying

Click for Post: Those Pesky Certainties Cassation’s Fifth Chambers May Or May Not Convincingly Contend With #1

(10) Burleigh Subscribes to No-Evidence Claim But Ignores This

Click for Post: Seven Years Clutching Knox And Trashing Italian Justice To Joy Of Mafias #3

(11) Knox’s Lamp Locked in Meredith’s Room, Because….

Click for Post: How The Clean-Up And The Locked Door Contribute To The Very Strong Case For Guilt

(12) Knox’s Statements Reek of Guilt

Click for Post: A More Detailed Analysis Of Knox’s Statement 6 November 2007 Points Even More Strongly Toward Guilt

Click for Post: Scientific Statement Analysis: Amanda Knox’s Statement To The Appeal Court On 11 December

Click for Post: Scientific Statement Analysis: Analysis Of Amanda Knox’s Email To Seattle Of 4 November 2007

(13) Innocent People Don’t Repeatedly Attack Each Other

Click for Post: Multiple Examples Of How RS And AK Have Tried To Apply More Blame To The Other

6. Overall Impression of FGOB

Burleigh’s book is not nearly as bad as Knox’s, and in fact a bit less so than Sollecito’s.

Too much is spent on irrelevant backstory of Knox, Sollecito, Italy and others, rather than discussing the actual case. It is difficult to be harsh to a book when there is so little material to work with.

While NB does ‘‘get her feet wet’’ with the facts, her coverage is so superficial that it really makes the case look light on evidence, heavy on prejudice and speculation.

If Burleigh was actually to read the facts omitted in part 5 above (any of them), her views would have no choice but to adjust. I don’t think Burleigh actually is a PR shill, but rather an extremely poor and lazy reporter.

Posted by Chimera on 05/18/18 at 09:48 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (22)

Why Did The Mainstream Media Enable A Takeover By The Conspiracy Nuts?

Posted by The Machine

How Seattle is misinformed. Exoneration? Riiiight….

Rampant Conspiracies

This condemnation is written in light of the ever-growing wave of translated transcripts.

They show how extremely good the investigation and case at trial really were. And how extremely wrong were too much of the press. Why did mainstream media organisations allow so many conspiracy nuts to spout their unsubstantiated and ridiculously far-fetched claims?

Mainstream media organisations have known for a while that the general public has an insatiable appetite for documentaries about allegedly innocent people who have been convicted of murders they didn’t commit.

A cursory glance at the selection of true crime documentaries on Netflix provides evidence of the appeal of this specific genre. Amanda Knox, West of Memphis and Making of a Murderer are all hugely popular.

The Serial podcast about the Adnan Syed/Hae Mine Lee case is one the most downloaded podcast of all time. Sarah Koenig presented the case from the defence’s perspective and concluded there isn’t enough evidence to convict Adnan Syed of Hae Min Lee’s murder.

The juries in the respective cases above listened to the prosecution and defence present their cases in court.

They weighed the testimonies of the experts and witnesses for both sides and they were all convinced that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, Damian Echols, Jesse Misskelley and Jason Baldwin and Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey and Adnan Syed were all involved in exceptionally brutal murders.

There is damning evidence against all the people mentioned above. But many journalists don’t want the facts to get in the way of a good story.

Among The Worst

Paul Ciolino admitted in a question-and-answer session about the Meredith Kercher case at Seattle University that CBS News didn’t care whether someone was innocent. The only thing they care about is the story.

I work for CBS News. I want to tell you one thing about CBS. We don’t care if you did it. We don’t care if you’re innocent. We like a story. We want to do a story. That’s all we care about.

It was recognised as far back as 1999 in the legal profession that journalists have an inclination to slant their reports in favour of the defendants.

P. Cassell, “The guilty and the ‘innocent’: An examination of alleged cases of wrongful conviction from false confessions”, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, 1999:

...academic research on miscarriages should not rely on media descriptions of the evidence against defendants. Journalists will all too often slant their reports in the direction of discovering “news” by finding that an innocent person has been wrongfully convicted.

The default position of mainstream media organisations in the US was that Amanda Knox is innocent despite the fact that the vast majority of journalists who covered the case weren’t in a position to know this - they hadn’t regularly attended the court hearings or read a single page of any of the official court reports.

The news organizations in Seattle was so partisan in their support of Amanda Knox that they were effectively just mouthpieces for the PR firm of David Marriott that was hired by Curt Knox to influence a credulous and naive local audience who felt duty-bound to support the hometown girl.

Lawyer Anne Bremner couldn’t resist the temptation to use the case to promote herself in the media. Judge Michael Heavey was recruited so he could use his position as a judge to sway the public.

The vast majority of people in Seattle were kept completely ignorant of the basic facts of the case by all their newspapers and all their TV news, so they were not in a position to realize that both Bremner and Heavey got basic facts wrong.

Many American journalists who reported on the case hold the ridiculous belief that the US legal system is the only competent and just one in the world, and that no US citizen charged by a foreign court with any crime can possibly be guilty of it or ever receive a fair trial.

The claim that Amanda Knox was being framed for a murder she didn’t commit by corrupt officials in a foreign country by her supporters was manna from heaven for mainstream media organizations in America.

It was a sensational story that was guaranteed to enrage and entertain a gullible American public in equal measure.

It’s not possible to ascertain precisely who originated the story that Amanda Knox was being framed for a murder she didn’t commit by a corrupt legal system.

But it almost certainly came from someone within or very close to Amanda Knox’s family. Jan Goodwin was one of the first journalists to make the claim after interviewing Edda Mellas for Marie Claire in 2008.

Studying abroad should have been a grand adventure. Instead, Amanda Knox has spent a year in jail, accused by a corrupt legal system of murdering her roommate.

Goodwin didn’t offer any evidence to substantiate her claim that the Italy legal system is corrupt, presumably the word of Edda Mellas was good enough for her.

It transpired that the word of Edda Mellas and ex-husband Curt and Amanda Knox’s supporters was good enough for the vast majority of journalists who covered the case on both sides of Atlantic.

They unquestiongly accepted everything they heard without bothering to do any fact-checking whatsoever. Time and again not a single investigator or court official in Perugia was interviewed.

This explains the reason why so many articles about the case are riddled with factual errors and well-known PR lies.

Other media organisations wanted to get in on the act and claim there was dastardly plot to frame Amanda Knox for Meredith’s murder.

CBS News allowed a couple of zany conspiracy nuts to spout their nonsense without providing any evidence to support their wild-eyed claims. Here’s Paul Ciolino again:

This is a lynching ... this is a lynching that is happening in modern day Europe right now and it’s happening to an American girl who has no business being charged with anything. (Paul Ciolino, CBS News.)

Here is Peter van Sant.

We have concluded that Amanda Knox is being railroaded… I promise you’re going to want to send the 82nd Airborne Division over to Italy to get this girl out of jail. (Peter Van Sant, CBS News.)

The reporting was invariably tinged with xenophobic sentiments. Italy was portrayed as some backward Third World country whose police force was comically incompetent. Here’s CBS’s Doug Longhini.

But in the case of Amanda Knox, the American student convicted of murder in Italy last December, the Via Tuscolana apparently failed to separate fantasy from truth. Too many Italian investigators rivaled Fellini as they interpreted, and reinterpreted facts, to suit their own, surrealistic script.” (Doug Longhini, CBS News).

WHERE in all the transcripts is that proved? Doug Longhini’s pompous and pseudo-intellectual comments are meaningless and lack any substance, although he was no doubt very pleased himself for his “clever” reference to Fellini.

Ironically Longhini was unable to separate fantasy from truth when he produced the error-ridden American Girl, Italian Nightmare for CBS News. The documentary includes the familiar PR lies about satanic rituals, the 14-hour interrogation sessions, and Knox not knowing Rudy Guede.

Lawyer John Q Kelly seemingly forgot the Latin maxim “semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit” - “he who asserts must prove” - when he claimed that Knox and Sollecito were being railroaded and evidence against them had been manipulated.

My thoughts, Larry, it’s probably the most egregious international railroading of two innocent young people that I have ever seen. This is actually a public lynching based on rank speculation, and vindictiveness. It’s just a nightmare what these parents are going through and what these young adults are going through also.

“There’s been injustice here. There’s been injustice in other countries but this is just beyond the pale. The manipulation of evidence; the most unfavorable inferences drawn from the most common of circumstances and conduct was just a gross injustice here.”

(John Q Kelly, CNN).

Judy Bachrach was also allowed to claim there was a conspiracy to Amanda Knox on CNN.

Everyone knew from the beginning that the prosecutor had it in for Amanda Knox, that the charges are pretty much trumped up…

From the beginning this was carefully choreographed, they wanted to find her guilty, they’ve kept her in jail for two years even before trial and they did find her guilty. This is the way Italian justice is done. If you’re accused, you’re guilty.

There isn’t an ounce of hard evidence against her and all of Italy should be ashamed actually.” (Judy Bachrach, CNN).

Arguably the craziest conspiracy nut - and the competition is fierce - is the former FBI agent Steve Moore in early retirement.

Steve Moore claimed the Perugian police, Guilano Mignini, Dr Patrizia Stefanoni, Edgardo Giobbi the head of the Violent Crimes Unit in Rome, Judge Massei, and the Italian Supreme Court were all part of a dastardly plot to frame Amanda Knox.

Moore claimed the following on his blog.

For this to happen, though, pompous prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, forensic perjurer Patrizia Stefanoni, and mind-reading detective Edgardo Giobbi (and others), must be prosecuted for their corruption. The judge who rubber stamped the lies in the first trial, Massei, must be also called to the bar of justice-or back to law school.

In a discussion with lawyer Paul Callan on CNN Moore actually claimed the Supreme Court was involved in the conspiracy.

Paul Callan: “And now “¦ and they (the Perugian police) got the Supreme Court of Italy involved in this conspiracy? You know, that’s like saying that “¦ [Steve Moore interrupts]”

Steve Moore: “Yes, they do. Yes, they do. You are being naive. You don’t understand the Italian system. You don’t understand it. You are defending something you don’t understand.”

Barbie Nadeau reported Moore’s claim that evidence was manipulated for The Daily Beast.

The evidence that was presented in trial was flawed, it was manipulated.

Steve Moore has never provided any evidence to support his wild-eyed hysterical claims there was a huge conspiracy involving a prosecutor, different police departments, Judge Massei and judges at the Italian Supreme Court to frame Amanda Knox for Meredith’s murder.

It’s no wonder TV legal analyst Paul Callan was smiling, desperately trying not to burst out laughing, when he discussed the case with Moore on CNN.

Moore provided irrefutable proof in the short time he was on CNN that he is ignorant of the basic facts of the case, and that he hasn’t read any of the official court reports. He falsely claimed “the DNA that they said was Raffaele’s was actually a woman’s DNA.”

No expert claimed this at the trial.

Sollecito’s DNA was identified by two separate DNA tests. Of the 17 loci tested in the sample, Sollecito’s profile matched 17 out of 17. David Balding, a professor of Statistical Genetics at University College London, analysed the DNA evidence against Sollecito and concluded it was “very strong”.

Moore told Erin Burnett: “The second trial proved with independent experts that the DNA that they claim was the victim’s was not on the knife.”

A number of forensic experts - Dr Stefanoni, Dr Biondo, Professor Novelli, Professor Torricelli, and Luciano Garofano - have all confirmed that sample 36B which was extracted from the blade of the knife WAS Meredith’s DNA. The independent experts did not carry out a test on this sample.

In England there were deranged conspiracy nuts claiming Amanda Knox was framed too.

Amy Jenkins bizarrely claimed in The Independent that Knox and Sollecito were the victims of a miscarriage of justice because Knox was a young woman, the Italians didn’t like the fact Knox snogged her boyfriend and someone needed to save face or something.

The truth is, Amanda Knox’s great crime was to be a young woman ““ but mainly it was to be a young woman who didn’t know how to behave. She was 20 years old, she was suffering from shock, and she was in a foreign country. She was interrogated with no lawyer and no translator present. She made a phony confession.

Clearly no saint, she wasn’t a Madonna either. That’ll make her a whore then. She snogged her boyfriend; she was slightly provocative on Facebook; she turned an inappropriate cartwheel. In a Catholic country, it’s clearly not such a leap to go from there to stabbing your room-mate in the neck during a violent sexual assault ““ because that’s the leap the prosecution made.

To save face, Knox and her poor boyfriend had to be somehow levered into the frame. As the whole juggernaut of injustice chugged on it became harder and harder for the six lay judges who acted as a jury to destroy a case that had been constructed over two years by prosecutors who were their close working colleagues.” (Amy Jenkins, The Independent).

Conclusion: READ THE DOCUMENTS

More and more the translated documents prove that all of them have been wrong. The conspiracy theorists predictably haven’t provided one iota of evidence that there was ever any conspiracy to frame Amanda Knox for Meredith’s murder.

I suspect the producers at mainstream media organisations like CBS News and CNN knew there never was any conspiracy to frame Amanda Knox all along, but they didn’t get care because they wanted a sensational story.

Too many people within the media perversely see murder as entertainment. Rather than providing balanced and factually accurate coverage of murder cases they want to outrage and entertain the masses with melodramatic stories of conspiracies involving corrupt prosecutors and cops who want to frame innocent people for murders they didn’t commit instead.

We shouldn’t be surprised by the popularity of Making of a Murderer on Netflix. It filled a vacuum after Knox and Sollecito were acquitted in 2015.

I have no doubts that journalists from mainstream media organisations are currently looking for the next alleged case of someone being framed or railroaded for a murder they didn’t commit.

Posted by The Machine on 12/30/17 at 03:33 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (1)

How Saul Kassin Hoaxed The American Psychology Law Society

Posted by Ergon

Knox and Kassin at the American Psychology Law Society Conference 2017

1. Post Overview

Serial misrepresenter of the Knox “interrogation” Saul Kassin has made yet another false claim, once again to a large audience.

This time it was to the American Psychology Law Society Conference in Seattle, Washington, March 16th-18th, and it suggests he simply cannot count.

2. Kassin Already Shown A Fraud

SIX prior posts correct numerous Kassin “mistakes”.

1. Claims Amanda Knox’s Confessions Resemble “False Confessions” Not Backed Up By Any Criminal Research

2. Saul Kassin: An Example Of How The Knox Campaign Is Misleading American Experts And Audiences

3. Correcting Saul Kassin’s Massively Inaccurate Description Of Amanda Knox’s So-Called Confession

4. Questions For Knox: Do You Really Think “False Memories” Claim Framing Italians Yet Again Will Help?

5. On Saul Kassin: Our Letter To Dr Douglas Starr Who Wrote An Effusive Profile In The “New Yorker”

6. How Saul Kassin Framed Many Fine Italian Justice Officials - And Then Played Victim When Corrected

3. Interrogation Already Shown A Hoax

EIGHTEEN prior posts on the Knox interrogation hoax describe what actually took place.

It is very important to understand that as the defenses conceded in court under the strict Italian legal definition of “interrogation” Knox was really only ever interrogated twice.

Both times this was by Dr Mignini (Dec 2007 and June 2009) and both times it was at Knox’s own request.

All of her other discussions with investigators early in November 2007 were merely “verbale di sommarie informazioni” or written-up discussion with a person with possible useful information. Notes exist in the record of all these discussions - none remotely coercive - and they were summarised by prosecution witnesses at trial.

See my quote below of the defense lawyers in Italian, where they use the correct Italian legal term. These written-up discussions with Knox carry precisely the same status as the “verbale di sommarie informazioni” with Sophie Purton and numerous others in the records of the case.

Accordingly I use “interrogation” a couple of times in quotes below in rebutting Kassin’s wrong claims.

4. The 45-50-55 Hours Hoax

Quoting Amanda Knox and Saul Kassin at the American Psychology Law Society Conference in Seattle in March 2017:

Kassin: “Knox was questioned for over 50 hours but none was recorded”.

Kassin: “I’ve never seen a case more steeped in misinformation than Amanda Knox’s”.

So, where did the magical 50 hourrs interrogation in 5 days that ‘inevitably lead to false confessions’ first appear?

Professor Kassin will not say, or provide background information to the crowded rooms of trainee law psychologists to which he and Amanda Knox have been repeating this claim.

So, here’s some vital background Kassin seems to have missed which spirals in to the truth.

1. Injustice in Perugia

Steve Moore: “In the five days after the murder of Meredith Kercher, Amanda Knox was interrogated by detectives for 43 hours.

2. CBS News-48 Hrs

Amanda’s focus was the appeal - and she soon had a world-renown ally.

“This case horrifies me. I’d like to say it shocks me. But I’ve seen others like it,” said psychologist and professor Saul Kassin, an expert on police interrogations.

On his own initiative, Kassin filed a report with the Italian (appeals) court on Amanda’s behalf. It outlines some of the psychological reasons why Amanda could have confessed to a murder she did not commit.

“Amanda Knox, like everybody, has a breaking point. She reached her breaking point,” he explained. “Eight or 10 or 12 police officials in a tag team-manner come in and interrogate her… Their goal is a confession and they’re not leaving that room without it.”

Er no, there’s no record of any report by Kassin in the Hellmann court files, and Amanda Knox never released one either.

But regardless, Judge Hellmann ruled Knox should have known Patrick Lumumba was innocent and upheld her 3 year conviction for criminal defamation (calunnia) anyway.

3. American Psychologist/Innocence Project

From “Why Confessions Trump Innocence” by Saul M. Kassin, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, April 2012

Armed with a prejudgment of Knox’s guilt, several police officials interrogated the girl on and off for four days. Her final interrogation started on November 5 at 10 p.m. and lasted until November 6 at 6 a.m., during which time she was alone, without an attorney, tag-teamed by a dozen police, and did not break for food or sleep.

4. CNN Transcripts

CNN May 8, 2011

CURT KNOX, FATHER: Between the time that they actually found Meredith and when Amanda was arrested, there was roughly a 90-hour timeframe. And I’m ball parking the numbers there. During that time, Amanda was in the police station for questioning for—I believe it was 52 hours.

Now we’re getting a little closer to the truth. Knox was possibly at the police station for maybe 52 hours. But actually she wasn’t ‘interrogated’ for that long.

Then going back to when those figures first came out:

5. King 5 News

Amanda Knox’s family says confession coerced

By LINDA BYRON / KING 5 News

Posted on November 13, 2009 at 12:16 PM

She was just flat scared to be alone,” Curt said. “So she went down to the police station with him and they were split into two rooms and then they started going at them.

With physical and mental abuse for 14 hours. No food, water, no official interpreter.”

Prosecutors say Amanda’s accounts swung wildly: She wasn’t at the cottage the night of the murder. She was there, but drunk in another room.

But her parents say she was coerced by police.

“(They said) you know, you’re never going to see your family again,” Curt said. “You’re going to jail for 30 years. You need to come up with something for us, you’re a liar. Come up with something for us. Envision something; throw something out there.”

6. Della Vedova/Ghirga appeal to Hellmann

There’s a summary of a defense analysis of the discussions here - note the “verbale di sommarie informazioni” which is NOT the Italian for “interrogation”.

