Sunday, February 23, 2020

Please Check Out Our Expanded New-Format Wiki Of This Extraordinarily Well-Documented Case

Posted by azoza

The famous Quadriga sculpture atop the Rome Supreme Court

1. What’s New Here

Italian justice sure goes the extra mile in documenting its cases.

Today our own collection for the murder case of Meredith Kercher features roughly 3,000 PDFs, 17,000 images, 150 audio files and 130 video files.

All these files now have a new second home at this address. Please note the “dot net”.

These are most of the existant files relevant to the murder case. They are necessarily a subset of the entire source documents on file in several locations in Italy. But we continue to seek to provide as complete a record of case documents as possible.

Above all, this is an extremely objective, reliable and trustworthy collection. Not a single document has been doctored and to our knowledge not a single document mistranslated.

This new “MMK.net” site was created in part as a more navigable version of the original file library (which is still available with some outdated analysis at the original Meredith Kercher Wiki website).

And also it was created in part for the much expanded file library, which is more complete and refined than the old one, with a very large image file section.

And also it was created in part as a precautionary backup in the event that the original site may no longer be available.

The new “MMK.net” will now serve as our primary file library website for the murder case, so that for example anyone interested in researching the murder case can easily get to the original documents, including many put into English, and view the facts of the case for themselves.

Eventually we hope to provide a guidebook documenting in detail some of the important key documents of the case.

Some source material that we did not scan or digitize are things like press pass requests, invoices for court expenses and various court administrative documents that were ancillary to the court proceedings.

There was some source material, like recordings on micro-tape, which will likely remain un-digitized. And, there some files, such as the autopsy video or phone intercept recordings, that will never be posted, out of respect for privacy.

2. Five Main Ways Of Navigating

Links to the files are organized in a number of different ways:

1) The “Master List Of Files” Webpage has links to all the files on a single page.

With the “find” function of your web browser, you can search for specific filenames.

2) The “Files By Chronology” Webpage lists the files chronologically, based on their date of creation.

So police and prosecutor notices issued on November 3rd, 2007, can be found on the webpage titled “November 3rd, 2007”. The chronological ordering is very interesting as it provides a daily, monthly and then yearly view of the police investigations, prosecutor and lawyer notices, court proceedings, etc.

3) The “Files By Subject Matter” Webpage organizes the files by the subject they deal with.

This grouping has links to a selection of the library files, since some of the files do not pertain to the subjects listed. Instead, this grouping is helpful to people just learning about the case. As an example, someone may want to find all the files relevant to DNA analysis, or all the files related to a particular lawyer, or all the files related to a particular court proceeding, or all the files related to a type of evidence.

4) The “Files By Type Of Content” Webpage organizes the files primarily by their document type or by their content type.

Most of the links are to pages featuring the PDF documents, but some of the links go to webpages featuring images. This organization is more “inclusive” than the subject matter organization. As an example, the “testimony” link goes to a webpage listing ALL the courtroom testimony available in the library, both in PDF documents and in audio files.

5) The “Files By Type Of Format” Webpage organizes the files by their type of data: PDF, images, audio or video files.

3. Other Available Ways Of Navigating

In addition to the five available “sorts” above of the file library documents, there are a few ancillary options.

Three webpages of images galleries feature (1) Meredith, (2) Perugia, and (3) select photos of the small mountain of source documentation that was consulted.

Various “Case Overview” links provide some general information about the case as help to newcomers.

The “Case Timeline” Webpage features a table of the events of the murder case, from the discovery of the murder to the final Italian Cassazione ruling.

The “Key Documents” Webpage provides links to documents that will be analyzed further in an upcoming guidebook on the documentation.

The “Evidence list” Webpage featuring a detailed listing of case evidence. It is still a work in progress.

We hope to eventually have authorization again to access the prosecutor case archives, and also the police archives, to find a few documents and files we know are still missing. We hope to have this in the next year or so.

We wish you fruitful researching.

Sunday, February 16, 2020

Highly Misleading But Revealing “Knox Week” On Enabler Kary Antholis’s “Crime Story” Site

Posted by Julan

1. On The Hoax Bandwagon

It is now twelve-plus years after Meredith’s murder.

And yet Amanda Knox still uses every opportunity to put herself on-stage, exclaiming how badly she was mistreated, misunderstood and vilified…

Condescending to the media, Italy’s justice system, anyone who doesn’t support her. And she still manages to snare naive enablers.

