Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris C]

Your reaction from the guilty perspective is immaterial. We already have the perspective of two unbiased trained professionals to show how normal people did react to the situation present at the cottage that morning. When the postal police arrived, Amanda told them about the open door, the blood in the bathroom, the unflushed toilet and even the broken window and mess in Filomena's room. Did they immediately jump to the conclusion that there was a dead girl behind the locked door? No. they went about their business with the cell phones. Is there even a record that they called their office or any other police branch to report the conditions?

Amanda saw the front door was open but that wasn't unusual. The girls sometimes left the door open when they ran out for a quick errand. She called out but nobody answered. Amanda closed the door but didn't lock it because that might lock her roommate out.

Amanda went to take her shower. Was that you that said that she walked naked from her room to the bath? The heat was off in the cottage. I imagine she would have slipped on her bath robe for that short trek.

It was when she got out of the shower that she noticed some blood in the bathroom. There were only a few spots of blood visible. It's hard to even see them in the Spheron imagery even when you know where they are. Is this enough to wake your roommates who may have been out partying late the night before?

The last thing Amanda sees is the unflushed feces in the toilet. This freaks Amanda out a little and combining that with open door and the blood in the bathroom she decided to grab the mop that she came for and leave. Perhaps one of her thoughts was that there had been an intruder in the house. The instinctive thing to do would be to get away from the house.

They all have cell phones so Amanda doesn't have to act like the typical bimbo in a scare movie and hang around the scene with the killer right behind the door. She starts calling her roommates starting with Meredith because she is closest to Meredith and they speak the same language. Meredith's phone rings but is not answered. Amanda then calls Filomena. From Filomena Amanda learns that Laura is out of town so Meredith is the only roommate unaccounted for.

Amanda tries again to call Meredith but this time both phones go directly to voice mail. This doesn't mean anything in particular because Meredith could have turned the phones off so as not to be disturbed. There are now 3 missed calls from Amanda on Meredith's phones so there is no need to continue calling as Meredith would get the message and return the call if she turns the phones back on.


This is all perfectly natural if you can set aside the fact that Meredith is lying dead on the floor behind her locked door. Guilters apparently cannot set this fact aside when evaluating Amanda's behavior that morning.

Actually, this is some of the points i've tried to stress before with the phones. How does it prove anything towards guilt. Amanda called Meredith and the phone rang but wasn't answered. Amanda calls Meredith and the phone goes to voice mail. Amanda calls other phone that rang earlier and instead of ringing it goes straight to voice mail.
If I found something strange in my apartment and tried calling one of my roommates and this scenario happened to me. I wouldn't call a 4th time. They switched off the phone after my first call. Why would I keep calling them back, if I know its just going to go to voice mail.

 

[Alt+F4]

Actually, this is some of the points i've tried to stress before with the phones. How does it prove anything towards guilt. Amanda called Meredith and the phone rang but wasn't answered. Amanda calls Meredith and the phone goes to voice mail. Amanda calls other phone that rang earlier and instead of ringing it goes straight to voice mail.
If I found something strange in my apartment and tried calling one of my roommates and this scenario happened to me. I wouldn't call a 4th time. They switched off the phone after my first call. Why would I keep calling them back, if I know its just going to go to voice mail.

Amanda, in her email to friends/family back home said she was "panicked" as to Meredith's whereabouts yet spent only 23 seconds trying to contact her during the 48 minutes between her first call to her and when the Postal Police arrived.

Amanda was back at her apartment no later than 12:34, according to cell phone tower records. The Postal Police didn’t show up for another 21 minutes with Meredith’s phones. Why didn’t Amanda stand outside Meredith’s door, call her phones and listen for rings? Because she knew the phones were not in the bedroom.

Both Amanda’s mother and Filomena told Amanda to call the police based on what she told them, she didn’t. Don't go with Amanda's Italian wasn't good enough to call the police. Both her mother and Filomena knew her Italian wasn't that great yet both her to call the police anyway....and again, she didn't.

