Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kevin_Lowe]

One thing I`ve understood; in this case there is no way, that any witness, that doesn`t fit in the agenda of the Knox-supporters, can be found (in their opinion) reliable.
The four independent witnesses, that heard the scream and/or heard running of people shortly after that, are useless because all of them are retarded daydreamer, as they falsely connect their "imaginative" hearing of the scream to a total "common" day, on which a negligibility like a murder in their neighbourhood had just occured. One of them even had such a great fantasy, that she heard such a harrowing scream, that she couldn`t sleep anymore that night and obviously is haunted by this event up to the present day. If this wasn`t enough, all of them went to court to tell their fantasy story, because, whether thier story is true or not, it doesn`t really matter, because their terstimony would be correlated to a totally unimportant matter like murder.
The witness, who saw AK & RS at the basketball court at the crucial time on Nov1, is also rubbish, because he`s homeless.
The witness, who is a shopowner, and who saw AK early in the morning of Nov2, is a bloody liar. He lied, because either he had fun seeing at least one "innocent" person rot in jail for 30 years due to his testimony or because he was just bored, and through his evilness, he thought about creating a story, which would bring one of the accused in big trouble, as he thought they were guilty by his knowledge of the case, which came from his newspaper study.

I think it would be far more productive to engage with the evidence for and against each witness being reliable and accurate, than to just pretend that they are all being dismissed because we want Knox and Sollecito to be innocent.

It would be equally unproductive for me to assert that all guilters are irrational and believe whatever suits them without any regard for the actual evidence. Even if it were true, it would get us nowhere to say it.

First of all I have no medical expertise at all and I don`t believe in getting it through googling some papers, that deal with the issue of estimating Tod in terms of pathology.

I very much believe in reading and understanding the relevant literature, rather than taking the word of authority figures whose testimony conflicts with the best available literature on the topic.

The ability to do so is why we have the scientific literature in the first place. Scientific facts must be peer-reviewed and publicly accessible. They are not mystical secrets which only the elect may apprehend, they are printed in black and white in journals anyone can read.

If a supposed expert contradicts the literature, then the supposed expert damned well better have a publishable paper in the pipeline backing up their position. Otherwise they're just wrong, and you don't need a relevant PhD to know it.

I just wanted to approach the issue in mathematical respect. First of all, it`s funny to see, that your knowledge of the method of "Estimating ToD based on stomach/intestinal contents" and your "knowledge" of the autopsy details in this case leads you to a time frame of 1.5 hours, in which ToD must have occured. This again implies, that this method gives a lot of space in terms of statistical interpretation. What I`ve said before, the occurance of such an event (be it stomach emptying times, grade of digestion or whatever) is of stochastical nature. That means (please note, that the only thing I try to point out is the mathematical side of such a method; if my following examples are nonsense in terms of pathology, that doesn`t change anything in the mathematical approach on such a method), if you reproduce, say 3 times the exact same conditions, for example: if a person (theoretically) eats three times the same steak under the exact same conditions (exactly the same steak, exactely the same day and time, eats the steak in exactly the same way etc. etc.) and then you measure the value, you are interested in (say percentage of the steak, that has left your stomach in the cause of digestion) 3 times in exact the same way, for example 3 hours later you get three different measured values. Why? The conditions were the same all three times.
The answer is, that this event is of stochastical nature, and even under the same conditions you get different measured values.
But the reality of measurement is far worse, as the measurements are adulterated by systematical errors, as for example imprecise measurement devices, incompetence of the person, who is doing the measurement etc..
Another problem is, that, for estimating the real parameters for the distribution function (in "our" case a normal-distribution) of our random-variable ToD, that is mean-value and variance, you need an extremly big control sample (the bigger the control sample the better the estimation of the unknown parameters(mean value, variance)). In "our" case, this would mean (theoretically) reproducing the way of death of MK (I know that sounds horrible) numerous times and then, every time, measure the value you are interested in. What a statistician is doing in the end after having acquired all the "relevant" data is the following. Through his data, he estiamtes the two relevant parameters (mean-value, variance) with a given formula and then, with the help of these two parameters, he builds a, say 95%-confidence intervall for the mean value (that is an intervall, which for "our" random variable Tod would be for example: 21:15-24:00), which says the following: the real value of the parameter mean-value (in our case the mean-value is also the value, which has the highest probability, which is a special attribute of the normal-distribution) lies with probability of 95% in the calculated intervall (21:30-24:00).
So, which conclusion can be drawn for "our case". First of all, our control sample has the size one, which means we can`t estimate the variance with the given mathematical formula. To "solve" this problem, as I suspect was done, you look for cases, which are similar to the Mk-case. It is cases, where, for example, a similar degree of the last meal was digested and, where the date of last meal and date of ToD are known , weigth of the person is similar to MK etc.. As said, the condition of those cases are just similar to these in "our" case and not exacly the same. Then, there are systematical errors, that were made in these cases, too (which add up, when they are evaluated). This means, that the "expansion" of our control sample is to a remarkable degree defective. Of course , the data acquired in our case is to some degree defective, too (systematical errors)
So, what we get, in the end, is, a defective (confidence)-intervall of time, which only tells us, that the event (ToD in "our" case) with the highest probability lies in there, with probability of, as said, for example 95%.

