What will the final Knox story be?

Somebody reminded me the other day that I questioned Amanda Knox’s innocence four years ago and asked if I’m ready to apologize. Well, I made that assessment on the basis of what I read in the newspapers about the case at the time. She was saying one thing one day and something different the next. She may have been so drugged up at the time of the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher that she has no clear recollection of how much of a part she took in it, but I still think she was there when it was done. And so was her Italian boyfriend. If it wasn’t them who did it, they both know who did it and each is protecting the other.

Remember, this was a group thing, that’s never been disproven And no group has been identified as people in the victim’s circle prior to Amanda and the boyfriend. Personally, I thought Amanda acted as guilty as hell in the parts of the trial I saw. She was too composed, too careful about what she said, did and acted. Unlike her kooky behavior on her arrest. A 20-year old girl on trial for a ghastly murder she didn’t commit should have been a basket case. She never was until the judge let her go.

I don’t know what percentage of Americans believe she beat the rap or was truly innocent. It’s not like the O.J. Simpson case after whose acquittal there couldn’t have been one person in the nation or even world who didn’t think he was guilty and got off.

He’s in prison now for going too far in trying to retrieve some of his belongings that had been stolen from him, but I don’t think Amanda is going to do anything in the future that will get her in another prison. She’s smarter than O.J.

I guess if there’s an upside to this, it’s that Amanda went to Perugia as a college student to learn to speak Italian and after four years behind bars, she mastered it sufficiently to plead her innocence to the jury in their language. She deserves an A for that.

What I wonder now, since the Seattle Times and the likes of Donald Trump were so fervent in Amanda’s defense, if we’ll hear about her activities before Perugia which don’t match the impression of the sweet-faced college girl portrayed by the media. Remember the two American bikers the Iranians released from prison in July after being arrested as spies when captured on the Iraq-Iran border? They swore they were taken illegally by the Iranians while in Iraq while the Iranians said they were in their country. They insisted they were innocent hikers out to see the countryside. My assessment was that they dared to cross the border and got caught.

After they were freed I learned more about one that makes me question his insistence it was all an accident. James Kerchick of the New Republic, writing in the Wall Street Journal, said Shane Bauer earned a degree in “Peace and Conflict Studies” at Berkeley. That, on a website calling for his release a friend attests to his “strong conviction of the U.S.- led brutal war on Iraq and Israel’s ongoing violence against the Palestinian people.”

The freed Bauer himself said that he opposes U.S. policies toward Iran which perpetuate this hostility. While neglecting to thank President Obama or Hillary Clinton for helping secure his freedom, Bauer expressed gratitude toward Hugo Chavez, Sean Penn, Noam Chomsky and Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) all anti- U.S. activists.

I don’t think Bauer and his companions were spies but one of them at least wanted to see Iran, only it backfired. His companions, of course, are not likely to tell.

Same goes for Amanda. It’ll be interesting to see if she writes a book to recoup all the money her family spent trying to get her off. The boyfriend undoubtedly needs money too, so it’ll be even more interesting if he writes one.

–Adele

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)