Category: The psychology

Friday, January 19, 2018

Interrogation Hoax #21: Illustrating How Batshit Crazy The Knox Interrogation Hoax Has Become

Posted by Our Main Posters

Knox again making things up, despite vast evidence and her defense team to contrary

1. From Impeccable Police Process…

Click here for the overview of our huge Interrogation Hoax expose.

We are coming full circle now, with new translations showing what happened at the very start, from the day Meredith’s body was found, to the day of RS’s and AK’s arrests.

In those days Knox and Sollecito provided information about possible perpetrators in four relatively brief sessions with investigators in the central police station, and they signed the written records on every page.

It is pretty obvious from those signed depositions why no court believed Knox was forced to frame an innocent man.

Even Knox’s own defense team did not believe the hoax (yes she actually had one, though hoaxers leave this awkward fact aside). Though it took us some time to translate it all, some of that stark evidence against Knox has been available in English for years.

And yet it could be quicker to list here who among the Knox apologists HASN’T put this hoax on steroids than who has.

2. To Interrogation Hoax On Steroids

This is from a hyped keynote presentation to a New York conference of senior government justice officials from all over the world.  It mentioned no original sources as proof and was not peer-reviewed. No attempt has ever been made to set the record right. The 37 untrue statements are rebutted in Part 3 below.

Meredith Kercher was found raped [untrue] and murdered in Perugia, Italy. Almost immediately [untrue] police suspected 20-year-old Amanda Knox [untrue], an American student and one of Kercher’s roommates””the only one who stayed in Perugia after the murder [untrue]. Knox had no history of crime [untrue] or violence and no motive [untrue].

But something about her demeanor [untrue] such as an apparent lack of affect [untrue], an outburst of sobbing [untrue], or her girlish and immature behavior [untrue] led police to believe [untrue] she was involved and lying, when she claimed she was with Raffaele Sollecito, her new Italian boyfriend, that night [untrue]. 

Armed with a prejudgment of Knox’s guilt [untrue] several police officials interrogated [untrue] the girl on and off for four days [untrue]. Her final interrogation started on November 5 at 10 p.m. [untrue] and lasted until November 6 at 6 a.m [untrue] during which time she was alone, without an attorney, tag-teamed by a dozen police [untrue] and did not break for food [untrue] or sleep [untrue].

In many ways, Knox was a vulnerable suspect””young, far from home, without family, and forced to speak in a language [untrue] in which she was not fluent. Knox says she was repeatedly threatened [untrue] and called a liar [untrue]. She was told [untrue], falsely [untrue], that Sollecito, her boyfriend, disavowed her alibi and that physical evidence placed her at the scene [untrue].

Despite a law that mandates the recording of interrogations, police and prosecutors maintain that these sessions were not recorded [untrue]. 

Police had failed to provide Knox with an attorney [untrue] or record the interrogations [untrue] so all the confessions [untrue] attributed to her were ruled inadmissible in court [untrue].

Still, the damage was done [untrue]. The confession [untrue] set into motion a hypothesis-confirming investigation [untrue], prosecution, and conviction”¦.

It is now clear that the proverbial mountain of discredited [untrue] evidence used to convict Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito was nothing but a house of cards [untrue] built upon a false confession [untrue].

3. And Pesky Hard Facts

Neither Knox’s own lawyers nor any court ever believed Knox’s fluctuating versions of what happened on 5-6 November 2007 to make her frame Patrick for murder and maintain that for 2 weeks.

Only a guilty person would let such claims stand. All courts saw that and so Knox is a convicted felon for life. She served three years for the malicious accusation, and she still owes the victim $100,000.

Below, how to destroy the hoax in 12 points.  See further our extremely detailed 20-part series on Knox’s interrogation hoax (via the link in our right column) with numerous translations as proof.

1. Police provably kept open minds, and did not immediately suspect Knox though her odd behaviors were hard to miss, or treat her differently than others with possible useful facts.

2. She was not the only one with possible useful facts told to stay in Perugia for several days; others were told they might be needed again; no others complained.

3. There is no documented investigator prejudgement of guilt, even at her fourth and final quite short session on 5 Nov when the subject was provably once again listing more visitors to the house.

4. She was never tag-teamed by a dozen police, and she signed every page of all four session reports which named the mere several officers who were there.

5. There was no 50 or more hours of sessions. No session lasted from 10:00 pm to 6:00 am. All four of her sessions over 4 days combined may not have exceeded that length of time.

6. The fourth and final session on 5-6 Nov was unplanned, and when she turned up late on 5 Nov and was told to go get some sleep, she insisted she wanted to remain.

7. All four sessions were recorded and she signed. She was never threatened or called a liar; her conniption when shown a text message on 5-6 Nov happened spontaneously and very fast.

8. On 5-6 Nov 2007 Sollecito also u-turned - and blamed Knox! No tag-team there. Knox never confessed; she made a false charge of murder against someone else, allowed to stand for several weeks.

9. She did not simply claim she was with Sollecito that night; under no pressure she repeated several times in writing that she went out and all courts allowed that. Sollecito said she did too.

10. After she broke she was told several times she should not talk further without an attorney. No questions were asked of her after that but she pressed on.

11. She had a translator at all four sessions, though she herself chose to speak in Italian now and then. She made and handed over notes in Italian.

12. At trial she confirmed she was provided with refreshments and helped to get some sleep. She was never refused bathroom breaks and confirmed she was not hit.

4. In Conclusion

This hoax is a money-tree for Knox. A blood-money tree. Act the real victim, shake the tree, and tens of thousands fall out. Knox is to blame, but far from the only one. Most of the hoaxers are trying to shake their own money-trees too. Knox’s speaker agency and her PR and lawyers and publishers all want a big payday. Huge sums are at stake.

Can the hoax survive?  Probably not for long. It needed a 100% rebuttal which finally we have achieved now. And it needs Knox’s confidence and her credibility. Even one disbelieving voice from the audience could show the world that the empress has no clothes.

Thursday, November 30, 2017

The Academic Fraud By Martha Grace Duncan Enabled By Emory & Harvard Law Schools

Posted by Our Main Posters

Emory Law Dean Schapiro; Martha Grace Duncan; Harvard Law Dean Manning

1. Yet Another Major Academic Fraud

Our main poster The Machine has spotted yet another academic fraud.

She is Martha Grace Duncan of Emory University, in Atlanta USA.

She joins a long line of other academic fraud we continue to expose. She follows and freely borrows from such other academic charlatans as Doug Bremner, Chris Halkidis, Greg Hampikian, Saul Kassin, Michael Krom, Michael Wiesner, Peter Gill, and Mark Waterbury.

She especially emulates the quack law-school psychologist Saul Kassin. He also could not explain the equal official focus on Sollecito by way of the madonna/whore complex which the PR shill Nina Burleigh also propagated hard.

Christine Corcos runs the blog where the Martha Duncan notice that the Machine spotted appears. She tells us in an email that the article will appear in a scholarly legal journal. Christine Corcos is not certain whether peer review has already happened or is still ahead but it is expected.

But Duncan’s flippant, xenophobic, callous, me-me-me paper is already widely published without peer review. By Harvard University Law School! Those who failed to vet it include Nasheen Kalkat, Alexa Meera Singh, and Brianne Power.

Duncan promotes the paper avidly and seems to have already duped thousands. She beats the drum about the paper on these lines.

Previous versions of this Article were presented at (1) the Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Università  degli Studi di Torino; (3) the European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy; (3) the Emory Law Faculty, (4) the Emory Psychoanalytic Studies Program, and (5) the Emory Workshop on Geographies of Violence.

2. Duncan’s Simplistic, Self-Serving Thesis

Large parts of the paper are about Duncan herself. In the passages devoted to the case. Duncan seeks to make readers believe that Knox was demonized, charged and convicted.

Why? Because she was “free-spirited”. We get endless tortured examples. That’s it, apparently. Nothing else. There was no real case against Knox at all.  Foolish prosecutors. Foolish judges. Foolish juries. Foolish Italy.

And the demonizer who amazingly swayed all of them? One of the prosecutors, Dr Mignini, an Italian and a Catholic (both groups Duncan tars as anti-women).

3. Duncan’s Appalling List Of Omissions

Duncan’s flippant, xenophobic, me-me-me paper with its dozens of false Knox PR talking points omits even more than she fraudulently includes.

1. Duncan ignores the victim, Meredith (mentioned only briefly and pretty callously).

2. Duncan ignores that Knox was not an exchange student, that she was perhaps the only American student who turned her back on available funding and any possibility of course credits.

3.  Duncan ignores the bizarrely grubby, noisy, sharp-elbowed, tin-eared, self-absorbed behavior that was making Knox so unpopular in Perugia.

4. Duncan ignores Knox’s proven over-the-top drug use, extending back to Seattle and that Knox was stinking of cat-pee on the morning of the murder, a sign of cocaine use (and of no recent shower). 

5. Duncan ignores the breaks Dr Mignini gave Knox. She ignores what he actually said. She ignores that he have her several breaks which her lawyers urgen her to take.

6. Duncan ignores Knox’s endless trail of incriminating behaviors.

7. Duncan ignores the co-defendant Sollecito (mentioned only once, because he doesnt fit the demonizing-of-Knox theory).

8. Duncan ignores the kind boss Knox maliciously framed, put in prison for two weeks, served three years for framing, and still owes $100,000 (Patrick).

9. Duncan ignores that two courts were provably corrupted and known to be so in Italy and that the mafias had a major role.

10. Duncan ignores that Knox’s so-called “interrogation” was a hoax, she was treated well, and she did not confess.

11. Duncan ignores or advances over 30 other hoaxes as listed in our right column.

12. Duncan ignores that the 30-plus judges who handled the case published extensive lists of evidence.

13. Duncan ignores that there were two unanimous pro-guilt juries (and one corrupted one).

14. Duncan ignores that Knox was NOT exonerated by the Supreme Court, bent though it was, and she was placed at the scene of the crime. .

15. Duncan ignores Knox’s promotion of the stalking of the victim’s family (a felony).

16. Duncan ignores that Italy’s murder and incarceration rates are 1/6 those of the US.

17. Duncan ignores the co-prosecutor Dr Manuela Comodi, never once mentioned, presumably because a very bright woman prosecutor doesnt fit the demonizing-of-Knox theory.

18. Duncan ignores the huge wave of court documents or trial transcripts which of course support none of her thesis.

More? Please see here.

Friday, February 26, 2016

Surprising Similarities Between Sammy The Bull Gravano And The Ex-Perps In Meredith’s Case

Posted by Chimera

Overview

This piece is about Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano, an admitted serial killer.

He had a career in the mafia, and was the underboss and hitman for the notorious mob boss John Gotti.  Although his is a case about organized crime, there are many similarities between Gotti v Gravano, and Knox v Sollecito v Guede.

Some Gotti/Gravano history

John Gotti was a captain in the Gambino crime family (named after Carlo Gambino), based in New York, NY.  A serious problem emerged for him when several members of his ‘‘crew’’ were indicted for drug dealing.

These indictments included his younger brother, Gene Gotti, and Angelo Ruggiero, a childhood friend.  The policy within the crime family for many years had been ‘‘deal-and-die’‘.

The upper leadership of the mob had figured that drug dealing was too high profile a crime, and that the extra police attention was not worth it.  True, this was extremely hypocritical, as the bosses collected their cut of all income, knowing that a large portion of those proceeds came directly from drugs.

The drug indictments suddenly meant that John Gotti was in danger.

Though not personally implicated, he thought he might also be killed on the assumption that he approved of the alleged dealing.  He decided to strike first, to save his own neck by having then boss Paul Castellano ‘‘rubbed out’‘.  Gotti solicited the help of Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano, who was known as a prolific killer.

Paul Castellano had inducted Gravano into the mob in 1978.  However, Gravano had no qualms about killing his ‘‘friend’’ since Gotti offered him even more: a promotion to ‘‘capo’’ or to ‘‘captain’‘.

Gravano helped Gotti set up the hit for December 16, 1985.  With Castellano (and driver Tommy Billoti who was at the time underboss) dead, the family was temporarily leaderless.  Gotti got himself voted in, and took over the Gambino family.

Castellano wasn’t the only ‘‘friend’’ that Gravano murdered, or would later murder.  Gravano murdered Robert di Bernardo—a business partner, Louie Molito—a childhood friend, and others.  He then took over any assets that they had.  Some ‘‘friend’‘.

For the next several years, Gotti deliberately put himself into the spotlight.  He managed to win 3 criminal trials, and seemed untouchable.  However, in 1990, his mouth got him into trouble, and the FBI recorded Gotti implicating himself and other Gambino associates on murder and other crimes.

Gotti also made many nasty insults towards Gravano, now his underboss.

Gotti, Gravano, and Frank LeCasio (then the 3rd in command) were arrested December 11, 1990.  All were held without bail.  When Gravano finally heard the tapes of what Gotti had been saying about him, he turned and became a ‘‘mob rat’‘.  Gotti and LeCasio were convicted of murder, racketeering and other crimes, and received life without parole. 

Gravano, however got a deal that would put Karla Homolka to shame: 5 years for 19 murders.  True, he could have served 20 for racketeering, but the judge cut it far below that.

For the complete interview, please see the YouTube video at the top here. This was shot in the 1990’s and converted to digital, so the quality is not that great.  Here are a few more for background.  The third one, the movie ‘‘Gotti’’ is fairly accurate, though off on some points.

• More on Sammy Gravano.
• More on the Gambino Family.
• More on John Gotti.

Gambino family highlights

(1) Albert Anastasia (underboss to Vincent Magino) made his ‘‘friend’’ disappear.  Anastasia then took over.

(2) Carlo Gambino (underboss to Albert Anastasia) had his ‘‘friend’’ shot in a barbershop.  Gambino then took over.

(3) Carlo Gambino made sure the ‘‘best qualified person’’ took over when he had a heart attack.  He hand picked his brother-in-law Paul Castellano to succeed him.

(4) Paul Castellano’s underboss, Neil Delacroce, died of cancer.  Castellano hand picked his buddy, Tommy Bilotti, to become new underboss.

(5) John Gotti and Salvatore (Sammy) Gravano, had their ‘‘friend’’ Paul Castellano shot dead in public.  Gotti took over.

(6) While in prison, John Gotti made sure the best qualified person succeeded him as boss.  He hand picked his son, John Jr.

So…. murder and nepotism seem to be how the top spots get filled in the mafia.

Excerpts From the Video

2:55 (Gravano)  You can relate me to a soldier in Vietnam who killed hundreds of people.  I was a soldier of Cosa Nostra.  I am a hitman.

No. You are just a slimeball who kills for money.

3:25 (Gravano)  Here I am

3:30 (Sawyer)  They have said that you are the single most important witness ever to testify against the mob.

3:36 (Gravano)  I think I am.

3:39 (Sawyer)  So there’s a word you use, for people who turn ...

3:42 (Gravano)  Who cooperate.  You trying to goat me into the word?  Rat?  Is that the word?

3:51 (Sawyer)  That’s the word.  So are you a rat?

3:53 Gravano)  I look at it as ‘‘I was betrayed.  I betrayed him.’‘

3:59 (Sawyer)  Double crosser?

4:01 (Gravano) Loud sigh ... master double-crosser.  John’s a double-crosser.  I’m a master double-crosser.  We played chess, and he lost.

Gravano had in the past sneered at the idea of people testifying.  However, when it is his turn, he dismisses it as a game.

4:30 (Gravano)  Power has a way, where you can believe for a while that you can walk on water.  And I think this is what happened to him.

And people who can walk away from 19 murders?  What are they thinking?

5:25 (Sawyer)  Were you Gotti’s friend?

5:30 (Gravano)  His pit bull.  And his friend.

5:42 (Sawyer)  What was the reason, the real reason you cooperated?  Or was it just to save your skin?

5:48 (Gravano)  I was just tired of the mob, and tired of fighting.  It was a door out of the mob.  You know I watched the David Karresch incident, and I would say to myself: ‘‘how could these people get so brainwashed?  Are they crazy?  Are they nuts?’’ And then I look at myself in the mirror and I say ‘‘brainwashed?’’  Here I am on orders, killing people left and right.  And I’m calling them brainwashed.

6:18 (Sawyer)  There was a book written about you that you said you had a characteristic of committing murder with the non-chalence of someone pulling open the tab on a can of beer.  That was about all that it phased you, or about all it took.

6:30 (Gravano)  As far as being a hitman goes, I was actually good at it.

6:36 (Sawyer)  Because you were fast, and lethal?

6:39 (Gravano)  And loyal.  If I was on your case, I dropped everything.

6:45 (Sawyer)  Look at this list.  There are ... how many?

6:49 (Gravano) 19

6:51 (Sawyer)  Serial killers don’t have 19.

6:53 (Gravano)  We’re worse than they are.

Okay, which is it?  You turned on Gotti because it was a chess game?  Or you did it because you were tired of the mob and the games?  It can’t be both.

7:00 (Gravano)  We only kill ourselves.  What are you worried about?  The public seems to like what we do.  Look at John Gotti.  If I have 19, forget about what he has.  When he wanted a hit, he wanted it done yesterday.  He would sent me to supervise it, or to control it, make sure the job got done.  And I obviously did.  When you’re the boss, and you’re giving orders, you’re credited with all of it, even if you’re not on the street.

