Continuation Part Eight: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[Bill Williams]

Bill,

You are clearly leaving out some context if Stefanoni believes they are guilty which by default is denying there contamination. She obviously had more to say than what you posted. You are leaving out the nuance, I suspect.

I never heard of somebody automatically imagining stuff that isn't real as the result of somebody asking them to recall stuff. Either it happened or it didn't.

Does Amanda have schizophrenia? Because what you are describing sounds like hallucinating. It is my understanding that she asked to write an unsolicted letter to the police confirming her imaginings and it reads like she is trying to leave herself an escape hatch on her allegation. He might have done, but maybe not. It isn't a useful statement in that regard. So why bother making the accusation at all? If you are not sure, just keep your mouth shut until you are.

Given she had lawyers over there, it isn't believable that she was intimidated by the police. They would know if she was beat by them because she would have bruises on her body. All she had to do was stop talking.

I do not really know if Stefanoni believes they were guilty or innocent.

But Massei HAD to respond to Stefanoni's admissions. Since you asked, I will summarize for you the reasons why Massei thought these four things did not denote contamination: You can either believe me or read Massei for yourself.

- Stefanoni could neither confirm or deny that she herself had touched the bra-hooks with obviously dirty gloves. Massei ruled that Stefanoni was to be believed that she frequently changed her gloves, despite her gloves being plainly dirty in the video.

- Stefanoni claimed that the other investigator that day also frequently changed his gloves, including before picking up the clasp himself. Massei believed Stefanoni.

- Stefanoni admitted that the simple act of replacing the clasp onto the floor could be an avenue of contamination. She qualified this by saying that to actually ensure contamination, you would want the floor to be wet.

- Stefanoni admitted that the 118 Medical people had come into the room on Nov 2 without protective measures. Massei ruled that the clasp at that time was "probably" underneath Meredith and, thus, protected from contamination.​

Napoleoni took a step inside the room when the doctor from 118, who had arrived, uncovered the body. Deputy Commissioner Napoleoni stated that everyone who entered wore gloves and shoe-covers except for the personnel from 118, who, even without the precaution of shoe-covers and gloves could not have contaminated the clasp, it is observed, since it was well-hidden and, one might say, protected by Meredith's body and by the pillow under which it was found.​

This begs the question that since the clasp was not collected for another 46 days, and was in fact found in a different place than as photographed on Nov 2, how can you rule out the 118 Medical Staff as the source of contamination from what they'd tracked in - particularly through the door where hours before Raffaele was trying to break it down?

 

[Desert Fox]

I don't believe she was interrogated very long and she seems like a confident tough girl. If she was innocent she wouldn't be breaking down like that and making wild accusations. Her wearing a All You Need Is Love t-shirt in court indicates she is confident and a rebels. Rebels don't give into authority that quickly. She would have to been tortured essentially and nobody believes that happened.

If you read her book, she is not that kind of rebel.
She is more of the harmless rebel that wants to do the right thing.
Kind of a kind heart as well.
Maybe some is fiction, sure. I don't think it is but I will grant that as an argument point.

Different people break at different points and impossible to tell where that is. She had been questioned though over several days and she was being questioned in the middle of the night in a language she barely spoke.

You did not answer my key point though I posted previously.
Is there anything which would convince you of reasonable doubt?

 

[Skind]

Why didn't the defense ask for the semen stain to be tested from day one?.

Because there was no defence on day one. There were no suspects on day one. This failure is entirely on the police.

Even so, the defence do not take their pay-check from the Italian police. It is not their job. Literally.

However, Sollecito did point out that this was discussed amongst himself and his defence early on, but they rightfully suspected the results would *somehow* end up being his dna. Or would *somehow* get lost. Or something else might happen.

 

[kwill]

What a strange discussion this has been today.

Aiken77, I'm learning things from you. Interesting things, but not the ones you think you're sharing.

For the record: in DNA testing, contamination is ASSUMED unless the people doing the testing can show that the procedures they used to run their tests followed very carefully defined standards.

