This is going to be a long post. About half-way through it, I thought about turning it into an article for SOTT, but decided I'd run it past all of you first.
Last couple of evenings I took some time out to read the updated edition of
The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi. After one, thankfully brief, description of the murders, he considerately avoids graphic descriptions. (That's to let the squeamish know that they can survive this book which is well worth reading for other reasons.)
There are four main threads in the book: 1) the murders; 2) the completely bizarre world of Italian officialdom; 3) the activities of the journalist, Mario Spezi; 4) the involvement of Douglas Preston himself.
Regarding the murders, at one point, the Italian police/prosecutor, request a profile from the FBI's BSU. The results of this profile are included in the book and actually do describe accurately an individual who, in the opinion of Preston and Spezi, IS the killer. However, the Italian police/prosecutor just dump this profile to the side as useless and go after all kinds of peripheral individuals - and even some totally unrelated individuals - ruining lives, putting people in prison, subjecting them to horrendous interrogations, obviously buying witnesses, planting false evidence, and more. It's truly the most bizarre thing I've ever seen.
Respecting the bizarre world of Italian officialdom, while reading all this, I started having an intense feeling of deja vu... Apparently, the chief inspector Michele Guittari and the prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini (the latter apparently influencing the former) concocted the theory that behind the Monster killings was a satanic cult composed of a cabal of wealthy and powerful people who occupied the highest positions in society: business, law, medicine, etc. These individuals hired the killers (innocent dupes set up by Guittari and Mignini) to obtain body parts for their black masses.
Later on, as the case proceeded, it became obvious where Mignini was getting his ideas: from an online conspiracy theorist named Gabriella Carlizzi. Preston writes about Lizard Woman (for such she is):
Carlizzi claimed to know a great deal of hidden information about many infamous European crimes of the past decades - including the kidnapping and murder of the former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro and the Belgian pedophile ring. Behind them all, she said, was the School of the Red Rose. On the day of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Carlizzi shot a fax out to Italian newspapers: "It was them, the members fo the Red Rose. How they want to strike Bus!" The Red Rose was also behind the Monster killings. Carlizzi had earlier been convicted of defamation for claiming the well-known Italian writer Alberto Bevilacqua was the Monster of Florence, but since that time her theories had apparently evolved. Her site was also filled with religious and inspirational stories and a section in which she detailed her conversations with the Madonna of Fatima.
Carlizzi became an expert witness for the investigation. Giuttari and his {task force} detectives called her in and listened to her for hours - perhaps even days - as she recounted her knowledge of the activities of the satanic sect hidden in the green hills of Tuscany. The police had to give her a protective escort, she would later claim, because of the grave danger she faced from members of the sect intent on silencing her.
Obviously, there ARE cases where something along this line (Satanic or pseudo-satanic cults in high places) MIGHT be true, but I don't think it is that simple. And I think that IF such cabals exist (and there are a lot of clues pointing in that direction), this is certainly not how they would be getting their stuff, whatever it is. Reading the rants of Lizard woman, a selection of which Preston includes in his book, we can easily recognize the flavor of this whole situation.
One might almost think that Carlizzi was a deliberate creation of some secret services, mind-programmed and controlled to introduce lies and confusion into selected situations for
the purposes of damage-control. But again, it's not that simple. As I've said repeatedly, there are plenty of pathologically deficient people who, when a gap between official reality and observed reality opens, jump right in there and fill it with the most insane nonsense that is simply derived from their own psychological deficiencies. We've seen enough of them show up on this forum.
The end result is, of course, not just muddying of the waters, but the destruction of logic in those who are susceptible, and worst of all: giving any research or ideas that are NOT controlled by the mainstream, a bad name. Notice how Preston includes the remark that Carlizzi is concerned with spiritual matters and chats with the Madonna. So any spirituality or research into the paranormal is automatically tarnished by association with the truly insane ideas spouted by this Lizard woman, Carlizzi.
Ya really have to read the book to get the full sense of this.