Gravano is pulling the ‘‘John was even worse’’ card here.  And he seems somewhat proud of what he has done.  Sicko.

17:55 (Gravano)  I remember something that surprised me is that I had no remorse at all.  None.  I didn’t feel sorry for him in the least.  I felt power.  I felt like my adrenaline in my body was completely out of control.

18:09 (Sawyer)  You were excited?

18:13 (Gravano)  I guess it’s like an animal going after its prey.

18:35 (Gravano)  Everything changed.  .... At a club, oh, no Sammy, you don’t have to wait in line.  You can come right in.

18:40 (Sawyer)  You were a player?

18:45 (Gravano)  I was out of the minor leagues.  I was in the major leagues.

No comment needed.

Other parallels with our pair

• Gravano is of Italian-American descent.
• Knox is American.
• Sollecito is Italian.

• Gravano was paid $1.5 million for ‘‘his’’ book called Underboss.
• Knox was paid $3.8 million for ‘‘her’’ book called Waiting to be Heard.
• Sollecito was paid $950,000 for ‘‘his’’ book, called Honor Bound

• Gravano tried to ‘‘cash in’’ on his murders by admitting what he had done.
• Knox/Sollecito tried to ‘‘cash in’’ on Meredith’s murder

• ’‘Gravano’s’’ book was really written by Peter Maas.
• ’‘Knox’s’’ book was really written by Linda Kuhlman.
• ’‘Sollecito’s’’ book was really written by Andrew Gumbel.

• The families of Gravano’s victims are outraged he is cashing in on the notoriety of his crimes.
• The Kercher family is outraged AK/RS are cashing in on the notoriety of their crimes.

• Gravano got an interview from Diane Sawyer.
• Knox’s first (of many) interviews was with Diane Sawyer.
• Sollecito’s first (of several) interviews was with Katie Couric.

• Gambino boss John Gotti was referred to as ‘‘John Gotti’‘.
• Sammy Gravano was referred to as ‘‘John Gotti’s Hitman’‘.
• Amanda Knox is referred to as ‘‘Amanda Knox’‘
• Raffaele Sollecito is referred to as ‘‘Amanda Knox’s Italian Ex-Boyfriend’‘

• Gravano has no problems airing personal details about his ‘‘friend’’ John.
• Knox has no problems airing personal details about her ‘‘friend’’ Meredith.

• Gravano criticizes Gotti’s public lifestyle, then after his deal becomes a media whore.
• Knox claims she wants to live in peace, but becomes a media whore to sway public opinion, and sell ‘‘her’’ book.
• Sollecito claims he was just dragged into Knox’s case, but becomes a media whore for the same reasons as Knox.

• Gravano blames Gotti for destroying the Gambino family, even though he was the one who testified at trial.
• Knox seems to blame Meredith for her own death, even though she stuck the knife in (well, she had it coming).

• Gravano (at least he claims) to have rigged Gotti’s racketeering trial to ensure an acquittal (or at worst a hung jury)
• Knox’s and Sollecito’s case was rigged by Hellmann/Zanetti and Marsca/Bruno to ensure an acquittal.

• Gravano was psychologically evaluated before leaving prison, and the results were disturbing.
• Knox and Sollecito were psychologically evaluated in prison, and the results were disturbing.

• Gravano smeared other mob associates for getting involved with drug trafficking.
• Knox smeared others (especially in her book) for drug use.

• Gravano’s drug smears were hypocritical as he was later brought to justice for drug trafficking.
• Knox’s drug smears were hypocritical, as she was into drugs, and slept with a dealer (Federico Martini) for drugs.

• Gravano’s most depraved act (outside of murder), was marrying a woman whose brother he had killed (Nick Scibetta).
• Knox’s most depraved act (outside of murder), was continuing her sex-for-drugs deal even after Meredith’s death.
• Sollecito’s most depraved act (outside of murder), was his various bride shopping efforts to avoid extradition.

• Warning signs?  Gravano murdered his business ‘‘friends’‘, so betraying Gotti was no real surprise.
• Warning signs?  Knox staged a break in, wrote rape stories, and threw rocks at cars, so violence in her home was no real surprise.
• Warning signs?  Sollecito had supposedly attacked a classmate with scissors, so stabbing someone was no real surprise.

• Collateral damage?  Gravano was prepared to kill innocent bystanders during the December 16, 1985 hit on boss Paul Castellano.
• Collateral damage?  Knox framed an innocent person (Lumumba), and tried to pin it all on accomplice Rudy Guede.
• Collateral damage?  Sollecito helped to pin it all on Guede, and cost his sister Vanessa her career with the Carabinieri.

A Final Thought:

Knox liked the Beatles.  Here is ‘‘Working Class Hero’’ by John Lennon.

.... There’s room at the top
They’re telling you still
.... But first you must learn how to
Smile as you kill
.... If you want to be like all
The folks on the ‘Hill

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Why The Peaking Of Rage And Early Deaths Of Middle-Aged Lower-Prospects Whites In The US?

Posted by Peter Quennell

Recently a study was published showing that middle-aged less-successful whites in the US are dying off unusually fast.

Approximately this same group may be behind the “radical” candidatures for president of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. No question but that those supporters have a serious unmet need.

It may also be behind a lot of the rage we encounter on the web.

In the New York Times this “reference group theory” hypothesis by Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist, has just appeared. Excerpts from a longer whole:

Why are whites overdosing or drinking themselves to death at higher rates than African-Americans and Hispanics in similar circumstances? Some observers have suggested that higher rates of chronic opioid prescriptions could be involved, along with whites’ greater pessimism about their finances.

Yet I’d like to propose a different answer: what social scientists call reference group theory. The term “reference group” was pioneered by the social psychologist Herbert H. Hyman in 1942, and the theory was developed by the Columbia sociologist Robert K. Merton in the 1950s. It tells us that to comprehend how people think and behave, it’s important to understand the standards to which they compare themselves.

How is your life going? For most of us, the answer to that question means comparing our lives to the lives our parents were able to lead. As children and adolescents, we closely observed our parents. They were our first reference group.

And here is one solution to the death-rate conundrum: It’s likely that many non-college-educated whites are comparing themselves to a generation that had more opportunities than they have, whereas many blacks and Hispanics are comparing themselves to a generation that had fewer opportunities….

In the fourth quarter of 2015, the median weekly earnings of white men aged 25 to 54 were $950, well above the same figure for black men ($703) and Hispanic men ($701). But for some whites “” perhaps the ones who account for the increasing death rate “” that may be beside the point.

Their main reference group is their parents’ generation, and by that standard they have little to look forward to and a lot to lament.

In a comment on a previous thread our frequent poster Grahame Rhodes described a syndrome among ex-military looking for a cause, and asked if we have any ideas.

Strange thing about the civilian mind set concerning Military personnel who have been involved in the actual horrors of warfare. Most civilians are squeamish about the necessity of eradicating an enemy by killing them. They deny the horrors of warfare by pretending that it does not exist, and yet civilians pay for the training and the arming of military personnel to keep them safe. Of course after soldiers are no longer members of any military organization they are generally ignored and even vilified for having taken part in saving any form of saving democracy.

Recently I was at a reunion quite close to Seattle, and sitting at a table among a group of perhaps thirty or so old soldiers the closes one asked me.
“What do you see?”
I said “I see a lot of old soldiers.”
The answer I got was as follows.
“Ah yes but I see far more than that. See him over there? He’s a weapons tech, or perhaps him, he used to teach unarmed combat, or those two who have served in several hot spots the world over.
There is a wealth of knowledge here from medics to drivers etc: But there is something far more important. Everybody you see, all highly trained in warfare and subversive operations are bored out of their mind. They need something to do.”

I said that was very true and very interesting. The point being that when old soldiers are put out to pasture all that training goes to waste. That is a shame and something should be done about it.

Any suggestions?

My own suggestion for what it’s worth was this.

Great story. I know many or most ex-military have a tough time. Here’s an idea that I think might provide them with a viable way forward.

You’d think from what comes out of Hollywood that all our great problems can only be solved by some perverse lone-wolf superhero maverick essentially working against great resistance and with no team or one that is very small.

In fact that is not at all how most real progress works. The two things that create all good change are (1) group-group-group and (2) “seeing” systems and how to adjust them or build new ones afresh.

Really huge and significant processes can be made to come alive, which would fit well with most purely military missions. The kind of thing totally lacking after Bush’s wonderful war in Iraq,

A massive lack throughout the world of people skilled and organized according to these two principles is the root cause of global growth slowing down. There is shockingly little of it going on though US corporations and some others are doing more than they did.

Ex military are already at least 50% down the road in each of them.

They have learned dozens of systems, including the personal skills part, and they are very used to doing things in groups.

“Civilianizing” those abilities could have them playing key roles in exciting processes in communities and corporations and so on that need to upgrade.

Do you know of any book or training that says anything like this? If not I sense a need. As to what to read first, I’d suggest this book as a “compulsory read”.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business/dp/0062060244

Tuesday, February 09, 2016

Endemic Hints By RS That He WAS One Of The Real Killers Pretty Blatant In Italy #1

Posted by Peter Quennell

TV commentator Selvaggia Lucarelli voices what numerous Italians think


“Social Network For Dead People Launched In Italy By Amanda Knox’s Ex-Boyfriend”

We didnt make that headline up. Really. Sollecito’s gruesome venture is described here.

Called Memories, the business will provide a wide range of “graveyard” services, including lightning candles for the deceased, laying wreaths and flowers at graves, and even tombstone cleaning. Once a service is completed, the client’s profile will be updated with a high-resolution photo showing the work done. The prices start at €45 (50 dollars).

The project received a €66,000 grant (nearly $74,000) from Apulia’s regional authorities. Some extra expenses were covered by Sollecito and his family, The Local reported.

According to Sollecite, the idea came to him after his mother died in 2005. The grieving young man thought it would be a convenient way to look after her grave. “I wanted a way to make remembering her easier,” he explained.

Selvaggia Lucarelli is an influential blogger and a sharp and often very funny guest commentator on many TV shows in Italy.  Like many in Italy, she doesnt just want to hold her nose and give the death-fixated fruitcake a free pass.

This time Sollecito ends up in the clutches of a journalist known for her controversy and sharp tone.

It seems that Lucarelli did not welcome the new start-up by the engineer from Puglia.

“See, Raffaele Sollecito, this thing to create a portal for funerals may seem clever but but is really macabre and in addition paints you for who you are (disrespectful and unintelligent) and casts an even more disturbing shadow over you - a healthy person judged innocent by a court while half of Italy is still convinced he’s guilty would instead seek media oblivion.

And if not oblivion, at least a career a few fields away from the smell of death, the suspicion that death carries with it, the face of a little girl named Meredith who was killed like a dog.

But there is obviously a sadistic pleasure in you wanting to see yourself still, with your hair slicked back and a funereal expression, on the front pages of newspapers associated with the word “death” and social networks associated with predictable jokes on the name Meredith.

Meredith needs to be remembered and respected in the silence of your home, not on a portal through which you try to make your wallet fat - you know that wont happen - and boost your macabre popularity.

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Latest Of The Documentaries That Make Us Focus On Psychopaths And Their Trails Of Wreckage

Posted by Peter Quennell

This is a one-hour YouTube video of an excellent BBC Channel 5 report aired several weeks ago.

Our poster DavidB kindly drew our attention to it in a comment. There are increasingly more of these heads-up reports on YouTube, some of the most useful videos there.

Tuesday, June 09, 2015

Why Desperation Sets In At The Pesky Similarities Between Amanda Knox And Jodi Arias

Posted by Chimera

1. The Incessant Comparisons

Google “Amanda Knox” along with “Jodi Arias” who was recently convicted of killing her ex-boyfriend and you will see what I mean.

Of comparisons between the two, there are many dozens. Some pieces damningly list the similarities, and then in numerous defensive comments the facts about the real Knox get mangled. Some pieces try to argue that there are differences, and in comments the writer’s numerous false claims get nailed.

To bring out quite forcefully the stark similarities, this post looks at the interrogations. At the time of this posting, Arias has been convicted of first degree murder, but sentenced to life without parole, since the jury would not hand down the death penalty.

Meanwhile, Knox has been provisionally found not guilty in a highly suspect Fifth Chambers action which might be overturned by an order of the President, or by a challenge by the Florence court, or by a challenge by another arm of the Supreme Court.

2. Similarities Under Interrogation

Below is all of Arias’s 2008 interrogation after her arrest (posted in 4 parts) with notes on some of the similarities. Knox was only ever interrogated once, on 17 December 2007 (at her own request), in a couple of hours, so I also draw on some of her other statements.

Most of what Jodi Arias says is just babbling and rambling, a trait common to Knox.  But unlike Knox, Arias doesn’t have a media campaign going on to release her, and Arias hasn’t been able to bend or corrupt any courts.

Part 1 (2 hours 40 minutes)

 

Part 2 (2 hours)

 

Part 3 (2 hours)

 

Part 4 (2 hours)

 

Assessment

My view from watching this: Arias is truly emotionally vulnerable here, but even so, her mind is constantly trying to get her out of this.

The problem is that she doesn’t seem to register just how much the contradictions ensnare her.  Arias, like Knox, thinks she can talks her way out of anything.  She seems stunned that her ‘‘little-girl routine’’ doesn’t win over the police.

Arias seems to think during the police questionings, she can simply make it all go away if she keeps denying.  Problem is, her interview is riddled with partial admissions.  Knox seems to think that she can win over the media if she keeps denying ‘‘she killed her friend’‘.

However, when Arias finally does testify, she is cold, sarcastic, and testy.  (Sound familiar?)

I imagine if Amanda Knox ‘‘had’’ been formally questioned without lawyers, it would have looked something like this.  Yes, it is segmented, but it would be mindnumbing to do a complete transcript.  However, there were many gems from this questioning.  It is chilling to watch, but if you can, do it, and ask yourself if that isn’t another ‘‘Knox’’ performing there.

Note these telling exchanges, all from Part 1

(5:46) Det. Flores: I travelled all the way up here to talk to you.  Because, I’ve been working on Travis’ case ever since it happened.  And I know exactly what happened, how he was killed.  I know a lot of details.  And just recently we found quite a bit of evidence, and I’ll discuss that with you.  The main thing that I’m looking for though is answers, on why certain things happened, and also to get your statement.

(6:25) Arias: Okay.

(6:35) Det Flores: A lot of details in this case haven’t been released to the public or even to Travis’ family yet.  And those details are known only to us, and to the person who did it.  And that’s why we’re here. I believe you know some of those details, and you can help us.

(6:51) Arias: I would love to help you in any way that I can

One of the most laughable statements ever made in the case.  8 hours later, she still won’t give them a straight answer.

(8:45) Arias: Should we record this?  (reaching for the remote).

Seriously?  Arias has been arrested for murder, and her first act is pretend to be ‘‘helping the police’‘.  A bit like Knox, who insisted she was helping the police, even after being charged with Meredith’s murder

(10:35) Arias: I know that people have been posting a lot of really nice things on Facebook, you know, memories, and I thought maybe I should do that.  And I realized looking back in it is sounded immature, more like a ‘‘Dear Travis’’ kind of letter, so I took it down…

(10:53) Det Flores: Personal?

(10:55) Arias: Yeah, some of it was personal, not too personal, nothing inappropriate.

At least least Arias isn’t emailing people questions about whether Travis likes anal, or what he uses vasoline for.  Give her some credit.

(12:00) Arias: I didn’t realize until I was speaking with Ryan Burns, the guy that’s in Utah.  We’ve been talking, we try not to talk about that, because it’s kinda like ... ugh (makes disgusted face).  And plus Travis is my ex-boyfriend, so, when you’re mourning your friend, how do you talk to to your new potential mating person?  .... So, it’s kind of a grey area.

Yes, Jodi thinks dead bodies are ‘‘yucky’‘, and that mourning an ex, while talking to a new potential partner is a ‘‘grey area’‘.  Did she go run off to buy any lingerie?

(12:15) Arias: I try not to talk about it too much, but he [Travis] comes up a lot

Your ex-boyfriend was stabbed 29 times and shot in the head.  Annoying, how often ‘‘he’’ comes up.

(12:20) Arias: And it was though him [Ryan] that he thought things were really weird, and some think that you had a hand in it.

Maybe because you find the topic of your ex so annoying when you try to spend time with new boyfriend….

(12:28) Det. Flores: I’ve talked to a lot of people.  And everyone is pointing the finger at you.

(12:35) Arias: I know.

(12:36) Det Flores: Everyone is saying - I don’t understand what happened to Travis.  I don’t know who killed him, but you need to look at Jodi.  And sometimes the simplest answers are the correct ones.

Something Knox found out (and soon Arias soon will), is that when you have suspicions about someone, you bring them up immediately.  You don’t wait until you become a supect yourself.

(13:30) Det. Flores: I know that you still had a relationship of convenience, even though you were not boyfriend/girlfriend anymore, that you two were still having sexual relations with ...

(13:45) Arias: Does his family know?  Just curious.

(13:50) Det. Flores: No, his family doesn’t know anything.

