Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[RoseMontague]

By the way, I noticed that your posts at Chris Halkides' site mimic what I agreed with about the contamination/secondary transfer trope. I think the people arguing about the DNA have to go the fabrication route too. In fact, as you'd said, it is the next likely scenario after the probability that the results were correct.

The narrative works with the FOA supporters' claim that Mignini was out to get Amanda. How he managed to enlist Stefanoni and Biondi is up to them to prove but you're on the right track.

The contamination/secondary transfer trope only works if you accept that, by some miracle, the precisely same unlikely accidents affected both Raffaele's and Meredith's physical evidence.

Yes, I was attempting to assign odds to the most discussed probabilities.

1. Both results on the knife and bra-clasp are legit.
2. Both results are fabricated.
3. One result is contamination/transfer and the other legit.
4. Both results are some type of contamination/transfer of DNA.

As you have indicated you also feel that the chances are pretty low on number 4. The knife just happens to get contaminated with Meredith's DNA, proving Amanda's involvement and the other just happens to be contaminated with Raffaele's DNA proving his involvement. I am currently inclined to give the odds of number 4 only a 1 in 25 chance and I have had that as low as 1 in 100.

 

[Amazer]

Yes, I was attempting to assign odds to the most discussed probabilities.

1. Both results on the knife and bra-clasp are legit.
2. Both results are fabricated.
3. One result is contamination/transfer and the other legit.
4. Both results are some type of contamination/transfer of DNA.

As you have indicated you also feel that the chances are pretty low on number 4. The knife just happens to get contaminated with Meredith's DNA, proving Amanda's involvement and the other just happens to be contaminated with Raffaele's DNA proving his involvement. I am currently inclined to give the odds of number 4 only a 1 in 25 chance and I have had that as low as 1 in 100.

I'm not sure if I really want to put odds in there but without a doubt number 4 is the least likely of the lot. Followed very closely by number 3 i might add.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Yes, I was attempting to assign odds to the most discussed probabilities.

1. Both results on the knife and bra-clasp are legit.
2. Both results are fabricated.
3. One result is contamination/transfer and the other legit.
4. Both results are some type of contamination/transfer of DNA.

As you have indicated you also feel that the chances are pretty low on number 4. The knife just happens to get contaminated with Meredith's DNA, proving Amanda's involvement and the other just happens to be contaminated with Raffaele's DNA proving his involvement. I am currently inclined to give the odds of number 4 only a 1 in 25 chance and I have had that as low as 1 in 100.

Having thought about the topic some more the fact that there are two such pieces of odd evidence make me too think that (4) is not highly likely.

I think that the potential for (4) to be true should probably eliminate the knife and clasp DNA evidence from consideration in a court of law, since contamination (4) is competitive with (1) and (3) in terms of probability, but (2) is starting to take the lead in my mind.

 

[Supernaut]

Yeah, Rudy claimed he bought the laptop and the cell phone stolen from a lawyer's office in Perugia from someone at Milan station just after he arrived in Milan from Perugia. What a coincidence!

It's yet another obfuscatory pretence by the guilters that Guede's presence in Milan with the laptop and phone stolen in Perugia is in any way puzzling.

He was there to sell them. Even he wasn't stupid enough to try it in Perugia, where he wasn't just "some black guy", and the items themselves could also easily be recognised.

His photo as a desktop wallpaper was to reinforce the impression the laptop was his, to be removed when he found a buyer.

 

[Supernaut]

It's yet another obfuscatory pretence by the guilters that Guede's presence in Milan with the laptop and phone stolen in Perugia is in any way puzzling.

He was there to sell them. Even he wasn't stupid enough to try it in Perugia, where he wasn't just "some black guy", and the items themselves could also easily be recognised.

His photo as a desktop wallpaper was to reinforce the impression the laptop was his, to be removed when he found a buyer.

Just to re-iterate; the guilters want to believe Guede's story about travelling to Milan with enough money buy a laptop and mobile from "some dude", and pay 50€ to "some dude" to be shown a nursery school where he could spend the night.

Guede isn't even a very good liar, "50€" being a stupidly large figure to pull out of his butt.

I would remind everyone of what the local patrician, who ill-advisedly became Guede's guardian when he was a teenager, said about him; "he is a tremendous liar", which I take to mean 'compulsive' or pathological liar.

Remember all the malicious (and asinine) armchair psychologists who claimed to see "evidence of sociopathy" in Knox's writing and behaviour? As it happens, the compulsive lying evinced by Guede IS a strong indicator of pathological tendencies.

 

[capealadin]

Sometimes keeping up with a lie is easier than facing up to the truth. Also, Amanda and raff and their families have been led to believe that appeals have a very good chance of being overturned. They are placing their hopes on just that, imo. I believe they feel the odds are in their favour. Time will tell. I don't think the family of Amanda has helped their cause any.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Greetings Mr. Holmes!
I for one would luv to read what you are thinking before I grab some shut eye in L.A. Please do share...
For some reason I believe that I recall reading of his name recently, but I would have to back-track to really make sure, which isn't gonna happen tonight. Maybe Fulcanelli knows it off the top of his head, hmmm?
RWVBWL

I guess I went to bed first - anyways, I figure he's married, and not to the lady he was with, thats why he did not testify - he, his girlfriend and the police made a deal where she testified and told the story and left his name out.....

 

[Supernaut]

I would remind everyone of what the local patrician, who ill-advisedly became Guede's guardian when he was a teenager, said about him; "he is a tremendous liar", which I take to mean 'compulsive' or pathological liar.

This is Guede's "open letter to Italy", in which he seems to show that he has no conception of how to express genuine emotion, and instead has to resort to absurd (almost comical) hyperbole - even allowing for the translation making the Italian adjectives Guede scactters everywhere sound 'flowery', one can EASILY imagine one is reading something written by a pyschopath;

As usual in this beloved country of ours, there are many false people, devoted to lying. As there are people who give voice to them without consciously asking themselves whether it is worth giving space to such insinuations.

In these last few days I have heard nothing but blasphemous insinuations against me, false rumors, which have done nothing but be reported here and there on television channels even if for those of good sense, they were nothing but the pure invention of a wicked mind. It must be said that what I heard reported by means of the media regarding what was falsely declared by that filthy being called Alessi Mario, whose conscience is nothing but stinky garbage, are only inventions by a sick and contorted mind: fantastic and false declarations by an ogre, which as is known to the whole of Italy, is stained by a dreadful killing in which he took the life of a small human angel.

Lying, he is now saying things that I have never said to him, things that are not true in heaven or earth. To his putrified statements, it is my intention to put in writing, that I have never confided in this filthy being, as I have also nothing to confess or say and that everything I had to say I already told the judges and will continue to do so for as long as I'm alive to scream and fight and until truth and justice will prevail regarding these lies. I also did not speak on my own or with others to other detainees about matters regarding my trial and if I had had something to say, do you not think I would have spoken to my lawyers?

To use or give credit to that which is a blasphemous statement by a sick mind by an ogre that had no pity towards a child.

With this latest show in which myself, my lawyers and my relatives are now used to (...), this latest ogre Alessi. And I hope that Italians and the rest of the world realize what pigs they are having to deal with, pigs who smell of false slime but which despite all this go around showing their face and suffocate people with their stench of falsity. This latest show does nothing else but give me the strength and awareness to fight more than ever to make sure that the truth that they intend to hide is before everyone's eyes.

As far as I am concerned, in the full serenity and tranquility of my soul of he who is right and does not pretend to show unjustified suffering, but precisely because he is in the right, I trust in Justice and in the good sense of Italians and finally I hope that sooner or later judges will realize my total non involvement in what was the dreadful murder of the splendid and marvelous girl Meredith, by Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox.

Guede Rudy

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

This is Guede's "open letter to Italy", in which he seems to show that he has no conception of how to express genuine emotion, and instead has to resort to absurd (almost comical) hyperbole - even allowing for the translation making the Italian adjectives Guede scactters everywhere sound 'flowery', one can EASILY imagine one is reading something written by a pyschopath;

I don't think we need to go there. We're not qualified psychotherapists, and qualified psychotherapists wouldn't try to diagnose someone based on a letter.

We can't divine Rudy's innocence or guilt from an ill-written letter any more than the Amanda-is-guilty posters can divine hers from her Myspace page or Raffaele's comic collection.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

DNA from housemates

There has been no evidence or studies, showing that living in a shared residence would leave random substrate (I assume you mean dead skin) whose DNA could be identified coming from an individual contributor.

There was study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18420364 from 2008 and reported on http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826584.200-telltale-dna-sucked-out-of-household-dust.html which had a few posts in the science forum. As the article points out "The amount of DNA in dust is tiny and from so many people that singling out any individual could be tricky", but if we were believe the statement "All it proves is that Knox lived in the apartment", this would be old news in science, so why is it presented as a new study?

Odeed,

I think you are ignoring several things. DNA forensic scientist Jason Gilder said, "One of the central axioms of DNA typing is that the presence of a DNA profile says nothing about the time frame or circumstances under which DNA was transferred to that item." It is worth recalling that Amanda’s DNA was found on Sollecito’s flat, and that it not surprising, either.

DNA can be deposited from handprints, footprints, hair, etc. It is known from DNA contamination studies that talking while you work in a DNA lab can contaminate a sample. I surmise that small numbers of epithelial cells are shed by talking or sneezing.

Halides1
.

 

[odeed]

Odeed,

I think you are ignoring several things. DNA forensic scientist Jason Gilder said, "One of the central axioms of DNA typing is that the presence of a DNA profile says nothing about the time frame or circumstances under which DNA was transferred to that item." It is worth recalling that Amanda’s DNA was found on Sollecito’s flat, and that it not surprising, either.

DNA can be deposited from handprints, footprints, hair, etc. It is known from DNA contamination studies that talking while you work in a DNA lab can contaminate a sample. I surmise that small numbers of epithelial cells are shed by talking or sneezing.

Halides1
.

Perhaps you should write a paper, I am sure the authors of the paper I linked would be interested in that their efforts to extract human DNA from real world examples were flawed, and not needed.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

clarification needed

Perhaps you should write a paper, I am sure the authors of the paper I linked would be interested in that their efforts to extract human DNA from real world examples were flawed, and not needed.

Odeed,

I am not sure what you are talking about. Maybe you can explain.

halides1

 

[odeed]

Odeed,

I am not sure what you are talking about. Maybe you can explain.

halides1

All the factors you mentioned are not uncommon, handprints, fingerprints, hair as well as the talking and sneezing, and would be present in the environments in the study, but extracting human DNA from the samples taken is a new technique, or else there would be no need to conduct the study.

 

[LondonJohn]

Well, my point in mentioning it originally wasn't so much the glass-breaking potential of the hammer, so much as the fact it was probably another thing Rudy stole. But since you mention it, I do find it a bit difficult to imagine other things one might take a glass-breaking hammer for, if not in order to, well, break glass...

Who knows, perhaps he had some really tiny chairs he needed to fix.

Hehehe.

In addition, I believe that the small hammers designed for breaking glass in bus windows etc (which is the type of hammer we're talking about here) have rounded striking ends, rather than flattened ends. So they'd actually be useless at knocking in any type of nails - however small. Therefore, the ONLY conceivable reasons to be carrying one, in my view, would be a) to break glass; b) possibly as a weapon (but unlikely); c) because he found or stole it and simply admired its aesthetics, so decided to hang onto it.

 

[LondonJohn]

You sound very facile, very authoritative, very certain.

I wish it were as simple. It really isn't, though.

Starting here, in Wiki, we can find this paragraph.

Following through on the Victor v. Nebraska reference (the wiki link is a stub) leads to this brief, the opinion written by Justice O'Connor. I won't quote a bunch of it here. It's a long read, but an enlightening one and demonstrates that there is not exactly a consensus on the precise meaning of reasonable doubt, as you suggest. Quite the contrary, actually.

The wiki article did uncover this rather surprising statement.

I'm not clear whether this implies a more stringent standard has been adopted in the U.K., or a more relaxed one. Is "must be sure" tougher to achieve than "beyond a reasonable doubt"?

Thanks for your reply.

I believe that the root cause of all this confusion is the very ambiguity of that darned phrase "beyond reasonable doubt". Pretty much every adult in the "first world"* has heard this phrase (or a translation of this phrase if they're not English-speaking), and most people think that they know what it means or implies in a legal sense.

The problem is that most people DON'T correctly understand what it means. That's why - as you point out - it can actually be a problem for judges to use the specific phrase in jury instruction: it can lead jurors to fall automatically back onto their (incorrect) presuppositions as to what "beyond reasonable doubt" means or implies.

I would argue (as do many experts in the fields of jurisprudence and legal systems analysis) that the phrase "beyond reasonable doubt" should actually be totally abolished - in order both to eliminate the elements of inherent ambiguity in the phrase, and also to reduce the chances of jurors falling back onto a prior misinterpretation.

As you quoted above, a judge in the UK was rebuked for using the "reasonable doubt" instruction - and was instead advised that he should have instructed jurors that they must only convict if they are "sure of the guilt of the accused".

This is in line with my previous re-writings of what "beyond reasonable doubt" actually means. The main perceptional/interpretational problem with the phrase (as far as I can make out) is that it appears to give jurors permission to convict even if they still have small elements of doubt. In other words, the phrase can be misinterpreted to mean something like "I can't vote to convict if I have "reasonable" levels of doubt (which I might personally define as - say - 10% doubt), but if I have between 9% and 1% doubt then that's beyond "reasonable" levels so I should vote to convict."

Unfortunately, that's explicitly what "beyond reasonable doubt" DOESN'T mean. As your UK example above (but not quoted) implies, the phrase ACTUALLY means "beyond ALL doubt that could be termed a reasonable type of doubt" There's a critically important difference.

So, what I believe that the legal establishment is tying itself up in knots about is NOT what the correct criteria for voting to convict should be. I believe that this threshold for conviction is more-or-less universally agreed upon. Instead, the issue under debate is how best (and most fairly) to convey this concept to jurors. And in order to do that, I'd argue that we need to throw the words "beyond reasonable doubt" out of the window, and start again with a less ambiguous phrase that carries fewer implicit presumptions in the minds of the public.

* Horrible phrase I know - with ugly connotations - but I just wanted to use a shorthand for speed.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

DNA from fingerprints

Odeed,

You wrote, "All the factors you mentioned are not uncommon, handprints, fingerprints, hair as well as the talking and sneezing, and would be present in the environments in the study, but extracting human DNA from the samples taken is a new technique, or else there would be no need to conduct the study." http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5974035&postcount=14634

The study you cited was solely devoted to dust, and you seem to be generalizing from dust to other kinds of samples, including but not limited to fingerprints. DNA from fingerprints was first described in 1997 and 1998 (J.M. Butler, Forensic DNA Typing, p. 168, 2005). There have been some studies since then; the most recent one I found was in 2008, and this one showed that it was possible to recover the DNA, even after the fingerprint had been treated with ninhydrin or other chemicals used to detect latent fingerprints. The other chemicals lessened the amount of DNA recovered, but did not otherwise interfere with the DNA analysis.
Van Oorschot, R.A.H. and Jones M.K. (1997) Nature, 387, 767.
Van Hoofstat, D.E.O., et al., Proceedings of the Second European Symposium on Human Identification, pp. 131-137, Madison, WI: Promega Corporation.
Sewell, J. et al., Forensic Science International: Genetics 2 (2008) 281–285

In addition, the dust in the study you cited came from classrooms or hallways. Thus it probably contained DNA from many individuals over a considerable length of time. This is relevant because degraded DNA shows a progressive loss of intensity from short to long alleles. These two factors would have made it more difficult to detect and to deconvolute a full profile from any single contributor, which was not the point of the study, anyway.

Halides1

 

[LondonJohn]

A short (and maybe final) word on the descriptors applied to Rudy Guede in the British media:

I did write this much further up in response to a more general question about it, but I thought it bore repeating, since many people seem to be misunderstanding the situation.

The UK media (and, I'd imagine, the media all over Western Europe and North America - although I can't be sure) could print pretty much ANYTHING they wanted to about Guede AFTER 28 October 2008 - the date of Guede's conviction for murder and sexual assault.

They (the media) could describe him in virtually any terms they chose after this date - regardless of whether these terms were actually true or false - because Guede would have no reputation to defend in any potential libel suits (being a convicted rapist/murderer...). As a reminder: in order to win a libel action, a plaintiff must show that NOT ONLY was the information false, BUT ALSO that it was demonstrably injurious to his/her reputation.

Clearly, the media (as a whole) had previously decided that it wasn't worth taking the risk of describing Guede as a "drug dealer" while he was still either on remand or on trial - since he might have either sued pre-trial (unlikely), or he might have been acquitted at trial and then sued. Of course, the very fact that the media seemed to pull back from using these "drug dealer" descriptors at this time gives some indication that they though they might not be able to prove the veracity of these claims in a libel suit. But once he was convicted - and therefore had no reputation to protect - it was open season to publish any claims they fancied about him.

Incidentally, the same thing currently applies to Amanda and Raffaele. Pretty much any negative stories could be published about either or both of them - with no current fear of libel actions. After all, neither AK nor RS currently have good reputations to protect in any libel action either.

 

[Fulcanelli]

It doesn't matter where they were, if they weren't in the murder room with Meredith. I don't care if they were on the roof dancing a jig or up a gum tree.

That said, my current understanding is that all of the evidence the prosecution claimed put them in the house at the time fell to pieces under examination. Thus the claim that they were at Sollecito's house fits the available facts perfectly well as far as I am aware.

Well, then what you're 'aware' of is completely wrong...otherwise, they wouldn't have been convicted, would they?

Unless I've lost the thread, we established that it's far from certain that he did so. The prosecution claimed that they had positively identified a bloody footprint as his, and they got away with it until it was proved that it couldn't possibly be Raffaele's because the second toe touched the ground in the print. They also claimed they had positively identified some luminol footprints as his which was also bogus because there simply isn't enough resolution with luminol to make that kind of identification. The simplest explanation is that all those footprints were Rudy's, and there seems to be no sound basis for claiming that any of the footprints can be known to be Raffaele's.

Again, you are confused. You seem to confuse the fact that the defence having argued something to be so have therefore proven it to be so. Their argument wasn't very convincing.

It's true, and possibly Stilicho, Bob and Fulcanelli, Amazer, Capealadin and Tsig are doing a disservice to the Amanda-is-guilty case, but it does seem to me that their whole story feels like a pathological conspiracy theory.

It's YOU people that are arguing that Amanda and Raffaele were convicted due to some conspiracy to railroad them. But by the way, when a group of people work together to murder someone, cover it up and then deny it, by definition, that is a conspiracy.

The prosecution narrative about a rape plot turned into murder is unlikely, to say the least, yet every single little thing about the scenario (the lamp, the bathmat, the mobile phones, the door, everything) gets creatively turned into evidence that Amanda did it by the supporters of her guilt. Whereas absolutely nothing, as far as I can see, counts to them as evidence for her innocence.

The prosecution never argued there was any 'rape plot'. You are employing hyperbole here. As for the evidence you list, evidence is already evidence...it doesn't get 'creatively turned into evidence'. You again are getting confused with the police doing their job, the correct term for which is 'building a case'.

My take on the Amanda-is-innocent case is that lots of little things can be construed as suspicious, but that doesn't make any difference to the central problems with the prosecution case, which are the lack of any proper evidence that Knox and Solecito were in the murder room, the lack of any evidence of motive, and the prosecution's pattern of forcing confessions and misinterpreting evidence to support their conspiracy theory narrative.

But it's funny, there aren't lots of thongs that can be construed as suspicious in regard to all the other people the police investigated (the housemates, the friends, etc). I therefore reject that your assertion that it is perfectly normal that innocent people can have many things construed as suspicious, at least not to the extent that stands up to the scrutiny of a 9 month police investigation, several courts and a full trial.

It simply doesn't matter how suspicious Amanda and Raffaele look if they couldn't have done it. It doesn't matter if they collected chainsaws and torture porn, worshipped Satan and told the police that the Easter Bunny did it, if they weren't in the murder room they weren't in the murder room.

Except the evidence says not only that they could have done, but they did do it. It's not just about looking suspicious, but about evidence.

This seems to me to be another example of the conspiracy theorist symptom of ascribing the villains total idiocy one second and then supernatural competence at covering up their tracks the next.

Amanda is a criminal genius who can talk strangers into joining her in rape plots, and a criminal genius who can (armed with a lamp) remove every single trace of her and Raffaele's presence from the murder room while leaving evidence of Rudy everywhere, but then immediately afterwards she's a total idiot who leaves a lamp lying there and then locks the room (which in the Amanda-is-guilty narrative is somehow proof she did it, as opposed to being consistent with Rudy trying to delay discovery of his crime).

It strikes me as considerably less plausible than the much simpler explanation that she left no evidence in the murder room because she wasn't there.

Nobody has called them geniuses. Nobody has said there was a rape plot. Nobody has said they 'removed' every trace of themselves from the bedroom. As usual, you are misrepresenting the case against them and the arguments being made to support it with straw men.

Interesting. We are indeed approaching the issue from totally different directions. I'm reviewing the court's decision and asking "Is there proof beyond reasonable doubt they did it?". You're taking the court's judgment as correct, and hence from that starting point it's a case of them being guilty until proven innocent.

How can you review the court's decision when you've not even read it?

The first problem is that those two pieces make no sense as part of a coherent picture. Even the prosecution doesn't try to claim that Meredith's murder was premeditated. Everyone agrees it was a spur-of-the-moment affair whether it was Rudy alone doing it or Rudy, Amanda and Raffaele doing it. That does not fit with the murder weapon being a cooking knife from a completely different house. A cooking knife from Meredith's house maybe, but one from Raffaele's house makes no sense. A disorganised killer isn't going to run home for a murder weapon. Similarly the DNA evidence showed that Rudy cut Meredith's bra off, so it's not immediately obvious why Raffaele would be handling the bra clasp anyway.

Really? The prosecution and everyone agrees that it wasn't premeditated and it was a spur-of-the moment affair? I'm glad we now have that in writing from you. Because just before that you were accusing the prosecution and those who lean toward their guilt of of alleging a 'rape plot'. Thanks for confirming you earlier nonsense was a straw man, as we all knew anyway.

The evidence doesn't show Rudy cut Meredith's clasp off, it shows Raffaele did.

Amanda claimed it was a forced confession, it was ludicrously false, and it fit with the existing prosecution conspiracy theory. That's enough for me. Amanda couldn't have come up with that ludicrously false confession uncoerced and unprompted.

I see...your evidence that it was amounts to 'Amanda said so!'. And how was her second statement on the night forced, when she insisted on making it, forcing the prosecutor to be dragged out of his bed at 3 in the morning to hear it? Who forced her to demand pen and paper the next day and write that she stood by her statements the previous night? Who forced Raffaele to drop his alibi for Amanda (Raffaele never claimed his questioning was forced)?

Oh and it wasn't a confession, it was an accusation.

 

[Fulcanelli]

Doesn't look to me like it would have been an obstruction at all.

That photo is of the scene with the door open after it had been forced. The forcing of the door pushed the lamp back away from the door and knocked it over. They also have another photo where they pit things back as they were before the door was forced, this time with the door shut and the lamp cord coming out to its fullest extent from under the door. I don't have that picture to hand, but I believe you'll find it in one of Kermit's PowerPoints.

 

[Fulcanelli]

Why do you find the locked door issue so unlikely from Rudy's perspective, Sherlock?

If we assume Rudy acted alone, then we also have to assume he removed his shoes at some point (due to the bare footprint, obviously). I think it may have been Rose who suggested elsewhere that Rudy probably sat at the end of the bed to take his shoes off, leaving the knife print on the bed sheet. His motive for doing so would have been to try and avoid leaving blood evidence outside the bedroom (because he was leaving bloody shoe prints everywhere). If you think about it from the perspective of Rudy in the house with Meredith alone, he wouldn't have known when her three housemates were getting back, and it would certainly be to his advantage to delay the discovery of her body as long as possible. What if Amanda or Laura had come back later that evening, raised the alarm, and Rudy had been caught (literally) red-handed? Far better to leave as little evidence as possible outside the room, and hope it would at least be a day or two before she was discovered, giving Rudy time to clean himself up, get rid of evidence, even skip town.

He would have locked the door for the same reason, making it more difficult for Meredith's housemates to discover what had happened. If he was barefoot, the lack of shoe prints outside the door (presuming there aren't any, and that they weren't just partial or missed) isn't an issue; it would just mean Rudy put his shoes back on in the corridor immediately before he left. The phones would also have taken in order to delay the discovery of Meredith's body, ensuring they couldn't be heard ringing inside the room (which is what Massei concludes, too).

And a further reason for Rudy taking the keys is that, in all likelihood, Meredith would have locked the front door with her key when she arrived home, meaning Rudy wouldn't have been able to get out (who knows, this may have precipitated their confrontation in the first place). If Meredith's front door and room keys were on the same key ring - as they likely were, since they would both have been given to her by Filomena - locking the bedroom door may just have been opportunistic for Rudy; he had the keys anyway, so why not lock the bedroom door too?

Overall, I think Rudy's motives for locking the bedroom door were far stronger than those of Knox and Sollecito.

It's not logical for Rudy to have locked it at all. He'd have been home inside 4 minutes, long before Meredith was discovered. Once he was at home, it would have made no difference to him 'whatsoever' when Meredith was discovered. Neither was there any chance of her surviving.

In contrast, Raffaele and Amanda had every reason to lock the door, the reasons for which have already been posted here.