The November 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia is one of the most controversial crimes of our age, and perhaps like the murders of Beryl and Geraldine Evans over half a century earlier, will never be properly resolved, because all the parties involved have lied shamelessly.
The earlier case involved two men who were fluent liars: Timothy Evans and serial killer John Reginald Halliday Christie. In the Meredith Kercher case, which is ongoing, the three people convicted: Rudy Guede, Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox, all told significant untruths.
Of the three, Guede is the only one who is currently behind bars. When he testified at the appeal of the other two in June 2011, he claimed they murdered Meredith rather than him. The prosecution case was, always has been, and remains, that all three committed the murder during what has been described as a bizarre sex game. Although there were and remain three suspects (after the last appeal three perpetrators), the bulk of media attention has been focused on Amanda Knox for reasons that need no explaining here.
The defenders of Miss Knox – which includes most of the American media – portray her as a free-spirited young woman who has been both victimised and stigmatised by an antedeluvian criminal justice system on account of her icy stare and loose morals. The prosecution’s theory of the murder is ridiculed, and Rudy Guede is cast as the sole perpetrator.
These arguments are plausible; it does not take more than one person to commit a knife murder. Furthermore, her seemingly bizarre behaviour in the wake of the murder is easily explained. People often react in offbeat or truly bizarre ways following traumatic events. There are the well-documented phenomena of disaster shock and rape trauma syndrome. Disaster shock can affect anyone. Women who have been raped often behave in ways that diminishes their credibility with the legal authorities. The video footage of Knox and Sollecito embracing after the discovery of Meredith’s body has been represented as proof of their callous indifference, but is it?
Amanda Knox is said to have confessed to her involvement in the murder, but many innocent people have confessed to serious crimes including murders in short order and under less duress than that to which she was allegedly subjected. Even her implication of the totally innocent Patrick Lumumba can be explained away. If – as is acknowledged – she had been smoking things she didn’t ought to have been smoking, her reactions and even her memory of recent events could have been seriously distorted. All these factors weigh in opposition to the bizarre three-way murder scenario painted by the Italian prosecutors and now apparently accepted twice by legally constituted tribunals. And yet...
There are things that cannot be explained away, however incompetent, prurient, ludicrous her “persecutors” may be.
In spite of the bias of the American media, there are those who take an entirely different position. Attorney, Harvard academic and legal pundit Alan Dershowitz is one of the few. Listen to what he says about the media coverage, and the way Amanda Knox supporters have (wilfully) misled the public about the true strength of the case against her. There are also dissenting websites which pose some awkard and still unanswered questions about that night in November 2007.
This one, True Justice for Meredith Kercher, contains massive documentation. And only today a new BBC documentary with the title Is Amanda Knox Guilty? has been uploaded to YouTube.
If you check out all this documentation thoroughly, you may find yourself coming to the same conclusion as Alan Dershowitz, that legally Amanda Knox should be found not guilty, but you wouldn’t want her dating your son.
[The above article was first published February 19, 2014.]
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