Excerpt from DECEIT: THE CASE AGAINST AMANDA KNOX

The Case Against Amanda Knox

“I want to say that I’m so sorry that Meredith is not here any more. I can’t know how you feel.” – Amanda Knox, addressing the Kercher family in court

Soundtrack to this chapter: Oasis Little by Little

Meredith Kercher was a real person, a living breathing flesh and blood human being, with hopes, and dreams, fears and concerns, and irritations, just like you and I have.  In November 2007, she had her whole life ahead of her.  She’d moved into the cottage on September 10^th, just ten days before Amanda. On the 31^st she’d celebrated a happy night of good, clean revelry with her friends. But Amanda wasn’t one of them.  Why not?

The charming, ramshackle cottage, like something out of a Hansel and Grettel fairy tale that lured the young British student into staying there was tucked away from the ribbon of roadside skirting the hillside, so much so that police looking for the house couldn’t find it, and needed directions. 

While possessing a sort of old world charm, the crumbling villa had a dilapidated exterior and was obscured by foliage and trees on several sides.  It was peculiar for a house in central Perugia in that it was relatively isolated, in that few other dwellings immediately surrounded it, and at night, the grounds – if not lit – could be quite dark. The tenants at this property, without exception, smoked marijuana on a regular basis.  Sunken below the level of the road, out of sight, it was a place to unwind, strum a guitar and get high on one’s own particular brand of bohemian bliss. 

We the people fight for our existence
We don't claim to be perfect but we're free
We dream our dreams alone with no resistance
Fading like the stars we wish to be – lyrics from the Oasis song Amanda and Raffaele listened to hours after Meredith’s murder

It was a place to disconnect, and be disconnected without getting into any trouble.  It was also a place where Meredith would be murdered, and apparently no one would know. 

And this is the key reason why Meredith Kercher’s murder is not an open and shut case.  The mystery is wound around a nebulous clock that refuses to give up its secrets. We cannot be certain of the time of death.  We’re not talking about minutes either, but hours.  

Unfortunately for the suspects in this case, they made such a mess of the crime scene, it appears they spent several hours cleaning up, hence they are unaccounted for during the several critical hours when Meredith’s light went out.  When her precious blood spilled all over her bedroom floor - warm and slick - parts of her seeped into everything that came into contact with it.  Shoe soles, bare feet, hands, knives, shirts, coats, the wall, the bed, the closet – and Meredith’s own underwear. If there was ever a crime where the criminals left with blood on their hands, this was it.  If Meredith’s death was a cruel and drawn out struggle for the young woman, if it was an agonising death – and it was – then her murderers paid a price for that brutality.  They left a blood trail effectively signing their names in blood.  

Eight years later only one attacker has been convicted for her murder. Rudy Guede has been convicted of sexual assault and murder, but the police and prosecutor don’t believe it was Guede who knifed Meredith in the throat.  On November 1 Guede was a petty criminal and a drug dealer, but he had no criminal record.  If the argument in favour of Knox is how could she go from a history of non-violence to murder, well, the same can be said for Guede.  And Jodi Arias.  And Oscar Pistorius.  And OJ Simpson.  And Robert Durst.  And Casey Anthony.  And James Holmes.

If we are going to compare Jodi Arias case to the Amanda Knox case – and I think we should – we realize Travis Alexander was slaughtered in a particularly excruciating manner (stabbed 29 times, throat slit to the neck vertebra, shot through the top of the head). It pains me to say it but Meredith’s death was several orders of magnitude worse. She was sexually assaulted, and this would have been painful too. Travis wasn’t.  Meredith’s wounds were almost twice as many as Alexander’s. She was not cut across the throat but rather deep into her throat and neck, from opposite sides. 

It is easy to compare two deaths on paper to get an intellectual sense that one criminal act was worse than another.  But what about getting an intuitive sense of what Meredith actually endured?  Any living person reading this should pray they will never endure a personal holocaust of this scale in their final moments of life, via InjusticeinPerugia.org:

She suffered a hard blow to her nose and lips which resulted in significant swelling before she died. No obvious outer contact abrasion was observed to her nose and lips. Pathologist Lalli found bruising on the inside of her lips and gums. A shallow horizontal cut of about one inch in length was found to the left cheek about one inch in front of the left ear.

