Innocent Amanda Knox Is A Rabbit-Faced ‘Whore’ With Sexy Sisters: News Round Up
AMANDA Knox: the appeal against the murder of Meredith Kercher is almost over. We round up the news:
Knox Speaks
“It’s going to be truly heartfelt,” Curt Knox tells the Today show.” You’ve got a 24-year-old kid that’s essentially fighting for her life and this is her last chance to actually tell the judge and jury that she truly had nothing to do with this horrific crime.” – People
The Films
Sollecito’s lawyer Giulia Bongiorno said prosecutors were obsessed with the portrayal of Knox as a “femme fatale” figure like the dominatrix character in a well-known 19th century sado-masochistic novel called “Venus in Furs”. Speaking to jurors on Tuesday, Bongiorno said: “You have been provided with a deformed portrait of these two young people….. Amanda has been transformed into a ‘Venus in Furs’ in contrast to a fake and weak man.” – AFP
Anything else?
Defence lawyer Giulia Bongiorno said in her closing argument on Tuesday that Knox is like the cartoon character Jessica Rabbit — man-eater in appearance but actually a loving woman. “It’s a case of ‘I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way,’” Bongiorno said, quoting a line from the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. – Indian Express
The Backdrop
Before the killing Perugia was best known for its chocolates, but in one of its oldest chocolate shops the owner says the murder and legal battles still being fought have left a bitter taste. “On Perugia, it’s had a terrible impact,” said candy maker Carla Schucani. “The media coverage has made it worse, and created confusion because no one is sure who is really responsible.”- KSDK
No one? The prosecution seem certain.
The PR
Boise State University’s paper, The Arbiter, tries to place Knox’s trial in context of its overseas education programmes:
Yet, some American students don’t seem to get the message of appropriate behavior. University of Washington student Amanda Knox was convicted in 2009 of murdering her roommate, British national Meredith Kercher, while studying abroad in Perugia, Italy in a case that has drawn worldwide attention. Knox is currently serving a 26-year prison term, while her boyfriend, 27-year-old Italian national Rafael Sollecito, is serving a 25-year term for the same crime. On Sept. 26, prosecutors asked an Italian judge to increase their sentences to life in prison, according to ABC News.
The danger for Americans abroad is that it’s easy for what’s supposed to be a voyage of discovery to become simply an extended vacation spent with friends from back home.
To say nothing of the danger of British students falling victim to inappropriate behaviour.
The Bonkbusting Blockbuster
THE WORD from Perugia is that there is not a motorbike for rent anywhere in the city. Why? Because the paparazzi and news agencies have taken them all, ready to cover the ‘liberation of Amanda’ when Seattle student Amanda Knox is eventually freed from the high-security Capanne prison and whisked to the city airport, possibly as early as Saturday afternoon. There, it is said, a private jet chartered by a US television network will be waiting to take Amanda home to Seattle, via London. In return, the network – rumoured to be ABC, though they deny it – will get the “first interview” with the 24-year-old…
The US networks aren’t the only ones with their cameras ready to roll – so is Hollywood. British director Michael Winterbottom has a project under development based on the book Angel Face by Rome’s Newsweek bureau chief Barbie Nadeau, who is considered one of the experts on the case… The Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth is attached to the Winterbottom project. The star of The King’s Speech has enjoyed a tour of the city and even stopped in to chat with Mignini. “He seemed a great guy… very intelligent,” said Mignini of Firth, adding that the English heart-throb’s visit had put his wife and daughters in a tizzy. – The First Post
The Supporting Cast
Amanda Knox, the American student convicted of killing her British roommate in Italy, has had her three equally comely blonde sisters, Deanna, Delaney and Ashley, visiting her in prison while she awaits the verdict on her appeal. Deanna, 22, told the BBC that her sister “doesn’t want to get too hopeful” because she “doesn’t want to get crushed.” – Chicago Sun Times
And:
Amanda Knox’s sisters have told of their heartbreak after discovering abusive graffiti scrawled on the tables in the Italian courtroom where her appeal is being heard. Deanna Knox, 22, said that she looked down to find ‘Amanda is a whore’ written on the table beneath her as she listened to the proceedings. – Daily Mail
The Star
Two years ago, as she waited to know whether she’d be found guilty of murdering her British roommate, Amanda Knox was so confident she thought she’d be flying home to Seattle within hours.
