as for motive as far as I know it is not a legal requirement in Italy, UK or America for example so why do believe people tend to mention the lack of motive as though it is a legal requirement in any of the aforementioned countries?
There are such things as motiveless killings, but establishing a motive is a helluva good point if you're trying to convict someone. There's absolutely no known motive here at all. There's no evidence at all of this "crazed sex game gone wrong". The idea that Amanda took up a carving knife and headed home to kill Meredith because Meredith was a bit miffed with her over the usual sort of frictions you get in shared accommodation, is frankly risible. The other idea that she just wanted to experience the thrill of killing - oh, give me a break.
Why did anyone ever even
begin to imagine that Amanda Knox might be the person to look at in connection with Meredith's murder? That's the question people should begin by asking. If in fact suspicious forensic evidence had emerged from the crime scene, then of course it would have been legitimate to take a very careful look at her. But there was no such evidence. Leaping to the conclusion that Amanda was the murderer before any forensic evidence had been processed is so off-the-wall that it should be a red light to anyone examining the affair.
Has nobody questioned how spookily lucky these investigators were? One might almost say psychic.
They pounce on Amanda as the murderer within a very short time, on the grounds that she wiggled her hips or something. Oh yes and she was eating pizza with her boyfriend. After that, everything that was found about her was seen through a prism of assumed guilt. I keep reading a string of very ordinary reactions from her being painted as somehow sinister indications of guilt. She knew details about the crime she shouldn't have known (but these could easily have been guessed at). She was wrong about some details of the crime, which shows she was very calculating and pretending not to know (gimme a break). She was too calm. She cried. She swore at another girl who hoped Meredith hadn't suffered (I can easily see that as a normal reaction).
But despite this extremely unpromising start, hey, they were right! Amanda was the murderer all along. Because - apparently, only because of a knife they took from Raffaele's kitchen. There was nothing in the house to incriminate her.
Knife. Positively psychic. They went to Raffaele's flat and selected one cooking knife from the drawer. Come on! The guy collected knives! Why would anyone imagine a cooking knife would have been used? Especially not one that didn't match the wounds or the bloody imprint. And there were cooking knives in the cottage too. Why not test one of these? But someone magically chose that knife to test, by "investigator instinct", and hey what do you know, it was the murder weapon.
But what about Raffaele, the collateral damage? Not a trace of him in the house either (until someone brutally murdered common sense by declaring that he could be identified through that splodge of a footprint). So they go back to the cottage and hunt for the bra clasp. And there it is! They make a big performance to camera of finding it, obviously it is going to be such an important clue.... Er, how did they know? Could they see Raffaele's y-haplotype, that needed such great amplification of the DNA before it could be seen?
It's almost as if these police say, this is so - and someone makes it so.
Rolfe.
