Continuation Part 16: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

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Steve Moore did not originate the theory that Rudy was an informer. I believe the first person to write about it was English journalist Bob Graham:



Mark Waterbury then ran with that story, calling it "information" instead of "speculation." Did Steve Moore agree? I don't know. If he has ever said anything about it, someone should provide a citation.

To this day, there is no evidence Rudy was a police informant.

If I understand S.M.'s position at all, he's saying that the way the PLE treated Rudy was very much like someone would be treated as-if a police informant. IIUC Moore believes that the cops were trying to frame Lumumba for something they knew Guede did.

The way to get at Lumumba, the cops found out, was through Knox, and the way to get to Knox was to get to Raffaele.

I am not sure what to think of this. If true, it became plain that the PLE at some point decided they could not sustain a framing of Lumumba, because of his iron-clad alibi and because the forensics pointed to Guede.

So they went to plan B) which was more of a limited hang-out; try to construct a scenario where Rudy was only a minor player in what they were going to assert was multiple attackers. Then they'd vilify Knox in the press hoping attention would be diverted from the obvious.

If any of this is at all true, it almost worked.
 
If I understand S.M.'s position at all, he's saying that the way the PLE treated Rudy was very much like someone would be treated as-if a police informant. IIUC Moore believes that the cops were trying to frame Lumumba for something they knew Guede did.<snip>

Do you know where he says this?
 
They let Lumumba go but kept him under pressure, for example by keeping his pub closed as a crime scene for months. Otherwise, he could have pursued charges under CP Art. 377-bis against the police for their mistreatment of him (beating, threats) when he had been arrested.
Mignini kept the case against Amanda (and thus Sollecito) because of his obsessions. But both Mignini and the police commanders needed to keep the case going to prevent being charged with mistreatment of Amanda during her interrogation (CP Art. 377-bis).

This doesn't address why they were so focused on Lumumba before the Nov 5 interrogations, and getting Amanda to name Lumumba on Nov 5/6.

IIRC, you had speculated that they had a forensic indication that the perp was African, either from hair or DNA.

But recognizing Guede's break-in style and wanting to protect themselves for their relationship to guede, that would be a reason to swap, 'one black for another'.
After all, accusing Amanda of exactly what they themselves are doing, is kind of their MO.

In any event, their enthusiasm for Patrick, as the object of the Nov 5 interrogations, still needs explaining. This loose end bothers me still.
 
Do you know where he says this?

Steve Moore also wrote a chapter in a book called; "Rudy Guede, The Forgotten Killer", or something like that.

He describes his reasons for believing Rudy to he an informer. Pretty chilling stuff IMO.
 
He said it in this video about 24 minutes in.



The video is an interview of Steve Moore and Jim Clemente.

I still think it is more likely he was protected by the police for being associated with the Caporali family than with the police.

And Rudy was not known for throwing rocks. He entered the Tramontano and Diaz residences through lower level windows, requiring no climb and no breaking of glass. He also did not climb or break glass to get in the Del Prato nursery.

I believe with the Brocchi law office, he first climbed to the balcony (using the grating that covered a window), and then used a rock to break the window on the balcony.

http://amandaknoxcase.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/law_office_window.jpg
 
This doesn't address why they were so focused on Lumumba before the Nov 5 interrogations, and getting Amanda to name Lumumba on Nov 5/6.

IIRC, you had speculated that they had a forensic indication that the perp was African, either from hair or DNA.

But recognizing Guede's break-in style and wanting to protect themselves for their relationship to guede, that would be a reason to swap, 'one black for another'.
After all, accusing Amanda of exactly what they themselves are doing, is kind of their MO.

In any event, their enthusiasm for Patrick, as the object of the Nov 5 interrogations, still needs explaining. This loose end bothers me still.

It is very likely they found black African hairs at the scene. It was even in the paper, although later covered up. There are only about 1,000 black men in Perugia, and Patrick was very well known. The police probably resented him because 1.) prejudice against blacks and immigrants in general is very high in Italy (he is married to a Polish immigrant), 2.) he owned a business during a time of very high unemployment for Italians, 3.) they probably suspected he was associated with the drug trade.

Does anyone know when they started tapping Patrick's phone? I forget whether it was before or at the same time they started tapping Amanda and Raffaele's. They probably tapped everybody's. I'm sure once they found a connection between a local African man and one of the murder victim's housemates, they flipped their wigs. Why they didn't just bring him in for questioning, we may never know. It doesn't make any sense.
 
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New translation: Witness statement of Riccardo Luciani on November 2, 2007: http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Riccardo-Luciani-Statement-02-Nov-2007.pdf

This is interesting:

That afternoon returning to her house, Meredith who had seen me return, called me asking me for help because Filomena was locked in the bathroom. After about an hour of attempts I was able to open the door.

The pictures and the maps show windows in the bathroom.
 
This doesn't address why they were so focused on Lumumba before the Nov 5 interrogations, and getting Amanda to name Lumumba on Nov 5/6.

IIRC, you had speculated that they had a forensic indication that the perp was African, either from hair or DNA.

