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: Knox-Marriott PR

Friday, August 08, 2014

False Claims By Amanda Knox & The Book Team May End Up Costing Them Millions

Posted by Our Main Posters

Book agent Robert Barnett forgets to exult about marketing the defamatory Amanda Knox book

True Costs Of The PR Bandwagon

Not solely for crimes of her own making, but there is a potential $10-million-plus bill that Knox & co may be stuck with.

• $5-plus million in costs and damages awarded against her by the Massei trial court and confirmed by the Nencini appeal court, incuding unpaid damages of nearly $100,000 to Patrick which Cassation already rendered final.


• $4 million for the book payment arranged in seeming defiance of Italian and American bloodmoney laws (called Son of Sam laws in the US), big bucks in financial donations from other misleading fundraisings (see the Knox website), and yet more big bucks for civil damages (see one defamation action described in the post under this one.)

A Self-Damaging Trend

It seems Amanda Knox can be extremely hard to shut up. Back in 2008 Knox’s own Perugia lawyers had to ask her publicly, via the media, to please shut up and stop inventing things.

After her conniption at Perugia’s central police station on 6 November 2007 she not only insisted on writing out three statements, she also babbled for large parts of the next five hours.  That was despite attempts to calm her down with camomile tea and carbohydrates.

Then came her two calamitous days in mid 2009 on the witness stand (see more below) and her leaked diaries (which actually did nail one malicious lie not her own), and her bizarre video, and multiple reports of her other doings in Capanne, and multiple interviews ever since.

One of which has entrapped Italy’s Oggi as we can see here and here.

A Possible Legal Scenario

Knox’s own lawyers (who dont seem to have read her book in draft) also never backed up any of her claims at trial. Read the transcripts and it is pretty obvious that they were very very careful not to do so.

Even the partisan Judge Hellmann concluded Knox was lying and both he and Cassation confirmed Knox’s three-year prison sentence for calunnia. To that there is no further appeal, and of course the time was served.

The precise timing of the Knox book’s release represents another potential millstone. It came out after Sollecito’s book had been sent to Florence prosecutors for investigations, and also after British and Italian editions were cancelled by HarperCollins’s own lawyers, and also after the Italian Supreme Court reverted Knox’s status to “guilty pending any final appeal” leading to her appeal which failed last January.

Red flags were up all over the place. Even other better-advised American publishers were emitting warnings.

Absent Knox’s team getting good advice and withdrawing, settling, and apologizing, Knox and HarperCollins could be targeted by those Knox defamed. Then HarperCollins could target Mr Barnett and Ms Kulman. Mr Barnett and Ms Kulman could then target Mr Knox and Mr Marriott and Mr Simon.

Finding fault with Knox’s book is like shooting fish in a barrel. See our previous post. Here are ten further examples.

Instances Of False Claims

1. False Claim: Knox On The Framing Of Her Kindly Employer

This is the lie that was universally disbelieved and for which Knox served three years for. See our still-emerging Interrogation Hox series. The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt is ahead of us on this one.

[Knox] writes that she had a flashback to the interrogation, when she felt coerced into a false accusation. “I was weak and terrified that the police would carry out their threats to put me in prison for 30 years, so I broke down and spoke the words they convinced me to say. I said: ‘Patrick - it was Patrick.’”

In her memoir, she describes in detail the morning that she put that accusation in writing, and says the prison guard told her to write it down fast.

Yet in a letter to her lawyers she gave no hint of being rushed or pressured. “I tried writing what I could remember for the police, because I’ve always been better at thinking when I was writing. They gave me time to do this. In this message I wrote about my doubts, my questions and what I knew to be true.”

2. False Claim: Dr Mignini Portrayed Knox As A She-Devil

During the rebuttals, on December 3, each lawyer was given a half hour to counter the closing arguments made over the past two weeks. Speaking for me, Maria criticized Mignini for portraying Meredith as a saint and me as a devil

Really? Prosecutor Mignini said that? So why did the entire media corps report that it was said by Patrick Lumumba’s lawyer Carlo Pacelli? As the BBC reported:

[Mr Pacelli] added: “Who is the real Amanda Knox? Is it the one we see before us here, simple water and soap, the angelic St Maria Goretti?”

“Or is she really a she-devil, a diabolical person focused on sex, drugs and alcohol, living life to the extreme and borderline - is this the Amanda Knox of 1 November 2007?”

So even Mr Pacelli didnt compare Knox to Meredith, or simply call Knox a she-devil to her face. He asked rhetorically if she was a she-devil or a saint. Not exactly unheard of in American courts.

And remember he was addressing someone who would have been quite happy to see Patrick put away for life, cost him two weeks in a cell, entangled her own mother in a cover-up, destroyed Patrick’s business and reputation world-wide, still hasnt paid him money owed, and for lying about him served three years.

Prosecutor Mignini in fact never called Knox anything at all. We can find no record that he did. Again and again he has denied it. And he had no personal need to prosecute Knox, and certainly no need to frame her, despite many pages Knox devotes to trying to prove the reckless claim that he did.

3. False Claim: Dr Mignini Ascribes Crimes To Satanic Cults

Actually Dr Mignini has been repeatedly seen on Italian national TV saying satanic cults are rare and he has never originated even one such claim.

Dozens of others had suspected and talked about a satanic cult behind the Monster of Florence murders for many years before he investigated one loose end in the case. He did correctly not ascribe those murders to the work of a single serial killer - the man Doug Preston and Mario Spezi seemed to be framing to create for themselves worldwide adulation, only to end up bitter and mean when caught red-handed.

A Sollecito defense lawyer (Maori) emerged from a closed meeting with Judge Matteini and among other heated remarks originated the malicious claim that Dr Mignini was seeing something satanic.

4. False Claim: Knox Portrays Her Success On The Witness Stand

No success to anyone present. Knox devotes many pages to trying to make herself look good on the witness stand at the trial in mid-2009.

But Italians who could follow in Italian in real-time ended up trashing her phony performance up there. Read what they saw here and here.

It didnt convince the Massei court judges or Nencini court judges or the Supreme Court judges - or even the Hellmann court judges, those of the annulled appeal. Knox served three years.

5. False Claim: About Knox’s Medical Examination After Arrest

The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

“After my arrest, I was taken downstairs to a room where, in front of a male doctor, female nurse, and a few female police officers, I was told to strip naked and spread my legs. I was embarrassed because of my nudity, my period - I felt frustrated and helpless.”

The doctor inspected, measured and photographed her private parts, she writes - “the most dehumanising, degrading experience I had ever been through”.

But in the 9 November letter to her lawyers, she described a far more routine experience.

“During this time I was checked out by medics. I had my picture taken as well as more copies of my fingerprints. They took my shoes and my phone. I wanted to go home but they told me to wait. And that eventually I was to be arrested. Then I was taken here, to the prison, in the last car of three that carried Patrick, then Raffaele, then me to prison.”

Amanda Knox (arms up) at one of various concerts she attended in Capanne prison

6. False Claim: Capanne Prison was A Hellhole Of Sin And Debauchery

That opening remark of a book review by the National Enquirer was widely parroted in other American media reports.

Over half of the Knox book is devoted to hammering home this theme. Maybe in a longshot hope that it will help to encourage the U.S. to refuse her extradition.

Italian prison conditions and treatment, Knox claims, were so bad that they made her life miserable. She says that at times she became very despondent, and even claims to have imagined doing away with herself. 

However, Italian prison conditions except for occasional overcrowding are widely considered among the most humane, caring and rehabilitating in the world. Compared to US prison conditions, they are like night and day.

And this almost universal claim of every prisoner everywhere is contradicted by the media on which she and her family worked so hard; by prison staff and official visitors, and even by the US Federal Government itself.

(1) Contradicted by the extensive media reporting

Occasional despondency is not all uncommon among those paying their debt to society. And there is scads of reporting that Knox had adjusted well to prison.

Read all of this BBC report dated 2013 by the objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt. And read this by ABC News after Knox was found guilty in 2009.

Knox said that she felt “horrendous” the night that the verdict was delivered. “She said the prison guards did come in to hold her and make her feel better. She said the other prisoners were good to her,” Thomas said.

The reporter said the prison is “extremely clean.” Knox’s cell, which she shares with another American who has been sentenced on drug charges, is small. “It had a little bathroom with a door, a bidet, a sink, a shower…. better than some of the things I’ve seen at summer camp or boarding school.”

The women inmates are allowed to go to a hairdresser once a week.

The prison is a new facility, just opened in 2005. The women’s ward has an infirmary, an entertainment room with a pool table and ping-pong table, and a library. There is also a small chapel. Outside there is a little playground for children with benches and toys because there are cells specifically for women with children. Currently there are two women in Capanne with children.

It was very widely reported over four years that Knox was given the opportunity to do all these many things rarely encountered in American prisons: Learn the guitar. Read a lot. Watch TV. Study foreign languages.

Do artwork (colored pictures of hands). Attend rock concerts where she was seen leaping up and down (images here). Attend classical concerts. Attend Christmas parties.

Knox even played a major part in the creation of a rock video with a rock group. Unfortunately for her, that video appeared to many to come close to a taunting murder confession.

And on various occasions Knox was quoted as saying prison guards were kind to her.

(2) Contradicted by the US Embassy and State Department

American officials monitored Knox in court and prison and never saw anything that would back up Knox’s claim.

The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

State department cables, released through the Freedom of Information Act, show that between 2007 and 2009, three different high-level diplomats from Rome (Ambassador Ronald Spogli, Deputy Chief Elizabeth Dibble and Ambassador David Thorne) were among those reviewing Knox’s case.

Embassy officials visited regularly. Records show one consular official visited Knox on 12 November, soon after her arrest.  A few weeks later she wrote in her diary how the visits of embassy officials improved her experience….

In 2008 and 2009, she was visited by two embassy officials at a time, six times. Ambassador David Thorne, whose name appears at the bottom of cables in August, November and December of 2009, is the brother- in-law of US Secretary of State John Kerry (at that time chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee).

If the diplomats knew anything of the “harrowing prison hell” Knox was going through (as one paper put it), they are keeping those reports under wraps. Neither Kerry nor any other prominent US politician has made any public complaints. Even today, her Italian lawyers maintain she was not mistreated.

This matters incredibly to Knox because it constitutes the official take of the US Federal Government. It will be front and center of State Department and Justice Department considerations when an arrest warrant for Knox is issued and extradition is requested.

(3) Contradicted by Member of Parliament Rocco Girlanda

Mr Girlanda visited Amanda Knox in prison approximately 20 times for the specific purpose (or so he claimed) of checking her prison conditions. In fact that was the only way he could legally visit her, although oddly enough a book and a number of other pro-Knox actions emerged - even a complaint to the President about the Perugia prosecutors.

After Knox was released late in 2011 Mr Girlanda specifically praised the prison staff in this statement.

Perugia Prison Police The Example of Professionalism.

The PdL Party member of parliament Rocco Girlanda praises the officers of the Perugia prison.

“I’ve had the opportunity to describe to the Minister of Justice, Nitto Palma, the great professional behaviour shown by the Perugia Penitentiary Police with regards to the court case that saw Amanda Knox as protagonist, a behaviour that I had always observed during the course of my visits to the Capanne prison in the last two years.”  So says Rocco Girlanda, Umbrian deputy of the PdL, after the conclusion of the appeal trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

“In recent months I have had the opportunity to make dozens of visits to the prison, which also included some of the petitions presented by the senior management of the premises and my commitment in this regard, always finding, that starting from the director Bernardina Di Mario, continuing with the Penitentiary Police commander Fulvio Brillo, up to the entire personnel employed, the helpfulness, the courtesy and their professionalism which allows me to say that Perugia is a model structure on the national landscape, managed and directed in the best way and with a large dose of humanity on the part of the staff employed.”

(4) Contradicted by Knox’s own Italian lawyers

Knox’s lawyers Mr Dalla Vedova and Mr Ghirga visited her again and again during the 2009 trial and 2010 hiatus and 2011 appeal. Knox once again had dozens of opportunities to lodge complaints with them - lawyers who could have initiated Supreme Court action in response.

When Knox was released late in 2011 Mr Dalla Vedova and Mr Ghirga were interviewed by the TV station Umbria 24:

The lawyers: “she never complained about the prison”.

Amanda Knox “has never complained about the conduct/behavior of the prison police supervisor” and “she has never mentioned his name”: to say so are the defenders of the American woman, lawyers Carlo Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga, commenting on what was reported by the tabloid The Sun. “

Ghirga said: “In the diary Amanda never makes the name.”

Della vedova said: “We are grateful to the management staff of Capanne prison for their cooperation even given to the family’s requirements. Amanda has never reported violations against her.”

“She absolutely has received the correct treatment and the outmost solidarity, within compliance, especially in the prison’s female section.”

(5) Contradicted by prison guards and other inmates

In some interviews, the reporter Sharon Feinstein captures a view of a difficult, narcissistic, uncaring Amanda Knox which is very commonplace around Perugia. The real faults lie with Knox, in effect.

7. False Claim: About Knox’s Persona And Mood Swings In Prison

The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

She says she was often suicidal, but recollections of prison staff and other inmates differ. Flores Innocenzia de Jesus, a woman incarcerated with Amanda in 2010 described Knox as sunny and popular among the children who were in Capanne with their mothers, and recalled her avid participation in music and theatrical events. She also held a sought-after job taking orders and delivering goods to inmates from the prison dispensary.

“Most of the time when we spoke during our exercise break, the kids would call her and she would go and play with them,” de Jesus told me.

American officials monitored Knox in court and prison and never saw anything that would back up Knox’s claim.

8. False Claim: Negative Attitudes Displayed By The Prison Staff

Agian, the objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

“The prison staff are really nice,” wrote Knox in her personal prison diary, which was eventually published in Italy under the title Amanda and the Others.

“They check in to make sure I’m okay very often and are very gentle with me. I don’t like the police as much, though they were nice to me in the end, but only because I had named someone for them, when I was very scared and confused.”

She described Italian prisons as “pretty swell”, with a library, a television in her room, a bathroom and a reading lamp. No-one had beaten her up, she wrote, and one guard gave her a pep talk when she was crying in her cell.

Unlike the heavily-edited memoir, these are phrases she handwrote herself, complete with strike-outs, flowery doodles, peace signs and Beatles lyrics.

9. False Claim: The Positive HIV Result At Capanne Was Malicious

The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

Both accounts also refer to the devastating but erroneous news from the prison doctor that she had tested positive for HIV, although her diary presents a more relaxed person at this point. “First of all, the guy told me not to worry, it could be a mistake, they’re going to take a second test next week.”

We also know that it was Knox’s own team who leaked the HIV report and list of sex partners she herslf chose to create. Not the doctor or anyone else. No malice was intended, that is clear, despite her claims.

10. False Claim? Knox Was Pressured For Sex By A Prison Guard

One of Knox’s prison claims actually names a now-retired senior prison guard who Knox claimed often asked her for sex. There are no witnesses, but he is now suing Knox for libel and Knox herself seems to have wrecked any defense..

Knox made the claim but in a far weaker form in 2011. Then as CBS reported she had in fact concluded the guard was not even serious about sex. He was seeking to understand her.

Investigative journalist and CBS News Consultant Bob Graham, reading from Amanda’s letter to him: “”˜He was fixated on the topic of sex, with whom I’d done it, how I liked it, if I would like to do it with him. When I realized that he really wanted to talk to me about sex I would try to change the subject.’”

Correspondent Peter Van Sant: “What does this letter say to you about what she’s been going through?”

Graham: “It says in a time when she was clearly traumatized by the events of the death, the murder of her flatmate, that there she was, an innocent abroad, because she was innocent, she is innocent”¦ and here she was being pressured, further pressured in a prison system, a system that at least she should have had some degree of safety.”

Graham, reading Amanda’s letter: “I realize that he was testing me to see if I reacted badly, to understand me personally. He wanted to get a reaction or some information from me. I did not get the seriousness of the situation.’”

Knox’s claim about pressure for sex seems to have left Italians contemptuous. Yet more lies from knox, the Italian Il Giornale labeled it.

Have a good weekend, guys. Hit the law books.

Saturday, August 02, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #10: Why Prosecution And Defenses Never Believed Knox’s Version #1

Posted by Our Main Posters

1. Anti Knox Proofs In Plain Sight

American supporters of Knox argue that the “interrogation” is a “she said/they said” situation. One in which it is Knox that tells the world the truth.

And that the police had closed ranks to hide a brutal hours-long session resulting in Knox framing Patrick and that the “lost” recording of the “interrogation” would prove that she is the one that is right.

There is, of course, no recording, as it was an impromptu recap/summary session, with someone who might or might not have relevant information for the police. No legal system in the world requires the taping of that.

But there is in fact hard evidence the other way, that the investigators told the world the truth. Two items. Each mentioned often and assumed as givens in Posts #2 to #9.

Even if the days of crushing testimony left undented by cross-examination which we have posted was not enough, these items prove that the first scenario here is the truth and Knox has ever since lied.

Because several defense lawyers remarked on them without debating them, in cross-examining all the investigators who had any encounter with Knox on 5-6 November, all the defense counsel unquestionably knew that the items lurked there in the evidence pile in plain sight.

It seems impossible to know about these items, and yet still believe that Knox was telling the truth.

Lawyers often encourage their clients to tell the truth and good lawyers never encourage their clients to lie. And yet here Ghirga, Dalla Vedova, Bongiorno and Maori would have known from latest early 2008 that Knox’s claims on the “interrogations” were in fact made up.

And if so, they must have asked themselves, why? Why did Knox have to lie?

In all the legitimate legal processes, meaning all those except the Hellmann appeal, the defense lawyers were seen by close observers to be dispirited and lacking the full punch that the certainty of innocence can bring.

In the years that followed since, these two items helped to changed legal mindsets, from Prosecutor Mignini, to Judge Matteini, to Judge Micheli, to Judge Massei, to even Judge Hellmann, and so on to Cassation and the Nencini appeal.

If they are landmines, in the legal process they long ago went off. 

And all along Knox should have known that the items exist, they were repeatedly talked about right in front of her in the court.

But Knox makes no mention in her book, or in her appeals, or in her email to Judge Nencini, or in her appeal to the ECHR (we presume). How odd.

2. See Proofs In Plain Sight

Click for Post:  The Knox Interrogation Hoax #11: Why Prosecution And Defenses Never Believed Knox’s Version #2

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Italian Reporting Of Prolonged Knox/Cocaine-Dealer Connection; Media Digging

Posted by Our Main Posters

1. How Drug Use Was Addressed At Trial

The story of Knox’s drug use clearly has legs. But whoever is driving it, the trial prosecution is not - they are simply sitting back and watching.

Police and prosecutors have never driven the perception that Knox and Sollecito were stoned on the night when they attacked Meredith. Judge Micheli wasnt keen on this possible “out” and besides they have never had a reason to.

It was in fact the defenses who drove the drug-use argument. Knox admitted to police on 5-6 November 2007 to marijuana use, and so did Sollecito. He already had a minor record of cocaine possession. Both tried to use the argument at trial that they were indeed stoned. But that was only to explain major discrepancies in their statements, not to say that drugs helped to fuel the attack on Meredith.

The defenses had an opportunity with Judge Matteini, the guiding magistrate from late 2007 though to Judge Micheli’s arraignment in October 2008, to try to seek lesser charges due to impaired capacities. But either they did not want to, or they were prevented by the families from doing so.

At trial in 2009 the prosecution remarked that the two were suspected to have been using cocaine (the symptoms seem to us pretty obvious) but the defence simply shrugged at this and did not contend it.

Judge Massei never mentions amphetamines. Two defense experts were brought in to try to convince the Massei court that the admitted drug use had fogged their clients’ brains. Judge Massei simply recorded this doubtful claim in his sentencing report. He gave the perps no breaks based on this reasoning.

]page 393] On the effects of drugs of the type used by Amanda and by Raffaele, such as hashish and marijuana, [we] heard the testimony of Professor Taglialatela who, while underlining the great subjective variability (page 211, hearing of 17 July 2009) specified that the use of such substances has a negative influence on the cognitive capacity and causes alterations of perception (pages 201 and 207) and of the capacity to comprehend a situation (page 218).

In his turn, Professor Cingolani, who together with Professor Umani Ronchi and Professor Aprile, had also dealt with the toxicological aspect (see witness report lodged on 15 April 2008, pages 26 and following), responding to the question he had been asked as to whether the use of drugs lowers inhibitions replied: “šThat is beyond doubt”› (page 163 hearing of 19 September 2009), while correlating that effect to the habits of the person [on] taking the drugs. Raffaele Sollecito’s friends had furthermore stated that such substances had an effect of relaxation and stupor.

2. New Reporting On Knox/Drug-Dealer Connection

Below is the new Giallo report on a connection between Knox and drug-dealers kindly translated by our main poster Jools. Note that the main drug dealer Frederico Martini (who is “F” below) and others were convicted back in 2011 and the connection to Knox was reported then in the Italian press, though not in the UK and US press.

The main new fact here is that Giallo has the dealers’ names. Giallo makes clear it obtained the names legitimately from open police records, not from the prosecutors back at trial.  Dr Mignini merely takes note of the names which Giallo itself provided and he doubted that Knox would now become truth-prone.

Clamorous [Sensational/Scoop]

The American woman already convicted to 28 years for the murder of her friend Meredith.

A NEW LEAD, LINKED TO DRUGS, PUTS AMANDA KNOX IN TROUBLE

The woman was hanging around a circle of hashish and cocaine traffickers. One of them had intimate relation with her. Another, a dangerous criminal offender, had attempted to kill his brother with a knife. Are they implicated?

“During the course of the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher we have confirmed that a person whose initial is F. would occasionally supply drugs to Amanda Knox, as well as having a relationship with her supposedly of a sexual nature.” So begins an [official note] annotation of the Flying Squad police in Perugia dated January 19, 2008, two and half months after the terrible murder of the young British student Meredith Kercher. An annotation that could open a new, worst-case scenario on the Perugia murder and on one of its most talked-about protagonists, Amanda Knox, besides making it possible to convince the USA to send her back to Italy for a new trial.

But why is this annotation so important? And who is this mysterious F. that is now entering the scene? Let’s see. When Amanda came to our country to study, in September 2007, did not yet know Raffaele Sollecito, the guy from Giovinazzo who will be accused together with her and Rudy Guede, a thief and drug dealer, of the murder of Meredith. But she soon started to hang around characters implicated in a drug ring for university students in Perugia. A particularly disturbing entourage of whose members included dangerous multi-convicted felons. The first one is precisely F. We will not disclose his full name or F’s last name, for reasons of discretion, but GIALLO knows them.

In 2007, F. is a student of psychology from Rome, much older than Amanda. The two meet on a Milano-Florence train and decide to visit the city together in the evening, Knox having gotten rid of [her sister] she and F. smoke a joint together. “My first smoke in Italy,” says the same Amanda on MySpace, a social network site that was popular seven years ago. The two end the Florentine evening in his hotel room. Photo evidence of this new friendship was formerly on Myspace, because Amanda publishes a photo of F., half naked. An aunt commented: “Do not date strange Italian guys.”

Once she settled in Perugia, Amanda continues to have contact with F. His number is in Amanda’s phone book, and they both frequently called each other, before and after the murder.

F., also appears in a “list” of Italian guys she slept with which was compiled by Amanda on one of her big school notebooks and also in her autobiographical book Waiting to be heard. In the book Amanda talks about F. but changes his name and calls him Cristiano. Maybe to protect their privacy, maybe to obfuscate opinions. She writes of him: “I promised my friends that I would not end up sleeping with the first guy that comes by, but F. was a change of plans.” Further adding that in Italy smoking joints is simply normal, “like eating a plate of pasta.”

On the other hand Amanda spends a lot of money in the several months she’s in Perugia. In September, she draws out $ 2,452 from her bank account, that’s 1,691 euros. How did she spend it? No one has ever investigated this, and she does not explain it. She says she used the cash for living [expenses], but considering that the rent she had to pay was only 300 euros, and that twice a week she worked as a waitress in the bar of Patrick Lumumba, Le Chic, putting more cash in her pocket, the [living] expenses seem really excessive.

What does Amanda do with all that money? For sure she does not buy only hashish, which is not so expensive. Was she, then, using cocaine? The [police] annotation makes you think of it. And this could explain both the state of alteration of the girl on the night of the murder as well as a possible motive. Amanda that evening returned home to get some money to pay for the drugs, and she encountered Meredith? The girls had a fight, as Rudy Guede says in his reconstruction of that night, why, did Amanda steal Meredith’s money? Was Amanda on her own, or maybe she made sure she was accompanied by Rudy or other drug dealing friends?

No one has ever investigated this, or Amanda’s dangerous acquaintances. So dangerous that the same F., in 2011, was arrested. To be precise that started from the analysis of Amanda’s mobile phone, police investigators found that in fact F. and two of his close friends, Luciano and Lorenzo, were part of a major drug ring: all three ended up on trial for selling cocaine.

On January 14, 2011 they were all sentenced. The court judges established that Luciano was the one that supplied the other two: He was to serve two years and eight months in prison.

But let’s read the rest of the police annotation because what this reveals is really disturbing: “F. is contacted by phone by the presumable clients placing an “order” with him of the quantity of drugs they want to buy and in turn he contacts various Maghrebi characters ordering. It is also established that F. associates with multiple-convicted offenders of very serious crimes in the matter of drugs, and with persons such as A. Luciano, with whom he maintains frequent contacts aimed at drug trafficking.”

And precisely in this way Luciano, linked to F., a friend of Amanda, has a terrible past. The cops wrote this about him: “The above-cited Luciano on the 28/7/2006 was arrested by the carabinieri in Foligno because he was responsible for the murder attempt of his brother, who gave him 16 stab wounds inflicted with a kitchen knife.”

Luciano, therefore, who sells drugs in Perugia and provides supply to F., with whom he is often in touch, is an unsuccessful killer. Only a year before the murder in Perugia, under the influence of drugs, he tried to kill his brother during an argument over money and drug dealing. Luciano, out of his head that evening, grabbed the knife with which he was slicing a melon in the kitchen and stabbed his brother’s body 16 times.

A scene not so different from what the judges think happened in Meredith’s house, and even from what was described by the same Amanda on the 5 November 2007 when, at the end of a night of contradictions and anguish, confessed giving culpability of the murder to Patrick Lumumba, the owner of the bar Le Chic, who later proved to be unconnected with the facts of the case. Amanda said: “Patrick and Meredith went to Meredith’s room, while I think that I stayed in the kitchen. I heard screams and was scared, I covered my ears.”

Where were, F. and Luciano the night of the murder? And who was there that night, instead of Patrick? Questions still unanswered. What seems likely, however, is that Amanda was not with Raffaele, who was at his home on his computer. The judiciary may now decide to open a new file on her. Will the USA grant extradition?

Here is the translation of Dr Mignini’s interview with Giallo translated by Kristeva.

Luciano [Giuliano] Mignini, the judge leading the investigation, talks “Amanda knows how to lie very well: she seems sincere and credible ...”

[GM] The magistrate has directed all investigations: it is she [Judge Matteini] who had Amanda, Raffaele, Patrick Lumumba and Rudy Guede arrested.

[GM] “In the Supreme Court of Cassation new revelations don’t count” Giuliano Mignini, deputy prosecutor of the Attorney General Office of Perugia and public prosecutor of the first trial for the murder of Meredith [Kercher], goes straight to the point.

Mr. Mignini, pending the Supreme Court, Raffaele Sollecito seems to have distanced himself from Amanda Knox. He claims he is not certain that the American girl has spent the whole night with Sollecito ...”

[GM] “All this is irrelevant. In Court of Cassation only questions of laws can be raised. They do not take into account the new elements of reconstruction of the facts. Trials are based on the acts of the proceeding. Sustaining now a different reconstruction of what happened is a question of merit that does not in any way interest cassation.”

Amanda has repeatedly argued that her version of the facts had been affected by heavy pressures from the prosecutor’s office.

[GM] “Nothing could be more false. The process of investigation and trial proceeding of Kercher’s murder has had from the beginning an unprecedented media pressure, which has confused some ideas in public opinion. The trial should take place with the guarantee of an adversarial process, with equality of prosecution and defense. When one steps out of these parameters one ends up with a trial through the media. In this scenario, the foreign press, especially the American one, not taking into account our legal system, has given its input. They created a discourse that sounds a bit like this:she is one our fellow citizens and therefore she must be innocent. “

And if today even Amanda was to change her version?

[GM] “I would be astonished. She had plenty of occasions to tell her truth”

What was your impression of Amanda?

[GM] Amanda is very intelligent. She cleverly tried to divert suspects from her, as in the case of the staged burglary, a huge lie. Amanda is shrewd like when she accused Patrick Lumumba. On that occasion she appeared credible, she was crying. She looked as if terrified. I believe she’s a very theatrical girl and in a certain way even anti conformist: while everyone was crying and were worried, she was doing cartwheels.

What was her relationship with Meredith?

[GM] “Amanda did not like to be contradicted and had a conflictual relationship with Meredith. There were constant arguments regarding Amanda’s behaviour that Meredith could not tolerate. She believed that Amanda stole her money.”

And what type was Sollecito?

[GM] Raffaele is an enigmatic character. He is a shy young man who was subjected to Amanda’s strong personality. He was very attracted to Knox who in the meantime did not disdain the company of other acquaintances.

About acquaintances, Amanda knew some drug dealers. Could they have had a role in the murder?

[GM] “I cannot answer this” But then writes down their names.

[By] Gian Pietro Fiore

3. Our Comments On The Giallo Report

As observed above, for Italians most of this is actually not new news. The new news is that Giallo now has all the dealers’ names, from the open records of the police.

Giallo’s mention of a possible new trial is presumably connected to this drug-dealing, as the trial for Meredith’s murder and Knox’s and Sollecito’s failed appeal have both concluded, and only Cassation’s endorsement of the verdict is awaited.

Giallo’s references to Guede as a drug dealer and thief are both unproven. He had no criminal record prior to final conviction by Cassation. He was never a police source, and got zero breaks, ever. He was unknown to Dr Mignini until some days after Meredith was attacked and forensics identified him.

4. UK and US Media Get Key Fact Wrong

The UK’s Daily Mail has wrongly claimed that Italy’s Giallo magazine had reported as follows: “Italian prosecutor from Amanda Knox trial gave newspaper list of drug-dealer names associated with American student”.

In their headlines the US’s National Enquirer and Radar Online make the same wrong claim, though they quote enough from Giallo to show how that magazine really re-surfaced the report.

So for now UK and US media get that key fact wrong.  This surely wont be the end of it though. The story finally has legs of its own, and clearly the media in all three countries have a willingness to pursue it more.

In the interview also posted on Giallo Dr Mignini doubted that even now Knox will tell the truth - in fact it is hard to see what she can say. We will wait and see.

5. Ground Report Also Gets It Wrong

This shrill report from “Grace Moore” about Guede and Dr Mignini in Ground Report is both seriously wrong on the facts and defamatory - she should try saying that sort of thing about any American prosecutor.  “Grace Moore” should find out what the roles of Judge Matteini and Prosecutor Comodi were, and why after a malicious prosecution against him Prosecutor Mignini is riding high on Italian TV - and pouring cold water on satanic claims about any crimes.

Paul and Rachel Sterne, the father and daughter owners of Ground Report which carries well over 100 similarly inflammatory posts, could in theory be charged by both Italian and American prosecutors, as they are an eager party to bloodmoney (a felony), harrassment of the victim’s family (a felony) and obstruction of justice under Italian law for poisoning opinion out of court (another felony).

They need to clean up their site and make some amends.

This drug report continues with new developments in another post here.

   

Click to enlarge

Friday, July 25, 2014

Why It Will Be Republic Of Italy v Knox And Sollecito For The Myriad False Claims They Have Made

Posted by Peter Quennell

Bergamo in the foothills of the Alps where the journal Oggi is published


Yesterday’s post quotes some statements that Sollecito has already started winding back.

For Raffaele Sollecito that marks a significant first. Amanda Knox still seems headed the other way, pouring yet more gasoline on the flames.

Yesterday’s post also mentioned the growing pressure the Italian system is asserting to surface and adhere to the truth. When Cassation rules as widely expected, that Knox’s and Sollecito’s appeals did fail in Florence, and off back to prison they must go, Italy probably wont stop there.

It needs a single truth to stand at the end of the day, and in the courts is how its inquiry-based system arrives at that truth. More prison time is probably ruled out, but there should be some big fines. And that truth.

Sollecito wrote those claims quoted yesterday only in English, of course, exclusively for English-speaking audiences. There are no editions in any other language, certainly not Italian.

The only claim of those quoted yesterday that is widely known in Italy is Sollecito’s false charge, challenged on national TV, that the prosecution offered him a deal for his turning on Knox. That was one of his many claims accusing Italian officials of crimes. All his other claims are still sleepers in Italy.

Sollecito’s father Francesco was asked on national Italian TV why the book was not written or published in Italian. He awkwardly replied that no Italian publisher was interested; he didnt name even one that refused.

He didnt explain why it was written on the US west coast with the help of a British-born shadow writer (an unfortunate choice: Gumbel himself seems to have a big chip on his shoulder about Italy after his stay there, like Peter Popham and Nina Burleigh; unusual but it happens).

So, with no Italian version, what passages in what language were those Italian publishers if any shown?

Not much liked in Italy, Sollecito has been trying to burnish his image there since 2008 when he began writing diary-type reports on several websites.

Passages from the book put into Italian by the Republic of Italy for his book trial in Florence could come to irritate many Italians, and really rain on his parade in the months coming up.

Good reporters should perhaps press Knox to release the Italian version of her own book and let Italy have a close look.

It was yanked from publication at the last moment (like the UK version) when the US edition came out. Some excerpts were put into Italian by Oggi. See our own rebuttals here.

Their publication along with some other articles has resulted in both Oggi and Knox facing a trial in Bergamo. The statute of limitations on the entire book itself expires in 2017. If and when Italy targets all of Knox’s malicious claims she could find her parade rained on too. 

Both books are available globally in the Kindle edition and so a few English-speaking Italians have read them that way. The only version of Knox’s book that was officially sold in Europe was in German. There’ve been no others so far though a Spanish translation may exist.

None of the other English-language pro-Knox books have been put into Italian either. In fact the only book translated into Italian that takes Italy to task is The Monster of Florence by Spezi and Preston - and that one is quite different (very toned down) from the edition in the UK and US.

Back here on Planet Earth, various objective books on the case have been written and published in Italian, which kinda shoots Francesco’s claim in the foot that there is no interest among publishers there.

Those books are mostly quite classy affairs, carefully researched. All the books (like TJMK) essentially concentrate on explaining the prosecution’s case in depth, and those from late 2009 all saw “case proven” after the Knox and Sollecito lawyers put on an ineffective defense.  There isn’t even one which says Italian officials maybe got it wrong.

The Knox people sued Corriere for damages over the Sarzanini book and in the third round won, but that was only because the book published excerpts from Knox’s prison diaries - which her own people had put around - which invaded the privacy of others she mentioned.

The Sarzanini book is still on sale in Italy and was not ordered withdrawn, so Knox at most won half a loaf via her case.

Our main poster Yummi has at various times pointed out that over 100 prosecutors and judges have been assasinated in the anti-mafia fight.  Hate stirred up in the US for Italian officials is of real concern, because it could have a nut with a gun headed to Italy to “even the score”. Hate messages have been received.

Hate is still being perpetually beamed at the real victim’s suffering family as well. That started way back in 2008. There is zero precedent for that - in fact the US and UK and Italy all have strong anti-harrassment laws.

So Knox and Sollecito, and by extension Sforza and Fischer and Moore and so on, will face put-up-or-shut-up time in court on a whole row of claims which appear to Italy malicious and wrong.

Italy wants a searchlight cast on those.  It is for this reason above all that the book trials will take place. To wind back the hate, and to cast light.

This whole publishing scene (really two parallel publishing scenes) is absolutely unique in the world. It shows in stark terms the cowardice of the “public relations” wave of defamation which Curt Knox brought alive in 2007 and beamed away from Italian speakers.

No wonder Amanda Knox could not bear to head for Florence late last year for her own appeal - or “new trial” as she still seems to suppose. Her team has burned too many boats.

Gee thanks dad for that….

Friday, July 18, 2014

Seeds Of Betrayal: Multiple Examples Of How RS And AK Have Stabbed Each Other In The Back

Posted by Our Main Posters

RS in Feb 2014 after Nencini-appeal guilty verdict

1. History Of Backstabbing #1 2007-2014

The other day, a claim was posted that claimed sources had said Knox would soon accuse Sollecito.

This inspired quite an outcry, and the claim’s heavy-handed suppression. Can you believe: by legal means? That claim really rattled a few cages.

Why was the claim so dangerous?

NOT because the claim was wrong. In fact because for seven-plus years Sollecito and Knox have repeatedly cycled between very occasional chummy hugs and very numerous aggrieved stabs in the back.

And for the most part the more-aggrieved Sollecito has come out ahead. The desperate Knox PR and apologists are simply stumped at how to stop him or how to explain all of this.

2. Phases And Kinds Of Backstabbing

We are now seeing the fourth phase.

• In 2007 (see below) Sollecito really damaged Knox’s situation and both stabbed the other in the back a lot.


• From 2008 right through 2011, desperate for confirmation of an alibi, an anxious Knox beamed pleas at a sullen Sollecito, for example in public “love letters” she wrote, and a public request to have a private chat.


• From 2012 upon provisional release it was now Knox being sullen, and hard to get. Now it was Sollecito in puppy-dog mode. He might have been driven by a genuine desire for a renewed relationship, but a highly publicised bid to set himself up safely in the US maybe made Knox wonder “Is this was true love?”.


• And from mid 2013 mutual knifings have been fast and furious, many now on Twitter, and Italy in particular is closely watching the show and waits agog as the justice system applies further heat.

The backstabbings break down into two varieties: (1) many are active-aggressive (as in: they actually complain about one another); (2) others were passive-aggressive (as in: they try to help themselves but conspicuously ignore the other.) Typically Sollecito’s aggression dominates over Knox’s.

3. Incidences Year By Year

1. The year 2007

Our emerging Interrogation Hoax series quotes multiple witnesses testifying how quickly and decisively Knox and Sollecito in the blink of an eye began dropping the other in it. Posts of relevance soon to be linked-to here.

From 6 November 2007 Knox and Sollecito were kept separated, and were not allowed to talk. (That continued to late 2011.) Sollecito was pretty easy to read: he had little interest in talk. A sulky silence was his norm.

1 Click for Post:  Officer Moscatelli’s Recap/Summary Session With Sollecito 5-6 No

On 6 November Sollecito’s statement to Inspectors Moscatelli and Napoleoni included this about Knox :

I know Amanda for two weeks. From the evening I first met her she started sleeping at my house.

The first of November I woke up about 11.00, I had breakfast with Amanda, then she went out and I went back to bed. I then met up with her at her house around 13.00-14.00. In there was Meredith who left in a hurry about 16.00 without saying where she was going.

Amanda and I went to the [town] centre about 18.00 but I don’t remember what we did. We remained in the centre till 20.30 or 21.00.

I went to my house alone at 21.00, while Amanda said that she was going to the pub Le Chic because she wanted to meet with her friends.

At this point we said goodbye. I went home, I made a joint. Had dinner, but I don’t remember what I ate. About 23.00 my father called me on my house phone line.

I recall Amanda was not back yet.

I web surfed on the computer for two more hours after my father’s phone call and I only stopped when Amanda came back in, presumably about 01.00…

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

Yikes. Knox finds her best alibi yanked.

2 Click for Post:  Summarised AK And RS Signed Statements 2-5 November 2007 

Not so long after, possibly knowing about this, Knox comes out with a statement which points at Sollecito in turn.

I don’t know for sure if Raffaele was there that night [during the attack on Meredith] but I do remember very well waking up at my boyfriend’s house, in his bed, and I went back to my house in the morning where I found the door open.

3. [Source to come] Then on 8 November 2007 Sollecito submitted a statement to Judge Matteini which began:

I never want to see Amanda again. Above all, it is her fault we are here.

4. [Source to come] There were multiple further instances throughout the rest of 2007, quotes of which will be included soon in the Knox Interrogation Hoax series.

2. The Year 2008

5. [Source to come] Knox and Sollecito each appealed Judge Matteini’s ruling to the Supreme Court. Neither helped the other at all. Both appeals failed in April and they were each kept locked up.

6. Click for Post: Sollecito Turns On Knox? This Is Extraordinary”¦

In October toward the end of Guede’s trial and RS’s and AK’s remand for trial Sollecito’s DNA expert testifies to Judge Micheli that he found Knox’s DNA on Meredith’s bra and bra-clasp.

7. Click for Post:  Sollecito Family Trial: On The Component About Their Alleged Attempt At Political Interference

Francesco Sollecito phone conversation in March 2008 with Vanessa captured by the Carabinieri in which he shows his extreme distrust and dislike of Knox who he blames for RS’s plight.

3. The Year 2009

8. Click for Post  The Letters Between The Women’s And Men’s Wings In Capanne

Letters sent from Knox to Sollecito in February are published, showing an eagerness to get together, suggesting she really needs Sollecito to speak up and confirm her latest alibi.

9. Click for Post  Trial: Defendant Noticeably Bubblier Than Meredith’s Sad Friends

This kind of callous, flippant behavior by Knox had the entire court backed off, not least the Sollecito team which had no desire to be chained to this seeming dangerous nut.

10. Click for Post  Sollecito Not To Be Trumped By Knox Antics In The Female Wing Of Capanne

While RS and AK didnt have access to one another they sure had access to the media and in the Italian media a competitive Sollecito posted a steady stream of stories

11. Click for Post  Trial: Knox Claimed Not To Have Been At The House On The Night

Knox suddenly claims this, despite contrary 2007 claims by both Knox & Sollecito, which messes with Sollecito’s alibi that he was at home alone on the computer.

12. Click for Post  Seems Sollecito Is Feeling Really Sorry - For Himself (So What’s New?)

Sollecito tries to give himself an edge over AK by being extra-whiny about how awful he finds prison, and the distasteful little people he was being made to mix with.

4. The Year 2010

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

The Knox team avoided this popular Porta a Porta TV series, maybe too scared of hard questions, while the Sollecito lawyers and family used it to promote suspicion of AK and Guede.

14. Click for Post  Newsweek Report From Italy On Damage Shrill Campaign Is Doing To Knox’s Interests & America’s Image

The shrill Knox campaign was irritating Italians and so hurting Sollecito’s image and prospects and it was not shoring up his own story. Bongiorno especially disliked the campaign. 

15. Click for Post  Rocco Girlanda’s Strutting Manic Grinning Intrusion Seems A Major Danger To Sollecito/Knox Harmony

The strangely kinky Member of Parliament (now voted out) paid numerous visits to Knox (“monitoring conditions”) and tried some nasty (though ineffective) political tricks - but not for Sollecito.

16. Click for Post  The Knox Movie: Sollecito Reported Angry - Real Risk That His Defense Could Break Away From Knox’s

The Sollecito camp had a strong belief that the Knox camp was behind this TV movie and so they fought it, though it turned out quite even-handed and the RS role was minor.

5. The Year 2011

17. Click for Post  Sollecito Defense Team Breaking From Knox Defense Team On Legal Measures To Stop Lifetime Movie

Further differences reported here between the two camps on the Lifetime movie which until it was aired was believed to favor Knox and build a case for her innocence.

18. Click for Post  Tenth Appeal Court Session: Might Today’s Testimony Give Sollecito More Of An Advantage Than Knox?

After his team’s (attempted) discounting of the main evidence at Meredith’s house against Sollecito, Knox’s position looks way worse, as she has motives both for killing and cover-up.

19. Click for Post  Is The Raffaele Sollecito Defense Team About To Separate Him From A Radioactive Amanda Knox?

Final days. Sollecito has at least five advantages over Knox. Better lead lawyer, better family in Italian eyes with smarter campaign, not much physical evidence at the house, no obvious motive unlike Knox, and a weak and washy personality Bongiorno plays up.

6. The Year 2012

20. Click for Post  In Desperation A Council Of War? All Of The Sollecito Family Suddenly Hop On Flights To Seattle

Sollecito is the one now in puppy-dog mode, though his father has said publicly that the relationship with Knox is at an end; here the RS family sets out for Seattle to try to make it so. 

21. Click for Post  Sollecito’s Book Honor Bound Hits Italy And Already Scathing Reactions And Legal Trouble

Sollecito’s book, which subtly promotes Knox’s guilt, runs into legal trouble for false claims, which could also impact Knox’s claims and legal future. His seeming sticking with Knox damages Bongiorno’s defense strategy.

22. Click for Post  Will Sollecito Drop Amanda Knox In It Further In A Public Seattle Interview At 7:00 PM Tonight?

Sollecito’s American book promotion tour often went badly and he seemed unaware of what was in his own book; though once again he was making out Knox was guiltier. His defense team despise the book.

7. The Year 2013

23. Click for Post  Knox & Sollecito Meet - To Attempt To Bury The Hatchet Other Than In Each Other?

The second public Sollecito attempt to end up with Knox, who already had chips on her shoulders about him but went through this charade. Soon, they were back to whacking one another.

24. Click for Post  Seeds Of Betrayal: Sollecito Twice More Implies Evidence Against Knox Much Stronger Than Against Him

Sollecito sustains this steady drum-beat of putting Knox down, highlighting the evidence against her, repeatedly saying he stuck with her despite no evidence against him (no deal helping RS was ever offered).

25. Click for Post  Seeds Of Betrayal: In Interview Knox Reveals To Italy Her Considerable Irritation With Sollecito

Knox does an extended interview with Oggi (for which she and Oggi are being charged) lying about officials and the evidence, but also uttering her angriest blast yet against Sollecito.

8. The Year 2014

26. Click for Post  Rejected Yet Again By Knox, Sollecito Seems Frantic To Avoid What Might Be A Final Return To Italy

Sollecito (like Sforza) was desperately looking for someone to marry him, to keep him in the US. Kelsey Kay was briefly interested, but he dumped her; he had told her Knox had recently turned him down.

27. Click for Post  What We Might Read Into Sollecito Lawyer Giulia Bongiornos Final Arguments To The Appeal Judges

Bongiorno shows contempt for Knox; she effectively conveys the sense of the RS family that a crazed Knox dragged RS into this. She see the RS book as a pro-Knox con job by her team.

28. Click for Post  As Knox & Sollecito Try To Separate Themselves, Each Is Digging The Other In Deeper

Sollecito is clearly trying to distance himself from Knox now, claiming that there is far more evidence against her than against him. Knox’s irritation with him is growing.

29. Click for Post  Sollecito Suddenly Remembers He Wasnt There But Cannot Speak For Knox Who (As She Said) Went Out

Members of Sollecito’s family are believed to be taking their anger at Knox to Twitter and making numerous taunts while emphasizing how they believe Sollecito was dropped in it by Knox and is less to blame.

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

Really irritated at the US-written RS book, Bongiorno goes a long way to separating the two perps in the minds of Italians; however RS hedges a little though, after having said the evidence points only to Knox.

4. Interim Conclusion

There were also myriad instances of mutual put-downs in their two books. Public squabbles post-2014 will soon be linked-to. The war by other means also continues on Twitter. Briefly it hit the bathshit-crazy Ground Report website.

This feud is obviously driven mostly by Sollecito. Much damage to Knox is already done, and Italians adamantly want her put away. A brighter family and paid team might now be saying “It is time for a Plan B and doing something to warm up Italy”.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

On-Steroids Knox/Marriott PR Provokes Sollecito Reaction, Guarantees Long-Term Hurt To Knox

Posted by Peter Quennell

Act 1. Hubris Of The Knox Public Relations Described

A long report on Marriott’s PR appeared late in 2011 after Knox was provisionally released.

David Marriott never visited Amanda Knox during her four years in an Italian prison.  He met her this month, when she stepped off a plane in Seattle.

Yet for Knox and her family, Marriott was as important a player in her ordeal as anyone in the courtroom. As Knox’s publicist, beginning three days after her arrest, Marriott worked to convince the international public that she did not murder her British roommate while studying in Perugia.

“Hiring him was one of the smartest things we ever did,” said Curt Knox, Amanda’s father.

The article goes on to describe how family and friends were pushed into the limelight and specific big TV networks targeted.  It talks about great financial opportunities for Knox.

Marriott himself demonstrates no understanding of the case - in fact. he sounds proud of his ignorance and his reflexively anti-Italy stance. To a smarter Curt Knox those might have been red flags.

Act 2: Brutal Overkill Of A Flailing Campaign Described

In October 2013 our main poster Media Watcher laid the blame for the slow-moving Knox media cooling at David Marriott’s door.

Now The Examiner is only one of many preparing to take another retaliatory whack.

Public relations is perfectly understandable for celebrities, politicians, or executives, but murder suspects too? At first this aggressive proliferation of pro-Knox articles, tweets and commentary were justified as a defense against the European media’s negative portrayal of her. However, as time wore on, the overpowering presence of Knox’s media campaign has reached outlandish proportions.

Nowadays no blogger is safe to write a factual article about the Meredith Kercher Murder Case without contemptuous comments filling up their Disqus community. Patient webmasters at CNN.com must brace themselves for the onslaught of tens of thousands of interjections cluttering up each and every news article concerning the Meredith Kercher cum Amanda Knox murder case. Mob mentality seems to have taken over Knox’s PR initiative. Knox’s advocates have gone so far as to aim their crosshairs on the victim’s family.

The article, very well researched so far as it goes (it omits the third act below) goes on to describe how Sollecito’s camp has had to open a PR front to unchain Sollecito from Knox. 

Act 3: How Knox Herself Is Losing Big Described

Know your enemy. Dont go about attacking the king unless you can kill him dead. Italy’s Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote about it in The Prince:

If one is striking out at an opponent, one should make sure that the fatal blow is struck, successfully ending the confrontation. Machiavelli wrote that “the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”

Wise words for Marriott and Curt Knox. They have remained steadfastly ignorant of the enemy. The attack has clearly failed. Wall-to-wall Italy now has the upper hand. And the PR is a millstone around Knox’s neck.

Here are seven of the ways the Knox-Marriott campaign has fallen short and has actually done real harm.

1) The real case for conviction remains rock-solid with many times the number of evidence points that a US or UK court would require for guilt.

2) No paper trail helpful to Knox exists between the American Embassy and the State Department, and the extradition agreement is precise and firm. 

3)  Knox’s bedrock claim, that she was pressured into a false accusation, not only cost her three years for calunnia but will cost her a defamation trial.

4) The defamatory Knox book that was the windfall David Marriott so jubilantly talks about is turning into an albatross around Knox’s neck.

5) The bloodmoney windfall will not remain Knox’s to keep, under Italian and American laws, and even Marriott’s fees could be at risk.

6) The PR is being unresponsive to ANY damaging claims, such as Knox’s attempted framing of Mignini, and its output is increasingly surreal junk.

7) The PR is making the Sollecito camp hostile, Italian media too; at the same time, since the failed appeal, the US media have chilled.

And so we see the slow death of a campaign built on xenophobia, racism, personal abuse, zero understanding of the details of the case, and zero understanding of the real Italy and its law.

Italy is actually rather a sucker for confession and penitence. Against a famously impervious justice system, the hard line was a terrible, terrible mistake.

Coming soon? “Firing him was one of the smartest things we ever did” says Curt Knox.


Below: From the Examiner, David Marriott and Seattle TV reporter Linda Byron

Friday, July 11, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #9: Officer Moscatelli’s Recap/Summary Session With Sollecito 5-6 Nov

Posted by Our Main Posters

[Sollecito at trial on the day when Inspector Moscatelli testified]

1. What Really Happened on 5-6 November

The introduction to Hoax Post #1 explains what really happened at Knox’s recap/summary session on 5-6 November 2007.

In a sentence: Knox was there unwanted and grumpy, was advised to go and sleep, refused, agreed to build a list of possible perps (she listed seven, including Rudy Guede), spontaneously broke into a wailing conniption over a message she sent to Patrick, was semi-calmed-down and repeatedly provided with refreshments, and insisted on writing three statements without a lawyer, all of which said she went out on the night of the attack, all framing Patrick, one even pointing at Sollecito.

Posts #1 to #8 included all the testimony from three police staff (Ficcara, Zugarini, Donnino) who sat with Knox, and then some of the testimony from Napoleoni (who was mainly with Sollecito) and Giobbi (an officer from Rome who was elsewhere in the questura and overheard Knox’s conniption). 

