Sunday, March 18, 2012
Could A Growing Asymmetry Between Raffaele And Everybody Else Be Ensuring No Sleep In Seattle?
Posted by Peter Quennell
[Louise Burke, Jen Bergstrom, and Tricia Boczkowski, top editors at Sollecito publisher Gallery Books]
Amanda Knox seems to have had a history of putting her foot in it and then (sometimes) when she realizes it she tries to make amends.
That seems to be the arc of her Berlin experience where she upset people by quitting a plum intern job at the parliament after a day and then retroactively at least worrying about it. That may have been what she was doing at the first meeting with her parents in Capanne prison when they very quickly shushed her up.
Meredith seems to have found Knox hard to take with her noise and grubbiness and sharp elbows and general pushiness. But Amanda Knox was losing her few new friends in Perugia fast, and possibly her job in Patrick’s bar, and Meredith seems to have fatefully banked on Amanda Knox coming full circle soon.
There are instances recorded almost to the end where they both seemed to try to get along, although Meredith may have brushed Knox off on Halloween night when Knox made unanswered calls, maybe to ask if she could tag along.
Enter Sollecito.
Seemingly a classic loner with no close friends in Perugia, no previous genuine deep relations with girls, apparently no prior sex, a year or two behind the rest of his class in completing his degree, with serious time given to beastie porn and Japanese anime and Japanese manga. Believed to have had a history of cocaine use with some incident on record back in Bari. Loves knives.
Seemingly forever kept on a very short string by his father, who called him on the phone at least once daily, and who made sure to keep his son’s bank balance on a level with Raffaele’s legitimate monthly expenses.
Seemingly already nervous prior to Meredith’s death that Amanda Knox might soon dump him. That after less than one week.
Our Italian poster ncountryside translated these statements by Dr Sollecito which seem to show Francesco trying hard to get a grip over his slippery son.
From a family conversation recorded in Capanne prison
And then this f@cking knife that you carried back and forth .... I told you about leaving it at home .... You’re an idiot from this point of view .... aren’t you? .... and then the f@cking point that you could have avoided the [marijuana] joints .... You promised a few years ago about it, didn’t you? You gave us your promise, to me and to your sister that you would not have used them again, and instead you have not given a f@ck .... is that clear?”
From another family conversation recorded in Capanne prison
If the investigators are finally realizing what the real dynamics of the matter is ... automatically understand that you have nothing to do with [rude in italian] ... Do you understand? ... Amanda can be more or less involved in this matter ... more or less I do not know and do not give a damn ...
She will know something ... precisely ... especially considering all the versions that she has given, maybe she has not told the right one because she was worried about what this character the little negro [i.e. Patrick Lumumba] has managed to do, something like that ... do you understand what I mean? ... But you have nothing to do with [rude in Italian] ... and they understood ... now this morning or Monday there will be also the checking of your computer ... they have already cloned the hard disk ..
If Amanda was home ... if she was out, wtf were you doing? ... were you at the computer? ...... We cannot understand, this [=AK] within three days, when she went to the questura ... she has four to five different versions ... she has pulled in the little negro a@@hole ... Is a strange personality this girl, isn’t it?.
In his second and third alibis Sollecito definitely seemed to throw Knox under the bus.
It was only after hearing of Sollecito’s second alibi from police interrogators that Knox headed off down the slippery slope that now results in a confirmed three-year sentence for her and calunnia trials for both herself and her parents.
It was right then that Knox pointed the finger at Patrick Lumumba, in her own second alibi when still only a witness.
Upon his release by Judge Hellman, Raffaele Sollecito adopts a high and surprisingly jubilant “catch me if you can” profile not dis-similar to that which has been the downfall of many a psychopath throughout history.
He goes on national TV and avoids all the hard questions and he bristles with narcissistic bravado. He makes several statements about himself and Knox from his seclusion in Bisceglie north of Bari, which his father then publicly tries to pull him back from.
A seemingly naive ghost-writer, Andrew Gumbel, is invited in to capture Sollecito’s immortal thoughts, and he seem to have instantly started to mirror Sollecito’s extreme bravado.
More or less the opposite of the cautious, subdued book approach of the Knox camp. Although she may not have wanted this, Amanda Knox will be tied forever to Sollecito in the opportunistic, self-serving title: “Presumed Guilty: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox”.
Book announcements are totally mute about all the legal trouble headed down the pike toward himself and Knox and their two families. The publisher’s announcement makes this inaccurate statement:
“Sollecito was an unwilling participant in a case that riveted the world. The Italian media convicted the young couple before any evidence had even been heard,” Gallery Books said in a statement. “Over and over, Sollecito came under pressure to change his testimony and get himself off the hook, but he refused to betray Amanda and he refused to lie.