(p.12) Amanda Knox è stata sottoposta ad esame ed attività investigative e tra il 2 e il 6 novembre 2007, fino al momento del fermo, ha fornito sommarie informazioni e risposto a domande della A.G. come segue:

2 novembre 2007, ore 15.30 VENERDI’: totale ore “¦”¦”¦”¦..12,00
Verbale di sommarie informazioni della Knox, senza indicazione della chiusura.
Testimoni fino alle 3.00 am del 3 novembre 2007

3 novembre 2007, ore 14.45 SABATO totale ore “¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦8,00
Verbale di sommarie informazioni della Knox, senza indicazione della chiusura.
Testimoni indicano fino alle 22,00.

4 novembre 2007, ore 14.45 DOMENICA: totale ore “¦”¦”¦”¦.12,00
Verbale di sommarie informazioni della Knox, ed accesso alla villetta di Via
della Pergola dalle ore 14.45 alle ore 21. Telefonata di Amanda alla zia dice 5 ore
di interrogatorio in questura

5/6 novembre 2007, ore 01.45 LUNEDI’/MARTEDI’: totale ore “¦”¦.5,00
Verbale di sommarie informazioni della Knox inizio alle ore 22.00 del 5
novembre 2009.

6 novembre 2007, ore 05.45 MARTEDI’: totale ore “¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦.3,45
Verbale di “spontanee dichiarazioni” della Knox con successivo breve
memoriale. Dalle ore 1,45 alle 5,45 e memoriale alle ore 14,00.

In 5 giorni la Knox è stata sentita per un totale di circa 53,45 h.

Except, here above I count a total of 40.45 hrs, hmm, not all of which was spent being “interrogated”.

She was in the waiting room with the others, as confirmed by her own phone records, e-mails home, texts, etc. Not to forget headstands, cartwheels, yoga poses and general faffing around with Sollecito.

The defense realized their math was off so they included an additional 13.0 hrs. to the time of her memoriale though they counted their own figures twice, Lol.

Keep in mind her attorneys never argued the time was unreasonable, only that the accusation should not be considered for the calunnia charge.

Their summary was only to show how long she had been ‘present for examination’ in that time she was at the Questura till her arrest. And even then, their figures were wrong..

7. From Rita Ficarra’s Testimony

Knox was let go by the evening of the first day so the 12 hours interrogation figure is incorrect. She also had an official interpreter by 12:30, was fed and allowed to rest in between, wasn’t slapped, and there were only two detectives present.

8. Case follower Soletrader4U analyzed her phone records and case files and came up with a more realistic figure of 17.45 hrs of actual “interrogation”.

5. My Conclusions

It looks like Kassin is still spinning his hoaxes. I invite Professor Kassin to correct his figures and explain how, according to his research, Amanda Knox could have produced a “False Confession” over the span of 17.45 hours of “interrogation” over 5 days?

[Everything in this post applies equally to the ludicrously inaccurate claims of ex FBI “mindhunter” John Douglas in his books and lobbying at the State Department.]

Posted by Ergon on 04/10/17 at 11:31 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Defendants in court, Amanda Knox, Hoaxes against Italy, 2 Italian mileu hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 16 Interrogation hoax, 17 Fake memory hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Marriott PR, Hoaxers from 2009, Saul Kassin, Hoaxers from 2011, John Douglas, Hoaxers: media groups, CNN Network • Comments here (25)

Exposing Peter Gill #2: Nailing His “Proven Miscarriage Of Justice” False Claim

Posted by The Machine

This article is the second in a series of posts about Peter Gill. The first can be read here.

I want to expose some of the claims Gill noisily made only a year ago in an academic paper The Meredith Kercher case for Forensic Science Genetics: Analysis and Implications of the Miscarriages of Justice of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito to see whether they stand up to the light of day.

Peter Gill claims the case is a PROVEN miscarriage of justice with regard to their convictions for Meredith’s murder:

“The case discussed here relates to the proven miscarriage of justice of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in relation to the accusation of murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy on the 1st November, 2007” (Peter Gill, FSI Genetics Report).

Anyone who is unfamiliar with the case might assume after reading Gill’s comments that there must be some exculpatory evidence will supports his claim e.g. verified alibis or CCTV footage that proves Amanda Knox and Sollecito were not at the cottage at the time of the murder.

However, Peter Gill never substantiates this claim. The reason why he can’t substantiate this claim? There is in fact NO exculpatory evidence at all.

Those unfamiliar might also assume that the other pieces of evidence against Knox and Sollecito have been completely discredited. However, Peter Gill chooses to completely ignore this evidence and its stark significance.

“This paper is necessarily restricted to the interpretation of the DNA evidence””without it the original convictions probably would not have occurred.”

How does Peter Gill KNOW the original convictions probably wouldn’t have occurred?

He seems to be labouring under the misapprehension that DNA evidence is mandatory in a murder trial order to secure a conviction.

However, DNA evidence isn’t a required element in any common law jurisdiction. All the pieces of evidence in a murder trial have to be considered. They also have to be considered wholly - not separately.

If firm DNA proof is there good. If it isnt, that is not a fail. The Italian Supreme Court criticised Appeal Judge Hellmann for adopting a piecemeal, atomistic approach to the evidence, and assessing each piece of evidence in isolation to the other pieces of evidence.

“The Hellmann Court of Appeal did not assess the pieces of circumstantial evidence in a comprehensive fashion; it did not evaluate them in a global and unified dimension, but managed to fragment them by evaluating each one in isolation, in an erroneous legal”logical analysis, with the goal of criticizing their individual qualitative significance, whereas if the Hellmann Court of appeal had followed the interpretative rule of this Court of legitimacy, each piece of circumstantial evidence would have been integrated with the others, determining an unequivocal clarification of each of the established facts, so as to reach the logical proof of the responsibility of the accused.” (Judge Chieffi’s Supreme Court report, page 25).

But Gill makes the exact same mistake as Hellmann in adopting a piecemeal approach to the evidence against Knox and Sollecito. Unlike Hellmann, however, he ONLY considers the DNA evidence.

British killers Levi Bellfield and Robin Garbutt were both convicted of murder on far less evidence than Knox and Sollecito and without the prosecution presenting any DNA evidence at their trials.

Nobody batted an eyelid. Presumably because these two killers didn’t hire PR firms and they weren’t young women in their 20s.

By restricting his comments to the DNA evidence, Peter Gill conveniently doesn’t have to address and let alone refute the other pieces of evidence that led mutiple judges - including three separate panels of Supreme Court judges - to believe Knox and Sollecito were involved in Meredith’s murder.

One of the key reasons why Knox and Sollecito were convicted of murder is they repeatedly told the police a pack of lies. They gave completely different accounts of where they were, who they were with and what they were doing on the night of the murder. Neither Knox nor Sollecito have verified alibis despite three attempts each.

All the other people who were questioned as part of the police investigation into Meredith’s murder had one credible alibi that could be verified. Innocent people don’t give multiple conflicting alibis and lie repeatedly to the police. It should be noted that Knox and Sollecito lied before and after their questioning on 5 November 2007, so their lies can’t be attributed to police coercion.

Amanda Knox initially claimed she was at Sollecito’s apartment on the evening of the murder and that she was there when she received the text message from Diya Lumumba at 8:18pm. However, Judge Massei and Judge Nencini both pointed out in their reports that her mobile phone records showed that this wasn’t true.

On 5 November 2007, Sollecito admitted in his signed witness statement that he had lied to the police.

“In my former statement I told you a load of rubbish because I believed Amanda’s version of what happened and did not think about the inconsistencies.”

Sollecito withdrew his alibi for Knox and claimed she wasn’t at his apartment.

“At 9pm I went home alone and Amanda said that she was going to Le Chic because she wanted to meet some friends. We said goodbye. I went home, I rolled myself a spliff and made some dinner, but I don’t remember what I ate. At around eleven my father phoned me on the house phone. I remember Amanda wasn’t back yet. I surfed on the Internet for a couple of hours after my father’s phone call, and I stopped only when Amanda came back, about one in the morning, I think.”

Once Knox was informed Sollecito was no longer providing her with an alibi, she repeatedly admitted that she was at the cottage when Meredith was killed in two witness statements and in her handwritten note to the police.

Knox was given another opportunity to tell the police the whole truth, but she chose to deliberately and repeatedly lie to the police by again and again accusing Diya Lumumba of murder.

“Amanda Marie Knox accused Patrick Lumumba of the murder at 1:45 am on 6 November 2007.”

“Amanda Marie Knox repeated the allegations before the magistrate, allegations which she never retracted in all the following days.” (The Nencini report, page 114).

Amanda Knox reiterated her false allegation against Diya Lumumba on 6 November 2007 when under no pressure.

“[Amanda] herself, furthermore, in the statement of 6 November 2007 (admitted into evidence ex. articles 234 and 237 of the Criminal Procedure Code and which was mentioned above) wrote, among other things, the following:

“I stand by my [accusatory] statements that I made last night about events that could have taken place in my home with Patrick”¦in these flashbacks that I’m having, I see Patrick as the murderer”¦”

This statement was that specified in the notes of 6 November 2007, at 20:00, by Police Chief Inspector Rita Ficarra, and was drawn up following the notification of the detention measure, by Amanda Knox, who “requested blank papers in order to produce a written statement to hand over” to the same Ficarra. (Massei report, page 389).

The Italian Supreme Court categorically stated that it’s a judicial fact Amanda Knox was present at the cottage when Meredith was killed because she repeatedly admitted she was there and she knew specific details about the crime.

“Given this, we now note, with respect to Amanda Knox, that her presence inside the house, the location of the murder, is a proven fact in the trial, in accord with her own admissions, also contained in the memoriale with her signature, in the part where she tells that, as she was in the kitchen, while the young English woman had retired inside the room of same Ms. Kercher together with another person for a sexual intercourse, she heard a harrowing scream from her friend, so piercing and unbearable that she let herself down squatting on the floor, covering her ears tight with her hands in order not to hear more of it.

About this, the judgment of reliability expressed by the lower [a quo] judge [Nencini, ed.] with reference to this part of the suspect’s narrative, [and] about the plausible implication from the fact herself was the first person mentioning for the first time [46] a possible sexual motive for the murder, at the time when the detectives still did not have the results from the cadaver examination, nor the autopsy report, nor the witnesses’ information, which was collected only subsequently, about the victim’s terrible scream and about the time when it was heard (witnesses Nara Capezzali, Antonella Monacchia and others), is certainly to be subscribed to.”

We make reference in particular to those declarations that the current appellant [Knox] produced on 11. 6. 2007 (p.96) inside the State Police headquarters. On the other hand, in the slanderous declarations against Lumumba, which earned her a conviction, the status of which is now protected as final judgement [giudicato], [they] had themselves exactly that premise in the narrative, that is: the presence of the young American woman inside the house in via della Pergola, a circumstance which nobody at that time ““ except obviously the other people present inside the house ““ could have known (quote p. 96). (The Bruno and Marasca, Supreme Court report).

Not only does Peter Gill completely ignore Knox and Sollecito’s numerous lies and multiple false alibis as if they are somehow unimportant and irrelevant, he also completely ignores the fact that Amanda Knox knew specific details about the crime.

Judge Nencini pointed out in his report that Knox made statements to the police that contained specific references to events that the investigation ascertained actually happened on 1 and 2 November 2007 and that nobody other than a participant in those tragic events could have known about. She knew that Meredith had been sexually assaulted and had screamed loudly and she placed herself near the basketball ball in Piazza Grimana which was corroborated by another witness.

Umbria Prosecutor General Galati pointed out in his appeal that Amanda Knox told Meredith’s British friends that Meredith “was covered by a quilt, that a foot was sticking out, that they had cut her throat and that there was blood everywhere” (The Galati-Costagliola appeal, page 65).

Galati concluded that Amanda Knox knew these specifc details because she was in Meredith’s room at the time of the murder.

“Amanda has described the spot where Meredith was effectively murdered (in front of the wardrobe) and she has described the state of the body and of the room and the injury to the throat, in speaking with Meredith’s co-nationals, although, at the moment when the door to Meredith’s room was kicked in, neither she nor Sollecito, for certain, were able to look inside.

According to her, neither she nor Sollecito went into that room that morning before the arrival of the police because it was locked. Yet she knew everything. She knew because she was in that room at the time of the murder and when Meredith was left in the conditions in which she was discovered.” (The Galati-Costagliola appeal, pages 66-67).

I anticipate that Peter Gill might try to handwave away the lies by attributing them to police coercion or brutality on 5 November 2007. Amanda Knox claimed she was slapped twice by a police officer. However, the witnesses who were present when Knox was questioned, including her interpreter, all testified under oath at the trial in 2009 that she wasn’t hit.

Furthermore, Amanda Knox’s lies can’t be attributed to police brutality and coercion because she lied repeatedly BEFORE she was questioned on 5 November 2007.

Her account of the morning of 2 November 2007 is fictitious. She lied about sleeping until around 10:00am on 2 November 2007. (The Nencini report, page 158).

She lied to Filomena about where she was later that morning. (The Nencini report, page 174).

She pretended she hadn’t just called Meredith seconds earlier when she spoke to Filomena. (The Massei report, page 387).

She lied to her friends in an e-mail on 4 November 2007 by claiming she had called Filomena first. (The Nencini report, page 169).

She lied to the postal police by claiming Meredith always locked her door (The Massei report, page 179).

Florence Judge Martuscelli has just comprehensively detailed Raffaele Sollecito’s numerous lies and false alibis in his report - which explained why Sollecito was denied compensation from the State.

“The contradictions and inconsistencies between the various reconstructions which Sollecito offered about the movements of himself and his girlfriend during the late evening of 1 November 2007, and the succeeding night are clear, and we don’t need to underline them.

At first he said he and Knox went to his house shortly after 17:30, after a short walk around the town, and that he remained at home with her for the rest of the evening and night. A few days later he described this story as a “sacco di cazzate”, recounted by him only because the girl had persuaded him to confirm her account, whereas the truth was that he had gone to his home alone at 20:30-21:00, and had remained at home alone until Knox returned, about 01:00, and she remained and slept with him.

Two days later, questioned by the GIP, he said that this story of 5 November 2007 was untrue, and that really Knox had gone to his house with him at 20:00-20:30, they ate together, and then he certainly had remained at his computer until midnight, though it was possible that the girl had gone out, even though he didn’t remember well either if she went out or if she had later returned, excusing his lack of recall either because he had smoked cannabis that evening, or alternatively because every evening at that time was much like all the other evenings.

Such contradictions and inconsistencies render some of his earlier statements obviously incredible, because he himself has declared that they contain lies, besides which, after having purposely retracted his statements of 5 November 2007, which completely overturned his earlier statements, he didn’t return to his original story but came up with something different in which he reaffirmed the fact that he had first introduced on 5 November 2007 that Knox hadn’t spent the whole evening with him, “without however being certain about this, but confusing it in a tale of vague recollections emphasising this vagueness in the course of questioning aimed at clarifying his inconsistent statements.

Additionally his claims [5 ->] to be unable to remember those hours was criticised by various judges regarding the cautionary measures, who highlighted the strangeness of a “wavering” memory, which showed that he recalled very well various details of the evening but claimed to have completely forgotten other details of equal or greater importance. For example, the GIP in the interrogation of 8 November 2007 receiving the vague replies of Sollecito, when asked about his earlier declarations said “Sometimes you seem to remember very clearly, but at other times, when you are challenged, you say you don’t remember. I exhort you to be accurate, because you must understand that with all of these contradictions…your situation is not good.”

At the Court of Review, the order made on 30 November 2007 notes that in the spontaneous declaration given by Sollecito to that court that he had lingered on the fact that he had been at the computer the whole evening “adding new details about what he had done on the computer, details which obviously contrast with the complete mental blank which must have been his mind due to drug taking, at least unless we reach the conclusion hypothesising a particular pathology, the loss of memory secundum eventum.” [after the event]

The poor memory of what he was doing on the evening and night of 1 November 2007 seems barely credible because if it is possible that he spent all of his evenings in the same way, certainly he had never before lived through a day like 2 November 2007. To discover in the morning of 2 November 2007 that in his girlfriend’s house a murder had occurred, and that it was one of her flatmates who had been killed should have, logically, prompted the young man to have a precise memory of where Knox had passed the time during which all of this had presumably happened, at the very least to be thankful for the circumstances which had kept her away from the house, and thus would have been bound to encourage a precise recall of whether she was at home with him all evening or had been absent during that critical period.

“However all of the versions offered by Sollecito are untrue not only because they are contradictory, but also because many of them have been substantially disproved. For example, the witness Popovic disproves that Sollecito returned to his home alone at around 20:00/:30, although this is what he claimed in his last account which he never withdrew. This witness testified that she visited Sollecito’s house twice on the evening of 1 November 2007, at about 18:00 and at about 20:40, and that on both occasions saw Knox there, from which it seems certain that both of the young people were at Sollecito’s house together at least up until the time of the later visit. In addition, examination of his computer showed that it was in use, to watch a film, and showed “signs of human interaction, between the hours of 18:27 and 21:10.

It is also disproved that the young man was working at his computer on the evening of 1 November 2007 until 23:00/24:00. The analysis of his computer shows that between 21:10 and 05:32 there was no human interaction, though the machine remained switched on, downloading films in an automated manner (although Sollecito’s expert witness D’Ambrosio claims that a short animated film was viewed between 21:26 and 21:46).

The claim that the two slept all night, from 24:00 or 01:00 until 10:00 is also disproved; one of them (there was nobody else in the house) at 05:32 had turned on the computer, and listened to music for half an hour, and at about 06:00 someone had turned on Sollecito’s cell phone which was then able to receive a goodnight message from his father sent at 23:14 and which had not been received earlier because the phone was turned off.

Finally, it was disproved that Sollecito had received a phone call from his father at about 23:00 on 1 November 2007: the phone logs show that he received no calls on either the fixed or mobile line after about 20:40, [6 ->] and indeed his father explained that having established from this call that his son was with his girlfriend, getting ready to spend the evening together, he avoided telephoning again in order not to disturb them.”

The significance of Knox’s and Sollecito’s numerous lies to the police and others seems to be completely lost on Peter Gill.

Bear in mind that Robin Garbutt was found guilty of murdering his wife because he lied to the police, changed a key part of evidence and was caught out by technology.

There was no murder weapon, no DNA or forensic evidence, no logical motive, no witnesses and no confession. There has been no big media maelstrom concerning Robin Garbutt’s conviction for murder. It seems middle-aged white knights are only interested in rescuing damsels in distress and trying to profit from Amanda Knox’s infamy.

There is no plausible innocent explanation for Knox and Sollecito’s multiple false alibis and numerous lies. Amanda Knox’s high-profile supporters in the media seem to be completely oblivious to them.

The filmmakers responsible for the Netflix documentary Amanda Knox also completely ignored her lies with the exception of her false and malicious allegation against Diya Lumumba.

They ignored the fact Amanda Knox didn’t retract her accusation the whole time he was in prison even though she knew he was innocent. Time and time again Amanda Knox’s advocates in the media brush inconvenient facts that show her in a bad light under the carpet.

