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.
Posted by Our Main Posters on 08/08/14 at 05:00 PM in The legal followups, Sollecito followup, Knox followup, Hoaxers from 2007, Amanda Knox #1, Knox-Marriott PR, Hoaxers from 2011, Amanda Knox #2, Raff Sollecito #2
Comments
NOBODY gets a free pass under the tough federal and state laws against the harassment of victims’ families.
Knox has been harrassing the Kerchers right there on her own website, and seems liable for American prosecution. That will kill extradition resistance right there.
So do Steve Mooore, Bruce Fischer, Doug Bremner, David Anderson, Nigel Scoot, and the Sternes who own the notorious Ground Report. Their abuse of the Kerchers is all out there still and easy to track down, especially Fischer’s and Doug Bremner’s.
The only ones who get a free pass under American bloodmoney laws are lawyers doing legitimate legal business.
Were Robert Barnett and Ted Simon doing legal business in promoting the publishing of Knox’s book? Or advancing a malicious PR scheme?
You decide.
That is only on the American side. There is also a UK and Italian side.
On the Italian side Italy also has such laws, which can result in trial of perps in absentia and label anyone found guilty as a felon, which with some help from Interpol would show up on records around the world.
Robert and Ted should not even need to hit the lawbooks. The protection of victims’ rights is Basic Law #101.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/08/14 at 08:01 PM | #
For historical reasons the Italian system strives for extreme legitimacy and consensus that it decisions are right. That is why it is so open, and so constrained from explaining itself other than in court and formal documents.
Many outside Italy now praise it as extremely fair and highly effective and we have noted that New York is leading an American gravitation toward it.
One thing that is so contemptible is that the cowards Knox and Sollecito deliberately set out to mischaracterize it but only in English. Those other cowards Preston and Dempsey and Burleigh and quite a few others also did so but only in English for their own ends.
Some of these legal liabilities above are crimes against the system and no one individual was required to spark them. Sollecito and Gumbel will be tried for some of these.
Other legal liabilities above are criminal defamation against officials - not private individuals but a special class of civil servant with special protections to ward off nasty campaigns by the mafia.
Not one is purely personal.
That contemptible and dishonest ditz Candace Dempsey among others who is utterly clueless about the Italian system keeps claiming that Dr Mignini is litigious.
Really? Does she have the slightest idea how stupid that claim is?
Name one legal action he has launched that Italian law did not require of him in the rules established for his position. He has followed those rules faithfully and had no interest in going beyond them.
Name one legal action he had any role in that was not taken up by another prosecutor - it is prosecutors who advance these actions, ask Sforza and Sollecito and Gumbel. It was a Florence prosecutor who got an appeal judge to throw out the hoax case against him.
Name one legal action he had any role in which a presiding judge did not okay substantively - he has been winning and winning, if you want to call it that.
Micheli’s judgement in favor of the interfering Narducci 22 was reversed by the Supreme Court. The dropping of an action the other day against some of them (including Spezi) was for technical reasons not for bad substance.
US prosecutors who study Mignini, like the brave and talented Wendy Murphy of Harvard and Boston University (who ties Ann Bremner up in knots on TV), find him one of the more admirable they have ever looked at.
Wendy Murphy told me that it is almost always the defense lawyers who get up to shenanigans, not prosecutors, and she has a great book out on on tricks played in the American system.
http://www.amazon.com/And-Justice-For-Some-Dangerous/dp/1481849670
Theres room for a book now on Italian tricks too and my betting is a very good one will be written amd the tricks in this case will figure prominently.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/08/14 at 09:14 PM | #
I hope there are screen shots of every single one of the malicious blog pages and entries as well as all the other examples of harassment from Knox and her followers.
Don’t forget the ripped-out October 2007 diary pages .....
Posted by thundering on 08/09/14 at 12:08 PM | #
Sure, documentation was not something American law enforcement forgot. The involvement of AMERICAN prosecutors against the careening Knox effort was clearly not foreseen.