Taking all this into account, the claim, that Tod must have occured shortly after 21:00 is ridiculous.

You were fine right up until the end.

There is a degree of error in any scientific measurement, yes. With the correct mathematical tools you can describe the possible error range and the likelihood of an error of a given magnitude, yes.

But then you jump from this to "and therefore nobody can ever know anything, TA-DAH! SHE'S GUILTY!". Sorry, but we can know all sorts of things, within given margins of error. A time of death of 21:00 is already getting implausibly late based on Meredith's stomach contents, knowing what we do about the range of possible error. Only because we know Meredith was alive until shortly before then can we rule out a much earlier time of death.

Of course, you`re right, that physics is an "exact", science, but the measuring of physical values is far from exact, it`s defective and of statistical nature, as shown above.
The fact, that so many experts came to so different conclusions for ToD in respect to the size of the time intervals and placed them at so different times, speaks volumes for me in terms of reliability of this method.

So the published evidence says one thing, but four different prosecution witnesses said four different other things... and you conclude from this that nobody can possibly know the answer? How do you think the universe works? Do you think that when people are gathering hard data for a publication the universe sets out to trick them, and that to get to the real truth we need to ask prosecution witnesses in a highly controversial trial?

The witness testimonies are much more profundly for me in that respect.

The untrained human brain is terrible at weighing up evidence, and tends to put far more weight than it should on its perception of social communications and far less weight than it should on scientific data. That's why there are so many suckers who think "This guy seems legit... he has an honest face... I bet he really does have a free energy machine".

In the Knox case there are plenty of people making exactly the same mistake and thinking "Knox looks shifty... I think she lied about some stuff... I bet she really is a murderer despite the hard scientific fact that the prosecution narrative cannot be reconciled with the stomach evidence".

The trained human brain is aware of this tendency and looks at the hard evidence first, and forms hypotheses based on the hard evidence first. The hard evidence says that Knox and Sollecito were at home when Meredith Kercher died, and Rudy Guede was alone at the scene.

Finally this will be my last post on this thread, as it seems to be an unreachable task to change the belief of AK-supporters in her innocence, regardless of what had happened and what will happen.

It's a psychological fact that we only like to change our beliefs and behaviour a little at a time. You can get someone to make a small donation more easily than a large donation, but once they have made that small donation they are then more likely to make a large donation in the future. Once again this is characteristic behaviour arising from the monkey instincts of the untrained human's brain.

One of the hardest things scientists have to learn to do is to turn on a penny when the evidence calls for it. Even if you've spent twenty years assembling evidence for a pet theory you are expected to chuck it all in immediately if your worst enemy elegantly falsifies that pet theory. Even if you've spent months or years on the internet viciously defaming Amanda Knox, if the evidence proves her innocent you're expected to switch immediately to recognising her innocence.

You've obviously got some background in science or statistics: I think you know as well as I do that your attempt to cast doubt on the reliability of the stomach evidence just doesn't hold water. When you go to the best published data (which neither side in the trial did), you find out that Meredith could not possibly have been killed by Amanda or Raffaele. The stomach contents nail down the time of death to around 21:00 or not much later, and the computer records verify Amanda and Raffaele's alibi until 21:49 plus travel time.

Now the question is, are you going to act like a scientist and turn on a dime when the evidence tells you to?

 

[Chris C]

LiamG,
There are alot of problems with the witness testimony.

The homeless guy had his days confused and if you accept his testimony then you have to accept that Knox and Sollecito didn't committ this murder. The guy literally gives them an alibi to not commit the murder. All the defense asks is either throw out his testimony or accept all of his testimony. They claim Knox/Sollecito where at home and have proof using the computer records that they couldn't have been on the court at 2130. However, if you accept the testimony, the defense wants all of his testimony accepted. The guy testifies that knox/sollecito where at the court from 2130 to 2400 hrs. Which puts them there until after Mignini ToD for murder.

Nara wasn't exactly sure about what time she heard the scream and she made conflicting statements in her testimony. Plus there is the the distance at which the scream would have had to travel. Plus multiple walls the sound would have had to travel through. There is also the witnesses on the street that heard nothing.

