OXY MORAN: Non capisco: Kercher Police in "fifth suspect" fiasco

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Non capisco: Kercher Police in "fifth suspect" fiasco

Earlier today, Oxy Moran reported news of a possible fifth suspect in the remarkably inept Italian Police investigation into the throat-slashing murder of British student, Meredith Kercher. I warned readers to consider the source, i.e. the newspaper/tabloid People UK. Now, I can report that a second more reputable source, The Times of London, is reporting the same story. Here is the report and my comments are included at the end.

Richard Owen, Rome correspondent for the Times of London

A new suspect has emerged in the murder case of Meredith Kercher, the British student murdered in a frenzied attack in Perugia last November.

Witnesses have said that a man was seen near the scene of the crime covered in blood and screaming: “I killed her, I killed her.”

He is described as blond with blue eyes, aged about 30, and wearing a fleece decorated with the Norwegian flag and a white woollen hat. Paramedics who found him wandering around, dazed, say that his hands, clothes and shoes were all bloody.

The emergence of another suspect raises further questions about the police investigation.

Ms Kercher, 21, had just begun an Erasmus studies course in Perugia when she was murdered at the whitewashed hillside cottage that she shared with Amanda Knox, an American student, and two female Italian students. Prosecutors allege that she was forced to her knees and had her throat cut after she refused to take part in a drug-fuelled sex game.

Three suspects in the case — Ms Knox, 20, her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 24, and Rudy Guede, 20, an Ivory Coast immigrant and basketball player — are being held in prison. Appeals for their release have been rejected and investigators say that they will present their findings to a judge next month.

A fourth suspect, Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, a barman and musician of Congolese origin accused by Ms Knox of being the murderer, has been released because of a lack of evidence, but remains under investigation.

The existence of a fifth suspect apparently came to light by chance when local reporters in Umbria were writing an article about the local ambulance service. One of the doctors being interviewed said: “What happened to that boy with his shoes covered in blood in the Meredith Kercher case? We never heard any more about it.”

Asked to explain, the doctor told the reporters: “He was someone we knew well. We had often picked him up and had to deal with him.”

Members of the ambulance crew who found the man said that they had spotted him at 7am on November 2, several hours before Ms Kercher’s body was found at Piazza Grimana, a small tree-lined square and basketball court between the cottage and the University for Foreigners.

The man was washing his bloodied hands under a fountain. The paramedics said that when they approached him he had shouted: “Get out of here, all hell is going to break loose soon.” Other people in the square told the ambulancemen that they had seen the man in a phone box screaming down the phone: “I’ll kill you, you whore.”

“The hypothesis must be that a killer is still at large,” the newspaper La Stampa said. However, sources close to the murder investigation said that the man in question was a well-known drug addict in Perugia and had already been “taken into account”. Police had established that the woman he screamed at on the phone was his girlfriend. The man had been taken to hospital after being found by the paramedics, and then transferred to a home for drug addicts where he remained under close observation, investigators said.

Luca Mauri, a lawyer for Mr Sollecito, said that he would ask for the evidence about the “fifth suspect” to be put on the record. His description tallied with that given of the murderer by Mr Guede, who admits being at the cottage on the evening of the murder, but maintains that he was in the lavatory when the killer entered.

Defence lawyers said that Mr Guede had told investigators that the intruder resembled Mr Sollecito, but his description could equally well apply to the “fifth suspect”.

Oxy Moran can only roll his eyes to the Heavens. How could this sighting of a man who was, not only covered with blood close to what would become widely known within 6 hours as a grizly blood-drenched crime scene, but also seemingly CONFESSING TO A MURDER, have gone unreported? The witnesses are paramedics who would routinely document their response in emergencies. They along with the attending doctors would be familiar with standard police procedure in criminal investigations.

Either the paramedics and docs did not do their job, and then forgot about it until a journalist found it by fluke; or they informed the Police and the Police effectively ignored it. Of course, not only did the Police not pursue it as part of their investigation, but also they did not disclose the sighting in their reports to the Italian judges who were asked by Police to retain three suspects for up to 12 months without the need to file any charges.

While Police have concluded that suspect Rudy Guede was indisputably involved in Meredith's killing, this is not the case for two other suspects.

With every passing day, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Police cases against Italian suspect Raffaele Sollecito, and American suspect, Amanda Knox, are heavily flawed. Both cases appear to be based on the most flimsy of circumstantial evidence. Such evidence when carefully considered by numerous reputable investigative journalists in the past few months has been dismissed piece by piece. Obviously, the attorneys for both of these suspects have made compelling arguments to dismiss charges against their clients. Such appeals have been rejected. The most recent rejection was to Amanda Knox’s petition and came 10 days ago.

That judge not only refused to drop charges against Amanda, but also refused to let her out of her tiny Italian jail cell where she has been held to all intents and purposes in isolation for the past seven months. Knox’s attorney had requested that his client be allowed to place herself under house arrest in a facility supervised by a local Catholic charity. The judge gave no reason for his decision to keep her in jail. Earlier decisions to incarcerate Knox had referred to what the Judge termed Amanda Knox's "negative" personality.

Amanda has no record of violence; no record of crime; at around, I'm guessing, 120 lbs is hardly a physical threat to anyone. Is she a flight risk? Without a passport she cant get very far...certainly not Stateside. Due to the notoriety created by unflattering anti-American stereotyping in, always hostile, frequently inaccurate, media reports, a frightened Knox is hardly likely to get very far within Italy or neighboring countries. Nor could she find sanctuary in the US Embassy, which is powerless to help her escape prosecution from local laws.

Oxy Moran believes it’s unforgivable in a democracy, part of the European Community, that an American female without any prior criminal record can be held effectively in solitary confinement for 12 months without a trial because an Italian judge considers that she has a "negative" personality. For the record, I’d like to see a list of Americans that the Italian judge considers have a positive personality.