“In “˜Presumed Guilty,’ Sollecito will finally tell his side of the story “” from his first meeting with Amanda Knox, to his arrest, prison time, subsequent release, and current relationship with the woman he stood by through the worst ordeal of both their lives.”
Really?! No, in fact Sollecito threw Amanda Knox under the bus as soon as he was leaned on, in his alibis two and three. He left her under the bus throughout the whole trial. Even after she rather desperately reached out to him in Capanne prison. And he lied again and again and again. Besides:
- Sollecito seems to show no concern at all that Perugia’s formidable chief prosecutor Dr Galati has filed a devastatingly strong appeal with the Italian Supreme Court.
- Sollecito seems to show no concern at all over his own family’s upcoming trial or the fact that they might end up in prison (which could cause his father to lose his medical license).
- Sollecito seems to show no concern at all that, for over-vigorously trying to defend him, his sister Vanessa has now permanently lost her plum job with the Carabinieri.
And now? Well, now there is a new report from the UK press, which seems to keep stringers permanently on the ground in Seattle and may have a direct pipeline to the Knox-Mellases. The report includes this:
Amanda’s new boyfriend, musician James Terrano is understood to be unhappy about Raffaele’s arrival.
James Terrano has himself been very cautious. He is unlikely to have let that damning remark leak out without a heads-up to Amanda Knox and her family. This seems yet another sign that the secret Seattle meetings are not simply a lovefest.
Both families seem to be struggling with a loose cannon called Raffaele.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/18/12 at 02:31 PM in Hoaxes Knox & team, 13 AK persona hoax, 14 AK/RS got-on hoax, 15 Single alibi hoax, 20 No-PR hoax, Hoaxes Sollecito etc, 25 RS persona hoax, 26 RS/AK got-on hoax, 27 Single alibi hoax, 32 No-PR hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Marriott PR, Raff Sollecito PR, Amanda Knox #2, Raff Sollecito #2
Comments
Both the hard disks (AK and RS) from the laptops gave no results: don’t you find that strange?
Usually police do not fiddle with these stuff: they hand over the laptops to some agencies. They have the software and the expertise to recover data even from a deleted or damaged hard disk. I find very little comments on this.
Hard disks do go bad- in fact with remarkable regularity. But both at the same time and both beyond any recovery?
Perhaps that one of them is a Computer Science graduate is no coincidence.
If you permit yourself to read meanings into (rather than drawing meanings out of) the evidence, you can draw any conclusion you like.
Posted by chami on 03/18/12 at 09:30 PM | #
That’s what I thought. It is a verrrry strange coincidence.
The translated conversations of Dr. Sollecito with Raphael were enlightening. They show that in fact Raphael was definitely trying to imply that AK was out of the house but that he was worried about the knives that were found.
His dad was trying to understand what happened that night and was panicking and shouting at him to explain. That was a very different scenario from what was presented in court (all coached by the lawyers) of the two of them definitely spending the whole night together in love and peace and harmony.
Along with the stories from the prison guard and AK’s cellmate, the whole picture has been changing for me from the time of the second appeal. I now have a picture in my mind of what happened that night but I don’t know if it will ever be confirmed.
Posted by believing on 03/19/12 at 02:31 AM | #
How did those statements get recorded of Dr. Sollecito’s conversation with Raphael? Are they reliable? They were never talked about during the trial that I know of, so how are they published now.
Posted by believing on 03/19/12 at 02:33 AM | #
Hi Believing.
They were published in mid 2009 during the trial, not now, and you can find an Italian version posted by bolint on PMF back then, though it was not translated. The recordings were made routinely at Capanne Prison during a family visit with Raffaele prior to Rudy Guede’s role being known.
They would be included in the 10,000 pages of evidence submitted at trial. There may be much more of interest in those 10,000 pages that has never come out. They have mostly never been published and are only available for a high fee to anyone other than to the legal teams and Italian reporters with contacts.
Although Fiorenza Sarzanini and Corriere were taken to court because her book included quotes from an Amanda Knox diary which somehow ended up in the hands of the prosecution, her book (in Italian) remained on the market and convinced many Italians of the nefariousness of the pair.
Frustrating, right?! We seem to run a small translation business here and yet always there is so much more. Talking of asymmetry, the asymmetry between what interested Italians know and what media dupes in the English-speaking world know is enormous.
That explains why the Knox PR scheme tried so hard to fly under the radar in Italy, and why it was such a surprise to Italians when Mr Mignini warned about an alternate-universe “million dollar PR campaign” in his summation in court at the end of the first appeal.
It also explains why the ignorance-based Knox campaign’s various useful idiots like David Anderson and Steve Moore and the dogmatic and ill-informed books by Candace Dempsey and Nina Burleigh and Bruce Fischer are so much not to be believed.
