Continuation Part 19: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[LondonJohn]

The ground under the window is flat. You can see it at about 35 seconds https://youtu.be/8JL6nIkaYLs

Well, yes, it's flat directly under the window, but there is a steep slope just to the side, and in addition the ground is uneven (and it would have been rather damp and slippery on the night in question as well as well as extremely dark and shadowed at the level of the ground). All in all, a jump from one storey high onto that sort of ground would have had clear risks of injury.

And that's why I think this would have been a significant factor for Guede that night. I think he would have wanted to minimise the possibility of him having to jump down from alongside Romanelli's window to the ground if at all possible. And I think this therefore became one of (several) factors in his decision to throw a large rock, retreat to the shadows, then make a quick ascent and entry.

Incidentally, this may, IMO, also have played a factor in his behaviour once he was inside the house, and when he was (IMO) surprised by Kercher's arrival home. I think he instinctively wanted to avoid exiting via that window, partly because of the risks of injury descending/jumping onto uneven, damp, slippery ground in the darkness, and partly because anyone outside the cottage noticing a man climbing out of a broken window would immediately recognise foul play of some sort. By contrast, exiting via the front door would guarantee a risk-free exit, both in terms of the terrain and in terms of what anyone outside the cottage would see (a person opening a front door and leaving a house - even briskly - is obviously perfectly normal and no cause for alarm or even worth noticing).

 

[analemma]

It's a pity they didn't do all this at the trial, the only place it counts.

It is a pity, since it could have been nipped in the bud.
The entire "staged burlary" insanity could have been demolished by the defense team by simply presenting to a court the video of how easy it was to climb to the window and enter: It truly is simple.
Once you see that video it is so easy to see what the whole prosecution theory of a "staged burglary" for what it is, an almost insanely contrived proposal to find a way to frame AK and AS for the murder.
But it seems that the lawyers did not realize that the judges would be both stupid and prejudiced, without the slightest understanding(as Maresca pointed out) of what the term BARD meant.
If the lawyers had produced a conclusive video proving how easy the climb was in the FIRST trial, then Massei would not have been able to cloud the analysis with irrelevant nonsense about nails and 3.5 meters and three attempts and other truly BS ramplings, because it would have been apparent to everyone that the burglary was an easy task, the ease of which even the stupid, but mostly prejudiced, Massei would have had to agree with.
But after Massei, the "staged burglary" become a matter judicial infallibility that the twisted principle of Italian pride cannot correct without bringing down the whole Italian Justice System.
Yes, the lawyers did not do a good job early on, but how could they know that the judges, except for Helleman and Maresca, would be so stupid and the courts so political.

 

[analemma]

Erratum: it was, of course, Samuel Johnson.

that's ok

We are very familiar with the general reliability of your references.

 

[analemma]

Please show us a picture of the door window at the cottage. They didn't go in through the front door. Do your accounts ever balance?

It sometimes seems like Vixen doesn't even look at his last post before he makes the next post.
That is one of the things I like about his thinking: It is so fluid.

 

[analemma]

It sometimes seems

By the way, is there an engineer that can determine if the Cottage Window can be seem by the driver on the far side of the road?
I am really curious about this.

 

[Grinder]

By the way, is there an engineer that can determine if the Cottage Window can be seem by the driver on the far side of the road?
I am really curious about this.

Or if someone in Perugia could drive by and do a video it would be clear and beyond a shadow of a doubt. I do support verification but when one "drives" Google map down that road there is absolutely no doubt that the balcony off the kitchen is at least as visible as the window and the climb up to the window is less visible than the climb to the balcony.

IIRC even one of the early judges recognized that the climb was not so difficult that it required Spiderman.

One person that used to post here that could the work you want is Dan O. If you know him you could ask. He may have done it already.

 

[Bill Williams]

By the way, is there an engineer that can determine if the Cottage Window can be seem by the driver on the far side of the road?
I am really curious about this.

My bet is that a driver on the far side of the road probably can. Just a guess.

One of the issues suggested to me way back when, though, is that the advantage of climbing in through Filomena's window is that any perp could see headlights of any car coming that direction.... and quickly jump down to cover, shielded by the parking lot which is on the same level as the front door. The balcony on the other side - besides being illuminated by a street-lamp (albeit probably dimply because of distance) - is a poorer choice because if spotted, then the perp has no place to go quickly.

Then again, as mentioned, there were two subsequent break-ins at the cottage, one alleged to be through the kitchen window.

Whatever one thinks about preferred route of entry and relative visibility, fact is the owner took action to secure Filomena's window; and there's been no report of any other part of the cottage - balcony or kitchen window - being similarly secured. If someone can find something it would be good to know.

 

[Grinder]

My bet is that a driver on the far side of the road probably can. Just a guess.

One of the issues suggested to me way back when, though, is that the advantage of climbing in through Filomena's window is that any perp could see headlights of any car coming that direction.... and quickly jump down to cover, shielded by the parking lot which is on the same level as the front door. The balcony on the other side - besides being illuminated by a street-lamp (albeit probably dimply because of distance) - is a poorer choice because if spotted, then the perp has no place to go quickly.

Then again, as mentioned, there were two subsequent break-ins at the cottage, one alleged to be through the kitchen window.

Whatever one thinks about preferred route of entry and relative visibility, fact is the owner took action to secure Filomena's window; and there's been no report of any other part of the cottage - balcony or kitchen window - being similarly secured. If someone can find something it would be good to know.

Take a look at the Google camera truck. The camera is at least 4 feet higher than the driver's eyes. Then drive yourself down the street. Even with the high camera only the top window (Filomena's) is visible. I agree that some of her window would be visible, but barely and maybe only part of it and through the railing.

Which windows had bars put on them, doesn't mean that much. The balcony doors may be difficult to secure.

The praecipuus point is that the balcony is not hidden in such a way to make it the obvious entry point even if the two break ins during the trial used it. What those two break ins makes perfectly clear is that it was easy to enter the cottage without being noticed.

 

[Bill Williams]

Take a look at the Google camera truck. The camera is at least 4 feet higher than the driver's eyes. Then drive yourself down the street. Even with the high camera only the top window (Filomena's) is visible. I agree that some of her window would be visible, but barely and maybe only part of it and through the railing.

Which windows had bars put on them, doesn't mean that much. The balcony doors may be difficult to secure.

The praecipuus point is that the balcony is not hidden in such a way to make it the obvious entry point even if the two break ins during the trial used it. What those two break ins makes perfectly clear is that it was easy to enter the cottage without being noticed.

1) it was just a guess. Short of doing the investigation that the original prosecution should have done so that this guessing 8 years later could be avoided....you get the drift.

2) the bars on the windows mean nothing more or nothing less than that the owner wanted to secure that as an entry point. It may be obvious to me why he would do that, but nowhere is there an account from him as to why he did it. So probably any reason is possible, but out of those reasons which is more probable?

3) as explained to me many years ago, once an easy access point is decided upon, no 2nd-storey man is going to abandon it because there might be a theoretical more easy one on the other side of the building. I wasted key-strokes with Machiavelli on this point - he seemed to be arguing that burglars always did the **most** logical thing.​

Despite two-break-ins through other entry points, there is no reason to disqualify Filomena's window - esp. based on a thought-experiment. Channel 5 got a reasonably fit guy approx. Rudy's age who had no problem with the climb.

Every time the few remaining guilters invoke Peter Parker's name, or do a powerpoint on the climb's **impossibility** one can only wonder what the agenda is behind that. Of course, that cannot be known unless someone freely offers it..... but the facts remain:

The climb is doable. The presumed staging was never really investigated. It was assumed, and left to defenders to prove a negative.

 

[Grinder]

FYI the cottage was owned by a woman. It doesn't really matter why barred the window nor does it prove anything that she didn't bar the balcony door or window. It does mess with the PGP assertion that it was the obvious entry point.

Well it's been another couple of days of firming up that the PGP are wrong on a number of points. The alleged phone shut off has been shown to be no more than a deduction from call and texting patterns. It is off interest AFAIK only one call to Raf was missed during the evening and night. Clearly if there were many more that would point more strongly their assertion but regardless they have no direct evidence that the phones were turned off.

