Amanda Knox: The Bald Blonde’s Truth With Diya ‘Patrick’ Lumumba, Sex And Lies
AMANDA Knox, one of Meredith Kercher’s killers, is on the cover of the UK papers. The British student was killed in Perugia on Nov 1, 2007. In 2008, Rudy Guede, 20, was convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison, reduced to 16 years on appeal
Amanda Knox and Knox and Raffaele Sollecito trial begins. Found guilty of murder and sexual violence, they are jailed for 26 and 25 years respectively
The Daily Mail’s front page says:
“Why she-devil Foxy mustn’t be freed”
Her nickname – a play on her blondeness – makes the story fly.
A writer on a site called Digital Journal says:
Knox is said to be a shadow of her former self, and losing her hair in prison. If justice is done next week, the next time she is seen in public, she’ll be bald.
The Times’s front page is factual:
“Knox was a she-devil lawyer tells appeal court”
The Independent’s front page gives Knox a religious choice:
“Saint or she-devil.’ Court must rule on Amanda Knox Murder appeal”
Back in 2007, when Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, a Congolese bar-owner who was jailed for two weeks after Knox initially identified him as the killer. She testified that she “remembered Patrick killing Meredith”. Knox had “stayed in the kitchen covering her ‘ears to drown out the screams”.
His lawyer Carlo Pacelli tells the court – via The Times:
Carlo Pacelli quoted testimony by Ms Kercher’s friends about tensions between the two over the American’s alleged promiscuity and bad bathroom hygiene. At the time of the murder, Knox was “an explosive mix of drugs, sex and alcohol”, he said. He claimed that Knox had a split personality. One side is “angelic, good, compassionate, and in some ways even saintly”, he said. The other is “Lucifer-like, demonic, satanic, diabolic” and “longs to live out borderline extreme behaviour”. Urging the jury to ignore her “doll-like” appearance, he added: “She is a spell-casting witch, a virtuoso of deceit.”
Pacelli’s words echo an earlier comments by Richard Owen, of The Times, back in 2009:
She is a wide-eyed innocent, a normal, high-spirited, all-American college student. She came to Italy to learn the language and became caught up in a nightmare of accusations over the death of her British housemate.
She is a she-devil, manipulative, unscrupulous, a born actress and a liar, a killer whose angelic face is betrayed by her ice-blue eyes. She taunted and fought with her housemate and eventually killed her in a drug-fuelled sex game out of hatred and revenge, with her submissive Italian boyfriend and one of the “strange men” she kept bringing back to the house. Then she tried to blame an innocent man.
The question for the jury throughout this marathon trial boiled down to this: which version of Amanda Knox did they believe in?
Now, Lumumba tells the media outside court:
“I ask for justice, not vendetta. She is a great actress, I know her better than most. I don’t know if she was the assassin, but she lied because she needed time.”
Lumumba sued Knox for libel, winning 40,000 euros ($54,000) in damages.
Was something lost in translation? Knox’s father Curt says:
“It was so over top of what I believe would be necessary as a lawyer, he just assaulted her verbally and that’s wrong, flat wrong. Calling her a she Devil that is just wrong and when you look at humanity I just don’t believe that is the way you handle yourself. It was an all out personal attack. I’m sure it was hurtful to her but we didn’t even get a chance to speak with her. As the translation was coming in I was thinking, you are just so wrong. He doesn’t even know her, he has never met her and he basically assaulted her verbally in a court room and that’s unfortunate.”
The Christian Post quotes him:
“It has been a struggle this entire time being in prison, having your freedom taken away for something you haven’t done,” he said. “But, these past few months have really been a struggle for her just because the light is really on at the end of the tunnel as a real opportunity to have a chance to come home.”
Knox will soon address the court.
The Seattle Post Intelligencer, Knox’;s local read, has been backing the hometown girl. Candace Dempsey is emotional:
After three days of lies, exaggerations, insults and no evidence, the prosecution closing is finally over over. Raffaele Sollecito’s defense up Tuesday; Amanda’s on Wednesday.
