One thing is certain: Rudy didn't belong in the upstairs flat in the cottage. He had never been a lodger, boyfriend, guest or anything else. Yet police found his DNA on the victim, inside her body, on her purse and in other locations. His conviction was no surprise.
Amanda Knox murder trial: Taking aim at Rudy Guede
By Candace Dempsey
Coming up: On November 18, Rudy Guede's appeal begins and will last perhaps two days. On November 20, the trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaaele Sollecito reopens with closing arguments. On November 27, the much-postponed verdict in the abuse-of-power trial for prosecutor Giuliano Mignini may finally arrive, but ... could be delayed once again. The rumor is that it may not be announced until after the verdict in the Knox/Sollecito trial. That may come as early as December 3-5.
Rudy Guede mugshots taken before the murder of Meredith Kercher in 2007
Lawyers for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito promise huge surprises when the world's most tabloid-genic murder trial restarts September 14.
Shockers can't be good news for supposed conspirator Rudy Guede. He opted for an abbreviated trial, got slammed with 30 years, and will appeal the guilty verdict on November 18. All three are accused of murdering and sexually assaulting Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student, in Perugia, Italy, on November 1, 2007.
The problem for the prosecution: It never showed Rudy conspiring with the co-conspirators. Now PMs Giuliano Mignini and Manuela Comodi must cool their heels in Judge Giancarlo Massei's courtroom. The defense teams for Amanda and Raffaele get to speak. Look for Raffaele's team to take direct shots at Rudy Guede.
They point out Raffaele never met Rudy--except in court, never the best place to socialize. Nor has Rudy been eager to establish a buddy relationship. He's always said he was a stranger to Raffaele, Amanda's Italian boyfriend, a wealthy doctor's son.
Erasmus scholar Meredith KercherEveryone agrees Rudy did meet both of the beautiful foreign girls, Meredith and Amanda. But only because he played basketball with the boys who lived in the downstairs flat from them at via Della Pergola 7, in the house where the murder occurred.
No one saw either girl out with the club-loving loafer, a jobless 20-year-old, hard-pressed to pay his rent. Amanda did place him on a police list of visitors to the downstairs flat, but couldn't even provide his name. Stefano Bonassi, one of the downstairs boys, said Rudy had been over only two times, one night falling asleep on their toilet.
Police admit Rudy never called or emailed Meredith, Amanda or Raffaele. Police found no trace of them in his apartment, nor did they discover his DNA in Raffaele's flat. Yet he is supposed to have participated in a sex game with the three college students that ended in Meredith's refusal and death. A theory for which the prosecution has presented little evidence, other than numerous attempts to portray Amanda as sluttish and manipulative. A black widow. Judge Paolo Michelli, during the pretrial, took the conspiracy for granted. He boasted that he began his reasoning with all three suspects in the murder room. So much for innocent until proven guilty.
One thing is certain: Rudy didn't belong in the upstairs flat in the cottage. He had never been a lodger, boyfriend, guest or anything else. Yet police found his DNA on the victim, inside her body, on her purse and in other locations. His conviction was no surprise.
Police nabbed Rudy the old-fashioned way. They found his bloody hand print on a pillowcase under the victim. They matched it to his Italian ID card and launched an international manhunt. They tracked him down in Germany, where he'd fled, sleeping on trains and river barges. German police brought him in on November 20, nearly three weeks after Meredith died. He eventually admitted he'd been in the flat on the night she was murdered, but claimed they had a date and another man had stabbed her to death. Rudy also claimed to have seen this man--a tall left-handed Italian--and grappled with him, accounting for the cuts police found on Rudy's hands. He said he was so rattled that he took off after this encounter. Too panicked even to call for an ambulance, he left Meredith to bleed to death. He went home to change out of his bloodstained pants. He topped off the evening by joining friends at the Domus disco at 2:30 a.m. All of this by his own admission.
Before the trial shut down for the summer recess, Sollecito's team managed to wedge in Rudy's previous brushes with the law, including two break-ins in which he allegedly entered via windows and was armed with knives.
Both teams have sought to portray Rudy as the lone wolf of Piazza Grimana. Now they're getting some help from the press.
This week the Italian glossy Oggi posted stills from CCTV camera footage taken on November 1 beginning at 7:41. Reporter Giangavino Sulas says the photos show a figure dressed like Rudy Guede leaving the parking garage and heading over to the cottage--and then coming back about 20 minutes later. The young man in the wool hat does wear a "husky" coat very similar to the one Rudy was wearing when arrested. The figure is also wearing the same shoes that Rudy admits to wearing on the night of the murder: Nike Outbreak 2s, with the telltale white stripe on the bottom.
