Cody's Theory
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I think Mignini may not have thought of her a a liar and an actress until AFTER she recanted her statement, AND they realized Lumumba was innocent.
It is possible the police originally thought she had done nothing more than facilitate a date at the cottage between Lumumba and Meredith which resulted in Lumumba murdering Meredith. For various reasons they had this theory before, during, and immediately after the interrogation. They thought she was either too afraid of Lumumba to tell anyone, she had blocked it from her memory, or both. When they convinced her that she had blocked the memory out ("She buckled and made an admission of facts that we knew were correct") they rushed out and arrested Lumumba and announced case closed to the world. At the time, the police seemed satisfied with her statement that she was cowering in the kitchen holding her hands over her ears while Lumumba was murdering Meredith in the bedroom.
Later, when she re-unblocked her real memory and recanted, and it became apparent that Lumumba had an airtight alibi, Mignini and his minions decided they had been duped and embarrassed by the clever evil American witch bitch so therefore she must be the actual murderer. They never got over it, and any possibility of a fair prosecution and trial after that became impossible.
I am not locked to this theory, but it does explain a lot, and understanding the problem is fundamental to solving the problem. I would like to hear arguments for or against it, particularly with regards to the time-line. For this theory; a sincere police investigation before the interrogation, a prejudiced and dishonest police investigation after Amanda's recanting of her coerced statement.
Interestingly, nothing of the above precludes Rudy from being a police informer, or of some police protecting him. It's just that they either never considered him before the forensic test results were obtained, or if a few did, they never mentioned it.
Cody
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It's a very interesting interpretation, and I found my self saying, 'hmm, maybe, plausible' at many points.
But I do have a issues I want to raise. These are questions.
What did Mignini believe, and when did he believe it? This is the question I think you're asking, and my problem is it may not be a legitimate question.
I'm not entirely convinced Mignini processes information in a rational way. At times he seems literally possessed by madness, At times, he seems opportunistic, playing the ball where it lies.
Patrick has an alibi they can't beat? No problem, he still has Amanda's "confession" of her involvement, so Mignini reconstructs his theory to fit the crime to Amanda. He can gain support from Stef at the lab, and round up tramp witnesses as he has done in the past.
So what does it really mean to say Mignini believes anything?
When confronted with the identification of the Narducci corpse, that Mignini had exhumed (2002), claiming the body had been switched to conceal a satanic cult murder, Mignini claimed there had been a 'double swap'.
When confronting Spezi at his hearing to be released from jail, after Mignini had Spezi imprisoned for being the actual 'Monster of Florence', the description provided in Preston/Spezi's book "MOF" tells of an enraged Mignini shaking his finger at Spezi for his irrational opposition to Mignini's investigations.
Mignini's Narducci theory, Spezi theory, and Kercher theory (that the murder was related to the rites of Halloween as Mignini originally claimed) were provided by the psychic Gabriella Carlizzi, based on her recounting of her illuminations that she reports receiving from Father Gabriel, a deceased vatican priest and exorcist who had died in (I think 1984). There is every reason to believe that Mignini himself honestly believes Carlizzi's claims of satanic cults and their relationship to the MOF crimes, with which Mignini has been trying to associate himself. (The original MOF investigators all received prominent promotions for achieving discredited convictions against people unrelated to the MOF crimes on the basis of their involvement in satanic cults). (Mignini has also authored two articles published on the website "catholic alliance", where in one he describes a revolt against Napoleon where the war cry of "Viva Maria" was taken up by the locals, and he writes of the simultaneous appearance of 'weeping Madonna statues' and other "confirmed" miracles that fed the "counter-revolutionary" rebellion).
So in attributing to Mignini a rational mind, and a logical flow of ideas based on the discovery of new evidence, is not supported by his previous behavior in the Narducci and Spezi cases. (The Case against 20 Florentines, recently dismissed in the last few weeks, was a continuation and cumulation of those investigations).
Lastly Cody, I have tried to point out my belief that the police, specifically Napoleone, tried to get Amanda to pick up a knife 'compatible with the murder', when they took Amanda to the cottage on November 4th. Had Amanda picked up a knife then, do you doubt Stef would have found a match to both Amanda and Meredith, just as Stef did with the knife selected at random from Raf's kitchen on the morning of Nov 6th?
That event on Nov 4th was before Amanda's naming Patrick. And Raf was warned by a police woman outside the station, also I believe on Nov 4th, that he would "need a lawyer for sure", and gave him a lawyer's card. I think its hard to know how crooked or crazy Mignini and the Italians actually are, as these behaviors are by no means isolated to the Kercher investigation.
So, I guess I'm kind of stumped myself. But a picture begins to emerge of a manifestly insane Mignini, bouncing back and forth between the conflicting mental states of a cynical opportunism on the one hand, and a mad delirium of satanic cult witch hunting on the other - and you ask, what does Mignini truly believe? Both? Neither? Can a schizophrenic be said to actually have a fixed set of beliefs, or are they simply subjected to the whims of neural chemical alternate realities washing over them on the fly?
I'm not sure a diagnosis for Mignini beyond "criminally insane" is feasible for outsiders and non-professionals. Mignini should be formally studied though. He is a modern day Torque Mada, an anachronism in modern times, an "Inquisitor" from the medieval Inquisition pining for his instruments of torture, forcing confessions from those in proximity to evil, all in service of his holy war against the devil.