(13:54) Arias: I’m interested in protecting how he is remembered as well.

Another laughable claim.  Jodi would later accuse him of everything from being abusive and controlling to pedophilia.  Knox uses Meredith’s memory to cash in on a blood money book ‘‘Waiting to be Heard’‘, does dozens of interviews claiming to be a victim, and uses her website to raise money for her legal fees to get off on Meredith’s murder.

(16:10) Arias: Too much of my nightlife was about him [Travis].  He would text ‘‘hey I’m getting sleepy….. zzzz’‘.  That was his code for ‘‘coast is clear, come on over’‘.  (long, unrelated rambling).

Less than 3 minutes after saying she wants to protect how Travis is remembered, Jodi is already implying Travis is horny, and leaking unnecessary details.  An attempt to smear him?  Who else does that?

(19:20) Arias: I used to always joke, ‘‘that, regardless of what the Bible says, and yes I’m Christian, I just live my life by the 10 commandments, and that those are my rules,

‘’ .... so I always used to joke about that.

Your ‘‘friend’’ has been savagely stabbed to death, and after being arrested you are making jokes about fornication.  Who else would make such jokes after the loss of a close one?

For the next 15 minutes Arias babbles on about unrelated things.  Det. Flores has incredible patience, as most would have slit their wrists listening to her.  But finally he tries to pull Jodi back to the topic at hand. 

He makes several attempts, but Arias keeps trying to divert the topic away from Travis and his death.  After about 1/2 hour of Jodi talking nonsense, Detective Flores tries to get Jodi to give a timeline and direction of her travels.

(52:20) Det. Flores: So, you took this trip and you left on Monday the 2nd until Thursday?

(52:44) Arias: I think so.

(52:50) Det. Flores: So, we have here about 48 hours…. this trip would take you a little over 48 hours….  I have a problem with this trip.

(53:06) Arias:  Well I first went to ....

(53:30) Det. Flores: I’ve gone over this trip over and over in my mind.  There’s still 20-some odd hours, even if you pull over to sleep, a couple of times ....

(53:42) Arias:  Did I tell you I got stranded?

(53:46) Det. Flores: Yeah, you mentioned that.  If you slept for 10 hours, here and here (pointing on map), it would still leave 18 some odd hours, for something else.  This is the trip that people are focusing on.  People are saying that she left .... Travis was killed on Wednesday.

(54:22) Arias: I did not go near his house.

(54:27) Det Flores: I pulled your cell records.  Your cell phone was turned off, between here and here (indicates on map).  What does that show me?

(54:45) Arias: No, no, no.

(54:50) Det. Flores: Is there plenty of time for you to do this?  Yes.  And do I believe that you had come to visit Travis?  Yes.  Did you have the opportunity?  Yes, there were no other witnesses.

(55:10) Arias: Well, I didn’t turn it off physically, but it died.

(55:16) Det. Flores: And you magically found your charger here?  (pointing on map)

(55:20) Arias: It was under the passenger side of the front seat.

(55:23) Det. Flores: When you were lost, you couldn’t have pulled over and found it?

(55:41) Det. Flores: I’ve been focusing on why your phone turns off here, outside of Los Angeles ... because the [Highway] 15 goes through Las Vegas.  It never goes through Arizona.

Detective Flores zeroed in on a huge gap Arias’ timeline.  Why did a 48 hour trip take more than 3 days?  He also noted that her cell phone was not active for most of that trip.

In Peugia, the police had noted a discrepancy in Sollecito’s timeline.  He claimed to have reported the burglarly then waited outside for the police.  In fact phone records showed the Postal Police showed up about 15-20 minutes before he made the call.  It was later discovered that Knox and Sollecito had turned off their cell phones (something they never did), during the time of the murder.

(58:25) Det. Flores: Were you at Travis’ house on Wednesday?

(58:28) Arias: Absolutely not.  I was nowhere near Mesa.

She is very sure then, but with some more questioning, she will not only be there, but a witness to the actual murder.

(58:40) Det. Flores: What if I could show you proof you were?  Would that change your mind?

(58:45) Arias: I was not there.  (trying to look convincing)

(58:59) Det. Flores: You were at Travis’ house.  You had a sexual encounter.  Which, there’s pictures.  And I know you know there’s pictures, because I have them.  I will show them to you.  So, I am asking you to be honest with me.  I know you were there.

(59:30) Arias: Are you sure that those pictures aren’t from another time?

(59:35) Det. Flores: Absolutely positive.

(59:40) Arias: The last time I had any sexual contact with Travis was in May.

(59:55) Det Flores: You know how I told you about the camera? The camera was damaged.  Someone put it in the washing machine, ran it through a wash cycle, with some clothes of Travis’, but the card is intact.  You know how I told you the card was destroyed?  I didn’t want to tell you the truth, because I wanted to make sure the photos were accurate.  We can pull deleted photos, even from 6 months ago.  And I have pictures of you and Travis.

(1:01:00) Arias: Are you sure it was me?  Because I was not there.

(1:01:00) Det. Flores: Jodi, it’s you.

Arias is trying to look and sound convincing, but her denials come out weaker and weaker.  But the stunned look shows through.

(1:01:55) Arias: I didn’t hurt Travis.  He’s done so much for me.

But like your Seattle ‘‘colleague’’ you will soon trash the memory of the person you called a friend.

(1:02:00) Arias: I lived there.  I lived there for months and months.

Pretty much the excuse Knox used to explain her DNA being everywhere.

(1:02:15) Det. Flores: I know you took pictures in the shower just before he died.

(1:02:29) Arias: I don’t think he would allow that

Either you did, or you didn’t.

(1:05:30) Det. Flores: our record indicate you reported a gun stolen, a .25 auto, which just happens to be the same caliber used to kill Travis.

(1:06:10) Arias: A .25 auto was used to kill Travis?

Using a ‘‘drop piece’‘, reported stolen, brought to the murder scene.  Knox brought one of Raffaele’s knives.

(1:06:18) Det. Flores: Do you want to see pictures of him?

(1:06:25) Arias: Part of me does, part of me doesn’t.

(1:06:30) Det. Flores: Why, because you don’t want to remember?

(1:06:35) Arias: No, there’s a morbid curiosity.

Arias is curious to see photos of Travis.  In fact, she asks several times to see photos of him (after the fact).  The detectives wonder if it is to help her come up with a story, but it is possible she just wanted to see her handiwork

Knox had also made several public demands to visit Meredith’s grave.  Creepy as hell.

(1:06:50) Det. Flores: I can’t deny this evidence.  The trip you took doesn’t make any sense, the opportunity was there, the pictures on that date with him, your blood is in the house - mixed with his, not alongside, but mixed, your hair is there is blood, and your palm print is there, in blood.  Your image is not important, saving the rest of your life is.

(1:07:30) Arias: Listen, if I’m found guilty, I won’t have a life.  I’m not guilty.

To compare Det. Flores’ listings: Knox’s account of the night/morning made no sense; she had access and opportunity; she had 5 spots of mixed DNA with Meredith, and oddly, NO fingerprints were found in Knox’s own home.

Jodi’s denial is extremely weak, just like many of the ‘‘no evidence’’ denials that Knox makes.

(1:08:20) Arias: I’m not a murderer, but if I were to do something like that I’d wear gloves, or something.

Wow…. way to be convincing.

(1:09:35) Arias: Let’s say for a second that I did.  Suppose I say I did.  Why

(1:09:50) Det. Flores: The motive is there.  Anger, jealousy ....

Knox frequently argued along the lines of ‘‘there is no motive for me to do this’‘.

(1:29:30) Arias: If I was ever going to try to kill someone, I would use gloves.  I’ve got plenty of them.

This is the second time Jodi mentions this.  Like Amanda, she knows a little something about C.S.I.

(1:29:55) Det. Flores: Would they see your car, or did you park it down the street?

(1:30:05) Arias: No, they would see it, I drove an Infinite.

(1:31:42) Det. Flores: You know that all rental cars have GPS on them?  For us to use….

Oh, s**t.

(1:42:15) Arias: Is it possible that my memory card was in his camera, and they are interchangeable?

(1:43:30) Det Flores: You’re saying that someone took your pictures and your memory card and was framing you?

Knox has written before that she thinks Raffaele planted her fingerprints on the knife used to kill Meredith.  Everything is a conspiracy.

(2:01:00) Arias: I’m trying to put his death behind me.

So…. you just want to get on with your life?

3. Numerous Other Similarities

• Arias had cuts on her fingers which she said was from ‘‘dropping glass’‘.  She claimed that happens regularly.  Police believed it was from the knife slipping in her hand.
• Knox had a cut on her neck which she said was from a ‘‘hickey’‘.

• Arias claimed her phone died while on the road and that she found her charger later
• Knox claimed she turned her phone off so she would not receive a text in case Patrick wanted her to come in afterall.  She previously claimed that it was to preserve the charge for her Gubbio trip

• Arias was asked if anyone else was present at the scene.  She invented a story about 2 masked intruders.
• Knox was told Sollecito removed her alibi.  She invented a story about Lumumba doing the crime.

• Arias has given prison interviews and basked in the limelight
• Knox has given interviews since being released from prison and basked in the limelight.

• Arias refused her own suggestion for a lie detector test since if it wouldn’t help her in court,
• Knox says she will take a lie detector test, but never has.

• Arias attempted to destroy evidence, including attempting to destroy a camera in the washing machine.
• Knox attempted to selectively clean the crime scene, and pin it all on Rudy Guede

• Arias had the foresight to clean her feet before, going to the washing machine to throw the camera in.
• Knox (or Sollecito), had the foresight to clean his/her feet before going into Amanda’s room to grab the lamp.

• Arias had the foresight to clean her hands before grabbing Clorex to put in the washing machine
• Knox had the foresight to leave Meredith’s lamp, but use her own and wipe it for prints

• Arias put her licence back on upside down (it was removed while at Travis’ house).
• Knox put the bathmat (with Sollecito’s footprint), back upside down

• Arias staged a prior break-in so she could report a gun stolen, which she would later use.
• Knox staged a prior break in and later used some techniques on Meredith.

• Arias planned it by using a ‘‘trip to Utah’’ as a way of explaining her time away.
• Knox planned it by waiting for a time when no one else was home.

• Arias tried to wash Travis’ body to destroy evidence.attempted to destroy evidence.
• Knox (and Sollecito), stripped Meredith down to make it look like a rape.

• Arias called Travis’ phone and left voicemails to make it look like she didn’t know he was dead.
• Knox called Meredith’s phone to make it look like she was trying to reach her.

• Arias had sex with Travis prior to killing him
• Knox had sex with a drug dealer (Federico Martini), before and after killing Meredith.

• Arias caused Travis to think she was dangerous and a stalker, leading to police suspicion after.
• Knox caused Meredith and others to think she was pushy and weird, leading to police suspicion after
.

• Arias rented a car, bought cans of gas (to avoid stopping at gas stations), reported her gun stolen (so suspicion wouldn’t be aroused), and turned off her phone.
• Knox brought a knife from Raffaele’s flat, brought 2 ‘‘frame-able’’ accomplices, chose a night no one was home, and turned off her phone.

• Arias attempted to rain hostility down on prosecutor Juan Martinez.
• Knox attempted to rain hostility down on prosecutor Guiliano Mignini.

• Arias flirted with the police who arrested her.
• Knox flirted with court officers.

• Arias went to her current boyfriend as if nothing happened.
• Knox went back to her life, including missing Meredith’s memorial.

• Arias murdered her ex-boyfriend.
• Knox murdered her roommate.

• Arias called Travis repeatedly just to hear his voicemail.  Stalker?
• Knox texted Meredith repeatedly the day before.  Stalker?

• Arias was born July 9, 1980.
• Knox was born July 9, 1987.

Monday, May 18, 2015

“What It Feels Like To Be Wrongly Accused” Could This Be Your First Draft, Amanda Knox?

Posted by Chimera

Above: someone who unequivocally WAS wrongly accused - and still has seen no justice

What finally was published. You may decide if this was a scrapped first draft, with due caution!

I wanted to get it all out now, so I don’t have to keep explaining it a a hundred times, like I have been on CNN, ABC, NBC, Daybreak, or my memoir, or anyone else who would listen.

I have this dream in my head that when you accuse someone of a horrific act they didn’t do, they inevitably experience shock, disorientation, confusion.  They will likely get their name and photo in the paper, and forever be associated with a vile deed.  The emotional scars will remain, and their families and friends will abandon them or at least lose trust.  However, they did not suffer nearly as bad as you have, as some trauma, such as being slapped in the head, broke you down emotionally.

In all honesty, I know this is as strange to me as it is to everyone else.  Since most people don’t angrily deny false accusations, they just let the pressure squeeze their temples, and they let it become hard to concentrate.  But they are clearly acting suspiciously, if they don’t remember a fact correctly.  But even when they are locked up for that vicious crime, it has to be considered that they are still trying to help the police.

Truthfully, when you falsely accuse someone of murder, police strangely wonder why you did not bring this knowledge up before.  You try to keep a straight face, but there is tension in your right eyebrow, and below your right nostril and sometimes triggers you to twitch uncontrollably, making you self conscious about looking people in the face.  There’s a pinpoint knot that spasms between your heart making it hard to sit still, as your lies are crumbling around you.

But the truth is, this is still much easier than being outside a murder room with your hands over your ears, while your ‘‘friend’’ is being murdered.  After all, it could have been you.  The stress is causing you to vaguely remember things, about obscure texts, and to forget if your boyfriend is with you.  The stress causes you to smell, even after taking a shower, and to wake up first thing in the morning to buy bleach, as a sudden urge for housecleaning is therapeutic.

Honestly, it can be incredibly stressful to have to release this sudden burst of energy.  You yell, are anxious, and hit yourself in the head.  The police try to calm you down with food and drinks, but the visions and dreams are tormenting you, as you imagine that you have witnessed something horrific.  Yes, your friend let out a huge scream as she died, but you are not really lying when you tell the police who did it.  After all, your 2 hour police interview, or was is 14, 35 or 50? Or 150?... was tantamount to torture, and you should not have to be subjected to the stress of having to explain yourself a hundred times while the police investigate the murder of your friend.  You suffered too.

My best truth is that when people don’t trust you after making these false accusations, the anxiety arrives even at the most safe and casual of circumstances.  You’re hypersensitive to what people say, and how they say it.  They seem skeptical when you refer to things constantly as your best truth, or the truth you remember, or the truth you think is closest to the truth. There is an accumulation of primal anger and grief that can give no satisfactory expression when you start talking about visions you had, or how you vaguely remembered something happening. There is always this thought: how can you reconcile with significant parts of society whose trust you have abused?

I have nothing but lies to be afraid of.  But people take things out of context.  Saying someone had their f***ing throat slit is a way of explaining how a person died (even if I didn’t ‘‘officially’’ know it).  That person was my friend.  People can’t admit they were wrong when I make gurgling sounds and call blood ‘‘yucky’‘.  The can’t admit their mistakes when I say I only knew someone for a month, and want to get on with my life.  That person was my friend.  They find fault with everything when I say ‘‘shit happens’‘, and miss the memorial, because someone else made the decision for me.  That person was my friend.  They come up with speculation, and twist things around, and they are haters, when they complain about me wearing Beatles T-shirts in court.

In my head, the trauma felt by the victim of a wrongful accusation is foreign and unimaginable to the majority of people, that’s why I am here to help.  By that I mean write this story, not just make up (more) false accusations.

But, in the closest version of the truth, these are the questions that need answered: Why is the person I falsely accused angry with me?  Why is he not angry with the police for arresting him?  And why are the police now suspicious of me after making a false accusation?  Can they not see that I am a good person?  Why are people angry when I give interviews of get a million dollar book deal?  Can they not see I’ve suffered?  I mean, my friend (whose name I forget), was murdered, but it could just as easily have been me.  Why are people persecuting me? (loud sigh)

Honestly,  I am a victim here.  Why can you not see that?

Anyway, that’s all for now.  Just need to get on with my life.

Thursday, April 02, 2015

The Psychology Of The Human Race Puts Us On A Rising Curve Toward True Justice For All

Posted by SeekingUnderstanding

Above and below: more and more people worldwide are on the march to make justice for victims work

1. The “Just-World” Is Built

When we were children, we listened to fairy tales. Most cultures have a library of myths.

They frequently had ‘happy ever after’ endings, where everything worked out well, after many scares, struggles and deep sorrows. Rarely did the ‘bad people’ win, in the very end, although there were often sacrifices along the way required by those who were true to themselves, and cared for others and the world. The ruthless, selfish, greedy people often appeared in disguise - their ugly and scheming natures only revealed by chance at The End.

We often asked our fathers to read us these stories, before we were tucked up safely in bed. Usually we went to sleep reassured. This is because such tales reinforce a concept known as ‘the just-world’. In this just world, good thoughts and deeds are rewarded, eventually, and the bad and cruel actions will reap the punishment they deserve, even if patience is required until this comes about.

Our belief in this concept helps us, as we begin to go out in the world and face its stresses and dangers. It gives us hope and courage, in our tiny childhood bodies.

Our parents are our caretakers, there to guide us and protect us from harm. Good parents, who are teachers too, show us right from wrong, good from bad. We grow, and begin to form a sense of Self, a core self that finds meaning and values, experiences beauty and ugliness, joy and pain.

