Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Supernaut]

Weirdly I just noticed that someone on PMF recently posted a so-called "joke" that read like this:

"What is your favourite 80s band?"
"Gasajoojoo!"

Can't quite find the humour in it myself, but maybe it's just me.

It isn't just you.

 

[katy_did]

Common sense would tell me that this case probably had more witnesses, experts, and lawyers than the average so it would take longer than average from the start of the actual trial to the finish. So yes, this lawyer may have the right numbers but is likely not interpreting them correctly.

I think Michael at PMF is probably correct in his estimate of just a few days if the court does not allow any new witnesses or testing.

It would certainly make more sense since 2 years seems like a ridiculously long time for an appeal! Yummi seems like the person who knows about Italian legal issues over there, and he said it depends on this issue of new witnesses/testing and so on, so you could well be right. Probably the guy who wrote the article just researched the statistics and assumed those figures were for the trial and appeal themselves, not the overall length of time.

 

[Chris C]

Out of curiousity I think I might have asked this before but didn't read the response. Is meredith's room door a dead bolt or can you lock it and pull it shut.

 

[RoseMontague]

I saw on PMF a claim that the picture of the "lawyer guy" climbing up to Meredith's window is "cropped" and that he could not even reach the ledge. What's up with that?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Out of curiousity I think I might have asked this before but didn't read the response. Is meredith's room door a dead bolt or can you lock it and pull it shut.

I'm positive its a deadbolt from the pictures I saw of it - from the blood on the inside handle I'ld bet it was closed while the murder took place and was opened after for Rudy to clean up in the washroom, he didn't pull the door back shut so he must have known Meredith was dead at that time.

 

[tsig]

Just to wrap this sucker up, I'm working on a Larsen list for guilters. This is a draft, obviously, and lacking citations of the relevant data, but I'd appreciate comments or suggestions on it. The goal is to highlight all the major points where the guilter story is provably false, on matters which go directly to the matter of whether Amanda and Raffaele are guilty of Meredith's murder. If everything checks out I'll polish it up, add links to the relevant papers, and generally put the finishing touches on it.



A Larsen list for guilters:

1. How do you explain the fact that all of Meredith's last meal was still in her stomach, and none of it was in her bowel, if she was undisturbed until 10pm and died after 10pm? This is completely inconsistent with everything we know about human digestion. Estimating time of death by stomach contents is imprecise to a degree, but not to anything like the degree needed to explain this.
   
2. How do you explain the fact that Meredith's mobile phone pinged a tower in between her house and the final resting place of her phones at 22:13, if she was not murdered until 23:30 or similar? Meredith's phone had never pinged that tower before so while it was physically possible for her phone to reach that tower from her room, it would never actually do so in the normal course of things. This is nigh incontrovertible evidence that at 22:13 the killer had left her house and was en route to the place where they dumped her phones.
   
3. How do you explain the fact that the characteristics of Amanda's "confession" (vagueness, doubts about its authenticity, obvious errors of fact, conformity with police theories at the time, later retraction) match with those of an internalised false confession, a well-recognised and objectively documented psychological phenomenon? There is no evidence Amanda knew enough about such false confessions to fake one so convincingly, and indeed if she knew enough to fake one she would almost certainly know that such confessions often lead to the confessor being convicted. If it is highly implausible that she faked an internalised false confession, the only alternative was that this was a real internalised false confession.
   
4. Do you acknowledge that since Meredith died long before 23:30, the witnesses who claim to have heard a scream at about that time cannot have been hearing Meredith scream, and that this destroys the claim that these witnesses confirm Amanda's internalised false confession because they heard the scream Amanda described? If not, why not?
   
5. If you believe Curatolo's testimony, how do you explain the fact that the computer records provided by the police show that an episode of Naruto was opened on Raffaele's computer at 21:26, which would have lasted for at least twenty minutes, covering the time period when Curatolo very specifically claims to have seen them out of the house?
   
6. If you still believe Curatolo's testimony, and cannot present scientific evidence to dispute the time of death based on Meredith's stomach contents, doesn't Curatolo give Amanda and Raffaele an alibi?
   
