Headsup: In the US, the bizarre AP report, carried by just some of the media, and a delusional, highly defamatory rant in The Atlantic, seem the only major questionings of the Florence and Rome guilty verdicts so far. There are other developments we wish to report next though we'll keep an eye on this.

Saturday, November 29, 2014

The PMF/TJMK Master Evidence List: First Of Our Projects To Make The Final Picture Whole

Posted by Our Main Posters

High-achiever Meredith Kercher was born less than one mile south of this famous London landmark

Building An Evidence Mountain

There are really three pictures, not just the one, still to be fully made whole.

• That of Meredith. We believe a family site will soon add to the fine book published by Meredith’s dad.


• That of all of the evidence the court acquired in 2009, which is the sole picture the Italian citizenry takes seriously.


• That of the misleading campaign by the Knox and Sollecito PR shills, leaving some in the UK and US misled.

The Master Evidence List is a key part of the second picture and there are several other media-friendly pages still to come.

Please click here for more

Monday, November 24, 2014

Italian Media Spotlighting The Perversion Of Killer Groupies Of Alleged Murderer Of 38 Patients

Posted by Peter Quennell

1. Alleged Nurse-Killer Attracting Deviant Males

Convicted killers and alleged killers facing trial often attract deviant support with sexual undertones.

Why the case of Nurse Daniela Poggiali, arrested a month ago in north Italy, is capturing so much attention is not only the seeming extent of her crimes - some 38 patients in her care died mysteriously - or her bizarre selfies exulting over one dead patent.

It is also the astonishing volume and and rabid lust of the fanmail now arriving at the place where she is awaiting trial, and the increasing numbers of Italian killer groupies emerging online and jostling to head her parade, Italian Knox groupies such as Luca Cheli maybe among them.

Here is a UK report and a translated Italian-media report will follow.

Italian nurse who took photos of herself with patients she had murdered is flooded with fan mail in prison ““ including marriage proposals

An Italian nurse who took photos of herself with dead patients she had murdered is being flooded with fan letters from male admirers, including some containing marriage proposals.

Daniela Poggiali, 42, from the town of Lugo, in the Emilia-Romagna Region of central Italy, was arrested after police investigating the mysterious death of a 78-year-old patient stumbled upon 38 other unexplained deaths on her shifts.

Rosa Calderoni, 78, was admitted with a routine illness but died after being injected with high levels of potassium - the compound used in lethal injection executions in the U.S.

Nurse Daniela Poggiali from Lugo, in central Italy, has been sent fan mail and wedding proposals while she awaits trial in relation to 38 unexplained deaths on her shifts

Further investigations revealed that over a three month period, 38 out of 86 patients under Poggiali’s care at the Umberto I hospital in Lugo had all died mysteriously.

Now awaiting trial at a prison in Forli, a city in central Italy, Poggiali is being inundated with fan mail from admirers calling her ‘good looking’.  A prison spokesman said: ‘Over the last few weeks since she was placed here there has been a steady stream of letters from males.

‘Most of them say how pretty and good looking they think she is, and one or two have even contained proposals of marriage.’ Prison officials said Poggiali has received a steady stream of letters from men calling her ‘good looking’

According to investigators the nurse had found the dead patients ‘annoying’ or that they had ‘pushy relatives’. During their investigations they discovered pictures of Poggiali grinning alongside the dead bodies.

The lead magistrate investigating the case, Alessandro Mancini said: ‘We believe she is sound of mind, but simply took satisfaction, and real pleasure in killing.

‘The photos reveal an unbearable cruelty that I have not seen in 30 years on the job.’

A spokesman from the hospital where she worked said: ‘She always came across as being a very cold person. ‘But she also used her charms to flirt with male doctors if she thought she could get favours from them.’

Poggiali has denied killing any patients and says she is being framed by jealous colleagues.

2. Killer-Groupies Get More Media & Research Attention

The growing fear in justice circles is that killer groupies are helping to elevate murder rates.

They are certainly elevating anger levels, and making potential killers feel competitive and jealous of the media coverage of others. They are damaging professional careers and sparking death threats, making law-abiding people more distrustful, making police-work and convictions more difficult, and distracting hard-pressed politicians and populations from looming world-wide problems.

All of which comes at a high cost and puts all of us in a great deal more danger. So the spotlight upon killer groupies is intensifying. Here is one media report.

A look inside the bizarre world of serial killer groupies

If you type the phrase “serial killer addresses” into an Internet search engine, you’ll get some disturbing results.

A number of websites list the prison addresses of convicted killers, and police investigators told FOX 12 there are plenty of people “” serial killer groupies “” writing to convicted serial killers.

Portland police homicide detective Jim Lawrence said he once investigated a Portland man who corresponded with two convicted serial murderers.

Lawrence showed FOX 12 some of the correspondence, including a letter he said the Portland man wrote to serial killer Douglas Daniel Clark.

Clark and a partner were known as “Sunset Strip Killers.”

The pair were convicted for a series of killings in Los Angeles. The letter to Clark included an illustration of a hand with the phrase,  “Who knows what these hands will do, what they’ll do 20 years from now.” 

“He really seemed to put a kind of hero worship behind this serial killer, and it was a kind of morbid fascination,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence also showed FOX 12 violent artwork the man received from serial killer Ottis Toole, convicted of killing six people in Florida in the 1980s. Police believe Toole also killed 6-year-old Adam Walsh in 1981. The sketch depicts a decapitated head.

Criminal psychologist Dr. Frank Colistro said serial killers often radiate a perverse charisma that groupies find attractive.

“A lot of them get caught up in the drama that’s associated with these people forever,” Colistro explained.

And the list is long for love behind bars, for killers who’ve been married in prison.

I-5 killer Randy Woodfield, who was convicted for murder and attempted murder and suspected in dozens of other crimes in the early 1980s, has been hitched twice at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and Scott Peterson all have had loyal female followers.

“The Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez, convicted of 13 brutal murders in California in the 1980s, had groupies who called themselves, “˜the women in black,’ who attended his trial.

“You do get a lot of inadequate, insecure women,” Colistro said. “In a sense, they’re the perfect boyfriend, the perfect husband. In a sense, you can do a relationship light, so to speak.”

Then there are groupies who want to befriend the notorious. Lawrence said some write to convicted killers for profit, to potentially sell the letters online. He said others have a bizarre admiration for the killers.

Lawrence said he interviewed the Portland man who wrote the detailed, expletive-filled letters after out-of-state police discovered the man’s relationship with killer Ottis Toole.

“So they contacted us and I had a little chat with him,” he said.

He said it turned out the man was trying to get letters and artwork from Toole to sell online.

Colistro, however, said there are some people hoping to become copycats.

“They’ll study the M-O of the offender and they’ll start to duplicate it,” he said.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #16: Fourth Opportunity Knox Flunked: Gemelli Supreme Court Appeal

Posted by Our Main Posters

Media outside the Cassation back entrance waiting for news of the ruling

1. Where This Series Stands

Dozens of people have very aggressively gone to bat for Knox over her “interrogation” and still do.

They trust that one or other of her versions of the 5-6 November 2007 police-station session is right.

We have been demonstrating the rock-solid evidence that Knox and her supporters have lied and lied and there will be more evidence of this to come.

We’ve shown in this series that Knox insisted on being there; she was merely helping to build a list; she was treated kindly and taken for refreshments; she was the only one overheard by anyone to raise her voice, when she screamed about Lumumba “He did it!”; it was Sollecito not the police saying that she had been lying and had made him lie; and there is documentary evidence that the police investigators who sat with Knox told the truth.

Coming soon, we are going to post hundreds of false claims made by Knox shills, all sparked by and never reigned in by Knox.

2. The Pre-Trial Hurdles Knox Failed

Do you know how many major opportunities before her 2009 trial started Knox was given to get the murder charges dropped? This is not something Knox supporters trumpet about, if they even know.

In fact there were six, and Knox dismally failed them all.

In 2007 there were (1) the Matteini hearing and (2) the Ricciarelli hearing in November and (3) the Mignini interview in December.  And in 2008 there were (4) the separate Knox appeal and Sollecito appeal to the Supreme Court in April, and (5) the first Micheli hearings in September, and (6) the second Micheli hearings in October, which dispatched Knox and Sollecito for trial.

In all six instances Knox’s team also had the opportunity to get the charges against Knox for calunnia against Lumumba dropped.

As you will have seen in previous posts, Knox’s team pussyfooted about without conviction in the few brief instances when the 5-6 November session was discussed. In the Mignini hearing of 17 December 2007 they eventually advised her it would be in her best interests to shut up.

This post covers the third hurdle, specifically why in April 2008 the First Criminal Section of the Supreme Court ruled that for reasons of evidence and psychology Knox and Sollecito should remain locked up and the judicial process against them should go forward.

Please consider this meticulous (and for the pair, damning) statement, which denied their release, in light of a couple of explanations which follow in Part 4 below.

3. Catnip Translation: Gemelli Report On Knox

Shown in bold in the statement on Knox below are:

(1) the defense appeal against the use of Knox’s 5-6 November statements framing Lumumba (reason given was ONLY no lawyer being present - a need which Knox herself had shrugged off when she herself insisted on writing out the 1:45 am and 5:45 am and noon statements) and there is zero mention of abuse;

(2) Cassation’s reasoning why the first 2 Knox statements (the 1:45 and 5:45) can indeed be used, in the “sub-trial” addressing the calunnia against Patrick, and the third (scribbled around noon) can be used in the main trial.

In neither statement is there any ruling of “illegal” regarding any actions by any interrogators. The Knox shills often falsely claim there was.

The Judgment

REPUBLIC OF ITALY
IN THE NAME OF THE ITALIAN PEOPLE
THE SUPREME COURT OF CASSATION
FIRST CRIMINAL DIVISION

Comprised of the Most Honorable Justices
Dr Torquato GEMELLI ““ President
Dr Emilio Giovanni GIRONI ““ Member
Dr Maria Cristina SIOTTO ““ Member
Dr Umberto Zampetti ““ Member
Dr Margherita CASSANO ““ Member

has pronounced the following

JUDGMENT

on the appeal lodged by AMK born on X

against the Order of 30/11/2007 Liberty Tribunal of Perugia

having heard the relation [legal analysis] made by the Counsellor [Judge] Margherita Cassano

having heard the conclusions of the Prosecutor-General Dr S Consolo who has prayed the rejection of the appeal

HAVING FOUND IN FACT

1. With the order of 30 November 2007 the Perugia Court, as constituted under Article 309 Criminal Procedure Code, rejected the submission to review lodged by AMK and, as a consequence, confirmed the precautionary prison custody measures disposed in her matter on the 9th November 2007 by the GIP of the same Court in relation to the offences of aggravated wilful homicide in company and in sexual assault by a group, committed on the day of 1 November 2007 against MSCK.

2. According to the reconstruction put forward by the judges of merit, on the 2nd November 2007, around 12:35, the State Police, to whom had been signalled the discovery in the garden of a house of two mobile phones, both resulting to be in the service of the American [sic] citizen MSCK, intervened at an apartment in Via della Pergola in use by Ms K and AMK and two Italian women. At the place were found AMK and her boyfriend RS, the which declared they were expecting the arrival of the Carabinieri, called by them after having discovered that the window of one of the rooms of the habitation presented with broken glass.

The crime scene inspection immediately carried out inside the apartment led to the discovery in the bedroom occupied by Ms K, locked under key, of the body of the woman, which, at the level of the head, was immersed in a lake of blood, was dressed only in two tops pulled above the breast and was covered with a blanket. Beneath this latter was found the print of a shoe in haematic material, collected, besides in the room of the offence, also in a small bathroom adjacent to the same. In a second bathroom, used by the two Italian lessees of the apartment, were found faeces and other natural biological residues. The autopsy immediately carried out permitted the establishment of the cause of death, collocatable around 22 hours of the day of 1st November 2007, to have been due to a haemorrhagic shock from vascular lesions to the neck from an edged blade and that the instrument used to restrain her was constituted of a pointed instrument capable of penetration and with a sharpened profile capable of cutting tissue.

The victim’s body did not present unequivocal signs of sexual assault even though there were found things of some medico-legal interest, in the sense of the observed anal dilation of two-three centimetres, the discovery of minute ecchimoses on the posterior part of the anal ring (otherwise compatible with situations of constipation) and, above all, mauvish marks on the inner face of the labia minore, suggestive of a sexual rapport carried out with haste and occurring a little before the death.

3. The Court had found that grave indicia of guilt as against the suspect were constituted by the following elements:

(a) the autopsy results and the medico-legal report;

(b) the discovery of a knife with dimensions of 14cm for the handle and of about 17 for the blade, seized from inside a drawer of cutlery located in the kitchen of the home of S, carrying, on the handle, traces of DNA referable to Ms K and, on the blade, traces of DNA ascribable to the victim;

(c) statements made by persons informed of the facts, FR and LM, housemates of the victim, who without contradiction excluded that the seized knife were part of the their apartment’s endowment and made mention that Ms K, on the day of the fact, was wearing a top, which has not yet been found;

(d) outcome of the technical tests carried out on a pair of shoes, N brand, size 42.5, property of S, evidencing a perfect correspondence between the aforesaid footwear and the print found at the location of the homicide, as well as on the door of the Via della P apartment which did not present signs of forced entry;

(e) results of technical tests carried out on the palm print found on the pillow on which the victim had been placed and resulting as belonging to RHG, a citizen of the Ivory Coast, nicknamed “˜the Baron’, known to AMK;

(f) presence of RHG’s DNA on the vaginal swab taken from the cadaver during the autopsy and on the fragment of toilet paper taken from inside the larger bathroom of the apartment, where faeces had been found, resulting as being from G;

(g) outcome of biological tests carried out on the blood found in the apartment’s small bathroom, in use by the victim and Ms K, which permitted the establishment that to the victim were attributable the bloodstains present on the mat, to Ms K those found on the washbasin, and to both of the women the blood traces found on the bidet;

(h) statements made by the American [sic] citizen RCB, the which, having returned home to her country a few days after the fact, referred to the Authorities that Ms K, while waiting to be interviewed by the Police on the morning of the 2nd November 2007, had told her of having seen M’s body on a wardrobe (or reflected on a wardrobe) with a blanket on top of her and of having seen her friend’s foot after a police officer had opened the door, circumstances conflicting with the modality of intervention at the apartment;

(i) statements made by the friends of MSCK, the which without contradiction said that the woman had spent the afternoon of the 1st November 2007 in their company and had left their house in the company of SP, who, reaching her own domicile in Via del L around 20:55, had parted from the victim, whose apartment in Via della P was less than 10 minutes’ distance from Via del L;

(l) statements made by FR and PG, contacted by A after ascertaining that the front door of their house was open, that there were blood stains and that the window of MSCK’s room presented with broken glass

(m) statements made by S on the 2nd, 5th and 6th November regarding his movements both alone and with AMK between the day of 1 November 2007 and the following 2 November, in regards to what was found inside the Via della P apartment, to the call for help to law enforcement, not to mention the reference to the search for strong emotion contained in various of his writings posted on his blog;

(n) statements made on 6 November 2007 at 1:45 by Ms K which indicated L, entranced by M, as the author of the murder after a sexual relation with the victim;

(o) spontaneous statements made by Ms K on 6 November 2007 at 5:45 from which it emerged that L and M had gone to her room, that, at a certain point, M had started to scream, such that A, so as not to hear, had put her hands on her ears, that maybe S was also present in the house;

(p) contents of the account written by Ms K which repeated having heard M scream, to having removed herself into the kitchen and of having blocked her ears with her hands so as not to hear her friend’s scream and of having seen blood on S’s hand during the dinner that had taken place around 23:00 hours on the day of 1 November 2007 in S’s apartment;

(q) contents of a recorded conversation in prison on 17 November 2007 relating to a discussion between Ms K and her parents in the course of which the woman, amongst other things, said “It’s stupid, because I can’t say anything different, I was there and I can’t lie about this, there is no reason to do it”;

(r) tests carried out on the computer and on the mobile phone used by S, from which it emerged that, contrary to the defensive stance of the suspect, his computer had not been used during the night and had been activated only at 5:32 on 2 November 2007 and that, likewise, his mobile phone also had been off during the night and had been first used at dawn on 2 November 2007.

The Re-examination judges concluded recognizing, for continuing the precautionary custody measure, the continuance of all the typologies of precautionary requirements mentioned under Article 274 Criminal Procedure Code.

4. Against the cited order there has been submitted an appeal to Cassation, through her lawyers, by AMK, the which, also by means of a defence memorandum, alleges:

(a) violation of Article 309 paragraph five Criminal Procedure Code with reference to the omitted transmission to the Re-examination Court of the statements made by the suspect RHG arrested in Germany in the execution of a European Arrest Warrant, constituting, contrary to what was adopted by the Re-examination Court, an element favourable to the suspect, relevant for the indication of the author of the offence, identified as an individual of the male gender and, contrary to what as held by the Court, fully usable, given the basis of their acquisition into evidence under Articles 22 and 28 of the law on international judicial representation in criminal matters of 23 December 1982;

(b) Violation of Article 250 paragraph seven, and 357 paragraph two, Criminal Procedure Code, being placed at the foundation of the custody order and of the subsequent provisioning by the Re-examination Court, which indicative elements, the statements made by Ms K on 6 November at 1:45, without defence safeguards, the “spontaneous statements” made at the time of 5:45 hours, are not classifiable as such, given the procedural status invested on her in the meantime, all acts fully non-usable inasmuch acquired in patent violation of Article 63 Criminal Procedure Code;

(c) Violation of law, deficiency and manifest lack of logic in the reasoning with reference to the picture of circumstantial gravity, having regard: (a) to the personality of the suspect, a young foreigner with unblemished record, with a perception of reality altered by cannabis use, a substance which also may have been influencing her excessive and dreamlike behaviours; (b) to the seriously lacunose character of the translation of passages of the suspect’s hand-written account, analysed in a partial manner; (c) to the not unambiguous reading of the contents of the recorded conversation of 17 November 2007 between the suspect and her parents in prison; (d) to the non-probative nature of the DNA traces found on the seized knife, of the suspect’s blood stains on the mat and basin in the small bathroom of the apartment occupied by, amongst others, the victim and Ms K;

(d) Lack and manifest illogicality in the reasoning with reference to the considered circumstantial value, as against the suspect, of the results of tests carried out on the vaginal swab and on the knife in custody, with an un-reasoned devaluation of the considerations put forward by the defence;

(e) lack and manifest illogicality of the reasoning, distortion of the fact with reference to the considered presence of the suspect on the location of the fact and to her contribution purportedly made to the consummation of the offence;

(f) violation of law, deficiency and illogicality of reasoning as to the configurability of the precautionary requirements, given: (1) the absence of a specific danger in evidentiary acquisition even in the light of investigative developments which have evidenced Ms K’s extraneity to the commission of the offence and have allowed the acquisition of statements by fellow-suspect G; (2) the lack of an objective risk of flight in the light of international cooperation between Italy and the USA which would permit, once the suspect’s responsibility has been definitively ascertained, full judicial cooperation; (3) the lack of danger of repetition of the offences.

Observes as of law.

The Appeal Is Unfounded.

1. With reference to the deduced violation of Article 308 paragraph five for omitted transmission to the Re-examination Court of elements appearing favourable to the person placed under investigation (in the type of statements made by G to the German Judicial Authority in the ambit of European Arrest Warrant procedure), this Bench observes as follows.

For “elements in favour of the person placed under investigation” must be understood to mean those objective results, of probative value, suitable for being of positive influence in the evaluative complex of the custody picture (Cass., Sez. IV, 22 giugno 2005, rv. 231749) and in the concrete usable for exculpating the suspect (Cass., Sez. I, 26 settembre 2000, Corrente, rv. 217611) and not information that resolves itself into mere reformulations of the prosecutorial hypothesis or in the advancing of alternative hypotheses (Cass., Sez. Un. 26 settembre 2000, Mennuni).

In line with this interpretative stage there are to be excluded from the enumerated elements appearing favourable and as a consequence obligated to be transmitted to the Re-examination Court, under Article 309 paragraph five Criminal Procedure Code, statements made, as in the case under examination, in the ambit of an extradition procedure against the fellow-suspect who limits himself to giving his own defensive version and to affirm his own extraneity to the facts, without however releasing the other accused subjects from the same crime. It is, therefore, under this profile that the defence petition does not merit granting, it is rejected, rather, by the Re-examination Court on the basis of the erroneous assumption that RHG’s statements were unusable through omission with respect to due process, in reality assured by the German Judicial Authority, which ““ in conformity with the principles contained in the decision-framework of the Council of Ministers of the Union of 13 June 2002, relating to European arrest warrants and the handover procedure between member States (2002/584/GAI) ““ have, amongst other things, pre-emptively made the suspect informed: (1) of the European arrest warrant and its contents, even to the ends of allowing him to consent, if necessary, to the handover; (2) of the right to legal and interpretive assistance during the procedure.

2. With reference to the second appeal ground by the defence, the Court observes that circumstantial statements are characterized by a different usability regime under a subjective aspect. In the case in which these originate from a person against whom there already is sustained circumstantial evidence as regards the same crime, that is to a crime connected with or tied to the one attributed to a third party, the same cannot be used not only against themselves, but neither in relation to co-accused in the same crime (or of those accused of connected or related crimes).

The regime of absolute unusability under Article 63 paragraph two Criminal Procedure Code is, instead, to be excluded in the case in which the declarant, whether called to respond, in the same or another matter, for a crime or for crimes attributed to others, which have no procedural ties with the one for which they are being proceeded against, with respect to which the person assumes the character of witness.

In fact, in the first case, due to the close connection and interdependence between the fact itself and the other one, there arises the necessity to also safeguard the declarant’s right to silence; in the second case, the declarant’s extraneity and indifference with respect to the facts in cause renders them immune to possible sanctions carried out by the investigative bodies (Cass., Sez. Un. 13 febbraio 1997, Carpanelli).

On a par with these principles, the statements made by AMK at 1:45 on 6 November 2007, ““ at the end of which the interview was suspended and the woman was placed at the disposition of the relevant judicial Authority, revealing circumstantial evidence against herself ““, are usable only contra alios, while the “spontaneous statements” from 5:45 are not usable, neither against the suspect nor against other subjects accused of participation in the same crime, inasmuch as they were made without due process safeguards by a person who had formally assumed the status of suspect.

On the contrary, the account written in English by Ms K and translated into Italian is fully usable, under Article 237 Criminal Procedure Code, since it is a document originating from the suspect, who had been its spontaneous material author for a defence purpose. The disposition under examination allows attribution of probative relevance to the document not only as regards it and its representative contents, but also in the strength of its particular ties, which tie it to the suspect (or accused), thereby illuminating the review of admissibility which the judge had held to be in operation.

3. The fourth, fifth and sixth grounds of the petition also lack merit. The circumstantial evidence picture specifically concerning AMK is based, in the first place, on the autopsy results, evidencing multiple contusions and ecchimotic areas on various parts of the body (nose, lip, oral cavity, cheek, mandibular and sub-mandibular region, upper and lower limbs, inner face of labia minore, abdomen, dextral latero-cervical region), an ample dilation, in the order of two to three centimetres, of the anal ring with the presence of small ecchimoses, a large wound, disposed obliquely, in the caudal-lateral sense, fully diastased, with sections of underlying tissue right to the cartiliginous layer in the left latero-cervical region, the complete sectioning of the upper right thyroidal artery, the fracture of the hyoid bone in proximity of the left median. The medico-legal tests, carried out after the necroscopic examination of the body of the victim, permitted the confirmation that the cause of death, around 22:00 hours on 1 November 2007, is ascribable to meta-haemorrhagic shock from the vascular lesion on the neck from an edged blade, occasioned by a pointed implement, capable of penetration, and with a sharpened edge able to cut tissues. The anal dilation, the observation of minute ecchimoses on the posterior part of the anal ring and, above all, the mauvish marks on the inner face of the labia minore, are suggestive of a sexual rapport carried out hastily, before the victim had had time to produce adequate lubrication, occurring in a time period proximate to that of the observation, but in any case before death, by reason of the ecchimotic lesions and their colour.

The impugned provision highlights that the complex of these medico-legal conclusions assumes a particular evidential value, in the event that place in correlation with other elements: (a) the statements made by the friends of MSCK, who without contradiction stated that the woman had spent the evening of [1] November 2007 in their company, had started to dine with them from 18:00 hours onwards and had left the house in company with SP, who, reaching her home in Via del L around 20:55, had parted from the victim, whose apartment in Via della P was less than ten minutes’ walk from Via del L; (b) the outcome of the search effected at the house of RS, romantically linked to AMK, which permitted the discovery and seizure in the apartment’s kitchen, from the cutlery drawer, of a knife, having an approx. 14cm long blade and 17cm handle. The knife, not forming part of the inventory of the house occupied by AMK, MSCK and two Italian women (cf on the matter, the statements made, as persons informed of the facts, by FR and LM), presented traces of DNA on the handle attributable to AMK and on the blade traces of DNA ascribable to the victim.

Weighing against the suspect, in the opinion of the judges, there are, in addition, even in their mutability, statements by RS, who, after firstly having claimed to have remained home all evening and night with his girlfriend, stated, afterwards (cf. Interviews of 5 and 6 November 2007) that, at a certain time, Ms K had left and had come back to his house at only around one in the morning.

The judges of merit have underlined the strict correlation found between the interviews given by S on 5 and 6 November 2007, and the following further elements: (a) statements made by citizen RCB, who, returning to her country of origin, referred to the relevant Authorities the confidence received on 2 November 2007 from AMK regarding the position of the victim’s body and its condition, circumstances that, contrary to the stance of the suspect, she could not have been able to perceive on the occasion of the intervention by the police at the apartment, an intervention that unfolded in a way irreconcilable with the version furnished by Ms K to the friend; (b) statements made by persons informed of the facts FR and LM, who said that Ms K, the day of the fact, was wearing a top, which has not been found since.

The impugned provision, with logically reasoned argumentation, observes that the content of these declarative acts appears even more significant when evaluated also in the light of the written account produced by the suspect, containing relevant references to M’s scream on the night of the fact, to her reactions, consisting of huddling in the kitchen with her hands over her ears, to the presence of a man, to traces of blood noted by her on RS’s hand during the dinner that took placed at 23:00 on 1 November 2007.

Under the same lens appearing imbued with unequivocal circumstantial value is the contents of the recording, effected on 17 November 2007 inside the prison where Ms K found herself restricted to and between the woman and her parents, in the course of which there was pronounced by the accused the following words: “It’s stupid, because I cannot say anything else, I was there and I cannot lie about this, there is no reason to do so”;

These elements must, in their turn, be inserted into a larger circumstantial evidence context, cross-correlated by the identification of a print left in haematic matter present on the scene of the crime from a sports shoe, held to be compatible, by its dimensions and configuration of the sole, with the type of footwear brand “N” used by the suspect and by the failure of the alibi put forward by the young man, being demolished by the technical investigations that were carried out, by which, as he asserted, he had interacted with his computer in the hours in which, according the medico-legal reconstruction, the criminal fact would have occurred, just as also remained demolished that the young man had received a phone call from his father at 23:00, it resulting, instead, said call had occurred at 20:40.

From the same perspective, light has been shone, with precise and logical reasoning, on the circumstance that in the course of the evening of 1 November 2007, almost at the same time, telephonic traffic for AMK and RS ceased, after the latter had received a call on his mobile phone from his father at 20:40, of which reference has been made earlier and, in addition, that S, contrary to what was by him stated, did not spend the night of 1 and 2 November 2007 sleeping, it having been ascertained that the computer and mobile phone at his disposal were reactivated at dawn on 2 November 2007.

The judgment reasons, further, on the concourse aspect of the consummation of the homicide and sexual assault, on the basis: (1) of the outcome of the technical tests carried out on the palm print found on the pillow on which the victim had been placed, and it results as belonging to RHG, known to AMK; (b) of the presence of RHG’s DNA on the vaginal swab taken from the cadaver during the autopsy and on the fragment of toilet paper collected from inside the larger bathroom in the apartment, where there had been found faeces, resulting to have been G’s; (c) of the outcome of biological tests carried out on the blood found in the smaller bathroom of the apartment in use by the victim and by Ms K, which permitted the finding that the blood stains on the mat were referable to the victim, those found on the basin to Ms K, and to both the women the blood traces found in the bidet.

The Court, with thorough and logical reasoning, has illustrated, with full reference to the factual circumstances ““ inasmuch such are unreviewable in this seat of legitimacy ““ the reasons for the attribution of pregnant circumstantial value to the elements above recalled, proving the presence on the scene of the consummation of the homicide and sexual assault of AMK, RS, RHG (these last two both known to Ms K), has explained, with articulate and logically correct reasoning, the reasons for which they cannot find agreement with the defence deductions in terms of erroneous interpretation and reading of the recorded conversation of 17 November 2007, of the account written by Ms K on 6 November 2007, of the results of biological and medico-legal tests, of the unreliability of the technical investigations carried out on the computer and mobile phone belonging to S, and has at length examined, including in the light of aspects formulated by the defence, the entire case file, explaining the reasons of its unequivocal value.

So, the argumentative development of the judgment reasoning is founded on a coherent critical analysis of the circumstantial evidence and on its cohesion in an organic interpretative framework, in the light of which the attribution to said elements of the requisite of gravity appears supplied with adequate logical and judicial plausibility, in the sense that they have been considered drivers, with a high level of probability, with respect to the theme of investigations concerning the responsibility, amongst others, of AMK, as to the crimes put against her.

From which, given the evaluation carried out the Re-examination Court on the level of inference of the circumstantial evidence and, therefore, on the more or less demonstrative character of the same in terms of probabilistic qualification of guilt even if not of certainty, it has to be highlighted that the impugned order exceeds the threshold of legitimacy demanded by this Court, whose bench cannot hold itself back from a checking of the respect of rules of logic and of conformity with legal canons which govern the appreciation of grave indicia of guilt, as prescribed by Article 273 Criminal Procedure Code for the ordering of provisions restricting personal liberty, without being able to draw on the intrinsic consistency of the evaluations reserved to the judges of merit.

4. Unfounded, finally, are the censures formulated by AMK’s defence, on the matter of custody requirements, the Re-examination Court having correctly evaluated them, with reference to the parameters to which letters (a), (b), (c) of Article 274 Criminal Procedure Code apply the extreme gravity of the crimes carried out, having had regard to their nature and their method of consummation, the negative personality of the suspect, which emerges from the outcomes of the investigations and from the served case conduct, the specific and binding requirements relevant to the investigations in relation to the clear and present danger for [evidence] acquisition and probative genuineness, considering the necessity for completing the testing and of proceeding with the gathering of other means of declarative proof, the outcome of the handover to Italian authorities, of RHG, as well as allowing corroborations to be made, also permeates the current contrast between the different versions so far furnished of what happened, the clear danger of flight, taking into account the foreign citizenship aspect of the suspect and of the penalty of more than two years’ imprisonment, impacting on the outcome of the recognition of her criminal responsibility.

5. Refusal of the appeal leads in law to the appellant ordered to pay procedural costs.

The Registry will provide for its carrying out as prescribed by Article 94 paragraph 1-ter, and actuating provisions Criminal Procedure Code.

FOR THESE REASONS

Rejects the appeal and orders the appellant to pay procedural costs. Disposes transmission via the Registry a copy of the provision to the Director of the penitentiary institution per Article 94 paragraph 1-ter, and actuating provisions Criminal Procedure Code.

So decided in Rome, in Chambers, 1 April 2008.

DEPOSITED IN THE REGISTRY 21 APRIL 2008

4. Catnip Translation: Gemelli Report On Sollecito

Summary

Held: the decision to continue pre-trial prison detention for the suspect was reasonable.

THE REPUBLIC OF ITALY

IN THE NAME OF THE ITALIAN PEOPLE

THE SUPREME COURT OF CASSATION

SECTION 1 CRIMINAL DIVISION

Comprised of the most Honourable Justices:

Dr Torquato GEMELLI - President -

Dr Emilio Giovanni GIRONI - Member -

Dr Maria Cristina SIOTTO - Member -

Dr Umberto ZAMPETTI - Member -

Dr Margherita CASSANO - Member -

have pronounced the following

JUDGMENT

on the appeal lodged by:

(1) RS, born on X, against Order of 30/11/2007 Liberty Court of Perugia;

having heard the relation made by Member Emilio Giovanni Gironi;

having heard the conclusions of the Prosecutor-General Dr Consolo for its rejection;

having heard the defence advocates G and T (substituting for advocate M).

REASONS FOR THE DECISION

The order referred to in opening confirmed, at the Re-examination stage, the one by which the GIP [the Preliminary Investigation Magistrate] had applied pre-trial prison detention of RS for participation in the murder of MSCK, the which occurring in Perugia on the evening of the 1st of November 2007 by means of a cutting weapon, in an alleged context of sexual assault by a group, in which there would have taken part, in addition to S, his girlfriend AK and a RHG, who had left behind a palm print on the bloodied pillow on which the victim’s body was resting and whose DNA was found on the vaginal swab taken from the body of the same and on faecal traces found in a bathroom of the house that the victim was sharing with Ms AK and two Italian students.

The picture of circumstantial evidence specifically concerning S consists of the identification of a print left in haematic material present at the scene of the crime of a sports shoe held to be compatible, because its dimensions and configuration of the sole, with the type of footwear, “N” brand size 42.5, used by the suspect; of the recovery ““ in the kitchen of his house ““ of a kitchen knife bearing traces of Ms AK’s DNA on the handle and on the blade traces of Ms MK’s DNA; and of the collapse of the alibi put up by the young man (having been disproven by technical investigations carried out), in which, as asserted by him, he had interacted with his computer during the hours in which, according to the forensic pathologist’s reconstruction, the criminal fact would have occurred, that is between 22:00 and 23:00 of the 1st November 2007; from the investigations carried out up until now it would appear, in fact, that the last interaction with the machine on 1 November occurred at 21:10 and that the subsequent one took place at 5:32 the day after, when S also reactivated his mobile phone, acts witnessing thereby an agitated and sleepless night. Equally disproven was that the young man had received a phone call from his father at 23:00 on the night of the murder, it resulting, instead, that said call had happened at 20:40.

Against S, caught at the time of arrest with a switchblade initially considered compatible with the wounds found on the neck of the victim, would line up, in addition, the mutability of the stories given to the investigators by the same and by his girlfriend, having initially maintained they had remained the whole evening and night in the young man’s house, later to state, instead, that at a certain point Ms AK would have left to meet the Ivorian [sic] citizen PDL, manager of a pub in which Ms AK was undertaking casual employment, she making a returning to her boyfriend’s house only around one in the morning.

It must, finally, be added that the same Ms AK had, amongst other things, initially referred (not confirming, in any case, the thesis in confused and contradictory subsequent versions) to having taken herself to her own house with L, where this latter (he also was struck with a custody order, later revoked after the previously mentioned identification of G’s DNA) had had sexual relations with Ms MK, and to having, while she herself was in the kitchen, heard her friend scream, without, further, remembering anything else of the subsequent events, up until the occurrences of the day after, marked by the discovery of traces of blood in the small bathroom next to Ms MK’s room and culminating in the discovery of the body, after the intervention of the forces of law and order (the police appear, in particular, to have intervened prior to the call to 112 effected by S); in particular, the young woman was specifically pointing out not being able to remember whether S were also present in the victim’s house on the occasion of the events just described.

The Re-examination Court concluded recognizing, for the purposes of maintaining pre-trial detention, the persistence of all the types of pre-trial exigencies mentioned by Article 274 Criminal Procedure Code.

The S defence has indicated an appeal, on the grounds of, with new reasons as well:

  reference to Ms AK alone of the circumstantial evidence constituted by the presence of biological traces from her and from the victim on the knife found at S’s house;

  absence, at the scene of the crime, of biological traces attributable to the suspect [ndr: note, this was before the bra-clasp tests had been done];

  arbitrary transference onto S of the weighty circumstantial evidence against Ms AK, on the unfounded assumption that the pair could not have been anything but together at the moment of the homicidal fact;

  inexistent evidential value of the phases relative to the discovery of the body;

  absence of blood traces from the soles of the “N” shoes worn by the suspect even at the moment of his arrest;

  absence of any evidential value of merit, alleged failure of the alibi, constituting the use of his computer, of which the falsity has not in any case been ascertained, of the lack of interaction by the subject with the machine after the last operation at 21:10 not permitting the inference that the computer was not, however, engaged in downloading files (being, to be specific, films);

  irrelevancy of the mistake revealed between the indicated time of the phone call to the father furnished by S and the actual time of the call, given the uncertainty of the time of death of the victim, depending on the time, otherwise uncertain, of the consumption of the dinner (according to various witness statements coinciding with 18:00), it being well able, therefore, for the time indicated by the forensic pathologist (23:00) to be revised backwards to 21:00, a little before which time the witness P had referred to having made a visit to S, finding him at home and not on the verge of going out;

  interpretability of the so-called unlikelihood of the versions supplied by the suspect as attempts to cover for (aid and abet) another subject;

  attribution of the victim’s biological traces found on the knife seized at S’s house to chance contamination not related to the homicidal fact;

  insufficiency of the pre-trial exigencies, having diminished in a probative sense after the return to Italy of G; those relating to risk of flight lacking in specificity and concreteness; and with reference to the conventional content of blogs posted on the internet by the suspect, those relating to danger to society illogically reasoned;

  missing appearance of the young man’s walk, via security cameras installed along the route that the aforesaid would have had to traverse to go from his house to that of the victim’s.

The appeal is unfounded.

As regards what this Court is permitted to appreciate, not being able here to proceed with a re-reading of the investigative results nor with an alternative interpretation of the factual data referred to in the custody order, the appellant defence substantially contests the recognition, as against S, of the necessary requisite of grave indicia of culpability. The question thus posed and submitted for scrutiny by this bench of the well-known limits of the competence of the court of merit, it must be held that the finding expressed by the Re-examination judges concerning the gravity of the frame of circumstantial evidence is not susceptible to censure.

Not upheld, in the first place, is the defence submission according to which the knife bearing the genetic prints of Ms AK and of Ms MK found in S’s house would constitute a piece of evidence relevant solely as against the young woman, even if privy of traces attributable to the suspect, the utensil has as always been found in the young man’s house, and the testimony acquired up until now has led to the exclusion that it formed part of the inventory of the house inhabited by the victim, and which, at the time, and until proved to the contrary, must be held to be the same available for use by the suspect and which had been used in MK’s house, there being contested no access by her to S’s house.

Given the multitude of group contributive possibilities, the fact is not significative, then, in itself being a neutral element, that on the scene of the crime there are no biological traces attributable to S, to which, in any case, is attributable the “N” brand shoe print considered compatible, by dimensions and sole configuration, with the footwear worn by the suspect at the time of arrest. Although having the same impugned order excluded, at the time, the certainty of the identification constitutes as, in any case, a certain datum that the print in question had been made in haematic material found in Ms MK’s room by a shoe of the kind and of the dimensions of those possessed by the appellant, while it remains to be excluded that this could have originated from G’s shoe, who wore a size 45 and, therefore, dimensions notably larger. The revealed coincidence, notwithstanding the residual uncertainty on the identification, assumes particular valency in relation to the restricted circle of subjects gravitating to the scene of the homicide, with not even Ms AK, who made admissions about her presence on site at the same time as the execution of the offence, excluding the presence of her boyfriend in the victim’s house in the same circumstance; nor can it be held that the print could have been left by S the following morning, he never having claimed to have entered into the room wherein the body was lying.

It does not answer, therefore, to verity that, as against the young man, there had been recognized, by a phenomenon of transference, items of circumstantial evidence in reality pointing solely to Ms AK.

The last finding held unfavourable to S is constituted by the failed proof of the alibi constituted by the argument of the suspect as having remained at home on the computer until late at night; it being a matter of, properly speaking, an alibi failing up till now and not of a false alibi and the defence, correctly, does not refute the technico-judicial valency of the circumstantial evidence, but it remains, in any case, acquired into the case file that the accused had not been able to prove his absence from the locus of the crime at the same time. An item up until now assumed as certain is, instead, the fact that S had interacted with his computer at 5:32 the morning following the murder, at around the same time reactivating his own mobile phone, a contradiction of the assumption of a waking up only at 10:00 and a symptomatic tell-tale of a more or less sleepless night; likewise as symptomatic was held to be the nearly simultaneous cessation of telephonic traffic as much by Ms AK, in his company the evening of 1 November 2007.

The proof of a permanent stay in his house by the suspect can, all told, be considered as acquired up until 20:40 ““ coincident with P’s visit ““ who confirmed his presence, or up until 21:10, the last interaction time on the computer, but this does not cover the time of the homicide, located between 22:00 and 23:00.

As for the proposed argument that S’s conduct were interpreted as aiding and abetting, this does not result, in the event, as being supported by anything emerging from the investigations and its plausibility cannot be verified by the judges of merit.

In conclusion, the Re-examination Court’s evaluation as to the gravity of the circumstantial evidence picture are removed from the audit of this court.

There remains, finally, the finding that for what concerns the pre-trial exigencies, those of a probative nature are not able to be considered as ceasing from the sole fact of G’s re-entry into Italy (amongst other things significantly never invoked in the statements by the suspect and by his girlfriend, who instead co-involved L in the proceedings), given the existence of an investigative picture in continual evolution, in which the positions of the various protagonists so far remain unclear, the changing versions of which are marked by reticence and mendaciousness (the same suspect had, in truth, admitted to having, at least initially, told “˜a load of balls’); but the permanence of pre-trial exigencies had been held reasonablely even under the aspect of flight risk, in relation to the gravity of the charges and of the potential sanctions, not to mention danger to society, given the revealed fragility of character and the specific personal traits of the subject, ““ which would narrowly evaluate as innocuous youthful stereotypes ““, in a context the more connoted by the noted habitual use of drugs.

FOR THESE REASONS

Rejects the appeal and sentences the appellant to payment of costs of the proceedings. Article 94 para 1 ter, and activating provisions, Criminal Procedure Code, applies.

Rome, 1.4.2008.

DEPOSITED IN THE REGISTRY ON 21 APRIL 2008

Saturday, November 15, 2014

The Status Of The Various Computers In The Case #2 New Developments

Posted by Sallyoo

Please first see my previous post and my several updates in the Comments thread.

There has been a new flurry of interest in Raffaele’s computers following the publication, on iip, of a report prepared by Prof. Alfredo Milani. It is available in both in Italian and English, (translation prepared by iip.)

The report isn’t dated, but it was prepared after the Massei report had been published, and it was taken into evidence at the Hellmann appeal. Milani credits another defence computer expert, D’Ambrosio, with a lot of the content.

There have been (to my knowledge) three “˜defence computer expert reports’ prepared. The first, signed by Angelucci in March 2008, is concerned primarily with the damaged hard disks of the Asus of Sollecito, and the computers of Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. This report was commissioned by Dalla Vedova and has not (as far as I can determine) ever been taken into evidence, or even mentioned in court.

The salient point in this document is that the data was recovered from the disks of Sollecito’s Asus and Meredith Kercher’s computer.

Then we have D’Ambrosio testifying at Massei (available), accompanied by a report written by D’Ambrosio and Gigli taken into evidence (not available).

At Hellmann we have the Milani report. Raffaele mentions Alfredo Milani in his book as one of his professors.

There isn’t a lot of (strictly computer) information in it which goes beyond D’Ambrosio’s testimony, although the tone is very different. While D’Ambrosio was relatively generous to the police computer analysts, appreciating the procedural retrictions which they worked under, Milani gets close to being offensively insulting to those tehnicians. (Compare with the Conti/Vecchiotti tactics”¦)

Milani attempts to make us believe that two “˜grave methodological errors’ committed by the postal police have concealed data which would provide an alibi.

Firstly he spends much time outlining the MacOS, in every release, and tells us that because the postal police used an “˜analogous but not identical’ MacBook a tiny difference in the release number of the operating system renders their analysis unreliable. This is impossible to acept for two reasons - firstly that the OS employed resided on the cloned disk from Sollecito’s own MacBook, but more importantly the precise OS release would not affect in any way the reading of the log files.

Secondly, he unwisely reminds us of inodes (log files). These files are regularly archived, in compressed form, and this archive is not overwritten. The archive isn’t very simple for an ordinary user to search, but such a search is certainly within the capabilities of an “˜expert computer consultant’. If Milani had discovered anything - such as a use of the Samba utility via the Asus which would have been recorded - he would have told us about it.

He also includes some gratuitous comments - which are rather fun - so we can move onto those now!

Milani has trawled up a keyboard interaction (on Sollecito’s Mac), at 22.04 on November 5, when he assures us that Sollecito was in the questura. Well, every other piece of evidence has Sollecito not arriving at the questura that evening until at least 22.30 - but Raffaele has always claimed to have been eating with a friend when he received the phone call at 21.30 asking him to attend the questura. Was Sollecito at Riccardo’s? Did he nip home (why) before going to the questura? We shall never know, but Milani has given us reason to speculate.

He also offers us the playlist of the music tracks both listened to and skipped between 05.40 and 06.20 (approx) on the morning of Nov 2 - which for some reason he erroneously asserts that the postal police failed to identify as an interaction. You can form your own opinion on the musical taste of the listeners, Nirvana and Bon Jovi feature.

Additionally we learn that one of the films “˜recently viewed’ was Suicide Club, a Japanese cult movie, which can charitably be described as Extreme Fantasy. We also discover that in the CD drive was music from Blind Guardian - a German heavy metal band who used fiction/fantasy themes in their lyrics. (I am left with the impression that Sollecito and Knox were determined not to live in the real world during this period).

