Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[TellyKNeasuss]

Firstly this has already been discussed, secondly this is another instance of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, and thirdly the idea that someone having just committed a murder might not shut the door properly is far from being so improbable that the prosecution case is more probable by comparison.

Right. I just logged back in because I remembered the front door problem, but I was too late.

Your statement about the question being an example of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy is not correct.

 

[LondonJohn]

It is unknown what time Amanda turned her cell phone back on. The only reason we know about Raf's is because he had an sms message sent to him which wasn't received until he turned the phone back on. All we know from the computer and phone activity that morning is that Raf apparently woke up to turn his phone on at 6 and may have fiddled with his computer - but as has been pointed out, the computer activity is questionable and will be addressed upon appeal. It says nothing about what Amanda did that morning.

From a technical perspective, it should be (or perhaps should have been) entirely possible to know when AK's mobile phone was turned back on, and roughly where it was when it was activated. The handset would have sent out an identifier "ping" in order to connect with the nearest base station and register itself as within range and active.

I can't believe that the prosecution did not present evidence regarding whether or not AK's handset (or RS's for that matter) was ever switched back on during that evening/night/morning. This is something that the police could easily have ascertained from the Italian mobile phone network operators. Whether those activity records still exist, however (given the passage of time), is open to further question.

 

[Matthew Best]

Right. I just logged back in because I remembered the front door problem, but I was too late.

What is this alleged "problem"? Somebody locked one door and failed to lock another one. Ooooh!!! Hold the front page everybody!!! I think we've cracked the case!!

Yawn.

 

[LondonJohn]

Revise 13) Why did Rudi take the trouble to lock Meredith's door but not bother to even close the front door?

Is it "not bother to close the front door" or "leave the front door wide open" in your most current "hypothesis"?

There is no evidence to suggest that whoever exited the front door that night decided to do either of these two things. The strong likelihood is that the door was closed upon exit - perhaps with the mistaken assumption that, like most front doors, it would remain shut and possibly even self-locked. However, as is now well-known, the door would not remain shut for long under this arrangement - the wind and/or the door's weight would eventually cause it to swing open. Therefore the only way of ensuring that the door remained shut was to lock it - something which is widely known now, but which was probably not known to the very person who closed the door behind them that night.....

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Again, this makes no sense because neither phone rang.

According to the person who found them, one of them did receive an incoming call, and the name "Amanda" flashed on the screen.

Here's the lowdown as I understand it:
1) Amanda calls Meredith's UK phone and lets it ring for 16 seconds. This wouldn't have been long enough to get the voicemail.

Why not? The cellular log might not reflect the time it took to put the connection through.

2) Amanda then calls Filomena, though Amanda claims that she called Filomena before she called Meredith. Filomena wonders where Meredith is, so Amanda tells Filomena that she will try to contact Meredith. Though she had just tried to call Meredith, Amanda doesn't mention this to Filomena. Amanda also tells Filomena that she is going to go back to Raffaele's.
In his prison diary, Raffaele stated that Amanda made both calls from the cottage. Amanda claims that she made both calls from Raffaele's.

Somebody used Raffaele's computer, at his apartment, to check email and look at David Johnsrud's Facebook page at 12:20pm.

3) Amanda calls Meredith's Italian cellphone. She gets the voicemail and hangs up without leaving a message. Amanda claims that the phone rang and then there was a strange noise (I think that she used the word "disturbance").

4) Amanda calls Meredith's UK phone and gets the "out of service" message. This phone call lasted only a few seconds, but Amanda claims that the phone "just kept ringing".

No, she said the call to the Italian phone was the one that kept ringing (consistent with the lady seeing Amanda's name flashing on the screen) and the second call to the English phone was the one where she got the out-of-service message.

5) The next phone call that Amanda made was to her mother (a call that she never mentioned in any of her statements). Amanda never called Filomena again. She not only did not call Filomena to tell her that she couldn't get in touch with Meredith, but she did not call Filomena after discovering the "break in". In Amanda's version of the events, as stated in her email, she called the police and then she called Filomena. Both points are wrong. Filomena called Amanda, not the other way around, and it was at least 15 minutes after this conversation that Raffaele finally called the police. Raffaele claimed that he called the police before the postal inspectors showed up, but there is plenty of evidence that shows that the postal inspectors had been there at least 20 minutes before Raffaele called the police.