7. If you do not believe Curatolo's highly specific testimony, what alternative do you suggest to the obvious hypothesis that Curatolo was a police stooge who committed perjury, and that his whole statement was false?
   
8. Do you acknowledge that Amanda's DNA on the "double DNA" knife proves absolutely nothing, because it could have been deposited on the handle by completely innocent means after Meredith's death? If not, why not?
   
9. Do you acknowledge that Amanda's DNA mixed with Meredith's blood found in the house proves absolutely nothing, because it could have been deposited by completely innocent means before Meredith's death? If not, why not?
   
10. Do you acknowledge that without this DNA evidence, absolutely no forensic evidence links Amanda to Meredith's murder at all?
    
11. What hard evidence do you have that there was a staged break-in given that we have Filomena's statement that there was glass on the floor of her room as well as on top of her clothes? The fact that nothing was stolen from this room is not evidence of a staged break-in, the lack of fingerprints or DNA from Rudy in that room is in no way unusual even if he did search the room without gloves, and the unsupported word of police who did not document their observations is not hard evidence.
    
12. Do you acknowledge that the police destroyed the evidence, in the form of Amanda's hard drive and the Spotlight metadata for Stardust on Raffaele's computer, which could potentially have confirmed their alibi, that they were at home at the prosecution's alleged time of death? Do you acknowledge that they have refused the defence's request to have the damaged hard drives repaired by the manufacturer so this evidence can be examined? If not, why not?
    
13. Finally, doesn't it ever strike you as weird that Mignini "figured out" that this was a once-in-history three-way sex crime more or less on sight, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support that theory? Isn't it just a bit convenient that when absolutely all the forensic evidence failed to confirm his theory, miraculous and unreproducible DNA evidence gathered at the eleventh hour popped up out of Stefanoni's lab to save his theory, but they refuse to show their raw data or their log files? Isn't it cause for concern that the best evidence for the prosecution can't be reproduced and they refuse to show their work, and that the vital pieces of evidence that could have confirmed Amanda and Raffaele's alibis (the hard drives and the Spotlight data for Stardust) were all destroyed by police?

You could have saved yourself a lot of time and just said:

1. Assume Amanda's innocent no matter what.

 

[Matthew Best]

I don't think that's very fair. They seem like reasonable questions to me. It's a shame nobody seems prepared to answer them.

 

[quadraginta]

If you're here for a conversation rather than to snipe and run, can you elaborate on your point and explain what the significance is? I honestly have no idea what point you are attempting to make with this post.

You write this as if it comes as some sort of revelation to you that the discussions of why the murderer might use a different exit resulted specifically from the allegation that the entry door was locked with a double deadbolt.

The post of yours I responded to suffered from the same lapse of memory. That was my point.

------------------------------------

Are comments like "snipe and run" the new standard of civility since the thread has been taken off moderator status ... again? I've been participating in these threads since the day after the first one was started, half a year and over 13,000 posts before you honored us with your first visit. When did you get to decide who was an interloper?

 

[Katody Matrass]

I saw on PMF a claim that the picture of the "lawyer guy" climbing up to Meredith's window is "cropped" and that he could not even reach the ledge. What's up with that?

From all of the talking points that about impossible climb is one of the most ridiculous.

There are not one but two easy paths for climbing to the window.

One is the grating "ladder".

The other, even easier is traversing the wall laterally from the concrete planter:
For a reasonably tall guy, like Rudy it's a matter of making one step sideways onto the ledge, without losing hand or feet support at any time. The shutter can be pushed flatly to the wall, so not only it doesn't block the way, it provides additional hand grip if needed.
Interestingly such path of access obliterates Massei argument about nails in the wall, dirt, grass etc.


If the shutter was pulled in (we rely only on Filomena's recollection about it) he opened it first. But it is equally possible that Filomena's memory is faulty about it and Rudy arrived to the cottage to see one of the shutters open (IIRC at some point he told so), and it gave him idea to try a rock throw, as was his custom.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Just to wrap this sucker up, I'm working on a Larsen list for guilters. This is a draft, obviously, and lacking citations of the relevant data, but I'd appreciate comments or suggestions on it. The goal is to highlight all the major points where the guilter story is provably false, on matters which go directly to the matter of whether Amanda and Raffaele are guilty of Meredith's murder.