This is because it is extremely likely that samples will be corrupted without those procedures. It's not at all like matching fingerprints, except at the very last stage of the process.

To say that a defendant must prove how and when a particular instance of contamination occurred is truly through the looking glass justice.

You have to ask yourself which is more likely:

1. A student about to graduate from university has no history of violence. He is in a new relationship with a foreign student who doesn't speak his language well. For no particular reason, he helps her to kill her roommate, cleans up afterwards, and then spends 4 years in prison, insisting all the while that it never happened.

2. A careless police officer touches a doorknob with a defendant's fingerprints on it and then touches a scrap of cloth and metal, transferring the defendant's DNA onto the scrap.

 

[Bill Williams]

I don't believe she was interrogated very long and she seems like a confident tough girl. If she was innocent she wouldn't be breaking down like that and making wild accusations. Her wearing a All You Need Is Love t-shirt in court indicates she is confident and a rebels. Rebels don't give into authority that quickly. She would have to been tortured essentially and nobody believes that happened.

She's been fighting this murder charge for 7 years. She has perservance. Yet we are to believe she cracked after a few hours of interrogation and started to believe things that were not true? That isn't believable unless she has a serious mental disorder of some sort. She's a lot more mentally tough than you give her credit for. There is no quit in her.

You should read up on wrongful confessions. You are trying to assess personality traits of a person you've never met, using behaviour science you do not understand.

Any competent interrogator can crack any innocent suspect, which is why (after the Central Park Five wrongful convictions based on false confessions) police forces have protocols to prevent this from happening. False confessions benefit no one, esp. the victim's family.

 

[Desert Fox]

You should read up on wrongful confessions. You are trying to assess personality traits of a person you've never met, using behaviour science you do not understand.

Any competent interrogator can crack any innocent suspect, which is why (after the Central Park Five wrongful convictions based on false confessions) police forces have protocols to prevent this from happening. False confessions benefit no one, esp. the victim's family.

The victim's family will almost always consider the person guilty even when there is substantial later evidence of innocence.

 

[Bill Williams]

Why didn't the defense ask for the semen stain to be tested from day one?.

Because there was no defence on day one. There were no suspects on day one. This failure is entirely on the police.

Even so, the defence do not take their pay-check from the Italian police. It is not their job. Literally.

However, Sollecito did point out that this was discussed amongst himself and his defence early on, but they rightfully suspected the results would *somehow* end up being his dna. Or would *somehow* get lost. Or something else might happen.

A completely incredible aspect of guilter-logic is represented in the above. Amanda's and Raffaele's defence teams should have been there on Nov 2 demanding that the presumed semen stain be tested.

Think on this for a second - take all the time you need.

Not very far below the surface of this is the blaming of the falsely accused and even their lawyers, even before they'd been falsely accused or lawyers were needed.

Police work is to establish who, in the future, should be accused and who will need a lawyer and a defence.

What I think happened is this. The semen stain belonged to Lumumba. Lumumba had his lawyer go back in time to Nov 2 and complain to the police that if this stain was tested it would implicate his client, someone who on Nov 2 was not suspected or mentioned by ANYONE.

The defence lawyer brought the investigators forward in time 2 weeks to witness Lumumba being released from jail. The police went back to Nov 2 and because of this lawyer's intervention, and in the knowledge that Lumumba was not involved, they chose to decline testing, knowing Lumumba was going to be released...

.... how's the logic going?

 

[Skind]

I don't believe she was interrogated very long and she seems like a confident tough girl. If she was innocent she wouldn't be breaking down like that and making wild accusations. Her wearing a All You Need Is Love t-shirt in court indicates she is confident and a rebels. Rebels don't give into authority that quickly. She would have to been tortured essentially and nobody believes that happened.

They weren't wild accusations though, they were quite specific in terms of person. Which is why it is strange that they don't include any firm specifics of action that she would have known had she actually been there. It's exactly like the police had been suggesting a particular suspect to her and she was making **** up to please them based on guesswork. You know, like generally happens in false confession cases.

