Perhaps this is not the intent of Knox supporters. All I can say is that many of them have acted in a way perfectly consistent with the scenario I have described above -- in short, like CTers, like people more concerned with winning an argument than in determining the truth. To change this perception, I'd suggest that if Knox supporters are really interested in persuading people like me, people who avoid knee-jerk responses and look beyond the superficial before making up their minds, you must jettison your usual tactics and work on devising a coherent, comprehensive, and above all plausible theory about what really happened to Ms. Kercher; a theory that encompassess all the facts without cherry picking and tossing out the inconvenient ones. If you really make a good faith effort to do this (as I did -- and recall, I was originally leaning more towards Knox's innocence than guilt), you may well find yourself questioning your own convictions and beliefs.
OK, I will take on this challenge. In my scenario, this was a disorganized, unplanned sexual homicide like hundreds that occur throughout the world every year. It happened as follows:
9:00 PM - Guede breaks the window in Filomena Romanelli’s room and uses it to gain entry, using either the planter box adjacent to the window or the bars on the downstairs window as a starting point.
9:15 PM - Guede is using the toilet in the large bathroom when Meredith arrives home. That is why it was not flushed. He did not want to alert her to his presence.
9:20 PM - Armed with a small pocketknife, Guede sneaks up on Meredith and attacks her in her room. She struggles desperately, but he overpowers her and cuts her throat.
9:25 PM - When the struggle is over, he moves her out of the pool of blood, removes most of her clothing, and assaults her sexually, leaving his epithelial DNA inside her vagina.
9:40 PM - He goes into the small bathroom where he cleans himself up. He removes his right shoe, which is soaked through with blood, and rinses it under the bidet. This is why police found the victim’s blood in the bidet. He puts his exposed foot down on the bathmat to steady himself, leaving a bloody print.
9:45 PM - He puts his shoe back on and returns to Meredith’s room, where he pulls the duvet from the bed and spreads it over her body. He goes through her purse, and he takes her money along with two cell phones that he discards on the way back to his apartment.
9:50 PM - He exits the room, locking the door behind him. He leaves bloody shoe prints inside the room and a trail of shoe prints leading down the corridor to the exit.
Under my scenario, the evidence against Amanda and Raffaele is either the result of contamination or else meaningless forensic data that would have been present even if no crime had occurred. But, if you believe this evidence means something, I would challenge you to come up with a scenario that explains it, as follows:
1. The knife from Raffaele's kitchen with Amanda's DNA on the handle and Meredith's DNA on the blade, which fits one of the wounds on Meredith's neck but not the other two.
2. The bra fastener with Raffaele's DNA on the hook.
3. The bloody footprint in the bathmat attributed to Raffaele.
4. Luminol footprints in the corridor:
- one just outside Meredith's door with the toes pointing toward that door, attributed to Amanda.
- one just outside Amanda's door, with the toes pointing toward the kitchen.
5. A shapeless luminol reaction in Filomena's room that revealed Amanda's DNA mixed with Meredith's DNA.
6. The mixed DNA of Amanda and Meredith in the bathroom and in a luminol shoe print in the hallway.
6. Inconsistencies and falsehoods in their statements to police.
This is the "mountain of evidence" in brief. Take this evidence and fit it into a plausible narrative, one that explains why the knife from Sollecito's kitchen was taken to the cottage and back, how the luminol footprints ended up in the places they were found, how Amanda's DNA came to be mixed with Meredith's DNA in the bathroom, in Filomena's room, and in the hallway shoe print. Tell us what Amanda's role was in the murder, what Raffaele's role was, and how it happened that Raffaele left his DNA on the metal hook of the bra fastener.
This narrative should also take into account the evidence against Guede:
1. Guede’s DNA inside Meredith’s body.
2. Guede’s DNA on the sleeve of Meredith's sweatshirt and on her bra.
3. Guede’s DNA on a purse inside the room where she was killed.
4. Guede’s fingerprints, made with Meredith's blood, on a pillow in the room where she was killed.
5. Bloody shoe prints in the murder room and the corridor, matching the size and model of Nike shoes for which the police found an empty box in Guede’s apartment, and which Guede has admitted he left at the scene.
6. Guede's feces in the toilet of the larger bathroom shared by Laura and Filomena.
