Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[katy_did]

I've read several times about Filomena going into her room, but can you tell me when exactly that occurred, and under what circumstances?

Hi Groucho, Filomena went into her room when she first arrived at the cottage that morning, to check whether anything was missing (that's when she made the statement about glass being on her computer bag). So that would have been before the door was broken down.

I think I'm also right in saying she went back after Meredith's body had been discovered too, to go and pick up her laptop. One of the police officers accompanied her to go and collect it, then a little while later they realized that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to let someone take objects from a murder scene and asked her to hand it over to them. And then they fried it, along with the other two laptops...

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

If you can imagine that the defense's version could be true, that is enough to raise reasonable doubt.

Not really, that would only be the doubt, the reasonable part would come into effect on how likely that senerio would actually be.

 

[Fine]

But again, that's how you feel you yourself would act in that situation. You would have called the police. Amanda felt suspicious enough to make the brief walk back to her boyfriend's and bring him back with her to inspect. You seem to feel that any person presented with those findings in their apartment would have called the police, where the most alarming find was a droplet of blood in the sink and a footprint on the mat that may or may not have looked like blood to the naked eye. The question I pose to you is, if you could magically compose a case study where 25 people were subjected to the same scenario as Amanda can you say with certainty that all 25 would have called the police, or would some have been hesitant and gotten a friend/loved one involved first?

___________________-

Amanda probably had no idea how to call the cops. And she probably felt that had she called them, they wouldn't have understood her garbled Italian anyway. So she never did call them....Raffaele placed the call.

///

 

[RWVBWL]

I have always been curious about using Nara's scream as the timeline for the murder when there is scientific evidence that is contrary to this timeline. The original coroner pronounced that Meredith died about 3 hours after ingesting her last meal. The British women said they ate dinner around 6:00 PM. That would put time of death more around 9:00 PM. I believe Meredith's stomach contents matched what was served at dinner that night with just one anomaly, the mushroom in her esophagus. Candace Dempsey provided an explanation for this mushroom in her book saying that each of the four women living in the house had their own refrigerator shelf. On Meredith's shelf was a package of mushrooms with one corner pulled back as if Meredith had reached in for a snack just before she was murdered. Candace says that a photo of the shelf and the package of mushrooms was taken and is in the police files. I wonder if Charlie has this photo in his archives?

Hi El Buscador,
No one seems to want to discuss your post, but I do. So let's converse.
I have wondered if it was indeed a mushroom that Miss Kercher munched on after she got home to her apartment that night or if she had some of the apple crumble that the girls had after eating pizza when they watched "The Notebook" on the evening of Nov. 1st, 2007.
You wrote of this:
"The original coroner pronounced that Meredith died about 3 hours after ingesting her last meal. The British women said they ate dinner around 6:00 PM. That would put time of death more around 9:00 PM. I believe Meredith's stomach contents matched what was served at dinner that night with just one anomaly, the mushroom in her esophagus.

If it was a piece of apple, not mushroom that was found in her system, it helps to bring the time of her death earlier, near the 9:00 hour.
But if it was a mushroom that she ate after coming home, the time of death might be closer to 12:00am, which seems to work with the prosecutions theory of what happened that night.
I wonder what it was that Miss Kercher last ate?

In an interesting twist, I believe Prosecutor Mignini ended up firing Cororner Lalli soon afterwards.
I wonder why Cororner Lalli was really fired?
Might his findings not have jived with the prosecutors theory?
Or was it because, if my memory serves me well, he simply spoke about the case to the media?
But if that was really the case, I would think that many, many others should have been fired too for the many, many leaks to the media regarding this brutal murder.
Hmmm...
RWVBWL

 

[Mary_H]

Agreed.

