Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

Ms. Dempsey knows Italian

If, for you, lying on the basics - like asserting you understand Italian (or southern "accent" (!!) ) - is a "personality trait" and not her coverage of the case, in that case you can say I dislike her for her personality trait.

I will maintain I simply hold her as a totally unreliable source for information on the case.

Machiavelli,

Candace Dempsey claims a knowledge of the Italian language, partly on he basis of having relatives with whom she would like to communicate. She has not, as far as I am aware, claimed to be fluent. However, she has indicated that she had some help from her publisher's staff.

 

[RWVBWL]

capealadin,

Andrea Vogt wrote about the access to the movie Stardust,

“Specifically, a computer engineer who analyzed Sollecito's computer and Internet provider records testified that his review indicated someone navigated on Sollecito's computer while he and Knox were being questioned by police. Specifically, the computer revealed that the movie "Stardust" had been downloaded, and then a few hours later, at 1 a.m. and 2:47 a.m., someone surfed the Web twice and viewed a story about Kercher's killing on the Italian wire service news agency ANSA.

"We aren't saying who it was, but you can imagine," said Sollecito's attorney, Luca Maori during a break in the trial, noting that Sollecito left his computer at home and went into police headquarters 21:40 p.m. on November 5 for questioning, leaving the keys to his house with police. He has been in jail ever since…First, defense lawyers claim that the computer interactions while he was at police headquarters may have canceled out important data showing the last known access to files that could have proven he was on his computer the night of the killing.”

The police were at Raffaele's when the file was accessed on the morning of the 6th of November. Yet, Luca Maori won't come right out and say it. Perhaps he was afraid of crossing a line. And we know that this report is accurate, coming from Andrea Vogt, don't we?

Hi halides1,
I wonder whom Luca Maori as referring to?
And why wouldn't he come straight out and say who it was?

Interestingly, Frank Sfarzo could not or would not elaborate when posed this question from a reader of his forum on Perugia Shock:
Is fear of slander charges the reason that Lumumba denied what he was quoted as saying about the police beating him up?
-What do you think?

It seems like folks in a certain town in Italy have to keep some things quiet regarding this brutal murder case.
Hmmm...
RWVBWL

 

[Machiavelli]

As I said to Solange earlier, you can try all you like to bait me to talk about identifying details. I do not plan to do so. My arguments stand or fall on their own merits and do not rely in any way on personal authority.

Well that's good, if it's the case. But my was targeted on this thought (#8726):

It's painfully evident that we've got a better basis amongst ourselves for deciding on the case here and now than the judges and jurors at the actual trial did because Massei's writings on it are embarrassingly devoid of logic or common sense, as well as getting the science totally wrong on vital points.

You claim you have a better basis of knowledge - could be - but you claim this without fully knowing what the basis of the judges was, without accessing the evidence and the reports, without having listened to the witnesses. Your claim is solely based on a personal search path through scientific literature, and on a series of assumptions only derived secondarily, from your interpretation of judges and defence documents.
I would refrain from asserting I have a better basis from this position.

 

[Machiavelli]

Candace Dempsey claims a knowledge of the Italian language, partly on he basis of having relatives with whom she would like to communicate. She has not, as far as I am aware, claimed to be fluent. However, she has indicated that she had some help from her publisher's staff.

Halides I don't know if you have any knowledge of Italian language, but I hope you're not seriously thinking Candace's claims of understanding patterns of Italian speech can make any sense. Candace was not able to get a word gender or a verb in a single sentence. She asked for translation for the simplest phrases, and yet got them wrong ("I asked an Italian friend about 'non centra'... ")

 

[Malkmus]

"buona serata" in Italian can roughly mean "have fun". It is not "buona ser" nor "buona notte". In French, I think, thre is a similar distinction although I'm not sure 100% of its use.
The essence is, it is not true - as Candace says - that "buona serata" implies they won't see each othr again that evening. Buona serata is not like "good night", it is a salutation open (or ambiguous) on the possibility that you meet each other again later in the night. The police interpreted the message by its correct Italian meaning: we will see each other later, have fun. (have a niche evening meanwhile, than later we weill meet). The message sounded suspicious, in fact it is, it looks as if Amanda and Patrick are arranging something very late in the evening. It has been ascertained that the message was innocent and simply badly written. But it was not read wrongly by the police.

