Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[RoseMontague]

What backtracking?

Could you point out the areas of discussion in this thread where the idea that "no one could climb in through that window" was proposed as a serious argument? Discrediting an argument which has not been offered is not evidence of anything in particular.

One problem with the so-called burglary is not that there was not "an abundance of trace evidence" (another argument no one has offered). It was that there was no evidence outside the confines of the house. This isn't something which "happens everyday", and early on in this discussion clear statistics to that effect were presented. One argument which was disproven was that throwing a rock through a window wouldn't leave glass fragments outside the structure.

Yes,
I am still convinced that there should have been glass on the ground beneath the window if it was broken from a rock thrown from outside. Some of the broken glass will travel in the opposite direction from the impact and this appears to me to be a scientific fact. If there was glass on the ground then the investigators missed this fact. If there was not glass there then the window was broken from the inside. If it was broken from the inside the question becomes who did it and why they did it. This is still the number one thing that those of us on the innocent side have not satisfactorily addressed, in my opinion. Looking at the glass on the window sill with several large pieces laying on the sill, my opinion now is that some smaller pieces would have had to have gone forward enough to fall on the ground.

I believe the "ballistics" expert hired by the defense team was not the right sort of expert to address this and was concerned with answering questions that were not as important as this one. I would have sent someone back to the scene to look for glass fragments the police may have missed. Tiny shards of glass in the grass are difficult to see and find and I don't know to what extent the police effort went to find glass fragments.

 

[christianahannah]

You admit your ignorance in not knowing how much DNA is normal to find on a given surface. For that I don't fault you. Nobody can know how much DNA would be normally found on a surface because there are too many variables that will affect it. Any forensics expert that is more than a BS artist would tell you that you have to measure the background levels. We have seen the list of all the DNA samples that were taken. Guess what is missing from that list. Amanda's DNA was found on every spot tested on the sink. What does that prove.

I believe we have seen only a partial list of the DNA samples that were taken. Maybe the whole list has been posted elsewhere but I don't think it was posted here (I could be mistaken and missed it, though).

 

[RWVBWL]

This blog post from Science Spheres is strictly speculation, and it relies upon taking the claims that Rudy Guede was a protected police informant as fact, so it should obviously be taken with a grain of salt.

It's central thesis is that it's plausible that one or more members of the investigative team recognised the M.O. of the break-in as Rudy's in the first few days of the investigation, and out of fear that they would be blamed for letting Rudy back out on the streets to kill someone they made a deliberate effort to frame someone else for Rudy's crime.

That's a pretty serious accusation, and normally I'd want pretty serious evidence for an accusation like that, and there is no such evidence.

However there is for me a definite "click" moment in this piece, where the hypothesis suddenly rearranges some things that didn't make sense into a shape that does make sense. One thing that has been troubling about the larger story is that Rudy was caught breaking and entering while carrying a large kitchen knife three or four days before Meredith was murdered but, as the PMF crew delight in pointing out, he was never charged or convicted. They interpret this to mean that he was innocent, or something, but to me it was just odd.

The second oddity that I've seen no satisfactory explanation for is the police, by means of alleged "policeman's intuition", zeroing in on Raffaele's kitchen knife when they searched his apartment and miraculously being proved right that it was the murder weapon. We know Raffaele owned scarier-looking knives than his kitchen knife, which would be much more suitable for carrying around with oneself and/or using to murder people, so what on Earth possessed them to decide that the kitchen knife needed to be bagged as evidence? That never made much sense either.

Those two oddities click together to explain each other under this hypothesis, which is why it struck me as very clever and possibly even correct. The autopsy at this point had not revealed that Meredith was attacked with a small knife, so the police could well have thought "Crap, we let Rudy out and he murdered someone with that big kitchen knife he had. We need another knife like that one to be the murder weapon", and that would be why they zeroed in with apparent prescience on the kitchen knife in Raffaele's drawer.

Then later they would have found out Rudy actually killed her with a smaller knife which he later disposed of, and so they would have had to switch to the two knife theory. That's how the theory goes, anyway.

It would also go some way to explaining why the undoubtedly-guilty Rudy has been given such a soft ride in terms of sentencing compared to Amanda and Raffaele, despite his criminal history and the wealth of evidence against him.

I'm well aware that lots of neat theories turn out to be rubbish, but it does make sense of some very odd facts that, frankly, I have no other sensible explanation for.