Here is Peter Hyatt trying hard to press Steve Moore, a non-Italian-speaker, to divulge what out of all the evidence he actually read, to which (surprise, surprise) Steve Moore’s response (and Michele’s) has 15 months later still not appeared.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/19/12 at 03:09 AM | #
By the way if anyone’s smart next question is:“Did the Hellman judges and jury read the 10,000 plus pages??” the answer almost certainly is “no”.
Under Italian law a first-level appeal is not meant to be a replay of the first trial and the Supreme Court routinely throws out verdicts of judges and juries who try.
So they would not have any obligation to read the 10,000 plus pages, only those very few that relate to the points raised on appeal.
That is why RS and AK stand maybe a 99 percent chance of being reconvicted in light of the “extreme overreach” arguments offered to the Supreme Court by Dr Galati.
The 99 percent assumes a level playing field this time around, and no more stealth moves behind the scenes. RS seems to have quite a shock in store.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/19/12 at 03:44 AM | #
Not much of the Fiorenza Sarzanini book “Amanda E Gli Altri” on Knox’s diaries etc (still available on Amazon) has ever made its way into English (pity) but here below is what James Follain of the Sunday Times summarized from it on 30 November 2008.
************
A book explores the desires of the student accused of killing her UK housemate
The London Sunday Times; By John Follain; November 30, 2008
In one diary Amanda Knox imagines Meredith Kercher being raped and killed
On the eve of a fateful summer journey to Italy, the American student Amanda Knox drew up a list of things to do before she left home in Seattle. Top of the list, according to her diary, was visiting a sex shop.
A book published in Italy last week quotes leaked extracts from Knox’s diary and portrays her as a young woman for whom sex is a key part of life. Knox, 21, will go on trial in January along with her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 24, accused of sexually abusing and murdering the Leeds exchange student Meredith Kercher in November 2007.
Kercher, 21, stabbed in the throat, was found half-naked in her bedroom in the Perugia cottage she shared with Knox. Rudy Guede, 21, an Ivory Coast drifter, has already been jailed for 30 years for the crime. All three pleaded not guilty.
The book, Amanda and the Others by Fiorenza Sarzanini, a journalist on Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper, quotes previously unpublished extracts from diaries Knox kept from August 2007 until a few weeks after the murder. They have been seized by investigators.
Knox’s family protested at the publication of “Amanda’s personal and private property”. [ Sorry folks, it goes to “State of Mind” and “Motive” and “All the Facts” and “Truth vs Fantasy PR” ... She is innocent,” they said in a statement.
Sarzanini said yesterday: “Knox isn’t obsessed with sex but she sees it as one of the predominant aspects of her life. This has influenced her life in the sense that it influences her relationships with both men and women.”
Before leaving Seattle, Knox, who is fond of making lists and called herself Foxy Knoxy, wrote that buying condoms was one of her priorities. On October 18, 2007, she lists four men with brief descriptions, including an American boyfriend.
Sarzanini comments: “It’s as if you [Knox] were always hunting men. You list your conquests as if you were displaying them like trophies.”
Knox writes to one boyfriend: “I’m waiting for you, I want to see something porno with you and put it into practice with you” In another list, Knox names four men in Seattle and New York, and three in Florence and Perugia with whom she has had sex.
Knox writes: “Interesting isn’t it? I think it means that my sex life doesn’t correspond to my romantic emotional life. An obvious statement because the only one I’m in love with (even if in truth he isn’t the only one I want to have sex with) is incredibly far away . . . Sex is useless, well not useless but always disappointing unless I manage to establish emotional contact with someone”.
The book quotes testimony to police from Amy Frost, a British student friend of Kercher. She describes an episode on the day of Knox’s arrival at the cottage: “Meredith told us that Amanda put down in the bath-room a beauty-case in which there were condoms and a vibrator. They were visible and it seemed a bit strange to Meredith.” Kercher later told Frost: “Isn’t it odd that a girl arrives and the first thing she shows is a vibrator (and condoms) ?”
In a sign of tension between Knox and the victim, Frost also relates that a few weeks before the murder Kercher had learnt from her housemates that one of them, Giacomo Silenzi, fancied her. When Kercher told Knox, she replied: “I like Giacomo too, but you can have him!” The remark upset Kercher, who later started a relationship with Silenzi.
Several witnesses quoted in the book depict Knox and Sollecito as not only failing to show any grief immediately after Kercher’s death, but also constantly cuddling and kissing as they sat waiting to be questioned at police headquarters, a few days before they were accused of the crime. “[Amanda] was in front of Raffaele. I remember that she stuck her tongue out at him, she made faces and then they’d laugh and kiss each other. In that moment I thought she was going crazy, that she was really crazy,” Frost testified.
