2. The The Hachette Hoax: Gladwell “Strangers” Actually Pro-Mafia Trolls
Unreliable sources: Mark Olshaker, John Douglas, Jim Clemente
1. Gladwell’s Book Thesis (Really)
It’s hard not to laugh. Gladwell’s thesis is actually: Don’t be taken in.
Strangers are not always what they seem. A mind-fail which, for some reason, he thinks happens to law enforcement all the time.
In other words: with conspiracy theorists and Russian hackers and Nigerian princes and bumbling cops all rife in the world today, do look before you jump.
That, or suffer buyer’s remorse. Don’t jump the wrong way. Really. That is what he came down to Earth to share with us mortals.
2. Gladwell Falls Hard For Fake Knox
See Gladwell’s take on the case in this previous post.
The dangerous shoot-from-the-hip Gladwell doesn’t actually know Amanda Knox. She is a “stranger” in his definition.
He clearly has no idea what the erratic, abrasive, irresponsible Knox 1.0 of 2007-10 was really like, the one that without question led the attack.
She was not in Perugia for serious study, everyone knew this. She was not even enrolled in a course that could earn degree credits at UW, her Seattle university.
Most of her days, she was doing drugs or hanging out with her dealer or hitting on customers in Patrick’s bar. Everybody started avoiding her.
Even Sollecito thought she was weird, after he got entangled in her Typhoid Mary wake. He blamed her from the time of his arrest, and still does.
Nevertheless, Gladwell burbled on about her sheer amazingness thus:
“an immature, sheltered, middle-class girl from Seattle” who of course would never be “interested in engaging in murderous sex games with a troubled drifter.”
Hard to believe, but Gladwell’s best shot at framing this stranger, the real Knox, was wildly inaccurate.
Knox’s own parents and lawyers knew full well that she was a loose cannon. Everybody knew by early in 2008. Her own lawyers warned publicly that she was.
So they did all they could to adjust her default mode. She was taught to hate Dr Mignini, and try to act lovably daffy, and the PR became barbarically vicious.
But they were not exactly succesfull. Her trial was a disaster. Prosecution and experts did a brilliant job. Her condescending, callous stint on the stand shocked many. On some days, defense lawyers did not even turn up.
So after a unanimous and well-argued conviction in 2009, Knox was radically transformed. Now she was to be in “I’m the real victim” Knox 2.0 mode. No mention of Meredith’s name was to be made. Media was to be bribed or threatened. It was to be saturated with Knox happy-news. The Kerchers were to be stalked, and Italy and Italian justice were to be trashed, in the US and UK.
Gladwell jumped aggressively to the support of this fake Knox and her defamatory, lie-based vigilante campaign, with no sign he had taken his own advice to look first.
He’s thus fallen in with very unsavory “strangers”. Shades of the professional hoax exposure Benjamin Radford similarly duped a while back.
To summarise:
- Gladwell has chosen sides AGAINST the globally respected forces of Italian justice, which the FBI cooperates with a lot.
- Gladwell has chosen sides WITH the looniest of self-serving conspiracy theorists, with the anti-justice mafias cheering them on.
Nice doing. And it gets worse.
3. Bizarre Logic Of Gladwell’s Position
In Gladwell’s take, numerous highly-trained cops, and some of the world’s best crime-scene analysts well known in FBI circles, and a dozen renowned prosecutors, and the Massei and Nencini juries, and over thirty judges, all ran some kind of gigantic hoax.
It gets worse.
Knox’s high-powered defense did not say a word about this. They had a very easy route to complain but there was not even one complaint lodged. In fact, to the contrary, it was Knox they publicly complained about. One high-powered Rome lawyer walked right off the job.
It gets worse.
The US Embassy in Rome monitored the court and the prison at Capanne, and each time reported to Washington that all was fine. An Italian MP also monitored Knox and reported nothing wrong.
It gets worse.
In Gladwell’s take this is how all Italian media and 2/3 of the Italian population that was watching were taken in. They did not REALLY see three bent courts, or the wild battle between Sollecito and Knox that went on for years, or that mountain of evidence.
So why this huge globally unique hoax?
This is how Gladwell explains. It’s all because “they” read Knox wrong. He has zero evidence for it but that really is his claim. Those daffy Italians… “Gladwell’s here, Knox, I have them on the run.”
And it gets worse.
This was a hoax not only against Knox. It was also against the Italian, Sollecito, as well, who came from a well-connected and quite wealthy family who could pull strings (well, in theory; in practice they were forced to put their campaign on ice, and Sollecito’s sister got booted out of the Carabinieri for polluting the jury pool).
And even worse.
This hoax happened in a country which hosts 3 of the UN’s 10 apex crime institutes, which has a murder rate and prison incarceration rate only 1/7 that of the US, and which does not have even ONE Innocence Project case.
Parts 4 to 6 below summarize the hard facts in three key years: the real justice system, the real Knox, and the PR hoaxers behind one of the world’s greatest legal hoaxes.
They constitute a lot of depth. Read all of them when you have the time. For now a scan of all the the headlines will show how out to lunch Gladwell was in each area.
Unreliable sources: Doug Preston, Michael Heavey, Steve Moore
4. The Real Italian Justice System
Click for Post: The Almost Unique Carefulness Of Italy’s Justice System
Click for Post: Why Numerous American JUDGES Favor The Supremely Neutral Italian Kind Of System
Click for Post: Compared To Italy, Say, Precisely How Wicked Is The United States?
Click for Post: Italy’s Advanced, Effective, Humane Law & Order System Also Adopted By City Of New York
Click for Post: Italy’s Unpopular Politicians And Mafia Fellow Travelers Against Italy’s Popular Justice System
Click for Post: So Where Would YOU Want To Go On Trial? In Italy Or In The U.S.?
5. The Real Amanda Knox (Knox 1.0)
Click for Post: Questions For Knox: Why The Huge Lie About Your ZERO Academic Intentions In Europe?
Click for Post: Questions For Knox: Why So Many False Claims In Accounts Of Your Visit To The House?
Click for Post: Questions For Knox and Sollecito: Why Claim Rudy Guede Did It Alone When So Much Proof Against?
Click for Post: Questions For Knox: Why Does Book Smear Others On Drug Use, Severely Understate Your Own?
Click for Post: Master Manipulators, Masks, and Murder: Parallels Of The Amanda Knox And Scott Peterson Cases
Click for Post: Is The Raffaele Sollecito Defense Team About To Separate Him From A Radioactive Amanda Knox?
Click for Post: The Amanda Knox Book: Good Reporters Start To Surface Amanda Knox’s False Claims In Droves
Click for Post: Demonizations By Knox: Book Claims About Prison Traumas Contradicted By Many Solid Sources
Click for Post: Omitted - How Amanda Knox Falsely Accused Dr Mignini Of A Felony
Unreliable sources: Netflix’s Morse, Blackhurst, and McGinn
6. The Real Strangers Gladwell Should Have Mistrusted
These mafia poodles seem the most likely to have duped Gladwell. Some of them wrote the crackpot “Forgotten Killer” (amazingly still on sale), a xenophobic, racist book which framed Guede as the sole killer, trashed many reputable Italians, and misrepresented the case.
Click for Post: Exposing Peter Gill: An Opportunistic Expert Never At Trial and Never At Either Rome Police Lab
Click for Post: New Mignini Interview Makes Doug Preston Look Increasingly Incompetent And Vindictive
Click for Post: After 6 Years Michael Heavey Still Heedless Of Errors Pointed Out Again & Again & Again
Click for Post: Disarray And Decay In The Pro-Knox Parade: Bruce Fischer’s Epidemic Of Malicious Claims
Click for Post: How Greg Hampikian Abuses Two Positions of Trust In Serially Misrepresenting The Hard Evidence
Click for Post: How With Myriad False Claims John Douglas Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots
Click for Post: How With Myriad False Claims Steve Moore Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots
Click for Post: How With Myriad False Claims Nina Burleigh Pushes To Forefront Of Pro-Knox Crackpots
Click for Post: Netflix Hoax Producers Morse, Blackhurst, McGinn Commited Stalking Crimes
7. Galdwell’s Only Face-Saving Opportunity
Gladwell is clearly totally sold on the wrong paradigm. For now he is a dangerous inflammatory menace. He thoroughly deserves strong push-back, and needs to be in career-saving mode.
Best advice to Gladwell would be to bite the bullet, and belatedly learn from each of those posts. Then apologize and withdraw the misleading and insulting book, and try hard to get the Knox case right next time.
8. Our Next Post
Click for Post: Explaining To “No Physical Evidence” Gladwell Just How MUCH There Was: #1 Knife DNA
Posted by Our Main Posters on 09/14/19 at 02:03 PM in
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Speaking of psychology, maybe Meredith showed Knox a few of her martial arts skills innocently one day and Knox got crazy jealous. Maybe later Knox wanted to see if she could physically overpower Meredith in karate.
Knox might have taunted Sollecito, “Can you take her down?” Maybe this started the final fight. Knives were brought in for backup, because the fight was going against Knox when she got her nose smashed by Meredith’s fist. Then the rage boiled.