A further couple of snippets, the first from an intercepted conversation in prison between Raffaele, his father and his stepmother, Marisa Papigni:

FS:....have nothing to do with [rude in italian] ... and they understood ... now this morning or Monday there will be also the checking of your computer ... they have already cloned the hard disk .. “

RS: “”¦ my concern of the computer is basically that if I came ...”

Marisa Papagni: “Hey ... there is a monster on your computer ... there is a monster ... “

RS: “Forget it ... the fact about the computer is if I have spent much time with Amanda ... there is not all this time I have spent with the computer ...”

FS: “If Amanda was home ... if she was out, wtf were you doing? ... were you at the computer?” .....

And from Honor Bound:

Papà  told him about the data from my computer”¦.but still Maori was skeptical. “Why don’t you let me see it?” he asked.

My father didn’t have the data with him, but he said his brother, Giuseppe, could fax it over.

Below: Professor Milani; Perugia University School of Mathematics & Computers

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

The Case For More Observation And Firmer Action As Psychopaths Among Us Do Enormous Harm

Posted by SeekingUnderstanding

Above: The murdered teacher Ann Maguire and convicted killer Will Cornick


Here is an example of the much tougher action to protect society which judges worldwide are inclining toward.

In Leeds in the UK a 16-year old boy has been sentenced to 20 years.  He has also been publicly named, unusual for one so young,  and an image released, to hopefully protect the public from him for the rest of his life. The judge warned him that he may never be released.

The more you read about Will Cornick the worse it gets.

He slashed a popular teacher in front of a whole class. She escaped wounded and terrified but he followed her to another room with glass panes and tried to push in. Another teacher kept him out but Ann Maguire was too far gone.

Grim clues are still coming to light. From one of the latest reports. 

Cornick attacked Mrs Maguire after boasting to friends that he was going to kill her. He also said he was going to murder other teachers, including a pregnant woman “˜so as to kill her unborn child’.

He later told doctors: “˜I said I was going to do other stuff but I never got the chance, other murders. It was a triple homicide.’

After the murder the teenager told psychiatrists that he “˜couldn’t give a s***’ and added: “˜Everything I’ve done is fine and dandy.’...

Far from having an unhappy upbringing, Cornick comes from a middleclass background and his parents have been described as loving and supportive…

Cornick’s former girlfriend believes Mrs Maguire, who has been called the ‘mother of the school’, was killed because she was being tough on the intelligent teenager in a bid to unlock his potential…

Friends had started to think of him as a “˜loner and weirdo’ and “˜disturbing’ aspects of his personality became apparent.

He spoke openly about murdering his teacher, messaging a friend on Facebook about brutally killing her and spending the rest of his life in jail. But no one - including his former girlfriend - believed he was capable of carrying out such psychotic threats.

After the murder it was revealed that he had numerous images of knives on his mobile phone. The teenager used a picture of the Grim Reaper for his Facebook profile.  He also had a keen interest in ultra-violent video games, including Dark Souls II, in which players hack zombies to pieces.

Players devour the souls of their fallen enemies to the sound of cries of agony. Disturbing images include a character made up of hundreds of human corpses. It was voted one of the ten Most Violent Video Games of 2014.

One pupil recalled Cornick saying disgusting things at a party. He said: “˜He was saying twisted stuff like “imagine jumping on a pregnant woman and seeing the baby come out”, and saying horrible stuff about cancer and stuff like that…

The teenager later confessed to a psychiatrist that the killing had been on his mind for three years, and one expert said he had engaged in a “˜considerable amount of fantasy’ about killing Mrs Maguire.

And so the debate on psychopathy and what to do about it ratches up anothert notch.

The word ‘psychopath’, like ‘narcissist’,has become known in common usage. This is both good and bad,- good if we understand more, yet bad if we assume wrongly or more superficially.

One assumption too frequently made is an association with only adulthood. Surely a child can’t be psychopathic? Unfortunately the answer is Yes.

Another assumption : surely if a child were to be nurtured correctly - with all the optimal nutrition and healthy lifestyle, and love possible, with encouragement and guidance from the parents - any tendency towards psychopathic traits could and would be overcome?

We want to believe this is so. It hurts us, on a fundamental human level, to be informed that,

‘No, this is not the case’.

A child from what is considered a ‘good background’ CAN nevertheless have a psychopathic personality. (This is also what the judge said in the Cormick trial).

With the advance of new technology - in particular MRI studies of the brain- we are beginning to explore and discover the structural differences in people’s brains (at every age). We are also recording the differences in our responses to varying events, stimulation, and emotion.

Our brains do not react in the same ways, not at all. Even introverts and extraverts are physiologically different, with regard to the amount of stimulation they can take, and also what might be called ‘method’ pathways.

In the more normal mind, it is a customary impulse to respond to pain, humiliation etc by lashing out oneself. The “˜taking it out on others’ scenario.

But, from when we are very young,this impulse is moderated by an awareness of what the pain we would be causing would feel like. In other words, we feel like pinching our sister very hard, say because she has stolen something small, but we remember how that severe pinch would feel, and bruise etc, and so we restrain.

As we continue to grow, this restraint to the impulse becomes a strong and immediate inhibition. Hence we become socialised and civilised. We feel each others’ pain, literally. It is a function of imagination, memory and neurology.

There is growing evidence from advancing research that in the truly psychopathic mind, this inhibition does not happen, because the first stage - of feeling for others - is absent. Perhaps some of the pathways are missing or diminished; the amygdala is different, perhaps, or other brain structures.

Such people therefore are able to impose violence and pain upon others with impunity. Hence we observe and say they are “˜cold’.

One important difference between this type and the more normal type of mind, is that they are like this irrespective of whether they have been loved or not. Of course disadvantageous and dysfunctional upbringings make the situations a whole lot worse.

Experiments have been done, and are still being explored, to define the extent of these differences, with some accuracy. It will take some time, as of course the neurology in the brain is highly complex, and subtle, and a single event will involve several or many pathways and several ‘hubs’ -as one might describe them.

So far, Baron-Cohen has identified about twelve ‘centres’ that will be involved in high or low empathy circuits in the brain. There may be more. Also, he and other distinguished researchers (many of whom have spent their life’s work on the subject) are examining what the genetic components are that underlie psychopathic traits.

Unfortunately, all this worthwhile work meets some resistance, and therefore delay (and difficulty in funding of course). Sadly such resistance comes from both left and right, ( leaving the researchers treading a fine line down the centre).

On the left, those who advocate improving social conditions, alleviating poverty, greater nurturing etc., fear that a discovery of the violent, cruel, anarchic nature ‘being genetic’ would undermine their raison d’être, and the case for more funding for the deprived and under-privileged.

On the right, there is a substantial fear, valid to a degree, that finding the root cause of psychopathic behaviour in brain structure and genes would give the worst and most unanswerable opt-out clause when psychopaths are on trial, to the effect of,

“Sorry, M’Lord, I couldn’t help it ; it’s in me genes”. (Etc).

A nightmare, indeed, for the prosecution.

This objection is something psychologists are already familiar with, where attempts are made by the defense to proffer psychological truths or diagnoses as mitigating factors, or ‘get-out’ clauses.

It cannot be stated clearly enough : to understand something is not to excuse it. To establish something in fact does not dilute the need to bear responsibility for the behaviour that ensues from it.

We can, and must, find ways to exert restraint and control over anti-social, destructive and undesirable behaviour. Preferably before it becomes criminal behaviour. It becomes more and more imperative, as we realize that ‘the enemy’ - the terrorist - the destroyer- moves among us, as ‘the kid next door’.

Please click here for more

Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Denial Of Parole For Rudy Guede Could Be Yet More Bad News For Knox And Sollecito

Posted by Peter Quennell

Above and below: Mammagialla prison at Virterbo north of Rome where Guede is


Rudy Guede has been in prison at Viterbo for seven years less only several weeks now.

Despite his claims via closed-circuit TV that he has had an exemplary record and has nearly finished a college degree, the Italian parole oversight board in Rome has just declined his work release application.

Rudy Guede has been treated fairly, and does seem to have behaved himself, and there is zero evidence he was on a crime wave or dealt drugs or acted as a snitch for the Perugia police.

Despite that, he has never been given any breaks in the past seven years except as described here by the current system. 

That post in fact reflects the view of a number of pro-victim Italian judges and prosecutors who personally incline toward the UK and US practice of plea bargaining under which the accused puts realistic evidence on the table and rolls over on accomplices and shows real remorse, in return for which lesser charges are arrived at.

The grounds for refusing work-release parole were not published, but if this is a way of pressuring Guede into further pressuring Knox and Sollecito? Go for it.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #15: At 5:45 AM Session Knox Told Her Rights - Repeats Fake Murder Charge

Posted by Our Main Posters

Dr Mignini examines Knox July 2009 on the “interrogation” at her own initiative

1. Overview Of This Post

Post #1 includes an overview of the entire series and links to all posts up to this one.

Knox has repeatedly claimed that Dr Mignini was present at the informal summary/recap session led by Inspector Rita Ficarra, the actual purpose of which was merely for Knox to suggest a few possible leads the police might interview.

He wasn’t there, though. And he has repeatedly explained that at the second session ending with a second insisted-upon statement by Knox at 5:45 AM, his entire role was to read Knox her rights, and to advise her to say no more until she had appointed lawyers. (Regardless, she then insisted on dictating that second statement.)

Dr Mignini more than anyone else at the central police station that night developed a complete overview of how the two sessions had proceeded.

THREE TIMES Knox willingly put herself under his questioning (December 2007, January 2008, July 2009) to attempt to shake this. While his questioning was formal, polite and quite mild, Knox’s recollection of 5-6 November was scrambled or devious (some think she and RS were both high on hard drugs).

So by the end of those sessions Knox seems to have made a complete disbeliever of Dr Mignini, swayed few if any in Italy, and certainly did not sway the judges of the trial court or any appeal court.

But few English-language reporters other than Andrea Vogt, John Follain and Barbie Nadeau have interviewed and reported Dr Mignini in depth fairly, and there are a number of English-language reporters to whom he kindly gave time who mangled what he lucidly and fairly explained to them.

2. Dr Mignini Attempts Explanation To Biased Linda Byron

In July 2009 Dr Mignini wrote an acerbic email to Linda Byron of Seattle TV to attempt to straighten out her own understanding, and although she seemingly tried to hide it, we captured it and translated and posted in full his explanation.

Dear Ms Byron,

I hope we will be able to meet and discuss sometime in person, since some of the issues you have examined, specifically the Florentine proceedings against myself and Dr Giuttari, are way too complex to be described in just a few words. I will try to give a short answer here.

To begin with, there is no relationship between the events that are the subject of Spezi’s and Preston’s book and the murder of young Ms Kercher beside the fact that I am the one person dealing with both the Narducci proceedings (connected to the Monster of Florence case) and the Meredith Kercher murder.

These two are totally different events, as well as wholly unrelated to each other, and I am not able to see any type of analogy.

Furthermore, while the precautionary custody order for Spezi has been voided by the Tribunale del Riesame of Perugia, exclusively on the grounds of insufficient elements of proof, the precautionary custody order for Knox was firmly confirmed not only by the Tribunal of Riesame in Perugia,, but above all by the Sixth Section of the Court of Cassazione, which has declared the matter decided and closed.

About the “sacrificial rite” issue, I have never stated that Meredith Kercher was the victim of a “sacrificial rite”.

It should be sufficient to read the charges to understand that the three defendants have been accused of having killed Ms Kercher in the course of activities of a sexual nature, which are notoriously very different from a “sacrificial rite”.

The Monster of Florence investigations have been led by the Florentine magistrates Adolfo Izzo, Silvia della Monica, Pierluigi Vigna, Paolo Canessa and some others.

I have never served in Florence. I have led investigations related to the case since October 2001, but only with regard to the death of Dr Francesco Narducci, and just a superficial knowledge of those proceedings [Dr Narducci drowned or was drowned] would suffice to realize that I never spoke of a “sacrificial rite” which in this case doesn’t make any good sense.

About the defense lawyer issue.  Mr. Preston was heard as a person claiming information about the facts (in effect a witness), but after indications of some circumstances against him surfaced, the interview was suspended, since at that point he should have been assisted by an attorney, and since according to the law the specific crime hypothesis required the proceedings to be suspended until a ruling on them was handed down.

All I did was to apply the Italian law to the proceedings. I really cannot understand any problem.

In the usual way, Knox was first heard by the police as a witness, but when some essential elements of her involvement with the murder surfaced, the police suspended the interview, according to Article 63 of the penal proceedings code.

But Knox then decided to render spontaneous declarations, that I took up without any further questioning, which is entirely lawful. According to Article 374 of the penal proceedings code, suspects must be assisted by a lawyer only during a formal interrogation, and when being notified of alleged crimes and questioned by a prosecutor or judge, not when they intend to render unsolicited declarations.

Since I didn’t do anything other than to apply the Italian law applicable to both matters, I am unable to understand the objections and reservations which you are talking about.

Secondly, I have told you that explaining the nature of the accusations against me is a complex job.

In short, it has been alleged that I have favored Dr Giuttari’s position, who was investigated together with two of his collaborators for a (non-existent) political forgery of a tape recording transcription of a conversation between Dr Giuttari and Dr Canessa.

The latter was giving vent to his feelings, telling Dr Giuttari that the head prosecutor in Florence (at the time) was not a free man in relation to his handling of the Monster investigations.

A technical advisor from the prosecutor’s office in Genoa had tried to attribute that sentence to Dr Giuttari, without having previously obtained a sound test from him, only from Dr Canessa.

I decided, rightly and properly, to perform another technical test on that tape for my trial (I have a copy of it, and the original transcripts of the recording).

I had the technical test performed by the Head of the Sound Task Force of the RIS Carabinieri in Rome, Captain Claudio Ciampini.

If Giuttari had lied, Captain Ciampini would have certainly said so. But his conclusions from the analysis were that that sentence had been pronounced by Dr Canessa. And by the way, this is clearly audible.

I then deemed it appropriate to interrogate the technical adviser from Genoa, in the sphere of the investigations led by me, since the people under investigation were thoroughly but inexplicably aware of the development of the investigation of Dr Giuttari.

The technical advisor from Genoa had made some absolutely non-credible declarations, and I had to investigate him.

The GUP from Genoa, Dr Roberto Fenizia, by means of a non-contested verdict on 9 November 2006, acquitted Dr Giuttari and his collaborators, because the alleged crimes had never occurred.

Therefore, I am accused for doing a proper and due investigation, without even the consideration that I have spared some innocent people from a sentence. I leave any further evaluation up to you.

As for the phone tappings, they had been fully authorized or validated by the GIP. [Those charges are now thrown out.] Explain to me how they can be considered wrongful. I haven’t been able to understand this yet.

This is the story of that case in short, and I am certain the truth will prevail.

None of us is guaranteed not to be subjected to unjust trials, especially when sensitive and “inconvenient” investigations have been conducted.

When accusations are serious and heavy in Italy, a magistrate that has been investigated or charged suffers heavy consequences.

There are appropriate bodies in charge to intervene according to the current laws, but the Florentine penal proceeding so far hasn’t affected me at all, perhaps because everybody ““ and specifically those professionally working on the matter - have realized that such penal proceedings have been anomalous, to use a euphemism.

As to my possibility to appeal any conviction, the Italian law provides for it, and I don’t need to say more.

I will make some closing remarks on the different jurisdictions.

Indeed there are differences between the [UK and US] common law jurisdictions and those of continental Europe, including the Italian one, which like any other jurisdiction has its flaws but also its merits, of which I “˜m becoming more aware as I carry on.

Furthermore, both jurisdictions are expressions of the juridical culture of the Western world, and this is something that shouldn’t be disregarded.

I don’t think I need to add anything else, except that these issues would need to be discussed in a personal conversation in order to delve further into the matter.

Sincerely

Giuliano Mignini

3. Dr Mignini Attempts Explanation To Biased Drew Griffen

In mid 2011 a similar thing happened. Drew Griffen of CNN was given a three-hour on-camera interview - and sarcastically broadcast cherrypicked and mangled responses from Dr Mignini. Again we obtained Dr Mignini’s full statement, and Skeptical Bystander posted the whole thing in three long parts, with translation by Clander, Yummi, Jools, Thoughtful, TomM and Catnip.

Again, highly worth reading.

In the first 20 minutes of the second hour of the interview, Drew Griffen tried to give Dr Mignini a hard time over the so-called Knox interrogation. Drew Griffen was abysmally informed of the testimony at trial we have been posting and had no idea of the substance of Knox’s one interview on 5-6 November or the fact that this was merely a recap/summary session not ever requiring recording.

Dr Mignini had not himself testified at trial, and he led the testimony of others present on 5-6 November very fairly and without defense protests about any bias. And Dr Mignini is not under oath here. However this 20-minute segment is important, for it reinforces that Knox was treated extremely fairly and she had no genuine reason for complaint about it.

0’40’’ English question [Translator’s note: These words are in English in the Italian transcript of which this document is a translation.]

0’48’’ CNN: You didn’t interrogate Amanda?

0’50’’ Mignini: Oh, the police interrogated her. I was told about it. I wanted to explain this. I remember that I had gone to sleep and the director of the flying squad, Dr. Profazio, called me, because he tells me: “There are developments; Raffaele in fact has denied what he had said before”. So I went down and the head of the flying squad told me what had happened. At some point they tell us that Amanda has made this statement.

And thus her interrogation as a person informed of the facts was suspended by the police in compliance with Article 63 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure [c.p.p. - Codice di Procedura Penale], because if evidence appears that incriminates the person, the person being questioned as a person informed of the facts can no longer be heard, and we must stop. “Everyone stop! There must be a defense attorney [present]”. And thus the police stopped and informed Amanda, who had placed herself on the scene of the crime and who said that she had accompanied Lumumba and let him in and that then Lumumba, in the other room, allegedly committed a sexual act and killed Meredith. This is what she said.

2’11’’ Then I was called, I was informed about this, I went to Amanda who, I remember how she was, what she looked like, I remember her very well, she remained imprinted in my memory, I still remember then two things about Amanda that struck me at the time: first, she looked like she was relieved of a burden and second, she was like, and this is another detail that was impressive, it seemed as if she was terrified of Lumumba.

20’48’’ Then I, as I had in some way to, let’s say”¦ this police interrogation had been suspended. At that point I remember that”¦ they made me notice that Amanda, because she wanted to go on talking, I remember she had, like a need to. So I told her: “you can make statements to me; I will not ask questions, since if you make a spontaneous statement and I collect it, I will collect your statement as if I were in fact a notary”. She then repeated [her story] to the interpreter, who was Mrs. Donnino, I remember there was a police woman officer who wrote the statement down [verbalizzava], I did not ask questions. She basically repeated what she had told the police and she signed the statement. Basically I didn’t ask Amanda questions. Not before, since the police asked them and I was not there, and not after, since she made spontaneous statements. Had I been asking her questions, a defense attorney should have been there. This is the procedure.

05’24 CNN: She had an interpreter during the whole time?

05’26’’ Mignini: Yes.

05’29’’ CNN: She says no.

05’32’’ Mignini: Look the interpreter was there, when I heard her there was the interpreter. The interpreter Anna Donnino, who is an interpreter for the police; she was hired by the police.

Just like I believe that there was [before], I do not have the minutes now, but yet now this is a fact, it is undisputed that there was an interpreter.

06’02’’ CNN: Amanda Knox says she was interrogated for 14 hours”¦

06’11’’ Mignini: No, look, absolutely not. At 1 a.m., the minutes of Nov 6th has started at 1 a.m. and I arrived, 14 hours that cannot be, we are really”¦ that’s absolutely impossible. So the minutes were done at one o’clock, then the minutes of the spontaneous declaration was taken at 5.45, it maybe lasted half an hour because no questions were asked. She made her statements; they were translated; then at around 8 a.m., I think, at approximately 8, I drew up the detention order. Thus it is”¦ well, she had been heard earlier, so she had been questioned as a person informed of the facts at around one forty-five a.m. She had previously been heard by a female police officer, but [that’s] because she had gone voluntarily to the police and she reported that, she said things quite relevant to the investigation of Raffaele and was heard by the inspector [Rita] Ficarra. However this [event] ... I was not there, I do not know [about it]. But remember, there are the minutes. Then the minutes in which she was questioned as a person informed of the facts starts at 1:45 of November 6, and cannot have lasted 14 hours ... in no way whatsoever. Then she was arrested at around 8 a.m. or at about 9 a.m. or so.

08’16’’ Mignini: Look, I remember what I saw when I saw her personally, because she said, I told her: “you can make, if you deem it [necessary], a spontaneous statement, because Italian law provides for this. If a person is aware that he/she is suspected [under investigation], may request to speak before a magistrate, it happened many times, they came also to me, and they say “I want to make a statement”. Very well, I listen. If I listen, I wanted this to be highlighted”¦. to be clear, I listen and that’s all, and I ask no questions, the defense attorney may be not present. But if I ask questions and I object to the facts [of your answers], it is like an interrogation and thus we would need a defense attorney.

09’10’’ CNN: was [Amanda Knox] scared?

09’11’’ Mignini: Well, I recall this feeling that I had in that moment which, [as] I am explaining to you, in the spirit in which I am doing this interview, to explain to you the acceptance [adozione] of our requests [provvedimenti], what was, why the trial went in a certain way. [Translator’s note: The Italian in the CNN transcript is nearly incomprehensible. We have provided the foregoing on a best effort basis.]

09’36’’ She was, she seemed to me like she was uplifted, freed of a weight, and terrified of Lumumba. That’s an impression that has stayed with me, yet I don’t understand. I remember that there was a policeman who was called, from the SCO [Servizio Centrale Operativo] in Rome, who made an impression on me because he was very fatherly. She was crying as though freed of a great weight, and he was trying to console her. I remember there was also a policewoman who, well, she”¦[missing word?] and I’m sure that.. [missing word?] .. well, all that picture how it was described later”¦ at that moment it wasn’t like that. Right then, there was a situation in which I was trying to console her, to encourage her, because actually we believed that she had told the truth.

11’03’’ CNN: No one hit her?

11’06’’ Mignini: No, look, absolutely not. I can state this in the most positive way, and then, let’s say”¦ I wasn’t there when she was being questioned by police, the rooms are quite far away”¦ you don’t know but I was”¦ it’s quite far, there’s a corridor, and I was with the director, Dr. Porfazio, and she was being questioned in a different place. I also remember that passing through, I also saw Sollecito who was alone in a different room; he was also being questioned, as I recall. I don’t exclude”¦well”¦it’s clear that I wasn’t there, but I don’t believe that anything whatsoever happened, and in my presence absolutely not.

11’55’’ On the contrary, there was an attitude of”¦ I mean they gave her [some] ... [missing word?] then she was like, you know, like someone crying from a sense of liberation, as though she had been freed. That was the attitude.

12’51’’ CNN: Why wasn’t there any video or transcript of those hours?

13’00’’ Mignini: Look, that’s, I was at the police station, and all the”¦let’s say”¦when I made investigations in my own office, I taped them. I taped them, we have an apparatus for that, and I transcribed them. For example, there’s the interrogation of the English girls, Meredith’s friends, it was all taped. The interrogations of Amanda in prison were taped, and then transcribed, and we have the transcripts of”¦ But in a police station, at the very moment of the investigation it isn’t done, not with respect to Amanda or anyone else. Also because, I can tell you, today, even then, but today in particular, we have budget problems, budget problems that are not insignificant, which do not allow us to transcribe. Video is very important”¦I completely agree with you that videotaping is extremely important, we should be able to have a video recording of every statement [verbale di assunzione di informazioni] made Because what is said is very important, but it’s maybe even more important how it is said, the non-verbal language. Because from the non-verbal language you can [missing words].

15’14’’ Mignini: It isn’t only Amanda, it’s always like that. But I wanted to say that I agree with him that it’s fundamental, only there’s a problem, especially when the witnesses are so numerous, and in fact just recording, I mean recording the sound, isn’t enough according to me.

15’38’’ CNN: It doesn’t cost much, he says.

15’40’’ Mignini: Well we have significant budget problems, that’s what it is.

15’38’’ CNN: So in the end, you did get a confession. But then, everything that was written in the confession became a lie?

16’16’’ Mignini: But then, there was the fact that she placed herself at the scene of the crime, and Lumumba wasn’t there, together with the three of them, the two of them, but Rudy was there, according to the facts that emerged later. But the fact of having accused”¦and she’s even accused of calumny in regard to Lumumba, was an element that was very important from the point of view of her legal position at the trial. Why accuse someone of participating in a crime, placing yourself at the scene of a crime? Because with those declarations, she placed herself at the scene, at the place of the crime. And she placed someone there who was a complete stranger to it. Why did she do that? There is one detail that’s particularly significant. Above all when Lumumba was arrested and no one ““ if it hadn’t been for the Public Prosecutor’s Office that conducted the investigation, and that is mandated to seek elements in favor of the accused, Lumumba would have stayed in prison. But we investigated, and we saw that Lumumba wasn’t involved, that he was the object of calumny and so he was freed and the case against him was archived.

18’15’’ CNN: Was she asked to imagine what might have happened?

18’24’’ Mignini: No, absolutely not. Either you saw a person or you didn’t. I can’t ask someone what they imagine because it would be a question that doesn’t mean anything, that I even don’t understand.

This really does finish our posting of the case for the prosecution on this “interrogation” issue, though at least half a dozen other investigators provided supportive testimony which we have not yet quoted.

Next, how all of the Italian courts up to Cassation concluded that Knox’s claims were unsupported, contradictory, and damaging, and how her three-year prison sentence served was well justified.

Analysis #3 Of Testimony Of Dr Chiacchiera, Organized Crime Section: Contradictions Between RS & AK

Posted by Cardiol MD

1. Overview Of This Series

In 2007 Dr Chiacchiera was the Director of the Organized Crime Section and the Deputy Director of the Flying Squad.

He was one of the most senior and experienced law enforcement officers to testify at the trial. His testimony and his cross examination by the defenses occupied a lot of time of the court late in February 2009. He covered the following ground.

(1) He found Knox and Sollecito uncooperative when he asked them questions.

(2) Saw evidence contradicting any lone burglar theory and indicating that the “break-In” to Romanelli’s room was faked.

(3) Phone records and the police investigation into the accused phone activity the night of the murder.

(4) Discovery of pornographic magazines at Sollecito’s house.

(5) Details of how the large knife, Exhibit 36, was collected from Sollecito’s and the evidence that it is the murder knife.

Dr Chiacchiera was submitted to cross-examination on the above 5 items by 4 Attorneys for the Defence of Knox and Sollecito, by 2 Civil Party Attorneys, and to Re-examination by the Prosecution. He had a gruelling time as a witness.

All the translation is by the ever-dedicated main poster ZiaK. This series is highlighting some key portions. Here is the full 50-page transcript which will be posted in the trial testimony area of McCall’s great Wiki.

(GCM=Giancarlo Massei; MC=Manuela Comodi; MaCh=Marco Chiacchiera; GB=Giulia Bongiorno; DD=Donatella Donati; CP=Carlo Pacelli; LG=Luciano Ghirga; CDV=Carlo Dalla Vedova; FM=Francesco Maresca)

Continuation of Dr Chiacchiera’s Evidence-in-Chief:

MaCh: It emerged that normally Sollecito kept his cellphones, and also Amanda Knox, they kept their cellphones on until a late hour, evening, [sic] there is no telephone traffic from 20:40 hours. A thing of this “¦

{Witness begins Testimony re cellphones and is interrupted}

MC: But did this emerge from the declarations or did it emerge from the analysis of the [phone] records in the preceding days?

{Examiner interrupts witness with good Q re source of telephone-usage information}

MaCh: It emerged from the analysis of the [phone] records in the preceding days.

{Witness answers clearly}

GCM: Excuse me. Let me understand. In other words you say: the cellphone was switched off and there was no telephone traffic, these are two different things.

{Court asks good clarifying Q}

MaCh: I’m saying, Mr President. Two things. The first, normally Sollecito’s telephone and the telephone of Amanda, were switched on until the late hours. The fatal evening, they were switched off from 20:42 hours until “¦ one [of the phones] from 20:42 onwards and the other from about 20:50 onwards. One. Two, the traffic “¦

{Witness is Answering Court's Q in 2 parts. When he gets to his part #2, Court interrupts}

GCM: Before going on to “Two”, excuse me: “normally” ““ what does that mean? You had “¦

{Court is asking good Q re witness's Part #1, but is interrupted}

MaCh: We had done a comparative analysis of the telephone traffic of that evening with the telephone traffic of the preceding evenings. Shall we say the habits ...

{Witness interrupts Court with narrative response, and is also interrupted}

GCM: And so the “normally” emerges from this?

{Court interrupts witness's response with good Q}

MC: How many evenings? If you recall, or not?

{Examiner asks witness relevant Q, adding redundant Q}

MaCh: Months, no “¦ honestly, I don’t remember how many [evenings], but months.

{Witness stumbles, seeming uncertain re 'evenings' vs 'months'}

MC: I mean to say, not “¦

{Examiner preambles re her redundant Q but is interrupted}

MaCh: Not three days, no. The telephone traffic habits were evaluated. [This is point] one. [Point] Two, the element that emerged, that contradicted the declarations, I can’t report on the declarations but I can report on the element that contradicted [sic. i.e. provided the contradiction], that in effect no telephone call had arrived at 23:00 hours, as had been declared: on the phone line that was declared to have received that “¦ the recipient of that very phone-call. Another element: no interaction with the computer emerged, unlike what was declared. So there were a few objective elements of comparison from the analysis and from the technical checks that contradicted what had previously been revealed.

{Witness interrupts Examiner with narrative response to Examiner's Q, witness indicating contradiction between suspects' declarations and objective records of telephone and computer activity}

MC: For Amanda Knox, were there incongruities of this type?

{Examiner asks if incongruities/contradictions existed for Amanda Knox}

MaCh: Yes, there were incongruities because Amanda Knox was, how to say, contradicted by Sollectio, and then she contradicted herself, if I may “¦

{Witness answers affirmatively, amplifying applicability both to Sollecito & Knox, but is interrupted}

GB: President, if we continue in this way, then we might as well do the old [trial] procedure.

{Giulia Bongiorno, Sollecito's lawyer interjects, objecting-subjectively to Court, but submitting no legal basis for her objection}

GCM: Excuse me, please.

{Court seems to politely rule GB out-of-order}

MaCh: The elements, these are [sic], Mr President, I don’t know how to do.

{Witness communicates uncertainty to Court}

MC: But it is so difficult, however.

{Examiner chimes-in apparently commiserating with her witness's uncertainty}

MaCh: Mr President, I really don’t know what to do.

{Witness seems to repeat statement addressed to Court, who possibly interrupts}}

GCM: Excuse me”¦

{Court seems to begin response to Witness, but is possibly interrupted}

MaCh: If I have to describe the investigation activity “¦

{Witness may be interrupting Court or is continuing Witness's unfinished statement to Court}

MC: He’s not referring to declarations.

{Examiner chimes-in with his opinion re Witness's reference to Defendants' contradictions/incongruities - GB's interjection seems to have side-tracked court procedure}

GCM: Regarding these declarations, you can report on this [sic. i.e. in this instance?], and with regard to Raffaele Sollecito, you reported ““ citing the telephone traffic and citing the use of the computer. There now, and this is one point. With regard to Amanda Knox, you cannot report the declarations. But you may, however, say ““ following these declarations ““ what type of investigations you carried out, and the outcome of these. So, following the declarations given by Amanda Knox, did you do similar investigations, as [those you did] for Sollecito Raffaele on the [phone] records? Or was there nothing to do, except to “¦?

{Court rules on subject of testimony re Defendants' declarations, seeming to rule admissibility of Sollecito's declarations re telephone traffic and computer usage, but inadmissibility of Knox's declarations. Court does seem to permit description of investigations that followed Knox's declarations, without describing Knox's actual declarations, and Court asks whether phone-record investigations similar to those done for Sollecito were done for Knox.}

MaCh: Mr President, all the necessary checks were made, but in that immediate moment the most important element “¦ that is to say, in [this] place [NdT: i.e. “in this Court”], in this moment, in this place, that is to say, when they were “¦ I said [that] when the arrests were made, I don’t, I don’t know how to do, however, the incongruity of the declarations with the facts that we had found, and with the declarations that Sollecito had previously given us, [this] was the most important element. I don’t know if I have managed to “¦

{Witness seemingly responding to Court that he doesn't know how to deal with the declarations, is interrupted.}

GCM: No, excuse me (overlapping voices). So, with regard to Raffaele Sollecito, we have
understood these checking activities were carried out on the declarations made, the verification activities carried out, and [that’s all] very well. With regard to Amanda Knox, if you also carried out “¦ maybe there were no objective elements for possible checking, there were no “¦ or else, there were activities carried out of “¦

{Court, interrupting over witness's testimony, seems to be explaining his Q to witness, but is interrupted by witness}

MaCh: Later, there emerged a series of further elements.

{Witness interrupts with statement re unspecified further elements}

GCM: Not evaluations on the congruity, incongruity, likelihood, these are evaluations and will be done, there you go, comparably. I’m thinking of the [phone] records, of the use, if she had given indications on the basis of which [you] could carry out investigative activity “¦

{Court seems to want evidence in Knox's phone records justifying further investigation.}

Here ends the Testimony Of Dr Chiacchiera covering the relevant Phone Records, elicited by the Prosecution.

Next comes the Testimony Of Dr Chiacchiera elicited by the Prosecution, covering Discovery of pornographic magazines at Sollecito’s house, Details of how the large knife, Exhibit 36, was collected from Sollecito’s and the evidence that it is the murder knife

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

The Hundreds Of DNA Samples Taken And Analyses Done, Shown In Table Form

Posted by Olleosnep

1. Even Excluding DNA, There’s Massive Evidence

The DNA Spreadsheet will open using Microsoft Excel or alternatives such as the free OpenOffice. Please note the table is very wide.

Contrary to foolish claims elsewhere, there’s a great deal of evidence implicating not only Guede but also Knox and Sollecito in the brutal murder of Meredith Kercher. 

The bulk of the evidence is circumstantial, and encompasses different categories of evidence, such as: wounds sustained by Ms. Kercher;  ear and eye witnesses;  footprints; shoeprints; fingerprints and lack thereof; blood patterns; evidence that Ms. Kercher was moved after she died; misplaced items in her room and in the cottage; evidence of partial clean-up; cellphone records; computer evidence; evidence of staged break-in; lack of evidence of actual break-in; statements by all three defendants; lack of alibis; lies by Knox and Sollecito; etc.

A lot of the most critical evidence has been repeatedly reviewed by many different judges involved in the case, from Judge Micheli to Judge Nencini, and led to the unanimous verdict at trial now confirmed by Appeal Judge Nencini. 

2. The Massive DNA Evidence Is Equally Conclusive

We have carried nearly five dozen DNA posts previously on the Scientific Labs work in 2007-09, the discredited judges’ consultants work in 2011, and the Carabinieri Labs work in 2013.

They go to prove that some of the most damning evidence comes from the DNA traces found on hundreds of samples tested by the Forensic Genetics department of the Italian Scientific Police squadron in Rome. The department was presided over by the biologist Dr. Stefanoni at the time [seen above left with Prosecutor Comodi] who acted as the department’s principal technical director.

The results of Dr. Stefanoni’s work were collected in several reports issued by her lab during the 2008-2009 investigation and trial phases. Of these reports, two reports in particular comprise a “˜survey’ of the work performed by her lab at the time: the “Genetic Tests” report (GT), and the “Stato Avanzamento Laboratorio” report (SAL). Both reports are available on the Meredith Kercher Wiki.

These two reports are notable for highlighting the large quantity of testing done and the significant number of objects and items sampled. In addition, the reports not only look at items with blood traces, but also traces of skin cells, feces, semen, and above all, hair traces, an aspect of the evidence that has been largely glossed over in the testimony and in the motivation reports.

3. For The First Time A Complete DNA Roadmap

In order to better understand the extent of the work and types of the tests performed, I have taken the data that can be gleaned from these two reports and placed them into a single spreadsheet, in order to create a kind of “˜database’ of the testing and analyses done.

This spreadsheet uses the GT report as a basis, followed by additional information obtainable from the SAL report.

The spreadsheet is basically a list of each sample, object and/or test done by Dr. Stefanoni’s team. These include tests done for DNA analysis, testing done for Y haplotype analysis and hair sample analysis. In the SAL report, it is shown that a few samples were tested multiple times. The list also includes some objects which were not analyzed at all, or were only analyzed up to a point.

It should be noted that there are a few difficulties with the reports. The GT report references an associated photographic report that has not been made available. The GT report is also missing a couple of pages and the descriptions of the results are at times inconsistent. Other times it can be tricky to follow exactly what tests were done. Because the report is a black and white scan of an original likely printed in color, some of the information in the tables is difficult or impossible to read. And some traces are missing result tables altogether.

The SAL report is also incomplete. The luminol samples at the cottage and all the samples taken at Guede’s apartment are missing, as are other samples. The scanned pages in the PDF are out of order, making cross-checking with the GT report tedious. The SAL report does not have all the test data indicated in the GT report. For instance, the human antibody tests noted in the GT report are not indicated in the SAL report. The data in the SAL report is often not as complete as one might think. As an example, all hair samples were logged and assigned a sample number. But those hairs that had no DNA extracted, do not have a date of when they were analyzed. Presumably they were all analyzed as a set for each item, given that the sample number is frequently numerically sequential (i.e. 47084, 47085, 47086, etc.). But it’s not possible to say with certainty when the hairs were reviewed from the report.

Nevertheless the GT and SAL reports do have significant information that is of interest to the case. Hence the spreadsheet.

4. Some Guidance For The Use Of The Spreadsheet

Spreadsheets can be useful for presenting various pieces of data together “˜at a glance’. But the real power of spreadsheets for this type of data is that rows can be sorted in order to group similar pieces of data together, allowing one to get a overview of subsets of data.

So, for instance, if one wanted to order all the rows by “˜sample number’ to see the sequence of how they were processed in the lab, one need only highlight all the rows (done by clicking on row number 5, holding down the “˜Shift key’ and paging down to the bottommost row), then go to menu option “˜Data’ and then “˜Sort’ and select the column or columns to sort by- “˜AF’ in the case.

Or perhaps one wants to sort by “˜DNA yielded’ and “˜building’ to see where someone’s DNA was found. Simply select all the rows again, select the menu option “˜Data’ and then “˜Sort’, and select the first column as “˜DNA yielded’ (or column AD), then select as the second column as “˜building (or column F).

To return to the original order, select all rows again and sort on column A.

Note that the first four rows in the spreadsheet are “˜locked’, in order to allow the column headers to be always visible.  If one wants to unlock these rows, select the whole spreadsheet by clicking on the upper left corner of the window where the column header labels and row numbers meet. Once the whole spreadsheet is selected, go to “˜View’ option and select “˜Unfreeze panes’. For Excel version 2007 and higher, click on the little arrow to the right of “˜freeze panes’ button on the menu bar, and there will be the option to unfreeze panes.

If one is handy with Access, or any other database program, it should be possible to import the spreadsheet into that database program, allowing one to perform more powerful “˜queries’.

The Rome headquarters of the Scientific Police which work closely with the FBI

5. Explanations Of Some Of The DNA Data

The data in each column was obtained directly or indirectly obtainable from the two reports by Dr. Stefanoni’s team.

1) Column “˜A’ allows one to resort rows to their original order, which is based on the order of the “˜item number’ noted in the GT report.

2) “˜Item number’ refers to the actual piece of evidence, whether an object sampled onsite or an object that was bagged and taken to the lab, as noted in the GT report.

3) “˜Original item label’ is data provided in the first pages of the GT report, as a way to tie the evidence item back to evidence markers used at the crime scene, and visible in some of the crime scene photos.

4) “˜Page in attached photo report’ indicates that there is an adjunct “˜photo report’ Dr. Stefanoni provided that has not yet been released, and likely has photos of the evidence items “˜in situ’. This information is also noted in the beginning item lists in the GT report.

5) “˜Sample date’ is based on the dates noted in the beginning list in the GT report, indicating when the evidence item was sampled or taken from the crime scene. This is sometimes difficult to read, due to the fact that the report was apparently printed in color and the black and white scan hides or obscures some text and graphics.

6) Columns F-K are location and object data, obtainable from the descriptions in the GT report, especially the first pages that provide a list of where evidence samples were obtained. I broke this data down into various categories to allow different possibilities of grouping the data.

7) “˜Sample obtained’ indicates the type of biological substance that was assumed to contain DNA. This was first obtained from the GT report, and later corrected with the data from the SAL report, which has a more consistent description of what the sample was assumed to be.

8) Columns M through AC list data either directly reported in the GT and SAL reports, or interpretable from them. Column M notes if an item was analyzed or not. In the GT report, unanalyzed items are noted in the beginning list as “˜not analyzed’ though not consistently. In the SAL report, they are noted as having 0 samples.

9) “˜Trace number’ was obtained from GT report, though on a few occasions, the actual number is not clear. Note that the number “˜starts over’ for each evidence item. Sometimes the trace number is sequential, independent of whether it is blood or hair or skin cells. Items having the most traces are those that were “˜heavily’ sampled, including Sollecito’s sneakers, the duvet, Ms. Kercher’s sweat jacket, her jeans, the kitchen knife, the kitchen sponge, etc.

10) “˜Additional trace info’ is additional information noted from both reports about a specific sample.

11) Column P “˜revealed in luminol?’ indicates with a “˜yes’ those samples obtained during luminol analysis. What often gets overlooked is that luminol analysis was performed not only at the cottage, but in Sollecito’s car, Sollecito’s apartment and Guede’s apartment. Notable here is that 14 different samples were obtained from luminol analysis at Sollecito’s apartment. While the DNA data yielded was meager, what is important is not the actual data yielded, but the number and location of samples investigated, including samples from door handles, and different locations like the bathroom, bedroom and kitchen. There was certainly a suspicious amount of blood, bleach or turnip juice at Sollecito’s place!

12) “˜Date of extraction’ comes from the SAL report, though, as mentioned above, it is not consistently reported for every trace or sample analyzed. This indicates when DNA processing occurred on a sample. This column is important to look at when discussing the issue of lab contamination. If one performs a sort on this column and on the “˜sample number’ column, one can clearly see that samples were processed in batches, often a week or two weeks apart. So for instance, claims that the sample 36B happened due to contamination at the lab is really not possible, given that Ms. Kercher’s DNA was analyzed one week earlier (11/5/07 and 11/6/07) and sample 36B is the only sample to contain Ms. Kercher’s DNA from all the samples analyzed on 11/13/07. Similarly, Sollecito’s DNA and Guede’s DNA are only found once each of all the items analyzed on 12/29/07, yet the last time Sollecito’s DNA had been analyzed was on 12/17/07, 12 days earlier. So the likelihood of lab contamination seems extraordinarily small, just from the dates of when samples were analyzed.

13) “˜TMB test positive’ was originally obtained from the GT report. Again because that report is likely in color, a number of tables have either missing graphics or are missing tables altogether. Fortunately the SAL report has duplicated this data consistently.

14) “˜Human antibody test positive?’ is obtained from other tables in the GT report, almost always paired with the TMB table. In some cases where the table data is illegible, I’ve placed a “?” in front of an assumed result. Curiously, this test is not shown in the SAL report.

15) “˜Cat antibody positive?’ is from the GT report, shows that the basement apartment blood samples were all made a by cat, which Dr. Stefanoni comments on in her Massei testimony.

16) Apparently they also ran “˜dog antibody’ testing as well, as is noted in the GT report.

17) “˜DNA extraction done?’ indicates if a decision was made to extract DNA. This was inferred from the GT report. Notable here is that even with samples having cat antibodies, Dr. Stefanoni does the DNA extraction anyway to make sure no human DNA is in the sample.

18) “˜Quantity extracted’ comes from the SAL report. This refers not to the amount of DNA extracted, but specifically to the amount of liquid (50, 100 or 150 microliters) filtered through the Qiagen Bio Robot EZ1 machine. This machine actually filters or purifies the sample, removing all other biological materials like cells, bacteria, etc. leaving only actual DNA molecules which can then be processed. This extraction process is also the quantification process, where from a 50 microliter sample a certain amount of DNA is found and quantified.

19) “˜Human DNA found during quantification’ was inferred from the GT report. It should be noted that for Dr. Stefanoni’s team, DNA analysis involved finding DNA useful for comparison. This means that Dr. Stefanoni was not looking for a sample of any human DNA, but a sample sufficiently “˜complete’ to be able to compare it with others samples. So it was likely often the case that a trace might have snippets and pieces of DNA, but these pieces were either too small or too fragmented to be useful for any profile comparisons. So “˜No’ in this column means not so much that no DNA was found at all, but that no DNA was found that could be useful for comparison.

20) “˜Decision to amplify and analyze’ was obtained from the GT report. Sometimes it is explicitly mentioned in the description of the results in the GT report. Other times, it can be inferred from the lack of tables.

21) “˜Concentrate sample with Speed VAC 110’ means that where “no human DNA was found” (i.e. when no DNA was found sufficiently complete or in sufficient amounts useful for comparison), Dr. Stefanoni decided to process the sample further in an effort to “˜bring out’ whatever DNA there might be. This was done using a “˜concentrator’, which dries the samples and vacuums them, thereby reducing sample fluid to make any DNA present more easily found by the subsequent DNA processing equipment.