I think it's beyond ridiculous to think that just because a phone goes to voice mail a "panicked" friend would stop calling. If there was real panic Amanda would have called Meredith's phones non-stop.

 

[Alt+F4]

Who was it that said that she walked naked from her room to the bath?

You.

 

[loverofzion]

Actually, this is some of the points i've tried to stress before with the phones. How does it prove anything towards guilt. Amanda called Meredith and the phone rang but wasn't answered. Amanda calls Meredith and the phone goes to voice mail. Amanda calls other phone that rang earlier and instead of ringing it goes straight to voice mail.
If I found something strange in my apartment and tried calling one of my roommates and this scenario happened to me. I wouldn't call a 4th time. They switched off the phone after my first call. Why would I keep calling them back, if I know its just going to go to voice mail.

Maybe because when callinhg Meredith Am,anda let the phone ring for 3 seconds onlyl, not bothering to wait for it to connect to voice mail.
she knew there would be no answer.

 

[loverofzion]

We are supposed to believe that they couldn't stage a break in through the kitchen window because it would be immediately obvious if one of the flatmates were to return too soon before they had a chance to clean up the incriminating evidence against them. But somehow being caught when they stay up all night using the mop and bucket to scrub the floor with bleach would not be incriminating.

The whole staged break in story was concocted by the prosecution because the evidence of the actual break in was inconvenient for their conspiracy theory of the crime. All the testimony supporting the staged break in is itself unsupported by any photos or notes taken at the scene by the investigators.

"Evidence of the actual break in"?
And what pray tell would that be?

 

[loverofzion]

http://works.bepress.com/benjamin_sayagh/1/

http://knoxarchives.blogspot.com/2010/04/appeal-moves-forward-for-raffaele.html

Sollecito was arrested without evidence. He was held without evidence. He wasn't charged. His arrest was improper because they had NO evidence against him and denied legal council. So in effect his right to a fair and speedy trial is being violated since he is already being held in prison. You can call it oranges and I can call it apples. The truth of the matter is Sollecito got the worse railroading in history. His civil rights where raped by everyone in the Italian justice systems that was involved in this case.

Boo hoo.
Sollecito was afforded the best legal minds his father's money could buy (that of the "money can make water run uphill" fame).
He was held because his alibi did not hold up; indeed he offered three differing alibis, at one point even throwing Amanda under the bus (His being "not sure" if she actually hadn't left his apt between 9 and 1)
He was a person of great interest to the detectives, not least of which because he and the girlfriend were found standing outside the cottage in whcih Meredith's body was lying.

Their subsequent behaviors, buying lingerie (it was ONE PAIR, let not Edda et al convince you it was because the poor girl had no underwear), while laughing about having hot sex, eating pizza AT THE TIME of Meredith's vigil- instead of attending it- (attended by hundreds of even more casual acquaintances), AMANDA RUSHING TO INQUIRE IF THEY COULD RENT ANOTHER COTTAGE TOGEThER, ETC ETC- ALL POINT A GREAT BIG FAT ACCUSING FINGER AT , YES- OUR MAN RAFFAELLO sOLLECITO.

 

[LondonJohn]

Amanda, in her email to friends/family back home said she was "panicked" as to Meredith's whereabouts yet spent only 23 seconds trying to contact her during the 48 minutes between her first call to her and when the Postal Police arrived.

Amanda was back at her apartment no later than 12:34, according to cell phone tower records. The Postal Police didn’t show up for another 21 minutes with Meredith’s phones. Why didn’t Amanda stand outside Meredith’s door, call her phones and listen for rings? Because she knew the phones were not in the bedroom.

Both Amanda’s mother and Filomena told Amanda to call the police based on what she told them, she didn’t. Don't go with Amanda's Italian wasn't good enough to call the police. Both her mother and Filomena knew her Italian wasn't that great yet both her to call the police anyway....and again, she didn't.

