Two african migrants arrested with others in White British girl's sex orgy murder -Amanda Knox clear

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Please Don't Make Me Make Me An Albanian's Bi*ch!


There is not enough evidence to place an Italian suspect jailed in connection with the slaying of a British student at the crime scene, his lawyer said in court documents obtained Thursday.

A judge must rule Friday on whether suspect Raffaele Sollecito and his then-girlfriend, American Amanda Marie Knox, should remain jailed in connection with the killing of Knox's flatmate, Meredith Kercher. The two were arrested Nov. 6.

In a document prepared for Friday's hearing and obtained by The Associated Press, Sollecito's lawyers dismissed prosecutors' allegations that he was at the crime scene the night of the slaying. Sollecito says he was at his own Perugia apartment, working at his computer.

Sollecito "from 20:30 of Nov. 1, 2007, until the morning of Nov. 2 was always at home and therefore did not have any role in the murder of the poor Meredith Kercher," the defense document says.

The defense says analyses on Sollecito's computer show he had been logged on. Prosecutors say police have proven that the computer was connected to the Internet but without anybody accessing it overnight.

According to the defense, there isn't enough evidence that a bloody footprint found near Kercher's body matches Sollecito's shoes, as prosecutors maintain. The defense says the print is not clear enough to allow for a certain match.

Sollecito, a 23-year-old student who was dating Knox at the time, is expected to attend the hearing Friday, said his lawyer, Marco Brusco. Knox also is expected to appear in court.

DNA from Knox and Kercher was found on a knife that investigators believe may have been the murder weapon; the knife was found in Sollecito's home.

But "no compatibility has been ascertained between the knife in question and the wounds inflicted on the victim," said the defense document.
 
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We Do All Sorts Of Girl Things



Amanda Knox, 20, is being held at Capanne prison on suspicion of sexually assaulting and murdering the British student, who was found with her throat cut in their shared house.

Luciano Ghirga, her lawyer, told Italian newspaper La Repubblica that Knox said to him: "I hope this affair is cleared up soon and I can go home. Where? To Perugia. I want to live in this city, I love it, it is the place that does it for me."

Knox said she was "incredibly serene" in prison, and guards have allegedly seen her carrying out a "strange" set of exercises, including doing pull-ups from the bars across her cell window.

"I love mountain-climbing with bare hands, without a rope. It's my passion," she told Osvaldo Napoli, a member of parliament for Forza Italia who entered the prison to check on the conditions inside.

Knox is sharing a four-bunk cell with three other women - two Italians and one Bolivian.

"My cell mates are wonderful," she told Mr Napoli. "And the other prisoners are very lovely to me too. We have become a sorority, we do a lot of things together."


Mr Napoli said: "She is not at all like the way she has been described. I found her to be calm and tranquil and extremely dignified. She was jovial too. She had good manners and was respectful to me.
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"We spoke in Italian and she said she had confidence in the Italian justice system. She also said she had been receiving dozens of letters, but she did not tell me about them. What struck me was her smile. It was a very happy smile."

Knox, whose cell has a television, a desk, a bathroom and a small kitchen, added: "My first days in isolation were very tough. I couldn't talk to anyone. Then they transferred me to a block which only contains people who are accused of similar offences. My God, those days were terrible. No one would say a word to me, I thought I was going mad and I prayed that someone would come and swap places with me."

Subsequently, she was transferred again. "Everything is different," she said. "They treat me with great dignity and that's important."
 
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The fourth suspect in the murder of Meredith Kercher has promised to name the British student's killer.

Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, from the Ivory Coast, fled Perugia in the wake of the killing and was captured in Germany. He was extradited back on suspicion of sexual assault and murder yesterday afternoon.

He has already admitted that he was in the house on the night of Miss Kercher's death, but insisted that he played no part in the murder.

He appeared in front of Judge Claudia Matteini at Capanne prison this morning. "He will tell her the name of the killer," said Vittorio Lombardo, his lawyer, before the hearing.

In a 25-page handwritten note, Guede said there were two killers, one of which allegedly spoke in an "Italian-American accent".

He also lamented that "Had I been a man, I would have saved Meredith". Instead, he fled the scene and did not call the emergency services.

Nor did he come forward when the investigation began, choosing instead to go on the run. His lawyers said he was "in a state of deep psychological trauma".

In his note, which was signed off: "The Guede salutes you", he described the scene. "When I closed my eyes, I could only see red. I have never seen so much blood. All of that blood on her beautiful face."