22) “˜STR amplification’ is the DNA copying process whereby any DNA found is copied millions of times to obtain samples that can be adequately rendered by capillary electrophoresis. The process Dr. Stefanoni used is described specifically in the GT report for evidence items 12 and 13.

23) In some cases “˜Y chromosome amplification’ is also done. While this may be done at the same time by the same machine, I took any Y chromosome amplification to be a separate test, since per the GT report, it sometimes yielded different results. In a few cases, it is not clear from the GT report if Y chromosome amplification was done on only one sample, or on all the samples of an evidence item. In those cases, I assumed all the samples.

24) “˜Capillary electrophoresis’ is where DNA is rendered through a chemical/electrical process that tags DNA particles with fluorescence. These fluoresced particles are then read by the software of the machine and mapped onto a graph that shows DNA particles as “˜peaks’, which are an indicator of quantity of DNA found. The software of the machine then produced graphs of the peaks obtained and it is these graphs that Dr. Stefanoni and her team used for profile comparison.

25) “˜DNA yielded’ is what is indicated in the GT report and is based on Dr. Stefanoni’s comparison of the DNA profile(s) shown by capillary electrophoresis to index DNA samples she had of Sollecito, Lumumba, Guede, Knox and Ms. Kercher.

26) “˜Egram number’ is taken from the GT report.

27) The “˜sample number’ was taken from the GT and further completed by the SAL report, which has the sample numbers for all samples, whether they were analyzed for DNA or not. The sample numbers are useful for indicating what was happening at the Dr. Stefanoni’s lab. As an example, if one does a sort on column Q (Date of extraction) and column AF (sample number) one can see that between 11/5/07 and 11/6/07, there is gap of 129 samples that were likely performed for another case. The last sample analyzed on 11/5/07 was 47082, and on 11/6/07, the next sample number is 47211. So presumably her lab ran 129 additional DNA tests on samples related to other cases between these two runs. Generally the sample numbers increase sequentially by date, but there are a few exceptions. One in particular is sample 47821, which appears as the last sample on 11/23/07, though samples starting on 11/26/07, three days later, start with sample number 47711. This implies that samples were probably numbered in batches (by sticking numbered labels on tubes or bags) and not necessarily right before extraction or other machine processing was done.

28) “˜Compatibility notes’ are extra comments noted by Dr. Stefanoni in the GT report.

29) “˜Likely substance containing DNA’ is interpretable from the GT and SAL report and the results of the testing done.

30) Finally there are columns related to hair analysis. “˜Type of hair’ comes from the SAL report, and it is sometimes, but not consistently or legibly, noted in the GT report.

31) “˜Hair color’ provides a description of the hair color. Notable is that the hair description is quite consistent, with black, blonde, chestnut, light chestnut, red chestnut being the more significant categories. This is available in both the GT and SAL report and both reports match.

32) “˜Hair length;’ is obviously the length of hair analyzed. I’m not sure how this was done since the machinery used is not indicated in either report. Again, this is in both reports, and again the data matches in both reports.

33) “˜Hair width’ is the diameter of the hair in micrometers, and is available in both reports.

34) “˜Hair marrow’ is found only in the SAL report, and presumably describes the condition of the very core of the hair.

35) “˜Hair end condition’ indicates whether the end of the hair is “˜cut’, a “˜point’, frayed or otherwise.  This is found in both reports.

36) “˜Bulb phase’ relates to the particular phase of hair growth, with DNA apparently present in the hair bulb only during the initial growth phases of the hair. This too is found in both reports.

37) “˜Hair remarks’ are any comments related to hair samples.

38) Lastly, the “˜remarks’ column contains my notes on a particular sample or test, indicating discrepancies or explanations of what I was able to understand.

As noted above, the SAL report does not contain data for all the samples. Per Dr. Gino’s testimony in the Massei trial on 9/26/09, additional SAL sheets were apparently released that indicate that TMB tests were done on the luminol samples at the cottage and that these tests were negative. However it should be noted that TMB is less sensitive than luminol, so it is possible that a luminol sample could be in blood, which however is too diluted to be registered by a TMB test.

6. More Commentary On the DNA Extracted From Blood

1) DNA is only found in white blood cells, not red blood cells

2) The luminol reacts with the iron in red blood cells, not white blood cells

3) Red blood cells outnumber white blood cells by roughly 600 to 1

4) Even if DNA is found it may be not usable for comparison

So just because there is a positive luminol or TMB result does not mean that DNA can be found.

7. More Commentary On The Resulting Statistics

At the bottom of the spreadsheet are some interesting statistics, which I won’t reiterate here, except to note a few things.

a) 227 different objects or site objects were sampled/ obtained for analysis. 30 of these were not analyzed at all. From the remaining 197 objects and site objects sampled, 484 separate tests were set up for analysis, with 93 of these consisting of hair analysis. Of these 484 tests, 193 of them yield DNA data useful for comparison (40%).

b) Of the 193 tests that were “˜successful’, 100 tests yielded DNA compatible only with Ms. Kercher’s DNA (over 50%- again keep in mind their may have been other DNA but it may have been too small or too fragmented to be useful for comparison). Nine additional tests (comprising seven samples) yielded DNA compatible with Ms. Kercher’s DNA mixed with either Knox’s, Guede’s or Sollecito’s DNA. 27 tests had DNA compatible with Guede’s DNA; 18 tests had DNA compatible with Knox’s DNA; 11 more tests had DNA compatible with Sollecito’s DNA. Nine other tests yielded DNA compatible with a mixture of Knox’s and Sollecito’s DNA. 17 tests yielded DNA of unknown men and women (i.e. unmatchable by Dr. Stefanoni), and two tests were of samples obtained from Lumumba.

c) Of the nine tests yielding Ms. Kercher’s DNA mixed with others, five of these yielded DNA compatible with a mixture of Kercher’s and Knox’s DNA. They were all samples found in blood or potential blood- notably: three in the bathroom, one on the corridor floor in a luminol revealed bloody footprint, one in a luminol revealed blood stain in Romanelli’s room.

d) Returning to the discussions about contamination, it is notable that, whether the contamination occurred during site collection or in the lab, one might expect to find bits of contamination occurring here and there over 193 tests. Yet nearly all the arguments involve contamination about two samples, out of 193 tests. Over 50% of the tests that had useful DNA yielded Ms. Kercher’s DNA. If site collection, transport and/or lab procedures were so poor, one would expect to find Ms. Kercher’s DNA in other places as well. Yet very few samples have her DNA mixed with others, and conversely, very few other samples have other mixed DNA. Only nine samples have mixes of Sollecito and Knox’s DNA, eight of which were all obtained at Sollecito’s apartment or from Sollecito’s things (including a pocket knife), and one was obtained from a cigarette butt at the cottage. If contamination was so rampant, why does it occur on only two samples out of 193, (and curiously only on the two most damning samples)?

e) Continuing along the same lines, 118 samples were obtained from Sollecito’s apartment. Of these, 49 were not analyzed, (many were hairs not having bulbs in the right phase). Of the remaining 66 samples that were analyzed, only one, the one the blade of the kitchen knife, had Ms. Kercher’s DNA. And 41 yielded no usable DNA. So if there was contamination, or worse, direct framing of evidence by the lab, certainly there would be more of Ms. Kercher’s DNA amongst those 66 samples, in order to achieve an ironclad case. Yet there is only one sample out of 66 that had Ms. Kercher’s DNA.

f) Similarly, 224 tests were done on objects taken from the upper apartment. Of these 56 were not analyzed for DNA and an additional 61 that were analyzed, did not yield anything useful. Of the remaining 107 tests, only 3 had Sollecito’s DNA (a trace on the cigarette butt, and a trace on the bra clasp having Sollecito’s DNA as well as his Y chromosome.) Surely if there was rampant contamination or worse, direct framing of evidence, one would expect to find more of Sollecito’s DNA in Ms. Kercher’s room. Yet only one sample had his DNA and Y chromosome- the bra clasp.

g) Conversely, it is rather odd that Sollecito’s car was sampled in 16 locations (actually 19 samples were taken but only 16 analyzed), and none of those samples revealed his DNA. Did he ever drive his car?

8. And Finally More Commentary About The Hairs

Guede had black hair. From photos of Nov 2, 2007, Knox had blonde hair and Sollecito had chestnut to light chestnut hair. Meredith Kercher had chestnut to reddish chestnut hair.

93 hairs were found and analyzed. Seven of these were either animal hair or fibers. The remaining 86 hairs were, per the SAL report, all human. Seven of these hairs were black in color. Of the seven, six were short (4 cm or less) and one was long. Of the six short black hairs, four were found on the duvet covering Ms. Kercher, one was found on her mattress cover, and one was found on a sponge (containing fourteen other hairs) at Sollecito’s apartment. It is very likely these short black hairs were Guede’s, and if so, how it one of his hairs get on a sponge at Sollecito’s apartment.

Similarly, 21 blonde hairs were found, ranging from 4 cm to 20 cm. Of these, fifteen were found at Sollecito’s apartment, either on a sponge in the kitchen, or on a sweater. The other six were found at the cottage, with three being found on the duvet, one found inside the small bathroom sink, one found on a mop, one found on Ms. Kercher’s purse and one found on Ms. Kercher’s mattress cover.

Assuming the blonde hairs were Knox’s hair, it is difficult to imagine how they might wind up on Ms. Kercher’s purse and mattress cover.

There were four light chestnut hairs found. One, measuring 9 cm, was found on the kitchen sponge at Sollecito’s apartment. The other three light chestnut hairs were found on Ms. Kercher’s bra (2 cm), sweat jacket (7.5 cm) and the towel found under Ms. Kercher’s body (20 cm).

35 chestnut colored hairs were found, ranging from 1.5 to 30 cm in length. The vast majority were in Ms. Kercher’s bedroom. Two chestnut colored hairs (5 cm and 8 cm) were on the kitchen sponge at Sollecito’s house. It should be noted that three chestnut colored hairs yielded Ms. Kercher’s DNA, measuring 15, 18 and 23 cms.

So even from the hair evidence, it seems that hair having Knox and Sollecito’s color were on Ms. Kercher’s more intimate objects, while Guede’s and Ms. Kercher’s hair apparently were on a sponge in the kitchen at Sollecito’s apartment. In other words, an object used in a clean-up, and in a room that also had five luminol revealed samples.

Even the hair evidence points to Guede, Sollecito and Knox having acted together in the murder of Ms. Kercher.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Knox, Tied In Knots By Her Own Tongue: Translation Of The 17 Dec 2007 Interview With Dr Mignini #4

Posted by Machiavelli, Catnip, Kristeva

Inmate-chefs at Capanne Prison, from which Knox was making a bid for release

1. Getting Up To Speed On This Fourth Post

How much serious questioning was Knox subjected to prior to this voluntary interview six weeks after her arrest?

In fact, none. In the early days of November, after Meredith was found dead, she had several less-formal “recap/summary” sessions with investigators on possible leads (as did many others), which the defenses conceded without argument at trial were simply that and no more.

So these were the first serious questions put to Knox - politely, and Knox is essentially not argumentative throughout

The transcript was in the evidence pile and all judges except Hellmann seem to have studied it hard. This was also the first-ever interview of Knox by Dr Mignini, as prosecutor appointed to the case. He had seen her twice at the house and heard her at her strong insistence early on 6 November.

But they had never before really talked.

Prior to this, Knox had already emanated over a dozen differing versions of what she wanted to claim took place and the police and prosecutors and Supervising Magistrate Claudia Matteini had tried to make sense of those. 

2. Our Translation Of Approximately The Fourth 40 Minutes

This is the fourth 40 minutes of the voluntary interview which lasted in total about three hours. For a full understanding it would really be best to read (1) our first post and comment thread and (2) our second post and comment thread. and (3) third post and comment thread.

Transcript of Interview 17 December 2007: Statement of Interview Of Ms Amanda Knox (cont)

PM Mignini: After having talked, after you were heard at the Questura, did you go away or did you wait?

Knox: The first day I was questioned I was there for hours”¦ maybe 14”¦

Interpreter: The first time it seems to her that she had been there a very long time, 14 hours

PM Mignini: But questioned

Knox: No, maybe they questioned me for 6 hours but I stayed at the Questura a very long time”¦

Interpreter: It must have been more or less 6 hours that Amanda was questioned but staying in the Questura must have been about”¦

PM Mignini: But was there”¦ were you in the waiting room?

Knox: Yes the whole time together with everyone else we were there in the waiting room”¦

Interpreter Yes, yes together with the other ones

PM Mignini: And who were the other people?

[82]

Knox: The housemates, and later others arrived”¦ After quite a long time our neighbors arrived, after a while some people Meredith knew arrived, her friends

Interpreter: Her housemates and then other people who arrived later, the neighbors after a while”¦ and after, Meredith’s friends arrived, the people Meredith knew”¦

PM Mignini: But did you speak to them? Did you exchange any confidences?

Knox: Yes we were all there and I said “it appears that Meredith’s body was found in a closet”

PM Mignini: Who said that?

Knox: I remember talking to her friends and I remember telling them that it appeared the body had been found inside a closet”¦

Interpreter: She remembers having said it to Meredith’s friends

PM Mignini: But friends, who? You must tell us the name”¦ a name even just the name”¦

Knox: I remember having talked to Sophie”¦ But I don’t know the name of the other friends

PM Mignini: A certain Natalie? From London

Knox: The name sounds familiar but I don’t think I could recognize her face

Interpreter: She can’t tie the name to her face but”¦

PM Mignini: And what were you saying? What kind of comments were you making?

[83]

Knox: I told them what I knew, I told them that I had arrived home and found the door open, and told them what I knew”¦

Interpreter: She told what she knew that she had arrived home and found the door open

PM Mignini: Did you ever see, did you see in those moments the wound on Meredith’s neck?

Interpreter: Up to the moment?

PM Mignini: In that moment.

Knox: I never saw Meredith dead, I never saw her dead body”¦

Interpreter: No, she never saw her dead

PM Mignini: Ok, but was there anyone that night who said, anyone who said that she had died quickly? Did someone else say that she must have suffered for a long time”¦ was there anyone who said this?

Knox: Nobody of the people I talked to knew what had happened”¦

Interpreter: No, none of the people she talked to said something”¦ knew what had happened

PM Mignini: Did you come to know, did you ever come to know, and if yes, when, in what moment, Meredith had died”¦ that is, if Meredith’s death was immediate or if it was prolonged, if there was a death agony”¦ if yes, when did you find that out?

Knox: The only time when I heard of this was when Luciano [Ghirga] was describing the wound and how deep it was”¦ What kind of wound it was and he said “maybe she died slowly because no big vein had been struck”

Interpreter: So, the first time you had heard talking about the wound and how she died”¦ when was it with Luciano?

Lawyer: The morning of the 8th

[84]

PM Mignini: So, after the 6th…

Lawyer: The morning of the 8th

PM Mignini: The morning of November 8th

Lawyer: After the arrest validation [hearing]

Interpreter: And there she found out that no vital vein was directly struck and therefore”¦

PM Mignini: You say that she came to know on the 8th from the lawyer.

Lawyer: From the lawyers.

PM Mignini: From the lawyers, sorry.

Lawyer: We always came all together

PM Mignini: Either one or the other [of you] could have told her”¦ so”¦ [talking to Knox] I formally notify [for the record, a contradiction] that an Erasmus student and a colleague of this student, they said, on this past December 10th that on the night of the second in the Questura, while having”¦ a girl called Natalie, I won’t tell you her last name but she”¦ she was a friend of Meredith, she had noticed that you were talking at length with Sollecito, and at a certain point, in response to a comment made by one of these girls that they hoped Meredith had died without suffering, you instead said ” with those kind of wounds the death would not have come fast and that therefore Meredith must have died after a certain period of time”. I’ll reread it to you if you’d like, ok?

Knox: The police told me that her throat was cut, and what I know about that topic, I mean when they cut your throat, it is terrible and I heard that it’s a horrible way to die”¦

Interpreter: Yes the police had told her that Meredith’s throat was cut and what Amanda knew is that it’s an agonizing way to die”¦

[85]

PM Mignini: But this is something we found out after, we too found it out only later”¦ not right away”¦

Knox: The police told me that her throat had been cut.

Interpreter: The police had told her that her throat had been cut.

PM Mignini: Who from the police? Excuse me I’d like to know”¦ cutting the neck, it can happen in many ways, vital veins can be struck and might also not be struck, therefore one thing is about cutting the throat, and another is about the way how to cut it and therefore make it so that the death occurs instantaneously, or cause a death with agony. On the evening of the second, if it’s true, according to these results, on the evening of the second you knew that, with those kind of wounds, she must have suffered an agony”¦ and the police didn’t know that”¦

Knox: I thought that a death by cutting the throat was always slow and terrible”¦

PM Mignini: The autopsy was made on the fourth, two days later

Interpreter: What she thought was that cutting the throat was always a slow death in general

PM Mignini: It’s not like that”¦not necessarily”¦ anyway, who from the police told you about the neck wound? Tell us.

Knox: It was probably the interpreter”¦the first interpreter was the person I talked to the most”¦ all information I had came more or less from him”¦

Interpreter: Probably the translator/interpreter

PM Mignini: Therefore, therefore he told you while you were being heard”¦

Lawyer: She was in there 12 hours

[86]

Knox: When I was in there I was talking to the police and they told me that her throat was cut”¦ the whole conversation was between me and the interpreter. It was him who must have told me, a long time has passed but I think it was like that”¦

Interpreter: Directly from the interpreter, indirectly from the police

PM Mignini: So [it was] when you were questioned. Not before.

Interpreter: No, before she was questioned she didn’t know how she was”¦

Knox: No, when I was home the way she died”¦

PM Mignini: Before being questioned”¦ you were questioned until 15:30, until what time have you been heard? You were being heard since 15:30, until what time were you being heard?

Knox: I don’t know it was a long questioning”¦

Lawyer: She had been heard in the presence of an interpreter, maybe the interpreter”¦

PM Mignini: It was D’Astolto”¦ Fabio D’Astolto

Lawyer: The interpreter was present from the beginning or only from the questioning onwards?

PM Mignini: Yes, well he was a policeman acting as an interpreter, translating. Fabio D’Astolto. Assistant D’Astolto. When and how, in what terms did D’Astolto express himself, this translator what did he tell you?

Lawyer: When?

PM Mignini: When and what did he tell you

Knox: I don’t remember when but I asked him how she died

Interpreter: She doesn’t remember when but she asked him how she was killed”¦

PM Mignini: And he pointed out to you the wound on the neck. The wound on the neck and that’s all. Fine. This translator.

[87]

Lawyer: [to the Prosecutor] You referred to an Erasmus student who had said that on December 10th.  Ms. Natalie would have said this.

PM Mignini: Yes

Lawyer: And is the Erasmus student indicated [in the records]?

PM Mignini: It is indicated

Lawyer: Do we have a name?

PM Mignini: Capruzzi, Filippo and the other one is a certain, a colleague of his, Chiara, Maioli.

Lawyer: So it was two Erasmus students

PM Mignini: Two Erasmus students who confirmed this confidentiality from this English girl. Some”¦ this is the December 10th hearing report”¦ ok

Lawyer G. She clarified if she had talked with the interpreter, with someone before”¦

Lawyer C. We have clarified that the interpreter was not an interpreter but was a police officer who speaks English and that apparently was present from the beginning and therefore at this point…

PM Mignini: Wait.. one moment”¦ did you, did you”¦ did you see this person who was translating at the house?

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: Perfect

Lawyer: She was approximately 12 hours in the Questura and at some time she heard the first… let’s call it questioning but it was a long time, and before the questioning she heard of this wound on the neck, is that right?

[88]

PM Mignini: During the questioning, you said before, during the questioning so much as this policeman translator was present, therefore”¦ no I’m very sorry, who did you hear this from? The translator? The policeman

Interpreter: About the wound? The first time?

PM Mignini: The wound

Knox: I think so

Knox: The first time?

PM Mignini: Yeah

Interpreter: I think the interpreter the first time

PM Mignini: And it would be this D’Astolto”¦ so this D’Astolto told you, please excuse me you told me this “it was D’Astolto” now”¦ therefore this D’Astolto told you this during the course of the questioning?

Knox: I think so”¦

Interpreter: Yes, she thinks so

PM Mignini: Ok, one more thing, so the”¦ you did, the morning of the”¦ actually no, the night between the fifth and the sixth of November, you did, let’s say partially modify your previous declarations, so then you modified your previous declarations and you made a specific accusation against Patrick Dia Lumumba known as Patrick. You said that you were supposed to meet with Patrick, that you met with Patrick at the basketball court of Piazza Grimana, that you went to Meredith’s house, to your house, and then he had sex with Meredith, then you heard a scream and you accused him even if in terms you say “confusedly” of killing Meredith. Isn’t that so? Why did you make this accusation? “¦ Now remember, I was hearing you, I was present, you were crying, you were

[89]

profoundly upset, and you were as if relieved when you made this statement.

Lawyer: Maybe she was stressed?

PM Mignini: Well, stressed or not, in any case she was very   she made these declarations

Lawyer: You asked her a question “Why did you make these declarations”?

PM Mignini: Well I also have to”¦

Lawyer: Eh these are opinions

PM Mignini: I am saying that you made a declaration not in a detached way, in other words in a very involved manner, why did you make these statements?

Knox: I was scared, I was confused, it had been hours that the police that I thought were protecting me, and instead they were putting me under pressure and were threatening me.

Interpreter: She was scared, she was confused, it had been hours that the police were threatening and pressuring her.

PM Mignini: Yes, tell me, go on

Knox: The reason why I thought of Patrick was because the police were yelling at me about Patrick”¦ they kept saying about this message, that I had sent a message to Patrick”¦

Interpreter: The reason why she thought of Patrick was because the police was asking her who was this Patrick to whom she sent, with whom there was this exchange of messages, they were asking her insistently.

Knox: That was the worse experience of my life

Interpreter: The worse experience of her life

[90]

Knox: I had never been more confused than then

Interpreter: She had been so confused or scared

PM Mignini: But in the following memoriale [spontaneous statement around noon 6 November] that you wrote before going to prison, basically you don’t retract this accusation. Even if in terms, still in terms let’s say of uncertainty, between dream and reality, in other words in such a way “¦ still you didn’t “¦ I believe that in this memoriale you say “I still see this image in front of me” and then you see yourself while hearing it, you say that in that first memoriale you wrote “you hear Meredith’s screams and you put your hands over your ears”. Why do you have this image? Your ears”¦ the scream”¦ it’s not like it’s changing much after all isn’t that so?

Lawyer: No, but she says she was very confused”¦ she was under a lot of stress

PM Mignini: Yes, but why does it basically remain the same, this one”¦

Knox: Yes, I imagined these things”¦

Interpreter: Imagined this scene

Knox: I was so scared and confused

Interpreter: I was so scared and confused

Knox: that I tried to imagine what could have happened. The police told me that I was probably not remembering well. So I thought of what could be another answer and therefore I imagined it”¦

Interpreter: She tried to think of what could have happened since the police was saying that probably she didn’t remember well. And therefore she imagined this scene, trying to think how it could have happened

PM Mignini: Well, you, I just tell you, I tell you only that this Dia Lumumba, this Patrick, only comes up in your statements, he wasn’t, he has never been indicated previously in the slightest, I mean why did you, why did you almost feel…

[91]

...forced to, so you say, to give this name? While this name had never been, you had never mentioned him previously”¦ in the statements of the 2nd, the 3rd”¦. Why only at a certain point di this Patrick pop up? I’m telling you, do you realize”¦ excuse me, eh? “¦ excuse me”¦.

Knox: They were telling me “why did you send this message to Patrick, this message to Patrick!”

Interpreter: Because they were always insisting about this message to Patrick and because”¦

PM Mignini: Well because there’s the message so [it’s] the message but it’s just that, it’s not that there was an attitude, I mean it’s not like there was any reference to a message according to what emerges from the statements. In fact there was a message that you”¦ since there had been an exchange of messages right before the time of the murder between you and this person it’s normal that the police would want to know why, what this message meant, this”¦ therefore it’s not something”¦ why did you threw yourself in this kind of”¦ ? While you had, you had the possibility to”¦?

Knox: Because I thought that it could have been true

Interpreter: Because she thought it could have been true”¦

PM Mignini: It could have been true?

Lawyer: Why?

Knox: When I was there, I was confused”¦

PM Mignini: [to the lawyers, ed.] No, no, excuse me, at this point no, I’m sorry. Not the lawyers. The defense can intervene against me but against the person investigated…?

Lawyer Ghirga: But there was no question”¦ Prosecutor there was no question

PM Mignini: It could be true. What does it mean?

[92]

Lawyer Ghirga: There was no question

PM Mignini: What? I am asking the question.

Lawyer Ghirga: Then ask it.

PM Mignini: What does it mean, how “˜could it be true’? What?

Lawyer Ghirga: What could be true?

PM Mignini: Excuse me, lawyer

Lawyer Ghirga: It’s like the phone call with her parents

PM Mignini: What could be true

Lawyer Ghirga: It’s like the phone call with her parents

PM Mignini: “¦Lawyer Ghirga”¦ what”¦?

Lawyer Ghirga: [seems to Knox] What do you want to say then? Let’s ask her”¦

PM Mignini: Excuse me, I am asking the questions, I am asking them now

Lawyer Ghirga Yes of course

PM Mignini: Then after you can”¦ I am asking her”¦

Lawyer Ghirga: Yes of course, we will ask them too”¦

PM Mignini: Lawyer”¦ she is saying “it could have been true””¦

Lawyer: What?

PM Mignini: “it could have been true”. She was telling me why did she accuse Lumumba of this fact? “It could have been true” is what she answered. Gentlemen, here”¦

Knox: I said it because I imagined it and I thought that it could have been true”¦

Interpreter: She said because she had imagined it and therefore she thought it could have been true.

[93]

PM Mignini: Look, listen”¦ listen, why did you imagine it?

Knox Why?... Because I was stressed

PM Mignini: Why didn’t you imagine”¦

Lawyer: No she was answering

PM Mignini: Yes; what did you want to say?

Interpreter: Because she was under stress”¦

Knox: Knox: Why? I was stressed, I was scared, it was after long hours in the middle of the night, I was innocent and they were telling me that I was guilty

Interpreter: Because they were saying that she was guilty

PM Mignini: Who was saying it? Guilty who’”¦.

Interpreter: After hours”¦

Lawyer: Excuse me, prosecutor, if we can correctly compile this translation, these words that were said in English at the right moment

PM Mignini: She is crying, we acknowledge, I’m sorry, we acknowledge that the”¦ investigated is crying.

Interpreter: Because she was stressed, scared under pressure after many hours, she was”¦ in the middle of the night, they had reached the middle of the night and because they were saying that Amanda was guilty.

PM Mignini: Who was saying that she was guilty?

Interpreter: The police

Lawyer: The police was accusing her

Interpreter: The police was accusing Amanda

[94]

PM Mignini: Why”¦ why did you accuse Lumumba and not others? How many people did you know who could”¦

Knox: Because they were yelling Patrick’s name”¦

Interpreter: She accused Patrick and not others because they were always talking about Patrick, suggesting”¦

PM Mignini: The police, the police couldn’t suggest…

Interpreter: Yelling Patrick’s name

PM Mignini: Excuse me, what was the police saying?

Interpreter: What did the police tell you?

Knox: The police were telling me that “˜we know that you were at the house, we know that you left the house’, and the moment before I said Patrick’s name they put.. someone was showing me the message that I had sent on the phone

Interpreter: The police said that they knew that Amanda was inside the house, and when she went in, when she went out, that she was inside the house, and while they were asking her this someone showed her Patrick’s message on the phone.

PM Mignini: But this is”¦ But this is normal. You”¦ there was this message”¦ I’m sorry, I’m very sorry. There’s a murder here. There’s a girl whose throat is slit, there was a phone number, there was a call that had been made, you were being heard. There was a call that had been made to you on the night of the murder from this person, you replied to this call in a way that could have been interpreted, according to the meaning in Italian “will see you”. Eh, so what is more normal than to insist? The police are doing their job. They insist to know, what did that mean, what was the, what relationship was there between you and Lumumba. This is normal.

[95]

Knox: I didn’t understand why they were insisting that I was lying”¦ they kept telling me that I was lying”¦

Interpreter: She didn’t understand why they were insisting that she was lying.

PM Mignini: Why are you”¦?

Interpreter: The police was insisting that she was lying.

PM Mignini: But why did you accuse, then if it was like this….  Again you are, you are crying again, for a long while since you started, I put in the record, I put in the record that”¦ it’s been ten minutes that you have been crying. Why did you accuse a person that, today, you’re telling us he is innocent, but earlier you just told us “it could be true” what does “it could be true” mean? You have told me “it could be true”.

Lawyer: The subject is missing

PM Mignini: No the subject is there, because I asked the question. Why did you accuse Lumumba?

Lawyer: Can we suspend a moment please?

PM Mignini: What reason?

Knox: It means that in the moment when I told Patrick’s name, I thought that it could have been true.

Interpreter: In the moment in which she said Patrick’s name, in that moment, she thought it could have been true.

Lawyer Ghirga: We ask for a suspension”¦ she is calm, you say she is crying, and we think she’s not.

PM Mignini: I put that in the record it because I could see the tears, she was crying and I could hear her too.

[96]

Lawyer: It was not ten minutes long

PM Mignini: Well, even more, maybe

Lawyer: maybe, no less

PM Mignini: Let’s interrupt, break off.

Lawyer: You asked her six times”¦

PM Mignini: For Heaven’s sake, let’s interrupt, break off.

(interruption)

[from this point on Amanda declares her right to remain silent]

PM Mignini: So, at 15:12 lawyer Luciano Ghirga resumes the interrogation

Lawyer Ghirga: In the name of the defensive collegium we submit a reason to confer personally, privately, we mean alone together with our client, for a time not longer than ten minutes.

PM Mignini: So, the Public Prosecutor is pointing out that the interrogation had already been suspended and it’s 15: 13 now, pointing out that the interrogation was suspended several times, and the last time for, how long? Ten minutes on request of the defence, and the defence will be allowed to fully have counsel with the person under investigation at the end of the interrogation. [The Public Prosecutor] orders to proceed, orders to go forward with the investigation procedure. So now I would like”¦

Lawyer Ghirga: If you may, ask to the suspect, to the person under investigation, whether she intends to go on or to invoke her right not to answer”¦?

PM Mignini: This is a”¦ it’s a”¦ it’s a”¦ she decided to answer questions at the beginning. Now if she decides to make a statement where she says “I don’t want to answer any more” she’ll be the one who says it, and it’s not that I must ask now, that question was done at the beginning of the interrogation. If now she wants to say”¦

Knox: I prefer not to answer any more”¦

[97]

Lawyer Ghirga: What did she say?

Interpreter: She doesn’t want to answer anymore.

PM Mignini: So, at this point, at 15: 15, on a question asked by the defence lawyers, about whether the person under investigation intends to go on answering or not”¦

Lawyer Ghirga: To your questions

PM Mignini: To a question by lawyer Ghirga”¦ yes, well, Lawyer Ghirga asked her that

Lawyer: He didn’t first ask the question

Lawyer Ghirga: But what question did I ask?

Lawyer: We told you to ask her…

PM Mignini: Yes, you asked me, and I did follow the request. But”¦

Lawyer Ghirga: She made a declaration, and we took note, unfortunately, about forbidden suggestions”¦ but on what request”¦?

PM Mignini: Now at this point, at 15: 15 the defence lawyers… Let’s put like this, the defence lawyers ask this Prosecutor about whether he intends to ask the person under investigation if she intends to go on answering questions, but then, after my decision, Lawyer Ghirga said”¦

Lawyer Ghirga: Who said? You said

PM Mignini: You asked her, I put in the record what happened, it’s recorded anyway, this is what I perceived you asked her, and she answered “I do not intend to answer”, she said, and then the interpreter…

Lawyer Ghirga: I asked whether she intended to make a statement, and she made a statement

PM Mignini: You indicated that to her, it changes nothing, doesn’t change”¦ I must only put in the record what happened. The public prosecutor points out that…

[98]

...the warning about the right not to answer was explained to the person under investigation at the beginning of the interrogation, as provided by the Code, and that same [person under investigation] declared she wanted to answer. It is not possible now to invoke the duty to inform the suspect about her right, because such requirement has been already fulfilled. Anyway the person under investigation can, if she decides to, declare that she doesn’t want to answer any more. Such option has been shown to the person under investigation by lawyer Ghirga.

Lawyer: ...by the defence lawyers

PM Mignini: By the defence lawyers, to the person under investigation. What do you want to do?

Lawyer: What do you mean by “It was shown?”

PM Mignini: It was shown, because you said”¦ I need to put in the record what happened. The lawyer… Facing my warrant which I described, the notice was provided at the beginning of the interrogation as the code requires. She said “I want to answer, I do not intend to invoke my right not to answer”. That answer had been given already, I informed her, and she answered. Now to this, at this point, however, I said nothing prevents her from wanting, from declaring “at this point I do not intend to answer any more”. I put it in the record and I don’t ask why, at that point, at that point.

Lawyer: You should not put in the record “the defence lawyers have shown”¦”

PM Mignini: “at that point”

Lawyer: We did not show anything, we asked to be allowed to, well”¦ and you said no.

PM Mignini: So”¦ lawyer, lawyer?

Lawyer: And you said no, and we didn’t have the possibility to show her…

[99]

PM Mignini: Lawyer Ghirga”¦ Lawyer Ghirga”¦

Lawyer: that she might invoke her right to not answer. It’s not that it’s we who’ve shown this possibility this is what I want to explain”¦

PM Mignini: Lawyer Ghirga told her something, so…?

Lawyer Ghirga: No, no, I only said, if you could give us a ten minutes suspension

PM Mignini: You told her something, now come on”¦ I need to put that on record

Lawyer Ghirga: what did I say”¦

PM Mignini: You have shown, I don’t know if the other lawyer did too, you told, Lawyer Ghirga, you told the person under investigation about… You said, if you can, if I remember correctly,  we’ll hear her again”¦

Lawyer Costa: It was me who told her, Mr. Prosecutor

PM Mignini: So I understood Lawyer Ghirga… Lawyer Giancarlo Costa declares he explained that, I didn’t say anything else

Lawyer Costa: ... To Ms. Amanda Knox to use her right to invoke her right not to answer

PM Mignini: ... And she herself declares so, she is supposed to declare what she wants

Lawyer: She has already said that

PM Mignini: Let’s repeat it since with this superimposition of voices”¦ the interpreter will translate faithfully word-by-word what you say.

Knox: At this point I don’t want to answer any more

Interpreter: At this point she doesn’t want to answer any more

PM Mignini: So “at this point I don’t want to answer any more”. We put on record that the current transcript was recorded entirely.

[100]

Lawyer Costa: Mr Public Prosecutor, we lawyers may renounce to our own time terms of deposit if Your Honour would give us a copy

PM Mignini: Yes, no problem”¦ at 15: 22. The parties demand a transcription, I mean the defence lawyers request the transcription of the recording.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Knox, Tied In Knots By Her Own Tongue: Translation Of The 17 Dec 2007 Interview With Dr Mignini #3

Posted by Machiavelli, Catnip, Kristeva

Warden of Capanne Prison Bernardina di Mario (not present at Knox’s interview)

1. Getting Up To Speed On This Third Post

How much serious questioning was Knox subjected to prior to this voluntary interview six weeks after her arrest?

In fact, none. In the early days of November, after Meredith was found dead, she had several less-formal “recap/summary” sessions with investigators on possible leads (as did many others), which the defenses conceded without argument at trial were simply that and no more.

So these were the first serious questions put to Knox - politely, and Knox is essentially not argumentative throughout

The transcript was in the evidence pile and all judges except Hellmann seem to have studied it hard. This was also the first-ever interview of Knox by Dr Mignini, as prosecutor appointed to the case. He had seen her twice at the house and heard her at her strong insistence early on 6 November.

But they had never before really talked.

Prior to this, Knox had already emanated over a dozen differing versions of what she wanted to claim took place and the police and prosecutors and Supervising Magistrate Claudia Matteini had tried to make sense of those. 

2. Our Translation Of Approximately The Third 40 Minutes

This is the third 40 minutes of the voluntary interview which lasted in total about three hours. For a full understanding it would really be best to read first our first post and comment thread and also our second post and comment thread.

Transcript of Interview 17 December 2007: Statement of Interview Of Ms Amanda Knox (cont)

[recording begins again at 01.35 pm]

PM Mignini: At 13.35 the recording resumes, so where were we, so you, I asked you if you looked inside the toilet, or not?

Knox: I didn’t look closely inside the toilet

Interpreter: Only from a distance

[55]

PM Mignini: And you saw the faeces, but this time you got worried, what did you think, because, we said that already, didn’t we? Have you seen them [faeces] other times in the house?

Knox: It’s there when I thought something was wrong

Interpreter: At that point she started to be worried and to think there was something wrong

Knox: I couldn’t imagine what it could be because the house was in order

Interpreter: But she was unable to imagine what it could be because the house was in order

Knox: First of all I didn’t know the phone number of the Police

Interpreter: She didn’t know the police number here in Italy

Knox: Second I didn’t know if it was necessary

Interpreter: She didn’t know if it was necessary

Knox: So what I decided to do, I was thinking about it, I thought what these things would mean put altogether

PM Mignini: What is “if it was necessary”, I’m sorry, I don’t understand”¦

Interpreter: To call the police, she thinks”¦ it didn’t seem to her it was necessary to call the police

PM Mignini: But, excuse me, you found the house door open, blood in the house, closed bedroom doors, and you did not try to”¦ they didn’t answer, you called and then you didn’t try to look inside the rooms, you found faeces in the bathroom, sign of the presence of a foreign person, and you didn’t feel the need to call the police or the Carabinieri?

[56]

Knox: No, because if you come into the house and nothing is missing it usually means that no foreign person has come in

Interpreter: No, because nothing was missing, and so it appeared to her that”¦

PM Mignini: I understand, but there was blood”¦

Knox: It was not much”¦

PM Mignini: Did you check if anything was missing?

Knox: I didn’t really check; there was my computer in my room, and that was a big clue that everything was ok in the rest of the house.

Interpreter: She saw the computer was still in her room, so this”¦

PM Mignini: But you didn’t look inside the other rooms

Knox: They seemed okay.

Interpreter: And for the rest everything seemed ok to her”¦

PM Mignini: The drawer with the money, did you look [there] where the money was supposed to be?

Knox: No, I didn’t think that a foreign person or a thief could have been there, and I didn’t even think about it

Interpreter: No, She didn’t think about a theft and she didn’t imagine”¦

PM Mignini: Ok, let’s go forward, then I’ll make”¦ so you went to Sollecito, how were you dressed?

Knox: I was wearing the white skirt, the blue t-shirt and tights

Interpreter: White skirt, the light blue t-shirt and tights

PM Mignini: Well, what was the time, what route did you walk? Was it the usual rout to walk to Sollecito’s”¦? At what time did you arrive?

Knox: I think around midday

Interpreter: Around midday

[57]

PM Mignini: What did you say to Sollecito? Who was there”¦ was there someone with him or was he alone?

Knox: He was alone, and when he opened the door he was in his underpants

Interpreter: Yes he was alone, and when he answered he was in his underpants

Knox: When I went to the house, I took the bucket and mop with me

Interpreter: So she said (same as before our pause) before returning back to Raffaele’s house, she picked up the bucket and mop she promised to bring him on the previous evening”¦

PM Mignini: What bucket? How was that? What colour?

Knox: Red

Interpreter: Red

PM Mignini: Red. So where did you take it from?

Knox: In the corridor, which is between my room and Meredith’s room, there is a wardrobe, it was in there

Interpreter: She picked it up from a wardrobe that is in the corridor between her room and Meredith’s [room]

PM Mignini: There was a cleaning rag or a”¦ a towel”¦ a rag?

Knox: It was a red bucket and the mop

Interpreter: She took, it was a set, a bucket, and a rag with stick [mop]”¦

PM Mignini: The mop

Lawyer: The bucket was red, the rag was not, the bucket was red

Interpreter: Yes, sorry

PM Mignini: And you picked this in the”¦? Where was this mop?

Interpreter: This bucket was in the wardrobe that is in the corridor

[58]

PM Mignini: So you arrived at Sollecito’s, and you found him in his underpants, and what did you tell him?

Knox: At the beginning I didn’t tell him anything because I didn’t know what to say to him, still I didn’t know if there was anything strange”¦

Interpreter: She didn’t speak immediately with him because she was not sure whether there was something strange or not

PM Mignini: What, you were not”¦ Excuse me.. excuse me but you just told me everything was strange

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: I can’t [understand]”¦ I mean you, what were you thinking, please explain yourself because this is a version that honestly”¦

Knox: I was trying to understand what the whole could mean

Interpreter: She was trying to understand how the things could fit together

Knox: Because I knew it was strange

PM Mignini: Thus, understand it by asking Sollecito about it, didnt you?

Knox: At the beginning I didn’t tell that to Raffaele because I didn’t know if there was something really serious”¦ I understood there was something strange, but I didn’t understand if it was serious”¦

PM Mignini:  Contradiction is noted [for the record] here [io le contesto = a legal formula by which a judge points out a contradiction] that you”¦. that you”¦

Interpreter: But the situation was not worrying…

PM Mignini: Because about this [point]”¦ in particular about this point you said contradictory things”¦ well because you said, at a certain point “blood, open front door, faeces, etcetera, I became worried”, now you are saying “I was not worried”

[59]

any more, I asked Raffaele if I should worry””¦ so honestly, explain yourself, because it’s not clear at all

Knox: It seemed strange to me but not worrying or alarming

Interpreter: It seemed strange to me but not so worrying, alarming

Knox: Because the house is exactly how it should have been, except for those small things

Interpreter: At her house, in Amanda’s house, everything was as it should have, except for those details

Knox: I had the idea that if someone entered the house and did something there should be visible chaos

Interpreter: Had some foreign person come in they would have made more mess

PM Mignini: Well so, did it happen other times that you saw blood in the house, open house door, faeces in the toilet?

Knox: No

PM Mignini: This one was the first time?

Knox: Yes

PM Mignini: And”¦ and Raffaele, when you asked him about it, what did he say to you?

Knox: I talked with him about it after we cleaned up the water”¦

Interpreter: She told him after they cleaned up”¦

PM Mignini: So before that you told him nothing

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: You cleaned up”¦ but excuse me?... Let me understand, that was water”¦ was that the water that spilled on the previous evening? At what time did it spill? Around 21 hours?

[60]

Knox: I don’t know because I didn’t look at the watch”¦ it was after dinner”¦

Interpreter:  Ehm”¦ after dinner

PM Mignini: Ok, what time could that be? When did the leakage occur? 21: 30?... 20: 30? Have no clue?

Knox: I think it was about 10: 30

Interpreter: More like half past ten

PM Mignini: Half past ten”¦ and so almost, about twelve hours”¦ had passed, if I’m not mistaken, well, but didn’t the water dry up?

Knox: No, there was a lot of it

Interpreter: No it was a lot of water

PM Mignini: But hey it’s twelve hours that had passed, I didn’t make the count now but anyway it’s many hours that had passed, so…

Interpreter: But there was still the water

PM Mignini: As if those hours hadn’t passed. And then, what did Raffaele tell you? When did you talk about it with him? After finishing drying up [the floor]”¦

Knox: While he was dressing up I dried up the floor and when he got dressed I had finished drying up, we started to have breakfast, and then I told him”¦

Interpreter: Amanda was drying up the water while Raffaele was getting dressed and then when they”¦

PM Mignini: So when you finished everything taking your time, you said “this happened”

Interpreter: After he had dressed and they had breakfast she talked with him about it

PM Mignini: Oh so he dressed up, you had breakfast, so like about an hour has passed”¦ how long?

[61]

Knox: Yes, I don’t think quite a whole hour”¦

Interpreter: Almost an hour yes”¦ about an hour”¦

PM Mignini: At that point you told him what had happened”¦ what you had seen

Knox: Yes I told him the door was open, that there was some blood in the bathroom and there was the shit in the other bathroom”¦ the first thing I told him was “look, hear about these strange things that happened to me this morning”

PM Mignini: And what did he say?

Interpreter: Yes she told him about these three elements that were in the house

PM Mignini: And what did he say? What did he say?

Knox: Yes it’s strange, you need to call your housemates”¦

Interpreter: He said “yes it’s strange, call your housemates”

PM Mignini: But excuse me, he didn’t say call the Police or the Carabinieri? Not even on that occasion?

Knox: No, he said to call the housemates, I didn’t think that someone entered the house but that something could have happened to the girls”¦ thus he said “you should call the housemates”

Interpreter: She was thinking something happened to her housemates, not that someone, a foreign person had entered, so he suggested to her to call the housemates

PM Mignini: And did you [plural, referred to both] call them immediately?

Knox: I called Filomena

Interpreter: She called Filomena

PM Mignini: And what did Filomena say to you?

[62]

Knox: She was more worried than me”¦

Interpreter: Filomena was more worried than her”¦

Knox: She said she spent the night with her boyfriend and Laura”¦

PM Mignini: Excuse me”¦ excuse me”¦ excuse me”¦ when you called, where did you call Filomena, from where did you call Filomena and when?

Knox: From Raffaele’s house

Interpreter: From Raffaele’s house

PM Mignini: After you talked with him

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: Is that after?

