Continuation Part 16: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[RWVBWL]

On the Nov. 2 witness statements, Ms. Lana stated that the prank call came about 10 pm on Nov. 1, while her son and daughter each stated it came about 10 pm but neither provided a date. The police must have considered the call important, at least after the murder, since they obtained Capasso's statement in Terni at 3:40 am on Nov. 3, in the presence of a Perugian police Chief Inspector. It is puzzling that the police and prosecutor did not attempt to resolve the differences in the date of the prank call as stated by the alleged caller compared to the alleged recipient.

The kid who prank called Elisabetta Lana on Halloween night at 9:48pm
was apparently barely 17 years old. His 17th b-day was Oct. 8th.

http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/2007-11-03-Witness-deposition-Capasso.pdf

It's gettin' late here in Los Angeles, 12:29am,
I need to get to bed...

I'd bet the kid was probably shocked to have been busted and sitting inside a Questura, being deposed at 3:40 am for crank callin' someone on October 31st. about a bomb in their toilet.

By the way,
does anyone have a Goggle map of Lana's yard where the phones were found?
I'm just wondering if she had an Outhouse for a toilet.
I doubt it, for some reason...
Goodnight,
RW

 

[Kauffer]

See above.

No, there's nothing there from you which explains which cleaning materials were used, where they were obtained from and how they were disposed of.

Equally, there is nothing in Kercher's room or elsewhere in the cottage to indicate that any crime scene cleanup took place.

And there is no transfer evidence at all. Remember how you cited Locard? Well, Locard insists on transfer evidence.

Additionally, there is no physical evidence at all of Amanda in Kercher's room - nothing - including no shoe or footprint, hair samples or DNA. Locard insists on this too.

 

[LondonJohn]

Hmmm. So there appears to be testimony that refers directly to the phone records of the prank caller, which shows unequivocally that the call was made on the evening of 31st October, and not 1st November.

If we provisionally accept this as proof that the call did indeed take place the evening before the murder, as opposed to the night of the murder, then how and why did this get through the entire Massei trial process (and make it into the Massei Report) without being picked up or corrected?

And how/why did the transposition of nights happen anyhow? I'd go back to my earlier supposition: that the police didn't want to admit that the call-out they got on 1st November was actually in relation to noises in the garden, that they'd visited the house in response to this call, that they'd searched the garden in the dark, and that they'd failed to find either of the phones (even the Italian one which was apparently lying on open grass). This sort of sloppy incompetence meant they failed to find the phones within (literally) tens of minutes of their having been thrown into the garden - something which might have made a material difference to the investigation. After all, had the police found and identified the phones by 11pm on 1st November, they might well have visited the girls' cottage that night (just as they did the following day).

So I think that the police (with the PM's endorsement) possibly made a conscious decision to pretend that on 1st November they were in fact responding to the bomb-hoax prank call. By doing so, this diverted attention from their failure to find the phones, since they'd have been investigating a threat of something happening within the house and not outside in the garden.

 

[LondonJohn]

No, there's nothing there from you which explains which cleaning materials were used, where they were obtained from and how they were disposed of.

Equally, there is nothing in Kercher's room or elsewhere in the cottage to indicate that any crime scene cleanup took place.

And there is no transfer evidence at all. Remember how you cited Locard? Well, Locard insists on transfer evidence.

Additionally, there is no physical evidence at all of Amanda in Kercher's room - nothing - including no shoe or footprint, hair samples or DNA. Locard insists on this too.

Vixen has also claimed that the absence of fingerprints in certain places (e.g. none of Sollecito's prints found inside his car, and almost no prints of Knox's found inside her bedroom) serves as some sort of evidence, in and of itself, that a clean-up took place.

But the truth is very different. The fact is, unless a wet and viscous transfer medium is involved (and blood serves extremely well in this regard), latent prints are very hard to deposit in any sort of identifiable form. Unless there's firm, non-sliding finger contact with a smooth, hard surface, a readable print is almost never deposited. This gives rise to the old movie trope of giving a suspect a glass of drink, then dusting the glass for prints afterwards. Holding a drink glass is one of the few activities where latent prints (in the absence of any liquid medium) might reasonably be deposited in a readable/identifiable manner. Another way is if someone places fingers onto the glass of a window, or onto a high-gloss window frame or window sill, in the course of breaking in. And that is precisely how/why many break-in burglars are discovered.

By contrast, virtually every surface in something like the interior of a modern car is in no way amenable to the deposit of readable prints in the absence of a separate liquid transfer medium. And where there are potentially decent surfaces (possibly the steering wheel and gear knob, and the inner/outer door release handles), the high likelihood is that whoever is driving or entering/exiting the car will slide their fingers in some way in the course of making contact, thereby destroying the chance of reading/identifying the prints. And the same is true of a typical bedroom.

Oh and of course, there's also the distinct likelihood that the "crack" on-site forensics team (led, let us not forget, by a lab scientist who was completely unsuitable for the specialised job of crime scene evidence collection) didn't look hard enough for prints and/or botched the process in any case.

In short, the failure of the police to produce any identified prints of Knox or Sollecito from such places as Sollecito's car or Knox's bedroom can in no way be taken as any sort of evidence of a clean-up.

 

[carbonjam72]

Lana's garden call, and Mignini's "absent fingerprints proves clean-up" theory

Hmmm. So there appears to be testimony that refers directly to the phone records of the prank caller, which shows unequivocally that the call was made on the evening of 31st October, and not 1st November.

If we provisionally accept this as proof that the call did indeed take place the evening before the murder, as opposed to the night of the murder, then how and why did this get through the entire Massei trial process (and make it into the Massei Report) without being picked up or corrected?

And how/why did the transposition of nights happen anyhow? I'd go back to my earlier supposition: that the police didn't want to admit that the call-out they got on 1st November was actually in relation to noises in the garden, that they'd visited the house in response to this call, that they'd searched the garden in the dark, and that they'd failed to find either of the phones (even the Italian one which was apparently lying on open grass). This sort of sloppy incompetence meant they failed to find the phones within (literally) tens of minutes of their having been thrown into the garden - something which might have made a material difference to the investigation. After all, had the police found and identified the phones by 11pm on 1st November, they might well have visited the girls' cottage that night (just as they did the following day).

So I think that the police (with the PM's endorsement) possibly made a conscious decision to pretend that on 1st November they were in fact responding to the bomb-hoax prank call. By doing so, this diverted attention from their failure to find the phones, since they'd have been investigating a threat of something happening within the house and not outside in the garden.

Two points:

1.
When did the son/daughter come to stay with Lana? There has to be testimony supporting the idea that the police were investigating a noise in the garden.

Also, it means the investigating police were lying about the purpose of their visit, and their specific actions that night.

I like this hypothesis, but I think it needs to be supported by something more than a good fit. There's Lana, two other people (son & daughter or her husband?), plus any police documentation of phone calls to the police and any incident reports, plus the police who came to investigate and spoke to Lana and/or others. That's a lot of people and docs, seems like there would have to be something about this.

And, the timing of any visit by police on Nov 1 has to fit too.

2.
Lastly, Vixen has been arguing that finding only one fingerprint of Amanda in the house where she lived, is proof of a clean-up. IIRC, this was Mignini's argument when he met with Amanda in December 2007. Its also evidence of Mignini's mentally imbalanced faculties, that he latches onto this to explain the absence of evidence against Amanda and Raf, and evidence pointing only to Rudy Guede.

 

[LondonJohn]

Two points:

1.
When did the son/daughter come to stay with Lana? There has to be testimony supporting the idea that the police were investigating a noise in the garden.

Also, it means the investigating police were lying about the purpose of their visit, and their specific actions that night.

I like this hypothesis, but I think it needs to be supported by something more than a good fit. There's Lana, two other people (son & daughter or her husband?), plus any police documentation of phone calls to the police and any incident reports, plus the police who came to investigate and spoke to Lana and/or others. That's a lot of people and docs, seems like there would have to be something about this.

And, the timing of any visit by police on Nov 1 has to fit too.

2.
Lastly, Vixen has been arguing that finding only one fingerprint of Amanda in the house where she lived, is proof of a clean-up. IIRC, this was Mignini's argument when he met with Amanda in December 2007. Its also evidence of Mignini's mentally imbalanced faculties, that he latches onto this to explain the absence of evidence against Amanda and Raf, and evidence pointing only to Rudy Guede.

I agree with all this.

Something I would point out is this: if we provisionally accept that the prank call was actually made on 31st October, then it would appear to be massively unlikely that the police would have been at Lana's house in the late evening of the following day to investigate that threat.

So that leads to only two possible scenarios:

1) The police did not in fact visit Lana's house on the late evening of 1st November, but instead they only visited on the evening of the previous day (31st October), i.e. shortly after the prank call was reported in.

2) The police did visit Lana's house on the late evening of 1st November, and this visit must have been related to something other than the prank call of the previous evening.


In short, if the police visited Lana's house on the night of the murder, as was claimed, it's a virtual certainty that this visit must have been related to something other than the prank bomb-hoax call (which had taken place over 24 hours earlier).

 

[carbonjam72]

I agree with all this.

Something I would point out is this: if we provisionally accept that the prank call was actually made on 31st October, then it would appear to be massively unlikely that the police would have been at Lana's house in the late evening of the following day to investigate that threat.

So that leads to only two possible scenarios:

1) The police did not in fact visit Lana's house on the late evening of 1st November, but instead they only visited on the evening of the previous day (31st October), i.e. shortly after the prank call was reported in.

2) The police did visit Lana's house on the late evening of 1st November, and this visit must have been related to something other than the prank call of the previous evening.


In short, if the police visited Lana's house on the night of the murder, as was claimed, it's a virtual certainty that this visit must have been related to something other than the prank bomb-hoax call (which had taken place over 24 hours earlier).

Words like "must" and "virtual certainty" are pretty strong words in any situation, and I'm hesitant to apply it to a local police unit that has had such a haphazard record in investigating this case, and I'm guessing other cases.

When you call in the Keystone cops, or the Three Stooges, you're not dealing with Scotland Yard. You would expect a semen stain at a sex crime scene to be tested too, but it wasn't. Etc, Etc.

So, I'm very interested in this hypothesis, and I think you've shown enough to require a careful review of facts to see if there is support for it. But I think that's as far as we can go on what we have discussed. The wish to show 'logical necessity', doesn't follow yet, from what we've discussed thus far, imo.

There's so much potentially confirming info between witnesses and docs, its hard to imagine we can't nail this down.

 

[Dan O.]

...
By the way,
does anyone have a Goggle map of Lana's yard where the phones were found?
I'm just wondering if she had an Outhouse for a toilet.
I doubt it, for some reason...
Goodnight,
RW

I posted the link years ago but here it is again: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.1190722,12.3874144,22z/data=!3m1!1e3

You'll want to use google earth to scroll back the time since there have been recent changes including adding a driveway where the toilet/phones were. Just plug the lat/lon data “43.1190722,12.3874144" into the GE search box.

Note: if anyone is planning to write a book on this case, the guilter sites have had the wrong address for Lana. There are photos and drawings in the expert testimony on the phones that proves my location is correct.

 

[Dan O.]

...

There's so much potentially confirming info between witnesses and docs, its hard to imagine we can't nail this down.

We have witnesses saying one thing but the contemporary documentation says another. Is there any reason the defense would want to go along with a November 1 prank call if they had the documentation at the time that showed it was in fact Oct 31? One possibility is simple oversight, either unintentional due to other more important work or delibrate. The November 1 time doesn't hurt their case. But if the prosecution tries to spin it to where it does hurt they have the trump card to set it back to the 31.

 

[Bill Williams]

In short, the failure of the police to produce any identified prints of Knox or Sollecito from such places as Sollecito's car or Knox's bedroom can in no way be taken as any sort of evidence of a clean-up.

Sure it can.