We have determined that there is no record of Amanda tearing out the page of her diary as it is not mentioned in the MR of Massei and PMF states they have only seen one page.

It still remains the case that not one example of DNA being found on a knife after testing negative for blood has been produced.

Marasca didn't say Amanda washed blood off her hands.

Raf did tell the police he received a call from his dad at 11 am which wasn't true.

The cottage was not broken into during the trial through the front door. There is no window in the front door.

Amanda did not write on the back of a picture "the Nazi within".

 

[Bill Williams]

FYI the cottage was owned by a woman. It doesn't really matter why barred the window nor does it prove anything that she didn't bar the balcony door or window. It does mess with the PGP assertion that it was the obvious entry point.

Well it's been another couple of days of firming up that the PGP are wrong on a number of points. The alleged phone shut off has been shown to be no more than a deduction from call and texting patterns. It is off interest AFAIK only one call to Raf was missed during the evening and night. Clearly if there were many more that would point more strongly their assertion but regardless they have no direct evidence that the phones were turned off.

We have determined that there is no record of Amanda tearing out the page of her diary as it is not mentioned in the MR of Massei and PMF states they have only seen one page.

It still remains the case that not one example of DNA being found on a knife after testing negative for blood has been produced.

Marasca didn't say Amanda washed blood off her hands.

Raf did tell the police he received a call from his dad at 11 am which wasn't true.

The cottage was not broken into during the trial through the front door. There is no window in the front door.

Amanda did not write on the back of a picture "the Nazi within".

Aside from all of this, there are folk claiming they're obviously guilty. Although it is old, old news, and I've said it before....

... my own entry point into this started with seeing a foreign paper with the case mentioned on the front-page, below the fold; "DNA falling apart in Knox trial." It was August 2011. I went on a web-search and the first page I found (other than Wikipedia, which was - then - a mess) was TJMK. TJMK was promising that even though the DNA was falling apart, there was still, "all the other evidence."

Some of all that other evidence is as per your summary above. Stupid me, I actually argued with someone who said the sine qua non of the case was, "sex on a train". From this distance that seems dumb to engage!

It's now 8 months post-acquittal, with perhaps only the ECHR ahead but most certainly nothing in Italy. All the other satellite prosecutions seem to have fallen off the edge of the earth. One of the PMFs is closed, the other is procrastinating on an English translation of Marasca/Bruno's report - and regardless of how they differ from the IIP translation, the original Italian remains unchanged. Unless Google is strangely filtering searches, there's no mention anywhere in Italy of anything other than the English speaking pro-innocence people have been saying. Well - all except what Andrea Vogt blew the whistle on.

Who knows - maybe even the ISF/JREF thread will stall before Continuation 25. That'd be the most unlikely thing of all.

 

[Grinder]

Well Bill I checked on .org to see if they had shut down and lo and behold I found they have a new murderer they can tell did it because he didn't act correctly after the murder. His wife's name was Amanda but what you will really enjoy is they were dissing lil' ole Grinder.

Grinder is a Seattle-dwelling groupie. Literally a groupie -- Bruce Fischer has mentioned meeting Grinder at a social occasion for groupies. Grinder likes to refer to the killers fetishistically as 'the kids' and his arguments are always nitpicking RD arguments which assume factual guilt. His posts consistently betray profound anglophobic and misogynistic hostility to Meredith Kercher. Like most groupies he appears to approve of the crime.

Apparently he didn't get that BF was asking what a non-groupie supporter was doing at the party.

Any idea what RD is?

 

[bagels]

It probably does make sense that you would view AK supporters as "approving of the crime" if you saw her guilt as so self evident and transparent you were incapable of viewing the crime any other way. They will never understand the profound weaknesses in the case that objectively exist without regard to Amanda's guilt or innocence and act as clear barriers against ever allowing for a sustained conviction.

 

[Grinder]

It probably does make sense that you would view AK supporters as "approving of the crime" if you saw her guilt as so self evident and transparent you were incapable of viewing the crime any other way. They will never understand the profound weaknesses in the case that objectively exist without regard to Amanda's guilt or innocence and act as clear barriers against ever allowing for a sustained conviction.

I think it more than that. If one doesn't view Meredith as a totally superior being to Amanda, that is another indicator that one approves of the crime. The PG site with all the pictures of Meredith and the way they write motive as being that the kids () killed her because they were jealous of her being everything they weren't demonstrate the point.

I've had the nerve to point out that they were similar and that while Amanda smoked more Meredith drank more. They have demeaned Raf as a boyfriend and I've pointed out that Meredith's boyfriend was far from top drawer. I've even repeated Barbie's claim that Meredith was cited for public intoxication.

To restate previous caveats, I think both women were normal regular college students having a great time in Perugia, as they should have been doing.

 

[Bill Williams]

Well Bill I checked on .org to see if they had shut down and lo and behold I found they have a new murderer they can tell did it because he didn't act correctly after the murder. His wife's name was Amanda but what you will really enjoy is they were dissing lil' ole Grinder.

Grinder is a Seattle-dwelling groupie. Literally a groupie -- Bruce Fischer has mentioned meeting Grinder at a social occasion for groupies. Grinder likes to refer to the killers fetishistically as 'the kids' and his arguments are always nitpicking RD arguments which assume factual guilt. His posts consistently betray profound anglophobic and misogynistic hostility to Meredith Kercher. Like most groupies he appears to approve of the crime.

Apparently he didn't get that BF was asking what a non-groupie supporter was doing at the party.

Any idea what RD is?

You're making this up!?!!

You!? A groupie! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, and ha.

<Clutching chest> "I'm coming Aunt Martha I'm coming!"

Grinder!? A groupie? Ok, I said that. That is probably THE most ridiculous thing posted there - ever. Bar none. And that, boys and girls, is saying something.

"(A)nglophobic and misogynistic hostility to Meredith Kercher"!? Based on what? What can you say.

I have no idea what "RD" means. But that post alone betrays that those remaining at .ORG don't know anything.

And I barely like you! Ok, that was uncalled for..... but you get my meaning!

Nihil in intellectu nisi prius in sensu.

 

[Grinder]

And I barely like you! Ok, that was uncalled for..... but you get my meaning!

I'll have to live with that fact.

ETA - thought I'd entertain you with that genuine post

 

[Bill Williams]

I'll have to live with that fact.

ETA - thought I'd entertain you with that genuine post

My first thought was, "The bugger's trying to kill me, in revenge for all those arguments he lost."

Then it occurred to me you were serious.

Grinder? A groupie? Words fail.

 

[Grinder]

Well someone who can't be named has come up with "reasonable doubt" for the RD. If true it would seem that I am...well...I can't figure it out.

his arguments are always nitpicking RD arguments which assume factual guilt

anyway another birdie tell me I've been outed as a BF toadie.

As I understand it that puts me ahead of all but BF in the Marriott pay scale. Looks like that Aston Martin will be mine soon.

 

[Bill Williams]

Well someone who can't be named has come up with "reasonable doubt" for the RD. If true it would seem that I am...well...I can't figure it out.

his arguments are always nitpicking RD arguments which assume factual guilt

anyway another birdie tell me I've been outed as a BF toadie.

As I understand it that puts me ahead of all but BF in the Marriott pay scale. Looks like that Aston Martin will be mine soon.

As you well know, I am vested in loyalty.....

And all I have is a bus pass!! Grinder gets one lousy positive mention from BF, which the ijiots completely mangle, and you get an Aston Martin?

Then you complain that I barely like you!?

 

[Planigale]

Why would it be a scandal? If you are issued with a ticket for speeding, there is no requirement to prove anything at all other than a snapshot of your whizzing by the speed camera.

Ditto, if a defendant in murder trial disputes the prosecution claims, the onus is on them to produce the, ahem, defence.

For example, if it were your belief the speed camera was kaput, it'd be for you to get the expert witness in to testify this on your behalf.

Actually if you go to court the police need to provide evidence that the radar gun (or other device) was maintained and calibrated and the accuracy of the device. If they fail to provide this documentation you get off. (This is also true for breathalysers).