I think it's beyond ridiculous to think that just because a phone goes to voice mail a "panicked" friend would stop calling. If there was real panic Amanda would have called Meredith's phones non-stop.

Hmmmmm. I think the crucial point to remember in relation to both Knox's email and her actions on the morning of November 2nd is this: the luxury of ex-post knowledge. Knox had it when she wrote her email, and you have it when you analyse her behaviour on the morning of the 2nd.

If Knox is indeed guilty of participating in the murder of Meredith Kercher, then what you say certainly has logical validity. However, if she is instead non-culpable, then a different analysis can also make sense.

I personally don't believe that Knox was "panicked" on the morning of the 2nd. I believe that this is an ex-post rationalisation in her email to friends - given that when she wrote the email she knew that Meredith had been lying murdered behind her bedroom door all that morning. I therefore believe that Knox may very well have been amplifying her "panicked" state in her email recollection, owing to her subsequent knowledge of the horror of what actually unfolded later that day.

And, in the same vein, we all know now that Meredith was lying dead behind her bedroom door during the morning of November 2nd, so we subconsciously tend to make that a piece of assumed knowledge when analysing behaviours on that morning. However, if Knox was not involved in (nor had any knowledge of) the murder, there would have been absolutely no reason whatsoever for her to infer from what she found in the cottage that morning (open door, faeces in the large bathroom's toilet, spots of blood in the small bathroom, Meredith's locked door, Meredith's phones not being answered/going to voicemail) that Meredith had been murdered. Murders are vanishingly rare. The overwhelming majority of us will live our whole lives never knowing anyone who was murdered - or even knowing anyone who know someone who was murdered.

Given what Knox found when she returned to the cottage that morning, she had no reason to suspect that Meredith had come to any harm whatsoever, let alone had been murdered. If there had been puddles of blood in the house, or signs of a struggle, then there might have been a genuine reason for serious concern. But there were neither of these things. Instead, there were a number of unusual and bizarre things, which would certainly have prompted curiosity and further investigation. But even when Knox returned to the house and discovered the broken window after talking with Filomena, there's still no reason to suspect murder. Rather, the far more logical inference is that this was a botched attempted burglary, where perhaps the burglar had cut himself on entry, cleaned himself up, then made a run for it.

So, with all that in mind, I strongly suspect that Knox was concerned about the whereabouts of Meredith - who was, after all, uncontactable and unaccounted for - but that she was not "panicked" to the degree that she recalled in an ex-post email. I also suspect that nobody presented with the state of the cottage by lunchtime on the 2nd November could possibly guess that Meredith was lying murdered behind her bedroom door.

 

[loverofzion]

I believe Amanda and Raffaele were already under arrest before Raffaele made the statement about Filomena's door being open. Hence we can't draw a connection between their inconsistency about the door and why the police came to suspect them of the crime.

Questions about Amanda and Raffaele's credibility are circumstantial, at best. In the big picture, their stories are consistent and reliable.

Which of each of their total of SIX alibis squared up in your opinion?

They definitely had widely varying accounts of Filomena's door- be it open or shut- and that is just for starters.

Lying in a murder investigation is not looked upon kindly by law enforcement detectives; as it went down, it placed the 2 squarely under suspicion of involvement.

That and Amanda's "gift" to the police admitting having been present at the murder.

What HAVE you been reading for your sources?

 

[loverofzion]

So what your asking me is if I had proof that Knox retracted her statement? I'm confused. I thought everyone knew that knox retracted it. As for Patrick already being a suspect. The police themselves said she admitted to that what we already knew. Therefore her saying patrick was there was confirming what they already knew.

Two glaring inconsistencies, Chris.

One, NO she NEVER retracted her accusation, even AFTER Patrick had served 2 whole weeks in prison. (SHe incidentally managed to ruin his business irrevocably). Who is your fictitious "everyone " who knew. Chris?
In addition her mother knew that Patrick was INNOCENT (Amand told her), yet did nothing to alert the authroties to this face while he languished in prison. WHen later aked why she hadn't, she feebly responded, she couldn't speak good enough Italian (!!)

