Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kevin_Lowe]

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.

If both phones went to voice mail, what do you expect?

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.

Seeing as this hysterical panic is purely your own invention, based on taking one word from an email written after the event and twisting it to suit yourself, your conclusion does not follow.

I think it highly likely that if Amanda had kept calling those numbers you'd now be saying "Why did she keep calling when she knew it went immediately to voicemail? Could it be that she was desperately trying to pretend to be doing something, while delaying the discovery of the body as long as possible? Could it be that she was being driven mad by guilt and terror so she had to compulsively redial and redial Meredith's voicemail? It's so obvious! Any other interpretation is beyond ridiculous!".

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.

Maybe nobody you know has voicemail? When I call my friend's phones that are set to voicemail you hear no ring at all, you just connect and start to hear the automated message.

3 seconds is enough time to recognise that the mobile phone is effectively off the hook.

Two glaring inconsistencies, Chris.

One, NO she NEVER retracted her accusation,

This is only true if you use a fairly unusual definition of "retraction". She stated very clearly afterwards that she now doubted her recollection of Patrick murdering Meredith and that her memory of spending the night at home was now much stronger.

This is entirely consistent with an internalised false confession brought on by lengthy interrogation, browbeating and physical assault. Amanda didn't know the truth herself, and she was being as honest as she could be.

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.

This is simply false.

If (as I think is likely) you are fresh from PMF and/or TMJK, you'll find that many factual claims which are echoed around those forums and repeated as ironclad fact are in fact questionable or outright false. As such, you just look silly if you boldly make claims that we dissected and discarded long ago. It will pay off for you to check your facts about matters like this rather than just repeating things you heard that you liked the sound of.

 

[RoseMontague]

Maybe nobody you know has voicemail? When I call my friend's phones that are set to voicemail you hear no ring at all, you just connect and start to hear the automated message.

3 seconds is enough time to recognise that the mobile phone is effectively off the hook.

Now if only Meredith had a ringback. It drives me crazy listening to some of the music choices my friends seem to feel I should be forced to endure before I can either talk to them or leave a message. I set mine to play Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine......just for payback. LOL.

 

[Kestrel]

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?

Amanda grew up in a world with cell phones, caller ID and voice mail. People her age understand that cell phones record missed calls. They also feel that leaving a voice mail saying "call me back" is redundant and silly.

The idea that you would call a number repeatedly if you didn't get an answer is from the distant past. An era when phones didn't tell you that a friend tried to call.

 

[Supernaut]

I think there are a few reasons.


2nd. The defense claims that the semen was smeared and was left at the scene around the time of the murder. If its not Rudy's and it is not Sollecito's, then it gives credibility to that low life murderer that claims Rudy confessed that him and another man where at the scene.

This needs to be emphasised. The cops said that they wouldn't be able to determine when the stain was made, even if it is semen, and this was the reason they didn't bother testing it at all (yeh, right - just to much trouble for to go to).

It was smeared along with the blood, apprently by the sole of a shoe, probably the same one that left the bloody prints, i.e. Guede's.

I believe it might turn out to be vital evidence.

 

[loverofzion]

Funny those guilters eh?
they just can't ignore the presence of a dead body.

 

[loverofzion]

Now if only Meredith had a ringback. It drives me crazy listening to some of the music choices my friends seem to feel I should be forced to endure before I can either talk to them or leave a message. I set mine to play Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine......just for payback. LOL.

Somehow I doubt that would have helped Meredith at that point.
Just what is your point(s)?

 

[Supernaut]

I think I'm correct on this point. However, wasn't knox/sollecito both held for nearly a year using some "flight of the country law" before being charged so they could find evidence against them.

This aspect of Italian law still appalls me. Habeus corpus has been a cornerstone of European law for 7 centuries.

In the UK, the NuLabour regime was forced to back down on plans to allow 'terrorist suspects' to be held for 3 monthswithout charge, this from the current 28 days (which it also introduced) which was and is still vigrously opposed.

A year without being charged? How could it be made any easier for police and officials to fabricate a case against innocent people?

 

[Dan O.]

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.

I assume that with 4 girls sharing a cottage they would each have bath robes so they wouldn't have to parade naked in front of each other going to and from the bathroom. There is at least one robe hanging between the towels in the large bath and what appears to be Amanda't robe on the foot of her bed.

I could be wrong about the robe. Amanda could have put the robe on after showering and still had wet feet (did she say she was dripping wet from her whole body or just her feet were wet?) or she could have chosen not to get her robe wet which is evidenced by the fact that the object on the foot of the bed is not hung up to dry as the towel is. Whether or not Amanda wore a robe that morning is not significant and there is no requirement that Amanda had to disclose every such minor detail. The prosecution could have asked Amanda about this if they thought it was important.

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.

You would disturb your roommates that may be trying to sleep late after a heavy night of partying because of a couple of drops of blood? The blood was in the bathroom. There wasn't a trail of blood from the bathroom back to one of the bedrooms. If one of the roommates had left this blood they obviously had control of the situation and got back to their own room where if they needed help they have a cell phone and can make a call.

The unflushed toilet was recognized by Amanda (as you pointed out) as something her roommates wouldn't do. Amanda doesn't have to stay in the cottage where there may be a stranger that leaves toilets unflushed. She did the smart thing and got outside and used her cell phone to contact the roommates.

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.

If Amanda knew that Meredith had been killed she would have never returned to the cottage that morning. The police would have found only evidence of Rudy Guede and Rudy alone would be spending the rest of his life in prison.

 

[loverofzion]

If both phones went to voice mail, what do you expect?



Seeing as this hysterical panic is purely your own invention, based on taking one word from an email written after the event and twisting it to suit yourself, your conclusion does not follow.

I think it highly likely that if Amanda had kept calling those numbers you'd now be saying "Why did she keep calling when she knew it went immediately to voicemail? Could it be that she was desperately trying to pretend to be doing something, while delaying the discovery of the body as long as possible? Could it be that she was being driven mad by guilt and terror so she had to compulsively redial and redial Meredith's voicemail? It's so obvious! Any other interpretation is beyond ridiculous!".



Maybe nobody you know has voicemail? When I call my friend's phones that are set to voicemail you hear no ring at all, you just connect and start to hear the automated message.

3 seconds is enough time to recognise that the mobile phone is effectively off the hook.



This is only true if you use a fairly unusual definition of "retraction". She stated very clearly afterwards that she now doubted her recollection of Patrick murdering Meredith and that her memory of spending the night at home was now much stronger.

This is entirely consistent with an internalised false confession brought on by lengthy interrogation, browbeating and physical assault. Amanda didn't know the truth herself, and she was being as honest as she could be.



This is simply false.

If (as I think is likely) you are fresh from PMF and/or TMJK, you'll find that many factual claims which are echoed around those forums and repeated as ironclad fact are in fact questionable or outright false. As such, you just look silly if you boldly make claims that we dissected and discarded long ago. It will pay off for you to check your facts about matters like this rather than just repeating things you heard that you liked the sound of.

I think it is YOU who is looking silly now.

"No evidence" and "Mr. Mignini is a blahblahblah" are among the very lowest name calling and outright denials in the hierarchy of defense mechanisms.

Read up in psychoanalytic books why they really don't cut it when crisis arrive.

And you guys are in for a huge one if you DON'T DO BETTER THAN THIS!

 

[loverofzion]

Alt+F4,

Both Katy_did and I have suggested possible routes of secondary/tertiary transfer of DNA from a towel to the bra clasp. This would not constitute contamination, because it would have occurred before the item was taken into evidence. I offered the towel as an example of an item that might have Raffaele Sollecito's DNA on it.

His DNA may have also ended up on the door or door handle to Meredith’s room. An investigator who touched one such location and then handled the clasp might transfer Raffaele’s DNA to the clasp that way. This example would be both secondary transfer and contamination. With respect to the cigarette butt, it may have been tested earlier, but the defense was not provided with machine logs, as Sara Gino pointed out in a news report. Therefore, one cannot say with certainty when it was tested. Raffalele’s reference sample is another possible source of contamination if not handled properly.

In the previous thread I linked to articles on DNA contamination that pointed out that the exact mechanism of DNA contamination is not always known. It is up to the lab doing the testing to provide the results of the proper controls and to provide protocols and machine logs. The use of negative controls is one way, although an imperfect one, to catch contamination.

I believe that some labs keep a database of their own technicians’ DNA profiles. I have no evidence that Dr. Stefanoni’s lab did so. Good labs also keep a log of contamination events and the changes implemented to lessen the chances of this happening in the future.

On the subject of the non-release of the electronic data files, Raffaele’s appeal indicates that both Dr. Pascali and Dr. Tagliabracci were denied information about the DNA testing. One portion of his appeal at this site was provided by an anonymous translator, and another portion was machine-translated, then read over by an anonymous Italian-speaking individual.

Case of the flying DNA!

For your information all labs involved used scrupulous, standardized and tested conditions.
If contamination cannot be proved, then for all legal purposes, it doesn't exist.

 

[loverofzion]

I assume that with 4 girls sharing a cottage they would each have bath robes so they wouldn't have to parade naked in front of each other going to and from the bathroom. There is at least one robe hanging between the towels in the large bath and what appears to be Amanda't robe on the foot of her bed.

