As a post-script to the whole offender profiling issue, I'd wager that if a dozen experienced profilers were show the crime scene and the autopsy report in the Kercher case and asked to produce a profile, not one of them would suggest that the crime was the work of a group of people which included a woman. I think they would all produce profiles which suggested that the murder was the work of a lone male killer, who was quite youthful and inexperienced (disorganised crime scene, covered body, no attempt to move the body). I think that the profiles might also suggest that the culprit had experience of petty crime and minor sexual deviancy. Of course, this is all total speculation on my part
It's worth bearing in mind that acts of extreme violence committed by groups are extremely rare, outside of gang warfare or tribal rivalries (e.g. football hooliganism). And it's even more rare for a woman to be involved. Of course there are some murders where women participate alongside men, but the circumstances have - without exception - been particular and peculiar. In pretty much every case, the female has been susceptible to controlling influences, and she has been progressively indoctrinated by a male sexual partner - usually over many years - before the first serious crimes are committed by the pair.
This is vividly illustrated if we look at a few of the examples that the pro-guilt groupthinkers tend to hold up as more-or-less direct read-across comparators to Knox and Sollecito:
1) In the case of Homolka and Bernardo, Bernardo (the male) had been raised in a family where familial sexual abuse was rife, and had already committed a number of rapes by the time he met Homolka. She was 17, naive and submissive when she met him - he was her first serious boyfriend, and certainly her first sexual partner. Bernadro continued his rapes (without Homolka's knowledge) for the first year or so of their relationship, while he gradually established a controlling hold over her. It wasn't until almost
four years into their relationship that Bernardo and Homolka committed their first offences together.
2) Hindley and Brady followed a very similar pattern to the Homolka/Bernardo case above. Brady (male) tortured animals as a child, and was a convicted burglar by the age of 15. Hindley became infatuated with Brady, who again was her first serious boyfriend and her first sexual partner. As Brady indoctrinated Hindley into his extremist views and sexual deviancy, he moved her towards the threshold of committing crimes by planning bank robberies with her (which were never carried out). The first sex crimes committed by Brady and Hindley took place over
two years after they started their relationship.
There are many other examples (Bonnie & Clyde, Fred & Rose West, etc) which follow similar patterns of gradual indoctrination measured in years, not months, or weeks - or
SIX DAYS. See, one of the critically important things to remember about group crimes is that there has to be an extremely high level of trust among the participants. That trust is only mutually gained by having an intensely close and intimate level of emotional bond with the other person/people in the group, and a well-established comfort with each other's moral code. It also almost always involves a gradual breaking down of moral boundaries in small increments over a long period of time, before the joint commission of the most heinous crimes becomes acceptable to all the people involved.
Interestingly, Brady and Hindley got caught because Brady allowed his hubris and arrogance to get the better of him: having successfully "converted" Hindley to the extent that she was a willing participant and facilitator in the horrific murders, Brady took the chance of introducing Hindley's brother in law, David Smith, to the group by having him witness the murder of Edward Evans. It's obvious that Brady had judged that Smith would find the murder thrilling - thus expanding the group. Instead, however, Smith was appalled and informed the police.
