Category: Other witnesses

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Jailhouse Snitch With “New Evidence” Doesn’t Seem To Be Widely Believed

Posted by Peter Quennell

[click for larger image]

Andrea Vogt as usual has the best report. Key excerpts:

1) Claims by a fellow prisoner oif Rudy Guede

In a bizarre development Friday, attorneys for Raffaele Sollecito, Amanda Knox’s former boyfriend, deposited a new piece of evidence in the slaying of British student Meredith Kercher—the deposition of a Sicilian bricklayer serving a life sentence in the same prison as Rudy Guede in Viterbo, Italy.

In the statement, deposited Friday and obtained by the seattlepi.com, the fellow convict claims Guede confided in him that Knox and Sollecito were innocent and that the murder was committed by a friend of Guede’s who had gone to Kercher’s house for a threesome.

Mario Alessi, 38, is currently serving a life sentence in connection with the brutal kidnapping and murder of Tommaso Onofri, a 2-year-old boy from Parma known as Tommy, whose high-profile disappearance and murder in 2006 shocked the nation….

Sollecito’s attorneys requested authorization from the Bologna Court of Appeals and sent their legal assistants to videotape Alessi’s statement in Viterbo, where he is detained in the same sex crimes section of the prison.

In the statement, Alessi claims three other prisoners can confirm his declarations. He said he wrote several letters to Sollecito’s attorney, Giulia Bongiorno, because he felt the need to tell her what he had heard from Guede during their open air breaks.

Buongiorno is a noted lawyer from Sicily who is also a parliamentarian and heads a governmental justice commission. On many occasions Guede said explicitly and clearly that Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox were completely extraneous to this homicide, he said in the deposition.

Around the time of Guede’s appeal, Alessi claims Guede confided in him that the murder was actually committed by a friend of his, who had joined him at Kercher’s for a threesome, which she resisted. Alessi gives a detailed description of the scene as he claims was described to him by Guede: with Kercher getting wounded as he tried to get away from her knife-wielding attacker. While Guede tried to stem the bleeding, the friend said “we’d better finish her off or we’ll both rot in prison,” according to Alessi’s account.

The friend then stabbed her repeatedly in the neck and fled, leaving Guede to try to stop the bleeding, Alessi claims. Later, the two saw each other in the disco, where the friend gave Guede money to flee to Germany, Alessi claims he said. The name or identity of the friend Alessi said Guede was referring to was not given. Guede’s attorney, Walter Biscotti, drove to Viterbo on Saturday to speak with Guede, who emphatically denies the conversation ever took place.

2) Denials by Guede, his lawyers, and prison authorities

In the strongest terms possible, Rudy denied ever having talked to Alessi about these matters, Biscotti said. Alessi’s appeal of his life sentence was denied, so he is not credible. He is doing what those who are desperate do grab onto someone else in desperation. But Guede is bothered by the fact that he is always being dragged into the middle, Biscotti said.

Authorities who interrogated Alessi in the Onofri case said Saturday that they do not believe he can be considered reliable and had given misleading declarations in the past.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Trial: Defense Expert Tries To Claim Sollecito-Sized Footprint Is Guede’s

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click above for the Daily Express’s full report. The relevant section:

A bloody footprint found at the house where a British student was killed in Italy was wrongly attributed to one of the defendants in the case, a forensic expert has testified at the murder trial.

The footprint was found on a bathroom rug in the house in Perugia where Meredith Kercher was killed in November 2007.

Prosecutors have attributed it to Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian who is on trial on murder charges with Amanda Knox, his girlfriend at the time. Both defendants deny wrongdoing.

In his testimony, expert Francesco Vinci compared detailed pictures of the footprint on the rug with images of Sollecito’s feet, arguing that the sizes and shapes “absolutely don’t match”.

“Differences, one by one, can be seen,” said Vinci, who is a witness for Sollecito’s defence.

According to Vinci, the footprint is “compatible” with the foot of a third man, Rudy Hermann Guede, who was convicted in a separate trial last year and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

In effect then, the claim is that Guede was participating with bare feet in the cleanup of the crime scene some time after the death of Meredith - although precisely what he cleaned up is unclear, as strong evidence of his presence remains.

Like many of the defense’s attempts at rebuttals, this sounds to us like a tragedy that is now playing out as farce.

In one of his clinically precise powerpoints Kermit already refuted this claim

 

Friday, August 28, 2009

Maybe Why Meredith’s House Was So Tough For Some Of The Police-Cars To Find?