Anyway, this very much reminded me of the influence internet defamation had on the Police Judiciare in Toulouse - and possibly the prosecutor of the department wherein we live. The "crime" of which we were accused - being a dangerous "secte" - is obviously not as serious as the string of murders attributed to the Monster of Florence, but I think you can see where such accusations COULD lead! And, of course, during that investigation we were subjected to, I had a very difficult time really grokking how these supposedly intelligent, logical, clear thinking French officials could be so gullible and actually initiate and base an investigation on such nonsense and drivel. I mean, it literally boggles the mind. And no matter what we said then, and later during the Fiscal audit, no matter how many documents we provided, how much proof we pointed to, it literally made no difference. It was assumed that we were just really good at covering our tracks and hiding our TRUE activities. Preston, it seems, came up against the same realization about the Italians which caused me to reflect on the similarities between the Italians and French. What is interesting in Preston's story was the explanation he received from no less a person than Count Niccolo Capponi.
Capponi's Palazzo was used in the film "Hannibal" in the scenes where Hannibal Lecter, alias "Dr. Fell", was employed as the curator of the Capponi library and archive.
http://www.terraditoscana.com/hannibal/uk/pages/kappa.htm
Capponi, himself, is a historian/professor, author of a book about Machiavelli: http://www.amazon.com/An-Unlikely-Prince-Times-Machiavelli/dp/B004I1JQZC
So, Preston meets Capponi and they become friends. This is also described in the book as well as some interesting background to the making of the movie "Hannibal." Capponi is also friends with the Italian journalist, Mario Spezi, who covered the Monster murders from day one and observed the insanity of the Italian investigation and later was completely shocked by the behavior of the media. The investigation of Mignini and Guittari proceeds. When one suspect whose life has been ruined by their confabulations gets away, they don't miss a beat, they find another person's life to ruin with false accusations along with the lives of all the peripheral people involved with that person. At this point, Count Niccolo and Preston are having lunch together and Capponi, as a historian, tries to explain things:
Dietrologia,” said Count Niccolo. “That is the only Italian word you need to know to understand the Monster of Florence investigation.”
We were having our usual lunch at II Bordino. I was eating baccala, salt cod, while the Count enjoyed stuffed arista. “Dietrologia?” I asked.
“Dietro—behind. Logia—the study of.” The count spoke grandly, as if still in the lecture hall, his plummy English accent echoing in the cavelike interior of the restaurant.
“Dietrologia is the idea that the obvious thing cannot be the truth. There is always something hidden behind, dietro. It isn’t quite what you Americans call conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theory implies theory, something uncertain, a possibility. The dietrologist deals only in fact. This is how it really is. Aside from football, dietrologia is the national sport in Italy. Everyone is an expert at what's really going on, even . . . how do you Americans say it? . . . even if they don’t know jack -shite-{e}.”
“Why?” I asked.
"Because it gives them a feeling of importance! This importance may only be confined to a small circle of idiotic friends, but at least they are in the know. Potere, power, is that I know what you do not know. Dietrologia is tied to the Italian mentality of power. You must appear to be in the know about all things.”
“How does this apply to the Monster investigation?”
“My dear Douglas, it is the very heart of the matter! At all costs, they have to find something behind the apparent reality. There cannot not be something. Why? Because it is not possible that the thing you see is the truth. Nothing is simple, nothing is as it seems. Does it look like a suicide? Yes? Well then it must be murder. Somebody went out for coffee? Aha! He went out for coffee . . . But what was he really doing?”
He laughed.
“In Italy,” he continued, “there is a permanent climate of witch-hunting. You see, Italians are fundamentally envious. If somebody makes money, there must be a fiddle there somewhere. Of course he was in cahoots with someone else. Because of the cult of materialism here, Italians envy the rich and powerful. They’re suspicious of them and at the same time want to be them. They have a love-hate relationship with them. Berlusconi is a classic example.”
'And that’s why the investigators are looking for a satanic sect of the rich and powerful?”
"Precisely. And at all costs they have to find something. Once they’ve started, to save face they have to go on. For the sake of this idea, they will do anything. They cannot give it up. You anglosassoni do not understand the Mediterranean concept of face. I was doing historical research in a little thing that a distant ancestor had done three hundred years ago. Nothing very bad, just a naughty thing that was already largely known. The head of the family was aghast. He said, ‘You can’t publish this! Che figura ci facciamo! What shame it would cast upon our family!”
We finished and rose to pay at the counter. The count as usual insisted on picking up the tab ("They know me,” he explained, “and give me lo sconto, the discount”).
As we stood on the cobbled street outside the restaurant, Niccolo gazed at me gravely. “In Italy, the hatred of your enemy is such that he has to be built up, made into the ultimate adversary, responsible for all evil. The investigators in the Monster case know that behind the simple facts hides a satanic cult, its tentacles reaching into the highest levels of society. This is what they will prove, no matter what. Woe to the person”—he eyed me significantly—“who disputes their theory because that makes him an accomplice. The more vehemently he denies being involved, the stronger is the proof.”
He laid a large hand on my shoulder. “Then again, perhaps there is some truth to their theories. Perhaps there is a satanic sect. After all, this is Italy .
Let me paraphrase that statement: "The investigators know that behind the simple facts hides a cult...This is what they will prove, no matter what....The more vehemently it is denied, the stronger is the proof..." and we see exactly how WE were treated by the French Police Judiciare. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen.
So, this "lust to power," to to say, combined with endemic envy and over-weening self-importance appears to be the psychological state behind this Mediterranean concept of 'face' that permeates Italy, France and, I hear, Spain as well. I don't know about the other countries surrounding the Med, like Greece, Cyprus, but it seems that it may play a strong part in the psychological make-up of the Arabic countries as well, though certainly with a powerful religious twist. In France, there is, actually, a "religious twist" given to it: Being French is the religion of France, and it is just as damning as any other religion. (And that's not to say that being American is not the religion of America, fundamentally, and Calvinism has been drafted into the service of American exceptionalism.)
Getting back to the Monster of Florence, moving eventually to how this relates to Amanda Knox, sure enough, as Preston continues to relate the events, the efforts on his and Spezi's part to do a journalistic investigation into the murders in order to show how badly derailed the official investigation actually was, resulted in Preston being hauled in for a nasty interrogation, and subsequently, Mignini and Guittari, under the influence of the Lizard woman, manufactured evidence that Spezi was himself was the Monster/murderer, or at least the mastermind. You really have to read the book to see how twisted and pathological the thinking of Mignini and Guittari really is. I even wonder, at this point, if Mignini and Guittari were not using Carlizzi to spread rumors and memes to back them up, and what they were actually doing was throwing suspicion on a lot of innocent people in order to hide their own possible involvement in the very types of crimes they were projecting onto everybody and his brother. After all, that IS typical of the psychopathic mind: to accuse others of what you, yourself, are doing or plan to do.
What was amazing at this point was the effect that all this total nonsense had not only on the public, but on journalists themselves! Preston writes:
In my conversations with Italian friends and journalists, I was surprised to discover that quite a few suspected that at least some of the accusations {against Spezi and Preston, his accomplice!} were true. ... They viewed my outrage as naive and a bit gauche. To be outraged is to be earnest, to be sincere - and to be a dupe. Some Italians were quick to strike the pose of the world-weary cynic who takes nothing at face value and who is far too clever to be taken in by Spezi's and my protestations of innocent.
"Ah!" said Count Niccolo in one of our frequent conversations. "Of course Spezi and you were up to no good at that villa! Dietrologia insists that it be so. Only a naif would believe that you two journalists went to the villa 'just to have a look.' The police wouldn't have arrested Spezi for no reason! You see, Douglas, an Italian must always appear to be furbo. You don't have an English equivalent for that marvelous word. It means a person who is wily and cunning, who knows which way the wind is blowing, who can fool you but never be fooled himself. Everyone in Italy wants to believe the worst of others so they don't end up looking gullible. Above all, they want to be seen as furbo."
Thankfully, Spezi had a good friend in Preston to helped to create an international uproar.
