The murder of Meredith Kercher: Raffaele Sollecito… Trapped, In His Own Words

Right: Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito


Sunday, April 19, 2009
Raffaele Sollecito… Trapped, In His Own Words
Posted by TheMachine
on truejustice.org
.


When the prosecutors present the forensic evidence, the defence lawyers will do their level best to try and muddy the waters, by claiming that much of the damning forensic evidence is due to contamination.
.
Well, good luck with that one. There is a FAR greater danger for them lurking…
.
We have already described in among other places here and here how Amanda Knox has boxed herself in with her own words.
.
Raffaele Sollecito has done precisely the same. Sollecito has also said things that are demonstrably untrue, and they now seriously haunt him and his team.
.
There is no question that Raffaele Sollecito has deliberately and repeatedly lied. He even himself admitted that he told the police “un sacco di cazzate” (a load of rubbish), and the judges at the Italian Supreme Court noted that he had lied and was reluctant to cooperate.
.
Lie one. Raffaele Sollecito first claimed in an interview with Kate Mansey from the Sunday Mirror that he and Amanda Knox were at a friend’s party on the night of the murder. It would have been obviously a tad difficult for Sollecito to find any witnesses who had attended an imaginary party to provide him and Knox with an alibi. This alibi was predictably abandoned very quickly.
.
Lie two. Sollecito then claimed that he was his apartment with Amanda Knox. This alibi is flatly contradicted by a silent witness: forensic evidence. According to the scientific police, there are six separate pieces of forensic evidence, including an abundant amount of his DNA on Meredith’s bra clasp, that place him in the cottage on Via della Pergola on the night of the murder.
.
Lie three. Sollecito then came up with a third alibi. He claimed that he was alone at his apartment and that Knox had gone out from 9pm to 1am. Both Sollecito and Knox gave completely different accounts of where they were, who they were with and what they doing on the night of the murder. These weren’t small inconsistencies, but huge, whopping lies.
.
Lies four and five. Sollecito and Knox told the postal police that he had called the police before the postal police had turned up at the cottage and were waiting for them. Sollecito later admitted that this was not true and that he had lied because he had believed Amanda Knox’s version of what had happened.
.
He said he went outside “to see if I could climb up to Meredith’s window” but could not. “I tried to force the door but couldn’t, and at that point I decided to call my sister for advice because she is a Carabinieri officer. She told me to dial 112 (the Italian emergency number) but at that moment the postal police arrived. He added: “In my former statement I told you a load of rubbish because I believed Amanda’s version of what happened and did not think about the inconsistencies.” (The Times, 7 November, 2007).
.
Lie six. Knox and Sollecito said they couldn’t remember most of what happened on the night of the murder, because they had smoked cannabis.
.
It is medically impossible for cannabis to cause such dramatic amnesia and there are no studies that have ever demonstrated that this is possible.
.
Long term use of cannabis may affect short-term memory, which means that users might have difficulty recalling a telephone number. But it won’t wipe out whole chunks of an evening from their memory banks.
.
Lie seven. Sollecito claimed that he had spoken to his father at 11pm. Phone records show that there was no telephone conversation at this time. Sollecito’s father called him a couple of hours earlier at 8.40pm.
.
Lie eight. Sollecito claimed that he was surfing the Internet from 11pm to 1am. The Kercher’s lawyer, Franco Maresca, pointed out that credible witnesses had shattered Sollecito’s alibi for the night of the murder. Sollecito still maintains he was home that night, working on his computer, but computer specialists have testified that his computer was not used for an eight-hour period on the night of Meredith’s murder
.
Lie nine. Sollecito claimed that he had slept until 10pm the next day. However, he used his computer at 5.32am and turned on his mobile phone at 6.02am. The Italian Supreme Court remarked that his night was “sleepless” to say the least.
.
Lie ten. When Sollecito heard that the scientific police had found Meredith’s DNA on the double DNA knife in his apartment. He told a cock and bull story about accidentally pricking Meredith’s hand whilst cooking at his apartment.
.
“The fact that Meredith’s DNA is on my kitchen knife is because once, when we were all cooking together, I accidentally pricked her hand.’’ Meredith had never been to Sollecito’s apartment. Sollecito could not have accidentally pricked her hand whilst cooking.
.
It’s highly telling that Sollecito wasn’t surprised that the forensic police had found Meredith’s DNA on the double DNA knife in his apartment. He knew Meredith’s DNA was on the blade, which is why he made up the silly cock and bull story. He was attempting to explain the presence of Meredith’s DNA on the blade, but in doing so, he further incriminated himself and Amanda Knox.
.
Manuela Comodi, the deputy prosecutor, explained during the hearings that the prosecution had not called either Knox or Sollecito as witnesses “because there is no point. Every time they were questioned during the pre-trial investigation they lied or tried to derail the inquiry.”
.
Judge Paolo Micheli, who presided over Rudy Guede fast-track trial and sent Knox and Sollecito to trial, didn’t believe many of their claims. He noted that they had given triple alibis and had lied in attempt to cover for each other.
.
Sollecito’s lawyers claim that he lied out of confusion and fear. However, Sollecito lied from the very first time he spoke to the police when he wasn’t a suspect. His lies cannot be attributed to confusion and fear.
.
Like Amanda, he has boxed himself in.