Posted by Peter Quennell

Most of the police team seem to have made it with alacrity to 7 via della Pergola on the day after.

They have very fast cars and pretty good navigation. But one or two had to call in for directions.

This led to some ridicule among those who actually think that ridicule helps Amanda Knox.

Their fast route to the house is to head east up the hill from the Questura (if that is where they all came from). Then through Piazza Grimana by the School for Foreigners. And then down to via della Pergola, by way of the famous tee junction.

Click above for the route from Piazza Grimana down to the tee junction (the last several shots there are of the stone steps that Rudy ran up) and then click below for the street sign they would have encountered. 

Via della Pergola heads down to the LEFT here. The street sign says that via San Antonio begins to the RIGHT here.

And Meredith’s house is clearly off to the RIGHT.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Trial: ABC News Has The Only End-Of-Day English Report

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click above for Ann Wise’s report. “Rejected offer to leave” seems rather misleading.

In some of the Italian reports it is observed that Knox was told very soon after the death of Meredith was discovered that she was not allowed to leave Perugia for the time being, so she really had no choice but to stay. Cousin Dorothy and Ann Wise seem not to have known this.

In fact all of the key witnesses including Meredith’s English friends were told to remain in Perugia until the investigations were further advanced. Although it was very tough on them all because of a voracious media, they had to remain there for some weeks.

Only two witnesses were heard today - the second was the mobile phone specialist that Ann Wise mentions - leaving half a dozen witnesses to testify tomorrow or after the summer break.

We are told that the uncertainty about whether Judge Massei would be recovered enough to preside this Friday and Saturday resulted in several scheduling problems and forced absences. This is a busy press corps and few of them actually live in Perugia.

Apparently Judge Massei looked well and very attentive today, and interrogated the mobile phone specialist on his contribution to the timeline for the morning after.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Trial: Il Messagero Describes Testimony Of Knox Relative From Germany

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click above for the original report in Italian on the testimony of Aunt Dorothy.

The woman, who lives in Germany, said she listened to Knox on the phone after the murder, and found her “scared and confused.”

Dorothy claimed to have suggested to Amanda to come to Germany, but she said ‘no’ because she wanted to be of help to the police and answer questions.

The relative of Amanda also said that the young American, before being arrested, wanted to “meet the father of Meredith to console him and tell him what she knew.”

Other defense testimony today will focus on the mobile phones, the effects of smoking marijuana, and the nature of the knife Sollecito carried at all times.

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Trial: Testimony Of Sollecito’s Childhod Friends From Giovinazzo

Posted by Peter Quennell

The defense DNA experts Carlo Torre and Gino Sara have been postponed into next week.

Testifying today instead were five friends of Sollecito’s. He was born in Giovinazzo on the flat and underpopulated south-eastern coast. Giovinazzo (images) is just north of Bari, where his father practices medicine.

Four childhood friends from there testified along with one who knew him in Perugia. Some translated excerpts:

Raffaele is a romantic, shy, kind, and always available, and honest with everyone…. The television described him as a womanizer, in fact he was shy and introverted. 

He typically carries a knife in his pocket. For him it was a decorative object to be matched to his clothes. He was once wrapped in toilet paper with a meat cleaver and photographed for a joke.

He occasionally smoked a joint, but was not a habitual consumer of hashish, and would not use other drugs. The joints had a sedative effect and made him want to sleep,

Concerning his first sexual intercourse, he had told one of his friends he had been with a girl from Brindisi who lived in Perugia in 2004 or 2005.

Sollecito then issued a correction. “It was actually in 2007” he said through his lawyer.

The civil lawyer for the Kercher family, Francesco Maresca, made it clear that he was skeptical of much of the testimony.

Perhaps with good reason. Sollecito wrote in his occasional newspaper column in Bari that he was a virgin when he met Amanda Knox.

Friday, July 03, 2009

Trial: Not Even These Days Will Be Easy For The Defense Teams

Posted by Kermit

[Sollecito’s lawyers Buongiorno and Mauri last October]

I wouldn’t be overly concerned about the upcoming defence “experts”, unless there’s some statement like “and then the investigator picked up the bra clasp after picking his nose”.

If I were on the jury, the first thing I would ask myself is “why are there Carabinieri - who are part of the state police structure - declaring against their brethren’s work, the investigation done by the Polizia?”.

Why? for two reasons: the different state police units all compete with one another for historical reasons. We have the same thing here in Spain between the Guardia Civil and the National Police. Organizations with different historical roots and overlapping roles which compete between themselves.

