[EPISODE 23] Amanda Knox: and the Murder of Meredith Kercher, Part II

[00:00:00] Kyle Risi: He says that if he didn't report things immediately, someone else would've got the headline. He. So he just wanted to be the guy to be bringing all the news. And he was, but at what cost? It's astonishing that he didn't stop to think about the potential repercussions on this woman's life and also Raphael's life.

[00:00:19] Adam Cox: Do you know what? There are better detectives and journalists on Reddit than this guy. Yeah, 

[00:00:23] Kyle Risi: Internet slueths you should have got them on this case. Yeah. She could have gone to jail forever and he's just directing all this attention to an area that's just making the newspapers more and more money rather than towards the objective truth. Yeah. Uh, so he generally seems to believe that he didn't play a role in this at all. And he puts more blame on the police investigation than he does on himself and the media.

[00:00:46] Kyle Risi: What a m**********r. Yeah. Just can't believe it. And he's still about today, still spreading lies. Nick, Piza, f**k you, Nick. 

[00:00:55] Kyle Risi: Welcome to the compendium, an assembly of twists, turns, and courtroom churns. For those of you tuning in for the very first time, I am your host, Kyle Risi. And I'm your co-host, Adam Cox. Welcome back for part two. Of the Amanda Knox and the Meredith Kercher story. 

[00:01:37] Adam Cox: Hmm. You left us on a bit of a cliff. Hang on. Last time 

[00:01:40] Kyle Risi: I did, didn't I? Before we get into that, you're listening to the Compendium, an Assembly of fascinating and intriguing things.

[00:01:47] Kyle Risi: We are, a weekly variety podcast where I, Kyle Risi, tell Adam Cox all about a topic that I think you will find both fascinating. Intriguing. And today this is part two, so if you haven't listened to part one, stop now. Go listen to that first and we'll wait. 

[00:02:04] Kyle Risi: So adam, do you want to tell listeners about what happened? Up to this point.

[00:02:09] Adam Cox: So Amanda and Meredith, uh, met at university and they're studying in a town in Italy.

[00:02:17] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. 

[00:02:18] Adam Cox: So Amanda and Meredith start off quite close, or seem to be, and they're thrown together in university. Um, but then they both, I guess start to form different friendship circles.

[00:02:28] Adam Cox: So whilst then not not close, they've developed other relationships. So Amanda has. Developed a relationship with a guy, whereas Meredith hanging out with the girlfriends, I guess 

[00:02:40] Kyle Risi: And then of course, six weeks or about two months into their first term of their year abroad, Meredith is, uh, sadly murdered brutally.

[00:02:50] Kyle Risi: Um, and they find her in her bedroom. Um, the door is locked. There is a mysterious poo in the toilet. Oh yes. The mysterious poo. And yeah. And Meredith has been brutally murdered. She's been stabbed in the neck. And very quickly, all the attention turns straight to Amanda Knox and Raphael. 

[00:03:11] Adam Cox: Yep. And so they were acting quite weird when the police come, what was the prosecutor.

[00:03:17] Adam Cox: Manini. So, uh, they were acting kind of weird, I guess they were kind of comforting each other. Mm-hmm. Um, well that's what they were sort of saying and that that's their sort of perspective on it. But I think from the outsider perspective, it just looked a little strange. Like almost a bit detached.

[00:03:33] Adam Cox: Maybe 

[00:03:33] Kyle Risi: not. I don's it. Yeah. And I mean, I think it was all orchestrated from this man Manini. Mm. He notices these two, these two people just standing kind of oddly on, on the front lawn while the investigation is going on.

[00:03:47] Kyle Risi: And he just gets a sense that somehow they must be involved because your roommate is just be murdered and then stand there cuddling with your partner, essentially. Yeah. So, 

[00:03:58] Adam Cox: yeah. And so Amanda's making a series of unfortunate mistakes, which she doesn't realize she's doing, but to an outsider, it just looks a bit odd.

[00:04:07] Adam Cox: Um, which is causing sort of suspicion mm-hmm. When she's being interrogated by the police. Yeah. So she quickly realizes, 'cause up until this point, she hasn't got a solicitor or a lawyer to defend her. And then she realizes actually they're pinning this on me. So she needs Yeah, she, her mom advises her, get a solicitor, quick.

[00:04:25] Kyle Risi: That's it. Yeah. And because of course, she's this beautiful blonde American woman, and because the press are involved from the very beginning, they kind of deem this as the better angle. And then as a result, what ends up happening is a the world press kind of hone in on this just to sell more papers, which is just horrendous really, because they're taking away from the investigation. Mm-hmm

[00:04:50] Kyle Risi: What they end up saying at the Supreme Court is that it's a combination of terrible investigation and also the media that ends up causing this horrendous shit show of a case mm-hmm. So, yeah, the media have got lots of answers to, as far as I'm concerned.

[00:05:08] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. So we ended off last week's episode with Amanda being coercing into falsely admitting that she had seen or been involved in the murder in some way.

[00:05:20] Adam Cox: Which I still find so bizarre. But as you were sort of saying that she hadn't had sleep for like over a day. Mm-hmm. Was it like 30 odd hours? And she signs a confession, even though she doesn't really remember saying it.

[00:05:31] Adam Cox: Mistakenly being involved. Mm-hmm. Or somehow suggesting she's involved or kind of knows something. She comes to her senses the next day when she's had a bit of sleep and rest and then she's like, uhoh. 

[00:05:42] Kyle Risi: Yeah. What have I done?

[00:05:43] Kyle Risi: But we'll touch upon this towards the end of today's episode where we talk about some of the techniques that are being employed within the Italian justice system, which largely in many countries now being banned. And we'll talk about what some of those techniques are because they're really effective in terms of interrogating people.

[00:06:00] Kyle Risi: But what they do is yield a, a massive amount of kind of false confessions in a lot of high profile crimes. So we'll go into what that is and how that kind of works, like on a real compendium level basis. Like not going too deep, but you'll get a sense of what's happened here with Amanda. But yeah, 

[00:06:21] Adam Cox: I'm intrigued by these techniques.

[00:06:23] Adam Cox: Is it something I can use in an everyday life that I might be able to use? Like getting outta paying, I dunno. A gas bill or something, 

[00:06:28] Kyle Risi Overdub: or getting me to, uh, what, what happened to the chocolate rounds Kyle? 

[00:06:32] Adam Cox: yeah. Yeah. Things like that. When my stuff goes missing, I can then find out where it's gone.

[00:06:36] Kyle Risi: So last week we wrapped up with the dreadful murder of Meredith Kercher and the ensuing, obviously witch hunt that kind of happened as a result of the press coming after Amanda Knox.

[00:06:47] Kyle Risi: Now, today, we're gonna delve more into the actual trial, Amanda's prison time and literally everything else. So after Amanda is coerced into providing her false confession where she accuses. Patrick, that's her boss, you remember him? Mm-hmm. Of essentially murdering Meredith. The police arrest him and after a few weeks, he is of course released because his alibi for where he was at the night is solid and there's no evidence linking him to the crime scene or to any of the girls.

[00:07:19] Kyle Risi: Anyway. What was the original hunch 

[00:07:20] Adam Cox: with him that just seemed so odd 

[00:07:22] Kyle Risi: to me? It's all kind of leaning on that text 

[00:07:25] Adam Cox: message. Okay. Yeah, that's it. That's right. We'll, I'll see you 

[00:07:28] Kyle Risi: later. That's it. So, understandably, Patrick is really pissed off at Amanda and he does speak out against her, which obviously doesn't do her any favors, especially kind of in the court of public opinion.

[00:07:38] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. So let's continue. So Amanda goes into intake and she's put into solitary, she's on her own. So every day doctors are asking her if she wants sedatives or antidepressants but she consistently refuses.

[00:07:51] Kyle Risi: She says that it's really important for her to maintain the level head throughout the entire process rather than being drugged up. Mm-hmm. Because she's already been fallen victim to kind of the police already. Mm-hmm. And their tactics. So she's like, I need to stay as level as humanly possible. And so what she does is she starts journaling and that's how she spends most of her time.

[00:08:11] Kyle Risi: Now, about a week in, after she's been given a series of tests, they wrongly and they deliberately tell her that she's HIV positive. What? It turns out that the prosecution can literally say whatever they want to sway their case. So after telling her this, they bug all of her conversations with her parents.

[00:08:31] Kyle Risi: And basically they're trying to see if, like Amanda. Can get into like a desperate state thinking that maybe she's dying or, and or giving up and then just confess to the crime. That's the thinking behind this, which is just horrendous. That's crazy. It's awful. So they also force her to write out a list of everyone that she's ever had sex with. I think it's like a requirement that you have to inform all your sexual partners if you get diagnosed with HIV. Mm-hmm. But the reason why police want this information is 'cause they believe that someone else was involved in the murder.

[00:09:04] Adam Cox: So they're using this to trick her into revealing all her Correct. Recent encounters, correct. 

