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

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Trial: Did Someone Prevent Meredith Calling Home On The Night?

Posted by Peter Quennell


“The British student Meredith Kercher may have tried to telephone her mother in a last cry for help before she was overpowered and stabbed to death in Perugia in central Italy.”

This story on one of Meredith;s last actions out of the courtroom yesterday is being very widely picked up around the world. Click above for John Follain’s report.


Trial: Evidence Casts Doubt On Knox’s “I Slept In At Sollecito’s” Alibi

Posted by Peter Quennell

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/22/09 at 12:23 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Trials 2008 & 2009Amanda KnoxComments here (0)

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Trial: Testimony Places Amanda Knox At Supermarket Here Early Morning After The Crime

Posted by Peter Quennell


Above center: people entering and leaving the Conad supermarket in Via Garibaldi.

Other shots here. This small supermarket franchise is less than 100 meters from the School for Foreigners (straight ahead).

It is about five minutes walk from Meredith’s house (off to the left) and about five minutes walk from Sollecito’s apartment (directly behind).

The Associated Press has just reported on the testimony of Marco Quintavalle, the manager of the store.

A grocer testified Saturday that an American student accused of killing her British roommate in Italy was in his store early on the morning after the death, contradicting the timeline she offered…

Sollecito said he spent the night at his house, and does not remember if Knox spent all or part of it with him. Knox, after conflicting statements, eventually said she was at Sollecito’s house and awoke mid-morning on Nov. 2, 2007.

Witness Marco Quintavalle said Saturday that a young woman he identified as Knox entered his grocery store near Sollecito’s house in Perugia at 7:45 a.m. on Nov. 2. He said the woman was waiting for him to open the store, and that he and she exchanged glances when she entered.

“It really struck me, she had a very pale face and these light eyes,” Quintavalle said. “I can still see the image in my head.”

Asked by the presiding judge if that woman was in the courtroom, Quintavalle said he was sure it was Knox. “Now I’m sure,” he said, looking at her. Knox did not appear to react.

Quintavalle said he did not know if Knox bought anything because he was not at the cash register that morning. He said he had seen Knox one or two times before at his store with Sollecito, a frequent customer.

Defense lawyers questioned the reliability of the witness. Carlo Dalla Vedova asked him if he could say how tall Sollecito is and what color his eyes are. Quintavalle gave an indication on the height and said he was not sure about Sollecito’s eye color.

The Daily Telegraph report added this detail.

[Mr Quintavalle] said"I was inside and I opened the shutters of my supermarket at 7.45am. Outside I saw a girl waiting to come inside.

“She had a hat and jeans on but what struck me was how pale she looked and the colour of her blue eyes, I can still see them in front of me now.

“She was young, around 20 or 21 years old. She came in and went to the section at the back of the supermarket on the left where there are the cleaning products.

“I can’t remember if she bought anything. A few hours later I heard about the murder and then a few days later I saw Amanda’s picture in the newspaper and I recognised her as the same girl.”

He said he had no doubt about identifying her. “The shape of the face was the same, as was the nose, she was pretty. For me the girl in the newspapers was the same girl.”

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/21/09 at 11:53 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Evidence & WitnessesOther witnessesTrials 2008 & 2009Comments here (1)

Trial: Report From The Courtroom On Vodaphone Testimony

Posted by stewarthome2000



[above: a defendant-mobile entering Cappanne Prison]

It was a technical day in court, mostly devoted to confirming events and facts that we the public have already known about for a while. The court heard from the Vodaphone engineers, the communications investigator from Rome, and the Perugia homicide squad.

The Vodaphone engineers illustrated that cell phone uses cell points to connect, and those cell points cover certain areas. As you move about, your phone gets switched from tower to tower depending on your location, choosing the best signal for it. Many times, signals from cell points overlap, so one area can be serviced by three or more towers, and if one is blocked or congested the other processes the call.

