Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Katody Matrass]

Hi and welcome Kaosium,
The email was sent on Nov 4 after long sessions of more and more aggressive interrogation. You're basically right about it.

 

[Katody Matrass]

The issue of why and how PL was accused ( false confessions ?) on the night of the 5th has come up yet again and it seems to go round and round.

Was AK not later questioned by a magistrate about this in the presence of her lawyer in Nov/Dec 07' ? What was the outcome ?? - it would surely cut to the heart of the matter !!

Hi, platonov if you have some info on this could you provide it?

 

[Fuji]

We have Rudy's word in his initial statement that he went into the bathroom after Meredith was stabbed and that he was the one who took the towels from the bathroom to the murder room, and the guilter response as far as I can recall is merely "Oh, but Rudy is unreliable". That is very far from being solid grounds to reject his claim - you can question it on those grounds, to be sure, but not reject it.

We also have Rudy's word in his spontaneous statement to the court at his appeal last November that Amanda Knox was present at the time and place of Meredith Kercher's murder.

 

[Fuji]

I refer you to our previous discussion of the phenomenon of internalised false confessions. Amanda's statement was an internalised false confession, unless she was some kind of criminal genius who knew enough to fake one but didn't know that such confessions all too often lead to innocent people being convicted.

The key word there is false.

Yes, her statement was demonstratively false in at least one salient aspect: the presence of Patrick Lumumba at the scene of Meredith's murder. It has not been conclusively established whether this misstatement was involuntary (a genuine internalized false confession) or voluntary (a deliberate dissemblance).

None of the clothes Rudy was wearing when he murdered Meredith were ever found, and nor was the knife he murdered her with or the money he stole. He presumably disposed of them in the time between the murder and his eventual capture.

By contrast, none of the clothes Amanda and Raffaele had ever been known to have owned were ever established by the police to have vanished on the night of the murder. As far as anyone can tell, they did not dispose of a single item of clothing, be it shoes or anything else, after Meredith's murder.

As far as anyone can tell, Knox and Sollecito may very well have disposed of items of clothing after Meredith's murder.

A common trope of conspiracy theories is a villain who is hypercompetent some of the time and a total idiot some of the time - the Massei CT assumes that Amanda and Raffaele were hypercompetent at disposing of their clothing and ensuring that no trace that they had ever worn that clothing existed, hypercompetent and knowing where Meredith's corpse and clothing would be swabbed for DNA and grabbing her by other parts, hypercompetent at cleaning up every trace of themselves in the murder room right down to invisible traces that could yield DNA, and yet total idiots in many other respects.

This is an example of the logical fallacy of the excluded middle, or false dilemma.

 

[LondonJohn]

As far as anyone can tell, Knox and Sollecito may very well have disposed of items of clothing after Meredith's murder.

But the police and prosecutors never presented a shred of evidence that clothing/footwear was indeed disposed of by Knox or Sollecito. And in Knox's case in particular, none of her housemates - with whom she had been living for six weeks - could provide any testimony about clothing or footwear which they'd previously seen Knox wearing, but which was missing after the murder. This is, I think, what led to the preposterous prosecution theory that Knox and Sollecito were naked during the attack.

Interestingly, the police and prosecutors thought at one time that they had identified a particular sweater that they thought Knox was wearing on the day of the murder, which they believed was missing post-murder. I believe that they leaked this information to the media in order to bolster the case against Knox. Only problem was, the sweater was in Knox's room all along, and it had no evidential value whatsoever. Chalk up one more for the "crack" Perugia police team........

 

[Kaosium]

Interestingly, the police and prosecutors thought at one time that they had identified a particular sweater that they thought Knox was wearing on the day of the murder, which they believed was missing post-murder. I believe that they leaked this information to the media in order to bolster the case against Knox. Only problem was, the sweater was in Knox's room all along, and it had no evidential value whatsoever. Chalk up one more for the "crack" Perugia police team........

This is interesting, as I recall they were all together in a group before they parted, is that sweater what the others reported Amanda was wearing?

 

[LondonJohn]

This is interesting, as I recall they were all together in a group before they parted, is that sweater what the others reported Amanda was wearing?

Hi Kaosium! A belated welcome here, by the way!