_________________________________________________________________

Hi Kevin Lowe and other JREF regulars,
Like you Kevin, I had a moment when something clicked involving Rudy Guede's participation in this brutal murder of Meredith Kercher. It was from reading a post that katy_did wrote a few weeks back, post #3337, which I am re-posting here:

Well, there's this (admittedly involving no. 1s not no. 2s). As well as using the bathroom, RG also said he took orange juice from the fridge in Via della Pergola. From pages 225/6 of RS's appeal:

Quote:
The judgment, in fact, has failed to consider that, almost always, Rudy entered buildings by breaking a window reachable only after a climb, leaving behind him a general state of confusion (clothes scattered on the floor, use of the bathroom, consumption of beverages found inside the buildings) and with the availability of a knife. This last fact - which assumes a fundamental importance in relation to the murder in Via della Pergola - was inexplicably ignored by the motivations, which merely mentions it.

In reality, both in the case of the theft from the nursery in Milan, and in that perpetrated at the home of Christian Tramontano, Rudy was carrying a knife: a knife used to threaten, in the case of Tramontano, to make sure he was able to get away, and in the case of Milan, taken from the kitchen.

Also the consumption of beverages and the use of the bathroom represents a common element between these episodes. The witness Brocchi, heard at the hearing of 26 June 2009, stated: "I noticed that this person or persons who had broken into the office had also drunk some drinks that were present in a cabinet" (p. 16 transcript); and also the witness Palazzoli, at the same hearing, reported "Yes, I remember that there was a bottle of orange juice left, if I remember correctly, in the trainees' room (p. 37 transcript 26 June 2009). And also it is likely that the bathroom was used (Palazzoli: "the light had been left on in the office bathroom" p. 35 transcript of the hearing on 26 June 2009).

On her part the witness Tittoni Del Prato, manager and owner of the nursery school in Milan, reported that the bathroom was dirty with urine: "I remember finding pipi in the children's toilet" (p.22, transcript hearing 27 June 2009).

I recall reading that Rudy Guede had said that he had drank directly from an orange juice bottle or carton that was in the refrig while he was in Miss Kercher's apartment the night she was killed, and I had always kinda wondered why he even mentioned this. Maybe because he had left fingerprints and/or DNA evidence?

But it really "clicked", as you wrote, for me when I read what katy_did had posted from Raffaele Sollecito's appeal about the lawyers office break-in, where someone had drank orange juice too. Interestingly, Rudy Guede, was found to be in possesion of a laptop that was stolen from that same lawyers office break-in, even though he supposedly went back to the same lawyer to tell them he did not steal it. Rudy Guede also, I believe, spoke out at his murder trial to the Kercher family and said it wasn't he who murdered their daughter.
Hmmm...
RWVBWL

 

[LondonJohn]

I think that the whole door key issue could be another illustration of just how many holes there might have been in the original defence of Knox and Sollecito. I've said many times that the combination of a commercial lawyer and a full-time MP as the two lead criminal defence attorneys might have resulted in some important things slipping through the net. This door evidence looks like it might be another instance of a less-than-perfect defence in the original trial.

Let's just hope that the truth about the door comes out in the appeal - after that, it's proper to let the court decide how it sits in the whole scheme of things. But I have a tiny feeling it's not going to look too good for the prosecution.

 

[RoseMontague]

A rock is thrown into a window from the outside. What is the source of the energy that propels glass fragments in the direction from where the rock was thrown?

Anyone who took a high school physics course should understand why I asked the question.

Also in regards to the broken window, the judge dismissed the defense expert because he only had experience with ballistics, and hadn't studied rocks.

If you review some of my older posts you will find reference to several scientific and forensic articles on the backwards motion of glass from the direction of impact. After doing some research at that time my understanding the reason for it is somewhat of a trampoline effect due to the fact that glass does have a degree of elasticity. When the impact of a rock hits the glass away from the direct impact area is stretched inward, if the crack first develops in the back side of the glass it will go in the direction of the impact. However if the front side cracks first and the glass on the backside does not crack immediately after impact the glass goes forward after having been bent inward, the crack then develops on the back side when the glass springs back and the glass is propelled forward. I believe one of the articles stated it was not unusual to see as much as 40% of the glass going in the direction opposite the impact. I believe I have that correct, it has been awhile since I looked into this.

