Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kevin_Lowe]

Remember that the paper bag was against the wall before it toppled over with the stone inside? It's not simply getting the rock to fall/roll 2 feet inside and 1 foot to the side.

How does the rock get from the impact point on the shutter to bag against the wall? It means that the rock had to travel parallel to wall. That should give you another hint.

Is this theory of yours a national secret or something? Could you just explain it rather than dropping hints about what it might be?

Do you have some kind of hard numbers about what arc the rock could have come from in order to end up travelling parallel(ish) to the wall, given that it's blocky and it could have been spinning and we don't know exactly how much force was exerted by the inner shutters before they gave way?

I'm not ruling out the possibility that you have some great argument going on here, but so far all you have given us is "trust me, I know rocks, it's impossible, therefore if you trust me because I know rocks it was staged".

 

[LondonJohn]

"A foolish consistency ... etc., etc."

In the KnoxIsInnocentNoMatterWhat Universe all instances of everything are totally isolated in both time and space, and the only legitimate way to evaluate any one thing is with an adamant refusal to concede that it might somehow relate to something else.

Where is this KnoxIsInnocentNoMatterWhat Universe to which you refer? I certainly don't belong to that universe. If I saw evidence which led me to believe that Knox (and Sollecito too - remember him...?) were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of direct involvement in the murder and sexual assault of Meredith Kercher, I'd have no problem believing in their guilt. But at the moment, not only can I not see that evidence, I tend to believe that there is significant evidence that's actually exculpatory towards Knox and Sollecito.

However, I have a totally open mind, and am very willing to be proven wrong.

 

[Antony]

(msg #6736)
I, too, think Amanda would rather forgive and forget, but her lawyers might feel otherwise. Suing all the people who harmed Amanda would be a gold mine for them.

Compensation is one thing, but it may take time. Overcoming impunity for police and judiciary would do us all a favour.

But the first task will probably be to put a stop to defamatory gossip; there will be people who won't accept that some of their cherished beliefs about the case will suddenly acquire an unfavourable legal status. Shutting down malicious websites may be one of the first steps.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves on this one. It will all depend on the appeal being fairly heard.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Do you honestly believe that? I don't think that you do.

But if you do then you obviously know little or nothing about climbing of any sort, or about the capabilities of the average person. Yes, it could feasibly be done. It certainly could not "easily" be done by many people. Anyone capable of doing it "easily" would be verging on the skills and training of a world class gymnast.

I think we can be fairly confident that Guede is not. If he was he would have had no money problems. He would have been performing somewhere.

Try it yourself sometime. Find a wall with a top above your head and see how "easily" you can do it. Invite all your friends to try. Get back to us with the results. Please include video.

I can only echo LondonJohn's post and say that this argument seems to be based on an incorrect understanding of the distance between the top of the lower window's bars and the sill of the second floor window.

Lifting oneself up over a wall which is above your head is not easy for most people, although I know a couple of thin, wiry people who can do it quite easily. It's got a lot to do with your body shape and fitness level, and Rudy was indeed thin and apparently fit, so asking endomorphs or mesomorphs to do it isn't going to get you good data about what a fit ectomorph is capable of.

It wouldn't even be unreasonable to hypothesize that since Rudy made a habit of breaking and entering through second storey windows he was probably more talented and/or practiced than average for a man of his build when it came to urban mountaineering. So even if the climb did require such a feat it wouldn't merit vast incredulity.

However lifting oneself up over a wall at armpit height or lower when you have something under your feet to push off is substantially easier, and that is all that was necessary in this case. I refer you to the photograph of the lawyer standing on the bars of the window.

I find it amusing that so many of these scenarios proposed by supporters of a break-in focus on what could have been done before the intruder was on the ledge, and then conjecture what might have happened after he was up on the ledge, and completely avoid any discussion of the intervening process. Getting onto the ledge.

How did he place a foot or two on the ledge? I bet you're not suggesting he walked on air.

As others have said, this simply isn't all that hard. Do you see a kid in an apple tree and say to yourself "There must have been a ladder... human beings are incapable of climbing!". Honestly, I did more athletic things when I was a skinny kid to get back inside the house when I locked myself out than this, and I was a far from athletic teenager although I was skinny.