What I find strange about your interpretation is that you had linked (on PMF) to a word reference forum as proof of this. But ironically, the italian posters on that forum agree with Candace's translation, and nowhere does anyone imply that it means "have fun". Now, I'm not disagreeing that it can mean that. But the link you supplied only corroborates Candace's translation. In case you've forgotten, here is the link you posted:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=174278

And here are the translations of "Buona serata" from the italians on that site:

buona serata: have a nice evening

Buona serata when wish someone has a nice evening.

Serata is something like a soiree in french.

Not to mention, the English equivalent "See you later" is also ambiguous. It could mean later that night or later in the week. I believe it's the "Have fun" that really implies they won't see each other that same day. The bottom line is that we know what Amanda meant with her text, and that the statement written by ILE and signed by her is a misinterpretation of her text message.

 

[Machiavelli]

Seems like a rather honest and humble assertion of her understanding of the Italian language. How is this a "lie"?

Malkmus, do you have the slightest idea of what a Southern Italian dialect sounds like?
Giacomo Silenzi is from Civitanova in the Marche. Candace Dempsey's ancestors are from Pedace in the Sila, Calabria.
Do you know these languages are not mutually understandable? Giacomo Silenzi spoke Italian with a local or personal "Adriatic" slang.
A southern dialect would require an interpreter for a Perugia court. A southern accent is Raffaele Sollecito's speech, not Giacomo Silenzi. The evident fact is Candace simply ignores entirely the whole topic she is talking about.

 

[Machiavelli]

What I find strange about your interpretation is that you had linked (on PMF) to a word reference forum as proof of this. But ironically, the italian posters on that forum agree with Candace's translation, and nowhere does anyone imply that it means "have fun". Now, I'm not disagreeing that it can mean that. But the link you supplied only corroborates Candace's translation. In case you've forgotten, here is the link you posted:

Maybe it was someone else's post, I didn't post a link.

 

[christianahannah]

Wasn't that particular cell phone tower also accessible from the front door of Raffaele's flat (albeit not the strongest signal there)? I can't recall where I read that so need to check it...

One way or another, I see no way to state with certainty that Amanda was outside Raffaele's flat when the message was received, unless we also conclude with certainty that Patrick lied about being in the vicinity of the cottage that evening. Perhaps this is why (again IIRC) Massei doesn't really use the receipt of the text message as evidence against Amanda or see it as anything negative, but just speculates that maybe she was on the way to work. He doesn't use it as evidence of an inconsistency in her story, as far as I remember.

Given that there's always some uncertainty about the particular cell phone tower a phone connects with, it doesn't seem at all possible to me that we can state where Amanda was at the time with absolute certainty - Patrick's experience is proof enough of that. And after all, Amanda's reply, sent around 15 minutes later, is consistent with her being in the flat, as she says she was.

I agree that cell tower connections can be variable due to location, weather, etc. Patrick is a good example. Evidently his cell connection was not good inside the bar so he stepped outside to use his phone to message Amanda. It connected to a cell tower that was compatible with the area near the cottage.

I imagine Raffaele's flat may have had the same circumstances, especially since Massei states that the message Amanda sends to Patrick at 20:35 was from the strongest server cell to Raffaele's flat, Via Berardi sector 7, which is different than the server cell from which Amanda received the 20:18 message from Patrick (Via dell’Aquila 5-Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3) but is still compatible with Raffaele's flat.

