The Brutal Killing of Meredith Kercher – Part 7

Fred Davies in the seventh chapter of his critical examination of the trials and subsequent appeal hearings of Rudy Hermann Guede, Amanda Marie Knox and Raffaele Sollecito

3. Inferences to be drawn from inconsistencies in the accounts of Knox and Sollecito
During the course of her witness examination Knox indicated that she and Sollecito had dinner around 9.30pm to 10pm; then she put the time as slightly later, at or about 11pm. But this was contradicted by the declarations of Francesco Sollecito who spoke with his son at 8.42pm. There was the reference to his washing dishes and the water spillage (supra). This fact was also mentioned by Knox who linked it to the need to fetch a mop [head] to dry up the floor. This allowed the Court to fix the time of the dinner as being around 8.30pm and before the telephone call at 8.42pm. A logical deduction bearing in mind that prior to roughly 8.15pm, Knox was scheduled to work at the “Le Chic” pub that evening. The Massei Court made a finding (of fact) that Knox’s statements constituted an attempt to mitigate insofar as possible, the prosecution allegation that the two were elsewhere i.e. at Via della Pergola 7, when the murder of Meredith Kercher was being perpetrated. This is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to draw except that when one reads the transcript of the Massei Report, great emphasis was placed on the supporting eye witness account of eg, Antonio Curatolo, to contradict Knox’s account. As we have already seen, Curatolo’s evidence was unreliable and therefore the prosecution were unable to break Knox and Sollecito’s alibi by eye witness testimony alone. One can infer, therefore, that although the telephone conversation casts doubt on the accuracy or truthfulness of the time Knox and Sollecito ate their evening meal, viewed in isolation, the Court could not infer guilt. Much more cogent and persuasive evidence was required. See also the analysis of the Hellmann Report infra. Hellmann inferred that the washing of dishes by Sollecito did not necessarily imply that the two accused had already dined. Another reasonable explanation was that Sollecito was washing up dishes left from an earlier meal.

The focus of attention then shifted to the computer and mobile telephone activity of Raffaele Sollecito which was documented earlier. Massei observed: “…these circumstances, while they indicate the peculiarity of that night due to something very unusual happening.., it does not seem possible that they may have escaped from Amanda Knox’s attention, who instead makes no mention of them, and she claims her waking up was at 10am in Raffaele’s arms as already mentioned”.

It is submitted that the Massei Court erred. These were questions by necessity which had (initially) to be put to Raffaele Sollecito. But they never were. The fact that Knox was unaware of the computer and SMS activity is explicable by the fact that she was unconscious. It is reasonable to infer that Sollecito got up at 5.30am and returned back to bed after 6am. The same came be said of the telephone call at 9.24am made by Sollecito’s father. There was no inconsistency here. In summary, the reason why Knox had no knowledge of the computer and telephone activity was not necessarily because she had already left the house at Corso Garibaldi, as erroneously claimed by Quintavalle, but due to her being asleep in bed (as related to the State Police and at her trial).

A strong piece of circumstantial evidence against Knox concerned the sequence of events after she had returned to Sollecito’s house from Via della Pergola on the late morning of November 2, 2007. To recapitulate: “Amanda, after seeing the door open, the blood stains, the bigger bathroom dirty, returned to Raffaele’s house and he (according to what Knox explains in her email dated November 4, 2007) suggests that she call one of her housemates. So it was that she called Filomena [Romanelli], who was worried. Amanda told her then that she was going to call Meredith and then she would call back. So Amanda called Meredith on both cell phones (see email op.cit). Filomena Romanelli, in recalling the first phone call.., does not say that Amanda told her she had already called Meredith…”

There is a discrepancy here. The chronological order should have been: phone call to Romanelli and next, Meredith Kercher. In point of fact the actual order was Meredith Kercher first (one mobile phone, not both), Romanelli second. There is also a second discrepancy. Knox told Romanelli she was on her way back from Via della Pergola to Sollecito’s house. This was either a mistake on her part or an untruth. The GSM traffic indicated the call was made from the area of Corso Garibaldi.

If those were the only discrepancies the variation in accounts could have been attributed to a failure of recollection on the part of either Romanelli or Knox (or both). But the cellular traffic also revealed that Knox only telephoned the mobile registered to Meredith Kercher’s English subscriber line (the “English phone”), not both mobile phones as she later claimed in the email dated November 4. The Massei Court concluded therefore that Knox had lied (see s.6 below). The Court reasoned that Knox (and by implication Sollecito) knew very well that Meredith could not answer; their concern and interest was not for Meredith, but to check if the phones, which they had disposed of together in Mrs Lana’s garden, had been found by someone.