Notable bruise markings were noted to both elbow regions. Some bruising was also noted to the mid section of the right forearm. Light knife tip contact wounds were found to the hands.

Pathologist Lalli also noted bruising to the hips and some to the right leg

An area of trauma was noted to the rear scalp by the pathologists. From the crime scene photos, numerous loose long hairs were observed on the floor and a large plug of hair was observed in the blood where Meredith’s head had rested. These indicated strong pulling or yanking trauma to the hair and scalp.

Some of the crime scene photos suggest limited use of the right arm after the mortal wound. This infers possible trauma to the right shoulder rotator cuff region that may have rendered the right arm incapacitated after the mortal wound.

The bruises on Meredith's elbows suggest strong handgrips during the struggle. Bruises on the legs and hips were probably caused by contact with furniture.

The killer also pulled Meredith's hair violently to gain control or position her body.

The finger bruises to the jaw line may have occurred in multiple stages, although probably in rapid succession.

The initial throat stabbing wounds were likely the horizontal wounds to the right throat area leading to significant external bleeding that continued until death. The blood flow coming from this wound was likely reduced at times by hand pressure at the site. Meredith was likely able to get her right hand to her throat area after the initial stab wounds were inflicted, and it came into contact with the blade tip a couple of instances.

The final stabbing wounds were likely the series of slanted vertical wounds under the chin. The mortal gaping stab wound led to heavy bleeding into the esophagus as well as externally.

The knife inflicting the mortal wound was likely thrust with considerable force into the throat to the full depth of the blade. The killer then pulled the knife upward with maximum force increasing the length of the gaping wound. The last one fourth of the wound involved tearing brought about by an extreme upward force being applied by the killer.

To inflict the mortal wound, the killer needed to be solidly positioned and in full control of Meredith’s head. The likely position would be behind and above the victim, using one hand to hold her head backwards in firm contact with the killer’s lower midsection while using the other hand to inflict the mortal wound.

The mortal wound immediately led to copious outward blood loss, while a considerable amount also bled inward into the esophagus. Some of the blood that entered the esophagus was inhaled and expelled through the mouth and nose as aspirated blood drops. Some of the blood expelled through the mouth had a darker and heavier appearance.

Pathologists have concluded that Meredith died from suffocation, but the blood loss was also enough to cause death. Pathologists indicate that Meredith only had about 10 minutes to live after the mortal wound was inflicted. During that period, she would only have been fully conscious for a couple of minutes.

Little by little the wheels of your life have slowly fallen off
Little by little you have to give it all in all your life
And all the time I just ask myself why you're really here

– from the Oasis song Amanda and Raffaele listened to hours after Meredith’s murder

Unlike Travis Alexander, who had many deep defensive wounds on his hands, both on the inside (on his palms) and on the outside (sliced across his fingers), Meredith had only three very small cuts on the inside of her hands.  The duration of Travis’ murder was approximately 120 seconds, and a large proportion of his wounds were to his back. All of Meredith Kercher’s puncture wounds were to the front of her body, and at unusual angles into the throat – indicative that she was forced onto to her back, on the floor, during her assault.

Because Meredith’s murderer was such as amateur, Meredith didn’t die because of a mortal blow. She died due to blood loss and asphyxiation.  Bleeding to death took her an agonising 600-900 seconds. That’s an eternity to die.  The reader ought to count on his or her watch, ten seconds, right now.  Or thirty seconds.  Or fifty seconds.  Consider that in all this time, Meredith, a strong, spirited girl, merely lay calmly whilst bleeding to death.  10-15 minutes is a long time not to scream or struggle. 10-15 minutes, when you are attacked with a knife in your bedroom, is a long time not to fight back.  Not to get any skin, or dirt, or blood under your fingernails.  If Guede didn’t stab Meredith in the neck, who did?  If Guede held Kercher down, if he digitally raped her, who was he doing it with, and why? Anyone who cares about this case should not only be deeply outraged, but committed, to solving this mystery surrounding Meredith’s untimely departure from this Earth. 

