Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Dan O.]

Rudy is a convicted murderer, rapist and liar. Why do you give credence to what he says?

I should use that next time you use something that Rudy says. What theory do you have to explain why Rudy is claiming that his trousers were wet except to explain that his trousers were wet?

I'll forget for a minute that you're just making this up, and ask, why the heck would he take his shoe off if he were washing blood off his trousers?

It is Massei that claimed that the print could only be made if there was a trail of prints from the bedroom. Even if I made up my explanation without any supporting evidence it still would counter Massei's claim that there was no alternative. However, unlike Massei's claim which has no supporting evidence and even requires a cleanup theory to explain the lack of such evidence, my scenario is consistent with Rudy's trousers being wet, the diluted print on the mat, the diluted blood drips in the bidet and even the drips of blood within Rudy's footprints.

We don't know exactly when Rudy took his shoe off. It's probable that he took it off in the bedroom because he was already leaving tracks from before Meredith's body was moved onto the pillow. Some of the shoe prints in the bedroom appear to have a different section of the shoe bloodied. Rudy may have taken the shoe off in the bedroom to walk to the bathroom where he cleaned the shoe only to get it bloody again when he returned to Meredith room before leaving the cottage.

Are you suggesting that Rudy should have left his shoe on when he washed the trousers and let water run down inside his shoe?

 

[Antony]

A single piece of evidence puts it beyond doubt: the bathmat print. The blood is over the entirety of the foot. There isn't a jury in the world that's going to believe that that came out of nowhere and that the perpetrator did not walk up to that bathmat. The fact that there are no footprints on the tiled floor on the way from Meredith's bedroom to that mat shows clearly they have been cleaned from the tiles. QED.

It doesn't show anything of the sort. What clean-up artist would plausibly wipe up all of the surrounding bloody footprints and then leave a single footprint in plain view?

The forensic explanation isn't even particularly obscure: the intruder went to the bathroom to rinse some blood off his trousers, removed his shoe to do so in the bidet, then placed his bare or stockinged foot on the bathmat after doing so and before drying it off with towels. No bloody footprints leading to or from the bathroom required, and no clean-up necessary.

(Not my explanation, by the way - it's been described previously here by Kevin Lowe, if I remember right.)

 

[Kaosium]

"What are you trying to say about Japan?". Nothing. I didn't use the word Japan at all - you did. I never did and I'm not and I don't think anyone could understand where you would leap to a comment about the content of certain Manga to a statement about an entire nation. Rather patently silly.

Let me try again then: If the contents of this one are so damning to Raffaele, and you are so condemning, what would you be trying to imply about the nation that produces and consumes the vast majority of them?

 

[Alt+F4]

I should use that next time you use something that Rudy says.

I don't believe I've ever used anything Rudy has ever said.

What theory do you have to explain why Rudy is claiming that his trousers were wet except to explain that his trousers were wet?

There probably was blood on his clothes. That doesn't mean he tried to clean his trousers. You have no idea how much blood was on his clothing. If anything there was probably more blood on his shirt (or jacket) yet no mention of trying to clean that.

However, unlike Massei's claim which has no supporting evidence and even requires a cleanup theory to explain the lack of such evidence, my scenario is consistent with Rudy's trousers being wet, the diluted print on the mat, the diluted blood drips in the bidet and even the drips of blood within Rudy's footprints.

In this scenario Rudy goes into the bathroom either with his shoes on or off. How did he get from the bedroom to the bathroom without leaving bloody prints (shoe or naked) between the two rooms?

We don't know exactly when Rudy took his shoe off. It's probable that he took it off in the bedroom because he was already leaving tracks from before Meredith's body was moved onto the pillow. Some of the shoe prints in the bedroom appear to have a different section of the shoe bloodied.

If he was so concerned about leaving bloody footprints in the bedroom why wasn't he concerned about the bloody footprints he left from the bedroom to the front door? Also, it doesn't make sense to take off your shoes to stop leaving bloody footprints. What did he think, that if his shoes were off his naked feet wouldn't leave prints?

Rudy may have taken the shoe off in the bedroom to walk to the bathroom where he cleaned the shoe only to get it bloody again when he returned to Meredith room before leaving the cottage.

But if he took his shoe off in the bedroom there would have been his bloody footprint in the bedroom, there was not.