In a statement to German police, Guede said he was in the toilet at the time of the murder, having eaten a kebab that upset his stomach. He said he had heard screams, and emerged, with his trousers "halfway down" and seen a "brown haired" Italian fleeing the scene.

Police in Perugia said they found his version of events "barely credible".

Yesterday, Raffaele Sollecito, 23, another suspect, exercised his right to appear in front of the prosecutor and to give new evidence. However, he merely said he wished to reiterate that he was not connected to the killing and that he was using his computer all night on the evening of the murder.

His father, Francesco Sollecito, said he was "eagerly waiting to hear Guede's testimony", which he said would absolve his son of any wrongdoing.
 
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Italian Court Keeps Eggplant In The Can



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"You Know Dem Italians Don't Like Colored Folk"



The Perugia review tribunal has ruled that Rudy Hermann Guede wil be staying in jail.

Four hours after the end of the hearing, the judges ruled that there was enough evidence against the man from Ivory Coast, issuing the authorization for his arrest.

The bloodied fingerprint on the pillow found next to Meredith, the DNA traces on the vaginal swab carried out as part of the autopsy and epithelial ones found in the bathroom are the mark left by Rudy Hermann Guede in the house where the crime was committed, the proof of a presence that state attorney Giuliano Mignini believes was not simply that of a witness to the events but a more active participant (in addition to Guede, according to investigators, also present were Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox, who had the entire night and the next morning to get rid of any traces).

On this basis the state attorney had based the request to the Perugia review court to reject the repealing of arrest asked for by the man's legal defence, Walter Biscotti, Nicodemo Gentile and Vittorio Lombardo.

While in London at the Croydon Parish Church Meredith Kercher's funeral was being held, those judging the review, Marco Battistacci as chairman, Lidia Brutti and Rosaria Monaco, lay associate judges, have heard - in addition to the defence - the reconstruction of the grounds for the charge and the comments by the magistrate on the "relationship/non-relationship" between Rudy and Meredith.

The two allegedly did not have any date the evening before 1 November simply because on that date they had not even met.


Meanwhile, also this morning, the forensic department provided for another on-the-scene inspection of the house on un via Sant'Antonio where the English student was killed.
 
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Moolie Says Dem Kinky-Azzed Whiteys Killed Meredith

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Yo Maing, Yo Know Colored Folks Don't Do Dem Kinky-Azzed Sex Crimes - Dat Be A White Thang!



Rudy Guede, the Ivory Coast immigrant suspected of involvement in the murder of the British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia last November, has incriminated the two other suspects, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, by telling police that they were also at the scene of the crime.

Mr Guede is the only one of the three to have admitted he was at the whitewashed cottage on the evening of the murder, while insisting that he did not commit the murder. Ms Knox, an American student from Seattle who shared the cottage with Ms Kercher and two female Italian students, and Mr Sollecito, her Italian boyfriend, maintain they spent the evening and the night of the killing at his flat in Perugia.

However Mr Guede, who was questioned for three hours yesterday, said he had seen both Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito at the cottage. He told investigators that he had seen Ms Knox "at the door of the house" and that he had seen Mr Sollecito inside it brandishing a knife. He is reported to have given police a description of the clothes Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito were wearing.

Mr Guede, who fled to Germany after the murder but was arrested and extradited back to Italy, has until now claimed that Ms Kercher was attacked by an intruder while he was in the bathroom, and that he then struggled with the intruder, who he did not know and who was armed with a knife. He also said in earlier testimony that he had heard the voice of a woman outside the house.
New witness 'saw Meredith suspects together'

Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede were see at the house in Perugia where the American student died

He has now identified the intruder as Mr Sollecito and the woman as Ms Knox. He continued to maintain yesterday that he was not involved in Ms Kercher's death. Corriere della Sera suggested Mr Guede had decided to speak out against the other two suspects because they had "more or less explicitly pointed the finger of blame at him".

Last week police removed a Harry Potter book and two guitars in a renewed search at the crime scene, where Ms Kercher was found on 2 November half naked under a duvet in her bedroom with stab wounds to her neck and throat.

Next Tuesday a court will decide whether Ms Knox, Mr Sollecito and Mr Guede should be kept in custody. None of them has been charged, and all can be kept in jail for up to a year before charges are brought.

Prosecutors have said Ms Kercher was killed while resisting a sexual attack, although a report issued last month by the coroner, Dr Luca Lalli, said it could not be determined "with certainty" if there had been "sexual violence or attempted sexual violence". He said bruises on Ms Kercher's body suggested she had had "hurried" sexual intercourse, possibly against her will.

