Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Alt+F4]

Alt, let me restate what I said before, hopefully with correct unreal conditional this time:

• And lastly If she really was still alive at 23:30 her stomach contents would indicate a pathological digestion problem which she made no attempt to remedy.

I hope this will clear out the misunderstanding
I'm also curious what do you think about the rest of my post?

Nope, no misunderstanding. No one, not Meredith's family, friends, or roommates has ever stated that she had digestive problems. I've yet to see anyone who thinks RS and AK are innocent make this asseration either. My question to you is where are you getting this information from?

As for the rest of your post you seem to be in agreement that the crime took place much earlier than the prosecution says it does. Many agree, but determining time of death based on stomach contents is an inexact science. In my opinion the fact that she didn't try to call her mother again after the 8:56 attempt, and the cell phone tower ping at 10:13 are stronger evidence than the stomach contents.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Nope, no misunderstanding. No one, not Meredith's family, friends, or roommates has ever stated that she had digestive problems. I've yet to see anyone who thinks RS and AK are innocent make this asseration either.

That's why I think that a 2-4 hours time for gastric emptying for a healthy individual, as indicated by papers mentioned here recently, and stated by experts (even Massei admits it) is reasonable.

In my opinion the fact that she didn't try to call her mother again after the 8:56 attempt, and the cell phone tower ping at 10:13 are stronger evidence than the stomach contents.

I think they strengthen each other.
Another clue that work in concert with those facts:
Rudy's droppings in Filomena's bathroom strongly indicate that he was surprised by Meredith entering the house. He didn't flush because it would reveal his presence.

And what is your opinion about the time of death?

 

[LondonJohn]

Nope, no misunderstanding. No one, not Meredith's family, friends, or roommates has ever stated that she had digestive problems. I've yet to see anyone who thinks RS and AK are innocent make this asseration either. My question to you is where are you getting this information from?

As for the rest of your post you seem to be in agreement that the crime took place much earlier than the prosecution says it does. Many agree, but determining time of death based on stomach contents is an inexact science. In my opinion the fact that she didn't try to call her mother again after the 8:56 attempt, and the cell phone tower ping at 10:13 are stronger evidence than the stomach contents.

*takes deep breath*

Alt, Katody is not suggesting that Meredith had digestive problems. His point is that she did not have digestive problems. He is saying that the only way in which Meredith could have had a half-full stomach and an empty duodenum five hours after eating the pizza meal would have been if she had had digestive problems - which she did not. Therefore, he's saying that the prosecution's ToD theory is wrong.

Katody is therefore agreeing that Meredith must have died well before 10.00pm, since her digestive function can be assumed to have been normal - and healthy adults with normal digestive systems start to empty their stomach contents into the duodenum within 3 hours maximum of eating.

 

[LondonJohn]

Episode 101 is 23:47 long. Anyone know the exact times?

I have had Itunes since 2007. I worked Offshore until Obama shut us down. So i season pass all my favorite shows. I might not know all of itunes features, but I do know alot about it.
I know that if I click my music files while they are playing they start over from the beginning.
I know videos work differently. As an example if I close a video out on Itunes and shut itunes down or not. If i come back to the movie/tvshow i was watching and click it. It will pick up where it left off. It wont got back to the beginning. That being said.
If itunes was closed there is no chance that Sollecito could manually access a MP3 file thats associated with itunes 3 times in 4 seconds. There would be longer than a 1 second pause while itunes loaded up.

Didn't Sollecito usually play his downloaded torrents on the VLC Media Player rather than iTunes? Also, does Mac OS (Sollecito's OS) control media programs in a different way than Windows?

By-the-by, I also find it extremely strange that the "crack" Postal Police computer team chose to open the Stardust file - of all the files they could have chosen (not that they should have been opening any files in the first place). It's doubly strange because presumably Sollecito would have accessed many more movie files in the days between the murder and his arrest, so it's unlikely that Stardust was even sitting as the last played file on his laptop.

 

[Justinian2]

Nope, no misunderstanding. No one, not Meredith's family, friends, or roommates has ever stated that she had digestive problems. I've yet to see anyone who thinks RS and AK are innocent make this asseration either. My question to you is where are you getting this information from?

As for the rest of your post you seem to be in agreement that the crime took place much earlier than the prosecution says it does. Many agree, but determining time of death based on stomach contents is an inexact science. In my opinion the fact that she didn't try to call her mother again after the 8:56 attempt, and the cell phone tower ping at 10:13 are stronger evidence than the stomach contents.

I agree.

I wonder why the ToD from the temperature reading was not centered around the 9-10 time frame. Was the temperature data fudged? Did the blanket keep the body warm? Perhaps the room was warm (due to the sun) at 9 pm and then cooled off during the night?

