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An editor insists on giving Meredith's ethnicity as Anglo-Indian. There is no evidence to support that claim. The citation Meredith's mother tells court of grief says only that her mother was born in India. We don't know if she is Indian etnicity, let alone Anglo-Indian.
The Anglo-Indian article says
“ | The Anglo-Indian community in its modern sense is a distinct, small minority community originating in India. They consist of people from mixed British and Indian ancestry whose native language is English. An Anglo-Indian's British ancestry was usually bequeathed paternally. | ” |
These are people whose geneology dates back to the British India, and who became a distinct ethnic group, neither truly Indian nor truly British, but tend to regard themselves as more British than Indian.
If in fact Arline Kercher is an Indian national, that would certainly make Meredith Eurasian, but it would not give her Anglo-Indian ethnicity unless Arline is Anglo-Indian. We have no evidence whatever to support that idea: the probability is tiny that it could be true by chance.
The line should be deleted from the info-box. -- Red King ( talk) 20:06, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
"Half-British, half-Indian" is like something from a Victorian trial. It is not an ethnicity. Nobody has produced a reason why that line should remain. -- Red King ( talk) 20:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Personally I think the Ethnicity part of the info box should not be there at all - ever. rturus ( talk) 19:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Adding Meredith Kercher presumed ethnic group in the infobox doesnt provide useful information to the reader. Instead that is a misleading information, because someone could think that Meredith had particular habits, in relation to the culture, language or religion of that specific group that indeed she did not have at all. She was fully British and had enjoyed a life in a global way tyipical of western civilizations, or at least she did in the last months of her life, wich is what it is of interest in the article.-- Grifomaniacs ( talk) 20:57, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
A few days ago (say the 19th Dec) I thought the lead section was beginning to look finished: the wording needed a bit of polishing and I think it failed to mention that the defendants all maintained their innocence throughout, but otherwise (to my mind) it looked OK. It stuck to the factual events, named the people concerned and gave the outcomes. It read to me like the sort of entry you might find in, say, a one-volume encyclopaedia. Since then, it has been expanded a bit. This is OK but I think we are starting to see some of the details of arguments and evidence creeping in, which will make it difficult to keep the lead balanced and risk making it too big. I thought this should be discussed before it becomes a problem! A prime example of what I'm talking about is the statement that "[Knox and Sollecito] further claimed that the murder had been commited by Guédé, a man with whom they had no relationship, acting alone". Initially I deleted this because I thought it must be wrong, but apparently it is true. However, putting a statement like this in the lead begs a lot of questions. Firstly, how were Knox and Sollecito able to accuse Guede when they claimed not to know him, and how do they know he acted a lone if they weren't there at the time? Secondly it leads to the question of how the prosecution responded to this claim and what evidence led the court to reject it? If we put all this in, the whole thing starts to get out of hand. My own view would be that we should keep the lead very simple and avoid getting into the details of evidence and arguments. What do others think? Bluewave ( talk) 11:03, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I wasn't sure what to make of the reduction in Guede's sentence when I read about it on the BBC site. However, there is a useful statement from Commisario Montalbano at http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php. Of course, this is a blog and not appropriate for using directly in the article, but is at least an informed opinion. He explains that an appeal of a fast-track trial is different from the 'tougher' full appeal of an appellate Court of Assizes, which will apply to Knox and Sollecito. He goes on to say that the reduction for Guede was based on an assumption that Knox and Sollecito sentences would be confirmed in appeal, and he then granted to Guede the same ‘attenuanti generiche’ which has been applied to the other two. He then applied the 1/3 auto-reduction for his fast-track trial. The result of this arithmetic is the 16 years. So this has simply brought Guede's sentence into line with the other two and it sounds like it is entirely the expected outcome (to those who are familiar with the Italian justice system). Bluewave ( talk) 18:08, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
[Unindent] A couple of points. Firstly, Wikid77 has (above) likened the fast-track system to US-type plea-bargaining. We need to be a bit careful about this comparison because, in the fast-track system (as I understand it), it is quite possible for the defendant to plead their innocence of all charges throughout the process. The fact that Guede opted for a fast-track in no way affects his own argument that he his innocent. A second point is that I think European sentences may be less harsh than those in the US. In the UK, for example, someone given a "life sentence" is actually eligible for parole after about 15 years (depending on the case). Bluewave ( talk) 11:08, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