What it requires is confirmation biased thinking, and suspect-centric investigation. It's why it took 7 1/2 years to sort this out, and it is why despite the complete exonerations some continue to press these long-since debunked factoids.

 

[LondonJohn]

We have witnesses saying one thing but the contemporary documentation says another. Is there any reason the defense would want to go along with a November 1 prank call if they had the documentation at the time that showed it was in fact Oct 31? One possibility is simple oversight, either unintentional due to other more important work or delibrate. The November 1 time doesn't hurt their case. But if the prosecution tries to spin it to where it does hurt they have the trump card to set it back to the 31.

Unfortunately I strongly suspect that this was one more case of the defence teams failing to nail down this matter properly before or during the Massei trial, or during the first appeals. They could easily have subpoenaed the phone records of this kid and discovered exactly when the call was placed. And then in court, the unified tale told by Lana and the police would have been immediately falsifiable, with obvious implications about the credibility of the police in particular.

In addition, the defence could have argued that either a) the police did not visit Lana's house on the night of the murder at all, or b) if the police did visit Lana's house on the night of the murder, something else must have caused their visit (why would the police visit the house over 24 hours after the hoax call was made and reported, and outside normal work hours at that?).

And lastly, the defence could have argued that had the police visited and searched Lana's house and garden on the night of the murder, and had they found the phones at that point, the investigation could (even would) have been very different, and there's even an outside possibility that Kercher's life might have been saved.

 

[LondonJohn]

Words like "must" and "virtual certainty" are pretty strong words in any situation, and I'm hesitant to apply it to a local police unit that has had such a haphazard record in investigating this case, and I'm guessing other cases.

When you call in the Keystone cops, or the Three Stooges, you're not dealing with Scotland Yard. You would expect a semen stain at a sex crime scene to be tested too, but it wasn't. Etc, Etc.

So, I'm very interested in this hypothesis, and I think you've shown enough to require a careful review of facts to see if there is support for it. But I think that's as far as we can go on what we have discussed. The wish to show 'logical necessity', doesn't follow yet, from what we've discussed thus far, imo.

There's so much potentially confirming info between witnesses and docs, its hard to imagine we can't nail this down.

I'm only employing those strong terms on the conditional premise that the hoax call was indeed made on the evening of 31st October, and that it was reported to the police by Lana on that same night.

After all, if that's what did happen, then there is no reasonable explanation for why the police might show up at Lana's house in response to that incident the following late evening. If the police were going to respond to Lana phoning in the threat, it would have had to have been either the same night (31st October), or in the daytime of the following day at worst. And if Lana was telling the police that someone had phoned in a bomb threat, it's hard to see how/why the police wouldn't have gone over there pretty immediately and checked out the threat (for obvious reasons).

That's why I'm suggesting that if the Police were at Lana's house on the late evening of 1st November, and if the hoax call was made (and reported to the police) the previous evening, then the only reasonable explanation is that the police must have been there (on the late evening of 1st November) in response to another incident - i.e. not the bomb threat hoax from the previous evening.

 

[carbonjam72]

I'm only employing those strong terms on the conditional premise that the hoax call was indeed made on the evening of 31st October, and that it was reported to the police by Lana on that same night.

After all, if that's what did happen, then there is no reasonable explanation for why the police might show up at Lana's house in response to that incident the following late evening. If the police were going to respond to Lana phoning in the threat, it would have had to have been either the same night (31st October), or in the daytime of the following day at worst. And if Lana was telling the police that someone had phoned in a bomb threat, it's hard to see how/why the police wouldn't have gone over there pretty immediately and checked out the threat (for obvious reasons).

That's why I'm suggesting that if the Police were at Lana's house on the late evening of 1st November, and if the hoax call was made (and reported to the police) the previous evening, then the only reasonable explanation is that the police must have been there (on the late evening of 1st November) in response to another incident - i.e. not the bomb threat hoax from the previous evening.

It sounds like there is documentation of the phone call on Oct 31. Is there any documentation of the police visit on Nov 1 at night? (In other words, more than just witness testimony).

