Category: Hoaxers from 2007

Tuesday, September 01, 2015

The Amanda Knox Calunnia Trial In Florence: What It Is All About #1

Posted by Peter Quennell

Above: Florence Prosecutor Dr Leopoldo Di Girolamo. Quick route to Comments here.

1. Arrangements For Knox Trial In Florence

Knox’s second trial for aggravated calunnia will take place later this week and early next week in Florence.

For the record the sentence for a repeat calunnia offense can be six years and the statute of limitations cuts in at 11 year and three months which in this case will be late in AD 2020.

The real drama if any will be next week, when witnesses are to be called starting on Monday. We should have some court reporting from Main Poster Machiavelli. There is the possibility of a closed court and a verdict on Tuesday.

We believe the judge will be Dr Giampaolo Boninsegna. We presume that Knox will not attend (perhaps a weak move, perhaps not).

Two prosecutors have developed the case which was sparked by complaints from investigators in the Perugia central police station. They are Dr Leopoldo Di Girolamo (image above) and Dr Angela Pietroiusti. We could see either or both of them in action.

It appears now that knox’s lawyers will again be Ghirga and Dalla Vedova, who some lawyers criticise for dropping her in it at trial with an ill-judged stint on the stand after 20 months of trying to stop Knox dropping herself in it.

2. Why Knox Was On The Stand in 2009

Knox’s team primarily primarily intended that Knox’s two days on the stand should serve to explain why she framed Patrick and then allowed him to languish in prison.

Both publicly to the media and at the Micheli hearings in late 2008 Knox’s lawyers had denied she was ill-treated or forced into a “confession”. So why was Knox put on the stand?

Probably in part because Knox absolutely insisted on it, given her considerable track record of written and spoken explanations and her interrogation in December 2007 by Dr Mignini. Each time a fail, but perhaps she had in mind the movie Groundhog Day.

And probably in part because the prosecution portion of the trial had been pretty damning. There had been stacks of evidence and numerous witnesses whose testimony fitted together pretty seamlessly.

Contrast this with the defense portion of the trial, from late summer onward, which was often awkward and hesitant, often did not fill complete court days, and really gained no ground back.

3. The Knox Defense Team’s Uphill Task Here

Bizarrely, Knox AND her lawyers AND her family had already sat through days and days of testimony earlier in the trial from various investigators who were present on 5-6 November when Knox explosively fingered Patrick.

Knox’s testimony was like night and day compared to that, as if none of that previous testimony had even happened. This was probably unique in Italian legal history and quite possibly in US legal history also.

Our ongoing Interrogation Hoax series, still far from complete, which has included a lot of new translation, showed what a very consistent picture of events on 5-6 Nov all these witnesses testified to.

Testimony led by Knox’s team (see below) was quite extensive but it tellingly wandered far from the main point and was very pussyfooting about 5-6 Nov even though Knox was not under oath and prosecutor cross-examination was circumscribed. It really won no points for Knox at all and didnt avoid her serving three years.

To consider the target testimony below against the picture the court had already developed, please read at least Part One of the series.

Look below as you read for all the numerous claims by Knox of illegal pressure and illegal abuse and illegal insistence of scenarios and names given to her by the cops.

According to the prior testimony of all those officers Knox is impugning, none of these claims of illegality seemingly designed to hurt careers had any truth at all to them.

4. Day One of Knox’s Testimony

Day two’s testimony will follow in our next post. Excerpts in both posts are from the full transcript on the Case Wiki, and all transcription and translation into English (a massive task) was by the PMF Team.

Relevant Questions By Lumumba Lawyer Pacelli

Here AK is Knox, CP is Pacelli, and GCM is Judge Massei.

CP:  Listen, let’s get to the evening of November 1. On the evening of November 1, 2007, did you have an appointment with Patrick near the basketball court?
GCM:  (Interrupting the interpreter who is putting this question into English for Amanda) Excuse me, excuse me. Also for the interpreter, also the English translation, everything is for everyone, this is not a dialogue between two people.
CP:  I’ll ask a simpler question, Presidente.
GCM:  No no, we heard it. Please, go ahead. (The interpreter translates the question)
AK:  No, I didn’t.
CP:  So, on the evening of November 1, you didn’t meet Patrick?
AK:  No.
CP:  You didn’t meet him at the basketball court?
AK:  No.
CP:  Then why did you say you met him at the basketball court during your interrogation of November 6, 2007, at 1:45 in the morning in front of the judicial police?
AK:  It was a complicated situation. I can explain it if you want me to go into it.
CP:  Yes, yes, later.
AK:  Okay.
CP:  You had the keys of the apartment in via della Pergola?
GCM:  Excuse me, avvocato, she was saying something.
CP:  Sorry. Please, go ahead.
GCM:  She was adding something. Please go ahead. You can answer…
AK:  Okay.
GCM:  ...with all the time and the precision that you need.
AK:  Okay.
GCM:  (addressing the interpreter) Tell her that if she wants to add something, as it seemed she did, she can do it, and we will listen. (Interpreter puts this into English)
AK:  Yes. Um, the interrogation process was very long and difficult. Arriving in the police office, I didn’t expect to be interrogated at all. When I got there, I was sitting on my own doing my homework, when a couple of police officers came to sit with me. They began to ask me the same questions that they had been asking me days…all these days ever since it happened. For instance, who could I imagine could be the person who killed Meredith, and I said I still didn’t know, and so what they did is, they brought me into another interrogation room. Once I was in there, they asked me to repeat everything that I had said before, for instance what I did that night. They asked me to see my phone, which I gave to them, and they were looking through my phone, which is when they found the message. When they found the message, they asked me if I had sent a message back, which I didn’t remember doing. That’s when they started being very hard with me. They called me a stupid liar, and they said that I was trying to protect someone. (Sigh) So I was there, and they told me that I was trying to protect someone, but I wasn’t trying to protect anyone, and so I didn’t know how to respond to them. They said that I had left Raffaele’s house, which wasn’t true, which I denied, but they continued to call me a stupid liar. They were putting this telephone in front of my face going “Look, look, your message, you were going to meet someone”. And when I denied that, they continued to call me a stupid liar. And then, from that point on, I was very very scared, because they were treating me so badly and I didn’t understand why. (Sigh) While I was there, there was an interpreter who explained to me an experience of hers, where she had gone through a traumatic experience that she could not remember at all, and she suggested that I was traumatized, and that I couldn’t remember the truth. This at first seemed ridiculous to me, because I remembered being at Raffaele’s house. For sure. I remembered doing things at Raffaele’s house. I checked my e-mails before, then we watched a movie. We had eaten dinner together, we had talked together, and during that time I hadn’t left his apartment. But they were insisting upon putting everything into hourly segments, and since I never look at the clock, I wasn’t able to tell them what time exactly I did everything. They insisted that I had left the apartment for a certain period of time to meet somebody, which for me I didn’t remember, but the interpreter said I probably had forgotten. (Sigh)...
AK:  So what ended up happening was, that they told me to try to remember what I apparently, according to them, had forgotten. Under the amount of pressure of everyone yelling at me, and having them tell me that they were going to put me in prison for protecting somebody, that I wasn’t protecting, that I couldn’t remember, I tried to imagine that in some way they must have had…it was very difficult, because when I was there, at a certain point, I just…I couldn’t understand (Start of 15:19 minute video segment) why they were so sure that I was the one who knew everything. And so, in my confusion, I started to imagine that maybe I was traumatized, like what they said. They continued to say that I had met somebody, and they continued to put so much emphasis on this message that I had received from Patrick, and so I almost was convinced that I had met him. But I was confused.
CP:  But—did you really meet him at the basketball court?
AK:  No.
CP:  Then how could you be convinced that you had met him?
AK:  I was confused.
CP:  When you said this, how many police inspectors were present?
AK:  I don’t know how many were police officers or inspectors, but there were lots.
CP:  Listen, but you were accompanied to the bar, they offered you a cappuccino over the night? They assisted you through the night?
AK:  I was offered tea after I had made declarations.
CP:  So they treated you well.
AK:  No!

On November 6, 2007, at 1:45, you said that you went to the house in via della Pergola with Patrick. Did you go?
AK:  The declarations were taken against my will. And so, everything that I said, was said in confusion and under pressure, and, because they were suggested by the public minister.
CP:  Excuse me, but at 1:45, the pubblico ministero was not there, there was only the judicial police.
AK:  Ha. They also were pressuring me.
CP:  I understand, but were they telling you to say that, too, or did you say it of your own free will.
AK:  They were suggesting paths of thought. They were suggesting the path of thought. They suggested the journey. So the first thing I said, “Okay, Patrick”. And then they said “Okay, where did you meet him? Did you meet him at your house? Did you meet him near your house?” “Euh, near my house, I don’t know.” Then my memories got mixed up. From other days, I remembered having met Patrick, at Piazza Grimana, so I said “Okay, Piazza Grimana.” It wasn’t as if I said “Oh, this is how it went.”

GCM:  Please go ahead, avvocato.
CP: —which is the object of both declarations, the one at 1:45 and the one at 5:45. (Crossing voices.)
GCM:  It was about facts, though?
CP:  All right, I’ll reformulate the question. Meredith, before she was killed, did she have sex?
AK:  I don’t know.
CP:  Then why, in the interrogation of Nov 6 at 1:45, did you say that Meredith had sex before she died?
AK:  Under pressure, I imagined lots of different things, also because during the days that I was being questioned by the police, they suggested to me that she had been raped.
CP:  And the police suggested to you to say this?
AK:  Yes.
CP:  And to make you say this, did they hit you?
AK:  Yes.

CP:  When you wrote the memorandum, were you hit by police?
AK:  When?
CP:  When you wrote the memorandum. Were you hit by police?
AK:  No.
CP:  Mistreated?
AK:  No.
CP:  Did the police suggest the contents?
AK:  No.
CP:  You gave it to them freely?
AK:  Yes.
CP:  Voluntarily?
AK:  Yes.
CP:  Listen, in this memorandum, you say that you confirm the declarations you made the night before about what might have happened at your house with Patrick. Why did you freely and spontaneously confirm these declarations?
AK:  Because I was no longer sure what was my imagination and what was real. So I wanted to say that I was confused, and that I couldn’t know. But at the same time, I knew I had signed those declarations. So I wanted to say that I knew I had made those declarations, but I was confused and not sure.
CP:  But in fact, you were sure that Patrick was innocent?
AK:  No, I wasn’t sure.
CP:  Why?
AK:  Because I was confused! I imagined that it might have happened. I was confused.

CP:  Did you see Patrick on November 1, yes or no?
AK:  No.
CP:  Did you meet him?
AK:  No.
CP:  Then why did you say that you saw him, met him, and walked home with him?
AK:  Because the police and the interpreter told me that maybe I just wasn’t remembering these things, but I had to try to remember. It didn’t matter if I thought I was imagining it. I would remember it with time. So, the fact that I actually remembered something else was confusing to me. Because I remembered one thing, but under the pressure of the police, I forced myself to imagine another. I was confused. I was trying to explain this confusion, because they were making me accuse someone I didn’t want to accuse.

Relevant Questions By Knox Lawyer Ghirga

CP:  I’ll repeat my question. On the 10th, you said to your mother: “It’s my fault that he’s here. I feel terrible.” Why didn’t you say this to the pubblico ministero?
LG?:  I object! He’s already asked this question. And it was answered.
GCM:  Yes. It was already asked.
CP:  Yes, but she hasn’t answered!
LG?:  Yes, she HAS answered!
CP:  Can she answer? I didn’t understand.
GCM:  Excuse me, excuse me. Please.
CP:  I didn’t understand her answer, President. Can you explain?
GCM:  So, the question was asked and has been asked again because—
CP:  (speaking over him) Because I didn’t understand the answer!
GCM: —the defense lawyer has not understood why—in what regards the police, the accused has said that when they came to bring her paper, they said “Oh, another truth,” so her relations with them were such that she did not feel that she could tell them this circumstance. It remains to ask why she did not tell the pubblico ministero. This is what the lawyer is asking. For what concerns the police, we have heard her position and her answer. We’re talking about the period after the 10th of November, when this conversation with the mother was recorded. In what concerns the pubblico ministero, the lawyer is asking you why you didn’t feel the necessity, like with your mother, of telling him that Patrick Lumumba, as far as you were concerned, had nothing to do with all this.
AK:  We are talking about when I was in front of the judge?
GCM:  After the 10th of November.
AK:  Frankly, I didn’t have good relations with the police after that period, nor with the pubblico ministero, because he also had suggested declarations that got written down in the declarations. I didn’t know where to turn. I felt better talking to my defense than to the police.

