Tuesday, July 20, 2010

That Widely Watched LA7 TV Interview With Giuliano Mignini - Herewith A Full English Translation

Posted by ziaK

This is a translation of the YouTube video posted by my fellow poster True North two weeks ago.

Many readers asked for a translation of what Mr Mignini said in that interview, and True North, who has pretty good Italian but is not a professional translator, requested some help from the translation team. The sound of the video is not always crystal clear but this appears to accurately reflect what was said. 

Male interviewer: In the biological evidence, is there any one item which is the one which you consider, especially in terms of the trial, to have had the most value?

Giuliano Mignini: I think that, in terms of the trial, the most important were the knife, the bra hook and also the biological traces in the bathroom. From the point of view of the trial, the knife certainly links the two defendants and the victim. Therefore it was (interrupted).

Andrea Vogt: There was low copy number, and that’s not normal, is it, to use DNA when there’s low copy number?

Giuliano Mignini: However, I hold that those traces were nonetheless indisputable traces. That is, there was not an absolute huge amount, in terms that are perhaps more understandable [ndt: to an Italian speaker, “low copy number” is not necessaryily understandable, because it is an English term]. The trace might be really high, with a high quantity, or it may be very low, but however the trace may be, it was never reasonably explained in any other way. That knife was never touched by the victim. She was never (inaudible: possibly “at Raffaele’s”] during the period that the two young folk, the two defendants, knew each other. It was a very short period: we think the relationship was (inaudible) or a week.

Male interviewer: Certainly. However, (inaudible) limited, either a contamination in the place of the crime or a contamination in the laboratory? This is not meant as a criticism of the work, however it is a danger that we technicians have which we must confront.

Giuliano Mignini: Yes. Well, that point about the knife comes from the specific questions of Professor Finsi himself, and of the Superintendant (Parebiochi?), and it was clearly shown that that knife was collected with absolute”¦ that is, there was no possibility of exposure to contact [with the victim?]. Because it was found in Raffaele’s house and it was take with all precautions. This was shown in (inaudible). I was keen to show that (inaudible) that knife.

Andrea Vogt: Also the hook was very controversial because you found it 46 days after.

Giuliano Mignini: Yes, yes. I know. I understand. This, alas, can happen when there are places that are so full of objects, full of”¦ When one is doing an analysis of this type, it can happen that (inaudible) is moved. However, it remained within that room. And (Andrea Vogt interrupts). And then, if there is contamination, that means that Sollecito’s DNA was somewhere within that room. We’re still there (i.e. at the same conclusion). I think that all the evidence was limited [ndt: to the one place?], and the first findings were of an investigative nature. In particular, that includes the numerous contradictions made by Knox. Which were then repeated during the investigation, during the interrogation in jail, and in my opinion also during the questioning and counter-questioning in court.

Andrea Vogt: I want to talk a bit about the motive.

Giuliano Mignini: As a first impression of the [inaudible: crime?] it was clearly, it appeared clearly to be a crime of a sexual nature. It was extremely clear. A young woman, killed in that way, and almost completely stripped/naked.

Male interviewer: Excuse me, but on the contrary, at times I have heard attributed (inaudible) a different reason, a fight which ended badly, and then instead a transformation of the crime to put forward the idea that it was a sexual murder. Also because, in fact, the position of Rudy, who was however found guilty, also from the beginning changed a bit. There’s his responsibility.

Giuliano Mignini: Also Rudy gave indications which then changed a bit. Rudi too, for example, said that there was an appointment with Meredith. Then in later interrogations he said that Meredith had asked for him to be there, and (Male interviewer interrupts: The reconstruction [by Nabil?]: what could have happened?). Yes, according to me, there was a situation, a progressive situation of disagreement between the two girls. That seems undeniable to me.

Posted by ziaK on 07/20/10 at 03:56 PM in Various hypotheses,  Prosecution views,  The officially involved,  The prosecutors,  Trials 2008 & 2009,  Massei prosecution,  Hoaxes against Italy,  9 Mignini v Knox hoax,  12 Rabid media hoax

Comments

“A progressive situation of disagreement between the two girls.”  With very good reason, Mr Mignini all along has been very convinced of that.

In Perugia, where many things are heard which don’t end up as testimony in the court, there seems a widespread belief in the fast disappearance of any good chemistry between them. Tension in the flat was growing big. 

Knox was increasingly isolating herself in Perugia and if Patrick wanted her out of the bar it was for that reason as much as any other. That would have cost her her main social circle, such as it was, as well as her only income.

With zero checks and balances built into Knox’s arrangements for her stay in Perugia, her teaming up with an apparent sadistic loner on hard drugs (at minimum cocaine) like Sollecito was like throwing a stick of dynamite onto a fire.

