Headsup: Unsurprisingly, Knox chickens out of presenting her "proof" on 10 April of being forced to frame Patrick for Meredith's murder when actually under no stress. She's not a good liar. She could face Patrick's tiger of a lawyer and many officers she has slimed. Trial is closed to the press, like the most damning parts of the 2009 trial; a pity that. And see links here for Knox's false framing #2: Rudy Guede as sole killer.
Category: 15 Single alibi hoax

Friday, July 18, 2014

Seeds Of Betrayal: Multiple Examples Of How RS And AK Have Stabbed Each Other In The Back

Posted by Our Main Posters

RS in Feb 2014 after Nencini-appeal guilty verdict

1. History Of Backstabbing #1 2007-2014

The other day, a claim was posted that claimed sources had said Knox would soon accuse Sollecito.

This inspired quite an outcry, and the claim’s heavy-handed suppression. Can you believe: by legal means? That claim really rattled a few cages.

Why was the claim so dangerous?

NOT because the claim was wrong. In fact because for seven-plus years Sollecito and Knox have repeatedly cycled between very occasional chummy hugs and very numerous aggrieved stabs in the back.

And for the most part the more-aggrieved Sollecito has come out ahead. The desperate Knox PR and apologists are simply stumped at how to stop him or how to explain all of this.

2. Phases And Kinds Of Backstabbing

We are now seeing the fourth phase.

  • In 2007 (see below) Sollecito really damaged Knox’s situation and both stabbed the other in the back a lot.

  • From 2008 right through 2011, desperate for confirmation of an alibi, an anxious Knox beamed pleas at a sullen Sollecito, for example in public “love letters” she wrote, and a public request to have a private chat.

  • From 2012 upon provisional release it was now Knox being sullen, and hard to get. Now it was Sollecito in puppy-dog mode. He might have been driven by a genuine desire for a renewed relationship, but a highly publicised bid to set himself up safely in the US maybe made Knox wonder “Is this was true love?”.

  • And from mid 2013 mutual knifings have been fast and furious, many now on Twitter, and Italy in particular is closely watching the show and waits agog as the justice system applies further heat.

The backstabbings break down into two varieties: (1) many are active-aggressive (as in: they actually complain about one another); (2) others were passive-aggressive (as in: they try to help themselves but conspicuously ignore the other.) Typically Sollecito’s aggression dominates over Knox’s.

3. Incidences Year By Year

1. The year 2007

Our emerging Interrogation Hoax series quotes multiple witnesses testifying how quickly and decisively Knox and Sollecito in the blink of an eye began dropping the other in it. Posts of relevance soon to be linked-to here.

From 6 November 2007 Knox and Sollecito were kept separated, and were not allowed to talk. (That continued to late 2011.) Sollecito was pretty easy to read: he had little interest in talk. A sulky silence was his norm.

1 Click for Post:  Officer Moscatelli’s Recap/Summary Session With Sollecito 5-6 No

On 6 November Sollecito’s statement to Inspectors Moscatelli and Napoleoni included this about Knox :

I know Amanda for two weeks. From the evening I first met her she started sleeping at my house.

The first of November I woke up about 11.00, I had breakfast with Amanda, then she went out and I went back to bed. I then met up with her at her house around 13.00-14.00. In there was Meredith who left in a hurry about 16.00 without saying where she was going.

Amanda and I went to the [town] centre about 18.00 but I don’t remember what we did. We remained in the centre till 20.30 or 21.00.

I went to my house alone at 21.00, while Amanda said that she was going to the pub Le Chic because she wanted to meet with her friends.

At this point we said goodbye. I went home, I made a joint. Had dinner, but I don’t remember what I ate. About 23.00 my father called me on my house phone line.

I recall Amanda was not back yet.

I web surfed on the computer for two more hours after my father’s phone call and I only stopped when Amanda came back in, presumably about 01.00…

In my previous statement I told a load of rubbish because Amanda had convinced me of her version of the facts and I didn’t think about the inconsistencies.

Yikes. Knox finds her best alibi yanked.

2 Click for Post:  Summarised AK And RS Signed Statements 2-5 November 2007 

Not so long after, possibly knowing about this, Knox comes out with a statement which points at Sollecito in turn.

I don’t know for sure if Raffaele was there that night [during the attack on Meredith] but I do remember very well waking up at my boyfriend’s house, in his bed, and I went back to my house in the morning where I found the door open.

3. [Source to come] Then on 8 November 2007 Sollecito submitted a statement to Judge Matteini which began:

I never want to see Amanda again. Above all, it is her fault we are here.

4. [Source to come] There were multiple further instances throughout the rest of 2007, quotes of which will be included soon in the Knox Interrogation Hoax series.

2. The Year 2008

5. [Source to come] Knox and Sollecito each appealed Judge Matteini’s ruling to the Supreme Court. Neither helped the other at all. Both appeals failed in April and they were each kept locked up.

6. Click for Post: Sollecito Turns On Knox? This Is Extraordinary”¦

In October toward the end of Guede’s trial and RS’s and AK’s remand for trial Sollecito’s DNA expert testifies to Judge Micheli that he found Knox’s DNA on Meredith’s bra and bra-clasp.

7. Click for Post:  Sollecito Family Trial: On The Component About Their Alleged Attempt At Political Interference

Francesco Sollecito phone conversation in March 2008 with Vanessa captured by the Carabinieri in which he shows his extreme distrust and dislike of Knox who he blames for RS’s plight.

3. The Year 2009

8. Click for Post  The Letters Between The Women’s And Men’s Wings In Capanne

Letters sent from Knox to Sollecito in February are published, showing an eagerness to get together, suggesting she really needs Sollecito to speak up and confirm her latest alibi.

9. Click for Post  Trial: Defendant Noticeably Bubblier Than Meredith’s Sad Friends

This kind of callous, flippant behavior by Knox had the entire court backed off, not least the Sollecito team which had no desire to be chained to this seeming dangerous nut.

10. Click for Post  Sollecito Not To Be Trumped By Knox Antics In The Female Wing Of Capanne

While RS and AK didnt have access to one another they sure had access to the media and in the Italian media a competitive Sollecito posted a steady stream of stories

11. Click for Post  Trial: Knox Claimed Not To Have Been At The House On The Night

Knox suddenly claims this, despite contrary 2007 claims by both Knox & Sollecito, which messes with Sollecito’s alibi that he was at home alone on the computer.

12. Click for Post  Seems Sollecito Is Feeling Really Sorry - For Himself (So What’s New?)

Sollecito tries to give himself an edge over AK by being extra-whiny about how awful he finds prison, and the distasteful little people he was being made to mix with.

4. The Year 2010

13 Click for Post  How Each of The Three Subtly But Surely Pushed The Other Two Closer to The Fire

The Knox team avoided this popular Porta a Porta TV series, maybe too scared of hard questions, while the Sollecito lawyers and family used it to promote suspicion of AK and Guede.

14. Click for Post  Newsweek Report From Italy On Damage Shrill Campaign Is Doing To Knox’s Interests & America’s Image

The shrill Knox campaign was irritating Italians and so hurting Sollecito’s image and prospects and it was not shoring up his own story. Bongiorno especially disliked the campaign. 

15. Click for Post  Rocco Girlanda’s Strutting Manic Grinning Intrusion Seems A Major Danger To Sollecito/Knox Harmony

The strangely kinky Member of Parliament (now voted out) paid numerous visits to Knox (“monitoring conditions”) and tried some nasty (though ineffective) political tricks - but not for Sollecito.

16. Click for Post  The Knox Movie: Sollecito Reported Angry - Real Risk That His Defense Could Break Away From Knox’s

The Sollecito camp had a strong belief that the Knox camp was behind this TV movie and so they fought it, though it turned out quite even-handed and the RS role was minor.

5. The Year 2011

17. Click for Post  Sollecito Defense Team Breaking From Knox Defense Team On Legal Measures To Stop Lifetime Movie

Further differences reported here between the two camps on the Lifetime movie which until it was aired was believed to favor Knox and build a case for her innocence.

18. Click for Post  Tenth Appeal Court Session: Might Today’s Testimony Give Sollecito More Of An Advantage Than Knox?

After his team’s (attempted) discounting of the main evidence at Meredith’s house against Sollecito, Knox’s position looks way worse, as she has motives both for killing and cover-up.

19. Click for Post  Is The Raffaele Sollecito Defense Team About To Separate Him From A Radioactive Amanda Knox?

Final days. Sollecito has at least five advantages over Knox. Better lead lawyer, better family in Italian eyes with smarter campaign, not much physical evidence at the house, no obvious motive unlike Knox, and a weak and washy personality Bongiorno plays up.

6. The Year 2012

20. Click for Post  In Desperation A Council Of War? All Of The Sollecito Family Suddenly Hop On Flights To Seattle

Sollecito is the one now in puppy-dog mode, though his father has said publicly that the relationship with Knox is at an end; here the RS family sets out for Seattle to try to make it so. 

21. Click for Post  Sollecito’s Book Honor Bound Hits Italy And Already Scathing Reactions And Legal Trouble

Sollecito’s book, which subtly promotes Knox’s guilt, runs into legal trouble for false claims, which could also impact Knox’s claims and legal future. His seeming sticking with Knox damages Bongiorno’s defense strategy.

22. Click for Post  Will Sollecito Drop Amanda Knox In It Further In A Public Seattle Interview At 7:00 PM Tonight?

Sollecito’s American book promotion tour often went badly and he seemed unaware of what was in his own book; though once again he was making out Knox was guiltier. His defense team despise the book.

7. The Year 2013

23. Click for Post  Knox & Sollecito Meet - To Attempt To Bury The Hatchet Other Than In Each Other?

The second public Sollecito attempt to end up with Knox, who already had chips on her shoulders about him but went through this charade. Soon, they were back to whacking one another.

24. Click for Post  Seeds Of Betrayal: Sollecito Twice More Implies Evidence Against Knox Much Stronger Than Against Him

Sollecito sustains this steady drum-beat of putting Knox down, highlighting the evidence against her, repeatedly saying he stuck with her despite no evidence against him (no deal helping RS was ever offered).

25. Click for Post  Seeds Of Betrayal: In Interview Knox Reveals To Italy Her Considerable Irritation With Sollecito

Knox does an extended interview with Oggi (for which she and Oggi are being charged) lying about officials and the evidence, but also uttering her angriest blast yet against Sollecito.

8. The Year 2014

26. Click for Post  Rejected Yet Again By Knox, Sollecito Seems Frantic To Avoid What Might Be A Final Return To Italy

Sollecito (like Sforza) was desperately looking for someone to marry him, to keep him in the US. Kelsey Kay was briefly interested, but he dumped her; he had told her Knox had recently turned him down.