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: So, now I note a contradiction [for the record] from you, that Ms. Romanelli said she received a phone call from you, she reported that “you were very frightened”¦ you told her you were very frightened, and you were going to call Raffaele Sollecito”. Thus on these findings, you called Filomena before you talked with Mr. Sollecito. And she, Filomena, urged you to call Police or Carabinieri

Knox: I’m sorry, I didn’t understand well

Interpreter: I’m sorry, I didn’t understand well

PM Mignini: So from statements given by Ms. Romanelli on Dec. 3., it comes out that you, Amanda, you called Filomena, you told her you had slept at Raffaele’s house, that you had gone back to the cottage in the morning and you found the front door open and some blood in the bathroom, you told her you took a shower anyway, that you were scared and that you intended to call Raffaele Sollecito. Then the thing seemed strange [to] Ms. Romanelli, and she urged you to call immediately Police and Carabinieri….

[63]

...This is what Ms. Romanelli says, according to what Ms. Romanelli says, you called her before talking to Raffaele Sollecito.

Knox: What I remember about that morning, the first time I remember I called Filomena it was when I was at Raffaele’s home”¦ An interesting thing I didn’t remember about that morning is that I called my mother three times, but I had completely forgotten about it. So what could have happened is that I forgot I called Filomena or we failed to communicate because she doesn’t speak English very well and I don’t speak Italian well. So I may have forgotten about calling her before, or I could have talked with her with some difficulty”¦ but”¦ I remember the first time I called her it was at Raffaele’s home. I might be mistaken but the other thing I didn’t remember was I called my mother three times and I don’t even remember about it”¦

Interpreter: As for what concerns her, as for what Amanda remembers, she remembers she called Filomena the first time from Raffaele’s home. It may not be she called her before. She doesn’t remember about it because she also talked that morning three times [sic] with her mother, something about which she doesn’t remember. Or it could be that they didn’t understand each other very well, since Filomena doesn’t speak English well and Amanda doesn’t speak Italian well, so they didn’t understand each other well.

PM Mignini: How many times did you speak with Filomena that morning, how many?

Knox: I recall she called at least three times when I was at Raffaele’s. I called her and she told me to call Meredith. So I tried to call Meredith and then she called me again to ask me if Meredith answered and I told her no, she didn’t answer. I said “we must go home and check then” and while we were getting ready she called again asking if we had arrived at home yet.

[64]

Interpreter: She believes she spoke with Filomena three times because Filomena told her to call Meredith, something she did but she didn’t answer. After that Ms. Filomena wanted to know the answer, and then Amanda said she would go to her house again to see the situation, and then she called Filomena again.

PM Mignini: You alerted Filomena, let’s go forward with the”¦ then we’ll see”¦  So you talked with Filomena, then you went with Mr. Sollecito, you went to the house, didn’t you? At what time did you arrive?

At this point, we put in the record that, at 13.55, clerk of the court Daniela Severi leaves and [Carabinieri] officier Paciotti takes her place.

Knox: I think I’ve left at around half past twelve

Interpreter: She thinks about half past twelve

Knox: I know it seems strange, I realize I should have arrived at the house before that time, before twelve. Because I washed (? unintelligible)

Interpreter:  She should have arrived at Raffaele’s house before twelve, earlier than she thought. Because she did”¦

PM Mignini: Did you look at the time? The time?

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: Who was there when you arrived at the house?

(interruption of the recording)

PM Mignini: So we start again at 14.02

Lawyer: On a question by the lawyers, we ask if she was in possession of a watch

PM Mignini: Did you have a watch?

[65]

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: Well, but the cell phone had a watch, you had the time

Knox: Yes but I didn’t think about looking at the time

Interpreter: Yes but she didn’t think about looking at the time

PM Mignini: Well, so there were”¦ what did you see inside the house when you came in?

Knox: It was there that we started to open the doors, I checked in Filomena’s room and there was some broken glass”¦

Interpreter: So she opened FIlomena’s room where she saw broken glass

Knox: Yes it was broken, on the floor and the window

Interpreter: On the floor and the window

PM Mignini: Did you enter the room?

Knox: No I just opened it [the door]

Interpreter: No she just opened the door

PM Mignini: Excuse me, just to understand better this point, the first time you saw the door closed you might even”¦ you didn’t open it? You only opened on your return visit?

Knox: The first time I didn’t open the door

Interpreter: The first time she didn’t open the door

PM Mignini: It was closed. Now why did you open the door this time?

Knox: Because Filomena was afraid there could have been a burglary, a theft, so I opened to check if everything was ok.

Interpreter: Amanda opened Filomena’s room door because Filomena feared there could have been a theft and so she wanted to verify

[66]

PM Mignini: So then why didn’t you check? Didn’t you check if anything was missing?

Knox: I don’t know exactly what Filomena has in her room, I saw the computer on the table so I was not so much worried. The computer was the most valuable thing

Interpreter: So she didnt know of all Filomena’s items, but she immediately saw that Filomena’s computer was on the table, and so she thought”¦

PM Mignini: Well, and the door? Meredith’s door?

Knox: I was unable to open it

Interpreter: She couldn’t open it, the door of Meredith’s room

PM Mignini: Did you try to open the door?

Knox: Yes, first I tried to open it but it was locked so I knocked to see if she was sleeping, since it was locked I imagined she could be inside so I knocked to see if she was asleep

Interpreter: Yes she did try”¦ yes she tried to open but the door was locked and so she knocked to see if she was inside, if she was sleeping”¦

PM Mignini: I go back for a moment”¦ did you entered Filomena’s room, or you didn’t?

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: You should be precise about this

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: You didn’t enter”¦ so, as you saw that”¦ you knocked at Meredith’s door you saw her door, her room”¦ her room door was locked, at that point, did you try to call her?

Interpreter: Do you mean calling by voice?

[67]

PM Mignini: No, I mean calling her cell phone

Knox: I had already tried to call her three times from Raffaele’s home. I thought it would be easier to wake her up by knocking at the door.

Interpreter: She had tried to call Meredith three times already, when she was at Raffaele’s home, so she wanted to wake her up by knocking at the door

PM Mignini: And then what happened? “¦ oh just a moment, [you mean] you went to look inside the bathroom on the right, from the entrance point of view, not in your bathroom, the other bathroom”¦

Knox: When I looked inside, after we tried to open her door and everything, we were in the kitchen, and he would call his sister [sic]. I went to check the bathroom, I didn’t do down to the bottom, I went into the anteroom and what I had previously seen it had slipped down. It was as if it [the toilet] had been cleaned.

Interpreter: Amanda came back into the larger bathroom while Raffaele was calling his sister, and from a distance she could see the faeces had slipped down, apparently it had been cleaned.

PM Mignini: But did you go to look?

Knox: I didn’t look inside, I checked from a distance

Interpreter: She didn’t get close to see, she saw that from a distance

PM Mignini: From a distance? It’s hardly understandable”¦ from a distance of how many meters?

Knox: From the anteroom where I had dried my hair, I looked very quickly and I didn’t see anything and I got scared, because the man or whoever left the faeces had been there.

Interpreter: From the area where she dried her hair she gave a quick glance and she saw it was no more like it was before, it was clean, the faeces had slipped down and…

[68]

... thus at this point she got worried because apparently someone”¦

PM Mignini: At the same distance you”¦ you saw that from the same distance?

Knox: Yes, I had gone a bit closer the first time

PM Mignini: It’s where you dried your hair?

Knox: In the bathroom anteroom in front of the mirror”¦

Interpreter: In front of the mirror, in the area in front of the mirror”¦

PM Mignini: At what distance is that from the toilet?

Knox: I don’t understand meters”¦

PM Mignini: You mean it was in the bathroom anteroom [apparently Mignini shows her a picture or a map, ed.]

Knox: From here”¦ maybe I was here”¦

PM Mignini: It’s a couple of meters

Knox: The second time I was not at the mirror [sic] I was in the door [sic], I entered this way here and”¦

PM Mignini: At the same distance, so…

Knox: No, not at the mirror, because when I entered the mirror is this way, but I entered”¦

Interpreter: The second time from a bit more far away

Knox: But only a little more far

PM Mignini: Excuse me, you couldn’t see anything from there”¦ there is the bathroom anteroom and the bathroom, where were you?

[69]

Knox: I was at the door, I mean I entered the anteroom yet I was very close to the door, that leads to the kitchen..

Interpreter: Between the bathroom anteroom and the bathroom. Yes she was in the anteroom

PM Mignini: From the anteroom, so I note a contradiction [for the record], that you can’t see anything from there, so you made a statement, you told Raffaele the faeces were not there anymore, despite that you didn’t see anything. Because you would not be able to”¦

Knox: Because the first time I also saw from a distance

PM Mignini: Ok, that’s ok”¦ I doubt that you could see from there anyway”¦ you didn’t go to check, you say “let’s see if the faeces are still there or not”?

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: You remained outside [from the bathroom], you didn’t check, but you said to Raffaele “the faeces are not there anymore” in a worried fashion

Knox: I thought they were not there anymore

Interpreter: Because she thought they were not there

PM Mignini: Listen, so, then did you tell Romanelli about the break-in? about the broken glass? “¦ Filomena?

Knox: Yes I called her and she said she was coming

Interpreter: Yes she called her and she said she was coming too

PM Mignini: And what was Raffaele doing in that moment?

Knox: We decided to call his sister

Interpreter: They decided to call Raffaele’s sister

Knox: And she said, call the Carabinieri or the Police

Interpreter: And Raffaele’s sister told them to call the Carabinieri

[70]

PM Mignini: What time it was? “¦ excuse me I wanted, there’s another question I wanted to”¦ did you have any vaseline at home? Vaseline?

Interpreter: At their house?

PM Mignini: At their house, the apartment, Via della Pergola

Knox: No I don’t use it, the only thing I know about Vaseline is Meredith always looked for it and when we went in a store together she would always go to see if there was any Vaseline”¦ because she said it was very useful. I don’t think we had any, I don’t think, but I never use it

Interpreter: Amanda never used it, she only knows Meredith was always looking for it since she thought it was very useful, she [Knox] herself doesn’t know if there was any at home

PM Mignini: So you don’t know if Meredith had any?

Knox: I know she wanted it but I don’t know if she bought it

Interpreter: She knew she was going for it but she doesn’t know whether she bought it or found it

PM Mignini: Who arrived next?

Knox: After we called the police, I and Raffaele, we went outside because we felt very uncomfortable, two police men came”¦

Interpreter: After they called the police Amanda and Raffaele went outside and two police officers came

PM Mignini: So they called the police?

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: At what time?

Knox: I don’t know because it was Raffaele who called them.. they came.

[71]

Interpreter: She doesn’t know if they called the Police or the Carabinieri because it was Raffaele who did it but two officers came, dressed in uniform…

PM Mignini: Yes, yes”¦ no, not in uniform

Interpreter: In plain clothes

PM Mignini: At what time did they arrive?

Knox: I didn’t look at the time

PM Mignini: I note the contradiction [for the record]  that the calls to the Carabinieri were done after the arrival of the Provincial Police [sic]”¦ the Postal Police”¦

Knox: I did not call

Interpreter: Amanda didn’t call

PM Mignini: Well, did you see Raffaele calling?

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: How many times did he call?

Knox: Once

Interpreter: Once

PM Mignini: Once? He called twice”¦

Lawyer: she doesn’t know

PM Mignini: So two officers of the Police came, did they identify themselves as such? [Did they say] “Polizia Postale”?

Knox: Yes, they showed us the badges

Interpreter: Yes, they did

[72]

PM Mignini: Well, but in the meanwhile, did two other young people arrive?

Knox: Yes after the police arrived, I led them into the house, because I thought they were those Raffaele had called, and I showed them that the door was locked and I showed them the window was broken and in the meanwhile Filomena and the boyfriend arrived”¦

Interpreter: Yes when the two police officers arrived, she thought they were those Raffaele had called and so she showed them”¦

Knox: And also two friends of hers [arrived]

Interpreter: “¦ Meredith’s locked room and Filomena’s room with the broken glass, with the broken window and then Filomena with her boyfriend arrived and also other two young people”¦

PM Mignini: Oh”¦ so you”¦ you entered, I ask you this once more, you didn’t enter Filomena’s room, did you enter the other rooms?

Knox: It’s not that I went to look around, but I opened Laura’s door, that was all ok, there the bed was done up. There was the computer, so it was all ok.

Interpreter: She opened Laura’s room and she saw it was all in order

PM Mignini: Did you enter the room?

Knox: Maybe one step but I didn’t go inside

Interpreter: Maybe she made a step but she didn’t go around much

PM Mignini: And in which other”¦ did you enter other rooms?

Knox: I entered my room, and I tried to open the door of Meredith’s room

[73]

Interpreter: She entered her room, and tried to enter Meredith’s room but it was locked

PM Mignini: And so what did you”¦ what happened at that point?

Knox: After Filomena arrived, she handled the talking with the police, and I stayed in the kitchen with Raffaele

Interpreter: After Filomena arrived, it was Filomena talking with the two officers and Amanda and Raffaele remained in the kitchen

PM Mignini: And so did you two see”¦ what happened next? You two, did you see?

Knox: I know the police opened Meredith’s room

Interpreter: She knows the police opened Meredith’s room

PM Mignini: You know that because they told you?

Knox: No, no, I was in the kitchen, and from there I could see they were beside Meredith’s room, but I was not there, I was in the kitchen

Interpreter: No, no, she saw that from the kitchen

PM Mignini: But you, what did you see of Meredith’s room?

Knox: I did not see inside the room

PM Mignini: You didn’t see anything”¦

Interpreter: She didn’t see down into the inside of the room

PM Mignini: So did you see the scene? Neither you nor Raffaele?

Interpreter: No

Knox: No we didn’t see

PM Mignini: Neither of you two, when they opened it, where were you?

Knox: In the kitchen

[74]

Interpreter: In the kitchen

PM Mignini: So you were a few meters away

Knox: Yes, yes

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: In what area of the kitchen were you staying?

Knox: more or less near the entrance

Interpreter: In the.. near the [outside] entrance of the kitchen”¦

PM Mignini: About the entrance, you mean the house entrance, just beyond”¦ so you were”¦

Knox: Yes we were inside

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: When they entered, then was the door immediately closed again?

Interpreter: With the officers?

PM Mignini: Meredith’s [room].

Knox: I don’t know, they just told me to get out of the house

Interpreter: She doesn’t know, because they told her to get out of the house

PM Mignini: The Carabinieri, at what time did they arrive? Did [some people] wearing black uniforms come? Other police officers?

Knox: The Carabinieri came”¦ at that point I was very frightened”¦ I don’t remember when they arrived, I’m sure that was after, when I went out, and I sat on the ground and I couldn’t understand what was going on”¦

Interpreter: The Carabinieri arrived afterwards when I was outside

PM Mignini: How long after the arrival of the two plain-clothed police officers?

[75]

Knox: I’ve already said in these instances it’s too difficult to define the time, because I only remember Filomena saying “A foot! A foot!” We were pushed out, there were police officers outside and I sat on the ground, I couldn’t”¦ I was under shock and couldn’t understand what happened”¦

Interpreter: What Amande remembers is that after Meredith’s door was opened, Filomena was screaming “A foot! A foot!” and Amanda was told to get out of the house and it’s hard to explain at this point, to tell if she was frightened..

PM MIgnini: When did the Carabinieri come? When? After the body had been discovered?

Knox: I saw the Carabinieri when I went out, I don’t know when they came”¦

Interpreter: She saw the Carabinieri when she got out of the house, she doesn’t know when they came

PM MIgnini: But the Carabinieri did not enter? You did not see them inside the house.

Knox: No I don’t think so”¦

Interpreter: No

PM MIgnini: So you saw them when you went out, so was that after a long time since the arrival of the Postal Police? After”¦ ten minutes, fifteen minutes?

Knox: Yes, maybe after some ten minutes, I was still in shock and I was scared so it’s difficult to tell at what time the various things happened”¦

Interpreter: It’s difficult for her to say how much time had passed because she was in shock but something like ten minutes must have passed

PM MIgnini: Oh well, I wanted to know this: did Raffaele tell you about what was in the room?

[76]

Knox: Before, he didn’t know himself what was inside the room

Interpreter: Before, he didn’t even know himself

Knox: But after, when they were all talking”¦ he found out yes”¦ After the police was there and we were all outside together I don’t know who told him but it must have been Filomena or I don’t know who else”¦ but someone explained him that it was not just a foot in the room but the body”¦ but what they saw of it was the foot”¦ So he explained to me that the body was in the room, but you could only see the foot.

Interpreter: When she was outside with Raffaele, to [sic] him, he understood that it was not just a foot but it was the body that had been found

PM MIgnini: But he told you, did he tell you textually “there was a girl’s body inside the wardrobe covered with a sheet, and the only thing you could see was a foot”. This, did Raffaele tell it to you?

(the interpreter, at this point translates the question asked by PM MIgnini this way: “did Raffaele tell you that in the room there was the body covered by a cover?)

Knox: Yes

Lawyer: She [the interpreter] did not say: in the wardrobe?

PM MIgnini: These are your statements. You declared on December 2”¦. on November 2. “¦ On November 2. 2007 at the first questioning when you were heard, the very first one, a few hours after the discovery of the body, you told, you said Raffaele told you that “in the wardrobe, there was the body of a girl covered by a sheet and the only thing you could see was a foot”. Is this true, that Raffaele told you this?

Lawyer: Please judge, could you read it to us?

[77]

PM MIgnini: So “in the wardrobe..” Excuse me, please translate this word by word to her”¦ “in the wardrobe there was the body of a girl covered with a sheet and the only thing that you could see was a foot”

Knox: As Raffaele said

Interpreter: This is as Raffaele told it to Amanda”¦

PM MIgnini: Yes, she said this in the first [2 November] questioning.

Knox: Yes, apparently, it seemed to me, he told me the body was in the wardrobe”¦ it’s this that he told me”¦ obviously he did not see himself inside the room, it was things that were told to him by someone else”¦

Interpreter: Yes, on November 2. she said so because it’s what Raffaele told her. Because not even what he thought he understood [sic “neanche quello che secondo lui ha capito”]... Since he did not see”¦ he did not see inside the room”¦. Raffaele told her that way

PM MIgnini: These are textual, precise words so? “¦ I may read them again to you”¦ You confirmed”¦

Lawyer: She confirmed that Raffaele heard other people saying that maybe this was the version, and he referred this version, referring to something he heard

PM MIgnini: I read them again, I can read them again”¦.

Lawyer: We’ve read it, you explained to us

PM MIgnini: So on November 2. you say, that means the first questioning at 15: 30, this is the first one, the most aseptic one let’s say, so: “I learned in that moment from my boyfriend that inside Meredith’s room in the wardrobe there was the body of a girl covered with a sheet and the only thing you could see was a foot”.

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

[76]

PM MIgnini: You confirm that he spoke to you this way

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

Lawyer: She pointed out to the previous question, the source from which Raffaele had this information

Interpreter: Raffaele did not see, so it was what it seemed to him

Lawyer: Raffaele collected this information from other people

Interpreter: From the people around, Carabinieri and other young people

PM MIgnini: But excuse me, excuse me, did Raffaele tell you this, did he tell you “this one told me, that one told me”, or instead Raffaele limited himself to just telling you this? What did Raffaele tell you?

Knox: I think it was Filomena’s friends who told him

Interpreter: She thinks it was Filomena’s [male] friend who told Raffaele

PM MIgnini: You think”¦

Knox: I don’t know who told him

PM MIgnini: Excuse me”¦

Interpreter: Yes she thinks but doesn’t know

PM MIgnini: Excuse me, the question was as follows, here’s the question”¦ Are you ready? “¦ So, Raffaele comes to you”¦

Knox: Yes

PM MIgnini: And what does he say? “There is the body of a girl in the wardrobe, covered with a sheet, and you can only see a foot”? Or did he say “someone told me that there is the body of a girl” and said who [told him]?

[79]

Knox: I understand”¦ I understand”¦ He said precisely “Apparently there is a girl, there is the body of a girl, in the wardrobe”¦ But the only thing that you can see is her foot”

Interpreter: He did not say who told him, he just said “it seems like”¦” and “apparently”¦”

PM MIgnini: He said so: “It seems like”¦” ?

Interpreter: Yes

PM MIgnini: The body is in the wardrobe covered with a sheet, and you only see a foot

Interpreter: Yes it seems like they say apparently

PM MIgnini: Oh, then when did you know, you, how Meredith died?

Lawyer: How Meredith was dead?

PM MIgnini: That she was dead, and about how she died

Knox: The police told me

PM MIgnini: When did they tell you?

Knox: At the beginning they didn’t tell us if was Meredith or not, Filomena said “Oh no, Meredith!” so I imagined it was her but I didn’t know”¦ So at the Questura when they were already questioning they told me then that it was Meredith. I don’t remember the exact moment when they told me but it was at the Questura”¦

Interpreter: She actually learned this when she was at the Questura, later, before she learned about the body of a girl and then she heard Filomena saying “Oh my god, its Meredith!” and hence”¦

[80]

PM Mignini: And about the way she was killed, when did you come to know that? Excuse me, I’ll give you an example, she could have been shot with a gun, with a stab, poisoned”¦ I mean”¦

Knox: I didn’t know how she was killed”¦ I thought that there was this foot in the room but didn’t know anything else”¦ The police…

Interpreter: The police told her

PM : When? Who told you from the police?

Knox: I don’t remember

Interpreter: She doesn’t remember

Lawyer: No, but she also said that she doesn’t know how she was killed”¦

PM Mignini: This is important: therefore you don’t know how she was killed?

Knox: No

Interpreter: No, she didn’t know

PM Mignini: You didn’t know how she was killed, what was it the police telling you?

Knox: The police told me that her throat had been cut”¦ and from what they told me I had pictured something horrible”¦

Interpreter: The police told her that her throat had been cut

PM Mignini: Who told you from the police?

Knox: I don’t remember

Interpreter: Eh, she doesn’t know who

PM Mignini: Well, a man, a woman”¦?

Knox: I don’t remember

Interpreter: I don’t remember

[81]

PM Mignini : And when were you told?

Knox: When I was at the questura, but I don’t remember. When they interrogated me the first time I remember that they said “we don’t even know if it’s Meredith” I don’t remember when they told me, I only remember that the police told me when I was in the Questura because I didn’t know what had happened”¦

Interpreter: She only remembers that she was in the questura when she came to know how

PM Mignini: At what time?

Knox: I don’t remember”¦

Interpreter: I don’t remember.

Continued in Part #4 at this address.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Knox, Tied In Knots By Her Own Tongue: Translation Of The 17 Dec 2007 Interview With Dr Mignini #2

Posted by Machiavelli, Catnip, Kristeva

Prominent Rome criminal lawyer Dr Giancarlo Costa who walked off the Knox team soon after this

1. Getting Up To Speed On This Second Post

How much serious questioning was Knox subjected to prior to this voluntary interview six weeks after her arrest?

In fact, none. In the early days of November, after Meredith was found dead, she had several less-formal “recap/summary” sessions with investigators on possible leads (as did many others), which the defenses conceded without argument at trial were simply that and no more.

So these were the first serious questions put to Knox - politely, and Knox is essentially not argumentative throughout

The transcript was in the evidence pile and all judges except Hellmann seem to have studied it hard. This was also the first-ever interview of Knox by Dr Mignini, as prosecutor appointed to the case. He had seen her twice at the house and heard her at her strong insistence early on 6 November.

But they had never before really talked.

Prior to this, Knox had already emanated over a dozen differing versions of what she wanted to claim took place and the police and prosecutors and Supervising Magistrate Claudia Matteini had tried to make sense of those. 

2. Our Translation Of Approximately The Second 40 Minutes

This is the second 40 minutes of the voluntary interview which lasted in total about three hours. For a full understanding it would really be best to read first our first post and its insightful comment thread before tackling this.

Transcript of Interview 17 December 2007: Statement of interview Of Ms Amanda Knox (cont)

PM Mignini: Listen when you did you find out that Ms Romanelli and Ms Mezzetti would not have been there? Ms Romanelli, Laura and Filomena”¦

Knox: I discovered it when I had called Filomena on the morning of the second.

Interpreter: On the morning of the second when Amanda had called Filomena, she had found out that she had not been”¦

PM Mignini: And about Laura, did you know?

Knox: Filomena had told me that Laura was in Rome

Interpreter: Now then that morning of the 2nd of November Filomena had said to Amanda that Laura was in Rome.
(interruption of recording)

PM Mignini: Now then at this point the recording resumes at 11:50 am and I repeat the question, what did you do on the afternoon of the 1st of November and during that night between the 1st and the 2nd? Oh and the morning of the 2nd obviously.

[29]

Knox: When I had woken up in the morning I was at Raffaele’s house, the 1st of November, and I went to my house to have a shower to change myself, I had already spoken to Raffaele and he had said to me that he would have come over to my place, when he would have woken and everything”¦ So what I did was that I studied and then I put away my linens [whites]”¦

Interpreter: The morning of the 1st of November, so that night she had slept at Raffaele’s house

PM Mignini: The night between the 31st and the 1st?

Interpreter: Yes, in the morning she had woken up at Raffaele’s, after which she’d gone, gone back to her house to have a shower, change her clothes in expectation that Raffaele would meet up with her. In expectation that Raffaele would meet up with her she set herself to studying, to washing her clothes, and to put the clothes away

PM Mignini: And then?

Knox: While I was there in the kitchen studying and while I was in the kitchen Filomena came back home with her boyfriend, Marco, and they had wrapped a present and they got ready very quickly for a party to which they had to go and I had continued to study and I had helped them to wrap the present with Marco and when they’d left I’d continued to study.

Interpreter: She was studying, they’d only returned for a bit the housemate Filomena with her boyfriend who set themselves to wrapping a present that was going to be for a party. And she had helped them, she was studying in the kitchen and she helped get the present ready and then”¦

PM Mignini: Was Meredith there?

Knox: Meredith was sleeping

PM Mignini: In that moment”¦

Interpreter: She was sleeping

[30]

PM Mignini: Ah she was sleeping

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: Ah”¦ then go on

Interpreter: Then after the couple, Filomena and her boyfriend, had gone out, and she continued to study.

Knox: While I was studying, Meredith had woken up and I think she went to the bathroom first and then she came to say hello and she sat down to have breakfast. And we had chatted while I was studying”¦

Interpreter: Then while she was still at studying in the kitchen Meredith woke up, she went to the bathroom first and then into the kitchen

PM Mignini: At what time? “¦ at what time?

Knox: I think around midday

Interpreter: I believe around midday and then Meredith had joined her in the kitchen to have breakfast and they had exchanged chitchat about the night before

PM Mignini: Was Sollecito there as well?

Knox: No, not yet

Interpreter: No, not yet

PM Mignini: There wasn’t”¦ and then? Go on if”¦

Knox: We had spoken about Halloween she’d given me some advice about young men and went to have a shower and while she was having a shower I had thought about what to prepare for lunch, because I was starting to feel hungry”¦ I pulled out some things for lunch and that is bread and cheese”¦ then Raffaele arrived and while all this was happening Meredith was under the shower or in her room getting dressed. After Raffaele arrived he got some pasta ready,

[31]

...I believe for lunch while we were eating together Meredith had entered and had either put in, or taken out clothes from, the washing machine, she said hello to him and had gone back into her room”¦

Interpreter: Now then, Meredith was in the kitchen having breakfast with Amanda they chatted a bit after which Meredith had gone to have a shower and get dressed. In the meantime Amanda who was starting to get hungry had thought about what to prepare for lunch had taken out bread and cheese and Raffaele had also arrived who had set himself to cooking some pasta, it seems to her, for lunch. In the meantime Meredith was still either in the shower or getting dressed. And while Meredith had returned, while they were eating lunch, she’d returned to take her clothes from the washing machine.

PM Mignini: She’d eaten with them?

Knox: No, she had just had breakfast

Interpreter: No, she had just had breakfast

PM Mignini: Please go on

Knox: After Raffaele had eaten, I felt like playing the guitar for a while and Raffaele sat himself down to listen to me”¦ and in all this time Meredith had returned, she had dressed and everything she had gone to the door and she had said “Buona giornata” [have a good day] to us. I remained at home with Raffaele playing the guitar and singing a bit and around five I hadn’t looked at the clock but I believe it might have been five we’d decided to return to his house.

Interpreter: Now then, after lunch Amanda and Raffaele set about playing the guitar and in the meantime Meredith had left the house with a greeting to them. It seems to her that they stayed home playing the guitar until around five in the afternoon when they’d gone instead to Raffaele’s house.

[32]

PM Mignini: Just a moment, before going on. When you both had saluted Meredith, did Meredith tell you where she was going? And at what time would she be back?

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: Go on

Knox: At Raffaele’s house we made ourselves comfortable and I sat at the computer to find songs that I wanted to learn to play on the guitar and in the meantime I know that Raffaele had gone to the bathroom, I was at the computer transcribing songs from the Internet it’s difficult to say what happened first, but what happened was that while I was using the computer a friend of Raffaele’s arrived to ask if she could use his car. She was speaking Italian very quickly and so I don’t know what they said to each other. When Raffaele was in the bathroom the doorbell rang and I let this girl in, and Raffaele came out of the bathroom to meet her.

Interpreter: At Raffaele’s house Amanda searched for songs, music on the computer to play on the guitar in the meantime Raffaele had gone to the bathroom. While Raffaele was in the bathroom a friend of Raffaele’s rang the doorbell to whom Amanda had opened the door and afterwards this friend of Raffaele’s had spoken with Raffaele and it seems to her that this friend had asked him if she could borrow his car.

PM Mignini: Yes, before going further. At Raffaele Sollecito’s house in the bathroom, right? In Raffaele Sollecito’s bathroom is there a shower?

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: Have you had showers at Sollecito’s house?

[33]

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: Oh, go on yes

Knox: After having used the computer I grabbed, I read Harry Potter in German, I gave him the Harry Potter book while he was in the bathroom, but he didn’t understand it, so after we sat ourselves down and I was reading from it to him and I was translating for him and then let’s think about what else did we do”¦ We watched the film Amelie a message from Patrick arrived and in response to the message I said to him, I wished him a good evening and that I would see him again later when he would be”¦ Patrick told me that I didn’t need to go to work because”¦ he told me that in Italian but I believe the message was “there aren’t many people, there’s no need that you come to work””¦

Interpreter: Afterwards since Amanda is studying German and Raffaele also wants to learn Amanda has a Harry Potter book in German that they were reading together, trying to translate it together. Afterwards they had watched the film Amelie.

PM Mignini: At what time?

Knox: I don’t remember the time exactly”¦ sorry.

Interpreter: She doesn’t remember

PM Mignini: Doesn’t she remember, the film?

Interpreter: Amelie it’s called yes, so Patrick had sent a message in Italian but”¦

PM Mignini: And what did this message say?

Interpreter: That there weren’t many people that there was no need that she come to work

PM Mignini: That is he said exactly this. At what time did you receive it?

[34]

Knox: I hadn’t looked at the clock

Interpreter: She hadn’t looked at the clock

PM Mignini: After the film or before?

Knox: I don’t remember

Interpreter: I don’t know

PM Mignini: Did Sollecito see this”¦ did he know about it, or else”¦ did he become aware of this message?

Knox: He hadn’t seen it but when I read it I said, “Wow! I don’t have to go to work!”

Interpreter: He hadn’t seen it although she informed him that she didn’t need to go to work and that she was happy so”¦

PM Mignini: And then?

Interpreter: And then she had responded to Patrick saying “ci vediamo più tardi” [we’ll meet up later]

PM Mignini: Meaning? How did you answer in text precisely?

Knox: My message in English but I wrote it in Italian, what I was trying to say was “ci rivediamo e buona serata” [see you later and have a good evening]”¦ that is “ci rivediamo e buona serata””¦

Interpreter: Now then two things. One thing is that she wrote in Italian and another thing what she wanted to say in English. In English what she was thinking of wanting to say was “ci vediamo dopo buona serata intanto” [see you later have a good evening in the meantime] and instead she had written in Italian “ci vediamo buona serata” [let’s meet up have a good evening]

Lawyer: She had written the same thing that it also means in English. She had translated the same thing, I don’t know if she had said the same thing..

Knox: I’m saying to you in English what I wanted to say but I’ve told you I wrote it in Italian

[35]

PM Mignini: Make me understand then, excuse me a moment, he sends a message, an SMS, this message says “there’s only a few people don’t come. Don’t come tonight”

Interpreter: Don’t come to work.

PP Mignini: Don’t come to work. This had never happened before we’ve seen.

Knox: No

Interpreter: No the first time

PM Mignini: So that time, for the first time he calls and says “don’t come”

Knox: Yes it was the first time

Interpreter: Yes it was the first time

PM Mignini: How long after did you reply to him with an SMS? Do you remember?

Knox: I think I replied immediately after I received it

Interpreter: It seems to me I replied immediately, straight after having received it.

PM Mignini: But how did you reply? Try to remember the exact words.

Knox: Okay, I said “ci vediamo” or “ci vediamo più tardi buona serata”

PM Mignini: Più tardi buona serata

Interpreter: It seems to me I’d replied something in the affirmative to his message, saying “Okay, ci vediamo più tardi”

PM Mignini: Ci vediamo più tardi

Lawyer: In Italian, but in English what she said something that she”¦ let her say it clearly in Italian, if you would

Knox: Saying “See you later” is like saying ciao

Interpreter: What she wanted to say was only a salutation ciao

[36]

PM Mignini: But in Italian you wrote let’s meet up later. In Italian you wrote it like this, do you remember this?

Knox: In Italian I had written let’s meet up later have a good evening but it means in my language, see you later have a good evening

PM Mignini: Oh, does Lumumba know English?

Knox: No, he’s never spoken to me in it, we speak in Italian

Interpreter: She has never spoken in English to him only in Italian

PM Mignini: Go on

Knox: We had fish for dinner, I remember this, because it was very good and afterwards, we had eaten in the kitchen and then afterwards he started to wash the dishes, and while he was washing some water dripped on the floor. From under the sink, because the pipes had come unscrewed and the water had fallen on the floor.

Interpreter: They had dinner, they ate fish and after the meal Raffaele washed the plates and while he was washing the plates the water had gone onto the ground because the sink was broken, the sink pipes were broken, they had leaked.

PM Mignini: But did it break suddenly?

Knox: It wasn’t exactly broken, it was rather that the pipes had come unscrewed

Interpreter: Yes it was the first time that the pipes had become detached and afterwards Raffaele had readjusted them

PM Mignini: Therefore it happened unexpectedly, this breakage?

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: They had become loose? What happened? What breakage was it? What type of breakage was it?

Knox: Yes it was the first time that it had happened

[37]

Interpreter: Yes it was the first time that it had happened

PM Mignini: But what happened? I mean was there a pipe breakage or else the screw let’s say, how do you call it, had come unfastened”¦ is it? “¦ we would need to see it”¦

Knox: I hadn’t examined them myself but what happened is that it had become detached”¦ it had come loose and I don’t believe that”¦

Interpreter: The pipe had become detached, it had come loose yes

PM Mignini: The pipe came loose right go on

Knox: So to remove the water we grabbed the rags [canovacci= rags or floor rags] “¦ there was too much water and I went into the storeroom to see if there was a mop [in English in the transcript], but there wasn’t then I came back to the kitchen and I said to him “Don’t worry I have a mop at our house” and so tomorrow morning we can go and get it and we can clean”¦

Interpreter: So to get rid of the water from the ground they used the towels from the kitchen they weren’t enough, they were looking for a rag [sic “˜straccio’ in Italian in the transcript, but obviously the interpreter means “˜mop’] in Raffaele’s house, in the bathroom there wasn’t any so had said “don’t worry tomorrow morning I’ll bring you one, I’ll bring you a rag from my house”

PM Mignini: But in the meantime he’d turned the tap off, no? “¦ So the water wasn’t running out any more

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: Right go on, continue”¦

Knox: After this Raffaele was a bit upset that the pipes had got broken, he asked me what I wanted to do and we had thought about going, to go back in the bedroom I was laid out on his bed and he was at the desk preparing the joint.

Interpreter: Now then Raffaele was unhappy about this incident because he was saying that the pipes were new and then to cheer her up he thought about what they could do…

[38]

...together and they were thinking about smoking a joint together. They went back to bed and Raffaele manufactured a joint.

PM Mignini: Before going on I wanted a clarification. So you had put down towels right?

Knox: They were tiny and so they had done nothing and in the end I’d thrown them into the sink”¦ yes we had put them on the ground, they had taken up a bit of the water but nothing to speak of”¦ so I had put them in the sink and we’d gone to his bedroom.

Interpreter: They were tiny kitchen towels that had no great effect and which afterwards she had thrown into the sink, these towels

PM Mignini: had Raffaele any newspapers at home?

Knox: I think so

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: Dailies?

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: Why didn’t you use the newspaper paper since it absorbs a lot? It’s a question that I put to you

Knox: I didn’t think about it”¦

Interpreter: They didn’t think about it

PM Mignini: Oh, OK, go on continue to recount this”¦ go on, yes

Knox: While we were smoking we started chatting about what we had done, and after we had chatted we had sex”¦ and after that I believe I had fallen asleep”¦

[39]

Interpreter: Now then after they had smoked the joint they had made love and afterwards she believes she fell asleep.

PM Mignini: So Sollecito what did he do? Had he fallen asleep with you, he hadn’t gone, he didn’t stay awake?

Knox: I fell asleep in his arms

Interpreter: Yes she had fallen asleep in his arms

PM Mignini: Then? Go on. He received”¦ one last thing, were there phone calls that night?

Knox: No, I switched off my mobile phone

Interpreter: No she had switched off her phone. Amanda had switched off her phone.

PM Mignini: You switched off yours and Raffaele also switched off his?

Knox: I don’t know because I don’t check him so”¦ I don’t know if he switched off his or not

Interpreter: Now then she doesn’t know if Raffaele had switched his off but she doesn’t seem to remember him receiving any phone calls

PM Mignini: But why did you switch off your phone?

Knox: To save the battery, usually I keep it on at night if the following morning I have things to do, but the morning after was the day that everyone was going to skip school and we were going to go to Gubbio the day after with Raffaele. So I switched off my phone because I didn’t want that maybe Patrick might call to tell me to go to work. That’s why I switched it off and saved the battery.

Interpreter: To not have the battery discharge

PM Mignini: But you could recharge it

Interpreter: Since she was out of the house she wanted to save the battery because the next day she would have gone to Gubbio with Raffaele and since the day”¦ she leaves it…

[40]..

on during the night when the following day she has to go to school, but the following day there was no school and so she switched it off also to not run the risk that Patrick would change his mind and would call her to go to work

PM Mignini: Because there was the risk, that is you weren’t sure that”¦

Knox: He had told me that I didn’t need to go to work but it was still early and I didn’t know if he might have called back to tell me “Yes, now I need you””¦

Interpreter: No, when Patrick had called saying that she didn’t need to work it was still early enough and the situation could still change in the sense that more people could turn up and he couldn’t”¦

PM Mignini: One thing I wanted to know, the phone in the house rang? In Sollecito’s house?

Knox: I don’t remember I can’t be sure about it”¦

Interpreter: She doesn’t remember, she doesn’t know

PM Mignini: What’s the cell phone that you have? Which one was the cell phone that you switched off? What’s the brand?

Interpreter: the brand, or the [telephone] company”¦?

PM Mignini: No the brand, I meant the brand

Knox: It’s a Nokia phone

Interpreter: Nokia

PM Mignini: Nokia, but what’s the battery duration, I mean how long normally does the charge of your cell phone [last]..?

Knox: Let’s see”¦  I think a day but I don’t know”¦ because what I do is that I switch it off if I don’t use it during the night. But if I need it for example as an alarm clock, I let it stay on, then I go home and I charge it again, I put it on charge”¦

[41]

... I never use it to the point of battery exhaustion. Sometimes I put it on charge, sometimes I don’t.

Interpreter: It seems it lasts 24 hours, and she never lets it run out of battery to the limit

PM Mignini: So there was no risk that it would run out of battery while going to Gubbio?

Interpreter: It normally lasts 24 hours

PM Mignini: What?

Interpreter: The battery lasts 24 hours

PM Mignini: No, I’m asking, what the risk that it would run out of battery be like? I don’t understand

Knox: But why should I waste the battery leaving it on?

Interpreter: She only wanted to feel safe since she didn’t need to keep it on in order to”¦

PM Mignini: But she usually keeps it on at night

Interpreter: Only when she uses it as an alarm. In the morning

PM Mignini: Well but you’d use the alarm every morning, I use it every morning

Interpreter: But she was not going to school on the next day

PM Mignini: Ah”¦

Attorney: She said it previously, it was a holiday and I did not put the alarm on

PM Mignini: When you were going to school you said previously. Go on with the description.

Knox: You want to know more about that morning? “¦ When I woke up in the morning, I got up and Raffaele was still in bed, I dressed up and I went to my home, to take care about my things”¦ when I arrived at my home the door was wide open which was strange, so I went in my room, I undressed, I took a shower and…

[42]

...when I got out of the shower, I noticed the blood in the bathroom”¦  There was not much of it but even that I found it strange”¦ but at the same time it’s not that I immediately thought “Oh my God, there was a murder!”

Interpreter: She fell asleep at night and the following day she woke up at Raffaele’s home, while Raffaele remained in bed she went back home

PM Mignini: Let’s stop here for a moment. I just wanted to know this: On November 2 was it holiday at the “¦ [University?]”¦ because the 2nd is not a holiday here

Knox: The teachers said it was not a problem if I stayed home, because it seems like everyone was going to skip that Friday

Interpreter: Yes there was the sequence. Also the teacher said”¦

PM Mignini: Go on, so she said”¦

Interpreter: She said students were not expected to go, they were not coming”¦

PM Mignini: [the teacher] told her so, on the previous day?

Knox: Yes, on Wednesday I think

Interpreter: Yes on Wednesday at school

PM Mignini: Who was the teacher who told you that?

Knox: I don’t know her name but she is the Professor of Culture, I don’t know the day when she said that to me”¦ but it was during that week”¦ while we were talking during the week, one day she said it was a tradition to make a holiday bridge on Friday if Thursday was a holiday, so they can do [holiday] the whole weekend

Interpreter: So the teacher said it’s a classic for the students to make a holiday bridge when there is a holiday Thursday and have a prolonged weekend

PM Mignini: What’s the name of this teacher?

[43]

Knox: I’m not good at remembering names..

Interpreter: She doesn’t remember the name

PM Mignini: A woman?

Knox: Yes a woman

Interpreter: A woman

PM Mignini: Ok, go forward. You wake up at what time, at Sollecito’s place?

Knox: More or less at ten

Interpreter: Around ten

PM Mignini: And then?

Knox: Then I went back home, the door was open

Interpreter: Then she went back to her home where she found”¦

PM Mignini: Why did you go back home?

Interpreter: To take a shower and change her clothes

PM Mignini: Why didn’t you take a shower at Sollecito’s?

Knox: Did you see his shower? “¦ It leaks [drops?] everywhere”¦  It’s a dreadful shower”¦  I hate to use it”¦ and moreover all what I need to have a shower like shampoo is at my home”¦

Interpreter: Because it’s an ugly place, small, there is little space

PM Mignini: But you took the shower other times, but also during the afternoon you had one”¦

Knox: I prefer to take a shower at my home

Interpreter: She prefers to take a shower at her home, she also has clothes at home”¦ 

[44]

Knox: And also all my clothes are at my home”¦

PM Mignini: So she needed to go home, to take a shower and, let me understand, take a shower and to what?

Interpreter: To change her clothes

PM Mignini: To change your clothes”¦ well and so what [did you]”¦ did you bring anything with you?

Knox: I think I brought some clothes”¦ dirty underwear”¦

Interpreter: Yes she thinks she brought dirty clothes from Raffaele’s home

PM Mignini: Dirty clothes that is”¦ dirty clothes from previous times? Or since which”¦ since what day were they lasting from?

Knox: I had spent two weeks living a bit at my home and a bit at his home

Interpreter: Because for two weeks she had been living half the time at her home and half the time at his home, and thus she had a bit of”¦

PM Mignini: What clothes were those ones?

Knox: Maybe underwear

Interpreter: Probably”¦

Knox: But I don’t remember, maybe it was a t-shirt

PM Mignini: You don’t remember

Interpreter: Dirty clothes…

PM Mignini: Well dirty clothes, I mean a skirt, a pullover”¦

Interpreter: No rather”¦

PM Mignini: Underwear garments

[45]

Interpreter: Underwear garments

PM Mignini: She doesn’t remember?

Interpreter: She thinks rather pants and vests /undershirts”¦ and t-shirts

PM Mignini: Well, how were you dressed when you went at your house?

Interpreter: From Raffaele’s house to her house?

Knox: I was wearing trousers I remember that and let’s see”¦  so much time has passed”¦ I know it was trousers

PM Mignini: Yes

Interpreter: She put on some trousers, she remembers it was trousers

PM Mignini: What colour?

Knox: A t-shirt and a sweater

Interpreter: And a sweater

PM Mignini: A jumper?

Interpreter: No, sweater normally means felpa [cotton sweater]

PM Mignini: A sweater [felpa]? Ask her

Attorney: Was it made of cotton or wool?

Knox: I don’t know

Interpreter: She doesn’t know

PM Mignini: What colour?

