Category: Hoaxers from 2007

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Knox, Tied In Knots By Her Own Tongue: Translation Of The 17 Dec 2007 Interview With Dr Mignini #4

Posted by Machiavelli, Catnip, Kristeva

Inmate-chefs at Capanne Prison, from which Knox was making a bid for release

1. Getting Up To Speed On This Fourth Post

How much serious questioning was Knox subjected to prior to this voluntary interview six weeks after her arrest?

In fact, none. In the early days of November, after Meredith was found dead, she had several less-formal “recap/summary” sessions with investigators on possible leads (as did many others), which the defenses conceded without argument at trial were simply that and no more.

So these were the first serious questions put to Knox - politely, and Knox is essentially not argumentative throughout

The transcript was in the evidence pile and all judges except Hellmann seem to have studied it hard. This was also the first-ever interview of Knox by Dr Mignini, as prosecutor appointed to the case. He had seen her twice at the house and heard her at her strong insistence early on 6 November.

But they had never before really talked.

Prior to this, Knox had already emanated over a dozen differing versions of what she wanted to claim took place and the police and prosecutors and Supervising Magistrate Claudia Matteini had tried to make sense of those. 

2. Our Translation Of Approximately The Fourth 40 Minutes

This is the fourth 40 minutes of the voluntary interview which lasted in total about three hours. For a full understanding it would really be best to read (1) our first post and comment thread and (2) our second post and comment thread. and (3) third post and comment thread.

Transcript of Interview 17 December 2007: Statement of Interview Of Ms Amanda Knox (cont)

PM Mignini: After having talked, after you were heard at the Questura, did you go away or did you wait?

Knox: The first day I was questioned I was there for hours”¦ maybe 14”¦

Interpreter: The first time it seems to her that she had been there a very long time, 14 hours

PM Mignini: But questioned

Knox: No, maybe they questioned me for 6 hours but I stayed at the Questura a very long time”¦

Interpreter: It must have been more or less 6 hours that Amanda was questioned but staying in the Questura must have been about”¦

PM Mignini: But was there”¦ were you in the waiting room?

Knox: Yes the whole time together with everyone else we were there in the waiting room”¦

Interpreter Yes, yes together with the other ones

PM Mignini: And who were the other people?

[82]

Knox: The housemates, and later others arrived”¦ After quite a long time our neighbors arrived, after a while some people Meredith knew arrived, her friends

Interpreter: Her housemates and then other people who arrived later, the neighbors after a while”¦ and after, Meredith’s friends arrived, the people Meredith knew”¦

PM Mignini: But did you speak to them? Did you exchange any confidences?

Knox: Yes we were all there and I said “it appears that Meredith’s body was found in a closet”

PM Mignini: Who said that?

Knox: I remember talking to her friends and I remember telling them that it appeared the body had been found inside a closet”¦

Interpreter: She remembers having said it to Meredith’s friends

PM Mignini: But friends, who? You must tell us the name”¦ a name even just the name”¦

Knox: I remember having talked to Sophie”¦ But I don’t know the name of the other friends

PM Mignini: A certain Natalie? From London

Knox: The name sounds familiar but I don’t think I could recognize her face

Interpreter: She can’t tie the name to her face but”¦

PM Mignini: And what were you saying? What kind of comments were you making?

[83]

Knox: I told them what I knew, I told them that I had arrived home and found the door open, and told them what I knew”¦

Interpreter: She told what she knew that she had arrived home and found the door open

PM Mignini: Did you ever see, did you see in those moments the wound on Meredith’s neck?

Interpreter: Up to the moment?

PM Mignini: In that moment.

Knox: I never saw Meredith dead, I never saw her dead body”¦

Interpreter: No, she never saw her dead

PM Mignini: Ok, but was there anyone that night who said, anyone who said that she had died quickly? Did someone else say that she must have suffered for a long time”¦ was there anyone who said this?

Knox: Nobody of the people I talked to knew what had happened”¦

Interpreter: No, none of the people she talked to said something”¦ knew what had happened

PM Mignini: Did you come to know, did you ever come to know, and if yes, when, in what moment, Meredith had died”¦ that is, if Meredith’s death was immediate or if it was prolonged, if there was a death agony”¦ if yes, when did you find that out?

Knox: The only time when I heard of this was when Luciano [Ghirga] was describing the wound and how deep it was”¦ What kind of wound it was and he said “maybe she died slowly because no big vein had been struck”

Interpreter: So, the first time you had heard talking about the wound and how she died”¦ when was it with Luciano?

Lawyer: The morning of the 8th

[84]

PM Mignini: So, after the 6th…

Lawyer: The morning of the 8th

PM Mignini: The morning of November 8th

Lawyer: After the arrest validation [hearing]

Interpreter: And there she found out that no vital vein was directly struck and therefore”¦

PM Mignini: You say that she came to know on the 8th from the lawyer.

Lawyer: From the lawyers.

PM Mignini: From the lawyers, sorry.

Lawyer: We always came all together

PM Mignini: Either one or the other [of you] could have told her”¦ so”¦ [talking to Knox] I formally notify [for the record, a contradiction] that an Erasmus student and a colleague of this student, they said, on this past December 10th that on the night of the second in the Questura, while having”¦ a girl called Natalie, I won’t tell you her last name but she”¦ she was a friend of Meredith, she had noticed that you were talking at length with Sollecito, and at a certain point, in response to a comment made by one of these girls that they hoped Meredith had died without suffering, you instead said ” with those kind of wounds the death would not have come fast and that therefore Meredith must have died after a certain period of time”. I’ll reread it to you if you’d like, ok?

Knox: The police told me that her throat was cut, and what I know about that topic, I mean when they cut your throat, it is terrible and I heard that it’s a horrible way to die”¦

Interpreter: Yes the police had told her that Meredith’s throat was cut and what Amanda knew is that it’s an agonizing way to die”¦

[85]

PM Mignini: But this is something we found out after, we too found it out only later”¦ not right away”¦

Knox: The police told me that her throat had been cut.

Interpreter: The police had told her that her throat had been cut.

PM Mignini: Who from the police? Excuse me I’d like to know”¦ cutting the neck, it can happen in many ways, vital veins can be struck and might also not be struck, therefore one thing is about cutting the throat, and another is about the way how to cut it and therefore make it so that the death occurs instantaneously, or cause a death with agony. On the evening of the second, if it’s true, according to these results, on the evening of the second you knew that, with those kind of wounds, she must have suffered an agony”¦ and the police didn’t know that”¦

Knox: I thought that a death by cutting the throat was always slow and terrible”¦

PM Mignini: The autopsy was made on the fourth, two days later

Interpreter: What she thought was that cutting the throat was always a slow death in general

PM Mignini: It’s not like that”¦not necessarily”¦ anyway, who from the police told you about the neck wound? Tell us.

Knox: It was probably the interpreter”¦the first interpreter was the person I talked to the most”¦ all information I had came more or less from him”¦

Interpreter: Probably the translator/interpreter

PM Mignini: Therefore, therefore he told you while you were being heard”¦

Lawyer: She was in there 12 hours

[86]

Knox: When I was in there I was talking to the police and they told me that her throat was cut”¦ the whole conversation was between me and the interpreter. It was him who must have told me, a long time has passed but I think it was like that”¦

Interpreter: Directly from the interpreter, indirectly from the police

PM Mignini: So [it was] when you were questioned. Not before.

Interpreter: No, before she was questioned she didn’t know how she was”¦

Knox: No, when I was home the way she died”¦

PM Mignini: Before being questioned”¦ you were questioned until 15:30, until what time have you been heard? You were being heard since 15:30, until what time were you being heard?

Knox: I don’t know it was a long questioning”¦

Lawyer: She had been heard in the presence of an interpreter, maybe the interpreter”¦

PM Mignini: It was D’Astolto”¦ Fabio D’Astolto

Lawyer: The interpreter was present from the beginning or only from the questioning onwards?

PM Mignini: Yes, well he was a policeman acting as an interpreter, translating. Fabio D’Astolto. Assistant D’Astolto. When and how, in what terms did D’Astolto express himself, this translator what did he tell you?

Lawyer: When?

PM Mignini: When and what did he tell you

Knox: I don’t remember when but I asked him how she died

Interpreter: She doesn’t remember when but she asked him how she was killed”¦

PM Mignini: And he pointed out to you the wound on the neck. The wound on the neck and that’s all. Fine. This translator.

[87]

Lawyer: [to the Prosecutor] You referred to an Erasmus student who had said that on December 10th.  Ms. Natalie would have said this.

PM Mignini: Yes

Lawyer: And is the Erasmus student indicated [in the records]?

PM Mignini: It is indicated

Lawyer: Do we have a name?

PM Mignini: Capruzzi, Filippo and the other one is a certain, a colleague of his, Chiara, Maioli.

Lawyer: So it was two Erasmus students

PM Mignini: Two Erasmus students who confirmed this confidentiality from this English girl. Some”¦ this is the December 10th hearing report”¦ ok

Lawyer G. She clarified if she had talked with the interpreter, with someone before”¦

Lawyer C. We have clarified that the interpreter was not an interpreter but was a police officer who speaks English and that apparently was present from the beginning and therefore at this point…

PM Mignini: Wait.. one moment”¦ did you, did you”¦ did you see this person who was translating at the house?

Knox: No

Interpreter: No

PM Mignini: Perfect

Lawyer: She was approximately 12 hours in the Questura and at some time she heard the first… let’s call it questioning but it was a long time, and before the questioning she heard of this wound on the neck, is that right?

[88]

PM Mignini: During the questioning, you said before, during the questioning so much as this policeman translator was present, therefore”¦ no I’m very sorry, who did you hear this from? The translator? The policeman

Interpreter: About the wound? The first time?

PM Mignini: The wound

Knox: I think so

Knox: The first time?

PM Mignini: Yeah

Interpreter: I think the interpreter the first time

PM Mignini: And it would be this D’Astolto”¦ so this D’Astolto told you, please excuse me you told me this “it was D’Astolto” now”¦ therefore this D’Astolto told you this during the course of the questioning?

Knox: I think so”¦

Interpreter: Yes, she thinks so

PM Mignini: Ok, one more thing, so the”¦ you did, the morning of the”¦ actually no, the night between the fifth and the sixth of November, you did, let’s say partially modify your previous declarations, so then you modified your previous declarations and you made a specific accusation against Patrick Dia Lumumba known as Patrick. You said that you were supposed to meet with Patrick, that you met with Patrick at the basketball court of Piazza Grimana, that you went to Meredith’s house, to your house, and then he had sex with Meredith, then you heard a scream and you accused him even if in terms you say “confusedly” of killing Meredith. Isn’t that so? Why did you make this accusation? “¦ Now remember, I was hearing you, I was present, you were crying, you were

[89]

profoundly upset, and you were as if relieved when you made this statement.

Lawyer: Maybe she was stressed?

PM Mignini: Well, stressed or not, in any case she was very   she made these declarations

Lawyer: You asked her a question “Why did you make these declarations”?

PM Mignini: Well I also have to”¦

Lawyer: Eh these are opinions

PM Mignini: I am saying that you made a declaration not in a detached way, in other words in a very involved manner, why did you make these statements?

Knox: I was scared, I was confused, it had been hours that the police that I thought were protecting me, and instead they were putting me under pressure and were threatening me.

Interpreter: She was scared, she was confused, it had been hours that the police were threatening and pressuring her.

PM Mignini: Yes, tell me, go on

Knox: The reason why I thought of Patrick was because the police were yelling at me about Patrick”¦ they kept saying about this message, that I had sent a message to Patrick”¦

Interpreter: The reason why she thought of Patrick was because the police was asking her who was this Patrick to whom she sent, with whom there was this exchange of messages, they were asking her insistently.

Knox: That was the worse experience of my life

Interpreter: The worse experience of her life

[90]

Knox: I had never been more confused than then

Interpreter: She had been so confused or scared

PM Mignini: But in the following memoriale [spontaneous statement around noon 6 November] that you wrote before going to prison, basically you don’t retract this accusation. Even if in terms, still in terms let’s say of uncertainty, between dream and reality, in other words in such a way “¦ still you didn’t “¦ I believe that in this memoriale you say “I still see this image in front of me” and then you see yourself while hearing it, you say that in that first memoriale you wrote “you hear Meredith’s screams and you put your hands over your ears”. Why do you have this image? Your ears”¦ the scream”¦ it’s not like it’s changing much after all isn’t that so?