Maybe it's not a major point, but the falsehood of Quintavalle's testimony in the light of his coworker's and Volturno's statements is glaring. Since guilters seem to clinch to this talking point no matter how ridiculous it is, I would add it.

 

[ForTruth]

From all of the talking points that about impossible climb is one of the most ridiculous.

There are not one but two easy paths for climbing to the window.

One is the grating "ladder".

The other, even easier is traversing the wall laterally from the concrete planter:
For a reasonably tall guy, like Rudy it's a matter of making one step sideways onto the ledge, without losing hand or feet support at any time. The shutter can be pushed flatly to the wall, so not only it doesn't block the way, it provides additional hand grip if needed.
Interestingly such path of access obliterates Massei argument about nails in the wall, dirt, grass etc.


If the shutter was pulled in (we rely only on Filomena's recollection about it) he opened it first. But it is equally possible that Filomena's memory is faulty about it and Rudy arrived to the cottage to see one of the shutters open (IIRC at some point he told so), and it gave him idea to try a rock throw, as was his custom.

There are some other views of the window not often seen at PMF.
I am too new to post URLS - so just replace <site> with the pmf org root url in front of my references below.
Wish we had some better photographs. Maybe someone else has others.

taking a smoke break:
<site>/gallery/image.php?album_id=21&image_id=1667
really fuzzy. bet they were grinding some glass shards deeper into the ground. I'd expect to find glass below even if it were a staged break-in, broken from the inside.

looking down:
<site>/gallery/image.php?album_id=21&image_id=1296
my eyes seems to me approximately a several inch wide foundation ledge starting from where the broader path ends, though slightly higher that rudy may have used to avoid touching the ground below

looking up:
<site>/gallery/image.php?album_id=21&image_id=1291
looking up - super fuzzy from video wish we had a nice clear pic of this perspective

 

[Chris_Halkides]

substantive debate

You could have saved yourself a lot of time and just said:

1. Assume Amanda's innocent no matter what.

tsig,

There are discussion groups on this case where dissent from the party line can get one branded a troll and thrown off. The fact that this cannot happen at JREF makes this thread a useful place for the pro-innocence and pro-guilt commenters to debate in a civilized way. I would welcome anyone from the latter camp making a serious effort to engage the points that Kevin_Lowe raised.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

standard of civility

You write this as if it comes as some sort of revelation to you that the discussions of why the murderer might use a different exit resulted specifically from the allegation that the entry door was locked with a double deadbolt.

The post of yours I responded to suffered from the same lapse of memory. That was my point.

------------------------------------

Are comments like "snipe and run" the new standard of civility since the thread has been taken off moderator status ... again? I've been participating in these threads since the day after the first one was started, half a year and over 13,000 posts before you honored us with your first visit. When did you get to decide who was an interloper?

Quadraginta,

Is this your standard of civility? Accusing people of making things up and misdirection, and telling them that they are "pissing and moaning" about the DNA evidence (!) is not my idea of reasoned and adult conversation. Just so we can begin to get on the same page about this, PM Mignini listed the three strongest pieces of evidence in the case as the knife, the clasp, and the mixed DNA, IIRC, so my focus on that aspect of the case looks well placed.

Again, I welcome substantive debate, and I wish everyone would.

 

[RoseMontague]

There are some other views of the window not often seen at PMF.
I am too new to post URLS - so just replace <site> with the pmf org root url in front of my references below.
Wish we had some better photographs. Maybe someone else has others.

taking a smoke break:
<site>/gallery/image.php?album_id=21&image_id=1667
really fuzzy. bet they were grinding some glass shards deeper into the ground. I'd expect to find glass below even if it were a staged break-in, broken from the inside.

looking down:
<site>/gallery/image.php?album_id=21&image_id=1296
my eyes seems to me approximately a several inch wide foundation ledge starting from where the broader path ends, though slightly higher that rudy may have used to avoid touching the ground below

looking up:
<site>/gallery/image.php?album_id=21&image_id=1291
looking up - super fuzzy from video wish we had a nice clear pic of this perspective

Those are really fuzzy but that smoke break one is rather telling. Perhaps they were looking for glass shards while they were smoking.

