Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[LondonJohn]

Then why mention them?

And whose conspiracy?

People with better memories will hopefully correct me, but my recollection of the most significant genesis of this rather unfortunate bleed-over of petty disputes from other forums onto our small stage here began with Bruce Fisher's initial offerings, where he devoted his first two posts to boosting his own website, and used his fourth to take aim straight at Fulcanelli. We'd had a sprinkling of one-topic posters joining the forum for this thread up until then, but afterward the floodgates seemed to open wide.

Quite frankly I am unable to sort out who is conspiring to what.

Perhaps you have some thoughts on the subject beyond 'not' rolleyes mentioning it.

Never mind....

 

[LondonJohn]

I don't think that you do understand them. The statements you are making suggest otherwise.

I'm not "homing in" on anything. I have no idea what gives you that impression.




I certainly don't know that. Unless you are participating in a separate reality you don't know it either.

I note your facile use of qualifiers. It does not provide the plausible deniability you appear to think it does.

I could argue that the vast majority of publicity about any high profile case in the U.S. is pre-trial. For one thing, those sorts of cases generally are years in coming to trial. It is more common for people to have to be reminded of them when they finally do. The media outlets make hay while the sun shines. When public outrage shifts to the next crime du jour it all recedes from the spotlight.

Character analysis of the accused is an industry in the media. There are (regrettably) hordes of talking heads whose only employment is to pontificate on such matters on every imaginable sort of program from the morning shows to late night news recaps. We have cable channels devoted to nothing else. And it seems to get worse daily. They have absolutely no compunctions about doing this before a trial. They are only marginally restrained by even the lack of an arrest if a "person of interest" seems to be a vulnerable enough target.

I'd have to be convinced that Italy can hold a candle to the U.S. when it comes to pre-trial publication of evidence, or innuendo, or fabrication.

For one example, the Anthony case to date has generated thousands ... literally thousands ... of pages of evidence. Discovery documents from both the prosecution and the defense. Released by the state of Florida. Over 500 pages more just last week. The defendant's family quit visiting her in jail because all of the CCTV records of their conversations were released to the public. Her orders from the jail commissary are the subject of nightly discussion, as are donations to her commissary account. Her family's financial peccadilloes are common knowledge to anyone who cares to find out ... or doesn't turn their head quickly enough. This has been going on for over a year and a half so far and shows no signs of slowing down. Her trial is tentatively scheduled for next summer. Is that pre-trial enough for you?

For an example from a state on the other end of the transparency spectrum take some time and review the coverage of Melissa Huckaby in the Sandra Cantu murder. Tell me what you think of

"the freedom (or otherwise) of the media to "go to town" on a defendant's character, lifestyle, past life and previous misdeeds."
​

in that case. All of that coverage was pre-trial. There never was a trial, really. Knox was treated like a choir girl in the Italian press by comparison ... which is sort of funny in a sad way, because Huckaby actually was a choir girl, not to mention a minister's daughter. The media was publishing diary entries of hers from high school within days of her becoming a part of the investigation. LE got a lot of their background on her from the media.

Note that this is a state which generally plays their cards fairly close to the deck from a sub judice perspective.




Whatever "tone" you imagine is of your own making. Perhaps you should have your hearing checked.

I understand you to be saying that prosecutors in the UK have no right of appeal after an acquittal. This may be true. I have no great familiarity with the fine details of the system there. It isn't true here. Perhaps your "qualifier" of "by and large" covers this.

Double jeopardy protection carries a great weight in the U.S. system, but it is not as perfectly all-encompassing as some would believe. Ask Jeffrey MacDonald, for just one example.

Come to think of it, the MacDonald case offers some interesting parallels. I wonder if the people who believe that Knox would not have been convicted in the U.S. consider that trial to be a miscarriage of justice?

Thank you for your reply. I don't appreciate some of the less-than-civil elements of it, but there you go. However, I do agree that I over-represented the position in the USA regarding sub-judice rules. And for that I apologise.

I am not sure whether you read my subsequent posts on this before your reply, but I did clarify and correct my mistakes (including a whopper of a mistake on a link). Regardless of that, you have every right (of course) to respond to a post of mine that was originally addressed directly to you.

