Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[shuttlt]

In fact, looking back at the email I see that Mignini denies having called it a "sacrificial rite".

 

[shuttlt]

Gabriella Carlizzi

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/masonic-theory-that-put-knox-in-the-dock-981759.html

http://keithridgway.com/?tag=giuliano-mignini

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/knox-prosecutor-tainted-by-satanism-case-1992485.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/08/48hours/main4929950_page4.shtml

Those references seem to be associated with The Monster Of Florence. Further, one of them says:

Ms Carlizzi has been giving unsolicited advice to criminal investigations up and down Italy for many years.

Are you sure that Mignini consulted the medium about the case?

At best the articles you quote claim that she is a known nut who once contacted him about The Monster of Florence case. The whole thing seems to hinge on unsubstantiated claims from Douglas Preston.

He had her arrested in 2005.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7883286.stm
But then, that's hardly news.

I find it genuinely puzzling that doubts are expressed about anything incriminating Amanda, even if it is her own words and we go to great lengths analysing what she might have meant and finding ways in which it is in fact not incriminating, but for Mignini there seems to be absolute willingness to accept that he is in the thrall of visions of satanic plots with not direct evidence what so ever, and all quotes supporting this going back to Douglas Preston. Sure there's got to be reasonable doubt to convict, etc. etc. but entering this kind of thing into ones list of facts of the case colours so much of ones perspective and is very badly supported indeed.

 

[Kaosium]

Those references seem to be associated with The Monster Of Florence. Further, one of them says:



Are you sure that Mignini consulted the medium about the case?

I was just providing the name and a few links to someone who requested them, I wasn't making a case.

I've read all this stuff about Mignini, I'm actually looking for the rest of the story. That's the part that's hard to come by, but it must exist if he's actually 'respected' anywhere.

As for your question, I don't know, he must have had kind of a love-hate relationship with her, being as he files defamation suits against her. I saw that he had her arrested in 2005, but perhaps that was just a sloppy reference to one of the defamation suits.

(#7 on this list)

http://knoxarchives.blogspot.com/2010/02/another-giuliano-mignini-defamation.html

Here's another one, but it looks like just speculation:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...zi&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Lead prosecutor Giuliano Mignini has become a particular focus for criticism.
His links to the controversial Rome blogger Gabriella Carlizzi have been a cause of embarrassment, raising the prospect that some of the wildest conspiratorial aspects of his reconstruction of the crime may have flowed from her online pen.
His early claim that the murder could have been a “sexual and sacrificial rite” to mark the occasion of Halloween appeared to echo Carlizzi’s contention that the killing was a sacrifice organized by a secret Masonic sect, the Order of the Red Rose.

 

[Justinian2]

Who's word are we taking for the happiness of their childhoods?

About their happiness: Absence of evidence (of unhappy childhoods) is evidence of absence. Plus lots of happy pictures.

It's time to stop letting Magnini & other guilter suppositions be considered evidence! In fact that time should have passed over three years ago!

Guilter suppositions are NOT evidence!
Guilter theory is NOT evidence!

Shuttlt, you've got to do better than that! Just because the world lets Italian courts use supposition and theory in lieu of fact, doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold you to the more universal norm of providing the proof!

 

[shuttlt]

Kaosium,

Apologies for making assumptions about you. There are so many people to keep track of.

 

[nopoirot]

I never met a defense lawyer who didn't believe that, if "police misconduct" didn't exist, it would have to be invented.

 

[shuttlt]

About their happiness: Absence of evidence (of unhappy childhoods) is evidence of absence. Plus lots of happy pictures.

Are unhappy families necessarily unable to produce some happy pictures? Where would we be getting the unhappy stories from? Amanda's family? Her? Raffaele's family? Him? If they had had an abusive childhood none of them would be likely to admit to be publicizing it at the moment, now would they?

It's time to stop letting Magnini & other guilter suppositions be considered evidence! In fact that time should have passed over three years ago!

Ditto on pro-Knox suppositions.

Guilter suppositions are NOT evidence!
Guilter theory is NOT evidence!

Ditto on the pro-Knox stuff as well.

 

[shuttlt]

My research on profiling revealed this interesting tidbit about the characterics of murderers (from a study funded in part by the USA department of justice):

Every single one of the murderers were subjected to serious emotional abuse during their childhoods. All of them developed into what psychiatrists label as sexually dysfunctional adults, unable to sustain a mature, consensual relationship with another adult.​

Neither of those characteristics were those of Amanda or Raffaele who were in a mature, consensual relationship with each other and who had happy childhoods.

Still searching for the cop/criminal personality traits study which I first heard about in the 1960's.