Lawyer Francesco Maresca (representing the victim’s family) fibbed today, claiming victim had no defense wounds, therefore had to be group attack. Massei Report cites cuts on palm and fingers consistent with knife held to throat by single attacker (Rudy Guede, obviously, since he had knife cuts on his fingers and only he left evidence at crime scene.).
From Patrick Lumumba’s lawyer, the unsavory Carlo Pacelli, we learned that college students who have sex are evil, but only if they’re female and American like Amanda Knox. Okay for Brits and Italians–and all men.
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Edda Mellas, center, mother of U.S. murder suspect Amanda Knox and her husband Chris Mellas, left, talk to lawyer Luciano Ghirga after an hearing in Perugia's court, Italy, Monday, July 4, 2011. The parents of Amanda Knox are standing trial for alleging that Italian police abused their daughter. The charge stems from an interview they gave Britain's Sunday Times years ago in which the father alleged that police had physically and verbally abused his daughter during questioning after Meredith Kercher's 2007 slaying but before Knox was arrested. Police have denied harming Knox. (AP Photo/Stefano Medici).
October 2nd, 2011 at 5:56 pm
coolandcalm, I agree with you and Emma she is not guilty. But I would not wager one way or the other if she’ll be set free. The arrogance and mentality of Italians came through loud and clear with the Prosecutor wanting to up the years for her to serve in prison over there. That was pure vindictiveness on the Prosecutor’s part.
There is not a lot of good I can say about our flawed Justice System but I’ll tell you I would rather take my chances in court over here than to deal with that lot in Italy..
October 1st, 2011 at 6:41 pm
I don’t know whether Amanda Knox is innocent or not. I don’t know why she must be portrayed as a wide eyed innocent or a she-devil.She is obviously neither of those things. To me, she just seems like an average college student. To me, the scenario used to tie her to the murder does not add up. On the other hand, she tried to deflect guilt on to an innocent man and admitted to being home and hearing her roomate’s screams. To me, there is certainly room for reasonable doubt. However, I can not feel sympathy for her. I cringe to think of what would have happened to her boss if he had not had a rock solid alibi. He would probably be rotting in prison without any media spotlight on his case. Nobody would even be questioning if he might be innocent. I just hope in the end justice prevails. Whatever that may be in this case.
September 28th, 2011 at 2:37 pm
The other thing about sentencing reports of course is that they can only reflect the verdict.
September 28th, 2011 at 2:17 pm
In my opinion that sentencing report is risible. It basically concocted a scenario like some kind of hard-boiled trashy crime thriller.
As for not having defensive injuries, the beginning of the report mentions lacerations to the upper limbs. These could well be defensive (particularly if the victim was used to blocking techniques in karate). You would not expect someone who knew karate well to have lacerations on their hands.
The full report is here:
http://www.beforeyoutakethatpill.com/2011/3/Massei_Report.pdf
September 28th, 2011 at 2:07 pm
C&C
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Meredith had no self-defence injuries. The Sentencing Report drew the conclusion from this, her fitness, and the autopsy report, that the wounds were inflicted from several directions from the front, and that she was likely held from behind while this was done, otherwise it would have been normal to expect self-defence injuries on hands and arms.
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I wasn’t suggesting that she could have defeated a male attacker.
September 28th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Well I wasn’t there, and have no idea who happened to cause Meredith’s death, but the certainty is that she is dead.
But at least there isn’t capital punishment to face.
But in this case Amanda Knox seems to have extreme difficulty in proving she was not present but is she completely innocent of any activity which resulted in the murder?
September 28th, 2011 at 1:03 pm
on that Stig I definitely disagree with you… and the court!
If someone is in fear of their life (as Meredith undoubtedly was) then strength/fitness/ability is irrelevant.
If it was relevant then the murder rate would be at least halved as most young girls go to karate/judo nowadays, and rape would all but disappear as they kicked their attackers out of the ring…..
A strong man with a knife and an urge to rape/kill will inevitably ‘beat’ a strong woman who can play fight at karate etc in controlled circumstances. There’s no comparison…..
September 28th, 2011 at 12:54 pm
Moderator, where have I objected to speculation?