[00:09:10] Kyle Risi: Yes. Because I think when she goes to court, if it's just her on her own, that's not gonna stand well.

[00:09:17] Kyle Risi: But if they can prove that another male was involved right then potentially that can kind of help reinforce this idea that. There was a, a second or a third person involved mm-hmm. In this, in this murder. So they're playing a real dirty game basically. Yeah. So eventually her prison diary gets leaked to the press, and again, it gets massively misinterpreted because she writes in it about everyone she's ever had sex with.

[00:09:41] Kyle Risi: And the press like, see, she's a 

[00:09:43] Adam Cox: whore. I remember them doing this as if she's like, she's some sort of Yeah. Going around sleeping with everyone. That's 

[00:09:49] Kyle Risi: right. And it just keeps reinforcing this kind of idea that she's this fem fatel, right? Mm-hmm. So when investigators go through Raphael's apartment, they find a kitchen knife and the blade was like 17.5 centimeters.

[00:10:01] Kyle Risi: The police point fingers at claiming that this to be the kind of the true murder weapon and it essentially being really the sole clue linking Amanda Knox to the scene.

[00:10:09] Kyle Risi: But the truth is, of course, that the knife has never been used in any crime at all. But somehow forensics find traces of Amanda's DNA on the handle and Meredith's DNA on the blade, which they call the double DNA knife. That's gotta be staged or planted.

[00:10:25] Kyle Risi: Right. Well, we'll get onto this. Okay. So based on all the forensic data, the prosecution on now suggesting the crime was committed by three people, which shifts the story to a sex game involving Amanda and Raphael, which is bullshit because later on when the case is on appeal, They discover footage of the forensic team mishandling the evidence, like they're not changing their gloves in between testing various items and like different pieces of the evidence, and they're just kind of all like bundled together.

[00:10:53] Kyle Risi: They're all like on top of each other. They're touching each other, all just kind of just getting cross-contaminated. We use That's how that might have happened. Exactly. There's a million reasons how their DNA could have gotten the knife, and remember, it's trace DNA, which means that it's such minimal amounts that it could have got on there in any number of ways.

[00:11:09] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Amanda lived with Meredith as well, so Amanda could have been her home. She could have got DNA on her hands or her clothing or something. It could have, she could have been wearing maybe one of Meredith's jumpers. Mm-hmm. She could have been over at Rafi Hell's house. They could have been cutting, like chopping up vegetables.

[00:11:26] Kyle Risi: She might have wiped the knife blade on her jumper or whatever. Sure. That's got Meredith's. There's so many different possibilities there. Yeah. Yeah. Another piece of evidence tying Raphael and Amanda to Meredith murder. Was the late discovery of Meredith Bra clasp. This was found weeks later and it was tucked under a carpet and was initially overlooked by the investigators.

[00:11:46] Kyle Risi: Now the clasp carried DNA from Raphael, Amanda, and Meredith, and the prosecute is interpreted this specific location of kind of Raphael's DNA as kind of an indicative way of how he had managed to kind of like unfasten her bra class 'cause of where the DNA was on it. Right? Okay. What's weird is that there's this scene, which is caught on camera, where a detective demonstrates to the courtroom how Raphael would've kind of unc clasped the bra.

[00:12:15] Kyle Risi: So when she's showing the court, she's, oh my God, she's so smug and proud of herself, and she has the audacity to say, well, my bras a little bit bigger, but oh well, Just like really This is a court case. Yeah. What kind of shit show is this? Adam piped down. No. Right. So now, even though they find small traces of Raphael and Amanda's DNA in various places, remember we're, we're not talking about huge amounts of data. We're talking about trace amounts of DNA.

[00:12:44] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Like small amounts. They do, however, find tons of DNA from a single male who is not Raphael, and this DNA is all over the crime scene, including a. This guy semen, which is found on Meredith's body. 

[00:13:00] Adam Cox: So have they just kind of conveniently ignored all this evidence and gone, but you know, there's enough of it on Raphael.

[00:13:06] Kyle Risi: Well, they, they have this evidence, but they don't want to lose sight of Amanda and Raphael as part of this investigation. Maybe it's a, uh, like a, a sunk cost fallacy where they've come this far, so they need to try and make it work, but essentially that's foreshadowing there. Yeah. They're going to try and make this work.

[00:13:25] Kyle Risi: I was gonna 

[00:13:25] Adam Cox: say, this is, this is really trying to fit a round peg hole into a square. 

[00:13:29] Kyle Risi: So this DNA belonged to a guy named Rudy Guday. We don't know him, do we?

[00:13:34] Kyle Risi: Yes we do. Remember this is the guy they met through the lads that lived downstairs that one night when Meredith and Amanda were walking home, they stopped off at a bar and they met the guys. And with them was a guy called Rudy. He's the guy from the Ivory Coast.

[00:13:50] Kyle Risi: Right? Okay. Now, the police, they are of course frustrated because Rudy doesn't really fit the narrative that they're trying to tell. So because of the large amount of DNA from Rudy, they have to factor him in in some way, but they don't want to lose Amanda and Raphael from their story.

[00:14:09] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. So they arrange for one of Rudy's friends to Skype with him and record a conversation where Rudy admits that he met Meredith that night and went back to her apartment, but they didn't have sex because she didn't have a condom. So he says that he goes to the bathroom and while he's there, he hears a struggle.

[00:14:30] Kyle Risi: When he comes back, he finds Meredith dead and he decides that he's gonna flee the scene, and two days later he ends up leaving the country and heading to Germany. I'm sorry, this sounds so suss. It is so suss, right? I, 

[00:14:44] Adam Cox: you're hearing all this commotion. You're in the bathroom, you're hearing all this commotion.

[00:14:48] Adam Cox: I'm sure she's screaming. She's not just being quite timid and quiet at this point. Mm-hmm. And he's like, Hmm. Oh, 

[00:14:53] Kyle Risi: she's been killed. Oh yeah. That sounds a bit, okay. That was quick. How did that happen? Yeah. 

[00:14:57] Adam Cox: Well, oh God, I better be going. 

[00:14:59] Kyle Risi: Oh yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, I've got a train to catch.

[00:15:02] Kyle Risi: So 

[00:15:02] Adam Cox: it's, I'm sorry I don't buy 

[00:15:04] Kyle Risi: this. No, I don't buy it at all. It's absolute crap.

[00:15:06] Adam Cox: So Rudy tells his friend this, he makes a, well, not really a confession, but he admits this on a Skype call. Mm-hmm.

[00:15:16] Kyle Risi: Let's take a closer look at Rudy who he is as a person, what his background is, and then we can dive back into the case. 

[00:15:23] Kyle Risi: So Rudy was born on the 26th of December, 1985 in a small town on the Ivory Coast of Africa. Now Rudy moved to Perugia in Italy with his father at round about the age of five years old. Now, his father was rarely present in his life. And so Rudy was primarily cared by like a combination of teachers, of various parents who kind of rotate their duties to kind of just make sure that he was okay, like he had a place to stay, but they just wanted need to check on him, make sure he is eating, and that he had managed to get into the house at night.

[00:15:57] Kyle Risi: And do you know what I mean? Banding together. It takes a village to raise a child basically. And this is what this neighborhood is pretty much doing. Overall, he was kind of well-liked and he was described as polite. He was non-violent and he was a bit like kind of melancholic, if you will, like a bit.

[00:16:14] Kyle Risi: Well, how would you describe melancholic?

[00:16:15] Adam Cox: A bit serious. Very somber. Yeah, 

[00:16:19] Kyle Risi: I think, yeah, I guess that I don't imagine him being a spritely kind of kid based on that description. Mm-hmm.

[00:16:25] Kyle Risi: However often Rudy would find himself locked out of his house when his dad would just kind of go awol. So he spends a lot of his time just wandering the streets at night. And he describes his father at about this time of his life, like physically and mentally like abusive towards him.

[00:16:40] Kyle Risi: So it's not really a great relationship and wherever he can, he will just kind of rather just not be near his dad. Mm-hmm. So despite him not having a nurturing father figure, Rudy does have several other men in his life, including a priest and several basketball coaches.

[00:16:54] Kyle Risi: Now, Rudy was an extremely skilled basketball player and he was actually playing semi-pro at the round about the age of 16. And he also had ambitions to kind of forge a career in the hotel industry. Mm-hmm. 

[00:17:08] Kyle Risi: In 2004, Rudy is playing semi-pro basketball for a team in Perugia, and here he becomes friends with a son of a wealthy kind of entrepreneur. His name is Paolo, um, how to pronounce the name. Capelli the Capelli's. Okay. Capelli. Yeah.

[00:17:27] Kyle Risi: So he just so happened to own the local basketball team. The family decides to kind of adopt Rudy until he turns 18, which provides him with a more of a stable life. Rudy, soon after this starts to neglect his responsibilities and his studies. At first, the family kind of stick with him and continue to offer him the support that he needs.

[00:17:48] Kyle Risi: They hire a tutor and they find him a job, but they end up discovering that Rudy has just been lying to them about like his whereabouts and his performance at school and also on the basketball court.

