Meredith’s Perugia #41: Best Walking-Tour Video We’ve Seen Tho Caution! Length Two Hours

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Perugia University is big in the Italian news. We’ll have a post on this soon.

Long seen in Italy as an Oxford or Cambridge, Princeton or Cornell, for its exceptional advanced research, it’s just been named the #1 Italian university, with the various criteria spelled out.

Remember, Knox was never enrolled there. She said in her book that she did not even know it exists. She was at a mere language school, which anyone can enroll in, anyone at all.

Druggies looking for some legitimacy come to mind.

One shouldn’t sniff at people attending language school if that’s what they want to do. Given that Knox was studying German, Italian and Creative Writing at the University of Washington, a year at a language school in Italy would be a sensible and rewarding project, if taken seriously. I suspect Knox started out with every intention of taking it seriously, in order to impress her parents, but then soon got diverted by all the distractions on offer, boys, drugs, nightclubs etc.

The usual trope from the FAO was that she was an innocent abroad who could barely speak Italian.

I think part of the reason why her parents were not adverse to her going to Italy alone was that she really did have an aptitude for languages, and wanted to see her develop and shine at this. She and her mother probably occasionally spoke German at home together, she lived with her uncle and aunt in Germany for several weeks, and she had been to Japan on a student exchange. In Perugia she insisted on talking in Italian to Meredith’s english girlfriends and enjoyed picking up Italian boyfriends.

On the day of the discovery of the murder she was photographed conversing with a bunch of detectives outside the cottage, no doubt giving her explanation as to why she was there and what she had seen etc. Some of the detectives look puzzled, but by her Italian or by the explanation?

This not to say she was fluent but she already had some measure of confidence with the language. Probably she struggled with the range of vocabulary required to be reasonably fluent but, with prompting, one can talk around words one does not know.

I suspect it was one area, probably the only one, where she outshone Meredith, and was keen for this to be generally acknowledged.

I remember seeing a video of Knox talking Italian like trooper. This was back in Seattle after her acquittal. However one has to add that 4 years in an Italian jail would have made her fluent. But why, when she went back to Italy to address an Italian Innocence Project audience, did she speak in English? Because to do otherwise wouldn’t fit with her act of a wronged innocent who could barely speak Italian, and because that performance was all for americans back home, that’s why.

Furthermore, whenever it really mattered, she had an official interpreter with her during the case.

One lacuna is that it’s not known how her lawyers explained the evidence to her, particularly the technical stuff, which will have all been heard in Italian at the trial, but one assumes that they used an interpreter to give her the basics and had translations of the reports and witness statements done for her.

One also assumes that Knox has since read the translations of the Motivations done on boards such as this and perugiamurderfile.org. Or perhaps not.

Hi James

I do love your rabbit-hole of course, but you seem to miss the key point about Knox and the language school, mere or otherwise.

This is very crucial to understanding the growing financial pressures upon Knox which may have triggered her attack on Meredith.

The University for Foreigners is not the main Perugia University (tho administratively it is under the UP wing now) where Meredith but not Knox was also enrolled.

It could not offer Knox any course credits, and the University of Washington back in Seattle could not, even if asked, provide Knox with any funding.

Knox’s financial supply was dwindling, and extensive work by a main poster back on PMF dot Net suggested Knox was at most several months away from going broke.

In effect, from either asking her father for funding or being forced back to Seattle. 

Problemo. From her book this is how she had dishonestly sold the Perugia trip to her father.

“Dad,” I said, trying to sound businesslike, “I’d like to spend next year learning Italian in a city called Perugia. It’s about halfway between Florence and Rome, but better than either because I won’t be part of a herd of American students. It’s a quiet town, and I’ll be with serious scholars. I’ll be submerged in the culture. And all my credits will transfer to UW.”

So what was the “serious scholar” to say to him? “Jeez dad, who knew, cocaine is really pricey over here” ??!

How was she to explain that her entire classroom time and homework would be maybe 10 hours a week?

How was she to explain that there would be zero course credits toward her UW degree?

How was she to explain that she had foregone the easy-to-obtain exchange-student funding (which for her would entail local supervision by UW staff, always watchful for drug usage) which ALL normal exchange students arrive with?

Representing many thousands of dollars foregone?  I believe the EC Erasmus fund was paying Meredith around E24,000 for comparison.

Knox NEEDED that bar job with Patrick, which on the night she may have thought Meredith was stealing away from her.

I enjoyed both the above comments tonight. @James Raper, about Knox being extremely fluent in Italian after her incarceration, when you heard her speaking fluent Italian in Seattle. Also it’s an interesting question of how her Italian lawyers relayed to her the technical aspects of her case, about blood spots and DNA against her. I imagine Curt and Edda communicated with her lawyers the most, since she was in prison. That’s why they stayed so long in Italy and constantly kept family members there despite the flights and expense. They probably helped monitor her legal defense. Would that have been allowed, as their client’s parents?

The scene of Knox trying to talk to the Italian detectives outside the cottage after the murder, one does wonder how well she spoke Italian to them at that time. She seems in photo to be gesticulating with her hands, perhaps in some way trying to simulate Italian hand gestures?

Maybe the police who have excellent instincts, sensed she was not showing the fear or sorrow of the Italian roommates. Maybe they had a sixth sense that Knox was putting on a big act of sincerity and concern and helpfulness but that really she was trying to play them?

One can only speculate.

She may have been butchering the Italian language as she spoke to detectives at the cottage but knowingly did so in an attempt to appear naive, and to make her foreignness stand out in her favor as the bewildered American who had no idea what was going on.

Her broken Italian might have been an effort to come across as more youthful and confused than she really was?

Of course in some small way she was trying to persuade the detectives of her alibi in simple terms, “I wasn’t here last night. I know nothing. Ask my boyfriend.”

I also agree with you that on arriving in Perugia Knox probably did mean to take her studies seriously but was quickly distracted and drugs didn’t help her willpower.

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@Peter Quennell, I agree about Knox’s money worries. I can totally understand her incipient panic over money, especially after her facile lies to Dad about how the money would earn her college credits that would transfer to her UW degree. As an accountant Curt Knox was concerned about the money.

In contrast the financially comfortable Erasmus scholar Miss Meredith was a student to be envied, not only for her brains but the money she had received to study. This was a point of silent envy with Knox IMHO.

Knox DID need the bar job with Patrick.

It might have been very difficult for her to find any other type of work quickly, being a foreigner, and having few job skills other than the coffee bar work she’d done in Seattle. Money pressures are real.

In fact speaking of money woes I read this comment 30 minutes after having come home from a late night store to buy snacks. An almost hysterical blonde older woman in checkout line ahead of me was weeping and pouring her heart out to the cashier about her money woes, saying her adult children could not support themselves and that she was working to clean apartments but the university was not even sure it would have students to occupy the apartments this fall due to Covid 19 lockdown.

Her world was in jeopardy and the sweet lady at cash register seemed to know her. She was ministering to her, telling her to hang on and keep on working for the sake of her son. She held her hands and seemed to be praying with her. The man behind me was standing six feet apart for corona virus spacing so I left the line to allow the women privacy.

Money is a real issue for emotional stability.

Knox was just getting started in Italy, she’d only been there about a month when the fatal November 1st arrived. She didn’t want to go back to Seattle in disgrace over finances.

Look at how quickly she appealed to Laura and Filomena to try to get another place to live together after the murder. She wanted to continue school in Perugia despite her dwindling funds.

My guess is that she would have stayed in Italy till the last penny was spent. Then she would quickly hop on a plane and fly home (Mom and Dad surely would be good for a return air fare) leaving perhaps unpaid debts behind her that she figured nobody could ever sue her for or hassle her for. Such distant debts would be easily hidden from Mom and Dad with a few easy lies.

She might have even hoped to get some money out of Sollecito had she stayed in Italy and never been arrested as she assumed would be the case. She might have hoped to stay at his apartment if all else failed.

Plus a pretense of badly wanting to stay in Italy made her seem to have nothing to flee from involving the crime, a show of innocence or boldness?

A few interesting factoids relevant to the above.

1. Knox had no Italian work permit (gee, thanks Knox parents for your great due diligence) and was working illegally at Patrick’s bar and he risked being hassled by the police. Meredith didnt need one and she was Patrick’s safer bet. Had Knox lost that bar job, for this reason it was unlikely she could have found any other.

2. In her book she explained her very light study load and loss of a complete academic year by saying she didnt know the main university existed or she would have enrolled.   

3. Sollecito told us in his book that he was angry at Knox for talking with her supposed-ex boyfriend on Skype - also he turned up at trial, presumably adding to RS’s well-documented ticked-offishness with Knox (explain that, Knox apologists). RS was stunned to find out that Knox had bought a ticket to China, seemingly one-way, which would not have come cheap, to be with the ex-boyfriend there, implying a single term (semester) in Perugia would have been it. 

4. Knox’s natural excellence at languages was maybe a myth. Italian speakers on the two PMF boards groaned at her accent and grammar at trial, after she had impatiently pushed her interpreter aside. Meredith was said to have hit the ground running with fine pronunciation and grammar - and Italianate looks.

