Amanda Knox & Raffaele Sollecito
Injustice Anywhere, an organization I co-founded, recently published an open letter that I wrote to Edward McCall, inviting the blogger to be a guest on a live broadcast of the Injustice Anywhere radio program to discuss the Meredith Kercher case. McCall is the creator of themurderofmeredithkercher.com, a deceptive website that falsely presents itself as a non-biased resource for the Meredith Kercher murder case.
Our organization took notice of the website when we discovered that it was run by a member if an anti-Amanda Knox hate group. We will not hesitate to call out individuals or groups that intentionally publish misinformation for the sole purpose of attacking Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, two people we advocate for. I sent an email to the website’s owner to see if he would be willing to defend the information presented on his website. When I did not receive a response, I decided to post an open letter.
Here is my letter to Edward McCall:
Edward McCall,
You and I recently had a brief opportunity to discuss the Meredith Kercher murder case on a blog called allthingscrimeblog.com. The moderator of that forum decided that I should no longer be allowed to participate. I feel that our conversation was just getting started and I would like to see it continue.
I am writing to invite you to be a guest on the Injustice Anywhere radio program. All questions about the case would be allowed. Both of us would agree ahead of time not to ask questions about our personal lives. This would give you the benefit of remaining anonymous if you choose to do so. I would like to have an adult conversation with you about this case, without the distraction that Internet forums and comment sections often provide. Just you and I, discussing this case live on the air, nothing edited, and nothing off limits.
You have made several comments recently about our organization. I would like to give you the opportunity to clarify those comments. I will be happy to clarify any of my comments as well. Our conversation will also give you the opportunity to discuss your new wiki project.
Open conversation is key if you want to show yourself as a credible advocate for your cause. Unfortunately the websites that you are a member of do not allow open discussion, so I would like to offer you a platform where open discussion is encouraged. You are very confident in your position so I can see no plausible reason to decline my offer.
If you accept my offer, the show will air on Tuesday, November 5, at 8pm CDT. If this time does not work for you, we can work out an alternate time. The show must air live in order to assure our listeners that the show is not edited in any way.
Thank you in advance for your consideration of this request. Please send your response to injusticeanywhere@yahoo.com. I will be happy to provide further contact information via email.
I look forward to hearing from you, Bruce Fischer
McCall was quick to reject my offer, stating: “I’ve already explained that I don’t have any respect for Bruce and that his show has no audience. Responding to decline was more legitimacy than he deserves. He went on to say: “I’ll happily debate anyone on a show that has an audience. I’d even agree to them having more than one person representing their position.”
In my opinion, McCall’s statements are disingenuous and are that of a coward. McCall spends his days debating the case on various online forums that often receive far less attention than our radio show. He had no problem firing off questions to me on the blog mentioned in the letter above, and he often displays similar behavior on Twitter.
In fact, after denying my request, McCall took to Twitter to ask me questions. I guess he prefers the comfort of Twitter to defend his website. He directed the same question numerous times to our Injustice Anywhere Twitter account, and then claimed victory when I did not respond to his tweets. For the record, I do not use Twitter. Sarah, our Director of Operations, does an outstanding job of handling our Twitter account. I did not see the tweets until long after McCall claimed victory on his cult forum, Perugia Murder File. I am not surprised that McCall would rather communicate via Twitter than talk to me one on one. Twitter gives him the opportunity to throw around insults without having to answer real questions.
I have absolutely no problem answering McCall’s question, and will be happy to do so here. McCall’s Twitter question referred to the interrogation of Amanda Knox. For some reason McCall thought this was a “gotcha” question that would catch me in a lie. He was wrong. In Twitter speak, McCall asked:
“How long from 1st q to #amandaknox accusing an innocent man?”
Answer: It took a couple of hours for Amanda Knox to comply and sign a statement that was prepared by her interrogators. The interrogation did not end there. She was later questioned by Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, and was coerced into signing a second statement at 5:45 am. Amanda was at the police station all night, hence the proper title “all night interrogation.”
Amanda Knox was interrogated repeatedly in the five days following the murder of Meredith Kercher. Amanda consistently told the same story over and over again. She repeatedly told the truth.
