Powerful Evidence Of Knox’s Presence Locked Inside Meredith’s Room
Red star, where lamp found; blue star, lamp’s normal position
Long post. Click here to go straight to Comments.
1. The Lamp Tellingly Not Mentioned In Knox’s Book
During the case it was frequently suggested that there was no actual evidence of Knox’s presence in “the murder room”, i.e in Meredith’s bedroom.
Now, years later, this is parroted by Malcolm Gladwell.
However this is to ignore the presence of her desk arc lamp there, not to mention a preponderance of other circumstantial evidence, including a knife with Meredith’s DNA on it’s blade in Sollecito’s kitchen.
Also, by the way, one must ignore, as the 5th Chambers of the Supreme Court duly noted, the compelling forensic evidence that Knox had washed Meredith’s blood off her hands in the small bathroom. Quite how she had blood on her hands without her having been in the room, which was locked until forced open, would be a mystery though the 5th Chambers explained “her contact with the victim’s blood would have occurred after the crime and in another part of the house.”
“Would have”? Yea, right! So come on, show us where that other blood is! If, perchance, they meant blood that had been removed then who, one wonders, would have done that? The 5th Chambers did not even ask itself the question, but in any event it accepted that Knox was in the cottage at the time of the murder.
Back to the lamp.
2. Who Had Reason To Move The Lamp
The bald facts are that Knox had such a lamp which was the only source of illumination for her own room. When Meredith’s locked door was forced open, Knox’s lamp was found on the floor immediately behind it.
What was it doing there? This was not a question that was ever adequately adressed by any of the judges when considering her complicity in the murder.
Let us redress that oversight.
Knox denied knowing that her lamp was in Meredith’s room and has never offered a plausible, indeed innocent, explanation for it being there. Accordingly we can rule out that Knox had lent it to Meredith at any time.
This leaves us with two possible options; that either Meredith or Rudy Guede had taken it from Knox’s bedroom, without her consent, and for some purpose.
Why would Meredith have done this? She had a wall light above her bed and her own desk lamp, neither of which were not working. Even if she had, why on the night of (and in the no more than two hours before) her murder, only to leave it on the floor behind her door? There is no reason at all to believe that Meredith had borrowed the lamp just prior to her death that evening.
Likewise, no plausible explanation can be offered for Guede taking the lamp.
If Knox was unaware that her lamp was there, could she have been unaware that it was not in her room?
Two days after the discovery of the murder this is what Knox wrote in her e-mail, referring to the discovery of Filomena’s broken window after she and Sollecito had returned to the cottage –
Convinced that we had been robbed I went to Laura’s room and looked quickly in, but it was spotless like it hadn’t even been touched. This, too, I thought was odd. I then went into the part of the house that Meredith and I share and checked my room for things missing, which there weren’t.
How could she have possibly have missed it? Her own room was quite small and cramped and the desk lamp should have been either on her desk or her bedside table. It would have been a fairly prominent item, and an important one, because she had no other means of illumination, and it’s absence would be impossible to miss even if, while checking, she was only paying mimimal attention.
Furthermore, according to her account she had been in and out of her room when visiting the cottage earlier that morning. She had undressed for a shower in her room but had to return for a towel, and then return to her room again to get dressed. Never noticed that her lamp was missing be it she had no reason to actually check on that occasion.
Knox was, of course, lying (there are many aspects of her e-mail which are simply not credible) but she had to say that she checked her room because there had been a burglary, had there not? She has to convey the impression that she herself believed, innocently, that there had been a genuine burglary and in doing so she was hoping to draw the investigators’ attention away from two important matters. The first was that the burglary was staged. That is now a settled judicial fact in the case. The second was that there had been a post murder manipulation of the crime scene by the removal of blood traces, though ultimately the Supreme Court did not accord this the status of a judicial fact, largely due to obfuscation on it’s part, and a tendency to put the telescope to it’s blind eye.
Furthermore the Supreme Court did not mention Knox’s lamp at all.
Obviously it’s presence, in the position in which it was found, in Meredith’s room, plays into the notion of a post murder manipulation of the crime scene. If Meredith is a most unlikely agent for it being there, then how do we rate Knox and Guede’s agency?
Knox’s lamp and Meredith’s lamp were both on the floor, at either end of Meredith’s bed. This suggests that they were being used to check under the bed as this area, with the wall light on, would have been in shadow.
It is difficult to imagine what incriminating item Guede would have been looking for and why it would have been of particular importance to him, to the extent that he ignored everything else. We have to bear in mind that the room already had incriminating forensic traces of his presence there, and fairly obvious ones at that, which it never occurred to him to remove. We know that he had blood on the sole of his left shoe but the positioning of these prints did not indicate that he was looking under the bed. No, they went straight from Meredith’s room to the front door, not even changing direction to lock Meredith’s door, enter the small bathroom, or Filomena’s room.
It is admittedly speculation but Knox might have been looking for an earring. She’d had her ear pierced several times and from a photograph of her taken by the press outside the cottage we can see that one of her earrings is missing.
The very presence of that lamp there has to be considered as potentially incriminating and of Knox. It is a fact that has to be assessed and evaluated, and Knox would surely have appreciated that questions would be asked and that adverse inferences could be drawn. That this is obvious is recognized even by her own supporters whose response is to take Knox’s e-mail at face value and claim that her lamp was a plant by the police.
Yes, really.
The lamp is part of the overwhelming circumstantial case against Knox and, I would argue, has had a particular resonance for her since, so much so that she has always simply ignored it.
Why would she leave it there? Probably for the same reason that she did not get around to removing the trace of her own blood on the faucet of the sink in the small bathroom. Not thinking clearly because she was shattered, having been up all night and, probably, as a result of having indulged in drugs and/or alcohol.
In any event it was left behind. An oversight which, at some point, must have occurred to her. When might that have happened? It would have had to be when she was no longer in possession of Meredith’s keys or, at least not in a position to retrieve these in time given the train of events set in motion.
A perpetrator would not want to be found in possession of those keys. On the face of it the keys could have been taken by Guede, but clearly the keys had remained in the possession of those who had arranged the staged burglary and the post murder manipulation of the crime scene, and it is very improbable (as argued elsewhere) that Guede had any involvement with that.
Very probably the keys were tossed away into heavy undergrowth afterwards, or disposed of down some drain and then, some time later, Knox had the sudden realisation that this left her and Sollecito with a problem. She could not simply retrieve the lamp and return it to her room without breaking down Meredith’s door.
Actually that could have been done, though not without some difficulty, and it would have fitted with a burglary and a violent assault on Meredith, though here the intelligent observer would have to assume from the circumstances, and no doubt Knox and Sollecito would have pondered on this, that Meredith had surprisingly been unable to thwart the lone intruder, had locked herself in to her room with her phones still with her, and would have undoubtedly called the emergency number for the police while all this, and the breaking down of her door, was going on.
