Don't Swat At My Dongle -

I'm on a dongle this week because I'm in transit. But I happen to be at Sbucks at the moment and wanted to check in. Normally, I don't blog much about my personal life; however, I may bend that policy to explain my blogging absence a bit further on.

Meanwhile, there's news
about The Perugia Slasher Case . . .

A dramatic 180 degree turn-about development for Amanda Knox. Judges for the court of cassation in Italy, who nullified her acquittal in March, have issued their treatise detailing their reasoning for that decision.

*  *  *  *  *
So much grim news; time for a hilarity break . . .

Ron Burgundy is back with a sequel. The legend continues, and, in a way, is the flip side to Life on Mars, which also had a sequel. Must be the right moment for it, since David Bowie is back with his sequel, Where Are We Now?

+ Will try to stay in touch more soon.

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Case Updates -

There has been a big information dump about the late Trayvon Martin which is under contention, as the nominal prosecutor wants to exclude it all from the court proceedings.

I believe we indicated here previously that Trayvon Martin appeared to be a Youth in Need of Adult Supervision (MINOS). It now seems that he should have been identified much earlier as an At Risk youngster and could have benefited from having a Guardian Ad Litem appointed for him long before he reached his majority.

:: WFTV :: - - - :: Hornsby ::

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Andrea Vogt reported last week that Amanda Knox is experiencing mounting legal and financial problems as well as slow sales performance of her book. From that report:

"In Bergamo, anti-mafia magistrate Giuliano Mignini, who prosecuted the murder case against Knox and her one-time Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, [has] filed a defamation complaint... [which takes] ...issue with accusations that he intimidated, yelled and failed to protect Knox rights during his questioning."

It's been quite a while since I first harbored the suspicion that an Italian blogger who used to criticize Mignini about this case might be connected, but then a court in Florence squashed him like a bug. What happened to him then may happen next to Amanda Knox like a ton of bricks.

:: Andrea Vogt ::

+ Sorry for blogging pause, but
I've been a bit extra busy this past week.

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News Notes From Florida -

During a recent Wednesday evening rush hour, two women reportedly hailed a taxi cab in Fort Lauderdale and asked the driver to take them to several locations.

Then, events took an unexpected twist, when one of the women began choking the driver from the backseat while the other repeatedly struck him in the face before taking money out of his pocket.

The two women have been arrested for allegedly robbing and brutalizing the taxi cab driver and carjacking his vehicle, leaving him penniless and stranded.

The police have declined to
disclose how the women were found.

*  *  *  *  *
A French family's legacy may go
to the accused killer's wife in Florida.

*  *  *  *  *
Naples FL police have arrested a 12-year-old girl for placing a bomb threat note in the local public library's book return depository box.

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Differently Knox -

James Raper, who has been described as a lawyer, has posted a study in which he carefully compares differing versions of Amanda Knox's story.

Does this mean that Amanda Knox is deliberately lying? No, not necessarily. There is another possibility which should be considered: that Knox may not be able to distinguish between what is in her imagination inside her head and what are independently existing facts in the external world.

It is my impression that Amanda Knox is an emotionally disturbed person. This is not an official disorder; it is, rather, an informal description of my impressions of her.

How can we evaluate the impressions we form of someone's state of mind? We can start with the Simple Two-Part Test:

1) Does the subject know right from wrong?

2) Can the subject appreciate
the consequences of their actions?

If someone cannot comprehend the causal nature of the connection between their actions and the results, reactions, or responses thereof, we may say that the person has a diminished capacity.

*  *  *  *  *
The Daily Mail is running an article in which Amanda Knox expresses her belief that the videotape clip of her and Raffaele Sollecito kissing in front of the cottage resulted in a misperception of her and had a damaging impact on her.

Actually, the videotape clip which had the negative impact was the "Wild Sex" CCTV footage of her and Sollecito laughing and joking and talking about "wild sex" in the lingerie shop only a day after her flatmate's corpse was discovered, not the images of their embrace in front of the cottage.

Can't Amanda Knox distinguish between these two videotape clips and the public's reaction to each of them? It is possible she cannot.

On what basis have I formed the impression that Amanda Knox is emotionally disturbed? There are several characteristics which I have observed over the course of time.

At the top of a potential list would be: inappropriate response. The behavior in the lingerie shop immediately after the ghoulish homicide of her roommate would be just one example of this characteristic.

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In Some Little Corner of The World -

The other day I clicked on the TV
to catch the Noon News a bit early . . .

ABC's The View was still airing. I was taken by complete surprise when the Welsh crooner, Tom Jones, arrived in the spotlight and began singing Tower of Song by Leonard Cohen. It blew me away. I kept saying "Oh, wow!" It was an unusual treat, now being shared on YouTube.