What evidence would that be? The evidence I have bears out Raffaele's story. The Carabinieri are shown arriving at 1:22 according to the clock on the garage camera. But at 1:22, the Carabinieri were driving around trying to find the place. They finally called for directions at 1:29, a call that lasted five minutes. So the clock on the garage camera is at least 10 minutes slow. Therefore, the car the postal police claim is theirs does not show up until at least 12:46, right around the time Amanda was calling her mother in Seattle, Raffaele was calling his sister and then two calls to the Carabinieri. The postal police did not say that either Amanda or Raffaele was busy making phone calls when they arrived, so they must have arrived after those calls had been made. And indeed, the garage camera shows a pair of legs crossing the street from the parking lot to the cottage driveway at 12:48 by the camera's clock, which was actually 12:58 to 1:00pm, exactly when Raffaele and Amanda said they arrived.

 

[stilicho]

BobTheDonkey,

Carlo Torre changed his opinion on whether or not Meredith were strangled based on the observation that her hyoid bone was cut, rather than broken. His scenario, as described at Perugia-Shock, implies contact with Meredith’s neck, but not necessarily her wrist. The prosecution’s scenario is that Amanda strangled Meredith, causing the bruising. I acknowledge the possibility that blood from Meredith’s neck wounds might make it impossible to swab there.

If Rudy passed through Filomena’s room without touching objects with his bare hands, it is unlikely he would have left much, if any, DNA there. Rudy did leave DNA on the bra itself; your conclusion that he did not cut the clasp off does not take this point into account.

Based on the citation I gave, my contention is that if any of the three had held Meredith’s arms, each would have left his or her DNA. If the forensic police swabbed Meredith’s arms and found nothing, it is the prosecution’s scenario that is hogwash. If the forensic police did not swab her arms, then all bets are off.

I think this is special pleading, halides1. If they had found DNA on Meredith's arms then we'd be back to secondary transfer and/or contamination. It seems it doesn't matter what the medical examiner's or other forensic reports say. Lack of DNA is presented as evidence against the prosecution case in one spot and presence of DNA is also called evidence against the prosecution case.

The lone-wolf scenario was rejected by Micheli and was never seriously considered after that. The elements leading to its rejection included the forensic reports which I doubt either of us have seen or read. Other evidence affirmed this conclusion and that includes the weakened and finally discarded alibis of the accused.

 

[katy_did]

So I guess that it was just one of those numerous coincidences.

Erm, I'm not clear. This is like one of those card games where someone asks you to pick a card, and if you pick the card they want you to pick they turn it over, and if you pick the other one they discard it and turn the other one over, so either way you get the same card.

It seems to me that whether Amanda called the UK phone or the Italian phone first, you'd consider it to be "just one of those numerous coincidences". How is it a "coincidence" she called the phone that happened to be switched on, any more than it'd be a "coincidence" if she called the one that was switched off? As I said before, either way you'd interpret it as some terribly damning evidence of guilt.

Wrong. Neither phone rang at all. And neither phone call lasted more than a few seconds. The Italian phone went right to voicemail and the UK phone gave the "out of service" message.

No, because neither phone rang.

Again, this makes no sense because neither phone rang.

Here's the lowdown as I understand it:
1) Amanda calls Meredith's UK phone and lets it ring for 16 seconds. This wouldn't have been long enough to get the voicemail.
2) Amanda then calls Filomena, though Amanda claims that she called Filomena before she called Meredith. Filomena wonders where Meredith is, so Amanda tells Filomena that she will try to contact Meredith. Though she had just tried to call Meredith, Amanda doesn't mention this to Filomena. Amanda also tells Filomena that she is going to go back to Raffaele's.
In his prison diary, Raffaele stated that Amanda made both calls from the cottage. Amanda claims that she made both calls from Raffaele's.
3) Amanda calls Meredith's Italian cellphone. She gets the voicemail and hangs up without leaving a message. Amanda claims that the phone rang and then there was a strange noise (I think that she used the word "disturbance").
4) Amanda calls Meredith's UK phone and gets the "out of service" message. This phone call lasted only a few seconds, but Amanda claims that the phone "just kept ringing".
5) The next phone call that Amanda made was to her mother (a call that she never mentioned in any of her statements). Amanda never called Filomena again. She not only did not call Filomena to tell her that she couldn't get in touch with Meredith, but she did not call Filomena after discovering the "break in". In Amanda's version of the events, as stated in her email, she called the police and then she called Filomena. Both points are wrong. Filomena called Amanda, not the other way around, and it was at least 15 minutes after this conversation that Raffaele finally called the police. Raffaele claimed that he called the police before the postal inspectors showed up, but there is plenty of evidence that shows that the postal inspectors had been there at least 20 minutes before Raffaele called the police.

