Sunday, May 11, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #1: Masterlist Of Posts Re Pre-Trial Events And Hoax Overview

Posted by Our Main Posters



Perugia Central Police Station at night (left-center)

1. Masterlist Of Posts In The Series

The Interrogation Hoax series will consist of a total of 24 posts.

These posts quote from a large number of transcripts only recently acquired and translated. There are no serious conflicts, no gray areas. One can assume with total certainty that this is the real thing (see Part 3 below), and that any other versions (see Part 4 below) are fabricated.

Numbering of posts 1-24 is not chronological, it represents the original order of postings.

1. What Happened At AK & RS Q&A Prior To 6 Nov

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

Click for Post: #20: ALL Knox Q&A Sessions 2-6 November 2007 WERE Recorded #2

2. What Happened At Knox Q&A 6 Nov Ending 1:45 AM

Click for Post: #2: Trial Testimony From Rita Ficcara On Realities 5-6 Nov

Click for Post: #3: More Defense Pussyfooting Toward Rita Ficcara, Key Witness

Click for Post: #4: More Hard Realities From Rita Ficcara, More Nervousness From Defense

Click for Post: #12: Ficarra & Knox Notes PROVE Knox Merely Worked On Visitors Names List

Click for Post: #5: Key Witness Monica Napoleoni Confirms Knox Self-Imploded 5-6 Nov

Click for Post: #7: Testimony Of Witness Lorena Zugarini On The Knox Conniption 5-6 Nov

Click for Post: #8: Testimony Of Interpreter Donnino On Events Night Of 5 November

3. What Happened At Sollecito Q&A 6 Nov Ending 3:30 AM

Click for Post: #6: Sollecito Transcript & Actions Further Damage Knox Version

Click for Post: #9: Officer Moscatelli’s Recap/Summary Session With Sollecito 5-6 Nov

4. What Happened At Knox-Rights Session Ending 5:45am

Click for Post: #15: Knox Is Told Her Rights And Repeats Fake Murder Charge

5. What Of Relevance Happened In Ensuing Months

Click for Post: #13: The First Two Pre-Trial Opportunities Which Knox Flunked

Click for Post: #14: The Third Pre-Trial Opportunitty Which Knox Flunked

Click for Post: #16: The Fourth Pre-Trial Opportunity Which Knox Flunked

Click for Post: #17: Sollecito April 2008 Before Supreme Court Again Coldshoulders Knox

Click for Post:#18: The Final Pre-Trial Opportunities Which Knox Flunked

Click for Post: #21: Illustrating How Batshit Crazy The Interrogation Hoax Has Become

6. Why Investigators’ Version Won Hands-Down At Trial

Click for Post: #10: Why Prosecution And Defenses Never Believed Knox’s Version #1

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

2. Explaining Overall Arc Of Events

Much of the testimony listed above was about events at the central police station pre-arrest in early November 2007 and subsequent court attempts to achieve some believability and relief.

Early in 2009 at trial Knox and Sollecito sat glumly through all of the investigators’ pre-arrest testimony and cross-examination at trial. They were downhearted and apprehensive, and there were no smiles and few interruptions.

Subsequently Sollecito chose not to get on the stand, so from his team there really was never a rebuttal.

But Knox HAD to get on the stand, in July, for two days. She had no other way to defend herself against the serious felony crime of falsely framing Patrick for murder.

It was her word against theirs. It contradicted in many places what she had heard months earlier in sworn testimony from many investigators.

Knox’s version inevitably weakened a lot under cross-examination, and was ultimately a fail at trial and several appeals, even the annulled one.

Knox ended up serving three years. While on the stand she confirmed that she had been treated well, stiffing thousands of supporters duped into believing she had not been.

3. Explaining Court-Accepted Narrative For 6 Nov

This is an overview of Knox’s so-called “interrogation” at Perugia’s central police station, the subject of the first ten posts.

It led to her arrest and three years served. To make this picture really firm we will quote a lot of the testimony at trial. The Case Wiki carries all of these transcripts, many in English translation, and more. 

