Headsup: Disney's Hulu - mafia tool?! First warning already sent to the Knox series production team about the hoaxes and mafia connections. The Daily Beast's badly duped Grace Harrington calls it "the true story of Knox’s wrongful conviction of the murder of her roommate". Harrington should google "rocco sollecito" for why Italians hesitate to talk freely.

Category: 15 Single alibi hoax

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Appeal Session #7: The Day For Knox And Sollecito Attorneys To Show Where Prosecution Went Wrong

Posted by Our Main Posters

[Above and below: images from previous sessions, here till today’s crop appears]

Long Form Reports

Website of Andrea Vogt

The court hearing reserved for Knox’s appeal defense began with the reading of an email from Amanda, reported here in the Messaggero and then widely picked up in the English-language press, claiming her innocence and explaining why she was afraid to return to Italy. The email was the only “new” aspect introduced Tuesday so made all the headlines, but at the end of the day it occupied just a small fraction of the day’s arguments. 

Several Italian court observers considered the email a considerable “own goal,” having witnessed the presiding judge raise his eyebrows in obvious annoyance at having to himself read aloud an email from Knox, who requested an appeal in his courtroom, but is refusing to attend it, for reasons she detailed.  “Those who want to speak at the trial should come to the trial,” he said. He also declined to consider the letter a spontaneous declaration because, he said, he could not ascertain if she was the true author of the letter. “I’ve never seen her. I do not know her,” he said.

After the email, Knox’s Perugian lawyer Luciano Ghirga made his closing arguments, followed by Carlo Dalla Vedova of Rome.  Most of the discussion focused on two aspects of the case they felt are fundamentally lacking: motive and murder weapon. Below are short quotes/snippets translated quickly during court.  To read the Kercher family lawyer’s arguments, scroll down to yesterday’s notes.

[Report continues on The Freelance Desk with good summaries of arguments made by Ghirga and Della Vedova]

3. Tweets from La Nazione

66. Meredith process , the hearing ends. The next hearing will be on January 9 [Sollecito team]

65. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : ” Amanda Knox is shown to have worshipped [Meredith]”

64. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “There is a shortage of proof”

63. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “There is no evidence, with doubts you have to acquit Amanda Knox”

62. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “On the motive the prosecutor did the same as the Costa Concordia at Giglio”

61. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Room too small for the participation of more people in the crime”

60. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The victim was attacked from the front,  not from behind”

59. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “For Amanda and Raffaele, Rudy Guede was a stranger”

58. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The bra clasp of Meredith is not a genuine artifact”

57. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The bra clasp November 2nd was white, but 40 days after gray”

56. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Amanda knew the cut was throat because she was told by a policeman “

55. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Absurd that there are missing only traces of Amanda and Raffaele “

54.Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The alleged footprint of female shoe on the pillow: pillowcase was folded over.”

53. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The broken glass from the window shows the easiest way to enter the house “

52. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “War between consultants is like “The War of the Roses” where everyone will hate “

51. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Unable for Amanda and Raffaele to commit the crime in 50 minutes “

50. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The mother of Meredith says she and Amanda were friends “

49. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Guede never says that Amanda was in the house, even outside the interrogations”

48. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Guede never talks about Amanda “

47.Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : ” Guede in his chats after the murder told a friend that Amanda had nothing to do with it”

46. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “There are traces only of Rudy Guede at the crime scene “

45. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The witness Curatolo either is unreliable or is our alibi. Decide for yourself “

44. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Do not trust the testimony of the witness Quintavalle “

43. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “Amanda did not call into question Lumumba to sidetrack the investigation “

42. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “The alibi of Amanda is of the same type as her roommates ”

41. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “The alibi of Amanda is accurate and unchanged in her deposition ”

40. Meredith appeal: the argument of Carlo Dalla Vedova, defender of Amanda Knox, resumes.

39. Meredith appeal: Judge orders one-hour lunch break

38. President Nencini asks if there are certificates for the AIDS tests done on Amanda, but there are none

37. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “It was said of Amanda in prison that she had AIDS, but it turned out an error ”

36. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “From the conversations in prison Amanda does not show anything, the sum of zeros ”

35. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “In 30 hours of interviews with parents in prison Amanda never was heard [incriminating herself]”

34. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “It was immediately admited, the mistake by the investigators”

33. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “The footprint of Guede on the pillow right now is the signature of the crime”

32. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “Lumumba was not to be charged, he confirmed his alibi”.

31. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “There has been judicial harassment against [my client]”

30. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “Prosecution and plaintiff leverage statements of Amanda unusable ”

29. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “The declarations of Amanda between 5 and 6 November are unusable ”

28. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “Absurd that Amanda is joining the attack on a friend ”

27. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “Changing motive is constantly an element of weakness of the prosecution ”

26. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “Add up all the clues , the sum of zero is always zero ”

25. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “Without connections between clues and evidences the value is zero ”

24. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “In this process there is no evidence ”

23. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “A murder without a motive is fallacious ”

22. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “Absurd that the knife used for the murder was brought home ”

21. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “Imaginative reconstruction of the prosecution ”

20. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “This story has been in the headlines for months ”

19. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “Meredith killed in this manner is a defeat for all ”

18. The closing argument of Lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova begins (Knox defense).

17. Meredith appeal: the closing argument of the Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ) ends.

16. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ) : “Amanda Knox was not present at the crime scene ”

15. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ): “The judgment of Justice is the acquittal of Amanda

14. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ): “The witness Curatolo is unreliable ”

13. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ): “We challenged from the outset the murder weapon ”

12. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ): “On the blade of the knife there is no blood and no trace of Meredith.”

11. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ): “The expertise that revealed traces of Meredith on the knife is not trusted “

10. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ): “The knife found at Sollecito’s house is not the murder weapon “

9. The closing argument of Luciano Ghirga defender Amanda Knox begins.

8. Amanda to the court: ” I am innocent , put an end to this enormous injustice ”

7. Amanda : “I’m not the monster he has been portrayed in recent years ”

6. Amanda: ” I did not know Rudy Guede ”

5. Amanda: “I’m not a killer , the prosecution and the civil parties are wrong , they want a conviction without proof ”

4. Amanda: ” Meredith and I have always been friends , we never quarreled ”

3. Amanda: “I have been subjected to illegal interrogation , I made a false confession extorted”

2. Amanda: “I have not killed , raped , robbed , I was not at the scene of the crime”

1. The email of Amanda : “I’m innocent , but I am not in court because I’m afraid”

2. Tweets from Freelance Andrea Vogt

3. Carlo dalla Vedova to #amandaknox appeal jury: If there is no murder motive, you must acquit.

2. Carlo dalla Vedova: We know #amandaknox is innocent. As time passes we’re even more tranquil.There are many more doubts than certainties.

1. In Florence, amanda knox lawyer holds up large knife to jury: “Starch was on the knife. It was not cleaned. It was in domestic use.”

1. Email from Amanda Knox

Court of Appeals of Florence section II Assise Proc. Pen, 11113

Letter sent to attorneys Carlo Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga via email Seattle, 15 December 2013

Attn: Honorable Court of Appeals of Florence

I have no doubt that my lawyers have explained and demonstrated the important facts of this case that prove my innocence and discredit the unjustified accusations of the prosecution and civil parties. I seek not to supplant their work; rather, because I am not present to take part in this current phase of the judicial process, I feel compelled to share my own perspective as a six—year-long defendant and victim of injustice.

The Court has access to my previous declarations and I trust will review them before coming to a verdict. I must repeat: I am innocent.

I am not a murderer. I am not a rapist. I am not a thief or a plotter or an instigator. I did not kill Meredith or take part in her murder or have any prior or special knowledge of what occurred that night. I was not there and had nothing to do with it.

I am not present in the courtroom because I am afraid. I am afraid that the prosecution’s vehemence will leave an impression on you, that their smoke and mirrors will blind you. I’m afraid of the universal problem of wrongful conviction. This is not for lack of faith in your powers of discernment, but because the prosecution has succeeded before in convincing a perfectly sound court of concerned and discerning adults to convict innocent people-Rafael and me.

My life being on the line and having with others already suffered too much, I’ve attentively followed this process and gleaned the following facts that have emerged from the development of this case that I beg you not to dismiss when making your judgment:

No physical evidence places me in Meredith ‘s bedroom, the scene of the crime, because I was not there and didn’t take part in the crime.

Meredith’s murderer left ample evidence of his presence in the brutal scenario: handprints, footprints, shoe prints in Meredith’s blood; DNA in her purse, on her clothing, in her body.

No evidence places me in the same brutal scenario. The prosecution has failed to explain how I could have participated in the aggression and murder—to have been the one to fatally wound Meredith—without leaving any genetic trace of myself. That is because it is impossible. It is impossible to identify and destroy all genetic traces of myself in a crime

scene and retain all genetic traces of another individual. Either I was there, or I wasn’t. The analysis of the crime scene answers this question: I wasn’t there.

My interrogation was illegal and produced a false “confession” that demonstrated my non-knowledge of the crime- The subsequent memoriali, for which I was wrongfully found guilty of slander, did not further accuse but rather recanted that false “confession.” Just as I testified to the prosecutor in prison and to my family members in prison when our conversations were being recorded without my knowledge.

My behavior after the discovery of the murder indicates my innocence. I did not flee Italy when I had the chance. I stayed in Perugia and was at the police’s beck and call for over 50hours in four days, convinced that I could help them find the murderer. I never thought or imagined that they would have used my openness and trust to fuel their suspicions. I did not hide myself or my feelings: when I needed comfort, Rafael embraced me; when I was sad and scared, I cried; when I was angry, I swore and made insensitive remarks; when I was shocked, I paced or sat in silence; when I was trying to help, I answered questions, consoled Meredith’s friends and tried to keep a positive attitude.

Upon entering the questura I had no understanding of my legal position. Twenty—years old and alone in a foreign country, I was innocent and never expected to be suspected and subjugated to torture. I was interrogated as a suspect, but told I was a witness. I was questioned for a prolonged period in the middle of the night and in Italian, a language I barely knew. I was denied legal counsel- The Court of Cassation deemed the interrogation and the statements produced from it illegal. I was lied to, yelled at, threatened, slapped twice on the back of the head. I was told I had witnessed the murder and was suffering from amnesia. I was told that if I didn’t succeed in remembering what happened to Meredith that night I would never see my family again. I was browbeaten into confusion and despair. When you berate, intimidate, lie to, threaten, confuse, and coerce someone in believing they are wrong, you are not going to find the truth.

The police coerced me into signing a false “confession” that was without sense and should never have been considered a legitimate investigative lead. In this fragmentary and confused statement the police identified Patrick Lumumba as the murderer because we had exchanged text messages, the meaning of which the police wrongfully interpreted (‘Civediamo piu tardi. Buona serata’). The statement lacked a clear sequence of events, corroboration with any physical evidence, and fundamental information like: how and why the murder took place, if anyone else was present or involved, what happened afterward—it supplied partial, contradictory information and as the investigators would discover a little later, when Patrick Lumumba’s defense lawyer produced proof of him incontestable alibi, it was obviously inaccurate and unreliable. I simply didn’t know what they were demanding me to know. After over 50 hours of questioning over four days, I was mentally exhausted and I was confused.

This coerced and illegitimate statement was used by the police to arrest and detain a clearly innocent man with an iron-clad alibi with whom I had a friendly professional relationship. This coerced and illegitimate statement was used to convict me of slander. The prosecution and civil parties would have you believe that this coerced and illegitimate statement is proof of my involvement in the murder. They are accusing and blaming me, a result of their own overreaching.

Experience, case studies, and the law recognize that one may be coerced into giving a false"confession” because of torture.

This is a universal problem. According to the National Registry of Exoneration, in the United States 78% of wrongful murder convictions that are eventually overturned because of exonerating forensic evidence involved false “confessions.” Almost 8 in 10 wrongfully convicted persons were coerced by police into implicating themselves and others in murder. I am not alone. And exonerating forensic evidence is often as simple as no trace of the wrongfully convicted person at the scene of the crime, but rather the genetic and forensic traces of a different guilty party—just like every piece of forensic evidence identifies not me, but Rudy Guide.

In the brief time Meredith and I were roommates and friends we never fought.

Meredith was my friend. She was kind to me, helpful, generous, fun. She never criticized me. She never gave me so much as a dirty look.

But the prosecution claims that a rift was created between Meredith and I because of cleanliness. This is a distortion of the facts. Please refer to the testimonies of my housemaster and Meredith’s British friends. None of them ever witnessed or heard about Meredith and I fighting, arguing, disliking each other. None of them ever claimed Meredith was a confrontational clean-freak, or I a confrontational slob. Laura Masotho testified that both Meredith and I only occasionally cleaned, whereas she and Filomena Romanelli were more concerned with cleanliness. Meredith’s British friends testified that Meredith had once told them that she felt a little uncomfortable about finding the right words to kindly talk tome, her new roommate, about cleanliness in the bathroom we shared. The prosecution would have you believe this is motivation for murder. But this is a terrifying distortion of the facts.

I did not carry around Rafael’s kitchen knife.

This claim by the prosecution, crucial to their theory, is uncorroborated by any physical evidence or witness testimony. I didn’t fear the streets of Perugia and didn’t need to carry around with me a large, cumbersome weapon which would have ripped my cloth book bag to shreds. My book bag showed no signs of having carried a bloody weapon. The claim that he would have insisted I carry a large chef’s knife is not just senseless, but a disturbing indication of how willing the prosecution is to defy objectivity and reason in order to sustain a mistaken and disproven theory.

It is yet another piece of invented “evidence”, another circumstance of theory fabricated to order, because having discovered nothing else, the prosecution could only invent.

I had no Contact with Rudy Guide.

Like many youth in Perugia, I had once crossed paths with Rudy Guide. He played basketball with the young men who lived in the apartment below us. Meredith and I had been introduced to him together. Perhaps I had seen him amongst the swarms of students

who crowded the Perugian streets and pubs in the evenings, but that was it. We didn’t have each other’s phone number, we didn’t meet in private, we weren’t acquaintances. I never bought drugs from Rudy Guide or anyone else. The phone records show no connection. There are no witnesses who place us together. The prosecution claims I convinced Rudy Guide to commit rape and murder, completely ignoring the fact that we didn’t even speak the same language. Once again, the prosecution is relying upon a disturbing and unacceptable pattern of distortion of the objective evidence.

I am not a psychopath.

There is no short list to the malicious and unfounded slanders I have suffered over the course of this legal process. In trial I have been called no less than:

“Conniving; manipulating; man—eater; narcissist; enchantress; duplicitous; adulterer; drug addict; an explosive mix of drugs, sex, and alcohol; dirty; witch; murderer; slanderer; demon; depraved; imposter; promiscuous; succubus; evil; dead inside; pervert; dissolute; a wolf in sheep’s clothing; rapist; thief; reeking of sex; Judas; she-devil;

I have never demonstrated anti-social, aggressive, violent, or behavior. I am not addicted to sex or drugs. Upon my arrest I was tested for drugs and the results were negative. I am not a split-personality One does not adopt behavior spontaneously.

This is a fantasy. This is uncorroborated by any objective evidence or testimony. The prosecution and civil parties created and pursued this character assassination because they have nothing else to show you. They have neither proof, nor logic, nor the facts on their side. They only have their slanders against me, their personal opinions about me. They want you to think I’m a monster because it is easy to condemn a monster. It is easy to dismiss a monster’s defense as deception. But the prosecution and civil parties are both severely mistaken and wrong. They have condemned me without proof of guilt, and they seek to convince you to condemn me without proof of guilt.

If the prosecution truly had a case against me, there would be no need for these theatrics. There would be no need for smoke and mirrors to distract you from the lack of physical evidence against me. But because no evidence exists that proves my guilt, the prosecution would seek to deceive you with these impassioned, but completely inaccurate and unjustified pronouncements. Because I am not a murderer, they would seek to mislead you into convicting me by charging your emotions, by painting me not as an innocent until proven guilty, but as a monster.

The prosecution and civil parties are committing injustices against me because they cannot bring themselves to admit, even to themselves, that they’ve made a terrible mistake.

The Court has seen that the prosecution and civil parties will not hear criticism of their mistakes. Not by the experts of the defense, nor by the experts of the Court.

The Court has seen that the prosecution jumped to conclusions at the very start of their investigation: they interrogated and arrested innocent people and claimed “Case Closed"before any evidence could be analyzed, before bothering to check alibis.

The prosecutor and investigators were under tremendous pressure to solve the mystery of what happened to Meredith as soon as possible. The local and International media was breathing down the necks of these detectives. Their reputations and careers were to be made or broken. In their haste, they made mistakes. Under pressure, they admitted to as few mistakes as possible and committed themselves to a theory founded upon mistakes.

Had they not jumped to conclusions based on nothing but their personal and highly subjective feeling, they would have discovered definitive and undeniable evidence of not Patrick Lumumba, not Rafael Sollecito, not Amanda Knox, but of Rudy Guide. We would not be here over six years later debating inconclusive and unreliable “clues.” We would have been spared the cost, anguish and suffering, not only of Raffaele’s and my family, but especially of Meredith’s family as well.

The prosecution’s accusations are unworthy of judicial or public confidence. In over six years they have failed to provide a consistent, evidence-driven, corroborated theory of the crime, but would nevertheless argue that you should take my life away. I beg you to see the facts and reason of what I say. I am innocent. Rafael is innocent. Meredith and her family deserve the truth. Please put an end to this great and prolonged injustice.

in faith,

Amanda Marie Knox

Monday, December 16, 2013

Appeal Session #6: Case For Knox’s & Sollecito’s Guilt - The Civil Parties

Posted by Our Main Posters

[Above, today: Dr Maresca, the Florence lawyer who speaks for the victim, arrives at the court]

7. Court resumes tomorrow

Court will resume at 9:30 am Italy time with the first of the summations for the defenses. When they conclude, probably in January, the prosecution will have a chance of rebuttal.

6. Reporting in English

Andrea Vogt has posted a detailed report from the court at The Freelance Desk, Scroll down to the heading “Update Dec 1t 2013”

5. Reporting in Italian #3

Report by Gazetta del Sud

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, accused in the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, were in the grip of a “murderous rage” fuelled by illegal drugs and alcohol, a lawyer for the victim’s family said Monday. Knox, Sollecito and a third person definitively convicted of the crime, Rudy Guede, had “no inhibitions” because of the drugs and alcohol they ingested before murdering Kercher in November 2007, charged Vieri Fabiani.

Only later did the “fear take over” and led to false explanations including a simulated break-in and robbery, and a false accusation against a bar owner in Perugia, where the murder occurred, added Fabiani. A Florence court is trying the case against Knox and Sollecito, who have been on trial twice before for the murder of Kercher. Both have said they are not guilty of the accusations.

Guede was convicted in a fast-track trial and is serving a 16-year sentence in the murder, but Italy’s top appeal court said it was unlikely he acted alone. Knox, who is in the United States and has not returned for this trial, and Sollecito each served two years in prison after a lower court convicted them of murder in 2009. An appeal court overturned those convictions in 2011 and in March, Italy’s highest court sent the case back to the appeals stage over aspects of the evidence it argued had not been properly examined before.

The supreme court ruled that the initial forensic evidence had been wrongly dismissed in the acquittal and a prosecution theory about a sex game that went wrong should be re-examined. Kercher, 21, was found dead on the floor of an apartment she shared with Knox on November 2, 2007. Guede’s DNA was found inside Kercher, on her clothes, and elsewhere in the apartment.

Fabiani said that a motive for the murder was “irrelevant” because the crime was committed while the trio were abusing substances. An Italian prosecutor has requested a 26-year prison term for Knox and Sollecito for the murder, plus a further four years for Knox for allegedly slandering bar owner Patrick Lumumba, whom she initially implicated during tough police questioning before later retracting, saying she had been confused.

The new trial opened in Florence in September, and a decision is expected on January 10.

Translation by The 411

4. Reporting in Italian #2

Report by Umbria24

For the Kercher family it is “intolerable” that Amanda Knox on her website is issuing “invitations to collect donations in memory of Meredith” declared Dr Francesco Maresca, the lawyer for the parents and siblings of Mez, speaking in the Assize Court of Appeal of Florence, where judicial process continues for the murder of the young British student Meredith Kercher, which occurred in Perugia on the night of November 1, 2007 .

Dr Maresca asked the Court “to forget the opposing sides and all that is foreign to the process”, meaning the media coverage of the controversy being generated in the U.S. in the legal defense of Knox, as they should also “forget the statements made in court a few weeks ago by Raffaele Sollecito, who is now returned to a “vacation” in Santo Domingo”

Dr Maresca also pointed the finger at Knox for her book, for which she signed “contracts in the millions” and also retains “a person to handle public relations”. Finally, he invited the Court to also forget “those journalists who are inspired by the freedom of delirium and not the freedom of the press.”

Many elements confirm the original verdict. “We have no doubts about the guilt of the accused - there are so many elements to confirm the sentence”.

The family of Meredith Kercher, said the lawyer, will be in Florence on the day of the judgment of the appeal for the murder of the young British student by the defendants Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito .

This was a heinous crime committed knowingly. “We ask the Court for truth and justice for a heinous crime committed with precise awareness and desire” said the lawyer Vieri Fabiani, one of the lawyers of the Kercher family… “The defendants Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede, in the process of killing Meredith Kercher, were “excited and a murderous rage was triggered” because, with the drugs and alcohol taken ” their minds were free of inhibitions”.

Fabiani focused in particular on Rudy Guede also convicted for the murder of Meredith, recalling that the judgment was delivered after the first degree trial in Perugia [in October 2008]. And on the verdict against Guede, Fabiani stated that he was sentenced in collusion with another two who “accidentally” have been identified as Sollecito and Knox, whose responsibility and presence on the scene of the crime are well documented.

Fabiani called Sollecito and Knox persons of “high criminal capacity” who have created the picture of a crime without serious motive.  Then after the murder “fear, terror, took over and they set out to simulate a theft, frame Patrick Lumumba, to mystify, however clumsily, to banish from their minds the crime they committed.”

Fabiani argued that the presence of two defendants in the house on Via della Pergola that evening, and their willingness toward murder, were strongly demonstrated.

“The motive becomes irrelevant,” even if it can be identified “in the issues between Amanda and Meredith, which evolved into a sort of punishment of the victim, in an escalation”.

3. Reporting in Italian #1

Report by Blitzquotidiano

Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede were ” excitedly and this unleashed their homicidal rage ” that tragic night between the first and November 2 of 2007. Vieri Fabiani, one of the lawyers of the Kercher family, during the appeal session in Florence about the murder of Meredith Kercher .

Because of drugs and alcohol their minds were “devoid of inhibitions ,” argued the lawyer, according to whom the defendants should be considered ” persons of a high criminal capacity .” After the murder, fear took over, then they get to simulate a theft, to accuse Lumumba, to mystify to banish from their minds the crime they committed.”

The lawyer explained that the presence of the two defendants at the crime scene and their willingness to commit murder was strongly demonstrated. “The motive becomes almost irrelevant, even though important elements can be identified” in the problems existing between Amanda and Meredith, which “evolved into a sort of punishment of the victim in an escalation”.

For the Kercher family it is “intolerable that Amanda Knox on her website makes invitations to collect donations in memory of Meredith” added the lawyer Maresca. He invited the Court ” to forget the opposing sides and all that is foreign to the process.” The court should “forget” the statements made in court a few weeks ago by ” Raffaele Sollecito who has returned to “a vacation” in Santo Domingo

Avv Maresca also pointed the finger at Amanda and her book thanks to which she ” has signed contracts making her a millionaire.”

2. Tweets from La Nazione

10. Amanda knows the mode of the crime because she was present

9. Motive is irrelevant, the presence of the accused at the scene of the crime is proven

8. Amanda and Raffaele in the grip of the excitement and this triggered the murderous rage

7. It is not sustainable that Rudy Guede is the only murderer

6. The lack of motive is irrelevant, there is evidence of homicidal intent

5. The ruling of the Supreme Court crushed the acquittal of appeal

4. Amanda knew the mode of the murder

3. On the knife found at Sollecito’s house there was the DNA of the victim

2. Contamination of the bra clasp is false (invented)

1. Meredith proceedings: hearing begins. Lawyer Vieri Adriani for the victim family to speak first

1. Tweets from Freelance Andrea Vogt

5. Courtroom nearly empty for closing args of lawyer representing meredith kercher family. Not much interest in their quiet suffering.

4. Maresca: “While we’re here in trial, Sollecito in Santo Domingo & Knox in US taking online donations for victim she’s accused of killing.”

3. Kercher attny Serena Perna: Meredith’s many wounds in many places (from bare hands,from knife, yet not defensive) = multiple attackers.

2. Kercher attny: Motive, or lack thereof, is absolutely irrelevant.1000 different problems could have led to fatal escalation of violence.

1. Right now lawyers for the civil parties (specifically Kercher family) giving closing arguments. Defense is to follow.

[Below: two images in the courtroom from previous sessions]

Monday, December 02, 2013

A Second Analysis Of Amanda Knox’s Email To Family And Friends Of 4 November 2007 DRAFT

Posted by Peter Quennell

I have been trawling through Knox’s infamous email that she wrote to her “friends” in the US shortly after she had cruelly murdered poor Meredith.  Here are my thoughts - apologies to all if I am covering old ground.

I have interspersed Knox’s email record, (as she had written it), with my own comments. Hope they are useful to TJMK’s fight for justice for Meredith.

Email by Amanda Knox

This is an email for everyone, because I’d like to get it all out and not have to repeat myself a hundred times like I’ve been having to do at the police station. Some of you already know some things, some of you know nothing.

This reads as if Knox is establishing an alibi and a chronology from the outset. The structure is an odd mix of quasi-formality and off the cuff anecdote.

She does not feel the need to explain why she has had to repeat herself a hundred times at the police station. After all, an innocent person would tell the truth once, with perhaps minor corrections. Only a person, like Knox, who was changing her story to the police so often, would need to repeat herself endlessly. By default, therefore, she is admitting that her story is proving unbelievable, so this email is her attempt to garner psychological support and credence from her family and friends in the US.

What I’m about to say, I can’t say to journalists or newspapers and I require that of anyone receiving this information as well.

Here and repeated further on in this email, Knox is blatantly breaching the strict advice that she remains publicly silent, particularly in relation to the media. She has no control over this email “information”, once she has sent it to her multiple recipients, because she cannot be sure that it will not leak to third parties.

This is my account of how I found my roommate, murdered, the morning of Friday, November 2nd.

Strictly formal in style, much as one would expect of a written statement to the police. Knox seeks to assuage her psychological turmoil and gain mental control because she knows she has repeatedly lied to the police and none has yet, (understandably), believed her.

The last time I saw Meredith, 22, English, beautiful, funny, was when I came home from spending the night at a friend’s house.

The insertion of “22, English, beautiful, funny” seems completely inappropriate in relation to a recently, brutally murdered Meredith. It reads as if a third-rate novelist is introducing a key character. Thus Knox reveals her email to be a self-serving, imaginary construct ““ not factual and honest, as an innocent person would write.

It was the day after Halloween, Thursday. I got home and she was still asleep, but after I had taken a shower and was fumbling around the kitchen, she emerged from her room with the blood of her costume (vampire) still dripping down her chin.

Showers, in this email, seem to be a major obsession for Knox. Could she be trying to wash away her oppressive psychological feelings of guilt?

We talked for a while in the kitchen, how the night went, what our plans were for the day, nothing out of the ordinary”¦..,

Why should Knox note, “Nothing out of the ordinary” in this routine conversation, other than she is trying to paint a benign landscape of her relationship with Meredith? (In fact, we know from independent witnesses that Meredith had become increasingly annoyed by Knox’s anti-social behaviour around the house)

“¦and I began to start eating a little, while i waited for my friend (Raffaele-at whose house i stayed over) to arrive at my house. He came right after I started eating and he made himself some pasta.

Note Knox’s truly strange attention to detail, “I began to start eating a little” and “He came right after I started eating”. Why the almost millisecond importance of eating? I believe that Knox is highlighting the timing of Sollecito’s arrival to establish that they were therefore together when Meredith was alive and that they remained so until her body would be discovered. This seeks to build an apparently highly accurate and continuous chronology for their alibi.

As we were eating together, Meredith came out of the shower and grabbed some laundry or put some laundry in, one or the other, and returned into her room after saying hi to Raffael

Knox mentions the word “grab” repeatedly throughout this email. It does not signify a factual rush to do something, but her psychological need to create a fleeting impression about recollections that she knows to be untrue.

It is also odd that Knox feels the need to highlight the “laundry”, but is immediately vague on whether or not it was before or after the wash.  This is the sort of detail that adds nothing of factual relevance, but tends to create the impression that Knox is making it up as she goes along. Repeatedly, throughout all her statements, she fluctuates between sudden accuracy about certain unimportant facts or those that support her claimed innocence, but becomes, equally suddenly, very “confused” when it relates to important facts that might establish her guilt.

After lunch, I began to play guitar with Raffael and Meredith came out of her room and went to the door. She said bye and left for the day. It was the last time I saw her alive.

This is a very laborious and therefore insincere recall. Most innocent people would simply recall that, “After lunch, Meredith said goodbye and left for the day”. Knox’s attention to detail appears necessary only because she is carefully constructing a knowingly dishonest version of events and placing herself in it, as if she were an innocent spectator.

After a little while of playing guitar, I and Raffael went to his house to watch movies and after, to eat dinner and generally spend the evening and night indoors. We didnt go out.

Once again, Knox takes great care to build a continuous, but dishonest, alibi. She seeks to reassure herself by creating a fantasy narrative, with Sollecito and her as the key actors.

How can one “generally spend the evening and night indoors”? Either they did or they didn’t do so. Period.

Why, if they did stay in, does Knox feel the need to expressly state, “We didn’t go out”?

It would appear that Knox is grappling with her inner knowledge that she is telling whopping great lies, but by repeating them, she can establish the alibi in her mind and also reassure herself, (and the FOA), that she is telling the truth.

The next morning, I woke up around 1030 and after grabbing my few things, I left Raffael’s apartment and walked the five-minute walk back to my house to, once again, take a shower and grab a change of clothes.

As above, we have two instances of “grabbing”, indicating a specific desire to skip quickly across her conscious lies. Knox again stresses a shower, a subconscious effort to cleanse her burdensome knowledge of guilt.

I also needed to grab a mop because, after dinner, Raffael had spilled a lot of water on the floor of his kitchen by accident and didnt have a mop to clean it up.

This is not the first time that Knox alludes to this water issue and therefore, the need to collect the mop from her house. Unfortunately, Sollecito’s and her versions vary between a “spillage” and a “leak” from the sink.
These descriptions mean two different things. A “spillage” indicates a human cause, whereas a leak indicates a failure in the pipes.

Judge Massei has rightly questioned the need to collect a mop from Knox’s house, when Sollecito had a janitor service at his house.

I don’t think anyone on TJFM has suggested a perhaps more likely reason for Knox “grabbing” her mop and taking it to Sollecito’s house, one that has nothing to do with leaks or spillages at the latter house.

We know that there was a concerted clean-up of the murder scene, most likely after Knox had purchased cleaning agents/bleach from the shop, early on the morning of November 2nd 2007.  It would make sense that Knox and Sollecito, bare foot, used Knox’s house mop to wash down the floors. It would be potentially very risky to leave that mop at the murder scene thereafter, (no matter how well it was rinsed), for fear that traces of Knox’s and/or Solliceto’s incriminating DNA remained for detection by forensics, mixed with Meredith’s DNA.