# Easy Rawlins is back! Tanya Ballard Brown reviews
Walter Mosley's new mystery novel, Little Green at NPR.

# And Carl Hiaasen's newest
offering, Bad Monkey, is expected
to make its debut around June 11th.

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MIA Gold Heist -

It's the kind of crime
you have come to expect from SoFlo:

a shipment of gold bullion snatched from transit through the Miami Int'l Airport. Last seen being wheeled around a corner, then it seemingly vanished.

Half a million in gold from Ecuador has become someone's much dreamt of pot of enchanted fairy fortune somewhere over the rainbow.

Miami is certainly the setting for a number of TV series in which crimes like this so often take place: Burn Notice, CSI Miami, and other such weekly dramas, which usually solve the mystery within their allotted hour.

But, contrary to appearances in this caper, SoFlo law enforcement officers are no amateurs in the transmittal of valuable shipments, whether it be armored car cash pickups or precious metals. Generally accomplished via convoys with elaborate strategic planning and military precision execution, these operations are actually not so unusual.

Thus, there is no reason to believe that this gold can move through the ether into a permanent state of Oblivion.

South Florida is now necklaced by a network of high tech highways which may lack gun towers, but are embedded with highly sophisticated surveillance equipment. If satellite cameras can photograph a pack of cigarettes in your shirt pocket, a shipment of gold does not have much of a chance of going too far AWOL for very long.

The FBI is coordinating the investigation.

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A Breezy Browse -

Matthew Walther reviews an enjoyable book of email exchanges between two literary figures: Frederic Raphael and Joseph Epstein at TDB.

# Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, a light and humorous beach read, is new in paperback for this summer.

# An essay about Italian caffe
espresso vs American coffee by Sara Davis.

# Patti Smith writes about a French
author who inspired her: Albertine Sarrazin.

# Mike Ripley's latest column.

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Truth or Consequences, Italian Style -

The Prosecutor from Perugia, Dr Giuliano Mignini (JD), has filed a complaint against the Italian magazine OGGI for publishing excerpts from Amanda Knox's memoir in Italy which are alleged to contain false and defamatory claims about him, according to a new report by Andrea Vogt. John Follain has filed a report about this, too.

:: OGGI article in English ::

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Knox: The CNN Interview -

As part of her ongoing Media tour to promote her book of prison memoirs, Amanda Knox recently sat for a CNN Cable TV interview.

In a prior interview with Diane Sawyer Knox adopted a mysterious new affectation: a suddenly swish lisp. If you were one of the viewers who was wondering what this mannerism was all about, you may discover the explanation in this subsequent CNN interview.

There are three characters in this interview: Amanda Knox, Chris Cuomo, and a Big Pink Dildo.

Whoa!  Where did this Dildo come from?

Amanda Knox moved into the Pergola St cottage equipped with a Dildo which she kept in a transparent plastic toiletries kit bag and, arguably, flaunted by leaving it ostentatiously displayed in commonly used areas of their living quarters, according to the other gals who were her flatmates there.

CUOMO: So then that means, in your mind, you spent four years of your life in jail because of a perverted prosecutor?

KNOX: Yes, that's what I think.

I didn't watch this interview when it was aired.

I just read the transcript.

It wasn't the prosecutor's Dildo.

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Knox-Sawyer: Some Staircase Thoughts -

Now that the much-touted ABC prime time interview and media blitz is over, it is an appropriate moment to reflect on what has happened here and to put some perspective on it.

The Amanda Knox book of prison memoirs is not the first time the Mainstream Media has made a big fuss about such an opus; the previous such event should present us with a cautionary tale. But has the Media learned anything from Jack Abbott and his book, In the Belly of the Beast? It doesn't look like they have.

Jack Abbott was a prison inmate; his book consists of his letters to Norman Mailer about his experiences in the prison system. On July 19, 1981, the New York Times published a rave review of it.

According to her remarks in the Sawyer interview, Knox seems to have developed an obsession with Meredith Kercher and the Kercher Family, expressing her aspirations to somehow contact them. The Kercher Family has made in very clear they do not wish to have any contact with Knox.

If Knox does not drop her obsession with them, it's bound to get her into even more trouble. When are her lawyers going to advise her to stop saying she's hoping to contact them?

Most of the young women who roomed together on Pergola St have moved on with their lives. Is Amanda Knox's life really so vacuous that Meredith Kercher's death is the only significant thing that has ever happened to her?

What will happen with Amanda Knox's case? I don't know. There are a lot of Italians who regard her as a toxic personality and they don't want her to return to Italy. Jack Abbott committed suicide. Sometimes these situations resolve themselves beyond the legal system.