That's a dark, soggy, bloody footprint. I personally would be starting to feel a little uneasy. And I forgot to mention the human waste in the toilet, and Amanda said that none of her roommates would have left the toilet unflushed. So now you have an unopened door, blood splatters, and a strong suspicion that someone else had been in the apartment (and since some of the bedroom doors were closed, there was no guarantee that this person was not still in the apartment). (As an aside, my understanding is that most Italian toilets are "dry". If this is the case in the apartment, there would have been an odor in the bathroom, so why didn't she flush the toilet[If it had been me, I would have flushed the toilet even if it was an American-style "wet" toilet], especially since Amanda must have been very clean-conscious for her to take a shower in the morning after [according to her statements] taking a shower with Raffaele the previous evening).

I agree with Malkmus that we have to look at this from Amanda's point of view, not our own. Amanda lived in a house with three roommates upstairs and four neighbors downstairs. It was a college town, with friends and acquaintances coming and going into each others' apartments; she might not even know the identities of most of them. I don't think most kids would jump to conclusions - they would just kind of wait and see if there was an explanation for the door being open, first of all.

Second, Amanda didn't see the blood on the mat until after her shower; I am of the opinion she may be the one who put it there, by walking through blood in the hall. It looks noticeable in some photos, but it is really not very noticeable at all.

Third, she didn't discover the toilet situation until after her shower, either, when she went into the other bathroom to dry her hair. She said she was more alarmed by the feces than by the door or the blood; that's when she decided to get the heck out of there and get Raffaele. Since she wasn't fluent in Italian at the time, calling the police herself might even have gotten her in trouble, if she couldn't explain the situation well.

When you think about it, if she assumed Meredith was in her bedroom, Amanda could just as easily have thought Meredith had an overnight guest who had used the toilet, so it is to Amanda's credit that she began to feel alarmed at all. (By the way. they had to use a brush to flush their toilets. It is understandable that she wouldn't want to clean someone else's feces up after them.)

Finally, I believe Amanda stated somewhere that she got the night she and Raffaele took a shower together mixed up with the night of the crime -- some of the previous several days of their relationship ran together in her mind.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

But again, that's how you feel you yourself would act in that situation. You would have called the police.

As I stated, I called security just because I saw a car with a broken-out window. I think that I can be pretty sure what I would have done.

Amanda felt suspicious enough to make the brief walk back to her boyfriend's and bring him back with her to inspect. You seem to feel that any person presented with those findings in their apartment would have called the police, where the most alarming find was a droplet of blood in the sink and a footprint on the mat that may or may not have looked like blood to the naked eye. The question I pose to you is, if you could magically compose a case study where 25 people were subjected to the same scenario as Amanda can you say with certainty that all 25 would have called the police, or would some have been hesitant and gotten a friend/loved one involved first?

For one thing, the scenario also needs to include bloody footprints leading to the door of the apartment. For another, Amanda didn't immediately run to Raffaele. She took a shower and started a load of laundry.

I couldn't be certain that all 25 would, but if we ran the scenario in Las Vegas I would bet on all 25. You can address every single incriminating evidence and speculate on some scenario that would explain it. But then you'd at least have to concede that if Amanda is innocent then she's incredibly unlucky that some many things occurred just by coincidence that make her appear guilty.

She called three times. The one where it rang only was 16 seconds, the other two times voice mail and out of service. So the strongest point here is that she didn't leave a voice message for Meredith, which in itself is hardly unreasonable, especially considering that they were trying to get immediate hold of Meredith.

I don't know how Italian or British cellphones work. With my American cellphone, if it's turned off or the battery runs down the call immediately goes to voicemail. What causes a cellphone call to return an "out of service" message?

 

[RWVBWL]

(As an aside, my understanding is that most Italian toilets are "dry". If this is the case in the apartment, there would have been an odor in the bathroom, so why didn't she flush the toilet[If it had been me, I would have flushed the toilet even if it was an American-style "wet" toilet], especially since Amanda must have been very clean-conscious for her to take a shower in the morning etc...{QUOTE]
_________________________________________________________________

Hi TellyKNeasuss,
Like Amanda Knox, I am the eldest child.
Being the oldest of 4 kids who grew up together, when someone left a lil' present in the toilet, I would always try and embarrass my brother or sisters and let them simply know that it was not cool!
And I did not flush it for them, unless I had to!
And so nowadays, while at work, I personally can't stand it when my co-workers or friends leave presents in the john, and I still embarassingly let them know it!
RWVBWL

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

It's a double-edged sword. I don't think anyone on either side has claimed that the other can or can't make claims of what is likely or reasonable. This is a forum where all thoughts are welcome and subsequently debated. The reason there is so much debate, though, is that much of the circumstantial evidence is weighed subjectively; so those who think she's guilty look at everything she does as the actions of a guilty person and vice versa with the side who thinks she's innocent.