 

[LondonJohn]

Yes,
I am still convinced that there should have been glass on the ground beneath the window if it was broken from a rock thrown from outside. Some of the broken glass will travel in the opposite direction from the impact and this appears to me to be a scientific fact. If there was glass on the ground then the investigators missed this fact. If there was not glass there then the window was broken from the inside. If it was broken from the inside the question becomes who did it and why they did it. This is still the number one thing that those of us on the innocent side have not satisfactorily addressed, in my opinion. Looking at the glass on the window sill with several large pieces laying on the sill, my opinion now is that some smaller pieces would have had to have gone forward enough to fall on the ground.

I believe the "ballistics" expert hired by the defense team was not the right sort of expert to address this and was concerned with answering questions that were not as important as this one. I would have sent someone back to the scene to look for glass fragments the police may have missed. Tiny shards of glass in the grass are difficult to see and find and I don't know to what extent the police effort went to find glass fragments.

Firstly, just for clarification, I assume that your (highlighted) reference to "breaking the window from the inside" is referring to opening the window inwards, then throwing the rock from close range so that it hits the outside face of the window?

Second, I agree that there's a physical possibility of glass being propelled backwards when a glass pane is broken. I wouldn't agree that it's a scientific fact that it always happens, though. Glass is actually a very, very viscous liquid, even in so-called "solid" form. This means that when it's struck with a blunt object (here. a rock), it bends inwards before the stresses cause it to break. The only bits of glass to end up with momentum in the opposite direction to the direction of impact are those which result from this tiny trampoline effect.

The trampoline effect in breaking glass is not very bit at all. So, in fact, very little glass ends up travelling backwards after breakage from a blunt object. Witness this super-slow-motion footage of a plank of wood impacting a regular glass pane:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/33704-time-warp-regular-glass-break-video.htm

Notice how many pieces of the glass fell (let alone were propelled) backwards from the impact? I count...none. To my objective eye, they all fall either in the direction of the impact, or straight downwards (after the vertical strength of the pane is compromised). To me, this is pretty consistent with how the visible pieces of glass were found in Filomena's room and on her window sill on the 2nd November.

I would well imagine that some very small shards of glass would fall backwards with sufficient momentum to clear Filomena's windowsill. But I think that shards of this size would easily be lost among stonework or rough ground outside the house - unless an extremely detailed search was carried out using magnifying equipment and careful examination. I think I can be pretty sure that such a search didn't happen.

On the subject of the window, one more thing (it's been said before, but bears saying again): the position in which Filomena's exterior blinds was found the following morning need not have been the position they were in at the time the window was broken. Even if Filomena's testimony is 100% accurate (that she pulled the exterior shutters closed but did not/could not latch them shut), any potential burglar could have pulled them open from outside, broken the window, entered the house, then pulled the shutters closed behind him. This would also make good "business" sense for the burglar, since it would conceal the broken pane from any passers-by on the road outside (or by anyone returning to the house....), and therefore minimise the chance of the alarm being raised.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

strengths and weaknesses of DNA profiling

Okay. Thank you for the clarification

It may lead to a more perplexing and even more ominous issue, though.

Your earlier contributions have already led us near to the conclusion that most if not all DNA evidence must be considered dangerously suspect. Now you seem to be suggesting that any forensic science at all which is not performed under double-blind conditions should be viewed with equal suspicion.

Is this standard practice in Italy? How about the U.S.?

Anywhere?

The ramifications could be profound.

Quadraginta,

As Dan Krane said, the science of DNA profiling is sound, but not all DNA profiling is sound science. It is, IMO, the branch of forensics that perhaps has the best grounding in basic scientific principles. However, it has some limitations that should be recognized, for example, that DNA rarely can tell us anything about when or how it was deposited. It is also difficult to see how DNA forensic scientists and technicians can become entirely free of cognitive bias. I am not an expert in the issue of blind testing, but I do not think it is common.

The problems above do not mean that we should abandon DNA forensics or any other branches of forensics. IMO, it does mean that a jury presented with DNA evidence cannot simply say that the defendant must be guilty. Instead, they need to approach it critically and deliberately, the way that they should approach any piece of evidence.

 

[Malkmus]

Yes,
I am still convinced that there should have been glass on the ground beneath the window if it was broken from a rock thrown from outside. Some of the broken glass will travel in the opposite direction from the impact and this appears to me to be a scientific fact. If there was glass on the ground then the investigators missed this fact. If there was not glass there then the window was broken from the inside. If it was broken from the inside the question becomes who did it and why they did it. This is still the number one thing that those of us on the innocent side have not satisfactorily addressed, in my opinion. Looking at the glass on the window sill with several large pieces laying on the sill, my opinion now is that some smaller pieces would have had to have gone forward enough to fall on the ground.