Why all the background? Because they were setting the stage to show that Sollecito’s cell phone having no traffic from 8:42pm till 6:02am on the night of the murder was not due to him being unable to get a signal at his home. His neighborhood is well covered with cell areas, so most likely the phone was turned off and then turned back on again.

The engineers essentially proved that his phone was, beyond reasonable doubt, turned off from sometime after 8:42pm and turned on at 6:02am. At 6:02am he finally received a sms text that his dad sent the night before around 11:15pm, which had been undeliverable while the phone was switched off.

This was shown to be unusual behavior for him, because throughout the entire month of October he never once tuned his mobile phone off so early (nearly every night it was on till around 11 or midnight or later) or ever once turned it on so early - usually he turned back on well after 9, 10 or even 11am. So they showed not only that this behavior was unusual and unprecedented for him”¦ but that it happened to be on the night that Meredith was murdered.

It was also shown that Sollecito on the day of the 2nd topped up his phone with more credit, around 12:20pm, and then called his sister at 12:50pm, and the carabinieri at 12:51pm (connection failed) and then again at 12:55pm. Thereafter, he and his dad exchanged a number of calls, up until he arrived at the police station in the late afternoon.

Knox’s phone was shown to confirm on the night of the murder the exchange of sms messages with Patrick Lumumba, where Patrick sent a message to AK at 8:18pm (in effect “no need to come to work”) and she responded with the message at 8:35pm “ci vediamo piu tardi, buona serata” (“we will see each other later, good evening”).

The police right after the crime thought that might be evidence against Patrick, but I see where the mix-up comes from, because “pui tardi” is almost exclusively used when you plan to see someone later that day or in a few hours. She should have said “ci vediamo presto” which means “soon” or just “ci vediamo”. The way she wrote it, any Italian would think it meant in a few hours or very soon thereafter.

It was confirmed that the last communication from Knox’s phone on the night of the murder was at 8:35pm. Then there was nothing untill the next morning, when she tried to call Meredith’s UK cellphone at 12:07pm. Then she called Filomena, then Meredith’s Italian phone, and then she called home to Seattle a number of times.

The police also showed that Raffaele’s fixed line at his house showed no activity between 12:02pm on the 1st and 2:16pm on the 3rd. So much for activity on his land line or internet.

One interesting fact to emerge was that the eye witness who is saying he saw the three of them together the night of the murder had his mobile phone traced as well. It was shown to be in the Assisi area till the late afternoon on the 1st and then it entered the cell area of Via della Pergola at 8:01pm. So he was in fact in that part of the city on that evening. The prosecution made a request to note that fact.

They also showed, with a dispute from Sollecito’s lawyer Buongiorno, that Meredith’s cell phone made a call (not a phone call but a GPS call attempt) at I believe around 10:15pm, and that the call was made from the area where the phones were found the next day as it involved a different cell tower than those covering Via della Pergola.

So most likely the phone was in the possession of the killer and right then already on its way to the garden in Via Sperandio. So Meredith was most likely killed just before that time. This cell point analysis was done during the day and in a limited area, so this finding was disputed by the defense.

Finally, the homicide squad covered more ground.  They testified that Sollecito’s ASUS computer was already broken before they collected it for testing. They also indicated that they had been monitoring the phone activity and calls of everyone concerned for some time after the murder, including those of Raffaele’s dad. He had made a number of calls, to some of his political connections, to journalists, to legal counsel, to Panorama Magazine, and so on.

They also described the crime scene, and who precisely went in, and who was found at the scene, and who sequestered the knife at Sollecito’s home. One inspector initially claimed that Sollecito’s place smelled like bleach. Buongiorno attacked this, and he changed it to, okay, it smelled as if it had been cleaned with soap.

Overall, the testimony today mainly confirmed in precise and suggestive scientific detail much of what had been in the public area about the communications for some time.


Friday, March 20, 2009

Trial: ABC News Report: Experts Remark On Very Odd Phone Patterns

Posted by Peter Quennell


In another objective report for ABC News, Rome-based reporter Ann Wise adds the following details.

