The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher (Kindle Single) (9 page)

Massei imagined that Knox and Sollecito brought Guede back to the house late that night, but then retreated to Knox’s room so they could have sex. Guede, sexually aroused but left out of the action, decided to force himself on Kercher. Here is how Massei described what happened next:

Rudy decided on his own to enter Meredith’s room, the young woman’s reaction and refusal must have been heard by Amanda and Raffaele (Amanda’s room was very close to Meredith’s) who, in fact, must have been disturbed by them and intervened, as the progression of events and their epilogue show, backing up Rudy, whom they had brought into the house, and becoming themselves, together with Rudy, Meredith’s aggressors, her murderers.

Massei admitted he was at a loss to explain why “two young people, strongly interested in each other, with intellectual and cultural curiosity, he on the eve of his graduation and she full of interests, resolved to participate” in a senseless murder. He allowed for a range of possibilities, concluding that the most likely explanation was simply a “choice of extreme evil,” precipitated by smoking pot.

Having completed what must have been a distasteful exercise, and with a large segment of the media lambasting the injustice, Massei faded back into the judicial
bureaucracy. Someone else would have to clean up the mess. The following year, Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann entered the scene to do just that. Nobody is sure who decided Hellmann was the right man for this particular job. Everyone understood, however, that Hellmann had shown a willingness to buck the system in other trials, and he was on the verge of retirement. This would be his last big case.

In Italy, an appeal is granted automatically following a criminal conviction, and it is like a second trial rather than a procedural review. Hellmann, therefore, engaged scientists to examine the DNA evidence purporting to implicate Knox and Sollecito in the murder. They concluded in no uncertain terms that it was worthless, because of the way it was collected and processed. Hellmann also reviewed witness accounts, which were vague and largely ridiculous. He could see that the case against Knox and Sollecito was a sham, and he said so clearly in his ruling.

With regard to Guede, Hellmann noted that “the items of evidence against him are numerous and unambiguous.” He concluded that “reexamination of what emerged at the first trial and further investigations resulting from our partial reopening of trial proceedings at the present level do not confirm the hypothesis that more than one person was necessarily involved in the crime.”

On October 3, 2011, in a hearing broadcast live around the world, Hellmann acquitted Knox and Sollecito and released them from custody. They had spent almost four years in prison.

The defendants were overjoyed and greatly relieved that someone had finally accepted what should have been obvious all along. According to Raffaele Sollecito’s subsequent book about the case,
Honor Bound,
Judge Hellmann’s sentencing report was
“a magnificent 143 pages of close argument that knocked down every piece of evidence against us and sided with our experts on just about every technical issue. It lambasted both the prosecution and the lower court for relying on conjecture and subjective notions of probability instead of solid evidence. And it launched a particularly harsh attack on Mignini for casting aspersions on the very concept of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Mignini had dismissed it in one of his court presentations as a self-defining piece of linguistic trickery. Hellmann pointed out that reasonable doubt was now—belatedly—part of the Italian criminal code. A case built on probability alone, he said, was not sufficient and must necessarily lead to the acquittal of the defendant or defendants…”

That should have been the end of it, but it was not. What has happened since the acquittal shows the problems inherent in an insular bureaucracy where interests run amok and irrational beliefs are allowed to flourish.

The Italian court system is intentionally shielded from political accountability. The idea is to make judges less susceptible to corruption, but critics have likened the system to a dictatorship within a democracy. Prosecutors are allowed to appeal an acquittal, prolonging litigation almost indefinitely, and that is what they did in this case. They found a sympathetic ear in the Court of Cassation, Italy’s Supreme Court, a body noted for its eccentric thinking and idiosyncratic rulings.

The activities of Ferdinand Imposimato, honorary president of the Supreme Court, show how far off the deep end this eccentricity can go. Imposimato is part of a political cult that believes the U.S. government was behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He thinks the CIA used high explosives to bring down the World Trade Center. He has used his emeritus role with Italy’s highest court to promote this belief, which he
summarized in an open letter published on a conspiracy Web site:

[T]he collapses had features that indicate controlled explosions. I agree with architect Richard Gage and engineer Jon Cole, both highly experienced professionals, who have arrived at their conclusions through reliable tests, scientific proof, and the visual testimony of people above suspicion, including firefighters and victims. The authoritative theologian David Ray Griffin has described very precisely why the hypothesis of controlled demolition should be taken into consideration.

All of this is manifest nonsense, derived from the phony research of cranks who pass themselves off as experts, but it suits Imposimato’s political views. The judicial body he represents is equally at war with fact and reason in its findings on the murder of Meredith Kercher. In overturning Hellmann’s acquittal, they have embraced an accusation that is much like Imposimato’s conspiracy theory. It is fundamentally an insinuation rather than a fact-based description of events that might really have happened. It is built on a discordant mass of inferences and murky details, purporting to show a deeper plot, but with no coherent explanation that fits the details together.

The high court’s lengthy ruling presented a challenge for English translators. It is filled with sentences that ramble for well over 100 words, winding through a maze of caveats and qualifiers until the original subject is all but lost. The judges seem to have made a conscious effort to obscure their reasoning with writing that is hard to understand, and it is no wonder why. They misrepresent evidence, and they ignore the implications of crucial facts. They repeatedly dismiss appeals to common sense, expressed by Hellmann
and the defense, as “manifestly illogical.” They call for the new court proceeding to “osmotically demonstrate” the guilt of Knox and Sollecito. In their conclusion, they lead official thinking back to its starting point. They say the original police hypothesis is as good as any: “the forcing of an erotic game pushed by the group, which blew up out of control.”