Yes, Knox and Sollecito were at the girls' house together with Meredith and Filomena at around lunchtime on the day of the murder, but I can't remember offhand whether Filomena was able to remember what Knox was wearing. In any case, the prosecution has postulated various theories about Knox changing her clothes during the evening, possibly in an attempt to further obfuscate on the clothing issue.

Whatever did or didn't happen, the fact is that the police/prosecutors haven't been able to link Knox or Sollecito with any missing clothing or footwear. I presume they would have had access to photos of Knox and Sollecito from September and October (that is, before the "crack" Postal Police squad started frying the hard drives), together with testimony from Filomena and Laura, yet no clothing or footwear was identified as missing.

 

[platonov]

Thanks for the correction, and I mean that. I have ingested this entire discussion in short period with a interruption of a few months. I am certain I don't have the entire time-line down perfectly and it's helpful to be advised when I get something wrong, which is inevitable.

Do you know of a site with a good time-line of the entire ordeal? Just the facts?

You are welcome but you seem to have missed the (my) point.
Evidence (Facts) then conclusions is the way to go, not the reverse.


I wouldn't trust any 1 site/source on any subject for all the 'facts'.

OT

I'm aware the Christians Muslims (and some CT's) etc adopt this approach but its not a worldview I share.
Even if such a source did exist how would one have sufficient discernment to tell which one it was without first adopting a broader approach.

 

[platonov]

Originally Posted by platonov

The issue of why and how PL was accused ( false confessions ?) on the night of the 5th has come up yet again and it seems to go round and round.

Was AK not later questioned by a magistrate about this in the presence of her lawyer in Nov/Dec 07' ?

What was the outcome ?? - it would surely cut to the heart of the matter !!

Hi, platonov if you have some info on this could you provide it?

I may have but on the advice of my lawyer I don't wish to answer any further questions on this issue on the grounds it may incriminate me (and get me 30 yrs).

Given 18 months I may be able to come up with a better response - whether it will be credible is a different matter.



On a more serious note I'd was hoping to see a response from the posters who have been back and forth on this issue for some time ( The plays of T Williams seem short by comparison ) - especially those claiming with certainty that it was a 'false confession'.

Surely AK's responses to this Q in Dec 07 have some bearing on the issue - from the horses mouth and all that.

 

[Katody Matrass]

On a more serious note I'd was hoping to see a response from the posters who have been back and forth on this issue for some time ( The plays of T Williams seem short by comparison ) - especially those claiming with certainty that it was a 'false confession'.

Surely AK's responses to this Q in Dec 07 have some bearing on the issue - from the horses mouth and all that.

Hi platonov,
Every transcript I could found where Amanda is talking about the interrogation indicates strongly that it resulted in an internalized false confession. I was hoping that you have something I haven't seen already that would challenge that view.

 

[RoseMontague]

The point of this research is possibility, inconclusive value of TMB test, and non contradiction with the (more important) evidence that you consider "bad arguments".
The literature points out - as highlighted by halides1 too - that there is a chemichal criterion to search for positive substance.
What you do here is, after reviewing literature, to cast in aside and propose instead as a basis the principle that "you sense chemists don't know what causes a reatcion". Which means a change of paradigm and method and decide to not consider scientific literature at all, but focus only on the.
Now if you want to construct an argument based entirely on this hypothesys, i think you you have to: 1. show what can produce positive reaction, just practically independently from chemical studies; 2. base practical experiments not on what is contained in your fridge, but on what was contained in their fridge and their house.

I think you have the burden of proof reversed. It is up to the prosecution to show that it is blood, not to the defense to show that it was some other substance within the home. The Luminol test is not a conclusive test and the TMB tests were negative. I can honestly say that I don't know what caused the Luminol reaction, I don't believe it is blood. If the court made a judgment that it was blood without conclusive evidence of that, then in my opinion the court is in error by again putting the onus on the defense to prove innocence.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

50 rfu

I believe that this is the almost unanimous view of those who post on the PMF site. I find them a very plausible bunch and choose to go along with their views.

Colonelhall,

You may find PMF a plausible bunch, but I find that this site has much misinformation on DNA forensics. At this site an anonymous commenter wrote, “[Rose Montague] claimed that Sollecito's DNA on Meredith's bra clasp was LCN DNA despite the fact that the lowest RFU peak was 30% higher than that the 50 RFU test widely used for minimum reliability and the highest RFU peak was more than 200% higher.” The anonymous commenter, The Machine, said this disparagingly, but it is she who is wrong.

One, LCN DNA is defined either in terms of amount of template DNA, such as 200 picograms, or it is defined as the point where stochastic effects begin to manifest themselves. It makes no sense to define the LCN range in terms of peak heights in RFUs because one could alter a sample from being in the LCN range to outside of the LCN range just by doing more PCR cycles. Doing more cycles would not change the amount of template DNA and would not make the stochastic effects go away.

Two, if The Machine believes that 50 RFU is the appropriate standard for minimum reliability, then she needs to explain why the knife DNA profile is acceptable. 22 of 29 peaks fall below this intensity threshold. This is one of several good reasons to toss this particular piece of evidence, in my opinion.

 

[LondonJohn]

You think the phone records "argue" for a time of death "probably" close to 9. So your scientific evidence for your 100% certainity consists in this element?

By hte way I think the phone records don't argue at all for a time of death close to 9, and I will talk about it. For making a statement about 100% confidence, I really don't believe you really think you are saying something scientific.

Halides actually said that the combination of the stomach/intestinal contents and the phone records pointed towards a ToD closer to 9.00pm than 10.00pm.

But the phone records by themselves do tell us an interesting story. The court chose to believe that Meredith was not attacked before around 11.30pm. The court's rationale therefore regarding the curious short calls to Abbey Bank and her voicemail at around 10.00pm were that Meredith was playing with her phone - pushing random buttons and so on.

But when Meredith's mobile phones were recovered, one of them showed that she had attempted to call her family in the UK at just before 9.00pm. The call was stored in the "numbers dialled" list in the handset, but the connection had never been made (and therefore it didn't show up in billing records). This suggests either that Meredith was situated in an area with no mobile network coverage when she tried to place the call, or that she pressed to dial, then immediately terminated the call for some reason before a network connection was made. Either way, Meredith was either just about to return by foot to the girls' cottage, or had just returned to the cottage, at the time this aborted call was placed.

Either way, it shows that Meredith had a clear intention to call home to the UK that evening, as apparently she always did (her mother was ill). Yet she never made any further attempt to call home. And the prosecutors/court would argue that Meredith was idly pressing random buttons on her phone at around 10.00pm, yet had not found the time or inclination between 9.00pm and 10.00pm (or indeed between 10.00pm and 11.30pm) to make the call to the UK. Remember also that Italy is 1 hour's time zone ahead of the UK, so 9.00-10.00pm in Perugia was only 8.00-9.00pm in Croydon.

I believe that this is actually a fairly strong indicator that Meredith was confronted very shortly after 9.00pm. I find no other way to rationalise why she would not have repeated her call home at some point between 9.00pm and 10.00pm. I also don't believe that Meredith would have been making phantom calls to her UK voicemail and her UK bank at around 10.00pm; these calls suggest to me that someone else was pressing buttons on her phone - either deliberately or inadvertently. And this - to me - is a further indication that Meredith had been attacked and her phones had been taken from her room by 10.00pm.

 

[RoseMontague]

Thanks for the correction, and I mean that. I have ingested this entire discussion in short period with a interruption of a few months. I am certain I don't have the entire time-line down perfectly and it's helpful to be advised when I get something wrong, which is inevitable.

Do you know of a site with a good time-line of the entire ordeal? Just the facts?

Dan O. had the best timeline posted that I have seen, if you go back through his posts and find it, it will be well worth your effort. Perhaps if he is available (I don't believe he was in Atlanta recently), he can repost it for us.

 

[RoseMontague]

Colonelhall,

You may find PMF a plausible bunch, but I find that this site has much misinformation on DNA forensics. At this site an anonymous commenter wrote, “[Rose Montague] claimed that Sollecito's DNA on Meredith's bra clasp was LCN DNA despite the fact that the lowest RFU peak was 30% higher than that the 50 RFU test widely used for minimum reliability and the highest RFU peak was more than 200% higher.” The anonymous commenter, The Machine, said this disparagingly, but it is she who is wrong.