However when exactly the oversight occurred to her would also be critical. I personally believe that it was much later than most people would think. I do not think that the plan to stage a burglary and remove the blood traces from the corridor was put into operation until after they had listened to music for half an hour from 5.30 am and maybe was still in operation when Knox was seen by Quintavalle at his store at 7.45 am. When they had finished that I have no idea but it would have been at a time in the morning when it was unlikely that anyone i.e Filomena would come calling. And they could still have cleared off to Gubio for the day.
So, throwing away the keys could be after, say, 9 am, and then some time after the dreadful realisation dawns.
Perhaps it was always the case that Knox and Sollecito needed to be present when the murder was discovered, and in circumstances which they could control in such a manner as to convince others of their complete lack of complicity in what had happened. Maybe much of what then happened had already been pre-planned, including the story of Knox visiting the cottage to have a shower etc.
If one assumes this and that then Knox realises her mistake with the lamp, then what subsequently transpired makes a lot more sense.
A discovery process which had initially seemed manageable became, with her error, laden with danger. The lamp had to be retrieved but, with Sollecito’s assistance, this could still be achieved in the confusion of Filomena and her friends attending the cottage and breaking down the door themselves. Should Filomena have perhaps baulked at the idea of doing any damage then I suspect Knox and Sollecito would have pressed her to authorise this, if not actually do this themselves, and just how innocent would that have then made them look! Win, win. What would complicate matters was if the police were also there, imposing order and preserving a crime scene, and so the possibility of anyone alerting the police had to be delayed.
Now let us look at the phone records with the above in mind.
3. Zooming In On The Timing Of Events
From 12.07 until 12.35 am on the morning of the discovery of the murder, Knox and Filomena exchanged telephone calls, whereby Knox slowly ramped up the worry on Filomena’s part as to what was going on and Meredith’s safety. As a consequence of the first call, by Knox, made from Sollecito’s bedsit, Filomena asked her to check certain things out e.g ring Meredith’s phones and keep her informed, but otherwise had not heard enough to indicate that she herself needed to return to the cottage, or that the police needed to be involved.
However Filomena remained concerned and called Knox three more times until Knox answered her from the cottage at 12.35 to inform her that her bedroom window had been broken and her room had been trashed. Knox would have been fully aware what the effect would have been of the latter call. Filomena was adamant. Knox had to call the police. More importantly, for Knox, Filomena would now definitely be returning to the cottage. Who would get there first? Filomena or the police? The answer, for Knox, would not be in doubt. It was another 16 minutes before Sollecito called the 112 number, time enough for Filomena and her friend (who were on the road when they had spoken) to arrive before the police.
At 12.47 whilst awaiting the arrival of Filomena, Knox called her mother.
The circumstances of that call are extremely puzzling. In retrospect I think the call was simply to fill in time and keep her nerves steady.
As to that call (4.47 am Seattle time, while Edda and Chris were still asleep, and prior to the discovery of Meredith‘s body) Knox not only did not mention that in her e-mail but in taped conversation with her mother and in her trial testimony she steadfastly declined to recall that it had occurred. Ostensibly the call would have been, of course, to report the break in. So what would be the problem with that? On the other hand, what was so important about it that her mother should know, and at that moment? Knox was aware of the time difference between Italy and Seattle, and that it would have been early in the morning in Seattle, as she acknowledged in her trial testimony. If Knox had a premonition then why not wait a little longer for resolution? Indeed, Edda’s puzzlement with her daughter was expressed on tape as follows –
A: Oh, I don’t remember this.
M: OK, you’d called me once telling me…
A: Honestly, maybe I was shocked.
M: Yes, but this happened before anything had really happened, besides the house…
A: I know that I was calling, but I remember that I was calling Filomena; I don’t remember having called anyone else, and so the whole thing of having called you… I don’t remember.
M: Mhmm… why? Do you think? Stress?
Knox clearly did not want to discuss her motive for the call, then nor later, nor as to what had transpired in conversation with her mother (and stepfather) before the discovery of Meredith’s body.
On her Facebook page Knox had written that she enjoyed new situations and “the bigger and scarier the rollercoaster the better”. Well, her error was going to make for one mother of a rollercoaster, one that would scare the life out of her.
Not only was the timing of the 12.47 call inconvenient to her mother but I found it interesting to note from Knox’s phone records (covering 2nd Oct - 3rd November) that mother and daughter do not appear to have called or texted each other once by phone up until that 12.47 call. It would appear then that in so far as they remained in direct communication with each other for that period it must have been by e-mail or Skype. Indeed Knox has referred to such communication being via internet café. One can therefore imagine that her mother was very surprised to receive that call. It is also very difficult to accept that Knox could not recall a phone call she was not in the habit of making.
Until Knox published her book the only information that was available about the 12.47 call (apart from the phone log which showed that it lasted 88 seconds) came from her mother (who reported that her daughter was concerned about the break in) and her stepfather Chris Mellas. Mellas says that he interrupted the conversation between mother and daughter to tell Amanda to get out of the cottage. In her book Knox tells us (her memory now having returned) that he yelled at her but that she was “spooked” enough without that. But what had really happened to spook her? It was just a burglary after all, even if the matter of Meredith’s whereabouts was as yet unresolved. None of her own possessions had been stolen.
Furthermore Filomena was on her way to take charge. The call she made to her mother after the discovery of the murder (the one she remembered) was perfectly understandable, the prior call, without further context, less so. Readers will already know where I am coming from, but I believe that it was whilst walking back to the cottage with Sollecito that Knox realised her mistake with the lamp. However, it could have been earlier than that. In any event this realisation would have set the cat amongst the pigeons for her. So, it was both a comfort and a rehearsal call, not simply because there had been a burglary, but because she knew a hazardous set of events was about to unfold on Romanelli’s arrival at the cottage. The fact that her mother and stepfather already had the jitters was not a good omen.
Still, retrieving the lamp and returning it to her own room remained perfectly feasible, provided the police were not there. However Romanelli had yet to arrive and time was running out. Both Knox and Sollecito knew that any further delay in calling the police would look suspicious. Finally they did so, at 12.51, though it is probable that the postal police had unexpectedly arrived before then. In my book I have argued that the likely time of arrival of the postal police was probably about 12.48-9. Indeed that may have been why Knox brought her call to her mother to an end. (e.g “Looks as if someone is coming. Gotta go now.”) I wonder if that is another reason why Knox would not want to remember the call, particularly during the taped conversation with her mother in the prison. She would not want to prompt her mother to that recollection. That wouldn’t fit with the claim, as related to the postal police, that they had already called the Carabinieri. In any event, the opportunity to retrieve the lamp had been lost.
I have always thought that the oddities in Knox’s own account of events reveal and explain much even if, ostensibly, she appears to be giving an innocent account of everything. In her e-mail she refers to her panic and specifically links this to concern over Meredith’s whereabouts and safety. However the panic had apparently suddenly subsided, and her concern was significantly lacking, non-existent actually, when the postal police made their surprise entrance before the arrival of Filomena and her friends. We can also see why she says, before that, that Sollecito would want, and allegedly attempt, to break Meredith’s door open.
Had I been in Knox’s shoes, and with a mutual alibi with Sollecito, I too would have thought the discovery of the murder of “my best friend” would have been manageable, but for that damned lamp. There would be questions to be answered, of course, but she had already thought all that through, hadn’t she?
