The chapter in Malcolm Gladwell’s book TALKING TO STRANGERS dealing with Amanda Knox is Chapter 7 of 12 chapters, in Part 4 of 5 parts. As the chapter itself admits, it’s a “short” explanation of the Amanda Knox case. And that’s the problem. In a case spanning four years and four separate hearings [between November 2007 and October 2011], five pages hardly does the Amanda Knox case justice.
I’ve written six books on the case, with two to go. That’s two trilogies. This blog post on it’s own [and it will be one of several on the same subject] is likely as long if not longer than Gladwell’s chapter on Knox. It’s impossible to give this case a fair airing in a single “short” chapter. Even in that chapter Gladwell provides other cases, including Bernie Madoff and someone he refers to as “Nervous Nelly”.
And Gladwell* admits at one point:
I could give you a point-by-point analysis of what was wrong with the investigation of Kercher’s murder. It could easily be the length of this book…But instead, let me give you the simplest and shortest of all possible Amanda Knox theories. Her case is about transparency.
Gladwell is an expert at thin-slicing, and arguably a craftsman at keeping things short, sweet and succinct. For my part I’ve bought, read and enjoyed several of Gladwell’s books.
The problem here, dealing with this particular subject matter, is that brevity becomes reductionist. Short becomes not only simplistic, but grossly oversimplified. What Gladwell’s done here is basically taken the veneer of the mainstream media version of Knox’s story, the generic Wikipedia version, and adopted it seemingly at face value. He may have Googled a few other sources, and did some background reading, but then figured, he’s figured it out, let’s stick to the basics and not confuse the audience.
True Crime sets a high bar for truth-telling, and though Gladwell means well, it’s questionable whether he succeeds in clarifying the Knox case or contaminating it even more than it already is.
Bear in mind, his book isn’t a book on the Amanda Knox case, it’s a book about something else, and the Amanda Knox case is just one short chapter on the way to making his points about effective discourse with strangers.
In this series True Crime Rocket Science will evaluate Gladwell’s assertions on Knox. In itself, Gladwell’s “thin-slicing” of the Knox case is fortuitous – it’s an excellent summary of the mainstream narrative and what’s wrong with it. It also shows how in our haste to make our “expert” opinions known, we are tempted to cherry pick the low hanging fruit that suits our own confirmation bias. True crime can’t be rushed, and complex criminal cases shouldn’t be treated like a convenience store for civil intertextuality.
You get intertextuality within crimes, and that’s one thing, but there be dragons when you start to assume murder suspects are innocent and they are then recruited as part of a PR effort to promote some sort of cerebral agenda. It would be like conflating Stephen Avery with the plight of the poor – just don’t do it. Leave true crime out of it. It’s a separate discipline.
If Gladwell is a cognitive specialist, the Amanda Knox case is the epitome of a case, and a character, that is anything but cerebral.
From Vocabulary.com:
Cerebral people use their brains instead of their hearts.
I don’t mean that the case itself isn’t challenging, I mean the personality and the character of Amanda Knox, as it relates to the Murder of Meredith Kercher, is anything but cerebral. Knox’s book Waiting to be Heard is exhibit A in confirming someone who was trying to live it up, as most students do.
Chocolate festivals, sex, Halloween parties [and not being invited to them], boyfriends [and being passed over by someone you fancy living downstairs in favor of her housemate], smoking marijuana and then stepping the recreational drugs up a gear.
The most cerebral aspect of Knox’s existence in 2007 was Harry Potter. She read it in English, German and at the time of the murder, was trying to read The Deathly Hallows in Italian. Even in her choice of boyfriend, Knox selected Raffaele Sollecito because he resembled her hero Harry Potter.
Instead of carrying a wand and being interested in magic, Sollecito was a knife freak, who was into violent manga and cocaine. In today’s parlance we’d think of the young Italian as an incel. He was closer to an Elliot Rodger than Harry Potter, and Knox herself – loud, boisterous and promiscuous – was no Hermione.
This is what I mean by “the personality and the character of Amanda Knox, as it relates to the Murder of Meredith Kercher, is anything but cerebral.”
But let’s deal with the cool intelligence of Gladwell as he writes about the case. We’ll assume, as a thought leader, he became a scholar of the case, and we’ll test his application of his research through the prism of True Crime Rocket Science.