DNA tests show that Mr Guede, whose fingerprint was found in bloodstains on Ms Kercher's pillow, had sex with Ms Kercher the night she died, according to investigators. He has never denied this, but maintains they had agreed to have sex.

Ms Knox has given conflicting statements, at first saying she was not at the cottage the night of the murder. She later admitted to prosecutors that she was present and had to cover her ears to muffle Ms Kercher's screams, but later still reverted to her first version.

According to prosecutors, Ms Knox's blood was found on a bathroom tap at the cottage, placing her there on the night of the killing or the morning after. A bloody footprint near Ms Kercher's body was matched to Mr Sollecito's trainers, placing him at the crime scene as well.

Defence lawyers however maintain Mr Sollecito’s shoes do not match the footprint, and that there is no definitive or reliable evidence linking a kitchen knife found in Mr Sollecito's flat with both Ms Knox's and Ms Kercher's DNA on it to Ms Kercher's wounds.
 
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Amanda Knox: I'm only a suspect in Meredith Kercher killing because I'm sexy

Amanda Knox, the American student accused of involvement in the murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in Perugia last November, wrote in her diary that she was only a suspect because she is attractive.

In hundreds of pages of notes, diary entries, poems, and letters written in her prison cell, released to try to clear her name, Ms Knox protests her innocence over the killing of the South London student.

Ms Knox, her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast immigrant with joint Italian nationality, are being held on suspicion of sexually assaulting Ms Kercher and stabbing her in the throat af
ter she refused to take part in a "sexual game".

Ms Knox - who was accused of acting in a strangely cold and unfeeling manner after the discovery of Ms Kercher's corpse - says she is distressed and angry about the killing, of which she is innocent.
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"My friend was killed" she wrote in the diaries. "My roommate, my friend. She was beautiful, intelligent, fun and cared about everyone. Everyone I know is upset about it, but we all have contradictory feelings. We are angry. We want justice."

The notes, which veer in tone from hope to despair, include a list of the seven men she says she slept with in Perugia in the two months before the murder, with details of the sexual encounters.

The Knox family has strongly contested evidence from witnesses that Ms Knox was "a man eater", although friends of Ms Kercher say she repeatedly complained about the number of "strange men" Ms Knox brought back to the whitewashed hillside cottage they shared with two female Italian students.

Ms Knox calle
d herself "Foxy Knoxy", although her family says this derives from her reputation on the sports field and has no sexual connotation.

In her diary and prison extracts, published in Corriere della Sera and written in Italian and English, she refers to her own looks, suggesting she has been singled out because she is attractive. "If I had been ugly, would they have acted in the same way? I don't think so."

At one stage, Ms Knox admitted to police that she had been present when the murder was committed, but later withdrew this, saying she had made the confession under duress during a late night interrogation with no lawyer present. She said she had not been at the cottage when the crime was committed but spent the night with Mr Sollecito at his flat all night, smoking marijuana.

In her diary Ms Knox writes "I am innocent so I will be free. Free. Free. Free. Freedom. I will have freedom." One poem extract reads "Open your eyes and see that when it is said I am an angel, or a demon, or a lost girl, recogn
ise that what is really lost is: the truth!"

The prison cell dossier also includes love letters to Ms Knox from admirers, with 35 men writing to her in the first two weeks of her incarceration. Some proposed marriage. One man wrote "I love you, marry me. Write to me, because I want to finally know 'the girl with the face of an angel'". Other letters urge her to "have faith in God". In a diary note Ms Knox says she will reply to all letters , "but only when I am out of here".

More at link
 
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http://cbs3.com/topstories/amanda.knox.satanic.2.844458.html

U.S. Student Accused Of 'Satanic' Killing

ROME (AP) ― Prosecutors on Saturday accused an American student of fatally stabbing her British housemate in a Satanic rite in Perugia, Italy last year and asked a court to convict and punish an alleged African accomplice with life imprisonment, defense lawyers said.

The American, Amanda Knox, 21, proclaimed her innocence at the closed-door hearing in the Umbrian university town and emotionally accused police of hitting her on the head and calling her a liar during an interrogation, defense lawyers said.

"It was expected" that prosecutors would seek a harsh penalty, said Valter Biscotti, a lawyer for Rudy Hermann Guede, the Ivorian accused in the case.

At his lawyers' request, a fast-track trial is being conducted for Guede. He has acknowledged being in the bedroom where Meredith Kercher's body, stabbed in the neck and lying in a pool of blood, was found in November 2007 in the house she rented with Knox.

Fast-track trials can sometimes result in lighter penalties. But prosecutors asked the court Saturday to convict Guede and mete out Italy's stiffest punishment - life imprisonment. Italy does not have the death penalty.