As it happened, things did not turn out too bad for her in the immediate aftermath. She was not, she thought, under immediate suspicion as she must have feared she would be. Seemingly nobody had twigged to the lamp business, nor to the staged burglary. She must have thought the police immensely stupid for her to have got away with that, as she thought she had. She was also the centre of attention and coping reasonably well, but for that dicey moment when she was shown the drawer of knives in the kitchen. Her confidence had soared sufficiently for her to even claim that she had checked her room and had found nothing missing!
In her e-mail she also wrote –
It was then that we decided to call the cops……. [Raffaele] first called his sister for advice and then called the Carabinieri. I then called Filomena who said she would be on her way home immediately. While we were waiting two ununiformed police investigators came to our house. I showed them what I could and told them what I knew. Gave them phone numbers and explained a bit in broken Italian, and then Filomena arrived with her boyfriend Marco-f and two other friends of hers. All together we checked the house out, talked to the police and in a big [word missing] they all opened Meredith’s door. I was [standing] aside really having done my part for the situation.
Knox is in overdrive here. First of all, she did not call Filomena in their last telephone conversation. It was the other way around. Secondly, that call was not after Sollecito had called 112. Thus she has the 112 call some 16 minutes before it was actually made rather than 16 minutes after it should have been made. And finally, what does she mean by saying “I was standing aside really having done my part for the situation”?
The “situation”? That rollercoaster has turned into barely concealed “duper’s delight”!
But wait! What were those “hard facts” she claims the police had mentioned later during her interview?
Let me see. Hmm. Suspicions, certainly. The locked door, the lamp, the quilt, the staged burglary? An e-mail in which she is is just a bit too full of herself and the content of which, in places, was just a bit too unreal, daffy and lah-di-dah, to be true? The strange and inappropriate behaviour at the police station? No wonder she didn’t ask the police to elaborate.
4. Additional Information On The Lamp
This is adapted from my book (US version and UK version). There is additional information in Parts 3-6 including Knox’s trial questioning of this previous slightly different version.
5. Our Next Post
Click for Post: Explaining to “No Physical Evidence” Gladwell Just How MUCH There Was #5 Bra Clasp
Posted by James Raper on 10/02/19 at 11:00 AM in
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Not to mention zero fingerprints were found on her lamp. How likely was that, when she would have had to touch the lamp all the time to switch it on or off.
It’s interesting Guede claims in his testimony that when he came out of the bathroom - and he had obviously been there - the place was ‘now in semi-darkness’ suggesting someone other than himself had turned off the hall light.
I seem to recall that Meredith’s own lamp was quite dim so it would perhaps explain why the extra lamp was fetched.
Posted by KrissyG on 10/02/19 at 04:07 PM | #
Hi Krissy,
I’m not sure Rudy Guede was in the small bathroom. We only have his word for it and he’s a proven liar. Nothing he says can be believed unless it can be corroborated. His bloody footprints led straight out of Meredith’s room and out of the cottage.
Posted by The Machine on 10/02/19 at 04:22 PM | #
@Machine
This would have been the larger bathroom, that he claims he exited when he heard loud screams.
Posted by KrissyG on 10/02/19 at 04:40 PM | #
Thanks James for this excellent article about Amanda Knox’s lamp being in Meredith’s room.
It’s another piece of incriminating evidence against her that places in Meredith’s room along with the knife evidence, the woman’s bloody shoe print on the pillow, the mixed-blood evidence, the fact she tracked Meredith’s blood into the small bathroom and Filomena’s room, her bare bloody footprints in the hallway that were revealed by Luminol and the light brown hair that was found in Meredith’s hand.
Numerous judges - Judge Matteini, Judge Micheli, Judge Borsini and Judge Belradi and Judge Nencini - all believe Knox and Sollecito called 112 after the arrival of the postal police.
Michele Battistelli and Fabio Marzi testified that they arrived at the cottage around 12:30 pm. Battistelli said he looked at his watch when they entered the cottage and it was 12:35 pm.
Mauro Barbadori testified that an examination of the CCTV video from the parking garage showed the Postal Police arriving at 12:26 pm and heading in the wrong direction. At 12:41 pm, the Postal Police appear on the CCTV video again.
Mauro Barbadori testified that he had calculated that the CCTV clock was 10 minutes fast - which means it corroborates Battistelli’s claim he and Marzi arrived at the cottage at approximately 12:30pm.
Battistelli also testified that Knox and Sollecito looked surprised and embarrassed when he and Farzi arrived at the cottage - which indicates that Knox and Sollecito hadn’t been expecting their arrival and they hadn’t called 112 before Battistelli and Farsi arrived at the cottage.
It’s clear from Paola Grande’s witness statement that Knox and Sollecito were not with the Postal Police the whole time:
‘‘We arrived just before 1pm and when we entered the house we met Luca Alteri and Marco with a man that we later discovered worked for the postal police and who was there with his colleague. Amanda and Raffaele were in Amanda’s room because at a certain point they came out into the corridor and we introduced ourselves.’‘
Luca Alteri also said that he saw Knox and Sollecito go into Knox’s room in his witness statement.
The defence lawyers claim Sollecito called 112 before the arrival of the postal police, but there’s no way Knox and Sollecito could have given the Postal Police a tour of the cottage, Knox could have written Meredith’s number on a post-it note, Marco and Luca could have had a conversation with the Postal Police about the ownership of the phones, Filomena could have explained to the Postal Police about Meredith’s phones (one lent by Filomena, and the other a UK phone) and the Postal Police could have made contact with their HQ before Meredith’s phone was activated at 1:00pm.
Posted by The Machine on 10/03/19 at 04:46 AM | #
Thanks TM. However the time of arrival of the postal police involves a complicated and lengthy analysis to which I devoted a whole chapter in my book. At the time I could well imagine the reader’s eyes glazing over with boredom. I also gave some attention to defence submissions on the topic which I also thought were quite clever if not entirely convincing.
One thing I did not find convincing was Barbadori’s testimony that the CCTV clock was 10 minutes fast. I forget what his reasons were now. Amongst other things this would have meant that the Carabinieri had arrived at the cottage (at 1.22 pm, according to the CCTV clock) at 1.12 pm, 14 minutes before they called HQ at 1.26 pm to ask for directions to the cottage. It had to be slow, and by at least 4 minutes, but probably longer than that.
Nencini argued that the 1.22 image of the Carabinieri car outside the cottage could have been a drive by, but again I do not find that convincing, primarily because the car was obviously parked up and because it was accompanied by images, at about the same time, of the distinctive trouser leg of a Carabinieri Officer walking outside the car. That would have been when everyone was milling around outside the cottage and that would have been a matter of obvious interest to a policeman trying to locate an address.
The CCTV clock was slow, but by how much is debatable.
