Amanda Knox made a statement at Rudy Guede’s trial, nearly one year after Meredith Kercher’s murder. You can hear that statement here. 48 Hours reports that at the end of the day at Guede’s trial, there was a surprise: “Amanda asked to address the court.”

Did Amanda talk to her lawyers and plan to make this statement? I can’t imagine any attorney would let her ramble on and on, without having reviewed what she had to say, but this statement certainly doesn’t sound prepared. It’s just a mess. What was her attorney thinking? What was Amanda thinking?

I tried to search online to see if this statement was prepared, but I can’t find confirmation. If anyone finds this information, please let me know.

Read moreThere is no doubt when I listen to this statement that Amanda was exceptionally nervous here. You can hear it in her voice. It quivers from fear, and fear of this nature can cause us to stutter and skip words–especially if we are reading from a prepared statement. Yet when I realize she had one year to compose herself, and get her facts straight, I’m surprised even more by this statement. She really doesn’t say much to her defense. You would think after a year in jail, she would have worked out a feasible account of that night, wouldn’t you?

Amanda says:

I want to….reiterate my position, for all of this case, and also to clarify….the confusion that I…have brought to this case.

Okay. I want to clarify what it is that happened to me in …um… the…um…in the Questore — the day that– the day that I made declarations that didn’t make sense, that changed.

After….um… the discovery of Meredith, I had spent days in….uh, cooperating with the police, to try to just give as much information as I could.

The question I and everyone else should have at this point is, if Amanda is telling us the truth, why did she have to “try to give” information? Why didn’t it come naturally? When we are honest, we don’t struggle and try. Speaking and fact recollection are second nature to us.

The day of the fifth, I wasn’t called to the Questore. Raffaele was called, but I decided to go with him, to keep him company, but also because I was scared to be alone.

When I was there, I had just planned to wait, but the police came into their waiting room and wanted to talk to me more about what I knew, people that I knew who had come to my house. I gave them phone numbers and–

I am very troubled at how Amanda has thoughts through this entire statement that just stop cold in the middle of the sentence, such as “phone numbers and —“. This is likely a form of “self-censoring” by Amanda. Amanda is thinking things and decides not to say them, and that concerns me. These are huge red flags and they happen over and over again. I could understand once or twice, if someone is nervous, and reading from a prepared statement, but this is just too many times. Why is she doing this?

After that, they moved me into another room and started asking me the same questions, what I had done that night, asking me…for times, exact time periods, exactly what I did. And was…..(cut)…. it was difficult for me because it was in the middle of the night that I…. we had been called, hired. I was very tired. And I was also quite stressed out. And I…. so I….(sigh)

Does this make any sense? She couldn’t remember because she was tired? It was the middle of the night? Does anyone believe this is a good reason for a lack of all memory? When Amanda is telling us this, a year has passed from the crime, so why doesn’t she elaborate more in this statement? Why isn’t she setting the record straight for the judge here and now?

They kept asking me the same questions, time periods….um, exactly sequences of actions and I did my best, to give the same information over and over and over again.

Why isn’t Amanda saying, “This is the truth. This is what I told the police over and over again, but they didn’t want to hear it”? She doesn’t seem to have any memories of what she said. Why does she say that she “did my best” to give “the same information”? If she told the truth, the best memory wouldn’t be important, would it? Why doesn’t she ever speak of the truth?

Um…At a certain point…um, excuse me. At a certain point, they um… they began…the police began to be more aggressive with me. They called me a liar and…….They told me that I was….of all the things that I had kept saying, over and over again, they said that I was lying. They said that….(unnn)

Amanda calls it aggressive when someone calls her a liar. I find that interesting. Furthermore, her self-censoring at the end of that paragraph really gets to me. The “unnn” sound at the end seems like a form of “biting her lip” so-to-speak — a sound like she is holding herself back. Why would she be doing that? Why is she holding herself back at such a valuable time? Honest people have nothing to hide, but Amanda seems to be hiding a lot. It’s a huge red flag.

They threatened that I was going to go in prison for 30 years because I was hiding something. But I–(unn) but I felt…I felt completely stressed out, blocked, because I wasn’t lying. (cut) I didn’t know what I… I didn’t know what to do.

Then they started pushing on me the idea that I must have seen something, and forgotten about it. They said that I was traumatized. (cut)

What I find fascinating throughout Amanda’s statement is she has no problem recounting what the police say to her. When she does, she speaks quite coherently with very little pauses and hesitations. However, when it comes to her memories and her actions, you suddenly hear hesitations, stops, starts and self-censoring. Whenever you see the word “I”, you see increased stress. If she is honest, I would not expect to see this. I would expect her to be consistent across the board. Clearly, she is not.

I didn’t understand. I became really confused. I tried to–ex, re-express, re-explain what I had done– the fact that I didn’t have to go to work. At that point, they– I gave them my phone so they could see that I didn’t have to um, I received– okay– okay–see – because I received an SMS, and for that reason, they kept repeating to me that I was lying about – uh, SMS. I was confused.