Now, get this: Spezi was arrested and held incommunicado for five days before his arraignment. Only on that day was he allowed a bar of soap and a bath! At the hearing, the prosecutor, Mignini, appeared to argue why Spezi was a "danger to society." You are NOT going to believe this twisted reasoning:
"The journalist", Mignini wrote in his brief, "accused of obstructing the investigation of the Monster of Florence is at the center of a genuine disinformation campaign, not unlike that which might be undertaken by a deviant secret service." This disinformation operation, Mignini explained, was an attempt to derail the investigation into the "group of notable people" who had been the masterminds behind the killings of the Monster of Florence. ...Spezi had tried to redirect the investigation back to the Sardinian trail {indicated by the FBI profile, I should add}, because "in that case there wouldn't be even the minimum danger that the investigation might touch the world of the notables and the masterminds."
Like I said, there certainly may be "notables" who are involved in unsavory stuff; there is REAL evidence that this is the case. But in this situation, the alleged "notables" that the Mignini and Guittari went after were definitely not in the class nor at the altitude where this stuff may REALLY go on. Again, it LOOKS like a huge smoke-screen and re-direction of attention operation and if that is the case, then it is Mignini and Guittari who are the masterminds with Carlizzi as their dupe. But that is just speculation.
The date was set for Spezi's 'bail hearing' on April 28 (he had been arrested on April 7). Preston writes:
The review would take place before three other judges from Perugia, close colleagues of {Mignini} and of the examining magistrate. The Tribunal of Reexamination was not known for reversing its colleagues, especially in a highly visible case like this one, on which the {Mignini} had placed all his credibility as a prosecutor.
On April 18, twelve days after Spezi's arrest, the Committee to Protect Journalists had finished its investigation into Spezi's case. The next day, Ann Cooper, the executive director, faxed a letter to the prime minister of Italy. It said, in part:
Journalists should not be fearful to conduct their own investigations into sensitive matters or to speak openly and criticize officials. In a democratic country such as your own, one that is an integral part of the European Union, such fear is unacceptable. We call on you to make sure that Italian authorities clarify the serious charges against our colleague Mario Spezi and make public all available evidence supporting those charges, or release him immediately.
The persecution of Mario Spezi and his U.S. colleague Douglas Preston, who is afraid to travel to Italy for fear of prosecution, sends a dangerous message to Italian journalists that sensitive stories such as the Tuscany killing should be avoided. Government efforts to promote this climate of self-censorship are anathema to democracy.
Copies of this letter were sent out to a whole bunch of other authorities, so it was clear that the Italian system/government/people were now being judged by the rest of the world as more or less un-democratic, totalitarian, thus un-civilized. A number of other organizations got on the bandwagon and finally, the Italian media found its cojones. Things started getting wild and I guess it was at this point that the PTB decided to sacrifice Guittari and Mignini... well, almost.
Because of the public outcry, the pressure that Preston helped to generate, Spezi was set free and that was seen as an enormous rebuke to Mignini. But he didn't even pause. He immediately appealed the decision. But, soon after, Guittari was indicted for falsifying evidence including doctoring tape recordings!!!
"Is it not as I said?" Count Niccolo told me the next day. "Guittari is taking the fall. With your campaign, you have sputtanato {cast aspersions on} the Italian judiciary in front of the whole world, with the risk of making them an international laughingstock. They don't give a damn about Spezi and his rights. They just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. All they care about is preserving face. La faccia, la faccia! The only surprise to me is that it happened a great deal sooner than I expected. ...
The Supreme Court of Italy summarily rejected Mignini's appeal with a curt opinion that it was "inadmissible," and dismissed all the proceedings against Spezi....
A few months later, Guittari's and Mignini's offices were raided by the police, who carried away boxes of files. They discovered that Mignini had been invoking a special anti-terrorist law to order wiretaps of journalists who had written critically about his Monster of Florence investigation - wiretaps carried out by Guittari {and his task force}. In addition to wiretapping journalists, Guittari had also been taping telephone calls and conversations with a number of Florentine judges and investigators, including his counterpart in Florence, the public minister Paolo Canessa. It seemed that Mignini suspected them of being part of a vast Florentine conspiracy working against his investigation into the masterminds behind the Monster Killings.
