Excerpt 2 from DECEIT: Book 1 in The Meredith Kercher Murder Mystery Series

An excerpt from the chapter:

The Road to Hell is Paved with Good PR

Saturday. November 3

At 01:04 Amanda texts PJ: “Im sure you’ve already heard but Meredith was murdered last night. I was the first to come home and call the police.”

At 01:30 Amanda and the British girls are fingerprinted.  The British girls are released, but not Amanda.

At 02:00 Rudy is still footloose and fancy free and revelling in it.  He heads to Domus Disco, possibly with some extra money to spend, possibly with demons to drown, possibly both. About an hour later the disco has a moment of silence to pay respects to Meredith.  Guede is so out of it he continues dancing on his own.  In an odd parallel to what’s been going on at the police station, the people around him find his behaviour inappropriate. 

At 04:00 some of Guede’s friends arrive at Domus Disco and find Rudy hanging out with kids they don’t know.

According to one timeline, at 05:30 the remaining seven – Laura, Filomena [and her fiancé Marco], Amanda and Raffaele and Luca [and his fiancé Paola] – are finally released by the authorities.  They’ve been at the station for approximately fifteen hours in total, answering questions, waiting, answering more questions, giving fingerprints etc. The three housemates are not allowed to return to the crime scene, so Laura and Filomena stay with family, while Amanda heads back to the apartment with Raffaele.

Now, just to put recent events into perspective, note that Amanda and her group arrived at the police station at around 15:00.  They leave early the next morning at 05:30.  One of the reasons they arrive as late as they do at the police is because it took Amanda and Raffaele until past noon to actually call them

Now here’s another strange parallel. If the murder took place close to 22:00, and the Postal Police took Luna’s statement at 11:30, and Meredith’s door was only kicked open after 13:00, then we know her body lay in her room, unreported, for fifteen hours as well. 

DM pic 2

Let’s also recall, when Raffaele calls the police, he’s phoning in a burglary.  It’s no wonder it took a while for the police to not only secure the scene, but secure the witnesses.  It’s ironic that if Amanda and Raffaele purposefully hid, concealed or delayed the body, the time it took to do so was matched, almost to the hour and the minute, by the police interrogation.

Again, we have Amanda initially telling her family she wants to help the police, not that she is being treated unfairly.  Surely, if she had been, the group of 20 would have been as well?  Or was Amanda special? 

While the ‘matching fifteens’ fits together nicely, based on the cell tower serving the police station [Via Cortonese, Sett.7], Amanda is still at the police when her Aunt Dorothy calls her at 09:18:16.  The two second call is cut off. According to Raffaele’s memoir the two them are released together at 05:30 and Amanda [only Amanda] is told to report back at 11:00.

At 10:01:43 Amanda texts her Greek buddy Spyros: “My roommate was murdered night before last. I was the first to come home and call the police.”

It’s very similar to her SMS to PJ almost exactly nine hours early, where she texted:

“Im sure you’ve already heard but Meredith was murdered last night. I was the first to come home and call the police.” 

Really?

Absolutely nothing wrong with that statement is there?

At 11:00 Amanda’s at the police station for more grilling. Raffaele, although not summoned, is with her [presumably for moral support, but possibly also to keep tabs on Amanda, and how her story unravels.] Meanwhile a British newspaper published that morning is already reporting on a possible scenario: since nothing was stolen, the theory that Meredith disturbed a burglar has been ruled out. The suggestion, the paper goes on to speculate, is that whoever murdered Meredith ‘staged’ a break-in to throw the investigation off track.

While some believe all this intrigue is hokum, conspiracy theory hogwash, let’s consider the idea on its own merits.  It was a burglary, it was reported as a burglary, and the burglars…didn’t steal anything. Did the burglar/s lose track of what they were there to do?  Presumably if they remembered to steal phones, lock a bedroom door, cover the deceased in a blanket, rummage through her handbag, visit the toilet and the bathroom, wipe away half a footprint, and possibly throw in a load of washing, then perhaps they’d also have time – since the only occupant of the house was dead – to finish what they started: the burglary. 

There were four expensive portable computers in the villa, and Meredith arguably had the most expensive one of all.  But the burglars decided stealing not one phone, but both, was more important.  And then locking her door but apparently leaving the front door open…

DECEIT, the first narrative of three in The Meredith Kercher Murder Series, is available on Amazon

Read it for yourself and then decide.  Nick and I welcome respectful discussion on the topic.

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DECEIT: The Meredith Kercher Murder Mystery

Excerpts from the chapter

The Case Against Amanda Knox

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The charming, ramshackle cottage, like something out of a Hansel and Grettel fairy tale that lured the young British student into staying there was tucked away from the ribbon of roadside skirting the hillside, so much so that police looking for the house couldn’t find it, and needed directions. 

While possessing a sort of old world charm, the crumbling villa had a dilapidated exterior and was obscured by foliage and trees on several sides.  It was peculiar for a house in central Perugia in that it was relatively isolated, in that few other dwellings immediately surrounded it, and at night, the grounds – if not lit – could be quite dark. The tenants at this property, without exception, smoked marijuana on a regular basis.  Sunken below the level of the road, out of sight, it was a place to unwind, strum a guitar and get high on one’s own particular brand of bohemian bliss. 