In the early morning hours of November 6, 2007, the questioning became much more aggressive. Amanda was in a situation that she had absolutely no control of. She was thousands of miles from home, in a country where she had a very limited knowledge of the language. She was confronted by aggressive police officers who were accusing her of a horrible crime that she did not commit. Amanda was terrified.
Amanda did not have a lawyer present during her interrogation. She was told it would be worse for her if she did. Amanda was told that she was being questioned as a witness but she was clearly being interrogated as a suspect. Italian law is very clear; no suspect is to be interrogated without the presence of an attorney. The interrogation of Amanda Knox was illegal.
You must take into account the stress Amanda had gone through from the time her friend was found murdered until the pen met the paper to sign her name to those statements. Amanda’s defense team stated in her appeal that she had endured over 50 hours of questioning in the days leading up to that fateful night. In a moment of weakness, due to shock, stress and extreme exhaustion, Amanda was broken by her interrogators.
Amanda had no idea that she was accusing an innocent man. Amanda was told that her boss, Patrick Lumumba, was the man that attacked Meredith. She did not give Patrick’s name to the police. His name was suggested to her. She complied with her interrogators demands to put an end to the terrifying situation she was in. As soon as she did, the police rushed out to arrest Lumumba. The pain and suffering Lumumba endured is the fault of the police, not Amanda Knox.
Shortly after Amanda’s interrogation, on the morning of the 6th, she retracted the statements she had signed. She did so again on the 7th. You can read more about Amanda’s interrogation here.
For those that disagree that a suspect cannot be broken in 2 hours, I suggest researching the work of Saul Kassin and Richard Leo, both experts in the field.
McCall is free to disagree with Amanda’s statements and the statements of her attorneys, but to discredit them he needs to provide proof that he does not have. Unfortunately, even though it is normal police policy in Italy to record interrogations, there is no available recording of Amanda’s interrogation.
I would have been more than happy to discuss this question on our radio show, along with any other questions that McCall may have had. McCall is very confident when posting online, leaving me baffled as to why he felt the need to make excuses rather than defend his website on a live broadcast where he would have had the opportunity to freely express his opinions.
Why is Injustice Anywhere interested in discussing McCall’s website?
Our organization operates injusticeinperugia.org, a website that advocates for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. Unlike McCall, our advocacy is clear as soon as you open the homepage to our website. McCall’s Wikipedia format completely masks the true intentions of his site. McCall openly advocates against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito on 3 different cult-like hate sites, while making absolutely no mention of it on his wiki project.
McCall’s website utilizes the same template as Wikipedia.com, a freeware template offered by MediaWiki. This format gives casual readers a sense of security, as most have no idea that the template is available for all to use.
McCall neglects to inform his website readers that he is a regular contributor on Perugia Murder File (PMF), an anti-Amanda Knox hate site. PMF has now split (.org and .net) because the original leaders could not get along.
The activities of the anti-Knox hate group have been well documented. Author Nina Burleigh reported on the group in an article entitled: “The Amanda Knox Haters Society: How They Learned to Hate Me Too.” Author Douglas Preston wrote about the group in his recent Amazon Single “Trial By Fury: Internet Savagery and the Amanda Knox Case.” And I wrote about the group in my book “Finding Justice in Perugia.” You can read the complete chapter here.
The hatred for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito can be seen every day coming from McCall’s group. It doesn’t get any clearer than a recent post made by
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PMF member earthling. After visiting Amanda’s new website amandaknox.com, the poster wrote: “Okay, I looked at the “in memory” page. There are no words for the disgust I feel for the waste of flesh that is KNOX. GO TO YOUR OWN CIRCLE OF HELL, BITCH. I hate KNOX. I don’t hate many people, but for her, I make an exception for.”
McCall makes his feelings for Amanda Knox, her friends, and her supporters, very clear while posting on both PMF’s. McCall voices his opinion about Knox while mocking her best friend in this excerpt: “Knox is an oblivious narcissist so she has and always will have trouble making friends. Look at Knox’s best friend and you have a human troll.”
McCall goes on to give his analysis of Amanda Knox’s supporters: “For the most part they are just mentally ill. Knox supporters are broken down into two categories. The first and smaller category are people who think they can somehow benefit from this. The second category are people with serious mental issues.”