The nail pic is by far the clearest, and the only one clear enough to really see the nail.

To big to host here is the link

http://img704.imageshack.us/i/wallshowingnail.jpg/

 

[RoseMontague]

From all of the talking points that about impossible climb is one of the most ridiculous.

There are not one but two easy paths for climbing to the window.

One is the grating "ladder".

The other, even easier is traversing the wall laterally from the concrete planter:
For a reasonably tall guy, like Rudy it's a matter of making one step sideways onto the ledge, without losing hand or feet support at any time. The shutter can be pushed flatly to the wall, so not only it doesn't block the way, it provides additional hand grip if needed.
Interestingly such path of access obliterates Massei argument about nails in the wall, dirt, grass etc.


If the shutter was pulled in (we rely only on Filomena's recollection about it) he opened it first. But it is equally possible that Filomena's memory is faulty about it and Rudy arrived to the cottage to see one of the shutters open (IIRC at some point he told so), and it gave him idea to try a rock throw, as was his custom.

Looking at this better pic, I think it is possible to have done this the way you describe. You can see the police guy in the very right of the pick I linked to with his hand on the ledge. I wish this lawyer dude had demonstrated that access as well as the other one. The appeal points out the problems with the Massei report and filomena's testimony regarding the shutters. The Micheli report is more clear, perhaps this was before she had a chance to clarify her previous statements: (Google translation)

As for the window, remember to have certainly closed the windows, but probably leaving the shutters open: the shutters, but can not be hundred percent sure, without thought of them still closed both since left the tax met resistance on the sill due to a swelling of the wood. His memory was no longer accurate, since it considered to have certainly opened the shutters in the morning needing light to change (while not having stayed home, but with your boyfriend, had moved from there and reached the A. who was celebrating his birthday), but was then removed in a hurry because he was already late.

 

[quadraginta]

Quadraginta,

Is this your standard of civility? Accusing people of making things up and misdirection, and telling them that they are "pissing and moaning" about the DNA evidence (!) is not my idea of reasoned and adult conversation. Just so we can begin to get on the same page about this, PM Mignini listed the three strongest pieces of evidence in the case as the knife, the clasp, and the mixed DNA, IIRC, so my focus on that aspect of the case looks well placed.

Again, I welcome substantive debate, and I wish everyone would.

Tu quoque?

I make no pretense of not being a surly, uncouth SOB.

Others have.

The point of the post you have resurrected was that the issue of the verity of the DNA results for the knife was made moot by Sollecito's own admission that he had reason to believe it could be found there. Had, in fact, a reason to expect it could be found there, by explicitly reciting the particular circumstances which had caused it to be there. At that point it was the verity of his account which became the issue, not that of the lab. That was true then, and remains true now. Your analysis of the lab results, however scholarly and well footnoted, and no matter how often repeated, became irrelevant as far as the knife was concerned. The lab could have stated unequivically that there was no DNA found at all. We'd still be left wondering why Sollecito wanted to claim that there ought to be.

But there really isn't any reason to start that all up again. It won't make any difference.


Good work, BTW, dredging that up. If that's the worst I've managed to behave in nine months and 20,000 posts worth of conversation in these threads then I'm going to lose my "Surly SOB" credentials.

Maybe I need to try harder.

 

[RoseMontague]

Tu quoque?

I make no pretense of not being a surly, uncouth SOB.

Others have.

The point of the post you have resurrected was that the issue of the verity of the DNA results for the knife was made moot by Sollecito's own admission that he had reason to believe it could be found there. Had, in fact, a reason to expect it could be found there, by explicitly reciting the particular circumstances which had caused it to be there. At that point it was the verity of his account which became the issue, not that of the lab. That was true then, and remains true now. Your analysis of the lab results, however scholarly and well footnoted, and no matter how often repeated, became irrelevant as far as the knife was concerned. The lab could have stated unequivically that there was no DNA found at all. We'd still be left wondering why Sollecito wanted to claim that there ought to be.

But there really isn't any reason to start that all up again. It won't make any difference.


Good work, BTW, dredging that up. If that's the worst I've managed to behave in nine months and 20,000 posts worth of conversation in these threads then I'm going to lose my "Surly SOB" credentials.

Maybe I need to try harder.

When confronted with BS Sollecito answered with BS. I does not make him guilty, just stupid. It doesn't make Meredith's DNA on the double DNA knife real at all. It is either there or it is not, regardless of Sollecito's BS. I also believe there is none of Meredith's DNA on the knife blade, I don't think anyone's DNA was on the blade of that knife and the claim that there was is Stefanoni's BS to Raffaele as far as I am concerned.. It is not the murder weapon or even one of the murder weapons.

I am glad you are still posting on this topic and encourage you to continue to do so. I had asked your opinion on the Massei report previously. Have you had a chance to read it yet?

 

[Malkmus]

Unless of course he was suddenly confronted with a locked double deadbolt, and he was in a real hurry.

Oh, wait. That's scenario is just too far-fetched.

Quadraginta, perhaps you missed my post addressing this just yesterday. When Rudy broke into Cristian Tramontano's house he was indeed confronted with a locked door to which he needed the key. He didn't go running out the way he came in, but instead turned on the owner of the house with a knife so he would let him out. There is nothing supporting the notion that Rudy would have gone back out the window, and in fact it is nullified by the anecdote I just presented.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

You write this as if it comes as some sort of revelation to you that the discussions of why the murderer might use a different exit resulted specifically from the allegation that the entry door was locked with a double deadbolt.

The post of yours I responded to suffered from the same lapse of memory. That was my point.

Oh, fair enough. I assumed you were making some kind of joined-up argument in your head that ended with "...and that is why Knox and Sollecito are probably guilty", but when you wrote it down you left most of that argument out.

Given that this is what you posted, that still makes sense to me as the logical interpretation:

Unless of course he was suddenly confronted with a locked double deadbolt, and he was in a real hurry.

Oh, wait. That's scenario is just too far-fetched.

Exactly what you were saying is not clear, but it looks like you are trying to make some argument to the effect that some specific scenario is or is not far-fetched.

If all you are saying is that the door was claimed to have been locked, well, thanks for that contribution I guess.

As for your argument about the knife, I think it has a huge hole in it. It assumes that if Raffaele Sollecito was innocent, he would magically have known that the DNA evidence on the double DNA knife was erroneous or falsified. As opposed to Raffaele Sollecito believing the police, and then trying to construct some scenario where the DNA got there by innocent means.

Since there are still people with the benefit of this thread who do not believe that the DNA evidence on that knife was erroneous or falsified, it seems irrational to convict Sollecito in your mind for jumping to the same conclusion.

My original goal was to keep the Larsen list to the core points which should exonerate Raffaele and Amanda when examined by a rational person. However it might need an appendix to focus on the non-core, trivial claims which guilters find highly persuasive, such as Raffaele's prison diary remarks. Such an appendix might end up quite lengthy, however, and there is a relevant proverb about wrestling pigs. I suspect the guilters would attack the appendix, declare victory, and then declare that they didn't have to engage with the core points any more because they had trashed the appendix.

Nonetheless, just for Quadraginta: Do you acknowledge that when Raffaele Sollecito, whose written Italian skills are poor and who has no particular knowledge of DNA forensics that we know of, wrote the passage "I am convinced that she could not have killed Meredith and then return home. The fact that there is Meredith's DNA on the kitchen is because once while cooking together, I shifted myself in the house handling the knife, I had the point on her hand, and immediately after I apologized but she had nothing done to her. So the only real explanation of the kitchen knife is this." he could equally well have been claiming to have touched Amanda's hand with a knife as Meredith's? If not, on what basis do you rule this possibility out?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

You could have saved yourself a lot of time and just said:

1. Assume Amanda's innocent no matter what.

Beautiful.

I know I have constructed my list reasonably well when this is the kind of response I get. Thank you tsig!