Knox: I don’t remember”¦ a long time has passed, I remember what I put on but I don’t remember exactly”¦ I’m sorry”¦

Interpreter: She doesn’t remember

[46]

PM Mignini: You don’t remember

Interpreter: She remembers she put on but not what”¦

PM Mignini: And the trousers, what colour were they?

Knox: I don’t remember, I only remember I was wearing trousers”¦ I think they were jeans”¦

Interpreter: She does not remember even this one”¦ maybe they were jeans

PM Mignini: So around blue? Light blue?

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: What route did you follow to walk”¦

Knox: The same route I do every day, I walk down Corso Garibaldi I follow the lane close to the basketball court, and next there’s my house

Interpreter: Down Corso Garibaldi then along aside of the basketball court to the house, the route she did every day

PM Mignini: You walked down the stairs?

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: On the side of the basketball court”¦

Knox: This road here that”¦
 
PM Mignini: Oh, so you walked down the lane not the”¦  the basketball court was on your right?

Knox: Yes

PM Mignini: So, excuse me, did you carry a bag, a [plastic] bag with the dirty clothes, or an empty [plastic] bag?

[47]

Knox: The clothes in a plastic bag

Interpreter: Yes a plastic bag with the dirty clothes

PM Mignini: With the dirty clothes. Well, please go on with the description”¦ then”¦

Knox: When I arrived home the door was wide open and I thought it was strange, I thought that maybe somebody..  but nobody ever leaves the door open, however there was the possibility that someone went out without locking, maybe for a moment. I saw it I thought it was strange, I closed the door without locking it, because I didn’t know if someone was out,  I went into my room, I undressed and I went into the bathroom, I took a shower, first I took off my earrings, I took a shower and I used the bath mat on which there was some blood because I left my towels in my room. I saw the blood on the mat and I dragged it to my room to grab the towels. And then I took it back into the bathroom.

PM Mignini: Maybe you should stop

Interpreter: So when she arrived home she found the house door open, that was strange, she thought it was one of the girls who went out for a moment, she pulled it ajar [sic],  she did not lock it because she thought maybe someone left it open on purpose and she went in her room to remove her clothes to take a shower.  When she took a shower”¦

Knox: When I went to take a shower I forgot the towel in my room, I took off my earrings, I took a shower I had to use the bath mat and drag it to my room and then I dragged it back into the bathroom I put on my earrings

[48]

.. again, I saw the blood on the bath mat and in the bathroom but I did not think something terrible happened.

Interpreter: when she had gone [sic] into the bathroom to take a shower she forgot the towel and so there was this, how’s the word in Italian, bath mat which she used to go back and walk in her room to take the towel”¦ she had taken away her earrings in the bathroom and from there she noticed there was some blood on the mat and on the basin, but she noticed it was strange but she didn’t think about something”¦.

PM Mignini: I’m sorry I didn’t understand, but you took the bath mat to walk, to go in her bedroom?

Interpreter: Yes in order not to slip.. so to avoid walking barefoot

PM Mignini: When did you realize?

Knox: After the shower

Interpreter: After the shower

PM Mignini: When did you realize there was blood?

Interpreter: After the shower

Knox: I saw the blood when I entered the bathroom, I saw a little of blood just as I entered the bathroom, before taking the shower I took off my earrings, I took the shower and then I noticed blood on the bath mat

Interpreter: She noticed the blood while entering the bathroom, on the basin when she took off her earrings, then she had a shower and after the shower she was without the towel, so she used the mat to shuffle into her room

PM Mignini: Yes, so you saw blood before you took a shower?

[49]

Interpreter: Yes, in the basin

PM Mignini: In the basin

Interpreter: But on the bathmat, there she saw it when she was about to use the bathmat

PM Mignini: On the basin, where did you see it”¦ where was the blood?

Knox: It was inside the basin, that was after”¦ and it was also on the faucets

Interpreter: Inside the basin and on the taps

PM Mignini: So the blood was in the basin in the [inside] part”¦ and on the tap”¦ well, then”¦ this was before taking a shower”¦ then after taking the shower..

Interpreter: The towel was missing and she used

PM Mignini: She walked and realized that there was blood on the bathmat as well

Interpreter: Yes, yes

PM Mignini: And what did you do then?

Knox: I used the bathmat to walk to my room to get the towel and I went back into the bathroom, I think I washed my teeth, something I usually do, and when I dried myself I went back to my room and I put my clothes on.

Interpreter: So after she dried herself up in the bathroom and”¦

PM Mignini: Just a moment, before going on. The dirty clothes you had with you, where did you put them?

Knox: Between my bed and the wardrobe there is a heap of dirty clothes”¦ there is a little space between the two and I usually put the dirty clothes there, behind the guitar”¦ the guitar is not mine”¦ the guitar is Laura’s..

Interpreter: So she put the [plastic] bag between the bed and the wardrobe, there is a space where she placed the guitar her friend has lent her

[50] 

Knox: Not the bag, just the clothes

Interpreter: And she placed the clothes, without the [plastic] bag, behind the guitar

PM Mignini: Why didn’t you put them into the washing machine?

Knox: Because I put all the dirty clothes in the same place, and when I’m ready to do a washing I put all the clothes in the washing machine

Interpreter: Because she was waiting to have some more to do a whole washing

PM Mignini: The bathmat, where did you”¦ where did you take it after?

Knox: Once I finished using it to go and to come back from my room, I put it in the bathroom again

Interpreter: She put it back into the bathroom

PM Mignini: Were the bedroom doors open or closed?

Knox: No they were all closed”¦  Filomena’s door was closed, Meredith’s was closed and Laura’s I think it was slightly ajar

Interpreter: Only that one, the door of Laura was only a little bit open, so it seems to her, the other two were closed.

PM Mignini:  The other two were closed, you tried to open ... to knock?

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: Why didn’t you try? With .... blood ... with the front door open .... I mean….

Knox: I didn’t see a reason to do it…

Interpreter: She did not see a reason for knocking

[51]

PM Mignini: So, excuse me, you find the door open, the front door open and itself this is something”¦ then you find the blood in the bathroom and you have a shower despite this and this is something, allow me to say that, for”¦ a bit strange this one, I mean you could imagine that there could be some, there could be some ill-intentioned person in the house or around, you find the front door open and the blood in the bathroom and in spite of everything you took a shower. The rooms were closed. You didn’t attempt to knock. Did you enter the rooms? This is strange.

Knox: In my whole life nothing that was ever remotely similar to this has ever occurred to me”¦ I do not expect to come back home and find there is something wrong  

Interpreter: She did not expect to find something wring because she never experienced something”¦

PM Mignini: But there was blood, there was the front door open

Knox: There was not so much blood.. it could have been anything”¦ when I saw the open door I thought it was strange, it’s that the thing I found most strange, I did not think it was so strange to find blood in the bathroom”¦

PM Mignini: But did you enter the rooms? I asked if you entered the room

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: You didn’t even knock?

Knox: No because when I came in I called to hear whether there was somebody at home

[52]

Interpreter: As she entered the house she called to know if there was somebody

Knox: But there was no answer

Interpreter: But there was no answer

PM Mignini: Listen, where did you dry up yourself?

Knox: In the bathroom

Interpreter: In the bathroom

PM Mignini: The bathroom, the small one, the one nearby”¦ yours?

Knox: Yes I took the towel from the room, I dragged myself into the bathroom [sic], I dried myself up a little more”¦

Interpreter: Yes she dried herself up in the bathroom more or less, then she finished drying herself up in her bedroom

PM Mignini: Listen, were there broken glasses?

Knox: When I came out of from the shower I used the bathmat to go to my room, I took the towel I obviously wrapped it around myself and then I went back to the bathroom and I dried myself up

Interpreter: Before, since after taking the shower she had no towel cause she had forgotten it she went back into her room with the bathmat, there she took the towel which she wrapped around herself and then she finished to dry up herself in the bathroom. She went back in her room when she had finished drying herself

PM Mignini: Still stepping on the bathmat? Still bringing the bathmat?

Knox: I dragged the bathmat, I made more or less a heap to enter my room, I jumped back on the bathmat again and meanwhile my feet had got dry”¦  and since my feet were dry I brought the bathmat back into the bathroom”¦ I did not drag it back with my feet

[53]

Interpreter: To go back she picked it with her hands because her feet were dry, she was dry

PM Mignini: Listen, but what did you do after?

Knox: I put my earrings on again

Interpreter: She put on her earrings again

PM Mignini: Oh just one thing, I wanted to know, did you see the pieces of broken glass?

Knox: No, I didn’t see them. I saw them the second time I entered the house

Interpreter: No she didn’t see the broken glasses

PM Mignini: Another thing I wanted to know: did you enter the other bathroom? The one with the washing machine?

Knox: Yes after I dressed up I went to dry my hair, and I used the hairdryer that Laura and Filomena use so I went into the other bathroom which is a large bathroom, there is a part, an area where they store all the make-ups”¦ and there is another part with the bathroom fixtures. I passed through the anteroom where they have the make ups, the hairdryer and”¦

Interpreter: Yes after she dressed up, then”¦

PM Mignini: Try to interrupt her, or it gets [difficult] 

Interpreter: She dressed up she went in the other bathroom of Laura and Filomena because they have the hairdryer to dry her hair, the bathroom has two areas, let’s say the toilet area and the hairdryer area.. she saw the toilet from a distance, she did not see well because she was not in front of it she was far, and she say some shit, yes

PM Mignini: The toilet paper was there too?

Knox: I did not look into the toilet. From a corner

Interpreter: She only looked from far distance, not at close distance

[54]

PM Mignini: Excuse me, excuse me, I wanted to know this: when you saw this thing, what did you think? I mean did you think that a foreign person entered the house or”¦ ?

Knox: It’s then when I thought something could have happened because the open door and that little amount of blood did not worry me

Interpreter: The fact that the front door was open and the blood seemed strange to her but not so much to feel alarmed”¦

PM Mignini: I was talking about the faeces

Knox: It’s there that I thought there was something strange, I felt scared”¦  It’s when I decided to go back to Raffaele’s house, because I got scared”¦

Interpreter: On that circumstance when she sat the [big] bathroom she started to become afraid

PM Mignini: Have you seen that other times? Did you see un-flushed faeces in the toilet other times? 

Knox: No that’s why it was strange, because nobody in our house would do that

Interpreter: No she never saw that before and exactly for this reason it seemed strange to her and she started to worry

PM Mignini: At this point there were many elements, the blood, the open front door”¦

Knox: Yes I was worried, after when I saw this, I saw the open front door and also the blood and I thought okay, maybe, I don’t know, but when I saw the blood”¦

Continued in Part #3 at this address.

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Knox, Tied In Knots By Her Own Tongue: Translation Of The 17 Dec 2007 Interview With Dr Mignini #1

Posted by Machiavelli, Catnip, Kristeva

A view of Capanne Prison where this interview was done

1. What Had Already Happened Prior To This Interview

How much serious questioning was Knox subjected to prior to this voluntary interview six weeks after her arrest?

In fact, none. In the early days of November, after Meredith was found dead, she had several less-formal “recap/summary” sessions with investigators on possible leads (as did many others), which the defenses conceded without argument at trial were simply that and no more.

Early on 6 November 2007 at Perugia’s central police station, Knox had headed off down a slippery slope, from which nearly seven years later she is still trying to crawl back.

It was recorded at the arrest hearing before Judge Matteini on 9 November that her newly-appointed lawyers had told her not to say a word. But by the end of that November alone the ever-talkative Knox had come out with ten-plus differing statements, and in early December she came out with even more.

The ten-plus differing November statements included an email to many in Seattle, two voluntary statements she insisted upon making early on 6 November, and another around noon; two letters she wrote to her lawyers dated 9 November, a daily diary which she began writing on 9 November in Capanne (partly in Italian, apparently beamed at police, prosecutors and judges, as she left it in her cell after she was warned the cell needed to be searched), several recordings of conversations with her parents in Capanne (into which the Supreme Court read a great deal), a letter to Raffaele Sollecito dated 22 November and another to Madison Paxton around six days later.

None of her statements prior to 17 December had helped her and several had dropped her in deeper. In some Knox was not simply in defiant denial mode all of the time about any role in attacking Meredith. In some she seems hard on herself for things she had done including the framing of Patrick, though she never wound hat back.  In Capanne Prison her parents had shushed her to be quiet just when she seemed to be coming clean, as she seems close to doing so here. 

2. Our Joint Translation Of This Extremely Crucial Interview

This interview by Dr Mignini at Capanne Prison was eagerly agreed to by Knox, possibly seeing this as her last best chance to get herself off the hook and to avoid remaining locked up.  This lasted about three hours, until Knox’s lawyers interrupted to got her to clam up.

Despite the many false claims about “interrogations” to the contrary, this was Knox’s first-ever in-depth interview. It was also the first-ever interview of Knox by Dr Mignini as prosecutor appointed to the case - as we have shown he asked Knox no questions on 5-6 Nov. 

All of the trial judges and appeal judges and lay judges had clearly studied this document hard. Also prosecutors and the Knox and Sollecito defense counsel periodically refer to it.

Knox’s lawyers were Luciano Ghirga and Giancarlo Costa who soon after departed from Knox’s team for mysterious reasons rumored as being that he saw guilt. (Giancarlo Costa is not even mentioned in Knox’s book; if that isnt suspicious, what it?).

Knox very much mischaracterizes this interview in her book Waiting To Be Heard (2013) but has never seriously been called on that so far, because there was no English transcript. 

We need to forewarn you that this is not a trial transcript but a transcript of a suspect interview over which Dr Mignini presided, requested to be put fully into Italian (many of Knox’s words were in English) by Knox’s defense team. That is why sometimes you will read the interpreter translating Knox (and the Italian speakers present to her) and sometimes not.

3. Our Translation Of Approximately The First 40 Minutes

Transcript of Interview 17 December 2007: Statement of interview Of Ms Amanda Knox

Criminal Proceeding n. 9066/07, r.g.n.r. Public Prosecutor’s Officer Perugia

On the day of 17.12.2007 At the Perugia Prison

Those Present:

Public Prosecutor Dr Giuliano Mignini
Daniela Severi ““ Clerk of the Court
Agent Danilo Paciotti ““ Carabinieri Section Judicial Police
Giacinto Prefazio ““ Head of Flying Squad Perugia Police
Monica Napoleoni ““ Deputy Superintendent Perugia Police
Julia Clemesh ““ Interpreter

Translation Into Italian

For the transcription of this Statement, the declarations made by Ms Knox have been translated by Prof Dr Alesssandro Clericuzio. The statement is transcribed in 100 numbered pages from number 1 to number 100. [page numbers shown in square brackets here]  (signed)  Technical Consultant Rosanna Siesto

[Note by our translation team. In the Italian, the header on each page consists of: “Statement of information supplied by Ms Amanda Knox, assisted by the interpreter Julia Clemesh. In the statement, the phrases reported and pronounced in the language of Amanda Knox have been translated by the Technical Consultant Dr Alessandro Clericuzio.” and the administrative annotations “Crim. Proc. n. 9066/07” and “Of the day 17 December 2007”.  The footer on each page carries the annotations: “Technical Consultant Rosanna Siesto”, “Interpreter Dr Alessandro Clericuzio” and the page number.]

Complete statement of the declarations made as a person being investigated on the facts by Ms Amanda Knox.

[1]  Public Prosecutor Mignini: It’s 10:45 am I’m assisted for the redaction of this current statement. The date is 17 December 2007, in the proceeding 9066/07 mod. 21 in Perugia, Capanne Prison, before the Public Prosecutor Dr Giuliano Mignini, assisted for the redaction of the statement by Clerk of the Court Daniela Severi and by Carabinieri Agent Danilo Paciotti from the Carabinieri Judicial Police Section qualified for recording, present for investigative exigency Dr Giacinto Profazio, head of the Perugia Flying Squad, and Deputy Superintendent of the Perugia Flying Squad Monica Napoleoni, also present, and the interpreter Dr Julia Clemesh, born at Frankfurt-on-Maine?

Interpreter: Yes.

PM Mignini: Federal Republic of Germany, 17 September 1974, resident in Perugia, Via [address edited]. Amanda Knox has appeared, since she in a state of detention audio recording is provided for and the other requirements under Article 141 bis of the Criminal Procedure Code and the other requirements of Law. A summary report is also provided for; she is invited to declare her particulars and whatever else is required to identify her with the admonition of the consequences which apply when one refuses to give them or gives them falsely, [2] in answer. Now then, you have to tell me your particulars. And you have to tell me, exactly. So, what’s your name? You have to say, I am and my name is”¦

Knox: My name is Amanda Knox.

PM Mignini: Born at? You see, you have to tell me”¦

Knox: Born in Seattle.

PM Mignini: Seattle, Washington State, isn’t that?

Knox: Yes in the United States on the 9th July 1987.

PM Mignini: What date sorry? The”¦

Knox: The 9th July ‘87.

PM Mignini: 9 July ‘87. Resident at?

Knox: Here?

PM Mignini: No, resident in the United States in Seattle”¦

Knox: 37th Avenue”¦ a pen”¦

PM Mignini: She needs to write it down”¦ a pen”¦ yes so yes notice is given that 9821. Now then, can you speak Italian? Do you understand it a bit?

Knox: Yes but I prefer to speak in English.

PM Mignini: Yes, but in any case do you understand Italian a little bit?

Knox: Yes, yes but I can help better”¦

PM Mignini: Do you have a pseudonym? A nickname?

Knox: In the soccer team they called me Foxi Noxi (naughty fox, ndr)

Interpreter: In the soccer team they called her Foxi Noxi.

PM Mignini: Can you dictate it for the”¦

Interpreter: How to spell it?

PM Mignini: They call me Foxi Noxi.

Knox: Only when I play soccer.

PM Mignini: Nationality from the United States, residence as above, domicile as above, place of employment? “¦ Where do you work, are you a student

Knox: I’m a student.

Interpreter: Yes, student.

PM Mignini: Marital status, single, is it? Conditions of your specific life, social relations, study title?

Knox: I’ve finished high school.

Interpreter: She hasn’t graduated yet.

PM Mignini: High school diploma.

Interpreter: Yes senior high yes.

PM Mignini: Occupation? “˜I am”¦’ You’re a university student?

Knox: Yes.

PM Mignini: “I’m a university student [male adjectival form], university student [female adjectival form].” ?

Knox: Yes.

PM Mignini: Listen, do you have real estate? Do you own houses, land?

Knox: No.

PM Mignini: Propertyless. Are you under other criminal trials, besides this one, involved in other processes or proceedings?

Knox: No.

[4] PM Mignini: Do you have any convictions under the State or in foreign countries? Careful, you need”¦ Whether you have proceedings in foreign countries. Do you understand? Proceedings in the investigation phase.

Knox: No.

Interpreter: The second question instead?

PM Mignini: Whether you have had convictions, in the Italian State or in foreign countries”¦ so therefore also in the United States”¦

Lawyer: I would like that you explained”¦

PM Mignini: But is that a crime?

Lawyer: No administrative.

PM Mignini: You shall say it, have you had fines, have you paid fines in the United States

Knox: Yes

PM Mignini: Yes? “¦ But was it about facts constituting an offence? You don’t know this”¦ or was it facts which constitute administrative breach

Knox: For having made noise

PM Mignini: I understand. Do you exercise or have you exercised public offices or services or of public necessity? No. Have you ever carried out public duties? Electoral for example”¦

Knox: No

PM Mignini: Public duties no. Now then you therefore have the right to nominate a defender, you have two defenders, you confirm the nominating of these defenders that are present, therefore you confirm the nominating of the advocates Luciano Ghirga of the Perugia Bar and Advocate Carlo Dalla Vedova of the Rome Bar, present at the taking down of this document. Also present as collaborator from the Dalla Vedova Law Firm, advocate Giancarlo Costa also of the Rome Bar. Now then. [5] The choice of domicile, where do you want the notices of this proceeding to go to?

Interpreter: In Italy right?

Knox: To the office of my lawyer

PM Mignini: I confirm the choice of domicile as at the firm of advocate Ghirga. The Public Prosecutor therefore notifies to you the charges that you have seen in the precautionary custody orders which are the offences contrary to Articles 110, 81 main paragraph, 575, 578, and 609 bis of the Criminal Code, committed in Perugia on the night of the 1st and the 2nd of November 2007 against Meredith Kercher in acts as registered. Statements of summary information, findings pursuant to Art 354 and 360 CPC searches and seizures, statemented search proceedings and all the elements mentioned by the Perugia Re-examination Court in the order dated 30 November, 5 December 2007. Therefore all the elements against you there are declarations by persons informed of the facts, there are the results of the tests carried out by the Scientific Police, therefore the traces, in particular the trace on the knife, the DNA trace on the knife, the DNA in the bidet, and all the other results mentioned by the Perugia Re-examination Court in the 30 November, 5 December 2007 order. Therefore you shall make known what you consider to be useful for your defence.

Lawyer: Excuse me, we’re given to understand that there have been indicated things, in the 30 pages of the re-examination some other things have been indicated, so you put them to her and invite her to say things useful for the trial, you’ve given four or five examples, if”¦ I don’t believe that it acquits your task to put them to her.

PM Mignini: Now then look. Well she was found to be”¦

Lawyer: You’re going through the evidence against her, can we describe it like that? Now then.

PM Mignini: Of course. So it resulted during the course of the investigations there was a series of items of evidence, items against her that are, that derive from the declarations of persons informed of the facts, in particular the declarations made by, from some declarations that have been made by you yourself during the phase, during, in the period in which you were a person informed of the facts, so prior to the 6th November 2007, there are also declarations by Raffaele Sollecito when he was still a person informed of the facts, and declarations by Raffaele Sollecito at the Validation Interview, because at the Validation hearing Sollecito had responded to the interrogatory and has therefore, his declarations are therefore fully utilizable and are”¦ now then from these declarations, then I’ll pass to the other items, from these declarations one can deduce a reconstruction that in the opinion of the Public Prosecutor’s Office is not credible, of what had occurred. Of what had occurred, things are different, I’ll explain to you then in particular it’s not credible in the opinion of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, what was and then what had been declared by Sollecito even during his interrogation, the whole reconstruction that had been made of both your whereabouts, yours and Sollecito’s, the night of the 1st and 2nd of November 2007. In particular what happened the morning of the 2nd November up until 13:00. Then there are the findings, the DNA trace, the DNA trace on Sollecito’s knife and on the blade of this knife there’s Meredith’s DNA. Then on the handle there’s your DNA, the blood traces therefore in the bidet, yours, also in the washbasin.

Lawyer: On the bidet there’s DNA and in the washbasin.

PM Mignini: On the bidet of her and of Meredith and in the washbasin there’s blood, her haematic traces. Then there are, in the ambit of fingerprint tests that were done, the prints despite she lives, despite she lived in that house and she was the person who remained, who had moved around the inside of the house as [7] the last one there, up until”¦ there was one trace only on a glass, only one print of hers. And this, this makes one think that there had been, that she had removed her other prints, because it isn’t, in the opinion of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, it’s not likely that she had, that there would be only one single print of hers from”¦ although she lived in the house. Now then. It’s these ones. Then there are the findings they are basically these ones. Now then. There are also further findings that derive from declarations made by persons informed of the facts. I’ll limit myself to mentioning this. So you have the possibility, I invite you to specify what you consider useful for your own defence with the advice that your declarations can be used against you, right? But in any case you have the right to not answer, you can refuse to answer any question but in any case the Proceedings will take their course. Even if you don’t answer. Then if you make declarations on the facts that concern the responsibility of others you’ll take on as regards these facts the role of witness with all the”¦ now then, so you intend to answer?

Knox: Yes

PM Mignini: First of all do you intend to answer? Then “˜I intend to answer’, “˜I claim I’m innocent’, right? What do you say? Do you admit the deed or not? Admit the facts that are being put to you or not? “¦ That is you have been accused of the murder-in-company of Meredith Kercher and sexual violence. You, do you admit this fact or else do you protest your innocence?

Knox: Innocent.

PM Mignini: I protest my innocence. So”¦ when did you arrive in Perugia?

Knox: The first time I had arrived with my sister for three days but the second
Interpreter: When?

Knox: It was August that I had come the first time in my life here

[8] Interpreter: This year?

Knox: Yes, for three days.

Interpreter: The first time was August of this year for three days with her sister.

PM Mignini: And your sister is called?

Knox: Diana.

Interpreter: Diana

PM Mignini: And then?

Knox: And I went to Germany for a bit and then I came for the second time to Perugia to stay on the 20th September”¦

Interpreter: In August for three days, then she went to Germany and came back to Perugia to stay, to remain for a while”¦

PM Mignini: In Germany where?

Knox: Grunenwald near to Hamburg where my aunt lives.

Interpreter: Where her aunt lives near Hamburg.

PP Mignini: And your aunt is called?

Knox: Dolly which is the diminutive of Dorothy.

Interpreter: Dorothy. She came back to Perugia on 20 September

PM Mignini: On the 20th September and you found, in the Via della Pergola house who did you find when you’d come back to Perugia on the 20th September?

Knox: In reality I found Laura the three days that I was here with my sister and they introduced me to Filomena and we had decided to live together. I had met Laura in front of the University for Foreigners, we had spoken of the fact that [9] she was looking for a flatmate and I had met Filomena and we had decided to live together”¦

Interpreter: In August during the three days she had met the housemate name of Laura

PM Mignini: Mezzetti?

Knox: I don’t know”¦ we were calling her Laura.

Interpreter: She doesn’t know.. she met Laura in those three days when she was looking for a housemate and then they had agreed that in September she would have gone”¦

PM Mignini: And it was only Laura there?

Interpreter: She had met her, when she had gone to see the house, she had also met Filomena

PM Mignini: Filomena Romanelli

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: Meredith wasn’t there?

Knox: No

PM Mignini: Listen, do you use drugs?

Interpreter: Marijuana sometimes

Knox: I take marijuana

PP Mignini: Marijuana. Only marijuana?

Knox: In the form of hashish

Interpreter: Marijuana in the form of hashish

[10]  PM Mignini: No other substances?

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: And up until when have you used it?

Knox: Do you want to know when I started? Ah no, you want to know up until when “¦

Interpreter: The last time the first of November? But you asked up until when right?

PM Mignini: Up until when, yes, yes the first of November. In the evening?

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

Knox: Yes

PM Mignini: With Sollecito?

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

Knox: With Raffaele yes

PM Mignini: And how much did you have that evening?

Knox: We shared a joint”¦

Interpreter: She had shared a joint, yes they had shared a joint.

PM Mignini: From whom had you obtained this substance?

Lawyer: From whom had you obtained it?

Knox: I didn’t obtain it myself”¦ it was Raffaele’s I simply used his smoke

Interpreter: It was a joint of Raffaele’s.

PM Mignini: And you don’t know who he got it from

[11] Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: And before, when you had come to Perugia had you used it? Before the first of November.

Interpreter: Ah, before the first of November?

PM Mignini: Yes

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: And from whom were you getting it?

Knox: I was smoking it with friends I never bought any”¦ I wasn’t buying it since for example I would give ten euro to Laura and she used to buy it for me”¦

Interpreter: She never bought it directly herself only with friends they shared joints

PM Mignini: And who were these friends?

Knox: A flatmate”¦

Interpreter: A housemate, the two Italian housemates and the neighbours down below.

PM Mignini: Who of these? Giacomo?

Knox: We were all together and we were smoking all together”¦ There was a young man who was living on the floor below who was called Riccardo and we didn’t use to visit him, so we weren’t smoking with Riccardo and with the others yes.

Interpreter: Everybody. It was shared amongst everybody, except for a young man who is called Riccardo who had never been around, who happens to be downstairs who had never been in their company, apart from him with the others

[12]  PM Mignini: And Meredith was using it?

Knox: Sometimes but not as often as me”¦ not as much

Interpreter: Eh sometimes times but not much.

PM Mignini: But who was giving it to you? “¦ Do you know who gave it to you?

Knox: No, I don’t know who was giving it, we were smoking together but I don’t know who was giving it”¦

Interpreter: The same story, only in company.

PM Mignini: Listen and when did you start working for Patrick, for Lumumba?

Knox: Straight after when I had arrived I had looked for a job, I knew a friend of Laura’s called Jube (phonetic) and who was working for Patrick”¦ I don’t know the day, I can’t remember the day. It was October, I think”¦

Interpreter: Then when she had arrived she was looking for a part-time job through, there was a boy called Juve (phonetic) who was working with Patrick and he was a friend of the housemate Laura, through Laura and this boy Juve (phonetic) she ended up at Patrick’s in October it would have been.

PM Mignini: October?

Knox: I don’t remember precisely.

Interpreter: She doesn’t remember exactly.

PM Mignini: And the salary, what was it? That is how much was Patrick giving you?

Knox: Around 5 euro an hour”¦

Interpreter: Around 5 euro an hour

PM Mignini: How many hours were you working at Patrick’s?

Knox: It depended on how many people there were at the beginning I was working every day up until around”¦ between midnight and 2 am, starting at 10. But I was also [13] handing out flyers during the day, independent of how many hours I was working her was giving me 15, 20 euros at the end of the day”¦ and so it was”¦

Interpreter: Depending on the amount of work, how many people there were in the pub, she used to finish work between midnight and two in the morning and she used to start at ten. During the day she was distributing flyers, always for Patrick, and Patrick at the end of the evening used to give her 15 to 20 euro and doing the sums it came to 5 euro an hour on average.

PM Mignini: I want to know this, what were the work hours? If you can repeat it.

Knox: Depending on if there were things to do, I was finishing at midnight or at two.

Interpreter: She was starting at ten and depending on how much work there was she was finishing between midnight and two AM.

PM Mignini: Every day or else only some days only during the week?

Knox: At the beginning it was every day but when they had arrested me the last two weeks I had worked twice a week.

PM Mignini: What days?

Knox: Thursday and Tuesday”¦

Interpreter: Tuesday and Thursday

PM Mignini: Did it ever happen that you weren’t, beyond that, apart from the evening of the first of November right? Before, did it happen that you didn’t go to work one night on which you had work, right? That you hadn’t gone and for what reason”¦ anyone advised you?

Knox: If it had ever happened”¦ let’s see”¦ did it ever occur to me? It could have happened that one time I didn’t go because I was feeling sick”¦

[14] Interpreter: It’s possible that she didn’t go there one time because she was ill

PM Mignini: So only on one occasion. So the evening of the first?

Interpreter: She said maybe also one other time

PM Mignini: Ah so

Interpreter: But she wasn’t feeling well

PM Mignini: Ah because she wasn’t feeling well

Interpreter: Yes, yes, to be precise she doesn’t remember

PM Mignini: You weren’t feeling well and you’d informed Patrick about not being well and so you couldn’t go

Interpreter: This she didn’t say. She hasn’t said this.

PM Mignini: You say: “˜it could have happened that I hadn’t gone because I was sick once’

Interpreter: You’ve asked apart from the first of November, true?

PM Mignini: yes, yes

Interpreter: So we speaking of apart from the first of November, the question is whether she had informed Patrick”¦

PM Mignini: The question is if on other occasions she had not been able to go to work because she had been advised”¦ on other occasions”¦ ask her the question

Lawyer: Eh but this one is different to the one from before

PM Mignini: Now then the question that I asked before was this one: did it happen at other times she had not gone to work?

Interpreter: And the answer was yes, maybe when she was feeling ill

[15]  PM Mignini: She was feeling ill, did it happen on other occasions that you hadn’t gone to work because Patrick had called you telling you not to go to work?

Knox: No, it never happened

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: It never happened. Listen, how were you maintaining yourself? That is how much were you earning? How much let’s say per week were you earning from Patrick?

Knox: I had saved that I had had from my parents”¦

Interpreter: The money from her parents and also her savings she had from before

PM Mignini: But how much from Lumumba were you earning in a week? You’ve said so right? “¦ I think
“¦
Interpreter: From 15, 20 euro a night

PM Mignini: A night, so 30 euro a week broad brush right? Because it was two days

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes.

PM Mignini: And the parents, how much were your parents sending you, what amount were they sending you and how often?

Knox: They were sending me each month more or less what was needed to pay the rent”¦

Interpreter: They were sending her enough each month to pay the rent

PM Mignini: How much? So how much was the rent?

Knox: 300 euro a month”¦ but they were giving me a bit more”¦ they used to put in my bank account”¦

[16]  Interpreter: 300 euro a month. But they were giving her a little bit extra, they were putting in her account. Her parents were putting it into Amanda’s account

PM Mignini: So they were giving you a little bit more, so how much? How much, around 400”¦ 500 euro I don’t know”¦

Knox: Maybe around 400 euro”¦

Interpreter: Around 400 euro yes

PM Mignini: Oh, and then your savings, isn’t that? “¦ Yes

Knox: Yes

PM Mignini: Right then, can you tell us how much money you had, the first of November”¦ eh?

Knox: In my bank account?

Interpreter: Where did she have this money? “¦

PM Mignini: How much did you have and where did you have it? If you had accounts”¦

Knox: Okay, it was in my bank account

Interpreter: In her savings account

Knox: “¦I think around about 5 thousand dollars but I don’t know

Around [sic: read: Interpreter]: She thinks around 5 thousand dollars in her savings account

PM Mignini: Savings account at which bank?

Knox: Washington Mutual

Interpreter: Washington Mutual

PM Mignini: Did you have an ATM [=cash dispenser]? Or a credit card?

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

[17]  PM Mignini: Right then, this ATM [card] where is it? This card or credit card?

Knox: In my wallet

Interpreter: In the wallet that has been seized

PM Mignini: How much had you withdrawn the last time before the first of November?

Knox: I always take out 250 euro because that’s the maximum and I always take the maximum because there’s a cost to pay for each withdrawal so I always take the maximum”¦ and I put in the drawer of my desk”¦

Interpreter: She doesn’t recall exactly which day she would make withdrawals, she knows that she always used to withdraw the maximum because she has to pay a fee and the maximum is 250 euro and this money she used to put in the little drawer of the desk at home

PM Mignini: In your room?

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: And so you had 250 euro on the first? How much did you have?

Lawyer: Translate the question for her

Knox: In my room?

PM Mignini: I’m asking you where you had it, where were you holding it?

Knox: I think I could have had around 300 euro”¦ about”¦ in my desk”¦

Interpreter: She thinks she might have had 300 euro in total in the little drawer

Knox: Usually I would take 20 euro and I would put it in my wallet when I needed to

Interpreter: and she would take 20 euro that she would put in her wallet

[18] PM Mignini: Listen, did you know Guede? Rudy?

Knox: Vaguely”¦

Interpreter: Vaguely

PM Mignini: How did you know him? Where did you meet him?

Knox: I’d encountered him a couple of times, I’d seen him at my place of work and also in the city centre and I’d encountered him with my neighbours in the city centre and I’d also seen him at the basketball court”¦ I was there with all the others in my neighbours’ house

Interpreter: At the basketball court?

Knox: No

Interpreter: At a party at the neighbours’ house?

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: She’d met him she thinks in Patrick’s pub, no, she had seen him she thinks in Patrick’s pub and then she’d seen him at the basketball court and at a party in the neighbours’ house below.

PM Mignini: Now, when had you known him?

Lawyer: How much time before

PP Mignini: How much time before, with when you’d arrived in September”¦

Knox: I believe that it was around mid-October but truly I don’t remember”¦

Interpreter: I think towards the middle of October

PM Mignini: Did you used to visit him? Guede

[19]  Interpreter: Meaning?

PM Mignini: If she visited him with a certain regularity in short, with a certain, whether they were going out together

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: Did it happen that you had to give him some money?

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: Listen, but were you, were you missing any money that night of the first and second?

Knox: I don’t know I didn’t look”¦ the 2nd I didn’t look”¦

Interpreter: She didn’t look in the room

Lawyer: But when?

Interpreter: The 2nd of November

Lawyer: Ah right

Interpreter: On the 2nd of November she didn’t look

PM Mignini: And where did Meredith used to keep her money?

Knox: I don’t know

Interpreter: She doesn’t know

PM Mignini: Listen, when was the last time you see Guede?

Knox: I think that the last one is that of which I have already spoken and that is a party at my neighbours’ house on the floor below

[20]  Interpreter: The last time she thinks that it was at the party at the neighbours’ house below

PM Mignini: Which had taken place when?

Lawyer: More or less

PM Mignini: More or less, if you don’t recall”¦

Knox: Towards the end of October”¦

Interpreter: Towards the end of October

PM Mignini: The end of October, so close to the 31st? Eh the end of October”¦ the end of October”¦ in any case you don’t remember. Listen, did Rudy know Patrick? Had he visited his pub?

Knox: Yes I’d seen him at the pub but I’d seen him only once”¦

Interpreter: She had seen him in the pub but she’d seen him only one time

PM Mignini: But do you know whether those two knew each other?

Knox: I don’t think so but actually I don’t know, I didn’t get the impression that they knew each other”¦

Interpreter: She doesn’t think that they knew each other, she doesn’t know

PM Mignini: You know or you don’t know?

Interpreter: She’s not sure about it but what it looked like to her is that they weren’t acquainted”¦

PP Mignini: What’s the basis of this conviction?

Knox: Because everybody that knows Patrick go straight to him to talk with him and Rudy didn’t do that”¦

Interpreter: Because everyone who knows Patrick goes straight to him to talk to him and Rudy didn’t do that

PM Mignini: But did they greet each other, did you see them”¦

[21]  Knox: Patrick greeted everybody who was coming in”¦

Interpreter: Patrick greeted everybody who was coming in

PM Mignini: Listen, were you getting on OK with Lumumba?

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: There were no problems between you?

Lawyer: Of what nature?

PM Mignini: Problems of any sort I don’t know “¦

Lawyer: Money ones, personal ones, right”¦

PM Mignini: Problems I mean in general eh “¦

Knox: No we were getting on OK”¦

Interpreter: No, they were going OK

PM Mignini: Listen, Lumumba was irascible?

Interpreter: Was?

PM Mignini: Irascible [=bad-tempered], that is easily annoyed, was he irritable?

Knox: No he’s a relaxed young man, calm”¦

Interpreter: No he’s a calm young man.

PM Mignini: Listen and who had the keys to the house at Via della Pergola?

Knox: Me, Meredith, Filomena and Laura”¦

Interpreter: All four of the girls

PM Mignini: All four of the girls

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: No one else had keys?

[22] Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: One other thing, your rooms”¦ inside the flat there were your rooms, did you use to lock your rooms or leave them open?

Knox: When we were going out? “¦ I never used to close my door, it was always open, Laura and Filomena used to close their doors but I don’t believe that they would lock them, even when they were going out they would close their doors but not lock them”¦ but I had never tried to open their doors. Meredith sometimes used to lock her door, for example if she was inside and was getting changed, and mine was always open”¦

Interpreter: Now then, only Meredith was locking her door when she was getting changed, she said in substance, otherwise no one used to lock their rooms

PM Mignini: But on the occasion of”¦ when the police arrived and they found themselves in front of Meredith’s door isn’t that? What did you say? Did you by chance say that Meredith never used to lock her door, or that instead she did?

Knox: I said that it was strange that it was locked and she wasn’t answering while usually if the door was locked it meant that she was inside and the fact that she wasn’t answering was strange”¦
Interpreter: It was strange that it was closed without Meredith responding, because normally when it was closed”¦

PM Mignini: To us it results that she didn’t use to lock her door. So then I’ll put this to you [contestare= (leg.) to formally point out a contradiction]. That is, that it was only during one absence of hers for a few days that she locked her room

Knox: She doesn’t do it that often, it isn’t a frequent thing I would say that there were times in which I had tried to open her door to say hello to her and it was locked [23] and she was inside”¦ and when instead she was out I had never tried to open her door. So I don’t know if it’s locked”¦

Interpreter: It happened that, when Meredith wasn’t home she had never tried to open the door, Amanda had never tried to open the door, only it happened that she wanted to say hello opening [it] and had said, “It’s locked”

PM Mignini: I haven’t understood this, that is “¦ that is she used to lock the door or not? According to what you’re saying”¦ she used to lock the room or not?

Interpreter: Only when she was”¦

PM Mignini: Only when she was getting changed you say

Interpreter: Yes, yes

Lawyer: No also when she went away

PM Mignini: And when she went away”¦

Interpreter: Also once when she had gone away for a few days

PM Mignini: Sure, sure”¦ oh, did you get on well with Meredith?

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: There was never any ups and downs in your relationship?

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: Oh, did Meredith ever go with you to Sollecito’s? To Sollecito’s house

Interpreter: Whether she had gone”¦

PM Mignini: No, whether Meredith had gone with you to Sollecito’s house?

Knox: No

[24] Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: She had never gone there?

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: So she had never been for lunch at Sollecito’s house?

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: You had noticed prior to 2 November eh? I mean, you had noticed”¦ I mean the 2nd, had you noticed traces of blood in the bathroom prior, in the days prior? “¦ on the mat, in the bathroom next to Meredith’s room

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: Oh, so”¦ then let’s go back to this day later. Now I want to go back a step. Where did you spend the night of Halloween between the 31st of October and the 1st of November?

Knox: I had been at Le Chic for a bit, then I left and went out to the Merlin because I wanted to meet a friend and then around two in the morning I had met up with Raffaele outside the cathedral and we had decided to go to his place”¦

Interpreter: On the 31st of October she had been at the Le Chic pub

PM Mignini: Yes, up until what time? And with who?

Knox: I was there I knew more or less everybody but I was there on my own account”¦ I wasn’t there working

Interpreter: She wasn’t working but she was there

[25]  PM Mignini: You were there like that

Interpreter: Yes with her friends

PM Mignini: With her friends”¦ who were these friends?

Knox: I had arrived alone, I know Lumumba, I know other people, other classmates, I know that there were people who go there exactly to have fun at the pub

Interpreter: There’s this young man who works for Patrick, Patrick there were classmates, at the Chic

PM Mignini: Of yours?

Interpreter: Yes, yes

PP Mignini: And who were these girls?

Knox: They were girls from Kazakstan who used to always be together”¦

Interpreter: They were girls who stayed in a group, these girls from Kazakstan and who came to find her a few times

PM Mignini: And you don’t remember their names? Was Raffaele there?

Interpreter: No

Knox: No

PM Mignini: He wasn’t there and where was he, Raffaele?

Interpreter: She said that after”¦

PM Mignini: Now then up until what time”¦ up until what time were you at Le Chic?

Knox: I think around one”¦

Interpreter: Around one

PM Mignini: Till one and then?

[26]  Interpreter: Then she had gone to meet a friend in front of the Merlin pub

PM Mignini: Who is this friend? The friend who was waiting at the Merlin, in front of the Merlin?

Knox: He’s a boy who works at Coffee break it’s an internet café with coffee “¦ Spiros

PM Mignini: A Greek?

Knox: Yes

Interpreter: Yes

PM Mignini: And then where did you go?

Knox: Together with Spiros and some of his friends,

Interpreter: Now then she had said before that she had met the Greek (change of tape) she had gone to some other pub

PM Mignini: Where?

Interpreter: In the centre, she doesn’t remember

PM Mignini: In which area in the centre?

Knox: In the area of Le Chic and of the Merlin”¦

Interpreter: Around near the Merlin pub and the Le Chic pub”¦ in that zone there”¦ around there

PM Mignini: She doesn’t know how to point it out?

Knox: I have never been before to the other pubs

Interpreter: She hadn’t gone to visit other pubs before

PM Mignini: Listen, do you know where and with who she spent that night of Halloween, Meredith?

[27]  Interpreter: She’s said that after the fountain she had met Raffaele, after going around a bit with him she had gone to Raffaele’s house

PM Mignini: At what time did you meet Raffaele?

Interpreter: At two

PM Mignini: In the morning and then you returned home with Raffaele. And do you know and with who she had spent that night of the 31st October, Meredith?

Knox: She went out with her English friends

Interpreter: She went out with her English friends

PM Mignini: Did you have, the English friends are you able to give me their names?

Knox: Sophie, Amy I don’t remember all their names but I know that Sophie and Amy were there

Interpreter: Amy, Sophie”¦

PM Mignini: And where did they go?

Knox: I think they went to the Merlin it’s what she had said

Interpreter: She said that they had gone to the Merlin pub

PM Mignini: Merlin”¦

Lawyer: Why does she know? Let’s ask her that, excuse me, eh?

Interpreter: Because Meredith had told her so

PM Mignini: That is Meredith had told you that they had gone there because you had asked Meredith to go out with you that night?

Knox: In the afternoon I asked her if she had plans and she had told me that she would have been with her friends at the Merlin pub and I had said to her “maybe we’ll see each other there””¦ but we hadn’t set a time”¦

[28] Interpreter: In the afternoon she had”¦ Amanda had asked Meredith if she had some plans for the evening and Meredith had answered that she was going with her friends to the Merlin pub

PM Mignini: Listen, do you have”¦ do you know any Spanish boys or Spanish girls?

Knox: Spanish?

Interpreter: Spanish eh [male gender]?

PM Mignini: Yes, girls as well

Knox: I might know some but usually I don’t ask where they come from

Interpreter: It’s possible but she doesn’t ask where they’re from specifically.

Continued in Part #2 at this address.

Tuesday, October 07, 2014

Translation Of The Nencini Sentencing Report Explaining The Failure Of The RS & AK Appeal

Posted by Our Main Posters

This is the report by Judge Nencini now in English which the Italian Supreme Court will be ruling upon next March.

The 355-page report was kindly emailed to us by Skeptical Bystander for the translation team on PMF-dot-Org which did all the work. Translation of the legal concepts and references was tough work but precise.

