It was all about the lamp.
Perhaps that sounds ridiculous, but quite frankly any theory that has the rather nice bohemian couple of Raffaele and Amanda conspiring with Rudy Guede to kill a perfectly inoffensive girl like Meredith Kercher is going to come off as absurd anyway. Plus I find an explanation for the lamp that explains how it got there without having to blame it on sloppy cops and having Platonov calling me a conspiracy theorist. Wait, he's going to do that anyway, nevermind.
I will start with something I've wondered why no one has ever done, move the time that Meredith ate, not the time of death. The testimony comes from the English girls, and I've wondered why they had such difficulty remembering when they ate that night, being as they knew just about when Meredith returned home, and they ought to be able to subtract two hours or so from that and then roughly the amount of other time expended beforehand without about an hour discrepancy.
The reason for that is they were
stoned. Here you have a number of college girls who partake in the pungent smokeables, perhaps a little hung-over still from the night before, and watching movies, I think it not unlikely they may have been toking that night. It didn't come out in part for the same reason the cops didn't find out Amanda was stoned until the fifth, they just didn't volunteer that information to the police, and quite possibly they didn't want to speak ill of the dead; why not just keep it to themselves?
Actually at one point the pathologist (I think) said MK had a high level of alcohol in her blood. This was written off as lab contamination.
Meredith, however, was out especially late and was 'overserved' so when the pizza-eating commences she takes a couple of pieces, thinks about it, and decides to wait until the anti-nausea effects of the cannabis kicks in more fully, and puts them back or off to the side where no one notices. The other girls aren't really paying attention, talking amongst themselves and enjoying the
comfortable numbness of THC.
Around about eight o'clock, shortly before the apple crumble she gets up from the movie, feeling a little better, and wolfs down some pizza while the other girls are engrossed in the show or perhaps conversation and don't notice. They eventually notice she's gone and at that point stop the movie and have some apple crumble with her, not having realized she just got done with the pizza. The movie ends a little later, she's not feeling very well from the recent rapid consumption of her meal and Sophie Purton walks her home. She comes in, starts to make the expected call to her mother and then realizes the pizza still hasn't settled well and decides to put it off. She sits down to hopefully alleviate the discomfort, grabs the textbook and loafs for a little while.
Meanwhile, Raffaele and Amanda are being naughty, watching movies and enjoying the
sweetleaf as well. They put in Naruto, and try to
blaze up again and realize they're out. They remember Meredith is tending the plants of the boys downstairs and might have some of her own anyway, and they set out at about 9:30 to see if they can get some from her.
I was at one time certain the only thing to bring AK, RS out on the cold night was because they were OOD (out of drugs). Rudy says he was there at 8:30...he is videoed near that time. But we certainly have AK at RS home at 8:40. I’m missing something here...is it a computer file time stamp? So far I like it.
Rudy Guede has also stopped by the cottage looking for the boys who are away and is thirsty and needs to take a dump. Amanda and Raffaele run into him, and as she seen him around with the boys and
Le Chic and was introduced once, she is willing to let him come in and do his business, which he proceeds to do after having something to drink.
Yes still good...lets have him take the drink after the BM.
Meredith, seeing Amanda come home with a strange man
again and Raffaele as well, is rather cross as she's still not feeling that well, and she has just begun to get undressed. Amanda goes into her room and tries to hit her up for her stash, but Meredith has just about had it with the habits of this annoying yank and an argument commences. Raffaele is waiting uncomfortably outside the room, and Rudy finishes up quickly, forgets to flush and joins him as they hear the two girls catfighting through the door. Amanda is demanding her lamp back and tries to take it, and Meredith--who isn't going to give an inch--won't let her have it and tries to snatch it out of her hand and it ends up falling to the floor near the door . Amanda breaks into tears and exits the room in a rage where she finds Rudy and Raffaele waiting for her, and demands that Raffaele retrieve her lamp.
Raffaele hesitates, having enough sense to want to avoid getting involved in the altercation, and Rudy who kinda fancies Amanda makes his move as Meredith comes out, still somewhat undressed, which she realizes immediately, enraging her further. She lets out a stream of the vernacular Anglo-Saxon which is about the only English Rudy knows well. The fire rushes to Rudy's head as the embarrassment of being cursed out by a girl at the same time he's trying to win the approval of another hits him where it hurts inside. He draws a knife with the intent to threaten, which just causes Meredith to mock him, as she's simply
had it now, she came home early feeling ill and these smoked-up louts have totally gone too far.
Only thing I don’t like...is "MK was somewhat undressed". Its pretty clear her hoodie was pulled off inside out. Perhaps her jeans??? Okkkk.