Are you suggesting that Rudy should have left his shoe on when he washed the trousers and let water run down inside his shoe?

I doubt a wet shoe was one of his biggest concerns at that minute.

 

[Kestrel]

Let me try again then: If the contents of this one are so damning to Raffaele, and you are so condemning, what would you be trying to imply about the nation that produces and consumes the vast majority of them?

Or for that matter, the nation that reads all those steamy novels full of sex and violence that appear on the New York Times bestseller list?

 

[Alt+F4]

the intruder went to the bathroom to rinse some blood off his trousers, removed his shoe to do so in the bidet, then placed his bare or stockinged foot on the bathmat after doing so and before drying it off with towels. No bloody footprints leading to or from the bathroom required, and no clean-up necessary.

Here's the problem with that theory. FBI guy Steve Moore said it was impossible for someone to leave Meredith's bedroom without blood on the bottom of their shoes (or naked feet). He has seen all the photographs taken in the bedroom, he has seen all the evidence.

 

[piktor]

Piktor,

So the bathmat print is smudged. Apparently it is smudged so badly (according to you) that we cannot conclude that the big toe looks nothing like Sollecito's foot. Yet not so smudged as to preclude millimeter-precision measurements. Thanks, but that dog won't hunt.

It is a smudged print but it is not a useless print. The bathmat is not a flat and smooth sheet of paper, the foot plant was wet, lending to distortion. This is the reason a positive match cannot be made.

Sollecito's footprint morphology is distinct from Guede's. There is no doubt on this.

On the other hand, no one here has seen the bathmat directly. The experts assigned to analyze it have. Massei talks about their findings and includes them as part of the Report reasonings.

The findings convinced the judges. Including this evidence in the report is justified because it is reasonable. Unless eight judges were led by their noses and this trial is a complete joke, it stands as is.

The experts' finding is that the print eliminates Guede and is compatible with Sollecito. It is not a match but an elimination of one defendant and an "opinion of probable identity" for Sollecito.

The above-mentioned differences led the technicians to conclude that there was compatibility of imprint “A” on the mat with regard to the general characteristics of shape and size with Raffaele Sollecito’s right foot, and this outcome allowed them to express of an opinion of probable identity; at the same time they arrived at a finding of non-[366] compatibility of print ‚A‛ with Rudy Hermann Guede’s right foot (page 44 transcripts).- Massei p.342

 

[Trigood]

Originally Posted by Trigood
What is also largely neglected by the Innocentisti is that the Postal Police's arrival was totally coincidental, and had nothing whatsoever to do with Raffaele's call to the Carabinieri (how could it? different crew).



How do the "Innocentisti" neglect it?

They make such a big deal about how Raff called the police, and how the police then arrived a few minutes later.

The one act had nothing whatsoever to do with the other, something they neglect to mention.

 

[Kaosium]

Be sure you let us know when the Italian authorities ship Amanda off to Devil's Island.

They already have. The venue of imprisonment is not why Dreyfus and the others are remembered.

 

[Trigood]

I can't help but smile incredulously every time i hear the words "millimetre precision" when applied to analysis of that bath mat partial print...

Snarkiness is soooo convincing. Please give your arguments? Thanks.

 

[SomeAlibi]

I presume you meant Merdith's Bedroom in that statement.


I can understand SomeAlibi missing our earlier discussion of how the bathmat print could have been formed without necessitating a trail of prints leading to it. But I thought you had been here since that time.

As a recap, the simple explanation for how the watered down print could be formed is that in the process of washing blood off his trousers (which Rudy admitted were wet), bloody water would have run down the pant leg onto his foot (from which the shoe would have been removed). Subsequently stepping on the mat with this wet foot would leave the print. It is not even necessary that the heal would touch the floor and leave the rest of the print though we know that the mat was subsequently moved so we don't know where this heal print would be and the ILE did an excellent job of obliterating any trace evidence in that bath.

Yes bedroom, thank you. What evidence do you refer to in a *bath*? Do you mean bidet or shower?

I have heard some ingenious theories in my time, but this running water down the trouser and all under the foot takes the biscuit. There isn't a jury in the world that's going to buy that blood runs down a foot, then miraculously runs from the edge of the foot such that the foot is covered with blood across it's entire width and breadth. It crystal clear that that footprint must have been made by stepping in blood and then transferring it onto the surface below. Any child doing a potato print shows you that mechanism. The running water, total coverage idea is extraordinarily weak by anyone's common experience. He would have had to have got a paint roller out and rub it across his sole to get that effect!

The orientation of the bathmat shows the footprint 90 degrees to either the bidet or the sink which it bisects and is clearly in keeping with someone stepping right into the shower. If someone was to clean their foot in the bidet and we posit that they did such a very poor job of cleaning themselves (the very point of them carrying out that action), which I don't accept, then how does the foot get back into that position? In order to get the *right foot* to land there as the first imprint, you have to turn your right foot completely inside your left leg and have it facing at 90 degrees to your body. Try it, it is extraordinarily unlikely.

So now in order to have that work we now also have to posit the bathmat being spun around as well into a position which it is not found. This "explanation" is now looking massively stretched.

Ask a normal person to compare the idea of what you can see in those pictures and ask them does it look like someone with bloody feet walking straight to the shower, with the lack of prior footprints as evidence of a cleanup does it look like the footprint of a contortionist turning their right leg outside-in by 90 degrees and you're going to get very short shrift.

Your argument would last about 5 minutes in a court and I would enjoy making maximum use of it. Some pretty comprehensive work has been done on DNA and the break-in by the proponents for the defence which at least sounds plausible at first blush, but this one? This is the bottom of the credibility pack of any theory I've heard about the case and no jury would believe it.

 

[Trigood]

I presume you meant Merdith's Bedroom in that statement.


I can understand SomeAlibi missing our earlier discussion of how the bathmat print could have been formed without necessitating a trail of prints leading to it. But I thought you had been here since that time.

As a recap, the simple explanation for how the watered down print could be formed is that in the process of washing blood off his trousers (which Rudy admitted were wet), bloody water would have run down the pant leg onto his foot (from which the shoe would have been removed). Subsequently stepping on the mat with this wet foot would leave the print. It is not even necessary that the heal would touch the floor and leave the rest of the print though we know that the mat was subsequently moved so we don't know where this heal print would be and the ILE did an excellent job of obliterating any trace evidence in that bath.

This is not a "simple" but rather a totally bizarre explanation.

You expect us to believe that Rudy ran out of the house, leaving the bloody shoeprints as they exist from Meredith's bedroom door to the door of the cottage.

Then, he realized his pants were bloody, so he took off his shoes, left them outside (didn't bring them in to clean them? why not?), came back into the cottage barefoot, and went to the bathroom (the one farthest from the door? why?)

Then, he rinsed the blood off his pantlegs (why not just throw the pants away later?), blood ran down his pantlegs and mysteriously got underneath the soles of his feet (laws of physics, anyone? blood will not flow down and then suddenly horizontally to cover the bottom of a foot, certainly not in such thickness and density to form a clear footprint), and then he stepped strategically on the blue bathmat to leave (in your mind) a perfect imprint that could implicate him later.

Hmm. Seems he's solving one so-called "problem" (which doesn't require solution), while creating another worse problem for himself in terms of evidence against himself.

Or do you have someone else in mind for the bloody shoeprint trail that leads out of the cottage? Not a "lone wolf" after all?

Rudy was a pretty dumb murderer, wasn't he? Not only that, he behaved totally inexplicably. Why go back into the house at all?

If he didn't leave the house first, you're expecting us to believe that, after washing blood off his pant legs, for no explicable reason he puts his shoes with blood on the soles back on (why not wash them too, while he's at it?), and then runs out of the house, leaving evidence for all to see and connect him with the murder.

This is the problem the Innocentisti bump up against all the time: They want to selectively look at the evidence, but you can't; it must be taken in its entirety.

 

[SomeAlibi]

Let me try again then: If the contents of this one are so damning to Raffaele, and you are so condemning, what would you be trying to imply about the nation that produces and consumes the vast majority of them?

Please concentrate: I did not raise Japan, you did. I am not, nor could anyone possibly make out that I was trying to imply something about the country I never mentioned. I am here to talk about the case against Knox and Sollecito and have no interest in discussing Japan with you, nor have I ever.

