Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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He pushed the window open and jumped in. He didn't have to come up from underneath and slither over broken glass. He probably didn't need to break the window, but he didn't know it was unlatched because the frame was warped and swollen so it didn't close all the way.

I thought the testimony was that she had pulled the shutters to but one stopped short of closing all the way because of the swelled wood, therefore not able to be latched, but that the actual windows were closed and latched. He would not be able to push a window open if it were closed and latched and if he had broken it beforehand and was now standing on the window sill he would have to bend way down to reach his hand through the broken glass and unlatch the window.

Remind me who it was that said this, then:

"....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."


It wasn't you, was it?

Of course I said those words John, but I certainly did not predicate any argument on them. My argument has always consisted of reiterating the unreliability of basing TOD on stomach contents, for which I had found abundant sources, and I posted some articles describing studies which found results different to yours. That is now probably enough on this subject with you as you seem to now be focusing on semantics and inserting straw men into the debate.

If the room had been preserved - as would be normal practice even if this were only a suspected burglary, let alone a suspected burglary with a missing person, a locked door, and blood traces - forensic teams might have had a better shot at determining exactly what did happen in Filomena's room. As it is, however, the Postal Police and Filomena destroyed any chance of that happening.

Moving right along, I wonder if this is indeed standard practice, to seal a suspected burglary scene. I've been broken into before, back door kicked in, things stolen, but the police did not seal the scene. They did look things over and had me walk them around pointing out where I could tell the thieves had been etc. but they didn't call in the forensics or anything, guess they were likely incompetent :D
 
Except I don't think she was in Meredith's room when the murder occurred. I believe her when she said she was in the living room covering her ears.

So you believe that part of her fantasy, but do you believe the rest of her story which would include the fact that her "see you later" was confirming an appointment with Patrick at the basketball court so she could take him home and wait for Meredith to arrive or to meet Meredith (without Raffaele of course, as in her story she leaves him at his place)? Then she was in the kitchen (not the living room BTW)while somehow Patrick was in Meredith's bedroom and she may have hear a thud or a scream but she had her hands over her ears. And while she is giving this statement she is holding her head in her hands and shaking her head. And it is also her story in that statement that she woke up the next morning in Raffaele's bed and she came back to her place later and found the apartment open etc, etc, so there is not only no Raffaele involved and there is no cleanup or staging in her story. Do you believe her claim in the same statement (Verbale 5:45)that she was very confused and upset and could have imagined what happened?
 
Except your missing the first half about him comming in the front door - he has no key, so if no one comes to the broken window, who lets him in?

Chris C said: If rudy went in through the front door, he tossed a rock through the window to check and see if anyone was home.


Keep in mind we're speaking hypothetically here, so anything is possible. So far, I think Charlie has the strongest case (that Rudy actually did break in through the window); the rest of us are only raising possibilities.

I have always envisioned Rudy seeing Meredith come home to the cottage, and seizing on the opportunity to get himself inside, either to rob her or to try to "get with" her. He could have accomplished this by "running into" her in the street and asking if he could come in for awhile, or by seeing her go in and then immediately going to the door, knocking, and asking her if he could use the bathroom. After using the bathroom, he comes to her room. Personally, I don't think Meredith had a reason to fear Rudy at that point, since he was one of a group of people she knew in Perugia.

That scenario, of course, doesn't explain the rock through the window, which could have happened before Meredith arrived (as in, Rudy was just about to break in, but then didn't need to), or could actually have been staged after the killing.
 
Where are the keys and the knife Alessi's brother supposedly had him bury? I don't see them being introduced as new evidence in the appeals summaries Bruce Fisher posted. They want the judge to hear the Alessi story but as soon as the judge asks about these two crucial items it will be an obvious wash.
So where are these things? Do they exist? Were they unearthed? Will the defense seriously try to introduce this story and then just say they didn't bother to go get them?
 
Rudy's entrance

Except your missing the first half about him comming in the front door - he has no key, so if no one comes to the broken window, who lets him in?

