The Amanda Knox & Raffaele Sollecito Case
This website is no longer being updated. Some images may not be available. You can visit www.injusticeinperugia.org for additional information. Both websites now serve as archives for the case.
.
| May 16, 2014 Nencini Report Analysis |
September 07, 2015 Supreme Court Motivation Report |
February 04, 2016 Boninsegna Report – Dismissal of Callunia -bis |
April 29, 2016 ECHR communication regarding “Charge F“ |
About Amanda Knox Case
This is an Injustice Anywhere website about the murder of Meredith Kercher and trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. It was set up to archive the case files, inform the public, and document and analyze one of the highest-profile miscarriages of justice of the 21st century. Our grassroots organization has been presenting the facts about the Amanda Knox case since early 2010. Links to our websites are in the menu on the right. You can follow us on Twitter at @NJusticAnywhere
The case was called the ‘Trial of the Century’ and saw 2 movies made, thousands of articles written, and dozens of books and documentaries, yet very little of the coverage was based on the facts established at the trials nor did the media show much interest in the actual killer Rudy Guede who slipped under the radar after he was convicted in 2008. This website sets the record straight. People are encouraged to read the case files and trial transcripts and to learn about the flawed investigation, the false and unreliable pseudo-evidence, and the arbitrary and illogical Kafkaesque court rulings.
The murder of Meredith Kercher isn’t a murder mystery, a ‘who done it or a fanciful far-fetched conspiracy involving multiple perpetrators. The question we hope people ask is: how could two innocent students, who never should have been suspects let alone convicted, be effectively kidnapped from their families by a malevolent prosecutor and why did Italy’s polizio-judicial system and media go along with it? Italian journalist Alberto Laganà described it as “It was a sort of justice freak show, a sadistic dogged obstinacy against two young people whose only fault was to know the victim …”
Additional elements in the case that have stirred interest include the international aspects, the very obvious procedural flaws, and violations of the defendant’s rights including arbitrary court judgments, discovery violations, and evidence suppression.
For people wanting to learn more about the case, the books written by Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are essential reading.
On March 27, 2015, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were declared innocent by Italy’s Supreme Court. The case is closed! See our Media Archive for all the post acquittal news and articles.
On January 14, 2016, the trial against Amanda Knox for “slandering the police” when she took the stand in 2009, ended with an acquittal because “the crime does not exist”. This decision is final because the prosecution did not appeal.
On April 29, 2016, the European Court of Human Rights accepted Amanda Knox’s complaint against the still-standing Callunia conviction (Charge F) and asked the parties for additional information, especially on the – now final – ruling concerning the second Calunnia (against the police) charge.
Introduction – ‘Case Closed!’
On November 2, 2007, Meredith Kercher, a 21-year old British student studying in Perugia, Italy was found dead in her apartment, in a clear case of homicide.[1] Her housemate, American student Amanda Knox, and Knox’s Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, along with local bar owner Patrick Lumumba, were soon arrested and placed in solitary confinement for the murder based largely on an illegal interrogation and the police junk profiling their behavior. After the arrest of the three suspects, the police held a press conference stating they had evidence all three killed Meredith Kercher because she refused to participate in a “sex game”. They boasted that the case was solid. They were even bold enough to announce “case closed” to the world’s media.[2]
Police Chief Arturo De Felice as quoted in the Giornale dell’Umbria on November 7, 2007:[3]
I have to compliment our men and our women (the interpreters) that in 4 days and 4 nights, with professionalism and integrity, have resolved the case. In these days, we have felt the weight, the pressure of the people of the city, and of the mass media. Everybody wanted an immediate and certain response. It seems to me we have responded, almost immediately.
The problem was, they had barely begun to investigate and process the crime scene. And when that evidence started coming in, the police had a problem. There was substantial evidence pointing to the presence of another suspect, Rudy Hermann Guede, and almost nothing pointing to Amanda Knox, Raffaele or Patrick. There was also another problem: Lumumba had an unshakable alibi. He had witnesses that were with him in his pub all evening.[4]
The authorities, led by prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, should have realized their mistake: it wasn’t a sex game gone wrong but a burglary gone wrong. Local thief and burglar Rudy Guede had broken-in and murdered Meredith Kercher when she arrived home and found him inside her house. But the authorities, who had boldly announced to the media that the crime was solved, refused to admit their mistake. They simply pulled Patrick Lumumba out of their fantasy and plugged in Rudy Guede. They then attempted to find evidence to support their theory and ignored, suppressed and destroyed evidence that didn’t. At the center of the prosecution’s fantasy was a violent sex orgy involving the three defendant’s and Meredith.[5]
Rudy Guede
Rudy Hermann Guede was born in Agouk, Ivory Coast, on December 26, 1986. At the age of 6, he moved to Italy and settled with his father.