It was simply much safer to take the mop away, as they left the house.

It would be interesting to know if the police ever found Knox’s original mop and whether it would have yielded any incriminating DNA evidence.

So, I arrived home and the first abnormal thing I noticed was the door was wide open.

Note: Knox immediately notes that the “wide open” door was “abnormal”.

Here’s the thing about the door to our house:
It’s broken, in such a way that you have to use the keys to keep it closed.

if we dont have the door locked, it is really easy for the wind to
blow the door open and so my roommates and I always have the door
locked unless we are running really quickly to bring the garbage out
or to get something from the neighbors, who live below us.

Who “runs really quickly” to bring garbage out? Only someone like Knox, who is trying to persuade herself and the FOA that it would justify leaving an entrance door “wide open”. Most sensible tenants would have demanded that the landlord repair the door and secure the property, particularly as it housed four young women.

(Another important piece of information: for those who dont know, I inhabit a
house of two stories, of which my three roommates and I share the
second story appartment. there are four Italian guys of our age
between 22 and 26 who live below us. We are all quite good friends and we talk often. Giacomo is especially welcome because he plays guitar with me and Laura, one of my roommates and is, or was, dating Meredith.  The other three are Marco, Stefano, and Ricardo.)

Why is this information so “important”, particularly for “those who don’t know”?  The only reason seems to be an opportunity for Knox to create the illusion that she was very sociable. We know, according to independent witnesses, that Knox had distinct character quirks that made social contact uncomfortable for all who met her, (bar Solliceto).

Anyway, so the door was wide open. Strange, yes, but not so strange that I really
thought anything about it.

Note: now Knox cannot make up her mind whether the “wide-open” door is “odd/strange” or “not so strange that I really thought anything about it”. The truth is that these expressed reactions are mutually exclusive. Indeed, she goes on immediately to show that she DID think something about it”¦.

I assumed someone in the house was doing exactly what I just said, taking out the trash or talking really quickly to the neighbors downstairs. So I closed the door behind me
but I didnt lock it, assuming that the person who left the door open would like to come back in.

A lot of “thinking” here, all of it a self-serving excuse as to why Knox didn’t call the police straight away.

When I entered, I called out if anyone was there, but no one responded and I assumed that if anyone was there, they were still asleep.

This was another of Knox’s BIG assumptions, taking no care to even consider that there might have been a genuine break-in or that the culprit might be still lurking in the house.

Laura’s door was open which meant she wasn’t home, and Filomena’s door was also closed. My door was open like always and Meredith door was closed, which to me meant she was sleeping.

Knox seems to be so knowledgeable about her housemates’ whereabouts, simply by the status of their respective bedroom doors!
In fact, Knox knew that both Filomena and Laura would be away for the long weekend and that only Meredith would be in the house on 01/11/2007.

I undressed in my room and took a quick shower in one of the two
bathrooms in my house, the one that is right next to Meredith and my
bedrooms, (situated right next to one another).
It was after I stepped out of the shower and onto the mat that I noticed the blood in the
bathroom. It was on the mat I was using to dry my feet and there were
drops of blood in the sink.
At first, I thought the blood might have come from my ears, which I had pierced extensively not too long ago, but then, immediately, I know it wasn’t mine because the stains on the mat
were too big for just droplets from my ear, and when I touched the
blood in the sink it was caked on already.

Who pierces their ears “extensively”? Knox, here, is desperate to try to link bleeding from alleged tiny earlobe punctures with the volume of blood visible in the sink and on the mat.

There was also blood smeared on the faucet. Again, however, I thought it was strange
because my roommates and I are very clean and we wouldn’t leave blood
in the bathroom, but I assumed that perhaps Meredith was having
menstral issues and hadn’t cleaned up yet. Ew, but nothing to worry
about.

Again, lots of “strange” blood that Knox immediately seeks to explain away by careless and indeed ridiculous “menstral” bleeding.
More importantly, note here that Knox only considers that she and/or Meredith could be the only source of the blood. She had arrived back to a “wide-open” door, which could have allowed any bleeding person to enter the bathroom unimpeded.
In fact, Knox is grappling again with her knowledge that the blood is a mixture of Meredith’s and her own DNA. By suggesting her bleeding ear piercings and Meredith’s “menstral issues”, Knox is making a feeble attempt to put together an innocent, advance explanation for any mixture of Meredith’s and her blood that subsequent forensic examination might identify.
Still, Knox shows not the slightest concern that her house is “wide-open” and there is blood in the bathroom. An innocent person would have immediately contacted her housemates, accounted for their safety and then called the police.

I left the bathroom and got dressed in my room. After I got
dressed, I went to the other bathroom in my house, the one that
Filomena and Laura use, and used their hairdryer to obviously dry my
hair”¦

Why does Knox state “”¦.obviously to dry my hair”? Why otherwise would anyone normally use a hair dryer?

“¦ and it was after I was putting back the dryer that I noticed the
shit that was left in the toilet, something that definitely no one in
our house would do.

NOTE: Knox confirms here that she first noticed the “shit” in Filomena and Laura’s toilet and that it could not be that of any of the housemates.

I started feeling a little uncomfortable.

Only a “little”? How many indications did Knox need to conclude that something was seriously amiss? Still, she made no call to the police or her housemates.

Note again that she only “started” to feel uncomfortable ““ no more than that. She constantly seeks to express her alleged concern on one hand and simultaneously write it off on the other.

and so I grabbed the mop from out closet and left the house, closing and locking the door that no one had come back through while I was in the shower, and I returned to Raffael’s place.

This is another “grabbing” remark to skip over another deliberate untruth. It also seems to imply that her discomfort made her leave the house in a hurry, (see below).

How does Knox know whether or not anyone had come in through the open door, while she was in the shower?

After we had used the mop to clean up the kitchen, I told Raffael about what I had seen in the house over breakfast. The strange blood in the bathroom, the door wide open, the
shit left in the toilet. He suggested I call one of my roommates, so I
called Filomena.

So here we have Knox, having left her house feeling “uncomfortable” for all the reasons that she stated in this paragraph, but then goes to Sollecito’s house where she and Sollecito allegedly “cleaned up the kitchen”, (note: not “”¦.mopped up the water spillage/leak”).
They then make breakfast and it is only “over breakfast” that Knox gets round to sharing this troubling and uncomfortable information with Sollecito.
An honest person would have told Sollecito straight away, upon her return. Why was Knox so nonchalant about the “strange” things at her house? Perhaps because she and Sollecito, (as the murderers), already knew all about them and that she is now constructing this fantasy alibi to cover their guilty asses.

Filomena had been at a party the night before with her boyfriend, Marco, (not the same Marco who lives downstairs but we’ll call him Marco-f as in Filomena and the other can be Marco-n as in neighbor).
She also told me that Laura wasn’t at home and hadn’t been
because she was on business in Rome. which meant the only one who had
spent the night at our house last night was Meredith, and she was as
of yet unaccounted for.

Knox therefore confirms that she already knew that both Filomena and Laura were out of town for the long weekend. Filomena testified that she had asked Amanda, on the afternoon of 01/11/2007, to help her wrap a birthday present for the party.

Filomena seemed really worried, so I told her I’d call Meredith and then call her back.

Knox seems quite surprised at the extent of Filomena’s worried response. The real surprise is that Knox is the only one, of all the housemates and Meredith’s friends, who behaved in a totally inappropriate and cold manner, both leading up to the discovery of Meredith’s body and particularly afterwards at the police station.
The phone record shows that Knox is telling more lies here ““ she had already rung Meredith’s phones before ringing Filomena.

Judge Massei found that Knox had done so, not out of any concern about Meredith, (the calls only lasted 3 or 4 seconds), but to establish that the discarded phones had not yet been found. Having satisfied herself that the phones remained undiscovered and that no investigation could yet be underway, the coast was clear for Knox to ring Filomena and thereby set the wheels in motion of the inevitable discovery of Meredith’s body.

I called both of Meredith’s phones, the English one first and last and the Italian one between.

No, this was BEFORE Knox first called Filomena, (see above). The phone record completely destroys Knox’s alleged call chronology and proves her, without doubt, to be a liar.

The first time i called the English phone, it rang and then sounded as if
there was disturbance, but no one answered.

What kind of “disturbance”? Was Knox trying to imply that someone else had the phone at that stage?

I then called the Italian phone and it just kept ringing, no answer.
I called her English phone again and this time an English voice told me her phone was out of
service.

Oh well, Knox, never mind”¦.

Raffael and I gathered our things and went back to my house.

I unlocked the door and I’m going to tell this really slowly to get
everything right, so just have patience with me.

Revealingly, Knox had to warn herself to be careful here ““ she wouldn’t want a slip up in her alibi, would she? No innocent person would ever have the need to write such a phrase.

The living room/kitchen was fine. Looked perfectly normal. I was checking for
signs of our things missing, should there have been a burglar in our
house the night before.

Why did she not do this when she had first gone to her house earlier that morning?

Filomena’s room was closed, but when I opened the door, her room was a mess and her window was open and completely broken, but her computer was still sitting on her desk like, it always was and this confused me.

Yes, Knox, of course it did, but you bravely persevered with your search”¦

Convinced that we had been robbed, I went to Laura’s room and looked quickly in, but it was spotless, like it hadn’t even been touched. This, too, I thought was odd.

This alleged robbery becomes even more strange for Knox ““ “convincing” but at the same time, “odd”. The only explanation, (which she knew and was discovering more and more flaws in it), was that it was a “staged” break-in of Sollecito’s and her own making.

I then went into the part of the house that Meredith and I share and checked my room
for things missing, which there weren’t.

Phew, that must have been a relief! Most (innocent) people would have checked their own room first.

Then I knocked on Meredith’s room, but when she didnt respond. I knocked louder and louder until I was really banging on her door and shouting her name. No response.
Either Meredith wasn’t in, (the most likely reason) but she had not answered her phones.

Why did Knox not call the police immediately?

Panicking, I ran out onto our terrace to see if maybe I could see over the ledge into her
room from the window, but I couldn’t see in. Bad angle.

The “angle” was the same as it had always been. It was only a small house. Why did Knox allegedly try to see through Meredith’s window when it was out of the line of sight from the terrace?

I then went into the bathroom where I had dried my hair and looked really quickly
into the toilet. In my panic, I thought I hadn’t seen anything there,
which to me meant whoever was in my house had been there when I had
been there.
As it turns out, the police told me later that the toilet was full and that the shit had just fallen to the bottom of the toilet, so I didnt see it.

Why, in a state of panic, did Knox suddenly decide to inspect the toilet bowl in Filomena’s bathroom? Knox has already written, (see above, in this discussion), that she had noticed the unusual “shit” in the toilet during her first visit to the house earlier that morning.
Why would the police discuss with Knox the position of the “shit” as a means of helping her to understand why she had completely failed to notice it in her “panic”?

Knox deduces that whoever had left the shit in the bowl had been there when she was there. It turned out to be Guede’s shit, therefore Knox is admitting that she was with Guede on the night of Meredith’s murder and Guede has been convicted of the crime - one for which he is co-responsible with Knox and Sollecito.

I ran outside and down to our neighbors’ door. The lights were out, but I banged on the door anyway. I wanted to ask them if they had heard anything the night before, but no one was
home. I ran back into the house.

Knox knew that the boys downstairs were going away for the long weekend before she murdered Meredith. Why would Knox have pounded of the door of a house that she had known was empty?

In the living room, Raffael told me he wanted to see if he could break down Meredith’s door. He tried, and cracked the door, but we couldn’t open it. It was then that we decided
to call the cops.

What a wimp! The housemates’ boyfriends, when they discovered that Meredith was missing and that her door (unusually) locked, had no trouble breaking down the door and unlike Sollecito, they were not trained in kick-boxing.

Finally, they called the cops!!  Knox did so with no urgency whatsoever. She and Sollecito delayed calling the police for as long as possible, to give themselves time to construct an agreed alibi and to check that everything was in place, at the murder scene, to indicate a “lone wolf” break in and attack on Meredith.

There are two types of cops in Italy, Carabinieri, (local, dealing with traffic and domestic calls) and the police investigators.
He first called his sister for advice and then called the Carbanieri.
I then called Filomena, who said she would be on her way home immediately.

Knox is a liar here again. These remarks are unsupported by the phone record.

While we were waiting, two ununiformed police investigators came to our house. I showed them what I could and told them what I knew. Gave them phone numbers and explained a bit in broken Italian, and then Filomena arrived with her boyfriend, Marco-f
and two other friends of hers.

These uniformed police confirmed that both Knox and Sollecito looked very surprised to see them. Neither of them knew that the phones had been discovered, (ironically one had been discovered when Knox had rung it a little earlier), and that these police had arrived to investigate their loss and return them to Filomena and Meredith.
No word from Knox as to why she and Sollecito were surprised to see these police.

All together, we checked the house out, talked to the police and in a bit, they all opened Meredith’s door.
I was in the kitchen, standing aside, having really done my part for
the situation. But when they opened Meredith’s’ door and I heard
Filomena scream, “a foot! a foot!”, in Italian, I immediately tried to
get to Meredith’s room, but Raffael grabbed me and took me out of the
house.

This is a complete fabrication. Knox speaks as someone who knew that the opened bedroom door would reveal Meredith’s body. No innocent person would stand back, aloof and disinterested, when all the others were anxious to break down the door.
Which innocent person would lapse into complete disinterest because “I had already done my part for the situation”. Sounds as if Knox felt she had acted that part of the planned alibi script and was waiting to resume the act at a later stage.
Knox then tries to establish that she tried to get to Meredith’s room because Filomena had screamed “a foot”. Again, Sollecito saved the day by “grabbing”, (that word again!), her and taking her outside because Filomena had screamed out “a foot”.

It is a fact that both Knox and Sollecito obviously knew details of the murder scene, but had not been present to see into the bedroom when the door had been broken down.
Thus, Knox is trying here to establish how she knew about the disposition of Meredith’s body, without needing a line of sight on the murder scene.

The police told everyone to get out and not long afterward the
Carabinieri arrived and then soon afterward, more police
investigators. They took all of our information and asked us the same
questions over and over.

The police had not asked the same questions “over and over” of any other, (innocent), witnesses, just of Knox and Solliceto. Why? I suspect that only Knox and Sollecito needed repeated questions because only they were telling inconsistent and changing stories.
Knox simply does not understand that the police only tend to ask the same questions “over and over” if the witness is being dishonest and evasive by giving inconsistent and contradictory answers. She may as well admit that her answers were and are just that.

At the time, I had only what I was wearing and my bag, which thankfully had my passport in it and my wallet. No jacket though, and I was freezing.

Was Knox trying to cover up her nervous trembles, during her answers to difficult questions, by trying to claim here that she was “freezing”?

After sticking around at the house for a bit, the police told us to go to the station to give testimony, which I did.
I was in a room for six hours straight after that, without
seeing anyone else, answering questions in Italian for the first hour
and then they brought in an interpreter and he helped me out with the
details that I didnt know the words for..

An innocent person would never submit to an interview in a murder case, without fluency in the local language
Knox repeats here the allegations of extended questioning and sleep/food/water deprivation to try to excuse her admissions in her signed, written statements. The facts show that she had only about three hours of questioning, the remainder of the time at the police station being spent on giving long, voluntary accounts of her part in the events, at her request.
No person EVER admits to a callous murder, except perhaps under overt torture. Knox has never claimed torture during questioning.

They asked me, of course, about the morning, the last time I saw her, and because I was the closest to her, questions about her habits and her relationships.
Here, Knox is attempting to create an untruthful impression of a close and warm relationship with Meredith. Meredith’s friends consistently claim to the contrary.
Afterwards, when they were taking my fingerprints, I met two of
Meredith’s English friends, two girls she goes out with, including the
last one who saw her alive that night she was murdered. They also had
their prints taken.
After that, (this was around 9 at night by this time), I was taken into the waiting room where there was various other people who I all knew from various places, who all knew Meredith. Her friends from England, my roommates, even the owner of the pub she most
frequented.
After a while, my neighbors were taken in too, having just arrived home from a weeklong vacation in their home town, which explained why they weren’t home when I banged on their door.

