How Meredith’s London Typically Celebrates Its New Year’s Eve

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Happy New Year 2012 to all TJMK readers and posters.  Thanks, TJMK Main Posters, for this lovely video clip from London - am now a little homesick 😉

A special prayer for Meredith has been created and read by the bishop of Perugia.  http://www.lanazione.it/umbria/cronaca/2011/12/31/645565-preghiera_speciale.shtml

Email alert in just as I’m headed out alerting us. Anyone with translation skills, might you oblige?

HNY everyone. Announcement of grounds for the Cassation appeal is just days away. I hope Mignini’s people have been reading the Hellman dismemberment oevr at the PMF forum. Pretty shocking.

I was just watching a documentary where it says Meredith was never raped and only skin cells were found inside Meredith. Is this true? If it does it somewhat vindicates his skype conversation. Guede has always puzzled me, why would he be going to the bathroom in a burglury. Could it be that maybe his story is true.

Peter,

There was a mention of it on PMF the other day:

Re: XXVII. MAIN DISCUSSION, OCTOBER 11 -
by DLW » Sat Dec 31, 2011 10:02 pm

Florence, December 31, 2011 -A special prayer for Meredith on New Years Eve from the Bishop of Perugia, Gualtiero Bassetti,: ‘‘for the student English, Meredith Kercher , who had chosen Perugia as a place of study, but which in this city ‘has found the end of his earthly existence.’’ ‘‘All the hype for the decision process - has again underlined the prelate - should not divert our hearts and our intentions to the poor girl and her family to go, once again, all of our more ‘strong , sincere and genuine sympathy.”

Happy New Year 2012 to everyone!

Thank you, Peter, for keeping us up to date about what is going on in Perugia. It is so much appreciated. Thanks to all the people who write and translate incessantly to bring justice to Meredith Kercher. Thank you!

Severino518 - this is definitely is my understanding of the case - Rudy’s DNA was found inside Meredith - but it was not semen but skin cells.

However - there are definition issues here - regarding sexual assault and actual rape - semantics I know as from a female perspective both equally intrusive, distasteful and just as appalling and soul-destroying. Also the autopsy was inconclusive although there was evidence of activity but it could not be confirmed either way.

Hope this answers your questions - but this is my understanding. Others on this site may be able to provide more info and validate further.

Well like you I have been puzzled by this case from day one. Here in the States there is so much misinformation, its frustrating. Middle America assumes that a middle class white girl is not capable of these things.

I come from NYC and for that reason alone, I have seem people like Amanda Knox a million times and I have a gut feeling I know what happened that nite because I have seen it a million times before in the streets of my city.

Amanda Knox is your typical selfish, arrogant white middle class American away from her parents. Like in NYC, its so easy to fall to the dark side. She gets to Perugia and quickly takes in the party scene, the sex, the drugs. She meets Raf, a lonely loser who is also into drugs. I assume they both were into the hard stuff, the kind of stuff that changes you.

On that nite they were high, looking for more drug money. Amanda knew Meredith had rent money and her and Raf went to the apartment to try to steal it. Meredith is there with Guede, she gets in a fight with Amanda and probably says I want you kicked out of this house. This sets Amanda off, not only is she a junkie in desperate need for her fix but all of her resentment of Meredith comes out. She goes after Meredith who kicks, Raf grabs her and Amanda who is in a psychotic state, grabs a knife and kills her. Guede comes out and they run away waiting for him to leave.

They go to the piazza and fight over what happens, then they realize they have to use Guede as a fall guy and go back and stage the break in and make it appear as a sex attack.

The thing that killed this case was the fact that prosecution didn’t assume the obvious motive, DRUGS. I have seen so many people do horrible things on drugs. Normal people robbed old ladies for a fix, people killed over a fix. The sex game gone wrong was complete rubbish and it killed this case.

Did police ever do a drug test on Amanda?

Hi Severino.

On the drugs, AK admitted to doing drugs right-off so as far as we know there were no drug tests. That has always left the question open as to WHAT drugs. We have often posted in comments that cocaine and skunk cannabis can cause psychotic episodes that have already led to some murders. Mignini seemed to have reason to think it was cocaine (among other evidence AK had a cocaine dealers # in her phone) and it looks like the police pulled their punches on the extent of drug evidence against AK here, maybe to protect sources.

There is major evidence both here and in Italy that the alcohol and drug consumption of American exchange students on average jumps, often quite sharply, when they move away from home or first-college constraints. There have been several murders and many other crimes in Italy among other places as a direct result and the US Rome Embassy is kept pretty busy. (Under State Department policy it does nothing except monitor if drugs were involved.)

On your scenario of the crime, perhaps most here would agree with most of it. Just not on Meredith ever inviting Guede in. No way. She barely knew him and had a headache and had homework to do that night. He almost certainly came in with AK and RS. Judge Micheli thought AK initiated the attack for the reasons you suggest, especially the theft of money, and he considered Guede an accidental passenger. Judge Massei softened and confused matters by trying to make Guede into the lead perp, maybe to give AK and RS some kind of a break. (Judge Hellman then grabbed that and ran with it to a crazy extent.) 

AK’s band of angry conspiracy theorists have a wrong fix on Mignini and the police and they have mangled just about every hard fact about her and the case. AK arrived in Perugia with a long history of abrasive narcissistic quirkiness and no friends there, no structure, and very little money, given what things cost in Perugia. She NEEDED that bar job. By the time she connected with RS she was headed for losing her bar job and had already lost every tentative friendship she ever made there. None of the other girls in the flat liked her, nor did any of Meredith’s English friends, nor did Patrick or any of the people who frequented his bar. The ONE friend she had at the end was RS and as you say he was distinctly weird. (She had few friends back in Seattle too; few spoke up for her and some quietly said yes the AK they knew could have done it.)

