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There are two main positive indications that the Italian police intentionally framed Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito for the murder of Meredith Kercher. Again, the motivation for framing Knox and Sollecito is to deflect attention away from Rudy Guede in the killing of Meredith Kercher, so as to conceal the culpability of the Perugian authorities and Giuliano Mignini for having protected and thus enabled Guede to murder Meredith Kercher. In short, self preservation. (For a review of the Police motive for framing Amanda Knox for the murder of Meredith Kercher, please see this previous article (link), or a summary of that article here (link).
The first indication, is the text book characteristics of the intensive and regimented pre-plamnned program of interrogations that were conducted by the police, resulting in falsely incriminating statements from the defendants. The second positive indication, is the process for the manufacture of evidence which the Italian police and the police lab in Rome followed in selecting what evidence to test, and then generating incriminating results through intentionally flawed and falsified lab procedures. This is especially evident in regard to the production of the famed, ‘double knife’.
In this article, we’ll examine the pre-planned coercive interrogation. In a follow-up, we’ll address the manufactured evidence.
It should first be said, that no confession taken under any circumstance whatsoever, can overcome the overwhelming physical evidence that the murder of Meredith Kercher was committed only by Rudy Guede. The lack of any physical trace of anyone else in the tiny blood soaked room where Meredith was killed, renders it a scientific impossibility that anyone but Rudy Guede, and he alone, killed Meredith Kercher. There is no evidence of a ‘staged break-in’, that claim is simply a distraction from this essential unquestionable and obvious truth. Having said that, let’s discuss the interrogation.
As a practical matter, it is undisputed that in the five days from the discovery of the Kercher murder, to the arrest 5 days later, Amanda Knox was subjected to 43 hours of questioning by the Italian police. The last overnight session went from 10:30pm to 6am the next morning. We need look no further than Steve Moore’s analysis in his contribution to the book; “The Forgotten Killer; Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher”, to understand this process and objectives.
One of the most striking elements of Moore’s narrative, is the extraordinary degree of consistency between the program of interrogation applied against Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito by the Italian police, and that described in a declassified FBI manual discussing techniques for “brain washing” used by the communists in North Korea.
Moore, quoting the FBI the manual; “Deprivation of sleep results in more intense psychological debilitation than does any other method of engendering fatigue. The communists (North Koreans) vary their methods. “Conveyor belt” interrogation that last 50-60 hours will make almost any individual compromise, but there is danger that this will kill the victim. It is safer to conduct interrogations of 8-10 hours at night while forcing the prisoner to remain awake during the day. Additional interruptions in the remaining 2-3 hours of allotted sleep quickly reduce the most resilient individual.”
At 43 hours over 5 days, the Italian police interrogation of Amanda Knox is perfectly consistent with the formal brain washing techniques favored by the North Korean communist totalitarian regime.
Moore also draws special emphasis on the last day of the interrogation, the overnight session. Remarking on the number of detectives, he writes; “The fact that there were twelve detectives in the police station overnight is an indictment in and of itself. If you are going to have twelve detectives available all night for an interrogation, you need to let them know well in advance. You need to schedule them, to change their days off, etc. You need to pay them overtime. In the real world, twelve detectives all night is something that has to be signed-off on by higher ups. What does that tell us? It tells us the interrogation was planned well in advance and intentionally overnight.” (emphasis Moore).
That this process was pre-planned, is also suggested in Amanda Knox’s own account in her book, “Waiting To Be Heard”. When speaking with Rita Ficarra, whom Knox describes as ‘her main interrogator’ and has identified as the officer who twice struck her during the last crucial session, Knox had asked if she could leave Perugia to stay with her Aunt in Germany, and Ficarra’s response; “You can’t leave Perugia. You’re an important part of the investigation”. When Knox inquired how long she would be needed, Ficarra’s reply; We don’t know- maybe months”. When Knox responded that she was planning to go home for Christmas. Ficarra’s response; “We’ll decide if you can do that. We’ll have to hear what the magistrate says when he calls in three days”. This conversation occurred on the morning of November 3rd, the day after the crime was discovered. The decision to specifically target and frame Amanda Knox, was likely made no later than on the evening of November 2nd, 2007, the same evening of the day the crime was discovered.
Regarding the last overnight interrogation, Moore continues; “The reason they interrogated Amanda all night was to break her. Not to get the truth, not to get answers, not to make Perugia safer, but to break her so that she would say what they wanted her to say.”
Reflecting on the overall process, Moore adds; “Amanda Knox was interrogated for eight hours. Overnight. She was denied food and water. She was denied the use of a bathroom. In a police station. In a foreign country. In a foreign language. By a dozen different officers. Without being allowed a lawyer.”
Moore continuing; “The inquisition Amanda Knox endured in Perugia was no more legally or morally defensible than the Salem Witch Trials. No rational person should believe that the results of what she went through are reliable evidence. If you gave me the same amount of time with Knox’s prosecutor (Mignini), I could have made him confess to the crime.”