The police who made the arrests and concocted the sex-game theory are no doubt pleased by this official finding. It means they guessed right, according to the Supreme Court. Their need for vindication may explain why the judges sacrificed credibility to rule as they did. It would not be the first time they have indulged a matter of pride at the cost of seeming ridiculous. In 2012, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that has the effect of criminalizing a certain phrase, rendered in English as “you don't have the balls.” This ruling came at the end of a tortuous, years-long process initiated by a lawyer after someone insulted him in a courthouse dispute. To utter the offending phrase in an argument is an intolerable affront, the judges decided. It is now, by their edict, a criminal offense.

A preoccupation with pride and interest seems to lie at the heart of the vendetta against Knox and Sollecito. As the case has played out over the past six years, police and prosecutors have filed a slew of criminal charges for defamation, not just against the defendants but against their family members and outside critics too. They obtained a court order to shut down a local blogger who initially sided with them but soon realized the case was a farce and was not shy about saying so. He, too, has been charged with defamation. In 2010, the local police union held a ceremony to hand out awards for work on the Meredith Kercher murder investigation. A spokesman described the awards as
compensation for “years of unfair criticism.”

The pride of the authorities suffered a devastating blow with the acquittal. Hellmann’s ruling meant the entire system had been wrong, from the very beginning, and all of their theories and arguments were nonsense. It was an intolerable affront.

One might argue that the high court would have served the true interests of the affronted parties by putting an end to their folly, sweeping it unceremoniously into the dustbin of history. But that is not how the police and prosecutors see it. They want to press on, through the new hearings that are under way.

These proceedings, under the auspices of Judge Alessandro Nencini, have not produced any stunning insights. The court denied all defense requests in a preliminary hearing while agreeing to those of the prosecution. These requests were centered on two pieces of evidence.

The first is the testimony of a convicted mobster who testified in Hellmann’s court at the behest of the defense. He asserted that his now-deceased brother killed Kercher, a claim for which there is no evidence. The wisdom of the defense in producing this witness is debatable. Hellmann did not find him credible. His involvement backfired on the defense, in that the witness reportedly told someone he had agreed to testify in exchange for money to fund a sex-change operation. Thus, at the request of the prosecution, the witness was called to the stand in October 2013, to answer questions about the rumored bribe. He has now officially become a she, although the surgery is still pending. The testimony did not amount to much. The court learned that the witness’s gender has changed, but her story has not. She denied that she was offered a bribe, and she continued to insist that her brother committed the murder.

The second item arose from the work of the scientists engaged by Hellmann. During their analysis, these experts took further samples from a kitchen knife alleged to have been the murder weapon. One of the samples contained a minuscule quantity of DNA but not enough to generate a reliable test result. The scientists adhered to the best practices in their field, and they did not perform further analysis. The high court, however, recommended that the test be completed. Presumably, the court hoped it would confirm the presence of the victim’s DNA on the knife blade, as suggested by an earlier and highly controversial police test. The gambit was a bust. The result seems to be a match with Knox, and it excludes Kercher as a source. If it means anything, it further supports Knox’s claim that she used the knife to cut up food, on a quiet evening she spent alone with her new boyfriend.

On the day these new DNA results were discussed, Sollecito appeared in court to make a statement. He noted that until a few days before the murder, his sexual experience was almost nil, and suddenly he had a girlfriend. His thoughts in those whirlwind days did not stray far from her, and they certainly did not extend to bloody mayhem with Guede, whom he had never met. Six years down the road, his life has been turned upside-down, he cannot get a job, and he wishes the court system would come to its senses.

Knox, for her part, sent the court an impassioned letter in which she summarized the glaring problems with the case and asserted, once again, that she had nothing to do with the murder.

This, apparently, was the full extent of the fact-finding through which Judge Nencini endeavored to prove the sex-game theory. If he adheres to the wishes of the high court, a request to extradite Knox may follow at some point, but it is hard to imagine it
would succeed or that anyone really wants such an outcome. It is easier to conduct a judicial travesty with the defendants out of the picture, because the media doesn’t care. Knox and Sollecito are free, although the court system continues to hound them. Rudy Guede, the disturbed man who really committed this crime, has been convicted and sentenced. The case is over, except for the paperwork and the salvaging of pride.

CHAPTER FIVE: MY DECLARATION

by Amanda Marie Knox

Court of Appeals of Florence

Section II Assise

Proc. Pen, 11/13

Letter sent to attorneys Carlo Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga via e-mail

Seattle, 15 December 2013

Attn: Honorable Court of Appeals of Florence

I have no doubt that my lawyers have explained and demonstrated the important facts of this case that prove my innocence and discredit the unjustified accusations of the prosecution and civil parties. I seek not to supplant their work; rather, because I am not present to take part in this current phase of the judicial process, I feel compelled to share my own perspective as a six-year-long defendant and victim of injustice.

The Court has access to my previous declarations and I trust will review them before coming to a verdict. I must repeat: I am innocent.

I am not a murderer. I am not a rapist. I am not a thief or a plotter or an instigator. I did not kill Meredith or take part in her murder or have any prior or special knowledge of what occurred that night. I was not there and had nothing to do with it.

I am not present in the courtroom because I am afraid. I am afraid that the prosecution’s vehemence will leave an impression on you, that their smoke and mirrors will blind you. I’m afraid of the universal problem of wrongful conviction. This is not for lack of faith in your powers of discernment, but because the prosecution has succeeded before in convincing a perfectly sound court of concerned and discerning adults to convict innocent people—Raffaele and me.

My life being on the line and having with others already suffered too much, I’ve attentively followed this process and gleaned the following facts that have emerged from the development of this case that I beg you not to dismiss when making your judgment:

No physical evidence places me in Meredith’s bedroom, the scene of the crime, because I was not there and didn’t take part in the crime.