27. Click for Post  What We Might Read Into Sollecito Lawyer Giulia Bongiornos Final Arguments To The Appeal Judges

Bongiorno shows contempt for Knox; she effectively conveys the sense of the RS family that a crazed Knox dragged RS into this. She see the RS book as a pro-Knox con job by her team.

28. Click for Post  As Knox & Sollecito Try To Separate Themselves, Each Is Digging The Other In Deeper

Sollecito is clearly trying to distance himself from Knox now, claiming that there is far more evidence against her than against him. Knox’s irritation with him is growing.

29. Click for Post  Sollecito Suddenly Remembers He Wasnt There But Cannot Speak For Knox Who (As She Said) Went Out

Members of Sollecito’s family are believed to be taking their anger at Knox to Twitter and making numerous taunts while emphasizing how they believe Sollecito was dropped in it by Knox and is less to blame.

30. Click for Post  Spitting In the Wind: Sollecito News Conference Backfires On Him AND Knox - What The Media Missed

Really irritated at the US-written RS book, Bongiorno goes a long way to separating the two perps in the minds of Italians; however RS hedges a little though, after having said the evidence points only to Knox.

4. Interim Conclusion

There were also myriad instances of mutual put-downs in their two books. Public squabbles post-2014 will soon be linked-to. The war by other means also continues on Twitter. Briefly it hit the bathshit-crazy Ground Report website.

This feud is obviously driven mostly by Sollecito. Much damage to Knox is already done, and Italians adamantly want her put away. A brighter family and paid team might now be saying “It is time for a Plan B and doing something to warm up Italy”.


Wednesday, July 16, 2014

On-Steroids Knox/Marriott PR Provokes Sollecito Reaction, Guarantees Long-Term Hurt To Knox

Posted by Peter Quennell




Act 1. Hubris Of The Knox Public Relations Described

A long report on Marriott’s PR appeared late in 2011 after Knox was provisionally released.

David Marriott never visited Amanda Knox during her four years in an Italian prison.  He met her this month, when she stepped off a plane in Seattle.

Yet for Knox and her family, Marriott was as important a player in her ordeal as anyone in the courtroom. As Knox’s publicist, beginning three days after her arrest, Marriott worked to convince the international public that she did not murder her British roommate while studying in Perugia.

“Hiring him was one of the smartest things we ever did,” said Curt Knox, Amanda’s father.

The article goes on to describe how family and friends were pushed into the limelight and specific big TV networks targeted.  It talks about great financial opportunities for Knox.

Marriott himself demonstrates no understanding of the case - in fact. he sounds proud of his ignorance and his reflexively anti-Italy stance. To a smarter Curt Knox those might have been red flags.

Act 2: Brutal Overkill Of A Flailing Campaign Described

In October 2013 our main poster Media Watcher laid the blame for the slow-moving Knox media cooling at David Marriott’s door.

Now The Examiner is only one of many preparing to take another retaliatory whack.

Public relations is perfectly understandable for celebrities, politicians, or executives, but murder suspects too? At first this aggressive proliferation of pro-Knox articles, tweets and commentary were justified as a defense against the European media’s negative portrayal of her. However, as time wore on, the overpowering presence of Knox’s media campaign has reached outlandish proportions.

Nowadays no blogger is safe to write a factual article about the Meredith Kercher Murder Case without contemptuous comments filling up their Disqus community. Patient webmasters at CNN.com must brace themselves for the onslaught of tens of thousands of interjections cluttering up each and every news article concerning the Meredith Kercher cum Amanda Knox murder case. Mob mentality seems to have taken over Knox’s PR initiative. Knox’s advocates have gone so far as to aim their crosshairs on the victim’s family.

The article, very well researched so far as it goes (it omits the third act below) goes on to describe how Sollecito’s camp has had to open a PR front to unchain Sollecito from Knox. 

Act 3: How Knox Herself Is Losing Big Described

Know your enemy. Dont go about attacking the king unless you can kill him dead. Italy’s Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote about it in The Prince:

If one is striking out at an opponent, one should make sure that the fatal blow is struck, successfully ending the confrontation. Machiavelli wrote that “the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”

Wise words for Marriott and Curt Knox. They have remained steadfastly ignorant of the enemy. The attack has clearly failed. Wall-to-wall Italy now has the upper hand. And the PR is a millstone around Knox’s neck.

Here are seven of the ways the Knox-Marriott campaign has fallen short and has actually done real harm.

    1) The real case for conviction remains rock-solid with many times the number of evidence points that a US or UK court would require for guilt.

    2) No paper trail helpful to Knox exists between the American Embassy and the State Department, and the extradition agreement is precise and firm. 

    3)  Knox’s bedrock claim, that she was pressured into a false accusation, not only cost her three years for calunnia but will cost her a defamation trial.

    4) The defamatory Knox book that was the windfall David Marriott so jubilantly talks about is turning into an albatross around Knox’s neck.

    5) The bloodmoney windfall will not remain Knox’s to keep, under Italian and American laws, and even Marriott’s fees could be at risk.

    6) The PR is being unresponsive to ANY damaging claims, such as Knox’s attempted framing of Mignini, and its output is increasingly surreal junk.

    7) The PR is making the Sollecito camp hostile, Italian media too; at the same time, since the failed appeal, the US media have chilled.

And so we see the slow death of a campaign built on xenophobia, racism, personal abuse, zero understanding of the details of the case, and zero understanding of the real Italy and its law.

Italy is actually rather a sucker for confession and penitence. Against a famously impervious justice system, the hard line was a terrible, terrible mistake.

Coming soon? “Firing him was one of the smartest things we ever did” says Curt Knox.


Below: From the Examiner, David Marriott and Seattle TV reporter Linda Byron


Friday, July 11, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #9: Officer Moscatelli’s Recap/Summary Session With Sollecito 5-6 Nov

Posted by Our Main Posters



[Sollecito at trial on the day when Inspector Moscatelli testified]

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 to go and sleep, refused, agreed to build a list of possible perps (she listed seven, including Rudy Guede), spontaneously broke into a wailing conniption over a message she sent to Patrick, was semi-calmed-down and repeatedly provided with refreshments, and insisted on writing three statements without a lawyer, all of which said she went out on the night of the attack, all framing Patrick, one even pointing at Sollecito.

Posts #1 to #8 included all the testimony from three police staff (Ficcara, Zugarini, Donnino) who sat with Knox, and then some of the testimony from Napoleoni (who was mainly with Sollecito) and Giobbi (an officer from Rome who was elsewhere in the questura and overheard Knox’s conniption). 

Inspector Daniele Moscatelli was also from the national police in Rome. He had previously questioned the boys who lived downstairs, and on 5-6 November he led the discussion with Sollecito, who was in a room some distance from Knox. On this night, the subject was to be some discrepancies in Sollecito’s phone records. Expectations were low, and many others were still being similarly questioned.

There was some limited interaction with Rita Ficcara’s recap/summary session with Amanda Knox, so the claims made here and their timing will become very important.

At the end of the session Sollecito’s signed statement for Inspectors Moscatelli and Napoleoni included this about Knox :

I know Amanda for two weeks. From the evening I first met her she started sleeping at my house.

The first of November I woke up about 11.00, I had breakfast with Amanda, then she went out and I went back to bed. I then met up with her at her house around 13.00-14.00. In there was Meredith who left in a hurry about 16.00 without saying where she was going.

Amanda and I went to the [town] centre about 18.00 but I don’t remember what we did. We remained in the centre till 20.30 or 21.00.

I went to my house alone at 21.00, while Amanda said that she was going to the pub Le Chic because she wanted to meet with her friends.

At this point we said goodbye. I went home, I made a joint. Had dinner, but I don’t remember what I ate. About 23.00 my father called me on my house phone line.

I recall Amanda was not back yet.

I web surfed on the computer for two more hours after my father’s phone call and I only stopped when Amanda came back in, presumably about 01.00”¦

In my previous statement I told a load of rubbish because Amanda had convinced me of her version of the facts and I didn’t think about the inconsistencies.

This will already be a long post, and the last for now on testimony from the police. So we’ll highlight all the devils in the details of all this police testimony in our next post. This translation is by Catnip and is also posted on the excellent wiki.

Please click here for more

Friday, July 04, 2014

The Status Of The Various Computers In The Case And Whether Anything Nefarious Happened To Them

Posted by Sallyoo



Trial court 2009 on one of several days computer and internet activity was testified to

1. Computer use as high-stakes evidence

There have been many arguments about computers during the case.

They began at the very beginning, and there is even now, in the final appeal by Sollecito to the Court of Cassazione, one remaining somewhat fantastical theory.

The facts surrounding the computer evidence collected by the prosecution have been obfuscated and contradicted by the defence using exactly the same techniques as have been used about the DNA and other forensic evidence in the case.

Blind the court (and the public) with hypotheses which very few people can follow, and use this ignorance to spread confusion and doubt.

Let’s try to shed some light.

2. Five key computers, plus

We know that Sollecito is pretty familiar with computers, he had two at the time, a MacBook and an Asus [1],  both portables.[2]  His apartment had a decent broadband connection, supplied, (using the Telecom Italia infrastructure) by Fastweb.

We know that both of these computers were sequestered from his apartment on the morning of Nov 6 2007, when Sollecito accompanied a squad of policemen despatched to search his apartment.

We know that the police removed, (on Nov 7), from the house in Via Della Pergola (where there was no telephone nor broadband service) a MacBook belonging to Meredith, a Toshiba belonging to Knox, and a portable computer belonging to Laura Mezzetti.

The police also took an HP portable from Lumumba’s apartment.

There is even another computer which the police already had possession of, and that is a Sony portable belonging to Filomena Romanelli. This computer Filomena herself had taken away from her bedroom shortly after the discovery of the murder, and which the questura, in the evening of Nov 2, required her to hand over to them because it formed part of the ‘crime scene’.

3. The police HD analysis begins

On Nov 13 a postal police technician (Marco Trotta) received a box containing five computers (two from Sollecito, Knox, Meredith and Lumumba).

On Nov 15, in the presence of Formenti, (a consultant nominated by the defence) Trotta took them apart (removed the hard disks) and attempted to make copies of the data recorded on them.

This is the point at which it is alleged the destruction of three hard disks occurred.

It is difficult to believe that this is the case. Not only because the equipment used had never before (or since) managed to trash a hard disk (and it had no problems with Lumumba’s disk) but also because of the state of Filomena’s computer, which never got anywhere near Trotta.

