Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

the demotion never made any sense to me

Could you cite the post where you asked me about flyers because I don't remember it and a quick backscan didn't show any.

tsig,

In this comment, I questioned the demotion, "How can you be demoted from a job that only pays 5 euros in the first place? I have not seen the flyer handout business documented anywhere else, and I question whether Patrick would need that particular service." You may have taken this as a rhetorical question, but I was hoping for some clarification.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

And my point is that we know Rudy did sexually assault Meredith and that removing her bra and pants fits in with that scenario. I don't see why Amanda and Raf would have felt the need after the fact to make it look more than what it actually was when it's perfectly reasonable to assume those things were part of Rudy's assault.

Yes, we do know that, but Amanda and Raff did not at the time, but Amanda at least suspected it when she was in the kitchen with her hands over her ears. In fact, I doubt she thought Rudy was killing Meredith, I doubt too that Rudy thought he would be killing her either in the beginning.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Hey RW! Good to see you back around again!

Maybe some "expert" could conduct a statement analysis of Curatolo's statements to the newspaper and the police. It might make for interesting reading

(By the way, "statement analysis" falls into the same realms of pseudoscience as polygraph testing or graphology. Occasionally (but only occasionally), things like these can be used as tools to help focus an investigation, but they have next to no true probative value in themselves.)

Hey. Congrats on 1,000 posts - don't respond or you'll break the magic.

 

[Fuji]

The First Rule of Holes applies here Fuji, this isn't PMF and most of the people around here can spot an incorrect appeal to a canonical fallacy.

If my assessments of your statements are so mistaken, then perhaps you would be so kind as to correct me?

I see no point in arguing with you about the validity of particular pieces of evidence when you refuse to argue logically. If you can't even refute my simple judgments, then I have little faith that you can draw the logical inferences necessary to establish the likelihood of the accuseds' guilt.

 

[Kestrel]

tsig,

In this comment, I questioned the demotion, "How can you be demoted from a job that only pays 5 euros in the first place? I have not seen the flyer handout business documented anywhere else, and I question whether Patrick would need that particular service." You may have taken this as a rhetorical question, but I was hoping for some clarification.

A homeless man the prosecution put on the stand claimed he saw Meredith, Rudy, Amanda and Raffaele walking to the cottage a day or two before the murders. He claimed that he recognized Rudy as the guy that handed out flyers for Patrick's pub. It turned out that Raffaele had proof he was elsewhere that day and handing out flyers was something Patrick always did himself.

This prosecution witness was ignored by the court, just as they ignored HK the mad Albanian. I don't believe he was even mentioned in the judgement.

The idea that Amanda was demoted to handing out fliers seems to be pure invention.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Maybe some "expert" could conduct a statement analysis of Curatolo's statements to the newspaper and the police. It might make for interesting reading

(By the way, "statement analysis" falls into the same realms of pseudoscience as polygraph testing or graphology. Occasionally (but only occasionally), things like these can be used as tools to help focus an investigation, but they have next to no true probative value in themselves.)

For anyone not getting the full context of LJ's allusion, here's a link for a good laugh

Looks like bogus science is the only science that can make AK and RS guilty.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

That’s how he gets his DNA on it. They break the window, mess up the room, try and make it look like a break-in turned rape/murder. They don't know Rudy did all he did, like Rudy said, Meredith had her pants on when he left. Even Amanda's lite in the room is from RS cutting off the bra and looking for the clasp, Amanda came in to help, but not until RS covered Meredith's body with the duvet. Amanda and RS didn't even see the body until somewhere between 11 and 11:30, the Scream, was actual Amanda when she walked in Meredith’s room.

No, the scream was a Reptoid scream. And the footsteps... that was the Grays.

 

[Fuji]

Fuji,

It is not a question of whether or not Chris_C is correct about the lack of release of key files. The lack of complete discovery has been documented on this forum previously. The prosecution's failure is discussed here. Raffaele's appeal indicates that such refusal to provide key documentation of the DNA forensics was something that was repeated on more than one occasion. Bob Graham also wrote an article about this last March or April.

The real question is why the prosecution would do so if they are so confident of their results. Maybe it is because they are not so sure.

halides1 - I am well aware of the basic thrusts of the Knox and Sollecito appeals. I did not dispute the main content of Chris_C's reply. I merely indicated that if things are as you and he say, then AK and RS should eventually be exonerated by one of the Italian courts hearing their appeals. I remain open to that possibility, but doubtful of its likelihood.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

No, the scream was a Reptoid scream. And the footsteps... that was the Grays.

