Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[katy_did]

What I find really interesting is Prof Ronchi makes a guestimate of 200ml rather than 500ml and states he did not "see" evidence of the pizza contents, just the apple crumble. These difference of opinions between the medical examiner doing the autopsy and the prosecution's own witness are not fully explained but they are certainly worth noting.

Rose, could this be to do with the gastric contents having been separated, and only 200ml of the 500ml having been given to the experts to examine?

(Am assuming it's from this part of Massei: "He claimed that the gastric content, which came to the examination of the experts, was about 200 cubic centimetres" - think he may just be stating a fact there, rather than making an argument about the volume of the gastric contents).

ETA: Maybe he got the apple crumble half. LOL.

 

[RoseMontague]

I'll ignore the fluff but comment on the drifter thing.

I did notice that initially - the power of language and media, perhaps. Was surprised there wasn't more of an immediate Aha !

In any case Kercher snr is entitled to call RG whatever he wishes - If you wish to follow him in this then, for the sake of consistency, be aware he also refers to AK as 'unequivocally, culpable'.

I actually use the term 'drifter' to highlight how RG is differentiated by the Foakers from the other 2 convicted of the murder.

In reality, as far as I am concerned RG is actually a convicted killer ( Murder & Sexual assault)
.

You both have made me smile today. Just a side note. When I was looking into at what point and for what reason the Kerchers hired Maresca as their lawyer, it appears it was to fight against a second autopsy and a return of the body so they could take it back to the UK for burial. I am curious if anyone knows how his role expanded, continued, or if he was hired to represent the Kerchers for the entire process initially?

 

[katy_did]

I did not know that. You would think that fact alone would destroy the prosecutions theory. Who was with Guede at 11:30pm? What is the source of that info.? Sorry to be so uninformed.

Rudy said he went to see his friends after the murder, while his friends denied seeing him. According to Frank, his upcoming appeal argues that his friends were lying; his lawyers hired a female spy to go undercover and talk to them, and they admitted they saw Rudy after the murder.

The Spy Who Came in from the Law Office

Biscotti & Gentile had a young female collaborator to go undercover among the youths who knew Rudi. Rudi's friends told her she had seen him after the crime, which contradicts what they had stated to the police, that they had not seen him at all that night.
Testimony and records discovered by the beautiful spy weren't admitted by the court. With the appeal Biscotti & Gentile asked the Supreme Court to admit it.
The idea is that if Rudi's friends lied about the after-crime, they may have lied, too, about the pre-crime when they said to have not seen Rudi talking with Meredith the night before.

I suppose it does make more sense that if Rudy were looking for an alibi, he'd go and see people who knew him, rather than randomly turning up in a club somewhere.

 

[RoseMontague]

Rose, could this be to do with the gastric contents having been separated, and only 200ml of the 500ml having been given to the experts to examine?

(Am assuming it's from this part of Massei: "He claimed that the gastric content, which came to the examination of the experts, was about 200 cubic centimetres" - think he may just be stating a fact there, rather than making an argument about the volume of the gastric contents).

ETA: Maybe he got the apple crumble half. LOL.

It does seem rather strange, that is on page 148 if anyone else wants to "weigh in".

 

[RoseMontague]

Rudy said he went to see his friends after the murder, while his friends denied seeing him. According to Frank, his upcoming appeal argues that his friends were lying; his lawyers hired a female spy to go undercover and talk to them, and they admitted they saw Rudy after the murder.

Quote:
The Spy Who Came in from the Law Office

Biscotti & Gentile had a young female collaborator to go undercover among the youths who knew Rudi. Rudi's friends told her she had seen him after the crime, which contradicts what they had stated to the police, that they had not seen him at all that night.
Testimony and records discovered by the beautiful spy weren't admitted by the court. With the appeal Biscotti & Gentile asked the Supreme Court to admit it.
The idea is that if Rudi's friends lied about the after-crime, they may have lied, too, about the pre-crime when they said to have not seen Rudi talking with Meredith the night before.

I suppose it does make more sense that if Rudy were looking for an alibi, he'd go and see people who knew him, rather than randomly turning up in a club somewhere.

Thanks katy_did. This must be LJ's source.
Have you seen this in the appeals? I don't recall this and I am wondering if it may be a part of those additional documents filed?

 

[katy_did]

It does seem rather strange, that is on page 148 if anyone else wants to "weigh in".

Here we are - I knew I'd seen this somewhere (p150):

They were also able to view some of the histological specimens described in the report of Dr. Lalli and 200 cubic centimetres of the gastric content out of the 500 indicated by Dr. Lalli as present in the stomach.

 

[katy_did]

Thanks katy_did. This must be LJ's source.
Have you seen this in the appeals? I don't recall this and I am wondering if it may be a part of those additional documents filed?

I guess Rudy's lawyers would have all the records on this so I wouldn't have thought Amanda and Raffaele's lawyers would have access to it yet, but who knows? Maybe if the Supreme Court allows Rudy to submit the evidence, it might become significant...

 

[Katody Matrass]

False. I tried to explain you what instad Rinaldi did. But you removed it.

Hi, Machiavelli, I understand perfectly well what Rinaldi did and didn't do. Your explanations are OK, just your eyeball approximations are a bit off.