One, LCN DNA is defined either in terms of amount of template DNA, such as 200 picograms, or it is defined as the point where stochastic effects begin to manifest themselves. It makes no sense to define the LCN range in terms of peak heights in RFUs because one could alter a sample from being in the LCN range to outside of the LCN range just by doing more PCR cycles. Doing more cycles would not change the amount of template DNA and would not make the stochastic effects go away.

Two, if The Machine believes that 50 RFU is the appropriate standard for minimum reliability, then she needs to explain why the knife DNA profile is acceptable. 22 of 29 peaks fall below this intensity threshold. This is one of several good reasons to toss this particular piece of evidence, in my opinion.

I was reading some of Dr. Waterburys older posts earlier and saw this about the bra clasp. I will bold what I found to be an appropriate comment about the real value of this piece of evidence.

Control experiments to check for this would have been simple. The clasp was retrieved from a pile of debris left by the fastidious investigators in Meredith's room, shown in the picture at the right. Testing a few other items from that pile to see if they, too, had picked up DNA dust from the floor would tell us whether there was anything special about the clasp. Of course, that wasn't done.

So we have “Raffaele's DNA was found on Meredith's bra clasp,” rather than, “Raffaele's DNA, along with DNA from lots of other people, was found at various random locations throughout Amanda's apartment, which he visited several times before the murder.” The first phrase sounds incriminating. The second, accurate phrase, shows how meaningless this test result is without a control experiment.

http://www.sciencespheres.com/2009/10/methods-of-polizia-pseudoscientificaa.html

 

[platonov]

Hi platonov,
Every transcript I could found where Amanda is talking about the interrogation indicates strongly that it resulted in an internalized false confession. I was hoping that you have something I haven't seen already that would challenge that view.

I believe I answered this in my previous post ......

..........as the trial transcripts put it

"Excuse me, excuse me, but this question is not admitted because it was
already asked, avvocato. It's the second time. Please avoid repetitions"

or as the movies have it "Asked & Answered"

 

[platonov]

OK - given the lack of a response on the 'internalized false confession' Q we can finally put the issue to bed.

This mole has been well and truly whacked by the 'testimony' of no less a personage than AK herself.

Finally we are making progress on this case as regards items that can be accepted by both parties to the debate.

 

[Danceme]

You misunderstand my point. Yes, they tested them.

<snip>

So, to summarize, they found bloody tissues with the DNA of four unknown people, two males and two females, and they found cigarette butts with the DNA of a third unknown male. But they made no effort to investigate further or determine who these unknown people might be.

I've seen it said many times that they did not test any of the other housemates or their friends. Was this actually confirmed in court testimony? Is it 100% accurate to say that they didn't collect DNA samples from anyone other than Amanda, Raffaele, Rudy and perhaps Patrick? or is it just what you think happened?

I also saw it written many times they didn't even collect fingerprints or shoeprints from anyone, even the Postal Police, but it says in Darkness Descending that they did. What to believe?

If you are provably correct then I do think it's grounds to say they were only interested in evidence that implicated the three convicted.

I still do not properly grasp why the guilters see that footprint as such a smoking gun.

We have Rudy's word in his initial statement that he went into the bathroom after Meredith was stabbed and that he was the one who took the towels from the bathroom to the murder room,

Was Rudy questioned about the footprint and as to whether he had removed his shoes at some point? I can't see him denying it was his footprint if he freely admits to entering the bathroom for towels after coming upon Meredith bleeding profusely where he likely could have stepped in her blood. He would have said, "sure it could be mine, I went to get towels to try and save her" and "yes I had my shoes off, I was getting intimate with Meredith" which fit the story he told. I think if he denies it is his print it likely isn't. He had already admitted the bloody shoeprint was most likely his.

The question I asked the other day is that if it is normal to find luminol reactions at non crime scenes. Did you see that question addressed in your research?

Very interesting question. I'd like to know more about this too.

I think you have the burden of proof reversed. It is up to the prosecution to show that it is blood, not to the defense to show that it was some other substance within the home. The Luminol test is not a conclusive test and the TMB tests were negative. I can honestly say that I don't know what caused the Luminol reaction, I don't believe it is blood. If the court made a judgment that it was blood without conclusive evidence of that, then in my opinion the court is in error by again putting the onus on the defense to prove innocence.