In the summer of 2006, both Guittari and Mignini were indicted for abuse of office. .. Guittari lost his staff and the Monster of Florence case was taken away from him. ...
Mignini so far has retained his position of public minister {prosecutor} of Perugia, but two more prosecutors were added to his staff, allegedly to help him with his workload; their real assignment, everyone knew, was to keep him out of trouble.
Count Niccolo's father, Count Neri Capponi, had been a judge himself. After all the dust began to settle, he wrote a letter to the editor of the
Atlantic Monthly where Preston's article about the Monster killings and the situation vis a vis the Italian police and judiciary that had developed around his and Spezi's investigation had been published. The letter said:
Sir
The travesty of justice undergone by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi is the tip of the iceberg. The Italian judiciary (which includes the public prosecutors) is a branch of the civil service. This particular branch chooses its members, is self-ruling and is accountable to no one: a state within a state!
This body of bureaucrats can be roughly divided into three sections: a large minority, corrupt and affiliated with the former communist party, a large section of honest people who are too frightened to stand up to the political minority (who controls the office of the judiciary), and a minority of brave and honest men with little influence.
Political and dishonest judges have an infallible method of silencing or discrediting opponents, political or otherwise. A bogus, secret, indictment, the tapping of telephones, the conversations (often doctored) fed to the press who starts a smear campaign which raises the sales, a spectacular arrest, prolonged preventive detention under the worst possible conditions, third degree interrogations, and finally a trial that lasts many years ending in the acquittal of a ruined man. Spezi was lucky because the powerful Florentine public prosecutor is no friend of the Perugia one and, I am told, "suggested" that Spezi be freed: the Perugia court, I am told, accepted the "suggestion".
It may be of interest to know that miscarriages of justice in Italy (excluding acquittals with a ruined defendant) amount to four million and a half in fifty years.
yours sincerely,
Neri Capponi
Just how nuts these people are was in evidence when Preston and Spezi later went with Dateline NBC to film a program on the Monster of Florence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l38OewLJPRA
Stone Phillips, the show's host, interviewed Guittari, the corrupt cop, who "continued to insiste that Spezi and {Preston} had planted evidence..." He also made the claim that the guy who Spezi and Preston believe to be the real Monster of Florence for a lot of good reasons, who also happens to fit the FBI BAU profile, was "in prison for another crime..." at the time of one of the murders. The next guy interviewed was the real Monster of Florence who confirmed what Guittari had said, i.e., that he had been in prison so could not be "the Monster."
The NBC staff checked this claim and found that both Guittari and the suspect were lying: he had never been in jail during the periods of any of the killings. In other words, a corrupt cop has formed an alliance with a deranged killer and is protecting him!!! How sick is that?
On
September 27, 2007, the latest of the accused "notables" that Mignini believed to be involved with the Monster killings, an old, broken-down pharmacist, Calamandrei, was brought to trial. During the course of the trial, his attorney read aloud to the court one of the documents on which Mignini relied for his case proof, a statement taken from a "witness": it was a sworn deposition of an associate of Gabriella Carlizzi - yup, lizard woman again! - and it was so full of schizoidal insanity that it basically destroyed Mignini's case entirely to have it read aloud. Apparently, Mignini had earlier slapped a seal of secrecy on this alleged testimony. Spezi was in the courtroom listening and was astonished to learn that HE was the subject of the "sworn statement". Here is where I had deja vu about Vincent Bridges, Jay Weidner, "Jean the pedophile" who reported us to the Police Judiciare, etc.
As Zanobini {Calamandrei's atty.} read the bizarre document... Spezi heard an astonishing, completely fabricated story about his own life and how he had become the Monster of Florence. The woman told Mignini that Spezi was an illegitimate child, having been conceived on a Sardinian farm in Tuscany during an illicit liaison between his mother and a famous musician. This musician - a man of perverse habits - had committed the first double-killing of 1968 for his own sick gratification. When Spezi grew up and discovered the truth about his real father, he decided to carry on his murderous avocation as a family tradition, and thus became, in the woman's words, the "real Monster of Florence." ... And she went on to claim that the "writer Douglas Preston, Spezi's friend, is connected to the American Secret Service."