Two other things are going on here.

One, as Bob001 pointed out, we're reviewing the evidence to see whether or not it rises to the level of proof beyond reasonable doubt. Any plausible story as to how the facts could be as we know them in which Amanda or Raffaele is innocent constitutes a demonstration of reasonable doubt. In that sense the "defence" side's job is to establish that a given hypothetical story is merely reasonable, not to establish that it was true.

Two, as Hume pointed out a rational person weighs up competing claims to see which is more absurd, taking the whole picture into account. The Amanda-is-guilty side, in my personal view, tend to be very bad at that kind of weighing up. (I suspect it's because it's a self-selecting group based on that very quality). As such they put enormous faith in their subjective judgment of whether a given statement or hypothesis is likely to be true, but they tend to do so with a kind of tunnel-vision that doesn't embed each individual judgment in the context of the larger story, where the prosecution narrative as a whole is highly implausible: A prosecutor known for wild theories and disconnection from the evidence jumps to the conclusion that a superficially boring murder was an exiting Satanic ritual killing, and then he is miraculously proven right in a touching vindication of the power of faith.
That is a very silly story, and requires extraordinary evidence, much like stories of a man walking on water require extraordinary evidence.

Also, I haven't been posting here much for a while because work absorbed my posting time, but having had the benefit of time away from this thread I have to say that a JREF forum thread is not the right medium for discussing this case. The problem is that information is lost too quickly - just browsing the last few pages I've seen multiple instances of Amanda-is-guilty posters claiming as fact things which we've already shown to be questionable or outright wrong. That's not their fault though, because it's impossible to dig through this monster thread to the relevant bits of discussion.

To productively discuss a case as complex as this with posters dropping in and out you need some kind of easily searchable or indexed discussion.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

the hyoid bone may have been cut

Where was Rudy's DNA on Meredith's body? Should it not have been found on her neck where he strangled her?

BobTheDonkey,

Several considerations make this issue more complicated than I first thought (I am grateful to Charlie, LondonJohn, and Mr.D for their thoughts). First, there may have been too much blood to swab portions of Meredith’s neck. Second, we do not know where ILE swabbed and did not find DNA. Third, there are more than one plausible scenarios for the attack, including that Meredith’s hyoid bone was cut. Carlo Torre demonstrated one to Frank Sfarzo. “Then he suddenly throws his cigarette away, grabs my jaw with an unbelievable strength and, simulating a knife with his forefinger, he sticks it into my throat until it impacts against the angle of my right jaw, then he sticks it again on the other side to show me how the larger wound was made. He doesn't forget to make me feel quite strongly the nail of his thumb, since he thinks that's how the large bruise under Meredith's jaw was formed.”

 

[Bob001]

Cite?
I wonder where the advocates for poor Joran are as the safeguards against a wrongful conviction in Peru appear to be considerably more lacking than in Italy.

What does this have to do with anything? "Poor Joran" was a prime suspect in another murder, and, among other evidence, Peruvian police have security video showing him with his newest victim in the casino and walking with her to his room, and subsequently leaving his room alone. The tapes show no one else entering or leaving during the relevant time. Unless you think the tapes were doctored (which should be pretty easy for technicians to determine), they've got him. But if Peru starts arresting people who weren't at the scene and had nothing to do with the crime, then I would see parallels with Italy.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

I agree with Malkmus that we have to look at this from Amanda's point of view, not our own. Amanda lived in a house with three roommates upstairs and four neighbors downstairs. It was a college town, with friends and acquaintances coming and going into each others' apartments; she might not even know the identities of most of them. I don't think most kids would jump to conclusions - they would just kind of wait and see if there was an explanation for the door being open, first of all.

1) Presumably, the guys downstairs didn't have access to the women's apartment.
2) Amanda presumably knew that Filomena and the 4th women (Laura?) were not planning on being home.

Second, Amanda didn't see the blood on the mat until after her shower;

Other than Amanda's statements, what evidence shows this?

Third, she didn't discover the toilet situation until after her shower, either, when she went into the other bathroom to dry her hair. She said she was more alarmed by the feces than by the door or the blood; that's when she decided to get the heck out of there and get Raffaele.

1) Again, this is only according to her statements.
2) Most Italian toilets don't have much water in the bowl, meaning that there was likely an odor.

Since she wasn't fluent in Italian at the time, calling the police herself might even have gotten her in trouble, if she couldn't explain the situation well.

We're talking about 21st century Italy.

When you think about it, if she assumed Meredith was in her bedroom, Amanda could just as easily have thought Meredith had an overnight guest who had used the toilet, so it is to Amanda's credit that she began to feel alarmed at all. (By the way. they had to use a brush to flush their toilets. It is understandable that she wouldn't want to clean someone else's feces up after them.)

See above point about odor.

Finally, I believe Amanda stated somewhere that she got the night she and Raffaele took a shower together mixed up with the night of the crime -- some of the previous several days of their relationship ran together in her mind.

All your points offer plausible, though not necessarily probable (and depend on Amanda's often incorrect, for whatever reason, statements to be true), explanations. But at what point does that amount of required coincidences get large enough that one starts to wonder if perhaps it is possible that she is guilty?

 

[HumanityBlues]

Cite?



What safeguards would have prevented Amanda and Raffaele from supplying the Perugia police with a litany of conflicting, contradictory, and changing statements from 02 NOV 2007 until their arrests? I don't personally know of any. What safeguards would have prevented Amanda from writing her alibi email and the "gift"?

In this listing (corruption), Italy fares pretty poorly: http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2009/cpi_2009_table. US = 19th, UK = 17th, Canada = 8th...Italy = 63rd.

In this one they're listed as "Free":
http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/fiw10/FIW_2010_Tables_and_Graphs.pdf
Political Rights: US, UK, Canada and Italy all highest rated.
Civil Liberties: Italy is one rank lower than the other three.

Here's a look at Italy:
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,,ITA,,4c1a1ea8c,0.html

The judicial system is undermined by long trial delays and the influence of organized crime. A bill backed by Berlusconi's government that would place a six-year cap on the length of trials in Italy's three-tier justice system was pending before parliament at year's end. The bill, which does not apply to mafia crimes, has been criticized by the opposition as it would apply retroactively and annul Berlusconi's current trials for tax fraud and corruption. Despite legal prohibitions against torture, there have been reports of excessive use of force by police, particularly against illegal immigrants. In August, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that an Italian police officer who shot dead a protester during the 2001 Group of 8 summit in Genoa was acting in self-defense. Some prisons system suffer from overcrowding.

Amanda did report excessive force by police but it's rather probable she lied about it. She isn't an illegal immigrant; she's a murderer.

Just as a comparison, I thought I'd dig up Peru, where Joran Van Der Sloot is claiming exactly the same things Amanda did (coerced confession, mistreatment, problems with translations, etc):

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,,PER,4562d94e2,4c0ceada28,0.html

The judiciary is widely distrusted and prone to corruption scandals. The Constitutional Court, once seen as independent, has been accused of favoring the government in recent years; civic groups criticized its December 2009 decision to close a corruption case against a former army general based on a procedural violation. A 2008 Judicial Career Law improved the entry, promotion, and evaluation system for judges, and the judiciary's internal disciplinary body has been highly active in recent years. Access to justice, particularly for poor Peruvians, remains problematic.

An estimated 70 percent of inmates are in pretrial detention, and as of November 2009 the inmate population had reached nearly 200 percent of the system's intended capacity. Since 2006, an adversarial justice system has been gradually introduced with the hope that it will speed up and ensure greater fairness in judicial proceedings.