The house diagram that I created for the article has been deleted from Wikimedia Commons, as being a "map" (rather than artwork) whose dimensions must be based on public-domain sources. I still have the workfiles for that image, but due to consideration as a so-called "map", it will be difficult to re-add it to the Commons images. I've never tried to put a fair-use rationale on an image that I created myself, so I'm not sure what reasoning to use. This is a somewhat of a Catch-22 situation: if I haven't been in the Perugia house, I can't put the diagram ("map") on Commons, but since I created the diagram myself, I have no source that I am "fairly using" to copy the image without altering it, so it can't be a fair-use image? I'll see what I can do about this. - Wikid77 08:40, 23 December 2009
I came to this article thinking I had no particular point of view and could help make it better, less partisan and more encyclopaedic. I'm now coming to the conclusion that it is just too difficult. My own attempts at neutrality seem to be perceived as being partisan and the effort of trying to justify my neutrality turns out to be just too difficult. I am not a novice to Wikipedia...I have been here at least four years and must have made at least a couple of thousand edits, but I have never felt so disheartened as I have been over this article. It clearly needs someone else with complete neutrality and a great deal more tenacity than I can muster. Sadly, the squabbling over the imaging of those convicted of the murder has completely overshadowed the memory of the victim. Please, somebody, delete the whole thing and start again. Bluewave ( talk) 22:41, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
26-Dec-09: I had thought that creating a subarticle would allow a major expansion of details on that page, without bloating the main article. However, Wikipedia rarely operates in a "pre-planned" fashion (for resource balancing). Instead, just keep expanding the main article, and when huge, then consider re-creating the subarticle(s). Compare to 17 subarticles from article " Charles Manson" (107kb), with subarticles for the Manson Family members & the 7 Tate/LaBianca Murders on August 9-10, 1969. Pregnant actress Sharon Tate was stabbed 16 times, at the house with her 4 friends also stabbed/shot, and the 4 convicted suspects were also in their twenties: Susan Atkins (age 21), Charles "Tex" Watson (23), Patricia Krenwinkel (21) and Linda Kasabian (20). Since the 2007 Kercher murder was treated as a gang of 3 suspects convicted of stabbing her, then similar coverage would seem justified. However, beyond the murder, there were charges of sexual assault and theft. Plus, the Manson Family operated only in the U.S., whereas the Kercher case involves the British girl, the American & Italian couple, and the Ivory-Coast man. Hence, expect vastly broader coverage to handle details related to each nation/culture. Plus, as a recent case, more details would be found published in reliable sources, as compared to sparse details of murders 40 years ago. So, expect a massive page of 200-300kb. Beyond that size, the details can be moved into a Wikibooks entry, because we can't expect WP to pre-plan the long-term size as being a wikibook. - Wikid77 11:25, 26 December 2009
26-Dec-09: Some people seem to think this is a low-profile, routine homicide requiring only a "footnote" in an encyclopedia. However, try the following neutral test of finding similar cases: hunt for the following set of phrases in a search-engine (of billions of webpages): "murder and sexual assault" theft students "3 suspects". Then, count all of the similar, ordinary murder cases that match. I found only 1 murder case: Kercher. - Wikid77 11:51, 26 December 2009
The case is striking also for the fact that to many observers, the prosecutor is a very controversial figure the likes of which we do not encounter in the U.S. PilgrimRose ( talk) 06:12, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
The italian article is short and clear in Wiki. Why in English is so long? Justice is justice,the rest is bla bla bla. 92.39.149.7 ( talk) 11:29, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
This article is farce and a disgrace compared to other articles In Wikipedia. As long as the "truth" about the case has not come out, it cannot be that the defense always has the last word. There is no respect of the work of the Italian prosecution and jurisdiction, they themselves are judged in this article, as if they were primary school pupils or worse. It would be best to translate the Italian wikipedia article into english and to prevent anyone associated with a personal interest (e.g. "friends of Amanda") from contributing to it, if that was possible. Cannot somebody seriously neutral rewrite all this and keep out any personal interest and manipulative disguise. Otherwise, I suggest that this article should be called "Amanda Knox involvement into the Murder of Meredith Kercher as seen by her friends and relatives". I'm seriously disgusted, even if Amanda is innocent, this article gets the current status of the trial and previous events totally wrong. Just look at some of the phrases used, typically at the end of a paragraph, to give Knox the last word: " Knox's defence claim..", "Defence lawyers for Knox dismissed..", "There is no forensic evidence, such as DNA..", "The defense and Knox's supporters claim that it was the real killer, Guédé...","Knox's family has claimed that she was convicted because..", "Knox, her family and many supporters in the U.S. maintain that she has been unjustly convicted and vow to..". People responsible of this distortion should be ashamed of themselves, whatever the truth behind the involvement of Knox and Sollecito is. If they are seriously involved, which seems really reasonable after all, you load a subtle kind of "guilt" or at least serious responsibility on yourselves. — 91.109.190.146 ( talk) 19:28, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