When Rudy fled Perugia, he took those shoes with him and dumped them somewhere in Germany. Much later he admitted that--while wearing those shoes on the night of the killing--he had made the bloody shoe print next to Meredith's bed. Prosecutors had blamed that print on Raffaele even when his lawyers made an appeal to the Supreme Court in Rome in April 2008. In fact, it was considered grave evidence against him.
Rudy admitted the truth in late May 2008, too late to help Raffaele, and only after police had discovered the empty Nike Outbreak 2 shoebox in his flat and matched that model to the bloody shoe print. Only then did he say, "Yes, the print is mine" to PM Mignini in a face-to-face.
Bloody shoeprint of Rudy Guede
According to Oggi, defense experts will now display many more Rudy footprints from the murder room. Professor Francesco Vinci, of the University of Bari's department of Forensic Medicine, has examined the pillowcase on which the victim lay. Judge Massei granted him permission to enter Rome's forensics lab from Judge Massei. What he saw astonished him.
As Oggi says: "With the use of Crimescope which helps to select prints, treated chemically with fluorescing products, he found on the pillow case five good prints (3 superimposed) of a left shoe that delineates a sole that corresponds and measures exactly to a Nike Outbreak 2, size 45. Thus the foot of Guede. The disconcerting thing is that on that pillowcase the forensic police found only 2 traces: one of Guede and the other of a woman size 37."
The police have tried to pin the latter print, not too convincingly, on Amanda. "Today the discovery of Prof. Vinci bewilders everyone. On this cushion only the youth of color has 'walked.' The report of the professor will be presented in court at the re-start of the trial and will surely be at the center of a clash between experts. Will he succeed in establishing the truth?"
Oggi contends that all of the blood-stained footprints in Kercher's bedroom are Rudy's size 11 Nike Outbreak 2 shoeprints. Lorenzo Rinaldi, the director of print identity in the Rome forensic police division said that in court in May 2009. Oggi goes further, saying there are no women's shoeprints in the room at all. And all of the prints appear to be from Rudy's left foot.
Patrizia Stefanoni note: Courtesy, Perugia Shock
Look for more fireworks over the missing data that made Judge Massei close down the trial early. Adriano Tagliabracci, a well-respected forensic geneticist, will be back on the stand on Monday, addressing that very issue. The judge shut down his testimony when it was discovered that defense lawyers hadn't received all of the evidence analyzed by the forensic police in Rome. The judge demanded it all be turned over by the end of July. (Note: Judge Massei has now ruled that the defendants were not wronged by documentation withheld for a year and a half. Their lawyers continue to press for complete documentation. Many questions remain unanswered).
The rumor is the defense received many pages, but not the key information they were seeking.
As Oggi says: "They foresee other interruptions because Giulia Bongiorno, Luca Maori and Luciano Ghirga, the defense lawyers of Sollecito and Amanda, will question at least two super experts: one on the bra clasp of Mez on which was found the DNA of Sollecito, and the other on the knife, the presumed crime weapon, on which was found the DNA of Amanda and that of the victim." We can expect "a fiery trial phase: the defense has announced sensational findings of a degree to demonstrate the innocence of the two ex-lovers and also the construction of false proof against them."
The drawing below is from the Oggi story. It shows the five footprints from the murder room and--an even bigger surprise--a Rudy-attributed footprint from the famous room with the broken window (a room once occupied by Filomena Romanelli). The defense contends Rudy Guede broke in that way; the prosecution insists the broken window was part of an elaborate staging.
We'll be hearing more about all six footprints in court. Below you can see the two images that will highlight the debate at the re-start of the hearing. Oggi says: "To the left, a diagram of glass lying next to a shoe print left by Rudy Guede. For the lawyers of Amanda and Raffaele this is another sign against the Ivorian: it would show that he entered the house after breaking down a window. To the right, the five prints that, to his astonishment, Prof. Vinci (Sollecito's expert) found on the pillowcase of the cushion on which lay the body of Meredith. There is an entire left shoe print and the sole is of a Nike Outbreak 2 number 45, the same worn by Guede the night of the crime."
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Patrizia Stefanoni note: Courtesy, Perugia Shock
From Oggi: Glass on the tile next to Rudy's shoeprint in Filomena's room, where a broken window was found. Five shoeprints in the murder room on a pillow case under the victim's body. (right).Note: The left photo shows exhibit A on the tile; the right shows the five left shoe prints on the pillowcase, one in the center, 3 overlapping ones in a group a half-step to the left, and one below the other 4, turned to the right.
* Feet of a killer: Here is another set of footprints, said to be Rudy Guede's, heading across the living room floor.
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