Robert Barnett saw the UK and Italian editions of Knox’s book yanked; possibly he said then “They cant touch us” and allowed the US version to go ahead.
Actually they can be touched, by American prosecutors, under any of various laws, which the Republic of Italy can move to see enforced. Son of Sam anti-harrassment Aare the two mentioned in the post.
For example Robert Barnett and Ted Simon might both be the subjects of ethical complaints to their state bar associations as well. Hardly the legacy Bob Barnett wants.
David Marriott got a real fright when his firm appeared to be taking the wrong side in the twitter wars, and signs are he’s insisting to close the toxic Fischer down.
Its worth noting that despite the bluster of Steve Moore and John Doglas and this guy Clemenett the FBI is solidly in Italy’s court.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/09/14 at 04:52 PM | #
Did Edda Mellas even want this cruddy book? She knew she already had to lie once for Knox on the stand about a troubling phone call.
Conjecture and theory here, but Edda might have been privy to a private emotional breakdown by Amanda during a visit at Capanne, with Knox baring all and trusting or begging mom to stand by her. Amanda might have made promises then to her mother of amending her life when she got out, promises she might have failed to keep to Edda.
If the book plan was fathered by Curt and Marriott, maybe Edda was alarmed by it. Curt had not done Amanda much good in the past, nor much good to Edda, so she may have been suspicious of anything he fostered despite his seemingly good intentions.
Speculating further: could Edda by now have turned against Knox and be secretly wishing she would get sent down, sent back to the slammer?
Is Edda privately hoping her daughter is forced by higher authorities to re-enter the jail cell? Would there be any advantage to the parents in this?
Another theory: if mom has been betrayed since Knox returned to Seattle, or mom has discovered some written materials Knox brought back on the plane, or mom overturned a mattress to find a new secret journal, or on a visit to Knox’s apartment perhaps glanced at an email or draft of a short story, or saw drawings—well, mothers often have a sixth sense about their daughters.
If she confronted Knox maybe after allowing her a many months to settle back in Seattle after prison, but then felt Amanda was trying to ignore her after all that she and Chris had suffered for her, maybe hot words were exchanged.
Even without that kind of discord maybe over time Edda felt that once Amanda was “safe” in the States, she could no longer live without asking her daughter bluntly what the truth about Meredith really was.
If she got a hollow answer or one that intimated guilt then maybe Edda would have been the last person to want to see Knox fill another book or journal full of lies.
A book would mean Knox expected her mom to continue the charade of lies and the fake stance of declaring Knox an innocent victim of injustice, with head held high.
Maybe with recent revelations since 2011 back home which we have no inkling of, that just got too much for Edda to stomach despite having started off trying to cover for her baby as all moms would be tempted to do.
Maybe Edda’s priest has been told in confession one of Edda’s terrifying secrets about her daughter and has urged Edda to do the right thing and yet she can’t bear to or thinks it’s too late or doesn’t know what would make things right now.
She may be paralyzed fearing what Curt would do if his ex-wife went off-script and undermined all his and Marriott’s efforts to cover. She may justify anything Amanda did as the result of Curt’s negligence or as a grievous mistake caused by alcohol, and forgiven her.
Edda may believe that all their financial futures are riding on that snake-eyed hussy, to borrow a phrase.
Edda may have a hard time hiding her true opinion about sister’s guilt from Deanna. Could Edda keep such a big secret from Chris Mellas, her own husband?
So much tension in her life. She could resent that she was forced by a lying daughter to become part of the lying juggernaut.
Maybe she sees in Knox an ungrateful daughter who took Oma to the cleaners at one point financially and was willing like Raffaele seems to be, to sacrifice an entire family’s fortune for her personal gamble. Maybe the New York trip where they met Raffaele threw light on something. Maybe Edda knows a lot about James Terrano that she’s not telling.
Edda may be angry that Knox won’t return to church with her after Seattle Prep stood up for her.
She may have guilt that she reared and misjudged a seriously aggressive child, who might even use violence with her if she were to speak out truthfully.
