Amanda Knox Convicted in Murder of Meredith Kercher; AKPart1

Nearly three months ago, on December 4, 2009, an Italian jury convicted Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito of murdering her roommate British student Meredith Kercher on the night of November 1 2007 in a rented cottage in the Umbrian capital of Perugia, Italy. After Knox's family has spent nearly $1 million in legal defense fees, and after eleven hours of jury-deliberation, Judge Giancarlo Massei pronounced Knox as 'Guilty' in Italy's top criminal court The Court of Cassation. He sentenced her to 26 years imprisonment- although Knox could be freed in fifteen years.

A college honor student from Seattle Washington, Amanda Knox spent 2008 in jail without bail while waiting for her trial. She spent the next year, 2009, in jail during her year-long trial. And she will return as a convict to the same jail where she was incarcerated since her arrest on November 6, 2007- the maximum-security Casa Circondariale Capanne prison compound just outside the hilltop town Perugia. She has two cellmates. Her ex-boyfriend Sollecito- a computer science major and the son of a well-off family in the south of Italy-was also convicted and is being held in Terni on a 25-year sentence. Deemed a sex offender, he is in isolation.

A third person who was arrested in November 2007 for the murder of Meredith Kercher- Le Chic club owner and Knox's employer Diya 'Patrick' Lumumba- was released within weeks of his imprisonment for lack of evidence. However, blatant DNA evidence emerged that placed Ivory Coast citizen Rudy Hermann Guédé, then 20, with Kercher in her room on the night of the murder.

Yet, Guédé had fled the country the day after the murder. Police found his Facebook friends, listened in on an Internet phone call, and traced him to a computer in Germany. Interpol picked up Guédé on November 20, 2007. He was extradited to Italy on December 6. Proclaiming his innocence, he elected to have a fast-track trial, with the hope of leniency. However, on December 28 2008, Judge Paolo Micheli convicted Guédé of murder and sexual assault; he sentenced him to thirty years of jail-time.

The prosecutor against Knox and Sollecito, Giuliano Mignini- whose co-prosecutor was Manuela Comodi- is himself in trouble. Mignini was sentenced by a Florence court on January 22 2010 to sixteen months in jail- although his sentence may be suspended- for his abuse of high office, illegal phone tapping, and dereliction of duty in connection with the high-profile serial-killer case 'The Monster of Florence'.

The confusing convoluted story of Meredith Kercher's death began on the night of the murder when Meredith Kercher left a friend's home after eating pizza and watching The Notebook on DVD. She walked partway home with another friend and the rest of the way by herself. She arrived home shortly before 9pm. At 8:56, she called her mother but her call was never completed. This may have been the moment in which Kercher was first attacked. The attacker severely bruised one side of Kercher's neck and stabbed the other side with a knife- and then left Kercher to die a prolonged painful death as she drowned in her own blood.

Did Amanda Knox murder Meredith Kercher? The evidence says 'no'. Not even the contaminated evidence points a finger at her. Yet, Prosecutor Magnini has stuck with his theory of a drug-infested sex orgy for four- with Kercher as an unwilling partner- and persistently tried to fit the evidence to his concocted theory. This lack of evidence will be addressed in a future article.

On the morning after Kercher's murder, Knox left Sollecito's apartment after spending the night and went to the cottage that she shared with four boys on the ground floor and three other girls, including Kercher, on the top floor. She saw that the entrance door was open, which was very unusual. She entered the cottage. She called her mother, Edda Mellas, who later was to tell a reporter that her daughter said, "I'm fine, I'm home. But I think someone's been in my house." Knox took a shower and returned to Sollecito's apartment.

In the meantime, a neighboring woman of Knox and Kercher's cottage had called the Postal Police, (the department that handles Communications) and said she had found two cell phones (a Motorola and an Ericsson) in a garden. This was a usual thing to do since the phones could have been triggers for bombs. However, the UK phone turned out to be Kercher's and the Italian one turned out to belong to housemate Filomena Romanelli, who had loaned the phone to Kercher. The garden was about two hundred yards from Kercher's cottage.