LG:  All right, I’ve exhausted this topic. Now, I said we were just coming to the evening when you were called in, or rather when Raffaele was called in to the Questura on Nov 5. Where did you come from? Were you having dinner somewhere? Do you remember?
AK:  We were at the apartment of a friend of his, who lived near his house, and we were having dinner with them, trying, I don’t know, to feel a bit of normality, when Raffaele was called by the police.
LG:  Okay. So you went with him in the car, and you came in and they settled you somewhere, and later you were heard.
AK:  Yes. What happened is that they weren’t expecting me to come. I went somewhere a bit outside near the elevator, and I had taken my homework with me, so I started to do my homework, and then I needed to do some “stretching”, so I did some “stretching”, and that’s when one policeman said something about my flexibility. A comment.
LG:  Okay. Then you were interrogated, let’s say interrogated, it was just for information. So you were interrogated.
AK:  Mm.
LG:  During the interrogation, there were several people in the room, did someone come who was involved in Raffaele Sollecito’s interrogation? He was being interrogated in one place, you in another.
AK:  So, there were lots and lots of people who came in and went out, and after one had come in and gone out, another policewoman told me that Raffaele said that I went out of the apartment—at least, Raffaele apparently said that I (stammering) had gone out of his house.
LG:  Okay. And the episode of the text message came later? After this person came in and said that? You don’t remember?
AK:  Yes, yes. I think it happened after they told me that.
LG:  Now what interests me is that you should be precise about the term “hit”, because being hit is something…was it a cuff on the head, two cuffs on the head? How precise can you be about this “hitting”?
AK:  So, during the interrogation, people were standing all around me, in front of me, behind me, one person was screaming at me from here, another person was shouting “No no no, maybe you just don’t remember” from over there, other people were yelling other things, and a policewoman behind me did this to me (you hear the sound of her giving two very little whacks).
LG:  Once, twice?
AK:  Twice. The first time I did this, I turned around to her, and she did it again.
LG:  I wanted to know this precise detail.
AK:  Yes.
LG:  After all that, that whole conversation, that you told us about, and you had a crying crisis, did they bring you some tea, coffee, some cakes, something? When was that exactly?
AK:  They brought me things only after I had made some declarations. So, I was there, they were all screaming at me, I only wanted to leave because I was thinking that my mother was arriving, and I said look, can I have my telephone, because I want to call my mom. They said no, and there was this big mess with them shouting at me, threatening me, and it was only after I made declarations that they started saying “No, no, don’t worry, we’ll protect you,” and that’s how it happened.
LG:  Then you stayed in the Questura?
AK:  Yes.
LG:  Then, at midday, or one o’clock, we don’t know exactly, they brought you a paper called an arrest warrant. When they served you this warrant, it must have been around twelve, one o’clock. Do you remember?
AK:  So, all papers they brought me to sign, at that point, they were all the same to me, so I can’t even say what I had to sign, arrest warrant, declarations, whatever, because at a certain point, I just wanted to sign and go home.
LG:  Right. But instead?
AK:  Instead, no. After a while they told me I had to stay in the Questura, so I had to stay, and I rolled up in a fetal position to try to sleep, on a chair, and I fell asleep, then I woke up, and I was there thinking and some people were going in and out, and during this period of time, I was telling them: “Look, I am really confused, these things don’t seem like what I remember, I remember something else.” And they said “No no no no no, you just stay quiet, you will remember it all later. So just stay quiet and wait, wait, wait, because we have to check some things.” And at that point I just didn’t understand anything. I even lost my sense of time.
LG:  And I wanted to ask you after how long they took you to prison. At some point there was a car, a police wagon that took you to prison. After how much time was that? You don’t know?
AK:  Well, I can’t say, but what I can say is that I stayed a while in the Questura, and during that time I kept trying to explain to the police that what I had said was not certain, and they took my shoes during that time and they took some pictures, they undressed me to take the pictures, and so it seemed like a long time.
LG:  So it was between this time and the time you went to prison that you wrote the memorial?
AK:  Yes. I wrote it there because, I asked to do it because I was telling them “Listen, you’re not hearing me, give me a piece of paper, and I’ll write this down in English to be sure you understand what I’m saying.” But I couldn’t really say that. I just said “Look, I’ll give you a present.” (Laughs.) It was because I wasn’t really able to speak or understand then. So I wrote that, but after I wrote the first pages, I was in the middle of writing this memorandum, they suddenly said “Hurry up, hurry up, finish because we have to take you to prison.” I stayed there like…I didn’t expect to go to prison, I thought maybe I hadn’t understood. I asked the policemen, the people who were around me, there, “But Why? I haven’t done anything.” And they said “No, it’s just bureaucracy. At least that’s what I understood.
LG:  All right Amanda, okay. Thank you. So you went to prison and spent the night. When did you write the second memorial?
AK:  So in prison I again asked for paper, because that’s how I’m used to expressing myself, the way I succeed best, also to organize my thoughts, I needed to write them down. I needed to reorganize all my thoughts, because at that point I was still confused, I still had these images in my memory that finally I understood were a mixture of real images in my memory from other days mixed with imagination. So I needed those pieces of paper, so I could take everything and put it in order.
LG:  All right, I’ve finished the subject of the night in the Questura. When you made your first declaration, it was without the pubblico ministero. Then he came. Can you tell us if there was some discussion about a lawyer? If you remember, and whatever you remember.
AK:  So, before they asked me to make further declarations—I really can’t tell you what time it was, I was lost after hours and hours of the same thing—but at one point I asked if I shouldn’t have a lawyer? I thought that, well, I didn’t know, but I’ve seen things like this on television. When people do things like this they have lawyer. They told me, at least one of them told me that it would be worse for me because it would prove that I didn’t want to collaborate with the police. So they told me no.

Amanda Knox’s first letter of Nov 9, 2007

This letter was entered in testimony by Knox’s lawyers on the first day. It was written by Knox to her lawyers around noon on Friday, Nov., 9, three days after her arrest and one day after the Matteini Hearing. Words that are missing from the scan are shown in square brackets.

Presumably intended to help Knox, it has now become part of her problem.

Per I Miei Avvocati

- Amanda Knox (Friday, Nov. 9, 2007)

Buon giorno Signore Ghirga e Signore Vedova. I’m sorry, but I must write in english to make sure I express myself (cl)early. Please excuse my handicap. I trust you are well, though probably very busy with my case and for this I thank you. What I want to provide for you now is help, because I know my position (is) a little confusing. I want to write for you everything I know as best I can and I especially want to tell you about this so-called “confession” that the police received from me. I want to begin with this “confession” because I know it is the most confusing, and so I will begin with that night.

The night of Monday, November 5th, 2007, and the following early morning of Tuesday, November 6th, 2007, was one of the worst experiences of my life, perhaps the worst. Around 10:30pm or 11pm Raffaele and I arrived at the police station after eating dinner at the apartment of one of Raffaele’s friends. It was Raffaele who the police called, not me, but I came with him to the Questura anyway while he was to be questioned for support, as he had done for me many times. When we arrived he was taken inside and I waited by the elevator and looked through my books while I waited. Not long aftwerward one of the police came and sat by me, wanting to talk with me, supposedly to pass the time. He didn’t tell me he was a police officer. In fact, he said I could tell him whatever I wanted because it wouldn’t matter. At the time I was frustrated and told him so. I thought it was ridiculaous that the police called us in at ridiculous hours of the night and kept us at the police station for hours on end with only vending maschine (sic) food to sustain us, especially since we (wer)e all doing our best to help the police. I had been asked twice to reenter the home of my neighbors and mine, first to witness the blood in the neighbors’ apartment and then to look through (k)nives in mine. I really feared the place. Inside my own home I broke down crying because I couldn’t stand to be inside. These were the reasons for my frustration and I told him so.

He then wanted to discuss who I thought the murderer could be, but as I had already told them before, since I wasn’t there at my home, I couldn’t have any idea, but (deleted words) he wasn’t satisfied with my answer. Who did I think it was? How would I know? I didn’t know anyone dangerous. Soon I was joined by other police people who only wanted to “talk” but who interrogated me again with the same questions. What males had ever been in my house? Who knew Meredith? Did I have any phone numbers? I gave them all the information I could. Names, phone numbers, descriptions. But it was all giving me a headache. I had already answered these questions before and I was confused as to why the police wanted so much to talk to me. Why me? Why did they keep asking me who I thought the murderer was when I already told them I had no idea?

And then they brought me inside, because it was “warmer”. I (asked) where Raffaele was and they told me he would be done soon (but) in the meantime they wanted to talk to me. The interrogation process started rather quickley (sic). One minute I was just (tal?)king and the next they were asking me where I was between (?):30pm and 1:30am between November (1st) and 2nd. I told them I was with my boyfriend, like I had already said. They asked me what I had done during this time period and I found that I couldn’t remember a lot. I told them (we) watched the movie Amelie together, that we ate dinner (tog)ether, that after dinner Raffaele washed the dishes and spilled water on the floor when the pipes came loose. I told them that (we) smoked hash somewhere in that time but I couldn’t remember (mo)re. They told me I was lying. They told me they knew I had (not) been with Raffaele. They told me they knew I met someone that night. They told me they had proof I was at my house that night. This really confused me. I told them I wasn’t lying and (the)y began to get angry. Stop telling lies, they told me. We know (you) were there! But this didn’t make sense. I was frightened, because I couldn’t for the life of me remember what I did during the time (the)y were asking me. What were you doing?! Where did you go?! We (kno)w you were at your house!! Who did you meet?! But this all (did)n’t make any sense. How could they have proof that I was at my (hou)se when I wasn’t? Why did they think these things? Why me? They told me Raffaele had finally told the truth and that he had no (rea)son to lie. They told me that they knew I had told Raffaele to (lie?) and I told them this wasn’t true. I had never told him any (suc)h thing. We talked about the message I received from Patrik (and) I told them yes, I received a message from Patrik, he told me (not) to go into work that night because there was no one there. I (did)n’t remember if I had sent a message back, so I said no, but they (had) taken my phone and showed me the message I forgot I sent: (ending?) with the words, “Ci vediamo. Buona serata.” They called me a (stu)pid lier. They said I was protecting someone, who was it?! (The)y stuck pieces of paper in front of me, to write down the name (of) the murder, but I didn’t know. And I still couldn’t remember (wha)t me and Raffaele had been doing at his house. I had nothing to (say?) to answer their questions and it was terrifying me. Why couldn’t (I r)emember. The interpretor told me that one time she experienced (a ho)rrible car accident and couldn’t remember what had happened (unt)il a year later. She told me perhaps I had seen something (horr)ible and I couldn’t remember. Since I couldn’t remember (wha)t I had been doing at Raffaele’s house I started to think what (...?) was true? What if I had seen something and I didn’t (rem)ember? But it didn’t make sense. I remembered being (at) Raffaele’s the whole night. But in the meantime the police were (...?) or they were going to put me in jail for (...?) (p)rotecting the killer. They told me they had already caught the killer (a)nd they just wanted me to say his name, but I knew nothing. My (m)ind was a blank slate. Now, now, now!!! They were yelling at me. One (p)olice officer hit me on the back of my head twice. My head was (s)earching for any answer. I was really confused. I thought I was at my boyfriend’s house, but what if it wasn’t true? What if I couldn’t remember? I tried and tried and tried, but I couldn’t remember anything until all of the police officers left the room except one. He (to)ld me he was the only one who could save me from spending the (n)ext 30 years in jail and I told him I couldn’t remember. I asked to see the message on my phone to see if I remembered sending that (an)d when I saw the message my mind thought of Patrik. It was all I could think of, Patrik. I imagined meeting him by the basketball (cou)rts, I imagined him in front of my house, I imagined covering my ears to stop the sound of Meredith’s screaming, and so I said (Pa)trik. I said Patrik and I regret every second of it because now I (k)now that what I have said has done someone harm that I have no idea whether he was involved or not.

After I said his name I was hysterical. I was weeping, (s)cared of what could have happened to me. I honestly thought (t)his could have been the answer. I was so confused. They told me that they had to write all of this down but I told them I wasn’t (s)ure. So they told me just to say what I had said, that I had seen (Pat)rik. That I had heard Meredith screaming. I told them I was (c)onfused, unsure, but they weren’t interested. While they were writing my so-called “confession”, which the didn’t call it (t)o me, they asked me to say if it was okay to write certain things. I (d)dn’t explain, but just said yes or no according to what these (im)ages of Patrik were showing me, but I always told them I wasn’t (su)re, these things didn’t seem real. They asked me why he had done (thi)s and I didn’t know why. Why would anyone kill another person? I told them he must be crazy. They asked me if I feared him and I (sa)id yes. I was so confused and the idea that he would kill someone (fr)ightened me. But I had never been frightened of him before, he has (al)ways been kind to me. After all of this I was allowed to sleep, (fi)nally. The whole thing was going through my head and I felt (aw)ful, to even think I could have been involved. But the more (confu)sed I became, the more sure I was that these ideas about Patrik (w)eren’t true, but I still couldn’t remember what I had been (do)ing at my boyfriend’s house after dinner.