I believe the "ballistics" expert hired by the defense team was not the right sort of expert to address this and was concerned with answering questions that were not as important as this one. I would have sent someone back to the scene to look for glass fragments the police may have missed. Tiny shards of glass in the grass are difficult to see and find and I don't know to what extent the police effort went to find glass fragments.

I agree that it is likely that some small amount of glass probably would have made it's way onto the grass outside, but that we have insufficient proof that there was none. I would be willing to simply take the investigators' word on this if they hadn't already been proven to be less than reliable in so many other areas (the shoe print fiasco for one). For me, the main thing that doesn't fit with it being a staged break-in, honestly, is the placement of the rock. Hidden partly in a bag the way it was just doesn't seem consistent with the actions of a person who is going out of their way to make it look like someone broke in with a rock from outside. In other words, if they had staged the break-in I think they would have moved the rock from its not-so-obvious location and placed it closer to the bedroom door to make it look like it was chucked from the inside and catapulted to the other side of the room in the most obvious way possible. I also don't buy into reasons such as lack of traces on the outside wall, or footprints in the glass because it seems entirely plausible to enter without leaving those traces (but important to note as Bruce pointed out that there do seem to be traces of the dust from the wall on the clothes under the window).

 

[RoseMontague]

Here are a few articles on the backward fragmentation of glass and it's importance in forensics:

http://www.enotes.com/forensic-science/glass

When a glass object breaks, fragments can be ejected from the object in all directions (Pounds and Smalldon 1978), including backward toward the direction of the breaking force (Nelson and Revell 1967). During experimental studies, glass fragments have been recovered from up to four meters away from a breaking glass object (Francis 1993; Locke and Unikowski 1991). Glass fragments can be transferred onto anything within this distance. The number of glass fragments that can be transferred is controlled by a number of factors:

http://www.enotes.com/forensic-science/glass

When glass breaks at the scene of a crime, small particles of glass are projected not only forward, but also backward, onto the perpetrator and into the immediate environment. These particles can later be retrieved and used to establish a link between a suspect and a crime scene.

http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/jofso/article/PIIS001573686770376X/abstract

When a glass window is broken by a blow, small fragments fly off in a direction opposite to that of the force which breaks the pane of glass.

Such backward fragmentation from breaking glass sheets was photographed by movie and still cameras, and a high speed movie film suitable for police instruction was made.

 

[RoseMontague]

I will add just another comment on the backwards fragmentation of glass. Two other causes in addition to what I described as the trampoline effect. One is called flaking or splatter and another is similar to a compression effect where some cracks force one piece outward and the next inward, etc. That concludes my restudy on this, I hope. It still gives me a headache.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

But it really "clicked", as you wrote, for me when I read what katy_did had posted from Raffaele Sollecito's appeal about the lawyers office break-in, where someone had drank orange juice too. Interestingly, Rudy Guede, was found to be in possesion of a laptop that was stolen from that same lawyers office break-in, even though he supposedly went back to the same lawyer to tell them he did not steal it. Rudy Guede also, I believe, spoke out at his murder trial to the Kercher family and said it wasn't he who murdered their daughter.
Hmmm...
RWVBWL

I'm trying to be particularly cautious with this angle, because frankly the support for the claim that Rudy was a protected police informant doesn't seem to be there. It might emerge later, and it fits with the other puzzle pieces we have, but that is a very long way from making it true.

I also try to be cautious about employing PMF-style "If they were X, then why did they Y?" arguments from incredulity. The fact is people do weird things sometimes and personal incredulity isn't proof of guilt.

However now I've thought about it, a part of the prosecution story that I had never previously thought about strikes me as a bit odd. We've got Rudy running around Perugia with form for breaking and entering by climbing through a broken window which he broke with a rock, while carrying a knife, and we know this because the police picked him up for it less than a week before Meredith was murdered. There are allegations I haven't been able to run to ground that this was far from his first arrest or sighting for such crimes, but let's take them with a grain of salt for now.

So the police come across a crime scene. A second-storey window has apparently been broken with a rock, items have apparently been stolen, a woman has been murdered with a knife, and dark curly hair matching Rudy's is found at the scene.

Yet apparently nobody says "This looks exactly like that Rudy guy's M.O., and this looks exactly like his hair, better haul him in". That's odd.

They instead hare off on an investigation of the housemates, try to fit up Lumumba whose hair matches but who had no motive and no form, fixate on a kitchen knife which coincidentally matches the weapon Rudy was last arrested with, and apparently give no thought at all to Rudy until the German police bag him.

Maybe I've just watched too many episodes of The Bill, but I'd have thought that the police would be straight after a known local criminal whose M.O. fits the apparent crime scene.

Steve Moore alleges here (but annoyingly does not provide a source) that the police removed a grand total of zero potential weapons from the murder house for testing, and that competent police procedure would be to take every single item in the house that could cut or stab, including letter openers and scissors, because you do not want any chance for the murder weapon to escape the net. It does make me wonder if someone had decided at that point that they wanted the murder weapon to be a kitchen knife and wanted the murder weapon to be found elsewhere, but then again it's always highly risky to ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence.

 

[christianahannah]

The appeals filed by Amanda and Raffaele do a good job of taking apart the Massei report. The report is the court's interpretation of the evidence. Many people believe that Amanda and Raffaele were wrongly convicted, so those people will obviously disagree with the report.

Some simply assume that every single piece of information in the report is correct and cannot be argued. If this belief was true, there would be no need for appeals. This line of thinking is ridiculous.

As far as I know, Massei is not the expert of all things. Many credible experts disagree with his interpretation of the evidence.

Bruce,

An advantage for the defense on appeal is that they do have the Massei Motivations. They will be much more effective in arguing their case knowing what the reasoning was behind the verdict. This is a benefit of the Italian judicial system.

I would doubt any report is 100% fail proof. There already has been much heated discussion concerning the reasoning in the motivations when compared to the arguments in the appeals.

I believe the Italian appeal process is good. It gives the defendant every chance to plead their case and shore up deficiencies they might have had in the initial trial (and deficiencies in the prosecution's case).

 

[Dan O.]

The current option under review is whether this particular lockset might have had additional bolts at the top and the bottom of the door, and whether these additional bolts could be operated using the lever handle on the inside of the door (pulling the handle upwards by 45 degrees to engage the extra bolts, then depressing the handle to disengage).

I would say that is not possible.

Sure, I've seen such configurations in a lock set before. But never with a key cylinder on the inside. And even if the installer were silly enough to install such a redundant combination, the residents would not be pulling out their keys to lock and unlock the door from the inside when they could just pull on the handle. And we know for a fact that the were using their keys in the cylinder on the inside of the door by...

...the scratch marks they left!


(excerpt from image of cottage door previously posted by Charlie)

 

[quadraginta]

A rock is thrown into a window from the outside. What is the source of the energy that propels glass fragments in the direction from where the rock was thrown?

Anyone who took a high school physics course should understand why I asked the question.

Also in regards to the broken window, the judge dismissed the defense expert because he only had experience with ballistics, and hadn't studied rocks.

Kestrel, you were one of the earliest posters to these threads. You have also been one of the more prolific, so I have to assume you have at least been exposed to the majority of the posts that other people have contributed.

Many moons ago the subject of glass flying outward from a rock thrown into a window was discussed here in some depth. I took the time to research and share links to studies and experiments by crime forensics experts which quite clearly demonstrated that not only was such a phenomenon possible, it was indeed actually expected. It turns out that faked break-ins are relatively common and that this phenomenon, sadly not a part of standard high school physics curricula I guess, is often one of the clues that exposes the deception.

Fiona (I believe) did the same, independent of my efforts.

High school physics courses can suffer many deficiencies, or perhaps it is the students. I have met many who have graduated such courses and left still under the impression that heat rises. This suggests that any number of fundamentals may not be properly assimilated.

In anticipation of your response to this post.

No, I am not going to go back through the old thread and find the relevant posts for you. Nor am I going to repeat my on-line research into the subject. The studies and monographs I found were not trivial to uncover, not being on a first page of a single Google search return, but neither were they particularly difficult. If your interest in the subject is sincere I encourage you to look on your own. This time.

 

[Danceme]

8) Whilst I can understand your "feeling" in regard to the so-called "mixed DNA" in the bathroom, I don't agree with the random chance element to your analysis. The points where Knox's DNA were found were not random areas of the bathroom (e.g. behind the door, somewhere in the middle of the floor, etc). They were in the places where someone who regularly used the bathroom would be expected to deposit DNA: round the plughole in the sink, on the sink taps (faucet), round the plughole of the bidet, around the light switch etc.

Lastly, this is not a case of "spinning the facts" at all.

You got it exactly right this time LJ and I don't agree with random chance either. The blood on the light switch for instance, was found only on the top part of the actual switch, exactly where one would expect to find it if placed by "someone who regularly used the bathroom" as opposed to being found on the wall around the light switch if placed there by someone unfamiliar with the switch location who would have had to feel around in the dark to find it. Do you consider that "spinning the facts"? and if so, on whose part, yours or mine?

It is one test that could be done, even today. A person could simply stand where the tow truck driver was positioned, view the cottage at night, and see if light could be noticeable from Merediths window.

I guess you're not aware that Meredith's window faced the ravine in back of the house. It was not visible from the road at all so if it was the only room with a light on, the tow truck driver still would not be able to tell.

 

[quadraginta]

There's a lot of "mental gymnastics" going on elsewhere to try to figure out whether a key would have been needed to exit the front door. The current option under review is whether this particular lockset might have had additional bolts at the top and the bottom of the door, and whether these additional bolts could be operated using the lever handle on the inside of the door (pulling the handle upwards by 45 degrees to engage the extra bolts, then depressing the handle to disengage).

However, I don't recall hearing any of the residents of the house (Laura, Filomena or Amanda, of course tragically excluding Meredith) saying anything at any point along the lines of "The door wouldn't stay shut by itself, but we used the supplementary bolts to secure it by pulling up on the inside lever". Rather, they specifically said that they used the key to secure the door shut - presumably by simply engaging the main deadbolt.

The other factor in all this is whether the extra bolts (top and bottom) could even be activated by the key at all (that is, in addition to using the lever handle). This is obviously important since if the lever handle was the only mechanism to engage or disengage the two extra bolts, nobody would be able to enter the house from the outside once these bolts had been engaged.

However, I think that the single most telling factor in all this is that all the girls spoke specifically about the need to use a key to secure the door, from the inside or the outside. There was never any mention at all (as far as I can see) of using these extra bolts - so regardless of whether this facility actually existed in this particular door, it seems highly unlikely that the tenants used it (or even knew about it). They appearently used a key - and only a key - to secure the door.

Where is this "elsewhere" of which you speak? Sometimes I get the oddest impression that you're engaged in a conversation that we only see your half of, like listening to one side of a phone call.

We have had our own discussion of multi-point locksets right here in this very thread. Thanks to katy_did's curiosity as well as her patient persistence, and your timely link to a portion of the Corbin catalog both Dan O. and I realized that the three deadbolt multi-point lockset depicted there was a remarkably close match for the lockset in the Knox apartment door. The upper and lower strike plates in the doorjamb which had initially attracted katy_did's attention are nearly perfect matches for the ones in that catalog page. The feature that had puzzled me a bit when I first saw the door lock photos Charlie shared was the metal strip mortised into the full length of the edge of the door leaf, instead of the edge of a typical mortise lock (usually only six or eight inches long). I didn't recognize it for what it was at the time, because residential multi-point locksets are only now starting to see much use in the U.S. and I have never had an opportunity to become familiar with them, but as soon as I saw that lockset in the Corbin catalog it was clear that this was what we were seeing in the Knox door.

Sadly, nothing has changed in spite of this. As Dan O. and I have both pointed out before, without the specific model number of the specific lockset in that particular door there is no way for us to know for certain even which of many possibly available features apply to that lockset, much less which ones were actually implemented on the door itself. From what I have read since finding out about this multi-point application there are many variants, even more as their popularity in the U.S. has begun to grow. It is quite possible, maybe even likely that the center portion of the lockset, both deadbolt and latch, can function alone, and engaging the upper and lower deadbolts is not required. In that case my earlier conjecture about operation remains quite valid. If all three deadbolts are key operable from the exterior it also remains the same.

But the spring latch was still intentionally disabled, not broken. None of the above changes that one simple fact.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

With all credit due to RoseMontague, I think I'd like to add to LondonJohn's excellent list of the points we've mostly now settled, with a quick list of the pro-guilt points we've mostly now demolished.

The list comes from the charming and erudite The Machine, who posts elsewhere but who it seems cannot be with us as a result of the local moderation policy forbidding excessive incivility. Let us hope that The Machine one day develops the ability or inclination to post civilly so that they can join us. If any pro-guilt advocates think this list omits important points please feel free to bring them up.

The Machine's list of questions is poorly organised and repetitive, so I have reorganised it in places to put substantially similar questions next to each other.

Why did Amanda Knox repeatedly lie to the police in the days following Meredith's murder?

Why did Raffaele Sollecito repeatedly lie to the police in the days following Meredith's murder?

Why did Amanda Knox lie to Filomena on 2 November 2007?

Why did Amanda Knox lie to friends in her e-mail on 4 November 2007?

After Amanda Knox had been confronted with proof that she had lied to the police on 5 November 2007, why did she choose to tell the police even more lies?

After Raffaele Sollecito had been confronted with proof that he had lied to the police on 5 November 2007, why did he choose to tell the police even more lies?

Why didn't Amanda Knox tell Filomena that she had already called Meredith's mobile phone when she spoke to her at 12.08pm on 2 November 2007?

Do you believe that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollectio couldn't remember very much about the evening Meredith was murdered because they were suffering from cannabis-induced amnesia?

As we have already demonstrated, as well as Amanda and Raffaele getting things wrong in their descriptions of events on the day the victim was found, Filomena and the police got things wrong too. Saying that any of them lied as opposed to just getting things wrong assumes facts not in evidence, specifically that any of these people knew their statements were incorrect at the time they made them.

Why did Raffaele Sollecito stop providing Amanda Knox with an alibi on 5 November 2007?

Why won't Raffaele Sollecito corroborate Amanda Knox's alibi that she was at his apartment on the night of the murder?

He admitted that he could not be absolutely certain that Amanda hadn't snuck off while he was asleep. This is scarcely shocking stuff, unless you think it's normal for people to chain their girlfriends to the bed at night to stop them going off and murdering people, or for people to stay awake all night for the same reason.

Spinning this as him stopping providing AK with an alibi seems reflective of dishonesty or excessive partisanship.

How would you account for Meredith's DNA being on the blade of the double DNA knife?

Accidental contamination at the lab is the single most probable cause. This can happen at the best of labs, and the lack of any audits at the Rome lab and their refusal to hand over their logs and other relevant records indicates that this probably isn't the best of labs. In fact, based on the videos of their evidence collection practises, it looks like the investigation as a whole was practising cargo cult forensics. They were doing things a lot like what real forensic scientists do, but without the vital methodological safeguards that make properly obtained forensic evidence valuable.

Deliberate falsification is less probable but, give the other unethical acts that we know the investigators engaged in, not a great leap.

How would account for the abundant amount of Sollecito's DNA being on Meredith's bra clasp?

As above, with the proviso that describing it as "abundant" is also reflective of dishonesty or excessive partisanship since a relatively small amount of DNA was found, and DNA from other unidentified sources was on the bra clasp, so unless a lot of different people were fondling MK's bra clasp in the days before she died the clasp definitely got contaminated seriously at some point.

Without a baseline provided by testing other samples from the rubbish pile where the clasp was found, that were collected in the same way as the clasp, we simply cannot say what the odds are that Raffaele's DNA would be found in that amount on the bra clasp. Once again this is why you want real forensics rather than cargo cult forensics.

Is it a coincidence that there were five instances of Amanda Knox's DNA mixed with Meredith's blood in three diifferent locations in the cottage?

The investigation's failure to take control samples from around the house means that nobody knows whether this is coincidence, because we don't know how likely a random swabbing of Amanda's house would have been to turn up Amanda's DNA. Once again, cargo cult forensics rather than proper forensics seems to have been the rule. In the absence of controls, we cannot say what the odds are that Amanda's DNA would be on any given spot where Meredith's blood ended up.

Who do you think cleaned up the trail of bloody footprints that led up to the blue bathmat?

If there ever was such a trail, the person who cleaned it up was Rudy - we can say this because, taking everything into account, he was almost certainly the only one of the accused there at the time.

Why were there three traces of Meredith's blood in Amanda Knox's room?

Possibly Rudy went in there at some point after his initial clean-up in the bathroom, or possibly police tracked it in there.

Why do you think Sollecito lied on two separate occasions about accidentally pricking Meredith's hand whilst cooking?

Perpetuating the claim that he did so is indicative of dishonesty or excessive partisanship, because his statement was ambiguous but taken in the context of everything everyone else has ever said the only logical interpretation was that he talked about accidentally touching Amanda's hand, not Meredith's.

Rudy Guede's visible bloody footprints led straight out of Meredith's room and out of the cottage. Who do you think staged the break-in in Filomena's room and who do you think left the bloody footprint on the blue bathmat?

At Rudy himself stated, he travelled between the murder room and the bathroom after Meredith was stabbed. To believe that Rudy headed straight out of the cottage without visiting the bathroom first you have to ignore Rudy's own statement, and no sensible reason has ever been advanced to do so.

