AIBU to think an Edinburgh festival show about Meredith Kercher's murder should be stopped?

[VivienneDelacroix]

Aibu to think that this show at the Edinburgh Festival should be cancelled? It mocks the circumstances around the murder of Meredith Kercher and serves it up as entertainment.

Not only is it horribly disrespectful of Meredith's family, but it also belittles the issue of violence against girls and women.

Meredith's siblings are calling for it to be pulled from the festival. There is also a petition calling for it to be stopped.

c.org/WXGTGJfpRh

And the true whining green eyed basis is slowly leaking out.

In bad taste and utterly insensitive. It is not a topic you can justify using for comedy and to make money from.

Prosecution theory:

Guede frequented the downstairs apartment and had a passing acquaintance with Kercher, Knox and Sollecito. Kercher invites Guede to the apartment (there is no evidence to support this). Guede defecates in the bathroom but does not flush the toilet. Knox discovers this when she and Sollecito return to the apartment. Tensions between Knox and Kercher over cleaning the apartment come to a head (the prosecution abandoned their original theory that it was a sex game gone wrong as it was not consistent with the forensic evidence). The row escalates into physical violence. Kercher is stripped. Guede restrains and sexually assaults Kercher (the forensic evidence clearly shows that Guede sexually assaulted her) while Knox and Sollecito attack her with two knives. One of the knives is Sollecito's penknife (there is no forensic evidence suggesting this knife was used at all, but the alleged murder weapon is too big to have caused most of the injuries). The other is a kitchen knife from Sollecito's apartment which the prosecution allege Knox carries in her handbag for protection (there is no evidence to support this allegation - the available evidence suggests the knife was always in Sollecito's apartment). The fatal blow is administered using the kitchen knife which Knox is holding by the blade rather than the handle (marks on Kercher's skin clearly show that the fatal blow was administered by a knife being driven in violently up to the hilt, but the kitchen knife would have caused a much deeper wound if it had been used, so this was an attempt to make the theory fit the evidence. However, this explanation does not fit the forensic evidence - the marks on Kercher's skin were caused by the handle of the murder weapon, not by someone's hand). Some or all of the three then stage the scene to look like a break-in, including using a rock to break a window 4m off the ground from the outside (there is some debate about whether this is possible, leading to speculation about a staged break-in, but the evidence is clear that the window was broken from the outside using a rock that was found in the room). Guede leaves. Knox and Sollecito clean the room, removing all forensic evidence of their own involvement but leaving extensive forensic evidence of Guede's involvement (the forensic evidence is clear that the room was NOT cleaned, so the most likely explanation for the lack of any forensic evidence of Knox and Sollecito being present is that they weren't). At some point Sollecito removes a shoe and sock, gets blood on his foot then hops to the bathroom where he leaves a bloody footprint on the bathmat (as another poster points out, the forensic evidence is that this footprint was made by Guede, but the prosecution insisted it was made by Sollecito. The police forensic scientist also claimed that there were a lot of other bloody footprints around the apartment made by Knox and Sollecito which they had cleaned up, but her notes revealed that she had tested these alleged bloody footprints for blood and for Kercher's DNA and both tests had come up negative. During the original trial she had specifically denied carrying out any such tests - one of several lies she told to help the prosecution get a conviction). Knox and Sollecito then return to his apartment taking the kitchen knife with them. They clean his apartment with bleach to remove any traces of blood (there is no forensic evidence to suggest that his apartment had been cleaned in this way and, even if it had, it would have been possible to detect any bloodstains they had cleaned - none were detected). They clean the knife rather than disposing of it because it was on the inventory for the apartment and they would have had to replace it if they had disposed of it. The police then identify it as the murder weapon because it looks cleaner than the other knives in the apartment.

Defence theory:

Guede is known to commit burglaries. When doing so he carries a knife which he uses to threaten people if discovered. He gains entry to the apartment shared by Knox and Kercher from by breaking a window from the outside with a rock. Kercher discovers him when he returns home. Realising that she knows who he is, he attacks her with his knife, which has never been recovered but there is a bloodstain on the bedding in the shape of a knife which is the right size to have caused all Kercher's injuries. He also strips her and sexually assaults her. At some point he defecates in the toilet but does not flush it - it is not clear if this happened before or after Kercher's death, but the presence of Guede's bloody footprint suggests it was after. He would subsequently claim that Kercher was murdered while he was using the toilet and that he heard Knox's voice - note that he never claimed to have seen her and was adamant that he was not present in the room when the murder was committed, despite the forensic evidence clearly showing that he was. He makes his escape and disposes of the knife.

The defence theory entirely matches the forensic evidence. The prosecution theory does not.

I agree with your last point, but other than that, the evidence has been extensively examined by the Supreme Court, and their conclusion has been that it is almost impossible that Meredeth and Raffaele were involved.

There were a lot of rumours, lies and misinformation during the original trial for sure.

Meredith and her family deserved a more competent investigation.
Absolutely agree with this. It was an horrendous murder and I feel such sympathy for her family. And such disgust for knox.

I'm honestly not sure why people are still claiming that the Fringe show is so offensive given that we now know the content - some spoken-word stuff with a bit of wry humour about Amanda's own experiences with false imprisonment. All relatively tame and anodyne.

She's hardly been up there cracking jokes about the murder itself.

The prosection'a theory was simultaneously absurdly demeted and yet significantly less batshit than their early theories.

A real case of hear hooves, think Amanda Knox has sacrificed a herd of zebras to Satan and is using their severed hooves to put on a tap dance performance.

Yes, it really is disgusting that Knox allowed the police to prosecute her for a crime when the forensic evidence is clear that she did not commit it and could not have been involved.

Yep, just made it all about her.

No evidence of faked break in? Really? Smashed glass all over one of the room mates room.

Yes the Italian courts have said she is innocent of all charges, but that doesn't change the fact her actions put an innocent man in prison.

You are entitled to your own view point about whether Knox is guilty or not. Just as I'm entitled to mine.
What should be at the centre of everyone's thoughts should be the horror of Meredith's death and what her family have had to go through since.

No, you are not entitled to say someone is guilty when they have been fully exonerated. Thats slander.

it was ITALIAN POLICE and prosecution actions that put an innocent man, another innocent man (Sollecito) and an innocent woman (Knox) in prison

Well actually I have made it clear that I am voicing a personal opinion. And as far as I'm concerned I am entitled to that opinion.
What I don't understand is why Knox, having been fully exonerated in the eyes of the law, can't let the matter drop in deference to the feelings of the family. Why torment them?

She owes them absolutely nothing. They should not try to control her, any more than she should try to control them. They all have different things to deal with, and they have no responsibilities to observe or contact each other.

There was smashed glass in Kercher's room, indicating that the window had been broken from the outside. There was a large rock in her room which is believed to have been used to smash the glass. Those items are evidence of a real break in. The police argued that the break in had been faked, but there is no evidence whatsoever to support that theory.

As has already been explained multiple times on this thread, it was the police that arrested an innocent man. He had already been arrested when the police extracted a statement from Knox implicating him. The ways in which they extracted that statement have already been set out on this thread.

You are entitled to your opinion but, contrary to what many seem to think, voicing a personal opinion can be slander and posting it on a public forum such as Mumsnet can be libel. Stating an opinion about something that is clearly a matter of opinion such as the quality of Brad Pitt's acting is fine. Stating an opinion about something that is a matter of fact such as someone's guilt of a crime is not, particularly when the individual involved has been found not guilty and even more so when, as here, the evidence shows beyond any doubt that she could not have been involved.

Having said that, it is highly unlikely Knox would take action so you are almost certainly safe. And you are, of course, free to hold your opinion regardless of the evidence, just as flat earthers are free to hold their opinion regardless of the evidence.

It’s not unusual that one persons needs dont mesh well with someone else’s, and it is perfectly ok. It might be better for Meredith’s family to have no reminders. And better for Knox that she speaks up about what happened to her. The podcast I posted earlier about Andrew Malkinson gives some insight into why victims of MoJs might not want to be quiet.

you are making Knox responsible for Meredith’s family. When in fact the people responsible for both parties pain are the murderer, the authorities and the international press.

Saying “it’s my personal opinion” doesn’t automatically protect you. It’s still a defamatory statement

There was a break in.

And Guedy had committed a string or similar, break ins (including break ins in the days and weeks prior to the murder) where he had threatened people with knives.

There was also a shard of glass embedded in a bloody shoeprint left by Guede, proving the glass was already shattered and Meredith already attacked before he started walking around the rest of the apartment.

There was no evidence that the break in was fake.

Just to clarify, I don't in any sense question the fact that it's possible to induce false memories - as I said, I have encountered this phenomenon in cult abuse survivors whom I have worked with, who had been subjected to extreme abuse over a significant period of time.

But (and I am trying to be really careful here to avoid giving offence or implying expertise I don't possess), it's also a phenomenon that advocates of abuse survivors need to be careful with, because it can, and many times has been, used to "explain away" abuse which has actually occurred.

We don't do the truth (and therefore, usually, women, who, let's be real, are most often the victims of disbelief) any favours, if we accept too readily that memory is so very malleable, that any degree of trauma can easily alter it.

But it's impossible to prove one way or another and no doubt Knox should be given the benefit of the doubt at least in a legal context - not be convicted of giving a false statement unless intent to do so can be proven behind reasonable doubt.

And I do accept the suggestion up-thread that (it stands to reason) some people would be innately more prone to such influence than others.

In fact, I do wonder whether that's what the insistent repeated presentation of Knox in her ITV show as a quirky, whimsical fantasist given to flights of imaginative fancy, was all about. As the "vision" we are through her eyes of Lumumba in the show is presented very much in the style of her other "fantasies" (where she sees the talking flyers, and so on) - perhaps the message is supposed to be that she had a highly visual imagination, which contributed to her accusation of Lumumba.

Again, feels to me like a trite over-simplification of a serious and complex issue. But maybe that's TV drama for you......

Also, just a small detail and it doesn't much matter, but I am pretty sure that Sollicito had indeed retracted the alibi he gave her. Though he later retracted his retraction, and claims to have retracted it initially under similar duress that the duress she describes experiencing.

I think at least for some people (can't speak for everyone) the fact that she advertised it as a comedy show is what is offensive, rather than the content of it.

To be fair, only a few people will watch it, and they are choosing to be there so unlikely to be hurt or upset by it, whatever it contains. So I think the concern is more for the potential upset caused to those reading or hearing about it, and having the very notion of 'comedy' linked to a violent sexual murder.

(Not saying I agree by the way. I can see both sides).

Some might argue that she owes them a certain amount of kindness and compassion as fellow human beings? I realise that's a subjective opinion. Additionally, having been friends with their murdered relative might count for something, to some.

Again, I am not entirely sure what I think overall, but can certainly see this side of the argument.

She has extended and continues to extend that to them, more than they arguably deserve. Despite her exoneration they have persisted in being vile towards her.

Being the relatives of a murder victim does not entitle them to determine how Meredith Knox chooses to handle her own trauma, or tell her own story.