The court deciding Guede's fate is also hearing arguments to determine if Knox and her former boyfriend, Italian student Raffaele Sollecito, should stand trial for the slaying. A ruling on prosecutors' request for their indictment is expected for the end of October.

All three suspects have repeatedly denied wrongdoing in the slaying, which took place in Perugia, a university town with a large foreign student population.

Knox told the closed court hearing, "Meredith was my friend… I had no reason to kill her," reported CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey.

Prosecutors at Saturday's hearing "laid out a scenario like from some crime novel," Sollecito's lawyer, Luca Maori, said by telephone after a seven-hour hearing.

Prosecutors "alleged it was some kind of Satanic rite, with Amanda allegedly first touching Meredith with the point of a knife, then slitting her throat, while Sollecito held her by the shoulders, from behind, Guede held her by an arm" and tried to sexually penetrate the victim, Maori said.

One of Knox's lawyers, Carlo della Vedova, told reporters outside the courtroom that prosecutors had laid out "a presumed scenario" with no hard evidence that would justify a trial for his client.

Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, contacted by The AP, declined to elaborate on his allegations Saturday about the slaying or comment on his request for life imprisonment for Guede.

Another member of Knox's defense team, Luciano Ghirga, described the American as being "disappointed" when the prosecutors pushed for the stiffest sentence for Guede.

The case has received heavy publicity in Italy, in Britain, and in the United States, where Knox is a University of Washington student.

Knox asked permission during the closed-door hearing to make a declaration in English. "She proclaimed her innocence, and got emotional when she recalled her interrogation by police in Perugia," Ghirga said in a telephone interview.

The lawyer denied Italian news reports that she wept while addressing the court, but said Knox was upset as she recounted "the pressure, the aggressiveness of the police who called her a liar."

Maori said Knox also accused the police of hitting her on the head during her questioning.

Italian TV showed a brief, partial view of Knox as she given a microphone to address the court. Only her hands, busily gesticulating as she addressed the court, could be seen. There was no audio.

Knox and Sollecito have been jailed as suspects since shortly after the slaying. Under Italian law, they can be jailed for as long as a year during the investigation. Pizzey reported that there has been increasing criticism over how long the Italian authorities are taking to process the case.
 
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http://cbs3.com/topstories/amanda.knox.murder.2.1349421.html

Italian Jury Convicts Knox Of All Murder Charges

PERUGIA, Italy (CBS) ― An Italian jury has convicted and sentenced American student Amanda Knox to 26 years for murdering her British roommate.

Jury deliberations began Friday in the yearlong trial. Knox and her co-defendant, Raffaele Sollecito of Italy, were charged with murder and sexual assault in the 2007 slaying of Meredith Kercher. Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years.

The three were all studying in Perugia and Knox and Sollecito were dating at the time. The prosecutors were seeking a life sentence for both, while both defendants deny wrongdoing. The verdict can be appealed by both parties.

In Italy, a jury's verdict can be overruled by the judge in the case, who is also obligated to rule acquittal if the jurors fail to agree a verdict.

Just a day before the deliberations began, Knox made an emotional appeal, trying for the last time to convince the court that she is not a murderer.

Standing up, her voice breaking as she fought back tears, the 22-year-old American told the court that she feels "vulnerable" after two years in jail.

"I have written on a piece of paper ... that I was afraid of losing myself," she said, speaking Italian.

"I am scared of being branded what I am not," she said. "I am scared of having the mask of an assassin forced onto me."

Knox's mother, Edda Mellas, told "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith that as a translator relayed her daughter's words to her on Thursday, "I started to cry. It was a very emotional thing she said."

"You could tell it was very emotional," Curt Knox told "The Early Show". "She closed it by thanking the prosecutor - which I would have had a very hard time doing - for trying to find justice for Meredith."

Both Knox, who is from Seattle, and Sollecito, 25, have been jailed since shortly after the slaying. They were taken to their cells as they awaited the ruling.

The prosecutors contend on the night of the murder, Nov. 1, 2007, Knox and Sollecito met at the apartment where Kercher and Knox lived. They say a fourth person was there, Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen who has been convicted in the murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Guede, who is appealing his conviction, says he was in the house the night of the murder but did not kill Kercher.

The prosecution says Knox and Kercher started arguing and the three brutally attacked and sexually assaulted the Briton. They were acting, according to the prosecution, under "the fumes of drugs and possibly alcohol."

Kercher's body, her throat slit, was found in a pool of blood the next day at the apartment.