I guess that college is a lot easier these days if someone with as lousy a memory as Amanda can be an honors student. Maybe a lot of open-book exams?

This seems like crazy logic. Amanda mixed up some phone calls, therefore she's guilty of murder? Why the heck would she deliberately lie about phone calls, of all things, when she would know there would be records of all these calls?

Amanda forgot the details of a few phone calls. It really isn't any more complicated than that, though you're trying to turn it into something hugely significant. And you still haven't answered my question as to why Amanda would lie about those things, especially since she would know there was no point in doing so.

I think you should turn your attention to Filomena. Filomena said in court she was "shocked" after Amanda's first phone call, yet she didn't bother starting for home till the second phone call. She also called her boyfriend and asked him to go to the cottage, even though she had his car! (he had to go find a mate with a car to take him there). She claimed the first phone call happened at 12.35 and the second at 12.45; in reality, they happened at 12.11 and 12.36. Not once did she attempt to call Meredith's phones herself, and despite being the main tenant, she left it to the 20 year old foreign student who didn't know the difference between Carabinieri and postal police and spoke poor Italian to call the police. When she finally arrived home (nearly an hour after the first phone call, though she was only a few miles away and had a car; claims she 'couldn't find it'! A ruse?) she was again terribly shocked but made an inappropriate joke about the burglars being "stupid" for not taking anything. Then after Meredith's body was discovered, she seemed mainly interested in going back inside to recover her laptop, despite knowing - as a trainee lawyer - that taking objects from a crime scene is not the most sensible idea. To top it all off, she's the main source for glass being on top of the things in her room, despite the photographs contradicting her.

Very suspicious, no?

 

[katy_did]

I think this is special pleading, halides1. If they had found DNA on Meredith's arms then we'd be back to secondary transfer and/or contamination. It seems it doesn't matter what the medical examiner's or other forensic reports say. Lack of DNA is presented as evidence against the prosecution case in one spot and presence of DNA is also called evidence against the prosecution case.

If the amount of evidence found against Guede had been found against either of the other two, I would have no problem with calling them guilty (now that might more properly be called a 'mountain of evidence').

 

[LondonJohn]

According to the person who found them, one of them did receive an incoming call, and the name "Amanda" flashed on the screen.



Why not? The cellular log might not reflect the time it took to put the connection through.



Somebody used Raffaele's computer, at his apartment, to check email and look at David Johnsrud's Facebook page at 12:20pm.



No, she said the call to the Italian phone was the one that kept ringing (consistent with the lady seeing Amanda's name flashing on the screen) and the second call to the English phone was the one where she got the out-of-service message.



What evidence would that be? The evidence I have bears out Raffaele's story. The Carabinieri are shown arriving at 1:22 according to the clock on the garage camera. But at 1:22, the Carabinieri were driving around trying to find the place. They finally called for directions at 1:29, a call that lasted five minutes. So the clock on the garage camera is at least 10 minutes slow. Therefore, the car the postal police claim is theirs does not show up until at least 12:46, right around the time Amanda was calling her mother in Seattle, Raffaele was calling his sister and then two calls to the Carabinieri. The postal police did not say that either Amanda or Raffaele was busy making phone calls when they arrived, so they must have arrived after those calls had been made. And indeed, the garage camera shows a pair of legs crossing the street from the parking lot to the cottage driveway at 12:48 by the camera's clock, which was actually 12:58 to 1:00pm, exactly when Raffaele and Amanda said they arrived.

It will be interesting to see how the CCTV time stamp discrepancies will be addressed in the appeal. After all, if it can be shown that the time stamp was indeed 10-12 minutes slow on 2nd November 2007, then this places AK/RS's behaviour & phone calls between 12.00 and 13.00 in a whole new light.

Also, I'm intrigued by your mention of the activity on RS's computer at 12.20pm. I'm assuming that you mean 12.20pm on the afternoon of the 2nd November? Do you know whose email account was accessed? And the view of Johnsrud's Facebook page clearly suggests that it was AK who was at the computer - since RS would have no reason to even know who Johnsrud was (although I guess another possibility is that AK had looked at Johnsrud's profile some time earlier, and RS re-accessed it that lunchtime).

