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Defense with Luca Maori to close on January 20th, Verdict on the 30th
Florence, January 9, 2014
“I was arrested because they thought there was my shoe print under Meredith’s body,” Giulia Bongiorno said, making a parody, in her theatrical interpretation, of a weeping Raffaele.
“No, no, no,” Bongiorno added. “Sollecito is wrong. He was arrested because he was the boyfriend of Amanda. By consequence, the shoeprint had to be read as his, even if it was completely different.”
Bongiorno wants to demolish the myth built on Amanda Knox as a dominatrix of men, a pusher of committing crimes, etc. In Bongiorno’s opinion, they wanted to blame Amanda because she was the ideal scapegoat. She was the ideal scapegoat because by blaming her the investigators would have cured the fears of Perugia, which was worried for the presence of a killer who was entering people’s houses and was still free. The thought that the crime came from a sex party gone wrong, and had been elicited by a foreign girl, would have reassured Perugians.
Frankly, we think that things are much more simple and prosaic than the brainy theory of the signorina Giulia, who probably forgets they thought at the beginning the killer was Patrick, while Amanda and Raffaele just had unspecified roles in the crime. Only after the discovery of Rudy and the exoneration of Patrick did the “killers” become, in the imagination of the accusers, Amanda and Raffaele.
After the romantic vision of the cops as mass healers, Bongiorno gave her version of the night of November 5/6. Slaps, threats, constrictions, psychological torture? La signorina Giulia seems never to have heard of such rumors, or of calling them so. Insults. Only insults, maybe. Amanda said they insulted her, they denied it. And to know who to believe we have the notes of the wiretapped conversation between Raffaele’s aunts, signed by Napoleoni and Zugarini. The two took note as well of their insults to the ladies they were spying on (unbelievable but true). And Napoleoni and Zugarini performed the interrogation of November 6, so it’s reasonable to think they insulted Amanda. Plus, they didn’t give her or Raffaele a lawyer.
That’s it. All the fault of Amanda’s false confession, in the opinion of Bongiorno, goes to the interpreter Anna Donnino, who instead of working as an intepreter, worked as a psychic, and convinced Amanda to believe she had been present at the crime. Because, in the opinion of Bongiorno, Amanda didn’t just repeat what they, with a slight insistence, asked her to imagine, but she really believed she had been present at the crime. So, Bongiorno really places value on those statements. Those statements fill 3 minutes’ time. But Bongiorno doesn’t ask herself what happened in that police station in the remaining 8 hours, aside from the intense convincing activity of “the interpreter”…. And if she doesn’t, why should Nencini do it?
So Patrick brought very detailed accusations against the cops. Then he even retracted them, as typically some victims do. Amanda and Raffaele also have denounced abuses in their books, in one complaint and in one appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. Even the Perugia Prosecution Office accuses four of the cops now. And the Court of Perugia confirms.
So, there kind of starts to be a lot of people, and qualified, to complain about those cops now. But Bongiorno absolves them. We understand that she defends Raffaele (or “Sollecito”, as she now coldly refers to him), not Amanda. We didn’t think she was representing them, too.
As for the “simulated break-in,” Bongiorno projected the picture of the lawyer, of whom she didn’t even remember the name, climbing it. Nencini: “I just see a guy hanging from a window, that doesn’t say anything to me. Don’t you have the video?” But no, la signorina Giulia, after having been paid 150,000 euro, didn’t even bother to burn a video. Not the one of the lawyer (of whom we do remember the name — Delfo Berretti), nor the one of the BBC, the existence of which she probably doesn’t even know. She probably has more important things to think about.
For the rest:
– A good, but not impressive, explanation of why the DNA can’t be on the bra clasp, and also on The Knife.
– The non-scientific inspections, with tens of people entering the house before December 18 (when the bra clasp was recovered).
– The garage camera that proves that Amanda and Raffaele called 112 before the police arrived (we hope the judges followed the complicated account of the minutes and of the camera clock which was ten minutes behind, not ten minutes ahead as the cops, with no reason, had maintained).
– Rudy was spotted out by the same garage camera at 7:40, then walking around the cottage. So, he must have broken into the house before Meredith (spotted out by the same camera at 8:50) came back, and that’s why he assaulted her (from behind, in Bongiorno’s opinion).
– Why the murder weapon was of course a smaller knife.
– About The Knife, Bongiorno insisted that the only way it could be the murder weapon is if they used it for threatening her, and by mistake it went into Meredith’s throat (kind of suggesting to the judge, if he really wants to convict, that the one who, in the prosecution theory, was holding the knife, committed a manslaughter…).
– An excellent new interpretation of Raffaele’s talk to the carabinieri: he told them that the thieves hadn’t stolen anything. That proves that he wasn’t simulating a theft, as the prosecution maintains.
– As we remember, Bongiorno closed the first trial with a question. “Are we sure the blood downstairs was from the cat?” Now she developed that argument, showing the pictures of the large stains of blood in the apartment downstairs, recalling that even Giobbi was surprised that a cat could have so much blood. And she found one of the blood tests from downstairs that says “human blood.” So, the others that say “cat blood” could be wrong, and the whole story of via della Pergola could be different, involving people other than “Sollecito.” Just raising a doubt (she probably thinks that if the judge has a doubt he would tell us…).
A good defense by Bongiorno, but certainly not what we were expecting. No ovation was drawn this time. She had in her hands the match ball, but she didn’t close the game. Amanda and Raffaele by now can have hope only in the half-day for Luca Maori on the 20th, and in the few minutes Carlo Dalla Vedova will have to specify his concepts. They have the match ball now, will they score?
Frank Sfarzo