Is Edda afraid of Amanda now?
Does Edda have a copy of the HarperCollins book on her coffee table or hidden in a back closet under blankets? Is she giving it to friends with a bow on it?
Posted by Hopeful on 08/09/14 at 11:03 PM | #
@hopeful
It is not easy being a mother, a role model and a responsible human, all rolled into one.
Deanna complained to a reporter (??) that someone wrote some offensive comments on her desk in the court. It was not corroborated by anyone present. Most likely a spontaneous lie. I think she was trying to give support to her sister by blaming Italians!
As an adult individual, AK must have been taught to learn basic responsibility. No excuses, please.
Young children learn little from the parents, they follow their peers in the schools. Of course most modern parents do not have enough time for the kids but then I am not in favour of excuses.
I think all the family knows what really happened on that fateful night and I do not believe that all of it has come from Amanda. There are many best truths in the armoury of Amanda.
I was not aware that Amanda declined to visit the church. It says a lot about her. Churches are imposing structures and the atmosphere inside is serene- much like a courtroom! Unless one is a professional, she will not be able to spin continuously. But she used to visit the chapel in Capanne, right?
The burden of the guilt will be suffocating. Sooner or later, she has to come clean.
Posted by chami on 08/10/14 at 10:01 AM | #
I find that picture of the “concert”/rave-up in the picture disturbing. Alright, Italian justice and prisons are relatively defendant-friendly etc but come on, what is the point of all this. To pretend for the sake of the prisoners that they aren’t being held as a result of a conviction, so they don’t have to reflect on anything that might be too serious? Poor dears.
And why is Knox trying to have the time of her life? If she’s innocent she should have been deeply worried about her perilous situation. But then Knox wasn’t worried it seems from the word go because, well, she just needed to get on with her life.
Psycho.
Posted by Odysseus on 08/10/14 at 03:01 PM | #
“...Picture of the “concertâ€/rave-up in the picture”
Sorry - not paying attention!
Posted by Odysseus on 08/10/14 at 03:10 PM | #
The picture of her “rocking-on” in prison is troubling on so many points especially after watching the video that was made. Knox herself was pointing to some serious issues in her “Psyche” What on earth are inmates doing attending a rock concert in prison?
Posted by Vinnie on 08/11/14 at 03:09 AM | #
Thanks, Pete.
One would think that someone of Barnett’s stature would do his homework. What an idiot.
I really do wonder whether Italy will actually go after these dreadful people. I hope they do but wonder whether they will stop once Knox is extradited?
Posted by thundering on 08/11/14 at 05:35 AM | #
Interesting post, Hopeful.
I am fascinated by the Knox-Mellas family dynamics now that St. Amanda is home. She won’t have been able to have hidden her true character from them for long and she has now been back three years!
Three years of injustice for Meredith.
Like you, I suspect that there may have been some kind of an attempt at a confrontation at some point.
The photos of Edda and Knox after Edda had finished on the stand were sooo telling. Of course the mother knows. Of course.
Unfortunately we will probably never know what is going on within the family.
Correct me if I am wrong but NONE of them appear to have spoken publicly since Knox lost her appeal in January.
Knox seems to have been going it alone since then and even before (think Simon Hattenstone interview and then her subsequent attendance at the conference for exonerated prisoners). Interesting that Hattenstone didn’t feature any of her family in his report - just MadPax ....... hmmmm .......
Posted by thundering on 08/11/14 at 05:47 AM | #
Bruce Fischer seems to be blissfully unaware that there is a Mutual Legal Assistance agreement in place between the G8 countries.
Because the ‘Son of Sam’ law was mentioned as the US equivalent of criminal asset laws in other countries, he believes this is the law that would apply to any proceeds of crime being seized from Amanda…..emm….NO
Italy can quite rightly and legally go after Amanda’s assets if she is ‘finally’ convicted.
Attached is a link which provides a brief overview of the Mutual Legal Assistance agreement, but I am sure there are many other routes to the same result.
