Let's talk about your attempt to dismiss the "towel" simply because Guede talke about them and your reference to Skype call.
Maybe you overlooked, I also stated that what Guede said doesn’t matter.
He might well have taken a towel from the bathroom and put it on the wound as he said, but he might well have made it up, since he could have heard about a bloody towel found in the murder room from the news. It was already known from Italian news reports that a towel soaked with blood had been found in the murder room, this was said by TGCOM and also mentioned by some press articles (such as La Stampa)as early as Nov. 10 or 11. Guede did emphasize his story of bringing a towel to stanch the wound for years all along his proceedings, he attempted to use such towel-story to try convince the judges that he was the one who “tried to help her” not the one who meant to kill her. It’s clear from the very beginning he saw this this towel detail as something he could try use in his favour. So we can as well think that, as he learned about the towel on the news from his Internet café in Düsseldorf, when he made up his story on the Skype conversation he might well also have decided to use the towel to build his towel-story to portray himself as the guy who “tries to help”.
Incidentally, during the same conversation Guede says also some things that are not particularly favourable to Knox’s character (she smoked too much drugs, they argued on money, there was no broken window etc.); he also depicts a scene which is visibly different from how the scene was found: says he left Meredith’s body still dressed, and also does not mention any duvet covering the body. Then he also says this outstanding phrase “Avevo paura che dessero la colpa solo a me”. This word “solo” is shocking as a ‘drop-in’ word: this kind of things are very meaningful in declarations, because it’s clearly an unprepared part of the statement, adds a meaning that would be completely unexplained if he was actually the lone perpetrator. A paradigm (which I believe) from statement analysis is that since statement is partly a subconscious driven activity, when people talk they always tend to say in some degree exactly what they mean to say. What Guede says is that he’s afraid not to be just blamed for the murder, but rather that they would put the blame on him alone. So not that they would accuse him, his fear is they would accuse him ‘solo’, alone, so draw the blame on him as if he was the only culprit. His statement revolves around this word “solo”, I found this detail very outstanding, and apparently the Supreme Court did too.
Then let's sart looking a bit in depth to some points of your arguments and "scenario".
You wrote:
So at this point, from what you write we can conclude that you, by putting forward your scenario, you basically concede that there is in fact evidence of a clean-up.
You implicitly agree that the towels and the bathmat diluted print with alleged bathroom ‘washing’ are to be considered 'evidence of cleanup'. You only attribute it to Guede.
I point out that also the ‘disappearance’ of half of one of Guede’s shoeprints, which later re-appeared showing up with Luminol and yielding mixed DNA of Meredith and Knox, is another piece of evidence of a cleanup. Don't forget this print. And also, the clean floor in the bathroom surrounding a splashed bathmat is evidence of cleanup, as well as some sweep marks on blood, and some others visible in luminol in the corridor, are too.
So your 'shower-trouser-rinsing' scenario implies a cleanup, and specifically a cleanup of the bathroom floor.
But also - here comes the interesting part - it brings up a series of problems with its consistency. That is, basically consistency with physical evidence.
Because apaprently, what your Gogerty Marriott sheet doesn't tell you, is that you will need to elaborate a series of arising problems.
At a first sight there is additional inconsistency in your scenario for what concerns Guede’s behaviour and movements.
There is then some further inconsistence with what Guede says, since, while you seem glad to pick the towel detail from his Skype dialogue, we can also note he describes how he ran away with blood stained clothes – not with wet clothes - and he omits the ‘trouser-washing’ or ‘foot-washing’ part completely.
We should take note about how he goes on repeating the towel story all the time during the proceedings, for years, but he never says he washed himself nor he ever speaks of doing anything in that bathroom.
Then, as I mentioned, there is inconsistency of such scenario for what concerns Guede’s behaviour and movements. In fact what we see from physical scene is that he doesn’t seem to care at all about walking away with bloody shoes and about leaving prints. He has this peculiar "style" on the scene. He makes no attempt to clean is shoes, no attempt to clean his prints, apparently not even an attempt to clean his bloody hands since there is no evidence he did, he did not try to remove his handprint (it would would have been easy to remove the pillowcase) and there is no evidence he touched anything in the small bathroom; but we’ll deal with his hands too, later.
