I suggest that the issue is not whether or not the kids did anything "suspicious", it is whether or not the kids did anything qualitatively MORE suspicious than anyone else - so much so as to justify this case eventually slipping into its.....
...... suspect-centrism.
It is already a matter of record what the "behaviours" were that caused the police to focus on them. All three of those behaviours were trivial. What is relevant is: what behaviours did others do (who also were keyholders, or within one-degree of separation of a key) which could be said to be "suspicious".
For the police to get locked into the staging of the crime-scene so early, combined with their assumption that the climb in through Filomena's window was undoable were the chief reasons why the investigation when so bad so early - and, thus, became unduly suspect-centred on to AK and RS.
I'd suggest to you both that everything within two-degree of separation of Meredith did something suspicious. (Filomena, for instance, swiped her own laptop from behind crime-scene tape, and with her lawyer returned it to the cops later at the Questura.)
Some of the British girls lied about Meredith's drug use, as [FILOMENA?] counselled Amanda to do the same when talking to police.
The missing element in your back-and-forth with each other is suspect-centrism.
I agree with everything you posted, but I made one correction since I believe it was Filomena who had counseled Amanda to not mention their pot smoking to the police?
I don't believe Filomena was involved, but Filomena had the exact same alibi Amanda had, that both spent the night with their boyfriends, and both of their boyfriends lived about 10 minutes away from the cottage. Yet, the police didn't even take DNA samples from Filomena or her boyfriend ...I guess, because Filomena cried at appropriate times and Amanda cried at wrong times?
This may be lengthy, but it's a perfect example of the tunnel vision (confirmation bias and suspect-centrism) that had afflicted the Italian police from the very beginning:
FILOMENA'S GLASS
Filomena testified that the first thing she did upon entering her bedroom was to pick up her laptop, which was lying flat beneath the shattered window with glass on it, which fell off of her laptop onto her strewn clothing as she picked her laptop up.
Not surprising that Filomena may have next noticed some glass atop her strewn clothing, but Filomena wasn't a trained CSI, so did Filomena ever check beneath her clothing for glass?
At some point Filomena left her bedroom to go to Meredith's bedroom door, and once Meredith's body was discovered, everyone (Amanda, Raffaele, Marco, Luca, Filomena & her gal-pal) were told to leave the cottage.
Of course, Filomena did somehow sneak back in to get her laptop, but other than that, supposedly no one else had entered Filomena's bedroom until the police had photographed everything to document the crime scene (around 3:00 pm),
and at that time the photos showed no glass atop Filomena's strewn clothing!
Yet, later arriving police claim they saw glass atop Filomena's clothing?
Monica Napoleoni (at Massei, page 103) testified that she saw broken window glass on Filomena's clothing (which was used as proof of a simulated break-in), which would have been impossible for Napoleoni to have actually observed:
Monica Napoleoni, Deputy Commissioner of the State Police, arrived at the Via della Pergola house around 13:30 pm, and colleagues of the postal police gave information about the discovery of the body of a girl. Arriving almost at the same time as the staff from 118, there was a female doctor and a nurse.
In Romanelli's room, she saw the break-in and glass "that had fallen on top of the stuff lying on the floor" (page 226).
She approached Meredith’s room with the chief assistant Buratti, who remained at the door as Napoleoni took one step inside the room "while the 118 doctor uncovered the corpse" (page 228, hearing [96] on February 27, 2009).
http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/PDF/Massei_Report.pdf
How could later arriving Monica Napoleoni have seen glass atop Filomena's clothing if Filomena had already shook the glass off her clothing, as claimed by Massei?
Without worrying about Monica Napoleoni's obvious LIE (
or the psychological factors that causes witnesses to fabricate testimony), Judge Massei explained that the police pictures failing to show the broken glass on top of Filomena's clothing wasn't that important since Filomena had been disturbing the crime scene in her room, and consequently, Massei theorized that Filomena had knocked the glass from atop her clothing before she was ordered out of the cottage:
One last aspect which bears repeating is the presence, noted and checked by several witnesses, of pieces of glass on top of the objects and clothing in Romanelli's room. This circumstance, which also reveals an activity of simulation, although it is not decisive because it does not actually exclude that the phantom burglar first broke the window and then made the mess in the room,
was rejected by the Defence of the accused, which showed [POLICE] photographs that did not show glass on top of the clothes and objects scattered around Romanelli's room,
and observed that the documentary and crystallisation value of a specific situation as realised [42] through a photo should prevail over witness statements sworn into the record.
