We were told there was a mountain of evidence proving Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito murdered Meredith Kercher, in Perugia Italy, in late 2007. We heard bold claims about a "double DNA" knife that had been cleaned with bleach, an eyewitness account putting Amanda and Raffaele near the crime scene, and an ear piercing scream solidifying the prosecution's believed time of death. This evidence all sounded believable to the judge and jury the first time around but it isn't holding up so well on appeal.
Giangavino Sulas has written an article for Oggi Magazine highlighting new information that has sent the prosecution's case against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito into a free-fall.
By Giangavino Sulas
This article has been translated for Injustice in Perugia by Maurice R. Azurdia.
Perugia, April.
The prosecution, which considers Amanda Knox and Raffaele
Sollecito the murderers of Meredith Kercher has been disarmed.
The scientific proof that has finally been assigned to
experts appointed by the appeals court and not just to the police, is
crumbling, and revealing disturbing questions about the procedures used. The
witnesses, if they are not drug addicts, or end up in jail for distribution of
drugs (as was the case with Kokomani and Curatolo), then suffer from deafness
and from physical and also mental problems, to the extreme of undergoing
recovery in the psychiatric ward (as was the case with Nara Capezzali).
This is the appeal process in Perugia for the homicide of
the British student Meredith Kercher. On the chair two
defendants, and on the prosecution bench three prosecutors (one General Prosecutor
and two assistants). A crowd worthy of a Grand Jury in the case of a Mafia
trial (In Italy known as: “Cosa Nostra,” meaning: “Our Business”). Evidently, there is some sort of problem with this. And
the problems have appeared right on schedule.
If the clasp of Meredith's bra, on which the prosecution claims to have discovered the DNA of Raffaelle
Sollecito, is rusted and can no longer be examined by
the experts appointed by the appeals court, and the only witness claiming to
have seen Amanda and Raffaele together the night of the crime has changed his
version, by changing the dates of his “sighting,” then what else is left as
evidence against the young man from Puglia?
WHAT DO THEY HAVE IN HAND?
And what is left against
Amanda if, according to the experts, the amount of biologic material found on
the knife (presumed murder weapon), has levels of material that are too low to
decipher the genetic code?
Let’s recall that it was from this biologic material that
the scientific police had extracted the DNA belonging to Meredith (from the top
of the blade) and to Amanda (from the handle). The experts added also another
detail, that the knife did not exhibit traces of bleach. Hence, it was never washed to cancel traces
of evidence, as had been claimed by the scientific police. The only proof
against the two young people has been swept away, but Amanda and Raffaele
remain in jail for three and a half years now. The young man from Puglia celebrated
his fourth birthday in a cell on March 26.
 |
| Antonio Curatolo |
And March 26 was also the day of
Antonio Curatolo, the vagrant who decided to follow the steps of Jesus and who
spent his nights on a bench in piazza Grimana, in front of a university
attended by foreign students (he defined himself as a Christian anarchist, but
admitted to the regular use of heroin and also to its distribution). Curatolo
appeared for the second time in front of the Court because Luca Maori, attorney
for Sollecito, discovered a few too many holes in the vagrant’s testimony as
was given to the prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, six months after the crime.
Curatolo, who in recent years had assisted the Perugia
police by helping solve two brutal crimes thanks to his prompt presence at the scenes
where these two crimes had been committed, appeared in court claiming that he had seen Amanda and
Raffaele on the evening of November 1, 2007, between 9:30 pm and 11:30 pm, animatedly discussing
something with each other. Curatolo had linked his recall of this event to the
presence of mini-buses, which at that time of the evening had been transporting
young people to several discos outside of Perugia.
His testimony demolished the alibi of the two young
people, who had always claimed that the evening of November 1, the
night of the crime, they had spent at home watching a movie.
But the presence of the mini-buses was something that did
not fit. In fact, the owners of several discos, amongst them Giorgio
Brughini, the father-in-law of Marco
Materazzi, and the Perugia Director of the Italian Society of Authors and
Editors (Siae), arrived in court to state that the evening of November 1,
the evening after Halloween, that the discos had been closed and that the
mini-buses had been garaged. A hard blow for the prosecution, who immediately
recalled the vagrant. Curatolo entered the courtroom escorted by the
penitentiary police.
WITHOUT A ROOF
He is serving a sentence of eighteen months in jail for
distribution and sale of cocaine. In November he is going to appear at another
trial for the same charges. In front of the judges, he contradicted his previous
deposition. “It was October 31, when I saw Amanda and Raffaele. I
recall all the young people were wearing costumes.” A clear reference to the
night of Halloween. End of testimony. Curatolo was returned to jail.
WHY WAS THE FORENSIC WORK REJECTED?
It will not be Curatolo who will resolve the third crime.
It will be Carla Vecchiotti and Sefano Conti, faculty experts of the Sapienza
University in Rome, the experts appointed by the court of appeals. They
were appointed by Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann when he decided
to open the investigation and obtain expert neutral opinion about the dark
issues of the process. This expert neutral opinion which inexplicably had
originally been denied.
The two experts will have to verify that the scientific
police followed established protocols for this type of analysis and will have
to determine if there was contamination during the examination of the knife and
the bra clasp.
On first analysis, it appears that they have already
reached a conclusion: on the knife, after recovering samples from diverse parts
of the knife, they have found that there is not a sufficient quantity of
biological material. Sufficient quantity meaning, enough to establish genetic
profiles of any use for an investigation. How could then, the scientific police
obtain enough DNA from Amanda and Meredith? The prosecutor Giuliano Mignini is
quick to claim: “We knew then that the available amount of material was so
small that the testing conducted by the police would be the only one that could
be performed, because they used all the material that was found.” But then, why
did the court order new tests? In reality, the two appointed experts invalidate
the work of the police by stating that “On that knife, there never was enough
biological material in enough quantities to obtain genetic profiles.” This is
the resounding and disturbing truth which is emerging from the latest forensic
activity.
A CHAIN OF ERRORS
The second investigation discovered even more disturbing
facts. The experts took delivery of the clasp belonging to the Meredith’s
bra, and found it totally covered in rust: “impossible to analyze,” they
concluded.
But where and how was this evidence conserved? Is it
possible that nobody thought of preserving it in a vacuum-sealed plastic bag?
The story of this clasp which so far has cost three and a half years of jail
time to Raffaele Sollecito is truly peculiar. The clasp was found on the afternoon of November 2, 2007, under
Meredith’s body by medical examiner Luca Lalli. The clasp was photographed but
then someone forgot to bag it and it remained at the scene of the crime. It
remained there for forty-six days. Until December 18, when the
investigators realized that a footprint of a shoe discovered next to Meredith’s
body could not be connected—due to size and design disparities—to Raffaele
Sollecito. In fact, the footprint belonged to Rudy Guede. Then somebody remembered the clasp. They ran
to recover it from a house that up until then had undergone three investigations.
They found the clasp, and surprise, it was really Rafaelle’s DNA that was on
it.
Now there is only rust.