I seriously started to doubt when the police told me what my boyfriend had said. (1) First, that when I received the message from (Pat)rik, that I had told him I had to leave to go to work. This I (k)new, even then, wasn’t true. I remembered and still do specifically (th)at I had told him I _didn’t_ have to work and I kissed him and (...)

(...) said, “Yay!” (2) I also never told him to lie for me. Why would he lie? Could he have lied about me not being there too? I was especially troubled by this because even though I had thought of Patrik, I still remembered being at Raffaele’s house. I told the police of my doubts but they said not to worry, little by little, I would remember. So I waited.

I tried writing what I could remember for the police, because I’ve always been better at thinking when I was writing. They gave me time to do this. In this message I wrote about my doubts, my questions, and what I knew to be true.

(Deleted words) During this time I was checked out by medics (and?) had my picture taken as well as more copies of my fingerprints. They took my shoes and my phone. I wanted to go home but they told me to wait and then eventually that I was to be arrested. Then I was taken here, to the prison, in the last car of three who carried Patrik, then Raffaele, and then me to prison.

I hope this clears up some confusion for you and I’m sorry again that it is in English. I hope you are in contact with my mother and if you are, could you please tell her I love her, that I miss her, that I’m okay, and that I hope to see her soon.

I also just received the order of arrest and it says I must remain here in prison for one year. I’m assuming this means only if they can prove I did it or not. So I’m not sad, I just have to wait until they prove I’m not guilty, and that I wasn’t there.

I want to write another message for you which describes my version of events that at this time I remember very well. This I will do on a different piece of paper and a little later because I’m very tired.

Good luck and thanks,
Amanda Knox
quasi mezzogiorno
Venerdi, Novembre 9, 2007

Part 2 (Day Two) in our next post.

Friday, August 07, 2015

Knox Book Phenomenon: PR Reaction Way Too Strident & Only Grows Suspicion She DID Do It

Posted by Nick van der Leek

Reporters, crime-book writers, and photojournalists, Nick van der Leek and Lisa Wilson


Overkill. A Sure sign of bad PR. As someone once said “An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.”

What’s interesting for Lisa Wilson and myself as True Crime authors and wrieters of Dark Matter and Deceit is that there are not only always two sides to every story, but two factions as well. 

When the one faction believes us not to belong to theirs, well, then there is war.  Mudslinging, slander, insults ““ everything except a genuine discussion of the case.

From where Lisa Wilson and I stand, which is hopefully in the middle and on the side of Lady Justice [who is blind, or blindfolded] both factions are mirror-images of each other.  Both sides are throwing stones, like the protagonists in the Middle East conflict, both have their grievances, and plenty of stones to throw. 

And like the Middle East, the two factions in the Amanda Knox case have been in a war of mostly words for years.  Who has won?  Amanda Knox seems to have eeked out some sort of victory, but though recently engaged, shows no signs of getting married, and it’s possible the wedding is off.

All is not always what it seems.

Before highlighting a few of our haters, I want to touch on a quick incident that happened on twitter literally in the last day.  We had one of our followers enthusiastically report on one of the books she’d read [on Jodi Arias] and promise to give a review the same day.  We get bad reviews and we get good reviews, and especially when a book is new, reviews matter.  When I followed up with a tweet and then a second tweet, our enthusiastic reader said she felt pressured and obligated and then blocked me on twitter.

What I’m trying to illustrate here is that even those you agree with our work aren’t necessarily above board themselves.  What we’re trying to achieve with our books isn’t merely justice in the court of public opinion, but we also want to encourage people to go out and live their lives in an honest, genuine and hopefully happily-ever-after way.  One of the ways we interrogate these cases is we try to fathom the underlying psychology of the criminals, and we try to understand these crimes as cautionary tales that we can learn from, and hopefully avoid spiralling into ourselves.

Which is why Lisa and I find the constant lobbing of stones and jibes a little unfortunate.  When I confronted one of our supporters with their constant ping pong [block, reporting, badmouthing etc especially on twitter], the response was:  but didn’t that debate suit you when we were reviewing your books.






We’ve love our reviewers to be honest, even when they disagree, especially when they disagree.  We’d hate our books to be part of a sort of football that is kicked about to score personal points for either side.  Our narrative isn’t intended to score points for either team, it’s intended to solve “˜the mystery’ of Meredith’s death.  Lisa and I see very little debate on that.  Maybe that’s fair given the time since Meredith’s death, but for me this is a crying shame.

I came into this investigation unsure of whom to believe.  When you see ““ as you see in the Middle East conflict ““ two sides engaged in a tit for tat battle, it’s hard to come away with a sense that either side is right.  It’s even harder to trust that either side is going to even be able to be unbiased and fair in their assessment of things.  Does that make sense?

Of the 30-odd books I’ve written and co-written with Lisa Wilson, DOUBT [on Amanda Knox] was the first to face accusations of plagiarism.  It became a lightning rod for haters and Pro Justice folk, and to date is my most reviewed book on Amazon by far.  To be honest, Amanda Knox’s fans are by far the most vindictive and malicious of the folk we’ve encountered through the course of nearly 20 True Crime books.  To be honest these people and their underhanded behaviour, even their language, don’t reflect well on their patron at all.

They descend on any criticism of Amanda in organised groups that tag team each other.  Do these people not have day jobs?  Because it’s hard to believe such tactical and practised viciousness isn’t bought and paid for.  Such frenzied attacks inspire responses, and there’s been a lot in the comments section under various reviews ““ good and bad ““ of DECEIT. Does that mean people actually read the narrative or are debating it?  In a few cases they are, and in a few cases people have contacted us and let us know where they have learnt something or where they disagree, and this is tremendously useful and helpful. 

But what about the plagiarism accusation?  It was at one time the most popular “˜agreed on’ review when DOUBT was published, so does that mean the plagiarism accusation was actually valid? Or was the accusation a cynical attempt by one side to throw a stone at another side because they didn’t agree with something.  Shoot the messenger in other words, forget the message. 

Why would someone ignore a message, ignore a narrative unless there’s an implied threat that it could be true? 

If it wasn’t true, would anyone really care?  But in the context of justice denied, the stakes are rather higher when truth and facts are obscured from the public view.  And then it seems, in order to defend the indefensible, one resorts to dirty tricks, like suppression of freedom of speech, and slander.  The biggest ironies are the accusations that we are profiting from the tragedy.

Or that we’re slandering someone in our books [that’s the real crime]. It’s ironic when a murder suspect and her boyfriend together earned $5 million for their books, and have numerous and very real slander charges they have faced. In Knox’s case she’s already been found guilty of her false incrimination of Lumumba.  Lumumba never got off because Knox said, “Oh, hang on, that’s not right, sorry I made a mistake, it wasn’t him.”  Lumumba got off because he had an alibi and someone from the bar came forward to vouch for him.  In Sollecito’s case he must still defend allegations of police conduct made in his book [and so must Knox’s parents.

Since Knox was found guilty of slander she served a few years for that.  She hasn’t paid restitution to Lumumba [who lost his job and moved to Poland] to date.  If Knox is innocent, why isn’t she suing the Italian authorities for wrongful imprisonment?  Lumumba did and got a hefty pay-out, so why doesn’t Amanda? Why aren’t we talking about that? But no, we ““ those of us writing books about the trial ““ we are the real criminals, we’re the slanderers, we’re profiting out of the loss of the poor victim [no not Kercher, Knox].  This is a crazy inversion of the facts, and only the intellectually weak actually fall for it.






Coming back to Pruett’s plagiarism accusation:  was it an exaggeration, was it a lie?  Was it based on real plagiarism?  Within a few days ““ subsequent to a phone call to Karen Pruett, and a lawyer’s letter delivered by overnight courier to her work address [she’s a hairdresser in Seattle]”“ DOUBT was once again available online.  We elected to remove any references we made to Pruett’s work ourselves [credited in every instance] and repackage the narrative without including references to Pruett’s timeline in a new book, DECEIT.  Of course then the accusation is that our views, since we haven’t referred to Pro Knoxers, is biased and unbalanced.  Interesting isn’t it: you quote them and they accuse you of plagiarism, you don’t quote them and they accuse you of being biased.

I only subsequently saw Pruett is endorsed on Amanda Knox’s own website, and was probably paid to research the timeline she produced for Ground Report, which is itself a site facing shutdown due to financial difficulties.  The first 80% of her research seemed fairly solid and reasonably unbiased, much of it did reference court testimony, but the last 20% [relating to the crucial timeline of the crime itself] became increasingly dodgy, and part of the original DOUBT narrative highlighted this. 

If Pruett had received a hefty payment for her timeline and someone had come along and analysed all of it only to find sections of it to be”¦.well”¦wanting, well, no wonder she wanted herself excised out of her book.  No wonder she wanted the book blocked.  So was it really about plagiarism then [because I referenced all quotes to Pruett, and all her quotes were italicised] or was it about Pruett protecting Pruett?

In the end the blocking of the book [for a few hours, perhaps a day or two] by haters created curiosity amongst the Pro Justice folk, and this was invaluable PR for us. Upwards of 40 people asked for a PDF of the original DOUBT manuscript to be sent to them, and at least half sent through carefully considered reviews and feedback.  As a result of these reviews and the endorsement of Meredith’s supporters, when DOUBT returned as DECEIT it immediately sold like hot cakes.

Right now it’s currently in the top 20 in Amazon’s “˜Criminal Procedure’ category, and the interest in that book has encouraged us to write a second [DARK MATTER, #15 on Amazon] , and in two weeks we begin with a third [UNDER SUSPICION].  We plan on writing around a dozen more books on this case, and we hope by around midway we will have galvanised a real conversation, not around “˜libellous wankers’ or “˜plagiarism’ or “˜removing Jesus from the Last Supper’ but the most legitimate questions of all:

1. Did Amanda Knox get away with murder?
2. Can the courts in Italy [or the USA or SA] be trusted, even when the world is watching?
3. Is justice up for sale, is it a PR game? 
4. If it is, what can we do as the Court of Public Opinion?
 
As someone sympathetic to Meredith Kercher wisely pointed out in a recent review, the biggest mystery in this case is that it is a mystery at all. My suggestion is we do something more constructive than throw stones at each other.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Why The Count Of Discredited Prosecution Witnesses Even Now Remains Down Around Zero

Posted by James Raper

As with all images on TJMK this image above will expand if clicked on


Just sifting through the latest drivel on Injustice in Perugia today and I came across this statement from one of their main posters.

“It was physically impossible for Capezalli to have heard any sounds from Meredith’s residence”.

Note : not that she was mistaken or that her evidence was unreliable but the bald statement that it was physically impossible for her to have heard anything.

Was she profoundly deaf then? If not, then why this assertion? Without some basis for this assertion then it is simply a dismissive slur on the credibility of the witness.

This happens to be the same poster who wowed that board with his claim that the Prosecution suppressed exculpatory evidence that would have cleared Knox and Sollecito.

Not that he supplied any proof. How could he?

It is axiomatic, of course, that if there was suppressed evidence then what it was would not be known. Nevertheless it was a ready springboard for calls from mindless idiots to have the Prosecution fully investigated and charged with perverting the course of justice!

Anyway, to move on, the purpose of this post is just to revisit (with pictorial assistance) Capezalli’s testimony (I shall call her Nara from now on) and see if there is even a scintilla of justification for the claim.

Now to be fair, Nara did say in her evidence that she had double glazing and maybe that is what he is referring to although for the life of me I don’t see why that would make it impossible for her to hear a scream outside.

But it’s worth investigating because it’s the sort of thing that does get repeated without further analysis and I have read others taking that remark at face value and doubting whether she did hear a scream and, perhaps more credibly, whether she would have heard the sound of someone running on the gravel of the cottage forecourt and up the metal steps from the car park.

Here is what she said -

“What happens is that getting up I’m going past the window of the dining room, because the bathroom is on that side, and as I am there I heard a scream, but a scream that wasn’t a normal scream. [A terrifying and agonising long scream as she describes it elsewhere] I got goose bumps to be truthful. At that moment I no longer knew what was happening, and then I went on to the bathroom. There is a little window with no shutters, none at all.”

Mignini then asks -

Q—Well, you go by the window and you hear this cry?
Ans ““ Yes.
Q ““ Then you continue to go towards the bathroom, you told me?
Ans ““ Yes.
Q ““ Do you open the bathroom window?
Ans ““ No.
Q ““ Explain what happened for us.
Ans ““ I haven’t any shutters on that window, I only have double-glazing so I can look straight out
Q ““ So you looked out of the bathroom window?
Ans”“ I didn’t open up because I had all the little succulent plants there for the light.

