Networked Knowledge - Media Report

[This edited version of the report has been prepared by Dr Robert N Moles]

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On 10 November 2007 NineMSN / AAP reported “Judge's report paints lurid picture of Briton's murder”.

It said that all three suspects in the murder of a British student in Italy were remanded in custody Friday by an investigating magistrate whose order, leaked to the media, painted a lurid picture of debauchery and depredation. The American flatmate of Briton Meredith Kercher is thought to have arranged a tryst with a barman that ended in her murder, according to a scenario contained in Claudia Metteini's order. Enough evidence exists against the barman, Congolese immigrant Lumumba Diya, the flatmate Amanda Knox and her boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito to justify their continued detention, Metteini ruled.

When the three appeared before Metteini on Thursday, Diya and Solleciti offered alibis while Knox claimed her right to remain silent. The three face charges of aggravated homicide and sexual assault in the death of 21-year-old Kercher, who was found with her throat slit on November 2 after what police called a sexually motivated attack. Press reports said Metteini's order contained a reconstruction of the events leading up to the murder, starting with Knox, 20, and Sollecito, 24, spending the afternoon smoking hashish together.

She received a text message from Diya, 38, confirming a rendezvous that evening. She replied saying that she would set up an encounter with Kercher, with whom Diya was in love. Knox and Sollecito met up with Diya in the town and together headed to the flat Knox shared with Kercher and two Italian women. Investigators surmise that Kercher and Diya went into her bedroom and sometime later something went wrong, according to the leaked court order, which was detailed by the Italian news agency ANSA. Probably Sollecito — described as bored and hungry for strong emotions — entered the room and the two men asked something of Kercher that she refused. Then her throat was slit with the flick knife that Sollecito always had on him, investigators surmise.

Lawyers for the three suspects had not reacted to the document by the end of the business day on Friday. Diya, whom Knox accused of the murder, claimed that he was at his bar, Le Chic, at the time, with witnesses and cash register records to prove it, press reports said. A text message from Kercher to Diya on the evening of November 1 reading see you later was not to be taken literally, he told the judge. Knox, of Seattle, Washington, had given police varying accounts of what transpired but on Thursday defended her right to remain silent.

For his part, Sollecito claimed to have been at home surfing the Internet at the time of the murder. He also said he called his father in southern Bari that evening, but police reportedly have no record of such a call. An imprint of a sports shoe in Kercher's blood matches the size and design of shoes police seized from 24-year-old Sollecito, reports said. Police said Kercher's assailants apparently had a sexual motive though initial autopsy results showed the Briton from south London had not been raped. They have also said that the depth of the wound in Kercher's throat indicated that it was inflicted by a man, and that the bruises on her head suggested that she was restrained by one person while another beat her.

The case has prompted lurid headlines in the Italian and British press as well as in Knox's hometown of Seattle. Sollecito's lawyer Tiziano Tedeschi on Thursday lashed out at the press for carrying out what he called a media lynching in the case. The Perugia state prosecutor opened an investigation into leaks to the media, which she said violated the most elementary principles of civility and respect for others' feelings, fueling deplorable, morbid sensationalism.

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