The prosecutors have described Knox as a manipulative, sexually promiscuous woman whose personality clashed with her roommate's. They say Knox had grown to hate Kercher and wanted to get back at her.

Knox says Kercher was a friend whose death shocked her. Defense lawyers have described the American as a smart and cheerful woman.

DNA traces that the prosecutors have linked to the defendants have been disputed in court. The defense lawyers contend that traces are either two small to be attributed with certainty or that evidence may have been inadvertently contaminated in the police investigation.

The prosecution maintains that a a 6 1/2-inch knife they found at Sollecito's house could be the murder weapon. The knife has Kercher's DNA on the blade and Knox's on the handle, they say. But defense lawyers argue that the knife is too big to match Kercher's wounds and that the amount of what prosecutors say is Kercher's DNA is too low to be attributed with certainty.

The defense has largely focused on the lack of evidence and what they say is the absence of a clear motive.

Knox has given contradicting versions, saying at one point that she was home the night of the murder and had heard Kercher's screams and accusing a Congolese man of the killing. The man, Patrick Diya Lumumba, owns a pub in Perugia where Knox worked. He was jailed briefly but was later cleared and is seeking defamation damages from Knox.

Knox said police pressure led her to initially accuse an innocent man.
 
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Amanda Knox wins Meredith Kercher murder appeal
4 October 2011 Last updated at 00:06

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Amanda Knox left the court in tears as her family hugged and kissed

Amanda Knox and ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito have been cleared of killing UK student Meredith Kercher following a successful appeal in Perugia, Italy.

Miss Knox, 24, and Mr Sollecito, 27, had been convicted in 2009 of murdering the Leeds University student, 21, from south London, two years earlier.

American Miss Knox sobbed as they were freed after nearly four years in jail.

Miss Kercher's family said they did not understand how the original verdict could be so "radically overturned".

However, the family - in Perugia for the decision - added in a statement: "We still trust the Italian justice system and hope that the truth will eventually emerge."

The judge had upheld Miss Knox's conviction for slander after she accused bar owner Patrick Diya Lumumba of carrying out the killing. He set the sentence at three years, time that Miss Knox has already served.

But the eight-member jury cleared both defendants of Miss Kercher's murder after doubts were raised over procedures used to gather DNA evidence.

Miss Knox is expected to fly back to the US on Tuesday. Her family said she had "suffered for four years for a crime she did not commit".

Speaking on the steps of the court, Miss Knox's sister Deanna said: "We are thankful to the court for having the courage to look for the truth and to overturn this conviction."

She said Miss Knox's "nightmare was over" and asked for privacy for her family to recover from "this horrible ordeal".

Her lawyer, Carlo Della Vedova, said outside court that there was "no winner" in the case and the appeal court had "rectified a mistake".

"Meredith was a friend of Amanda - we should never forget this and we have to respect the sorrow of all the families," he told the BBC.

Mr Sollecito's father Francesco said he had "allowed himself some tears" following the verdict.

"We will remember her with affection," he said of Miss Kercher.

"I would have liked to talk to her relatives as well, as they have lost a daughter in a very cruel way.

"But tonight, they have given me back my son."

Giulia Bongiorno, Mr Sollecito's lawyer, said: "I don't want to stress the four years of suffering that these two young people went through but I do want to stress the extremely positive outcome of this trial."

Hundreds of people had gathered in the streets outside the court ahead of the verdict and some shouted "shame" when they heard about the decision, while others cheered.

Miss Kercher's mother Arline left the court without commenting and was escorted into a waiting car before being driven away. The Kercher family had earlier said they would speak at a news conference the day after the verdict.

Earlier in the day, Miss Knox, who was serving 26 years in jail for the killing, was given a final chance to state her case in a personal statement and she told a packed courtroom she was "paying with her life".

Tearful, and speaking in fluent Italian, the American said: "I did not kill, I did not rape, I did not steal. I was not there."

She added: "I want to go back home. I want to go back to my life. I don't want to be punished. I don't want my life and my future to be taken away for something I didn't do because I am innocent."

Her ex-boyfriend Mr Sollecito, who had been given a 25-year term after the initial trial, told the court in his statement that he was in a "nightmare" and said the claims against him were "totally untrue".

Human rights lawyer Paul Gilbert told the BBC News Channel it would be difficult for Miss Knox to get compensation from the Italian justice system as she would need to show she had been the victim of a "malicious prosecution".

Prosecutors had said beforehand they would appeal if the verdict was overturned, although it appears unlikely that Miss Knox would be extradited back to Italy from the US.

They had called for Miss Knox and Mr Sollecito's sentences to be increased to life in prison.