In addition to this, we must also note that the overall scenario of his movements would become more complicate and inconsistent if you assume that: first, he went to the shower to wash his trousers while he was still wearing clean shoes (since he didn’t leave prints walking to the showers), but then, later, he managed to somehow get his shoe dirty with blood again, afterwards; and despite this he didn’t care to clean it again. This sequence would be quite inconsistent, especially when you have to fit it in a theory that includes the ‘five Guede shoeprints’ found in the murder room and pillowcase: if he washed his trousers prior to that, did he leave these prints there on a second entry in the room?
If yes, did he neglect taking taking any precaution in order to avoid stepping in blood pools despite he had just washed his trousers and foot?
And also, why then did he step on the pillowcase at this point; think about that instead at this point he supposedly picks up the pillow and locates under the body, or... wait a minute.. did he pick up the pillow to place it under the body before walking to the bathroom? It is already under Meresdith's body since before, this sequence would allow him to wash his bloody hand; but it would not allow for the possibility of leaving the shoeprints on it.
He needs to leave the shoeprints on the pillow before the body is placed on top of it.
In conclusion it's hard to have him washing in the bathroom and leaving both the palm print on the pillow and shoeprints on the pillow and place the pillow under the body, since he needs to have clean shoes when he walks to the bathroom (can't leave prints on pillow) and needs to have bloody hands when he picks up the pillow but he would have clean hands when he comes back from the bathroom (and maybe, no shoe, since he washed his foot). Or you might be force to construe a kind of baroque scenario where he gets his hands covered with blood multiple times and washes them multiple times in the bathroom; which would turn your scenario into a wirhlpool of nonsensical actions not backed by evidence (which would conflict with the medico-legal evidence as we will see).
But then, also think why should he walk on the pillow on his second entry, when Meredith is already dead, when he is no longer involved in a struggle, and why making so many steps on it?
Or there is an alternative: if you have him stepping on the pillowcase before going to the shower, so the stepping occurs during the attack (more logical) then you would need to assume he managed walk from the room to the bathroom, and thus to the shower, with a bloody shoe, but without leaving shoeprints leading to it; which is inconsistent.
And then, also consider that you would also need to assume he decided to wash his trousers-leg, yes but not to wash his shoe. Why, since at a certain point his shoe must have got dirty; this is also inconsistent.
Your scenario is related to several inconsistent explanations that I described above but it was just the start, there is much of further inconsistency, that is even more directly related with some physical facts.
Let’s see: you say he took off his shoe, put the leg under the shower to rinse his trousers, and so his bare foot got completely wet with bloody water.
One problem is that the stained part of the bathmat is [i ]the other side of the bathmat from the shower[/i]: the bigger print in diluted blood is on the opposite edge of the bathmat. How did he manage to jump there? And without leaving any footprints and stains near the shower? Well, you will say: but it was Amanda Knox who “reversed” the bathmat the following morning (I would throw her into jail just for that), after her bathmat-journey through the corridor.
But still things don’t add up: when you reverse the bathmat you have the bloody print closer to the shower, but it’s pointing away from it. The direction of the step is by someone who is coming out from the shower walking outwards, and is having the shower at the back of him. It’s not someone sticking just his leg under the shower while standing on its door: this person was standing inside the shower box completely and when he walked outside the shower box was on his back (on his right), not at his front. If he was facing the shower and sticking his leg into it he would need to take at least another step before leaving that print in bloody water. He would also leave several drops by the shower actually. But there is no trace of this.
Ok let’s help the defence and say: the murderer put his right leg under the shower sticking it laterally, while standing having the shower on his right, instead of frontally, and that after that he made a strange movement putting down his right foot a bit forward on the bathmat, with a kind of heap.
An aerobical description, not impossible, but still, there is the same problem: are no drops near the shower; and I can also see another problem: where did he go? Where was the next step?
There is a problem here: where did he make the next step? Why is there only one clear footprint (plus the smaller one in the middle)?
Shouldn’t there be some trail of footprints going somewhere?
We need to think he must have walked somewhere, maybe to take a towel to dry his foot, and we should expect he must have put his foot down at least one more time.
I put aside for a moment the obvious evidence which I have shown about the bathmat print: it is not compatible with Guede and compatible with Sollecito, and no argument to the contrary exists.
Just focus now on the dynamic: did he manage to put on his shoe again right on the spot, without putting his foot on the floor a second time? i'm not sure that it would be so easy, and wouldn't make much sense. How is it possible that there is not even one more bare footprint of him that follows that first one? I would expect to find at least some trace of some other one.
And last but not least: the smaller footprint, the more wet and diluted bare print on the bathmat, whose print is that?