 

[LondonJohn]

If the amount of evidence found against Guede had been found against either of the other two, I would have no problem with calling them guilty (now that might more properly be called a 'mountain of evidence').

Agreed. And as I've said before, from my point of view it might even be that AK and RS were somehow involved in the murder. But I believe that the prosecution may not have met its burden of proof for conviction of the pair - owing to the dubious and questionable quality of the evidence against them.

 

[katy_did]

Agreed. And as I've said before, from my point of view it might even be that AK and RS were somehow involved in the murder. But I believe that the prosecution may not have met its burden of proof for conviction of the pair - owing to the dubious and questionable quality of the evidence against them.

Yes, when I first started reading about the case (after the verdict, back in December) I thought they were guilty; now I think they're probably innocent; but either way, the important thing is whether the evidence convicted them beyond reasonable doubt. My belief in their guilt/innocence is separate from any assessment as to whether there was enough evidence to convict.

I read a comment elsewhere in which someone said that given the way the police/prosecution (mis)handled this case, either two innocent people have been locked up for 2 and a half years and counting for something they didn't do, or two murderers should walk free because the police ballsed up the investigation. I think that about covers it!

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

It will be interesting to see how the CCTV time stamp discrepancies will be addressed in the appeal. After all, if it can be shown that the time stamp was indeed 10-12 minutes slow on 2nd November 2007, then this places AK/RS's behaviour & phone calls between 12.00 and 13.00 in a whole new light.

Also, I'm intrigued by your mention of the activity on RS's computer at 12.20pm. I'm assuming that you mean 12.20pm on the afternoon of the 2nd November? Do you know whose email account was accessed? And the view of Johnsrud's Facebook page clearly suggests that it was AK who was at the computer - since RS would have no reason to even know who Johnsrud was (although I guess another possibility is that AK had looked at Johnsrud's profile some time earlier, and RS re-accessed it that lunchtime).

Yes, I mean 12:20 pm November 2, just before walking back to the cottage with Raffaele. What could she have gained by telling Filomena she was at the cottage rather than Raffaele's place? It was just a misunderstanding.

 

[katy_did]

It will be interesting to see how the CCTV time stamp discrepancies will be addressed in the appeal. After all, if it can be shown that the time stamp was indeed 10-12 minutes slow on 2nd November 2007, then this places AK/RS's behaviour & phone calls between 12.00 and 13.00 in a whole new light.

Massei actually accepted the defence position on this, after Bongiorno gave a presentation comparing the CCTV timestamps/phone records (some of Bongiorno's ideas in court were pretty ingenious, including this one - whether she was fully committed to the trial is another matter, of course!).

The report doesn't exactly reject the prosecution position directly (on anything, actually, which is quite frustrating) but what he does say is that "The postal police believed they arrived at 12.35", and follows it with "The postal police arrived shortly before 13.00" (i.e. at about 12.56-12.58, which is what Bongiorno argued).

Guess which of those facts appears on the PMF version of "Massei's Timeline"? Michael will still try and tell you it's "inconclusive".

 

[LondonJohn]

Yes, when I first started reading about the case (after the verdict, back in December) I thought they were guilty; now I think they're probably innocent; but either way, the important thing is whether the evidence convicted them beyond reasonable doubt. My belief in their guilt/innocence is separate from any assessment as to whether there was enough evidence to convict.

I read a comment elsewhere in which someone said that given the way the police/prosecution (mis)handled this case, either two innocent people have been locked up for 2 and a half years and counting for something they didn't do, or two murderers should walk free because the police ballsed up the investigation. I think that about covers it!

Absolutely. Although, there is a third option to add to the list - there may simply not have been enough evidence of guilt available for even the most professional police force to collect. I believe that this may well be part of the picture in this case, coupled with "tunnel vision" on behalf of the police and prosecutor's office to take what scant evidence there was and fit it to their predetermined scenario...

 

[LondonJohn]

Massei actually accepted the defence position on this, after Bongiorno gave a presentation comparing the CCTV timestamps/phone records (some of Bongiorno's ideas in court were pretty ingenious, including this one - whether she was fully committed to the trial is another matter, of course!).

The report doesn't exactly reject the prosecution position directly (on anything, actually, which is quite frustrating) but what he does say is that "The postal police believed they arrived at 12.35", and follows it with "The postal police arrived shortly before 13.00".