Sollecito was particularly cheerful today…. as the 10th hearing of the trial concentrated on phone records.

Sollecito has always maintained that he was home in his apartment the night of the murder and initially told police his father had called him at home around 11 p.m.

Phone records later showed that he received no such call.,,,

Police investigator Letterio Latella testified today that Knox and Sollecito’s cell phones were inactive most of the night, and activity on the cell phones stopped almost simultaneously….

Latella said that he did not find any evidence of a similar “blackout” of Knox and Sollecito’s phones in the month preceding the murder.

Normally, investigators have said, both Knox and Sollecito’s phones were on until late at night and would come back on in the late morning.


Trial: Testimony On Mobile Phones, Suspicious Silence At Just The Wrong Time

Posted by Peter Quennell


Expert testimony essentially did not depart from the narrative in particular set out by Judge Micheli.

He was the judge who committed Knox and Sollecito to trial. For the full report by Alessandra Rizzo of AP click above. 

1) On the switching off and on of the mobile phones:

The cell phones of two defendants in the murder of a British student killed in Italy remained inactive the night of the murder, witnesses testified Friday.

Investigators say having their cell phones turned off made their whereabouts untraceable. Defense lawyers contend that the cell phone data were inconclusive….

Police inspector Letterio Latella, who analyzed the data, said Knox’s and Sollecito’s cell phones showed no activity on the night of the crime. His testimony confirmed previous witness accounts and provided details of the cell phones’ traffic.

In lengthy testimony supported by PowerPoint slides, Latella said Sollecito’s cell phone remained inactive between 8:42 p.m. of Nov. 1 and 6:02 a.m. of Nov. 2, when he received a text message from his father.

Latella suggested that the cell phone had been turned off because the text message had been sent the night before. He said there were no reported glitches in the network that night, and that other cell phones active in the area appeared to function properly.

Knox’s cell phone was inactive between 8:35 p.m. of Nov. 1 and 12:07 p.m. of Nov. 2, according to Latella, who studied documents provided by the phone operators. At 12:07 p.m., Knox’s called Kercher’s British number….

2) On Knox’s text exchange on the night of the murder with Patrick Lumumba

Phone records showed [Knox] exchanged text messages with the Congolese owner of a pub where she used to work part-time, Latella and other witnesses said.

The messages Knox sent at 8:35 p.m. to the man, Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, said: “Sure. See you later. Have a good night!” said Simone Tacconi of the telecommunications branch of Rome police. The message was written in Italian.

Lumumba was detained for two weeks in November 2007 after he was implicated by Knox. He has since been cleared and is seeking defamation damages from Knox.


Trial: The Defendants Arrive At The Court This Morning

Posted by Peter Quennell



[click for larger image]

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/20/09 at 06:51 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Trials 2008 & 2009Amanda KnoxRaff SollecitoComments here (7)

Trial: Proceedings Resume, The Agenda For Friday And Saturday Is 11 Witnesses

Posted by Peter Quennell


Eleven witnesses are scheduled - and they are probably about to provide some really dramatic testimony.

On Friday, the police experts who analysed the locations and activities of the phones relevant to the case will take the stand. The phones in question include Meredith’s two mobile phones (one of which was in Filomena’s name) which may have been removed from the house to prevent Meredith from calling for help as she lay dying.

They were both tossed into a garden very close to Sollecito’s and Guede’s places. The finding and reporting of one of the phones resulted in the Communication Police visiting Meredith’s house, where they have testified they found Knox and Sollecito outside apparently quite startled, with a mop and a bucket and the washing machine still running just inside.

One issue is whether anyone tried to use one of Meredith’s phones to communicate deliberately with Meredith’s password-protected bank account in the UK. Her rent money of course disappeared at the time of the murder, and Guede, Sollecito and Knox may all have been low on funds.

There should be confirmation that Sollecito’s father called Sollecito on his apartment’s land-line very late on the evening of the crime. His call went unresponded-to, perhaps because nobody was home at the time.