Knox returned to the cottage with Sollecito. They found a broken window. They called Kercher's UK cell phone but there was no answer; they called another of Amanda's roommates and reached her. They went to her bedroom and found the door locked. Sollecito tried to break it down but couldn't. He called the Carabinieri (Italian police). The Postal Police arrived minutes later to ask about the found cellphones. A security camera captured several activities and thus captured the Postal Police's arrival in a time-stamped video clip. Also newly-arrived were one of Amanda's housemates, Filomena Romanelli, with a couple of friends.

After learning about Meredith's locked door, the Postal Police determined there was insufficient evidence for them to justify causing damage by breaking down the door- which shows that police saw even less to be concerned about than did Knox and Sollecito. The Postal Police asked one of Romanelli's friends, Luca Alteri, to break down the door. He did so and immediately backed off in shock when he saw the blood and a foot poking out from under a duvet covering the corpse, to which the foot belonged, on the floor. The Carabinieri arrived.

Mellas later told a reporter that her daughter called her again but this time, there was chaos. "The second call I received from Amanda was horrible. People were yelling and saying they had seen a foot [poking out from the duvet]. She was very upset, it was disturbing. I said to her 'Oh my God'," Mellas said. Knox called her mother a third time and told her that there wasn't just a foot but a dead body in Kercher's bedroom. "She didn't know for sure who it was," Mellas said.

This homicide was the beginning of an Italian nightmare for Amanda Knox that her December 2009 conviction perpetuates. But since the evidence on her is nonexistent, was Knox convicted based on a crucifixion of her actions such as 1) kisses shared with Sollecito outside the cottage on November 2 2007, which was the day after Kercher's body had been removed and put in the morgue; 2) buying sexy underwear with Sollecito (November 3) because she had none after police had locked her out of her apartment; 3) her cartwheel(s) in the police station were just stretches- touching her toes- after being at the station for hours (November 5), etc.

According to CNN, Knox and Sollecito, who were convicted on all charges but theft, must together pay five million euros ($7.4 million) to Meredith Kercher's family. Knox alone must pay 40,000 euros ($60,000) to the man whom she falsely accused of the murder after her grueling fourteen hours of grilling by police. For Sollecito, the collateral damage was his sister's loss of her job with the Carabinieri back in November 2007.

Was the trial fair? The answer is 'no', for many reasons. A few reasons are- 1) no recordings of the interrogations were produced; 2) the prosecution intentionally translated Knox's words wrongly and then leaked the misinterpretations to the press; 3) Amanda was abused during the interrogations. These statements will be addressed and supported with sources in later articles.

End of AK Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. If you believe Amanda Knox is innocent, click here for Facebook cause.
Sources: cnn; ionlinephillipines; cbs; westseattleherald;

Amanda and Raffaele are innocent.

Timeline of Meredith's last call home: 8:56 pm,

The call was interrupted by Guede's attack before her mother could answer the call.

Nov. 1, 2007 pm

~06:00 Meredith ate dinner at friends home Via Bontempi

~08:30 Guede captured on the parking garage CCTV cam

~8:40 Amanda answered the door at Raffaele's flat.

~08:45 Meredith & Sophie start walking home together

~08:40 Guede busted the window and enters the apartment

~08:55 She got home, went straight to her room and placed a phone call to her mom, *8:56 pm, police testimony

*08:56 Meredith's call to mom is interrupted,GUEDE ATTACK

>8:56 She put up one hell of a fight so Guede stabbed her soon after he attack.

* 9:10, 9:26 - 9:46 The scientific police determined Raffaele was active on his PC, watching a cartoon.

~10:00 Guede used her UK phone and the wrong area code to call her UK bank.The call connects to a cell tower that services Ponte Rio, Montelaguardia

*10:13 Her phone receives pic. message from same cell tower