I understand the argument here, and I'm interested. It still sounds loose. Even if the call is on Oct 31, and a 1st or 2nd police visit on Nov 1 in the evening, there's still room for unknowns. I'm hesitant to jump the gun. But that's me.

 

[Grinder]

Hmmm. So there appears to be testimony that refers directly to the phone records of the prank caller, which shows unequivocally that the call was made on the evening of 31st October, and not 1st November.

If we provisionally accept this as proof that the call did indeed take place the evening before the murder, as opposed to the night of the murder, then how and why did this get through the entire Massei trial process (and make it into the Massei Report) without being picked up or corrected?

Maybe they didn't think it had anything to do with the murder which it didn't. The time/date according to posts here came from his phone which could have been wrong but I doubt it.

And how/why did the transposition of nights happen anyhow? I'd go back to my earlier supposition: that the police didn't want to admit that the call-out they got on 1st November was actually in relation to noises in the garden, that they'd visited the house in response to this call, that they'd searched the garden in the dark, and that they'd failed to find either of the phones (even the Italian one which was apparently lying on open grass). This sort of sloppy incompetence meant they failed to find the phones within (literally) tens of minutes of their having been thrown into the garden - something which might have made a material difference to the investigation. After all, had the police found and identified the phones by 11pm on 1st November, they might well have visited the girls' cottage that night (just as they did the following day).

I find the diligence by Italians over lost phones baffling. Why would they have searched the yard at all. Wouldn't they have just checked the toilet if anything? If a crank call was reported here I doubt anything would be done at all.

So I think that the police (with the PM's endorsement) possibly made a conscious decision to pretend that on 1st November they were in fact responding to the bomb-hoax prank call. By doing so, this diverted attention from their failure to find the phones, since they'd have been investigating a threat of something happening within the house and not outside in the garden.

If the call came in on the 31st and the police went there then, there would be nothing to find.

I would guess that perhaps one day passed between the call and the phones being found. Even if they went out at 10:30 and looked into the house for a bomb the phones could have been thrown while they were inside. At any rate they weren't looking for phones or anything outside so I don't see any embarrassment.

I haven't read the interviews so may change mind if there is something not covered by posters.

 

[Grinder]

I looked at the depos in Italian of the two kids. I didn't see them actually name a date just times but I could easily be in error.

Is there a way to take these photo PDFs and translate them or does it require typing them into another program?

Anyway this seems much ado but I think Lana confused the prank call date. It came in on the 31st but they found the phones on the second. I can imagine they were quite disturbed by the fact that a murderer had been so close to their house. After all she was freaked out by a prank call enough to call the police.

I still see no reason the police would have been looking for phones or anything outside.

 

[Strozzi]

Vixen has also claimed that the absence of fingerprints in certain places (e.g. none of Sollecito's prints found inside his car, and almost no prints of Knox's found inside her bedroom) serves as some sort of evidence, in and of itself, that a clean-up took place.
. . .

What is interesting about the mindset of those who maintain that the PLE's failure to find many of Amanda's fingerprints in her home must be proof of some sort of cleanup, is that it is in fact just the opposite. It is proof of the PLE's failure to function - to systematically collect and analyze evidence of human presence in the cottage.

 

[Dougm]

A ladies size 37 bloodied footprint was found in the murder room, together with Raff's fingerprint on the door, DNA on the bra clasp and various hairs suspiciously similar to theirs. What was the bloody footprint in Amanda's room? Why was Amanda's fingerprint found in blood on the bathroom lightswitch pressed down? Her blood was on the tap as of 2 Nov. So she was there, bleeding and leaving traces in the bidet, footprint in Filomena's room, glass shard in Mez' room, mixed DNA in five different places. Raff's footprint on bathmat.

Are you sure "there's no trace of Raff or Amanda"?

Surely you've heard of Amanda's awesome Bathmat Shuffle?

ETA. She can hardly name Rudy without giving away inside knowledge.

You are continually posting about evidence that either never existed, or has been disproven. You have so far ignored my request that you provide proof that Raff's fingerprint was inside Meredith's door. I will add to that a request to prove there was a woman's shoe print, and that there were hairs "similar to theirs".