Lawyer: No, but she says she was very confused”¦ she was under a lot of stress

PM Mignini: Yes, but why does it basically remain the same, this one”¦

Knox: Yes, I imagined these things”¦

Interpreter: Imagined this scene

Knox: I was so scared and confused

Interpreter: I was so scared and confused

Knox: that I tried to imagine what could have happened. The police told me that I was probably not remembering well. So I thought of what could be another answer and therefore I imagined it”¦

Interpreter: She tried to think of what could have happened since the police was saying that probably she didn’t remember well. And therefore she imagined this scene, trying to think how it could have happened

PM Mignini: Well, you, I just tell you, I tell you only that this Dia Lumumba, this Patrick, only comes up in your statements, he wasn’t, he has never been indicated previously in the slightest, I mean why did you, why did you almost feel…

[91]

...forced to, so you say, to give this name? While this name had never been, you had never mentioned him previously”¦ in the statements of the 2nd, the 3rd”¦. Why only at a certain point di this Patrick pop up? I’m telling you, do you realize”¦ excuse me, eh? “¦ excuse me”¦.

Knox: They were telling me “why did you send this message to Patrick, this message to Patrick!”

Interpreter: Because they were always insisting about this message to Patrick and because”¦

PM Mignini: Well because there’s the message so [it’s] the message but it’s just that, it’s not that there was an attitude, I mean it’s not like there was any reference to a message according to what emerges from the statements. In fact there was a message that you”¦ since there had been an exchange of messages right before the time of the murder between you and this person it’s normal that the police would want to know why, what this message meant, this”¦ therefore it’s not something”¦ why did you threw yourself in this kind of”¦ ? While you had, you had the possibility to”¦?

Knox: Because I thought that it could have been true

Interpreter: Because she thought it could have been true”¦

PM Mignini: It could have been true?

Lawyer: Why?

Knox: When I was there, I was confused”¦

PM Mignini: [to the lawyers, ed.] No, no, excuse me, at this point no, I’m sorry. Not the lawyers. The defense can intervene against me but against the person investigated…?

Lawyer Ghirga: But there was no question”¦ Prosecutor there was no question

PM Mignini: It could be true. What does it mean?

[92]

Lawyer Ghirga: There was no question

PM Mignini: What? I am asking the question.

Lawyer Ghirga: Then ask it.

PM Mignini: What does it mean, how “˜could it be true’? What?

Lawyer Ghirga: What could be true?

PM Mignini: Excuse me, lawyer

Lawyer Ghirga: It’s like the phone call with her parents

PM Mignini: What could be true

Lawyer Ghirga: It’s like the phone call with her parents

PM Mignini: “¦Lawyer Ghirga”¦ what”¦?

Lawyer Ghirga: [seems to Knox] What do you want to say then? Let’s ask her”¦

PM Mignini: Excuse me, I am asking the questions, I am asking them now

Lawyer Ghirga Yes of course

PM Mignini: Then after you can”¦ I am asking her”¦

Lawyer Ghirga: Yes of course, we will ask them too”¦

PM Mignini: Lawyer”¦ she is saying “it could have been true””¦

Lawyer: What?

PM Mignini: “it could have been true”. She was telling me why did she accuse Lumumba of this fact? “It could have been true” is what she answered. Gentlemen, here”¦

Knox: I said it because I imagined it and I thought that it could have been true”¦

Interpreter: She said because she had imagined it and therefore she thought it could have been true.

[93]

PM Mignini: Look, listen”¦ listen, why did you imagine it?

Knox Why?... Because I was stressed

PM Mignini: Why didn’t you imagine”¦

Lawyer: No she was answering

PM Mignini: Yes; what did you want to say?

Interpreter: Because she was under stress”¦

Knox: Knox: Why? I was stressed, I was scared, it was after long hours in the middle of the night, I was innocent and they were telling me that I was guilty

Interpreter: Because they were saying that she was guilty

PM Mignini: Who was saying it? Guilty who’”¦.

Interpreter: After hours”¦

Lawyer: Excuse me, prosecutor, if we can correctly compile this translation, these words that were said in English at the right moment

PM Mignini: She is crying, we acknowledge, I’m sorry, we acknowledge that the”¦ investigated is crying.

Interpreter: Because she was stressed, scared under pressure after many hours, she was”¦ in the middle of the night, they had reached the middle of the night and because they were saying that Amanda was guilty.

PM Mignini: Who was saying that she was guilty?

Interpreter: The police

Lawyer: The police was accusing her

Interpreter: The police was accusing Amanda

[94]

PM Mignini: Why”¦ why did you accuse Lumumba and not others? How many people did you know who could”¦

Knox: Because they were yelling Patrick’s name”¦

Interpreter: She accused Patrick and not others because they were always talking about Patrick, suggesting”¦

PM Mignini: The police, the police couldn’t suggest…

Interpreter: Yelling Patrick’s name

PM Mignini: Excuse me, what was the police saying?

Interpreter: What did the police tell you?

Knox: The police were telling me that “˜we know that you were at the house, we know that you left the house’, and the moment before I said Patrick’s name they put.. someone was showing me the message that I had sent on the phone

Interpreter: The police said that they knew that Amanda was inside the house, and when she went in, when she went out, that she was inside the house, and while they were asking her this someone showed her Patrick’s message on the phone.

PM Mignini: But this is”¦ But this is normal. You”¦ there was this message”¦ I’m sorry, I’m very sorry. There’s a murder here. There’s a girl whose throat is slit, there was a phone number, there was a call that had been made, you were being heard. There was a call that had been made to you on the night of the murder from this person, you replied to this call in a way that could have been interpreted, according to the meaning in Italian “will see you”. Eh, so what is more normal than to insist? The police are doing their job. They insist to know, what did that mean, what was the, what relationship was there between you and Lumumba. This is normal.

[95]

Knox: I didn’t understand why they were insisting that I was lying”¦ they kept telling me that I was lying”¦

Interpreter: She didn’t understand why they were insisting that she was lying.

PM Mignini: Why are you”¦?

Interpreter: The police was insisting that she was lying.

PM Mignini: But why did you accuse, then if it was like this….  Again you are, you are crying again, for a long while since you started, I put in the record, I put in the record that”¦ it’s been ten minutes that you have been crying. Why did you accuse a person that, today, you’re telling us he is innocent, but earlier you just told us “it could be true” what does “it could be true” mean? You have told me “it could be true”.

Lawyer: The subject is missing

PM Mignini: No the subject is there, because I asked the question. Why did you accuse Lumumba?

Lawyer: Can we suspend a moment please?

PM Mignini: What reason?

Knox: It means that in the moment when I told Patrick’s name, I thought that it could have been true.

Interpreter: In the moment in which she said Patrick’s name, in that moment, she thought it could have been true.

Lawyer Ghirga: We ask for a suspension”¦ she is calm, you say she is crying, and we think she’s not.

PM Mignini: I put that in the record it because I could see the tears, she was crying and I could hear her too.

[96]

Lawyer: It was not ten minutes long

PM Mignini: Well, even more, maybe

Lawyer: maybe, no less

PM Mignini: Let’s interrupt, break off.

Lawyer: You asked her six times”¦

PM Mignini: For Heaven’s sake, let’s interrupt, break off.

(interruption)

[from this point on Amanda declares her right to remain silent]

PM Mignini: So, at 15:12 lawyer Luciano Ghirga resumes the interrogation

Lawyer Ghirga: In the name of the defensive collegium we submit a reason to confer personally, privately, we mean alone together with our client, for a time not longer than ten minutes.

PM Mignini: So, the Public Prosecutor is pointing out that the interrogation had already been suspended and it’s 15: 13 now, pointing out that the interrogation was suspended several times, and the last time for, how long? Ten minutes on request of the defence, and the defence will be allowed to fully have counsel with the person under investigation at the end of the interrogation. [The Public Prosecutor] orders to proceed, orders to go forward with the investigation procedure. So now I would like”¦

Lawyer Ghirga: If you may, ask to the suspect, to the person under investigation, whether she intends to go on or to invoke her right not to answer”¦?

PM Mignini: This is a”¦ it’s a”¦ it’s a”¦ she decided to answer questions at the beginning. Now if she decides to make a statement where she says “I don’t want to answer any more” she’ll be the one who says it, and it’s not that I must ask now, that question was done at the beginning of the interrogation. If now she wants to say”¦

Knox: I prefer not to answer any more”¦

[97]

Lawyer Ghirga: What did she say?

Interpreter: She doesn’t want to answer anymore.

PM Mignini: So, at this point, at 15: 15, on a question asked by the defence lawyers, about whether the person under investigation intends to go on answering or not”¦

Lawyer Ghirga: To your questions

PM Mignini: To a question by lawyer Ghirga”¦ yes, well, Lawyer Ghirga asked her that

Lawyer: He didn’t first ask the question

Lawyer Ghirga: But what question did I ask?

Lawyer: We told you to ask her…

PM Mignini: Yes, you asked me, and I did follow the request. But”¦

Lawyer Ghirga: She made a declaration, and we took note, unfortunately, about forbidden suggestions”¦ but on what request”¦?

PM Mignini: Now at this point, at 15: 15 the defence lawyers… Let’s put like this, the defence lawyers ask this Prosecutor about whether he intends to ask the person under investigation if she intends to go on answering questions, but then, after my decision, Lawyer Ghirga said”¦

Lawyer Ghirga: Who said? You said

PM Mignini: You asked her, I put in the record what happened, it’s recorded anyway, this is what I perceived you asked her, and she answered “I do not intend to answer”, she said, and then the interpreter…

Lawyer Ghirga: I asked whether she intended to make a statement, and she made a statement

PM Mignini: You indicated that to her, it changes nothing, doesn’t change”¦ I must only put in the record what happened. The public prosecutor points out that…

[98]

...the warning about the right not to answer was explained to the person under investigation at the beginning of the interrogation, as provided by the Code, and that same [person under investigation] declared she wanted to answer. It is not possible now to invoke the duty to inform the suspect about her right, because such requirement has been already fulfilled. Anyway the person under investigation can, if she decides to, declare that she doesn’t want to answer any more. Such option has been shown to the person under investigation by lawyer Ghirga.

Lawyer: ...by the defence lawyers

PM Mignini: By the defence lawyers, to the person under investigation. What do you want to do?

Lawyer: What do you mean by “It was shown?”

PM Mignini: It was shown, because you said”¦ I need to put in the record what happened. The lawyer… Facing my warrant which I described, the notice was provided at the beginning of the interrogation as the code requires. She said “I want to answer, I do not intend to invoke my right not to answer”. That answer had been given already, I informed her, and she answered. Now to this, at this point, however, I said nothing prevents her from wanting, from declaring “at this point I do not intend to answer any more”. I put it in the record and I don’t ask why, at that point, at that point.

Lawyer: You should not put in the record “the defence lawyers have shown”¦”

PM Mignini: “at that point”

Lawyer: We did not show anything, we asked to be allowed to, well”¦ and you said no.

PM Mignini: So”¦ lawyer, lawyer?

Lawyer: And you said no, and we didn’t have the possibility to show her…

[99]

PM Mignini: Lawyer Ghirga”¦ Lawyer Ghirga”¦

Lawyer: that she might invoke her right to not answer. It’s not that it’s we who’ve shown this possibility this is what I want to explain”¦

PM Mignini: Lawyer Ghirga told her something, so…?

Lawyer Ghirga: No, no, I only said, if you could give us a ten minutes suspension

PM Mignini: You told her something, now come on”¦ I need to put that on record

Lawyer Ghirga: what did I say”¦

PM Mignini: You have shown, I don’t know if the other lawyer did too, you told, Lawyer Ghirga, you told the person under investigation about… You said, if you can, if I remember correctly,  we’ll hear her again”¦

Lawyer Costa: It was me who told her, Mr. Prosecutor

PM Mignini: So I understood Lawyer Ghirga… Lawyer Giancarlo Costa declares he explained that, I didn’t say anything else

Lawyer Costa: ... To Ms. Amanda Knox to use her right to invoke her right not to answer

PM Mignini: ... And she herself declares so, she is supposed to declare what she wants

Lawyer: She has already said that

PM Mignini: Let’s repeat it since with this superimposition of voices”¦ the interpreter will translate faithfully word-by-word what you say.