Senior Inspector Rita Ficarra testified that she arrived back at the police station late on 5 November, and finds her way blocked by a cartwheeling Knox.

She rebukes Knox, who testily responds that she is tired of the investigation. Rita Ficarra tells Knox to go home and get some sleep. Knox testily refuses, and remains there.

Shortly after, Ficarra suggests to Knox that if she really wants to help, she could add to the list of possible perps - men who Meredith knew and who might have visited the house.

This was a recap/summary, a simple checking of facts with someone who might or might not be of help. This could have been done on a street corner or in a house by a single officer. It was not a witness or suspect interrogation. From the transcript:

Ghirga: “While this interrogation - let’s call it thus - was in progress, some colleagues arrive…”  Ficarra: “It was not an interrogation, Attorney.” Ghirga: “They are called recaps/summaries.

Knox eagerly agrees. So they begin on the list.

This goes slowly because of language problems, until an interpreter, Anna Donnino, arrives. In total only Knox and four others (three of them women) are present.

Knox builds a list of seven people and adds maps and phone numbers (placed in evidence) in a calm proceeding. These were the names: Peter Svizzero, Patrick, Ardak, Juve, Spiros, Shaki and “a South African [Guede]” who played basketball near the house.

At several points in the evening Knox is provided with refreshments. No voices are ever raised, no bathroom breaks are refused.

In a separate wing Inspector Napoleoni and a couple of colleagues are seeking facts from Sollecito. Shown conflicts between what he has said and what his phone records show, Sollecito backtracks, and declares that Knox went out alone on the night, and made him lie.

Napoleoni moves through the questura to suggest to Ficarra to discuss the night of the attack with Knox in more detail and clarify who might have been present. Knox is not informed of Sollecito’s backtrack. She is asked for more names and spontaneously shares her phone. There is an outgoing to Patrick but no prior incoming. Knox is asked who Patrick is.

Suddenly, to the considerable surprise of others present, Knox has a yelling, head-clutching conniption (the first of several that night) and says “It’s him, it’s him, it was him, he killed her”. The session is halted.

Despite warnings she should not do so without a lawyer, Knox insists on a recorded statement which says she headed out to meet Patrick that night after he texted her. She accuses Patrick of killing Meredith. 

Efforts are made throughout the next several hours to try to help Knox to calm down. Knox is put on hold, given more refreshments, and made comfortable on some chairs so she might try to get some sleep.

A second session ending at 5:45 is intended as merely a formal reading of Knox’s legal status and her right to a lawyer, with Dr Mignini presiding. She is to be held as a material witness and for her own protection.

Again warned that she should not speak without a lawyer, and no questions can be asked, Knox still insists on a second spontaneous accusation culminating in a second recorded statement.

This also says she went out to meet Patrick that night, also accuses Patrick of killing Meredith, and now also hints that Sollecito may have been there. 

Just before noon, now under arrest and about to be taken to Capanne Prison, Knox insists on writing out at length a third statement this time in English.

She gleefully hands it to Rita Ficcara who cannot read it as she as no English. In the statement, Knox included this damning remark, without any mention of having been coerced: “The questions that need answering, at least for how I’m thinking are… 2. Why did I think of Patrik?”

Knox’s lawyers never ever substantially challenge this version, and never lodge any complaint. At trial in 2009 they accept on the record that there was no interrogation, and leave standing that Knox insisted on all three statements, and dont ever pursue Knox’s claims that she was coerced.

Courts all noted that there is no mention in that third note of Knox having been coerced, although this note was her idea and she could put in it anything she liked. From this there never was any going back.

In July 2009 at trial, in face of days and days of prior investigator testimony, Knox brashly tried to substitute this scenario above with the one below. Of course she was disbelieved.

For the calunnia framing of Patrick Lumumba Judge Massei in 2009 sentenced her to a year more than Sollecito, amended by Judge Hellmann in 2011 to three years served.

The Supreme Court definitively overruled her calunnia appeal so for her false framing of Patrick she is a felon for life.