The translators were Ald, Jools, Kristeva, Olleosnep, Maundy, Catnip, Tiziano, Katsgalore (our ZiaK), Thoughtful, Sallyoo, The 411, Tom, and Popper, and the proofreaders were Tom, Thoughtful, Popper and Skeptical Bystander.

While the report can stand alone for the meticulous detail it includes, for a full confident understanding it should be read in conjunction with the following posts:

• The four-part short version of the Massei trial report done in 2011 by the same PMF Dot Org team


• Our posts on RS and AK’s Florence appeal. reflecting great reporting by Andrea Vogt, Barbie Nadeau, and Machiavelli from the court.

In April last year the Supreme Court reinforced the definition of how narrow first appeals and their sentencing reports should be, which the Hellmann court had wildly exceded.

See the top posts here. Our Italian lawyers reckon Judge Nencini has now followed that guideline to a tee.

That makes overturning this legally impeccable report really tough for the defense teams of Bongiono, Maori, Dalla Vedova and Ghirga, none of whom have ever won a case before the Supreme Court.

Among the many factors making it worse for the perps, the Prime Minister of Italy Mr Renzi is from Florence. For years he has worked closely with the highly respected Florence court.

Attempts at a political endrun around Nencini and the Supreme Court will be dead at the gate.

Sunday, October 05, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #14: Third Opportunity Knox Flunked: Requested Interrogation By Dr Mignini

Posted by Machiavelli, Catnip, Kristeva

1. Our Translation Of Knox’s Key Interview

At her request Dr Mignini interrogated Amanda Knox, her first true interrogation under Italian law, on 17 Dec 2007.

This was about six weeks after her arrest. If Knox had explained away the charges against her, she could have been on her way home.

Read our translations for how it finally emerged. There is some context in Part 2 below.

Knox, Tied In Knots By Her Own Tongue: Translation Of The 17 Dec 2007 Interview With Dr Mignini #1

Knox, Tied In Knots By Her Own Tongue: Translation Of The 17 Dec 2007 Interview With Dr Mignini #2

Knox, Tied In Knots By Her Own Tongue: Translation Of The 17 Dec 2007 Interview With Dr Mignini #3

Knox, Tied In Knots By Her Own Tongue: Translation Of The 17 Dec 2007 Interview With Dr Mignini #4

Part 2: Context Of The Interview

Dozens of people have very aggressively gone to bat for Knox over her “interrogation” and still do. They trust that one or other of her versions of the 5-6 November 2007 police-station session finally stands up.

This interview was sought-after by Knox, seeing this as her last best chance to get herself off the hook before trial and to avoid remaining locked up.  This lasted about three hours, until Knox’s lawyers interrupted to got her to clam up.

All of the trial judges and appeal judges and lay judges had clearly studied this document hard. Also prosecutors and the Knox and Sollecito defense counsel periodically refer to it.

As you will have seen in previous posts, Knox’s team pussyfooted about without conviction in the few brief instances when the 5-6 November session was discussed.

In this Mignini hearing of 17 December 2007 they eventually in effect advised her it would be in her best interests to shut up.

Saturday, October 04, 2014

Negative Drumbeat Continues: Two New Developments Mitigating Against Breaks for Knox Or Sollecito

Posted by Our Main Posters

1. Overview

Tick tick tick. The growth of factors negative to Sollecito and Knox is relentless.

We already count several dozen, the most recent of which are the legally impeccable sentencing report by Judge Necini the lead Florence appeal judge, the expected hard line on Sollecito’s and Knox’s further appeal by a hard-line Supreme Court justice, the legal focus on the world-record blood money and two books riddled with felonies (more to come), the surfacing in the US media of Knox’s daily liaison with a drug kingpin (more to come), and the Sollecito camp’s ongoing moves to put Knox squarely between the fire and Sollecito (more to come).

In the last couple of days these two stories hit the headlines with further implications negative to the foolishly uncomprehending pair.

2. The Further Promotion Of Arturo De Felice

The official title of the prime minister of Italy is President of the Council of Ministers, which is the counterpart body to the President’s cabinet in the United States and the Prime Minister’s cabinet in the United Kingdom

Our main poster Jools has picked up reports by the Italian media that the Council of Ministers has appointed Dr Arturo de Felice (image above) to be Prefect of the Republic.

As we understand it, the Prefect is a top post of unusual powers in the central government filled in times of generational change of the bodies of government, in which the Prefect is a sort of czar representing the agencies of the central government toward the regions, special cities and provinces (the province level is expected to be phased out).

Perhaps the nearest equivalent in the American government is the Secretary of Homeland security, the czar who coordinates the CIA, FBI, and dozens of other security agencies.

Why is this significant in ensuring justice for Meredith?

Well, Dr Felice was the head of the Perugia police when Guede, Knox and Sollecito were arrested and he oversaw the investigations which began in November 2007 and were essentially concluded in summer 2008

Dr Felice was at that point promoted to more senior regional and central posts. Then in 2012 he was appointed as head of the national anti-mafia department.

At any one time Italian and American justice agencies are pursuing dozens and perhaps hundreds of matters of common interest and nobody in Italian justice oversees more dealings with the Federal Department of Justice or the FBI than the head of Italy’s anti-mafia department

We see no signs that the Federal government will buck the Italian government as a favor to the convicted felon and admitted drug user Amanda Knox, but Dr Felice’s past and future roles will help greatly to keep things politically on the straight and narrow.

3. Extradition To Mexico Of American

We have had 18 posts on how extradition law, politics and statistics are stacked against Knox (see category link in right column) with this post by James Raper and this post by TomM as must-reads.

Johnny Yen has picked up on the reports of the US Government extraditing an American to Mexico to face murder charges.

For his role Dylan Ryan Johnson has now been sentenced to 13 years in a Mexican prison.

Prosecutors allege that early on the morning of Sept. 7, 2003, when Johnson was 20, he drove his pickup truck into the small community of Empalme Escobedo in Guanajuato state and checked into a hotel with Hilario Garcia Rosales, who had worked for the American man. Johnson was intoxicated, according to witnesses.

Johnson departed about an hour later, but told the hotel staff that his friend would be staying longer. The boy’s body was discovered the next day by a maid. Garcia was strangled shortly after someone had anal sex with him, according to forensic reports. Authorities originally accused Johnson of rape and premeditated murder, but he was convicted only of the latter….

Johnson was on the Guanajuato prosecutor’s most wanted list for years until he was picked up on an international arrest warrant in 2012. A U.S. judge reviewed a summary of evidence against him before approving Mexico’s extradition request, and agreed that probable cause existed for the prosecution, applying American legal standards. In re Extradition of Dylan Ryan Johnson, No. 12-1832, U.S. Dist. Ct., W.D. Penn. (Opinion and Order Dismissing Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus, Mar. 11, 2013).

This was one of the few extraditions of American nationals to make headlines but numerous other cases are handled quietly. It is almost unheard-of for governments with firm bilateral extradition treaties to fail to respect them.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Analysis #2 Of Testimony Of Dr Chiacchiera, Organized Crime Section: Discounting Any Lone Wolf

Posted by Cardiol MD

Dr Chiacchiera (talking) with his team explaining reason for charges in another case

Overview Of This Series

In 2007 Dr Chiacchiera was the Director of the Organized Crime Section and the Deputy Director of the Flying Squad.

He was one of the most senior and experienced law enforcement officers to testify at the trial.  His testimony and his cross examination by the defenses occupied a lot of time of the court late in February 2009. He covered the following ground.

(1) He found Knox and Sollecito uncooperative when he asked them questions.

(2) Saw evidence contradicting any lone burglar theory and indicating that the “break-In” to Romanelli’s room was faked.

(3) Phone records and the police investigation into the accused phone activity the night of the murder.

(4) Discovery of pornographic magazines at Sollecito’s house.

(5) Details of how the large knife, Exhibit 36, was collected from Sollecito’s and the evidence that it is the murder knife.

All the translation is by the ever-dedicated main poster ZiaK. This series is highlighting some key portions. Here is the full 50-page transcript which will be posted in the trial testimony area of McCall’s great Wiki.

This post continues analysis of the evidence that the lone burglar/lone wolf theory was not credible to those that were first on the crime scene and that the “break-In” to Filomena Romanelli’s room was to them obviously faked.

(GCM=Giancarlo Massei; MC=Manuela Comodi; MaCh=Marco Chiacchiera; GB=Giulia Bongiorno; DD=Donatella Donati; CP=Carlo Pacelli; LG=Luciano Ghirga; CDV=Carlo Dalla Vedova; FM=Francesco Maresca)

Public Prosecutor Comodi [MC] Leads Testimony

Judge Massei [GCM}:  Excuse me a moment, just to give some guidelines, but of the evaluations that the witness is expressing, obviously it’s not that they can be taken account of, however we will acquire them [for the trial files] in order to understand the investigation activities, the appropriateness of the investigations that were carried out, directed in one way or in another, there you go. However, maybe, “¦ there you go, yes, maybe if we can manage to keep with the bare essentials this will help everybody.

{Court proceedings seem to have been diverted into a free-for-all colloquy, with multiple participants chiming-in, and creating confusion. Court-President, GCM, now politely intervenes, apparently trying to restore order, ruling that the professional evaluations made by the witness, testified-to by the witness, should be admitted for the trial files. The appropriateness of the witness's evaluations can be dealt with separately and later.}

Manuela Comodi [MC}:  Well, in short, they were called “¦ they are the only ones who can describe the whole progression of the investigations - Dr Profazio and Dr Chiacciera ““ because they are directors, they are the only ones who will come to describe for me, thus, what was the progression of the investigations. Clearly, in order to pass from one investigative act to another rather than “¦ and the choice of the subsequent investigative acts. It’s clear that they have to describe, in order to make a complete reasoning, even the lines of thought that, as Dr Chiacchiera said, it sometimes happens that they make. However, one point: apart from the break-in, apart from the broken window, there are “¦ did you acquire further elements that corroborated the idea that there had been a burglary? Nothing from Romanelli’s room had been carried off? Valuable things had been taken?

{Examiner acknowledges Court's admonition, argues importance of her witness's testimony, and segués into triple-Q addressed to witness re elements corroborating idea of burglary.}

Dr Chiacchiera [MaCh]:  This ... in fact, in the progress ...

{Witness begins to answer, but is interrupted by Examiner}

MC:  Was a declaration/complaint of theft made then, with a list of the things taken?

{Examiner interrupts witness with new double-Q}

MaCh:  In the logical progression, if I may in some way still, in summary, say what “¦.

{Witness begins narrative response but is interrupted by Court}

GCM:  Say the objective facts, if you have “¦.

{Court interrupts witness, beginning to admonish him to respond by testifying to objective facts, but is itself interrupted by witness}

MaCh:  Nothing disappeared, so a burglar would have had difficulty “¦

{Witness answers 3rd Q of Examiner's above triple Q, but then launches into a narrative beginning: "so…", but Court interrupts}

GCM:  Excuse me, nothing had disappeared? Before all else, what thing .... you knew what things were in that room that did not disappear?

{Court interrupts, questioning basis for witness's statement that "Nothing disappeared"}

MaCh:  Yes, because, shall we say, the investigation elements that then subsequently emerged, allowed us to deduce that from Romanelli’s room absolutely nothing disappeared. There was a complete mess/chaos, but nothing disappeared from Romanelli’s room. And this is another element to [lead us] to obviously deduce that the desired hypothesis of a burglar and of a theft was objectively “¦ But then the burglar does not [sic] close the door and throw away the key. The burglar does not cover the victim. The burglar “¦

{Witness answers Court's Q, with narrative explanation including reference to "the key", and Court interrupts}

GCM:  Excuse me. They key. What is this detail about the key? What is it?

{Court asks Q simple Q re "the key" - with apparent transcriptional error: "They key"}

MaCh:  There was no key.

{Witness answers Court's Q}

GCM:  There was no key where?

{Court asks simple Q}

MaCh:  Those who entered into the inside of the house first found the door closed. A closed door that then aroused the suspicions and that then gave concern and then it was decided to “¦ to break [it] down.

{Witness responds to Court's Q with narrative explanation}

GCM:  Excuse me, on [sic] Romanelli’s room there was no key?

{Court asks another simple Q}

MaCh:  No, I’m talking of Meredith’s room, Mr President; Meredith’s room was locked by key.
This is another “¦ how to say, the investigative deductions that we drew from these details that emerged, also from the declarations that we gathered.

{Witness responds to Court's Q, and informatively amplifies A}

MC:  Was it normal that Meredith closed herself [sic. i.e. her room] by key?

{Examiner asks witness a simple Q}

MaCh:  No.

{Witness gives simple A}

MC:  And did you find the key of Meredith’s room?

{Examiner asks witness a simple Q}

MaCh:  No.

{Witness gives simple A}

MC:  So it was closed by key, but there was no key inside?

{Examiner summarises witness's testimony re key and poses a simple Q}

MaCh:  But there was no key inside, so that it was necessary to break down the door in order to enter. Also the almost inexplicable detail of the presence of two cellphones in a garden of a house, doesn’t tend to favour the thesis of someone who enters and who accidentally, so to speak, finds a person and then kills them, because [he] is forced to kill them because they have seen [his] face.

{Witness responds to Q in form of confirming-repetition and amplifies A in expanded narrative-form}

MC:  But is via Sperandio far from via della Pergola?

{Examiner poses vague Q re proximity of 2 streets}

MaCh:  No. And there we tried to deduce. And via Sperandio, as I said earlier, Doctoressa, is not far from the house. We discussed [this] to understand why these telephones went and ended up there “¦

{Witness answers simply, and respectfully, introducing " the house" on one of the streets, seguéing into subject of the mobile telephones and is interrupted by the Court}

GCM:  Excuse me. When you say it is not far from the house, can you specify at what distance? How one reaches it?

{The Court's interruption is also vague, with double-Q, referring to an unspecified "it"}

MaCh:  Not far from the house means that, by following a route that any Perugian knows, Mr President, one passes through a park and one arrives, let’s say, near the gateway of Porta Sant’Angelo. So for this reason, as the crow flies, how much would it be, but less [sic] “¦ three hundred, four hundred metres. But to reach it by foot from via della Pergola to via Sperandio I think that it doesn’t take more than 5, [or] 7 minutes.

{Witness responds to Court in explanatory narrative form

MC: But do you have to pass by via Garibaldi?

{Examiner asks simple Q}

MaCh:  Yes. But you can also pass through the park ““ there’s a park that then comes out right in front.

{Witness answers Q, and amplifies his response}

MC:  Of the villa?

{Examiner seeks clarification of witness's response}

MaCh:  In front of the villa, at the entry to the villa. Looking from the street that crosses with the provincial [road], the one that, shall we say, borders the villa, whoever is looking at it, I repeat, I ““ who am 44 years old, am Perugian ““ I did not know that there was a garden behind there.

{Witness clarifies his response, amplifying further}

MC:  And how far away is via Sperandio from via Garibaldi, corso Garibaldi?

{Examiner asks apparently simple Q}

MaCh:  it’s parallel. It’s very close, very very close. It’s 200 metres away, as the crow flies. I think even much less, because they are almost parallel, let’s say. Even that is something that in some way made us understand that there was an interest in getting rid of those cellphones, clearly, by whoever did that thing there.

{Witness gives detailed response;
See: "Just seeing police could panic the killers into instant dumping of the telephones, without even needing to know why the police were where the police were (There is no need to invoke any awareness by the phone-dumper[s] of the reason the Police were near Mrs. Lana's place - the hoax-call.). So if the killers saw flashing police-lights, or any other sign of police near Mrs. Lana's place, that sign could be enough to explain panic phone-dumping - then and there (not considering whether the phones were switched-on or switched-off)." In TJMK: "Updating Our Scenarios And Timelines #2: An Integrated Comparison Of The Timing of the Phone-Events." 6/28/2013}

MC:  When you arrived for the first time in via della Pergola, did you enter the room of the crime?

{Examiner asks simple Q}

MaCh:  Immediately, no. I went in afterwards, when Dr Mignini also arrived; and later with Dr Lalli. Then I had, how to say, occasionally entered when the crime-scene inspection of the Forensic Police, of the colleagues arrived from Rome, was already begun, so late. I didn’t stop long inside the house, I say the truth, also because the measures/orders that I issued immediately were those, yes, of deducing, [of] drawing out all the investigative elements that might emerge in the immediate surroundings [and/or immediately after the facts] to seek to immediately direct the investigation activity, but also to “freeze” [sic. i.e. to solidify, or to make concrete] another aspect, which was that of hearing/questioning all the people who might tell us details on Meredith’s stay in Perugia, in general, but above all on her final hours, on her visits/visitors, everything about those who Meredith had known in some way and “¦ This was the thing that we considered logical to do precisely in relation to this, to these first investigative deductions that we drew from the [above]-described crime-scene.

{Witness gives detailed narrative reply}

MC:  And so that same day you were present when they began to hear/question…

{Examiner begins preamble to presumed Q, but is interrupted}

MaCh:  Yes.

{Witness interrupts Examiner with witness's answer to assumed Q}

MC:  “¦ the people [who were] acquainted with the facts.

{Examiner completes interrupted Q-in-the-form-of-a-statement, which omits Q-mark}

MaCh:  I was present. I did not participate personally in the examination [of witnesses], but I was present, in the sense that both with [my] colleague Profazio and with [my] other colleague from the central operative service”¦

{Witness responds with narrative description of circumstances, but is interrupted}

MC:  from Rome.

{Examiner interrupts with her assumed next part of witness's response}

MaCh:  from Rome. We began to put the pieces together, excuse my [use of] the expression; that is to say all the “¦ all the elements that emerged from the examination of witnesses, were checked, were gradually verified/cross-checked.  Both with cross-checks that enlarged the group of witnesses, of the people to be heard/questioned, and with the checking of the alibis of many people, [as well as] with a technical activity that was carried out.

{Witness confirms Examiner's assumption, and completes his narrative description of circumstances}

MC:  That is to say?

{Examiner enquires as to witness's reference to indefinite "technical activity"}

MaCh:  A technical activity. A bugging activity was carried out. There was also an activity carried out also for the cross-checking of the phone [activity] printouts. There was an activity to understand also the cross-checking of the [phone] cells. There was a very wide-range activity carried out. Without excluding, I repeat, all also [sic] ... shall we say, the minor hypotheses. For example, the news arrived of a Maghrebi who had been in a rush to wash his own clothes in a launderette, not too far from the scene of the crime. This piece of information was excluded for a very simple reason, because from the first results of the investigative inquiries, he had arrived there in the early afternoon, but instead, in the early afternoon of the day before her death, Meredith was still alive [sic]. Because from the witness examinations we had determined that the last person who had seen her alive, saw her in the late afternoon. After which, we also did another series of checks relative to the one [sic] that there was a strange telephone call that the people who found the cellphones in the famous villa, the beautiful one on via Sperandio, had received in the evening. However, we had, how to say, understood that it was a case of a boy who had made a call from Terni and of a strange coincidence, but absolutely irrelevant for the investigation activity. Indeed, we made checks on all the hospitals in order to evaluate, to check, whether maybe there were [patients] who had presented blade/cutting wounds that in some way might have been compatible with a wound, let’s say, or at any rate with a reaction by the victim. Only one had presented, it was a [person] from Foligno who, [while] cutting salami, had cut their hand during the trip back from an away-game with Foligno ““ he was a football fan. Nothing else. So no investigative hypothesis was rejected. It was, obviously, because this is how it is done, and thus I believe that it is logic, we began to discuss/think in a certain way, because we had deduced from all this scen, another series of further elements, that is to say that the person “¦.

{Witness responds with prolonged narrative re "technical activity" and seems to pause}

MC:  Speak. Don’t be afraid to say it.

{Examiner urges witness to continue}

MaCh:  No, no. I’m not afraid.

{Witness argues with Examiner}

MC:  That is, let’s say, when was it that the investigations turned to, [started] to focus on today’s defendants?

{Examiner asks simple Q}

MaCh:  When on the evening of “¦ they did not focus on today’s defendants, that is to say, progressively the analysis of the investigative elements made us “¦ made us start, even us, to suspect. Because going into a house, finding a [sic] door of Meredith’s room closed, a [sic] door of the apartment opened, faeces in the toilet [bowl], while I take a shower, a series of bloody prints”¦

{Witness responds in narrative form and is interrupted}

MC:  However the faeces were in which of the two bathrooms?

{Examiner interrupts witness with clarifying Q}

MaCh:  Of the bathrooms. Me, if I take a shower in a bathroom where there are faeces, instinctively I flush the toilet, in short.

{Witness makes non-responsive subjective statement and is interrupted}

MC:  Yes, but the faeces were in the other bathroom.

{Examiner engages witness in argument}

MaCh:  Yes, yes, I understood. However, in short, in some way it comes instinctively, no?, to flush the toilet? The fact is that “¦.

{Witness joins argument and is interrupted}

GCM:  Excuse me, do you know how many bathrooms there were in the house?

{Court interrupts argument with simple Q}

MaCh:  Two.

{Witness ignores actual Q and responds with answer to assumed follow-up Q}

GCM:  Two bathrooms. Excuse me, please. Do you know that a shower was taken?

{Court asks another simple Q, using vernacular ref. to whether a person used the shower, rather than that the the shower device was taken away.}

MaCh:  Yes.

{Witness answers Court's actual Q}

GCM:  How do you know?

{Court asks simple follow-on Q}

MaCh:  I know because it is a thing that I cannot, I believe, report because it was “¦.

{Witness seems to answer in non-responsive, subjective narrative form, and is interrupted}

GCM:  But you checked”¦?

{Court seeks objective answer to his simple Q}

MaCh:  I am trying to be very very careful.

{Witness hints that he has reasons for apparent evasion}

Giulia Bongiorno [GB]:  Mr President, we are talking of nothing.

{Sollecito's lawyer chimes in with distracting comment}

GCM:  Excuse me, Attorney.

{Court appears to admonish GCM not to chime-in without specified legal-objection}

MaCh:  Well, the main point [is] that very slowly we began to understand that there were strong inconsistencies in the revelations that were made. And there were behaviours that on the part of above all, indeed exclusively, of Sollecito and Knox, appeared to us as [being], at the very least, particular. Behaviours both immediately after the event ““ a sort of impatience/irritability shown [with regard to] the investigation activity that we were carrying out, and obviously we could not but ask [NdT: i.e. “we had to ask”] those who were close to Meredith [about] elements that we considered useful, even necessary, in order to continue the investigation activity.

{Witness launches into apparent justification for his evasiveness}

MC:  Excuse me if I interrupt you. I’ll just make a few precise questions, thus: you checked, let’s say, let’s call them alibis, even if it’s a term that’s very so [sic] from American TV films, but in any case [it’s] understandable”¦ Did you check the alibis of the people closest, let’s say, to Meredith?

{Examiner, after preamble, asks relatively simple Q}

MaCh:  Yes.

{Witness answers Q as phrased}

MC:  In particular, did you check the alibis of the young men from the [apartment on] the floor below?

{Examiner asks simple Q}

MaCh:  Yes.

{Witness answers Q as phrased}

MC:  Results?

{Examiner poses Q in casual form}

MaCh:  Positive for them, in the sense that they were at home, in their own home, that is to say their respective houses, because they were here for reasons of study, so they were not present in Perugia during the days when “¦

{Witness responds with allusive casual A, begins to amplify, but is interrupted}

MC:  Because they had left for “¦

{Examiner interrupts with suggestion for next part of witness's response}

MaCh:  Yes, for the All Souls’ Day long-weekend, let’s call it that.

{Withess reacts to Examiner's suggestion by stating reason for upcoming week-end absence, but not stating week-end destination}

MC:  Did you check the alibi of Mezzetti and of Romanelli?

{Examiner asks double Q}

MaCh:  Yes.

{Witness answers for both Qs}

MC:  Results?

{Examiner poses Q in casual form}

MaCh:  The result in this case also [is that] Mezzetti and Romanelli were not there, so “¦

{Witness gives clear Answer, apparently begins explanation, but is interrupted}

GCM:  Excuse me, can you say what checks you did?

{Court interrupts witness's testimony to ask Q re witness's method}

MaCh:  We carried out a whole series of checks that brought us to evaluate, establish, that these persons were not present in the premises that evening.

{Witness ignores Court's Q as phrased and answers anticipated next Q}

MC:  Let’s say, I imagine that you heard/questioned them.

{Examiner makes statement-in-form-of-Q with ?-mark omitted}

MaCh:  Yes.

{Witness answers presumed Q}

MC:  Did they tell you where they were that evening, what they did that evening”¦?

{Examiner seems to interrupt and asks double-Q}

MaCh:  And in effect, we assessed/considered that “¦

{Witness ignores Q-as-phrased and is apparently interrupted}

MC:  And you ascertained that in effect “¦

{Examiner apparently interrupts A and continues his interrupted multiple Q}

MaCh:  That it was true what they had told us. I can report on the circumstance.

{Witness seems to continue his interrupted answer and offers to expand his narrative.
Q &A cycle is confused and confusing because of repeated multiple Qs, instead of orderly single Q & A}

MC:  Did you check the alibi of Amanda Knox and of Raffaele Sollecito? Was there a comparison between the declarations of Amanda Knox and of Raffaele Sollecito with regard to the night of the murder, and what you were able to compare, shall we say, objectively, through the other declarations, through the phone records?

{Examiner asks multiple Qs}

MaCh:  Through the phone records and through the checks [that were], shall we say, objective, it was found that what Sollecito had declared was not truthful because there was a phone call that was never received [i.e. answered] by Sollecito at 23:00 hours. Because it turned out that there was no interaction with the computer, but I believe that this “¦ as declared [sic]. But above all there was an absolute incongruity of the “¦.

{Witness summarizing findings wrt phone records, is interrupted}

GCM:  There now. Excuse me. Maybe we will not ask the question in these terms: following the declarations, on which you cannot report, that you got from and that were given by Amanda Knox and Sollecito Raffaele, what type of investigations you carried out”¦

{Court interrupts to restrict Qs but is interrupted}

MaCh:  We carried out ...

{Witness interrupts Court's interruption and is interrupted}

GCM:  ... and the outcome of these investigations. There now. This is where we’re at.

{Court completes it's interruption, seeming to believe he has made himself clear, but confusion still reigns}

MaCh:  Well, in summary ...

{Witness begins a summary, but is interrupted}

GCM:  Following the declarations given by them, you had “¦ With regard to Sollecito Raffaele, what did you do and what [information] emerged?

{Court interrupts witness with double-Q}

MaCh:  It emerged that, unlike “¦

{Witness begins to answer Court's 2nd Q, but Court interrupts}

GCM:  What did you do, first?

{Court repeats1st Q}

MaCh:  We did an analysis of the telephone traffic, and from the analysis of the telephone traffic it emerged that Sollecito had absolutely not received/answered the 23:00 hours phone call as he had declared. From the analysis of the telephone traffic, there then emerged a very strange detail, in the sense that the cellphones “¦

{Witness answers 1st Q, begins answering 2nd Q, and is interrupted by Sollecito's lawyer}

GB:  (overlapping voices) “¦ continue with the opinions/judgements, with all the opinions/judgements.

{Sollecito's lawyer seems to demand comprehensive testimony}

GCM:  That which emerged.

{Court makes seemingly cryptic statement which is probably a Q relating to witness's interrupted A to Court's 2nd Q above: "It emerged that, unlike "¦" }

MaCh:  A detail/particular emerged ... unlike what “¦. (overlapped voices).

{Witness resumes testimony but is interrupted, multiple voices are heard}

GCM:  Excuse me. What emerged?

{Court asks witness to clarify what witness was saying}
_____________________________________________

Here ends the Analysis of the Evidence #2, discussing that the lone burglar theory is not credible, and that “Break-In” to Romanelli’s room was faked.

The next Post:  Analysis of the Evidence #3, will Analyse the Phone records and the police investigation into the accused phone activity the night of the murder.

 

Monday, September 15, 2014

Analysis #1 Of Testimony Of Marco Chiacchiera, Director, Organized Crime Section, Flying Squad

Posted by Cardiol MD

Dr Chiacchiera with Dr Comodi explaining reason for charges in another case

Overview Of This Series

Yet another vital translation which will be posted in the trial testimony areaof McCall’s great Wiki. This again is translated by the ever-dedicated main posterr ZiaK.

Although I graduated as a medical doctor I also graduated as a lawyer, and was often in courtrooms. For this post and the rest of the Chiacchiera series I am wearing my lawyer’s hat to point out what strikes me in Prosecutor Comodi’s questions,  Marco Chiacchiera’s testimony, and the cross-examinations by defense lawyers.

Prior Preparations And Procedures

Under the Italian Code, before the beginning of the trial phase in Italy, the parties file a brief, detailing all evidence they want to present ““ the parties have to indicate by name every witness and precisely what these will be asked. The aims include creation of a Record of Admissible Facts.

Also under the Italian Code, both the defendant and the prosecutor can cross-examine each other’s witnesses. The Judge may choose not to admit any testimony that appears patently superfluous, reject irrelevant or improper or irregular questions ““ such as leading questions, and Inadmissible Hearsay ““ and also ask questions to the witnesses and experts.

Ground Covered In Dr Chiacchiera’s Testimony

(1) He found Knox and Sollecito uncooperative when he asked them questions.

(2) Saw evidence contradicting any lone burglar theory and indicating that the “break-In” to Romanelli’s room was faked.

(3) Phone records and the police investigation into the accused phone activity the night of the murder.

(4) Discovery of pornographic magazines at Sollecito’s house.

(5) Details of how the large knife, Exhibit 36, was collected from Sollecito’s and the evidence that it is the murder knife.

My Assessment Of This Court Exchange

It is immediately obvious to me that this witness is a skilled witness; as such, and given his deep hands-on involvement in the immediate investigation this witness’s testimony is credible.  My assessment therefore is that this was a very good and unflinching witness and that Dr Comodi shows no signs of leading the witness or seeking other than a truthful record.

I have seen prosecutors examine witnesses differently but dont believe the resultant record would have been superior. This would have stood up well in any American court.

(GCM=Giancarlo Massei; MC=Manuela Comodi; MaCh=Marco Chiacchiera; GB=Giulia Bongiorno; DD=Donatella Donati; CP=Carlo Pacelli; LG=Luciano Ghirga; CDV=Carlo Dalla Vedova; FM=Francesco Maresca)

Public Prosecutor Comodi [MC]

MC:  Dr Chiacchiera, you carried out your duties where, when, at what moment of the events?

MaCh:  I was and am the director of the Organized Crime Section of the Flying Squad and I am the vice-director of the Flying Squad. The Organized Crime Section is a branch of the Flying Squad that deals with “¦ the term, I think that in this place [i.e. the court] it is enough to say that it deals with organized crime. However, I am also the vice-director of the Flying Squad, for which [reason] I deal with, in the case of need, everything that is necessary [for] the various aspects.

{Witness supplies 5 items of relevant information that Examiner should elicit at beginning of examination.}

MC:  Can you tell the Court how you became aware of events, who called you, when you became involved?

{Examiner asks another triple-question}

MaCh:  Yes.

{Witness simply answers question as worded by Examiner}

MC:  For now, start to tell us, then maybe I will intervene [NdT: i.e. interrupt with further questions] if necessary.

{Examiner, asking no Q, instructs witness, suggesting provisional forbearance if witness does not make interruptions necessary.}

MaCh:  On the fateful day, at around 12:33, I had gone to the cemetery with my mother. The operations room called me immediately after the discovery of the body.

{Witness begins appropriate narrative response, but Examiner interrupts}

MC:  So the 113? [NdT: 113 is the Italian State Police emergency number]

{Examiner interrupts witness with a Q, suggesting witness's receipt of call from an emergency number, but suggests wrong source-number}

MaCh:  110. The operations room of the Questura called me, and informed me of the happenings in an initially obviously very summarized manner. They said to me that there was a suspicious death, a young woman who lived in via della Pergola. I rushed to the place directly in my mother’s car. I didn’t stop by at the Questura, I didn’t go to get the service [i.e. police] car. I got myself taken to via della Pergola. We took about 15 minutes from the cemetery to there, ten fifteen minutes. In the meantime, I phoned the deputy Commissioner Napoleoni, in the temporary absence of the director, Dr Profazio, who arrived later, who was “¦ he was enjoying a period of leave, and with deputy Commissioner Napoleoni we arrived almost at the same time. We arrived almost simultaneously at the premises. Forensics, too, arrived almost at the same time at the premises.

{Witness supplies correct source-number and resumes interrupted narrative response}

MC:  The Perugia Forensics?

{Examiner questions witness's correction, as if to verify and to ensure accuracy of court's record}

MaCh:  The Perugia Forensics, I highlight, yes.

{Witness emphatically agrees with Examiner's question}

MC:”‹[They were] alerted by you, or ...?

{Examiner pauses mid-Q, inviting witness to guess complete Q, or is interrupted}

MaCh:”‹Alerted by the operations room, and also alerted by me.
,
{Witness responds to invitation, or interrupts with A to assumed complete Q}

MC:”‹So you arrive, and who do you find?

{Examiner's 1st simple Q.}

MaCh: “‹I found there ... there was already deputy Commissioner Napoleoni, there were also a few of Meredith’s co-tenants. There was Amanda Knox, there was Raffaele Sollecito. There were two young men who were, I believe, the friend of the boyfriend of one of the co-tenants. In short, there were a few people who had already been inside the house. There was the Postal Police.

{Witness answers Q in reasonable detail}

MC:”‹In the person of”¦?

{Examiner seeks more detail re specific Postal Police Personnel}

MaCh: “‹Battistelli and another of Battistelli’s colleagues. Inspector Battistelli, with whom there was immediately a discussion in order to understand what were the reasons for his intervention there, because it is not normal to find the Postal [police] in a crime of this sort. And he explained to me immediately what was the reason for his intervention. The origin of the, shall we way of his intervention, was due to the discovery of a pair of cellphones in a period of time, I believe, of an hour, [or] two, I don’t recall clearly, that were one in the name of one of Meredith’s co-tenants and one in the name of, later it [sic] “¦ I mean the SIM [card], obviously, the cellphones’ SIMs, the cards, they were in the name of a co-tenant and the other in Meredith’s [name]. The co-tenant, however, then told us, we then ascertained that both of the cellphones in fact were used by Meredith. And already that was, how shall we say, a first detail on which we began to reflect because, in fact, that was an element than in some way made us [become] immediately occupied/involved from an investigative point of view.

{Witness responds to Q and includes relevant amplifying narrative, anticipating probable future Qs re cellphones}

MC: “‹So, excuse me, also if the Court already, shall we say, knows this, because others have reported it, on this point however, where were the cellphones found?

{Examiner seems to interrupt with simple Q to clarify specific relevant fact not yet reached}

MaCh:”‹Inside the garden of a villa that is in via Sperandio.

{Witness responds appropriately}

MC:”‹In via Sperandio.

{Probably a Q, but implicitly inviting more specificity}

MaCh: “‹A villa that ... I am Perugian, [and] honestly, I didn’t even know there was a villa there. I’m Perugian, and I swear that I would have sworn [sic] that behind there was a wood.

{Witness flounders, seems unable to be more specific}

MC:”‹A field

{Probably a Q, but implicitly inviting more specificity}

MaCh: “‹It [was] the first time that I went in behind there. Instead, I see a marvelous old mansion with an enormous garden that gives ... that is almost adjacent to the street ““ the street that leads towards Ponte Rio. Anyone from Perugia understands me maybe.

{Witness seems to be in informal conversational mode}

MC: “‹From the structure of the fencing/enclosure, could you tell, shall we say, whether it was possible to throw these cellphones from the street, or whether it was necessary to enter the garden itself?

{Examiner engages witness, and asks Q to clarify how cellphones got into that garden}

MaCh: “‹Yes, obviously, we checked that. In fact, immediately, in short, the detail that seemed, how shall we say, of great investigative interest was that [very point], besides other details that I will go [into] a bit [sic], so to speak, also to give the impression of what the immediate impact was that we saw in the moment when we found ourselves in a situation of this type. So, deputy Napoleoni immediately entered inside the house in order to check it for herself. I did it [entered] shortly afterwards, also because [as] you will imagine that in that moment whoever was there had to notify all those who [sic], amongst whom Dr Mignini who was the Public Prosecutor on duty, and immediately give orders so that the correct checks are carried out. Because it was not just a crime scene that had to be analysed immediately: there also had to be, how shall we say, correlated with the information that we had got from via Sperandio ““ because the entry of the Postal [police in the case] originated with via Sperandio. And so we immediately asked ourselves: “Ah, what are these cellphones belonging to poor Meredith doing inside the garden of a villa?” And then And then immediately after, we asked ourselves, obviously, what might be the profile of the possible, or probable, murderer, and we discussed/talked about the crime scene. The crime scene immediately seemed fairly strange to us, if you wish [NdT: literally “if we wish” in Italian, but meaning the same as “shall we say”, “if you wish”, “so to speak” etc.]

{Witness responds to Q with detailed narrative}

MC:”‹Why?

{Examiner asks ambiguous Q, probably wrt crime scene seeming "fairly strange "}

MaCh:”‹Because the door did not show”¦ the entry door to the villa did not show signs of break-in. The we checked “¦

{Witness seems to decipher ambiguity correctly, begins narrative response, but is interrupted by Examiner}

MC:”‹We are not talking about the villa on via Sperandio obviously?

{Examiner interrupts with Q, apparently not comprehending Witness's narratives}

MaCh: “‹For the love of god! It was called a “villa” “¦ (overlap of voices), let’s say the house, of the house on via della Pergola there was no forcing/break-in. We found a forcing on the window. The window is this one, on the side of the house. I don’t know if you’ve seen the house? Anyhow, it is this one on the side of the house that can be seen immediately when you come down the slope from the gate. Logically reconstructing the thing, a hypothetical prowler [NdT: literally “ill-intentioned person”] who entered the house, breaking the glass with a rock - because inside the room, which was Romanelli’s room, which was the, shall we say, hypothetical arena of the entry, was completely in utter chaos. For that reason, what should we have hypothesized? That the hypothetical prowler took a rock, managed to throw the rock; the shutters, the external ones, the external shutters were not “¦

{Witness is exasperated at Examiner's apparent incomprehension, is repeating his previous testimony, but is interrupted by Examiner}

MC:”‹The dark-green wooden ones?

{Examiner interrupts with Leading Q re colour of external shutters. Now begins a confused and confusing colloquy. The arrangement of Filomena Romanelli's window, with Outside, and Inside Shutters, the Broken-Glass-Frame in-between, and the glass-splinters on the window-sill is complicated and needs a picture-exhibit that the witness can refer-to; this is apparently not provided, leading to the confusions}

MaCh:”‹The dark-green wooden ones were half shut, for which reason [he] must have had an aim like “Pecos Bill” [NdT: a cartoon Wild West cowboy], takes aim and throws that rock, smashes the window. After, he climbs up and does a turn on the little slope, and has to clamber up towards the window on the smooth surface, it seems to me, that from the ground up to the window there are two and a half metres-three [metres]. And then would have said: “bah, in short” [sic]. Yeah, well, the thing seemed to us…. in short, the first hypothesis that the investigator normally does, finds a level of unlikelihood of this kind of happening. After which, we looked at the house and we saw that an entry of a potential prowler [ill-intentioned person], still reasoning on the hypothesis”¦

{Witness amplifies narrative response but is interrupted by Examiner}

MC:”‹Of theft.

{Examiner inappropriately interrupts, incorrectly guessing what witness was about to say}

MaCh: “‹Of theft ending badly. Of theft that then degenerates because the burglar in some way thinks that he will find no-one in the house and instead finds a person, and then it degenerates “¦ We saw that there were easier means of entry, without wishing to bore you, but behind the house there was the possibility of climbing in a much easier way, without being seen by people that might have passed in the road. Let’s remember that, in short, it was not very late; quite the contrary. Normally people passed there, for which reason, if [he] had done it, the thing would probably have been seen. That thing there, as an hypothesis, we didn’t immediately discount it, that’s clear, because it’s a good rule to never discount any hypothesis. But we immediately considered that it was not a priority.

{Witness corrects Examiner's wrong guess, amplifies and seems to end narrative response}

MC:”‹Dr Chiacchiera, I interrupt you. (The witness is shown an exhibit.)

{Examiner, seems to acknowledge her habit of interruptions without actually interrupting, while introducing an unspecified exhibit. This introduction seems very informal, because Exhibits are normally identified by an assigned title.}

MaCh:”‹Ah! I didn’t remember it as being so big.

{Witness recognizes unspecified exhibit}

MC:”‹Precisely! You saw it? This is the rock that ...

{Examiner engages witness, stating it is "the rock".}

MaCh:”‹Yes, but it has been some time I have not, how shall we say, yes, I saw it. Absolutely.
However, it’s big, it’s huge.

{Witness engages Examiner, commenting on how large the rock exhibit is}

MC:”‹Do you consider that it could be this?

{Examiner ambiguously (what are "it" & "this "?) asks witness's opinion}

MaCh:”‹I believe so.

{Witness seems to overlook ambiguity of Q with vague A)

MC:"‹I try "¦

{Examiner begins to speak but is interrupted}

Judge Massei [GCM]:”‹How?

{Court interrupts as if to ask Q how Examiner 'tries'}

MC:”‹It is this. Yes, it is this one that was collected, yes, that was found.

{Witness seems to confirm that exhibited rock is the rock found in Filomena's room}

GCM:”‹So the rock is shown. [NdT: an “aside” for the court records?]

{Court formally announces admission of rock-exhibit, seemingly trying to reduce confusion caused by informal dialogue}

MaCh:”‹Inside the room where we then found the rock…
??:”‹But what was the question about the rock?

{Witness amplifies that rock had been found in a room, but enquires re rock Q, exposing confusion caused by informal dialogue}

GCM:”‹If this was the rock. And the witness said ...

{Court begins explanation to confused witness}

MaCh:”‹I said yes. Yes.

{Witness interrupts Court - confusion reigns}

GCM:”‹You saw it? You saw the rock?

{Court asks witness 2 Qs, trying to clarify that 'it' refers to 'the rock' that witness saw.}

MaCh:”‹Yes.

{Witness confirms that witness had previously seen the rock introduced into court as an unlisted exhibit.}

GCM:”‹When you saw it, where was it?

{Court proceeds to clarify confusion re where the rock was when witness originally saw the rock}

MaCh:”‹The rock [was] in the room of Romanelli.

{Witness specifically testifies, for witness's first time, that when witness originally saw the rock, the rock was in Filomena Romanelli's room}

GCM:”‹How far from the window? Can you say?

{Court continues to seek clarification using double-Q.}

MaCh: “‹A few centimetres [NdT: “un palmo” = “a hand’s width”] from the window sill, under the window, from the wall where the window is.

{Witness testifies clearly in answer to Court's 1st Q of above double-Q.}

GCM:”‹So from the internal perimeter wall, from where the window gives onto it, a “hand’s breadth”. So 20 centimetres…

{Court apparently begins to seek verification of witness's testimony, but is interrupted}

MaCh:”‹Mr President ....

{Witness begins to Interrupt Court}

GCM:”‹... away from it approximately.

{Court finishes his interrupted statement}

MaCh:”‹Yes.

{Witness agrees with Court's completed statement}

GCM:”‹And this is the rock. You remember it.

{Court states his understanding in form of Qs.}

MaCh:”‹Yes, yes, yes, yes. That is the rock.

{Witness impatiently agrees with Court's understanding}

MC:”‹At least as far as size and colour [are concerned], it corresponds thus to the one that was collected [as evidence].

{Examiner makes statements in form of Q, seeking verification of resemblance of exhibit-rock to original rock}

MaCh:”‹At least as far as size and colour [are concerned], it absolutely corresponds. If it was collected, I think that ...

{Witness begins narrative agreement with statements of Examiner, but is apparently interrupted by Examiner}

MC: “‹Very well. WITNESS [sic? Should be MaCh?] and Romanelli’s room was a complete shambles. The clothes were on the floor, the glass was strangely on top of the clothes, the [glass] shards were strangely on top of the “¦ on the windowsill, let’s put it that way.

{Apparent Transcriptional confusion attributing to interrupted witness narrative the interrupting .statement of Examiner}

MC:”‹The outside one.

{Examiner seems to amplify statement of Examiner wrt which window-shutter witness had been referring-to}

MaCh: “‹The outside one, precisely. The one that is between the shutters and the shutters [sic. NdT: “imposte” in Italian, but this can also mean shutters, or flap, as in the inner “scuri” shutters, or he may mean the window-frame itself, with the window-panes, given his following description], the green shutters and the shutters, the broken ones in short, where the glass is. The shutters ““ the wooden ones. The rock was a bit too close with regard to the wall if I [were to] throw it from least two metres. Unless it was lobbed [i.e. thrown in a high arc]. But in that case it’s rather unlikely that it would smash the glass. For that reason, I repeat, in the context of immediate likelihood, this one “¦

{Witness agrees with Examiner that he was referring to "The outside one", continuing with narrative of reasoning, but is interrupted by Examiner…}

MC:”‹Yes, it’s true. These are considerations. However they are considerations, shall we say, that refer [sic], because they are reasoning/lines of thought that are formed in the “immediacy” of the events [NdT: i.e. “in the immediate aftermath”. NOTE: throughout the text, a number of speakers use “immediatezza” (lit. “immediacy”) to convey a number of meanings, from “in the immediate aftermath”, or “in the immediate surroundings”, or “very soon after”, etc. I will translate them appropriately according to the context, without further explanation of the use of “immediatezza”], in order to proceed in one direction rather than another.