Inspector Daniele Moscatelli was also from the national police in Rome. He had previously questioned the boys who lived downstairs, and on 5-6 November he led the discussion with Sollecito, who was in a room some distance from Knox. On this night, the subject was to be some discrepancies in Sollecito’s phone records. Expectations were low, and many others were still being similarly questioned.

There was some limited interaction with Rita Ficcara’s recap/summary session with Amanda Knox, so the claims made here and their timing will become very important.

At the end of the session Sollecito’s signed statement for Inspectors Moscatelli and Napoleoni included this about Knox :

I know Amanda for two weeks. From the evening I first met her she started sleeping at my house.

The first of November I woke up about 11.00, I had breakfast with Amanda, then she went out and I went back to bed. I then met up with her at her house around 13.00-14.00. In there was Meredith who left in a hurry about 16.00 without saying where she was going.

Amanda and I went to the [town] centre about 18.00 but I don’t remember what we did. We remained in the centre till 20.30 or 21.00.

I went to my house alone at 21.00, while Amanda said that she was going to the pub Le Chic because she wanted to meet with her friends.

At this point we said goodbye. I went home, I made a joint. Had dinner, but I don’t remember what I ate. About 23.00 my father called me on my house phone line.

I recall Amanda was not back yet.

I web surfed on the computer for two more hours after my father’s phone call and I only stopped when Amanda came back in, presumably about 01.00”¦

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

This will already be a long post, and the last for now on testimony from the police. So we’ll highlight all the devils in the details of all this police testimony in our next post. This translation is by Catnip and is also posted on the excellent wiki.

Please click here for more

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Are The Rank-Amateurs With Their Hooks In Knox Dividing Into Two Flocks Of Sheep?

Posted by Peter Quennell

Confusion Increasingly On Display

Publicly berating the Sollecitos, Kerchers, Italy and Europe has had a detrimental effect on Knox’s public persona?

So says Sophie in the forum text above. Smart take. But Clive Wismayer himself has posted some pretty wild accusations against Italian officials which absolutely dont help Knox at all. People like him should go.

Click here for more of those postings by those supposedly helping Knox. (Guede did it alone? Really?) The postings are a month old, but we hear the internal disputes are now way worse. Three obvious problems stand out.

1. The Sollecito Headache

They dont know as a group whether to try to hug Raffaele Sollecito and his family closer, or to nuke them, in the FOA’s usual mode. Some now incline one way, some the other, and it is splitting them apart.

The Sollecito backlash almost certainly isnt done yet. They dont like Knox at all, and further talk of resisting extradition and further demonizing of Italy and justice officials hardly helps them, and will see them back in front of the press.

In no circumstances will Bongiorno ever again let Sollecito get attracted back to the people who have their hooks in Knox - Bongiorno took the harder line at the press conference, and burying the very damaging claims stuffed by the Knox people into Sollecito’s book is sure on her radar now.

2. The Bloodmoney Headache

There’s rarely much money to be made legally out of trashing murder victims and their families and justice officials as the Bruce Fischers have set out to do. Amanda Knox did get a windfall payment out of her hapless book - but is THAT turning into a two-edged sword…

There’s nothing like a huge pot of money unfairly distributed to make people who feel used and unrewarded walk off. So says Clive Wismayer in the text. Knox is clearly acting cheap, maybe because she sees no career ahead, and may have squirreled much of her bloodmoney away for the reasons given here.

Some like Ted Simon seem to have had a very big payday, the lawyers and experts and Marriott and travel and hotels have all had to be paid-for. Media sources tell us that none of their reporters get within miles of Sollecito or Knox without a greedy hand coming out.

And Knox still has to pay the damages awarded to Patrick for maliciously wrecking his life, or risk more time inside.

Knox is to be charged for the false claims in her book on the same lines as Sollecito and the damages awarded could be huge. Knox’s publishers have their own liability, but may have been misled, and if they are made to pay damages, they could set their lawyers on Knox.

3. The False-Labels Headache

That “guilters” smear used freely in the text above is an albatross around their necks. It stops them seeing straight and being fully informed and (especially) trying to convince in reasonable terms.

Competent American lawyers and PR would have stopped Knox supporters painting themselves into such a corner long ago on the grounds that it just doesnt work. They dont know their enemy as a result.

What they are really up against is not only people posting translations and analyses on websites (people much more qualified than themselves) but also all the forces of justice in Italy and 90 percent of the population who clearly can see guilt.

The pro-Knox conspiracists are in fact a very small faction. The in-group at the core is a dozen or two at most. Perhaps a few hundred now who might lift a finger for Knox.

In contrast, those who see a case for guilt - and who revere the victim and Italy and its officials and system - are not a mere faction at all.  Between them, they are huge. Good smart reasonable people who are very well informed and are certainly not driven by hate.

A lot of what websites like this do, in a media-created vacuum of hard facts, is to simply pass on reliable information from Italy in competent translations of key documents and timely and comprehensive reports.

This “guilters” smear has blinded them to that, and so “garbage-in-garbage-out” and paranoid suspicions and ranting language have become their plagues.

And with no real help, Knox faces 28-plus years.

Wednesday, July 02, 2014

Amanda Knox Left Sollecito’s House By Herself? Both Claimed It But Neither Of Their Books Back It Up

Posted by Our Main Posters

1. Current Contexts Of Sollecito’s And Knox’s Books

Neither book is exactly riddled with truths.

The claims throughout Sollecito’s book are soon to be the subject of a trial in Florence and the claims throughout Knox’s book are soon to be the subject of a trial in Bergamo. So both will need to endorse or reject what they wrote.

Plus Knox will need to endorse or reject this, from the first unforced statement she insisted on making without a lawyer on 6 November 2007. This is what Sollecito is gleefully using against her now.

Last Thursday, November 1, a day on which I normally work, while I was at the house of my boyfriend Raffaele, at around 8:30 pm, I received a message on my cellular phone from Patrik, who told me that the premises would remain closed that evening, because there were no customers, and thus I would not need to go to work.

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

I met Patrik immediately afterward, at the basketball court on Piazza Grimana, and together we went [to my] home.

2. From Sollecito’s Honor Bound (Simon & Schuster 2012)

Amanda and I smoked a joint before leaving the house on Via della Pergola, wandered into town for some shopping before remembering we had enough for dinner already, and headed back to my place. Shortly before six, a Serbian friend of mine named Jovana Popovic rang the doorbell and asked if I’d mind driving her to the bus station at midnight to pick up a suitcase her mother was sending. I said that would be fine. When she left, Amanda and I sat down at the computer to watch a favorite movie, Amélie.

We had to stop the film a few times as the evening wore on. First, Amanda got a text from Patrick telling her it was a slow night because of the holiday and he didn’t need her to come in after all. It was like getting an unexpected snow day””we were thrilled. Amanda texted back: Certo ci vediamo più tardi buona serata! Sure. See you later. Have a good evening.

Then my father called. He and Mara had just seen the Will Smith movie The Pursuit of Happyness, and he told me how beautifully it portrayed the relationship between a father and his son. My father was always making phone calls like this. It was sweet that he wanted to share his experiences, but he also made everything he said sound vaguely like an order, as if laying out the parameters of how I should react to things before I’d had a chance to form my own opinion. But he never stayed on the line for long””he is too nervy and impatient””so I listened calmly and the call was over in less than four minutes.

In the meantime, Jovana dropped by again and told Amanda that I didn’t need to drive her to the bus station after all. Now we didn’t have to leave the apartment. The evening was ours, and we couldn’t have been happier. We switched off our cell phones, finished watching Amélie, and discussed what to make for dinner…

When Amélie ended, I went into the kitchen to take care of some dishes left over from breakfast before we started making dinner. I soon realized that water was leaking out of the pipe under the sink, and I cursed under my breath. I’d had a plumber come and fix the sink just a week earlier, and he had made me buy all sorts of replacement parts that clearly were not put together properly. I suspected he had left them loose on purpose to force me to pay for another visit. As Amanda and I threw kitchen towels onto the puddle on the tile floor, I decided I was going to let my landlady deal with it from now on.

“Don’t you have a mop?” Amanda asked. I did not. She offered to pick one up from Via della Pergola the next morning and bring it round.

We cooked a fish dinner, did our best to wash the dishes again, and tumbled gratefully into bed in each other’s arms. Only later, when I lay in the dark, unable to sleep, did it dawn on me that Papà  had broken his usual habit of calling to wish me good night.

It turned out he did so out of consideration. He had been about to pick up the phone when my stepmother talked him out of it. “Stop bothering him,” Mara said, as they got ready for bed around eleven o’clock. “He’s with Amanda, and they want to be alone. Why don’t you send a text instead?”

My father took her advice, but because my cell phone was turned off, I didn’t receive the message until six the next morning.