So you can cut out your ideas of what innocent people would or would not do, as innocent people can and have done exactly that in the past, again and again.

It's laughable to assert that you can tell she is a rebel from her t-shirt. Aside from the possibility that it may have been her only clean t-shirt, she has already indicated that she wore it because of what day it was. Heavily cliched, entirely predicatable for a women from Seattle, and nothing to do with 'rebelling'.

She's been fighting this murder charge for 7 years. She has perservance. Yet we are to believe she cracked after a few hours of interrogation and started to believe things that were not true? That isn't believable unless she has a serious mental disorder of some sort. She's a lot more mentally tough than you give her credit for. There is no quit in her.

It's believable because people mature and change. Are you really so dumb as to think years of prison won't have toughened her up a bit? To think that years of stress won't have inured her a bit?

You're essentially requiring absolute stasis in hardiness, whilst talking about a person who faced one of the most hardening environments anyone can undergo without living in a warzone.

You're using a classic logical fallacy, and one that's so obvious that there's no way are you not using it knowingly and purposefully. Sort yourself out before spewing accusations of divergance and underhanded tactics against other people.

 

[Desert Fox]

Bill you've never met her either if I am not mistaken yet you assert it is perfectly logical that she would give a false confession during a confession.

I don't think the Central Park Five is the example you want to use. There was overwhelming evidence they did. Just not probable all of them would give false confessions either.

Knox was an athlete and she's a survivor. Survivors if innnocent don't say things that aren't true. She was clearly scheming and for whatever reason she thought blaming Patrick would do something for her, maybe just buy her some time to come up with a better story. This theory jives with her "he might have, he might not have" approach. She can always go either way later on because she never committed to either.

See, you are making up a complete fantasy here

 

[RWVBWL]

Top Expert?

<snip>
I think it is tough to argue this woman is not a top expert if she's working at Italy's government crime lab. There has to be some qualifications for a job like that. This isn't some fast food job.
<snip>

Aiken77,
Your top expert apparently tested the presumed seminal fluid!
Here she is discussing the testing particulars with her co-worker, Alessa
back on Nov. 3 of 2007:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlXKyMh48KQ&app=desktop

Where's the results top expert?

 

[Bill Williams]

She did give specifics of action. She said Patrick wanted to have sex with MK, that she covered her ears while he was raping her. That seems like more detail than the police needed if all they wanted was for her to place herself at the crime scene or accuse Patrick.

Wearing that t-shirt at the trial indicates she wasn't scared of Italian justice. This was after them supposed hitting her in the head and using mental mindgames to get her to say what they wanted. You'd think she'd show up in her most professional looking attire.

No, she was asked why she DIDN'T hear anything.... and she responded by saying, "I don't know, maybe I had my hands over my ears." Please read her book.

Her responses are classic false confessions, being led by interrogations who already knew and were trying to lead her there, or as one of the investigators said, "She buckled and told us what we already knew."

 

[Strozzi]

. . . There was never any evidence outside the house that he climbed up that way and I can't see an experienced thief going in that way. . .

The police did not search very hard outside the cottage for evidence that a burglar scaled the wall. Step one is you walk around and look down. Step two is you get down on your hands and knees and really comb through the leaves and soil. Maybe run a sticky paper through the leaves and over the soil to see if it picks up tiny glass fragments. That is elementary if you wanted to see if tiny glass fragments were in the leaves and soil.

I don't recall any serious examination of the outside wall beneath Filomena's window. Do you, Aiken77?

How about checking for fingerprints around the window and on the glass? What do you recall of the police effort, Aiken77? Any lab results?

The police very early on concluded that the break-in was fake, and therefore did no serious search for forensic evidence on the exterior or around the window (inside and out). They let their early theory that it was an inside job trump a serious search for physical evidence that the break-in might be real.

 

[Bill Williams]

. . . There was never any evidence outside the house that he climbed up that way and I can't see an experienced thief going in that way. . .

