
Category: Amanda Knox #2
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Bizarrely Jubilant And Way Too Exposed Amanda Knox Again Fails Liar-Analysis Tests
Posted by The Machine
Pamela Meyer, a highly respected liar spotter and fraud spotter, explains how she knows if someone is lying. TED Talks applies the telltale signs to Amanda Knox.
This brilliant video needs to be promoted as much as possible on social media websites. Most people can’t be bothered to read the official court reports, but they will watch a fascinating TED talk that last a few minutes.
Thursday, December 21, 2017
Knox & Sollecito: How From Their Very First Questionings The Cracks & Fissures Start To Appear #2
Posted by KrissyG
Minimetro at left foresightedly located provides quick 2 mile trip up to the center.
1. The Much Mischaracterized Interview Context
You’ve read the PR-driven meme that Perugia investigators zoomed in way too quickly on Amanda Knox?
And also on Raffaele Sollecito? No, probably not Raffaele. He is a really big nuisance in proving any malicious targeting. Hard to manufacture a reason to zoom in on an Italian male with a rich and connected father and mafia ties.
Say that investigators were doing little else but ferociously framing Amanda Knox, as John Douglas, Steve Moore and Michael Heavey have claimed again and again (and even so advised the Department of State).
Well-trained American investigators will say they are lucky to average upward of a dozen sessions a week with people of possible involvement. If Douglas, Moore and Heavey have it right, what is your best guess here? Five? Seven? Maximum ten?
Okay. Take a look. Amazing, right? And there were many more still in progress. Interviewing went on for weeks. They are all loaded on the Case Wiki. Never recorded, as the PR lie has it? No, literally everything was captured.
Unfair zooming-in? These depositions prove quite the opposite. Right through to the fourth and ultimate session on 5 November, the investigators were mainly in the mode of spreading the net wider and wider. Seeking still others maybe involved.
2. Analysis Of Knox’s First Statement Continues
Remember this is still the same day Meredith’s body was discovered. We are still on the 2 November deposition which sets narrow limits on what Knox could credibly claim later. (Path dependency, for scientists.)
Maybe Douglas, Heavey and Moore would have missed them?! But I’ll point out more Knox claims that for competent law enforcement would be big red flags. Points that dont match up with Knox down the road, and points that don’t match up with Sollecito.
This morning, around 10-11am, I returned to my house alone to have a shower and change my clothes, and in this circumstance I noticed that the entrance door of the apartment was wide open whereas the doors to the rooms inside the house were all closed, at least the ones to Filomena’s and Meredith’s rooms, although I didn’t check if they were locked, whereas the one to Laura’s room was ajar and my door was open as usual.
Why would she say the door of the apartment was wide open? Remember, we only have Knox’ word for this. We know it needed a key to lock it. In Honor Bound, Raff says this applied both coming in and going out. Imagine for a minute the real reason for returning was to continue tidying up. The aim had been to finally leave the cottage with the door left flapping open (as though by an unknown intruder). If it had been locked, then the conclusion would be it must be Knox, as she and Meredith were the only house mates around that weekend. So, of course, she has to claim it was open. Distancing herself.
She says she “˜didn’t check if they were locked’ (Filomena’s and Meredith’s rooms). But why would they be locked. This indicates an awareness that Meredith’s room was locked. To explain why she didn’t spot it then, we have the made-up-on-the-spot event, which turns out to be a non-event. Rather like Gubbio. They were going to “˜go to Gubbio’, but then they didn’t go.
We see from Knox’ statement, she wants to tell the story as though she really was innocent. She has to imagine and play role what an innocent person would do. The door was hanging open. She was only there because she wanted to shower and change to go to Gubbio Ah, but what about Meredith’s locked door? Didn’t try it to see if it was locked. Which of course it was. Perhaps Knox has psychic powers to foresee that it might be found to be locked in the future. Pre-empting and forestalling the tricky question of Meredith’s closed door.
These things seemed really strange to me because, like I already said, it is customary for all of us to always close the entrance door with a key since that is the only possible way to close it. So I started to call [the names of] the girls aloud, but without getting an answer. At that moment I thought that maybe one of the girls had gone out to throw the trash into the bins, or to go to see our neighbors, the boys, who occupy the apartment below ours and with whom we hang out.
Knox claimed she didn’t know Laura and Filomena were away for the weekend until Filomena told her on the phone after she rang her at midday on 2 Nov 2007, a couple of hours later. But seriously, if there are three possible housemates around, wouldn’t one just call, “˜Hello! Anybody home?’
Truth is, Knox doesn’t want to say she knew Meredith was the only one around, as the next question would be, “˜So what happened when you called Meredith’s name and knocked on her door, and tried the handle’.
Meredith home alone, would be a real reason to panic. The realisation “˜Meredith might be hurt inside’ mustn’t come ““ for script purposes ““ until after Knox has - in her story - had a shower, changed and gone back to Raff to tell him of her strange experience. She has to account for going back to his abode and ringing Filomena from there. Rather than ring him from the cottage, she has to walk there and then walk back with him. After a leisurely breakfast, of course.
Still imagining herself in the role of innocent, she has to dream up why, if she thought all housemates were around they didn’t seem to be after all, so here comes the precluding: “˜I thought that maybe one of the girls had gone out to throw the trash into the bins, or to go to see our neighbors’.
I remember having closed the front door of the apartment, but I didn’t lock it with the keys, and I went to the bathroom located near to my room, the one that only me and Meredith usually use, to have a shower, when I noticed drops of blood on the floor and a bigger blood stain on the bath math and other blood stains on the sink as if someone had smeared it with a bloody hand. This thing seemed a bit strange to me because we girls are all fairly clean and tidy, and we clean the bathroom [immediately] after we have used it. At first I thought that the blood on the sink could be mine because I did some ear piercings about a week ago, so I immediately checked in the mirror and touched my ear. Then I touched the blood on the sink but seeing that it was not removed immediately, that is, it was not recent, I thought it could be some girl’s menstrual blood and because it disgusted me, I did not attempt to clean it.
Reason for not raising the alarm or becoming concerned? I thought it could be some girl’s menstrual blood and because it disgusted me, I did not attempt to clean it.
Again, a clever lie (or so she thought) whilst expressing her disgust at Meredith’s life blood, it would “˜explain’ why she thought nothing was amiss, just a bit strange (she reasons). As Meredith was the only other person who used that bathroom, we note the careful avoidance of using her name and the use of “˜some girl’ instead. Remember, at this stage, she is not to know anything has become of Meredith. Could be anybody’s blood, is the message, with an innocuous cause (albeit “˜disgusting’.)
No mention of padding back to her room on the “˜disgusting’ bathmat to fetch a towel after the shower, which seems to be a story that evolved later, when her lawyers told her of the five isolated luminol prints in the hallway identified as “˜compatible’ with hers and Raff’s.
Immediately after this I went to the other bathroom, where I usually dry my hair, and after having dried it, I noticed that there were feces in the toilet, that is, someone had used it to relieve themselves, but they had not flushed afterwards. This thing also seemed strange to me for the reasons that I have already stated, and so I avoided flushing it myself.
Again we have the liar’s ready explanation as to why the toilet was left in a disgusting state, even though at this stage, she wasn’t spooked enough to think there was anything to be concerned about. No, the real reason it was “˜strange’, was that according to Knox, nobody who visited the cottage would ever have not flushed the loo. So that explains why it dawned on her when they realised there had been a burglary that this faece must be the burglar’s. She ”˜avoided flushing it’ herself, she explains to police, because she had some kind of uncanny intuition it didn’t belong to anybody in the house, nor their friends.
As for Knox shock at the poop, Sophie Purton testified to the court:
One thing in particular that I remember very well regards Amanda’s habits in the bathroom. Meredith said that Amanda often did not flush the toilet. [This] annoyed her and she wanted to do something about it but did not know what to do without creating problems, not wanting to create embarrassing situations.
Same complaint by those in prison with Knox. She does on:
Later I took the mop, which was located inside a closet, and I left my house to go to my boyfriend’s house to clean his room [kitchen] because we had soiled it the previous night. I remember that when I left, around 11.30 am, but I’m not sure about the precise time as I didn’t look very carefully at the clock, I closed the door of the apartment with a turn of the key.
In Knox’ court testimony and police interviews, her favourite refrains are “˜I wouldn’t know what time it was, as I don’t look at the clock’. One wonders how appropriate this type of sarcasm is in front of murder detectives and a panel of judges. As Francesco put the time of the pipes leaking at before 8:42 and Knox put it back considerably later, changing it from 9:30, to 10:00 and then to 11:00 pm, we see her dilemma. She has to say she only took the mop to Raff’s that morning or she’s admitting she returned to the cottage on the night of the murder.
After arriving at the house of my boyfriend, who lives alone in an apartment near my house and to be more precise in Corso Garibaldi number 110, we stayed there for about an hour, for the time it took to clean the kitchen and have some breakfast, after which we returned to my house together. I want to point out that I immediately told my boyfriend about the strange things that I had detected in my house, and he urged me to call one of the girls.
Immediately? That came and went. Here it’s all action, systems go. The ditzy Knox needed caring Raff to get her to start worrying. So first two calls to Meredith’s phones. Then Filomena. She again has to be told to “˜ring Meredith’, this time by Filomena. So she dutifully rings Meredith again, this time, just a quick couple of seconds each. Been there, done that.
And I did indeed first call [emphasis added] Filomena to ask her if she knew anything about the blood I had found in the bathroom, and she replied that she knew nothing about it as she had slept at her boyfriend’s, Marco’s, house the previous night, and the following morning, that is, this morning, she had gone directly to work without going home first. After Filomena, [emphasis added] I phoned Meredith three times and to be more precise, the first time I called her, I called her English cell phone number 00447841131571, which is the first phone number Meredith gave to me, and which I saved first to my phone card; the phone rang several times, and at one point I heard the line disturbances and interruption of rings. So I tried to contact her on the phone with the number 3484673711, and also this time the phone rang but no-one answered. I tried calling her for the third time with the first cell phone number again, but also this time without getting an answer.
I didn’t call Laura because Filomena had told me in the previous phone call that she had gone to Rome, but I don’t remember if Filomena told me when she had left. So I haven’t seen Laura since the afternoon of October 31st this year. At this point, I returned to my house with my boyfriend, worried about Meredith, because she was the only one whose whereabouts I didn’t know of.
As we know, this call was 12:11 yet Knox & Sollecito didn’t actually get to the cottage until circa 12:35, when by coincidence the postale police arrived and Filomena rang Knox again. This time, she was told of her smashed window. Knox and Sollecito were so “˜worried about Meredith’ it took over twenty minutes to carry out what should be a five-minute walk.
Knox doesn’t tell police that the first call she made, after having switched off her phone 20:45 the night before, was at 12:08 to Meredith’s two phones, before she ring Filomena. So a clear lie, that it wasn’t until Filomena mentioned it that it occurred to her to ring Meredith. She didn’t realise, either, that police could discover just how long she rang for. We see it is a nonsense “˜no-one answered’ if they only rang for three seconds or less. Another sleight of hand, changing the chronology, which takes on a different light when the true time line comes to light.
When I got to my house, around 1 pm, I opened the front door, which I found locked, and entered the apartment. I began to open the doors of the rooms occupied by the other girls. First, I opened Filomena’s bedroom door, that is the first room nearest to the entrance, and together with Raffaele we found that the window, with two shutters, was open and the window glass was broken. I don’t remember if both glasses were broken or only the other one. Broken glass was scattered on the floor, inside the room, near the window. Scared, I thought it could be that a thief had entered the house, and then I quickly glanced around to check that everything was in order, and that nothing had been removed. So I headed to Laura’s room and also there I opened the door and checked that everything was in order. I want to point out that I didn’t go inside the rooms, that I just had a quick look, from the door.
Immediately after that I went into my room, and even there I didn’t notice anything / nothing was different, after which I headed to Meredith’s room, but I couldn’t open the door because it was locked.
Given, having just rang Meredith’s phones three times, and now being told by Filomena that she and Laura were both away for the weekend, you’d think Meredith’s room would be FIRST priority. Instead, in her account, Knox checks the other two instead, even though Sollecito stated Filomena’s door was wide open when he arrived. Laura’s door was “˜ajar’ and had a drawer hanging out, and surprise, surprise, Knox’ hunch about Meredith’s door being locked, turns out to be correct, but she only finds out now, some two hours later.
Knox goes to her room, on a dark November day, and doesn’t notice her table lamp is missing (it is on the floor of Meredith’s room) and she would have had to dry herself after the shower (she claims) and change in the dark, as the room had very little natural light.
At that point I looked out from the bathroom terrace, leaning forward to try and see the window of Meredith’s room, but I couldn’t see anything, after which I returned to the door to look through the keyhole and I could only see Meredith’s handbag on the bed. I retraced my steps to take another look at all the rooms without, however, entering any of them and without noticing anything unusual. Immediately after that I entered the first bathroom near the entrance to the apartment where I very quickly looked around without paying close attention to whether the feces were still inside the toilet.
Knox keeps telling the police she didn’t enter any of the rooms, as though she was being carefully to not contaminate any evidence nor disturb the mise en scene the police see set out before them.
At that point while Raffaele remained in the apartment, I went down to the downstairs students’ apartment, and above all to talk with Giacomo hoping he would have news of Meredith’s whereabouts, but no-one answered the door. After I had returned to the apartment, Raffaele decided to call his sister for advice on what to do, and immediately after that call he called, I don’t know if it was the state police (Polizia) or Carabinieri, to come to the house, and in the meantime, I contacted Filomena at her cell phone number 3471073006 to inform her we had found the window panes in her room broken, and that Meredith’s room was locked. She replied that she would join me at once.
So now, the lead up to the discovery of the body is in full swing. Filomena is on her way, and so are the police. Once again liar Knox changes the chronology and the correct order of things. Note how here, Raff calls his sister (a very brief 39 seconds) before Knox claims she contacted Filomena to tell her of the broken window. Firstly, this would place Raff’s call at 12:35, and we know it was actually 12:47. Secondly, Knox only called Filomena once, and that was at 12:11. Filomena had to ring Knox ““ for the third time ““ at circa 12:35, when she was informed of the mayhem in her room. Police later found out the real time of Sollecito’s call.
Raffaele, who was worried about Meredith’s safety, tried to break the door to her room by kicking it without success, and immediately afterwards we saw the plainclothes police arrive. After they showed us their identification cards, they inquired about our particulars and our cell telephone numbers. Then they asked us what had happened. We told them about the window we had found with the shattered glasses, about the blood stains found in the bathroom, and about Meredith’s room that was strangely locked. The policemen asked us questions about the people who occupied the house and about the telephone calls made, and in the meantime a friend of Filomena whom I know as Marco, and two other friends of hers I didn’t know, arrived. At that point Filomena began to talk to the policemen, and while I stood aside in the kitchen, the others together with the policemen headed for Meredith’s room and broke down the door. I can’t specify who really proceeded to break down the door. At that point I heard Filomena screaming and saying “a foot, a foot” while the police officers ordered us all to go outside the apartment.
At that point while Raffaele remained in the apartment, I went down to the downstairs students’ apartment, and above all to talk with Giacomo hoping he would have news of Meredith’s whereabouts, but no-one answered the door. After I had returned to the apartment, Raffaele decided to call his sister for advice on what to do, and immediately after that call he called, I don’t know if it was the state police (Polizia) or Carabinieri, to come to the house, and in the meantime, I contacted Filomena at her cell phone number 3471073006 to inform her we had found the window panes in her room broken, and that Meredith’s room was locked. She replied that she would join me at once.
At that moment I learned from my boyfriend that inside Meredith’s room, in the wardrobe there was a girl’s body covered with a sheet, and the only thing you could see was a foot. None of those present mentioned the name of Meredith, and as I left the house immediately after that without having seen the body, I can’t state whether it’s her.
What’s interesting is what Knox omits. She fails to mention calling her mother at 3:57 am Seattle Time, soon before Luca kicked open the door at circa 13:05.
These “additionallys” are likely answers to further impressive and unexceptionable questions by the police.
Additionally: There are four Italian students living in the apartment on the lower floor of my house, and we often gather together to play the guitar; together with them we also went out a few times to go for a dinner, and once we went to a disco. Meredith and I went out more times together with all the four boys than the other two (Laura and Filomena). These guys are respectively called Giacomo, Marco, Stefano and the fourth, with whom I personally speak very little, I seem to remember is called Riccardo. I know that one of the four guys, to be precise, Giacomo, is Meredith’s boyfriend. In fact, Meredith sometimes slept at Giacomo’s house and sometimes Giacomo came to our house to sleep with Meredith. I want to point out that the two didn’t very often go out together as Meredith went out with her English friends while Giacomo, from what Meredith told me, preferred to spend more time at home.
Additionally: Regarding the house keys, I can say that they are available to each of us, but I don’t know that other outsiders would be in possession of any copies of them, including Raffaele, my boyfriend. I’m sure Filomena gave no key to Marco, her boyfriend, since every time he arrives at our house he always knocks at the door very loudly. Laura doesn’t have a boyfriend, whereas regarding Meredith, I can say that knowing her I don’t think she had given keys to Giacomo even if I can’t definitely rule it out.
Additionally: Meredith and Giacomo had only been seeing each other for a few weeks, and as for their relationship, Meredith herself told me that it was going well, she never talked about any quarrels with Giacomo, whom I moreover find a very quiet guy. As I’ve already said, she went out very often with her English friends, and they used to attend the disco pub “Merlins”. Once I went there too, and another time we went to another disco pub. Both times there were just us girls.
Additionally: Meredith and I did not celebrate Halloween together, in that I, that evening, was at the “Le Chic” pub, but not for work, but I know she went to “Merlins” with her English friends and without Giacomo, as she told me herself just yesterday. She told me that she had a lot of fun. She did not tell me about any new acquaintances made that evening. From what I know she always went out with the same friends, including me, or with Giacomo and his friends. She usually did not go out alone in the evening.
Additionally: I can describe Meredith as a girl of 21 years or age, of English nationality, about 1.70cm (5’7’‘) tall, thin build, olive complexion, black hair smooth and long, brown eyes. I don’t think she had any particular marks such as tattoos or other marks on her body. The last time I saw her, she was wearing white jeans and a short, light, pale-colored jacket.
Her email to her address book contacts came some 36 hours later, and we can see how she attempts to consolidate what she told the police. This becomes a script which she commits to memory in strict chronological order as is in the manner of a liar, in order to keep track of their falsehoods.
Monday, December 18, 2017
Knox & Sollecito: How From Their Very First Questionings The Cracks & Fissures Start To Appear
Posted by KrissyG
“Now I say… and then you say… and then I say… and then you say”
Reference the caption above: that’s the last time they talked before their first questionings.
Each day the cracks and fissures got worse. Would any cop not get suspicious?! Three days later, Sollecito separates with a bang and proclaims that Knox had made him lie.
That sure went well. Next murder Knox may do alone… A good primer for this post is this guide on how to read lies.
Here’s my take on the Recorded Statement taken from Amanda Knox 2 Nov 2007 in Part 4 of our previous post below. It is timed at 3:30pm. Mignini arrived about 3:00.
It could be the Squadra Mobila (the Flying Squad attached to the Carabinieri) took statements at the scene as Knox had to wait at the Questura quite a while before she was spoken to and got home late.
I have only processed three or four paragraphs so far (so this could turn into a whole series). What jumps out at me is the following statement:
Around 5 pm I left my house together with Raffaele to go to his house where we stayed the whole evening and the night.
In Sollecito’s own statement of 2 Nov 2007, in Part 5 of the previous post, he states:
At about 4:00 pm, Meredith left without saying where she was going, while we stayed at home until about 17.30. After that hour, Amanda and I took a little trip to the center to go to my house where we stayed until this morning.
So, from having been at Via della Pergola for lunch, during which time, Sollecito joined her and Meredith had got out of bed after arriving home in the early hours, and according to Knox and Sollecito, still had the remains of vampire makeup on her chin, was wearing her ex-boyfriend’s jeans, and had gone out at four, “˜without saying where she was going’, the pair claim to have gone straight to Raff’s apartment in Via Garibaldi, “˜at about five’. In Sollecito’s earliest account, it was to go to his house via the centre.
The next written record we have comes from Knox email home to 25 people in her address book on Sunday 4 Nov 2007, in the early hours circa 36 hours or so after Meredith’s body was found.
meredith came out of the shower and grabbed some laundry or put some laundry in, one or the other and returned into her room after saying hi to raffael. after lunch i began to play guitar with raffael and meredith came out of her room and went to the door. she said bye and left for the day. it was the last time i saw her alive. after a little while of playing guitar me and raffael went to his house to watch movies and after to eat dinner and generally spend the evening and night indoors. [sic]
Many believe this was Amanda writing out a “˜script’ to “˜get her story straight’. One thing about liars, is that they stick rigidly to a set chronology to make it easier to remember their lies.
The next written record is Sollecito’s first written statement to the police:
Raffale Sollecito: November 5th 2007 at 22:40 in the offices of the Flying Squad of the Perugia Police Headquarters
QA Around 16:00 Meredith left in a hurry without saying where she was going. Amanda and I stayed home until about 17:30-18:00.
QA We left the house, we went into town, but I don’t remember what we did.
QA We stayed there from 18:00 until 20:30/21:00. At 21:00 I went home alone because Amanda told me that she was going to go to the pub Le Chic because she wanted to meet some friends.
For the first time we are made aware that the pair went somewhere after leaving Via della Pergola at between “˜5:30 and 6:00’ according to Raffaele’s statement, this glides neatly into Popovic’s visit at 6:00pm at Raff’s abode. No visible gaps in the timeline here.
Next comes Knox’ handwritten statement to the police:
Amanda Knox Handwritten Statement to the police 6 Nov 2007
“˜Thursday, November 1st I saw Meredith the last time at my house when she left around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Raffaele was with me at the time. We, Raffaele and I, stayed at my house for a little while longer and around 5 in the evening we left to watch the movie Amelie at his house.’
So Knox says they left at 5:00 ““ sticking to her scripted story as she set out in the email home, whilst Raff makes it an hour later. So, we are led to believe, they didn’t stay in town long at all, and in any case, ”˜I don’t remember what we did’.
This is a big flag. When people say, “˜I don’t remember’, they are telling you they recall an event, but are unable to retrieve it from their memory. In fact, they do not even try, not even when elite detectives are carrying out a crucial murder investigation of your girlfriend’s own roommate. A person who was not involved will say, “˜I don’t know’ when asked a straight question, not “˜I don’t recall’.
Sollecito sticks to his script: “˜We left via della Pergola, five-thirty to six’:
Raffaele Sollecito 7 Nov 2007 PRISON DIARY
“˜An amusing thing I remember is that Meredith was wearing a pair of men’s jeans which belonged to her ex”boyfriend in England. She left quickly around 4 pm, not saying where she was going. Meanwhile, Amanda and I stayed there until around 6 pm and we began to smoke cannabis.
My problems start from this moment because I have confused memories. Firstly, Amanda and I went to the centre going from Piazza Grimana to Corso Vannucci passing behind the University for Foreigners and ending up in Piazza Morlacchi (we always take that road). Then I do not remember but presumably we went shopping for groceries. We returned to my house at around 8 “ 8:30 pm and there I made another joint and, since it was a holiday, I took everything with extreme tranquillity, without the slightest intention of going out since it was cold outside.
Note the signifier, informing the reader, “˜it was cold outside’ embellishing the lie, “˜therefore we could not have gone out that night’.
So, whilst Raff on 7 Nov 2007 has jotted in his PRISON DIARY (which of course he is aware the authorities will be reading avidly), they were out between “˜six and eight’, Amanda writes to her lawyers a couple of days later adhering firmly to her script.
Amanda Knox Letter to her Lawyers 9 Nov 2007
Around 3 or 4 Meredith left the house wearing light-colored clothing, and all she said was “Ciao”. She didn’t say where she was going. I continued playing guitar and after a while Raffaele and I left my house, probably around 5pm.
We went to his house and the first thing we did was get comfortable. I took off my shoes etc. I used his computer for a little while to write down songs I wanted to learn for the guitar, I listened to some of Raffaele’s music at this time.
Note the inclusion of irrelevant and trivial detail, “˜I took off my shoes’. A liar loves to gild the lily.
click image for larger version
Then comes Knox’ next written affirmation of what she did the day of the murder:
Page 1223 PRISON DIARY ““ AMANDA KNOX 27 Nov 2007
Here is what I did that night:
5pm: Left my house with Raffaele and walked to his apartment.
5:05pm - ???:
(1) Used the computer to look up songs to play on the guitar.
(2) Read Harry Potter in German w/Raffaele.
(3) Watched Amelie.
(4) Prepared and ate dinner ““ Fish.