I merely pointed out that it WAS pure speculation. In which case, let me speculate myself. I am of the opinion that stig’s opinion of the case is is built on little more than dislike for Knox.
It’s certainly not built on anything concrete.
September 28th, 2011 at 12:37 pm
What I said, Emma, was this:
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“One thing I had not previously appreciated was Merdedith Kerchers physical fitness and her having done some Karate. Together with the details of the autopsy report, which I had not previously absorbed, It does seem that the conclusion that Meredith must have been restrained by one or more people is very sound reasoning. As portrayed in that report, ”
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September 28th, 2011 at 11:40 am
She DID NOT have one during the initial police interviews. An interpreter was only brought in towards the end of a long questionning session. The Italian Supreme Court has even mentioned this fact in its ‘telling off’ – it is one of the reasons Amanda Knox’s ‘confession’ could not be used in court.
Again, you are moving into conjecture with things like ‘she claims she was hit and she didn’t ask for a lawyer…’
What you think of her character is irrelevant. There is NOTHING which indicates guilt beyond all reasonable doubt. Indeed, even the circumstantial case is extremely weak.
And from what I can recall you said something akin to ‘I wasn’t aware Meridith Kercher was really fit from doing martial arts’ or something like that (implying that you were accepting the case that fitness indicated an unlikelihood of being killed by a single person). It’s the same lack of serious analysis that kept you wedded to the bra-clasp.
Moderator- This is NOT a court of law, and we do allow posters to speculate, their opinions may not be valid to a barrister, but they are allowed to hold them
September 28th, 2011 at 11:03 am
She did have an interpreter:
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Knox painted herself as the victim of a false confession in which a seemingly sympathetic Italian police interpreter described her own traumatic experience that made her “forget what happened” and then suggested the same psychological syndrome might have affected Knox. “It was a complicated situation,” Knox said, describing how she confessed to being in the cottage and falsely accused her former boss of murder as well. Knox now says she spent the night in question across town, smoking pot and sleeping with her boyfriend. She says the police urged her to imagine other possible scenarios. “They insisted I had left [the boyfriend's] apartment at a certain period of time. I didn’t remember that. The interpreter said I was probably traumatized and had forgotten.”
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1904473,00.html
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Of course those are supposedly her own words being quoted, maybe she lied about that too. I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking that.
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You are correct, she didn’t have a lawyer present.
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“Knox had, in her opinion, advanced her cause by making clear what police had not previously conceded — that Knox thought she was being a helpful witness when in fact police were targeting her as a suspect and should have told her so. Under questioning from her own lawyer, Knox said she never thought to call the American embassy or a lawyer, even after being called in for a fourth day of questions. Knox said she only realized she was a murder suspect when she was brought before a judge after she had put herself at the murder scene, coaxed into what she thought was an imaginary scenario by police.
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“I just thought they wanted to talk to me because I was the closest to [Meredith] in the house,”
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She said she was physically assaulted by those interviewing her and yet didn’t think to ask for a lawyer or think she was under suspicion?
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I mentioned her physical fitness because the Italian court took that fact into consideration in concluding that more than one person would have been required to murder her in the way they belive it happened. It wasn’t ‘my’ belief and I have mentioned this before on the previous occasion you brought it up, but you continue to misrepresent my position.
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September 28th, 2011 at 9:11 am
Just noticed this from stig:
‘It was just after midnight, she had a translator’
No she DID NOT have a translator (in any case, it would have been an interpreter required – they are not the same thing). In fact the Italian Supreme Court ruled that her rights had been breached because of this fact. Moreover, IIRC, the initial police interviews were not recorded.
But then in a past thread you appeared to believe that Kercher’s physical fitness was evidence that she couldn’t have faced one assailant.
September 28th, 2011 at 6:16 am
Actually, Guede’s sentence was only reduced to 16 years after his appeal – the appeal where he implicated Knox and Sollecito. Indeed, he may actually only serve half of that. It is an irony that in the prosecution’s attempts to nail Knox and Sollecito, they have been unduly leniant to a serious sexual murderer. The ONLY person who we can be pretty sure did the crime.
