Continuation Part 14: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Vixen]

Well, there's no proof of anyone else in the cottage that night other than Meredith and we have a broken window with a glass distribution pattern supporting the glass being broken by an object thrown from the outside in. There's also a rock. Given these facts, how do you think Rudy got inside?

The logical answer is someone let him in. He often played basketball with the guys.

 

[Vixen]

It's not that far of a streach. Only about 1.5m from the corner to the center of the window as I recall. And you don't have to just hang out there. It is easy enough to put a foot on the window grate below or if you prefer smaller steps, step down just a bit from the porch to a rock below and from there to the lower window grate. Rudy need never let his sneakers touch the grass below.

Even if we accept the rock was thrown from outside, for example, from the car park space, in a straight trajectory, how does that prove Rudy threw it?

The person who threw it, is the same person who ransacked Filomena's room. Yes? Or no?

 

[Vixen]

He wouldn't need to be below on the ground. He could easily reach across from the porch to see if they would open.

You would need a six-foot reach? Not even the finest boxers have that.

 

[Grinder]

Interesting that Rudi made a point of saying he saw a woman outside the cottage from F's room, thereby excusing any evidence of him being in that room. F's gave a statement expressing her concern about the safety of her things in her room because the window having no grate made it vulnerable.

Person that lives there thinks the climb would be easy but some overweight PLE people don't. Video shows a very easy climb. F scores 1 PLE 0.

 

[Vixen]

Huh?

The fact is that Guede was arrested in Milan carrying goods that were stolen from that Law office in Perugia. Guede tried to claim that he'd bought/acquired these goods in Milan (he wasn't even intelligent enough to realise that it would sound a lot more plausible to claim that he'd bought/acquired them in Perugia before leaving for Milan!).

It's therefore entirely reasonable to suppose that a) Guede was lying about how he came by having these goods in his possession, and b) Guede was lying because he had himself burgled the Perugia law office.

And since there were some interesting similarities concerning the topology and the means of ingress between the law office and the cottage, it's also reasonable to believe that this constitutes another strand of evidence linking Guede to the (real) break-in at the cottage on the night of the murder.

Equally, it could be a logical fallacy of cause and effect. Rudy = burglar, therefore, Rudy = burgled the cottage because he was there.

 

[Vixen]

Actually, that's quite interesting. Hellmann, for standing up for evidence and justice and acquitting Amanda and Raffaele found himself sent to Coventry by his colleagues. Now, I don't know what that tells you, but it tells me that the club of judges thought that clubability meant something different from fairly and honestly and independently considering the case with an open mind without fear or favour.

That's all changed now. It was certainly his place to say that the crime did not happen.

So your position is Hellmann is some kind of Ayn Rand Fountainhead figure. The noble individual standing up to the mindless masses.

That's an interesting thought to hold.

However, as a judge, he is constrained by judicial directions. As a judge, you can't just suddenly rebel against all you have sworn allegiance to, in this case, allegiance to the court.

 

[Grinder]

When the PGP were still on boards that allowed debate the question of how the kids knew to stage the break-in Rudi-style came up often. The PGP explained that either Rudi had regaled them with his break-in techniques or they had read about it in the local paper's crime section. Now, of course, no one could produce said crime report but what the hey.

Bayesian logic clearly reveals Rudi did the break-in Rudi-style.

 

[Kauffer]

The logical answer is someone let him in. He often played basketball with the guys.

Not given the facts, no. I said "given the facts". There is no evidence to suggest that anyone was in the cottage to let Guede in. So, to suggest he was let in, without citing some evidence to support the suggestion, is the equivalent of attempting to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Who was this person? There is nothing logical to the idea that Guede was let in. The events at the cottage on the night of the 1st do not require the supposition of a "missing link".

The boys downstairs have unimpeachable alibis! Why did you mention them?

 

[Kauffer]

You would need a six-foot reach? Not even the finest boxers have that.

Have you not been following the answers in the thread? You do not need such a reach and you also have a tool available to help you, which does not require you to reach at all.

 

[carbonjam72]

Excuse me! I asked about the checks and balances on the police - twice - about a week ago. Get in line you lot.

Excuse me? Not boasting, but I questioned both claims of gender and of being really a bi-skeptical, and not just posing to make a fashion statement, within a few posts. Granted though, you were fast on the draw.

 

[Kauffer]

So your position is Hellmann is some kind of Ayn Rand Fountainhead figure. The noble individual standing up to the mindless masses.

That's an interesting thought to hold.

However, as a judge, he is constrained by judicial directions. As a judge, you can't just suddenly rebel against all you have sworn allegiance to, in this case, allegiance to the court.

It's his court and he is its President. Your characterisation is absurd. Hellmann was ostracised not because he got things wrong but because he dared to act non politically and insisted his court was an independent one.

What rebellion against allegiance are you referring to? His allegiance is to the law. In what way did he betray this? He has no allegiance to the police or the prosecutors or the prosecution witnesses or other judges or anybody else in the carrying out of his function as a judge.

 

[Vixen]

Still with the appeals to authority eh?!

Well if you insist on ploughing that furrow, I'll trump everything you have by telling you that the Supreme Court in 2015 - which is now the definitive, final ruling on this case - decided that the break-in was real.

By the way, I wish you were able to tell me and others just how/why/when you formulated your views and position on this case. You're coming up with plenty of things that have been pro-guilt talking points for years now. I'm assuming that you've at least been following the online debate very closely indeed for some time now, if not also participating in it. It would certainly be interesting and instructive to know just exactly how you've reached your current standpoint, but that's obviously (and rightly) your prerogative.

I do not have any particular view. I have a compelling theory that to my mind rings true.

I have followed the story since it broke in the papers, and it's intriguing, as it's very rare a young woman allegedly brutally sexually assaulted and murdered another woman, even with the added factors of the presence of her boyfriend and chum.

After the initial conviction, the story died, and a couple of true crime pulp paperbacks came out, both by British authors. One written in a tabloid journalist style, the other, more well-researched, Darkness Descending which I saw by chance in the library, whilst cramming for exams. That lead on to the aforesaid pulp book from Amazon.

Over the years, as the appeals progressed, a plethora of further books on the matter came out, almost all American. For example, Nadeau, Burleigh and one or two others.

I came across TJMK (and I have never contributed to it, as I told you) and that led me to reading Monster of Florence Doug Preston, and various othets on the Mignini "conspiracy" slant, together with Ron Hendry. I recently received a auto free update of Hendry from amazon kindle.

I should say, I read about twenty books a month from all genres. I particularly enjoy history and biography, of which trying to understand what makes notorious criminals tick, is a subset. To digress, Meyer Levin's original 1956 book about notorious killers Leopold & Loeb Compulsion has just been reissued a fortnight ago, in the UK.

However, I am wavering. Leading up to the Hellmann appeal, a British author and quality paper journalist, John Follain, brought out his book, based on court testimony. Although it contains errors, it is one of the best accounts IMV, because for all the speculation, at the end of the day, it is only what happens in court that counts.

However, I think I have a fair idea what makes the defendants tick.

If only someone would argue for their guilt, then perhaps I could argue a few sceptical reasons against, I am sure.

Think of the Nuremburg Trials (yes, I have read the paperback). A major defense argument was, as of the time of the offences (for example, by the prison camp guards), there was no law against murdering Jews and others considered degenerate. Hence, there were no charges against the eight million card carrying Nazionale Sozialist (sp?) party members in Germany.

So you see, not guilty in fact, does not mean they did not do it.

 

[Vixen]

You see, this is your modus operandi vixen. You make claims in a post. These claims are challenged. You then are asked to respond to the challenge made. But you don't. You move on to something else and you try to deflect.

So, tell me the totality of the investigation carried out into the question of the burglary. Point me to the evidence uncovered in the course of that investigation in the form of documents, visual record, testimony etc.

As to your first sentence. Who looked? How did they look? Was there a grid search? A walking line of officers? Are there photographs and video?

But why would I necessarily expect to find glass under the window?

What else was there to this investigation into the burglary?

While you're about it, perhaps I'll let you tell me with reference to actual documented evidence the size and weight of the rock you seem so obsessed with.

There is a picture of it in RVWBV's video a few pages back, and the picture of the rock is well-publicised. It is huge and weighs four kilograms, or nine pounds.

It screams, suspicious.

Burglars can use any hard object to smash the glass in front of them, to then gain access to the window latch, and then open the window from the inside. I have seen one in action. You really do not need to seek the largest and heaviest rock you can find. It doesn't sound like an experienced burglar, as you claim.

 

[Vixen]

Vixen, what would be appropriate techniques for investigators to use to search the ground beneath a broken window to determine if glass had fallen along the outside of the building? After you answer that, please tell me if the police uses such techniques. And tell me how you know it.

If I were a police investigator looking beneath a broken window to see if broken glass had fallen to the ground, I would do several things. I would photograph the area from a distance and then upclose many times. I would mark off sections of ground directly beneath the window and sections to each side, and do the same for sections a few feet back from the wall of the house, and then another row of sections even further back from the wall of the house. I would then put on rubber gloves to provide some protection to my hands and to avoid contaminating any piece or shard of glass I find. I might run my hand slowly through the leaves or grass or plants as I look, and I might repeat it with a bright flashlight to see if anything reflects. I might take sheets of tack paper and press it down firmly on the ground or perhaps drag it through the groundcover, looking at it every foot to see if it had picked up any glass splinters, chips, or larger fragments.

None of this is complex. None of this requires special equipment not commonly available to most anyone. Was any of this done by the Perugia police or Stefanoni's team? I might even ask a forensic investigator what to do, seeing as how I have no experience with investigating a serious rime scene what involves broken glass.

I presume they must have done, to be able to report, none found.

 

[Vixen]

Which part of this are you citing? What do you think it explains?

Just to say that it is a popular misconceptipn that switching your phone off makes you untraceable.

 

[Kauffer]

Equally, it could be a logical fallacy of cause and effect. Rudy = burglar, therefore, Rudy = burgled the cottage because he was there.

There is no evidence of anyone else at the cottage unless, possibly, at a stretch, you wish to argue that Kercher herself was complicit in the burglary or indeed that when Guede came on scene, he caught Kercher perhaps in the act of committing an insurance fraud and her death was a result of a different kind of encounter with Guede.

The real meaning of the logical fallacy in criminal investigations that you describe is derived from circumstances where an individual with relevant form is provably only in the vicinity of a crime and not at the crime scene, at the time the crime was committed and that there is no other evidence against him other than means and opportunity.

You cannot appeal to it in these circumstances and certainly not in the manner in which you do, which omits additional and relevant known facts. Your premise is incomplete.

 

[Bill Williams]

I presume they must have done, to be able to report, none found.

You presume wrong. Most certainly where it counts, in court, nothing was presented. It was just assumed.

AK and RS almost spent decades of their lives in prison on "judicial facts", generated out of the mouths of prosecutors and judges, rather than forensics at the scene.

Deal with it.

 

[Vixen]

Well, there's no proof of anyone else in the cottage that night other than Meredith and we have a broken window with a glass distribution pattern supporting the glass being broken by an object thrown from the outside in. There's also a rock. Given these facts, how do you think Rudy got inside?

There is proof others were there that night. Amanda herself confirmed they were her footprints,as highlighted by luminol, on Diane (?) Sawyer show. There's the Raf footprint on the bathmat, there's the mixed Amanda/Mez DNA. Both would need to have been bleeding within twenty minutes of each other for the blood DNA to mix and set in such a fashion.

The rock would have been thrown - whether from the inside or the outside - by whoever had the idea.

 

[Kauffer]

Just to say that it is a popular misconceptipn that switching your phone off makes you untraceable.

You have avoided my questions. Which part of your link are you citing and what do you think it explains? Arguments are not automatically made. You have to make yours, arguing from certain premises derived from your evidence to a supportable conclusion. LJ has actually addressed the argument you failed to make!

 

[Bill Williams]

Equally, it could be a logical fallacy of cause and effect. Rudy = burglar, therefore, Rudy = burgled the cottage because he was there.

There is no evidence of anyone else at the cottage unless, possibly, at a stretch, you wish to argue that Kercher herself was complicit in the burglary or indeed that when Guede came on scene, he caught Kercher perhaps in the act of committing an insurance fraud and her death was a result of a different kind of encounter with Guede.

The real meaning of the logical fallacy in criminal investigations that you describe is derived from circumstances where an individual with relevant form is provably only in the vicinity of a crime and not at the crime scene, at the time the crime was committed and that there is no other evidence against him other than means and opportunity.

You cannot appeal to it in these circumstances and certainly not in the manner in which you do, which omits additional and relevant known facts. Your premise is incomplete.

Vixen's silly statement also ignores the contribution of profilers like John Douglas. Douglas's stuff does not help get convictions, it helps investigators. Principally, it helps investigators narrow their inquiry if they've hit a roadblock..... like the did, really, when they wrongly arrested AK, RS and PL.

Douglas's work does not prove that neither of AK, RS or PL could have done the crime - it suggests that those three were the unlikely ones. When the forensics come back indicating their non-involvement, then the should be let go.

When the forensics comes back, unanimously pointing to someone who fits the profile..... well, then Douglas's work has paid off. In case after case, it is exactly how Vixen says it isn't.

BTW - has Vixen answered anyone's questions yet? Lonepinealex was grumpy about not being included in the waiting-list.