He became a suspect in the Meredith Kercher murder investigation after his bloody palm print was discovered on the pillow under Meredith’s body. Guede also left bloody shoeprints in the room where she was killed. His DNA was found inside Meredith and on her bra, jacket, and purse. His DNA was also linked to feces left in the toilet. Two days after the murder he fled to Germany and told a close friend in a secretly recorded Skype chat: “Amanda had nothing to do with it [….] because I fought with a male and she wasn’t there.”
On November 20, 2007, he was arrested in Germany after trying to board a train without a ticket.[6] He was almost immediately extradited back to Italy and confronted with the overwhelming evidence that placed him at the crime scene. He claimed to have been at the cottage on a “date” with Meredith and a man he couldn’t identify killed her while he was on the toilet listening to his iPod. At this point, he knew Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were innocent and probably expected them to be released like Lumumba had been.
At the time of the murder, Rudy Guede was an unemployed criminal on a crime spree linked to multiple break-ins including one almost identical to the one at the cottage. They were:
- Breaking into a local bartender’s apartment in the middle of the night and pulling a knife on him and stealing his credit cards;
- Breaking into a nursery where he was caught with stolen property, a knife, a woman’s gold watch, and a little hammer used for breaking glass;
- A second story break-in at a local attorney’s office where he threw a large stone through the window and stole a computer, cell phone, USB sticks as well as tossing clothes on the floor and going through the filing cabinets. One of the attorneys testified they noticed the photocopier had been used.
The Knox-Sollecito defense teams were never able to question the man who admitted being in Meredith Kercher’s bedroom and covered in her blood about the night of the murder. In his March 2008 deposition at Capanne prison in the presence of his two attorneys, Rudy Guede admitted having his hands at Meredith’s neck as she died.[7] Kercher family attorney, Francesco Maresca, had no questions for him at the Hellmann trial and objected to the defense questioning him.[8] And again at the Nencini trial, Francesco Maresca objected to him being called by the defense to answer questions. The prosecution also never appealed his sentence reduction from 30 years to 16 years knowing he’d get day release after serving only half of that.
The Murder of Meredith Kercher
Rudy Guede admitted leaving his apartment after 7.30 pm and heading to the cottage where he was captured on CCTV at 7.51pm. He left and then returned a short time later and broke in via Filomena Romanelli’s 2nd story bedroom window, smashing it with a rock and tossing clothes on the floor just like he did at the local attorney’s office two weeks earlier. Meredith Kercher arrived home at 9.01 pm and after going to her bedroom to settle in for the night, Guede attacked, stabbing her in the throat from behind. Meredith was positioned on the pillow, suffocated with the blood-soaked towel, and then undressed and sexually assaulted post-mortem. In May 2009, the defense discovered a semen stain on the pillow which the prosecution never disclosed and objected to it being tested throughout the trials.
Rudy Guede stole Meredith Kercher’s cash, keys, credit cards, and phones and left the cottage before 10.13 pm when an incoming MMS pinged off a tower that serviced the Sant’Angelo Park area where the phones were found. Before leaving the cottage, there’s reason to believe he broke in to the downstairs apartment as well for a change of pants and left blood on the floor and bed. Later that night witnesses reported seeing Guede dancing in a nightclub.[9]
How can we say with certainty that’s what happened? Because it’s what the crime scene photos show, the autopsy says and what the timeline and evidence prove. Raffaele Sollecito didn’t know Rudy Guede and Amanda Knox had briefly met him once through the downstairs neighbors. The prosecution’s theory of them randomly teaming up with a guy they didn’t know for a sex game and then by coincidence staging a burglary to look like his modus operandi is absurd.
Amanda Knox & Raffaele Sollecito Alibi
Both were at Raffaele Sollecito’s apartment the entire evening. Computer records show they were watching the movie Amélie between 6.26 pm and 9.10 pm while Amanda waited to go to work at 10 pm. At 9.26 pm, a Naruto cartoon was opened on Raffaele’s computer.[10] At 6 pm Raffaele agreed to help a friend, Jovana Popovic, who dropped by his apartment asking for a ride to the bus station to pick up a suitcase at midnight. Popovic returned to his apartment at 8.40 pm and spoke to Amanda Knox for 2 mins saying she no longer needed Raffaele’s help. Popovic testified Amanda was smiling, cheerful and invited her inside but she declined.[11]
The Motives
For the Italian Supreme Court, it was a “group-led erotic game which exploded out of control”[12]
The outcome of such an osmotic assessment will be decisive, not only to demonstrate the presence of the two defendants at the crime scene, but to possibly delineate the subjective positions of those who acted with Guede, before the range of situations which might be hypothesized, from a genetic agreement on the death option, to the modification of a plan which originally envisioned only the involvement of the young Englishwoman in an unwanted sexual game, to solely forcing her into an extreme, group-led erotic game which exploded, going out of control.
