Stephanie Kercher's open letter marking 4th anniversary of Meredith's death

FOR us, this has only ever been about Meredith. She had been in Perugia for eight weeks and I had moved away from home only three weeks previously. We had stayed in touch updating each other with the exciting new things we were doing.

I had just got home from a training course when Mum called me, her voice trembling, relaying news that a 21-year-old English girl had been found under a mattress in Italy.

Trying to calm Mum down I began calling Mez on her mobile. I ended up leaving a voice message explaining what had happened, telling her to be safe and to call me as soon as she could.

I finished, as always, saying “I love you”. I even emailed her the news page so she knew what I was talking about... Little did I know I was already too late.

Dad’s was the next voice I heard. Through tears he told me the name he had been given by a newspaper was Meredith. I cannot remember what I thought – it was a mixture of disbelief and sheer pain. I did not know what to think or do and then my body just sunk.

When I arrived at Mum’s the pain in my chest was unbearable as I was told the few details of what had happened – the broken window, her door locked on the inside.

Thoughts and scenarios were racing through my head faster than I could comprehend and I collapsed into my parents’ arms, filled with the fear Meredith must have endured that night.

We stayed up all night watching the news, waiting for any concrete information. The Halloween photo of Meredith was the first to appear and I spun round to Mum and said ‘That’s not Mez! That’s not Mez, Mum!’

I was adamant it was not my little sister, but Mum stroked my hair and painfully submitted that it was.

I cried all night until I could barely see or breathe, everything just felt so empty. From the moment we received the call I knew we had to go and look after Mez.

We were told she was in a room with flowers either side of her and Mum said we had to go as soon as possible because she did not want to leave Meredith on her own. I cannot begin to imagine how my parents must have felt, I just know how numb I was and how Mum’s strength pulled us together.

We began our journey to identify her and bring her home. Arriving in Italy was surreal, everything happened so quickly. I still remember looking at Meredith lying there so still, no breath to be taken, a crisp white sheet pulled up to and over her neck.

She seemed peaceful, yet she bore a look of determination, of courage marred by defeat. It was a look that let us know how hard she had fought to be with us – and for that I am eternally grateful.

From that moment we knew we had to fight for her, too, not only for justice for her, but every day for ourselves, for her.

Others have given us the strength to continue since November 1, 2007 and we’d like to thank everyone around the world who has supported us and given us hope.

This is testament to a truly special sister, daughter and friend. She really did touch so many lives with her selfless compassion and loyalty, and continues to do so now.

Nothing was ever too much trouble for her. Mez never knew how effortlessly beautiful she was or how much of an impact she had on people. This was a quality of hers, which enabled her to make others laugh, help others when they needed someone, and become someone to aspire to.

She held such an incredible presence that the void she has left us with is noticeable every day. Marking the fourth anniversary of our loss, we now live without reason. No motive was found.

It is difficult to find any reason to want to hurt her and it terrifies me to think she may have left us that night not knowing either.

We still hope justice will prevail and, in the darkest times, the support given to Meredith and us as a family reminds us of why we are still here.

We are working with friends and colleagues to start a Trust Fund in Meredith’s name to help with the case and eventually support anyone else who may tragically find themselves in our position, so that her fight may continue and help others.

On November 1 at 9pm I will light a candle for my sister, may she rest in peace.

For Meredith Kercher, on the fourth anniversary of her death

The return of button; counting arroyos crows; the biz that keeps on giving

Now that the supertanker has pulled into port, the story about the creation of the narrative can finally begin to be told. We live in a world that needs an endless supply of stories. Just ask Scheherazade - whatever gets you through the night is all right.

Click on the title above and you will be taken to the Land of Marriott. In the land of Marriott, as Button notes, the media operates on the assumption that the American Public can't remember the day before yesterday. And in the business journal treatment of the Marriott PR Triumph (aka The Snow White Job), someone has forgotten that the script a month ago stated that there was no PR campaign and that anyone who believed there was one was nothing but a guilter and a hater. But now all that is swept aside so that Mr. Marriott, who looks like a cross between Colonel Sanders and a dumpling, can lumber up to the stage and accept kudos from one and all. After all, he was hired three days after Knox was arrested, for financial terms neither side will disclose.

Let's look at how the business journal spins the yarn:

Marriott was as important a player in [Knox's] ordeal as anyone in the courtroom. As Knox’s publicist, beginning three days after her arrest, Marriott worked to convince the international public that she did not murder her British roommate while studying in Perugia.

“Hiring him was one of the smartest things we ever did,” said Curt Knox, Amanda’s father.

The partnership between the Knox family and Marriott illustrates the potential of a public relations campaign to shift sentiment — and possibly even influence a verdict.