4. Explaining Knox Family & PR Alternative

Knox’s Italian lawyers were not a part of this; in contrast the American PR lawyer Ted Simon sought to introduce major confusion.

In Italy, lawyers are REQUIRED to report tales of abuse of their clients or face possible criminal charges. Contrariwise, if they knowingly report false charges they can face similar charges. So what they do is a strong indicator of truth. 

Amanda Knox’s lawyers not only did not ever report any abuse. They even announced publicly, in face of incessant claims of abuse by Knox, family, and PR forces, that they had seen no evidence of abuse and so would not be reporting. 

Though her precise claims vary and often contradict one another, Knox herself has on and off ever since November 2007 tried to put the investigators on trial - tried to blame the police for causing her conniption and her false accusation of Patrick for the death of Meredith.

Her fail rate has been spectacular.

Knox failed to convince (1) Supervising Magistrate Matteini and (2) the Ricciarelli review panel in November 2007, (3) failed to convince Prosecutor Mignini in December 2007, (4) failed to convince the Supreme Court in April 2008, (5) failed to convince the Micheli court in late 2008, (6) failed to convince the judges and jury at trial 2009, (7) failed at annulled appeal 2011, (8) failed at repeat appeal 2013, (9) failed to convince the Supreme Court in 2012 and (10) failed again in 2015.

As Knox’s team simply did not ever believe her, they may not have given this their hardest shot. It was not part of their largely spurious complaint to the EC HR.

And yet despite all of these failures, the huge and very nasty Knox PR effort went full-bore ahead with the abuse allegations anyway.

Read this post of 11 February 2009 which was about two weeks before the Knox “interrogators” were cross-examined at trial, and several months before Knox herself took the stand. Dozens of media reports repeated the Knox claims as if true.

Knox repeated them in her April 2013 book, and her December 2013 email to Judge Nencini, and her appeal to EHCR Strasbourg, and in some TV and newspaper interviews, including one with the Italian weekly Oggi which caused that paper legal harm.

This version has been blown up by Knox PR shills in internet posts, articles, TV interviews, and books. Among others propagating it have been Raffaele Sollecito (in his book), Doug Preston, Saul Kassin, Steve Moore (especially), John Douglas, Jim Clemente, Paul Ciolino, Michael Heavey, Greg Hampikian, Chris Halkidis, Mark Waterbury, Doug Bremner, Candace Dempsey, Nina Burleigh, Bruce Fischer, and many posters on the Knox sites and Fischer sites and on Ground Report.

Main claims included 50-plus hours of “interrogation”, numerous officers in teams, no food or drink, no sleep, no bathroom breaks, no lawyer, no recording, and much abuse and yelling and suggestions and threats. Way beyond anything even Knox herself and notably her own lawyers ever claimed. 

  • Here is Steve Moore claiming that around a dozen cops in rotating tag teams of two assaulted a starving and sleepless Knox over 20/30/40 hours, threatened her, and refused her a lawyer throughout.

  • Here is Saul Kassin claiming that Knox was interrogated over the entire night of 5-6 November, until she was finally broken and a coerced “confession” emerged - even though the “false confession” actually framed Patrick and was in reality a false accusation. That Kassin ignores.

  • Here are several former FBI profilers blatantly embellishing the same claims in a book, with (today) 60 five-star reviews.

And yet Knox’s own Italian lawyers specifically denied her accusations! No complaint against the police was ever lodged. All courts disbelieved her. Knox served her three years. But still the PR-driven hoax keeps resounding.

Comments

Damaging to the hoax (and the hoaxers) is that Knox sits placidly through all of this without interruption.

The defenses in their cross-examinations (see the next several posts) have no idea what to believe from what the erratic Knox has told them.

In sharp contrast here Dr Mignini is well set up and confident and clearly knows where he is going with the super-smart Rita Ficarra.

He knows there is no police pressure that will flare out to undermine the prosecution case here. Here are 10 points made not at all helpful to Knox and the meme of “police coercion”.