Another witness heard a scream and then 2 people arguing in italian. Though if i remember correctly he wasn't a witness until after mignini read about him telling a reporter this. This is a credibility problem.

She shopkeeper told the police he hadn't seen Knox/Sollecito that morning at his store then nearly a year later changes his story while talking to a reporter. This is a credibility issue.

All 4 of these people have changed their story yet the prosecution say they are credible. Of course the prosecution also claims Knox/Sollecito changed their story and are liars because of it. Now the biggest problems with the screams are the Times. You see at the time of the screams Rudy says he had already left the scene. Also rudy was convicted of the murder on a ToD earlier than the ToD that the prosecution claims Knox/Sollecito killed kercher. By changing the ToD between the convictions you are saying that they wrongly convicted Rudy.

 

[Fine]

Fine, having double-checked this I think you may have made a translation error here... (#4580)

The quote reads "dall'inizio dell'assunzione dell'ultimo pasto noto". "Dall'inizio" means "from the start". Hence the proper translation should read (as I posted originally) "from the start of the consumption of the last known meal". You only translated the last part of it.

I'm very happy for any errors to be pointed out, obviously, but it would be nice if you double-checked to make sure your facts are right first.
(Btw, any progress on the pepper spray info for H_B yet?)

______________________

Well, katy_did, thank you for your courteous response. To "double-check my facts," I wandered over to Bruce's site and noticed that he has translated the relevant passage pretty much as I did (but not as katy_did did):

"Based upon experts and medico-legal criterion, Meredith died at 2-3 or 3-4 hours after her last meal which was completed around 6:30pm to 7:00pm. This places the death using 3 hours at 9:30pm to 10:00pm."
Raffaele's Appeal

Hmmm. May I suggest this explanation for the confusion. "From the start" does not modify the eating of the meal (so there is no reference to when Meredith starts eating), it modifies starting of the clock ticking in the digestive process. The process starts with completion of the meal and---on average---stops 3 hours later, when the stomach is empty. And this interpretation is consistent with the formula used by the medical experts, which led to the estimated 9:30pm - 10:00pm time of death.

Anyone interested can see the relevant passage on page 168 in the original Italian APPEAL, also seen on Bruce's site.

///

 

[RoseMontague]

______________________

Well, katy_did, thank you for your courteous response. To "double-check my facts," I wandered over to Bruce's site and noticed that he has translated the relevant passage pretty much as I did (but not as katy_did did):

"Based upon experts and medico-legal criterion, Meredith died at 2-3 or 3-4 hours after her last meal which was completed around 6:30pm to 7:00pm. This places the death using 3 hours at 9:30pm to 10:00pm."
Raffaele's Appeal

Hmmm. May I suggest this explanation for the confusion. "From the start" does not modify the eating of the meal (so there is no reference to when Meredith starts eating), it modifies starting of the clock ticking in the digestive process. The process starts with completion of the meal and---on average---stops 3 hours later, when the stomach is empty. And this interpretation is consistent with the formula used by the medical experts, which led to the estimated 9:30pm - 10:00pm time of death.

Anyone interested can see the relevant passage on page 168 in the original Italian APPEAL, also seen on Bruce's site.

///

I think that both you and Bruce are mistaken here, Fine. katy_did speaks Italian and though Bruce indicates he had an Italian speaker's help in his summary, I trust that katy_did is accurate in her translation. Regardless of the translation you are still getting a TOD of 10pm or even as early as 9pm.

 

[LondonJohn]

You've got to be kidding me right?

The first link is to an article I found through google on my first search, some pretty good information but I'd found better myself.

The second and third are to abstracts of articles that must be purchased and you must either join an online library or subscribe to the Indian Journal of Pharmacology. Which did you do in order to read these?

If you did either of the above why not post full quotations from the experiments? or perhaps LondonJohn can post them, as surely one of you actually downloaded the full articles in order to be so confident and be able to so authoritatively put down anyone who tries to do honest research and comes up with differing results to yourselves.

I'll be waiting, thanks.

Firstly, where is the honest research that has come up with different results to those posted by me or Kevin_Lowe? (I sincerely hope that you're not referring to the quoted research which dealt with total gastric emptying times btw.)

I'll be waiting, thanks.

 

[LondonJohn]

In our search for the truth, our personal beliefs should not be fixed. If our beliefs cannot change we are no longer searching. Perhaps you should be questioning why your own belief is not subject to change.

Exactly. If it could be shown to me, for example, that the bloody footprint on the bathmat is definitively Sollecito's, then I would switch my opinion in a heartbeat to "almost certainly guilty" - at least regarding any post-murder clean-up. If there was any credible evidence placing Knox and/or Sollecito in the vicinity of the cottage at any time between 9.00pm and 11.45pm, I'd similarly switch to an "almost certainly guilty" stance.

