Monday, July 8, 2019

Review Bomb: The Murder of Meredith Kercher



There are certain crimes that transcend the genre of true crime and I think this case is a prime example.

I truly do not know what to believe. Sometimes I think no way was Knox involved. Other times, it seems possible. That Rudy Guede was there, I do not doubt. His prints are all over the crime scene. On one hand, how would Knox and her boyfriend have managed to clean up all their prints and leave only Guede's? On the other hand, Kercher had no defensive wounds, which should have been present because Kercher had taken karate lessons for years and would've attempted to defend herself. To me, the lack of said wounds means someone had to be holding her down. Either way, I do not believe there was only one person involved in the assault. I also find the mix of DNA and blood interesting, and Knox's behavior in the immediate aftermath, at the police station, and even during the trial to be as a whole very odd. Never in a million years, even in my secured building, would I just walk into my home after finding the door open and go take a shower. And I especially would not do so after finding blood in one bathroom, and a toilet full of shit in the other. This makes no sense. The minute I saw the door open, I would have been waiting out on the street, waiting for police to arrive.

There are just so many things that are so odd about this case, it seems almost impossible to make all the pieces fit together. The worst part of this is for Kercher's family. They will likely never know the truth about what happened that night, and my heart breaks for them.

15833693 ⭐⭐⭐

I've read a lot of books about this case and I always go back and forth on whether I thought Knox was innocent or guilty. When the case was first playing out in the news I definitely thought she and her boyfriend were involved, but after really looking at the evidence and how it was portrayed by the prosecution here, I recall thinking they had nothing to do with it. Even so, Knox is not a particularly sympathetic person. Meredith Kercher was brutally murdered and she is the real victim. Amanda got her life back, that's not possible for Meredith. I whole-heartedly agree that justice would not have been served had the original judgment been upheld. Basically, Amanda is the kind of naive weirdo and that worked against her because she was so very odd and American. FFS, stop doing the splits and cartwheels when you are being questioned by the police for the murder of your roommate, you idiot.

The book was okay, her writing is fine. It was interesting to hear directly from her perspective after reading accounts written by others. She comes across as self-centered and naive and weird, but she was twenty at the time this all first occurred, so that is not completely surprising. But, come on, you are in a foreign country. Try not to be so American. People who act like this abroad are the reason the rest of the world hates us (among other reasons, but that is a whole other story). There's nothing really new here, if you've read other books about the case; the lens is simply different in that we see it all through the eyes of Knox. There are times when she is curiously silent over things that need explaining, and talks non-stop about things that don't. I get the feeling there are somethings she was not truthful about, but at the end of the day, I do not believe she murdered Meredith. There is simply no motive. And even if she was high - there is no evidence of or witnesses claiming that she did any hard drugs. Weed doesn't make people sex-crazed murderers, it makes them hungry and sleepy.

11161726 ⭐⭐

Blah blah blah. We get it, they were both pretty girls. The author states this a billion times. If you did a shot every time the author mentioned one of them being pretty, you would be hammered very quickly.

7760816 ⭐⭐

This is the first book I read about the case because it was the shortest and came across as the most sensational, so I wanted to get it out of the way. It was interesting to hear about the evidence that was not reported on nearly as much in the US, but by reading other texts it becomes clear that contamination could have been possible. Not saying it was, just saying in some instances it could have been.

The slut-shaming was take to ridiculous levels in this one. Liking sex does not make someone a murderer.

I remember thinking that after reading some of the evidence presented here, such as that Amanda and Raffaele cleaned the apartment with bleach, that they might have been involved. Had the book been more professional and less absurd, I could more easily entertain the idea that somehow, Amanda may have been in the apartment that night, though I do not believe she was involved in the murder itself. The author seems to have it out for Knox and is not subtle about it. She's also not a great writer, so this ends up being pretty insufferable.

13573505 ⭐⭐

A pretty terrible affront to the real victim. Sorry you had to deal with cockroaches in jail, but Meredith Kercher was brutally murdered, so...

Also, even Raffaele becomes a supporting player in his own story. It's still all about Amanda.

13539495 ⭐⭐⭐

This is the fifth book I have read about the case. There are still a few more I have on my TBR, but our library does not have them so I will have to be on the look-out at Half Price Books and such. By the time I got to this one, I was very frustrated with the case - as mentioned above, I am frustrated and heartbroken for the Kercher family. Not knowing the truth would be so horrible.

In reading the previous accounts, I was pretty sure that Knox was innocent, but this book made me question that. Again as mentioned with the other books, I don't know that we can entirely rule out Amanda and Raffaele, or at least Amanda, being in the apartment that night. Her behavior was just so strange in the aftermath, and I can not get over the whole 'front door wide open, no big deal I will go in and shower like nothing is wrong' thing. 

This book contained information that was thoroughly explained and detailed, and is one of the better ones I feel, in regards to the case. I feel like, aside from Knox's own memoir, this is one of the least sensational ones. Follain covered the trial for the London Times, but I do not know if that is a pro or con in this case, as some of the headlines accompanying his articles were pretty ridiculous themselves. It's almost like people could not help themselves when it came to being outlandish with this whole terrible tragedy.

