Perugia Park Name Dropped, But Most Of Seattle Seems Now To Accept Knox’s Guilt And Moves On

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Who is the baby killer referred to in the article?

It’s great that so many of the posts are on the side of Justice.

Hi Allison. The convicted babykiller is Mario Alessi.

Perugia deserves a nicer park than that, anyway.

Speaking of “regular fanatics” that Shay’s articles attract, CD-Host takes the cake. He now has art depicting the death of Marat in a bathtub, and a story about Marat being stabbed on his Church Discipline website. His point seems to be that his imagining about Marat’s murder is no proof of being at the event (like Amanda and her “visions” of Meredith’s murder is no confession.)

He also has a photo of an alien on a nearby post.

In the Marat death scene, his choice of bathtub (shower?), knife, and female murderess sounds like plagiarism of the Knox tableau.

One of his posts has a Jungian explanation that says Amanda basically represents something psychological, and that anti-Knox commenters are reacting out of some Shadow of the Ego or the Id or whatever, that Knox is not being viewed rationally as an individual.

CD-Host says outlandish things like Meredith’s background wasn’t investigated enough, maybe she wasn’t so straitlaced, implying she was involved in drug activities because she had reluctantly agreed to water Silenzi’s marijuana plants. He’s unbelievable.

Also he has now commented on the park renaming on Shay’s West Seattle Herald newspaper site.

A picture’s worth 1,000 words. CD-Host puts some questionable ones on his website of 4 years. He says he’s from the Northeast.

He does not curse or namecall much and sounds very intelligent and rational, but he is rudely dismissive and disrespectful of Meredith, determined to blast Mignini as a vengeful prosecutor (shades of CD-Host’s past trauma where he landed in the klink for 3 weeks and has never forgotten an incident where an inmate slashed at him with a cutting tool having mistaken a harmless remark) all of which has left CD-Host bitter it seems.

He doesn’t think Amanda is 100% innocent, either, but regrets she wasn’t allowed to plead to a lesser charge. All in all, I really can’t understand him at all. He is out in left field.

I found this old article by Andrea Vogt. It’s quite good, again there is a healthy number of posts from right-minded Americans.

The whole question of what would have happened to AK if she was in the States, one poster points out that it is a moot point [she isn’t in the States] and that discussions about it are a waste of time…

Rgds, Allison

The Independent On Sunday here in the UK has just gone with a big article by a David C Anderson, a retired english physician, endocrinologist and former professor of medicine and endocrinology in Manchester, now living in Umbria, entitled “Amanda Knox is a victim of Italian Pride”.

An endocrinologist, by the way, is someone who deals with glands and the treatment of hormone imbalances.

Anderson was involved - or should I say Not involved, as he should have been - in a famous miscarriage of justice concerning Stefan Ivan Kiszko who served 16 years in prison for the murder of an 11 year old girl, an offence he did not commit.

Kiszko was a patient of Anderson’s suffering from Klinefelter’s syndrome, a sex chromosome disorder. A vital piece of evidence, not disclosed by the prosecution, was that the killer masturbated over the victim - sperm that Kiszko could not have produced because of his condition.

Just over half this article is about Kiszko and how everyone in the judicial system mishandled disclosure and evidence and took ages to acknowledge their mistakes. All quite true but then this is followed by all the usual inevitable misconceived and ignorant jumps of illogicality to the case of Amanda Knox.

He looks like another one who has not read the Massei Report. Has his experience of living in Umbria made him hate italians?

About Amanda’s “confession”. I have never regarded her story about being in the kitchen when Patrick was attacking Meredith as being a confession anyway. It is not even a confession as to being there.

As the business about Patrick was untrue, her statement about being there in that context patently lacks any evidential weight. Neither does Massei make the mistake of giving it any weight.

What does carry weight is the fact that she knew the business about Patrick to be untrue and did not correct what she obviously knew to be a lie. This non action has significant evidential weight as to her character - to wit, she has to be treated with extreme caution as being a credible (honest) witness in her own right.

I saw Dr Anderson’s article in Sunday’s Independent (mentioned by James Raper, above): “Amanda Knox is a victim of Italian Pride.”

Astonishing that a former professor now living in Italy can have gone so in ignorance of the available evidence. He goes beyond the weak encouragements reported in the Seattle Times & Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Curatolo’s conviction.

Fortunately, trials are won or lost in the courtroom & the Italians won’t be bullied or insulted by reports in the English-language press.

I retain my firm belief that Amanda’s conviction cannot be overturned.

1/16/11

No doubt Dr. Anderson did the best he could to help Kiszko medically. Anderson told the police the truth about Kiszko’s condition due to Klinefelter’s.