I would guess these same circumstances would also apply to Meredith's cell phone traffic and cell towers.

Two paragraphs addressed by Massei concerning the cell towers:

Page 317

Sollecito’s house, it was established, receives various signals [in the places]where the measurements were taken, as is the case for Meredith’s cottage when standing outside, and placing the measuring instruments in front of the entrance.

Page 318

1. The area around the defendant’s home was reached by a very strong signal radiated from the Via Berardi sector 7 cell, indicated as being the 'best server cell‛ with regard to Sollecito’s house; furthermore the signals of other cells are also powerful, respectively that with a pylon in Piazza Lupattelli sector 8 and that with a pylon in Via dell’Acquilla-Torre dell’Acquedotto sectors 3 and 9.

 

[Machiavelli]

Not to mention, the English equivalent "See you later" is also ambiguous. It could mean later that night or later in the week. I believe it's the "Have fun" that really implies they won't see each other that same day.

I'm a bit tired so I want to make clear as possible as I can:
"ci vediamo più tardi" in Italian is *not* ambiguous: it means that you are going to meet that person within the same day.
"buona serata" is generally used as "have a nice evening" and "have fun" (if it's evening) with no implication that you are not going to meet each other the night.
So the whole message sounds as somebody arranging an appointment in the night.
I think it's very clear and there is not much more to learn about this.

 

[Machiavelli]

From the old wordreference posted link:

" Buona serata when wish someone has a nice evening. So I wouldn't use it if I arrive (for example to a party).
Or if I go to a pizzeria to take away a pizza the pizzaboy sais me Buona serata (have fun). But when I come in he sais buona sera.
Buona sera can be said when you arrive or when you go.
Buona sera can be said always when you could say "Have fun" (of course not at 12 a.m.!). "

"Serata is something like a soiree in french.

But also you can say "Che bella serata" referring to the weather or to a beautiful sunset or something like that.
Reply With Quote"

"Do you agree ... a "sera" is merely a timespan, but a "serata" is something that you're "experiencing"? "

 

[christianahannah]

Hi christianahannah,
One of the hardest parts while referencing both "Angel Face" and "Murder in Italy" is that both authors DO NOT footnote where the reference is from that they discuss.
With this in mind,
I went to page xiii where in Barbie Nadeau discusses "A Note on the Sources."

"Most of the material in this book comes directly from official court materials, which are available only in Italian. All references to forensic evidence are based on the transcripts of court testimony and the ten-thousand page crime dossier known as the Digital Archive. The archive includes police reports, photo's, and most of the interrogation transcripts, as well as Amanda Knox's and Raffaele Sollecito's prison writings and intercepts of their visiting room conversations. I also refer to PowerPoint presentations, slide shows, and other exhibits presented in court by key witnesses for both the prosecution and the defence. Rudy Guede's testimony comes from interviews with his lawyers and official transcripts of both his fast-track and his appellate trials. The rest of the information about the trial was garnered by my attendance at every session of the 11 month trial of Knox and Sollecito, except for 2 sessions in mid-June 2009. In addition, I viewed roughly 10 hours of video taken during the crime scene investigation and listened to audiotapes of Amanda's and Raffaele's interrogations in prison and the Skype call to Rudy Guede in Germany." ETC, ETC, ETC...

Re-reading this preface again the other day, christianahannah, I feel that Barbie Nadeau has written A LOT of valuable information in "Angel Face" and any person that is truly interested in what happened the night that Meredith Kercher had her life brutally taken from her should have this book, along with Candace Dempsey's book "Murder in Italy", in their reference collection...

Have a pleasant rest of the day,
RWVBWL

PS-Here is another gem that I recently re-read was on page 27 of "Angel Face":
"After she was arrested, the police set a trap for Amanda by telling her that she had tested positive for HIV. This sort of psychological trickery is commonly used by investigators in Italy to illicit a confession.' etc...

