Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[Fulcanelli]

Fulcanelli obviously cannot back up his (or PMF's) claim. If there really was backing for the PMF timeline he would be able to show specific references that support his point. Such references may exist and I am willing to accept a later start of the interrogation if they are produced and validated. But so far, the information we have at hand is consistent with a 10:30 start time and continuous till 1:45 when the first declaration is signed.

I don't have the links written up my arm. In any case, since when has not being able to back anything up ever stopped you?

A great example are your recent postulations about when the questioning started and about the cartwheels.

You asserted Amanda did the cartwheels because the police told her to as part of her interrogation, without backing it up...you were proved wrong. Then you leapt to insisting her interrogation started at 10:30 without backing it up. You were proved wrong. You then leapt to asserting her questioning started immediately after 11, again without backing it up...your method being simply to demand others back up with hard evidence that it didn't. And on goes the sophistry and bad faith argument from you in that vein. I could point to countless other examples, but I think everyone knows you well by now.

 

[Fulcanelli]

A couple more points we may be able to agree on:

10) Edgardo Giobbi claimed the investigators in this case were "able to establish guilt by closely observing the suspect's psychological and behavioral reactions during the interrogations."

For the benefit of newcomers to this thread:


11) Scientific studies have shown that even experienced investigators are only slightly better than chance at detecting truth from lies and guilt from innocence.

It doesn't matter what the police 'believed'. At the end of they day, they have to back it up in court, with hard evidence. And this they did.

 

[Fiona]

Dan_O do you apply your mind to any of what you read? I assume you do

So: according to you the police asked her to do cartwheels as part of her questioning. Let us suppose you are correct. In that case the fact she was doing cartwheels can't have contributed in any way to a negative perception of her behaviour which led to suspcion of her. That was the claim which started this thread so presumably you believe there is nothing in that claim at all?

Can you cite this "Interrogation Methods 101" which advises the police to encourage cartwheels as a means of ......building rapport? does that phrase capture what you are trying to convey?

You are aware that several police officers told her it was inappropriate behaviour, I presume? How do you fit that testimony into your picture of what happened? How do you reconcile it with Amanda's own testimony?

What we have been doing here is trying to lay out what we can agree: and where there is disagreement show what facts/evidence/logic leads us to our conclusions. "That's the way I heard it reported" doesn't cut it.

That is one thing you have heard and I have heard. We have both also heard that she did this of her own volition because it is how she deals with stress. We have both heard the police told her to stop. We have both heard it generated suspicion because the behaviour was odd.

So how did you balance all of that and reach the conclusion you did?

I see you are once again asking that other people lay out the reasons for their conclusions and I agree this is a good idea.

After you

 

[Chris_Halkides]

policeman and stretching

Let's put this nonsense to bed.

From Amanda's testimony on the stand:




http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?p=17375#p17375

Fulcanelli,

The quote from Amanda’s testimony you provided in comment #3327 does not contradict Frank Sfarzo’s account, which he indicated came from Amanda, and which indicated she did the cartwheel at the behest of a police officer. Moreover, you have left out the following from her testimony:

“I went somewhere a bit outside near the elevator, and I had taken my homework with
me, so I started to do my homework, and then I needed to do some "stretching",
so I did some "stretching", and that's when one policeman said something
about my flexibility. A comment.”

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?p=17358#p17358

This is completely compatible with the story as reported at Perugia-shock. The question of whether or not this was part of the formal interrogation is less central than that she did these gymnastics in response to being asked about them, IMHO.

Chris

 

[Fulcanelli]

Fulcanelli,

The quote from Amanda’s testimony you provided in comment #3327 does not contradict Frank Sfarzo’s account, which he indicated came from Amanda, and which indicated she did the cartwheel at the behest of a police officer. Moreover, you have left out the following from her testimony:

“I went somewhere a bit outside near the elevator, and I had taken my homework with
me, so I started to do my homework, and then I needed to do some "stretching",
so I did some "stretching", and that's when one policeman said something
about my flexibility. A comment.”

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?p=17358#p17358

This is completely compatible with the story as reported at Perugia-shock. The question of whether or not this was part of the formal interrogation is less central than that she did these gymnastics in response to being asked about them, IMHO.

Chris

Sfarzo didn't get it from Amanda, he got it from Chris Mellas.

Amanda was asked about the stretching, cartwheels and whatever on THE STAND...I quoted her response. If the police had told her to do it, she'd have mentioned it. The court is a primary source, Sfarzo is not, he's an FOA blogger.

 

[Fiona]

Ok let us look at these cartwheels and what has been said about them

When I got
there, I was sitting on my own doing my homework, when a couple of police
officers came to sit with me. They began to ask me the same questions that
they had been asking me days...all these days ever since it happened. For
instance, who could I imagine could be the person who killed Meredith, and
I said I still didn't know, and so what they did is, they brought me into
another interrogation room.

No mention of them at this point.

G: To the Questura. After the Questura...there followed all these phases,
you were heard, then they took photographs, and you did cartwheels and splits?
Are those things true? How did they happen? And where did they happen?

AK: So, on that first day, I didn't do those things, I was always talking with
the police, but...uh...in the following days, but also...in general, I'm
a person who kind of, when I feel in difficulty, I kind of try to "lighten
up" [in English, asks interpreter; silence, lawyer says "non lo so", "I don't
know", the interpreter then suggests "to relax"], to relax the situation,
it was too heavy, really everything was really, really heavy, so somehow I
had to...uh [sigh] I don't know, it's an outlet, it's a way of, for me it
was a way of...

LG: We heard that you did some free-climbing, yoga...

AK: Yes, right, often people tell me "You're really flexible, how do you manage
to do that?" and I say yes, I do yoga and gymnastics.

Here she says she did do cartwheels but does not say anyone asked her to do them

AK: Yes. What happened is that they weren't expecting me to come. I went
somewhere a bit outside near the elevator, and I had taken my homework with
me, so I started to do my homework, and then I needed to do some "stretching",
so I did some "stretching", and that's when one policeman said something
about my flexibility. A comment.

Here she did them spontaneously, and a policeman made a comment.

AK: Okay. Fine. So, when I got to the Questura, they placed me to the side,
near the elevator, where I was waiting for Raffaele. I had taken my homework,
and was starting to do my homework, but a policeman came in, in fact there were
I don't know, three of them or something, and they wanted to go on talking to
me. They asked me again --

Here there are three policemen asking her about something but no cartwheels.

After an interruption from various lawyers she continues

The more the confusion grew, the more I lost the sense of time. But I
didn't do my homework for a very long time. I was probably just reading the
first paragraph of what I had to read, when these policemen came to sit
near me, to ask me to help them by telling them who had ever entered in
our house. So I told them, okay, well there was this girlfriend of mine and
they said no no no, they only wanted to know about men. So I said okay,
here are the names of the people I know, but really I don't know, and they
said, names of anyone you saw nearby, so I said, there are some people that
are friends of the boys, or of the girls, whom I don't know very well,
and it went on like this, I kept on answering these questions, and finally
at one point, while I was talking to them, they said "Okay, we'll take
you into this other room."

No cartwheels there either

FM: All right. We heard, and you gave testimony on this point, about your
behavior in the Questura, the cartwheel, the gymnastics, the stretching and
so forth.

AK: Yes.

FM: According to you, was this behavior appropriate, a normal behavior faced
with such a misfortune, or was this something special?

AK: According to me, each person confronts a tragedy in their own way, and I am
used to trying to find normality, at least my own normality, in situations
of difficulty. This is my way of feeling more secure, because I was feeling
really, really, really scared of what had happened, very shocked. I didn't
know how to face up to the situation, and for me it was surreal, but I
was obliged to accept the fact that it had happened, so my behavior -- yes,
I know that they are a bit lighthearted, but that's just how I am.

Already quoted above

From AGI:The inspector Ficarra underlines "Amanda at the police was not and never been treated badly' and that 'and' she was made to rest and eat '." In the inspector also remembers images of Amanda at the police station, on the evening of November 5. "I saw her near the lift door - the official said - while she was showing her skills' athletics, with the wheel and the split. A behavior that I thought not appropriate to the place and the situation and I reprimanded her. Amanda was also reprimanded because she continued to have a behavior that was not appropriate.

Various media sources

A court in the Italian university town of Perugia, where Miss Kercher, 21, was stabbed to death in Nov 2007, heard on Friday that Miss Knox turned cartwheels and did the splits as she waited for her boyfriend to be questioned about the killing...

Curt Knox, said his daughter was a yoga enthusiast and it was not unusual for her to break into a yoga pose in the middle of conversations.

Inspector Ficarra, of the city’s Flying Squad, described 21-year-old Knox’s bizarre behaviour after her arrest following the killing in 2007.

“I was in the elevator and when I got to the floor where the Flying Squad department is the door opened and I saw Amanda doing floor exercises,” he said.

“She was doing the splits, cartwheels and arching herself backwards, pressing her hands on the floor. I said to her, ‘What on earth are you doing? Is this the right way to behave?’

“Amanda told me that she was waiting for colleagues to finish with Raffaele [her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito] and that she was getting bored and fed up with being at the police station.

“I told her that she may well be tired and bored but that a friend of hers had been killed, in the house they shared and that if she was at the police station, then it was because her presence was useful to find the killer.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/87051/We-didn-t-hit-Foxy-Knoxy-say-police

No mention of anyone telling her to do them here either

She was actually sitting alone in a separate room waiting for her boyfriend, and Napoleani said in court Friday (Feb. 27) that when she went to get some water she walked by the room where Amanda was and saw Amanda ‘doing the splits.’ She said she thought this was ‘odd behavior,’ and that Amanda should have instead appeared to be mourning the loss of Meredith. The tabloid press further sensationalized her statement by changing ‘the splits’ to ‘cartwheels,’ and the mainstream press ran with that.”...

Amanda was making faces and, on one occasion, I saw while she was turning cartwheels [faceva la ruota] and doing the splits in a Questura room. With the passage of time, the two youngsters’ declarations seemed more and more improbable and contradictions were emerging/becoming apparent ".

(Monica Napoleoni as reported by AGI 27/2/09)

The former Perugia Flying Squad chief also recalled that on the night of 5th and 6th November (the morning of the 6th saw the triggering of the arrest in the [police’s] dealings with Knox and Sollecito), he had been advised that Amanda had taken it upon herself to turn cartwheels in the room opposite the entrance to the station.

(http://www.diregiovani.it/gw/producer/dettaglio.aspx?id_doc=21526})

"Later Monica Napoleone, head of the Perugia murder squad, also described Knox's unusual behaviour at the police station where she had been taken for questioning.
Ms Napoleone said: 'She had complained that she was feeling tired and at that stage I told her that she could go if she wanted.
'She said she wanted to stay, Sollecito was also at the station at the time and she said she wanted to wait for him.
'A few minutes later I walked past a room at the police station where she was waiting and I saw Amanda doing the splits and a cartwheel. It was around 11am on November 5th.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/wor...diths-dead-body-police-chief-tells-trial.html

NB 11am is clearly a typo because they were not at the police station till after dinner: they arrived about 10pm-10:30 pm. Knox was on the phone to Filomena around 10:40. If that is accepted as a typo it is the source of the information that Knox was doing cartwheels at 11 pm

I do not see anywhere where Knox says a policeman asked her to do this. I have done my best and the closest is where she says she was doing them and a policeman made a comment. So if anyone else can find a statement or testimony from Knox where she makes that claim please go ahead

 

[Chris_Halkides]

testimony

Sfarzo didn't get it from Amanda, he got it from Chris Mellas.

Amanda was asked about the stretching, cartwheels and whatever on THE STAND...I quoted her response. If the police had told her to do it, she'd have mentioned it. The court is a primary source, Sfarzo is not, he's an FOA blogger.

You are ignoring the quotation I provided, which came from her testimony.

 

[Fiona]

And you are once again demonstratng your problems with reading comprehension

 

[Kestrel]

With the focus back on the cartwheel, can we agree on this point?

12) A suspect doing a cartwheel several days after a murder does not imply guilt.

 

[shuttlt]

With the focus back on the cartwheel, can we agree on this point?

12) A suspect doing a cartwheel several days after a murder does not imply guilt.

For me it's part of a whole mass of "the girl ain't right" and the fact that there is all this bull made up to explain it away sums up the whole case. There is hardly a single bloody detail so trivial that people aren't willing to insist on the Bible happened some other way. It's not even as if we only have the choice of the defences way or the prosecutions way. Amanda offers multiple different ways things could happen. Other people quote Amanda, or make things up on her behalf. It's a swamp. I'm sure there are untruths going in the opposite direction as well. The whole thing about being caught outside the murder scene with a mop and bucket came from somewhere.

The cartwheel isn't particularly important though in the grand scheme of things.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

compatible

And you are once again demonstratng your problems with reading comprehension

Fiona,

Fulcanelli wrote, “Amanda was asked about the stretching, cartwheels and whatever on THE STAND...I quoted her response. If the police had told her to do it, she'd have mentioned it. The court is a primary source, Sfarzo is not, he's an FOA blogger.”

Fulcanelli is claiming without explanation that Sfarzo’s account comes from Mr. Mellas, not Amanda. How about some evidence to that effect?

Fulcanelli had written earlier, “That was a claim made by Chris Mellas, a claim he completely made up.” (emphasis added) This is at least partially false: Amanda confirms talking with a policeman. In case he missed it, here is her testimony again:

“I went somewhere a bit outside near the elevator, and I had taken my homework with
me, so I started to do my homework, and then I needed to do some "stretching",
so I did some "stretching", and that's when one policeman said something
about my flexibility. A comment.”

Fulcanelli is implying that my comment is not from a primary source, but the quote above is just as much a primary source as the one he provided; therefore, Fulcanelli’s saying he quoted her response is a half-truth.

I was careful in my choice of the word “compatible.” Amanda did not say any more in this exchange than what I quoted. Nevertheless, it is still compatible with Frank’s account in that there is nothing that contradicts it, in addition to her account of meeting the policeman, which supports it. You missed this fine distinction. No wonder you were scornful of an introductory textbook. It is manifestly above your reading level.

Chris

 

[Fulcanelli]

Where in that quotation does Amanda say the police told her to do yoga or perform cartwheels?

 

[Fiona]

It doesn't Fulcanelli

Halides1 doesn't speak english and he doesn't speak retract either

 

[Kestrel]

What an odd note (whatever the context).

At least part of Amanda's confusion was because the police were lying to her.

A few days later, they passed on the same lie to the press.

The American student accused of murdering Meredith Kercher in an "extreme" sexual game was captured on security cameras entering their shared house on the night her throat was slit.
A camera in the carpark opposite Miss Kercher’s house has a "clear-cut image" of 20-year-old Amanda Knox, from Seattle, on the premises, according to police.
...
The CCTV footage apparently shows Knox entering the driveway of the house at 8.43pm on the night, wearing a light-coloured skirt. A similar skirt has been confiscated by police from Sollecito’s house for analysis.

 

[Fiona]

Unattributed source. I believe it is true they took some footage and that it was not clear enough to show anything much. Open to correction on that: it is a while since I read anything about it and since it was useless I am not about to hunt for it

 

[Fulcanelli]

At least part of Amanda's confusion was because the police were lying to her.

A few days later, they passed on the same lie to the press.

You're a bit free with that word 'lie'. First of all, the police did not confront Amanda with the video during her night of questioning. Secondly, they believed that 'was' Amanda in the video. The police introduced it in court under Micheli. But, it was ruled to be of so low quality that a positive identification couldn't be made and so deemed as unusable. Whatever you think of the video, it certainly depicts 'someone' going to the cottage, but the reason above is why it was never used in the main trial.

 

[odeed]

No kidding. At least there I knew who my fellow shills were . Errr. Nevermind



I had thought the original such claim came from Knox herself, which may have led in a fruitful direction towards establishing other true, relevant and more useful points of agreement.

Since the claim did not originate with her, barring any new primary sources, it seems the "14 hour" meme should be dropped altogether and anyone bringing it up again without primary sources should be slapped silly (preferably with a fish ala Monty Python).

On the 14 hour confusion, I thought it could of arose because her first interview on November 5 began at 11pm, and she was asked to sign an arrest warrant at "noon, 1 pm" the next day (I think that is what is reported a few pages back).

ETA: found where I saw the quote about the warrant

From Amanda’s testimony:

“LG: Then, at midday, or one o'clock, we don't know exactly, they brought you a
paper called an arrest warrant. When they served you this warrant, it must
have been around twelve, one o'clock. Do you remember?

AG: So, all papers they brought me to sign, at that point, they were all the same
to me, so I can't even say what I had to sign, arrest warrant, declarations,
whatever, because at a certain point, I just wanted to sign and go home.” (emphasis added)

.....

 

[odeed]

Is there an English transcript of Filomena Romanelli court testimony anywhere, I have tried searching but all I can find just news/blog articles with some snippets?

 

[BobTheDonkey]

Here's what blows my mind:

We're trying to determine what facts/evidence we can all agree upon. One side is presenting evidence and leaving it at that, the other is presenting interpretations of the evidence that seem to prove innocence.


So much for that project.

 

[Dan O.]

Here's what blows my mind:

We're trying to determine what facts/evidence we can all agree upon. One side is presenting evidence and leaving it at that, the other is presenting interpretations of the evidence that seem to prove innocence.

And where did that start?