I have been lurking on these forums for a little over a month. After today's events, I had to break down and register. This saga is just infuriating to my sense of a logical and rational world of law. I know it does not exist, but every case like this further erodes my misplaced faith (hope?) in justice ultimately prevailing.
I started following this case around mid-November of 2007. I got all of my initial information from the British press. At first, I wondered why they thought she was involved, and I felt they were really playing up the "ugly American" angle for the UK audience. I wondered if she was really one of the perpetrators. My healthy skepticism of the tabloid coverage (I have visited the UK numerous times in the last decade and a half) was overwhelmed by the deluge of negative press for AK, and I started to think she was involved in the alleged orgy/murder. When I stopped paying attention PL was a main suspect, and RG was just being mentioned but not by name yet. I still thought AK might not be involved, because the coverage seemed so slanted to play up AK's guilt that I wondered if the overkill was overcompensation for lack of real evidence.
I brushed up on the case when AK and RS were convicted in 2009. I just read the Wikipedia entry. From reading that, it seemed like they were guilty due to the DNA evidence and the way it was written on Wikipedia at the time. Although, the case the prosecution presented was much different than the one that was printed in the press when I was reading about the case back in 2007.
Then I saw the Lifetime movie in February of this year, and thought there were many discrepancies in the film from the actual facts of the case. If I remember correctly, they portrayed MK as living in the apartment before AK, when AK moved in first in reality. A minor change, but the film seemed intent upon casting AK in a more unfavorable light than the facts would suggest. A much more significant change was that RS was portrayed as calling the police after the Postal Police had arrived which was very damning to RS and AK. I think the portrayal of AK was extremely unfortunate due to the fact that many people in the US will assume that the film is relatively accurate, and that she is the person the film presented.
After watching the film, I watched an on-demand Lifetime "documentary" of the case and Barbie Nadeau was one of if not the featured talking heads that discussed the case. She mentioned many facts I found pertinent in the case that would cast doubt on AK and RS's involvement. After listening to her, I got the sense she thought the state did not make its case, because I found it difficult to square the evidence she relayed with a guilty verdict. However, she stated towards the end she thought they were guilty. I found it very odd and became really intrigued with the case.
Which lead me into the Pandora's Box that this case is on the web. All of the ills of Western civilization are exposed by this case: cronyism, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and numerous others. Almost every single notable person that is involved in this case has skin in the game to promote their pro guilty or innocent book or website. I find it extremely maddening and disheartening. I just want to know who killed Meredith Kercher.
I started at the True Justice for Meredith Kercher site, but I found their pro-prosecution bias overwhelming if not downright nauseating. It is fine to support a verdict but to be so gleeful about it is unseemly. Then to compound their bad manners, they are boorishly disrespectful of anyone that is not enamored with the verdict or questions any element of the prosecution’s actions. Their cavalier <modsnip> responses do nothing in terms of attaining real and lasting justice for MK. If anything, they are attempting a fool’s errand to build a citadel on the faulty foundation of the first trial.
Then I went to the pro-AK sites and was almost equally disturbed. Many half-truths and character assassinations are presented to deflect potential holes in the defense of AK and RS. If you are interested in this side of the case, I have found Ron Hendry and Mark Waterbury to be the most credible. Bruce Fisher and Steve Moore seem as unhinged and unreliable as Peter Quennell and Will Savive do on the other side.
The crux of the problem seems to be that people have to present themselves as experts on this case, and if you do that you have profess that is overwhelmingly evident that AK is guilty as sin or as innocent as Mother Theresa (not good example for Christopher Hitchens fans). However, if you are an honest analyst, no sweeping judgment like that is really possible if you look at all the evidence, because you have to ignore too much information that does not fit tidily into those confining conclusions.
<modsnip>
But Amanda Knox’s story also has significant inconsistencies.
First, the reason given by Amanda Knox for which she would return to the house in Via della Pergola 7 on the morning of November 2 does not appear credible. She states that she went back home to change her clothes, take a shower and fetch the mop to dry the floor.