This [DEFENSE] claim is not held to be sustainable, since it does not take into account the events and their succession and chronology.
On the subject of the contrast between the testimony and the documents (photographs of Filomena's room that do not show pieces of glass on top of the clothes and objects scattered around),
Romanelli's own declarations are significant and decisive. In her questioning of Feb. 7, 2009, she recalled having left her computer in its case "standing up, not lying down" (p. 269), and then, when she returned to the house, she saw that in her own room, the window was broken and "everything was all over the place..." (p. 40)
http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/PDF/Massei_Report.pdf
Massei continues his 'EXPERT' analysis of the glass, and it's interesting that Massei describes Filomena as being a "
very orderly" gal (
in apparent comparison to the slovenly killer witch he was judging):
She [FILOMENA] checked that her jewellery was there, which it was, and she looked for her computer which she saw "from underneath" (p. 40), and continuing to explain, she declared that "I picked up the computer and perceived that in lifting it, I was picking up pieces of glass, in the sense that there was actually glass on top of it" (p. 41)[/B], and she noticed this circumstance so particularly that she added the following comment: "
It was really a stupid burglar; not only did he not take anything, the broken glass was actually on top of the things" (p. 41).
As she [FILOMENA] is usually very orderly,
the witness also stated that she entered into her own room and searched around to see if anything was missing, and during that search she moved objects, thus changing the position of some pieces of glass. At that moment, however, only the Postal Police officers were present, and they were there to understand why two mobile phones had been found in the garden of a house in via Sperandio; the broken window pane indicated a robbery which seemed entirely independent from the finding of the telephones; thus it seemed perfectly natural and almost automatic for them to enter the room with the broken glass without taking any particular precautions, focusing only on the task of finding out if anything was missing.
Thus, the movement of objects was perfectly natural, as was the progressive modification of the situation in Romanelli's room with respect to the pieces of glass which, having been found and noted on top of objects, were then allowed to fall and moved around during the search which, it can be imagined, Romanelli made with a certain agitation and anxiety due to worry and the strong [43] disturbance that she was feeling.
The photos, however, were only taken later, around 15:00 pm according to what can be inferred from the declarations of the personnel of the scientific section of the Questura of Perugia, Cantagalli and Brocci, when the discovery of Meredith's lifeless body imposed the use of care and circumspection in the necessity of crystallising the situation, avoiding any modification of the scene and acquiring every element which could be useful for the investigation.
Thus, the moments during which the witnesses found glass on top of the objects and the moments during which everything in the house was photographed and thus fixed were different moments. Consequently, the visual and tactile observations of the witnesses and the photographs of the surroundings cannot be judged in parallel, given that they represent different situations at different times.
It is enough to note that inspector Battistelli told everyone to leave the house, not when he saw the broken window in Romanelli's room, but when he realised that there was a corpse in Meredith's room.
http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/PDF/Massei_Report.pdf
Filomena testified that she had left her laptop on the floor where she found it with glass on top of it, but she recalled it was standing on edge when she left, and it was lying flat on the floor with glass on it when she found it, which probably means her laptop fell over as the rock crashed thru the window, with glass falling on top of it.
Filomena's recollections constantly changed – e.g., shortly after the murder she said she had left her shutters open, then later Filomena testified she had closed her outer shutters, but when confronted with the discrepancy, she reverted back to saying she probably had left them open.
Filomena may have also left some dirty clothes on the floor as she rushed to change clothes for the B-day party?
Too much speculation was based upon Filomena's changing recollections, but either way, Napoleoni had LIED about seeing glass on Filomena's clothes.
The problem with witness recollections, is when were their statements taken?
For example, immediately after the murder the English girls described Amanda and Meredith as friends, but later after reading that Amanda had murdered their friend, the later recollections of the English girlfriends had magically changed and now described Amanda as a witch-on-wheels.
Filomena, the police, and everyone else who would later testify against Amanda, all of their later recollections would likewise be influenced by the salacious media reports about Amanda.