As I said previously: while I still think that there are more remedies in the USA for prejudicial sub-judice publication (but not, notably, prior restraint, following the Supreme Court rulings) than there are in Italy, I would fully concede that I overstated the USA's general position in this area. And that was my mistake.

I would, however, also add that the very mention of the USA in the first place was merely as a somewhat parenthetical addition to a list of countries where stringent sub-judice rules are in operation. I'd still argue, therefore, that a total removal of the USA from my original post would not change the actual argument contained within that post.

Nonetheless, mistakes DO need to be identified, owned up to, and corrected. And I hope that's what's happened here.

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

Nonetheless, mistakes DO need to be identified, owned up to, and corrected. And I hope that's what's happened here.

Well said. I think so, ...and, yes.

 

[RoseMontague]

Then why mention them?

And whose conspiracy?

People with better memories will hopefully correct me, but my recollection of the most significant genesis of this rather unfortunate bleed-over of petty disputes from other forums onto our small stage here began with Bruce Fisher's initial offerings, where he devoted his first two posts to boosting his own website, and used his fourth to take aim straight at Fulcanelli. We'd had a sprinkling of one-topic posters joining the forum for this thread up until then, but afterward the floodgates seemed to open wide.

Quite frankly I am unable to sort out who is conspiring to what.

Perhaps you have some thoughts on the subject beyond 'not' rolleyes mentioning it.

It seemed to me that the floodgates began shortly after Mary_H's initial flurry of posts. Regardless of the reasons people decided to join the debate, my personal opinion is that the more opinion and debate you get, the better a discussion you have.

I see nothing wrong with mentioning posts on other sites, especially if you are not a member or have been banned from that particular place or even made to feel unwelcome. I think that here as well as to a lesser extent, View From Wilmington are the best places to have a discussion with both sides of the argument participating. A little petty bickering and taking sides are to be expected.

 

[Mary_H]

I could argue that the vast majority of publicity about any high profile case in the U.S. is pre-trial. For one thing, those sorts of cases generally are years in coming to trial. It is more common for people to have to be reminded of them when they finally do. The media outlets make hay while the sun shines. When public outrage shifts to the next crime du jour it all recedes from the spotlight.

Character analysis of the accused is an industry in the media. There are (regrettably) hordes of talking heads whose only employment is to pontificate on such matters on every imaginable sort of program from the morning shows to late night news recaps. We have cable channels devoted to nothing else. And it seems to get worse daily. They have absolutely no compunctions about doing this before a trial. They are only marginally restrained by even the lack of an arrest if a "person of interest" seems to be a vulnerable enough target.

I agree with these assessments.

I'd have to be convinced that Italy can hold a candle to the U.S. when it comes to pre-trial publication of evidence, or innuendo, or fabrication.

For one example, the Anthony case to date has generated thousands ... literally thousands ... of pages of evidence. Discovery documents from both the prosecution and the defense. Released by the state of Florida. Over 500 pages more just last week. The defendant's family quit visiting her in jail because all of the CCTV records of their conversations were released to the public. Her orders from the jail commissary are the subject of nightly discussion, as are donations to her commissary account. Her family's financial peccadilloes are common knowledge to anyone who cares to find out ... or doesn't turn their head quickly enough. This has been going on for over a year and a half so far and shows no signs of slowing down. Her trial is tentatively scheduled for next summer. Is that pre-trial enough for you?

For an example from a state on the other end of the transparency spectrum take some time and review the coverage of Melissa Huckaby in the Sandra Cantu murder. Tell me what you think of

"the freedom (or otherwise) of the media to "go to town" on a defendant's character, lifestyle, past life and previous misdeeds."
​

in that case. All of that coverage was pre-trial. There never was a trial, really. Knox was treated like a choir girl in the Italian press by comparison ... which is sort of funny in a sad way, because Huckaby actually was a choir girl, not to mention a minister's daughter. The media was publishing diary entries of hers from high school within days of her becoming a part of the investigation. LE got a lot of their background on her from the media.