That’s not to imply I think that there any real grounds for thinking Sollecito had called 112 before the arrival of the postal police. One only has to listen to the call (both parts) to understand that Sollecito was making it clear that he was concerned about Meredith and her locked door and that he needed the Carabinieri to get there quickly. If, in fact, that call had been just prior to the arrival of the postal police, then why the sudden evaporation of such concern. Knox and Sollecito didn’t even mention Meredith, or her locked door, to the postal police until, that is, Filomena arrived, and even then Knox tried to pretend that her door being locked was not unusual.
Posted by James Raper on 10/03/19 at 10:48 AM | #
On the relevance of what James and Machine just said.
Legal researcher Chimera had a whole series on the differences between Italian law and common law. Probably beyond any book or paper in the world.
One distinction is that Italian juries (panels of judges) need to take in the totality of evidence, and reflect that in their sentencing report (thus opening the door to an army of chest-thumping Steve Moores.)
In contrast, black-box common-law juries can in practice base their verdict on any single point. They only have to horse-trade on one single smoking gun, and often the public never even finds out what that was.
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/73964264.pdf
So the US and UK equivalent of the 440-page Massei Report in a common-law court (barely ever required except in business and civil law) could be a mere 10 pages long.
A common-law smoking gun could have been just that lamp, or just those cell-phone calls, or just those forensic items in Machine’s ongoing series - maybe even a single mix of DNA.
They might not have spent even a minute on the timings, or the alibis, or the other items in Machine’s list just above. There would be zero Steve Moores. James might have written a 30-page book. 😊
The resources Italy threw at this case had to have been in the low millions at least because every last base had to be touched. (Italy can afford it sort-of because it has 1/7 the murder rate of the US.)
In the UK or US, murder investigators and prosecutors with small budgets might have narrowed to five or ten points, and timings (because they can be so complex) might not even get onto that list.
Here the Italian defense actually (for the first time) followed CLASSIC American lines: muddy the water with the DNA, confuse Hellman and Marasca/Bruno, and tiptoe past the rest.
Not only does that CSI Effect win defense lawyers numerous case - as with the Innocence Project in the US, it can pay them very big bucks.
This is what the Modena conference was all about: Amanda Knox helping Italian defense lawyers earn very big bucks by polluting the jury pools. None of those present cared about a little thing like guilt.
Good on James for standing up to this.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/03/19 at 12:41 PM | #
Knox is on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (Oct. 3, 2019) with an interview; and a follow up piece will air Friday morning (Oct. 4) on TODAY. There’s a Daily Mail online story by Chris Spargo.
Poor Lester Holt has to listen to her claims (along with her hand waving) that she was so afraid to return to Italy for Modena Innocence conference because “I still have people who send me messages describing how they’re going to murder me.”
The interview is a vehicle for her to advertise her podcast “The Truth about True Crime”:
“The latest season is focused on stories of vigilante justice.”
Knox must still be lying to NBC Lester Holt about her wedding facts because the Daily Mail online article states: “Knox is set to marry her longtime boyfriend, Christopher Robinson, later this year.” Oops, he’s no boyfriend. He is her hubby! And they’re already married.
Knox wears an all-denim outfit, a blue-jean jacket, a light-colored denim long sleeved shirt, and her hair quite long and straight. She wears a charm-type necklace that seems to have small leaves dangling all along it.
The Daily Mail reader comments include:
She’s so hot.
She just wants money… Also she is a far lefty from Seattle.
Why is she still milking this?
Must have another movie or book deal coming.
Omg i’m sick of this woman.
(referring to fear of trip to Italy) Then why go back? You know they hate you there. It got you a lot of attention, though. And still is.
She’s still pretty hot. As soon as she’s not, she’s done.
Posted by Hopeful on 10/03/19 at 09:54 PM | #
Hi Hopeful
November is the timing of our big-wave press release. It’d explain among other things why Knox rightly served three years. I doubt she shared that with NBC?
Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/04/19 at 07:04 AM | #
I’m super interested in James Raper’s take on the lamp. That clue was badly underestimated. I’d like to comment on his post when I can do it justice. October has me distracted with small Oktoberfest and a Gun and Hunting Show. Not enough hours in the day, bummer.
To me the similarity of the women’s two lamps, the fact Knox’s was found in murder victim’s bedroom, yet Knox pretended not to notice its disappearance or care in early days of investigation, were big red flags.
Yesterday it was irksome to see headline of Knox re:NBC interview. Her whine about fear of Italy, fear of “death threats” if those threats aren’t 10 years old? or outright lies to play victim?)—infuriate me at how ashamed she should be of her false bravado against sweet Meredith. The bully. She was so bold when armed with men and knives against the harmless Meredith who was just trying to live in peace in her own little room and study. Ohhhhhh…it burns me up.
Now Knox without her cocaine, her knife, her anonymity in foreign land, her male Dobermans to help her attack, is shaking at the knees at supposed paper threats on her own life. She’s even trying to sell that as some heroic thing.
Meredith was bold and honest, a true fighter, a brave one. Knox totally underestimated her in every way. “Esse quam videri” (to be rather than to seem)
Posted by Hopeful on 10/04/19 at 08:37 AM | #
Hi James,
I’ll read your chapter about the 112 calls again.
Andrea Vogt and Barbie Nadeau were both in court when the prosecution and defence made their claims about the 112 calls. They were both convinced Sollecito made the calls after the arrival of the Postal Police.
John Follain also thinks Sollecito made the calls after the arrival of the Postal Police.
Battistelli was adamant that it was 12.35pm when he checked the time. I also think it’s telling that Knox and Sollecito disappeared into her room when the Postal Police were there.
Posted by The Machine on 10/05/19 at 07:18 AM | #
James and Machine
We have several posts on the timelines and sequencing. See if this helps, maybe do a site search for more (must run):
Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/05/19 at 12:02 PM | #
A telling oddity of this case is how the Carabinieri got involved. Sollecito organized that. He said his sister in the Carabinieri Vanessa had told him to do that.
Hmmmmm.
In his book (see below) he wanted them there rather desperately before the “local police” because they were the super-duper cops and would solve the case, wheres the local cops would mess up.
Nonsense, the national science police were very rapidly on the job, and the local police in the Questura did endless great work.
So… was Sollecito already planning to have Vanessa put in a fix? She DID begin to move, but instead she lost her job.
[AK] “Now what do we do?” she asked.
[RS] “I don’t know,” I said. “Let me call my sister, Vanessa. She’s in the carabinieri. She’ll tell us.”...
The carabinieri, like the Polizia Postale before them, got lost on the way to Via della Pergola and had to call Amanda’s cell phone for directions. It wasn’t an easy place to find because the street signs suggested that Via della Pergola had, at this point, turned into Viale Sant’Angelo, and the one-way traffic system meant there was no going back.
The delay had a huge impact in determining our fate because the case was turned over instead to the Perugia city police, who had far less experience than the carabinieri in conducting high-profile criminal investigations and were less likely to assert their independence from the prosecutor’s office.
As things spiraled out of control over the next several days, a senior investigator with the carabinieri in Perugia took it upon himself to call my sister and apologize, colleague to colleague. “If we had arrived ten minutes earlier,” he told Vanessa, “the case would have been ours. And things would have gone very differently.”
Instead of the carabinieri, we got the Squadra Mobile, the flying squad of the Perugia police, who sent a forensic team kitted out in white protective suits (but no hoods), as well as a handful of detectives, all in plainclothes.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/05/19 at 12:13 PM | #
It’s rather difficult to get a handle on the purpose and difference of the two main national police forces in Italy : the Polizia Stato and the Carabinieri. From what I can glean from Wikipedia the Carabinieri also have a military purpose as well as being a civil police force. It also appears that they alone carry weapons and with their military style uniforms they would appear to be the sort of hard nail cops you would not want to mess with. The Polizia Stato would appear to have prime responsibility for towns and cities. All this suggests to me that although both are national in scope officers in the Polizia Stato are probably recruited locally to enforce the law in their own local urban areas whereas the Carabinieri is open to recruits nationally, and the force can be anywhere and range far and wide.
Given that all AK and RS had to concern themselves with was a burglary it does seem puzzling that the Carabinieri rather than the Polizia Stato were involved. However, that said 112 is probably the number most people would be familiar with (i.e for emergencies) although 113 can be used for the local police.
Bartolozzi (at Postal Police HQ) chose the Polizia Stato. He would have been aware that a body had been found under suspicious circumstances. No doubt he figured that they would have more than enough local resources for the appropriate investigation.
Even had the Carabinieri got there first and had first call on the investigation, they would presumably have still had to operate under the aegis of Mignini as the Public Minister for Perugia.
In fact I am rather puzzled because it seems to me that the Carabinieri probably did beat the local cops to the punch, unless, of course, Bartolozzi got his phone call in first. If that was the case I’d bet the postal police made the point forcefully, and whilst it was being debated Napoleoni turned up.
Just a hunch. I don’t know.
The bit about the apology rather sounds like something Vanessa would have told Raffaele later, not because it was true but as a mea culpa. She would have realized later that he had been hoping to use her, given that she was a Carabinieri Officer herself, and from a family with political connections. That would have been an influential foot in the door, and she could have been a mine of info re any investigation.
Posted by James Raper on 10/05/19 at 02:19 PM | #
@James It is an interesting coincidence that the lady who heard the phone in her garden just when Knox rang up to test it, then took it to the police station (how many people would, straight away?).
She said she had been alarmed because she had received a hoax call there was ‘a bomb in your toilet’ (strangely, there was a bombshell of another sort in Amanda’s professed toilet sighing).
Bartolozzi was merely on his way to return the phone to its listed owner, not because anyone had called the emergency number.
It’s almost as though the police had some kind of intelligence there was something amiss at the cottage for them to decide to return the item promptly.
That’s synchronicity for you.
Posted by KrissyG on 10/06/19 at 07:10 AM | #
Masssive belittling of the “local” police and “provincial” police and their utter misrepresentation has been a vital mainstay of the Knox and Sollecito crime-gangs, and they are vital to most of the 35 hoaxes in our right column.
But they did not invent the demonization. That flows directly from the demonization that is the mainstay since 2000 of the Ndrangheta, which took over dominance from the Sicilian mafia, after more 100 police and court officers had been assassinated - and still they kept coming.
The main mafia fellow-travelers (all US-based except for Spezi and Sforza, both of whom sought overkill and paid high prices) intent on misrepresenting the real Italian police presence on a grand scale have included the following:
Doug Preston (the original sinner), Heavey, Sforza, Steve Moore, Ann Bremner, Candace Dempsey, Paul Ciolino, Nina Burleigh, Paul Ciolino, Saul Kassin, Jim Clemente, and Greg Hampikian. And Bruce Fischer, ad-nauseum.
Both the 2012 Sollecito book and 2013 Knox book sustained this trend. Both of them made things up which were actionable - but swallowed by many non-Italian readers.
***
In the real world, the very popular Italian police presence (which we’ve praised in quite a few posts) is a highly integrated force with common training and career-paths and rule-books and pay-scales. One of the world’s best, in objective eyes unquestionably.
They can move from one arm to another very easily. One of the “local” cops on this case went off to Rome to become the HEAD of the national anti-mafia force.
Dr Galati the Umbria Prosecutor General in Perugia for the 2011 and 2013 appeals arrived from the Rome Supreme Court.
Morale is high. They go the extra mile. They are very popular. KrissyG is right, they are almost uncannily plugged in to the communities, really a global model.
They are exceptionally well equipped, use very flashy cars and uniforms, have flashy aircraft and speedboats and helicopters and horses and 200-mph autostrada cruisers including Bugattis.
In the United States, only the massive NYC protective presence comes lose to this - and it is in part modeled on Italy’s!
***
My guess? Sollecito would be THE ONLY PERSON in Perugia who would think to involve the Carabinieri rather than simply calling the Questura.
And as James says just above, the reason is obvious: because of Vanessa, he would have an inside track on the investigation.
The Carabinieri would never have handled all of this case because as far as crimes of violence go they concentrate on conspiracies and gangs doing drug-running and white collar crime like the huge investigation of a tunnel project near Florence.
They did handle superbly their several parts of it.
***
And finally two ironies here.
Vanessa lost her job as a direct result of meddling.
And had the DNA processing gone straight to the Carabinieri labs in 2007-2008 and 2011, as it did in 2013, we would never have heard of Conti and Vecchiotti.
Thus there would have been no way for Hellman to bend the 2011 appeal outcome and release the pair.
Hellman might still be in a job, the First Chambers would have closed the case, and Marasca and Bruno would not have been heard of.
RS and AK would still be locked up and payng for their barbaric crime, and Knox would not be out hoaxing for blood-money.
And we would long ago have wrapped-up our mission, with justice for Meredith achieved and Italy riding high.
So Sollecito calling the Carabinieri could have reacted massively against him. Not the brightest of criminals despite his book full of self-adulation.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/06/19 at 11:54 AM | #
The “honor student” can’t remember her lamp! what a liar. The lamp is a very big clue that Knox was inside the murder room. Her lamp certainly was.
Knox seemed ready to climb over the balcony to try to peer into Meredith’s window, which alarmed Raf.
His false explanation was that the climb attempt was out of loving concern for Meredith. Nope, not at all.
Knox was probably panicked about the lamp she had left while cleaning up the murder scene. Being a rock climber she went to the balcony and was stretching over the railing to see if possibly though it was risky she could climb into Meredith’s bedroom window to retrieve it.
Another dumb move:
The “honor student” threw away the keys to the murder room before she had cleared the room of her own lamp, left it on the floor. What a doofus.
The “honor student” told police nothing had been stolen from her bedroom, yet her one study lamp in a tiny room was gone. Had she no eyes?
Her lamp was in a prominent place right beside her desk where she studied, for goodness’ sake! And as James Raper says it was the only light in her room.
Her room was very small with few possessions. She had only just moved in.
The lamp’s disappearance would have been obvious to a three-year-old.
I think Knox wiped down the lamp of fingerprints before she took it into Meredith’s room as a precaution, probably wearing gloves of the plastic kitchen dishwash kind during the soap and water cleanup. Having wiped the lamp down once, she then sort of forgot about it and failed to fully remove it after use. She’s not too bright.
