Thursday, September 20, 2012

Dr Galati: Here On American TV Tonight Raffaele Sollecito Apparently Commits Felony Defamation

Posted by Peter Quennell



Right now, Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian, is swanning around the United States with the apparent sole purpose of making his home country look bad.

As he is still accused of murder and other felonies until the Supreme Court signs off on the case, and accused felons are normally never allowed to enter the US by Immigration, it seems Sollecito could be here in the US illegally.

This video above was recorded from the Anderson Cooper news program on CNN at 8:45 pm tonight.

Here Raffaele Sollecito claims to have been abused and threatened by interrogators and claims that the same thing happened to Amanda Knox. He implies that he held out for hours, and that Knox was interrogated for 10 hours.

This seems to our lawyers precisely the same kind of invented malicious claim against interrogators which has resulted in both Amanda Knox and her parents being sued for felony defamation (calunnia) by police officers present when she was interrogated.

We know that both Sollecito’s own father Francesco AND HIS LAWYER Mr Maori have just indicated on national Italian TV that Sollecito was lying when he made this and other claims in his book. He has zero evidence to prove it, and he cannot point to anyone who abused him.

Sollecito had more than four years at trial and appeal and on national TV and privately with his lawyers to lodge such charges of abuse - and yet he never did. Not once did he ever advance them even though they might have got him off.

He did not even mention it in his nationally televised interview in Italy soon after he was released. He had to come to America to start making it - as blackmail, to make the Knox forces get him a resident visa?  .

What do we believe really happened?  This is from our July 2009 post on Sollecito’s many alibis.

Sollecito was asked to return to the police station on 5 November to answer some more questions. He was at that time confronted with telephone records that proved that he and Amanda Knox had lied previously.

So for his third alibi, which now cut Amanda Knox loose and implicated her, Sollecito claimed that he was at his apartment all evening, and that for part of the evening Knox was out, from 9 pm to 1 am.

In my previous statement I told a load of rubbish because Amanda had convinced me of her version of the facts and I didn’t think about the inconsistencies…..

Amanda and I went into town at around 6pm, but I don’t remember what we did. We stayed there until around 8.30 or 9pm.

At 9pm I went home alone and Amanda said that she was going to Le Chic because she wanted to meet some friends. We said goodbye. I went home, I rolled myself a spliff and made some dinner.”

He goes on to say that Amanda returned to his house at around 1am and the couple went to bed, although he couldn’t remember if they had sex.

How did things proceed from there? Did Sollecto or his lawyers claim that he had been tricked or abused into a “confession” ? No…

This third alibi was undercut by Amanda Knox when she took the stand and testified. She stated that she was with Sollecito at his place all night.

It was also contradicted by the forensic evidence presented by the prosecution: the four separate pieces of forensic evidence that placed him in the cottage on Via Della Pergola on the night of the murder.

This third alibi was also undermined by the telephone records and by the data taken from his computer.

Sollecito claimed that he had spoken to his father at 11 pm. The phone records showed that to the contrary, there was no telephone conversation at this time, though Sollecito’s father had called him a couple of hours earlier, at 8.40 pm.

Sollecito claimed that he was surfing the internet from 11 pm to 1 am. Marco Trotta, a police computer expert, testified that the last human interaction on Sollecito’s computer that evening was at 9.10 pm and the next human activity on Sollecito’s computer was at 5.32 am.

Sollecito said that he downloaded and watched the film Amelie during the night. However, Mr Trotta said that the film had been watched at around 6.30 pm, and it was earlier testified that Meredith returned to the cottage she shared with Amanda Knox at about 9 pm.

Sollecito claimed that he had slept in until 10 am the next day. There was expert prosecution testimony that his mobile phone was actually turned on at 6.02 am. The Italian Supreme Court remarked that his night must have been “sleepless” to say the least.

This alibi was undermined by the eyewitness Antonio Curatolo, the watcher in the park above the house, who testified that he saw Sollecito there.

From 2007 to 2011 Solleceto was rather notorious for NOT reaching out to Amanda Knox during trial and appeal and for NOT fully supporting her alibi. He has never retracted the statement that she was absent from his house from 9:00 pm to 1:00 am on the night Meredith was murdered.