[00:17:58] Kyle Risi: And this is kind of where things just start spiraling for Rudy. So, Elina, who is Rudy's adopted sister. She recalls how Rudy struggled to kind of grasp the basic principles of right and wrong roundabout this time of his life. 'cause before he was really good, but then all of a sudden he just kind of dropped off a cliff.

[00:18:16] Adam Cox: What kind of, or do we understand what made him slip a little bit? 'cause it seems like he's quite a sweet kid and quite Yeah, normal. 

[00:18:23] Kyle Risi: Really. You're gonna find out why in a second. Okay. Alright.

[00:18:26] Kyle Risi: Eventually when he turns 18, the caparelli decide that they are just gonna cut ties with him completely. They tell him that he needs to find his own path because he's just not showing them any respect anymore and he's not doing what he's required because he's still kind of like a young kid. Right?

[00:18:42] Kyle Risi: If you want to live under our roof, We're happy to support you, but you need to be kind of pulling your weight so they just say goodbye to him. Imagine a bit like 

[00:18:49] Adam Cox: Peggy Mitchell, but Italian. Get outta my house. 

[00:18:51] Adam Cox: But more like, get outta my 

[00:18:53] Kyle Risi: house. Ooh. I don't think you're allowed to use the hand gestures.

[00:18:57] Adam Cox: What no, I can use a hand gesture for Italian swear words. 

[00:19:01] Kyle Risi: No. Yeah. You're not Italian. But really. 

[00:19:04] Kyle Risi: Rudy moves in with his aunt, uh, Georgetta, who is now living in Milan, which is obviously about a five hour kind of train journey from Perugia now in Milan.

[00:19:14] Kyle Risi: Rudy is doing marginally better. He got along with his aunt and her new husband. He gets a job at a cafe and starts dating an Italian girl. And life was looking really good for him at this point. So that's rubbing shoulders with the likes of Giorgio Armani, who he meets at a nightclub.

[00:19:29] Kyle Risi: And at this stage of his life, he was living the life and he was really proud of how things were going. He's kind of turned his life around. 

[00:19:38] Kyle Risi: Well yeah, if you're hanging out with Giorgio Armani, you've not doing 

[00:19:41] Kyle Risi: too bad. Mm-hmm. That's it. So notice this, right? So he was a good little kid. He turned a bit naughty.

[00:19:47] Kyle Risi: Now he's good again. Well, 

[00:19:49] Adam Cox: that feels like that's probably quite common with a lot of male teenagers growing up A little bit maybe. 

[00:19:54] Kyle Risi: Well, he seems to do this a lot. Okay. And this is what suggests that he might have a psychological disorder because other things are gonna start happening, which you're gonna start thinking, Hmm, that's a bit weird.

[00:20:02] Kyle Risi: A bit like bipolar or something, or possibly. I think the way we're gonna describe it in a moment is going, it is slightly, it's more like a personality disorder. Okay. 

[00:20:11] Kyle Risi: His boss gets arrested for some kind of crime. I think it's like drug related or something. And the cafe that he is working at ends up going bust, leaving Rudy Jobless. So Rudy returns back to Perugia and in the spring of 2007, he asks Mr.

[00:20:25] Kyle Risi: Caparelli for some help. So they decided that they're gonna graciously rent him an apartment near a nearby college campus. And that's when he starts hanging around with some of the students. Now, he would play basketball on the courts across the street from number seven via Della Pergola, where that's the apartment that obviously Amanda Knox and Meredith.

[00:20:45] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Kercher were living. And that's exactly also where Amanda says that she met Patrick in her confession. It's these basketball courts, right? Obviously that never happened. 

[00:20:57] Kyle Risi: So with the guys Rudy plays basketball with, he earns the nickname The Baron after Baron Davies and NBA player on the Golden State Warrior team. Now I mention this because this is the name that the guys in the apartment downstairs know him as.

[00:21:12] Kyle Risi: Right? Like when the police are questioning them about Rudy, they're like, who's that like. Oh, you mean Barron? Yeah. We're like, we don't know him, but we know this guy called Barron. 'cause he's been going by this different name for Okay. Like ages. So he soon befriends an American student from also from Seattle, which this was interesting.

[00:21:31] Kyle Risi: I didn't realize that actually the number of students that come over from kind of the American West Coast specifically Seattle, just like Amanda is huge. There's loads of Americans in Perugia. Oh right. Every year they, that's kind of their, their main program of study, if you will, where they send their students over as one of the options that they can choose to go to Perugia, the University of Foreigners.

[00:21:51] Kyle Risi: So this guy's named Victor and Victor found him a little bit strange, but they still hung out quite a lot. Victor says that Rudy was a great dancer.

[00:21:59] Kyle Risi: He was charismatic, but he was just a little bit strange. What he says specifically is that Rudy would spend the night over at his apartment quite a lot, even though he had his own place. He just had this, this thing of not wanting to ever go home. So his roommates didn't really care too much at first, but then Rudy started doing some other stuff, really weird stuff in his sleep.

[00:22:22] Kyle Risi: Right? He was a prolific sleepwalker. Okay, so one time he was sleepwalking in the middle of the night and he was acting like he was a teacher in a classroom and he was using kind of the dresser as a blackboard and he was slipping in and out of like speaking Italian and English. And he would then sometimes sleepwalk right out the apartment and he would wake up like miles and miles away.

[00:22:47] Kyle Risi: Miles away. Yeah. So he would proper go for it. That would freak me out. He would freak me out, especially waking up and going, shit, where am I? So he would even ask them to hide his keys because he didn't know sometimes where he would end up putting his keys.

[00:23:02] Kyle Risi: Right. And he would often lose them in, in his sleep. So sometimes people say that they also saw him crawling on the floor and barking like a dog, which I think is funny. Brilliant. So Victor also recalls Rudy passing out on the toilet several times. Usually after like smoking a little bit of weeded.

[00:23:21] Kyle Risi: Now Victor says that Rudy wasn't really a heavy drug user at all, but even if he smoked just a little bit, it would really affect him in really strange ways. Okay. And he would just end up acting really, really weird. 

[00:23:34] Adam Cox: So I see what you mean by actually, maybe there has some kind of disorder. If he's sleepwalking, he's kind of affected by drugs in this capacity.

[00:23:43] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[00:23:44] Kyle Risi: Maybe there is some kind of imbalance there and the bad behavior as well. Mm-hmm. Okay. It's a bit messed up, not to the point where I don't think a little bit of maybe psychiatry will or just can help. 

[00:23:55] Adam Cox: Yeah. Or probably just, um, understanding what he has and kind of finding ways to deal with it and that it doesn't, it doesn't feel like it's something that would really, that stop him from having a good quality of life.

[00:24:05] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:06] Kyle Risi: So Victor's time in Italy was almost up and he was getting ready to head back to Seattle. So it was roughly this time that Rudy made friends with the Italian guys who lived downstairs from the apartment of Meredith and Amanda. And at this time he was still going by the name of Baron while he was at their house.

[00:24:27] Kyle Risi: So some of the Italian guys are starting to get a little bit tired of Rudy, right? He's always coming over to their place and he just seems to not wanna sleep at his house for whatever reason. He just doesn't, that's strange. Ever spend any time there? And he's getting this entire apartment completely paid for for him.

[00:24:46] Kyle Risi: And it's not even that far away from where these guys are, but he's just always there. Is he 

[00:24:50] Adam Cox: lonely, do you think? I don't know. Or they've just got food and he doesn't want to get to do shopping, so he comes over and helps himself. Maybe. He 

[00:24:56] Kyle Risi: seems like he's quite a popular guy though. He's going to nightclubs, he's meeting people.

[00:25:00] Kyle Risi: He knows how to socialize. He knows Giorgio Armani, he knows Giorgio Armani. So they talk about, again, his weird sleeping habits too. And they also mention the time that he fell asleep on the toilet. He was also found asleep on the toilet in Meredith and Amanda's apartment too, which he seems to have this issue with toilets and ping and big shit and stuff.

[00:25:23] Kyle Risi: Oh, I see where this is going, but I don't know where it is going. It is just weird that so many people are brought up that he falls asleep in the toilet. And then one of the biggest clues at the crime scene was this big old poop in the toilet. I just don't get it. So we thinking he 

[00:25:37] Adam Cox: might asleep, walked, killed this Meredith, and then took a poo 

[00:25:42] Kyle Risi: and then left.

[00:25:43] Kyle Risi: Do you think, I mean, I thought that's that's certainly where it was going. Yeah. But it doesn't seem to make an appearance in his appeal or in Or or in anything. I don't think. It seems to be a case that he makes in court. Okay. Not, certainly not the sleepwalking stuff. The poo. Well, the poo doesn't really factor into it, but I think the POH should factor into it a lot more.

[00:26:02] Kyle Risi: I feel 

[00:26:02] Adam Cox: like. I feel like they should have. 