Mignini omits to mention that the main cause of the delay in collecting the bra clasp was to do with getting the defense nominee to come along. There was testimony from the Rome team on that.

And as poster Pat AZ pointed out in March low copy number DNA testing has been okayed by a US Supreme Court. The defense experts managed to not be at that one-time-only testing of the DNA on the knife.

How surprising.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/20/10 at 04:39 PM | #

wonderful! thank you.

Posted by mojo on 07/20/10 at 11:39 PM | #

Those Knox groupies who disparage and attack Mr Mignini will have a lot to answer for, in another place, at another time.

He seems like a truly decent, kind and caring man. So he believes in the Devil. So do many, many Christians in Italy and all over the world. Nothing strange or curious about believing in the Devil, and believing that Satan is a genuine entity who exists and works among us.

I am not saying I agree with it, necessarily. I am saying it is a legitimate belief and one that is shared by numerous people. Even if you don’t believe in the devil, it’s hard to deny the existence of evil, as an absolute reality. What happened to Meredith was evil.

Whether you believe that the killers were guided by Satan is a matter of belief, but there are many thousands of intelligent, thoughtful people worldwide who would think so. If Mignini is among them, he is in very good company.

I admire his courage, and his affection and respect for Meredith, and I wish him the very best.  Sorry, I needed to get that off my chest. Knox groupies irk the heck out of me sometimes!

Posted by Janus on 07/20/10 at 11:59 PM | #

Right on, Janus. Also, if Knox herself was educated at a Jesuit institution, I am sure the majority of her relatives and friends, are catholics. Don´t all Christians believe in the devil?

The last thing I would expect from Americans, is to be critical of a Christian. Christianity has penetrated every aspect of American society, including government and the judicial branch of it. Think judge Heavey…

Posted by saskia on 07/21/10 at 02:29 AM | #

Hi Janus and Saskia.

You seem to have it pretty well right. Mr Mignini is a fervent fighter for justice for victims and their families, one of Italy’s best, but absolutely nothing beyond that. Meredith’s family and friends appear to very much endorse him.

You can read plenty about Mignini, including in his own words, in our past posts here and here, and in this category here.

And with Kermit’s usual brilliance, in a set of Powerpoints here, in which a lot of Kermit’s slides compare the mundane Mignini with a seemingly frenetic and devil-fixated Doug Preston.

There is no way that denting Mignini undermines the Knox verdict or helps the Knox appeal.

The Micheli and Massei courts arrived at very similar scenarios of Meredith’s murder, agreed to by 20 or so other judges, including some on the Italian Supreme Court. And already Mignini is sustaining a hard line, by launching his own appeal for a tougher sentence.

Not one piece of evidence has ever been shown to have been fabricated or misinterpreted. Not one. Not one witness has ever been seriously undermined, except Kokomani the Albanian by his own hand. Knox’s and Sollecito’s various weird and highly contradictory alibis have never been explained or made to fit together.

So why set about attacking Mignini in this rabid way? Here is one theory.

The Monster of Florence cabal (which a majority of journalists, book writers and ordinary citizens in Italy believe actually does exist) caused immense grief among victims’ families because of the intensely cruel mutilations of the bodies.

When Mignini became tangentially involved, late in the case, when a possible turncoat member of the cabal was found drowned by suicide or murder, he naturally sets about vigorously investigating the cabal.

And what happens? That absurdist pair of Don Quixotes, Doug Preston and Mario Spezi, come wittingly or unwittingly riding to the aid of the cabal, and reinvent a lot of his professional history to do all they can to bring Mignini down.

Now we have an adolescent pro-Knox gaggle, mostly but not entirely in Seattle, busily extending fictions about the evidence in the case and Mignini’s professional history, and presumably also making the cabal very happy.

Did big checks change hands for these favors?

Given the general money-grubbing that is endemic in the Amanda Knox bandwagon, it would not be entirely surprising. Amanda Knox, naive kid, seems to be a lot of peoples’ tickets now to fame and fortune.

She should throw them all to the wolves and start to deal. Tell us all what really what happened, and do her best to show major empathy for Meredith’s family and friends (which she never has) and she might actually get some time off.

Mignini is doing what he can right now, via his appeal, to achieve precisely this outcome. Quite a game of chess. At which the Knox groupies have not yet won even one pawn.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/21/10 at 03:43 AM | #

Thanks for posting this translation.

Neither Knox nor Sollecito have provided any sort of coherent alibi or explanation of what they did on the night of the murder. They can’t even agree on a story.