This may be giving the Knox-Mellases some grins. They despise Sollecito, and they know full well of his treachery toward Amanda during trial when his own lawyer Bongiorno repeatedly blamed Knox (scroll down). They are presumably appalled at his loose lips and dishonest book which mess with her own prospects. . 

the book’s title is a living lie. There is nothing honorable about him. And he is acting treacherously and cowardly toward his own country.

Comments

CNN is struggling in the ratings at third place. It rarely broadcasts news but has taken at least three points of view in its opinion shows on the case.

1) Anderson Cooper and Jane Velez Mitchell (who will interview Sollecito tomorrow) have long been PR shills for the Knox PR campaign. Videos we had up have gone.

2) Ken Jautz was worse. He went to Perugia and interviewed Mignini - and then twisted the outcome by leaving most of what Mignini said un-broadcast. We translated all of Mignini, and he comes across as a great guy.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/dear_ken_jautz_of_cnn_Full_CNN_Interview_With_Mignini_that_cnn_should_1/

3) Nancy Grace the popular legal anchor in prime time (her ratings are higher than Anderson Cooper’s) to her great credit said in October 2011 that there had been a miscarriage of justice. That comment went viral.

“I was very disturbed, because I think it is a huge miscarriage of justice,” Grace said. “I believe that while Amanda Knox did not wield the knife herself, I think that she was there, with her boyfriend, and that he did the deed, and that she egged him on. That’s what I think happened.”

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

You presumably wont see Nancy Grace interviewing Knox or Sollecito any time soon. You might not like her but if she got back on the case with her caustic nightly commentary, the lovebirds would be toast.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/20/12 at 06:25 AM | #

Is it true that ‘everyone else’ who was interviewed had an attorney?

If he had ‘no idea’ that he was a suspect, then why did he tell Katie Couric yesterday that he was uncomfortable when Amanda wanted to climb into his lap and make out at the police station - not because that was weird or inappropriate on her part- but because they were constantly being watched by the detectives?

Posted by Formerlurker on 09/20/12 at 09:15 AM | #

Hi Formerlurker

Right. Good catch. Nobody else had a lawyer. A made-up FOA meme that they did “lawyer up” which Anderson Cooper somehow picked up on.

Nobody else was giving contradictory stories. Nobody at all was officially a suspect. Knox wasnt even called to the police station on 5 November.

When things flew apart for them that night, the interviews with both were stopped till they could get lawyers, and there were no further questions that night.

Knox demanded to make a further statement, and Mignini stepped in to observe, but asked her no questions.

He didnt ask her any question all that night as he wasnt even at the pre-midnight interrogation. .

Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/20/12 at 11:51 AM | #

On this “honor bound” angle re Knox that Sollecito keeps slobbering about.

There was NO honor. From AK’s angle and her family’s he was a consistent self-centered rat for four years. He looked out for number one and that was it. His choice or his father’s? Probably both. Interviewers should call him on it.

There is plenty of evidence for this. Here is one item. During appeal his own lawyer Bongiorno had been painting him as weak and wishy-washy and incapable of deadly initiatives - and Knox as quite the opposite.

He could have pulled Bongiorno back, as her client, but apparently never did. It came out publicly that a seeming desperate Knox wanted a private discussion with Sollecito at Capanne (to plead to coincide alibis?) but they only ended up exchanging notes.

On 2 October 2011 we reposted this report by the Associated Press which they filed with a seeming nudge from the Sollecito team.

Even in Sollecito’s native Italy, it is Knox who commands the most media attention. Two prominent celebrity and gossip magazines, “Oggi” and “Gente,” put Knox on their covers during the final week of arguments in the appeals trial, and newspapers characterize him as being in the background.

Not even prosecutors have portrayed Sollecito as the main protagonist in the murder of Meredith Kercher on Nov. 1, 2007. According to their version, Sollecito held Kercher from behind while Knox stabbed her and another man tried to sexually assault her. Ivorian immigrant Rudy Guede was convicted in a fast-track trial and saw his sentence cut from 30 years to 16 years on appeal.