Thinking of that leads me to a further question: if the court accepts that the murder was non-premeditated, then how does it interpret the so-called "deliberate" turning off of Knox and Sollecito's mobile phones? If - as the prosecution suggests - their phones were turned off in order to conceal their location in any subsequent investigation, how on earth does this square with the conclusion that they merely intended to "scare" or "haze" Meredith, rather than kill her? Why, in other words, would they have needed to think about concealing their location if they had no prior intention of committing anything other than a prank - to which Meredith would have been a living "victim"? And why would they have foreseen a police investigation of what was intended to be a harmless prank?

In this regard, have detailed tests been done within Sollecito's apartment, to see whether mobile signal drops out for long periods of time? After all, he lived in a ground floor apartment in a narrow street with tall buildings on each side, in a very hilly walled city. Is it not conceivable that Knox and Sollecito's mobile phones were, in fact, switched on all night, but that they were not registered to any network due to lack of signal (and therefore appeared to the network to be the equivalent of "off"? The other thing to note is that after the Perugia Postal Police squad managed to destroy three hard drives, it's not hard to have less than 100% confidence in their investigative ability......

 

[katy_did]

______________________

Well, katy_did, thank you for your courteous response. To "double-check my facts," I wandered over to Bruce's site and noticed that he has translated the relevant passage pretty much as I did (but not as katy_did did):

"Based upon experts and medico-legal criterion, Meredith died at 2-3 or 3-4 hours after her last meal which was completed around 6:30pm to 7:00pm. This places the death using 3 hours at 9:30pm to 10:00pm."
Raffaele's Appeal

Hmmm. May I suggest this explanation for the confusion. "From the start" does not modify the eating of the meal (so there is no reference to when Meredith starts eating), it modifies starting of the clock ticking in the digestive process. The process starts with completion of the meal and---on average---stops 3 hours later, when the stomach is empty. And this interpretation is consistent with the formula used by the medical experts, which led to the estimated 9:30pm - 10:00pm time of death.

Anyone interested can see the relevant passage on page 168 in the original Italian APPEAL, also seen on Bruce's site.

///

Fine, I think you initially assumed I'd made a "translation error" because you thought I'd translated "dell’assunzione" ("of the assumption/consumption" of the meal) as meaning "from the start" of the meal (in the sense that to assume something can mean 'to take it on', 'to start it'). Now you've found out you were wrong, and that "dall'inizio" actually does mean "from the start", you're switching your argument around rather than admit you were wrong the first time. That reminds me a little of the 'pepper spray' saga.

But no matter. Now, as to your theory on the confusion: the first thing is that, however we interpret what the defence said, the phrase “dall’inizio dell’assunzione del pasto” means “from the start of the consumption of the meal” (I’m not clear now as to whether you agree or disagree with that!). Whatever your theory is, and whatever the summary says, that's what it means. So that can’t just be ignored here. Here’s another example where the same phrase is used:

Il Prof. Introna, consulente della difesa, ha dimostrato che l’aggressione di Meredith Kercher è iniziata non più tardi di 3-4 ore dall’inizio dell’assunzione del pasto serale consumato, sulla base delle testimonianze, tra le ore 18,30 e le ore 20,30 del 1° novembre 2007.

As you can no doubt see, here the appeal refers to Prof. Introna's position which was that the attack started no later than “3-4 hours from the start of the consumption of the evening meal [which was] consumed, on the basis of [witness] testimony, between 18.30 and 20.30". If you read the translated Massei report, you'll see that Prof. Introna's position is, indeed, that it is the start of the meal that is important, not the end of it:

With respect to the stomach contents, he clarified that he took the start of the meal as a parameter and never the end, "because at the start of a meal, the first bolus arrives in the stomach, starts to be attacked by the gastric juices and will be the first chyme to pass the pyloric sphincter into the duodenum. The stomach does not wait for the last mouthful before starting digestion; the stomach starts the digestive process from the first mouthful" (page 82 of the transcripts).

It’s not the end of the meal that is important, but the beginning of it. So for that reason, your theory that the digestive process starts at the end of the meal is obviously not right. A second reason why your theory doesn’t sound right is that the meal didn’t end at 19.00, did it? It carried on till 20.00. So I don’t see why the defence would be using 19.00 as the time at which the last meal finished.

As to what the defence actually meant by this 18.30-19.00 (and hence the source of the confusion), well, I really don’t know! Perhaps they assumed that if the girls’ pizza was ready at 18.30, Meredith would certainly have started eating it shortly thereafter (and definitely before 19.00). I don't know...

 

[Alt+F4]

If it could be shown to me, for example, that the bloody footprint on the bathmat is definitively Sollecito's, then I would switch my opinion in a heartbeat to "almost certainly guilty" - at least regarding any post-murder clean-up. If there was any credible evidence placing Knox and/or Sollecito in the vicinity of the cottage at any time between 9.00pm and 11.45pm, I'd similarly switch to an "almost certainly guilty" stance.