Knox: At this point I don’t want to answer any more

Interpreter: At this point she doesn’t want to answer any more

PM Mignini: So “at this point I don’t want to answer any more”. We put on record that the current transcript was recorded entirely.

[100]

Lawyer Costa: Mr Public Prosecutor, we lawyers may renounce to our own time terms of deposit if Your Honour would give us a copy

PM Mignini: Yes, no problem”¦ at 15: 22. The parties demand a transcription, I mean the defence lawyers request the transcription of the recording.

Sunday, October 05, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #14: Third Opportunity Knox Flunked: Requested Interrogation By Dr Mignini

Posted by Machiavelli, Catnip, Kristeva

1. Our Translation Of Knox’s Key Interview

At her request Dr Mignini interrogated Amanda Knox, her first true interrogation under Italian law, on 17 Dec 2007.

This was about six weeks after her arrest. If Knox had explained away the charges against her, she could have been on her way home.

Read our translations for how it finally emerged. There is some context in Part 2 below.

Knox, Tied In Knots By Her Own Tongue: Translation Of The 17 Dec 2007 Interview With Dr Mignini #1

Knox, Tied In Knots By Her Own Tongue: Translation Of The 17 Dec 2007 Interview With Dr Mignini #2

Knox, Tied In Knots By Her Own Tongue: Translation Of The 17 Dec 2007 Interview With Dr Mignini #3

Knox, Tied In Knots By Her Own Tongue: Translation Of The 17 Dec 2007 Interview With Dr Mignini #4

Part 2: Context Of The Interview

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 finally stands up.

This interview was sought-after by Knox, seeing this as her last best chance to get herself off the hook before trial and to avoid remaining locked up.  This lasted about three hours, until Knox’s lawyers interrupted to got her to clam up.

All of the trial judges and appeal judges and lay judges had clearly studied this document hard. Also prosecutors and the Knox and Sollecito defense counsel periodically refer to it.

As you will have seen in previous posts, Knox’s team pussyfooted about without conviction in the few brief instances when the 5-6 November session was discussed.

In this Mignini hearing of 17 December 2007 they eventually in effect advised her it would be in her best interests to shut up.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #13: First Two Opportunities Knox Flunked: Judges Matteini & Ricciarelli

Posted by Our Main Posters

Judge Matteini and Judge Ricciarelli each held key hearings in November

1. Where This Series Stands

1. Summary Of Post #1

Post #1 sets out the two versions of Knox’s sessions at the central police station on 5-6 November 2007.

The first version has in total about two dozen eye witnesses, and it is the one that prevailed at the Massei trail and throughout all of the appeals -  Hellmann in 2011 (this part was not annulled), Casssation in 2013, and Nencini in 2014. Cassation in 2013 made Knox’s verdict and sentence of three years for the false accusation against Patrick final.

The second version lacks any independent witness, although Sollecito makes some claims in his book that could be assumed to help Knox. There seems no sign that Knox’s own lawyers in Perugia have ever bought into any part of it, they have never lodged a complaint, they did not pursue it in cross-examination, and they have even cautioned against it.

Knox’s lawyers seemed jumpy when Knox pursued elements of it (unconvincingly to the court) in her two days of testimony in July 2009.  Despite this, it is still sustained by Knox herself (in several contradictory versions) and by a number of PR campaigners.

2. Summary Of Posts #2 to #9

Those posts quote the relevant trial testimony of the six investigators (scroll down) who had the major roles in the 6-7 November sessions.

3. The Warrant For Three Arrests

This arrest warrant was drafted and signed by Dr Mignini. He did so in the prosecutors’ offices in Perugia’s central courthouse (image at top) at 8:40 am.

Note that, critically, it includes reference to Knox’s spontaneous chatter and her knowledge of the dynamics of the crime.

PUBLIC PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE, COURT OF PERUGIA

N. 19738/07 R.G. Mod. 44

DETENTION ORDER ISSUED BY THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR

(artt. 384, comma 1 c.p.p)

TO THE JUDGE OF PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF THE COURT OF PERUGIA

The public prosecutor Dr. Giuliano Mignini

Based on the records of the above-mentioned proceeding;

Having found that there are serious indications of the crimes of complicity in aggravated murder Article 576 n.5 c.p.e. and sexual assault for which we are proceeding, against DIYA Lumumba, born in Kindu (Zaire) on 5.05.1969, KNOX Amanda Marie and SOLLECITO Raffaele, already identified, for the following reasons:

Regarding KNOX and DIYA, the first made glaringly contradictory and not credible statements during the investigation. In particular KNOX claimed to have spent the night between November 1st and 2nd in the company of SOLLECITO Raffaele whom she met a few days before the event while he, after initially confirming the statements made by KNOX, confessed to have lied instructed by KNOX and made clear that he separated from KNOX at 21.30 of November 1st 2007, remaining at his house where he received a phone call from his father on the land line at 23:30.

Furthermore from the data relating to the phone traffic of the number 3484673590 in use by KNOX there emerges a lack of phone traffic from 20:35 of November 1st to 12:00 November 2nd. Same lack of phone traffic from 20:42 of November 1st to 06:02 of November 2nd is found in the phone traffic of 3403574303 in use by SOLLECITO Raffaele.

At 20:35 of November 1st was found an outgoing text message from the number 3484673509 belonging to KNOX sent to 3387195723 belonging to the co-defendant PATRICK to whom she communicates “see you later” which confirms that in the following hours KNOX was together with DIYA in the apartment where the victim was.

KNOX, in the statement made today has, in the end, confessed the dynamics of the committed crimes against KERCHER: the accused, in fact, first claimed to have met with DIYA, as communicated to him with the text message found in the phone memory of her cell phone by the operating Postal Police, text message sent at 20:35 in reply to a text message from DIYA sent at 20:18, detected thanks to the analysis of the phone traffic related to KNOX.

This last text message is not present in the cell phone memory.

KNOX in her witness statement from today has then confessed that, meeting DIYA in the basketball court of Piazza Grimana, she went together with DIYA to Meredith’s house, where DIYA, after having sex with the victim, killed her.

The sexual intercourse must be deemed violent in nature considering the particularly threatening context in which it took place and in which KNOX has surely aided DIYA.

In addition to this it should be pointed out that KNOX, in her spontaneous declarations from today, has consistently confirmed to have contacted DIYA, to have met with him on the night between November 1st and 2nd and to have gone with him to the apartment where the victim lived. She then said that she stayed outside of Meredith’s room while DIYA set apart with her and also added that she heard the girl’s screams.

KNOX reported details that confirm her own and Sollecito Raffaele’s involvement in the events, like the fact that after the events she woke up in the bed of the latter.

As far as the essential facts against SOLLECITO there are numerous verifiable inconsistencies in his first declarations, in respect to the last ones and the fact that, from a first inspection, the print of the shoe found on SOLLECITO appears to be compatible in its shape with the one found on the crime scene.

Moreover, there is the fact that KNOX claimed to not remember what happened between the victim’s screams up until she woke up in the morning in SOLLECITO’s bed, who was also found in possession of a flick knife that could abstractly be compatible for dimension and type (general length of 18cm, of which 8,5 blade), with the object that must have produced the most serious injury to the victim’s neck.

Having considered all the elements described and all converging findings of the intense and detailed investigations conducted after the discovery of Kercher’s body and culminating with the confession and indicated complicity of DIYA, also known as “Patrick” by KNOX, there is substantial serious evidence of the crimes for which we are proceeding to allow the detention, given the limits of the sentence.

Likewise there must be considered a founded and valid danger of flight especially for DIYA since he is a non-EU citizen and in consideration of the specific seriousness and brutality of the crimes, especially that of sexual violence and the possibility of the infliction of a particularly heavy sentence.

In regards to KNOX she has shown a particular ruthlessness in lying repeatedly to the investigators and in involving in such a serious event the young SOLLECITO.

Having regard to Art.384 comma 1 c.p.p.

ORDERS

The detention of DIYA Lumumba, KNOX Amanda Marie and SOLLECITO Raffaele, already identified, and to be taken to the local District Prison.

We proceed to request validation of the detention in the separate document.

Forward to the Secretary area of authority with regard to recognition of Diya Lumumba and Amanda Marie Knox, born in Washington (USA) on 07/09/1987, based in Perugia, Via della Pergola 7, and Raffaele Sollecito, also already identified.

Perugia, November 6th 2007, h.8,40

PUBLIC PROSECUTOR

(DR. GIULIANO MIGNINI)

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 (see below) 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. The First Hearing by Judge Matteini

1. Summary Of The Hearing

This key post by Nicki describes how every one of the numerous hoops Italian police and prosecutors must jump through is presided over by a guiding magistrate.

Finally, in this ultra-cautious process, if the investigation has not been dropped and the guiding magistrate is confident that the police and prosecutors have made a case, they can then order it submitted directly for short-form trial (as with Guede) or for a trial judge (like Judge Micheli) to decide if there is a case for a long-form trial.

At this point, 9 November 2007, the police investigations were far from done, and the existence of Guede was not yet known (though Knox hinted at him on 6 November) let alone the role he is serving 16 years for.

The investigations continued through the summer of 2008 with Judge Matteini re-entering the process repeatedly. Even after the summer of 2008 additional witnesses were being sought and several including Kokomani and Quintavalle only came forward later.

On 9 November 2007 Judge Matteini had before her the police summaries of evidence and witness and suspect statements. Knox and Sollecito were placed under arrest on 6 November and she had held separate hearings with Knox, Sollecito and Patrick with their lawyers present on the day before (8 November)

2. Sollecito’s statement for his hearing

Knox presented no written or oral statement to Judge Matteini on the very strong advice of her lawyers. Sollecito wrote one out. In various ways it separates him from Knox.

Sollecito had seen his lawyers on 7 November in Capanne Prison. Sollecito was extensively interviewed by Judge Matteini (translation pending). He also submitted in advance a new statement for his own 8 November hearing which famously starts off “I wish to not see Amanda ever again.”

ʺI wish to not see Amanda ever again.

I met Amanda at a classical music concert which took place at the University for Foreigners of Perugia, about two weeks ago. I then met her again at the bar ʺLe Chic”: I went to this pub 2”3 times just to see Amanda since she had told me that she worked there.

A romantic relationship had taken shape and we have lived together since the first day at my house, and she would go back to her house at Via della Pergola more or less every other day to pick up her clothes and talk with her girlfriends. I have never met the man who runs the pub ʺLe Chicʺ and I did not know anything about the pub; I do not even know who worked there. I used to accompany Amanda to work at the pub around 22”22.30 and then I went back to pick her up at 24.00”00.30.

I met Meredith at Amandaʹs house since they were friends and they lived together, besides her also Filomena and Laura lived there. We ate lunch at her house sometimes, and sometimes we ate at my house. While dinner [instead] always at my house or out. On 1 November, Amanda woke up before me. I went to see her later since she told me she wanted to go home to talk with her girlfriends.

I arrived at about 13”14 and there was Meredith who was wearing a pair of jeans which belong to her ex”boyfriend who was in London, Meredith went out at around 16:00 and we stayed, and we went out at around 18:00.

I point out that I make use of cannabis and I make use of it on every holiday, and whenever I need it. I am an anxious person. I do not remember how much I smoked, I certainly did [smoke] one at Amanda’s place, and at my house every time I felt like.

At 18.00 we went out and we went to the [city] center passing by Piazza Grimana, Piazza Morlacchi alla Fontana and Corso Vannucci. We remained in the center until 20.30”21 and then we went to my house; I do not remember at what time I had dinner, I think I had dinner together with Amanda.

I remember Amanda received a few text messages on her phone and she replied. I do not remember whether the message arrived before or after dinner. Then she told me that the pub was closed, unlike every Tuesday and Thursday and thus she did not have to go to work that day. Iʹm not sure if Amanda went out that night, I do not remember.

About that night I remember that the pipe under the sink had unlatched and, while I was washing things in the kitchen, the floor flooded, I tried to dry the floor and then, on Amanda’s suggestion, I let it go. I worked with my computer and then I went to bed. I received a call from my father, who calls me every night before I go to sleep, I do not remember if he called me on the landline phone or on the cell phone.