All of the computers had of course been in the hands of the squadra mobile for some days before being consigned to Trotta, allowing for the possibility of some earlier interference by some malfeasant policeman.

This isn’t likely, not only because Trotta insists that the computers were complete and superficially undamaged, and the hard disks factory sealed when he dismantled the computers, but also because of Filomena’s computer.

4. Filomena’s Sony machine

It is now time to go a little deeper into the history of Filomena’s Sony.

This was a fairly new machine, which she kept in a substantial computer carrying case. It was working perfectly on Oct 30 when she last used it. She had left it in her bedroom, the case standing upright beside her bed, when she went off to spend the brief holiday with her boyfriend.

She found it, still in the carrying case, lying flat in a pile of stuff under the broken window of her disturbed bedroom. [3]

The defence commissioned a Computer Expert Report, entered during the Massei trial, which talked about the reason for the data being irrecoverable on the three computers’ disks.

Their conclusion was that the electronic circuitry controlling the hard disks had, in all three cases, suffered damage, most probably due to an electrical overtension. The circuitry had been ‘fried’.

They were unable to be certain how or when this might have occurred, or to opine on whether it was deliberate.

Filomena, in the presence of Gregori, (another communications police officer), at the Questura on the evening of Nov 2 attempted to turn on her Sony. It wouldn’t work. The hard disk would not respond properly.

When she got it back on Dec 18 and gave it to a private computer technician, he said the control circuitry on the hard disk is ‘fried’. Exactly the same fault as had occurred on the other three, which we are expected by th defense to believe was either a deliberate piece of police sabotage, or proof of police incompetence.

5. The Sollecito computers

The important computers, of course, are those owned by Sollecito because he is, even now, still trying to force an alibi out of them.

The MacBook has been accurately interrogated to death, most particularly by a defence expert named Antonio d’Ambrosio who gave very clear testimony at Massei on 26 Sept 2009.

He was even generous enough to acknowledge that the investigations carried out by the postal police were correct, and well interpreted, and that he was able to uncover a little more information simply because he wasn’t limited by forensic protocols (and could therefore reveal information not visible to the Encase software used by the police) when he examined a copy of the cloned disk from the Mac.

Basically the only ‘news’ in this interesting testimony was an interaction with the Apple website at 00.58 on Nov 2, which he did consider a human interaction with the computer. 

6. Activity on the Internet

Sollecito maintains he spent the whole evening and night in his flat. At first his story was that he was sending e-mails and surfing the web. This was quickly demolished by reference to the IP log supplied by Fastweb, the broadband supplier.

It’s necessary to get slightly technical here.

Most of what we call The Internet, and certainly everything which is called The Worldwide Web, including e-mail clients, subscribe to a protocol which (in shorthand) means everything is a Port 80 request.

The individual computer, via its router, contacts the ISP (Fastweb, in this case) and identifies itself by means of a unique IP address. The ISP then directs the communication to the IP of the website requested.

This is all recorded on the Fastweb network. It is certain that no Port 80 requests were made from Sollecito’s apartment (whichever computer he may have been using) between 18.00 on Nov 1 and 00.58 on Nov 2. 

There are parts of the international communications network which don’t use Port 80 protocols. The most ‘innocent’ of these are Peer to Peer (P2P) networks ““ in widespread use for distributing and downloading music and video files.

Sollecito certainly availed himself of these services, using a program called Amule on his Mac. He had a folder containing downloaded files, which was accessible to the program, and thus also accessible to anyone in the world who wanted a copy of something which Sollecito had in this shareable folder on his computer.

If he wished to save the file for posterity, he would move or copy it from this accessible folder into his own archive.

Video files are large, and they take a long time to download. Clearly, to download a file, or to make your publicly accessible folder available, the computer has to be turned on and connected to a router.

If you use these file sharing services extensively, it implies that you keep your computer turned on and connected all the time. It seems likely that this was Sollecito’s habit.

Clearly, you need to automate this sort of transfer ““ often a large file will be accessed in part from one remote computer, and another part will be located on another remote computer ““ so you simply instruct Amule to get you a film, or a list of films, and you can walk away from the computer.

Even D’Ambrosio is unable to be certain that a human interaction occurred at 21.26 on Nov 1, or whether a pre-requested download of Naruto commenced.

However, no IP addresses are exchanged when connecting to a P2P network, and so it is impossible (from ISP records) to trace any traffic.

It is possible though, from the hard disk, to discover what has been downloaded and saved to a computer on a P2P network, and exactly when ““ but to distinguish an automated process from a user instigated one is not possible.

7. Computers and Hellmann appeal

Now we move onto the Hellmann appeal, where a report from this same consultant D’Ambrosio was accepted into the case files. I haven’t been able to find this report, and Judge Hellman doesn’t even refer to it in his sentencing report.

However, the gist of this D’Ambrosio report is included in the current ricorso (appeal) from Sollecito to the Court of Cassazione.

8. Computers and Cassation appeal

We hear a bit about screensaver behaviour, and quite a lot about post Nov 1 interactions overwriting earlier actions.

The major ‘fresh’  theory now depends on asserting (more than four times in the ricorso) that the postal police destroyed Sollecito’s Asus, and that this action has meant that Sollecito’s alibi cannot be proved.

The lack of any signs of interaction on the Mac can be explained (so we are informed) by the Mac and the Asus being networked together, using a file sharing utility named Samba, and if the (broken) Asus could have been accessed it might have shown that it had been controlling the Mac.

So the Mac would have been doing things at the command of its owner, but because the owner was interacting with the keyboard of the Asus rather than that of the Mac, these actions are undetectable on the Mac.

This is what we are now being asked to believe.

9. Conclusion and way forward

I think this is an accurate summary of the relevant parts of ‘computer evidence’ discussed, or deposited, during the hearings and in the ricorso.  I look forward to any comments, clarifications, corrections, but above all, to any new theories about how and when the four hard disks got trashed.

From other sources there are an additional two hints at possible new or ignored evidence:

The BBC reported, on 14.03.2009, the following sentence. “A second computer belonging to Mr Sollecito also showed no activity but the suspect had himself admitted it had been broken before the crime was committed.”  [4]

And then we have Sollecito, in his prison diary of 11.11.2007, being rather more than aware that his computer is not going to be useful to him as an alibi.

I have been very anxious and nervous in the last few days, but to see my father who tells me “do not worry, we will get you out” makes me feel better. My real concerns are now two: the first one derives from the fact that, if that night Amanda remained with me all night long, we could have (and this is a very remote possibility) made love all evening and night only stopping to eat… it would be a real problem [casino] because there would be no connections from my computer to servers in those hours…

No connections in those hours? Hmmm.

10. My references

[1] This computer is sometimes referenced as an Acer. In Trotta’s testimony (he is reading from notes) it is listed as an Asus, so I have used this name. There is only one computer whether it’s an Asus or an Acer.

[2]  There is a reference to a non portable computer in Sollecito’s apartment (in the testimony of Popovic). This is the only mention of any non-portable (i.e. desktop or tower cased machine with separate monitor).  Given the position from which Popovic saw the screen (on a desk, with Knox sitting in front of it) it seems likely that she was mistaken.

[3]  Amanda Knox frequently refers to seeing Filomena’s computer on her desk after the ‘break in’. At one point in her testimony she changes her mind and corrects herself to change the computer to camera.

[4]  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7943828.stm I have not found another source for this comment.


Wednesday, July 02, 2014

Rome Press Conference Reports: Sollecito Separates From Knox, Bongiorno Misleads On Her Text

Posted by Our Main Posters




1. Overview Of This Post

Sollecito and Bongiorno held a much-attended press conference at which they tried to hang Knox out to dry.

This post first quotes some of the reports and then looks at the big reveal, that there is proof Knox was out TWICE including later in the evening when Sollecito was still at home.

2. Reports From English-Language Media

Lizzy Davies In The Guardian

Raffaele Sollecito, the ex-boyfriend of Amanda Knox who faces a 25-year prison sentence for the murder of Meredith Kercher, has placed renewed pressure on his American co-defendant by noting “certain anomalies” in her case.

As he unveiled his defence strategy for a potentially definitive appeal which could see him and Knox definitively convicted of the British student’s killing in 2007, the 30-year-old Italian said he still believed “to this day in the innocence of Amanda Marie Knox”.

But, in what some read as a sign he is preparing to distance himself from his former lover after six-and-a-half years of rigidly joint defence, he added: “But obviously, in what I read in the court papers, I register certain anomalies.”

While saying she hoped both convictions would be quashed by Italy’s supreme court, Sollecito’s lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, urged the judges to take “coherent and consequent decisions” if they felt there were contradictions in the appeal court’s sentence, and not to “automatically extend anomalies pertaining to Amanda to Sollecito”.

At a press conference in Rome on Tuesday, Sollecito acknowledged, as he has done previously, that he cannot be absolutely certain of how much time the 27-year-old student from Seattle spent in his flat on the early part of the evening of the murder, even if he is certain the two spent the night together. The pair have always said their memories were foggy due to the effects of cannabis.

Sollecito’s appeal, said Bongiorno, focused on a text message which Knox says she sent from her then boyfriend’s home at 8.35pm the evening of the murder but which the Florence court, in its reasoning, accepts was sent from outside.

“According to the sentence, this [SMS] was not written from Raffaele’s house. Therefore the two were not together,” said Bongiorno. She added that, from her client’s point of view, the discrepancy was “either the nth mistake of the sentence, or ‘I [Sollecito] was lied to, too.’”

She added that his defence team had estimated that the attack on Kercher took place between 9pm and 9.30pm ““ though a time of death has never been agreed on and prosecutors have argued it occurred later. Sollecito says evidence from his computer proves he was at his home until at least 9.26pm.

Another hinge of his defence is a memo written by Knox in which she admitted to confusion over earlier statements in which she had falsely accused bar owner Patrick Lumumba of the murder, said she was present at her house and heard the 21-year-old Leeds University student “screaming”.

She later retracted the statements.

Sollecito said he did not believe the contents of the “odd, eccentric” memo, but that as the Florence appeals court ““ which reinstated the pair’s guilty verdicts in January ““ appeared to draw on parts of it for the convictions, he was forced to respond to that version of events.

“For me this memo recounts only fantasies and figments of the imagination,” he said. “But if what were written in the memo were true, taking it as a given that the judges are right [to use it in their verdict], could you explain to me where I figure in it?”

He added: “What is my participation? What is my motive, my involvement, anything? Explain it to me, because my name is Raffaele Sollecito and not Amanda Marie Knox.”