(5) While cleaning the dishes a bunch of water spilled on the floor.
(6) We tried to soak up a little with small towels but there was too much.
(7) Raffaele rolled a joint.
(8) We smoked the joint together and talked.
(9) We had sex.
(10) We fell asleep.It’s that simple.’
Did you spot, she remembers her lines, despite her problems with amnesia? Still no mention of going into the old town. When people use qualifies such as, “˜That’s about it’, or “˜It’s as simple as that’, there’s another flag they have just told you a lie. Note the triple question mark as if she is unsure it took half an hour to arrive at Raff’s, in case anyone pulls her up on it sometime in the future. Again bells and whistles, the liar’s toolkit.
Raffaele helpfully offers us an insight in his book several years later as to why he revealed ““ even if Amanda never does ““ they went into town in his police statement of 5 Nov 2007.
From Honor Bound 2012 Andrew Gumbel and Raffaele Sollecito write:
(P 17) It was the last time I ever saw [Meredith Kercher].
Amanda and I smoked a joint before leaving the house on Via della Pergola, wandered into town for shopping before remembering we had enough for dinner already, and headed back to my place.
P53 (in the Questura 5 Nov 2007)
I mentioned [to police] Amanda and I had gone out shopping, something I had apparently omitted in my previous statements. [note the plural].
So, we see, Raffaele has not voluntarily offered the information “˜we went into town’ either, on the afternoon of 1 Nov 2007. He concedes he only proffered it, because the police brought it up. When asked the purpose of the trip, he claims they went “˜shopping’, but on not being able to prove they bought anything nor state which shops the pair frequented, he had to retract this half-lie, by now adding to his 6 Nov 2007 official police statement, later, that once there, they suddenly realised ”˜we had enough for dinner already’.
So, we are led by this to conclude the purpose of the expedition into the old town was “˜shopping for dinner’, when before, it was to “˜to go to my house where we stayed until this morning.’
It is bizarre and a symptom of lying for someone to say they did something, but then didn’t do it, when asked to elaborate. Raff omits to even mention to police going into the old town, and Knox persistently does not mention it at all. He only mentions it when detectives ask him why he omitted to. He then “˜suddenly remembers’ this “˜unimportant detail’ and tells them they were there to shop. But wait. They suddenly do not do any shopping at all, whilst in the old town, because once there, they realise they ”˜already had’ provisions for the evening meal. Amanda Knox makes clear this evening meal was FISH. Yet she claims she couldn’t remember exactly what she did at Raff’s, for at least three weeks. Fishy indeed.
I don’t know about you, but if I head into town to buy food or clothes, once there, I don’t suddenly think, “˜Hang on a minute, what am I doing here, I already have bread/a dress at home!’
Surely, I would buy something anyway, or at least browse around, perhaps use my John Lewis voucher and go for a coffee and cake.
Astonishingly, years later, Knox still deceives us in this matter:
In Waiting to be Heard 2013 Amanda Knox resolutely omits the detail of “˜going into the old town’:
(P61) Sometime between 4:00pm and 5pm we left to go to his place.’
There then follows filler sentences about how “˜we wanted a quiet cozy night in’.
Then comes the type of deception liars love to use: they pad out their tall tales with irrelevant guff.
“˜As we walked along, I was telling Raffaele that Amélie was my all time favourite movie.
“˜Really?’ he asked. “˜I’ve never seen it’
[Forgetting completely, forensic police discovered he’d downloaded the movie way back on 28 Oct 2007 {by coincidence, no doubt}].
“˜Oh my God,’ I said, unbelieving. “˜You have to see it right this second. You’ll love it’
The narrative then completely jumps to:
Not long after we got back to Raffaele’s place, his doorbell rang. [Enter first alibi Jovanna Popovic, whom Raff states appeared at 6:00pm].
A whole hour is omitted. One whole hour to get back to Raff’s, just around the corner, four to ten minutes away at the outside.
From all the embellishments, fabrications and outright lies, we see that what happened between 4:00pm and 9:00pm and where the pair went, is significant. Some say, they obviously went to score drugs. However, they openly admit to smoking a joint. In fact, they go to pains to emphasise it. They have no inhibitions talking about having sex. Therefore, the trip into the old town which took up to two to five hours of their time is rather more sinister than some kind of coyness or embarrassment about buying some dope.
In his statement to police on 5 Nov 2007, Sollecito changes his story and claims he came home alone at ‘20:30/21:00’. As we now know, the pair both switched off their phones together, between 20:45 and 21:00, so we can be sure this time is supremely salient. Meredith was on her way back around then. From Knox not ever mentioning the trip into town, it could be she indeed never did go into town, and that Raff went alone.
Raffaele Sollecito complains in his book “˜the police were out to get me’ by catching out his anomalies. However, I was watching a tv programme a few days ago, about a murder case, and detectives had to puzzle out from scratch who was the culprit. The detectives explained to the viewer, when someone comes in for questioning, all they have is that person’s face value account. They then check out the details, and then, if they discover falsehood and deception in the interviewee’s story, that is what makes them suspicious. So Raff and Amanda have only themselves to blame police suspected them.
I believe the pair followed Meredith and stalked her movements that night, hence the concealment of their true motive for being out between 4:00 and 9:00.
Popovic has a story that she had to pick up a suitcase from the station, and then didn’t have to after all, so either she really did see Knox at home at six, as claimed, or it was “˜a friend helping out with the alibi’. See “˜the event that is a non-event’ -type of lie, as above. Who knows what that was about. Popovic claims to have spoken to the pair at between 5:30 and 5:45 and again at about 8:40. I personally remain sceptical of her testimony, as I do of his father’s, Francesco, whose claimed account of the 8:42 telephone conversation directly contradicts Knox’ and Sollecito’ with regard to dinner and the pipes flooding, supposedly happening before the murder.
We do know, as James Raper points out, as per Massei - “at 18:27:15 [6.27 pm] on the 1/11/07, there was human interaction via the “VLC” application, software used to play a multimedia file for a film “Il Favolso Mondo Di Amelie.avi”, already downloaded onto Sollecito’s computer laptop via P2P (peer to peer) some days earlier.”
We also know there was human interaction when the film “˜crashed’ (as it was finished?) at 9:10 because someone clicked on the error message to close it. I do not think this starting and finishing the film proves anything. I have always viewed Amélie as a contrived alibi.
Lies can work both ways. I don’t believe either Francesco or Popovic. The supposed testimony of these two “˜alibi witnesses’ were used directly against Sollecito when his compensation claim was thrown out.
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Interrogation Hoax #19: ALL Knox Q&A Sessions 2-6 November 2007 WERE Recorded #1
Posted by Our Main Posters
Working entrance of Perugia’s main police station
1. What Does The Hoax Allege?
In its ever-differing core version (see Part 3) this widely-promulgated hoax alleges among other things:
(1) that the total hours Knox was questioned from 2 to 6 November was upward of 50;
(2) that Knox was the main suspect for the murder of Meredith from the get-go;
(3) that the “interrogation” was conducted by tag-teams of investigators working in shifts;
(4) that Knox was under duress and forbidden bathroom breaks, sleep and refreshments.
(5) that Knox was refused a lawyer and all questioning sessions were illegally not recorded.
(6) That the outcome was “a confession”.
2. Who Are The Main Propagators?
Often seeming intent on outdoing one another in their manufactured outrage and lurid descriptions, the frontrunners are Doug Preston, Steve Moore, Michael Heavey, Paul Ciolino, Saul Kassin, John Douglas, and Bruce Fischer.
Also Steve Moore, Steve Moore, and Steve Moore. Seemingly for him an obsession.
Thousands of other accounts take their word as gospel. Curt Knox and Edda Mellas have repeated it, blaming Amanda when challenged (really).
Amanda Knox attempts to fire up this hoax again repeatedly.
But testimonies of numerous investigators at trial that she sat through without objection confirmed one another, strong proof that nothing on the list above is true.
Knox tried to make some of this fly at the 17 December 2007 questioning that she herself requested by Dr Mignini.
She tried again on the stand at trial in July 2009. But she had to concede that none of it was like that list above and that she was treated fairly on 5-6 Nov.
No judge in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015 ever accepted that a “confession” was forced out of her. Knox’s own lawyers did not believe it.
Totally isolated on this in court, and often her own worst enemy, Knox was sentenced to three years for voluntarily and maliciously fingering Patrick.
Knox will remain a felon for life (there can be no reversal) for this demonizing of Patrick.
She is trying very hard to hide that fact.
For example she hid it last year from Netflix. Now she is hiding it from Vice Media who dont realize that Knox is the mother of all demonizers. Not yet.
3. Complete Absence Of Verification
So far, the hoax is a huge fail. See Part 2.
But the malicious or confused usual suspects continue to parrot the hoax like a mantra. For Fischer’s hapless bunch of apologists on Ground Report it’s a mainstay.
In this series we have already posted proof of records of all Q&A made and signed by Knox herself for 5 and 6 November. They dont go toward proving anything on the list.
Here below is the record made and signed by Knox three days earlier for 2 November. A sort of prequel but an important one. It began at the house and then took maybe two hours at the questura. We will be posting the records for 3 and 4 November soon. None of them go toward proving anything at all on the list.
Here Knox was in discussion (in fact said to be eagerly in discussion) with just three officers on their regular shifts. This record is timed at 3:30 pm. There was a hour or so for discussion and an hour or so for typing and signing. Then Knox sat outside with others until they were all fingerprinted and sent home.
This below was the longest of all her questionings. Her sessions on 3 and 4 November merely consisted of two visits with Dr Mignini to the house, nothing more. Her nighttime sessions on 5 and 6 November we have posted on; they were quite short too. We know of no hard proof that puts their aggregate time beyond ten hours at maximum. We think less actually.
We will post the reports for 3 and 4 November soon, and you may be surprised at their briefness and thrusts - especially as Knox’s book suggests rank paranoia and chronic fatigue at the burdensomness of it all setting in.
Remember Knox was free to walk out of the police station at any time. Remember twice she turned up unrequested and she just hung around, watching and listening. (Her team actually counts in all those hours to get to their 50-plus.)
Before the wee hours of 6 November she did not even have the status of a witness. Just a person with information of possible value.
Told that she needed a lawyer on 5 and 6 November by both Rita Ficarra and Dr Mignini, she brushed them off, and kept talking and talking.
She was very keen to see things put in writing, and she demanded statements like this one to sign. The Sollecito statement follows.
4. Signed Record Of Knox Statement 2 November
[Preliminary Translation Not Yet Checked Out For Wiki]
Questura di Perugia /Perugia Police Station
Squadra Mobile /Flying SquadRe: Transcript of summary information from persons informed of the facts (of the case) conveyed by:
KNOX, Amanda Marie, born in Washington (USA) on July 9th, 1987, domiciled in Perugia, Via della Pergola n. 7; identified by means of Passport n. 422687114 issued by the US Government on June 13th, 2007, tel. 3484673590.On the day of November 2nd, 2007 at 3.30 pm, in Perugia at the offices of the Squadra Mobile of the Questura of Perugia. Before the undersigned Officers of the Judicial Authority Inspectors Luca C. Scatigno and Rita Ficarra, Assistant Fabio D’Astolto, respectively on duty at the aforementioned office and the local U.P.G.S.P., there is present the person indicated above who sufficiently understands and speaks Italian, who regarding to the death of Meredith Susanna Cara KERCHER, and who declares the following:
“I have been in Italy since the end of September for reasons of study, even if occasionally, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I work in a pub called “Le Chic”, and since then I have lived at Via della Pergola number 7 together with other girls, specifically: Laura, 27 years of age, who is the one through whom I found the apartment in question, Filomena, 28 years of age, whose surnames I don’t know, but I know that they work in a law firm, though not together.
Then also living there is Meredith, an English student attending on the Erasmus exchange programme. Each one of us, peripatetically, occupies a room in the aforementioned apartment, on the 2nd floor. The common parts shared by all the girls are the two bathrooms and kitchen. Access to the apartment is through a door reached by an exterior stair. This entrance door, to be well closed, needs to be locked by means of keys, because otherwise as it is broken the door can be opened with a simple push.
Yesterday afternoon I definitely saw Meredith at lunch time, around 1 pm roughly. On that occasion I ate at my house together with my Italian boyfriend, Raffaele, whereas Meredith did not eat with us. Around 3 pm or perhaps 4 pm, after chatting a bit together with us, Meredith said goodbye and left, without however saying either the place she was going to or with whom, while we remained to play the guitar. I am not sure if yesterday Laura was at the house, because I didn’t see her, but I cannot exclude that she may have been in her room. Filomena, on the other hand, I saw yesterday morning before lunch time. She was preparing herself to go to a graduation party that afternoon.
Around 5 pm I left my house together with Raffaele to go to his house where we stayed the whole evening and the night.
This morning, around 10-11am, I returned to my house alone to have a shower and change my clothes, and in this circumstance I noticed that the entrance door of the apartment was wide open whereas the doors to the rooms inside the house were all closed, at least the ones to Filomena’s and Meredith’s rooms, although I didn’t check if they were locked, whereas the one to Laura’s room was ajar and my door was open as usual. These things seemed really strange to me because, like I already said, it is customary for all of us to always close the entrance door with a key since that is the only possible way to close it. So I started to call [the names of] the girls aloud, but without getting an answer. At that moment I thought that maybe one of the girls had gone out to throw the trash into the bins, or to go to see our neighbors, the boys, who occupy the apartment below ours and with whom we hang out.
I remember having closed the front door of the apartment, but I didn’t lock it with the keys, and I went to the bathroom located near to my room, the one that only me and Meredith usually use, to have a shower, when I noticed drops of blood on the floor and a bigger blood stain on the bath math and other blood stains on the sink as if someone had smeared it with a bloody hand. This thing seemed a bit strange to me because we girls are all fairly clean and tidy, and we clean the bathroom [immediately] after we have used it. At first I thought that the blood on the sink could be mine because I did some ear piercings about a week ago, so I immediately checked in the mirror and touched my ear. Then I touched the blood on the sink but seeing that it was not removed immediately, that is, it was not recent, I thought it could be some girl’s menstrual blood and because it disgusted me, I did not attempt to clean it.
Immediately after this I went to the other bathroom, where I usually dry my hair, and after having dried it, I noticed that there were feces in the toilet, that is, someone had used it to relieve themselves, but they had not flushed afterwards. This thing also seemed strange to me for the reasons that I have already stated, and so I avoided flushing it myself
Later I took the mop, which was located inside a closet, and I left my house to go to my boyfriend’s house to clean his room [kitchen] because we had soiled it the previous night. I remember that when I left, around 11.30 am, but I’m not sure about the precise time as I didn’t look very carefully at the clock, I closed the door of the apartment with a turn of the key.
After arriving at the house of my boyfriend, who lives alone in an apartment near my house and to be more precise in Corso Garibaldi number 110, we stayed there for about an hour, for the time it took to clean the kitchen and have some breakfast, after which we returned to my house together. I want to point out that I immediately told my boyfriend about the strange things that I had detected in my house, and he urged me to call one of the girls.
And I did indeed first call Filomena to ask her if she knew anything about the blood I had found in the bathroom, and she replied that she knew nothing about it as she had slept at her boyfriend’s, Marco’s, house the previous night, and the following morning, that is, this morning, she had gone directly to work without going home first. After Filomena, I phoned Meredith three times and to be more precise, the first time I called her, I called her English cell phone number 00447841131571, which is the first phone number Meredith gave to me, and which I saved first to my phone card; the phone rang several times, and at one point I heard the line disturbances and interruption of rings. So I tried to contact her on the phone with the number 3484673711, and also this time the phone rang but no-one answered. I tried calling her for the third time with the first cell phone number again, but also this time without getting an answer.
I didn’t call Laura because Filomena had told me in the previous phone call that she had gone to Rome, but I don’t remember if Filomena told me when she had left.
So I haven’t seen Laura since the afternoon of October 31st this year.
At this point, I returned to my house with my boyfriend, worried about Meredith, because she was the only one whose whereabouts I didn’t know of.
When I got to my house, around 1 pm, I opened the front door, which I found locked, and entered the apartment. I began to open the doors of the rooms occupied by the other girls. First, I opened Filomena’s bedroom door, that is the first room nearest to the entrance, and together with Raffaele we found that the window, with two shutters, was open and the window glass was broken. I don’t remember if both glasses were broken or only the other one. Broken glass was scattered on the floor, inside the room, near the window. Scared, I thought it could be that a thief had entered the house, and then I quickly glanced around to check that everything was in order, and that nothing had been removed. So I headed to Laura’s room and also there I opened the door and checked that everything was in order. I want to point out that I didn’t go inside the rooms, that I just had a quick look, from the door.
Immediately after that I went into my room, and even there I didn’t notice anything / nothing was different, after which I headed to Meredith’s room, but I couldn’t open the door because it was locked.
At that point I looked out from the bathroom terrace, leaning forward to try and see the window of Meredith’s room, but I couldn’t see anything, after which I returned to the door to look through the keyhole and I could only see Meredith’s handbag on the bed. I retraced my steps to take another look at all the rooms without, however, entering any of them and without noticing anything unusual. Immediately after that I entered the first bathroom near the entrance to the apartment where I very quickly looked around without paying close attention to whether the feces were still inside the toilet.
At that point while Raffaele remained in the apartment, I went down to the downstairs students’ apartment, and above all to talk with Giacomo hoping he would have news of Meredith’s whereabouts, but no-one answered the door. After I had returned to the apartment, Raffaele decided to call his sister for advice on what to do, and immediately after that call he called, I don’t know if it was the state police (Polizia) or Carabinieri, to come to the house, and in the meantime, I contacted Filomena at her cell phone number 3471073006 to inform her we had found the window panes in her room broken, and that Meredith’s room was locked. She replied that she would join me at once.
Raffaele, who was worried about Meredith’s safety, tried to break the door to her room by kicking it without success, and immediately afterwards we saw the plainclothes police arrive. After they showed us their identification cards, they inquired about our particulars and our cell telephone numbers. Then they asked us what had happened. We told them about the window we had found with the shattered glasses, about the blood stains found in the bathroom, and about Meredith’s room that was strangely locked. The policemen asked us questions about the people who occupied the house and about the telephone calls made, and in the meantime a friend of Filomena whom I know as Marco, and two other friends of hers I didn’t know, arrived. At that point Filomena began to talk to the policemen, and while I stood aside in the kitchen, the others together with the policemen headed for Meredith’s room and broke down the door. I can’t specify who really proceeded to break down the door. At that point I heard Filomena screaming and saying “a foot, a foot” while the police officers ordered us all to go outside the apartment.
At that moment I learned from my boyfriend that inside Meredith’s room, in the wardrobe there was a girl’s body covered with a sheet, and the only thing you could see was a foot. None of those present mentioned the name of Meredith, and as I left the house immediately after that without having seen the body, I can’t state whether it’s her.
Additionally: There are four Italian students living in the apartment on the lower floor of my house, and we often gather together to play the guitar; together with them we also went out a few times to go for a dinner, and once we went to a disco. Meredith and I went out more times together with all the four boys than the other two (Laura and Filomena). These guys are respectively called Giacomo, Marco, Stefano and the fourth, with whom I personally speak very little, I seem to remember is called Riccardo. I know that one of the four guys, to be precise, Giacomo, is Meredith’s boyfriend. In fact, Meredith sometimes slept at Giacomo’s house and sometimes Giacomo came to our house to sleep with Meredith. I want to point out that the two didn’t very often go out together as Meredith went out with her English friends while Giacomo, from what Meredith told me, preferred to spend more time at home.
Additionally: Regarding the house keys, I can say that they are available to each of us, but I don’t know that other outsiders would be in possession of any copies of them, including Raffaele, my boyfriend. I’m sure Filomena gave no key to Marco, her boyfriend, since every time he arrives at our house he always knocks at the door very loudly. Laura doesn’t have a boyfriend, whereas regarding Meredith, I can say that knowing her I don’t think she had given keys to Giacomo even if I can’t definitely rule it out.
Additionally: Meredith and Giacomo had only been seeing each other for a few weeks, and as for their relationship, Meredith herself told me that it was going well, she never talked about any quarrels with Giacomo, whom I moreover find a very quiet guy. As I’ve already said, she went out very often with her English friends, and they used to attend the disco pub “Merlins”. Once I went there too, and another time we went to another disco pub. Both times there were just us girls.
Additionally: Meredith and I did not celebrate Halloween together, in that I, that evening, was at the “Le Chic” pub, but not for work, but I know she went to “Merlins” with her English friends and without Giacomo, as she told me herself just yesterday. She told me that she had a lot of fun. She did not tell me about any new acquaintances made that evening. From what I know she always went out with the same friends, including me, or with Giacomo and his friends. She usually did not go out alone in the evening.
Additionally: I can describe Meredith as a girl of 21 years or age, of English nationality, about 1.70cm (5’7’‘) tall, thin build, olive complexion, black hair smooth and long, brown eyes. I don’t think she had any particular marks such as tattoos or other marks on her body. The last time I saw her, she was wearing white jeans and a short, light, pale-colored jacket.
Written, read, confirmed, signed
The declarer The verbalizers
Amanda Knox (signed) (Signed, three signatures)
5. Signed Record Of Sollecito Statement 2 November
QUESTURA DI PERUGIA
Anti-crime Police Division
Flying Squad
Section 5 Anti-drug treatment
SUBJECT: Minute of summary testimonial information provided by:
SOLLECITO Raffaele, born in Bari on 26.03.1984 residing in Giovinazzo (BA) in via Solferino nr. 4, domiciled in Perugia in C.so Garibaldi nr. 110, identified by means of C.I. nr. AJ1946390 Issued by the Municipality of Giovinazzo (BA) on 22.07.2004 Tel.340 / 3574303.The year 2007, of the month of November, the day 02 at 15.45, in the offices of the
Flying Squad of the Perugia Police Headquarters.Before us, undersigned Officers and Agents of P.G. Sost. Commissioner ROSCIOLI Roberto and Ass. ROSSI Romano, belonging to the Office. In the indicated inscription, the person indicated is the subject who heard about the finding of a dead English girl inside a flat located in Perugia in via della Pergola no. 7 who declares the following:
I state that I am a university student, enrolled in the first year of the Mathematics-Physics-Natural Sciences Department, at the Computer Science course at the University of Perugia. I am enrolled at the aforementioned university since 2003, also for about a year between 2005 and 2006 I attended the same course in Germany, through the Erasmus project. From October 2006 I returned to Perugia and for the study periods I live alone in a studio located in Perugia in Corso Garibaldi No. 10.
About a week and a half ago, I met my current girl of American nationality, KNOX Amanda, who is also a student, enrolled at the local University of Foreigners. My girlfriend lives together with three other students in an apartment located in Perugia in via della Pergola No. 7. Visting there, I have met the other three roommates, Filomena of Italian nationality, Laura also Italian with residence in Viterbo, and Meredith of English nationality with residence in London.
Since Amanda and I met, she usually spends the night at my house, same as it happened yesterday night and the previous one.
Yesterday morning, my girlfriend and I woke up around 10.30; I stayed to sleep while Amanda went to her home with the agreement that we would be seing each other in the early afternoon of the same day. Around 2:00 pm I went to Amanda’s house to have lunch with her and once I got there, I also found Meredith in the house who had already eaten. After eating lunch, I stayed at home talking to both my girlfriend and Meredith, who in the meantime was preparing to leave.
At about 4:00 pm, Meredith left without saying where she was going, while we stayed home until about 5.30 pm. After that hour, Amanda and I took a little trip to the town center and then went to my house where we stayed until this morning.
This morning around 10.00, we woke up and as on other occasions, Amanda returned home to take a shower and change, with the intention of returning later to my house.
At about 11:30 am, Amanda returned to my house and while we were having breakfast, she told me worriedly that in the house where she lives she had found the door open, and in the bathroom used by her and Meredith Amanda had noticed traces of blood both on the sink and in the mat below. Furthermore, Meredith’s room was locked.
Concerned about the situation, because it was not clear why the front door had remained open, Amanda went downstairs and knocked on the door of some Italian students who live under her to ask for help, but with negative outcome because nobody answered. I want to clarify that among the guys of the apartment above, there is a Giacomo, a person unknown to me, who Amanda says would hang out with Meredith. Not receiving resposess, Amanda, before returning to my house, locked the door and after arriving at my home told me the story
She asked me to take her home to find out what had happened. Once on the spot, Amanda opened the door, which has a defect in the lock, both from the outside and from the inside, which opens only with the keys because the handle does not work. Without the keys, it can not close even you pull it outward.
