Ground Report

(This is an abbreviated version of a longer article on Ground Report, which can be found here: LINK )

The truth of what really happened to Meredith Kercher may have finally emerged in the Amanda Knox case: Meredith Kercher was killed by Giuliano Mignini, not with a knife, but with a phone call.

That is the inevitable inference of a theory long championed by Steve Moore, the retired FBI agent and consultant to the Knox defense.

Now Moore’s theory has found surprising support from an unexpected source: Judge Nencini’s motivation report, explaining the recent guilty verdicts against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, which his court in Florence reached at the end of January this year.

Luca Cheli provides us with an analysis and partial translation of the Nencini motivation, on the website www.wrongfulconvictionnews.com (see it here).

Quoting Nencini in english translation, Cheli writes; “Nencini states at page 84 that Guede “had perpetrated before thefts using the same technique” and that hence for him faking a break-in would have just meant calling upon himself the attention of the investigators.”

Cheli continues; “Now, besides admitting that our highly skilled burglar had used the same “uselessly complex” technique before, Nencini also implies that he was known to the investigators because of his activities (and he reiterates on page 92 that the police would have quickly arrived at him) and if so, clearly just his name made by Bonassi or Knox would have raised their interest.”

Nencini’s acknowledgement that the Perugian investigators were sufficiently familiar with Rudy Guede and his method of burglary, is consistent with Moore’s belief that the Perugians did recognize the handiwork of Guede at the Kercher crime scene, from his similar burglaries in Perugia, and also because he was acting as an informant for the Perugain authorities.

As to whether Guede was an informant for the Perugians, even prosecutor Giuliano Mignini doesn’t dispute the notion. As Bob Graham reported in an article for the UK’s ‘Mail On Sunday’;

“Even the man who prosecuted 22-year-old Knox and her 25-year-old former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito believes it is likely Guede was an informer who should have been in jail at the time of  Meredith’s brutal murder in November, 2007.”

Graham quotes Mignini; ” ‘I cannot say if Guede was an informer for the police but it would not be a surprise, this would not be unusual for a man of his background’, admitted Giuliano Mignini, the controversal lead prosecutor in the trial that for four months ago convicted Knox and Sollecito of murder.

Graham continues; “When Mignini was asked if he should have known the truth of whether or not the Ivory Coast-born Guede was a police informer, the prosecutor shrugged: ‘For me, it’s not important in this case’.

But he admitted – as have others in the Italian judicial system – that 22-year-old Guede should already have been in jail when the sexual assault and stabbing of Meredith took place in the Perugian apartment she shared with Knox and two other girls”, Graham writes.

As Public Minister of Perugia, presumably Mignini himself would have been the prosecutor of Guede, and the lack of such prosecution, seems to have left Mignini puzzled by his own inaction, according to this account by Graham.

Again we turn to Moore, as he explains what he imagines the Perugian police were thinking upon first arriving at the crime scene.

From Moore; “These are the things the cops would be thinking about when they surveyed the body of the slain woman and recognized the oh-too-familiar method of break in. I can imagine that they felt sickened by what they were seeing, as much by the gore and tragedy as they were by the realization of who was responsible for the crime.”

Nencini’s agreement with Moore on this point is absolutely critical for this reason: it means the Perugian police upon first arriving at the Kercher crime scene, had an immediate, urgent, direct and personal motive to deflect suspicion away from Rudy Guede, in the commission of the crime, because Guede was only at liberty to commit the crime by virtue of their having had him released just days earlier from the police in Milan. By deflecting responsibility away from Rudy Guede, the Perugian authorities would be in essence deflecting responsibility for the Kercher killing away from themselves.

If Rudy Guede committed the crime alone, then Giuliano Mignini was responsible in the death of Meredith Kercher for not prosecuting Guede for the crimes he committed in Perugia, and the Perugian authorities are responsible as well for Ms Kercher’s death, for using their influence with the Milan police in helping to free Guede, and enable his return home on the next train to Perugia just days before his killing Ms. Kercher.

And if Giuliano Mignini were to be seen as responsible for the Kercher killing for failing to control Rudy Guede, then who but the Italian judiciary is responsible for allowing Giuliano Mignini to remain in office, where there was already ample evidence of his gross incompetence and actual mental instability, and whose plainly apparent professional failings would ultimately cost Meredith Kercher her life.

However, if Guede’s responsibility could be lessened to a supporting role, if someone else could be said to have controlled him, then such a person might just as easily have controlled another, and Meredith Kercher might still have died even without Guede’s now lesser participation.  And in that scenario, Mignini, the Perugians and the Italian judiciary would all be off the hook. All that was minimally required, was that Rudy Guede be found to have not committed the crime alone.

And by this logic, the break-in had to be staged.

What kind of person, we can imagine the Perugians might have asked themselves, could be invented to have the power and ability to beguile Rudy Guede, or indeed any man, to commit a brutal murder? What fantasy would come most naturally to the Italian Perugian Prosecutor’s satanic orgy murder cult obsessed mindset, so as to invent such a character out of thin air? Why of course, a seductive woman, a witch, a beguiler of men, a she-devil.

Thus was born the tabloid legend of “Foxy Knoxy”, the foulest lie that has ever been told.

And so Judge Mignini substituted Amanda Knox for himself, forcing on her the burden of accountability in the death of Meredith Kercher, a terrible burden that apart from Rudy Guede, is rightfully his own.

Moore’s theory, if true, explains it all. And on at least the issue of motive, Judge Nencini concurs.