Of course it did, Knox.  You knew that the neighbours had gone away for the weekend. In fact, as you knew that only Meredith would be in the house, it was a perfect opportunity to assault and murder her.

Later than that, another guy showed up and was taken in for questioning, a guy I
dont like, but whom both Meredith and I knew from different occasions, a
Moroccan guy that I only know by his nickname amongst the girls,
“shaky”.

Big, bad BLACK guy, that is, not an all-American, sweet, apple pie gal like good ole Amanda…

Then I sat around in this waiting room, without having the
chance to leave or eat anything besides vending machine food, (which
gave me a hell of a stomach ache) until 5:30 in the morning.

Knox made no official complaint about this alleged mistreatment by the police. On the contrary, she confirmed, in court, that the police had treated her well, including supplying food and drinks to her. More lies.

During this time, I received calls from a lot of different people, family
mostly of course, and I also talked with the rest, especially to find
out what exactly was in Meredith’s room when they opened it. Apparently
her body was lying under a sheet, and with her foot sticking out and
there was a lot of blood. Whoever had done this had slit her throat.

Here, Knox records another explanation of how she knew about the crime scene details, while never having been in the position to see them. These are lies, again, of course.

They told me to be back in at 11am. I went home to Raffael’s place,
ate something substantial and passed out.

Altogether, what with the murder, staged break in, intensive overnight cleanup of the murder scene, giving consistently contradictory evidence to the police and maintaining an aura of sweet innocence, I am not surprised that Know alleges that she “passed out”. She must have been knackered. Photos of the pair on the morning after the murder show both to be drawn and unkempt.

In the morning, Raffael drove me back to the police station, but had to
leave me when they said they wanted to take me back to the house for
questioning.
Before I go on, I’d like to say that I was strictly told not to speak about this, but I’m speaking with you people who are not involved and who can’t do anything bad except talk to journalists, which I hope you won’t do. I have to get this off my chest because it’s
pressing down on me and it helps to know that someone besides me knows
something and that I’m not the one who knows the most out of everyone.

Why does Knox reveal information here, about which she had been “strictly told” not to speak? This shows her unwillingness to accept any boundaries in her behaviour.
What is pressing on Knox’s chest? The guilt of having murdered Meredith or more likely, that she cannot persuade anyone, (outside the FOA), to believe her changing stories and denials of fact.
Knox inadvertently concedes here that she “”¦ knows the most out of everyone”. I would suggest that the only way to know that much is to be the murderess.
Pathetically, she is seeking to share her guilt by passing the buck of responsibility onto others, who by swallowing her stories, hook, line and sinker, can become witting or unwitting co-conspirators in her deception.

At the house, they asked me very personal questions about Meredith’s
life and also about the personalities of our neighbors. How well did I
know them? Pretty well, we are friends. Was Meredith sexually active?
Yeah, she borrowed a few of my condoms. Does she like anal? WTF? I
dont know. Does she use Vaseline for her lips? What kind of person is
Stefano? Nice guy, has a really pretty girlfriend.

I have no doubt that Knox could fill in any gaps in her knowledge here by telling her usual lies, as she always has done and continues to do.

Hmmm”¦very interesting. We’d like to show you something, and tell us if this is
out of normal.

Why would the police rely on Knox for an honest answer to ANY question?

They took me into the neighbors’ house. They had broken the door open
to get in, but they told me to ignore that.

Why would the police have broken the door down, rather than simply call the young men home and keep their part of the house sealed off until they had arrived?

The rooms were all open. Giacomo’s and Marco-n’s rooms were spotless, which made sense because the guys had thoroughly cleaned the whole house before they left on
vacation.

This is Knox reaching quick conclusions on matters about which she has no knowledge. How ironic that she cannot reach any consistent and revealing conclusion about Meredith’s murder, about which she knows so much
!
Stefano’s room however, well, his bed was stripped of linens,
which was odd, and the comforter he used was shoved up at the top of
his bed, with blood on it. I obviously told then that the blood was
definitely out of normal and also that he usually has his bed made.
They took note of it and ushered me out.

How can Knox be such an expert about Stephano’s room, his blood and his personal habits? More lies and fantasy.

When I left the house to go back to the police station, they told me to put my jacket over my head and duck down below the window, so the reporters wouldn’t try to talk to
me.
At the station, I just had to repeat the answers that I had given
at the house, so they could type them up and after a good 5 and a half
hour day with the police again, Raffael picked me up and took me out
for some well-deserved pizza. I was starving.

Again, Knox admits that she has to answer the same, repeated questions, oblivious to the fact that this must imply that her answers are inconsistent and God Forbid, dishonest.

I then bought some underwear because, as it turns out, I won’t be able to leave Italy for a
while, as well as enter my house. I only had the clothes I was wearing the day it began, so i bought some underwear and borrowed a pair of pants from Raffael.

So Knox only buys underwear because she cannot leave Italy or enter the house? Does she not need any other clothes?

Spoke with my remaining roommates that night (last night) and it was a hurricane of emotions and stress, but we needed it anyway.

I would suspect Knox, more than anybody, to be at the centre of the “hurricane”. Innocent people would be upset for Meredith’s loss, but would not experience anything like Knox’s stress, as a murderess trying to concoct a consistent alibi, without success.

What we have been discussing is basically what to do next. We are trying to keep
our heads on straight.

Knox, here, is admitting that she was exercised in keeping her concentration on the next phase of maintaining her concoction of lies.

First things first though, my roommates both work for lawyers, and they are going to try to send a request through on Monday to retrieve important documents of ours that are still in
the house.

These “documents” were obviously much more important than Meredith’s murder. Knox is such a narcissist ““ everything is all about her.

Secondly, we are going to talk to the agency that we used to find our house and obviously request to move out. It kind of sucks that we have to pay the next month’s rent, but the owner has protection within the contract.

Such a shame! Obviously Knox did not foresee that murdering Meredith might cost her a month’s extra rent.

After that, I guess I’ll go back to class on Monday, although I’m not sure what I’m going to do about people asking me questions, because I really dont want to talk again about what
happened. I’ve been talking an awful lot lately and I’m pretty tired of
it. After that, it’s like I’m trying to remember what I was doing before
all this happened. I still need to figure out who I need to talk to and what I need to do to continue studying in Perugia, because it’s what I want to do.

Yes, Knox, don’t let your murder of Meredith interrupt your study and future plans.

Anyway, that’s the update, feeling okay,

Better now for off-loading all this rubbish? Here’s a bit of advice, Knox, if you truly wish to offload your burden, tell the truth of your involvement in Meredith’s cruel murder.

Hope you all are well,
Amanda.

Yeah - right!

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Note For Strasbourg Court & State Department: Knox Herself Proves She Lies About Her Interrogation

Posted by James Raper

In our previous post Kermit nicely shows how, under the European Court of Human Rights’ own guidelines, Amanda Knox’s “appeal” won’t put her out of reach of the fair and painstaking Italians. 

If any of the busy, hard-pressed ECHR investigators do choose to press beyond the ECHR guidelines, they will almost instantly establish that in her voluntary interview on 5 November 2007 Knox was treated with complete fairness.

Also that her false accusation of Patrick (which she never retracted) was entirely of her own doing.

And also that she is not only trying to throw sand into the wheels of Italian justice during an ongoing judicial process (a felony in Italy) but she is trying to welsh out of paying Patrick his damages award of $100,000 (a contempt of the Supreme Court) thus foolishly risking two more charges of aggravated calunnia.

This post derives from a post of mine last May. In another post, we showed that Dr Mignini was not present for the interrogation that night, and Knox maliciously invented an illegal interrogation at risk of a third aggravated calunnia charge.

In fact Dr Mignini met with Amanda Knox only briefly, later, to charge her and to warn she should say no more without a lawyer. He asked her no questions.

I will compare the various accounts of the interrogation to demonstrate that Amanda Knox is indeed lying to the ECHR, just as she did repeatedly in her book this year and also on US and European television.

• There are two main bodies of truth about the interrogation: (1) all of those present at various times on that night and (2) Knox’s own testimony on the witness stand in mid 2009.


• There are two main bodies of lies about the interrogation (1) The Sollecito book and (2) the Knox book, which by the way not only contradict one another but also contradict such other accounts as those of Saul Kassin and John Douglas.

The police had called her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito in to the station for questioning and Knox had accompanied him because she did not want to be alone. They had already eaten at the house of a friend of Sollecito’s.

Knox’s interrogation was not tape recorded and in that sense we have no truly independent account of what transpired. The police, including the interpreter, gave evidence at her trial, but we do not yet have transcripts for that evidence other than that of the interpreter. There are accounts in books that have been written about the case but these tend to differ in the detail. The police and the interpreter maintain that she was treated well. Apart from the evidence of the interpreter all we have is what Knox says happened, and our sources for this are transcripts of her trial evidence and what she wrote in her book. I shall deal with the evidence of the interpreter towards the end of this article.

I am going to compare what she said at trial with what she wrote in her book but also there was a letter she wrote on the 9th and a recording of a meeting with her mother on the 10th November which are relevant.. What she wrote in her book is fairly extensive and contains much dialogue. She has a prodigious memory for detail now which was almost entirely lacking before.  I am going to tell you to treat what she says in her book with extreme caution because she has already been found out for, well let us say, her creative writing if not outright distortion of facts. I shall paraphrase rather than quote most of it but a few direct quotes are necessary.

Knox arrived with Sollecito at the police station at about 10.30 pm (according to John Follain). The police started to question Sollecito at 10.40 pm (Follain).

In her book Knox describes being taken from the waiting area to a formal interview room in which she had already spent some time earlier. It is unclear when that formal questioning began. Probably getting on for about 11.30pm because she also refers to some questions being asked of her in the waiting room following which she did some stretches and splits. She then describes how she was questioned about the events over a period from about the time she and Sollecito left the cottage to about 9 pm on the 1st November.

Possibly there was a short break. She describes being exhausted and confused. The interpreter, Knox says, arrived at about 12.30 am. Until then she had been conversing with the police in Italian.

Almost immediately on the questioning resuming -

“Monica Napoleoni, who had been so abrupt with me about the poop and the mop at the villa, opened the door. “Raffaele says you left his apartment on Thursday night,” she said almost gleefully. “He says that you asked him to lie for you. He’s taken away your alibi.””

Knox describes how she was dumfounded and devastated by this news. She cannot believe that he would say that when they had been together all night. She feels all her reserves of energy draining away. Then -

“Where did you go? Who did you text?” Ficarra asked, sneering at me.

“I don’t remember texting anyone.”

They grabbed my cell phone up off the desk and scrolled quickly through its history.

“You need to stop lying. You texted Patrick. Who’s Patrick?”

“My boss at Le Chic.”

Stop right there.

How were the police able to name the recipient of the text? The text Patrick had sent her had already been deleted from Knox’s mobile phone by Knox herself and Knox hasn’t yet named Patrick. In fact she couldn’t remember texting anyone.

It is of course probable that the police already had a log of her calls and possibly had already traced and identified the owner of the receiving number for her text, though the last step would have been fast work.

In her trial testimony Knox did a lot of “the police suggested this and suggestd that” though it is never crystal clear whether she is accusing the police of having suggested his name. But she is doing it here in her book and of course the Knox groupies have always maintained that it was the police who suggested his name to her.

The following extract from her trial testimony should clear things up. GCM is Judge Giancarlo Massei.

GCM: In this message, was there the name of the person it was meant for?

AK: No, it was the message I wrote to my boss. The one that said “Va bene. Ci vediamo piu tardi. Buona serata.”

GCM: But it could have been a message to anyone. Could you see from the message to whom it was written?

AK: Actually, I don’t know if that information is in the telephone”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦..

GCM : But they didn’t literally say it was him!

AK : No. They didn’t say it was him, but they said “We know who it is, we know who it is. You were with him, you met him.”

GCM : Now what happened next? You, confronted with the message, gave the name of Patrick. What did you say?”

AK : Well, first I started to cry…....

And having implied that it was the police who suggested Patrick’s name to her, she adds”¦.. that quote again -

“You need to stop lying. You texted Patrick. Who’s Patrick?”

“My boss at Le Chic.”

Here she is telling the Perugian cops straight out exactly to whom the text was sent. “My boss at Le Chic”.

But that does not quite gel with her trial testimony -

And they told me that I knew, and that I didn’t want to tell. And that I didn’t want to tell because I didn’t remember or because I was a stupid liar. Then they kept on about this message, that they were literally shoving in my face saying “Look what a stupid liar you are, you don’t even remember this!”

At first, I didn’t even remember writing that message. But there was this interpreter next to me who kept saying “Maybe you don’t remember, maybe you don’t remember, but try,” and other people were saying “Try, try, try to remember that you met someone, and I was there hearing “Remember, remember, remember…..

Doesn’t the above quote make it clear that the police were having considerable trouble getting Knox to tell them to whom her text message was sent? It would also explain their growing frustration with her.

But perhaps the above quote relates not to whom the text was sent but, that having been ascertained, whether Knox met up with that person later? Knox has a habit of conflating the two issues. However there is also the following quote from her trial testimony -

Well there were lots of people who were asking me questions, but the person who had started talking with me was a policewoman with long hair, chestnut brown hair, but I don’t know her. Then in the circle of people who were around me, certain people asked me questions, for example there was a man holding my telephone, and who was literally shoving the telephone into my face, shouting “Look at this telephone! Who is this? Who did you want to meet?”

Then there were others, for instance this woman who was leading, was the same person who at one point was standing behind me, because they kept moving, they were really surrounding me and on top of me. I was on a chair, then the interpreter was also sitting on a chair, and everyone else was standing around me, so I didn’t see who gave me the first blow because it was someone behind me, but then I turned around and saw that woman and she gave me another blow to the head.

The woman with the long hair, chestnut brown hair, Knox identifies in her book as Ficarra. Ficarra is the policewoman who started the questioning particularly, as Knox has confirmed, about the texted message. “Look at this telephone! Who is this? Who did you want to meet?” Again, surely this is to get Knox to identify the recipient of the text, not about whether she met up with him?






In the book though, it is all different.

In the book, the police having told her that the text is to someone called Patrick, Knox is a model of co-operation as, having already told them that he is her boss at Le Chic, she then gives a description of him and answers their questions as to whether he knew Meredith, whether he liked her etc. No reluctance to co-operate, no memory difficulties here.

Notwithstanding this, her book says the questions and insinuations keep raining down on her. The police insist that she had left Sollecito’s to meet up with - and again the police name him - Patrick.

“Who did you meet up with? Who are you protecting? Why are you lying? Who’s this person? Who’s Patrick?”

Remember again, according to her trial testimony the police did not mention Patrick’s name and Knox still hasn’t mentioned his name. But wait, she does in the next line -

“I said “Patrick is my boss.””

So now, at any rate, the police have a positive ID from Knox regarding the text message and something to work with. Patrick - boss - Le Chic.

Knox then refers to the differing interpretations as to what “See you later” meant and denies that she had ever met up with Patrick that evening. She recalls the interpreter suggesting that she was traumatized and suffering from amnesia.

The police continue to try to draw an admission from Knox that she had met up with Patrick that evening - which again she repeatedly denies. And why shouldn’t she? After all, she denies that she’s suffering from amnesia, or that there is a problem with her memory. The only problem is that Sollecito had said she had gone out but that does not mean she had met with Patrick.

Knox then writes, oddly, as it is completely out of sequence considering the above -

“They pushed my cell phone, with the message to Patrick, in my face and screamed,

“You’re lying. You sent a message to Patrick. Who’s Patrick?”

That’s when Ficarra slapped me on my head.”

