The past is prologue
During the Nencini trial in the Fall of 2013 I remember my jaw-dropping reading one of Machiavelli's posts in this very forum.
Out of the blue, Machiavelli said something akin, "I am now thinking that the kitchen knife from Raffaele's is a match for the bedsheet outline of a knife." I thought at the time that Machiavelli was grasping at straws and didn't bother to respond (IIRC).
Lo and behold a week later, dial-it-in prosecutor Crini made the same claim in court!!! At the time that seemed to confirm that Machiavelli was a somebody in this case, until Andrea Vogt called him an arm-chair detective.
But the post-war was on - a full six years past the horrible crime, suddenly a major piece of claimed-evidence, Raffaele's kitchen knife, was now (out of the blue) claimed to be a match for that blood-soaked outline on the bedsheet. If one called that into question, one was called a despicable shill for the defence, who would say anything to get the kids off. (!!)
The whole issue of one-knife, two-knives had gone full circle.
To echo Welshman's post, if the prosecution had such an open and such case - why'd they have to change motives like Imelda Marcos changes shoes, and why oh why oh why did they have to keep re-inventing the evidence about that ridiculous knife?
Not only was it ridiculous that they chose one, and one only, knife - this one from a remote location; one, just one and none other.....
Why'd Massei have to invent out of whole cloth a ridiculous claim that Knox had carried it for protection (thus preserving Massei's no prior-intent motive, but still getting the knife over to the cottage)....
Now, in 2013, they were cycling back to the "one knife theory", one that had to be abandoned back in 2009's trial because Raffaele's knife was
so obviously not a match for the bed-sheet outline of a knife in blood!?
Welshman, you have provided a list of other extreme issues with that knife, if one wants to tie it to the crime somehow. What I've outlined is the problems associated with just one of those issues.
And they have the gall to say that the evidence against AK and RS is an open and shut case!!!
Finally, I remember finding a copy of Frank Sfarzo's earliest blog entries from the time, early on, when his trademark snark had been aimed at AK and RS whom he believed at the time to be obviously guilty.
In the blog entry, he recounted going down to the cottage, only to be kept at a distance because a cop was on duty. Passing the time, Sfarzo had asked the cop, "Have you searched the woods below the cottage for a knife?" The cop had replied, "Oh don't worry, we have the knife."
Sfarzo found out that there had been no search for a knife in those woods. Fourteen months later the trial had started, and Sfarzo then heard the prosecution's (then) theory of two knives, because the one from Raffaele's neither matched the wounds nor the bedsheet outline. He'd remembered, "They'd not even searched the woods for this mythical second knife!? They'd confiscated the knife Raffaele had had on him at the Questura during interrogation, and now that one is nowhere to be seen either."
This had convinced Sfarzo that the PLE were more stupid than anything, and that they had nothing, not really, to link RS and AK to the crime.
Then there was the link to Hallowe'en, then Mignini's plea to the court to see the motive as Knox's psychopathology. Even though Massei had dismissed both those motives, Massei had convicted anyway.
Which just proved to Sfarzo that the PLE from Napoleoni, to Ficarra, to Mignini, to Mattieni to Massei were really quite stupid.
Fast forward - because past is prologue. At the Nencini trial it was a completely different scenario..... with the need for two knives reduced to one, because after six years, all of a sudden Raffaele's knife was a match for the bedsheet outline/stain!
How do we know that is true? Machiavelli told us.