Something I don't understand about that bloody footprint. Obviously it was made by a naked foot that had blood on the bottom of it. My question is: how did the person walk from the murder room with blood on the bottom of their feet (or foot) and not track that blood from the bedroom to the bathrooom?

Thinking of that leads me to a further question: if the court accepts that the murder was non-premeditated, then how does it interpret the so-called "deliberate" turning off of Knox and Sollecito's mobile phones? If - as the prosecution suggests - their phones were turned off in order to conceal their location in any subsequent investigation, how on earth does this square with the conclusion that they merely intended to "scare" or "haze" Meredith, rather than kill her? Why, in other words, would they have needed to think about concealing their location if they had no prior intention of committing anything other than a prank - to which Meredith would have been a living "victim"? And why would they have foreseen a police investigation of what was intended to be a harmless prank?

In this regard, have detailed tests been done within Sollecito's apartment, to see whether mobile signal drops out for long periods of time? After all, he lived in a ground floor apartment in a narrow street with tall buildings on each side, in a very hilly walled city. Is it not conceivable that Knox and Sollecito's mobile phones were, in fact, switched on all night, but that they were not registered to any network due to lack of signal (and therefore appeared to the network to be the equivalent of "off"?

Amanda admitted that she turned off her phone shortly after receiving Patrick's text at 8:18. Sollecito's defense team hired a consultant who testified that there was poor cell reception in his apartment. The prosecution rejected his finding (see page 321 of the Massei Report)

The other thing to note is that after the Perugia Postal Police squad managed to destroy three hard drives, it's not hard to have less than 100% confidence in their investigative ability......

Was it the same officers?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

built-in assumption about the towels

I agree. And, if Rudy were the lone attacker why would he take towels and try to save her after? why would he undress her after he killed her? Is he a necrophiliac?

SNIP

I don't need replies, thanks. You've all had all kinds of theories on all of the above but none are convincing.

Danceme,

You assume that Rudy took the towels to save her, but he might have taken then solely to clean up. What makes you sure of his motive in taking the towels? I am not sure that defense needs to make claims about Rudy's motives no matter what, but was it not the prosecution that claimed they did not need to present a motive for Meredith's murder?

If you want to discourage discussion on the very points you raised, I fail to see the reason for your commenting. If you want to engage in a genuine discussion, please comment in a respectful way.

 

[Alt+F4]

You assume that Rudy took the towels to save her, but he might have taken then solely to clean up. What makes you sure of his motive in taking the towels?

Doesn't the defense contend there was no clean up? As far as I know about the towels, they were bath towels from one of the bathrooms and they were found next to (or on? or under?) the body?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

You've got to be kidding me right?

The first link is to an article I found through google on my first search, some pretty good information but I'd found better myself.

The second and third are to abstracts of articles that must be purchased and you must either join an online library or subscribe to the Indian Journal of Pharmacology. Which did you do in order to read these?

I work and study at a university that subscribes to most of the major on-line journals.

If you did either of the above why not post full quotations from the experiments? or perhaps LondonJohn can post them, as surely one of you actually downloaded the full articles in order to be so confident and be able to so authoritatively put down anyone who tries to do honest research and comes up with differing results to yourselves.

I'll be waiting, thanks.

Waiting for what, exactly? Waiting for us to (probably) break copyright law by posting the entire method, results and so on or what? Is there any particular aspect of the method or results you want more details on?

I imagine what you really want is the whole text of the article so you can try to find a loophole or a disclaimer that says what you want it to say: that the stomach begins to empty itself at a more or less random time which can be up to five hours after a meal. If it was that easy I'd give you the whole text, but unfortunately that wouldn't be legal. You probably have to either fork out the cash, or visit your nearest major government or university library and look at the hard copies of the relevant journals if they have them.

I agree. And, if Rudy were the lone attacker why would he take towels and try to save her after? why would he undress her after he killed her? Is he a necrophiliac? Rudy assaulted her during the attack but Meredith's jeans were removed after she was dead and repositioned, her legs had no blood on them. Her bra was removed after she was dead.

Why are there stab wounds on both sides of her neck, short thin little ones on one side and a large deep one on the other side. Did he spin her around to stab the other side? She also had evidence of having a hand clamped over her mouth and her elbow areas bruised as if restrained, how did he do this, hold the knife and sexually assault her at the same time?

Why would he pick the most visible, and the highest window to break in? the one with the shutters almost closed creating still one more obstacle to the quick easy entry he could have found around the side of the house off the balcony.