[00:26:04] Kyle Risi: Hmm, I agree. Done a lineup. 

[00:26:07] Kyle Risi: I tried to find out more about this anyway, and it seems that after his arrest, the sleeping behaviors are kind of classified as some kind of psychogenic, dissociative kind of state thing that he's got going on. Apparently it's a rare psychiatric disorder.

[00:26:21] Kyle Risi: And it's characterized by kind of amnesia, personal identity issues, including memory loss, personality erasure. So apparently these states that he gets himself, himself into can last like months. Days or even longer. Right. So I'm wondering if, if that's what's happening here, and again, as you said, Could this be one of the reasons why he ended up killing Meredith?

[00:26:45] Adam Cox: Because he went into this weird state, 

mental 

[00:26:48] Kyle Risi: state. Yeah. This dissociative kind of personality state. Hmm. It's weird, isn't it?

[00:26:53] Kyle Risi: So apparently in some criminal trials, this has been used by other people who have committed crimes and it has been quite effective. But it doesn't seem to be the case that he used it in his right. Okay. I'm assuming they would've been prepared to use it in his case.

[00:27:07] Kyle Risi: So about a month before Meredith's murder, Rudy starts getting into trouble. Up until now, he'd been pretty clean with no real run-ins with the law. But on October the 13th and 14th, a local law office and a few other businesses are broken into, and the windows are smashed with a large stone Now, things like a computer, a cell phone, USB keys and a printer go missing.

[00:27:29] Kyle Risi: Now, the 27th of October, a principal from a local nursery school in Milan, so he's now back up in Milan, found Rudy coming out of her office and he claimed that he was just drifting through and he just needed somewhere to sleep for the night.

[00:27:43] Kyle Risi: And she's like, no, you can't stay here. It's bloody nursery school. That's weird. So she's like, you need to leave. So she notices that he has been rummaging through quite a lot of their stuff. So she just calls the cops and they find a laptop, a cell phone, and a giant kitchen knife from the, the backpack they left at the nursery. 

[00:28:01] Kyle Risi: All the traveling essentials. All of the traveling essentials. Right. In case he wants to kind of make like a little chopped salad, you know? Yeah. Look up a recipe. So the electronics match the items that were stolen from the law officers in Perugia.

[00:28:14] Kyle Risi: Right. So Rudy is brought in, he's fingerprinted, but due to more pressing cases in Milan, the prosecutor just lets him go telling him that he just needs to head back to Perugia and he needs to stay away from Milan. Right. It's actually these fingerprints that later connect him to Meredith's room. Oh, 

[00:28:32] Adam Cox: okay.

[00:28:33] Adam Cox: So this little run in is act, even though he didn't really get punished for it, 

[00:28:38] Kyle Risi: that's how they connect him to it. Gone on record. But I have a problem with that though, if they had just sent them to prison when he was in Milan, rather than just letting him go, he 

[00:28:47] Adam Cox: would've, I mean, would is it worth going to prison for, but I guess 

[00:28:50] Kyle Risi: some kind of punishment or even just arrested. Yeah, because remember this is like the 27th of October, right?

[00:28:55] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. So if he'd even been arrested just for a few days, Meredith could still be alive. Yeah. Even if he was arrested for one day. Or even arrested at all because then he'd be like, oh, I got in trouble. I need to just behave. It was just for a few days and she would've skirt free. Could've changed his path.

[00:29:10] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So after recognizing Rudy in the newspaper, a bartender from a club in Perugia reported a break in at his home on September the 27th. So this is going back a month prior, and he recounts being waken up in the middle of the night by, uh, several noises in his apartment.

[00:29:25] Kyle Risi: But then the intruder managers escape after threatening him with a knife. Now, of course, the bartender does report this incident that same evening. However, when the police ask him to come down to the police station to review some pictures, he gets to the police station and the line is just too long on arrival.

[00:29:41] Kyle Risi: So he's like, Ugh, nothing was stolen, so I'm just gonna go home and just, right, not report it, but he could 

have 

[00:29:48] Adam Cox: potentially identified him. For a 

[00:29:51] Kyle Risi: picture or something. Yeah, that's it. Right. And again, what we have here is that if he'd just stuck in the line again, maybe Rudy would've been arrested and maybe Meredith would still be alive.

[00:30:03] Kyle Risi: So that's two times now. Two. 

[00:30:05] Adam Cox: But I guess that one is not necessarily the police's fault, it's just someone that can be bothered. Mm-hmm. Which I don't know, maybe you can get that 

[00:30:12] Kyle Risi: really, it's a series of unfortunate events, in my opinion. Yeah. So later the barman sees Rudy at the bar and he just has bouncers remove him. But it wasn't until he sees him in the paper that he knows that his name is Rudy and then he gets the police. But of course, too late now. It. 

[00:30:28] Kyle Risi: It's now October the 31st, and Rudy says that he goes to a Halloween party with some Spanish girls that he's been hanging out with.

[00:30:35] Kyle Risi: He claimed on the Skype Go's friends that he had met Meredith that night and they had planned to see each other again. But Meredith obviously had a boyfriend at that time. So Rudy's story changes a lot, so we don't really know for sure. And this last bit that I have about his whereabouts is a little bit hazy, but on the 1st of November, on the night of the murder, Rudy apparently goes to a friend's house around 11:30 PM and then he goes clubbing till 4:30 AM on the 2nd of November, there's a huge gap with nothing in between.

[00:31:09] Kyle Risi: And on the evening of the 2nd of November, Rudy goes back to the same nightclub with three American female students that he met at, at a bar. And after that is when he gets onto the train to Germany, where he's then found seven weeks later. So he seems to have fled to Germany on Randall the fourth and November.

[00:31:27] Kyle Risi: So right in that gap between 11:00 PM and 4:30 AM obviously Meredith is murdered. Yeah. And he was apparently clubbing, but no proof of that. There's no real proof of that really. 

[00:31:40] Adam Cox: So they know that there's another male at the moment that has been connected at the scene. Mm-hmm. But the police are still like hellbent on it being Amanda and her boyfriend.

[00:31:52] Kyle Risi: It's kind of catch 22. Right. The media are all over the fact that it was Amanda and Raphael. You've got Manini, who is a hellbent on it being someone ungodly. And that person is Amanda. She's got the devil in her. And also it's now it's like a case of like, oh, we don't wanna lose face, so we have to make this fit.

[00:32:11] Kyle Risi: But that's just so 

[00:32:12] Adam Cox: ridiculous when they've got, surely they would see some of this evidence. They might not know. Mm-hmm. Who it was at this moment in time will have everything, but surely there's enough doubt there. It just, it baffles me. 

[00:32:23] Kyle Risi: Well, the thing is that they're confident enough to, well, they want their cake and they want to eat it.

[00:32:27] Kyle Risi: Right? So they don't want to lose face. They're confident that they've got the guy who is involved, which was Rudy, but they're gonna say we can also pin it on these other two as well. Right. And Adam, you're forgetting something here. They're successful at it. Yeah. Twice. Twice, she goes through two trials.

[00:32:46] Kyle Risi: They now have Rudy who is brought in because his DNA is of course all over the body and of course the house. So he immediately consults a lawyer and they ask to fast track his trial So that he is trialed completely separate from Amanda and Raphael. Suspicious. That seems a bit odd.

[00:33:06] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. So it's apparently something that you can do in Italy when you admit partial guilt. Again, his story changes. He now says that he went to the house that night and Amanda and Raphael are there. Oh, so he changed his story now? Mm-hmm. According to them, a sexual game is instigated by Amanda and Raphael, but Meredith does not want to participate.

[00:33:27] Kyle Risi: So this came from him. This? Mm-hmm. I remember this news. Well probably come from his lawyer. Right, right. Okay. Rudy alleges that Amanda forces the boys to assault Meredith, and then Amanda kills Meredith with a knife. 

[00:33:41] Adam Cox: Okay. That's weird.

[00:33:43] Adam Cox: They 

[00:33:43] Kyle Risi: have an animation, Adam, they have an animation. They make an animation of, 

[00:33:48] Adam Cox: well, like a reenacted of what happened. 

[00:33:50] Kyle Risi: Yes. And what's crazy is like the jury are like lapping it up as if it's CCTV evidence. It's really heartbreaking and it completely destroys Amanda, but, and that's 

[00:34:01] Adam Cox: someone's job. Can you like recreate this event in cg?

[00:34:05] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[00:34:05] Kyle Risi: Based on what? Oh, just based on what I say. No footprints, no whereabouts? No CCTV no evidence of how they moved around the room. No, no. Just do what I say. So 

[00:34:15] Adam Cox: how weird that this guy Rudy has gone? Yeah. Like, oh no, Amanda's not involved. I was there, but I didn't, you know, I heard a commotion. And then completely backtracked now that he's got a solicitor.

