A case based on wild theories

last updated 8 January 2015

Peter Popham

The Independent (U.K.)

Amanda Knox may be the victim of a wacky conspiracy theorist, said Peter Popham. Knox, an American student at an Italian university, was told this week that she and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, will stand trial for the murder last year of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher. The Italian prosecutor trying Knox “decided only a few days after Meredith died that the murder was the culmination of an orgy.” Where did he get such an idea? From Italian blogger Gabriella Carlizzi, a noted conspiracy theorist who claimed, based on no evidence whatsoever, that the murder “had been ordered by the dark masters of an esoteric Masonic sect.” Carlizzi, a wealthy architect’s wife who says she receives guidance from a dead priest, blogged that the murder looked to her like a Halloween “ritual culminating in human sacrifice.” In his statement to the court this week, prosecutor Giuliano Mignini said the murder was a Halloween “rite.” Coincidence? No. “Carlizzi and the prosecutor know each other well.” Mignini may have no evidence that Knox is guilty. But he does “have the benefit of a cracking story. And in Italy, that counts for a lot.”