The Forgotten Killer Quotes

“The reason they interrogated Amanda all night was to break her. Not get the truth, not get answers, not make Perugia safer, but to break her so that she would say what they wanted her to say. Amanda Knox was interrogated for eight hours. Overnight. She was denied food and water. She was denied the use of a bathroom. In a police station. In a foreign country. In a foreign language. By a dozen different officers. Without being allowed a lawyer.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“The purpose of interrogating at night has more to do with torture than law enforcement.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“Perugia had to call in resources from Rome to help that night. It was not a spontaneous interrogation. It was preplanned, and preplanned to be an all-nighter.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“But on the final evening of Amanda’s interrogation, she was interrogated all night. Not by just one or two detectives, but by adozen—twelve—detectives. Again, the police not only do not dispute this; they have entered this evidence into court.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“In the five days after the murder of Meredith Kercher, detectives interrogated Amanda Knox for 43 hours.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“All indications are that burglar/murderer Rudy Guede was a police informant.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“Mignini claimed that the crime scene had been cleaned. But I saw the unedited videotape of the crime scene. I knew that there was no way it had been cleaned, nor had any cleaning been attempted. Mignini’s statement made no sense. It could not be a mistake. It was a lie. The prosecutor also claimed that he had a receipt for bleach purchase by Amanda Knox the morning after the murder. Sure sounds convincing. Except that he didn’t have a bleach receipt, and none was ever produced in court. He was lying. Had he not been, the receipt would have been entered into evidence. But then, he would have had to explain away the fact that bleach wasn’t used at the crime scene.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“Edgardo Giobbi, lead investigator, all but confessed his ignorance with this statement to the press: “We knew she was guilty of murder without physical evidence.” This embarrassingly naïve statement apparently raised no alarms in Perugia.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“For reasons steeped in flawed intuition, differing cultural norms, and superstition, detectives in Perugia almost immediately focused on Amanda Knox as the target of their investigation. It was this “junk profiling” that caused them to believe that because she didn’t weep for the victim in public, she didn’t weep in private. This lack of public display of grief caused them to falsely believe she killed her friend.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“Target fixation” is a term first coined by the military to explain crashes of ground-attack planes that could not be attributed to enemy fire. Investigators found that pilots could fixate so completely on their target that they ceased to take in outside data, which would tell them important things like, “You’re about to hit the ground.” In their zeal to make a perfect “drop,” it is not uncommon for pilots who are suffering from target fixation to fly their airplanes directly into the target before dropping their bombs, or to pull out so low that they have no chance to avoid hitting the ground. Target fixation is exactly what afflicted the investigation in Perugia, and with such ferocity that the detectives and the prosecutors continued on that fatal course, to the destruction of their case, their credibility, and, likely, their careers.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“On November 20, 2007, he was arrested for riding without a ticket on an intercity train near Mainz, Germany. Once German authorities identified him, he was extradited back to Italy.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“From all physical and behavioral evidence, the most likely scenario would have the lone offender quickly rising from the toilet, pulling up his trousers, and going immediately to the woman and confronting her with his knife. With reference to the element of surprise and victimology displayed at countless scenes of violence, we would expect the victim to plead with the UNSUB to take what he wants and leave her unhurt. This would be true whether the victim knows the UNSUB or not.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“It is scientifically impossible for one offender to leave extensive DNA evidence and for others involved in the same assault to leave none.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“The perpetration of the primary felony burglary is organized and methodical, strongly suggesting criminal sophistication and experience. It is the unexpected introduction of one of the house residents to the crime in progress that quickly shifts the crime scene to a disorganized presentation.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“There is no evidence of sexual or religious ritual, or any kind of game or group orgy.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“Signature refers to those elements that make the crime emotionally satisfying or fulfilling to the offender, such as binding or torture, photographs, humiliation”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“Modus operandi, or M.O., encompasses those actions necessary to accomplish the crime.