Kary Antholis had an illustrious 25-year career with HBO the premium cable-TV movie channel. One could expect him of all people to look before he leaped into any venture.

For example, Kary might have taken a minute to track down the damning and unrefuted posts about Knox and her huge mafia-backed hoax on this Smoking Guns page.

And yet instead Kary has emerged as yet another unwise Knox enabler. This week-long event is now featured on his new Crime Story website.

Amanda Knox Week: We dedicate this week at Crime Story to Amanda Knox, the legacy of her story, and the work that she has pursued as a voice for compassionate and restorative justice with her partner, Christopher…

See in particular these two postings on Kary’s site of an unwittingly revealing two-part Amanda Knox interview.

Day 4 Part 1/2: Interview with AK and husband #1

Day 5 Part 2/2: Interview with AK and husband #2

Those interviews were seemingly done in December. They are a bit difficult to read because of the disjointed grammar. Maybe better to listen.

2. Window Into Knox Psychology

The interviews actually give great insight into Amanda’s psyche… truly showing an esoteric mindset and blatant narcissism.

Both Amanda and husband claim to be atheists and moral nihilists (there is no right nor wrong).

They have a complete lack of logic and critical thinking.

Nihilism, most simply, means believing in nothing. The word is derived from Latin, nihil, which means ‘nothing.’

Knox says her “moral compass of kindness and empathy” was instilled at an early age by her mother and that she practises the Golden Rule.

One has to wonder if Patrick who she framed and whose business she wrecked would still be in prison if Rudy had not been caught?

Friday, December 27, 2019

Commemorating Meredith: Not Only Qualities Lost, Forty Years Of Achievements Too

Posted by Our Main Posters

All YouTube versions exceed 25m views; the most-watched operatic duet

Friday, December 20, 2019

Crack Italian Law Enforcement Gain Ground On New Kind Of Mafia

Posted by Peter Quennell

1. The Context

One could argue that Italy is both blessed and cursed by its geographical location.

Blessed, because it has a wonderful and extraordinarily long coastline, which allowed for the Roman Empire, allows for many amazing towns and villages, allows for a lot of fresh seafood, and allows for a lot of tourism from the Vitamin-D-deprived countries to the north of it. 

Cursed, because the south of Italy, which a couple of thousand years ago sat right on main trade routes and became enormously rich, fell into deep poverty as both the trade routes and the climate changed. Hence the origin of the mafias.

And cursed again, because it is so close to the desperate populations of north Africa, which makes Italy by the far the main point of entry for migrants to Europe trying to escape tribal frictions and their own descent into deep poverty.

2. The Development

In the past 20 years Italy has had major anti-mafia successes. The Sicilian Cosa Nostra is largely history, and the Calabrian Ndrangheta and Neapolitan Comorrah have been leaned on to the extent that their only expansions have been away from Italy.

And so crime-rates remain lower in Italy than in many European countries, and much lower than in the United States.

The video and this article depict the first big sweep against the recently-arrived Nigerian mafia.

This is typically Italy’s way against organized crime. Seem to be paying no attention (this was the mode in Perugia against the Ndrangheta). But then all of a sudden - pow - busloads of perps are on their way to courts and prison. 

Stay tuned. Such first mass arrests usually lead to other mass arrests. Although not here yet, for sure there will be a tipping point.

Monday, December 02, 2019

Here’s How We Might Actually Help The Hard-Pressed Media - And Development Generally

Posted by Peter Quennell

One of the largest newspaper printing presses; to what purpose?

1. The News-You-Can-Use Concept

We’re almost fully loaded for our widespread exposure of this huge legal hoax.

And there’s a possible constructive alternative to merely rubbing the media’s noses in it, though that, frankly, is pretty enticing as so many messed up so much.

A couple of decades ago, some smart TV and movie producers noticed that having some “news you can use” built into every airing would attract noticeably more eyeballs. As an example, we should be able to learn something interesting or useful from every CSI episode.

2. Nature Of The Problem

American news media right now fall short terribly in this news-you-can-use dimension. Their “breaking news” almost always tends to be bad news, depressing and disempowering, and all too soon a turn-off.

