Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Mary_H]

This isn't evidence of police lying. Try again. I'm afaraid it doesn't count as being summoned if....you weren't.
How was she summoned? Is there a paper trail? How can one be summoned without knowing it? What difference does it make? Amanda's lies made a very big difference...like Lumumba spending a fortnight in jail and subsequently losing his means to support his family.

bucketoftea, last week, on August 2nd, you asked for evidence that the police lied. At least five posters responded, with many examples, beginning on page 100 of this thread. It would be helpful to the dialog if you would respond to those posts before raising the question again, or before trying to change the subject. That way, we could discuss the topic, come to some resolution or closure about it, and not have to go around and around again.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

One of the most interesting books in my true crime collection is called Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner, by Michael Baden, MD, who was the chief medical examiner in New York City for many years. Now that the people following this discussion have read what the esteemed Massei has to say about the time of Meredith's death, I thought it would be useful to provide the opinion of an expert. I have uploaded a few pages from Baden's book to the FOA site, at the following urls:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden01.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden02.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden03.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden04.gif

The relevant discussion begins at the bottom of page 103.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I think in an important sense we're done with the prosecution case. The time of death was around 9pm, Amanda and Raffaele were at home until 45 minutes after the time of death, and that's all there is to say about the guilt and/or innocence of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of Meredith Kercher.

Is this anticlimactically easy? As someone said on the PMF boards:

Brogan at PMF

Kevin actually typifies the problem with Amanda’s glee club, they think they are more qualified than the actual experts. What was the family thinking engaging all those expensive lawyers and experts when all they needed was a laptop and google.[/quote]

Although this is an argument from incredulity and hence worthless as an argument, it does raise an interesting question. How did the prosecution ever get up in the first place if it had a hole in it that you could comfortably steer a barge through?

There is precedent for such a horribly flawed conviction. Stefan Kiszko was convicted of murdering a girl in 1976 despite the fact that he was unable to produce sperm, and sperm was found on the body of his alleged victim. One might well have thought that confronted with evidence that absolutely ruled him out as a suspect the police would have dropped the investigation, but confirmation bias and groupthink presumably led the investigative team to discount this pesky fact that completely exonerated him because they had lots of crappy evidence that incriminated him.

He had pornography and sweets in his car - gotcha! He made all sorts of inconsistent statements about where he had been and what he had done in the days around the murder, which clearly only a guilty person would do. The police had thousands of pages of evidence, and it's natural to think that if there were thousands of pages of evidence it must have been pretty good evidence. He broke down under lengthy interrogation without a lawyer present and made a false confession - sound familiar yet? Three eyewitnesses came forward to say he had exposed himself to them and stalked one of them.

As a result of all this crappy evidence was convicted.

He spent fifteen years in prison for a crime that anyone with access to the relevant facts and a working brain could prove that he could not possibly have committed.

There is a major difference in the two cases, in that in Kizko's case the police suppressed the forensic evidence that should have cleared him. However that doesn't change the fact that the "mountain of evidence" against him was rubbish and that no credible evidence even put him at the murder scene.

So is it beyond credibility that two people who could not possibly be guilty, could be convicted? No, it's not beyond credibility. It should be, but it's not. It's happened before and in this case it seems nigh certain that it's happened again, and I can say that with a high degree of confidence armed only with a laptop, google and logic.

 

[piktor]

Would you mind posting the links to those websites then Chris because from the forensic websites I've been reading it is stressed there is an unacceptable level of imprecision in basing TOD on stomach contents. It can be downright misleading in fact and is only used when other methods are not available, such as in Meredith's case where the pathologist could not examine her straight away to take body temperature readings.

I concur with Danceme. It is made clear by experts at trial and literature elsewhere: stomach content is not a precise method to determine time of death.

In the Kercher case, precise time of death is not scientifically provable, it is approximate and no more. It is approximate within a variation of hours, not minutes.

