The Amanda Knox hate group wiki is deceptive
The Pro-Guilt Campaign
The trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are more than a miscarriage of justice. The facts of the case are clear and are set out on this website and elsewhere. People who believe they are guilty do so for a number of reasons, some in combination. They are:
1. Confirmation bias: There is a tendency for people to accept the first thing they learn about a subject and then refuse to believe subsequent information if it appears to contradict this. First impressions can be overwhelming. Nobel prizewinning psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains this phenomenon in his best-selling book, ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’. There can be little doubt that the Kercher family has found it impossible to view the case rationally because they were informed within days of Meredith’s death that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were her killers. They were also advised to commence civil proceedings against Knox and Sollecito immediately – even before charges were laid.[1] The Kerchers’ own legal team, with its own financial interest in guilt, has continued to counsel them. It is doubtful that any of the Kercher family or anyone who advises them has ever studied the case with an open mind.
2. Biased media coverage: Media coverage of the trials was superficial and biased with hours of witness testimony reduced to a few quotes in news reports, often not even accurately. Many articles about the case failed to mention the real killer Rudy Guede, or if they did, it’d be a single line at the bottom saying: “Rudy Guede, a drifter from the Ivory Coast was also convicted for the murder in a fast track trial and is serving a 16-year sentence”. Even correspondents like John Follain, formerly of the London Sunday Times, who was based in Italy and wrote a book about the case, deliberately misrepresented the writings of Amanda Knox, selectively edited prison transcripts of private conversations, and tailored his reporting of the questionable evidence presented in court to favor the prosecution. The British Daily Mail, which runs the most popular news site on the internet, devoted its resources to paying photographers to stalk Knox around Seattle when it could have easily hired investigative reporters and published the facts of the case.
3. Wikipedia: The online encyclopedia is the first port of call for many people including journalists wanting information about the case. The Murder of Meredith Kercher article was controlled by a clique of pro-guilt editors, mainly based in the UK. Eventually Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales was forced to intervene and changes were made. Despite this, the page is still unsatisfactory and many reliable sources are excluded. We expand on this below.
4. Respect for authority: Some people have a natural tendency to believe that persons accused of a crime are always guilty. This stems from a respect for authority. They find it hard to accept that law enforcement professionals who investigate crimes could ever make a mistake or might even be criminals themselves. Judge Giancarlo Massei presided over the first trial which led to the wrongful conviction of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann looked at the same evidence on appeal and concluded the case was a house of cards built on junk science, unreliable witnesses, and conjecture.
5. Intensive online pro guilt campaign involving numerous websites: The unprecedented publicity that this case generated not only attracted the attention of innocence campaigners, it also saw one of the largest and most relentless pro-guilt campaigns in the history of the internet. A conspiracy theory website appeared within months of the murder, ostensibly in tribute to Meredith Kercher. In reality, it promoted a hate agenda directed at Knox and Sollecito and mimicked the prosecution in seeking to minimize the role of Rudy Guede. That site was accompanied by a forum that later split in two after an argument between the founders. A further development was the creation of a ‘fake’ Wiki site.
The Fake Wiki
The website address is: themurderofmeredithkercher.com
The fake Wikipedia-style website egregiously misrepresents the facts about the murder of Meredith Kercher, the investigation, the evidence, the trials, what the witnesses said, and the history and background of the case. The misleading website is owned by an obsessed anonymous blogger who uses the alias “Edward McCall”. When we say obsessed, we mean OCD obsessed. During the Florence trial and for 6 months after the verdict, this person was using 4 accounts to tweet links to his site 18 hours a day, every day, sometimes every 2 minutes. What would motivate someone who has no connection to the victim, her family, or any of the parties involved to basically dedicate their life to smearing 2 defendants in a criminal trial in a foreign country? The answer is hatred.