79.156.168.92 15:38, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
I think could be interesting to note that a delegation of the Italy USA Foundation met on Sunday December 13, 2009, in Capanne prison on the outskirts of Perugia Amanda Knox, in an effort to heal any rift over accusations that Italy's justice system is unfair. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.199.65.2 ( talk) 17:48, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Why did a lot of the media coverage in the UK and Italy change from feeling sure that Knox and Sollecito were guilty into doubting their guilt and saying the evidence against them was insufficient to convict? Lkjhgfdsa 0 ( talk) 18:54, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
29-Dec-09: The article has finally been expanded to note that Rudy Guede had been caught with a large stolen knife (16-inch, 40-cm) inside a closed Milan school on 27-Oct-07 (5 days before the murder) with a laptop PC reported stolen 14-Oct-07 from a Perugia law office burgled with a rock breaking an upstairs window. The Perugia police were notified Guede had the laptop, plus a cellphone also stolen from the Perugia office with the broken window. However, Guede was released by the Milan police, and not transferred to the Perugia police, as testified by the two Perugia solicitors (attorneys) at the Knox/Sollecito trial hearing on 26-June-2009 and by the school teacher 27 June. Hence, the reports of Guede holding a stolen knife and stolen property from a prior upstairs-window burglary could be confirmed by Milan police, Perugia police, and the 2 solicitors (lawyers Palazzoli and Paolo Brocchi) whose PC, printer and mobile phone were stolen on 14-Oct-07. I regret that this major information had been omitted from the article, even until late December, while the details had been in major news reports in June 2009. Please understand that when police release a knife-carrying theft-suspect days before a theft/murder, with his handprints and DNA near/on the stabbed victim, the event is judicial dynamite, and should never have been omitted from the article. The details are not rumors, but rather, confirmed by Milan police, Perugia police, and court testimony of 3 professionals. - Wikid77 (29Dec2009) revised 15:34, 31 December 2009
Still trying to understand what really happened. The fact that the police kept ignoring Guede's activities in the weeks before the murder is troubling. More importantly, they must have had Guede's fingerprints already on file at the time of the murder from his prior arrests. The police did say that they were able to identify Guede through his fingerprints at the Kercher scene. If the police had his fingerprints already on file, they should have been able to confirm that Guede had been at the scene of the crime very quickly, very early on. Yet, the prosecutor ignored Guede and focused on Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba until Lumumba could establish an alibi. I find this very strange. If Guede's fingerprints were at the crime scene and the police had the ability to identify his fingerprints, then why did they take such a long and winding road in focusing on Guede? Instead, the police spent a great amount of time and effort trying to connect others to the crime, based on very weak forensics, while the guy whose DNA and fingerprints are all over the place was initially ignored. Was this all just incompetency or was it by design?? PilgrimRose ( talk) 02:16, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Returning here, having had a few days' Christmas break from the internet, it seems to me that the article itself had been overly influenced by editors' opinions and is now just getting worse by the day. This talk page seems to have been taken over by people's theories about what might have happened; people's opinions about the competence of the police; people's assessments of who was lying and who telling the truth; people's opinions about the chief prosecutor and almost anything other than the purpose of this page, which is to discuss improving the article. At one point, above, Wikid77 even tells us to "beware of other court testimony that might have falsely accused Amanda Knox of deceitful behaviour...". Rubbish! The article should summarise the main evidence (including testimony under oath) that led the courts to convict the three accused. Bluewave ( talk) 17:35, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Some readers seem shocked at the text that the article now contains, because formerly, for many months, the article had been less than half the current size. However, I was shocked at all the details that the article formerly omitted. There have been several recent "revelations" added to the article, even though the issues had been published months, or years, ago in reliable sources, as in mainstream newspapers. Many issues had shocked me, including:
For most of 2009, the article had mentioned the word "theft" only once or twice, even though all 3 suspects had been charged with theft for over a year. All of these issues I found to be totally shocking. So, please understand, if other people are shocked by details of the events in the article, they are not alone. - Wz777 ( talk) 10:02, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
Resolution: If I don't like it, I won't just whinge about it, I'll do something about it. So, onto the "satanic rites" which are mentioned twice in the lead and elsewhere. The cite given for "satanic rite" is talking about a hearing that was held behind closed doors. The quote about the satanic rite was actually a quote from Sollecito's lawyer, giving his take on the prosecution case. The other cite given (which doesn't say satanic) is the Daily Star. If there is something to be said, a reputable source should be found, not a notorious tabloid. I don't believe that anything was said about satanism at the trial itself and my recollection is that Mignini brought up the suggestion of a "ritual killing", early on in the trial, but this was stamped on instantly by the judge and never mentioned again. It is clear from the Guede judgement that this was not considered at his trial. Summarising the prosecution's theory, in this way, for the article lead, is totally misleading. Hence, I'll edit accordingly. Bluewave ( talk) 17:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
For those of us who didn't know much about the trials (until recently), there is a lot of stuff to add. What exactly is the " Celtic Horse" found in blood (?) on Kercher's bedroom wall? Perhaps it was like a Rorschach test image, where the interpretation depends on what a person favors (a mathematician sees a plus sign "+" where a devout Christian might see a short cross). I don't wish to burden anyone into adding all these details, but I think more details might be sought by readers of the article. This is, in all fairness, an utterly bizarre, wild murder case claiming a sexual orgy, with no condoms, wrappers or sexual aids in the room. To me it seems like a simple theft/murder got faked to appear like a no-evidence sex game? Where are the "sex dice" and "sex game rulebook"? I don't have much time, but I will try to find out if Guede got mad because he lost a round in the sex game or something. - Wikid77 ( talk) 21:00, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm new here, please don't assume a negative tone, I'm sincerely curious how this article fits the policies on Wikipedia inclusion. I see a lot of work has been done on this article, and these types of events are always tragic, but I know among other things from randomly browsing Wikipedia policy pages that Wikipedia isn't for memorial pages, and biographies of persons must meet a certain level of renown before they can be included as well. -- Is it enough to meet inclusion that an event is sufficiently covered, was mysterious, perhaps there was a media circus? Being from the USA I hadn't heard about this particular case until now, but I do know these types of things when they happen here are often in the media for weeks or even months after the event. Thanks for your patience in advance, +- Adam.T.Historian ( talk) 00:00, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
This is just a courtesy notification that the usernames FormerIP, Wikid77 and Darryl98 have been temporarily blocked from editing Wikipedia due to charges leveled in a secret, 2-week investigation of the article & talk-page entries, as a sort of " sealed indictment" against them. They are only allowed to edit their own talk-pages during the ban. The charges included excessive removal of text, or too many reverts ( WP:3RR), and the appearance of sockpuppetry to avoid tracking by other users, with this article. All of the charges have been appealed, but the responses have been mostly negative, and all of the edit-blocks were upheld in the first round of appeals, pending further analysis by several of the many (1707+) admins (an admin is an ordinary "anonymous" username who is allowed access to administrative tools, after debated approval by others). Anyway, if those 3 users appear to have been rudely ignoring any of the recent discussions, please understand that their silence has been because they were swiftly blocked without even a grace period to allow them to announce their temporary ban from the English Wikipedia. Such instant bans have been common in Wikipedia, and some users have quit Wikipedia due to harsh policies, so any banned users might not wish to return. In general, please be courteous in discussions with other users, and try to reach a consensus (as a mutual compromise with opposing users) before removing text from an article. Discussions and edits of these pages are being monitored. The admins deal with a lot of malicious vandalism, so their actions might seem to be overly harsh (as in " violence begets violence"), so please treat the apparent draconian actions as a lack of courtesy in Wikipedia policies, but not as a personal trait of admins, where many wish they didn't have to handle disputes. -12.78.83.238 13:44, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | → | Archive 15 |
An editor insists on giving Meredith's ethnicity as Anglo-Indian. There is no evidence to support that claim. The citation Meredith's mother tells court of grief says only that her mother was born in India. We don't know if she is Indian etnicity, let alone Anglo-Indian.
