Report By Bob Graham In The Daily Express Close To Breaking New Record For Inaccuracy


Here is a short list of the competition for most misleading reporter on the case: Peter Popham, Peter Van Sant, Simon Hattenstone, Steve Shay, Timothy Egan, Linda Byron, Candace Dempsey, and Jan Goodwin.

Typically after their report they disappear, hopefully shamed into never being heard from again (Popham, Egan, Van Sant, Goodwin, and Hattenstone). And the others seem to have become more innocuous and one or two close to strange mutterings (Byron, Shay, and Dempsey).

Now another hapless reporter, one Bob Graham, has floated an ill-conceived and ill-researched report, this time in the UK’s Daily Express. There is no Bob Graham who writes regularly for that paper, so the one reporting here might be an America freelancer - if not, apologies in advance. 

False claim 1

Endless leaks of court documents, private conversations, diaries and correspondence paint a picture of Amanda as a cold-blooded killer.

There is well over 10,000 pages of evidence. There have not been many leaks and almost all of those have come from the defenses. In fact Sollecito’s father may soon be under indictment, for leaking a video showing Meredith’s body to a Bari TV station. In the course of the trial there have been many small surprises which were never leaked in advance. And Edda Mellas here is blaming the prosecution and authorities for leaking documents when Knox’s family and team seem to have done much or more.

False claim 2

Yet if the prosecutors and gossips are wrong and Amanda was, as she claims, at Sollecito’s house at the time of the murder, she has been subjected to a staggering injustice.

Amanda Knox admitted that she was at the cottage on the night in question on four separate occasions (once to police officers now in evidence, twice to interrogators but ruled inadmissible, and once to the prosecutor in a handwritten note now in evidence). Sollecito has claimed she wasn’t there at his apartment for part of the night and he has never reversed that position. It’s not only the prosecutors and gossips who think she was at the cottage - Judge Micheli, who indicted her after reading the 10,000 pages of evidence, also thought so, and so did the scientific police.

False claim 3

They claim they took part in the murder in a tiny room, that after the murder they returned, still under the influence of drink and drugs, and managed to erase every trace of their own DNA and fingerprints without removing any of Guede’s DNA or fingerprints or other DNA that has not been identified. Is that credible? Of course not.

Edda Mellas seems to have told a deliberate lie. The prosecutors have never claimed the defendants removed every trace of their own DNA. Sollecito left an abundant amount of his DNA on Meredith’s bra clasp. Knox can be placed in the murder room by way of the double DNA knife and the woman’s bloody footprint on the pillow plus footsteps in blood outside. Professor Vinci also claimed he found Knox’s DNA on Meredith’s bra.

False claim 4

The name [Foxy Knoxy] has returned to haunt her, implying something altogether less innocent.

It is well-known that Knox herself pushed that nickname out on the internet. It rarely appears in a derogatory way in any of the reporting these days, and it is hard to see how the few mentions demonize her. Amanda Knox would have been aware from the age of four that Foxy has sexual connotations, especially as she was an “A-grade student”.

False claim 5

In September 2007 Amanda, then at the University of Washington, was awarded a year-long scholarship to further her Italian studies at Perugia’s university for foreigners.

This is not true. Knox paid for her trip abroad herself by working part-time jobs in Seattle. The University of Washington in Seattle had no role in her registration for the Perugia language school, and did not agree to accredit her scores. UW did not play a larger role. Her arrangements in Perugia look to have been under-organized, under-supervised and under-funded. She seems to have been running very low on funds, and had no work permit, just when Meredith may have been under consideration to replace her as a waitress at a bar.

False claim 6

Financially, it’s been devastating, the cost already in excess of $1 million.

Curt Knox and Edda Mellas chose to hire an expensive Seattle PR firm and two expensive Italian lawyers, and to fly large family presences to Perugia. Those were their choices to make, and it is suspected that at least some of the media have made payments in kind or cash to gain exclusive access. The PR campaign has been spinning its wheels for 18 months, and seems to us to have been a huge waste of money and quite damaging to Amanda Knox’s own best interests.

False claim 7

In the first hours after she was arrested she made a statement, later retracted, suggesting she and Raffaele had been present at the murder, and wrongly implicating Congolese barman Patrick Lumumba.

The statements were in fact made at the police station on 5-6 Nov under no police pressure after Sollecito had whipped the rug out from under her first alibi. She made three statements categorically accusing Diya Lumumba and spelling out some imaginary details. She said in all that she went out on the night. And she didn’t just “suggest” that she and Raffaele were there, she categorically claimed that she was indeed there.

False claim 8

Her defence team says she was threatened into making it. Amanda claims she was slapped around the head. Curiously, a tape-recording of the initial interviews have “disappeared”.

The defense never claimed that. There were many witnesses to the interrogations at the police station, including a senior police officer from Rome, and not one has corroborated this testimony. We have seen no evidence that any tapes were made or have disappeared. One statement cannot be used against Knox not because she was banged around but because she didn’t have a lawyer at the time. She later repeated it in writing when she was certainly not being banged around - she was under no pressure to speak up at all.

False claim 9

No less bizarre is the fact that chief prosecutor Giuliano Mignini is facing criminal charges for allegedly abusing his powers to question suspects in a separate murder case. He denies the allegations.

This is not true and it is possibly libelous. There is plenty of information on TJMK here that points to Mr Mignini being a competent, popular and hard-working prosecutor, who only faces an administrative charge because he seems to have guessed right on some of the murky details of the Monster of Florence case. At issue was not “abusing his powers to question suspects” it was a taped recording approved by a judge that caught the prosecutor saying damning things.

Peter Popham, Peter Van Sant, Simon Hattenstone, Steve Shay, Timothy Egan, Linda Byron, Candace Dempsey, and Jan Goodwin? Please now welcome Bob Graham to your misleading company.

Posted by The Machine on 09/16/09 at 07:07 PM in The officially involved,  Police and CSI,  The prosecutors,  News media & movies,  Hoaxes against Italy,  1 Ital justice hoax,  2 Italian mileu hoax,  3 No evidence hoax,  5 No pack attack hoax,  9 Mignini v Knox hoax,  10 Mignini MOF hoax,  Hoaxes Knox & team,  15 Single alibi hoax,  16 Interrogation hoax,  17 Fake memory hoax,  Hoaxers from 2007,  Knox-Marriott PR,  More hoaxers

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Comments

Thanks Machine for exposing the obvious contradictions between the existing facts and the report from Bob Graham.

I must say that what I find most disturbing about this trial is the biased reporting about this case and the spreading of misinformation together with the victimisation of AK, the murder suspect.

How many times do we have to listen or read again that the room was “too small for more than one attacker”? This is just outrageous. It has been left very clear to the defence that the room is indeed big enough for three attackers. Same with the her nickname “Foxy Knoxy”: The Knox/Mellas family and their supporters are talking more about it than anybody else. The found blood drops mixed with AK DNA in various places at the house, the double DNA knife and the bloody foot print on the pillow are simply dismissed without consideration and are often not even mentioned in order to mislead the public. Let alone the phone records and conflicting statements made by the accused.

With that lack of information is it any wonder that there are still readers out there believing in the innocence of AK? In the end it looks like the lies from the Knox/Mellas camp has come to fruition in some people, even though I am observing a decrease of supportive comments on the Perugia Shock blog and the Candace Dempsey Seattle PI Blog.

Posted by Nell on 09/17/09 at 02:35 AM | #

Thank you to all the people that regularly post updates regarding this sad and tragic sequence of events. It is with morbid interest that I have followed this case, if only in an amateur attempt at understanding human behaviour. Sometimes human beings make snap decisions that results in extreme devastation. One could assume that many times there is a distinct lack of forethought and had there been 5 minutes of ‘weighing up’ the consequences, tragedy could be averted. However, there are obviously many occassions where forethought was indeed prevalent - with either a selfish disregard for the impact or a certain perverse satisfaction that is derived from the outcome. Nobody except the perpetrator/s will ever know the accurate depths of these details. Either way, they will need to sleep with their demons every night.

Posted by Terence on 09/17/09 at 01:38 PM | #

I am new at posting but have been following your site for the last few months.
I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why someone would want to murder Meredith and why Amanda would get herself involved in something like this.
Then it came to me…..she didn’t plan a murder…she planned a rape.  She thought about it at the Halloween party by seeing how easily a disguise could hide one’s appearance. She then devised a perfect plan with her boyfriend and Rudy.  They would disguise themselves and hide in Meredith’s bedroom…when she arrived they would be waiting…Rudy would grab her and rape her while the boyfriend held her down and Amanda would hold the knife up to her neck…after the humiliating rape.. Amanda would get her revenge and the boys sexually satisfied…they would all disappear into the night without being recognized…

Posted by kt on 09/17/09 at 04:05 PM | #

I would like to commend TJMK for serving the public interest in providing such excellent coverage and original information in relation to the murder of Meredith Kercher.

I have two questions in relation to the case:

Has any explanation been put forward by the police or the prosection as to why Meredith’s bedroom door was locked after she was murdered (while the front door of the cottage was left open)?

And - Why did the perpetrator(s) remove Meredith’s mobile phones from the scene and dispose them in a neighbours garden.

Any info in relation to the above questions would be appreciated.

Posted by rightturn on 09/18/09 at 01:41 AM | #

Hang on guys!
The tide is surely turning among Seattlites, despite the P.R. efforts by Amanda’s family to effect an opposite reaction.
I just met a worldly and mature British couple who live in Seattle, who have only a fleeting interestin this case, not being hooked into the popular media and having never heard of any internet forums regarding this case.
In other words I did not sense any bias from them.
They reported a recent shift in opinion from the general populace, as to the true character of Amanda and a leaning towards her likely personal involvement in the murder of Meredith Kercher.
The couple, themselves, are convinced of her guilt.
So, you see, bad journalism doesn’t pay.(Nor does it sway).

Posted by Starling on 09/18/09 at 02:46 AM | #

I would like to point out that the blog maintained by Candace Dempsey only allows comments in favour to the defendants. In the moment a doubt is expressed, the comments get deleted. I would like to let all readers know that yesterday, I posted a comment at that blog and later a response to two users who had been commenting on my post. My posts have been deleted (both). I later wrote more comments asking for why this measure has been taken and they got deleted as well.

I made screen shots from my messages. I published them at PMF:
Click me (you might need to scroll down a bit)

Censorship of its worst kind. That can’t be good at all.

Posted by Nell on 09/18/09 at 02:58 AM | #

As to why Meredith’s door was locked after the murder, I believe it gave the perpetrators more time to do their clean up before she was discovered…also I don’t discount the psychological reaction of “locking” the horror of what they had done, putting the matter aside by locking the door as it were, much like the defendant does on a psychological reaction, locking off her murderous dark impulses and puting forth the image of the sweet tempered optimistic girl she wants to portray herself.

As for throwing the cell phones in the neighbor’s garden, that sounds like a panicked response to their escalating violence; they wanted to make sure she could not reach her phones and disposed of them in the heat of their crazed behavior, probably thoughtlessly.


We may never now thir motivations and the sequence of events that led up to the horrific murder , but I turst this trial will yeild a sense of justice when these two are given their just due.

Posted by LReik on 09/18/09 at 08:49 AM | #

If you google the names Garfield Kennedy and Bob Graham together, you discover that they are listed as the writers of a documentary about the Meredith Kercher murder that is now in post production.

In light of Bob Graham’s most recent article, I think it is safe to say what the slant of this documentary is. I am guessing that Barbie Nadeau was referring to this project in her most recent article.

From IDMB:

Making a Killing (2009)
Overview
MOVIEmeter: Up 3% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:Garfield Kennedy

Writers:Bob Graham (writer)
Garfield Kennedy (writer)

Release Date:30 November 2009 (UK) more
Plot:The media maelstrom surrounding the brutal killing of a British student, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy, and the subsequent arrests and murder charges against US student, Amanda Knox, and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

Posted by Skeptical Bystander on 09/18/09 at 06:45 PM | #

It’s not hard now to imagine the murder of Meredith Kercher was fueled purely for “Making a Profit.” 

Try not to worry about how many copy cat murders will follow and escalate to even greater grotesque killings only to have perverted producers and directors at their heels much like low life ambulance chasers.  Now we know what Knox meant when she claimed she wanted to help her family financially. 

Those A$$HOLES are proud of their obscene accomplishments and will remain forever clueless as to what is right and what they are doing is grossly wrong.  What they are doing ought to be a crime.

Starting with the Mom I’d like to cast a round of the Cruciatus Unforgivable Curse and a hex to rot in hell.

Posted by Professor Snape on 09/19/09 at 10:21 AM | #

I am assuming that the Knox family will need a lot of money in the future, you know, all the visits for the next 30 years!  I just hope that all monies earned go to the true victim’s family.  Would there be a way to stop the killer’s families from receiving money?

Posted by BARBM on 09/23/09 at 11:11 PM | #
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