Something else to consider in the Perugia case - and probably more significant than competitiveness between police branches - is that Raffaele’s sister is a Carabinieri, and the taped Sollecito Family phone conversations show her to be one of the most active members in behind the scenes “making water flow uphill” activities.

if I were Mignini, in my turn to cross-examine the Carabinieri witnesses, the first and only question I would have is: “are you aware that the sister of Raffaele Sollecito is also a Carabinieri like you, and that the immediate famly of the accused is under investigation for perverting the course of justice?”.

It doesn’t matter how they answer.

As regards Carlo Torre, for as respected as he is, I see him simply as an “outside defense expert”, who is to be expected to counter the prosecution forensics. Carlo Torre is not a surprise figure who the Defence have just found, but he has been making comments in the press on behalf of Amanda’s team for months now. I recall - I believe - that he has also been on Matrix or another TV show opining on the case.

The jurors know it and may well take the attitude of “well even though he’s a respected scruffy old professor, he has been making PR noise for some time now in favor of Amanda, from months before the detailed technical data was released with the final investigation report”.

Mignini could have one question for Torre: “Professor Torre, please tell the jury the first time you appeared on television or you were quoted in an article concerning this crime, where you expressed an opinion on the evidence”.

He would give a date from over a year ago. In the John Follain The Times interview with Curt and Edda, they refer to Torre saying that Meredith’s DNA on the Double DNA knife “could belong to half the population of Italy”

Okay, next week may be tough. It wouldn’t be any other way, as it’s the Defences’ turn to bamboozle the jury with their smoke and mirrors show. But the jury knows that behind the curtain, there’s a meek, weak Wizard pulling a few cables and levers.

The same creaky levers we’ve been hearing over and over for over a year and a half now.

[Knox’s lawyers Sollecito’s lawyers Ghirgha and Vedova last October]

The Trial Resumes: The Court Agenda For Friday, Saturday And Monday

Posted by Peter Quennell

On Friday and Saturday Raffaele Sollecito’s defense will interrogate several of the Carabinieri who will explain how they think the police made mistakes at the crime scene. 

And on Monday the forensic scientist Carlo Torre will testify for Amanda Knox’s defense team. Dr. Torre is one of the most prominent forensic scientists in Italy and some of those he has testified for have walked.

These witnesses may make a dent or they may not. It is common to have experts from within law enforcement who say, well, they would have done it another way.

Mr Torre may be more impressive but the forensics are only a fraction of the case and no-one else has undermined them so far.

And there is the endlessly confounding question hanging over Knox: who moved Meredith later - much later? 

A whole day of prosecution evidence on the final day was offered on this belated rearrangement of the crime scene.

It may leave Mr Torre pretty stuck for an answer.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Trial: Defense Witness Testifies To Occurence In Nearby Piazza The Next Day

Posted by Peter Quennell

AGI is reporting the testimony of the final witness for today. A quick translation:

Alessia Ceccarelli, the girlfriend of the owner of the newsstand in Grimana Square (above and below; house is down the hill) stated that she had noticed a “boy” on the morning of November 2 around 7:00-7:30 who shouted on his cellphone “kill you bitch’.”

She remembered that the boy was wearing a white wool cap, a dark jacket and jeans, and had “dirty blood on the right hand.”

AGI adds that this is a fact that already emerged in the past but which, according to investigators, was found to have no connection with the crime.

On the Perugia Murder File Forum our poster Brian has posted this comment.

This guy is a total red herring. He’d just had an argument with his girlfriend. She, somewhat forcibly, threw him out of the house and he shouted “kill you bitch” into his mobile phone.

He was seen by lots of people cursing and swearing while washing his bloody arm in the fountain. He was soon picked up by an ambulance and taken to hospital. He was a known junky.

Trial: Defense Witnesses On Scream On The Night And On Relationships.

Posted by Peter Quennell

Today a Tuesday is for the first time a trial date as the momentum speeds up before the summer break. A verdict has been predicted for the end of October. 

L’Unione Sarda and AffarItaliaNI are reporting the testimony of the first two defense witnesses for the day.

Pasqualino Coletta from Rome was the driver of the car that would not start on the street above the house on the night in question and had to be towed away. He stated that he heard no scream or any sound of broken glass. He explained that he was on via Pergola between 10.30 and 11:00 pm and “was not attracted to anything in particular.”

And Marzana Marco, a student who lived downstairs, stated that he noticed no friction between Meredith and her flatmate. He also described the two times that Rudy Guede had slept on the sofa of their apartrment.