The next morning Amanda woke up before me, she woke me up telling me that she wanted to go take a shower at her house because she did not like my shower. So she went out and I remained to sleep. She went out at around 9:30 to 10:00. Later she came back, she rung at my door and I woke up. I remember that she had changed her clothes and she was now wearing a white skirt while the day before she was wearing jeans. She carried a mop with her to clean the floor.

I finished drying up the floor. I do not remember if we had breakfast together before or after. Amanda told me that she had found the front door wide open, with blood stains and that therefore all this was strange. She told me to go to her house to see what had happened, we got there and I was agitated.

She opened the front door [and] I noticed that Filomenaʹs door was open with broken glass. The bathroom was clean except the bathmat and the sink which was stained with blood, she told me that someone had cut himself/herself or they were menstruating. The only thing that I noticed [is] that Meredith’s door was locked with the key and I tried to enter the room from the outside, while I was doing this Amanda was leaning over the railing to try to reach the window; she had knocked repeatedly and calling [sic] Meredith ʹs room.

I tried to look through the keyhole and saw that there was a duffel bag and an open wardrobe”door. Then I told her to call her girlfriends. I then called my sister who is an inspector and she told me to dial 112 [Carabinieri] and I gave [them] Amanda’s phone number. We remained out of the house to wait for the arrival of the Carabinieri. Some officers of the Postal Police arrived who wanted to talk to Filomena. When the officers of the Postal Police arrived we were out of the house. I remember I called 112 before the arrival of the Postal Police officers. I spoke with the officers of the Postal Police and Amanda too if she could understand what they said; I reported [to them] that there was something wrong by showing that Filomenaʹs bedroom door was wide open with broken glass on the floor and the door of Meredithʹs room was locked.

Filomena arrived with her boyfriend and some friends of hers. The Postal Police officers broke down the door of Meredithʹs room and they said that they had seen a foot and some blood. Then the Carabinieri arrived.

I previously made a false statement because I was under pressure and I was very agitated, I was shocked and I was afraid. I point out that on 5 November I was very agitated when the agents asked me questions because they put me under pressure. I confirm that on the night of 1 November I spent the night with Amanda. I do not remember if Amanda went out that evening. At 20.30 we were at my house. I got it mixed up.

I remember that Amanda must have come back [home together] with me. I do not remember if she went out. My father calls me every day and I find it strange that he did not call on 1 November. I fail to understand why my prints are there; I [did] not enter that room; I was not wearing those shoes on 1 or 2 November. The one who killed her must have had my same shoes. They are rather common shoes.

In my Internet blog where there are some of my feelings and in particular where I quote the Monster of Foligno [2] who came from the Onaoasi College, that was just irony.

With regard to the faeces in the bathroom, I did not see them since I did not enter the bathroom, I was outside [the bathroom] and I leaned with my face toward the toilet bowl. Amanda got scared and she jumped on me and told me that the faeces were no longer there compared to before [sic] when she had gone to take a shower.

I walk around with a knife that I use to carve trees. I have a collection of knives in Giovinazzo. I also have katanas, [but] they are blunt swords. Itʹs a passion that one about knives. I have always carried a knife with me in my pocket since I was 13 years old.

I do not remember exactly if that Thursday night she went out, I remember well that I was on the computer more or less up to 12.00 smoking my joints. I am sure that I ate, that I remained at home and that Amanda slept with me.

I have two knives, the one the Flying Squad seized is the one that I carry when I wear these garments; when I wear other clothing I carry the other knife; these two are my favorite knives. The Flying Squad put great psychological pressure on me. The first time we went to the police station we were kept there the whole night. I categorically rule out that I have ever entered the room where the victim was found.

On 8 November Knox’s lawyers had just been appointed. Knox and her lawyers were perhaps at a disadvantage in the hearing, having just met. But Judge Matteini was not fact-finding and her only decision was to remand the three (including Patrick) in prison. Knox’s opportunity to talk came on 17 December 2007 in Capanne before Dr Mignini (see Post #15).

On 6 November Amanda Knox had submitted three statements all linked to in Part 1 here and all written at her own insistence. Judge Matteini disallows these for use against Knox but allows them for use against others, later confirmed in a Cassation ruling which oddly was claimed as a new victory by Knox forces. The statements were never ruled illegally obtained.

3. Matteini Report: The Full Version

Because it is so long, our new translation of the Matteini report, with emphases in bold of what is especially significant, appears as Part 5 below under “Click here for more”.

4. The Panel of Three Judges Chaired By Judge Ricciarelli

Judge Riciarelli chaired a panel of judges on 30 November 2007 and, with more evidence, the findings were more forceful than Judge Matteini’s.

For example the panel labeled both of the two dangerous with Knox demonstrating having several personalities. For the first time a court stated that the physical evidence pointed toward a group attack.

There is a full translation of the Ricciarelli Report here. We will excerpt key passages here soon.

Significantly, Knox and her defense are not reported anywhere as having made her 6 November “interrogation” an issue. So nearly a month has passed since the “interrogation” and Knox has seemingly still not complained to anyone except for one private letter from Knox to her lawyers on which they did not act.

These media reports below will be supplemented soom by excerpts from the judges’ report.

1. CNN Cable News Rome

They carried a report in English on the Ricciarelli panel which included the following.

A panel of judges in Italy said an American student held in connection with the killing of Meredith Kercher should stay in police custody because evidence suggested she had “fatal capacity for aggression,” Italian media reported Wednesday.

A court ruled last week that Amanda Knox, 20, and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 23, must remain in jail after lawyers for the pair appealed for their release.

Massimo Ricciarelli, president of the panel of three judges that gave last Friday’s ruling, published the reasons for his decision Wednesday, Luca Maori, a lawyer for Sollecito confirmed to CNN.

In his ruling, Ricciarelli said Knox’s detention was justified because evidence showed she has multiple personalities, according to the Italian daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera, which published transcripts of the ruling on its Web site.

Corriere della Sera reported the judge as saying that Knox has a “high, we could say fatal, capacity for aggression.”

“(Knox) has a disposition to follow whatever drive she has, even when they can end up in violent and uncontrollable acts,” the ruling said, according to the paper.

Ricciarelli added that all the evidence suggested Kercher was killed by someone she knew, the paper reported, and investigations suggested that more than one person carried out the killing and that the villa where the body was found had not been broken into….

According to the newspaper, the ruling said the lack of evidence of a break-in “proves that the killer did not have to exercise any type of violence in order to enter the house, having used the keys or having been allowed in by the victim herself.”

A report issued more than a week ago by an Italian judge suggested Kercher may have been sexually assaulted at knifepoint before she was killed in her bed.

John Follain Book

In the excellent book A Death In Italy John Follain included this below. He leaves out that the panel concluded that there must have been several attackers though CNN above and Italian media did report that.

30 November 2007

Amanda and Raffaele’s hopes of freedom ““ a fortnight earlier both had made a new appeal for their release ““ were drastically dashed by a panel of three judges headed by Judge Massimo Ricciarelli. The judges endorsed much of Mignini’s reconstruction of the murder and decreed they should stay in prison.

Their ruling was scathing in its analysis of Amanda. She had “˜a many-sided personality ““ self-confident, shrewd and naïve, but with a strong taste for taking centre stage and a marked, we could say fatal, ability in putting people together.’ She acted on her desires “˜even when they can lead to violent and uncontrollable acts.’

As for Amanda’s statements since Meredith’s death, they were a “˜constant attempt to do and undo, to say something and then immediately deny it, as if she wanted to please everyone. Such behaviour seems to be the result of slyness and naïvety at the same time.’

For the judges, there was no burglary at the cottage. Only Spiderman, they said, could have entered the cottage through Filomena’s broken window. Why would a thief have got rid of Meredith’s mobile phones so soon after the crime? And why would a killer take the phones with him in the first place, only to abandon them a short distance away? Meredith’s killers had taken them from the cottage, the judges surmised, because they didn’t want the phones to ring there. The killers needed to pretend to call Meredith after her death, and they didn’t want their call to help track her down to her room.

“˜The killer did not have to exercise any type of violence in order to enter the house, having used the keys or having been allowed in by the victim herself,’ the judges said. Meredith was killed by someone she knew, and probably by more than one person.

Raffaele had lied in claiming to have called the police before they arrived at the cottage. Nor had he gone to bed the previous night at about midnight or 1 a.m. He had spent a turbulent night, so much so that he had switched his mobile on again very early and received a message from his father at 6 a.m. ““ it was a goodnight message, clearly sent when the mobile was switched off and for that reason had reached him only the next morning.

The judges mocked Raffaele for claiming he could recall spending a long time at his computer as well as smoking joints on the evening of 1 November. Appearing before the judges themselves a few days earlier, he’d given new details of his time at the computer which, they remarked, “˜clearly conflict with the pitch darkness that would have reigned in his mind after taking the drugs, unless he suffers from a particular pathology ““ the selective loss of memory.’

An expert’s analysis of Raffaele’s laptop showed there had been human activity between 6.27 p.m. and 9.10 p.m. when the film Amélie was screened. There was no trace of human activity between 9.10 p.m. and 5.32 a.m. ““ “˜a formidable corroboration of Raffaele’s involvement’ as the dawn activity, they said, pointed to a virtually sleepless night.

In his blog, Raffaele had failed to distance himself from serious criminals ““ he’d praised a convict who killed two boys ““ and above all he’d proclaimed his desire for “˜big thrills’. The judges also mentioned the photograph of him in which he brandished a cleaver. Violence, they concluded, attracted him. Both in his behaviour and in his wavering statements, which often fell into line with Amanda’s “˜dream-like’ accounts, Raffaele had shown himself to have a fragile temperament, “˜exposed to impulses and outside influences of every kind’.

Please click here for more

Wednesday, September 03, 2014

Sollecito Posting Of Knox’s Diary: Is He Again Prodding Knox Closer To The Fire To Help Himself?

Posted by Peter Quennell

Above and below: interiors of Capanne Prison built about a decade ago; Knox front-row right?


Another potshot in the escalating Knox/Sollecito wars?

In November 2007 in Capanne Prison Knox wrote prolifically in English in a diary.  Sollecito has now aggressively put it online together with the official Italian translation, as spotted by the sharp eyes of main poster Nell

The diary was taken by prison authorities, apparently with no protest by Knox as she was pre-warned that her cell would need to be searched. The English original and an Italian translation were entered into evidence at trial, though the diary played no overt role of which we are aware.

Defense forces helpfully offered it around perhaps in the hope that it would make the authorities not look so good.

The diary then became the core of a 2008 book Amanda And The Others by Fiorenza Sarzanini, a prominent Italian journalist on the staff of the major newspaper Corriere.

The book was not entirely unsympathetic to the real Knox. But Knox’s lawyers were seemingly concerned that her peculiar writings as riffed-upon by Sarzanini could subvert the preferred Knox image in court - though frankly that image was pretty daffy too.

The Knox team sued the holding company of Corriere. They won an award in the first round, then that was reversed on appeal, and then last year Cassation partially reversed that verdict, and Knox was granted an award.

Italian media reported all of this, but we didnt see any jubilant report in the US. Maybe because all Knox case-related income can be clawed back under US and Italian bloodmoney laws.

However, according to the Italian reports, Corriere’s legal fault was held not to be one of copyright or of the privacy of Knox. It was in publishing passages in which Knox negatively highlighted others, such as the list of those she had had sex with, a no-no under Italian privacy laws.

The Sarzanini book is still on sale in Italy, and there was no court ruling that it had to be withdrawn. The same passages Sollecito has put online are also in Italian in that book. There seems nothing in US or UK law that would forbid publishing of an English-language version if Fiorenza Sarzanini wants to do that.

Ironically Knox with her own 2013 book seems to have run afoul of the self-same laws in her serial defaming of officials, and in due course she stands to lose much more than she had gained from that small award.

Knox’s book was apparently put into Italian, though Italian and British editions were dropped at the last minute, days after Cassation ruled against Knox, in April last year. Oggi translated and published passages from the book which will see Oggi also taken to court.

Hard to believe but Knox’s bamboozled shadow writer Linda Kulman and HarperCollins New York were reported as scrambling to remove a lot of defamatory passages from the US version before Knox’s book went out.

We have posted several excerpts, which were pure fiction, and it is still the nasty work of a troubling psyche. Presumably that is Sollecito’s point.

