Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kevin_Lowe]

Sure. I don't understand why it is difficult for you to grasp that I am not attempting to fabricate a narrative for the courtroom.

Are you ready to agree that if we are going to discuss only the propriety (or "safety", as LJ would say) of the verdict then we must only offer evidence and argument as it was presented in the courtroom ... to the jury (or judges)? This applies to both guilt or innocence.

This is the second time you have asserted this nonsensical "rule", and the second time I've had to explain to you that it's rubbish.

As I've already explained to you, I am not particularly interested in whether AK and RS should have been convicted by the evidence presented in court as it was presented in court. I'm interested in whether AK and RS should have been convicted according to the best available knowledge of the affair that we have today. I've never been the least bit unclear about this.

You can insist until you are blue in the face that I have to do it your way, but it won't achieve anything.

The instant you bring up anything else then the topic becomes one of the likelihood of actual guilt or innocence, which is not the same thing.

You still insist on trying to have it both ways. Suggestions of possible guilt judged by some caricature of courtroom standards, but suggestions of innocence open to any hypotheses of what might be "possible".

This is also the second time that you've labelled the search for a proper trial result as "having it both ways". Please stop repeating this nonsense.

I realise it may be a lot more fun to make up your own personal theories and express your own personal opinion about every issue related to the case, and that it spoils a lot of the fun to discard all the theories and opinions that don't rise to the level of proof beyond reasonable doubt, but nobody is under any kind in obligation to facilitate you having that kind of fun with this murder case.

You mean people sometimes LIE on the internet? I had no idea. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. And again, thanks for the warm welcome, even though I might just be a dissembler partial to "non-mainstream theories".

If you don't like the answer you are going to get, you have the option of not asking the question. Since you asked why I assumed you were an immigrant from PMF, I answered. (I didn't know at the time I made that remark that you had never posted on any topic here other than the Kercher murder, but that would also have informed my assumption had I known).

And who decides if this evidence has been "properly" collected and interpreted?

Yes, scientific studies which can only ever show that a null hypothesis has been disproved withn a margin of statistical significance. All you have are probabilities.

In the first instance peer-review decides whether evidence has been "properly" collected and interpreted, however people with relevant knowledge or expertise can also make this judgment.

As for the remark about "all you have are probabilities", that demonstrates a kind of epistemological confusion about why we do science in the first place. All we ever have in this life are probabilities, outside the realms of mathematics and formal logic. However rational people take the "mere probabilities" found by science to be much, much more powerful evidence than the mere opinions expressed by anonymous internet posters.

Maybe, but I think that is quite unlikely.

I am somewhat mystified why so many people either implicitly or explicitly maintain that taking a bathroom break while in the midst of committing a burglary is a routine occurrence.

Nobody ever said it was routine, so you are attacking a straw man with an argument from incredulity. We merely showed you evidence to prove that it's not terribly unusual, hence the fact that it happened is in no way a problem for the defence. People like Rudy leave their stools at a crime scene every now and then. It's weird but it's demonstrated fact that they do it.

This is a recurring theme in amateur attempts to "prove" AK and RS are guilty. People pick one mildly abnormal aspect of the evidence, and then exaggerate how unusual it is. ("Oh my, would a burglar ever not flush? I don't think so! Do you think you would call Meredith's phones in that order? No way! Could anyone ever use the bathroom slightly further away rather than the one slightly closer, if they didn't know the layout of the house well? The idea is obviously crazy!").

Then they stack these exaggerated claims together and say "They are obviously guilty... I mean, what are the odds that the burglar wouldn't flush and Amanda called the phones in that order and a burglar would use that bathroom? The inconsistencies in the defence story keep piling up!".

This is why Quadraginta got tired of me calling people out on the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, yet was conspicuously unable to find an instance of me calling people out on it when they were not doing so. The standard guilter approach is the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, with a healthy dollop of argument from incredulity added to each individual piece of evidence.

The first step in a rational approach to the problem is to throw out all the "evidence" which isn't actually relevant to their guilt or innocence of Meredith's murder, then throw out all the evidence that doesn't get past the level of proof beyond reasonable doubt. Then you see what's left - which gets you to things like the DNA evidence, the footprint evidence (such as it is), the bloodstains in the murder room and so on.

 

[odeed]

It is indeed. We do indeed now know that false negatives to presumptive blood tests can occur a) when there has been fire damage at the crime scene, and b) when reducing agents (such as vinegar or lemon juice) have been added to the blood under examination. Thank you for bringing these special situations to our collective attention.

Under all other circumstances, a negative chromiluminescence test for blood means that a DNA test will also show negative, and therefore need not be conducted. And, unsurprisingly, the evidence in the Kercher case all falls into this "all other circumstances" bracket.

For some reason during this discussion about bleach and presumptive tests, both you and halides1 got my mind set into sodium hypochlorite (chlorine) bleach, but I totally forgot if it was ever established if Sollecito had chlorine bleach in his apartment, or was it laundry detergent as of this discussion.

If it is, then it would contain hydrogen peroxide and other ingredients, including perfume, surfactants^WP, and EDTA^WP I think, maybe one or two of those ingredients could inhibit a presumptive blood test, but that is pure speculation on my part.

 

[Bruce Fischer]

Here is some information regarding sloppy evidence collection procedures and contamination of key pieces of evidence. The link below discusses;

1. Contamination on Gloves and Improper Use of Collection Swabs

2. Evidence Collected From the Floor Was Severely Compromised.
...
3. The Truth About the Bra Clasp. 47 Days is a Long Time

4. Did Giuliano Mignini Contribute to the Contamination of Evidence?

5. Articles Detailing Forensic DNA Contamination By Chris Halkides

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

 

[BobTheDonkey]

Here is some information regarding sloppy evidence collection procedures and contamination of key pieces of evidence. The link below discusses;

1. Contamination on Gloves and Improper Use of Collection Swabs

2. Evidence Collected From the Floor Was Severely Compromised.
...
3. The Truth About the Bra Clasp. 47 Days is a Long Time

4. Did Giuliano Mignini Contribute to the Contamination of Evidence?

5. Articles Detailing Forensic DNA Contamination By Chris Halkides

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

Wasn't Meredith's sweatshirt (and purse, I believe) also collected on the same day as the clasp? And, yet, the results of testing of the sweatshirt are not disputed. In fact, your favorite not-so-DNA-qualified scientist, Chris Halkides, has multiple times argued that the results of the sweatshirt testing is evidence that Raffaele and Amanda were not involved.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Here is some information regarding sloppy evidence collection procedures and contamination of key pieces of evidence. The link below discusses;

1. Contamination on Gloves and Improper Use of Collection Swabs

2. Evidence Collected From the Floor Was Severely Compromised.
...
3. The Truth About the Bra Clasp. 47 Days is a Long Time

4. Did Giuliano Mignini Contribute to the Contamination of Evidence?

5. Articles Detailing Forensic DNA Contamination By Chris Halkides

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

Having looked at those photos of how the bra clasp was handled, I really struggle to see how any informed person could argue that there wasn't ample scope for contamination by RS's DNA long after the murder. I think I'm going to definitively cross that bra clasp off the list of possibly relevant evidence items in my own mind having seen that.

That leaves the alleged positive result for Meredith's DNA on the kitchen knife as the only thing resembling decent evidence against AK and RS, and that has really serious problems too (the inability to replicate the result, the fact that there was no blood on the knife, and the lab refusing to hand over their raw data and logs).

I also wonder how people can swallow the whale of an absolutely unprecedented three-way rape plot by relative strangers turning into a murder that leaves no traces, which a prosecutor correctly divined at first glance and then was miraculously proven correct about, yet strain at gnats like the order in which phone calls were made or a housebreaker's choice of bathroom. To me it's like believing that the sound of hoofbeats you heard was made by a zebra unicorn, because the alternative hypothesis is a donkey with a straw hat, and whoever heard of donkeys wearing hats?

("I've seen a few donkeys, and let me tell you none of them wore hats. I challenge you to cite a scientific paper that shows what percentage of donkeys wear straw hats! How did it put the hat on, with its hooves? Don't you think that if donkeys could wear hats the defence would have brought this up? I give up, no amount of evidence will convince you that it was really a zebra unicorn, you're just irrational").

 

[LondonJohn]

Wasn't Meredith's sweatshirt (and purse, I believe) also collected on the same day as the clasp? And, yet, the results of testing of the sweatshirt are not disputed. In fact, your favorite not-so-DNA-qualified scientist, Chris Halkides, has multiple times argued that the results of the sweatshirt testing is evidence that Raffaele and Amanda were not involved.

A straw man of sheer beauty!

Firstly, the sweatshirt may well be subject to contamination. But it's what wasn't found on it that's more important than what was found. None of either Knox or Sollecito's DNA was found on it. And if Meredith had been wearing the sweatshirt at the beginning of the attack as described by the prosecution, then DNA from all three should most likely have been deposited on it.

But, likewise, if Meredith wasn't wearing the sweatshirt, then (if the prosecution scenario is to be accepted) Knox, Sollecito and Guede's DNA should have most likely been found on Meredith's wrists, forearms and neck. But these areas appear not to have been properly swabbed for evidence by the police. Why not?

 

[LondonJohn]

Something occurs to me about cellphone location analysis:

It's possible to get a general (but crude) idea of where a cellphone is geographically located by establishing which cell (base station) it is connected to. This has been cited many times in the Kercher case, as a means of placing certain phones in certain (rough) locations.

However, the GSM network system protocol allows for a far more sophisticated - and accurate - means of determining location. A cellphone periodically sends out an identifier ping in order to establish a) that it is turned on, and b) its presence to nearby base stations. This ping is often (and "often" turns to "usually" in urban areas) picked up by more than one base station in the vicinity. The network then selects one base station to serve as the base station for that particular cellphone. This selection is usually based on relative amplitude of the ping - i.e. the base station which hears the strongest/loudest ping is the one selected for that cellphone. But other factors can also affect the selection, including relative congestion of each base station (e.g. if the nearest base station has all (or most) of its available channels already occupied by other users, a more distant base station may be used).

So, the mobile phone networks maintain records of pings which (among other things) show cellphone identifiers and relative amplitude of the pings. From this information, it is entirely possible to analyse relative amplitudes of pings, and triangulate the results to give a pretty accurate reading of where the cellphone was located at the time it sent out each particular ping*.

I wonder if the defence teams have asked the mobile phone network operators for more detailed information of the pings sent out by the relevant cellphones on the 1st and 2nd November 2007? That information might not even be saved after such a long time, of course. But if it were still available, a decent network analyst would fairly easily be able to locate the relevant phones' positions with a much higher degree of accuracy than currently appears to be the case.

* As a simplified example of this (using one dimension rather than two), imagine if a cellphone was located somewhere on a straight line between two base stations. Imagine that the phone sent a ping that was picked up by both base stations. Imagine that Base Station A heard a ping that was four times as "loud" as that heard by Base Station B. Amplitude analysis would suggest that if the phone was "x" distance away from Base Station A, it was "2x" distance away from Base Station B (2x rather than 4x because amplitude is related to the square of the distance, and not therefore a straight linear relationship). So one could deduce that the cellphone was positioned at 1/3 of the distance between A and B (such that the distance from cellphone to B was twice the distance from cellphone to B).

 

[LondonJohn]

Every male has a unique Y haplotype, (at least to all intents and purposes).

Unless it's his brother.

But my initial statement (in bold italics) still stands. Because the qualifier in brackets renders the word "unique" subject to any interpretation I care to place upon it. It's not that I was wrong in my initial statement.

 

[Fuji]

I do indeed seem to have completely failed to grasp your argument.......

By the way, please can you refer me to the part in my argument where I compared a burglar's state of anxiety to the terror and antelope feels when chased by a lion? That analogy (read back) was to argue that these types of feelings do not necessarily significantly diminish after a number of events which elicit that fear. My quote, just to recap, was:

"Why might Guede's previous (alleged) experience of burglary greatly diminish any heightened sense of fear/anxiety during this break-and-enter? Do antelope which are being chased by lions experience any less fear on account of the herd having been chased by lions previously?"

Please could you indicate to me where I suggest that the level of fear felt by the antelope in my analogy is equivalent to the level of fear/anxiety felt by a burglar as he enters a property?

Let's recap.

In this post, you say:

"I believe that some criminal psychologists interpret this defecation phenomenon as a complex combination of "territory marking" and a psycho-physiological response to heightened anxiety/fear. There are very, very few nonchalant burglars. Most of them (backed up by studies and post-arrest interviews) are something between very nervous and terrified while they are actually committing the crime."

I replied by saying:

"So the experienced burglar is having a panic-induced colon blowout?"

To which you replied:

"Why might Guede's previous (alleged) experience of burglary greatly diminish any heightened sense of fear/anxiety during this break-and-enter? Do antelope which are being chased by lions experience any less fear on account of the herd having been chased by lions previously?"


Your initial post in this exchange referred to a physiological response to burglary-related anxiety. You were the first one to bring this up. You used the formulations "very, very few nonchalant burglars", "most of them", and
"between very nervous and terrified" to imply that it is quite common for burglars to experience severe gastric distress during break-ins. In your subsequent post, you make referrence to lions hunting antelopes. It is reasonable to infer from context that you were comparing the terror of hunted prey to the "terror" of an apprehensive burglar.

If you are now disavowing that perceived implication, that is fine with me. I agree that it is most unlikely that any burgalrs experience anywhere near the terror that an antelope fleeing a lion would feel. Which, of course, helps support my assertion that Rudy did not leave a fear-induced deuce at the scene.

 

[Fuji]

If you don't like the answer you are going to get, you have the option of not asking the question. Since you asked why I assumed you were an immigrant from PMF, I answered. (I didn't know at the time I made that remark that you had never posted on any topic here other than the Kercher murder, but that would also have informed my assumption had I known).

How would I know that I wouldn't like that answer I was going to get?

And how do you know that I in fact don't like the answer?

You are very quick to make assumptions.

In the first instance peer-review decides whether evidence has been "properly" collected and interpreted, however people with relevant knowledge or expertise can also make this judgment.

I am a big fan of the peer review process. May I see the peer-reviewed study which has conclusively determined within a margin of statistical significance that AK & RS are innocent of this crime? Thanks in advance.

As for the remark about "all you have are probabilities", that demonstrates a kind of epistemological confusion about why we do science in the first place.

Please tell me - why do we do science in the first place?

All we ever have in this life are probabilities, outside the realms of mathematics and formal logic. However rational people take the "mere probabilities" found by science to be much, much more powerful evidence than the mere opinions expressed by anonymous internet posters.

Again, I'm still waiting on that scientific report confirming AK's & RS's innocence. I'm well aware of the conclusions of purported experts in this case in regards to individual pieces of evidence, but I have yet to see one in regards to the overall case. Peer-reviewed, of course.

Nobody ever said it was routine, so you are attacking a straw man with an argument from incredulity.

Not true. LondonJohn has implied as such.

We merely showed you evidence to prove that it's not terribly unusual, hence the fact that it happened is in no way a problem for the defence. People like Rudy leave their stools at a crime scene every now and then. It's weird but it's demonstrated fact that they do it.

Actually, you've done no such thing. I have not been presented with any evidence by LondonJohn, Supernaut, Kestrel, or yourself in regards to the frequency of burglar defecations. Only hand-waving and lame allusions to Google search results. I thought you were a big believer in peer-reviewed studies?

This is a recurring theme in amateur attempts to "prove" AK and RS are guilty. People pick one mildly abnormal aspect of the evidence, and then exaggerate how unusual it is... Then they stack these exaggerated claims together... The standard guilter approach is the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, with a healthy dollop of argument from incredulity added to each individual piece of evidence.

Who are you to determine how "mildly abnormal" or "exaggerated" certain items of evidence are? In the case of my defecation argument, you have only asserted, not demonstrated, "People like Rudy leave their stools at a crime scene every now and then. It's weird but it's demonstrated fact that they do it." To be fair, I have not presented any studies supporting my argument, either, but at least I am willing to enumerate the reasons why I hold my belief. You and your debating partners have not done so for your argument.

The first step in a rational approach to the problem is to throw out all the "evidence" which isn't actually relevant to their guilt or innocence of Meredith's murder, then throw out all the evidence that doesn't get past the level of proof beyond reasonable doubt.

No, the first step in a rational approach to the problem is to not throw out any evidence.

Wikipedia states that the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy is:

"a logical fallacy in which information that has no relationship is interpreted or manipulated until it appears to have meaning"

When you discard items of evidence, such as Rudy's stool, because you assume that have no significance, you are committing the logical fallacy known as Begging the Question.

Furthermore, by simply discarding as having no probative value any item of evidence which does not rise to your standard of reasonable doubt, you are also committing another logical fallacy, the Perfect Solution Fallacy.

 

[Fuji]

I also wonder how people can swallow the whale of an absolutely unprecedented three-way rape plot by relative strangers turning into a murder that leaves no traces, which a prosecutor correctly divined at first glance and then was miraculously proven correct about, yet strain at gnats like the order in which phone calls were made or a housebreaker's choice of bathroom. To me it's like believing that the sound of hoofbeats you heard was made by a zebra unicorn, because the alternative hypothesis is a donkey with a straw hat, and whoever heard of donkeys wearing hats?

And I wonder how some people remain utterly convinced of the innocence of a suspect (AK) in a case where:

- the victim is found in a locked room in the suspect's house
- the suspect is found at the scene of the crime
- there is no credible sign of forced entry
- a burgalry has been staged, presumably to misdirect investigators
- the suspect has repeatedly lied to the investigation about her whereabouts and actions on the night of the murder and subsequent morning
- the suspect has no independently confirmed alibi
- the suspect falsely accuses another man of the crime while placing herself at the scene
- the suspect claims amnesia or confusion for much of the time-scale of events on the night of the murder, yet has excellent recall for many other events outside of the critical time frame
- the suspect's behavior and affect in the days following the murder were enough outside the range of normal experience as to raise the suspicions of friends of the victim, as well as investigators

It takes all kinds, I guess.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

sweatshirt

Wasn't Meredith's sweatshirt (and purse, I believe) also collected on the same day as the clasp? And, yet, the results of testing of the sweatshirt are not disputed. In fact, your favorite not-so-DNA-qualified scientist, Chris Halkides, has multiple times argued that the results of the sweatshirt testing is evidence that Raffaele and Amanda were not involved.

BobTheDonkey,

Let me restate my beliefs. I have never seen the electropherograms used in Rudy Guede's trial. Until I do, I cannot make final statements about the quality of the data. I have not seen films of the collection of the sweatshirt, but I have seen how the bra clasp was handled; therefore, the same caveat applies here as above. I agree that any piece of evidence not taken immediately into custody is problematic.

When skin to skin contact is strong enough to strangle someone, restrain them, or to leave bruises, I would expect to find DNA. Probably the same would hold for skin to clothing. The lack of reports of DNA on Meredith's neck or skin mean that either these areas were not tested or they were tested and found to be negative. If they were tested and found to be negative of DNA, such a result would fall into the category of exculpatory evidence. DNA on Meredith's sleeve might or might not arise from the time of the struggle. One can also imagine it arising from someone disrobing her after she was stabbed.

If they were not tested, it might be because the amount of blood made it impossible to do so. However, it is difficult to see how this could be true for the nape of the neck, where some bruising was found, IIRC. If the areas were not tested, no conclusions with respect to the defendants can be drawn.

 

[Dan O.]

That question applies no matter who left the print. I would suppose that the blood was on the upper part of the shoe rather than the sole.

