Headsup: To those many lawyers amazed that Knox did not get on the witness stand to head off a certain re-conviction: the best guess among Italian lawyers is that Knox's own lawyers feared ANOTHER calunnia charge if she repeated the crackpot and highly disprovable claims that she was tortured. The tough calunnia law is primarily a pushback measure against mafia meddling which is widely suspected in this case.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Summaries Of Knox & Sollecito Statements On Night Of Their Arrest

Posted by Our Main Posters

From Corriere della Sera translated by the Daily Telegraph 7 November 2007

Suspect statements in Kercher murder case

By Aislinn Simpson

2:40PM GMT 07 Nov 2007

The following are extracts from police interviews with Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, in the murder case of Meredith Kercher, as printed in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera

Amanda Knox

Police said that Knox, when confronted by police with her boyfriend’s evidence, admitted she had lied in previous interviews.

She maintains she played a “minimal role” in what happened, Corriere della Sera reported.

The newspaper said Knox appeared “confused” in interviews, repeatedly putting her head in her hands and shaking it, and that detectives believe she is still not telling the whole truth.

She reportedly told them during interviews on Tuesday: “I want to talk about what happened because the incident has left me really upset and I am really scared of Patrick (Lumumba), the African man who owns the pub Le Chic where I work sometimes.

“I met him on the evening of November 1 after having replied to a message he sent me, with the words ‘Let’s meet up’.

“We met at around 9.00pm at a basketball court in Piazza Grimana and we went to my house. I don’t remember if my friend Meredith was already at home or if she came in later. All I can say is that they went off together.

“Patrick and Meredith went off into Meredith’s room while I stayed in the kitchen. I can’t remember how long they were in there together - I can only say that at one point I heard Meredith screaming and I was so frightened I blocked my ears.

“I don’t remember anything after that - my head’s all confused. I don’t remember if Meredith screamed and I heard thuds too because I was upset, but I guessed what might have happened.

“I found Patrick this morning (Nov 5) in front of the language school and he asked me some questions. He wanted to know what the police had been asking me. I think he also asked me if I wanted to meet some journalists, maybe to find out if I know anything about Meredith’s death.”

Of Sollecito, she said: “I don’t know for sure if Raffaele was there that night, but I do remember very well waking up at my boyfriend’s house, in his bed, and I went back to my house in the morning where I found the door open.”

Raffaele Sollecito

Sollecito reportedly told police in an interview that he wanted to change his story.

He said: “I have known Amanda for two weeks. From the night that I met her she started sleeping at my house. On November 1, I woke up at around 11, I had breakfast with Amanda then she went out and I went back to bed.

“I met her at her house again at around one or 2.00pm. Meredith was there too, but she left in a hurry at around 4.00pm without saying where she was going.

“Amanda and I went into town at around 6pm, but I don’t remember what we did. We stayed there until around 8.30 or 9pm.

“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.”

He goes on to say that Amanda returned to his house at around 1am and the couple went to bed, although he couldn’t remember if they had sex.

He said she got up the next morning and went home for a shower at around 10.30am.

“When she went off Amanda took an empty plastic bag, telling me it was for dirty washing. She came back around half past eleven and I remember she changed her clothes.”

At this point, he says Amanda told him she was worried.

“She told me that when she went back home she found the door wide open and traces of blood in the little bathroom. She asked me if it sounded strange to me. I answered that it did and I advised her to call her housemates. She said she had called Filomena (another housemate), but that Meredith wasn’t answering.”

He said the two went back to the house together.

“She opened the door with her keys and I went in. I noticed that Filomena’s door was wide open and there was broken glass on the floor and the room was in a mess. Amanda’s door was open but it was tidy. Then I went towards Meredith’s door and saw that it was locked.

“I looked to see if it was true what Amanda had told me about the blood in the bathroom and I noticed drops of blood in the sink, while on the mat there was something strange - a mixture of blood and water, while the rest of the bathroom was clean.

“I was asking myself what could have happened and I went out to see if I could get in through Meredith’s window. I tried to break down the door but I couldn’t and so I decided to call my sister to get some advice because she is a police lieutenant.

“She told me to call 121 (the Italian emergency number) but in the meantime the postal police arrived.

“In my previous statement I told a load of rubbish because Amanda had convinced me of her version of the facts and I didn’t think about the inconsistencies.”

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Kate Mansey Interviews Sollecito Several Days Before His Arrest

Posted by Our Main Posters

Published in the Sunday Mirror 4/11/2007

MURDERED IN ITALY. MEREDITH, 21
Friend tells how he broke down door
Kate Mansey In Perugia, Italy 4/11/2007

A friend of murdered British student Meredith Kercher told last night how he discovered her body in her blood-spattered bedroom.

Raffaele Sollecito, 23, relived the horror of finding the body of the pretty brunette who died when her killer broke into her home and cut her throat as she lay in her bed.

“It is something I never hope to see again,” he said. “There was blood everywhere and I couldn’t take it all in.

“My girlfriend was her flatmate and she was crying and screaming, ‘How could anyone do this?’”

Meredith, 21, who had been studying in Perugia, Italy since August, was murdered the day after a Halloween fancy dress party at the city’s British-themed Merlin Pub on Wednesday.

On Thursday she posted happy snaps of herself in fancy dress on the internet and in the evening had returned home alone after watching a film at a friend’s house.

But her flatmates - two Italian girls and one American - had all stayed out for the night, so the gruesome discovery wasn’t made until the next day.

Raffaele had spent the night at his own house on the other side of the city with his girlfriend, Meredith’s American flatmate Amanda Knox, 22.

He said: “It was a normal night. Meredith had gone out with one of her English friends and Amanda and I went to party with one of my friends.

“The next day, around lunchtime, Amanda went back to their apartment to have a shower.”

As Amanda, from Washington DC, stepped into house [sic B] she could tell there was something terribly wrong.

Raffaele said: “When she arrived the front door was wide open. She thought it was weird, but thought maybe someone was in the house and had left it ajar.

“But when she went into the bathroom she saw spots of blood all over the bath and sink. That’s when she started getting really afraid and ran back to my place because she didn’t want to go into the house alone. So I agreed to go back with her. When we walked in together, I knew straight away it was wrong. It was really eerily silent and the bathroom was speckled with blood like someone had flicked it around, just little spots.

“We went into the bedroom of Philomena (another flatmate who was away) and it had been ransacked, like someone had been looking for something. But when we tried Meredith’s room, the door was locked. She never normally locked her bedroom door and that really made us frightened.”

Their panic grew as they desperately banged on her door.

Raffaele said: “I tried to knock it down. I thought maybe she was ill… I made a dent, but I wasn’t strong enough on my own so I called the police.”

When police arrived they knocked the door down straightaway and Raffaele followed them into the room.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he said. “It was hard to tell it was Meredith at first but Amanda started crying and screaming. I dragged her away because I didn’t want her to see it, it was so horrible.

“It seems her killer came through the window because it was smashed and there was glass all over the place. It was so sinister because other parts of the house were just as normal.”

Raffaele, a computer science student, said Meredith had recently started seeing an Italian neighbour called Giacamo [sic B] who lived in the apartment beneath the girls.

He said: “Meredith was always smiling and happy. She was really popular and it’s horrible that someone would want to hurt her.”