Tuesday, February 11, 2014

The Much-Demonized Rudy Guede Is Back In The News And Increasingly Threatening

Posted by Peter Quennell





Rudy Guede has long DELIBERATELY been demonized so that the attack on Meredith can be assigned to him alone.

This description of Guede’s early days in the Ivory Coast and Perugia in the excellent Darkness Descending by Paul Russell and Graham Johnson remains the ONLY one that fully checks out. Certainly not that by the dishonest PR shill Nina Burleigh.

Guede wasn’t especially an angel, and some in Perugia were iffy about him. But he had real friends, and up north he held a real job with a real career future, until that prospect imploded and sent him haplessly back to Perugia.

Late in October 2008 Judge Micheli discounted all that Guede ever said about his role in the attack on Meredith in various conversations and statements, and sentenced Guede to 30 years.

But Judge Micheli also concluded that there was no firm evidence either that Guede acted alone or that Guede was a drifter, drug dealer, knife wielder or burglar (Micheli was very sharp with one witness who claimed Guede may - may - have broken into his house).

In 2009 through his lawyers Guede enquired of the prosecution whether he might testify at the Knox-Sollecito trial.

But the prosecutions’ hands were already tied by the indictments and they (rightly) believed they had a really strong case regardless of anything Guede could add.

At the 2009 trial the defenses pussyfooted around and never settled for a firm position on Guede. They floundered in their subdued attempts to prove that Guede or somebody else unknown was the so-called Lone Wolf.

The Lone Wolf theory is really a zombie theory with so many stakes through its heart that no court will ever take it seriously.

Guede’s steadfast fallback position before and since was that he was only in the house on the night of the attack because Meredith invited him to come in and they began love-making.

At his late-2009 first appeal and also at Sollecito’s and Knox’s 2011 appeal before Judge Hellmann, he increasingly firmly pointed the finger at Knox and Sollecito as the murderers.

Guede had been initially inclined to let sleeping dogs lie after he was mysteriously beaten up in the sex offenders wing of Viterbo prison, where prisoners are meant to be kept very safe.

But Judge Massei’s scenario of the attack on Meredith in his March 2010 Sentencing Report, with Rudy Guede as the lead instigator, really bothered him.

And in mid 2010 he became even more bothered when claims were made by a fellow prisoner the baby killer Mario Alessi that Guede confided that he really had committed the murder, along with two others. Not with Knox and Sollecito.

A very angry Rudy Guede in turn wrote a letter denying this which very rapidly went public.

In 2011 there was a tense confrontation in the Hellmann court (which several times descended into chaos) when this letter, in which by now Guede firmly accuses Knox and Sollecito, was read out for him.

Guede stuck to this position on the stand, and he was not required to face full cross-examination by the shrill, frustrated defenses because he was already convicted and no longer the one on trial. 

Seemingly fed up with all the dirty tricks against him and the now-incessant Knox and Sollecito mantras in the media that Guede had acted alone, he has come out with another letter.

Italy’s AGI News Service has posted this letter to an unidentified recipient, along with this report.

(AGI) Perugia, February 11 “Against me are being repeated false imaginated reconstructions of the crime for the sole purpose of wanting to denigrate my figure and person, systematically and in a negative way, in the public eye and not just in Italy.”

He apparently also posted what he wrote in his own hand on the Facebook page “Legal processes and their surroundings”...

The letter is on a sheet of notebook paper handwritten and signed by Guede.

“To my regret I am again forced to take a pen and paper and write for the sake of the truth.. to all those thousands of people who still believe in justice.”

“They can not access all the pleadings and components of this sad and extremely complex legal case which was dramatically painful for those who lived it . My sentence and judicial reasoning have been for too long subject to a continuous and willful manipulation and alteration of the data of the proceedings.”

“Against me are made continuous false and imaginary reconstructions for the sole purpose of wanting to denigrate my figure and person, systematically and in a negative way in the public eye and not just the Italian.”