[00:34:27] Kyle Risi: Crazy, huh? Mm-hmm. So previously, of course, the story was that Amanda wasn't present at all. However, after seeing a lawyer, he changes the story, which completely devastates Amanda, because of course, um, it's a big fat lie, right? Mm-hmm. But this new version of the story perfectly feeds in to this prevailing public perception about Amanda, with a story of her being this wild, seductive fem fatel.

[00:34:54] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. The world's captivated by that story. Mm-hmm. And basically what's disgusting is that even after this omission of guilt, the press still mostly ignored Rudy because they, because he just wasn't as interesting as Amanda Knox and the fem fatal narrative.

[00:35:11] Kyle Risi: Yeah, 

[00:35:12] Adam Cox: that's because I didn't evens mental, I didn't know that this guy existed really, to be honest. 

[00:35:16] Kyle Risi: Exactly. But he is, the, the evidence is just overwhelming against him. Mm-hmm. So Rudy is ultimately sentenced to 30 years in prison, which has reduced to 16 years on appeal. And even though the guilt is evidence due to good behavior, he's released from prison on the 23rd November, 2021, having served just 13 years of his 16 year sentence. 

[00:35:41] Adam Cox: So he is found guilty and he does serve time.

[00:35:45] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. So, but there, but he's not the main 

[00:35:47] Kyle Risi: culprit. He's, he's saying that it was partial guilt. Right. So he says, I did it, but. I, well didn't act alone, but because he's managed to plea or claim partial guilt, he is able to get his trial, um, fast tracked ahead of Amanda's because I think it's just a way of getting a, a lesser sentence for him. Right. Okay. Otherwise, if they had the trial first, then they might not look it for him. Right. Okay. If, if she wins her trial, yeah. See,

[00:36:14] Kyle Risi: yeah. It just makes me sick that he's ham print is in Meredith's blood and that links him directly to the crime scene. Yet that focus still remains on, on Amanda and Raphael. Yeah. Just because the authorities wanna maintain this weird stance that they have, they don't wanna lose 

[00:36:30] Adam Cox: face after all the, yeah. Or supposed evidence that they've got on her. 

[00:36:34] Kyle Risi: So after Rudy's sentencing, everyone goes along with this kind of drug fueled sex game narrative, which really does affect Amanda's trial because every appearance she makes in court just kind of fuels more of that media kind of scrutiny. They. Constantly discuss her appearance and her behavior. For instance, when she smiled upon seeing her family in court, it's kind of twisted into like she's smiling after committing a murder.

[00:36:59] Kyle Risi: Like what a terrible person she is. Mm-hmm. And I mean, what a terrible misrepresentation of being relieved and happy to see your family member. Yeah. I know your mom and your dad, 

[00:37:08] Kyle Risi: I guess, uh, if she was actually guilty, we'd probably feel different, but, 'cause we know 

[00:37:12] Kyle Risi: that she was disagreed. Yeah, possibly. Yeah. Possibly. 

[00:37:15] Kyle Risi: So another issue was the slow place of the trial due to kind of, it's least weird traditional breaking up for the summer. So they have to kind of pause for two months and that just makes the process even more agonizing for Amanda because in between these, the slow decision making or Tering, mm-hmm. She's just living in agony, right? Stuck in prison for a crime that she did not commit. So are you telling 

[00:37:40] Adam Cox: me if I became a lawyer in Italy, I would get somewhere off? 

[00:37:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Hmm. That's a thought. It's too late for you to make a career change, Adam. So the prosecution leaned heavily into the sex gay narrative and despite the DNA evidence, not linking Amanda strongly enough to the crime scene, the defense team request that the DNA be retested, but this is completely dismissed by the judge and the defense team. Were like, what? But it's not strong enough. Clearly, it's, it's trace evidence.

[00:38:07] Kyle Risi: And he is like, yeah, it's just not necessary. Really. Yeah. 

[00:38:10] Adam Cox: So he wants this over and done with? 

[00:38:12] Kyle Risi: I think so. I think so. So after they come back from summer break, the judge finally finds Amanda guilty, and she is sentenced to 26 years in prison. And literally the crowd erupts, right? And Amanda leaves. And as she's leaving, she, she, she just collapses.

[00:38:29] Kyle Risi: She cannot even stand up. She's so shocked. She just did not see this coming. She honestly thought that she would be exonerated. It feels like a nightmare. 

[00:38:39] Adam Cox: You must, absolutely. Yeah. You must think that some, they're gonna have realized something's gonna come up and get me off this hook when, you know, deep down, you know, I've got nothing to do with this.

[00:38:47] Adam Cox: Mm. 

[00:38:47] Kyle Risi: Well, sure. I can't imagine it. Raphael, however, has given 25 years now, Amanda Knox has given the additional year for the false accusation that she made against Patrick. Now, typically in Italy, false accusations carried like a three year sentence, but the judge reduces us down to one, considering that Amanda Knox has already served three years in prison.

[00:39:09] Adam Cox: Right. So she's already got three years in prison. Mm-hmm. Already by this 

[00:39:12] Kyle Risi: point. Yeah, just three years later. Damn. Ugh. It's devastating, isn't it? Yeah. I'm exhausted. Poor Amanda. So after sentencing prosecutor, manini goes around shaking everyone's hands, and he's kissing all sorts of babies, and he's literally boing, 

[00:39:30] Adam Cox: why are the babies at 

[00:39:31] Kyle Risi: court?

[00:39:31] Kyle Risi: No. You know what I mean? It's like a politician thing. He's kind of doing the rounds, okay. And he's been celebrating. Sorry, that made me sound really creepy. Sorry. But you know what I mean? Yeah. That's what politicians and these type of people do. So he's boasting about how he solved the crime of the century and how he found the knife and the DNA and how he managed to connect all the dots.

[00:39:50] Kyle Risi: So obviously Amanda and Raphael, they appeal, but it takes forever for the appeal to come through. And meanwhile, what the documentaries don't tell you is that Raphael actually spends six months in solitary confinements, and during this time he starts to communicate through letters.

[00:40:07] Kyle Risi: And Raphael sends Amanda Flowers for her birthday, white lilies, which are her favorite. Um, but sadly the guys won't let her have them at all, which I guess, I mean, you're in prison, but yeah, it'd be nice if she's got some flowers. You know what I mean? 

[00:40:21] Adam Cox: I guess. But then I guess if you're a prison guide, you're thinking you're a murderer.

[00:40:23] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So Amanda, so she writes back to him and she just says to do, you know what? I'm not interested in you anymore. Don't contact me anymore. And yeah, it really breaks his heart because he was really, really in love with her. Mm. Which is so sad. So Amanda also talks about her experience entering prison.

[00:40:42] Kyle Risi: Like she talks about all the invasive male doctors examining her and even taking pictures of the inside of her vagina. Why, why do they need to do that? God knows. I'd check. Check for drugs. I don't know. God knows. It's gross. Maybe it's to humiliate them. Probably. Possibly, yeah. Subjugation, who knows? She also faces loads of sexual harassment from various guards who would say things like, like, you're gonna have sex with me because you're a slut, and things like that, because of like this reputation that she has, right?

[00:41:11] Kyle Risi: It's horrible. Um, one of her confidants in prison is this chaplain who over time, like after getting to know her, he like, truly, truly believes that she's innocent and apparently like he is really instrumental. Just keeping her sane throughout the entire ordeal. Mm-hmm. All those three years. So in prison, she does have some roommates.

[00:41:32] Kyle Risi: She has one who is this American roommate who is really nice actually. And she really advises her well. She teaches her how to be tough in prison. You know, how to trade tampons for like Right. Kind of minutes on the phone. Very orange is a new black. Yeah. That's how I imagine it. When I was reading through it, um, by the way, I made that up about the tampons.

[00:41:52] Kyle Risi: Right. Ah-huh Uh, no, I just, because that's what you see on, she doesn't mention that in the book, but I imagine that's what she probably had to do, you know? Okay. Um, and she would like show her the ropes and things like that. So sadly she was released in, Amanda was still in prison, but they continued to write to each other, which was really nice.

[00:42:07] Kyle Risi: And she would offer her advice on what to do in certain situations. Um, so I guess, yeah, there's just like no friend, like a friend that you meet in prison, you know? Mm-hmm. Or you're drinking like wine out of a toilet. That's where the best bonding is done. You know? Moonshine. Moonshine, yeah. Can you imagine like using your toilets to make some wine, but then you're desperately needing a Wii?

[00:42:26] Kyle Risi: Um, like you just ruined the batch of wine or like having explosive diarrhea. Oh, he's like, that's gross, Adam, you just ruined the wine. Why is it me? I dunno. You sound like a kind of guy who would have explosive diarrhea. Shut up.

[00:42:40] Kyle Risi: So the media's first comments about her during the appeal was about obviously her appearance, as it always is, saying how skinny she looked and perhaps she needed to kind of have her, her hair and makeup done, which is mental because if she had had a makeup and hair done, they would've said, oh, look how she's like trying to make herself look present, or they probably found something negative to say about her, which is just awful.