Also, he did not ‘plead guilty’. He claimed in the original trial some shadowy Italian man carried out the murder – while he was in another part of the house. He then changed his story completely in the subsequent appeals – pointing the finger at Knox and Sollecito.
Moreover, the Italian police have ignored procedure (and that is their own procedure by the way – I’m not being xenophobic) at almost every step of the way. They didn’t even bag evidence properly. They also failed to inform Knox of her rights, did not get her a lawyer on arrest and did not provide an interpreter (all of which they should have done at the start). This is why her ‘confession’ was not allowed as evidence in trial.
September 27th, 2011 at 11:32 pm
“Guede’s sentence was reduced because he involved them”
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Not true. His sentence was reduced because he opted for a fast-track trial by pleading guilty. It had absolutely nothing to do with implicating the other two.
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Guede did not accuse or mention Sollecito or Knox at his trial, he only accused them of being the sole two murderers at his appeal.
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September 27th, 2011 at 9:17 pm
Stig, you’ve already shown yourself up on this one by claiming that the DNA evidence against Knox and Sollecito was damning (evidence which actually was highly suspect right from the beginning and which should never have been used in any court.).
‘Knox said she was assaulted by a cop – but she wasn’t, and withdrew her allegation.’
Assault in common law is actually defined as a situation whereby the perpetrator gives rise to the victim being in fear of violence. FEAR of violence is the defining characteristic in common assault. You do not have to physically harm a person. Might of course, be different in Roman law. Actual physical assault is battery (usually defined in the UK these days as ‘assault occasioning actual bodily harm’.)
Also, remember Knox was being interviewed in a different language. Despite speaking Italian, after hours of questionning, she would have been confused and tired.
There is no evidence linking either Sollecito or Knox to the murder of Meridith Kercher. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of her character of untruths she may have said to the police. None of this equates to solid evidence of involvement in the death of her flatmate.
September 27th, 2011 at 6:46 pm
I read a load of the transcripts Stig, and I just believe that neither of them were involved, its so outrageous and the evidence just isn’t there.
Of course she said lots of things and so did he, we all would i’m sure, and Amnesty will tell you that violence is commonplace during interrogations……
Only three people know how it really happened… Guede’s sentence was reduced because he involved them so he’s not going to change his story now so that leaves only Knox and Sollecieto. The prosecution are now asking for sentences to be increased as ‘punishment’ for appealing!!
It’s all down the Judges now.. Monday is going to be the day but the prosecution have said they’re going to keep appealing so it’s going to be a long old road.
September 27th, 2011 at 6:34 pm
C&C
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Battered? Knox said she was assaulted by a cop – but she wasn’t, and withdrew her allegation. She said she fingered Lumumba at 5am because she was distraught after being interrogated for so long and not being given food and because she didn’t have a translator. It was just after midnight, she had a translator and she was given food.
I am not aware of Sollecito ever making a claim of being mistreated while in custody.
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As for being terrified by their legal system, 104 people per 100,000 are incarcerated under the Italian legal system vs 148 per 100K in England and Wales.
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September 27th, 2011 at 1:43 pm
…it might be farcical…and it may be murder….but one things almost or sure…this story going to make a great movie one day…Hollywood awaits Foxy Knoxy…
September 27th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
There is no hard evidence linking Knox or Sollecito to the crime. That was always the case and remains the case. There is only one person who can be linked to the body of Meridith Kercher and he has been convicted of her murder.
And both prosecution and defence lawyers are guilty of the most ridiculous language (we had Knox called a she-devil yesterday by a lawyer acting for the prosecution and the defence calling her Jessica Rabbit today – it is farcical).
September 27th, 2011 at 10:19 am
I’ve always thought that she and Sollecito were innocent of any part of it but were ‘battered’ into submission because the tourist police need a fast resolution that didn’t appear racist!
Makes me very scared of Italian justice I must admit. especially as there have been other cases.
I feel for Meredith Kerchers family so much but I still think the whole thing stinks.
September 27th, 2011 at 9:59 am
…and not one mention of Knoxy being Foxy…