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Weekend Browse -

Adam Woog reviews The Tooth Tattoo by Peter Lovesey which is set in the atmospheric city of Bath in England. Murder, string quartets, and fanatical groupies. Can Chief Inspector Peter Diamond solve the mystery?

# Red Handed: The Fine Art of Strange Crimes is a new graphic detective novel by Matt Kindt reviewed here by Doreen Sheridan.

# Ziggyology by Simon Goddard traces how David Bowie became Ziggy Stardust.

# Adam Morris reviews Cypherpunks by Julian Assange.

# An excerpt from The Annals of Unsolved Crimes.

# The 10 best magicians - in pictures.

...

Review: Knox TV Special -

The ABC TV Amanda Knox Prime Time Special with Diane Sawyer is over, and we can't call it Checkbook Journalism, because it wasn't any kind of Journalism whatsoever. It was a strictly promotional, hour-long commercial for her book.

You know those guest spots on late night shows where a movie star drops in to plug his latest movie? That's what the ABC Amanda Knox Special was, but dragged out and stretched to fill an entire hour. And, even then, ABC was not completely honest or straightforward about how much of this kind of content viewers should expect.

Not only was there an hour with Diane Sawyer, but after that, the Nightline program would be offering even more Amanda Knox content, which I wasn't able to catch. Moreover, the next morning, I was quite disgusted to discover that Amanda Knox was scheduled to invade GMA. At my age I have very limited tolerance for people like Amanda Knox.

How did Amanda Knox come off in the special? She came off as Miss Thing with the quivering lip who portrays herself as the principal victim whenever a plane crashes in Sri Lanka. Her posturings looked almost laughably ridiculous. The Drama Queen who thrusts herself into the center of every story, no matter how absurd it may be.

Were there any glaring errors in the special? Yes, I spotted one howler. ABC News felt compelled to include a clip of Elizabeth Vargas hectoring Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini with misattributed remarks she accused him of making.

A quick and simple Google search query yielded more accurate sourcing for such remarks: Amanda Knox was described as a "diabolical, Satanic, demonic she-devil" by Patrick Lumumba's lawyer, Carlo Pacelli, according to one newspaper article. When is ABC going to quit flogging this dead horse?

The Meredith Kercher Homicide was a ghoulish crime. The American Public should try to ignore this troubled young woman, give her some space, and let her get the professional help she needs away from the glare of the unblinking spotlight.

CBS has previewed their upcoming crime show for this weekend. It will be about a chef who ate his wife. I think I'll skip that one.

...

Ben & Mark Go Social -

What role has Social Media played
in the Sanford Shooting Case involving
Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman?

CFTV Reporter John W Davis shares an illuminating video link featuring lawyers Mark O'Mara and Benjamin Crump who both address the question.

Tomorrow will be an
important day in court for the case.

...

Popcorn Juries -

Since much of the American trial-watching public has been following the Jody Arias trial, the upcoming Amanda Knox interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC TV is going to seem like a pale sequel in comparison. ABC has been running teasers lately to promote their exclusive.

"Arias initially denied involvement then later blamed it on masked intruders. Two years after her arrest, she said it was self-defense."

Contrasting sharply with the newly emerging twists and turns in the Arias trial, the public face of Amanda Knox is mostly the creation of a press agent and is expected to spout mostly fluffy drivel.

An Arias courtroom seat recently sold for
$200, according to the AP's Brian Skoloff.

...

A Bit of a Browse -

"The mystery of just why and how Jim Thompson disappeared, and by the agency of whom, is one that persists still and probably always will." Silk Thread by Larry Wallace.

# John Le Carre's latest novel,
A Delicate Truth, is reviewed by Mark Lawson.

# A Neo-Noir offering from Akashic written with tongue in cheek by Jim Pascoe and Tom Fassbender, including illustrations by Paul Pope. It's the By the Balls Collection.

# John Leyden reports the latest
update on the LulzSec hackers.

...

Mail Crimes & French Lit Fest -

For almost two decades toward the end of the Twentieth Century, a shadowy figure wearing a hoodie haunted America. Nicknamed the Unabomber, he sent mail bombs to college professors, computer geeks, scientists, and others.

The iconic image of a shadowy figure in a hoodie came to be closely associated with this elusive fugitive.

But we live in an era of spectacle, some say, in which images can be manipulated and used to brainwash people.

Thus, last year, a group began waging an intense propaganda campaign to convince the American Public that if you think a shadowy figure in a hoodie may be sinister, you are a Racist, even though the Unabomber was White.