Most probable is that the blood was on his pant leg and he tried to rinse that off in the bidet. I recall reading that Rudy had made a statement that his pants were soaked in blood and kneeling beside Meredith in the pool of blood would have caused this. The shoe would have been removed before attempting to rinse the pants and the sock would then saturate with a blood/water mix. One of the bloody footprints shows a drip/splatter in addition to the imprint of the shoe. This would be consistent with Rudy's pants being dripping wet with bloody water as Rudy is leaving the cottage.

 

[katy_did]

There seems to be some sort of folding security grate (similar to what might be found on a downtown storefront) stored to the left side of the door. I have not picked out any sort of roller mechanism which is related to the hardware installed in the door leaf.

I think those grooves in the door frame may actually be part of the locking mechanism. I just had a look at our front door and another external door (both with lever handles) and both have similar grooves at top and bottom of the door frame; when you lift the handle to lock the door, the catches (or whatever they're called!) slot into place. They seem to be activated by the door handle, not the key.

The problem with that as regards the door of the cottage is, of course, that there's only a lever handle on one side of it. So what I'm wondering is, could that round handle in the middle of the door - that we've assumed just to be for pulling the door closed - actually function in the same way as the lever handle? I mean in the sense that turning the handle one way might work to open the door, and turning it the other way would allow you to lock it. It would be odd to have different styles of handle on either side of the door, but then it's even odder to deliberately design a door that you can only open from one side.

 

[katy_did]

I also wonder how people can swallow the whale of an absolutely unprecedented three-way rape plot by relative strangers turning into a murder that leaves no traces, which a prosecutor correctly divined at first glance and then was miraculously proven correct about, yet strain at gnats like the order in which phone calls were made or a housebreaker's choice of bathroom. To me it's like believing that the sound of hoofbeats you heard was made by a zebra unicorn, because the alternative hypothesis is a donkey with a straw hat, and whoever heard of donkeys wearing hats?

("I've seen a few donkeys, and let me tell you none of them wore hats. I challenge you to cite a scientific paper that shows what percentage of donkeys wear straw hats! How did it put the hat on, with its hooves? Don't you think that if donkeys could wear hats the defence would have brought this up? I give up, no amount of evidence will convince you that it was really a zebra unicorn, you're just irrational").

Oh man, this! It's as if Guede has to conform to some burglar code of conduct ("always lock the front door behind you - remember, you're a guest! Always use the nearest bathroom, and don't forget to flush". Etc) while the combination of Guede, Knox and Sollecito can rewrite the nature of sex crimes entirely and this is apparently completely plausible.

 

[RoseMontague]

I also wonder how people can swallow the whale of an absolutely unprecedented three-way rape plot by relative strangers turning into a murder that leaves no traces, which a prosecutor correctly divined at first glance and then was miraculously proven correct about, yet strain at gnats like the order in which phone calls were made or a housebreaker's choice of bathroom. To me it's like believing that the sound of hoofbeats you heard was made by a zebra unicorn, because the alternative hypothesis is a donkey with a straw hat, and whoever heard of donkeys wearing hats?

I don't know, but this is so amusing on so many levels, some of them personal. Just a terrific post. Thanks you.

 

[HumanityBlues]

I would just like to say that even though this thread is being moderated, that I think it is awesome.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

And I wonder how some people remain utterly convinced of the innocence of a suspect (AK) in a case where:

- the victim is found in a locked room in the suspect's house
- the suspect is found at the scene of the crime

Meaningless in this case because the victim's home is also the suspect's home.

- there is no credible sign of forced entry
- a burgalry has been staged, presumably to misdirect investigators

Firstly, it hasn't been established to general satisfaction that there is no credible sign of forced entry. Entering a second-story window after breaking it with a rock is consistent with Rudy Guede's (highly probable) criminal MO, and it's solely the prosecuting team's opinion that he couldn't have gotten in the broken window without leaving traces. Their opinions have been proven to be conveniently wrong before.

Secondly, it makes just as much sense for Guede to fake a break-in as AK and RS, if he talked his way in the front door using his acquaintance with the downstairs tenants.

So nothing about this incriminates AK and RS or exonerates Guede.

- the suspect has repeatedly lied to the investigation about her whereabouts and actions on the night of the murder and subsequent morning

It has not been established that AK or RS lied about anything, as opposed to misremembering.

- the suspect falsely accuses another man of the crime while placing herself at the scene

As has been patiently explained time and time again, the circumstances under which that statement was made, the content of the statement and its subsequent retraction are all more consistent with a false statement made under duress (a well-known and unsurprising result of the kind of treatment Amanda was subjected to) than with a true confession.

- the suspect claims amnesia or confusion for much of the time-scale of events on the night of the murder, yet has excellent recall for many other events outside of the critical time frame

I'm pretty sure this one is pure PMF spin - everything AK and RS get right is "evidence they have perfect recall when they want to!" and everything they get wrong is "evidence they are lying, because they have perfect recall when they want to!".

- the suspect's behavior and affect in the days following the murder were enough outside the range of normal experience as to raise the suspicions of friends of the victim, as well as investigators/QUOTE]

Apart from the fact that we know some of these claims were media beatups, so what? Is it really more incredible to you that a young woman would at abnormally after a housemate was killed, than that the prosecution fantasy story is true?

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Secondly, it makes just as much sense for Guede to fake a break-in as AK and RS, if he talked his way in the front door using his acquaintance with the downstairs tenants.

It might or might not make sense, but it's not consistent with the rest of his behavior. Staging is the behavior of someone who is thinking ahead. Guede was not thinking ahead. He acted on impulse and made no serious effort to avoid leaving evidence.

Likewise, if Amanda and Raffaele had staged the break-in, it would mean they were worried about being suspects. If that were the case, they would have stayed away from the place and let someone else find the body.

This crime isn't that complicated. The window was right next to a concrete planter box, with an overhanging roof and an outside shutter to hold on to. I don't understand how people can look at photos and convince themselves that it was some kind of insurmountable challenge. Nobody has put forth one iota of credible evidence that the break-in was staged. It is merely an assertion made by police.

 

[Dan O.]

I think those grooves in the door frame may actually be part of the locking mechanism. I just had a look at our front door and another external door (both with lever handles) and both have similar grooves at top and bottom of the door frame; when you lift the handle to lock the door, the catches (or whatever they're called!) slot into place. They seem to be activated by the door handle, not the key.

The problem with that as regards the door of the cottage is, of course, that there's only a lever handle on one side of it. So what I'm wondering is, could that round handle in the middle of the door - that we've assumed just to be for pulling the door closed - actually function in the same way as the lever handle? I mean in the sense that turning the handle one way might work to open the door, and turning it the other way would allow you to lock it. It would be odd to have different styles of handle on either side of the door, but then it's even odder to deliberately design a door that you can only open from one side.

The images that Charlie provided (here) make it abundantly clear how this door was intended to function and how it was "modified". In its normal operation, there is a double key deadbolt on the bottom and a spring latch on the top. When the door is simply closed, the spring latch is pushed in by the edge of the strike plate then the spring pushes it back into the hole in the strike plate securing the door closed. The lever handle on the inside will retract the spring bolt to open the door but there is no corresponding handle on the outside so the only way to retract the spring bolt from outside would be with the key. (using a credit card or flick knife would be easier)

The downside of this configuration is that when the tenant goes to take out the trash wearing only a bath robe and slippers, if the door should close behind them they will be locked out. It was probably such a situation that led to the modification.

By jamming the spring bolt in the retracted position, it will no longer operate to hold the door closed. This resolves the problem of getting locked out of ones home in their bath robe but leads to the condition that amanda describes where if the door wasn't locked with a key it would blow open in the wind.

The key operates the deadbolt from either inside or out. It's possible for the lockset to be configured to link the lever handle on the inside to the deadbolt for either locking and/or unlocking the door but this is apparently not the case here.


BTW Kate, the rollers were a deduction based on the earlier outside image and the description of the door operation. There are no rollers visible on this door (though the rollers would be a good suggestion for the current tenants if they don't want the door blowing open in the slightest breeze when it isn't locked with a key).