Attention during the investigation focused intensely on the two young female roommates as the world and prosecutors searched for a motive. Knox was portrayed as sexually promiscuous and lacking inhibition, while at the same time working hard to support herself and trying to learn Italian; Kercher was depicted as more serious and studious, who had at the end of her life began to chafe at her American roommate’s sloppiness.

The good girl/bad girl dichotomy drove headlines across the globe, while Sollecito — the mild mannered boyfriend — was largely overlooked in a supporting role.

It’s a role that his defense lawyer plays up. Sollecito is the son of a wealthy doctor from southern Italy who hired a crack legal team to defend his son. It’s led by Giulia Bongiorno, who successfully defended former Italian Premier Giulio Andreotti on charges of mafia association.

“It’s not by chance that Raffaele arrived in this trial as the boyfriend. Nothing connects Raffaele to the crime,” Bongiorno said in her closing arguments last week. “With a girlfriend, you usually get a family. Raffaele got a murder.”

She said the few pieces of evidence in the “Amanda-centric” trial relate to Knox, not to Sollecito. “Nothing connects him to the crime,” Bongiorno said.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/20/12 at 11:56 AM | #

The guys a complete and utter bare faced liar, the more I see and here him actually speak, the more I feel repulsed by this man.

You can fully expect his father & their legal team to go into overdrive now, they need to stop him speaking out, and also do some major damage control, you can tell by his fathers reaction on Porter Porter that he knows his son has once again dropped himself in the mire with his lies & contradictions.

I bet their is some heated phone call exchanges between father and idiot son.

I also was not aware, that everyone else who was interviewed had a attorney present.

Posted by Jeffski1 on 09/20/12 at 11:58 AM | #

When I saw the interviews Rafaelle has given recently, I was reminded of the interviews Joran van der Sloot gave in the US about his involvement with Natalie Holloway. Rafaelle has the same lack of expression on his face and also looks like someone who doesn’t understand how he comes across in the US. He also seems to have the same attitude as Joran, something like “everybody is not as fantastic and smart as me and I need to constantly prove this to myself by putting myself in the limelight”.

Like someone said in earlier comments, it is so telling that he doesn’t vocally point the finger to Guede as the bad guy. Instead of sticking to simple answers (which is easy when you innocent)he seems to try and give nuanced grayish answers to the questions of Couric and Cooper. Since his command of English isn’t nearly good enough to do this, his answers seem a little incoherent to me. I personally was a somewhat disappointed that I wasn’t able to properly weigh his answers because of his limited ability to respond.

Can anyone comment on how Rafaelle comes across in Italian. Does he use complex formulations in his wording? Is he direct in answering questions or is he as evasive as he seems in his recent interviews? Does he come across as lacking emotion in Italian interviews?

Posted by carl on 09/20/12 at 12:16 PM | #

Hi Carl.

Smart perception. Once you start with Joran you can find other killers with this same telling “catch me if you can” attitude. Ted Bundy had it. Very often it drops them in it.

Sollecito only did one national TV interview, in Rome late last year, and there was apparent strong agreement beforehand on questions that would not get asked.

He came across as evasive and whiny and narcissisti,c and the audience reactions and reviews all appear to have been negative. He really is disliked there.

His spoken and especially written Italian are regarded as mediocre.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/20/12 at 12:37 PM | #

Hi Jeffski

We have readers from Italy here every morning. Francesco may now be among them. (Enjoy the YouTube Francesco.)

We may know if Francesco has been burning up the phone lines to Raffaele later today (thursday) when Sollecito is due to be interviewed by Jane Velez Mitchell, also on CNN.

Watch to see if he repeats what he said to Anderson. If he doesnt, Francesco may have re-assumed some control. 

Right now though Raffaele is the very definition of a loose canon.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/20/12 at 12:43 PM | #

Hi Pete,

It is all simmering along ready to come to the boil, all that is needed is one of his interviewers to grow a pair, have the transcripts of his official written statements at hand, and ask him just one or two of those awkward questions.

KC done better than I think any of us expected, but just one or two of the more awkward questions and she would have had him.

He would fold straight away, and it would be gold in TV viewing terms, we need Nancy Grace on the case, but unfortunately Sollecito’s handlers would not let her within a mile of Mr liar.