At least one of our caretakers will empathize with us, and give us what is known as validation. Gradually, we learn to be self-reliant and do this for ourselves, although we will always still turn towards the caretaker for this reassurance at certain times.

2. When Our Just-World is Broken

And then, suddenly, one day, something else happens. (Hopefully, this day doesn’t come when we are so very young - if it does, it is frequently disastrous).

Our belief in the Just World is fractured. It cracks, and comes crumbling down around us, terrifying us as it does. Life goes into slow motion, and we remember the colours, shapes, smells, words, for the rest of our lives. Someone who has done wrong is praised and rewarded, and the little person who is ‘me’, who was being as good as we knew how to be, is scolded, teased, taunted, hurt (perhaps physically), neglected, ignored, humiliated, punished. We suffer when we do not deserve to, sometimes when we least deserve to.

Most of all, our ‘caretaker’, whose function it is to protect us, now reprimands us, withdraws their love or approval and, worst of all, refuses to believe us. We are telling it as it is, telling the truth as we have been taught to do, and the very person we have entrusted with truth, rejects us, and believes the one who is lying. We feel despair,and we feel isolated. We panic inside, and experience fear as we have not known it.

Our adrenalin and other endocrine reactions are set in motion. Our heart thumps. We don’t know what to do, we feel numb, confused, it is hard to concentrate. We are unlikely to be able to say, at that point, - but what we are feeling is betrayal. All our inner security has temporarily dissolved.

Not only has the person insulted and harmed us with their wrong-doing, but they compounded this by sanctimoniously pretending that they were ‘put upon’, a victim no less, while simultaneously the true victim is blamed and derogated. It is outrageous, and moreover it is disempowering (at first).

It is our first experience of injustice.

3. The Experience of Acute Distress

If our psyche is healthy, we will recover, both physically and emotionally within a short period. Human beings have innate coping mechanisms, and we learn gradually to activate these. Different personalities develop different ways.

But the period of stress and distress does need to be of a short duration. This is important. If it is not, we now know that very real damage occurs. This is not something vague, but is actual, biological, involving the Hippocampus and other specific areas in the brain.

When we talk about ‘healing’, this is not just a fancy word for getting into a better mood : real healing and correction need to occur in the cell tissues. Stress really does damage your health, and if we need to take time out to recover from it, - this is a real need. The greater and more prolonged the distress, the longer the time needed to rebuild, to adapt and adjust. Music, and being in nature, often have an important role to play here. People find their own ways, in their own time.

The other thing of prime importance is contact and talking, sharing, with others to whom we feel bonded. It may seem like saying the obvious - but it has been shown that victims of trauma heal very much more quickly when their contact with their loved ones in the aftermath had been immediate.

What is needed is the opposite of isolation, which would simply increase the undermining of the sense of self and our own identity, which has been hurt, or sometimes splintered.

People are isolated in cases of torture - the perpetrators of it know this isolating alone is punishing, fragmenting, weakening and eroding to the self.

We need the validation of our true friends. Perhaps this is the origin of the saying, ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’.

To recap slightly : our first experience of having our illusion of a totally Just World challenged probably first occurs as we are growing up, perhaps at school or similarly.

I will not, here, address the very serious cases where child abuse happens in the home, where the damage may never be repairable (although a certain amount can be done, miraculously, with professional and skilled help). Neither is this the place to describe terrible trauma caused by murder and terrorism. Extreme experience of injustice, especially continuous, leads to severe trauma, which at the extreme end leads to PTSD.

Needless to say, those who survive need the utmost sensitivity and skill to help them deal with the sheer inhumanity of their situations.

4. The Caretaker in the Wider World

As we go out into the world, ‘the family’ and with it, the head of the family or the main caretaker extends onto a more macro scale. The head of an institution becomes the caretaker. The headmaster or headmistress has a duty of care and protection : they are ‘in loco parentis’.

And so on upwards - the head of a large company where we may work has to duty of care that his employees are kept safe; we have local heads of government, police commissioners etc., whose responsibility includes the safety and protection of the citizens - this is achieved through law and order. And so we finally go to the top, and have the governments of countries, and their judiciary and courts, and the Head of State.

Governments carry the ‘caretaker’ role for the people, the citizens. They are entrusted with our ultimate safety, security and defence - against violence, against terror, unreason, and the break-down of law and order into chaos and tyranny. We entrust them to save us from barbarism.

It is because they have this extension of the caretaker role (a leader will sometimes be called ‘The Father of the Nation’), that when something goes badly wrong, we can feel betrayed. Our own personal memories of betrayal, which may exist in layers of many chapters, can suddenly be triggered. It matters not that physically, personally, we may not be anything like in proximity or involved in what has just happened.

A feeling of insecurity, of being totally let down, indeed of being betrayed, is experienced in the collective, the caretaker of which is the top of government and judiciary.
The shockwaves in the collective trigger our personal memories of our own past trauma. Just as happens when someone we know is bereaved, and we then suddenly recall our own bereavements, as clear as day. Our own memories are re-experienced within the present, integrated into the collective event.

When a member of the Royal Family (in Britain) for whom there is much affection, dies, one can see an outpouring of collective sentiment. Some may disparage it (as in, ‘well, how could they possibly have known her!’ etc), but the phenonomen of collective sentiment is very real, and contains more than the sum of its parts. As all collective moods, it will operate as a wave - a wave that may sweep reason aside.

5. Injustice Is So Like Bereavement

Injustice affects us as bereavement does. When we are bereaved, and perhaps especially when we lose a parent (our original ‘caretaker’), we are affected physiologically as well as emotionally.

Our fear responses are heightened, (sometimes called heightened arousal), our heart rate changes, our concentration and memory are affected, as too our ability to regulate our emotions (be overwhelmed by them); our perception itself is affected, including our perception of who we are ourselves, our very core identity.

It is very common to feel we have lost a part of ourself with the loss of the one we loved, or, importantly, who loved us. Their love for us was part of what made us feel valid. How many feel, when bereaved, lost themselves, - rudderless, as it were? We have to re-learn, and validate ourselves.

Why, you may wonder, are we discussing bereavement here? Because the responses that we go through (and it happens involuntarily) are the same as when experiencing the distress of injustice, or injustice trauma where it is extreme.

The same shattering of world-view is involved, and the same loss of security, which affects us fundamentally.

We need ‘safe-holding’ - first our parents provide this, then gradually other people and other structures out in society provide this keeping of us safe and secure. Being able to dependably rely on the administrators of just law to do exactly that is a very important part of our security. We trust them. We trust our government to use their powers judiciously, to look after our best interests, or at least to try.

If suddenly justice itself appears from every logical perspective to be in fact injustice, it is a great threat to our psychological security, for reasons I’ve tried to explain.

If the collective has been subject to such stress, then the process of repair or healing is required to happen in the collective, exactly as it is when the injustice stress or trauma has occurred on a personal level. It is just as essential. As one of our commentators said, ‘Silence is not an option’.

But fortunately, humanity is resourceful. We can all think of ways and times when people of every diversity have come together in adversity, and pulled together, in generosity, kindness and strength. There is the dual instinct in most people (who are not dysfunctional, damaged or disturbed) which is for both justice and compassion - civilized, just action - .. and when we recover from the adrenalin state, where one feels temporarily stunned in disbelief, we slowly regain our ability to creatively engage in the present.

6. How The Healing Process Works

Many people come and seek out counselling when they are recovering from extended periods of stress and distress, caused by a wide variety of reasons, and within a wide spectrum of severity. There are a number of effective techniques to aid the self-therapy.

These include understanding one’s own fear responses and calming these; recognizing personal triggers, and having a method to deal with flashbacks when they occur; working on acceptance, and being ‘grounded’ or anchored; and learning to create a feeling of safety and security for yourself in the present, and recalling the stressful time but placing it carefully in the past.

7. Narrative Therapy For RS And AK

Sollecito admitted to lies, Knox served three years for lies, and both are still on trial in Florence for many more. Even their best friends know that.

In order to make progress in recovery, with counselling, some sort of ‘narrative therapy’ is needed, where what has been so distressing can be processed and talked about from the perspective of the present, looking back and making sense -  but not talking as if one is still there in the experience.

To be able to arrive at this narrative is an important healing step. But if instead, the story is made of fragmented flashbacks, and the talk slips back into the present tense, as if the person is there again at the scene…really this is not good news. (cf AK was doing this in one of her last interviews last year - the one where she talked about ‘the corpse’).

There is avoidance, where the person can’t bear to think about the stress, and there are intense flashbacks, re-lived, - which can re-traumatise.

The narrative that we seek, and that helps bring calm and the ability to move forward, is neither of these. But to reach the good narrative the person will have to go through the detail of the traumatic event, and face the pain it causes them. They will have to be truthful. The therapist helps them do this incrementally, within a very safe environment. It does work, but it takes time - the greater the trauma, the greater the time.

This knowledge is useful to anyone recovering from a major stressful life event, but the reason I mention it here is in thinking about our two ex-defendants. Stepping aside for the moment from the flip-flopping judgement delivered, - what concerns me is whether and how healing is possible - for everyone.

There are so very many deeply disturbing aspects to this dreadfully drawn-out case, - most have been noted. But one that disturbs me most is that the ex-defendants have wound themselves up to delivering false narratives to the media circuses - to the point where they can’t now recant them without getting their respective knickers in a complete twist, knots that can’t be unravelled, nor make any sense.

As it is, it seems we have two ghosts who held down Meredith, where Guede was the third man.

My serious point here being that, for their own sakes if no-one else’s, the ex-defendants will need to tell a truthful narrative, in order to find any kind of reasonable and balanced functioning in their lives.

Quite simply, healing will not be possible unless they arrive at telling a truthful narrative in the way I touched on above - even if this is in confidentiality, to a therapist, - it will need to be done. It cannot be done in fiction.

If they do not go through the necessary steps in the process as outlined - instability, gross insecurity, and states of fear and anxiety will persist, and the trauma can and will always re-emerge unpredictably, and haunt and shadow their lives with flashbacks.

This process is well-known, and well-documented.

This site is primarily to support the Kercher family, who are the genuine, innocent victims of the most appalling trauma - one that has been selfishly drawn out by ruthless external forces, thus putting their own recovery in jeopardy, and causing great suffering.

They should always have been put first, but now, at this point in time, it is more vital than ever.

They will need, as all victims in recovery, to be able to make their ‘good narrative’. But they cannot fully do so without the truth - even if it has to remain just a sketch of the truth. I wish with all my heart they can find the whole narrative that they need - I do not know how at this point, with so much obfuscation abounding.

But I do not give up hope : healing can always arrive, for those with good will, and good hearts…so however long it takes, I have faith that it can, and it will.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

The Scale Of Evil By Forensic Psychologist Professor Michael Stone Of Columbia University NYC

Posted by Mark

1. Who Is Dr Stone

Dr Stone is increasingly on American TV and in American courts as demands for better answers to heinous crimes grow.

He has published a lot and is a partner in a research clinic in New York. These are Dr Stone’s professional credentials as posted on Psychology Today.

Dr. Michael Stone is a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia. His specialty is personality disorders - most especially “borderline personality disorder.” But in recent years he has concentrated as well on the extremes of personality, as shown by persons who show antisocial, psychopathic, and sadistic traits. This led to an interest in the kinds of people committing murder - spanning the spectrum from jealousy murders to serial killers and torturers. Recently he served as the host of the Discovery Channel show, “Most Evil,” for which he was sent around the country interviewing serial killers and murderers of other types.

This experience, plus his research over the past twenty years, led to his writing The Anatomy of Evil (appearing in July of 2009). The book explores the “why” factor: what are the inborn and environmental factors that cause certain people to commit murder and, at the extreme end, to behave with uncommon cruelty toward their fellow man. Modeled after Dante’s Inferno, the book progresses from the least to the most “evil” crimes, and contains a chapter devoted to recent contributions from neuroscience toward understanding the mind of the psychopath.

2. Interviews On Radio And TV

In the video above, how Dr Stone explained his scale of evil on a Canadian interview show, and below how he explained it on American National Public Radio.

Perhaps no surprises for Americans in the names of the killers in the examples. How they divide up confirms some postings we have had here before. For one thing, most don’t fit in the full-blown psychopathic group (Group 4). 

Introduction

Columbia University professor Michael Stone knows evil. He’s a forensic psychologist “” the type of expert that provides testimony on the mental state of accused murderers when a declaration of insanity can mean the difference between life and death row.

Inspired by the structure of Dante’s circles of hell, Stone has created his own 22-point “Gradations of Evil” scale, made up of murderers in the 20th century. “I thought it would be an interesting thing to do,” he says.

His scale is loosely divided into three tiers. First are impulsive evil-doers: driven to a single act of murder in a moment of rage or jealousy. Next are people who lack extreme psychopathic features, but may be psychotic “” that is, clinically delusional or out of touch with reality. Last are the profoundly psychopathic, or “those who possess superficial charm, glib speech, grandiosity, but most importantly cunning and manipulativeness,” Stone says. “They have no remorse for what they’ve done to other people.”

Stone hopes the scale could someday be used in prosecutions. “The people at the very end of the scale have certain things about their childhood backgrounds that are different,” he says, from those who appear earlier in the scale. And because the scale follows a continuum of likelihood a killer will kill again, courts may be able to better categorize the risks posed by releasing a psychopath.

Conspicuously absent from Stone’s scale are wartime evil-doers. “My scale is a scale for evil in peacetime,” he says. That’s because assessing wartime evil from a criminal-psychological standpoint is more complicated because of factors like culture, history and religion.”

And in war, there are often two sides. Take Hitler, Stone says. “He thought we were evil, we thought he was evil.” But, he adds, “in that particular case, we were right.”

The Scale Of Evil

1. NOT EVIL

1. Justified Homicide

The least malevolent: Those who have killed in self-defense and do not show psychopathic features.

Cheryl Pierson

Long Island native Cheryl Pierson had been repeatedly molested by her father after her mother died. He was a domineering man with rigid and bizarre rules “” for example, he insisted she eat three items on her dinner plate incrementally in a clockwise rotation; if she didn’t he would become violent. In desperation at age 17, she paid a classmate $400 to kill her father. She was sentenced to six months in jail for what was, in Stone’s words, “in effect a self-defense killing.”

2. IMPULSIVE MURDERERS

People who are not really psychopaths, not subject to routine unspeakable acts without remorse. “Ordinary people that get caught in some terrible situation,” Stone says.

2. Jealous Lovers, Non-Psychopathic

Though egocentric or immature, evildoers in this category committed their crimes in the heat of passion.

Jean Harris

School director Jean Harris led an exemplary life before she became romantically involved with “Scarsdale Diet” doctor Herman Tarnower. But when she found another woman’s panties in his dresser, she snapped. Harris shot her lover to death in a crime of passion “” and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

3. Willing Companions Of Killers

Still far from psychopathic, some have antisocial traits and an aberrant personality. They’re often driven by impulse.

Cindy Campbell

Jack Olsen’s 1987 book Cold Kill describes Cindy Campbell as a manipulative, chaotic woman. She claimed she was the victim of incest and was accused of enlisting her lover, David West, to kill her parents in their sleep. Both she and West were convicted of murder.
Susan Cummings. Larry Morris/AFP/Getty Images i

4. Provocative “Self-Defense”

These people kill in self-defense, but they aren’t entirely innocent themselves; they may have been “extremely provocative” toward their victim.

Susan Cummings

A shy, tomboyish daughter of a billionaire arms trader, Susan Cummings fell in love with an Argentine polo player, Roberto Villegas. But after two years together, they fought: She was stingy and began to refuse sex; he would get angry and verbally abusive. Finally she shot him to death in her kitchen in 1997. Originally charged with first-degree murder, she was ultimately convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 60 days in jail.

5. Desperate Measures

These are traumatized, desperate killers of abusive relatives or others “” but they lack “significant psychopathic traits” and are genuinely remorseful.

Susan Wyche

Susan Wyche was a topless dancer who married and had a child with Jeff Wright, a successful carpet salesman from Houston. He used cocaine, had affairs, gave Susan herpes and was physically abusive. In 2003, she reached a breaking point, and in a fit of rage stabbed him 193 times. Portrayed as a battered wife by the defense and a vicious seductress by the prosecution, she was given a relatively light sentence: 25 years. A new punishment hearing is set for October.

6. Hot Heads

Killers who act in an impetuous moment, yet without marked psychopathic features.

Issei Sagawa

Born in Japan, Issei Sagawa was pampered by his mother, but became highly irritable and prone to tantrums. In high school, he developed cannibalistic fantasies, and in 1981 he was accused of carrying one out in Paris. His victim: a Dutch student named Renee Hartevelt. He lured her to his apartment, shot her to death, sexually assaulted the body and then began eating her muscle tissue. He was declared legally insane in France and sent back to Japan, where he was released from a mental institution in 1986. He’s now a minor celebrity and has written books and magazine articles about his experience.

7. Narcissists

Highly narcissistic killers who are often possessive, not distinctly psychopathic, but “with a psychopathic core.” They typically kill loved ones or family members out of jealousy.

