Continuation Part 19: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[JREF2010]

Me too, they are almost always keyed so this kind of thing is impossible. I seem to recall that it was a homemade cable. But I could be wrong.

Homemade, for homicide investigations, by "experts"!! sure...
... and I wonder, for what intentions were the homemade cables to accomplish?

 

[acbytesla]

Oh dear. That fabled "research" is coming up rather woefully short once again.

1) What's the evidence that there's "no doubt" that the two ACE bleach bottles were new?

2) What did the police allege the apartment "reeked" of when they went to search it? (hint for you: it wasn't bleach)

3) What's the evidence that Sollecito soaked the bottom of his Nike daps(?) in bleach?

I look forward to seeing your carefully-researched sources for each and every one of these claims. Thanks in advance.

How do you tell that a bottle of bleach was just purchased or sitting under the sink for 6 months? I know, Vixen has the bleach receipts!!

How long have been told that these exist? And have they ever been produced? No.

 

[acbytesla]

Homemade, for homicide investigations, by "experts"!! sure...
... and I wonder, for what intentions were the homemade cables to accomplish?

To interface with the drive cloning machine. Or frying disk drives.

 

[Samzilla]

How do you tell that a bottle of bleach was just purchased or sitting under the sink for 6 months? I know, Vixen has the bleach receipts!!
How long have been told that these exist? And have they ever been produced? No.

You mean you don't buy Pizza brand bleach?

 

[acbytesla]

You mean you don't buy Pizza brand bleach?

2 pepperoni pizzas is store code for 2 bottles of Clorox.

 

[Grinder]

I know you think CD and Nina's description is way way over the top yet to me it seems spot on although "destroyed" sounds more like someone took a hammer to the drives.

Any way you look at it. The tech hired took functioning disk drives and made them non-functioning. It cost far more to recover the data from those fried drives than you would pay for any new drive, probably more than you would pay for the laptop.

To review: I made the comment that I hadn't realized that ONLY the data from Amanda's computer wasn't recovered, to which you indicated that it had been know for an extensive length of time and I provided the quotes from the book which showed that books published up to four years after the murder still referred to multiple drives "destroyed" which they clearly weren't. It was in a report in March of 2008 and if you or anyone wanted to bet in the parlor Anglo and I discussed (it doesn't exist but the idea was bets to settle online disagreements) I'll show multiple times where PIP maintained or certainly implied that the data was lost.

I asked around at a holiday party last night and all I asked said they hoped the hard drive of mine a tech fried was backed up because the data was gone forever. Try it yourself. People when asked or if they read it think the data was never recovered and that wasn't the case.

The fact is that long after the defense expert reported only one drive was not read PIP went on and on about all the drives that were fried and they didn't mean the data was recovered.

 

[Grinder]

But in fact it's an inappropriate analogy to compare this with a car engine and the distributor (not that modern cars have distributors any more, but still....).

The problem is this: the information on the (magnetic) hard drives is all stored in addressable sectors. As a simple analogy, think of it like thousands and thousands of little boxes, each with its own identifying number written on it (its "address"), and each of which contain small portions of information.

But only the central electronics of the hard drive (in the form of hardware, BIOS and OS) knows which information is stored in which "box". And to complicate matters much further, any particular string of information gets split up and placed into "boxes" all over the place - for example, a letter which says "Hello I am in Amsterdam, are you well?" might (simplistically put) have "Hello" put into Box 10342, "I" into box 71420, "am" into Box 63369, and so on. And only the central "brain" of the hard drive knows which of the boxes each of the words has been placed into, and in which order. Thus, if anyone wants to retrieve the letter, one needs the hard drive's "brain" to retrieve the parts of the letter in the right order from the right "boxes" (in this simplistic example, even a slight mistake from the "brain" might lead to the letter being incorrectly reassembled as "Hello, I am well, you are in Amsterdam".

So in a very real sense, if you fry the "brain" of the hard drive, it's immensely difficult - in many instances impossible in practice - to retrieve the data from the magnetic disc, even if the data itself is uncorrupted. All that you're left with, when you don't have the means to understand what is stored where, is an unintelligible cacophony of 1s and 0s, with no means of reassembling those 1s and 0s back into the correct, readable order.

The point remains that people in the PI camp kept discussing this as if the data was never retrieved.

The analogy with the distributor was perfect regardless of current technology. The engine won't work but it isn't beyond repair.

 

[Grinder]

And of course the Italian police refused to allow the builders of the hard drive to see if they could recover it.

Yeah and a separate issue. Why the judges refused most all of the defense requests is baffling. If the Italian courts were the fastest in the world, maybe it would be understandable, but being the slowest why not?

 

[Grinder]

How do you tell that a bottle of bleach was just purchased or sitting under the sink for 6 months? I know, Vixen has the bleach receipts!!

How long have been told that these exist? And have they ever been produced? No.

Well I can tell by the dust on the bottle and sometimes the dirt on the bottom depending where it's kept. Obviously the bleach receipts etc. was all BS.

Now recently over on the other side much is being made of a study or report (I haven't seen it) that they claim show blood can be destroyed by bleach yet DNA can survive and they point to the knife. Of course there is no evidence that bleach was used on the knife.

The thing they don't get is that survival of DNA in a bleach environment would only strengthen the argument that if Meredith's DNA was found on the knife contamination chances in the lab just increased immensely.

Of course, no knife from another case has yet surfaced. Certainly if a one in million case was used for the defense the PGP would laugh or hand wave it off.

 

[acbytesla]

To review: I made the comment that I hadn't realized that ONLY the data from Amanda's computer wasn't recovered, to which you indicated that it had been know for an extensive length of time and I provided the quotes from the book which showed that books published up to four years after the murder still referred to multiple drives "destroyed" which they clearly weren't. It was in a report in March of 2008 and if you or anyone wanted to bet in the parlor Anglo and I discussed (it doesn't exist but the idea was bets to settle online disagreements) I'll show multiple times where PIP maintained or certainly implied that the data was lost.

I asked around at a holiday party last night and all I asked said they hoped the hard drive of mine a tech fried was backed up because the data was gone forever. Try it yourself. People when asked or if they read it think the data was never recovered and that wasn't the case.

The fact is that long after the defense expert reported only one drive was not read PIP went on and on about all the drives that were fried and they didn't mean the data was recovered.

No offense but I really don't understand what your trying to say. The tech that was hired to clone or pull the data from the disk drives was unable to recover the data.. The court had to send the drive out to a company that specializes in data recovery.Most people wouldn't spend the $1,000 to recover the data from an $80 drive. Which is what happened in this case.

As for backing up your files. That is always a good idea. About 20 years ago, while working as sales Rep for Redmond based ADIC,, (now Quantum) A company that specialized in automated backup solutions I would often start a presentation by saying There are 2 kinds of peoplr, those that do backups and those that will.

 

[bagels]

Amanda trashed her own hard drive cause she wrote about her homicidal fantasies on there just like her torn diary. She trashed the other hard drives but less enthusiastically to make it look like the police were incompetent knowing they would be too incompetent to show that she was trying to make it look like they were incompetent. She would have gotten away with it but a gang of really obsessed people knew that everything she ever did implicated her as a murderer.

 

[Bill Williams]

Amanda trashed her own hard drive cause she wrote about her homicidal fantasies on there just like her torn diary. She trashed the other hard drives but less enthusiastically to make it look like the police were incompetent knowing they would be too incompetent to show that she was trying to make it look like they were incompetent. She would have gotten away with it but a gang of really obsessed people knew that everything she ever did implicated her as a murderer.

Don't forget that Amanda is responsible for the missing interrogation tapes. It was simple tradecraft 101 to get both hers and Raffaele's, but a bit more involved getting Patrick's.

The pinnacle of her powers was taking advantage of a brief lapse in prison security to stealth-into Perugia to grab Rudy's interrogation tapes.

 

[Grinder]

Amanda trashed her own hard drive cause she wrote about her homicidal fantasies on there just like her torn diary. She trashed the other hard drives but less enthusiastically to make it look like the police were incompetent knowing they would be too incompetent to show that she was trying to make it look like they were incompetent. She would have gotten away with it but a gang of really obsessed people knew that everything she ever did implicated her as a murderer.

Damn Bagels, I was trying to keep that from you know who. But since you brought it up, did I miss where a cite to the pages being torn out was produced? Didn't think so the last I recall was that it was well known so no proof needed.

 

[Grinder]

No offense but I really don't understand what your trying to say. The tech that was hired to clone or pull the data from the disk drives was unable to recover the data.. The court had to send the drive out to a company that specializes in data recovery.Most people wouldn't spend the $1,000 to recover the data from an $80 drive. Which is what happened in this case.

As for backing up your files. That is always a good idea. About 20 years ago, while working as sales Rep for Redmond based ADIC,, (now Quantum) A company that specialized in automated backup solutions I would often start a presentation by saying There are 2 kinds of peoplr, those that do backups and those that will.

Tesla - as I just wrote above but will repeat for you, I came across a statement that all the drives except Amanda's had been recovered. I, as most all that have followed this, had been led by repeated references to the hard drives being fried, to believe that the data from them had not been recovered. When I read the defense expert's report I was surprised to find that it was the case that all but Amanda's had been recovered. You made the comment that this had long or always been known. I produced quotes from your two favorite TCN authors showing that they were under the impression that at least two of the drives were destroyed. Not damaged, but destroyed.

I could easily provide sections from this site and I'm sure others where the hard drives being fried/destroyed etc. was mentioned until quite recently or maybe even today.

You and others may maintain that people when told a hard drive has been fried think only the BIOS is gone and that the data can be relatively easily, albeit at some expense, recovered but my experience is that universally those I have asked think the data is gone, kaput, vanished etc.

 

[Planigale]

Well I can tell by the dust on the bottle and sometimes the dirt on the bottom depending where it's kept. Obviously the bleach receipts etc. was all BS.

Now recently over on the other side much is being made of a study or report (I haven't seen it) that they claim show blood can be destroyed by bleach yet DNA can survive and they point to the knife. Of course there is no evidence that bleach was used on the knife.

The thing they don't get is that survival of DNA in a bleach environment would only strengthen the argument that if Meredith's DNA was found on the knife contamination chances in the lab just increased immensely.

Of course, no knife from another case has yet surfaced. Certainly if a one in million case was used for the defense the PGP would laugh or hand wave it off.

One of the papers looking at tertiary transfer of DNA documents that they needed to increase the strength of bleach from 1% to 3% to ensure there was inactivation of DNA prior to carrying out the experiment. I had wondered what strength bleach Stephenoni used to clean the bench. Inevitably with using an increasingly sensitive assay (LCN) then decontamination needs to be more thorough. Almost certainly the standard of cleanliness for carrying out standard DNA work would not have been appropriate for carrying out LCN work. Such technical considerations are considered irrelevant by most pro-guilt commentators who cannot concede any error on the part of the prosecution authorities.

 

[Grinder]

Following the tests carried out, by various interveners, it therefore appears that the Toshiba disk belonging to Miss A Knox’s Toshiba-brand laptop was damaged with problems evident in the electronic board, which resulted as being inactive, just like the other two. While the contents of two of the three disks have been recovered, following the Krollontrak company’s diagnosis, the third disk seems to have been also damaged in its component mechanics, while CBL Data’s and Recovery Tech’s diagnoses confirm that the third disk has been damaged in its electronic component.

http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/evidence-destroyed/

Now what I found interesting is the PIP meme has been that all the hard drives were fried beyond all hope but that isn't true. The two or three damaged computer hard drives were recovered by March of 2008.

This is not news. We've known for a long time that at least some of the data was recovered from 2 of the machines.

From RandyN Jan 2012:
I have the same queasy feeling though. Something about this is seriously amiss. And there are hundreds of circumstantial pieces of evidence proving who caused and what exactly are these things that are amiss.

1.4 burned up hard drives

From Tesla Feb 2014

Interesting Charlie, I just read the plot line of the Hitchock movie "The Wrong Man". Interesting. That is based on mis-identifications. The Knox and Sollecito story is just downright bizarre. No evidence...and then bizarre evidence pops up and up and up. Imagine being in jail and hearing that your shoe prints match the shoe prints from the murder scene. Imagine being told that the cooking knife has the victim's DNA on it. Imagine hearing that the computer that should prove you were at home has the hard drives fry? Then hearing that they caught some other guy...you should get out...right?? No, they are saying that you did it with this other guy that you had only seen in passing.

Lamasheen March 2014

Once AK’s work alibi got ruined, they tried to create their computer alibis at Raff’s; his shows activity – several hard drives were conveniently destroyed by the police..

Kaosium May 2014 The second is that somehow when the technician went to copy the hard drives on the four computers he managed to fry three of them, those being Amanda's, Meredith's and Raffaele's own computer (which he wasn't using that night--he was on his sister's which is the one above). I've tried my best to follow the posts made by Dan-O and others who understand this process better than I and it seems what happened there may well have been the result of incompetence. That actually makes more sense to me for this reason: no matter what they contained the police would find something they can use. Look at the hay they made out of Amanda's Myspace page or the report of a report of a religious guy who said Raffaele once watched some really nasty porn. Or for that matter what's in Matteini (wrongly dated incidentally it was 2006 not 2007) about Raffaele wanting to try 'extreme sensations' (which basically just meant the then virginal Raffaele wanted to get laid at some point) that he'd written on his page more than a year before? These computers didn't hold any alibi evidence but there were things like Amanda and Meredith's pictures showing them at the chocolate festival which were lost, but my guess is the cops would have mined more out of what they found, or at least they figured they could have.

So it is pretty clear that people were not aware that the data from all but Amanda's had been recovered by March of 2008 and that was my original point.

 

[Grinder]

One of the papers looking at tertiary transfer of DNA documents that they needed to increase the strength of bleach from 1% to 3% to ensure there was inactivation of DNA prior to carrying out the experiment. I had wondered what strength bleach Stephenoni used to clean the bench. Inevitably with using an increasingly sensitive assay (LCN) then decontamination needs to be more thorough. Almost certainly the standard of cleanliness for carrying out standard DNA work would not have been appropriate for carrying out LCN work. Such technical considerations are considered irrelevant by most pro-guilt commentators who cannot concede any error on the part of the prosecution authorities.

Thank you. I've read that labs use much stronger bleach concentrations than home bleach or some other substance that does an even better job.

Do you happen to know if there is a time factor. If a knife was left in home bleach for an hour would that damage the DNA beyond recognition? If a knife was scrubbed with bleach and soap what would that do to DNA?

 

[acbytesla]

Tesla - as I just wrote above but will repeat for you, I came across a statement that all the drives except Amanda's had been recovered. I, as most all that have followed this, had been led by repeated references to the hard drives being fried, to believe that the data from them had not been recovered. When I read the defense expert's report I was surprised to find that it was the case that all but Amanda's had been recovered. You made the comment that this had long or always been known. I produced quotes from your two favorite TCN authors showing that they were under the impression that at least two of the drives were destroyed. Not damaged, but destroyed.

I could easily provide sections from this site and I'm sure others where the hard drives being fried/destroyed etc. was mentioned until quite recently or maybe even today.

You and others may maintain that people when told a hard drive has been fried think only the BIOS is gone and that the data can be relatively easily, albeit at some expense, recovered but my experience is that universally those I have asked think the data is gone, kaput, vanished etc.

First, there is nothing easy about recovering the data from a drive that has it circuit board fried. 99.999 percent of the population wouldn't know how to do it. I get that you've appointed yourself as the guy who is tamping down any exaggeration regardless of where it comes from.

We discussed the drives in great detail years back especially Charlie, Dan and I. My guess is that heavy technical discussion probably didn't interest you much. All that you are bringing up now was debated and discussed because the frying of three drives is beyond incompetent. Most of us in the industry have never heard of such a thing. I was at one time, squarely in the camp that thought it was a deliberate act of sabotage. But through the discussion of the hardware and the forensic procedure used, I came to the conclusion that it was probably an innocent yet unbelievably inept event.

The drives were fried. That really is how to describe them whether you want to change the description or not. That one is able to remove the platters and install them into a second drive mechanism and recover the data doesn't change that fact.

I can see your point and it is reasonable. It does seem now that CD etc either omitted or was unaware of some salient facts.

 

[Grinder]

First, there is nothing easy about recovering the data from a drive that has it circuit board fried. 99.999 percent of the population wouldn't know how to do it. I get that you've appointed yourself as the guy who is tamping down any exaggeration regardless of where it comes from.

We discussed the drives in great detail years back especially Charlie, Dan and I. My guess is that heavy technical discussion probably didn't interest you much. All that you are bringing up now was debated and discussed because the frying of three drives is beyond incompetent. Most of us in the industry have never heard of such a thing. I was at one time, squarely in the camp that thought it was a deliberate act of sabotage. But through the discussion of the hardware and the forensic procedure used, I came to the conclusion that it was probably an innocent yet unbelievably inept event.

The drives were fried. That really is how to describe them whether you want to change the description or not. That one is able to remove the platters and install them into a second drive mechanism and recover the data doesn't change that fact.

I can see your point and it is reasonable. It does seem now that CD etc either omitted or was unaware of some salient facts.

Thanks for this reply. It is easy to repair a damaged hard drive. You just take to the hard drive recovery place

My point with CD and NB was only to show that people were misled into thinking the hard drive data was never recovered.

I read or at least skimmed the discussions but only recall them discussing how the damage might have been done, nothing about the recovery of all the data except Amanda's.

 

[LondonJohn]

Yeah and a separate issue. Why the judges refused most all of the defense requests is baffling. If the Italian courts were the fastest in the world, maybe it would be understandable, but being the slowest why not?

Actually, I don't believe it's all that baffling, in the context of the warped and unfit-for-purpose nature of the Italian criminal justice system.

I think that even though the constitution and legislation mandates an adversarial system in which the defendant is innocent unless/until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt (with the burden of proof entirely resting with the prosecution), in practice the Italian courts are full of reactionary judges with improperly close links to prosecutors. And I think that the courts therefore are inclined to act in an improper quasi-inquisitorial manner. What this means is that courts (judges) are inclined to improperly view the prosecutor's case as the "truth" case: that the prosecutor is a non-partisan servant of the state whose sole motivation is to seek the truth behind the crime, wherever that may lie. And this leads to the easy - and entirely improper and unjust - leap of logic: if the prosecutor says the defendant did it, then why should we (the court) question the sage and impartial prosecutor.

And at the same time, of course, this ugly and improper system leads courts (judges) to believe that defence lawyers (and defendants themselves) are entirely different creatures from the prosecutors: they are weasels who are desperate to find a way to wriggle off the hook at any cost, no matter how many lies they have to tell or how outlandish their versions of events have to become. All the while, the defence weasels are seen against the fine propriety and selfless public service of the prosecutors.

So when the defence teams make requests of the courts, I think there is a huge tendency to approach every such request with a jaded view that this is probably just a trick of sophistry or misdirection being employed by the slippery, dishonourable defence lawyers. And in addition, the courts think that if any request were necessary, the fine, upstanding, impartial dedicated, "truth-seeking" public servants of the prosecution would have asked for it themselves! And that's even more the case if the defence make a request and the prosecution vehemently oppose that request. It is - I would suggest - almost always a given that the courts in Italy would defer to the prosecutors in such a scenario.

In my opinion and experience, the Italian criminal justice system is broken and unjust in so many ways that only a root-and-branch reform, backed by a whole new raft of legislation, and with proper judicial oversight to ensure that the new laws and codes are scrupulously followed (probably including mandatory retraining and recertification for judges) will have any chance of putting things right. Italy really should be ashamed about how horrifically unfit-for-purpose its criminal justice system is right now. And unfortunately for Knox and Sollecito, they found themselves victims of this kafka-esque farce.