And there should be confirmation that Sollecito’s and Knox’s mobiles were turned off more or less simultaneously at Sollecito’s house less than an hour before the crime against Meredith took place, and that at least one of them was switched back on before daybreak the next morning, at a time when Knox and Sollecito have both claimed to have been asleep. 

On Saturday, the manager of the Conad supermarket in lower Via Garibaldi (in Sollecito’s street, and about 200 meters from Meredith’s house) will give testimony on whether Knox was seen in the supermarket early on the morning after the crime, and whether any bleach was sold. His previous statement included this:

I saw Amanda, on the morning they found the body of Meredith, doing some shopping at around 7.45am,” the witness, whose name has not yet been released, claimed.

“She was in the part of the shop where they keep detergents, but I couldn’t say for sure if she bought anything,” the man was quoted as saying by the Giornale dell’Umbria newspaper.

“I thought it was very strange for a student to be out so early in the morning. That morning was virtually a holiday, there were no lectures, if there had been I could understand her being up so early.”

Also on Saturday, the boyfriend of Alessandra Formica who apparently saw a black man similar to Guede running up the stairs near the house will testify. He and his girlfriend are often referred to as the diners, and they were returning to their parked car at the time. This could be vital to a firm timeline.

And also on Saturday the man sitting on a bench in the Piazza Grimana, from which the gate of Meredith’s house can easily be seen, is expected to testify that Knox and Sollecito came and sat nearby, late in the evening, and seemed to be keeping an anxious eye on that gate.

The timing of that action appears to be just minutes after a neighbor whose apartment looks onto the house heard a terrible scream and then footsteps running from the house in several directions.

Knox’s stepfather Chris Mellas is expected to again be present. He doesn’t speak Italian. Nevertheless, his spin on the above is awaited with great interest.


Thursday, March 19, 2009

What Are The Judges And Jury Now Thinking? The Current Position Of AK And RS

Posted by Brian S


When nothing else works, the mantra again becomes “I simply don’t remember”.

Attempts have been made at various alibis, but as each of them fall flat or collide, the fall-back position becomes one of blackouts on the night.

I view this with complete disbelief.

Although I was only a teenager at the time, I can remember exactly where I was and who I was with when somebody came into the room and said JFK had been shot.

I can remember where I was and who I was with when I watched on TV as a man first walked on the moon.

I can remember the business phone conversations I had on the afternoon (UK time) the World Trade Centre came down.

Because I can remember those “surreal” conversations, I can recall all the details of a work project in which I was involved in the days immediately preceding and following. I can even remember the pub lunch I had on the Sunday before, and the content of the casual conversations I had with colleagues after we finished the weekend portion of that same project. That was nearly eight years ago.

I can remember all of the details of some of the more traumatic or major events which have occurred in my own life.

I just can’t believe that RS and Ak can’t remember what they did the night Meredith was killed - even if they really are innocent, and didn’t find out about the murder until the next day.

Traumatic and other major events “fix the memory” pretty well forever. I can still remember much of my first day at school.

If AK and RS were “so far out of it” they can’t remember what they did on November 1st, then they can no more remember they didn’t kill Meredith than they can remember that they did.

Many people, even those innocent, may be tempted to “create a simple alibi” when first interviewed by the police. Especially if they have to admit to something like “we spent the night at home smoking cannabis” or they spent the night with the partner of their best friend.

And then in face of any contrary, damning facts, they usually suddenly grow a brain.

Let’s walk through what happened inb this case.

At their very first questioning, on the day after the murder, RS and AK said they wandered around town and then went to a party.

Within 3 days the police knew this wasn’t true, because of a trace on Raffaele’s phone movements. And so on November 5th, they called him back in to explain the anomaly.

They didn’t request Amanda’s attendance as well but she went along with Raffaele anyway.

It’s at this time that most innocent people will admit that they had lied earlier, as they don’t want to dig themselves in any deeper. They make their excuses now, and admit to what they were really doing.