Since she knew she and Raffaele had made plans for a trip to Gubbio on November 2nd, she could well have brought the clothes with her that were going to be needed for the next day, and there were no circumstances shown that, occurring and unforeseen, may have given rise to such needs; on the evening of the same November 1st, she had already showered and washed her hair at Raffaele’s house, and therefore it is hardly credible there is a need to repeat both those actions, and it is not understandable why, in addition, she would have to repeat all this somewhere else and not where she already just had a shower and washed her hair, especially since for the scheduled trip it would have been advisable to save time. (p.85)
http://truejustice.org/ee/documents/perugia/TheMasseiReport.pdf
First of all, this reminds of the confusion over the colloquial farewell “see you later” which in the U.S. means goodbye and until we meet again (indefinite frame), not literally I will see you later that evening, night, etc. (definite time frame). I know in France and other parts of Europe it is customary for many if not the majority to bathe/shower less frequently than in the U.S. The judge finds it unbelievable that a woman would shower/bathe after having showered the day before. This guy does not know U.S. college girls. I know many that showered in the morning and showered again in the evening if they were going out that night. Really, he finds it inconceivable that a young woman that was about to meet her new boyfriend’s parents for the first time would want to shower after having smoked illegal drugs and had sex the night before? I find this to ludicrous reasoning. He also finds it hard to believe she would want to shower in her own apartment? I find it very much like the behavior that my girlfriends exhibited in college. I also remember in college not utilizing the most efficient time management when we had a holiday road trip. I mean she lost approximately 10 minutes showering in her apartment if they had been able to leave for their trip.
Reading this report, Massei comes across as having a template for how a good young woman should comport herself, and if AK fails in Massei’s ideal of a young woman her failure to live up to Massei’s unrealistic representation is portrayed as nefarious.
This really comes across in how he tries to pigeonhole AK’s relationship with RG as a friendship when I would describe it as a tenuous acquaintance at best.
It has already been stated that Rudy Guede was acquainted with the inhabitants of via della Pergola, and that he had a good relationship of friendship and fun with them (with all of the boys from downstairs; with Amanda, in whom he had actually shown some interest; and with Meredith). (p.48)
http://truejustice.org/ee/documents/perugia/TheMasseiReport.pdf
So according to Massei RG was “good friends” with AK and MK.
Moreover Rudy did not have access to the key to the house at 7 Via della Pergola and he did not have special visiting relationships with the girls from upstairs, where it does not turn out he had ever gone, and thus there was no reason at all that suspicions about what had been done to Meredith, about whom, it must also be observed, he had never manifested any interest, should have been directed towards him.
…
Under other circumstances, it seems unlikely that Meredith, alone at home at night (her coming home as has been seen took place no earlier than 21:00 pm) would have opened the door to the house to Rudy and let him come in.
Indeed, she had only had occasional meetings with Rudy, while she was with others and never alone. She did not talk about Rudy, and her English girlfriends declared that they did not know who he was and that Meredith had never said a word about him. 58
Besides, if Rudy had asked about Giacomo Silenzi or some other of the boys downstairs with whom he had some relationship, it would have been enough to let him know that there was nobody there, thus removing any reason that Meredith may have had for letting Rudy come into the house.
And even if it is admitted that Meredith could have allowed Rudy into the house, since Rudy went into the big bathroom (the one next to the living room) and all the action of the violence took place in Meredith’s room (it is enough to consider that in that room the body of the victim was found, her clothes torn and removed, the blood) and that there are no signs indicating a different place for the action of the violence, it must be hypothesised that Meredith, alone in the house at night (after 21:00 pm) allowed Rudy to enter the bathroom and went back into her own room.
This too is [47] an unlikely hypothesis: the front door was defective and it would not have been enough to pull it in order to close it: consequently Meredith would have had to take herself from her own room into the living room and from there to the entrance door to lock up as soon as Rudy, leaving the bathroom, called her to say he was going away.
Better to wait in the living room and thus prevent Rudy, who was coming out of the bathroom, from being able to take himself into Meredith’s bedroom and try to make a ‚move‛ on her.
..
Such a cunning scenario cannot be traced back to Rudy Guede, who on the other hand, entered the house through the entrance door, without any [48] breaking in or forcing, but with the agreement of whoever had available the house and the key to the entrance door.
Whoever permitted Rudy Guede to enter the house that night was not Meredith but others who also had the house available and could freely gain access to it. (p.57-59)
http://truejustice.org/ee/documents/perugia/TheMasseiReport.pdf
Then when it suits his narrative, there is no earthly reason that MK would let Rudy in to the apartment. It must be his other “good friend” AK. Yet, Massei has no idea how MK could let him in the apartment. However, Massei surmises AK would not only allow him in the apartment but conspire to murder and sexually assault MK along with RS whom no one has ever been able to confirm RG had ever met before that night.
Neither, AK nor MK had any real relationship with RG. AK is damned, because RG stated an interest in her. There are other examples (I am too lazy to find them all), where Massie infers a relationship due to RG’s interest. It reads as a very sexist perspective, and I don’t know if it is due to Massei’s age, Italian machismo, or something is lost in the translation. However, it is very demeaning that if a man shows interest in a woman they have a “good relationship or friendship”.
The whole report reads like these excerpts. There are numerous incidents: the break-in, the cell phone activity, the heroin dealer/informant “eyewitness”, RG’s criminal activity, the non-existent purchase of bleach, etc. which are open to interpretation about how they are occurred. They are almost all coin flips (could have been a break-in or it could have been staged) at best, and every time Massei makes the coin land on its head. The bleach incident is not even a 50/50 proposition; I think it is highly unlikely that incident happened, since there were bleach bottles at both AK’s and RS’s residences, and the forensic team testified that the crime scene did not appear to have been scrubbed.
This Court deems that the testimony of Quintavalle is reliable. It was discovered that Inspector Volturno did not ask Quintavalle if, on the morning of November 2, he saw Amanda Knox in his shop.
He was asked – so Quintavalle recalled - about purchases made by Raffaele Sollecito. Mr. Quintavalle did not say anything about having seen Amanda Knox on the morning of November 2, 2007 in his [76] shop because he was not questioned about this and because, as indicated by Quintavalle himself, he considered this fact to be insignificant.
He later spoke about having seen Amanda Knox because a young man who used to live above his shop, who he knew, Antioco Fois, had just graduated and had become a freelance reporter for the newspaper Giornale dell’Umbria. When he passed him, he would sometimes ask: "But do you know anything? Did you see something? Did you hear something?" So one day Quintavalle told Fois that he had seen Amanda Knox on the morning of November 2; later he decided to go to the Public Prosecutor’s Office because Antioco Fois convinced him that this fact might be important.
Consequently, the fact of not telling Inspector Volturno about seeing Amanda on the morning of November 2 and the fact of having come forward only after having been convinced by Antioco Fois about the possible significance of this event, do not reduce the reliability of the witness, since these facts do not affect the genuineness of the memory.
Conversely, it is worth observing that the witness gave a precise description of what he saw on the morning of November 2 and also provided a description of certain physical features of the woman he saw (light blue eyes and pale face) which, together with the unusual time, may well have fixed in his memory what Quintavalle said he saw. In addition, it should be added that one evening prior to November 2 and shortly after 20:00 pm, he noticed the young woman when she came into the shop with someone he knew well (Raffaele Sollecito) after the shop had closed. To this it should be added that witness Ana Marina Chiriboga, at the time an employee in Quintavalle’s shop, said that Quintavalle asked her whether that morning she had seen Amanda and Chiriboga answered no (page 74, hearing on June 26, 2009). This question necessarily presupposes that Mr. Quintavalle had seen 85
Amanda Knox that morning. And since he did not know whether or not she had bought anything (see above-mentioned statements by Quintavalle, hearing on March 21, 2009), he was asking his employees in order to gather information on that subject.
These elements contradict the version provided by Amanda of a peaceful night of continuous and prolonged sleep that she and Raffaele allegedly spent together; elements which also show a peculiar condition in which both Amanda [77] and Raffaele must have found themselves: at 5.32 am, Raffaele Sollecito went to his computer and listened to music for about half an hour; he also turned on his cellphone; at 7.45 am Amanda was already out of the house and entering into Quintavalle’s shop, showing a particular urgency to buy and do something; the trip to Gubbio had by now been forgotten and when Francesco Sollecito phoned his son at 9:30 am about that trip, his son was still in bed.(p.84-85)
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Amanda and Raffaele were seen together, constantly and by several people on November 1, 2007: Filomena Romanelli and her boyfriend Marco Zaroli had seen them together in the afternoon in the house in Via della Pergola; Jovana Popovic saw them together in the house in Corso Garibaldi.
Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito lived, in those days, like in symbiosis, as if they were a couple according to what has already been presented. (p.87)
http://truejustice.org/ee/documents/perugia/TheMasseiReport.pdf
Two pages dedicated to support unreliable testimony from a person paid by the Italian press for his exclusive eyewitness account. Then, a short mention that the other coworker contradicts the person who had a financial incentive to testify. Not to mention this incident destroys Massei’s contention throughout the report that AK and RS were unable to do anything independent of each other during the time of these events.
The whole report reads like this passage. Pages of unsubstantiated reasoning contorted to fit contradictory and convoluted facts. Steely Dan wrote an album about this type of thinking called “Pretzel Logic” back in the early 1970s. I have no idea how people can be so sanctimonious about this report and profess any claims of AK’s and RS’s innocence are refuted by this document. I suspect many have not read it at all, and those that have read it hope no critical thinkers are able stay awake long enough to finish it.
For the appeals process, it seems like a show trial that Mussolini would have been proud of back in the early 1930s. Heilmann is lathering on a veneer of verisimilitude on this pig, but truth is just something to be manipulated to satisfy the masses. Overturning the original verdict seems about as likely as Meredith Kercher ever getting any real justice.