Why would he lock the bedroom door? he ran out of there without going back to flush the toilet, or see if he left fingerprints or perhaps a handprint on a pillow, or wash his shoes so as not to leave all those shoeprints, and no it's not his footprint on the bathmat. He didn't worry about washing blood off his foot and then turn around and leave it on his shoes.

I don't need replies, thanks. You've all had all kinds of theories on all of the above but none are convincing.

What's more ridiculous: That the laws of physics changed their eternal course that night to preserve Meredith's stomach contents, fake a ping to a novel tower at 22:13 and fake Raffaele playing Naruto on his computer until 21:49?

Or that Rudy broke into the house in a fashion consistent with his known M.O., grabbed Meredith from behind, stabbed her repeatedly, molested her as she was dead or dying, and did an inconsistent job of fixing up the crime scene?

We are right back to the good old Texas Sharpshooter fallacy: Rudy robbed, raped, murdered and cleaned up in whatever fashion came into his head at the time. Now his defenders insist that unless we can come up with an explanation for exactly why a totally rational person would do everything he did in exactly the way that he did it, then Rudy must not be wholly to blame. You're drawing targets around every bullet hole you can find and saying "Explain to me why a rational sharpshooter would put a bullet there! If you can't, Knox is guilty!".

Three people killed Meredith but only two came back to stage it to look like a lone intruder did it.

Except that there's no proper evidence of "staging" at all, and indeed the "staging" was apparently so pathetic that Mignini was able to see through it at a glance.

Whereas the hard evidence we do have proves that Knox and Sollecito could not have been there when Meredith was murdered, and thus that if anyone did do any staging there is no reason to think it was them.

 

[Mary_H]

So you are suggesting that the entire sexual assult occured in only five minutes (9.05 - 9.10)? How? Your theory involves Rudy as the lone attacker, holding a knife against Meredith with one hand and using the other to undress and sexaully assult her while she barely fights back. Highly unlikely. She was young, healthy, fit and her sister said she would have fought for her life, "110%".

I agree that the attack against Meredith probably occured around 9:05 or so. The lack of defensive wounds indicates she was restrained by more than one person.

I have no doubt Meredith tried to fight back, but she had little to no chance of surviving a struggle with Rudy. He had to have been many times stronger than she, and he was armed.

There was an incident in Seattle last year in which one intruder armed with a knife assaulted two women together in one room, eventually killing one.

"He repeatedly raped and tortured the women over the next 90 minutes, threatening to kill them if they fought back."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009559117_websouthpark29m.html

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Ah it's a shame you're leaving. If you'd stayed, I'd have directed you to some research on the fallibility of witness testimony. People routinely have false memories about what they SEE - never mind what they hear:

http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/eyewitnessmemory.html

http://www.psychblog.co.uk/eyewitness-testimony-can-you-really-trust-your-own-eyes-851.html

http://www.americandaily.com/article/11659

http://criminaldefense.homestead.com/eyewitnessmisidentification.html

This is a fascinating subject. I'm surprised none of these sources mention the seminal experiment conducted by a German professor named von Liszt in 1902. He staged a mock assassination in his classroom and then questioned the students, who really thought someone had been killed, about what they had seen. They were wildly off-base. A Harvard professor named Hugo Munsterberg described it as follows:

"Words were put into the mouths of men who had been silent spectators during the whole short episode; actions were attributed to the chief participants of which not the slightest trace existed; and essential parts of the tragi-comedy were completely eliminated from the memory of a number of witnesses."

People want to help the police, so they rack their brains, sometimes too hard. Ann Rule has written about a murder that happened here in western Washington in the 1990s. A woman murdered her estranged husband by shooting him in his bed. Police canvassed the neighborhood to find out if anyone had seen or heard something out of the ordinary, and indeed, someone did:

"One neighbor woman said she stayed up long after her husband went to bed. She heard what she thought was a scream. If she had, it had nothing to do with Chuck Leonard [the victim in this case]. He hadn't been home when she'd heard that strange sound."

This is from But I Trusted You, a true-crime anthology by Ann Rule. The quotation about von Liszt;s experiment is from Actual Innocence by Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, and Jim Dwyer.

 

[Mary_H]

<snip>Thinking of that leads me to a further question: if the court accepts that the murder was non-premeditated, then how does it interpret the so-called "deliberate" turning off of Knox and Sollecito's mobile phones? If - as the prosecution suggests - their phones were turned off in order to conceal their location in any subsequent investigation, how on earth does this square with the conclusion that they merely intended to "scare" or "haze" Meredith, rather than kill her? Why, in other words, would they have needed to think about concealing their location if they had no prior intention of committing anything other than a prank - to which Meredith would have been a living "victim"? And why would they have foreseen a police investigation of what was intended to be a harmless prank?