The Tod from the temperature reading showed that a 9pm death was only slightly less likely than a 11:30pm death, but why was it a tad off the most probable Tod of 9:30?

 

[LondonJohn]

I agree.

I wonder why the ToD from the temperature reading was not centered around the 9-10 time frame. Was the temperature data fudged? Did the blanket keep the body warm? Perhaps the room was warm (due to the sun) at 9 pm and then cooled off during the night?

The Tod from the temperature reading showed that a 9pm death was only slightly less likely than a 11:30pm death, but why was it a tad off the most probable Tod of 9:30?

Because Meredith was not even weighed at the autopsy - Dr Lalli decided inexplicably to "eyeball" her weight, rather than weigh her body properly - as is standard procedure for any forensic autopsy. He almost certainly underestimated her weight by at least a couple of kg. Had her correct weight been entered into the Henssge nomogram (a complex formula used to estimate ToD from post-mortem body temperature), the mid-point of the nomogram result would have been 9.50pm, IIRC

 

[Kestrel]

I agree.

I wonder why the ToD from the temperature reading was not centered around the 9-10 time frame. Was the temperature data fudged? Did the blanket keep the body warm? Perhaps the room was warm (due to the sun) at 9 pm and then cooled off during the night?

The Tod from the temperature reading showed that a 9pm death was only slightly less likely than a 11:30pm death, but why was it a tad off the most probable Tod of 9:30?

The room temperature for calculating TOD (13 C if I recall correctly) was measured around midnight, when the room had probably cooled down a bit. If the average room temperature was 1 or 2 degrees warmer, the center of the TOD estimate would have moved up by at least 2 or 3 hours.

If you are curious, I would suggest experimenting with this TOD applet.

 

[LondonJohn]

From Peter Quennell on TJMK, regarding Steve Moore:

"Impersonating a federal law enforcement officer is of course a serious federal crime.

If ex-FBI agent “Steve Moore” is not a total phony, we can presumably now look forward to his standing up and, after he has actually read the Massei Report, embarking upon the re-education of Linda Byron.

And if he IS a total phony… well, this may not work out to be altogether pretty.

Seattle readers, when you have a minute, could you give your local FBI office a call? See if they can shed any light on this klutzy person who is claiming to King5’s investigative reporter that he was one of them.

Linda Byron should be able to pick him out of a llineup if there is any doubt. Do remember to tell the FBI that."

Is he seriously accusing Steve Moore of inventing his history as an FBI agent? Seriously?! I do hope that some of his loyal readers do go ahead and call the FBI offices in Seattle. They might get added to a Federal "weirdo watch list" for their efforts

 

[Katody Matrass]

By-the-by, I also find it extremely strange that the "crack" Postal Police computer team chose to open the Stardust file - of all the files they could have chosen (not that they should have been opening any files in the first place). It's doubly strange because presumably Sollecito would have accessed many more movie files in the days between the murder and his arrest, so it's unlikely that Stardust was even sitting as the last played file on his laptop.

Don't we know about the "Stardust" file only because Massei chose it as an example of data loss?
I think that Massei may be right on this one, if some media files were in a folder shared by p2p, the simple fact of switching the computer on would cause the p2p program to access that files. The major mistake Postal Police made in the first place was turning the computer on before imaging it's drive.
As for the damaging of the drives, some say that sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
So it's hard to decide on this one. But the fact they didn't allow the defense to fix the drives is telling.

 

[Katody Matrass]

I do hope that some of his loyal readers do go ahead and call the FBI offices in Seattle. They might get added to a Federal "weirdo watch list" for their efforts

Jokes aside, if Amanda happen to be exonerated some of them really may become unstable, keeping an eye on them then could save some people from harm.

 

[LondonJohn]

Don't we know about the "Stardust" file only because Massei chose it as an example of data loss?
I think that Massei may be right on this one, if some media files were in a folder shared by p2p, the simple fact of switching the computer on would cause the p2p program to access that files. The major mistake Postal Police made in the first place was turning the computer on before imaging it's drive.
As for the damaging of the drives, some say that sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
So it's hard to decide on this one. But the fact they didn't allow the defense to fix the drives is telling.

Well all the p2p programs I know of need to be initiated manually once the computer is powered up - they don't just activate of their own accord. So to my mind the police would have had to have not only turned on Sollecito's laptop, but they would also have had to start his p2p program running as well. And that's also assuming that Sollecito hadn't stopped his downloaded files from re-sharing (as many torrent users do in order to conserve upstream bandwidth). It's not unlikely therefore that the downloaded Stardust movie files were merely sitting on Sollecito's hard drive as common-or-garden mdeia files.