But recognizing Guede's break-in style and wanting to protect themselves for their relationship to guede, that would be a reason to swap, 'one black for another'.
After all, accusing Amanda of exactly what they themselves are doing, is kind of their MO.

In any event, their enthusiasm for Patrick, as the object of the Nov 5 interrogations, still needs explaining. This loose end bothers me still.

The police may have found hair they considered African at the crime scene. I had suspected they possibly had indication of an African from DNA, but I am not sure that their STR testing methods - the kind used by forensic labs - would be likely to show that - I simply don't know enough about the topic. My cursory look at that a few months ago leads me to believe that the forensic lab would need allele frequency charts for various African populations, and I am not sure how available those are.

I have also suspected that Patrick Lumumba may have been targeted because of his connection to Amanda, and that he was a kind of back-up to Raffaele for her alibi. That is, he could confirm that customers were few in the pub that night, therefore he told Amanda not to come to work. That indirectly supported her alibi of being at Raffaele's flat. By tossing Lumumba into the police-fabricated conspiracy, they eliminated that indirect support, and made it a sign of Amanda's guilty. The police may also have considered that they needed a "heavy" - someone who people might somehow consider more menacing, because of his color and age, then two relatively nerdy and apparently harmless students of 20 and 23 years of age. I acknowledge that this particular argument is not that strong.
 
Steve Moore did not originate the theory that Rudy was an informer. I believe the first person to write about it was English journalist Bob Graham:



Mark Waterbury then ran with that story, calling it "information" instead of "speculation." Did Steve Moore agree? I don't know. If he has ever said anything about it, someone should provide a citation.

To this day, there is no evidence Rudy was a police informant.

Migi was asked about it and said he didn't know. If that tells you anything.
 
The real disconnect is that Mignini described Knox as a liar and a consummate actress, then said he was in favour of going out to arrest Lumumba because, "Amanda accused him."

You tell me - there's stuff in the PLE's behaviour/accountings that simply do not add up.

Mignini has two possible plausible explanations for the wrongful arrest of Lumumba. Napoleoni and her interrogation team messed up badly in how they interrogated Amanda resulting in a legally-indefensible, police-driven, confused, false confession, or Amanda is so crafty and clever that over tea and cookies she fed the police false infirmation about Lumumba to throw the investigation off track. Mignini blames the whole debacle on Amanda, calling her a liar and actress who willfully misled the police about Lumumba.

After 4 days of investigation and under intense media watch, the police were trying to bust the case open. They were looking to elicit and magnify contraditions in anyone's statements, which is why they repeatedly interviewed Amanda and, by extension, Raffaele.

When Police Chief de Felice announced at the press conference on the morning of Nov 6 that they solved the crime he said that they felt under a lot of public pressure to do so. His acknowledgement of the pressure they felt was overshadowed by his more sensational "She told us what we knew to be true" comment and his crowing "Case closed". (De Felice probably wishes he could take back all three points.)
 
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Graham reported Mignini conceded Rudy may have been an informant

Migi was asked about it and said he didn't know. If that tells you anything.

According to Graham's article, IIUC, Mignini acknowledged that it might be true, since Rudy had the sort of background that police would normally approach for such services, but thought it not relevant to the case. Graham interpreted Mignini's concession as agreement that Rudy was an informant.

Mignini was also reported by Graham to believe that Rudy should have been in jail for previous crimes before he killed Meredith, but someone else screwed that up. (Wasn't that kind of Mignini's job?).

The interview was printed, IIRC, in the Sun about four months after the original Dec 09 convictions.
 
Dempsey if a journalist at all, is only just barely. Nina has been shown to have inaccuracies in her novel.

But it is hilarious that I'm accused of the fallacy of authority for quoting mainline dictionaries but you can even begin to quote song and verse from books that aren't even sourced.


I read it that Nencini was repeating a defense assertion and then saying if they were right about his well known pattern then he wouldn't use that well known MO for a stage. Even if I misread it why in the world in the maze of things he totally got wrong would you believe this one. Do you have any evidence that the court was ever informed of the police knowing his MO? I followed the trials and don't remember a Vogt, Nadeau, Dempsey, Burleigh, Pisa, or anybody reporting the police or prosecutors discussing the known MO. So if Nencini did say what you think he said then he disclosed a very significant sensitive item.


Yes that has been known for a long time. It was in the Massei Report.



The doubt is that Nina's account of the alleged break in, fire, severely damaged house and dead cat was accurate. Since the watch was known years before the Nina claim, that very fact is part of why I doubt Nina.


You like the authority thing don't you? Moore AFAIK had no experience in Italy at all and spent very little time in the FBI dealing with this type of crime. He was a pilot and did some lead on anti-terrorism before going to work at Pepperdine. Did Moore detail the workings of the Rudi/PLE arrangement? How much was he paid? Whom did he inform on?



Well when they bust you, you might just figure it out. They would sell their story for plenty and it's not like they aren't known to be criminals after the Rudi caper got them.



Proof that he wasn't destitute, no. Do you have proof that he was? It's just so hard to keep track of all the FOA PIP theories.