Prosenjit Poddar

In 1968, college student Prosenjit Poddar met Tatiana Tarasoff at a dance class in California. They dated briefly but she rejected him. Poddar then told his therapist about wanting to kill her. His therapist wanted to commit him to hospital, but Poddar convinced campus police he was not dangerous. In the summer of 1969, after she returned from a vacation, Poddar stabbed Tarasoff to death with a kitchen knife. Poddar was convicted and deported back to India after his conviction was overturned. Her parents sued the campus police for failing to warn that their daughter was in danger. This led to the famous Tarasoff decision, which ruled physicians now must warn potential victims of a psychiatric patient.

8. Fit of Rage

Non-psychopathic people, who live with an underlying, smoldering rage, then kill when that rage is ignited.

Charles Whitman

In 1966, ex-Marine Charles Whitman gunned down his wife and his mother, then ascended a tower at the University of Texas and began shooting people with a rifle. He killed 14 people and wounded 32, before being shot and killed by police. His early life was plagued by physical abuse by his father. A UT psychologist who met with Whitman before the murders described him as “oozing with hostility.” An autopsy revealed that he had a brain tumor, which may have contributed to his rage.

3. SEMI-PSYCHOPATHS

Those who show a “fair number” of psychopathic traits “” grandiosity, superficial charm, or general lack of remorse.

9. Jealous Lovers, Psychopathic

The scale’s first foray into psychopathic territory, these killers are jealous lovers but with marked psychopathic features.

Paul Snider

Paul Snider “discovered” Dorothy Stratten when she was working at a Dairy Queen at age 17. He became her manager and steered her to Playboy magazine, where she became Playmate of the Year in 1980. They married, but their relationship soon deteriorated, and she became involved with film director Peter Bogdanovich. In a jealous rage, Snider lured her to his apartment and shot her to death with a rifle before killing himself. Bob Fosse made a film about her tragic life, Star 80.

10. “In The Way” Killers, Not Fully Psychopathic

Killers of witnesses or people who are simply “in the way.” These evildoers are egocentric, but not totally psychopathic.

John List

Born in 1925, John List was described as rigid, joyless, angry and a neighborhood crank. A failed accountant with poor executive ability, he kept losing jobs, yet bought a big house for his wife and three children “” which he couldn’t afford. Caught between his indebtedness and his monstrous pride, he decided to kill his family. In 1971, he shot and killed his mother, wife and children, and fled to Colorado under an assumed name. He was at large for 18 years, until an image constructed by a forensic anthropologist was broadcast on America’s Most Wanted. He died in prison in 2008 at age 82.

11. “In The Way” Psychopaths

Psychopathic killers of people “in the way.” Premeditation is not usually a major factor in their killings.

Jeffrey MacDonald

An Army Green Beret doctor named Jeffrey MacDonald began showing signs of violence and hatred of women in his adolescence. In 1970, was accused of killing his wife and daughters, and then staging the scene to look like a cult slaying in the mold of Charles Manson. MacDonald was convicted of murder, but his case “” the subject of the book Fatal Vision “” has dragged on for four decades. In August 2010, his lawyers filed a brief in federal court asking for a new trial and claiming that DNA evidence could prove MacDonald’s innocence.

12. Power-Hungry And Cornered

Power-hungry psychopaths who kill when “cornered,” or placed in a situation they wouldn’t be able to escape with their power intact.

Jim Jones

Born in 1931, Jim Jones was attracted early on to a Pentecostal religious group that practiced “speaking in tongues.” He later became a charismatic leader of the Peoples Temple. Grandiose and fanatic, as well as psychopathic and paranoid, he gathered a large group of followers and moved with them to Guyana. In 1978, U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan and his entourage went to Guyana to investigate; he and four others were shot and killed. Cornered, Jones told his followers to commit group suicide. In all, 914 people died, 276 of them children. He also took his own life.

13. Inadequate And Rageful

Murderers with shortcomings that follow them throughout life, who also express psychopathic impulses and are prone to rage.

Karla Faye Tucker

Karla Faye Tucker was born the illegitimate daughter of prostitute and abused drugs since she was 9. She married at 16 “” by which time she had already had a hysterectomy for pelvic inflammatory disease. She divorced at 20. In 1983, she and boyfriend Daniel Garrett invaded the apartment of Jerry Lynn Dean while the two were high on methadone, valium, heroin and alcohol. Tucker and Garrett killed Dean and the woman he was with, using a hammer and pickaxe. After 14 years on death row, she was executed in 1998. She was the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War.

14. Schemers

Ruthlessly self-centered and psychopathic, schemers stop at nothing to deceive, con and steal.

Sante Kimes

Sante Kimes was born in 1934 and soon became a self-trained con artist. Briefly married to Lee Powers, she had a son, Kenny. Many more thefts followed, along with use of numerous aliases. She made her son into a kind of slave; the two became “grifters” “” accomplished at stealing. In 1998 she and her son conned their way into the good graces of Irene Silverman, a wealthy Fifth Avenue widow in New York City. They got her to sign over her property and then killed her, disposing of her body. Kimes is a classic psychopath, and is considered responsible for other murders besides that of Silverman. She and her son are serving life sentences.

15. Cold-Blooded Spree

Murderers who kill multiple people calmly and with a psychopathic motive. Often pathological in their denial of guilt or inability to confront reality.

Charles Manson

Charles Manson was born in 1934 to a troubled family. At a young age, he began stealing, ending up in reformatories then jail and prisons. In his 30s he began to attract a following of waif-like women who were in his thrall. Then in 1969 he had his group invade the home of pregnant actress Sharon Tate, killing her, her unborn baby and four friends. Later they killed Rosemary LaBianca, scrawling “Death to Pigs” in her blood around the house. He received the death penalty, later commuted to a life term in Corcoran Prison in California.

4. PSYCHOPATHS

Fully psychopathic by every modern definition.

16. Vicious Psychopaths

Those who commit multiple vicious acts that may also include murder, rape or mutilation.

Miyazaki Tsutomu

Born in 1962 into a wealthy Japanese family, Miyazaki Tsutomu had a congenital hand defect, such that he was unable to hold his hands palm-up. He was ostracized as a child and began to lurk around young girls, stalking them. In 1989, he kidnapped and murdered four young girls, mutilated their bodies and drank the blood of one victim. When his crimes were discovered, his father committed suicide out of shame. Miyazaki coldly regarded that as “just punishment” for not raising him correctly. He was executed in Tokyo in 2008.

17. The Sexually Perverse

Serial killers with some element of sexual perversion in their crimes. In males, rape is usually the primary motive and killing follows to hide the evidence. Torture is not a primary motive.

Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy was born in 1946, performed well in school and was acutely shy. His sexual homicides began in earnest in 1974, near his alma mater, the University of Washington. He worked his way down to Florida, luring, raping and killing at least 28 girls en route. He escaped from a Colorado prison in 1977, and continued killing until identified and apprehended (thanks to bite marks that matched his teeth) in 1978. He was executed in Florida in 1989.

18. Torturing Murderers

Though psychotic, they do not typically prolong their torture. Murder, not torture, is their primary motivation.

Gary Ridgeway

Gary Ridgeway, a.k.a the “Green River Killer,” grew up in Washington state. He was troubled by his sexual attraction to his mother and of his feelings of lust and humiliation. He’s one of the serial killers showing the famous childhood “triad” of bed-wetting, fire-setting, and animal torture. He began serial killing of prostitutes in earnest after a third divorce in 1982. Some investigators believe he may have killed as many as 90 women, subjecting some to bondage or necrophilia. He’s now serving 48 life sentences plus 480 years.

19. Non-Homicidal Psychopaths

Psychopaths who fall short of murder, yet engage in terrorism, subjugation, intimidation or rape.

Gary Steven Krist

Gary Steven Krist had served prison time for robbery and fraud in three different states before he was 18. Out of prison in 1968 at age 23, he planned a ransom kidnapping. His victim was Barbara Mackle. Krist buried her underground, allowing her to breathe using a tube, while he awaited a $500,000 ransom from her father. She was rescued after 83 hours buried alive. He was sentenced to life in prison, but was paroled and later convicted of importing cocaine into the United States. He’s in a federal prison in Florida, with a planned release in November 2010.

20. Murdering Torturers

Psychotic (legally insane) and primarily motivated by their desire to torture.

Joseph Kallinger

From a young age, Joseph Kallinger’s foster family abused him so severely that at age 6 he suffered a hernia inflicted by his foster father. He was psychotic and schizophrenic, and when he married and had children, he was equally brutal. In 1972 he was held on charges of child abuse but was later released. In 1974, he and his 13-year-old son Michael began to break into houses in Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Jersey, where they terrorized and tortured four families, and then sexually assaulted and killed a 21-year-old nurse. Finally arrested, he was sentenced to life, and then sent to a mental hospital where he died in 1996 at age 59.

21. Pure Torturers

Not all torturers murder. These psychopaths (evaluated to be in touch with reality) are preoccupied with torture “in the extreme,” but never convicted of murder.

Cameron Hooker

Cameron Hooker was born in 1953. As he grew older he read pornography, particularly that which portrayed women being tortured. He married his wife, Janice, in 1975. He fantasized about having his own sex slave and allegedly reached an agreement with his wife that she could have a baby if he could have a sex slave. After the birth of their child, Hooker kidnapped 20-year-old Colleen Stan in 1977 and kept her captive for seven years. She was whipped, strangled, burned, electrically shocked and raped. For much of that time, she was locked inside a box for 23 hours a day. She and Hooker’s wife fled together in 1984. He was convicted and sentenced to 104 years in prison.

22. Psychopathic Torture-Murderers

Defined by a primary motivation to inflict prolonged, diabolical torture. Most in this category are male serial killers.

Jeffrey Dahmer

Born in 1960 in Milwaukee, Jeffrey Dahmer was sexually molested by a neighbor when he was 8. At 10, he was decapitating animals and mounting their heads on stakes in the backyard. At 17 he committed his first murder, a male hitchhiker whom he bludgeoned, strangled, dismembered and buried. After a failed stint in the Army, his serial killing began in earnest in the late 80s, ending up with at least 17 victims “” all males, some homosexual, like Dahmer. Finally arrested in 1991, he was convicted the next year of 15 murders and sentenced to 936 years in prison. In 1994, another inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Wisconsin bludgeoned Dahmer to death with a bar from a weight machine.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

The Victim As Seen Through The Eyes Of A Past Abuser: Insights From Dr Sam Vaknin

Posted by James Raper

1. Overview Of This Post

My past posts here have been from the perspective of a lawyer, commenting on aggregations of evidence and how justice systems perform.

If there are to be any gains at all from this sad affair, both wider understanding of policework and law and also wider understanding of the relervant psychology should definitely be among those gains.

I dont have formal qualifications or expertise in psychology but several years ago I drafted a post on the psychology of perpetrators and then shelved it as it seemed then that our knowledge of the sciences and the perps in this case were both still lacking.

This is the post revisited, modified and upgraded to contribute to all the new knowledge we have been acquiring.

I want to concentrate on the work of Dr Sam Vaknin and especially his respected book Malignant Self Love (see Amazon reader rating below) which has helped many to understand why some people inflict pain.

2. Essentials Of Dr Vaknin

It transpires that in fact he also has no academic qualification (or anything approaching it) in psychology.  Indeed he is a colourful, controversial character and, it seems, an inveterate self publicist. Rather like, say, Hampikian? Aha.

There is a Wiki page on Vaknin. He has twice been diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and has also been found to be borderline schizoid.  He has accepted the diagnosis.

Who better, however, to write on the subject of narcissism than someone who has both extensively done the research and himself been the subject of an accepted diagnosis? His output has been enormous.

In any event his book gave me what I have considered to be helpful (if not authorative) conceptual and investigatory tools or windows on the subject and I have found these to be invaluable.

So this post concerns narcissism in its many forms and consists of direct quotes from “Malignant Self Love” with my own observations and some tentative conclusions. However (and given that I am just an amateur), I have to leave it to the reader to draw his/her own conclusions.

3. Insights For Our Case

Primary Narcissism

“Primary Narcissism, in psychology, is a defence mechanism, common in the formative years”

Pathological Narcissism

“Secondary or Pathological Narcissism is a pattern of thinking and behaving in adolescence and adulthood, which involves infatuation and obsession with one’s self to the exclusion of others. It manifests in the chronic pursuit of personal gratification and attention (narcissistic supply), in social dominance and personal ambition, bragging, insensitivity to others, lack of empathy and/or excessive dependence on others to meet his/her responsibilities in daily living and thinking.”

We do not know as much as we should know about Amanda’s childhood and adolescence. Unfortunately much of what we are told comes from partial observers which provides a picture of relative normality. This contrasts sharply with the picture as it unfolds once Amanda leaves Seattle. Immediately we see an Amanda in chronic pursuit of personal gratification and attention (sex and drugs etc), freed from what may have been excessive dependence on her parents. Not uncommon with adolescents but the word “chronic” does seem an apt part of the picture.

Amanda does not like not being the centre of attention. Witnesses report that when conversation leaves her in the background she starts singing loudly in protest.

The constant strumming of the same chord on her guitar to annoy others (again when she is being ignored) is another comically classic case of narcissistic supply.

She also knew (insensitively) how to make Meredith feel awkward, even humiliated “Me and Giacomo get on really well “¦. But I’ll let you have him”.

When things start to go wrong with her narcissistic self image she retreats into a dependency on Raffaele, - quite excessive in it’s intensity, - and the relationship is belatedly paraded at the cottage in what may have been an attempt to re-establish, if not social dominance, at least social equality.

The phone calls to mother when the postal police arrive at the cottage can be interpreted (amongst other things) as a need to re-establish a dependency, or mutual dependency, to see her through the uncertain events ahead.

Pathological Narcissism is at the core of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

“Research shows that most narcissists are born into dysfunctional families. Such families are characterised by massive denials, both internal (“you do not have a real problem, you are only pretending”) and external (“you must never tell the secrets of the family to anyone”). These families may encourage excellence, but only as a means to a narcissistic end. The parents are usually themselves needy, emotionally immature, and narcissistic and thus unable to recognise or respect the child’s emerging boundaries and emotional needs”.

“Pathological narcissism wears many forms;

• classic or malignant narcissism


• appropriative (e.g histrionic)


• schizoid, and


• aggressive destructive”

The foregoing forms are arbitrary categories, helpful to investigative analysis. As with all psychology the labels that are used describe mental conditions inferred from behaviour and language.

The foregoing forms of pathological narcissism represent solutions, adopted by the subject, to the ongoing gap between fantasy/the false self, and reality/the true self. They are not, as categories, mutually exclusive but can overlap as circumstances dictate.

Above: an online poster for one of Dr Vaknin’s recent presentations

(1) The Classic Narcissistic Solution

“This dissonance - the gap between grandiose fantasy and frustrating reality - gives rise to the unconscious “decision” to go on living in the world of fantasy, grandiosity and entitlement.”

“Thus the true self is replaced by the false self.”

“The Schizotypal Personality Disorder largely belongs here because of it’s emphasis on fantastical and magical thinking. The Borderline Personality Disorder is a case of a failed narcissistic solution. In BPD the patient is aware that the solution is failing. This becomes a source of separation anxiety (fear of abandonment). This generates identity disturbance, suicidal ideation and action, chronic feelings of emptiness, rage attacks and transient paranoid ideation”.

The Schizotypal PD is a mixture of Schizoid and Narcissistic Solutions. Amanda, for me, is not schizoid but I think her use of drugs, and an ego in free fall, tipped her behaviour into the schizotypal, if that is not a contradiction in terms.

Of more interest is Borderline Personality Disorder as I believe her behaviour in the lead up to Meredith’s murder is indicative of a case of failing narcissistic solution.

I think that Amanda’s perceptions were that she had little in common with Filomena and Lauretta, that she was probably regarded as little more than “trash” by the boys downstairs, and that she was “dumped” by Meredith on Halloween night. She perceived that Meredith was clearly now preferring her english friends to her, and furthermore was very likely going to supplant her at Le Chic. There was no one to reinforce her (deteriorating) self image/false self other than Raffaelle and the manipulated Rudy.

Bringing Raffaelle to the cottage on the morning of the 1st November was probably in part an attempt to establish some social dominance (or at least equality)  vis a vis Meredith but perhaps also in part an attempt at a sort of peace offering, both of which seem to have backfired. Meredith spent much if not all of the morning in bed and then was off again to see her friends. It is perfectly possible that whilst Meredith was no doubt polite she pretty much ignored the two of them. Again Amanda may have felt demeaned.

I do not know what Raffaele actually told her about his mother’s death. There is some suspicion that it may have been suicide and he may have told her that. In any event she talks of “her suicide” and the thought of that may have affected Amanda though there seems to be nothing to suggest that Amanda herself has ever thought of suicide.

I am also interested in Amanda’s “fascination” with Harry Potter. The boy who as a child survives a murderous attack on his parents by an evil wizard and is “marked” (like Cain) but who discovers his own magical powers with which to confront the evil wizard. The fascination even extends to picking a boyfriend who looked like the actor who plays the hero in the films and she even claims to have been reading a Harry Potter book on the evening of Meredith’s murder. These are elements of fantasy, grandiosity and entitlement to reinforce the False Self.