Monday, September 01, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #12: Hard Proof That In 5-6 Nov Session Knox Merely Built Visitors List

Posted by Our Main Posters

1. What Really Happened on 5-6 November

The introduction to Hoax Post #1 explains what really happened at Knox’s recap/summary session on 5-6 November 2007.

In a sentence: Knox was there unwanted and grumpy, was advised by Inspector Rita Ficarra to go and sleep, refused, agreed to build a list of possible perps (she listed seven, including Guede), spontaneously had a wailing conniption over a mundane text she sent to Patrick, was semi-calmed-down, repeatedly provided refreshments, and insisted on writing three statements without a lawyer; all said she went out on the night of the attack, all framed Patrick, and one even pointed at Sollecito.

2. Hard Proof Knox Worked On The List

This memo above (click on it for the full version) records the main outcome of Rita Ficarra’s 75-minute summary/recap session (defenses conceded it was not an interrogation session) with Knox, with an interpreter and two others present.

Rita Ficarra wrote the memo some hours later, on the evening of 6 November, after she had caught up on some sleep. It is based on a handwritten version Knox painstakingly evolved on a page of her notebook, which she then tore out and handed to Inspector Ficarra. That handwritten page is in evidence too.

The timing here is key.

According to the testimony of Rita Ficarra and the interpreter Anna Donnino, the real work on the list only began around 12:30 after Anna Donnino arrived. It took all or most of the next hour.  Knox obtained all the phone numbers from her mobile phone which she handed over to the others present at several points (those phone numbers are long disused.)

Kristeva kindly did the translation below.

Annotation By Rita Ficarra

On 6 November 2007, at 20.00, in the offices of the Flying Squad of the Questura of Perugia. The undersigned Officer of P.G. [Attorney General], Chief Inspector of the State Police FICARRA Rita, notes that, as part of the investigation of the murder of British citizen Meredith KERCHER,

On the night of November 5th c.a. [current year], at approximately 23.00, while in the Offices of the Questura of Perugia, along with Amanda KNOX, waiting for the same to be heard in regard to the fact for which we are proceeding,

Learned, informally. news related to some male subjects who certainly knew MEREDITH and of whom Amanda gave indications on their respective residences—drawing roads and landmarks in her notebook ““ as well as their mobile phone numbers.

The same [Amanda] extracted these phone numbers from her mobile phone contacts and copied them on a piece of paper torn from her notebook and handed it to the undersigned.

The subjects indicated by Amanda were described as being:

PJ - Peter, a Swiss young man of Swiss nationality who certainly frequented Meredith and who would have surely been several times to their home; this young man dwelled in Via della Pergola, precisely in front of the “Contrappunto” club and close to the stairs and parking lot; mobile phone: 3891531078;

Patrik, owner of the pub “Le chic” where [the same] Amanda works. He too certainly knew Meredith. She was not able to provide an address but indicated that she had often seen him near the “rotonda [roundabout] of Porta Pesa, next to the Laundromat. Mobile phone number: 338719523;

Ardak, North African citizen of whom she gave no other indications other than his mobile phone: 3887972380;

Yuve, Algerian citizen who occasionally worked at “Le Chic” and would have dwelled in Via del Roscetto (near the residence of Sophie) phone; 3203758112

Spyros, young man of Greek nationality of whom Amanda does not give any indications other than the mobile phone: 3293473230

Shaky, Moroccan citizen who would have been working in a “pizzeria” and who frequented the pubs and discotheques frequented by Meredith’s group of friends with whom they met at the pub or discotheque, friend of Sophie;

Lastly she informed of another South African young man, black, short, who plays basketball in the Piazza Grimana court, who would have, in one occasion, frequented the house.

On this occasion, Giacomo-Stefano, Riccardo and Marco (neighbours) were allegedly present, as well as Meredith.  She referred to the fact that Yuve probably knew him, but gave no further information, as she herself, didn’t associate with him.

Amanda, who was also present on this exact occasion, confirmed that she used hashish type drugs with her boyfriend Raffaele, despite what she had said previously.

She claimed that he had previously confessed to taking cocaine and acid in the past, but currently only used “pot”.  In addition, she hinted that Raffaele was experiencing problems with “depression-sadness”.

Furthermore, to get hold of her supply of “pot”, she claimed to have asked her flatmate Laura, who, allegedly, acted as intermediary between her and third parties.

It is noteworthy that the same afternoon, following her detention order and prior to her transfer to Capanne prison, Amanda KNOX asked for some blank paper with the intention of writing a written declaration. This she intended to deliver to the undersigned, before she was moved to prison, and requested that every policeman read it.

Hence, the undersigned received the attached manuscript written in English, by KNOX, and informed her that the manuscript, after being translated into Italian, would be forwarded to the appropriate judicial authority.

3. Subsequent TJMK Reporting On Next Steps

Nest in the list of posts in our interrogation hoax overview these reports should be read.

1. Click for Post: #15: Knox Is Told Her Rights And Repeats Fake Murder Charge

2. Click for Post: #13: The First Two Pre-Trial Opportunities Which Knox Flunked

They cover the first two formal opportunities for Knox to modify or to withdraw her accusation. At the second opportunity, Knox had legal counsel.

It is mandatory in Italy for lawyers to report any claimed abuse of their clients.

It affected Knox’s prospects for years down the road that not only did her lawyers never make such a report; they even announced publicly, in face of incessant further claims by Knox which her family took public, that they had never confirmed she had been abused.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #11: Why Prosecution And Defenses Never Believed Knox’s Version #2

Posted by Our Main Posters

Famous criminal lawyer Dr Giancarlo Costa - did he depart Knox’s team with doubts about her?

Recapitulating Our Purpose

In Post #10 below we hinted at two items - in fact, they are two documents - that resulted in a sharp drop in Knox’s credibility.

We said this about how Knox’s Perugia lawyers were affected.

It seems impossible to know about these items, and yet still believe that Knox was telling the truth.  Lawyers often encourage their clients to tell the truth and good lawyers never encourage their clients to lie. And yet here Ghirga, Dalla Vedova, Bongiorno and Maori would have known from latest early 2008 that Knox’s claims on the “interrogations” were in fact made up.

And if so, they must have asked themselves, why? Why did Knox have to lie?  In all the legitimate legal processes, meaning all those except the Hellmann appeal, the defense lawyers were seen by close observers to be dispirited and lacking the full punch that the certainty of innocence can bring.

Knox was lying. And they all knew. No hard proof, but it explains the timid cross-examinations. And it was the buzz around Perugia maybe put out by the Sollecito faction for which there is a sort of soft proof.

The one heavyweight among Knox’s lawyers, a prominent criminal lawyer from Rome called Dr Giancarlo Costa, who was with her at the 6-hour 17 December 2007 questioning (which we turn to next) inexplicably departed from her team early-on, leaving her with the much less experienced Ghirga and Dalla Vedova.

Sharp-eyed Andrea Vogt and Barbie Nadeau both noticed that no mention of Dr Costa was made in Knox’s book. Late in 2009 and again late in 2011 Andrea Vogt interviewed him, and he seemingly suggested that Knox might have been better served at the end of the process by a negotiated plea, in effect similar to Guede’s. (If so, he is now proved right, and the remaining Knox lawyers or her family made a very bad call.)

We said this about how all the prosecutors and all the judges were affected. 

In the years that followed since, these two items helped to changed legal mindsets, from Prosecutor Mignini, to Judge Matteini, to Judge Micheli, to Judge Massei, to even Judge Hellmann, and so on to Cassation and the Nencini appeal.

Describing The Two Incriminating Items

Now we turn to the two items, the two documents, the two elephants in the room. They are rock-solid confirmation of all the testimony by investigators in Posts #2 to #9, and in days of defense cross-examination they were not argued with. They were correctly guessed by several emailers. They are of course:

(1) Rita Ficarra’s notes of the 12:45 session

Inspector Ficarra wrote up these notes at 8:00 pm on the evening of 6 November, about six hours after Knox and Sollecito were carted off to Capanne Prison.

This was long before she knew she would be contradicted and years before she knew she would be accused of criminal actions. The notes were in evidence, and it was clear during cross-examination that the defense teams had studied them.

She recorded a description of the session in direct line with her testimony in Hoax Post #2 and Hoax Post #3 and Hoax Post #4. It anticipated perfectly the scenario that emerged from other investigators present.

(2) Knox’s hand-written list of seven names

She wrote these out along with maps and annotations. The list had very obviously been created over a prolonged period of time. This must have occupied all but the final minutes of the session, at which point she lost her cool, had her first conniption, and fingered Patrick.

Here again from Post #2 is the testimony about it by Rita Ficarra. GCM stands for Judge Massei and GM stands for Dr Mignini.

RF: At that point I say to her: “for me it is important then that we write these [names etc down], that therefore, since you are waiting [NdT. i.e. for Raffaele], let’s go do a follow-up to the recap that you have already given me, have already submitted to me”. So I go to the office, that is to say, I go into the office room, and we begin to write.

GM: Listen: before continuing, she wrote a note?

RF: Yes.

GM: The note: you can, I believe you can consult/examine/refer to it.

GCM: Yes, certainly, it is permitted to consult/examine/refer to her records.

GM: I am referring to everything that that note reported.

RF: Yes, I’ve already said that, in effect”¦ The note of 6 November, at 2000 hours, I made it in the evening because having then not slept for two days, I went [straight] to bed in morning when I finished. Morning and afternoon.

The first part I’ve already related and it gives me indications about these boys, about non-Italians, about a certain PJ Peter Svizzero, who had seemingly been several times in their home and who lived nearby the area of via della Pergola 7.

Patrick, of the [sic] owner of the pub, Le Chique [sic], where she herself worked, I’ve already said, she gives me the mobile-phone information.

Then she speaks of a certain Ardak, a North African citizen, and gives me the mobile-phone information.

A certain Juve, an Algerian citizen, who worked occasionally at the Le Chique [sic] pub and who apparently lived in the vicinity of the home of another of the victim’s friends.

Sofie [sic]; also for him she gives me the mobile information.

Spiros, a young lad of Greek nationality, for whom she givers me only the mobile-phone information.

Shaki [Hicham Khiri], a Moroccan citizen who works in a pizzeria, frequents the [same] pubs [as those] frequented by all the girls of the victim’s group, and [is] also friends with Sofie [sic].

She furthermore reports about a black South African boy, short, who plays basketball in the Piazza Grimana court, [and] who on one occasion had apparently visited the home of the boys who lived underneath the apartment.

So Knox eagerly devoted considerable time to recalling and explaining who Peter Svizzero, Patrick, Ardak, Juve, Spiros, Shaki and a South African [Guede, disguised] were, with maps to some of their places and phone numbers thrown in. She was talking and writing at the same time. The four investigators needed to do little more than sit watching.

Contrast The “Explanation” In Knox’s Book

In her book Knox makes no mention of any of the above.

Fom 2007 to 2013 when her book came out, Knox’s tendency was to expand upon and embellish her own explanation for her conniption and fingering of Patrick.

This was despite the fact that her two-day stint on the stand in July 2009 focussed exclusively on this was disbelieved by the Massei judges and by most Italians who watched.

It was also despite the fact that she served three years for this with her guilty verdict confirmed even by Judge Hellmann labeling her a felon for life.

It was also despite the fact that after the 2009 trial those investigators she had impugned at trial sparked new charges still to be faced in a Florence court.

It was also despite the fact that more charges for her 2013 book and her Oggi interview are expected to be added by the chief prosecutor in Bergamo.

Amazingly, she was still digging herself in deeper as late as 2014. By far her longest, most self-serving and most surreal version of the session appeared as Chapter 10 of her book.

This chapter is 20 pages long and consists of page after page after page of invented dialogue. Everybody has long known that the last few pages were Knox’s malicious invention.

That the rest of the pages are too is also dead-certain.

Neither Rita Ficarra’s notes nor Knox’s list of names with maps and notes,one of which she created and both of which were repeatedly testified to right in front of her, are even mentioned anywhere in Knox’s book.

This dishonest dialogue and mass accusation of crimes is what Knox and Linda Kulman give us instead: 

Police officer Rita Ficarra slapped her palm against the back of my head, but the shock of the blow, even more than the force, left me dazed. I hadn’t expected to be slapped. I was turning around to yell, “Stop!”””my mouth halfway open””but before I even realized what had happened, I felt another whack, this one above my ear. She was right next to me, leaning over me, her voice as hard as her hand had been. “Stop lying, stop lying,” she insisted.

