Florence – The case against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito has always been thin on evidence and rife with supposition. In the re-trial in Florence today the court once again rejected the knife as evidence just as was the case during the appeal, in which Knox and Sollecito were acquitted on Oct 3, 2011.
In the original trial it was contended that the knife seized from Sollecito’s apartment had Knox’s DNA on the handle and Kercher’s on the blade. It was the only piece of forensic evidence linking Knox to the brutal murder of British student Meredith Kercher on November 1, 2007 in Perugia Italy. In the appeal it was found during retesting that there was no DNA belonging to Kercher on the blade; today the re-trial confirmed this finding ruling the knife out as evidence.
It is worth mentioning that the knife in question never fitted all of Kercher’s wounds and this meant one of two things:
1)It was not the murder weapon as a smaller knife could have made the wounds in question;
2) It was one of two murder weapons.
This means the actual murder weapon has never been found.
I talked to Steve Moore, former FBI Special Agent and ardent supporter and outspoken advocate of Knox and Sollecito’s, who described the re-trial as, “Another Judicial Embarrassment for Italy.”
Moore states, “The real murder weapon has never been recovered except as an imprint on Meredith’s white bed sheet. The knife which the prosecution tried to foist on the court as the murder weapon would not fit into Meredith’s stab wounds. It is too big. So the prosecution created a ‘two knife’ attack theory, which is disproved by the type of crime scene; the fact that only one attacker ever existed in the room; that the knife was blocks away in a drawer at the time and because everything the murderer used in the crime was disposed of. Now, in today’s court session, the court-appointed expert proved that the knife never had any DNA from the victim on it. To quote court testimony: ‘It was for cooking, not killing.’ The knife is finally out.”
I asked Moore if there were any credible witnesses who could be called.
Moore: “The only witness who hasn’t been proved insane or irrelevant is Rudy Guede’s cellmate, who testified that Rudy told him that he alone killed Meredith. All the witnesses from the original trial have been discredited.”
In the trial of Rudy Guede, found guilty for his involvement in a fast track trial in 2008, the judge stated that more than one person was involved, how do you address that, I asked Moore?
“The evidence absolutely rules out more than one killer. This is no longer a judgement call. This is a fact. There is no physical way for more than one person to be involved in a bloody murder and its aftermath, and have the physical evidence of only one of the killers (in this case Guede) show up, with the complete exclusion of the other or others. It is impossible. Purely and simply impossible.”
It is worth remembering that the prosecution contend that Knox, Sollecito and Guede were involved in a violent struggle during which Meredith was murdered in her bedroom, however despite Guede’s DNA, hair, fingerprints and bloody handprint being found as evidence, no DNA or physical evidence was found to implicate Knox. A bra strap implicating Sollecito was discounted in the appeal.
It is certain that whatever the conclusions of the court in Florence there are some who will remain convinced that the truth is still out there and that justice has not been done. Rarely have I come across a case where so many have reached unshiftable conclusions with very little research into the facts as opposed to reliance what was reported in the often salacious headlines.
(Newswire.net — November 6, 2013) —