“Narcissistic rage is not specifically a reaction to stress - it is a reaction to a personal slight, insult, criticism or disagreement. It is intense and disproportional to “the offence””.

(2)  The Appropriation Solution

“This is the appropriation of someone else’s self in order to fill the vacuum left by the absence of a functioning Ego.”

““Appropriators” misjudge the intimacy of their relationships and the degree of commitment involved, they are easily suggestible and their whole personality seems to shift and fluctuate with input from the outside.”

Here I am thinking again of the brief intensity of her relationship with Raffaele.

I am also thinking of Amanda’s ability to change her persona like a chameleon (from the little girl lost routine, to earnest and sympathetic co-operation, to help me if you please charm). This is a skill derived from somewhere.

Meredith’s murder is the ultimate appropriation of another’s self.

(3) The Aggressive Destructive Solution

“These people suffer from hypochondriasis, depression, suicidal ideation, dysphoria, compulsions and obsessions and other expression of internalised or transformed aggression directed at a self which is perceived to be inadequate, guilty or disappointing. Many narcissistic elements are present in exaggerated form. Undulating self esteem is transferred into impulsiveness and failure to plan ahead.”

A sexual humiliation of Meredith may have been pre-conceived as an act of revenge when she was at a low and feeling inadequate and this may have temporarily raised her self esteem as a consequence but quite obviously without any planning ahead as to the consequences.

Impulsive behaviour is common to the above categories and the misuse of alcohol and drugs is common.

Psychopathologies ( in adolescence and adulthood)

“Psychopathologies are adaptive mechanisms”.

“The (narcissistic) mechanism is three-phased:-

(1) The person encounters an obstacle

(2) The person regresses to the infantile narcissistic phase

(3) Thus recuperated, the person confronts the obstacle again.”

Vaknin terms this mechanism The Psychopathological Default; a perfectly natural mechanism and being the only option an individual - even a perfectly rational, balanced,  and mature individual - has when confronted with some personal trauma or major life crisis with which he can not cope. The Pathological Narcissist will have the Default pre-set at a lower threshold to address any attack on the False Self.

“While in step (2), the person develops childish, immature behaviours. He feels that he is omnipotent and misjudges his powers and the might of the opposition. He underestimates challenges facing him and pretends to be “Mr Know All”. His sensitivity to the needs and emotions of others and his ability to empathise with them deteriorates sharply. He is pre-occupied with fantastic, magical thinking and daydreaming”

Perhaps here we can consider Amanda’s behaviour at the police station. The forthcoming questioning and the actual questioning being seen as obstacles to be encountered. There are the cartwheels and splits, the behaviour with Raffaelle and the appallingly insensitive remarks about Meredith and her death in front of M’s friends. The overconfidence under questioning suddenly breaks down and all too rapidly becomes the dreamlike incident at the cottage with Lumumba attacking Meredith.

“Whenever we experience a major life crisis (which hinders our personal growth and threatens it) - we suffer from a mild and transient form of Narcissistic Personality Disorder”“¦..(but)”¦.“the contrast between the fantastic world (temporarily) occupied by the individual and the real world in which he keeps being frustrated, is too acute to countenance for long without a resulting deformity”.

4. Some Tentative Conclusions

The defining attribute of the psychopath is that he has no moral conscience and he is highly skilled at fooling people and carrying off the appearance of being perfectly normal.

Amanda, by contrast it seems, only fools those who are easily fooled and furthermore, particularly because of what she says and does, merely draws attention and suspicion to herself.

In nearly all her statements, verbal or written, Amanda has had two different narratives before her. One narrative is the true version (the obstacle) and the other is the false version (the way through or around).

She has struggled to cope with the narratives when she is subjected to examination. The result has been the lying and the spider’s web of confusion and deceit, and the childlike, sympathy-seeking, performances to which we have become accustomed.

This is the narcissistic psychological default. Since being suspected of and charged with Meredith’s murder Amanda has been stuck in the default position because this time the obstacle - the evidence -  has always been in her way and, until the court case has final closure, will continue to be in the public domain and in her way. In this context the default position became critical and primal with the accusation of Patrick Lumumba and has continued playing out, but with some modification since her release from prison, ever since.

Since her release from prison her life has been organised for her in a manner that ensures that she receives the constant ameliorating narcissistic supply that is required to sustain her ego, in this case the False Self, and this has partially empowered and enabled her. It has come in the form of the publication of her “Memoir”, and interviews on TV. In the public domain she is a celebrity, even if that book and the TV appearances were not the success for which she and her managers would have wished.

She has also had narcissistic supply from (as might be expected) her family and close friends, but also from those outsiders in the PR campaign devoted to “demonstrating” her innocence. Vaknin talks of “inverted narcissists” - those whose egos obtain sustenance from providing the “supply” the narcissist feeds on. Or, as we put it in this case as regards the outsiders, white knights charging to the rescue of a damsel in distress.

Both the narcissist and the inverted narcissist have an unhealthy symbiotic relationship with each other.

I think that psychologically it will, without help, be impossible for Amanda to tell us about her involvement in Meredith’s murder. Incarceration would be preferable to a public demolition of her False Self.

I do believe that she is at least a pathological narcissist and as such has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Her condition at the time of Meredith’s murder was probably exacerbated by alcohol, drugs and an ego which was in free fall. At the same time her False Self probably tipped sharply towards the Aggressive Destructive Solution.

“Narcissistic rage is not specifically a reaction to stress - it is a reaction to a personal slight, insult, criticism or disagreement. It is intense and disproportional to “the offence””.

On the night of Meredith’s death, as a result of some event, or something said, or as the culmination of a series of events, (in which she had colluded - or which, far more likely,  she had instigated), and probably as a result of all three happening,  Amanda may well have flown in to an uncontrollable rage at the cottage. That would fit with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Monday, November 24, 2014

Italian Media Spotlighting The Perversion Of Killer Groupies Of Alleged Murderer Of 38 Patients

Posted by Peter Quennell

1. Alleged Nurse-Killer Attracting Deviant Males

Convicted killers and alleged killers facing trial often attract deviant support with sexual undertones.

Why the case of Nurse Daniela Poggiali, arrested a month ago in north Italy, is capturing so much attention is not only the seeming extent of her crimes - some 38 patients in her care died mysteriously - or her bizarre selfies exulting over one dead patent.

It is also the astonishing volume and and rabid lust of the fanmail now arriving at the place where she is awaiting trial, and the increasing numbers of Italian killer groupies emerging online and jostling to head her parade, Italian Knox groupies such as Luca Cheli maybe among them.

Here is a UK report and a translated Italian-media report will follow.

Italian nurse who took photos of herself with patients she had murdered is flooded with fan mail in prison ““ including marriage proposals

An Italian nurse who took photos of herself with dead patients she had murdered is being flooded with fan letters from male admirers, including some containing marriage proposals.

Daniela Poggiali, 42, from the town of Lugo, in the Emilia-Romagna Region of central Italy, was arrested after police investigating the mysterious death of a 78-year-old patient stumbled upon 38 other unexplained deaths on her shifts.

Rosa Calderoni, 78, was admitted with a routine illness but died after being injected with high levels of potassium - the compound used in lethal injection executions in the U.S.

Nurse Daniela Poggiali from Lugo, in central Italy, has been sent fan mail and wedding proposals while she awaits trial in relation to 38 unexplained deaths on her shifts

Further investigations revealed that over a three month period, 38 out of 86 patients under Poggiali’s care at the Umberto I hospital in Lugo had all died mysteriously.

Now awaiting trial at a prison in Forli, a city in central Italy, Poggiali is being inundated with fan mail from admirers calling her ‘good looking’.  A prison spokesman said: ‘Over the last few weeks since she was placed here there has been a steady stream of letters from males.

‘Most of them say how pretty and good looking they think she is, and one or two have even contained proposals of marriage.’ Prison officials said Poggiali has received a steady stream of letters from men calling her ‘good looking’

According to investigators the nurse had found the dead patients ‘annoying’ or that they had ‘pushy relatives’. During their investigations they discovered pictures of Poggiali grinning alongside the dead bodies.

The lead magistrate investigating the case, Alessandro Mancini said: ‘We believe she is sound of mind, but simply took satisfaction, and real pleasure in killing.

‘The photos reveal an unbearable cruelty that I have not seen in 30 years on the job.’

A spokesman from the hospital where she worked said: ‘She always came across as being a very cold person. ‘But she also used her charms to flirt with male doctors if she thought she could get favours from them.’

Poggiali has denied killing any patients and says she is being framed by jealous colleagues.

2. Killer-Groupies Get More Media & Research Attention

The growing fear in justice circles is that killer groupies are helping to elevate murder rates.

They are certainly elevating anger levels, and making potential killers feel competitive and jealous of the media coverage of others. They are damaging professional careers and sparking death threats, making law-abiding people more distrustful, making police-work and convictions more difficult, and distracting hard-pressed politicians and populations from looming world-wide problems.

All of which comes at a high cost and puts all of us in a great deal more danger. So the spotlight upon killer groupies is intensifying. Here is one media report.

A look inside the bizarre world of serial killer groupies

If you type the phrase “serial killer addresses” into an Internet search engine, you’ll get some disturbing results.

A number of websites list the prison addresses of convicted killers, and police investigators told FOX 12 there are plenty of people “” serial killer groupies “” writing to convicted serial killers.

Portland police homicide detective Jim Lawrence said he once investigated a Portland man who corresponded with two convicted serial murderers.

Lawrence showed FOX 12 some of the correspondence, including a letter he said the Portland man wrote to serial killer Douglas Daniel Clark.

Clark and a partner were known as “Sunset Strip Killers.”

The pair were convicted for a series of killings in Los Angeles. The letter to Clark included an illustration of a hand with the phrase,  “Who knows what these hands will do, what they’ll do 20 years from now.” 

“He really seemed to put a kind of hero worship behind this serial killer, and it was a kind of morbid fascination,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence also showed FOX 12 violent artwork the man received from serial killer Ottis Toole, convicted of killing six people in Florida in the 1980s. Police believe Toole also killed 6-year-old Adam Walsh in 1981. The sketch depicts a decapitated head.

Criminal psychologist Dr. Frank Colistro said serial killers often radiate a perverse charisma that groupies find attractive.

“A lot of them get caught up in the drama that’s associated with these people forever,” Colistro explained.

And the list is long for love behind bars, for killers who’ve been married in prison.

I-5 killer Randy Woodfield, who was convicted for murder and attempted murder and suspected in dozens of other crimes in the early 1980s, has been hitched twice at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and Scott Peterson all have had loyal female followers.

“The Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez, convicted of 13 brutal murders in California in the 1980s, had groupies who called themselves, “˜the women in black,’ who attended his trial.

“You do get a lot of inadequate, insecure women,” Colistro said. “In a sense, they’re the perfect boyfriend, the perfect husband. In a sense, you can do a relationship light, so to speak.”

Then there are groupies who want to befriend the notorious. Lawrence said some write to convicted killers for profit, to potentially sell the letters online. He said others have a bizarre admiration for the killers.

Lawrence said he interviewed the Portland man who wrote the detailed, expletive-filled letters after out-of-state police discovered the man’s relationship with killer Ottis Toole.

“So they contacted us and I had a little chat with him,” he said.

He said it turned out the man was trying to get letters and artwork from Toole to sell online.

Colistro, however, said there are some people hoping to become copycats.

“They’ll study the M-O of the offender and they’ll start to duplicate it,” he said.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

The Case For More Observation And Firmer Action As Psychopaths Among Us Do Enormous Harm

Posted by SeekingUnderstanding

Above: The murdered teacher Ann Maguire and convicted killer Will Cornick


Here is an example of the much tougher action to protect society which judges worldwide are inclining toward.

In Leeds in the UK a 16-year old boy has been sentenced to 20 years.  He has also been publicly named, unusual for one so young,  and an image released, to hopefully protect the public from him for the rest of his life. The judge warned him that he may never be released.

The more you read about Will Cornick the worse it gets.

He slashed a popular teacher in front of a whole class. She escaped wounded and terrified but he followed her to another room with glass panes and tried to push in. Another teacher kept him out but Ann Maguire was too far gone.

Grim clues are still coming to light. From one of the latest reports. 

Cornick attacked Mrs Maguire after boasting to friends that he was going to kill her. He also said he was going to murder other teachers, including a pregnant woman “˜so as to kill her unborn child’.

He later told doctors: “˜I said I was going to do other stuff but I never got the chance, other murders. It was a triple homicide.’

After the murder the teenager told psychiatrists that he “˜couldn’t give a s***’ and added: “˜Everything I’ve done is fine and dandy.’...

Far from having an unhappy upbringing, Cornick comes from a middleclass background and his parents have been described as loving and supportive…

Cornick’s former girlfriend believes Mrs Maguire, who has been called the ‘mother of the school’, was killed because she was being tough on the intelligent teenager in a bid to unlock his potential…

Friends had started to think of him as a “˜loner and weirdo’ and “˜disturbing’ aspects of his personality became apparent.

He spoke openly about murdering his teacher, messaging a friend on Facebook about brutally killing her and spending the rest of his life in jail. But no one - including his former girlfriend - believed he was capable of carrying out such psychotic threats.

After the murder it was revealed that he had numerous images of knives on his mobile phone. The teenager used a picture of the Grim Reaper for his Facebook profile.  He also had a keen interest in ultra-violent video games, including Dark Souls II, in which players hack zombies to pieces.

Players devour the souls of their fallen enemies to the sound of cries of agony. Disturbing images include a character made up of hundreds of human corpses. It was voted one of the ten Most Violent Video Games of 2014.

One pupil recalled Cornick saying disgusting things at a party. He said: “˜He was saying twisted stuff like “imagine jumping on a pregnant woman and seeing the baby come out”, and saying horrible stuff about cancer and stuff like that…

The teenager later confessed to a psychiatrist that the killing had been on his mind for three years, and one expert said he had engaged in a “˜considerable amount of fantasy’ about killing Mrs Maguire.

And so the debate on psychopathy and what to do about it ratches up anothert notch.

The word ‘psychopath’, like ‘narcissist’,has become known in common usage. This is both good and bad,- good if we understand more, yet bad if we assume wrongly or more superficially.

One assumption too frequently made is an association with only adulthood. Surely a child can’t be psychopathic? Unfortunately the answer is Yes.

Another assumption : surely if a child were to be nurtured correctly - with all the optimal nutrition and healthy lifestyle, and love possible, with encouragement and guidance from the parents - any tendency towards psychopathic traits could and would be overcome?

We want to believe this is so. It hurts us, on a fundamental human level, to be informed that,

‘No, this is not the case’.

A child from what is considered a ‘good background’ CAN nevertheless have a psychopathic personality. (This is also what the judge said in the Cormick trial).

With the advance of new technology - in particular MRI studies of the brain- we are beginning to explore and discover the structural differences in people’s brains (at every age). We are also recording the differences in our responses to varying events, stimulation, and emotion.

Our brains do not react in the same ways, not at all. Even introverts and extraverts are physiologically different, with regard to the amount of stimulation they can take, and also what might be called ‘method’ pathways.

In the more normal mind, it is a customary impulse to respond to pain, humiliation etc by lashing out oneself. The “˜taking it out on others’ scenario.

But, from when we are very young,this impulse is moderated by an awareness of what the pain we would be causing would feel like. In other words, we feel like pinching our sister very hard, say because she has stolen something small, but we remember how that severe pinch would feel, and bruise etc, and so we restrain.

As we continue to grow, this restraint to the impulse becomes a strong and immediate inhibition. Hence we become socialised and civilised. We feel each others’ pain, literally. It is a function of imagination, memory and neurology.

There is growing evidence from advancing research that in the truly psychopathic mind, this inhibition does not happen, because the first stage - of feeling for others - is absent. Perhaps some of the pathways are missing or diminished; the amygdala is different, perhaps, or other brain structures.

Such people therefore are able to impose violence and pain upon others with impunity. Hence we observe and say they are “˜cold’.

One important difference between this type and the more normal type of mind, is that they are like this irrespective of whether they have been loved or not. Of course disadvantageous and dysfunctional upbringings make the situations a whole lot worse.

Experiments have been done, and are still being explored, to define the extent of these differences, with some accuracy. It will take some time, as of course the neurology in the brain is highly complex, and subtle, and a single event will involve several or many pathways and several ‘hubs’ -as one might describe them.

So far, Baron-Cohen has identified about twelve ‘centres’ that will be involved in high or low empathy circuits in the brain. There may be more. Also, he and other distinguished researchers (many of whom have spent their life’s work on the subject) are examining what the genetic components are that underlie psychopathic traits.

Unfortunately, all this worthwhile work meets some resistance, and therefore delay (and difficulty in funding of course). Sadly such resistance comes from both left and right, ( leaving the researchers treading a fine line down the centre).

On the left, those who advocate improving social conditions, alleviating poverty, greater nurturing etc., fear that a discovery of the violent, cruel, anarchic nature ‘being genetic’ would undermine their raison d’être, and the case for more funding for the deprived and under-privileged.

On the right, there is a substantial fear, valid to a degree, that finding the root cause of psychopathic behaviour in brain structure and genes would give the worst and most unanswerable opt-out clause when psychopaths are on trial, to the effect of,

“Sorry, M’Lord, I couldn’t help it ; it’s in me genes”. (Etc).