Rudi knew the nursery was available because he had just stolen 2000 Euro there circa Oct. 13 but didn't pay his rent and was destitute. Or he didn't know the place but found it by walking around Milan looking for the unlocked door. When you read the Prato interview you will learn the door opened with a push and all the staff knew it.

You have him stealing things all over Perugia, working as an informant for the PLE but making little or no money. Being a fence doesn't make one well off. You and one other seems to think there is a significant barrier to entry in the fencing business. Some guys steal. Some guys sell. Some do both.

I'm guessing you haven't read Rudi's interview either where he lists his job history.

Just trying to hit the hilights.

1. The issue I have with your emphasis on definitions and citing dictionary definitions, is that i don't always agree with your definitions, or your interpretations of the dictionary definitions you cite. Simply stating your interpretation, isn't necessarily what has actually been written. (I believe you had this issue with Chris C and others, a few posts up-thread). Its not your appeal to authority that I sometimes have trouble with, its your interpretation of authorities you appeal to.
2. If Nencini is using the assertion that police would have recognized Rudy's MO as proof that Rudy did not stage the break-in, then Nencini must be accepting and relying on that view, in order to support the conviction against Amanda and Raf. If its not true, then Nencini (in Nencini land) would be arguing that Rudy could not be precluded from staging the break-in Nencini assumes to have occurred.

So the question remains, where did Nencini get this from? He had to have heard it from somewhere. On this point, I think we are in agreement.

3. I think your argument here for doubting Nina's reporting is circular, and unfounded.

4. Regarding Moore, I do not "appeal to authority". I rely on experience. I trust Chris C or Dr Gill more on DNA evaluation than I do Ergon, Vixen or Mach. That's not an appeal to authority, its sorting the wheat from the chafe. At some point if I truly want to understand the issue, I have to do my homework and slog through the argument, background and data.

For shorthand though, and to save time, I do look to credibility as an indication of how much to trust some info when I hear it, as I think we all do. Dismissing Moore's experience, and IIRC, experience in Italy too, is like the guilter's delight in bashing Moore and Jim Clemente, as though their guilter fantasies have any merit. We're short on data here. But your skepticism isn't more convincing to me than Moore's experience and expert opinion, even though I don't know the full basis for his opinion. WHo do you trust, and how far? I'm willing to try out the theory and see if it works, and I think it fills in a lot of holes.

Its fine to disagree, but you haven't proved anything, just loudly doubted.

5. You assume that Rudy informs, and there is then a bust, and its obvious who Rudy finked on. Could that be a scenario? Yes. Must that be the scenario? Obviously not. You seem to like to reduce the world to simple scenarios, then argue against your own assumptions. Why should anyone else feel bound by your assumptions?

6. I'll just comment generally, that I'm reflecting on what gets reported, testified to, concluded by judges, or supported by evidence, and to the comments and opinions posters express. Its a limited data set, so we can't get everything we need in every point. I say let's make the most of what we do know, not just dismiss everything out of hand when we encounter gaps.

Whatever happened to CoulsdonUK? He/she certainly went out in a blaze of glory just before the acquittals.
 
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I still think it is more likely he was protected by the police for being associated with the Caporali family than with the police.

Yes.

And Rudy was not known for throwing rocks. He entered the Tramontano and Diaz residences through lower level windows, requiring no climb and no breaking of glass. He also did not climb or break glass to get in the Del Prato nursery.

On Nov. 2nd the CT home invasion hadn't been reported beyond a 911 call as no police report had been filed and the Diaz case so far has only been reported by Nina and someone said Graham too. The report from Milan would hardly have arrived in Perugia by the 1st.

I believe with the Brocchi law office, he first climbed to the balcony (using the grating that covered a window), and then used a rock to break the window on the balcony.

That's how I remember it but Rudi wasn't caught doing it and may have only received the goods or been with someone else.

Paraphrasing Hellmann: All they knew was he had entered a nursery and stole virtually nothing and had two pieces of stolen merch. It is really impressive that the police in Milan knew the stuff was stolen from a data base. It raises the question why PLE would have listed the loot of their darling.
 
Yes.

On Nov. 2nd the CT home invasion hadn't been reported beyond a 911 call as no police report had been filed and the Diaz case so far has only been reported by Nina and someone said Graham too. The report from Milan would hardly have arrived in Perugia by the 1st.

According to Ron Hendry:

On Tuesday, October 23, 2007, Maria [Diaz] is attending an annual grape harvest festival about an hour drive from Perugia when police arrive with bad news. They tell her that her home in Perugia had been ransacked by a burglar and damaged by fire. In addition her cat has been killed in the blaze.


Paraphrasing Hellmann: All they knew was he had entered a nursery and stole virtually nothing and had two pieces of stolen merch. It is really impressive that the police in Milan knew the stuff was stolen from a data base. It raises the question why PLE would have listed the loot of their darling.

Upon arriving back in Perugia, Maria also finds that her jewel box had been looted. She is most distressed by the loss of her mother’s gold watch which is an irreplaceable heirloom.

I don't know whether he got the information from Nina or another source.
 
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