I could be wrong about the robe. Amanda could have put the robe on after showering and still had wet feet (did she say she was dripping wet from her whole body or just her feet were wet?) or she could have chosen not to get her robe wet which is evidenced by the fact that the object on the foot of the bed is not hung up to dry as the towel is. Whether or not Amanda wore a robe that morning is not significant and there is no requirement that Amanda had to disclose every such minor detail. The prosecution could have asked Amanda about this if they thought it was important.





You would disturb your roommates that may be trying to sleep late after a heavy night of partying because of a couple of drops of blood? The blood was in the bathroom. There wasn't a trail of blood from the bathroom back to one of the bedrooms. If one of the roommates had left this blood they obviously had control of the situation and got back to their own room where if they needed help they have a cell phone and can make a call.

The unflushed toilet was recognized by Amanda (as you pointed out) as something her roommates wouldn't do. Amanda doesn't have to stay in the cottage where there may be a stranger that leaves toilets unflushed. She did the smart thing and got outside and used her cell phone to contact the roommates.


[quoteI 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.

If Amanda knew that Meredith had been killed she would have never returned to the cottage that morning. The police would have found only evidence of Rudy Guede and Rudy alone would be spending the rest of his life in prison.[/QUOTE]
Well she wanted to mastermind the finding , hopefully when her roommate Fiona was to have arrived.
Unfortunately time dragged on and Fiona didn't show up.

They were surpised by the postal police during the latter stages of their clean up.

 

[loverofzion]

And how would you know anything about what Katody is known for?

1. There was no voice message at the point Amanda hung up.
2. The mobile phone was NOT off the hook; on the contrary, it rang and rang.

3. AN "UNUSUAL" definiton of retraction Chris? What would that be?
She stated "Clearly afterwards" that Patrick was innocent. Clearly after WHAT Chris? AFter her trial and when she was found guilty?
When and where did she retract this and Chris I am afraid there is ony ONE defintion of retraction. Check your dictionary.
4, I'd be careful if I were you about banding about things like "lengthy interrogation", "browbeating"- and especially "bodily assault"!! In case you are not up to date on your favorite convict, Ms. Knox is currently serving an extra year for saying exactly that.
That has since been retracted, Chris, usual definition of retraction.

 

[Supernaut]

Well she wanted to mastermind the finding , hopefully when her roommate Fiona was to have arrived.
Unfortunately time dragged on and Fiona didn't show up.

You might want to let a certain Fiona (not Filomina >> edit - i mean Filomena) field your ingenious theory over at a certain other forum. She really hates it when people assert opinion as fact, apparently.

They were surpised by the postal police during the latter stages of their clean up.

So, it's back to playing whack-a-mole with another spammer. They were sitting together outside the cottage wating for the police when the postal police arrived unexpectedly, shortly after Raff had dialled 112.

 

[loverofzion]

Please describe the six alibis you claim were given.



And?



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.



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?

She NEVER retracted that though Chris...proo: Patrick spent 2 entire weeks in prison without her saying nary a word. And Edda of the Weepy Eyes knew he was innocent too.

Edited by Gaspode: 

Removed breach of rule 0.

 

[loverofzion]

You might want to let a certain Fiona (not Filomina) field your ingenious theory over at a certain other forum. She really hates it when people assert opinion as fact, apparently.



So, it's back to playing whack-a-mole with another spammer. They were sitting together outside the cottage wating for the police when the postal police arrived unexpectedly, shortly after Raff had dialled 112.

Check your times.
They called the police AFTER the postal police arrived. unexpectedly.

 

[Kestrel]

If Amanda knew that Meredith had been killed she would have never returned to the cottage that morning. The police would have found only evidence of Rudy Guede and Rudy alone would be spending the rest of his life in prison.

Well she wanted to mastermind the finding , hopefully when her roommate Fiona was to have arrived.
Unfortunately time dragged on and Fiona didn't show up.

Amanda's flatmate's name was Filomena, not Fiona.

They were surpised by the postal police during the latter stages of their clean up.

Yet again the clean up is postulated. A clean up that removed all the trace evidence pointing to two suspects while leaving undisturbed the footprints of the other suspect and the blood splatters from the victim. A clean up that somehow left the areas that were cleaned looking no different from the areas that were not cleaned.

In the world of Harry Potter, this could be done with a wave of a wand. In the real world, it is simply impossible.

 

[katy_did]

Case of the flying DNA!

For your information all labs involved used scrupulous, standardized and tested conditions.
If contamination cannot be proved, then for all legal purposes, it doesn't exist.