Peter Gill has never publicly mentioned Amanda Knox’s false and malicious accusation of Diya Lumumba or the fact she is a convicted felon for life, presumably because it undermines his narrative that she is an innocent victim. Amanda Knox’s definitive slander conviction for repeatedly accusing an innocent man of murder completely shatters this PR myth - a myth that Gill has unethically tried to peddle in the media.

Judge Micheli, who presided over Rudy Guede’s fast-track trial and sent Knox and Sollecito to trial, said lying repeatedly to the police will always be considered to be a serious indication of guilt. Judge Massei and Judge Nencini both attached considerable significance to Knox and Sollecito’s numerous lies in their respective reports.

Judge Micheli, Judge Massei and Judge Nencini are all experienced trial judges. Even Judges Bruno and Marasca didn’t attempt to understate their significance and stated that Knox and Sollecito were covering for Guede. That makes Knox and Sollecito at the very least accessories after the fact and guilty of perverting the course of justice.

Only a gullible simpleton would unquestioningly believe anything Knox and Sollecito say given the fact they are self-confessed and compulsive liars. It’s completely illogical for anyone to trust them - and yet Peter Gill does.

He may be a highly-qualified DNA expert, but he doesn’t seem to have an ounce of common sense. It should be self-evident even to a half-wit that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito lied repeatedly because they were trying to cover up their involvement in Meredith’s murder.

Posted by The Machine on 03/06/17 at 02:08 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxers from 2007, Hoaxers from 2011, Peter Gill • Comments here (11)

Exposing Peter Gill: An Opportunistic Expert Never At Trial and Never At Either Rome Police Lab

Posted by The Machine

Peter Gill seen indoctrinating non-expert viewers on Italian TV

Follow the money trail…

So many of Amanda Knox’s high-profile supporters such as Frank Sforza, Candace Dempsey, Doug Preston, Bruce Fischer, Nina Burleigh and Steve Moore have something in common - they have cynically tried to make a profit from Meredith’s tragic murder.

Now we turn our big guns on tendentious DNA expert and Johnny-come-lately Dr Peter Gill. When Gill tried to cast doubt on the bra clasp and knife evidence with copious innuendo in the media early in 2014, it was a fairly safe bet that a book would follow suit.

Predictably, Gill’s book Misleading DNA Evidence: Reasons for Miscarriages of Justice was published later that year in June.

This first in a series of posts about Gill draws on some excellent previous posts - please do read in particular Fly By Night and Olleosnep, Machiavelli and KrissyG.

In this article I will explain the weak basis for his claims about the Meredith Kercher case and examine them to see whether he did real research.

Any hopes that Peter Gill did meticulously research the Meredith Kercher case before writing his book are almost immediately dashed. He embarrassingly refers to Meredith as “Meridith”. Is it too much to expect him to be able to spell the victim’s name correctly, especially when he is putting himself forward as an expert on the case and using his DNA credentials to bolster his credibilty?

In three specific places in his book, he refers to the case as a “miscarriage of justice” even though at the time Knox and Sollecito were still appealing their convictions for murder and sexual assault back in 2009. The appeal judge Judge Nencini then also found them guilty of murder and sexual assault in Florence in 2013.

Peter Gill was never in a position where he could conclude there had been a miscarriage of justice. Unlike the judges and lay judges, he hadn’t attended any of the court hearings in Perugia or Florence, he doesnt speak any Italian, and he has never been to the two labs that processed the DNA in Rome.

Upstanding forensic scientists limit their comments solely to their specific area of expertise, and they allow the courts to ultimately decide whether defendants are guilty or not guilty - and not act as partisan advocates. That’s certainly the stance Peter Gill took when replying to an e-mail to TJMK poster Swansea Jack on 28 June 2014.

Thanks for your email.

I cant control how people interpret my comments. I am not getting involved in a debate that specifically addresses the ulitmate issue of innocence/guilt of individuals since that is the purpose of the court. I can only comment on the probative value of the DNA evidence. I dont know definitively how the DNA was transferred - I simply make a list of all of the possibilities. I dont comment on the non-DNA evidence.

Regards, Peter

It was dishonest of Peter Gill to claim he wasn’t getting involved in a debate that specifically addressed the ultimate issue of innocence or guilt when he had already done that by categorically stating the convictions of Knox and Sollecito were a “miscarriage of justice” in his book.

It wasn’t the first time Peter Gill had blown backwards and forwards on an important topic and made contradictory comments. Here is judicial criticism of some of his comments during his testimony at the Omagh bomb trial.

Dr Peter Gill, an exponent of the Low Copy Number DNA technique, conceded some of the results presented in the bomb trial were “valueless”.

Mr Justice Weir warned Dr Gill about “blowing backwards and forwards” on “an important topic”.

The judge said it was “very unhelpful” to give apparently contradictory evidence. Sean Hoey denies 58 charges, including 29 murders in Omagh in 1998.

Mr Hoey is a 37-year-old electrician from Molly Road, Jonesborough in County Armagh.

Low Copy Number DNA - a technique whereby DNA profiles can be obtained from samples containing only a few cells - is an important part of the prosecution case.

Dr Gill had been asked to comment on claims that control samples tested at the same time as parts of a device in Lisburn had come up positive for Mr Hoey’s DNA type.

That finding, said defence QC Orlando Pownall, should have meant that the tests were run again. The fact that they weren’t meant the results were invalid, he claimed.

“I think it invalidates the result,” Dr Gill agreed.

Dr Gill was also challenged over what appeared to be conflicting evidence on the reliability of Low Copy Number DNA testing.

Mr Pownall was questioning him about the amounts of DNA below which results could be relied on.

Giving evidence, Dr Gill said at a certain DNA level information taken from the results could be “informative”.

But Mr Pownall pointed out that in papers Dr Gill had written on the subject he had said that at that level the results were “uninformative”.

Mr Justice Weir intervened to say it “seems rather an important topic on which to be blowing backwards and forwards on.

In July 2016, Peter Gill wrote an academic paper about the Meredith Kercher case for Forensic Science Genetics: Analysis and implications of the miscarriages of justice of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. He made the following false claims:

“The final judgement exonerated the defendants” and “Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were exonerated in March 2015”.

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito weren’t exonerated in March 2015 - they were merely acquitted with the weakest language available under Italian law.

There is a significant difference here. They were acquitted under paragraph 2 of article 530, which is merely an insufficient evidence acquittal. Had they been acquitted under paragraph one of article 530, then that would have been a definitive acquittal or exoneration.

Judge Bruno and Judge Marasca, the Supreme Court judges who acquitted them, said it was likely they would have convicted Knox and Sollecito of Meredith Kercher’s murder if the police hadn’t made claimed errors in their investigation:

“If it were not for the weak investigation and if the investigation had not been affected by guilty omissions, the court would, in all likelihood, be allowed right now to outline a framework, if not on absolute certainty at least of tranquil reliability, in view of the guilt Knox and Sollecito for killing the British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia on Nov. 1, 2007.”

Bruno and Marasca stated Meredith had been killed by Rudy Guede and others. They also said it’s certain that Amanda Knox was at the cottage when Meredith was killed and she washed Meredith’s blood off in the small bathroom. Furthermore, they said Sollecito was probably there. It’s not difficult to work out who the others are. Bruno and Marasca didn’t exonerate Knox and Sollecito - they clearly implicated them in Meredith’s murder.

I don’t know whether Peter Gill knows about Bruno and Marasca’s comments. If he doesn’t know about them, it was remiss of him not to read the whole report and refer to these comments in his academic paper. If he does know about them, he’s guilty of deliberately misleading the forensic community as well as the general public.

Is it just a coincidence that filmmakers responsible for the Netflix documentary Amanda Knox also cherrypicked comments made by Bruno and Marasca which were favourable to Knox and Sollecito, but completely ignored all their comments which were not?

Amanda Knox’s advocates in the media have always brushed inconvenient facts under the carpet. Their intention has always been to persuade the public that she’s innocent - not inform them and let them make up their own minds. Anyone who deliberately hides information that shows Knox and Sollecito in a bad light doesn’t care about Meredith or truth and justice.

More to come.

Posted by The Machine on 02/22/17 at 04:15 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxers from 2007, Hoaxers from 2011, Peter Gill • Comments here (38)

Problems With Fred Davies #2: His Claims On Knives, Wounds And Stains Also Highly Mislead

Posted by James Raper

Several of the numerous scientific witnesses; some evidence was behind closed doors

Overview Of This Post

Remember that Amanda Knox, a felon for life, served three years for framing Patrick for murder.

In my previous post I dismissed the claim which the British barrister FG (Fred) Davies pervasively made in Parts 1 to 20 of his mammoth series in Criminal Law and Justice Weekly that it was actually Guede and his team who had somehow framed Knox and Sollecito for a crime he alone committed and left all of Italian law enforcement bamboozled.

I now have Parts 21 to 26 as well, all of the series, and I wish to examine one more large area of cherrypicked facts and misinterpretations, along with Davies’s final conclusion.

First, Fred Davies’s Final Scenario

As anticipated, Davies concludes that Knox and Sollecito should only have been convicted of the charge of simulating a burglary. He presents his own synopsis of what happened on the night of the murder which has both Knox and Guede present at the cottage for the murder, but not Sollecito.

Davies says it is Guede who sexually assaults and stabs Meredith. Knox, unaware of what was going to happen is horrified and scared out of her wits, retreating to her bedroom and locking herself in.

Davies says Guede flees, ignoring or unable to do anything about the fact there is/was a witness to his horrific crime. When it’s safe to do so Knox emerges and meets up with Sollecito.

Davies says that Knox, fearing that if she went to the police she would only end up being accused of involvement in the murder, persuades Sollecito to be her alibi, and to stage the scene to point to a burglar, and Sollecito, being the Honour Bound sort of chap he is, agrees to go along with this. Once they both embark on this course of action there us no turning back.

I trust that you are all duly intrigued with Davies’s scenario and panting to learn how and why he arrives at it. Unfortunately this will have to wait until another day if it is to be from me.

He has, after all, taken 26 Chapters in half a year to get to this point and I am not yet ready to deal with them comprehensively. Others here may contribute posts and discuss implications with the Criminal Law editor.

Fred Davies On Knife Or Knives

Whilst I guess most comments are going to be about the above synopsis, I am going to deal with his thoughts regarding the knives, these being quite central to his synopsis.

My argument below is supported by numerous previous posters none of whom differed markedly from Massei or Nencini.

Davies in contrast is sharply critical of Massei. He simply excludes the Double DNA knife (Exhibit 36) as the murder weapon.

He is also critical”¦.nay, I would have to say that he is outraged”¦. at Massei holding that Sollecito was responsible for the lesser of the two wounds, that on the right side of Meredith’s neck. He is critical of Micheli for not finding, as a matter of fact, that Guede was the one responsible for the wounds, using his own knife which has yet to be recovered.

Without more ado I will proceed to Mr Davies’ evaluation:

“The finding against Sollecito that it was he who inflicted two of the three wounds to Meredith Kercher using a pocket knife which was in his possession at the material time is deeply flawed, offensive and wrong in law”

Well, I was unaware that Massei had found that Sollecito inflicted two of the three wounds. In fact I am not aware of three wounds (unless he includes what is effectively a nick) , but if there were then Massei only attempted to attribute two, the one to the right of the neck, 4 cms deep and with a width of 1.5 cms, being attributed to Sollecito’s “pocket knife”.

It did not cause any significant structural damage, unlike the wound to the left, 8 cms deep and 8 cms wide which had penetrated both Meredith’s larynx and the cartilage of the epiglottis, and had broken the hyoid bone.

Is the rest “deeply flawed, offensive and wrong in law”?

“It could not have been part of the prosecution case that Sollecito used a pocket knife to subdue and stab Meredith Kercher. If it had why was Sollecito and/or Knox not charged with carrying the said pocket knife without justified reason? To recapitulate,, the charge alleged that the killing was achieved by means of”¦”¦”¦”¦.and deep lesions to the left anterior-lateral and right lateral regions of the neck, caused by a bladed weapon (Exhibit 36).

The Massei Court’s finding strikes against basic principles of fairness which applies to all criminal proceedings. Put another way, a criminal court is not generally entitled to bring in a verdict which differs markedly from the basis on which the prosecution puts it’s case. This is because the defence would not be able to adequately prepare and meet such an unexpected contingency. In plain English the defence would be ambushed or taken by surprise. In this case the defence was ambushed and the defendants’ rights (Knox and Sollecito) were fundamentally infringed.”

Oh come on! Ambushed? Really?

OK, so the charge did indeed indicate that that both the right and left sided wounds were caused by “a bladed weapon to which Chapter B applies” (Exhibit 36) but the reality is that the defence always knew that Exhibit 36 (because of it’s dimensions and in particular it’s width 4cms from the tip) could not have been the cause of the wound to the left anterior lateral. That’s a matter of simple logic and in any event every expert and all the lawyers in the case agreed on that.

So the way the charge was erroneously framed in fact misled no-one.

Indeed had the defence thought so then they could have raised the matter. Mr Davies does not claim that Massei did not have the power to amend the indictment. If the court was unable to, or the defence chose not to raise it, either way thinking it was a clever appeal point, then it did not become one.

Indeed, Mr Davies will know anyway that in English law, by virtue of The Indictments Act 1915, courts can (and frequently do) order an amendment to an indictment at any stage (which includes during a trial) provided the amendment does not result in an injustice to the accused. This is a practical necessity as it would be an affront to the concept of justice if defendants were to be acquitted on the basis of a mere technicality.

One might consider what amendment might have been made.

A possibility is that reference to the right-sided wound might have been excluded. It was the left-sided wound that was fatal, after all, and caused, as the prosecution would endeavour to prove, by a weapon which, as it happened, belonged to Sollecito.

The prosecution did, of course, maintain that it was Knox who wielded the weapon, but might, as an alternative, have also asserted that it was Sollecito. Indeed the framing of the charge leaves it an open question as to which of them did. They were charged jointly with having caused Meredith’s death.

The evidence that it may have been either (AK or RS) is a common feature of cases to which the English legal doctrine of joint criminal enterprise applies.

The doctrine applies particularly to a case such as this in that no matter who actually wields the weapon the other participant in the common enterprise is deemed to possess the same level of criminal liability even if he did not know that there was a knife or that it would be so used. Being reckless as to that possibility is sufficient.

It is surprising how often how little is required to establish joint enterprise. Frequently the mere fact that the participants know each other and were there, and that the situation was a combustible one of the group’s making, is enough. The doctrine has come in for a great deal of justified criticism but despite this remains firm law.

My preference would have been to amend the indictment to refer to the right sided wound being caused by a bladed weapon, the blade being of indeterminate length but with a width of approximately 1.5 cms. It is the width of the wound that is salient because it is indicative of the width of the blade on the knife being used which, whilst also being indicative of the likely length of the blade, but without being sure, could be either a pocket knife (4 cms or more) or a flick knife (which could also be a pocket knife). 1.5 cms is about the width of the tip of one’s index finger, by the way.

Massei, and others, always refer to this knife as a pocket knife. However henceforth I am going to write “pocket knife” to refer to the options of a pocket knife with a blade of 4cms or more, or a flick knife.

As to Mr Davies other point as to why Sollecito was not specifically charged with carrying a “pocket knife” without justified reason, I do not know, but since the framing of charges is a matter for the prosecution, one might as well leave the matter there.

In any event the lack of a specific charge does not in any way preclude a court from inferring the nature of a weapon from the pathology of the wound nor from identifying the probable assailant (as distinct from having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the culpability of a single perpetrator named in a specific charge of “carrying”).

Guede did not ever face a specific charge of carrying a weapon but that does not prevent Mr Davis from concluding that Guede had a knife and had stabbed Meredith. It seems that Mr Davies would have been quite happy for Guede to have been so charged and convicted on Professor Vinci’s (see later) dubious testimony.

In this last respect, however, Mr Davies could have more telling argument. Lets see.

“To infer that Sollecito had a pocket knife at Via della Pergola 7 on the fateful evening of November 1-2, based on the character evidence of four witnesses called for the defence, was to say the least highly unusual..”

I think the operative words here are “witnesses called for the defence”, amongst whom was Sollecito’s own father. Yes, highly unusual but then that is what happens when you do not vet your own character witnesses before cross-examination.

Sollecito’s proclivity for carrying a knife (usually a pocket knife) at all times (and indeed he had one on him at the time of his arrest in the Police Station) is highly relevant. These witnesses referred to a knife with a blade of about 4 cms, or perhaps 6 cms.

In addition Sollecito was something of a knife aficionado. The police found two specialist knives, a Spiderco and a 2004 model Brian Tighe. Neither of these can be connected to Meredith’s wounds but they are indicative of his affinity to weapons specifically designed to be used in a fight to maim or kill. Clearly a flick knife falls into the same category.

As to proclivity evidence against Guede one can refer to his brief possession of a kitchen knife acquired at and belonging to the Milan nursery (which he did not break into, he had been given a key).

There is, of course, Tramontano’s dubious claim (angrily dismissed by Micheli even though Guede was never given the chance to challenge this in court) that a black man broke into his property and, confronted by Tramontano, had pulled out a flick knife as he exited. Tramontano tried to claim the burglar was probably Guede based on a photo of him he had seen in a newspaper. If it really was Guede he was not carrying that knife with him at the Milan nursery 8 weeks later.

“Even if Sollecito was present at the scene of the crime (as distinct from being complicit), the court could not have been sure that any “pocket knife” in his possession, which incidentally was never recovered, had inflicted all or some of the injuries, the most cogent rationale being:

1. The prosecution could not prove the dimensions and the character of the knife were consistent with the injuries inflicted upon Meredith Kercher.

2. The Court paid scant regard to the totality of expert opinion as to the type of bladed weapon (or weapons) which had been used to stab the victim

3. The Court paid scant regard to the dimensions of a bloody outline of a knife found on Meredith’s pillow

4. Consequently the Court could not have been sure that any pocket knife and, a fortiori, exhibit 36 had been used to stab Meredith that fateful night.”

As to 1 above, we know that no suitable weapon was ever recovered but if the indictment had been amended in accordance with my preference then the prosecution would easily have proved that part of the indictment, relating as it does to the wound on the right side of the neck.

It is a reasonable inference on the balance of probabilities that the wound was caused by a “pocket knife” and if one accepts the presence of multiple attackers (which I understand is a judicial truth in the case even following the latest acquittal of Knox and Sollecito) then, again on the balance of probabilities, and taking into account all the other circumstantial evidence in the case, I submit that it is a reasonable inference that it was Sollecito’s “pocket knife”.

The bar of “beyond a reasonable doubt” applies to culpability re the specified charge and is not to be confused with the elements.

As to 2, this simply is not true. I shall look at the totality of the expert opinion in a moment but suffice it to say that Massei spent a considerable amount of time in his Motivation detailing with and discussing the defence experts’ opinions.

As to 3, (and it was not on the pillow but the bedsheet) it was Professor Vinci’s contention that the bloody outline (there was a dual outline, he said) was left by a knife with a blade 11.3 cms long or a knife with a blade 9.6 cms long with a congruent section of handle 1.7 cms long (9.6 + 1.7 = 11.3). Davies does not mention a blade width but in fact Professor Vinci actually says 1.3 to 1.4 cms wide.