Jeffski

Posted by Jeffski1 on 09/20/12 at 01:36 PM | #

The interviewers would have to go off script. I assume his publishers have got him a publicist. They are negotiating on permissible questions - the excuse will be the prosecution appeal.

So an interviewer would have to deliberately ambush him. Not impossible by any means because who are they going to offend? And what might they get in ratings.

Of course, doing the interviews in English is a big advantage. Any inconvenient questions can be too much for his english.

To my eyes he came across as narcissistic. I hope he manages to self-incriminate.

Posted by harrym on 09/20/12 at 03:32 PM | #

Hi harrym

Interesting points. Here are some things we know about the book promotion.

1) Publishers and publicists of Honor Bound dont have a whole lot of potential interviewers interested in giving Sollecito valuable screen time. Ratings for CNN are weak, as described above.

2) His team seem to be hiding the fact (or unaware of it - the book sure seems unaware of it) that there is this very tough prosecution appeal heading down the pike. Interviewers find that out on their own.

3) Katie Couric was angry when she found about about the appeal and chopped the scheduled time for Sollecito Tueday in half and chopped the guests down to one.

4) She certainly went off any agreed script (rather as Kermit suggested she would!). Four or five of her questions were the same as we had suggested below.

5) The Honor Bound book is becoming a nightmare for the Sollecito family in Italy. They are desperately trying now to explain some of the lies, as the book moves into Kindle distribution. .

6) Francesco Sollecito appeared on the wildly popular one hour Porta a Porta show this week (we have the video in Italian). Despite his talking his head off, all the others on the show left his lame explanations decimated.

7) Perugia officialdom were already looking at legal action against the parties to the book, and videoed statements like Sollecito’s at top are like smoking guns for them. Gee, thanks Raffaele.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/20/12 at 04:28 PM | #

The two Italian flatmates were working for a law firm and I think they received sound legal advices- but they had excellent alibi also.

Follain never mentioned that “everybody else” who were interviewed had an attorney present. I am sure that RS is not telling the truth.

Call me a cynic but what the detectives told him (around 2 min in the video) has turned out to be true. What an irony!

I think the detectives were actually trying to help him. The only mistake they did is that they did not realize that he is beyond redemption!

Poor brother! Poor sister!!

best wises to brother and sister (you may need tons of it).

Posted by chami on 09/20/12 at 04:38 PM | #

At one point he said:

¨It seems to be crazy, but it is!¨

Posted by Helder Licht on 09/20/12 at 05:13 PM | #

He could have said:

¨I knew Amanda for eight days, but once they (Meredith and Amanda) were at my house for dinner. We had a laugh when I played a conductor of an orchestra and by accident I pricked her hand with a big knife. I will always remember that, because after all she wnet by a knife. Since then that evening became a lot more important to me.  Meredith was special indeed.¨

Posted by Helder Licht on 09/20/12 at 05:26 PM | #

Hi Chami

“Call me a cynic but what the detectives told him (around 2 min in the video) has turned out to be true. What an irony!... I think the detectives were actually trying to help him. The only mistake they did is that they did not realize that he is beyond redemption!”

I watched that segment about the disloyal whore again and it really made me laugh. If true they must have known Sollecito had been a virgin and so they got to work on his jealousy quotient.

As Hopeful observed in the post below, he’s trying to come across as noble but reeks of jealousy and spiteful payback. Par for the course among the Knox groupies except only that he did make it with her, briefly.

The little King Kong from hell. “If all this chest-thumping doesn’t result in a prostrate half-clothed Amanda in front of me RIGHT NOW the whole temple will be coming down!!” Not to demean King Kong of course. Fine fella. Met a sticky fate in NYC…

Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/20/12 at 05:50 PM | #

At 12 today on the Fox network Anderson Cooper did a longer interview, rolling over for any silly claim by Sollecito and Nina Burleigh who was in the front row of the audience.

Burligh blamed it ALL on Guede (not even Sollecitos own lawyers did that, and ther Supreme Coiurt sure didnt) and some inanities about a Madonna Complex that made all of Italy target Amanda Knox.