A couple of blows (more like cuffs) to the head (denied by the police) is mentioned in her trial testimony but more likely, if this incident ever happened, it would have been earlier when she was struggling to remember the text and to whom it had been sent. Indeed that’s clear from the context of the above quotes.

And this, from her trial testimony -

Remember, remember, remember, and then there was this person behind me who—it’s not that she actually really physically hurt me, but she frightened me.”

In the CNN TV interview with Chris Cuomo, Knox was asked if there was anything she regretted.

Knox replied that she regretted the way this interrogation had gone, that she wished she had been aware of her rights and had stood up to the police questioning better.

Well actually, according to the account in her book, she appears to have stood up to the police questioning with a marked degree of resilience and self- certainty, and with no amnesia. There is little of her trademark “being confused”. 

So why the sudden collapse? And it was a sudden collapse.

Given the trial and book accounts Knox would have us think that she was frightened, that it was due to exhaustion and the persistent and bullying tone of the questioning, mixed with threats that she would spend time in prison for failing to co-operate. She also states that -

(a) she was having a bad period and was not being allowed to attend to this, and

(b) the police told her that they had “hard evidence” that she was involved in the murder.

Knox has given us a number of accounts as to what was actually happening when this occurred.

In a letter she wrote on the 9th November she says that suddenly all the police officers left the room but one, who told her she was in serious trouble and that she should name the murderer. At this point Knox says that she asked to see the texted message again and then an image of Patrick came to mind. All she could think about was Patrick and so she named him (as the murderer).

During a recorded meeting with her mother in Capanne Prison on the 10th November she relates essentially the same story.

In her book there is sort of the same story but significantly without mention of the other officers having left the room nor mention of her having asked to see the texted message again.

If the first two accounts are correct then at least the sense of oppression from the room being crowded and questions being fired at her had lifted.

Then this is from her book -

In that instant, I snapped. I truly thought I remembered having met somebody. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I didn’t understand that I was about to implicate the wrong person. I didn’t understand what was at stake. I didn’t think I was making it up. My mind put together incoherent images. The image that came to me was Patrick’s face.  I gasped. I said his name. “Patrick””it’s Patrick.

It’s her account, of course, but this “Patrick - It’s Patrick” makes no sense at this stage of it unless it’s an admission not just that she had met up with Patrick but that he was at the cottage and involved in Meredith’s death.

And this is from her trial testimony -

GCM : Now what happened next? You, confronted with the message, gave the name of Patrick. What did you say?

AK : Well, first I started to cry. And all the policemen, together, started saying to me, you have to tell us why, what happened? They wanted all these details that I couldn’t tell them, because in the end, what happened was this: when I said the name of Patrick I suddenly started imagining a kind of scene, but always using this idea: images that didn’t agree, that maybe could give some kind of explanation of the situation.

There is a clear difference between these two quotes.

The one from her book suggests that she was trying hard but that the police had virtually brought her to the verge of a mental breakdown.

Her trial testimony says something else; that a scene and an idea was forming in her mind brought on by her naming of Patrick.

In her book she states that a statement, typed up in Italian, was shoved under her nose and she was told to sign it. The statement was timed at 1.45 am. The statement was not long but would probably have taken about twenty minutes to prepare and type.

The statement according to Knox -

... I met Patrick immediately at the basketball court in Piazza Grimana and we went to the house together. I do not remember if Meredith was there or came shortly afterward. I have a hard time remembering those moments but Patrick had sex with Meredith, with whom he was infatuated, but I cannot remember clearly whether he threatened Meredith first. I remember confusedly that he killed her.

The fact that the statement was in Italian is not important. Knox could read Italian perfectly well. However she does insinuate in the book that the details in the statement were suggested to her and that she didn’t bother to read the statement before signing.

Apart from what has been mentioned above, there are some other points and inferences to be drawn from the above analysis.

1.  Knox’s account destroys one of Sollecito’s main tenets in his book Honour Bound. Sollecito maintains that he did nothing to damage Knox’s alibi until he signed a statement, forced on him at 3:30 am and containing the damaging admission that Knox had gone out. But Knox makes it clear that she had heard from the Head of the Murder Squad that he had made that damaging admission, at or shortly after 12.30 am. Or is Knox is accusing Napoleoni of a bare-faced lie?

2.  It is valid to ask why Knox would not want to remember to whom the text had been sent. Who can see into her mind? Perhaps Knox realized that discussion of it would confirm that if she had indeed gone out then it was not to Le Chic, where she was not required. However even if she thought that could put her in the frame it’s not what an innocent person would be too worried about. Perhaps she did just have difficulty remembering?

3.  If there was no fuss and she did remember and tell the police that the text was to Patrick, and the questioning then moved on to whether she met up with Patrick later that evening, what was the problem with that? She knew the fact that she hadn’t met up with him could be verified by Patrick. She could have said that and stuck to it. The next move for the police would have been to question Patrick. They would not have had grounds to arrest him.

4.  Knox stated in her memorial, and re-iterates it in her book, that during her interrogation the police told her that they had hard evidence that she was involved in Meredith’s murder. She does not expand on what this evidence is, perhaps because the police did not actually tell her. However, wasn’t she the least bit curious, particularly if she was innocent? What was she thinking it might be?

5.  I can sympathise with any interviewee suffering a bad period, if that’s true. However the really testy period of the interview/interrogation starts with the arrival of the interpreter, notification of Sollecito’s withdrawal of her alibi and the questioning with regard to the text to Patrick, all occurring at around 12.30 am.  There has to be some critical point when she concedes, whether to the police or in her own mind,  that she’d met “Patrick”, after which there was the questioning as to what had happened next. Say that additional questioning took 20 minutes. Then there would be a break whilst the statement is prepared and typed up. So the difficult period for Knox, from about 12.30 am to that critical point, looks more like about 35 to, at the outside, 50 minutes.

6.  Even if, for that period, it is true that she was subjected to repeated and bullying questions, and threats, then she held up remarkably well as I have noted from her own account. It does not explain any form of mental breakdown, let alone implicating Patrick in murder. In particular, if Knox’s letter of the 9th and the recording of her meeting with her mother on the 10th are to believed, that alleged barrage of questions had stopped when she implicated Patrick.  An explanation, for what it’s worth, might be that she had simply ceased to care any longer despite the consequences. But why?

7.  A better and more credible explanation is that an idea had indeed formed suddenly in her mind. She would use the revelation about the text to Patrick and the consequent police line of questioning to bring the questioning to an end and divert suspicion from her true involvement in the murder of Meredith Kercher. She envisaged that she would be seen by the police as a helpless witness/victim, not a suspect in a murder investigation. As indeed was the case initially.  She expected, I am sure, to be released, so that she could get Sollecito’s story straight once again. If that had happened there would of course remain the problem of her having involved Patrick, but I dare say she thought that she could simply smooth that over - that it would not be a big deal once he had confirmed that there had been no meeting and that he had not been at the cottage, as the evidence was bound to confirm.

At the beginning I said that we also have a transcript now of the evidence of the interpreter, Anna Donnino. I will summarise the main points from her evidence but it will be apparent immediately that she contradicts much of what Knox and her supporters claim to have happened.

Donnino told the court that she had 22 years experience working as a translator for the police in Perugia. She was at home when she received a call from the police that her services were required and she arrived at the police station at just before 12.30 am, just as Knox said. She found Knox with Inspector Ficarra. There was also another police officer there whose first name was Ivano. At some stage Ficarra left the room and then returned and there was also another officer by the name of Zugarina who came in. Donnino remained with Knox at all times

The following points emerge from her testimony :-

1. Three police officers do not amount to the “lots of people” referred to in Knox’s trial testimony, let alone the dozens and the “tag teams” of which her supporters speak.

2. She makes no mention of Napoleoni and denied that anyone had entered the room to state that Sollecito had broken Knox’s alibi. (This is not to exclude that this may have happened before Donnino arrived)

3. She states that Knox was perfectly calm but there came a point when Knox was being asked how come she had not gone to work that she was shown her own text message (to Patrick). Knox had an emotional   shock, put her hands to her ears and started rolling her head and saying “It’s him! It’s him! It’s him!”

4. She denied that Knox had been maltreated or that she had been hit at all or called a liar.

5. She stated that the officer called Ivano had been particularly comforting to Knox, holding her hand occasionally.

6. She stated that prior to the 1.45 am statement being presented to Knox she was asked if she wanted a lawyer but Knox said no.

7. She stated that she had read the statement over to Knox in english and Knox herself had checked the italian original having asked for clarification of specific wording.

7. She confirmed that that she had told Knox about an accident which she’d had (a leg fracture) and that she had suffered amnesia about the accident itself. She had thought Knox was suffering something similar. She had also spoken to Knox about her own daughters because she thought it was necessary to establish a rapport and trust between the two of them.

The account in Knox’s book is in some ways quite compelling but only if it is not compared against her trial testimony, let alone the Interpreter’s testimony:  that is, up to the point when she implicates Patrick in murder. At that point no amount of whitewash works. The Italian Supreme Court also thought so, upholding Knox’s calunnia conviction, with the addition of aggravating circumstances.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

When You Get In A Deeeep Hole, Best To Stop Digging: Did Anyone Think To Tell Knox?

Posted by James Higham

[Florence courts in winter; how they might look when the appeal verdict comes down]


Not sure the Knox machine quite understands what trouble their charge is in.

She’s already done three years for calumny and is at it again.  Her recent slurs on Italian courts and the police have brought further litigation down on her head.

Then there is the little matter of the court award to Patrick Lumumba for false accusation of murder, which she has not paid to this day, despite earning huge amounts from her fiction work published in America.  Every one of us knows what happens when we default.

See how this stands up as her reason not to pay up:

I have already appealed to him to tell him that I didn’t go to the Police Headquarters with the aim of accusing him of a murder he did not commit. What was dragged out of me was dragged out from me without my wanting to harm him.

I only wanted to help and I was completely confused so that I didn’t know what was true and what was not true at that point. Therefore I didn’t want to harm him. I “¦ (MAXI-SIGH) “¦ His.. His name came out only because my mobile phone was there and we exchanged some SMS.

She says: “Vorrei che lui [Patrick]può capire in che situazione io mio trovavo.”  I’d like him to understand the situation I’m in.  Pardon?  A man wrongfully banged-up in prison and owed $80 000 by her should understand the situation she is in?

She was asked what happened and answered, “My best truth is “¦”  My best truth?  She invented an entire situation with Mignini which simply did not happen according to eyewitnesses, including her translator.  Simply did not occur that way.  She volunteered a statement but in the light of subsequent events weeks later, changes that, upon advice, to her being browbeaten.

Hence the calumny charges.

Main poster Stilicho adds:

Knox can’t even be honest about her time in prison. She was not in prison because she was wrongly convicted for murder but because of the calunnia she committed against Patrick and as a precaution against her fleeing the country or killing someone else before her trial was completed. She sang and danced and was frequently visited by politicians and other dignitaries. By all accounts, it was the most productive time in her life.

When confronted with her lies, she says, “I was confused.”  Sorry ““ courts don’t buy such things.  They deal in truth or non-truth.  None of this “it seemed to me”.  She interprets this real-world reaction as hurtful, hateful to Amanda.

In short, she appears to be emotionally or socially retarded, not fully understanding what she has got herself into.  Should she be released on a technicality, as Casey Anthony was, she still faces years inside because of the libel and slander which is piling up.  Her own people are also being litigated.  Peter Quennell:

We don’t see any sign that David Marriott or Robert Barnett or Ted Simon have the slightest clue about Italian law. They are all liable too for the felonies in the book and all of them could be charged too by the Bergamo judge.

Her advisors need to shut her up before she makes it any worse for herself.  In that accusation of Lumumba, she said she was there, in the next room with her hands over her ears because she couldn’t bear Meredith’s screams.  It was a clear description, clear enough for the police to arrest Lumumba and put him in prison.  The screams coincided with those the neighbours reported.

If one was to substitute Guede and Sollecito, whose bloodied footprint was on the bathmat, for Lumumba, that might be close to the truth of what happened, it would explain no DNA found of hers in the actual room..

Except that there are multiple mixed blood traces and her DNA twice now on the murder weapon, along with her panicked reaction when the cutlery drawer was opened, plus her words to her mother that they’d found a knife and that she was very worried about it.  Why would she need to worry if she wasn’t there?

She might be able to explain away the pattern of where her DNA was found on the knife ““ a stabbing grip near the blade ““ as a weird way of cutting vegetables.  Then there was Sollecito’s admission over Meredith’s DNA in the scratch as an accident when he pricked Meredith in the hand whilst cooking at his place.

Except Meredith had never been to his place.  And he still maintains that Knox was not with him that evening at his own home.

So, despite the sweeping statements by her minders of “no evidence”, which are then syndicated all over the world by their media entourage, inc the Wail, there’s actually copious evidence.  After you get past the conflicting stories, the cellphone activity and the witness identifications, there is still the matter of the mixed blood traces.

There was no blood the night before, by Knox’s own admission.  Meredith was out that early evening, the two had not been together.  These are the sorts of minor anomalies she can only explain with “it seemed to me” or “I imagined”.

Then there is the little matter of the hand marks on the neck, too small for the men although there were other marks too.

The horror for Amanda Knox, in her infantilized state ““ look at her handwriting ““ is that she cannot see consequences, not unlike a child.  She doesn’t understand that you can’t go killing someone and get away with it.  She’s constantly on about being seen as a good person, as every child and every adult would like and so many of us do not see it that way.

Like a child, she just wants it all to go away and that childlike appearance is what strongly drags in most people’s sympathy ““ here is a State and nasty people worldwide being cruel and mean to a young innocent.  Yet she’s getting on for 30 now and is no child.  And she still spreads the libel with no thought of consequences, just as she saw no consequences on that night, just the there and then.

The role of drugs cannot be downplayed in this effect on her mind.  She’s almost a poster girl for today’s youth and the early sex and drugs, with the dumbing-down at school at the same time.

She’s a mess and it’s hard not to sympathize with that and want help for her “¦ except for one pesky problem.  She’s a convicted murderess.

The reaction to these posts will be sympathy for her and anger at the bully who is writing it.  It should actually be disgust at what she did and neutrality towards the reporter writing the post.  How does it shift from one to the other?

Natural chivalry.  Yet in this sympathy for her, there is still the question of her victim choking on her blood once the screams had stopped.  And that is what maintains our interest in the case ““ it is unresolved as yet, it is close to the end.

She might get off on a technicality if her lawyers are good enough.  She’ll then go into that limbo state of Casey Anthony and all the other broken children of today, the blame for which many of us lay at the door of Them and their narrative.

For sure there is a sadness to it, which a new commenter, David Berlin mentions:

Knox is a hamster on a wheel, in a cage, endlessly condemned to repeating the same nonsense. In an earlier post I saw her as a character in Beckett’s “˜Play’ and the more she opines the more apt that seems. Endlessly repeating a story, fixed in her lines, unable to find an exit.

Commenter Goodlife writes:

Her life now does not seem all that different from her days in prison in that most aspects of her life seem to be under the control of someone else. But does anyone believe that she is any happier or more content now? She is now nothing more than a performing monkey, dishing out the script given to her by her supposed nearest and dearest.

An Italian commented:  “Young Italian actors should learn from Amanda Knox. She is a great actress.”

She’d stare at that comment in horror.  She uses the term bambina for herself, rather than ragazza, sheltering within this childlike status.  At 20.  At nearer 30 she is still doing it.  She said in an interview that she was la più piccola [the littlest] instead of la più giovane [the youngest].  Littlest evokes more sympathy.

She’s in a prison of her mother’s and her estranged father’s making.

She’s caught up in an international horror story and she’s the leading player.  This will always garner sympathy.

She asks why everyone hates her.  They don’t hate her ““ that’s child talk.  They are appalled by the machine she has behind her and their antics and believe she should take responsibility and start paying off the debt to the dead girl.