1. Someone was caught = case closed?
It seems ridiculously obvious doesn’t it? The black guy did it, so what’s the fuss about Amanda Knox anyway?
This is what’s known as being reductionist in true crime. Similar arguments have been made against the West Memphis Three, the three youths accused of brutalizing, torturing and murdering three eight-year-old boys. Why did three youths have to be guilty? Why couldn’t it be just one, or for that matter, anyone? Curiously, one of those youths found guilty and then acquitted in the West Memphis Three case appeared on the same stage to proclaim his innocence as Amanda Knox.
Interestingly, in the West Memphis Three case, one of the main challenges to the prosecution’s case is also a black person as a “possible alternate suspect”.
It should be noted, in the trials of Amanda Knox, as well as those of the West Memphis Three, Knox and Damien Echols both were charged with two sidekicks, and both received the harshest sentences. Both were implicated as ringleaders within a trio of suspects.
So Gladwell’s very first sentence in his chapter implies that because some person was caught and charged, Knox is off the hook. In theory, he could have stopped at that sentence and gone on to the next chapter.
There are many cases involving accessories to murder, one of the most famous – but never proved, nor tested in a court of law – was JonBenet Ramsey. JonBenet’s parents were found by the Grand Jury to be accessories after the fact to the a third party.
So even that case involves a potential trio – of accessories and a perpetrator. I could go on, but let’s get back to Gladwell. Nowhere that I can see, does Gladwell provide the most obvious thin-slicing. What’s the first thing one does when establishing the possible involvement of a potential suspect? What’s the first and best way to exclude a potential suspect of a crime? You find out whether they have an alibi. It’s not rocket science. And so you need two pieces of information. When did the victim die, and where was the suspect at this estimated time of death?
2. True Crime 101: Be Precise About Time of Death
I love the way Gladwell uses the most indirect language to skirt around this issue. He doesn’t write: “At 22:11 Rudy Guede murdered Meredith Kercher. At that time, Amanda Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito to were – WHERE EXACTLY?”
Instead Gladwell uses pretty clumsy English – for him.
“On the night of…Meredith Kercher was murdered by…”
Murdered by? I’m not sure when last I’ve heard those words. X murdered Y. It’s never a case of X was murdered BY Y.
By being this vague about the timing, Gladwell’s also vague about the date. November 1 was a holiday in Italy. It meant, on that day, most of the students in Perugia where Knox was attending college were away, visiting their parents over a long weekend. This meant it was only Knox and Kercher in the house, no one else. They were the only expats. And what do university students – especially expats – tend to do over long weekends?
In his next sentence, Gladwell juxtaposes mountains of speculation [what’s argumentation?] and controversy with the certainty of Guede’s guilt. Yes, Guede’s guilt is certain. He left his feces in the toilet bowel, and a bloody handprint on the wall above Meredith Kercher’s bed. He also left a series of shoeprints when he bolted from Meredith’s room down the hall and out the front door.
And this is where the rubber of True Crime Rocket Science hits the road. Look at the image of Guede’s shoe trail. What do you see? You don’t see anything. If you’d entered the house, as Knox claimed she did, at face value you wouldn’t see any blood. That’s a problem.
3. Where’s the blood, and why is so much of it a washed-out pink?
The original crime scene in Meredith’s bedroom was a bloodbath. Meredith throat was gashed deeply in two places, and she was also cut or stabbed seven times and had sixteen bruises on her body.
As Knox herself said: “She fucking bled to death…” When that happens, there’s a lot of blood. And there was. Arterial blood sprayed everywhere, and yet the crime scene had a weird combination of thick pools of blood, and pinkish transparent streams of diluted blood.
There was also a weird combination of the grotesqueness of the crime itself, and the fact that Meredith’s murderer had thoughtfully placed a duvet over her body, then closed the door behind him [or her], and locked it.
Somewhere in Gladwell’s “mountains of controversy” there are a few good reasons. Thin-slicing the evidence around Guede, we see if he was the only murderer, and if he beat a hasty retreat, then why did he fail to leave clear shoeprints in Meredith’s blood? He’d left a finger smear on the wall, and clearly more blood had to have sprayed onto his trousers and pooled onto the floor, so it was more likely he’d leave a trail of shoeprints. So why aren’t they there? Why, instead, are there various other footprints and shoeprints laid into the blue bathroom mat and in a shoe Guede didn’t even own?