 

[Alt+F4]

The preponderance of evidence is clear. The remains of her 6 pm meal were still in her stomach, suggesting that she was killed within three hours of eating. She tried to call her mother at 8:56 pm, but the call was not completed, and she made no further effort to contact her mother. And then the next activity with the phone suggests a random pushing of buttons. We know how Massei has worked all that out... she was playing with her phone, the bum in the park is more reliable than the pathology report, etc. But the truth is that Guede was in the house when she got home, and he blitzed her almost immediately. She was dead well before 10 pm.

I agree with you that she arrived home at about 9 (there is evidence to support this) and that someone else was messing with her phone at 10 (probably, but no real evidence) but as far as I can tell there is zero evidence that Rudy entered the home before Meredith did. What evidence do you know of that he did?

 

[LondonJohn]

One of the most interesting books in my true crime collection is called Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner, by Michael Baden, MD, who was the chief medical examiner in New York City for many years. Now that the people following this discussion have read what the esteemed Massei has to say about the time of Meredith's death, I thought it would be useful to provide the opinion of an expert. I have uploaded a few pages from Baden's book to the FOA site, at the following urls:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden01.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden02.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden03.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden04.gif

The relevant discussion begins at the bottom of page 103.

Dr Baden is an internationally-renowned forensic pathologist, who has given expert witness testimony in hundreds of criminal trials. And of course he's correct about the workings of the gastro-intestinal system.

I speak from a position of informed knowledge about the workings of the stomach and intestines - although I am not a medical doctor and am a very, very long way from being any kind of expert. But I know with a high degree of surety that if

a) no chyme matter was found in Meredith's duodenum or at the top of her small intestine;

b) there was still recognisable undigested cheese and vegetable matter in her stomach;

c) she had eaten the moderate-sized meal of pizza at 6.00-6.30pm; and

d) she had not undertaken strenuous physical activity in the hours following the meal (she watched a movie, and strolled back to her house);

then:

e) She must have been killed within a maximum of 3 hours after eating the meal - i.e. by 9.30pm.

As you and Kevin point out, this on its own is likely to be sufficient to reverse the original verdicts with respect to Knox and Sollecito. I presume that the defence teams will be bringing in strong expert testimony in this area. Dr Baden is probably too expensive and too distant, but there will be many eminent forensic pathologists in Italy who should be able to confidently give evidence that death must have occurred before 9.30pm.

 

[LondonJohn]

I concur with Danceme. It is made clear by experts at trial and literature elsewhere: stomach content is not a precise method to determine time of death.

In the Kercher case, precise time of death is not scientifically provable, it is approximate and no more. It is approximate within a variation of hours, not minutes.

But estimating time of death is much more possible in this case because apparently nothing was found in the duodenum or upper small intestine either. This means that none of Meredith's pizza meal had yet left her stomach. And the other factor is that there were also recognisable pieces of cheese matter and vegetable matter still detectable in her stomach contents. It's very well established that the stomach's acids and enzymes will take between 90 minutes and three hours to completely break down these sorts of food products into chyme.

It's fair to say that it's difficult to give accurate ToD estimates from stomach contents - certainly not to within, say, a 30-minute window. However, in this particular instance, it's actually possible to narrow down the ToD to precisely such a narrow window, since it's known that Meredith was alive for most of the broader window implied by the stomach/duodenum/small intestine contents. In other words, the contents indicate a broad time of death between 8.00pm and 9.30pm - but we can rule out 8.00pm-9.00pm since there is ample evidence that Meredith was still alive that that time. Therefore, the indication is that she died between 9.00pm and 9.30pm.

Incidentally, the "4-6 hours" time range that has been quoted for stomach activity is the time that all ingested food would typically take to pass out of the stomach and into the duodenum. If that had been the case, Meredith's stomach would have been totally empty at autopsy, and there would have been a significant amount of matter in her duodenum and upper small intestine. Instead, however, her stomach was half-full (with what amounts to her entire moderate-sized pizza meal plus some dessert), and there was nothing at all in her duodenum or upper small intestine.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I agree with you that she arrived home at about 9 (there is evidence to support this) and that someone else was messing with her phone at 10 (probably, but no real evidence) but as far as I can tell there is zero evidence that Rudy entered the home before Meredith did. What evidence do you know of that he did?

