Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Dan O.]

If anyone has a picture looking toward the balcony from the road clearly showing the window I'd appreciate seeing it.

This window?



The low hanging fruit makes the image more artistic but could have been avoided entirely by moving a few feet to the right.

 

[Dan O.]

If anyone has a picture looking toward the balcony from the road clearly showing the window I'd appreciate seeing it.

Perhaps the moderators thought the previous image wasn't clear enough. Here is the link to the full image: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BZD30a25F...o8/s400-h/Perugia+crime+scene+-+the+house.jpg

According to the authors notes, this image was taken within 2 weeks of the murder so the vegetation should be substantially the same as it was on the 1st. This image may have been taken from a location below the level of the road to get the artistic effect.

 

[Mr.D]

Here, on page 251, under the headings "Dispositional Vulnerabilities" and "The Phenomenology of Innocence" Kassin talks about the fact that young people are more likely to make false statements under pressure, possibly due to "immaturity of judgment" (a quality I think it's safe to say Amanda has displayed on some occasions), and that innocent people are vey much more likely to cooperate with police,

Thanks Kevin,

Quick response: Your cite isn't quite on point - in context "youth" is referring to juveniles and the specific case referred to involved a 16 or 17 year old.^*
More later, when I have time.

I think Fiona mentioned other research indicating that Amanda fit the profile of people known to have given false statements incriminating themselves in other ways as well, but I don't think she linked to it and she has bowed out of the discussion. I wasn't able to find anything that fit the bill immediately to hand.

I vaguely recall something like that, but I don't recall the poster. Anyone else remember it more specifically?



^* An interesting side note as to the power of a confession to a jury, he was convicted of rape and murder despite the fact that the jury was told that DNA tests showed that he was not the source of the semen found on the vicitm.

 

[Mrs.Columbo]

front door

May I add some words about that front door - which not kept closed unless it was locked with the key -

this has directly nothing to do with the mechanism of that lock-system (this was surely ok),
just indirectly - the *door* must be adjusted correctly.
I had this problem when I moved into my new flat. My frontdoor closed, but a little push from outside - and it was open. The door was just a tiny little too far away from the doorframe with the correspondent part of the lock-system.
A locksmith came and adjusted it.

Something like one does with the doors of kitchen-cupboards or wardrobs.

 

[Mrs.Columbo]

It might also be who's doing the translation. Here's the passage in question in the original Italian.
/QUOTE]

l fatto che c’è del Dna di Meredith sul coltello da cucina è perché una volta mentre cucinavamo insieme, io, spostandomi in casa maneggiando il coltello, l’ho punta sulla mano, e subito dopo le ho chiesto scusa ma lei non si era fatta niente. Quindi l’unica vera spiegazione a quel coltello da cucina è questa.

He refers only to Merediths DNA:
l fatto che c’è del Dna di Meredith sul coltello da cucina è
The fact that there is the DNA of Meredith on the kitchen knife is,

perché una volta mentre cucinavamo insieme
because at one time while we are cooking together,

io, spostandomi in casa maneggiando il coltello
I, staying in the house and handling the knife
** here is not clear which house: the cottage or his flat ** l'ho punta sulla mano.........
I pricked her (still referring Meredith) on the hand...........

The rest is clear - IMHO

 

[Mary_H]

Well, let's see, how about this one;

"Any woman (and any man who has any experience whatsoever of removing women's bras) will confirm that there is only one normal way to undo a rear bra clasp."

I think that was rather an extraordinary claim, amusing too.

Danceme, you might be overlooking the word "normal."

 

[Mrs.Columbo]

"dropped to save money"

One word to this: "dropped to save money"
It is absolutely correct, because it was her 'english phone'.
When this is used outside UK, she has to pay roaming, even when she is the called-one.


The caller pays roaming , and the one with the phone which is outside UK (Meredith, in this case), has to pay also.


and the roaming-fees are quite expensive!

**
If you do not know exactly about 'roaming' - I will then try to give a detailled description.

 

[LondonJohn]

This link isn't working for me.

Your "analysis" of merchandise at a do-it-yourself big box store surveys a relatively limited subset of available door hardware. They will have a wide selection of trims and finishes provided for a small selection of lockset configurations.




Look at more sites.