Once inside, we walked around the house and immediately Amanda noticed that in the other bathroom, the one used by the two Italian girls, when she left the house, there were faeces in the toilet while when we entered the toilet it was clean. In addition, the room in use by Filomena had the door wide open, was untidy and had the window completely open with the glass of the left pane broken in the lower part. Seeing this, Amanda told me that she had not previously seen this as the door to the aforementioned room was blocking the view of what was inside.
At this point, I went into the bathroom in use both by Amanda and Meredith. Here I too noticed the traces of blood on both the sink and the mat. Assuming something had happened, I was asking Amanda to call her roommate friends, but after several attempts she could only get in touch with Filomena, who told her that she was at her boyfriend’s house and that she would be returning immediately.
At this point Amanda called Meredith several times, and knocked on the door, but without any reply. Given the situation, I looked out of the various windows of the house in order to see where the window of Meredith’s room was, but being situated at the end of the apartment it was difficult to access from the outside, I decided to try to open the door by kicking it and pushing it at the height of the lock, but without succeeding because I only caused cracks in the wall and in the door.
Not succeeding in the intent, I tried to look through the keyhole which was missing the key and from there I could only see a brown woman’s bag that was on the bed, and on the left side probably an open cupboard door.
At this point I asked for advice from my sister, who serves as a Lieutenant of the Carabinieri in Rome, who advised me to call 112 directly. The local 112 when asked by me said that he would send a radio car. While waiting for the Carabinieri, I saw plainclothes police arrive who identified themselves officers of the Polizia Postale, who were looking for Filomena and Meredith because they had found the two cell phones of the latter.
To them, both Amanda and I told the story described above, and because of this the agents, given the situation, broke through the door of the room of Meredith thus ascertaining the tragic event. Seeing their faces I stayed on the sidelines and I did not look at what was inside. Present at the time of the breakthrough of the door, in addition to us and the police, there was also Filomena and her boyfriend who had arrived in the meantime and had reported not knowing where Meredith was.
Later a patrol squad of the Carabinieri also arrived. Being more precise, Amanda, when she told me that she went to ask for help from the boys who live below her apartment, found the doors closed but the gate in front of those doors was open.
I have nothing else to add.
Done, read, confirmed and signed.
Raffaele Sollecito
Monday, May 23, 2016
Carlo Dalla Vedova, Is ECHR Made Aware Italian Law REQUIRES Lawyers To First File Local Complaints?
Posted by Our Main Posters
You are aware of this, right? It is not optional: if Italian clients credibly claim police abuse, their lawyers MUST lodge a complaint.
This is a serious requirement in Italian law, which looks to protect the client while heading off innuendo and frivolous appeals years down the road. Under the principle of infedele patrocinio (betrayal of the interest of the client), if you really believed Knox’s varying claims that she was abused, it seems you’d have no choice but to lodge a formal complaint.
Not only was no formal complaint that we know of ever filed by you, and so no investigation ever begun, summaries of your ECHR case by Cassazione and by ECHR itself make no mention of any process having been followed. They specifically ask you about this.
The ECHR quotes in full a letter to you from Amanda Knox dated 9 November 2007 claiming at length that police abuse explained why she was “confused” at the so-called “interrogation” of 5-6 November 2007.
But the ECHR seems to have not been made aware that you never passed this letter on to any prosecutor or any judge. In fact, you provide it as evidence only now. Why was this not made clear?
And even more daunting for your appeal, your legal colleague Luciano Ghirga at Rudy Guede’s trial late in 2008 specifically said this - in effect, the exact opposite of your current claim.
“There were pressures from the police but we never said she was hit.”
Now the ECHR in its first response to your submission is asking some questions of fact. It has addressed this first question to you.
1. Has the applicant exhausted the domestic remedies available to her to complain about the violation of Article 3 of the Convention, concerning the slaps (scappellotti) allegedly suffered, and under Articles 6 §§ 1 and 3 a), c) and e) and 8 of the Convention?
It appears that no, Knox the applicant never did initiate the formal process to seek a remedy through Italian law. The point is one that ends the ECHR appeal process all by itself if the answer is no.
- (1) because of the obvious status of inadmissibility of the application under the ECHR rules (no domestic remedy was first attempted),
(2) because of its damaging probative value for assessing the credibility of the version of facts provided by the applicant.
You will of course know of the legal provisions under Italian law about which the ECHR may not yet be aware:
- (1) the crimes of beating (cp 581), or physical violence or threat (cp. 610-612) require the victim to file a complaint in order to allow prosecution of the charge, otherwise investigation cannot be initiated;
(2) the Ethics Code of lawyers requires a defence attorney to file a charge if he/she collects a claim by a client under detention, and to properly inform the client about the necessity to file a complaint;
(3) if a lawyer is informed by a client under detention that the same client suffered violence or offence by authorities, and does not take proper legal steps, the lawyer would commit the extremely serious criminal offence of infedele patrocinio (betrayal of the interest of client) besides breaching the Ethics Code;
(4) a defence attorney is also required to object any irregularity of breach of the code that could be suffered by the client, namely, in any particular case, if the applicant’s current claims had been made at the time, the lawyers should have denounced the breach of Procedure Code claiming that a prosecution interrogation had taken place (thus, that would mean breaching the Procedure code that prevents prosecution from questioning a suspect prior to his/her appearance before a judge)
So, in summary, no formal complaint ever seems to have been filed allowing local investigations to begin. And the failure to initiate the procedure for domestic remedy by the applicant on this claim could be a crime under Italian law if Knox had insisted on it.
And it would seem to render the request inadmissible on this point. It also undermines any possible credibility of the claim itself. Regardless of whoever dropped the ball here, lawyer or client, it does not bode well.
Monday, May 02, 2016
Revenge “On” The Knox: Judges Bruno And Marasca Of The Supreme Court Strike Back
Posted by Chimera
Judge Bruno the drafter of the seriously bizarre Fifth Chambers report “Who, me?!!!”
1. Overview Of The Post
We have posted both multi-part analyses of the Amanda Knox book (extended 2015 edition) and also multi-part analyses of the 2015 Supreme Court verdict attempting to apply closure to the case.
Primarily because they both make so much up and leave so much out, both efforts appear to Italian lawyers and observers and our own team to have fallen far short.
Worse, as I demonstrate here, Knox and the Supreme Court were not even on the same page. They used different arguments which tend to cancel one another out.
In effect the report of Judges Bruno and Marasca late in 2015 pulled the rug out from under Knox’s book published a few months before.
2. Arguments Of The Supreme Court
The final report from the 5th Chambers of Cassation was released in September 2015, several months late, with rumors swirling in Rome that it was proving a tough task.
Our five critique series were put together by (1) the Perugia prosecution, (2) Machiavelli, (3) Catnip, (4) James Raper (the longest of those four), and (5) in draft by Olleosnep.
From James Raper critique Part 1
The Fifth Chambers argued as follows:
1. The standard of “beyond any reasonable doubt” was not met due to insufficient and/or contradictory evidence - pursuant to Article 530, section 2 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure.
2. Multiple attackers upheld. Guede was guilty with others unknown.
3. The break-in in Romanelli’s room was staged.
4. Amanda Knox was present in the cottage at the time of the murder but there is insufficient evidence that she played a participatory role.
5. The DNA profile of Meredith Kercher on the knife and the DNA profile of Raffaele Sollecito on the bra clasp have “no probative or circumstantial relevance”
6. “Motive is not irrelevant” and motive was not established.
7. No selective cleaning.
8. No purpose would be served in remanding the case back to the 1st instance court of appeal (as had occurred on appeal against acquittal)
From James Raper Critique Part 5
The Fifth Chambers argued as follows:
1. Knox was present in the cottage at the time of the murder but in a non-participatory role. Very probably (if this is not a held fact) she had scrubbed Meredith’s blood off her hands in the small bathroom.
2. Sollecito was very probably there as well, but it cannot be known when.
3. There was certainly an assailant (and perhaps more than one) in addition to Guede.
4. There was a staging of the break-in in Filomena’s room.
While this seems (in a very tortuous way), to assert an “insufficient evidence” finding rather than an “innocence” finding, the findings of the 5th Chambers are now considered final, unless they are overturned.
That being said, these findings directly refute the bulk of Knox’s book “Waiting to be Heard”
3. Arguments of Amanda Knox
Our 12-part series taking apart the claims in Knox’s book can be found here.
(1) Chapter 5, 6: The Evening and Morning After Meredith Died
Knox Version (A): AK/RS were at his apartment, watching Amelie, smoking pot, reading Harry Potter and f***ing. AK returned to her home late the next morning.
Knox Version (B): AK was in the kitchen while PL was murdering Meredith
Knox Version (C): AK was in the kitchen while PL was murdering Meredith, and RS was probably there
Knox Version (D): AK has no clue what was going on, and doesn’t remember anything.
Version (A) is the story AK told in her book and on television—though the details are flexible. Versions (B), (C), and (D) are the 3 statements she made November 5th/6th.
However, the truth Bruno and Marasca think is closest to the truth (pun intended), is version (C), with Guede as the killer instead of PL.
Other courts: Pre-Trial Judge Micheli (October 2008), Trial Judge Massei (2009), Appeal Judge Nencini (2014) all found that Knox was not only involved, but that she personally killed Meredith. Even if you accept the Cassation ruling that AK wasn’t actually involved, the final ruling did place her at the crime scene, and RS probably so.
Bullshit level: COMPLETE
(2) Chapters 7, 8, 9: The Ensuing Investigation
AK goes on and on in WTBH about how she was trying to help the police. She complains about how she was subjected to repeated and very lengthy interviews. However, she never shared any of the insider information she had about that night. The police officers involved noted that she and RS seemed particularly unhelpful.
Bullshit level: COMPLETE
(3) Chapters 10, 11: The Knox Interrogation Hoax
AK goes on in great detail especially in Chapter 10 about how she was lured to the police station, and brutally interrogated. In her December 2013 email to Judge Nencini, she refers to it as “torture”.
Interesting how she remembers it with such lurid detail.
As AK points out, there is no recording or video
All of the officers involved give “very” different accounts
AK claims to be traumatized and have her memory go blank
AK’s performance was convincing enough to make Judge Claudia Matteini (November 2007) believe PL was the killer. But since then ....
(a) the 3 judge panel headed by Judge Massimo Ricciarelli (November 2007);
(b) the 5 judge Cassation panel headed by Judge Torquato Gemelli (April 2008);
(c) pre-trial Judge Paolo Micheli (October 2008);
(d) trial jury headed by Judge Giancarlo Massei (December 2009);
(e) appellate jury headed by Hellmann/Zanetti (October 2011);
(f) Cassation panel headed by Judge Chieffi (March 2013);
(g) appellate jury headed by Judge Alessandro Nencini (January 2014);
(h) Cassation panel headed by Bruno/Marasca (March 2015)
.... have ALL ruled that AK framed PL, and that she did it willingly, and wasn’t tricked or coerced.
Bullshit level: COMPLETE
(4) The Afterword: Everything After Hellmann’s Ruling
AK triumphantly declares that Cassation (2015) found her and RS innocent. But once again, AK releases her book prior to the Cassation report. Idiot.
AK does misrepresent far more than just the 2015 Cassation findings in the Afterword. More on that later.
Bullshit level: COMPLETE
(5) Understanding the Bruno/Marasca Ruling
At a minimum, Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and the Afterword of “Waiting to be Heard” are complete bullshit.
Considering that these bogus claims are repeated throughout the book, it can reasonably be inferred that much of the rest is made up as well.
This is not me talking. This is referencing the Bruno/Marasca ruling, which as it stands, is final.
(6) Author’s Note
This is a lot of speculation on my part, (as Andrew Gumbel would say “hearsay and speculation abound”), but feel free to comment
The B/M report can be understood in one word: finality. They don’t want any one else looking at it.
(A) B/M rule “insufficient evidence” rather than “innocent” hoping to placate the Italian public.
(B) B/M sabotage AK’s ECHR appeal chances, as they don’t want another court looking to carefully at it
(C) B/M ruling essentially says “just short of guilty” to stop AK/RS from crowing about their innocence.
(D) B/M ruling claims AK/RS lied and obstructed to ward off any potential wrongful imprisonment lawsuit.
(E) B/M do strongly imply AK/RS are guilty to try to give a “moral win” to the Kerchers.
(F) B/M appear to bend over backwards to acquit, trying to look “incompetent, at worst”, rather than corrupt.
(6) The problem is: Bruno and Marasca haven’t taken into account the personalities of everyone involved
(a) The Hellmann/Zanetti ruling (October 2011) stunk of corruption, so Italy would be immediately suspicious of anything remotely similar.
(b) AK’s ECHR appeal seems to warded off for now, but AK seems hell bent on going ahead anyway.
(c) AK/RS did start parading around again, and AK re-released her book
(d) RS and Papa Sollecito sued anyway.
(e) Far from giving a “moral win”, this ruling and the accompanying report just leave a bad taste.
(7) Bullshit in WTBH (Beyond Bruno/Marasca)
Chapter 1: Before Leaving Italy
Questions For Knox: Why The Huge Lie About Your ZERO Academic Intentions In Europe?
Chapter 2: Federico Martini (a.k.a. Cristiano)
US And UK Media Wrongly Attribute Italian Report Of Knox/Cocaine-Dealer Link To Trial Prosecutors
Multiple: Capanne Chapters
The Amanda Knox Book: Good Reporters Start To Surface Amanda Knox’s False Claims In Droves
Chapter 31-35: The Hellmann Appeal
A Summary Of The Cassazione Ruling On Annulment Of The Knox-Sollecito Appeal
4. Final Thoughts
I stand by my claim that WTBH is 90-95% bullshit.
Fair to say, Bruno and Marasca would likely agree.
Thursday, March 31, 2016
On April 26 Possible Sentences For Oggi For Publishing Defamations By Knox
Posted by Peter Quennell
Umberto Brindani, editor of Oggi, and Giangavino Sulas, veteran crime reporter
Outcome: OGGI caved, as it really had no defense (other than that Knox had extensively lied), and this was settled out of court.
This is still highly worth a read as it lists Knox’s false claims in Part 2 and all our rebuttals in Part 3.
OGGI seems to have steered clear of the case since. Smart move.
1. New Court Development In Italy
The Italian mafias have used three main weapons against the judiciary: bribes, slanders, and blowing them up.
As a result judges and prosecutors are protected in various ways. One is to make it a felony crime to maliciously defame them to try to throw trials off-course.
We are 1/3 of the way through Chimera’s elucidation of the 100 or so criminal felonies in Knox’s book, and the other two posts will follow next.
The first of what could be numerous trials of those who published them and repeated them is now approaching its climax.
This is the trial of Umberto Brindani, the editor of the weekly magazine Oggi, and Giangavino Sulas, a veteran crime reporter on his staff.
They have put up what amounts to zero defense, and on tuesday the chief prosecutor requested the judge to impose prison sentences of six years. Even if those sentences are minimised under Italian rules and no time will be served, each will still have a criminal record for life.
A guilty verdict bodes badly for Amanda Knox and her book agent Bob Barnett, her publishers, her lawyers, and her fellow-travelers, who could then all be easy targets for Italian prosecutors in future trials.
The foolish and uncomprehending Joel Simon of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, who knows nothing about WHY Italian prosecutors are protected from criminal defamations, could also find himself in the crosshairs.
Here below, from our posts of 12 May 2013, are Oggi’s paraphrasings of Knox’s claims (translation by Catnip) and our own rebuttals of those same claims.
2. Knox’s Defamatory Claims In Oggi
Amanda Knox: The American girl’s sensational story
Chilling. No other adjectives come to mind after having read Waiting to be Heard, finally released in the United States. An extremely detailed and very serious charge against the police and magistrates who conducted the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher.
Immediately after the crime, Amanda recounts, and for entire days and nights, they had interrogated the American girl and placed her under pressure to make her confess to a non-existent truth, without officially investigating her, denying her the assistance of a lawyer, telling her lies, even prohibiting her from going to the bathroom and giving her smacks so as to make her sign a confession clearly extorted with something similar to torture.
And now the situation is very simple. There are only two choices: either Amanda is writing lies, and as a consequence the police officers and magistrates are going to have to sue her for defamation; or else she is telling the truth, and so they are going to have to go, not without being sanctioned by the CSM [the magistrates’ governing body] and the top brass of the Police. The third possibility, which is to pretend that nothing has happened, would be shameful for the credibility of our judicial system.
Amanda Knox has written her Waiting to be Heard memoir with the sense of revulsion and of relief of someone who has escaped by a hair’s breadth from a legal disaster, but has got her sums wrong. Cassation has decided that the [appeal] proceedings have to be redone and the hearings should be (re)commencing in October before the Florence Court of Appeal.
In a USA Today interview, Ms Knox has not excluded the possibility of “returning to Italy to face this battle too”, but it would be a suicidal decision: it’s likely that the appeal will result in a conviction, and the Seattle girl will end up in the black hole from which she has already spent 1,427 days.
In this way Waiting to be Heard risks being the “film” on which Amanda’s last words are recorded about the Mystery of Perugia, her definitive version.
We have read a review copy. And we were dumbfounded. Waiting to be Heard is a diary that has the frenetic pace of a thriller, written in a dry prose (behind the scenes is the hand of Linda Kulman, a journalist at the Huffington Post), even “promoted” by Michiko Kakutani, long-time literary critic at the New York Times.
The most interesting part does not concern the Raffaele Sollecito love story (which Amanda reduces it to puppy love: “With the feeling, in hindsight, I knew that he… that we were still immature, more in love with love than with each other”), and whoever goes looking for salacious details about the three Italian boys Amanda had casual sex with, one night stands, will be frustrated (Ms Knox describes those enounters with the nonchalance of an entomologist disappointed with his experiments: “We undressed, we had sex, I got dressed again with a sense of emptiness”).
There are no scoops about the night of the murder and even the many vicissitudes endured during the 34,248 hours spent in Capanne prison ““ the [claimed] sexual molestations suffered under two guards, the unexpected kiss planted by a bisexual cellmate, the threats made by another two prisoners ““ remain on the backdrop, like colourful notations.
Because what is striking and upsetting, in the book, is the minute descriptions, based on her own diaries, on the case documents and on a prodigious memory, of how Ms Knox had been incriminated (or “nailed”).
COME IN KAFKA. A Kafkian account in which the extraordinary naivety of Amanda (the word naïve, ingénue, is the one which recurs most often in the 457 pages of the book) mixes with the strepitous wickedness of the investigators decided on “following a cold and irrational trail because they had nothing better in hand”.
Devour the first 14 chapters and ask yourself: is it possible that the Police and Italian justice work with such incompetence, ferocity, and disdain for the truth? You place yourself in her situation and you scare yourself: If it happened to me? You’re in two minds: is it a likely accusation, or a squalid calumny, the version of Amanda?
Because in reading it you discover that in the four days following the discovery of Meredith Kercher’s body (on 2 November 2007), Amanda was interrogated continuously, and without the least of procedural guarantees [=due process].
She changes status from witness to suspect without being aware of it.” No one had told me my rights, no one had told me that I could remain silent”, she writes. When she asked if she had the right to a lawyer, the Public Prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, had responded like this: “No, no, that will only worsen things: it would mean that you don’t want to help us”. Thus, the Public Prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini.
For a long period of time, Ms Knox, who at the time spoke and understood hardly any Italian at all, mistook him for the Mayor of Perugia, come to the police station to help her.
Then, with the passage of time and of the pages, the assessment changes: Mignini is a prosecutor “with a bizarre past”, investigated for abuse of office (he was convicted at first instance, but Cassation annulled the verdict on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction: the case will be held in Torino ““ ndr) and with the hunger to fabricate “strange stories to solve his cases”.
Mignini “is a madman who considers his career more important than my liberty or the truth about the killing of Meredith”. On the phone, the Perugian prosecutor reacts with aplomb: “First I will read the book and then I will consider it. Certainly, if it really calls me “˜mad’ or worse, I think I will file suit”.
BEING IN PRISON IS LIKE CAMPING Amanda goes looking. When the officers mysteriously bring her along to the crime scene inspection of the apartment below the one in which she and Meredith were living in, Ms Knox put on the shoe protectors and the white forensics gloves and called out Ta-dah! spreading her arms “as if I was at the start of a musical: I wanted to appear helpful”.
When they dragged her in handcuffs into Capanne Prison, she believed what the Police would have told her, and that was they would hide her for a couple of days to protect her (from the true killer, one presumes) and for unspecified bureaucratic reasons. “In my head I was camping: “˜This won’t last more than a week in the mountains’, I told myself,” writes Amanda.
They take her money off her, and her credit cards, licence and passport, and she draws strength from repeating to herself that “surely they’re not going to give me a uniform, seeing that I’m a special case and that I’ll be here for only a little while”.
But it’s the account of the notorious interrogation that takes the breath away. Around ten in the evening on her last day of freedom, Ms Knox accompanies Raffaele to the police station (he was called in, also without a lawyer, by the Police) and is thrown into a nightmare which she populates with many faces: there is Officer Rita Ficcara, who gives her two cuffs on the head (“To help you remember,” she would say); there’s another officer who advises her: “If you don’t help us, you’ll end up in prison for 30 years”; Mignini arrives and advises her not to call a lawyer; super-policewoman Monica Napoleoni dives in and bluffs: “Sollecito has dropped your alibi: he says that on the night of the murder you had left his apartment and that you had told him to lie to “˜cover you’”.
And a crescendo of yelling and intimidations that lasts from 11 at night until 5.45 in the morning. Seven hours “produce” two confessions that, exactly because they are made without a defence lawyer, cannot be used in the proceedings, but forever after “stain” the image of the accused Knox: Amanda places herself at the scene of the crime and accuses Patrick Lumumba.
RAFFAELE CONFIRMS THE ACCUSATIONS An account of the horror is confirmed by Sollecito in his memoir, Honor Bound, Raffaele writes of having heard “the police yelling at Amanda and then the cries and sobs of my girl, who was yelling “˜Help!’ in Italian in the other room”, and of having being threatened in his turn (“If you try to get up and go, I’ll punch you till you’ll bleed and I’ll kill you. I’ll leave you in a pool of blood”, another officer had whispered to him).
Published lines which have passed right under the radar of the Perugian investigators: “No legal action [against the interrogators] has been notified to us,” Franco Sollecito, Raffaele’s dad, tell us. For having recounted the sourness of her interrogation in court, Amanda was investigated for calunnia: the trial will take place in Florence. This one, too, will be a circumstantial case: it’s the word of two young people against that of the public prosecutor and the police.
The recording of the interrogation would have unveiled which side the truth stands on. But it has gone missing.
3. Our Rebuttals Of Knox’s Claims
- Knox was NOT interrogated for days and nights. She was put under no pressure in her brief witness interviews except possibly by Sollecito who had just called their latest alibi “a pack of lies”.
- Knox WAS officially investigated in depth, after she surprisingly “confessed” and placed herself and Patrick at the scene. Prior to that she’d been interviewed less than various others, who each had one consistent alibi.
- Knox herself pushed to make all three statements without a lawyer on the night of 5-6 November 2007 in which she claimed she went out from Sollecito’s house, met Patrick, and witnessed him killing Meredith.
- Far from Knox being denied a lawyer, discussions were stopped before the first statement and not resumed, in the later hearing she was formally warned she needed one; she signed a confirmation of this in front of witnesses.
- Prosecutor Mignini who Knox accuses of telling her a lawyer would hurt her prospects when she claims she asked for one was not even in the police station at that interview; he was at home.
- She was not prohibited from going to the bathroom. At trial, she testified she was treated well and was frequently offered refreshments. Her lawyers confirmed this was so.
- She was not given smacks by anyone. Over a dozen witnesses testified that she was treated well, broke into a conniption spontaneously, and thereafter was hard to stop talking.
- There is no evidence whatsoever that Knox was subject to “something similar to torture” and as mentioned above only Sollecito applied any pressure, not any of the police.
- There is nothing “suicidal” about returning to Italy to defend herself at the new appeal. Sollecito did. She risks an international arrest warrant and extradition if she doesn’t.
- There is no proof except for her own claims of sexual molestations in prison; she is a known serial liar; and she stands out for an extreme willingness to talk and write about sex.
- Many people have testified she was treated well in prison: her own lawyers, a member of parliament, and visitors from the US Embassy were among them; she herself wrote that it was okay.
- She may have based her account on her diaries and “prodigious memory” but the obviously false accusation against the prosecutor suggests that much of the book was made up.
- The investigators had a great deal of evidence against Knox in hand, not nothing, and they were not ever faulted for any action; they helped to put on a formidable case at trial in 2009.
- “Police and Italian justice work with such incompetence, ferocity, and disdain for the truth” is contradicted by a very complete record prior to trial which was praised by the Supreme Court.
- Mr Mignini has NO bizarre past at all. He is widely known to be careful and fair. He would not have been just promoted to first Deputy Prosecutor General of Umbria otherwise.