Still behind bars, the American is a changed woman, family and friends say — more mature, more wary of people around her, increasingly anxious as an appeals court verdict approaches.
The transformation they describe is seen on the outside. Gone are the Beatles t-shirt, the cocky demeanor, the irreverent smile. Now 24, Knox is conservatively dressed, thinner, clearly worn out — although detractors say she’s merely putting on an act. – SMH
Her pal does her bit to aid the opinion that Knox is an actress:
“When she walked in for the (2009) verdict she was actually happy,” says her friend Madison Paxton, “like she thought she was going to be on a plane home in 12 hours, and was running to the courtroom. She wasn’t even remotely prepared for what she heard. This time you see it manifest in her body and the way she physically responds to it — she is … terrified,” Paxton told The Associated Press, sipping an iced cappuccino in a bar in Perugia, a stone’s throw from the courthouse.
Rewriting History
Knox, a former University of Washington student, and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito have been accused of murdering Knox’s flatmate, Meredith Kercher. – The Third Age (Aus)
No. They have been convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher.
The Experts GEet The Italians
Seattle based attorney Anne Bremner, tells America:
According to Ms. Bremner, “The conviction of Amanda Knox was a gross miscarriage of justice based on prejudice, innuendo, superstitions, character assassination, and disregard of the evidence. Under the criminal justice system in the United States, and for that matter, in most other countries of the world, no jury would ever have found her guilty.” – Examiner
The Irish Times picks sides in Knox’s “ordeal”:
In Italy, those convicted of crimes are entitled to two appeals, meaning cases can drag on for years. In Knox’s case, the 21 months since her conviction have been spent anxiously waiting and hoping for the verdict to be overturned – or at the very least, for her sentence to be slashed. It was, however, almost a year after the trial ended before she and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito – also convicted of the murder – could return to court to launch their appeal. And, as with the rest of the justice process that began after the University of Leeds student’s body was found in November 2007, it has been slow going.
Peter Popham Knows (Indy)
She may look like Harry Potter’s scary elder sister but Giulia Bongiorno sent a breath of refreshing, rational air into the stifling medieval fug of Perugia this week. Bongiorno is one of Italy’s top lawyers, held in considerable awe for her feat of getting former prime minister Giulio Andreotti’s conviction for Mafia association overturned on appeal.
In Perugia she represents Raffaele Sollecito, but on Tuesday she went out to bat for Sollecito’s girlfriend, Amanda Knox. She knows that you cannot acquit the one for the murder of Leeds University student Meredith Kercher without acquitting the other.On Monday the subterranean brick courtroom, with its partially restored ancient frescoes, had rung to the wild rhetoric of Carlo Pacelli, speaking for the wrongly accused Patrick Lumumba, and accusing the Seattle student of being a witch and a she-devil. His four-hour rant was a sulphurous blend of cod psychology and Salem witch-trial. Knox, he claimed, has “a double-faced soul,” one side being “good”, the other being “Lucifer-like, demonic, satanic, diabolical.” It is extraordinary that he should have gone out of his way to remind the jury of the prosecution’s “satanic orgy” story, one for which no evidence has ever been adduced.
Then on Tuesday, Bongiorno heaped ridicule on the whole demonising operation. Like the voluptuous Jessica Rabbit in the classic cartoon film, Amanda wasn’t bad, she said, “she was just drawn that way.” Crucially, there was no forensic trace of either person in Meredith’s bedroom.The verdict in the appeal may be delivered as early as Saturday, and will be broadcast live on Italian TV. If I were a betting man, I would now put money on Knox and Sollecito being cleared. My reason? The mainstream Italian press uniformly ignored Pacelli’s rant on Monday, going instead with a story about Amanda being whisked home in a private jet if absolved. As the Perugia jury has not been sequestered, I expect they know a thing or two.
Stick to the facts…
Posted: 29th, September 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comments (14) | TrackBack | Permalink