Raffaele did now tell the police that his earlier story “was a load of rubbish he made up because he didn’t realise the inconsistencies in what Amanda had said”.

But he now said that he was home alone, doing things on his computer from sometime around 9:00pm when “Amanda went out to meet friends at Le Chic”. And that she didn’t come back until sometime around 1:00am.

As Amanda had conveniently made herself available at the police station with Raffaele, the investigators now asked her for her version of the evening too.

Faced with the removal of Raffaele’s alibi for her, and his saying that she went out to Le Chic (plus the admittedly misunderstood text message “see you later”) she now came up with the story “Patrick killed Meredith, and I was in the kitchen, with my hands over my ears”.

Over the following days, Amanda slowly withdrew from her accusation against Patrick and, following witness evidence which proved he was at Le Chic, came up with the third story that “Raffaele may say I went out, but that’s wrong. I did spend the evening with him.”

Unfortunately for her, Raffaele continued to maintain his story that he was home alone on his computer, and that Amanda went out, right through the stages of his appeals up to the appeal made to the Supreme Court last March, where he claimed that “the evidence against Amanda is being arbitrarily used against me on the erroneous assumption that we spent the evening together”.

To this day, Raffaele has not changed this assertion, nor provided any new version for the trial.

Currently, the judges and jury will know of the claims that Amanda says she was at home all evening with Raffaele. And that Raffaele says that he was at home alone and Amanda went out at around 9:00pm.

The judges and jury will understand that their current stories are conflicting, and that one or both can’t be true.

Two prongs of Raffaele’s alibi have already failed.

1) Evidence at the pre-trial proved that the mobile-phone tower which picked up the aborted call to Meredith’s bank proved nothing about the location of Meredith’s phones at the time the call happened.

2) Evidence already presented at the trial has proven that Raffaele did not use his computer past 9:10pm on the night Meredith was killed, and that statements made by both Amanda and Raffaele that they didn’t rise until approximately 10:30am the following morning have also been demonstrated as untrue. One or both of them played music on the computer at approximately 5:30am.

The evidence produced to date hasn’t proven that AK and RS killed Meredith, but it’s proven beyond any doubt that both AK and RS have been lying, and that their stories for the time in question don’t match.

Whatever else they may say now at the trial, can the judges and jury (or we the public) actually be expected to believe it?

Who will believe Raffaele now if he changes his story, for example to say that, yes, he really was at home with Amanda, and not on his computer that evening? That he’s now changed his mind, and actually Amanda didn’t go out to meet friends at Le Chic?

Why should anyone believe a word he says? Who could believe he’s suddenly recovered his memory and not just invented another story to fit with the changed circumstances in which he finds himself?

His credibility looks to be toast.

And who will believe another word from Amanda, if the external enquiry concludes that the police really didn’t hit her, and she is faced with a second charge of slander?

Remember Mignini acted instantly to ask for that inquiry when Amanda made her accusation in court. Assuming that tapes and records of her interview exist, and he knows full well what they will reveal.

Her credibility too looks to be toast. 

So. What now? More statement somersaults? More mental fog?

Enjoy the show, judges, and jury.


Why Inflammatory Attempts By Knox Etc To Dupe And Militate Well-Intentioned Feminists Must Be Denied

Posted by Miss Represented



Only one victim here


In this post, without implying that the case against Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede are in any way less important to the overall outcome of the case or justice for Meredith and her family, I would like to focus on the case against Amanda Knox as I believe it is extremely important for a number of reasons, most crucially in helping us to unlock secrets about the female gender, the crimes they commit and the reasons they may have for doing do.

I recently began thinking about Amanda in more detail as well as the society that created, unleashed and ultimately unraveled her.