On this, I don't agree as much. The impression I have gotten of the coverage of Amanda's case in Italy is that it was comparable to the U.S. coverage of Michael Jackson's death. For at least a few weeks in the United States, you could not turn on any mainstream news show, cable or non-cable, look at any news website or any paper news publication and not see coverage about Michael Jackson. The coverage was literally inescapable.

On the other hand, it has been my experience in the Pacific Northwest that you have to seek out coverage of the Casey Anthony case if you want to know about it. I have seen it on TV exactly once, and in these discussion threads about 20 or 30 times; that's it. And I don't even know who Melissa Huckaby is, even though I read the Seattle Times every day, watch the news every night, look at news sites and listen to NPR several times a week. These two figures would have no hope of being voted "Celebrity of the Year," if we had such a thing in this country.

As you wrote, quadraginta, "It is more common for people to have to be reminded of them when they finally do. The media outlets make hay while the sun shines. When public outrage shifts to the next crime du jour it all recedes from the spotlight."

I have gotten the impression that coverage of Amanda's case in Italy was constant, leading up to and continuing during the trial. And of course, as we know, the jurors and judges were not instructed to avoid the news.

 

[quadraginta]

It seemed to me that the floodgates began shortly after Mary_H's initial flurry of posts. Regardless of the reasons people decided to join the debate, my personal opinion is that the more opinion and debate you get, the better a discussion you have.
I see nothing wrong with mentioning posts on other sites, especially if you are not a member or have been banned from that particular place or even made to feel unwelcome. I think that here as well as to a lesser extent, View From Wilmington are the best places to have a discussion with both sides of the argument participating. A little petty bickering and taking sides are to be expected.

I agree 100% with the part I highlighted. As for the rest, posts which contribute new information or even points of view which may illuminate our understanding of the case are welcome, or should be. There really isn't much difference between a blog or website source and OpEd or "background" articles in newspapers, and not really any less deserving.

OTOH, ongoing personality disputes from internecine blog wars and belly bumping about old grudges doesn't add anything useful to an already strained S/N ratio. We can generate plenty of fresh, shiny, new bickering and taking sides without importing a steaming load of old ... um ... stuff.

 

[katy_did]

And yet Patrick didn't change his story. Do you recognise the inconsistency in your position? Of all four of those interrogated, only Patrick stayed with his first version of the events of the evening of 01 NOV 2007.

We're back again to Rose's and Mary's perceptions of improbabilities. The three of those who lied to police were also found guilty of murder and the one who didn't lie to police was entirely exonerated. You may substitute lying with coercion but the results are identical.

I'm not quite sure of the point you're making. Are you saying that since Patrick didn't falsely confess, false confessions in general aren't possible? I completely disagree that you can equate 'lying' and 'coercion', as you seem to imply. A coerced false confession isn't the same thing as a 'lie', to be used as damning evidence against the confessor.

Incidentally, IIRC Matteini thought Patrick did lie. He lied about the time the bar opened - saying it was 20:30, when till receipts showed it didn't open till 22:00; he lied (or failed to inform the police about) having hastily changed his phone number shortly after the murder; he 'lied' about being in the area of the cottage, when his cell phone suggested he was.

And then there's the prosecution witness Gioffredi, who claimed he saw Amanda, Raffaele and Rudy together a few days before the murder. He recognized Rudy, he said, because he'd seen him handing out leaflets at the university. Only, Rudy had never handed out flyers at the university; that was Patrick. Patrick is extremely lucky he had an alibi.

 

[katy_did]

If I remember correctly this homeless person was found by a local journalist that took him to the cops. Was this the case?

Not only that, but I think the police had already spoken to him after the murder, when he said he hadn't seen anything. It was only when the journalist 'found' him that he remembered he'd seen AK and RS there that night.

To go full circle with the JREF/PMF/JREF thing, here's a video that was just posted on PMF which shows Curatolo. It's a bit confusing because Curatolo and the journalist asking questions sound very similar to me! One of the Italian-speakers on PMF wrote the following about it:

Interesting, the video of a journalist talking to Curatolo. Curatolo looks around a lot, but never at him. His speech is very slightly slurred, he has a local accent. He says "I got here at around 9:30, and while I was sitting down, lighting a cigarette and taking a look around, maybe 5 minutes passed." The journalist says "And they were already there?" Curatolo responds "According to me, it's a real shame (è una disgrazia)". The journalist says "Were they having a heated discussion?" Curatolo gives a tiny shake or movement of his head, and then he says, "According to me, the only person who could explain everything is really Rudy." That's all we see.