I don't think she'd have let him in, and she would have called for help if he had tried to smash his way in when she was already home. Plus there is the unflushed toilet, which I think was used before the murder, because no blood was found there. Also, she tried to call her mother at 8:56, but made no further attempt to reach her, which I think she would have done. Her mother was sick, and Meredith was worried about her.

It fits together into a narrative that is consistent with many other sexually motivated homicides I have read about. But the theory the authorities have laid out makes no sense. Amanda Knox had no reason to kill her housemate, or to participate in violence against her housemate or anyone else. And when a murder like this happens, the perp is usually someone like Guede, a young man with problems.

 

[piktor]

c) she had eaten the moderate-sized meal of pizza at 6.00-6.30pm

The girls had home-made pizza and apple crumb cake. Nowhere is a precise time of Meredith's final ingestion of food.

Did she eat both entries at the same time?

Did she eat all her pizza at once or eat part of her pizza, had some crumb cake and later eat the remainder of her pizza?

Did she have seconds?

Stomach content is not a precise method for measuring time of death.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I concur with Danceme. It is made clear by experts at trial and literature elsewhere: stomach content is not a precise method to determine time of death.

In the Kercher case, precise time of death is not scientifically provable, it is approximate and no more. It is approximate within a variation of hours, not minutes.

You can't boil a complex process like the effects of the human digestive system down to a sound bite like "it is approximate within a variation of hours". The precision depends on what they ate, on whether or not you know precisely when they ate it, how long ago that was and a variety of other factors.

Have you read the excerpt Charlie Wilkes linked for you?

In this particular case we can nail down the time of death using the stomach contents fairly precisely because Meredith ate recently, it is known exactly when she ate, and we know that Meredith wasn't home until close to 9pm.

If Meredith had eaten at an unknown time six or eight hours before her death then her death could not be pinned down nearly as precisely by her stomach contents. As I understand it, anyway.

 

[LondonJohn]

The girls had home-made pizza and apple crumb cake. Nowhere is a precise time of Meredith's final ingestion of food.

Did she eat both entries at the same time?

Did she eat all her pizza at once or eat part of her pizza, had some crumb cake and later eat the remainder of her pizza?

Did she have seconds?

Stomach content is not a precise method for measuring time of death.

No, the English friends testified that Meredith ate pizza at 6.00-6.30pm, and that (IIRC) the girls first prepared then ate apple crumble (an English dessert, not a cake) mid-way through the movie (7.30-8.00pm).

I believe the testimony was that the pizza was a discrete meal at 6.00-6.30pm. So any pizza component ingredients that were in her stomach at ToD had been ingested between 6.00pm and 6.30pm.

Incidentally, I'm not sure whether you're implying this or not, but the human stomach is not one single large homogeneous "bag" - it is in fact internally compartmentalised into different areas, and is capable of processing food eaten at different times in these different areas. This is to maximise the efficiency and speed of digestion. Therefore the apple crumble ingested at around 7.30-8.00pm would have been treated separately from the earlier pizza. The pizza's passage through the stomach would be essentially unaffected by any further food Meredith ate afterwards (unless she had subsequently eaten a very large volume of food, or had drunk large amounts of alcohol - neither of which happened in this instance).

For me, the biggest single indicator is that there was no chyme matter in the duodenum or the majority of the small intestine (except the very last loop). This in itself clearly implies that Meredith was killed within 3 hours MAXIMUM of the pizza meal at 6.00-6.30pm - regardless of the later apple crumble, or whether she had "seconds" of pizza.