Amanda Knox’s supporters may complain that, to be fair, there ought to be a The Case For Amanda Knox Chapter, and there is. In the interest of brevity, that chapter – which is shorter than this one – is not included in this narrative, but forms part of the second book in this series: DARK MATTER.  Because of the enormity of this case, this narrative will only highlight the main points.  DARK MATTER, like MENDACITY, our second book on Jodi Arias, probes the devil in the details.

To recap, what we are are to do is this: we are trying to accumulate not all the information, but the most vital information, circumstantial, evidentiary and intuitive, to guide us into the process that led to Kercher’s murder. Now, if we are to create a sensible and credible scenario, we have two remaining orders of business to finalise. 

1.         We need to highlight – and summarize – what we have learnt thus far.

2.         We still need to personalize some of these insights, in order to be able to draw an intuitive pattern that resonates not only with our own experiences of reality, but with the reality of this particular schema.

In the second instance, we have to get behind that door, into the room, we have to touch the blood and the grime and the bathroom mat with our own skins.  We have to get into Meredith’s heart and into the minds of her murderers.

Let’s start by listing 12 key insights.

1.         Meredith’s door was closed and locked. Yet on Amanda Knox’s version, the front door was left open.  Did anyone else see the door open?  When Sollecito arrived with Amanda, was it open?  We only have Amanda’s word that the front door was left open.  If it wasn’t left open all night, and for half of the morning, why lie about it?  

 2.         Guede. The evidence shows that Rudy Guede bolted from the scene first.  It is highly unlikely Guede locked Meredith’s door on his way out, or the villa’s front door, for that matter.  In the history of unprofessional burglaries, break-ins and murders, how many robbers, killers and petty crooks lock the doors or close the windows of the places they’ve targeted?   We must also ask a serious question: if Amanda and Raffaele were involved in the crime, if they covered it up, if they staged the burglary, if they moved Meredith’s body (and propped it onto a pillow) if they cleaned up the crime scene, did they do so selectively – making sure not to remove Guede’s footprints (for example), or flush the toilet, only their own?  We know today that Guede was involved, and that he was assisted by one, probably two accomplices. We know he was there.  But let’s say Guede wasn’t there, if Guede didn’t do it, then who did? How about someone who locked the front door after leaving the crime scene?  But who would do that?  Would a burglar do that or a tenant?  Is it possible that there really was a burglar, but that the burglar was also a tenant? Is it possible that a thieving tenant caused an argument with another tenant?  Is it possible that two men in the house at the time came to the aid of the thieving tenant, and that tenant, caught out, but supported by sidekicks, escalated the argument into a homicidal rant?

 3.         AK vs RS (implicating each other) Immediately after having been told her boyfriend was no longer supporting her alibi, Amanda implicated Patrick Lumumba. In Amanda’s schema, she also smears Raffaele a little, saying he had blood on his hands whilst cooking, maybe from fish, but maybe not. Sollecito in turn supports Amanda’s story until the heat in the kitchen gets too much for him, and he then throws Amanda under the bus, but then loses an alibi himself (that she was with him).

 4.         Implicating Lumumba Lumumba had nothing to do with the crime, so why implicate him?  Why not implicate Guede?  Well, there is such a thing as honor among thieves – and murders.  You rain on my parade, and I’ll rain on yours.  Which is exactly the case in point number 3.

 5.         Delay In Amanda’s own version, she arrived at the villa at 10:30 am.  In fact, while she was there, Meredith lay dead in her bedroom (next door to Amanda’s room), under a duvet.  Half an hour later Amanda takes a shower, around the time Meredith’s phones are reported to the Postal Police.  Here’s the irony.  One random person finds a cell phone in their garden and calls the police.  Another person enters a crime scene and is there for hours, and doesn’t call anyone.  The door is eventually kicked down not by the police (who have been convinced, by Knox, that it’s not abnormal for Kercher to lock her door), not by a tenant, but by another random person.