That may be Massei's perspective but it's not a standard 'legal' perspective and most certainly not a scientific perspective. Apparently you haven't been following the thread, as I posted this quote a couple of days ago from Judge Weir's ruling on the Omagh bombing case:

The Defence submit, correctly in my judgment, that it is for the prosecution to establish the integrity and freedom from possible contamination of each item throughout the entirety of the period between seizure and any examination relied upon. They contend, and I accept the contention, that the court must be satisfied by the prosecution witnesses and supporting documents that all dealings with each relevant exhibit have been satisfactorily accounted for from the moment of its seizure until the moment when any evidential sample relied upon by the prosecution is taken from it and that by a method and in conditions that are shown to have been reliable. [...] For this purpose they must be able to demonstrate how and when and under what conditions and with what object and by what means and in whose presence he or she examined the item. Only if all these requirements have been satisfactorily vouched can a tribunal have confidence in the reliability of any forensic findings said to have been derived from any examination of the item.

How can you possibly 'prove' the transfer of minute, invisible samples of DNA? It's up to the prosecution to prove they handled the samples properly and in such a way that contamination couldn't have happened, not up to the defence to prove it didn't happen.

Now, how did the bra clasp get up and walk across Meredith's room again? If the police don't know that, how do they know it didn't get kicked around the rest of the house too?

 

[Chris C]

Well she wanted to mastermind the finding , hopefully when her roommate Fiona was to have arrived.
Unfortunately time dragged on and Fiona didn't show up.

They were surpised by the postal police during the latter stages of their clean up.

What proof do you have that she wanted to mastermind the finding? Who called the police? If she wanted to mastermind the findings, along with sollecito, they would have had a very good alibi. Instead they had a confused allibi unsure about the exact times of the previous night. They where very sure about what they did. They where just unsure about the times they did them. If she was gonna mastermind the findings, why not turn merediths phones off and toss them in a dumpster somewhere. There was no masterminding in this murder. It was guede killing Meredith in a crime of passion and a prosecutor that cries satanic sex group crime when people die.
For some reason you have bought into this belief that Knox has the power to make men do whatever she wants. That somehow she was able to control 2 men that had never met each other before help her kill her roommate. Thats one of the most absurd ideas I have ever heard and it is what Mignini believes. Are you trying to tell us Knox at the age of 20, is capable of controlling men so strongly that they would both kill someone for her? I would love to see another case, thats not draped in stories of some witch in the 15th century, where a young girl was able to control 2 independent men that had NEVER met each other into committing murder together. No matter how you say it, it would be laughable if 2 people were not sitting in jail.
I always here the guilters say about how knox acted, "well thats not how I would have acted." Well let me say thats not how men act. These are not boys we are talking about. These are sexually experienced men living on their own. Even Rudy who many claim was a drifter and drug dealer. He is still an independent person. This guy is breaking into peoples home and threatening them with knives. He takes what he wants. He dont ask permission for it.

 

[Dan O.]

They were surpised by the postal police during the latter stages of their clean up.

Ah, the classic sign of a conspiracy theory. If the evidence isn't there to support the theory, claim it was cleaned up. Of course there is no evidence of any cleanup either. Maybe in the appeal the prosecution will work in a double body swap too.


BTW: Welcome to JREF. The moderators are paying particularly close attention to this thread since it just recently came off an extended period of moderated status. I recommend reviewing the membership agreement that you agreed to when you joined this forum.

 

[katy_did]

This is only true if you use a fairly unusual definition of "retraction". She stated very clearly afterwards that she now doubted her recollection of Patrick murdering Meredith and that her memory of spending the night at home was now much stronger.

This is entirely consistent with an internalised false confession brought on by lengthy interrogation, browbeating and physical assault. Amanda didn't know the truth herself, and she was being as honest as she could be.

Yes, it's very difficult not to see Amanda's handwritten note as shedding very serious doubt on the police statements she signed. Not unless you handpick sentences in isolation to make them say what you want them to say, as Massei did.

But regardless of whether Amanda retracted the confession, there seems to be a perception amongst some people that her not having done so immediately would be an indication that the confession wasn't coerced. In fact, as you say, this is entirely consistent with an internalized false confession:

Coerced-compliant false confessors are likely to retract or withdraw their false confession as soon as the immediate pressures are over (e.g. when seen by a solicitor or a relative after being charged). Coerced-internalized false confessors, on the other hand, will only retract after they themselves have become convinced, or suspect, that they are innocent of the crime they are accused of. How long this takes depends on the individual case (Ofshe, 1989, 1991b) [...] The critical issue is to what extent, if at all, the suspect's original memory for events becomes permanently distorted as the result of coercive and manipulative police interviewing (Gudjonsson 1999: 232).

Amanda's initial doubts about the 'confession' and her later realization that her original memory of being in Raffaele's flat was the real one are absolutely text book indications of a coerced-internalized false confession. Guess she must've been reading up on them...