Knox had so much time to get her story straight before she spoke in court, but she didn’t bother to do that.

Has she attempted to defend herself by examining the evidence and providing an alternative explanation?

Why is that?

Instead, her family and supporters concentrate on sliming the prosecutors, the police,  the justice system of Italy, and most disgustingly of all, the victim.

Why? Because that’s all they have and they are prepared to sink that low. (Does it surprise you that Knox pointed a finger at Patrick Lumumba?)

They can’t provide an alternative explanation because there isn’t one.

Posted by lilly on 07/21/10 at 02:35 PM | #

Well said Lilly, you are spot on, “They can’t provide an alternative explanation because there isn’t one”. All there is left is lies, insults, mockery, slander…the list goes on…

I hope the Italian justice will prevail!

Posted by tempusfugit on 07/22/10 at 03:41 AM | #

7/23/10

Vogt asks Mignini about motive. He says, “clearly… a crime of a sexual nature.” Maybe this is too tame an explanation. Catnip on PMF suggests perhaps a zombie-vampire scenario or a Halloween-themed plot. (PMF see Catnip post July 22, 2010 4:49pm)

Although conjecture, it might be closer to the truth. Ultra brutal is the norm in our modern “Twilight” world. Youth are exposed to graphic violence. Just walk into a Hastings or other DVD/games store, your hair will stand on end. It’s all about death, no more happy Pac-Man. Meredith’s scream might have been elicited by some unspeakable act the trio intended to perform on her.

Catnip suggests perhaps it was a game where two zombies have to feed a tame pet vampire with real blood, or some jungle-sacrifice or a high like Operation Theatre Interactive level 1. Catnip makes clear that this is strictly conjecture, but it jolted me with a sense of ‘it’s plausible’, maybe everyone’s been thinking too mild.

In other words, maybe the Migninis of this world and decent people trying to analyze this strange kill can’t even envision the grossness or demonic baseness of what really happened. A freaky game far beyond what has been assumed would mesh with AK’s last words after trial, “you got it all wrong.”

Could this dreadful option account for the broken glass that Rudy got in his shoe? Were they trying to get MK’s blood in a glass?

Posted by Hopeful on 07/23/10 at 05:57 PM | #

Hi Hopeful. This sort of scenario has long been hinted at and never definitively ruled out although Mignini seemed to back down from wondering about it or at least talking about it because he had no firm evidence to prove it. He himself never claimed it was satanic.

At least three things have always puzzled us. Amanda’s various attempts to reach Meredith on the night of Halloween. The simultaneous turning off of the cellphones on the night of Meredith’s death. And AK’s obvious continued satisfaction in the days after.

The Albanian Kokomani who was discounted by the judges did claim to have encountered AK and RS lying on the road above the house wearing some sort of costumes. He said they rose up and threatened him, at which point he punched RS in the nose, broke his glasses, and drove a few feet along the road, where he then encountered Guede, who wanted to rent his car.

Miss Represented in her early posts on her site thought it possible or probable that at minimum sadistic ill-treatment of Meredith had been fantasized by both AK and RS in their different ways.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/23/10 at 06:32 PM | #

Just my opinion, but I have two thoughts about the motive regarding the sexual part of the crime:

1) that it was simply to humiliate Meredith, and for Knox to feel in control.
OR
2) that it was a ruse to make it appear that the fictitious burglar that supposedly broke in to Filomena’s room happened upon Meredith being home and took advantage by raping her and then murdering her to keep her from identifying the perpetrator.

Posted by Mo-in-Mass.,USA on 07/24/10 at 05:40 AM | #

Hi SomeAlibi,

Thank you writing for such a brilliant piece that helps newcomers the case to understand just how much evidence there is against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

Nobody has been able to provide a plausible innocent explanation for Knox’s and Sollecito’s lies before and after 5 November 2007.

Just for the record, Amanda Knox was questioned from 11.00pm to 1.45am on 5 November 2007. She wasn’t questioned again that night. There was no all-night interrogation. Her witness statement at 5.45am specifies that she is making the statement spontaneously:

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

It should also be pointed out that the defence experts were unable to prove there had been any contamination at the trial. Alberto Intini, head of the Italian police forensic science unit, pointed out that unless contamination has been proved, it does not exist.”

One TV critic has written an article saying the film made Knox look guilty:

http://watching-tv.ew.com/2011/02/21/amanda-knox-hayden-panettiere-lifetime/

There were countless of tweets from people saying the same thing. I’m not surprised Amanda Knox’s family have released a press statement condemning the film. They have been allowed to suppress the truth and lie to the public for far too long.

Posted by The Machine on 02/22/11 at 02:40 PM | #
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