 

[Machiavelli]

I am the poster who writes as “Yummi” on Perugia Murder File.

I am not planning to interact much with most people here. Recently some posters addressed topics from the case which I usually deal with, some of my posts were also explicitly cited. It is possible that I will answer to some of those topics here. The name “Machiavelli” here is the only one to be identified as the poster “Yummi”. Disclaimer: I will never use those nicks anywhere else, never on other forums.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I thought that Massei said the window was broken the other way, by Amanda and Raffaele leaning behind the window and breaking it from outside in. It seems to have been the only way he could account for the evidence that the window was broken from the outside.

If so the translation got it completely wrong. Here's what it says on the matter:

This situation, like all the other glaring inconsistencies, is adequately and satisfactorily explained if one supposes that the rock was thrown from the inside of the room, with the two shutters pulled inwards so that they blocked the pieces of glass from falling to the ground below. Once the glass had been broken from inside, the rock was set down at some place in the room, and the shutters were pushed towards the outside, being thus opened from within the room.

Mr. Moore's observation applies to Filomena's room.

The scaling intruder had to hover over Filomena's room to leave zero traces of himself as he broke and entered, ransacked and took... nothing.

We are talking ZERO physical evidence of any sort from the scaling intruder in Filomena's room. Is that simply amazing or what.

Well firstly there's a white, powdery substance visible on some of Filomena's clothes in the crime scene photos which could be powder from the whitewash on the outside wall, scuffed off by an intruder's shoes as they ascended and deposited there when they walked about. It could also be powdered paint from the shutters, or something else entirely. It was not investigated or tested, so we'll never know. So saying there was "ZERO" evidence is not quite accurate, and indeed this is evidence that the police weren't trying very hard to find evidence of an intruder in that room.

Secondly, what evidence were you expecting? Fingerprints? There were only 97 or so in the whole house and only one from Rudy, despite his own testimony that he was wandering around, drinking juice from the fridge, using the toilet and so forth. However he could perfectly well have been wearing gloves, rendering the question moot. DNA? Even if he was not wearing gloves there is no reason to think he made forceful contact with things as he searched, and he could perfectly well have been wearing gloves.

So to sum up, it's false to believe he had to have left identifying evidence if he searched the room even if he didn't wear gloves. However a housebreaker wearing gloves isn't exactly stretching the bounds of credulity either. It's not exactly a compelling argument to say "This burglary was staged! That or the burglar wore gloves. But I think it was staged!".

This is substantially different to the claim that Amanda and Raffaele participated in an impromptu, physical, life-or-death struggle with Meredith without leaving any contact traces on Meredith's body or clothes, or for that matter on anything else in the room. If Rudy had been involved in a fight to the death with someone in Filomena's room and left no trace at all, then I would certainly agree that was unusual.

Mr. Intruder has a fastidious, Swiss-watchmaker-like attention to detail as he enters the flat's first bedroom, which he proceeds to ransack- keenly aware of no traces left behind...

This is really no better than palm reading with advance knowledge of what conclusion you want to get to. You haven't established that leaving no identifiable traces was a particularly unusual outcome even if he searched Filomena's room without gloves, so you have no basis for drawing conclusions about fastidiousness. But even if you did... (see below)...

The next moment he poops and does not flush, leaves bloody shoe prints on the corridor on his way out, leaves a bloody foot print on the bathmat, etc.

Yes, I'd buy that.

It's not exactly the craziest hypothesis ever that Rudy's behaviour changed when Meredith (in this theory) came home and caught him on the pot with his pants down. It's not beyond belief that he was more methodical when he had the house to himself and was robbing it as he'd done before, and then less organised when he got caught, sexually assaulted and murdered a young woman, and fled the scene which was all new behaviour for him.

 

[LondonJohn]

Is this theory of yours a national secret or something? Could you just explain it rather than dropping hints about what it might be?

Do you have some kind of hard numbers about what arc the rock could have come from in order to end up travelling parallel(ish) to the wall, given that it's blocky and it could have been spinning and we don't know exactly how much force was exerted by the inner shutters before they gave way?

I'm not ruling out the possibility that you have some great argument going on here, but so far all you have given us is "trust me, I know rocks, it's impossible, therefore if you trust me because I know rocks it was staged".

And, contrary to Amazer's assertions, the black paper bag was originally actually slightly away from the wall and almost directly underneath the right hand window (viewed from the inside). You can see that in many of the photographs in the following IIP article (bear in mind that the police evidence number "1" has been placed forward and to the right of the rock):

http://injusticeinperugia.com/RonHendry------2.html

This indicates that the rock might well have been thrown from the elevated driveway slightly to the right of Filomena's window (as viewed from the outside). The rock would then have broken the glass of the right hand window pane (again, as viewed from the outside), near to the right edge of that right hand pane. It would then have hit against the exterior surface of the right hand interior shutter which was ajar. Newtonian laws of motion dictate that this impact would have made the shutter swing open to the right on its hinge, and it would have made the rock deflect to the left (still as viewed from outside). The impact with the interior shutter would also have removed most of the kinetic energy from the rock, causing it to fall towards the ground.

So, viewed from the inside now, the rock would have passed through the left hand window and hit the left hand interior shutter. The shutter would have flown open to the left, and the rock would have deflected to the right and would have lost most of its forward momentum. The black paper bag was more-or-less underneath the right hand window pane, slightly away from the wall. It's therefore perfectly feasible that the rock - falling from left to right - could have caught the outer edge of the bag, causing the bag to topple over and push the rock slightly outwards (i.e. further into the room) as it fell.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I am the poster who writes as “Yummi” on Perugia Murder File.

I am not planning to interact much with most people here. Recently some posters addressed topics from the case which I usually deal with, some of my posts were also explicitly cited. It is possible that I will answer to some of those topics here. The name “Machiavelli” here is the only one to be identified as the poster “Yummi”. Disclaimer: I will never use those nicks anywhere else, never on other forums.

So if I googled {yummi "amanda knox" -site:perugiamurderfile.org -yummy} and got these results, those would all be some other Yummi?

That must be really annoying, having someone else who comments prolifically about this case using the same handle.

 

[LondonJohn]

I am the poster who writes as “Yummi” on Perugia Murder File.

I am not planning to interact much with most people here. Recently some posters addressed topics from the case which I usually deal with, some of my posts were also explicitly cited. It is possible that I will answer to some of those topics here. The name “Machiavelli” here is the only one to be identified as the poster “Yummi”. Disclaimer: I will never use those nicks anywhere else, never on other forums.

Hi Machiavelli (an interesting choice of name!).

What would you like to talk about? It seems a little strange to say in your introductory post that you're not planning to interact much with most of the people here. Under what circumstances will you interact? It's not much of a forum if there's no interaction, after all. Do you want people to ask you specific questions, or are you willing to debate aspects of the case in a more to-and-fro fashion? It would be nice to get a conversation going.

 

[christianahannah]

I am the poster who writes as “Yummi” on Perugia Murder File.

I am not planning to interact much with most people here. Recently some posters addressed topics from the case which I usually deal with, some of my posts were also explicitly cited. It is possible that I will answer to some of those topics here. The name “Machiavelli” here is the only one to be identified as the poster “Yummi”. Disclaimer: I will never use those nicks anywhere else, never on other forums.

Hello Machiavelli/Yummi.

I am one of the posters who cited your posts from PMF concerning the luminol footprints and the possible reasons for them and what possibly caused them to show up. I think your insight into the forensics of the case will add to the discussion here.

I read View-from-Wilmington and appreciate what Chris brings to the subject also. I think you and he may have a differing opinion as to the importance of the forensic evidence in the case and how it was acquired.

I look forward to any information/explanation you have concerning the forensic evidence in the motivations, as well as what Chris has to add to the discussion.

 

[LondonJohn]

So if I googled {yummi "amanda knox" -site:perugiamurderfile.org -yummy} and got these results, those would all be some other Yummi?

That must be really annoying, having someone else who comments prolifically about this case using the same handle.

No, I think that "Machiavelli" is explicitly saying here that (s)he is the same person who posts as "Yummi" on PMF. Which is fair enough, and an honest disclosure.

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

Hiya Yummi,

Glad to see you pop over here to share your take on the case.

 

[Machiavelli]

So if I googled {yummi "amanda knox" -siteerugiamurderfile.org -yummy} and got these results, those would all be some other Yummi?

That must be really annoying, having someone else who comments prolifically about this case using the same handle.

Read the dates on the pages you cite.

I have also the password of "Yummi" on seattle pi. But I will not post there.

 

[Machiavelli]

Everybody who followed the blog discussions knows that Yummi on PMF is the same person who posted on Dempsey's blog, and that I migrated from seattle.pi on PMF.

I was awaiting an intelligent comment by Kevin Lowe

 

[Slayhamlet]

Read the dates on the pages you cite.

I have also the password of "Yummi" on seattle pi. But I will not post there.

Okay, so by saying that you "will never use those nicks anywhere else" you actually meant that you will no longer use those names anywhere else (besides here and PMF). It helps to speak precisely if you wish to be understood.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Read the dates on the pages you cite.

I have also the password of "Yummi" on seattle pi. But I will not post there.

I'm guessing English is your second language, in which case fair enough. Normally we'd say "I will never again post elsewhere" to indicate that we have done so in the past but will not do so in the future. "I will never post elsewhere" would more normally be used to state that we have never done so in the past and will not do so in the future.

Everybody who followed the blog discussions knows that Yummi on PMF is the same person who posted on Dempsey's blog, and that I migrated from seattle.pi on PMF.

I was awaiting an intelligent comment by Kevin Lowe

Everybody who followed the JREF discussions knows that I'm a relative newcomer and I haven't followed those blogs.

Since you asked for an intelligent comment, here's a smorgasbord. Reply to any or all, as you see fit.

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 10:30pm and died after 10:30pm? 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. No credible source claims that the time for stomach contents to begin moving into the duodenum in a healthy adult having eaten a small-to-moderate meal with no alcohol, extreme stress or other confounding factors can plausibly exceed four hours, and exceeding three hours is very unlikely indeed. Since there was no digested matter in Meredith's duodenum, and we can establish from the statements of Meredith's friends that she ate her last meal no later than 18:30, there is reasonable medical certainty she died before 22:30, and it is very unlikely indeed that she died later than 21:30.
   
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 near the house, it would never actually do so in the normal course of things. The police were only able to ping this tower for test purposes by sticking their device out the window, and in normal use people don't stick their phones out the window when they talk. 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 for the time of death?
   
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. How do you explain the glass scattered across Filomena's room, if Massei is correct that the window was broken by a rock being thrown out the window with the shutters closed? Massei has no coherent explanation for this beyond "they must have thrown it super hard so glass went backwards everywhere". The volume of glass scattered across Filomena's room fits much better with a rock being thrown from outside the house. The glass immediately outside the hole could be explained by the closed shutters catching it as in the Massei story, but fits equally well with Hendry's theory that Rudy manually widened the hole in the glass after the initial throw, and placed the glass chunks he removed on the sill as he did so. Hendry's theory explains the glass inside the room and the glass outside on the sill, while Massei's theory only explains the glass on the sill.
    
13. How do you explain the scuff marks on the wall below Filomena's window, the freshly-made holes in the wall below Filomena's window consistent with nails being there which someone knocked out in the process of climbing the wall, and the white powdery substance found on clothes on the floor in Filomena's room consistent with someone's foot having scuffed the white surface of the wall? (See previous link for photographs). How do you explain that police claimed that there was absolutely no sign of anyone climbing the wall yet we can clearly see these signs in photographs, if the police are not untrustworthy witnesses? There are additional photographs showing the white powdery substance on dark objects on the floor of Filomena's room here. You can certainly argue that they do not add up to conclusive proof somebody climbed that wall and walked around in Filomena's room, but it is not credible to argue that they do not raise reasonable doubt about the Massei narrative where the break-in was totally staged.
    
14. Do you acknowledge that the police destroyed the evidence, in the form of 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?
    
15. Finally, doesn't it ever strike you as weird that Mignini "figured out" that this was a once-in-history three-way sex crime (where relative strangers ganged up on one of their housemates) 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 LCN 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 piece of evidence that could have confirmed Amanda and Raffaele's alibis (the Spotlight data for Stardust) was destroyed by police?

Thanks in advance. Take as long as you need.

 

[quadraginta]

Read the dates on the pages you cite.

I have also the password of "Yummi" on seattle pi. But I will not post there.

Okay, so by saying that you "will never use those nicks anywhere else" you actually meant that you will no longer use those names anywhere else (besides here and PMF). It helps to speak precisely if you wish to be understood.

I'm guessing English is your second language, in which case fair enough. Normally we'd say "I will never again post elsewhere" to indicate that we have done so in the past but will not do so in the future. "I will never post elsewhere" would more normally be used to state that we have never done so in the past and will not do so in the future.

<snip>

Hello, Machiavelli.

You are starting out nicely. You have already been offered the sort of jovial companionship and samples of the keen and insightful discourse that have made this thread what it is today.

I expect your anticipation of the future knows no bounds.

Welcome.

 

[lane99]

...That said, I can't find any way to excuse investigators who had access to the scene and claimed that it was impossible to climb in that window. They weren't trying to form judgments based on carefully chosen photos, so it would have been immediately obvious to them that the window was accessible from two directions.

The police claims that the window was virtually impossible to climb through are troubling for at least two important reasons:

1. They are in error. It's not impossible to climb through. Thus should the objective person be skeptical of the credibility of any police claim in this case.

2. A habitual burglar or second story man perhaps would see that window as an opportunity. But the average person not familar with the athletic feats that burglars can achieve probably wouldn't.

Therefore, that Knox and her boyfriend would have chosen it as an ostensible entry point is a very dubious proposition. And even more improbable because there seems to have been a door at the cottage that tended to became ajar on its own. That door would be the likely scapegoat if someone familiar with the cottage was trying to "stage" the scene.

 

[lane99]

Anyone interested in a previous example where, in order to pin a murder on a family member or housemate of the victim, the police falsely claimed a scene was staged, can reference the wrongful conviction of a Greg Parsons in Newfoundland, Canada.

Parsons was convicted of murdering his mother. There was a broken window at the victim's house, but the police and prosecution insisted no one could have climbed through it. Parsons had broken the window himself, to try and make it appear an unknown intruder had broken into the house, they claimed.

Several years later, the real murderer was discovered. And he admitted that he had, in fact, gained entry to the victim's house through the window in question.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

The police claims that the window was virtually impossible to climb through are troubling for at least two important reasons:

1. They are in error. It's not impossible to climb through. Thus should the objective person be skeptical of the credibility of any police claim in this case.

2. A habitual burglar or second story man perhaps would see that window as an opportunity. But the average person not familar with the athletic feats that burglars can achieve probably wouldn't.

Therefore, that Knox and her boyfriend would have chosen it as an ostensible entry point is a very dubious proposition. And even more improbable because there seems to have been a door at the cottage that tended to became ajar on its own. That door would be the likely scapegoat if someone familiar with the cottage was trying to "stage" the scene.

I think the reasoning I have seen offered on this point is something like "Amanda and Raffaele needed to cover up the fact that they let Rudy in, although they left all sorts of evidence proving Rudy did it in the murder room. So they decided to try to make it look like he came in by another route, because it would somehow be evidence of their involvement if Rudy had gotten in by the front door, even though it tended to become ajar. So they chucked a rock out the window to try to simulate a rock being chucked into the window, but foolishly picked a window that no human being could possibly have used to enter the building! That was their fatal mistake. If they'd been smart enough to fake a break-in at another window or the front door we would not be expressing any incredulity at all about it".

The Massei report, as far as I can tell, does not express a coherent hypothesis as to why they allegedly staged the scene. It just rounds up the various bits of alleged evidence that they did so.

How they knew Rudy's M.O. well enough to fake it is also unclear, both in the Massei narrative and the various guilter embroideries.