Like I said, if you have the right publicist, anything is possible! The right publicist can make water flow uphill and, once that has happened, can advise you on the best way to make the money you will need to pay for his services. That's the phase we're in now, folks. If you ever get in trouble, this is the guy you want working for you, feeding chicken shit to the masses and calling it chicken delight.



More from the Business Journal version of The Story:

Then, there’s the need for money. Curt Knox and Amanda’s mother, Edda Mellas — they are not married to each other — have each said they’ve drained their retirement funds, taken out second mortgages and accrued credit card debt to pay for Amanda’s defense. So, in this new phase, lucrative media deals will be a consideration.

At Marriott’s downtown Seattle office, he fields inquiries from book agents, screenwriters, news shows and movie studios. All want the Amanda Knox saga for their own. Some are offering big bucks. Marriott and the Knox family will be considering the offers, Marriott said — likely in a couple of weeks.

“There will be financial opportunities,” Marriott said. “I’ll be there to walk them through the opportunities.”

Vargas edits darkness out of the story where it suits her

If you have only watched morning television and the truly disgustingly bad mainstream network telling of the Marriott Fairy Tale, you will be excused for not realizing that Curt and Edda are no longer married to one another. They put on such a united front, and Elizabeth Vargas never once uttered the word "divorced" (focus groups show this does not resonate with viewers in a key demographic).

Ah, Elizabeth Vargas. Button has her number. Noting that ABC in particular had descended into "absolute Sleazeville" in its coverage, she makes a telling observation:

Did you happen to notice that Vargas tried to edit Meredith's mother entirely out of the press conference following the announcement of the verdict? As if she weren't even there. As if she didn't even exist.

Crow counting

The most interesting news item of the week was provided by a local blogger called batgurrl on her Crows of Arroyos* blog. Seems she was out counting crows and ran into the paparazzi assigned the task of hanging out and getting "candid" (LOL) photos of Knox in hiding.

Then on my way home I see the same two cars parked in the same spot. As I walked by one of the guys was out talking to the other again. I said “Whatcha up to?” even though I had it pretty much figured out. They proceeded to tell me they were making a living. I teased them they were “Professional Stalkers” and they teased me back that I was a “Crow Stalker”. While I was watching them they were watching me earlier. Guess it is pretty boring sitting in a car waiting & waiting.

Next they said they had given the family their cards and were invited to a BBQ last night over there. One of the guys started showing me his photos and said he had made over 200k on them. OMG no wonder they sit in cold cars for hours but it was like they were justifying their being. And did they really get invited into the house? One has to wonder.

Incidentally, some native American tribes - and the Irish - believe that crows symbolize the souls of the dead.

* The Arroyos is a fairly ritzy neighborhood (Marine View Drive) with spectacular waterfront views and properties, which unfortunately is located next to the dicey area called White Center, but referred to, not altogether unfondly, as Rat City.

America's angelic OJ

Guest post by Ilana Mercer, lifted shamelessly from a website I do not agree with politically. But she gets it right, facts and all.

A must read. Possibly the best thing written on the vicious murder of Meredith Kercher to date.Posted: October 06, 2011

© 2011
The conviction of America's sweetart du jour, Amanda Knox, was overturned this month. Based on O.J.-like evidence, Knox was convicted of murdering her British roommate. The vicious and depraved Nov. 1, 2007, killing took place in the historic, university city of Perugia, Italy. Police bungling notwithstanding, the biological and circumstantial evidence stacked against Knox and her former lover, Raffaele Sollecito, was considerable.

Ann Coulter offered up a few tart tweets about Knox's exoneration:

•Amanda Knox not guilty, Casey Anthony rolls eyes, says; 'we'll, duh…'"
•"Amanda Knox begins search for real killer."
The once-convicted killers were declared innocent, no less, and released, due in no small part to a PR blitz mounted by Knox's family and their Seattle-based publicist. They were assisted by the country's national media, left and right. With the exception of Bill O'Reilly, former homicide prosecutor Kimberly Guilfoyle and Jeanine Pirro, Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC – all worked tirelessly on behalf of the attractive, white kids. The conviction of Rudy Guede the American media let stand. Guede, the pretty pair's (alleged) partner in crime, is a black man who lacked their appeal and assets.

Nor did Megyn Kelly, Shepard Smith, Wolf Blitzer, Piers Morgan, Dr. Drew, Oprah (on and on) give the time of day to the victim's family. In defense of our homegrown popularizers and poor thinkers, however, the Kercher family was way too classy to partake in the circus created by the ugly Americans and their aides.

In Italy, as a commentator pointed out, everyone is under investigation, including the prime minister. In the U.S., too few jurists and politicians are investigated and jailed. The American media have no issue with the Patriot Act. They are not in the habit of calling for arrests pursuant to the wiretapping of Americans without a search warrant. Laughably, the same lot has accused Knox's Italian prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, of unspeakable corruption: Mignini will serve time for … ordering illegal wiretapping in the case of a serial killer (the "Monster of Florence").