{Examiner, interrupting witness, apparently agreeing with witness's reasoning. While Examiner is apparently stating his own argumentative reservations re the possible evolution-in-time of witness's changing lines of reasoning, he is interrupted by Giulia Bongiorno, Sollecito defense lawyer:}

Giulia Bongiorno [GB]: “‹I never like to interrupt an examination [of a witness], however if one wanted, between the Public Prosecutor’s hypotheses, to do that [sic] of demonstrating that from a ballistic point of view it is not possible, then the ballistic expert should be called.

{GB interrupts Examiner to comment that Witness and Examiner are expressing opinions on Ballistics that require the testimony of a Ballistic Expert.}

MC:”‹But in fact, his considerations are not the considerations of an expert: they are the considerations of an investigator who made certain deductions in the immediacy of the events.

{Examiner argues that witness's testimony is that of an investigator's temporal train of thought.}

MaCh:”‹It happens to us too, at times, to reason/think rationally “¦

{Witness joins colloquy, amplifying Examiner's argument.}

GCM:”‹These reasonings/deductions, then determined your investigative activity in one direction rather than in an “¦?

{Court seems to invite further amplification by witness}

MaCh: “‹Yes, obviously, Mr President. I was trying to ... (overlap of voices) it is a premiss/basis to be able to then, how shall we say, reach ““ I won’t say conclusions ““ but in order to try to understand what our way of broaching the thing was, there and then. We had, I reassert, reasoned immediately also on via Sperandio. So the first thing, I may say, [was] the unlikelihood, or at any rate it was not the top priority hypothesis, the one of a prowler/ill-intentioned person entering. The open door without signs of break-in. But above all, a young woman who is [sic] probably killed in her own room, nude or almost nude, with a wound of that type, in a lake of blood, covered with a duvet. I repeat, the door was not smashed/wrecked, there’s a broken “¦ a window broken with a thrown rock, how can I say, it’s obvious that we immediately found this situation as “¦ (overlap of voices).

MaCh:”‹”¦ particular.

{Witness further amplifies narrative}

GCM:”‹You formed these considerations, and what did they lead you to?

{Court asks simple Q.}

MaCh: “‹That very probably the author or authors knew the person, or at any rate that the author or authors did not enter “¦ did not enter from the window-pane of that window.

{Witness responds with his conclusion that the authors of the faked break-in did not enter from the window-pane of that window.}

GCM: “‹Excuse me a moment, just to give some guidelines, but of the evaluations that the witness is expressing, obviously it’s not that they can be taken account of, however we will acquire them [for the trial files] in order to understand the investigation activities, the appropriateness of the investigations that were carried out, directed in one way or in another, there you go. However, maybe, “¦ there you go, yes, maybe if we can manage to keep with the bare essentials this will help everybody.

{Court proceedings seem to have been diverted into a free-for-all colloquy, with multiple participants chiming-in, and creating confusion. Court-President, GCM, now politely intervenes, apparently trying to restore order, ruling that the professional evaluations made by the witness, testified-to by the witness, should be admitted for the trial files. The appropriateness of the witness's evaluations can be dealt with separately and later.}
_________________________________________________

This segment of Chiacchiera’s Testimony re the Crime Scene, which he believed had been remodeled by the criminals to dupe Investigators into believing that there had been a burglary, committed by a single criminal, is paused here because it is so prolonged.

Analysis of Chiacchiera’s Testimony will continue in a future post.

 

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Now Raffaele Sollecito As Well As Amanda Knox Is Using A PayPal Link To Encourage Donations

Posted by Our Main Posters

Sollecito And Knox Paypal Accounts

Please check out the images at bottom here. As of today Knox’s PayPal account still exists.

At the same time Sollecito has created a new one as GoFundMe dropped his solicitation page. PayPal and their own Italian lawyers are likely to regard these two accounts as hot potatoes when the following implications are shared with them.

Imperiled Bank Accounts

Each PayPal account will point behind the PayPal scenes to a bank account, which as this example among many others describes can be seized by American and Italian authorities.

The Government wants the seized properties to be handed over to the authorities, and claims it’s permitted under U.S. law. This includes the bank account that was used by Megaupload for PayPal payouts. The account, described as “DSB 0320,” had a balance of roughly $4.7 million (36 million Hong Kong Dollars) at the time of the seizure, but processed more than $160 million over the years.

“Records indicate that from August 2007 through January 2012 there were 1,403 deposits into the DBS 0320 account totaling HKD 1,260,508,432.01 from a PayPal account. These funds represent proceeds of crime and property involved in money laundering as more fully set out herein,” the complaint reads.

PayPal refused to channel payments to the hacker organization Wikileaks and 14 members of the hacker group Anonymous who attempted denials of service attacks (DOS) against PayPal were charged and pleaded guilty.

Strong evidence that law enforcement will work hard to help prevent the use of PayPal for activities it considers illegal. 

How It Gets Worse For Them

Knox is already a convicted felon for life for calunnia with no further appeal possible. Under PayPal’s terms of service that by itself seems sufficient grounds to bounce her. From Paypal’s rules for Donate buttons:

Note: This button is intended for fundraising. If you are not raising money for a cause, please choose another option. Nonprofits must verify their status to withdraw donations they receive. Users that are not verified nonprofits must demonstrate how their donations will be used, once they raise more than $10,000.

Neither have publicly specified in even the least detail who will get what and why out of the funds raised by this Donate button intended for good causes (think charities).

How It Gets Worser For Them

The pitches on the Knox and Sollecito websites are essentially the same as in their two books which are both riddled with demonstrably false accusations, for which Sollecito has already been charged and for which Knox will also in due course be charged.

The charges against Sollecito are a mixture of calunnia and diffamazione, which are explained at the bottom here, and the charges against Knox are expected to be the same.

In effect then this is seemingly not only Knox and Sollecito attempting to profit from crimes, but attempting to profit from crimes based on highly fraudulent accounts of those crimes for one component of which (as pointed out above) Knox has already served three years in prison.

How It Gets Even Worser For Them

“Defense Fund” implies the money being raised is all going to their Italian lawyers. If the lawyers accept such payments as fees that could become a problem for them.

The same thing applies if any of the money raised goes to David Marriott, Ted Simon and Robert Barnett. It is now radioactive. They will presumably know this - know that they cannot profit from proceeds which are illegal under Son of Sam laws and obtained on fraudulent pretenses.

And In Fact Even Worser For Them

If Cassation dismisses the final appeal of Knox and Sollecito (for which the grounds seem very flimsy) they will each be liable for the millions in damages which Judge Massei imposed as modified by Judge Nencini.

Donations legally labeled bloodmoney cannot under any circumstances be used to pay damages. Knox and Sollecito would have to generate new funds to pay the damages awards by legal earnings or by voluntary or forced selling off of any assets.

The Bottom-Line Liabilities Here

The financial liabilities Knox and Sollecito are presently incurring for themselves include (1) payment of all fees for legal and PR help in the US and Italy; (2) the clawing back of all bloodmoney profits from their crimes; (3) the payments of millions in damages as assessed by Judges Massei and Nencini; and (4) further fines and damages that are expected to result from their two books.

Under the post below Popper posted this partial calculation for Knox; the forfeit of bloodmoney and possible future damage awards are additional.

Massei gave (and Nencini confirmed) provisional damage to father and mother of Meredith of Euro 1 million each, to brothers and sister Euro 800,000 each, to PL Euro 50,000 and to the owner of the flat Euro 10,000.

To this it must be added more for the legal costs in Appeal and Cassazione, so a total a bit short of Euro 5 million, about 6 million dollars.

VAT and CPA must be paid on all the above sums, so more than that, we probably go over USD 6 million

Together with the forfeit of bloodmoney and possible future damages imposed, this adds up to around the $10 million estimated in this post. Sollecito’s burden would be less, somewhat more than half of that. 

Explanation Of Calunnia And Diffamazione

The charge of calunnia (art. 368) has been commonly translated as “slander” in the English/US media. This translation is incorrect, however, as calunnia is a crime with no direct equivalent in the respective legal systems.

The equivalent of “criminal slander” is diffamazione, which is an attack on someone’s reputation. Calunnia is the crime of making false criminal accusations against someone whom the accuser knows to be innocent, or to simulate/fabricate false evidence, independently of the credibility/admissibility of the accusation or evidence.

The charges of calunnia and diffamazione are subject to very different jurisprudence. Diffamazione is public and explicit, and is a more minor offence, usually resulting in a fine and only prosecuted if the victim files a complaint, while calunnia can be secret or known only to the authorities. It may consist only of the simulation of clues, and is automatically prosecuted by the judiciary.

The crimes of calunnia and diffamazione are located in different sections of the criminal code: while diffamazione is in the chapter entitled “crimes against honour” in the section of the Code protecting personal liberties, calunnia is discussed in the chapter entitled “crimes against the administration of justice”, in a section that protects public powers.


Click for larger image

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Those Channeling Funding To RS And AK Should Definitely Take Note Of This

Posted by Our Main Posters

GoFundMe has dropped this page of Sollecito’s which was soliciting funds under false pretenses


The increasingly tough American bloodmoney laws (Son of Sam laws) were described here and here.

These laws are operable at the federal level and in most states. The tendency is for the laws to be made more and more tough, and to spread the net of who could be charged more and more widely.

Book publishers and TV networks have armies of lawyers who usually step in smartly to stop them being party to illegal money flows. All American TV networks have codes of ethics which prevent fees being paid that reward a crime.

The bloodmoney net could be spread widely in the Perugia case if the Republic of Italy requests the invoking of these laws against Knox, Sollecito, their families, and the in-it-for-the-money opportunists such as Sforza, Fischer, and Moore.

Their PR help also appears to be at risk, along with the shadow writers, book agents and publishers of the two books.

Sollecito might have got a blessing in disguise then when GoFundMe the private-purposes fundraising site closing down his begging page (image above) after around $40,000 had been conned from the sheep.

GoFundMe did that as part of a move to keep the company and the site away from controversy and the long arm of the law. This move is fairly typical of a broad trend on the internet as courts increasingly sentence harrassers, abusers, swindlers and money-grubbers to tough terms.

Making money out of crime has never been a walk in the park, and anything gained rarely goes very far.

Trying to make money illegally is fundamentally why OJ Simpson (images below) is serving a term for armed robbery east of Reno in Nevada - and in that case he considered the property he was robbing at a Las Vegas casino hotel was actually his own.

In his case his wife and a friend were found slashed to death at her home a mile or two from his. Simpson nearly fled the country before trial, then he won an acquittal at criminal trial, and then he was convicted at a wrongful-death civil trial. Wikipedia explains.

On February 5, 1997, a civil jury in Santa Monica, California, unanimously found Simpson liable for the wrongful death of and battery against Goldman, and battery against Brown. Daniel Petrocelli represented plaintiff Fred Goldman, Ronald Goldman’s father. Simpson was ordered to pay $33,500,000 in damages. In February 1999, an auction of Simpson’s Heisman Trophy and other belongings netted almost $500,000. The money went to the Goldman family.

To avoid ever making any of the required payments to the Goldman family, Simpson squirreled assets and income away.

The items he wanted back at the point of a gun at the Palace Station hotel and casino would have been worth a lot. But instead this foolish financial crime could cost him up to 33 years.

Our take is that Sollecito may have squirreled away some of his gains, and Knox may have squirreled away much more. US law enforcement is capable of finding those payments if asked and if Knox’s family and paid help don’t press her to cough up.

Hopefully it will be made to sink into that Knox’s panhandling (she is still at it via her website via Paypal) was not such a good idea.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #13: First Two Opportunities Knox Flunked: Judges Matteini & Ricciarelli

Posted by Our Main Posters

Judge Matteini and Judge Ricciarelli each held key hearings in November

1. Where This Series Stands

1. Summary Of Post #1

Post #1 sets out the two versions of Knox’s sessions at the central police station on 5-6 November 2007.

The first version has in total about two dozen eye witnesses, and it is the one that prevailed at the Massei trail and throughout all of the appeals -  Hellmann in 2011 (this part was not annulled), Casssation in 2013, and Nencini in 2014. Cassation in 2013 made Knox’s verdict and sentence of three years for the false accusation against Patrick final.

The second version lacks any independent witness, although Sollecito makes some claims in his book that could be assumed to help Knox. There seems no sign that Knox’s own lawyers in Perugia have ever bought into any part of it, they have never lodged a complaint, they did not pursue it in cross-examination, and they have even cautioned against it.

Knox’s lawyers seemed jumpy when Knox pursued elements of it (unconvincingly to the court) in her two days of testimony in July 2009.  Despite this, it is still sustained by Knox herself (in several contradictory versions) and by a number of PR campaigners.

2. Summary Of Posts #2 to #9

Those posts quote the relevant trial testimony of the six investigators (scroll down) who had the major roles in the 6-7 November sessions.

3. The Warrant For Three Arrests

This arrest warrant was drafted and signed by Dr Mignini. He did so in the prosecutors’ offices in Perugia’s central courthouse (image at top) at 8:40 am.

Note that, critically, it includes reference to Knox’s spontaneous chatter and her knowledge of the dynamics of the crime.

PUBLIC PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE, COURT OF PERUGIA

N. 19738/07 R.G. Mod. 44

DETENTION ORDER ISSUED BY THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR

(artt. 384, comma 1 c.p.p)

TO THE JUDGE OF PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF THE COURT OF PERUGIA

The public prosecutor Dr. Giuliano Mignini

Based on the records of the above-mentioned proceeding;

Having found that there are serious indications of the crimes of complicity in aggravated murder Article 576 n.5 c.p.e. and sexual assault for which we are proceeding, against DIYA Lumumba, born in Kindu (Zaire) on 5.05.1969, KNOX Amanda Marie and SOLLECITO Raffaele, already identified, for the following reasons:

Regarding KNOX and DIYA, the first made glaringly contradictory and not credible statements during the investigation. In particular KNOX claimed to have spent the night between November 1st and 2nd in the company of SOLLECITO Raffaele whom she met a few days before the event while he, after initially confirming the statements made by KNOX, confessed to have lied instructed by KNOX and made clear that he separated from KNOX at 21.30 of November 1st 2007, remaining at his house where he received a phone call from his father on the land line at 23:30.

Furthermore from the data relating to the phone traffic of the number 3484673590 in use by KNOX there emerges a lack of phone traffic from 20:35 of November 1st to 12:00 November 2nd. Same lack of phone traffic from 20:42 of November 1st to 06:02 of November 2nd is found in the phone traffic of 3403574303 in use by SOLLECITO Raffaele.

At 20:35 of November 1st was found an outgoing text message from the number 3484673509 belonging to KNOX sent to 3387195723 belonging to the co-defendant PATRICK to whom she communicates “see you later” which confirms that in the following hours KNOX was together with DIYA in the apartment where the victim was.

KNOX, in the statement made today has, in the end, confessed the dynamics of the committed crimes against KERCHER: the accused, in fact, first claimed to have met with DIYA, as communicated to him with the text message found in the phone memory of her cell phone by the operating Postal Police, text message sent at 20:35 in reply to a text message from DIYA sent at 20:18, detected thanks to the analysis of the phone traffic related to KNOX.

This last text message is not present in the cell phone memory.

KNOX in her witness statement from today has then confessed that, meeting DIYA in the basketball court of Piazza Grimana, she went together with DIYA to Meredith’s house, where DIYA, after having sex with the victim, killed her.

The sexual intercourse must be deemed violent in nature considering the particularly threatening context in which it took place and in which KNOX has surely aided DIYA.

In addition to this it should be pointed out that KNOX, in her spontaneous declarations from today, has consistently confirmed to have contacted DIYA, to have met with him on the night between November 1st and 2nd and to have gone with him to the apartment where the victim lived. She then said that she stayed outside of Meredith’s room while DIYA set apart with her and also added that she heard the girl’s screams.

KNOX reported details that confirm her own and Sollecito Raffaele’s involvement in the events, like the fact that after the events she woke up in the bed of the latter.

As far as the essential facts against SOLLECITO there are numerous verifiable inconsistencies in his first declarations, in respect to the last ones and the fact that, from a first inspection, the print of the shoe found on SOLLECITO appears to be compatible in its shape with the one found on the crime scene.

Moreover, there is the fact that KNOX claimed to not remember what happened between the victim’s screams up until she woke up in the morning in SOLLECITO’s bed, who was also found in possession of a flick knife that could abstractly be compatible for dimension and type (general length of 18cm, of which 8,5 blade), with the object that must have produced the most serious injury to the victim’s neck.

Having considered all the elements described and all converging findings of the intense and detailed investigations conducted after the discovery of Kercher’s body and culminating with the confession and indicated complicity of DIYA, also known as “Patrick” by KNOX, there is substantial serious evidence of the crimes for which we are proceeding to allow the detention, given the limits of the sentence.

Likewise there must be considered a founded and valid danger of flight especially for DIYA since he is a non-EU citizen and in consideration of the specific seriousness and brutality of the crimes, especially that of sexual violence and the possibility of the infliction of a particularly heavy sentence.

In regards to KNOX she has shown a particular ruthlessness in lying repeatedly to the investigators and in involving in such a serious event the young SOLLECITO.

Having regard to Art.384 comma 1 c.p.p.

ORDERS

The detention of DIYA Lumumba, KNOX Amanda Marie and SOLLECITO Raffaele, already identified, and to be taken to the local District Prison.

We proceed to request validation of the detention in the separate document.

Forward to the Secretary area of authority with regard to recognition of Diya Lumumba and Amanda Marie Knox, born in Washington (USA) on 07/09/1987, based in Perugia, Via della Pergola 7, and Raffaele Sollecito, also already identified.

Perugia, November 6th 2007, h.8,40

PUBLIC PROSECUTOR

(DR. GIULIANO MIGNINI)

2. The Pre-Trial Hurdles Knox Failed

Do you know how many major opportunities before her 2009 trial started Knox was given to get the murder charges dropped? This is not something Knox supporters trumpet about, if they even know.

In fact there were six, and Knox dismally failed them all.

In 2007 there were (1) the Matteini hearing and (2) the Ricciarelli hearing in November (see below) and (3) the Mignini interview in December.  And in 2008 there were (4) the separate Knox appeal and Sollecito appeal to the Supreme Court in April, and (5) the first Micheli hearings in September, and (6) the second Micheli hearings in October, which dispatched Knox and Sollecito for trial.

In all six instances Knox’s team also had the opportunity to get the charges against Knox for calunnia against Lumumba dropped.

3. The First Hearing by Judge Matteini

1. Summary Of The Hearing

This key post by Nicki describes how every one of the numerous hoops Italian police and prosecutors must jump through is presided over by a guiding magistrate.

Finally, in this ultra-cautious process, if the investigation has not been dropped and the guiding magistrate is confident that the police and prosecutors have made a case, they can then order it submitted directly for short-form trial (as with Guede) or for a trial judge (like Judge Micheli) to decide if there is a case for a long-form trial.

At this point, 9 November 2007, the police investigations were far from done, and the existence of Guede was not yet known (though Knox hinted at him on 6 November) let alone the role he is serving 16 years for.

The investigations continued through the summer of 2008 with Judge Matteini re-entering the process repeatedly. Even after the summer of 2008 additional witnesses were being sought and several including Kokomani and Quintavalle only came forward later.

On 9 November 2007 Judge Matteini had before her the police summaries of evidence and witness and suspect statements. Knox and Sollecito were placed under arrest on 6 November and she had held separate hearings with Knox, Sollecito and Patrick with their lawyers present on the day before (8 November)

2. Sollecito’s statement for his hearing

Knox presented no written or oral statement to Judge Matteini on the very strong advice of her lawyers. Sollecito wrote one out. In various ways it separates him from Knox.

Sollecito had seen his lawyers on 7 November in Capanne Prison. Sollecito was extensively interviewed by Judge Matteini (translation pending). He also submitted in advance a new statement for his own 8 November hearing which famously starts off “I wish to not see Amanda ever again.”

ʺI wish to not see Amanda ever again.

I met Amanda at a classical music concert which took place at the University for Foreigners of Perugia, about two weeks ago. I then met her again at the bar ʺLe Chic”: I went to this pub 2”3 times just to see Amanda since she had told me that she worked there.

A romantic relationship had taken shape and we have lived together since the first day at my house, and she would go back to her house at Via della Pergola more or less every other day to pick up her clothes and talk with her girlfriends. I have never met the man who runs the pub ʺLe Chicʺ and I did not know anything about the pub; I do not even know who worked there. I used to accompany Amanda to work at the pub around 22”22.30 and then I went back to pick her up at 24.00”00.30.

I met Meredith at Amandaʹs house since they were friends and they lived together, besides her also Filomena and Laura lived there. We ate lunch at her house sometimes, and sometimes we ate at my house. While dinner [instead] always at my house or out. On 1 November, Amanda woke up before me. I went to see her later since she told me she wanted to go home to talk with her girlfriends.

I arrived at about 13”14 and there was Meredith who was wearing a pair of jeans which belong to her ex”boyfriend who was in London, Meredith went out at around 16:00 and we stayed, and we went out at around 18:00.

I point out that I make use of cannabis and I make use of it on every holiday, and whenever I need it. I am an anxious person. I do not remember how much I smoked, I certainly did [smoke] one at Amanda’s place, and at my house every time I felt like.

At 18.00 we went out and we went to the [city] center passing by Piazza Grimana, Piazza Morlacchi alla Fontana and Corso Vannucci. We remained in the center until 20.30”21 and then we went to my house; I do not remember at what time I had dinner, I think I had dinner together with Amanda.

I remember Amanda received a few text messages on her phone and she replied. I do not remember whether the message arrived before or after dinner. Then she told me that the pub was closed, unlike every Tuesday and Thursday and thus she did not have to go to work that day. Iʹm not sure if Amanda went out that night, I do not remember.

About that night I remember that the pipe under the sink had unlatched and, while I was washing things in the kitchen, the floor flooded, I tried to dry the floor and then, on Amanda’s suggestion, I let it go. I worked with my computer and then I went to bed. I received a call from my father, who calls me every night before I go to sleep, I do not remember if he called me on the landline phone or on the cell phone.

The next morning Amanda woke up before me, she woke me up telling me that she wanted to go take a shower at her house because she did not like my shower. So she went out and I remained to sleep. She went out at around 9:30 to 10:00. Later she came back, she rung at my door and I woke up. I remember that she had changed her clothes and she was now wearing a white skirt while the day before she was wearing jeans. She carried a mop with her to clean the floor.

I finished drying up the floor. I do not remember if we had breakfast together before or after. Amanda told me that she had found the front door wide open, with blood stains and that therefore all this was strange. She told me to go to her house to see what had happened, we got there and I was agitated.

She opened the front door [and] I noticed that Filomenaʹs door was open with broken glass. The bathroom was clean except the bathmat and the sink which was stained with blood, she told me that someone had cut himself/herself or they were menstruating. The only thing that I noticed [is] that Meredith’s door was locked with the key and I tried to enter the room from the outside, while I was doing this Amanda was leaning over the railing to try to reach the window; she had knocked repeatedly and calling [sic] Meredith ʹs room.

I tried to look through the keyhole and saw that there was a duffel bag and an open wardrobe”door. Then I told her to call her girlfriends. I then called my sister who is an inspector and she told me to dial 112 [Carabinieri] and I gave [them] Amanda’s phone number. We remained out of the house to wait for the arrival of the Carabinieri. Some officers of the Postal Police arrived who wanted to talk to Filomena. When the officers of the Postal Police arrived we were out of the house. I remember I called 112 before the arrival of the Postal Police officers. I spoke with the officers of the Postal Police and Amanda too if she could understand what they said; I reported [to them] that there was something wrong by showing that Filomenaʹs bedroom door was wide open with broken glass on the floor and the door of Meredithʹs room was locked.

Filomena arrived with her boyfriend and some friends of hers. The Postal Police officers broke down the door of Meredithʹs room and they said that they had seen a foot and some blood. Then the Carabinieri arrived.

I previously made a false statement because I was under pressure and I was very agitated, I was shocked and I was afraid. I point out that on 5 November I was very agitated when the agents asked me questions because they put me under pressure. I confirm that on the night of 1 November I spent the night with Amanda. I do not remember if Amanda went out that evening. At 20.30 we were at my house. I got it mixed up.

I remember that Amanda must have come back [home together] with me. I do not remember if she went out. My father calls me every day and I find it strange that he did not call on 1 November. I fail to understand why my prints are there; I [did] not enter that room; I was not wearing those shoes on 1 or 2 November. The one who killed her must have had my same shoes. They are rather common shoes.

In my Internet blog where there are some of my feelings and in particular where I quote the Monster of Foligno [2] who came from the Onaoasi College, that was just irony.

With regard to the faeces in the bathroom, I did not see them since I did not enter the bathroom, I was outside [the bathroom] and I leaned with my face toward the toilet bowl. Amanda got scared and she jumped on me and told me that the faeces were no longer there compared to before [sic] when she had gone to take a shower.

I walk around with a knife that I use to carve trees. I have a collection of knives in Giovinazzo. I also have katanas, [but] they are blunt swords. Itʹs a passion that one about knives. I have always carried a knife with me in my pocket since I was 13 years old.

I do not remember exactly if that Thursday night she went out, I remember well that I was on the computer more or less up to 12.00 smoking my joints. I am sure that I ate, that I remained at home and that Amanda slept with me.

I have two knives, the one the Flying Squad seized is the one that I carry when I wear these garments; when I wear other clothing I carry the other knife; these two are my favorite knives. The Flying Squad put great psychological pressure on me. The first time we went to the police station we were kept there the whole night. I categorically rule out that I have ever entered the room where the victim was found.

On 8 November Knox’s lawyers had just been appointed. Knox and her lawyers were perhaps at a disadvantage in the hearing, having just met. But Judge Matteini was not fact-finding and her only decision was to remand the three (including Patrick) in prison. Knox’s opportunity to talk came on 17 December 2007 in Capanne before Dr Mignini (see Post #15).

On 6 November Amanda Knox had submitted three statements all linked to in Part 1 here and all written at her own insistence. Judge Matteini disallows these for use against Knox but allows them for use against others, later confirmed in a Cassation ruling which oddly was claimed as a new victory by Knox forces. The statements were never ruled illegally obtained.

3. Matteini Report: The Full Version

Because it is so long, our new translation of the Matteini report, with emphases in bold of what is especially significant, appears as Part 5 below under “Click here for more”.

4. The Panel of Three Judges Chaired By Judge Ricciarelli

Judge Riciarelli chaired a panel of judges on 30 November 2007 and, with more evidence, the findings were more forceful than Judge Matteini’s.

For example the panel labeled both of the two dangerous with Knox demonstrating having several personalities. For the first time a court stated that the physical evidence pointed toward a group attack.

There is a full translation of the Ricciarelli Report here. We will excerpt key passages here soon.

Significantly, Knox and her defense are not reported anywhere as having made her 6 November “interrogation” an issue. So nearly a month has passed since the “interrogation” and Knox has seemingly still not complained to anyone except for one private letter from Knox to her lawyers on which they did not act.

These media reports below will be supplemented soom by excerpts from the judges’ report.

1. CNN Cable News Rome

They carried a report in English on the Ricciarelli panel which included the following.

A panel of judges in Italy said an American student held in connection with the killing of Meredith Kercher should stay in police custody because evidence suggested she had “fatal capacity for aggression,” Italian media reported Wednesday.

A court ruled last week that Amanda Knox, 20, and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 23, must remain in jail after lawyers for the pair appealed for their release.

Massimo Ricciarelli, president of the panel of three judges that gave last Friday’s ruling, published the reasons for his decision Wednesday, Luca Maori, a lawyer for Sollecito confirmed to CNN.

In his ruling, Ricciarelli said Knox’s detention was justified because evidence showed she has multiple personalities, according to the Italian daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera, which published transcripts of the ruling on its Web site.

Corriere della Sera reported the judge as saying that Knox has a “high, we could say fatal, capacity for aggression.”

“(Knox) has a disposition to follow whatever drive she has, even when they can end up in violent and uncontrollable acts,” the ruling said, according to the paper.

Ricciarelli added that all the evidence suggested Kercher was killed by someone she knew, the paper reported, and investigations suggested that more than one person carried out the killing and that the villa where the body was found had not been broken into….

According to the newspaper, the ruling said the lack of evidence of a break-in “proves that the killer did not have to exercise any type of violence in order to enter the house, having used the keys or having been allowed in by the victim herself.”

A report issued more than a week ago by an Italian judge suggested Kercher may have been sexually assaulted at knifepoint before she was killed in her bed.

John Follain Book

In the excellent book A Death In Italy John Follain included this below. He leaves out that the panel concluded that there must have been several attackers though CNN above and Italian media did report that.

30 November 2007

Amanda and Raffaele’s hopes of freedom ““ a fortnight earlier both had made a new appeal for their release ““ were drastically dashed by a panel of three judges headed by Judge Massimo Ricciarelli. The judges endorsed much of Mignini’s reconstruction of the murder and decreed they should stay in prison.

Their ruling was scathing in its analysis of Amanda. She had “˜a many-sided personality ““ self-confident, shrewd and naïve, but with a strong taste for taking centre stage and a marked, we could say fatal, ability in putting people together.’ She acted on her desires “˜even when they can lead to violent and uncontrollable acts.’

As for Amanda’s statements since Meredith’s death, they were a “˜constant attempt to do and undo, to say something and then immediately deny it, as if she wanted to please everyone. Such behaviour seems to be the result of slyness and naïvety at the same time.’

For the judges, there was no burglary at the cottage. Only Spiderman, they said, could have entered the cottage through Filomena’s broken window. Why would a thief have got rid of Meredith’s mobile phones so soon after the crime? And why would a killer take the phones with him in the first place, only to abandon them a short distance away? Meredith’s killers had taken them from the cottage, the judges surmised, because they didn’t want the phones to ring there. The killers needed to pretend to call Meredith after her death, and they didn’t want their call to help track her down to her room.

“˜The killer did not have to exercise any type of violence in order to enter the house, having used the keys or having been allowed in by the victim herself,’ the judges said. Meredith was killed by someone she knew, and probably by more than one person.

Raffaele had lied in claiming to have called the police before they arrived at the cottage. Nor had he gone to bed the previous night at about midnight or 1 a.m. He had spent a turbulent night, so much so that he had switched his mobile on again very early and received a message from his father at 6 a.m. ““ it was a goodnight message, clearly sent when the mobile was switched off and for that reason had reached him only the next morning.

The judges mocked Raffaele for claiming he could recall spending a long time at his computer as well as smoking joints on the evening of 1 November. Appearing before the judges themselves a few days earlier, he’d given new details of his time at the computer which, they remarked, “˜clearly conflict with the pitch darkness that would have reigned in his mind after taking the drugs, unless he suffers from a particular pathology ““ the selective loss of memory.’

An expert’s analysis of Raffaele’s laptop showed there had been human activity between 6.27 p.m. and 9.10 p.m. when the film Amélie was screened. There was no trace of human activity between 9.10 p.m. and 5.32 a.m. ““ “˜a formidable corroboration of Raffaele’s involvement’ as the dawn activity, they said, pointed to a virtually sleepless night.

In his blog, Raffaele had failed to distance himself from serious criminals ““ he’d praised a convict who killed two boys ““ and above all he’d proclaimed his desire for “˜big thrills’. The judges also mentioned the photograph of him in which he brandished a cleaver. Violence, they concluded, attracted him. Both in his behaviour and in his wavering statements, which often fell into line with Amanda’s “˜dream-like’ accounts, Raffaele had shown himself to have a fragile temperament, “˜exposed to impulses and outside influences of every kind’.

Please click here for more

Wednesday, September 03, 2014

Sollecito Posting Of Knox’s Diary: Is He Again Prodding Knox Closer To The Fire To Help Himself?

Posted by Peter Quennell

Above and below: interiors of Capanne Prison built about a decade ago; Knox front-row right?


Another potshot in the escalating Knox/Sollecito wars?

In November 2007 in Capanne Prison Knox wrote prolifically in English in a diary.  Sollecito has now aggressively put it online together with the official Italian translation, as spotted by the sharp eyes of main poster Nell

The diary was taken by prison authorities, apparently with no protest by Knox as she was pre-warned that her cell would need to be searched. The English original and an Italian translation were entered into evidence at trial, though the diary played no overt role of which we are aware.

Defense forces helpfully offered it around perhaps in the hope that it would make the authorities not look so good.

The diary then became the core of a 2008 book Amanda And The Others by Fiorenza Sarzanini, a prominent Italian journalist on the staff of the major newspaper Corriere.

The book was not entirely unsympathetic to the real Knox. But Knox’s lawyers were seemingly concerned that her peculiar writings as riffed-upon by Sarzanini could subvert the preferred Knox image in court - though frankly that image was pretty daffy too.

The Knox team sued the holding company of Corriere. They won an award in the first round, then that was reversed on appeal, and then last year Cassation partially reversed that verdict, and Knox was granted an award.

Italian media reported all of this, but we didnt see any jubilant report in the US. Maybe because all Knox case-related income can be clawed back under US and Italian bloodmoney laws.

However, according to the Italian reports, Corriere’s legal fault was held not to be one of copyright or of the privacy of Knox. It was in publishing passages in which Knox negatively highlighted others, such as the list of those she had had sex with, a no-no under Italian privacy laws.

The Sarzanini book is still on sale in Italy, and there was no court ruling that it had to be withdrawn. The same passages Sollecito has put online are also in Italian in that book. There seems nothing in US or UK law that would forbid publishing of an English-language version if Fiorenza Sarzanini wants to do that.

Ironically Knox with her own 2013 book seems to have run afoul of the self-same laws in her serial defaming of officials, and in due course she stands to lose much more than she had gained from that small award.

Knox’s book was apparently put into Italian, though Italian and British editions were dropped at the last minute, days after Cassation ruled against Knox, in April last year. Oggi translated and published passages from the book which will see Oggi also taken to court.

Hard to believe but Knox’s bamboozled shadow writer Linda Kulman and HarperCollins New York were reported as scrambling to remove a lot of defamatory passages from the US version before Knox’s book went out.

We have posted several excerpts, which were pure fiction, and it is still the nasty work of a troubling psyche. Presumably that is Sollecito’s point.

Monday, September 01, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #12: Hard Proof That In 5-6 Nov Session Knox Merely Built Visitors List

Posted by Our Main Posters

1. What Really Happened on 5-6 November

The introduction to Hoax Post #1 explains what really happened at Knox’s recap/summary session on 5-6 November 2007.

In a sentence: Knox was there unwanted and grumpy, was advised by Inspector Rita Ficarra to go and sleep, refused, agreed to build a list of possible perps (she listed seven, including Guede), spontaneously had a wailing conniption over a mundane text she sent to Patrick, was semi-calmed-down, repeatedly provided refreshments, and insisted on writing three statements without a lawyer; all said she went out on the night of the attack, all framed Patrick, and one even pointed at Sollecito.

2. Hard Proof Knox Worked On The List

This memo above (click on it for the full version) records the main outcome of Rita Ficarra’s 75-minute summary/recap session (defenses conceded it was not an interrogation session) with Knox, with an interpreter and two others present.

Rita Ficarra wrote the memo some hours later, on the evening of 6 November, after she had caught up on some sleep. It is based on a handwritten version Knox painstakingly evolved on a page of her notebook, which she then tore out and handed to Inspector Ficarra. That handwritten page is in evidence too.

The timing here is key.

According to the testimony of Rita Ficarra and the interpreter Anna Donnino, the real work on the list only began around 12:30 after Anna Donnino arrived. It took all or most of the next hour.  Knox obtained all the phone numbers from her mobile phone which she handed over to the others present at several points (those phone numbers are long disused.)

Kristeva kindly did the translation below.

Annotation By Rita Ficarra

On 6 November 2007, at 20.00, in the offices of the Flying Squad of the Questura of Perugia. The undersigned Officer of P.G. [Attorney General], Chief Inspector of the State Police FICARRA Rita, notes that, as part of the investigation of the murder of British citizen Meredith KERCHER,

On the night of November 5th c.a. [current year], at approximately 23.00, while in the Offices of the Questura of Perugia, along with Amanda KNOX, waiting for the same to be heard in regard to the fact for which we are proceeding,

Learned, informally. news related to some male subjects who certainly knew MEREDITH and of whom Amanda gave indications on their respective residences—drawing roads and landmarks in her notebook ““ as well as their mobile phone numbers.

The same [Amanda] extracted these phone numbers from her mobile phone contacts and copied them on a piece of paper torn from her notebook and handed it to the undersigned.

The subjects indicated by Amanda were described as being:

PJ - Peter, a Swiss young man of Swiss nationality who certainly frequented Meredith and who would have surely been several times to their home; this young man dwelled in Via della Pergola, precisely in front of the “Contrappunto” club and close to the stairs and parking lot; mobile phone: 3891531078;

Patrik, owner of the pub “Le chic” where [the same] Amanda works. He too certainly knew Meredith. She was not able to provide an address but indicated that she had often seen him near the “rotonda [roundabout] of Porta Pesa, next to the Laundromat. Mobile phone number: 338719523;

Ardak, North African citizen of whom she gave no other indications other than his mobile phone: 3887972380;

Yuve, Algerian citizen who occasionally worked at “Le Chic” and would have dwelled in Via del Roscetto (near the residence of Sophie) phone; 3203758112

Spyros, young man of Greek nationality of whom Amanda does not give any indications other than the mobile phone: 3293473230

Shaky, Moroccan citizen who would have been working in a “pizzeria” and who frequented the pubs and discotheques frequented by Meredith’s group of friends with whom they met at the pub or discotheque, friend of Sophie;

Lastly she informed of another South African young man, black, short, who plays basketball in the Piazza Grimana court, who would have, in one occasion, frequented the house.

On this occasion, Giacomo-Stefano, Riccardo and Marco (neighbours) were allegedly present, as well as Meredith.  She referred to the fact that Yuve probably knew him, but gave no further information, as she herself, didn’t associate with him.

Amanda, who was also present on this exact occasion, confirmed that she used hashish type drugs with her boyfriend Raffaele, despite what she had said previously.

She claimed that he had previously confessed to taking cocaine and acid in the past, but currently only used “pot”.  In addition, she hinted that Raffaele was experiencing problems with “depression-sadness”.

Furthermore, to get hold of her supply of “pot”, she claimed to have asked her flatmate Laura, who, allegedly, acted as intermediary between her and third parties.

It is noteworthy that the same afternoon, following her detention order and prior to her transfer to Capanne prison, Amanda KNOX asked for some blank paper with the intention of writing a written declaration. This she intended to deliver to the undersigned, before she was moved to prison, and requested that every policeman read it.

Hence, the undersigned received the attached manuscript written in English, by KNOX, and informed her that the manuscript, after being translated into Italian, would be forwarded to the appropriate judicial authority.

3. Subsequent TJMK Reporting On Next Steps

Nest in the list of posts in our interrogation hoax overview these reports should be read.

1. Click for Post: #15: Knox Is Told Her Rights And Repeats Fake Murder Charge

2. Click for Post: #13: The First Two Pre-Trial Opportunities Which Knox Flunked

They cover the first two formal opportunities for Knox to modify or to withdraw her accusation. At the second opportunity, Knox had legal counsel.

It is mandatory in Italy for lawyers to report any claimed abuse of their clients.

It affected Knox’s prospects for years down the road that not only did her lawyers never make such a report; they even announced publicly, in face of incessant further claims by Knox which her family took public, that they had never confirmed she had been abused.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #11: Why Prosecution And Defenses Never Believed Knox’s Version #2

Posted by Our Main Posters

Famous criminal lawyer Dr Giancarlo Costa - did he depart Knox’s team with doubts about her?

Recapitulating Our Purpose

In Post #10 below we hinted at two items - in fact, they are two documents - that resulted in a sharp drop in Knox’s credibility.

We said this about how Knox’s Perugia lawyers were affected.

It seems impossible to know about these items, and yet still believe that Knox was telling the truth.  Lawyers often encourage their clients to tell the truth and good lawyers never encourage their clients to lie. And yet here Ghirga, Dalla Vedova, Bongiorno and Maori would have known from latest early 2008 that Knox’s claims on the “interrogations” were in fact made up.

And if so, they must have asked themselves, why? Why did Knox have to lie?  In all the legitimate legal processes, meaning all those except the Hellmann appeal, the defense lawyers were seen by close observers to be dispirited and lacking the full punch that the certainty of innocence can bring.

Knox was lying. And they all knew. No hard proof, but it explains the timid cross-examinations. And it was the buzz around Perugia maybe put out by the Sollecito faction for which there is a sort of soft proof.

The one heavyweight among Knox’s lawyers, a prominent criminal lawyer from Rome called Dr Giancarlo Costa, who was with her at the 6-hour 17 December 2007 questioning (which we turn to next) inexplicably departed from her team early-on, leaving her with the much less experienced Ghirga and Dalla Vedova.

Sharp-eyed Andrea Vogt and Barbie Nadeau both noticed that no mention of Dr Costa was made in Knox’s book. Late in 2009 and again late in 2011 Andrea Vogt interviewed him, and he seemingly suggested that Knox might have been better served at the end of the process by a negotiated plea, in effect similar to Guede’s. (If so, he is now proved right, and the remaining Knox lawyers or her family made a very bad call.)

We said this about how all the prosecutors and all the judges were affected. 

In the years that followed since, these two items helped to changed legal mindsets, from Prosecutor Mignini, to Judge Matteini, to Judge Micheli, to Judge Massei, to even Judge Hellmann, and so on to Cassation and the Nencini appeal.

Describing The Two Incriminating Items

Now we turn to the two items, the two documents, the two elephants in the room. They are rock-solid confirmation of all the testimony by investigators in Posts #2 to #9, and in days of defense cross-examination they were not argued with. They were correctly guessed by several emailers. They are of course:

(1) Rita Ficarra’s notes of the 12:45 session

Inspector Ficarra wrote up these notes at 8:00 pm on the evening of 6 November, about six hours after Knox and Sollecito were carted off to Capanne Prison.

This was long before she knew she would be contradicted and years before she knew she would be accused of criminal actions. The notes were in evidence, and it was clear during cross-examination that the defense teams had studied them.

She recorded a description of the session in direct line with her testimony in Hoax Post #2 and Hoax Post #3 and Hoax Post #4. It anticipated perfectly the scenario that emerged from other investigators present.

(2) Knox’s hand-written list of seven names

She wrote these out along with maps and annotations. The list had very obviously been created over a prolonged period of time. This must have occupied all but the final minutes of the session, at which point she lost her cool, had her first conniption, and fingered Patrick.

Here again from Post #2 is the testimony about it by Rita Ficarra. GCM stands for Judge Massei and GM stands for Dr Mignini.

RF: At that point I say to her: “for me it is important then that we write these [names etc down], that therefore, since you are waiting [NdT. i.e. for Raffaele], let’s go do a follow-up to the recap that you have already given me, have already submitted to me”. So I go to the office, that is to say, I go into the office room, and we begin to write.

GM: Listen: before continuing, she wrote a note?

RF: Yes.

GM: The note: you can, I believe you can consult/examine/refer to it.

GCM: Yes, certainly, it is permitted to consult/examine/refer to her records.

GM: I am referring to everything that that note reported.

RF: Yes, I’ve already said that, in effect”¦ The note of 6 November, at 2000 hours, I made it in the evening because having then not slept for two days, I went [straight] to bed in morning when I finished. Morning and afternoon.

The first part I’ve already related and it gives me indications about these boys, about non-Italians, about a certain PJ Peter Svizzero, who had seemingly been several times in their home and who lived nearby the area of via della Pergola 7.

Patrick, of the [sic] owner of the pub, Le Chique [sic], where she herself worked, I’ve already said, she gives me the mobile-phone information.

Then she speaks of a certain Ardak, a North African citizen, and gives me the mobile-phone information.

A certain Juve, an Algerian citizen, who worked occasionally at the Le Chique [sic] pub and who apparently lived in the vicinity of the home of another of the victim’s friends.

Sofie [sic]; also for him she gives me the mobile information.

Spiros, a young lad of Greek nationality, for whom she givers me only the mobile-phone information.

Shaki [Hicham Khiri], a Moroccan citizen who works in a pizzeria, frequents the [same] pubs [as those] frequented by all the girls of the victim’s group, and [is] also friends with Sofie [sic].

She furthermore reports about a black South African boy, short, who plays basketball in the Piazza Grimana court, [and] who on one occasion had apparently visited the home of the boys who lived underneath the apartment.

So Knox eagerly devoted considerable time to recalling and explaining who Peter Svizzero, Patrick, Ardak, Juve, Spiros, Shaki and a South African [Guede, disguised] were, with maps to some of their places and phone numbers thrown in. She was talking and writing at the same time. The four investigators needed to do little more than sit watching.

Contrast The “Explanation” In Knox’s Book

In her book Knox makes no mention of any of the above.

Fom 2007 to 2013 when her book came out, Knox’s tendency was to expand upon and embellish her own explanation for her conniption and fingering of Patrick.

This was despite the fact that her two-day stint on the stand in July 2009 focussed exclusively on this was disbelieved by the Massei judges and by most Italians who watched.

It was also despite the fact that she served three years for this with her guilty verdict confirmed even by Judge Hellmann labeling her a felon for life.

It was also despite the fact that after the 2009 trial those investigators she had impugned at trial sparked new charges still to be faced in a Florence court.

It was also despite the fact that more charges for her 2013 book and her Oggi interview are expected to be added by the chief prosecutor in Bergamo.