The overall effect of “breaking news” is to jack up nation-wide paranoia and helplessness. Hence the heated confrontations almost everywhere, which can get luridly misreported like the “Knox case”, and we all move on to our next “breaking news” fix.

Plus the superhero-as-savior angle is vastly over-played these days, both in the media and in entertainment. No top-down president, top-down manager, or rogue soldier or cop, is of much relevance to present problems, which need harmonious skilled diverse teams to resolve them. 

So viewership and readership and revenues dwindle, and we encounter all these desperate struggling media websites. And very few of our myriad problems actually get fixed or stay fixed.

3. Nature Of The Solution

TJMK has long tried to include some news you can use if you want to in the inter-country comparisons of policing, legal and penal systems, as in the previous post just below this.

For the most part Italian policing, legal and penal systems are something other countries could really learn from, rather than reject as the Knox campaign incites people to do.

And here is the much wider value of this angle, if it has any.

Virtually no Americans or Europeans have ever been a part of a development project or process (unlike residents of developing countries, who have often experienced several) and could really use those tools they don’t yet know about to get ahead.

In development terms, American news - and European news, especially on Brexit - is almost entirely useless, and worse, it comes with a high cost, because it is so distracting and prone to over-heating hard-pressed segments of the population.

Japan’s remarkable development exploded from the 1960s. It was mirrored in due course by Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, and then by China, India, and Indonesia. That is more than 50 percent of the world’s population - all growing faster in real terms than Europe or the US are now.

And how did they do this? By first Japan and then all the others “borrowing” and using American systems (with the help of some Americans who moved to Japan) and then taking them further, often much further.

At Toyota, for example, a production system can be tweaked 2,000 times - and then junked and replaced by a new generation system.

Meanwhile, way too many Americans - and Europeans - are barely conscious of systems like those that define their lives and careers… well, except maybe for those on their Apple phone.

For this reason primarily it is actually much slower and harder and more unusual to get development processes (AKA system invention and upgrade processes) moving in the US or in the EC countries than it is in India or Africa!

4. The Main-Media Opportunity

There’s such an enormous “news you can use” opportunity here for the main media.

The NY Times has maybe 100 stories a day where, if one is on this wavelength, one can spot the system angles - a system or some systems broken, waiting for some sharp team to leap in there and fix them. Even in the arts and the sports pages.

The Boeing 737 MAX story is exactly this type of story - Boeing aircraft systems and production and quality control systems were badly developed or broken, Federal government watchdog systems were politically pushed away to arms length - and so nearly 400 people died.

But one has to work really hard from say the NY Times reporting to figure out all the system shortfalls and how to make up for them so all future aircraft are a lot more safe.

The NY Times and BBC and so on could so easily build into many or most of their stories this additional system enhancement angle.  Start to tell us ALL of the news. News-we-can-use is value-adding and empowering and integrating.

And development lessons can really be hammered home by engaging in international systems comparisons. Comparing US and UK versus Italian justice systems is just one place to start.

A lot better than this instance where the premier justice school in the US extensively lied about Italy’s justice - and duped an audience from around the world.

Friday, November 29, 2019

Knox’s Toxic Campaign: How Safe Are Women Really In Italy?

Posted by Peter Quennell

Carabinieri: best safety force in the world? NYC models on them.

1. Italy’s Crime Rate Generally

We have posted Italy/US crime comparisons before.

American rates of all crimes are typically in the range of five to seven times Italy’s rates. In effect, those resident in Italy are 5 to 7 times less likely to be swindled, burgled, robbed, or murdered than those resident in the United States.

A large, flamboyant, and much-liked police presence (video above) helps to explain that, though most Italians naturally are easy-going and caring, rather than a threat. And the justice/penal system is the world’s best at steering offenders away from a life of crime.

Italy’s low rates continue to decline, even with an uptick in immigrant crime, and Italy’s current prison population is around 60,000 compared to over 6 million in the United States - about 1/25 the US rate.

2. Knox’s Highly Toxic Campaign

One of Knox’s numerous toxic effects is to spread this great lie: that the Italian situation is exactly the opposite of what it really is.

In other words, that American tourists and exchange students are typically a lot safer if they decide to go elsewhere, or stay at home. 

We have all seen the thousands of claims on American website threads to the effect that “I will never visit in Italy” or “I will never study in Italy” or “I had this monstrous experience….” with of course zero proof of that.