I agree with Werner and Raper that the doctor has made too big a leap to assume misconduct by the police or prosecution in the Knox case. However, I have great respect for his medical profession; he saved lives, improved lives, and cannot be responsible for followup on each patient’s life outside his office. He couldn’t be a medical doctor and a private detective at the same time. He tried to help the man and the police, he told the truth.

Pulmonary, diabetes, language problems and complications enter into Klinefelter’s so Kiszko might have developed schizophrenia or died at a young age whether or not he had been falsely imprisoned. It’s a tragic case, but I hope Dr. Anderson will not let guilt rob him of happiness. It is possible to put too fine a point upon conscience.

Meanwhile, I think Knox is guilty.

I have been trying to find on this site some information on for how long AK was questioned by the police on the 5th Nov. Sadly I have not got it yet.

But I have seen SomeAlibi’s comment on The Independent’s website re Anderson. He says 2 and a half hours before AK came up with her false memory. I follow the arithmetic but even then the time must be even shorter.

RS was requested to attend the police station for some questions and AK voluntarily went along with him. They arrived together at 11pm having had pizza together. AK’s false memory bit was at just before 1.45am. So just over 2 and a half hours.

RS was questioned on arrival (because it was he the police wanted to talk to) and it was only when RS signally failed to give AK a cast iron alibi that the police switched their attention to AK, who was doing the usual arobics in the waiting room.

The foregoing must have taken up some time so the period of AK’s pre-suspect questioning has to be even shorter. A guess might be about half the time, say, 1 and 1/4 hours and again, at a guess, most of that time would be her going through her story from the very beginning. So hardly a strenuous questioning session until the police told her about RS not giving her an alibi. Then the false memory bit occurs and it is this which makes her formally a suspect (though it would not be a surprise if in the minds of some police officers she already was).

AK was then questioned (apparently at her own request) as a suspect (though as a suspect not obliged to answer questions) by Magnini (Oh that dreadful man!) from 3.30 to 5.45 in which AK repeated - repeated - her false allegation, and then on top of that, after breakfast, she provides her voluntary hand written statement by way of further confirmation.

So what is this nonsense about her cracking under prolonged unfair police interviewing techniques?

Of course the police version, as above, may all be lies!

It does help for the interrogation of suspects to be taped. Did it not happen in this case? If not then obviously there is room for improvement but it does not follow that AK was stitched up, nor does she claim that she was. It’s others who claim that.

There is also a thin line between helping police with their enquiries and being a suspect. At what point does that occur? Usually when that happens you are read your rights and arrested. Get it wrong and the police can be sued for wrongful arrest. Usually what you say before being cautioned, though not always, can not be used in evidence against you. So there is some leeway there for the innocenti thinking that AK was leaned on by that horribly corrupt and brutal Mignini to make, rather than repeat, her allegation.

The trouble with that is that AK was already a suspect by that stage precisely because she had already made the allegation. Furthermore the whole incident is of no evidential weight whatsoever (except for Lumumba’s civil suit against AK), as I have already said above.

Hi James,

Amanda Knox was questioned from approximately 11.00pm to 1.45am on 5 November 2007. Her questioning was stopped when she became a suspect. She wasn’t questioned again that night.

Number of times David C Anderson refers to himself by including in his article the words “I”, “me” and “my” = 23

Number of times he mentions Amanda Knox = 10

Number of times he mentions Meredith Kercher = 4

Number of readers Anderson convinces through his highly misinformed article that, “...their conviction is a monstrous injustice, and one from which a number of people in the Italian justice system will not emerge well.” = 0

Machine,

Thanks, the information I came up with in the end was derived from Darkness Descending.

“Although she was technically now a suspect.. Amanda asked to be questioned again. At 03:30 she repeated her remarkable story to Magnini…....At 05:45 the session ended.”

Of course repeating her story is not quite the same as being questioned but then it would not have taken her 2 and 1/2 hours just to do that.

What is meant by “At 05:45 the session ended”?

What are our sources?

Hi James,

Mignini explained to Linda Byron that Amanda Knox was not questioned after she had become a suspect:

“Knox was also heard as a witness by the Police, then evidence of her involvement in the crime having emerged, the Police suspended the questioning according to article 63 - Law of Criminal Proceedings. However she deemed that she was making an unsolicited statement, which I received without her being questioned, and which was thus completely legitimate. Only in the case of a formal interrogation, with notification of criminal offences and questioning by a PM or a judge, must the person under investigation be represented by a defence lawyer, not when unsolicited statements are being made under article 374 - Law of Criminal Proceedings.”

1/17/11

The Meredith Effect being a crackdown on illegal drugs in Perugia, is good news. Maybe Perugia needs a D.A.R.E. program. The police came into our schools at about the 5th grade level and educated the children in “Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.)” about the danger of drug use.

