Lies & Misinformation

This was an incident in the media showing that lies continued even after Amanda Knox was convicted. Here is a picture of Walter Verini on the Today Show. Walter Verini is an Italian Member of Parliament. After visiting the prison and doing an interview with Amanda four days after she was convicted, Walter had this to say:

“She had nothing to complain about the functioning of the legal system,” he said, “she thinks her rights have been granted. Amanda was satisfied with the results of her trial.”

The Knox family was being polite. This ridiculous report is an outright lie. Amanda was devastated by the ruling. Here is the actual conversation of Walter Verini speaking to Amanda through her prison cell door;

Walter: What are you doing?

Amanda: Reading

Walter: I am a friend of Ghirga’s

Amanda: He has a lot of friends

Walter: What did you think of the trial?

Amanda: I think my lawyers did an amazing job.

That was the end of the conversation.

Walter Verini also quoted Amanda as saying that her trial was "correct." Amanda Knox never said that her trial was "correct." The lies about Amanda Knox continue to be spread throughout the media.

There was a series of lies leaked to the media shortly after Meredith's death. These lies were leaked for the sole purpose of destroying the credibility of Amanda Knox. Amanda Knox was put on trial in the media long before her actual trial took place. Raffaele was almost totally ignored. Amanda was the target of most of these leaks. The prosecution used the media to create a fictional character. A character they needed to play the lead role in Mignini's fantasy. With the help of the media, Mignini's fictional character, the satanic ritualistic sex crazed killer, Foxy Knoxy was born. As we would all later find out, Foxy Knoxy wasn't a sex crazed killer after all. She was a sweet innocent eight year old soccer player. Amanda Knox was given the nickname as a child. But it was too late. The damage was done.

Some of the more popular lies are listed below.

1) Lie - Amanda Knox was seen waiting at the store the morning after Meredith was murdered, waiting to buy bleach. It was widely reported that the authorities had bleach receipts proving that Amanda purchased bleach. On November 19, 2007, Richard Owen reported for the UK Times that police had found receipts showing purchases of bleach on the morning after the murder. The information was specific: one alleged purchase was made at 8:30, and a second was made at 9:15. No receipts were ever found. Then, in a November 25, 2007, report, Owen quoted an apparently official source as saying that the entire cottage, except for Meredith's room and the bathroom she shared with Amanda, had been "thoroughly cleaned with bleach."

It was reported that Amanda and Raffaele were caught by surprise that morning standing on the porch of the cottage with a mop bucket and bleach when the Postal Police arrived.

Truth - Amanda never purchased bleach. No receipts were ever presented at trial. Amanda and Raffaele weren't caught by surprise. In fact, Raffaele had already called the police to report a possible break in. The mop bucket at the cottage was investigated and no evidence was ever presented in regard to any mop bucket. This story was told around the world. This lie is still being told. On December 10, 2009, Anne Coulter repeated this lie on the O'Reilly Factor.

There have also been reports that Raffaele purchased bleach and that receipts were found in his apartment showing proof of this purchase. Once again, this is simply not true. Raffaele's apartment was thoroughly searched. Receipts were found in his apartment but none of the receipts indicated a purchase of bleach. The police took video of the receipts that were found.

Click here to view the images of the receipts found in Raffaele's apartment.

The prosecution presented no evidence at trial that anyone cleaned the cottage with bleach, Bloody footprints from Rudy Guede's shoes are seen going down the hall and right out the front door. How could Amanda and Raffaele clean the floor with bleach, removing all of the evidence that pointed at them while leaving all of the evidence that pointed to Guede completely untouched? This theory is simply nonsense.

2) Lie - Amanda attempted to clean up all of her finger prints in the cottage.

Truth - Prosecutor Mignini made the claim to the press that Amanda attempted to clean up her finger prints from the crime scene. Mignini stated: "It is reasonable to hypothesize that she herself felt the need to eliminate the traces of her presence from an apartment in which she lived."

At the trial, the prosecutor's own fingerprint expert, Giuseppe Privitera, flatly refuted this hypothesis. He said fingerprints tend to get smudged, often it is hard to find good ones even of someone who lives at the scene of an investigation, and nothing he found at the cottage suggested that any effort had been made to remove fingerprints intentionally.

3) Lie- Amanda and Raffaele used the washing machine to destroy evidence.

Truth - This is another case where the police misinformed the media. In Richard Owen's November 25 report mentioned above, he says police heard the washing machine spinning to the end of its cycle when they arrived at the cottage. Other media reports repeated this claim. The stories varied from article to article. As it turned out, there was nothing incriminating at all in the washing machine. Meredith had clothes in the washer. Nothing in the washer had been worn at the time of her murder. Meredith had simply been doing laundry. There was never any mention of the washing machine running when the Postal Police arrived, at the trial. This was another myth that spread throughout the media.