A little late in her testimony Mignini seeks to clarify her evidence -

Q”“ So you hear the scream, go to the bathroom, look out the window and you don’t see anything?
Ans ““ No.
Q ““ Then you go back to the bedroom?
Ans ““ Yes.
Q ““ When is it that you hear the noises you described, and then we will see what they are?
Ans ““ I hear the noises I described when I was closing the bathroom door, then I heard running, because that steel there [the metal stairs] makes a tremendous noise at night, then when you don’t hear cars going by or such like, I looked out but there was nobody there.
Q ““ From which way?
Ans ““ To the left and the right, and there was nobody there.
Q ““ Then you heard the scuffling?
Ans ““ The same, in the meantime I heard running on the stairs, from the other direction they were running in the driveway.

Much later Nara is helpfully (perhaps) cross examined by Dalla Vedova on her remark that she has double glazing, as follows -

CDV - How are your windows made?
Ans -  My windows are made of wood. They have double glazing and they have a shutter.
CDV - When you say “they have double glazing” do you mean that every single window has two panes, or are there two windows, one in front of the other?
Ans -  No, two panes in each side and opening in the middle.

Confused? What is she really describing?

Many moons ago Kermit put together a very helpful Powerpoint lambasting the behaviour and claims of Paul Ciolino, the American PI who appeared on CBS rubbishing the suggestion that Nara would have been able to hear anything. It is obviously Ciolino’s disreputable work that is the basis for the claim.

I am going to lift some stills from Kermit’s excellent Powerpoint and add to them some more from a (somewhat infamous) Channel 5 documentary, from which it will be clear that

(a) Nara doesn’t have double glazing, nor shutters, at least not at the back of her property overlooking the cottage. However there are shutters at the front and, for all I know, double glazing there but that is not of concern to us.

(b)  There is little reason to doubt that she would have been able to hear sounds outside quite well.

Let’s start.

Here’s a picture of the back of Nara’s property immediately above the car park.






Here it is again in relation to the cottage






In the first picture Nara’s first floor flat is shown circled. In the second, it is obvious that only the roof of the cottage would be visible from the first floor, as indeed she said in her testimony.

There are two further floors above. The top floor is the one to which Ciolino (and Pater Van Sant) gained access, having tried but failed to interest Nara. Nara in her evidence said that there was an apartment above which she rented out and I suspect that this was the top floor. The top floor undoubtedly had double glazing or double casements.

Below is one of the top floor windows. (We can see Ciolino’s reflection in the glass)






And here he is, standing in front of the same window whilst conducting his experiment with a couple of kids running along the road outside -






As we shall see it really was quite pointless conducting off-the-cuff sound experiments from there with the double casement shut tight

Nara said that her daughter also lived in the building so either the second floor was a separate conversion for her daughter or first and second were shared and the second was where their bedrooms were. That’s actually immaterial as it is the first floor that really interests us.

Here is a close up of the first floor. We can be sure because we can see Nara and the co-presenters of the Channel 5 documentary standing on the balcony.






We can see how large the windows are on either side of the balcony. As to the window on the right it is also apparent that this has been blocked up save as to four panes in the middle so that now there is only that smaller window there.

Let us now look at that window from the inside.






“One went up, one went over there” is Nara explaining to the Italian TV reporter the sounds she heard.

Clearly then she is standing inside her bathroom and the bathroom window looks over the car park. Indeed we can see her succulent plants on the inside window ledge as she stated in her evidence. Also, if we look closely, we can see that her wall is tiled or wall-papered with a tile design befitting a bathroom. Probably that wall is also made of little more than plasterboard.

One thing is quite certain though and that is that the window, which opens in the middle, is not double glazed.

Nara’s understanding however seems to be rather different. To her “double glazing” is (as she said to Dalla Vedova) “two panes in each side and opening in the middle”.

We can also infer that the large window to the left of the balcony belongs to her dining room. What she said, in effect, was that she was traversing the first floor (from left to right) from her dining room to her bathroom (being both on the same side, as she says). She heard the scream in her dining room.

The window there does not appear to be blocked off as it is to the right. Indeed I think we can see full length drapes or net curtains but certainly one would expect a larger window there and again, clearly, it is not double glazed.

So again, why would it be physically impossible for her to have heard a sound, particularly a scream, coming from the cottage?

It couldn’t be because it was too far away. We can see that from the pictures but also here is a handy GoogleMap calculation of the distance from her place to the far side of the cottage.






So that’s, say, 45 metres. Or 49 yards. Not far at all. Thanks to Yummi for bringing that up on pmf.org.

We should also remember that it was the 1st November which is a religious holiday in Italy in remembrance of the dead and therefore background noise was quieter than usual. It was also probably sometime around 11pm and the back of Nara’s property looks out on what is a natural amphitheatre in which noise will echo.

Nara Capezalli in fact came across as a compelling witness to what she heard that night and there is no way at all that it was physically impossible for her not to have heard that scream. Nor the metal stairs (”..makes a tremendous noise at night””¦.) just off to the right of her property and immediately below it.

On a personal note I was recently driven nuts by a manhole cover that had come loose in the road outside my bedroom window. Cars constantly drove over it and the noise kept me awake. The top floor of the car park would probably also act like a sounding board and the noise made by the stairs may also have come up through the stairwell we see immediately in front of her property. I am not so sure about the sound of gravel on the cottage forecourt being crunched underneath but already I am more than prepared to believe Nara on that score as well. Why not?

Finally, as we await the Cassation Motivation (whenever!) I seem to remember that at least one appeal point was the failure of the lower courts to accede to a defence request for audio tests to be conducted from Nara’s property.

Bearing in mind that Judge Marasca reportedly has stated that the ground for overturning the Nencini convictions was insufficient and contradictory evidence one wonders whether Cassation will say that a test was required, in the absence of which Nara’s testimony can be thrown into a pot along with other evidence somehow deemed “insufficient”?

If they do then watch out for them getting the double glazing issue quite wrong as well.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Amazon Reviews: Are Knox PR’s 1000 Dishonest Paid Reviews Losing Traction?

Posted by Our Main Posters

Amazon reader reviews may or may not dictate how the sales of a book make out.

Sales of the Sollecito and Knox books have been way below expectations despite dozens of glowing reviews - and by the way numerous repeats of the hoaxes and defamations.

At the same time sales of objective books on the facts of the case and the psychologies have been meeting expectations despite the absence of advertising or a paid-for PR campaign.

Here are some of the spontaneous review for the two books “Deceit” and “Dark Matter” by Nick van der Leek and Lisa Wilson.

By atlantic 1 “atlantic1” on June 3, 2015

This is an exceptionally-well-written, complex (but lucid and fast-paced) account of the murder of Meredith Kercher (a British exchange student) in Perugia, Italy, and the unconvincing behavior and at times multiple stories of the main suspects: Amanda Knox (the American roommate), Raffaele Sollecito (Knox’s Italian boyfriend at the time of the murder), and Rudy Guede (Ivory Coast native adopted by an Italian family, currently the only one serving time in Italy for the murder).

Other characters are prominently featured, along with a lot of background information from reputable sources.

What I really liked about the book is that many links throughout the text (in the Kindle edition that I purchased) send the reader to outside documents (e.g., photographs) that would otherwise take a while to research (warning: some visuals are pretty disturbing, but one always has the option of not clicking on the link).

The book has a fluid style and is absolutely engrossing, I highly recommend it.

By Leigh on June 8, 2015

Nick has done a superb job in ‘Deceit’ of reviewing, combining, comparing, and contrasting vast amounts of information from many different sources on Meredith Kercher’s case. As someone who has followed anything and everything of substance I could find on the case since 2007—I appreciate his massive effort, and certainly agree, some amount of speculation is required. What is especially effective about Nick’s speculations is that they are based on confirmed ‘knowns’ about the case from genuine sources such as investigations, witness testimony, interviews with Meredith’s friends, housemates, and others who knew AK (rarely spell out AK’s name since I hold extreme animus for that wrongly acquitted psychopath!).

While I don’t agree with every speculation of Nick’s—I have many of my own—I do appreciate that he examines what’s real. For everyone trying to follow the case, it’s been difficult to sift through the exhaustive amount of subterfuge, deceit, and duplicity from rabid AK fan club members, a professional ‘damage-control’ PR / media manipulation machine, lazy mainstream US media lapdogs, and AK’s lying family—people and organizations who clearly would stop at nothing to defend their favorite two murderers. The worst of them always show up to deliberately hurl their vile insults and spew hatred at anyone who doesn’t howl about the great Italian conspiracy perpetrated against the murderer AK, or who don’t constantly drool like a fool over AK’s beauty and brilliance. The AK jerks are certainly out in force at trying to bring down this book—they try and destroy anyone who seeks to get the truth out about Meredith’s murder and AK’s direct involvement in her death.

By S. Gleason on June 7, 2015

Thank you for reminding people of the truth Nick. Wonderful book. A breath of fresh air. Please don’t listen to propaganda being posted here in the reviews. Listen to the abundant case evidence against all three. Justice for Meredith and her family.

By M Thomson “Elizabeth” on June 2, 2015

This book is a interesting and fast paced read. Suspicion builds naturally as the author follows the two defendants in the hours before and the murder. Their actions and changing alibis are well documented here. Amanda Knox falsely accused Patrick Lumumba in a very short time just after learning Sollecito said she went out that night. I wonder if the one star reviewers would rather you not know this.

By Margaret Ganong on May 25, 2015

The author has a good grasp of the facts and makes a case that is far more convincing than the two recently and bafflingly acquitted Knox and Sollecito have ever been able to do. Indeed, one of the most compelling reasons to read this book is for its effort to set the written accounts of Knox and Sollecito side by side, revealing the many ways they don’t add up and are at odds with one another.

By Amazon Customer on May 25, 2015

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. I cannot wait for the next one in the series. There HAD to be more to this murder ... and I am now sure that there was more than one person involved. Poor Meredith ’ s family having to live with this. I just love the narrative that makes Nick’s books SO enjoyable.

By kris arnason on May 26, 2015

Nick van der Leek has written an extremely cohesive narrative about the tragic Meredith Kercher case. The author takes you through what likely happened that horrific night, and why Amanda Knox & Raffaele Sollecito’s stories don’t add up, all the while providing the reader with hundreds and hundreds of hyperlinked images, news reports, and audio clips, etc. that have been consolidated, collected and embedded in this one narrative. Everything sourced, right at your fingertips. A must read for people like me who have followed this case from the beginning and folks just getting interested and want to learn all they can. Thanks Nick! Looking forward to more from you about this case!

By Caroline on July 5, 2015

I bought this book because of the reviews! I’ve never done that before but I’m so intrigued by the almost angry tone to all of these one star reviews. It just makes me wonder if a nerve was hit. Somebody’s hiding something maybe? Anyway, I just have to read it now. Will come back with full review when I’m done.

By Amazon Customer on June 1, 2015

Finally! An honest book of what really happened to Meredith Kercher! Can Nick interview AK & RS on TV in the USA? I am sure he would ask REAL questions!

By Jeff “jeffski” on May 26, 2015

It is a disgrace that Amazon allows these Amanda Knox trolls a platform to spread hate and abuse people simply because they write a review for a book that these people disagree with. Amazon must act on these known frauds/cyber bullies who suppress and insult/abuse people on forums/Comments section and social media.

This book is a excellent read and obviously hits a nerve with Knox’s followers as the negative comments and abuse/insults aimed at author prove. Please look beyond the rent a hate mob and read the book and come to your own conclusion.

By Columbo on May 25, 2015

This is an excellent true crime story with highly accurate and precise detail of how Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede all killed Meredith Kercher. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to know the truth of this case in a very revealing and fast page turning account of what really happened in this case.

By Michela on May 30, 2015

Excellent read.

By Maria Chinnapan on May 26, 2015

A great read!, very down to earth appraisal of what may have happened. No nonsense and to the point

By MCD on May 31, 2015

Again this formidable true crime writer has come up trumps with an incredibly well researched interrogation of a crime that continues to baffle the world. The detailed sequence of events is painstakingly pieced together. I had only superficially followed this case when the news initially broke so have been fascinated by this book which has filled in many gaps and highlighted the inconsistencies in the behaviour of Amanda Knox and her boyfriend, who said what, who lied about what, etc.

In addition to the bare bones of the case, the author’s classic approach is the use true crime as a melting pot of evil and the extremes of human nature. He asks unsettling questions about human behaviour, herd mentality, apathy and our place in society - a society where a crime like this one can and does take place and despite all the investigation, the waters are still muddied in the deeper pools.

For those who appreciate that truth is stranger than fiction and like to delve deeper into these cases, the author brings it all together for you, with a dollop of enriching ‘food for thought’.

By Truth Seeker on May 26, 2015

It is the behavioural evidence which has always bothered me about this case, and it has always seemed that everything said/done by the ex defendants had to be explained away or justified. The author has cross referenced the two versions written by them in their memorials, and needless to say, there are major discrepancies.

Unless we expose the inconsistencies, then the two will have literally got away with murder. Legally this may be the case, but analysis provided by this book goes some way to keeping the memory of Meredith honoured, and ensuring that there are some still fighting for justice for her. Do buy the book- it has none of the obfuscation and image management that we have been subject to in the past years.

