Category: Micheli trial etc

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

A Good Profile Of Guede, Now Starting His 10,950 Days EDIT

Posted by Peter Quennell

By Nick Squires in Perugia

9:09AM GMT 29 Oct 2008

Within days of Meredith Kercher’s half-naked body being found in Perugia last November, key suspect Rudy Hermann Guede, 21, fled the Umbrian hill town and jumped on a train to Germany.

His flight across the Alps sparked an international manhunt. Italian police wanted him in connection with Miss Kercher’s brutal killing, having found his bloody hand print on a pillow at the scene of the crime.

During a desperate few days on the run, he slept rough in empty train carriages and on a barge on the Rhine.

At one point he was contacted on Facebook by journalists, including the Daily Telegraph’s correspondent, and engaged in an online chat in which he protested his innocence.

On November 20, nearly three weeks after the murder, he was stopped on a Frankfurt-bound train near Mainz after a conductor found him without a ticket.

He was arrested, held for two weeks in a German prison and extradited back to Italy to face charges of murder and aggravated sexual assault.

It was all so different from the life of opportunity his immigrant father had envisaged when he left his native Ivory Coast in the early 1990s with five-year-old Rudy in tow.

Leaving his wife behind, Pacome Roger Guede settled in Perugia, Umbria’s provincial capital, and found work as a building site labourer.

He put down roots in the university town but after a decade decided to return to West Africa, leaving the teenage Rudy in the care of an Italian family, who looked after him as their own son.

For all their good intentions, he developed into a troubled youth, skipping school, dabbling in drugs and dropping out of courses in accountancy and hotel management.

He lived for a time in Milan and proudly posted on his Facebook site a photograph taken of him with Giorgio Armani in the fashion guru’s bar.

His adoptive father, wealthy local entrepreneur Paolo Caporali, 63, told the Italian national newspaper La Repubblica: “It is pointless to hide the fact that for me, Rudy was a disappointment. I hoped to help him build a future. I thought I had given him an opportunity. But as the months passed I understood I was mistaken, that my hopes were all met with delusion.

“He said he was at school, but he skipped class. He preferred to spend the day in front of the television or with video games. He had little wish to study, and even less to work.”

Rudy was thrown out ““ cut loose from those who cared for him for the second time in his life - and drifted into a rootless existence of part-time work, petty crime and drug dealing.

In the evenings and at weekends he mingled with the thousands of students who are drawn to Perugia each year to learn Italian at the town’s University for Foreigners.

He played basketball on the concrete court just up the hill from the house which Miss Kercher shared with Miss Knox and two other students, becoming friendly with the people living in a basement flat.

Through them he met Miss Kercher in a bar at a Halloween party, the night before the murder.

Four days before the party, he was in Milan and broke into a nursery school so that he could spend the night there.

He was armed with an 11-inch kitchen knife, telling police he had to “protect” himself against thieves.

In a 25-page handwritten note he gave to police after his arrest, Guede said he regretted leaving Miss Kercher to die from her injuries. “Had I been a man, I would have saved Meredith”. Instead, he fled the scene and did not call the emergency services.

He described the scene he came across in chilling terms. “When I closed my eyes, I could only see red. I have never seen so much blood. All of that blood on her beautiful face.”

And the inevitable bluster about appealing. Good luck on that one, Rudy.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Judge Micheli’s First Of Six Hearings To Decide If The Three Must Stand Trial

Posted by Peter Quennell

Not decided today: is there enough evidence to indict any or all of the three? But there were some developments:

Rosa Silverman of The Independent reports:

Amanda Knox and Rudy Guede came face to face yesterday with the family of Meredith Kercher, the British student they are accused of murdering in Italy last year…..

Judge Paolo Micheli granted a request for a fast-track trial for Mr Guede [if indicted] who is fearful of a pact between Miss Knox and Mr Sollecito to frame him for the killing…

The family were admitted to the court as civil plaintiffs, as was a Congolese former suspect, Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, 38, who was cleared of any involvement in the crime….