Remember, this is a forum where people will look closely at claims, and confirm them. People here long ago learned that was, at first, claimed to be a woman's shoe print, turned out to be a partial print of Guede's Nike. And the hairs, well they only exist in a hard to decipher photograph, and were either lost or dismissed by the police as insignificant (not presented in court).

It's not really good form to keep posting old, made up, or disproven facts to try to prove your points. People might get confused and actually think there was a case against Knox and Sollecito.

 

[Grinder]

Several posters and one or two recently have put forward the meme that the police stated early on that they had bleach receipts from the morning after. I searched and searched to no avail. Dan O.'s post indicated that the first account of this was from the 16th IIRC.

The reason I brought this up is that one of the sources people have used is Steve Moore. In his video interview with Jim Clement (sp?) he staes near the beginning that the police announced at the "case closed" presser that they had bleach receipts from the 2nd and makes the point strongly that this demonstrates that the police were framing the kids.

Video at 9:20 he claims Mignini at the presser says they have the receipts of Amanda buying bleach the next morning. Now if that were true it would definitely be the case they were framing at the time. But it isn't true. At least no one here can verify it and if he had said that on the 6th it would have been reported everywhere. It wasn't reported anywhere.

So it appears that he makes stuff up or uses information from sources that aren't credible. Now this is the same guy that is used as the "Rudi" is an informant source. He states that he used his FBI contacts for information but I don't believe he is specific. He is named as a person on the FOA/IIP team so clearly he has an agenda.

 

[Dougm]

Several posters and one or two recently have put forward the meme that the police stated early on that they had bleach receipts from the morning after. I searched and searched to no avail. Dan O.'s post indicated that the first account of this was from the 16th IIRC.

The reason I brought this up is that one of the sources people have used is Steve Moore. In his video interview with Jim Clement (sp?) he staes near the beginning that the police announced at the "case closed" presser that they had bleach receipts from the 2nd and makes the point strongly that this demonstrates that the police were framing the kids.

Video at 9:20 he claims Mignini at the presser says they have the receipts of Amanda buying bleach the next morning. Now if that were true it would definitely be the case they were framing at the time. But it isn't true. At least no one here can verify it and if he had said that on the 6th it would have been reported everywhere. It wasn't reported anywhere.

So it appears that he makes stuff up or uses information from sources that aren't credible. Now this is the same guy that is used as the "Rudi" is an informant source. He states that he used his FBI contacts for information but I don't believe he is specific. He is named as a person on the FOA/IIP team so clearly he has an agenda.

I think that people on both sides of the case debate have gotten the source of various things confused. There are a lot of things that were reported by the media that end up being attributed to Mignini, or other PLE members. It may be that people mix up the sources, or that they assume when the media reports something, it came from Mignini. Not sure.

 

[Numbers]

I agree with all this.

Something I would point out is this: if we provisionally accept that the prank call was actually made on 31st October, then it would appear to be massively unlikely that the police would have been at Lana's house in the late evening of the following day to investigate that threat.

So that leads to only two possible scenarios:

1) The police did not in fact visit Lana's house on the late evening of 1st November, but instead they only visited on the evening of the previous day (31st October), i.e. shortly after the prank call was reported in.

2) The police did visit Lana's house on the late evening of 1st November, and this visit must have been related to something other than the prank call of the previous evening.


In short, if the police visited Lana's house on the night of the murder, as was claimed, it's a virtual certainty that this visit must have been related to something other than the prank bomb-hoax call (which had taken place over 24 hours earlier).

It would be better to say that a Nov. 1 visit by the police would have been motivated probably by the prank call (most likely not yet traced by the police, possibly not considered very important) and a new event that alarmed the Lana family, such as hearing or seeing something being thrown into the grounds of their residence. The police would not have known that the objects tossed in were phones; they could have been one or more dangerous objects related to the prank.

ETA: I am assuming for simplicity and relative sanity that the police were unaware that they were looking for cell phones on the evening of Nov. 1.