In this regard, have detailed tests been done within Sollecito's apartment, to see whether mobile signal drops out for long periods of time? After all, he lived in a ground floor apartment in a narrow street with tall buildings on each side, in a very hilly walled city. Is it not conceivable that Knox and Sollecito's mobile phones were, in fact, switched on all night, but that they were not registered to any network due to lack of signal (and therefore appeared to the network to be the equivalent of "off"? The other thing to note is that after the Perugia Postal Police squad managed to destroy three hard drives, it's not hard to have less than 100% confidence in their investigative ability......

London John, I addressed this issue in post #4357, on page 109. Is it possible you're not reading my posts? I will copy it here for your convenience:

The "switched-off" cell phones

For those of you who find yourself up against Harry Rag's ubiquitous lists of "evidence" against Amanda and Raffaele, there is some strong support in the motivations for eliminating the infamous, long-lived claim that Amanda and Raffaele both turned off their cell phones the night of Nov. 1, then turned them back on around 6 a.m. on Nov. 2nd, which supposedly proves they lied about the time they got up.

Twenty pages (pp. 311-331) of the report are spent on the cell telephone usage, with some fascinating information contained therein. For example, we learn that "phone record printouts do not give information as to whether a mobile phone is switched on or turned off" (page 320); they give information only as to whether the phone was inactive.

The phone-record "evidence," then, that the defendants turned their phones off or on at specific times is non-existent. The police and the prosecution can only know for sure that there was no traffic on the phones the night of November 1st; they merely surmised that Raffaele had turned off his phone, and they must have guessed at when Amanda turned hers back on.

Amanda informed the police herself that she had turned off her phone after texting Patrick at 8:35 p.m. on Nov. 1. On page 323 of the report, however, where Amanda's phone activity for November 2nd is listed, there is not even a claim that Amanda turned her cell phone back on around 6 a.m. on the morning of 11/02/07. The first record is of her first call to Meredith, at 12:07 p.m.

The suspicion about Raffaele's phone arose from the fact that he didn't pick up the message his father had sent him at 11:14 the night before until 6 a.m. The police hired a consultant to make some measurements about where Raffaele's phone was likely to have been and whether traffic could have been interrupted, and as a result, the court determined that is was likely Raffaele had shut off his phone. However, it was not proven, and there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that A & R turned their phones on at the same time.

One glaring omission from all the facts and figures about the phone records is that there is no mention of when the records were obtained by the police. Knowing when the records were obtained would allow us to determine whether the police knew about Amanda's text to Patrick before they interrogated her. Equally important is the question of whether Amanda and Raffaele were being treated as suspects, not witnesses, long before their interrogations, which would make the failure to provide them with counsel even more egregious.

Kestrel responded in post #4369 that, "A quick look at Amanda's phone records confirms that there was no activity between the text to Patrick at 8:35 PM and the attempt to call Meredith at 12:07 PM the next day."

With regard to your current questions, LJ, yes, tests were done on Raffaele's apartment (you can read about them in the cell phone section of the report. Two conclusions were reached, however: Raffaele's cell phone may or may not have been turned off.

As for the aspect of premeditation, this may be one of the contradictory elements of Massei's report that seems to have been left intact purposely to weaken the prosecution's case.

 

[Mary_H]

I agree. And, if Rudy were the lone attacker why would he take towels and try to save her after? why would he undress her after he killed her? Is he a necrophiliac? Rudy assaulted her during the attack but Meredith's jeans were removed after she was dead and repositioned, her legs had no blood on them. Her bra was removed after she was dead.

Rudy probably attacked Meredith sexually after he disabled her. She didn't die immediately.

Why are there stab wounds on both sides of her neck, short thin little ones on one side and a large deep one on the other side. Did he spin her around to stab the other side? She also had evidence of having a hand clamped over her mouth and her elbow areas bruised as if restrained, how did he do this, hold the knife and sexually assault her at the same time?

Again, he probably sexually assaulted her after he disabled her. The knife wounds could take any kind of configuration depending on how Meredith was struggling as he held the knife to her neck. He may have held the knife to her neck with his left hand, then administered the fatal cuts with his right, or vice versa.

Why would he pick the most visible, and the highest window to break in? the one with the shutters almost closed creating still one more obstacle to the quick easy entry he could have found around the side of the house off the balcony.

Why would he lock the bedroom door? he ran out of there without going back to flush the toilet, or see if he left fingerprints or perhaps a handprint on a pillow, or wash his shoes so as not to leave all those shoeprints, and no it's not his footprint on the bathmat. He didn't worry about washing blood off his foot and then turn around and leave it on his shoes.

I don't need replies, thanks. You've all had all kinds of theories on all of the above but none are convincing.

Three people killed Meredith but only two came back to stage it to look like a lone intruder did it.