Posted by Stan on 08/11/14 at 01:00 PM | #
Hi Stan
That document: perfect. Thank you. It absolutely shows how the G8 countries work together. It is put out by an arm of the United Nations created by EcoSoc (which once put me in the hot seat testifying against a critical report on development) which like us gives a lot of respect to the Italian system and the very low level of crime in Italy.
The document also fits very well with our extradition series, and the Italy/US documents those posts are based on. Great post at top there by lawyer James Raper.
http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/C753/
Ergon has shown in some well-researched posts that Fischer (not alone in this) has been beating up on Italy to try to jumpstart a career and make an income (aka bloodmoney).
I’ve seen him claim he is well out of reach and can say what he likes. He did so recently re bloodmoney.
His legal advice if any seems appalling. The only reason legal actions remain pending is because everyone is waiting for the Supreme Court to sign off. At which point this legal limbo will be replaced by some concrete action.
You wont find Fischer abusing the American justice system or judges or prosecutors or families of victims in similar terms, because he does not feel safe going there. Prosecutors abused in the terms he abuses Mignini would come down on him like a ton of bricks.
He looks to me like a one-man crime-wave, a Bonnie & Clyde mentality, though I think the Bonnie in this case steers well clear of him which only makes him more frantic.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/11/14 at 01:26 PM | #
Hi Pete,
I find this particular line from the document to be pretty clear:
The crime for which the property is to be restrained and ultimately forfeited must be one that would subject the property to forfeiture under U.S. law, had the underlying acts been committed in the United States.
Not much scope for wriggling there!!
Posted by Stan on 08/11/14 at 01:42 PM | #
Stan
We could use a main post on this to drive the point home. Among other things this is highly relevant to bringing some relief to Meredith’s family.
Financially they are decimated and could use the money (why they so rarely appeared in court in Perugia) but the Fischer group beats up on them in part in the hope that they wont go after the damages and bloodmoney - which they too are vulnerable on.
THE FAMILY DOESNT NEED TO. They really dont need to lift a finger, and that pressure on them is not only mean but both lawless and fruitless.
Italian and the American federal and numerous state bloodmoney laws and laws against harassment of victims clearly state that prosecutors must swing into action based on a complaint by any law-abiding national or offical body.
The Republic of Italy is expected to be one complainant, there will certainly be others, and the document shows that American law will fully accomodate them.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/11/14 at 02:03 PM | #
Apparently, Michelle Moore lost it yesterday on Twitter and made it clear that she no longer sees Sollecito as part of the Knox family. She also threatened him that they wouldn’t financially support him any longer, whatever that means!
Posted by MHILL4 on 08/11/14 at 06:46 PM | #
Michelle Moore never had it to begin with. However this is a good thing, since the family Sollecito will read stuff like this. Mind you, since they also know Michelle Moore I doubt if they will give any credence to it anyway.
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 08/12/14 at 03:49 AM | #
The FOA absolutely dont matter now. There is hinted to be real concern among the adults and maybe the first thoughts that sending AK back with a boatload of contrition might lead to her getting out somewhat younger. Time in Italian prisons is flexible. RS is angling for years off for himself, AK would be a fool not to do likewise.
Remember Mignini who is famously pro-victim in a system that often isnt has made clear in interviews from 2008-2014 that he thinks all three got in over their heads in a jealousy-based hazing of Meredith. But the request in face of AK brushing him off by incessant lying came to be 30 years or life in prison, hard-line, the sentence for pure evil.
Knox in her book describes how she had to be coached to brush him off and distrust him. In fact the 17 Dec 2007 interview happened because she did still trust him and both thought they might meet in the middle. Maybe nearly happened.