- He was put on trial by a rogue prosecutor desperate to protect his own back from Mignini’s investigations; the Supreme Court has killed the trumped up case dead.
- There was nothing “mysterious” about Knox being taken to the crime scene to see if any knives were gone, but her wailing panic when she saw the knives was really “mysterious”.
- Knox never thought she was in prison for her own protection; she had signed an agreement at the 5:00 am interview confirming she did know why she was being held.
- Monica Napoleoni did not “bluff” that Sollecito had just trashed their joint alibi; he actually did so, because his phone records incriminated him; he agreed to that in writing.
- There was no crescendo of “yelling and intimidations that lasts from 11 at night until 5.45”. There were two relatively brief sessions. Knox did most of the talking, named seven possible perps, and drew maps.
- There was zero legal requirement to record the recap/summary interview, no recording has “gone missing” and many officers present testified to a single “truth” about what happened.
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Amazon Reviews: Are Knox PR’s 1000 Dishonest Paid Reviews Losing Traction?
Posted by Our Main Posters
Amazon reader reviews may or may not dictate how the sales of a book make out.
Sales of the Sollecito and Knox books have been way below expectations despite dozens of glowing reviews - and by the way numerous repeats of the hoaxes and defamations.
At the same time sales of objective books on the facts of the case and the psychologies have been meeting expectations despite the absence of advertising or a paid-for PR campaign.
Here are some of the spontaneous review for the two books “Deceit” and “Dark Matter” by Nick van der Leek and Lisa Wilson.
By atlantic 1 “atlantic1” on June 3, 2015
This is an exceptionally-well-written, complex (but lucid and fast-paced) account of the murder of Meredith Kercher (a British exchange student) in Perugia, Italy, and the unconvincing behavior and at times multiple stories of the main suspects: Amanda Knox (the American roommate), Raffaele Sollecito (Knox’s Italian boyfriend at the time of the murder), and Rudy Guede (Ivory Coast native adopted by an Italian family, currently the only one serving time in Italy for the murder).
Other characters are prominently featured, along with a lot of background information from reputable sources.
What I really liked about the book is that many links throughout the text (in the Kindle edition that I purchased) send the reader to outside documents (e.g., photographs) that would otherwise take a while to research (warning: some visuals are pretty disturbing, but one always has the option of not clicking on the link).
The book has a fluid style and is absolutely engrossing, I highly recommend it.
By Leigh on June 8, 2015
Nick has done a superb job in ‘Deceit’ of reviewing, combining, comparing, and contrasting vast amounts of information from many different sources on Meredith Kercher’s case. As someone who has followed anything and everything of substance I could find on the case since 2007—I appreciate his massive effort, and certainly agree, some amount of speculation is required. What is especially effective about Nick’s speculations is that they are based on confirmed ‘knowns’ about the case from genuine sources such as investigations, witness testimony, interviews with Meredith’s friends, housemates, and others who knew AK (rarely spell out AK’s name since I hold extreme animus for that wrongly acquitted psychopath!).
While I don’t agree with every speculation of Nick’s—I have many of my own—I do appreciate that he examines what’s real. For everyone trying to follow the case, it’s been difficult to sift through the exhaustive amount of subterfuge, deceit, and duplicity from rabid AK fan club members, a professional ‘damage-control’ PR / media manipulation machine, lazy mainstream US media lapdogs, and AK’s lying family—people and organizations who clearly would stop at nothing to defend their favorite two murderers. The worst of them always show up to deliberately hurl their vile insults and spew hatred at anyone who doesn’t howl about the great Italian conspiracy perpetrated against the murderer AK, or who don’t constantly drool like a fool over AK’s beauty and brilliance. The AK jerks are certainly out in force at trying to bring down this book—they try and destroy anyone who seeks to get the truth out about Meredith’s murder and AK’s direct involvement in her death.
By S. Gleason on June 7, 2015
Thank you for reminding people of the truth Nick. Wonderful book. A breath of fresh air. Please don’t listen to propaganda being posted here in the reviews. Listen to the abundant case evidence against all three. Justice for Meredith and her family.
By M Thomson “Elizabeth” on June 2, 2015
This book is a interesting and fast paced read. Suspicion builds naturally as the author follows the two defendants in the hours before and the murder. Their actions and changing alibis are well documented here. Amanda Knox falsely accused Patrick Lumumba in a very short time just after learning Sollecito said she went out that night. I wonder if the one star reviewers would rather you not know this.
By Margaret Ganong on May 25, 2015
The author has a good grasp of the facts and makes a case that is far more convincing than the two recently and bafflingly acquitted Knox and Sollecito have ever been able to do. Indeed, one of the most compelling reasons to read this book is for its effort to set the written accounts of Knox and Sollecito side by side, revealing the many ways they don’t add up and are at odds with one another.
By Amazon Customer on May 25, 2015
Thoroughly enjoyed this book. I cannot wait for the next one in the series. There HAD to be more to this murder ... and I am now sure that there was more than one person involved. Poor Meredith ’ s family having to live with this. I just love the narrative that makes Nick’s books SO enjoyable.
By kris arnason on May 26, 2015
Nick van der Leek has written an extremely cohesive narrative about the tragic Meredith Kercher case. The author takes you through what likely happened that horrific night, and why Amanda Knox & Raffaele Sollecito’s stories don’t add up, all the while providing the reader with hundreds and hundreds of hyperlinked images, news reports, and audio clips, etc. that have been consolidated, collected and embedded in this one narrative. Everything sourced, right at your fingertips. A must read for people like me who have followed this case from the beginning and folks just getting interested and want to learn all they can. Thanks Nick! Looking forward to more from you about this case!
By Caroline on July 5, 2015
I bought this book because of the reviews! I’ve never done that before but I’m so intrigued by the almost angry tone to all of these one star reviews. It just makes me wonder if a nerve was hit. Somebody’s hiding something maybe? Anyway, I just have to read it now. Will come back with full review when I’m done.
By Amazon Customer on June 1, 2015
Finally! An honest book of what really happened to Meredith Kercher! Can Nick interview AK & RS on TV in the USA? I am sure he would ask REAL questions!
By Jeff “jeffski” on May 26, 2015
It is a disgrace that Amazon allows these Amanda Knox trolls a platform to spread hate and abuse people simply because they write a review for a book that these people disagree with. Amazon must act on these known frauds/cyber bullies who suppress and insult/abuse people on forums/Comments section and social media.
This book is a excellent read and obviously hits a nerve with Knox’s followers as the negative comments and abuse/insults aimed at author prove. Please look beyond the rent a hate mob and read the book and come to your own conclusion.
By Columbo on May 25, 2015
This is an excellent true crime story with highly accurate and precise detail of how Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede all killed Meredith Kercher. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to know the truth of this case in a very revealing and fast page turning account of what really happened in this case.
By Michela on May 30, 2015
Excellent read.
By Maria Chinnapan on May 26, 2015
A great read!, very down to earth appraisal of what may have happened. No nonsense and to the point
By MCD on May 31, 2015
Again this formidable true crime writer has come up trumps with an incredibly well researched interrogation of a crime that continues to baffle the world. The detailed sequence of events is painstakingly pieced together. I had only superficially followed this case when the news initially broke so have been fascinated by this book which has filled in many gaps and highlighted the inconsistencies in the behaviour of Amanda Knox and her boyfriend, who said what, who lied about what, etc.
In addition to the bare bones of the case, the author’s classic approach is the use true crime as a melting pot of evil and the extremes of human nature. He asks unsettling questions about human behaviour, herd mentality, apathy and our place in society - a society where a crime like this one can and does take place and despite all the investigation, the waters are still muddied in the deeper pools.
For those who appreciate that truth is stranger than fiction and like to delve deeper into these cases, the author brings it all together for you, with a dollop of enriching ‘food for thought’.
By Truth Seeker on May 26, 2015
It is the behavioural evidence which has always bothered me about this case, and it has always seemed that everything said/done by the ex defendants had to be explained away or justified. The author has cross referenced the two versions written by them in their memorials, and needless to say, there are major discrepancies.
Unless we expose the inconsistencies, then the two will have literally got away with murder. Legally this may be the case, but analysis provided by this book goes some way to keeping the memory of Meredith honoured, and ensuring that there are some still fighting for justice for her. Do buy the book- it has none of the obfuscation and image management that we have been subject to in the past years.
By Ipsos Maati on May 30, 2015
Why is Amanda Knox panicked about this book, and why did she try to have it banned?
Deceit shines light on the truth about the murder of Meredith Kercher, and the dishonest effort to free her.
Exonerated does not mean “innocent”.
By elizabeth on May 26, 2015
Deceit is a fascinating read no matter where you stand on the recent verdict. Fast paced but manages to bring a cohesive dialogue to days before and after the murder
By A. Futo “911 coincidence analyst” on May 26, 2015
Well written book by author Nick van der Leek, with all new research and links to original reporting and publicly available information about the murder Of Meredith Kercher.
Is Amanda Knox, the main suspect in the case, guilty of murdering her room mate as many believe, or was she railroaded by the prosecution, as claimed by her friends and family?
The author skilfully navigates the questions of motive, means, and evidence, starting with the premise that this is a case that begins with and is marked by many layers of deceit, as Knox first accuses an innocent man, Patrick Lumumba, then must lie and keep on lying to distance herself from the crime she implicates herself with by admitting to her presence at the scene.
Her co-accused, Raffaele Sollecito withdraws then confirm her alibi, and the other person evidence shows was involved in the sexual assault that preceded the murder, Rudy Guede, also tries to distance himself by running away then denying her involvement, then accusing the two of them in a letter to the media.
The author’s hypothesis of what happened is based on a finely rendered psychological evaluation of Amanda Knox. No matter what the final decision will be, this is a case that will be discussed for many years to come. I look forward to his next book of the series.
By Leigh on June 25, 2015
After more than 7 years of following Meredith Kercher’s murder case closely as the saga has wound through the arcane Italian justice system, I am completely convinced that AK & RS are her two other murderers who have ultimately escaped justice. Their final acquittal has not changed anything for me. Yet I’ve been asked by others who have more than a slight interest as to why is it I’m so certain, what’s your 3-minute elevator speech? Well, an elevator speech doesn’t exist, but in ‘Dark Matter’ and its prequel, ‘Deceit’ and I hope, in more follow-up e-books on this case, a reader can get as close as possible to a comprehensive full-view, what-happened, tell-me-everything explanation without having to slog through over 1,000 pages of trial documents translated from original Italian and endless arguments from two deeply entrenched opposing sides. Trying to read through it all could easily take most of an interested person’s discretionary time for a lengthy period of their lives. And who needs that, right?
What’s special about ‘Dark Matter’ is how easy it is to read, how well the authors guide readers through crucial evidence while using a technique borrowed from Socrates—keep asking yourself common sense questions as you’re reading. ‘Dark Matter’ examines the early case from a big picture view—the most prominent evidence, the investigation, what happened in days before, and after Meredith’s murder, and what was the behavior like of those near Meredith? Then go further, examine what AK & RS wrote in their own books about the murder. Do they agree with each other or give themselves away by not agreeing in crucial areas? ‘Dark Matter’ creates these scenes while assisting readers in finding their own answers.
‘Dark Matter’ examines what is important to know, then asks readers to consider: ‘does it make sense?’ or ‘were these actions meant to deceive and lead investigators astray?’ ‘is there an innocent explanation?’ ‘does unusual behavior indicate guilt, youthful carelessness, or something else?’ ‘Dark Matter’ lays out salient evidence found during investigations, and continues to encourage readers to question its importance: ‘where does this evidence naturally lead?’ ‘can we tie the evidence and the behavior together to draw conclusions, and how do we do that?’
‘Dark Matter’ is exactly how I’d want someone to guide me through an enormous case if didn’t know much about it. Don’t tell me what to think, don’t try to persuade me towards your view—show me what is important to know—and I’ll decide for myself; in this, both authors excel.
One area where I completely disagree with the authors is their, what appears to be, complete acceptance of nonsense created by AK’s professional Seattle-based propaganda machine and American author Douglas Preston—these two parties had their own reasons to intentionally malign and destroy Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini. Their agendas were obvious to truth seekers—one sought to do ‘damage control and create a villain to take attention away from AK,’ the other, to leverage the murder to create interest in his own book.
Unfortunately this propaganda proved to be extremely effective, and was picked up by most US media outlets that then ran with the deception. Those who know the case from the pro-justice side are keenly aware of how this vicious, deceitful campaign against the prosecutor convinced tens of millions of Americans AK was an innocent who was framed. I hope the authors make an effort to learn how completely they have been deceived and correct these mistakes in future books in this series.
By JJ on July 3, 2005
Great book!! Highly recommended
By Sarah Breen on June 30, 2015
Research and writing are top notch! True investigative journalism into this controversial subject.
By Nicole church on June 27, 2015
I loved your book-you guys definitely did your research and systematically take the reader though some of the most damning evidence in this case. I was impressed at how you tied it all in with the theme of dark matter- very well done and thought provoking.
No need to apologize for your narrative;yes there are some f bombs but it made me respect you more for being authentic and your sarcasm is justified when it comes to this case. Like you both said it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. You do a great job calling bulls*** on both murderers using example after example from their own words(in court,interviews,diaries,etc)
I am sure this book has the murderers supporters all in a tizzy- it is easy to spot their attempts to sabotage your deservedly 5 star reviews with their 1 stars. Just look for lots of exclamation points and words in all caps then move right along to the honest reviews that will really help you decide if this book is worth reading- and it certainly is.
Looking forward to your next book and thank you for being the stars that shine light on the truth 😊
By Columbo on June 26, 2015
Another really great book by Lisa Wilson and Nick van der Leek. In this easy to read and compelling book the key events, character aspects of Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede and the most significant evidence against them are all objectively weighed and analyzed. Additionally, in a very balanced view, the case for Amanda Knox as promoted by her supporters is also reviewed so readers can make up their own minds. But there is only one conclusion: all three killers murdered Meredith Kercher (RIP). I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to know even more about this case.
By kris arnason on July 5, 2015
Dark Matter is a must read for everyone wanting to know more about the murder of Meredith Kercher. Those who believed in the lies & cover up of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s multi million dollar PR campaigns will have their eyes opened after reading this excellent book.
By JJ “jj0388” on July 3, 2015
great book!! highly recommended
By A. Futo “911 coincidence analyst”
I read many crime books, and this is one of the really good ones on the case. Amanda Knox’s strange behavior and lies, accusing Patrick Lumumba, her relationship with Meredith, all reflected in the “Dark Matter” of her psychology.She simply is not very believable in her book, and her media appearances have been disasters which is why she’s withdrawn in hiding. Her father hired a PR firm to manage her image, and in the process influenced many sad, gullible people who still try to negate any criticism. Even though Amanda Knox has ‘won’ her case, why are they still posting nonsensical, abusive reviews of a book they never read?
One example, but this is important to me. Her father said that Meredith gained advanced three levels in karate and would not have gone without a struggle. A testimony to her character, but a reviewer writes “that’s an orange belt, beginner’s level”. Sorry, but the people who loved her say she would have fought to the end. So why the lack of defensive wounds, if she was being restrained by only one person?
In the struggle, she managed to injure Amanda Knox, who left her blood behind in the crime scene. (A bloody nose, ear stud pulled out? Left her lamp behind in the room to assist cleaning?) She was photographed with a scrape on her neck, and the police photograph taken on arrest shows the long scratch which she only partially covered with makeup on November 02. Her adoring fans call that a “hickey”, lol. Perhaps Lisa Wilson can collect these reviews as insight into their “Dark Matter” as well?
By GH2006 on June 22, 2015
This book is a perceptive analysis of the evidence in the murder case of Meredith Kercher. Nick van der Leek and Lisa Wilson take you through the court documents, statements made by the suspects as well as the DNA evidence among other things, which reveal the many lies and obfuscations by the public relations firm hired by the defendants as well as the ob-knox-ious murder-supporters who attack anyone who writes about the truth of this crime. (Shown by the flock of 1 star comments with long venomous attacks by haters who haven’t even read the book.)
Written with the same interesting, insightful, and at times entertaining way van der Leek and Wilson hook the reader in from beginning to end. I couldn’t pull myself away from this book that Nick generously gifted to me because this is not about making a profit for them but in getting the truth out there! (In stark contrast to the defendants who made millions selling their version of the crime.) Oh! And this book also shines a light on the way Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito obscure the truth in their own books. That was very interesting as well! I also enjoyed the first book DECEIT and looking forward to the next book! TY
By Bibliophile on June 21, 2015
Awesome humdinger of a book. This book will tell you the truth!
Friday, June 26, 2015
What No-Show Amanda Knox SHOULD Have Emailed Judge Nencini As Truthful Testimony in December 2013
Posted by Chimera
As the real thing really didnt work any better for Knox…
As is well known, Amanda Knox refused to attend her own appeal in Florence in 2013/2014.
This was a defence appeal by Knox herself and Sollecito against the 2009 conviction by Judge Giancarlo Massei’s trial court. It was not a new trial, or a retrial, or even a prosecution appeal. It was an appeal DEMANDED by Knox and Sollecito.
While Knox refused to attend, she did send a long, rambling email to Lead Judge Nencini. Judge Nencini tartly read out the email in court, and remarked that she could have delivered this in person and answered questions if she wanted it credibly on the record - after all, Sollecito was sitting right there and not scared out of his wits.
Kudos to fellow main posters Finn MacCool and SeekingUnderstanding for their original and well done posts on this ‘‘submission’‘
With a bit of fact checking, Knox’s email could have looked to the court and the media more like this. Enjoy.
Court of Appeals of Florence section II Assise Proc. Pen, 11113
Letter sent to attorneys Carlo Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga via email Seattle, 15 December 2013
Attn: Honorable Court of Appeals of Florence
1. I have no doubt that my lawyers have explained and demonstrated the important facts of this case that prove my innocence and discredit the unjustified accusations of the prosecution and civil parties. I seek not to supplant their work; rather, even though I am not present to take part in this current phase of the judicial process, I feel compelled to share my own perspective as a six””year-long defendant and causation of Meredith’s injustice.
2. The Court has access to my previous declarations, and please disregard that whole ‘‘aggravated calunnia’’ in which Cassation says i framed Patrick to divert attention, or that pending calunnia charge claiming I falsely accused the police to sabotage the court proceedings. I trust you will not be blinded by these things to come to this verdict. I must repeat: I am innocent. Because repeating it will help dissuade you from studying my lies too carefully.
3. According to my lawyers: I am not a murderer, I am not a rapist, I am not a thief or a plotter or an instigator, at least not until Cassation signs off on it. I did not kill Meredith or take part in her murder or have any prior or special knowledge of what occurred that night, (other than screaming, slit throat, and that the body was moved). I was not there for part of the time, and had nothing to do with it.
4. I am not present in the courtroom because I am afraid. Frederico Martini is probably still pissed that I gave him up; the court and jail officials don’t like my book; and I think there is still an open warrant on me for calunnia. Also, without any employment or housing references, staying here may be tricky. I have faith in your judgement, but am worried you are so poor a judge you will be blinded my the Prosecution’s vehemence. I remember Judge Micheli: he was the wise Judge who found Guede guilty; he was the idiot Judge who ordered Raffaele and I to stand trial as accomplices.
5. My life being on the line, at least until I get parole, and having with others already suffered too much, I’ve rehearsed this story and attentively followed this process and gleaned the following facts that have emerged from the development of this case that I beg you not to dismiss when making your judgement:
6. No physical evidence places me in Meredith “˜s bedroom, the scene of the crime, because I define only that as the crime scene. My DNA mixed with Meredith’s was in the bathroom and Filomena’s room, not Meredith’s. Those bloody footprints cleaned away were in the hallway, not Meredith’s room. Raffaele had one knife, and this other was at his flat, neither of which is Meredith’s room. My lamp on Meredith’s floor had no fingerprints on it, and does not implicate me. That DNA on Merdith’s bra, and bloody footprint on the bathmat only implicates my alibi witness (who refuses to be questioned), not me. Those false alibis, false accusations, details I know about the crime, and phone records are not physical evidence, and did not happen in Meredith’s bedroom. Those ‘‘eyewitnesses’’ the Prosecution produced are not forensic evidence, and do not place me in Meredith’s room.
7. Meredith’s murderer left ample evidence of his presence in the brutal scenario, we made sure of that. Heck, the police couldn’t even find my fingerprints in my own bedroom.
8. No evidence places me in the same brutal scenario, again, which I restrict to Meredith’s bedroom, and only actual physical evidence. The prosecution has failed to explain how—with these restrictions—I could have participated in the aggression and murder””to have been the one to fatally wound Meredith””without leaving any genetic trace of myself. Just because i spend a lot of time talking about it, and am a C.S.I. fan, doesn’t mean I know how to remove evidence. That is because it is impossible. It is impossible to identify and destroy all genetic traces of myself in a crime scene and retain all genetic traces of another individual, or so C.S.I. has taught me. Either I was there, or I wasn’t. My analysis of the crime scene answers this question: I wasn’t there.
9. My interrogation was illegal and produced a false “confession” that demonstrated my non-knowledge of the crime- The subsequent memoriali, for which I was wrongfully found guilty of slander, did not further accuse but rather recanted that false “confession.” Yes, I wrote out a false ‘‘confession’’ that accuses someone else. Just as I testified to the prosecutor in prison and to my family members in prison when our conversations were being recorded without my knowledge. Dammit, give me some privacy.
10. My behavior after the discovery of the murder indicates my innocence, if you think creatively enough. I did not flee Italy when I had the chance, because (in my November 4th email), the police wouldn’t let me leave. I stayed in Perugia and was at the police’s beck and call trying to think of answers for over 50 hours in four days, convinced that I could help them find the murderer, or at least someone who was ‘‘close enough’‘. I never thought or imagined that repeatedly changing my story would fuel their suspicions. I did not hide myself or my feelings: when I needed sex, Rafael ‘‘embraced’’ me; when I was scared of being exposed, I cried; when I was angry that it wasn’t working, I swore and made insensitive remarks; when I was shocked, I paced or sat in silence, at least until I could find a new ‘‘best truth’‘; when I was trying to help, I evaded questions, consoled Meredith’s friends, especially her male friends, and tried to keep a positive attitude that this would blow over.
11. Upon entering the questura I had no understanding of my legal position, accompanying Raffaele to a witness summary session which I was not invited to. 20””years old and alone in a foreign country, I was, legally speaking, innocent and never expected to be suspected and subjugated to torture, and I wasn’t. I was told I was a witness, then after I placed myself at the crime scene I was told I was a suspect. I was questioned for a prolonged period in the middle of the night and in Italian, a language I barely knew, and that questioning includes the time I was sleeping or getting tea. I denied legal counsel- still The Court of Cassation deemed the interrogation and the statements produced from it was inadmissible. In my memoir, WTBH; I was lied to, yelled at, threatened, slapped twice on the back of the head. I told myself I had witnessed the murder and was suffering from amnesia. I told myself that if I didn’t succeed in ‘‘remembering’’ what happened to Meredith that night, I would never see my family again. I browbeat myself into confusion and despair, to sell to the media at a later date. When you berate, intimidate, lie to, threaten, confuse, and coerce someone in believing they are wrong, you are not going to find the truth, but again, that is not what happened here.
12. The police used tea and kindness to coerce me into signing a false “confession” that was without sense and should never have been considered a legitimate investigative lead. In this fragmentary and confused statement the police identified Patrick Lumumba as the murderer because we had exchanged text messages, the meaning of which I let the police wrongfully interpret (”˜Civediamo piu tardi. Buona serata’). The statement lacked a clear sequence of events, corroboration with any physical evidence, and fundamental information like: how and why the murder took place, if anyone else was present or involved, what happened afterward””it supplied partial, contradictory information and as the investigators would discover a little later, when Patrick Lumumba’s defense lawyer produced proof of him incontestable alibi, it was obviously inaccurate and unreliable. After over 50 hours of rehearsing the questioning over four days, I was mentally exhausted and I was confused.
13. This coerced and illegitimate statement, which I dreamed up, was used by the police to arrest and detain a clearly innocent man with an iron-clad alibi with whom I had a friendly professional relationship, (at least until I destroyed his life). This coerced and illegitimate statement was used to convict me of slander. Judge Hellmann saw that this statement was coerced, and threw out my calunnia conviction .... I mean he increased the sentence .... never mind.The prosecution and civil parties are accusing and blaming me, a result of their own overreaching.
14. Experience, case studies, and the law recognize that one may be coerced into giving a false"confession” because of torture. I’m not sure why this applies to my case, but damn, it sure sounds impressive.