 

[stilicho]

I'm not quite sure of the point you're making. Are you saying that since Patrick didn't falsely confess, false confessions in general aren't possible? I completely disagree that you can equate 'lying' and 'coercion', as you seem to imply. A coerced false confession isn't the same thing as a 'lie', to be used as damning evidence against the confessor.

Incidentally, IIRC Matteini thought Patrick did lie. He lied about the time the bar opened - saying it was 20:30, when till receipts showed it didn't open till 22:00; he lied (or failed to inform the police about) having hastily changed his phone number shortly after the murder; he 'lied' about being in the area of the cottage, when his cell phone suggested he was.

And then there's the prosecution witness Gioffredi, who claimed he saw Amanda, Raffaele and Rudy together a few days before the murder. He recognized Rudy, he said, because he'd seen him handing out leaflets at the university. Only, Rudy had never handed out flyers at the university; that was Patrick. Patrick is extremely lucky he had an alibi.

Did Patrick lie? That would be an intriguing development. Any cites? Or did he stick with his story, some portions were attributable to mistakes anyone could make, and the evidence showed him to be innocent?

I would like to see your proof that Patrick changed his story. He stuck with it, as far as I've seen, and the investigators had to reconcile the parts where he was incorrect.

The same cannot be said of Rudy, Raffaele, and Amanda.

Patrick wasn't lucky. He was innocent and there was nothing that withstood scrutiny to connect him to the crime. The timing of his bar opening, Amanda's lies, the problems with his phone, and the pings near Via Pergola were investigated as thoroughly as any of the evidence against the three people who were sent to trial.

 

[katy_did]

Oh, but they do, Katy. That is pretty much all they've got in the way of evidence regarding "lies." If you look at any discussion in any thread or blog about this case over the past two years, you will find the guilters compulsively defaulting to the claim that Amanda repeatedly lied, and that that gave the police, judges and prosecution license to interrogate her, imprison her and convict her.

Oddly, the only documentation they can ever provide shows that Amanda's "lies" consist of forgetting the times or the number of phone calls she made, or the time or menu of her dinner with Raffaele -- really important stuff like that -- all of which was stated four days after the crime.

Yes, agreed. I just read a whole article on TJMK (which was linked to from the 'chilling killing' knife article...) devoted to Amanda forgetting the phone call from her mother. Apparently, this was "almost enough to convict her on its own". The significance of this forgetfulness was supposed to be that the call was made after the postal police arrived. Except it wasn't, of course. Nonetheless, there surely must be some sinister explanation for it...

Then there's the way she said that Meredith's Italian phone 'rang and rang', when in fact it was Meredith's English phone. Another crucial bit of evidence against her, though I'm not clear as to the motive for that particular barefaced lie (actually, I think I just figured it out: Meredith's Italian phone was switched off, so by saying it 'rang and rang', Amanda was hoping to convince investigators she didn't know it was switched off, thereby proving she wasn't the one to take it. She wrote this lie in her e-mail, because, cunning vixen that she is, she was fully aware that this e-mail would be later used against her in a murder trial. So that clears it up).

Seriously though, I agree that the 'lies' told outside the interrogation are normal instances of misremembering/forgetfulness, while the only obvious untruths (the accusation of Patrick) were told during the interrogation session, for which there's at least an argument of coercion. So describing those as 'lies' really just brings us back to a discussion as to whether the interrogation was coerced; they are certainly not straightforward 'lies'.

 

[katy_did]

Did Patrick lie? That would be an intriguing development. Any cites? Or did he stick with his story, some portions were attributable to mistakes anyone could make, and the evidence showed him to be innocent?

I would like to see your proof that Patrick changed his story. He stuck with it, as far as I've seen, and the investigators had to reconcile the parts where he was incorrect.

The same cannot be said of Rudy, Raffaele, and Amanda.