We take note of the fact that another set of diluted bare footprints, what I feel as "probable" and needed, exists and it is the luminol footprints, many of them much smaller than Guede's foot, just like the small one on the carpet: I would expect to find some other bare footprint from Guede, and instead those that we find are the luminol prints, those with these so peculiar features, with stunning analogy (isolated, not in trail, bare, diluted, apparently belong to different, one so similar in shape to the bathmat one).
There is more: besides the peculiarities that are the isolation and orientation of the print, there is also evidence of a washing of floor and bathmat.
The bathmat was reported to be found also completely soaked with water: someone had tried to wash it (together with the trousers maybe); by contrast the bathroom floor doesn’t have blood stains, not even diluted or latent. Not even drips from the missing heel which should be on the side near the shower.
See how the bathmat is covered by half with a pattern of splashes of bloody water, there are two footprints and more than ten stains, why is there no trace of this “pattern” of stains outside the bathmat?
This is not something likely, it’s not consistent: one more strange thing that adds to the others, someone must have washed the floor.
But there is further inconsistence in your scenario: we may deal later with the fact that such alleged behavioural pattern (not cleaning here, cleaning there etc.) followed by Guede would become inconsistent on multiple levels. Just mention that we would have a perpetrator who cares about washing the bathroom floor, but doesn’t care about cleaning his trail of bloody shoeprints nor to flush the toilet nor about removing pillowcase with his fingerprints in blood, besides the perplexing fact of the motivation for his trousers washing: since walking around with wet trousers would attract even more attention than having blood stains.
But besides these behavioural contradictions, a bigger problem is, if Guede washes his trousers by putting his leg under the shower, yes the bloody water will get maybe all his foot wet, but given that the bloody water must be in so large amount we need to assume the washing must have soaked his trousers leg completely with water.
And this water contains at least a small dilution of blood.
The fabric of the trousers leg would collect far more bloody water than his foot, so the leg of his trousers would be completely soaked with bloody water. This would be be dripping around. It would go on dripping when he walks, around the bathroom and along the corridor, along al his steps as he walks away; wherever he walks in the house after this “washing” the result would be that he would leave drops of water containing some blood in dilution.
The pattern of these drops in bloody water should have been found all along the track of his steps, they would follow his shoeprints marking his movement along the corridor. You can’t reasonable expect that the water dripping from his trousers to be completely clean, to not contain some blood in dilution, so these drops would become visible at least with luminol.
But instead, there is no trace of this dropping this along the trail of his shoeprints. There isn’t anything such this evidence anywhere. The path he followed to walk out is marked by his visible shoeprints and the absence of any luminol evidence indicating that his trousers leg was wet, is outstanding.
The inconsistencies are getting tougher.
So we have:
inconsistency of your scenario with the five shoeprints in Meredith’s room; absence of a trail of prints going to the bathroom; inconsistency of behaviour like not cleaning shoeprints and bathroom there, and cleaning bathroom and prints here; inconsistency between splashed bathmat and clean floor; inconsistency between your leg-shower scenario and absence of dripping near the shower; missing heel on the side of the shower; inconsistency of position and orientation with the print; unexplained isolation of the print; unexplained second smaller bare footprint print by unknown perpetrator; does not explain why part of one of Guede’s print had disappeared and re-appeared with luminol (showing Knox+Meredith DNA); unexplained washing of bathmat; inconsistency between washing his trousers but not washing his shoe; inconsistency between washing and getting his shoe dirty with blood again; inconsistency between wet trousers scenario and the absence of drops along the trail of shoeprints; and maybe I even forgot something.
But this was only the first part.
Still this is not all. While we focus the trail of shoeprints, as we notice how, in contradiction with your scenario, there isn’t that trail of luminol drops that it should be there, if the man was actually wearing wet trousers, we also notice a further contradiction between FOAs scenarios about the trail of shoeprints itself.
That is about the orientation of the bloody shoe prints.
You have this trail of shoe prints that walks away straight from Meredith’s door, all prints are oriented clearly towards the exit with Meredith’s door with the walker turning his back to the door, but .. the door was found locked.
The person should have turned his feet towards the door in order to lock it. It’s impossible otherwise. I would like you to try: lock a door by turning the key while keeping your right foot still and pointing away from the door. Rudy Guede, while walking away did not turn himself to lock the door. All his shoeprints are walking straight away, not a single print is oriented towards the doo as it would be necessary if he turned to lock it. Someone else locked the door, not Rudy Guede.