The police did not search very hard outside the cottage for evidence that a burglar scaled the wall. Step one is you walk around and look down. Step two is you get down on your hands and knees and really comb through the leaves and soil. Maybe run a sticky paper through the leaves and over the soil to see if it picks up tiny glass fragments. That is elementary if you wanted to see if tiny glass fragments were in the leaves and soil.

I don't recall any serious examination of the outside wall beneath Filomena's window. Do you, Aiken77?

How about checking for fingerprints around the window and on the glass? What do you recall of the police effort, Aiken77? Any lab results?

The police very early on concluded that the break-in was fake, and therefore did no serious search for forensic evidence on the exterior or around the window (inside and out).

Upthread I posted the snippet (in Italian) from Nencini's report which lent credence to Steve Moore's "conspiracy theory" that the police knew of Rudy Guede and hsi methods.

Nencini's claim, like Aiken77's, was that Rudy was an experienced thief, and no experienced thief would fake a burglary in the manner which the police knew was Rudy's signature!

If the police knew this was Rudy's signature, why didn't they go looking for Rudy?

But don't worry, I think this is just Nencini's sloppiness, saying unconnected things in his report, often contradicting what he's say previously. I do not believe there is any proof, really, that Rudy was known "by his burglary M.O." this specifically.

I'm with Strozzi. I think they just dismissed the break-in because at that time they had Lumumba, Knox, and Sollecito, none of whom could actually have done the deed.

The crime is that the police did not reconsider once Guede was known.

 

[Desert Fox]

1. Independent corroboration of their alibi is really all I would need. If they weren't at the cottage, they didn't do it. Although it would be strange all that other evidence of them was at the cottage.

2. Amanda herself admitted her blood sprinkled with MK's in the bathroom occured that night because she said it was not there when she left and it was there when she got back. The blood is what supposedly made her worried, even though she claims to have taken a shower in there anyway. If her blood wasn't there that would have been decent evidence of her innocence. If she hadn't told that incredible bath mat story, that would have helped. That wasn't believable in any way. It did not look like she had taken a shower that day in photos and the police said that she smelled like BO that day. She also told one of the roommates that she had not taken a shower.

1. For the most likely time of murder, there was interaction with a computer. Might have been more if the Italian computer experts had not managed to fry 3 (or is it 4) laptop hard drives.
2. What is your source for those claims?

 

[Bill Williams]

Independent corroboration of their alibi is really all I would need. If they weren't at the cottage, they didn't do it. Although it would be strange all that other evidence of them was at the cottage.

Amanda herself admitted her blood sprinkled with MK's in the bathroom occured that night because she said it was not there when she left and it was there when she got back. The blood is what supposedly made her worried, even though she claims to have taken a shower in there anyway. If her blood wasn't there that would have been decent evidence of her innocence. If she hadn't told that incredible bath mat story, that would have helped. That wasn't believable in any way. It did not look like she had taken a shower that day in photos and the police said that she smelled like BO that day. She also told one of the roommates that she had not taken a shower. There is a lot of evidence of her lying and making stuff up like this and I can only see one reason why she would be lying about this kind of stuff. She's guilty.

Aiken77 - you've said this two or three times. The is no Amanda-blood sprinkled with Meredith blood. You are making this up.

In fairness, Harry Rag made this up for 6 years, even after the Massei court (even in convicting them) debunked mixed-blood in 2010.

 

[Bill Williams]

Her book is what you call revisionist history. She's trying to revise things so they don't look incriminating. Her book contradicts what she said in court and other places. It isn't legit to base anything on what she says because she appears to lob a bunch of stuff out there and hope people buy one of them and not think about the inconistencies.

Cops always try to sound super confident in press conferences. Cop bravado doesn't mean it was forced or false confession. That is a false choice.

If they wanted to nail Patrick they wouldn't have let him go or bother trying to confirm the DNA was his. So that wasn't their agenda at any point.

Strangely, you have the right to believe whatever you want.

But the cops were clear, at least one of them was. And you avoid things by failing to discuss this, other than to, in effect, call the cops themselves liars.