Robyn Butterworth, a British friend of Kercher who saw Knox at police headquarters, gave evidence that Knox “seemed to me to be completely lacking any emotion”. Butterworth added that Knox and Sollecito “sent each other kisses by smacking their lips. At a certain point she stretched out on a few chairs and he caressed her feet. It was strange, it wasn’t a nice thing to watch”.
Prosecutors have argued that Knox’s alleged coldness after the murder, as well as her DNA on the handle of a knife that may be the murder weapon, points to her guilt. Knox’s parents have said Knox was in shock and was simply seeking comfort from her boyfriend.
In another diary that Knox started in prison on November 8, 2007, shortly after her arrest, there is a rare passage about Kercher in which she imagines her raped and killed.
She wrote: “I can only imagine what she felt in those moments frightened, injured, raped. But I imagine more what she went through when the blood went out of her. What did she feel? And the mother? Desperation? Did she have the time to find peace or in the end did she have only terror?”
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/19/12 at 04:51 AM | #
@believing, Peter
Unfortunately, the book became - quite understandably - rare. Maybe an opportunity to make an effort and learn Italian.
The original article in “Corriere della Sera” with some excerpts:
http://www.corriere.it/cronache/08_novembre_24/magazine_i_segreti_di_amanda_sarzanini_d2e224d2-ba41-11dd-a287-00144f02aabc.shtml
Editor – Bompiani - page:
http://bompiani.rcslibri.corriere.it/libro/6218_amanda_e_gli_altri_vite_perdut_sarzanini.html
A comment in english about the book ?
http://www.italyinliterature.com/2009/02/fiorenza-sarzaninis-amanda-e-gli-altri.html
The book on Amazon UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amanda-perdute-intorno-delitto-Perugia/dp/8845262189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332122787&sr=8-1
on Feltrinelli:
http://www.lafeltrinelli.it/products/9788845262180/Amanda_e_gli_altri/Sarzanini_Fiorenza.html
on LibreriaUniversitaria:
http://www.libreriauniversitaria.it/amanda-altri-vite-perdute-intorno/libro/9788845262180
Posted by ncountryside on 03/19/12 at 06:35 AM | #
It seems the intrepid (and accurate) Chelsea Hoffman is being set upon by Marriott’s flash mob. Maybe she could use some help?
http://news.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981199582
The fraud of the century “Bruce Fisher of New York” is there calling other people a fraud.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/19/12 at 03:33 PM | #
If we cut through all the smoke and mirrors in this and just examine the cold facts. The events and the facts speak for themselves.
(1) Girls who are driven sexually (AK)to have as much sex as possible with just about anybody are by this quirk in their psyche shunned and mistrusted by their contemporaries. That is because the other girls (in this case)saw AK as a threat. This is manifest in part as a clue through AK being a pain in the ass by strumming one chord on her guitar over and over. She exhibited that annoying trait thereby gaining recognition even if it was a negative reaction, it’s better to have that than being ignored. This is the universal reaction of men and woman, who having found no love at home, or have been rejected or molested, strive to do.
(2) The facts state that AK was jealous of Meredith who, in the beginning, had been AKs friend only to reject her later because of her dirty behavior, flaunting her sex toys and bringing strange men back for sex and being a total whore while everybody else was studious and wanting to get on with study. AK making noises during climax was not conducive to studying the classics. I believe that AK suggested at one point that Meredith, herself an Sollecito, have a threesome and was rejected outright. I am still of the opinion that AK was attracted to Meredith and had broached the possibility of using a strap on. Don’t forget that her interpretation of friendly was associated completely with sex as she has written. ie According to AK if you are friends then sex is a way of showing and proving your friendship. AK has stated that she got a bigger rush having sex with someone she had feelings for than any of the casual meetings before. Guede was an after-thought because of his direct access to drugs and this was a form of payoff.
(3) RS doesn’t really count since was a just a silly little virgin child fascinated by comic books and violence and therefore easily manipulated. AK goes through boy friends because it never takes them very long to start to understand AKs modus operandi so they leave. Sollecito is still the child by the way, and is secretly ‘Chuffed’ that he got away with it and now likes the attention hence the bravado. He has convinced himself that daddy will fix it as he always has.
(4) All three have a basic in common. AK & RS came from families where they had little freedom and little love but a lot of rules. Guede had been rejected by society and therefore all three had this desire to have complete control over their lives.
(5) Therefore Meredith became a symbol. She was an adult among children and a prime target. Point is if it hadn’t been Meredith it would have been someone else.
That’s the bare bones and thank God there is no statute of limitations upon murder. I believe they will eventually be found guilty and as a result, AK particularly, will sink without a trace. I do not see any future for her at all. Perhaps one day as an old bag lady but nothing else. Her parents will die and she will be left alone because time and a hundred boy friends later will see to that. RS I believe will fare little better. Guede is done one way or the other because justice comes in many forms.