The Massei Court’s reasoning appears impeccable but consider this proposition: The said tribunal was prepared to assume that it was Knox and, by implication, Sollecito, who disposed of the mobile phones. We can assume that the mobile phone used by Meredith to make international calls to England (the “English phone”) was not turned off by the person or persons who disposed of it. Of course the phones could have been abandoned while the murderer or murderers were in a state of panic and not thinking straight. But in all probability they would have known if the phones had been switched off. They could also have removed the SIM cards and abandoned those items elsewhere. By phoning one of Meredith Kercher’s mobile phones Knox would have run the risk that the ringing of the phone would have alerted any passer by or the owner of the property to the presence of the mobile phone. And that is precisely what happened. Under the third section entitled “Meredith Kercher’s murder” the reader is referred to the evidence of Fiammetta Biscarini. So, as far as Filomena Romanelli is concerned, Knox was consistent when she assured her flatmate she would immediately ring Meredith. As the GSM traffic discloses, that is precisely what Knox did. It is conceded that the second anomaly remains ie, Knox’s claim in her email dated November 4, 2007. The writer has concluded that the falsity of Knox’s later claim was a further attempt to reduce, so far as possible, her connection to the digital rape and murder of Meredith. It is circumstantial evidence, but viewed in isolation or in the round, it is hardly conclusive.

One surprising omission was the failure of the Massei Court to draw inferences from the phone call made by Knox to her mother at 12.47pm (Italian time) prior to the discovery of Meredith’s body. Based on Knox’s replies during cross-examination at trial, Massei was entitled to infer that Knox had revealed details which, if she was a stranger to what had transpired, she could not have known. But the Massei Court did not trouble to include it in its primary reasons for convicting Knox and/or Sollecito. This aspect of the case will be scrutinized in considerable detail when evaluating the findings of the Supreme Court in the Galati appeal infra. However, as indicated previously, the crucial evidence which was advanced to controvert Knox and Sollecito’s alibi was forensic or biological traces. Let us now turn our attention to this crucial aspect of the prosecution case.

4. Biological and forensic traces
This subject has already been catalogued earlier in the section entitled Biological and Forensic Evidence.

At the outset one must observe this was not a case where either defendant sought to minimize his or involvement or criminality to the detriment of the other or to run what is colloquially known as (forgive the innocent association with Meredith’s murder) a “cut-throat” defence. The cases against both defendants stood or fell together.

The prosecution case was that following the commencement of their relationship Knox and Sollecito were almost inseparable which probably accounted for Sollecito having adopted Knox’s alibi. At a pre-trial hearing on November 8, 2007, (the Matteini hearing), Sollecito told the hearing that Knox had accompanied him back to his house on Corso Garibaldi and that they dined together. He stated (conveniently some would say) that he stayed in for the rest of the evening to sleep. However, he related that he was unsure whether Amanda went out that night; he said he could not remember. In the light of Amanda Knox’s pre-trial statements and her trial court testimony, the case proceeded on the basis that either both accused were complicit in Meredith Kercher’s murder or both were innocent. Effectively this meant that any damning evidence against Knox, including biological traces, implicated Sollecito and vice versa.

The first thing that caught the author’s eye, so to speak, was the marked absence of genetic traces attributable to Knox and Sollecito in the “killing zone” (Meredith’s bedroom). The absence of fingerprint evidence in Meredith’s bedroom is also striking. Had Knox and Sollecito been complicit in the attack upon Meredith Kercher including her stabbing, similar to Guede, one would also have expected a good deal more incriminating vestiges in or around Via della Pergola 7. True, the authorities suspected the two had attempted to clean up after the heinous crime, hence the reference to the mop and bleach, but nothing concrete was adduced to bolster this suspicion (the author is unable to point to any expert testimony on this point). This did not seem to trouble the Massei Court though who at one stage (p.269) commented: “Certainly it can be observed that every single place in the house [Via della Pergola 7] was not tested, and one might think that Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA might have been located in some other places”. Precisely, but it was not. This went to the very heart of the case i.e. contradicting and refuting the alibi and proving their complicity. As we shall, it is also significant that until the later search of Via della Pergola 7 on December 18, 2007 no biological or forensic traces of Sollecito had physically been located within Meredith’s bedroom (the killing zone).

To overcome the absence of biological and forensic traces Massei deduced that Knox and Sollecito must have performed a clean-up of the cottage after the murder. The thesis begins at p.381:

“The taking of the mobile phones… Such a requirement may be explained by the need to check that no compromising traces had been left behind [in the cottage] and by the consequent need to eliminate any possible remaining traces. What has just been said is confirmed by the circumstance by which, on the morning of 2nd November at 7.45am, Amanda was in Quintavalle’s shop and just after leaving was seen travelling downhill along Corso Garibaldi, most likely therefore in the direction of the house of Via della Pergola where, moreover, she might already have been prior to 7.45am.