It was a place to disconnect, and be disconnected without getting into any trouble.  It was also a place where Meredith would be murdered, and apparently no one would know. 

And this is the key reason why Meredith Kercher’s murder is not an open and shut case.  The mystery is wound around a nebulous clock that refuses to give up its secrets. We cannot be certain of the time of death.  We’re not talking about minutes either, but hours.  

Unfortunately for the suspects in this case, they made such a mess of the crime scene, it appears they spent several hours cleaning up, hence they are unaccounted for during the several critical hours when Meredith’s light went out.  When her precious blood spilled all over her bedroom floor – warm and slick – parts of her seeped into everything that came into contact with it.  Shoe soles, barefeet, hands, knives, shirts, coats, the wall, the bed, the closet – and Meredith’s own underwear. If there was ever a crime where the criminals left with blood on their hands, this was it.  If Meredith’s death was a cruel and drawn out struggle for the young woman, if it was an agonising death – and it was – then her murderers paid a price for that brutality.  They left a blood trail effectively signing their names in blood. 

Because Meredith’s murderer was such as amateur, Meredith didn’t die because of a mortal blow. She died due to blood loss and asphyxiation.  Bleeding to death took her an agonising 600-900 seconds. That’s an eternity to die.  The reader ought to count on his or her watch, ten seconds, right now.  Or thirty seconds.  Or fifty seconds.  Consider that in all this time, Meredith, a strong, spirited girl, merely lay calmly whilst bleeding to death.  10-15 minutes is a long time not to scream or struggle. 10-15 minutes, when you are attacked with a knife in your bedroom, is a long time not to fight back.  Not to get any skin, or dirt, or blood under your fingernails.  If Guede didn’t stab Meredith in the neck, who did?  If Guede held Kercher down, if he digitally raped her, who was he doing it with, and why? Anyone who cares about this case should not only be deeply outraged, but committed, to solving this mystery surrounding Meredith’s untimely departure from this Earth. 

 MK9

AK vs RS (implicating each other) Immediately after having been told her boyfriend was no longer supporting her alibi, Amanda implicated Patrick Lumumba. In Amanda’s schema, she also smears Raffaele a little, saying he had blood on his hands whilst cooking, maybe from fish, but maybe not. Sollecito in turn supports Amanda’s story until the heat in the kitchen gets too much for him, and he then throws Amanda under the bus, but then loses an alibi himself (that she was with him).

 Implicating Lumumba:  Lumumba had nothing to do with the crime, so why implicate him?  Why not implicate Guede?  Well, there is such a thing as honour among thieves – and murders.  You rain on my parade, and I’ll rain on yours. 

MK8 

Drugs:  From Amanda’s prison diary (which we will analyse in detail in DARK MATTER) Amanda herself speaks of dream-like feelings of disconnectedness, unreality.  In her statements to police Amanda specifically states that she can’t be sure what is real.  She literally uses the word ‘dream’ to describe how she saw herself and heard Patrick [written ‘Patrik’] assaulting Meredith.  One aspect that makes absolutely no sense on her version of Patrick assaulting Meredith is that Patrick didn’t care that Amanda was there.  He went into her room, and by all accounts raped and murdered Meredith, not caring that his employee was next door, and also apparently leaving, still not caring that a murder witness was out there.  In her desperate rush to implicate Patrick, Amanda seems to have forgotten about the implications of her own story.  Of course, by implicating Patrick, by being a witness, and at the same time, Raffaele no longer backing up Amanda’s story, all three automatically became prime suspects. And it did seem like a crime perpetrated by multiple attackers.

AMAZON REVIEW – Format:  Kindle Edition

A marvellous book: well-written, exciting and insightful.,May 25, 2015

By Christina

Nick van der Leek has written a stunning exposition of the actions of Amanda Knox, in particular. It is clear the author has researched his material in great depth, from court documents, newspaper reports, court testimony, DNA evidence and motive. However, none of this gets in the way of the flowing narrative.

The book reads like a psychological thriller, with the perpetrators continuously trying to keep six steps ahead of the cops, like a Spaski- Fisher chess game.

It doesn’t help that in Italy, court hearings go on for years and do not end until the final Supreme Court seal of approval. In this case, we know the Italian SC – perplexingly to many – acquitted the two remaining accused, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

However, that does not mean we cannot revisit the crime scene and try to reconstruct, from all the facts known, what really happened and to attempt to guess at the motive.

You may or may not agree with Nick van der Leek all of the time, and critical minds should not, as the case is ever-developing; however, the author’s insights into what drives Amanda Knox, in particular, are astute, perspicacious and logical.

I have my own theory as to what happened, but it doesn’t really contradict Van der Leek’s view point. This is a marvellous book; well-written, exciting and insightful. Just when you thought you knew all there is to know, the author surprises with a fresh nugget of information or observed behavior.

DECEIT is available now on Amazon

For additional information about the Meredith Kercher Murder Mystery visit HI-REZ Life

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