So we have a situation here where it appears someone spent time cleaning up the crime scene – not only inside Kercher’s room, but in the hallway. Guede’s shoeprints left in Meredith’s blood were mostly wiped away, but not completely. Why weren’t they clearly visible, bright, and solid? After all, blood in a situation like this, where someone’s neck is cut open, is thick and scarlet. Think about Nicole Brown. So much blood flowed out of her it traveled down the garden path and dripped onto the sidewalk.
We won’t go into detail here about the blood evidence, or the mixed DNA traces, but it’s extensive. There’s an orgy of evidence.
4. “I wasn’t there” vs “Of course my DNA was there, I lived there”
Knox often refers to this aspect dismissively, saying there’s no evidence of her in the crime scene. She seems to be referring to Meredith’s room when she says that. As if the crime scene begins and ends inside Meredith’s room.
From EW.com:
Knox’s lack of DNA in Kercher’s room was no fault of her own. According to Knox, cleaning DNA is not one of her specialties. “That’s impossible. It’s impossible to see DNA, much less identify whose DNA it is.”
It’s not impossible to see DNA. If blood is lying on the ground, DNA is in that blood lying on the ground. If you clean up the blood, you clean up the DNA.
When asked about her DNA in Meredith’s blood elsewhere in the house, Knox is equally dismissive.
“Of course my DNA was there. I lived there! We lived together for months…”
5. Shady Character/s
Now let’s deal with Guede. Gladwell accuses Guede of being a “shady character” but doesn’t explain why. He mentions Guede having a “criminal history”, but doesn’t say what for.
So let’s answer that. Guede was drug dealer. He was said to be involved in several break-ins, but these were so petty, even when he was caught, the police didn’t press charges. More pertinently, Guede was a fairly frequent visitor to the house where Meredith, Knox, and the Italian boys downstairs lived. He played basketball with the guys, and sometimes smokes joints with the girls. On at least one occasion Guede got so high he fell asleep in the bathroom of the villa.
Gladwell is right to observe that Guede had been hanging around the house, but he should be more explicit that he also hung around inside it. On one occasion he went out clubbing with them. In this scenario, where Guede is a fairly frequent companion to the residents of the villa, it suddenly becomes less preposterous that there might be a crime involving more than one person.
We’ve also got to link Guede to Knox’s Italian boyfriend. How do we do that? Actually, it’s pretty simple. How did one link Guede to any university student?
In July 2014 the Telegraph reported on a cocaine dealer who Knox met on a train and had sex with, while her younger sister was traveling with her through Italy [and just prior to her commencing her studies in Perugia]. Guess what? This cocaine dealer wasn’t Rudy Guede, it was someone else.
Amanda Knox was reportedly having sexual relations with a cocaine dealer…Reports of Ms Knox’s drug dealing connections were not mentioned at her murder trials in Italy, but the Italian crime magazine Giallo has reported that in January 2008, police investigators wrote that she had had a relationship of a “supposedly sexual nature” with a man they refer to as ‘F’, who had sold drugs to the US student.
Giallo wrote that ‘F’ was a psychology student from Rome who met Ms Knox on a train from Milan to Florence and shared a joint with her. His number was later found on Ms Knox’s cell phone and Giallo said he had been in contact with her frequently, before and after the slaying of Ms Kercher.
Source: The Telegraph.
What we have here is a precedent for Knox and Sollecito to require the drug peddling services of Guede. And if he was a shady character, and they were actively using his services, what does that say about their characters?
When Gladwell refers to Guede hanging around the house Knox stayed in, why was he hanging around? Well, what about to do his trade with them, as he was doing with the student population in general?
Gladwell portrays Guede as a stranger to Knox, but that’s a mistake. It’s even possible Knox was either sleeping with Guede, or infatuated with him.
Source: The Education of Amanda Knox, from thestranger.com
6. Fleeing the crime scene
Gladwell finishes off his opening gambit linking the discovery of Kercher’s body to Guede fleeing to Germany [where, as it happens, Knox’s aunt also lived].