1. Knox could have gone off home to sleep right then.

And continuing to speak, the girl told me that she was rather shocked at the fact, annoyed at the fact that she had been called and recalled several times by the Police and [that] she was totally tired.

At that point, I also admonished her because I said: you’re tired, yet nonetheless you came this evening, when nobody has invited you: you could have gone to rest.

2. Knox was not a co-operative or reliable witness.

I explained to her that the reason for which she had been called and recalled several times, it was because there had emerged some significant contradictions between what she had declared and the subsequent information that other subjects had given us, that there had even emerged some lies in the end,

3. Rita Ficarra only wanted a list of contacts.

I, from the first time that I heard her, I always insisted on knowing what the victim’s associations might be, whether she knew which people had known her [i.e. the victim], with friendly relationships, with mere acquaintanceship, who had been to the house, above all subjects who had been to the house there.

4. Knox seemingly eagerly spreads the net of suspicion.

...she understands my intentions and says to me: “Ok, I now will tell you the names of other persons” because I invited her myself to look at her mobile phone, at the phonebook/contacts list, I say “Bring someone to your mind. It’s not possible that no-one ever entered this house, or only two people. Call to mind who might have known her”.

So she runs through her mobile-phone contacts list and starts to look at a series of numbers, and then she remembers and says to me “Look, it’s come [back], there were another four-five people that I know who knew her, some of these actually came to the house, some of them I brought myself”. She gives me the references of telephone numbers and [maps etc]

5. Knox points to a “short” South African; really Guede

She furthermore reports about a black South African boy, short, who plays basketball in the Piazza Grimana court, [and] who on one occasion had apparently visited the home of the boys who lived underneath the apartment.

GM: Was “South African” an exact term?

RF: No, no. In fact, I wanted to explain that she didn’t recall the particulars of this boy, or at least she did not tell me about them…

6. Knox admits drugs and names dope dealer

RF: In short, she never saw or smoked joints, had never used drugs, but here instead she says, contrary to what she had told me, she says to me that yes, a few times I’ve used, or at any rate I’ve used …

GCM: But only that which you have …

RF: She tells me this, I say it in the note, she tells me herself.

GCM: Yes, in the note, in this conversation…

RF: She tells me also who supplied it in this circumstance.

7. Knox was very calm after reprimand for cartwheels

GM: So, even while you were listening to her, she was as unworried/unconcerned as she had been?

RF: I told you that she was doing cartwheels…

GM: No, no, that was when you arrived. But I’m saying, even when, shortly after midnight, you had started to hear her [NdT: i.e. listen to what she had to say]?

RF: She was very calm, she was calm because we had a quiet chat, I said “Since you came here yourself, no-one called you, you’re giving me extra information, let’s write it down properly, because there could be very important details for us”. She had understood very well that ...

And she was calm, she says [sic]: “Yes, yes, ok. let’s wait for the interpreter that way we avoid misunderstandings”, and that is what we did.

8. Sollecito in his questioning withdrew Knox’s alibi early

And then after that came the Deputy Commissioner Monica Napoleoni, who says to me that Sollecito had said different things, that in effect he was no longer giving an alibi to Amanda, and therefore to ask Amanda, since I was recording [NdT: in the sense “writing down what was said”] her - [or] I had started to report/write down - to ask what the latter had done that evening in particular, in other words, to focus on that evening more than on anything else: we were interested in the hour more or less preceeding ...

9. Judge Massei [GCM] insists on a description of Knox’s conniption

We found only that one [text] sent by her. She, in the moment in which was, she was given the mobile into her hand, so it was said who is this person, so did you go out later or not, she said the name of Patrick Lumumba and gave the declaration that then ...

GM: And what behaviour did she then adopt/assume?

RF: She suddenly put her hands to her head, burst out crying and said to us “It’s him, it’s him, it was him, he killed her”. It was the only time that I saw her cry.

GM: This behaviour, did she then continue like that during the course of that morning, by now we were at what time?...

