Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris C]

I didn't argue that it was or wasn't anything. I didn't argue at all. I simply asked a question about how you knew what it was.

Are you sure you didn't confuse my post with someone else's? You keep responding to things I never said.

Have you ever posted on this thread before. Are you trying to say you dont have an opinion and you know nothing about this case? You clearly wanted proof as to how i knew it was semen. So when I refer the stain as semen you want proof. So i offer you the same proof that is used against knox/sollecito. Except you dont want to engage in that conversation.

 

[Dan O.]

I saw a photo earlier when searching for luminal that demonstrated how an even distribution of blood can be invisible. There was a set of test tubes each containing a successively lower concentration of blood: 1:10, 1:100, 1:1000... 1:1,000,000. The 1:10 was definitely red. It may have been just possible to detect a pinkish tint in the 1:100. All the rest were clear. Yet the luminol would detect the blood present in each when applied to various surfaces and tested up to 30 days later.

Such invisible concentrations of blood could easily be found in the basin of the girls shower and tracked into the hall anytime since the floors were last scrubbed.


ETA: here is the BS press release where I found the info.

 

[Draca]

crimescope and semen stain

The link you cite sums up with this comment,


Please help me understand how "vaseline" is considered a "bodily fluid", and how this offers a reason to discount my supposition in preference to others.

I was using Frank Sfarzo's comments to have a look at the trial jostling. I don't know if vaseline shows up as fluorescent with a crimescope. However, Bodily fluids like semen and saliva do.

Francesco Vinci from Frank's blog says "I can only say that the stains look like having the typical luminescence of sperm."

It will need to be tested, that is what the defense is requesting right? Just for it to be tested.

 

[quadraginta]

Have you ever posted on this thread before. Are you trying to say you dont have an opinion and you know nothing about this case? You clearly wanted proof as to how i knew it was semen. So when I refer the stain as semen you want proof. So i offer you the same proof that is used against knox/sollecito. Except you dont want to engage in that conversation.

I don't have an opinion about the mystery spot. I haven't seen enough information offered in these threads (I've been around here since before they started, nearly a year ago) to develop an opinion. You appeared to have additional information which gave you sufficient confidence to make a positive claim. I asked you to share that information. Nothing more.

I am uncertain why this prompted a tirade from you about bloody footprints or anything else. It seemed to me to be a reasonable question, quite in the same spirit as the questions asked by Knox advocates about the sort of issues your diatribe referred to.

I am going to assume from the tenor and content of your responses that you do not actually have any additional information on the subject, although it would have been much simpler if you had just said as much.

 

[quadraginta]

I was using Frank Sfarzo's comments to have a look at the trial jostling. I don't know if vaseline shows up as fluorescent with a crimescope. However, Bodily fluids like semen and saliva do.

Francesco Vinci from Frank's blog says "I can only say that the stains look like having the typical luminescence of sperm."

It will need to be tested, that is what the defense is requesting right? Just for it to be tested.

I agree. It should have been tested. The defense should have insisted on that from the time of its discovery.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I agree. It should have been tested. The defense should have insisted on that from the time of its discovery.

The defense is not in a position to insist. They can only request, which they did, and the request was denied.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

What process quantifies "reasonable"? I am asking this in all seriousness.

The actual term I used was "pretty reasonable guess". A pretty reasonable guess is one that is not implausible and may even be probable, but is not certain.

 

[Chris C]

I don't have an opinion about the mystery spot. I haven't seen enough information offered in these threads (I've been around here since before they started, nearly a year ago) to develop an opinion. You appeared to have additional information which gave you sufficient confidence to make a positive claim. I asked you to share that information. Nothing more.

I am uncertain why this prompted a tirade from you about bloody footprints or anything else. It seemed to me to be a reasonable question, quite in the same spirit as the questions asked by Knox advocates about the sort of issues your diatribe referred to.

I am going to assume from the tenor and content of your responses that you do not actually have any additional information on the subject, although it would have been much simpler if you had just said as much.

It wasn't a tirade. I offered you the same evidence, that the prosecution offered about all the rest of the evidence against knox and you didn't like it. You are trying to play the innocent victim, yet you apparently having been here for over a year and now suddenly when someone mentions an untested semen sample your response is.

What "untested semen sample"? Did "unidentified stain" get a promotion?

I don't have an opinion about the mystery spot. I haven't seen enough information offered in these threads (I've been around here since before they started, nearly a year ago) to develop an opinion.

You clearly know what stain is being talked about, and have been offered the same type of proof that the prosecution has used against Knox/Sollecito. You clearly have an opinion on the matter because you don't believe it warrants an upgrade from unidentified stain to untested semen sample.