The fake wiki website was tweeted thousands of times to journalists and media outlets around the world as if it’s a credible source. It’s also listed on Google page 1 under Amanda Knox and is one of the first websites people come across when looking for information about the case. We watched in disbelief as news organizations like ABC News cut and pasted straight from the website into one of their articles after the Florence conviction as if the information was accurate. They rewrote the article after we called them out on it. We’ve also seen pseudo reporters like Aphrodite Jones use factoids from the website as talking points to say why she thought Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were guilty. Lastly, we’ve seen dozens of people turn up on Facebook, Twitter, internet forums, and in comment sections repeating all the lies straight from the website. Put simply: the website dupes people.
Here’s the kicker: people are being duped by a charlatan who claims to be Jesus. The main editor who wrote a lot of the content on the website is a guy called Naseer Ahmad who posts on the internet as “Ergon”. When not smearing Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito on Twitter and the hate forum he moderates (PMF.net), he spends his time leading his “disciples” on his blog, “ManfromAtlan.com”. You see, Naseer believes he is God. In fact, he boldly proclaims himself to be the “Messiah Jesus Christ” from a planet called Atlan. You can read more about Ergon here.
The use of the Wikipedia format gives casual readers a sense of security, as most have no idea that the template, called MediaWiki is available for anyone to use. The real case article was hijacked early on by a small group of biased agenda editors who controlled a one-sided article for years with skillful abuse and manipulation of the editing rules. Anyone outside of the group who attempted to edit the article had their edits reverted and told their citations weren’t credible. To give one example: for nearly 2 years there was no mention of the fact the luminol stains on the floor tested negative for blood — it simply wasn’t allowed in the article. Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, finally stepped in and commented there had been a “systematic exclusion of reliable sources” and asked for the article to be rewritten.[2] After the page was cleaned up and achieved a more neutral point of view, the new fake wiki was created in an attempt to continue deceiving the public and journalists.
The other editors of the site are regular contributors at 3 cult-like anti-Amanda Knox hate sites, two of which are called “Perugia Murder File” (PMF). PMF split into 2 separate groups (.org and .net) because the original moderators couldn’t get along and started hating on each other. The activities of the anti-Knox hate group have been well documented. Author Nina Burleigh reported on the group in an article entitled: “The Amanda Knox Haters Society: How They Learned to Hate Me Too.” Best-selling author Douglas Preston wrote about the group in his recent Amazon single: “Trial By Fury: Internet Savagery and the Amanda Knox Case.” And Bruce Fischer wrote about the group in his book: “Finding Justice in Perugia”. You can read the complete chapter here.
The fake wiki presents an extreme made-up fantasy version of the prosecution’s case. The primary listed sources are old newspaper articles with false information in them, the Massei report, and “TrueJustice.org” (TJMK), a tabloid-style conspiracy theory blog run by eccentric New Jersey pensioner Peter Quennell. If it was an objective source, it would detail the Hellmann report in the same fashion as Massei, translate defense witness testimony instead of offering deceptive summaries, and provide English translations of the Conti-Vecchiotti report, Rudy Guede’s depositions, and his Skype chat with Giacomo Beneditti where he said: “Amanda had nothing to do with it because I fought with a male and she wasn’t there”. Lastly, instead of using old inaccurate tabloid articles from hacks like Barbie Nadeau, they’d translate the actual witness testimony so people can see exactly what was said and decide for themselves.
Here are the facts: For some unknown reason the fake wiki has cut and pasted all of the trial transcripts from the original Italian downloadable PDF’s (ie the court documents which we provide) onto pages. It’s entirely possible witness answers have been altered or Q&A sections removed. The roles of people involved in the investigation have been mixed up: for example, the opening of the luminol page reads “On December 18, 2007, Deputy Commissioner Maurizio Arnone and Chief Inspector Claudio Ippolito went to the cottage to spray luminol” yet Arnone and Ippolito were the video and camera guys who filmed the inspection and certainly didn’t spray any luminol because they had no qualifications to do so.[2]
The “Amanda Knox Confession” page says “Around 11:30 pm Monica Napoleoni, the head of the homicide department at the police station, approached Amanda Knox in the public area.” yet it was Rita Ficarra who approached Amanda not Monica Napoleoni.