Moore’s contribution and the book itself are well worth the read for anyone wanting to understand the injustice of the case against Knox and Sollecito, but let’s turn lastly to Moore’s comments on why an interrogation stops.
Moore; “There are two reasons an interrogator stops an interrogation: 1. He/she gets what he/she wants, or 2. He/she gives up. If the interrogator gives up, there is no written statement by the suspect. Therefore if the interrogation ends with a signed statement, you know the interrogator got what he/she wanted and can easily determine what that was. And what did Amanda say that satisfied her inquisitors? ‘I confusedly remember seeing Patrick come out of Meredith’s room.’ So what did they want? They wanted to implicate Patrick Lumumba.”
Moore explains; “Amanda did not bring up the name of Patrick Lumumba. The police did. And they repeatedly told her to ‘imagine’ Patrick and herself being at the cottage that night. Amanda did not give in to the brainwashing. But the police achieved enough with her to obtain a statement that let them do what they had intended to do all along: arrest Patrick Lumumbra”
As has been said, the motive of the Italian police and Mignini was to defect attention away from Rudy Guede, but in any event, to absolutely deny that Rudy Guede acted alone. For that to be the case, the break-in had to be staged, because otherwise, its just Rudy all by himself breaking in, and killing Meredith Kercher.
But by embroiling multiple people in the crime, the police could if not keep Rudy out of the crime entirely, they could at least minimize his role. If Patrick Lumumba had remained as a defendant, no doubt all the judges would have put the knife in his hands. But since Rudy Guede could not be kept out of the picture, it became necessary for someone else to play a more dominant and leading role.
And of course such a person had to be someone capable of manipulating others, and who better for that role, than a woman. So in the fantasy world of the Italian prosecutors, judges, police, and an unfortunately significant segment of the populations of Italy and the UK, the knife that killed Meredith Kercher ended up being placed in Amanda’s tiny hands, in their fantastic false imaginings.
Of all the lies that have been invented and repeated in this case, among the worst is that of those who misuse the confused statements that were extracted through psychological torture, as evidence of deception on the part of Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Solecito. It is the exact equivalent of blaming a rape victim for the consequences of a violent sexual assault. This lie is repeated by major news outlets, unscrupulous or careless reporters, and has become part of the lexicon of the case. It’s both tragic and profoundly unfair.
And worst of all, in the rush to blame Knox for the confused statements induced through these abusive coercive means, was the Italian police charging Amanda Knox with Calumnia after forcing her to name Lumumba as part of their process and their objective. The criminal, brutal, illegal, and supposedly unrecorded interrogation by the Italian police should shock the conscience of the civilized world. Yet this criminal conduct by the Italian police must again be concealed by blaming the victim. Charging Knox with calumnia, is the arrogance of unrepentant criminals, and it is a marvel to behold how pliant and cooperative the Italian, UK and international media have been in simply passing along the prosecution’s malicious slanders. It may be the Italian authorities simply no longer have the ability to recognize the wrongfulness of their own behavior.
The last word is perhaps best left to Moore: “How could this happen? It is either inexperience combined with poor training or corruption – or both. I have had rookie FBI agents come out to the field and conduct vastly superior investigations to what happened in Perugia in this case. I do not think the Italian system is inferior. In fact, if I thought so, I would not be criticizing those detectives in this manner.”
Significantly, Moore concludes; “Every country has prosecutors and investigators who make mistakes. Every country experiences the shame of corruption. No country should be judged on whether these things exist; it should be judged on how it deals with them.”
When Patrick Lumumba was released, and Rudy Guede was brought back from Germany, Rudy was substituted in for Patrick in the prosecution’s case. But now the role of chief instigator would pass from Patrick, and be applied to Amanda Knox. Because from the perspective of the Perugians authorities, Mignini, the Italian police, and the Italian judiciary, Rudy Gude could not have acted alone (which is why the break-in must have been staged), or at worst, Rudy must have been a lesser player in this crime which was as has been stated, was by necessity a group effort – for otherwise, the Italians themselves are responsible for it.
Other commenters have said that the police erred by not changing their theory of accusation, when they slotted in Guede for Lumumba. I disagree. There never was an ‘accusatory theory’ in the sense of one supported by evidence. The police objective of minimizing Guede’s role, and therefore their own culpability in the murder of Meredith Kercher, was unaffected by Guede’s formal emergence as a culprit. The police objectives remained unchanged; under no circumstances, could Rudy Guede be found to have acted alone, because otherwise, Kercher’s killing was the fault of the Italians. So the frame-up proceeded accordingly.
With Amanda’s and Raffaelle’s coerced statements in hand, now all that was necessary for Mignini and the Perugians, was to fabricate the evidence.