Chris C said: If rudy went in through the front door, he tossed a rock through the window to check and see if anyone was home.

Suppose that Rudy, intending to break in, throws the rock only a minute or two before Meredith arrives. Then Meredith shows up unaware of the rock, and he either wheedles (Hey, can I use your bathroom?) or forces his way in through the front. Just my speculation, and I admit that it is not terribly likely.

I am not sure whether or not he went through the front door, BTW.
 
Amanda said Filomena's door was closed when she (Amanda) returned to the apartment. Rudy would have to have touched the door to close the door behind him.

It's impossible that he left no fingerprints on that door but left fingerprints everywhere else. He was never in Filomena's room.

No it's not impossible. He could well have been wearing gloves at this point, he could well have closed the door with his foot, or he might have slid his hand off the doorknob, smudging and destroying his prints, rather than lifting his fingers off leaving clear prints behind.

"Impossible" does not mean "I don't think it's very likely based on only on a moment's thought".

Doesn't matter, the truth remains that nothing was taken. A burglar goes to the trouble of throwing a rock through a window, climbing in the window and takes....nothing!

Possibly he was looking for money, laptops, cell phones and other high-value goods and didn't see any? He seems to have been the kind of housebreaker who wasn't shy about taking his time and helping himself to the fridge and the toilet, so he wasn't trying to get in and out as fast as possible with whatever he could grab in sixty seconds.

I don't think the position of the glass means anything because yes, Filomena moved things around in her room. Why? Because she wanted to see if any of her possessions had been stolen. She had to take the time to look through her stuff to see if anything was missing. But guess who immediately knew that nothing was missing, even though he had never been in that room....Raffaele!

I don't think it's either honest or reasonable to take absolutely everything Amanda and Raffaele said under stressful conditions to be either absolutely, precisely true or a giveaway that they are murderers. He wasn't aware of anything being taken, so he said nothing had been taken. I don't think any reasonable, decent human being would take that to be a claim that he had personally overseen a complete inventory of the house contents that morning and was absolutely sure nothing had been taken.

Wow, what an alibi! If this was true you would think either Amanda or Raffaele would have mentioned this considering they were facing a life sentence for murder.

In none of their statements to authorities, their families, their friends or in their prison diaries has watching Naruto on the night of the murder ever been stated. It won't work on appeal.

It may have slipped your mind that they were convicted of a murder that allegedly happened long after 21:26, or even 21:49. As far as I can tell Amanda and Raffaele were far too ready to believe the stories concocted by the prosecution, and had absolutely no idea that Meredith had actually been murdered around 21:00.

If I want to veer into guilter-logic speculation, I could well speculate that if Raffaele and Amanda had murdered Meredith they would have known when it happened, and would have been alert to the potential defence benefits of contesting the prosecution's time of death. The fact that they did not do so could be taken as a strong indication that they had no more idea than anybody else did about when Meredith died.

The walk from his apartment to hers is about 10 minutes so even if they left his apartment at 9:10 they could be at hers by 9:20, just in time to walk in on the attack, which is what I think happened. It's good to you say "his innocence" because it's ridiculous that "human interaction" on a computer explain the whereabouts of two people.

The prosecution theory is that they did it together: If one of them was at home, then at least one of them has been wrongfully convicted, and the prosecution case is still falsified.

I would truely love to see the FOA collectively, make up a list of everyone that they believe lied, mistaken or was incompetent in this case, then compare it a Guilters, (which has but 2 names on it). That would surely be quite telling.

Indeed. Given the mass of evidence that the Perugia police were incompetent and unethical in some aspects of their handling of this case, it is extraordinarily telling if someone believes that their handling of the case was exemplary.

Neither am I aware of such conclusive evidence. Which leaves us with Filomena's testimony on what she found in her room. I have no reason to doubt her word, do you?

As has been established, the prosecution and the guilters conveniently ignore the parts of Filomena's that don't suit them, which indicate that glass was mixed through her possessions and was under them, and focus solely on the bit where she said glass was on top of her possessions.