No, it really doesn't support anything except that a quickly and casually made review of a consumer outlet will not make you an authority on door hardware. In spite of impressive square footage and websites such stores offer only a small fraction of the vast amount of lockset applications available in the industry.




http://www.jmlock.com/arrow-a-series-mortise-lock-storeroom-ball.aspx

That took me less than two minutes to find. There are plenty more examples. I used a three word search criteria, and found it in the first catalog link I chose to open. It helps to know what is actually available.

Except that the lock you've shown is a specialised commercial storeroom lock, which looks nothing like the domestic lockset from the cottage. Find me a lockset for a domestic front door which looks like the one at the cottage, and I'll start to change my mind. Furthermore, find me a Corbin model domestic lockset in which the key mechanism can operate both the deadbolt and the latch, and I'll fully change my mind.

But I'm guessing that you won't be able to.

 

[LondonJohn]

I think we need to be careful making these sorts of claims: I could make up any number of everyday scenarios to explain such a call. Someone might accidentally hit the speed dial for their voicemail while trying to set an alarm or compose a text message they didn't end up sending, or doing some other task with their phone that doesn't involve making an actual call. Or someone might decide to check their messages, then remember they left the kettle on and hang up to deal with it, and never get around to actually checking their messages.

I agree that it would be mildly unusual to make such a call, and that a stranger messing with the phone trying to turn it off fits a bit better, but it's not exactly conclusive evidence of anything.

Oh I agree. It was the "to save money" part of Massei's reasoning that I took issue with. I absolutely agree that there are other reasons for aborting that call (although aborting three different calls is harder to explain...).

However, in addition to that, if I'm correct in how Meredith used her UK phone (i.e. only for important incoming calls, and not for outgoing calls), it's harder to see why she'd be playing with it much at all anyhow. But, either way, I agree that it's impossible to be conclusive either way. Having said that, I think that Massei has concocted spurious reasoning to support his preferred narrative, and I think that this tells us something about Massei's general approach.

 

[katy_did]

I was reading some of Frank's previous posts and came across one that now strikes me as being significant. It was a "non-interview" Frank did with Quintavalle. The thing that strikes me with this is that Frank also asked him two weeks after the murder if he had seen Amanda and Raffaele and he denied that. It also gives some interesting details about Quintavalle's TV interview and the strange "journalism" exhibited in this case. It also indicates that Quintavalle at one point said Raffaele had been coming to his shop for years, where in truth he had just recently moved there.

http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2009/01/appetite-for-punishment-2.html

Thanks for that, Rose - so when Quintavalle said the TV stations 'tricked' him into doing the interview, what he really meant was that he was supposed to do it without anyone knowing about it!

 

[Fine]

Here's a thing:

The prosecution must have concluded that Knox and Sollecito disposed of their clothes and shoes after the murder. This must be the case, since none of Knox or Sollecito's clothes or shoes recovered by the police showed any sign of blood smear/splatter (which would have happened with a near certainty if Knox and Sollecito had been active participants in the murder*. And neither (I believe) did any of their clothes or shoes show any sign of being cleaned since 1st November. Ergo: the clothes and shoes were disposed of - presumably in a municipal skip/dumpster, or something like that.

But if the clothes and shoes were disposed of, why not the murder knife as well? If Knox and Sollecito were aware enough of the potentially incriminating nature of their clothing and footwear, why on earth would they allow the actual knife used as a murder weapon to remain in Sollecito's kitchen drawer? What would be the downside of getting rid of the knife in a similar way to the clothes/shoes? Would the knife have even been registered as missing by anyone other than Sollecito? And, in addition, the prosecution seem to be alleging that the "other" murder knife also belonged to Sollecito, but that he disposed of this knife. Why would he dispose of one knife and not the other?

Suggestions and comments gratefully received. Muchas gracias

* This is not to suggest that their clothes would have been drenched in blood (a common misconception in regard to bloody stabbings). However, anyone that close to a violent stabbing would have had to get at least traces of Meredith's blood onto their clothes and/or shoes.

__________________________

I wish all these mysteries could be so easily resolved.

LondonJohn, Raffaele was not the legal owner of that knife. The knife was owned by Raffaele's landlord. So the options for the lovebirds were: properly clean the knife and return it to the drawer in the kitchen (where it belonged), or dispose of it and risk the landlord reporting the knife missing. The lovebirds thought that the first option was safest. Makes sense to me.