Why hadn't she spoken about this before? "Because I am afreaid of Mario Spezi and his friends," she said to Mignini. "When Spezi was arrested by you I gathered up my courage and decided to speak about it with Carlizzi, because I trusted her and I knew she sought the truth."
The trial continued this way for EIGHT MONTHS, exposing day by day by day the ridiculousness of the satanic sect theory of the Monster killings. At the end, the judge simply pronounced: "Acquitted; for the reason that the allegation is nonexistent." That is to say, that the claim that there was some satanic cult behind the Monster of Florence killings was such nonsense that it lacked "any logical foundation. He then pronounced Mignini's investigation devoid of value.
Now, keep in mind that dozens of lives have been destroyed in this witchhunt and if she is not the dupe of Mignini, then Carlizzi is a woman with a LOT to answer for in this life or the next.
Now, we come to Amanda Knox and I hope that I've given enough background and context to understand what happened there. As just mentioned, the trial of the latest victim of Mignini's Monster of Florence witch-hunt began on 27 September 2007. It was on 2 November 2007 that the poor Kercher girl was murdered.
Judge Giuliano Mignini, Public Minister of Perugia, took charge of the case as chief prosecutor.
Now, obviously, Mignini is desirous of creating a smokescreen to cover up his loss of face in the Monster trial that was running at that moment. And, sure enough, Preston writes:
A few days after the crime, I got a call from niccolo Capponi. His cynical Edwardian drawl came rolling down the international wire: "My dear Douglas, I have a little wager for you. I bet you a bottle of '97 Chianti Classico that
before the week is out someone will connect this poor girl's murder with the Monster of Florence."
Sure enough, on November 7, Gabriella Carlizzi posted a new page at her website:
The human sacrifice of the student {Kercher} bears a close connection with the "Narducci Case" and with the Monster of Florence...
She wondered if "those who commissioned this murder" did it knowing the investigation would end up in Mignini's lap, and in this way the "offered sacrifice" to Satan would be a fair exchange for the protection they hoped to gain from Mignini's investigations of their Satanic rituals." ...
While Carlizzi blogged, Mignini forged ahead with the case...
Preston then discusses what was done to Amanda, how the case was handled in the same, corrupt, inept manner as the whole Monster of Florence case had been bungled. What was most shameful was the way the American and English press just simply got onboard with the Italian media that was being daily corrupted by "leaks" from Mignini et al. And, just as with the Monster case, Carlizzi's theories became Mignin's theories. (As I mentioned, I wonder if it is the other way around? Who is feeding who, duping who, here?)
Finally, CBS's
48 Hours show hired a top criminal defense investigator, Paul Ciolino, and sent him to review the evidence. Ciolino, influenced by the media - as was everyone - went to Perugia thinking that Amanda was probably guilty. However, at the end of his review and interviews with everyone involved, he had definitely changed his mind. He told
48 Hours that the prosecution of Amanda Knox was a "railroad job from hell" and a "police-generated fairy tale."
This part of Preston's book is well worth reading because he quotes Ciolino's comments. Preston asked him: "Do you think she'll be convicted?" And Ciolino said: "Say good-bye to Amanda. She's been so convicted already that it's scary. She's gonna be gone unless people rise up and fight."
After the
48 Hours episode was aired, the case became better reported in the US, and many voices were raised against the obvious judicial malfeasance of Mignini. Mignini then went on the attack against "US Interference."
"I am shocked and scandalized, " he said. "it is the first time have come across such presumption and superficiality... From across the ocean there are those who are conducting an organized press campaign that seeks to undermine the investigation." He then added, darkly and mysteriously, "But the masterminds of this operation are in Italy." Mignini didn't identify the masterminds, but many following the case were certain he meant Mario Spezi. "Don't you believe he was thinking of me?' Mario wrote me the next day, clearly shaken. "This man is very, very sick." ...
