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US student in Italy on trial for murder of british roommate

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Postby gwen » Wed Nov 07, 2007 6:08 pm

ROME - An American woman who traveled to Italy to comfort her daughter following the slaying of her roommate was told during the journey that her daughter was being detained as a suspect, officials said Wednesday.

Edda Mellas, of Seattle, arrived in Perugia on Tuesday night and was being hosted in an apartment owned by the city, said city spokesman Paolo Occiuto.

Mellas' daughter, Amanda Marie Knox, 20, was detained Tuesday along with her 24-year-old Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and a Congolese resident of Perugia, Lumumba "Patrick" Diya, 38, in connection with the sexual assault and death of British student Meredith Kercher.

Perugia police did not release the suspects' names, but a police spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday that the names that had appeared in the Italian media were correct.

Kercher, 21, was found dead Friday, half-naked, in the apartment she shared with Knox the morning after attending a Halloween party, authorities said.

Police chief Arturo De Felice said Tuesday she died fighting off a sexual attack. The coroner said Kercher was stabbed in the neck, but police say no murder weapon has been found
.

Members of Kercher's family arrived Tuesday in Perugia and were being hosted at the city's expense at a central hotel, awaiting word from prosecutors on when they can take her remains home, Occhito said in a phone interview.

"We don't know how long it will take," he said.

In Seattle, the president of the Seattle-Perugia Sister City Association, Mike James, said it helped make travel arrangements for Mellas to get to Perugia. At the time she left, she was going to comfort her daughter and did not know she was a suspect.

Occhito said Mellas had been informed during the trip that her daughter had not just been questioned by police in the case but had been detained.

Kercher had been enrolled for a year of study in Perugia, an Umbrian city 105 miles north of Rome that is known for its university for foreigners.

Image
Police officers guide American student Amanda Marie Knox, center, who is one of the three suspects in the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, central Italy, on Tuesday.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21659676/?GT1=10547
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Meredith Kercher

Postby iquitos » Fri Nov 09, 2007 5:28 pm

never heard of istf? we shall see if the tabloid media picks this one up. is greta, protector of well off young women, on a plane?

prolly not, Meredith Kercher is only a Brit.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3835147&page=1

British Student Murdered
The ugly side of studying in a foreign country made headlines this week when American student Amanda Knox was implicated in the death of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British student who was living with Knox as the two studied in Italy.

Last week Kercher was brutally murdered, her seminaked body found hidden under a duvet, with a deep knife slash in her throat. Knox is now being held on suspicion of murder.
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Postby SavannahStar » Fri Nov 09, 2007 5:46 pm

Wow, I saw a bit of that story last night, I forget which show. Pretty awful gruesome! :shock:
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sex and shoes

Postby iquitos » Fri Nov 09, 2007 5:53 pm

"And it should be noted that on November 6 a pair of Nike size 42 ½ gymnastic shoes and a black flick knife 8.5cm long and 2cm wide were seized from the ownership of Sollecito Raffaele.

The results of a first check on the place of the murder found the trace of a footprint, verification of which shows a clear compatibility with the imprint of the shoes of Sollecito."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... xml&page=1

sometimes there is actual evidence!
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Postby all10suspects » Fri Nov 09, 2007 11:22 pm

Well the Italians did the right thing. I would like to see all 3 get 30 years.
If they have the dp they should all get that.
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Postby George » Sat Nov 10, 2007 7:40 am

Posted by macker at 11/8/07 11:48 p.m.

my heart goes out to the parents, but didn't she already admit involvement, even a little more than 'looking the other way'? Mom and Dad, talk to her and tell her come clean while she can.


WTF!
My heart goes out to the parents of the British girl. Do you mind me doing so?
Yes, Europeans also have "Moms and Dads"
Another example of American ethnocentrism in the local and national US "press".

Better read this story here: (The Times)
WARNING: you are reading a FOREIGN online newspaper

http://tinyurl.com/29849p
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Postby SavannahStar » Sat Nov 10, 2007 10:13 am

Two threads on this now. Maybe Fash could merge them?