[00:43:01] Kyle Risi: Again, as with so many high profile cases involving young women, it always just comes down to that appearance, which just is completely detracting from the real issue at hand. And that is she's trying to prove that she's not bloody guilty, you know? Yeah. 

[00:43:17] Adam Cox: And does she like dress appropriately for that? How does she do that?

[00:43:19] Adam Cox: Does, does she dress timidly and Yeah. Kind of like, you know, plain and everything? Or does she try and address assertive or 

[00:43:25] Kyle Risi: That's it, and if she chose any one of those avenues, they would find the, the negative angle on that. Mm. Yeah. So in her book, she writes about how she like couldn't show any joy when she saw her family at all.

[00:43:37] Kyle Risi: She just had to have this kind of dazed focused look on her face at all times. And she made a few statements during her time in court. At first they were kind of strong and clear, but halfway through, like the pressure really gets to her and she just ends up breaking down. Right? And like during the second statement that she makes, like she was just overcome with tears, like in sadness.

[00:43:59] Kyle Risi: So something of the course that you would probably expect under kind of these types of circumstances, right? Mm-hmm. Of course, this was interpreted as a sign of, again, instability. So again, putting a negative spin on it. Guilt A guilt probably. Oh, she can't face up to it. Like she's remembering what she's done.

[00:44:17] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. She can't deal with it. And once again, yeah, every time the press just jump at it. So during the appeal, um, they have a different judge and the appeal's process in Italy is a little bit different to how it is in the United States, where of course Amanda is from.

[00:44:32] Kyle Risi: So in Italy, an appeal isn't about reviewing the same evidence, right. It's about bringing in brand new evidence. Okay. And I think the UK is similar in that sense. So the lawyer argues that fresh forensic scientists are needed to be brought into kind of the investigation because the previous investigation was completely botched.

[00:44:53] Kyle Risi: So it needs to all be done again and all reassessed. Okay? So the request is granted, and a new forensic scientist comes aboard and he completely criticizes everything about the original investigation. He shows how every single scene of the crime was like contaminated in some way.

[00:45:13] Kyle Risi: This is where he shows that footage showing how the people that were examining kind of the evidence were just literally touching everything one after the other. Mm-hmm. They were picking certain items up, putting them down, picking the next bit up. They weren't changing gloves. Right. They weren't bagging things up properly.

[00:45:28] Kyle Risi: They were just putting them all on the same thing. You could even see them handling kind of the bra clasp that had Raphael and Amanda's DNA on it and how they would then also touch other items. Right. And that's how that DNA got on there.

[00:45:41] Adam Cox: Yeah, I was gonna say that's quite an odd place to find that. But if they're just so like not careful and, 

[00:45:47] Kyle Risi: and remember the bra classs wasn't found for weeks and weeks. Mm-hmm. So in that time, there's loads of opportunity for DNA to get on that bra.

[00:45:56] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:45:57] Kyle Risi: So the new scientist confirms that Raphael's DNA was on the bra class, but points out that it didn't necessarily mean that he had touched it. It only suggested the item. Had come into contact with something that he had touched. And the DNA evidence on the Knife originally claimed to belong to Meredith was also disputed because the quantity of DNA on this knife was too small for it to be anything definitive at all.

[00:46:22] Kyle Risi: And also the knife had also been stored in a location that could have easily just been cross-contaminated by other items. Anyway, I, 

[00:46:32] Adam Cox: God, I, I really hate to think about the other, like criminal investigations, these, uh, um, forensics and, uh, detectives work done if they let something as big and high profile as this go to, crap. 

[00:46:45] Kyle Risi: You probably don't ever hear about any of them. Yeah.

[00:46:47] Kyle Risi: So at this point the narrative begins to shift and the American media catch wind of what's happening. In this case, they're like four years too late. It's crazy. So as the forensic evidence is presented, it becomes clear that Amanda and Raphael's DNA wasn't where it was initially reported to be.

[00:47:04] Kyle Risi: Instead, Rudy's DNA is found everywhere. However, rather than showing remorse for the damage that was caused by the initial reporting, the media are just instead excited about the new twist in the story. Oh God. And they're basically just kind of assume this new angle without being accountable at all for the damaging angle they took initially.

[00:47:28] Kyle Risi: Right. Okay. It's just so sickening. So a reporter even admitted that he didn't feel guilty for publicizing kind of Amanda's prison diaries and. Making references about what, or inferences, sorry, about what had happened. Instead, he just puts all the blame on the legal system. And when pressed about this, his response was like, what did, what was I supposed to do?

[00:47:49] Kyle Risi: Like check every fact that we get? 

[00:47:51] Adam Cox: Yes, you're supposed to be a journalist, you mornon 

[00:47:54] Kyle Risi: that's exactly what you're supposed to do. So one of the key journalists was this British guy called Nick Piza. He's the main guy, right? That led a lot of this media across the world. He becomes heavily involved and he's now mostly a tabloid writer working for papers like the Daily Mail and The Mirror, right?

[00:48:13] Kyle Risi: So he gets picked for this job because he can translate everything really easily. But most importantly, quickly. And so because of this, most papers go with like his stories.

[00:48:25] Kyle Risi: So he writes the stories and they then take his stories to then write their own stories. Right. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's like secondhand information, which just perpetuates everything. So because he has this background in tabloid journalism, the entire thing explodes because he knows how to write these kind of sensationalist kind of articles.

[00:48:45] Kyle Risi: What a m**********r Yeah. Just can't believe it. And he's still about today, still spreading lies. Nick, Piza, f**k you, Nick. 

[00:48:54] Kyle Risi: He says in the documentary that if he didn't report things immediately, someone else would've got the headline. He. So he just wanted to be the guy to be bringing all the news. And he was, but at what cost? And it's astonishing to me that he didn't even stop to think about kind of the potential repercussions on this woman's life and also Raphael's life.

[00:49:14] Kyle Risi: 'cause we always seem to forget him in this story. 

[00:49:16] Adam Cox: Do you know what? There are better detectives and journalists on Reddit than this guy. Yeah, 

[00:49:20] Kyle Risi: Internet slueths you should have got them on this case. Yeah. She could have gone to jail forever and he's just directing all this attention to an area that's just making the newspapers more and more money rather than towards the objective truth. Yeah. Uh, so he generally seems to believe that he didn't play a role in this at all. And he puts more blame on the police investigation than he does on himself and the media.

[00:49:43] Kyle Risi: And I personally think that the guilt lies probably equally between both parties because. Lots of people call this a trial by media, right? Mm-hmm. But the fanciful prosecution were playing into this 'cause they were trying to drive a specific narrative.

[00:49:58] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So it's both of their faults, right? They're both using 

[00:50:00] Adam Cox: each other. Exactly. And the police aren't gonna back down or admit fault when this guy has been Oh, pushing these stories. 

[00:50:07] Kyle Risi: And they don't. Amanda made an interesting point. During her appeal, she felt that instead of looking at the evidence, they were just studying her reactions. Mm-hmm. And they were constantly showing her things just to observe her reactions, which isn't objective evidence at all. Like you can't base something on someone's reaction because it's not like people react in different ways.

[00:50:31] Kyle Risi: Right. Big Brother. 

[00:50:32] Kyle Risi: So there's a significant amount of evidence presented in the appeal that indicates that Amanda and Raphael are completely innocent. However, the prosecution doubled down on their story and they maintained that they were just representing justice for Meredith and painted Amanda as this diabolical, even suggesting that she was performing Satanic rituals, which we're gonna come back onto because Manini.

[00:50:58] Kyle Risi: He has a history of this. Right? Okay. Yeah. So, in a bizarre twist, Amanda is sentenced to an extra year in prison for slander against the prosecution. What? Uh, yeah. Another year. Yeah, because she apparently, yeah. So she claims that Detective Rita, uh, Fakara had hit her during an interrogation, which she maintains as a lie.

[00:51:19] Kyle Risi: So, She gets convicted of slander and she gets an extra year added on to her sentence. So 27 years 

[00:51:25] Adam Cox: she's serving. Mm-hmm. And does that include the three years that she served before the sentencing? Or is that, I guess 

[00:51:31] Kyle Risi: that's, or could it be all of that? Oh, that's interesting. I don't know. I think 'cause yeah, I don't know.

[00:51:36] Kyle Risi: So we're looking 

[00:51:36] Adam Cox: at 27 to 30 years. Mm-hmm. Whatever that is. 

[00:51:38] Kyle Risi: They also brought two men in who were in prison with Rudy and these men say that on two separate occasions, Rudy had apparently told them what had happened.

[00:51:49] Kyle Risi: Apparently Rudy told them that he went to Meredith's house with a friend intending to fool around with her. At one point, Rudy takes a break again, he goes to the bathroom. I think that's the only thing that's true. 

[00:52:00] Adam Cox: He went to the bathroom 

[00:52:02] Kyle Risi: to have a poo. To have a poo. And when he returns, his friend is trying to restrain Meredith and trying to rape her.

