Unarresting the Arrested:FBI Profiler John Douglas on the case against Amanda Knox & Raffaele Sollecito

This is an excellent interview of FBI Profiler John Douglas conducted by journalist Krista Errickson.

The interview originally appeared on her blog, Woman on a Wire, and is now available on Ground Report (linked below).

 

From Krista: This article was originally supposed to be published for Il Messaggero. It was given to me as an assignment, after the editor and legal expert of the newspaper saw the Maxim interview with famed FBI profiler, John Douglas, in the January 2011 issue.

When the article was turned in, albeit shortened, my editor told me – “this article is too dangerous to print in Italy”. 

Hunting the Hunters

There are two kinds of hunters: the hunter that waits and the hunter that tracks. The difference of two is the complexity of their hunting techniques though both aim for the same thing; bagging the prey.

Hunters who wait prefer to lure their prey into range. This is usually the preferred method of serial killers. They watch, and wait for the chance to pounce. Hunters who track their prey, involves a more detailed approach; knowing the specific differences, patterns and behaviors of the hunted, and calculate their next moves. John Douglas is of the latter. However, he pursues a different kind of animal: serial killers. He is the investigator and legendary criminal profiler known as “The Mind Hunter”.

Click here to read Krista Errickson's  interview with John Douglas

Amanda Knox and the Architects of the Foxy Knoxy Myth

Amanda Knox and the Architects of the Foxy Knoxy Myth

by Bruce Fisher    September 16, 2011

Nick Pisa & Barbie Nadeau

Freedom looks to be on the horizon for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, in Perugia, Italy. Both were convicted in 2009 for the murder of Knox’s roommate Meredith Kercher. Both have adamantly denied any involvement in the murder.

Where the original trial was a prosecutor’s dream come true, the appeal has been a complete disaster, where the prosecution has lost every key issue. The prosecution’s most important witness from the first trial admitted that he was a heroin addict on appeal and told the court, quite unashamedly, he was using heroin on the night in question----a humiliating blow to the prosecution, prompting Judge Hellmann to cut his testimony short and have him escorted out of his courtroom. 

The most damaging blow to the prosecution came from independent experts appointed by the court to review the DNA evidence. The experts’ testimony discredited the alleged murder weapon and a DNA laden bra clasp used to secure the convictions of Knox and Sollecito.  Knox’s father Curt Knox summed it up best when he told CNN “the prosecution has no case left.”

Click here to read the rest of this article. 

Want to read Italian report on why the science in the Amanda Knox case is bogus? You can

Stefano Conti and Carla Vecchiotti

Translation of the report submitted by Profs. Carla Vecchiotti and Stefano Conti of the University of Rome — La Sapienza to the Corte di Assise di Appello (Court of Appeals) of Perugia, Italy, regarding DNA evidence in the case against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito is now in progress. Vecchiotti and Conti were appointed by the presiding judge in Knox and Sollecito’s appeal trial, Claudio Pratillo Hellmann, to conduct an independent review of this evidence, which (like most of the evidence in the case) had long been seriously questioned by Knox and Sollecito’s defense teams and by outside observers.

The conclusions reached by Conti and Vecchiotti constitute a damning indictment of the investigation conducted by Italy’s Scientific Police, and in particular of the methods employed by the prosecution’s main forensic scientist, Dr. Patrizia Stefanoni. They lend official support to the already-widespread perception that Knox and Sollecito have been the victims of a scandalous miscarriage of justice.

Read the translation here: The Conti-Vecchiotti Report By komponisto

Why I Believe a Mafia Supergrass Will Help Clear Foxy Knoxy's Name

Luciano Aviello, a mafia witness who wrote to the court three times saying he knows who the real killer is.
Photo originally post by the Daily Mail.

Copy of Aviello letter can be read here.

By Bob Graham

Rarely has a murder investigation been so mired in controversy, prejudice and downright incompetence as the inquiry into the death of British student Meredith Kercher.  Yet this week, three years after she was killed in her Italian digs, once more the case took a dramatic twist as a Mafia mobster emerged to add to the obfuscation and intrigue. Gangster Luciano Aviello, a jailed supergrass, claims it is not Amanda 'Foxy Knoxy' Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito - who are serving jail sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively for the crime - who are guilty, but his own brother, Antonio.  In almost two years since I began investigating this murder for a documentary, I have learned to be intensely sceptical of the many 'new' developments that have occurred. And this latest is no exception.

Read rest of the article here.

Amanda Knox Prosecutor Tainted by 'Satanism' Case

As Meredith Kercher's killers prepare their appeal, serious questions are being asked about the man who led the case against them

By Peter Popham

One of Italy's most rambunctious legal performers, the scourge of Amanda Knox, was back in action last week.

Plump, pompous and perspiring, Giuliano Mignini, 60, may look like a character out of Dickens, but in persuading a Perugia jury to convict Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito of murdering Knox's English flatmate Meredith Kercher, the public prosecutor for the city of Perugia earned himself a reputation for steely ruthlessness in nailing his enemies.

A devout Catholic with a dim view of lax modern ways, he went on to demand that Knox serve not 26 years, as decided by the court, but life. And he was on form again this week, adding to the American student's woes by prosecuting her for slander. During the murder trial, Knox had claimed that, during an all-night grilling, a woman police officer had repeatedly slapped her. Mignini said "the good name of the Perugia police" had been attacked and asked the judge to add another six years to Knox's sentence.

Read the rest of the article here.

Amy Jenkins: Amanda Knox's plight has taken an even more absurd turn

From The Independent:

There's adding insult to injury – and there's adding an entirely spurious slander trial to a monumentally unjust 26-year prison sentence. It's not enough for the Italian authorities to have convicted Amanda Knox for murder on the basis of a) no forensic evidence, b) no motive and c) no previous; they're now going to prosecute her for slandering the police when she spoke out in her own defence.

There have been complaints about a kind of snobbery leaking out from British and American commentators about the Italian judicial system – but no amount of political correctness is going to stop me from saying that this trumped-up charge exposes the Amanda Knox case for the witch hunt it is. I'm not saying the British courts haven't overseen some terrible injustices in their time, but the fact is that if you were serving 26 years for murder in this country and you said the police hit you, you wouldn't be had up for slander.

You can continue the article here.

Motivations Against Giuliano Mignini

Comments Allowed

Back in January, Giuliano Mignini was convicted for abusing his office. Just as all criminal cases in Italy, the judge's must publish their motivations 90 days after the verdict. Last month this blog posted a summary of the charges and significance against prosecutor Mignini (which we were able to do thanks to a very informed source who has followed the case closely in Florence). You can read that summary and view the sentencing report here. As discussed in that post, the charges Mignini was convicted for are:

1.) Illegally investigating journalists who had criticized him with the "intent to harass or deter them from pursuing their legitimate profession". Specifically the court found that Mignini had targeted Italian journalists Vincenzo Tessandori, Gennaro De Stefano, and Roberto Fiasconaro, because they had criticized his investigations into the death of Narducci.

2.) Ordering an illegal investigation of the Florentine ex police chief Giuseppe De Donno.

3.) Ordering illegal investigations of two officials of the Viminale, the Ministry of the Interior in Rome, including an illegal investigation of the Roberto Sgalla, ex-director of the office of external affairs.

For the news round up from the day of Mignini's conviction, click here.

For info on the defamation suits related to this case, including Giuliano Mignini, click here.

Now the motivation document is available to the public and you can read that document embedded here. Below are both the Italian and English versions. The English version is a computer translation, so at the moment that translation is rough. For the Italian version, this is the full and unredacted copy.

Italian Version Part 1

Italian Mignini 1 -

Italian Version Part 2

Italian Mignini 2 -

English Version Part 1 (Rough Translation)

Mignini part 1 doc -

English Version Part 2 (Rough Translation)

Mignin Motivation part 2_2_ -