 Whether Knox and Sollecito finally communicate about the crime scene before the Postal Police arrive or not is less relevant than whom they call.  When they eventually do make calls, both call relatives.  Knox never calls the police, despite claiming to do so to a friend, and in her email. 

 raffaele told me he wanted to see if he could break down merediths door. he tried, and cracked the door, but we couldnt open it. it was then that we decided to call the cops. …he first called his sister for advice and then called the carbanieri. i then called filomna

 

 Actually, Amanda called her Mother at this point. Amanda does call Filomena, earlier in the day, to get the burglary ball rolling, and Filomena goes on to call everyone else.  Raffaele and Amanda are so concerned when the door to Meredith’s room is broken open, that they ‘stand aside’, somewhere else, whilst everyone else is in the corridor, anxious to find Meredith.

 i was in the kitchen standing aside, having really done my part for the situation. 

 6.         Cover Up A cover up sounds like conspiracy theory, like paranoia and imagination.  In the Jodi Arias trial the conspiracy was hers, there were apparently two intruders, a man and a woman, dressed like ninjas. Why come up with such an outlandish story?  Well, in order for Jodi Arias to be innocent, someone else has to be guilty.  Some anonymous outsider, some nameless, faceless, intruder, must be guilty. In the Oscar Pistorius case, he thought he heard a burglar climbing through a window, about to attack him. In this case the burglar is nameless and faceless by definition, because Pistorius admits ‘I thought she [Reeva] was an intruder, and so I shot her [through a locked door’.]  By implicating Lumumba we see the intentionality - the determination to cover up.  

 By investigating the ‘burglary’, in which – note, nothing is stolen – we are forced not only to question the ‘evidence’ of the break-in, but the method.  Which burglar in his right mind is able to hurl a 5kg rock through a second story window? Even if we accept this burglar is a champion shot-putter, is he a gymnast and part time rock climber too?  It is an extremely implausible if not impossible climb to the window only to throw glass fragments over clothes already strewn on the floor.  Then there is also the bloody footprint, left in Meredith’s blood, after breaking into her room (even though the ‘burglar’ left through the front door, via themurderofMerdeithKercher.com:

 Rep 176 (L1 in the inspection report) was a Luminol trace found to have the victim's DNA, located on the floor near the window.  Rep 177 (L2) was between the door and the window, containing a Knox/Victim mixed profile.  That the victim's blood had been tracked into Filomena's room proved to the satisfaction of the courts that the staging must therefore have taken place after the murder.

 When we look at images of the window housing, there’s also clear evidence of a fresh bruise to the wood [just above ‘R’] on the inside of the wooden panel. A rock hurled from below would need to arc perfectly over the sill to strike the bottom part of the housing which is also set backwards, away from the exterior of the house. It’s more likely the rock was thrown downwards into the corner, possibly with the shutters closed, than that it was lofted effortlessly from ground level, that it penetrated the narrow gap between shutters, and did all this on the first throw (there was no additional damage to the glass, shutters, window pane or wall indicative of unsuccessful lobs.

 If we interrogate the ‘lobbying’ even further, we have to wonder why no glass was found outside, under the window, or why the intruder didn’t cut himself or leave any DNA in his gymnastic attempt to clamber over a window sill littered with jagged glass. Remember, he would be putting his full weight on the sill, and if any pieces of glass were evident, from the outside, he might pluck these off to clear his entrance.  Being outside and under the window, would he throw the glass inside the room and risk the glass landing on himself, or discard obscuring fragments to the ground outside?  If the shutters were closed, and the projectile thrown at the window from the inside, the glass would ricochet inwards, as is evident.  The shutters could have been pushed open afterwards, although may have swung open and closed in the wind afterwards. In Knox’s own testimony, she describes the shutters not as wide open, but slightly open. 

Also worth noting and consistent with a delay/cover-up is that in Amanda’s version, she sees Filomena’s room the next morning, but doesn’t call her at the time, from her room, or from the villa.  Amanda calls Filomena only once she is back at Raffaele’s house. 

 In Guede’s testimony, he and Meredith had a date, and thus he was invited through the front door.  Also, Guede was not convicted of burglary. So if it was a burglary, the burglars are still out there.

7.         Sex Besides staging a burglary, besides delaying the discovery of the body, we also have to deal with the staging of a sexual assault.  Meredith’s body was not lying in the position she was in when she was murdered. Blood stains show that Meredith was murdered right in front of her closet and then moved backwards and to the left. A sheet, two towels, a sock and a pillow were found under her body.  The bra was cut off her body post mortem and placed at her feet.  Why?  Was it to suggest an aggressive sexual assault?  Meredith was sexually assaulted, but it was not a conventional rape.  No male genitalia were involved.  Why?  Why was it necessarily to humiliate Meredith sexually?  Why was it necessary, post mortem, to exaggerate the assault itself?  What sort of petty criminal locks the door to a crime scene after thoughtfully placing the deceased on a make-shift bed on the floor, also covering the corpse in her own duvet?  What sort of amateur does all this but neglects to cover her foot?  The botched covering up of the body is analogous to the botched staging of the burglary. And the botched staging of the burglary is analogous to the poor execution of the murder. 

 Besides all these, sex comes up again and again with Amanda – whether it is her casual attitude to sex leading up to the crime, whether it is Meredith’s disapproval of her bringing strangers home to the villa on a regular basis, whether it is promising Raffaele wild sex immediately after a grueling police interrogation, whether it is her boyfriend describing Amanda as ‘pleasure-seeking’, whether it is others describing Amanda as a ‘man-eater’, whether it is Amanda’s condoms or dildos lying around the villa, whether it is Amanda’s ‘menstrual’ explanations for finding blood, whether it is Amanda’s ‘rape’ essay or whether it is her one-night stand with the cocaine dealer she met on the train. 

 8.       Drugs  In Amanda’s prison diary she says she will never use marijuana again.  Why not? When did marijuana ever have anything to do with this crime?  She smoked a joint with Raffaele, wasn’t that it?

 What’s macabre is how Amanda, in her own words, combines conspiratorial rape, violence, sex and drugs, via thestranger.com:

Last week, Knox's MySpace page was set to private, though not before The Stranger—and other news organizations—had printed out the contents of Knox's blog. On November 7, London's Daily Mail wrote that the writing on Knox's blog gave "worrying insight into the bizarre life which has led the 20-year-old brunette to an Italian police cell," and, with specific reference to "Baby Brother," that "the discovery of the prose, which will now be examined by detectives, casts a new light on the woman." But the ostensible "insight" provided by this ostensible "new light" went unarticulated. You were just supposed to infer it, since "Baby Brother" is built around an older brother (Edgar) confronting his younger brother (Kyle) for drugging and raping a girl.

The only new light that "Baby Brother" casts on the murder suspect is that she wasn't a very good short-story writer. She emphasizes characters' furrowed brows and facial creases and is overly fond of the word "sand" ("His husky voice sounded like it was crawling out of a bucket of sand"; "His skin reminded him of sand, and how sand was all stretched and washed out on a cold beach"; a character named Sandra has "sandy blond hair"). When Edgar is about to confront Kyle, we get this rather overbaked sentence: "His mouth was drawn tight and creased at the edges, and for a second Edgar thought he was going to say something, but he felt the tightness of his brow ease and he swallowed a large, slippery gulp of the aching, burning rage that pulsated in his forehead, chest, and throat." These are unmistakably the contorted metaphors and maudlin exaggerations concocted by someone who doesn't know what she's talking about, who's making it up whole cloth.

The story's biggest weakness from a literary standpoint is that none of it is believable. Kyle, the story's rapist, is a cheeseball bad guy who first tells his brother, "A thing you have to know about chicks is that they don't know what they want," and then punches Edgar in the face. Anyone who's ever read a handful of college-level creative-writing assignments knows that date rape is a cliché of the genre, as is someone-punching-someone-else-in-the-face. These are the sorts of conflicts that creative-writing students cook up because they're taught that the first thing they need to do is cook up conflict. After Edgar gets punched by his brother (described as feeling "like someone was jabbing a razor into the left side of his face," which isn't what getting punched in the face feels like), Edgar is on the floor bleeding profusely. "He spit into the blossoming smudge beside his head." That's pretty evocative, that "blossoming smudge."