Taking these measurements as read, Davies points out that they are incompatible with either a pocket knife (such as Sollecito had a proclivity to carry) and Exhibit 36. I have no argument with that observation. It follows, he then argues, that one has to infer the presence of a third knife in any hypothesis and if a pocket knife and Exhibit 36 are already accounted for by Knox and Sollecito then a reasonable inference is that the third knife would have to be Guede’s. Indeed (Davies does not say this, but I will) Professor Vinci’s blade is not incompatible a priori with either of the two wounds.

This is worth looking at seriously as so far it is the only worthwhile point Davies has made.

First of all I have to say that I have searched for but have not found any rebuttal evidence or comment from the prosecution amongst the documents on the Wiki. I do not even see a question on the matter in the cross-examination of Professor Vinci.

Massei only briefly commented about the bloody outline on the bed sheet. He opined that the blood stains were certainly “suggestive” but insufficient to establish any clear outlines from which reliable measurements could be established. Clearly then he did not accord any reliability to Professor Vinci’s measurements. But is Massei right? One does not have to be an expert to consider this.

First of all, here are images of the blood stains.

In the picture below the stained section of sheet is cut out for analysis the day after the discovery of the murder.

Did the prosecution overlook their own analysis of the stains? Did they deliberately do so after Exhibit 36 was found, 9 days later on the 12th November, to have Meredith’s DNA on it? Or did they always know that the stains established nothing?

The next question to be asked is whether we can see the outline of a knife, or rather a blade. I think the honest answer to that is, on balance, yes. We think we see the tip of a blade, do we not? Maybe two, maybe even three.

It is fairly clear that Professor Vinci takes the largest of the stains to be the hilt of the handle to the knife. Lining that up with what is perhaps the likely clearest possible perceived blade tip (being the middle out of a possible three I believe I see) then the distance to the perceived hilt is indeed something like the 9.6 cms which Professor Vinci has measured.

But there are problems. Here are two of Ergon’s photos from his posts here and here with Exhibit 36 superimposed on the stains in two different positions to reflect the supposed dual outlines.

The blob of blood in the bottom left of the pictures and it’s lesser moon at 1, or 2, o’clock are regarded as having come from the same position on the blade and so with that reference point the blade is positioned accordingly in each photo.

We can surely take it that Professor Vinci also sees the same duality. But if the bloody hilt is aligned to fit with “the moon” stain in order to get the 9.6 cms measurement, then what has happened to that large hilt stain when the knife is moved further to the left, and then dropped a bit, to align to the moon’s planet (the blob)?

It has either disappeared or become an edge. That doesn’t make sense if “the moon” is the lesser version of the blob. The blob has to come from the first positioning of the knife. Despite this, in the knife’s later position the volume of blood at the hilt has actually increased comparative to the knife’s first position. That doesn’t make sense either.

So maybe the largest stain pre-exists, even for perhaps a moment, the stains suggesting the blade outlines, but in that case we can throw Professor Vinci’s measurements out of the window.

Can we do without the blob and it’s moon? It’s all a lot less convincing without them. But in truth we cannot even be sure that they are related. Nor that the largest stain has anything to do with the hilt of a knife.

A further connected observation concerns Professor Vinci’s claim that the blade of the knife is 1.3/1.4 cms wide. Like the rest of his evidence I do not find this very convincing. I suspect that he has deduced this from the largest stain which has a length, he says, of 1.7 cms. It’s width could then be something like 1.3/1.4 cms.

If the width of the knife is represented by approximately 1.4 cms then, given the position of the bloody hilt relative to the tip of it’s blade, what are we to make of the two spots of blood in a horizontal line above? They look like the upper (or lower) edge of a knife but they can’t be without making the blade wider.

Why does it have to be the same knife anyway? The stains could be the result of two different knives collected and laid to rest in the same spot.

The blood stains are certainly bewitching - rather like seeing patterns in tea leaves at the bottom of one’s cup - but on the balance of probabilities I would not totally rely on anyone’s perception of them even, with all due respect, Ergon’s but his analysis is as good as anyone’s, and that for me is the point of it.

In short I think that Massei was probably right. These stains are suggestive but basically useless and the police/prosecution ignored them for that reason.

“Consistent with English law the Massei Court’s findings should be struck down as Wednesbury unreasonable. Where there is no evidence to support a finding of a court or the court has reached a conclusion which is irrational or perverse, in the light of the evidence adduced at trial, a conviction based on that part of the evidence cannot be sustained”¦”¦”¦.The Massei Court also appears to have violated Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to a fair trial),”

Yeah, right. The case to which he refers, Associated Provincial Picture Houses v Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1KB 223, is an odd and unnecessary one to pray in aid. It was a civil case where the appellant sought judicial review in respect of a licencing decision. As a formulation of a first principle of natural justice it is, of course, unquestionable. However the claim that Massei reached a conclusion that was irrational or perverse is laughable.

It is at this point that one does begin to wonder whether Davies is indeed connected in some way with the daffy Nigel Scott (Sollecito”˜s ex Lib Dem Haringey Councillor groupie) who similarly emerges with bizarre arguments.

Next, in his evaluation, we come to a numbers game as to who was for and against the incompatibility of Exhibit 36 with the fatal wound on the left side, but before I enter into that game I want to make a point about incompatibility.

A knife blade is only incompatible with a wound if the depth of the wound is longer than the length of the blade or if the width of the wound is shorter than the width of the blade at the relevant depth.

We can therefore establish that Exhibit 36 was not incompatible, a priori, with the depth of the wound. The blade on Exhibit 36 was 17. 5 cms long and the depth of the wound was 8 cms.

Yes, I know that other arguments as to incompatibility were advanced based, in the main, on these measurements. These Massei logically deconstructed. In fairness to Mr Davies he did not advance them in his evaluation and so neither shall I.

I would also have to concede that Sollecito’s “pocket knife” is not incompatible a priori with the wound on the left side nor, even if it”˜s length of blade was over 4 cms, with the wound on the right. Nor Professor Vinci’s knife either.

The same is true of the width of these knives.

It should however be recalled that the width of the right-sided wound was also 8 cms. That is over 5 times the width of the “pocket knife”. The width of the blade on Exhibit 36 - 8 cms from it’s tip - was twice the width of the blade on the “pocket knife”.

This fact, and the robustness of the larger weapon, particularly with regard to the observed butchering at the base of the right-sided cut, makes Exhibit 36 a far more likely candidate, in my submission, than a “pocket knife”, and that’s without taking into account Meredith’s DNA on the blade.

Returning to our numbers game, Mr Davies puts it slightly differently from Massei. He says -

“And if that were not enough, of the 8 experts who gave evidence on the point, two (Dr Liviero and Professor Bacci) opined that Exhibit 36 could have caused the fatal wound to Meredith’s left side. Professor Norelli could not rule out Exhibit 36. Professor Ronchi’s opinion is not clear due to the use of the “double negative” (non-incompatibility) - it will be assumed that he supported the prosecution contention, but in any event al the remaining four experts, Professors Introna, Torre, Cingolani and Dr Patumi) opined that Exhibit 36 could be ruled out.”

In other words a draw but one of the prosecution experts is a bit “iffy”.

Massei tells us that Dr Liviero concluded “definite compatibility”, Dr Lalli and Professors Bacci and Norelli “compatibility” whilst “non- incompatibility” came from the 3 GIP experts nominated at a preliminary hearing. The latter were Professors Aprile, Cingolani and Ronchi.

“Non-incompatibility” is not hard to understand. It simply means not incompatible or rather, compatible.

Note that Mr Davies has Professor Cingolani lining up to exclude Exhibit 36. Massei disagrees and I agree with Massei. So, for what it is worth (and this is a bit childish I know) Mr Davies loses the game 7 - 3.

“And one final thought. If the defendants (Knox and Sollecito) were sufficiently compos mentis to dispose of the pocket knife “¦. Why did they not dispose of Exhibit 36? By a process of deduction and logical synthesis the answer is plain for all to see: Exhibit 36 never left Corso Garibaldi and was not the murder weapon “

Because it was on his landlord’s inventory of kitchen items? Indeed we don’t know for sure that the “pocket knife “was actually disposed of. All we know is that it was not identified and recovered by the police.

And In Conclusion

This is the second of my posts involving Mr Davies. I may not be disposed to do any more. I have to say that although he certainly provided some food for thought on this one, I have not been impressed with his analysis in the topics I have covered so far.

Others here have been tabulating other factual errors and forced arguments and as I mentioned at the start we may see them carry this a bit further.

Posted by James Raper on 08/11/15 at 12:52 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Defendants in court, Rudy Guede, Evidence & Witnesses, The pack attack, News media & movies, Hoaxes against Italy, 5 No pack attack hoax, Hoaxes re Guede, 33 Sole attacker hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers • Comments here (12)

Problems With Fred Davies #1: Did Guede’s Separate Trial REALLY Impact Negatively On RS And AK?

Posted by James Raper

1. Summary Of The Complaints

I want to write about the separate trials of Guede on the one hand and Knox and Sollecito on the other.

This feature has often been criticized by the apologists for Knox and Sollecito, and I was surprised to learn just recently that their gripe seems to have some support in learned establishments in the UK! Ahem.

The gripe concerns the Fast Track trial of Rudy Guede, and the consequent Supreme Court confirmation of his conviction, with the apologists arguing that these had an adverse and unfair effect upon the proceedings in which Knox and Sollecito were involved. It is based on the simple fact that Guede chose to be tried separately, this being seen as an unfair complication for the administration of justice in the Italian justice system.

There are a number of complaints that the usual apologists have regarding the separate trial of Guede. Most of these are in fact fantasies as I will address.

These complaints, or constant refrains, which some apologists fondly thought could form the basis of a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights in due course, can be summarised as follows -

1. That the proceedings concerning Guede established various tenets the most important one of which was the multiple attacker scenario, and that this unfairly affected Knox and Sollecito bearing in mind that their defence was based on the Lone-Wolf scenario.

2. That the evidence in the Guede proceedings could never be effectively challenged by the Knox and Sollecito camps.

3. That, in consequence of which, Knox and Sollecito had virtually already been convicted by the judiciary by the time of their own trial.

4. That Guede was allowed to give evidence against Knox and Sollecito at both his own trial and at the Hellmann appeal hearing without effective cross-examination. Had this been the case the defence would likely have exposed and demonstrated his sole responsibility for the murder of Meredith Kercher. Indeed had he been tried together with Knox and Sollecito this could well have happened at the Massei trial.

5. That Hellmann was right to give no probity value to the content of Guede’s sentencing and the subsequent annulment unfairly allowed material that was prejudicial for the aforesaid reasons into the Nencini Appeal.

6. That Guede was induced into electing for a separate trial with the promise of a reduced sentence should he be convicted - this being to prosecution’s advantage re the case against Knox and Sollecito.

2. How Overall The Complaints Are Wrong

I think that we know what fast-track is by now, so I will not dwell on that. Guede’s trial was over relatively quickly. It lasted a month and likely consisted of about 3-4 hearings. There were just a few witnesses called.

The judge, Micheli, in addition, dwelt on all the evidence in the investigative file including witness statements and forensics. This was because Guede was charged with murder “in complicity with others” and because Micheli also had to make the decision whether or not to commit Knox and Sollecito to stand trial as the other accomplices.

Before I address whether or not there could be any justification at all for the apologists’ above complaints I would like to mention that learned quarter to which I referred at the outset.

I recently stumbled (with the help of the apologists’ website) across the Criminal Law and Justice Weekly website.

I was surprised to learn that various articles had been appearing on it under the heading of “The Brutal Killing of Meredith Kercher - A critical examination of the trials and subsequent appeal hearings of Rudy Hermann Guede, Amanda Marie Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.”

Lexis Nexis ( publishers and distributors of legal material to the legal profession in the UK) describe Criminal Law and Justice as”¦.”the leading weekly resource for criminal law practitioners and all those working within the courts and criminal justice areas.”

The articles are by an F. G Davies, described as a Barrister and listed in Anthony and Berryman’s Magistrates Court Guide as a Deputy Justices Clerk, North Cambridgeshire, in England. He is also a contributor and specialist editor to Justices of the Peace Law Reports.

Online image associated with an annual legal-fees guide which FG Davies edits

Here are two quotes I picked out relevant to this post about separate trials.

“This supports the writer’s contention made earlier that the holding of separate trials for co-accused was wrong in principle and law because the prosecution were alleging that at all three defendants committed the crime acting in concert”

And:

“It provided Guede with a golden opportunity to minimize his part in the attack upon and murder of Meredith Kercher, loading the blame on to Knox and Sollecito who, by this time were suspected to be chief architects of the attack.”

It is of course perfectly true that in the anglo-saxon world Guede would not have had the choice to elect for trial separately from his co-accused. It might have made for a very interesting trial for everyone concerned if he had stood trial together with Knox and Sollecito, but for reasons I will explain later I doubt it, or that Knox and Sollecito would have gained any advantage from it.

Indeed separate trials had rendered a very specific advantage to the Knox and Sollecito camps in that Guede had already been convicted when Knox and Sollecito stood trial, a fact that their PR campaign and followers have drilled home at every conceivable opportunity.

But what on earth does it mean to say that “the holding of a separate trial [for Guede] was wrong in principle and law”? .

Whose law? Whose principles? Just how deeply does the Deputy Justices Clerk delve into the respective systems of justice (and particularly the Italian one) for a comparative evaluation?

Certainly on the basis of a quick read of his articles I would say that he hasn’t delved very far at all. In fact I will go further and say that despite that he is capable of a detailed review of various aspects of the case he pretty much shares the same hostility and concerns based upon parochialism and ignorance to be found on the usual apologists’ websites.

So I will try to put him and the apologists right on how the Italians cope, as a matter of law, with any evidential difficulties that separate trials can throw up.

However, let’s start first with the assertion that the fast-track trial “provided Guede with a golden opportunity to minimize his part in the attack upon and murder of Meredith Kercher, loading the blame on to Knox and Sollecito”? Is that true?

Guede admitted that he was present at the scene of the murder and he has always minimized his part in the attack, in fact denying that he had any part. This is all to be found in his statements pre trial. He would have minimized his part even if he had been tried with his co-accused and had given evidence. Given that he was not believed anyway, it is difficult to detect wherein lies the golden opportunity of a fast track trial.

It is also difficult to envisage what cross examination formula (and the point of it) would have been available to the Knox and Sollecito defence teams as to Guede’s minimal role or otherwise given that Knox and Sollecito maintain that they were not there and thus are hardly in a position to dispute Guede”˜s version.

Did Guede load the blame onto Knox and Sollecito? The answer to that is that he did directly implicate Knox but not Sollecito. Again this is all to be found in his pre-trial statements and interviews with the police and investigating magistrates. Whilst on the toilet he had heard the doorbell ring, Meredith call out “Who is it?” and later say “We need to talk” followed by another woman’s voice, which he thought was Amanda, replying “What’s happening?” He had also claimed to have seen, through Filomena’s bedroom window, a female figure with flowing hair and had recognised the shape as being that of Amanda Knox.

It might be useful at this point just to pause and remember when Guede could have been cross-examined on this by the Knox and Sollecito defence teams.

Guede was called to give evidence during the Massei trial but declined to give evidence. Not surprising given that he was appealing his own conviction at the time. This was heard two weeks after the conclusion of the Massei trial.

He then appeared at the Hellmann trial by which time he already had a definitive conviction. On this occasion he did respond to questioning and I shall look at this a little later.

3. The Specific Mistakes In Each Complaint

Let us return now to the apologists standard refrains as I listed them at the beginning.

1. That the proceedings concerning Guede established various tenets the most important one of which was the multiple attacker scenario, and that this unfairly affected Knox and Sollecito bearing in mind that their defence was based on the Lone-Wolf scenario.

One might also add the staged break in and some others as well which were all considered by Micheli and endorsed by Massei.

However as at the conclusion of the Massei trial Guede’s first appeal was still extant and the Supreme Court’s definitive reflections on the multiple attacker scenario were still a year off. Nothing had been written in stone at that point. If the multiple attacker scenario became a tenet of the case then it would be more accurate to say that it became so because of Massei joining up with Micheli.

But let’s also take in the second refrain to consider alongside the first at this point.

2. That the evidence in the Guede proceedings could never be effectively challenged by the Knox and Sollecito camps.

This really is pretty rich. So what? Knox and Sollecito were not on trial there. And what to make of the Massei trial which of course is when Knox and Sollecito then wheeled out their big guns; the expensive lawyers and experts in telecommunications, forensic pathology, forensic DNA, ballistics and footprint analysis?

The Massei trial may have taken its time but it was nevertheless (unlike Guede’s trial) a full blooded adversarial trial of first instance, lasting a year, with the prosecution producing each and every one of it’s witnesses for rigorous cross-examination by the defence.

It was Massei that confirmed the multiple attacker scenario on the basis solely of that evidence and with scarce a mention of Guede’s sentencing report. It is lame to argue that Massei was in any way constrained by Micheli’s reasoning on the matter though his judgement was indeed available.

However Massei did make the following observation -

“”¦”¦the reconstruction of the facts leads to the unavoidable conclusion that he (Guede) was one of the main protagonists (writer’s note: no concession to Guede’s chances on appeal, then?); thus it is not possible to avoid speaking of Guede in relation to the hypothesised criminal facts. The defence of the accused in particular have requested the examination of texts concerning only Rudy, and have demanded the results, specifically concerning Guede of the investigative activities carried out by the police in particular. In fact they have expressly indicated Guede as being the author, and the sole author, of the criminal acts perpetrated on the person of Meredith Kercher.”

So here we see the defence making the running on Guede (without Guede being present as a co-accused to dispute anything) to include any and all evidence as to his alleged criminal background with the precise purpose of bolstering the Lone Wolf scenario, all of which was duly evaluated by Massei.

[One might think, in addition to the above, that Guede would have had cause to complain about the indictments for Knox and Sollecito, in that both were indicted, and subsequently convicted, with the crime of murder “in complicity with Rudy Hermann Guede”, although he still had two appeals left and theoretically (though not realistically) it was still possible for him to be acquitted of the crime. However the drawing up of indictments in separate trials, and how the judiciary would deal with an outcome such as above (which I don’t think would be difficult) would be a topic for another discussion.]

3. That, in consequence of which, Knox and Sollecito had virtually already been convicted by the judiciary by the time of their own trial.

This is so lame by any objective standard, but it is amazing just how often this particular drum is beaten. However our Deputy Justices Clerk would probably subscribe to this. He develops an argument akin to this which he terms the Forbidden Reasoning (echoes of Preston’s “The Forbidden Killer”?) which is basically that Micheli made a number of errors which were then compounded in subsequent hearings.

4. That Guede was allowed to give evidence against Knox and Sollecito at both his own trial and at the Hellmann appeal hearing without effective cross-examination. Had this been the case the defence would likely have exposed and demonstrated his sole responsibility for the murder of Meredith Kercher. Indeed had he been tried together with Knox and Sollecito this could well have happened at the Massei trial.