Having said all that of course, it's all fairly moot - as you point out - when it's obvious that the "crack" Postal Police investigators should have imaged the hard drives correctly before trying to power up the laptops. My mother could probably have done a better and more professional job than them........

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Stardust and Raffaele's interrogation

Don't we know about the "Stardust" file only because Massei chose it as an example of data loss?
I think that Massei may be right on this one, if some media files were in a folder shared by p2p, the simple fact of switching the computer on would cause the p2p program to access that files. The major mistake Postal Police made in the first place was turning the computer on before imaging it's drive.
As for the damaging of the drives, some say that sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
So it's hard to decide on this one. But the fact they didn't allow the defense to fix the drives is telling.

Stardust is mentioned in two reports from September 2009, one from Frank Sfarzo, and the other one from Andrea Vogt. I have two posts within the last week that give the links. Let me speculate. Raffaele may have told the police during his interrogation that he watched Stardust, and the police may have looked for that file specifically. Whether from malice or incompetence, they opened the file, and key information is lost. Does anyone have a feeling about how plausible Massei's explanation is?

 

[katy_did]

It's a heck of an unfortunate coincidence that, knowing what Amanda and Raffaele's alibi was, they nonetheless chose the one vital video file to amuse themselves with at the police station, thus destroying the evidence for their alibi. It's also a bit odd that Massei writes this off as peer-to-peer activity rather than police action.

Is that definitely what Massei says, though? I get the impression he's being very vague about it (though must admit I haven't read through that bit in detail yet) and just shows his typical reluctance to blame the police for anything...

I think there's a difference between the date a file was last opened, and the date it was last accessed. In the case of 'Naruto', it wasn't opened by the police but it was accessed, presumably because when they were surfing the net and playing video games on Raffaele's computer, a file sharing program was also open and Naruto was accessed by people downloading it. That meant it wasn't picked up by the postal police's investigations (because they searched by last access within certain time periods) but the date of last opening was still available when the defence did their investigations.

But with 'Starlight', it wasn't only accessed, but opened, which is why the date of last opening was wiped out. Here's a quick translation from page 30 of Raffaele's appeal, which deals with 'Naruto':

It should be noted, in fact, that the contested judgment placed the last operation carried out by Raffaele Sollecito on the day of 1 November 2007 at 21:10:32.

In truth, performing the search with ‘Spotlight’ version 10.4.10, at least one file was detected, “Naruto ep 101.avi”, which is not present in the report from the postal police, but whose date of last opening is Thursday 1 November 2007 at 21.26 (i.e. during the period taken into consideration by the postal police: 1 November 2007 18.00 – 2 November 8.00).

The date of last access (Tuesday 6 November 2007 at 10:18:38) and the last modification of this file (Tuesday 6 November 2007 at 13:28:09) corresponds to a period coinciding with the confiscation of the laptop from Raffaele Sollecito’s house, a period during which activity was detected on the aforementioned laptop as testified by the system log files.

If I'm understanding it right, the reason it wasn't picked up by the postal police is because they searched by date of last access rather than date of last opening. With 'Starlight', they opened the file, which wiped out both date of last access and date of last opening...

 

[katy_did]

Well all the p2p programs I know of need to be initiated manually once the computer is powered up - they don't just activate of their own accord. So to my mind the police would have had to have not only turned on Sollecito's laptop, but they would also have had to start his p2p program running as well. And that's also assuming that Sollecito hadn't stopped his downloaded files from re-sharing (as many torrent users do in order to conserve upstream bandwidth). It's not unlikely therefore that the downloaded Stardust movie files were merely sitting on Sollecito's hard drive as common-or-garden mdeia files.

It's possible Sollecito had put his computer into 'sleep' mode, meaning that when it was powered back up, any programs open on the computer would have restarted. Having said that, I don't think 'Stardust' was just accessed through a p2p program, but actually opened - it being downloaded by other people would affect only the date of last access, not the date of last opening.

 

[Malkmus]

I noticed on one of the other sites the perception that the recent King5 news report featuring Steve Moore used the term "medieval" to describe Perugia in a derogatory way and that it is in fact not a medieval town. I'd like to point out that practically every reference to Perugia uses that term. Here's a few:

Perugia is a lively medieval walled hill town with historic buildings, people-filled squares, and modern shops.

http://goitaly.about.com/od/moreitaliancities/p/perugia.htm

Travel to Perugia, Umbria, Italy, for an interesting medieval city trip

http://www.italy-travel-vacation.com/Perugia/en_perugia_umbria.htm

If you travel to Italy you must visit Umbria, and if you visit Umbria you must visit the City of Perugia, one of the largest medieval cities in Italy

http://www.italianvisits.com/umbria/perugia/index.htm

To fault King5 for referring to Perugia as a medieval city is rather silly. I'd like to add that just because the town was originally founded before the middle ages does not mean that it isn't now defined by it's primarily "medieval" architecture. The walls surrounding the city were last modified during the middle ages, and the majority of the churches/monuments are medieval. Perugia is a medieval town.