Unsigned, BBC Website

At a press conference in Rome on Tuesday, Sollecito insisted that he was innocent but said he remained convinced that Knox was too.

Unveiling his new defence strategy, he said January’s guilty verdict had been based on evidence from Knox that exonerated him.

“The 25-year prison sentence given to me is based entirely on the statement written by Amanda Knox in pre-trial detention. She herself exonerates me entirely,” he told press.

In the statement, she says she was in her flat while the murder was being committed, “with my hands over my ears because in my head I could hear Meredith screaming”.

Sollecito is not mentioned by Knox in the text, which his defence team says is proof he was not present at the scene.

“Taking it as read that the judges are right [in basing their verdict on Knox’s statement] will you please explain what I have to do with it?” Sollecito said.

Knox later withdrew the statement after saying she had written it under police pressure, and the pair have been each other’s alibis since, saying they spent the night together at his house.

Sollecito’s lawyer Giulia Bongiorno said that while he has always said he “spent the night” with Knox, he has never said they spent the evening together.

Ms Bongiorno added that her client’s appeal would cite a text message that Knox claims to have sent while with Sollecito at his house.

“This text message, according to the court’s own ruling, was not sent from his house. Therefore the pair were not together,” she said.

Despite throwing doubt on his ex-girlfriend’s alibi, the Italian said he had “always believed, and still believe, that Amanda Marie Knox is innocent.”

Hannah Roberts Daily Mail

Knox and Sollecito have always maintained that they were together the evening of the brutal 2007 murder in Perugia, after which Miss Kercher, 21, was found half naked her throat slit in the cottage she shared with Knox.

But Sollecito’s lawyer Giulia Bongiorno said that ‘for the entire first part of the evening, they were not together. It’s this first part of the evening that’s new [to his defence]’.

Sollecito has pointed to phone records that show that Knox was away from his house for part of the evening.

In a dramatic change of legal tactics that he announced in a press conference in Rome he has now claimed there are “˜anomalies’ in Knox’s story.

Knox says that she received a text, while at Sollecito’s house, from her boss, telling her not to come to her job at a nightclub that night.

But phone records show that the text was received on the road between their houses, something that their retrial judges felt was key in their reconstruction of events. Sollecito’s phone and computer records show that he was at home that evening.

Sollecito said: “˜I have always believed in the innocence of Amanda. But I have to react to the accusations of the court and to the text message.

“˜Either the court has made their umpteenth mistake or she lied to me.’

He added: “˜I was in love with her and we had some very happy moments, but ultimately Amanda was a stranger.’

‘There are anomalies in her version of events. Against me there is nothing.’

The ‘fundamental basis’ for the conviction is Knox’s memo to police in which she says she was at the cottage when the murder took place, he said.

“˜I believe this was a hallucination, but if the court believes it is true then they have to accept that she did not say I was there. She gave me an alibi. “˜

It is not the first time Sollecito has expressed his doubts about the holes in Knox’s story.

In an interview with Italian television earlier this year, he said Knox had spent the night with him but went back to her place to shower, he said. When she returned, she was ‘very agitated,’ he said.

She told him that it looked like someone had broken in and that there was blood in the bathroom, Sollecito said. But rather than call the police, she showered and returned to his place something he finds odd. “˜Certainly I asked her questions,’ he said. ‘Why did you take a shower? Why did she spend so much time there?’

He didn’t get any real answers from her, he said.


3. Analysis: Bongiorno’s Claim About Knox’s Location When Texting

Giulia Bongiorno claimed yesterday that Amanda Knox replied to Patrick’s text while she was away from Sollecito’s house.

This is demonstrably untrue.

Mobile-phone-tower records show that Knox’s phone received Patrick’s incoming text telling her not to come to work when she was already somewhere on the route to his bar in Via Alessi. Knox apparently then turned around and went back to Sollecito’s house.

Mobile-phone-tower records show Knox texted back, responding to Patrick, from Sollecito’s house in Corso Garibaldi at 8:35.

They both claim this in their books - Sollecito himself claims it too.  Those books are pretty suspect throughout, but for once they both tell the same truth.

Some five minutes later, Knox and Ms Popovic met at Sollecito’s house so Knox was still there then. That is still three to four hours away from the best estimate of Meredith’s death.

So the time-period prior to 8:35 pm when Knox texted from Sollecito’s flat was the only time-period when there is hard proof that Knox and Sollecito were ever apart that night. In her unforced statements on 5-6 November Knox did claim she went out alone to see Patrick, but we have only her word she was alone.

Here is the narrative from Judge Massei’s 2009 report.

− 20:18:12: Amanda receives the SMS sent to her by Patrick Lumumba, which let her off from having to go to work at the “šLe Chic”› pub on the evening of 1 November. At the time of reception the phone connected to the cell on Via dell’Aquila 5-Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3, whose signal does not reach Raffaele Sollecito’s house. The young woman was therefore far [i.e. absent] from Corso Garibaldi 30 when the SMS reached her, as she was walking in an area which was shown to be served by the Via dell’Aquila 5-Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3 cell. This point of her route could correspond to Via U. Rocchi, to Piazza Cavallotti, to Piazza IV Novembre, bearing in mind that Lumumba’s pub is located in Via Alessi, and that Amanda Knox would have had to travel along the above-mentioned roads and the piazza in order to reach the pub

− 20.35.48 Amanda sent an SMS in reply to Patrick, at No. 338-7195723; the message was sent when the young woman’s mobile phone was in Corso Garibaldi 30 or in the immediate neighbourhood. The cell used, in fact, was that of Via Berardi sector 7.

Here is the narrative from Judge Nencini’s 2014 report.

At 20.18 and 12 seconds, Amanda Marie Knox received a text message sent to her by Patrick Lumumba, in which he informed her that it would not be necessary for her to go to the bar to carry out her usual work. At the time of receipt, Amanda Marie Knox’s handset connected via the sector 3 mast at Torre dell’Acquedotto, 5 dell’Aquila, as shown by phone records entered in evidence. This mast cannot be reached from the vicinity of 130 Via Garibaldi, the home of Raffaele Sollecito. According to the findings of the judicial police entered in evidence, this mast could be reached by anyone in Via Rocchi, piazza Cavallotti or piazza 4 Novembre, all locations in Perugia which are intermediate between 130 Via Garibaldi, the home of Raffaele Sollecito, and Via Alessi, where the “Le Chic” bar is located.

From this set of facts established in the case, Amanda Marie Knox’s claim, according to which she received Patrick Lumumba’s text message while she was at 130 Via Garibaldi, appears false. Given the mast connected to and the time, it is reasonable to assume that, when Amanda received the message, she had already left Raffaele Sollecito’s home and was on her way to the “Le Chic” bar. Presumably, she then turned around and went back.

Here, then, is the first crack in the account of the young woman who, in her narrative, claims never to have left the house at 130 Via Garibaldi from the moment of her entrance into the house in the afternoon of 1 November 2007, together with Raffaele Sollecito. There is oral evidence (the deposition of Popovic) and evidence obtained through phone records that, at around 18:00 on 1 November 2007, Amanda and Raffaele were at the home of the latter. Later, at precisely 20:35 and 48 seconds, when Amanda Marie Knox sent a text message to Patrick Lumumba, connecting to a mast serving 130 Via Garibaldi, both were once again [118]together at Raffaele Sollecito’s home. This fact is confirmed by Popovic, who went there to cancel that evening’s appointment with Raffaele. In fact, the witness reported that she had visited Raffaele’s home at around 20:40 in the evening.

In essence, it can be established with certainty that Amanda and Raffaele were apart, albeit for a limited period of time, on the evening of 1 November 2007, contrary to what is stated repeatedly in multiple statements made by Amanda Marie Knox.

It seems Bongiorno got it wrong about Knox, and Sollecito sat beside her happily nodding his okay.


Amanda Knox Left Sollecito’s House By Herself? Both Claimed It But Neither Of Their Books Back It Up

Posted by Our Main Posters




1. Current Contexts Of Sollecito’s And Knox’s Books

Neither book is exactly riddled with truths.

The claims throughout Sollecito’s book are soon to be the subject of a trial in Florence and the claims throughout Knox’s book are soon to be the subject of a trial in Bergamo. So both will need to endorse or reject what they wrote.

Plus Knox will need to endorse or reject this, from the first unforced statement she insisted on making without a lawyer on 6 November 2007. This is what Sollecito is gleefully using against her now.

Last Thursday, November 1, a day on which I normally work, while I was at the house of my boyfriend Raffaele, at around 8:30 pm, I received a message on my cellular phone from Patrik, who told me that the premises would remain closed that evening, because there were no customers, and thus I would not need to go to work.

I responded to the message by telling him that we would see each other at once; I then left the house, telling my boyfriend that I had to go to work. In view of the fact that during the afternoon I had smoked a joint, I felt confused, since I do not frequently make use of mind-altering substances, nor of heavier substances.

I met Patrik immediately afterward, at the basketball court on Piazza Grimana, and together we went [to my] home.


2. From Sollecito’s Honor Bound (Simon & Schuster 2012)

Amanda and I smoked a joint before leaving the house on Via della Pergola, wandered into town for some shopping before remembering we had enough for dinner already, and headed back to my place. Shortly before six, a Serbian friend of mine named Jovana Popovic rang the doorbell and asked if I’d mind driving her to the bus station at midnight to pick up a suitcase her mother was sending. I said that would be fine. When she left, Amanda and I sat down at the computer to watch a favorite movie, Amélie.

We had to stop the film a few times as the evening wore on. First, Amanda got a text from Patrick telling her it was a slow night because of the holiday and he didn’t need her to come in after all. It was like getting an unexpected snow day””we were thrilled. Amanda texted back: Certo ci vediamo più tardi buona serata! Sure. See you later. Have a good evening.

Then my father called. He and Mara had just seen the Will Smith movie The Pursuit of Happyness, and he told me how beautifully it portrayed the relationship between a father and his son. My father was always making phone calls like this. It was sweet that he wanted to share his experiences, but he also made everything he said sound vaguely like an order, as if laying out the parameters of how I should react to things before I’d had a chance to form my own opinion. But he never stayed on the line for long””he is too nervy and impatient””so I listened calmly and the call was over in less than four minutes.

In the meantime, Jovana dropped by again and told Amanda that I didn’t need to drive her to the bus station after all. Now we didn’t have to leave the apartment. The evening was ours, and we couldn’t have been happier. We switched off our cell phones, finished watching Amélie, and discussed what to make for dinner…

When Amélie ended, I went into the kitchen to take care of some dishes left over from breakfast before we started making dinner. I soon realized that water was leaking out of the pipe under the sink, and I cursed under my breath. I’d had a plumber come and fix the sink just a week earlier, and he had made me buy all sorts of replacement parts that clearly were not put together properly. I suspected he had left them loose on purpose to force me to pay for another visit. As Amanda and I threw kitchen towels onto the puddle on the tile floor, I decided I was going to let my landlady deal with it from now on.

