Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Charlie Wilkes]

Charlie,

Reference the fingerprints which were not identified (in green) - did they all have the same characteristics and were attributed to one unknown person or were they partial fingerprints, and as such, could not be identified to a specific person (such as those persons listed on the diagram)?

I don't know if they were the prints of one unknown person or several. At the trial, the fingerprint expert testified that he found many unusable or incomplete prints that he didn't record, so I assume the green prints were complete and could have been identified, except they did not match any reference prints. The police got reference fingerprints from everyone in the household, which they did not do with DNA.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Thank you very much, Charlie!

So much for the claim that it's impossible to do anything without leaving fingerprints all over everything. We'd already established that, of course, but a picture might have the power to keep that mole down when mere words do not suffice. People just don't leave that many clear fingerprints.

Am I correct in only seeing one fingerprint from Guede? I think I may have erroneously stated once or twice in the past that he left fingerprints, and it's good to be corrected on that point.

Guede's fingerprints were only found in one place - a partial hand print in blood on the pillow underneath Meredith's body.

 

[Kestrel]

Exactly. Not only that, but when police need to find a suspect quickly and aren't too bothered about the truth, they frequently focus on someone near at hand. The fact that Amanda and Raffaele were at the scene when the crime was discovered by police told me immediately that this was a stitch-up. This is a recurring theme in cases like this.

Oddly, a second class of ready suspects are people already known to police who can easily be found. Yet the Perugia police made no move on Rudy Guede until he was arrested by German police; indeed, didn't he flee the country after the murder was discovered? There are deeply disturbing questions over the police lack of action towards Guede, as well as the courts' favourable treatment of him compared with Amanda and Raffaele.

The theory that Guede wasn't charged because he was a police informant has been batted around. But an alternative explanation is that the Italian legal system seldom presses charges for minor offenses.

 

[Malkmus]

None of this makes any sense, when viewed objectively. For instance, regarding the "deliberate" leaving of Guede's faeces in the toilet and his bloody shoe prints in the hallway: as others have pointed out, why would Knox and Sollecito want to deliberately set up a black guy who Knox knew (but not very well), and who is alleged to have been part of their "murder trio"? Why would they want to actively lead the police towards a man who could (and would) easily incriminate them as co-murderers? Why wouldn't

Another thing that makes no sense about Amanda pinning the murder on Patrick is that she knew he was working that night. What's more outrageous is that this uncovers another nonsensical misunderstanding by the police. In her "statement" at 1:45 she supposedly told them that the text from Patrick said that the bar was "closed" and she wouldn't have to come in. But we know that the bar stayed open and just wasn't busy. The idea that the bar was closed seems to exist simply in order to be able to place Patrick at the cottage in those hours. But it's ridiculous to think that Amanda would have lied to them about (a) the bar being closed when it obviously wasn't, and (b) Patrick being at the cottage when she knew he was at work and that this in conjunction with part (a) would be immediately found to be false. Unfortunately the police didn't even check to see if the bar was closed or if Patrick had been there working for nearly two weeks. This furthers my belief that Amanda's statements from the 5th were hardly her statements at all, and at best the police coming up with a scenario that they got Amanda to partially believe in so they could get their arrests.

 

[LondonJohn]

It's just come to light (via another site) that the "crack" Perugia forensics squad who initially searched Sollecito's apartment after his arrest actually disposed of their own soiled latex gloves in Sollecito's waste bin! When they returned to conduct a second search of the apartment (when the video was taken), they had to remove the soiled gloves in order to examine the contents of the bin in a search for evidence!

Add it to the list..........

(Interesting, in passing, to see one of the administrators on that site state with emphatic certainty that these gloves could not possibly have been left by the first forensics team - this statement was clearly made from a position of ignorance, since the video commentary shows conclusively that the gloves belonged to the police...)

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Exactly. Not only that, but when police need to find a suspect quickly and aren't too bothered about the truth, they frequently focus on someone near at hand. The fact that Amanda and Raffaele were at the scene when the crime was discovered by police told me immediately that this was a stitch-up. This is a recurring theme in cases like this.