Meredith by name.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Questions For Knox: Ten Hard Questions That Knox Should Be Asked Monday On ITV’s Daybreak

Posted by The Machine

Amanda Knox will be interviewed for the first time in Britain on ITV’s Daybreak programme tomorrow.

No interviewer should unquestioningly accept everything Knox says as the gospel truth. Remember Knox served three years in prison and is labeled a convicted felon for life for malicious lying.

So let’s hope tomorrow’s interview is not yet another whiny mis-statement of the core facts, and not yet more sliming of Italian officials, of which we have just seen so many.

There are many questions on this site which Knox has never ever answered. Some arise from the evidence and some from her dishonest book.

See especially the tough questions here and here and here and here.  With luck the Daybreak hosts will ask Knox all of these tough questions below.

1. Multiple false alibis

You and Raffaele Sollecito gave completely different accounts of where you were, who you were with and what you were doing on the night of the murder. Neither of you have credible alibis despite three attempts each. Sollecito told Kate Mansey from The Sunday Mirror that you and him were at a party.

He told the police that you and him were at his apartment. He then told them that he was home alone and that you weren’t at his apartment from around 9.00pm to about 1.00am. You first told the police that you were at Sollecito’s apartment. After you were informed that he was no longer providing you with an alibi, you repeatedly claimed that you went to the cottage with Diya Lumumba.

You changed your story yet again and claimed that you were at Sollecito’s apartment, but he might have gone out. All the other people who were questioned had one credible alibi that could be verified.

Extract of Sollecito’s witness statement.

“I went home, smoked a joint, and had dinner, but I don’t remember what I ate. At around eleven my father phoned me on the house phone. I remember Amanda wasn’t back yet. I surfed on the Internet for a couple of hours after my father’s phone call and I stopped only when Amanda came back, about one in the morning I think.

Question 1. Why did you and Raffaele Sollecito repeatedly tell the police and others a pack of lies?

2. False accusation

You falsely claimed that Diya Lumumba killed Meredith in two witness statements and you repeated the false accusation in your handwritten note to the police on 6 November 2007. You served three years in prison for this felony and your appeal to the Supreme Court was denied.

Question 2. Why did you repeatedly accuse Diya Lumumba of murder when you knew full well that he was completely innocent and why didn’t you or your mother retract your accusation when he was in prison?

3. The Double DNA Knife

According to a number of independent forensic experts - Dr. Patrizia Stefanoni, Dr. Renato Biondo, Professor, Giuesppe Novelli, Professor Francesca Torricelli, Luciano Garofano, Elizabeth Johnson and Greg Hampikian - Meredith’s Kercher’s DNA was found on the blade of a knife from Raffaele Sollecito’s kitchen.

He falsely claimed in his prison diary that he had accidentally pricked Meredith’s hand whilst cooking. Dr Stefanoni analysed the traces on the knife six days after last handling Meredith’s DNA. This means that contamination couldn’t have occurred in the laboratory.

Meredith had never been to Sollecito’s apartment, so contamination away from the laboratory was impossible.

Question 3. How do you think Meredith’s DNA got onto the blade of the kitchen knife?

4. The bra clasp

An abundant amount of Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA was found on Meredith’s on the exact part of Meredith bra clasp that was bent out of shape during the attack on her.  His DNA was identified by two separate DNA tests. Of the 17 loci tested in the sample, Sollecito’s profile matched 17 out of 17. Professor Torricelli testified that it was unlikely the clasp was contaminated because there was a significant amount of Sollecito’s DNA on it.

Professor Novelli analysed the series of samples from all 255 items processed and found not a single instance of contamination, and ruled out as implausible that a contaminating agent could have been present just on one single result. David Balding, a Professor of Statistical Genetics at University College London, recently analysed the DNA evidence against Sollecito and concluded it was strong.

Question 4. How do you think Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA ended up on Meredith’s bra clasp?

5. The bloody footprint on the bathmat

According to two imprint experts - Rinaldi and Boemi - the bloody footprint on the blue bathmat in the bathroom matched the characteristics of Sollecito’s foot, but couldn’t possibly belong to Guede. Rudy Guede’s bloody footprints led straight out of Meredith’s room and out of the house which indicates that he didn’t go into the bathroom after Meredith had been stabbed.

See our past posts on this here and here.

Question 5. Who do you think left the bloody footprint on the bathmat?

6. Mixed samples of Amanda Knox’s DNA or blood and Meredith Kercher’s blood

According to the prosecution’s experts, there were five instances of your DNA or blood mixed with Meredith’s blood in three different locations in the cottage. Even your lawyers conceded that your blood had mingled with Meredith’s blood. In other words, Meredith and Amanda Knox were both bleeding at the same time.

Question 6. Why were you bleeding on the night of the murder and is it a coincidence that only your DNA was found mixed with Meredith’s blood?

7. The Luminol Enhanced Footprints

Bare bloody footprints were revealed by Luminol at the cottage. Three of them are compatible with your foot size and one of them is compatible with Raffaele Sollecito’s foot size.

Question 7. What do you think the Luminol was reacting to - Meredith’s blood or some other substance?

8. The staged break-in

There is absolutely no evidence that anyone stood outside Filomena’s window and climbed up the vertical wall on the night of the murder. There were no marks from soil, grass or rubber soles on the wall. The earth of the evening of 1 November 2007 was very wet, so if anybody had climbed the wall, they would have left some marks on it.

The glass on the window sill and on the floor show no signs of being touched after the window was broken, which would have been the case if the intruder had gained entry through the window.

There was not a single biological trace on any of the shards of glass. It would have been very likely that an intruder balancing on the window sill would have suffered some kind of injury or cut because of the shards of glass.

If the window had been broken from the outside, there would have been shards of glass outside, but there wasn’t even one.

Judge Massei and the panel of judges at the Italian Supreme Court specifically mentioned the shards of glass on top of Filomena’s clothes which had been tossed onto the floor in her room and regarded it as proof that the break-in was staged.

Question 8. Who do you think staged the break-in at the cottage?

9. Knowledge of the crime

Umbria Procurator General Galati’s pointed out in his appeal that you knew specific details of the crime that you could have only known if you had been present when Meredith was killed.

According to multiple witnesses at the police station, you said you were the one who had found Meredith’s body, that she was in the wardrobe, that she was covered by the quilt, that a foot was sticking out, that they had cut her throat and that there was blood everywhere. But you weren’t in a position to have seen anything at all when the door was kicked in.

In your witness statement you described Meredith’s scream. Other witnesses have corroborated your claim that there was a loud scream.

Question 9. How did you know so many precise details of the crime?

10. Shower and the “bathmat shuffle”

The Scientific Police found 13 traces of blood in the bathroom that Meredith and you shared. Prosecutor Mignini and Filomena have both expressed their surprise that you showered in a blood-spattered bathroom.

Filomena told Mignini during cross-examination:  “I thought it was odd that she’d had a shower when there was blood all over the place.”

You told Mignini that you used the bathmat to shuffle to your room.

Question 10. Why did you shower in a bathroom that was splattered with blood, and did you notice the visible bloody footprint on the bathmat when you used it to shuffle to your room? And why so soon after did the police notice that you were stinking?

Lorraine Kelly and Aled Jones the ITV Daybreak hosts who should confront Amanda Knox

Thursday, September 05, 2013

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

Posted by James Raper

[Filomena’s shutters on approach above and below NOT half-open as they were when Knox arrived]


Additional to this post and this post on the overwhelming strength of the evidence against Sollecito and Knox.

Amanda Knox was of course lying from the start about her initial visit to the cottage to have a shower and collect a change of clothing, in the account which she gave the police when they turned up, and which she then embellished into a version of Little Red Riding Hood in her e-mail.

Here’s how we can know why. One of her most glaringly untrue claims, one not hard to fathom out and indeed I have no doubt that she had done so herself and regretted it within minutes of recounting her story to the police.

The shutters to Filomena’s window were open upon the arrival of the postal police.  Massei (page 27) -

Said window had two half-closed shutters, and the right-hand shutter (the right with respect to the person looking at it) was slightly more open”› (page 62, hearing of February 6, 2009, Battistelli’s statements).

Filomena’s window is in fact the most prominent feature of the cottage for anyone walking down the lane to it. Yet, incredibly, if we are to make sense of the rest of her account, we are required to believe that Knox did not notice the shutters .

Whether they were half open or less than half open does not matter. They were open, indicating, as a matter of common sense, that the occupant of the room might be somewhere around.

You would think that anyone (anyone but Knox apparently) apprised of this elementary scrap of information about their own home and flatmates, and then in addition finding that the front door was open and no-one was answering, would have checked the other rooms, and in particular Filomena’s, out of curiosity if not concern, wouldn’t you? Of course you would.

Discovery of the broken window would then, if not before, have been inevitable, but of course in those circumstances no one would have believed that she had then had a shower and blow dried her hair.

Of course it did occur to the police that her story was a load of nonsense, just as it did to Knox and Sollecito.

See at bottom here for the famous picture of Knox and Sollecito together outside the cottage, Knox with her left hand up to her eyes and Sollecito by her side standing with his back to the window, jaws clenched and staring blankly straight ahead.

They knew, and they must have been praying hard that the police were just as stupid as them. When they were not arrested on the spot they must have thought their prayers were answered.

[Shower? Knox with Sollecito several hours later at which point her body odour was reported as immense]

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Desperate Ghirga Urges Amanda Knox To Show At Florence Appeal, But She’s Created More Problems

Posted by Peter Quennell

[Above: Knox’s legal team with mom back when; even then it looked like they could use some sleep]

Overview

Meeting in Seattle, Amanda Knox’S lawyer urges her to be at the Florence appeal, but his suggestion falls on deaf ears.

Here is a brief report from Italy.  Clearly her lead defense lawyer Ghirga (who normally handles only small-time crime) thinks the presence of Knox and her entourage coould humanize her and allow her to speak out and to guide him.

But Knox has really been burning her bridges to Italy big-time. Let us list some of the ways in which they are now foolishly dug in so deep.

Further Law-Breaking

Since the end of trial in 2009 Amanda Knox’s entourage and she herself appear to have broken law after law after law, issuing new smears, harassing the victim’s family, having her book taken to court in Bergamo.

In Florence, how does she talk about that?

Evidence Could Strengthen

The evidence in the case as presented at trial in 2009 remains rock solid to this day (the Massei outcome is the state of play) and if the large knife is retested, it could actually get way worse. Hundreds of open questions remain which Knox has strenuously avoided answering, either on the stand or in her book or on TV. 

In Florence, how does she talk about that?

Calunnias Of Justice Officials

Every instance where Amanda Knox and any of her entourage alleged without hard proof that Italian police and prosecutors have committed crimes (and there have been literally hundreds of such accusations by Preston, Fischer, on and on, now all captured and preserved) could see any or all of them hauled into court with zero heads-up (ask Sforza).

In Florence, how does she talk about that?

Framing Of Dr Mignini

In 2011 Knox was sentenced to three years (served) for the crime of framing Patrick Lumumba. So what does this slow learner do? Turn right around and commit the SAME crime in her nasty book, only this time she makes it worse. This time, she frames the chief prosecutor, in describing in detail a highly illegal interrogation that never took place.

In Florence, how does she talk about that?

Threat Of Conspiracists

There are perhaps 40 felony allegations against police and prosecution in Sollecito’s blood-money book and maybe another 20 in Knox’s own. Each of them will be put on trial separately for those claims and either one of them or both in desperation could take down all the writers, all the agents, all the publishers, all the wild-eyed conspiracists who helped write the books, and all those who made the illegal multi-million dollar deals, including their own two dads.

In Florence, how does she talk about that?

Threat Of Frank Sforza On Trial

The contempt of court trial of Frank Sforza is about to start. He is desperate to stay out of jail, and all of his alleged felonies since 2008 in contempt of the court could put him there for up to ten years. Consider the list of precisely who in Italy and the US Frank Sforza might take down, to try to give himself something of a break. This list is nothing if not long (see next post).

In Florence, how does she talk about that?

Threat Of Hellmann And Aviello

Witness Luciano Aviello is now on trial and as this post explained Aviello could take down all of the defense lawyers (for illegal dealing over the “right” judge), all of the Sollecitos, if they offered bribes, and both of the judges, Hellmann and Zanetti, who presided over the annulled appeal.

In Florence, how does she talk about that?

Conclusion

Nobody with any sense flouts the Supreme Court, or the extremely important, powerful court in Florence, which has sent down some of the toughest perps in the land.

Both courts and both prosecution teams are well-know in Italy for being cold and relentless in their search for the truth. None of the four lead lawyers for Sollecito and Knox has ever won even one case either in Florence or before the Supreme Court.

This might well be a trial balloon, to see how the Florence prosecutors and courts react. An arrest warrant, maybe? As we have seen lately, they act fast, and suddenly at any time.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Knox & Sollecito Meet - To Attempt To Bury The Hatchet Other Than In Each Other?

Posted by Peter Quennell

Knox and Sollecito meet in New York right after the release of Cassation’s ruling.

Below are excerpts from the report by Christopher Bucktin of the Daily Mirror. It is not tilted toward Knox and Sollecito, but it does get some of the law wrong in their favor.

What Cassation had just done was to toss out the corrupted 2011 Hellmann appeal, which was essentially THEIR first (automatic) appeal. Cassation was in effect saying they could run their own first appeal again in the appeal courts in Florence.

They can still choose not to. There was no retrial, and in fact one of Cassation’s major complaints about Hellmann was that he illegally tried to run a retrial rather than address the narrow grounds for appeal as the law requires. 

Our exclusive pictures show how they secretly reunited just hours after judges ordered them to return to court [for their own appeal in Florence].

They didn’t seem to have a care in the world as they hugged and kissed during a secret meeting in New York.

But the passionate embrace between Amanda Knox and former lover Raffaele Sollecito raised some serious questions last night.

Their tryst came just hours after they were ordered to return to Italy to face a retrial over the murder of British student Meredith Kercher.

Italy’s top judges ruled the possibility that the 21-year-old died during a sex game that went wrong needed to be re-examined.

And the move immediately cast doubt on whether the couple should be allowed to be in contact now they have been formally recalled.

The pair, along with Knox’s mother, spent Tuesday visiting New York together ““ sparking rumours they have rekindled their romance.

There was no sign of James Terrano, the loyal boyfriend Knox is reportedly living with in Seattle, Washington.

An onlooker said: “They just looked like a normal couple who had been with each other a long time. Together with her mum they explored Manhattan and took the subway to get around.

“You only have to look at him to see he still holds a huge torch for Amanda. He clearly finds her captivating. When they hugged she closed her eyes as he gave her a tender kiss on her cheek.

“At one point he put his arm around her to help warm her up. They never once stopped chatting.

“It’s astonishing they are allowed to even talk to each other, let alone see one another, considering they are both suspects in a murder trial.”

The pair spoke to each other in Italian and were chaperoned during the afternoon excursion by Knox’s mother Edda Mellas, who walked several yards behind everywhere they went.

When confronted by the Mirror, Knox and Sollecito were cagey about their reunion.

Knox refused to comment about the Italian court’s ruling.

She also declined to confirm or deny reports that she planned to stay in the US and would not be returning to Italy to face justice.

Sollecito, who also says he has no wish to go back, said: “We have everything to do now. We have a lot of planning.”

Knox’s mother, Edda, added: “We need to speak to our lawyers.”

The couple were reunited as Italy’s Supreme Court “faulted” the 2011 acquittal of Knox and Sollecito by the appeals court for the murder and sexual assault of room-mate Meredith….

In a recent interview, in which she boasted about being proud of one-night stands and drug use, Knox defended her actions saying: “I think that everyone’s reaction to something horrible is different.”

The interview was given as Knox cashed in on the trial by promoting her book, Waiting To Be Heard.

The deal is reported to have earned her £2.6million. Sources close to 29-year-old Sollecito claim he still loves Knox and hopes they may get back together one day.