 

[quadraginta]

It wasn't a tirade. I offered you the same evidence, that the prosecution offered about all the rest of the evidence against knox and you didn't like it. You are trying to play the innocent victim, yet you apparently having been here for over a year and now suddenly when someone mentions an untested semen sample your response is.


You clearly know what stain is being talked about, and have been offered the same type of proof that the prosecution has used against Knox/Sollecito. You clearly have an opinion on the matter because you don't believe it warrants an upgrade from unidentified stain to untested semen sample.

I asked a question. I hazarded a guess as to your real meaning. It seems to have been an accurate guess.

Your tu quoque collection is irrelevant to my query.

So you are saying that there is not an untested semen sample?

 

[Chris C]

I asked a question. I hazarded a guess as to your real meaning. It seems to have been an accurate guess.

Your tu quoque collection is irrelevant to my query.

So you are saying that there is not an untested semen sample?

There is enough evidence to warrant it being called an untested semen stain until its proven not to be. Thats the reason its an untested semen sample. Your more than welcome to argue its not semen.
As to the tu quoque remark. You can call it what you want. However, there are similarities between my reasoning that its a semen stain and the prosecution reasoning that the luminol footprints are made from blood. If ones wrong they both are. The only difference being the semen stain hasn't been tested.

I believe in, you can't have it both ways. If you want to call that tu quoque, then so be it.

 

[Fine]

Not really sure how it can be disputed that Amanda mentioned having a shower and using the bathmat to walk back to her room before the luminol tests were even carried out. In Court, her lawyers asked her in more detail how she walked back to her room - naturally enough, since it had become an important detail at that stage - but the most significant facts had been mentioned by Amanda long before that.

Hmmm. An interesting point, katy_did. So, what did Amanda know---or fear---when interrogated by Mignini on December 17, 2007?

The first time Amanda spoke of her bath mat boggie---while interrogated by Mignini in prison---she may have feared, without any confirmation, that her bloody footprints had already been discovered, in the corridor, her bedroom, or the bathroom. And it may have been that Mignini's questions to her suggested such a state-of-affairs.

It would be interesting to know exactly what question Mignini asked her, which led to her account of the bath mat boogie. Was she explicitly answering his question....or, instead, digressing, to explain feared Luminol tests of the past, or in anticipation of the next day's Luminol tests?

///

 

[Chris C]

Hmmm. An interesting point, katy_did. So, what did Amanda know---or fear---when interrogated by Mignini on December 17, 2007?

The first time Amanda spoke of her bath mat boggie---while interrogated by Mignini in prison---she may have feared, without any confirmation, that her bloody footprints had already been discovered, in the corridor, her bedroom, or the bathroom. And it may have been that Mignini's questions to her suggested such a state-of-affairs.

It would be interesting to know exactly what question Mignini asked her, which led to her account of the bath mat boogie. Was she explicitly answering his question....or, instead, digressing, to explain feared Luminol tests of the past, or in anticipation of the next day's Luminol tests?

///

Actually if I remember correctly, she mentioned it when she mentioned that there was no towels in the bathroom.

 

[TomCH]

There is enough evidence to warrant it being called an untested semen stain until its proven not to be. Thats the reason its an untested semen sample.

By that logic, it is also an untested BLOOD sample.

What it is, is simply an unknown and untested stain, nothing more.

 

[platonov]

There is enough evidence to warrant it being called an untested semen stain until its proven not to be. Thats the reason its an untested semen sample. Your more than welcome to argue its not semen.
As to the tu quoque remark. You can call it what you want. However, there are similarities between my reasoning that its a semen stain and the prosecution reasoning that the luminol footprints are made from blood. If ones wrong they both are. The only difference being the semen stain hasn't been tested.

I believe in, you can't have it both ways. If you want to call that tu quoque, then so be it.

Thats not how it works on JREF or in 'skeptical' debate generally.

We are having it 1 way - you made the claim, if you cant back it up it will be dismissed.
You cant and it has.

.

 

[Katody Matrass]

It would be interesting to know exactly what question Mignini asked her, which led to her account of the bath mat boogie. Was she explicitly answering his question....or, instead, digressing, to explain feared Luminol tests of the past, or in anticipation of the next day's Luminol tests?

///

Hi, Fine, I noticed you are not afraid of hypothesizing. Maybe you could help with creating a coherent guilt hypothesis based on Massei? A believable train of events, actions and motives, starting with the reason AK and RS switched phones off, took a knife and went out to loiter on Piazza Grimana?

 

[Katody Matrass]

By that logic, it is also an untested BLOOD sample.