Now, to be clear, all of Meredith’s British friends fled Perugia. They cut short their studies and decamped back to Britain. But Knox wanted to stay. Everyone in the villa had to move out following Meredith’s murder, but Knox wanted to continue staying there. In fact, Knox was bummed out that she’d just paid the rent and now wasn’t going to get anything for it. Knox wanted her life to go on business as usual, even though someone in the room next door to her had been brutally murdered.
Gladwell might dismiss this as simply quirky, but most right-thinking people would realize something more was amiss. This isn’t just goofy behavior, although the goofy behavior is relevant. It’s more goofy than everyone else, why is that? And what might this goofiness have to do with her street cred, and her attitude to…say…alcohol use [as a 21-year-old American] and her proclivity to recreational drug use, and sex?
When Guede went to Germany, a friend of his got hold of him on Skype and had a conversation. This is an extract of that conversation.
GUEDE: I’m afraid. But I don’t want to stay in Germany, I’m black and if the police catch me I don’t know what they might do to me. I prefer Italian jails. In the newspaper they’re writing that I was drunk and slept on the toilet. That’s crap. In that house we were smoking joints, we smoked and so did those girls, everyone did. After that I said to the guys, who are men of their word, “Listen, guys, I’m tired, I can’t walk now, can I sleep over here?” So I slept on their sofa. I was only ever at their place twice. After that, after that I met Amanda, but I didn’t talk to her any more, I just saw her one other time, at that pub, at Lumamba’s pub, whatever his name is.
GIACOMO: Right, Lumumba.
Slipping ahead.
GUEDE: Listen to this [Guede is reading from a newspaper], “Meredith’s clothes were put in the washing machine. When the police came to the house it was still full, the girl’s clothes were wet”, so if that really did happen, Amanda or Raffaele did it. Do you understand? That must have been them, if it really happened.
GIACOMO: Why would they have done that?
GUEDE: Because when I left she was dressed, see?
GIACOMO: Meredith? The girl who died?
GUEDE: But Meredith was dressed.
GIACOMO: So they killed her dressed?
GUEDE: Yes, but it says here that they were washed in the washing machine, but it’s not true, she was dressed, she had a pair of jeans on and a white shirt and a woolen thing. She was dressed.
GIACOMO: All right, and that…
GUEDE: This means that they washed them, Giacomo. I left [the house], and that guy [quello] must have left that house and…
GIACOMO: But what the hell did Amanda go wash the clothes for?
GUEDE: How the hell do I know?
Read the rest of the transcript here.
There’s also something else that’s interesting. When Knox was arrested, she implicated another black man as being at her apartment. Her boss. According to that confession she was with this black man while he was in the room with Kercher. What are the chances Knox would know that Meredith’s killer was black person before anyone, before the rest of the world did?
And further, if Guede was at the villa, and Knox knew about him, why wouldn’t she tell the police about him, rather than her boss, was a married father who had never been to her home to begin with?
In Episode #2 TCRS will deal with Gladwell’s version of the police investigation into Knox and Sollecito, including his version of the forensic evidence.
*Malcolm Gladwell. Talking to Strangers (Kindle Locations 1975-1983). Little, Brown and Company.
Nick I hope you read this-i know it got long-and that you can appreciate that I still think you’re a great writer and we agree more often than not. I just struggle with your logic some on this one. hope you answer when you can my questions, or that other ppl who agree with you will, cause I don’t mean them rhetorically I’m really asking.
In the section “fleeing,” what do you mean when you ask “what might this goofiness have to do with her street cred, and her attitude to…say…alcohol use [as a 21-year-old American] and her proclivity to recreational drug use, and sex?” I’d say she’d be naive and was probably open to experience, and how is it relevant to Meredith being murdered?
I think this femme-fatale image keeps being used to connect unrelated things, like Amanda having sex with coke dealer on train—> they must have needed a dealer. You said “set precedent for A and R to require..his services.” There are many reasons that’s false. It seems like the real point of that article and the paparazzi’s portrayal of her had nothing to do with Meredith or her murder, it was public slut-shaming Amanda, placing a value judgment on her for sex she may or may not have had. If she looked different, the whole thing would have been completely different. I keep thinking “who cares” or “why does that have to do with this case?” Then I realize it doesn’t.
She didn’t randomly pick a black man to “pin it on” a la Susan Smith. That whole thing started because they read a text she sent him saying “see you later” that they found suspicious.
