Continuation Part 13: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Strozzi]

Those "blood rings" couldn't have been caused by a cat and they couldn't have been caused by a human by chance. Some of the rings are nearly circular. So I think they were caused on purpose. Therefore, the rings aren't made of blood; they are markes made by the police, while the blood trace is located inside the rings.

Greetings

Yes, OK, I get it now. They are circles drawn by the police around blood drops. And the several long lines on the tile floor in one of the downstairs bedrooms are lines delineating one side of blood mark areas.

Let me suggest that in the future the police use another marker or crayon color instead of brownish-red.

So Rudy was not carrying a soaking-wet sweater in his hand as he descended the outside steps. Do you believe he removed his sweater in the upstairs flat and hung it over a chair? That is an explanation given earlier to explain the pattern of Rudy's footprints.

 

[Numbers]

Time is too late for the calunnia case to be admitted or heard before the 25th March so nothing will happen before unless of course a friendly settlement or unilateral declaration is made by Italy and it is announced - unlikely, I would think. There is still time, for the court to announce the case for April, but no particular reason to think it would do so. If Ms Knox is eventually acquitted in Italy on the murder charge, the court might not hear the calunnia application probably for up to another two years or so but not at all in the event of a friendly settlement or unilateral declaration, which might come earlier.

If they are found guilty and subsequent applications are forthcoming as we would expect, the ECHR might be minded to hear all the cases together, though it is not bound to do so. All applications are separate, but the rulings might be delivered together or close together to dispose of the whole matter.

Some urgency, you would think would be injected into the proceedings if guilty verdicts are confirmed and Mr Sollecito is imprisoned and Ms Knox the subject of an extradition request, but then we will wait 90 days for a motivation report and there is a further 6 month deadline before new ECHR applications must be submitted. I think Numbers looked at this issue some time ago and the conclusion was that the court would not be in a position to intervene before an application is submitted in order, for example, to stay Mr Sollecito's imprisonment. However, you might expect the court to consider the case very soon thereafter, since if it were to find an Article 6 violation in Mr Sollecito's case and he is actually in prison, then the imprisonment would be wrongful. A process would then be instituted, which would result in Mr Sollecito's release.

Your penultimate question is a real corker. Since Ms Knox's calunnia case and murder case are linked by statements used to convict made without benefit of counsel, some of us concluded some time ago that the murder case could not survive the finding of an Article 6 violation in the calunnia case on this point and we hoped such a ruling would be delivered before 25th March as it might encourage Cassation to take the unusual step of providing an outright acquittal without a retrial. But this hasn't happened. If it happens during a retrial, I know of no reason why it should make any difference to the trial continuing to a conclusion, but it might provide an incentive to the 2nd instance court to acquit. Or if not that court, then later, Cassation. But it would be horribly embarrassing for the Italians.

I believe that there is a large group within the Italian judiciary which simply does not become easily embarrassed. They are in control of their judicial kingdom within the Italian Republic and pursue their own agendas.

Timing of case flow through the ECHR is difficult to predict. I don't believe that the ECHR would wait for the outcome of the March 25, 2015 CSC hearing to proceed with processing Amanda Knox's November, 2013 application. But I am not confident of this belief.

If there were a friendly settlement by Italy at any point for Amanda Knox's application on her conviction for calunnia, the Italian government would be acknowledging their violation of her rights. That end result would not really differ from a judgment.

 

[LondonJohn]

Just a correction platonov.

You asserted it was nonsense. You offered no proof, other than a second layer of assertions. You are 100% entitled to your opinions and assertions. You simply are not entitled to facts, or claiming that your assertions are factual simply because of your ability to assert them - repeatedly.

True. And those assertions appear to be warped and coloured by confirmation bias. The rational, critical way to interpret this issue is that Sollecito was being confronted by a group of authority figures who had a very high level of control and power over him, who told him they had proof that Knox was present at the murder. He was evidently being told to stop "protecting" her, that he should hate her rather than be trying to cover for her, and that he could get into very big trouble if he continued to "lie" on her behalf. Faced with that, and with no access to legal assistance, it's entirely reasonable to suppose that Sollecito began to doubt his own memory over what he was told were hard physical facts. I would imagine he was also starting to doubt the whole basis of his nascent relationship with Knox: could she really - as they police were saying they could prove - have been the type of person who had participated in a gruesome murder (and then acted in the way she had acted the following morning and days)?