From Amanda’s prison diary (which we will analyse in detail in DARK MATTER) Amanda herself speaks of dream-like feelings of disconnectedness, unreality.  In her statements to police Amanda specifically states that she can’t be sure what is real.  She literally uses the word ‘dream’ to describe how she saw herself and heard Patrick [written ‘Patrik’] assaulting Meredith.  One aspect that makes absolutely no sense on her version of Patrick assaulting Meredith is that Patrick didn’t care that Amanda was there.  He went into her room, and by all accounts raped and murdered Meredith, not caring that his employee was next door, and also apparently leaving, still not caring that a murder witness was out there.  In her desperate rush to implicate Patrick, Amanda seems to have forgotten about the implications of her own story.  Of course, by implicating Patrick, by being a witness, and at the same time, Raffaele no longer backing up Amanda’s story, all three automatically became prime suspects. And it did seem like a crime perpetrated by multiple attackers.

9.         Rock ‘n Roll Besides the dreamy disconnection of the diary, besides the dreamy dissociated behaviour at the villa, despite the dreamy druggy playlist (Nirvana and Oasis) ringing out from Raffaele’s apartment before 6am on the morning of Meredith’s murder, besides the giggling and gymnastics at the police station, besides the sense of a vacant mind and a restless, impatient spirit in jail (counting the days of her incarceration, hoping for house arrest, and to be home for Christmas) we get a sense that this is who Amanda is. She’s into Harry Potter and marijuana.  She’s into Nirvana, strumming her guitar, drugs, late night/early morning parties and casual sex.  She’s into soccer, foreign men and a campaign of casual sex.  She’s kinda in a fantasy world.  She’s kinda living somewhere that doesn’t quite exist.

 10.     Psychological Traits In DARK MATTER, we will do thorough psychological profiles on Knox, Sollecito and Guede.  Using ‘thin slicing’, we can infer from Knox’s hedonism is a certain drug-induced level of self-absorbed narcissism (and empty oblivion), from Sollecito there is a knife fetish (when he was arrested he carried a large knife with him), he had been disciplined by the university for consuming bestiality porn, he was into violent manga, and like Knox, there’s a strong sense of hedonistic entitlement.  I am entitled to live my life.  The police are to blame.  I am allowed to tell my story.  I am free.  I am the victim. All this is typical of many killers (Durst, Pistorius, Arias, Anthony) suffering from entitlement and its attenuating excesses.

 11.     Mendacity The thinnest way to slice whether someone has criminal capacity or not, is to measure their honesty. Chances are if you lie about small things on important matters, if you suffer memory lapses at critical junctures (only to reclaim these memories at one’s own convenience), then one’s attitude to reality, and to other people is fucked up.  

 There are two basic scenarios that fuck up your reality:

 1.         You have an attitude problem founded on a poor psychology.  Maybe you’re a psychopath, maybe you’re a narcissist, maybe you have low self esteem, or maybe you’re arrogant. Whatever it is, your reality and Reality aren’t quite congruent.  They don’t gel.  And neither do you.

 2.         You are a habitual liar, perhaps because of circumstances (like poverty, or wealth, or poor parenting, or parenting that is too good), or because of an addiction, or because everything is always someone else’s fault.  Call it what you will, lying, dissembling, denial, dreaming, amnesia, it doesn’t start in court, it ends there.

 If Knox and Sollecito are innocent of murder, if they both slept through the crime, then how come there are so many inconsistencies in both their statements.  Why are there so many holes to their story, and why is their behaviour similarly odd?  Why is the murder weapon discovered at Sollecito’s flat?  How did Meredith Kercher’s blood end up on Sollecito’s knife, which is at his apartment, if Meredith had never been there herself?  How come Knox’s blood was found on the same knife?