5. It was those bemused cops around Knox at the house on the afternoon after who were said to have remarked later on her cat-pee smell, an indicator of cocaine use, and no recent shower as so-claimed.

6. Curt and Edda paid Knox’s legal bills and kept a tight reign on the defense. The lawyers were said to have wanted to accept Dr Mignini’s equivalent of a plea-bargain (that it was a hazing gone wrong) but no, it was to be pedal to the floor and scorched-earth PR. In December 2007 one Rome lawyer walked off the team, seemingly rightly seeing a guilty verdict down the road.

7. In early 2008 Knox’s remaining lawyers asked publicly that she be stopped from telling so many lies. In her book Knox describes how they taught her to be extremly distrustful of Dr Mignini. She had seemed to have a “trust thing” for him and he thinks she came pretty close to confess.

8. Knox and RS tried a drug-angle excuse in 2008 and 2009, claiming they were too drugged to remember this and that. But this was not allowed by the parents to become a mainstay of the defense. The prosecution knew (they put Knox’s drug dealer away directly because of her) but didnt want a mitigated case.

9. Skunk marijuana and cocaine have caused psychoses leading to “unintended” deaths. Knox may have been on an extended high right through to the night of her arrest; her entire behavior that night such as the incessant hitting on the head and inability to shut up which extended into the Miranda session with Dr Mignini seem evidence of that.

10. Sollecito lawyer Maori made sarcastic comments about Knox’s cocaine use at trial. The only time the Sollecito defense team was ever kind to Knox at trial (explain that, Knox apologists) was when Bongiorno compared her to Jessica Rabbit - well, sorta kind. Ditsy and spaced-out. (Sorry, Ms Rabbit, no offense.)

August 6, 2020 Daily Mail online: “Amy Schumer, Tori Amos and Amanda Knox mourn the gut-wrenching loss of Audrie and Daisy star Daisy Coleman” Story says the Netflix star Cat Daisy Coleman age 23 committed suicide Tuesday after 4 previous attempts. You can see Daisy’s work @youngcattatattoos. She tattooed a semicolon onto Knox’s finger. Semicolon tattoo is symbol for a suicide survivor.

The story says, “Public shaming activist Amanda Knox tweeted a snap of the semicolon tattoo that Daisy inked onto Knox in 2018. Knox wrote that she was “devastated” by Daisy’s suicide

Knox:  “She was so kind and thoughtful even as the mob sought to erase her after her assault. She imprinted herself on me, literally (the tattoo). Daisy was brave, she was a fighter for others more than for herself. I hope she’s remembered for all the good she did and not the bad done to her.”

Story continues, “Knox the 33-year-old acquitted murder suspect had interviewed Daisy the tattoo artist for an episode of her Facebook Watch series, The Scarlet Letter Reports.

Daisy Coleman was one of the founders of @safe__bae

Daisy was 14 when she was raped by Matthew B at a Missouri house party in the presence of his pals Jordan Zech, Nick Groumoutis and Cole Forney.

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comment:
Knox looks sooooo sad at this woman’s fate, see her sad eyes in the photo as she shows off her finger tattoo, but she didn’t care what happened to Meredith her own roommate.

This Daisy Coleman lost her father to a car crash, her brother recently to a car crash, and had tried to kill herself numerous times. She had a tattoo of Satan on her own neck.

I don’t know why Knox wants a “suicide survivor” emblem on her hand. She may have contemplated suicide in Capanne (she said she did) but she is not a suicide survivor. I guess for Knox it’s just one more way to lie.

The show called “Audrie and Daisy” is still streaming on Netflix.

Daisy sneaked out of her house to attend the wild party. I believe her own brother told her to steer clear of Matthew. She refused to listen. She was “plied with alcohol” (code for “she got herself drunk”). I don’t know what happened, the jock may have real guilt on himself for his behavior, his charges were dumbed down considerably, but she brought the catastrophe on herself. She chose suicide, another sin (a forgiveable one I think) but suicide is the sin of despair, of losing all faith in God. If she had intractable pain or old age decline or half decent reasons to off herself, that’s one thing. But she was young, attractive, was doing work to help other women. She had her health and her whole life ahead of her yet she chose to kill herself. I have little sympathy. And any bandwagon Knox jumps on is the wrong one and done to justify Knox’s shady past. Knox is for all shameful women who do wrong, get the consequences then play the victim.

A separate issue but to me Tattoos are hideous.

More importantly it is forbidden to mark one’s skin with them according to the Old Testament.

Where next:

Or to next entry Meredith’s Perugia #42: Beautiful Italy From Up Above By Drone

Or to previous entry Sad Passing Of Meredith’s Dad: His Passionate Thoughts On Mez And The Case