By Ipsos Maati on May 30, 2015

Why is Amanda Knox panicked about this book, and why did she try to have it banned?

Deceit shines light on the truth about the murder of Meredith Kercher, and the dishonest effort to free her.

Exonerated does not mean “innocent”.

By elizabeth on May 26, 2015

Deceit is a fascinating read no matter where you stand on the recent verdict. Fast paced but manages to bring a cohesive dialogue to days before and after the murder

By A. Futo “911 coincidence analyst” on May 26, 2015

Well written book by author Nick van der Leek, with all new research and links to original reporting and publicly available information about the murder Of Meredith Kercher.

Is Amanda Knox, the main suspect in the case, guilty of murdering her room mate as many believe, or was she railroaded by the prosecution, as claimed by her friends and family?

The author skilfully navigates the questions of motive, means, and evidence, starting with the premise that this is a case that begins with and is marked by many layers of deceit, as Knox first accuses an innocent man, Patrick Lumumba, then must lie and keep on lying to distance herself from the crime she implicates herself with by admitting to her presence at the scene.

Her co-accused, Raffaele Sollecito withdraws then confirm her alibi, and the other person evidence shows was involved in the sexual assault that preceded the murder, Rudy Guede, also tries to distance himself by running away then denying her involvement, then accusing the two of them in a letter to the media.

The author’s hypothesis of what happened is based on a finely rendered psychological evaluation of Amanda Knox. No matter what the final decision will be, this is a case that will be discussed for many years to come. I look forward to his next book of the series.

By Leigh on June 25, 2015

After more than 7 years of following Meredith Kercher’s murder case closely as the saga has wound through the arcane Italian justice system, I am completely convinced that AK & RS are her two other murderers who have ultimately escaped justice. Their final acquittal has not changed anything for me. Yet I’ve been asked by others who have more than a slight interest as to why is it I’m so certain, what’s your 3-minute elevator speech? Well, an elevator speech doesn’t exist, but in ‘Dark Matter’ and its prequel, ‘Deceit’ and I hope, in more follow-up e-books on this case, a reader can get as close as possible to a comprehensive full-view, what-happened, tell-me-everything explanation without having to slog through over 1,000 pages of trial documents translated from original Italian and endless arguments from two deeply entrenched opposing sides. Trying to read through it all could easily take most of an interested person’s discretionary time for a lengthy period of their lives. And who needs that, right?

What’s special about ‘Dark Matter’ is how easy it is to read, how well the authors guide readers through crucial evidence while using a technique borrowed from Socrates—keep asking yourself common sense questions as you’re reading. ‘Dark Matter’ examines the early case from a big picture view—the most prominent evidence, the investigation, what happened in days before, and after Meredith’s murder, and what was the behavior like of those near Meredith? Then go further, examine what AK & RS wrote in their own books about the murder. Do they agree with each other or give themselves away by not agreeing in crucial areas? ‘Dark Matter’ creates these scenes while assisting readers in finding their own answers.

‘Dark Matter’ examines what is important to know, then asks readers to consider: ‘does it make sense?’ or ‘were these actions meant to deceive and lead investigators astray?’ ‘is there an innocent explanation?’ ‘does unusual behavior indicate guilt, youthful carelessness, or something else?’ ‘Dark Matter’ lays out salient evidence found during investigations, and continues to encourage readers to question its importance: ‘where does this evidence naturally lead?’ ‘can we tie the evidence and the behavior together to draw conclusions, and how do we do that?’

‘Dark Matter’ is exactly how I’d want someone to guide me through an enormous case if didn’t know much about it. Don’t tell me what to think, don’t try to persuade me towards your view—show me what is important to know—and I’ll decide for myself; in this, both authors excel.

One area where I completely disagree with the authors is their, what appears to be, complete acceptance of nonsense created by AK’s professional Seattle-based propaganda machine and American author Douglas Preston—these two parties had their own reasons to intentionally malign and destroy Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini. Their agendas were obvious to truth seekers—one sought to do ‘damage control and create a villain to take attention away from AK,’ the other, to leverage the murder to create interest in his own book.

Unfortunately this propaganda proved to be extremely effective, and was picked up by most US media outlets that then ran with the deception. Those who know the case from the pro-justice side are keenly aware of how this vicious, deceitful campaign against the prosecutor convinced tens of millions of Americans AK was an innocent who was framed. I hope the authors make an effort to learn how completely they have been deceived and correct these mistakes in future books in this series.

By JJ on July 3, 2005

Great book!! Highly recommended

By Sarah Breen on June 30, 2015

Research and writing are top notch! True investigative journalism into this controversial subject.

By Nicole church on June 27, 2015

I loved your book-you guys definitely did your research and systematically take the reader though some of the most damning evidence in this case. I was impressed at how you tied it all in with the theme of dark matter- very well done and thought provoking.

No need to apologize for your narrative;yes there are some f bombs but it made me respect you more for being authentic and your sarcasm is justified when it comes to this case. Like you both said it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. You do a great job calling bulls*** on both murderers using example after example from their own words(in court,interviews,diaries,etc)

I am sure this book has the murderers supporters all in a tizzy- it is easy to spot their attempts to sabotage your deservedly 5 star reviews with their 1 stars. Just look for lots of exclamation points and words in all caps then move right along to the honest reviews that will really help you decide if this book is worth reading- and it certainly is.

Looking forward to your next book and thank you for being the stars that shine light on the truth 😊

By Columbo on June 26, 2015

Another really great book by Lisa Wilson and Nick van der Leek. In this easy to read and compelling book the key events, character aspects of Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede and the most significant evidence against them are all objectively weighed and analyzed. Additionally, in a very balanced view, the case for Amanda Knox as promoted by her supporters is also reviewed so readers can make up their own minds. But there is only one conclusion: all three killers murdered Meredith Kercher (RIP). I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to know even more about this case.

By kris arnason on July 5, 2015

Dark Matter is a must read for everyone wanting to know more about the murder of Meredith Kercher. Those who believed in the lies & cover up of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s multi million dollar PR campaigns will have their eyes opened after reading this excellent book.

By JJ “jj0388” on July 3, 2015

great book!! highly recommended

By A. Futo “911 coincidence analyst”
I read many crime books, and this is one of the really good ones on the case. Amanda Knox’s strange behavior and lies, accusing Patrick Lumumba, her relationship with Meredith, all reflected in the “Dark Matter” of her psychology.

She simply is not very believable in her book, and her media appearances have been disasters which is why she’s withdrawn in hiding. Her father hired a PR firm to manage her image, and in the process influenced many sad, gullible people who still try to negate any criticism. Even though Amanda Knox has ‘won’ her case, why are they still posting nonsensical, abusive reviews of a book they never read?

One example, but this is important to me. Her father said that Meredith gained advanced three levels in karate and would not have gone without a struggle. A testimony to her character, but a reviewer writes “that’s an orange belt, beginner’s level”. Sorry, but the people who loved her say she would have fought to the end. So why the lack of defensive wounds, if she was being restrained by only one person?

In the struggle, she managed to injure Amanda Knox, who left her blood behind in the crime scene. (A bloody nose, ear stud pulled out? Left her lamp behind in the room to assist cleaning?) She was photographed with a scrape on her neck, and the police photograph taken on arrest shows the long scratch which she only partially covered with makeup on November 02. Her adoring fans call that a “hickey”, lol. Perhaps Lisa Wilson can collect these reviews as insight into their “Dark Matter” as well?

By GH2006 on June 22, 2015

This book is a perceptive analysis of the evidence in the murder case of Meredith Kercher. Nick van der Leek and Lisa Wilson take you through the court documents, statements made by the suspects as well as the DNA evidence among other things, which reveal the many lies and obfuscations by the public relations firm hired by the defendants as well as the ob-knox-ious murder-supporters who attack anyone who writes about the truth of this crime. (Shown by the flock of 1 star comments with long venomous attacks by haters who haven’t even read the book.)

Written with the same interesting, insightful, and at times entertaining way van der Leek and Wilson hook the reader in from beginning to end. I couldn’t pull myself away from this book that Nick generously gifted to me because this is not about making a profit for them but in getting the truth out there! (In stark contrast to the defendants who made millions selling their version of the crime.) Oh! And this book also shines a light on the way Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito obscure the truth in their own books. That was very interesting as well! I also enjoyed the first book DECEIT and looking forward to the next book! TY

By Bibliophile on June 21, 2015

Awesome humdinger of a book. This book will tell you the truth!

Friday, June 26, 2015

What No-Show Amanda Knox SHOULD Have Emailed Judge Nencini As Truthful Testimony in December 2013

Posted by Chimera

As the real thing really didnt work any better for Knox…


As is well known, Amanda Knox refused to attend her own appeal in Florence in 2013/2014.

This was a defence appeal by Knox herself and Sollecito against the 2009 conviction by Judge Giancarlo Massei’s trial court.  It was not a new trial, or a retrial, or even a prosecution appeal. It was an appeal DEMANDED by Knox and Sollecito.

While Knox refused to attend, she did send a long, rambling email to Lead Judge Nencini.  Judge Nencini tartly read out the email in court, and remarked that she could have delivered this in person and answered questions if she wanted it credibly on the record - after all, Sollecito was sitting right there and not scared out of his wits.

Kudos to fellow main posters Finn MacCool and SeekingUnderstanding for their original and well done posts on this ‘‘submission’‘

With a bit of fact checking, Knox’s email could have looked to the court and the media more like this.  Enjoy.

Court of Appeals of Florence section II Assise Proc. Pen, 11113

Letter sent to attorneys Carlo Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga via email Seattle, 15 December 2013

Attn: Honorable Court of Appeals of Florence

1. I have no doubt that my lawyers have explained and demonstrated the important facts of this case that prove my innocence and discredit the unjustified accusations of the prosecution and civil parties. I seek not to supplant their work; rather, even though I am not present to take part in this current phase of the judicial process, I feel compelled to share my own perspective as a six””year-long defendant and causation of Meredith’s injustice.

2. The Court has access to my previous declarations, and please disregard that whole ‘‘aggravated calunnia’’ in which Cassation says i framed Patrick to divert attention, or that pending calunnia charge claiming I falsely accused the police to sabotage the court proceedings.  I trust you will not be blinded by these things to come to this verdict.  I must repeat: I am innocent.  Because repeating it will help dissuade you from studying my lies too carefully.

3. According to my lawyers: I am not a murderer, I am not a rapist, I am not a thief or a plotter or an instigator, at least not until Cassation signs off on it. I did not kill Meredith or take part in her murder or have any prior or special knowledge of what occurred that night, (other than screaming, slit throat, and that the body was moved). I was not there for part of the time, and had nothing to do with it.

4. I am not present in the courtroom because I am afraid. Frederico Martini is probably still pissed that I gave him up; the court and jail officials don’t like my book; and I think there is still an open warrant on me for calunnia.  Also, without any employment or housing references, staying here may be tricky.  I have faith in your judgement, but am worried you are so poor a judge you will be blinded my the Prosecution’s vehemence.  I remember Judge Micheli: he was the wise Judge who found Guede guilty; he was the idiot Judge who ordered Raffaele and I to stand trial as accomplices.

5. My life being on the line, at least until I get parole, and having with others already suffered too much, I’ve rehearsed this story and attentively followed this process and gleaned the following facts that have emerged from the development of this case that I beg you not to dismiss when making your judgement:

6. No physical evidence places me in Meredith “˜s bedroom, the scene of the crime, because I define only that as the crime scene.  My DNA mixed with Meredith’s was in the bathroom and Filomena’s room, not Meredith’s.  Those bloody footprints cleaned away were in the hallway, not Meredith’s room.  Raffaele had one knife, and this other was at his flat, neither of which is Meredith’s room.  My lamp on Meredith’s floor had no fingerprints on it, and does not implicate me.  That DNA on Merdith’s bra, and bloody footprint on the bathmat only implicates my alibi witness (who refuses to be questioned), not me.  Those false alibis, false accusations, details I know about the crime, and phone records are not physical evidence, and did not happen in Meredith’s bedroom. Those ‘‘eyewitnesses’’ the Prosecution produced are not forensic evidence, and do not place me in Meredith’s room.

7. Meredith’s murderer left ample evidence of his presence in the brutal scenario, we made sure of that.  Heck, the police couldn’t even find my fingerprints in my own bedroom.

8. No evidence places me in the same brutal scenario, again, which I restrict to Meredith’s bedroom, and only actual physical evidence.  The prosecution has failed to explain how—with these restrictions—I could have participated in the aggression and murder””to have been the one to fatally wound Meredith””without leaving any genetic trace of myself. Just because i spend a lot of time talking about it, and am a C.S.I. fan, doesn’t mean I know how to remove evidence.  That is because it is impossible. It is impossible to identify and destroy all genetic traces of myself in a crime scene and retain all genetic traces of another individual, or so C.S.I. has taught me. Either I was there, or I wasn’t. My analysis of the crime scene answers this question: I wasn’t there.