It was a desperately unlucky combination of circumstances. If my father had tried my cell and then called me on the home line””which he would have done, because he’s persistent that way””I would have had incontrovertible proof from the phone records that I was home that night. And the nightmare that was about to engulf me might never have begun.

My father called my landline a little before nine thirty the next morning to make sure we would be ready for our day trip to Gubbio. I was too groggy to talk. I’d been up several times in the night””listening to music, answering e-mail, making love””and wanted only to go back to sleep. Amanda got out of bed and said she was going home to shower and change her clothes, so I walked her to the front door, gave her a kiss, and crawled back under the covers.

3. From Knox’s Waiting To Be Heard (HarperCollins 2013)

Raffaele and I were good at being low-key together. We chilled out in the common room and smoked a joint while I played Beatles songs on the guitar for an hour or so. Sometime between 4 P.M. and 5 P.M., we left to go to his place. We wanted a quiet, cozy night in. As we walked along, I was telling Raffaele that Amélie was my all-time favorite movie.

“Really?” he asked. “I’ve never seen it.”

“Oh my God,” I said, unbelieving. “You have to see it right this second! You’ll love it!”

Not long after we got back to Raffaele’s, his doorbell rang. It was a friend of his whom I’d never met””a pretty, put-together medical student named Jovanna Popovic, who spoke Italian so quickly I couldn’t understand her. She’d come to ask Raffaele for a favor. Her mother was putting a suitcase on a bus for her and she wondered if he could drive her to the station at midnight to pick it up.

“Sure,” Raffaele said.

As soon as she left, we downloaded the movie on his computer and sat on his bed to watch it. Around 8:30 P.M. I suddenly remembered that it was Thursday, one of my regular workdays. Quickly checking my phone, I saw that Patrick had sent me a text telling me I didn’t have to come in. Since it was a holiday, he thought it would be a slow night.

“Okay,” I texted back. “Ci vediamo più tardi buona serata!”””“See you later. Have a good evening!” Then I turned off my phone, just in case he changed his mind and wanted me to come in after all. I was so excited to have the night off that I jumped on top of Raffaele, cheering, “Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!”

Our good mood was only elevated when the doorbell rang again at 8:45 P.M: Jovanna had come back, this time to say that the suitcase hadn’t made the bus and that she didn’t need a ride after all. With no more obligations, we had the whole rest of the night just to be with each other and chill out.

After the movie ended, around 9:15 P.M., we sautéed a piece of fish and made a simple salad. We were washing the dishes when we realized that the kitchen sink was leaking. Raffaele, who’d already had a plumber come once, was frustrated and frantically tried to mop up a lot of water with a little rag. He ended up leaving a puddle.

“I’ll bring the mop over from our house tomorrow. No big deal,” I said.

Raffaele sat down at his desk and rolled a joint, and I climbed into his lap to read aloud to him from another Harry Potter book, this one in German. I translated the parts he didn’t understand, as best I could, into Italian or English while we smoked and giggled.

Later, when we were in bed, our conversation wound its way to his mother. His dad had divorced her years before, but she’d never gotten over the break. In 2005 she had died suddenly. “Some ¬people suspect she killed herself, but I’m positive she didn’t,” Raffaele said. “She would never do that. She had a bad heart, and it just gave out. It was horrible for me””¬we were really close””¬and I miss her all the time.”

I felt terrible for him, but it was hard for me to relate. The only person I knew who had died was my grandfather, when I was sixteen. I felt sad when my mom told me, but my grandfather had been old and sick, and we had expected his death for a few weeks.

I’m sure Mom and Oma must have cried, but my strongest memory is sitting around the dining room table telling funny stories about Opa. My grandmother’s message””that grieving was something you did in private; that you didn’t make public displays and you kept on moving forward””had remained with me.

Hearing the pain in Raffaele’s voice, I hurt for him. Nestling my head on his chest, I tried to be comforting.

As we started kissing, Raffaele gave me a hickey on my neck. We undressed the rest of the way, had sex, and fell asleep.

We’d known each other for exactly one week and had settled so quickly into an easy routine that one night seemed to melt happily and indistinguishably into the one that came after.

We planned to break our routine the next day, All Souls’ Day, by taking a long drive into the countryside, to the neighboring town of Gubbio. The November 2 holiday wasn’t usually observed with as much fanfare as All Saints’ Day, but since it fell on a Friday in 2007, a lot of people, including us, were turning it into a four-day weekend. I thought, Italians having a good time again. And I couldn’t wait.

 

Tuesday, July 01, 2014

Twice Today Amanda Knox’s Long-Running Interrogation Hoax Turns On Her To Bite Her In The Tail

Posted by Peter Quennell

1. Today’s Sollecito Claims

Take a look at this Knox statement and this Knox statement and this Knox statement.

If you think Knox was in a planned police interrogation, and her framing of Patrick was forced, over some hours, by tag-teams of cops, with no food, no drinks, no interpreter, and no lawyer, then the cops look bad and Knox is maybe home free.

But in fact voluminous testimony at trial by a whole host of those present in Perugia’s central police station on the night of 5-6 November 2007 confirm that absolutely none of that is true.

In fact Knox rolled over on Patrick in a heartbeat, and it happened during a quiet session of name-listing of possible perps, a task in which Knox was pretty eager - perhaps so eager because none of them were herself and one of them was Rudy Guede. 

Knox had turned up late at the police station, unwanted and grumpy, was advised to go and sleep, refused, agreed to build that list of possible perps (she listed seven), spontaneously broke into a wailing conniption over a message she sent to Patrick, was semi-calmed-down and repeatedly provided refreshments, and insisted on writing three statements without a lawyer all of which said she went out on the night of the attack, all framing Patrick, one even pointing at Sollecito.

Knox’s erratic claims of pressure were of course disbelieved by the Massei trial court, she was convicted of calunnia, her appeals failed both at the Hellmann appeal court and the Supreme Court, and she served three years in Capanne Prison. Knox still owes Patrick a major payment and she herself continues to propagate the interrogation hoax repeatedly - in her book, on TV, in her email to Judge Nencini, and in her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Sollico is now taking advantage of those three statements, and a claim that Knox’s text message to Patrick was sent from outside Sollecito’s apartment, to hint that Knox told the truth there, and he was not with her at the time when Meredith was killed.

2. Why This Might Resonate In Italy

This might lead to some review of “new evidence” though it cannot happen before Cassation confirms conviction. 

Not so much because of the hard facts, which belie him, but because of the growing recognition of the enormous damage done to Italy’s reputation by Curt Knox, Chris Mellas, and the paid thugs of their campaign.

And the threats to fight extradition, and the appallingly large sums of blood-money.

3. The Curt & Edda Defamation Trial

In a double whammy, a judge ruled in Perugia that Curt Knox and Edda Mellas must go on trial in the hard-line Florence court for their role in propagating that same interrogation hoax.

That is the same court that is already staging felony trials against Frank Sforza and Luciano Aviello and will soon stage defamation trials for the ironically titled Honor Bound against Raffaele Sollecito and Andrew Gumbel.

This is from Andrea Vogt’s latest website report (Update June 30, 2014) which as usual leaves in the dust all other non-Italian reporting except Barbie Nadeau’s and John Follain’s (though that is sadly behind the UK Times pay-wall). 

Amanda Knox’s biological parents, Curt Knox and Edda Mellas, faced a trial hearing in Perugia Monday on charges of defaming the local police with allegations in the international media (and reported in Italy) that their daughter was abused during questioning during the 2007 investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher.

The case Monday came before Perugia Judge Noviello, who opted not to hear witness testimony, but instead moved the case to Florence. This because the judge reportedly noted that the Perugia prosecutor was also defamed, even though he did not make any official complaints, therefore it is a case that should be handled outside the sphere of Umbrian influence.

Amanda Knox was convicted on appeal in January in Florence, but still faces another trial there ““ that of allegedly slandering the police (calumny) with false accusations on the stand, which in Italy is a more serious charge than just defamation\libel. Knox and her parents now both face decisions by Florentine courts about the outstanding charges

The claims being targeted for trial were made in 2010 so the Florence court has another three-plus years before the statute of limitations cuts in. 

And this (tick tick) is from a TJMK post by Jools in January 2012.

The name of Amanda Knox was included in the list of trial witnesses that the defence for Kurt Knox and Edda Mellas, lawyers Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga intend to call to testify in court.

So Amanda Knox could want to testify under oath on the interrogation hoax - either that or see her parents go down.  (Knox will probably also face trial in Bergamo for extensive defamation in her book. Amanda Knox could again want to testify under oath on the interrogation hoax - either that or see herself go down.)

We understand it was Knox lawyer Dalla Vedova who first asked for the Knox-Mellas trial to be moved to Florence. That was when Dr Mignini was the subject of a phony prosecution in Florence and Dalla Vedova seemed intent on embarrassing him.

Now Dr Mignini is riding high nationally, and is maybe having a few grins at Dalla Vedova’s predicament.