Nevertheless, if you observe a shadowy figure loitering around your mail kiosk at night and you do not recognize him as a neighbor, you should call the police and report it.

# A report from France in English
about this year's Crime Fiction Festival there.

...

Worth Noting, However Briefly -

The London Book Fair
begins on Monday . . .

What kind of publishing environment do today's
young novelists encounter, asks Alex Clark.

# Heather Mac Donald writes about the dangers
represented by loiterers. Recommended. [CityJ]

# Emily Rhodes reviews The Exiles Return
by Elisabeth de Waal. It's about post-WWII Vienna.

...

Browsing Around -

Cuban writer Jose Latour, now based in Canada, has a new mystery thriller novel out called Riders of Land and Tide. John Barber writes about him at the G&M.

# Shocked by Patricia Volk is a coming of age story about the author's complicated relationship with an elegant but highly critical mother; reviewed here by Heller McAlpin.

# "The Slow Death of the American Author"
by Scott Turow, an Op-Ed piece at the NY Times.

# Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, a novel by Susanna Clarke, will be coming to the BBC and BBCAmerica in 2014.

# Mike Ripley's latest
Getting Away With Murder column.

# BBC TV Centre in London demolished.

# In the mood to listen to some old-fashioned Noir?

Jake Hinkson writes about the Night Beat radio
series and leaves a link to it in the comments.

# Controversy about the song Accidental Racist.

...

After The Kissoff II -

Then, we come to the issue of Geo Locating Cues. In the transcript of Zimmerman's conversation with the dispatcher, Zimmerman appears to have difficulty giving his location over the telephone.

First, some system needs to be selected for orienteering, such as North East Quadrant or something else; then, more signs are needed.

A good, but not expensive, beginning for this process could be: planting some distinctive trees and shrubs, as in "I'll meet you under the big oak tree."

The Geo Locating issue goes beyond Law Enforcement. It is crucial to the Health and Safety of residents. What if a resident has a heart attack and a family member calls 911 for Fire and Rescue with Cardiac Resuscitation equipment?

You can't have the Rescue Unit driving round and round the ring road endlessly, trying to figure out where their heart attack patient awaits them, because time is of the essence. The Condo Commandos need to start thinking about making better provisions for Geo Locating Cues within their campus.

Since the teenager Trayvon Martin is presumed to have died intestate, we will be interested to see whether any inter-family disputes arise over the settlement, with regard to the youth's estate. Trayvon, it appears, had numerous half-brothers from diverse babymamas with even weirder names than his.

I would only be guessing, partly on the basis of those weirdish names, that the father is a member of a syncretic cult which may be an offshoot of the Moorish Science Movement. At some point in the future I expect them all to hold a very public reunion with each of the weirdly named half-brothers wearing a fez, taking turns in eulogizing their fallen brother.

The next issue on the agenda for this case is expected to be: the disputation about whether or not Zimmerman Defense can depose Benjamin Crump.

Will Benjamin Crump Esq be deposed?

...

After The Kissoff -

Trayvon Martin - George Zimmerman

The recent disclosure of a settlement reached between the HOA of The Retreat at Twin Lakes (or their insurance company) and the estate or birth parents of the itinerant teenager Trayvon Martin does not come as a surprising event in cases like this or "Slip and Fall" or other kinds of Death by Misadventure.

In my experience, typically, the organization admits no guilt or blame and the decedent's representatives agree to refrain from further litigation with some (secret) sum of "go-away" money paid to them in exchange for their relinquishing any further claims.

Thus, we almost take it for granted as a expected given in this kind of situation. This settlement, including any nondisclosure provision, is pretty standard stuff, I believe.

OK, "Slip and Fall" it isn't this time, but now that this landmark has been established, I want to address a couple of the issues raised post-kissoff: first, the insecure and porous enclosure of the multi-residential campus; and, second, the Geo Locating Cues.

An architect wrote an Op-Ed piece about this case in which he opined that the campus of this development is poorly designed. I happen to agree with him. The townhouses or villas look lovely, but the environment is sterile and disorienting, among other things.

How could the developers have left the enclosure so porous and insecure? Other condo complexes have high concrete walls around them. These developers may have had to trim costs to keep their offerings within the preplanned price points. Then, they may have claimed that they expected to complete the enclosure at some future date. It should be clear by now that the estate's boundaries security needs more attention sooner rather than later.

Somewhat related to this issue is the protocol for guests. Aren't residents expected to notify Security that they are housing guests and provide their identities? Aren't guests supposed to get signed security passes? Are guests allowed to roam the campus after dark without being accompanied by their resident hosts? How do unit owners know whether someone is a legitimate guest or a trespasser?

Continued in Part II which follows . . .

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