For Giuliano Mignini at the pre-trial, the murder was a ritualistic killing connected to Halloween:[13]
And it must be highlighted that, in any case, for individuals morbidly attracted by mingling sex and violence, it is far from being unlikely the connection of such a project with the Halloween tradition, because, if it is true that the night between October 31 and November 1st had passed (and Meredith had spent it with her fellow countrywomen), it is as much true that, at about 9 pm on November 1st and for the following three hours, it was still All Saints’ Day and that what had not been done on the night of the eve of All Saints’ Day [i.e. Halloween’s night] could be realized on the night between the latter and the Day of the Dead.”
Moreover the three, and particularly Sollecito, were, all of them, addicted to the erotic-homicidal “cultural” suggestions we have talked about and that night was still All Saints’ Day, the catholic “heir” to Samhain, the celtic New Year’s Day, with all the implications having their focus on the eve of the celebration, that is on the night between October 31 and November 1st.
Other motives theorized by the prosecution and judges include theft, hatred, a sex game gone wrong, they killed for nothing, Meredith got upset because Rudy Guede didn’t flush the toilet which led to a fight, Amanda Knox directed the murder from the hallway and Judge Massei’s ridiculous theory in his motivation report where Rudy Guede heard Amanda and Raffaele having sex in her bedroom and became aroused so decided to make a move on Meredith and they spontaneously joined him attacking her. Judge Alessandro Nencini’s fantasy had Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito having sex at the cottage (after already having sex at his place first – yes he writes this in the motivation report) while virtual stranger Rudy Guede roamed around inside and the murder was because of a fight over Meredith Kercher’s stolen rent money.
The Trials
In October of 2008, Rudy Guede was convicted in a ‘fast-track’ trial and sentenced to 30 years in prison, later reduced to 16 years on appeal.[14][15] Witnesses were called and testified he was prone to excess and was often drunk and used drugs including cocaine and would hassle girls stealing their handbags.[16] Other witnesses testified he had stopped playing basketball and was showing signs of mental illness. In December 2014, the Italian Supreme Court confirmed a separate conviction against him for receiving stolen goods in a crime that pre-dates Meredith Kercher’s murder and his sentence of 16 months was upheld.[17]
The case against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito continued according to a standard schedule, and in December of 2009, they were convicted by Judge Giancarlo Massei for participating (along with Rudy Guede) in the murder of Meredith Kercher, and sentenced to 26 and 25 years respectively.[18] US Senator Maria Cantwell issued a statement after the guilty verdict saying:[19]
I am saddened by the verdict and I have serious questions about the Italian justice system and whether anti-Americanism tainted this trial. The prosecution did not present enough evidence for an impartial jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Knox was guilty. Italian jurors were not sequestered and were allowed to view highly negative news coverage about Ms. Knox.
Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s appeal process began in November 2010 and the presiding Judge was Claudio Pratillo Hellmann.[20] In October 2011, after a detailed re-examination of the case — including among other things a highly critical expert review of the DNA evidence — Knox and Sollecito were declared innocent and released immediately after nearly four years of imprisonment. [21] (Knox remained convicted of a lesser crime, calumny, for having accused an innocent person, Patrick Lumumba, of the murder under intense police pressure; for this she was sentenced to three years in prison, less than the time she had already spent there.)
In March 2013, the Italian Supreme Court annulled the Hellmann acquittal and ordered a new trial to be held in Florence.[22] The new trial started on September 30, 2013, and the presiding Judge was Alessandro Nencini.[23] The trial was a farce with only 1 witness called, transsexual ex-mobster Luciano Aviello.[24] There was some testimony about 1 DNA sample from the knife showing once again it wasn’t the murder weapon.[25] All defense requests were denied except for photographs of Raffaele Sollecito’s fingernails[26] Judge Nencini admitted “total ignorance” about DNA when questioning his own court-appointed experts.[27]
In January 2014, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were convicted again.[28] In a stunning admission after the Florence trial conviction, Judge Nencini revealed in an interview with Il Messaggero that jurors were coming to him saying they were confused and what they were hearing on TV about the case was different to what they heard in the courtroom.[29] Nencini’s interviews sparked 3 post-conviction investigations for inappropriate comments regarding the Sollecito defense strategy.[30]
US Senator Maria Cantwell again issued a statement after the verdict saying:[31]
I am very concerned and disappointed by this verdict. I am confident there will be an appeal to closely re-examine today’s decision. It is very troubling that Amanda and her family have had to endure this process for so many years. I will continue to closely monitor this case as it moves forward through the Italian legal system.