It was from this passage that I learned the the police had used the false HIV results as a trap...

PSS-As Malkmus mentions above, there are a numerous factual errors in it though, but I feel there it has a lot of good information also...

Yes, that is the deficiency in the books - no source notes which would be nice to have to give proper weight to the information stated. But then again, I would rarely base a conclusion on just one statement without there being other sources which confirm it. Source notes are a good place to begin that confirmation.

I will read Nadeau's book (I have read Candace Dempsey's Murder In Italy) and see where she and Dempsey agree and disagree. And perhaps one day, there will be a collection of the case file transcripts and documents to read without the filter of an individual's interpretation.

 

[JREF2010]

The Motivation Report contradicts itself. It says that on one page that the tower does not connect with the Raffaele's Apt and on another it says it does. I see no reason to believe Amanda was not at Raffaele' Apt at 8:18 as she said.


FROM MASSEI REPORT PAGE 322: "− 20:18:12: Amanda receives the SMS sent to her by Patrick Lumumba, which let her off from having to go to work at the ‚Le Chic‛ pub on the evening of 1 November. At the time of reception the phone connected to the cell on Via dell’Aquila 5-Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3, whose signal does not reach Raffaele Sollecito’s house.

....................

NOTE: The following summeriest the following four calls cell tower locations and all four calls were connected while the phones were at Raffaele's flat. This is the same cell tower that Amanda's phone connected with at 20:18:12

Cell tower location -------------- Serviced Raffaele's flat:
Via dell’Aquila 5-Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3, YES, page 323
Via dell’Aquila 5-Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3, YES, page 323
Via dell’Aquila 5-Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3, YES, page 323
Via dell’Aquila 5-Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3, YES, page 323

......................

FROM MASSEI REPORT PAGE 323:
"-12.08.44 (lasted 68 seconds) Amanda calls Romanelli Filomena on number 347-1073006; the mobile phone connects to the Via dell’Aquila 5-Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3 cell (which covers Sollecito’s house)

"− 12:11:02 (3 seconds) the Vodafone number 348-4673711 belonging to Meredith (this is the one [i.e. SIM card] registered to Romanelli Filomena) is called and its answering service is activated (cell used: Via dell’Aquila 5-Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3 "

"− 12:11:54 (4 seconds): another call is made towards Meredith’s English mobile phone number (the cell used is the one in Via dell’Aquila 5-Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3, thus compatible with Sollecito’s house)"

"− 12:12:35 (lasting 36 seconds) Romanelli Filomena calls Amanda Knox (No. 348-4673590); Amanda receives the call connecting to the cell on Via dell’Aquila 5-Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3 (still at Raffaele’s house)"

Thats interesting. I wish there was a visual of the area and a plot of where the towers covered. I never knew that cell towers were so precise and "either or", a person is either on one tower or the other. Or I'm understanding it all wrong.

So for a question, if I was to sit in Raffaeles apartment and make 100 cell calls, would every call show the same tower in this log/book, or would it be a random list showing different towers?

or the same for the cottage, would every call from Merediths bedroom list as the exact same tower everytime?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Well that's good, if it's the case. But my was targeted on this thought (#8726):

You claim you have a better basis of knowledge - could be - but you claim this without fully knowing what the basis of the judges was, without accessing the evidence and the reports, without having listened to the witnesses.

This is the foolish old chestnut "Massei had access to special evidence we can never know about!" dressed up in a new hat. We have more then enough information to determine that Massei interpreted the DNA evidence incorrectly, that he ignored the forensic evidence by making up his specious story about "improperly tied ligatures" and so forth.

As I said before if you are genuinely convinced that these judges' decisions should be taken as trumping our own views unconditionally, even though those judges manifestly knew far less about important aspects of the case than we now know, then there is nothing to discuss. Go and believe as you see fit.

Rational people, who do not believe that judges have super-powers and who do not believe in magical secret evidence hidden from the Massei report and everyone else, will continue to think that those judges might be wrong and that we might be able to determine this ourselves by looking at the objective evidence.