Yet aside from the coerced confession (which, as I said I would hardly class a 'lie') Amanda's errors were also "mistakes anyone could make" (the forgetting of a phone call, misremembering which phone 'rang and rang', etc). Those aren't lies, they're normal lapses in memory. It doesn't even make sense that she would 'lie' about those things.

Here's an extract from Matteini's report - really garbled I'm afraid. Normally I'd check it against the original but the site where it's hosted seems to be down (anyone know where's Dan O disappeared to?). This is about Patrick's "odd behavior" in changing his cell phone on November 2:

This fact would remain neutral if he himself had admitted it...but what it contributes instead to give him relief is just the stubbornness of him in denying it, this factor suggesting that he did it in the erroneous conviction of being thus able to deflect his identification.

i.e. They wouldn't have been suspicious if he'd openly admitted changing his phone number, but it seems he tried to deny it.

Patrick wasn't lucky. He was innocent and there was nothing that withstood scrutiny to connect him to the crime. The timing of his bar opening, Amanda's lies, the problems with his phone, and the pings near Via Pergola were investigated as thoroughly as any of the evidence against the three people who were sent to trial.

If he hadn't had an alibi, I'm betting they would've found things to tie him to the crime, especially witnesses who'd seen him (they already had Gioffredi). His cell phone connecting to a tower near Via della Pergola has never been explained, as far as I know.

 

[Bruce Fischer]

Without a disclaimer, there is no way to establish the content has not been stolen from its rightful owner. There is little chance that a CBS employee would have the legal right to provide you with that authorisation.

Here we go again wasting time on nothing. Doug Longhini is an investigative producer for 48 Hours. He cleared it with CBS. Feel free to ask him or better yet, ask CBS.

What is your point of continuing to discuss this nonsense?

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

On this, I don't agree as much. The impression I have gotten of the coverage of Amanda's case in Italy is that it was comparable to the U.S. coverage of Michael Jackson's death. For at least a few weeks in the United States, you could not turn on any mainstream news show, cable or non-cable, look at any news website or any paper news publication and not see coverage about Michael Jackson. The coverage was literally inescapable.

On the other hand, it has been my experience in the Pacific Northwest that you have to seek out coverage of the Casey Anthony case if you want to know about it. I have seen it on TV exactly once, and in these discussion threads about 20 or 30 times; that's it. And I don't even know who Melissa Huckaby is, even though I read the Seattle Times every day, watch the news every night, look at news sites and listen to NPR several times a week. These two figures would have no hope of being voted "Celebrity of the Year," if we had such a thing in this country.

As far as Melissa Huckaby is concerned it would appear that you need to read your Seattle Times more diligently. The most recent article they ran about her was this past Monday. There were plenty of others, at least according to a search done on their web page. I won't bother to search the other sources you mentioned for you. The results will be the same.

Perhaps national coverage is different in the Pacific Northwest, but for quite some time the Anthony case required all but a conscious effort to avoid down here in the lower fortyseven. It has tapered off a lot now, but the Anthony family ... father, mother, and brother, plus assorted lawyers ... were making regular rounds of the morning shows, daytime talk circuit, and evening reviews for many months. The Grace creature's program was virtually the Casey Anthony Show for more than a year, and her junior partner-in-sleaze JVM wasn't much better. Geraldo is a personal friend of Casey Anthony's lead attorney (they vacation together ), and took every advantage of the fact. That covers all the national broadcast networks and both of the cable news extremes.

The web coverage is even more devoted. By comparison the Knox case is barely a column filler. I can point you to one forum which alone probably has more traffic about the Anthony case than all of the Knox oriented websites and blogs mentioned here combined, and that isn't even a single issue forum. The topic comprises a fraction of their posts. There are a multitude just like it.

The Seattle Times you read so assiduously has had two articles on the Anthony case in just the last six weeks.

Perhaps there is some selection bias at work here.

This doesn't even address the question of comparable geography. A more accurate comparison to the Knox coverage in Italy would be the Anthony coverage in Florida.