This may be a very interesting case!

http://www.refugeesunleashed.net/viewtopic.php?t=11757
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Postby pax » Sat Nov 10, 2007 1:44 pm

My heart goes out to the family and friends of the British girl too.

Very interesting case. Has there been any speculation as to possible motive?
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Postby pax » Sat Nov 10, 2007 1:46 pm

British student Meredith Kercher. Just repeating it to myself, as she's the murder victim.
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Postby Katie » Fri Nov 16, 2007 8:07 am

Thanks Mia , I think she's toast.
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Postby pax » Fri Nov 16, 2007 2:53 pm

It will be interesting to learn more about criminal justice in Italy.
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Postby George » Mon Nov 19, 2007 7:36 am

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Photo of Amanda Knox, aka "Foxy Knoxy", the name she gave herself, aka "a brilliant scholar" (sic) by
her fellow students back in the US.

Guilty, partly guilty or not guilty, seeing this picture and other pictures published in the British media I have come to realise that Knox is getting the same treatment as J2K received in the early stages of the Holloway case by the American media. A person called Dan Riehl extracted some pictures from the web and had himself even invited by Fox News to comment on them ($). The pictures fuelled all kinds of speculation on who these fellows were, their lifestyle, their parents, and even the mother of Joran was judged according her political views and even the fact that she was an art teacher seemed to be a point of interest. As far as my information both the Holloways and the Knoxes are broken families while the Van der Sloots are not.

Now scroll back to the beginning of this thread and you will see a picture (see also below)of the very same brilliant student Knox, now wearing handcuffs shortly after having been arrested by the Italian police. But this picture was published on an American website (MSNBC) and someone thought it was appropriate to blur the part of the photo where the HANDCUFFS would have been clearly visible. Apparently publishing the original photo would have been unpatriotic?

More stories and pictures here:


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=492893&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=493435&in_page_id=1811

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edited to provide working links due to interrupted tinyurl service
Last edited by George on Mon Nov 19, 2007 11:48 am, edited 2 times in total.
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i think knox engineered the murder then

Postby iquitos » Mon Nov 19, 2007 10:49 am

implicated her boyfriend in the cleanup and tried to incriminate her employer. the fourth man probably did the deed or helped. why shit in the sink?
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Re: i think knox engineered the murder then

Postby George » Wed Nov 21, 2007 8:02 am

iquitos wrote:implicated her boyfriend in the cleanup and tried to incriminate her employer. the fourth man probably did the deed or helped. why shit in the sink?


Right on spot , you made this observation before Patrick was released and the fourth suspect was arrested in Germany. Chapeau iquitos!

Patrick Lumumba (Knox' employer) has a Polish wife and they have a child. The Perugian community speaks very well of them.
If he really has nothing to do with the death of Meredith, this "brilliant student" Knox from the US has a lot explaining to do. Mind you, Italian police warned her from the beginning of the interrogations that implicating an innocent person in a murder case - as Knox has done by pointing the finger at Patrick - is a serious crime under Italian law no matter what role she played herself in the tragedy. Add to that that Knox according to other students seemed unshaken (a sociopath? bring in the FoxTV psychologists on this one !) by the death of her roommate, I am beginning to wonder what these American "language students" actually are doing in Europe. I have known an American manager in our company writing in her resume that she had studied languages and was fluent in both German and Dutch. After meeting her for the first time we decided to switch back to English because both her German and Dutch was just enough to reach Kindergarten level. But maybe I know what they are looking for. Have yourself photographed in front of a weed shop in Amsterdam (you know: the kind of shop that 99% of our Dutch students never have seen from the inside), have a good time, go back to the US, make a career as a Fox(y Knoxy) reporter (like this flatfaced Greta type) and depict your former favourite holiday destinations (yes, HOLIDAY, not STUDY) as modern day Sodoms. Well, there is still hope for Amanda, she can grow some hair on her vocal cords and join the ranks of the US talk show bitches. Bon courage Amanda!