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/19/12 at 04:17 PM | #
While I’m thinking about it a prime vehicle for discussion and comparison would be the book ‘The Lord of the Flies’
If you remember the plot it concerned a group of school boys who are the only survivors on a deserted island. Left to their own devises they soon lose the veneer of civilization and revert to aggression and murder by joining into opposing gangs fighting for control.
My sense here is that the book parallels a close dynamic to Knox and Sollecito. Knox couldn’t wait to get away from Seattle so she could indulge her favorite sex life without having to explain herself to her mother. Same with Sollecito. Being away from home he could also indulge his passion for getting high without the daily phone calls from his father (who suspected what he was doing notwithstanding) and having to explain himself all the time.
Given this dynamic it’s easy to see how the situation developed and why they were drawn towards each other and why they hated Meredith.
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/19/12 at 06:23 PM | #
Pete,
Just read Chelsea Hoffman’s article and then the comments after; my, my, who let the dogs out ? That’s just a very predictable cast of nastiness. Do they have nothing better to do ? Where did they suddenly spring from ?
BTW, if Marriott’s line moving forward is based on Hellman’s unique interpretation of the facts it’ll be entertaining to see how they countenance that as Hellman is picked apart by the Supreme Court.
Posted by Smacker on 03/19/12 at 07:04 PM | #
Please let Andrew Gumbel know what you think about his support for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito via his Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/#!/AndrewGumbel
Posted by The Machine on 03/19/12 at 09:15 PM | #
RS became instantly protective of and obsessive about AK. This is understandably due to his inexperience with women and his euphoria at suddenly having such a seeming nymphomaniac at his personal disposal. This was only the first (and last!) week of the “relationship”.
She was probably flattered by his intense interest in her (the narcissist being recognized as Queen) but I’ll bet that before too much longer, she would have felt annoyed by his possessiveness, or would have tested it by flaunting her newer conquests. How would a jealous Raf have treated her, or her other hookups?
Seeing more than one person concurrently is nothing unusual for our generation, but even if both parties in a couple (even loosely committed) are aware of the open arrangement, there is no guarantee against jealousy, insecurity. He was likely already threatened by the knowledge that she maintained contact with DJ. He may not have been thrilled at the idea that she was off to the pub without her (during the hours that he” no longer covered for her” , if they were actually apart during part of that time.)
Perhaps she did go out and try to hook up with another bloke, who blew her off. Then RS was relieved that she came back. She may have been frustrated. They got high, talked about right and wrong, sex, being dissed (by Meredith, by authority, by society, by stepparents??) and the situation at the cottage escalated into the resulting homicide.
Neither RS nor AK seems capable of truly empathising with the suffering of others, be it a terrified, bleeding “friend”, or a distraught, furious, sacrificing family member. They are hollow inside, and can only be filled by adulation (listen to my singing! lust after my voluptuousness! rescue me from this horrid cell! read my super important thoughts in my fascinating diary!)
Now my confession. I saw her (AK) with some other women (family?) attending an athletic meet at the middle school. My heart rate increased, and I felt somewhat ill, but , to tell the truth, she looked completely ORDINARY, boring and harmless.The moment was not about her, but about her little sister. Didn’t soften my feelings regarding her involvement, but confirmed that she is, in no wise, larger than life.
Posted by mimi on 03/19/12 at 09:37 PM | #
Hi Mimi.
I think you have them both pretty well nailed.
I know that reporters when they first saw her found her shorter and chunkier than they expected with heavy bones. There is an image out today of her in Seattle which makes her look, well, short and chunky with heavy bones.
In the left shot there she looks like she is back in a bubble.
And her ability to attract men, even if only to one night stands, was a newfound thing. She herself admits she didnt have it in Seattle and at school there were those who presumed her lesbian.
That would put the behavior you describe on steroids. I wonder if Raffaele would have lasted another week. Now he is in Seattle trying hard to chain her to himself for life.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/20/12 at 05:12 AM | #
Not to be too picky but asymmetry is misspelled in the title here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetry
Posted by believing on 03/20/12 at 06:20 AM | #
Thanks Believing.
We’ve been tripped up before by spelling in the post titles as the online spell checker doesnt work there and we do them and and move on, unlike the main text where the spellchecker works and which we do actually read 3-4 times.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/20/12 at 02:31 PM | #
Hi Smacker
The reason for all the vitriol is very simple. These people are scared to death (I’m being polite here)of being wrong. Well that’s a given. My take on it is that they form a collective mind set of old men whose daughters have left.
I could get really nasty with this but I’m not going to stoop to their level of gutter thought.
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/20/12 at 03:12 PM | #
Hi Smacker and Grahame.