“Don’t you have a mop?” Amanda asked. I did not. She offered to pick one up from Via della Pergola the next morning and bring it round.

We cooked a fish dinner, did our best to wash the dishes again, and tumbled gratefully into bed in each other’s arms. Only later, when I lay in the dark, unable to sleep, did it dawn on me that Papà  had broken his usual habit of calling to wish me good night.

It turned out he did so out of consideration. He had been about to pick up the phone when my stepmother talked him out of it. “Stop bothering him,” Mara said, as they got ready for bed around eleven o’clock. “He’s with Amanda, and they want to be alone. Why don’t you send a text instead?”

My father took her advice, but because my cell phone was turned off, I didn’t receive the message until six the next morning.

It was a desperately unlucky combination of circumstances. If my father had tried my cell and then called me on the home line””which he would have done, because he’s persistent that way””I would have had incontrovertible proof from the phone records that I was home that night. And the nightmare that was about to engulf me might never have begun.

My father called my landline a little before nine thirty the next morning to make sure we would be ready for our day trip to Gubbio. I was too groggy to talk. I’d been up several times in the night””listening to music, answering e-mail, making love””and wanted only to go back to sleep. Amanda got out of bed and said she was going home to shower and change her clothes, so I walked her to the front door, gave her a kiss, and crawled back under the covers.


3. From Knox’s Waiting To Be Heard (HarperCollins 2013)

Raffaele and I were good at being low-key together. We chilled out in the common room and smoked a joint while I played Beatles songs on the guitar for an hour or so. Sometime between 4 P.M. and 5 P.M., we left to go to his place. We wanted a quiet, cozy night in. As we walked along, I was telling Raffaele that Amélie was my all-time favorite movie.

“Really?” he asked. “I’ve never seen it.”

“Oh my God,” I said, unbelieving. “You have to see it right this second! You’ll love it!”

Not long after we got back to Raffaele’s, his doorbell rang. It was a friend of his whom I’d never met””a pretty, put-together medical student named Jovanna Popovic, who spoke Italian so quickly I couldn’t understand her. She’d come to ask Raffaele for a favor. Her mother was putting a suitcase on a bus for her and she wondered if he could drive her to the station at midnight to pick it up.

“Sure,” Raffaele said.

As soon as she left, we downloaded the movie on his computer and sat on his bed to watch it. Around 8:30 P.M. I suddenly remembered that it was Thursday, one of my regular workdays. Quickly checking my phone, I saw that Patrick had sent me a text telling me I didn’t have to come in. Since it was a holiday, he thought it would be a slow night.

“Okay,” I texted back. “Ci vediamo più tardi buona serata!”””“See you later. Have a good evening!” Then I turned off my phone, just in case he changed his mind and wanted me to come in after all. I was so excited to have the night off that I jumped on top of Raffaele, cheering, “Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!”

Our good mood was only elevated when the doorbell rang again at 8:45 P.M: Jovanna had come back, this time to say that the suitcase hadn’t made the bus and that she didn’t need a ride after all. With no more obligations, we had the whole rest of the night just to be with each other and chill out.

After the movie ended, around 9:15 P.M., we sautéed a piece of fish and made a simple salad. We were washing the dishes when we realized that the kitchen sink was leaking. Raffaele, who’d already had a plumber come once, was frustrated and frantically tried to mop up a lot of water with a little rag. He ended up leaving a puddle.

“I’ll bring the mop over from our house tomorrow. No big deal,” I said.

Raffaele sat down at his desk and rolled a joint, and I climbed into his lap to read aloud to him from another Harry Potter book, this one in German. I translated the parts he didn’t understand, as best I could, into Italian or English while we smoked and giggled.

Later, when we were in bed, our conversation wound its way to his mother. His dad had divorced her years before, but she’d never gotten over the break. In 2005 she had died suddenly. “Some ¬people suspect she killed herself, but I’m positive she didn’t,” Raffaele said. “She would never do that. She had a bad heart, and it just gave out. It was horrible for me””¬we were really close””¬and I miss her all the time.”

I felt terrible for him, but it was hard for me to relate. The only person I knew who had died was my grandfather, when I was sixteen. I felt sad when my mom told me, but my grandfather had been old and sick, and we had expected his death for a few weeks.

I’m sure Mom and Oma must have cried, but my strongest memory is sitting around the dining room table telling funny stories about Opa. My grandmother’s message””that grieving was something you did in private; that you didn’t make public displays and you kept on moving forward””had remained with me.

Hearing the pain in Raffaele’s voice, I hurt for him. Nestling my head on his chest, I tried to be comforting.

As we started kissing, Raffaele gave me a hickey on my neck. We undressed the rest of the way, had sex, and fell asleep.

We’d known each other for exactly one week and had settled so quickly into an easy routine that one night seemed to melt happily and indistinguishably into the one that came after.

We planned to break our routine the next day, All Souls’ Day, by taking a long drive into the countryside, to the neighboring town of Gubbio. The November 2 holiday wasn’t usually observed with as much fanfare as All Saints’ Day, but since it fell on a Friday in 2007, a lot of people, including us, were turning it into a four-day weekend. I thought, Italians having a good time again. And I couldn’t wait.

 


Tuesday, July 01, 2014

Twice Today Amanda Knox’s Long-Running Interrogation Hoax Turns On Her To Bite Her In The Tail

Posted by Peter Quennell


1. Today’s Sollecito Claims

Take a look at this Knox statement and this Knox statement and this Knox statement.

If you think Knox was in a planned police interrogation, and her framing of Patrick was forced, over some hours, by tag-teams of cops, with no food, no drinks, no interpreter, and no lawyer, then the cops look bad and Knox is maybe home free.

But in fact voluminous testimony at trial by a whole host of those present in Perugia’s central police station on the night of 5-6 November 2007 confirm that absolutely none of that is true.

In fact Knox rolled over on Patrick in a heartbeat, and it happened during a quiet session of name-listing of possible perps, a task in which Knox was pretty eager - perhaps so eager because none of them were herself and one of them was Rudy Guede. 

Knox had turned up late at the police station, unwanted and grumpy, was advised to go and sleep, refused, agreed to build that list of possible perps (she listed seven), spontaneously broke into a wailing conniption over a message she sent to Patrick, was semi-calmed-down and repeatedly provided refreshments, and insisted on writing three statements without a lawyer all of which said she went out on the night of the attack, all framing Patrick, one even pointing at Sollecito.

Knox’s erratic claims of pressure were of course disbelieved by the Massei trial court, she was convicted of calunnia, her appeals failed both at the Hellmann appeal court and the Supreme Court, and she served three years in Capanne Prison. Knox still owes Patrick a major payment and she herself continues to propagate the interrogation hoax repeatedly - in her book, on TV, in her email to Judge Nencini, and in her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Sollico is now taking advantage of those three statements, and a claim that Knox’s text message to Patrick was sent from outside Sollecito’s apartment, to hint that Knox told the truth there, and he was not with her at the time when Meredith was killed.

2. Why This Might Resonate In Italy

This might lead to some review of “new evidence” though it cannot happen before Cassation confirms conviction. 

Not so much because of the hard facts, which belie him, but because of the growing recognition of the enormous damage done to Italy’s reputation by Curt Knox, Chris Mellas, and the paid thugs of their campaign.

And the threats to fight extradition, and the appallingly large sums of blood-money.

3. The Curt & Edda Defamation Trial

In a double whammy, a judge ruled in Perugia that Curt Knox and Edda Mellas must go on trial in the hard-line Florence court for their role in propagating that same interrogation hoax.

That is the same court that is already staging felony trials against Frank Sforza and Luciano Aviello and will soon stage defamation trials for the ironically titled Honor Bound against Raffaele Sollecito and Andrew Gumbel.

This is from Andrea Vogt’s latest website report (Update June 30, 2014) which as usual leaves in the dust all other non-Italian reporting except Barbie Nadeau’s and John Follain’s (though that is sadly behind the UK Times pay-wall). 

Amanda Knox’s biological parents, Curt Knox and Edda Mellas, faced a trial hearing in Perugia Monday on charges of defaming the local police with allegations in the international media (and reported in Italy) that their daughter was abused during questioning during the 2007 investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher.

The case Monday came before Perugia Judge Noviello, who opted not to hear witness testimony, but instead moved the case to Florence. This because the judge reportedly noted that the Perugia prosecutor was also defamed, even though he did not make any official complaints, therefore it is a case that should be handled outside the sphere of Umbrian influence.

Amanda Knox was convicted on appeal in January in Florence, but still faces another trial there ““ that of allegedly slandering the police (calumny) with false accusations on the stand, which in Italy is a more serious charge than just defamation\libel. Knox and her parents now both face decisions by Florentine courts about the outstanding charges

The claims being targeted for trial were made in 2010 so the Florence court has another three-plus years before the statute of limitations cuts in. 

And this (tick tick) is from a TJMK post by Jools in January 2012.

The name of Amanda Knox was included in the list of trial witnesses that the defence for Kurt Knox and Edda Mellas, lawyers Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga intend to call to testify in court.

So Amanda Knox could want to testify under oath on the interrogation hoax - either that or see her parents go down.  (Knox will probably also face trial in Bergamo for extensive defamation in her book. Amanda Knox could again want to testify under oath on the interrogation hoax - either that or see herself go down.)

We understand it was Knox lawyer Dalla Vedova who first asked for the Knox-Mellas trial to be moved to Florence. That was when Dr Mignini was the subject of a phony prosecution in Florence and Dalla Vedova seemed intent on embarrassing him.

Now Dr Mignini is riding high nationally, and is maybe having a few grins at Dalla Vedova’s predicament.


Saturday, June 28, 2014

Sollecito Suddenly Remembers He Wasnt There But Cannot Speak For Knox Who (As She Said) Went Out

Posted by Peter Quennell




1. The State Of Play

Sollecito is becoming intent again on digging himself out (really). But he and his own team have created definite problems.

Consider for example the last two public performances by Raffaele Sollecito’s defense, both in Florence. They consisted of:

    1. Giulia Bongiorno in her summation back in January, in Florence, at the tail-end of RS’s and AK’s appeal, ranting on foolishly about Perugia and Rome justice officials, in an apparent attempt to outdo even the nastiness of Amanda Knox’s earlier email to Judge Nencini which also ranted on foolishly about those officials.