Rudy advances and Meredith all of a sudden realizes she's really pissed Rudy off, and the stoned Raffaele and the blubbering Amanda are of no help so she retreats into her room and Rudy follows, adrenaline coursing through his system. Meredith pauses in hopes of deescalating the situation, but gets hit with the knife and screams, and in a white hot furor killer instinct takes over and the horrific part happens. Raffaele has started to regain his senses and is at the door and she tries to call out his name as she succumbs to unconsciousness, bleeding to death.
However, there
is no rape. One thing you can find from the very beginning from the coroners and the courts is there's something
very strange about the DNA inside. What happens instead is something I saw posted at PMF way back in their archives from one of their Italians or someone familiar with the practices of Italian police and their laws. Apparently police in Italy get expanded powers for sex-murders, and one of the Perugian police first on the scene after the postal police, outraged at this the death of this beautiful half-dressed girl is determined to ensure that they have all the powers at their disposal to hunt down the killer. As the ponderous Italian regulations stipulate something must be found there, he takes something he's pretty damn sure contains the DNA of the killer and puts it there with a tool to be found by the
scientifica polizia.
This planting of DNA would not be necessary. The girl was half naked...the police would have enough already to gain the expanded powers.
However at the scene everyone realizes the horror of what happened. The stress of the acute anxiety Amanda feels seeing her friend killed so quickly causes her nose to start to bleed somewhat, and she retreats to the bathroom to get some cotton balls and wash up, a drop of her blood landing on the faucet which she fails to notice as she washes the rest of the blood down the drain. Rudy, still in the murder room, gets towels from Raffaele to start a clean-up, but soon realizes it's pointless so he wipes himself down somewhat, heads to the bathroom where Amanda has just finished up, takes off his shoe and makes the bathmat print in the process.
AK had 8 holes in each ear. The blood drop can be from an ear. I like it better that AK, RS run away as they hear screams and gagging...perhaps RS looked into the room but they quickly ran.
They all feel terribly guilty, but none want to pay the price for this horrific crime so plans are made to avoid responsibility, Raffaele realizing Italian law will hold them responsible just for being there. Rudy suggests they pretend it was a break in, and says he will stage one as he leaves. He says he will leave the country, as he knows he'll leave traces everywhere, and demands money. Raffaele and Amanda go through the rest of the house while Rudy look for Meredith's purse, but in the process he gets more blood on his shoes and slips a little and catches himself causing blood to get on his hand as he goes through the purse, finding the keys first and taking them as he thinks maybe they'll come in handy, knowing that one of the keys is for the boys place downstairs and thinking maybe he'll find those plants. They also find the phones and offer them to Rudy, Amanda through Raffaele trying to tell Rudy how to access Meredith's bank, to which she knows the code but can't get it across how to get money.
Nope...I like that they ran away while Rudy took care of the details. Maybe he did try to save her after he had calmed down some.
Rudy just wants to get out of there at that point and after they all promise never to tell a soul he exits at a run headed for the woods to cover his retreat, and then remembers he said he'd stage a break-in and climbs up, opens the outer shutter which isn't completely closed, throws a rock through the window and departs posthaste, forgetting to open the window. It occurs to him to attempt to establish an alibi, which he does by going straight to the disco still with the hastily cleaned up blood on him which will start to reek, mixed with his especially pungent sweat from the massive anxiety of the murder.
Someone definitely picked glass from the window and laid it on the window sill. The photos show it to be an impossible random issue where these pieces from the border are laying in a pile on the ledge. And the rock had to come from outside in.
Amanda and Raffaele go over the place quickly, Amanda hearing the rock go through the window goes into Filomena's room and notices the window wasn't opened, and does so, getting glass on a shoe which she stops to take off when she hears it crunch, where she causes the glop, something of Meredith's that Rudy had tracked around and gotten on the top of her shoe falls to the floor in Filomena's room as well as her DNA.
Raffaele can't help himself, he carefully enters Meredith's room, he has to see what happened, and he dodges Rudy's shoeprints and approaches the body which he reaches out to touch, getting close enough something ends up on the bra-clasp before he realizes what a bad idea it was as it will be with him the rest of his life and he just as carefully retreats meeting Amanda at the door, who unbeknowenst has a glass shard which will end up in the doorway and later tracked in by the postal policeman who lied about entering.
They both just want to get the hell out of there at this point, traumatized by the whole ordeal, thus they leave, and return to Raffaele's, it only being 10:00 at this point, having spent only twenty minutes total in the cottage. Meredith, who'd been stabbed a mere five minutes into the fracas but had gone unconscious quickly due to trauma and blood loss, dies; Raffaele and Amanda not having realized she'd been technically alive the past fifteen minutes, after all in the movies it's instantaneous practically.