It would be helpful if you quoted her sometimes (like you did w/ the DNA)-like, when did she say something like she was “bummed she had just paid rent and wasn’t going to get anything for it?” That certainly sounds like a shitty thing to say, which is exactly why it’d be helpful to have context there-when she said it, to whom, etc.
I’d say she’d be naive and was probably open to experience, and how is it relevant to Meredith being murdered? >>>It has everything to do with it. If one person is credible and appropriate, and another not credible and inappropriate, it reflects hugely on the dynamics that arise between them in a cohabiting situation. Meredith had appeared in a music video, and had a lot of work experience, and was in Italy as an Erasmus scholar or on an Erasmus scholarship. Meredith was studying at a more prestigious institution than Knox. In almost every area, Meredith was “better” than Knox. When she visited Lumumba’s pub, he wanted to hire her because she was so good at mixing drinks. At the time of the murders, Knox was about to be fired by her boss. Meredith had more friends and “stole” Knox’s male fancy – Giacomo – the boy who lived downstairs. This is what is meant by one having more street cred than the other, and why being goofy is a symptom really of having no street cred.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/i-fired-foxy-knoxy-for-hitting-on-customers-patrick-lumumba-reveals-why-he-was-framed-over-merediths-6622028.html
If you think drugs have got nothing to do with this case, good for you.
She didn’t randomly pick a black man to “pin it on” a la Susan Smith. That whole thing started because they read a text she sent him saying “see you later” that they found suspicious.>>>The police saw a text on her phone and so…Knox said he’d killed Meredith. Yes, it makes a lot of sense. And it didn’t hurt that he was black too. Funny thing, after he was arrested, Knox did nothing to get him unarrested. She had a change of heart, said she felt bad, but DID nothing.
It would be helpful if you quoted her sometimes (like you did w/ the DNA)-like, when did she say something like she was “bummed she had just paid rent and wasn’t going to get anything for it?” That certainly sounds like a shitty thing to say, which is exactly why it’d be helpful to have context there-when she said it, to whom, etc.>>>With all due respect, there are two trilogies written, and if you want that sort of information, read the books, don’t expect everything handed for you for free on a platter. Here’s the quote:
“It kind of sucks that we have to pay the next months rent, but the owner has protection within the contract.” – Amanda Knox’s Email Home, Sunday, November 4
http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Amanda_Knox%27s_Email_Home
I just read her 3 “confessions” and in not one of them does she confess to anything other than hiding in the kitchen, covering her ears. The first 2, signed at about 1 and 5 in the morning, she repeatedly states that (after the police drummed into her head the notion that Patrick Lumumba was known to be guilty) she was not sure at all if her memories were accurate, given her state of intoxication that night. In the 5 AM statement, she only remembers hearing screams from the kitchen, not seeing Lumumba doing anything. Her statement from the next day completely retracts any implied accusation of Lumumba and re-asserts that she was at Sollecito’s house the whole night (which he later confirmed, after at first suggesting she might have left during the night). It sounds as if the police, assuming Lumumba was guilty, did everything they could to get statements confirming that assumption and threatened both Knox and Sollecito with false (from their perspective) prosecution if they didn’t provide those statements .
Hiding in the kitchen places her at the scene of the murder at the time the murder happened.
Really enjoyed your article Nick,
It is extremely close to what I also understand from that case. One thing I would add: unlike AK and RS, Rudy Guede never changed his story a bit. It remained all along, from the day he told it to his friend Giacomo on Skype when he was on the run, to the day he was arrested, to now… Lies are a very difficult thing to keep up with. They branch out in absurd and contradicting facts that eventually collapse.
Unfortunately, medias and the Internet haven’t echoed Guede’s versions as much as AK and RS’s. Absurdly he was considered an accomplice but remained so even after his “partners in crime” were acquitted without a chance for him to have his case also reconsidered.
I strongly recommend watching the 11 short video interviews of Guede available on Youtube and done for the Italian Television but never showed to an International audience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCaO1pY5QBE
Guede’s version of the story fits perfectly and strangely resonate as “more probable” than Knox’s. It also provides a strong hypothesis as why did Knox point to Lumumba: Guede is 101% sure (to use his own words) that Knox and another man were in the house at the time of the murder. When he came out of the bathroom Knox was leaving or had just left the house but he encountered the man. Guede didn’t recognize him but that stranger couldn’t not but notice Guede was black. And this is how Knox elaborated her lie later, citing the presence of a black man (reported by her accomplice), and conveniently pointing finger at Lulumba (the first and most obvious black person she could think of). Only she had made a mistake, it was not Lulumba, but Guede.