    2. Giulia Bongiorno fooishly taking strong offense to Judge Nencini wondering why Sollecito remained soomewhat bound to Knox and so little forthcoming, and then Bongiorno foolishly having her political allies advance a complaint to the Supreme Council of Magistrates, dropped after a brief investigation.

Yes that is the same Judge Nencini who already reacted firmly to abrasive pressure from the Knox camp.  And the same Judge Nencini to whom Cassation MUST refer the case back down if there is to be any hope of adjustment of the outcome of the appeal.

Bongiorno’s were not exactly the smartest of moves.

3. Today’s New Development

An apparent u-turn, or at least a blink and slight deviation, in the suicidal game of chicken the Knox and Sollecito camps have long thought to be so smart.

Bongiorno or others very close to Sollecito, probably including his father and an aunt, seem to be again shooting for an additional degree of separation.

This familiar loosening of bonds with Amanda Knox was apparently explicit in his appeal to Cassation and today it is made slightly more explicit by Sollecito in a magazine interview.

And next Tuesday the Sollecito team will stage a press conference.

2. Fraught With Problems

The Sollecitos would be wise to bump up their plea to Cassation about 100-fold.  Substantial evidence that Sollecito was at the house still looms like an 80,000 pound gorilla - see a listing of it in one of our next posts.

And one key thing about the Italian system: it has immense capacity to hit back very hard in response to out-of-court pressure and attempts to poison public opinion.

As we have explained previously, these strong powers originate in the endless fight against the mafias, which have long used defamation of justice officials as a way of seeking some relief for their guys.

The reason why Knox is sentenced to 28 and a half years on top of her three years served for calunnia doesnt yet seem to have sunk into the slow minds of Knox or her family or her vigilantes..

But Sollecito is increasingly alive to the ability of Italian justice to hit back very hard when the justice system and its officials are impugned.

Yesterday Sollecito and his lawyer Alfredo Brizioli were being interviewed for the multiple false charges of crimes in Honor Bound The book is pretty horrific and new charges seem certain.

The foolish shadow-writer Andrew Gumbel has surfaced, and appointed a lawyer, and is expected to join him.

Our guess? Sollecito will need to tell all, and make a major plea for forgiveness from the Kerchers, if any adults with real powers are to give him any break.


Friday, June 20, 2014

Knox Interrogation Hoax #6: Sollecito Transcript & Actions Further Damage Knox Version

Posted by Our Main Posters




1. Breaking News From The Sollecito Appeal

It is in effect being reported (see below) that the Sollecto team have asked Cassation to concede that back in 2008 they - Cassation - maybe made a mistake in the law.

That, the Sollecito team said, directly caused a disadvantage to their guy. And they may very well be right. If Cassation agrees, it may leave Knox with no further effective fight.

2. What Happened When Knox Was “Interrogated”

To fully understand this, it will pay you to have read this series which includes major new translations by the professional translator ZiaK. And especially Part 2 of the previous post.

You will see repeatedly confirmed by those who were there these key facts:

(1) Amanda Knox turned up at the Perugia central police station late at night, unwanted and grumpy, and was advised to go home and get some sleep.

(2) Inspector Ficarra later said if she really wanted, she could help, she could build a list of possible perps, in a recap/summary session (not an interrogation).

(3) For maybe 45 minutes, starting at 12:30 am (when the interpreter arrived), Knox quite calmly listed seven names along with maps drawn.

(4) Knox was then quietly told Sollecito had contradicted her alibi (see his newly translated statement below). Knox had no immediate reaction.

(5) Soon after, Knox had a wailing conniption, which really startled the four others present, when Knox saw an outgoing text to her boss she had just said wasnt there.

(6) Police did what they could to calm her down, and she insisted on writing out three statements (see below) in supposed elaboration in less than 12 hours.

(7) She was warned she should have a lawyer each time, the second warning by Dr Mignini, but each time she shrugged off this advice and pressed on.

(8) In the noon statement Knox said this, with no mention of having been coerced: “The questions that need answering, at least for how I’m thinking are… 2. Why did I think of Patrik?”


3. More About Knox’s Three Statements

Cassation ruled in April 2008 that the first two statements could not be used to indict Knox at the murder trial, but all three could be used to argue her framing of Patrick.

All three of Knox’s voluntary statements of 5-6 November say she was at her house with Patrick; the main thrust of the third statement (handwritten when she knew Patrick was being held nearby and may have proved her a liar at any minute) was to spread the accusations around a bit more, and drop Sollecito also in the soup

But the voluntary 1:45 and 5:45 statements also include these damning claims:

Statement 1:45: “I responded to the message [from Patrick] by telling him that we would see each other at once; I then left the house, telling my boyfriend that I had to go to work.

Statement 5:45: “I wish to relate spontaneously what happened because these events have deeply bothered me and I am really afraid of Patrick, the African boy who owns the pub called “Le Chic” located in Via Alessi where I work periodically. I met him in the evening of November 1st 2007, after sending him a reply message saying “I will see you”. We met soon after at about 21.00 at the basketball court of Piazza Grimana. “

See the possible opportunity for Sollecito’s team via the new appeal here? That’s one supposed “proof” that he wasn’t there (or at most came late, to explain his footprints and DNA).

And see the really big problem for Knox? She says she went out from Sollecito’s place on the night - and quite specifically says he did not come along.

4. Dr Mignini’s View On Cassation Ruling

Dr Mignini has several times observed that Cassation misunderstood that Knox herself had insisted on all three statements, ignoring advice he and investigators gave her.

But he did not think it was a make-or-break issue, and to him Cassation is almost invariable respectful and benign. And many Italian legal precedents say yes, in those circumstances those statements really should have been permitted exhibits at the main trial.

5. Now Sollecito Team Agrees With Mignini

1) Read the excellent new report by Andrea Vogt here (her Update of 19 June 2014) which in part quotes the Sollecito appeal saying this:

“The trials lacked an adequate review of the “individual” role of Sollecito, generating instead a sense of his guilt due to…  a “confession” made by her, which never mentioned him at the scene of the crime. 1a) That declaration should be used as a favourable element showing Sollecito was not at the scene of the crime, not as a piece of evidence that confirms his guilt.

2) Also read the new report by Barbie Nadeau here [with the caution by Popper in Comments below] which in part says this.

Now, for the first time in this seven-year long, painfully epic case, Sollecito wants to be judged independently from Knox””if not on the case as a whole, at least on the issue of the so-called “false confession.”


6. Sollecito’s Statement Early 6 November 2007

Perugia Police Headquarters

Flying Squad General Affairs Area.

SUBJECT: Witness statement of person informed of the facts given by SOLLECITO Raffaele, already identified.

On November 5th 2007 at 22:40 in the offices of the Flying Squad of the Perugia Police Headquarters. Before the undersigned of the Criminal Investigation Dept. Deputy Commissioner MONICA NAPOLEONI, Chief Inspector Antonio FACCHINI Vice Superintendent of Police Daniele MOSCATELLI, Assistant Chief Ettore FUOCO is present the above-mentioned who, to supplement the declarations made [November] in these Offices, in regards to the facts being investigated, declares as follows: [*A.D.R. = Question Answer = QA]

QA I have known Amanda for about two weeks. From the night that I met her she started sleeping at my house. On November 1st, I woke up at around 11, I had breakfast with Amanda then she went out and I went back to bed. Then around 13:00-14:00 I met her at her house again. Meredith was there too. Amanda and I had lunch while Meredith did not have lunch with us.

QA Around 16:00 Meredith left in a hurry without saying where she was going. Amanda and I stayed home until about 17:30-18:00.

QA We left the house, we went into town, but I don’t remember what we did.

QA We stayed there from 18:00 until 20:30/21:00. At 21:00 I went home alone because Amanda told me that she was going to go to the pub Le Chic because she wanted to meet some friends.

QA At this point we said goodbye and I headed home while she headed towards the center.

QA I went home alone, sat at the computer and rolled myself a spliff. Surely I had dinner but I don’t remember what I ate. Around 23:00 my father called at my home number 075.9660789. During that time I remember Amanda had not come back yet.

QA I browsed at my computer for another two hours after my father’s phone call and only stopped when Amanda came back presumably around 1:00.

QA I don’t remember how she was dressed and if she was dressed the same way as when we said goodbye before dinner.

QA I don’t remember if we had sex that night.

QA The following morning around 10:00 we woke up, she told me she wanted to go home and take a shower and change clothes.

QA In fact at around 10:30 she went out and I went back to sleep. When she went out that morning to go to her house, Amanda also took an empty bag telling me she needed it for dirty clothes.

QA At around 11:30 she came back home and I remember she had changed clothes; she had her usual bag with her.

QA I don’t know the contents of her bag.

QA I remember we immediately went to the kitchen, we sat down and talked for a while, perhaps we had breakfast. In that circumstance Amanda told me that when she got to her house she found the entrance door wide open and some traces of blood in the small bathroom and she asked me if it sounded strange. I answered that it did and I also advised her to call her housemates. She said she had called Filomena but that Meredith was not answering.

QA At around 12:00 we left the house; passing through Corso Garibaldi we arrived in Piazza Grimana, then we went through the Sant’ Antonio parking lot and reached Amanda’s house. To walk there it took us about 10 minutes.

QA As soon as we got there she opened the door with her keys, I went in and I noticed that Filomena’s door was wide open with some glass on the floor and her room was in a complete mess. The door to Amanda’s room was open and I noticed that it was tidy. Then I went towards Meredith’s door and saw that it was locked. Before this I looked to see if it was true what Amanda had told me about the blood in the bathroom and I noticed drops of blood in the sink, while on the mat there was something strange - a mixture of blood and water, while the rest of the bathroom was clean.

QA I went to the kitchen and saw that everything was in order, then went around the rest of the house, I went to Laura’s room and noticed it was tidy. In that moment Amanda went inside the big bathroom, next to the kitchen and came out frightened and hugging me tight telling me that earlier, when she took the shower, she had seen feces inside the toilet, while now the toilet was clean. QA I just took a rapid glance at the bathroom trusting what Amanda had told me.

QA At that point I was asking myself what could have happened and I went out to find Meredith’s window to see if I could climb to it. I went outside with Amanda and she tried to climb to it, I immediately stopped her telling her to not do it because it was dangerous. I then told Amanda that the best solution was to break down the door, I tried to kick it and shoulder it open but I didn’t manage to open it. Then I called my sister on her cellphone and asked her what I should do since she is a Carabinieri lieutenant. My sister told me to call the Carabinieri (112, the Italian emergency number), which I did, but in the meantime the Postal Police showed up.