9. My interrogation was illegal and produced a false “confession” that demonstrated my non-knowledge of the crime- The subsequent memoriali, for which I was wrongfully found guilty of slander, did not further accuse but rather recanted that false “confession.” Yes, I wrote out a false ‘‘confession’’ that accuses someone else.  Just as I testified to the prosecutor in prison and to my family members in prison when our conversations were being recorded without my knowledge. Dammit, give me some privacy.

10. My behavior after the discovery of the murder indicates my innocence, if you think creatively enough. I did not flee Italy when I had the chance, because (in my November 4th email), the police wouldn’t let me leave.  I stayed in Perugia and was at the police’s beck and call trying to think of answers for over 50 hours in four days, convinced that I could help them find the murderer, or at least someone who was ‘‘close enough’‘.  I never thought or imagined that repeatedly changing my story would fuel their suspicions. I did not hide myself or my feelings: when I needed sex, Rafael ‘‘embraced’’ me; when I was scared of being exposed, I cried; when I was angry that it wasn’t working, I swore and made insensitive remarks; when I was shocked, I paced or sat in silence, at least until I could find a new ‘‘best truth’‘; when I was trying to help, I evaded questions, consoled Meredith’s friends, especially her male friends, and tried to keep a positive attitude that this would blow over.

11. Upon entering the questura I had no understanding of my legal position, accompanying Raffaele to a witness summary session which I was not invited to. 20””years old and alone in a foreign country, I was, legally speaking, innocent and never expected to be suspected and subjugated to torture, and I wasn’t. I was told I was a witness, then after I placed myself at the crime scene I was told I was a suspect. I was questioned for a prolonged period in the middle of the night and in Italian, a language I barely knew, and that questioning includes the time I was sleeping or getting tea.  I denied legal counsel- still The Court of Cassation deemed the interrogation and the statements produced from it was inadmissible. In my memoir, WTBH; I was lied to, yelled at, threatened, slapped twice on the back of the head. I told myself I had witnessed the murder and was suffering from amnesia. I told myself that if I didn’t succeed in ‘‘remembering’’ what happened to Meredith that night, I would never see my family again. I browbeat myself into confusion and despair, to sell to the media at a later date. When you berate, intimidate, lie to, threaten, confuse, and coerce someone in believing they are wrong, you are not going to find the truth, but again, that is not what happened here.

12. The police used tea and kindness to coerce me into signing a false “confession” that was without sense and should never have been considered a legitimate investigative lead. In this fragmentary and confused statement the police identified Patrick Lumumba as the murderer because we had exchanged text messages, the meaning of which I let the police wrongfully interpret (”˜Civediamo piu tardi. Buona serata’). The statement lacked a clear sequence of events, corroboration with any physical evidence, and fundamental information like: how and why the murder took place, if anyone else was present or involved, what happened afterward””it supplied partial, contradictory information and as the investigators would discover a little later, when Patrick Lumumba’s defense lawyer produced proof of him incontestable alibi, it was obviously inaccurate and unreliable.  After over 50 hours of rehearsing the questioning over four days, I was mentally exhausted and I was confused.

13. This coerced and illegitimate statement, which I dreamed up, was used by the police to arrest and detain a clearly innocent man with an iron-clad alibi with whom I had a friendly professional relationship, (at least until I destroyed his life). This coerced and illegitimate statement was used to convict me of slander.  Judge Hellmann saw that this statement was coerced, and threw out my calunnia conviction .... I mean he increased the sentence .... never mind.The prosecution and civil parties are accusing and blaming me, a result of their own overreaching.

14. Experience, case studies, and the law recognize that one may be coerced into giving a false"confession” because of torture.  I’m not sure why this applies to my case, but damn, it sure sounds impressive.

15. This is a universal problem. According to the National Registry of Exoneration, in the United States 78% of wrongful murder convictions that are eventually overturned because of exonerating forensic evidence involved false “confessions.” Almost 8 in 10 wrongfully convicted persons were coerced by police into implicating themselves and others in murder. I am not alone: Susan Smith and Casey Anthony ‘‘falsely confessed’’ that other people did it too.  And exonerating forensic evidence is often as simple as no trace of the wrongfully convicted person at the scene of the crime, but rather the genetic and forensic traces of a different guilty party””just like every piece of forensic evidence identifies not me, but Rudy Guide.

16. In the brief time Meredith and I were roommates and friends we never fought.  Roommates, not friends.

17. Meredith was my friend, not that I was her friend. She was kind to me, helpful, generous, fun, and in retrospect, I should have been more of the same.  She never criticized me. She never gave me so much as a dirty look, even as I left the place a mess, and even when I flirted with her boyfriend, or she took my job at the bar.

18. But the prosecution claims that a rift was created between Meredith and I because of cleanliness. This is a distortion of the facts. Please refer to the testimonies of my housemaster and Meredith’s British friends. None of them ever witnessed or heard about Meredith and I fighting, arguing, disliking each other. None of them ever claimed Meredith was a confrontational clean-freak, or I a confrontational slob. Laura Masotho testified that both Meredith and I only occasionally cleaned, whereas she and Filomena Romanelli were more concerned with cleanliness. Meredith’s British friends testified that Meredith had once told them that she felt a little uncomfortable about finding the right words to kindly talk tome, her new roommate, about cleanliness in the bathroom we shared. The prosecution would have you believe this is motivation for murder. But this is a terrifying distortion of the facts, as proving motive it not necessary—anywhere.

19. I did not carry around Rafael’s kitchen knife.  That’s what men are for, to do the lifting for me.

20. This claim by the prosecution, crucial to their theory, is uncorroborated by any physical evidence or witness testimony. I didn’t fear the streets of Perugia and didn’t need to carry around with me a large, cumbersome weapon which would have ripped my cloth book bag to shreds. My book bag showed no signs of having carried a bloody weapon. The claim that he would have insisted I carry a large chef’s knife is not just senseless, but a disturbing indication of how willing the prosecution is to defy objectivity and reason in order to sustain a mistaken and disproven theory.  Yes, i can positively disprove a theory I know nothing about.

21. It is yet another piece of invented “evidence”, another circumstance of theory fabricated to order, because having discovered nothing else, the prosecution could only invent: phone records, false alibis, false statements, false accusations.

22. I had no Contact with Rudy Guide, even though I mention in my book having seen him twice, and a third time in the next paragraph.

23. Like many youth in Perugia, I had once crossed paths with Rudy Guide. He played basketball with the young men who lived in the apartment below us. Meredith and I had been introduced to him together. Perhaps I had seen him amongst the swarms of students who crowded the Perugian streets and pubs in the evenings, but that was it. We didn’t have each other’s phone number, we didn’t meet in private, we weren’t acquaintances. I never bought drugs from Rudy Guide or anyone else. I was having sex with Federico for drugs, which isn’t the same thing.  The phone records show no connection. There are no witnesses who place us together, except my statement here. The prosecution claims I convinced Rudy Guide to commit rape and murder, completely ignoring the fact that we didn’t even speak the same language. He has lived in Perguia for 15 years, and I am a student of Italian. Once again, the prosecution is relying upon a disturbing and unacceptable pattern of distortion of the objective evidence.

24. I am not a psychopath.  That evaluation in 2008 was unfair, as I didn’t get a chance to prepare my spontaneous answers.

25. There is no short list to the malicious and unfounded slanders I have enjoyed over the course of this legal process. In trial, in the media I have been called no less than:

“Conniving; manipulating; man””eater; narcissist; enchantress; duplicitous; adulterer; drug addict; an explosive mix of drugs, sex, and alcohol; dirty; witch; murderer; slanderer; demon; depraved; imposter; promiscuous; succubus; evil; dead inside; pervert; dissolute; a wolf in sheep’s clothing; rapist; thief; reeking of sex; Judas; she-devil;

26. I have never demonstrated anti-social, aggressive, violent, or behavior. Throwing rocks at cars, writing rape stories, and staging break ins are not violent or anti-social.  I am not addicted to sex or drugs.  In fact, Federico Martini hasn’t given me any since I was arrested.  Upon my arrest I was tested for drugs and the results were negative. I am not a split-personality One does not adopt behavior spontaneously.

27. This is a fantasy. This is uncorroborated by any objective evidence or testimony. The prosecution and civil parties created and pursued this character assassination because they have nothing else to show you. They have neither proof, nor logic, nor the facts on their side. They only have their ‘‘evidence’’ against me, and my personal opinions about them. They want you to think I’m a monster because I am telling you they think I am a monster.  it is easy to condemn a monster. It is easy to dismiss a monster’s defense as deception. But the prosecution and civil parties think I’m both severely mistaken and wrong. I have condemned them without proof of wrongdoing, and I seek to convince you to condemn them without proof of wrongdoing.

28. If the prosecution truly had a case against me, there would be no need for these theatrics. Never mind that this is my own appeal, and I ‘‘should’’ be demonstrating why the 2009 trial verdict is unjust.  If I had a case, there would be no need for smoke and mirrors to distract you from the mountains of physical evidence against me. But because this evidence exists that proves my guilt, I would seek to deceive you with these impassioned, but completely inaccurate and unjustified pronouncements. Because I am not a murderer (yet), I would seek to mislead you into convicting me by charging your emotions, by painting me as an innocent until proven guilty, but not as a monster.

29. The prosecution and civil parties are committing injustices against the Kerchers because they cannot bring themselves to admit, even to themselves, that they’ve made a terrible mistake, namely, that the murder was premeditated. Again, it is my own appeal, but they are persecuting me.

30. The Court has seen that the prosecution and civil parties will not hear criticism of their mistakes, by people who won’t attend their appeal.

31. The Court has seen that the prosecution jumped to conclusions at the very start of their investigation: they interrogated and arrested innocent people and claimed “Case Closed"before any evidence could be analyzed, before bothering to check alibis.  As proof of this, they called Raffaele to the police station (at his leisure), to clear up discrepencies in his alibi.  Then when he claimed I lied, Rita Ficarra then asked me for an explanation.  Those brutes!  Then they hauled in Patrick just because in ‘‘confessed’’ several times that he did it.

32. The prosecutor and investigators were under tremendous pressure to solve the mystery of what happened to Meredith as soon as possible. The local and International media was breathing down the necks of these detectives. Their reputations and careers were to be made or broken. In spite of that, they still saw my mistakes. Under pressure, they admitted to as few mistakes as possible and committed themselves to a theory founded upon disproving my mistakes.

33. Had they not jumped to conclusions based on nothing but Raffaele’s changing alibi and my false accusations, they would have discovered definitive and undeniable evidence of not Patrick Lumumba, but of Rudy Guede, Raffaele Sollecito, and Amanda Knox. We would not be here over six years later debating clues my lawyers claim are inconclusive and unreliable.  Had we plead guilty we would have been spared the cost, anguish and suffering, not only of Raffaele’s and my family, but especially of Meredith’s family as well.

34. My accusations are unworthy of judicial or public confidence. In over six years I have failed to provide a consistent, evidence-driven, corroborated theory of the crime, but would nevertheless argue that you should not take my life away. I beg you to see through the ‘‘facts’’ and ‘‘reason’’ of what I say. I am innocent. Raffaele is innocent. Meredith and her family deserve the ‘‘truth’‘. Please put an end to this great and prolonged injustice for them.

in faith,

Amanda Marie Knox

 

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Why This Offer Of Legal Funding To Amanda Knox May Not Be Such A Good Idea

Posted by Peter Quennell

Report on how hard it is in the US to get compensation - that could inspire a search for new markets


Wrongful convictions in Italy are extremely rare because of the multi-step process to final verdict mandated by law. 

In the United States and other countries they are more common. It is not a given though for those innocents who do get released to be given a payment by the state. See the case in the video above.

Cavalli Legal Finance is a large and respected group which helps people pay their legal bills.

Somebody on the staff - maybe Andrew Braithwaite - has issued this press release presumably aimed at a share of any proceeds. It does raises question in our minds about whether any due diligence was done, though it may be early days for that yet.

Press Release

Cavalli Legal Finance Reports a Possible Wrongful Imprisonment Lawsuit

This press release was orginally distributed by ReleaseWire

Hamilton, NJ—(ReleaseWire)—05/28/2015—Settlement loans are now made available and applicable to wrongful imprisonment cases through Cavalli Legal Finance.

The Italian lawyer of Amanda Knox said a lawsuit is possible to be filed, although not certain, against Italy due to the wrongful detention of Knox, following her 7-year-old legal battle in Meredith Kercher’s murder.

In an email, Knox’s attorney Carlo Dalla Vedova said a lawsuit is possible, but they are not interested to make such move at the moment, and that he and his client have no discussion about it. Their option for a settlement loan was not also disclosed.