So, what ended up happening was…. the fact that I had been pressured so much, and I was….(sigh), I was hit in the back of the head by one of the police officers…who said she was trying to make me…help me remember the truth.

She was pressured so much that she was hit on the back of the head? Does that make sense? Why does she change “make me” which is a strong statement to “help me”, which is much softer? I find this odd. If someone is hitting me on the back of the head, they aren’t “helping me” do anything. They are making me forcefully and brutally react. Why aren’t her emotional memories matching her story? These words are red flags for me. This is an indication she is trying to manipulate things, and in her nerves, it appears she can’t keep her manipulations straight.

I was terrified, because (cut) I didn’t know… (crying) I… I didn’t know what to do anymore.

And so what ended up happening was they said they….they went…. take me to jail, and I’m….and because of all this SMS, because….because of all this confusion, they kept saying, “You sent this thing to Patrick. We know that you left the house. We know.” I just said his name. It wasn’t because I was trying to say anything. I just said it because they were… (unnn)

Does any of this make sense above? Why doesn’t she complete her thoughts?

After that……at a certain point, I asked if I should have had a lawyer. And they said that it would have been worse for me.

I get the feeling Amanda doesn’t feel like her plea is working, and so she throws this statement out–that she didn’t have a lawyer–hoping to get understanding. Why isn’t she telling us what she knows to be true? Instead, she is just whining, without saying much of anything valuable or supportive of her case.

So they asked me to make declarations about what I remembered, but I told that I didn’t remember anything like this….because I was confused. What I remembered was different from what they were asking me to say.

They asked me for details, and I didn’t have details to give (cut) them, so they just asked me questions that I just responded as – (and yeah)

Why doesn’t she give us specifics? They said “blah, blah, blah”, I said “blah, blah, blah”. Why does she stop when it comes to her again? Why is there another incomplete thought?

From…I was stressed, so what I…. what, in that moment that I was trying to think of something else….my memories of just random events, of seeing Patrick, for instance, one night, or…, ugh…(sigh)

Another incomplete thought, again. It sure appears that Amanda has no memories from that night of her own, doesn’t it? Worse, I find it extremely strange that she pointed the finger at a black man, when in fact, it was another black man, Rudy Guede, who was ultimately found to have taken part in the murder. What are the odds? I’m curious what the black population is in Italy and in Perugia? The lower the population, the more unusual this looks. Often when people are deceptive, there is a grain of truth in their lie.

I wrote these memorials that everyone’s putting so much pressure on…for… only because I wanted to express the fact that I was confused. I felt like no one was listening to me anymore, and so I wrote these to express the fact that I didn’t…I ….I didn’t ….I wasn’t for sure about anything anymore.

(sigh)

I want to stress the fact…. that… I’m innocent. Meredith was my friend, and I could never have hurt her. I’m not the person that the prosecutor says I am. And that’s all I want to say. Thank you.

I am very disappointed by this statement. I think the best defense of anything is to say the truth, but we don’t hear the truth. We don’t hear Amanda give us any events or timelines. She doesn’t give us anything of substance. Instead, she whines like a child. Worse, her crying, which is notable in the middle of her statement, amazingly disappears towards the end. And when she says, “I want to stress the fact that I am innocent,” you would think the tears would really be flowing, but amazingly, they are totally absent. Gone. It’s weird.

I don’t know what happened that night in Perugia. I don’t know what happened to Amanda that night, but I am not buying her story now, after she has had a year to gather herself and her memories. If this is the best she can do, it looks awful for her. Quite frankly, I think she and her Italian boyfriend were smoking cannabis, and perhaps used other drugs, and her memory from that night is so foggy, she doesn’t know what the truth is herself. That doesn’t bode well when a murder occurred, because how can she prove that she knew what was going on when she was out of her mind? Her only option at that point would be to build the best supporting evidence to support the truth, but she hasn’t done that, either.

I am haunted by the fact in early interviews, she said that she was in the house, and that she heard screams, but covered her ears. The fact that she claimed, at one point to hear screams, yet said she covered her ears, if this is true, is indicative she knew what was going on but turned her back on Meredith. It’s just chilling.

On 48 Hours, they spend a fair amount of time discussing the prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, and his troubled past. Mignini definitely seems over-the-top in his approach. I don’t doubt Doug Preston’s story at all. I believe him. I believe that Mignini did go after him and cause him an unfair nightmare. However, that doesn’t support one argument: Even if the prosecutor is biased, and bases his beliefs on fantasy rather than fact, innocent and guilty people will still come before him. Not all people who go before Mignini will be innocent, even if he is unable to determine fact from fiction. Hence, just because Mignini says and does strange things, it doesn’t absolve Amanda of any wrongdoing, or the potential that she did something wrong.

Could Amanda have been led to create a false confession? Absolutely. We need to look at this seriously. The potential exists, but so far, after more than two years, Amanda has yet been able to give us a clear account of what happened to her that night. Nothing she says, to date, seems to add up. After one year and now two years, you would think the truth would be a lot more clear for her now, and she could articulate what truly happened to her, like Preston did when he recounted his story on another 48 Hours episode. It would make sense for someone who is honest, but how about someone who is not?