 Besides evidence linking them to the crime, and besides the DNA evidence, there is an orgy of evidence.  There’s an orgy of circumstantial evidence, and behavioral anomaly that lines up. There is also a subjective test, and yes, this is speculative rather than scientific.  Although there are some scientific methods to test for veracity, there’s body language, there are facial giveaways, there’s statement analysis, and there is also intuition.  When you watch Knox in her interview with CNN and with Diane Sawyer the thought foremost in our minds is the most basic and most obvious one.  Are you a murderer, Amanda?  And for my money, just watching Knox’s reactions, she’s not very convincing.  If Knox is a liar, she’s not a very good one.

 “If I were there, I would have traces of Meredith's broken body on me. And I would have left traces of myself around -- around Meredith's corpse.”

 Well you did, Amanda, didn’t you?

 Calling Meredith’s body broken feels odd, doesn’t it?  It’s not as though Meredith fell or was bludgeoned, or any part of her was amputated, crushed or decapitated.  She bled to death.  Rather, the term ‘broken’ may be indicative of the murder itself, and how a strong woman was overhwhelmed or – in the murderer’s sick schema – defeated.  Is that what she really means by ‘broken’?

 Calling Meredith’s body a ‘corpse’ is reminiscient of Robert Durst’s letter to LA police referring to a ‘cadaver’.  Both are disassocations, because the idea of a dead body is too personal, especially when the dead body used to belong to someone the murderer knew quite well.  The ‘corpse’ and ‘cadaver’ distances and de-personalizes.

 It’s also interesting that Durst would contact police.  Why?  Is it because if he is the killer, he couldn’t bear the thought of his friends body decomposing?  Is the duvet thoughtfully covering Meredith, and her door locked, not also indicative of a similar prior attachment.

 Via Scienceofthepeople.com:

First, Sawyer asked Knox, “Did you kill Meredith Kercher?” Knox says “No,” very directly, with eye contact, no odd facial tics and, most importantly, a side to side head shake–the nonverbal sign of “no.” This negative head shake matches her negative statement and the absence of facial leaks is also devoid of deception.

Second, Sawyer asks, “Were you there that night?” Knox’s verbal answer is the same, “No.” Yet, her nonverbal behavior at this question is different. She says “No” then flashes a microexpression of surprise and nods her head up and down–the position of “yes.” Here her nonverbal does not match her words. There are a number of reasons why she could have shown that surprise and head nod. Occasionally people raise their eyebrows as a verbal punctuator or exclamation point. Again, not a sure sign of lying, but a definite red flag in my book.

I concur.  By simply studying Knox’s facial cues, it’s difficult to imagine she’s a murderer.  Simultaneously, it’s hard not to see that Knox is hiding something.

 So besides being a bad actress, and possibly a bad liar, what are we really saying? We’re also suggesting that two literate, educated people created a situation, and then manufactured and manipulated the situation to make it appear…different. And for one purpose: to exonerate themselves.  

 Why are Knox and Sollecito not so much adamant that they weren’t there, but that they can’t be connected to the crime?  Why are they so confident of this?  How could they know, especially if they were involved in Kercher’s death, that there are few, to no, traces of themselves at the crime scene?  Is it because they spent hours on the floor, using Knox’s bedside lamp, scouring the scene, perhaps vacuuming or dusting the clothes and otherwise cleaning up after themselves?  We know for a fact that the bathroom footprint, half on the mat, was removed.  That was almost certainly Sollecito’s print.  If Guede left a paint-by-number pattern of footprints, surely Sollecito and Knox did too, initially.  Raffaele, a more meticulous individual, may have masterminded the clean-up operation in Guede’s absence.  And for all intents and purposes they succeeded.  

 But there is a difference between no evidence and a slight trail. There is also the question of why the cottage – as a whole – had so few traces of Amanda in it, and she lived there.

 Make no mistake, drug users, casual or otherwise are experts at manipulation, obfuscation and deception.  More serious drug users are expert liars.  Why?  Because recreational drug use – cannabis or cocaine – is a criminal offence.  It’s a criminal offense because the addictive behavior it causes can lead to anti-social behavior at best and drug-fueled mayhem at worst.