I'm getting really tired of you making unrepresentative claims. Your study is about serial killers. For the second time, the sample has to be representative of the group you are making the claims about. Serial killers are murderers. Serial killers are not necessarily representative of all murderers. It is almost certainly not the case that all murderers had emotionally abusive childhoods.

 

[Chris C]

Well, most don't I would imagine.


Are we really arguing this? Most human sacrifices aren't and haven't been associated with Satanism. Halloween doesn't have anything to do with Satanism it's really more strongly associated with paganism and the occult. But this isn't what we are arguing, is it? I also don't see why you, or Amanda supporters in general would specifically choose the word "Satanic", when "pagan" is closer to what a Halloween rite might normally be taken to mean and even that is more specific than anything I've seen directly attributed to Mignini. I haven't ever seen any indication that he actually claims that he believed the murder was committed by pagans let alone Satanists. In his email, my recollection is that his claim is that the murder has some ritualistic elements, that is all.

Ask your priest what the modern Catholic churches view on ritual human sacrifice is. Satanic or is it non satanic? When you are talking about performing rites and using human sacrifice, there is little doubt that all modern christian churches view this as satanic.

So if I'm a Catholic, in Perugia, Italy and our prosecutor says Meredith Kercher was killed as part of halloween rites, there is left little doubt to any christian that it was a Satanic Ritual. Two Reasons why its satanic.
1st. Performing rites of human sacrifice is a sacrifice to a God.
2nd. Human Sacrifice is wrong atleast according to the Catholic Church. Therefore since they where not sacrificing the person to the one and only God, then they must have been sacrificing her to a false god, which therefore makes it Satanic.

 

[shuttlt]

Ask your priest what the modern Catholic churches view on ritual human sacrifice is. Satanic or is it non satanic? When you are talking about performing rites and using human sacrifice, there is little doubt that all modern christian churches view this as satanic.

Yes, but presumably to some degree they believe all false religions, heresies, sins and so forth to be the work of Satan. In any case, in this reading one absolutely would not be implying that it was the work of Satanists, as in people who necessarily consciously worship the Christian Devil? By this reading after all there have been times when many protestants would have seen Catholics as Satanists, and many Catholics seen Protestants as Satanists.

So if I'm a Catholic, in Perugia, Italy and our prosecutor says Meredith Kercher was killed as part of halloween rites, there is left little doubt to any christian that it was a Satanic Ritual.

So, you would read it as meaning that Satan was at work, rather than that the people involved in the notional ritual would have described themselves as Satanists, or claimed to be followers of the Christian Devil?

Two Reasons why its satanic.
1st. Performing rites of human sacrifice is a sacrifice to a God.

Probably this is generally true. Of course Mignini denies having called it a sacrificial rite.

2nd. Human Sacrifice is wrong atleast according to the Catholic Church.

It's wrong according to many religions, isn't it?

Therefore since they where not sacrificing the person to the one and only God, then they must have been sacrificing her to a false god, which therefore makes it Satanic.

So, again, you are saying that it is clearly Satanic, because it is the work of Satan, rather than because the people conducting this notional rite would describe themselves as Satanists, or felt that the term was in any way fitting?

 

[LondonJohn]

Hmm. So a necessary element of "calumnia" is communication to "an authority" or, in the civil arena, public disclosure by the author? Where does that leave the contention that Raffaele, bemoaning in his diary his stupidity for telling the police a "load of bs" was afraid to mention that nefarious tactics had been brought to bear on him? In any event, it would hardly be "police misconduct" for the police to tell Raf they had "hard evidence" placing Amanda at the scene, if they believed they had photographic evidence to that effect. And according to every chronology I have seen, Raf "broke," and quickly, well before Amanda.

So why did he do it? There is not a scintilla of evidence to show that his confession was not voluntary. That he repudiated it on 11-8 proves nothing. So one is asked to believe that an amorous, dissertation-writing, knife-collecting, pot-smoking, well-rested, recently-fed Italian male of 23, having vigorously defended himself for several days, is easily intimidated into throwing his girl friend to the wolves?

See, to me this is actually more indicative of a total lack of conspiracy or pre-interview planning by Knox and Sollecito (which surely one would have expected from such cunning and manipulative murderers......).

It seems entirely likely to me that the following chain of events happened:

1) Sollecito and Knox were both comfortable in the knowledge that they'd been at Sollecito's apartment all evening/night on 1st November.

2) In Sollecito's police interrogation on the late evening of 5th November, he repeated this to the police.

3) The police then told him that they "knew" that Knox had actually left his apartment that night - they told him they had conclusive evidence (CCTV, phone calls/texts) to prove that she was not with Sollecito all night.

4) Sollecito had no reason to doubt the police's "certainty" - evidently backed up with hard evidence - that Knox had left his apartment that night.

