As a campaigner for liberty, and a sucker for damsels in distress, I was looking to work up a piece in defence of Amanda Knox.
Incarceration is a horrible thing. We lock up far, far too many people in the UK. Punishment is necessary in society, but there are innumerable other forms of punishment possible apart from prison. The only real reason I can think of to lock somebody away is that they pose a physical danger to others; why we lock people up for non-violent property crime I have no idea, especially as in the vast majority of cases the cost of incarceration is greater than the value of the property which was stolen.
But I am genuinely sorry to say that the more I researched the more I came to the conclusion that locking up Amanda Knox is rather sensible. Having previously simply seen the odd bit of news coverage, I am quite sure after further research that the balance of that reporting has been rather kinder to Amanda Knox than she deserved.
She gave a series of lies to the police about where she was at the time of the murder, and has no corroborated alibi. She did not just (as news reports I have seen implied) suggest to the police that it may have been Patrick Lumumba, she actually told them that she was present in the flat when he murdered Meredith. Lumumba – who it is worth stating is entirely innocent – had many witnesses to the fact he was in his bar all evening. Knox later changed her story back to not having been in the flat that evening at all.
She also claimed that the next morning she came back to the flat, found a broken window and blood on the floor and wall, and Meredith’s door locked, but did not call the police or in fact anyone. Instead she took a shower and washed her hair in a bloodstained bathroom. Rudy Guede’s unflushed faeces now eight hours old and presumably pretty smelly – we in the toilet, and it was one of those ledge ones so they sit above the water. She didn’t flush them, but showered, brushed and blow dried her hair all standing in the small bathroom next to them.
That tiny detail is for me a clincher that her story is untrue. Yes, it is of course physically possible to wash brush and blow dry your hair right next to a pile of someone elese’s faeces, but do you know a girl who would do it?
The glass from the broken window had fallen on top of belongings of another flat mate that had been strewn around the floor, and had not been strewn around when the flatmate left that afternoon. But the glass landed on top of the strewn around things. So the strewing around was not done by someone who broke in through the window. The window breakage therefore looks like a later effort to simulate burglary.
Knox testified that she had been worried when she found the blood and the broken window and no Meredith, so she had phoned several times to check if she was OK. Phone records show that she had phoned each of Meredith’s phones, but only once – and for three seconds and four seconds respectively. That is less than two rings.
Knox was leaving the flat with a mop and bucket when the police arrived. She had not called them and Meredith’s body was still locked in its bedroom. Police had been alerted by finding Merdith’s phones, apparently flung out of her window. Knox had a mop and bucket with her which she said she was taking to her boyfriend’s house to clean up a pasta spill. When police got to his place, everything was newly cleaned – with bleach – including the knife which matched one of the wounds. Have you ever cleaned a knife with bleach?
So the white charger is staying the stable on this one. The defence are making much of the fact that Knox had no motive. But what precisely is the motive of the Perugia authorities for setting her up meant to be? Chillingly, someone who worked with Knox in the US and is Jewish said that Knox, who has German ancestry, taunted “My people killed your people! My people killed your people!”
That does kinda seem a bit odd. So the ‘sex game gone wrong’ is perhaps better termed as ‘violent rape & murder’? Hmm… what a bloody waste of all their lives.
Oh, and having just caught my 4th rat on Saturday evening (pretty sure chinmey’s completely bust or they’re coming through from my neighbours house from the wood across the way – bloody good year for rats) I have often cleaned knives in bleach, and plates, and cups, and anything else vaguely contaminated – it’s enough to send anyone bonkers! Horrible little twats – still, haven’t killed any of them yet but my restraint is being sorely tested (although they ate the poison and came back for more – err.. that’s not right!!)
Small correction… did you mean ‘Knox’ instead of ‘Know’ (twice) in the final paragraph?
Dick, get a cat or 3
Apologies in advance: wildly off-topic but Dick may be interested in a tip for rodent control I heard on the radio a while back.