You sure you want to go down this road? Because i'm becoming increasingly convinced that you are modelling your argument less and less on the facts of the case and more and more on the outcome you desire.

All I can do is restate that the understanding each of the two of us has about what constitutes a reasonable basis for forming a belief is greatly dissimilar.

The evidence is inconsistent with someone climbing through the window precisely because evidence that should be there if someone climbed through the window is not there. Your claim that this 'missing' evidence doesn't prove anything either way just doesn't wash.

You sure you want to go down this road? Because if absence of evidence is evidence of absence, then Amanda and Raffaele weren't in the murder room.

However I've never been persuaded by prosecution claims that certain evidence must have been in certain places if Rudy climbed in through the window. They don't know exactly how he did so, so that claim doesn't wash. Plus this is yet another prosecution claim with no hard evidence to back it up, so it comes down to "Trust us, we're experts, if we say we didn't find any evidence, then that is proof beyond reasonable doubt the break-in was faked".

These people's expertise, and indeed impartiality, is not exactly established.

I want to make a correction to what I wrote in post #4680. RS's lawyer did state that he said he watched Naruto the night of the crime. She made this announcement about a year after the murder. It took him a whole year to remember this?

If Meredith died around midnight it's not exactly relevant.

Amanda (as far as I can tell) never mentioned anything about Naruto or watching Japanese animation in any of her statements. How come she wasn't asked about this during her trial testimony?

If Meredith died around midnight it's not exactly relevant.

RS had a computer expert on his defense team, why wasn't any of this brought up at the trial?

We know his defence were incompetent.

Look, I've talked about this repeatedly but I guess I have to talk about it again. It is a fundamental logical error to think that this kind of armchair speculation about social processes should trump hard fact.

Raffaele opened that Naruto file at 21:26. The computer records say so. The defence got this information from a copy of Raffaele's hard drive provided to them by the police, so there is absolutely no possibility that this evidence is fabricated by the defence or the defendants. That is a cold, hard fact and it is not up for dispute.

Saying "Because they did not bring it up at the trial then it must be false! Because Amanda did not mention it then it must be false! Because Raffaele did not mention it then it must be false!" is deeply irrational. The computer records are impartial and precise. It is only rational to challenge them if something equally hard and fast contradicts them.

It's natural for the untrained mind with its monkey instincts to want to fix conclusions based on guesses about social processes. A hundred thousand years ago on the plains of Africa this was the best investigative tool we had to figure out who murdered someone. We didn't have science back then. However standing on the shoulders of two thousand years of philosophical and scientific giants we now have much, much better investigative tools and we need to overcome our monkey instincts to use them properly. If the hard evidence says Raffaele opened a Naruto file at 21:26, then you need to immediately chuck out all of your guesswork based on social processes that says different.

If the hard evidence says that Amanda and Raffaele were at home when Meredith was attacked around 21:00, you need to chuck out all of your guesswork based on your estimation of their personal character and admit that they could not possibly have done it, no matter how guilty they seem to your instincts.
 
That's a false characterization. No one one the "guilters" side has claimed that it couldn't be done. What has been claimed is that the evidence that is available to us is inconsistent with someone climbing through the window.

Fulcanelli would disagree with you there.

Fulcanelli said:
I thought you guys believed Rudy had magic all sorts...that enabled him to climb up and enter a nearly impossible window without being seen, heard or leaving a trace.

Before the thread was split this was a heavily debated issue... A "mole" that was whacked in the new thread, but lives on at PMF.
 
Quote: I respectfully submit the Patricia Stallings case for your consideration. At least four times a clinical laboratory claimed to find ethylene glycol in Ryan Stallings' blood or in his feed bottle. His mother was sentenced to life. Trouble is, the lab work was beyond slipshod, and Ryan had a metabolic disease that mimicked some but not all of the symptoms of ethylene glycol poisoning. What are the odds that four chemical analyses would be wrong? I don't know, but they were wrong, and Ms. Stallings was eventually released from prison.