15. This is a universal problem. According to the National Registry of Exoneration, in the United States 78% of wrongful murder convictions that are eventually overturned because of exonerating forensic evidence involved false “confessions.” Almost 8 in 10 wrongfully convicted persons were coerced by police into implicating themselves and others in murder. I am not alone: Susan Smith and Casey Anthony ‘‘falsely confessed’’ that other people did it too. And exonerating forensic evidence is often as simple as no trace of the wrongfully convicted person at the scene of the crime, but rather the genetic and forensic traces of a different guilty party””just like every piece of forensic evidence identifies not me, but Rudy Guide.
16. In the brief time Meredith and I were roommates and friends we never fought. Roommates, not friends.
17. Meredith was my friend, not that I was her friend. She was kind to me, helpful, generous, fun, and in retrospect, I should have been more of the same. She never criticized me. She never gave me so much as a dirty look, even as I left the place a mess, and even when I flirted with her boyfriend, or she took my job at the bar.
18. But the prosecution claims that a rift was created between Meredith and I because of cleanliness. This is a distortion of the facts. Please refer to the testimonies of my housemaster and Meredith’s British friends. None of them ever witnessed or heard about Meredith and I fighting, arguing, disliking each other. None of them ever claimed Meredith was a confrontational clean-freak, or I a confrontational slob. Laura Masotho testified that both Meredith and I only occasionally cleaned, whereas she and Filomena Romanelli were more concerned with cleanliness. Meredith’s British friends testified that Meredith had once told them that she felt a little uncomfortable about finding the right words to kindly talk tome, her new roommate, about cleanliness in the bathroom we shared. The prosecution would have you believe this is motivation for murder. But this is a terrifying distortion of the facts, as proving motive it not necessary—anywhere.
19. I did not carry around Rafael’s kitchen knife. That’s what men are for, to do the lifting for me.
20. This claim by the prosecution, crucial to their theory, is uncorroborated by any physical evidence or witness testimony. I didn’t fear the streets of Perugia and didn’t need to carry around with me a large, cumbersome weapon which would have ripped my cloth book bag to shreds. My book bag showed no signs of having carried a bloody weapon. The claim that he would have insisted I carry a large chef’s knife is not just senseless, but a disturbing indication of how willing the prosecution is to defy objectivity and reason in order to sustain a mistaken and disproven theory. Yes, i can positively disprove a theory I know nothing about.
21. It is yet another piece of invented “evidence”, another circumstance of theory fabricated to order, because having discovered nothing else, the prosecution could only invent: phone records, false alibis, false statements, false accusations.
22. I had no Contact with Rudy Guide, even though I mention in my book having seen him twice, and a third time in the next paragraph.
23. Like many youth in Perugia, I had once crossed paths with Rudy Guide. He played basketball with the young men who lived in the apartment below us. Meredith and I had been introduced to him together. Perhaps I had seen him amongst the swarms of students who crowded the Perugian streets and pubs in the evenings, but that was it. We didn’t have each other’s phone number, we didn’t meet in private, we weren’t acquaintances. I never bought drugs from Rudy Guide or anyone else. I was having sex with Federico for drugs, which isn’t the same thing. The phone records show no connection. There are no witnesses who place us together, except my statement here. The prosecution claims I convinced Rudy Guide to commit rape and murder, completely ignoring the fact that we didn’t even speak the same language. He has lived in Perguia for 15 years, and I am a student of Italian. Once again, the prosecution is relying upon a disturbing and unacceptable pattern of distortion of the objective evidence.
24. I am not a psychopath. That evaluation in 2008 was unfair, as I didn’t get a chance to prepare my spontaneous answers.
25. There is no short list to the malicious and unfounded slanders I have enjoyed over the course of this legal process. In trial, in the media I have been called no less than:
“Conniving; manipulating; man””eater; narcissist; enchantress; duplicitous; adulterer; drug addict; an explosive mix of drugs, sex, and alcohol; dirty; witch; murderer; slanderer; demon; depraved; imposter; promiscuous; succubus; evil; dead inside; pervert; dissolute; a wolf in sheep’s clothing; rapist; thief; reeking of sex; Judas; she-devil;
26. I have never demonstrated anti-social, aggressive, violent, or behavior. Throwing rocks at cars, writing rape stories, and staging break ins are not violent or anti-social. I am not addicted to sex or drugs. In fact, Federico Martini hasn’t given me any since I was arrested. Upon my arrest I was tested for drugs and the results were negative. I am not a split-personality One does not adopt behavior spontaneously.
27. This is a fantasy. This is uncorroborated by any objective evidence or testimony. The prosecution and civil parties created and pursued this character assassination because they have nothing else to show you. They have neither proof, nor logic, nor the facts on their side. They only have their ‘‘evidence’’ against me, and my personal opinions about them. They want you to think I’m a monster because I am telling you they think I am a monster. it is easy to condemn a monster. It is easy to dismiss a monster’s defense as deception. But the prosecution and civil parties think I’m both severely mistaken and wrong. I have condemned them without proof of wrongdoing, and I seek to convince you to condemn them without proof of wrongdoing.
28. If the prosecution truly had a case against me, there would be no need for these theatrics. Never mind that this is my own appeal, and I ‘‘should’’ be demonstrating why the 2009 trial verdict is unjust. If I had a case, there would be no need for smoke and mirrors to distract you from the mountains of physical evidence against me. But because this evidence exists that proves my guilt, I would seek to deceive you with these impassioned, but completely inaccurate and unjustified pronouncements. Because I am not a murderer (yet), I would seek to mislead you into convicting me by charging your emotions, by painting me as an innocent until proven guilty, but not as a monster.
29. The prosecution and civil parties are committing injustices against the Kerchers because they cannot bring themselves to admit, even to themselves, that they’ve made a terrible mistake, namely, that the murder was premeditated. Again, it is my own appeal, but they are persecuting me.
30. The Court has seen that the prosecution and civil parties will not hear criticism of their mistakes, by people who won’t attend their appeal.
31. The Court has seen that the prosecution jumped to conclusions at the very start of their investigation: they interrogated and arrested innocent people and claimed “Case Closed"before any evidence could be analyzed, before bothering to check alibis. As proof of this, they called Raffaele to the police station (at his leisure), to clear up discrepencies in his alibi. Then when he claimed I lied, Rita Ficarra then asked me for an explanation. Those brutes! Then they hauled in Patrick just because in ‘‘confessed’’ several times that he did it.
32. The prosecutor and investigators were under tremendous pressure to solve the mystery of what happened to Meredith as soon as possible. The local and International media was breathing down the necks of these detectives. Their reputations and careers were to be made or broken. In spite of that, they still saw my mistakes. Under pressure, they admitted to as few mistakes as possible and committed themselves to a theory founded upon disproving my mistakes.
33. Had they not jumped to conclusions based on nothing but Raffaele’s changing alibi and my false accusations, they would have discovered definitive and undeniable evidence of not Patrick Lumumba, but of Rudy Guede, Raffaele Sollecito, and Amanda Knox. We would not be here over six years later debating clues my lawyers claim are inconclusive and unreliable. Had we plead guilty we would have been spared the cost, anguish and suffering, not only of Raffaele’s and my family, but especially of Meredith’s family as well.
34. My accusations are unworthy of judicial or public confidence. In over six years I have failed to provide a consistent, evidence-driven, corroborated theory of the crime, but would nevertheless argue that you should not take my life away. I beg you to see through the ‘‘facts’’ and ‘‘reason’’ of what I say. I am innocent. Raffaele is innocent. Meredith and her family deserve the ‘‘truth’‘. Please put an end to this great and prolonged injustice for them.
in faith,
Amanda Marie Knox
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Updates: Sollecito’s Trial For Vilipendio And Diffamazione, Knox’s Trial For Calunnia #2
Posted by Peter Quennell
Knox and Sollecito have each been indicted in Florence BY PROSECUTORS on charges that bear no resemblance to UK or US slander or libel cases.
They are each essentially charged for lying to poison public opinion against officials, and Sollecito against the system, to try to win themselves illegal breaks at their murder trial and appeals. Knox in court in 2009, and Sollecito in his book in 2012.
The weekly magazine Oggi is also on trial for jubilantly publishing some of Knox’s numerous lies.
Yesterday in a Florence court a new court translation of the passages from Sollecito’s book fully quoted here were accepted by the presiding judge. They differed little if at all from what the prosecutor filed last year and brought the defenses no joy. Right now both the defenses seem stuck.
And on June 9th the calunnia trial against Knox will start in a Florence court. It would be smart for her to be there, as Sollecito usually is. As mentioned above, Knox is already indicted.
It is not clear who her lawyers will be. Sollecito had to field a new team. Ghirga and Dalla Vedova both helped Knox with her defamatory book and with her defamatory email to Judge Nencini in December 2013 in which Knox ludicrously claimed she had been tortured (for the mundane truth read here) and like Bongiorno and Maori they could feel they have conflicts here.
On June 16 Dr Mignini will testify in the Oggi trial in Bergamo north-east of Milan where Oggi is based against the editor Umberto Brindani and the reporter Giangavino Sulas for publishing illegal claims made in Knox’s 2013 book.
At that hearing Knox’s book may finally become the subject of charges on the same lines as Sollecito’s book. Italian legal opinion is not supportive of the pair or the sleazy moves that led to Cassation giving them a break
That break looks increasingly temporary now. Sollecito could face big fines and Knox could face up to six years. Brighter bulbs would have realized it is best not to confront Italian courts.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Knox Interrogation Hoax #18: Final Pre-Trial Opportunities Which Knox Flunked
Posted by Our Main Posters
Image of Judge Micheli who presided over the hearings that remanded Knox to trial.
1. Overview Of The Interrogation Hoax Series
In Post #1 there’s a long summary of what various courts concluded in sentencing Knox for calunnia to three years.
All 17 posts prior to this one are linked-to there. The first twelve posts cover the key parts of the trial testimony and evidence from investigators for the events at Perugia’s central police station on 5-6 November 2007.
The next six including this show how Knox failed to convince numerous magistrates at many hearings that she was ever interrogated or abused or made to lie. For the most part in fact she did not even try.
2. The Six Pre-Trial Opportunities Which Knox Flunked
The previous five posts and this one cover the six hearings from late 2007 to late 2008, any one of which was a big opportunity for Knox. She could have been released if the evidence was weaker and the arguments of herself and her legal team stronger.
Knox blew all six opportunities. The judges were Claudia Matteini, Massimo Ricciarelli and two others, Torquato Gemelli and four others, and Paolo Micheli (this post). A total of 10 judges, and Dr Mignini. After the first two, one of Knox’s lawyers walked off the job.
Those ignorant of the reports of these hearings (all but one newly translated for this series with the Micheli to come) often demonize the prosecutor, Dr Mignini, as somehow taking a harder line than all those judges.
Really?
Read all of the reports and in fact every one of those judges took a harder line than Dr Mignini who worked very hard to be fair. His early version of the attack on Meredith was of an almost accidental death with sexual humiliation in the course of a hazing.
This went out the window, and all of the judges without exception adopted a harder position - that Knox’s anger had spiraled over Meredith’s difficulties with her, and a barbaric 15-minute torture-attack resulted in Meredith’s death which may have been premeditated in a timespan between minutes and days.
Judge Matteini, Judge Ricciarelli, and Judge Micheli (see below) all flat-out warned that they considered RS and AK to be dangerous to others and that they needed to be kept locked up pending trial. Judge Gemmelli and other Supreme Court judges endorsed this.
Typically Knox was constrained by her lawyers to say little or nothing.
They were already wrestling to try to wind back the three problematic statements she demanded to make on 5-6 November - mainly by changing the subject and aggressively attacking Guede.
She was allowed to be questioned by Judge Ricciarelli and she herself volunteered to be questioned by Dr Mignini three times, but her performances were shaky and erratic and once she seemed to break down in tears.
There was little or no hint of the inflammatory claims which cost her three years which Knox came up with when she had to take the stand mid-2009 to try to defend her framing of Lumumba.
3. Micheli Hearings September and October 2008
This Sky News report describes how prior to the Micheli hearings Knox’s lawyers seemed pretty desperate to change the subject.
Valter Biscotti and Nicodemo Gentile said they wanted Guede’s trial to be separate from that of Knox and Sollecito because they feared a pact against their client. Mr Biscotti added: “We feel the urgent need to have our trial heard independently of the other two suspects.
In recent weeks a lot of poison has been spread by the defence teams and we feel the necessity to find some form of serenity in a separate hearing. That’s why we have asked for a fast-track hearing just for our client and we want that hearing as quickly as possible. At this hearing we will prove that our client has absolutely nothing to do with the tragic death of Meredith Kercher.”
On 16 Sept 2008 Judge Micheli accepted the Guede team’s request for a fast-track trial and as the rules require moved all of the hearings behind closed doors.
A fast-track proceeding is closed to the public, unlike a full trial. It will be held before the same judge, who is expected to issue the verdict at the time he decides whether to indict Knox and Sollecito. The rulings are expected next month.
Judge Micheli had mountains of investigative reports and physical evidence to plow through. He heard witnesses in four hearings (with Meredith’s family present at several) on the DNA collection, on the character of Rudy Guede, and also on the three defendants acting menacing outside their house, which he heavily discounted.
Late on 28 October Judge Micheli issued a 17-page ruling which includes almost no mention of Knox implicating Patrick. He convicted Guede of murder and sexual assault, and sentenced him to 30 years. He also ordered Knox and Sollecito to stand trial on charges of murder and sexual assault.
As the UK Guardian and many other media reported, Judge Micheli assessed Knox and Sollecito as being dangerous.
The suspected killers of Meredith Kercher were refused transfer from jail to house arrest last night while awaiting trial for her murder, because of the danger that they might flee and kill again.
After 12 hours’ deliberation in Perugia, the judge, Paolo Micheli, said there was a “concrete possibility” that Amanda Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito would run off if freed from prison.
In a written ruling to lawyers, he said he believed the murder of the British student was not premeditated, but the likely “absolute disregard” shown by Knox and Sollecito for the victim’s life meant they would be capable of murdering again….
Turning down their request for house arrest yesterday, Micheli agreed with prosecutors that more than one person took part in the sexual assault and murder, dismissing claims that the 47 bruises and knife wounds on Kercher’s body could have been made by a single attacker.
He upheld the testimony of a neighbour who heard more than one person fleeing Kercher’s house, adding that while footprints there might not definitely belong to Knox and Sollecito, they did indicate more than one attacker.
He stood by forensic evidence indicating Kercher’s and Knox’s DNA on a knife found at Sollecito’s house which investigators suspect is the murder weapon, and ruled Sollecito’s DNA on Kercher’s bra strap as reliable evidence.
On 30 October Judge Micheli was interviewed. No sign in this that any claim of unfairness to Knox was on his radar.
4. Apparent False Claim Of A Statement By Knox
Bearing in mind that these hearings were all behind closed doors, none of the Italian and English-language media reports including those of the New York Times make any mention at all of Knox testifying or answering questions. Nor do the books of Sollecito or John Follain. We are still checking with Italy to make sure.
To jump the gun on the series a bit, a probable non-statement by Knox morphed in Knox’s 2013 book into this heated claim below, which we have already been told, based on court transcripts and Judge Micheli’s immediate 17 page report, was definitely not what was said, if anything, in court.
On October 28, the final day, I got to speak for myself. Since the judge understood English, I stood up without my interpreter and tried to explain what had happened during my interrogation. I told the judge that I hadn’t meant to name Patrick or to cause confusion but that the interrogation had been the most brutish, terrifying experience of my life. I’d been exhausted to begin with, and I had gotten so scared and confused that it was as though I went out of my mind. My interrogators told me that they had evidence I’d been at the villa, that Raffaele was no longer vouching for my whereabouts that night, that I had been through such a horrible trauma, I had amnesia. “I believed them! I’m innocent!” I cried.
Posts #1 to #12 have shown that Knox experienced no “brutish, terrifying experience”. Trauma was inflicted only by Sollecito and then by Knox on herself. With high confidence, we can conclude that as so often in her book Knox was simply making this up. So much for Linda Kulman’s fact checking.
5. The Micheli Sentencing Report Of January 2009
Finally three months later Judge Micheli issued a sentencing report of about 100 pages. While it has still not been fully translated we did summarise it in four posts here.
In the Italian original (which is equally firm to harsh on all three defendants) it is quite graphic about what the physical evidence says of the callous role of Knox and Sollecito in the torture-attack.
Judge Micheli does note how often Knox and Sollecito help to destroy one another’s stories which numerous witnesses confirmed helped to spark Knox’s conniption and framing of Patrick.
There is no mention at all of Knox taking exception to her “interrogation”.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Questons For Knox: Adding A Dozen More To The Several Hundred Knox So Far Avoided
Posted by Chimera
Knox during a pause in questioning at trial; her answers destroyed many Italians’ trust
1. State Of Play On The Questions Front
Sollecito and his father Francesco actually take questions without 99% of them being agreed-on in advance.
They evade a lot and lose a little but they also gain some points, unlike a seemingly terrified Knox and a seemingly terrified PR who now seem stuck in tongue-tied and consistently-losing modes.
In Italy last night on the much-watched crime show Porta a Porta Francesco Sollecito had to go along with the official reconstruction of the prolonged pack attack on Meredith which rules out any lone wolf though he again maintained that Raffaele was not there.
Not by any means does TJMK give Sollecito a pass. He WAS there at the attack, the evidence is very strong. And we do have many dozens of pending questions waiting for him to respond.
But the truly evasive one is Amanda Knox. Previously helped by the fawning arm of the American press.
2. Pending Questions We Have Already Asked
These are ordered chronologically with the first questions, by Kermit in mid trial in 2009, at the bottom of the list.
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Ted Simon Gone? With Legal And Financial Woes Will The Other Paid Help Stay
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Why Does Book Smear Others On Drug Use, Mischaracterize Your Own?
Click here for: Questions For Knox and Sollecito: Why Claim Rudy Guede Did It Alone When So Much Proof Against?
Click here for: Questions For Knox: How Do You Explain That Numerous Psychologists Now Observe You Skeptically?
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Ten Hard Questions That Knox Should Be Asked Monday On ITV’s Daybreak
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Why So Many False Claims In Accounts Of Your Visit To The House?
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Why The Huge Lie About Your ZERO Academic Intentions In Europe?
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Do You Think “False Memories Kassin” Framing Italians Yet Again Will Help?
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Did You Undergo An Illegal Interrogation By Mignini Or Did You Try To Frame Him?
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Diane Sawyer, How To Push Back Against The False Claims And Emotion
Click here for: Questions For Sollecito And Knox and Enablers: Several Hundred On The Hard Evidence
Click here for: Questions For Knox: The Questions That Drew Griffin On CNN Tonight SHOULD Have Asked
Click here for: Questions For AK And RS From Barbie Nadeau As Knox Slander Trial Starts
Click here for: Questions For Knox: (Powerpoints #11) 150 Hard Questions That You Incessantly Avoid
3. My Own Dozen Questions More
I have mentioned before my belief that Meredith Kercher’s attack and possibly death was premeditated, at least on the part of Amanda Knox. Raffaele Sollecito, and Rudy Guede, while accomplices, and also liable, did not plan this out.
Below is my own list of a dozen more hard questions Knox should be asked. This post focuses on questions that point towards forethought and premeditation. And no, crying, having a fit, and refusing to answer just won’t do it. An open challenge to not answer in a Hellmann-court-type wail.
1. Keeping the ‘‘See you later’’ Text to Patrick
You kept the message that you sent to Lumumba, which you wrote in Italian. The literal translation from English implies that you actually intend to meet, rather than the English one that means a parting of ways. As a language student, this common expression was likely one of the first things you learned, if you didn’t know already.
At your voluntary questioning, of November 5th/6th, you give that message to the police, and claim it as proof that you left Raffaele’s apartment to meet him. The police didn’t force this knowledge from you, rather you volunteered it after Raffaele withdrew your alibi. Patrick was falsely arrested, due entirely to your statements, and that message.
I considered, and rejected the idea that you might have kept the message in case Patrick might have wondered why you didn’t show. If that were the case, you would have kept his message not to come in, and not your response.
Here is the 2009 trial video, the relevant part starts at about the 7:30 mark. At the 10:30 mark, she talks about the message. At 12:15, she says she doesn’t know how to delete sent messages.
Question for Knox: Why did you keep Patrick’s message, if not to use later as a backup plan?
2. The Lack of Videotaping for the ‘‘Interrogation’‘
You and your supporters in the U.S. frequently complain that your November 5th/6th ‘‘interrogation’’ was never recorded. You claim that if there was such a record, it would corroborate your claims, and prove you were beaten/smacked around/tortured. A video would go both ways: it could either prove police brutality and misconduct, or it could definitively prove a suspect or witness was lying.
Until that night, you claim nearly 50 hours of interrogation (see December 2013 email to Judge Nencini), yet none of it was recorded. Odd, if you were the suspect all along. Witness summaries routinely are not, but suspect interrogations almost always are, if only to cover the police officer’(s) butt(s).
That night, when you said you witnessed a crime you did not report (Patrick attacking Meredith), your legal status changed from a witness to a possible suspect. You were given a miranda warning, but still continued to talk.
At this point with your new status, the police would have wanted to videotape or audio record any questionings. And if they had, any claims of the ‘‘police beat me’’ would have been very easy to refute. So, by staying away from the camera, it actually creates at least a bit of ambiguity, and gives some wiggle room, should you decide to make complaints later. It turns an open-and-shut matter into your-word-against-theirs where you lose.
Question for Knox: Did the police ever ask to videotape any of your ‘‘questionings’‘? And if so, why did you refuse?
3. Transporting Raffaele’s Knife to Your Apartment
You and Raffaele were charged in addition to murder and sexual assault, with transport of a weapon, namely, a knife to your apartment and back. Despite all the denials of your lawyers, it had Meredith’s DNA on the blade, and your DNA on the hilt (the infamous ‘‘double DNA knife’‘). Most spontaneous violent crimes involve objects in the immediate area, such as the room, whereas this knife was taken from another location and brought to the crime scene. Frankly, it reeks of pre-planning.
I considered, and rejected the argument of needing protection. Knox never claimed she felt unsafe walking around Perugia, heck she sleeps with random people there. If she did feel afraid at times, many women just clench keys in their fists, for something like that.
Even more disturbing, (as you admit you are a CSI fan) the knife was brought back to Raffaele’s apartment, cleaned with bleach, and put back. Had the bleach actually destroyed all the DNA—it tends to miss DNA in cracks and grooves—it would have implicated Raffaele only, being his knife, and would not implicate you. Rather than throw it away, like a ‘‘smart’’ killer would do, it is put back, where it is fairly easy to be found.
Question for Knox: Why did you bring the knife from Raffaele’s apartment, if not to use against someone?
Question for Knox: Why was the knife returned to Raffaele’s kitchen? Were you hoping (as a fallback), that it might lead to him alone?
4. The Staged Break-In
You finally admitted, after long denying, that you staged an April Fool’s Day prank on April 1st, 2007, by simulating a burglary against a housemate. You found it funny, while others found it disturbing. However, in order to do such a prank, you needed to think in advance about how you wanted things to look. In short, this had to be planned out.
Well, the November 1st ‘‘break-in’’ at your apartment when Meredith was killed, was ruled by the courts to be a staged burglary. There are just too many holes in your story, and in the crime scene, to believe it was legitimate.
But what is not clear, is whether the killers staged the burglary as a panicked response to Meredith’s death, or whether some of the details were worked out ahead of time. And you had, as a prank, done this before.
I considered, and rejected the claim that it was a real burglary. However, Judges Micheli, Massei, Nencini and the Court of Cassation disagree, and they can summarize it better.
Question for Knox: Did you think of simulating a break in at your home BEFORE or AFTER Meredith was murdered?
5. Rudy Guede’s Involvement
FoAK has long smeared Guede as a drifter, drug dealer, orphan, burglar, and many other things. There was one bit of truth there: Guede had broken into at least one place, prior to Meredith’s death, although he had not been charged at the time. He recently got his jail time extended though, as a result of this.
Interestingly, while you claim to not know Guede, your book seems to include a lot of detail about him. You knew he was interested you. You say he had done a break in, and you had staged a break in. You allege his was done in Perugia, while your prank was far away, in Seattle, where no police were involved. And let’s be frank: men say dumb things to impress women. What an interesting person to bring along.
Question for Knox: Did you know about Guede’s prior break in BEFORE or AFTER Meredith was murdered?
6. Turning Off the Cellphones (you and Raffaele)
It is now common knowledge that most cellphones contain GPS that can track the movement of a user. Police know this, and can often track suspects’ movements this way. Smart people looking to avoid police attention have figured this out, and can turn their cell phones off (or leave them at home), to make their movements more ‘‘anonymous’‘.
Even smarter police have now figured out that people know, and can now find out if turning off phones is routine, or just a one time thing. Jodi Arias was caught out this way. Thomasdinh (Dinh) Bowman was caught out this way. See this.
