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Saturday, April 12, 2008

More Amanda

posted by on April 12 at 12:32 PM

The next chapter in the endless Amanda Knox case happens tonight on the TV show 48 Hours Mystery.
450Knox12a.jpg
The program hired two private investigators to get to the bottom of things. And what did they find at the bottom? One investigator, Paolo Sfriso, found things are looking not so good for Amanda. There’s “damning evidence” everywhere. The other investigator, Paul Ciolino, found no piece evidence that adequately links Amanda to the moment of the crime. He thinks she has been railroaded by Italy’s legal machine. I would have seriously considered Ciolino’s conclusions if he had not made this statement:

Speaking on the program, Ciolino said he’s convinced that young women such as Knox — a Seattle Prep grad who made the UW honor roll — don’t commit murder.

“Jesuit-educated high school girls who are high honors students … don’t participate in orgies and homicides,” Ciolino said. “They don’t do it. And if you can tell me of one that does, I’d sure like to see her.”

I think Ciolino fell in love with Amanda. She put a spell on his heart.

UPDATE!
Meredith’s death was not caused by a loss of blood but by a lack of air, suffocation. But the report does not say if the suffocation was caused by someone’s hands or her own blood.


Meredith was ‘cut with two knives - but death caused by suffocation’, post-mortem reveals.

British girl Meredith Kercher, murdered while studying in Italy, suffered wounds from two knives, according to a new post-mortem.

It also suggests that even though the 21-year-old had her throat slit, the cause of death was suffocation, according to leaked reports.

Police have said that Meredith, from Croydon, Surrey, whose body was found in her student house in Perugia in November, may have been killed after a sex game went wrong.

The latest post-mortem was ordered by Judge Claudia Matteini.

Its findings are to be made public next Saturday.

But, according to leaks, the report will say her neck wounds were from two different blades.

The Leeds University exchange student’s American flatmate Amanda Knox, 20, Knox’s boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 24, and Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, are being held in custody.

EDITOR'S NOTE: On October 3, 2011, Amanda Knox was acquitted of the murder of Meredith Kercher and released from prison.

RSS icon Comments

1

"Jesuit-educated high school girls who are high honors students … don’t participate in orgies and homicides"

It's true. Here's a short list of who else could never, EVER be bad-

NFL Hall of Fame running backs
Former University of Michigan professors
Members of San Francisco's city goverment

See, you CAN get away with murder. You just need the right resume.

Posted by just a guy | April 12, 2008 1:41 PM
2

Does Ciolino deny that she liked to party and drink and use drugs? I don't understand where he's drawing the line. Does he claim she has been a "good girl" here entire life?

Posted by stinkbug | April 12, 2008 1:45 PM
3

Charles,
Does that mean you think that she is guilty?

Posted by I Got Nuthin' | April 12, 2008 1:50 PM
4

So, Jesuit-educated girls are all innocent (not just of murder, but of any debauchery whatsoever)? Bullshit. She looks like she could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. And like it.

Seriously, when is the trial actually going to happen? I'm getting bored of this tabloid-fodder speculation...when is someone actually going to try and prove that she did/didn't do it?

Posted by Hernandez | April 12, 2008 2:07 PM
5

rudy's recent and absurd testimony lead me to believe Amanda is not guilty. Ciolino's current and absurd statements have lead to reverse that opinion.

Posted by charles mudede | April 12, 2008 2:10 PM
6

Is this Twin Peaks?

Posted by eday | April 12, 2008 2:21 PM
7

This guy is an idiot, often times the honor students are the most experimental ones in the school. In my high school they were the ones try exotic drugs and getting involved in bdsm.

This is the kind of guy who thinks his kids never drank and were virgins when they got married.

Posted by uhhuh | April 12, 2008 2:30 PM
8

Girls who wear Care Bears t-shirts are capable of anything.

Posted by PopTart | April 12, 2008 2:42 PM
9

I'd just like to point out that drinking, taking drugs, having sex, and so forth are not equivalent to murder. He didn't say that Jesuit girls don't party.