Chris,
I had actually read this, as your site is one of several I have accessed in reading about this case. I am not trying to imply it is unbelievable the lab testing could be erroneous. In fact, I believe the knife had absolutely nothing to do with the crime. What I find difficult to fathom is for all the lab/DNA evidence to be erroneous in addition to all the (credible) witnesses being mistaken, in addition to the several versions of alibis, in addition to all the other ‘happenstances’ that would have had to have occurred for those kids to be innocent.

The over-zealous prosecution is not lost on me; I know it happens (Duke, for one.) But it is the numerous other details, each of which on their own can be explained away but in toto are difficult to swallow.

Just one of those instances which troubles me is this: in Amanda’s own statement she states she noticed the feces when she put the hair dryer back in the bathroom. Who in the world would see that and NOT flush it? Why would you just leave that there… unless you wanted it to be present for a reason? It is the accumulation of all these little nagging details which bother me.
 
Why would the prosecution ask an open ended question like that? Amanda could say she was sleeping. By asking that question Mignini would validate Sollecito's claim that he was watching his computer. If he was watching his computer then the eyewitness could not have seen them at 2130 hours. Mignini has claimed every thing they say was lies and it would make the Jurors wonder how much was destroyed in the lab while examining the computer. If he admits Sollecito was watching the computer then you have to believe that there is a possibility that Knox/Sollecito are telling the truth. The prosecutions evidence was thin and suspect. You dont want the jury thinking about Knox sleeping at Sollecito's house or having to admit that Sollecito was on his computer after the time the guy says he saw them at the court. Mignini spent to much time branding Knox and Solliceto as liars in the press.

Your ignoring the fact that the defense also didn't bring it up... what stopped them?
 
Quote: Except I don't think she was in Meredith's room when the murder occurred. I believe her when she said she was in the living room covering her ears.

But if she really did not participate in the murder and was a mere bystander why wouldn't she have cut a deal? I would think being charged with murder and being locked up in prison in a foreign country would be a good time to change course and tell the truth and cut a deal, if they even have deals in Italy. If not at that point, surely as so much bad evidence came out in the media and then hearing about Rudy taking the fast-track route you would think she'd have realized how badly it was going to turn out for her. If she wasn't realizing it, certainly her defense team should have recommended a change of course.

Of course. She wouldn't have waited for a trial. If she had been there, she'd have known that Guede was there, and she'd have rolled over on him in a heartbeat. But she didn't. And neither did Sollecito. Instead, both of them went through grueling interrogations, were arrested, and were hauled off to jail - all without saying one word about Rudy Guede, the guy who left bloody shoe prints in the victim's room and in the hallway, the guy whose DNA was inside the victim's body, the guy whose fingerprints, made with the victim's blood, were on a pillow underneath the body.

That's not reality in the world of crime. They weren't there.
 
This is a completely misleading statistic, and demonstrates your (and others') ignorance of the court process - whether in Italy or elsewhere in a modern judiciary. Ready for the truth? Here it comes:

All the judges before Massei were not ruling on Knox/Sollecito's guilt or non-guilt. They were essentially ruling on whether there was a prima facie case against them which justified either their continued custody or their committal to trial. In addition to this fact, many of these "15 judges" based their rulings on evidence which has now been entirely discredited, but which was placed before them at the time by the prosecutors as proven, solid evidence.

So can we, once and for all, drop this ridiculous mis-statement that "15 judges" (or sometimes even more than that) judged that Knox and Sollecito were guilty of the murder of Meredith Kercher. It's simply not true.


Your truth maybe, its you and your FOA's that have the problems with all these judges, the rest and vast majority of us feel they are doing a stand up job.
 
You are reaching for mighty weak evidence to maintain your position.

A burglar would try not to leave fingerprints behind when committing a burglary. This typically begins by wearing gloves. Of course, there are times when wearing gloves can be problematic. Have you ever tried wiping your butt while wearing gloves? Do you disagree that it would be reasonable for someone to remove their gloves while using the toilet?

It's wiping your butt. Why would someone want to remove gloves they already had on for that?