I think very fateful was that Curt & Edda were never allowed a private interview with AK after their arrival and were flying blind for months until it seemed to become overwhelmingly apparent. One could write a whole book on the path dependencies.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/12/14 at 04:00 AM | #
MHILL4, saw the disturbing Twitter by Michelle Moore. She hosted Raffaele in her home and has become overly invested emotionally in him. Enmeshed, using language of adoption and then abandonment of him for his betrayal. Cutting off money to him, incensed, enraged, now despising him but grilling him, all this because of her love of Miss Knox. She and her husband are broken-hearted to see Raf jump ship. Man, the power they’ve given to him. It’s all very weird and we don’t know the whole story.
Possibly she is using the two young people in this murder case as substitutes to work out some delicate issues with her own children, while simultaneously seeing the two suspects as reversed symbols of herself and her husband and their marriage. Their losses, Steve’s cancer, Knox’s train to nowhere, his reconnection with former FBI “experts” who validate him on the Knox issue, all very entangled in competitive angst.
She has put her faith on the line and now maybe is afraid to trust her instincts, or God, or her prayers. This is when real faith begins, when faith seems to fail. We should never have total faith in our intellect or instinct, but in the Creator of both and despite an irrational world where meaning seems to slip from our hands Christians continue to press on in the Holy Spirit the Comforter, the Paraclete, the one who comes alongside to help.
Letdowns such as we all face are sad but may be a catalyst for growth.
Maybe Raf’s current caving to pressure to separate his defense from Knox gives Michelle some irrational foreboding of what may happen to her marriage. She may unconsciously see herself as “Raf” while hubby may symbolize “Amanda”. That’s why Michelle has problems with Raf, he’s her doubt and her temptation to give up perhaps. This is pure speculation of course from an amateur.
Hopefully less serious than that, maybe the presentiment or threat emotionally that has caused her Twitter meltdown is simply a threat to the Moore family ego and reputation among their friends if their heroes prove to be common criminals with nobody very honor bound after all.
Others suggest the Moores have insider knowledge about Raf and more is to come. We don’t know what is happening behind the scenes of this FOA drama.
The Moore’s powerlessness to affect the verdict is the main source of their pain, as they pridefully believe they are wiser than seven Solomons and “know” who is innocent and guilty more than the judges and juries.
It is painful to see the pain of those who must relinquish illusions. I say that without sarcasm or pleasure, knowing my turn could be next.
This website has tried to point out the truth about Knox to people such as the Moores but it was not heeded. Some people have their own agenda while talking about the truth and honor.
Posted by Hopeful on 08/12/14 at 04:05 AM | #
Hi Hopeful
Nice segue there into the new post above which presumes the irrelevance of the FOA from now on in face of far greater forces.
On the Moores I must say that, as I follow ballet and theater, like you I have a lot of sympathy for people whose careers peak early.
The so-called Security Guard Syndrome among private security (which Moore was) and those who retire from law enforcement (which Moore did) can be very real. At an early age they move from high exposure and adrenaline rushes to a gray life where few people not in law enforcement feel fully at home with them.
I was hearing psychological commentary tonight on the suicide of poor Robin Willams and had to wonder whether his recent failed TV show at age (then) of 62 was a factor. The answer seemed to be no, his depression seems to have flowed from his lapse back into addiction around 2006 which took a mighty effort to conquer.
We are witnessing two gloabl trends (among too many others) which are not at all promising for a majority in any population.
One is the winner-take-all phenomenon, where a very few manage to corner all the new resources while the many slip slowly behind. The other is TV etc which increasingly rubs this growing divide in. The US is filling up with half-empty hotels now, because people are finding travel less afforable.
The only rule of thumb I can offer in present circumstances, while we try to move a better growth model into place (there is one), is to get an MBA early. Business principles are great tools and also empowering, and if anything helps to jumpstart a second career, those tools might.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/12/14 at 06:14 AM | #
Robin Williams sad death (by suicide, apparently) reminds us how depression is such a difficult problem in society. In his case, made worse by substance abuse and underlying mental health issues. He was a genius, and, like Philip Seymour Hoffman, will be sorely missed. RIP.
Posted by Ergon on 08/12/14 at 03:25 PM | #
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