Maybe Knox was high on drugs and alcohol and began dancing around the kitchen, kickboxing to emulate Meredith’s moves, accidentally broke something in the cottage, Meredith came out of her room to protest. At the rebuke, the irritable inebriated Knox started swinging and kicking? Sollecito rushed to her aid. Rudy was called for? This is Speculation.
Also, more psychology for Mr. Gladwell to consider. Knox was perhaps in awe of her two native Italian roommates. Laura and Filomena were mature, attractive, had good jobs, no serious money worries compared to cash strapped Knox and no late hours exhausted at a bar. Laura was a guitar player and Knox likes music, Laura gave her lessons. She felt inferior to their lovely culture and backgrounds. Was overwhelmed at the role change.
She had no patience to be feeling inferior to Meredith, yet she had to. Meredith had so many virtues and privileges: the close relationship with a father that Knox didn’t have. Meredith had smooth skin, a slim good figure, great social skills, no need to work while enrolled in University, an Erasmus status, good grades. She’d been given dance lessons, karate classes, she had worked as a tour guide, saved her money, was loved by everyone and fluent and studious. She “ran rings around” Knox as we say.
She even had a boyfriend in Perugia, the handsome Silenzi (who later said he felt immediately that Knox killed Meredith). Knox was so jealous of Meredith’s big English family, brothers, loving sister, close-knit mother daughter relationship, and it was too much for Knox to bear. Suddenly the Queen Bee entitled one was reduced to being a virtual nobody, a not so special female in the group like she was in Seattle as oldest sister, first in all things and able to lie to her mother with easy acceptance. Her mother had brought her up in the Catholic church and Knox was rebelling full speed.
Also, Meredith was a Catholic not an atheist as Knox claims to be. Meredith had once volunteered with Caritas.
Maybe Knox was secretly feeling guilty about leaving the Church, which Meredith had not done. I don’t pretend to know anything major about Meredith’s religious convictions, but Knox had pressed hard to get into a Jesuit school then listed herself as atheist or IIRC Wiccan, the latter I have no proof of as her Myspace was erased when she did the PR smokescreen.
Maybe Knox couldn’t handle being the least of 4 amazing women in the house, Knox being almost Asperger’s in social skills. She took out her resentments on the one woman who was not Italian who had no support in the city, someone she might be able to permanently flee from, back to the States.
(In Knox’s view Meredith had no support in Perugia other than her warm English friends Sophie Purton and Robyn Butterworth, a few other student friends).
Not that she bragged, quite the opposite she was humble, but Meredith had it all and Knox felt inferior and tried to balance the equation with physical wrestling and posturing with knife-lover boyfriend. An “I’ll show you who’s best” moment that went too far? Maybe she tried a show of bravado and wildness that got out of hand? Maybe she wanted to get kicked out of University for Foreigners and get sent home, have the decision made for her since she was not thriving in Perugia at all. Maybe Raffaele pushed things too far and she panicked to shut Meredith up from calling police instead of calling the University board of trustees to report a minor fracas.
Posted by Hopeful on 09/14/19 at 04:07 PM | #
Hi Hopeful
Yes, your scenario brings out very well the paranoid, aggressive nature of Knox 1.0 which Gladwell is blind to, seeing only the engineered widows-weeds “I’m the real victim” version of Knox 2.0.
Gladwell would never have written that daft chapter if he had picked up the threads in 2007, 2008 or 2009, and especially understood her complete failure of the Interrogation Hoax on the stand at trial.
The Knox 2.0 mode got her through the 2011 Hellman appeal and duped many people, including all those listed at the end of the post who in turn duped Gladwell (Heavey and Bremner and Ciolino and Doug Preston were the main ones duped earlier).
But she could not keep it up for the 2013 Nencini repeat appeal and so was a no-show, sending instead an email claiming TORTURE which was back in classic Knox 1.0 mode!!!
“Demonizations By Knox: Multiple Ways In Which Her Email To Judge Nencini Is Misleading”
http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php/tjmk/comments/multiple_ways_in_which_amanda_knoxs_email
We saw a strong Knox 1.0 reemergence during Knox’s stint in Modena.
I don’t think Knox 1.0 appreciates Knox 2.0 very much. Classic zombie In your terms, surely feels inferior. Perhaps she should watch her back a bit.
BTW Talking of classic zombie, we take note of TWO new zombie Knox enablers in a very sort period: Gladwell, and Theo Von.
Mention of the mafia fingers in the pie seems the way to send them below ground again. Hardly any of those mentioned above seem to have any life in them.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/15/19 at 01:12 PM | #
Was Gladwell simply lazy? Was he pushed? Or did he jump?