Closing Filomena's door while wearing gloves, removing the gloves to use the bathroom then encountering and attacking Meredith while the gloves are off is entirely possible and even plausible. Why can you not see such possibilities, especially after they had been pointed out before in these threads?

The contention has been that the reason he didn't flush the toilet was that he was startled by hearing Meredith entering the apartment. Now you would have us believe that after the murder he comes back to the bathroom to retreive the gloves but not flush the toilet? Don't go with the argument that he forgot he used the toilet, you're saying that is the reason why he took off the gloves to begin with. If he forgot he used the toilet, then why remember to come back for the gloves?
 
But if she really did not participate in the murder and was a mere bystander why wouldn't she have cut a deal?

Any deal still would have given her prison time on one or more lesser charge(s). I think Amanda believed she would never be convicted of murder.
 
Except your missing the first half about him comming in the front door - he has no key, so if no one comes to the broken window, who lets him in?

Chris C said: If rudy went in through the front door, he tossed a rock through the window to check and see if anyone was home.

Door was already damaged. He could have PICKED the lock. Seriously picking locks are not as hard as you think. A lock picker could get in that door in less than a minute. I made a post before on the ways to get inside a home through the front door without the need of a key. If the police did as good a job examining the lock as they did the supposed fake break in then we will never know if the lock was tampered with.
 
I can throw a guess in this lengthy list of posts related to the broken window and glass on the clothes, and no bent grass below, with no muddy shoeprints and the nail unbent.

On the way out, after the brutal rape and murder, Rudy goes into Filomeans room. He rummages Filomenas room for cash and he also looks out the window to ensure its ok to leave. It was empty and dark in the driveway so he decides to flee.
From the empty driveway, upon leaving, he tosses the rock through the window, leaving glass on top the clothes, no bent grass, muddy footprints, and no bent nail needed.

Why?
Someone else would have to be there committing the murder/rape for Rudy's “date alibi” to work. That was the motivation for the broken window, aka the imaginary burglar.
 
This is a completely misleading statistic, and demonstrates your (and others') ignorance of the court process - whether in Italy or elsewhere in a modern judiciary. Ready for the truth? Here it comes:

All the judges before Massei were not ruling on Knox/Sollecito's guilt or non-guilt. They were essentially ruling on whether there was a prima facie case against them which justified either their continued custody or their committal to trial. In addition to this fact, many of these "15 judges" based their rulings on evidence which has now been entirely discredited, but which was placed before them at the time by the prosecutors as proven, solid evidence.

So can we, once and for all, drop this ridiculous mis-statement that "15 judges" (or sometimes even more than that) judged that Knox and Sollecito were guilty of the murder of Meredith Kercher. It's simply not true.

I understand your point, but I think it's important to face the reality and the scope of this problem. Whether one calls it a conspiracy or a matter of converging interests, the fact is that the police and court officials of Perugia have collaborated to railroad two innocent people.

What people need to realize is that this is not a paranoid fantasy. This is a real, documented phenomenon that has happened countless times. How many people lied and distorted the truth to keep Captain Dreyfus imprisoned? The collaborators included people at the highest levels of the French military. In the US, we had the Wenatchee hoax, where the whole town turned out to support the chief hoaxer, a pscyho detective named Perez. More than 20 innocent people went to prison and it took lawyers many years to get them out. In the UK, the Birmingham Six were in prison for two decades, mired in a swamp of junk science, police lies, and cynical judges who didn't care a whit about truth or justice but were deeply concerned about their public image.

These cases are matters of historical record, not the rantings of "CTs" wearing tinfoil hats. And there are many more like them.
 
Of course I said those words John, but I certainly did not predicate any argument on them. My argument has always consisted of reiterating the unreliability of basing TOD on stomach contents, for which I had found abundant sources, and I posted some articles describing studies which found results different to yours. That is now probably enough on this subject with you as you seem to now be focusing on semantics and inserting straw men into the debate.

