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.

 ⭐⭐⭐

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.

 ⭐⭐

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.

 ⭐⭐

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.

 ⭐⭐

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.

 ⭐⭐⭐

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.