When in November 2011 he announced they had split he said tearfully: “Our love was like a seed that was not allowed to grow because it was brutally stamped on.

“We were both victims of a cruel injustice and our relationship was overcome.”

During the trial Sollecito, from Bari in southern Italy, claimed he was offered a secret deal by prosecutors to implicate the American undergraduate but said he never considered betraying her.

He added: “She told me that she thinks that I’m a kind of hero, but I don’t think so.

“I did it because I know it’s the truth. It’s the good thing to do. It’s the only way for me.”

Sunday, June 16, 2013

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

Posted by Our Main Posters

[You say Madison Paxton found Kassin? So why did Bruce Fischer and Sarah claim to have done so??]

1. Your Real Persona, Widely Observed

Remember that Italians have seen a lot more of the real you than most Americans ever have. Italians all saw the real you described here and here.

That is why maybe 95% of all Italians long ago concluded for your guilt. At times you can come across as winning but, as there on the stand, too often as brash, sneering, sharp-elbowed, humorless, uncaring, and self-absorbed.

That is the Knox that put off many who encountered you in Seattle, it is why you had Halloween largely alone, and why you put off almost everyone you encountered in Perugia. Including everyone in your house in Perugia, and most in Patrick’s bar - and this literally in less than a month.

The “lost little girl” persona, the “chaste girl who never did sex and drugs” persona, the “diligent girl who studied so hard” persona, and the “they all want to get me because I am so fantastically cute” persona you or your agenda-driven shadow-writer put in the book have many people who have seen a lot of you in strong disbelief.

Can you name even one good friend who still stands by you in Perugia, given that even Raffaele Sollecito has placed you at the brink of a cliff?

By the way, this is not an unkind group, mostly comprised as it is of professionals, and some surprising things you yourself said in your book confirmed a suspicion about untreated root causes that we mentioned here.

2. Pages 270 to 272 Of Your Book With Your False Claims Highlighted

Let us first quote what you claim about your interrogation as “explained” by Saul Kassin who had at this point diagnosed you only long-distance and talked with not even one person who was there. False claims are shown in bold.

Thankfully Madison had researched the science on false confessions. She found Saul Kassin, a psychologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. A specialist in wrongful convictions, he took the mystery out of what had happened to me.

Before my interrogation, I believed, like many people, that if someone were falsely accused, they wouldn’t, couldn’t, be swayed from the truth while under interrogation. I never would have believed that I could be pressured into confessing to something I hadn’t done. For three years I berated myself for not having been stronger. I’m an honest person. During that interrogation, I had nothing to hide, and a stake in the truth “” I desperately wanted the police to solve Meredith’s murder. But now I know that innocent people often confess. The records kept of people convicted of a crime and later exonerated by DNA evidence show that the DNA of 25 percent of them didn’t match the DNA left at the scene. The DNA testing showed that one in four innocent people ended up confessing as I did. And experts believe that even more innocent people confess, both in cases with and without DNA evidence.

According to Kassin, there are different types of false confessions. The most common is “compliant,” which usually happens when the suspect is threatened with punishment or isolation. The encounter becomes so stressful, so unbearable, that suspects who know they’re innocent eventually give in just to make the uncomfortably harsh questioning stop. “You’ll get thirty years in prison if you don’t tell us,” says one interrogator. “I want to help you, but I can’t unless you help us,” says another.

This was exactly the good cop/bad cop routine the police had used on me.

Besides being compliant, I also showed signs of having made an “internalized” false confession. Sitting in that airless interrogation room in the questura, surrounded by people shouting at me during forty-three hours of questioning over five days, I got to the point, in the middle of the night, where I was no longer sure what the truth was. I started believing the story the police were telling me. They took me into a state where I was so fatigued and stressed that I started to wonder if I had witnessed Meredith’s murder and just didn’t remember it. I began questioning my own memory.

Kassin says that once suspects begin to distrust their own memory, they have almost no cognitive choice but to consider, possibly accept, and even mentally elaborate upon the interrogator’s narrative of what happened. That’s how beliefs are changed and false memories are formed.

That’s what had happened to me.

I was so confused that my mind made up images to correspond with the scenario the police had concocted and thrust on me. For a brief time, I was brainwashed.

Three years after my “confession,” I’d blocked out some of my interrogation. But the brain has ways of bringing up suppressed memories. My brain chooses flashbacks””sharp, painful flashes of memory that flicker, interrupting my conscious thoughts. My adrenaline responds as if it’s happening in that moment. I remember the shouting, the figures of looming police officers, their hands touching me, the feeling of panic and of being surrounded, the incoherent images my mind made up to try to explain what could have happened to Meredith and to legitimize why the police were pressuring me.

This new knowledge didn’t stop my nightmares or flashbacks, but I was so relieved to learn that what I’d been through wasn’t unique to me. It had been catalogued! It had a name! As soon as I understood that what happened during my interrogation wasn’t my fault, I started forgiving myself.

Kassin and others show that interrogations are intentionally designed to bewilder and deceive a suspect. Originally created to get highly trained, patriotic U.S. fighter pilots to sell out their country during the Korean War, one technique uses a tag team of investigators and tactics meant to induce exhaustion, agitation, and fear. It’s especially potent on young, vulnerable witnesses like me. The method was designed not to elicit information but to plant it “” specifically tailored to destroy an orderly thought process. After some hours, the subject gives the interrogators what they want “” whether it’s the truth or not.

In my case they’d put several interrogators in a room with me. For hours they yelled, screamed, kept me on edge. When they exhausted themselves, a fresh team replaced them. But I wasn’t even allowed to leave to use the bathroom.

These were strategic measures, many of which are described in Kassin’s report on police interrogation, “On the Psychology of Confessions: Does Innocence Put Innocents at Risk?” Reading it, I was flabbergasted to learn how by the book the police had been in their manipulation of me.

It had been the middle of the night. I’d already been questioned for hours at a time, days in a row. They tried to get me to contradict myself by homing in on what I’d done hour by hour, to confuse me, to cause me to lose track and get something wrong. They said I had no alibi. They lied, saying that Raffaele had told them I’d asked him to lie to the police. They wouldn’t let me call my mom. They wouldn’t let me leave the interrogation room. They were yelling at me in a language I didn’t understand. They hit me and suggested that I had trauma-induced amnesia. They encouraged me to imagine what could have happened, encouraged me to “remember” the truth because they said I had to know the truth. They threatened to imprison me for thirty years and restrict me from seeing my family. At the time, I couldn’t think of it as anything but terrifying and overwhelming.

That was exactly their point.

Highlighted in bold is another large body of your many easy-to-disprove lies as in the previous post.

Your bizarre analysis leads to many many questions.

What honest person? You served three years for felony lying. Exactly how did you ever help the police? What good cop/bad cop routine? There were only ever 2 or 3 interviewers there. What airless room? You were in a very modern building with air conditioning. What shouting? What 43 hours of interrogation? You had at most been questioned for one or two hours - and only for a few minutes on this night when you “broke”.  What story were police forcing on you? Why were you so confused and stressed - other than that Sollecito had just left you with no alibi? What did the police concoct and thrust on you, and why? Why didnt they do that to anyone else? So many others were interviewed too.

You are not even in Kassin’s “vulnerable” target group. How could you possibly be brainwashed in such a short time? What do you mean “after some hours”? What hours? Who exactly yelled and screamed and kept you on edge? What fresh tag team? Who stopped you leaving the interrogation room for a bathroom break? Why did you testify that you were given refreshments and treated well? Why did your own lawyers say you were treated well? Why did they never lodge a complaint? Why when you had an excellent interpreter did you say you couldn’t understand? Why would police threaten to imprison you for 30 years when their whole interest moved quickly to Patrick as you engineered? And why after the interview when you were left sitting in a corridor, babbling and being calmed down, did you not simply walk right out?

In fact, nobody ever accused you of anything at all in your voluntary witness interview.

You were put under no pressure to confess. Not so long after Sollecito fingered you, you spontaneously blamed Patrick for Meredith’s death. For the next several hours, you babbled on, again and again blaming Patrick. Dr Mignini then witnessed you being warned, and barely said a word.

And of course you never ever did confess that you participated in the attack on Meredith yourself. You are really claiming a false confession - when you didnt even confess? 

Sollecito similarly cracked spontaneously in an adjacent room, and he pointed the blame at you. Its very noticeable in all of the above that you essentially dont even mention his name. Nor does Kassin.

So what made Sollecito crack? You don’t explain that.

3. Saul Kassin’s Version with His False Claims Highlighted

It seems that Kassin was subjected to the toxic Misinformation Cloud conjured up by the Rank Amateurs for Knox, and Kassin very foolishly failed to check with anyone at all who had been on the spot.

Here are the relevant passages from Saul Kassin’s paper in American Psychologist with his false claims highlighted in bold.

As illustrated by the story of Amanda Knox and many others wrongfully convicted, false confessions often trump factual innocence. Focusing on consequences, recent research suggests that confessions are powerfully persuasive as a matter of logic and common sense; that many false confessions contain richly detailed narratives and accurate crime facts that appear to betray guilty knowledge; and that confessions in general can corrupt other evidence from lay witnesses and forensic experts””producing an illusion of false support. This latter phenomenon, termed “corroboration inflation,” suggests that pretrial corroboration requirements as well as the concept of “harmless error” on appeal are based on an erroneous presumption of independence among items of evidence. In addition to previously suggested reforms to police practices that are designed to curb the risk of false confessions, measures should be taken as well to minimize the rippling consequences of those confessions…. 

Meredith Kercher was found raped and murdered in Perugia, Italy. Almost immediately,  police suspected 20-year-old Amanda Knox, an American student and one of Kercher’s roommates””the only one who stayed in Perugia after the murder. Knox had no history of crime or violence and no motive. But something about her demeanor””such as an apparent lack of affect, an outburst of sobbing, or her girlish and immature behavior”” led police to believe she was involved and lying when she claimed she was with Raffaele Sollecito, her new Italian boyfriend, that night. 

Armed with a prejudgment of Knox’s guilt, several police officials interrogated the girl on and off for four days. Her final interrogation started on November 5 at 10 p.m. and lasted until November 6 at 6 a.m., during which time she was alone, without an attorney, tag-teamed by a dozen police, and did not break for food or sleep. In many ways, Knox was a vulnerable suspect””young, far from home, without family, and forced to speak in a language in which she was not fluent. Knox says she was repeatedly threatened and called a liar. She was told,  falsely, that Sollecito, her boyfriend, disavowed her alibi and that physical evidence placed her at the scene. She was encouraged to shut her eyes and imagine how the gruesome crime had occurred, a trauma, she was told, that she had obviously repressed. Eventually she broke down crying,  screaming, and hitting herself in the head. Despite a law that mandates the recording of interrogations, police and prosecutors maintain that these sessions were not recorded. 

Two “confessions” were produced in this last session,  detailing what Knox called a dreamlike “vision.” Both were typed by police””one at 1:45 a.m., the second at 5:45 a.m. She retracted the statements in a handwritten letter as soon as she was left alone (“In regards to this “˜confession’  that I made last night, I want to make it clear that I’m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressures of stress, shock, and extreme exhaustion.”). Notably, nothing in the confessions indicated that she had guilty knowledge. In fact, the statements attributed to Knox were factually incorrect on significant core details (e.g., she named as an accomplice a man whom police had suspected but who later proved to have an ironclad alibi; she failed to name another man, unknown to police at the time, whose DNA was later identified on the victim). Nevertheless, Knox, Sollecito, and the innocent man she implicated were all immediately arrested. In a media-filled room, the chief of police announced: Caso chiuso (case closed). 

Police had failed to provide Knox with an attorney or record the interrogations, so the confessions attributed to her were ruled inadmissible in court. Still, the damage was done. The confession set into motion a hypothesis-confirming investigation, prosecution, and conviction. The man whose DNA was found on the victim, after specifically stating that Knox was not present, changed his story and implicated her while being prosecuted. Police forensic experts concluded that Knox’s DNA on the handle of a knife found in her boyfriend’s apartment also contained Kercher’s blood on the blade and that the boyfriend’s DNA was on the victim’s bra clasp. Several eyewitnesses came forward.  An elderly woman said she was awakened by a scream followed by the sound of two people running; a homeless drug addict said he saw Knox and Sollecito in the vicinity that night; a convicted drug dealer said he saw all three suspects together; a grocery store owner said he saw Knox the next morning looking for cleaning products; one witness said he saw Knox wielding a knife. 

On December 5, 2009, an eight-person jury convicted Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito of murder. The two were sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison, respectively. Finally, on October 3, 2011, after having been granted a new trial, they were acquitted. [Actually they still stand accused - and facing a tough fact-based prosecution appeal] Ten weeks later, the Italian appeals court released a strongly worded 143-page opinion in which it criticized the prosecution and concluded that there was no credible evidence, motive, or plausible theory of guilt. For the four years of their imprisonment, this story drew international attention (for comprehensive overviews of the case, see Dempsey, 2010, and Burleigh, 2011).1

It is now clear that the proverbial mountain of discredited evidence used to convict Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito was nothing but a house of cards built upon a false confession. The question posed by this case, and so many others like it, is this: Why do confessions so often trump innocence? ...

Third, it is important to realize that not all evidence is equally malleable or subject to corroboration inflation. Paralleling classic research indicating that expectations can color judgments of people, objects, and other stimuli that are ambiguous as opposed to those that compel a particular perception, forensic research indicates that ambiguity is a moderating condition. Asked to report on an event or make an identification decision on the basis of a memory trace that cannot be recovered, eyewitnesses are particularly malleable when confronted with evidence of a confession (Hasel & Kassin, 2009). This phenomenon was illustrated in the case against Amanda Knox. When police first interviewed Knox’s British roommates, not one reported that there was bad blood between Knox and the victim. After Knox’s highly publicized confession, however, the girls brought forth new “memories,” telling police that Kercher was uncomfortable with Knox and the boys she would bring home (Burleigh, 2011). ... 

In recent years, psychologists have been critical of the problems with accuracy, error, subjectivity, and bias in various types of criminal evidence””prominently including eyewitness identification procedures, police interrogation practices, and the so-called forensic identification sciences,  all leading Saks and Koehler (2005) to predict a “coming paradigm shift.” With regard to confessions, it now appears that this shift should encompass not only reforms that serve to minimize the risk of false confessions but measures designed to minimize the rippling consequences of those confessions””as in the case of Amanda Knox and others who are wrongfully convicted.

4. An Exposure Of Ten Of Saul Kassins’s False Claims

Our main poster the Machine exposes further how Kassin’s key claims are wrong.

False Claim 1: They brought her in for that final interrogation late at night.

No they didn’t.

Neither the police nor the prosecutors brought Amanda in for questioning on 5 November 2007. Amanda Knox herself testified in court that she wasn’t called to come to the police station on 5 November 2007.

Carlo Pacelli: “For what reason did you go to the Questura on November 5? Were you called?”

Amanda Knox: “No, I wasn’t called. I went with Raffaele because I didn’t want to be alone.”

Amanda Knox went with Raffaele Sollecito because she didn’t want to be alone. Kassin’s false claim is the first red flag that Saul Kassin is very confused or has been seriously misled when it comes to this well-documented and well-handled case.

False Claim 2: The so-called confession wasn’t until 6:00am.

No it wasn’t.

If Saul Kassin had actually read Amanda Knox’s first witness statement, he would have known that it was made at 1:45am. Knox had admitted that she was at the cottage when Meredith was killed some time before this.

False Claim 3: She was interrogated from 10:00pm to 6.00am.

No she wasn’t.

According to the Daily Beast Amanda Knox’s questioning began at about 11:00pm.

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

After Amanda Knox had made her witness statement at 1:45am, she wasn’t questioned again that evening. That was it.

However, Amanda Knox herself then wanted to make further declarations and Mr Mignini who was on duty on the night sat and watched while Knox wrote out her declarations.