What it is, is simply an unknown and untested stain, nothing more.

You're right. To be strict we should call it an untested stain believed to be semen.

And sample believed to be blood but tested repeatedly with negative results.

 

[moodstream]

I saw a photo earlier when searching for luminal that demonstrated how an even distribution of blood can be invisible. There was a set of test tubes each containing a successively lower concentration of blood: 1:10, 1:100, 1:1000... 1:1,000,000. The 1:10 was definitely red. It may have been just possible to detect a pinkish tint in the 1:100. All the rest were clear. Yet the luminol would detect the blood present in each when applied to various surfaces and tested up to 30 days later.

Such invisible concentrations of blood could easily be found in the basin of the girls shower and tracked into the hall anytime since the floors were last scrubbed.


ETA: here is the BS press release where I found the info.

Thanks,

I couldn’t get the pdf to pull up for some reason.

Because the police did not find the prints by visual inspection, I assume the print was invisible when made, and therefore much less than one part blood to 100 water. Presuming Knox murdered Kercher barefooted, she washed her feet before leaving those footprints. She would have presumed there was no blood left. And then she walked around barefooted. But this can’t be because that would leave an invisible trail of two feet, becoming fainter, like the footprints out the door.

Can someone give me a scenario where she has committed the crime, washed up so that she believes there is no blood on her feet, but leaves traces of blood as described by the locations of the footprints?

 

[Kaosium]

Hmmm. An interesting point, katy_did. So, what did Amanda know---or fear---when interrogated by Mignini on December 17, 2007?

The first time Amanda spoke of her bath mat boggie---while interrogated by Mignini in prison---she may have feared, without any confirmation, that her bloody footprints had already been discovered, in the corridor, her bedroom, or the bathroom. And it may have been that Mignini's questions to her suggested such a state-of-affairs.

It would be interesting to know exactly what question Mignini asked her, which led to her account of the bath mat boogie. Was she explicitly answering his question....or, instead, digressing, to explain feared Luminol tests of the past, or in anticipation of the next day's Luminol tests?

///

I think we need to find out. I think it's time they released the tapes of the interrogation as well. This pretending they 'never taped' them or that they were destroyed is just silly. I cannot believe they had at least twelve police officers on, some from Rome, and that they were wiretapping her and they didn't record these interrogations. If they were destroyed, we need to find out who destroyed them and why. Why would a tape of an interrogation that lead to the signing of a 'confession' and 'accusation' be destroyed? I can't think of a good reason. Nonsense about the above subject still being considered a 'witness' is laughable. When an institution tells you something that stupid you can't help but wonder if they have something to hide.

I want to know more about the 'bathmat boogie' too. Why wouldn't the Hades and Persephone tapes be available?

 

[platonov]

Aha, that's more of it - Oh wait !

I think we need to find out. I think it's time they released the tapes of the interrogation as well. This pretending they 'never taped' them or that they were destroyed is just silly. I cannot believe they had at least twelve police officers on, some from Rome, and that they were wiretapping her and they didn't record these interrogations. If they were destroyed, we need to find out who destroyed them and why. Why would a tape of an interrogation that lead to the signing of a 'confession' and 'accusation' be destroyed? I can't think of a good reason. Nonsense about the above subject still being considered a 'witness' is laughable. When an institution tells you something that stupid you can't help but wonder if they have something to hide.

I want to know more about the 'bathmat boogie' too. Why wouldn't the Hades and Persephone tapes be available?

No Kaosium I'm afraid you are confusing different interrogations yet again.

The Dec 17 interrogation transcript was part of the court file.

The defense even brought up this interrogation during AK's own testimony, referring to the reasons for the termination of it by AK - to try an undo the damage done by her inability on that occasion [Dec17] to explain the Nov 6 accusation of PL.

See earlier posts - which also by a happy coincidence dispatched the 'internalized false confession' trope.

.

 

[samba]

False Confessions

One of the more interesting false confession cases. Four men actually confessed to murdering 9 Buddhist monks outside of Phoenix, AZ. The crime occurred in 1991, but this article just appeared in yesterday's paper:

http://www.azcentral.com/community/...1/20101121arizona-buddhist-temple-murder.html

One quick quote:

After an exhaustive study of Arizona's infamous Buddhist temple murder case, attorney-author Gary L. Stuart arrived at a conclusion that average folks may find hard to accept: Anyone can be coerced into making a false confession of murder.

"Most of us think we are too smart, too strong, too self-confident to ever confess to a crime we didn't commit," Stuart told an audience at Arizona State University's school of law last week. "But it could happen to us."