Posted by Fnarf | April 12, 2008 3:11 PM
10

Has he ever met a Catholic High School girl?

Posted by elswinger | April 12, 2008 3:23 PM
11

I think the TV program wanted "balance," but the only people they could find who believe Amanda to be innocent in the face of damning evidence are people with weird beliefs about the inherent purity of jesuit-educated female honor students.

Posted by David Wright | April 12, 2008 3:54 PM
12

That kind of logic - "this type of person doesn't commit murder" - is often helpful in setting our initial intuitions, though we should be willing to overturn our intuitions if evidence overwhelms them.

For instance, if investigators had kept this sort of intuition in mind - "teenage suburban kids who do their chores and fill out job applications at Blockbuster don't generally mug people and murder them" - Brenton Butler probably wouldn't have had to go through an entire jury trial to prove his innocence, and the real killer - a drug addict with a long criminal record - might have been located sooner. (I'm talking about the documentary "Murder on a Sunday Morning" here guys.)

Posted by Sister Y | April 12, 2008 4:45 PM
13

Fnarf, sure.

But he *did* say that people with her background "don’t participate in orgies." I don't know exactly what he meant by orgies, but probably he meant some group sex involving at least 3 people.

If he thinks that there are zero "Jesuit-educated high school girls who are high honors students" who do group sex, then I think he's naive.

Posted by stinkbug | April 12, 2008 4:48 PM
14

She was nearby, or she lied about being there. that's evidence?
What's her motive by the way?

This whole Amanda is guilty line is lacking in EVIDENCE.

Charles has continually implied Amanda is guilty. Now there's a whole show on it and instead of summarizing the evidence (for or against) for us he gives us one little piece of into he doesn't like (girls like this don't do this kind of crime) & says he doesn't like that and presto, an investigor's possible bias towards Jesuit girls is now somehow an excuse for not having any evidence.
A reason to disbelieve everything else this investigator says. But we're not to know what he actually says. Because you see, he seems biased in favor of white people, or rich people or Catholics or something.

So. What is the evidence?

Posted by unPC | April 12, 2008 5:08 PM
15

gee don't look far, this is the story linked in the morning news w/ comments:

"What they found, "48 Hours" executive producer Susan Zirinsky said," that is what BOTH investigators found -- "is that the evidence against Knox is nowhere near as strong as police in Perugia, Italy, would suggest."

So, the idea one investigator thinks she is guilty is made up.

HEre are the facts:

--Kercher shared a flat with Kno = not evidence of murder.

--"Kercher was found on her bedroom floor covered in a blanket, her neck slashed with a knife"
what motive would Knox have to do this or do it in this way?

--.""48 Hours" private investigators question the legitimacy of statements Knox made to police shortly after her arrest in the killing."

investigators, plural, not just one of them.

--"Although some media outlets heralded them as confessions, Italian authorities have since discredited part of the statements."

Even the police don't say they have a confession now.

--"Knox, who was raised in West Seattle, initially told investigators she was in the Perugia flat when Kercher was killed. In words reprinted around the globe, Knox said she "heard Meredith screaming" as she cowered in their shared kitchen."

being there = not evidence of murder.

--"She later recanted that version of the story, as she did other statements she made that pointed to popular bar owner and musician Patrick Diya Lumumba as the killer. Lumumba was cleared weeks later"

blaming someone else == extremely weak evidence of murder, you need a lot more.

-- "police arrested Ivory Coast national Rudy Hermann Guede, saying his fingerprints had been found at the scene. Guede, a college dropout living in Perugia, has since admitted to being in the apartment when Kercher was killed but claims not to have seen her killer."

another possible perp = not evidence Know did it.

--"Ciolino said police don't have any solid evidence linking Knox or Sollecito to the killing."

Neither does Charles.

-- "14-hour interview" was had with Knox. Great, if cops did that in the USA wewould all be xreaming about their unfair tactics.

-- "Sfriso, didn't share Ciolino's view. Sfriso agreed there are problems with the case put forward by prosecutors, but he said there are also some apparently damning pieces of evidence."