I won't answer the question about the window because I'm not convinced that's how he got in. I think he locked the door to prevent Meredith from getting out. He wasn't convinced he had killed her.

A lot of your questions imply that Rudy was thinking or planning clearly. That is probably not an accurate assumption.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Something I don't understand about that bloody footprint. Obviously it was made by a naked foot that had blood on the bottom of it. My question is: how did the person walk from the murder room with blood on the bottom of their feet (or foot) and not track that blood from the bedroom to the bathrooom?

That isn't how it happened. It happened when the murderer cleaned up using the the bidet. Look at these pictures:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/bidet01.jpg
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/bidet02.jpg

The dried bloodstains were made with bloodied water rather than undiluted blood. Same with the footprint on the mat.

But let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that the court got this right. The footprint on the mat was made by Raffaele tracking blood from Merediths' room. He and/or Amanda cleaned up the other footprints along this route. They did such a thorough cleaning job that neither the footprints nor the cleaning action was detected with luminol. Luminol did reveal a footprint in that exact path - but the toes were pointed toward Meredith's door rather than the bathroom, and the prosecution's footprint expert claims it is a match to Amanda rather than Raffaele.

Moreover, one of Guede's bloody shoe prints, which was visible without the use of luminol, was found just outside the door to Meredith's room. So the cleaning operation was not only thorough enough to avoid being detected with luminol, it was also precise enough to avoid removing Guede's shoe print. We are thus asked to believe that Amanda and Raffaele, after carrying out a cleaning operation that was both thorough and precise, left a bathmat it plain sight with Raffaele's bloody footprint and then called Filomena and the police.

I don't believe it. This crime scene shows the aftermath of a messy sexual homicide committed by someone who was not thinking ahead to the consequences. He did the deed and got out of there, and then fled the country.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Thinking of that leads me to a further question: if the court accepts that the murder was non-premeditated, then how does it interpret the so-called "deliberate" turning off of Knox and Sollecito's mobile phones?

It doesn't, but they've got this piece of "evidence" so they have to make it relevant. It's the same way with the rest of the evidence. The knife doesn't fit the wounds, and no one would ever take it to a place that was already stocked with knives. But the prosecution has this marginal DNA result, so they invent a two-knife hypothesis, to which Massei adds the hypothesis that Amanda was carrying the knife for protection on the street.

The footprint on the mat doesn't really look like Sollecito's foot, and it undermines the "clean-up" theory. But, Sollecito's defense cannot prove absolutely that it was not made with his foot, so the prosecution's expert uses the "Grid of LM Robbins" to conclude that it was made by Sollecito.

There's no evidence of a cleanup, but they've got a witness who is willing to testify that he saw Amanda in his store after the murder, so the court decides she was there to buy cleaning supplies.

For a long time, a key tenet of the prosecution was that Sollecito called the emergency number after the postal police had arrived. That was cited as an established fact by both Matteini and Micheli. But Sollecito's defense team blew it out of the water with photographic evidence and cell phone records, which is why Massei fails to mention it at all in his 400+ page report.

 

[Danceme]

Firstly, where is the honest research that has come up with different results to those posted by me or Kevin_Lowe? (I sincerely hope that you're not referring to the quoted research which dealt with total gastric emptying times btw.)

I'll be waiting, thanks.

No. You don't get off by saying "show me first". I asked specifically about the linked abstracts you say prove your theory on TOD.

You can also claim copyright issues or tell me to buy the articles myself or you can just describe what you read in them when you bought them.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Rudy probably attacked Meredith sexually after he disabled her. She didn't die immediately.

He might have assaulted her sexually after she was dead. It's not that uncommon. Some of these guys don't rape the victim, and some of them kill the victim after consensual sex, like Gary Ridgway and Keith Jesperson. It's also pretty common for sex killers to start with someone they know, a friend of a friend. Bundy did that.

 

[Alt+F4]

What's more ridiculous: That the laws of physics changed their eternal course that night to preserve Meredith's stomach contents, fake a ping to a novel tower at 22:13 and fake Raffaele playing Naruto on his computer until 21:49?

I agree with your first two points, that Meredith's stomach contents prove she was dead no later than around 10:00pm and that the 10:13 call on one of her cell phones proves that phone was far from her apartment. Please provide more information regarding Raffaele playing Naruto on his computer until 9:49. As far as I know, after 9:10 there was no "human interaction" on his computer until the next morning.

Rudy broke into the house in a fashion consistent with his known M.O.,

His "known MO" never consisted of sexual assult or murder.[/quote]

Whereas the hard evidence we do have proves that Knox and Sollecito could not have been there when Meredith was murdered.

No. There is no "hard evidence" that Knox or Sollecito were at his apartment when Meredith was murdered.