You and Raffaele had never turned off your cellphones, but chose to (and together) the evening before Meredith was killed.
You gave multiple excuses. (1) Sollecito says in his book it was so you could fool around undisturbed. (2) You say in your book it was so you wouldn’t receive a message from Patrick if he changed his mind and wanted you to work. (3) You said in your December 2007 questioning with Mignini that it was done to preserve the charge in your phone. (4) At trial, your lawyers disputed that the phones were shut off?
Question for Knox: Why did you and Raffele turn off your phones the night Meredith died, if not to cover your movements?
7. Ditching Meredith’s Phones
Meredith’s phones, both her English and Italian phones, were found well away from the home. While it is normal to have a cell phone, very few people have more than one, and other than a friend, family member, or roommate, who would know this? Meredith’s attackers took them both, and rather try to sell them or use them, dumped them.
Police have speculated that this was done to divert attention, and to give out false leads. However, this amount of thought in a ‘‘hurried and rushed’’ crime seems very much out of place. The unexpected consequence is that it helped narrow the focus.
I considered, and rejected the idea that they were part of an actual robbery. A killer who seems to know so much about evidence, and about cell phone evidence, would take them, knowing the GPS would help track his movements. Really, what smart killer would take a mobile ‘‘ankle bracelet’’ with him?
Question for Knox: Why did you take Meredith’s phones, if not to throw off the police investigation?
8. Keeping Frederico Martini’s Number in Your Phone
It is now well known, even if not reported at the time, that Frederico Martini (a.k.a. the ‘‘Cristiano’’ in your book), was a drug dealer you met on the train to Perugia. You ditched your sister, Deanna, to be with him. And since then, he had been supplying you with free drugs in return for sex.
It is also well known that you gave Frederico’s number to police, probably trying to divert attention from yourself once again, and that he ended up serving time for drug dealing.
You have enough sense to turn your cell phone off prior to phones (see sections 1, 6, and 7), so you clearly knew that phones can provide serious evidence against you. If you truly were worried about the police searching your phone, you could have deleted his number, changed a digit or 2, changed the name, or otherwise hidden that information.
The police weren’t concerned with drugs, only with catching a killer.
Question for Knox: Why did you keep Freddy’s number, and then give it to police, other than just another diversion tactic?
9. The Lamp From Your Room on Meredith’s Floor
The lamp from your room, the only source of light in your room, was found on the floor in Meredith’s room. This would seem odd, as Meredith had two lamps of her own, and your room would be left dark. Police have speculated that the lamp was used during the clean-up, and then forgotten.
This demonstrates a lot of control, as rather than grabbing an available lamp from Meredith’s room (if it were needed for cleanup), the killers would have moved outside the bedroom, grabbed a lamp from another room and brought it back.
It further demonstrates control, as there was no bloody footprints into your room. Therefore, the killer must have cleaned his or her feet, then gone into your room to grab the lamp. And that lamp was found wiped off prints, so whoever took it had the foresight to make sure their own weren’t on it, but had Meredith’s lamp been used, finding it wiped clean would have been a dead give away.
All of this smacks of planning, and had the lamp not been forgotten in the locked room, we would never have known any of this.
Question for Knox: Why was your lamp found on Meredith’s floor, if not to clean or search for evidence?
10. Gloves Used for Cleanup?
The police went through the house. Although they did not test everything, very few fingerprints were found at all in the house, and only one belonging to Knox, on a glass. Of course, it raises the question of why any random burglar or killer would do that, and points to someone who is there regularly—a resident.
Such an undertaking would have taken a long time, again, pointing to a resident of the building. And while a sock or a cloth may be used a few times, it seems extremely impractical to use for any length of time. That leads another obvious suggestion: gloves.
However, Perugia was still warm. Amanda, (in that God-awful interview with Simon Hattenstone), said that she could sunbathe in October. Even if she had them in her luggage, they would probably take time to find. She was not known for wearing gloves as a fashion accessory.
Given her living habits, it is extremely unlikely she had her own cleaning gloves, and Laura and Filomena never reported such things missing. Nor did anyone else. So, where would they come from?
Question for Knox: Did you purchase (or steal) gloves prior to Meredith’s death?
11. Clothes and Supplies
You were seen in Quintavalle’s shop first thing in the morning on November 2nd, even if your lawyers contest it. He claims you were looking in the cleaning section, but then left. Strange, as you are not much of a cleaner, however he has no reason to lie. You also claim that you were not ‘‘missing’’ any clothes, even though Filomena mentions a sweater you were wearing but has not been recovered.
It is also known that you have made many cash withdrawls in the month of October, with seemingly little to spend on. Police and the media have speculated drugs, but with absolutely no paper trail, there is no way to know for sure how much was spent on what.
Question for Knox: Did you purchase any cleaning supplies, or extra clothes, either before or after Meredith’s murder?
12. Concerning The Gubbio Trip
You have travelled to many places, sure, but hadn’t really gone anywhere after settling in Perugia. Yes, you had given serious thought to ditching the town, even buying a ticket to China. Since meeting Raffaele, you two had kept in a relatively small area. Therefore, the trip planned to Gubbio, for the day after Meredith was killed, seems somewhat out of place.
I may very well be wrong, but was this the first road trip you had taken with him? You hadn’t packed anything, and you left your house (after the shower) without taking anything. You apparently also didn’t notice Filomena’s broken window in front of you.
Question for Knox: Was the Gubbio trip for real, or was this a staged cover?
Thursday, March 05, 2015
Ten Of The Ways In Which The FOA Petition That The State Department Accepted Is Dishonest
Posted by Our Main Posters
1. Post Overview
It is hard to believe that the Knox PR is guided by a professional - good PR operatives know to just shade the truth.
Again and again in sharp contrast the Knox PR tries to go 180 degrees the other way. Down is up. Black is white. “Don’t believe your lying eyes” stuff.
Instead of making one or two mistakes, it makes hundreds - and then lets them stand when challenged. Many amount simply to childish tantrums.
In Italy all the lawyers (on both sides), and all the judges, and all the media, simply ignore them.
This is made easy enough, as they are usually pushed out only in English in relative safety across the Atlantic.
This is a great example.
2. The ChangeOrg Petition by The Knox PR
The guilt of the pair was confirmed by the Nencini appeal court in Florence six weeks ago. What was particularly telling was the stark two-day presentation of the massive evidence by Prosecutor Crini.
It caused Sollecito to miss the second day and then head off “secretly” to the Dominican Republic to seek help there.
It also caused this shrill and inaccurate petition in which, tellingly, none of the defense lawyers played any part - possibly as they have been highly critical of previous scaremongering.
The petition consists mostly of blustery innuendo. No supporting facts are pointed to. It is inaccurate on the judicial sequence, on official motives throughout, and on Italian law. It omits the prosecution case which took Prosecutor Crini two days to present.
In the shrill tone and false claims it resembles the Knox email to Judge Nencini ten weeks previously, and numerous attempts by Knox apologists Heavey & Bremner and Italian MP Rocco Girlanda to influence top leaders (all failures).
Any Italian court would take this to be an attempt to throw an ongoing legal process through dishonest means, a mafia technique, which is a felony (vilipendio) in Italy.
These are some of the major errors.
1) Unspecified claim of corruption by Italian state?
Neither defense team ever claimed this. There was demonstrably no official corruption at any point, and no obvious reason for it. The entire legal process was closely supervised by a series of judges including Supreme Court justices and fully documented.
There IS public proof of corruption (the Hellmann appeal court was subverted) but that was effected by the defense teams.
2) Unspecified claim of abuse of RS and AK?
Neither defense team ever claimed this. Both were treated extremely well. Knox conceded that at trial. There was no abuse of the pair, ever, and significantly no paper trail of complaints by either the two defenses or the US Embassy monitoring the process.
In fact the defenses have almost invariably inclined the other way, stating that claims of abuse by the PR are a foolish way to go. In 2008 they publicly requested that Knox stop lying.
3) Claim of abusive interrogation of Knox?
Neither defense team ever claimed this. There was no abusive interrogation of Knox on 5-6 Nov - in fact, there was no interrogation at all. In great detail what happened was described at trial.
Knox had insisted on being there, and when asked she agreed to list possible perps, all of whom the cops extensively checked out. She herself incessantly offered explanations on the night (all part-true and part-false) when she was told Sollecito did not support her latest alibi.
She herself insisted on putting them in writing. The investigators tried hard on the night to calm her as she herself confirmed at trial.
4) Legal representation denied?
Neither defense team ever claimed this. Knox was repeatedly told she should have a lawyer present when she explosively “confessed” on 5-6 November 2007. Knox herself shrugged off the need for a lawyer on that night as her statements came pouring out - even after Dr Mignini had read her her rights - as multiple witnesses testified.
Knox still cant explain why she twice claimed she headed out alone on the night, leaving Sollecito behind. Or why she lied about Dr Mignini abusively questioning her at her first session finishing at 1:45 am when in fact he was home in bed.
5) The pair held unfairly before trial?
Neither defense team ever claimed this. RS and AK had SIX opportunities between November 2007 and January 2009 to get themselves freed or moved to house arrest. They failed each time and all courts gave detailed reasoning. In one of those it was the Court of Cassation which turned them down. Each often blamed the other.
The supervising magistrate Judge Matteini documented an extensive list of evidence against them and ruled that if allowed house arrest they could flee or cause harm to witnesses. This was not based on a single fact as claimed.
6) Guede’s process unfair to them?
Neither defense team ever claimed this. The claims about Guede in that petition are upside down. He did not target the pair in 2008 - in reality they went gunning for him and sustained that right through trial on a daily basis to the final appeals.
This was public knowledge in mid 2008 as this UK report shows.
Claims have been made of a pact between Knox and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 24. It is alleged their lawyers have agreed to work together to blame the murder on Rudy Guede, 21, a part-time gardener from the Ivory Coast and the third accused.
Now, Guede’s lawyers are threatening to call for a separate trial for him alone - well away from the legal teams of the other two whom they fear could prejudice his case.
It is a pact, says Guede’s lawyer Walter Biscotti, that can be traced back to July when Sollecito sent Knox a bouquet of yellow flowers on her 21st birthday which both celebrated in prison.
‘There is a clear desire to make Rudy the guilty party, and it’s clear they will try anything,’ Biscotti said.
Added: In July 2013 lawyer James Raper put up this post: Did Guede’s Separate Trial REALLY Impact Negatively On RS And AK?
7) Guede fingered the pair?
Neither defense team ever claimed this. Guede did not testify at the 2009 trial, he just sat there mute and then went away. In sharp contrast, the RS and AK teams introduced witness after witness attempting to do maximum harm to him long before his own legal process was concluded. For example:
- (a) The witness who said Guede was in his apartment; but he had not even reported that to the cops, and Judge Micheli concluded he was a publicity hound at best.
(b) The two lawyers who said someone broke into their office; but even they hinted it was really a work-related hit as legal documents had been gone though and some probably copied and removed in a car by several persons.
(c) The head of the pre-school in Milan; but she could not even call Guede’s presence a break-in, because he must have been given a key to get in.
(d) Both defenses labeled him a drifter, drug dealer, woman-molester and habitual thief. No proofs for any of these charges was presented.
This was highly unfair to Rudy Guede. His own legal process was far from over. Neither he nor his lawyers were even in court to cross-examine or repudiate any of those witnesses. The prosecution took zero role - merely observed, and asked zero questions - so in reality it was the RS and AK defenses and not Guede who had an unfair edge here.
8) Courts wrongly tied them with Guede?
Neither defense team ever claimed this. The closed sessions at trial in 2009 showed conclusively to the judges that there had been THREE attackers which the defenses simply had to agree to.
The Sollecito defense put Alessi and Aviello on the stand. Bizarrely, the mafioso Aviello pointed AWAY from Guede; he claimed two others had done it; then he claimed the Sollecito defense team had offered payment.
Cassation did not say in ending Guede’s process that it must have been RS and AK along with Guede at the crime. It left who they were open. Cassation simply agreed that there were three
9) Guede did the crimes by himself?
Neither defense team ever claimed this, for the reason explained directly above: too much evidence. This was not a one man crime by a rapist or burglar (a burglar at 8:00 in the evening, with cars around and some tenants probably at home in the house?). It was provably a 15-minute torture and humiliation pack-attack, fueled by rage, drugs, and quite probably jealousy.
Knox’s trial and appeal courts both concluded that she plunged in the knife. Sollecito and Guede have shown strong signs of not having not been pre-warned, and remaining sore and resentful of Knox ever since.
10) Omitted is enormous factual evidence
As usual with the PR a huge amount about the case and RS and AK is simply left out. Here is a comment from another thread attacking CBS which explains how this lies-of-omission approach works (or doesn’t work) and the same omissions apply to the petition.
If you watch the numerous CBS videos or read the numerous attacks on Italy on their site, do you spot a trend? CBS 48 Hours is prone to leaving an awful lot out.
Where is CBS’s translation of even one major document? Where is evidence of knowledge of even one court transcript? Where is the real reason the appeals were allowed? Where are the six opportunities RS and AK were given before trial to prove they had no role? Where are the bad times the defense had in 2009? What about the lengthy trial sessions behind closed doors? Where are the numerous conflicting alibis? Where are the numerous whacks at one another by RS and AK? Where is AK’s disastrous stint on the stand? Where is any mention of the dealer Knox screwed for drugs? Where is the current trial of RS for his book? Where is the trial of Oggi for Knox’s book? Where is the Knox interrogation hoax? Where is the Carabineri lab nailing the “science” of C&V? Where is the known corruption of the Hellmann court? Where is the downfall of defense witnesses Alessi and Aviello? Where is the Guede/lone-wolf hoax? Where is the downward spiral of Frank Sforza now on trial in Italy and wanted by US and Canadian police? Where is any fair remark about the Italian system or its staff? Where is the long overdue expose of the Preston hoaxes? Why are Spetzi’s many losses in court not there? Where is the truth about the Narducci 22? Where is Dr Mignini’s total rebound and promotion after Cassation sharply repudiated a rogue prosecutor and judge in Florence? Why does CBS feel such a need to defame so many Italians in English from so far? Where is any mention of the PR’s corrupting very big bucks?
We have no problem seeing the foolish petition remain up - but in their own best interests Knox herself and Sollecito himself should want the incriminating thing taken down. It will merely further annoy the courts.
And they really should tell the blundering Marriott and his online thugs to get lost.
3. Even Knox Supporters Despise This
Not the first time the forever-grandstanding Pruett spikes anger among her own people. This is from one of their myriad sites; she has often claimed she is closer to Curt Knox than any of them.
This person, Karen, is not worth the time or attention she is getting. She has no expertise in any remotely relevant subject matter, does not speak a word of Italian, and has largely exaggerated the slenderest of ties to the victim. She did not even attend high school at the same time as Knox’s father - she is 59 years old FFS.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Sollecito v Italy & Guede: My Subtitled YouTubes Of Rudy Guede’s Interview with Leosini
Posted by Eric Paroissien
Friday, February 13, 2015
The Sollecito Trial For “Honor Bound” #7: Why It Also Threatens Amanda Knox
Posted by Peter Quennell
Cover of the New York Post (owned by a probably gleeful Rupert Murdoch) this week
We will soon be posting several hundred easy-to-disprove lies we have identified by Knox.
Late March Cassation will probably rule that Knox needs to go back and serve her time, and if so between then and late-year there will probably be an attempt at a big media fuss.
But lying to the US media and public in the next few months is going to be a more-than-normally dangerous game.
Brian Williams is the news anchor for the NBC network’s nightly news, who was often a guest on late-night comedy TV, where he made himself look super-sized.
William was just outed by soldiers who had complained that he lied when he said a helicopter he was in in Iraq took shots and was forced down. That was another helicopter in a companion group out of sight.
He’s now suspended, without pay, and his contract does not let him talk. Death by 1000 cuts and (like Sollecito and Gumbel) without making things worse he cannot talk back.
Williams was long suspected of lying about his experiences when Hurricane Katrina hit new Orleans in 2005.
Williams had made several questionable claims in interviews and a documentary: He witnessed a suicide at the Superdome in New Orleans, saw a body floating by his hotel in the French Quarter and had contracted dysentery from accidentally ingesting floodwater.
Throughout Thursday, Williams was pounded by bloggers and newspaper columnists, who noted that he hadn’t reported the suicide when he was on assignment in New Orleans, that the French Quarter had largely remained dry during the hurricane and that there were no reported outbreaks of dysentery.
Today the reports get worse: it seems Williams also lied about being on a flight with some Navy SEALS as well. And there is said to be worse to come.
And who is entangled in this bad news? Bob Barnett, Williams’ lawyer, who brokered Williams’ $10 million a year contract a few weeks ago. He also brokered Amanda Knox’s book full of lies to the US.
Bob Barnett will not want to see Knox and her dishonest team draw attention to this by telling the US media and public yet more easy-to-disprove lies. Defending one big-time liar will be more than enough.
By the way, the big expose of Gumbel’s lies is still ahead. Those by Preston, Heavey, Fischer, Moore, etc, too. Knox should maybe dump them all, and give up her foolish fight.
When one is in a deep hole, the best advice is to stop digging, right now.
Friday, January 02, 2015
Rudy Guede As Serial Burglar: Pure Innuendo, Court Testimony Provides ZERO Proof
Posted by Peter Quennell
Maria Del Prato in the inner courtyard in Milan from which her pre-school opens off
1. Summary Of The Hoax
For the defense teams and especially the army of PR tricksters a lot hangs on proving:
(1) Guede was a break-and-enter thief around Perugia (although he had only recently returned from a paying job in a failed restaurant north of Milan);
(2) Who chose to break into Meredith’s house (well before 9:00 pm? In intense light from up above? Via an impossible route? Not knowing if any of the four girls was home? And not knowing if there was anything of value?);
(3) Who had a history of violence or sexual depravity (though he was the only one of the three with no police record? and not even a single past accuser?);
(4) Who had a prior history of similar break-ins with three proven instances; had in fact been a serial burglar.
Many TJMK posts debunk claims (1) to (3). In this post we will debunk the fourth one.
Up to the present day, no UK or US media seems to have ever reported in English the key segments of Guede’s 2008 trial or Knox’s and Sollecito’s 2009 trial that relate to this. Had they ever done so, the now-pervasive notion of Guede as sole perp - lone wolf - would never have gained the ground that it has.
All UK and US followers would readily understand why ALL courts said THREE attackers were at the scene and the breakin was faked.
2. 2009 Trial Attempts To Incriminate Guede
All the testimony about supposed break-ins by Guede was presented by the defense on 26 July and 27 July 2009. These were two lackluster half-days for the defense.
3. Summary Of What It Amounted To
That trial testimony fell far short of providing the numerous Rudy Guede demonizers with all they now claim. Here are the witnesses the defenses called.
1. Pre-school principal Maria Del Prato
She came across as understanding and fair. Maria Del Prato conceded that Guede probably had a key loaned to him by one of her staff which explained why no break-in charges were lodged. Milan police did not just let him go, they checked his record with Perugia police (he had none and police knew little or nothing of him) and knew where he was for a possible later charge.
2. Christian Tramontano
Tramontano was a security guard and bouncer. There is a noted tendencies in those occupations to claim acts of bravery which in many cases never happened. This looked to cops like one such instance. His one-page police report filed late said he called the cops; there is no record.
He had claimed someone threatened him in his house in the dark with a knife who he much later said looked like a shot of Guede in the papers.He was never called to court. At a hearing in October 2008 Judge Micheli sharply denounced him in his absence as having made things up and wasted police and court time.
3. Lawyers Matteo Palazzoli and Brocchi
Matteo Palazzoli had first encountered the break-in scene during a Sunday night visit to his office and found his computer gone. He did not elaborate very much, and seemed glad to be gone.
His colleague Lawyer Brocchi who had the least involvement talked the most - but he could be read as pointing a finger away from what he believed really happened for brownie points with the court.
Here courtesy of Miriam’s translations is the key 2009 trial testimony
Click for Post: Guede Hoax: Translation Of Lawyers Testimony #1 On Breakin Shows No Concrete Connection To Guede
Click for Post: Guede Hoax: Translation Of Lawyers Testimony #2 On Breakin Shows No Concrete Connection To Guede
4. A Major Unfairness To Guede
We have knocked chips off Guede in the past, but how this testimony (albeit mild) opened the gates to a wave of innuendo was simply unfair. HE WAS NOT EVEN IN COURT.
Neither he nor his lawyers were there to cross-examine the witnesses or call more witnesses of their own and the prosecution did not ask even one question. Nobody asked what legal documents may have been involved.
This has allowed supposition to grow unchallenged, though it looked like a red-herring by the defenses at the time.
5. What Guede’s Team Could Have Brought Out
Note what Guede if his team had been present could have brought out:
1. Nobody in Italy is given precautionary custody simply for possessing several items none of which were reported as stolen which conceivably could have been passed to him by another perp. When those were later proven stolen Guede was charged and he was recently sentenced in Milan to another 16 months.
2. The French window one floor above the ground in the dark around the back would have been easy to break into on a Saturday night according to Matteo Palazzoli by simply climbing up the grill over the French window below and then using the balcony to break through.
This is very far from the supposed scenario for Guede breaking into Filomena’s window
- (1) during Perugia’s late rush-hour on a weekday evening with a lot of cars and people still around,
(2) under a great deal of light both from the street lights and the carpark lights above,
(3) bypassing several other much easier entrances all of them in deep dark,
(4) while leaving no prints and no DNA anywhere outside the window or in the room,
(5) on a day when as far as he knew all four girls were in town (in fact three of them still were).
3. Zero fingerprints were found in the lawyers’ offices though a great many items had been touched.
4. What appear to be the tools of a habitual burglar were left at the scene.
5. The burglar alarm dial-out had been disabled by someone who knew the special trick to doing that.
6. The copier was switched on and some quantity of copy paper and several USB drives with legal data were gone.
7. A front window had been opened and then not fully closed, seemingly to pass things through to someone waiting with a car.
Payback or warning by a legal opponent? Such things are not unknown. Neither lawyer ever systematically reported a theft to the police. No comprehensive investigation was ever begun.
Paolo Brocchi claimed he didnt even know that one of his cellphones was gone. Matteo Palazzoli never gave the serial number of his computer to the police. Palazzoli could only weakly testify that Guede came by - to say he was not the real thief.
Each seemed embarrassed to be put on the stand by a flailing defense and simply anxious to move on.
Thursday, January 01, 2015
Guede Hoax: Translation Of Lawyers Testimony #2 On Breakin Shows No Concrete Connection To Guede
Posted by Peter Quennell
Exit route was via one of those windows; weeks later, Guede would come knocking at that door.
1. Overview Of The Post
This post provides the translated testimony of lawyer Matteo Palazzoli.
He was the owner of a Sony Vaio computer stolen from his office, which was possibly the same one that Guede was found in possession of. The previous posts on this aspect of the Guede hoax showed:
- How similar to the back balcony route to a forced break-in of Meredith’s house was the supposed route into the Perugia lawyers’ offices.
- How the testimony from the lawyer Paolo Briocchi on the office break-in pointed as much away from Rudy Guede as it did toward him.
There will be an overall assessment in the next post.
2. Testimony Of Matteo Palazzoli
Translation of the difficult language here and in previous posts was kindly provided by Miriam. MP stands for Matteo Palazzoli, the lawyer whose office was broken into. GCM stands for Judge Giancarlo Massei. LM stands for Sollecito defense lawyer Luca Maori. MDG stands for Knox defense lawyer Maria Del Grosso.
The witness, admonished pursuant to Article 497 of the Criminal Procedure Code, reads the oath.
General information: Matteo Palazzoli, born in Umbertide, province of Perugia, October 9 1974, resident of Perugia.
GCM: Please proceed.
LM: Lawyer Maori, for the defense of Sollecito. What is your profession?
MP: Lawyer.
LM: Where is your legal office?
MP: At via del Roscetto no. 3, from Febuary 2007, if I am not mistaken.
LM: Together with lawyer Brocchi.
MP: Together with lawyer Brocchi.
LM: Before you, Lawyer Brocchi told us of this theft you were subject to on the night between the 13th and 14th of October 2007.
MP: Yes.
LM: Can you give us information of what happened in that situation?
MP: I was coming back on Sunday October 14, after being away from Perugia for 2 days, and before coming back”¦ because I live close to the office, I keep the car parked with a subscription at the parking lot of Sant’Antonio [opposite Meredith’s house], therefore I walk down via del Roscetto regularly to return home, which is in via Imbriani [further down the hill behind the law offices]. In these circumstances, I sincerely don’t reacll the reason, I stopped at the office before returning home. I think it was 6:30, 7.00 pm, of Sunday afternoon, I don’t recall the exact time.