Amanda's autonomic nervous system, frazzled from the ups and downs of the night, starts to bottom out, causing her to want sleep which she does after being comforted by Raffaele, who cannot sleep and won't until early morning, spending it on the computer to distract his mind from the view of the body which Amanda had not witnessed. He finally sleeps early in the morning, with the aid of Filomena's hash which he'd pocketed when going through the place, having forgotten to actually
take anything besides, which he realizes at this moment, rationalizing that at least he wasn't a thief and didn't actually have much responsibility for the murder.
Amanda wakes first the next day in horror, realizing it wasn't a dream. She returns to the cottage to see if the murder was discovered, and starts to plan out the story. Realizing no one has noticed yet, and that Raffaele had wisely locked the door to Meredith's room, she decides to take a shower to make sure she doesn't have anything on her body that might have adhered during the brief struggle she had with Meredith, and to try to scrub away the horrific guilt she feels. She exits the shower not realizing Raffaele had taken the towels, and she accidentally steps in highly diluted blood which pooled on the floor near the bathmat. She returns to her room, pausing at Meredith's door as she breaks into tears, eventually composing herself and trying to figure out what to do.
No AK would never return alone. And she did not take a shower. Simply not necessary for the story. In fact a common guilter theme is that AK looks un-showered.
She returns to Raffaele's, and they decide to pretend to discover the murder, making all the necessary phone calls. As she contemplates facing the police, hysteria starts to mount and she asks Raffaele to get her damned lamp, and Raffaele thinking she's being silly doesn't try very hard and then decides to get her out of the cottage. The postal police arrive unexpectedly, and Massei takes over from here.
Amanda feels terrible guilt so she's torn between helping and obstructing, causing her take the police right to Rudy's feces and other traces, but temporizing when the door is about to be opened, which Filomena will notice. Amanda's conscience and kind of offbeat personality causes her to willingly subject herself to constant police presence, during which time she starts to raise suspicion in the officers. She tries too hard and overdoes it. Giobbi is not quite as clueless as he comes across, it's not so much the hip-wiggling and her breaking down with the knives but just something
about the way she is when it happens. That causes him to wonder even more when she's out getting pizza, as she acts even more differently away from the police. Napoleoni and Mignini pick up on it as well.
Raffaele can't get that view of the body out of his mind, he starts to smoke even more hash that normal, culminating in him being so stoned he forgets he has his knife on when summoned to the police station on the fifth, which doesn't cause him the panic it should have. Amanda thinks she's got everyone fooled, though privately she's a mess as she feels horrific about the whole ordeal, causing even more erratic behavior which the cops are noticing even more, and she detects Raffaele's detachment as she knows she got him into this mess and she dares not let him out of her sight, so she goes into the police station on the fifth of her own accord, Raffaele being so out of it and realizing she's attached to his hip he doesn't even bother to tell her she was summoned too.
Raffaele enters the police station and quickly realizes in his fogged state he cannot endure interrogation. He starts to get angry, thinking it was mostly Amanda who got him into this mess, so he tells the police a 'load of crap' so they'll go bother her about it. The police start slowly with Amanda, who feigns more difficulty than she should with Italian, puzzling the officers as they'd been able to communicate better in previous unmoderated encounters. Thus they then summon a translator who arrives at 12:30 and they then put the screws to her.
They have their eye on Patrick, mainly because of the text she 'forgot' to tell them about and other errors and coincidences they've picked up. Amanda breaks within the hour, giving them what they want, but not willing to give them much more because she feels terrible about doing that too. They keep after her and she resists better now, having succumbed she won't extrapolate much further.
Thinking they've solved the crime and have the murderers and will find the physical evidence at the scene, the police don't press her as hard as they should. Soon after she's arrested she realizes she's been played, and also feels terrible about giving them Patrick, thus she writes her 'gift' note, trying to recant her confession. As she was actually guilty the threat of them having 'hard evidence' making her capitulation much quicker.
In prison they both figure they can get away with lying about it as they weren't actually physically involved in the murder much, but despite their togetherness after the murder and before the arrest they have grown apart emotionally. Both try in their diaries to hint the other might have been involved, before realizing that would likely end up with the other also turning on them. Thus after feigning suspicion of the other they soon realize it would be best to pretend they've come to the conclusion they don't suspect each other.
Rudy feels grave remorse as well due to the fact he's the one who physically did the deed, and doesn't want the others to suffer for his crime. Though to spare himself some prison time he does kinda implicate them both, but he never gives the prosecution what it really wants.
Just off the top of my head, I'm sure I missed a number of things, tear it up guys.