The evidence that implicated Knox I have already mentioned. It is not entirely decisive in that it is not a solid ID of Knox at the crime scene. At the Hellmann appeal Guede added this in an exchange with Knox”˜s lawyer -

DEFENSE ATTORNEY DALLA VEDOVA””And therefore, Mr. Guede, when you wrote verbatim that it was a “horrible murder of Meredith a lovely wonderful young woman, by Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox” what do you mean exactly? Have you ever said this?
WITNESS””Well, I”¦ this, I’ve never said it explicitly, in this way, but I’ve always thought it.
DEFENSE ATTORNEY DALLA VEDOVA””And so, it’s not true.
WITNESS””No, it’s very true”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦.............. So if I wrote those words it’s because I’ve always had them inside of me. It’s not up to me to decide who it was who killed Meredith, in the statement that I made in my trial, I always said who was there in that home that damned night, so, I think I’m not saying anything new”¦”¦

In another exchange, this time with Bongiorno, Guede makes it clear that he is not planning to answer any further questions about what happened that night but this is because he has already stated (statements and recorded interviews etc), and stands by, all that he has to say about it. Thus all that is taken into evidence perfectly properly. The matter is then left to rest by the defence.

Indeed it is difficult to conceive what further effective cross-examination could have occurred in this situation because clearly Guede would have responded with exactly the same answer each time.

The above exchanges also show just why it is unlikely that there would have been any fireworks had Guede been tried with his co-accused.

Guede would not have been obliged to give oral testimony any more than were Knox and Sollecito and in the event that he had done so (and I think it would have been in his interests to do so) his evidence would not only have been the same but it would have been subject to the same limitations, which would have been zealously protected by his lawyers, that had protected Knox when she gave oral evidence.

On due consideration it might have been a somewhat tetchy affair for the lawyers but it would not have been in the interests of any of the respective teams of lawyers for there to have been any surprises such as Guede moving from beyond what he had already said in pre-trial statements to a solid ID of Knox from the witness box. That wouldn’t have particularly helped Guede as it would have affected his credibility even further. They all had prepared positions to protect and Guede’s presence would be neither that much of an added threat nor an advantage for Knox and Sollecito.

5. That Hellmann was right to give no probity value to the content of Guede’s sentencing and the subsequent annulment unfairly allowed material that was prejudicial for the aforesaid reasons into the Nencini Appeal.

Now we are into the law, Italian law that is, and how it coped with separate trials of co-accused.

By this time Guede’s conviction, remember, had been ruled as definitive by the Supreme Court.

This is what Hellmann said about that -

“”¦”¦. in truth, this judgement, acquired pursuant to article 238 and so utilisable under the probative framework only as one of it’s evaluative elements pursuant to article 192.”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦.. already appears in itself a particularly weak element, from the moment that this judgement related to Rudy Guede had been carried out under the fast track procedure.”

It will be useful to consider some of Prosecutor-General Galati’s observations in the prosecution’s appeal submission and we can do this because the Supreme Court agreed with him.

This is what the Supreme Court said -

“The submission on the violation of article 238 “¦”¦.is correct. Even though (Hellmann) obtained the final judgement pronounced by this court against Rudy Guede, after properly considering that the judgement was not binding, it has completely “snubbed” the content of the same, also neutralizing it’s undeniable value as circumstantial evidence on the presupposition that it’s profile was particularly weak, since the judgement was based at the state of proceedings without the enrichment acquired as a result of the renewal of the investigations hearing arranged on appeal, In reality, the court was not authorised at all, for this reason alone, to ignore the content of the definitive judgement.”

The enrichment referred to would of course have been the Independent Expert’s evidence (subsequently debunked by Nencini) and the Supreme Court also added that in any event article 238 was not impaired at all by the fact that the first instance trial was fast track.

At the end of the day this was just poor argument by Hellmann but it was symptomatic of the many flaws that underlay much if not all of his reasoning for acquittal.

More importantly for me and in addition to the foregoing the Supreme Court delivered a withering criticism of Hellmann’s understanding of circumstantial evidence and how to evaluate and treat it in its broad spectrum.

However, how can and what elements contained in the separate trial of one co-accused have any probative weight in the trial of the others?

Prosecutor-General Galati puts it like this. The Supreme Court’s rulings -

“have now settled definitively regarding the interpretation according to which finalised judgements can be acquired by the proceedings, as provided for by the indicated law, but they do not constitute full proof of the facts ascertained by them, but necessitate corroborations not differing from the declarations of the co-accused in the same proceedings or in a connected proceeding”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦......
Naturally this confirmation is not directly used for the purpose of proof but as corroboration of other circumstantial pieces of evidence or of evidence already acquired, not very different from what happens when declarations of collaborators with justice corroborate each other.”

In the event the only material from Guede that really seems to me to have hitherto been extraneous to the first instance trial of Knox and Sollecito was the inclusion at the Nencini appeal of Guede’s partial ID of Knox at the scene and his evidence as to Meredith’s missing money, which were corroborative of elements of evidence that had appeared at the Massei trial; in the case of the missing money for instance, the missing credit cards and Filomena’s testimony that at a meeting shortly before both the murder and the day the rent was due Meredith had told her that she had the cash to hand and was prepared to hand it over there and then.

No such money was found at the crime scene. One suspects that these two elements would have been more prominent at the Massei trial, and have been motivated more attentively, had the three been tried together. In the event Guede’s partial ID of Knox was not even mentioned by Massei and Knox and Sollecito, in the absence of any evaluation of Guede’s evidence, were acquitted (not even motivated at all in fact) of the charge of theft in relation to the money and the credit cards.

Given the foregoing I would argue that Knox and Sollecito derived an advantage rather than a disadvantage from the separate trials.

Furthermore I would argue that the material from Guede’s separate proceedings was not particularly damaging given the overall context of the evidence already directly available from the trial of Knox and Sollecito (which received some but in truth did not require much corroborative confirmation from Guede’s separate trial) and which in itself was sufficient to found a verdict of “beyond reasonable doubt”, but it did supply some useful insight into a motive when of course Hellmann had found none and Massei had supplied a rather improbable one.

6. That Guede was induced into electing for a separate trial with the promise of a reduced sentence should he be convicted - this being to prosecution’s advantage re the case against Knox and Sollecito.

Needless to say this is what you get from desperate and deluded minds. Guede’s lawyer has explained why his client took his advice and the decision was perfectly rational and in Guede’s interests. Guede was entitled to a third off his sentence from choosing fast track though I am no fan of that. Furthermore I have explained why no particular advantage accrued to the prosecution from this choice other than that it probably foreshortened the time that a full trial of the three would have taken.

Posted by James Raper on 07/30/15 at 09:00 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Defendants in court, Amanda Knox, The officially involved, The defenses, Evidence & Witnesses, The pack attack, Hoaxes against Italy, 5 No pack attack hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 24 ECHR appeal hoax, Hoaxes re Guede, 33 Sole attacker hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Marriott PR • Comments here (25)

To Create Points With More Traction For His Yawnfests, Mr Heavey Convenes A Mock Court…

Posted by Grahame Rhodes

“Right” said Mr Heavey “I have convened this mock court to replace some of our failing arguments against the mountain of pesky evidence implicating our little cherub, Amanda Knox”

“Amanda of course is innocent. We all know that. Guede was the sole attacker, and Amanda and Sollecito were not there, and all of Italy has got it wrong.

“Let’s begin with some of the pesky items we have not yet shaken, and see if we can explain them away.”

(1) The numerous DNA traces in the cottage itself that were a mix of Meredith and Amanda.

(2) The DNA of Sollecito strongly showing on the bra clasp.

(3) The imprint of the murder weapon in blood on the bed sheet that matched exactly the knife found in Sollecito’s kitchen carrying Merediths and Amandas DNA. The same knife Sollecito claimed that Meredith cut her finger on even though she had never been to his apartment.

(4) Sollecito’s small knife matching the small wounds on Meredith neck.

(5) The shoe imprint under Meredith’s body which matched Amanda’s shoe size.

(6) The bloody imprint on the bathmat which was proven to be Sollecito’s.

(7) Knox’s lamp in Meredith’s bedroom with no fingerprints, and only one fingerprint of Amanda’s in the entire cottage, which proved once again that there had been a cleanup

(8) The break-in with the glass on top of the clothes in the bedroom, proving that the room was ransacked before the window was broken.

(9) The break-in through the window even though it was an impossible wall to climb and the soil outside had not been disturbed even though it had been wet outside.

(10) The extensive cell phone evidence.

(11) The extensive computer and internet evidence.

(12) Sollecito saying nothing had been stolen even though he could not know for sure as the room been ransacked.

(13) Amanda knowing the precise position of Meredith’s body even though she could not see into the room where Meredith died.

(14) The many witnesses against Knox including the girls who lived with Meredith.

(15) Amanda accused an innocent man, her kindly employer Patrick Lamumba, and let him languish for two weeks.

(16) Amanda and Sollecito each change their stories three or four times; each chip away angrily at the other.

(17) Amanda voluntarily writes a list of other suspects for the police without coercion; includes maps and phone numbers.

(18) Amanda writes out several so-called confessions without coercion, they were her choice.

(19) The autopsy definitively proves more than one attacker; the 47 bruises and knife wounds on Meredith’s body could not have been made by a single attacker.

(20) Our DNA contamination claim totally unsupported.

(21) Amanda not actually interrogated at all, let alone for over 50 hours by teams of policemen, which she confirmed in her book.

(22) The numerous lies about justice officials from Amanda and Sollecito which they repeated in their books.

(23) Sollecito accused Amanda of making him lie and denying her alibi; whereupon Amanda broke down and screamed and admitted she was there covering her ears.

(24) Amanda’s and Sollecito’s pallid demeanor the next day.

(25) Amanda has sex with a drug dealer in exchange for drugs up to day of arrest.

(26) Amanda smells like rotten eggs the next morning indicating possible use of cocaine or crystal meth.

“Right!” said Mr Heavey. First, thanks to our audience which consists mostly of Michelle Sings Easterly Moore and Edda Mellas.

“And now we hear from our experts, Steve Moore, Bruce Fischer, Curt Knox, and Chris Mellas.

“After we have these ones nailed there will be a couple of hundred more.

“I will be writing to the Italian President again soon, to set all of Italy right, as that worked so well for us before…”

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 02/03/15 at 02:33 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Knox & team, 20 No-PR hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Heavey, Bremner • Comments here (11)

The Sollecito Trial For “Honor Bound” #5: Gumbel Just A Defamatory Anti-Italy Shill?

Posted by Our Main Posters

Above: “Neutral ghostwriter” Andrew Gumbel tweets…

1, Today In The Florence Court

Lately many of the chest-thumping PR shills have whined a lot more about themselves as victims than done anything to boost Sollecito and Knox.

Think of Preston, Burleigh, Dempsey, Sforza, Fisher, Moore, and a whole lot of other serial complainers. Now chest-thumper Andrew Gumbel seems to want to join their ranks. That is if the claim that he was ONLY a ghostwriter was made by his lawyer with his consent to the Florence judge.

2. Signs Gumbel Really Is A Shill

Note that Sollecito gave many signs during his US book promotion tour late in 2012 that he really didn’t know much about what was in his own book.

So did Gumbel really only hang on Sollecito’s every word? Or did he talk to a lot more people than that, and get very invested in nasty, dishonest propaganda to deny justice for Meredith via the courts?

Here’s Andrew Gumbel on 1 May 2014, providing the first media opinion in the UK on Judge Nencini’s appeal report. The nasty false claims highlighted suggest Gumbel has a very strong investment in Sollecito and Knox and not a little contempt for the Italian courts.

One truth in Gumbel’s article which he must really regret? That sentence in the thitrd paragraph: “Disclosure: I am the co-author with Sollecito on his memoir about the case.”

The longer the Italian courts consider the Meredith Kercher case ““ and we have now had three trials, six presiding judges, two hearings before the Italian high court and a third on the way ““ the more the country’s institutions of justice have covered themselves in shame.

Judge after judge has twisted the available evidence into extraordinary contortions of logic to assert, at different times, that Kercher ““ a British exchange student stabbed to death in her room in Perugia in 2007 ““ was the victim of a premeditated attack; that her murder happened spontaneously; that the motive was sexual; that the motive was a dispute over housework with Amanda Knox, the star defendant; that the trigger for the murder was the unseemly appetite Knox and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, had for sex and drugs; that the trigger for the murder was Rudy Guede, the Ivorian-born drifter everyone agrees was involved, knocking on the door to use the toilet.

By now, Knox and Sollecito have been convicted, acquitted and convicted again, and the underlying forensic evidence has been both exposed as a sham and, mystifyingly, reinstated. (Disclosure: I am the co-author, with Sollecito, on his memoir about the case.)

Still, the latest judicial document in the ongoing battle, a 337-page justification of the most recent convictions made public on Tuesday, marks a new low. Not only has Alessandro Nencini, the presiding judge of the Florence appeals court, apparently resorted to the same tortured logic as his predecessors; he has also stated things as fact that are manifestly and provably wrong.

That may be more than even the Italian justice system can stomach; judges, after all, aren’t supposed to do things like that. And it may provide Knox and Sollecito with unexpected ““ if still slim ““ grounds for hope at the very moment when Kercher’s death had seemed settled, at last, according to the law.

To read the new conviction report in detail is to enter a kind of alternate reality, where concrete facts appear ignored and alternate facts are seemingly plucked from the air. Kercher’s murder is reduced to a parlor game and all roads lead to the inevitable, if not also foregone, conclusion that Knox and Sollecito are guilty. For instance:

On page 63, Judge Nencini claims that a partial shoeprint found at the murder scene comes from a size 37 women’s shoe and must therefore belong to Amanda Knox. But this is not based on the available evidence. In the early days of the case, the prosecution sought to show that the shoeprint was from Sollecito’s Nikes; the pattern of concentric circles on the sole was later proven to come from a different pair of Nikes belonging to Guede.

On page 81, Nencini grapples with the question of how Knox and Sollecito could have participated in the murder but left no more than a single, hotly disputed trace of themselves at the scene. Extraordinarily, Nencini argues that Knox and Sollecito must have wiped the place clean of their DNA (but left an abundance of Guede’s) because no traces of Knox’s DNA were found anywhere in the apartment that she shared with the victim. But multiple samples of Knox’s DNA were found and presented at trial; they just weren’t found in the room where the murder took place.

Then, on page 321, Nencini writes that the blade of the purported murder weapon ““ a large kitchen knife found in Sollecito’s apartment ““ bore traces of both Kercher’s and Sollecito’s DNA. Again, this is at variance with the evidence. The most the prosecution ever asserted was that Kercher’s DNA was on the tip of the blade. Sollecito’s DNA has never been found.

The defense teams have reacted with consternation: Knox issued a formal statement decrying the lack of “credible evidence or logic” in this latest document, which arrived just ahead of the three-month deadline following her latest conviction; Sollecito’s lead lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, denounced what she said were “at least ten clamorous mistakes per page”. (A Kercher family lawyer called the document “a version that we have always in some ways sustained”.)

This being Italy, however, the judicial errors are not necessarily a bad thing for Knox and Sollecito, because they give the Italian high court an opening ““ should the justices choose to take it ““ to overturn the latest conviction, and either dismiss the case, send it back to get the mistakes fixed, or order yet another trial in another court.

The high court justices will be aware, of course, that the longer the case drags on, the more suspect the process will look in the eyes of world opinion. Another trial would test the patience of even the most ardent believers in Knox and Sollecito’s guilt, and certainly of the Kercher family. But the process is starting to curdle ““ even without the spectacle of lawyers arguing, yet again, over the same controversies before a barrage of international TV cameras. That leaves the high court, which always has one eye on the integrity of the system, with a genuine dilemma.

Much has been written about Italian justice’s desire to save face in this much written-about case. To admit a miscarriage of justice, the argument runs, has become too difficult, because it would expose the mistakes of too many people, from the primary investigators to the Rome forensic lab to the prosecutors and judges.

However, as the case trudges toward the seven-year mark, one has to wonder how much appetite the institutions of justice still have to stand by what they have done. Will the high court really want to endorse Nencini’s report with all these evident flaws? Or will this finally be the moment when the justice system calls a halt to a travesty committed in its name and exonerates Knox and Sollecito, as it should have done years ago?

3. How Gumbel Got It Wrong

We responded by rebutting 20 of Gumbel’s malicious claims in just the first 7 pages of Honor Bound. And Pataz1, a TJMK main poster who also runs his own blog posted this rebuttal of Gumbel below

This letter was sent to the Guardian’s Reader Editor on 4 May 2014, and again on 3 June, 2014. The Reader’s Editor did not respond to either of the email submissions.

Gumbel’s May 1st, 2014 article in the Guardian is a thinly veiled advocacy piece for Sollecito and Knox. He left out a significant phrase from a Nencini passage he cites; this phrase he omitted undermines one of his main claims.

To the Guardian:

I’m writing to you about Andrew Gumbel’s “comment” on developments in the murder of Meredith Kercher case. Gumbel writes about the recently released Nencini court motivations document, which outlines the court’s reasoning for affirming Knox and Sollecito’s conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher.

Gumbel waits until the end of the third paragraph in his article to provide his disclaimer: that he is a co-author of the book by one of the defendants. Its hard to understand why Gumbel waited so long to disclose his vested financial interest in the innocence of one of the defendants on trial. By this time, Gumbel has already levied allegations of impropriety upon the Italian courts and judges. For example, he alleges “the country’s institutions of justice have covered themselves in shame.” He continues specific allegations that “judge after judge has twisted the available evidence [”¦]”. If Gumbel had provided his disclaimer appropriately at the beginning of his letter, readers would have had a more appropriate understanding of Gumbel’s perspective and motivations for writing his letter.

Despite being a co-author of a book by one of the two still on trial for Meredith’s murder, Gumbel’s statements on the court process are wrong. Gumbel pushes the perspective that Knox’s reps have pushed in the US; that Knox and Sollecito have been “convicted again” after an acquittal. Gumbel leaves out any mention of the Italian Supreme Court ruling that overturned Knox and Sollecito’s acquittal and sent the case back to the appellate level. After the acquittal was annulled, the original 2009 conviction remained in place. Gumbel is no doubt aware that the Florence court is an appellate court. (Curiously, Sollecito’s co-defendant Knox also wrongly claims on her website that the Italian Supreme Court “annulled all previous verdicts”; ref: http://www.amandaknox.com/about-contact/?).

Gumbel’s omission of the Italian Supreme Court ruling is odd, because the entire point of his article is the integrity of the judicial decisions. Gumbel left out that the Italian Supreme Court has already made one ruling regarding the integrity of a judicial decision in this case. The Supreme Court’s ruling wasn’t in favor of Gumbel’s co-author and defendant Raffaele Sollecito; perhaps this is the reason that Gumbel failed to mention the actual outcome of the acquittal.