Miss Kercher had been sharing a cottage in Perugia with Miss Knox, who is originally from Seattle, during a year abroad from Leeds University when she was murdered.

Prosecutors said she was killed in a brutal sex game which went wrong. Her throat had been slit and she had been sexually assaulted.

They maintain that Miss Knox's DNA was on the handle of a kitchen knife - found in Mr Sollecito's flat and believed to be the murder weapon - with Miss Kercher's DNA on the blade.

They also said Mr Sollecito's DNA was on the clasp of Miss Kercher's bra.

But an independent review disputed those findings, raising concerns over poor procedures in evidence collection and forensic testing, and possible contamination.

It placed into doubt the attribution of the DNA traces - collected from the crime scene 46 days after the murder.

A third person - Rudy Guede, 24 - had been convicted of Miss Kercher's murder in a separate trial and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

His conviction was upheld on appeal but his sentence reduced to 16 years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15158163
 
http://www.king5.com/news/local/Raffaele-Sollecito-Honor-Bound-book-170172946.html

Ex-boyfriend of Knox: 'Neither Amanda or I had anything to do with the crime'
Posted on September 18, 2012 at 7:33 AM

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Their relationship and embraces made headlines around the world. In the days after Amanda Knox's roommate was found murdered, Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were seen hugging and kissing near the murder scene.

But in a new tell-all book out Tuesday, Sollecito tells about his four-year ordeal in "Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox."

Sollecito and Knox were convicted, then acquitted for killing Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy.

Excerpts from the memoir have been posted on various websites, including The Daily Telegraph and Daily Beast.

In the book, Sollecito acknowledges that he smoked marijuana the night of the murder, perhaps affecting his memory, but maintains his and Knox's innocence.

"Neither Amanda Knox or I had anything to do with the crime but we came perilously close to spending the rest of our lives in prison because the authorities found it easier, and more convenient, to take advantage of our youth and inexperience than to mount a proper investigation."

"We had no real alibi for the night of November 1 except each other, and we did not have lawyers to protect us, and we seemed to have a propensity for saying things without thinking them through."

"My poor memory seemed a ridiculous reason to throw me into an isolation cell and accuse me of involvement in the crime."

He also talks about how he refused to stop defending Knox, ignoring his family's wishes to distance himself. Though he admits their behavior at times seemed odd. Specifically, he describes the pair kissing at the Italian police station.

"Days earlier, under very different circumstances, this quirky, unrestrained behavior had drawn me to her. But here it was embarrassing."

Sollecito, now 28-years-old, also admits to being jealous of the attention Amanda received.

"Amanda, Amanda, Amanda…But what about me?"

The pair reunited last year in Seattle. Of the meeting, Sollecito described trying to separate his memory of Knox from the media's portrayal of her:

"...the real one, and the distorted, she-devil version I had read about and seen on television nonstop for four years."

Tuesday, Sollecito talks for the first time on Katie Couric's new show, "Katie," about the murder case that made international headlines. He will open up about his life after his ordeal and share details about his reunion with Amanda. Tune into "Katie" at 4:00 p.m. on KING 5 News.
 
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/italy_high_court_overturns_knox_FTGtFlDsVjaokPbtzRYzKI

Italy's high court overturns Amanda Knox acquittal, orders new trial
From AP
Last Updated: 2:04 PM, March 26, 2013
Posted: 5:33 AM, March 26, 2013

ROME — Italy's highest criminal court ordered a whole new trial for Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend on Tuesday, overturning their acquittals in the gruesome slaying of her British roommate.

The move extended a prolonged legal battle that has become a cause celebre in the United States and raised a host of questions about how the next phase of Italian justice would play out.

Knox, now a 25-year-old University of Washington student in her hometown of Seattle, called the decision by the Rome-based Court of Cassation "painful" but said she was confident that she would be exonerated.

The American left Italy a free woman after the 2011 acquittal and after serving nearly four years of a 26-year prison sentence from a lower court that convicted her of murdering half-caste Paki Meredith Kercher. The 21-year-old British exchange student's body was found in November 2007 in a pool of blood in the bedroom of a rented house that the two shared in the Italian university town of Perugia. Her throat had been slit.

Raffaele Sollecito, Knox's Italian boyfriend at the time, was also convicted and acquitted.

It could be months before a date is set for a fresh appeals court trial in Florence, which was chosen because Perugia has only one appellate court. Italian law cannot compel Knox to return for the new trial and one of her lawyers, Carlo Dalla Vedova, said she had no plans to do so.

"She thought that the nightmare was over," Dalla Vedova told reporters on the steps of the courthouse. "(But) she's ready to fight."