The Anglo-Indian article says
“ | The Anglo-Indian community in its modern sense is a distinct, small minority community originating in India. They consist of people from mixed British and Indian ancestry whose native language is English. An Anglo-Indian's British ancestry was usually bequeathed paternally. | ” |
These are people whose geneology dates back to the British India, and who became a distinct ethnic group, neither truly Indian nor truly British, but tend to regard themselves as more British than Indian.
If in fact Arline Kercher is an Indian national, that would certainly make Meredith Eurasian, but it would not give her Anglo-Indian ethnicity unless Arline is Anglo-Indian. We have no evidence whatever to support that idea: the probability is tiny that it could be true by chance.
The line should be deleted from the info-box. -- Red King ( talk) 20:06, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
"Half-British, half-Indian" is like something from a Victorian trial. It is not an ethnicity. Nobody has produced a reason why that line should remain. -- Red King ( talk) 20:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Personally I think the Ethnicity part of the info box should not be there at all - ever. rturus ( talk) 19:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Adding Meredith Kercher presumed ethnic group in the infobox doesnt provide useful information to the reader. Instead that is a misleading information, because someone could think that Meredith had particular habits, in relation to the culture, language or religion of that specific group that indeed she did not have at all. She was fully British and had enjoyed a life in a global way tyipical of western civilizations, or at least she did in the last months of her life, wich is what it is of interest in the article.-- Grifomaniacs ( talk) 20:57, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
A few days ago (say the 19th Dec) I thought the lead section was beginning to look finished: the wording needed a bit of polishing and I think it failed to mention that the defendants all maintained their innocence throughout, but otherwise (to my mind) it looked OK. It stuck to the factual events, named the people concerned and gave the outcomes. It read to me like the sort of entry you might find in, say, a one-volume encyclopaedia. Since then, it has been expanded a bit. This is OK but I think we are starting to see some of the details of arguments and evidence creeping in, which will make it difficult to keep the lead balanced and risk making it too big. I thought this should be discussed before it becomes a problem! A prime example of what I'm talking about is the statement that "[Knox and Sollecito] further claimed that the murder had been commited by Guédé, a man with whom they had no relationship, acting alone". Initially I deleted this because I thought it must be wrong, but apparently it is true. However, putting a statement like this in the lead begs a lot of questions. Firstly, how were Knox and Sollecito able to accuse Guede when they claimed not to know him, and how do they know he acted a lone if they weren't there at the time? Secondly it leads to the question of how the prosecution responded to this claim and what evidence led the court to reject it? If we put all this in, the whole thing starts to get out of hand. My own view would be that we should keep the lead very simple and avoid getting into the details of evidence and arguments. What do others think? Bluewave ( talk) 11:03, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I wasn't sure what to make of the reduction in Guede's sentence when I read about it on the BBC site. However, there is a useful statement from Commisario Montalbano at http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php. Of course, this is a blog and not appropriate for using directly in the article, but is at least an informed opinion. He explains that an appeal of a fast-track trial is different from the 'tougher' full appeal of an appellate Court of Assizes, which will apply to Knox and Sollecito. He goes on to say that the reduction for Guede was based on an assumption that Knox and Sollecito sentences would be confirmed in appeal, and he then granted to Guede the same ‘attenuanti generiche’ which has been applied to the other two. He then applied the 1/3 auto-reduction for his fast-track trial. The result of this arithmetic is the 16 years. So this has simply brought Guede's sentence into line with the other two and it sounds like it is entirely the expected outcome (to those who are familiar with the Italian justice system). Bluewave ( talk) 18:08, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
[Unindent] A couple of points. Firstly, Wikid77 has (above) likened the fast-track system to US-type plea-bargaining. We need to be a bit careful about this comparison because, in the fast-track system (as I understand it), it is quite possible for the defendant to plead their innocence of all charges throughout the process. The fact that Guede opted for a fast-track in no way affects his own argument that he his innocent. A second point is that I think European sentences may be less harsh than those in the US. In the UK, for example, someone given a "life sentence" is actually eligible for parole after about 15 years (depending on the case). Bluewave ( talk) 11:08, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