Knox forgets a vital phone call:
Same goes for her forgotten phone call to her mom in a panic. Oops, I forgot. I was so busy calling Filomena, I couldn’t remember calling Mom although I knew I woke her up in the middle of the night before a school day she had to teach, and I rarely called her. Yet this call made no impression on me even though I was in a panic.
I’m an honor student and I forget things, I can’t remember what’s real and what’s fiction. I don’t recall where I even was on the night of the 1st November, don’t recall what house I was at. Where was I? Who knows? It’s been so long ago and I tend to see things in my mind that aren’t true.
I am a fantasist. I am a liar. I dissemble. I contort. I like to fool people. I’m a Liar, a born liar. I even have to write notes to my Mom because I dare not tell her things to her face. I’m afraid and I’m so dishonest. That’s why I don’t remember that phone call to her (because it might incriminate me, is the real reason).
Thus speaks the “honor student”.
Edda as much as told us all in an overheard prison convo with her daughter, that Knox’s phone call to Mom was an H-bomb. Edda says openly that Knox called in a panic before anything much had “happened” in Perugia. For the supposedly bold undaunted Knox, Edda knew this panic was out of character. The call with panic was out of character. A mother knows these things. And she knows Knox often lied to her, a mom knows a daughter after awhile.
Why the panic? Why the super late night call back to the States from Italy? A broken window in another girl’s bedroom, a few clothes ransacked by a local burglar, although it occurred in the same house where Knox lived would normally not have bothered Knox so much, not enough to create sheer panic.
Edda knew there was panic in Knox’s voice during the call. And what do you know? A few minutes later a dead body was found?!!!
Edda knew right then that Knox knew all about the body, the murder.
That’s why Edda lied about the phone call on the witness stand, and why Knox lied about “forgetting” the call. Knox became very defensive when pressed about it when her little fog of forgetfulness was rejected.
Knox is a bad liar, but she thinks she’s so smart.
And that 4:00 in the morning phone call is why Edda vomited in the Frankfurt? airport en route to Perugia.
She knew what she was going to face there, the defense of a murderous child, a loss of her own values as a Catholic by telling lies and defending the wrong to protect her idol. She had made flesh and blood her foolish daughter, her idol, didn’t want to alienate her at any cost. Honesty is not their family’s long suite. Like her lying daughter, Edda justified it by saying to herself, “I love my daughter, I’ll save her by lying if necessary, that’s love.” Many of us might also be tempted.
How horrible it must have been after the acquittal to have Knox back home again with Edda and her husband, mincing about the house as if she were innocent. Knox needing to be consoled for having murdered! Knox home again, a wreck of nerves and prison resentments, acting weird, having a little PTSD from the strain of having to defend the indefensible for years, hiding the truth.
Knox back home, a disaster, a disappointment yet needing family help and provision. I bet Chris Mellas was not deceived by the prima donna. Edda probably felt miserable, angry with Amanda yet loving her, perhaps attributing Knox’s new strange behavior to prison effects.
Knox moved out of her mother’s house very fast, to the first guy who would have her, no doubt to Edda’s profound relief.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
Edda had tried so hard to teach Knox Biblical values. Not even Seattle Prep a Jesuit high school made any deep impression on her daughter. The only thing Edda need blame herself for is the lies she told on the witness stand while swearing to God to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. Has she turned to drink and drugs herself?
@KrissyG, that Italian lady, Elizabetta? Lana who turned in Meredith’s lost cell phone so immediately, she was one cool cookie. The bomb hoax might not have been an idle one and Ms. Lana knew that cell phones have been used to trigger bombs.
The toilet irony or “humor” is God’s way of laughing at Knox who seemed to find leaving surprises in the toilet for others amusing. It was a passive-aggressive way of insulting others, or maybe just a low-class way of living. So Knox finally got nailed by toilet issues.
There was even a photo of Knox taken by Madison Paxton of Knox dressed playing a musical instrument (iirc) sitting on a toilet within a bathtub The photo was some off the wall effort at surrealism. Or absurdity. Quirky is the Seattle label, and it’s gross. Trashy.
The fact that the postal police moved swiftly to return the lost phone was another bout of Italian efficiency that caught Raf and Knox offguard at the cottage looking embarrassed, ill at ease.
As James Raper suggests the sudden police presence spoiled their little plan to have a frightened flustered Filomena arrive before police did, to help them break down Meredith’s door so they could grab the lamp. They’d use Filomena as a witness of their “innocent efforts to see about Meredith” (ha, right)
They knew Filomena would flip out at the sight of Meredith’s body on the floor with blood. They would have ordered her out of the room to “call the police!!!”
Then they would have rushed into the room to double-check their earlier handiwork. Mainly Knox would have removed her lamp while she had Filomena shaken by the scene and screaming.
While Knox removed the lamp back to her bedroom she could also use Raf to distract Filomena. Maybe they hadn’t planned on Filomena’s boyfriend arriving with her.
The fear of knowing her lamp was literally beside the body was probably the “hard evidence against me” that Knox was terrified of, so terrified she went silent and refused to ask police about it. Any innocent person would have DEMANDED to know why they were being charged and arrested, what evidence was against them. Knox shut her trap. The guilty retreat.
The defense position of her lawyers no doubt was that ANY perp could have moved the lamp into Meredith’s room.
But why? The lamp was used for a careful cleanup and the Number One Perp Guede didn’t clean. He showed that fact in his shoeprints fleeing the house, not staying to wash floors. I guess it was the two “unknown assailants” who partnered with Guede who used the lamp? ridiculous.
Seems Knox “the lady with the lamp” was no Florence Nightingale, not a healer but a killer. She lost her earring, perhaps on the floor. Her beauty was certainly removed that night, as she took away another’s. And maybe metaphysically Knox left her lamp in the murder room because she wanted to be in Meredith’s place, to replace her. Envy has its symbol.
It’s poetic that a wonderful lovely woman like Elisabetta Lana and her nice adult children who advised her, a good lady who lived in a big villa with a grand garden did the right thing by beautiful Meredith and helped so quickly, so quickly (all unknowingly, which makes it more sweet). Her judicious actions helped to trip up the fox in her escape. One good woman helps another good woman, by helping police and being honest.
That swift and almost MIRACULOUS discovery of the hidden-in-bushes cell phone and the phone’s quick removal into police hands, police who rushed to the scene in a goodhearted effort to return the phone promptly to its owner, that series of small wisdoms and efficiencies trapped the stupid Knox and Raf.
Lana’s fast move and thus the postal police’s quick arrival caught the fatal duo tongue-tied at the scene, and aided their arrests, aided the trial that proved to the judges and jury in Perugia that these two loose students were part of the murder.
It seems fitting that it would be Meredith’s phones that came to her aid in solving her murder. Meredith used her phone as a kindness to make frequent phone calls to her sick mother in England.
That phone was very important to Meredith, her lifeline. It was Meredith’s phone that helped trip up the perpetrators, was it the Ericsson phone?
