[above: conspiracy theorists don’t want you to believe that is an aircraft]
Conspiracy Theories And Those That Surround Meredith’s Murder:
What do the Apollo moon landings, the JFK assassination, the 9/11 attacks, and Meredith Kercher’s murder all have in common?
They have each attracted the vigorous cult-like attention of conspiracy theorists. Despite the cold hard fact that in each case there has been ample documentation to support what might best be called the official story.
We know from independent and highly credible and very respected sources that the Apollo missions were successful, that a lone gunman shot and killed the US president in Dallas, that a terrorist group was responsible for hijacking of four aircraft, that the World Trade Center complex was destroyed by the subsequent fires..
And that Knox, Sollecito and Guede attacked and killed Meredith in her rented room in Perugia on the first of November in 2007.
Among the dozens of similarities between the Meredith case conspiracy theorists and others, we will focus on those made most apparent by the words and actions of those advocating for Knox and (occasionally) Sollecito.
A Commonality: Lack Of Any Coherent Alternate Narrative:
The court was obliged to create a logical narrative supported by the evidence. That narrative, briefly, states that Knox and Sollecito encountered Guede after they found they had no obligations that evening, consumed drugs that lowered their inhibitions, and entered Meredith’s room.
What followed was a sexual assault upon the young British woman, the active participation of each of the three accused, Meredith’s attempts to scream for help, and the silencing of the victim by covering her mouth, throttling her and finally stabbing her in the throat. The three assailants then departed after locking Meredith’s bedroom door.
Her mobile phones and keys were taken by Knox and Sollecito to be discarded in a remote location. Once it was apparent that the authorities had not responded to Meredith’s screams, Knox and Sollecito returned to the cottage to stage a break-in and to obscure as much evidence of their presence as was possible.
Those advocating for Knox and Sollecito have never supplied a coherent narrative to refute the official story.
Similarly, 9/11 truthers have never been able to agree on much apart from their strident belief that the official story simply must be wrong. Various hypotheses have been advanced and withdrawn in the face of objections by scientists, engineers, and even rival truther factions.
There is a no-planer faction that argues there were no planes hijacked and that all the video and film evidence was created in a government production studio. There is a controlled demolition faction that argues government agents secretly wired unknown explosive devices in one of the busiest office buildings in the world while nobody noticed. There are others who believe the leaseholder of the site ordered the demolition because of concerns about asbestos replacement.
When asked how Guede gained entry to the cottage, conspiracy theorists promote three main theories without selecting the one they all agree upon.
They argue that Guede entered through Filomena’s window OR that Meredith let him in the house herself OR that he entered by unknown means and was there before she returned home at roughly 21:00.
Because conspiracy theorists are not constrained by the requirement for a logical narrative they will pick any of the three available and contradictory claims.
A Commonality: An Aversion To Respecting Good Science:
The Apollo moon landing hoaxes have a lot in common with the advocacy sites proclaiming the innocence of Knox and Sollecito.
Apart from the development of the atomic bomb, there has likely been no human technological achievement so intensively documented as the Apollo programme.
Among the many claims of the conspiracists is the position that late-Sixties technology and instrumentation was insufficient or too bulky to allow the moon landings to take place. They compare the size and power of 21st century computing hardware and software with that of 1969 and make their conclusions based on a perceived inadequacy of the previous era’s equipment.
In Meredith’s case there are several advocacy sites that criticise the scientific police on exactly the same basis.
The techniques employed by (mainly) Dr Stefanoni, in determining the presence of Meredith’s DNA on a knife found in Sollecito’s drawer, are attacked partly because the equipment had not been used this way before.
Just to be sure of their position, however, they add confidently that she simply could have faked the results or kept her tweezers in a beaker of Meredith’s DNA accidentally left in the laboratory. It matters little to the unscientific mind of the conspiracy theorist that Stefanoni’s techniques were fully documented and observed by an independent party as required by law.
A Commonality: Lack Of A Credible Alternate Suspect:
Wrongful convictions happen. There are dozens of them documented on a site operated by The Innocence Project, an American advocacy group. Its banner proudly proclaims that 258 convictions had been overturned.
The foundation seizes upon several important facets of wrongful convictions including DNA evidence and improper defence counselling. In almost all the 258 cases there is another common feature: a credible alternate suspect.
JFK conspiracy theorists have never been able to establish a credible alternate suspect - and neither have Knox/Sollecito advocates.
The latter have not yet gone so far as to accuse the Mafia, Fidel Castro, the Teamsters Union, LBJ, Nixon, the CIA and a man carrying an umbrella in Dealey Plaza. But their attempt to establish Guede as the sole perpetrator accomplishes the same thing.
Just in case the ‘lone wolf’ doesn’t make any sense, they are not beyond implicating even Filomena, falsely claiming that it is only her word against that of Knox that Meredith did not normally lock her bedroom door.
There was only one attempt to identify an alternate suspect and that was made by Knox herself. She told police investigators that Patrick, her boss, was the killer.
She is one step ahead of those proclaiming her innocence; she knew better than they that without another explanation it is she and Sollecito who remained the prime suspects. She also knows, more than her supporters, that naming Guede instead would invite reciprocation.
Conclusions About Conspiracy Theorists
As briefly illustrated above, the length and depth of those being falsely implicated by the mostly anonymous Knox/Sollecito conspiracy theorists, untethered by the 80,000 pound gorilla in the room, the Massei Report, now knows few bounds.
This has now reached such levels of absurdity that they are increasingly being laughed at or, for the most part, ignored. Nobody - really nobody - in either the Italian or American governments is paying them even the slightest attention.
Meredith’s case is showing to the clear-thinking and objective world that Italy has an enviable justice system, that it is very careful and very humane, and that its scientific and forensic techniques are among the vanguard in applied criminal research.
And with no obvious way of obtaining special gains for themselves (or for that matter of hitting back against the anonymous attacks) the very fine police and investigators and prosecutors and judges and juries in Italy are doing the very best they can for Meredith.