PS IMO the Meredith Kercher case deserves a separate chapter under "Crimes and Missing People" preceding the Natalee Holloway case. (prolly not, Meredith Kercher is only a Brit ??)
PS2 I just learned that the Italian prime minister thanked the Germans to act so efficiently arresting the fourth (now third) suspect. HIGH PROFILE ENOUGH?
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Postby George » Wed Nov 21, 2007 7:33 pm

Mr Lumumba has now been freed, with suspicion falling instead on Mr Guede, while the murder weapon is now thought to be an 8in (20cm) kitchen knife discovered at Mr Sollecito's flat, with Ms Kercher's DNA found at the tip and Ms Knox's DNA near the handle.
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seems guede had been there at parties before

Postby iquitos » Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:11 pm

did he come on to meredith while knox lay stoned and oblivious so she blamed patrick? or we she in on it? i smell a revenge thing and it could even be directed at her boyfriend as well. does she sleep with them then resent them? i still see the boyfriend as cleanup. why did she leave the knife at his place? if she was not involved why did she touch the knife at all?
what of the sighting of her and guede doing laundry? what was her relationship with guede? i think there are some deep psychological and even racial motivations here. chilling.
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Postby victims cry » Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:24 pm

someone might want to start a news/links thread i will sticky and perhaps an overview one for those who happen on the forum :)
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now the sierra leonian boy is

Postby iquitos » Thu Nov 22, 2007 12:46 am

backtracking and denying. his flat has been searched. he admits he knows both girls and has been to the flat but was not there that night. says his (bloody) prints are from other visits i wonder in this permissive atmosphere why a boy would need to kill for sex. seems like there were more than a few a few willing ladies around. this kids you tube vampire act is lame he is a bad actor with a seemingly hard face, possibly reflecting a hard but at the same time too easy life.
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Postby George » Thu Nov 22, 2007 6:57 am

A bar owner who spent three weeks in prison on suspicion of murdering Ms Kercher said yesterday he would “never forgive” the American student who implicated him. Diay “Patrick” Lumumba, who was released on Tuesday, was detained after Amanda Knox, 20, said that she heard screams and thuds after he (Lumumba) entered Ms Kercher’s room. The prosecutor in Perugia said yesterday that there were “no longer any serious indications linking Mr Lumumba to the crime.”
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Postby Seraph » Thu Nov 22, 2007 7:07 am

[quote="George"]A bar owner who spent three weeks in prison on suspicion of murdering Ms Kercher said yesterday he would “never forgive” the American student who implicated him. Diay “Patrick” Lumumba, who was released on Tuesday, was detained after Amanda Knox, 20, said that she heard screams and thuds after he (Lumumba) entered Ms Kercher’s room. The prosecutor in Perugia said yesterday that there were “no longer any serious indications linking Mr Lumumba to the crime.”[/quot


Hello George, it seems we have only a few interested posters, I quess Meredeth has been eclipsed by Natalee.



Suspect admits being at Meredith house
By Malcolm Moore in Perugia
Last Updated: 10:31am GMT 22/11/2007



The fourth suspect accused of killing British student Meredith Kercher has admitted that he was in her house on the night of the murder.

Extracts from Amanda Knox's note
Bar owner freed in Meredith murder inquiry
Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, from the Ivory Coast, told a court in Germany that he was innocent of Miss Kercher's murder, but did not deny that he had been at the scene of the crime.


Rudy Hermann Guede told a court in Germany that he was innocent
Miss Kercher, 21, from Coulsdon, south London, was found in her bedroom in Perugia on Friday November 2 with her throat cut. Police believe she was forced into an "extreme" sexual game before being killed.

However, the circumstances of Miss Kercher's death were muddied further when Guede allegedly told a friend that Amanda Knox, 20, had not been at the house when Miss Kercher died.

Instead, he said that a "brown-haired Italian" had been the assassin.

Guede is reported by La Nazione, a newspaper, to have made the allegation while chatting on the internet to a friend, with the police listening in. He is reported to have told his friend that Miss Kercher had invited him to her room, to make love.

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He then claimed he went to the bathroom, and in the meantime, someone rang the doorbell.