Comparison to the Michael Jackson hysteria is meaningless. That episode was just pitiful. A revolution in the streets of Iran was forgotten in the noise of that mindless stupidity. I have never been so ashamed of our media, and that is a tough hurdle, coming from me. I started being ashamed of them in the '60s.

<snip>

I have gotten the impression that coverage of Amanda's case in Italy was constant, leading up to and continuing during the trial. And of course, as we know, the jurors and judges were not instructed to avoid the news.

I don't know how to confirm the amount of coverage, or quantify it. We have discussed the issue of the influence of the media on the Knox jury at great length earlier in this thread. I don't think it has been established that the jurors were influenced by media coverage any more unduly than they would have been here in the U.S., which was, of course, the point of such insinuations.

By contrast it was the over-the-top positive coverage of the case here in the U.S. which aroused my suspicions about biased presentation in the first place. That and the thinly (badly) disguised xenophobia.

 

[LondonJohn]

Here we go again wasting time on nothing. Doug Longhini is an investigative producer for 48 Hours. He cleared it with CBS. Feel free to ask him or better yet, ask CBS.

What is your point of continuing to discuss this nonsense?

Errr....to try to discredit you, I'd guess. Shame it's not working in this instance

 

[LondonJohn]

Yet aside from the coerced confession (which, as I said I would hardly class a 'lie') Amanda's errors were also "mistakes anyone could make" (the forgetting of a phone call, misremembering which phone 'rang and rang', etc). Those aren't lies, they're normal lapses in memory. It doesn't even make sense that she would 'lie' about those things.

Here's an extract from Matteini's report - really garbled I'm afraid. Normally I'd check it against the original but the site where it's hosted seems to be down (anyone know where's Dan O disappeared to?). This is about Patrick's "odd behavior" in changing his cell phone on November 2:



i.e. They wouldn't have been suspicious if he'd openly admitted changing his phone number, but it seems he tried to deny it.



If he hadn't had an alibi, I'm betting they would've found things to tie him to the crime, especially witnesses who'd seen him (they already had Gioffredi). His cell phone connecting to a tower near Via della Pergola has never been explained, as far as I know.

Good points well made (in my humble opinion!).

I actually believe that the whole Patrick Lumumba business might serve very well as a template for certain elements of the police/prosecutors' collective mindset regarding this whole case.

For example, take Lumumba's allegations of police coercion, bullying, physical and racial abuse. If I were in Lumumba's shoes, and I'd just been held for two weeks under arrest for a murder I didn't commit, then even if I'd been abused by the police in these sorts of ways, I most likely wouldn't want to broadcast these sorts of allegations. Why not? Well, for three important reasons. First, I'd fear the police dragging me in again for more questioning and more heat; second, I would fear that the police might start scrutinising my business and personal life far more closely from now on (and I might well have been engaging in "less than scrupulous" business practices in the running of my bar...); and thirdly, I'd fear direct defamation suits from the police and prosecutors, even if everything I'd said was true (after all, in most of the allegations, it's my word against theirs).

IIRC, when Lumumba was released, there was a gaggle of media vultures waiting as he left the police station (or prison, I can't remember). Again, IIRC, Lumumba kept counsel at that point, saying merely that he looked forward to getting back to his partner and child (or words to that effect). If I'm correct, then he certainly didn't therefore make a spontaneous outburst immediately following his release. These allegations would have come later, after at least some period of reflection.

And I'd further argue that the three reasons that I gave above might well be the self-same reasons why Lumumba might subsequently be trying to distance himself from these allegations that he made (although the first reason obviously no longer really applies). In particular, the second of the reasons seems in itself to be a darned good reason why Lumumba might not want to inflame relationships with the Perugia police department - regardless of what might have happened between 6th and 20th November 2007.

So I can only currently conclude that the police and prosecutors DID behave towards Lumumba in the way that he initially alleged. After all, Lumumba (unlike, say AK) - on the face of it - would have a strong personal disincentive to allege such behaviour, since a) he didn't have to defend himself and b) he also would benefit from a decent ongoing relationship with the police for the sake of his business.

And if the police did do this to Lumumba, then how might they have behaved in their treatment of AK and/or RS? I wonder if the whole issue of Lumumba's allegations will come up in the appeal......