4) Lie - Amanda took a shower in a bathroom soaked in blood shortly before Meredith's body was found. The prosecution released crime scene photos showing a bloody bathroom. The public was told that Amanda returned to the apartment and took a shower in a bathroom soaked in blood.

Truth - The bathroom had been sprayed with a chemical that turns pink when it comes in contact with any protein. The bathroom that Amanda showered in, looked nothing like the photo that was released by the prosecutor. This was one of many leaks by the prosecution designed to turn the public against Amanda Knox. The video below shows the bathroom as Amanda saw it that morning.

The photos below show what Amanda saw when she used the bathroom to take her shower. Would these small traces of blood lead you to believe that a brutal murder had taken place in the room next door? I would think someone cut their finger or maybe had a bloody nose.

The images below are taken from the crime scene video. As you can see, there was no alarming visible blood in the bathroom.

Below you will see the photo that was released by the prosecution. The photo was released with no explanation whatsoever. There was no mention that the photo shows the room saturated in a pink chemical. This photo was seen around the world. Some people still believe that Amanda Knox took a shower in the bathroom shown below. The efforts by the prosecution to destroy Amanda Knox in the media were disgusting. Amanda was a twenty year old college student visiting a foreign country. She never stood a chance against this blatant abuse of power from the prosecution.

5) Lie - Raffaele called the police after they had already arrived to the cottage to try and create an alibi.

Truth - The Postal Police were the first police to arrive at the cottage on November 2, 2007. They arrived to investigate two cell phones that were found in a nearby garden. The Postal Police handle this type of incident. The Carabinieri (Italian Police) arrived shortly after the Postal Police. The prosecution claimed that Amanda and Raffaele were surprised by the arrival of the Postal Police. Raffaele stated that he had already phoned his sister and the Carabinieri before the Postal Police arrived. Raffaele's sister was a police officer at the time. Amanda and Raffaele were not surprised at all. They actually assumed the Postal Police were the Carabinieri responding to Raffaele's call. The prosecution claimed that Raffaele went and hid in Amanda's room and called the Carabinieri after the Postal Police arrived. The prosecution was attempting to catch Raffaele in a lie. This was simply not the case. The video taken from a camera located in the parking garage across the street from the cottage supports Raffaele's claim.

The clock on the garage camera was ten to twelve minutes slow, not fast. The prosecution has totally misled and confused the public on this point. The prosecution repeatedly stated the camera timer was fast. The prosecution was wrong.

The reason we know the clock is slow is because the camera shows a picture of a Carabinieri (Italian Police) car, and a Carabinieri officer with the distinctive stripe running down his trouser leg, in a clip time-stamped 1:22 pm on the day Meredith's body was discovered. However, at 1:22 pm, the Carabinieri were driving around, unable to find the place. They called Amanda's cell phone at 1:29 pm to ask for directions. Amanda handed the phone to Raffaele who handed it to one of the Postal Police, who explained how to get there. That call lasted four minutes and fifty seven seconds, meaning it did not end until 1:34 pm. Therefore, even if one assumes the call did not end until after the car appeared in the video, the clock had to have been at least ten to twelve minutes slow.

This is significant, because it means the camera footage shows the Postal Police arriving after Raffaele called the emergency number. The claim that he went and hid in Amanda's room, called his sister, and then called the emergency number twice, a series of calls that took about five minutes, is nonsense.

Raffaele was being completely honest with the Postal Police when they arrived. This is just another example of how the prosecution released completely misleading information to the media.

Click here to view the photos taken from the garage camera.

6) Lie - It was leaked to the media that investigators had collected the Harry Potter German edition book from Amanda's apartment. Amanda Knox had stated that she spent the night at Raffeale's apartment on the night of Meredith's murder. She stated that they watched the film Amelie and read Harry Potter in the German edition. Finding this book was another blow to Amanda's alibi.

Truth - The leaked story was a complete lie. The video below shows the Harry Potter German edition book at Raffaele's apartment as the apartment was being searched for evidence. Amanda had purchased two German language Harry Potter books during her trip to Germany. She brought one of the books to Raffaele's. The information was leaked to further damage the reputation of Amanda Knox. This evidence was never presented at trial, proving once again that this was a lie. This lie was leaked on Tuesday, December 18, 2007, shortly before a hearing was to take place to decide if Amanda and Raffaele would remain in custody until their trial.

