Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Malkmus]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-25/amanda-knoxs-bloody-footprint/full/

Thank you, Mary. That's very helpful. So, it's not just Amanda's bedroom we're talking about, but the entire house. And in the entire house only 47 fingerprints were usable. So, this just magnifies how ludicrous the notion is that Amanda somehow cleaned every trace of her fingerprints from the entire house - an unimaginable task that would have taken days to complete. It's quite obvious that the police were selective in where they searched for fingerprints or there would have been a heck of a lot more than 108 prints total.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Yes. No more talk of turnip juice. Let's wait until we hear what the Massei Report has to say on the whole issue of Turnip juice and other turnip-based products. I think many people will be extremely surprised at what Massei has to say on the matter.

On that subject, I - for one - am almost literally on tenterhooks waiting for the translation of the Massei Report. I salute the tireless humanitarian work of the translators, who have laboured ceaselessly to provide an English translation of an Italian document. I imagine (and hope) that the day on which translation is published there will be plenty of media coverage. It will, after all, be an historic day - not just for the understanding of this case, but perhaps also for a wider understanding of the human condition.

Indeed. What do you suppose Massei will have to say about sand flea eggs hatching in glass?

http://www.washington.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=5136

 

[Mrs.Columbo]

As I wrote earlier, Patrick was Amanda's employer, he was rumored to have wanted to offer Meredith a job, and he was known to some as the "most famous man in Perugia." Of the 84 people the police reportedly interviewed, how many actually had a connection to the crime scene?

Logic:
The 'starting point' in every investigations is the victim.
In this case it is Meredith. Her friends, her fellow students, and so on.

Ms. Knox at this stage of the investigation was a witness, amongst other witnesses. I would see no whatever reason to involve Ms. Knox' boss.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Your speculation has no proof to back it up. We could all take time and write fictional stories about how we think the murder occurred but that is not very productive.

Amanda and Raffaele will fully support each other on appeal. They both know they are innocent.

I don't think my story is one bit more fictional than yours is, actually, ours are the same except I'm saying Amanda was there and after the fact, she when and got RS and together they staged the break-in.

I've heard there is a chance RS may go it alone on appeal, they mentioned it on TJMK and for the life of me, I can not figure out why RS let himself be tried with Amanda, big mistake and he's curently paying for it.

 

[stilicho]

As I wrote earlier, Patrick was Amanda's employer, he was rumored to have wanted to offer Meredith a job, and he was known to some as the "most famous man in Perugia." Of the 84 people the police reportedly interviewed, how many actually had a connection to the crime scene?

I think we can agree that AK and RS were the closest things the police had to suspects at that point(I'm not sure about Guede yet).

So if Amanda is at least a potential suspect, why not speak to her employer?

From all I've read that is just basic procedure.

Also, didn't you say in a previous post that you believed the failure to contact Lumumba was an oversight? I thought we only differed as to it's significance.

The simple answer is that we don't know that Amanda or anyone mentioned that she or Meredith worked for Patrick. The question is still a good one: Why would the police have connected Patrick to the crimescene before 06 NOV 2007?

I believe the failure to identify all the connections may have been an oversight. However, unless someone told them that Amanda and Meredith worked for him, or they asked that question to identify any connection and received an affirmative answer, there's no reason to believe they knew anything about him.

This is a version of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy because it appears to be obvious after the fact. But without any tangible evidence we can only assume they didn't know about Patrick because nobody told them. Payment for work done was a cash-only transaction between employer and employee. There was nothing to trace in terms of bank deposits or typical government paperwork.

The crux of this matter is this: Amanda's supporters insist that it was the police who used Raffaele to get to Amanda and then get her to label Patrick falsely as the murderer. One of the chief objections to this is that Patrick was not connected in any way to the crimescene, or not in any way known to the police. Even the infamous SMS text does not connect him to the crimescene. It was not an SMS on Meredith's phone but on Amanda's.

The fact that Patrick was unconnected works against the hypothesis that the police went through verbal acrobatics with two people with the "predictable" result that Amanda would sign a declaration stating he was the killer. It's less important that he "should" have been connected or contacted than that he simply wasn't.

 

[Bruce Fischer]

Charlie posted excellent information regarding the mixed DNA in the bathroom. This evidence has been extremely exaggerated online. The truth is, the mixed DNA in the bathroom is not incriminating in any way. It means nothing. Click on the link below for a video showing the samples being collected along with a brief analysis of Patrizia Stefanoni's gloves.

http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/contamination2.html

 

[stilicho]

Thank you, Mary. That's very helpful. So, it's not just Amanda's bedroom we're talking about, but the entire house. And in the entire house only 47 fingerprints were usable. So, this just magnifies how ludicrous the notion is that Amanda somehow cleaned every trace of her fingerprints from the entire house - an unimaginable task that would have taken days to complete. It's quite obvious that the police were selective in where they searched for fingerprints or there would have been a heck of a lot more than 108 prints total.

What do you base your conclusions on? How many usable fingerprints should there be in the cottage? How many should belong to Knox?

The lawyer asked the police investigator why he didn't look for her prints on her guitar (which I believe was Laura's and not hers) or her books. The answer ought to be pretty simple. Meredith was not killed with a guitar or a book.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Several problems that I have with this scenario:
First, it makes no sense that Raf and Amanda had any "time to kill" after the murder if you believe they are responsible. "Kill time" waiting for what? Waiting for the mood to strike to stage the break-in or clean all their fingerprints? They had anything but time, especially since the alleged clean-up wasn't completed by the time police arrived.
Second, I don't believe it's the act of listening to music that's impossible (though I do find it unlikely), but the idea that he decided to create a playlist. If you killed someone and you desperately need some tunes to lull you to sleep you don't spend 40 minutes creating a playlist. You just turn on whatever music you have.
Third, I can't conceive of being in a situation like that where I've just killed someone and my entire train of thought until the police arrived not be about how to fix the situation. Trying to get to sleep or listening to music doesn't add up to me. I think I would be a terrified and frantic mess by the time I spoke to police and I probably wouldn't have gotten one wink of sleep. Amanda and Raf were present in front of police the entire next day, sitting through questioning until the sun went down. If they had committed the crime they would have been up all night and their signs of exhaustion, I think, would have been obvious (especially if we're to believe they spent hours scrubbing the cottage down).

Unless you can provide some evidence to support your contention that murderers never fiddle with their computers the night after committing a murder, this qualifies as a belief (and I would argue an Argument from Incredulity). I happen to believe otherwise. I make no assumption that criminals would never act in a manner that we, as non-criminals, would consider to be non-productive.
Addressing some other points:
1) How often do criminals anticipate every scenario? Is it not possible that it never occurred to them that someone might call the postal police after spotting a couple of cellphones? AK came home, according to her story, to find an open door, blood splattered in the bathroom, and human waste in the toilet. Yet she did not find that of any concern. That is, until the postal police showed up. Then, she was concerned.
2) Is it possible that RS didn't expect to get back to sleep?
3) Can you not think of other reasons why RS would not have gone back to AK's apartment? Such as that they decided that AK would do the cleaning to eliminate the possibility of RS leaving any fingerprints or other evidence in the apartment? Or that having music on his computer was intended to create the impression that they listened to music in his aparrment the night before (RS appears to have not realized that it is possible to determine the times when commands are entered into computer, and he is hardly alone in this). Yes, this is speculation, but so is your contention.
4) I don't find it meaningful to discuss what you think that you would do in that situation. Most criminal acts are committed by people acting irrationally and afterwards they are under a lot of stress. I don't see any reason to expect they would necessarily act in a manner that we, who aren't under this stress, would think would be productive.

As Charlie has pointed out to you there is no evidence to back the claim that they bought bleach.

So you're claiming the report about the receipt isn't true? Whatever. The grocer testified that Amanda shopped for cleaning supplies. I'm sure that it was just by coincidence it happened to be the morning after the murder. And she was in such a hurry that she waiting outside when the store opened. This despite her claim that she had slept until 10. I'm sure that it was also just a coincidence that she forgot about this. Just like it was a coincidence that RS had forgotten that he hadn't used his computer after 9:00 the previous night.

Nope. We know they had access to the inside of the cottage, not to mention this completely undermines the notion that they had been cleaning up to the point the police arrived.

I said RF, not AK, might have not known where AK had the key.

 

[katy_did]

It appears from this photograph at PMF that sharp items were, at the very least, looked at from the crime scene flat. Whether they were collected and tested I can't say.

http://perugiamurderfile.org/gallery/image_page.php?album_id=21&image_id=1252

There's no mention in Massei's report of any knives from the cottage being tested, which is a pretty crazy situation if true. Maybe Charlie or Bruce would know for sure?

I thought the comment from Steve Moore that in this type of spontaneous crime, the person would be more likely to find a weapon in the place they were breaking into rather than to bring it with them was pretty interesting. It fits what we know of Rudy's behaviour previously, when he took a knife from the kitchen of the nursery he broke into for 'self-protection'. The girls were shown the knife drawer in the kitchen and said they didn't think any were missing, but would they really have known for sure? Especially if the knives came with the cottage. This is what Amanda says about them in her testimony:

AK: So, on the 4th is when they asked me about knives, they asked me to look in our kitchen, in the upstairs apartment, to see if there was anything missing. But honestly, there were so many...firstly, there were so many knives in that house, and then I just took a look and I just said "I don't think so", and then I was kind of taken by this impression that I had of the house, and I just started crying.

If the knives were all in a drawer instead of laid out as they are in the picture it would probably have been even more difficult to tell if any were missing. We know Rudy was looking round the kitchen, because he said he took an orange juice carton from the fridge and drank from it (probably expecting his DNA would be found on it). So what else was he doing in there?

Either way it would be very strange if none of those knives were tested. Even if it's more likely the killer(s) would have taken the knife with them, it's still possible they wouldn't want to be caught carrying a murder weapon, and might have cleaned it and put it back in the drawer. You'd at least check, wouldn't you?

 

[katy_did]

Thank you, Mary. That's very helpful. So, it's not just Amanda's bedroom we're talking about, but the entire house. And in the entire house only 47 fingerprints were usable. So, this just magnifies how ludicrous the notion is that Amanda somehow cleaned every trace of her fingerprints from the entire house - an unimaginable task that would have taken days to complete. It's quite obvious that the police were selective in where they searched for fingerprints or there would have been a heck of a lot more than 108 prints total.

I think the prosecution's own fingerprint expert also said that it was quite normal not to find many 'usable' fingerprints from someone in the place where they live. They key word there is 'usable'; they might find a lot of smudged or unreadable prints, but none clear enough to identify. Only 5 fingerprints each were found from Laura and Filomena, IIRC. Plus, as you say, it was always a ridiculous idea that AK and RS could've gone round selectively cleaning fingerprints! (nearly as ridiculous as the idea they could have selectively cleaned up DNA).

I thought the whole fingerprint issue had been cleared up (so to speak!) a long time ago. I'm curious as to where TellyKNeasuss is getting his/her information from...

 

[RoseMontague]

Yes, that and Rudi's foot prints leaving the room. You know, at first I read about the trashed room and believed it, then I read Bruce's page on it and I was convinced it wasn't trashed, but just messy like my son's room is most of the time. (Actually, it's not even as bad as his is most of the time)

Then I was reading that motivation's report you kindly sent me and Lord and Behold, Filomena’s (sp) own words say her room was not like that, she had left it tidy. Those pictures I saw of the room were taken way later; Filomena stated that she had picked some up and move other stuff around. Now FOA would have me believe that she is lying, but I don't see that but they will have to add her to the pile of liars in this case, the cops, the hobo, the store clerk, the DNA experts, the prosecutor and who knows, probably the judge too. I seen no reason for Filomena to lie.

Yes, I have been having the same issue with this. However, I don't know that Filomena's story is complete or entirely accurate. I gave an example in a previous post where it is documented that Filomena states in a statement prior to her trial testimony that the glass was not only on top of the clothes, it was mixed in and underneath. The defense should have made this a point of emphasis in the trial, because the location of the glass is very important. From what I can see, they also did not get at the exact nature of the state of tidiness in her room prior to the "break-in", another mistake, in my opinion. Perhaps it is just a matter of not getting at the details.

 

[RoseMontague]

I see a very convincing reason for Guede to stage a break-in. Let's start by assuming for a minute that Guede committed the crime alone (or even possibly with an accomplice as yet unidentified). If Guede had knocked on the front door of the girls' house that night, he might well have been let in by Meredith (who knew him, at least by sight). And if he'd then ended up killing her, he'd have easily come to the following realisation: If he simply left via the front door, there would be no evidence of forced entry. And he'd have realised that the police would therefore quickly summise that whoever killed Meredith either a) had a key to the front door, b) was let in by someone with a key to the front door, or c) did not have a key but was let in by Meredith.

Therefore, it would definitely be in Guede's interest to stage a break-in in this scenario, since it would be his attempt to misdirect the police away from looking for someone whom Meredith would know well enough to let into the house, and towards a stranger-intruder*. Guede would have known that the number of people whom Meredith might have let into the house when she was alone would be a pretty small number, and that he would soon be identified as one of that number. He'd also probably have realised that many of this group of people were away from Perugia that night (including all the boys from downstairs), thereby narrowing down the list even further.

I'm not suggesting that this is what happened - I'm merely trying to argue that it's not so hard to find a motive for Guede staging the break-in if he were the lone attacker (or even Guede plus A.N. Other).

*Granted, Guede might arguably fall into this category too, but I think he'd have reasoned that the potential group size for "stranger intruders" was far larger than it was for "people whom Meredith knew well enough to let in, and who were in Perugia that night".

I had seen you advance this theory, London John. It gives a possible motivation for Rudy to stage a break-in and that is the first step, one that you have done a good job with, in my opinion. The next step is fitting that theory with the evidence. When did he stage the break in and how does that fit with the footprints, etc?

 

[RoseMontague]

Thank you, Mary. That's very helpful. So, it's not just Amanda's bedroom we're talking about, but the entire house. And in the entire house only 47 fingerprints were usable. So, this just magnifies how ludicrous the notion is that Amanda somehow cleaned every trace of her fingerprints from the entire house - an unimaginable task that would have taken days to complete. It's quite obvious that the police were selective in where they searched for fingerprints or there would have been a heck of a lot more than 108 prints total.

I thought it was amusing that right smack dab in the middle of one of the Luminol enhanced footprints, was a usable fingerprint. The dating of these non-visable footprints is the main issue. When they were made is possibly more important than who made them. A fingerprint in the middle of one argues both lack of cleaning and fingerprint made after footprint was deposited. That fingerprint did not belong to anyone they had a reference sample of.

 

[Supernaut]

I understand what you're saying, but I assure you I'm definitely not being less than honest with myself (and I'm more than a little insulted that you've chosen to use that terminology). Allow me to tell a story for illustration:

I'm nore than a little insulted that you are calling me insulting!

A few years ago, I started reading stuff online and in print about Barry George - a very strange and disturbed man with a history of following women in London. He'd been convicted in 2001 of the 1999 shooting murder of Jill Dando, a very prominent and much-loved TV personality. I started from a position of belief in the guilt of George - after all, he'd been convicted, the prosecution had presented what they said was compelling evidence of George's guilt, and his background certainly seemed to fit.

However, the more I read, the more I became persuaded that a miscarriage of justice might have occurred. I thought that some of the "compelling" evidence now looked anything but compelling, and that there might have been a rush to judgment from police and prosecutors who were becoming desperate to "solve" this high-profile murder case (George himself wasn't arrested until over a year after the murder). I wrote to - and subsequently had a couple of meetings with - someone in a position to escalate things. By this time, George had already had two appeals dismissed. However, a BBC TV documentary highlighting the problems surrounding the conviction was aired in September 2006, and the programme's producers themselves referred the case back in conjunction with George's solicitor. To cut a long story short, a retrial was ordered in which key police evidence was discredited. Barry George was acquitted in the retrial and is now a free man.

There are two points arising from this: The first is that, in this case, I actually believe that Barry George may well have committed the crime. But I came to think that the prosecutors failed to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt - as they are obliged to do. And the second point is that Barry George may be one of the strangest people I've ever seen (I haven't met him in person), who lives in a filthy apartment and who follows women obsessively. He's not a pleasant specimen of humanity. But his wrongful conviction deserved to be highlighted just as much as any other potential wrongful conviction - including that of a pretty, preppy, "kooky" young girl from West Seattle.

I'm familiar with all of this. Barry George is to be pitied, but he hardly had his promising young life ruined as result of people's envy, or even their misunderstanding of him.

Again, I reiterate that for me it's not about thinking anything like "I can't believe that a girl like that could be involved in a crime like that". Because I do believe that "people like her" can sometimes have a dark and sinister alter ego that not even their family or closest friends know anything about. My beliefs about the case are purely based on an appraisal of the evidence (or lack of evidence), and the requirement to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt in order to secure a safe conviction. It truly doesn't matter to me whether AK is a pretty young American girl or a 50-year-old Meth-addled Albanian prostitute. There still seems (to me) to be a number of problems with significant elements of the evidence.

The evidence corroborating Amanda's character and integrity is just that, evidence, and it is more compelling, to say the least, than any of the malign inneuendo, nevermind the so-called "physical eviednce" that was manufactured to convict her, to brand her as the worst kind of criminal.

 

[Supernaut]

Q. for Bruce Fisher or Charlie Wilkes re. luminol hallway prints

Is it true that the luminol-revealed hallway footprints were said to have NOT been tested for blood, but that it was later discovered (c. June 2009?) that they HAD (by Stefanoni), and the result had been conclusively negative?

Thanx.

 

[RWVBWL]

Not at all. Why do you think investigators should have chosen to question Patrick? What connection did he have to the crimescene that they would have known about?
So, again, what connection did Patrick have to the victim or the crimescene that the police knew about before 06 NOV 2007?

_________________________________________________________________

Greetings Stilicho,
As I like to read and learn more about this interesting murder case,
yesterday I picked up a copy of "Angel Face", authored by Barbie Nadeau.
There are lots of interesting facts written in this book, and 1 that I read of right before I fell asleep last night that caught me eye.

It is written on page 66 while Raffaele Sollecito is being interviewed in a tiny room in the police station while Amanda Knox was doing her homework and her infamous cartwheels in the waiting room:

"I went home on my own. Amanda said she was going to Le Chic because she wanted to see some friends. That's when we said goodbye. I went home, smoked a joint and had dinner, but I can't remember what I ate."
He also couldn't remember Amanda being around, although she had told police, days earlier, that when Patrick Lumumba sent her a text message telling her not to come to work,she went straight over to Raffaele's and spent the entire evening there.

Well, when I read of this in B. Nadeau's book, I was just amazed, for from the many discussions here on JREF that I have read, it has seemed like the police had never heard of Patrick Lumumba's name, or even knew he was Miss Knox's boss.
But yet this seems to say that is incorrect, would you agree?
If correct, the police then did indeed know of Patrick Lumumba before the night of the 5th/6th.
Hmmm...
RWVBWL

 

[RoseMontague]

As I am unable to edit something that I posted 2 hours ago that has not yet appeared and I will be shortly gone for the day, I wanted to add a caveat about my post on the fingerprint within the footprint. The Google translated version is not as clear as I remembered and I see several instances where footprint is translated as fingerprint. Until I am able to get a better translation of that particular passage, you should consider that post as being either not correct or unverified at this point. I would also like to renew a call for future civility and an appeal to the powers that be that the current undesirable status of this thread be lifted.

 

[christianahannah]

In Claudia Matteni's report of November 9th, she states that the crime was likely committed with Raffaele's flick knife, which had been confiscated and was being tested. It turned out not to have any DNA on it. Hence, there was NO evidence whatsoever against Raffaele when he was arrested, other than that he said he couldn't remember whether Amanda had been with him the whole night. As Raffaele later wrote in his prison diary, "What an absurd story, all ready to point the finger when nothing is known yet."

Even with all their fantasies and imagery that put Raffaele at the scene, the prosecution seems to have treated him almost as an afterthought -- maybe that's why bloggers do, too -- taking six weeks before it even occurred to them that they needed some forensic evidence against him, and then scurrying out to concoct the bra clasp scam.

On November 6, 2007 wasn't there also seized from Raffaele a pair of Nike shoes which could possibly match a print left in the murder room (later proven to be Rudy's print)? Didn't Amanda's statement on November 5-6 include that she couldn't be sure if Raffaele was with her at the flat during Meredith's murder? The hearing took place November 9 so two of the three items mentioned probably warranted holding Raffaele until the evidence was further tested to include or exclude him. I think Amanda may have later clarified her statement concerning her memory of Raffaele, but I am not sure.

 

[LondonJohn]

Something occurred to me today, which I think illustrates the distinct possibility of police "tunnel vision" and "scenario fulfillment", as much as it illustrates poor forensic analysis. And this is the case of the bloody shoeprint in Meredith's room.

The prosecution insisted for a long time that the shoeprint "A", found at the foot of Meredith's bed and made in her blood, belonged to Sollecito's Air Force 1 trainers. Sollecito repeatedly denied that the prints were made with his shoes, but the police swiftly concluded that he was lying. The police forensic experts ruled that the prints were made with Sollecito's Air Force 1's, and that was that.

Except that Sollecito's forensic expert, Professor Vinci, obtained scale photos of the shoeprints from the prosecution, and conducted the somewhat simple exercise of measuring the number of rings and the distances between rings in the sole pattern. He quickly discovered that the bloody shoeprint "A" in Meredith's room was definitively not made by an Air Force 1 brand of trainer - let alone by Sollecito's Air Force 1's.

Yet still the prosecution insisted that their forensic experts were correct. Apparently, it actually took Rudy Guede himself to point out to the police that shoeprint "A" was in fact made by his Nike Outbreak 2 trainers - which have a similar sole pattern to Air Force 1's, but a sufficiently different pattern to be easily distinguishable.

To me, this episode illustrates how the police and prosecutors became skewed in their assessment of the evidence. The failure to properly forensically match the sole pattern to a particular brand of trainer was egregious, but I suspect it was also due (to at least some degree) to the police "wanting" to match Sollecito's trainers to the murder room prints. I think the police/prosecutors had probably decided by that point that a) since they believed Sollecito was involved in the murder, and b) since Sollecito owned a pair of trainers whose sole pattern resembled the bloody prints, then there was by extension a high degree of probability that Sollecito's Air Force 1's had made the bloody prints. I certainly can't imagine that the forensics lab made much of an effort to try to challenge this belief - after all, a 10 year old with a ruler could have quickly figured out that a different brand of trainer mad those prints.

 

[LondonJohn]

I'm nore than a little insulted that you are calling me insulting!




I'm familiar with all of this. Barry George is to be pitied, but he hardly had his promising young life ruined as result of people's envy, or even their misunderstanding of him.





The evidence corroborating Amanda's character and integrity is just that, evidence, and it is more compelling, to say the least, than any of the malign inneuendo, nevermind the so-called "physical eviednce" that was manufactured to convict her, to brand her as the worst kind of criminal.

I substantially agree with most of what you're saying. But I would still countenance that appearances can be deceptive. I think this case not only can be assessed without bringing AK's (or RS's) character into things, I actually think it should be assessed in this way. The case should only be judged on the evidence that is particular to the crime - and by-and-large this excludes not only character assessment, but also any prior history of criminal behaviour (or absence of criminal/antisocial behaviour). Those factors are only ever usually relevant at a sentencing stage, not when determining guilt or non-guilt.

And I believe that even after AK's personality / upbringing / life experiences / character have been stripped out from the analysis, there's still ample evidence to suggest that these convictions may be unsafe. I maintain that any argument along the lines of "It's unlikely that she did it because she was a UW Honors student / hippy / loved her mother / wouldn't hurt a fly etc" is not only intellectually bankrupt, but is also irrelevant to the case under discussion.