Heavily prompted by Knox, such claims still continue to appear.

But note how in reality Knox was and remains a walking time-bomb, and in fact none of what she claims about herself and Italy is true.

She never reveals that she was not herself an exchange student unlike 99% of student-age Americans abroad.

So she was ineligible for any degree course credits. And very significantly, she was not eligible for any financial or legal help. And she was totally unsupervised. Knox also never reveals her voracious drug habit or her shortage of money or her zero real study demands.

This walking time-bomb is the real Knox her grossly irresponsible parents approved to go to Italy.

Oh, and Knox never reveals this, either: she caused every university in America with genuine exchange students abroad to barricade itself against possible future time-bombs like Knox.

Nevertheless the dip in American tourists and exchange students, women especially, continued throughout the 2007 to 2015 period. That was confirmed in several surveys of American students making up their minds where to have their year abroad.

Amanda Knox has worked assiduously ever since to ensure that tourists and genuine exchange students keep away.

3. Crimes Against Women: Hard Facts

Rape is well understood to be under-reported everywhere, and reliable statistics take years to firm up.

This table of the rates of rapes around the world does use data a few years old, though that makes it more accurate than the tables done more recently.

Italy’s rate of rape shows up as 7.6 rapes per 100,000 annually.

That is somewhat lower than that of the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and Austria; less than half that of France, Finland, and Norway.

Italy’s is only about one-quarter that of the United States, at 27.3 per 100,000 reported.

So if American women spend serious time in Italy, they will actually be four times as safe. 

4. Bottom Line From The Above?

The toxic message Knox is conveying to millions of American women is the polar opposite of the hard truth.

She is being harmful to Italy, and rendering American women on average somewhat more unsafe.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Why For Wrongful Imprisonment DID KNOX NOT SUE ITALY?

Posted by Peter Quennell

This finally hit a big wall…

1. The Dog That Didn’t Bark

Knox made no effort at all to pursue a lawsuit for wrongful imprisonment against the Republic of Italy.

Precisely why?

That kind of suit does happen in Italy, although wrongful imprisonment is extremely rare, and there’s no pack of lawyers making this their main game.

1. The typical global context

That is in sharp contrast for example to the United States, where such suits go on all the time.

The Innocence Project is essentially a group of lawyers that does make out gangbusters in this line of work (plus a lot of well-meaning saps swindled into making donations to provide income before the giant payoffs arrive).

Although the number of prisoners the Innocence Project released is very small - just several hundred over many years - their cuts in the payoffs granted by the courts against, well, we the taxpayers, has added up to some billions over those years.

2. Why the Knox team blinked

The Knox team’s main self-recognized problems causing their restraint in suing the Republic of Italy would seem to be these.

(1) Knox was RIGHTLY imprisoned for three years for framing Patrick and leaving him locked up. All courts ruled against her on that and there’s no further appeal route.

(2) Courts up to the Supreme Court in 2008 decided she (and Sollecito) could be a risk to others, and maybe a risk of flight. And so the courts ruled that she must remain locked up to the end of trial. No bail or house arrest.

(3) Sollecito very publicly and humiliatingly failed in his own wrongful imprisonment suit which was taken up to the level of the Supreme Court, for proven lying right before and after arrest.

(4) Sollecito still had to pay the fees of his very powerful legal team (who quite blatantly had been a party to bending other courts). Notorious deadbeat Knox may well have not been trusted by her lawyers to pay their fees.

Knox’s and Sollecito’s lies of commission and omission in the short period before and after their arrest on 6 Nov 2007 created a ton of extra work for the cops and prosecutors.

And Knox’s lies also resulted in Patrick being wrongly locked up.

2. And The Bottom Line Is?

Knox’s lies of omission - telling facts she deflects from because they would land her in the soup - number up in the many hundreds now.  This one is easily graspable even by interviewers so shockingly ill-informed on the details as Gladwell and Doctor Phil. 

Pontificators and interviewers (and Innocence Project lawyers) if they REALIZE that Knox pursued no claim at all, and just why, should certainly be a lot less chummy with her going forward.

Thursday, November 07, 2019

Demonizations By Knox: Yet Another Paying Audience Is Lied To

Posted by Our Main Posters

Knox lies to Lorena Bobbitt

Postscript To This Post: Breaking News

Dear Audience. So Knox and Legetic DID scam you as we warned. Knox hid that she’s a convicted felon for life and RIGHTLY served 3 years for her unforced murder accusation (in the US she could have faced life) and Knox lied that she was a victim of sexist men. She confirmed at trial she was always treated well; see also this.