It was also nice the generosity of Filomena to lend Meredith a phone. Knox did not like Filomena, Knox stole her makeup which was missing from the ransacked room. Knox made Filomena’s room the focal point of the break-in. She didn’t touch Laura’s room, because Laura smoked hash with her and taught her guitar and Knox liked her. But Filomena, not so much. Maybe because Filomena was the one who took up the rent money for the cottage owner?
Knox resented Filomena’s screams and hysteria when the door was opened. Paola Grande also screamed and ran. Innocent terror and horror. Knox, of course, wasn’t moved. Instead she had to pretend, and did a poor job of it.
She never had another hour of peace after the body was discovered. She had her eye on Sollecito: would he crack, would he rat on her? She had the same fear of Guede. She had an anxious family to console and confuse with lies. She had friends to deceive. She had lawyers to deceive. She had police to lie to.
She had a good reason now to do all the lying she always so loved.
And she’s still lying, about her innocence of course but even about small things, even about her marriage. It will last about as long as Angelina Jolie’s.
Back to the subject of the good folks who aided Meredith’s justice, like Mrs. Elizabetta Lana and the good Mignini and the Perugian police investigators, and the lion Maresca who stood with the Kerchers: It was poetic justice that fine upstanding people worked on Meredith’s behalf, while halfwits and police-haters and low-brows were attracted to foxy’s cause. I speak mainly of her PR juggernaut of paid professional mourners and airbrushers and internet apologists, deceiving and being deceived by the arch liar of Foxtown.
That is why afterwards Raf tried to recoup his honour with the title of his book, “Honour Bound”. He saw what a miserable crowd he had fallen in with. His father certainly saw it. “I curse the day my son met Amanda Knox.”
Of course the book title also was a way to hint that poor Raf the otherwise honorable man, the good one was being forced to destroy justice and to lie for his sweetie due to a lover’s covenant bond of honor. He was excused by fealty to the beloved. Let dad pay the price for sonny’s false virtue, tee hee hee.
The irony: Raf lost all his honour hiding behind lies and protecting a murderess who didn’t love him at all His “cause” was a dissolute liar who hated another woman enough to plunge a knife into her neck for little reason, a wild harebrain drugged up tart who cared nothing for his Italian family’s loss of money, prestige, even his sister’s job loss due to him defending and participating in her high jinks.
A policewoman in the family: IMO Raffaele was jealous of his sister’s good position as a Carabinieri, resented the police due to his drug use and skulking ways, so he unconsciously sought to mire her in his criminal action while simultaneously using her job connections to get out of his punishment. He was trying to show Daddy he could be tough by being involved in a capital crime and standing strong as a protector to a woman, perhaps something Raf felt Daddy had not done for Mom? who knows?
Enough said. Now back to my iced tea.
Posted by Hopeful on 10/06/19 at 02:16 PM | #
Yes, Hopeful. A good point that I had missed. The police do use the occasional trick now and then in police interviews, such as pretending that they have hard evidence. It’s a legitimate tactic. They’re looking for a reaction. Assuming that this happened in Knox’s case it seems they got none, not even curiosity. That might well have been because Knox was wondering if they’d twigged to the lamp and the staged break -in. Perhaps that is when she thought that a big distraction might come in handy, like playing the part of an innocent traumatised witness to murder.
P.S I think Laura’s room was a non-starter for a staging because it did have a window grille IIRC.
P.P.S However daring and accomplished Knox may have been as a rock climber, the chances of her getting to see in through Meredith’s window would be another complete non-starter. A ladder would be needed.
P.P.P.S Knox was at Quintavalle’s store at 7.45 am. She did not make a purchase but for all we know she may have stuffed something from the shelves into her jacket pocket when no one was looking, like, oh I don’t know….how about some washing up protective gloves?
P.P.P.P.S Incidentally Quintavalle’s description of Knox and her clothing was pretty spot on. Wearing a head warmer, a grey jacket, blue jeans and a scarf. He said he thought the scarf was blue (which it wasn’t) but the crime scene photograph of her bed displayed the grey jacket, blue jeans, scarf and another item of clothing that was light blue. That last item long puzzled me but I was always pretty sure it was inside out. Eventually I found the photograph of Knox that I was looking for. Wearing a soft woolen head warmer and a blue denim shirt. If she was wearing that with the collar up and the long scarf tucked inside the jacket, that might explain Quintavalle’s mistake. The aforesaid photos are in my book now.
Krissy.
Bartolozzi sent Batistelli and Marzi to locate Filomena at 7 Villa della Pergola.
Posted by James Raper on 10/06/19 at 04:28 PM | #
Yes, perhaps Knox feared the lamp evidence so much that when police suggested they had “hard evidence” of her, she reacted by admitting she was there but only as innocent witness of the boss doing the killing! She squirreled and tossed the police that story to excuse any “hard evidence” against her left at the scene.
The left behind lamp might have managed to spook her into a semi-confession.
Also, thanks for clear explanation of Laura’s window. I stand corrected about the reason Knox broke Filomena’s window rather than Laura’s, which had a grille and wouldn’t work as entry point for burglar. That’s a much more reasonable motive for Knox leaving Laura’s room alone.
It’s very interesting about Knox’s exact outfit lying on her bed as you have evidence of in photograph. Quintavalle’s memory was remarkable. Perhaps it was because he had thought Knox attractive and viewed Knox with male interest. He might have also viewed her as acting nervous, suspicious in the shop, and observed her carefully with shopkeeper’s fear of a thief in case he had to describe her to police.
It’s possible he watched the young student with the artistic Italian eye for color and design since he later described her clothing exactly, and there it was lying on her bed.
Your suggestion that Knox might have worn the blue denim shirt under gray jacket with blue collar turned up which was why Quintavalle recalled she wore something blue, explains away the one supposed flaw in Quintavalle’s description. It was not really a mistake on his part.
She was in his store that morning. Boom! there went her alibi.
She was in that store, no doubt. No doubt. The question: what did she remove from the store? Medicine for herself? a cleaning product? gloves to wash dishes and floors? a new mop head? (maybe that’s too big to hide under her jacket?) But maybe it wasn’t Knox’s first time shoplifting, either.
Theories about Early Bird Knox, her morning walk to a shop without Sollecito:
I always wondered if she went to the shop for a serious need but then chickened out and bought or stole nothing there out of fear of being remembered. Maybe she really wanted bleach but was afraid to buy it or steal it.
Maybe she just wanted to get away from Sollecito awhile and think, walk, breathe fresh air and consider her next move. She was an early bird, an early riser by nature. He was not. He was already probably smothering her emotionally.
He was probably assuming she would lean on him for “protection” to assure his secrecy about the crime. He would want her to stay in Italy and be with him. He might have promised her his family would welcome her, that he would take her to Bari, that they could marry, or run off somewhere in Europe together, maybe wildly impractical plans that frightened her. She knew he didn’t have a job or his own money. She couldn’t work in Europe. They’d be fugitives. Maybe they had quarreled over what to do after the murder, whether to run or stay in Perugia and bluff it out with police. They knew they needed to agree on a strategy, whatever the plan there had to be unity, a united front to tell police and family.
