Wednesday, October 12

Kooks and Knox

We join the Kooks at the Brixton Academy , pictured, with Justin and Natalie. Our pre-dinner conversation turns to Amanda Knox , recently acquitted for the murder of Meredith Kercher , and Justin nails me for assuming Knox must somehow be innocent given she is from a middle-class (white) family from Seattle. By implication , then, I must be inclined to condemn somebody who is not these things, which Knox plays to an advantage falsely blaming Diya Lumumba, a black man. No matter the acquittal, Justin says : "Knox is a piece of work." And I agree.

Here is what we know :

1. A partial strand of the Kercher's DNA discovered on the blade of a knife found at Raphael Sollecito’s apartment. While the size of the partial strand means prosecutors can’t prove that Kercher was the only possible source of the DNA, it matters that Kercher cannot be ruled out.

The partial DNA match is even more important considering that the knife had been scrubbed clean with bleach and an abrasive substance.

More telling is what Sollecito said to cops after they let him know they found the victim’s DNA on the blade. He said Kercher cut her finger while preparing dinner at his apartment. It was an important admission because forensic experts could not determine whether the DNA was from skin, blood or other bodily fluid. That Sollecito felt compelled to explain how blood got on the knife became an even more damning piece of evidence when cops subsequently proved that Kercher had never been to Sollecito’s apartment –– for any purpose –– ever.

2. Knox’s DNA was found mixed with the victim’s blood in many different locations at the murder scene where Knox had lived with Kercher for only a few weeks before the crime took place. Knox told cops there was no blood from either her or Kercher in any of the rooms where the mixtures were found prior to the night in question. Without an innocent way to explain this DNA evidence, Knox’s involvement in the crime cannot be doubted.

3. Knox changed her story several times, initially claiming she was at Sollecito’s apartment at the time of the crime –– until cops told her that other evidence, including phone and computer records, disproved her alibi. Knox then confessed that she was present at the murder and could hear the victim screaming –– but she couldn’t recall much because she was under the influence of drugs. Many of the details she could recall about the crime were correct and could only have been known by someone who was there because the facts had not yet been publicly released.

4. Knox falsely accused an innocent black man, Lumumba, of the crime and let him sit in jail for days until police figured out he had a solid alibi.