In those circumstance, I would suggest that it's perfectly reasonable to see how and why (an innocent) Sollecito might have conflated and invented memories in order to try to reconcile what he thought he remembered with a police narrative that appeared to leave no room for doubt. It's provably happened in many other similar situations, so I certainly see it as a wholly reasonable possibility here.

Oh, and I'd also observe that in general, only a bigot, idiot or sophist would subscribe to the misguided belief that a lack of response to a given post equates to either concession or an inability to refute that post. Sometimes, for example, it is indicative of a head-shaking lack of desire to keep butting one's head against a brick wall (much as one might soon give up trying to argue fossil history with creationists....)

 

[Diocletus]

Downstairs

Here is my working theory of what happened downstairs.

1. After killing Kercher, Guede went downstairs to get himself together (clean up, find a change of clothes).

2. Guede did not enter the downstairs unit through the kitchen door, but rather, through the door to the left, which enters into the Common Room.

3. Guede got blood on the couch and lightswitch.

4. Guede turned left, and went into the "front" bathroom. He closed the window to wash up, and in the process bled on the floor and window frame. He used the tub to wash his clothes and/or body. He must have wrapped his wet clothing in something and carried it out (possibly, before washing up, he went to the other side of the house, stripped a sheet off of the bed (leaving blood drops), and then returned to the bathroom). He may have wrapped the wound on his hand at this point. He took a pair of flip flops and left the bathroom.

5. Back in the common room, he stopped on the brown rug to do something. Perhaps he stripped down--we may see his bloody underwear lying on the brown rug, together with a blue pillowcase and another item.

6. The rear bathroom/marijuana closet have nothing to do with the crime--Rudy never went there,

7. Instead, after his pause on the brown rug, he went to Silenzi's room. Silenzi's room has an entry door that leads out below Filomena's window, and potentially, Guede wanted to flee out the back. However, he would have found the door locked and barred. He took a pair of Silenzi's pants--Loose Fit Size 31--which had a Chagall Exhibit ticket in the pocket (these same pants were later found in Guede's apartment). The large, watery blood ring on the floor is leakage from whatever bundle of wet clothing he was carrying, which he set down on the floor to put on the pants. He picked up his bundle and left Silenzi's room, locking the door behind him.

8. He exited the cottage (not sure whether through the kitchen door or Common Room door), and went up the stairs holding his wet bundle. The action of the watery blood filtering through the bed sheet created drips, which made the strange rings going up the stairs.

 

[LondonJohn]

I believe that there is a large group within the Italian judiciary which simply does not become easily embarrassed. They are in control of their judicial kingdom within the Italian Republic and pursue their own agendas.

I agree with this. To an extent, though, a reactionary and fiercely-independent attitude is a healthy attribute for any judiciary. After all, their job is to apply the law without fear or favour, and to be seen very clearly to be doing so.

But, as you point out, this can be a double-edged sword when things go wrong. That's why there simply has to be the correct level of oversight and accountability of the judicial system, and an openness to correcting mistakes. I think that many justice systems - most particularly those in the US and UK - have done well to build in such systems and safeguards, though there is still work to do. By contrast, countries such as Italy are still an unregulated and unaccountable mess in this area. When you factor in specific additional issues in Italy - especially the Mafia history, the post-fascist readjustment problems, and the whole "face-saving" problem - it only makes matters worse.

I don't think that the Italian courts will ever change until and unless they are dragged kicking and screaming into enforced change by way of the ACHR and the EU. Hopefully the Knox/Sollecito case will provide them with a healthy kick in the right direction.....

 

[Dan O.]

Yes, OK, I get it now. They are circles drawn by the police around blood drops. And the several long lines on the tile floor in one of the downstairs bedrooms are lines delineating one side of blood mark areas.

Let me suggest that in the future the police use another marker or crayon color instead of brownish-red.

So that explains why so many posters were claiming that thes drips on the steps could not have been caused by the cat. Those big rings were definately made by humans.