7) Lie - It was reported that Amanda Knox went to a lingerie store with Raffaele shortly after Meredith's body was found to by a g-string. It was reported that they were laughing and talking about "wild" sex in the store.

Truth - Amanda was locked out of her apartment because it was a crime scene. She needed underwear. As it turns out, the witness that said Amanda and Raffaele were talking about sex didn't speak any English at all. Amanda was speaking English in the store. It appears the witness was looking for his fifteen minutes of fame. The defense believes he was paid by the tabloid for the story. The store wasn't a lingerie shop. Elizabeth Vargas, an ABC reporter, reported on the Oprah Winfrey show that she visited the store. She said they didn't even sell the sexy lingerie that was described in the media. She described the store as being similar to a Target store in the US. The security camera footage that shows a brief moment when Amanda smiled at Raffaele, was all the media needed to push this lie all over the world. This was one of the most widely distributed lies to come from this entire case. The media knows that sex sells. It doesn't matter who's lives get destroyed in the process.

8) Lost in translation, but not by accident.

Amanda wrote in her diary regarding the DNA on the knife. In her diary, she explains to herself that it would be impossible for Meredith's DNA to be on the blade. She imagined how ridiculous the scenario would have to be for that to have happened. Amanda wrote this excerpt:

"Raffaele and I have used this knife to cook, and it's impossible that Meredith's DNA is on the knife because she's never been to Raffaele's apartment before. So unless Raffaele decided to get up after I fell asleep, grabbed said knife, went over to my house, used it to kill Meredith, came home, cleaned the blood off, rubbed my fingerprints all over it, put it away, then tucked himself back into bed, and then pretended really well the next couple of days, well, I just highly doubt all of that."

Read again what Amanda wrote, “It’s impossible that Meredith’s DNA is on the knife because she’s never been to Raffaele’s apartment.” Think about what she wrote. Amanda only thought about the possibility of DNA from Meredith visiting Raffaele's apartment, not from being murdered. That never even occurred to her. It was a natural, human mistake. One that suggests Amanda's innocence.

Here is what happens when the excerpt is intentionally incorrectly translated. This translation appeared all over the Italian and British press. As you can see, the meaning has been completely distorted to make it look like Amanda is accusing Raffaele.

"That night I smoked a lot of marijuana and I fell asleep at my boyfriend’s house. I don’t remember anything. But I think it’s possible that Raffaele went to Meredith’s house, raped her and then killed. And when he got home, while I was sleeping, he put my fingerprints on the knife. But I don’t understand why Raffaele would do that."

Here is another example of ridiculous translation.

The expression I would kill for a pizza, commonly used in the US when you are hungry, instead than being explained or being translated with an equivalent Italian expression (ho una fame da morire) was translated literally. Hosts of Italian talk shows were actually saying that Amanda Knox who could really kill even for a pizza. If she could kill for a pizza then of course she could have killed Meredith for refusal to have sex.

Was it "wild" or "hot" sex?

This translation problem is in reference to lie number six, above. Amanda and Raffaele went shopping for underwear because Amanda was locked out of her apartment. The witness in the store told the police that Amanda looked at Raffaele and said - "Now we can go home and have wild sex." He later changed his statement to "hot" instead of "wild." This is all a moot point now, because this witness has been completely discredited. But this was a big issue at the time. The word "wild" can be a word that is considered as violent. It was originally reported that Amanda told Raffaele that she wanted to go home and have violent sex.

These are just a few of the examples of translation issues. Some errors in translation are simply honest mistakes. In certain cases, it's very clear, the incorrect translation was purposefully done in the attempt to incriminate Amanda Knox.

9) The prosecution's misrepresentation of a childhood nickname to once again, attempt to destroy the character of Amanda Knox in the media.

Amanda Knox's myspace page was dissected by the media. Sentences were taken out of context to give them entirely different meanings. A photo from a vacation with her family showing Amanda posing with a gun on display in a museum was even used against her. The most memorable detail taken from her myspace page was her nickname. The prosecution used the media to create their fictional character. A character they needed to play the lead role in Mignini's fictional sex fantasy. With the help of the media, Mignini's fictional character, the satanic ritualistic sex crazed killer, Foxy Knoxy was born. As we would all later find out, Foxy Knoxy wasn't a sex crazed killer after all. She was a sweet innocent eight year old soccer player. Amanda Knox was given the nickname as a child for her sly moves on the soccer field. By the time the world found out who the real Foxy Knoxy was, it was too late. The damage was done.

This photo was taken from Amanda's myspace page. This photo was shown to imply that Amanda was reckless and unstable. In reality, she was a teenage girl having fun in a museum on vacation with her family.