[00:52:08] Kyle Risi: So the friend is like, Hey Rudy, come on. And Rudy just agrees. And then they take turns restraining her while the other rapes her. And then afterwards they kill her because they don't want her to report the crime, 

[00:52:18] Adam Cox: right? And so they find another 

[00:52:20] Kyle Risi: person's DNA. Well that's the thing. So they say that Rudy then broke the window in the bedroom to make it look like a burglary.

[00:52:28] Kyle Risi: And according to the evidence, it looked like the window, however, was broken from the inside, even though the rock was found in the room, right? And the guess is that he had brought the rock back in. Now, the only reason I don't think a third person was involved is that Rudy's, DNA is literally all over the room, right?

[00:52:46] Kyle Risi: There is a third party's DNA. Yes. But there it's just trace amounts of DNA, which could have got there in all sorts of different ways. Remember Philomena and her friends were in the room when they discovered the body. The police are in and out as well. She lived with a bunch of people, like as a dorm room for God's sake.

[00:53:03] Adam Cox: But I guess regardless, this confession, whether there was another person or not, is him admitting that there was no Amanda Knox, correct? 

[00:53:11] Kyle Risi: But the prosecution, as I mentioned, they just keep doubling down. He has this appalling recreation made, which I mentioned earlier on, that depicts what he thinks happened on the night of the murder. So Amanda has to just sit there watching herself, instructing her boyfriend and Rudy. To rape her roommate and then watch herself kill her roommate, which is mad. What is mad is that the, the jury is hugely influenced by this. As I said earlier on, they think that they're like watching CCTV footage.

[00:53:41] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. But it's blatant just a stupid animation. That's terrible. If you get the opportunity to look it up, it's ridiculous. So then the appeal process goes on summer break again. So Amanda has to wait another six weeks in prison to find out what the outcome of her appeal is gonna be. And as it went badly, the offs course the last time, you can only imagine just how anxious, she's probably six 

[00:54:05] Adam Cox: weeks to wait for this decision.

[00:54:08] Adam Cox: Yeah, that is, that just feels 

[00:54:10] Kyle Risi: unfair. It is unfair. Right. But just like that, when the court resumes, the new judge acquits them both. Really? Yeah. But Italy. Is at this point, furious. She leaves to the sounds of like the Italians literally imagine Game of Thrones screaming shame at her.

[00:54:29] Kyle Risi: Really? Yeah. 

[00:54:30] Adam Cox: So, wow. So they have bought into 100% 

[00:54:34] Kyle Risi: the whole completely impressive, and they should all be ashamed, right? So in her book, she talks about how she's driven back to prison to collect all of her things, and when she gets there, she gets to say goodbye to some of her friends. And she talks about how there are these kind of weird superstitions in prison.

[00:54:48] Kyle Risi: When you leave, you're supposed to like break your toothbrush because that's your link to prison. And so breaking it breaks that link, right? You're also supposed to give your bedsheets to your roommate. And then, and I can't get this outta my head, then when you're leaving, you have to drag your right foot along the ground in a line.

[00:55:08] Kyle Risi: What? So that the next prisoner that comes in is then freed. It's like a weird superstition. So 

[00:55:15] Adam Cox: you just, you're dragging your leg behind you as if you've got limp or something like 

[00:55:18] Kyle Risi: that. Yeah. That's how I imagine Amanda doing it and she does it.

[00:55:21] Adam Cox: I'm like, Kevin, you know when Kevin Spacey in the usual suspects? 

[00:55:24] Kyle Risi: Mm. 

[00:55:25] Adam Cox: He's walking along and all of a sudden then starts walking. Okay. 

[00:55:29] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That's weird. Yeah. So in, in some accounts they say, you scuff your foot, but in, in this account here, you drag your foot along. Right. So I thought that was quite interesting.

[00:55:39] Kyle Risi: And did she do those things? Yeah, she did. Yeah. Good. So Amanda's driven away to a safe house in a car because Absolutely. They cannot stay in a hotel because Italy Furious. Mm-hmm. And her mother and stepfather follow them in the car. And when they are far enough away, their carpools over, and that's the moment that she's reunited with her mom.

[00:56:01] Kyle Risi: Oh, isn't that sad? Can you just imagine getting out on like a side of a road? Mm. And just like I can just imagine just running at each other and just embracing, embracing each other. Yeah. 

[00:56:08] Kyle Risi: So of course the prosecution team keeps slandering her. And in the documentary they talk to the man who defended Rudy, right? And they ask him point blank, do you think that you were a good lawyer? Right? What do you think? He says, yes. At first he gets mad and then he says who managed to get their clients through the legal system real fast and is now out of jail. 

[00:56:30] Adam Cox: Oh. So he did a good job, but I guess not ethically. 

[00:56:34] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I guess ethically. Mm-hmm. Which, I mean, to be fair, he's supposed to be working in the interest of his clients. So True. It's a good comeback. Yeah.

[00:56:42] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Eventually, Amanda gets home to the U S A and the press are of course all over her. And there's this intriguing moment with the press and her father where they ask like, like, are you gonna share the story? Is she gonna be writing a book? Is she gonna give interviews? What's happening? And they, they implied that if she waited, then like she wouldn't be that popular later on.

[00:57:02] Kyle Risi: And her father responds with like, I don't see my daughter as a popular commodity. Like, she's my daughter. This is her life. Leave her the hell alone. Yeah. Which I think good for him. I. So six years later, back in Italy, the prosecution make their appeal. Right, right. So they're still at it and like, Jesus, just let it go.

[00:57:23] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Of course Amanda doesn't attend and guess what? She is found guilty again. So who is 

[00:57:32] Adam Cox: representing her at this appeal? As if she doesn't turn up, but what? What 

[00:57:38] Kyle Risi: people? Nope, they're just, I guess she's just not there. Right? She's thinking, oh, 

[00:57:41] Adam Cox: they're not gonna do, yeah. Yeah. But she gets found guilty. And what do they find her guilty on this time?

[00:57:46] Adam Cox: 'cause have they not gotta have new evidence 

[00:57:49] Kyle Risi: apparently. Yeah. Right. I dunno. I dunno. All I know is that she gets found guilty again. Okay. Now the lawyers in Italy appeal once more and the final appeal, they are entirely exonerated. That means they are, they can never be tried again. It's done. Now, is 

[00:58:09] Adam Cox: there like a maximum you can have on this?

[00:58:10] Adam Cox: Something like that? Yes. Just so she's been found guilty. Still guilty, acquitted. Guilty is all right. I've lost 

[00:58:18] Kyle Risi: track, if I'm honest. So when they receive the news, the two of them, Amanda and Raphael, they call each other and they're just like, we're free. Oh, we're free. It's done. It's over. Case closed. So, and it just can't be revisited again, sadly, Meredith's family still believe that Amanda was the killer.

[00:58:35] Kyle Risi: And from what I understand, they're confused. Right. They've even suggested that if Amanda's not guilty, then who is? And I mean, it's just Rudy on his own. Right. But I mean, they, they seem to believe that there's another, there must be another murder out there. 'cause they don't believe that Rudy would've acted alone.

[00:58:51] Kyle Risi: Right. Okay. But I just believe it's Rudy, you know, and listen, even if I don't agree. I do understand their position, which appears to stem from their trust in the police and the prosecution, right? Mm-hmm. Um, who were treating them with respect and who told them, you know what, like, we're gonna find the person who killed your daughter.

[00:59:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And we're going to go and get them for you. So I get it. I get where they're coming from. The Supreme Court cites stunning, stunning flaws in the evidence and the investigation, as well as the excessive immediate attention, which the case attracted, which they say led to the frantic search for guilty parties.

[00:59:29] Kyle Risi: And they say that it was this lack of biological evidence that ultimately led to their exoneration. So to sum up what the Supreme Court is saying here is that this was a witch hunt. Mm-hmm. And they're, they're, they're saying it in a very roundabout way, right? Yeah. With. Like with the police, the prosecution and the media, they're all, they're all playing their own part in this, but it was all just a witch hunt.

[00:59:55] Adam Cox: I think the thing is like with the evidence being like trace DNA, surely, or, you know, if you look at, so my understanding with a, a jury, they need to be able to find someone guilty without any sort of reasonable doubt or anything like that. Mm-hmm. And if there's, there's no, it doesn't, for me, there's been nothing presented that suggests like there isn't doubt with her sort 

[01:00:17] Kyle Risi: of thing.

[01:00:17] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't seem like it does it? Yeah. 

[01:00:20] Kyle Risi: So the documentary also features an interview with Manini, you know Shark Holmes? Yeah. And he says that if Amanda and Raphael are innocent, then I hope they can forget the whole ordeal. But if they're guilty, he says God will now ultimately judge them. Because now it's out of my hands. 

[01:00:38] Adam Cox: It kind of feels like poor him, poor him that, you know, he did his, he tried to do his best and now what 

[01:00:43] Kyle Risi: else can he do? Well, I hope he doesn't do nothing else because he should retire. I, he retired. Yeah, for sure. Manini still maintains that he was acting for good and he's eventually promoted to general prosecutor in Perugia. So God help. Whoever ends up running into legal trouble under his watch. 