The house diagram that I created for the article has been deleted from Wikimedia Commons, as being a "map" (rather than artwork) whose dimensions must be based on public-domain sources. I still have the workfiles for that image, but due to consideration as a so-called "map", it will be difficult to re-add it to the Commons images. I've never tried to put a fair-use rationale on an image that I created myself, so I'm not sure what reasoning to use. This is a somewhat of a Catch-22 situation: if I haven't been in the Perugia house, I can't put the diagram ("map") on Commons, but since I created the diagram myself, I have no source that I am "fairly using" to copy the image without altering it, so it can't be a fair-use image? I'll see what I can do about this. - Wikid77 08:40, 23 December 2009
I came to this article thinking I had no particular point of view and could help make it better, less partisan and more encyclopaedic. I'm now coming to the conclusion that it is just too difficult. My own attempts at neutrality seem to be perceived as being partisan and the effort of trying to justify my neutrality turns out to be just too difficult. I am not a novice to Wikipedia...I have been here at least four years and must have made at least a couple of thousand edits, but I have never felt so disheartened as I have been over this article. It clearly needs someone else with complete neutrality and a great deal more tenacity than I can muster. Sadly, the squabbling over the imaging of those convicted of the murder has completely overshadowed the memory of the victim. Please, somebody, delete the whole thing and start again. Bluewave ( talk) 22:41, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
26-Dec-09: I had thought that creating a subarticle would allow a major expansion of details on that page, without bloating the main article. However, Wikipedia rarely operates in a "pre-planned" fashion (for resource balancing). Instead, just keep expanding the main article, and when huge, then consider re-creating the subarticle(s). Compare to 17 subarticles from article " Charles Manson" (107kb), with subarticles for the Manson Family members & the 7 Tate/LaBianca Murders on August 9-10, 1969. Pregnant actress Sharon Tate was stabbed 16 times, at the house with her 4 friends also stabbed/shot, and the 4 convicted suspects were also in their twenties: Susan Atkins (age 21), Charles "Tex" Watson (23), Patricia Krenwinkel (21) and Linda Kasabian (20). Since the 2007 Kercher murder was treated as a gang of 3 suspects convicted of stabbing her, then similar coverage would seem justified. However, beyond the murder, there were charges of sexual assault and theft. Plus, the Manson Family operated only in the U.S., whereas the Kercher case involves the British girl, the American & Italian couple, and the Ivory-Coast man. Hence, expect vastly broader coverage to handle details related to each nation/culture. Plus, as a recent case, more details would be found published in reliable sources, as compared to sparse details of murders 40 years ago. So, expect a massive page of 200-300kb. Beyond that size, the details can be moved into a Wikibooks entry, because we can't expect WP to pre-plan the long-term size as being a wikibook. - Wikid77 11:25, 26 December 2009
26-Dec-09: Some people seem to think this is a low-profile, routine homicide requiring only a "footnote" in an encyclopedia. However, try the following neutral test of finding similar cases: hunt for the following set of phrases in a search-engine (of billions of webpages): "murder and sexual assault" theft students "3 suspects". Then, count all of the similar, ordinary murder cases that match. I found only 1 murder case: Kercher. - Wikid77 11:51, 26 December 2009
The case is striking also for the fact that to many observers, the prosecutor is a very controversial figure the likes of which we do not encounter in the U.S. PilgrimRose ( talk) 06:12, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
The italian article is short and clear in Wiki. Why in English is so long? Justice is justice,the rest is bla bla bla. 92.39.149.7 ( talk) 11:29, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
This article is farce and a disgrace compared to other articles In Wikipedia. As long as the "truth" about the case has not come out, it cannot be that the defense always has the last word. There is no respect of the work of the Italian prosecution and jurisdiction, they themselves are judged in this article, as if they were primary school pupils or worse. It would be best to translate the Italian wikipedia article into english and to prevent anyone associated with a personal interest (e.g. "friends of Amanda") from contributing to it, if that was possible. Cannot somebody seriously neutral rewrite all this and keep out any personal interest and manipulative disguise. Otherwise, I suggest that this article should be called "Amanda Knox involvement into the Murder of Meredith Kercher as seen by her friends and relatives". I'm seriously disgusted, even if Amanda is innocent, this article gets the current status of the trial and previous events totally wrong. Just look at some of the phrases used, typically at the end of a paragraph, to give Knox the last word: " Knox's defence claim..", "Defence lawyers for Knox dismissed..", "There is no forensic evidence, such as DNA..", "The defense and Knox's supporters claim that it was the real killer, Guédé...","Knox's family has claimed that she was convicted because..", "Knox, her family and many supporters in the U.S. maintain that she has been unjustly convicted and vow to..". People responsible of this distortion should be ashamed of themselves, whatever the truth behind the involvement of Knox and Sollecito is. If they are seriously involved, which seems really reasonable after all, you load a subtle kind of "guilt" or at least serious responsibility on yourselves. — 91.109.190.146 ( talk) 19:28, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