“In the final judgment, as far as I’m concerned about these false and imaginative reconstructions, is that I was acquitted of theft and simulation of crime, a fact that I never hear mentioned in the various journalistic reconstructions.”

“I also want to point out I do not accept in any way to be passed off and continually held up as a drifter, a thief, a homeless man, seeing my person and my dignity offended continually, denigrated and stereotyped by facts and things that do not realte to me… when I had a beautiful family and precious squeaky clean and friendly relations in Perugia.”

Fast-forward to today, where reports say that Guede is getting close to day-release for study purposes and may only be months away from making more evidence against Sollecito and Knox public.

Our posting lawyer TomM has looked at the issue of Guede being allowed out to study, and finds it regular and humane in this assessment.

I respect the Italian system of criminal justice. Just as I recognize that the Italian courts have much better information than anyone posting on the internet relating to the culpability of the defendants in this case, I also think that the people who oversee Guede’s stay in prison are better informed as to his fitness to be reintegrated into society. That he would be allowed out during work days to become better educated, returning to his prison cell at the end of the day seems to me a more enlightened approach than what we do here.

We used to have training programs in prisons. I don’t know that they were “cushy”, but they did work, so that when these convicts were released they were equipped with a marketable skill and rarely re-offended. But, the public thinks these were too cushy, so more Draconian circumstances and longer sentences are now the norm. It used to be people were sent to prison as punishment, now they are sent for punishment.

Sometimes when a prisoner who has spent his or her entire adult life in prison completes the sentence imposed, they have to be physically dragged from their cells, so ill-prepared are they for anything other than doing time. With no skills, social or job-related, they re-offend—surprise, surprise. Sometimes re-offense is for the purpose of being returned a world that, for all its dangers is, to them, relative safety.

While it is certainly true that prison doesn’t have much impact on sociopaths, the one thing they are attached to is money. Taking away their money does impact their behavior, so there is an alternative to killing them.

Comments

Interesting report today on a major US-Italy operation against La N’Drangheta (The Calabrian Mafia):

http://news.msn.com/world/italy-us-crack-down-on-mafia-drug-smuggling

This level of cooperation has to be seen as one more reason Amanda Knox is going to eventually get extradited.  The US has too much at stake in joint operations with Italy to piss them off.

Posted by Gonzaga on 02/11/14 at 09:47 PM | #

Sharp eyes, Gonzaga. Thanks a lot. And guess who is the head of the anti-mafia authority in Rome? Quite a surprise:

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/perugia_police_chief_during_2008_investigation_rises_to_head_of_nation/

So the FBI are closely collaborating in an incredibly key way at a strategic level with the same head of the Perugia police the FOA still dopily demonize.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 02/11/14 at 10:28 PM | #

I, for one, am not going to be distracted by media stories of Guede, no matter how much the usual suspects, Moore, Dempsey et al would like us to.

As he reminds us in his letter, he wasn’t convicted of theft or staging the burgalry, nor did he act alone.

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito have still not paid the price for what they have done. Sure, Sollecito and Guede might whine and blame Knox for inflicting the fatal wound, and hope to negate their own culpability in Meredith’s murder, and I have no patience with that.

But Knox and Sollecito, for their taunting of the Kerchers, for his actual visit to Meredith’s grave in March 2013 in FOA supporter Nigel Scott’s company, well, it’s time for their karma to catch up with them.

Posted by Ergon on 02/12/14 at 01:02 AM | #

I also believe that Mr Guede has been much vilified by the media, in particular by the FoA army. That he was friendly with one of the boys downstairs suggests that he was not a social outcast as claimed by the media.

If Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito are exonerated (miracles do happen) by the media then I too will think that grave injustice has been done to him too. He was just a participant in the crime but certainly not the leader.

Justice is blind but money talks.

Posted by chami on 02/12/14 at 05:18 AM | #

Hi Ergon and Chami

Thanks for the incisive insights.

We believe Guede did not settle for the short-track trial in October 2008 because he anticipated years off his sentence. Guede went all through 2009 thinking he had been sentenced to 30 years, end-of-story, which is why he offered to testify.