But apparently not clear enough to mention what they are!

--"There are the shoe print left in Kercher's blood that investigators say matches a pair owned by Sollecito,"

this is not evidence Knox did it.

--"the knife with Knox's DNA on the handle and Kercher's on the blade."

DNA -- not blood? My DNA is on all the knives in the place where I live, duh.

--"There are the blood evidence on a bra strap that carries DNA from Guede and Sollecito, and more DNA in the sink showing blood from both Knox and Kercher."

DNA showing blood -- but not blood -- so maybe Knox cut herself while cutting veggies?
Coudl be evidence but it's very ambiguous.

--"Knox's strange behavior in the days after Kercher was killed. Surveillance video shows Knox and Sollecito shopping for underwear the day after finding Kercher's body; other shoppers said they overheard the couple talking graphically about sex."

Wow, if my roommate was knifed I mioght act strange too. They should just charge her with witchcraft.

Apparently it's okay to railroad someone if they went to Seattle Prep. IF this was some guy held by cops down South in the USA with kind of non-evidence, we'd be shocked and we'd all be writing checks to his defense fund. But since she went to prep school...

hey who gives a shit about evidence. that kind got it coming.

Posted by unPC | April 12, 2008 5:23 PM
16

charles, yr sprung

Posted by lar | April 12, 2008 5:26 PM
17

@16 Beat me to it.

Posted by Mike of Renton | April 12, 2008 5:37 PM
18

she looks like lindsey (e or a? sorry) lohan in that photo.

Posted by feom | April 12, 2008 6:06 PM
19

if she is freed, ciolino gets his cazzo greased.

italians will do anything for testa.

Posted by SeMe | April 12, 2008 6:18 PM
20

the most damning thing i've heard against her yet is her inconsistent statements. boils down to: "i wasn't there."-- ms. knox, we have surveillance cam proof you were there.-- "okay, i was there and cowering in the kitchen." now, tell me why an innocent person would lie like that? or if she is innocent, she is covering for someone (her creepy bf, maybe--the guy who's candidly and proudly "into knives").

Posted by ellarosa | April 12, 2008 6:29 PM
21

If she didn't go to the UW none of us would care.

Posted by elswinger | April 12, 2008 6:33 PM
22

I agree with the original post, they kinda had me until they made that blanket statement and then credibility went bye-bye.

Please. I may be an entirely upstanding three-piece-suit college-edumacated doctor-guy between 8 and 5, but that doesn't preclude me from leather/whips/weapons/drugs/drinking/various kink/whatever behind closed doors. Not that I'm ANY of those things.

I'm just sayin'.

Posted by Wolf | April 12, 2008 6:45 PM
23

At the rate they're going, she's going to spend more time in jail as a suspect than she would have if she had been found guilty. This is frickin' Italy, for Chrissakes - jail sentences, even for murder, just aren't that long.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty | April 12, 2008 6:49 PM
24

everytime a gringo commits a crime abroad, the media goes on some hunt to prove theyre innocent, and the public buys it, when a foreign born person commits a crime here, they assume he or she is guilty.

fuk it, its simple, she got drunk and wasted and watched her boyfriend sodomize the victim. .lock her ass up already.

Posted by SeMe | April 12, 2008 7:43 PM
25

I believe that so far the only thing anyone had proved beyond a reasonable doubt is that Amanda Knox is guilty of being a dimwit.

Posted by Y.F. | April 12, 2008 8:34 PM
26

seme, where's the sodomy angle? they're not even sure she had sex intercourse, let alone that she was raped. and NOBODY mentioned sodomy that i've read.

Posted by ellarosa | April 12, 2008 9:48 PM
27

Charles,
You got smoked on reporting here, so keep an open mind yourself.

Posted by Charles the Magnificient? nope. | April 12, 2008 10:52 PM
28

48 Hours was crap.

Posted by stinkbug | April 12, 2008 10:59 PM
29

@27, how did I get smoked? Read the other investigator:

another investigator hired by "48 Hours," Paolo Sfriso, didn't share Ciolino's view. Sfriso agreed there are problems with the case put forward by prosecutors, but he said there are also some apparently damning pieces of evidence.