Mr Mignini explained what happened in his email letter to Linda Byron, another who was factually challenged.

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.

In Amanda Knox’s written witness statement, she explicitly states that she’s making a spontaneous declaration:

Amanda Knox: “I wish to relate spontaneously what happened because these events have deeply bothered me and I am really afraid of Patrick, the African boy who owns the pub called “Le Chic” located in Via Alessi where I work periodically.

False Claim 4: They banged her on the back of the head.

No they didn’t.

All the numerous witnesses who were actually present when Amanda Knox was questioned, including her interpreter, testified under oath at trial in 2009 that she wasn’t hit. She has never identified anyone who hit her and on several occasions confirmed that she was treated well.

Even one of Amanda Knox’s lawyers, Luciano Ghirga, confirmed that Amanda Knox had not been hit: “There were pressures from the police but we never said she was hit.”  He never ever lodged a complaint.

False Claim 5: All the other British roommates left town.

No they didn’t.

The police also told Sophie Purton that they needed her to stay on in Perugia on precisely the same basis as Amanda Knox. In chapter 19 of Death in Perugia, John Follain states that Sophie Purton was questioned by Mignini and Napoleoni in the prosecutor’s office on 5 November 2007.

Sophie had been counting on leaving Perugia to fly back home as soon as her parents arrived, but the police called to tell her they needed her to stay on; they would let her know when she could leave.

False Claim 6 : Amanda Knox stayed back to help the police.

No she didn’t.

This claim is flatly contradicted by Amanda Knox herself. In the e-mail she wrote to her friends in Seattle on 4 November 2007 she categorically stated she was not allowed to leave Italy.

i then bought some underwear because as it turns out i wont be able to leave italy for a while as well as enter my house

Knox actually knew on 2 November 2007 that she couldn’t leave Italy. Amy Frost reported the following conversation (The Massei report, page 37),

I remember having heard Amanda speaking on the phone, I think that she was talking to a member of her family, and I heard her say, No, they won’t let me go home, I can’t catch that flight.

It’s not the first time that the myth that Knox chose to stay behind rather than leave Italy has been claimed in the media. And incidentally, lying repeatedly to the police isn’t normally considered to be helping them.

False Claim 7: Amanda Knox had gone 8 hours without any food or drink.

No she hadn’t.

Reported by Richard Owen in The Times, 1 March 2009

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

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

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

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

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

False Claim 8: The translator was hostile towards Amanda Knox.

No she wasn’t.

Saul Kassin offers no evidence that the translator was hostile towards Amanda Knox and there is no evidence that this was the case. Nobody at the questura has claimed this. Amanda Knox’s own lawyers have not claimed this.

Even Amanda Knox herself has never ever claimed that Anna Donnino was hostile towards her although she had every opportunity to do so when being questioned on the stand.

False Claim 9: The translator was acting as an agent for the police.

No she wasn’t.

Saul Kassin offers no evidence to support this claim, which by the way in Italy is the kind of unprofessional charge that incurs calunnia suits. Do ask Curt Knox.

False Claim 10: The police lied to Amanda Knox.

No they didn’t.

The police didn’t mislead Amanda Knox. They told her quite truthfully that Sollecito was no longer providing her with an alibi, and that he had just claimed in the next interrogation room that she wasn’t at his apartment from around 9:00pm to about 1:00am. This also is the kind of unprofessional charge that incurs calunnia suits

Other claims by Kassin are also inaccurate. He claims that not one of your acquaintances had reported there was bad blood. That also is untrue. Even prior to the witness interrogation, law enforcement knew from multiple sources that you had been feuding with just about everyone. Acquaintances created no “new memory”. The bad blood you created was quite real. 

5. How Kassin Bends His Own Science To Make Results Come Out “Right”

Our main poster Fuji dug deeper into the science and turns up what is an obvious scientific fraud by Kassin to insert himself into the case.

Meredith’s case is absolutely riddled with fabricated false myths. 

They are now found by the hundreds on some misleading websites, and they simply make experienced law enforcement and criminal lawyers laugh. 

For example “Police had no good reason to be immediately suspicious of Knox simply because the murder occurred at her residence”.  And “The double-DNA knife is a priori to be disregarded as evidence, because no murderer would retain possession of such a murder weapon.”

One of the most strident and widespread myths is that Amanda Knox’s statements to the Perugian investigators on 5 and 6 November 2007, placing her at the scene of Meredith’s murder, are to be viewed as the products of a genuinely confused mind imbued with a naïve trust of authority figures.

The apparent certainty with which many of Amanda Knox’s most vocal supporters proclaim that Knox’s statements are actual “false confessions” as opposed to deliberate lies is not supported by even a cursory reading of the pertinent academic literature regarding false confessions.

What actually are “false confessions”?

Richard N. Kocsis in his book “Applied Criminal Psychology: A Guide to Forensic Behavioral Sciences” (2009), on pages 193-4 delineates three different kinds of false confessions:

First, a voluntary false confession is one in which a person falsely confesses to a crime absent any pressure or coercion from police investigators….

Coerced-compliant false confessions occur when a person falsely confesses to a crime for some immediate gain and in spite of the conscious knowledge that he or she is actually innocent of the crime….

The final type, identified by Kassin and Wrightsman (1985), is referred to as a coerced-internalized false confession. This occurs when a person falsely confesses to a crime and truly begins to believe that he or she is responsible for the criminal act.

The first problem facing Knox supporters wishing to pursue the false confession angle as a point speaking to her purported innocence is epistemological.

Although much research has been done on this phenomenon in recent years, academics are still struggling to come to terms with a methodology to determine their incidence rate.

The current state of knowledge does not support those making sweeping claims about the likelihood of Knox’s statements being representative of a genuine internalized false confession.

As noted by Richard A. Leo in “False Confessions: Causes, Consequences, and Implications” (Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 2009):

Although other researchers have also documented and analyzed numerous false confessions in recent years, we do not know how frequently they occur. A scientifically meaningful incidence rate cannot be determined for several reasons.

First, researchers cannot identify (and thus cannot randomly sample) the universe of false confessions, because no governmental or private organization keeps track of this information.

Second, even if one could identify a set of possibly false confessions, it is not usually possible as a practical matter to obtain the primary case materials (e.g., police reports, pretrial and trial transcripts, and electronic recordings of the interrogations) necessary to evaluate the unreliability of these confessions.

Finally, even in disputed confession cases in which researchers are able to obtain primary case materials, it may still be difficult to determine unequivocally the ground truth (i.e., what really happened) with sufficient certainty to prove the confession false.

In most alleged false-confession cases, it is therefore impossible to remove completely any possible doubts about the confessor’s innocence.

The next problem Knox supporters face is that, even allowing for an inability to establish a priori any likelihood of a given statement being a false confession, the kind of false confession which is usually attributed to Knox is in fact one of the LEAST likely of the three types (Voluntary, Compliant, and Persuaded, as Leo terms the three different categories) to be observed:

Persuaded false confessions appear to occur far less often than compliant false confessions.

Moreover, despite assertions to the contrary, Knox and her statements do not in fact satisfy many of the criteria researchers tend to observe in false confessions, particularly of the Persuaded variety:

“All other things being equal, those who are highly suggestible or compliant are more likely to confess falsely. Individuals who are highly suggestible tend to have poor memories, high levels of anxiety, low self-esteem, and low assertiveness, personality factors that also make them more vulnerable to the pressures of interrogation and thus more likely to confess falsely…

Highly suggestible or compliant individuals are not the only ones who are unusually vulnerable to the pressures of police interrogation. So are the developmentally disabled or cognitively impaired, juveniles, and the mentally ill….

They also tend to occur primarily in high-profile murder cases and to be the product of unusually lengthy and psychologically intense interrogations… ordinary police interrogation is not strong enough to produce a permanent change in the suspect’s beliefs.

Most significantly, there is one essential element of a true Persuaded False Confession which in Knox’s case is highly distinctive:

To convince the suspect that it is plausible, and likely, that he committed the crime, the interrogators must supply him with a reason that satisfactorily explains how he could have done it without remembering it.

This is the second step in the psychological process that leads to a persuaded false confession.

Typically, the interrogator suggests one version or another of a “repressed” memory theory.

He or she may suggest, for example, that the suspect experienced an alcohol- or drug-induced blackout, a “dry” blackout, a multiple personality disorder, a momentary lapse in consciousness, or posttraumatic stress disorder, or, perhaps most commonly, that the suspect simply repressed his memory of committing the crime because it was a traumatic experience for him.

The suspect can only be persuaded to accept responsibility for the crime if he regards one of the interrogators’ explanations for his alleged amnesia as plausible.

Knox did not in fact claim drug or alcohol use as the source of her amnesia - rather, she claimed to have accepted the interrogators’ attribution that this was due to being traumatized by the crime itself, and she offers no other explanation for her selective amnesia:

This is from Knox’s statement to the court in pretrial on 18 October 2008 with Judge Micheli presiding.

Then they started pushing on me the idea that I must have seen something, and forgotten about it. They said that I was traumatized.

Of course, Knox’s initial statement went far beyond being that of being merely a witness to some aspect of Ms. Kercher’s murder, as the interrogators at first seemed to believe was the case.

Rather, her statement placed her at scene of the murder during its actual commission while she did nothing to avert it, which naturally made her a suspect.

In other words, in the absence of any of her other testimony which indicated that she was only a witness to the murder, her own self-admitted rationale for providing a false confession was that she was traumatized by the commission of the murder itself.

Perugia judges will be familiar with all of the above and we can be sure that they brief the lay judges on the remote circumstances and incidences of false confessions.

If I were a Knox defense attorney, I would find it to be a far more fruitful line of argumentation to argue that she was simply lying, rather than claiming the supremely unlikely provision of an actual internalized false confession.

6. Kassin’s Paper with Correct Facts and Context Now Included

Here is our main poster BR Mull describing what actually took place.

On November 2, 2007, British exchange student Meredith Kercher was found sexually attacked and murdered in Perugia, Italy. The next day, 20-year-old Amanda Knox, an American student and one of Kercher’s roommates, became a person of interest, along with Meredith’s downstairs neighbors and several of her other acquaintances. Interviewing close contacts is a cornerstone of police work. Two of Meredith’s close English friends, who were so scared they couldn’t sleep alone, left Perugia in the immediate aftermath of the murder. Everyone else stayed on.

Months before arriving in Perugia, Knox received a citation for a noise violation when a going-away party she’d thrown for herself in Seattle got out of hand. One of the officers described it as a “scene from Baghdad.” Within about three weeks of moving into the cottage in Perugia, Knox was ejected from a nightclub for pouring her glass on the head of a disc jockey.

It’s often said that Knox had no motive to kill Meredith, but it was Knox’s claim of drug use which indicated a possible motive: a drug-fuelled assault. There are various others, though a motive is not actually required for conviction. In crime scene videos from the day Meredith’s body was discovered, Knox can be seen outside the cottage glancing furtively around. Still, it was not this and other odd behavior, but rather the many conflicting witness statements by Knox and her new Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, that led police to believe Knox was involved and lying when she claimed she was with Sollecito at his home continuously on the night of November 1.

Police interviewed dozens of witnesses in the days after the murder, some more than once. All witness statements were written down and signed for, not recorded. The police interviewed Sollecito for the third time beginning at 10:40pm on November 5. Knox later testified that she voluntarily accompanied her boyfriend to the station, because she didn’t want to be alone. The police did not summon her. To the interviewers’ surprise, Sollecito repudiated his earlier alibi when shown phone records, and now said Knox had left his apartment for much of the evening. Some time after 11:00pm the police asked if they might interview Knox. An interpreter was called and by 1:45am Knox had given a signed statement that she had witnessed the sounds of her employer, bar owner Patrick Lumumba, murdering Meredith at the cottage.

In that statement she acknowledged that she had been given an interpreter, and that she herself was now officially a suspect. Knox later testified that she was treated well. She was offered snacks and drinks during the interview and afterward. Made aware that she could not be interrogated without a lawyer, but still anxious to put out as much information as possible, she then requested a chance to make a spontaneous statement without any questioning. The prosecutor on duty agreed, and she gave a statement in front of him very similar to her witness statement from hours earlier.

Knox and the police gave different accounts of how the 11:00 to 1:45 am interview was conducted. Police said Knox was told Sollecito now no longer confirmed her alibi and he had called her a liar. She now had no alibi. Sympathetic to her because Knox now had no alibi, the interpreter urged her to try to remember at least something.  Shown a text she had sent to Lumumba at 8:35pm saying “See you later. Have a good evening!” she was asked to explain this. The police say Knox started to cry and burst out, “It’s him! It’s him!”

Both Knox’s witness statement at 1:45 a.m and her voluntary suspect statement at 5:45am were written out in Italian and translated back to her before she signed. After Knox was formally taken into custody at midday on November 6, she asked for paper and wrote a slight modification of her earlier statements, adding: “In regards to this “˜confession’ that I made last night, I want to make it clear that I’m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressures of stress, shock, and extreme exhaustion.”

Lumumba was arrested along with Knox and Sollecito. Knox and her mother held out on his non-involvement, but he was eventually determined to have a solid alibi. Another man, Rudy Guede, was identified through a hand print in Meredith’s bedroom. Knox appeared to have substituted Lumumba for Guede in her statements, and several details of the crime in her so-called confession were later corroborated by witnesses.

Because police had not needed to provide Knox with an attorney at the impromptu witness interview after 11:00, the Supreme Court ruled that statement inadmissible in the murder case against her. However both statements were ruled admissible in court for the purpose of establishing the crime of defamation against Patrick Lumumba. Knox’s November 6 letter was also ruled admissible.

Guede, the man whose DNA was found on the victim, told a friend while he was still on the run that he had found Meredith stabbed and that Knox had nothing to do with the murder. However, in the same conversation, which was recorded by police, he speculated that Knox and Sollecito might have been at the cottage. In a letter dated March 7, 2010, while his sentence was awaiting final confirmation by the Supreme Court, Guede wrote that Knox and Sollecito murdered Meredith. He reiterated this claim as a witness during Knox and Sollecito’s appeal.

Forensic police from Rome concluded that a kitchen knife found in Sollecito’s apartment had Knox’s DNA on the handle and Meredith’s DNA on the blade. Sollecito’s DNA was on the victim’s bra clasp in Meredith’s locked bedroom.

Several eyewitnesses came forward. Three neighbors testified that they heard a disturbance around 11:30pm in the vicinity of the cottage. A homeless man who at appeal admitted heroin use was reading a newsmagazine at the basketball court near the cottage. He testified that he saw Knox and Sollecito four or five times that night. An Albanian, a possible drug dealer. who the Massei court deemed unreliable after the Micheli court accepted him, said he had seen all three suspects together, and that Knox had accosted him with a knife. A grocery store owner testified he saw Knox at his shop early on the morning after the murder.

The conflicting alibis of the two were never resolved during trial. On December 4, 2009, an eight-person panel consisting of two professional judges and six lay judges found Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito guilty of murder aggravated by sexual assault, simulation of a burglary, unlawful carrying of a knife and, in Knox’s case, criminal defamation of Patrick Lumumba. The two were sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison, respectively….

Knox’s mother later described her daughter as “oblivious to the dark side of the world.” Knox herself wrote that, on the night of the murder, she and Sollecito were talking about his mother’s suicide. She told him her philosophy was “life is full of choices and that these choices are not necessarily between good and evil, but between what’s better and what’s worse.”...

7. Our Concluding Advice

You simply didnt remotely fit Kassin’s own profile of those who break easily under interrogation and make things up. Your suspect interrogation was gentle, brief and considerate, as you have said, and didnt remotely fit Kassin’s claims. And of course, you never made a false confession on that night or any other.

Do you really want this guy or yourself cross-examined on the stand? Again, it may be the last good time to try to walk all of your malicious invention back.


[Saul Kassin with President Travis of John Jay College who lets the false anti-Italy allegations stand]