Rational people, in other words, will recognise the "nineteen judges found her guilty" meme as inaccurate and deceptive.

Your claim is solely based on a personal search path through scientific literature, and on a series of assumptions only derived secondarily, from your interpretation of judges and defence documents.

That's the nice thing about science: It's not like interpreting poetry where everyone's opinion is equally valid. If you do a "personal search path through scientific literature", you actually read it as opposed to latching on to phrases taken out of context, you actually understand it as opposed to taking wild-ass guesses about what it says, and you do it properly rather than stopping the minute you find a sound bite you like, do you know what happens Machiavelli?

What happens is that you get to exactly the same conclusion as everyone else who has done their research properly. That's the beauty of science, it's about objective facts about the universe which do not depend completely on personal opinion.

Since you come from a community where understanding how science works is dismissed as "science worship" I don't necessarily expect you to grasp this at the first attempt, but it's really important. Scientific facts aren't personal opinions. That's the entire point of science. If the scientific fact is that t(lag) is not five hours or more in a normal, healthy, unstressed young woman eating a small-to-moderate meal of pizza with no alcohol then that is the fact for everyone, whether you like it or not. That trumps any amount of armchair psychology based on cherry-picked and misrepresented sound bites and/or outright defamation.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

RWVBWL,

"Darkness Descending" reads like a pastiche of tabloid articles strung together. There are some good bits, but there are also a number of errors. I seem to recall that the authors imagine a meeting between two of the principles that never took place (Charlie Wilkes probably remembers better than I do). Colonel Garofano's contributions are the best part. He has coauthored at least one paper on the forensic use of luminol, and his comments on its use were helpful to me. He also noted the fact that ILE did not disassemble the kitchen knife. I do not agree with all that he wrote on the DNA profiling, however.

It's not a function of memory, but of organizing and indexing information. Here is Garofano's comment about the mixed DNA samples from the bathroom, on page 371 of Darkness Descending:

"However, here is the electropherogram and you can see that the RFU value is very high, so the sample is undoubtedly blood, which is the body fluid that provides the greatest amount of DNA. In some cases you see higher peaks of Amanda's DNA than Meredith's. Amanda has been bleeding. Nor is it old blood, as the defence might say, because blood decays fast."

No expert would ever say this in good faith. The peaks in these particular samples were no higher than those from many other non-blood samples. For example, the reference samples for Amanda and Raffaele were oral swabs that produced peaks of 2000-4000rfu. Sample 145, a cigarette butt in an ashtray, produced a mixed profile for Amanda and Raffaele, with peaks for Raffaele over 1200rfu - as high as any of Amanda's markers in the mixed DNA samples.

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/egrams_compared.gif

On page 373, he presses the point further:

"Let's say the assassin used the basin and the bidet to wash the knife: if you look at the electropherograms you'll see that there seems to be more of Amanda's blood than Meredith's. There is a copious blood loss by Amanda. Not from a pierced ear, nor from washed underwear, but from bleeding."

Here he seems to be referring to Rep. 66, the sample from the bidet, for which the DNA test results specifically note "mistura d sostanze biologiche, contenenti sangue umano, appartenenti a KNOX Amanda Marie (in misura minore) e KERCHER Meredith Susanna Cara (in misura maggiore)," which Google renders as "mixture of organic substances containing human blood, belonging to KNOX Amanda Marie (to a lesser extent) and Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher (more readily)."

It's just one of several points on which Garofano doesn't have his facts right. On the luminol footprints, he says this (page 377):

"But let's see what the prints actually mean. First of all, from their sheer luminosity they are blood. The DNA test showed Meredith's blood in all cases except for two places in which we have a mixed Amanda and Meredith sample."