Knox’s Seven-Year History Of Frauds

Are lawsuits for misrepresentations in the works?

Many seem to have wisened up and the pace of Knox’s bloodmoney scams has significantly slowed lately. With some help from ourselves, Scams Six and Seven summarized below finally resulted in real media outrage.

And yet nevertheless, surprisingly, Knox on this Sunday (see Part 2) will perpetrate yet another callous anti-victim anti-Italy anti-justice bloodmoney fraud.

Knox began scamming for bloodmoney and trashing Italy and numerous Italians and justice generally back in 2012, as described in these summaries below.

(1) Scam Wave One

We saw Knox’s own scams, following upon numerous scams by her family and PR, kick off in 2012 with the serious misleading of her publisher and the first of numerous media wails.

Click for Post:  Were Prospective Knox Publishers Given The Full Score On The Likely Legal Future Of This Case?

(2) Scam Wave Two

The bloodmoney scams continued with her book in 2013, when we witnessed the defrauding, claimedly for millions, of numerous paying readers and her publisher.

The Knox book includes multiple demonizations of fine Italians, and false claims about her case on every page.

Click for Post:  Knox Book Put On Hold In UK As Legal Implications Of Blood Money Finally Sink In

Click for Post:  Amanda Knox Book: Good Reporters Start To Surface False Claims In Droves

Click for Post:  500-Plus Lies In Knox’s Highly Defamatory Book

(3) Scam Wave Three

Next we observed the US’s Innocence Project paying Knox as a keynoter to lie annually about Italian justice and her “innocence” to the past five or six of their main events.

Click for Post:  Innocence Project: Seven Years Clutching Knox And Trashing Italian Justice To Joy Of Mafias #1

That series about the Innocence Project, itself a huge scam for financial windfalls by its lawyers, continues for another five posts.

(4) Scam Wave Four

Next we exposed over a dozen trusting, misled and defrauded groups. Please do read Part 2 (Knox’s pitch) of this post and Part 3 (how that pitch misleads).

Click for Post:  “Americans Are Paying Knox $10,000 A Gig To Trash Italian Cops - Smart Move Liberating Her”

That widely highlighted post seems to have helped to slow Knox’s American gigs. But still…

(5) Scam Wave Five

We saw Knox lying - and singing - on national TV to a non-alerted, unsuspecting Ireland.

Click for Post:  Amanda Knox sings pro-IRA song in bizarre Irish TV chatshow appearance

(6) Scam Wave Six

Then we saw Knox actually lying to an outraged Italy (and outraged Sollecito), albeit before an audience mostly too young to know the real facts of the case.

Click for Post:  The Hard Truths About Knox Lupária, Sola, Cagossi, Etc Should Have Known Before Betraying Italy

Click for Post:  The World Isnt Short Of Suckers - Lupária, Sola & Cagossi Present “The Traveling Innocence Gang Show”

Click for Post:  How Knox Lied About “The Media” Which Long Lied Profusely For Her

(7) Scam Wave Seven

And most recently we saw Knox attempting a widely-decried swindle of her “wedding guests” for large cash payments.

Click for Post:  Knox’s Fake Wedding Exposed, Yet Another Fraudulent Scam For Yet More Bloodmoney

(8) Knox’s Latest Scam

That is to take place this Sunday in Washington DC. To a paying audience of nearly 1500 Knox will tell the “truth” about true crime - surely a first for her.

The hosting bloodmoney group (which could itself be sued for fraud) is Svetlana Legetic’s callously anti-victim “Bright Young Things”.

Do read here (scroll down) the details of Knox’s part in this bizarre anti-victim pro-bloodmoney charade.

Friday, November 01, 2019

RIP Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher 28 December 1985 - 1 November 2007

Posted by KrissyG

My tribute first posted here in 2015…

It was a gloriously sunny early summer’s day. I stepped out of the tube onto Tooting Broadway, with throngs of shoppers overflowing the pavements and schoolchildren milling around the bus stops in groups.

Now here at last, in Croydon Cemetery, fifteen bus stops later, I found Meredith’s grave, startling in its unexpectedness, after walking for quite a while, hopeless at following directions, having originally gone to the wrong graveyard altogether, the day before.