This is not first grade where "everone just knows things.

Two, Chris I am sorry to say that no, Patrick was NOT a suspect until Amanda in her moment of desperation, said "He did it...he's bad."
The girl is not only a liar, she is a cold and calculated criminal.

 

[Alt+F4]

I personally don't believe that Knox was "panicked" on the morning of the 2nd.

She said she was "panicked". That was her word.

I believe that this is an ex-post rationalisation in her email to friends...

You're not her psychaiatrist, you've never meet her. Just stick with what she wrote, not your amateurish attempts to analyse her psyche.

Given what Knox found when she returned to the cottage that morning, she had no reason to suspect that Meredith had come to any harm whatsoever, let alone had been murdered.

Yet both her email and RS's phone call to the police were filled with worry about Meredith. Why would he mention a locked door to the police and a missing roommate if there was no worry? At that point it was almost 1pm, the obvious conclusion should have been that Meredith had gone out.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Yet both her email and RS's phone call to the police were filled with worry about Meredith. Why would he mention a locked door to the police and a missing roommate if there was no worry? At that point it was almost 1pm, the obvious conclusion should have been that Meredith had gone out.

You need to review again the timeline of the phone calls. It is very revealing. Around 1pm it was already known there was a break in, and it was known that Meredith is not answering her phones - both of them were on voice mail.

Also reading her email it is noticeable how her state of mind changes:
from feeling a little uncomfortable into a more alarmed state later, when Meredith was not answering, and finally panic when the break-in and the locked Meredith's door is revealed.

 

[Chris C]

Amanda, in her email to friends/family back home said she was "panicked" as to Meredith's whereabouts yet spent only 23 seconds trying to contact her during the 48 minutes between her first call to her and when the Postal Police arrived.

Amanda was back at her apartment no later than 12:34, according to cell phone tower records. The Postal Police didn’t show up for another 21 minutes with Meredith’s phones. Why didn’t Amanda stand outside Meredith’s door, call her phones and listen for rings? Because she knew the phones were not in the bedroom.

Both Amanda’s mother and Filomena told Amanda to call the police based on what she told them, she didn’t. Don't go with Amanda's Italian wasn't good enough to call the police. Both her mother and Filomena knew her Italian wasn't that great yet both her to call the police anyway....and again, she didn't.

I think it's beyond ridiculous to think that just because a phone goes to voice mail a "panicked" friend would stop calling. If there was real panic Amanda would have called Meredith's phones non-stop.

Why didn't Filomena call the police?

 

[Chris C]

Maybe because when callinhg Meredith Am,anda let the phone ring for 3 seconds onlyl, not bothering to wait for it to connect to voice mail.
she knew there would be no answer.

When u turn a phone off it goes straight to voice mail. Why did the people turn off the phone instead of answering it? You dont find that strange behavior. Maybe we should throw them in jail for 26 years because they did something odd.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Amanda, in her email to friends/family back home said she was "panicked" as to Meredith's whereabouts yet spent only 23 seconds trying to contact her during the 48 minutes between her first call to her and when the Postal Police arrived.

Because both of her phones went to voice mail.

Amanda was back at her apartment no later than 12:34, according to cell phone tower records. The Postal Police didn’t show up for another 21 minutes with Meredith’s phones. Why didn’t Amanda stand outside Meredith’s door, call her phones and listen for rings? Because she knew the phones were not in the bedroom.

Because both of her phones were on voice mail.

 

[Chris C]

Two glaring inconsistencies, Chris.

One, NO she NEVER retracted her accusation, even AFTER Patrick had served 2 whole weeks in prison. (SHe incidentally managed to ruin his business irrevocably). Who is your fictitious "everyone " who knew. Chris?
In addition her mother knew that Patrick was INNOCENT (Amand told her), yet did nothing to alert the authroties to this face while he languished in prison. WHen later aked why she hadn't, she feebly responded, she couldn't speak good enough Italian (!!)