QA In my previous statement I told a load of rubbish because Amanda had convinced me of her version of the facts and I didn’t think about the inconsistencies. I heard the first statements that she made to the Postal Police who intervened at the place.

QA She always carried a big bag that she also had the night of November 1st.

The investigating officials acknowledge that the deposition ends at 3:30 (AM) of November 6th 2007.


7. Our Analysis Of What RS Signed

Chimera (who is currently working on identifying all of the lies in Amanda Knox’s book) offers these notes.

QA Around 16:00 Meredith left in a hurry without saying where she was going. Amanda and I stayed home until about 17:30-18:00.

QA We left the house, we went into town, but I don’t remember what we did.

Really? Some alibi.

QA We stayed there from 18:00 until 20:30/21:00. At 21:00 I went home alone because Amanda told me that she was going to go to the pub Le Chic because she wanted to meet some friends.

QA At this point we said goodbye and I headed home while she headed towards the center.

In both books, you and Amanda claimed to have spent the evening together.

QA I went home alone, sat at the computer and rolled myself a spliff. Surely I had dinner but I don’t remember what I ate. Around 23:00 my father called at my home number 075.9660789. During that time I remember Amanda had not come back yet.

You don’t remember what you ate, yet both you and Amanda remember vividly the pipe leaking, although you contradict each other on if it happened before.

QA I browsed at my computer for another two hours after my father’s phone call and only stopped when Amanda came back presumably around 1:00.

A false claim: In both books, Knox and Sollecito admitted they turned the phones off

    (a) In Honor Bound, Sollecito says the phones were turned off so they could fool around undisturbed.
    (b) In Waiting to be Heard, Knox says she turned her phone off so Patrick couldn’t text back if he changed his mind about her working.
    (c) In the December 2007 questioning, Knox says she turned her phone off because it had a limited charge, and she didn’t want to drain it prior to the Gubbio trip.
    (d) In the trial, defence lawyers spent much time disputing that the phones were ever turned off.

A false claim: It was shown that the computers were not active.  Sollecito also claimed to be emailing many people.  Odd, as this would be a solid alibi ....

    (a) Not a single person came forward to say that they received anything from Raffaele.
    (b) Raffaele doesn’t name a single person that he emailed.
    (c) Not a single sent email was ever traced to his computer at that time period.

QA I don’t remember how she was dressed and if she was dressed the same way as when we said goodbye before dinner.

(Unless the police specifically asked him this), why would Raffy bring up Amanda’s clothes?  Were they blood soaked?

QA I don’t remember if we had sex that night.

You were a virgin until Amanda, and you don’t remember having sex?

QA The following morning around 10:00 we woke up, she told me she wanted to go home and take a shower and change clothes.

QA In fact at around 10:30 she went out and I went back to sleep. When she went out that morning to go to her house, Amanda also took an empty bag telling me she needed it for dirty clothes.

QA At around 11:30 she came back home and I remember she had changed clothes; she had her usual bag with her.

You remember the bag in clear detail, but not if you had sex?

In Knox’s statement (one of them), she says she doesn’t remember if she read or made love, but in WTBH, insists they slept together.

QA I remember we immediately went to the kitchen, we sat down and talked for a while, perhaps we had breakfast. In that circumstance Amanda told me that when she got to her house she found the entrance door wide open and some traces of blood in the small bathroom and she asked me if it sounded strange. I answered that it did and I also advised her to call her housemates. She said she had called Filomena but that Meredith was not answering.

Amanda asks you if finding blood is strange?

You immediately went into the kitchen and talked, but don’t remember having breakfast?

Funny, why not mention the mop?

QA As soon as we got there she opened the door with her keys, I went in and I noticed that Filomena’s door was wide open with some glass on the floor and her room was in a complete mess. The door to Amanda’s room was open and I noticed that it was tidy. Then I went towards Meredith’s door and saw that it was locked. Before this I looked to see if it was true what Amanda had told me about the blood in the bathroom and I noticed drops of blood in the sink, while on the mat there was something strange - a mixture of blood and water, while the rest of the bathroom was clean.

QA I went to the kitchen and saw that everything was in order, then went around the rest of the house, I went to Laura’s room and noticed it was tidy. In that moment Amanda went inside the big bathroom, next to the kitchen and came out frightened and hugging me tight telling me that earlier, when she took the shower, she had seen feces inside the toilet, while now the toilet was clean.

QA I just took a rapid glance at the bathroom trusting what Amanda had told me.

Is this normal in Italy for people to not flush smelly toilets, or just these two?

You noticed Filomena’s door was open and was a complete mess, but you didn’t notice the broken window coming in?

And at what point did you ‘‘realize’’ or ‘‘conclude’’ nothing had been taken?

You noticed blood in the sink, but on the bathmat, was it an ‘‘orange’’ like described in WTBH?  Or more like a footprint?

But in your recent Porta a Porta interview, did you not tell Bruno Vespa that Amanda didn’t even mention the blood?

QA At that point I was asking myself what could have happened and I went out to find Meredith’s window to see if I could climb to it. I went outside with Amanda and she tried to climb to it, I immediately stopped her telling her to not do it because it was dangerous. I then told Amanda that the best solution was to break down the door, I tried to kick it and shoulder it open but I didn’t manage to open it. Then I called my sister on her cellphone and asked her what I should do since she is a Carabinieri lieutenant. My sister told me to call the Carabinieri (112, the Italian emergency number), which I did, but in the meantime the Postal Police showed up.

This might have been plausible except for that ‘‘minor’’ detail, of Amanda telling the postal police Meredith locking her door was no big deal.

And that ‘‘minor’’ detail, that phone records show the call was made well after the Postal Police arrived.

QA In my previous statement I told a load of rubbish because Amanda had convinced me of her version of the facts and I didn’t think about the inconsistencies. I heard the first statements that she made to the Postal Police who intervened at the place.

QA She always carried a big bag that she also had the night of November 1st.

You are asked about inconsistencies in your alibi, and your immediate response is to say Amanda told you rubbish?

You told the police first that you were at a party with Amanda, then a story that you were together at your place.  Now you say it is rubbish, and you were on your computer (even though that was proven false).  At the Massei trial you stay silent, at the Hellmann appeal and your book tour you say you were together.  Later, at the July 2014 press conference, and February 2015 Porta a Porta interview you say Amanda was with you in the evening, but not the night.

You didn’t see the inconsistencies?  It is Amanda’s fault you keep changing your story?

In your book ‘‘Honor’’ Bound, you complain that if ‘’... we, [You or Amanda], deviated one iota from the version you broadly agreed on, it could mean a life sentence for both of you’‘.  Gee, nice proofreading job, Gumbel.

You tell the police that Amanda always carried a big bag?  Really ‘‘Honor Bound’’ aren’t we? That bag has never been found and Knox has never explained where it is. Knox might have carried a large knife in it, and bloody items the other way.  No wonder she ‘‘broke up with you’‘.

So, this is the first whack you’ll take at Amanda?  Let’s just hope she doesn’t retaliate by making up some story about you having ‘‘fish blood’’ on your hand.

Conclusions: I think this statement alone is enough to render most of his book total B.S, not that there isn’t a lot more to do so too.

 


Tuesday, May 06, 2014

Judge Nencini Issues Harsh Warning To Tell The Truth - So Amanda Knox Does The Precise Opposite

Posted by Our Main Posters




1. Substance Of The Nencini Explanatory Report

The Florence Court of Appeals released the Nencini Motivations Report in Florence one week ago today.

This report explains the rejection of Knox’s and Sollecito’s own first appeal against the Massei trial outcome of 2009. Four years were lost because the Hellmann court, which heard the first iteration of that appeal was bent as Cassation, the competent judge displaced, and now Judge Nencini have all concluded.

The Hellmann outcome of 2011 was mostly annulled, as in “ceased to exist”. The main findings and verdict have zero legal standing, and zero relevance to today’s process though (see below) Knox and Sollecito repeatedly try to ride that dead horse again.

Cassation confirmed Knox’s three-year prison sentence for framing Patrick (for which she has served the time). And Cassation referred the methods and recommendations of the Conti & Vecchiotti consultancy, which Cassation had hammered on legal grounds, to the Florence appeal court for the substance to be reviewed.

Our evidence and law experts here and in Italy have been looking at Judge Nencini’s 347 page report and find it hard-hitting and unequivocally blunt.

It will be extremely hard to appeal against within the very narrow limits Cassation allows. It removes all of Judge Massei’s ambiguities about motives, it reaffirms the witness statements of Curatolo and Quintavalle, and it judicially affirms the validity of the DNA and other forensic evidence against Knox and Sollecito.

There is overwhelming proof of the presence of all three perps, Knox, Sollecito and Guede, in the cottage that night.  Guede is considered to have been brought inside by Knox, who had the only key, and he could not possibly have broken in through Filomena Romanelli’s window in the manner asserted by their defense.

Especially troubling for the defense, the report hints at an illegal suborning of the independent forensic experts appointed by the Hellmann court, and it also hints that the two “supergrass” witnesses, the prisoners Aviello and Alessi, may have been illegally tampered with by Sollecito’s lawyer Giulia Bongiorno, as first claimed 30 months ago.

The report warns that criminal slander of justice officials and other contempts of court will be heavily leaned on.

So the report demolishes the last remnants of Judge Claudio Hellmann’s now annulled acquittal, and substitutes for its fatally flawed reasoning a tightly crafted report that confirms the convictions of Knox and Sollecito.

It confirms that they acted in concert with Guede as Cassation itself long ago concluded had to be the case, and it appears to close any possible argument against the verdict that will carry weight at the Supreme Court.

2. Amanda Knox’s Press-Release Statement In Response

Knox issued a seven paragraph statement later the same day. Maybe not the smartest bit of work.

It is riddled with factual inaccuracies and innuendo, is typically arrogant and condescending in tone, includes the trademark racial innuendos about Italians and the black guy in the case, and shows no signs in its compiling of competent legal help.

Here below we show the various ways in which Knox flouts Judge Nencini’s warning and attempts to mislead. None of what Knox stated was the truth.

Claim: The Hellmann Court Found Knox “Innocent”

I have stated from the beginning of this long ordeal that I am innocent of the accusations against me. I was found innocent by the only court in Italy that retained independent forensic experts to review my case. I want to state again today what I have said throughout this process: I am innocent of the accusation against me, and the recent motivation document does not ““ and cannot ““ change the fact of my innocence.

First even if she was provisionally released following the now-annulled appeal, Amanda Knox was never, repeat never, found innocent. Only Cassation can make that final ruling, and they strongly found against the lower court that had jumped the tracks midway-through.