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“Stripping the duvet from the bed and throwing it over the victim’s body in this situation is an indicator of depersonalization—the UNSUB did not want to see the results of his assault as he remained in the room searching for money and valuables. The UNSUB would be able to justify the killing in his own mind as necessary to protect himself;”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“In the above-captioned case, the motive or original intent of the UNSUB was burglary of cash and/or other valuables. With the unexpected appearance of one of the residents of the house, the crime devolved into a homicide. The motivation was both sexual opportunism and the need to eliminate the only witness.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“According to the organizational typologies of the Crime Classification Manual [Douglas, Burgess, et al], the major category classification of this crime is Criminal Enterprise, with sub-classifications of Situational Murder and Disorganized Sexual Homicide. The key consideration in these classifications is that the primary intent is a nonsexual felony (e.g., robbery or breaking and entering). The victim is at the scene of the primary felony and is sexually assaulted and murdered as a second offense.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“In other words, the case, almost from the beginning, was more about covering up mistakes and protecting the careers of powerful people than in finding the truth about who killed Meredith Kercher.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“After the eight-month investigation, Amanda and Raffaele were put on trial and convicted a year later. Their appeal took two more years. (Trials in Italy are notoriously slow.) The court of appeals, in a full jury trial, found them innocent of murder in 2011 and severely criticized the evidence against them as being nonexistent, scientifically flawed, and erroneous. They were released after spending 1,427 days in prison, and Amanda flew home to America. But Italy has no double-jeopardy clause in its constitution, and prosecutors are allowed to appeal acquittals. Mignini appealed the verdict to the Corte Suprema di Cassazione. On March 26, 2013, the Court of Cassation vacated the acquittal and ordered a new trial. That new trial took place in late 2013.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“Mignini’s proposed motive—that the murder was an occult rite—may seem far-fetched to American readers, but it was no surprise to those who knew Mignini. That had also been his theory of motive in the Monster of Florence case.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“Eight months passed before they were actually charged with murder: That was how long it took to develop the “evidence.” In the United States, suspects typically cannot be held more than 72 hours without being charged.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“On October 3, 2011, Amanda Knox walked out of Capanne Prison a free woman, escorted by her family, on her way to a flight back home to Seattle, while Raffaele Sollecito headed to his father’s house and liberty, soon to enroll at the University of Verona to continue his college studies.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“Nearly two more years would pass before appellate Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann announced his verdict, declaring them innocent upon appeal—under Italian law an even more forceful verdict than not guilty because it means exoneration and an absence of any compelling evidence at all.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“After a grueling trial lasting almost a year, Judge Giancarlo Massei found both Knox and Sollecito guilty of murder on December 4, 2009.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“When Meredith Kercher arrived home, Guede was still there. He sexually assaulted her and slit her throat. Two days later, he fled the country. He was identified through fingerprints left at the scene. Two weeks after that, he was tracked down by police and apprehended near Mainz, Germany, and brought back to Italy to face justice. By then, however, an overzealous prosecutor named Giuliano Mignini, a lifelong resident of Perugia, had detained, interrogated, and arrested Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of Meredith Kercher. Rather than admitting his mistake in light of the capture of Rudy Guede and freeing the young couple, he kept them imprisoned for an entire year, routinely allowing prejudicial gossip, damaging innuendo, and questionable “evidence” to reach a media pool hungry for salacious details. In this way, irreparable harm was done to the reputations of the accused, who were isolated and denied any avenue of response. When Mignini finally charged them as co-conspirators with Guede in the murder of Meredith Kercher, any chance of a fair trial had been purposefully destroyed.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“On the evening of November 1, 2007—All Saints’ Day—Rudy Guede climbed a wall, used a rock to break a second-floor window under cover of darkness and forced his way into a small house on Perugia’s Via della Pergola where Meredith Kercher lived with three other women who, because of the holiday, were not present at the time.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher

“On October 28, 2008, when Judge Paulo Micheli found Rudy Guede guilty of the crime of murder, following an abbreviated “fast track” trial, the killer of talented British college student Meredith Kercher was removed from society and placed safely behind bars, where he has resided ever since. That same day, the judge also ordered a case devoid of merit or motive to proceed to full trial against the victim’s American roommate and her Italian boyfriend.”
― Douglas Preston, The Forgotten Killer: Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher