Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[LondonJohn]

Assumes facts not in evidence. If the door was so easily opened that a breeze could swing it ajar there is no reason to assume that someone exiting wouldn't notice.

Also, I'm a bit curious about the absence of a handle. How exactly does somebody pull the door closed without one? You did notice that it is the pull side of the door?

There may be more left to learn about the entry door.

BTW, what do you think about the piece of wood jamming the spring latch open.

The "sex game gone wrong" theory assumes facts not in evidence.......

With regard to pulling the door shut, I imagine that there may be a knob/handle of some sort further towards the centre of the door, which isn't visible in these photos. Otherwise, as you say, it would be very difficult indeed for anyone to pull the door closed from the outside. But it's equally clear that there's no turnable lever handle on the outside face of the door.

Re the wood that appears to be jamming the spring latch open: I have a fair idea. It's pretty clear that the spring latch would only be operable via the inside lever handle. Therefore, if it were allowed to latch shut, nobody would ever be able to enter the front door from the outside without assistance from someone who was already inside - regardless of whether the cylinder lock below was used or not.

So, it looks to me as if the person who installed the door furniture quickly realised he'd made a stupid mistake - i.e. without a corresponding lever handle on the exterior face of the door, nobody would ever be able to open the door from the outside without someone on the inside turning the inside lever handle to open the spring latch. And for this reason (I believe), the spring latch was wedged permanently open.

Good explanation?

 

[Fine]

A Priori Mountaineering

Still looks taller than the short-ass lawyer, who could nonetheless have gotten up (who in fact did climb up, judging from what Charlie posted earlier...?).
Completely irrelevant anyway, since the jury never said he couldn't have climbed up.

__________________________

Yes, I know Charlie said that. Charlie is mistaken, or confused. Perhaps Charlie can provide a clarification.

I hope you weren't persuaded by Kevin Lowe's naive comments: "However the manoeuvre of pulling oneself up and over a ledge is routine for amateur rock climbers, even without the opportunity to push oneself up using one's legs. As LondonJohn says..."

The gentleman pictured standing on the grate did not climb up the wall, and arrive kneeling on, or seated on, or standing on the ledge to Filomena's window (except in some people's imagination.) Not a routine action---as the gentleman came to realize--- and so without being tied into a climbing rope it would have been dangerous, and therefore foolhardy for him to have even tried to reach the ledge.

Anyone who imagines that such an action---really, a series of actions---is "routine," should show that photo of the wall to a rock climber and ask about the feasibility of climbing up to the ledge. This would be far more instructive than asking our resident non-climbers what they can---or cannot---imagine.


///

 

[LondonJohn]

__________________________

Yes, I know Charlie said that. Charlie is mistaken, or confused. Perhaps Charlie can provide a clarification.

I hope you weren't persuaded by Kevin Lowe's naive comments: "However the manoeuvre of pulling oneself up and over a ledge is routine for amateur rock climbers, even without the opportunity to push oneself up using one's legs. As LondonJohn says..."

The gentleman pictured standing on the grate did not climb up the wall, and arrive kneeling on, or seated on, or standing on the ledge to Filomena's window (except in some people's imagination.) Not a routine action---as the gentleman came to realize--- and so without being tied into a climbing rope it would have been dangerous, and therefore foolhardy for him to have even tried to reach the ledge.

Anyone who imagines that such an action---really, a series of actions---is "routine," should show that photo of the wall to a rock climber and ask about the feasibility of climbing up to the ledge. This would be far more instructive than asking our resident non-climbers what they can---or cannot---imagine.


///

I wonder how anyone in history has managed to scale a 6ft brick wall? Because that seems pretty analogous to the "feat of mountain climbing" required to get up to Filomena's window ledge from a position on the grate of the window below. I'm sure I could find a video of a person (who's not a champion free-climber) scaling a 6ft high brick wall. I'm sure that's not in my imagination.

 

[Amazer]

I wonder how anyone in history has managed to scale a 6ft brick wall? Because that seems pretty analogous to the "feat of mountain climbing" required to get up to Filomena's window ledge from a position on the grate of the window below. I'm sure I could find a video of a person (who's not a champion free-climber) scaling a 6ft high brick wall. I'm sure that's not in my imagination.

I'm not claiming that the wall can't be scaled. I confident that it can be. I'm equally confident that climbing the wall and leaving evidence as it was found at the scene are incompatible.

 

[LondonJohn]

I'm not claiming that the wall can't be scaled. I confident that it can be. I'm equally confident that climbing the wall and leaving evidence as it was found at the scene are incompatible.

Oh right, sorry. I thought you were suggesting that it couldn't physically be done by someone who wasn't a fairly decent mountain climber. I didn't realise that you meant it could be done, but that it would leave evidence which wasn't found. My mistake.

 

[quadraginta]

The "sex game gone wrong" theory assumes facts not in evidence.......

With regard to pulling the door shut, I imagine that there may be a knob/handle of some sort further towards the centre of the door, which isn't visible in these photos. Otherwise, as you say, it would be very difficult indeed for anyone to pull the door closed from the outside. But it's equally clear that there's no turnable lever handle on the outside face of the door.

Re the wood that appears to be jamming the spring latch open: I have a fair idea. It's pretty clear that the spring latch would only be operable via the inside lever handle. Therefore, if it were allowed to latch shut, nobody would ever be able to enter the front door from the outside without assistance from someone who was already inside - regardless of whether the cylinder lock below was used or not.

So, it looks to me as if the person who installed the door furniture quickly realised he'd made a stupid mistake - i.e. without a corresponding lever handle on the exterior face of the door, nobody would ever be able to open the door from the outside without someone on the inside turning the inside lever handle to open the spring latch. And for this reason (I believe), the spring latch was wedged permanently open.

Good explanation?

Not really.

I've seen just about every screw-up in installing door hardware that can be envisioned by the human mind, and more than a few that hadn't been, at least until they happened.

I've never seen anyone accidentally purchase and install a residential entry door mortise lockset and not notice that there was only one handle to the assembly until they were finished.

There have been many rather dubious stretches of probability to account for things in this thread, but that one is almost in a class by itself.

Note that the face of the door without the handle is an unblemished surface. This suggests that either the door leaf was factory prepped to accept a lock assembly with only one handle, or that the installer did the prep. I can say with great certainty that anyone who is competent to prep a blank door leaf for a mortise lockset is very unlikely to be as incompetent as you surmise. It requires a high level of skill and ability, a fair amount of practice, and a deep familiarity with both the hardware being installed and a good number of tools.

I spent a little time trying to track down that particular model of lockset. I'm pretty familiar with most of Corbin's products, but I haven't run into that one, and I haven't found it on the web yet. It may be one that is in more general use in Europe, or perhaps just Italy, but not the U.S.

What I was trying to find out is if the spring latch was operated in conjunction with the deadbolt from the outside cylinder. This could be a security function designed to compel 'key entry only' from the outside, but obviously the inconvenience would prompt users to defeat the system in just such a fashion as we are seeing after they locked themselves out a few times.

This is not a very appropriate configuration for a residential entry door. In the past a similar sort of configuration, albeit with handles on both sides, the pull side inoperable, (one of the permutations of a "storeroom" lockset) could be found on some mechanical room doors, most often in buildings with rooftop mechanical rooms which opened onto an accessible roof. They had less in the way of such lock-out issues because the people who went out onto the roofs through those rooms were usually service personnel with their keys strapped to their belts, but they have been discouraged by most modern fire codes.

The thing is, if that is the state that the spring latch was in when the crime occurred it would mean that there isn't any 'little bit' or 'occasional' about the door not latching. It would never latch, at all, and that would probably be quite obvious to anyone using the door. At best it might 'snug' shut by friction against the frame, but we have reason to believe such friction would be minimal, since we have been told that only a breeze was needed to swing it open.

 

[Mrs.Columbo]

Rudy's bank account

Can anyone tell me, if Rudy's bank account was checked - had he sufficient money or was he short of cash or in debt?
I do not remember reading something about this. Only one time I think a friend wired him some money to germany (??)
Had he had some sort of regular earnings?

Thanks

 

[LondonJohn]

Can anyone tell me, if Rudy's bank account was checked - had he sufficient money or was he short of cash or in debt?
I do not remember reading something about this. Only one time I think a friend wired him some money to germany (??)
Had he had some sort of regular earnings?

Thanks

He may of course have had sources of cash-in-hand earnings as well...........

 

[christianahannah]

Assumes facts not in evidence. If the door was so easily opened that a breeze could swing it ajar there is no reason to assume that someone exiting wouldn't notice.

Also, I'm a bit curious about the absence of a handle. How exactly does somebody pull the door closed without one? You did notice that it is the pull side of the door?

There may be more left to learn about the entry door.

BTW, what do you think about the piece of wood jamming the spring latch open.

A photo from PMF showing a new lock on the door with the outside pull handle located in the middle of the door. I assume this is the same door absent the old lock.

http://perugiamurderfile.org/gallery/image_page.php?album_id=13&image_id=1364

If you view photo 3 that Charlie posted you can see something blurry in the middle of the door on the right side which could be the same door pull in the photo above.

 

[Fine]

I wonder how anyone in history has managed to scale a 6ft brick wall? Because that seems pretty analogous to the "feat of mountain climbing" required to get up to Filomena's window ledge from a position on the grate of the window below. I'm sure I could find a video of a person (who's not a champion free-climber) scaling a 6ft high brick wall. I'm sure that's not in my imagination.

_________________

Sure they do it LondonJohn. They use their feet, contrary to the evidence and contrary to Kevin Lowe's imagined scenario: "However the manoeuvre of pulling oneself up and over a ledge is routine for amateur rock climbers, even without the opportunity to push oneself up using one's legs."
I'd like nothing more than to be proved wrong here, but using just your arms to reach a ledge with the narrow width and depth of Filomena's ledge would be astounding. I say that as an experienced rock climber. And as I mentioned in my last post it would be dangerous, too.... yet another reason to make this scenario unlikely. (Or was the LONE WOLF also a daredevil?)

By the way, there are many great rock climbing videos on You Tube.

///

 

[LondonJohn]

Not really.

I've seen just about every screw-up in installing door hardware that can be envisioned by the human mind, and more than a few that hadn't been, at least until they happened.

I've never seen anyone accidentally purchase and install a residential entry door mortise lockset and not notice that there was only one handle to the assembly until they were finished.

There have been many rather dubious stretches of probability to account for things in this thread, but that one is almost in a class by itself.

Note that the face of the door without the handle is an unblemished surface. This suggests that either the door leaf was factory prepped to accept a lock assembly with only one handle, or that the installer did the prep. I can say with great certainty that anyone who is competent to prep a blank door leaf for a mortise lockset is very unlikely to be as incompetent as you surmise. It requires a high level of skill and ability, a fair amount of practice, and a deep familiarity with both the hardware being installed and a good number of tools.

I spent a little time trying to track down that particular model of lockset. I'm pretty familiar with most of Corbin's products, but I haven't run into that one, and I haven't found it on the web yet. It may be one that is in more general use in Europe, or perhaps just Italy, but not the U.S.

What I was trying to find out is if the spring latch was operated in conjunction with the deadbolt from the outside cylinder. This could be a security function designed to compel 'key entry only' from the outside, but obviously the inconvenience would prompt users to defeat the system in just such a fashion as we are seeing after they locked themselves out a few times.

This is not a very appropriate configuration for a residential entry door. In the past a similar sort of configuration, albeit with handles on both sides, the pull side inoperable, (one of the permutations of a "storeroom" lockset) could be found on some mechanical room doors, most often in buildings with rooftop mechanical rooms which opened onto an accessible roof. They had less in the way of such lock-out issues because the people who went out onto the roofs through those rooms were usually service personnel with their keys strapped to their belts, but they have been discouraged by most modern fire codes.

The thing is, if that is the state that the spring latch was in when the crime occurred it would mean that there isn't any 'little bit' or 'occasional' about the door not latching. It would never latch, at all, and that would probably be quite obvious to anyone using the door. At best it might 'snug' shut by friction against the frame, but we have reason to believe such friction would be minimal, since we have been told that only a breeze was needed to swing it open.

Umm... my comments about incorrect installation extend to the choice of door in the first place. I, like you, also think it possible that the door was bought with the latch/lever furniture already either prepped or installed. I didn't mean to suggest that a locksmith actually went to all the trouble of drilling, chiselling and fitting a single-sided lever-operated latch, then went "d'oh!". And I wouldn't want to upset the locksmiths' union.

 

[LondonJohn]

_________________

Sure they do it LondonJohn. They use their feet, contrary to the evidence and contrary to Kevin Lowe's imagined scenario: "However the manoeuvre of pulling oneself up and over a ledge is routine for amateur rock climbers, even without the opportunity to push oneself up using one's legs."
I'd like nothing more than to be proved wrong here, but using just your arms to reach a ledge with the narrow width and depth of Filomena's ledge would be astounding. I say that as an experienced rock climber. And as I mentioned in my last post it would be dangerous, too.... yet another reason to make this scenario unlikely. (Or was the LONE WOLF also a daredevil?)

By the way, their are many great rock climbing videos on You Tube.

///

So why couldn't somebody have made the climb from the lower window grate (foothold) to the upper window sill (handhold) by supplementing their arm pull with a leg push? I wasn't the one who suggested it could be done "even without the opportunity to push oneself up using one's legs" - so I think you maybe should be replying to that person rather than to me...?

 

[quadraginta]

A photo from PMF showing a new lock on the door with the outside pull handle located in the middle of the door. I assume this is the same door absent the old lock.

http://perugiamurderfile.org/gallery/image_page.php?album_id=13&image_id=1364

If you view photo 3 that Charlie posted you can see something blurry in the middle of the door on the right side which could be the same door pull in the photo above.

Thanks.

That's sort of what I expected. Curious. I wonder if it is an aesthetic thing?

Is that a folded back security grate hanging to the left of the door? Was it installed at the time of the crime?

 

[RoseMontague]

The comments regarding LCN and the bra clasp are on page 9 of the Sollecito appeal:

9
Sulla base della documentazione scientifica in possesso dell’accusa sin dalle
indagini preliminari, ma depositata nel fascicolo processuale solo in data 30
luglio 2009, anche se non è consentito stabilire con certezza il dato quantitativo
del materiale rinvenuto sul gancetto del reggiseno, è possibile dimostrare che si
tratti di low copy number e, cioè, di una situazione in cui i risultati ottenuti
dall’amplificazione non sono affidabili e devono essere accertati da
amplificazione e interpretati nel rispetto delle Raccomandazioni della Società
Internazionale di Genetica Forense. Ciò che, nel caso di specie non è avvenuto,
imponendo di concludere per l’inutilizzabilità dei risultati riferiti dalla polizia
scientifica.
Le indagini compiute sulla traccia 165B e che hanno portato alla identificazione
di un profilo genetico del cromosoma Y analogo a quello di Raffaele Sollecito,
secondo quanto dimostrato dal Prof. Tagliabracci, presentano limiti analoghi di
affidabilità riscontrati nell’accertamento elettroforetico compiuto dalla polizia
scientifica. Anche il risultato relativo all’aplotipo Y, infatti, non è utilizzabile in
considerazione della mancata conferma del risultato mediante un’ulteriore
amplificazione, come prescritto dalle raccomandazioni scientifiche in caso di low
copy number.
La rapida panoramica dei numerosissimi errori compiutamente
documentati nella consulenza tecnica del Prof. Tagliabracci dimostra che la
Corte, negando la perizia, è caduta in errore.

 

[quadraginta]

Umm... my comments about incorrect installation extend to the choice of door in the first place. I, like you, also think it possible that the door was bought with the latch/lever furniture already either prepped or installed. I didn't mean to suggest that a locksmith actually went to all the trouble of drilling, chiselling and fitting a single-sided lever-operated latch, then went "d'oh!". And I wouldn't want to upset the locksmiths' union.

Sorry. That wasn't apparent from the way you phrased this,

<snip>

So, it looks to me as if the person who installed the door furniture quickly realised he'd made a stupid mistake -

<snip>

I would never expect that door to come with the hardware factory installed. That would probably only occur with pre-hung doors (door and frame assembled complete) and only with the most uber-cheap of those. Even then it's fairly rare, would be for interior doors, and would require a massive amount of common applications. Hundreds per order, probably.

Lock prep is pretty standardized as far as mortising is concerned, with hardware application requiring/providing so many different possible permutations that it generally isn't cost effective to pre-install it. Unlike the door/frame prep itself, very little time or money saving is achieved by pre-installing hardware, especially when compared to the possibility of damaging finishes in handling.

Unless this type of facade is very common in Italy even the door prep for that particular door is not likely to be factory done. The more probable route would be to sell a standard prep and offer an escutcheon plate to trim out the unused handle penetration.

I suspect that someone was trying to achieve an aesthetic effect with that hardware configuration, and didn't think out the likely consequences of use by student tenants. Perhaps the unit wasn't always rental.

It really doesn't matter. To me the more important thing is that the spring latch may have been purposely defeated. I was more willing (not much more) to contemplate the likelihood of someone leaving without locking the door after the murder when it was possible that the door might seem to be latched, but this is not as likely if the latch was completely disabled.

 

[katy_did]

What was the mystery again?

Hi HB. Well, Fulcanelli and I had a discussion back in February (and on and off since) about the front door of the cottage, and whether you'd need to use a key to open it from the inside - something which would obviously be very significant since it would mean if the murderer were a non-resident he'd need to take Meredith's keys to leave the house, or he'd be locked inside. That would mean Guede had a much stronger motive for taking the keys than AK/RS; locking Meredith's bedroom door was probably just an afterthought in that scenario, since he had all Meredith's keys anyway (including those to the downstairs flat).

I argued you probably would need the keys, since the door was always described by AK as needing to be "locked with a key", but we didn't know for sure till the photos from Charlie - hence, mystery solved! I think the front door issue and the need for Guede to take the keys to get out of the house is part of RS's appeal, too (I'm really not sure why they didn't pick up on that during the initial trial, though...)

 

[katy_did]

Photo "....02" shows the exterior side of the door. There's no lever handle. So in my view this lends considerable weight to the opinion that whoever closed the front door assumed (incorrectly) that it would lock shut (i.e. be unable to be opened from the outside without a key). Therefore, whoever shut the door behind them would have felt no need to lock the door further with the key (which would have wasted time and increased the risk of being spotted by a passer-by).

Nice catch, LJ. Yeah, the front door really doesn't look from the outside as if you'd need to lock it, with that odd pull handle in the middle of the door. Not to mention, as you say, the risk of lingering at the cottage door in full view of anyone walking past the gate (I bet he only just missed the people in the broken down car as it is...)

 

[quadraginta]

Hi HB. Well, Fulcanelli and I had a discussion back in February (and on and off since) about the front door of the cottage, and whether you'd need to use a key to open it from the inside - something which would obviously be very significant since it would mean if the murderer were a non-resident he'd need to take Meredith's keys to leave the house, or he'd be locked inside. That would mean Guede had a much stronger motive for taking the keys than AK/RS; locking Meredith's bedroom door was probably just an afterthought in that scenario, since he had all Meredith's keys anyway (including those to the downstairs flat).

I argued you probably would need the keys, since the door was always described by AK as needing to be "locked with a key", but we didn't know for sure till the photos from Charlie - hence, mystery solved! I think the front door issue and the need for Guede to take the keys to get out of the house is part of RS's appeal, too (I'm really not sure why they didn't pick up on that during the initial trial, though...)

If he didn't need keys to get in, why would he need keys to get out?

 

[katy_did]

The comments regarding LCN and the bra clasp are on page 9 of the Sollecito appeal:

Coincidentally I just translated that bit. I get the impression that this section is maybe just a summary of a report from Tagliabracci which is attached to the appeal? Either that or they go into it a bit later on (I'm only up to page 9/281 so far...):

On the basis of scientific documentation in possession of the prosecution since the preliminary investigation but only deposited in the case file on July 30 2009, even if it is not possible to determine with certainty the quantity of material found on the bra clasp, it is possible to demonstrate that one is dealing with low copy number, that is, a situation in which the results obtained by amplification are not reliable and must be verified by amplification and interpretation in accordance with the recommendations of the International Society of Forensic Genetics. In this case this did not happen, forcing us to a conclusion of the unusability of the results reported by the Scientific Police.

As demonstrated by Prof. Tagliabracci, the investigations carried out on trace 165B which led to the identification of a genetic profile on the Y chromosome similar to that of Raffaele Sollecito have similar limitations in reliability to those encountered in the electrophoretic investigation carried out by the Scientific Police. The result for the Y haplotype is not usable due to the lack of confirmation of the results by means of further amplification, as is prescribed by the scientific guidelines in cases of low copy number.

This quick overview of the numerous computative errors documented in the technical advice of Prof. Tagliabracci demonstrates that the Court, in ignoring this expertise, has fallen into error.

Hopefully that's accurate - it gets tricky when I don't even understand what it means in English...!

 

[katy_did]

If he didn't need keys to get in, why would he need keys to get out?

'Cos he broke in through the window.