 

[Alt+F4]

From Peter Quennell on TJMK, regarding Steve Moore:

"Impersonating a federal law enforcement officer is of course a serious federal crime.

If ex-FBI agent “Steve Moore” is not a total phony, we can presumably now look forward to his standing up and, after he has actually read the Massei Report, embarking upon the re-education of Linda Byron.

And if he IS a total phony… well, this may not work out to be altogether pretty.

Seattle readers, when you have a minute, could you give your local FBI office a call? See if they can shed any light on this klutzy person who is claiming to King5’s investigative reporter that he was one of them.

Linda Byron should be able to pick him out of a llineup if there is any doubt. Do remember to tell the FBI that."

Is he seriously accusing Steve Moore of inventing his history as an FBI agent? Seriously?! I do hope that some of his loyal readers do go ahead and call the FBI offices in Seattle. They might get added to a Federal "weirdo watch list" for their efforts

I don't think there is any reason to believe that Steve Moore isn't a retired FBI agent. What I'm curious about is this:

He says he obtained the Italian trial transcripts, police and autopsy reports and had them translated into English.

How did he get all that (especially the autopsy report) and who paid for the translation (which would be about 100,000 Euros for the transcripts alone, never mind the translation).

Link:
http://www.nwcn.com/news/washington...BI-Agent-says-Knox-is-innocent-101839513.html

 

[Katody Matrass]

Stardust is mentioned in two reports from September 2009, one from Frank Sfarzo, and the other one from Andrea Vogt. I have two posts within the last week that give the links.

Sorry for overlooking your post, indeed Frank mentions Stardust repeatedly as early as November 2007 (!). No wonder Massei feels the need to explain this one.

 

[Katody Matrass]

accessed vs opened

katy_did,

You're most probably right about the sleep mode.

Regarding the file access date, I don't think Apple's OS differentiates between "last access" and "last opened". I think what allowed the defense to retrieve info about "Naruto" is a bit more subtle technicality. the Spotlight (desktop search utility) keeps it's own index of files and their metadata ( among others last access date, displayed as "last opened" ) and apparently this index went out of sync or lagged behind filesystem changes. So the info is lost in the filesystem ( which the Encase forensic software apparently accesses directly) but is preserved in the index.
But this can't show us what program accessed the file and whether it was human interaction or automatic.

 

[katy_did]

katy_did,

You're most probably right about the sleep mode.

Regarding the file access date, I don't think Apple's OS differentiates between "last access" and "last opened". I think what allowed the defense to retrieve info about "Naruto" is a bit more subtle technicality. the Spotlight (desktop search utility) keeps it's own index of files and their metadata ( among others last access date, displayed as "last opened" ) and apparently this index went out of sync or lagged behind filesystem changes. So the info is lost in the filesystem ( which the Encase forensic software apparently accesses directly) but is preserved in the index.
But this can't show us what program accessed the file and whether it was human interaction or automatic.

Thanks for that info Katody, I'll take your word for it! So that means both the 'date of last access' and 'date of last opening' for Naruto refer just to the file being accessed, but at different times?

Actually that sounds a little odd in itself, since wouldn't that mean that Naruto hadn't been accessed at any point between 1 November and 6 November, when the police took the laptop? Or that Spotlight happened to lag behind the system file changes just up to that point on 1 November...

 

[Chris C]

I don't think there is any reason to believe that Steve Moore isn't a retired FBI agent. What I'm curious about is this:



How did he get all that (especially the autopsy report) and who paid for the translation (which would be about 100,000 Euros for the transcripts alone, never mind the translation).

Link:
http://www.nwcn.com/news/washington...BI-Agent-says-Knox-is-innocent-101839513.html

Did he say he paid to have them translated or had them translated? The guy worked with terrorism investigators and retired from the FBI. I'm purely guessing he went through the state department to get the transcripts. The guy has some serious stroke in the FBI. I'm sure it wouldn't have been to hard for him to get a translator in the FBI or CIA to translate the documents for him. All those branches would have had to do is hand it off to one of their new employees. Regardless of how he got it translated, I'm still waiting to see someone rebuke his arguments with evidence.