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Amanda Knox’s Appeal: Did Mafioso Antonio Aviello Kill Meredith Kercher?

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Amanda Knox

The British news, Telegraph.co.uk, reported today that a man has come forward claiming that his brother, Antonio Aviello, murdered Meredith Kercher in a botched robbery. Interestingly, Luciano Aviello, brother of the Antonio, claims that he notified police three times in 2007 and his evidence wasn’t deemed reliable.

Could this be a turning point in the Knox case?  Mr. Aviello claims that his brother gave him a knife and keys to hide after he showed up at his home on November 1st, 2007.

Here is the article from the Telegraph.co.uk:

“The claim may offer fresh hope to Knox, who in December was convicted of murdering the British student and sentenced to 26 years in prison.

It will form part of an appeal that her lawyers are preparing and that is expected to be heard in the autumn in Perugia, Umbria, where the crime took place.

Luciano Aviello, 41, who is serving 17 years in jail after being convicted of being a member of the Naples-based Camorra mafia, claims that he has evidence that Miss Kercher was killed by his brother, Antonio.

He insists that the two men convicted alongside Knox of the murder – her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and Rudy Guede, a local drifter – are also innocent of the crime and should have their jail sentences of 25 years and 16 years quashed.

“It was my brother who killed Meredith on the night of November 1, 2007. Amanda, Raffaele and Guede are innocent,” Aviello told a weekly magazine, Oggi (“Today”).

“I know because my brother confessed to me and asked me to hide a blood-stained knife and a bunch of keys. I hid them underneath a wall, behind my house, covering them with soil and rubble.”

He claimed he could show investigators exactly where the knife and the keys were hidden.

Aviello wrote to court authorities in Perugia three times during the course of the murder investigation and subsequent trial, but his evidence was deemed unreliable.

Now, however, Knox’s defence team are demanding that it be heard as they put together an appeal which they hope could save her from spending much of her adult life behind bars.

In March, her lawyers, Carlo Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga, visited Aviello in the prison near Turin where he is being held and videotaped a statement he made.

They want him to be admitted as a witness when the appeal gets underway.

“Why should he not be considered credible when the prosecution was allowed, during the trial, to call witnesses who turned out to be unreliable, to say the least?” said Mr Dalla Vedova.

The convicted mafioso is from Naples but was living in Perugia at the time of the murder.

He claims that his brother was staying with him in late 2007 and that one night he returned home with an injury to his right arm and his jacket covered in blood.

He alleged his brother and an Albanian man named Florio broke into the hillside cottage that Miss Kercher, 21, shared with Knox and two Italian women.

The Leeds University student was alone in the house, which sits on its own just outside the city’s ancient stone walls.

The men were looking to steal anything of value, but when Miss Kercher saw them, she started screaming.

According to this version of events, Antonio Aviello tried to silence her by putting his hand over her mouth but she resisted and he allegedly ended up fatally stabbing her.

It is not known what has motivated Aviello to point the blame at his brother, although defendants who cooperate with Italian police and prosecutors can often expect their jail sentences to be reduced.

Miss Kercher, of Coulsdon, Surrey, was found lying dead in a pool of blood in her bedroom on the morning of Nov 2, 2007.

Some of her clothes had been removed, and she had several deep stab wounds to her neck.

Antonio Aviello’s whereabouts are unknown.”

What are your thoughts on this turn of events?  Do you think that the court in Perugia is so biased against Knox already that they will not seriously consider this new “evidence?”  How does this impact students who are abroad and considering Italy as a destination?  Please share your thoughts in the comments section.




Amanda Knox Update: Facing Slander Trial Next

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Amanda Knox, convicted of murdering fellow study abroad student, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy.

This is an update on the Amanda Knox case, courtesy of www.nwcn.com. It is dated May 13, 2010.  The Amanda Knox/Meredith Kercher case continues to be the most searched topic at Melibee Global.

PERUGIA, Italy – Amanda Knox, the University of Washington exchange student who is serving 26 years for murder in Italy, is about to go on trial on new charges that could extend her sentence.

Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted in December of killing Knox’s British roommate Meredith Kercher in 2007.

Even though prosecutor Giuliano Mignini successfully won the murder conviction, he’s not satisfied. He’s already appealing Knox’s sentence, saying she got off too easy and deserves life in prison.

On June 1, Mignini will again be leading the charge against Knox in the same courtroom, this time on slander charges. Mignini says Knox lied when she testified that police beat her during questioning at police headquarters the night of her arrest.

Knox’s defense team is crying foul because it was Mignini who oversaw the investigation and interrogation of Knox. They will ask for a new prosecutor.

They are also challenging the judge who ruled against Knox in the pre-trial hearings. They say the judge is biased.

If convicted of slander, Knox could face an additional six years in prison and a hefty fine.

Perugia is also abuzz about a possible new witness surfacing in the case. He’s a prisoner who claims to know who Kercher’s real killer is and where the murder weapon was hidden. A similar claim was made recently by a convicted child killer. He said Rude Guede, the Ivory Coast man convicted in Kercher’s slaying, confessed that he had acted alone and the Knox and Sollecito weren’t even there.

Click for a video report from nwcn.com news.




Prosecution Launches Appeal Against Amanda Knox

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Amanda Knox meets with Italian police outside of her housing, the day after the murder of Ms. Meredith Kercher

Several news agencies reported today that  Italian prosecutors will be requesting a life sentence for Amanda Knox, the American study abroad student sentenced for the murder of Meredith Kercher, a study abroad student from England.

Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini submitted a 13-page file requesting the increase in Ms. Knox’s stay in prison. He was reported to have said, “In their post-verdict report the judges said this was a murder for purely casual reasons, and if that is the case then this is a crime that calls for the maximum penalty of life.”

This is not the first time that Mignini has requested a life sentence for Ms. Knox.  The Italian court decided, at her original sentencing, to give Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito (her boyfriend at the time) a lower term  – due to their young ages and lack of prior arrest.

Reports have also surfaced accusing the Italian forensic police department of bias toward Ms. Knox.  This is based on a photograph (above) of Ms. Knox talking with investigators from the Italian forensic police department the day after the murder, while outside of the house where she and Ms. Kercher resided.  This photograph was supposedly hung on their office wall, alongside renowned murderers, 3 months after she was arrested.  Italian law, like US law, is supposed to assume that a person is innocent until proven guilty. It is also noted that the 2 men charged with the murder (Mr. Sollecito and Mr. Rudy Guede) did not have photographs on the “wall of fame”, implying bias against Ms. Knox.

My previous postings indicate that this is a very difficult  and complex case with two very firm camps – The Knox camp, claiming her innocence and finding it impossible that she could be found guilty with no DNA or physical evidence appearing in the room where the murder took place, and the Kercher Camp, mourning the young victim, Meredith Kercher, whose throat was slashed while she was left to die.

Ms. Knox’s attorneys are preparing her appeal, expected to be filed soon.




Rudy Guede Denies Allegations of Fellow Prisoner in the Knox/Kercher Case

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CBS news reported that Rudy Guede has denied the allegations of his prison mate, Mario Alessi, and claims that he is completely innocent in the murder of study abroad student Meredith Kercher.  Alessi was sentenced for kidnapping and murdering a 2 year old Italian boy.

The written denial by Guede has been released to the media.   YouTube Preview Image

Mr. Alessi claims that Guede told him that he and another man stopped by Ms. Kercher’s home and when they tried to engage her in a threesome, she refused, which resulted in her being attacked by the other man. He also alleges that Mr. Guede stated that he was in the bathroom at the time of Ms. Kercher’s knifing and that he stayed at the property until she had stopped breathing, but that the other man had left after telling him that she must die.

Supporters of Ms. Kercher are quick to remind us that Mr. Alessi is a vicious man who murdered a crying 2 year old boy with a shovel and therefore is not a source to be replied upon.

The saga continues…