I went to the office, and upon entering the office, I noticed right away that something was not right, because to begin with it was October, and it was rather warm, I remember, and strangely the heaters were turned on and it was rather hot inside the office. The heaters were turned on and I immediately noticed upon turning on the light that the bathroom light was on, the restroom of the office. At that moment I didn’t notice anything else.
Then I turned my head to the right in respect to the office entrance , and I immediately noticed my jacket, a black jacket, and a jacket of Lawyer Brocchi’s laid out on the floor. Honestly I asked myself the reason for this. I went to the French window of the office that gives out to an inner courtyard of the building, and opening the inner shutters, I noticed the glass had been broken, and that the jackets had probably been laid on the floor to cover the broken glass.
At this point I ran to my office, that is in front of Lawyer Brocchi’s , and I immediately noticed, cautiously, that the only thing that was missing”¦ besides the binders being completely opened, and the dossiers, in there turn, also were opened with papers strewn throughout the office, I noticed that my computer was no longer there, it was not where it should have been, and that the window of my office that gives out to via del Roscetto [a window in the image at top] that at first glance appeared to be closed, in reality was open. Therefore, it had been reclosed but not completely closed, probably, don’t know why.. whoever entered, exited through my window, not closing it completely on the way out, I honestly don’t know the reason.
I did another round of the legal office, and I noticed again upon entering the restroom, the light on in the restroom. I went into the office of Lawyer Brocchi, and I remember that inside his office, on the desk of Lawyer Brocchi, there was a suitcase of his and on top were positioned, with a certain precision, certain objects, that I seem to remember were screwdrivers, I am frankly not sure if there were screwdrivers.
After having gone into Lawyer Brocchi’s office I turned and went into the waiting room that is there close to the conference room, and I noticed that there was a small pile of glass, that I don’t know where it came from, because the window of the waiting room”¦ that is, no other window, if I remember correctly, of the office was broken, in the office the only window that had been broken was the French window that gives onto the inner courtyard.
The window of the waiting room had not been broken and yet still, there was this small pile of glass, furthermore well arranged, in the waiting room. The copying machine was turned on, I don’t know for what reason, several reams of paper of the copying machine were missing.
LM: The person who entered had drunk beverages that were in the legal office?
MP: Yes, I remember that it was a bottle of orange drink, if I am not in error, it was left in the waiting room.
LM: Listen, you spoke of this computer that was taken on this occasion. Can you tell us what type of computer it was?
MP: It was a Vaio, the outside cover was white. The distinctive trait is that differently”¦ the distinctive feature of that computer is that it has a 16:9 screen that is high resolution.
LM: It’s a Sony.
MP: It is a Sony Vaio, that is a brand of Sony. It has a particular graphics, it is only one of a few computer that doesn’t change the type of color depending on how one roatates the screen. It was a laptop, in any case.
LM: This laptop did you have any news of where it was”¦ was it ever found? Was it given back to you?
MP: In these days I have had ways to reconstruct, in my mind, the events and the only thing I have not had a way to”¦ it happened in the succeeding days, I don’t remember exactly when, that while I was coming back from a client outside the legal office, Lawyer Brocchi called me to tell me that the police or carabinieri called from Milan saying that they had found our things, commenting: “you are always lucky, you lose everything, they steal everything, but you always recover everything”, “Okay”, I said.
I arrived back at the office and he told me about the call in detail, that it was”¦ the police station, I sincerely don’t remember, of Milan anyway, they had called and they had found us because on the cellphone of Lawyer Brocchi”¦ which in the immediacy of the event, we had not noticed had been taken because it was an out of commission cellphone and not used by Lawyer Brocchi, thus probably he did not remember in the immediacy of the event it had been taken, he did not realize at that moment.
Opening the cellphone, the message, if I am not in error, “welcome Lawyer Brocchi” had appeared. Thus they were able to find us, and substantially tell Lawyer Brocchi that they had found his cellphone and my computer. Now, I said before, in these days before today’s judicial hearing I was able to gather my thoughts and furthermore I was never able to verify that the cellphone [note: he presumably means his laptop] that was found was effectively mine, because when Lawyer Brocchi and I went to the police station of Perugia to do the report, I did not have at hand, because my accountant had not given it to me, the invoice that indicated the specific model of the commuter. Thus, today I would not be able to say, if not”¦
LM: Anyway the computer was not given back to you?
MP: No.
LM: Before you spoke of this telephone call by the Milan police station.
MP: Made to Lawyer Brocchi.
LM: Do you know if those [investigators] attached to the police station in Milan had discovered the perpetrator of the theft?
MP: I sincerely don’t know, they certainly did not tell us. That is, we were told only that our things had been found, or rather, Lawyer Brocchi related to me that the police station of Milan had told him that the things we reported stolen had been found.
LM: Lawyer, do you know Rudy Hermann Guede?
MP: No.
LM: Have you heard of him?
MP: I have heard of him in relation to the renowned incident of this proceeding.
LM: Do you know that Hermann Rudy Guede was found by the police station of Milan, a few days before these matters, with your computer?
MP: I don’t know that he was found with”¦ or rather, at the time that Lawyer Brocchi related to me that the police station of Milan had called him, the police station did not specify the individual that was found with the computer. I think that in that circumstance they had specified that it was found on a boy that was committing a similar crime, if I am not in error, in a kindergarten in Milan.
LM: Was it related to you by your assistant Doctor Morini, I believe that is his name, and by Lawyer Brocchi of an encounter that took place on October 29 with this Rudy Guede?
MP: Yes, it was related”¦ somehow in this case”¦when these things happen, unfortunately I am never there.
LM: You were not present, it was only related to you.
MP: It was related to me that a boy had come to the legal office, and a conversation had intervened between”¦
LM: What kind of boy?
MP: A colored boy, I gathered, had come to the legal office and held a conversation with Doctor Morini and probably even with Lawyer Brocchi, and declared himself absolutely extraneous to the matter and declared that he bought my computer legally , if I am not in error at the train station of Milan, I sincerely don’t know. This was related to me by my colleagues.
LM: In any case, you exclude having had your computer returned?
MP: No, absolutely.
LM: That, by your knowledge, is in Perugia?
MP: I think I remember having done a request of release [to Milan] that unfortunately was rejected.
LM: If you do it here in Perugia, probably you will have a better result. Another question, before you spoke of the fact that when you entered the legal office on the evening of October 14th you saw lights on. The light that was on, where was it situated?
MP: At the instant I entered the legal office, it was dark obviously, inside the office, and I had not yet turned on the light, I noticed the shining of the bathroom light on.
LM: Had the bathroom been used?
MP: The bathroom”¦ honestly this I can’t tell you, that is I can’t know if it was used, from evident signs I think not, but, that is a simple supposition on my part , that does not have much value.
LM: Thank you.
GCM: There were no signs of it having been used.
MP: Yes, no signs of use, no odor.
GCM: This is what the lawyer was asking. Other questions? For the prosecution? There are no questions. Excuse me, probably just a peculiarity, the window that was broken, if you can give us a description? Are there inner shutters, outer shutters?
MP: It is a French window that gives out to a small terrace that overlooks an inner courtyard of the building, and below our window, right in alignment, there is a door covered with a metal mesh, so much so that we supposed that whoever entered inside the legal office, one of the possible hypothesis, climbed that metal mesh, because it is a mesh, with squares not more than fifteen centimeters, thus perfectly usable for this purpose. It is a French window that has inner shutters. It doesn’t have”¦I don’t remember, I think it has”¦ because there was a period when our legal office, for reasons of restoration, eliminated all the outer shutters. So I don’t remember if in that moment it had or not the outer shutters, I think not, but I would say something I don’t remember exactly.
GCM: I also wanted to ask you, there were only the two jackets on the glass? Where there other items of clothing that indicated a search in wardrobes, or only these two jackets?
MP: Honestly I would not be able to remember.
GCM: You remember of these two jackets, that one was yours.
MP: Yes because I don’t think there were other clothingsd in the office. I don’t remember if there were others”¦ besides the toga of Lawyer Brocchi, but it was left”¦
GCM: I wanted to ask you, these jackets where [normally] were they? On a coat rack?
MP: They were on a coat rack that is to the right of the entrance to the legal office, they were on a coat rack, a bluish jacket of Lawyer”¦
GCM: Not in a wardrobe?
MP: No, no, not in a wardrobe, on a coatrack.
GCM: A coatrack.
MP: A coatrack, yes.
GCM: I also wanted to ask you, you spoke of a small pile of glass.
MP: Yes.
GCM: That is, what was it, a small gathered pile or scattered?
MP: A small gathered pile of glass.
GCM: Purposely put there?
MP: I don’t know that.
GCM: A little gathered pile, not scattered..
MP: Not scattered glass as the ones”¦
GCM: Not scattered glass but a small pile.
MP: A small pile of glass.
GCM: Originating from the broken window?
MP: Probably yes even because there was no other broken window if not that one and there were no other bottle or other things inside the legal office.
GCM: The computer, can you describe it? Seen as you said: “you gathered your thoughts” you remember something”¦
MP: If I can see it, I will be able to say if it is mine..
GCM: It’s not that the invoice has”¦
MP: No, my computer is a Sony Vaio with a white cover, but the model is not”¦
GCM: Okay.
LM: With regard to the question by the President”¦
GCM: Please proceed.
LM: In connection to the glass, the glass of the broken window, was this glass scattered?
MP: In part scattered, I gather, seeing as there weren’t others”¦that the others clustered inside the waiting room were from that glass, but not”¦
LM: So there was glass scattered both inside the room where the window was broken, and in adjacent rooms?
MP: Let’s agree that the scattered glass, covered by the jackets, was in the corridor that leads to the administrative office, which is to the right of the entrance and is in front of the French window from where the individuals had”¦
LM: So, in conclusion, there was a scattering of glass”¦
MP: Yes.
LM: “¦ let’s say with enough range”¦
MP: More than where the jackets were located.
LM: Thank you.
MDG: May I, President, just one question?
GCM: Yes, please proceed, Lawyer.
MDG: Do you remember if you had inserted a password on your computer.
GCM: Okay, maybe the last questions, on the computer.
MDG: On the computer model, President.
MP: No.
MDG: It was not inserted?
MP: No.
MDG: Thank you.
GCM: The witness is excused.
There are no other questions; the witness is dismissed.
Friday, December 26, 2014
Guede Hoax: Translation Of Lawyers Testimony #1 On Breakin Shows No Concrete Connection To Guede
Posted by Peter Quennell
Balcony and the French doors broken into - an easy climb for most
1. Post Overview
Guede got no breaks, ever, contrary to myriad claims.
For evidentiary reasons exclusively, Rudy Guede has never been charged with breaking and entering. The one questionable location where he was found was the nursery school in Milan.
As he apparently used a key from one of the staff, any break-in trial would have been dead on arrival.
No law required that he be detained. (He was however later charged with being in possession of stolen property, and just a few days ago his sentence was extended by 16 months.)
The previous post in this three-part series showed how similar to the BACK BALCONY route to a forced break-in of Meredith’s house was the supposed route into the Perugia lawyers’ offices.
It had nothing in common with Filomena’s window, contrary to myriad claims.
This post and the next in this series show how the evidentiary proof that it was Guede (and not someone with a grudge or a trial opponent) who broke into the Perugia lawyers’ office is ambiguous and contradictory. Some signs point away from Guede, not least that photocopies apparently made of legal documentation (the copier was on and copy paper missing) would have required the use of a car.
This post is on the testimony of the lawyer Brocchi (owner of the cellphone) and the third post is on the testimony of the lawyer Palazolli (owner of the Sony Vaio computer). Brocchi was quite talkative, despite his minor role, and so we will hold our highlights and interpretation for the next post.
The extensive translation of the difficult language here and in the post still to come was kindly provided by Miriam.
2. Lawyer Testimony In Court #1
The witness, admonished pursuant to Article 497 of the Criminal Procedure Code, reads the oath.
General Information: Paolo Brocchi born in Rome, March 2, 1968
GCM: Please proceed.
LM: Good Morning, lawyer Maori, for the defense of Sollecito.
PB: Good morning.
LM: It is an unnecessary question, but I must ask it. The first question is this: what profession do you hold?
PB: Lawyer.
LM: Where is your legal office?
PB: In via del Roscetto no.3 in Perugia.
LM: Did your office undergo a burglary in 2007, in October 2007?
PB: Yes.
LM: Can you tell us how this burglary took place, how the thieves got in, and what was taken?
PB: Certainly, the burglary was discovered by my colleague lawyer Palazzoli, the owner of the office, he told me about it on a Sunday afternoon, because the theft took place….. It was done between the night of 13th and 14th of October 2007, a night between Saturday and Sunday. The burglary was discovered by my colleague, the lawyer Palazzoli, on Sunday afternoon, because he entered the office to look for a professional file, and upon entering he discovered the burglary. The person or persons that entered inside the office, from what we were able to reconstruct together with members of the Squadra Mobile that intervened for us at the office, they entered through a window situated in the secretary’s office that was subjected to broken glass, the glass of this window was broken with the aid of a piece of porphyry, a big rock that we found there at the spot. The window was broken, then these persons or person turned the handle. The glass clearly was spread everywhere, because it was a rather thick glass. After which, on top of these pieces of glass we found our clothes. For the most part the glass was scattered on the floor and on top of the glass were our jackets, mine and my colleague’s Palazzoli, that had been hanging on the clothes hanger in the corridor right in front of the window.
LM: Excuse me if I interrupt you, to reconstruct the dynamics of the event exactly . It would seem that the 13th of October was a Saturday.
PB: From what I remember, yes.
LM: Your colleague had remained in the office until….........
PB: No, I stayed in the office. Saturday I remained in the office because I had a client on Saturday afternoon, that was something anomalous, but it was for an urgent discussion. I called for a meeting that Saturday morning, then he arrived in the afternoon, and I left the office at 8.30 pm that Saturday.
LM: 8.30 pm that Saturday and after, the following Sunday, the evening…...
PB: The day after, Sunday, I was called on the telephone by lawyer Palazzoli, who told me “Look somebody came into the office, I have already called the Carabinieri”, who then because of the jurisdiction of the old town center, as we found out, alerted the Squadra Mobile of the State Police.
LM: Does your office have an alarm?
PB: The office was fitted out with an alarm, but that evening it was not activated, because, as I reconstruct the event, it had just been installed. That evening I left at 8.30 pm. I remember perfectly that I did not activate the alarm system. The strange thing that I can highlight in connection here is that I noticed the alarm system the next day, when we entered, was not damaged, the bright light was functioning even if it was dis-activated, and the person or persons that entered did not damage the alarm, they only dis-activated the telephonic combination, thus with this they manifested a minimum confidence, a certain competence in the subject matter of alarms, of electronics, because to dis-activate a telephonic combination without damaging the alarm, I would not be capable, even being the owner, thus I would not have this competence.
LM: One other thing. You spoke then about a window that “¦..
PB: Yes, apparently
LM: Was that the only break in?
BB: Yes
LM: Is it a window that gives onto the main street or onto a private court yard?
PB: No, this window gives out to a private court yard that is than protected from the public street by an exterior gate. So it is probable…. I don’t know if can be possible…. because close to that window there are other windows of other apartments, there are… there is a window that is about one meter from the balcony of my office, so everything is possible. But this person or persons if they came from the public street would have to open a gate that gives on private property and then, with the help of I don’t know which tools, climb up for three, four meters on a vertical wall to then arrive to the terrace ,where was located my office, where it is still located, first up to this window and then through this window enter inside my office, if this was the way in.
LM: However this break in took place in this window, three/four meters high.
PB: More or less
LM: Did you find a ladder close by?
PB: No
LM: Did you find other tools?
PB: No. I remember that we inspected with the Squadra Mobile crew. I should say that the property below us has a door, an armored mesh and a particularly able person could have climbed up. Could have, I don’t know, this is just an assumption.
LM: Anyhow it was not easy to climb up.
PB: Absolutely not.
LM: Before, you spoke about this rock, this porphyry..
PB: Yes
LM: Where was it found, inside or outside?
PB: Strangely, right on the little terrace, evidently the person or persons that entered with the help of this very heavy porphyry because a double glass had to be broken, it was not a thin glass, but it was that type of glass utilized mainly for thermal insulation, certainly not for security reasons, evidently it needed a heavy impact in order to somehow succeed in the intent, otherwise a small piece of rock would evidently have been sufficient.
LM: What was taken from inside the office?
PB: So, at first we noticed that the office was in a state of general disarray : all the archive was turned upside down, all the files of the offices were piled up in a heap. But from the first inventory that we did there at the moment, this was missing: a new computer belonging to the lawyer Palazzoli, a note book the brand of which I absolutely do not remember [actually a Sony], a USB flash drive used to save data, a portable Canon printer which was mine, and then a few days later, when I was contacted by a crew of the Police of Milan, agent Spesi Rita, I realized that they had also stolen a cell phone, that anyhow was not working properly, that furthermore was included in the process of investigation (SDI) of the Police Force. Therefore there was also this cell phone, that beforehad I had quit using and didn’t even remember about, that was in the drawer of my desk.
LM: Lawyer, were money and checks stolen too?
PB: No, there were none.
LM: On this I have to challenge, that you on the complaint of the burglary indicated also checks from the Banca delle Marche [were stolen].
PB: No I will explain the reasoning. Those checks at the first moment appeared to us not present. There was a block that was finished, but then after checking with the bank, those checks had been annulled, so in reality they hadn’t been stolen. The verification that we did at the bank the Monday after, highlighted that I had annulled those checks and the bank had trace of it, so nobody took anything.
LM: Another thing before speaking of the recovery of the computer, you told us of the small havoc done inside your office.
PB: Yes.
LM: You spoke of the ransacking, in addition to, as you said before, of the broken glass with your clothes on top. Was also the photo-copy machine utilized?
PB: I am not able to say that. It was easily usable because it was not code protected, but this I am not able to…
LM: Did they turn on the heating?
PB: Yes, when we entered the heating system was on, as matter of fact there was a torrid temperature inside the office, because it remained on, I think, more than 24 hours, in a month, October, that was not particularly cold. Furthermore I noticed that this person or persons that entered inside my office even made use of drinks that were in a cabinet, leaving…. they even opened the cabinet of the first aid meticulously looking for everything that was inside, but more than anything else disinfectants and blood pressure gauge, this type of things, but they really did an accurate selection of the material present inside the first aid cabinet.
LM: Returning to the computer, the property of…..
PB: Of the lawyer Palazzoli, yes.
LM: Was it discovered at a later date?
PB: Well, we never saw it. I say, that the 27th of October 2007, around noon, it was a Saturday, I was in the office in a anomalous way because generally I had the first 3 hours at school and the last 3 hours are normally always….. making 6 hours Saturday morning. But that morning I left early and I was in the office. A telephone call came in on the land line, a call from the police station Venezia Garibaldi from the Milan Police, the agent Rita Spesi, who told me that they had found an individual, of whom I was not given general information, nor the gender, I was only told that certain goods were on this individual, that if I remember correctly they were found inside a kindergarten, a school, an institute of learning, and in this instance, among goods that were in possession of this individual or better held by this individual, this person also had this cellphone. Turning it on, my name appeared, and from here the police officer by way of a search of the SDI system of investigation, saw my complaint of theft of October 15th 2007, and so she asked me if proveably those goods were my property.
LM: Therefore the telephone and computer?
PB: Telephone without doubt, the computer was described to me, it was not mine, I manifested doubts in the sense that…... well I had never seen it, or used it, because it was my colleague’s, who had just bought it, a short time ago he had just bought it. On the computer I manifested doubts. On the telephone, on the telephone however by way of the names of the address menu, the clients and friends of mine, I was able to confirm with certainty that at least my SIM card was on that phone.
LM: It is a Sony model…..no excuse me…..
PB: No, the telephone is a Nokia.
LM: It is a Nokia, model 6310.
PB: Nokia, for sure, the model now not….....
LM: Like this one, so to….....
PB: Yes, exactly.
LM: 6310.
PB: It is the same color, if I remember correctly.
LM: However this is not yours, it is mine.
PB: No, fine.
LM: Was the name of the person that was stopped given to you by agent Rita Spessi?
PB: No, absolutely not.
LM: Did you then find out the name of this person?
PB: No, this happened on October 27th when the police officer calls me. All ends with this telephone call in which I stated I recognized at least the cell phone. On October 29th, a Monday afternoon I am in the office and on the phone with some clients. October 29th, I may be mistaken, but I believe I mentally reconstructed the facts in this way, I did not take notes, I must be honest. October 29th my attention - I was on the phone - my attention was drawn by a commotion in the lobby, the common reception area outside the office. I hear voices in the corridor, I am still on the phone, afterward I get closer to see that an assistant of the office, Dott. Luciano Morini, is speaking with someone. Before I can realize what is happening, he tells me “Look Paolo, here is a person that says that he was found with merchandise, goods, objects that were reported stolen by you and your colleague Palazzoli, but that he bought them in Milan close to the train station in central Milan”. At which I go to the corridor and I see, at the entrance of the lobby, a colored person that has a basketball in his hands and is dressed in sport clothes. These things surprised me, because we were at the end of October and it was kind of cold, it struck me quite a bit seeing this person in sport clothes, a tank top like those used by basketball players, and a basketball. I recognized the basketball because I played basketball for twenty years, so I know how to recognize one. At that point I say: “Look I don’t know who you are”, he answered: “I don’t know who you are either”, I replied: ” Look we are only interested in having our belongings returned” and that was all. At that point I went back to the office. I don’t know if the person stayed in front of the office, and anyhow I close the door and there it ended. A few weeks later, may be a month later, I’m not sure, some time later I see on the newspapers photographs of a person that was associated with the matters of this proceeding, from which I recognized the person that presented himself that afternoon on October 29th, before the matters that brought to this proceeding, at the office to say that, yes he was found at that location in Milan by the crew of the Squadra Mobile, of the police station Venezia Garibaldi, that he did not…. tell me but tell to my colleague Morini, that he did not take anything from anybody but those things he obtained by purchasing them.
LM: Who is this person? Can you give us a name and surname?
PB: Doctor Luciano Morini that…....
LM: No, no, I say…....you told us of your assistant. You said that this colored person that you did not know, that you saw for the first time October 29th 2007, then at a later stage had the means to see by the newspaper who it was.
PB: Yes.
LM: Can you give us the name and surname of this person?
PB: I believe that I recognized in that person this Mr. Rudy Hermann Guede, that is not a defendant in this proceeding, but is involved in the other one…..
LM: Always in reference to October 29th , at the moment this person came to your studio, you said : “This person arrived , and spoke with my colleague Morini”.
PB: Yes.
LM: And he told you: “I do not know you”. These are the exact words that you said before?
PB: When I was on the landing, I said….....
LM: That which Guede said to you.
PB: That which I said to him, because I spoke first and said: “Look I do not know who you are”. He responds: ” I don’t know who you are either”, furthermore in a perfect Italian, with a Perugian accent, something that surprised me, because been a person”¦”¦ but everything is possible. To which I told him, “look let’s cut it short we are not interested. We are only interested in getting our goods back “, end.
LM: But naturally you knew the subject of the discussion between”¦.
PB: Because a moment before Dr. Morini related to me “look there is a person outside that says that he bought goods that you and your colleague reported stolen, he bought them in Milan”.
LM: One last thing. Concerning the computer of your colleague Pazzoli, do you remember the brand, the model?
PB: No, I’m not able to answer.
LM: Thank you.
GCM: Please proceed.
LG: Excuse me Lawyer Brocchi, I am Ghirga. Your office is on which street?
PB: Via del Roscetto, 3.
LG: First”¦. You already told us the height, can you repeat it?
PB: The office is on a raised floor, technically, it is not a first floor, is a raised ground floor, that means that from the entrance of the building you go up ten steps to enter the condominium, then on the left end side there is the entrance to the office.
LG: An what about this terrace window?
PB: It is on the other side of the building.
LG: From the outside how much can it”¦
PB: Let’s say that are a few meters, may be three, four, but I am not able “¦..because I never measured it.
LG: But you were speaking of an access from another street that intersects Via del Roscetto?
PB: Exactly there is an intersection, Via del Lupo, going downhill.
LG: Via del Lupo
PB: Via del Lupo, if I remember correctly, it goes down till you reach a dead end, it comes to a courtyard behind the building and then there is another courtyard that is private property enclosed by a gate. If these person or persons entered through here they would have had to open that gate to get inside to what I described before to get into the office.
LG: Thank you, I wanted to clarify that.
GCM: Mr. Prosecutor, please proceed.
PM: (unintelligible - no microphone) ?
