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| Raffaele Sollecito makes new claims in memoir about Amanda Knox trial | Raffaele Sollecito makes new claims in memoir about Amanda Knox trial |
| (8 days later) | |
| Raffaele Sollecito, the less arresting of the two students convicted and eventually acquitted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, has a memoir out – a warm-up act to Amanda Knox's book out next year – and is in some ways the more curious story. | Raffaele Sollecito, the less arresting of the two students convicted and eventually acquitted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, has a memoir out – a warm-up act to Amanda Knox's book out next year – and is in some ways the more curious story. |
| Until now, Sollecito has been a relatively unknown quantity, presented in the tabloids as weedy foil to the femme fatale by his side (you can imagine him being played by Daniel Radcliffe in the movie) who said he was stoned on the night of the murder. In Honour Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox, he makes a slew of new claims about what he says was sloppy police work leading up to his conviction and what actually happened that night: | Until now, Sollecito has been a relatively unknown quantity, presented in the tabloids as weedy foil to the femme fatale by his side (you can imagine him being played by Daniel Radcliffe in the movie) who said he was stoned on the night of the murder. In Honour Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox, he makes a slew of new claims about what he says was sloppy police work leading up to his conviction and what actually happened that night: |
| • While being held in custody in Perugia, he writes, the police stripped him naked, threatened him and slapped him. During that first overnight interrogation, Sollecito was subject to what he calls a "less than scrupulous" set of "time-honoured pressure techniques", in which, he believes, the police asked him to repeat his story multiple times in order "to catch me out in whatever inconsistencies they could find". | • While being held in custody in Perugia, he writes, the police stripped him naked, threatened him and slapped him. During that first overnight interrogation, Sollecito was subject to what he calls a "less than scrupulous" set of "time-honoured pressure techniques", in which, he believes, the police asked him to repeat his story multiple times in order "to catch me out in whatever inconsistencies they could find". |
| • He believes the police never seriously believed in his guilt, but pursued him aggressively in order to pressure him into testifying against Knox. The fact that he refused to do so, after the confusion of the first 24 hours, accounts in his opinion for the harsh treatment he received. | • He believes the police never seriously believed in his guilt, but pursued him aggressively in order to pressure him into testifying against Knox. The fact that he refused to do so, after the confusion of the first 24 hours, accounts in his opinion for the harsh treatment he received. |
| • As part of a litany of either hapless or actively malicious police work, Sollecito says that when the police searched his apartment after his arrest, an officer called Finzi reached into the cutlery drawer in the kitchen, "pulled out the first knife that came to hand, a large chopping knife with an eight-inch blade", and turning to a fellow officer, said, "Will this knife do?", to which the answer came, "Yes, yes, it's great." | • As part of a litany of either hapless or actively malicious police work, Sollecito says that when the police searched his apartment after his arrest, an officer called Finzi reached into the cutlery drawer in the kitchen, "pulled out the first knife that came to hand, a large chopping knife with an eight-inch blade", and turning to a fellow officer, said, "Will this knife do?", to which the answer came, "Yes, yes, it's great." |
| • During early questioning, Sollecito wavered in his conviction that Knox had been beside him all night when the murder took place, which he puts down to being out of it after smoking pot, something he curses himself for in the book: "I knew I had nothing to do with Meredith's murder, but I was furious with myself for having such a foggy memory and I knew it was in part because of the joint I'd smoked on the afternoon of November 1." | • During early questioning, Sollecito wavered in his conviction that Knox had been beside him all night when the murder took place, which he puts down to being out of it after smoking pot, something he curses himself for in the book: "I knew I had nothing to do with Meredith's murder, but I was furious with myself for having such a foggy memory and I knew it was in part because of the joint I'd smoked on the afternoon of November 1." |
| • He is now certain she didn't leave his side: Knox didn't have a key to his apartment. If she had slipped out to murder Kercher, he writes, she would have had to ring the doorbell for him to let her back in. This didn't happen, says Sollecito. | • He is now certain she didn't leave his side: Knox didn't have a key to his apartment. If she had slipped out to murder Kercher, he writes, she would have had to ring the doorbell for him to let her back in. This didn't happen, says Sollecito. |