How they reacted to Chelsea Hoffman surprised me. I havent seen such an angry reaction to such a mild post before. All Chelsea posted on was the UK report that James Terrano was apparently not too thrilled at Sollecito’s coming.
As the post above here explains Sollecito was not the best friend in the world to AK during trial and it would be more understandable if the Knox supporters turned on him or at least wished him to remain back in Italy.
Our continuing informed perception is that no-one in the families is too happy at his coming to Seattle, not just James, and for reasons Mimi gives above he might wear out his welcome with Amanda fast.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/20/12 at 04:00 PM | #
Hi Peter
Is it true that Knox & Mellas don;t have to go back for their trial? For some reason I was convinced that they did.. If they don’t and they are found guilty what will happen then?
M
Posted by Melanie on 03/20/12 at 05:19 PM | #
Hi Melanie
We’ll be posting on this soon. Yes in this essentially civil case they dont HAVE to be present in court. Nor does Amanda. But the problem is that they are their only witnesses.
They really NEED to get on the stand to hope to win. Police interrogators are expected to field at least a dozen solid believable witnesses of their own.
Curt and Edda were seen on TV many times seemingly stating categorically that Amanda was abused or maltreated (and hence her false fingering of Patrick). John Follain’s interview was only one vehicle of many.
They didnt say only Amanda told them that she was maltreated and that was all they were going on. They put it across globally as hard fact.
Doug Longhini of CBS has posted an article saying the charges are trivial or unfair but in fact they really aren’t. They have apparently been falsely accusing the interrogators of CRIMES in the global media.
That is a crime here in the United States and in the UK and not only in Italy. The interrogators seemingly could have brought a case in the US or UK and they still may based on TV clips.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/20/12 at 06:12 PM | #
Thanks Peter
I hope they do go back but I won’t hold my breath!!
Posted by Melanie on 03/20/12 at 06:19 PM | #
Yes no need to hold your breath. If the playing field is level they seem likely to lose either way.
When the charges are put in equivalent American terms as I did above, and not in Longhini’s misleading terms, most Americans should see this is quite legitimate and deserved.
Equally in the US and UK and Italy you simply can’t dogmatically in the media accuse professionals of crimes.
The European Court of Human Rights strongly espouses this as the tendency to web defamation spreads.
Various people are already in prison in the US for going too far.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/20/12 at 06:44 PM | #
It may be a faint hope but with RS coming to Seattle and obviously amanda knox (lower case on purpose)living down to her advanced billing there is every chance that he will be rejected by her. Perhaps he might even get pissed off enough to spill something. But if that happened then I doubt we shall ever hear of it. However stranger things have happened.
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/20/12 at 07:10 PM | #
Another thought. The louder these idiots scream the more attention they bring, That is the last thing the defense wants, but then I’m making a mistake presuming intelligence where there obviously is none
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/20/12 at 07:12 PM | #
It’s possible that the families have Raffaele lashed to a chair in a soundproof room right now and are taking shifts to tell him how it’s going to be.
The problem is that Raffaele really has them all by the short hairs. He has no history of just going along (ask his dad).
This is the classic situation in nuclear confrontations: whoever threatens harder and nastier and more convincingly is the one that comes out ahead. The other side blinks.
Raffaele might be demanding right now that AK marries him and they get down to the business of having a bunch of bambinos and he gets half the $4 mil.
Is anyone in a position to tell him: Raffy, just get lost?
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/20/12 at 07:32 PM | #
Yep, Peter, there’s a lot of vitriol being spewed at Chelsea Hoffman by the knox groupies. We shouldn’t be too surprised - they’re well practised at it and would suck on old socks full of sh*t if their goddess commanded it.
Posted by nopassingby on 03/21/12 at 02:36 AM | #
@ mimi. It may sound like a stereotype by now but I will repeat it anyway ... the banality of evil !
Posted by aethelred23 on 03/21/12 at 02:51 AM | #
The only thing left for them is to have Knox on dancing with the stars. Maybe they could put her up against Casey Anthony. Charles Manson is still alive. Maybe start a trend eh?
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/21/12 at 12:43 PM | #
I did not know that Knox can dance. But sure she can make others dance!
If there is money (should be more than 300 euro) in it, she will surely try!
Everyone is entitled to my opinion.
Posted by chami on 03/21/12 at 09:33 PM | #
I’m reading through all the comments on this article which are more interesting than the article itself and bring up several new points I wasn’t aware of. One of the comments was that the prosecution kept Rudy Guede from testifying in court, and stopped him from speaking in court. I never heard that before. Is this possibly true? I don’t think so but would like to hear from anyone more familiar with the details of the appeal.