Or perhaps Gumbel left out this information so he could present the evidence the way it is framed by supporters of Knox and Sollecito. Later in the the same paragraph, Gumbel expresses confusion about why evidence remains in the case. He states “the underlying forensic evidence has been both exposed as a sham and, mystifyingly, reinstated.” As the co-author of the book with Sollecito, Gumbel is again no doubt aware that after the appellate-level acquittal was thrown out, the original conviction (with all of the evidence) remained as a part of the case. Any decision made by Hellmann on the evidence was also thrown out of the case, including Hellmann’s conclusions on the knife DNA evidence and the Sollecito’s DNA on the bra clasp. Further, if Gumbel had indeed read the Nencini decision, he would have read the passage where Nencini takes to task the “independent experts” in the Hellmann trial (detailed here:http://thefreelancedesk.com/amanda-knox-trials-meredith-kercher-case/). Gumbel should be well aware after his reading of Nencini why the evidence still contributed to the Florence court upholding his co-author’s conviction.

In his second point on the Nencini decision, Gumbel leaves out a key phrase that completely undermines his claim. By this time in his article, one is forced to wonder if this omission is deliberate. Gumbel’s claim is that Nencini contradicted himself by writing that Knox and Sollecito only left a “single, hotly disputed trace of themselves” despite the other evidence that Nencini also talks about. But the start of the passage Gumbel cites is:

“Una peculiarità è, ad esempio, il rilievo che all’interno della villetta di via della Pergola quasi non sono state rinvenute tracce di Amanda Marie Knox ““ se non quelle di cui si dirà e riferibili all’omicidio ““ né di Raffaele Sollecito.”

The phrase Gumbel deliberately left out is this: “se non quelle di cui si dirà e riferibili all’omicidio”, which, roughly translated, is “except those which will be discussed and related to the murder.” The Nencini Motivations document explicitly contains a clause that accommodates the other traces related to the murder. Gumbel’s point is provably false. As someone who arguably puts himself forth as an expert on the case, this omission is highly concerning.

In Gumbel’s third point he highlights what is a minor error in the Nencini report. Calling out one word in a longer passage, Gumbel points out the report states that Sollecito’s DNA was found on the knife that is alleged as a murder weapon. If Gumbel truly read the report, as he claimed in a twitter exchange with me, he would be aware that the rest of the section that is contained in makes it clear that the finding is Knox’s DNA on the knife, not Sollecito’s. This minor error is hardly cause to overturn the full conviction.

I could continue, but the rest of Gumbel’s article is largely a diatribe against the length of the trial and the Italian justice system. Gumbel cites an article written by Douglas Preston, another author who has financially benefited by being openly critical of the prosecutor in Knox’s case. Knox and Sollecito’s case has gone through three levels of the Italian court system, and back to appeals. Cases in the US that follow a similar path have not happened any faster than the one in Italy. For example, in the Scott Peterson case in the US his defense still filed appeals eight years after his first-level conviction.

That the Guardian has allowed itself to be used as a platform to push the defense’s perspective is not only a disservice to the family of the murder victim who lives in the UK, but is also a disservice to the victim of a violent, brutal murder.

Posted by Our Main Posters on 01/22/15 at 07:35 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Defendants in court, Raff Sollecito, Evidence & Witnesses, The pack attack, The legal followups, Sollecito followup, Hoaxes against Italy, 1 Ital justice hoax, 2 Italian mileu hoax, 3 No evidence hoax, 5 No pack attack hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, Hoaxes Sollecito etc, Hoaxes re Guede, 33 Sole attacker hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers, Hoaxers from 2011, Raff Sollecito #2 • Comments here (17)

Calling Planet Knox: Maybe Chris Mellas And Bruce Fischer Need To Rein In Their Crackpot Brigade

Posted by Peter Quennell

Above is Chris Mellas with Curt Knox, who we are told maybe thinks the way-too-rabid Mellases now damage the prospects of Knox.

Here is some chest-thumping babble on the reliably dishonest website GroundReport by one of Chris Mellas’s crackpot gang, the mafioso wannabe Jay.

Today I examine the role of the Italian judiciary in the framing of Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito for the murder of Meredith Kercher, the skillful way Giuliano Mignini used the Italian media to hold the entire judiciary hostage to his career ambitions, and why I believe the Italian judiciary may finally be ready to fully exonerate Amanda and Raffaelle of any involvement in the murder of Ms Kercher.

This case has been out of the hands of Dr Mignini for over five years - if it ever was fully in his hands. He initially took a decidedly mild stance against Knox, who he thought, through drugs and mental problems, had got in over her head and Meredith’s death was not planned.

In fact from the day after Knox’s arrest the no-nonsense Judge Matteini and Judge Ricciarelli led the case all the way to trial. They got all their information directly from THE POLICE. In light of hard evidence and a psychological report they insisted a potentially dangerous Knox be kept locked up. In April 2008 Cassation very strongly agreed.

Pretty bizarre to see a Mignini witchunt in this, or a judiciary about to reverse itself on years of meticulous work.

At the time of the Meredith Kercher murder on November 1, 2007, the Italian judiciary was was locked in a struggle with the Perugian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini. Mignini was facing charges for abuse of office, relating to his “˜Narducci Trail’ investigations.

This is more chest-thumping babble by the mafioso wannabe Jay. Dr Mignini rarely even talks to the media and he is regarded by good reporters as especially careful with the truth. The Italian justice system is not only one of the world’s most careful and most pro-victim-rights, it is very popular and trusted in Italy second only to the President who is also the Justice System’s top dog.

Dr Mignini’s past caseload as a prosecutor was quite mundane as Kermit’s meticulous and powerful Powerpoint showed. Perugia and its region of Umbria are among the most prosperous and least crime-ridden in Italy toward which the very popular Dr Mignini contributed a great deal over the years.

Dr Mignini rose to his present seniority of Deputy Prosecutor-General in Umbria because on his merits he consistently excelled. He is often on national TV (among other things ridiculing conspiracy theories and the too-ready blaming of crimes on satanism) and has high-level professional friends and supporters throughout Italy, not least in Florence where he has known senior colleagues since law-school.

Mignini and his colleague Michele Giutarri had both been indicted after Mignini had Mario Spezi arrested and briefly imprisoned, in connection with the Monster of Florence crimes. Spezi was released just three weeks later, after an intense media campaign by his writing partner the American author Douglas Preston.

But rather than back off of his satanic sect Narducci trail investigations, Mignini instead plowed ahead with still more satanic sect cases. At the time of the Kercher murder, Mignini had a case unravelling in Florence against a pharmacist and friend of Spezi’s named Francesco Calamandrei.

When the Calamandrei case was dismissed in 2008, Mignini pressed his next “˜satanic sect’ case against the 20 innocent people in Florence, including Spezi and members of the Narducci family. Mignini had also tried at first to link the Kercher murder to “rites related to Halloween”.... It is these two convictions, these two false convictions, which the Italian judiciary is in my view trying so desperately to protect.

More chest-thumping babble by the crackpot Jay. The vast majority of Italians believe the truth of the Monster of Florence case is as set out in the exceptional book Il Mostro by Michele Giuttari in which there really was and is a shadowy group. It was for proving this that a desperate Florence prosecutor took Mignini and Giuttari to court.

We have shown repeatedly that the fading fiction-writer Preston often does not tell the truth. After his near-arrest for falsifying evidence to seek to make Spezi and himself world-famous for “solving” the MOF case, Preston took off out of Italy like a terrified rabbit and has tried to prove he actually has a backbone ever since.

Italians know that in his one brief formal interview with Dr Mignini Preston melted down. He blubbered and wailed while he lied and lied, and was considered so incompetent and naive he might as well be given a break.

Here from a public document arguing for custody of Mario Spezi (the “brains” of the two, if that is not a stretch) is a conversation between the publicity-hungry Inspector Clouseaus (through public sources we have also obtained the tapes) thinking here that they have made the cops look like foolish dupes:

[The word “passeggiata” (leisure walk) in the context of these statements makes little sense literally; in fact, it is a code word by which both Spezi and Preston mean the police visit to Villa Bibbiani that Spezi and Zaccaria are plotting to trigger by way of a letter they wrote reporting false incriminating testimony, and by way of which they expect the police to find the false pieces of evidence contained in six boxes that they are going to place in the villa. Preston is aware of this intended fraud, and he is happy about it, because he presumably expects that from such an operation their “Sardinian track” theory would gain visibility as a media scoop and he and Spezi would become world-famous from it, sell a lot of books, and make a lot of money out of it. So “passeggiata” is really the police eating their bait, going there, and finding their forged false evidence in the house.]

In conversation n. 17077 of Feb. 18. 2006, PRESTON calls Mr. SPEZI, who informs him, expressing satisfaction:

“We have done everything.. I mean”¦ we went and we did it”¦ you know my telephone is ugly [sic]”¦”

and Mr. PRESTON, still in a chummy and allusive tone:

“Oh yes, I understand perfectly, yes, hey”¦ the”¦ the”¦ the “˜passeggiata’ isn’t that”¦ isn’t that”¦ we have “¦ someone has done the “˜passeggiata’?”

and the journalist pointed out, interspersing that with chuckles of satisfaction: “No, no, no, but”¦ they are going to do it!!”

and Mr. PRESTON: “Yes, yes”¦ but”¦ isn’t that interesting wow”¦.”

and Mr. SPEZI: “”¦. We told them to do it !”

At PRESTON’s question about when they would be going to do the “˜passeggiata’, SPEZI answers: “Well”¦ I don’t know but I hope soon” and at a further question by PRESTON, he says: “In.. within.. within the 24th”

SPEZI again answers: “I hope yes”, laughing.

Then, Mr. Preston adds: “It’s fantastic!... Oh the end maybe, I don’t know but”¦”

and Mr. SPEZI: “That would be beautiful!” still sniggering, and Mr. PRESTON agrees enthusiastically.

After his charging, in conversation n. 17231, Mr. PRESTON calls SPEZI and tells him that they need to speak about it in person.

The criminal operation stands out even more egregiously in conversation n. 16950 of February 13. 2006, between Mr. SPEZI, the deviser of the plot, and his right hand man Nando Zaccaria; and when RUOCCO gives Mr. SPEZI “information” about the name of the person who allegedly attended the villa, Mr. SPEZI himself calls Mr. ZACCARIA, and, while making him understand that Mr. Gianfranco Bernabei had already been contacted and the report-complaint had been given to him, he adds: “So he called me.. not him Gianfranco”¦ the other guy, we have an appointment at 2:30pm, because he knew about the name”; and ZACCARIA cries out: “Beautifullllll!” with satisfaction.

In conversation n. 17095 of February 19. 2006, Mr. SPEZI calls Mr. ZACCARIA again and urges him to explain him (to the Flying Squad chief) thoroughly about the “six small boxes”, that is to convince him that the objects are related to the murders. Mr. ZACCARIA tells him that he already explained it to the other guy and says: “If they go there they must look very well.. at everything”¦”, and Mr. SPEZI: “What I mean to say”¦ if he finds a hairpin this doesn’t mean anything to him”¦”, making him understand that he will need to “work” him out.

Mr. ZACCARIA adds in the end: “Then I told him, well while we go”¦ when it’s”¦ when you are going”¦ he says anyway he advises us”. Mr. SPEZI says he agrees and Mr. ZACCARIA reassures him saying he [Bernabei] doesn’t know anything about the case and never dealt with it, then he complains about that the nowadays officers are incapable of doing their job. Thus the chief of the Flying Squad, Dr. Fillippo Ferri, will need to be led by “malicious” Mr. ZACCARIA. Then Mr. SPEZI asks Mr. ZACCARIA to advise him when he goes there (to the Villa). Anyway we remand to the unequivocal content of the conversation, at pages 6, 7 and 8 of request n. 114/06 G.I.De.S.

Back to analysing more from the crackpot Jay.

And Mignini, by continuing to file “˜Narducci trail’ cases, and invoking the same “˜satanic sect’ conspiracy theory, was holding the judiciary hostage to his unprincipled career ambitions. The challenge Mignini presented to the Italian judiciary, was how to stop Mignini’s witch hunt of innocent citizens, without also discrediting the “˜satanic sect’ convictions of Vanni and Lotti in the Monster of Florence cases.

The task of acting as a kind of judicial baby-sitter to Mignini, fell to Judge Paolo Micheli [who] presided over Rudy Guede’s fast track trial in 2008 ““ which was also the pre-trial hearing against Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito, to certify the case against them as warranting a full trial. The challenge for Judge Micheli, was to walk Mignini back from the edge, but without so completely devastating Mignini’s reputation, that the public might begin to question the validity of the satanic sect theory which had been used in the convictions in the Monster of Florence murders.

This is 180 degrees wrong. Judge Micheli is believed to have been leaned on but ultimately the courts at all levels came round to confirming that Dr Mignini had no choice but to act and he acted quite right. The notion of a satanic sect goes way back and Dr Mignini was more doubtful about it than most.

Judge Micheli’s ruling was scathingly overturned by Cassation, and some of the cases against malicious meddlers were resumed. Spezi has been in court after court - just a couple of weeks ago, he lost yet another defamation case brought by Michele Giuttari.

But Judge Micheli allowed Mignini’s case against Knox and Sollecito to go forward to trial. Had Judge Micheli simply done his job, properly heard and investigated Mignini’s case, the only fair outcome would be full dismissal. What Mignini has pulled off is a kind of blackmail. Mignini wanted his promotion at all costs, and was willing to convict and imprison dozens of innocent people to get his way. Amanda and Raffaele are only two of Mignini’s more recent victims, but there are scores of damaged lives left behind in the wake of Mignini’s lust for career advancement.

The crackpot Jay has defamed American prosecutors too? Probably not. Typical of the cowardly Mellas-Fischer gang he writes in English in the United States in a language and from a distance which makes him feel safe. Dr Mignini has zero record of overzealous or wrongful prosecution, and very, very few cases reversed on appeal, and nobody at all in Italy would buy this defamatory crap.

After Michelli dismissed the case against the Florence 20 in 2010, Judge Hellman’s appeal court fully acquitted Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito for any involvement if the murder of Meredith Kercher in October of 2011.

Hello?! Hellman’s verdict was ANNULED for terrible law, and for illegally trying to repeat the complete trial (absent the witnesses, who he ridiculed) instead of sticking to the few points that had been appealed. Cassation annuls very, very few cases, and reversing this corrupted overstretch was universally seen in Italian law circles as right.

Extraordinarily, Judge Micheli waited over one year to release his motivation report, only doing so about two months after the Hellman court released its motivation report in favor of acquittal. Motivation reports in Italy, are normally due in 90 days. I believe Judge Micheli’s delay in releasing his motivation report, was to allow him the opportunity to conform his report to that of Judge Hellman.

Good grief. What is the crackpot Jay on about here? Judge Micheli was leaned on, and he knew he had got the law wrong, and he presumably expected to be overturned - which Cassation very scathingly did. No wonder his homework was not handed in on time; he feared losing his job and serving time.

The Narducci trail case of the Florence 20, was sent back down absent the element of criminal conspiracy among the defendants. In essence, the case was rigged for dismissal, a fact confirmed by Michele Giutarri in a magazine interview earlier this year. Whereas the case against Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito was rigged for conviction.

A previous cassation ruling against Rudy Guede in his fast track process where Guede’s defense waived the right to challenge the evidence, determined that Guede had killed Meredith along with others. Cassation ruled that Knox and Sollecito’s trials should be bound by that finding, which is grossly and patently unfair.

There was nothing unfair. This is a foolish meme. Cassation simply ruled that two others had been involved and that had been proved. It was proved in the 1/4 of the trial that was held behind closed doors where two recreations connected all the dots of the vicious 15-minute taunting attack on Meredith. Both defenses without argument accepted this.

As irrational as the cassation ruling overturning the Hellman acquittal may seem, there may be a deeper reason behind it. In an article from CBS news earlier this year, Doug Longhini writes: “Following the verdict, judge Hellmann didn’t pull punches. He declared: “the evidence was nonsense.” Suddenly, several prosecutors and judges became the targets of criticism claiming they had mishandled the case from the beginning.” ...

For his part, Berlusconi and his party were at war with Italy’s prosecutors and judges. The Prime Minister was trying to reign in their investigative powers. Prosecutors, for their part, were trying to put Berlusconi in jail.” Seen in this light, the court of cassation reversing the acquittal of judge Hellman is not an act of judicial wisdom, but one of self preservation. To avert a political investigation among their own members, Italy’s court of cassation had to reverse Judge Hellman’s acquittal.

The addled Doug Longhini is consistently out to lunch both on the excellent Italian system and the Perugia case as have been the entire CBS team - no wonder they have said very little for several years.

The courts at all points have simply done the right thing and public opinion has been very solidly behind them. Almost every Italian knows that RS and AK carried out the attack. The courts are not in self-preservation and charges against the toothless Berlusconi still stand.

One can sense the political pendulum swinging first in favor of conviction, then back towards acquittal, then back again towards conviction. And events that unfolded just this year, cause me to believe that the Italian judicial-political pendulum is once again swinging back in favor of acquittal. Giuliano Mignini has received his promotion. In his new role, he will never again prosecute a case or lead an investigation, he is only allowed to sit with other judges on appeals courts. So the judiciary can be confidant there will be no more Mignini led witch hunts.

Only recently in the past few weeks, the last of the criminal charges against Mignini have been allowed to languish, due to statute of limitations. So Mignini is out of legal jeopardy. Despite the fact that the only trial on the merits resulted in a conviction and jail sentences for both Mignini and Giutarri, neither will be going to jail, or being held accountable for the crimes they were found to have committed at their first level trial. In the end, it may be said that the Italian judiciary found it easier to promote Mignini, then to jail him

More babble. Dr Mignini was NEVER in legal jeopardy as everyone in Perugia knew - a judge had signed the wiretap of the prosecutor who unwittingly confirmed a Florence cabal and Dr Mignini and his boss and all his colleagues KNEW he would overturn the spurious conviction on appeal.

Dr Mignini did overturn the verdict in Florence on appeal - the appeal judge’s ruling was the hardest-line “there is no case” - and as with ex-Judge Hellmann, both the rogue prosecutor and the rogue trial judge are now out.

Dr Mignini commendably kept pushing back and he won and won and won against the malicious meddlers in the MOF case. On 3 December the great reporter Andrea Vogt posted this:

Those following the side trials that have spun off or become entangled in the Amanda Knox trial might be interested to know that the now infamous and often-cited abuse of office investigation against Perugia prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, which once made such big headlines in the U.S. and UK media, has officially resulted in no charges, and the investigation has been closed.

An initial conviction stemming from 2006 wiretaps and the Monster of Florence investigation was overturned and annulled in Florence on appeal [in 2011]. The court ordered that the case be transferred to Turin for any future investigation. Earlier this year he was acquitted of nearly all the accusations. The Turin court on Tuesday chose to shelve the last remaining question regarding the wiretapping of a La Stampa journalist earlier this week, ruling it was time barred.

The court’s ruling finally settles the long debated question of Mignini’s record: He has no abuse of office conviction, and there is no longer any active investigation into such allegations.

The other protagonist, Mario Spezi, on the other hand, still has quite a few problems on his hands. His 2006 arrest eventually resulted in the high court (cassation) ruling No. 865/2013 deeming that the following crimes occurred: aggravated interfering with public investigation from Febuary 2004 to summer 2006, aggravated attempted judicial fraud between February and May 2004 and aggravated slander and defamation for naming Antonio Vinci as linked to the Monster of Florence homicides in 2006.