Amazingly, she was still digging herself in deeper as late as 2014. By far her longest, most self-serving and most surreal version of the session appeared as Chapter 10 of her book.

This chapter is 20 pages long and consists of page after page after page of invented dialogue. Everybody has long known that the last few pages were Knox’s malicious invention.

That the rest of the pages are too is also dead-certain.

Neither Rita Ficarra’s notes nor Knox’s list of names with maps and notes,one of which she created and both of which were repeatedly testified to right in front of her, are even mentioned anywhere in Knox’s book.

This dishonest dialogue and mass accusation of crimes is what Knox and Linda Kulman give us instead: 

Police officer Rita Ficarra slapped her palm against the back of my head, but the shock of the blow, even more than the force, left me dazed. I hadn’t expected to be slapped. I was turning around to yell, “Stop!”””my mouth halfway open””but before I even realized what had happened, I felt another whack, this one above my ear. She was right next to me, leaning over me, her voice as hard as her hand had been. “Stop lying, stop lying,” she insisted.

Stunned, I cried out, “Why are you hitting me?”

“To get your attention,” she said.

I have no idea how many cops were stuffed into the cramped, narrow room. Sometimes there were two, sometimes eight””police coming in and going out, always closing the door behind them. They loomed over me, each yelling the same thing: “You need to remember. You’re lying. Stop lying!”

“I’m telling the truth,” I insisted. “I’m not lying.” I felt like I was suffocating. There was no way out. And still they kept yelling, insinuating.

The authorities I trusted thought I was a liar. But I wasn’t lying. I was using the little energy I still had to show them I was telling the truth. Yet I couldn’t get them to believe me.

Huh? Really? In fact only four were involved. The conversation was low-key. The list of names did emerge. Knox was never yelled at or hit, as her own lawyers publicly confirmed. And Rita Ficarra and others describe some exceptional kindnesses shown to Knox, before and after she spontaneously became disturbed, which at trial Knox confirmed.

Knox and Linda Kulman give us twenty more pages of this mass accusation of crimes, which not one witness confirmed or any court believed, more than enough to occupy the entire session, leaving no time for all the work on that list of names which was the sole point of the session and undeniably exists.

Friday, August 15, 2014

Legal Timeline Of The Main Case, On Which The Next Ruling By Supreme Court Could Be Final

Posted by catnip

Cassazione (Supreme Court of Italy) seen from the east across the Tiber River


Todays Status

The Supreme Court is due to rule, possibly in the autumn, on what might be the final appeal by Sollecito and Knox on grounds which have not been published. Main steps prior to this:

November 2007

Meredith Kercher is found violently killed in her home while studying abroad in Italy. Her housemate, Amanda Knox, and Amanda’s friend Raffaele Sollecito, as well as Amanda’s boss, Patrick Lumumba, are arrested. A fourth person, Rudy Guede, is tracked down and also arrested. Patrick Lumumba’s alibi is confirmed and he is released.

December 2007, January 2008

Due process hearings authorise the continuation of preventative custody for the suspects, on the grounds of flight risk and possibility of tampering with the evidence.

October 2008

Preliminary Hearing Court, Perugia, Micheli presiding ““ after investigations have completed, the committal hearing finds there is a case to answer and remands Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito to stand trial on the charges of :

(A) aggravated murder in company of Meredith Kercher
(B) illegal transport of a knife from Raffaele Sollecito’s apartment
(C) aggravated sexual assault in company of Meredith Kercher (later folded into charge (A), on the grounds of being part of the same criminal event)
(D) illegal profiting by possession, to wit: of a sum of money approx. €300 and of credit cards belonging to the victim, and her mobile phones
(E) simulation of a crime, to wit: staging a break-in in Filomena Romanelli’s room
(F) Amanda Knox, in addition, calunnia, for falsely claiming, knowing him to be innocent, Diya Lumumba also called “Patrick”, of being the author of the murder

Rudy Guede is tried summarily “on the papers”, as he has requested the expedited trial procedure (“fast-track” trial) and is found guilty of charges (A) and (C), and not guilty of the theft, charge (D), and sentenced to life, automatically discounted to 30 years for choosing the expedited trial procedure.

December 2009

On appeal to the Court of Appeals, Perugia (4/2009, on 22 December 2009), his sentence is reduced to 24 years, automatically discounted to 16 years, the aggravating factors of the charges not being found by the court. His final appeal, to the Supreme Court of Cassation, First Criminal Section, is rejected (7195/11, hearing of 16 December 2010, reasons handed down 24 February 2011).

December 2009

Court of Assizes, Perugia, presided over by Massei ““ finds Amanda and Raffaele guilty of all charges (except the theft of the money and credit cards) but without the aggravating factors applying, and sentences them, with mitigating factors included, to 26 years for Amanda, and 25 years for Raffaele (the extra year for Amanda being for the calunnia).

October 2011

Court of Appeals of the Court of Assizes, Perugia, presided over by Hellmann (after a last-minute replacement) ““ trial convictions quashed, except for the calunnia charge against Amanda (charge (F)), where sentence was increased to time served (3 years); both prisoners released (4/2011, decision 3 October 2011, reasons handed down 5 December 2011).

March 2013

The Supreme Court of Cassation (25/3/2013) found the acquittals on charges A&C, B, D, and E to be unsafe, and annulled that part of the decision, remanding the matter to the Florentine jurisdiction, as per the usual cascade rules, for a fresh determination, and rejected Amanda Knox’s appeal on the charge (F) conviction and sentence.

January 2014

Court of Appeals, Second Chamber, Florence, presided over by Nencini ““ trial convictions on the non-calunnia charges upheld, therefore sentence increased to 28 years and 6 months for Amanda (11/13, decision 30 January 2014, reasons handed down 29 April 2014). All convicted parties to pay the relevant compensation to the various injured parties. Appeals to the Supreme Court of Cassation have been lodged.

Associated Timelines

See the posts here and here on the timing of events arrived at by the trial judges.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Advisor Ted Simon Jumps Ship? With Legal And Financial Woes Will The Other Paid Help Stay?

Posted by Peter Quennell

Paid help Robert Barnett, Linda Kulman, Carlo Dalla Vedova, and Luciano Ghirga


Knox seems to badly need several kinds of professional help.

But Ted Simon simply parroting the foolish Steve Moore and the foolish Bruce Fischer was not really what we had in mind. If Ted Simon really is Knox’s ex-lawyer what a legal and financial mess he leaves behind.

In America there is a common legal remark on TV: that the coverup is often worse than the crime. It is often for the coverup that perps get sentenced to the longest time - often that is the only sentence they get.

Had the Knox and Sollecito forces been smart enough to take the route Dr Mignini hinted at in 2007 - that this was a hazing with sexual humiliation that spiraled out of control - and shown remorse as Guede to some extent did - the two might have faced lesser charges, been out early, and brought to an early end some of the terrible agony inflicted on Meredith’s ailing family over nearly seven years.

The paid and unpaid help might now be doing just fine.

But of course the smart route was ignored. The coverup for Knox seems totally on the rocks. Italy holds all the cards. As described in the past several posts, legal and financial nightmares for the Knox and Sollecito paid and unpaid help could be ahead. For one thing, they could all end up unpaid.

• Remember, the prosecution case presented at trial in 2009 was powerful and decisive, and the defenses were so demoralised in the summer and fall that two defense lawyers were said to have nearly walked.


• Remember, the Knox forces never tell you this, as Steve Moore etc make inane charges about corruption on the prosecution side, but the ONLY known corruption in the case was on the defense side.

It is openly known in Italy that the judicial appointments to the 2011 appeal court were corrupt. It was a hijacked court.

Judge Chiari and Prosecutor Comodi both publicly made this quite plain, Dr Galati said Cassation would set things right, the CSM edged Judge Hellmann into retirement (where he still waffles on with trademark incompetence) and the Supreme Court did set things right, with the unique ferocity that we saw.

Knox’s serial lying in her own coverup was very well known (after all, it was for lying that she served three years) but the flashmob attempts at coverup based on her invented claims went on regardless, even escalated in the past several years with the arrival of new dupes. Saul Kassin and John Douglas and the seriously out-to-lunch Jim Clemente come to mind.

The Knox book bizarrely parrots Steve Moore and Bruce Fischer, presumably with Ted Simon’s okay. Now it has put her paid help’s problems on steroids. All of them including Ted Simon could be legally and financially liable in several different ways. The past several posts described some of those.

Take for example this statement Knox puts into the public domain about her Perugia lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova, in which she is accusing him of all people of falsely accusing police and prosecutors of crimes:

Carlo [Dalla Vedova], who’d never sugarcoated my situation, said, “These are small-town detectives. They chase after local drug dealers and foreigners without visas. They don’t know how to conduct a murder investigation correctly. Plus, they’re bullies. To admit fault is to admit that they’re not good at their jobs. They suspected you because you behaved differently than the others. They stuck with it because they couldn’t afford to be wrong.”

Really? He said that?

Read all the transcripts at trial and Mr Dalla Vedova’s public statements nowhere near resemble that. They were careful, honest and respectful, to say the least. He had numerous opportunities to complain. But he didnt, not once.

As we’ve remarked in the posts just below, back in 2008 he and Mr Ghirga had to publicly advise Knox to please not keep inventing things. So to this claim of Knox, when her book comes up for trial, what can Mr Dalla Vedova say?

Either he committed a new crime or his client did?

There is a good reason Giulia Bongiorno is not defending Sollecito for his own radioactive book. On that, she has already jumped ship.

Last one out the door, please turn off the lights.

Friday, August 08, 2014

False Claims By Amanda Knox & The Book Team May End Up Costing Them Millions

Posted by Our Main Posters

Book agent Robert Barnett forgets to exult about marketing the defamatory Amanda Knox book

True Costs Of The PR Bandwagon

Not solely for crimes of her own making, but there is a potential $10-million-plus bill that Knox & co may be stuck with.

• $5-plus million in costs and damages awarded against her by the Massei trial court and confirmed by the Nencini appeal court, incuding unpaid damages of nearly $100,000 to Patrick which Cassation already rendered final.


• $4 million for the book payment arranged in seeming defiance of Italian and American bloodmoney laws (called Son of Sam laws in the US), big bucks in financial donations from other misleading fundraisings (see the Knox website), and yet more big bucks for civil damages (see one defamation action described in the post under this one.)

A Self-Damaging Trend

It seems Amanda Knox can be extremely hard to shut up. Back in 2008 Knox’s own Perugia lawyers had to ask her publicly, via the media, to please shut up and stop inventing things.

After her conniption at Perugia’s central police station on 6 November 2007 she not only insisted on writing out three statements, she also babbled for large parts of the next five hours.  That was despite attempts to calm her down with camomile tea and carbohydrates.

Then came her two calamitous days in mid 2009 on the witness stand (see more below) and her leaked diaries (which actually did nail one malicious lie not her own), and her bizarre video, and multiple reports of her other doings in Capanne, and multiple interviews ever since.

One of which has entrapped Italy’s Oggi as we can see here and here.

A Possible Legal Scenario

Knox’s own lawyers (who dont seem to have read her book in draft) also never backed up any of her claims at trial. Read the transcripts and it is pretty obvious that they were very very careful not to do so.

Even the partisan Judge Hellmann concluded Knox was lying and both he and Cassation confirmed Knox’s three-year prison sentence for calunnia. To that there is no further appeal, and of course the time was served.

The precise timing of the Knox book’s release represents another potential millstone. It came out after Sollecito’s book had been sent to Florence prosecutors for investigations, and also after British and Italian editions were cancelled by HarperCollins’s own lawyers, and also after the Italian Supreme Court reverted Knox’s status to “guilty pending any final appeal” leading to her appeal which failed last January.

Red flags were up all over the place. Even other better-advised American publishers were emitting warnings.

Absent Knox’s team getting good advice and withdrawing, settling, and apologizing, Knox and HarperCollins could be targeted by those Knox defamed. Then HarperCollins could target Mr Barnett and Ms Kulman. Mr Barnett and Ms Kulman could then target Mr Knox and Mr Marriott and Mr Simon.

Finding fault with Knox’s book is like shooting fish in a barrel. See our previous post. Here are ten further examples.

Instances Of False Claims

1. False Claim: Knox On The Framing Of Her Kindly Employer

This is the lie that was universally disbelieved and for which Knox served three years for. See our still-emerging Interrogation Hox series. The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt is ahead of us on this one.

[Knox] writes that she had a flashback to the interrogation, when she felt coerced into a false accusation. “I was weak and terrified that the police would carry out their threats to put me in prison for 30 years, so I broke down and spoke the words they convinced me to say. I said: ‘Patrick - it was Patrick.’”

In her memoir, she describes in detail the morning that she put that accusation in writing, and says the prison guard told her to write it down fast.

Yet in a letter to her lawyers she gave no hint of being rushed or pressured. “I tried writing what I could remember for the police, because I’ve always been better at thinking when I was writing. They gave me time to do this. In this message I wrote about my doubts, my questions and what I knew to be true.”

2. False Claim: Dr Mignini Portrayed Knox As A She-Devil

During the rebuttals, on December 3, each lawyer was given a half hour to counter the closing arguments made over the past two weeks. Speaking for me, Maria criticized Mignini for portraying Meredith as a saint and me as a devil

Really? Prosecutor Mignini said that? So why did the entire media corps report that it was said by Patrick Lumumba’s lawyer Carlo Pacelli? As the BBC reported:

[Mr Pacelli] added: “Who is the real Amanda Knox? Is it the one we see before us here, simple water and soap, the angelic St Maria Goretti?”

“Or is she really a she-devil, a diabolical person focused on sex, drugs and alcohol, living life to the extreme and borderline - is this the Amanda Knox of 1 November 2007?”

So even Mr Pacelli didnt compare Knox to Meredith, or simply call Knox a she-devil to her face. He asked rhetorically if she was a she-devil or a saint. Not exactly unheard of in American courts.

And remember he was addressing someone who would have been quite happy to see Patrick put away for life, cost him two weeks in a cell, entangled her own mother in a cover-up, destroyed Patrick’s business and reputation world-wide, still hasnt paid him money owed, and for lying about him served three years.

Prosecutor Mignini in fact never called Knox anything at all. We can find no record that he did. Again and again he has denied it. And he had no personal need to prosecute Knox, and certainly no need to frame her, despite many pages Knox devotes to trying to prove the reckless claim that he did.

3. False Claim: Dr Mignini Ascribes Crimes To Satanic Cults

Actually Dr Mignini has been repeatedly seen on Italian national TV saying satanic cults are rare and he has never originated even one such claim.

Dozens of others had suspected and talked about a satanic cult behind the Monster of Florence murders for many years before he investigated one loose end in the case. He did correctly not ascribe those murders to the work of a single serial killer - the man Doug Preston and Mario Spezi seemed to be framing to create for themselves worldwide adulation, only to end up bitter and mean when caught red-handed.

A Sollecito defense lawyer (Maori) emerged from a closed meeting with Judge Matteini and among other heated remarks originated the malicious claim that Dr Mignini was seeing something satanic.

4. False Claim: Knox Portrays Her Success On The Witness Stand

No success to anyone present. Knox devotes many pages to trying to make herself look good on the witness stand at the trial in mid-2009.

But Italians who could follow in Italian in real-time ended up trashing her phony performance up there. Read what they saw here and here.

It didnt convince the Massei court judges or Nencini court judges or the Supreme Court judges - or even the Hellmann court judges, those of the annulled appeal. Knox served three years.

5. False Claim: About Knox’s Medical Examination After Arrest

The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

“After my arrest, I was taken downstairs to a room where, in front of a male doctor, female nurse, and a few female police officers, I was told to strip naked and spread my legs. I was embarrassed because of my nudity, my period - I felt frustrated and helpless.”

The doctor inspected, measured and photographed her private parts, she writes - “the most dehumanising, degrading experience I had ever been through”.

But in the 9 November letter to her lawyers, she described a far more routine experience.

“During this time I was checked out by medics. I had my picture taken as well as more copies of my fingerprints. They took my shoes and my phone. I wanted to go home but they told me to wait. And that eventually I was to be arrested. Then I was taken here, to the prison, in the last car of three that carried Patrick, then Raffaele, then me to prison.”

Amanda Knox (arms up) at one of various concerts she attended in Capanne prison

6. False Claim: Capanne Prison was A Hellhole Of Sin And Debauchery

That opening remark of a book review by the National Enquirer was widely parroted in other American media reports.

Over half of the Knox book is devoted to hammering home this theme. Maybe in a longshot hope that it will help to encourage the U.S. to refuse her extradition.

Italian prison conditions and treatment, Knox claims, were so bad that they made her life miserable. She says that at times she became very despondent, and even claims to have imagined doing away with herself. 

However, Italian prison conditions except for occasional overcrowding are widely considered among the most humane, caring and rehabilitating in the world. Compared to US prison conditions, they are like night and day.

And this almost universal claim of every prisoner everywhere is contradicted by the media on which she and her family worked so hard; by prison staff and official visitors, and even by the US Federal Government itself.

(1) Contradicted by the extensive media reporting

Occasional despondency is not all uncommon among those paying their debt to society. And there is scads of reporting that Knox had adjusted well to prison.

Read all of this BBC report dated 2013 by the objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt. And read this by ABC News after Knox was found guilty in 2009.

Knox said that she felt “horrendous” the night that the verdict was delivered. “She said the prison guards did come in to hold her and make her feel better. She said the other prisoners were good to her,” Thomas said.

The reporter said the prison is “extremely clean.” Knox’s cell, which she shares with another American who has been sentenced on drug charges, is small. “It had a little bathroom with a door, a bidet, a sink, a shower…. better than some of the things I’ve seen at summer camp or boarding school.”

The women inmates are allowed to go to a hairdresser once a week.

The prison is a new facility, just opened in 2005. The women’s ward has an infirmary, an entertainment room with a pool table and ping-pong table, and a library. There is also a small chapel. Outside there is a little playground for children with benches and toys because there are cells specifically for women with children. Currently there are two women in Capanne with children.

It was very widely reported over four years that Knox was given the opportunity to do all these many things rarely encountered in American prisons: Learn the guitar. Read a lot. Watch TV. Study foreign languages.

Do artwork (colored pictures of hands). Attend rock concerts where she was seen leaping up and down (images here). Attend classical concerts. Attend Christmas parties.

Knox even played a major part in the creation of a rock video with a rock group. Unfortunately for her, that video appeared to many to come close to a taunting murder confession.

And on various occasions Knox was quoted as saying prison guards were kind to her.

(2) Contradicted by the US Embassy and State Department

American officials monitored Knox in court and prison and never saw anything that would back up Knox’s claim.

The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

State department cables, released through the Freedom of Information Act, show that between 2007 and 2009, three different high-level diplomats from Rome (Ambassador Ronald Spogli, Deputy Chief Elizabeth Dibble and Ambassador David Thorne) were among those reviewing Knox’s case.

Embassy officials visited regularly. Records show one consular official visited Knox on 12 November, soon after her arrest.  A few weeks later she wrote in her diary how the visits of embassy officials improved her experience….

In 2008 and 2009, she was visited by two embassy officials at a time, six times. Ambassador David Thorne, whose name appears at the bottom of cables in August, November and December of 2009, is the brother- in-law of US Secretary of State John Kerry (at that time chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee).

If the diplomats knew anything of the “harrowing prison hell” Knox was going through (as one paper put it), they are keeping those reports under wraps. Neither Kerry nor any other prominent US politician has made any public complaints. Even today, her Italian lawyers maintain she was not mistreated.

This matters incredibly to Knox because it constitutes the official take of the US Federal Government. It will be front and center of State Department and Justice Department considerations when an arrest warrant for Knox is issued and extradition is requested.

(3) Contradicted by Member of Parliament Rocco Girlanda

Mr Girlanda visited Amanda Knox in prison approximately 20 times for the specific purpose (or so he claimed) of checking her prison conditions. In fact that was the only way he could legally visit her, although oddly enough a book and a number of other pro-Knox actions emerged - even a complaint to the President about the Perugia prosecutors.

After Knox was released late in 2011 Mr Girlanda specifically praised the prison staff in this statement.

Perugia Prison Police The Example of Professionalism.

The PdL Party member of parliament Rocco Girlanda praises the officers of the Perugia prison.

“I’ve had the opportunity to describe to the Minister of Justice, Nitto Palma, the great professional behaviour shown by the Perugia Penitentiary Police with regards to the court case that saw Amanda Knox as protagonist, a behaviour that I had always observed during the course of my visits to the Capanne prison in the last two years.”  So says Rocco Girlanda, Umbrian deputy of the PdL, after the conclusion of the appeal trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

“In recent months I have had the opportunity to make dozens of visits to the prison, which also included some of the petitions presented by the senior management of the premises and my commitment in this regard, always finding, that starting from the director Bernardina Di Mario, continuing with the Penitentiary Police commander Fulvio Brillo, up to the entire personnel employed, the helpfulness, the courtesy and their professionalism which allows me to say that Perugia is a model structure on the national landscape, managed and directed in the best way and with a large dose of humanity on the part of the staff employed.”

(4) Contradicted by Knox’s own Italian lawyers

Knox’s lawyers Mr Dalla Vedova and Mr Ghirga visited her again and again during the 2009 trial and 2010 hiatus and 2011 appeal. Knox once again had dozens of opportunities to lodge complaints with them - lawyers who could have initiated Supreme Court action in response.

When Knox was released late in 2011 Mr Dalla Vedova and Mr Ghirga were interviewed by the TV station Umbria 24:

The lawyers: “she never complained about the prison”.

Amanda Knox “has never complained about the conduct/behavior of the prison police supervisor” and “she has never mentioned his name”: to say so are the defenders of the American woman, lawyers Carlo Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga, commenting on what was reported by the tabloid The Sun. “

Ghirga said: “In the diary Amanda never makes the name.”

Della vedova said: “We are grateful to the management staff of Capanne prison for their cooperation even given to the family’s requirements. Amanda has never reported violations against her.”

“She absolutely has received the correct treatment and the outmost solidarity, within compliance, especially in the prison’s female section.”

(5) Contradicted by prison guards and other inmates

In some interviews, the reporter Sharon Feinstein captures a view of a difficult, narcissistic, uncaring Amanda Knox which is very commonplace around Perugia. The real faults lie with Knox, in effect.

7. False Claim: About Knox’s Persona And Mood Swings In Prison

The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

She says she was often suicidal, but recollections of prison staff and other inmates differ. Flores Innocenzia de Jesus, a woman incarcerated with Amanda in 2010 described Knox as sunny and popular among the children who were in Capanne with their mothers, and recalled her avid participation in music and theatrical events. She also held a sought-after job taking orders and delivering goods to inmates from the prison dispensary.

“Most of the time when we spoke during our exercise break, the kids would call her and she would go and play with them,” de Jesus told me.

American officials monitored Knox in court and prison and never saw anything that would back up Knox’s claim.

8. False Claim: Negative Attitudes Displayed By The Prison Staff

Agian, the objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

“The prison staff are really nice,” wrote Knox in her personal prison diary, which was eventually published in Italy under the title Amanda and the Others.

“They check in to make sure I’m okay very often and are very gentle with me. I don’t like the police as much, though they were nice to me in the end, but only because I had named someone for them, when I was very scared and confused.”

She described Italian prisons as “pretty swell”, with a library, a television in her room, a bathroom and a reading lamp. No-one had beaten her up, she wrote, and one guard gave her a pep talk when she was crying in her cell.

Unlike the heavily-edited memoir, these are phrases she handwrote herself, complete with strike-outs, flowery doodles, peace signs and Beatles lyrics.

9. False Claim: The Positive HIV Result At Capanne Was Malicious

The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

Both accounts also refer to the devastating but erroneous news from the prison doctor that she had tested positive for HIV, although her diary presents a more relaxed person at this point. “First of all, the guy told me not to worry, it could be a mistake, they’re going to take a second test next week.”

We also know that it was Knox’s own team who leaked the HIV report and list of sex partners she herslf chose to create. Not the doctor or anyone else. No malice was intended, that is clear, despite her claims.

10. False Claim? Knox Was Pressured For Sex By A Prison Guard

One of Knox’s prison claims actually names a now-retired senior prison guard who Knox claimed often asked her for sex. There are no witnesses, but he is now suing Knox for libel and Knox herself seems to have wrecked any defense..

Knox made the claim but in a far weaker form in 2011. Then as CBS reported she had in fact concluded the guard was not even serious about sex. He was seeking to understand her.

Investigative journalist and CBS News Consultant Bob Graham, reading from Amanda’s letter to him: “”˜He was fixated on the topic of sex, with whom I’d done it, how I liked it, if I would like to do it with him. When I realized that he really wanted to talk to me about sex I would try to change the subject.’”

Correspondent Peter Van Sant: “What does this letter say to you about what she’s been going through?”

Graham: “It says in a time when she was clearly traumatized by the events of the death, the murder of her flatmate, that there she was, an innocent abroad, because she was innocent, she is innocent”¦ and here she was being pressured, further pressured in a prison system, a system that at least she should have had some degree of safety.”

Graham, reading Amanda’s letter: “I realize that he was testing me to see if I reacted badly, to understand me personally. He wanted to get a reaction or some information from me. I did not get the seriousness of the situation.’”

Knox’s claim about pressure for sex seems to have left Italians contemptuous. Yet more lies from knox, the Italian Il Giornale labeled it.

Have a good weekend, guys. Hit the law books.

Saturday, August 02, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #10: Why Prosecution And Defenses Never Believed Knox’s Version #1

Posted by Our Main Posters

1. Anti Knox Proofs In Plain Sight

American supporters of Knox argue that the “interrogation” is a “she said/they said” situation. One in which it is Knox that tells the world the truth.

And that the police had closed ranks to hide a brutal hours-long session resulting in Knox framing Patrick and that the “lost” recording of the “interrogation” would prove that she is the one that is right.

There is, of course, no recording, as it was an impromptu recap/summary session, with someone who might or might not have relevant information for the police. No legal system in the world requires the taping of that.

But there is in fact hard evidence the other way, that the investigators told the world the truth. Two items. Each mentioned often and assumed as givens in Posts #2 to #9.

Even if the days of crushing testimony left undented by cross-examination which we have posted was not enough, these items prove that the first scenario here is the truth and Knox has ever since lied.

Because several defense lawyers remarked on them without debating them, in cross-examining all the investigators who had any encounter with Knox on 5-6 November, all the defense counsel unquestionably knew that the items lurked there in the evidence pile in plain sight.

It seems impossible to know about these items, and yet still believe that Knox was telling the truth.

Lawyers often encourage their clients to tell the truth and good lawyers never encourage their clients to lie. And yet here Ghirga, Dalla Vedova, Bongiorno and Maori would have known from latest early 2008 that Knox’s claims on the “interrogations” were in fact made up.

And if so, they must have asked themselves, why? Why did Knox have to lie?

In all the legitimate legal processes, meaning all those except the Hellmann appeal, the defense lawyers were seen by close observers to be dispirited and lacking the full punch that the certainty of innocence can bring.

In the years that followed since, these two items helped to changed legal mindsets, from Prosecutor Mignini, to Judge Matteini, to Judge Micheli, to Judge Massei, to even Judge Hellmann, and so on to Cassation and the Nencini appeal.

If they are landmines, in the legal process they long ago went off. 

And all along Knox should have known that the items exist, they were repeatedly talked about right in front of her in the court.

But Knox makes no mention in her book, or in her appeals, or in her email to Judge Nencini, or in her appeal to the ECHR (we presume). How odd.

2. See Proofs In Plain Sight

Click for Post:  The Knox Interrogation Hoax #11: Why Prosecution And Defenses Never Believed Knox’s Version #2

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Italian Reporting Of Prolonged Knox/Cocaine-Dealer Connection; Media Digging

Posted by Our Main Posters

1. How Drug Use Was Addressed At Trial

The story of Knox’s drug use clearly has legs. But whoever is driving it, the trial prosecution is not - they are simply sitting back and watching.

Police and prosecutors have never driven the perception that Knox and Sollecito were stoned on the night when they attacked Meredith. Judge Micheli wasnt keen on this possible “out” and besides they have never had a reason to.

It was in fact the defenses who drove the drug-use argument. Knox admitted to police on 5-6 November 2007 to marijuana use, and so did Sollecito. He already had a minor record of cocaine possession. Both tried to use the argument at trial that they were indeed stoned. But that was only to explain major discrepancies in their statements, not to say that drugs helped to fuel the attack on Meredith.

The defenses had an opportunity with Judge Matteini, the guiding magistrate from late 2007 though to Judge Micheli’s arraignment in October 2008, to try to seek lesser charges due to impaired capacities. But either they did not want to, or they were prevented by the families from doing so.

At trial in 2009 the prosecution remarked that the two were suspected to have been using cocaine (the symptoms seem to us pretty obvious) but the defence simply shrugged at this and did not contend it.

Judge Massei never mentions amphetamines. Two defense experts were brought in to try to convince the Massei court that the admitted drug use had fogged their clients’ brains. Judge Massei simply recorded this doubtful claim in his sentencing report. He gave the perps no breaks based on this reasoning.

]page 393] On the effects of drugs of the type used by Amanda and by Raffaele, such as hashish and marijuana, [we] heard the testimony of Professor Taglialatela who, while underlining the great subjective variability (page 211, hearing of 17 July 2009) specified that the use of such substances has a negative influence on the cognitive capacity and causes alterations of perception (pages 201 and 207) and of the capacity to comprehend a situation (page 218).

In his turn, Professor Cingolani, who together with Professor Umani Ronchi and Professor Aprile, had also dealt with the toxicological aspect (see witness report lodged on 15 April 2008, pages 26 and following), responding to the question he had been asked as to whether the use of drugs lowers inhibitions replied: “šThat is beyond doubt”› (page 163 hearing of 19 September 2009), while correlating that effect to the habits of the person [on] taking the drugs. Raffaele Sollecito’s friends had furthermore stated that such substances had an effect of relaxation and stupor.

2. New Reporting On Knox/Drug-Dealer Connection

Below is the new Giallo report on a connection between Knox and drug-dealers kindly translated by our main poster Jools. Note that the main drug dealer Frederico Martini (who is “F” below) and others were convicted back in 2011 and the connection to Knox was reported then in the Italian press, though not in the UK and US press.

The main new fact here is that Giallo has the dealers’ names. Giallo makes clear it obtained the names legitimately from open police records, not from the prosecutors back at trial.  Dr Mignini merely takes note of the names which Giallo itself provided and he doubted that Knox would now become truth-prone.

Clamorous [Sensational/Scoop]

The American woman already convicted to 28 years for the murder of her friend Meredith.

A NEW LEAD, LINKED TO DRUGS, PUTS AMANDA KNOX IN TROUBLE

The woman was hanging around a circle of hashish and cocaine traffickers. One of them had intimate relation with her. Another, a dangerous criminal offender, had attempted to kill his brother with a knife. Are they implicated?

“During the course of the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher we have confirmed that a person whose initial is F. would occasionally supply drugs to Amanda Knox, as well as having a relationship with her supposedly of a sexual nature.” So begins an [official note] annotation of the Flying Squad police in Perugia dated January 19, 2008, two and half months after the terrible murder of the young British student Meredith Kercher. An annotation that could open a new, worst-case scenario on the Perugia murder and on one of its most talked-about protagonists, Amanda Knox, besides making it possible to convince the USA to send her back to Italy for a new trial.

But why is this annotation so important? And who is this mysterious F. that is now entering the scene? Let’s see. When Amanda came to our country to study, in September 2007, did not yet know Raffaele Sollecito, the guy from Giovinazzo who will be accused together with her and Rudy Guede, a thief and drug dealer, of the murder of Meredith. But she soon started to hang around characters implicated in a drug ring for university students in Perugia. A particularly disturbing entourage of whose members included dangerous multi-convicted felons. The first one is precisely F. We will not disclose his full name or F’s last name, for reasons of discretion, but GIALLO knows them.

In 2007, F. is a student of psychology from Rome, much older than Amanda. The two meet on a Milano-Florence train and decide to visit the city together in the evening, Knox having gotten rid of [her sister] she and F. smoke a joint together. “My first smoke in Italy,” says the same Amanda on MySpace, a social network site that was popular seven years ago. The two end the Florentine evening in his hotel room. Photo evidence of this new friendship was formerly on Myspace, because Amanda publishes a photo of F., half naked. An aunt commented: “Do not date strange Italian guys.”

Once she settled in Perugia, Amanda continues to have contact with F. His number is in Amanda’s phone book, and they both frequently called each other, before and after the murder.

F., also appears in a “list” of Italian guys she slept with which was compiled by Amanda on one of her big school notebooks and also in her autobiographical book Waiting to be heard. In the book Amanda talks about F. but changes his name and calls him Cristiano. Maybe to protect their privacy, maybe to obfuscate opinions. She writes of him: “I promised my friends that I would not end up sleeping with the first guy that comes by, but F. was a change of plans.” Further adding that in Italy smoking joints is simply normal, “like eating a plate of pasta.”

On the other hand Amanda spends a lot of money in the several months she’s in Perugia. In September, she draws out $ 2,452 from her bank account, that’s 1,691 euros. How did she spend it? No one has ever investigated this, and she does not explain it. She says she used the cash for living [expenses], but considering that the rent she had to pay was only 300 euros, and that twice a week she worked as a waitress in the bar of Patrick Lumumba, Le Chic, putting more cash in her pocket, the [living] expenses seem really excessive.

What does Amanda do with all that money? For sure she does not buy only hashish, which is not so expensive. Was she, then, using cocaine? The [police] annotation makes you think of it. And this could explain both the state of alteration of the girl on the night of the murder as well as a possible motive. Amanda that evening returned home to get some money to pay for the drugs, and she encountered Meredith? The girls had a fight, as Rudy Guede says in his reconstruction of that night, why, did Amanda steal Meredith’s money? Was Amanda on her own, or maybe she made sure she was accompanied by Rudy or other drug dealing friends?

No one has ever investigated this, or Amanda’s dangerous acquaintances. So dangerous that the same F., in 2011, was arrested. To be precise that started from the analysis of Amanda’s mobile phone, police investigators found that in fact F. and two of his close friends, Luciano and Lorenzo, were part of a major drug ring: all three ended up on trial for selling cocaine.

On January 14, 2011 they were all sentenced. The court judges established that Luciano was the one that supplied the other two: He was to serve two years and eight months in prison.

But let’s read the rest of the police annotation because what this reveals is really disturbing: “F. is contacted by phone by the presumable clients placing an “order” with him of the quantity of drugs they want to buy and in turn he contacts various Maghrebi characters ordering. It is also established that F. associates with multiple-convicted offenders of very serious crimes in the matter of drugs, and with persons such as A. Luciano, with whom he maintains frequent contacts aimed at drug trafficking.”

And precisely in this way Luciano, linked to F., a friend of Amanda, has a terrible past. The cops wrote this about him: “The above-cited Luciano on the 28/7/2006 was arrested by the carabinieri in Foligno because he was responsible for the murder attempt of his brother, who gave him 16 stab wounds inflicted with a kitchen knife.”

Luciano, therefore, who sells drugs in Perugia and provides supply to F., with whom he is often in touch, is an unsuccessful killer. Only a year before the murder in Perugia, under the influence of drugs, he tried to kill his brother during an argument over money and drug dealing. Luciano, out of his head that evening, grabbed the knife with which he was slicing a melon in the kitchen and stabbed his brother’s body 16 times.

A scene not so different from what the judges think happened in Meredith’s house, and even from what was described by the same Amanda on the 5 November 2007 when, at the end of a night of contradictions and anguish, confessed giving culpability of the murder to Patrick Lumumba, the owner of the bar Le Chic, who later proved to be unconnected with the facts of the case. Amanda said: “Patrick and Meredith went to Meredith’s room, while I think that I stayed in the kitchen. I heard screams and was scared, I covered my ears.”

Where were, F. and Luciano the night of the murder? And who was there that night, instead of Patrick? Questions still unanswered. What seems likely, however, is that Amanda was not with Raffaele, who was at his home on his computer. The judiciary may now decide to open a new file on her. Will the USA grant extradition?

Here is the translation of Dr Mignini’s interview with Giallo translated by Kristeva.

Luciano [Giuliano] Mignini, the judge leading the investigation, talks “Amanda knows how to lie very well: she seems sincere and credible ...”

[GM] The magistrate has directed all investigations: it is she [Judge Matteini] who had Amanda, Raffaele, Patrick Lumumba and Rudy Guede arrested.

[GM] “In the Supreme Court of Cassation new revelations don’t count” Giuliano Mignini, deputy prosecutor of the Attorney General Office of Perugia and public prosecutor of the first trial for the murder of Meredith [Kercher], goes straight to the point.

Mr. Mignini, pending the Supreme Court, Raffaele Sollecito seems to have distanced himself from Amanda Knox. He claims he is not certain that the American girl has spent the whole night with Sollecito ...”

[GM] “All this is irrelevant. In Court of Cassation only questions of laws can be raised. They do not take into account the new elements of reconstruction of the facts. Trials are based on the acts of the proceeding. Sustaining now a different reconstruction of what happened is a question of merit that does not in any way interest cassation.”

Amanda has repeatedly argued that her version of the facts had been affected by heavy pressures from the prosecutor’s office.

[GM] “Nothing could be more false. The process of investigation and trial proceeding of Kercher’s murder has had from the beginning an unprecedented media pressure, which has confused some ideas in public opinion. The trial should take place with the guarantee of an adversarial process, with equality of prosecution and defense. When one steps out of these parameters one ends up with a trial through the media. In this scenario, the foreign press, especially the American one, not taking into account our legal system, has given its input. They created a discourse that sounds a bit like this:she is one our fellow citizens and therefore she must be innocent. “

And if today even Amanda was to change her version?

[GM] “I would be astonished. She had plenty of occasions to tell her truth”

What was your impression of Amanda?

[GM] Amanda is very intelligent. She cleverly tried to divert suspects from her, as in the case of the staged burglary, a huge lie. Amanda is shrewd like when she accused Patrick Lumumba. On that occasion she appeared credible, she was crying. She looked as if terrified. I believe she’s a very theatrical girl and in a certain way even anti conformist: while everyone was crying and were worried, she was doing cartwheels.

What was her relationship with Meredith?

[GM] “Amanda did not like to be contradicted and had a conflictual relationship with Meredith. There were constant arguments regarding Amanda’s behaviour that Meredith could not tolerate. She believed that Amanda stole her money.”

And what type was Sollecito?

[GM] Raffaele is an enigmatic character. He is a shy young man who was subjected to Amanda’s strong personality. He was very attracted to Knox who in the meantime did not disdain the company of other acquaintances.

About acquaintances, Amanda knew some drug dealers. Could they have had a role in the murder?

[GM] “I cannot answer this” But then writes down their names.

[By] Gian Pietro Fiore

3. Our Comments On The Giallo Report

As observed above, for Italians most of this is actually not new news. The new news is that Giallo now has all the dealers’ names, from the open records of the police.

Giallo’s mention of a possible new trial is presumably connected to this drug-dealing, as the trial for Meredith’s murder and Knox’s and Sollecito’s failed appeal have both concluded, and only Cassation’s endorsement of the verdict is awaited.

Giallo’s references to Guede as a drug dealer and thief are both unproven. He had no criminal record prior to final conviction by Cassation. He was never a police source, and got zero breaks, ever. He was unknown to Dr Mignini until some days after Meredith was attacked and forensics identified him.

4. UK and US Media Get Key Fact Wrong

The UK’s Daily Mail has wrongly claimed that Italy’s Giallo magazine had reported as follows: “Italian prosecutor from Amanda Knox trial gave newspaper list of drug-dealer names associated with American student”.

In their headlines the US’s National Enquirer and Radar Online make the same wrong claim, though they quote enough from Giallo to show how that magazine really re-surfaced the report.

So for now UK and US media get that key fact wrong.  This surely wont be the end of it though. The story finally has legs of its own, and clearly the media in all three countries have a willingness to pursue it more.

In the interview also posted on Giallo Dr Mignini doubted that even now Knox will tell the truth - in fact it is hard to see what she can say. We will wait and see.

5. Ground Report Also Gets It Wrong

This shrill report from “Grace Moore” about Guede and Dr Mignini in Ground Report is both seriously wrong on the facts and defamatory - she should try saying that sort of thing about any American prosecutor.  “Grace Moore” should find out what the roles of Judge Matteini and Prosecutor Comodi were, and why after a malicious prosecution against him Prosecutor Mignini is riding high on Italian TV - and pouring cold water on satanic claims about any crimes.

Paul and Rachel Sterne, the father and daughter owners of Ground Report which carries well over 100 similarly inflammatory posts, could in theory be charged by both Italian and American prosecutors, as they are an eager party to bloodmoney (a felony), harrassment of the victim’s family (a felony) and obstruction of justice under Italian law for poisoning opinion out of court (another felony).

They need to clean up their site and make some amends.

This drug report continues with new developments in another post here.

   

Click to enlarge

Friday, July 25, 2014

Why It Will Be Republic Of Italy v Knox And Sollecito For The Myriad False Claims They Have Made

Posted by Peter Quennell

Bergamo in the foothills of the Alps where the journal Oggi is published


Yesterday’s post quotes some statements that Sollecito has already started winding back.

For Raffaele Sollecito that marks a significant first. Amanda Knox still seems headed the other way, pouring yet more gasoline on the flames.

Yesterday’s post also mentioned the growing pressure the Italian system is asserting to surface and adhere to the truth. When Cassation rules as widely expected, that Knox’s and Sollecito’s appeals did fail in Florence, and off back to prison they must go, Italy probably wont stop there.

It needs a single truth to stand at the end of the day, and in the courts is how its inquiry-based system arrives at that truth. More prison time is probably ruled out, but there should be some big fines. And that truth.

Sollecito wrote those claims quoted yesterday only in English, of course, exclusively for English-speaking audiences. There are no editions in any other language, certainly not Italian.

The only claim of those quoted yesterday that is widely known in Italy is Sollecito’s false charge, challenged on national TV, that the prosecution offered him a deal for his turning on Knox. That was one of his many claims accusing Italian officials of crimes. All his other claims are still sleepers in Italy.

Sollecito’s father Francesco was asked on national Italian TV why the book was not written or published in Italian. He awkwardly replied that no Italian publisher was interested; he didnt name even one that refused.

He didnt explain why it was written on the US west coast with the help of a British-born shadow writer (an unfortunate choice: Gumbel himself seems to have a big chip on his shoulder about Italy after his stay there, like Peter Popham and Nina Burleigh; unusual but it happens).

So, with no Italian version, what passages in what language were those Italian publishers if any shown?

Not much liked in Italy, Sollecito has been trying to burnish his image there since 2008 when he began writing diary-type reports on several websites.

Passages from the book put into Italian by the Republic of Italy for his book trial in Florence could come to irritate many Italians, and really rain on his parade in the months coming up.

Good reporters should perhaps press Knox to release the Italian version of her own book and let Italy have a close look.

It was yanked from publication at the last moment (like the UK version) when the US edition came out. Some excerpts were put into Italian by Oggi. See our own rebuttals here.

Their publication along with some other articles has resulted in both Oggi and Knox facing a trial in Bergamo. The statute of limitations on the entire book itself expires in 2017. If and when Italy targets all of Knox’s malicious claims she could find her parade rained on too. 

Both books are available globally in the Kindle edition and so a few English-speaking Italians have read them that way. The only version of Knox’s book that was officially sold in Europe was in German. There’ve been no others so far though a Spanish translation may exist.

None of the other English-language pro-Knox books have been put into Italian either. In fact the only book translated into Italian that takes Italy to task is The Monster of Florence by Spezi and Preston - and that one is quite different (very toned down) from the edition in the UK and US.

Back here on Planet Earth, various objective books on the case have been written and published in Italian, which kinda shoots Francesco’s claim in the foot that there is no interest among publishers there.

Those books are mostly quite classy affairs, carefully researched. All the books (like TJMK) essentially concentrate on explaining the prosecution’s case in depth, and those from late 2009 all saw “case proven” after the Knox and Sollecito lawyers put on an ineffective defense.  There isn’t even one which says Italian officials maybe got it wrong.

The Knox people sued Corriere for damages over the Sarzanini book and in the third round won, but that was only because the book published excerpts from Knox’s prison diaries - which her own people had put around - which invaded the privacy of others she mentioned.

The Sarzanini book is still on sale in Italy and was not ordered withdrawn, so Knox at most won half a loaf via her case.

Our main poster Yummi has at various times pointed out that over 100 prosecutors and judges have been assasinated in the anti-mafia fight.  Hate stirred up in the US for Italian officials is of real concern, because it could have a nut with a gun headed to Italy to “even the score”. Hate messages have been received.

Hate is still being perpetually beamed at the real victim’s suffering family as well. That started way back in 2008. There is zero precedent for that - in fact the US and UK and Italy all have strong anti-harrassment laws.

So Knox and Sollecito, and by extension Sforza and Fischer and Moore and so on, will face put-up-or-shut-up time in court on a whole row of claims which appear to Italy malicious and wrong.

Italy wants a searchlight cast on those.  It is for this reason above all that the book trials will take place. To wind back the hate, and to cast light.

This whole publishing scene (really two parallel publishing scenes) is absolutely unique in the world. It shows in stark terms the cowardice of the “public relations” wave of defamation which Curt Knox brought alive in 2007 and beamed away from Italian speakers.

No wonder Amanda Knox could not bear to head for Florence late last year for her own appeal - or “new trial” as she still seems to suppose. Her team has burned too many boats.

Gee thanks dad for that….