I would like to point out at this stage that Amanda Knox is not the first female to be accused of such a heinous and brutal act against a fellow human being (nor will she be the last) but surprisingly this is the first real international case to be so publicly (and brutally) critical of a female defendant in a way that has become normal and totally acceptable when trying male defendants for similarly violent crimes. I believe the overwhelming fascination with Amanda Knox is that she has defied a feminist stereotype about the kinds of women that commit crime and the reasons they have for doing so and by doing this, people are more willing to be critical of her.

The idea of the feminist movement was to liberate women, give them access to better jobs, better rates of pay, a platform in important social and political matters as well equal rights and privileges alongside men in society. But feminism is a bit like communism, it only works on paper and this is because there are still a great number of women who demand the perks of being treated equally without also taking equal responsibility.  Amanda Knox is a case in point and it makes me furious that other women are vocally (despite all the evidence so far) defending and hence condoning her actions simply because she is female. The victim was female too. She no longer has a voice and Amanda doesn’t need two! Amanda has a voice of her own and has already used it to tell an astronomical amount of malicious lies.

While we are on the subject of malicious, aggravated and astonishing lies, what was the tactless, omnipresent voice of the FOA saying last week? Apparently: ‘All you need is love.’ How charming,  I’m sure the family of the young woman Amanda Knox is on trial for killing will bear that in mind *sighs*

The problem with feminism, coupled with the new and equally unworkable socialist idea that anyone can do anything they want, whenever they want and without thinking about the consequences, is that is has falsely encouraged young people (particularly women like Amanda) in the notion that they are invincible and that no matter what happens somebody will always be there to pick up the pieces and clean up the mess (even murder). Young women like Amanda are born underneath an idealistic umbrella and brought up safe in the knowledge that they can be anything they want to be or have anything they want to have just by demanding it (go look at Cosmopolitan and Teen Vogue if you don’t believe me).

Sexual liberation is another contentious issue (Amanda again is a case in point), nobody is saying you can’t be sexually liberated , it’s just that some people don’t want to have a pink rampant rabbit vibrator practically shoved in their face in order to let everyone know how absolutely wonderful is it to be able to have random sex on a train with whoever they like and all in the name of being sexually liberated. So childish and unnecessary.

Feminism has formed the dangerous and uncontrollable principle that all women are equal because they say they are and anyone that disagrees is anti-women, even if you point out how they refuse to accept responsibility for bad things they have done. You cannot condone behaviour for women that would simply be unacceptable for men. I condone equality amongst both sexes but wish more women would take responsibility too! That’s feminism.

Kids are brought up to believe they can do anything they like, why then are we surprised when someone gets hurt or killed?

Kids like Amanda, Raffaele and Rudy were brought up around these ideas, believing that other people exist to parasite off and to clean up their mess when they go out into the world and leave in their wake absolute havoc, mayhem and destruction.

I’ve noticed that most feminists who are reading or writing about this case are squealing about the ‘total injustice being done to Amanda-wa-wa-wa!’ by the horrible, horrible, nasty Italian men, seemingly forgetting that it would be these same men that would be in charge of ensuring justice was served had it been Amanda Knox who’d been brutally killed that night.

So to the people that have been using gender as an excuse for why Amanda should be given a slap on the wrist and promptly flown back to Seattle on a private jet with a hand-written note of apology from prosecutor Mignini, I’d like to say this: the victim is still a victim and the perpetrator is still a perpetrator, regardless of who the victim happens to be and regardless of the gender of said perpetrator. This is called justice you can find it in the dictionary. Under ‘J’ you can also find the word gender under ‘G’, I hope you’ve noticed they are separate words, start with separate letters and are should be completely and utterly unrelated.

Luckily, it seems the idea of ‘selective justice’ (i.e. one rule for me and another for my male friend here) is not very popular in Italy, where Amanda is currently being held equally responsible to her male counterparts for murder and sexual violence. As we all knew it would, the truth is gradually coming out, ugly as it is, and remember it’s only just begun. The case is unique and important, not because of what she did, but because of the equal way she is being prosecuted.

I urge you all to put aside your preconceptions and look at the evidence closely, justice for Meredith depends on it.


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