For this last charge, Spezi could be held liable in civil court. But he will never be sentenced for any of these crimes, because after the cassation sent it back down for trial at the appeal level, the appeals court in Perugia shelved the case, ruling that the statute of limitations had passed for any further prosecution. And once again, true justice grinds to a halt, caught up in the gears of Italy’s slow and messy system.

In the meantime, Spezi’s faulty thesis on the Monster of Florence case has landed him in court in several other jurisdictions, where ex-Florence homicide cop Michele Giuttari has been pressing forward with slander and defamation charges related to accusations made about him in his now discredited Monster of Florence yarn that Spezi and his American co-author, Douglas Preston made into a bestseller, pinning the blame on an innocent man in the process. [Bold added here]

And so the plot thickens. Giuliano Mignini was made into a convenient media villain when a high-profile American was being tried across the courtroom from him . . . on trumped up allegations that have since fallen unceremoniously to the wayside. Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, who Mignini initially prosecuted, await the decision of their final appeal before the court of cassation in March 2015.

Back to analysing more from the crackpot Jay.

In short and to sum things up: Mignini has gotten his promotion which he valued above the liberty of the innocent; Mignini’s Narducci Trail investigations are over for good; the Monster of Florence convictions against Vanni and Lotti claiming their participation in a non-existent satanic sect are safely in the past; and the war between the Italian judiciary and Burlesconi is in a state of a truce.

For all of these reasons, I believe the pendulum of Italian politics has again swung in the direction of acquittal, and the Italian judiciary is once again in a position to finally recognize, and exonerate, Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito.

It may be a good idea for the crackpot Jay to not hold his breath on this. Cassation and the Florence appeal court have been the most hardline on this. And it was Judge Matteini with the police not Dr Mignini who drove the case forward in 2007 and 2008. As explained above, Dr Mignini had almost no guiding hand, and on 17 December 2007 gave Knox a real break. A shot to get herself off - which she herself tanked.

Prior to that long conversation with Knox on 17 December at her request, where Dr Mignini played eminently fair and she had to be stopped as she was incriminating herself, they had barely spoken any words. Once briefly at the house on the day of the crime, once briefly when Knox was shown the knives, and once briefly when Dr Mignini presided over the reading of her rights on 6 Nov. That was it. From the post directly below, see also this:

In a move serially misinterpreted by the dimwits of the Knox brigade, the prosecution, suspecting she was both mixed up and high on hard drugs, in effect offered Knox and her team a way to a lesser count, when they said that the murder could have been a taunting attack which spun out of control.

As explained near the top here, from 7 November it was Judge Matteini and Judge Ricciarelli, not Dr Mignini, in the saddle, and they got all of their information directly from the police. Prior to the Guede and Knox/Sollecito trials Dr Mignini did not guide the process, impossible though that seems for the Mellas/Fischer crackpots to believe.

These facts, and in conjunction with the ECHR soon to take up the conviction of Ms. Knox for Calumnia in the European Court of Human Rights, provides the Italian Court of Cassation, in March of 2015 when they hear the appeal from conviction of Knox and Sollecito, with the opportunity and incentive to quietly discharge the case, and reinstate the verdict of Judge Hellman, finding that Knox and Sollecito are innocent of any involvement in the murder of Meredith Kercher, and innocent of the crime of “˜staging a crime scene’ because the crime does not exist.

Reinstate Judge Hellmann?! He is being investigated for his suspect role in bending the 2011 appeal right now! Again, it may be a good idea for the crackpot Jay to not hold his breath on this.

The appeal to the ECHR in Strasbourg is dead in the water because Knox herself made up all the claims of the supposed violations of her human rights. She has ZERO case. Read this series here.

By the way, for his wild defamations and his contempt of court, Crackpot Jay opens himself to the exact-same charges Knox and Sollecito and Knox’s parents and Sforza all still face.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 12/23/14 at 06:34 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (19)

Saul Kassin Framed Many Fine Italian Justice Officials - And Played Whiny Victim When Fraud Exposed

Posted by Cardiol MD

Williams College President Dr Falk, and head of psychology Dr Fein

1. The Mass-Victimhood Phenomenon

We often take note of a common “they can’t take what they dish out” phenomenon among the Sollecito & Knox supporters.

If you show unequivocally that their FACTS are wrong, and that they have illegally framed (in English) good Italian officials, they melt down with numerous shrill claims that the meanies ridiculed them - because their mission and the two perps they champion are so moral and so divine.

Doug Preston, Nina Burleigh, Greg Hampikian, Steve Moore, Doug Bremner and many others have exhibited this paranoid victimhood phenomenon.

Doug Preston even wrote an entire book-long wail about his supposed victimhood.

Foolishly perverse behavior. No police or prosecutors anywhere ever appreciate being framed.

In the US it is rare indeed. In Italy a single official complaint can spark a prosecutor’s investigation, and probable felony charges against any or all of them for obstruction of justice.

The Saul Kassin case surely has to be one of the worst of all faux victimhood cases, because his huge and very nasty swipe at Italy, with dozens of wrong facts and false accusations, was delivered as a keynote address to dozens of top justice officials from around the world.

To this day, he perpetuates this enormous academic fraud.

Presumably 100% of that global audience, ignorant of the real story (including a probable serious new felony by Knox) was frauded into believing Knox was tortured by Italians into some making a classic forced confession on Kassin’s guidelines.

2. A Historical Synopsis Of Kassin’s Fraud

Saul Kassin, an academic psychologist, established himself as an acknowledged authority-figure on the subject of prosecutor-induced false confession by develeoping a profile of such confessors.

Prosecutor-induced false confession is, of course, a real phenomenon, which has existed throughout recorded history, notoriously exemplified in modern history at the Moscow Show-Trials of the 1930’s.

Years ago supporters of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito (FOA), claiming that the pair were wrongly convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher, alleged that their “wrongful” conviction was based on a prosecutor-induced false confession, among some other things.

FOA concocted a false description of the events surrounding the “interrogation” using as many as 50 barefaced falsehoods to create a match to the characteristics of false confessors described by Kassin.

Strong fact-based reactions to this fabrication resulted in the exposure of numerous falsehoods and deceptions, in the course of which Kassin’s shilling for Knox was also criticised.

Offended by such criticism, Kassin wrote a new paper, defending his work, but sustaining the multiple falsehoods and deceptions created by the FOA.

On April 30th 2012 the American Psychologist [AP] published an Advanced Online Paper titled “Why Confessions Trump Innocence” authored by Saul Kassin (see the final version here).

In it he “described” the case of Amanda Knox, the American college student who had been convicted of murder in Italy, arguing that Knox was not guilty, and had been induced by prosecutorial-oppression into making a False-Confession.

In June 2012 Kassin presented his misleading keynote address about Knox to the John Jay College global conference (see page 31 of the program). Soon after that he made TV and radio appearances.

3. AP Publishes Non Peer-Reviewed Paper

In September 2012 the American Psychologist journal published Kassin’s paper in print-form (AP Vol.67 (6) Sept. 2012, 431-445).

When it did so, the paper was newly accompanied by Corrections and Updates, in which Kassin states that minor (sic) corrections “should be made in the description of the Amanda Knox case.”

They are not minor in their effect on the meaning of his text, but it remains untruthful as before.

The first change substitutes for one misleading false statement, a more clearly worded false statement; changes 4 and 5 modify the allegation that Guede had raped Meredith, and that Guede’s DNA had been found in sperm at the crime scene.

Not only are Kassin’s changes by no means “minor”, they are only a few of the many changes needed to acknowledge the true facts. They amply confirm the depth of Kassin’s fall into deception.

And in a ludicrously surreal development, Amanda Knox’s 2013 book Waiting to be Heard at great length parotted Kassin’s wrong claims about her wrong claims.

4. The Pro-Justice Community Dissents

TJMK and the two PMF forums and other pro-justice, pro-victim and pro-Italy websites have long explained in Posts and Comments that the Kassin paper containing 50 or more false or deceptive statements is so contrary to the actual facts as to be sheer obfuscation.

The first TJMK reference to False Confession was a comment by Faustus on Jan. 13th 2009. The first TJMK post questioning Saul Kassin was written by the Machine and published on 10 July 2012.

Since then TJMK has published more than a dozen articles focusing on the false facts and false accusations in Kassin’s presentations, with scores of comments expanding the corrections further. This rebuttal and this one were particularly key.

5. Some Relevant Kassin Background

Saul Kassin is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Recently, he was listed as in a “phased retirement” as Massachusetts Professor of Psychology from Williams College, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut.

Kassin’s “resume” reveals that he was once very aware of the phenomenon of self-fulfilling rophecy, and very scornful of people to whom he attributed it.

In 2004, C.U.P. published a multi-author book entitled “The Detection of Deception in Forensic Contexts”, defining “˜forensic context” as any context in which legal questions are raised.

Kassin was the author of chapter 8, entitled “True or False” He then claimed “˜I’d know a false confession if I saw one”. Then Kassin repeats the well-known fact that Oppression-Induced False Confession is a real phenomenon, ridiculing other professionals with the quote “I’d know a false confession if I saw one”.

Then he describes his own recipe for “˜knowing one”, providing a profile ideal for use by Knox and FOA, after Meredith’s murder in 2007.

Kassin’s ridicule relies upon what he, himself, describes variously as “˜self-fulfilling prophecy, interpersonal expectancy effect, and behavioral confirmation’. He provides the reader with 6 references to the phenomenon, the first 2 focusing on Pygmalion, as the classic exemplar of seeing what you want to see.

[Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory. His statue was so realistic that he fell in love with it. Making offerings at the altar of Aphrodite, he quietly wished for a bride who would be “the living likeness of my ivory girl”. When he returned home, he kissed his ivory statue and found that its lips felt warm. He kissed it again, touched its breasts with his hand and found that the ivory had lost its hardness. Aphrodite had granted Pygmalion’s wish. Shaw used this story as the subtext for his play “˜Pygmalion”, the musical version of which is “˜My Fair Lady”.]

Kassin’s “resume” also records that he served as a U.S. Supreme Court Judicial Fellow, working at the Federal Judicial Center .... Dr. Kassin is past president of Division 41 of APA (aka the American Psychology-Law Society).

Given these items from Dr.Kassin’s “resume” a reader would expect Dr. Kassin to be professionally knowledgeable in the law relevant to his specialty; Kassin definitely OUGHT to be that knowledgeable.

In “Why Confessions Trump Innocence” readers are directed by Kassin to FOA shill Dempsey, 2010, and FOA shill Burleigh, 2011, noting “personal communications with Amanda Knox, [shill] Madison Paxton, and Nina Burleigh”.

Consistent with Kassin seeing what he wants to see, his paper contains phrases such as “the case of Amanda Knox and others who are wrongfully convicted”. Kassin’s own deception seemingly promotes receptivity to deception by others.

In January the Nencini Appeal Court in Florence declared Knox and Sollecito to be Guilty-Beyond-Reasonable-Doubt. All that remains is the Supreme Court’s expected firm endorsement.

As we await the Nencini Motivazione report, the senior Florence prosecutor Dr Giuliano Giambartolomei has recently announced his findings that many claims in Sollecito’s “Honor Bound"are spurious and justify new charges being brought against Sollecito. Sollecito’s shadow-writer, the shill Andrew Gumbel, who recently published a self-incriminatory rant in The Guardian, has also been named by the court.

So now seems a great time to refresh TJMK’s reader’s awareness of Kassin’s arguments. Kassin’s false arguments were apparently communicated to Judges Hellmann and Zanetti by Knox’s lawyers, so Kassin himself may be liable under Italian Law.

6. How Dr Scott Sleek Enables The Fraud

Dr Scott Sleek

Remember, Kassin is the cowardly man who lied about good investigators half a world a way, and quite deliberately stirred up whatever hate he could.

Here are some quotes from an article by the duped psychology colleague Scott Sleek amazingly excusing Kassin’s serial framings and obfuscations.

“Studies (as well as real-life cases in the United States) also specifically show that the presence of a confession, because it creates a strong belief, can contaminate latent fingerprint judgments, eyewitness identifications, and interpretations of other types of evidence,” he wrote.

But what particularly inflamed the blogosphere was Kassin’s use of a headline-grabbing example — the case of Amanda Knox, an American college student who was convicted of murder. Kassin had provided a pro bono analysis of Knox’s case in her appeal to the Italian court, recommending that her confession be treated with caution.

He noted that Knox had been immediately identified as a suspect and presumed guilty, confessed after three days of denials and interrogations, and did not have any attorney present when undergoing questioning. In addition, Kassin pointed out, her statements were not recorded. [Actually they were, and Knox signed every one.]

“I used it as an example, not realizing the depth of a couple of Amanda Knox hate groups that track professionals who support Amanda Knox,” he said.

Kassin said the hate emails he received, and the blog posts criticizing him, didn’t focus on the science itself, but on his motives for analyzing Knox’s case. In essence, the attacks were personal. Some of the messages he received felt threatening, he said, and included statements such as: “We know where you work.” A few bloggers also wrote posts lambasting Kassin’s integrity, in one case even calling him a “shill.”

Scientists who have been subjected to these tactics say universities, journal editors, professional organizations and others need to support scholars who face these threats to their academic work.

7. Conclusion: Fraud Kassin Now Plays The Victim

TJMK readers know very well that the above précis is an outright falsehood.

That is not at all what took place.

In his “defence” Kassin also claimed: “I used it as an example, not realizing the depth of a couple of Amanda Knox hate groups that track professionals who support Amanda Knox.”

WHAT hate groups? There are only professionals pro-justice. And why that mere “example”?

Actually Kassin placed his framing and his wrong “facts” front and center, again and again and again.

WHAT other professionals if any support Knox? The real professionals posting and reading here handily exceed Kassin’s pay-grade.

Kassin also claimed, without showing proof, that he received hate mail, and the (very detailed) posts criticizing him didn’t focus on the science itself, but on his motives for analyzing Knox’s case. In essence, the attacks were personal, he stated.

Kassin also claimed that some of the messages he received felt threatening, and included statements such as: “We know where you work” and that a few bloggers wrote posts lambasting Kassin’s integrity.

In one case they even called him a “shill”. Really? Is he not?!

TJMK is as opposed as Kassin to hate-mail. We can correct wrong facts and serial defaming right here.

But we also believe that Kassin’s adoption of Knox’s, Sollecito’s, Paxton’s, Dempsey’s, Burleigh’s, and other FOA’s falsehoods, deceptions, and his serial framings of Italian officials, was far more improper, biased, and compromising of his own integrity.

The attempt to do real damage begins and ends with Kassin. And far from not focusing on Kassin’s “science” his TJMK critics focused sharply on the falsehoods Kassin used to support his self-fulfilling prophecies. Click on links to past posts above.

The historical trap Kassin has fallen into is that of “Experimenter Expectancy”, or seeing what you want to see [c.f. Chapter 6, pp107-108 Betrayers Of The Truth, OUP, 1982, By Broad & Wade]:

Expectancy leads to self-deception, and self-deception leads to the propensity to be deceived by others.

Having fallen into the very trap Kassin himself had described in great detail in 2004, and recited in his “resume”, a legal background that ought to inform him that he was entering a potential legal minefield, Kassin proceeded, in writing, to satisfy the common-law definition of Defamation-Malice [making false statements, knowing them to be false, or made so recklessly as to amount to willful disregard for the truth].

Under Italian law, if any of those he framed complains, Kassin may be chargeable with a felony.

Kassin’s MO does entail defaming the conduct of Italian Police, and Prosecutors. He has adopted many falsehoods. There is good reason to bring his integrity into question.

His best course now would be to publicly withdraw all the many versions of his false claims. And, finally, apologize to all those he framed and the real victim’s circle,

Footnote

Everything in this post applies equally to the ludicrously inaccurate claims of ex FBI “mindhunter” John Douglas in his books and his lobbying at the State Department. Relevant posts:

Click for Post: How With Myriad False Claims John Douglas Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots

Click for Post: Was A Vulnerable John Douglas Hijacked By ‘First Generation Crackpots’ To Lie About The Case?

Posted by Cardiol MD on 04/23/14 at 02:26 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Defendants in court, Amanda Knox, Hoaxes against Italy, 2 Italian mileu hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 16 Interrogation hoax, 17 Fake memory hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Marriott PR, Heavey, Bremner, Hoaxers from 2009, Steve Moore, Saul Kassin, Hoaxers from 2011, John Douglas • Comments here (15)

On Saul Kassin: Our Letter To Dr Douglas Starr Who Wrote An Effusive Profile In The “New Yorker”

Posted by Peter Quennell

Dr Douglas Starr
Co-director of Science Journalism Program
Co-director, Center for Science & Medical Journalism
Professor of Journalism
College of Communication
Boston University

Dear Dr Starr

We would like to take issue with your article “The Interview: Do police interrogation techniques produce false confessions?” in the Dec 2013 New Yorker.

Specifically the effusive passages on the New York psychologist Saul Kassin. Dr Kassin was a hired gun in the annulled 2011 appeal of the Amanda Knox case in Italy. In our assessment he has widely conflated the defense’s (spurious) position he was paid for with an objective academic analysis.

Our posting community consists of professionals in legal and criminal-science fields, and we have quite detachedly uncovered over 50 false claims in Kassin’s widely-promoted papers and TV and conference appearances. The presumed intent of those was to spark more paid court business and more academic advancement.

Amanda Knox was confirmed guilty for lying about her so-called confession a year ago by the Italian Supreme Court, and her sentence of three years was confirmed. This is the same “confession” Kassin builds huge castles upon, the false accusation which had placed an innocent man in jail for three weeks, during which time Knox never recanted.

So exactly what is left standing of Kassin’s position today is hard to discern. However, instead of exposing him and chastizing him, your New Yorker piece seems to have set out without due caution - no buyer-beware - to make your readers respect and associate with him.

This matter isnt over in Italy, because those many framed by Kassin are unhappy about baseless claims of illegal acts presented at a global John Jay College conference and many other forums and tv shows. Any one of those who feel impugned can trigger a felony investigation for poisoning American opinion in an attempted obstruction of Italian justice. Out of which, Kassin might find himself fighting charges incurring possible prison time.

If credible crime experts here in the United States such as yourself now come down in support of those falsely impugned in Italy, and in rejection of Kassin’s categoric false claims, it might assist to defuse a tense and ugly situation, and might keep Kassin’s legal troubles to a minimum. We dont speak on behalf of the officers framed in Italy but we might have some sway as we accept no payment from anyone and are widely trusted there.

We would like to ask you to read these various posts explaining where Kassin went wrong, particularly the fourth one, and then decide what you might like to do. It would be good if this could include inserting an addendum into the New Yorker explaining that due caution should be observed toward Kassin’s claims.

1. Includes a court-accepted widely-confirmed description of the Knox interrogation

2. An Example Of How The Knox Campaign Is Misleading American Experts And Audiences

3. Post Of Jan 2011 Rebutting Kassin’s Substantive Claim Of Forced Confession

4. Correcting Saul Kassin’s Massively Inaccurate Description Of Amanda Knox’s So-Called Confession

5. Passage from Amanda Knox Book Quoting Kassin As Explaining Her “Mental Condition”

If it would help I will need to be soon in Boston and could sit with you. I can also suggest several experts that you might like to consult with.