In this instance, stomach/duodenum/intestinal contents do provide a very strong indicator of the time of death. I don't believe it's physiologically possible for food ingested at 6.30pm to still be entirely inside the stomach at 11.30pm (the prosecution's and Massei's accepted time of death). That's five hours after ingestion of a moderate-sized meal, in a healthy young adult female who was relaxed and sedentary after eating. I don't think you could find a single gastro-intestinal specialist who has ever experienced food sit entirely inside the stomach for that length of time under those sorts of conditions.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

As you and Kevin point out, this on its own is likely to be sufficient to reverse the original verdicts with respect to Knox and Sollecito. I presume that the defence teams will be bringing in strong expert testimony in this area. Dr Baden is probably too expensive and too distant, but there will be many eminent forensic pathologists in Italy who should be able to confidently give evidence that death must have occurred before 9.30pm.

I don't think Baden would do any good. Five different pathologists - Lalli, Bacci, Norelli, Introna, and Ronchi - addressed the stomach contents. They all agreed that this evidence points to a time of death within three or four hours of her last meal, which, as we know, was around 6 pm. Norelli and Ronchi, however, suggested that under some conditions, it could take longer for the meal to pass from the stomach to the duodenum, and that was all Massei needed to hear. He had to grapple with the fact that Amanda and Raffaele had an alibi until around 9 pm, and the people with the broken-down car saw no lights or activity from 10:30 until shortly after 11 pm. Therefore, he decided that the stomach contents are not a reliable indicator of when Meredith died, but the bum in the park is a reliable indicator.

 

[Kestrel]

The girls had home-made pizza and apple crumb cake. Nowhere is a precise time of Meredith's final ingestion of food.

Did she eat both entries at the same time?

Did she eat all her pizza at once or eat part of her pizza, had some crumb cake and later eat the remainder of her pizza?

Did she have seconds?

Stomach content is not a precise method for measuring time of death.

Information from the three women present can be found starting on page 35 of the PMF translation of the Massei Report.

Robyn Butterworth said they ate pizza around 6 PM, then looked at Halloween photos watched a movie. They had apple crumble and ice cream about half way through the film.

Amy Frost said they started eating the pizza at half past 5 or 6.

Sophie Purton said they finished eating perhaps an hour before they left. But she is probably referring to the apple crumble.

So there is evidence that Meredith ate pizza around 6 PM. It's also known that when she died, that meal was still in her stomach.

You do realize that digestion starts when you start eating, not when the last bite of food enters your system?

 

[Fine]

One of the most interesting books in my true crime collection is called Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner, by Michael Baden, MD, who was the chief medical examiner in New York City for many years. Now that the people following this discussion have read what the esteemed Massei has to say about the time of Meredith's death, I thought it would be useful to provide the opinion of an expert. I have uploaded a few pages from Baden's book to the FOA site, at the following urls:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden01.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden02.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden03.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden04.gif

The relevant discussion begins at the bottom of page 103.

___________________

Thanks for the link Charlie.

Since you didn't do it, permit me to quote the most relevant passage:

"Certain extraordinary situations---the prolonged terror of a kidnapping or rape---would slow digestion considerably...." (My emphasis.)

Do you suppose Meredith could have suffered prolonged terror? I do.

///

 

[Chris C]

Would you mind posting the links to those websites then Chris because from the forensic websites I've been reading it is stressed there is an unacceptable level of imprecision in basing TOD on stomach contents. It can be downright misleading in fact and is only used when other methods are not available, such as in Meredith's case where the pathologist could not examine her straight away to take body temperature readings.