79.156.168.92 15:38, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
I think could be interesting to note that a delegation of the Italy USA Foundation met on Sunday December 13, 2009, in Capanne prison on the outskirts of Perugia Amanda Knox, in an effort to heal any rift over accusations that Italy's justice system is unfair. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.199.65.2 ( talk) 17:48, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Why did a lot of the media coverage in the UK and Italy change from feeling sure that Knox and Sollecito were guilty into doubting their guilt and saying the evidence against them was insufficient to convict? Lkjhgfdsa 0 ( talk) 18:54, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
29-Dec-09: The article has finally been expanded to note that Rudy Guede had been caught with a large stolen knife (16-inch, 40-cm) inside a closed Milan school on 27-Oct-07 (5 days before the murder) with a laptop PC reported stolen 14-Oct-07 from a Perugia law office burgled with a rock breaking an upstairs window. The Perugia police were notified Guede had the laptop, plus a cellphone also stolen from the Perugia office with the broken window. However, Guede was released by the Milan police, and not transferred to the Perugia police, as testified by the two Perugia solicitors (attorneys) at the Knox/Sollecito trial hearing on 26-June-2009 and by the school teacher 27 June. Hence, the reports of Guede holding a stolen knife and stolen property from a prior upstairs-window burglary could be confirmed by Milan police, Perugia police, and the 2 solicitors (lawyers Palazzoli and Paolo Brocchi) whose PC, printer and mobile phone were stolen on 14-Oct-07. I regret that this major information had been omitted from the article, even until late December, while the details had been in major news reports in June 2009. Please understand that when police release a knife-carrying theft-suspect days before a theft/murder, with his handprints and DNA near/on the stabbed victim, the event is judicial dynamite, and should never have been omitted from the article. The details are not rumors, but rather, confirmed by Milan police, Perugia police, and court testimony of 3 professionals. - Wikid77 (29Dec2009) revised 15:34, 31 December 2009
Still trying to understand what really happened. The fact that the police kept ignoring Guede's activities in the weeks before the murder is troubling. More importantly, they must have had Guede's fingerprints already on file at the time of the murder from his prior arrests. The police did say that they were able to identify Guede through his fingerprints at the Kercher scene. If the police had his fingerprints already on file, they should have been able to confirm that Guede had been at the scene of the crime very quickly, very early on. Yet, the prosecutor ignored Guede and focused on Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba until Lumumba could establish an alibi. I find this very strange. If Guede's fingerprints were at the crime scene and the police had the ability to identify his fingerprints, then why did they take such a long and winding road in focusing on Guede? Instead, the police spent a great amount of time and effort trying to connect others to the crime, based on very weak forensics, while the guy whose DNA and fingerprints are all over the place was initially ignored. Was this all just incompetency or was it by design?? PilgrimRose ( talk) 02:16, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Returning here, having had a few days' Christmas break from the internet, it seems to me that the article itself had been overly influenced by editors' opinions and is now just getting worse by the day. This talk page seems to have been taken over by people's theories about what might have happened; people's opinions about the competence of the police; people's assessments of who was lying and who telling the truth; people's opinions about the chief prosecutor and almost anything other than the purpose of this page, which is to discuss improving the article. At one point, above, Wikid77 even tells us to "beware of other court testimony that might have falsely accused Amanda Knox of deceitful behaviour...". Rubbish! The article should summarise the main evidence (including testimony under oath) that led the courts to convict the three accused. Bluewave ( talk) 17:35, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Some readers seem shocked at the text that the article now contains, because formerly, for many months, the article had been less than half the current size. However, I was shocked at all the details that the article formerly omitted. There have been several recent "revelations" added to the article, even though the issues had been published months, or years, ago in reliable sources, as in mainstream newspapers. Many issues had shocked me, including:
For most of 2009, the article had mentioned the word "theft" only once or twice, even though all 3 suspects had been charged with theft for over a year. All of these issues I found to be totally shocking. So, please understand, if other people are shocked by details of the events in the article, they are not alone. - Wz777 ( talk) 10:02, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
Resolution: If I don't like it, I won't just whinge about it, I'll do something about it. So, onto the "satanic rites" which are mentioned twice in the lead and elsewhere. The cite given for "satanic rite" is talking about a hearing that was held behind closed doors. The quote about the satanic rite was actually a quote from Sollecito's lawyer, giving his take on the prosecution case. The other cite given (which doesn't say satanic) is the Daily Star. If there is something to be said, a reputable source should be found, not a notorious tabloid. I don't believe that anything was said about satanism at the trial itself and my recollection is that Mignini brought up the suggestion of a "ritual killing", early on in the trial, but this was stamped on instantly by the judge and never mentioned again. It is clear from the Guede judgement that this was not considered at his trial. Summarising the prosecution's theory, in this way, for the article lead, is totally misleading. Hence, I'll edit accordingly. Bluewave ( talk) 17:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
For those of us who didn't know much about the trials (until recently), there is a lot of stuff to add. What exactly is the " Celtic Horse" found in blood (?) on Kercher's bedroom wall? Perhaps it was like a Rorschach test image, where the interpretation depends on what a person favors (a mathematician sees a plus sign "+" where a devout Christian might see a short cross). I don't wish to burden anyone into adding all these details, but I think more details might be sought by readers of the article. This is, in all fairness, an utterly bizarre, wild murder case claiming a sexual orgy, with no condoms, wrappers or sexual aids in the room. To me it seems like a simple theft/murder got faked to appear like a no-evidence sex game? Where are the "sex dice" and "sex game rulebook"? I don't have much time, but I will try to find out if Guede got mad because he lost a round in the sex game or something. - Wikid77 ( talk) 21:00, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm new here, please don't assume a negative tone, I'm sincerely curious how this article fits the policies on Wikipedia inclusion. I see a lot of work has been done on this article, and these types of events are always tragic, but I know among other things from randomly browsing Wikipedia policy pages that Wikipedia isn't for memorial pages, and biographies of persons must meet a certain level of renown before they can be included as well. -- Is it enough to meet inclusion that an event is sufficiently covered, was mysterious, perhaps there was a media circus? Being from the USA I hadn't heard about this particular case until now, but I do know these types of things when they happen here are often in the media for weeks or even months after the event. Thanks for your patience in advance, +- Adam.T.Historian ( talk) 00:00, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
This is just a courtesy notification that the usernames FormerIP, Wikid77 and Darryl98 have been temporarily blocked from editing Wikipedia due to charges leveled in a secret, 2-week investigation of the article & talk-page entries, as a sort of " sealed indictment" against them. They are only allowed to edit their own talk-pages during the ban. The charges included excessive removal of text, or too many reverts ( WP:3RR), and the appearance of sockpuppetry to avoid tracking by other users, with this article. All of the charges have been appealed, but the responses have been mostly negative, and all of the edit-blocks were upheld in the first round of appeals, pending further analysis by several of the many (1707+) admins (an admin is an ordinary "anonymous" username who is allowed access to administrative tools, after debated approval by others). Anyway, if those 3 users appear to have been rudely ignoring any of the recent discussions, please understand that their silence has been because they were swiftly blocked without even a grace period to allow them to announce their temporary ban from the English Wikipedia. Such instant bans have been common in Wikipedia, and some users have quit Wikipedia due to harsh policies, so any banned users might not wish to return. In general, please be courteous in discussions with other users, and try to reach a consensus (as a mutual compromise with opposing users) before removing text from an article. Discussions and edits of these pages are being monitored. The admins deal with a lot of malicious vandalism, so their actions might seem to be overly harsh (as in " violence begets violence"), so please treat the apparent draconian actions as a lack of courtesy in Wikipedia policies, but not as a personal trait of admins, where many wish they didn't have to handle disputes. -12.78.83.238 13:44, 1 January 2010 (UTC)