RF: No, she was as if she was giving vent in that moment, she cried, she began to say that he was crazy, he was crazy.

LG: No, that’s not possible, excuse me…

GCM: No, the question ...

GM: I was still talking about the behaviour.

GB: The behaviour is [described] in all the reports.

GCM: No, the behaviour, what was it?

RF: But this is not in the reports.

GCM: Sorry, the behaviour, what was it [like]?

RF: The behaviour was that she brought her hands ...

GCM: Were there fits of crying, were there ...

RF: Yes, yes. She brought her hands to her head, she started to “sgrullare” [NdT: Tuscan dialect: = either “shake” or “hit”] her head, she started to weep, she burst out crying and said that it was him.

GCM: Please.

LG: And suspends the report.

RF: I suspended the report obviously so that she could say what she said to me.

10. Knox was not threatened or intimidated

GM: Was she intimidated, threatened?

RF: No. I, as I said earlier, I came in that evening and there were some colleagues from the Rome SCO, I was with Inspector Fausto Passeri, then I saw come out, that is come out from the entry-door to the offices of the Flying [Squad] the Assistant Zugarini and Monica Napoleoni, who appeared for an instant just outside there, then we went back in calmly, because the discussion we had with her was quite calm.

Everything that she asked [for] we gave it to her, I repeat, she was treated with firmness and severity whereby by “severity” I mean that she was admonished in the moment when circumstances called for admonishment. She was treated with kindness and courtesy by all, because nothing was denied to her that she wanted.

In fact I made her sleep, I took her down for breakfast, I took her back [NdT: down to the canteen] before she left for jail to eat something because it was late by then. It seems to me that nobody in there treated her badly, absolutely [not].

Knox has served her sentence for framing Patrick. This does still matter legally and substantively in one sense. The coercion hoax is at the heart of the “appeal” that Knox’s lawyers have sent to Strasbourg to the European Court of Human Rights. On that for now (more in posts later):

Kermit http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/amanda_knox_lies_again_to_get_herself_into_another_european_court/

James Raper http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/note_for_strasbourg_court_and_state_department_/

FinnMacCool http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/multiple_provably_false_claims_about_false_confession/

Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/12/14 at 01:30 AM | #

Congratulations, and thanks to all the translators at .ORG and the Wiki who worked so hard to increase our understanding of this case.

I should mention however that Amanda Knox has been busted copying many of the translations, wrongly attributing them to IIP. The Giordano Report and Donino testimony come to mind, but, there are many more instances. Changing a few words here and some sentences there does not qualify as original work!

May I suggest that each translation have a copyright and fair use notice appended to them? As a writer I feel very strongly when people appropriate other people’s work.

Knox’s writing professors at UW clearly have failed to teach her the difference between research, and plagiarism. Or she is just, as always, tone deaf. But she clearly is responsible for the copying; WORD metadata shows the ‘translations’ were run through her own computer.

Posted by Ergon on 05/12/14 at 03:59 AM | #

I have perhaps been too kind. The word is Theft.

Posted by Ergon on 05/12/14 at 04:01 AM | #

Unfortunately among the knoxophiles this will do no good since they will insist that this is all lies. If you go to the pro Knox sites ‘Ground Report’ or ‘World of Psychology’ “The sacrifice of Amanda Knox” (Sorry I just threw up in my mouth)

You will find the usual tired bunch of Knox supporters repeating the same mantra over and over.
ie “There’s no evidence.” ie “It’s all Mignini’s fault” Satanic sex games. Rotten third world Italians out to get unsuspecting American girls etc;

Truly amazing that they even consider that their little diatribe will make the slightest difference. In fact they do more harm than good, but then there are still those who insist that Jodi Arias is innocent.

The tide is turning even more because all it will take is just one crack in the wall and it will come tumbling down and then watch the fur fly because the above mentioned ‘carpet baggers’ will have to find something else to promote themselves and their sorry little lives.

So be it. We will make continuous holes in the ever diminishing wall they have erected until it collapses and people will forget that Knox ever existed….........