He spoke minutes after relaying the top court's decision to Knox by phone from the courthouse shortly after 2 a.m. local time in Seattle.

Another Knox defender, Luciano Ghirga, was gearing up psychologically for his client's third trial. Ghirga said he told Knox: "You always been our strength. We rose up again after the first-level convictions. We'll have the same resoluteness, the same energy" in the new trial.

Still, it was a tough blow for Knox, and she issued a statement through a family spokesman.

"It was painful to receive the news that the Italian Supreme Court decided to send my case back for revision when the prosecution's theory of my involvement in Meredith's murder has been repeatedly revealed to be completely unfounded and unfair," she said.

Knox said the matter must now be examined by "an objective investigation and a capable prosecution."

"No matter what happens, my family and I will face this continuing legal battle as we always have, confident in the truth and with our heads held high in the face of wrongful accusations and unreasonable adversity," Knox said.
 
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/amanda-knox-found-guilty-anew-of-murdering-meredith-kercher/

Amanda Knox found guilty anew of murdering Meredith Kercher
Last Updated Jan 30, 2014 10:50 PM EST

FLORENCE, Italy - An appeals court in Florence convicted Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Thursday of murder for the second time in the 2007 death of Knox’s British roommate in the Italian university town of Perugia.

Knox was sentenced to 28 years and six months in prison. Raffaele Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years.

Lawyers for both Knox and Sollecito vowed to appeal to Italy's highest court, a process that will take at least another year. It is not expected that Italy would seek Knox's extradition until the appeals process is over and the verdict is finalized.

This was Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s third trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher and it spanned four months. Deliberations lasted more than 11 hours.

Sollecito, 29, was in the court earlier with his father and other relatives, but was not present when the verdict was read.

Knox, 26, learned of the verdict half a world away in Seattle, where she returned after spending four years in an Italian prison and then being acquitted of the murder on appeal in 2011. In Italy, defendants are not required to appear at their trials.

Knox said in a statement that she was "frightened and saddened" by the guilty verdict.

"This has gotten out of hand," she said. "Having been found innocent before, I expected better from the Italian justice system."

After the verdict was announced, a person believed to be Knox emerged from her mother's house. That person, surrounded by others and covered by a coat, got into a vehicle and was driven away.

When asked how Knox was doing, her mother, Edda Mellas, said: "She's upset. How would you be?"

Later, in an interview with ABC News, Mellas said the family would keep fighting to clear Knox's name.

"Amanda's upset, we were all shocked and upset, but we're all ready to fight too," Mellas told ABC. "Everyone in the family, everyone in the extended family are all ready to continue to fight for truth and fight for her freedom and it's not going to stop."

Kercher's sister Stephanie and brother Lyle were in the courtroom for the verdict.

"It's hard to feel anything at the moment because we know it will go to a further appeal," Lyle Kercher said. "No matter what the verdict was, it never was going to be a case of celebrating anything."

Knox and Sollecito have both maintained they had nothing to do with Kercher's death. The 21-year-old British student shared a home with Knox, a University of Washington student spending her junior year abroad, and two Italian women in Perugia.

Kercher's half-naked body was found Nov. 2, 2007, in her bedroom. Her throat had been slit and she had been sexually assaulted.

Prosecutors in the original trial said Knox and Sollecito, along with a man named Rudy Hermann Guede, had killed Kercher during a drug-fueled sex game in which the British student was an unwilling participant.

Guede, a small-time drug dealer originally from Ivory Coast who had been convicted previously of break-ins, was tried separately and is serving a 16-year sentence for the murder of Kercher. DNA evidence found in Kercher's room linked Guede to the crime, prosecutors said.

Knox's father said Thursday night that there was never any evidence putting his daughter in Kercher's room.

"If you look at common sense, you look at evidence, you look at the fact that Amanda is nowhere in that room, then no, I wasn't expecting this, absolutely not," Curt Knox told ABC News. "They got it right in the first appeals trial where they found her innocent and allowed us to bring her home. And this is totally wrong."

Italy's highest court ordered a third trial for Knox and Sollecito in a scathing dismissal of the appeals court acquittal, ordering the examination of evidence and testimony it said had been improperly omitted by the Perugia appeals court, as well as instructing the court to redress what it defined as lapses in logic.

The first trial court found Knox and Sollecito guilty of murder and sexual assault based on DNA evidence, confused alibis and Knox's false accusation against a Congolese bar owner, which resulted in a slander verdict that has been upheld on final appeal. A Perugia appeals court dismantled the guilty verdict two years later, criticizing the "building blocks" of the conviction, including DNA evidence deemed unreliable by new experts, and the lack of motive.