This is not first grade where "everone just knows things.

Two, Chris I am sorry to say that no, Patrick was NOT a suspect until Amanda in her moment of desperation, said "He did it...he's bad."
The girl is not only a liar, she is a cold and calculated criminal.

Seems you been reading Harry Rags posts on other websites. He claims the same stuff your posting. Just a little FYI, Mignini is a cold and calculated criminal. He is also a liar. Thats whose false information you are trying to make everyone believe. So are we suppose the believe the prosecution, one of which stands convicted of abusing his office, who presented no evidence that Knox or Sollecito committed this crime. Me I choose to accept what has been presented as evidence and choose to believe I would need something other than a convicted criminal's word that Knox and Sollecito committed this crime.

You want to prove she lied and it was her that made up these lies. Then show everyone the interrogation tapes. We know they recorded them. They tell us they didn't record the interrogation. Yet Mignini illegally recorded lots of people. Even politians in his own country. He was even wiretapping and recording knox, but claims she wasn't a suspect. Since when does italy allow the wiretapping of people that are not suspects of anything. There is a reason the Supreme Court of Italy wouldn't allow knox's statements in court. Its because Mignini violated her rights. Something he stands convicted of doing in a case before knox's.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Besides, from 12:34 they were quite busy. Checking the state of the belongings, banging on the door, trying to peek into Meredith's window, trying to force the door, answering and making multiple phone calls. And it's still questionable: how strong indication of guilt is it that she didn't nonsensically call Meredith's voice mail over and over again? How relevant it is, especially in the light of more concrete facts, like the time of death?

 

[Danceme]

You still aren't addressing the elephant in the room, the time of death.

This was addressed, multiple times. You are more than convinced by the studies you read while I'm not. Everything I read as well as all the testimony points to digestion being a very unreliable estimator of time of death. I don't know for sure exactly when she died, neither do you and neither do the experts, yet there is a window within which it could have happened and Amanda and Raffaele do not have an alibi.

If you assume for a minute that Amanda and Raffaele were at home watching Naruto until 21:49 or later and Meredith died at 21:30 or earlier, are you genuinely incapable of explaining from that perspective how they might have made two conflicting statements about the state of a given door?

I don't assume they were home watching Naruto. It hasn't been proven they were.

Amanda went to take her shower. Who was it that said that she walked naked from her room to the bath? The heat was off in the cottage. I imagine she would have slipped on her bath robe for the short trek.

Why do you imagine she slipped on her bathrobe. She didn't. There has never been any mention of a bathrobe, and if she had she wouldn't need to do the ridiculous 'bathmat shuffle' when she finished her shower because there were no towels handy.

The last thing Amanda sees is the unflushed feces in the toilet. This freaks Amanda out a little and combining that with open door and the blood in the bathroom she decided to grab the mop that she came for and leave. Perhaps one of her thoughts was that there had been an intruder in the house. The instinctive thing to do would be to get away from the house.

The instinctive thing to do would be to knock on Meredith's and Filomena's closed doors to see which one was possibly hurt, given the blood, the open door, the unflushed toilet. Why assume an intruder? Supposedly she hasn't seen the broken window yet. In her place I would have assumed someone was hurt and might need a little help.

This is all perfectly natural if you can set aside the fact that Meredith is lying dead on the floor behind her locked door. Guilters apparently cannot set this fact aside when evaluating Amanda's behavior that morning.

I actually don't find her behaviors 'perfectly natural' but that's just me. In fact all these inconsistencies and unusual behaviors make a lot of sense only if I think Amanda knew what was behind the locked door.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

This was addressed, multiple times. You are more than convinced by the studies you read while I'm not. Everything I read as well as all the testimony points to digestion being a very unreliable estimator of time of death

What exactly do you read?

It's certainly not the multiple peer-reviewed studies published in the scientific literature we cited for you that show that t(lag) has a median of around 80 minutes, and is only very occasionally over 120 minutes.