Answer this, Megyn Kelly: Has Mignini exceeded the corruption quotient of King County Superior Court Judge Mike Heavey? This Washington state justice abused his office (my state, my taxes) to petition members of the Italian judiciary on behalf of Knox, in violation of Washington state's code of judicial conduct.

Besides the famously contested Kercher and Knox DNA found on the knife at Sollecito's apartment, the victim and the alleged perpetrator's blood comingled elsewhere in the house they shared.

In the bedroom of another roommate, Filomena Romanelli, for example.

Ms. Romanelli's room was the scene of a staged burglary. Why staged? Glass shards were found scattered atop Romanelli's ransacked belongings, rather than beneath the items. The break-in was reported by Team Knox and Sollecito. Well before Romanelli had returned to verify his say-so, Solecito told police that nothing was missing. When the police arrived on the scene, Knox and Sollecito kept them away from Meredith's locked door with a ruse: Their friend, they promised, was in the habit of locking her door. A lie. When roommate Romanelli returned, she demanded that the locked door be broken down, claiming the exact opposite.

More mixed blood was found in the bathroom the women shared. As Daily Beast correspondent Barbie Latza Nadeau reported, unflinchingly, "Luminol which detects prints left in blood, bleach, and certain acidic juices" helped uncover a Knox footprint on the bathmat, which Knox excused by saying she took a shower right after noticing blood on the mat. American broadcasters failed to divulge too that there were ample partial fingerprints at the scene of the crime, which could have been smeared during the cover-up.

Nadeau, who is the author of the book "Angel Face," reported that "countless forensic experts, including those who performed the autopsies on Kercher's body, [had] testified that more than one person killed [Meredith] based on the size and location of her injuries and the fact that she didn't fight back – no hair or skin was found under her fingernails."

Rafaelle Sollecito was unable to corroborate Knox's alibi on the night of the murder. She had claimed she was with him and that they "cooked dinner, watched a movie, smoked pot, and had sex." Conversely, Sollecito said he had been downloading cartoons from his personal computer at the time of the murder. But according to Nadeau, computer experts were able to confirm that there was no activity on his PC during those hours. In eerie synchronicity, Sollecito and Knox had switched off their cell phones during the night of the murder. Despite claiming to have slept in, the cells were turned on early the next morning.

On Nov. 5, 2007, after cartwheeling and canoodling with Sollecito at the police station, Knox framed Patrick Lumumba for Meredith's murder and rape, which she claimed to have overheard. (At that stage, only the cops knew Ms. Kercher had been sexually assaulted.) Lumumba was Amanda's innocent employer. Knox even committed this evidentiary concoction to writing in a five-page memorandum. Later she blamed police for making her. Amanda's allergy to the truth cost Lumumba – another black man who remained voiceless in the American media – his livelihood and reputation.

"[W]e live in an age of violence with no motive," said Amanda Knox's besmirched prosecutor, alluding to the subterranean irrational forces that so often propel evil. Particularly well-placed to take the measure of Amanda was David Jones of the British Mail Online. For his exposé, the poor man had read Amanda's 80-page prison diary in its entirety. Jones had also consulted a professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, a top expert on sociopathic killers. The reporter described this "privileged 20-year-old daughter of a Seattle department store executive" as "vulgar and vain to the point of narcissism," as "pathetically self-pitying," a creature who regarded herself "as a cruelly wronged Shakespearean heroine."

Her own words revealed Knox to be disturbingly self- and sex obsessed.

Meredith's British girlfriends testified that their dead friend disapproved of the American girl's slovenly, slatternly behavior: Amanda was not in the habit of flushing the toilet, liked to entertain strange men in the home and to display sex toys and condoms in the bathroom. Tolerance for people who crossed her was not in Knox's nature.

Comprehending circumstantial evidence demands analytical and deductive thinking. These faculties are becoming rare in the Age of the Idiot now upon us, as was glaringly apparent in the deliberations of Casey Anthony's jurors. The average individual seldom reads; he knows only what is palpable and perceivable – what he can see and feel. If he can't picture something – see it happen on YouTube or on CSI – he certainly cannot think about it in the abstract.

Circumstantial evidence cannot be grappled with absent an ability to think in the abstract.

"If it doesn't fit, you must acquit" was the jingle that captured the "legal" argument that undergirded the O.J. Simpson case, one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in the annals of American justice. Adapted to Amanda Knox – whose case was determined in the U.S., not in Italy – it goes as follows: "If it wasn't uploaded on YouTube, you must acquit."

Sign o' the times

Zesto's doesn't just taste bad; it has bad taste.



Not to be outdone, Italian tabloid OGGI serves up Knox's "liberation" on the front page and a set of knives as its merchandising tie-in.