Seattle Crime Reports : Seattle Crime Blog : Seattle, Washington

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It seems like everybody in Perugia has something to say about Amanda Knox and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

Today, two English newspapers are reporting on an extremely unimportant "development" in the case: that Knox and Sollecito supposedly went shopping for lingerie the day after the murder.

First off...who cares? It has already been reported by one of Kercher's close friends that Knox didn't appear particularly distraught after the killing. Some people would say this is cause for suspicion; others - myself included - don't find her lack of emotion to be particularly worthwhile one way or another.

People handle death differently. What some express through tears and visible distress, others internalize and deal with on their own. To try and make a determination of a person's guilt or innocence simply based on their external emotional response to a crime, no matter how heinous the circumstances surrounding it, is absurd.

Working from this perspective, it shouldn't be at all surprising if Knox went shopping for lingerie with her boyfriend so shortly after the incident occurred. For all we know, shopping - or sex - could be their way of handling the newfound stress.

So why am I writing about it? Well, though the news doesn't strike me as being largely important, one article in The Daily Mail features some hilarious quotes from the shop owner who claims he witnessed the suspects' so-called "strange" behavior.

Knox, 20, who calls herself Foxy Knoxy, and doctor's son Sollecito, 23, were overheard by a shopkeeper as they browsed through underwear in a clothes shop selling fashion items.

Carlo Maria Scotto di Rinaldi spoke to police two days after the couple were arrested on November 6, after recognising them on the television news. "They came into the shop and were there for about 20 minutes," he said. "The girl bought a camisole and G-string.

"I heard her as she was choosing the underwear - particularly the G-string - and as they were ready to pay, in front of the till, she whispered, 'Afterwards I'm going to take you home so we can have wild sex together'."

The report at The Times Online, meanwhile, gives a slightly different quote from the shopkeep. This one, equally lame, is attributed to Sollecito.

Mr di Rinaldi said that they stayed for half an hour, and that Ms Knox bought two thongs. He overheard Mr Sollecito say to Ms Knox: “You can put these on at home and we’ll have wild sex.” He said that they spoke in English, “but I know the language and had no difficulty in understanding”.

Let's assume for a minute that these quotes are legit. For someone who attempts - albeit lamely, as The Stranger's Christopher Frizzelle has pointed out - to exhibit creativity in her writing, Amanda Knox sure has no idea how to talk dirty.

"Afterwards I'm going to take you home so we can have wild sex together"?

I've never been good at sex talk myself...but even I could think of something better to say than that.

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I'm not trying to make enemies here, but I've never really liked The Stranger, one of Seattle's two "alternative" weekly papers.

I find that they've got too much style and not enough substance in their print publication, all the while maintaining almost militant political and social viewpoints that can't help but leave politically moderate readers taken aback. (Maybe that's their goal...after all, moderates certainly aren't The Stranger's target audience).

That being said, I do prefer them to our other alternative news source - The Seattle Weekly - if for nothing more than The Stranger's ability to maintain a (for the most part) solid blog, one that is constantly updated on developments in the Puget Sound area.

Why am I mentioning all this?

Well, in this week's issue of the paper, Christopher Frizzelle has a review of Amanda Knox's short story "Baby Brother" (which I mentioned in a post yesterday). In his piece, he sheds a humorous light on the most infamous literature of 2007.

Frizzelle's review confirms what many of us following the case have already been thinking: Ernest Hemingway, Amanda Knox is not. Repetition, one-dimensional characters, ridiculous descriptions...all indicate, as the critic so tactfully points out, that "she wasn't a very good short-story writer."

The story's biggest weakness from a literary standpoint is that none of it is believable. Kyle, the story's rapist, is a cheeseball bad guy who first tells his brother, "A thing you have to know about chicks is that they don't know what they want," and then punches Edgar in the face. Anyone who's ever read a handful of college-level creative-writing assignments knows that date rape is a cliché of the genre, as is someone-punching-someone-else-in-the-face. These are the sorts of conflicts that creative-writing students cook up because they're taught that the first thing they need to do is cook up conflict. [Emphasis once again added by the Seattle Crime Blogger - Ed.]

Interesting take on things. Hats off to Frizzelle.

Meanwhile, a far less impressive piece written by Erica C. Barnett on SLOG chimes in on the absurd debate over whether Knox is attractive.

She writes:

The media salivates over stories where pretty white girls go nuts, ergo the media obsessively describes American girls who go nuts as “attractive,” “pretty,” “sexy,” etc. (See also: Coverage of murdered rich, blonde, white girls vs. coverage of murdered poor, non-blonde, non-white girls.)

I'm not sure what the author is trying to say here. Does Barnett mean that she is surprised by this?

She shouldn't be. Look at it objectively: the reason the media jumps on such stories is because "rich, blonde, white girls" are involved in murder cases - whether they're the victim or the suspect - far less often than "poor, non-blonde, non-white girls." When was the last time a case like the Knox spectacle shook Seattle, or any other major American city for that matter?

And then she has the nerve, a little farther down, to criticize the English press?

Come on. If there was ever a blog post on the Amanda Knox saga that didn't need writing, Ms. Barnett's "insightful" commentary certainly takes the cake.