Oddly, a second class of ready suspects are people already known to police who can easily be found. Yet the Perugia police made no move on Rudy Guede until he was arrested by German police; indeed, didn't he flee the country after the murder was discovered? There are deeply disturbing questions over the police lack of action towards Guede, as well as the courts' favourable treatment of him compared with Amanda and Raffaele.

There are disturbing questions about why Guede wasn't arrested and charged for earlier crimes. But it was Italian police work that brought Guede in after Meredith was killed, and the authorities deserve credit for that. They matched a bloody hand print, which he left on a pillow, to reference fingerprints they had on file. Then they interviewed Guede's friends and secured their help in locating him. Then they notified the German authorities, who nabbed him on a train and held him for extradition. It was good, competent police work. But it was preceded by a total CF in which three innocent suspects were arrested and triumphantly presented as the culprits.

If they had just waited until they had the results of their forensic tests, instead of handing the media a story based on speculation, this mess would not have happened.

 

[LondonJohn]

I wonder, where is all that credible evidence (academic research, respected forensic pathologists or gastro-intestinal physicians) to contradict a time of death of 9.00-10.00pm (and most likely 9.00-9.30pm) based on post-mortem analysis of Meredith's stomach contents and her known meal intake? I'm pretty sure some people have been looking fairly hard: I wonder why they seemingly haven't come up with anything.......

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Frank Sfarzo reported:

“Amanda and Raffaele told us that on November 1 they watched Amelie and then, more or less, Stardust. Indeed the VLC reader does show the viewing of Amelie and then of Stardust, but it doesn't give a date.
The last access to Stardust is November 6. Raffaele and Amanda were in jail, so the police, while working at the computer, opened Stardust (everyone needs a break).

The problem is that access canceled the record of the previous one. So, if really Raffaele and Amanda watched that movie, instead of, for instance, going to kill Meredith, the proof was in the computer. But the police, by mistake, canceled it.
It's not that the running of a movie can really be an alibi, it can run by itself. But, for a number of reasons, it would have been a heavy clue. It would have been.

Interesting that Raffaele --along with Amanda-- was still under interrogation and the police were already using his computer, as you probably read around.
In the morning of the 6 they weren't really working on it, they were using it to surf the web. Murder of the english girl: two have been stopped. Like this the officers were reading, from the Ansa site. And they could add: and we are using their computer.”

If that's true, that's absolutely outrageous.

Then again these are the people who fried all three hard drives and refused to get two of them repaired, so possibly they are all total idiots. Or possibly they were browsing goat pron and posting on PMF using those computers and fried the hard drives to cover that up.

Competent investigators would have imaged the hard drives immediately and backed up the images, before doing anything at all that could possibly affect the evidence. That's not rocket surgery.

 

[Kevinfay]

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.

KNOX AS 'BYSTANDER'

Could I add to this that Knox's lawyer threaten to walk off the case if she changed her story again. She would also have had to face her family, which would be difficult to say the least. There would also be the worry that if she told the truth, RG and RS would have testified against her .... claiming innocence may have seemed the least bad option.

Knox twice admitted to being present at the scene, she described the scream which even the police didn't know about at the time. When RS called the police, he twice said that nothing had been taken from the cottage, when he couldn't possibly have known if he was not involved?.

Given that they were both undoubtably present at the scene, there are some indications that Knox was telling the truth about being in the kitchen:

1. There was only physical evidence of RS and RG in the murder room.
2. Guede only blamed RS, saying that Knox, whilst present, 'non c'entra un cazzo'
3. Guede sexually assaulted the victim, so he has a motive. RS, with his interest in sex with animals, knives etc. seems far more likely to have got carried away in the 'excitement' than Knox.
4. The motivations report has three attackers, based on the wounds to the victim. I would suggest that two could have done it .... one to hold the victim, the other to deliver the final blow. There is a big bigger difference between one attacker and two than between two and three?.
5. Knox took the stand, did she do this knowing that she was the 'least guilty'?. I listened to the tapes of her testimony, she was very convincing explaining that there was no bad feeling between her and the victim. I got shouted down for saying this, but that is how the court saw it as well. She was not convincing at all about not being present at the scene.
6. In her final address to the court, she was extremely concerned about not being branded a killer. I think that by then she had sensed that she'd not convinced the court that she wasn't present at the scene .... the only thing she had left was to plead not to have to 'wear the mask of a killer'.

I really hope Knox was telling the truth about being in the kitchen, I think there are grounds to give her the benefit of the doubt. When her sentence is served, it would give her a better chance to look forward and make a fresh start.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

ANSA and Stardust

Oh mannnn. If Frank is correct here, then the "crack" postal police were actually watching movies on Sollecito's laptop and surfing the net for news stories about the murder, on the very day when they recovered the laptop for examination (and when Sollecito and Knox were already in police custody).

This is almost beyond belief. Quite apart from the fact that they may well have been destroying important evidence through their crass and stupid actions (e.g. whether the Stardust file may have been opened on the evening of the murder), it's extraordinarily unprofessional on so many levels. Does anyone fancy defending the police on this one???

Add it to the list..............

LondonJohn,

I found out a little bit more about the Stardust question. Andrea Vogt wrote,

“Specifically, a computer engineer who analyzed Sollecito's computer and Internet provider records testified that his review indicated someone navigated on Sollecito's computer while he and Knox were being questioned by police. Specifically, the computer revealed that the movie "Stardust" had been downloaded, and then a few hours later, at 1 a.m. and 2:47 a.m., someone surfed the Web twice and viewed a story about Kercher's killing on the Italian wire service news agency ANSA.

"We aren't saying who it was, but you can imagine," said Sollecito's attorney, Luca Maori during a break in the trial, noting that Sollecito left his computer at home and went into police headquarters 21:40 p.m. on November 5 for questioning, leaving the keys to his house with police. He has been in jail ever since…First, defense lawyers claim that the computer interactions while he was at police headquarters may have canceled out important data showing the last known access to files that could have proven he was on his computer the night of the killing.”

I find it interesting that Luca Maori would not say explicitly that it was the police.

 

[LondonJohn]

Just a point on "direct" vs "indirect" evidence:

Direct evidence is only that evidence which in itself could prove the charge(s). Therefore, if (for example) a man is shot dead in a bar, someone standing next to the murder victim who saw the defendant raise his gun and shoot the victim in the head could supply direct evidence as an eyewitness to the actual crime being committed. However, in contrast someone on the road outside the bar who testified to seeing the defendant entering the bar, hearing a gunshot, and then seeing the defendant running out of the bar, would only be giving indirect (or circumstantial) witness testimony: he's still a witness, but not to the actual crime, and his evidence in itself doesn't prove that the defendant was the murderer.

In other words, not all witnesses supply direct evidence. In the case of Meredith Kercher's murder, none of the key prosecution witnesses (Quintavalle, Curatolo, Capezzali) was a source of direct evidence. There was, in fact, no direct evidence at all presented in the trial of Knox and Sollecito (or Guede for that matter). But then most cases which get as far as a trial are purely based on circumstantial evidence - for hopefully obvious reasons - so a lack of direct evidence in the Kercher case does not necessarily make for a weak prosecution case in and of itself (but a lack of decent circumstantial evidence certainly does....)

A phrase springs to mind regarding people who mistakenly assert that all witness evidence is direct evidence........something about a hole in the ground.............I wish I could remember it in full

 

[Chris C]

The full contents were present, and no attempt had been made to flush them away.

Was Meredith still wearing the clothes she wore to her friends house?

 

[lane99]

Does anyone really believe that the thefts and break-ins for which Guede was caught red-handed (which includes being in possession of the laptop and phone stolen from the Perugian lawyer's office) were the only ones he committed?...

Some people believe it. But, then again, if you glance through other threads at JREF, you'd be surprised at some of the things people believe.

I don't believe it. But I do wonder how many crimes there is specific, known evidence of. I'm aware of three break-ins that can reasonably be associated with Guede (not including the Kercher case).

On the other hand, some months ago there was a brief online article from a British newspaper that said Guede was connected to SIX serious crimes in the time leading up to the murder. If anyone knows what these are, please elaborate. I'm not sure if the article was accurate.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Was Meredith still wearing the clothes she wore to her friends house?

Most of her clothing had been removed, but it was all there in her room and it was the same clothing she had been wearing that day.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

If that's true, that's absolutely outrageous.