Posted by believing on 03/21/12 at 11:59 PM | #
There’s something else which doesn’t make sense to me when reflecting on some of the opinions expressed in the above commentary.
If one could suppose that Rudy Guede was the sole perpetrator, who somehow launched himself through the second story window, into Filmena’s room etc to do a burglary, then assaulted and murdered Meredith, why would he need to go through a window like that, and why would he risk it? He did not know if all the girls would be home that night. If he came after Meredith was home, there would have been a light on in her room and maybe other rooms which would have alerted him that she or others were home.
Indeed, why did he need to break in as he had already met Meredith and Amanda at a pot party, as he said in his long rambling letter? He could have just knocked on the door and asked to be let in? He knew the boys downstairs. If their whole apartment was dark, and he believed them not to be home, why would he not have just entered one of their more easily accessible windows to rob them of whatever goods were left out? Finally we have already talked about the fact that a bare footprint on the bathmat with no footprints leading to it, with footprints of shoes going out the door don’t seem to correspond to him being the one person being involved.
Another thing I wonder about are the clothes that were left lying neatly on Amanda’s bed, which some people say prove she was not involved, as they were clean. For one thing, who knows if these were the clothes she wore the night before? It seems a little bit staged to me, for a messy girl to have her clothing laid out nicely like that. Couldn’t other clothing have been thrown out in the canyon, or burned, or put in the trash anywhere, or even washed?
It’s going to be very interesting when the calumnia trials begin.
Posted by believing on 03/22/12 at 12:17 AM | #
Hi Believing. In your first comment I guess you are referring to the persistent commenter Katody rather mindlessly channeling standard FOA talking points.
He or she does not know the case well, and in particular not the grounds of the Supreme Court appeal, which state that Judge Hellman’s scope and appointment of the independent DNA consultants were both ILLEGAL. Use links to our careful analysis here if you like. That usually quietens them down.
It is absurd to continue to re-argue the lone wolf theory. Micheli and Masssei both disposed of it in great detail, the Supreme Court ruled it out, and Hellman had no new evidence to prove the contrary. Even the defense teams kept away - they introduced Alessi and Aviello instead, who both argued against the lone wolf theory.
There are five possible entrances to the house including the front door, and Filomena’s window was by far the most difficult. Giulia Bongiorno’s staged attempt to have a tall athletic staffer climb through Filomena’s window failed laughably. He did not even come close. Katody wrongly claims the opposite. Guede’s DNA was nowhere in that room (or outside the window) only Knox’s.
Guede didnt enter the bathroom but Knox’s and Meredith’s blood are both there. As you say there are his shoe imprints and then there is evidence of two sizes of bare feet. Someone got a lot of blood on them in Meredith’s room and clothes were washed or disposed of that night for sure.
Guede offered to testify at trial but was considered not needed, and agreed to testify at appeal, but was nervous and so his statement was read for him. And he had no criminal record as Katody wrongly claims and no record of violence and rape. He could almost be described as passive. No-one ever proved he threatened anyone with a knife and Micheli got quite ticked at the one Perugia resident who tried.
It is probably far too late in the arc of that Daily Telegraph thread to make any difference, but one of the claims Katody repeatedly gets away with unchallenged is that Knox and/or Sollecito did not know Rudy Guede. Here is how Amanda Knox herself testified in court that she knew him.:
Carlo Pacelli (CP), Patrick Lumumba’s lawyer: In what circumstances did you meet him (Rudy)?
Amanda Knox (AK): I was in the center, near the church. It was during an evening when I met the guys that lived underneath in the apartment underneath us, and while I was mingling with them, they introduced me to Rudy.
CP: So it was on the occasion of a party at the house of the neighbors downstairs?
AK: Yes. What we did is, they introduced me to him downtown just to say “This is Rudy, this is Amandaâ€, and then I spent most of my time with Meredith, but we all went back to the house together.
CP: Did you also know him, or at least see him, in the pub “Le Chicâ€, Rudy?
AK: I think I saw him there once.
CP: Listen, this party at the neighbors, it took place in the second half of October? What period, end of October? 2007?
AK: I think it was more in the middle of October.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/22/12 at 12:45 AM | #
Sollecito is the lesser figure here. He finds it necessary to name Amanda Knox in the title of his book.
Reportedly, Chris Mellas arranged for Raffaele’s interview at Microsoft. So did the initiative come from the Knox clan? Are we to think of Chris Mellas doing favors?
The two families have so little in common apart from their culprits. They don’t face similar indictments. I wonder if their meeting or even the interview at Microsoft is a cover for the desperate meeting (& the necessary connivance) of Raffaele & Amanda.
Incidentally, Peter, those words of Amanda you quote in which she imagines the last moments of a raped & bleeding Meredith might have been meant, on her part, as evidence of her consideration of a roommate for whom she felt compassion.