If you get the Discovery ID channel on your cable or FIOS TV please watch all the “Deadly Women” series they have been repeating. There are dozens of women no different from AK who did some really horrendous things. And take a look at this great post by the Machine:

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/more_on_motive_some_of_the_cases_of_nice_girls_who_killed_with_little_/

And on ypour point of New York seeing similar crimes all the time, well, we know of no-one in NYC law enforcement or the legal profession who thoroughly know the case and at the same time believe AK did not do it.  For all of them it is an open and shut case.

Peter. once again thank you for the excellent job you have done with this site and just cause.  This annoys both of us Peter but I want to ask you something about Sfarzo that I actually find helpful.

Sfarzo appears to have written that Conti may well have known Judge Zanetti socially and professionally over a period of time. Do you think this might be true?

Secondly, iIt strikes me as odd that (as the independent experts claim) Stefanoni missed out several other contributors on the clasp (8/9). This seems further unlikely given that other experts that were representing independent,knox,sollecito,Meredith also had a look at the data for the clasp and did not notice these other contributors.  On the other hand C&V’s claims are a bit too damning to possibly believe they were made up.

Either way it still doesn’t hide the fact that Sollecito was the major contributor to the clasp and contamination of that amount doesn’t make any sense. It does raise questions of the entire forensic team (if true).  Who is telling the truth regarding a small number of contributors or a large number of them??

Hi RB.

On your first point, we don’t regularly read “Frank Sfarzo” so the Perugian Blogger may or may not have said that, and anyway our concern isn’t so much over C&V’s social lives as over the highly questionable quality and depth of their work.

For example, in spite of the C&V conclusion in their report that contamination was a possibility for explaining Meredith’s profile on the blade of the Double DNA Knife, they had to admit in court that they hadn’t studied the calendar of the knife’s analysis, and that upon finding out in court (not through their own diligence) the actual laboratory processing cycles of the forensic evidence, they had to accept that Meredith’s DNA profile on the knife couldn’t have possibly resulted from contamination.

Also they failed to retest the knife as specifically instructed. These points are much more damning of their conclusions from a trial point of view than C&V’s social life.

On your second point, we haven’t seen the detailed results of whatever partial profiles C&V claim to have identified. They had to admit that Sollecito’s DNA was strongly there, and other than some vague contamination claims provided no answer as to why.

In this very complex, long, highly-publicised investigation and legal process, the quality of Stefanoni’s work has never ever been effectively challenged.

The use of irrelevant references like archaic US state police handbooks, the video splice job by C&V on evidence collection that was shown to the court, and the many slip-ups by these “independent” experts, amongst other issues with their testimony, totally blunts their criticism of Stefanoni’s professionalism, and in fact makes her shine even more.

Meanwhile, our main poster Fly By Night’s criticism of C&V still stands: http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/analysis_suggests_the_conti-vecchiotti_dna_review_is_weak_tendentious_/

Is it true that Guede performed the same exact type of Burglery at the Lawyers office or is that just FOA nonsense. What exactly was Guedes criminal history. I hear the bs that they had his prints from a criminal background but based on what I have read they would have had his prints since he is an immigrant.

Hi Severino,

Rudy Guede didn’t have a criminal record before he was convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering Meredith.

Severino518 - whilst it is true that RG did not have a criminal record, there were allegations made against him for presumed burglary at the trials based on circumstantial accounts and are in no way conclusive.

1. Found in a Milan Nursery - knife and loose change taken. Found with laptop from said Lawyer’s office which was confiscated along with RGs mobile phone by the police.
2. Defence found a witness who testified that he was a burglar who accosted him with a knife.
3. Break-in a lawyers - burglar used a rock and broke in through a windows.

So you see how the defense have always latched on to this. That said it cannot be said with any certainty that this set a trend of criminal behaviour and he certainly was certainly never arrested.

He was identified from his fingerprints from his identify card NOT from police records.

Yes - he was involved no question but my personal view is that he was on a definite downward spiral in the months before the murder, but I cannot see him doing this crime on his own or not on drugs [there were rumours that he was. He was a party boy who liked a good time and to be around other people]

Hope this helps.

Hi Machine and tfyfe_uk. Helpful comments. Fair take on Guede.

It was Judge Micheli who sentenced Guede to 30 years and even he was highly scathing of the Perugia man who claimed it might have been Guede he saw with a knife in his place. Micheli suggested the man was grandstanding or perjuring himself. (Shades of Alessi and Aviello.) Guede did not threaten the woman who found him spending the night in the pre-school in Milan.

Guede was no drifter, he had a place to live, and if he dealt drugs (as it is possible he may have been doing on the night) it had not been for long. He had not been back in Perugia very long from a restaurant job up north which collapsed. That was not very well paid but he had hoped to parlay that into something of a career. His early story was well told in Darkness Descending:

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/from_the_book_darkness_descending_the_insights_on_rudy_guede/

Peter - I agree - there are definite unsavory undercurrents to this case in my opinion.

Where next:

Or to next entry Meredith’s Perugia #31: Spectacular Dolomites World Heritage Playground In Northeast

Or to previous entry Meredith’s 26th Birthday: A Seasonal Ballet That We Know She Very Much Liked…