Clander downloaded the video (you can watch it on PMF) and we will see if there is anything new that we have not anticipated or rebutted in other posts. Sollecito sure seems to be digging himself in deeper. His father must not be getting a lot of sleep.

All our open questions to RS and AK will soon show here on two new pages of their own.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/20/12 at 08:08 PM | #

I had thought he claimed in the AC interview and or his book that he himself was interrogated for 10 hours—from around nine in the evening until eight the next morning.  Was I incorrect about that?  I cannot view the video from where I am.  The post suggest that he only said he held out “for hours” and that it was Knox who was interrogated for 10 hours.

The distinction is important (even if Sollecito’s start time is off by an hour and a half).  If Sollecito says his own interrogation lasted ten hours then that means he alleges that the police already had two signed statements from Knox before he broke her alibi.

Can someone clarify this point?

Posted by Stilicho on 09/20/12 at 08:41 PM | #

The 10 hours could refer to him though the Anderson Cooper question is actually about AK’s interrogation and how she could have been made to imagine herself at the house.

Sollecito is responding sorta hypothetically or genericaly. He says something like “you are interrogated for 10 hours, no sleep, etc”. He did say “you”.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/20/12 at 10:54 PM | #

On a lighter note, I’d be curious to know if he’s still cleaning his kitchen knives with bleach, or if that was just a one-off.

Posted by Spencer on 09/21/12 at 12:59 AM | #

@spencer,

I am also curious about Amanda’s cartwheels. I would be very happy to know that she had a stressfree (or cartwheel free) life since then!

Seriously speaking, as a student of computer science, he should be good in logic. And she should be good in creative imagination. Well, the less said about their talents is better.

Most people should be able to make their own conclusions. No news from our friends at IIP for a long time!

Stanford women are responsible for the success of many Stanford men:
they give them “just one more reason” to stay in and study every night.

Posted by chami on 09/21/12 at 04:55 PM | #

@Pete:  Sollecito is responding sorta hypothetically or genericaly. He says something like “you are interrogated for 10 hours, no sleep, etc”. He did say “you”.

———

Again, I haven’t viewed the entire interview and have little compulsion to do so.  However, your reply suggests to me that Sollecito feels he is speaking for Knox as well as himself.  Or perhaps instead of for himself.

Does he also do this in the book?  I am especially interested in his timeline of the evening of 05-NOV until the morning of 06-NOV.  When was he legally made a suspect under Italian rules?  Was it at around midnight?  Was it at 03:30 when his statement was signed?  Later?  Earlier?

I think you can see why it is important whether he is literally or “hypothetically” discussing the events of that evening.

Posted by Stilicho on 09/21/12 at 08:35 PM | #

Re the 10 hours I think it is a hypothetical question but I also think that he supplies snippets from his own interrogations - ‘whore’ etc. 

These interviews are unmasking him - and Amanda - in the USA.

The Knox clan ‘grinning’, Pete?  I’d say.  They must be gritting, grinding and gnashing their teeth.  If not wailing.

Surely Amanda has watched these interviews yet she is singing to him on Skype?

And just where is Raffaele living now?  Is he scheduled to return to Italy any time soon?  That’d be some homecoming!

But the interviewers - apart from Jane Venez-Mitchell - are definitely showing caution and some scepticism which is refreshing. 

Perhaps now that they have the prospect of one of the pair in the flesh before them they are conducting a little research before the show.

Posted by thundering on 09/23/12 at 01:16 PM | #

Hi Thundering

“The Knox clan ‘grinning’, Pete?  I’d say.  They must be gritting, grinding and gnashing their teeth.  If not wailing.”

Yeah I’d maybe change “grins” to “death grins” now given how this is tanking in Italy (next post).

There are internal signs that the hatchet-men of the Knox-Mellases were solidly behind the book and many of their mantras are there. Saul Kassin was just a dry run.

Now RS’s book is being received critically in the US,  being ground into 1000 lying pieces on PMF and here, and freaking out Sollecito’s lawyers and his dad (we have even money on Bongiorno walking).

The Knox-Mellases surely see they have chained themselves to a tiny chest-thumping King Kong who is running amoke.

Smart move! We think he will be back in Italy way sooner than he wants.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/23/12 at 03:29 PM | #

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