My heart pounded as her name suddenly leapt out at me.

The burial site is beautifully maintained, with miniature pink and red rose bushes and set in the peaceful landscaped grounds, with evergreens and lawns.

I stood for a while overcome with emotion, quite alone, with nobody in sight all around.  I said a few prayers, including one pleading that Meredith’s murderers be brought to justice.  I quietly sang Psalm 23 and pondered how this beautiful, funny, bright young student had lived a life that was all too short.

A feeling of pain - for her mother Arline and father John, and Stephanie, Lyle and John and for all her family and friends - contracted like a taut elastic band across my chest.

I recalled how at her funeral service at St John the Baptist Church many of the mourners, including sister Stephanie and friends from Leeds Uni had carried a single white rose each.

Stephanie read out a poem she wrote, ” Don’t Say Goodbye”.  Her old school friends sang as a choir the requiem,  In Paradisum.  Two hymns sung at the service, on 14th December 2007, were “˜Abide with me” and “For the Beauty of the Earth”.

Meredith’s favourite record “With or without you” by U2 was played.

As I sat on a creaky bench nearby under the shade of a gnarled old tree, I scribbled down the following lines:

I came to pay my respects
To Meredith Kercher so dear
To all who knew her.
Go gently into that night
Enforced on you by the evil,
Those who walk in the darkness,
And you were in their path.
Your light shines
And the dark has not overcome it.

I write this article to reflect that this is about Meredith Kercher and her family and friends, and to reclaim the memory of her purity from the soiled agenda of the ex-defendants and the cruel IIP and FOA stalkers.

Stephanie Kercher had said, in response to Knox’s demand, on the launch of her “memoir”, that she be taken to visit Meredith’s grave, that Stephanie and her family just want a safe place for Meredith to rest in peace.

I cast my mind back to the news reports that broke in November 2013 that Raffaele Sollecito had nevertheless paid a “secret visit” to the spot.  He had been in London in March 2013.  He had the grace not to include pictures of the grave on his “London” Facebook page that he may have taken.

Newspaper reports reveal he was taken there by an “English friend” and left no flowers.  The “friend” who was quick to betray Sollecito’s “secret” is speculated to be one Nigel Scott, ex-Lib Dem Councillor in Haringey, and a purported member of the Injustice in Perugia advisory board, the rather grand name of a lobby of aggressive pro-Knox advocates.

Scott put up a picture of the grave in a tweet ““ hastily taken down ““ as the news broke.  He disparagingly refers to the grave as being in “poor condition”, with a temporary headstone marker. 

His co-campaigner, Karen Pruett, maintains a Find A Grave webpage for Meredith and was forced by demand from enraged supporters of Meredith Kercher’s family to take down the picture of Meredith’s grave, most probably taken from the Daily Mail.

Notorious FOA poster Lyn Duncan - who tweets under the name of @Annella - and others, left “tributes” after the acquittal, despite one of their party, Doug Bremner Jr, having referred to the Kerchers as “Nazis” and another mocking Meredith’s grave lacking a headstone as late as 2011, when Knox was first acquitted by Hellmann, as shown in the Daily Mail.

Time has shown how Scott’s, Pruett’s and other Knox chums’ characters speak for themselves.

Meredith’s final resting place is beautiful, in a quietly understated way.  The grave adjacent is of a Liverpool supporter aged 22,  who died around about the same time as Mez, who was 21.  It is very poignant to see.

Meredith’s headstone is fashioned out of marble and reads, ” We will always love you MEREDITH SUSANNA CARA KERCHER 28th Dec. 1985 ““ 1st Nov. 2007 Forever in our thoughts, always in our hearts.”

The temporary marker, so much derided by Knox’ supporters, remains at the foot.  I left some Sweet Williams in a flower container and slowly walked away, moved and changed by the visit.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

The Best Alternative-Sources Series: Roberta Glass’s True Crime Reports

Posted by The Machine

1. Pro-Justice V Anti-Justice Media Trends

Increasingly common these days is for pro-truth, pro-victim and pro-justice sources to stake out the high ground.

Malcolm Gladwell, subject here of an ongoing series, really is a throwback, part of a trend that is losing traction and that may already have peaked.