The question of whether the break-in was staged is still open - the prosecution "experts" claim that it had to have been staged, but these are the same "experts" who claimed that the footprint on the mat had to be Raffaele's, who thought that Amanda's DNA on the alleged murder weapon was evidence, and who told us that all the broken glass in Filomena's room was on top of mess caused by a faked search.

If it was staged conceivably Rudy could have staged it, but taking everything into consideration the most likely story is that Rudy just broke in that way as per his M.O. and the investigators came up with silly arguments from uninformed incredulity as to why it couldn't have been so.

Why did Amanda Knox voluntarily accuse an innocent man of Meredith's murder?

Why didn't Amanda Knox recant her false and malicious allegation against Diya Lumumba?

Why did Amanda Knox state on four separate occasions that she was at the cottage when Meredith was murdered?

Why did Amanda Knox voluntarily admit that she was involved in Meredith's murder?

Amanda Knox was either secretly an expert on what an internalised false confession is supposed to look like, which seems implausible, or after sustained and sometimes violent interrogation where she was encouraged to fantasise about the murder and told that she was repressing memories of the murder she made an internalised false confession.

This is a well-established psychological phenomenon, albeit one that most guilters don't appear to know about and which Amanda was highly unlikely to have known about. Ergo the hypothesis that it was an internalised false confession is far more likely than any other alternative hypothesis.

A better question would be "Why did the Perugia police browbeat and physically assault Amanda until she fingered Lumumba, when the police almost certainly knew that the crime fit the M.O. of a housebreaker with a history of carrying knives, who also had dark, curly hair, and who they had in custody less than a week ago?".

Why did Amanda Knox tell the postal police that Meredith always locked her door?

The only evidence we have that she ever did so is one officer's uncorroborated memory.

Do you think Amanda Knox made a genuine attempt contact Meredith on 2 November 2007?

I see no reason to believe otherwise, she certainly called both her phones.

Why did Amanda Knox phone her mother in the middle of the night before anything had happened?

I have no idea, and welcome any additions from other forumites. However the relevance to the murder is not clear to me.

What major talking points or "evidence" has been missed by this list? Going over it I was frankly surprised by how weak the list was. If those are the big guns of the guilt case they have serious problems, but I suspect that The Machine simply forgot to include some important points.

 

[JREF2010]

Yes,
I am still convinced that there should have been glass on the ground beneath the window if it was broken from a rock thrown from outside. Some of the broken glass will travel in the opposite direction from the impact and this appears to me to be a scientific fact. If there was glass on the ground then the investigators missed this fact. If there was not glass there then the window was broken from the inside. If it was broken from the inside the question becomes who did it and why they did it. This is still the number one thing that those of us on the innocent side have not satisfactorily addressed, in my opinion. Looking at the glass on the window sill with several large pieces laying on the sill, my opinion now is that some smaller pieces would have had to have gone forward enough to fall on the ground.

I believe the "ballistics" expert hired by the defense team was not the right sort of expert to address this and was concerned with answering questions that were not as important as this one. I would have sent someone back to the scene to look for glass fragments the police may have missed. Tiny shards of glass in the grass are difficult to see and find and I don't know to what extent the police effort went to find glass fragments.

yes, I agree to most of that, but the other theory, Judge Massei's interpretation is the window/glass+white shutter was opened inward and then broken with a rock, by someone standing inside the room. This doesn't answer how glass could "jump" to the window sill. This is a grossly weak theory, unless I'm totally misinterpreting something.

Bruce posted a new clue with the close-up picture of the window sill.
Each layer of glass logically laying on the window sill. So however way the window was broken, the window was most likely not opened inward to the room. It's the only new and very logical piece of the puzzle, thats been presented in a long time.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I believe we have seen only a partial list of the DNA samples that were taken. Maybe the whole list has been posted elsewhere but I don't think it was posted here (I could be mistaken and missed it, though).

This document includes all the samples that have any bearing on the case, except Rep. 36, the knife:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/selected_dna_results.pdf

I have left out samples from the downstairs apartment, samples from Sollecito's car, etc., which were not part of the prosecution's case.

 

[Mary_H]

Quote:
Why do you think Sollecito lied on two separate occasions about accidentally pricking Meredith's hand whilst cooking?

Perpetuating the claim that he did so is indicative of dishonesty or excessive partisanship, because his statement was ambiguous but taken in the context of everything everyone else has ever said the only logical interpretation was that he talked about accidentally touching Amanda's hand, not Meredith's.

Did Raffaele talk on two separate occasions about accidentally pricking Meredith? I am aware of only the one diary reference.