 

[SomeAlibi]

SomeAlibi,

Charlie Wilkes in comments 5332 and 8707 has stated what I would have said with respect to Massei's arguments about the origin of the print. As for your last paragraph, it is easy to turn this argument on its head. You have never acknowledged logical or factual flaws in Massei, to the best of my recollection. Yet over the course of the last 180 pages or so, we have analyzed a number of problems in the motivations document.

I have recently mentioned two of them, and here is a third. Massei said that not testing the pillowcase stain for whether or not it is semen was not done because semen cannot be dated. So should no putative semen stain ever be tested? Christianahannah pointed out that Stefanoni said it was more important to analyze this stain for its shoe print. Would this have precluded testing the stain later? The stain may or may not be a decisive piece of evidence, but it is the quality of Massei's reasoning that I am calling into question.

I was discussing the strength of your specific argument about the bathmat print which is not related to anything to do with arguing for or against Massei's conclusion on other matters.

As to testing and disclosure, from my position, you have to understand I would never agree to anything less to full disclosure and testing. Its the court's prerogative to overrule lawyers on that but that's Massei's decision and yes I would fight it too.

 

[SomeAlibi]

I can't help but smile incredulously every time i hear the words "millimetre precision" when applied to analysis of that bath mat partial print...

The point is that in several key measurements, the court found that Sollecito's footprint matches the bathmat print to the millimetre or one millimetre out. Using millimetre precision isn't supposed to convey more than that. We can use "matches to the millimetre" if you like.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

That's pretty hard to understand as much as, of course, there must be a defence argument for everything.

How do you deal with the fact the print would have to shrink? It clearly can't be Guede's because of this. Therefore, whose is it?

The forefoot dimensions of Guede and Sollecito's reference footprints are almost the same, once Rinaldi's measuring error is corrected. Guede's foot is slightly narrower. The forefoot dimensions of both reference prints are a slightly longer than the print on the mat, suggesting that more body weight was put on the reference print than on the bathmat. This is consistent with someone putting his right foot down lightly to steady his balance while most of his body weight is centered on his left foot.

No junk science hype about "millimeter accuracy" on a rug can change the fact that the big toe on the bathmat print looks very much like the one on Guede's reference print, and not at all like the one on Sollecito's reference print.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

some DNA comments, IIRC

Snarkiness is soooo convincing. Please give your arguments? Thanks.

Trigood,

Good to see you here again. I wrote a few comments directed toward you. How are your answers coming along.

 

[SomeAlibi]

Breathtaking arrogance on the part of the Perugia court. Not only is Amanda condemned for the murder on the basis of a prosecution narrative with no credible evidence to support it, but she is given extra time for the inventions within that narrative which are made to make it hold together.

If the court finds the knife was used in the murder, then the knife has to be transported from Raffaele's to the cottage. The conviction for the transportation is therefore nothing other than a logical consequence of the first conviction for the murder. It can't be any other way. You obviously disagree with the verdict but you've missed the causality / logical consequence about the knife transport. It can't be any other way.

 

[Dan O.]

What theory do you have to explain why Rudy is claiming that his trousers were wet except to explain that his trousers were wet?

There probably was blood on his clothes. That doesn't mean he tried to clean his trousers. You have no idea how much blood was on his clothing. If anything there was probably more blood on his shirt (or jacket) yet no mention of trying to clean that.

Rudy said his trousers were wet. How did they get wet?

However, unlike Massei's claim which has no supporting evidence and even requires a cleanup theory to explain the lack of such evidence, my scenario is consistent with Rudy's trousers being wet, the diluted print on the mat, the diluted blood drips in the bidet and even the drips of blood within Rudy's footprints.

In this scenario Rudy goes into the bathroom either with his shoes on or off. How did he get from the bedroom to the bathroom without leaving bloody prints (shoe or naked) between the two rooms?

Are you joking? There were several people running around inside that cottage the next morning. Why didn't they leave bloody prints all over the place? Why don't we see any bloody right shoe prints from Rudy?

 

[Kaosium]

Please concentrate: I did not raise Japan, you did. I am not, nor could anyone possibly make out that I was trying to imply something about the country I never mentioned. I am here to talk about the case against Knox and Sollecito and have no interest in discussing Japan with you, nor have I ever.

Then why did you make such a big deal about Raffaele possessing a Japanese comic book from a genre known for its sexual violence?

What was your point with that then, anyway?