In addition to diagnosing mental issues of complete strangers, McCall is also able to conclude that a majority of Amanda Knox supporters are crazy stupid racist homophobes. McCall wrote: “I will say that unlike the Groupies (Knox supporters) you won’t find anything I have posted that is damaging because unlike the majority of the Groupies I’m not a racist or homophobe. I’m also not crazy or stupid.”
When it comes to the possibility of extradition, McCall is confident that Amanda’s supporters will have no influence: “I don’t think there will be any credible outcry when it comes to extradition. Droolers, racists, and crazies are not the kind of people anyone listens to.”
Not surprisingly, McCall deceives his readers by neglecting to mention any of his negative opinions on his wikipedia-style website, leaving visitors no reason to think the site’s operator is anything other than an objective analyst of the Meredith Kercher murder case.
McCall is being highly disingenuous with his readers by only presenting an extreme view of the prosecution’s side of the case, with no acknowledgment of that fact. McCall’s primary sources are the Massei report and TrueJustice.org (TJMK), and an anti-Amanda Knox hate site.
Judge Giancarlo Massei presided over the first trial, which led to the wrongful conviction of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann looked at the same evidence on appeal and came to different conclusions. If McCall’s website was an objective source, it would detail the Hellmann report in the same fashion as Massei, but of course Hellmann is all but ignored by McCall.
McCall regurgitates many of the views that are presented on Peter Quennell’s website TJMK, when defending the Massei ruling. Quennell is a delusional man that posts complete nonsense about the case while fantasizing about Amanda Knox supporters being rounded up by Italian authorities and thrown in prison. Here is a recent excerpt from his website:
“Every instance where Amanda Knox and any of her entourage alleged without hard proof that Italian police and prosecutors have committed crimes (and there have been literally hundreds of such accusations by Preston, Fischer, on and on, now all captured and preserved) could see any or all of them hauled into court with zero heads-up”
Does Quennell really think I am at risk of being “hauled into court” for defending Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito? Does he really think I will be taken from my home in Chicago, Illinois, by the Italian police? You can read much more about McCall’s pathetic source, Peter Quennell, here.
Before calling Amanda Knox supporters crazy, McCall should probably take a closer look at his website editor, Ergon. Ergon’s real name is Naseer Ahmad. While not moderating his hate forum (PMF.net) and editing McCall’s website, he spends his time leading his disciples on his blog, “Man from Atlan.” You see, Naseer believes he is God. In fact, he boldly proclaims himself to be “the Messiah Jesus Christ.” I wish I was kidding. You can read more about Ergon here.
If you ask McCall, he will tell you that there is no need to be alarmed by his choice of friends, because his site’s credibility is based on the primary sources (transcripts) he provides. Sadly the commentary that makes up a majority of the content on his site does not properly represent the primary sources that are available. A prime example of this can be found right on his home page. McCall states:
“The current status of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito is that the findings of the Massei Court in the trial of the first instance stand, and they are provisionally guilty until their appeal, which started on September 30, 2013, reaches a verdict.”
McCall’s statement is absolutely false. Amanda and Raffaele are considered innocent until proven guilty. As of now they are defendants in an ongoing trial process. They are not provisionally guilty. That status does not exist in Italian law, and has been fabricated by McCall.
Oddly, despite his own behavior, McCall often accuses our websites of hiding information. The truth is that we have provided the information he cites on our discussion forum for years. As mentioned above, we also operate “injusticeinperugia.org,” the most comprehensive website detailing the case, providing case files, high resolution photographs, crime scene video, and expert analysis.
If McCall was honest he would state that the high resolution crime scene photographs his group has cataloged on various sites have been provided by the side of innocence. It is also apparent that many of the files and transcripts that McCall displays on his website come from the side of innocence as well, because McCall often neglects to provide original Italian documents, opting to cut and paste text instead.
McCall’s unwillingness to have a one on one conversation to defend his website is very telling. I think we now know the reasons why McCall prefers to hide behind his keyboard.
The current trial in Florence, Italy, has reinforced the case for innocence. A new DNA test further proves that Raffaele’s kitchen knife was not the murder weapon. Hopefully the court will do the right thing and acquit Amanda and Raffaele again. People like McCall need to stop hating on innocent people and move on with their lives.
Please visit www.injusticeinperugia.org to learn more about this case.