I wonder where the advocates for poor Joran are as the safeguards against a wrongful conviction in Peru appear to be considerably more lacking than in Italy.



So Gilder wrote something you found useful. Is Krane's company being engaged by either defence team for the appeals?

Your questions are irrelevant to the point I was making.

 

[christianahannah]

TellyKNeasuss wrote:

2) Amanda presumably knew that Filomena and the 4th women (Laura?) were not planning on being home.

Did Amanda know that? Did Amanda also think that Meredith may have made plans to stay with her girlfriends for the night?

I had read previous that a friend of Meredith's had warned her to never stay alone in the flat. Did Meredith know that she would be the only one alone in the flat for the night - with the boys downstairs away and her three roommates away on business or staying with their boyfriends?

 

[BobTheDonkey]

BobTheDonkey,

Several considerations make this issue more complicated than I first thought (I am grateful to Charlie, LondonJohn, and Mr.D for their thoughts). First, there may have been too much blood to swab portions of Meredith’s neck. Second, we do not know where ILE swabbed and did not find DNA. Third, there are more than one plausible scenarios for the attack, including that Meredith’s hyoid bone was cut. Carlo Torre demonstrated one to Frank Sfarzo. “Then he suddenly throws his cigarette away, grabs my jaw with an unbelievable strength and, simulating a knife with his forefinger, he sticks it into my throat until it impacts against the angle of my right jaw, then he sticks it again on the other side to show me how the larger wound was made. He doesn't forget to make me feel quite strongly the nail of his thumb, since he thinks that's how the large bruise under Meredith's jaw was formed.”

So, you mean, Amanda and/or Raffaele's DNA could have been on Meredith's body in a spot not swabbed?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Raffaele did not say ****, the police did

Hello Bruce: First, you obviously have more information as to Raffaele AGREEING with the police. We know he did say he had told them a lot of ****, etc etc. Again, the police exaggered to Amanda?? Why the word exaggerate? I'm thinking they just told her: your boyfriend isn't backing up your alibi.

During his appearance before Judge Matteini, Raffaele said that the police repeatedly said, "'don't give us ****' and 'be careful what you say.' Later, they'd written down that he said 'sack of ****.' It had all been a nightmare." (Murder in Italy, p. 199)

 

[GrouchoMarxist]

Hi Groucho, Filomena went into her room when she first arrived at the cottage that morning, to check whether anything was missing (that's when she made the statement about glass being on her computer bag). So that would have been before the door was broken down.

I think I'm also right in saying she went back after Meredith's body had been discovered too, to go and pick up her laptop. One of the police officers accompanied her to go and collect it, then a little while later they realized that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to let someone take objects from a murder scene and asked her to hand it over to them. And then they fried it, along with the other two laptops...

Thanks katy_did. I've been curious about the damaged computer(s) too.

Anybody have more on that? Was data accidently wiped or was there physical damage? Did they run them over or something - maybe on their way to arrest Lumumba?

 

[capealadin]

Hello, Mary. I know there have been a lot of posts since I posted, but I just got home. Lookit, my feeling is, that when the police dropped the bombshell, that Raff wasn't sticking with the alibi, one can imagine the shock. She absolutely had to speak to Raff. There had to be disbelief. As the police stepped up the interrogation, the text message came into play. I imagine the most important thing right then, was speak to Raff. If Amanda said she had been sleeping, then Raff would maybe on the hotseat. In Amanda's mindset, there may have been some disbelief that this could have happened. Perhaps the interpretation was screwed up somewhat. No, it was imperative that she and Raff communicate. There must have been a certain amount of confusion as to Amanda and Raff because of a language barrier. Patrick was the name mentioned at that time. Amanda probably had no idea that her blaming Patrick, and putting herself on the scene with him, would make her a suspect, and deny her her freedom. For this reason, I believe her letter to Madison says "I ******ed up so bad". I say I believe. I could be way off base. Either side of this *debate* can come up with their scenarios. It comes down to whether one thinks guilty or innocent. However, putting all the pieces together, I can't help but come to the conclusion, of guilt. There's just too many things here that have to try and be explained away. A few, okay, benefit of the doubt. But............

 

[RWVBWL]

Hello fellow JREF members,
As I like to read, I have read both books, "Murder in Italy" by author Candace Dempsey
and "Angel Face" by author Barbie Nadeau. Both are good, interesting reads.
As I sometimes think of this brutal murder that took the young life of Miss Kercher,
certain things will periodically come into my mind.
As this one just did when I read of what BobtheDonkey wote earlier:
"So, you mean, Amanda and/or Raffaele's DNA could have been on Meredith's body in a spot not swabbed?"
Now I do not know if spots were not swabbed on Miss Kercher's body, but I am curious of something similiar:

On page 47 and 49 of "Angel Face", author B. Nadeau writes that a blonde hair was found during an examination of Miss Kerchers genitalia by a police officer as Patrizia Stefanoni directed the collection of evidence.

A short time later, the scientific police officer pulled another blonde hair from Miss Kercher's blood-soaked left(?) hand.

Since this was an interesting find during my reading of these 2 books,
and I have not read anything of this before, I have wondered if this was indeed true?
If so, I am just a little curious about who might these 2 blonde hairs have belonged too?
From the many photographs I have seen, Amanda Knox has brown hair, as does Raffaele Sollecito.
Rudy Guede has black hair of African descent.

Might these 2 blonde hairs have been left from someone else involved in this murder?
Did Mr. Aviello's brother dye his hair blonde, as I, a male surfer, have done going platinum before?
I wonder if Miss Kercher's boy-friend Giacomo Silenzi had blonde hair?

Or might these 2 blonde hairs have been shed and left by Miss Kercher's friend, Sophie Purton, (who appears in 1 photograph to have blonde-ish hair), if she gave Meredith a huge as they split up that night and went to there respective apartments?

On page 37/38 of "Murder in Italy", author C. Dempsey writes that according to Carolina,
(a Spanish Erasmus student who, with her friend and fellow student Marta, lived above Rudy Guede),
Rudy was last seen dancing with a blonde woman with straight long hair at 5:30am at the Domus club on the morning of the day that Miss Kercher was murdered.

Might these 2 blond hairs come from Rudy Guede having close contact with this mystery blonde, who he put out an SOS for, "pleading for her to come forward and confirm that she saw him talking to Meredith, the British girl in the vampire cape?"

I wonder from whom did these 2 blonde hairs come from?
Were they tested and found to belong to someone known or unknown?
Does anyone know?
Hmmm...
RWVBWL

PS-Kinda cool, I just personally met an older Italian surfer named Filippo who surf's at Banzai,
'The Prince of the Lazio Coast' near the coastal vicinity by Rome.
And he believed that Amanda-(whose name he said in such a bitchin' Italian accent!)
is innocent too, as does his wife also!
Made my day to see another hardcore surfer, an Italian 1 at that,
believe Miss Knox innocent of involvement in the brutal murder of Miss Kercher.
Peace,
RWVBWL

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Meredith's sleeve

So, you mean, Amanda and/or Raffaele's DNA could have been on Meredith's body in a spot not swabbed?

BobTheDonkey,

Anyone’s DNA, including Rudy’s, could have been in a spot that was not swabbed. And if the ILE did not swab a bruised area near her neck when they could have, then they were not doing a very complete job, given the information in the article I cited. By analogy with this article, if Meredith were restrained by someone holding her wrists, one would expect DNA to be transferred there. Meredith’s sleeve had Rudy’s DNA, but I do not know where along the sleeve, and at what point it was deposited is uncertain. Bottom line, I find it extremely doubtful that anyone could have restrained Meredith without leaving DNA, but I acknowledge that ILE may not have been able to (on account of blood), or may not have chosen to swab in all locations.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

Thanks katy_did. I've been curious about the damaged computer(s) too.

Anybody have more on that? Was data accidently wiped or was there physical damage? Did they run them over or something - maybe on their way to arrest Lumumba?

I heard it was Amanda's cartwheels that destroyed them...