When considering ToD in Meredith's case you must remember there is nothing in her Duodenum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodenum

This one talks about pizza in the stomach.
http://www.exploreforensics.co.uk/stomach-contents-as-a-means-of-evidence.html

This one gives you a Time Frame of food passing through the digestive track. It states that after 3 hours food moves from the stomach to the small intestines. No food in Meredith's Duodenum.
http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00206/text_ta_time_since_death.htm

This one here mentions that the stomach empties itself 4 to 6 hours after eating. Since the Stomach hasn't even started empting itself, you know its less than 4 hours.
http://www.dplylemd.com/Articles/timelydeath.html

This one here states it takes a couple hours for food to pass from Stomach to Small Intestine.
http://myweb.dal.ca/jvandomm/forensicbotany/plantanatomy.html#stomach

Now when condiering ToD, the digestive track can be unreliable and misleading unless you know a few factors. If you know these factors you can get a very accurate window for ToD.
1st. This is the most important. You need a date and time of last meal and what they ate. In this case we know Meredith had Pizza and it was around 6pm.
2nd. Drugs. You need to know if Meredith was on drugs at the Time of Death, Meredith came back negative for drugs and her BAC was really low. So this is a non factor.
3rd. You need to know if the patient is suffering from any illness. Since none where reported then she has no illnesses.

Now these are the facts. There was nothing in the Duodenum when the autopsy was performed. There was reported to be pizza in the Victims stomach and chime.

With this knowledge it can be safely presumed that there is 0 chance she lived longer than 4 hours after eating pizza. The coroner put the ToD at 2 to 3 hours after eating pizza. Since we know that Meredith SUPPOSEDLY ate at around 5:30pm to 6:30pm. Then Meredith died between 7:30pm and 9:30pm. At the EXTREME latest it would have been 10:30 pm.

Now since the prosecution claims Knox/Sollecito killed Meredith between 11pm and 12pm then there is no chance this could have been accomplished since the Autopsy puts the time of death at 2 to 3 hours after eating pizza. This doesn't put the ToD at a time in which the prosecution claims that Knox/Sollecito could have committed this murder. Further more the prosecution claims Meredith died at a different ToD for Knox/Sollecito and Guede. The prosecution convicted Guede on a ToD that is an hour earlier than Knox/Sollecito's.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Now I'm a little curious about this TOD thing your talking about. Almost everywhere I look for info on this, I read it is only possible to give TOD to within 4 hours of a death after at least 10 hrs has passed, yet most of you have it down to a 1/2 hour. 9:00 - 9:30 ????

Next, this stomach contents thing, almost every site I visit, does not even list this as one of the ways to estimate TOD and the only one that does, says that if PIZZA was eaten and is still in the stomach, then the person died 2 hours after eating it, so I guess it must have those English friends of Meredith, no?

http://www.exploreforensics.co.uk/stomach-contents-as-a-means-of-evidence.html

Stonach contents are not a good way to determine TOD, I know they make sense to most of you, but then you are not coronors, so I put my money on the real experts and they tell me. TOD is between about 9 and 2 in the morning.... thankyou

 

[LondonJohn]

Oh dear. Some people on other forums seem to be under the impression that issues relating to the Kercher case discussed on JREF, PMF, IiP, PS etc (and any documents/translations posted on these sites) actually have some bearing on the outcome of the case. I think it's time to take a deep breath, and remember that we are - I assume - all peripheral players of no importance in the actual legal proceedings taking place in Perugia.

It's not necessary - from the point of view of justice - for anyone on these sites to have access to translations of the sentencing report or the appeals. It's only an interesting sideshow. The only people who need to know and understand these documents (whether in Italian or English) are the appellants themselves, their lawyers, their immediate families, the immediate family of the victim, the prosecutors, and the appeal court itself.

The rest of us are irrelevant. What we're engaging upon here is a sideshow discussion about a tragic murder case, but only for our own purposes. Nothing that's said or done or posted here will have any impact on what happens in Perugia courtrooms. Public opinion - whether in Italy, America, or anywhere in the world, will (or, more correctly, should) have no impact on what happens in Perugia courtrooms. To try to pretend otherwise is an exercise in arrogance, and in futility. To claim that anything posted on online forums or blogs is going to "harm" or "help" the actual legal case against anybody is absurd and fanciful.