* As a footnote, I'd argue that it's far less relevant whether Lumumba may or may not have subsequently retracted - or even denied making - these allegations. They've been directly attributed to him in various news media, and I haven't yet seen any evidence of libel action against the claims (or the reporting of the claims) from either Lumumba or the Perugia police/prosecutors. My current opinion therefore is that he DID make these allegations at some point soon after his release.

 

[RoseMontague]

Not only that, but I think the police had already spoken to him after the murder, when he said he hadn't seen anything. It was only when the journalist 'found' him that he remembered he'd seen AK and RS there that night.

To go full circle with the JREF/PMF/JREF thing, here's a video that was just posted on PMF which shows Curatolo. It's a bit confusing because Curatolo and the journalist asking questions sound very similar to me! One of the Italian-speakers on PMF wrote the following about it:

Interesting, the video of a journalist talking to Curatolo. Curatolo looks around a lot, but never at him. His speech is very slightly slurred, he has a local accent. He says "I got here at around 9:30, and while I was sitting down, lighting a cigarette and taking a look around, maybe 5 minutes passed." The journalist says "And they were already there?" Curatolo responds "According to me, it's a real shame (è una disgrazia)". The journalist says "Were they having a heated discussion?" Curatolo gives a tiny shake or movement of his head, and then he says, "According to me, the only person who could explain everything is really Rudy." That's all we see.

According to Rose, that seems a bit whacked. I'll have to see if Rudy could explain it better.

 

[LondonJohn]

According to Rose, that seems a bit whacked. I'll have to see if Rudy could explain it better.

A small point regarding the English translation: The Curatolo phrase that's translated here as "according to me" might translate better to "as far as I'm concerned" (or "in my opinion" or even just "I think"). What he actually said in Italian was "secondo me", which would translate to all of those English phrases. But the context implies that "as far as I'm concerned" - which has a different connotation from "according to me" - might better reflect his true meaning.

Also, the phrase "e stata una disgrazia" can also translate into English as "it was an accident" - which is, I believe, a better translation in this instance.

Therefore, what Curatolo said could likely be translated into English as "As far as I'm concerned, it was an accident". From that, one might guess that Curatolo used "accident" to apply to the murder and RS/AK's possible involvement in it.

Either way, he certainly doesn't appear to be a "star witness" on this evidence........

 

[LondonJohn]

By the way (and regarding my post above), I find it wryly amusing that there's a seemingly-automatic assumption (from some posters, at least) that nobody who posts to this thread has any knowledge of the Italian language. I think it would be a fair assumption that none of us has any in-depth knowledge of Italian legal terminology. But some of us have studied Italian at school and/or university, and some of use have travelled extensively to Italy on both business and leisure.

 

[LondonJohn]

I'd make two further points about Curatolo, based on that video. Firstly, his Italian accent is incredibly difficult to understand in places (which is in keeping with what the Italian speaker on PMF apparently said about the slurred speech and local accent). And secondly, he goes on to explain to the journalist what he thought happened within the murder house: "I think it was an accident, a (continuation) of a lively discussion between them. In my opinion, the only one who can say what really happened is Rudy". This is where the reference to Rudy comes in, and Curatolo himself volunteers this view.

Quite why Curatolo was in any position to be telling journalists his unsubstantiated personal opinion on how he though Meredith Kercher ended up murdered is anyone's guess. But I'd argue that if he wanted to protect his credibility as an eyewitness to AK/RS's movements on the night of the 1st November, then he should have kept the discussion to that specific area (although of course he'd have been even better off not talking with journalists at all...).

 

[RoseMontague]

By the way (and regarding my post above), I find it wryly amusing that there's a seemingly-automatic assumption (from some posters, at least) that nobody who posts to this thread has any knowledge of the Italian language. I think it would be a fair assumption that none of us has any in-depth knowledge of Italian legal terminology. But some of us have studied Italian at school and/or university, and some of use have travelled extensively to Italy on both business and leisure.

Thank you for that correction to the PMF translation. I believe Christiana speaks Italian and perhaps others here as well that I am not as familiar with. The statement makes a little more sense the way you have interpreted it.