Witness tells court Amanda Knox had ‘wound to her neck’

By Calvin Palmer

A witness in the Amanda Knox trial today told the court in Perugia, Italy, about a puzzling scratch on Knox’s neck that was visible hours after the murder of British flatmate Meredith Kercher.

Laura Mezzetti, who lived in the same house as Knox and the dead woman, said she had noticed the mark because Kercher had been stabbed in the neck.

Knox, who appeared in court wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “All you need is love”, denies murdering Kercher during an alleged sexual assault on November 2, 2007.

“Amanda had a wound to her neck and I noticed it because it was known that Meredith had been killed by a wound to her neck,” Mezzetti said.

Knox’s lawyer suggested the mark may have been a love bite or, as her father said, “probably a hickey”.

Mezzetti said a love bite would have been “purple and more round”.

She first noticed the mark at the police station in Perugia the morning after the murder when she and Knox were waiting to be questioned. She said it had not been there the day before.

“I was afraid that Amanda, too, might have been wounded,” she said. “I was worried and I looked at it really intensely.”

She told the court that the scratch, which was just under half an inch long, was bright red. She gestured to show that it was beneath Knox’s chin.

Mezzetti was asked why she had only mentioned the scratch during her sixth interview with police. She replied that she thought everybody else would have noticed it.

Knox addressed the court for the second time in two days.

She disputed evidence from witnesses last week that she had argued with Kercher over the allocation of domestic chores in the house.

“This issue of the cleaning has been exaggerated,” she said in the accomplished Italian she has learnt during her year of imprisonment. “I spoke to the other girls but it was never a reason for conflict, never. I always had a good relationship with them. I’m really saddened about it.”

Her father, Curt Knox, a 47-year-old executive with Macy’s department store in his hometown of Seattle, has objected to the portrayal of his daughter since the trial began.

“She’s been painted to be a black angel, a devil woman, whatever the hell you want to call it and she is none of those things,” he said. “The portrayal of her is the opposite of who she really is.”

He also called into question some of the evidence given by Kercher’s British friends about the behavior of his daughter after the murder.

He said the testimony provided by the seven British women was so similar that it suggested they may have conferred together.

“It was amazingly consistent,” he said. “It could lead you to believe that they may have had discussions prior to providing their testimony… you would expect there to be a little deviation here and there.”

He said the significance of the unusual T-shirt Amanda chose to wear on Valentine’s Day lay in her musical taste.

“She’s a Beatles fan,” he said. “Sometimes she ends her letters with lines from Beatles songs like Let It Be or All You Need Is Love.”

Knox, 21, and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 24, are standing trial in Perugia for the murder and sexual abuse of Kercher, 21, an exchange student from Leeds University. Knox and Sollecito deny the charges.

The trial was adjourned to February 27.

[Based on reports by The Daily Telegraph and The Times.]

Great Train Robber Biggs taken to hospital with pneumonia

By Calvin Palmer

Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs has been taken to hospital suffering from pneumonia.
 
His son, Michael Biggs, 34, today said his father had been taken from Norwich Prison to the nearby Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital in Norwich.

He said the case was serious and his 79-year-old father was being given intravenous antibiotics.

Prison authorities will not grant him permission to visit his father in hospital.

“All that they’re telling me is that he’s stable and I’m not authorised to go and visit him,” he said. “He’s stable but he’s had three strokes, two heart attacks, his body’s covered in skin cancer.

“It’s a pretty bad situation he’s in as he cannot speak, he cannot read or write; he cannot eat or drink. It’s a bit pathetic that he’s still in prison.”

He urged the Ministry of Justice to take pity on his father and set him free.

Ronald Biggs gained notoriety for his part in the Great Train Robbery, one of the most audacious hold-ups in British criminal history.

On the night of August 8, 1963, a 15-strong gang held up a London to Glasgow mail train, making off with £2.6 million ($3.75 million) in used banknotes — a massive heist at the time.

Biggs escaped from Wandsworth Prison in a furniture van 15 months after being jailed. He spent three decades on the run in Spain, Australia and Brazil but, when his health began to suffer, he returned home to give himself up in 2001.

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust said: “It’s time government thought again about how best to deal with thousands of elderly offenders, many of whom are chronically ill, disabled and demented.

“A compassionate country would develop secure accommodation for the elderly, or allow them home at last, rather than suffer the double punishment of growing old and dying in a bleak jail.”

[Based on reports by AFP, BBC News and the Press Association.]

Man gets seven life terms for torturing wives and children in ‘reign of terror’

By Calvin Palmer

A polygamist who tortured, starved, imprisoned and beat his wives and children for decades was sentenced to seven life terms in prison yesterday at a court in California.

Mansa Musa Muhummed, 55, was sentenced to additional terms totaling 16 years and eight months by Riverside County Superior Court Judge F. Paul Dickerson III, who said Muhummed’s treatment of his family amounted to “a reign of terror over defenseless children.”

Muhummed, spoke before sentencing and denied ever mistreating his three wives and 19 children.

“I never tortured anyone,” he told the court. “I don’t know where that came from.”

The judge dismissed his comments. “Mr. Muhummed showed no remorse and accepted no responsibility for his twisted behavior, and the court is sending the strongest message possible,” he said.

Muhummed was arrested in 1999 at the family’s house in rural Aguanga in Riverside County, but legal maneuvering delayed the trial for years.

Originally from Virginia, Muhummed — whose given name was Richard Boddie  — came to California, converted to Islam and moved his family from place to place, living in houses, small apartments and vans.

Muhummed was convicted in June of 25 counts, including torture, child endangerment, false imprisonment and corporal injury on a spouse.

At his trial, family members testified that he would beat them savagely with boat oars, hoses and electrical cords for any perceived infraction. Grounds for beatings included sneaking food, failing to recite a passage from the Koran accurately and not asking to use the bathroom. He also organized fights between his boys.

Muhummed tightly rationed food for everyone but himself. He carefully locked up the cabinets and chained the refrigerator. His children said he “ate like a king” while they went hungry, going without food for up to seven days. They had to beg for it or pick a lock and steal it. If caught, they were beaten or made to stand all night in a corner. Buckets in bedrooms usually served as their toilets, they said.

When police found Sharon Boddie in 1999, she was 18 years old, weighed 48 pounds and stood barely 4 feet tall. Her older brother Marlon weighed 53 pounds. Another brother, Curtis, 16, weighed 42 pounds.

Marlon Boddie, in an interview before the sentencing, said his father hung him upside down in the basement by a cord and beat him for hours. He said he was made to eat his own feces and vomit. Marlon Boddie, now 29, said he once smashed a bottle against his head in order to get sent to a hospital and out of the house.

The family lived in Bakersfield, North Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs, Moreno Valley, Riverside and Aguanga. Muhummed made money selling his food stamps and collecting Social Security on himself and his children, family members said. His children were pulled out of elementary school or never sent.

The wives and children were often locked up in a dark garage for days with no heating, air conditioning or toilets.

In 1999, one of the wives slipped a letter to the mailman, begging for help. Police raided the Aguanga home and arrested Muhummed. Another wife, Marva Barfield, was jailed for a year on charges of child endangerment. She was released after agreeing to testify against her husband.

“I married him at 18 and got out at 45,” Barfield told the court yesterday. “I was scared of him. I want to apologize to my kids for not doing more, but I was truly afraid of him.”

A letter was read from another daughter, Felicia Boddie, asking the judge to show mercy: “If he didn’t have emotional problems, would he have done this? . . . I want the hate to end and the healing to begin.”

When it was Muhummed’s turn to address the court, all but two family members left the courtroom. He spoke defiantly, saying that he was innocent and that his children were pressured to say they were abused.

“I made mistakes, but they know how I looked after them their whole lives,” he said. “I tried to keep them together. My family never suffered the way they say they did.”

The judge denied a defense motion to sentence Muhummed to one life term so he might be eligible for parole someday. Instead, he gave him a life sentence for each of the seven counts of torture.

“Muhummed isn’t eligible for parole for at least 65 years,” said his attorney, Peter Morreale. “If his appeals are exhausted and he does not prevail, he will die in prison.”

Sentencing came nearly a decade after Muhummed’s arrest. His trial followed nine years of delays in which he represented himself and changed lawyers multiple times.

Earlier yesterday, he sought to have his attorney removed and filed a motion for a new trial, claiming he had new evidence to help clear his name, but the judge denied the motions.

[Based on reports by the Los Angeles Times and Associated Press.]