As in, a stretch. A real reach.
The Telegraph in the UK reports that Amanda Knox was sexually involved with a cocaine dealer who knew someone else who stabbed yet someone else.
Got that?
This somehow bears upon Amanda Knox’s guilt, because….nope. This doesn’t bear on anything relevant to Amanda Knox’s guilt, even if every word of it is true. There are probably only a few people on the planet that can’t be linked to some kind of criminal act that way; that is, by extension several times removed.
It’s a silly effort at a smear that shouldn’t be taken seriously by anyone. And it’s a sign of desperation.
By someone.
Lawyers on Strike 
Well, let’s be fair here. No one is claiming this is evidence of her guilt. (Not even guilters — they don’t think they need any further evidence.) But it’s not even new news. The police got this number off her cell phone during the investigation. They didn’t even bother to bring it up during the trial. Presumably because it’s not relevant, but maybe also because it actually raises some doubt about her guilt.
Here she’s connected to this drug dealer — probably buying drugs from him, as her bank account was draining at a remarkable rate (she’s posted the bank statements on her own website and talks about the guy in her book). Mr. Dealer just happens to know a guy who stabs people and then her roommate gets stabbed? And police are convinced Guede did not act alone? Hmmm….
I don’t really buy that idea, since there’s no evidence of anyone else’s presence besides the three defendants, but, if anything, it’s more suggestive of her innocence than her guilt.
I sometimes wonder if the Italian authorities even really believe she’s guilty at all. Or if they just know perfectly well that she was present when it happened and, come hell or high water, they are going to wring the truth out of her.
Maybe they’d have gotten the truth in the first place if they hadn’t made such ridiculous leaps in logic and handcuffed her as soon as she started to talk. (Though I did confirm she was not arrested initially for the murder. It was protective custody, so they didn’t believe at the time of her arrest that she was guilty. But, of course, SHE didn’t know that!)
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Hi Jessie, I have some issues with your post and the original article. Frankly, I believe that everything about Amanda’s so called cocaine use is fictional. They claim that Amanda was sexually involved with this cocaine dealer “Federico” and as you said, they found his number in her cell phone. But if you examine Amanda’s phone records, there are no calls to or from this mysterious Federico. Just as there are no electronic records tying Rudy to Amanda.
As for the so called remarkable rate Amanda was spending money, I don’t actually think it was that remarkable. Keep in mind that Amanda was doing a lot of traveling during this period as well as setting up her new domicile in Perugia.
Lastly, there is no evidence of the presence of Amanda Knox in Meredith’s bedroom. NONE.
There is no doubt that someone in Perugia is still trying to demonize Amanda in the media. What their purpose is remains unknown.
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Hello Jessie.
I guess this post had more to do with media follies than anything else. I don’t suppose too many others are paying attention at this point. The real frenzy awaits the final (?) determination by the Italian appeals court, whenever that comes down.
Let’s leave aside the issue of whether AK was present at the crime for now. We’re both in agreement that she’s likely innocent regardless. So stories like the one in the Telegraph are troubling, aren’t they? They help perpetuate a false narrative of guilt that seems to appeal on some sub-rational level to a great many people.
The women in these high profile real life legal dramas – Casey Anthony, Jodi Arias, Amanda Knox – have their lives very publicly limited by this big event that befalls them at a relatively young age. Let’s assume for purposes of discussion that they’re all innocent, even though that’s not legally true for Jodi Arias at this point.
It’s a kind of punishment, isn’t it? Like human branding.
It strikes me as an injustice. But what is to be done?
A legal remedy of any kind is highly problematic, and probably not realistic.
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Jessie, Judge Matteini said that Amanda’s arrest was effected as quickly as it was because Amanda’s mother Edda was due to come into town the next day. In other words they were afraid that Edda would swoop in and deprive them of their prey. It is simply unrealistic to believe that Amanda and Raffaele did not walk into the station that night as suspects.
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Reblogged this on Michellesings's Blog and commented:
The sad thing is who is behind this. Who is responsible for all of this stuff that came out years and years ago (7, to be exact) and were all discredited. Same thing with a CCTV video that the relatives of Raffaele Sollecito went on TV showing a girl who they claim is Amanda. It’s not even close to being Amanda, but desperate times come to desperate measures. If you can’t beat them join them? No. That is not what I believe. I believe they’ve given up on faith that Raffaele will be exonerated any other way. We’re not in his shoes, but I, for one, can’t support things I know that are not true. Again, I’m not in his shoes, but…
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So are you saying that the Sollecito family is behind this in order to distance themselves from AK, to curry favor with the prosecution and maybe receive some consideration? It wouldn’t surprise me, but it would disappoint me. I guess.
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I think there are “some” members doing this, but Rafaelle is now distancing himself from them. He doesn’t want anything to do with Amanda because of the bad press that is associated with her. And yet, there is more good press associated with her than not. So… we’ll see. I’m trusting he’ll do the right thing in the end if at all possible.
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Everybody lied. Its like a glorious game of Prisoner’s Dilemma with organized crime lurking in the background providing an extra level of complexity.
The drug dealer exists, but his name is Daniel De Luna. I assume he has a street name “Af”….short for Affarista? In leaks to media this became “F” by chinese whispers and then recently “Federico” by faked police memo.
Rudy Guede gave an excellent description of “Af” including a white woolen cap, this can be matched to a description of a man wearing a white woolen cap with blood on his hand screaming “I killed the bitch” or “I’ll kill you bitch” into his mobile phone in Piazza Grimaldi in the early hours.
When you add in cat’s blood this has to be the most incompetent railroading in the history of police misconduct – it isn’t even in the slightest bit plausible, it is simply held together by threats, thuggery and the general stupidity and incompetence of the Friends of Amanda.
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Cat’s blood?
Are the “Friends of Amanda” you refer to some kind of organized group or are you just using the term generically? Either way, the contention that they are stupid and incompetent is interesting. Feel free to fill in some blanks if you like.
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There was a trail of blood leading from the upstairs apartment into the downstairs apartment and also around the broken window upstairs. Police agonized for some time on how to deal with this. First Giacomo Silenzi claimed his bloodstained keys had been found in Knox’s room, when that wouldn’t wash, he claimed he had given his spare keys to Meredith to water his pot potplants and induced English friends to suddenly “remember” this and urgently communicate it to the police when they were back in England – (God knows why – they refuse to tell me).
However, since nothing was taken that looked a bit odd also. Eventually they settled on saying their cat’s ear had got wounded in a fight and had bleed everywhere – including around the broken window used to enter the upstairs apartment for the 2nd time in the early hours of the morning. It is, as I said, the most incompetent railroading in history. I am vaguely curious how they managed to pull off the anti-cat IGG test – my best guess is they bribed a lab tech to switch antibodies. But forensics only have meaning if they are carried out with integrity, in the wrong hands they are just as powerful tool to deceive.
As far as FOA goes, one problem of many is that a significant portion of the FOA group had got into their tiny little brains she was guilty and were loudly proclaiming her innocence to gain her trust in the hope she might blurt out something incriminating. Not wishing to point fingers but possibly some of them have now realized their mistake and are wittering on about Tiananmen square.
If you want to see a picture of man with a cast iron alibi who was certain Knox was guilty try this link:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-494740/Merediths-boyfriend-reveals-moment-suspected-Foxy-Knoxy-killed-lover.html
“She gave me a bottle of rum as a present. Most of it was drunk at the party but there is a drop left that I will now keep for ever.”
Heartwarming.
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So, no one looked seriously at Meredith’s boyfriend or his alibi? That’s almost too difficult even for me to accept.
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My understanding is that Mr. Silenzi was hundreds of miles away at the time (that was why Meredith was watering his plants), but I don’t have a link handy. I have seen no positive evidence that it was cat’s blood. On the one hand, there was human DNA found in at least one of these stains. On the other, it could have been cat’s blood landing on previously deposited human DNA. I don’t have a strong opinion on whether or not it was actually cat’s blood.
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http://murderofmeredithkercher.com/batch-one-downstairs-crime-scene-semen-samples-early-exclusion-sollecito-lumumba/ This takes one to a discussion of some of the evidence from downstairs. I agree that distinguishing human blood from cat’s blood would require some sort of antibody-based test (or perhaps a test based on messenger RNA–which might not have even been available in 2007).
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Hello, Chris.
I think the commenter is suggesting that the alibi of “hundreds of miles away” might not be so iron clad, and that no one looked at him all that closely. If that’s true, well, I’m not sure I could be anything other than speechless.
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“That’s almost too difficult even for me to accept.”
It is difficult to determine if Giacomo Silenzi was Meredith’s boyfriend – initially both Amanda and Laura said she didn’t have a boyfriend. In Waiting To Be Heard Amanda appears to claim it was a one night stand. OTOH Giacomo says the night Amanda says they slept together they didn’t and it was a couple of nights later. Amy Frost didn’t testify to anything more than a snog. Jade Bidwell didn’t seem to think he was her boyfriend: ” I thought that at that time he wasn’t really her boyfriend but somebody she liked. ” Jade also believed Meredith felt he wasn’t honest.
In fact the only people who seem certain Giacomo was her boyfriend was Giacomo and the collective boneheads known as Friends of Amanda. Now personally I couldn’t care if she was doing the entire Inter Milan team, however my guess is a snog is all poor Giacomo got. This is why Mignini insisted that the motive was a sex game: “You think you are a saint, we will force you to have sex”. The police just cynically took what occurred with Meredith and Giacomo and friends and placed it into the mouths of Rudy, Amanda and Rafaelle. And they could only know this was what happened if Giacomo or one of his friends told them.
My understanding is he and Stefano claimed they were at their respective parents about 2 hours drive away on the coast (160 kilometers). Given this is Italy their parents would lie for them. In Italy it is quite acceptable to lie to police.
The police on cross examination admitted they hadn’t verified their location using mobile phone logs. The point of the Amanda Knox case is it is a clear cut case of police corruption and bullying – it is not a case of a series of unlucky accidents. So it is no accident that their affidavits were given only the most cursory of checks, the checks were so cursory because the police knew on close inspection they would fall apart. One of Giacomo’s friends – Daniel – was the drug dealer and enough police were getting kickbacks or implicated in the trade to feel they had to cover for him.
The point is not whether you find it too difficult to believe, but rather if Amanda Knox was to testify that they were present would you believe her? Because I know for a fact that the British tabloids are sitting on a CCTV still of her and Rudy turning up at the apartment together and are just waiting for the final verdict before publishing it.
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These are interesting comments but a bit cryptic. Are you arguing that Giacomo is a viable suspect or are you arguing that Amanda was present at the murder scene with Rudy, or both?
If the latter there’s a commenter here named Jessie who has been maintaining that AK was present at the scene but not involved in the murder. And she’s an interesting commenter, too.
And how can you know “for a fact” that there’s a closed circuit TV still like that? Why would the Brit tabloids hold off?
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I assume Giacomo and Stefano are present in the house because the “cat’s blood” trail points to their rooms and their various interviews suggest it. Marco seems more laid back about the matter. Stefano had a girlfriend who might have been present.
Giacomo would have been involved in the “sex game”, but I am not sure if he did the murder.
Amanda, Rafaelle and Rudy all give statements like they are under duress – see Amanda’s 3 statements of the 6th and Rudy’s German Diary, his Skype call and his interrogation. Rudy in particular has Meredith saying “AF…AF…” as she is dying. Rightly or wrongly, I expect Rudy is putting these into Meredith’s mouth and is attempting to communicate something, not necessarily to the police, rather to his friends.
I make a connection between AF and “F” the drug dealer that is continually being leaked about – particularly as a link to organized crime would explain the appearance of duress. I assumed AF was Daniele (and I still think that is more likely), but he could be Elis Prenga (if you google him you will find a hilarious News of the World article). Both Elis and Daniele are the only two Italians she had slept with (one of the characteristics of ‘F’). The other feature of F is that he is on the list of telephone contacts of Knox before and after the murder. This is definitely the case for Elis – his number is 3388580664. With Daniele, I am not sure, there are some calls with the number hidden which might be his, but nothing I can determine.
Daniele remains the favorite for me because
1. There is a clear and obvious social connection with Giacomo, which would bring him to the house on 1st of November. I don’t know of a connection with Elis
2. The description Rudy gives seems to match him quite well – if I have the right photograph. I don’t have a photo of Elis
3. It is not certain if Elis and Meredith met. It is known Daniele and Meredith did
4. In his German Diary Rudy makes an obscure reference to a Daniele “Oh my captain”
5. In Waiting To Be Heard Knox talks about the high price she would pay for sleeping with Bobby/Daniele
What makes Elis still a possibility in my mind is
1. He lived very close and I know he had made calls both before and after
2. The Albanian Kokomani claimed he had meet the uncle of one the killers, which might tip it towards an Albanian connection.
3. Federico, the amorous train traveling drug dealer is, I believe, a mythical creature introduced, I think, to hide something. The person that the introduction of Federico appears to hide is Elis. In other words as Cristiano/Federico becomes more solid, Elis tends to melt away.
In the end just having a clear scenario to have Daniele at the house tips it for me. But as always there are the things we know, the things we know we don’t know and the things we don’t know we don’t know. Ideally Amanda Knox should just tell us who was there that night, instead of me playing silly guessing games with scraps from google and social media
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I’m sorry, I’m not following this too well, probably because I have not read AK’s book upon which you seem to rely, at least somewhat. Maybe I’ll get back to this at a later time.
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