Further confirmation is constituted by the fact that, after Meredith’s murder, it is clear that some traces were definitely eliminated [and] a cleaning activity was certainly carried out. In fact, the bare foot which, stained with blood, left its footprint on the sky-blue mat in the [small] bathroom, could only have been reached that way by taking steps which should have left other footprints on the floor, also marked out in blood just like (in fact, most likely, with even more [blood], since they were created before the footprint [im]printed on the mat) the one found on the mat itself. Of such other very visible footprints of a bloody bare foot, on the contrary, there is no trace…Even the drip of blood left on the internal edge of the [small] bathroom door (see photos 141 and 143…) seems to be the remainder of a much larger trace… Moreover, this cleaning activity seems to fit in with the planning carried out by taking the telephones, which were then immediately thrown away, and by locking the door of Meredith’s room; otherwise one cannot see what other significance these behaviours could have”.

Massei would have one believe that Knox and Sollecito, calculating and Machiavellian as ever, spent the majority of the night and a good proportion of the morning (of November 2, 2007) working hard to expurgate their incriminating traces from Via della Pergola 7. Purely an observation but none of the witnesses who entered the cottage later the same day reported the smell of cleaning agents such as bleach. And further, no rational explanation was provided as to how (with the exception of the bra clasp and Double DNA Knife), they succeeded in wiping clean all of their traces in Meredith’s bedroom while at the same time leaving the traces of Guede untouched. Knox and Sollecito were not possessed of the scientific expertise to achieve this outcome.
And what of the prints that were actually found such as those in the small bathroom? Massei appeared to have an answer for every defence objection. At the bottom of p.386, the Report stated: “In this regard, it can in fact be hypothesised that the cleaning action was not particularly careful or else - and this second hypothesis is held to be more probable since the shoe prints, as has been recalled, were fairly evident - that such an omission was intentional, in the knowledge that, having been in Meredith’s room, when the latter was killed, with bare feet as has already been noted, the shoe prints in blood would have constituted an exonerating element in their defence”.

So Massei would have one believe that Knox and Sollecito calculated that if their shoe prints were found in the more communal parts of the cottage eg, in the entrance and corridor to the cottage, this would explain the presence of their traces. An astounding deduction.

Massei found as a fact, that this action of checking and cleaning was carried out, therefore, in the very early hours of the morning. And this circumstance constituted a clue to the actions of the accused; they may have divided their activities because to have been seen together they would have been far more noticeable; and hence why the task of going to the store was entrusted to Amanda (who had only been there once before). The problem with this hypothesis, as we have already seen, is that Quintavalle’s evidence was patently unreliable.

But having carried out such an efficient purging of the killing zone, why, by comparison, was the tidying up of the small bathroom so sloppy? After all, according to Massei, both defendants had taken the trouble to use the shower to wash away all of the bloody traces of Meredith upon their respective bodies. They must have later washed all of their clothing because no doubt, in both cases, the same was covered in blood. Further, assuming it was Sollecito’s bloody imprint on the sky-blue bathmat he would have been aware of that fact. The mat could have been removed and washed, even later replaced because there was sufficient time to complete the task, despite a slight risk that either Romanelli or Mezzetti could, unannounced, return early. And yet in spite of the thoroughness of the accused in removing their obvious traces from Meredith’s bedroom, taking care to leave Guede’s traces undisturbed, the same amount of diligence was not accorded to the small bathroom. Massei’s response was scholarly (at p.387):

“We believe that the small blood stains in the bathroom were not considered to be significant [by the accused] as to require specific cleaning and the same goes for the stains on the mat which could be explained either by referring to wounds which the criminal would have sustained when entering the house by breaking the glass, or by referring to a loss of blood attributable to menstruation (since the house was occupied by four women)”.

Two small observations should suffice. The break-in was simulated and if Knox and Sollecito were responsible, as Massei had concluded, the defendants would have known that there was no loss of blood on effecting entry to the house because the burglary was a fiction as was the intruder. Secondly, to assume that Knox told Sollecito not to worry about the blood stain on the bathmat, on the pretext it could be explained away by reference to eg, menstruation, was pure conjecture and plain ridiculous. Of course, the Court of Assizes placed reliance on Knox’s later declarations on this point, even though it did not believe (and subsequently found) that she had not returned to Via della Pergola 7 at 10.30am, as she had claimed.