So Rudy was not carrying a soaking-wet sweater in his hand as he descended the outside steps. Do you believe he removed his sweater in the upstairs flat and hung it over a chair? That is an explanation given earlier to explain the pattern of Rudy's footprints.

In one of his interviews with Mignini, Rudy says that he hung his yellow sweatshirt over the back of the kitchen chair. Before reading that, I had analized the trail of bloody footsteps and saw that Rudy stopped at the end of the table, possibly to pick something up before heading towards the door. Elsewhere, Rudu explained that he used a sweatshirt to cover his pants that were wet.

I don't always trust what Rudy says. But this part is consistent with the evidence, isn't trying to hide anything and gives an account of how Rudy would appear if he were witnessed walking home. The truthfulness here also pushes my beliefe that Rudy infact took the path he claimed he took going home that evening: Out throug the front gate of the cottage, past the carpark, up the steps beside the basketball court, around the back of the university for foreigners to these steps:

Which takes him to a road that emerges just across from his apartment.



ETA: But if you search around the back of the Univrsity of Foreigners, there is the Tokyo Resturant and up on the wall to the left of the entrance is another big old CCTV camera thet the idiot Perugia police failed to gather footage from.

 

[Diocletus]

So that explains why so many posters were claiming that thes drips on the steps could not have been caused by the cat. Those big rings were definately made by humans.

It's not crayon. It's watery blood, the same as seen in Silenzi's room. The blood is filtered through a sheet, lands on the pavement, and then the red cells wick to the edges.

 

[Diocletus]

The truthfulness here also pushes my beliefe that Rudy infact took the path he claimed he took going home that evening: Out throug the front gate of the cottage, past the carpark, up the steps beside the basketball court, around the back of the university for foreigners to these steps:

Which takes him to a road that emerges just across from his apartment.

Yup, this is consistent with the trail of bloody drops leading up the stairs from downstairs.

 

[Kauffer]

Here is my working theory of what happened downstairs.

1. After killing Kercher, Guede went downstairs to get himself together (clean up, find a change of clothes).

2. Guede did not enter the downstairs unit through the kitchen door, but rather, through the door to the left, which enters into the Common Room.

3. Guede got blood on the couch and lightswitch.

4. Guede turned left, and went into the "front" bathroom. He closed the window to wash up, and in the process bled on the floor and window frame. He used the tub to wash his clothes and/or body. He must have wrapped his wet clothing in something and carried it out (possibly, before washing up, he went to the other side of the house, stripped a sheet off of the bed (leaving blood drops), and then returned to the bathroom). He may have wrapped the wound on his hand at this point. He took a pair of flip flops and left the bathroom.

5. Back in the common room, he stopped on the brown rug to do something. Perhaps he stripped down--we may see his bloody underwear lying on the brown rug, together with a blue pillowcase and another item.

6. The rear bathroom/marijuana closet have nothing to do with the crime--Rudy never went there,

7. Instead, after his pause on the brown rug, he went to Silenzi's room. Silenzi's room has an entry door that leads out below Filomena's window, and potentially, Guede wanted to flee out the back. However, he would have found the door locked and barred. He took a pair of Silenzi's pants--Loose Fit Size 31--which had a Chagall Exhibit ticket in the pocket (these same pants were later found in Guede's apartment). The large, watery blood ring on the floor is leakage from whatever bundle of wet clothing he was carrying, which he set down on the floor to put on the pants. He picked up his bundle and left Silenzi's room, locking the door behind him.

8. He exited the cottage (not sure whether through the kitchen door or Common Room door), and went up the stairs holding his wet bundle. The action of the watery blood filtering through the bed sheet created drips, which made the strange rings going up the stairs.

Has everybody read Giobbi's testimony under examination by Giulia Bongiourno on the subject of the blood downstairs? It's quite extraordinary. Since it's reasonably long, I'll post the opening and link to the remainder:

GB:
I would like to start from the moment in which you entered the lower floor, you said that you had seen a lot of blood. But can you describe for me actually, you spoke of a duvet soaked with blood. How much blood?
EG:
On the duvet there was a great deal, on the one side the …
GCM: It is the duvet that covered the victim. GB: President, [we are talking about] the floor below.EG:
The lower floor, precisely. One enters the kitchen ...
GB:
I asked the question when you entered the lower floor, this blood, if you could describe to me how much there was and where it was.
EG:
Such a lot there was. And there was, going in it seems to me that you enter [directly] into the kitchen, on the right the first room going to the right, the first door on the right, there was this bed, and on it was this duvet, in complete disorder, where we saw traces of blood, traces of blood that were significant, extensive.

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.c...timony_(English)#Edgardo_Giobbi.27s_Testimony

 

[Numbers]

Here is my working theory of what happened downstairs.

1. After killing Kercher, Guede went downstairs to get himself together (clean up, find a change of clothes).

2. Guede did not enter the downstairs unit through the kitchen door, but rather, through the door to the left, which enters into the Common Room.

3. Guede got blood on the couch and lightswitch.

4. Guede turned left, and went into the "front" bathroom. He closed the window to wash up, and in the process bled on the floor and window frame. He used the tub to wash his clothes and/or body. He must have wrapped his wet clothing in something and carried it out (possibly, before washing up, he went to the other side of the house, stripped a sheet off of the bed (leaving blood drops), and then returned to the bathroom). He may have wrapped the wound on his hand at this point. He took a pair of flip flops and left the bathroom.

5. Back in the common room, he stopped on the brown rug to do something. Perhaps he stripped down--we may see his bloody underwear lying on the brown rug, together with a blue pillowcase and another item.

6. The rear bathroom/marijuana closet have nothing to do with the crime--Rudy never went there,

7. Instead, after his pause on the brown rug, he went to Silenzi's room. Silenzi's room has an entry door that leads out below Filomena's window, and potentially, Guede wanted to flee out the back. However, he would have found the door locked and barred. He took a pair of Silenzi's pants--Loose Fit Size 31--which had a Chagall Exhibit ticket in the pocket (these same pants were later found in Guede's apartment). The large, watery blood ring on the floor is leakage from whatever bundle of wet clothing he was carrying, which he set down on the floor to put on the pants. He picked up his bundle and left Silenzi's room, locking the door behind him.

8. He exited the cottage (not sure whether through the kitchen door or Common Room door), and went up the stairs holding his wet bundle. The action of the watery blood filtering through the bed sheet created drips, which made the strange rings going up the stairs.

Thanks for this highly credible analysis. It seems reasonable to me that red blood cells could wick to the edge of a water/blood drop, but this really cries out for some experimental verification. (Anyone have access to surplus blood?)

 

[Dan O.]

It's not crayon. It's watery blood, the same as seen in Silenzi's room. The blood is filtered through a sheet, lands on the pavement, and then the red cells wick to the edges.

A circle of crayon drawn on rough concrete highlighting a tiny almost imperceptible drip of blood.

 

[platonov]

True. And those assertions appear to be warped and coloured by confirmation bias. The rational, critical way to interpret this issue is that Sollecito was being confronted by a group of authority figures who had a very high level of control and power over him, who told him they had proof that Knox was present at the murder. He was evidently being told to stop "protecting" her, that he should hate her rather than be trying to cover for her, and that he could get into very big trouble if he continued to "lie" on her behalf. Faced with that, and with no access to legal assistance, it's entirely reasonable to suppose that Sollecito began to doubt his own memory over what he was told were hard physical facts. I would imagine he was also starting to doubt the whole basis of his nascent relationship with Knox: could she really - as they police were saying they could prove - have been the type of person who had participated in a gruesome murder (and then acted in the way she had acted the following morning and days)?

In those circumstance, I would suggest that it's perfectly reasonable to see how and why (an innocent) Sollecito might have conflated and invented memories in order to try to reconcile what he thought he remembered with a police narrative that appeared to leave no room for doubt. It's provably happened in many other similar situations, so I certainly see it as a wholly reasonable possibility here.

Oh, and I'd also observe that in general, only a bigot, idiot or sophist would subscribe to the misguided belief that a lack of response to a given post equates to either concession or an inability to refute that post. Sometimes, for example, it is indicative of a head-shaking lack of desire to keep butting one's head against a brick wall (much as one might soon give up trying to argue fossil history with creationists....)

So you and Bill are on the same page on the Nov 5th “throwing under the bus/ blaming her for his earlier lies” issue. Well thats something.

Unfortunately as I pointed out here Raffy is not.

Now LJ – if you don’t stop with this kind of stuff I’ll tell Rolfe

 

[platonov]

Actually why a bigot ?
Is there a previously undefined group out there who have an irrational hatred of the fat fingered crew. Would that not be ‘ableist’ or something

 

[Dan O.]

Don't look here is you want to maintain a belief in large circles of blood on the steps leading downstairs.

Or explain how such a circle forms draping over the edge of the wall.

 

[Kauffer]

So you and Bill are on the same page on the Nov 5th “throwing under the bus/ blaming her for his earlier lies” issue. Well thats something.

Unfortunately as I pointed out here Raffy is not.

Now LJ – if you don’t stop with this kind of stuff I’ll tell Rolfe

Why on earth are you still going on about this? We have already uncovered from you that it has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the conclusions you have come to about the case.

 

[MichaelB]

In this testimony there are references to documents or events that should be documented. Do we have the newspaper article that the journalist Fois wrote? And do we have any of the documents from when Alessa was first questioned by the police.

No and no.

The story originated in Giornale dell’Umbria and got picked up and published everywhere. The so called "5th suspect"

http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2008/05/28/possible-new-suspect-emerges-in-amanda-knox-case/

From the Times Online:

Members of the ambulance crew who found the man said that they had spotted him at 7am on November 2, several hours before Ms Kercher’s body was found at Piazza Grimana, a small tree-lined square and basketball court between the cottage and the University for Foreigners.

The man was washing his bloodied hands under a fountain. The paramedics said that when they approached him he had shouted: “Get out of here, all hell is going to break loose soon.” Other people in the square told the ambulancemen that they had seen the man in a phone box screaming down the phone: “I’ll kill you, you whore.”

Compare to what Alessa said at trial. There was no ambulance. He wasn't wearing a Napapijri jacket and he wasn't covered in blood and seen washing it off under a fountain. He was just a druggie with some blood on one hand screaming into the phone and it was common to see them.

 

[Dan O.]

Here is my working theory of what happened downstairs.

What is your theory of why this was covered up? For that mater, if Rudy had a key to downstairs, why does he instead fabricate a story of covering his pants with the sweatshirt?

 

[Dan O.]

No and no.

The story originated in Giornale dell’Umbria and got picked up and published everywhere. The so called "5th suspect"

http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2008/05/28/possible-new-suspect-emerges-in-amanda-knox-case/

From the Times Online:



Compare to what Alessa said at trial. There was no ambulance. He wasn't wearing a Napapijri jacket and he wasn't covered in blood and seen washing it off under a fountain. He was just a druggie with some blood on one hand screaming into the phone and it was common to see them.

Were they ambulance men or the iconic men in white suits come to retrieve an escaped mental patient?

There is a "drinking" fountain just of the side of the kiosk. It would not be unreasonable for someone with blood on their hands to try and wash it off.

 

[MichaelB]

What is your theory of why this was covered up? For that mater, if Rudy had a key to downstairs, why does he instead fabricate a story of covering his pants with the sweatshirt?

He said he changed in to the Pele Pele (?) ones immediately after the murder. Why does he include this detail even down to the brand of pants? I know you can't answer that but it's a pretty unusual specific detail to add unless he took them from downstairs and needed to account for them.

 

[Dan O.]

He said he changed in to the Pele Pele (?) ones immediately after the murder. Why does he include this detail even down to the brand of pants? I know you can't answer that but it's a pretty unusual specific detail to add unless he took them from downstairs and needed to account for them.

According to Rudy, those were pants he was already known to wear. His friends would be expected to be asked about them. Are you claiming that all of his friends that never saw him wearing those pajama pants and all of the friends of the downstairs boy that had his favorite pants stollen are in on the conspiracy to coverup an insignificant detail that Rudy went downstairs after the murder?

He was seen at the disco while he was wearing those pants. He needs to explain that he changed pants in order to account for the change in his appearance between the walk home and the night out.