There are the shoe print left in Kercher's blood that investigators say matches a pair owned by Sollecito, the knife with Knox's DNA on the handle and Kercher's on the blade. There are the blood evidence on a bra strap that carries DNA from Guede and Sollecito, and more DNA in the sink showing blood from both Knox and Kercher.

And, Sfriso told "48 Hours," there's Knox's strange behavior in the days after Kercher was killed. Surveillance video shows Knox and Sollecito shopping for underwear the day after finding Kercher's body; other shoppers said they overheard the couple talking graphically about sex.


How does this improve on my reporting? Please, have some teeth before you attempt to bite your better!

Posted by charles mudede | April 12, 2008 11:02 PM
30

1. why does foxy knoxy feel the need to point fingers at everyone? she's fingered like 4 people, and not in a hot "i'm a psuedo lesbian/experimenting" kinda way.

2. both times 48 hours have covered this, it has been very biased towards the murdering whore. they talk about her blog, but then fail to talk about her writing which pretty much mirrored WHAT ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED. sure, it's just a coincidence. she's also rasict. that the local and national news outlets portray her as a saint is dead fucking wrong. she was far from it. and everyone knows when you study abroad, unless you are a mormon, you go buck wild because there is zero supervision. i did it, my wife did it, and scores of other "jesuit educated high school girls" have done it. it's part of the fucking draw of leaving your lame ass UW.

furthermore, we can definitely show mr. ciolino those same girls participating in orgies. i think he just wants to meet her so he can get it on with underage chicks. what a fucking hack.

/end rant.

Posted by holz | April 13, 2008 2:30 AM
31

Charles, you doth protest too much.

Stop grinding your ax.

Get back to praising concrete buildings.

Posted by Charles the magnificient? Nope | April 13, 2008 7:07 AM
32

How close were the two to the victim?

Although it's incredibly self-centered and inappropriate to go shopping for a thong and to chat about how spoogey that thong is going to be later that day while tonguing each other in front of sales people the day AFTER discovering a dead roommate, it isn't evidence that they were involved in the murder.

It is evidence of what I'd call pathological egocentrism. There may be other evidence that does damn them, but I remember when my nephew unexpectedly died about fifteen years ago. He was in his late 20s and after the funeral, my sister - his mother - had friends and family over to her home to grieve and remember. Some of my nephew's friends turned the event into Oktoberfest, getting drunk, laughing loud, being loud period - all while an emotionally shattered mother was nearly drowning in tears in the next room. I know we all grieve in different ways, but I had to ask people to leave.

Insensitive and classless, yes. Murderers, no. Perhaps some people have a very short time limit on grieving. Perhaps some people can't grieve at all.

What I want to know is this: It's bad enough when people take a dump and don't flush in their own home, but what kind of animal doesn't flush is someone else's?

Jesus, these people don't need a year of studying abroad. They need charm school.

Posted by Bauhaus | April 13, 2008 8:31 AM
33

Chaz has already written the screenplay, he's hoping the facts will fit his sick version of reality. For a Marxist who hates the triviality of Seattle hippycrits, you sure have a lot of time to waste on thid Chaz.

Posted by left coast | April 13, 2008 11:53 AM
34

It is very clear that she did not do it. And it is reasonable to consider the a priori plausibility of a story. Either one guy who was known as sketchy raped & killed the girl and fled the country (leaving feces & a bloody handprint at the scene) OR there were 3 other people with no clear motives involved in some implausible sex game.

No clear evidence for the other 3 either- a knife that with 20% (! 20%! as in unlikely!) probability had Meredith's DNA, but not here blood? not evidence. Amanda making up some crazy story after an all night interrogation? Not evidence. (It is well known that people, especially those that are not used to police interrogation & who are stressed may eventually say what police want to hear. And what she eventually said was NOT a confession. )

The guy is not in love with her, he is being reasonable.

Posted by Allie | April 13, 2008 2:20 PM

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