Saturday, July 04, 2009

Trial: Testimony Of Sollecito’s Childhod Friends From Giovinazzo

Posted by Peter Quennell


The defense DNA experts Carlo Torre and Gino Sara have been postponed into next week.

Testifying today instead were five friends of Sollecito’s. He was born in Giovinazzo on the flat and underpopulated south-eastern coast. Giovinazzo (images) is just north of Bari, where his father practices medicine.

Four childhood friends from there testified along with one who knew him in Perugia. Some translated excerpts:

Raffaele is a romantic, shy, kind, and always available, and honest with everyone…. The television described him as a womanizer, in fact he was shy and introverted. 

He typically carries a knife in his pocket. For him it was a decorative object to be matched to his clothes. He was once wrapped in toilet paper with a meat cleaver and photographed for a joke.

He occasionally smoked a joint, but was not a habitual consumer of hashish, and would not use other drugs. The joints had a sedative effect and made him want to sleep,

Concerning his first sexual intercourse, he had told one of his friends he had been with a girl from Brindisi who lived in Perugia in 2004 or 2005.

Sollecito then issued a correction. “It was actually in 2007” he said through his lawyer.

The civil lawyer for the Kercher family, Francesco Maresca, made it clear that he was skeptical of much of the testimony.

Perhaps with good reason. Sollecito wrote in his occasional newspaper column in Bari that he was a virgin when he met Amanda Knox.


Comments

It seems to me that it is never hard to find people who wil say good things about us. After all, we all want to appear pleasant, so we tend to act nicely if we want to attract and keep friends. Or because we really are nice, of course. But if we harbor dark secrets or thoughts, we usually keep them hidden, we know they scare people away, or make us noticed. We also will hide the best we can jealousy, envy, tantrums ... That does not mean we do not feel them.

Therefore, I do not feel these testimonies show anything. But who was this “shy” guy inside, and what could a too-free-spirit American girl like Amanda bring to the surface? I believe it was a match made in hell.

It is the same for her. Most of her “friends” will describe her one way, the way she acted with them to be popular. But there have been some chilling tales from other people she met and she did not care to please.

Ted Bundy was a wonderful guy for his neighbors and friends, wasn’t he?

Posted by Patou on 07/05/09 at 01:53 AM | #

Does anyone know why the defence’s DNA testimony was delayed?
The character witness of young friends is always suspect, IMHO. If you’re lucky you never experience the misuse of testimonials; if you aren’t lucky, that tends to happen later in life, after which you are very careful about what you say about people’s character.
I don’t know whether young people in Italy think it’s ‘cool’ to be gangster-like and model themselves on rap stars as they do in the US and UK - the carrying of a knife seems to point that way, and might also explain why Rudy may have told Raffaele and Amanda of his burglaries - he would be ‘outside the system’ a ‘bad boy’.

Posted by NearlyNeville on 07/05/09 at 12:17 PM | #

“He was once wrapped in toilet paper with a meat cleaver and photographed for a joke.”  What a cutup! Meat cleaver in one hand, bottle of bleach, wasn’t it, in the other? To keep his mummy wraps bright, one assumes.

When, precisely, did that snapshot date from? Was it a weak attempt at a Halloween costume, or a clue to his fascination with knives and bleach? (The bogroll being the unexplained ingredient here.) Comments like those above, presumably in his defence, go about as deep as those of Knox’s UW chums in Steve Shay’s April Fools Edition piece.

It’s so funny when Amanda does her Julia Roberts imitation and laughs like a dolphin!!! Why hasn’t anyone close to these people have anything of substance to say? Is it because there is none? What are Sollecito’s convictions (political, philosophical, not criminal)? He likes computers, shiny knives and violent “comics”, and his concern for animal rights apparently did not extend to the unwilling actors in those porn flicks that just happened to be found in his dorm room.

Interesting how he manages to remain silent until someone errs on the date of his deflowering. Does he wish to preserve a good boy image (though not a boy..) or does he actually prefer to look like a saddo?

Posted by mimi on 07/08/09 at 03:42 AM | #

Post A Comment

Smileys



Where next:

Click here to return to The Top Of The Front Page

Or to next entry Why Defendants Mostly DONT Testify? Those Devils That Lurk In The Details

Or to previous entry Trial: The Two Defendants Arrive For Another Day In Court