Only Meredith will remain as a shining light of intelligence.

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 05/12/14 at 04:38 AM | #

Ergon & Grahame

First we need to get out for the 99% of the world that is NOT them the complete correct narrative of the night which we now have in the translated transcripts and Massei.

We will then be posting on whatever “alternative truths” they post - which right now is far from internally consistent (e: either you post Ficaara & Donnino OR you post Moore and John Douglas; never never post both as they are like matter and antimatter.)

There already is one example on the site of a short but correct version of the true narrative and an FOA invention side by side (well, vertically side by side) and although we havent got the guy (Kassin) to remove all his claims yet, we are remorseless and he knows that.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/Correcting_Saul_Kassins_Massively_inaccuraate_description/

Above all this series will illustrate for those in Italy more than anything else we have posted what is being said in the US about them. Then they have their own powers to weigh in with.

And the Knox team will have to kiss goodbye to the guts of their appeals to Cassation and the ECHR. Their island gets even smaller.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/12/14 at 06:01 AM | #

A very good, factual and unambiguous post, - with excellent quality of translation, which also gives a good indication of how the Italian language and vocabulary is used.

Posted by SeekingUnderstanding on 05/12/14 at 11:54 AM | #

the acting of AK gave her away big time ... the hands on head and face and her words “patrick is bad, he is the killer, i am afraid of him” ...

Posted by Popper on 05/12/14 at 12:53 PM | #

Hi Popper

Right. The 4 others in the room jumped a foot!

Its vague in the testimonies precisely when AK was told RS had said she went out. (If you see differently please say?)

Ficarra heard it quietly from Napoleoni; Ak doesnt seem to have clutched her ears and squawked then IF she was told (thats vague).

In both of the 2 statements she put in that she said goodbye to RS and headed out to see Patrick - why? To pick a bone?

I am wondering if its those few “unwise” words dropping her in it which led to her memoriale note which dropped that late on the morning of the 6th.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/13/14 at 02:50 AM | #

Apologies for going off topic but I wondered if others had seen this:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/silvio-and-the-cosa-nostra-berlusconis-links-with-italian-organised-crime-confirmed-9358790.html

‘...“In that period of time we’re talking about a continuous crime,” said Mr Galasso. He said the deal between the mafia and Berlusconi, mediated by Dell’Utri, was formed in 1974 and “was implemented voluntarily and knowingly”.

Berlusconi yesterday attacked “biased” judges. “[The rulings] are what the left has tried to do to me since ‘94,” he told Ansa news agency.

Giuseppe Di Peri, the lawyer for Dell’Utri who has always denied mob links, said his client would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg…

Appeal to the ECHR? Seem to have heard that before. (Surely, by definition, it’s not a suitable court for appeals from subhumans).

Posted by Odysseus on 05/13/14 at 11:06 AM | #

Hi Odysseus

Good catch.

A huge misunderstanding has been deliberately created in the UK and US out of the automatic appeals in the Italian system and their huge volume.

This is the only country we know of in the world that has them and it implies nothing about the competence of the trial process and those involved. Most appeal processes at their very end confirm the trial outcome, same conviction ratio as in the UK and US.

Appeals to ECHR Strasbourg are also something all Italian defense lawyers want to do.

They do this early, usually soon after trial.The whole point is to try to make the Italian appeal courts blink.

Ergon among others here keeps a close eye on this and found the ECHR hardly ever advances “appeals” from Italy. Almost all are frivolous, they eat up the scarce time of the ECHR staff, and the burden is unfair to real victims of poor justice elsewhere.

Knox lied in her own “appeal” to ECHR precisely on the lines explained in this series.  We had several posts on that. So not so off-topic at all!

Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/13/14 at 11:40 AM | #
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Where next:

Click here to return to The Top Of The Front Page

Or to next entry Knox Interrogation Hoax #2: Trial Testimony From Rita Ficcara On Realities 5-6 Nov

Or to previous entry Amanda Knox’s Awkward, Robotic TV Appearances: New Science Could Blow Away Such Fraud