"Why Knox Verdict Baffles Us"

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I spent two years researching and writing a book about the Knox case, living in Perugia, attending the trial, interviewing every lawyer involved in the case, reviewing thousands of pages of police documents and court transcripts, interviewing forensic police, coroners, the principles of the case, their family members and associates.

The latest Italian proceeding did not involve any new evidence and, sadly, didn't shed any new light on the crime. There is still no proof that Amanda Knox was in the bedroom where someone stabbed Meredith Kercher. The DNA and fingerprint evidence is still entirely linked to a man named Rudy Guede, who is serving a 16-year jail sentence for the murder -- shortened thanks to testimony that put Amanda Knox on the crime scene.

After he arrested them, the trial prosecutor proposed that the motive was a post-Halloween ritualistic sex game. But when authorities soon realized the DNA and fingerprints in the murder room belonged to neither Knox nor Sollecito, rather than reframing their case, the small town prosecutors and police in the glare of international media dug in their heels. In the latest proceeding, a new prosecutor abandoned the sex game motive but suggested Knox murdered Kercher after an altercation over Knox's poor hygiene and sloppy housekeeping.

In other words, out with Satan and in with the dirty laundry.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/31/opinion/burleigh-amanda-knox-verdict/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

[Starry Messenger]

1. K&R

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2. Writer/journalist Douglas Preston on Knox case

Q: What do you make of Amanda changing her story? First she said she spent the entire night with Raffaele. After a long interrogation at the police station, sans lawyer, she said she was at the murder house, but stayed in the kitchen. When she heard Meredith screaming in the bedroom, she was so scared that she put her hands over her ears. Once she was in prison and had a lawyer present, she reverted to her original story.

Preston: Well, first of all, do not believe everything you read in the newspapers. You cannot trust anything coming out of Mignini’s office.

In the Monster case, prosecutors leaked evidence to the papers that turned out to be false. One of the cops working closely with Mignini on the Monster case was actually indicted for falsifying the tape of an interrogation.

There is a supposed seal of secrecy over the Kercher investigation, but that allows the prosecutor to leak selective things to the newspapers while preventing independent journalists from exploring alternative theories.

I know Doug. He's a smart, savvy journalist who also writes thrillers. He had a run-in with the same Italian prosecutor, on a different case, and he knows exactly how the man thinks.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/dempsey/2008/02/08/crime-novelist-doug-preston-on-meredith-kerchers-murder/