The post suggests both. But some readers detect extreme venom in what he wrote. An anti-Italy bigot in waiting who could restrain it no more.
His sources were those guys above for sure and maybe several more. None of them have written much since the final Supreme Court.
The mafia angle was inescapable to Italians when Sollecito flew to meet “secretly” with Uncle Rocco right in the middle of the Nencini appeal. Six years ago.
That could explain their non-writing, plus John Douglas’s mental health. None of them seemed to have set new careers alight. TV doesnt want them any more.
Bruce Fischer didnt get paid for his thousands of hours, the Knox-Mellases showed him the door, and almost all his rancid pages have disappeared.
Knox simply ignores them all.
And then suddenly out of the blue, years later, we get this furious crackpot, warning us not to trust strangers with Italians as Exhibit A - and doing the opposite himself.
All very odd.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/16/19 at 07:54 PM | #
The venom in his chapter does seem phrased to punish, to hurt.
It has the same spitting-furious tone as we got from the mafia poodles Fischer and Steve Moore and Doug Bremner.
This guy has really lost his cool!
The police investigation against her was revealed as shockingly inept….
The analysis of the DNA evidence supposedly linking her and Sollecito to the crime was completely botched….
Her prosecutor was wildly irresponsible, obsessed with fantasies about elaborate sex crimes….
I could give you a point-by-point analysis of what was wrong. It could easily be the length of this book.
One suggestion is to watch how Gladwell withdraws, and also when. If he withdraws and apologizes really well, and soon, that could show he does have some class.
But we might have to keep on his tail for a while. Generally, we win.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/16/19 at 10:36 PM | #
There are some YouTubes of recent Gladwell presentations on the book. Few have many views. Except on one, briefly, Knox is avoided.
Those few YouTubes that have comments show mixed views, with maybe half under the latest (the Kimmel talk show) not so convinced or implying the thesis is trite or obvious, or simply wrong and unhealthy. Example:
How many black friends does he have? His premise borders on a level of white culture which is wrong by the way, considering how more often than not white jury bond instantly to exonerate a white guy over a clear cut crime committed against a person of color. He lives in a white bubble.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/17/19 at 07:07 AM | #
“Scientist creates a ‘ground-breaking’ technique to crack cold cases by extracting DNA from hair without a root at crime scenes”—Daily Mail headline September 17, 2019. Wasn’t there a lost bleached hair in Meredith’s hand? The article states:
Ed Green, a paleogeneticist at University of California Santa Cruz, is an expert at finding DNA where others cannot. His skills are now being used by law enforcement.
Getting nuclear DNA from hair without a root used to be impossible. Green has cracked it. “Justin Loe, chief exec of Full Genome, a genetics service company, told the “New York Times” that this is a bonafide game-changer.”
Dr. Green is somewhat of a trailblazer in DNA analysis. In 2005 he managed to obtain DNA from fossilized bones.
In 2010 he completed his work on neanderthals. I think he built up an entire genome of some ancient neantherthal by some new way of getting its DNA from a fossil.
No telling what Ed Green could find on Sollecito’s kitchen knife.
Posted by Hopeful on 09/17/19 at 09:00 AM | #
Wow. Astonishing news on DNA in hair samples. Great catch Hopeful.
This story is going viral because it could advance thousands of cases.
Yes, the hair in the case is probably gone for good. But the wooden knife handle was never cracked open by the Carabinieri labs during the Nencini appeal.
Evidence (or lack of evidence) of Meredith’s or Knox’s DNA in there could have gone either way.
But destroying the knife was totally unnecessary, the Knox & Meredith DNA evidence they did prove was overwhelmingly powerful.
Gladwell has sided with such posturing incompetents (the quack Gill included). Every one of them “missed” what is in this exciting report.
http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php/tjmk/comments/appeal_session_3_the_carabinieri_labs_report
It’s about the last day DNA evidence was ever presented, by the elite Carabinieri labs (one of the best in Europe) at the Nencini appeal in Florence 2013-14.
You can see how the fine Carabinieri lab experts hit it out of the ballpark.
And how Hellman’s “independent” consultants (actually illegal under Italian law at appeal level) and Knox lawyer Dalla Vedova receive the ultimate humiliations.
Well, until the next time, when Hellman “independent” consultant Vecchiotti’s lab was forcibly closed down.
Dead bodies were lying around everywhere - KrissyG’s post actually has photos of them.
Gladwell sure has sided with posturing incompetents.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/17/19 at 01:05 PM | #
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