Knox probably resented the dependence on Sollecito that she had inadvertently created. Now he could demand her loyalty to him. She resented that trap, she wasn’t going to be held hostage by him. Yet she needed him in a way, his language skills, his knowledge of Italian laws, his sister a Carabinieri. All of it might turn to Knox’s aid, but the fight or flight response might have kicked in and Knox probably wanted to fly back to America and hide there.
For her the fling with Raf had already ended, and badly. She was probably already trying to figure out a way to ditch him and get the heck out of Perugia.
Perhaps she lied to Raf, told him she would walk to the shop for some necessary item but it was a ruse to escape him for just a few minutes during which she might hail a taxi and flee by train to Rome airport without him? Then she chickened out on that idea and entered the shop as she’d told him, loitered aimlessly and left again, resigned to facing the police in days ahead with knifeboy, continue living with him?
Could Raf have followed Knox to the shop to make sure she wasn’t running away from him, and Knox saw him so she gave up on her escape plan? With Meredith’s rent money she could have gotten to Rome, then to the airport. She had enough money in her account to buy a plane ticket back to Seattle, but maybe she’d left her passport at the cottage and didn’t want to return to cottage alone with Meredith’s body lying there. I can’t believe Sollecito stayed at the cottage alone cleaning or smoking while Knox walked away to Quintavalle’s store. He would have been at his apartment, nervously awaiting her return, wondering if she was making any phone calls out of his hearing? Suspicious minds, they were stuck with each other for a dreadful ordeal ahead. What misery.
That shop visit has always seemed very odd.
But it’s equally likely she simply needed a cleaning item and risked taking something off the shelf without paying for it, rather than having a person at the cash register notice a cash purchase, or leaving behind a paper trail with a receipt for the item.
So the item was suspicious, if seen after a murder. Perhaps the gloves to clean with, yes. Good call.
Posted by Hopeful on 10/06/19 at 10:37 PM | #
Hi Hopeful & James:
Exciting work. Now that it is all riffed upon like this, the pesky presence of the lamp does seem to have been a psychological game-changer for sure. Probably a main reason why both were on hair-trigger alert, and ready to snap as both did, at the Questura 5-6 Nov.
We know from their responses (all recorded, and signed as okay by them) in the pretty mundane Q&A sessions pre 5-6 Nov, that really no zooming-in on eg the lamp had yet begun. Read Knox’s answers here:
http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php/tjmk/comments/interrogation_hoax_19_all_knox_qa_sessions_1
http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php/tjmk/comments/interrogation_hoax_19_all_knox_qa_sessions_2
Post 5-6 Nov the only interrogatiing which could have attacked all the angles you’re pointing out was Knox’s (at her request) with Dr Mignini six weeks later on 17 Dec, very tellingly stopped short. Transcript here:
http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php/tjmk/comments/the_knox_interrogation_hoax_14_third
And yes it does seem that one or both of them wanted to put Filomena between themselves and the fire, so no breaking-down by them alone of the door, cross that one off.
Below: Yes Laura’s window does have either a grill or steel frame. (You can see to the left and right the two easiest ways in, in the dark: the large-bathroom window, and the balcony, as used by burglars twice in 2009).
Below: Meredith’s window is at top right, really, Knox proposed to swing across to there?!
Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/07/19 at 06:09 AM | #
On Quintavalle, some tips. His Conad store is about 50 yards from Knox’s language school and the square, and 3-400 yards from RS’s house.
It is in 2 parts, each about the size of a 1-car garage, with a doorway in between. After any early-morning organizing, he himself is usually in the deli part to the left. The household items are in the dry-foods, produce and household-items part to the right. Under the gaze of the cashier by the street door if she looks 45 degrees right.
See some pretty good images and court reporting in these posts; and Quintavalle’s FULL testimony which was kindly translated by Catnip recently and added here.
http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php/tjmk/comments/trial_report_from_the_courtroom_on_testimony
Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/07/19 at 06:14 AM | #
Knox tried to be blasé about the lamp in trial court in 2019. Here’s how she explained it to Judge Massei:
GCM: Did you use the bathroom light switch? Did you turn it on? Did you press it on, and then press it off? Did you put the light on in the bathroom?
AK: Ah, the light?
GCM: Yes.
AK: I don’t remember if I turned it on or not.
GCM: You don’t remember. Well, another thing I’d like to ask you, you have said that you noticed that there had been a theft, a broken window etcetera.
AK: Well I thought so, yes.
GCM: You went into your room to see if anything was missing and you were reassured, your computer was there.
AK: Yes.
GCM: When you made this check, didn’t you notice that your desk lamp was missing?
AK: I didn’t look for the lamp.
GCM: But were you looking for something special on this occasion?
AK: I looked to see if the computer was there.
GCM: You looked only to see if the computer was there or not.
AK: Yes, because the computer was the most important thing for me.
—
But not whether her friend was all right, given her supposed fears?
Posted by KrissyG on 10/08/19 at 12:30 PM | #
Here’s what Knox told Dr Mignini:
GM: Now, another question. You told us before, this story about the door, about knocking down the door, that Raffaele tried to break down the door. You said that you tried to explain that sometimes she did have her door locked, you told us about this point. Now, I want to ask you this question: Raffaele didn’t by any chance try to break down the door to get back the lamp we talked about?
AK: [perfectly calm reasonable voice] No, we didn’t know the lamp was in there.
GM: You didn’t know that your lamp was in there?
AK: In the sense that the lamp that was supposed to be in my room, I hadn’t even noticed it was missing. I tried—
GM: You didn’t see that it was missing?
AK: No, I didn’t see that it was missing. We tried to break down the door because I was so worried after having seen the broken window. I basically panicked. I was thinking, Good Lord, what’s going on here? I ran downstairs to see if anyone down there had heard anything, then I tried to see if she was inside. She locked her door when she needed “privacy” [English]. So if she wasn’t in there but the door was locked, it seemed strange to me. Also the fact that the window was broken worried me. It wasn’t to get something.
http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Amanda_Knox%27s_Testimony
Posted by KrissyG on 10/08/19 at 12:35 PM | #
This sulky acknowledgment of the lamp, not wanting to look it full in the eye, had to have registered with many jurors.
It did not have to register as a home run. It only had to tilt THE AVERAGE one percent towards Knox guilt.
Defense lawyers made zero attempt to tilt it the other way. Over all the years of hearings and trial and appeal, not one attempt.
That too had to hurt.
Take a look at Marcello’s scenario here - we have many such lists, this sure in one of the best.
The lamp is Act #46. The list evenly flows. Many or most of those would we weighted against Knox.
In the first or second excellent NBC Dateline on the case, guess-who said this.
Theodore Simon thinks the prosecutors evidence made public so far is daunting. The defense could argue a faked robbery, and a moved body, and contamination, but eventually it could become like whack-a-mole, and all of their arguments could lose force.
We are at that stage. We have grounded hundreds and hundreds of incriminating points and the defenses only ever raised serious doubts about a tiny few.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/08/19 at 09:45 PM | #
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Or to previous entry Why Does Knox Book So Stridently Smear Italian Officials?