| • Knox's behaviour after her arrest, which convicted her in the minds of many casual consumers of the story, made Sollecito "uneasy" and he wishes he had put his foot down at the police station when she "curled up on me like a koala bear, grabbing hold of my neck with both arms and resting her body in my lap", to which a passing police officer remarked, "behave yourselves". | • Knox's behaviour after her arrest, which convicted her in the minds of many casual consumers of the story, made Sollecito "uneasy" and he wishes he had put his foot down at the police station when she "curled up on me like a koala bear, grabbing hold of my neck with both arms and resting her body in my lap", to which a passing police officer remarked, "behave yourselves". |
| • Sollecito's own family made up the shortfall in police work by scouring the country for the sneaker that matched the bloody footprint at the crime scene, a Nike shoe but not, as the police maintained, one that matched Sollecito's Nike shoe. Eventually, Sollecito's uncle Giuseppe found an out-of-stock pair of Nikes in a sales rack with the same swirly pattern on the tread, and emphatically not the shoe that Sollecito owned. | • Sollecito's own family made up the shortfall in police work by scouring the country for the sneaker that matched the bloody footprint at the crime scene, a Nike shoe but not, as the police maintained, one that matched Sollecito's Nike shoe. Eventually, Sollecito's uncle Giuseppe found an out-of-stock pair of Nikes in a sales rack with the same swirly pattern on the tread, and emphatically not the shoe that Sollecito owned. |
| • Less helpfully, writes Sollecito, his family, and his lawyers, urged him to abandon Knox and change his testimony in order to buy police favour and save himself, something he refused to do. "I had made many mistakes," he writes, "but my determination to stick by Amanda, and by what I knew to be the truth, was one thing I knew I had exactly right. Nothing in the world – not the people I cared about most, and certainly not the threat of further punishment for a crime I did not commit – could induce me to change my mind." | • Less helpfully, writes Sollecito, his family, and his lawyers, urged him to abandon Knox and change his testimony in order to buy police favour and save himself, something he refused to do. "I had made many mistakes," he writes, "but my determination to stick by Amanda, and by what I knew to be the truth, was one thing I knew I had exactly right. Nothing in the world – not the people I cared about most, and certainly not the threat of further punishment for a crime I did not commit – could induce me to change my mind." |
| • He was punished by the police for this lack of co-operation, he believes, with unjustifiably harsh treatment, including six months of solitary confinement (longer than Knox) and assignment to the sex offender wing of the prison. "Nothing was said explicitly, but the subtext seemed clear: if you don't want to tell us what we want to hear, you can take your chances with the perverts and child molesters and transsexuals and see how you like that instead." It's unclear what transsexuals are doing on this list, but one gets the point. | • He was punished by the police for this lack of co-operation, he believes, with unjustifiably harsh treatment, including six months of solitary confinement (longer than Knox) and assignment to the sex offender wing of the prison. "Nothing was said explicitly, but the subtext seemed clear: if you don't want to tell us what we want to hear, you can take your chances with the perverts and child molesters and transsexuals and see how you like that instead." It's unclear what transsexuals are doing on this list, but one gets the point. |
| • This isn't new information, but is still extraordinary to consider that Knox and Sollecito had been dating for one week before the murder. Speculation on whether, after the release, they were going to "get back together" made no sense in the context and underlines the strangeness of their connection to each other; how exactly do you relate to someone wrongly co-convicted with you in a murder trial? Sollecito details the difficulties of the reunion he had with Knox after their release. "I wasn't at all sure it was a good idea to see her and I wavered back and forth even after I had booked my ticket. We had been through so much; perhaps we owed it to each other to live our lives and leave each other in peace." | • This isn't new information, but is still extraordinary to consider that Knox and Sollecito had been dating for one week before the murder. Speculation on whether, after the release, they were going to "get back together" made no sense in the context and underlines the strangeness of their connection to each other; how exactly do you relate to someone wrongly co-convicted with you in a murder trial? Sollecito details the difficulties of the reunion he had with Knox after their release. "I wasn't at all sure it was a good idea to see her and I wavered back and forth even after I had booked my ticket. We had been through so much; perhaps we owed it to each other to live our lives and leave each other in peace." |
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