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I've been wonderin' if it is common for foreigners in Italy
to have to
give up their palm print when gettin' an ID residency card?
Reading a personal story titled
Getting an Italian ID Card - not for the feint of heart
here:
http://burntbythetuscansun.blogspot.com/2012/07/getting-italian-id-card-not-for-feint.html
it sure seems to be a hassle gettin' that Italian ID card.
But there's not a mention of givin' up the palm print.
Esh, even
Vixen seems to have not had to
give up the palm print.
I wonder why "poor Rudy" had his palm print taken?
Might he a been in some trouble with
the law
as that early newspaper article that
Ken Dine reported.
We know that not everything they reported early was incorrect, ok?
There could only be two explanations why they did such a complete documentation of Guede with all those prints taken in 2005:
1 - they do it with all immigrants when they turn 18 y/o since I think Guede turned 18 around 2005?
2 - Or, Guede was either charged or convicted of a crime (such as the reported knife-fight over drugs), and that may have kicked in a higher level of documentation on him.
Even if Guede had never been convicted of any crimes (perhaps protected by his rich adoptive family), I'm sure the local cops were well aware of Guede prior to the murder.
In any event, the quality of the palm print found at the crime scene was probably too poor to use it to locate Guede as a suspect, but once the police had identified Guede as a possible suspect and had his name, then his palm-print in those files may have been enough to allow the police to confirm Guede was their suspect on Nov 16th, and that may have been all that the cops had initially claimed.
A few days after Nov 16th is when the police finally located Guede's apartment and collected their DNA evidence there, which also linked Guede back to the crime.
According to media accounts at the time, the police were zeroing in on Guede by Nov 10th, but I doubt if they knew his actual name that early.
At first blush the below Nov 10th article implies that Guede was already identified (bolded), yet the highlighted portion deeper into the article makes it clear they still didn't have Guede's name on the 10th:
Fourth suspect in Meredith murder identified
By Malcolm Moore in Rome
11/10/2007
A fourth suspect involved in the killing of British student Meredith Kercher has been identified by police, it emerged today.
The manhunt for another possible killer began after forensic scientists identified a fingerprint in blood on a cushion in the house that did not match any of the three current suspects.
The police now think they can identify him from the footage from three car park security cameras which overlook the house where Miss Kercher was killed.
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http://s2.excoboard.com/Courthouse_Steps_Mavens/122767/1724692
Based upon the African hairs found at the crime scene as well as the CCTV footage, the police obviously knew their 4th suspect was an African man.
The boys downstairs had an African acquaintance that had visited the cottage once or twice (as reported by both the boys and by Amanda), but they didn't know his real name. From that start, good old fashioned police work could have identified Guede in just a few more days.
E.g., the police could have assembled a photo lineup of all African immigrant males and showed that to the 4 boys.
Or, the police went to the basketball courts and found someone there who knew Guede's name (and got lucky)?
Or, one of the local cops who knew Guede suggested Guede as a possible suspect?
While there were clearly many inept cops with tunnel vision who had early on focused in on Amanda, sometime after Nov 6th when the DNA started coming back with zero matches to Amanda, Raffaele & Lumumba, there were likely some experienced cops on Perugia's police force capable of following traditional leads, which quickly led to the identification and arrest of Guede.
That should have been the end of it, but
all-too-powerful Mignini had to play his crazy games, and the rest is history.