Mignini continued his investigation into the death of Narducci and its connection to the Monster of Florence. Calamandrei's acquittal and the judge's declaration that Mignini's investigation was worthless did not deter the {prosecutor} of Perugia. On October 10, 2008, only a week before he was to present the case against Amanda, Mignini held a hearing in Perugia about the Narducci case. The courtroom was packed with the lawyers of many of the twenty-two people Mignini had accused of involvement in the Narducci murder and cadaver switching. ... Mignini asked the judge {his pal} to split the Narducci investigation into two parts.... to affirm the fact that Narducci was murdered - something he had not been able to prove... {as a trick to} free Mignini to proceed full speed ahead with the second investigation against Spezi and the others for crimes related to the alleged cadaver-switching including conspiracy, racketeering, hiding a human corpse, obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, and perjury.
My own name {Preston} was on that list of conspirators. ...
At the hearing, Mignini portrayed Spezi as a journalistic Rasputin, the tentacles of his malefic influence reaching far and wide. "He manipulated journalists, journalistic associations and organizations, mystery and thriller writers, and even politicians, successfully drawing them knowingly or unknowingly into his criminal orbit, and with an extraordinary lack of scruples he exploited the support which he enjoyed, and probably still enjoyes, in Florence and in the journalistic field in general."
In other words, anyone who stood up for the truth of what Spezi was saying, and his right to investigate the case and investigate the investigators, was simply under his Svengali-like spell. I can really identify with this because it is the same attitude taken toward me by the French Police Judiciare and the Fisc.
In the middle of all this, Calamandrei's lawyer presented to the court evidence that Narducci had not been murdered at all (this was one of Carlizzi's "connected conspiracies" where the death of a guy over there had nothing at all to do with anything over here except in her twisted imagination!) The reading of this evidence threw the whole court into an uproar....
At this point in his review of the Amanda Knox case, Preston presents what amounts to a bombshell considering what we see above of the Italian judicial system, that real killers are left to roam freely while innocent people are subjected to the need to save face and appear cool and "in the know". Preston writes:
But the biggest surprise on that day in October {at the Narducci hearing} occurred outside the courtroom and did not involve the Monster case - but Amanda Knox. A little before noon, during a break, Spezi left the tribunal in Perugia and crossed the sun drenched piazza to grab an espresso at a sidewalk cafe. A few moments later a timid and exceedingly nervous young woman approached.
"'I’m a fellow journalist here in Perugia," she said quietly. "Could I speak with you a moment?" Spezi invited her to sit at his table. She looked about furtively, as if to check if she were being followed. Then she lit a cigarette with a trembling hand and, stumbling over her words, blurted out: "I hope they don't see us together!"
"Excuse me," Spezi asked, "but who is 'they'?"
"Them, the police. Mignini's men."
“And why can't we be seen together. What are you afraid of?"
"My name is Francesca Bene," she said all in a rush, "and I work for a small newspaper here, the Giornale dell'Umbria. Last July I made what I thought was a real scoop about the case of Meredith Kercher. I learned that the morning of the murder, a few hours before the discovery of the body, in a piazza near Meredith's house, a young man well-known in Perugia as a drug addict and dealer was seen washing himself in the public fountain because he was all covered with blood and also had a big cut on one hand. He was out of his mind, screaming, “I killed her. I killed her."'
The young reporter took a drag from her cigarette and went on. "I found many witnesses to this scene and I spoke to the ambulance driver and EMT who arrived to take care of the young man. All freely gave me their names and all of them agreed on the details."
"I remember the story," Spezi interrupted. "The scoop was reprinted in the Carriere della Sera and also taken up by Rai television. But the next day there was nothing, not even a line. The story just died, nothing more ever came out. I assumed it was an error, a false news report."
"The story was absolutely correct in every detail."
"Then what happened? Why wasn't there any followup?"
"I'll tell you what happened." Francesca Bene looked around again. "The very day I published that story, I was summoned to the prosecutor's office and interrogated by Mignini's men-in particular that big policewoman, the same one who interrogated Amanda Knox." (The one Amanda says struck her.) "She scares me."