The owner of the house Miss Kercher shared with Miss Knox and others… has also been admitted as a civil plaintiff, and can therefore claim damages if someone is convicted of murder….

It was the first time that Miss Knox, from Seattle, had been seen in public since she was imprisoned last November. Dressed in blue jeans and a white embroidered top, her hair scraped back neatly in a half-ponytail, she was escorted by two female jail guards….

The next hearing is scheduled for 26 September.

Nick Squires of The Daily Telegraph reports:

The judge has yet to rule, however, on whether the case should go to trial - a decision which is expected at a future hearing, probably next month.

And Tom Kington of the Guardian reports.

The family of Meredith Kercher, the British student murdered in Perugia last November, came face to face with two of her alleged killers for the first time in an Italian court yesterday.

Amanda Knox, 21, the American student who was Kercher’s former flatmate, appeared nervous as she passed photographers outside the courtroom. Rudy Guede, 24, who has dual Italian and Ivorian citizenship, followed her minutes later. Knox’s former boyfriend Raffaelle Sollecito did not attend court, but it was unclear why not. One of his lawyers said he felt unwell, but another claimed the IT student wanted to avoid “a media circus”. All three suspects, who are in custody, deny any wrongdoing.

Yesterday’s hearing was the first of six, after which Judge Paolo Micheli will decide whether to send Knox and Sollecito to trial next year. He accepted a request from Guede to undergo his own fast-track trial which could be concluded by the end of next month.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Startling U-Turn: Knox & Sollecito Agree To Truce, Will Now Dump All Blame On Guede

Posted by Our Main Posters

This is from a surprising report from the Guardian’s Tom Kington in Rome:

Claims have been made of a pact between Knox and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 24. It is alleged their lawyers have agreed to work together to blame the murder on Rudy Guede, 21, a part-time gardener from the Ivory Coast and the third accused.

Now, Guede’s lawyers are threatening to call for a separate trial for him alone - well away from the legal teams of the other two whom they fear could prejudice his case.

It is a pact, says Guede’s lawyer Walter Biscotti, that can be traced back to July when Sollecito sent Knox a bouquet of yellow flowers on her 21st birthday which both celebrated in prison.

‘There is a clear desire to make Rudy the guilty party, and it’s clear they will try anything,’ Biscotti said.

All three accused deny murder. Knox, or Foxy Knoxy, as she was known at her Seattle high school, shared a flat with Meredith, from Coulsdon, south London, who was studying in the city as part of her degree at Leeds University.

Knox has attracted headlines through a leaked prison diary in which she detailed her sexual escapades and a Facebook page on which she wrote about rape and fantasy. She has also speculated Sollecito, her then boyfriend, could have been responsible.

Knox’s lawyers maintain that bloodstains in the flat and DNA on a knife found at Sollecito’s flat cannot put her at the murder scene.

Sollecito’s lawyers will also question whether his DNA, found on the back of Meredith’s bloodied bra, is conclusive proof of his involvement. He and Knox claim that they were at his flat when the murder took place.

Guede, who fled to Germany after the murder, is the only suspect who has admitted to being in Kercher’s bedroom on the night she died. He states that they were planning to have sex - though he denies rape and murder. He has stated he was using the bathroom when she was killed, claiming Knox and Sollecito had rushed past him as he emerged.

Sensing a campaign against his client, Biscotti may press for the hearings to be separated in the hope Guede will be cleared quickly. It could involve a fast-track trial behind closed doors and a verdict as early as mid-October.

This could mean that Guede is convicted before a decision is made on whether Knox and Sollecito even stand trial.

‘There was a tacit agreement to just work on the defence of your own client,’ said Biscotti of the other legal teams. ‘But it looks like this is finished.’

He points to a recent briefing by one of Sollecito’s lawyers, Giulia Buongiorno, an MP and high-profile lawyer who has previously defended former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti against Mafia charges, who told journalists that there had been just one killer.

The Kerchers’ lawyer, Francesco Maresca, said: ‘We are holding out for a trial of the other two, even if Rudy is found guilty.’

