Wednesday, September 28, 2011

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

Friday, September 16, 2011

Amanda Knox and the Architects of the Foxy Knoxy Myth

Amanda Knox and the Architects of the Foxy Knoxy Myth




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.”

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

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