The uncanny case of Amanda Knox and Patrick Lumumba

Let sleeping dogs lie vs. Every cloud has a silver lining

This is how the story broke out on Wednesday:

Amanda Knox wasn’t just “re-convicted” out of some random viciousness by a corrupt Italian court—by the way, that would be her talking points if she were to somehow channel Trump and his MAGA disciples. But the hubris at the root of the appeal by Ms. Knox was most definitely Trumpian.

Just imagine… sixteen years after the fact, she actually had the chutzpah to appeal her slander conviction, turning herself into the sensational poster child of the life lesson out of the adage, “let sleeping dogs lie.”

And all these long years, without as much as dropping a phone call to apologize to the person she’d smeared: Patrick Lumumba.

A person who called her a friend. A person who’d offered her, a boozing co-ed, her first job overseas!

When 20-year-old exchange student Amanda Knox came ashore in Perugia, she immediately befriended Patrick Lumumba, 34, the Congolese owner of the hilltop dive popular with students called Le Chic, who, in short order, hired her as waitress. A decision Lumumba would live to bitterly regret.

(Le Chic. Perugia), Italy)

For, in November 2007, as soon as the police started considering her and her boyfriend as suspects in the gruesome rape and murder of her British roommate, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, Knox conveniently fingered Lumumba as the culprit.

(Congolese bar-owner Patrick Lumumba was nabbed after being fingered by his waitress Amanda Knox as the murderer of Meredith Kercher. To this day, Knox has still to apologize to Lumumba)

Lumumba spent 14 days in jail before being cleared by the carabinieri. But that episode only opened him to further snooping by the carabinieri, who strong-armed him into shuttering Le Chic. Ruined almost overnight, Lumumba left Perugia: he fled Italy altogether…

In September of last year, a reporter of the Milanese daily Corriere della Sera caught up with Lumumba in—of all places!— Krakow, Poland, where he’d successfully rebuilt his life, to get his take on the purported appeal being lodged by Amanda Knox of her slander conviction.

Beside genuine bafflement at the sheer stupidity of the whole exercise, Lumumba was still bristling with anger looking at the rear view mirror of the receding time:

My life was literally turned upside down. Amanda knew very well that I was innocent, but those few words she told the police the morning of November 6, 2007, "he killed her," in a flash destroyed me, resetting to zero the esteem I was enjoying in Perugia. And now, she’s even demanding the reversal of her conviction for slander!

Yesterday, Patrick Lumumba was displaying some cringe-worthy “un-Congolese”schadenfreude. Africans generally contemplate such events with a good dose of fatalism. And, to think of it, instead of “hailing” the court ruling against Amanda Knox, Patrick Lumumba ought to be on both his knees thanking her for her betrayal.

Move over Perugia!.. As the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining—or as Lumumba would say: “À quelque chose malheur est bon!”

Just look at the picture below of the Polish reinvention of Lumumba with Alexanndra and their baby, and tell me with a straight face that Ms. Amanda Knox doesn’t deserve a slew of kudos:

(Photo: Corriere della Sera)