No the scream was definately bonjeyed and the footsteps were trinni's as well.

 

[Fuji]

For anyone not getting the full context of LJ's allusion, here's a link for a good laugh

Looks like bogus science is the only science that can make AK and RS guilty.

Better get on to your local Congressperson about the FBI wasting public funds.

 

[LondonJohn]

Better get on to your local Congressperson about the FBI wasting public funds.

1) The type of statement analysis referred to in this FBI newsletter is at an extremely basic level: it examined lack of conviction in statements (e.g. qualifiers such as "I think", "sort of" "as far as I know") and extraneous information (irrelevant details, unnecessary additions). I think that a police officer straight out of police academy could recognise this definition of "statement analysis" as basic intuition.

2) Amusingly, the statements analysed in this little study were of police officers' reports of vehicle accidents - some were apparently telling the truth and some were apparently not......

3) The "area of concern" highlighted within the graph appears totally arbitrary, and appears to have been somewhat retrofitted to the known outcomes.

4) The authors themselves acknowledge that this is not "a scientific or precise instrument", but instead a quick and dirty way of screening statements. And I'd agree.

5) This very elementary (and, I'd argue, uncontroversial) way of looking for lies or truths in statements is a whole world away from the somewhat more......psychiatric.....definition of "statement analysis" as applied to Knox's email by "Seamus O'Reilly" - a small sample of which is given below:

"note any inclusion of "shower" or "washing", "water" etc is an indication of sexual abuse"

I leave people to draw their own conclusions between the two different definitions of "statement analysis". One is the kind that detectives undertake - probably subconsciously - every day.* The other is a pseudo-scientific flight of fancy with overtones of Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis thrown in, and of extremely questionable validity.

* You and I also understand this form of statement analysis. If we ask our 6-year-old nephew if he knocked over a vase, and he says something like "I remember the vase was on the shelf near to the photograph stand, and..umm...I think I walked past it on my way to get a book about dinosaurs from the shelf, but I don't remember knocking it over", then we ask our 5-year-old niece the same question and she answers "No, I didn't", then I think we can have a fairly good idea who knocked the vase over.

 

[Mary_H]

Hey. Congrats on 1,000 posts - don't respond or you'll break the magic.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Better get on to your local Congressperson about the FBI wasting public funds.

I'm positively sure is that I have no local congressman around where I live.

LondonJohn, thanks for the analysis of that bulletin article, what I'm left to add is maybe some more quotes from that blog, just for the laughs:


Amanda writes
i began to play guitar with raffael and meredith came out
of her room and went to the door. she said bye and left for the day.
it was the last time i saw her alive.

The guy goes into pure cold-reading mode:

In domestic homicides; we always look for the inclusion of departure words. When it is important enough for the subject to tell us that the words "good bye" or "see you later" (etc), this is often an indicator that the person is dead, by this time in the giving of the account.

Now that's quite a finding, especially knowing that we are dealing with a murder, not a missing person.


Amanda writes:
i woke up
around 1030 and after grabbing my few things i left raffael's
appartment

Our psychic explains:

"left" is an indication that the subject has withheld information, when it appears as an unnecessary connecting verb.

Thar she blows ?




I'd love to see this guys credentials. The fact that FBI pays him money wouldn't surprise me that much. Employing psychics in investigations is not unheard of, too.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Oh my goodness, I'm sorry Mary - I didn't notice
Congrats on 1,000 posts too

 

[Mary_H]

I'm positively sure is that I have no local congressman around where I live.

LondonJohn, thanks for the analysis of that bulletin article, what I'm left to add is maybe some more quotes from that blog, just for the laughs:


Amanda writes
i began to play guitar with raffael and meredith came out
of her room and went to the door. she said bye and left for the day.
it was the last time i saw her alive.

The guy goes into pure cold-reading mode:

Now that's quite a finding, especially knowing that we are dealing with a murder, not a missing person.


Amanda writes:
i woke up
around 1030 and after grabbing my few things i left raffael's
appartment

Our psychic explains:

Thar she blows ?

I'd love to see this guys credentials. The fact that FBI pays him money wouldn't surprise me that much. Employing psychics in investigations is not unheard of, too.

I compared what he does to dream analysis -- you know, the Big Book of Dream Symbols?

I already asked him for his credentials, Katody. Several days later, he wrote:

"Go to www.fbi.gov and search articles on interviewing and statement analysis. There is an abudance of info for you.

Then, check the references for the research. You will find the Labratory for Scientific Interrogation (LSI) as common to ALL major investigatory organizations in America and internationally.

That is where I studied."

Here is the reputable-looking website for the Laboratory of Scientific Interrogation: http://www.lsiscan.com/

I have also asked him a number of time to provide a source for the theory that anything having to do with showers, water or washing also has to do with sexuality. So far, he declines to answer. Come join halides1 and me on the comment page -- Fulcanelli is there, too!

 

[Mary_H]

Oh my goodness, I'm sorry Mary - I didn't notice
Congrats on 1,000 posts too

No, that wasn't my intention, SH, although thanks for pointing that out. I meant I thought it was funny that you told LJ not to break the magic by responding.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

If my assessments of your statements are so mistaken, then perhaps you would be so kind as to correct me?
I see no point in arguing with you about the validity of particular pieces of evidence when you refuse to argue logically. If you can't even refute my simple judgments, then I have little faith that you can draw the logical inferences necessary to establish the likelihood of the accuseds' guilt.

Surprise, surprise. You ducked the questions that matter to the actual case, and continued in your attempts to attack me personally.

Sorry, but that's not going to work. You aren't going to get out of answering the hard questions by picking a fight, and I'm not going to enable you while you do so. Stick to the topic.

I repeat:

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 regarding her guilt or innocence, because it could have been deposited on the handle by completely innocent means? 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?

Thanks in advance. Take as long as you need. But do actually answer them this time, if you please.

 

[RoseMontague]

halides1 - I am well aware of the basic thrusts of the Knox and Sollecito appeals. I did not dispute the main content of Chris_C's reply. I merely indicated that if things are as you and he say, then AK and RS should eventually be exonerated by one of the Italian courts hearing their appeals. I remain open to that possibility, but doubtful of its likelihood.

Glad you are here and glad to see you have an open mind. You do not have to answer any questions if you do not wish to do so. I hope the rest of the regular posters here will not think badly of you if you chose to not answer questions. I look forward to a discussion and debate with you on the issues you are interested in participating in.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Glad you are here and glad to see you have an open mind. You do not have to answer any questions if you do not wish to do so. I hope the rest of the regular posters here will not think badly of you if you chose to not answer questions. I look forward to a discussion and debate with you on the issues you are interested in participating in.

And I will second that - Good post , I really like hearing things like this.

 

[Fine]

Do you have a citation? The only citation I have seen for this alleged demotion is the "I Fired Foxy Knoxy..." article that also claims that Patrick was abused while in custody. If you disbelieve that part of the article, why do you believe another part of it? How can one be demoted from a job that only pays 5 euros an hour? What sort of flyers were being distributed? Amanda had money in the bank and voluntarily left her job. Her employer in the U.S. praised her work ethic and interpersonal skills.

On many previous occasions i have cited testimony to the effect that any knife could have made the third wound, including the knife that made the first two. We know that the common kitchen knife did not make two of the three wounds, and there is no good reason to believe it made the third.

_____________________________

Halides, this "information" about the kitchen knife is as common as the "information" about Amanda being fired, or demoted. So it's easy to understand why you would say that we know it.

However, here is what Massei says in the MOTIVATIONS REPORT about the compatibility of the kitchen knife with another stab wound.....


Examining the wound just below the most severe one [the most severe wound known to be compatible with the kitchen knife], Professor Cingolani had in fact noted and declared the following: "in the second lesion, the one that is 2 centimetres deep and 1.5 centimetres wide from corner to corner, the only thing that we are tempted to do, [albeit] in an absolutely amateurish/unprofessional way, because we only have photographs available, is to measure, assuming that only the tip entered, how wide the [kitchen knife] blade is [at a point] 2 centimetres from its tip: it is precisely 1.5 centimetres wide!" (pages 33 and 34, minutes of the incidente probatorio before the GIP on April 19, 2008).
See: PMF > Massei MOTIVATIONS REPORT > English Translation, page 291


It's clear that Massei concludes that the kitchen knife is compatible with this second stab wound, too. So is it suitable for you to say "we know" it is not? Massei is familiar with all the expert testimony on this matter, so maybe we should just call this a disputed subject?

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