In the Florence retrial, prosecutor Alessandro Crini contended that the motive was rooted in arguments between roommates Knox and Kercher about cleanliness and was triggered by a toilet left unflushed by Guede, the only person now in jail for the murder.

If Italy's supreme court now finds errors in the Florence trial, the case could go to trial for a fourth time.
 
Amanda Knox is innocent; it was a jiggaboo that did the murders, not her.
 
http://www.kirotv.com/news/ap/top-news/lawyer-for-knoxs-ex-boyfriend-makes-final-court-ap/nkgQQ/

Updated: 2:55 p.m. Friday, March 27, 2015 | Posted: 2:55 p.m. Friday, March 27, 2015
Amanda Knox murder conviction overturned by Italy high court

ROME —

Italy's highest court overturned the murder conviction against Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend Friday, bringing to a definitive end the high-profile case that captivated people on both sides of the Atlantic.

"Finished!" Knox's lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova exulted after the decision was read out. "It couldn't be better than this."

The decision by the supreme Court of Cassation is the final ruling in the case, ending the long legal battle waged by Knox and Italian co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito. Both Knox, who was awaiting the verdict in her hometown of Seattle, and Sollecito have long maintained their innocence in the death of British student Meredith Kercher.

The supreme Court of Cassation overturned last year's convictions by a Florence appeals court, and declined to order another trial. The decision means the judges, after thoroughly examining the case, concluded that a conviction could not be supported by the evidence.

Their reasoning will be released within 90 days.
 
Coonvicted Killer: Amanda Knox Was at Murder Scene

The stick nigger convicted of killing a British student in the Amanda Knox case broke his silence Thursday, insisting the American was at the scene of the crime on the night of the murder, NBC News reported.

Rudy Guede, who is serving a 16-year sentence for killing Knox's roommate Meredith Kercher, protested his innocence from an Italian jail in his first television interview.

The 30-year-old insisted he saw Knox, now 28, and her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, in the apartment when he rushed to investigate Kercher's screams :rolleyes: and repeated his claim that he was in the bathroom when the 21-year-old was fatally attacked. :rolleyes: "I clearly recognized her voice," Guede said, adding: "101 percent." :rolleyes:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Rudy Guede, who is serving a 16-year sentence for killing Knox's roommate Meredith Kercher, protested his innocence from an Italian jail in his first television interview.

https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/k...roommate-meredith-kercher-given-early-release

Killer Of Amanda Knox Roommate Meredith Kercher Given Early Release From Sentence For Good Behavior​


Rudy Guede served 13 years in prison for the rape and murder of British student Meredith Kercher.


By Megan Carpentier

Rudy Hermann Guede


Rudy Guede leaves a court hearing in Perugia on September 26, 2008. Photo: Getty Images

The man held responsible for the murder of a British student in Perugia in 2008 has been released from custody after 13 years.

Rudy Guede, 34, was convicted in 2008 of the rape and murder of Meredith Kercher
, who in 2007 was the roommate of Amanda Knox. Initially sentenced to 30 years in prison, his sentence was reduced to 16 years on appeal. In 2020, the Italians courts reportedly allowed Guede to finish serving sentence by performing community service outside the prison.

Guede's lawyer, Fabrizio Ballarini, confirmed to the Associated Press that Guede has now fully been released from custody in the town of Viterbo, about 75 miles southwest of Perugia.


In 2020, when news of Guede's work release program was made public, Knox told "Good Morning America" that she feels like his role in the crime has never been fully acknowledged.
"And while I can't say that I wish him suffering or imprisonment, I do wish that he had been fully held accountable for what he did and that he acknowledged what he did, and I don't know if that will ever happen," she said.

Kirchner was murdered in November 2007, and Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, found the body. Though there was a broken window and other evidence of a break-in, police arrested Knox and Sollecito. Thereafter, they discovered fingerprints and other DNA evidence tying Guede — who had previous arrests — for the crime, yet prosecutors persisted in trying all three. Guede insisted on a separate, fast-track trial and was convicted, though an appeal helped reduce his sentence.

Knox and Sollecito, tried together, were also convicted based on the prosecution theory that Kercher was killed in a sex game gone awry. Their convictions were thrown out by the courts, they were tried again, convicted again before those convictions were permanently thrown out a second time.
Knox, who maintained her innocence the entire time, returned to the U.S. in 2011 after her conviction was overturned the first time. She was definitively acquitted in 2015. She's since married and recently welcomed a daughter.
 
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