The court released its motivation report on April 29, 2014, explaining the decision.[32] In May 2014, now retired Judge Hellmann issued a statement to CNN about the verdict saying:[33]
The Florence Appeal Court has written the script for a movie or a thriller book, while it should have only considered facts and evidence. There is no evidence to condemn Knox and Sollecito. It’s a verdict that seems to me is the result of fantasy and has nothing to do with the evidence.
On June 12, 2014 Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito filed appeal documents with the Italian Supreme Court totaling 450 pages with 24 grounds for appeal.[34]
References
[1] Italian police investigate fatal stabbing of British student The Guardian, November 3, 2007
[2] Meredith, sms, bugie e trace i punti oscuri dell’indagine La Repubblica, November 9, 2007
[3] Giornale dell’Umbria November 7, 2007
[4] CCTV Footage Shows Roommate Entering Apartment on Night of British Student’s Death Fox News, November 12, 2007
[5] Italian prosecutors seek murder indictment against Amanda Knox Seattle Times, July 11, 2008
[6] 20.11.2007, 16:17 – Kriminaldirektion Mainz: Mainz/Koblenz, In Italien gesuchter Tatverdächtiger eines Tötungsdeliktes als Schwarzfahrer festgenommen
[7] Rudy Guede March 2008 Deposition p 56
[8] Hellmann Report: Statements of Rudy Guede paragraph 4
[9] Micheli Report English p19
[10] Sollecito defense computer expert report by Professor Alfredo Milani
[11] Testimony of Jovana Popovic
[12] The Chieffi Report – Conclusions
[13] Giuliano Mignini pre-trial closing arguments October 18, 2008 p 46 & 49
[14] Man sentenced to 30 years for Kercher murder The Guardian, October 29, 2008
[15] Court cuts Rudy Guede’s sentence for Meredith Kercher murder The Guardian, December 23, 2009
[16] Meredith Kercher murder trial: Rudy Guede ‘was violent to women’ UK Telegraph, September 2008
[17] Caso Meredith, Rudy Guede condannato per ricettazione La Nazione, December 9, 2014
[18] Italian Jury Convicts U.S. Student of Murder NY Times, December 4, 2009
[19] US Senator Maria Cantwell releases statement on Amanda Knox case West Seattle Herald, 2009
[20] Amanda Knox begins murder sentence appeal UK Telegraph, November 24, 2010
[21] Amanda Knox Leaves Italian Prison Following Acquittal ABC News, October 3, 2011
[22] Italy’s Highest Court Overturns Acquittal of Amanda Knox NY Times, March 26 2013
[23] Amanda Knox retrial over killing of Meredith Kercher begins in Italy CNN, Septmeber 30, 2013
[24] Transgender ex-mobster tells court her brother killed Meredith Kercher, not Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito News.com.au October 5, 2013
[25] New forensic tests find no traces of Meredith Kercher’s DNA on knife NY Daily News, November 2, 2013
[26] Amanda Knox retrial: judge allows new DNA test on alleged murder weapon – “But, in a blow for Knox and Sollecito, the court rejected almost all their lawyers’ requests for further evidence or testimony.”
[27] Berti-Barni Transcript October 4, 2013 p22-23 – “I think I’ve understood but with all the limits of my total ignorance of the subject”
[28] Amanda Knox Is Re-Convicted of Murder in Italy NY Times, January 30, 2014
[29] Omicidio Meredith, parla il giudice: «Amanda e Raffaele l’hanno uccisa perché quella sera non avevano niente da fare» Il Messaggero, February 2, 2014
[30] Judge who sentenced Knox, Sollecito under fire for remarks CBS News, February 5, 2014
[31] Cantwell Statement on Amanda Knox Verdict Senate.Gov January 30, 2014
[32] Amanda Knox, roommate fought night of murder, court says USA Today, April 29, 2014
[33] Amanda Knox says, ‘I did not kill my friend’ CNN, May 4, 2014
[34] Meredith/ In oltre 450 pagine i ricorsi di Sollecito e Knox contro le condanne Umbria Left, June 16, 2014