5) He therefore had to start to doubt his own recollection of events, and - more specifically - he had to start to doubt Knox's veracity, since she'd told him she was in his apartment all night, but the police now told him they were sure that she'd left his apartment.

6) Sollecito's upbringing, coupled with the fact that he'd only known Knox for six days, meant that he momentarily chose - in the psychological pressure of a police interrogation - to believe the police over Knox. He therefore told the police that yes, Knox must have left his apartment that night.

7) Within a day or so, Sollecito realised that upon reflection his memory hadn't failed him: Knox had been with him all night, and the police must have been incorrect.

8) And that's the version that he's stuck to ever since.


PS A belated happy Christmas/holidays to all (of all denominations and viewpoints!). I hope everyone had a safe, peaceful time with those they love and care for.

 

[Chris C]

Yes, but presumably to some degree they believe all false religions, heresies, sins and so forth to be the work of Satan. In any case, in this reading one absolutely would not be implying that it was the work of Satanists, as in people who necessarily consciously worship the Christian Devil? By this reading after all there have been times when many protestants would have seen Catholics as Satanists, and many Catholics seen Protestants as Satanists.


So, you would read it as meaning that Satan was at work, rather than that the people involved in the notional ritual would have described themselves as Satanists, or claimed to be followers of the Christian Devil?


Probably this is generally true. Of course Mignini denies having called it a sacrificial rite.


It's wrong according to many religions, isn't it?


So, again, you are saying that it is clearly Satanic, because it is the work of Satan, rather than because the people conducting this notional rite would describe themselves as Satanists, or felt that the term was in any way fitting?

And once again the word rite(s) are linked to religon.
You can play the Mignini didn't mean it as Satanic all you want. Any true Christian knows when you are talking about human sacrifice and rites, you are talking about satanic rituals or satinism. Last I heard Mignini was a devout christian, Catholic I believe.
If you honestly believe Mignini wasn't referring to anything but Satanic rites or Satinism, then you must believe he isn't Christian.

 

[RoseMontague]

Yes, Rose, it is regrettable that there isn't more tolerance for minority views. I posted a couple of comments before drifting here, and was denounced for being one Harry Rag, and drummed out of the forum.

On the one hand, the theories dreamed up by the prosecution are ridiculous. On the other, it is awfully difficult to believe that Raf and Amanda have been altogether candid with us. The defense team appreciates this. That's the reason I think they would have elicited from Amanda during her examination any further evidence they had of coercive tactics.

Having come late to this quagmire, I still have a bit of mucking around to do, here and there, before trying to come up with a "theory of the case."

I appreciate your comments. I have never hidden my belief that Amanda and Raffaele lied, nor have I hidden what I think are the reasons they did so. I am glad to see you have an open mind and are taking a realistic approach to the evidence.

 

[shuttlt]

And once again the word rite(s) are linked to religon.

Whose religion? By your description I might have no religious belief at all, but because of your particular religious beliefs my actions become Satanic. The word Satanic tells us more about the contents of your head than what I've been up to. It is also a bloody confusing way to use language since one could actually mean that the act in question is in fact the work of Satanists and was part of some kind of explicitly Satanic ritual relating to the Christian Devil.

If we're going to stretch language. Aren't all murders inspired by Satan and therefore plausibly describable as Satanic rites? I mean, if the intentions of the people involved have nothing to do with it.... Why not describe sex with a condom as a Satanic rite (unless you are a gay prostitute).

 

[Justinian2]

Are unhappy families necessarily unable to produce some happy pictures? Where would we be getting the unhappy stories from? Amanda's family? Her? Raffaele's family? Him? If they had had an abusive childhood none of them would be likely to admit to be publicizing it at the moment, now would they?

That's a supposition; a theory. Guilters have done pretty well at digging up garbage and rumor, so I have to assume that absense of evidence is evidence! You've continued the trend of requiring us to provide evidence of innocence. Just because this case, and perhaps the entirety of the Italian justice system, requires absolute evidence of innocence, doesn't mean that concept is the gold standard for the world.

Ditto on pro-Knox suppositions.

That's a supposition about suppostitions with NO evidence; not even a sample.

Ditto on the pro-Knox stuff as well.

The guilters get a well done on the MASSEI translation. Why don't you quote from it? I've seen the Amanda & Raffaele supporters make more quotes from MASSEI than do the guilters.

 

[LondonJohn]

I appreciate your comments. I have never hidden my belief that Amanda and Raffaele lied, nor have I hidden what I think are the reasons they did so. I am glad to see you have an open mind and are taking a realistic approach to the evidence.

I would've thought that it was more-or-less axiomatic that they lied - given that both of them gave contradictory accounts at one point or another, and therefore at least one of these accounts had to be a lie.