Even Judge Hellman himself said after his verdict that ‘the truth might be otherwise’ and suggested any reasonable doubt as to guilt has not been categorically and legally dismissed. He seemed to divine that he had failed in his task of bending the outcome in a way that would stay bent.

Second the court that Knox thinks found her innocent no longer exists as a legal fact. It seems to endemically escape Knox that the Hellmann outcome was annulled. Annulled. As in: wiped off the books. It is surprising that even Curt Knox and Ted Simon and David Marriott, while admittedly themselves no masters of Italian law, cannot help Knox to grasp that simple fact. It weakens her to keep clinging to a myth.

One reason it was annulled (and the reasons were overwhelming, one of Italy’s most decisive annullments ever) was that both Cassation and Dr Nencini had good reason to suspect the Hellmann court had been corrupted and had deliberately departed from the evidence and the law. Knox needs to ask herself why the highly qualified Judge Chiari was pushed aside (and immediately resigned in anger) in favor of a wrongly-qualified business judge (who is now ignominiously retired).

Third, it needs to be grasped by Knox that the Conti/Vecchiotti consultancy, far from being legally right and acting independently (and scientifically), was suggested as illegal by Perugia’s chief prosecutor Dr Galati, as appeal judges are forbidden from appointing consultants at that stage. While Cassation passed in ruling on that one, the consultancy outcome was criticised as illogical and legally unsound by both Cassation and Judge Nencini, as biased, full of baseless innuendo about contamination, and possibly tampered with by an American academic hired by the defense.

Conclusion: none of what Knox stated was the truth.

Claim: Only Rudy Guede’s DNA Was Found

The recent motivation document does not ““ and cannot ““ change the forensic evidence: experts agreed that my DNA was not found anywhere in Meredith’s room, while the DNA of the actual murderer, Rudy Guede, was found throughout that room and on Meredith’s body. This forensic evidence directly refutes the multiple-assailant theory found in the new motivation document. This theory is not supported by any reliable forensic evidence.

The forensic evidence is not just the DNA on the knife or in the room. It also includes the extensive traces deposited by Knox in the rest of the crime scene (bathroom, corridor and Filomena’s bedroom), and it also includes all of the autopsy.

Meredith’s room itself was not comprehensively tested for DNA. The room was dusted only for fingerprints, as the investigators had to make a call on prints or DNA.

Guede’s DNA was not found “throughout that room” or all over Meredith’s body. Guede’s DNA was found only in one instance on Meredith’s body, on a part of Meredith’s bra, mixed with Meredith’s blood on a sweatshirt cuff and the purse, and on toilet paper in a bathroom.

Knox’s DNA was found mixed with the blood of Meredith in multiple places, the only known source for which was the pool of blood in Meredith’s bedroom:  multiple prints of Knox’s bare right foot in the hallway and in Knox’ bedroom, and at least five instances of mixed samples containing the DNA of both Meredith and Knox, including in the north bathroom and Filomena’s room, places where Guede did not go.

The court ruled that the blood and mixed DNA evidence found throughout the crime scene places her and Sollecito there at the time of the murder at the same time as Rudy Guede.

Though not DNA, there was one bloody shoe print in Meredith’s bedroom estimated to be Euro size 36-38, compatible with Knox size 37 and with no one else known of who could have left it there.

No fingerprints of anyone were found in the room, just a palmprint of Rudy Guede. Fingerprints were not found even on Knox’s own lamp, which she only confirmed grudgingly at trial was her own, and not found even in Knox’s own bedroom. Overwhelming sign of a cleanup? The courts all believed so.

Conclusion: none of what Knox stated was the truth.

Claim: The Knife As Murder Weapon Was Disproved

The forensic evidence also directly refutes the theory that the kitchen knife was the murder weapon: the court-appointed independent experts confirmed that neither Meredith’s blood nor her DNA was on the alleged murder weapon, which experts also agreed did not match the stab wounds or the bloody imprint of a knife on her pillow.

Judge Nencini’s finding is that two knives HAD to have been involved from both side of Meredith’s throat and the final blow was by a large knife the same size as the one in evidence.

Regarding the large knife, Knox rehashes the same arguments her defense made to no avail before the original trial court that found her guilty. We posted explaining the solid proof here and here.

The only DNA tests that matter with regard to the big knife are (1) the sound finding by Dr Stefanoni that Meredith’s DNA was on the blade - Knox is wrong, the independent experts did not refute that; (2) the sound findings by Dr Stefanoni and the Carabinieri lab that Knox’s DNA was on both the blade and the handle of the knife. None were overturned; contamination was ruled out; and the defense was left without a shot.

The Hellmann-appointed experts confirmed that the genetic profile found on the knife blade was the genetic profile of Meredith Kercher.  The TMB test did not confirm if it was blood, but defense experts were forced to concede that TMB erroneously fails to confirm that blood is present about half the times in assessing minute quantities.

The Hellmann-appointed experts tried to explain away the genetic profile as being the result of contamination, but were never able to identify any scenario by which a knife that had supposedly never left Sollecto’s kitchen contained biological material yielding a clear genetic profile of Meredith Kercher.

Accordingly the Appeals court has ruled the kitchen knife is in fact the one that was wielded by her to strike a final blow, and at the same time there was a second knife in the room used by Sollecito to torture Meredith.

London DNA expert Dr David Balding certified Raf’s DNA as being on the bra clasp. This proves by itself that Sollecito was there. Knox belatedly claimed she stayed at the Via Garibaldi apartment with Sollecito all evening and now and then Sollecito belatedly backs her up. But how could that be if the court has positives of his footprint on the bathroom rug and on the bra, showing he was over at Meredith’s cottage that night? Proof of him present equals proof of her.

The Hellmann-appointed experts were not charged with analyzing the stab wounds, or whether the imprint on a sheet was of a knife or of something else and the result of the fabric being folded - nor was this within their field of expertise.  Defense experts testifying on these issues were in conflict.

Conclusion: none of what Knox stated was the truth.

Claim: The Circumstantial Evidence Is “Unreliable”

In fact, in the prior proceeding in which I was found innocent, the court specifically concluded that the forensic evidence did not support my alleged participation in the crime and further found that the circumstantial evidence was both unreliable and contrary to a conclusion of guilt.

The recent motivation document does not ““ and cannot ““ change the fact that the forensic evidence still does not support my participation and the circumstantial evidence still remains unreliable and contrary to the conclusion of guilt.

Knox appeals to Hellmann’s ruling on the circumstantial evidence being unsound. But the Supreme Court, in annulling Hellmann, explained why it found his arguments illogical, and reminded the court of the standards by which circumstantial evidence must form a coherent whole. Judge Nencini in our opinion amply meets those standards in an elegantly argued report which will be hard to defeat at Rome’s Supreme Court.

Knox herself has proved the “unreliable” one, proven over and over again to be a liar who attests to her own bad memory in written statements, who talks of “dreams her mind made up”, who repeatedly goes vague.

We cannot rely on Knox’s recall of phoning mom, the timing of which moves and sometimes disappears. Knox claims she can’t remember where she was that night, she told a whopper of a lie on her boss, she can’t remember if the door to Filomena’s room was open or closed, she can’t remember her own lamp, she claims she rarely looks at a clock. On and on.

The strongest example of circumstantial evidence Knox can’t shake is the five spots of her DNA mixed with Meredith’s blood. Maybe 2 or 3 spots could be put down to unlucky chance, but five really removes reasonable doubt.

Conclusion: none of what Knox stated was the truth.

Claim: No “Legitimate” Motive Is Identified

And the recent motivation document does not ““ and cannot ““ identify any legitimate motive for my alleged involvement in this terrible crime. No fewer than three motives have been previously advanced by the prosecution and by the courts. Each of these theories was as unsupported as the purported motive found in the new motivation document, and each of these alleged motives was subsequently abandoned by the prosecution or the courts. Like the prior “motives”, the latest “motive” in the new motivation document is not supported by any credible evidence or logic. There is simply no basis in the record or otherwise for this latest theory.

“Proof” of motive is not required in any legal system in the world. The serial misleader Ted Simon should at least admit to that. The motives advanced were not withdrawn or abandoned by successive judges; they were fine-tuned chronologically only within very narrow limits. The sex hazing that went too far was weighted downward and pushed back, and a battle over theft of money was weighted upward and pushed forward.

The court found very compelling evidence that Knox committed the murder and led the pack. It postulates that Meredith and Amanda were incompatible with each other, and that Knox, Sollecito and Guede, high on drugs, first assaulted Meredith, restrained and abused her, and then murdered her with two knives.

Knox was known to be in serious rejection by those she encountered in Perugia for her sharp-elbowed brashness - growing rejection by her flatmates, her employer and the bar customers, and just about everyone she encountered except initially for Sollecito. But soon even he was being given a hard time and has semi-rejected Knox in return ever since. The first words of his 8 November 2007 statement to Judge Matteini were “I wish to not see Amanda ever again.”

And money was a huge looming problem which could have had her back in Seattle in weeks. Knox was known to want to head for China, and was known locally to have an expensive drug habit which had cut her savings in half. She really needed to hang on to that job at Patrick’s bar, especially as she had no work permit.

Sollecito’s bank balance was minimally topped up by his father each month. Francesco seemed to realise cocaine is an expensive habit and didnt want to see his son off down that slippery slope. So with Knox’s own habit, her remaining savings would have run out in weeks. How then to explain to Curt Knox that she really needed a whole lot more? He would have given her a very hard time before any more money flowed.

Conclusion: none of what Knox stated was the truth.

Claim: The Supreme Court Will Allow Another Full Appeal

I will now focus on pursuing an appeal before the Italian supreme court. I remain hopeful that the Italian courts will once again recognise my innocence. I want to thank once again, from the bottom of my heart, all of those””family, friends, and strangers””who have supported me and believe in my innocence.

Cassation wont “once again” recognise innocence. Knox should be encouraged to get real. So should her dummy followers - all her immediate circle know she was involved. There are no obvious grounds for Cassation to second-guess Judge Nencini, a very senior and very respected judge, considering the thoroughness of the Nencini Report. The disjointed series of statements on her blog arguing to the contrary look like the opinions of her friends and fans, not legal minds, and it is time she realizes they have feet of sand and no power to help.

Conclusion: none of what Knox stated was the truth.


Three lawyers and five others supplied the rebuttals for Amanda Knox’s false claims here and elsewhere, such as Knox’s email to Judge Nencini and her interviews on TV. Posts on those follow soon. Below: the careful way in which Italian media explain what Judge Nencini released.


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