Straw Men? The coroner estimated the ToD using the stomach contents at 2 to 3 hours after eating her last meal. So there is no straw man here. There are just people giving information that shows how the coroner reached that estimate. The coroner is a prosecution EXPERT witness. The same witness that gave the ToD using the body temp. Mignini used the middle of that huge Body Temp ToD for his estimation of death and ignored the stomach contents eventhough it fell inside the body temp ToD. If I remember correctly the coroner is also the same witness that said all of Merediths knife wounds could have been created by the same knife.
 
It's wiping your butt. Why would someone want to remove gloves they already had on for that?

I'll take that as an answer of "no" to the question asked, which was "have you ever tried to wipe your bum with gloves on?". :) Seriously, try it some time.

The contention has been that the reason he didn't flush the toilet was that he was startled by hearing Meredith entering the apartment. Now you would have us believe that after the murder he comes back to the bathroom to retreive the gloves but not flush the toilet? Don't go with the argument that he forgot he used the toilet, you're saying that is the reason why he took off the gloves to begin with. If he forgot he used the toilet, then why remember to come back for the gloves?

We don't know and we don't care whether he left the gloves in the loo and came back for them, stuck them in his pocket, or never even had them in the first place. None of those alternatives is impossible.

The Argument from Incredulity is a logical fallacy, and launching a barrage of arguments from incredulity does nothing to advance the pro-guilt case or contribute to constructive discussion.

If you don't have any direct experience or hard data about how long it takes an untrained person to exhaust themselves wrestling a larger, stronger opponent, or whether it's awkward to wipe oneself while wearing gloves, it adds nothing to the conversation to express uninformed incredulity about such matters.

Chris,
I had actually read this, as your site is one of several I have accessed in reading about this case. I am not trying to imply it is unbelievable the lab testing could be erroneous. In fact, I believe the knife had absolutely nothing to do with the crime. What I find difficult to fathom is for all the lab/DNA evidence to be erroneous in addition to all the (credible) witnesses being mistaken, in addition to the several versions of alibis, in addition to all the other ‘happenstances’ that would have had to have occurred for those kids to be innocent.

The over-zealous prosecution is not lost on me; I know it happens (Duke, for one.) But it is the numerous other details, each of which on their own can be explained away but in toto are difficult to swallow.

It's boring to keep harping on the Kisko case, but I guess it's just another mole that is going to take several more whacks before it stays down for good.

In the Kiszko prosecution they had all these things: Inconsistent statements from the accused, a confession which was retracted, witnesses fingering him as a stalker, thousands of pages of evidence and so on. Yet he was completely innocent, and the police had the evidence in hand to prove it if only they looked at it logically. However they never looked at it logically: they just followed their monkey instincts and amassed a huge pile of bad evidence which got them a conviction.

Bent police and bent labs happen. In a witch-hunt, random members of the public can and do come forward to get in on a good thing and accuse the witch. If you interrogate people long enough they will contradict themselves, or say something that can be interpreted as a contradiction if you are so inclined.

Just one of those instances which troubles me is this: in Amanda’s own statement she states she noticed the feces when she put the hair dryer back in the bathroom. Who in the world would see that and NOT flush it? Why would you just leave that there… unless you wanted it to be present for a reason? It is the accumulation of all these little nagging details which bother me.

As an Italian judge once said, half a clue plus half a clue does not equal a whole clue. It equals nothing.

In the past I've seen a dead cockroach on the floor of my house and ignored it temporarily because it was icky and I wanted to put off dealing with it. Maybe Amanda thought it was icky. I don't know. It's sure as hell in no way evidence that she's a murderer.

In any case if she flushed it, the guilters would just accuse her of cleaning up the murder scene. ("She came home to a house knee-deep in blood, and found obvious evidence in the toilet bowl, and she just flushed it? Get real! She was obviously panicking and trying to get rid of every trace of Rudy Guede. Murderers like her always slip up like that. I hope they bring up the flush at the appeal, I'd like to see her lawyers try to talk her out of that one! etc.").
 
Except you've cherry-picked the 9.10pm time. There was actually activity on Sollecito's computer at 9.26pm. Which blows your theory out of the water.

What evidence is there that there was computer activity at 9:26?
 
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