The question then shifts to two areas: what is a lie? And what precipitated those lies?

With regard to the first area, I'd prefer to use the word "untruth" to "lie" here, because the word "lie" is pejorative and implies a deliberate attempt to mislead. And I don't think that there was a deliberate attempt to mislead taking place here.

And as to what precipitated these lies (or "untruths"), that's surely what we've been debating these past months. I (and others) might argue that they were led towards telling these "untruths" by police interrogation techniques. Others might argue that they deliberately chose to tell lies in order to try to derail the investigation and/or try to deflect attention from themselves. An appeal court in Perugia might be of some help in figuring out what really happened.

 

[shuttlt]

And once again the word rite(s) are linked to religon.
You can play the Mignini didn't mean it as Satanic all you want. Any true Christian knows when you are talking about human sacrifice and rites, you are talking about satanic rituals

The word rite is often associated with religion, but not always. It really means that some kind of ritual is involved. Rites of passage would be one, though perhaps not the best example. In any case again, Mignini has explicitly said that he has never said that it was a "sacrificial rite".

or satinism.

Now you go implying that the people involved in the act are Satanists, people who would describe themselves as worshipping the Christian Devil. That seems to be a very specific claim.

Last I heard Mignini was a devout christian, Catholic I believe.

Sure, but presumably he wouldn't describe the Aztecs as Satanists without considerable qualification unless he is a very great fool. I presume you wouldn't either.

If you honestly believe Mignini wasn't referring to anything but Satanic rites or Satinism, then you must believe he isn't Christian.

First it is far from clear that he has referred to "sacrificial rites" at all. Secondly, even a Christian must be aware that there is a difference between somebody doing something that they themselves believe is inspired by Satan, and that person being a Satanist.

 

[RoseMontague]

I hate to be thick, but, could you spell out in a straightforward way what lies you think they told, or might have told?

Thanks,

No worries, moodstream, I have always enjoyed your posts. I am not going over to the dark side so let not your heart be troubled on my account. The pricking of Meredith's hand is something that Raffaele just made up is one example. The reasons I think he did so have been discussed endlessly. One of Amanda's is the forgotten phone call to Mom. In this one I think she was tired and didn't want to answer so she just said she had forgotten about it and then became stuck with defending that story. One which came back and bit her based on what I have seen and read on this. A lot of what are claimed as lies that I have seen posted at PMF and TJMK may just be mistakes or getting the times or sequences of things wrong. Some may be lies, who knows for certain? I am quite certain that they are both innocent of murder and don't deserve to be in jail for telling a few fibs.

 

[capealadin]

I would've thought that it was more-or-less axiomatic that they lied - given that both of them gave contradictory accounts at one point or another, and therefore at least one of these accounts had to be a lie.

The question then shifts to two areas: what is a lie? And what precipitated those lies?

With regard to the first area, I'd prefer to use the word "untruth" to "lie" here, because the word "lie" is pejorative and implies a deliberate attempt to mislead. And I don't think that there was a deliberate attempt to mislead taking place here.

And as to what precipitated these lies (or "untruths"), that's surely what we've been debating these past months. I (and others) might argue that they were led towards telling these "untruths" by police interrogation techniques. Others might argue that they deliberately chose to tell lies in order to try to derail the investigation and/or try to deflect attention from themselves. An appeal court in Perugia might be of some help in figuring out what really happened.

Let's call it untruth then. Definition of untruth: The condition of being false. * Free dictionary.com.

Untruth: Something untrue : a lie. Answers.com.

 

[Chris C]

The word rite is often associated with religion, but not always. It really means that some kind of ritual is involved. Rites of passage would be one, though perhaps not the best example. In any case again, Mignini has explicitly said that he has never said that it was a "sacrificial rite".


Now you go implying that the people involved in the act are Satanists, people who would describe themselves as worshipping the Christian Devil. That seems to be a very specific claim.


Sure, but presumably he wouldn't describe the Aztecs as Satanists without considerable qualification unless he is a very great fool. I presume you wouldn't either.


First it is far from clear that he has referred to "sacrificial rites" at all. Secondly, even a Christian must be aware that there is a difference between somebody doing something that they themselves believe is inspired by Satan, and that person being a Satanist.

Whatever dude. Then again, the past speaks for itself and Mignini has used the word rite as part of a different case to describe human sacrifice and its connection to satanic rituals. So your argument that he could have meant they could have been performing some dead religons human sacrificial rites lacks weight. Or the Knox could have been observing a pagon religon that does human sacrifice on Halloween lacks even more weight. Sure Julius Caesar once claimed that druids performed Human Sacrifice on Halloween. Yet those pagans tossed human sacrifices on bonfires. So maybe there is another pagan religon that supposedly sacrifices humans on Halloween?