So, how does "a simple burglary turned nasty" come to include a sexual assault, in your view?
That's one of the few things that we seem to know definitively: that Rudy performed a sexual assault on Meredith. (I suppose there are still those who will argue that it was consensual but that doesn't apply in this scenario.)
I think Guede's sexual assault of Meredith was opportunistic - he was discovered breaking and entering, and found himself trapped in a house with a woman he'd met and previously been attracted to, him armed with a knife, her completely unarmed. I don't think he intended to kill her, and was probably shocked and panicked when it happened - I think he's probably telling the truth when he said he went to get towels from the bathroom to try and stop the bleeding. I doubt Guede would have deliberately set out to do something so drastic that it meant he would have to leave the country.
We've heard so much about Amanda's (pretty ordinary) sex life, yet we've heard nothing at all about Guede's, despite him being the only one whose DNA was found inside the victim. How might his sexual history (or lack thereof) have contributed to what happened? From the testimony of the people who knew him, it seems he hadn't had a girlfriend. There's some suggestion that he was known to hassle women, especially when he was drunk; a witness named Momi (later dismissed because he sold his story) said that Guede could be "a nuisance to girls, he’d block their path and try to hassle them. When we were in crowded places he stole their bags". When Guede was caught after breaking into the nursery, he was found with a woman's watch in his backpack.
How would someone in Guede's situation react if he found himself in the position he did with Meredith - alone with her in the house, armed, in a position of absolute power over her, and able to force her to do whatever he wanted (or so he must have thought)? Had he ever been in that situation before? Probably not, since on the two previous occasions he'd been caught, one was by Tramantano and his girlfriend, and the other was by a nursery school teacher and her son accompanied by a locksmith. I don't think it's difficult to imagine how, in the heat of the moment and high on panic and adrenalin (if nothing else), Guede attempted sexual assault, and even less difficult to see how that assault may have turned into murder (very common in cases of rape, of course).
And even if we are to dismiss the burglary turned sexual assault theory as unlikely, the problem is that we then have to accept scenarios which are infinitely more unlikely than that. We have to accept that three near strangers with no history of anything similar plotted and carried out a sex game and murder together, the timing of which was decided on the spur of the moment, with no motive whatsoever; or alternatively, we have to accept that an argument between housemates over money or cleaning (!) somehow escalated into sexual assault and murder. Surely that's a far bigger leap than the armed intruder turning rapist theory. A mark of how unlikely these alternative scenarios are is that, invariably, heavy drinking and drug-taking are suggested to explain how the murder happened, even though there's no evidence of either. In contrast, there's no need to invoke alcohol or drugs to explain Guede's involvement (though it's possible of course that they were involved). When faced with a scenario that is somewhat unlikely but certainly has precedent (I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time an armed intruder attempted rape) and an alternative scenario which is pretty much unprecedented in the history of crime, it seems to me we have to accept that the former is more probable, at least without very convincing evidence to the contrary - evidence I don't think has been supplied in this case.
This discussion keeps going on, as I've said before, because the evidence of multiple attackers will remain forever hidden to us outsiders. It's something that one has to take on faith: that the evidence was strong and fairly presented, that the defense couldn't refute it, and that the "jury" evaluated it rationally and didn't simply kowtow to the prosecution & the professional judges. I have always had trouble with this faith-based aspect of the case and still do. I am hoping that the Sentenza will shed some light on it.
Yes, I'll agree with you there. I thought Micheli's reasoning in terms of both the multiple attacker scenario and the moving of the body was very speculative (as is only to be expected from a pre-trial report which didn't carry the same burden of proof as was required in the trial) and no doubt those issues were discussed in much more detail during the trial itself. But since we don't know what was said during the trial, we're left pretty much in the dark in terms of what was proven and what wasn't. Like you, I hope the judge's report will give us more conclusive information on those aspects of the case.
All of the above??? 