A nightmare, indeed, for the prosecution.

This objection is something psychologists are already familiar with, where attempts are made by the defense to proffer psychological truths or diagnoses as mitigating factors, or ‘get-out’ clauses.

It cannot be stated clearly enough : to understand something is not to excuse it. To establish something in fact does not dilute the need to bear responsibility for the behaviour that ensues from it.

We can, and must, find ways to exert restraint and control over anti-social, destructive and undesirable behaviour. Preferably before it becomes criminal behaviour. It becomes more and more imperative, as we realize that ‘the enemy’ - the terrorist - the destroyer- moves among us, as ‘the kid next door’.

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Tuesday, July 29, 2014

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

Posted by Our Main Posters

1. How Drug Use Was Addressed At Trial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. New Reporting On Knox/Drug-Dealer Connection

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

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

Clamorous [Sensational/Scoop]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And if today even Amanda was to change her version?

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

What was your impression of Amanda?

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

What was her relationship with Meredith?

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

And what type was Sollecito?

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

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

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

[By] Gian Pietro Fiore

3. Our Comments On The Giallo Report

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

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

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

4. UK and US Media Get Key Fact Wrong

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

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

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

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

5. Ground Report Also Gets It Wrong

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

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

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

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

   

Click to enlarge

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”.

Thursday, June 05, 2014

Explaining Why Smart Feminists Have Rightly Been Extremely Wary Of Amanda Knox

Posted by Hopeful

1. Late Joiner Of The Dwindling Knox Parade

A week ago in the Huffington Post Lisa Marie Basile asked why feminists are not storming the barricades for Knox.

The gullible Lisa Marie Basile had obviously swallowed whole Knox’s avid self-promotion and serial demonizing to create a muddled article at best, confused about feminism, poorly researched on the case, nasty to good Italians who are in no easy position to defend themselves, and hugely disrespectful to the real victim. 

I want to explain what real feminists are seeing that the faux feminist Lisa Marie Basile has managed to miss. Above all feminism means justice to women, and the many women who post on and support sites like TJMK are upholding justice, for the only woman who counts in this case.

2. An Attack With Indisputable Sex Aspects

Remember, Meredith is the innocent woman who was slain by an undeniably jealous and unhinged fellow female who used two males as her henchmen. No Italian court disagrees with that, and Italian courts (except when hijacked as with Hellmann) are extremely careful. .

The victim was left partly nude and in a staged position on the floor to suggest to whoever found the body that it was a sexual attack. Has Ms. Basile forgotten this actually was a sex crime for which all three were charged and sentenced? This surely opened the door for examination of the sexual behavior of the former suspects.

There was no “gendered expectation” among Italians investigating this crime, only a ” truth expectation.”

Articles like “We Are All Amanda Knox” which Basile mentioned try to normalize and even exult in Amanda’s behavior as a wild woman, but she is not at all the norm there.

Raffaele had led a more restrained sexual lifestyle, actually more typical of a coy young woman than a randy man. Raffaele, in keeping perhaps with the church doctrines in which he had been reared, had not taken any sexual partners except possibly for one, other than in his extensive fantasy life.

Guede’s sex act on Meredith was never in question, as he left behind his DNA to prove he had no boundaries. His nuisance behavior hitting on girls in nightclubs in Perugia was fully discussed, and he got no breaks from anyone on any front.

Knox herself bragged about her liberation ethics and fast work with men. Nobody else turned her into a “filthy, sex-obsessed slut” but herself. The media mostly rather neutrally reported the facts, and even when her track record of casual sex became clearly documented, it was never made a focal point of the trial at all.

What was focused on was Knox’s alibi, her lies that her boss had killed her “friend” and her phone records. Knox was under the microscope for her DNA being found mixed with Meredith’s blood in five locations of the cottage.

Knox was not questioned in court about how many boyfriends she had, or her one-night stands. She was never ever questioned about her sex partners or asked to list them, simply about what males had visited the house who might have had an interest in Meredith.

Again, this after all was staged to look like a sex crime, and had signs of sexual activity on the body. The Italians were hardly rushing off on detours for false reasons of prurient interests.

3. Morphing Into A New Knox Persona

For several years starting in Seattle Knox had adopted a dangerous and very irresponsible lifestyle, which she first bragged about but has tried to back away from since she left Italy. She pretends now to have a monogamous relationship with James Terrano.

Now Amanda manages to visit the television studios in a somber manner without cartwheels or doing splits and laughing. Amazing how serious she has become about her own tragedy while telling it to microphones for the world to hear after giggling about Meredith’s death and sticking her tongue out sitting on a male lap in the police station, making fun of it all when it wasn’t her death involved.

Amanda’s “offness” as Ms. Basile refers to it raised a red flag of disrespect for the victim, which was why it was significant.  Her lack of dramatic weeping outside of the cottage was never an issue.

Italians are very savvy. They are hardly the logic challenged numbskulls that Ms. Basile seems to fear they’ve been painted. Her hints that a godfearing Mignini is somehow inept shows her own bias to the godless and ruleless, the lawless and the stupid. I won’t even go into issues of spiritual faith, it is too divisive. Surely we can all agree with the mandate “Thou shalt not kill.”

4. There Was No Witch Hunt Or Inquisition

Sadly Ms. Basile has bought into Knox’s warren of lies about “forced confessions” (in actuality accusations of an innocent man!), and the cleanup that was somehow “impossible” and a “tortured five days of brutal interrogation”.

All have again and again been proven false and didnt stop her serving a three year sentence. Amanda Knox was challenged on her alibi, the presence of her blood at the scene, and her ownership of a key to the non-broken-into cottage.

She herself brought forward her alcohol and drug use, and blamed it for intoxication and lost memory for the night in question.

To rid herself of her most fundamental misconception about Amanda Knox, Lisa Marie Basile should read this series on the interrogation hoax which Knox still pushes and Basile gullibly swallowed.

5. Why Respect The Virtues Of Sexual Purity?

Modern Italian women are more fast, colorful, liberal and worldly than Americans may realize. They certainly dress a lot better. Naturally they try to live out their Catholic faith as best they can, even if we all fail to meet our highest ideals.

At the same time Italians tend to arrive at very close loving enduring families. How women prepare themselves is a very big component of this success - a success which Americans could use a lot more of. 

Here are some practical reasons why Italians value sexual responsibility, which have nothing to do with faith, religion, or patriarchy, but only the safety of innocent children.

Italians as all cultures do, prefer women who are cautious and circumspect with their sexuality, as a sign of the woman’s self-discipline, a natural caution toward males as a survival instinct which she will pass on to her offspring.

A female’s self-discipline in sexual matters is a hallmark of her personal self-respect and a sign she is able to envision her larger future as the wife of a dignified man.

Most such men hope to marry a woman clean of physical disease who also carries little emotional baggage from multiple sexual affairs and heartbreaks with multiple men.

The fewer of those encounters before marriage, the better chance the children she bears him will be in no doubt of their parentage.

This is supremely important to the man, who will be working to pass on his entire life’s work and heritage to the children he feels he has truly engendered and who carry his genes and his bloodline.

The children will more likely have a safe lifestyle of similar circumspect behavior and self-discipline inculcated by their mother who will be a large influence on their morals.

The mother’s reputation can add or detract from her children’s social position and can expand their opportunities as people of trustworthy background or its opposite.

There can be a safety aspect. A woman who has had a raunchy past may have unfinished business with various men who may possibly come back into the area, begin to harass, taunt, spread rumors, or even physically threaten and cause difficulty for a new husband’s family, suspicious that perhaps one of the offspring is his own.

In this day of twitter, instagram, Facebook, email, and YouTube, sordid rumors that were once easily squelched now become known worldwide on digital media.

It is simple logic that if a woman while in the heyday of her youth and good looks in the full bloom of health and optimism, could not make attachments or command loyalty and devotion despite going all the way to sleeping with a man, that this person somehow has her radar broken or uses poor judgment.

Perhaps she simply prefers the lust for pleasure over saving herself for marriage to the man who would one day do her the most good and with whom she would develop a lifetime relationship. At any rate, she may have a sex drive that overwhelms her judgment. It may motivate her even after marriage, to break the ties of marriage.

The husband of such a woman will also inherit her personal history and may grow to resent behaviors in her past that might tarnish his future and their children’s.

This is merely a common sense outlook on why it is smart to abstain from sexual intimacies with lots of strangers who have no ongoing goodwill toward the person whose body they use, nor any commitment to the offspring of such union financially or physically.

A woman’s body at any time could conceive despite using birth control.

In each normal sex act she takes the risk of facing the horrendous consequences of pregnancy without emotional support, finances, and then she faces 15 to 20 years of her life required to raise the child while trying to introduce him to various father figures who may never feel the natural bond to the child that a married father would.

Talk to single moms anywhere, their path is no piece of cake.  To choose this hard path by one’s own lack of self-discipline and lack of insight is a foolish act. Society is left buying the diapers and formula and helping the exhausted young mother survive her day job and come home to night feedings.

In other words, all the hard duties of childcare are foisted upon those who didn’t ask for them, who may be tired from raising their own legitimate offspring, a hard enough job with two parents committed and working on the children’s behalf.

Social services are stretched hard enough when emergencies, accidents, death or desertion of the male parent leave women and children stranded and abandoned in financial straits.

To jump over this cliff by choice or lack of foresight is foolish of a woman who knows a child needs two devoted parents. It’s self-absorbed, pleasure loving behavior with refusal to delay gratification.

It is selfish to the community.

Governments have to chase down these fathers for non-support of their own children.

Taxpayers and others who had no joy of the sex act or the union however brief it was, are forced for decades by welfare agencies (and basic compassion) to fork out child support dollars for strangers, rather than see the infant starve.

The child of these hasty and ill-fated unions already may face for a lifetime the hardship of feeling unwanted by his father. He or she may suffer embarrassment at his mom’s unwise youthful choices that were predicated on her lack of logic or poor self-control and willful betrayal of her children’s best future for one of difficulty and poverty.

Where is the love? It was love for self, not others.

An aside: Thank goodness God in heaven does love us all, no matter what our parents made a mess of. All can be resolved in peace and love, but the path of natural life will be much tougher and more limited when the child will not learn problem solving skills from two parents of the opposite sex nor have the benefit of the greater security. “Two are better than one, for they have more reward for their labor.”

6. Precisely WHO Are Today’s Feminists?

There are many forms of feminism. Oddly Ms. Basile is determined to argue for the imparting of partiality and favoritism to a woman who has been found to have killed another woman using two males as proxies. Ms. Basile’s biased view is based on Amanda Knox being wrongfully condemned because Basile thinks she is attractive and sexually free.

But this never happened. There was hard proof against her in DNA in three rooms and a corridor in the house and on a knife handle and upper blade..

Where are all the feminists? Those who have their facts right are allowing justice to take its course, that’s where. Justice is blind, and does not favor the pretty over the ugly or the rich over the poor. Yet all these things may be factors in the cause of any crime.

There are as many flavors of feminist as there are ideologies in the world. Consider this list.

• Liberal feminism
• Radical feminism
• Conservative feminism
• Ecofeminists
• Separatist feminism
• Materialist feminism
• Socialist feminism
• Marxist feminism
• Anarcha-feminists
• Feminist punk movement
• Feminism as a social construction
• Lipstick feminism

There are dozens and dozens.  There are Christian feminists (I am one). All are equal before God, Mary is the mother of the Church, she was allowed to usher in the Savior of mankind. God uses women to restore what women through Eve lost.

Look at Meredith’s heel being exposed under the duvet. (see Genesis 3:15 prophecy from God that the seed of the woman would crush Satan’s head, but Satan would bruise his heel.)

Meredith was even worried she’d packed no socks when she first came to Perugia, and she told friends she hoped her dad would bring some, revealing concern about uncovered feet. .

There are the early feminist suffragettes who worked for women’s right to vote and birth control.  The second wave campaigned for legal and social and political equality for women. Equal work for equal pay. The second wave feminists declared, “The personal is political”.

The second wave in about 30 years splintered off into various feminist camps divided on the issues of pornography *is it exploitative of women or a celebration of sexuality?, male equality versus misandry, homosexuality, the racial issues of women of color, the cultural (some Islamic, some Jewish, some WASP, etc.) women in developed countries versus poverty stricken nations.

Feminism is not a monolithic entity. Arguments abound whether we’re now living in a postfeminist society, whether gender equality has been achieved.

Then there’s third wave feminism.

7. Feminism In The Case Of Meredith’s Murder

The truth of whether a person committed a crime rises above all of these feminist ideologies. All of them. It is not a traditional role problem, it is a problem of no respect for Meredith’s particular life.

If she had been male, the bullies would not have dared.

So it was her femaleness that made her a target. Ironically her vulnerability was caused by another female’s envy and anger management issues and extremely irresponsible lifestyle.

Knox is a very misguided cause for smart feminists.

Friday, May 09, 2014

Amanda Knox’s Awkward, Robotic TV Appearances: New Science Could Blow Away Such Fraud

Posted by Peter Quennell

In Italy the zillion or so Italians that Amanda Knox has framed are starting to push back on steroids in the Italian media and courts.

More on that coming up. Meanwhile Americans have been a tad less nimble to realize that they’ve swallowed a gigantic hoax.

Unsurprising, perhaps, given years of uniquely one-sided TV coverage of the case. But thanks to the good English-language reporters in Italy who have persevered. And thanks to CNN’s Nancy Grace for her biting segment this week, making it quite obvious where she stands on guilt.

Knox’s TV appearances and written statements are ringing more and more hollow as they lose all touch with reality. See our post immediately below. Such a brazen mangling of hard facts is absolutely absurd.

The professionals Vivianna and Friendofstfrank, main posters here, each have posts in the works for us on what they have been reading from Knox’s persona on the TV screen.

In the meantime, please check out these videos on the new science. Each is an hour long. They show just how hard it could get for any future Knoxes and Sollecitos to sustain a similar hoax in future.

Here’s an overview of the videos from the New York Times. 

The program looks at how developments in neuroscience are affecting court cases and might do so even more radically in the future. It sets up a fictional trial involving a shooting during a convenience store robbery, cutting between courtroom scenes and visits with researchers and legal scholars who are working on the front edge of this world.

By mapping brain activity, scientists know quite a bit about which regions are involved with processes like facial recognition, as well as the differences between mature adult brains and the brains of young people. (The fictional shooting suspect is 18.) The program has segments on how this research might be applied to issues like determining whether a witness is correctly identifying someone, whether a defendant is lying about not having been at a particular location, even whether potential jurors have racial biases.

Researchers, able to see the implications of their work, are also already studying whether knowledgeable test subjects can subvert the technology, rigging test results by how they think or where they focus their eyes.

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.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Knox & Sollecito Actions In The Week Prior To Arrest: An Incriminating Behavior Pattern For Sure

Posted by James Raper

[Video above: Sollecito slams Knox’s weird behavior, while not explaining numerous examples of his own ]

1. Today’s Context To This Post

A very strong case for guilt has been made at trial and endorsed at the first-level appeal.

This series hammers home the growing hundreds of incriminating stark differences between the official evidence record, Sollecito’s and Knox’s two books, and Sollecito’s and Knox’s multiple conflicting claims since.

The focus of this post as with the one immediately below is upon the described behaviours of Knox and Sollecito, from the very beginning to this very day. This pattern has more than contributed to the certainty of their involvement in the murder of Meredith Kercher.

2. How The Behavior Speaks To Guilt

The early pointer of the staged break-in aside this behaviour gave investigators an insight into the pair’s possible involvement back on Day One: Behavioral pointers have continued on a par with corroborated developments in the case.

It has even continued, incredibly, since their release from prison. For me it is the thread that runs through this case having as much to do with the overall picture of culpability as the other elements .

This behaviour - to include what they have to say for themselves - is a catalogue of the inappropriate, of the implausible, of inconsistencies and contradictions, of evasions and obfuscations, to be gleaned from the accounts of Knox and Sollecito themselves and highlighted in the accounts of other witnesses. It is also to be gleaned from phone and computer records.

Taken together it is a formidable body of evidence which goes to character and culpability. It cannot be attributed to a railroading job, the machinations of a corrupt and evil prosecutor or character assassination by the media. It is also implausible if not impossible to explain it as being due to naivety, confusion or some quirkiness of character.

It amounts to the pair of them concocting stories, telling lies and misleading investigators and the general public.

3. Physical Evidence Array Is Already Substantial

There are numerous items of evidence which are building blocks in the prosecution case and with which we are all familiar.

1. The staged break-in via Filomena’s window with pointers to this outside, on the windows and shutters, and throughout the bedroom.

2. The evident partial clean up proved by footprint trails with footprints missing and what was behind the locked door.

3. Amanda Knox’s lamp on the floor behind Meredith’s locked door which she only conceded was her own at trial, under pressure.