Stunned, I cried out, “Why are you hitting me?”

“To get your attention,” she said.

I have no idea how many cops were stuffed into the cramped, narrow room. Sometimes there were two, sometimes eight””police coming in and going out, always closing the door behind them. They loomed over me, each yelling the same thing: “You need to remember. You’re lying. Stop lying!”

“I’m telling the truth,” I insisted. “I’m not lying.” I felt like I was suffocating. There was no way out. And still they kept yelling, insinuating.

The authorities I trusted thought I was a liar. But I wasn’t lying. I was using the little energy I still had to show them I was telling the truth. Yet I couldn’t get them to believe me.

Huh? Really? In fact only four were involved. The conversation was low-key. The list of names did emerge. Knox was never yelled at or hit, as her own lawyers publicly confirmed. And Rita Ficarra and others describe some exceptional kindnesses shown to Knox, before and after she spontaneously became disturbed, which at trial Knox confirmed.

Knox and Linda Kulman give us twenty more pages of this mass accusation of crimes, which not one witness confirmed or any court believed, more than enough to occupy the entire session, leaving no time for all the work on that list of names which was the sole point of the session and undeniably exists.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Advisor Ted Simon Jumps Ship? With Legal And Financial Woes Will The Other Paid Help Stay?

Posted by Peter Quennell

Paid help Robert Barnett, Linda Kulman, Carlo Dalla Vedova, and Luciano Ghirga


Knox seems to badly need several kinds of professional help.

But Ted Simon simply parroting the foolish Steve Moore and the foolish Bruce Fischer was not really what we had in mind. If Ted Simon really is Knox’s ex-lawyer what a legal and financial mess he leaves behind.

In America there is a common legal remark on TV: that the coverup is often worse than the crime. It is often for the coverup that perps get sentenced to the longest time - often that is the only sentence they get.

Had the Knox and Sollecito forces been smart enough to take the route Dr Mignini hinted at in 2007 - that this was a hazing with sexual humiliation that spiraled out of control - and shown remorse as Guede to some extent did - the two might have faced lesser charges, been out early, and brought to an early end some of the terrible agony inflicted on Meredith’s ailing family over nearly seven years.

The paid and unpaid help might now be doing just fine.

But of course the smart route was ignored. The coverup for Knox seems totally on the rocks. Italy holds all the cards. As described in the past several posts, legal and financial nightmares for the Knox and Sollecito paid and unpaid help could be ahead. For one thing, they could all end up unpaid.

• Remember, the prosecution case presented at trial in 2009 was powerful and decisive, and the defenses were so demoralised in the summer and fall that two defense lawyers were said to have nearly walked.


• Remember, the Knox forces never tell you this, as Steve Moore etc make inane charges about corruption on the prosecution side, but the ONLY known corruption in the case was on the defense side.

It is openly known in Italy that the judicial appointments to the 2011 appeal court were corrupt. It was a hijacked court.

Judge Chiari and Prosecutor Comodi both publicly made this quite plain, Dr Galati said Cassation would set things right, the CSM edged Judge Hellmann into retirement (where he still waffles on with trademark incompetence) and the Supreme Court did set things right, with the unique ferocity that we saw.

Knox’s serial lying in her own coverup was very well known (after all, it was for lying that she served three years) but the flashmob attempts at coverup based on her invented claims went on regardless, even escalated in the past several years with the arrival of new dupes. Saul Kassin and John Douglas and the seriously out-to-lunch Jim Clemente come to mind.

The Knox book bizarrely parrots Steve Moore and Bruce Fischer, presumably with Ted Simon’s okay. Now it has put her paid help’s problems on steroids. All of them including Ted Simon could be legally and financially liable in several different ways. The past several posts described some of those.

Take for example this statement Knox puts into the public domain about her Perugia lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova, in which she is accusing him of all people of falsely accusing police and prosecutors of crimes:

Carlo [Dalla Vedova], who’d never sugarcoated my situation, said, “These are small-town detectives. They chase after local drug dealers and foreigners without visas. They don’t know how to conduct a murder investigation correctly. Plus, they’re bullies. To admit fault is to admit that they’re not good at their jobs. They suspected you because you behaved differently than the others. They stuck with it because they couldn’t afford to be wrong.”

Really? He said that?

Read all the transcripts at trial and Mr Dalla Vedova’s public statements nowhere near resemble that. They were careful, honest and respectful, to say the least. He had numerous opportunities to complain. But he didnt, not once.

As we’ve remarked in the posts just below, back in 2008 he and Mr Ghirga had to publicly advise Knox to please not keep inventing things. So to this claim of Knox, when her book comes up for trial, what can Mr Dalla Vedova say?

Either he committed a new crime or his client did?

There is a good reason Giulia Bongiorno is not defending Sollecito for his own radioactive book. On that, she has already jumped ship.

Last one out the door, please turn off the lights.

Friday, August 08, 2014

False Claims By Amanda Knox & The Book Team May End Up Costing Them Millions

Posted by Our Main Posters

Book agent Robert Barnett forgets to exult about marketing the defamatory Amanda Knox book

True Costs Of The PR Bandwagon

Not solely for crimes of her own making, but there is a potential $10-million-plus bill that Knox & co may be stuck with.

• $5-plus million in costs and damages awarded against her by the Massei trial court and confirmed by the Nencini appeal court, incuding unpaid damages of nearly $100,000 to Patrick which Cassation already rendered final.


• $4 million for the book payment arranged in seeming defiance of Italian and American bloodmoney laws (called Son of Sam laws in the US), big bucks in financial donations from other misleading fundraisings (see the Knox website), and yet more big bucks for civil damages (see one defamation action described in the post under this one.)

A Self-Damaging Trend

It seems Amanda Knox can be extremely hard to shut up. Back in 2008 Knox’s own Perugia lawyers had to ask her publicly, via the media, to please shut up and stop inventing things.

After her conniption at Perugia’s central police station on 6 November 2007 she not only insisted on writing out three statements, she also babbled for large parts of the next five hours.  That was despite attempts to calm her down with camomile tea and carbohydrates.

Then came her two calamitous days in mid 2009 on the witness stand (see more below) and her leaked diaries (which actually did nail one malicious lie not her own), and her bizarre video, and multiple reports of her other doings in Capanne, and multiple interviews ever since.

One of which has entrapped Italy’s Oggi as we can see here and here.

A Possible Legal Scenario

Knox’s own lawyers (who dont seem to have read her book in draft) also never backed up any of her claims at trial. Read the transcripts and it is pretty obvious that they were very very careful not to do so.

Even the partisan Judge Hellmann concluded Knox was lying and both he and Cassation confirmed Knox’s three-year prison sentence for calunnia. To that there is no further appeal, and of course the time was served.

The precise timing of the Knox book’s release represents another potential millstone. It came out after Sollecito’s book had been sent to Florence prosecutors for investigations, and also after British and Italian editions were cancelled by HarperCollins’s own lawyers, and also after the Italian Supreme Court reverted Knox’s status to “guilty pending any final appeal” leading to her appeal which failed last January.

Red flags were up all over the place. Even other better-advised American publishers were emitting warnings.

Absent Knox’s team getting good advice and withdrawing, settling, and apologizing, Knox and HarperCollins could be targeted by those Knox defamed. Then HarperCollins could target Mr Barnett and Ms Kulman. Mr Barnett and Ms Kulman could then target Mr Knox and Mr Marriott and Mr Simon.

Finding fault with Knox’s book is like shooting fish in a barrel. See our previous post. Here are ten further examples.

Instances Of False Claims

1. False Claim: Knox On The Framing Of Her Kindly Employer

This is the lie that was universally disbelieved and for which Knox served three years for. See our still-emerging Interrogation Hox series. The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt is ahead of us on this one.

[Knox] writes that she had a flashback to the interrogation, when she felt coerced into a false accusation. “I was weak and terrified that the police would carry out their threats to put me in prison for 30 years, so I broke down and spoke the words they convinced me to say. I said: ‘Patrick - it was Patrick.’”

In her memoir, she describes in detail the morning that she put that accusation in writing, and says the prison guard told her to write it down fast.

Yet in a letter to her lawyers she gave no hint of being rushed or pressured. “I tried writing what I could remember for the police, because I’ve always been better at thinking when I was writing. They gave me time to do this. In this message I wrote about my doubts, my questions and what I knew to be true.”

2. False Claim: Dr Mignini Portrayed Knox As A She-Devil

During the rebuttals, on December 3, each lawyer was given a half hour to counter the closing arguments made over the past two weeks. Speaking for me, Maria criticized Mignini for portraying Meredith as a saint and me as a devil

Really? Prosecutor Mignini said that? So why did the entire media corps report that it was said by Patrick Lumumba’s lawyer Carlo Pacelli? As the BBC reported:

[Mr Pacelli] added: “Who is the real Amanda Knox? Is it the one we see before us here, simple water and soap, the angelic St Maria Goretti?”

“Or is she really a she-devil, a diabolical person focused on sex, drugs and alcohol, living life to the extreme and borderline - is this the Amanda Knox of 1 November 2007?”

So even Mr Pacelli didnt compare Knox to Meredith, or simply call Knox a she-devil to her face. He asked rhetorically if she was a she-devil or a saint. Not exactly unheard of in American courts.

And remember he was addressing someone who would have been quite happy to see Patrick put away for life, cost him two weeks in a cell, entangled her own mother in a cover-up, destroyed Patrick’s business and reputation world-wide, still hasnt paid him money owed, and for lying about him served three years.

Prosecutor Mignini in fact never called Knox anything at all. We can find no record that he did. Again and again he has denied it. And he had no personal need to prosecute Knox, and certainly no need to frame her, despite many pages Knox devotes to trying to prove the reckless claim that he did.

3. False Claim: Dr Mignini Ascribes Crimes To Satanic Cults

Actually Dr Mignini has been repeatedly seen on Italian national TV saying satanic cults are rare and he has never originated even one such claim.

Dozens of others had suspected and talked about a satanic cult behind the Monster of Florence murders for many years before he investigated one loose end in the case. He did correctly not ascribe those murders to the work of a single serial killer - the man Doug Preston and Mario Spezi seemed to be framing to create for themselves worldwide adulation, only to end up bitter and mean when caught red-handed.

A Sollecito defense lawyer (Maori) emerged from a closed meeting with Judge Matteini and among other heated remarks originated the malicious claim that Dr Mignini was seeing something satanic.

4. False Claim: Knox Portrays Her Success On The Witness Stand

No success to anyone present. Knox devotes many pages to trying to make herself look good on the witness stand at the trial in mid-2009.

But Italians who could follow in Italian in real-time ended up trashing her phony performance up there. Read what they saw here and here.

It didnt convince the Massei court judges or Nencini court judges or the Supreme Court judges - or even the Hellmann court judges, those of the annulled appeal. Knox served three years.

5. False Claim: About Knox’s Medical Examination After Arrest

The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

“After my arrest, I was taken downstairs to a room where, in front of a male doctor, female nurse, and a few female police officers, I was told to strip naked and spread my legs. I was embarrassed because of my nudity, my period - I felt frustrated and helpless.”

The doctor inspected, measured and photographed her private parts, she writes - “the most dehumanising, degrading experience I had ever been through”.

But in the 9 November letter to her lawyers, she described a far more routine experience.

“During this time I was checked out by medics. I had my picture taken as well as more copies of my fingerprints. They took my shoes and my phone. I wanted to go home but they told me to wait. And that eventually I was to be arrested. Then I was taken here, to the prison, in the last car of three that carried Patrick, then Raffaele, then me to prison.”

Amanda Knox (arms up) at one of various concerts she attended in Capanne prison

6. False Claim: Capanne Prison was A Hellhole Of Sin And Debauchery

That opening remark of a book review by the National Enquirer was widely parroted in other American media reports.

Over half of the Knox book is devoted to hammering home this theme. Maybe in a longshot hope that it will help to encourage the U.S. to refuse her extradition.

Italian prison conditions and treatment, Knox claims, were so bad that they made her life miserable. She says that at times she became very despondent, and even claims to have imagined doing away with herself. 

However, Italian prison conditions except for occasional overcrowding are widely considered among the most humane, caring and rehabilitating in the world. Compared to US prison conditions, they are like night and day.

And this almost universal claim of every prisoner everywhere is contradicted by the media on which she and her family worked so hard; by prison staff and official visitors, and even by the US Federal Government itself.

(1) Contradicted by the extensive media reporting

Occasional despondency is not all uncommon among those paying their debt to society. And there is scads of reporting that Knox had adjusted well to prison.

Read all of this BBC report dated 2013 by the objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt. And read this by ABC News after Knox was found guilty in 2009.

Knox said that she felt “horrendous” the night that the verdict was delivered. “She said the prison guards did come in to hold her and make her feel better. She said the other prisoners were good to her,” Thomas said.

The reporter said the prison is “extremely clean.” Knox’s cell, which she shares with another American who has been sentenced on drug charges, is small. “It had a little bathroom with a door, a bidet, a sink, a shower…. better than some of the things I’ve seen at summer camp or boarding school.”

The women inmates are allowed to go to a hairdresser once a week.

The prison is a new facility, just opened in 2005. The women’s ward has an infirmary, an entertainment room with a pool table and ping-pong table, and a library. There is also a small chapel. Outside there is a little playground for children with benches and toys because there are cells specifically for women with children. Currently there are two women in Capanne with children.

It was very widely reported over four years that Knox was given the opportunity to do all these many things rarely encountered in American prisons: Learn the guitar. Read a lot. Watch TV. Study foreign languages.

Do artwork (colored pictures of hands). Attend rock concerts where she was seen leaping up and down (images here). Attend classical concerts. Attend Christmas parties.

Knox even played a major part in the creation of a rock video with a rock group. Unfortunately for her, that video appeared to many to come close to a taunting murder confession.

And on various occasions Knox was quoted as saying prison guards were kind to her.

(2) Contradicted by the US Embassy and State Department

American officials monitored Knox in court and prison and never saw anything that would back up Knox’s claim.

The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

State department cables, released through the Freedom of Information Act, show that between 2007 and 2009, three different high-level diplomats from Rome (Ambassador Ronald Spogli, Deputy Chief Elizabeth Dibble and Ambassador David Thorne) were among those reviewing Knox’s case.

Embassy officials visited regularly. Records show one consular official visited Knox on 12 November, soon after her arrest.  A few weeks later she wrote in her diary how the visits of embassy officials improved her experience….

In 2008 and 2009, she was visited by two embassy officials at a time, six times. Ambassador David Thorne, whose name appears at the bottom of cables in August, November and December of 2009, is the brother- in-law of US Secretary of State John Kerry (at that time chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee).

If the diplomats knew anything of the “harrowing prison hell” Knox was going through (as one paper put it), they are keeping those reports under wraps. Neither Kerry nor any other prominent US politician has made any public complaints. Even today, her Italian lawyers maintain she was not mistreated.

This matters incredibly to Knox because it constitutes the official take of the US Federal Government. It will be front and center of State Department and Justice Department considerations when an arrest warrant for Knox is issued and extradition is requested.

(3) Contradicted by Member of Parliament Rocco Girlanda

Mr Girlanda visited Amanda Knox in prison approximately 20 times for the specific purpose (or so he claimed) of checking her prison conditions. In fact that was the only way he could legally visit her, although oddly enough a book and a number of other pro-Knox actions emerged - even a complaint to the President about the Perugia prosecutors.

After Knox was released late in 2011 Mr Girlanda specifically praised the prison staff in this statement.

Perugia Prison Police The Example of Professionalism.

The PdL Party member of parliament Rocco Girlanda praises the officers of the Perugia prison.

“I’ve had the opportunity to describe to the Minister of Justice, Nitto Palma, the great professional behaviour shown by the Perugia Penitentiary Police with regards to the court case that saw Amanda Knox as protagonist, a behaviour that I had always observed during the course of my visits to the Capanne prison in the last two years.”  So says Rocco Girlanda, Umbrian deputy of the PdL, after the conclusion of the appeal trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

“In recent months I have had the opportunity to make dozens of visits to the prison, which also included some of the petitions presented by the senior management of the premises and my commitment in this regard, always finding, that starting from the director Bernardina Di Mario, continuing with the Penitentiary Police commander Fulvio Brillo, up to the entire personnel employed, the helpfulness, the courtesy and their professionalism which allows me to say that Perugia is a model structure on the national landscape, managed and directed in the best way and with a large dose of humanity on the part of the staff employed.”

(4) Contradicted by Knox’s own Italian lawyers

Knox’s lawyers Mr Dalla Vedova and Mr Ghirga visited her again and again during the 2009 trial and 2010 hiatus and 2011 appeal. Knox once again had dozens of opportunities to lodge complaints with them - lawyers who could have initiated Supreme Court action in response.

When Knox was released late in 2011 Mr Dalla Vedova and Mr Ghirga were interviewed by the TV station Umbria 24:

The lawyers: “she never complained about the prison”.

Amanda Knox “has never complained about the conduct/behavior of the prison police supervisor” and “she has never mentioned his name”: to say so are the defenders of the American woman, lawyers Carlo Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga, commenting on what was reported by the tabloid The Sun. “

Ghirga said: “In the diary Amanda never makes the name.”

Della vedova said: “We are grateful to the management staff of Capanne prison for their cooperation even given to the family’s requirements. Amanda has never reported violations against her.”

“She absolutely has received the correct treatment and the outmost solidarity, within compliance, especially in the prison’s female section.”

(5) Contradicted by prison guards and other inmates

In some interviews, the reporter Sharon Feinstein captures a view of a difficult, narcissistic, uncaring Amanda Knox which is very commonplace around Perugia. The real faults lie with Knox, in effect.

7. False Claim: About Knox’s Persona And Mood Swings In Prison

The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

She says she was often suicidal, but recollections of prison staff and other inmates differ. Flores Innocenzia de Jesus, a woman incarcerated with Amanda in 2010 described Knox as sunny and popular among the children who were in Capanne with their mothers, and recalled her avid participation in music and theatrical events. She also held a sought-after job taking orders and delivering goods to inmates from the prison dispensary.

“Most of the time when we spoke during our exercise break, the kids would call her and she would go and play with them,” de Jesus told me.

American officials monitored Knox in court and prison and never saw anything that would back up Knox’s claim.

8. False Claim: Negative Attitudes Displayed By The Prison Staff

Agian, the objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

“The prison staff are really nice,” wrote Knox in her personal prison diary, which was eventually published in Italy under the title Amanda and the Others.

“They check in to make sure I’m okay very often and are very gentle with me. I don’t like the police as much, though they were nice to me in the end, but only because I had named someone for them, when I was very scared and confused.”

She described Italian prisons as “pretty swell”, with a library, a television in her room, a bathroom and a reading lamp. No-one had beaten her up, she wrote, and one guard gave her a pep talk when she was crying in her cell.

Unlike the heavily-edited memoir, these are phrases she handwrote herself, complete with strike-outs, flowery doodles, peace signs and Beatles lyrics.

9. False Claim: The Positive HIV Result At Capanne Was Malicious

The objective Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt reporting.

Both accounts also refer to the devastating but erroneous news from the prison doctor that she had tested positive for HIV, although her diary presents a more relaxed person at this point. “First of all, the guy told me not to worry, it could be a mistake, they’re going to take a second test next week.”

We also know that it was Knox’s own team who leaked the HIV report and list of sex partners she herslf chose to create. Not the doctor or anyone else. No malice was intended, that is clear, despite her claims.

10. False Claim? Knox Was Pressured For Sex By A Prison Guard

One of Knox’s prison claims actually names a now-retired senior prison guard who Knox claimed often asked her for sex. There are no witnesses, but he is now suing Knox for libel and Knox herself seems to have wrecked any defense..

Knox made the claim but in a far weaker form in 2011. Then as CBS reported she had in fact concluded the guard was not even serious about sex. He was seeking to understand her.

Investigative journalist and CBS News Consultant Bob Graham, reading from Amanda’s letter to him: “”˜He was fixated on the topic of sex, with whom I’d done it, how I liked it, if I would like to do it with him. When I realized that he really wanted to talk to me about sex I would try to change the subject.’”

Correspondent Peter Van Sant: “What does this letter say to you about what she’s been going through?”

Graham: “It says in a time when she was clearly traumatized by the events of the death, the murder of her flatmate, that there she was, an innocent abroad, because she was innocent, she is innocent”¦ and here she was being pressured, further pressured in a prison system, a system that at least she should have had some degree of safety.”

Graham, reading Amanda’s letter: “I realize that he was testing me to see if I reacted badly, to understand me personally. He wanted to get a reaction or some information from me. I did not get the seriousness of the situation.’”

Knox’s claim about pressure for sex seems to have left Italians contemptuous. Yet more lies from knox, the Italian Il Giornale labeled it.

Have a good weekend, guys. Hit the law books.

Saturday, August 02, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #10: Why Prosecution And Defenses Never Believed Knox’s Version #1

Posted by Our Main Posters

1. Anti Knox Proofs In Plain Sight

American supporters of Knox argue that the “interrogation” is a “she said/they said” situation. One in which it is Knox that tells the world the truth.

And that the police had closed ranks to hide a brutal hours-long session resulting in Knox framing Patrick and that the “lost” recording of the “interrogation” would prove that she is the one that is right.

There is, of course, no recording, as it was an impromptu recap/summary session, with someone who might or might not have relevant information for the police. No legal system in the world requires the taping of that.

But there is in fact hard evidence the other way, that the investigators told the world the truth. Two items. Each mentioned often and assumed as givens in Posts #2 to #9.

Even if the days of crushing testimony left undented by cross-examination which we have posted was not enough, these items prove that the first scenario here is the truth and Knox has ever since lied.

Because several defense lawyers remarked on them without debating them, in cross-examining all the investigators who had any encounter with Knox on 5-6 November, all the defense counsel unquestionably knew that the items lurked there in the evidence pile in plain sight.

It seems impossible to know about these items, and yet still believe that Knox was telling the truth.

Lawyers often encourage their clients to tell the truth and good lawyers never encourage their clients to lie. And yet here Ghirga, Dalla Vedova, Bongiorno and Maori would have known from latest early 2008 that Knox’s claims on the “interrogations” were in fact made up.

And if so, they must have asked themselves, why? Why did Knox have to lie?

In all the legitimate legal processes, meaning all those except the Hellmann appeal, the defense lawyers were seen by close observers to be dispirited and lacking the full punch that the certainty of innocence can bring.

In the years that followed since, these two items helped to changed legal mindsets, from Prosecutor Mignini, to Judge Matteini, to Judge Micheli, to Judge Massei, to even Judge Hellmann, and so on to Cassation and the Nencini appeal.

If they are landmines, in the legal process they long ago went off. 

And all along Knox should have known that the items exist, they were repeatedly talked about right in front of her in the court.

But Knox makes no mention in her book, or in her appeals, or in her email to Judge Nencini, or in her appeal to the ECHR (we presume). How odd.

2. See Proofs In Plain Sight

Click for Post:  The Knox Interrogation Hoax #11: Why Prosecution And Defenses Never Believed Knox’s Version #2

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Italian Reporting Of Prolonged Knox/Cocaine-Dealer Connection; Media Digging

Posted by Our Main Posters

1. How Drug Use Was Addressed At Trial

The story of Knox’s drug use clearly has legs. But whoever is driving it, the trial prosecution is not - they are simply sitting back and watching.

Police and prosecutors have never driven the perception that Knox and Sollecito were stoned on the night when they attacked Meredith. Judge Micheli wasnt keen on this possible “out” and besides they have never had a reason to.

It was in fact the defenses who drove the drug-use argument. Knox admitted to police on 5-6 November 2007 to marijuana use, and so did Sollecito. He already had a minor record of cocaine possession. Both tried to use the argument at trial that they were indeed stoned. But that was only to explain major discrepancies in their statements, not to say that drugs helped to fuel the attack on Meredith.

The defenses had an opportunity with Judge Matteini, the guiding magistrate from late 2007 though to Judge Micheli’s arraignment in October 2008, to try to seek lesser charges due to impaired capacities. But either they did not want to, or they were prevented by the families from doing so.

At trial in 2009 the prosecution remarked that the two were suspected to have been using cocaine (the symptoms seem to us pretty obvious) but the defence simply shrugged at this and did not contend it.

Judge Massei never mentions amphetamines. Two defense experts were brought in to try to convince the Massei court that the admitted drug use had fogged their clients’ brains. Judge Massei simply recorded this doubtful claim in his sentencing report. He gave the perps no breaks based on this reasoning.

]page 393] On the effects of drugs of the type used by Amanda and by Raffaele, such as hashish and marijuana, [we] heard the testimony of Professor Taglialatela who, while underlining the great subjective variability (page 211, hearing of 17 July 2009) specified that the use of such substances has a negative influence on the cognitive capacity and causes alterations of perception (pages 201 and 207) and of the capacity to comprehend a situation (page 218).

In his turn, Professor Cingolani, who together with Professor Umani Ronchi and Professor Aprile, had also dealt with the toxicological aspect (see witness report lodged on 15 April 2008, pages 26 and following), responding to the question he had been asked as to whether the use of drugs lowers inhibitions replied: “šThat is beyond doubt”› (page 163 hearing of 19 September 2009), while correlating that effect to the habits of the person [on] taking the drugs. Raffaele Sollecito’s friends had furthermore stated that such substances had an effect of relaxation and stupor.

2. New Reporting On Knox/Drug-Dealer Connection

Below is the new Giallo report on a connection between Knox and drug-dealers kindly translated by our main poster Jools. Note that the main drug dealer Frederico Martini (who is “F” below) and others were convicted back in 2011 and the connection to Knox was reported then in the Italian press, though not in the UK and US press.

The main new fact here is that Giallo has the dealers’ names. Giallo makes clear it obtained the names legitimately from open police records, not from the prosecutors back at trial.  Dr Mignini merely takes note of the names which Giallo itself provided and he doubted that Knox would now become truth-prone.

Clamorous [Sensational/Scoop]

The American woman already convicted to 28 years for the murder of her friend Meredith.

A NEW LEAD, LINKED TO DRUGS, PUTS AMANDA KNOX IN TROUBLE

The woman was hanging around a circle of hashish and cocaine traffickers. One of them had intimate relation with her. Another, a dangerous criminal offender, had attempted to kill his brother with a knife. Are they implicated?

“During the course of the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher we have confirmed that a person whose initial is F. would occasionally supply drugs to Amanda Knox, as well as having a relationship with her supposedly of a sexual nature.” So begins an [official note] annotation of the Flying Squad police in Perugia dated January 19, 2008, two and half months after the terrible murder of the young British student Meredith Kercher. An annotation that could open a new, worst-case scenario on the Perugia murder and on one of its most talked-about protagonists, Amanda Knox, besides making it possible to convince the USA to send her back to Italy for a new trial.

But why is this annotation so important? And who is this mysterious F. that is now entering the scene? Let’s see. When Amanda came to our country to study, in September 2007, did not yet know Raffaele Sollecito, the guy from Giovinazzo who will be accused together with her and Rudy Guede, a thief and drug dealer, of the murder of Meredith. But she soon started to hang around characters implicated in a drug ring for university students in Perugia. A particularly disturbing entourage of whose members included dangerous multi-convicted felons. The first one is precisely F. We will not disclose his full name or F’s last name, for reasons of discretion, but GIALLO knows them.

In 2007, F. is a student of psychology from Rome, much older than Amanda. The two meet on a Milano-Florence train and decide to visit the city together in the evening, Knox having gotten rid of [her sister] she and F. smoke a joint together. “My first smoke in Italy,” says the same Amanda on MySpace, a social network site that was popular seven years ago. The two end the Florentine evening in his hotel room. Photo evidence of this new friendship was formerly on Myspace, because Amanda publishes a photo of F., half naked. An aunt commented: “Do not date strange Italian guys.”

Once she settled in Perugia, Amanda continues to have contact with F. His number is in Amanda’s phone book, and they both frequently called each other, before and after the murder.

F., also appears in a “list” of Italian guys she slept with which was compiled by Amanda on one of her big school notebooks and also in her autobiographical book Waiting to be heard. In the book Amanda talks about F. but changes his name and calls him Cristiano. Maybe to protect their privacy, maybe to obfuscate opinions. She writes of him: “I promised my friends that I would not end up sleeping with the first guy that comes by, but F. was a change of plans.” Further adding that in Italy smoking joints is simply normal, “like eating a plate of pasta.”

On the other hand Amanda spends a lot of money in the several months she’s in Perugia. In September, she draws out $ 2,452 from her bank account, that’s 1,691 euros. How did she spend it? No one has ever investigated this, and she does not explain it. She says she used the cash for living [expenses], but considering that the rent she had to pay was only 300 euros, and that twice a week she worked as a waitress in the bar of Patrick Lumumba, Le Chic, putting more cash in her pocket, the [living] expenses seem really excessive.

What does Amanda do with all that money? For sure she does not buy only hashish, which is not so expensive. Was she, then, using cocaine? The [police] annotation makes you think of it. And this could explain both the state of alteration of the girl on the night of the murder as well as a possible motive. Amanda that evening returned home to get some money to pay for the drugs, and she encountered Meredith? The girls had a fight, as Rudy Guede says in his reconstruction of that night, why, did Amanda steal Meredith’s money? Was Amanda on her own, or maybe she made sure she was accompanied by Rudy or other drug dealing friends?

No one has ever investigated this, or Amanda’s dangerous acquaintances. So dangerous that the same F., in 2011, was arrested. To be precise that started from the analysis of Amanda’s mobile phone, police investigators found that in fact F. and two of his close friends, Luciano and Lorenzo, were part of a major drug ring: all three ended up on trial for selling cocaine.

On January 14, 2011 they were all sentenced. The court judges established that Luciano was the one that supplied the other two: He was to serve two years and eight months in prison.

But let’s read the rest of the police annotation because what this reveals is really disturbing: “F. is contacted by phone by the presumable clients placing an “order” with him of the quantity of drugs they want to buy and in turn he contacts various Maghrebi characters ordering. It is also established that F. associates with multiple-convicted offenders of very serious crimes in the matter of drugs, and with persons such as A. Luciano, with whom he maintains frequent contacts aimed at drug trafficking.”

And precisely in this way Luciano, linked to F., a friend of Amanda, has a terrible past. The cops wrote this about him: “The above-cited Luciano on the 28/7/2006 was arrested by the carabinieri in Foligno because he was responsible for the murder attempt of his brother, who gave him 16 stab wounds inflicted with a kitchen knife.”

Luciano, therefore, who sells drugs in Perugia and provides supply to F., with whom he is often in touch, is an unsuccessful killer. Only a year before the murder in Perugia, under the influence of drugs, he tried to kill his brother during an argument over money and drug dealing. Luciano, out of his head that evening, grabbed the knife with which he was slicing a melon in the kitchen and stabbed his brother’s body 16 times.

A scene not so different from what the judges think happened in Meredith’s house, and even from what was described by the same Amanda on the 5 November 2007 when, at the end of a night of contradictions and anguish, confessed giving culpability of the murder to Patrick Lumumba, the owner of the bar Le Chic, who later proved to be unconnected with the facts of the case. Amanda said: “Patrick and Meredith went to Meredith’s room, while I think that I stayed in the kitchen. I heard screams and was scared, I covered my ears.”

Where were, F. and Luciano the night of the murder? And who was there that night, instead of Patrick? Questions still unanswered. What seems likely, however, is that Amanda was not with Raffaele, who was at his home on his computer. The judiciary may now decide to open a new file on her. Will the USA grant extradition?

Here is the translation of Dr Mignini’s interview with Giallo translated by Kristeva.

Luciano [Giuliano] Mignini, the judge leading the investigation, talks “Amanda knows how to lie very well: she seems sincere and credible ...”

[GM] The magistrate has directed all investigations: it is she [Judge Matteini] who had Amanda, Raffaele, Patrick Lumumba and Rudy Guede arrested.

[GM] “In the Supreme Court of Cassation new revelations don’t count” Giuliano Mignini, deputy prosecutor of the Attorney General Office of Perugia and public prosecutor of the first trial for the murder of Meredith [Kercher], goes straight to the point.

Mr. Mignini, pending the Supreme Court, Raffaele Sollecito seems to have distanced himself from Amanda Knox. He claims he is not certain that the American girl has spent the whole night with Sollecito ...”

[GM] “All this is irrelevant. In Court of Cassation only questions of laws can be raised. They do not take into account the new elements of reconstruction of the facts. Trials are based on the acts of the proceeding. Sustaining now a different reconstruction of what happened is a question of merit that does not in any way interest cassation.”

Amanda has repeatedly argued that her version of the facts had been affected by heavy pressures from the prosecutor’s office.

[GM] “Nothing could be more false. The process of investigation and trial proceeding of Kercher’s murder has had from the beginning an unprecedented media pressure, which has confused some ideas in public opinion. The trial should take place with the guarantee of an adversarial process, with equality of prosecution and defense. When one steps out of these parameters one ends up with a trial through the media. In this scenario, the foreign press, especially the American one, not taking into account our legal system, has given its input. They created a discourse that sounds a bit like this:she is one our fellow citizens and therefore she must be innocent. “

And if today even Amanda was to change her version?

[GM] “I would be astonished. She had plenty of occasions to tell her truth”

What was your impression of Amanda?

[GM] Amanda is very intelligent. She cleverly tried to divert suspects from her, as in the case of the staged burglary, a huge lie. Amanda is shrewd like when she accused Patrick Lumumba. On that occasion she appeared credible, she was crying. She looked as if terrified. I believe she’s a very theatrical girl and in a certain way even anti conformist: while everyone was crying and were worried, she was doing cartwheels.

What was her relationship with Meredith?

[GM] “Amanda did not like to be contradicted and had a conflictual relationship with Meredith. There were constant arguments regarding Amanda’s behaviour that Meredith could not tolerate. She believed that Amanda stole her money.”

And what type was Sollecito?

[GM] Raffaele is an enigmatic character. He is a shy young man who was subjected to Amanda’s strong personality. He was very attracted to Knox who in the meantime did not disdain the company of other acquaintances.

About acquaintances, Amanda knew some drug dealers. Could they have had a role in the murder?

[GM] “I cannot answer this” But then writes down their names.

[By] Gian Pietro Fiore

3. Our Comments On The Giallo Report

As observed above, for Italians most of this is actually not new news. The new news is that Giallo now has all the dealers’ names, from the open records of the police.

Giallo’s mention of a possible new trial is presumably connected to this drug-dealing, as the trial for Meredith’s murder and Knox’s and Sollecito’s failed appeal have both concluded, and only Cassation’s endorsement of the verdict is awaited.

Giallo’s references to Guede as a drug dealer and thief are both unproven. He had no criminal record prior to final conviction by Cassation. He was never a police source, and got zero breaks, ever. He was unknown to Dr Mignini until some days after Meredith was attacked and forensics identified him.

4. UK and US Media Get Key Fact Wrong

The UK’s Daily Mail has wrongly claimed that Italy’s Giallo magazine had reported as follows: “Italian prosecutor from Amanda Knox trial gave newspaper list of drug-dealer names associated with American student”.

In their headlines the US’s National Enquirer and Radar Online make the same wrong claim, though they quote enough from Giallo to show how that magazine really re-surfaced the report.

So for now UK and US media get that key fact wrong.  This surely wont be the end of it though. The story finally has legs of its own, and clearly the media in all three countries have a willingness to pursue it more.

In the interview also posted on Giallo Dr Mignini doubted that even now Knox will tell the truth - in fact it is hard to see what she can say. We will wait and see.

5. Ground Report Also Gets It Wrong

This shrill report from “Grace Moore” about Guede and Dr Mignini in Ground Report is both seriously wrong on the facts and defamatory - she should try saying that sort of thing about any American prosecutor.  “Grace Moore” should find out what the roles of Judge Matteini and Prosecutor Comodi were, and why after a malicious prosecution against him Prosecutor Mignini is riding high on Italian TV - and pouring cold water on satanic claims about any crimes.

Paul and Rachel Sterne, the father and daughter owners of Ground Report which carries well over 100 similarly inflammatory posts, could in theory be charged by both Italian and American prosecutors, as they are an eager party to bloodmoney (a felony), harrassment of the victim’s family (a felony) and obstruction of justice under Italian law for poisoning opinion out of court (another felony).

They need to clean up their site and make some amends.

This drug report continues with new developments in another post here.

   

Click to enlarge