In fact, none of the DNA tests on the bare footprints showed Meredith's DNA. The one in Amanda's room showed Amanda's DNA, and the three in the hallway showed no human DNA. The mixed DNA to which Garofano refers was found in a shoe print revealed with luminol, which no one claims to have matched to a specific individual. And, as we know, a TMB blood test was performed on all of these latent prints, and it was negative in every case.

Garofano is a fraud and a liar. But, when a publisher presents someone like him as a forensic expert, people tend to believe it.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

there is apparently a line that reporters can't cross, either

Hi halides1,
I wonder whom Luca Maori as referring to?
And why wouldn't he come straight out and say who it was?

Interestingly, Frank Sfarzo could not or would not elaborate when posed this question from a reader of his forum on Perugia Shock:
Is fear of slander charges the reason that Lumumba denied what he was quoted as saying about the police beating him up?
-What do you think?

It seems like folks in a certain town in Italy have to keep some things quiet regarding this brutal murder case.
Hmmm...
RWVBWL

RWVBWL,

InjusticeInPerugia lists Luca Maori as one of the people whom Mignini sued. Interestingly, the next four names on the list are journalists:

7. Luca Maori, an attorney for Raffaele Sollecito

8. Giangavino Sulas, journalist for Oggi magazine

9. The director and editor of Oggi magazine

10. Mario Spezi: Italian journalist who co-wrote The Monster of Florence with journalist and author Doug Preston. Mignini continues to torment Spezi for simply disagreeing with him.

11. Francesca Bene, an Italian reporter, said Knox had, in her opinion, advanced her cause by making clear what police had not previously conceded , that Knox thought she was being a helpful witness when in fact police were targeting her as a suspect and should have told her so. Mignini didn't like hearing the truth from Bene.

In comment 8821 i quoted the Committee to Protect Journalists. Sounds as if this committee is a full-time job if the journalists' beat happens to include Mignini.

 

[Trigood]

Apologies, I should have linked to them originally. Raffaele's appeal is here and Amanda's is here (both in Italian). You can also download the appeals and a bunch of other documents (Rudy's appeal motivation, Mignini's motivation document for his trial, etc) at Rose's docstoc page (I think the google translate versions of the appeals are there as well).

Thanks, Katy.
Very interesting.

Although, of course, I can't translate Italian, as you seem able to. I translated some of Raffaele's relating to the stomach contents using translation2.paralink.com, which is a pretty good translator. But not as good as you!

Thanks again.

 

[Dan O.]

Thats interesting. I wish there was a visual of the area and a plot of where the towers covered. I never knew that cell towers were so precise and "either or", a person is either on one tower or the other. Or I'm understanding it all wrong.

A cell phone can only be associated with one cell tower at a time. It needs to change frequencies and log in to the other tower when it switches.

So for a question, if I was to sit in Raffaeles apartment and make 100 cell calls, would every call show the same tower in this log/book, or would it be a random list showing different towers?

What I recall from reading the technical manuals for the cell system is that for phone calls you would probably always get the strongest tower for that location. The SMS connection however doesn't go through the negotiation to find the strongest cell but just uses the last cell that the phone associated with.

If Amanda and Raffaele walked through town before returning to his apartment, her phone could still be associated with the tower there several hours later even though there is a stronger signal from the cell that is closest to Raffaele's place. The reason for this is that it uses bandwidth and drains the phones battery to change associations. As long as the phone is getting an acceptable signal it will hold the current association.

or the same for the cottage, would every call from Merediths bedroom list as the exact same tower everytime?

There are reasons that a phone may switch to another tower even though the phone is essentially in the same place. There can be dead zones caused by reflections and interference. Or, excessive traffic in one cell can cause phones to move to another cell.

I believe it was stated that there were several strong cells in the vicinity of Meredith's cottage so there would be no reason to jump to the cell of the distant tower.

 

[Trigood]

Trigood, I said that Massei distorted what Ronchi said. Therefore, quoting Massei as evidence that Massei didn't distort what Ronchi said doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I was just trying to get clear on what you were saying, which wasn't making sense to me.

Point taken, however, that I didn't quote from a source in my post. It's mentioned in Raffaele's appeal:

Prof. Umani Ronchi, at the hearings of 19.04.2008 and 19.9.2009, never referred to “an imperfect apposition of the ligatures” at the level of the duodenum, but rather on the failure to ligate the duodenum on the part of Dr. Lalli during the autopsy...

Il Prof. Umani Ronchi, alle udienze del 19.04.2008 e del 19.9.2009, non ha mai riferito su “una non perfetta apposizione delle legature” a livello del duodeno, bensì sull’omessa legatura del duodeno da parte del dott. Lalli in sede autoptica...

It then goes on to quote Ronchi ("taking into account that ligatures were not put in place"/"tenuto conto che non sono state messe le legature") and then points out that the autopsy film showed that ligatures were made correctly:

The failure to ligate the duodenum, in fact, allowed Prof. Umani Ronchi to consider that the gastric contents, at least in part, could have slipped into the duodenum or that the gastric contents, already passed into the duodenum, could have slipped due to gravity up to the ileocal valve after having travelled 5 metres of the small intestine. From this, the Court deduced the unreliability of the finding effected during the autopsy relative to the objective fact of having found the duodenum empty.

On the basis of this assumption, endorsed by the decision, it could therefore be affirmed that, if the duodenum had been closed by means of ligature, the gastric contents would be [equal to] that faithfully described by Dr. Lalli, and that the duodenum described as empty would constitute completely reliable data.

However, the Court, during the hearing of 30.11.2009, was able to directly view the film of the autopsy carried out by Dr. Lalli, who correctly applied the ligatures to close the duodenum, so as to prevent any slippage of the gastric contents into the duodenum itself and from the duodenum downwards, stripping of credibility all the erroneous considerations put forward as to the possible slippage of food from the stomach into the duodenum.

But the contested decision completely failed to evaluate this data.

After you've finished with the Massei report, I'd recommend reading the appeals as well; parts are quite eye-opening.

So there are two questions:

1) What did Dr. Lalli really do in the autopsy? None of us have seen the video of the autopsy (I assume; I have no desire to). Both the appeals document (RS) and Massei Report imply that ligatures were used. I think we have no choice but to believe, therefore, that they were. Were they used "correctly"? That is one issue.

2) What did Ronchi actually say in his testimony of 4/19/08 and 9/19/09? Did Ronchi really get it so terribly wrong? According to the RS appeal, he did: He said there were no ligatures at all. According to Massei, he merely said they were "imperfectly" applied. I don't think we can say what Ronchi really said, unless and until we find a transcript of his testimony. I assume that's not available?

Neither issue 1 nor issue 2 is easy to resolve at this point. We have two opposing legal documents, without the supporting documentation (as far as I know).

At some point, some of that documentation may become available. Until that time, I don't see how we can intelligently argue these two points, except to favor one or the other depending on whether we credit Massei or Raffaele's defense as having the stronger case.

In other words, Massei may not really be misquoting Ronchi; your using RS appeal document to support such an assertion is no different from me using the Massei document to contest such an assertion.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

So there are two questions:

1) What did Dr. Lalli really do in the autopsy? None of us have seen the video of the autopsy (I assume; I have no desire to). Both the appeals document (RS) and Massei Report imply that ligatures were used. I think we have no choice but to believe, therefore, that they were. Were they used "correctly"? That is one issue.

2) What did Ronchi actually say in his testimony of 4/19/08 and 9/19/09? Did Ronchi really get it so terribly wrong? According to the RS appeal, he did: He said there were no ligatures at all. According to Massei, he merely said they were "imperfectly" applied. I don't think we can say what Ronchi really said, unless and until we find a transcript of his testimony. I assume that's not available?