It can't even be the Massei report, because Professor Ronchi was well aware that he needed some story to explain the lack of food in Meredith's duodenum to make it even conceivable that she died at 23:30, and we now know that his story was incorrect.

So what is it that you are reading that gives a t(lag) that can be as high as 270 minutes? Show us the citation, and show us the t(lag) range.

Unless of course "everything you have read" is just nonsense from the PMF and TJMK echo chambers. In that case "everything you have read" is worthless.

What you'll find if you try to pin this down is that every "expert" saying that the time of death established by bowel contents is wildly inexact is talking about establishing the time of death based on how far a meal has travelled through the bowels. That is inexact at best. Establishing time of death by whether the meal has left the stomach at all, when we have an independent witness whose testimony closes off 90% or more of the possible timeframe which would be established by stomach contents alone, is not wildly inexact.

. I don't know for sure exactly when she died, neither do you and neither do the experts, yet there is a window within which it could have happened and Amanda and Raffaele do not have an alibi.

Denial isn't pretty. You've been shown the relevant scientific literature. Do you think that Stephan Hellmig, Florian Von Schöning, Christof Gadow, Stavros Katsoulis, Jürgen Hedderich, Ulrich Robert Fölsch, and Eckhard Stüber are all FOAker stooges? Do you think that The Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology is something Amanda's defence team made up?

Do you think that VD Awasthi, AB Sewatkar, S Gambhir, B Mittal, and BK Das are all patsies of Raffaele's dad?

Do you think they had a goddamn TARDIS too, so they could go back to 2006 and 1992 respectively to falsify this research to get Amanda and Raffaele off the hook?

We don't know exactly when she died, no. We do know that even a TOD of 21:05 is in the tail end of the t(lag) distribution and any TOD after that gets increasingly more unlikely as it gets later, unless she was attacked as soon as she got in the door (which could have arrested digestion).

I don't assume they were home watching Naruto. It hasn't been proven they were.

But you acknowledge that even the prosecution accept that they were at home at 21:10, which is when Meredith was almost certainly being attacked? And you acknowledge that someone opened the Naruto file at 21:26, and that Naruto files would last about 23 minutes? And you acknowledge that their subsequent alibi is that they watched Stardust, and that the police knowing this "accidentally" destroyed the metadata that could have confirmed this alibi?

 

[Mary_H]

Which of each of their total of SIX alibis squared up in your opinion?

Please describe the six alibis you claim were given.

They definitely had widely varying accounts of Filomena's door- be it open or shut- and that is just for starters.

And?

Lying in a murder investigation is not looked upon kindly by law enforcement detectives; as it went down, it placed the 2 squarely under suspicion of involvement.

Lying in a murder investigation by law enforcement detectives is not looked upon kindly by those of us who will see the convictions overturned. Hopefully it will also not be looked upon kindly during the trials for false arrest.

That and Amanda's "gift" to the police admitting having been present at the murder.

What HAVE you been reading for your sources?

Amanda's accusation of Patrick was an admission of having been present at the murder. Her "gift" was a retraction of that.

What have you been reading for your sources?

 

[Mary_H]

Two glaring inconsistencies, Chris.

One, NO she NEVER retracted her accusation, even AFTER Patrick had served 2 whole weeks in prison. (SHe incidentally managed to ruin his business irrevocably). Who is your fictitious "everyone " who knew. Chris?
In addition her mother knew that Patrick was INNOCENT (Amand told her), yet did nothing to alert the authroties to this face while he languished in prison. WHen later aked why she hadn't, she feebly responded, she couldn't speak good enough Italian (!!)

This is not first grade where "everone just knows things.

Two, Chris I am sorry to say that no, Patrick was NOT a suspect until Amanda in her moment of desperation, said "He did it...he's bad."
The girl is not only a liar, she is a cold and calculated criminal.

You have a lot of catching up to do. The retraction been discussed repeatedly on this thread. As a matter of fact, we just discussed it yesterday, so you won't have to go back too far to find the facts.