4. Knox’s dried and congealed blood on the tap in the small bathroom that Amanda Knox and Meredith shared.

5. The bloody footprint on the mat in that bathroom definitively attributed to Sollecito rather than Guede

6.  The mixed DNA of Knox and Meredith Kercher found in blood in the basin, the bidet and on the box of Q tips in that bathroom

7. Two luminol enhanced mixed traces containing DNA belonging to Knox and Meredith Kercher, one in the corridor and the other in Filomena’s room

8. Two luminol enhanced footprints of Knox in the corridor and one of Sollecito immediately outside Meredith’s room.

9. The knife taken from Sollecito’s apartment with Meredith Kercher’s DNA on the blade and Knox’s DNA on the handle and on the blade

10. Meredith Kercher’s bra clasp with Sollecito’s DNA on a hook and contamination possibilities definitively ruled out.

4. Behaviors In The First Week Of November 2007

I don’t want to make this an unduly long post. Accordingly I am going to concentrate on the period up to that famous police interrogation analysed just below. As to that critical period I will be selective but it should be enough.

The Lady With The Mop?

The story (in Knox’s e-mail) that she had visited the cottage to collect a mop, have a shower and get a change of clothing, earlier on the morning of the 2nd November, but did not notice that Filomena’s window had been broken and her room trashed is just that - a made up story. It is entirely implausible and the account unreliable for a number of reasons including-

(a) it is hard to believe that she did not notice the hard to miss fact that the shutters to Filomena’s window were (as they were found) open - this would have alerted her to the likelihood that Filomena was back home which she would, of course, have checked out of curiosity if nothing else given that she found no one home.

(b) her claim that Filomena’s door was shut is contradicted by Sollecito who wrote (prison diary) that when he later entered the cottage with Knox   Filomena’s door was wide open.

(c) it is hard to believe that she took a shower without noticing until after her shower (as she claimed) that there was blood on the bathroom mat, including a bloody footprint. In fact she didn’t even claim to notice that it was a footprint despite the fact that it was obviously so.

(d) it is hard to believe that having found the front door wide open and having found blood, and having opted for a shower and to blow dry her hair, she never got round to checking for any sign of Meredith’s presence. Any one else would have tried her door to check whether or not she was home.

(e) from her appearance at the cottage that morning it is hard to believe that she took a shower at all (let alone blow dried her hair) and the cops remarked that she reeked of body odour.

(f)  less problematic but nevertheless still somewhat surprising is that as she is drying her hair she makes a fuss over shit (left by Guede) in the toilet,  describes herself as being “uncomfortable” about it but does not flush it away before grabbing the mop and leaving.

The Two Stayed At Home?

The story that Knox and Sollecito had spent the previous night (the night of Meredith’s murder) indoors, critically from 9 pm onwards, that both had slept and that Knox had been the first to rise at about 10.30 am the next morning is implausible and uncorroborated, not only because this alibi is directly contradicted by the testimony of Curatolo and Quintavalle, and Sollecito’s statement to the police that Knox had gone out and not returned until about 1 am, but also in view of the following facts.

(a) Curatolo claimed to have first seen the Knox and Sollecito in Piazza Grimana shortly after 9.30 pm but Knox claimed in her trial testimony that she and Raffaele had cooked and eaten a meal between 9.30 and 10 pm.


GCM:  Can you say what time this was?

AK:  umm, around, umm, we ate around 9.30 or 10, and then after we had eaten, and he was washing the dishes, well, as I said, I don’t look at the clock much, but it was around 10. And”¦he”¦umm”¦well, he was washing the dishes and, umm, the water was coming out and he was very bummed,  displeased, he told me he had just had that thing repaired. He was annoyed that it had broken again. So”¦umm

LG:  Yes, so you talked a bit. Then what did you do?

AK:  Then we smoked a joint together”¦”¦we made love”¦..then we fell asleep.


Unfortunately Sollecito’s father himself torpedoed this dodge by telling the court that when he phoned his son at 8.42 pm Sollecito had told him that there had been a water leak while he was washing the dishes. Taking into account Knox’s testimony that they had eaten before the dish washing, this places the meal and dish washing before that call.

(b) Sollecito told the police that at about 11 pm he had received a call from his father on his land line. Not only is that not confirmed by his father but there is no log of such a call.

(c) There is no log of a call to his mobile at that time either though his father had sent a text message at that time but which Sollecito did not receive until 6. 03 am the following morning. We know that he had received it at that time because that is the time at which it is logged in the phone records.  Sollecito had just turned his phone on and clearly the phone had been off when the text message was sent.

(d) There is no record of any phone activity for either of them from after the 8.42 pm call to, in Sollecito’s case, receipt of that text message at 6.03 am,  and in Knox’s case her call to Meredith’s English phone at 12.07 pm the next day.

A further word about this Point (d) here as Knox has released her phone records on her web site. In her case it has to be said that this is not so unusual. Up until the 30th October there is no regular pattern of late or early morning phone activity.

It is interesting to note, however, that as of the 30th October there is a spate of texts and calls between her and a young Greek known to us as Spiros.  Communication between them had in fact been going on since the beginning of October but there are 5 texts in the afternoon of the 30th, two telephone calls in the afternoon and a call at 11.38 pm on Halloween.

In the early hours of the following morning there are a couple of calls between the two. In fact we know that the two met up together for Halloween as Knox was at a loose end.  Meredith had shrugged her off and Raffaele was attending a friend’s graduation dinner out of town.

Sollecito is different as his father was in the habit of calling at all hours just to find out what his son was doing and, as we know, he had called late only to find that his son’s phone was switched off.

In the case of Knox she admitted in any event that her phone had been switched off, “to save the battery”.

(e) There is no record of any activity on Sollecito’s computer after 9.15 pm and until 5.32 am the following morning when music was played for half an hour.  This contradicts the claim that Sollecito had smoked pot and interacted with his computer until midnight and that they had both slept until late the following morning.

(f) The fact that the next morning, outside the cottage, both Knox and Sollecito looked utterly exhausted. This belies the alibi that they had spent a quiet night indoors and had only risen late that morning.

The Fake Call To Knox’s Mum in Seattle?

Knox falsely claims in her book that having had her shower she called her mother on her way back to Sollecito’s apartment as she was beginning to have concerns as to what she had seen at the cottage. Her mother tells her to raise her concerns with Raffaele and the other flatmates and Knox says that she then immediately called Filomena. Filomena tells her to get hold of Meredith by phone which she tries to do by calling Meredith’s English phone first, then her Italian one.

(a) How does this correlate to the contents of her e-mail of the 11/04/07?

(b) How does this correlate to Knox’s phone records?

(c) There is no mention of a call to her mother at all in the e-mail. This from her e-mail -


“”¦.and I returned to Raffaele’s place. After we had used the mop to clean up the kitchen I told Raffaele about what I had seen in the house over breakfast.  The strange blood in the bathroom, the door wide open, the shit in the toilet.  He suggested I call one of my roommates, so I called Filomena”¦”¦”¦..
Filomena seemed really worried so I told her I’d call Meredith and then call her back. I called both of Meredith’s phones the English one first and last and the Italian one in between. The first time I called the English phone it rang and then sounded as if there was disturbance, but no one answered. I then called the Italian phone and it just kept ringing, no answer. I called the English phone again and this time an English voice told me the phone was out of service.”


(d) the phone records are as follows for 2 November 2007:



Ist call of the day @  12.07.12 (to Meredith’s English phone)  - 16 seconds

2nd call   @  12.08.44 (to Filomena)  -  68 seconds

3rd call   @ 12.11.02 (to Meredith’s Italian phone)  -  3 seconds

4th call @ 12.11.54 (to Meredith’s English phone)  - 4 seconds

8th call   @  12..47.23 (first call to her mother) - 88 seconds


(e) The discrepancies are numerous, see these examples:

1. The first call to her mother was not just after leaving the cottage but 40 minutes after the call to Filomena, and the call to Filomena had been placed after she had returned to Raffaele’s place and after they had used the mop and had breakfast. In fact, say about an hour after she left the cottage.

2.  The first call to Meredith’s English phone was placed before the call to Filomena, and not after as Knox would have it in her e-mail. A minute before,  but Knox did not mention this to Filomena, as confirmed by the e-mail and Filomena’s testimony.

3. The first call to Meredith’s English phone disappears entirely in Knox’s book.

4.  The call to the Italian phone did not just keep ringing. The connection was for 3 seconds and this was followed by a connection to the English phone for 4 seconds.

5.  The English phone was not switched off or out of service. Mrs Lana’s daughter had found it. She said that she would not have done so but for it ringing (the 12.07 call for 16 seconds?). She picked it up and took it into the house where it rang again (the 12.11 call - 4 seconds?). A name appeared on the screen as it rang : “Amanda”.

6.  The 3 and 4 second calls are highly suspicious. The Italian phone was undoubtedly in the possession of the postal police. According to Massei it’s answering service was activated, accounting for the log. Clearly Knox did not even bother to leave a message for Meredith as it would take longer than 3 seconds just to listen to the answering service. This is not the behaviour of someone genuinely concerned about another.


Observations:

1.  In her e-mail, and repeated in her trial testimony, Knox says that she woke up around 10.30 am, grabbed a few things and walked the 5 minutes back to the cottage. If the first call to her mother was about an hour after she left the cottage (see before), then she left the cottage at about 11.47 am, which means that she spent over an hour there. Either that or she spent more (a lot more)  than 20 minutes at Raffaele’s place before calling Filomena. The latter would be more likely as it is difficult to conceive that she spent over an hour at the cottage. She didn’t have the heating on when she was there. Either way there is a period of about an hour and a half between when she might have tried to contact Meredith or raise the alarm and actually doing so.

2.  That we are right to be incredulous about this is borne out by the false claim in Knox”˜s book. That false claim is significant and can only be because Knox is aware of the problem and feels she needs to add some support to her implausible story of the mop/shower visit and to conceal the real reasons for the inactivity and delay connected with it.

3. That it is incredible is even belatedly acknowledged by Sollecito’s feeble but revealing attempt to distance himself from Knox in a CNN interview on the 28 Feb this year. “Certainly I asked her questions” he said. “Why did you take a shower? Why did you spend so much time there?”

4.  That she makes that false claim and has constantly stonewalled and/or misplaced the 16 second call to Meredith’s English phone is indicative of her guilty knowledge. Her guilty knowledge with respect to the 16 second call was that it was made to ascertain whether or not the phones had been located before she called Filomena, and hence for her it was not (incredulous though this is without such explanation) a pertinent fact for her to bring up with Filomena.

The Real Call To Knox’s Mum In Seattle?

As to the 12.47 call to her mother itself (4.47 am Seattle time and prior to the discovery of Meredith”˜s body) Knox not only did not mention that in her e-mail but in her trial testimony she steadfastly declined to recall that it had occurred.

She clearly did not want, or could not be trusted, to discuss why the call had occurred and what had transpired in conversation with her mother before the discovery of Meredith’s body.

Not only was the timing of the 12.47 call inconvenient to her mother but I found it interesting to note from Knox’s phone records (covering 2nd Oct - 3rd November) that mother and daughter do not appear to have called or texted each other once up until that 12.47 call.

It would appear then that in so far as they remained in direct communication with each other for that period it must have been by e-mail. One can therefore imagine that her mother was very surprised to receive that call.

It is also very difficult to accept that Knox could not recall a phone call she was not in the habit of making. (On the other hand the same records show that it was not at all unusual for Knox and Meredith to communicate with other on Meredith’s English phone.)

Sollecito’s Call From His Dad?

At the cottage, and prior to the above call, Sollecito received a call from his father at 12.40 am. Do we know what they discussed? It would in any event have been after the discovery of Filomena’s broken window and (allegedly) Sollecito’s (rather feeble) attempt to beak down Meredith’s door.

Did the responsible adult advise his son to do the obvious and call the police? One would think so, but then why was there a 10 minute delay before he called his sister in the Carabinieri at 12.50 am? Indeed, why call his sister at all? Filomena had also urged Knox to call the police when she called at 12.35.The delay might be explained by the unexpected arrival of the postal police and if this was the case then it was before Sollecito called the 112 emergency services.

The Claims Of Finding Meredith’s Body?

Neither Knox nor Sollecito saw into Meredith’s room when the door was broken down and her body discovered on the floor under a quilt. Yet in the immediate aftermath it is as if they have wanted others to believe that it was they who discovered her body and in the bragging about this there have been disclosures, not only as to what they should not have been aware but also suggestive of disturbed personalities. This behaviour was remarkable for all the wrong reasons.

(a)  Luca Altieri”˜s testimony makes it clear that Knox and Sollecito had heard about Meredith”˜s cut throat directly from him during the car ride to the police station.

However her bizarre and grotesque allusion in the early moments of the investigation to the body being found stuffed into the closet (wardrobe) is not just factually incorrect (it was lying to the side of the closet) but bears correlation to the later forensic findings based on blood splatter in front of and on the closet door, that Meredith had been thrust up against the closet after having been stabbed in the throat.

(b)  The behaviour of Knox and Sollecito at the police station is documented in the testimony of Meredith’s English girlfriends and of the police. Whilst it is true that people react to grief in different ways it is difficult to ascribe grief to Knox’s behaviour. Emotionally she was cold towards Meredith’s friends and occasionally went out of her way to upset them with barbed and callous remarks.

The fact that Knox was not observed to cry and wanted to talk about what had happened is not of itself indicative of anything but remarks like “What the fuck do you think, she bled to death” and her kissing and canoodling with Raffaele (including them making smacking noises with their lips when they blew kisses to each other) in front of the others was not normal.

Rather chilling in retrospect was a scene between the pair of them when Knox found the word “minaccia” ( in english - threat) amusing and made a play of it with Sollecito in front of witnesses.

(c) Grief is in any event reserved for friends and relations, or people one much admires. The evidence is that the initial short friendship between the two had cooled to the extent that Meredith was studiously, if politely, avoiding being around Knox. For the narcissistic and attention seeking american girl this would have been difficult to ignore and may well have offended her.

(d)  The next day Sollecito was willingly collared by a reporter from the Sunday Mirror and told her about the horror of finding the body.


“Yes I knew her. I found her body.”

“It is something I never hope to see again,” he said. “There was blood everywhere and I couldn’t take it all in.”

“My girlfriend was her flatmate and she was crying and screaming, ‘How could anyone do this?’”


Sollecito went on to tell the reporter that “It was a normal night. Meredith had gone out with one of her English friends and Amanda and I went to party with one of my friends. The next day, around lunchtime, Amanda went back to their apartment to have a shower.”

About the only thing that is true here is that he knew Meredith.

Friday, January 10, 2014

Amanda Knox Confirms She Faked A Break-In in Seattle Long A Sore Point To Previous Victims

Posted by Peter Quennell

[Knox’s off-campus house shared with others near the University of Washington]


It was an open secret in November 2007 among those who had known Knox in Seattle that her charge for murder did not exactly surprise everybody.

“That figures” was in effect their take.

We got to hear about boozing and drug-use. Also (see here and here) about deep anger issues in the Knox-Mellas family, and also about Knox writings (scroll down here to “Baby Blue”) in which violence and cruelty appeared front and center.

We got to hear the hard facts about the rock-throwing abuse of neighbors and passing cars in the course of a drug-fueled party in which Knox was probably lucky to be charged only with a misdemeanour.

And we got to hear rumors, but no hard confirmation, about a faked break-in near the University of Washington campus, in which Knox apparently exulted while those hoaxed were left pretty shaken.

Nobody else ever reported that they found it at all funny, but Knox herself has now off-handedly laughed it off on her increasingly bizarre and telling website. Steven Wentworth has an excellent commentary on TEKJournalismUK. It is all worth reading. These are key excerpts:

She admitted that the hazing prank, played on her flat-mates at the University of Washington, involved messing up the flat and hiding things to make it appear as if items had been stolen. Knox used “mutual friends” of her other housemates to help fake the burglary in her own premises. She acknowledges that it caused “distress” to her housemates and she and her accomplices had to apologise for the act…

Rumours of the hazing prank have been around for years, after a former acquaintance of Knox’s let the story slip, just a month after her arrest. On being pressed for details, the informant clammed up, and the incident has subsequently been vociferously denied by members of Knox’s family and her supporters. Meanwhile her defence have made repeated references to Rudy Guede’s past actions as character evidence against him.

Yesterday’s revelations will come as no surprise to case-watchers. Her decision to stay away from the appeal hearing in Florence was widely seen as an “˜own goal’, and her emailed plea to the court clearly irritated the judge. In it, she suggested that the court would be unable to remain neutral in deciding her fate ““ a move not designed to curry favour with the judiciary. Whether her latest admission makes an impact on the current hearing remains to be seen.

And then according to her own words based on a huge lie to her parents and others in her circle in Seattle, this loose cannon headed for Europe, with little structure, little money, and little intention to do any serious study. In reality she was taking a year off.

Everybody she came in contact with there was well-meaning, hard-working and acting responsibility.  By all accounts except her own, she then in sharp contrast evolved into a grating unhygienic nuisance who made few friends, and soon lost all but that oddball Sollecito. Even he she described as soon shrugging off.

Knox is already being remarked upon in Italy as “too cowardly” to turn up at what is in fact HER appeal and have to face all of those she has been smearing. Her ill-advised blog is being observed and could result in yet another obstruction of justice charge as it rarely strays too close to the truth.

Way to go to ensure a stiff sentence? Probably this time with zero mitigating factors.