 

[Samson]

She did give specifics of action. She said Patrick wanted to have sex with MK, that she covered her ears while he was raping her. That seems like more detail than the police needed if all they wanted was for her to place herself at the crime scene or accuse Patrick.

Wearing that t-shirt at the trial indicates she wasn't scared of Italian justice. This was after them supposed hitting her in the head and using mental mindgames to get her to say what they wanted. You'd think she'd show up in her most professional looking attire.

You linked to the simulated wiki, and are a disciple.
Every item is definitively wrong because all evidence needs a mirror to see guilt or innocence according to personal choice. You are all anonymous, while judges and scientists and senators put their real names to the notion of innocence. Dershowitz has never discussed hard evidence, just the soft stuff like the accusation, so he doesn't qualify, nor does Nancy Grace etc.
But you do have Peter Quennell on your team, if he is your idea of a scientist. He would not be elected a judge or a senator due to well documented character flaws.

 

[Skind]

Science isn't concerned with anything. Science just is. We only discover science.

I think it is tough to argue this woman is not a top expert if she's working at Italy's government crime lab. There has to be some qualifications for a job like that. This isn't some fast food job.

I think some forensics has an application of science aspect to it, like determining the trajectory of a bullet. But DNA testing is pretty simplistic I think. It is cookbook follow the procedure stuff. You guys make it out as though they are trying to split atoms or something.

And those proceedures have been worked out over time using the whole scientific process of hypothesis, discovery, refinement and replication, just like the current methods of spliting the atom.

We don't 'discover' science - we use science to discover things and then work out what they are and how they work.

Stefanoni isn't working at Italy's government crime lab, if they even have such a thing. The crime labs in Italy are run by various police and private organisations, she just happens to work for the Scientific Police at the central one for (one of the) national civil police forces.

Her qualifications included a biology degree, then a short preceptorship. That would qualify her (barely) as an assistanttechnician in places like the UK. She'd need a field specific professionally accredited postgraduate degree to have a decent chance to make it to a position where she reports to the court.

I notice that you keep avoiding addressing my contentions directly, instead preffering to waffle on about something tangential. Stop doing that, or explain yourself.

 

[JREF2010]

I don't believe it is true that they determined it was not cleaned. The defense no doubt argued that but that was not determined in the lab. The police said the house smelled like bleach when they entered, and they found two bottles under the sink. Their mop story was about explaing the bleach smell.

It was tissue in the scratch. The blood was no doubt removed from the blade upon scrubing and washing.

The print on the mat is Raffaele's. Like 12 of the measurements were 100 percent match for Raffaele.

The knife was tested in the crevice area to determine if it had been cleaned, or to remove the handle. The thought at the time was if this knife was used in a murder as the prosecution pretends, then there would be blood found somewhere. Instead the crevice area was found to not have been cleaned at all, so much so the handle wasnt even needing to be removed.

No blood was found per DNA tests.
The knife was not cleaned per the inspection of the crevice where the blade meets the handle.

There isn't any intelligent evidence to place the knife as a murder weapon.
Only people who briefly read slanderous articles would have the shallow depth of interest in the case would still think its the murder weapon.

Maybe even a court of average people who didnt read all the transcripts and thousands of pages of documents could miss this fact, that the knife doesnt have blood on it and wasn't cleaned.

There are pictures showing it wasn't cleaned and the tests showed no blood.

This abundance of data overrides some overzealous sloppy forensic team member who smells something. (I would hope...but maybe not in this trial)

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Laura and Filomena on Raf's visits to the cottage

Ok, do you have a source for this thing that they had lunch earlier in the day? Did anybody testify to that or is that based on Sollicito and Knox's own account only? I don't believe Knox and MK were that chummy by that point. Raffaele also said he cooked with MK at one point and pricked her with his knife and that turned out to be a lie.

Laura and Filomena both testified to the effect that he had been at the cottage several times. IIRC he cooked lunch there twice. Raffaele first wrote about the knife in his diary, which was illegally taken from his lawyer and the contents leaked. His discussion of the original incident (touching Meredith with the knife in the women's flat) makes it clear that there is no connection to the knife in his flat.