You need a jar of vaseline and some of the strongest chilli powder available. Mix vaseline and chilli powder into an evil paste, then smear it liberally round the holes where you think your unwanted visitors are getting in.
Horrible they may be, but rats are apparently rather clean and lick themselves regularly. If they get any of that paste on their fur they lick it off and…well, you can guess the rest. Not sure what becomes of them but I understand they never return.
I was rather unimpressed by the initial prosectution claim of Satanic rituals, which gave me no confidence whatsoever in the case.
When a satanic panic is raised, it’s often without any evidence whatsoever of guilt that that person is guilty of a crime or that a crime has been committed at all.
That a crime has been committed is obviously beyond arguement, but if the guilt lies with Ms. Knox then it’s a singular exception in the satinic panic history.
Ooohh – some sound advice there – thankyou very much. I’ve been all through the trap sophistication and at no point are decent cages a false economy – you defo get what you pay for. Thankyou very much again.
Somewhat related point – came to learn from someone who studied in Perugia the year prior to this murder that Patrick Lumumba is a very well known and popular member of the community there.
So when it was revealed that Knox and her boyfriend had falsely accused him of being at their house (and so implicated him as the black guy involved in the murder), that turned local opinion squarely against them. Then when their sickly bizarre behaviour in the small hours after the murder was revealed, as well as the frequency and brashness of their lying to the police, I don’t think the guilty verdict came as too much of a surprise.
Glad you didn’t dive into a righteous diatribe here, there’s way too much fishy and really quite disturbing about this case, and I don’t think Knox has come close to telling the truth about what happened.
What throws me is Miss Knox’s response to the violent death of her flat-mate. I have three daughters and one son in this age group. The three eldest lived in (one still lives in) student accommodation with house-mates. One will start university in a year’s time.
If any of my kids found one of their housemates brutally murdered in their house the anguish, breast-beating and tears would have gone on for weeks if not months. This little lady posed with smiles, did cartwheels in front of the police, then went shopping for underwear. Either she is unhinged, a cold killer, or both, and she belongs in a supervised institution to protect the rest of the world and especially herself.
In the States now there are campaigns to boycott sales of spaghetti, tinned Italian tomatoes and Chianti wine. This is ridiculous.
As a parent with sons and daughters in circumstances comparable with those of this poor girl from Coulsdon, I feel so much for the family who need our sympathy and support.
Lets face it Foxy Knoxy has had more pricks than a pin cushion!
Nedbel,
Yes. That of course is one reason I am rather sorry she has to be locked up.
I can’t say I’m convinced, especially when the forensic evidence produced by the prosecution more than reminded me of that which was initially used against Barry George and Barri White in this country, which was later shown to be worthless. That, along with no motive and the apparently fairly conclusive guilt of Rudy Guede, makes me sceptical at best of both Knox and Solliceto(sp?)’s guilt.
Septicisle
I am a great fan of your beautiully argued blog.
Well, its very difficult to get forensic evidence when everything has been scrubbed with bleach.
I always maintained Barry George’s innocence; that was a terrible miscarriage of justice I worried about right from the initial conviction. All my natural sympathies are with the accused.
But Knox’ production of repeated and completely inconsistent lies about where she was at the time of the murder and her strange behaviour the next day cannot simply be wished away. I really do wish they could.
If you think she didn’t murder Meredith Kercher, you must think she was doing something else, presumably somewhere else. Cam I ask where and what?
There’s plenty of people locked up for murder in this country for offences where “joint enterprise” is the determining factor.
She didn’t have to do the killing herself. She merely had to be party to actions which she might have known would lead to it. A knowledge of the presence of the knife has been deemed enough, in English courts.
Her lies, contradictions and attempts at cover up after the fact, and blaming innocent others would condemn her even further.
But now we have to listen to the tedious whining of Americans and even Billary that the nasty EyeTies have done over a good all American girl.
Bollocks!!
If she’d been prosecuted under the Anglo Saxon system in the US she’d have no reputation left whatsoever, and her PR efforts wouldn’t even get a look in.
She’d be portrayed as evil incarnate against the Virgin Mary Merideth, and have no life even when released.
As it is, she’ll be out when she’s 35 if not before, have cuddles and visiting rights with her family three times a week and can look forward to a bit of celebrity, Oprah, books and dosh when she goes back home.
I don’t want to come over all holier than thou, but what all you wankers fantasising over this femme fatale need to ask yourselves is; could you sleep easy at night, in bed with Amanda. Wouldn’t you be worried she’s just the teeniest weeniest bit weird?
So far as I can see, Meredith was more attractive, more sensible, a more considerate person and probably make a better partner and companion.
OK you might have to work a bit harder, but maybe that’s why…
Poor Amanda Knox. So it won’t be the dashing Craig Murray who gallops to her rescues. Some other chap then.
This case stank from the outset – satanic rituals – the murder of an undergraduate by another undergraduate.
Statistically undergraduates don’t do a lot of murdering although they do get murdered from time to time. Not to suggest that criminal cases should be decided on probabilities, but when something with as little precedent as this is posited, some hard evidence might be persuasive.
Add the satanic element – the face-of-an-angel-soul-of-the-devil stuff and we’ve descended into another, primitive and dreadful world where anything is possible.
Surely murder (outside of places like Uzbekistan), is a mundane affair. The person most likely to murder you or be murdered by you is your spouse.
Amanda Knox’s actions and statements to the police are confused and contradictory. I’m not sure this is so surprising.
‘If you think she didn’t murder Meredith Kercher, you must think she was doing something else, presumably somewhere else. Cam I ask where and what?’
Is the onus really on the defence to say what.
‘What throws me is Miss Knox’s response to the violent death of her flat-mate.’
It’s probably what threw Mignini – along with the irresistible idea of a neurotic, sexually promiscuous, American female on the loose. One so far sunk into moral depravity, that according to the Daily Mail, her diary was full of thoughts about sex. I rest my case.
As for your unworthy end piece, ‘Chillingly, (nice word – Ed) someone who worked with Knox in the US and is Jewish said that…..’ Oh do come on.
Amanda Knox may be a loud, self-obsessed bratish
American of the kind that all good Europeans love to hate. (Heavens, she may even have made an anti-semitic comment when drunk.) But that doesn’t deserve 26 years in jail. A good spanking maybe.
On the motive thing.
I don’t know why people are saying there’s no motive.
I thought it was quite clear that her motive was to sexually humilate someone she thought a goody two shoes.
What many Brits may not appreciate is that Brits of 21 are much more emotionally and sexually mature than Americans of the same age, and this is particularly true of middle class white Americans.
Many middle class Americans grow up in very conservative and sexually repressed environments with severe restrictions on alcohol consumption etc, so when they get to Europe they’re letting it all hang out in the way many Brits have already got over by the time they’re 21.
Brits are typically going through this stage at 14/15/16.
Amanda from her American cultural perspective had probably assumed that Meredith was repressed and had been so all her life and this annoyed her, immensely like really immensely, but didn’t appreciate that Meredith had been though it all before and just thought Amanda very childish.
“…you must think she was doing something else, presumably somewhere else”
Perhaps her original statement to the police, later withdrawn, that she was in the flat but not directly involved in the murder, was close to the truth. This might also explain her panicky attempts to clean up the crime scene the following day when it dawned on her that she would be implicated.
Being an accessory to murder is indeed a serious crime but it usually carries a lesser sentence than murder itself.
I don’t find the conviction totally satisfactory because the evidence on which it is based is rather flimsy. The case was also rather badly handled by the police, who themselves were responsible for the destruction of key evidence.
Interesting response from an American perspective, to a rather simplistic Q&A in The Independent:
“Many Americans, contrary to media portrayal, do not wish to protest this verdict. We believe the Italian court did the right thing. Europe is seeing the U.S. through its media, and it’s important to remember that the Knox family hired a professional PR firm. Many (if not most) Americans are grateful to the Italian court for its difficult decision and for being merciful. Also, many of us sincerely hope that the politicians stay out of it. There are so many real details about the case — facts, events, witnesses, timelines (and, yes, Amanda’s lies) — that we don’t hear about in our news.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-big-question-should-italian-justice-be-in-the-dock-over-the-conviction-of-amanda-knox-1836076.html
My sympathy is entirely with Meredith’s family. I think Amanda Knox is guilty of (at least) collaboration.
I was taken aback at the coverage on Sky News, immediately after the convictions. They gave at least as much coverage to Amanda Knox’s family (if not more?) and did quite a long interview with her aunt.
I had a sense of deja vu. I felt implied criticism (by Sky) of how the case was handled by the Italians, and this reminded me strongly of the criticism of the Portuguese authorities in the McCann case – although that criticism was very outspoken and not just implied.
Just because a judicial system is not identical to our own, does not mean that police and prosecutors in the other jurisdiction are twits. But they will be portrayed as such in the USA — where innocent people have been sent to the electric chair, and 50 people have been executed so far in 2009. Perhaps little Amanda should be grateful she wasn’t found guilty in the USA.
Actually, Alex..
Ms Knox did make that statement. Check out:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=504236
In the article you’ll find a former co-worker’s take on Amanda Knox:
“You know,” Matthew said, leaning toward me, “a lot of people are saying she is a sweet girl and they can’t believe she could have done such a thing. But, to be honest, I’m not surprised she is a suspect. Really. The first time I met her, when I got the job here, she asked me if I was Jewish. I told her I was. She then screamed: ‘My people killed your people,’ and began laughing hysterically. I didn’t know what to say. She just kept laughing about her Germans killing my Jews. After that, I did not like her. She really freaked me out.”
She deserves much more than 26 years.
It’s all very straightforward now.
If Knox is not guilty to any part in the murder of this innocent girl, Meredith, then she needs to come clean and tell the truth about what went on that night and explain why she lied about events and tried to cover them up.
Let’s hope she takes the opportunity of the appeal to do precisely that. She’s putting the dead girl’s family through further torture.
If she’s innocent, she’ll simply tell the truth and ordinary people will be able to work out for themselves whether it makes sense.
Oh yeah, and forget the professional PR team this time. We know they lie for a living.
She could of course submit her innocence to question on the stand in the anglo saxon manner, and then she’d be tried according to her tribe in the medieval way.
The Italians have been very easy on her, allowing interventions and speeches by her on points whenever she wanted without any cross examination whatever.
This little lady has already been given more leeway than anyone would ever get in the US on similar offences.
It’s disgusting that Meredith’s family have to go through this charade to appease American hegemony.
Marina,
Oh. Conclusive evidence, then.
For laughing about Germans killing Jews she deserves much more than 26 years?
I though this was about….
Oh never mind.
Craig,
I did read your stuff about Ghana, and I agreed with the vast majority of it…
But I also followed the links to some of the criticisms…
And you replied that the first MP for Oldham was right…
And so I got even deeper into English history as a result of what you were saying about being lonely in Ghana
And vronsky gave the most wonderful reply..and I thought there is no way I can compete with that….
So just keep doing what you are doing. You do realise that you just have to do this…
Yes I completely applaud your efforts to bring more cheap energy to the people of Ghana – and your understanding of the importance of Agriculture..
Craig, Sometimes You Really Surprise Me, with what a completely lovely and intelligent human being you are
Thank You,
Love & Peace,
Tony
PS – I was pissed off – because The Film Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines Was on TV at around 6:35 in the morning. I had set my SKY+ to record it – whilst I was clearing up from a party in our house that my friend had been to.
Her Uncle Derek Piggot (still alive and well and Flying) not only taught me to Fly, but he was also the stunt pilot in the film
Philius: I don’t think so, mainly because we know conclusively how many sexual partners Knox had had (7) as in prison she was told she had HIV and was asked to make a list of her lovers. This incredibly personal information was then, naturally, leaked, and could have been a ruse all along as further tests showed she didn’t. This whole supposed sex or jealousy motive doesn’t make the slightest sense, as alluded to above. Do undergraduates really kill each other simply because they don’t always rub along the right way, which by all accounts is how the relationship between the two was, just general annoyances with one another?
As for the alibi, I always thought that Knox’s story was that she and Solliceto were at his place or somewhere having sex or at least having the evening in; if that’s been disproved I probably haven’t been playing close enough attention. I also thought that the knife that supposedly had the DNA connection to Solliceto or Knox didn’t match the wound to Meredith’s neck, but maybe I’m wrong about that as well…
To septicisle:
My argument is that Amanda found freedom in Perugia, and her emotional and sexual desires had been repressed in the US.
This led her to an over expression of these repressed desires.
It led her also to assume that someone like Merdedith who didn’t share this over expression of sexuality and desire was a person who was still repressed and that Amanda could release her from her repression.
Meredith who had gone through sexual release and freedom at an earlier stage and could now reflect on the problems of such over exhuberance in sexual and emotional matters found Amanda childish.
This annoyed Amanda, who thought herself very grown up, indeed she thought her sexual exuberance the very symbol of adulthood.
Amanda had no way of knowing that Meredith’s British experience made her more mature than Amanda and she assumed Meredith’s attitude to be akin to those who repressed her in her teenage years.
Amanda decided to impose some sexual liberation upon Meredith and sought assistance to this purpose and it lead to Meredith’s murder.
Philius
Apologies for butting in but
you’ve been too much of your namesake’s work and not enough of the court reporting in your local newspaper.
Undergraduate flat sharers don’t murder each other however much they annoy each other because ultimately they are free. Free to move out.
It’s when the person who annoys you is also married to you and there’s a six- month old baby that the pressures begin to build.
Your stuff about US vs UK levels or sexual repression sounds like piffle – or have you been conducting some research of your own?
Akheloios said –
“When a satanic panic is raised, it’s often without any evidence whatsoever of guilt that that person is guilty of a crime or that a crime has been committed at all.”
Knox or no, the above statement is perfect bullshit. The evidence for organised Satanism is relentless and massive. That the media endlessly pushes a simplisitic buzzword message of ‘hysteria’ and ‘panic’ says more about the media than anything else.
Anyone who wants to argue, go here –
http://www.whale.to/b/pedophocracy.html
If you don’t want to read it all, take the shortcut and just click ‘Part VI – Finders Keepers’. I absolutely guarantee it’ll knock your socks off.
Craig
For an extensive and intelligent analysis of the Knox case try
http://missrepresented.net/blog/?m=200903
and when are you back in norfolk?
Alex,
Knox has siad she was in Sollecito’s flat more often than not. But she has also said (in a handwritten statement to police) that she was in the flat when Meredith Krecher was murdered by Patrick Lumumba, even adding the detail that she put her fingers in her ears to block out the screams.
Lumumba of coure turned out to have a cast iron alibi to have been elsewhere. Knox later retracted and went back to her story of being at Sollecito’s.
The trouble is that Sollecito has maintained throughout that she was not there, and three different eyewitnesses saw her in town.
Alex, with great respect I think you are buying into a media campaign against the ordinary Italian people of Perugia.
One other person who appears to have lost out badly in all this is Rudy Guede. He submitted himself to a fast track trial with the possibility of a reduced sentence if found guilty. He received a longer sentence than either Knox or Sollecito.
As Ali G would say “Is it because I is black?”
I wonder if he doesn’t have a good case for an appeal of some sort – either against his conviction or at least against the sentence.
Forgot to add: great piece Craig. How is it that you can summarise the salient facts much better than all the hacks who have written on this case? Many of the details you mention did not appear in any of the articles I read: as a result there is still a belief out there that those clumsy Italians are responsible for a miscarriage of justics against a poor defenceless slip of a girl.