If the luminol is the most sensitive, more so than the TMB, as I seemed to get from Machiavelli's research, then it is no wonder it convinced the jury the prints were made in blood. I would likely believe it too unless shown something equally believable as to what would give the false positive. If all that was presented from the defense were substances like turnip juice etc. I wouldn't be swayed from believing the prosecution's expert that it was blood.

The one interesting thing I did read that would have convinced me was the iron or copper from water pipes. This I see as likely if the plumbing were very old and the water from the shower contained iron or copper deposits. Arguing this, along with Amanda and Raffaele possibly having showered together one evening or other would definitely have caused 'reasonable' doubt in my mind.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

false confesson versus false accusation

OK - given the lack of a response on the 'internalized false confession' Q we can finally put the issue to bed.

This mole has been well and truly whacked by the 'testimony' of no less a personage than AK herself.

Finally we are making progress on this case as regards items that can be accepted by both parties to the debate.

What testimony is that? I do not see it quoted in your comments. Have you read the citations that Rose Montague provided? If so, what are your points of disagreement?

I am not sure that the following comment is germane or not. I personally find the distinction between a false confession and a false accusation to be very difficult to make. Some of the false confessions about which I have heard had both a confession part and an accusation part. This is true of the Ada, Oklahoma case and also a case that I read about in Canada and wrote about here in a comment directed to Stilicho. I believe it was also true of the Norfolk case, but I don't know the facts of that case as well as I might. Therefore, if anyone says that Amanda's statement was a not a false confession because it was a false accusation, I disagree.

 

[RoseMontague]

I've seen it said many times that they did not test any of the other housemates or their friends. Was this actually confirmed in court testimony? Is it 100% accurate to say that they didn't collect DNA samples from anyone other than Amanda, Raffaele, Rudy and perhaps Patrick? or is it just what you think happened?

I also saw it written many times they didn't even collect fingerprints or shoeprints from anyone, even the Postal Police, but it says in Darkness Descending that they did. What to believe?

If you are provably correct then I do think it's grounds to say they were only interested in evidence that implicated the three convicted.



Was Rudy questioned about the footprint and as to whether he had removed his shoes at some point? I can't see him denying it was his footprint if he freely admits to entering the bathroom for towels after coming upon Meredith bleeding profusely where he likely could have stepped in her blood. He would have said, "sure it could be mine, I went to get towels to try and save her" and "yes I had my shoes off, I was getting intimate with Meredith" which fit the story he told. I think if he denies it is his print it likely isn't. He had already admitted the bloody shoeprint was most likely his.




Very interesting question. I'd like to know more about this too.



If the luminol is the most sensitive, more so than the TMB, as I seemed to get from Machiavelli's research, then it is no wonder it convinced the jury the prints were made in blood. I would likely believe it too unless shown something equally believable as to what would give the false positive. If all that was presented from the defense were substances like turnip juice etc. I wouldn't be swayed from believing the prosecution's expert that it was blood.

The one interesting thing I did read that would have convinced me was the iron or copper from water pipes. This I see as likely if the plumbing were very old and the water from the shower contained iron or copper deposits. Arguing this, along with Amanda and Raffaele possibly having showered together one evening or other would definitely have caused 'reasonable' doubt in my mind.

As far as I can see, courts do not accept a positive luminol reaction as proof that there is blood, that is usually proven through a more specific test. The fact that there is not even the victim's DNA showing up in most of these samples is also a good point that was made earlier. If this particular court accepted it as proof however, I would not be surprised. However, even Dr. Stefanoni does not make the claim that it is blood. From Amanda's appeal:

Dr. Stefanoni has in fact stated that
<<positive test does not indicate with certainty the presence of blood human, and not even indicate with certainty the presence of blood, so I can not understand if that is a false positive or a true positive,... I still like to acknowledge, if I can document it by photographic point of view and groped to analyze>> (hearing transcripts May 22, 2009 p.. 52);
<<false positives, so it is easy to have false positives, because
the rust iron, chlorophyll also has no iron but has a
molecule similar to hemoglobin that contains iron and at
which has the other with iron atom that makes up say in making that kind of reaction, which is magnesium ...>> (May 22, 2009 hearing transcripts p.. 54).

ETA bolding mine