Then again these are the people who fried all three hard drives and refused to get two of them repaired, so possibly they are all total idiots. Or possibly they were browsing goat pron and posting on PMF using those computers and fried the hard drives to cover that up.

Competent investigators would have imaged the hard drives immediately and backed up the images, before doing anything at all that could possibly affect the evidence. That's not rocket surgery.

I have rescued data from a few sick hard drives in my day, using various kinds of external caddies, and I have tried to imagine what the hell I could do to fry a pcb. I can't come up with anything that wouldn't involve a deliberate effort.

 

[RoseMontague]

Some people believe it. But, then again, if you glance through other threads at JREF, you'd be surprised at some of the things people believe.

I don't believe it. But I do wonder how many crimes there is specific, known evidence of. I'm aware of three break-ins that can reasonably be associated with Guede (not including the Kercher case).

On the other hand, some months ago there was a brief online article from a British newspaper that said Guede was connected to SIX serious crimes in the time leading up to the murder. If anyone knows what these are, please elaborate. I'm not sure if the article was accurate.

That article was poorly written and poorly sourced, meaning an editor should have told Graham to go back and rework this thing before it was published so I will add poorly edited as well. As the article stands, it fails to show anything more than speculation.

 

[Mary_H]

<snip>.....Knox twice admitted to being present at the scene, she described the scream which even the police didn't know about at the time......<snip>

This reminds me of a funny exchange on Perugia Shock:

Poster #1: "Amanda Knox gave details about the murder that only a person involved in the crime could have known. She knew that the victim was sexually assaulted. She could not have known that. She also mentioned "thuds" and "a scream"."

Poster #2: "I did not know that the police found a thud and a scream at the crime scene. The very next day the papers were hinting at a sexual assault with "details" only the murderer would know. LOL."

Poster #3: "Well i'm pretty sure the police DID find a thud. I saw the videotape of them bagging it. AND they had clean gloves on.

"They didn't find a scream until about a year later when Nara came forward with the help of some kindly members of the press."

 

[Dan O.]

It's just come to light (via another site) that the "crack" Perugia forensics squad who initially searched Sollecito's apartment after his arrest actually disposed of their own soiled latex gloves in Sollecito's waste bin! When they returned to conduct a second search of the apartment (when the video was taken), they had to remove the soiled gloves in order to examine the contents of the bin in a search for evidence!

Add it to the list..........

(Interesting, in passing, to see one of the administrators on that site state with emphatic certainty that these gloves could not possibly have been left by the first forensics team - this statement was clearly made from a position of ignorance, since the video commentary shows conclusively that the gloves belonged to the police...)

Is this actually the source of the "rubber gloves in Sollecito's apartment" rumors? The police video of the discovery pays particular attention to the discarded gloves until they start unwrapping the wad of paper and tape found under them in the same bin and recognize what it is.

 

[quadraginta]

I have rescued data from a few sick hard drives in my day, using various kinds of external caddies, and I have tried to imagine what the hell I could do to fry a pcb. I can't come up with anything that wouldn't involve a deliberate effort.

So what you are saying is that based on your technical knowledge and experience you believe that the Italian LE must have intentionally damaged these drives.

Do you believe that they did this prior to determining the contents of the drives, or afterward?

 

[Dan O.]

I have rescued data from a few sick hard drives in my day, using various kinds of external caddies, and I have tried to imagine what the hell I could do to fry a pcb. I can't come up with anything that wouldn't involve a deliberate effort.

The court inquiry mentions the possibility of incompatible voltages. If the write blocker interface kit came with an external power supply that was wired for 110v and plugging it into 220 somehow didn't fry the supply but fed excessive voltages to the drive, it could quickly render the drive unusable.

Mere incompetence could account for taking the new kit out of the box and testing it on the first of the evidence drives. A cautious person would always verify that they knew what they were doing using expendable materials before working with the non-replaceable evidence drives.

To proceed to destroy three drives in succession before getting the clue that they were doing something wrong rises to the level of criminal stupidity if not outright intent.

Regardless of how stupid they acted, unless they intentionally destroyed the drives in order to make the content unaccessible, the data can be fully recovered by simply swapping the fried logic cards with an identical card from another drive. I've done this myself multiple times.
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_1514448cc188094a31.jpg[/qimg]I've also intentionally rendered many drives unreadable