Quoting: “I can only imagine what she felt in those moments frightened, injured, raped… Did she have the time to find peace or in the end did she have only terror?â€
Posted by Ernest Werner on 03/22/12 at 08:41 AM | #
Guede was called to give evidence at the first level trial of AK and RS. He elected, as was his right, not to answer questions and was dismissed by Massei.
He may well have offered to give evidence beforehand and perhaps hoping that by doing so he could cut a deal, but if so the prosecution rightly rejected any deal.
But also Guede’s own first appeal was still in the pipeline when he was called, and it was a wise choice by his defence team for him to not answer questions at that stage.
Posted by James Raper on 03/22/12 at 12:37 PM | #
What on earth would Microsoft want with Raffy. He was two years behind his class in IT studies. His father kept his boofhead son in school at great expense but he is clearly no genius.
When his cell phone records were put in front of him he admitted he didnt think his alibi through and had told proscutors a pack of lies to please Amanda.
I saw his father interviewed on TV saying that he couldnt have wished for a better son. He would say that wouldnt he. But the recordings of phone calls to Raffy tell a completely different story of a very disillusioned father indeed. And a lot poorer these days with no end in sight of the outlays.
Of course a face to face meeting in Seattle was the only solution to getting the stories right before they go to print and without phone taps and email intercepts.
We are all waiting to see this house of cards collapse. Good versus evil.
Posted by mason2 on 03/22/12 at 01:07 PM | #
Hi James. Yes a deal was requested during trial by Guede’s lawyers Biscotti and Gentile (now representing the soldier husband who may have killed Melania) in exchange for some years off his sentence (then 30 years) but Comodi and Mignini were having none of it.
They considered their case to be a strong one and Massei to be a predictable and well-qualified judge with a long track record of good judgement. Compare this to Hellman who had almost no track record of criminal trial (he is a business judge) but even so had produced at least one quirky judgement which let someone accused of a horrific crime counter-intuitively go free.
My impression has been that you as a lawyer have respected Biscotti and Gentile? They do seem to have done the best they for their client with almost no PR or grandstanding.
To the end Guede claimed that Meredith let him into the house for consensual sex, which we always found very ugly, and he was absolutely one of those who walked out on Meredith on the night without calling for help.
But without dropping himself in deeper (none of them will ever want to be the first) he did say to the Kerchers that he regretted what happened.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/22/12 at 03:02 PM | #
@Peter,
“...he did say to the Kerchers that he regretted what happened.”
To the best of my knowledge and belief, the other two (the masterminds, IMHO) never uttered a single word of regret, even a trace of remorse, even indirectly.
That makes Guede a better human being, a trace better.
Honesty is the best policy but insanity is always a better defense.
Posted by chami on 03/22/12 at 07:52 PM | #
Thanks a lot for the information that was posted since last night. My goodness some people have been very hard at work. I will certainly read through the many links above to refresh my memory on the case.
I am very curious as to the outcome of the trial of the Sollecito family in Bari which is coming up soon. First of all, of course there will be a completely different judge on this case. Secondly, it only involves the Italians, with no AK and no American media circus. Thirdly, I don’t think the case would have come to trial unless the prosecution was quite certain of a guilty verdict as it would not be worth the trouble/expense. Lastly, Dr. Sollecito must be rapidly running out of money for his defense but no doubt is digging into his reserve funds to make a strong effort at defense. My questions are: what will happen if he/they are found guilty? 2) What will be reported if anything in the English language news (I can’t imagine CBS/ABC/CNN big guns running any stories on this trial.
I have the same questions actually for the AK parents trial coming up, however in this case I do expect another media circus albeit not as big as before. In fact I just imagine them spouting off to the media from the safety of the USA and repeating how corrupt the Italian police are, how wronged they have been, how persecuted etc etc. If they are found guilty, what will happen, a fine? What if they refuse to pay? What if they just file a counter-suit? (I’m not sure they can do so, being American citizens). Again, as this will involve a completely different judge, right, I look forward to the spotlight being off Mignini and the whole Monster of Florence angle. I wonder if Douglas Preston will remain silent, or any of the other actors in the American support team. I highly doubt that the Knox/Mellas teams will show up in Italy because they will fear being arrested. They will remain in Seattle and make a loud media outcry about it all.
If anyone has more details about the 1) trial in Bari and who will be the judge and 2) the same for the calumnia trial for AK’s parents, that would be great to read. Lastly, 3) if a client actually admits to the crime, let’s say Rudy G, or Melania’s husband, does the defense lawyer just pretend that didn’t happen, and continue to defend as if the client is innocent? I’ve always wondered that. How would you sleep at night if so, knowing that you are helping a murderer to escape justice?
Posted by believing on 03/22/12 at 09:22 PM | #
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