Kind regards

Peter Quennell
Editor True Justice
Biography

[Everything in this letter applies equally to the ludicrously inaccurate claims of ex FBI “mindhunter” John Douglas in his books and lobbying at the State Department.]

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/14/14 at 06:50 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Defendants in court, Amanda Knox, Hoaxes against Italy, 2 Italian mileu hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 16 Interrogation hoax, 17 Fake memory hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Marriott PR, Hoaxers from 2009, Saul Kassin, Hoaxers from 2011, John Douglas • Comments here (34)

The Rise And Fall Of “Frank Sfarzo” And How Knox-Mellas PR Eagerly Propagated His False Claims

Posted by Ergon

[Frank Sfarzo, thinking of better days past…]

My previous posts

Parts One and Two of this series on the increasingly erratic Francesco Sforza (called here Frank Sfarzo, his pseudonym) are here and here.

Summary of conclusions of investigation

1) The Knox/Mellas PR campaign, the Friends Of Amanda, and the activities of online commenters like Bruce Fischer and Frank Sfarzo are one and the same, coordinated to subvert the course of justice in the trial of Amanda Knox.

There is evidence of coordination of stories planted in various media, manipulation of Wikipedia, moneys paid to Frank Sfarzo; they post on his forums, he posts on theirs, and attempts to profit from the murder of Meredith Kercher.

2) The mercenary trickster Frank, who has other agendas and is flexible on the idea of guilt or innocence of the accused, inflames her gullible supporters with stories of ‘rotten’ Italian justice, and, by demonizing the prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, makes them unlikely to ever reasonably look at the concrete evidence of guilt presented in court and confirmed in several trials so far.

3) A series of lies sourced by him and the campaign then makes it into Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s books, and from there into the media, which, thinking they have been confirmed by various sources, repeat them endlessly in an attempt to sway public opinion, without doing any fact checking of their own.

(Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi, co-authors, The Monster Of Florence, first set attack on legal system in process.]

Introduction to Part Three

As someone who has long been fascinated by politics and the use of PR in political campaigns, it was interesting to see similar tactics used by the campaign that sprung up around the group known as the Friends Of Amanda Knox, or, FOA.

The group, formed to battle inflammatory descriptions of Knox and counter the negative media reports about “˜Foxy Knoxy’ ” was soon indulging in pretty inflammatory rhetoric themselves, mostly through the internet.

Many trial watchers, who were used to the normal progression of murder cases, were shocked to see the virulent online campaign become the story, and translate into a wholesale attack on a foreign country’s judicial system, and an attack on one prosecutor, Dr Giuliano Mignini, and the police force of the city in which the murder took place, Perugia, Italy.

These attacks soon got picked up and repeated by a hostile media, often without the simplest fact checking, but more to do with feeding the public with an endless titillation effect of sex and violence.

Analyzing this wall of noise became an interesting pursuit for many of us. Was there truth to the allegation that these were two “˜innocent kids’ railroaded by a rogue prosecutor with an obsession with Satanism and sex, and was there widespread public support for them, or, just the semblance of it?

[Edda and Chris Mellas. Only picture of them at an FOA event, which Frank Sfarzo claims “they have no connection with”.]

And how and when did Frank Sfarzo become such a big part of the picture? Make no mistake, he was central to the PR effort, as “the only Italian reporter to attend every trial date for the two accused” and apparently a victim of “a prosecutor with an enemies list” who sent police goons to kill him (Frank Sfarzo) which only served as back story for quasi-journalists, to play out their own prejudices and excuse two people already convicted of murder.

This series of articles on the activities of Frank Sfarzo and the FOA was based on the simple philosophical equation: if some should set themselves up as watchers and experts of a murder trial conducted in a foreign language, in a country thousands of miles away, and create reams of “˜expert’ opinion that never was to be tested in court, well, who would watch the watchers?

And how important was Frank Sfarzo, as the only Italian in the mix, to give them credibility by simple parroting and agreeing with their conclusions? Who was Frank Sfarzo, anyway? (For that, see parts One and Two)

Who are the “Friends Of Amanda”?

And how did they come across Frank Sfarzo?

The FOA was originally a “group of parents whose children went to Seattle Prep School with Amanda Knox” included Tom Wright, a filmmaker, Jim Lovering, a marketing specialist, David Marriott, of the PR firm, Gogerty Marriott, and King County Superior Court Judge Michael Heavey, with attorney and CNN legal specialist Anne Bremner as their spokesman.

Seattle Resident and New York Times columnist Tim Egan fired off a series of xenophobic posts, which portrayed the 1st instance trial as an exercise in anti-Americanism. A sentiment regrettably echoed by Washington Senator Maria Cantwell.

[Many well known FOA members are seen here with Frank Sfarzo]

Here is Frank Sfarzo, fully converted to Amandaism by January 19, 2009, and on board on his blog Perugia-Shock: “Friends for Amanda…. A different kind of marines”

Hate and contempt, people judging, people lynching, profiteers, and jackals. But there are as well a few nice stories around the Meredith Kercher case.

There’s Meredith’s family who have not had a word of hate for who ever stolen their daughter’s life. There’s a guy like Rudy—guilty of having killed Meredith or of just not having called the 118? never mind—who lives today in repentance, and had thoughts of sorrow for the angel that we lost.

There are Rudy’s lawyers, Walter Biscotti and Nicodemo Gentile, able to fight with all their strength and not exactly for a fortune. There’s Rudy’s elementary teacher and her son who run to the court to testify for this unlucky guy.

There are people who go work into the jails, keeping inmates busy with any sort of activities. There are Amanda’s guards, first rough but who treat her now like a queen.

[Professor Chris Halkides, “the DNA Guy” who writes many misleading pieces on DNA evidence, with Amanda Knox and her friend Madison Paxton]

Frank Sfarzo, continuing:

There were already people in Seattle helping Amanda’s family. Now we have Anne Bremner and Amanda’s friends. They didn’t stay there just watching and complaining. They chosen to show to the world that the girl they know, the gentle and creative young woman who loves music, the outdoors and children can’t be a killer and today friendsofamanda.org, the website they built for the purpose, is ready.

“Amanda should never have been arrested,” said Anne Bremner, a Seattle attorney and TV legal analyst:

“She’s on trial because Italian officials made a series of serious investigative mistakes and didn’t realize it until they had already leveled false charges. They got themselves in so deep that they refuse to get out.

Private criminal investigator Paul Ciolino used stronger words in a CBS 48 Hours interview last year: “It’s a railroad job from hell.”

The Friends of Amanda is not associated in any way with Knox’s family or her legal defense team. It includes members from the U.S. legal and judicial systems, an internationally renowned criminal investigator, a best-selling author, and other professionals and friends who believe unequivocally in Knox’s innocence.

“Many of us are parents who would be grateful for the support of a similar group if our own child was locked up 6,000 miles away in a stranger-than-fiction nightmare,” Bremner said. “Our mission is to present the international public and the Italian justice system with the solid facts and evidence that irrefutably prove Amanda’s innocence, and bring her home.”

“The killer is serving his time,” said Bremner. “He acted alone. Neither Amanda nor Raffaele was at the scene at the time. Zero evidence connects them to this homicide. We are absolutely certain that neither of them had anything to do with Kercher’s tragic death.”

“Italian authorities and the international media have presented a lurid and utterly false image of Amanda, accompanied by fantastical references to sex games and occult rituals,” Bremner added. “Everyone who knows Amanda says these stories are beyond ludicrous.”

Not really “the marines” Amanda’s lawyer was joking about but a nice story of friendship and solidarity. “America as I like it.”

[There’s a picture of Meredith to the back here, along with her accused killers’. FOA and Knox revel in phony ‘tributes’ and ‘honor’ to Meredith, knowing it will pain the Kerchers]

Of course, as we now know, Sfarzo already had been receiving moneys from OGGI, from American networks, and, very likely, the Sollecito family.

I do not agree that he changed his mind about guilt at some point along the way.

It is my opinion, that, having known Mario Spezi from his time in Florence, he returned to Perugia to find ways to attack PM Mignini, and his primary goal was to attack his credibility and affect his Monster Of Perugia investigation through a full bore attack on his handling of the Meredith Kercher Murder case.

My opinion, as I say, but there simply is too much evidence of collusion with Mario Spezi and Douglas Preston, and financial inducements via Bruce Fischer’s gullible membership, as reported earlier.

The rest of his story, and the main point made, that the FOA had no connection with Amanda Knox’s family, (or Frank to the FOA) we know to be an outright lie, as FOA>Chris Mellas>Bruce Fischer. Note Sfarzo’s nearly two month stay with the Mellases.

Judge Heavey and others making regular donations amounting to tens of thousands of dollars to Frank Sfarzo and his never ending demands to them for more.

[Bruce Fischer, center, long chained to Sfarzo, now the toothless ‘attack dog’ of the FOA campaign]

The stories sourced from Frank about “˜Mignini’s Goons’ found its way into the CPJ, Committee to Protect Journalists, who never retracted their claim after finding out that Sfarzo lied to them, that he had assaulted police who were called by his sister when he attacked them for trying to take her away from his clutches. Maybe this had something to do with it:

CPJ 2009 Donors

Douglas & Christine Preston

Julia Preston

Even his stories about not receiving any commissions from newspapers turned out to be a lie, he directed the RCS Group to send royalties for all the previous photos and stories to Seattle, and his pleas to send donations to another PayPal account (controlled by his aunt) were not because PayPal was creating problems for him, but because he was trying to avoid taxes. (I saw copies of his e-mails, and he was traveling with copies of his aunt’s ID).

[Frank with Judge Michael Heavey, shortly after his arrival in Seattle.]

Judge Michael Heavey

He is an interesting subject in himself, as one of the most fervid FOA.. Not having been very successful in his political ambitions, and admonished by the Judicial Ethics Council for his advocacy for Amanda Knox, he seemed to have some sort of emotional connection to the case, and maybe, like Bruce Fischer, wanted a springboard for his next venture, which now, grandly, is called Judges 4 Justice.

Here is our full investigation of him along with a video and transcript of his pro-Knox presentation repeated at numerous Rotary Club venues. He even took Frank Sfarzo and Dr. David Anderson to one in Yakima, WA on July 25, 2012.

At one of them (transcript) he repeats the claims of “˜corrupt and dishonest police’, “˜they planted evidence’, “˜kangaroo court’, “˜14 hour all night long interrogation’ canards. He also says elsewhere: “I used to think he (Mignini) was evil incarnate” and, shockingly, says:

The criminals are those who perpetuated a false accusation against two good young people. These police and prosecutors lied, cheated, and stole the innocence of two good young people. They are the criminals.

Why did the Supreme Court of Italy send this case back? Here is the answer
. In an effort to save face, the Italian Supreme Court joined the prosecution and the police of Perugia, and perpetuated these false accusations. The Italian Supreme Court has become criminals themselves. They continue the abuse of two good young people.

My prediction, this goes back for a third trial, there won’t be too much fanfare, and the verdict will be not guilty, insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. The Supreme Court, the Court of Cassation, does this to save face, but in reality, in my opinion, they have disgraced themselves as jurists, they continue to disgrace their country. Is this justice? I think not.

Is Judge Heavey unhinged? You can decide here..

[Frank, the loony Dr. David Anderson, and Judge Heavey at the Yakima Rotary. Anderson still attacks the victim’s family]

Bruce Fischer

Now we all have Bruce Fischer’s M.O. of intimidation and bullying behavior down pat. He is not simply an advocate for Amanda Knox, he is Chris Mellas’s surrogate in the online wars.

His enemies list, his attempts to “out” any anonymous individual who got in his way of building an Innocence-Anywhere-for-hire advocacy group. He promised to apply for charitable status, but became for profit.

His ballistic threats to expose the leakers who came forward on Frank Sfarzo’s behavior showed how important Frank Sfarzo was to their cause, there was no level he would not sink to, this has all been reported previously, in Parts I and II. The relevance, also, of the SfarzoGate Papers is that it sank Bruce Fischer.

But it was in his using of a very few volunteers to create the impression of widespread support that he undid himself. He even patently allowed the use of PR puppet accounts to out people, and to attack PM Giuliano Mignini.

And it was in his use of sock puppets to write articles for Wikipedia, and control the Meredith Kercher, Giuliano Mignini, and Candace Dempsey entries, that he exposed himself, and even, inadvertently, showed collusion with FBI agent Steve Moore.

Here is our investigation, in part on his methods.

But where Bruce really out-did himself was where FOA friends wrote numerous articles on the poorly editorially controlled (plus active collusion with the editors) Ground Report to write numerous libels about their favorite target, Dr Giuliano Mignini. (I also once got the “˜special treatment’. No biggie, I knew when I got involved this would happen, and this cause is worth it.)

Here is one comment written by an anonymous commenter “JLS1950” to another, “Heisenberg”:

JLS1950 > Heisenberg âˆ’

Sounds to me like Mignini seeks to protect the real traffickers from “competition”. I wonder if that might help shed some light on his connections to Guede…”

And who do you think was the source for this? Frank Sfarzo.

Note: “JLS 1950” is Joe Starr, a Seattle resident who was identified as being Chris Mellas’s best friend, and whose syntax, repeated libels and foul language for the last six years in various forums marks him as being one single awful person, regardless of how many ID’s he appropriates.

[Joel Simon of the now discredited CPJ, which did not fact check Frank’s allegations, then refused to retract after it turned out he lied.]

Example of major false Sfarzo allegation

this is Frank Sfarzo on Perugia Shock:

“MIGNINI WAS THERE AND THE INTERROGATION WAS VIDEO RECORDED” January 31, 2012

“I gave the order, to bring them both in together” ““Giobbi revealed at the trial. “So, as soon as the room was ready, with the camera set up and everything, she was called in”

“I was in a room together with the prosecutor Mignini” ““Giobbi adds”“ “We were watching the interrogation, so to study her reactions”.

“So, Giobbi reveals that Mignini was present! He is responsible, then, for everything that happened that night.”

But in the court transcript Dr Giobbi says nothing of the kind. The only other observer was Dr Profazio, the head of the Flying Squad. Dr Mignini was at home in bed.

And in his testimony there was zero mention of any camera. There was no recording. They were merely puzzling over Sollecito’s and Knox’s behavior.

So here’s a legal quiz.

After an investigation into a certain Perugian Blogger’s Blog is concluded, and someone wades through three years of slanderous shite, they find posts that accuse an officer of the court of consorting with drug traffickers, and protecting them, and lying about whether Amanda Knox’s interrogation was recorded, amongst many other false allegations.

In short, if he accuses said officer of the court of committing crimes.

Is that worthy of being sued for defamation, or is it not?

Steve Moore

Shortly after ex-FBI agent became convinced by his wife to look at the case in 2010, he started running illegal background checks on prominent commenters for guilt, as he admitted on his blog. His presentations on the case were uniformly, laughably, unprofessional.

There are more than a dozen posts on TJMK debunking him.

Chris and Edda Mellas

Not only do they organize and coordinate the FOA and Bruce Fischer wings of the Amandic Party, they have made it very clear that they approve and support their activities 100%.

And then they threw a party for the troops, but hid when the infamous group photo was taken, to hide their involvement. Luckily (see image of them above) we do have a picture of them there.

I blame them for their lack of respect and thinly disguised hostility towards the Kercher family, and for allowing their surrogates to attack the Kerchers as being motivated by “greed” when it was the Massei court that awarded the damages! The people who made such comments on their behalf were at that party, and they know that! The Kerchers, with their grace and perseverance, are the polar opposites of the classless Mellases.

(David Marriott, of the Marriott PR firm, who quickly lost control of the campaign as the FOA got into attack mode.)

Frank Sfarzo, again

This is before he realized it might be better to keep his mouth shut and disappear for a while:

“Damn, I’ve heard that pmfrs are slandering me seriously through one of their members, a certain “Tamale”, a certain “Ergon and various other anonimous (sic, I am not anonymous) slanderers (people so ashamed of themselves that they don’t even have the courage of appearing with their own name and face). Good for my lawsuit. Hey, I didn’t know I was in jail”¦ Thank you “Michael”, hope you got valuable properties”¦”

No, I’m not “˜anonimous’. My photo and name’s been published on IIP since 2011, and when Sfarzo ran in to me at Cassazione in Rome on the afternoon of March 25, he couldn’t even make eye contact. He spent the whole day texting away (maybe he took a picture of me with his Blackberry? 😊. Then the last I saw of him was on the Porto Umberto I bridge that night at 10:00 PM, driving away in his little Smart Car, hunched down and still texting at the stop light.

On December 16, the lawyers for the Kercher family presented their arguments, in the Appeals court of Florence. They were there, as they had been since the beginning of the trial in Perugia, to speak for the real victim, Meredith Kercher, above all.

Then on December 17, the lawyers for Amanda Knox presented their case, which amounted to more than a rehash of false arguments. It was livened only by an e-mail from Knox, to which as the judge said, if she wants to defend herself, she can present herself in court.

Raffaele Sollecito’s lawyers will present their arguments January 09, and then the prosecution rebuttal January 10. From now on, nothing the few remaining FOA does will make any difference to the verdict, due January 15 approx.

The end

Who knew when I first commented on the case in 2010 where it would lead me? Yes, the case brought together all sorts of people, but in the end, it was the nastiest PR campaign I have ever observed. Amanda Knox, Chris Mellas, Frank Sfarzo, Douglas Preston, Michael Heavey, Bruce Fischer and Steve Moore all seemed to revel in this dirty fight.

One day, they may look back and ask “Was it worth it? Did it help the cases at all? The Monster Of Florence, Knox/Sollecito, against Mignini?” But somehow, I feel they are, and always will be, singularly unaware.

(Outside Cassazione, Aula No. 1, Rome, waiting for the court to return. 8:30 PM, Mar. 25, 2013. This is when the wheels fell off the PR bus.)

Acknowledgement

Much of the background is based on research on the principals conducted and reported in the pages of the PMF dot net forum,, the PMF dot org forum,, and TJMK here..

I want to mention Nell and guermantes, Kermit and James Raper, The Machine, jools, Mr. and Mrs. Fly By Night, Yummi, Peter Quennell, and brmull (who sadly is no longer commenting on the case), and many more. The rest, too many to list here, but gratefully acknowledged.

And also I was fortunate to be entrusted with information from many confidential sources about Frank Sfarzo, and to obtain more when I went to Rome to attend the hearing at Cassazione March 25-26, when the Italian Supreme Court accepted the appeal of the Umbrian prosecutor general Dr. Galati and annulled the acquittal of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

This was a collaborative effort, and my thanks to all of you.

Posted by Ergon on 12/18/13 at 08:13 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes against Italy, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 20 No-PR hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Marriott PR, Heavey, Bremner, Francesco Sforza, Paul Ciolino, Hoaxers from 2009, Bruce Fischer, Hoaxers: media groups, CPJ Joel Simon • Comments here (30)

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