Maybe you will need to do like Amanda Knox (as Exonerate Knox on Twitter) in order to justify this detail: make up that it was door that locks itself automatically by just pulling it. But it wasn’t. You can be confortable and add this to the list of the contradictions of your scenario.
The contradictions between physical evidence and your scenario that I listed above are not the whole list. They are still not finished. But by now you can comfortably start contemplating the idiocy of your PR Marriott-provided factsheet, once you look in depth at the contradictions that your scenario brings in. I’m sorry, your ‘Marriott factsheet’ doesn’t work so well; it won’t help you when it’s time to face the real depth you’re your inconsistency.
It’s not even finished as I said; in fact, just to start again from something simple, we forgot about the hands. Because you need to have Guede washing his hands, because he had bloody hands, since he had both his hands around the victim’s neck and we know that he had to wash them and that he has also cuts on his hands.
So he had to open at least a water tap somewhere, and close it. Did he clean the tap gear afterwards? Somewhere washed himself/herself at the sink, since that's the obvious place where you would wash your hands. Did he clean the blood he left by touching it with his bloody hands? Why the only blood there is Knox's blood, on a spot (cotton swab box) mixed with Meredith's blood?
So you point out that he says his fingers didn’t bleed. But, wait a minute, his scars were photographed. And in fact, if your hold on a knife slips and you get cut, is it actually realistic that there isn’t even a drop of his blood on your hand? When you lose hold on a knife you get cut. A knife has a blade and a blade cuts. As by human physiology there is always blood under the skin, and we also know that Guede claims to have still the scars on his skin twenty days from that day. Maybe his cuts didn’t drop blood around, ok, they didn't bleed much, but is it realistic to assume that he didn’t bleed at all? He says “wasn’t bleeding”, but just think: is it realistic?
And so, what happens with his smal blood drops as he touches something with his hands? As he washes his hands in the basin? The drain pipe was analysed for DNA, and there is no Guede's DNA.
Your Guede-rinse-his-leg theory in fact appears as something visibly inconsistent with everything just at first sight.
On a first very simple neutral first look, what you see is his trail of bloody shoeprints. Someone was walking out wearing bloody shoes. Your theory says: this is same person who was washing the leg of his trousers and his bare foot. Look: it’s inconsistent. That’s obvious. It looks inconsistent from the start.
Now I want to point out that the inconsistency of your scenario extends even further, because it extends over the medico-legal findings in the murder roo. Your scenario must imply some theory about the murder amd about the sexual violence which can refer to a lone perpetrator, and this is directly related to the physical traces inside the murder room.
Let’s see how the Guede alone scenario brings in inconsistencies with this kind of physical evidence too. In fact, one problem is that a complete FOA scenario requires Guede to perform a post-delictum sexual activity, a rape of a dead body or of an agonizing victim. Otherwise it becomes impossible to explain all the findings. This kind of scenario (‘raping a corpse’) is factually required by physical evidence when you try to pin all actions on Guede alone. So you and the FOAs need to depict Guede’s character as an extreme and unusual criminal profile, a very peculiar psychologically oriented person, a kind of serial killer that follows an impulse extreme perversion. This is something itself improbable and unsupported; yet this peculiar and improbable assumption is required by your scenario. This itself should be a red herring, a suggestion that a second check would be required.
But at that point, once you introduced your dead-raping scenario, you also need to describe the subsequent set of actions committed by Guede after the killing in a manner somehow supported by the evidence. However, no evidence was found about these actions.
You would need to have at least some traces of possibly Guede’s blood, and sure of Meredith’s blood, on her body; since we assume he would have had to touch her body in order to commit a post-mortem rape. All evidence suggests the violence was physical so you can’t assume that he was just standing there masturbating. By touching her body he would have left some blood mark, some smear or fingerprint in blood, simply because there was too much of her own blood on her body to avoid this.
But her body is untouched. There are no fingerprints or smear marks.
It just doesn't look like a body that has ever been touched after her death.
There is also another problem: superficial bruises in her vagina indicate that she was not agonizing, neither dead, when she suffered a sexual violence. She still had a normal blood pressure.
And also, 46 wounds indicate a progression of violence with an intent to restrain, something which does not express the intent of killing immediately, nor indicates the intent of raping a dead person.
Now, I will ende this post here. I will go on with this topic in a next post.