Of course, it's true that groundswells of public support can raise profiles of certain cases, but that's a world away from influencing legal proceedings. And, very occasionally, online "sleuths" can uncover something genuinely new in a case, which may end up having a real impact in a courtroom - but these occasions are incredibly rare.

So, while we all debate (some more openly than others), and postulate theories, and search for reasoning and interpretation of our necessarily-limited glimpse of the case, please let's not lose sight of the fact that, in the final analysis, none of us without a direct connection to the case actually really matters. That doesn't invalidate our debates and discussions, but it places them in the correct context.

 

[LondonJohn]

___________________

Thanks for the link Charlie.

Since you didn't do it, permit me to quote the most relevant passage:

"Certain extraordinary situations---the prolonged terror of a kidnapping or rape---would slow digestion considerably...." (My emphasis.)

Do you suppose Meredith could have suffered prolonged terror? I do.

///

Your logic is impeccable, as usual.

We know that Merdedith could not have been attacked before 9.00pm. Would you agree? We also know that she ate the pizza between 6.00pm and 6.30pm (latest), according the the testimony of her friends. Would you agree?

Would you therefore agree that there was a period of at least 2.5 hours after Meredith ate the pizza, when she was not suffering any sense of fear or terror?

Would you then agree that the food would have taken a totally normal transit through Meredith's stomach in those minimum 2.5 hours?

Would you then agree that any terror which was undoubtedly suffered by Meredith would have only taken place at some time after 9.00pm?

Are you therefore suggesting that a state of terror experienced after 9.00pm can not only slow down or (in very extreme cases) stop the normal digestive function, but that it can also reverse it?

Are you, in other words, suggesting that food which was normally digested by Meredith in the 2.5 hours between 6.30pm and 9.00pm - which would a) have been completely broken down into chyme over this period, and b) would have been well into its transition into the duodenum and beyond - was actually induced by the post-9.00pm terror to pass back from the duodenum into the stomach, and for parts of it to reconstitute itself into its component parts inside the stomach?

Because this is what has to have happened for Meredith's stomach/duodenum/intestine contents to be found the way they were found at the autopsy. You may want to contact a medical or scientific journal to publish your breakthrough discovery.

///

 

[LondonJohn]

Now I'm a little curious about this TOD thing your talking about. Almost everywhere I look for info on this, I read it is only possible to give TOD to within 4 hours of a death after at least 10 hrs has passed, yet most of you have it down to a 1/2 hour. 9:00 - 9:30 ????

Next, this stomach contents thing, almost every site I visit, does not even list this as one of the ways to estimate TOD and the only one that does, says that if PIZZA was eaten and is still in the stomach, then the person died 2 hours after eating it, so I guess it must have those English friends of Meredith, no?

http://www.exploreforensics.co.uk/stomach-contents-as-a-means-of-evidence.html

Stonach contents are not a good way to determine TOD, I know they make sense to most of you, but then you are not coronors, so I put my money on the real experts and they tell me. TOD is between about 9 and 2 in the morning.... thankyou

Do you know the difference in role and expertise between a coroner and a forensic pathologist? You appear to be conflating the two.

 

[Malkmus]

Next, this stomach contents thing, almost every site I visit, does not even list this as one of the ways to estimate TOD and the only one that does, says that if PIZZA was eaten and is still in the stomach, then the person died 2 hours after eating it, so I guess it must have those English friends of Meredith, no?

The article said "roughly" two hours, and considering Meredith ate and finished her last meal of pizza within a 6:00 - 7:00 window, that would mean she roughly died around 9 wouldn't it?

Stonach contents are not a good way to determine TOD, I know they make sense to most of you, but then you are not coronors, so I put my money on the real experts and they tell me. TOD is between about 9 and 2 in the morning.... thankyou

Instead of simply ignoring the citations provided by others (including the one you posted yourself), why don't you cite where anyone has actually said that "stomach contents are not a good way to determine TOD"? Then we can just stop taking your word, since, well, you're not a coroner either.