The children like hearing from real police officers in their school classroom. D.A.R.E. officers work with children to raise their self-esteem, teach them how to make decisions on their own and to resist peer pressure. They give them positive alternatives to drugs and violence.

Through role-playing the D.A.R.E. curriculum emphasizes the negative consequences of drug use and reinforces the skills to resist intimidation. It goes way beyond the “Just Say No” formula. Police officers who go into the schools must take 80 hours of training, much involves classroom management.

The D.A.R.E. officers were always in a friendly and upbeat mood. They like this part of their job. They say that they lock the same people up day after day, but this is a way they can be proactive.

D.A.R.E. humanizes the police
D.A.R.E. permits students to see officers in a helping role, not just enforcement role
D.A.R.E. opens lines of communication between youth and law enforcement that can then extend to non-drug related areas of help

D.A.R.E. ran summer camps in our town, borrowing the firetrucks’ big hoses to spray cooling water on the children in the heat. They were so happy dancing around in their bathing suits under the water. Mainly they felt safe and secure because the police were their friends and mentors, showing them love and concern.

Years after their efforts, I can still recall the black t-shirts with red letters spelling “D.A.R.E to resist drugs and violence”. The children signed pledges not to use drugs. Buttons, pens, glow-in-the dark markers and small gifts with D.A.R.E. logo were given freely. Certificates with gold seals are awarded upon completion.

Street-wise police officers who have seen the ravages of drugs and alcohol firsthand in the lives of local citizens are effective teachers.

Now there is the “keepin it REAL” program:

REAL
R= Refuse the offer of substances
E= Explain why you don’t want to use substances
A= Avoid places where substances are being used
L= Leave places where substances are being used

D.A.R.E. teaches assertiveness, ways to deal with pressure, managing stress without using drugs, and of course the consequences of drug use, some of the science and biology behind it, and gateway drugs like marijuana, inhalants.

The warm interaction between the officers and the children and schoolteachers is one of the greatest benefits of the program. The officers challenge the children to achieve, to respect themselves and others, how to work together and form a support system they can turn to, taking a stand, and to recognize the subtle and overt pressures to experiment with drugs or become involved in gangs or violent activities. Vandalism of school property dropped in some instances with heightened respect for authority.

President Obama declared a national D.A.R.E. day and so did preceding presidents.

D.A.R.E. is taught in 50 states within the U.S. now, and is a widely appreciated drug prevention program.

It started in the UK, then began in Los Angeles in the early 80s.

“The toughest part of getting to the top of the ladder is getting through the crowd at the bottom. Stay original, be yourself!” (from Hampshire County Sheriff Department website)

Some of the media have wrongly reported - so what’s new?! - that Antonio Curatolo has been CONVICTED of a drug crime in Italy.

That is untrue and his charge last week might be merely prosecutors making sure that he stays focussed and firm under examination.

In Italy as in the US and UK the defense cannot use a mere charge against a witness to discredit them on the stand.

Our bet? After the appeal is over and a confirmed verdict and sentence against Knox and Sollecito are in the bag, the charge against Curatolo will fall through the cracks.

Call us cynical if you like! But the perugia prosecutors know every trick in the book. And then some.  They ran rings around the defenses last year.

Several emailers have pointed out a bizarre discussion going on on the Knox Facebook page for conspiracy theorists here:

http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=101025109975255&id=18268784389

The frenetic and perpetually lathered up “Patrick King” is not known for ever getting any facts right. I’ve been dead since 1993?! That sure is news to me. Feel free to read my bio any time.  Its online here:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=446021012651

Many of the PMF/TJMK team are similarly publicly named and known and have very high qualifications. Some have appeared on TV.  Meredith’s family and all of those involved in the whole huge structure of Italian justice are all named and known..

The few anonymous conspiracy theory diddlers are by comparison irrelevant featherweights and so (no surprise at this) totally ignored in Italy.

This week’s print WS Herald has a front page column in which Steve Shite blames the city of Perugia for the un-naming of Perugia Park. I pulled up the website to comment, but I guess i should know better by now.

I didn’t find said column online, but instead read “Judge Michael Heavey Speaks at Rotary Luncheon on Amanda Knox; Curt Knox Attends”. Full to the brim with the usual, also the news that Curt is now gainfully employed (as controller for the Seattle Opera—hope it pays well—perhaps the fat lady will sing for him!

Then I tried to quit the site and was sent, once again, into a tail-swallowing limbo. Took 4 attempts to force quit. I am never going back to that particular hole again! ps—who chimed in with the first fawning comment? Phanuel B. Surprise, surprise.

Where next:

Or to next entry Post-Trauma Example Of Italy As One Of The Fastest-Learning And Adjusting Societies

Or to previous entry An Improvement To The Old City of Perugia: The End Of Civilization As We Know It?!