After that, he heard Miss Kercher's screams. "I had a fight [with the man], and I was wounded. I do not remember his face precisely, but then I ran away scared. I did not kill her."

Other witnesses have told the police that they were bumped into by a "man of colour" running away from the scene at roughly the same time.

Knox, and Raffaele Sollecito, 23, her boyfriend, are both in custody on suspicion on murder and sexual assault. The prime piece of evidence against them is an eight-inch kitchen knife, found at Sollecito's house.

The knife allegedly has traces of Knox's DNA near the handle and of Miss Kercher's DNA at the tip.

While police attention was focussed on Patrick Diya Lumumba, the 37-year-old Congolese bar owner who has since been released from custody, Guede was able to make a get-away to Germany, where he was sleeping rough on a barge on the river Rhine.

However, in a rambling hand-written letter, Knox said she had been put under such pressure to confess by the police that her testimony was worthless.

Knox wrote the letter at 11pm on the day of her arrest, asking for sheets of blank paper and a pen while in custody.

"I have serious doubts about the truth of my statements," she wrote, "because they were made under stress and shock and I was exhausted. I am very confused. At this point, my head is full of ideas and I am unable to control them."

She added: "I was told I would be arrested and put in prison for 30 years.

When I could not remember, things jumped out of my head. After all these hours of confusion, these responses came out."

She said she had not asked her boyfriend, Sollecito, to provide her with an alibi, and instead said that at one point, she recalls him with "blood on his hands".

However, she said she thought it was blood from a fish they had cooked for dinner.

She said Sollecito was now trying to "distance" himself from her.

His father has said Knox "ruined" Sollecito's life.

Knox, in turn, has alleged to police that Sollecito was a user of "cocaine and acid in the past, even if he now says he only smokes weed" and that "he is often depressed and sad".

One of Knox's friends, Spyros Gatsios, told police that Knox liked Sollecito because "he was very timid".
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Postby George » Thu Nov 22, 2007 8:23 am

Seraph wrote:
Hello George, it seems we have only a few interested posters, I quess Meredeth has been eclipsed by Natalee.

Sad, but true Seraph. A part of the year I live in a British community myself, so its only "us british" caring for "Justice for Meredith..." And iquitos of course, who started this thread.
BTW Sorry to hear that Britain will not join the Euro 2008 football championships, I think they belong there.

Oops, I mean ENGLAND
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Postby wvgirl » Thu Nov 22, 2007 9:41 am

Hi Seraph and George. I am interested in this case, but have promised myself that I will not be drawn into another case. I gained too much weight with Natalee. Now I have to spend my time walking it off :lol:
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this young lady has created a real problem for herself and

Postby iquitos » Fri Nov 23, 2007 12:31 am

her boyfriend. i have not seen the marijuana defense before. looks like the sierra leonian boy is cooked. they found dna. what was knox's role? looks like the time of death is in doubt too. too bad they didn't grand patrick's request that the body be checked again before shipment. now they have a problem. but the dan in her is pretty damning. how will amanda wiggle out of this?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 926812.ece

From The Times
November 23, 2007
DNA test shows suspect had sex with Meredith Kercher before she died


Richard Owen in Rome
A drug dealer suspected of involvement in the murder of Meredith Kercher had sex with her on the night she died, DNA tests have revealed.

Italian police last night said that DNA taken from the toothbrush of Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, matched samples found on Ms Kercher’s body and on toilet paper in the house where she was murdered.

Mr Guede, who has dual Italian and Ivorian nationality, was arrested in Germany on Tuesday nearly three weeks after he left Perugia following the murder of the British student.

The scientific evidence emerged after it was revealed that Amanda Knox, the American student who is also a suspect, told police after she was arrested that she was “very confused” about who had cut her housemate’s throat but insisted that she was not the killer.
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Postby George » Fri Nov 23, 2007 7:33 am

American "language student" Knox:
“I understand the stress the Italian police are under”

WTF!
What does she want to say? I am an American and can cope with it?
It is not the FBI doing the interrogations?

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Postby George » Fri Nov 23, 2007 11:20 am

deleted here and transferred to press clips
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