If Knox and Sollecito are guilty it is almost impossible to believe Guede was their accomplice. Either Guede is guilty and acted by himself, or AK&RS are the killers and Guede was telling the truth the whole time, and is innocent. After much hesitation the Italian Justice decided to sustain the second, and more convenient theory… living us with much unsettling feeling and only one conviction: poor Meredith and her family didn’t benefit much from the help of the justice, nor the medias.
Also, I can’t but express my sadness after the death of Meredith’s father John whom was also found dead last week; in yet other bizarre circumstances.
C/
Either Guede is guilty and acted by himself, or AK&RS are the killers and Guede was telling the truth the whole time, and is innocent. >>>I don’t think it’s a case of either or. All those present in that house when Meredith died are accessories to murder.
Yet you need a principal.
I think it’s easier to imagine a female ringleader recruiting two sexually invested pawns into a domestic scenario than any other version. Why would Guede or Sollecito have a grudge or a grievance about a British girl they hardly knew? Why would Amanda Knox have a grudge against a room mate that disapproved of her? How could that grudge involve Guede or Sollecito? Simple, through their relationship with her, and through their intentions with her, and her intentions with them.
What the reason for the rejection of the phrase “murdered by”? The obvious reason for introducing that phrase in a sentence such as “Y was murdered by X,” as an alternative to the simpler “X murdered Y,” is that it allows us the opportunity of letting the victim be the subject of the sentence. If we want to focus attention on the victim in a paragraph or in a summary of a case, then we might choose to use the “murdered by” construction, at least some of the time.
A Google search of the phrase “murdered by” that I just did yielded 25,000,000 results, while the phrase “murdered by him” yielded 800,000 results.
Correction: “What’s the reason…”
Would you also reject “killed by,” “slayed by.” “executed by,” “assassinated by,” etc.?
The obvious reason for introducing that phrase in a sentence such as “Y was murdered by X,” as an alternative to the simpler “X murdered Y,” is that it allows us the opportunity of letting the victim be the subject of the sentence.>>>But the victim isn’t the subject of the chapter, it’s the perpetrator, and the allegation is made by Gladwell that the actual perpetrator isn’t the perpetrator.
A Google search of the word “murdered” yields 176 000 000 results, so I don’t get what you’re arguing. “Murdered by him” isn’t the same as using names at either end, and using Google to try to disprove what I’ve experienced over several years as a true crime writer isn’t scientific, it’s silly.
I’m finding your serial nitpicking while making and correcting your own spelling mistakes irritating, quite frankly.
“But the victim isn’t the subject of the chapter, it’s the perpetrator…”
Granted, but you called it “clumsy English,” and said, “I’m not sure when last I’ve heard those words. X murdered Y. It’s never a case of X was murdered BY Y.” Never the case? Haven’t you suggested that the construction “murdered by” is universally ungrammatical or irregular? It’s unclear to me why that would be so.
I’m an author commenting on another author’s use of the English language. If you don’t understand, try not to let it bother you.
If that wasn’t your meaning, then I’ve misunderstood and I apologize.
Good morning from Shanghai, China everyone!
Just came across this short footage of convicted murderer Jodi Arias right after her arrest. Doing headstand while in custody. Does that weird behavior remind you of someone?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELzNWhpVvlo
Oh and by the way, same modus operandi in both cases: victim stabbed many times (27 to 29 times).
“I love the way Gladwell uses the most indirect language to the skirt around this issue. He doesn’t write: “At 22:11 Rudy Guede murdered Meredith Kercher. At that time, Amanda Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito to [sic] were – WHERE EXACTLY?”
Instead Gladwell uses pretty clumsy English – for him.”
So you accuse Gladwell (and I’m no fanboy) of clumsy English a sentence after writing an ungrammatical one. Lazy mistakes are not generally indicative of thorough examination, I’m afraid.
Not sure what error I’m supposed to have made. Perhaps you should get your eyes tested.