Friday, May 03, 2013
The Amanda Knox Book: Good Reporters Start To Surface Amanda Knox’s False Claims In Droves
Posted by Our Main Posters
[American Ambassador to Italy David Thorne whose reports contradict Knox’s prison claims]
Did ANYBODY think to check Knox’s book for criminal defamations and false claims? Take this glaring “mistake” from page 248.
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.
Another false claim: Knox’s claim that Prosecutor Mignini invented the notion of a satanic cult to explain the Monster of Florence murders, also made by Sollecito, is totally untrue.
Dozens of others had suspected and talked about a satanic cult for YEARS before he investigated one loose end in the case. And both that theory and that investigation are back on track - at the recent order of the Supreme Court.
Another false claim: Knox devotes pages to trying to make herself look good on the witness stand at the trial. But Italians who could follow in Italian in real-time ended up suspecting and despising her performance up there. Read what they saw here and here.
Inspired by such conspicuous false claims as these, various reporters have begun to dig. We posted on Knox’s false claims about her prison time and the many disproofs. Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt uncovers some more.
Knox’s memoir is a vivid personal account of the difficulties of prison life in Italy, complete with claims about inappropriate behaviour by staff. But Knox herself once painted a different picture.
Other documents - including writings Knox penned in her own hand while incarcerated, case files and state department records - conjure up quite another impression of a very different Knox, one who was more sanguine about her experience.
On the attitudes of the prison staff
“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.
On the positive HIV result she was given
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 lawyers who leaked the HIV report and list of sex partners. Not the doctor or anyone else. No malice was intended, that is clear, despite her claims.
On her framing of her kindly employer Lumumba
[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 gives 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.”
On her medical examination after arrest
“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.”
On her persona and mood swings in prison
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.
And on what US officlals and her own lawyers perceived
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.
Half a dozen obvious false claims and defamations here. We estimate we will uncover well over one hundred more.
Posted by Our Main Posters on 05/03/13 at 12:59 AM in Defendants in court, Amanda Knox, News media & movies, Excellent reporting, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Marriott PR, 16 Interrogation hoax, 21 Nasty prison hoax, Amanda Knox #2
Comments
Great post!
I was wondering if someone could point me in the direction of the video of the testimony where Knox says “In the end I only knew her for a month and really, I’m just trying to get on with my life” or something similar. Thanks in advance!
Posted by devorah on 05/03/13 at 08:00 AM | #
Include the one where, in the book, she names Rita Ficarra as the police officer who hit her.
When asked to name the police officer she said hit her on the back of her head several times at her original trial in 2009 she maintained that she did not know who it was.
Rita Ficarra was one of the arresting officers so Knox certainly knew who she was!
Posted by thundering on 05/03/13 at 09:55 AM | #
From NATO Allied Joint Forces Command Naples website,
” Ambassador Thorne was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to Italy and the Republic of San Marino on August 17, 2009. He grew up in Rome and speaks fluent Italian nurturing a deep appreciation and knowledge of Italy’s culture, politics and society.”
Posted by True North on 05/03/13 at 03:12 PM | #
Latest from Nina Burleigh:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/02/opinion/burleigh-amanda-knox/index.html
“Knox doesn’t know what happened that night and is unable to provide us with a single new clue that could unravel the Gordian knot of police error, lies, national pride and xenophobic prejudice that turned a simple crime into an international mystery.
Since she cannot offer that, her debut provides one thing only: performance.”
“She must overcome the challenge that confronts anyone convicted of a gruesome killing and then released without a substitute defendant. Millions of people believe she got away with murder.”
Posted by Hungarian. on 05/03/13 at 05:50 PM | #
I would like to point out to Nina Burleigh that Croydon is in south London.
Not north London as per her article, also having lived there for a greater part of my younger life I would not describe it as provincial.
Posted by DF2K on 05/03/13 at 06:06 PM | #
Hu Hungarian
So, more bigotry and criminal defamation of the police from Nina Burleigh who is absolutely clueless and unqualified to comment on the case.
If Knox knew nothing, she wouldnt have made all these deliberate “mistakes” in the book. You can see how they are slanted. An innocent person would tell the truth ONCE and then stick with it - as all Knox’s Perugia acquaintances and flatmates did.
Burleigh is a paid shill for the PR. Does CN know that? Read all about her here.
http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/C557/
Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/03/13 at 06:12 PM | #
@devorah, I think she said it in her trial testimony. The videos are all available on youtube and searching for “Amanda Knox Trial Testimony” should bring them up. I am not sure which part it is exactly and I don’t have the patience to listen to it but I am fairly certain she said it in English so it should be in one of the English parts.
@thundering, I agree, even I was surprised. Not only this incident, she also now remembers the phone call she made to her mother (in the book). During the trials she was consistently adamant that she could not remember the call. Ok, granted, her mom might have told her about it now. But she also describes her own feelings, why she called, how she felt after the call etc. Strange that all these “memories” would suddenly surface now, after almost 5-6 years, in a setting where she cannot be challenged back on their absurdity.
Posted by Sara on 05/03/13 at 06:17 PM | #
@ Sara,
Yes. As I said in a previous post I do think that she really believes that she is safe in Seattle.
Whether she is or not, only time will tell.
Posted by thundering on 05/03/13 at 06:40 PM | #
@ thunderling…I do not think she feels safe at any time. I do not want anyone to take action against her, and I fear there is an unhinged soul thinking he/she is saving the world from Amanda.
I hope this is a paranoid fantasy on my part.
On the other hand, Raf is busy having a grand time and doesn’t seem bothered about anything. He is the one who needs a slap to the head.
Sending love Meredith.
Posted by Bettina on 05/03/13 at 09:46 PM | #
Hi Peter:
“Burleigh is a paid shill for the PR. Does CN know that? Read all about her here.”
I know this, that is why I was surprised to read her article and especially those lines I copied here on CNN. Is this a REAL change? Time will tell….
Posted by Hungarian. on 05/03/13 at 10:51 PM | #
Children incarcerated along with their mothers ? Hehehe…starting their criminal careers young !
Posted by aethelred23 on 05/04/13 at 12:05 AM | #
It’s all going to come full circle and she knows it. The screws are inexorably tightening and a re-appeal is the last thing Knox or Sollecito want.
We need only wait and see justice finally done.
Posted by James Higham on 05/04/13 at 12:21 AM | #
Hi. Just to clarify. I meant ‘safe’ from Italian justice.
Whether she is ‘safe’ from some kind of attack is another question which I hadn’t considered. Hmm.
Posted by thundering on 05/04/13 at 03:17 AM | #
Thank goodness for these ambassadors from Rome that saw for a fact Knox was not ill-treated in prison. Spogli, Dibble, David Thorne would surely have been appealed to had Knox been mistreated. Are these the people who brought her the romance novel to read about which she said, “So it has come to this,” but confessed to enjoying it.
Meanwhile, what books can Meredith read? She had her little John LeCarre novels and “Sea of Truth”, “Enduring Love”. She would have been a voracious reader given time. Here are 2 of 5 poems I wrote for her March 25, 2013 before hearing of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Knox-Sollecito’s acquittal. I prefer the happier poem.
MEREDITH
Meredith, the roadside is abandoned
That was once houses
And shining curtains,
People at tables.
Meredith,
Victory
Is not saying
It never happened
But in finding
A new home
Happier than the two
You left.
A rainbow washes
Over your soul
Day after day.
The bright sparks of power
To overcome distress
Light up
The way seas shimmer
In the noonday sun.
You are part of every light
That awakens the hopes
Of everyone.
+++++++++++++++++
MEREDITH
Slipped away into oblivion too soon,
Too strange.
All the rain walks you’ll never walk,
All the triumphs you will never take
On this side glory,
What a dreadful waste
Of your distinguished intellect
And caring, soulful heart,
Eyes rich with pathos,
Skin as smooth as cream.
Sweet Meredith, release us
With your shadowed hand,
Moving the stone from the tomb
Which is this sadder world
Without you in it.
Visit us in dreams of your intentions,
Sharing what was real about yourself.
Remember, strangers banded to your loss
With varied grief
That all your kind and loving chance
Was marred by strangers
Who loved to see their power
In your loss,
Then shuffled to the sullen land of lies
To hide their doom.
3/25/13
Posted by Hopeful on 05/04/13 at 03:57 AM | #
Hopeful, these are beautiful 😊. I hope the Kercher family sees all these wonderful tributes to Meredith.
Posted by Sara on 05/04/13 at 04:29 AM | #
I just saw the GMA interview - what a whitewash. I really struggle with the fact that this is a convicted felon they’re pandering to and supporting, and one accused of a HORRENDOUS murder. Why do they act as if they’re truly honoured that she’s there speaking with them? Why do they support her version of events? What has happened to TV journalism, and what has happened to ethics in the media in the US?
I still don’t understand how she was allowed to make money from her crime, I don’t think she would be allowed to in the UK. When she goes back to prison does she get to keep her earnings?
Posted by Spencer on 05/04/13 at 06:13 AM | #
Spencer, that’s what we all wonder at. At least, in one sense we wonder but the media circus explains a lot.
Posted by James Higham on 05/04/13 at 08:32 AM | #
Have to agree with Spencer, tried to watch the German interview with Markus Lanz on ZDF, but it was totally ridiculous, almost as if he was interviewing someone heroic. I read in an article that he was ordered to New York to conduct this farce, obviously to encourage book sales, but not one question of any significance was asked. Considering the fact that Markus Lanz comes from South Tirol, he could have at least gone into a little detail about the damning accusations of the Italian police. He started off by saying .. I have read the book ... it is a good book. It was down-hill from there.
Posted by shavournia on 05/04/13 at 10:21 AM | #
See a poor “report” courtesy Frank Bruni NY Times this Sunday (5/5/13) in which a columnist swaggers deplorably (& in truth immodestly) in Amanda’s behalf. Tabloid stuff on the Times editorial pages.
Posted by Ernest Werner on 05/05/13 at 04:07 PM | #
Thanks Ernest
We are about to open a new page on misled media as so much poor fact checking is spilling out.
This is the link to Frank Bruni’s piece and a comment I posted underneath.
Poor research by Frank Bruni. He appears to have done little or no research in Italy, the only place where this could matter. The media there was almost always far more restrained than anything one can see nightly on the crime shows on US cable TV. The headlines so widely quoted were in the UK. The Italian justice system is one of the most pro-defendant in the world despite Bruni’s slur, hence two automatic appeals and the right to speak without cross-examination in court, which Knox often used. Read the 400 plus page trial outcome (the Massei report) now in English. This is now back to being the state of play, as the first appeal was annulled for being bent, and you will see zero hint that any on the jury were sexist - toward Sollecito either, for that matter. The case was very strongly made.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/05/13 at 08:31 PM | #
The front page banner across this week’s “Seattle Weekly” reads “The Curse of Amanda Knox”.
This curse, apart from the obvious irritation of her notkeeping her face out of ours, would appear to be a small epidemic of illnesses, job losses and even death among some of her most vocal and zealous champions.
The main thrust of the article, by Mark Baumgarten, is the effect that learning of Knox’s arrest has had on people previously apathetic re random true crimes of this sort.
(For example, Bruce Fischer, “a Chicago-area family man who manages a pair of auto retail stores, who estimates he spent three to four hours each night on the case,” and seems to describe himself as “obsessed”.)
The only interviewee quoted by Baumgarten who does not come off sounding like a loser is our Skep, Peggy.
To be fair, Mr “Science Spheres” Waterbury, having suffered from a severe outbreak of shingles, has sworn off further involvement with the advocacy efforts of the FOA.
Never too late to wise up?
Posted by mimi on 05/07/13 at 12:02 AM | #
Hi Mimi;
I read this article last night in the Seattle Weekly and I was just thinking to post about it when you did, thank you.
For me, it is a positive sign that in Seattle someone is stating this curse of AK - at least in the title.
We talked about this here I think long time ago, that how many people had a change in their life for the worse after they joined to the FAK bandwagon so for me it is a positive reinforcement. Even though the article seems rather one sided and doesn’t give any explanation for the possible reason. And in the end it turns out that it is not even AK’s curse they all talk about but Mignini…
Posted by Hungarian. on 05/07/13 at 12:17 AM | #
Greetings..
Oh, this is just pathetic. Somebody get that girl a valium (or a spinello). Now would be a good time for those yoga stretches, eh?
The truth will set you free Amanda. No…come to think of it, prison is not free either.
RIP beautiful Meredith.
Posted by Bettina on 05/09/13 at 12:35 AM | #
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