PB: In effect I don’t know. Seeing as I was alerted to these happenings by agent Rita Spessi of the police station Venezia Garibaldi, sometime later, together with my colleague, we filed an application for the repossession of these goods at the central penal record office of the Procura di Milano, via Manara. After 24 hours an agent, an operator, or a clerk of the central penal record office, calls me on the telephone and tells me: “Look, Lawyer, we saw the application of release, but to us form 21, does not result in any procedure”. To which I said: “How can it be that no form 21 procedure shows up ? The agents would have done a CNR, or not? At least by the end of their duty, having found a person in possession of stolen goods should have reported”¦”, “Look , there are no results of this procedure”
PM: (unintelligible - no microphone) ?
PB: Form 21, subject known, in the sense that in the Procura della Repubblica there are various forms, 21, 45, 44, relative documents, etc.
PM: (unintelligible - no microphone) ?
PB: No, I looked for it as a form 21, but even then they”¦..I even asked: “Be patient, I will look for it on the other forms”, to which he said: “We cannot find it”. Given that some time had passed this caused me some surprise. That’s it.
PM: But they notified you (unintelligible - no microphone) ?
PB: No, never.
PM: So then this procedure in any case is not a charge (inaudible - outside the microphone)?
PB: This I don’t know. I only say that the application of release, I filed it, and that the central penal record office of the Procura called telling me that they could not find the application filed by me and my colleague as the offended parties and no other relative documents regarding this procedure.
PM: When did this happen?
PB: 2008, last year in the spring, months and months after”¦..
PM: Did you by any chance verify if there was (unintelligible audible-outside the microphone)?
PB: No, no.
PM: (unintelligible - no microphone) ?
LM: I oppose this question by the Public Prosecutor because I would like to make it known to the court that we know that there is a penal proceeding, the Public Prosecutor D’Amico in Milan even has it. We asked for the acquisition, and we have right here”¦”¦
GCM: Excuse me lawyer, what is the motive for your opposition?
LM: Because the Public Prosecutor is asking if there is a penal proceeding, when in reality”¦”¦
GMC: Excuse me Lawyer, but the Public prosecutor is asking questions to the witness on what he knows. That if evidences comes out from other sources, they will be acquired. The objection is rejected. Please Public Prosecutor.
PM: (unintelligible - no microphone) ?
PB: Yes, it is a palace of the 15 century
PM: Do you know, by chance, which was the path (unintelligible ““ no microphone)?
PB: I can presume it, having found the glasses in the inside, that”¦.
Note: in this moment the PM microphone is turned on
PM: Therefore before I could not be heard.
GCM: The answers have been”¦
PM: The answers were”¦
GCM: Yes.
PM: I understand.
GCM: The other questions”¦ excuse me, the Public Prosecutor was asking if something to you results”¦
PM: If there is a proceeding, and you say there is not one.
PB: No, I don’t say there isn’t one, It does not result from me because the the central penal record office of the Procura di Milan, calling me on the telephone, referred to me the day after, that up to that date there was no registration. Now, everything is possible, that they it registered it later, I don’t know.
PM: You did not have any news, in any case”¦
PB: Never, never.
PM: Did you receive an extension of the investigation?
PB: Never, never.
PM: Let’s go back to the position of this”¦ then this office is on the ground floor”¦
PB: Raised ground floor.
PM: “¦ raised ground floor. From what point do you arrive?
PB: On via della Roscetto there are 2 windows on the raised ground floor, on the street front, that are the rooms of my colleague Palazzoli and mine. Then there are”¦
PM: What is the distance from the ground?
PB: From via della Roscetto it is minimum 3 meters, yes 3 meters, because I am tall”¦ well it’s 2 or 3 meters. Then going down via del Lupo, there is a slope, until this public courtyard, because via del Lupo is a dead end. Thereafter, from this side the height increases, let’s say, it increases slightly after this small slope, therefore the ground goes up and there is an internal court yard that is accessible from the public courtyard through an iron gate. Going through this gate you arrive at this private courtyard, than there is an armored door with a mesh, so that one with the mesh is on the ground floor, looking up you see this balcony, this little terrace that is outside is my office, that is situated “¦.. more than three meters, between three and four meters from ground level.
PM: So, this door with the mesh is a door and not a window.
PB: No, it is a door
PM: Therefore all the way to the ground.
PB: Yes
PM: How high is it?
PB: More than two meters for sure.
PM: So after this door, there is another meter to arrive”¦ or a meter and a half, two meters?
PB: I presume at least another meter.
PM: Another meter to arrive to the balcony.
PB: At least.
PM: Where was the porphyry rock found?
PB: On the balcony, on the outside.
PM: You said that inside “¦ can you describe what you found? How was the”¦..
PB: The situation.
PM: So the rock was outside.
PB: The rock was outside, the glass was inside, the glass of the window in part on the corridor and they were covered with our clothes, mine and those of Lawyer Palazzoli, placed right on top of the glass.
PM: They were on top of the glass.
PB: On top of the glass, and the thing surprised us, “maybe” we said “to not make noise passing over them”, I don’t know, it is only a supposition. After which they were in the room of the photocopier other pieces of fragments of glass always coming from that window, the only one broken, they were situated on a small rug that was right in front of a workplace, a computer. Then right in front of this there were drinks, real close, open, partially consumed. Then we went into the other room, where the filing cabinet is, it was completely turned upside down. All the drawers were open, all the files were taken and the papers all mixed up on the floor, there were a mountain of paper, an entire archive practically mixed up, that many things we were never able to find, some later, some first, others later. Therefore this was the situation. Then inside my room, on my desk, there was a leather suitcase belonging to me, on top of this suitcase in a very orderly way were placed some screwdrivers, pliers, a hammer, facing the window, all perfectly aligned and facing the window. Even here all the papers in disarray. A chest of drawers was opened, inside were files, all the records of the law practice funds, all the annual quotas of the inscriptions, all things that we found eventually with a lot of effort, mixed one on top of the other. Even here was another filing cabinet of my dossiers that was opened and all the papers mixed up. Then inside of the administrative office there were, there are all the folders with the contracts of the intensity bills, with the deed to the office, all upside down. There was the placement of the [printer] that was”¦ let’s say there had been activity, because we found receipts scattered close to the machine, so there had been”¦at the least this person or persons had gone to satisfy themselves of what that instrument was. This was”¦
PM: Listen, was the cell phone given back to you?
PB: No, I asked for the release, I deposited “¦
PM: So it is in possession of the police or the procura?
PB: Office of the body of evidence, I presume.
PM: Fine. I don’t have any other questions.
GCM: Questions from the civil parties? None, President. The defense can complete it’s questioning.
LM: I would like to deposit a record that naturally is in the dossier of the Public Prosecutor and on the basis of this record then ask questions of the witness.
GCM: Maybe put this record at”¦
LM: It’s about.. this can be useful to the lawyer because the number of the penal procedure that charges Rudy Guede is indicated and a warning effected on February 1, 2008 by the Procuratore della Repubblica, the assistant D’Amico, that is carrying out the investigation with regard on Rudy Guede for the crime of theft, receiving stolen good, and for the crime of carrying an illegal weapon, law 110 of ‘75. This information was also given to the Procura della Repubblica of Peruga, to Dr Mignini, with communication via fax.
PB: When was the procedure registered? Ah excuse me,I can’t”¦
GCM: Let’s see the document. So the parties have seen this document?
LM: There is an error in the writing of Dr Mignini (“Dr Minnini”) but it can be understood that it is his fax and and it was even addressed “¦
GCM: Even the defense of Knox knows this”¦?
LG: (unintelligible no microphone) ?
GCM: The question in relation to this document?
LM: The question is this, Doctor D’ Amico makes aware that all of the confiscated material and thus the computer and the Nokia cell phone, had already on the date of February 1, 2008, prior to February 1, 2008, been passed on to the police station of Perugia.
PB: So it is in Perugia.
LM: The question is this, I would like to know, did you request in the first days of the year 2008 to the police station the return of”¦
PB: No, I did so to the Procura di Milan, believing that it was held in the body of evidence of the Procura di Milano, because those people told me they were found in Milan and that it was probable evidence of a criminal activity. Therefore, I thought to make a request of release to the Procura di Milano.
LM: Reading the letter sent by Dr D’ Amico , for the Procura di Perugia, both the computer and the cell phone are indicated. Can you recognize the computer, property of your colleague?
PB: I say that the cell phone without doubt was a Nokia; the 27th of October 2007 is true because it was Saturday; the Sony Vaio I cannot be certain of the brand, because I absolutely don’t remember it, because it was not even mine, , therefore I don’t know. The attempted aggravated theft, 56, 624, 625, 648”¦
GCM: Only on the objects.
PB: Yes. No, the objects”¦ I can only say about the cell phone.
GCM: So only the cell phone.
LM: I ask for the acquisition so as to demonstrate that, indeed, there is a penal proceeding.
GCM: Agreed. Other questions?
PB: So it is pending in Milan. The strange thing that I can say to the president is this”¦ I see that it includes the form 21/2007. So I don’t understand why the Penal Central Record Office told me that it was not pending”¦
GCM: Excuse me layer, let’s go back to the testimonial questioning, therefore on the circumstantial facts.
LM: Let’s go back to the reconstruction of the entry path in your office by the thief. To the question by the Public prosecutor you explained, as you explained to me, that this window is at the height of about 3/4meters from the ground floor.
PB: From via del Lupo, yes
LM: Then you refer to a door, an iron door which is close”¦
PB: Yes, I confirm.
LM: And this iron door at what distance is from the window?
PB: It is perpendicular just under the window.
LM: So therefore there were, let’s say, coarseness on this door that could allow an eventual”¦
PB: A fit person, not I; a fit person, not someone like me, could have climbed up with the risk of plummeting to the ground, because there is clearly no protection, there is nothing but a vertical wall.
LM: I do understand. One last thing, the window from which the thieves entered as you indicated, is higher than the other windows?
PB: No, because the office is on the same level and it is exactly”¦you mean compared to the office or as per the window height?
LM: Compared to the street level and the other windows.
PB: No, at this point, when you get to little terrace you are practically at the level of the other windows.
LM: One last thing, when that man on the 29th of October that man, Rudy Guede, came to your office”¦
PB: No, not in the office, he was on”¦
LM: On the landing?
PB: Not even, he was in the entrance”¦ on the steps between the street and the entrance of the office”¦part of the lobby. He did not enter the office.
LM: His intention was to come inside the office, to come to you?
PB: I don’t know. As a matter of fact he didn’t know who I was, because, when he rang he rang on Legal Office, because evidently somebody had told him that those goods had been”¦ but I repeat, I did not speak with him, therefore no”¦ they are all things told to me by Dott. Morini, so they are not of my direct knowledge.
LM: Thank you.
GCM: When did this take place?
PB: This happened Monday afternoon around 5, late afternoon on October 29th 2007
GCM: So how many days after the theft?
PB: The theft was October 13th, this on the 29th .
GCM: If there no other question the witness is excused.
There are no other questions; the witness is dismissed.
GCM: The communication from the Procura della Repubblica, Tribunale Ordinario of Milano dated the 1st of February 2008 is acquired in order to be used. Who is next?
LM: Lawyer Palazzoli
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Knox Interrogation Hoax #17: Fifth Opportunity Knox Flunked: RS Supreme Court Appeal
Posted by Our Main Posters
Media outside the Cassation back entrance waiting for news of the ruling
1. Where This Series Stands
Dozens of people have very aggressively gone to bat for Knox over her “interrogation” and still do.
They trust that one or other of her versions of the 5-6 November 2007 police-station session is right.
We have been demonstrating the rock-solid evidence that Knox and her supporters have lied and lied and there will be more evidence of this to come.
We’ve shown in this series that Knox insisted on being there; she was merely helping to build a list; she was treated kindly and taken for refreshments; she was the only one overheard by anyone to raise her voice, when she screamed about Lumumba “He did it!”; it was Sollecito not the police saying that she had been lying and had made him lie; and there is documentary evidence that the police investigators who sat with Knox told the truth.
Coming soon, we are going to post hundreds of very nasty claims by Knox shills, all sparked by and never reigned in by Knox.
2. The Pre-Trial Hurdles Knox Failed
Do you know how many major opportunities before her 2009 trial started Knox was given to get the murder charges dropped? This is not something Knox supporters trumpet about, if they even know.
In fact there were six, and Knox dismally failed them all.
In 2007 there were (1) the Matteini hearing and (2) the Ricciarelli hearing in November and (3) the Mignini interview in December. And in 2008 there were (4) the separate Knox appeal and Sollecito appeal to the Supreme Court in April, and (5) the first Micheli hearings in September, and (6) the second Micheli hearings in October, which dispatched Knox and Sollecito for trial.
In all six instances Knox’s team also had the opportunity to get the charges against Knox for calunnia against Lumumba dropped.
3. Sollecito’s appeal to the Supreme Court
In Knox Interrogation Hoax #16 we described the fourth pre-trial hurdle Knox failed to make. That was her appeal to the Supreme Court against the Matteini and Ricciarelli rulings that much evidence pointed to her and for the safety of others she needed to be kept locked up.
Knox hadnt really lifted a finger to deflect suspicion away from Sollecito and the same thing applied in reverse from 2007 right through to 2014 with the one bizarre exception of Sollecito’s book.
Catnip kindly provided this translation below of Cassation’s ruling on Sollecito’s appeal in April 2008 that much evidence pointed to him too and for the safety of others he also needed to be kept locked up.
If Sollecito had not fingered Knox at his own interrogation on 5-6 November 2007 which set her fireworks off, here was his second chance after his memo to Judge Matteini to set things straight and get her off the hook.
So did he? No. He again left Knox dangling in the wind.
Summary: Held: the decision to continue pre-trial prison detention for the suspect was reasonable.
THE REPUBLIC OF ITALY
IN THE NAME OF THE ITALIAN PEOPLE
THE SUPREME COURT OF CASSATION
SECTION 1 CRIMINAL DIVISIONComprised of the most Honourable Justices:
Dr Torquato GEMELLI - President -
Dr Emilio Giovanni GIRONI - Member -
Dr Maria Cristina SIOTTO - Member -
Dr Umberto ZAMPETTI - Member -
Dr Margherita CASSANO - Member -have pronounced the following
JUDGMENT
on the appeal lodged by:
(1) RS, born on X, against Order of 30/11/2007 Liberty Court of Perugia;
having heard the relation made by Member Emilio Giovanni Gironi;
having heard the conclusions of the Prosecutor-General Dr Consolo for its rejection;
having heard the defence advocates G and T (substituting for advocate M).
REASONS FOR THE DECISION
The order referred to in opening confirmed, at the Re-examination stage, the one by which the GIP [the Preliminary Investigation Magistrate] had applied pre-trial prison detention of RS for participation in the murder of MSCK, the which occurring in Perugia on the evening of the 1st of November 2007 by means of a cutting weapon, in an alleged context of sexual assault by a group, in which there would have taken part, in addition to S, his girlfriend AK and a RHG, who had left behind a palm print on the bloodied pillow on which the victim’s body was resting and whose DNA was found on the vaginal swab taken from the body of the same and on faecal traces found in a bathroom of the house that the victim was sharing with Ms AK and two Italian students.
The picture of circumstantial evidence specifically concerning S consists of the identification of a print left in haematic material present at the scene of the crime of a sports shoe held to be compatible, because its dimensions and configuration of the sole, with the type of footwear, “N” brand size 42.5, used by the suspect; of the recovery ““ in the kitchen of his house ““ of a kitchen knife bearing traces of Ms AK’s DNA on the handle and on the blade traces of Ms MK’s DNA; and of the collapse of the alibi put up by the young man (having been disproven by technical investigations carried out), in which, as asserted by him, he had interacted with his computer during the hours in which, according to the forensic pathologist’s reconstruction, the criminal fact would have occurred, that is between 22:00 and 23:00 of the 1st November 2007; from the investigations carried out up until now it would appear, in fact, that the last interaction with the machine on 1 November occurred at 21:10 and that the subsequent one took place at 5:32 the day after, when S also reactivated his mobile phone, acts witnessing thereby an agitated and sleepless night. Equally disproven was that the young man had received a phone call from his father at 23:00 on the night of the murder, it resulting, instead, that said call had happened at 20:40.
Against S, caught at the time of arrest with a switchblade initially considered compatible with the wounds found on the neck of the victim, would line up, in addition, the mutability of the stories given to the investigators by the same and by his girlfriend, having initially maintained they had remained the whole evening and night in the young man’s house, later to state, instead, that at a certain point Ms AK would have left to meet the Ivorian [sic] citizen PDL, manager of a pub in which Ms AK was undertaking casual employment, she making a returning to her boyfriend’s house only around one in the morning.
It must, finally, be added that the same Ms AK had, amongst other things, initially referred (not confirming, in any case, the thesis in confused and contradictory subsequent versions) to having taken herself to her own house with L, where this latter (he also was struck with a custody order, later revoked after the previously mentioned identification of G’s DNA) had had sexual relations with Ms MK, and to having, while she herself was in the kitchen, heard her friend scream, without, further, remembering anything else of the subsequent events, up until the occurrences of the day after, marked by the discovery of traces of blood in the small bathroom next to Ms MK’s room and culminating in the discovery of the body, after the intervention of the forces of law and order (the police appear, in particular, to have intervened prior to the call to 112 effected by S); in particular, the young woman was specifically pointing out not being able to remember whether S were also present in the victim’s house on the occasion of the events just described.
The Re-examination Court concluded recognizing, for the purposes of maintaining pre-trial detention, the persistence of all the types of pre-trial exigencies mentioned by Article 274 Criminal Procedure Code.
The S defence has indicated an appeal, on the grounds of, with new reasons as well:
““ reference to Ms AK alone of the circumstantial evidence constituted by the presence of biological traces from her and from the victim on the knife found at S’s house;
““ absence, at the scene of the crime, of biological traces attributable to the suspect [ndr: note, this was before the bra-clasp tests had been done];
““ arbitrary transference onto S of the weighty circumstantial evidence against Ms AK, on the unfounded assumption that the pair could not have been anything but together at the moment of the homicidal fact;
““ inexistent evidential value of the phases relative to the discovery of the body;
““ absence of blood traces from the soles of the “N” shoes worn by the suspect even at the moment of his arrest;
““ absence of any evidential value of merit, alleged failure of the alibi, constituting the use of his computer, of which the falsity has not in any case been ascertained, of the lack of interaction by the subject with the machine after the last operation at 21:10 not permitting the inference that the computer was not, however, engaged in downloading files (being, to be specific, films);
““ irrelevancy of the mistake revealed between the indicated time of the phone call to the father furnished by S and the actual time of the call, given the uncertainty of the time of death of the victim, depending on the time, otherwise uncertain, of the consumption of the dinner (according to various witness statements coinciding with 18:00), it being well able, therefore, for the time indicated by the forensic pathologist (23:00) to be revised backwards to 21:00, a little before which time the witness P had referred to having made a visit to S, finding him at home and not on the verge of going out;
““ interpretability of the so-called unlikelihood of the versions supplied by the suspect as attempts to cover for (aid and abet) another subject;
““ attribution of the victim’s biological traces found on the knife seized at S’s house to chance contamination not related to the homicidal fact;
““ insufficiency of the pre-trial exigencies, having diminished in a probative sense after the return to Italy of G; those relating to risk of flight lacking in specificity and concreteness; and with reference to the conventional content of blogs posted on the internet by the suspect, those relating to danger to society illogically reasoned;
““ missing appearance of the young man’s walk, via security cameras installed along the route that the aforesaid would have had to traverse to go from his house to that of the victim’s.
THE APPEAL IS UNFOUNDED
As regards what this Court is permitted to appreciate, not being able here to proceed with a re-reading of the investigative results nor with an alternative interpretation of the factual data referred to in the custody order, the appellant defence substantially contests the recognition, as against S, of the necessary requisite of grave indicia of culpability. The question thus posed and submitted for scrutiny by this bench of the well-known limits of the competence of the court of merit, it must be held that the finding expressed by the Re-examination judges concerning the gravity of the frame of circumstantial evidence is not susceptible to censure.
Not upheld, in the first place, is the defence submission according to which the knife bearing the genetic prints of Ms AK and of Ms MK found in S’s house would constitute a piece of evidence relevant solely as against the young woman, even if privy of traces attributable to the suspect, the utensil has as always been found in the young man’s house, and the testimony acquired up until now has led to the exclusion that it formed part of the inventory of the house inhabited by the victim, and which, at the time, and until proved to the contrary, must be held to be the same available for use by the suspect and which had been used in MK’s house, there being contested no access by her to S’s house.
Given the multitude of group contributive possibilities, the fact is not significative, then, in itself being a neutral element, that on the scene of the crime there are no biological traces attributable to S, to which, in any case, is attributable the “N” brand shoe print considered compatible, by dimensions and sole configuration, with the footwear worn by the suspect at the time of arrest. Although having the same impugned order excluded, at the time, the certainty of the identification constitutes as, in any case, a certain datum that the print in question had been made in haematic material found in Ms MK’s room by a shoe of the kind and of the dimensions of those possessed by the appellant, while it remains to be excluded that this could have originated from G’s shoe, who wore a size 45 and, therefore, dimensions notably larger. The revealed coincidence, notwithstanding the residual uncertainty on the identification, assumes particular valency in relation to the restricted circle of subjects gravitating to the scene of the homicide, with not even Ms AK, who made admissions about her presence on site at the same time as the execution of the offence, excluding the presence of her boyfriend in the victim’s house in the same circumstance; nor can it be held that the print could have been left by S the following morning, he never having claimed to have entered into the room wherein the body was lying.
It does not answer, therefore, to verity that, as against the young man, there had been recognized, by a phenomenon of transference, items of circumstantial evidence in reality pointing solely to Ms AK.
The last finding held unfavourable to S is constituted by the failed proof of the alibi constituted by the argument of the suspect as having remained at home on the computer until late at night; it being a matter of, properly speaking, an alibi failing up till now and not of a false alibi and the defence, correctly, does not refute the technico-judicial valency of the circumstantial evidence, but it remains, in any case, acquired into the case file that the accused had not been able to prove his absence from the locus of the crime at the same time. An item up until now assumed as certain is, instead, the fact that S had interacted with his computer at 5:32 the morning following the murder, at around the same time reactivating his own mobile phone, a contradiction of the assumption of a waking up only at 10:00 and a symptomatic tell-tale of a more or less sleepless night; likewise as symptomatic was held to be the nearly simultaneous cessation of telephonic traffic as much by Ms AK, in his company the evening of 1 November 2007.
The proof of a permanent stay in his house by the suspect can, all told, be considered as acquired up until 20:40 ““ coincident with P’s visit ““ who confirmed his presence, or up until 21:10, the last interaction time on the computer, but this does not cover the time of the homicide, located between 22:00 and 23:00.
As for the proposed argument that S’s conduct were interpreted as aiding and abetting, this does not result, in the event, as being supported by anything emerging from the investigations and its plausibility cannot be verified by the judges of merit.
In conclusion, the Re-examination Court’s evaluation as to the gravity of the circumstantial evidence picture are removed from the audit of this court.
There remains, finally, the finding that for what concerns the pre-trial exigencies, those of a probative nature are not able to be considered as ceasing from the sole fact of G’s re-entry into Italy (amongst other things significantly never invoked in the statements by the suspect and by his girlfriend, who instead co-involved L in the proceedings), given the existence of an investigative picture in continual evolution, in which the positions of the various protagonists so far remain unclear, the changing versions of which are marked by reticence and mendaciousness (the same suspect had, in truth, admitted to having, at least initially, told “˜a load of balls’); but the permanence of pre-trial exigencies had been held reasonablely even under the aspect of flight risk, in relation to the gravity of the charges and of the potential sanctions, not to mention danger to society, given the revealed fragility of character and the specific personal traits of the subject, ““ which would narrowly evaluate as innocuous youthful stereotypes ““, in a context the more connoted by the noted habitual use of drugs.
FOR THESE REASONS
Rejects the appeal and sentences the appellant to payment of costs of the proceedings. Article 94 para 1 ter, and activating provisions, Criminal Procedure Code, applies.
Rome, 1.4.2008.DEPOSITED IN THE REGISTRY ON 21 APRIL 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2014
The PMF/TJMK Master Evidence List: First Of Our Projects To Make The Final Picture Whole
Posted by Our Main Posters
High-achiever Meredith Kercher was born less than one mile south of this famous London landmark
Building An Evidence Mountain
There are really three pictures, not just the one, still to be fully made whole.
- That of Meredith. We believe a family site will soon add to the fine book published by Meredith’s dad.
- That of all of the evidence the court acquired in 2009, which is the sole picture the Italian citizenry takes seriously.
- That of the misleading campaign by the Knox and Sollecito PR shills, leaving some in the UK and US misled.
The Master Evidence List is a key part of the second picture and there are several other media-friendly pages still to come.
Please click here for more