99-year-old man beaten over parking spot 1
Inmates hides dope in his rolls of fat 2
Customer kills armed liquor store robber 3
By Steve Huff in bizarre, homicide
Monday, Jan. 19 2009 @ 4:03PM

Amanda Knox, drunk with friends sometime in 2006.

Your friendly neighborhood crime blogger/reporter will be on Issues with Jayne Velez-Mitchell tonight on CNN Headline News, discussing the ongoing trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. Jayne's show airs between 7 and 8 p.m. ET.

Knox and Sollecito went on trial in an Italian courtroom on January 16. They're accused of killing Knox's then-roommate, British student Meredith Kercher, in early November, 2007. While the publicity surrounding this case has dwindled here in the U.S., it's still big news in Europe, where Amanda Knox's looks have led to a lot of heavy breathing in the press, to whit: "Angel-faced killer with ice-cold eyes." Hell, Knox has even starred in a movie made by an independent Italian filmmaker.

American media has been somewhat skeptical of the case against Knox. Dateline NBC has raised doubts about the integrity of the prosecutor in the case, Giulio Mignini -- doubts shared by best-selling American author Douglas Preston, who had his own unfortunate encounters with Mignini when Preston began researching Italy's most terrifying and famous unsolved series of murders for the book he wrote with Italian journalist Mario Spezi, The Monster of Florence.

Notable developments in the trial so far have been a denial of a Kercher family request to hold the trial behind closed doors, and in general, Amanda Knox's own reported behavior in the courtroom. A quote from the London Times:

During the seven-hour opening hearing on Friday, Ms Knox, 21 smiled and laughed repeatedly, joking with her lawyers and interpreter. Although sitting only a few feet from the bespectacled Mr Sollecito, 24, she barely acknowledged his glances along the row.

As far as is known the two, who have been held in separate prisons, have not spoken since they were arrested after the murder of Ms Kercher in November 2007. But during a recess on Friday, Ms Knox approached Mr Sollecito and broke the ice by asking: "Ciao, come stai?" ("Hi, how are you?"). She smiled at him and said: "You look good with your hair cut short."

I've gone back with my opinions on this case. The more I hear the possible scenario sketched out by prosecutor Mignini for what happened the night Meredith Kercher was murdered, the more I feel skeptical about Knox's possible culpability in her roommate's death (British journalist Peter Popham addresses the implausibility of Mignini's story here). Yet there's no denying Amanda Knox's behavior before her arrest and since her incarceration has been, at times, odd and inappropriate. Just take a look at the photos from the Times article to see what I mean.

To see what I've written in the past about this strange, almost operatic murder mystery, check out the following links: