Continuation Part 15: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Chris_Halkides]

from his report

I seem to recall a comment from Chris Mellas at P-S to the effect that they were given only a few hours notice and could not attend. However, Dr. Potenza was a consultant for Mr. Sollecito. From a machine translation of his report: "On the kitchen knife seized in the apartment of Raffaele Sollecito there are no biological traces due to the above mentioned, having to be ruled out that the use made of it in the period before its evidence collection. Furthermore, none of the two samples was subjected to the investigation before for the search of human blood while the analysis of the DNA of these has provided, as mentioned, the amplification products extremely weak in intensity and considerably below the minimum limit recommended by the recommendations of GEFI (Italian Group Pathologists Porensi) but above were obtained in the various amplifications performed on the two samples incomplete profiles and with buoyancy allelic differences for some loci, such as not to allow a correct use of these results at the end of forensics, state not uniquely interpretable and theoretically even due to analytical artifacts."

RoseMontague will undoubtedly remember more than I do.

 

[RoseMontague]

I don't think so - I can't open this story here but:

"Here's How the Evidence Stacks up for Amanda Knox
www.newsweek.com/heres-how-evidence-stacks-amanda-knox-81211
Oct 6, 2009 - Soon, it'll be up to a jury in Perugia to decide whether Amanda Knox killed Meredith Kercher. ... 2, 2007, with multiple knife wounds to her neck. .... And she did not test it with the defense experts present (they had been offered the opportunity to ...

Potenza's reports are on that link Chris provided, one from November 2007 and one from January 2008. This was Raffaele's expert, not Amanda's.

 

[MichaelB]

Is there photos of the bloody tissues they found?

 

[sept79]

I seem to recall a comment from Chris Mellas at P-S to the effect that they were given only a few hours notice and could not attend. However, Dr. Potenza was a consultant for Mr. Sollecito. From a machine translation of his report:


"On the kitchen knife seized in the apartment of Raffaele Sollecito there are no biological traces due to the above mentioned, having to be ruled out that the use made of it in the period before its evidence collection. Furthermore, none of the two samples was subjected to the investigation before for the search of human blood while the analysis of the DNA of these has provided, as mentioned, the amplification products extremely weak in intensity and considerably below the minimum limit recommended by the recommendations of GEFI (Italian Group Pathologists Porensi) but above were obtained in the various amplifications performed on the two samples incomplete profiles and with buoyancy allelic differences for some loci, such as not to allow a correct use of these results at the end of forensics, state not uniquely interpretable and theoretically even due to analytical artifacts."

Very puzzling. Despite this complete trashing of the knife, Italian Justice continued to trumpet this knife as the murder weapon. Wow!

Also, it is interesting that the minimum limit recommended by GEFI (Italian Group Pathologists Porensi) was not met.

 

[Grinder]

Potenza's reports are on that link Chris provided, one from November 2007 and one from January 2008. This was Raffaele's expert, not Amanda's.

I can't access them. Perhaps you could provide a snip showing he was there at test time.

 

[Dan O.]

Early newspaper report:


<snip>



Early newspaper report TIMES.

Why don't you show us the parts you believe in?

(or should we have your name changed to "Mr. Gullible")

 

[Grinder]

More troubling for the prosecution is that, while the DNA on the handle is inarguably Knox's, the spot on the blade attributed to Kercher was so small that Stefanoni could not double-test it according to forensic protocol standards. And she did not test it with the defense experts present (they had been offered the opportunity to attend but didn't attend.)

From Newsweek Nadeau article reporting from court.

 

[Dan O.]

This was an early report from a quality UK broadsheet. At the time police believed Patrick was involved, before they apprehended Rudy by matching DNA to his toothbrush.
They also believed there was another, unidentified couple, from tissue and blood found both in Mez' room and outside the house.

So, in theory, there may be four perps at large.

OK, newspaper reports are not court transcripts, but they provide an insight into how police progress a case.

I used the early news reports. I even have an extensive private collection. They are very useful for identifying the time that events happened. But there is so much false reporting going on that it is foolish to rely on them as evidence of any event happening.

So, do you know the story of Rudy, what led to his becoming a suspect, how his identification was confirmed, when and where he traveled, and how he was ultimately captured?

And what's this about blood found in Meredith's room?

 

[Dan O.]

There was so much bleach sloshing around Perugia from late on the 1st November, apparently, you have to wonder why the shops didn't run out.

Filomena had stocked up. 18 liters can do a lot of cleaning. Especially when you can be selective about who's DNA needs to be cleaned up.

 

[Dan O.]

Keep up the pointscoring.

You haven't scored any points.

 

[Dan O.]

You are welcome to play Mr Angry of Tunbridge Wells.

Count me out.

You were out long ago. Try actually examining the evidence sometime.

 

[Dan O.]

[/HILITE]

Correction: so much bleach sloshing around at Raf's. See RVBW's eye-opening police video.

I could swear the camera also hones in on a few receipts.

Read the housekeepers testimony about when the bleach was purchased and what was left when she took maternity leave. Also watch the video. I have an index of what it shows and transcriptions of the receipts found. But you need to watch the whole video yourself.

 

[Dan O.]

It is not conjecture, it is a police opinion:

Why don't you provide citations from the court proceedings as opposed to a newspaper. You won't find that in the trial tanscripts. So it's about as valuable as toilet paper after it was used.

The used toilet paper was still valuable as it had Rudy's DNA.

 

[Dan O.]

If this is traditional old school reporting NOT designed to mislead, then I am Marie of Romania. Basically the Rome stringer is repeating any old misleading crumbs the police are feeding him, without stopping to question the "hype and misinformation" he is getting from persons who clearly have a "vested interest."

It is the British press that pumped out most of the misleading, salacious stories about this case, not the American press.

I just don't get what your agenda is here. You aren't interested in discussing the details of the actual evidence, as opposed to the lies that were fed to the press to obscure the truth. You haven't brought anything new or even truthful about the case to this forum. Is this just winding up for its own sake? Are you even interested in looking for the truth?

It's called trolling. You repeatedly post the most contrarian statement in a thread where posters have put in a lot of effort sorting out the facts. He thinks he is having fun now and doesn't care what people think of his anonymous screen name because he'll just pick a new one for his next project. But what he doesn't know is what Raffaele's thesis project was all about. That's why I put up with it and let him dig deeper and deeper.

 

[Dan O.]

a person who believes in their guilt would say they didn't. they'd say "raffaele sollecito's dna is on the bra clasp".

That's why the police had to enter the cottage on November 13 to plant the recontaminated clasp.

Wait, does Vixen know about the open door? Should we tell him or let it be a surprise??

 

[Dan O.]

Is there photos of the bloody tissues they found?

dsc_0109, dsc_0111, dsc_0112, closeup disc_0147: At marker F, there are some paper and cotton fiber things on the corner of Meredith's desk. Looks like some kind of medical product. If these had been there at the time the door was kicked open they would have been blown off the desk and landed on the duvet with the receipts. They were probably left by the medical response team.
dsc_0180 shows corner of desk and door.

ETA: In the November 3 part 2 video at index 06:14 (closeup at 08:27), there is a tissue in the grass in front of the downstairs apartment which they mark with the number "11". In the November 2 video the tissue is not there. Go figure.

 

[Planigale]

Law has nothing to do with "common sense." Like tax, it is based on arbitrary rules arising from case law precedents.

Italy is a civil law or roman law system. This means case law precedents do not exist. Case law precedents are a feature of common law systems derived from the English legal system. The investigational magistrate (who directs the investigation) and inquisitorial courts are a feature of civil law systems where the court endeavours to discover the truth. The adversarial court where the neutral court judges between the prosecution and defence is a feature of common law systems.

Italy has moved recently to a more hybrid system, with criminal courts supposedly adopting an adversarial approach. However a number of 'findings' in the motivation documents are conclusions different from the case presented by the prosecution, and to which the defence never had opportunity to respond. Effectively what the court did was decide the prosecution case was not proven and substituted its own case. This is a hang over of the inquisitorial system. Hellman adopted a stricter adversarial approach declaring that the prosecution case was unproven. The court of cassation seemed to argue Hellman failed to synthesise the evidence, appropriate for an inquisitorial court, but not the duty of a court judging an adversarial case where the prosecution has to synthesise the evidence. My guess is the motivation of the final court will refer to the adversarial nature of the case and that the responsibility for the prosecution not the court to present the case, for the defence to refute the prosecution, and for the court to judge between the two and not substitute its own reasoning.

 

[Methos]

I can't access them. Perhaps you could provide a snip showing he was there at test time.

Note preliminari per la difesa del Sig. Raffaele Sollecito (translation)

In qualità di Consulente tecnico nominato dall'Avv.to Luca Maori per la difesa di Raffaele Sollecito, ho partecipato alle operazioni di consulenza tecnica in materia ematologico forense svolte dal giorno 12.11.2007 dalla Dott.ssa Patrizia Stefanoni e a tutt’oggi in corso di elaborazione.
[...]
36) coltello tipo da cucina con manico nero lungo complessivamente cm 31 di cui cm 17 lama e 14 manico (Misure riportate da PS). Su tale reperto sono state effettuate n. 2 campionature: (A) In corrispondenza della lama; (B) in corrispondenza del manico.
Nessuna delle due campionature e stata sottoposta all'indagine preliminare per la ricerca di sangue umano, ma sono state entrambe sottoposte ad analisi del DNA che hanno fornito prodotti di amplificazione estremamente deboli di intensitá e notevolmente al di sotto del limite minimo consigliato dalle raccomandazioni del GEFI (Gruppo Italiano Patologi Forensi); inoltre i risultati ottenuti non sono stati costantemente riprodotti nelle altre amplificazioni poiché per la stessa campionatura si sono ottenute amplificazioni con difformità dell'assetto allelico per alcuni loci.

Ulteriori brevi note per la difesa di Raffaele Sollecito (translation)

In particolare preme sottolineare che nella precedente nota preliminare avevo evidenziato che i resultati, seppure incompleti, delle analisi effettuate sui reperti in essa elencati e di cui avevo preso visione, afferenti per la maggior parte a Raffaele Sollecito, consentivano di affermare che su nessun reperto, ed in specie né sugli indumenti né sulle scarpe né tanto meno su alcun oggetto sequestrato a Raffaele Sollecito, vi era risconto di sangue umano che potesse essere ricondotto scientificamente alla vittima, cosi come su tutti i reperti delle vittima esaminati e su quelli rinvenuti nel suo appartamento non è stato riscontrata alcuna traccia di materiale biologico riconducibile a ll'indagato Sollecito Raffaele.

Relativamente alle ulteriori indagini espletate in ambito ematologico forense ritengo di dover segnalare, in particolare, i risultati ottenuti dal reperti di cui ai verbali del 10, 14 e 27 dicembre 2007, identificati progressivamente dal numero 114 al numero 164 ed afferenti ai sopralluoghi effettuati sia in casa della vittima Meredith Kercher Susan Cara, nei giorni 02-03-04 e 05 novembre, e sia nell'appartamento in uso a Rudy Herman Guede il 20 novembre, oltre che ad alcune campionature nuovament e eseguite sulle scarpe marca Nike (Rep.32) e sul coltello da cucina (Rep.36) di proprietà del Sollecito.
[...]
Alla luce di tali evidente, il giorno 14.12.07 gli incaricati dell’indagine hanno proceduto ad effettuare, alla mia presenza, complessivamente n. 4 nuove campionature, come da verbale, di cui due sulla lama e due sul manico del coltello ed identificate con le lettere (D - E , F - G).
Su tutte e 4 queste nuove campionature le nuove analisi per la ricerca della natura ematica della traccia mediante Tetra Metil Benzidina (TMB) hanno fornito un esito negativo confermando quindi che sul coltello da cucina (rep.36) sequestrato a Sollecito Raffaele non vi è adeso sangue.

 

[Planigale]

Soz, correction: the new evidence as demanded by Chieffi, the trace DNA 36i, Vecchiotti and Conti insisted was vegetable starch and "too low number copy to replicate".

It turned out it was replicable, was not vegetable and belonged to Amanda.

36i was found at the knife hilt, with Mez' DNA on the blade.

This is not at all "in favour of Amanda" - in fact, it underlines, Amanda held the fatal murder weapon - and that Vecchiotti and Conti were either incompetent, or more likely, not unimpartial and deliberately set out to mislead the court.

The DNA tells no such thing. Stefanoni, said the location of Knox's DNA on the handle of the knife was compatible with a stabbing hold. This is a unique claim, no other DNA scientists would make such a claim, there is no evidence in the literature to support this and Stefanoni presented no evidence this was true.

Knox's DNA could not originate from holding the knife at the time of the murder. If the knife was the murder weapon it would have been covered in blood, we have the bloody imprint to show this. Blood is full of DNA. Blood is even fuller of haemoglobin. Haemoglobin is a far more resilient molecule than DNA. No blood was detectable on the knife. Tests for blood (haemoglobin) are of the same order of sensitivity as tests for DNA. Contrary to what Stefanoni originally said the quantity of Kercher DNA she allegedly isolated from the knife was small around 40pg. The amount of Kercher DNA was much smaller than the amount of Knox DNA. There is no method that explains how if this was the murder knife all the blood and most of the DNA of the victims were removed (including from the handle), while leaving the DNA of the wielder intact. Even if this is the murder knife, the DNA on the handle of Knox must derive from contact post cleaning and cannot be used to conclude who wielded the knife.

 

[Planigale]

Did he not get any welfare benefits, being a Italian citizen? Do you know for a fact he didn't get any welfare, or is that just conjecture?

He was not an Italian citizen. Can you get any facts correct? This just shows you know little about the case, although strong on opinion.