Italy’s highest court exonerated Amanda Knox, along with her Italian, former boyfriend Rafaelle Sollecito in the November 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, Amanda’s British roommate.

Initially, both suspects were convicted in 2009. Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment, while Knox received 26 years. In 2011, the convictions were overturned and Amanda returned to Seattle immediately. Under the personal injury cases, Amanda can file for a compensation claim, if the lawsuit has a good merit to win such legal battle, considering the incurred damages such as pain and suffering.

In 2013, their acquittals were both overturned, and just last year, their convictions were reinstated by a Florence court. Knox’s sentence was increased to 28 and half years. The recent ruling to exonerate both suspects was the criminal case’s final decision. Thus, a settlement funding could be availed by the convicts if they wish to.

According to the lawyer, the Italian Supreme Court should issue a written motivation by June 27, and if Knox pursues a lawsuit, the Italian law could provide a maximum of 517,000 euros as compensation, which is equivalent to $556,317. Knox can avail a lawsuit funding to pursue with the case.

Fortunately, Cavalli Legal Finance provides these services so as to help plaintiffs reach settled cases and compensation claims such as Knox’s case. The firm supports not only simple case, but also complex litigation like construction accidents and large complex litigation cases.

As they seem to have been blown some smoke, here are a few comments on the summary above of Knox’s legal history which Cavalli Legal Finance may find of help.

(1) Knox was released possibly illegally as her process was not done yet late in 2011 after an appeal trial which the Supreme Court in 2013 pretty well said straight-out was bent. The lead appeal judge was edged out and an investigation process still goes on. 

(2) Knox was in prison for approximately four years. For three of those years she was imprisoned for the felony crime of calunnia for the false accusation of murder against Patrick Lumumba whose career she has pretty well destroyed. She still owes him approximately $100,000 in damages awarded him which she has still not paid.

(3) That sentence was signed-off on by ALL the courts - see the trial court ruling, the 2011 appeal court confirmation (which adjusted the sentence to three years), and the 2013 Supreme Court confirmation. End of the road. A felon for life. The 2015 Supreme Court ruling did not include this in its scope. No further route to appeal.

(4) That leaves one year in prison which in theory could be considered a candidate for a wrongful imprisonment suit. However the Italian Republic has a lot going for its side. For example, very careful process steps were followed and pre-trial Knox was given six opportunities to get the charges dropped. She failed at them all. The US Embassy in Rome had an observer in all courts and cables to Washington DC released reflect no complaints.

(5) The Italian Republic also has going for it that the terse Fifth Chambers verdict (which it still has to explain) actually can still be overturned if a fix was in or if it did not follow the law on what its role at final appeal should be. Questions about sufficient evidence are invariably referred back down to the appeal court; but that did not happen here. See explanations here and here.

(6) Knox is back on trial right now on a second calunnia charge which in theory, as a repeat offender, could carry a six-year term. This relates to her false accusations of crimes by interrogators which she made on the stand at trial in mid 2009 when trying to argue her way out of the first calunnia charge. Three court dates are in September of this year.

(7) Knox has a very dishonest book out in the US, and now Italy and the UK, for which she was said to have been paid millions, which is currently getting a very careful legal read in Italy. The book Waiting To Be Heard (an absurd title given how much she was heard - she has a long history of people trying to shut her up) actually repeats the same false accusations of crimes, with bells and whistles, which are the subject of the current calunnia trial #2. Excerpts from it in the Italian weekly Oggi already have that weekly publication on trial.

We could go on. After the Supreme Court ruling in March there was buzz, perhaps from the hard-pressed families, that lawsuits for false imprisonment would follow soon.

The Italian lawyers tamped that talk down fast, and Sollecito’s lawyers (one of whom is himself to go on trial)  pretty well ruled it out entirely. They are said to see it as a slippery slope, an aggressive action, which could bring the castle of cards down fast.

Tuesday, May 05, 2015

A Shaky Castle Of Cards At Best: The Long-Term Fight For Legitimacy #2

Posted by Our Main Posters

RS and AK in New York a while back, the last time that they actually met


Gloom and doom have been dissipating for over a month now in Italy among those most invested in a just outcome, for the reasons given in this immediate-post-verdict post.

Note that the defense camps really want and need that legitimacy. They know the perverse judgment is not the end of the road. They have clamped down hard on what RS and AK can say.

In the Italian legal community the Fifth Chambers are getting some scathing commentary for their strange law and dismissiveness of the facts of the case which Cardiol in the post below this one once again underlined.

The Fifth Chambers’ sentencing report should be red meat, very tough for the hapless judges to write and a target from Day One and, under a new law in Italy which already overturned several Cassation verdicts, a very likely candidate for a legal suit.

The two book trials should slowly strip the emperors bare (remember those books are still very unread, even by many who read this site, and neither are in Italian yet), and could cost Knox more time inside and both of them fines and civil suits.

The psychologist SeekingUnderstanding has posted several times on how untreated troubled psychology rarely simply gets better with time. RS’s startling new crack at AK shows he has no inner calm, Knox’s delay in wedding plans and her incessant anger and vagueness maybe too.

Neither seem to have the big bucks they will need for their legal teams going forward, or the promise of successful careers. Sollecito still hasnt worked a day in his life and his preferred software area never sees successful entrants at his age. Knox’s only known area of interest - paid writing - is a fast-shrinking field.

Several tough books are already in the works. And the media loves conspiracy theories and hoaxes, and as all the real conspiracies and hoaxes have been on the defenses’ side, trends will also be against RS and AK there.

The only safe bets are that there will be various surprise happenings in the next six months - and that we’d rather be in our camp than in theirs.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Knox Interrogation Hoax #18: Final Pre-Trial Opportunities Which Knox Flunked

Posted by Our Main Posters

Image of Judge Micheli who presided over the hearings that remanded Knox to trial.

1. Overview Of The Interrogation Hoax Series

In Post #1 there’s a long summary of what various courts concluded in sentencing Knox for calunnia to three years. 

All 17 posts prior to this one are linked-to there. The first twelve posts cover the key parts of the trial testimony and evidence from investigators for the events at Perugia’s central police station on 5-6 November 2007.

The next six including this show how Knox failed to convince numerous magistrates at many hearings that she was ever interrogated or abused or made to lie. For the most part in fact she did not even try. 

2. The Six Pre-Trial Opportunities Which Knox Flunked

The previous five posts and this one cover the six hearings from late 2007 to late 2008, any one of which was a big opportunity for Knox. She could have been released if the evidence was weaker and the arguments of herself and her legal team stronger.

Knox blew all six opportunities. The judges were Claudia Matteini, Massimo Ricciarelli and two others, Torquato Gemelli and four others, and Paolo Micheli (this post). A total of 10 judges, and Dr Mignini. After the first two, one of Knox’s lawyers walked off the job.

Those ignorant of the reports of these hearings (all but one newly translated for this series with the Micheli to come) often demonize the prosecutor, Dr Mignini, as somehow taking a harder line than all those judges.

Really?

Read all of the reports and in fact every one of those judges took a harder line than Dr Mignini who worked very hard to be fair. His early version of the attack on Meredith was of an almost accidental death with sexual humiliation in the course of a hazing.

This went out the window, and all of the judges without exception adopted a harder position - that Knox’s anger had spiraled over Meredith’s difficulties with her, and a barbaric 15-minute torture-attack resulted in Meredith’s death which may have been premeditated in a timespan between minutes and days.

Judge Matteini, Judge Ricciarelli, and Judge Micheli (see below) all flat-out warned that they considered RS and AK to be dangerous to others and that they needed to be kept locked up pending trial.  Judge Gemmelli and other Supreme Court judges endorsed this.

Typically Knox was constrained by her lawyers to say little or nothing.

They were already wrestling to try to wind back the three problematic statements she demanded to make on 5-6 November - mainly by changing the subject and aggressively attacking Guede. 

She was allowed to be questioned by Judge Ricciarelli and she herself volunteered to be questioned by Dr Mignini three times, but her performances were shaky and erratic and once she seemed to break down in tears.

There was little or no hint of the inflammatory claims which cost her three years which Knox came up with when she had to take the stand mid-2009 to try to defend her framing of Lumumba.

3. Micheli Hearings September and October 2008

This Sky News report describes how prior to the Micheli hearings Knox’s lawyers seemed pretty desperate to change the subject.

Valter Biscotti and Nicodemo Gentile said they wanted Guede’s trial to be separate from that of Knox and Sollecito because they feared a pact against their client. Mr Biscotti added: “We feel the urgent need to have our trial heard independently of the other two suspects.

In recent weeks a lot of poison has been spread by the defence teams and we feel the necessity to find some form of serenity in a separate hearing.  That’s why we have asked for a fast-track hearing just for our client and we want that hearing as quickly as possible.  At this hearing we will prove that our client has absolutely nothing to do with the tragic death of Meredith Kercher.”

On 16 Sept 2008 Judge Micheli accepted the Guede team’s request for a fast-track trial and as the rules require moved all of the hearings behind closed doors.

A fast-track proceeding is closed to the public, unlike a full trial. It will be held before the same judge, who is expected to issue the verdict at the time he decides whether to indict Knox and Sollecito. The rulings are expected next month.

Judge Micheli had mountains of investigative reports and physical evidence to plow through. He heard witnesses in four hearings (with Meredith’s family present at several) on the DNA collection, on the character of Rudy Guede, and also on the three defendants acting menacing outside their house, which he heavily discounted.

Late on 28 October Judge Micheli issued a 17-page ruling which includes almost no mention of Knox implicating Patrick. He convicted Guede of murder and sexual assault, and sentenced him to 30 years. He also ordered Knox and Sollecito to stand trial on charges of murder and sexual assault.

As the UK Guardian and many other media reported, Judge Micheli assessed Knox and Sollecito as being dangerous. 

The suspected killers of Meredith Kercher were refused transfer from jail to house arrest last night while awaiting trial for her murder, because of the danger that they might flee and kill again.

After 12 hours’ deliberation in Perugia, the judge, Paolo Micheli, said there was a “concrete possibility” that Amanda Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito would run off if freed from prison.

In a written ruling to lawyers, he said he believed the murder of the British student was not premeditated, but the likely “absolute disregard” shown by Knox and Sollecito for the victim’s life meant they would be capable of murdering again….

Turning down their request for house arrest yesterday, Micheli agreed with prosecutors that more than one person took part in the sexual assault and murder, dismissing claims that the 47 bruises and knife wounds on Kercher’s body could have been made by a single attacker.

He upheld the testimony of a neighbour who heard more than one person fleeing Kercher’s house, adding that while footprints there might not definitely belong to Knox and Sollecito, they did indicate more than one attacker.

He stood by forensic evidence indicating Kercher’s and Knox’s DNA on a knife found at Sollecito’s house which investigators suspect is the murder weapon, and ruled Sollecito’s DNA on Kercher’s bra strap as reliable evidence.

On 30 October Judge Micheli was interviewed. No sign in this that any claim of unfairness to Knox was on his radar.

4. Apparent False Claim Of A Statement By Knox

Bearing in mind that these hearings were all behind closed doors, none of the Italian and English-language media reports including those of the New York Times make any mention at all of Knox testifying or answering questions. Nor do the books of Sollecito or John Follain.  We are still checking with Italy to make sure.

To jump the gun on the series a bit, a probable non-statement by Knox morphed in Knox’s 2013 book into this heated claim below, which we have already been told, based on court transcripts and Judge Micheli’s immediate 17 page report, was definitely not what was said, if anything, in court.

On October 28, the final day, I got to speak for myself. Since the judge understood English, I stood up without my interpreter and tried to explain what had happened during my interrogation. I told the judge that I hadn’t meant to name Patrick or to cause confusion but that the interrogation had been the most brutish, terrifying experience of my life. I’d been exhausted to begin with, and I had gotten so scared and confused that it was as though I went out of my mind. My interrogators told me that they had evidence I’d been at the villa, that Raffaele was no longer vouching for my whereabouts that night, that I had been through such a horrible trauma, I had amnesia. “I believed them! I’m innocent!” I cried.

Posts #1 to #12 have shown that Knox experienced no “brutish, terrifying experience”. Trauma was inflicted only by Sollecito and then by Knox on herself. With high confidence, we can conclude that as so often in her book Knox was simply making this up. So much for Linda Kulman’s fact checking.

5. The Micheli Sentencing Report Of January 2009

Finally three months later Judge Micheli issued a sentencing report of about 100 pages. While it has still not been fully translated we did summarise it in four posts here.

In the Italian original (which is equally firm to harsh on all three defendants) it is quite graphic about what the physical evidence says of the callous role of Knox and Sollecito in the torture-attack.

Judge Micheli does note how often Knox and Sollecito help to destroy one another’s stories which numerous witnesses confirmed helped to spark Knox’s conniption and framing of Patrick.

