Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[Fiona]

On the murder knife issue:

1) Am I right to believe that kitchen knife from RS's apartment (i.e. one of the two alleged murder weapons) wasn't already in the girls' house on the night of the murder? In other words, is it generally agreed that the knife was brought from RS's flat to the girls' flat at some point on the evening of the 1st November? If so, I find it hard to reconcile why this would have happened, since the generally-agreed view of the crime is that it was not premeditated. I know that it's suggested either that AK was encouraged to carry the knife by RS "for her own protection", or that the knife was brought to the girls' flat to be used as a "threatener" in a sex game. But neither of those theories make much rational sense to me.

I do not think there is much that is agreed: and I do not think we can know whether the knife was brought there that night or at some other time. Knox was originally reported as saying the knife belonged to the cottage: but her flatmate(s) said they had never seen it there. The report might have been (probably was?) false, but either way it was quickly dropped and then it was said the knife was Sollecito's. I think most people assume it was taken to the cottage that night because the other women said they had never seen it: presumably they would have had it been there before? Not sure.

I also do not think it was carried for protection: I am not convinced it was a "sex game" either: but the possibility of a hazing along the lines that Knox was reported to have indulged in before seems possible to me. Per the web that is not very unusual in America, and although that is only one report (and I cannot find any verification for it) that is the fairy story which seems most likely to me, if I have to make up a story. On that scenario the reason that knife becomes plausible is precisely because it is big and scary: intended as a prop, and from a different house because Kercher would presumably recognise the cottage knives. But this is all just so stories: we do not know. It is terribly human to make a narrative but it does not add anything really

2) If this kitchen knife WAS used in the murder - why wouldn't AK/RS simply throw it away (perhaps even after careful cleaning)? Even if they thought they'd cleaned it so thoroughly that they'd destroyed any evidence, why would they take the risk? I am guessing that one reason they might have felt it necessary to retain the knife might be that some third party knew of Raffaele's ownership of it. Perhaps, for example, RS's mother had bought it for him as a housewarming present. Its post-murder absence might therefore have aroused suspicion. Does anyone know how many other people knew what types and numbers of kitchen knives Raffaele owned? I can only assume that SOMEONE knew he owned that kitchen knife - otherwise I can't understand why AK/RS wouldn't have cleaned it thoroughly and thrown it away. And after all, if nobody knew that this specific knife was connected to Raffaele, then even if it was subsequently found in a dumpster or a ravine, it's unlikely that it could be linked to RS/AK (unless, of course, they'd left evidence of themselves on the knife).

I have heard it said the knife came with his flat and was part of the furnishings there: but I do not know

 

[LondonJohn]

Amanda and Raffaele would have had the exact same motivation to close/lock Meredith's door and dispose of the phones. Therefore, this is, in and of itself, not a reason to attribute the door being locked to Rudy

Erm...I completely agree. I couldn't agree more, in fact.

However (male figure constructed out of dried cereal stalks, anyone?), I specifically WASN'T arguing that the rationale which I presented in favour of why Guede would have wanted to lock the door (if he were the lone killer) IMPLIED IN ANY WAY that it was indeed he who locked it.

What I was arguing instead was that there are (in my view) many compelling reasons why Guede would have felt that he might benefit from locking the bedroom door, had he been the lone assailant. And this argument was made by me in response to prior arguments that had been posted by others, which implied a chain of reasoning that a) there was no reason why Guede would have wanted to lock the door, and therefore b) this is in itself strong evidence that Guede wasn't a lone killer, and then c) by extension, AK/RS were involved (and additionally, ONLY RS/AK would have had any reason/motivation to lock the door).

In fact, I think I SPECIFICALLY made reference in one of my very recent posts to the fact that the rationale which I applied to Guede locking the door applies EQUALLY to AK and RS. I believe that all three had good reasons to delay discovery of the body - whether they acted alone or in concert. So I don't really understand the point you are trying to make.....

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Perhaps you should read the reports of the testimony

I'd appreciate a link. I've done a certain amount of reading and not come across support for those claims, and I've certainly had my patience tested already by Fulcanelli and Bob making emphatic claims about evidence here and there which they cannot actually find when pressed.

There is certainly dna evidence to show that Guede was there: there is also dna evidence to show that Sollecito was there; and since Knox's DNA was also on the bra clasp that could be said to be evidence that she was there too:

Speaking of which: Fulcanelli also claimed that Knox's DNA was on the bra clasp, however he couldn't back it up when challenged. Can you find a citation for that claim?

As for the DNA evidence against Amanda and Raffaele, according to New Scientist at least nine US DNA experts have gone on the record as saying that evidence is flawed. In particular while the Rome lab claims that they got a positive result for DNA, the more sensitive test for blood came back negative. So the claim that the DNA on the knife got there when it was used to stab Meredith is, in my view, nigh certain to be false. If the DNA was there at all it got there by other means, and contamination in the lab is the most obvious source.

Similarly the fact that the bra clasp was mishandled is not even seriously contested, and as the NS article says there are multiple innocent ways that the trace amount of DNA found could have gotten there.

What are these credible sources?

I refer you to this post where I copied and pasted the relevant passages with citations once already.

If you think that any of them are false or misleading please provide relevant citations yourself.

 

[43degreesNorth]

I have heard it said the knife came with his flat and was part of the furnishings there: but I do not know

I thought it had been identified by Raffaele's cleaner as part of the rented accommodation inventory.

 

[LondonJohn]

Raffaele's Prison Journal.


How about doing a bit more than just reading Wikipedia and thinking you're the expert on this case? You know, read this whole thread for starters.

Nobody's presenting themselves on this forum as an expert on this case, as far as I can see (well, almost nobody, to be fair - but to my mind Kevin doesn't fall into this category). Remarks like those you made above are, to my mind, unnecessary and inflammatory.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

How about you give us a link, Bob, to support the specific claim that you actually made?

Or are you taking a page out of Fulcanelli's book, and pretending you have evidence which you do not have?

I've posted it in this thread before. Do I really need to source my argument in each and every post?

Again, how about you read the thread, Kevin.

 

[stilicho]

[It] was perfectly rational for Guede to have had a strong motivation for locking the door...

Your concerns have been duly noted and found to be wrong. Thank you for trying.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I've posted it in this thread before. Do I really need to source my argument in each and every post?

Link to the specific post which backs up your specific claim then.

I've done exactly that when I've needed to, so you don't get a special exemption. I don't take your unsupported word for contested claims any more than you take mine.

 

[Mary_H]

Originally Posted by BobTheDonkey: "Amanda and Raffaele would have had the exact same motivation to close/lock Meredith's door and dispose of the phones. Therefore, this is, in and of itself, not a reason to attribute the door being locked to Rudy ."

Posted by LondonJohn: "In fact, I think I SPECIFICALLY made reference in one of my very recent posts to the fact that the rationale which I applied to Guede locking the door applies EQUALLY to AK and RS. I believe that all three had good reasons to delay discovery of the body - whether they acted alone or in concert."

Many here have argued that if Rudy had locked the bedroom door, he would have locked the front door, too, ergo, he did not lock the bedroom door.

Why doesn't the same argument hold for Amanda and Raffaele? If it makes sense for Killer Rudy to lock both doors to delay discovery of the body, then why would alleged Killers Amanda and Raffaele lock the bedroom door, and then make a big deal out of the fact that the front door was unlocked?

 

[LondonJohn]

Your concerns have been duly noted and found to be wrong. Thank you for trying.

No comment or reply required. But a reposting of this baseless accusation is warranted, I'd argue.....

 

[stilicho]

Originally Posted by stilicho
To your last point first. You're absolutely wrong. The locked door will be shown to be a part of the judges' deliberations and included in their logical processes. Not stupid at all.

Appeal to authority. Since I don't think the judge involved was doing a good job of critical thinking in the first place I don't take their opinion as being relevant.

Appeal to authority? Are you serious? Do you even know what an appeal to authority fallacy is? It works like this:

1] A trial was held that convicted three young adult druggies of murder.
2] An Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina, with no access to the evidence, declares that secondary transfer of DNA was likely responsible for the convictions.
3] FOA types trust the authority and appeal to it rather than to the evidence.

Quote:
To your prior point, Mary said she locked her door like that all the time. I called shenanigans. There is a difference between saying that it's a normal, everyday way to lock a door and merely saying it's possible. If you want me to agree that it's possible then that's easy to do.

Yes, you called shenanigans and outed yourself as an irrational partisan. It's a perfectly natural way to shut a door. There's nothing suspicious about it at all as far as I can see - the arguments otherwise are of the same calibre as the arguments finding evidence of a conspiracy in moon landing videos or 9/11 videos. You'd find it evidence of conspiracy if she claimed she broke her eggs open at the big end.

Nice to see another Swift fan. I am too but I'm a little-ender. We little-enders close our doors and lock them differently than you do.

Quote:


The locked door, regardless of who actually did it, would be the first thing to draw police attention to someone who lived at the cottage. It's interesting that the FOA types aren't even addressing that point. Why?

I don't even understand what point you think you are making, so I'm not surprised that nobody is addressing whatever that point is.

Nice hand-wave.

Quote:
I thought AK and RS were student lovers and not druggies. Which is it?

Now this is just pathetic. I mean, seriously? Everyone agrees they were lovers as far as I'm aware, everyone agrees that they were drug users as far as I'm aware. You're straining to find some kind of "gotcha" here, but you'd really be much better off either finding something relevant to say or not posting at all.

They told the police and their families that they were druggies. I don't dispute that. You were the one who characterised AK and RS as student lovers. You were incorrect and I humbly accept your apology.

Quote:
The bathmat was not riveted in place to the bathroom floor. There are a number of possible reasons that it was not washed and the print's visibility is the most obvious one. We will never know why they left the bathroom the way they did. Amanda put a great deal of care into her explanation for the blood and the bathmat in both her alibi email and her court testimony. She could have said she didn't notice anything unusual but she didn't.

Once again it looks to me like you are drawing the target after the bullet hole has been made. If Amanda was guilty then she put a great deal of care into her email and testimony to make herself look innocent, using the supposed brilliant criminal mind she used to hide the DNA evidence and completely failed to use the rest of the time. If Amanda wasn't guilty then she's just being forced to account for every mundane thing she did with that bathmat because the bathmat became evidence.

Who forced Amanda to write her alibi email? Nobody did.

By 04 NOV 2007, the lasso was already being drawn taut. She might have felt that she was compelled to explain things that didn't make any sense to the investigators and indeed that's what the alibi email preface makes clear. But she was not a formal suspect and therefore wrote only about the things she thought would be construed as evidence against her. She wasn't writing about mundane things. She never wrote once about the weather. She wrote only about the evidence piling up against her and mused about Meredith's sexual practices and the inconvenience caused to herself by the murder.

Quote:


The only other explanation I can think of is that RS and AK also thought (as you do) that the print and the blood was Rudy's rather than Raffaele's or Amanda's. Another rookie mistake?

The print was Rudy's. Another rookie mistake?

Cite?

 

[Fine]

The prosecution story is that Raffaele inflicted these wounds, although how they pretend to know that is very unclear to me, and it looks to me as if they were reaching for a way to make him a core part of the murder. The fact that Rudy had a wound on his hand which was entirely consistent with someone stabbing a small knife with no hand guard into someone, but slipping and cutting themselves on the blade as they did so, to me makes it far, far more plausible that whatever else happened Rudy inflicted those two wounds on Meredith.

Not plausible at all. Let's perform a simple experiment. Find one of those folding knives, or "pocket knives." Put it in your pocket. Now pull it out of your pocket and open the blade. If the blade point is now directed toward you, you are holding the knife to use for stabbing. And if the knife point is directed away from you, the knife is to be used for "carving." Now push the blade into something, say, a pillow, either stabbing or carving, as the case may be. If your hand should slide down the handle and on to the blade you would NOT cut yourself, because your hand would slide down the "thick" unsharpened edge of the knife blade.

And.......may I add, if Rudy had cut himself while stabbing Meredith, why not a drop of Rudy's blood on Meredith's neck, body, or anywhere else for that matter?

Whatever Rudy's injuries may prove they don't prove ---or even suggest---that he stabbed Meredith.

///

 

[Mary_H]

She wrote only about the evidence piling up against her and mused about Meredith's sexual practices...

Is this the third or the fourth time?

Show the exact spot where Amanda mused about Meredith's sexual practives.

 

[stilicho]

I think this is another instance of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy: Rudy breaks into the building any old way, and then the people who think Knox is guilty try to thrust the onus of proof on to the people who think Knox is innocent to explain every single aspect of the evidence left behind..

No.

It's stranger than that.

The problem with the staged break-in is that the onus is on the defence to establish, beyond reasonable doubt, that the window was shattered from outside the cottage and that entry was gained by those means. This issue is commonplace in bogus insurance claims. The prosecution and the insurance companies have the evidence of a staged burglary and/or no evidence of a real burglary and the defence is obliged to refute it with more than simply coulda-shoulda-woulda stuff.

Nobody has ever been able to explain away the staged burglary at Via Pergola and that's a real problem for both AK and RS.

 

[stilicho]

Is this the third or the fourth time?

Show the exact spot where Amanda mused about Meredith's sexual practives.

You and I agreed many pages ago about this. Her vaseline and "wtf" moments. These are Amanda's words. She simply wanted about two dozen people to know that Meredith might be into unusual sex.

No coercion.

 

[43degreesNorth]

Many here have argued that if Rudy had locked the bedroom door, he would have locked the front door, too, ergo, he did not lock the bedroom door.

Why doesn't the same argument hold for Amanda and Raffaele? If it makes sense for Killer Rudy to lock both doors to delay discovery of the body, then why would alleged Killers Amanda and Raffaele lock the bedroom door, and then make a big deal out of the fact that the front door was unlocked?

It could be the front door was locked or unlocked after Amanda unlocked herself in the morning. Either way, it is all painting a picture for her to explain why she is concerned and needs Filomena to be with them when the police come to breakdown the bedroom door. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter if the front door was actually locked or not, Amanda was at the house arranging for witnesses to be with her when Meredith's door was open so she could act surprised. The 'unlocked' front door is part of the story.

 

[stilicho]

Nobody's presenting themselves on this forum as an expert on this case, as far as I can see (well, almost nobody, to be fair - but to my mind Kevin doesn't fall into this category). Remarks like those you made above are, to my mind, unnecessary and inflammatory.

Amanda's supporters such as yourself think you know more than the judges and the forensic scientists do.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Appeal to authority? Are you serious? Do you even know what an appeal
They told the police and their families that they were druggies. I don't dispute that. You were the one who characterised AK and RS as student lovers. You were incorrect and I humbly accept your apology.

If "lovers" and "druggies" were mutually exclusive sets you'd have a point. Since they aren't you're just compounding a pathetic attempt at a "gotcha" with a further pathetic attempt to pretend you had a point.

Who forced Amanda to write her alibi email? Nobody did.

By 04 NOV 2007, the lasso was already being drawn taut. She might have felt that she was compelled to explain things that didn't make any sense to the investigators and indeed that's what the alibi email preface makes clear. But she was not a formal suspect and therefore wrote only about the things she thought would be construed as evidence against her. She wasn't writing about mundane things. She never wrote once about the weather. She wrote only about the evidence piling up against her and mused about Meredith's sexual practices and the inconvenience caused to herself by the murder.

It's a long email, but I searched it for "mat " and found only a very brief reference to Amanda noticing blood on the bath mat after she stepped out of the shower.

So I'm happy to say that your claim that "Amanda put a great deal of care into her explanation for the blood and the bathmat in both her alibi email" is simply untrue insofar as it pertains to the "alibi email". I also await your response to Mary_H with interest in case you are misrepresenting the facts about that aspect of the case too.

Cite?

Why shouldn't I repeat myself just for your benefit, I mean, sure I posted this link on the last page of this thread, but I haven't posted it on this page yet.

The footprint is compatible with Rudy's foot, there's no other evidence anywhere that Sollecito stepped in blood or tracked it anywhere, ergo the rational person concludes that it's Rudy's footprint on the bath mat.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

You and I agreed many pages ago about this. Her vaseline and "wtf" moments. These are Amanda's words. She simply wanted about two dozen people to know that Meredith might be into unusual sex.

No coercion.

Do you have mind reading powers, or are you just misstating easily verifiable facts again?

Amanda was claiming that other people, presumably the police, asked her those specific questions about Meredith. Nothing there resembles a direct claim that Meredith engaged in anal sex, nor would it be the least bit relevant if Meredith did engage in anal sex. The point of that paragraph was that Amanda is claiming she was asked highly personal questions about Meredith.

Here is a link to Amanda's email for those inclined to check for themselves whether Stilicho has had an uncharacteristic attack of factual correctness, or whether he's just slandering Amanda Knox as per usual for the PGF crew. Search for "vaseline".

Vaseline, needless to say, has uses other than facilitating anal intercourse.

 

[Mary_H]

You and I agreed many pages ago about this. Her vaseline and "wtf" moments. These are Amanda's words. She simply wanted about two dozen people to know that Meredith might be into unusual sex.

No coercion.

You must be joking. This is where you really go off your rocker, sti. Three times you wrote that Amanda was musing about Meredith's sexual pratices and three times I contradicted you. Please, by all means, cite where I agreed with you.

I notice you don't supply the quote from the e-mail where she recounts the police asking her questions about Meredith's sexual practices. What the heck is wrong with you?

While you're looking for the place where I "agreed" with you, look for the place where (was it LondonJohn?) handed you your head on a platter for making the same false claim.

EDIT: It was HumanityBlues who went into more detail about what was wrong with your descriptions of Amanda's e-mail, on page 344.