Guess which of those facts appears on the PMF version of "Massei's Timeline"? Michael will still try and tell you it's "inconclusive".

Gosh - if it was indeed established as fact in the trial that the postal police actually arrived shortly before 13.00, then I assume there will be no more nonsense posted about AK/RS disappearing to AK's room while the police were already there in order to make the 12.45-12.55 phone calls to AK's mother, RS's sister and the Carabinieri........

 

[katy_did]

Absolutely. Although, there is a third option to add to the list - there may simply not have been enough evidence of guilt available for even the most professional police force to collect. I believe that this may well be part of the picture in this case, coupled with "tunnel vision" on behalf of the police and prosecutor's office to take what scant evidence there was and fit it to their predetermined scenario...

Yes, true, although that option would probably be something like "Despite the police ballsing up the investigation, there wasn't enough evidence of guilt anyway, so their incompetence made absolutely no difference!"

I think it was also that they didn't want to wait around for the evidence that actually was there (the forensic tests) so were trying to work from very little evidence initially, and filled in the gaps with this fanciful crime narrative for which there really wasn't any basis (except some sort of amateur criminal profiling, i.e. young female rape/murder victims are often killed by someone they know). They got so far off track there was no way back once the real evidence came through.

 

[katy_did]

Gosh - if it was indeed established as fact in the trial that the postal police actually arrived shortly before 13.00, then I assume there will be no more nonsense posted about AK/RS disappearing to AK's room while the police were already there in order to make the 12.45-12.55 phone calls to AK's mother, RS's sister and the Carabinieri........

You would think.

 

[RoseMontague]

Rose I would disagree with your opinion concerning the reliability of Quintavalle and Curatolo based on news reports, partial translated appeals and forum conjecture. Those areas do not give as reliable evidence as court testimony - both questioning from the prosecution and defense and the answers given by both Quintavalle and Curatolo. Even with court testimony one can be subjective in how one interprets it, however, we have what was asked and what was answered in context and in a witnesses own words.

Fair enough, Christiana. However, a jury considers both the testimony of a witness as well as other factors including purely subjective ones. One of the factors both these witnesses have in common is they came forward late to the police and both were brought in by journalists. In Curatolo's case it is the third case he has managed to be a witness in. That is some bench he has watching the world of crime pass by as he is feeding the pigeons. Quintavalle was brought in after his TV interview which he seemed to have some difficulty remembering when questioned on the stand. Other parts of his testimony are cast in doubt by other witnesses including an employee of his and one of the police investigators. He also describes Amanda and Raffaele together in his store a week before they had even met and a year later recalls what they were wearing on that occasion as well. Curatolo can't get his times straight even with his non existent watch. Frank had an encounter with him in person that is Frankly hilarious.

The purpose of these two witnesses is to cast doubt on statements made by Amanda and Raffaele as to where they were the night of the murder and the morning after. According to me those casting doubt should first have doubt cast upon them.

Speaking Frankly, what curious timing here:

The trend is clear, but lots of suspicious clues remain against Amanda and Raffaele. Only one, though, is the proof thanks to which they were condemned: the two eyewitnesses.
If Curatolo and Quintavalle are true, indeed, that means that Amanda and Raffaele lie. It’s the indirect proof: you lie because you can’t say the truth, you can’t say the truth because the truth would convict you.
The indirect proof, the most common, the one that convicted Rudi too (it’s not enough, indeed, the presence on the crime scene to say that you did the crime. But Rudi --the courts said-- released a false version, he lies, so he’s guilty).

So, we know who the world has to thank if justice was done (for the moment). Not the police, nor the scientific police, nor the prosecution, or the judges. With their findings, with their theories, with their intuitions, with their knives and footprints, they provided lots of circumstantial evidence, but not the proof. And only the proof convicts.
The world, instead, has to thank the Giornale dell’Umbria, that worked on the witnesses and had them to remember the sighting of Amanda and Raffaele at critical times.

http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2010/06/yet-another-no-for-amanda-knox-but.html

 

[el buscador]

Hi Rose, what did you think about the rest of Frank's newest article? According to Frank there isn't a Perugian judge available for the appeals trial.

http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/

 

[RoseMontague]

Hi Rose, what did you think about the rest of Frank's newest article? According to Frank there isn't a Perugian judge available for the appeals trial.

http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/

Probably the reason for a later court date than initially anticipated. It would not surprise me if this is not pushed forward into next year. Frank is all about drama and I love his style even when I don't agree with what he has to say.