 It takes mendacity to become an addict in the first place.  Little by little, we get our kicks from something or someone with a little more of a kick.  Little by little our lies become a lifestyle.  Next thing you know, our mendacity has become a habit.  It’s automatic.  And we seek out others with similar habits, people who protect us and enable us….so we can feel safe in our denial. 

 We see mendacity again and again in this case. Amanda lies. Sollecito lies.  Why?  Arias lies, Pistorius lies, Anthony lies and Durst lies. Why?  Why do you lie when you have nothing to hide?

You know I didn't mean what I just said
But my God woke up on the wrong side of His bed
And it just don't matter now

 – from the Oasis song Amanda and Raffaele listened to hours after Meredith’s murder

12.     Motive In the ‘Little by Little’ Oasis song that is both the soundtrack and backdrop to this chapter, the last words Why am I really here? are repeated twice. Why are we here?  We’re here to solve a mystery.  The mystery is where was Amanda?  Was she involved in Meredith’s death? Even before Kercher’s death, why was she at the villa in the first place, what brought her there on September 20, 2007? Why did Amanda choose to live there, in a house – upstairs and downstairs – filled with marijuana users?  Why was she in Italy to begin with? 

 If the motive in the Arias murder was one-upmanship, it was probably the same in the Durst and Pistorius crimes as well.  You have an argument, and one person (who is important to you and important to your sense of self) either accuses or abandons or threatens you, or commits a combination of these abominations, why is the result a fatal and brutal lashing out by the killer?  Well perhaps because someone not in touch with reality is finally told off, in no uncertain terms.  Reality is brought down on them, and it is suffocating and terrible especially when you’ve lived without it for so long.

 What we find time and time again in these crimes isn’t that the trigger is the motive, but that some undercurrent of tension is set off by a trigger.  In Oscar’s case, the underlying tension is years of pretending to be ‘normal’, pretending to be ‘able-bodied’, pretending to be a champion athlete when he can barely move, let alone run on his stumps.  Oscar’s ‘feet’ in reality are the size of postage stamps, or an average sized coin.  Why did this come as such a surprise to the world?  Because Oscar hid this from everyone.  

 In the Durst case, his own mother’s death and his father picking his younger brother to run the business created this sense of ‘betrayal’ and ‘distrust’.  If anyone close to him let him down, it felt a million times worse than ordinary betrayal felt to anyone else.  With Jodi Arias, it was the bitterness of unrequited love culminating in escalating arguments involving threats and blackmail.  Arias’ case is like Durst’s in that the premeditation appears to be slow and calculated.  It’s not spontaneous, it’s planned.

 In this case, the trigger was the theft of Meredith’s rent money (this is what triggered an outburst against Amanda).  For Amanda, if she committed murder, being high on cocaine – if she was – didn’t help her to deal with Meredith’s accusation. If Guede and Sollecito were there too, and if they were both high as well, then their judgement would also have been impaired.  If the three of them were on the same high then the attack on Meredith would have played out the way one aggressive dog – even a small dog, especially a small dog – can incite aggressions in another, or in a small pack.  

 What about Sollecito?  He was under stress because he was wrapping up his thesis.  He was about to become a doctor, and Amanda was one of his first girlfriends. What about Guede? He was being investigated for his break-in of the local law offices.  How do their tensions play into Amanda’s, if at all? How did Halloween and the holiday mix all of this into a toxic brew that killed Kercher? We will discuss group-think in more detail in DARK MATTERS.

 For now, we will conclude this chapter with the suggestion that if the trigger was a squabble over money, the motive was one-upmanship.  It was a young woman showing another that she wouldn’t be bossed around, bullied, or told what she could and couldn’t do. She was here to do as she liked and she damn well would!  It was a young woman putting another in her place.  Because wasn’t that Amanda’s reason for being in Italy in the first place?  To occupy her rightful place in the world. And no one, not Meredith, not the police, not prison, not Raffaele, not the media, no one was going to take that away from her.  She was in Italy not waiting to be heard. This was finally Amanda’s time to do the opposite: live her life. Be seen. Be heard. And be felt. And can there be any doubt she succeeded?

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