Taking the side of the dwindling band of fabricators, inciters, stalkers, defamers, blood-money-grubbers, media-bashers, and foreigner-bashers, and the most unsavory crime elements seeking to undermine justice, now takes major chutzpah and unawareness.

Just before Gladwell’s rant against Italian justice surfaced, we had launched a new series to highlight the large number of objective sources on Meredith’s case and many others where justice is in question.

Documentaries, films and podcasts about people who have been convicted of murders they allegedly didn’t commit have been hugely popular.

TV documentaries such as American Girl, Italian Nightmare, Paradise Lost, West of Memphis, Making a Murderer and The Case Against Adnan Syed have all been watched by millions of people.

The Serial podcast about the Adnan Syed/Hae Min Lee case has been downloaded over 175 million times

When They See Us - the Netflix drama about the Central Park Five case - has been watched by 23 million Netflix accounts worldwide.

TV producers, filmmakers and podcast-makers know full well that a tale about a supposedly innocent person being railroaded by corrupt or incompetent cops and rogue prosecutors is a far more exciting and melodramatic story than cases where the juries convicted the right people.

They are not always concerned about truth and justice - they want a product that is a moneyspinner and will guarantee them an audience of millions, bucketloads of publicity, newspaper headlines and media interviews. Pesky facts that undermine their narrative that an innocent person was railroaded invariably get ignored.

They literally create fairytales where prosecutors and police officers are presented as evil villains intent on imprisoning innocent victims who are as pure and innocent as Snow White. Unfortunately, Joe Public and the likes of Kim Kardashian are stupid and they unquestiongly believe everything they see and read in the media without bothering to do any fact-checking.

Over 300 online reviewers gave the Netflix hoax Amanda Knox high marks. Gladwell quoted it. Celebrity Kim Kardashian watched the faux documentary on Netflix and said she thinks Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are innocent on Twitter.

“Just finished the Amanda Knox doc. I don’t think they did it. I really want a Natalie Halloway doc & they need to solve that crime. So sad!”

She recently tweeted her support for Netflix darling Brendan Dassey - who along with Steven Avery was convicted of raping and murdering Teresa Halbach.

Whenever a new true crime documentary or drama about alleged miscarriage of justice lands on Netflix, I immediately wonder what inconvenient facts have been brushed under the carpet and what lies and disinformation have been presented as fact.

I know I definitely can’t rely on The Guardian for reliable information because it has a long history of supporting people who have been convicted of murder or casting doubt on their convictions e.g. Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, the West Memphis Three, Adnan Syed, Jeremy Bamber, James Hanratty and Simon Hall.

2. Roberta Glass’s True Crime Reports

Roberta has the right approach to ascertaining the truth with regard to high-profile cases i.e. she relies on the official court documents - not on misinformation and propaganda.  Her explanation of where she is coming from on her YouTube Channel:

”Tired of the misinformation and propaganda in current True Crime reporting, podcasts and documentaries; Roberta Glass set out in 2018 to create a True Crime Report sourced directly from the court records and case files. Her drive and curiosity to look deeper into the true crime stories she covers has also taken her to the courthouse where she has covered the NXIVM trial and Jeffrey Epstein related hearings. “

Roberta has interviewed Ken Kratz who prosecuted Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey and Lyn Hartman who was engaged to Steven Avery.

It’s fascinating to listen to the stories of people like Lyn Hartman and Alexa who were fooled by the PR campaigns to free convicted killers and how they eventually realised they had been manipulated and misinformed. They give the listener an insight to what Rabia Chaudry and Kathleen Zellner are really like and how they mislead people.

I also recommend listening to the interview with former policeman and author Martin Preib. He explains how innocence activists from Northwestern’s Innocence Project - who included Paul Ciolino - framed Alstory Simon.

3. Podcasts Recommended For First Listening

I’ve listed some of the most interesting podcasts below.

What Amanda Knox Won’t Tell You

Central Park Five Myths

Making A Murderer: Ken Kratz - The Most Hated Man On The Internet Speaks!

Making A Murderer: Ken Kratz - The Most Hated Man on The Internet Part II

Steven Avery’s Former Fiancé Lynn Hartman Won’t Stop Talking!!!

The Wrongful Conviction of the West Memphis Three

HBO’s The Case FOR Adnan Syed

Roberta Glass True Crime Report can also be listened to on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker and Castbo