"What was there to interrogate you about?" Spezi said. "You say your story was, corroborated by many witnesses who went on the record."
"Of course. But that didn't stop them from indicting me for the crime of inciting public alarm by publishing false information."
"But that's absurd."
"I was afraid. I'm the only one who works in my family and if I lose my job . . . I was afraid. So I dropped the story."
To this day, neither Mignini nor the police appear to have investigated the episode or questioned the drug addict; nor have they apparently taken his DNA to compare it to the many unknown DNA samples recovered from the scene of the murder. The addict has been shut up in a rehab clinic ever since, unavailable to the press. Stranger still, the description the half-dozen witnesses gave of the addict - thirtyish, blond, blue eyes, wearing a white Wool beret pulled down on his head and a dark coat - matches the description Guede first gave of the man he claims to have struggled with at the scene of the murder.
The connection, if any, between the bloody man shrieking "I killed her" and the murder of Meredith Kercher remains largely uninvestigated and unknown.
I think if I were the parents of Meredith Kercher, I'd be pretty interested in finding the killer of my child. I'd also be interested in correcting a horrible perversion of justice in view of the fact that it really does appear that Amanda Knox is innocent and has bee unjustly prosecuted and persecuted by a corrupt and degenerate Italian legal system. This legal system reminds me a lot of the legal system at the end of Republican Rome where prosecuting high profile lawsuits was the way to make political capital and everybody was doing it. What is most disturbing is that this is also, to a great extent, how things are done in France though, admittedly, the rule of law still holds some value there that appears to be non-existent in Italy. It could be said that the law can be a counterweight to the French tendency to want to appear to be "in the know", though not always. In any event, what Preston writes in closing to his book is depressing:
During the course of the year, Mignini's own troubles with the law deepened. He was indicted for illegally wiretapping journalists, obstructing justice, violating judicial seal, and harassing newspapers with illegal investigations. The Florentine public minister publicy condemned Mignini, saying he had "fallen prey to a kind of delirium" in the Monster case and would go to "any extreme in defending himself from those who would criticize his investigation." Giuttari, he said, cynically manipulated Mignini's delirium "for his own personal, vindictive interests beyond the bounds of his professional responsibilities." ...
Inexplicably, even while under heavy indictments, Mignini continues to serve as public minister of Perugia and chief prosecutor in the Amanda Knox case. As for Giuttari, he labors under a cloud of disgrace. His elite squad was disbanded and his men taken from him. He was shuttled to Rome and installed in an office colloquially known as rhe "Parking Lot." And there he remains, with no official responsibilities, marking time until his retirement.
The government's last offer to Spezi for his illegal detention was compensation at the rate of two hundred euros for every day he spent in prison, the going rate for a housekeeper. His lawyer appealed the offer but has yet to receive an answer. Mignini continues to assert that as long as Spezi remains under investigation he should receive no compensation at all.
Over the summer (2009?) Mignmi publicly threatened to have me arrested if I returned to Italy. I first heard about the threat from, of all places, Amanda Knox's mother, who called me to say that Mignini had taken Amanda's lawyer aside in the courtroom and said to him, out of the blue: "If Douglas Preston returns to Italy, I will have him arrested." Mignini repeated the threat to a British journalist and an Italian journalist covering the Knox case. When the U.S. State Department asked Mignini if there was indeed a warrant for my arrest, he refused to respond, saying that releasing any information would "violate Mr. Preston's privacy rights." As a result, even though the case against me has allegedly been closed, I dare not return to Italy.
After the publication of The Monster of Florence, Mario and I received thousands of e-mails from readers asking many of the same questions: When can Preston return to Italy? Is he still under investigation? When will the charges be dropped against Spezi? Will police reopen the Sardinian trail investigation? Will they take another look at Antonio Vinci in light of the new information presented in the book? How can Mignini remain in office 'with all the charges against him? How can something like this happen in a civilized, Western European country? And finally: Will the families of the victims ever see justice?
We responded but had to disappoint them all. We have no answers to give.
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