The Patrick Lumumba page says Meredith Kercher worked at Le Chic which is false.
There are dozens of similar factual errors. Points and arguments made by expert witnesses at the trials have been outright made up or mixed up. There are lots of hints about officers smelling bleach at Raffaele’s apartment but what they don’t tell you is his cleaner testified she cleaned the apartment with lysoform on November 5 and the officers merely smelled a freshly cleaned apartment. They mix up the different knife samples and all of the science regarding the DNA evidence. Lastly where they really seek to muddy the water is regarding Amanda Knox’s all night interrogation.
Oddly, despite their own behavior, the pro-guilt group often accuses Injustice in Perugia (IIP) of hiding information. The truth is IIP provided the primary sources they claim were hidden on our discussion forum for years and posts new documents as they become available. As mentioned above, we also operate Injustice in Perugia, the most comprehensive website detailing the case, providing case files, high-resolution photographs, crime scene video, and expert analysis. If the pro-guilt wiki wanted to be honest they would acknowledge the case files and high-resolution crime scene photographs they have cataloged on various websites were provided by the side of innocence.
Media
Conspiracy theorists latch on to Meredith Kercher murder Croydon Guardian, November 2008
Why Does Wikipedia Host the Amanda Knox Guilt Project? by Candace Dempsey
The Amanda Knox Case: A Rare Failure at Wikipedia by Joseph Bishop
The Wikipedia Convention and Amanda Knox by Joseph Bishop
Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito, Wikipedia and Gaming the System by Nigel Scott
Perugians, And Tabloids, And Trolls! Oh My! by Karen Pruett May 2013
Target Amanda Knox: The Smear Campaign That Ruined Her Life by Karen Pruett June 2013
Anti-Amanda Knox Blogger Edward McCall Turns Down Offer To Defend His Deceptive Website On Live Radio Program November 2013
Some Ramblings on the Fringe By John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, April 18, 2014
Journalistic integrity questioned once again in the Amanda Knox case by Bruce Fischer, March 3, 2015
HarryRag and the garbage truck by Nigel Scott, September 2015 – “Under the guise, ‘The Machine’, he was also the driving force behind another larger hate site, ‘True Justice for Meredith Kercher’ (TJMK). This was destined to become the primary focus for an online war against Knox and Sollecito. It was launched on August 25th, 2008 by eccentric New York pensioner Peter Quennell. The groundwork for TJMK was laid down as early as January 2008 when Quennell visited Italy. He later wrote a series of irrelevant essays about the country and published them on the site. Quennell was also an online sex predator who attempted to trick a young ballerina into having a relationship with him. Fortunately, she was able to extract herself from his clutches. Despite his questionable hobby, Quennell has continued to edit TJMK.”
A Blog From Russia: Naseer Ahmad and the “internet freaks” obsessed with Amanda Knox by TokyoJoe, October 2015
References:
[1] Crime and punishment, Italian-style by John Hooper. The Guardian, October 2008 – “Is it blood money? Many in Britain were shocked to learn that lawyers for the parents of Meredith Kercher, the Leeds university student murdered last year while studying in Italy, were seeking €25m (£19m) damages from her alleged killer. In Italy, no one was surprised, even if some did think the amount excessive.
[2] Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales reviews page about Amanda Knox for inaccuracies March 2011. Wiki page “Murder of Meredith Kercher” being scrutinized for anti-Knox bias by Wales
[3] Arnone-Ippolito-Transcript (OCR) page 84 – PM Comodi: Now I wanted to clarify the following. The two gentlemen that we have called today, the first being Arnone and just now Mr. Ippolito, are those who actually took these videos and the photos of the second site visit, they did not carry out any analysis, because the collection of samples, evidence collection, etc, wasn’t done by them, they only recorded it.