15 comments:

  1. i see you shared a book college kids can use for a drinking game. LOL
    sherry @ fundinmental

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    1. Hopefully they don't considering how awful and tragic Meredith's murder is.

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  2. I see we have another thing in common. When we get hooked on a subject, we read everything we can get our hands on about it. Right now, that's me with Punk Rock.

    I never really got into this tragedy with Amanda Knox, although I would like to know more, if it's possible to really know anything. I think you're right, she's a narcissistic weirdo whatever happened.

    I traveled across Europe a few years back and stayed in hostels. I was older, but most of the people there were English speaking and college-aged. I was a little appalled at how some of them acted.

    Not all of them, mind you. Not even most of them. But some of them really felt that social boundaries had been removed and it was painful to watch.

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    1. I have honestly entertained the thought that she is high functioning on the autism spectrum, because she seriously lacks the pick-up on any social cues, small OR big. I watched the Netflix documentary a while back, last year sometime, and I don't know. I mean, I love Seattle and Seattle is quirky and weird, but she is on a whole other level. At least, she was when she was in Italy.

      Where did you travel to?? I've not been to too many places yet, but have several trips already planned in my head for now, when my daughter is a little bit older.

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    2. HI Sarah. That particular trip was when I was a single mom. My son had just graduated from high school and it was his graduation gift. I had a friend who taught in China and was also a single mom. We met in Rome and, with our sons, embarked on a 21 day trip across Europe: Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain, England, Iceland and even a 24 hour layover in Boston, so we toured around there also.

      I recommend the places I visited, but summer is hot and crowded. Try another season. Also, if you buy your tickets online or get city passes, you don't have to wait in line. If you want to see Da Vinci's Last Supper, but your ticket a couple months in advance.

      Also, if you go with a friend, make REAL sure you want the same things out of the trip. My friend and I were hardly speaking to each other by the end. We still love each other, but we found out things about ourselves that we did not have in common at all.

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    3. I should have said tickets for museums.

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    4. I've been to Scotland, Ireland, England, and the Netherlands. I love Europe and can't wait to go back. I just want Eleanor to be old enough to appreciate it, but young enough to not complain so much about the differences between the US and European countries. I would love to go to Iceland, and Italy. The big trip I am planning for now though will involve stops of all the remaining sites connected in any way to Eleanor of Aquitaine, who my daughter is named for. Unfortunately this means having to go to France, but I guess I can suffer for a few days if it gets me closer to my idol.

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  3. That sounds like a great idea. Eleanor is a beautiful name. You don't like France?

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    1. Not especially, but Aquitaine once comprised 3/4 of the land that France now occupies, so we will have to go to Poitiers and Paris. The only surviving object known to belong to Eleanor is at the Louvre, the rock crystal vase. She inherited it from her father and grandfather, and gave it to her first husband Luis VII as a wedding gift. He in turn gave it to Abbot Suger to place in St Denis, and now it rests in the Louvre.

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  4. Amanda Knox is not a woman that is easy to like but the trials were a total farce. We saw a lot of it televised in the UK and I'm not any wiser on what really happened that night. The media certainly played up the weird crap Amanda did but I've never been sure of her guilt.

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    1. This is something I kind of go back and forth on daily! And Rafaelle is also a big question mark. Sometimes he is portrayed as this quiet nerdy kid who smoked some weed, others say he is a coke-fiend mania who wields his knife collection all the time. These extremes help no one. It is my understanding from most of the books and such that Meredith's friends from the UK believe Amanda and Rafaelle to be guilty. Maybe there are things they picked up on that we simply can't, not having lived it, or seen Amanda being a complete freaking weirdo all the time.

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  5. I am humbled. I never even heard about this case. I like how you have dug so deeply into the subject though.

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    1. It's truly such a sad story. I remember being quite angry about all the coverage portraying Amanda as this victim who was railroaded - this I think is true. It is not exactly good for a college town to have college students murdered in their homes, especially so close to the universities. They had to solve it quickly and the trial really was kind of a joke. But through it all, Meredith was lost and the US coverage was especially keen to play up this stranded American who was beautiful and thus could not possibly be a murderer.

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  6. Actually, there have been various studies and articles medical and psychological sources , and a number of experts in these and similar who have claimed long term cannabis use can lead to paranoia, psychosis and ultimately violence. The ancient Chinese believed it caused men to see demons.


    Its also been linked to various violent crimes, including several murders. Just because it only makes some people hungry and sleepy does not mean it does that to everyone. People are different. Some people can drink 10 units of alcohol with almost no ill effect. Some people it goes straight to their heads. Many drunk drivers would probably say they're perfectly safe behind the wheel after a drink or two: until a tragedy happens.

    I know, its people's favourite drug, and they just luv to smoke it, but honestly, people swore cigarettes were harmless once too. There has not been enough openness in studies of the drug, and there is far too much emotional attachment involved.

    I can well believe Knox was involved in a horrific murder whilst high on weed, and people who are strung out don't need logical things like motives.

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