There is no mention at all of Knox taking exception to her “interrogation”.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

The Certainties And Open Questions In The Amanda Knox Trial Starting In Florence On 9 June

Posted by Our Main Posters

Dr Giuliano Giambartolomei prosecutes in both the Sollecito and Knox trials

1. A Bizarre Crime

What Knox will soon be on trial for is one of the most bizarre crimes conceivable.

If you followed all the links in the post directly below this (with more to come soon) you will see that the evidence is overwhelming that Knox maliciously and self-servingly invented the Interrogation Hoax of 5-6 November 2007 for very little likelihood of benefit and with massive damage done to good people and the proud image of Italy.

So what does Knox do? Learn anything? No. She serves three years for framing Patrick - and comes right out of prison to repeat more or less the self-same crime but this time on steroids. Passages in her book and claims in interviews were almost hysterically insistent, and the email she sent to Judge Nencini in December 2013 even more-so. In that email she actually ranted on about torture.

And dozens of others in the US picked up on the false claims and, as Steve Moore and John Douglas and Bruce Fischer did, heavily embellished them. What Knox was convicted for is still right there on a dozen YouTubes all “helpfully” uploaded by Bruce Fischer. 

Some few in Italy might have been undecided a month ago whether Sollecito was really there when Meredith was murdered. But nobody at all in Italy likes the dangerous and inflammatory campaign Knox has spearheaded.

This really could be Knox’s OJ Simpson moment. This time she could face as much as six years, and the US would seem to have zero grounds to resist extradition.

And as Knox was finally confirmed as sentenced for calunnia to the detriment of Lumumba by Cassation in 2013, left unaffacted by Cassation in 2015, Knox can no longer make any claim to have been induced to do so by the police and prosecution.

If she has a viable defense nobody, repeat nobody, right now seems able to imagine it. 

2. The Certainties

The trial will begin on 9 June in the Florence courthouse in front of Judge Anna Liguori.  The lead prosecutor will be Dr Giuliano Giambartolomei who is also the chief prosecutor in the Sollecito & Gumbel book trial which convenes next on 30 April.

While charges in the Sollecito & Gumbel trial are for diffamazione and vilipendio (slander of officials and of the system) the anticipated charges in the Knox case are for the more serious crime of calunnia (for accusing justice officials of crimes in court).

For a very good reason, diffamazione and vilipendio and especially calunnia are taken more seriously in Italy than equivalent contempts in some other systems.

This is because of a long-running (if declining) tendency for “connected” defendants to try to take the justice system down a peg in the hope of an unfair break in trials they or their unsavory buddies are in the midst of.

3. The Open Questions

The Knox book and email to Judge Nencini and TV claims cannot be a part of a calunnia case but certainly can be used as evidence of Knox’s disingenuousness and malice. To what extent this will happen is not clear yet, but signs are a lot of online evidence on these lines is being captured.

Nor is it clear yet who will represent Knox. Possibly Ghirga and Dalla Vedova, but they may not be the “best” team for her as they are credited in Knox’s book for its content and they handed over as a court document the inflammatory Knox email to Judge Nencini. (Remember, Sollecito is not being defended in his trial by Bongiorno or Maori.) 

Nor is it clear yet what line Knox’s defense may take. It is quite out of the question that she again simply repeats the claims that already cost her three years signed off on twice by Cassation. If Sollecito seems seriously stuck for a defense, Knox seems even more-so.

Nor is it clear yet if the defense team will make an immediate bid to Cassation for dismissal. The Fifth Chambers which overturned the murder conviction is already deeply entangled and under scrutiny, and judges there may already be wondering if they have committed career suicide to very little real benefit for anyone.

Also it is not clear yet how this will impact the pending trial of Curt Knox and Edda Mellas for diffamazione for repeating as gospel Knox’s false claims to a British reporter, and we dont know how this will impact Oggi’s trial for enthusiastically publishing some of Knox’s false claims.

It is not clear yet how the Knox PR (if it is still active) or the pro-Knox opportunists or the highly confused US media will handle this - but to repeat as gospel any of Knox’s claims could from now on be legally radioactive.

it is not clear yet how the Obama Administration will (if at all) react to this. Whether there will again be covert intervention, or whether they will finally concede that Italy did get it right and crimes should be paid for and not given a free pass. 

Finally, will Knox again be a no-show in Florence, as she was (against her lawyers best advice) at her own appeal? And if so, will she and her forces again falsely claim that she is being tried in absentia? That wouldnt win her points in Italy.

4. Further Background

Click here:   1. Could The Italian Authorities Be Starting A Wave Of Libel + Slander Investigations?

Click here:   2. Interrogation Hoax: Knox Hearing On Calunnia Charges, Then Trial To Resume June 16

Click here:   3. Calunnia Claims At The Core Of The Problem For Amanda Knox - And Her Parents

Click here:   4. Knox Calunnia Hearing: Amanda Knox Enters Court Via The Underground Entrance

Click here:   5. Another In Seeming Never-Ending Disasters For Hapless Knox Campaign

Click here:   6. A Perugian Media Report (Neutral As Usual) In Italian On Knox’s Calunnia Hearing

Click here:   7. Curt Knox And Edda Mellas Defamation Trial To Go Ahead On July 4

Click here:   8. Umbria’s Chief Prosecutor Will Proceed Against Knox And Sollecito And Also Aviello

Click here:   9. The Curt Knox And Edda Mellas Diffamazione Trial Will Resume In Perugia 30 March.

Click here:   10. False Allegations Against Italian Officialdom Sparking Increasingly Tough Legal Reaction

Click here:   11. An Overview From Italy #2: Current Perceptions In Italy, Sollecito Case, Mignini’s Full Vindication

Click here:   12. With Diffamazione Complaint Against False Claims In Oggi Knox’s Legal Prospects Continue To Slide

Click here:   13. Expected Calunnia And Diffamazione Trials Could Reverse Another Attempt To Take Justice Down A Peg

Click here:   14. Questions For Knox: Did You Undergo An Illegal Interrogation By Mignini Or Did You Try To Frame Him?

Click here:   15. Desperate Ghirga Urges Amanda Knox To Show At Florence Appeal, But She’s Created More Problems

Click here:   16. Pushback Against Mafia Playbook Gathers Speed With Denial Of False Accusation of “Satanic Theory

Click here:   17. Why It Will Be Republic Of Italy v Knox And Sollecito For The Myriad False Claims They Have Made

Click here:   18. False Claims By Amanda Knox & The Book Team May End Up Costing $10 Million

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

So Is James Moninger The One Moonlighting As Anonymous Spokesman For Dept Of State?

Posted by Ergon

Above: the unfavorable context which persuades Sec of State John Kerry to stick most carefully to the rules

1. Overview

This is the second of two posts on the real source of an increasing flow of anonymous but seemingly official State Department claims that Knox’s extradition is not in the cards.

My first post noted an increasing flow of anonymous but seemingly official claims that Knox’s extradition is not in the cards.

Also there is a certain sameness in all of the news reports of secret State Department agreements and assurances alleged to save Amanda Knox from extradition. This is a very typical one.

Paul Thompson in The UK Express for Sunday 22 March 2015 2015

US officials: Amanda Knox will never go back to Italian jail

AMANDA KNOX will never be extradited from America, even if an Italian court this week upholds her conviction for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, according to US sources.

“Lawyers for Knox, 28, are confident she will remain free even if Italy asks for her to be sent back to resume a 28-year jail sentence.

US State Department sources say the uncertainty of the case against Knox means they will not agree to any extradition request.

Knox also has a huge amount of public sympathy in the US where she is seen as a victim of a miscarriage of justice by a foreign court.

A source at the State Department said: “There is a feeling that the whole case is flawed and that a US citizen should not have to go to jail because of that. If there is an extradition request from Italy it will be denied.”

2. My Hunt For “Anonymous Source” Begins

The question of who is the State Department source (Burleigh calls him “˜American diplomat’) was highlighted in my previous post.

• Former US Ambassador David Thorne?


• Some low level employee at State or Justice?


• Completely made up by Anne Bremner and co?

So I reached out to my sources and this is what they told me informally for general background.

They considered it extremely unlikely that Ambassador Thorne or any one in Rome would pass on such assurances to Anne Bremner or even the likes of Nina Burleigh. While they could not confirm whether high level talks had taken place they did point out that John Kerry, as Secretary of State would respond differently now than when he was in the Senate and pointed to his statement “he would do his duty”.

And Italy had a new government and foreign secretary, so the latest news reports seemed entirely made up. State and Justice had been following the case quite closely and they were not going to risk offense to Italy for this case. Not to say they hadn’t been nervous when Knox went back to the US and got such heavy hitters in the media go to bat for her, but, also duly noted that public support for her was really paper thin.

This left either a made up story or some low level civil servant speaking out of turn with personal opinions “¦ we know that The FOA lie, but also, they sometimes seize on a wisp of rumour, or some “˜source’ whose importance they tend to exaggerate.

We know about retired Justice Department lawyer J. Michael Scadron who’s been saying State and DOJ would never allow extradition. There’s even a photo of him at the Vashon Island gathering, in all his fan boy glory.

But then another person showed up on my radar. Take a look.






I’m so tired of debating with the kooks, but when some members asked me to help them out on a closed Facebook Page (275 members)  Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito Roundtable which was run and overrun by FOA I joined to help out.

It turned out one of the admins was a State Department employee called James Moninger who is indeed, a “˜diplomat’, working in some role for State in Hawaii. Consular, maybe.

His Facebook friends are the entirety of the FOA it would seem (see some below), and he is an active member and admin of several other pro Knox groups. Quite the fan boy too, it seems.

He hemmed and hawed about my inclusion but within the course of a few hours I was bounced out of the group twice.  He wrote to me:

Naseer,

“I am writing to confirm that I removed you from the Amanda Knox Roundtable group. This was my decision, and I have advised the other administrators accordingly.

Earlier in the day I received a plea from one of the group members who claimed that you have harassed her in the past and contacted her employer. I have no opinions on this issue, but as site owner I am unwilling to take on a potentially significant liability.

Please don’t feel that this action was in any way predicated on the opinions you expressed in the forum.”

James Moninger

Here is my reply:

Hi, James,

“It’s your group and you’re welcome to do as you wish. That you didn’t give a chance to respond to the (false) allegation is par for the course and no loss for me. As you know, I have far bigger platforms to present my views; it was YOUR group that invited me to participate in the first place.

I already know the source of that slander from other forums and will respond appropriately.

You should also know I’d contacted the State Department previously concerning the Daily Mail and Express articles that “sources in the State Department” have said “Amanda Knox will never be extradited to Italy”.

Imagine my surprise to see you are the owner of this pro-Knox debate site, and membership in several others, which you have every right to. However, since your bio says you are a State Dept. employee, and your rather lengthy list of friends and followers have been actively advocating that Knox would never be extradited, with all sorts of references to internal department sources it is my responsibility to ask for comment:

1. Have you in any way told them the State Department would deny an extradition request?

2. Have you advised the Amanda Knox campaign in any way how to lobby the State Department or how it would respond to an extradition request?

3. Please explain the following comment on the Amanda Knox blog on February 7, 2014 at 20:38.

“Concerns about this case would more appropriately be directed to the US Department of State; not to Congress. There is little or nothing the legislative branch of the government can do to affect treaties that are already in place. (Senate hearings, etc. are not the way the federal process works.) Using profanity with senior members of Congress can never be helpful.

I am hopeful that the State Department is watching this case carefully and is prepared to choose the correct path, whatever that may eventually entail, to protect a US citizen from any further violations of human and legal rights.”

Are you, as a State Department employee, stating that Amanda Knox’s human and legal rights were violated? In a G7 country? Would you like to retract it?

I will be writing my story in 48 hours or so. Please reply at your earliest”.

Naseer Ahmad

He never replied, and it’s been a while though he did agree with someone else who called us “haters” ?

Conclusion: I will end with this. PMF/TJMK member Odysseus wrote to UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, expressing his concerns. He got a reply from the North America Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office:

“If the Italian authorities were to make an extradition request to the US Government, we would expect that it would be considered in accordance with US laws.”

Funny sort of a coincidence, but. I sent a list of questions three days ago to the Kerchers through an intermediary. Q. 4 was “Will they call for extradition Amanda Knox if she’s convicted?”

I know they haven’t received it yet, but, in The Sunday Times the Kercher family say Knox must be extradited

Tom Kington Rome

March 23 2015

“Amanda Knox must be extradited from the US if her conviction for murdering Meredith Kercher is upheld by Italy’s supreme court this week, the family of the British student have urged.”

“Meredith’s family hope that the sentence is upheld and the law is carried out to its fullest extent,” said Francesco Maresca, a lawyer representing the family. “If that means extradition for Knox, that’s what they want.”

As always, we are with them on this. Knox needs to serve her time. Zero mistake has been proved - except for hers.


Below: some of the self-important James Moninger’s “friends” on Facebook