[01:01:02] Adam Cox: Yeah. You just have to have some dodgy makeup and you could be on killed more found guilty. What do you mean? 

[01:01:07] Kyle Risi: Well, he seems to find any Oh yeah.

[01:01:09] Kyle Risi: Oh, that's the devil in you. Yeah. Yeah. So there's this quote from Amanda, which is just so fitting to the story. People love monsters, so when they get the chance, they want to see them. Hmm. So sad. Yeah. Interesting to note that this wasn't prosecutor Malini's first controversial case. 

[01:01:27] Kyle Risi: There was another case known as the monster of Florence, between like 1968 and 1985. Apparently the killer targeted kind of mostly women and was notorious for mutilating the bodies after they were killed. He coins the murders as some kind of satanic ritual.

[01:01:43] Kyle Risi: He ends up being part of the prosecution team where he wrongly again, implicates kind of this farm hand. Right. Um, for the murders, um, the case is largely circumstantial and really baseless, and the trial is heavily kind of criticized, which leads to the farm hand ultimately being acquitted in the end on appeal.

[01:02:02] Kyle Risi: Right. So he gets, he gets charged, he gets arrested, he gets kind of sentenced, and then he appeals just like Amanda. But so even then he was known for kind of weaving together patterns to make things fit, to make himself look like a hero. But this whole satanic thing was very present in this case, which is crazy.

[01:02:23] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So in 2010, manini is convicted of abuse of office in a separate case related to the monsters of Florence all those years ago. Mm-hmm. And, but he never actually serves any actual jail time. So unfortunately he's still out there and he's still trying cases. Is he? Yeah. Not bad. So Amanda has since gone on to do some really remarkable stuff.

[01:02:46] Kyle Risi: So during her appeal, one of her friends from back home moved to Perugia to help Amanda through kind of the trial. Mm-hmm. And she made contact with a guy called Saul Cassin, who is known as like the godfather of the Innocence Project. Right. Which I just love this project. So basically it helps to exonerate people who are like a wrongly convicted mm-hmm.

[01:03:08] Kyle Risi: Of various crimes. And Saul has also contested the Reed technique in interrogations, which the perusing detectives used in Amanda's case and still continue to use in loads of cases, or pretty much it's just standard practice still right now. As far as I'm aware, I think it's going through some kind of reform or it's gone through some kind of reform in the last few years.

[01:03:29] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. But I dunno if it's quite fully there. But basically the re technique is an interrogation method that was developed in the 1950s, and it's characterized by kind of the high pressure environment that they put the interviewee through. Mm-hmm. Which is composed of like three core components.

[01:03:46] Kyle Risi: Something called factual analysis, um, the interviewing, and then the interrogation. So the interrogation process of that, that's the last bit, is like super accusatory. Um, where like the investigator tells a person being interrogated, like all the evidence points to your involvement in the crime. And apparently there's like nine steps involved that they take the person through this interrogation process.

[01:04:08] Kyle Risi: It's confrontation. Mm-hmm. It's like theme development, whatever that means. Handling of denials, overcoming objections, uh, procurement of retention of the kind of suspect's, attention handling, the suspect's kind of passive mood, presenting an alternative question, having the suspect orally relates to various details of the offense.

[01:04:31] Kyle Risi: That's, we saw this kind of same thing with, um, Jennifer Pan, where they were like, okay, tell me the story again. Oh, now tell me the story backwards. Now tell me the story this way. And Oh, what does it look like if you're looking up from the top of the ceiling? Yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah. After that, then it's converting the oral confession into a written confession. Mm-hmm. Which is what they did with Amanda. But critics argue that the re technique often like leads to false confessions. Mm-hmm. And this led to a false confession with Amanda.

[01:05:00] Adam Cox: I still find that so bizarre, but I guess not I, yeah, I can't understand kind under that pressure. But to think that you would put your name to something, which Yeah. You know, in a sane mind. 

[01:05:11] Kyle Risi: I think it would, it could happen to you easily. Yeah. I think you're just underestimating the power of no sleep, no food.

[01:05:17] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Needing and be on your period. Mm-hmm. I'm not sure about that. So Saul explains that false confessions aren't rare at all, and that over a quarter of people exonerated by the Innocence Project had falsely confessed to their crimes. Amanda now actually works on the Innocence Project herself, which is awesome.

[01:05:38] Kyle Risi: That's good. She also has her own podcast called Labyrinth, and she has another one called The Truth About True Crime, and she's married and I think she's got like a kid. Oh, cool. So yeah, as we, as we mentioned already, Rudy was released from prison on good behavior, despite the court convicting him of both rape and murder.

[01:05:58] Kyle Risi: And Meredith doesn't really get much attention at all. I 

[01:06:02] Adam Cox: was gonna say, it's all about 

[01:06:03] Kyle Risi: Amanda, isn't it really? It really is. Mm. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have Meredith's name in the title of this podcast, because ultimately it is a story about Meredith Kercher.

[01:06:14] Adam Cox: Yeah. And. We don't seem to talk about it anywhere near as much as Amanda. Yeah. Yes. Because it's a, for unfortunate things happen to Amanda afterwards, but at the end of the day, it's Meredith that lost her life. Yeah. 

[01:06:28] Kyle Risi: And also even Rudy as well. Like it's a, also a story about Rudy, but it doesn't really factor factoring in either.

[01:06:36] Kyle Risi: So the Netflix documentary aimed to get a firsthand account of all the main people involved, but the coaches just did not want to be involved in any way with anything related to Amanda because they still firmly believed that she killed their daughter.

[01:06:51] Kyle Risi: Mm. And yeah, that is, That's the story of Amanda Knox and Meredith Kercher. 

[01:06:58] Adam Cox: Yeah. I mean, well I hope that is, obviously Amanda is innocent and everything like that because we kind of sympathized with her based on mm-hmm. What was proven and everything else, and all the lack of 

[01:07:09] Kyle Risi: evidence. Hey, do you know what, at the end of the day, the sources that I looked at were the Netflix documentary and her book.

[01:07:15] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Um, and I wanted to hear it from their perspective. Meredith is not here to hear her side of the story, unfortunately. I can go ahead and read like Raphael's book. He's got one out on Abound, but, uh, he wasn't the main focal point on this at all. Mm-hmm. I'd be interested to read kind of Rudy's, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was just full of lives.

[01:07:36] Kyle Risi: I don't think I'd be able to trust it. He's got a book. He is in the process of writing a book. He wasn't really in the Netflix documentary. He, some of the lawyers that represented him were. The thinking was that well he is probably gonna be writing some kind of book at some point soon, um, about his account.

[01:07:55] Kyle Risi: So that's probably why he didn't want to be part of the Netflix deal or any other interviews. 

[01:08:01] Adam Cox: So you have his own thing, but at the moment everything points to him and yet he's getting a book that just 

[01:08:07] Kyle Risi: feels gross. Yeah, it's, yeah, that's what they speculate. Right. Just because of his lack of involvement.

[01:08:12] Kyle Risi: Right. Okay. With you. So like he might be holding up because he couldn't write the book in prison. Right. 'cause you're not allowed to profit some off of like something of a crime until you've like paid your debt or something like that. But he killed someone. Yeah. It's not 

[01:08:23] Adam Cox: like he burled something and was like, oh, I'm gonna tell you how I managed to unpick a lock and everything like that.

[01:08:29] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Wow. So yeah, that brings us to the end of another episode of the Compendium and Assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. Did you enjoy it? Yeah, that was a 

[01:08:39] Adam Cox: good two parter. It was worth waiting the week. Oh, 

[01:08:43] Kyle Risi: find, I'm 

[01:08:43] Adam Cox: really glad. Find out what happened. But yeah, it's, um, it was interesting 'cause I just, I, yeah, I think as we kind of just talked about it, it is all been about sort of Amanda, but didn't know the, the, the rubbish criminal, um, system in Italy at the 

[01:08:54] Kyle Risi: And the press, the press's kind of involvement in this as well. The bloody daily mail 

[01:08:58] Adam Cox: and whatever 

[01:08:59] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Ugh. Should we roll the credits? Okay, great. So we hope you've enjoyed this week's journey into intrigue with us.

[01:09:06] Kyle Risi: For more, remember, subscribe and drop us a five star cheeky review and schedule your downloads so you never miss an episode. It really helps us to grow the show when you do, and allows us to bring you more fascinating stories. 

[01:09:21] Kyle Risi: Join us beyond the show by following us at the Compendium Podcast on Instagram . And also, don't forget to now visit us on our digital home, on the interwebs@thecompendiumpodcast.com. New episodes are released every Tuesday, so join us next week where we'll delve into another captivating story. 

[01:09:39] Kyle Risi: And until then, 

[01:09:40] Kyle Risi: stay curious. 

[01:09:41] Kyle Risi: See ya. 

[01:09:42] Kyle Risi: See ya. 

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