People on this site are well acquainted with the following controversy but since we have the Nencini document in English (thanks PMF.org) are there any thoughts on this?
Referring p.180 of the Nencini REPORT the judge writes that Sollecito, at 12.51.40
rang 112 (the emergency number for the Carabinieri) with whom he spoke for 169 seconds; finally at 12:54 pm he rang 112 again and spoke with the operator for about 57 seconds.
From the checking of these factual data and the investigations done by the State Police, it emerges that the first telephone call to the emergency number for the Carabinieri was made at 12:51:40 pm, and therefore more than 15 minutes after Inspector Battistelli had arrived in the black Fiat Punto belonging to his department at the dwelling at 7 Via Della Pergola.
Karen Pruett in her Ground report article, agrees with the time Sollecito rings the police but says that at 12.58 Batistelli (the postal police) “finally finds Via della Pergola 7”.
There is a discrepancy therefore of about 22 minutes between the two accounts.
Nencini writes how the Defence put forward the argument that the CCTV clock was ten minutes slow, as evidenced by the CCTV clock showing 1.22.38, (the car being outside the property) but the Carabinieri had contacted Amanda Knox’s telephone service at 1:29 to ask for directions.
Nencini discounts this (p.189). He argues that the call from the Carabinieri would have been routed through the operations centre, and that the first time the cctv shows the car at the carpark does not necessarily mean they had found the property at that time.
He writes:
In fact we should maintain that the Postal Police arrived at the cottage not at 12:36:15 pm on 2 November 2007, but rather at 12:42:38 pm. Therefore, still nine minutes before the first call to 112 registered at 12.51.40 pm.
So Nencini writes at first that the Postal Police arrive at 12.36.15, and then revises it to 12:42:38.
He writes that Battistelli walks on foot to the cottage further diminishing the time difference.
He then goes on to discuss “considerations of a logical character” but this is mainly about how guilty Amanda and Sollecito seem by not doing more, and does not address more specific timing questions.
I am asking if factually Nencini has it right about the timings? I doubt it.
Nencini has it wrong. There are guilters that have sorted this out in favour of the obvious fact that Raffaele did not ring Carabniere while Battisteli etc were on site.
This takes a bit of wading through.
Here is maths professor Leila Schnepps/thoughtful correcting fake wiki author McCall on PMF on january 19th 2014.
McCall wrote:
Also something that is important with respect to Postal.PDF. The logic used by the defense is incorrect so if we assume that the images of the Carabinieri arriving are actually them arriving and then work backwards not making the mistakes the defense made the result is a range for the postal police arriving between 12:49pm and 12:57pm so still before the 112 calls were made. This actually needs to be added to the reasoning.
Then thoughtful wrote:
Well no, this is just my point. An arrival time between 12:49 pm and 12:57 pm means that the 112 calls (at 12:51 and 12:54) were happening virtually at the same time as this arrival.
Certainly an arrival time of 12:49, 12:50, 12:51 can be exluded. Battistelli started out upon arrival by seeing and talking to Amanda and Raffaele, and both of their voices are heard in the first phone call.
So, 12:52, 12:53…Raffaele hangs up the phone as he sees Battistelli arriving, and after a few remarks, Amanda rushes Battistelli inside babbling about bloodstains while Raffaele makes the second phone call. Possible.
Can’t have been 12:54 since Raffaele wasn’t actually on the phone when Battistelli came in. So, 12:55-12:57? Possible, although the time before the arrival of Luca and Marco seems to get awfully short.
Personally I’d go for the second of the three possibilities.
How about if, like stilicho, we assume that the police were there long before, and the reason Raffaele and Amanda were free to phone at 12:51 and 12:54 was that Luca and Marco had already arrived.
Well, testimony shows that Filomena called Marco and asked him to go see what was going on at the cottage at 12:34. At the same time, Paola called Luca. Then Luca called Marco. Then Luca went down into the street, got his car and drove to Marco’s place (he estimates this as 10-12 minutes). Then he drove Marco to the cottage (he estimates this as another 10 minutes). He estimates the total time from their phone call to each other as 20-30 minutes. Marco estimates their arrival time at 13:00, and Luca, who estimates Paola’s phone call to him as 12:15 (when it was really 12:34) estimates the arrival time at the cottage as 12:45 (so logically, it would have been closer to 13:04).
In addition, Paola and Filomena both estimate their arrival time as 13:00 and Filomena says she asked Marco how long he had been there and it was very little time. And both policemen thought the four young people all arrived together.
Having Luca and Marco arrive at the cottage at 12:50 means having to ignore all of the above testimony, from four people who showed themselves to be quite reliable in testimony in general, and to assume that Luca called Marco, fetched him and got them both to the cottage in less than 15 minutes in spite of both their estimations that it must have been quite a bit longer. For me, that’s too much of a stretch.
What I don’t agree with about your timeline is that it ignores all oft his.
Basically, you are basing your reconstruction on believing Battistelli’s statements about the 12:35 and other estimations and not taking the others into account. But Battistelli’s testimony is very unreliable. He places the 112 call that we know happened at 12:29 at around 13:00, and there are other discrepancies in his testimony that the four friends don’t have in theirs.
As for Marsi, he never looked at a clock, but he does estimate the times and time-spans. He has all events taking place between 12:30 and 13:05, ending with the arrival of the Carabinieri at 13:05 that we know really happened more like 13:30. If you shift his testimony over to end at 13:30, that makes him and Battistelli arrive at 12:55. So if anything, his testimony supports an arrival shortly before 13:00.
My opinion is that making the assumption that the postal police circulated looking for the house for about a quarter of an hour longer than they thought is the solution that involves the smallest possible amount of discarding testimony.
