Saturday, March 28, 2009

Trial: ABC’s Ann Wise Reporting On Perugia And Bari Witnesses

Posted by Peter Quennell



Click above for full report.

Witnesses From Perugia And Bari

1. Mara Capezzali

Mara Capezzali, an elderly woman who lives across a parking lot from the house, testified that at about 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 1, 2007, she woke up in her home and while walking to the bathroom she heard a woman scream.

“It was not a normal scream,” said Capezzali, “it made my skin crawl.”

Capezzali was on the stand to testify in the trial of American student Amanda Knox, 21, and her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 25, who are accused of sexually assaulting and murdering Kercher.

Kercher, 21, was found dead in her bedroom in a pool of blood with her throat slit on the morning of Nov. 2, 2007. A third man, Ivory Coast citizen Rudy Guede, was earlier sentenced to 30 years in jail for participating in the murder, which he denied.

When asked to describe the scream she heard more specifically, Capezzali said it was a long scream, and she imitated it softly. The only other place she had heard such a scream, she said, was at the movies.

Capezzali looked out her bathroom window but saw nothing. Shortly afterwards she said she heard people running, at least two people in opposite directions almost simultaneously.

“I heard someone running on the metal stairs and someone else on the gravel and leaves in front of the house across the way,” Capezzali said.

Her testimony supported the prosecution theory that more than one person was at the scene of the crime when Kercher was killed.

Under cross-examination from defense attorneys, Capezzali became confused about events, and was unsure after repeated questioning of the date on which she heard the scream. But she said she was sure it was the night before she found out that Kercher had been killed.

2. Antonella Monacchia

Another witness, a young school teacher from Perugia, also told the court she had heard a scream the night of Nov. 1, 2007.

She testified that she awoke some time after 10 p.m., when she normally goes to bed, to the sound of two people arguing heatedly. Shortly after that she heard a scream.

She got out of bed and opened the window, but saw nothing. Everything was dark. Monacchia then went downstairs to her parents’ apartment, but they had heard nothing, after which she went back to bed.

Monacchia testified that the voices were a man and a woman yelling at each other in Italian. She did not hear what they said or whether they had any particular accent.

Monacchia’s bedroom window overlooks a parking lot, and has a clear view of the house where Kercher died.

3. Maria Dramis

A third witnes who lived in the area testified that on the same night she heard the sound of running footsteps under her window, a sound that woke her up around 11 p.m. This was not an unusual occurrence, but it struck her in light of what she found out the next morning about the death of Kercher just down the road.

A peculiarity about the testimony of the Monacchia Dramis is that they did not report what they had heard to investigators until over a year after the fact. When they finally did explain what they heard, it was only after prompting from a journalist who accompanied them to the police station.

“I thought that what I had heard was not important,” Monacchia said today of why she didn’t go to police earlier.

4. Sollecito Dormitory Connections

The director of a student dormitory in Perugia where Sollecito lived from 2003 to 2005 testified that he was “taciturn, introverted and shy” and that he often blushed.

Another student who also lived in the dorm at that time and was friends with Sollecito used very similar terms to describe the young student, confirming his quiet and reserved nature. The dormitory director told the court that Sollecito read Japanese Manga comics, watched many films and was once caught watching a sexually explicit movie.

5. Police Chief Antonio Galizia From Bari

The police chief from Sollecito’s hometown in southern Italy, said in court today that in 2003 Sollecito and some friends were caught in possession of one ounce of hashish at a nearby beach. That was, however, the only time Sollecito had been in trouble with the law.

When asked by Sollecito’s lawyer Luca Maori, Galizia also testified that Sollecito’s mother, who died when he was a teenager, had not committed suicide.

Maori later told reporters that Sollecito had agreed to have his mother’s death discussed in court, so, as he said, “we can clarify once and for all that she died from natural causes.” There had been repeated reports in the press that it was a suicide and that this had traumatized Sollecito.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/28/09 at 01:03 PM in Defendants in court,  Raff Sollecito,  The officially involved,  Trials 2008 & 2009,  News media & movies,  Excellent reporting,  Hoaxers: media groups,  ABC Network

Comments

No comments yet. Commenting is not available in this channel entry.

Where next:

Click here to return to The Top Of The Front Page

Or to next entry Trial: Italian Media Reporting Events In The Park On The Night

Or to previous entry Trial: Witness Emulates A Loud Scream She Heard On The Night