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Key Reporting: La Repubblica 22 November 2007

Posted by Peter Quennell

Rudy, the DNA test confirms
“There was a sexual relationship”

Rudy, the DNA test confirms
“There was a sexual relationship”

Rudy Hermann Guede
PERUGIA - The DNA test confirms: Rudy Guede had a sexual relationship with Meredith Kercher the night the girl was killed. These are the first results of the examinations conducted on the young man from the Ivory Coast arrested in Germany. The DNA, taken from the toothbrush seized in Perugia in the boy’s apartment, has been identified in the laboratories of the Scientific Police. That arrived in the evening, is the answer of the comparison between the DNA of the boy and that partial DNA that had already been detected during the autopsy of Meredith and on the scene of the crime. Precisely that partial DNA, which was already known to be of a man, which did not correspond either to Raffaele Sollecito or to Patrick Lumumba, which had been collected with specific tests on the victim’s body. And that testified to a sexual relationship that, as learned, had been incomplete and violent. The same DNA was on the toilet paper in the bathroom. It would seem therefore confirmed that, that evening, Guede forced the young woman to a relationship, before his death. The imprint of his bloody hand on the pillow had already confirmed the presence of the young Ivorian in the murder room.

Meanwhile, from Koblenz, where he is detained , Guede tells his truth: “He was an Italian boy”. “I went to the English girl’s house and we went together,” she tells the German judge. “As soon as I entered, I got a stomach ache and when I was in the bathroom, I heard a shout: there was a young Italian in the house, one I do not know who attacked the girl, stabbed her and ran away. I tried to save her, I picked her up, tried to reanimate her, but then, panicked, I ran away “.

He declares himself innocent, Rudy Guede. The accusation seems to be addressed to Raffaele Sollecito, although a Polish student has confirmed to the police that “Amanda remained in Raffaele’s house at least until 20.40 on the first of November”, more or less the hour of the crime. The investigating judge, however, presses: Rudy “can strike again”.

The judge of Perugia, Claudia Matteini, does not believe in the innocence of the young Ivorian. In the precautionary custody order, in which he orders the arrest of the young man, we read: “From the cruelty of the crime, from the agony in which the victim was left and to the personality of the suspect taken from the quick escape after the crime - wrote the magistrate to justify the provision signed a few days after the murder - there is a real danger that the suspect commits crimes of the same species as that for which it proceeds “.

To collect the testimony of Rudy, the Perugia judges will have to wait a couple more weeks. After the Wednesday hearing, which formally ascertained his identity, Guede will have to appear before the magistrate in Koblenz who will examine Italy’s request for delivery. He will be extradited to Italy not before December 10th.

Meanwhile, the words used by the investigating judge of Perugia remain: Rudy “felt a strong attraction for Amanda”; he used to go to the house that the American student shared with the same age then killed and, the magistrate unveiled, that night Rudy also slept drunk in the apartment in Via Pergola. But it is not written in the ordinance which link binds the attraction that the young black man had for the victim’s friend, and the possibility that he would come back to kill.

It seems clear that the investigators think that the crime is circumscribed between Amanda and Raffaele and Rudy, with roles all to be attributed. That Amanda is the pivot on which revolves the reconstruction of what happened, it seems obvious: his genetic code was discovered on the handle of a kitchen knife by Raffaele, along with the DNA of Meredith. But she keeps repeating that she is not a murderer. In his memorial , tries a desperate defense, then confesses: “I am exhausted and perhaps I confuse the dream with reality”.

Raffaele remains a controversial figure. He swears that that night, in Meredith’s apartment, he did not set foot as he was at his computer , but the results of the checks on his pc would have shown that no one was at the keyboard. Out of the prison there is only one of the four suspects, Lumumba. Arrested in the aftermath of the crime, with Raffaele and Amanda, he was released from prison after two weeks of detention. It remains investigated but, as the investigating judge wrote, “the clues are missing” to keep him in the cell.

( November 22, 2007