If this was all we knew and all we had to decide I would agree with you.

However the Massei story is an attempt to explain away a patent absurdity, that there was no food in Meredith's duodenum yet Massei has her alive until 23:30.

As Ronchi was well aware, the only way this can be explained within the bounds of known science is if Dr. Lalli accidentally and unknowingly squeezed all the food in Meredith's duodenum down the ~5m length of her bowel to the very end of her small intestine in the process of botching the autopsy.

This would take considerable effort, because the bowel is an elastic tube rather than a rigid, garden-hose like organ. However if even "imperfectly tied" ligatures were also obstructing the bowel the idea that Dr Lalli accidentally squeezed all the digested matter through those obstructions as well becomes an absurdity on an absurdity.

If it happened that way, then Dr Lalli deserves the Million Dollar Prize for proving that the pizza Meredith ate was actually the reincarnation of Harry Houdini.

 

[Malkmus]

I'm a bit tired so I want to make clear as possible as I can:
"ci vediamo più tardi" in Italian is *not* ambiguous: it means that you are going to meet that person within the same day.
"buona serata" is generally used as "have a nice evening" and "have fun" (if it's evening) with no implication that you are not going to meet each other the night.
So the whole message sounds as somebody arranging an appointment in the night.
I think it's very clear and there is not much more to learn about this.

Thanks for the lesson in Italian, Machiavelli

However, the points you have listed have not convinced me that Candace Dempsey is someone who lies or is dishonest about anything. I'll list each point here:

A. Candace Dempsey enjoys to introduce herself with assertions like, her interview when she told how she was able to understand better than other reporters witnesses speaking Italian with a peculiar "southern accent", because of her Calabrian origins

You believe she is lying when she says she could understand Giacomo. A strange thing to lie about, don't you think. Ultimately, however, you have no proof that Candace could not understand Giacomo. How do you know Giacomo was not raised in Southern Italy and later moved to Marche?

B. In her book she says Piazza Grimana is "a 5-minute walk from the girls' cottage"

Apparently a member at PMF was able to make the walk from the cottage to the basketball courts in "5 seconds". I don't care what you say, the photo below clearly shows that it would take a few minutes. I think between the two statements "5 minutes" is a lot better generalization of the time it would take to walk than "5 seconds".




C. The cottage is in "Sant'Angelo” defined a “noisy street”, and "Developers had built a solid wall of modern apartments right across".

"Sant'Angelo" might be the one error Candace has made. But which is worse, getting a street name wrong, or claiming that blonde hairs were found on Meredith's body when in fact they were just wool fibers, as Barbie Nadeau wrote in her book?

As for the second part she writes "Developers had built a solid wall of modern apartments right across the noisy street, plus a large beige garage."

Here's what she was describing:



Looks pretty accurate to me.

D. She emphasized a word -“subito” – which does not belong to the sms and attributed it to a police “claim”. In reality this is from Amanda’s spontaneous statement, but Candace re-allocates overlaps it to what the “police” says.

This is a point of contention. But logic tells me that since Amanda knew the true meaning of her text, and since she had no plans to meet Patrick that night, that her story of police coercion where they were convinced she met Patrick is true and that the written statement is the police's version of what they believed the text meant, not Amanda's.

E. The essence is, it is not true - as Candace says - that "buona serata" implies they won't see each othr again that evening. Buona serata is not like "good night", it is a salutation open (or ambiguous) on the possibility that you meet each other again later in the night. The police interpreted the message by its correct Italian meaning: we will see each other later, have fun.

We have both shown each other examples where "buona serata" can mean "good evening" or "have fun". There is no error on Candace's part here. Your assessment, however, that the police could take this as confirmation that Amanda and Patrick were planning to meet that night is asinine on their part because Patrick ran a business that operated well past Meredith's TOD, and their failure to assess this before arresting him is ludicrous.

Pictures are from Kermit's pp.