That reduction to 16 years at the end of 2009 might have come as quite a surprise. Sollecito and Knox could have been sentenced to 30 years or even life if Judge Massei had not found a nifty way to shift a heavy body of blame onto Guede as prime instigator and to invent mitigating circumstances to lop some years off RS’s and AK’s sentences.

(Signs are neither Prosecutor Crini nor Judge Nencini followed Judge Massei down those two paths.)

What was on Guede’s mind for sure late in 2008 were some very blatant attempts by the Knox and Sollecito lawyers to make him the fall guy if the 3 all went on trial together. So he chose to peel off.

By getting his own case across first, as he did at his trial, he mangled the defense lawyers’ attempts to make him the fall guy, and also assured that Knox and Sollecito were given an intensive trial in 2009 in which his own presence rarely intruded.

Here is a post by one of our sharper analysts in December 2008 which shows Guede and his team being quite nimble in adjusting the stories he was telling.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/the_defendants_high_stakes_blame_game/

.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 02/12/14 at 06:02 AM | #

OT:

AK is getting ‘jobs’ offered. AFAIC: Room given by Italian Justice Industry. :-(

Posted by Helder Licht on 02/12/14 at 02:30 PM | #

We talk with informed observers in Italy a lot, especially those going back to 2008 and 2009 who have by far the best takes before Preston and Sforza and Heavey pushed the FOA toward the seriously weird.

Things shared by those who really deeply investigated Guede (obviously not Burleigh) confirm they think he was set up on the night (he certainly was not one of those with a knife, and the cleanup tried to aim things at him) and he has been in various levels of panic ever since.

No pressure seems to fully shut him up, several times it made him say quite a bit more, and Italian media are watching him to get to him when they can. If his demonization gets worse, my informed guess is he will say some new things.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 02/12/14 at 02:32 PM | #

BBC Three are repeatedly broadcasting a documentary entitled Is Amanda Knox Guilty next week:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03wd39x

Andrea Vogt and Paul Russell are listed as producers and directors. This is excellent news because the documentary will be factually accurate and balanced.

Posted by The Machine on 02/12/14 at 02:37 PM | #

Agreed Guede will ‘cough’ eventually, but only after he is well clear from prison and certainly not out on day release for study.
He wouldn’t want to queer his pitch as it were.

Posted by DF2K on 02/12/14 at 02:55 PM | #

The International Business News website has published an article about Amanda Knox’s selfie being parodied on Twitter. Yahoo UK have published the same story. Both articles include a photo with a link the wiki website. These articles are worth sharing on the social media websites.

Posted by The Machine on 02/12/14 at 05:25 PM | #

the blatant blaming of Rudy Guede will come back and hit them in the face.  Already started.

Posted by thundering on 02/12/14 at 05:44 PM | #

Yes Your right of course.

Don’t forget that Guede was beaten up in the sex offenders wing of Viterbo prison. My thought is that Sollecto Senior with the full complicity of Giulio Bongiorno or perhaps the other way round arranged for this to happen so that Guede would shut up. Bongiorno has been complicit in so many dirty tricks in all of this that, I would put nothing past her at all in any way shape or form including libel since she has been shown to outright lie in order to get her way. Anything goes with this woman as shown by when she supposedly fainted when she lost the case against the Mafia head who’s name escapes me just now. Then there is the histrionics with the two knifes and so on and so on.
No! Guede was ‘got at’ That of course will come to an end once he is free. However I would
caution since while still inside he is vulnerable.
Perhaps they will try bribery if they haven’t done so already.

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 02/12/14 at 06:44 PM | #

Fully agree, @Grahame Rhodes ...RG is vulnerable, and really, not theoretical.
I think I would suffer from excess caution if I had witnessed someone stick a knife in someone as happened.
It is not thought that he himself was the knife- wielder, I believe.

Posted by SeekingUnderstanding on 02/12/14 at 06:55 PM | #

One thing I forgot to mention. The fact that she was approached to star in a porno flick ($20,000 is really cheap, and is reserved over the hill performers) This does her squeaky clean virginal image no good at all. She has presented herself as a victim, but the American public, being what it is, only proves to the vast majority (if they care at all) just who she really is.

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 02/12/14 at 06:59 PM | #

The Huffington Post has now picked up the story of the Twitter blacklash against Amanda Knox’s selfie:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/12/amanda-knox-twitter-selfie_n_4774911.html

Posted by The Machine on 02/12/14 at 08:04 PM | #

I guess Amanda must have used her animal charm on Guede quite effectively but not sufficient to keep him quiet for so long!

I still cannot figure out a plausible reason for Guede to be present on that night.

But one thing is certain: drug dealers themselves are not really great consumers. I understand that he was not having his own mobile phone and therefore his role as a drug dealer is rather suspect.

You can see their personal profile in their art of lying. Guede makes sure that every lie he says is understood clearly as a lie on the spot.

I think both Guede and Sollecito worked under a kind of - spell. They did not know- honestly speaking- what they are doing!

Posted by chami on 02/12/14 at 08:55 PM | #

@chami

“I still cannot figure out a plausible reason for Guede to be present on that night.”

Perhaps it’s not complex? Maybe it’s simply that when they found themselves released from mundane engagements, our star-crossed and drugged duo envisaged some fun and a hazing (similar to Knox’s Seattle escapade). Bear in mind AK seems to have spent a lonely, funless Halloween - how annoying that must have been for a narcissist.

Leaving RS’s pad they ran into Guede. He was easily persuaded to join the innocent-sounding high jinx, then the downward spiral and tragic consequences followed.

Just a hypothesis. I may have missed something that makes this implausible - if so I’ll happily be corrected.

Posted by Odysseus on 02/12/14 at 09:46 PM | #

@ The Machine

The Twitter backlash has become a real storm.  Knox must be kicking herself for her “brilliant” idea of the placard - it lends itself beautifully to manipulation.

There is now a FB page called Amanda & Raffaele Perugia vi odia (A & R Perugia hates you), born directly from the stupid meme La Knox put on Twitter.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Amanda-e-Raffaele-Perugia-VI-ODIA/675154922526751

Posted by Tiziano on 02/13/14 at 05:33 AM | #

Her recent attempts at self-promotion are further indications that Knox is simply not very bright.  The correct thing to do, and almost certainly what her Italian lawyers would have recommended, would be to keep her head down and stay off the internet.  Allow her legal representation to speak for her.

Don’t hold up dim-witted signs that directly go viral as 4chan parodies.

Posted by Stilicho on 02/13/14 at 05:42 AM | #

The AK meme is whooshing around the world!  It shows how intelligent the convicted murderer is.

Charles Mudede has written about it on his blog.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/02/12/knoxs-selfie

And from next Monday we will have the three part BBC documentary examining the Meredith Kercher case.

http://www.digitalspy.com.au/british-tv/news/a550750/is-amanda-knox-guilty-documentary-for-bbc-three.html

Posted by Tiziano on 02/13/14 at 08:17 AM | #

I always vaguely wondered if Guede just turned up at the flat as he was prone to do according to comments from a couple of the boys who lived downstairs. It’s not hard to believe that this could have happened if you consider that it was a public holiday and Guede may have been at a loose end and decided to see if the boys were home and if they wanted to hang out.

Posted by jhansigirl on 02/14/14 at 12:47 PM | #

@Stilicho

If she had an ounce (how many grams that makes?) of brain, she would not have committed the killing. There are certainly easier way to fame.

She is getting the publicity, if that is all she wanted, but hardly the desired kind.

You need to have some minimum amount of grey matter before you can listen to reason.

I am quite sure that her lawyers did explore this avenue- mentally handicapped to stand trial- but the little darling would not have nothing of that!!

That is what I call karma.

Posted by chami on 02/15/14 at 02:20 PM | #

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