///

 

[LondonJohn]

One word to this: "dropped to save money"
It is absolutely correct, because it was her 'english phone'.
When this is used outside UK, she has to pay roaming, even when she is the called-one.


The caller pays roaming , and the one with the phone which is outside UK (Meredith, in this case), has to pay also.


and the roaming-fees are quite expensive!

**
If you do not know exactly about 'roaming' - I will then try to give a detailled description.

Ughhhh I know full well about roaming fees, and I know full well that they apply to incoming calls/texts/MMS as well as outgoing calls (including voicemail calls).

The point is that Meredith would almost certainly have also been well aware of this after six weeks of living and studying in Italy. So when Massei "reasons" that she dialled her voicemail, then hung up when she realised it would be expensive, I take issue with that. Six weeks in, she would (in my opinion) have long since decided either to call her UK voicemail on her UK phone periodically, and bear the cost, or to not call her UK voicemail altogether while she was in Italy, on account of the cost (and the relevance).

And I further reason that Meredith might well have used her Italian phone for pretty much all outgoing calls (whether local or to the UK), for the same roaming-charge reasons. And if this is the case, there's no reason why she might have been making numerous aborted UK calls from her UK phone on the night of the murder. In my view, therefore, it's much more likely that these aborted calls were mistakenly placed by her killer. And if that's true, that makes Massei look like a bit of a chump.

 

[LondonJohn]

__________________________

I wish all these mysteries could be so easily resolved.

LondonJohn, Raffaele was not the legal owner of that knife. The knife was owned by Raffaele's landlord. So the options for the lovebirds were: properly clean the knife and return it to the drawer in the kitchen (where it belonged), or dispose of it and risk the landlord reporting the knife missing. The lovebirds thought that the first option was safest. Makes sense to me.

///

I can't believe that the knife would be such a unique model as to be irreplaceable. And, in addition, nobody would know how long the knife had been missing. When was the last inventory of the apartment carried out? Sollecito would know full well that he could claim that he'd accidentally thrown the knife out with food preparation waste (for example) a few weeks before the murder. And unless the police ever actually found the knife, they would be totally unable to refute this.

Plus......did the police ever try to reconcile Sollecito's known knife collection with the knives they actually recovered from his apartment? Since they appear to suggest that he disposed of one of his own "combat" knives after the murder, did they make any effort to establish whether any of his known knives was missing. Judging from what I already know of the Perugia police's competence, I suspect not........

 

[LondonJohn]

__________________________

I wish all these mysteries could be so easily resolved.

LondonJohn, Raffaele was not the legal owner of that knife. The knife was owned by Raffaele's landlord. So the options for the lovebirds were: properly clean the knife and return it to the drawer in the kitchen (where it belonged), or dispose of it and risk the landlord reporting the knife missing. The lovebirds thought that the first option was safest. Makes sense to me.

///

By the way, please can you stop using the term "lovebirds" in relation to Sollecito and Knox. It's pejorative, cliched, and clearly indicates a partisan approach. Thanks.

 

[LondonJohn]

Thanks for that, Rose - so when Quintavalle said the TV stations 'tricked' him into doing the interview, what he really meant was that he was supposed to do it without anyone knowing about it!

From what I currently think I know about Quintavalle, I have no idea how the first court accepted him as a credible witness. And, likewise, how the court accepted Curatolo's credibility is also almost beyond belief.

And, in this regard, I have serious doubts about the defence's performance in the first trial. I realise that they may have mounted a very strong attack on these witnesses' credibility, but that the court (for some inexplicable reason) chose to discount all these reasons. But I also strongly suspect that the defence didn't do its job properly in the first trial. Perhaps they will do a better job in the first appeal.

 

[katy_did]

__________________________

I wish all these mysteries could be so easily resolved.

LondonJohn, Raffaele was not the legal owner of that knife. The knife was owned by Raffaele's landlord. So the options for the lovebirds were: properly clean the knife and return it to the drawer in the kitchen (where it belonged), or dispose of it and risk the landlord reporting the knife missing. The lovebirds thought that the first option was safest. Makes sense to me.

///

To me this has always seemed like the most unrealistic argument as to why the knife would've been kept. Even if the knife was listed separately in an inventory of the cottage (as opposed to just coming under 'cutlery') it was just a cheap kitchen knife. I very much doubt the landlord would've known if they'd replaced it with another cheap kitchen knife. And when would the landlord even have found out about it? Most likely when Raffaele left the apartment and they did an inspection. They could easily have said the knife was damaged or lost; but my guess is they wouldn't have needed to do either if they'd replaced it with another.

I just think it's completely implausible that faced with the police discovering the knife and testing it, or the landlord discovering in a year's time that they'd replaced it, they would decide the landlord issue was the more important one. Even supposing that for some reason the landlord found out immediately and told the police, there would be nothing to prove when the knife had been replaced, and nothing to connect the missing knife to the crime (particularly considering that knife didn't fit either the print on the bedsheet nor 2/3 wounds). It's not in any way realistic to think they kept it just because it came with the flat. The risk of the police finding it MASSIVELY outweighs any other risk.

 

[katy_did]

Well, let's see, how about this one;

"Any woman (and any man who has any experience whatsoever of removing women's bras) will confirm that there is only one normal way to undo a rear bra clasp."

I think that was rather an extraordinary claim, amusing too.

I think LondonJohn is right in the sense that it would be very unusual to grip the hook of the bra clasp with any degree of pressure when you were undoing a bra, and not anywhere else on or around the clasp. At most when undoing your own bra you might brush the hook with your finger, but you'd be holding other parts of the strap/clasp much more firmly, and hence would be much more likely to leave DNA there than just on the hook of the clasp.

The defence argue in the appeal that the deformation of the hook was probably down to the person pulling the bra strap tight before cutting it, which they say tends to suggest the person who cut it wasn't trying to manipulate the clasp itself. Rudy's DNA on the strap is, they suggest, the place you would expect DNA to be left if the clasp were cut in that way.

 

[katy_did]

Someone young, naive and factually innocent of the crime fits the profile of someone quite likely to cooperate with police and then make an internalised false statement, under sufficient pressure.

I think Fiona mentioned other research indicating that Amanda fit the profile of people known to have given false statements incriminating themselves in other ways as well, but I don't think she linked to it and she has bowed out of the discussion. I wasn't able to find anything that fit the bill immediately to hand.

Other factors making someone more vulnerable to internalized coerced confessions are a high trust in authority (very evident from Amanda's handwritten statement), suggestibility, and lack of self-confidence. Amanda was also in a high-risk category because she was being interrogated in a foreign language, particularly since the interpreter they did eventually bring in seems to have been an active part of the interrogation itself.

 

[katy_did]

Oh I agree. It was the "to save money" part of Massei's reasoning that I took issue with. I absolutely agree that there are other reasons for aborting that call (although aborting three different calls is harder to explain...).

However, in addition to that, if I'm correct in how Meredith used her UK phone (i.e. only for important incoming calls, and not for outgoing calls), it's harder to see why she'd be playing with it much at all anyhow. But, either way, I agree that it's impossible to be conclusive either way. Having said that, I think that Massei has concocted spurious reasoning to support his preferred narrative, and I think that this tells us something about Massei's general approach.

I think she did use her phone to keep in touch with her family in the UK, so maybe she had some plan that allowed her to make those calls relatively cheaply (otherwise, as you say, it doesn't make a lot of sense to use that phone given how expensive it would have been).

What is interesting, though, is that as RWVBWL pointed out, Meredith didn't make any calls or send any texts that evening (apart from the aborted ones), whereas normally it seems she used her phone quite a lot in the evening. I wonder if they ever managed to recover the data from the hard drive on her computer. If that hadn't been used either, along with lack of normal activity on the phones that would seem to be quite a compelling indication that she didn't get a chance to use either.

I noticed also that someone on PMF with the same model of phone suggested it's quite a difficult phone to turn off, which again would support the idea those aborted calls may have been made as the person tried to switch off the phone.

 

[katy_did]

Google street view showing the view of the cottage balcony from the road.

Wow, I tell you what, something that's very evident from Google streetview is how close the front door is to the road and how visible. It's in an alcove but a street lamp is directly opposite. Having seen that it now doesn't surprise me at all someone who didn't want to be seen would avoid lingering outside the front door.