By Jacob Davis
Special to CSMS Magazine
This story is one of the most intriguing cases in a murder mystery in contemporary time. From the get go, it was a case full of twists and turns. It was a case that empowered passionate watchers from both sides of the parties involved. Amanda Knox, a reddish brunette with hazel eyes who walks in feline gestures, looks far from being the vicious killer the Italian prosecutor has been portraying her. Her innocent demeanor and her impeccable skills of persuasion brilliantly executed in both English and Italian—according to many watchers—were just enough to steal the hearts of those who had the power to set her free.
But as Amanda is now back home and warmly reunited with her family and friends, many questions still linger. If Amanda did not kill her British roommate, who did? We know there is a lone man still behind bars, but few believe he was alone in the brutal killing. This murder raises questions that stretch back to the early days of the investigation into the 2007 death of Meredith Kercher.
Why did Knox initially confess to prosecutors she was in the apartment that night and had to cover her ears to drown out her friend’s screams as she was brutally attacked by a man Knox falsely accused? As Alessandra Rizzo and Nicole Winfield from The Associated press reported, “There was also a purported burglary at the apartment that night — staged, prosecutors alleged, by the killers to derail the investigation.….And then there was the alibi of Knox’s ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, whose conviction was also overturned Monday. He claimed he was at home working on his computer the night of Nov. 1, 2007, yet police testified there was no sign he had used it that evening.”
It is clear that Monday’s verdict didn’t answer any of those questions. And it’s unlikely the appeals court’s written explanation of its decision — due within 90 days — will shed much light, likely rendering the sensational case a mystery for years to come. On the core question of who killed Kercher, there may yet be further legal wrangling.
A third defendant, Rudy Hermann Guede of the Ivory Coast, was convicted in a separate trial of sexually assaulting and stabbing Kercher, and his 16-year prison sentence — reduced on appeal from an initial 30 years — was upheld by Italy’s highest court in 2010.
Guede, a small-time drug dealer who fled Italy after the killing and was extradited from Germany to face the charges, acknowledged he was in Kercher’s room the night she died but said he didn’t kill her. Guede said he believed Knox and Sollecito did, but offered no evidence to back up his claim.
The high court ruling upholding his sentence said Guede didn’t act alone, though it didn’t name Knox or Sollecito as his accomplices. “The courts agree he wasn’t acting alone,” the victim’s brother, Lyle Kercher, told a news conference Tuesday. “If those two are not the guilty parties, then who are the guilty people?”
Note: Jacob Davis is editorialist for The Morning Eyes www.themorningeyes.com