The fact instead is, I was able to give measurements - made by myself - that where significantly closer to Rinaldi's,

IIRC you got a result of 227 mm. If you wouldn't forget to compensate for the huge motion blur from shaken camera (that added 1,5 - 2 cm) you would actually get Vinci's result
Machiavelli, I understand that this issue is boring to everyone, because the luminol prints have very low evidential value, after all no blood or DNA were found in them, but to settle this issue I really urge you to do a honest and simple experiment:
Start with the higher resolution photo of the print from rinaldi.pdf (Maybe you have access to even better sources). The two tile lines are there, you should be able to locate them with some enhancement. That will give you the first 16 cm reference and one axis of a coordinate system.
The chalenge is: Transform or straighten that photo however you wish and choose any scale of the other axis you want, just to get that 245 mm result in the end. You'll see how feasible it is.

But the break in appears to be staged.

Now we're talkin' I love that you put that in points, I like well organized arguments.

1. The rear balcony is the logical point of entry. Even if you would state it is more exposed to car sight, this assessment is false and quite ludicrous. The rear balconi is mor far from the road, it is in the dark, it is covered by a building, a person on a balcony won't be noticed as anything suspicious, the door-window had its shutters open, the climbing and the entrance is extremely easy and quick and non dangerous. Any burglar would enter though the terrace window or the kitchen balcony window. To me this is simply obvious.

First of all, do we have any info they were open? Could you share your sources on this? I think it's more probable they all were closed, considering that all of the girls were out that night.
If the shutters were closed, it makes the Filomena's shutters (the swelled ones that didn't close fully) an obvious target. After all Rudy couldn't open any fully closed shutters without forcing them, and he needed them open to throw the rock in.
Secondly, the balcony is certainly exposed not only to the road, but to every flat above Nara's windows IIRC you even argued there is a line of sight from Nara's windows to the balcony door. You also argued it's direction is compatible (facing) with the neighbouring buildings.
I think it's also brightly lit by every passing car.

And those are only the arguments that assume Rudy's choice of the entry point was rational, not random.

That's for your point 1.

Thanks, and

to be continued... ​

 

[Diastole]

Gastric emptying

Does anyone have an estimate for how much time it takes for the stomach to empty, from beginning to end? Thanks.

One study, employing a 225 kcal solid meal, found greater than 95% gastric emptying at 240 min., with 60% emptying at 120 min. (Tougas, G., Am. J. Gastroenterol., 2000). In addition to female sex, lower BMI also seems to extend gastric emptying, and it may be that the gastric emptying curve for slender females lies somewhat to the right of the curve for an average population.

A lag phase of four hours would be indicative of fairly severe gastroparesis, the most common causes of which are diabetic neuropathy and previous gastric surgery (60% of cases).

 

[LondonJohn]

Thanks katy_did. This must be LJ's source.
Have you seen this in the appeals? I don't recall this and I am wondering if it may be a part of those additional documents filed?

This was indeed my source. Guede's lawyers also appear to have documents related to this - which I can only assume are some sort of sworn statement to the effect that Guede's story is actually true. They tried to have the documents admitted in Guede's first appeal - more as an appeal to Guede's veracity than as an important piece of evidence in themselves, since Guede's judge decided that the murder took place by 10.30pm. But the evidence was not deemed admissible in the first appeal, evidently on the grounds that it did nothing to challenge the case established in the first trial: if the murder happened before 10.30pm, then Guede would have had ample time to get back to his apartment, change, and meet up with these friends before 11.30pm - so any evidence that he actually DID meet up with friends at that time would be somewhat irrelevant - in Guede's case.

But clearly this evidence (if it exists) has a potentially big part to play in Knox's and Sollecito's appeals. I find it pretty extraordinary in any case that the two different courts established two significantly different ToDs in their reasoning behind the respective convictions, since they were both trying to find the "truth" out about exactly the same crime, supposedly carried out by the same group of people at the same time.

And that's why I asked the question of whether Sollecito's and/or Knox's appeal lawyers might have followed up this lead - certainly to the extent of asking Guede's lawyers what they have by way of evidence. If Knox's or Sollecito's lawyers are able to put one or more people on the stand who will testify to having been with Guede at 11.30pm (and it sounds to me like this is very possible), then that will make another huge hole in the 11.30-11.45 ToD scenario upon which the convictions in the first trial were based.

 

[LondonJohn]

And a small footnote on the timings of the people in the broken down car. These people said that they tried to fix the car by themselves for around 15 minutes, then they gave up and called for breakdown assistance. It's generally agreed that they broke down at 10.30pm. This is corroborated by the testimony of Alessandra Formica (the woman whose boyfriend was barged into by a North African man). She testified that she saw one of the broken-down car's occupants on the telephone at 10.45pm - this was the call to the breakdown service.

Now to the possibly more important question of establishing what time this broken down car was removed from the scene. It's been established that once the call was logged by the control centre of the breakdown service, it took them 20 minutes to assign the pick-up to a particular tow-truck. This means that the tow-truck driver cannot have been alerted to the situation before around 11.05pm. From where he was located at the time of receiving the call, it would have taken him another 15-20 minutes to drive to the location of the breakdown. He therefore cannot have arrived at the breakdown location before 11.20-11.25pm. Everyone agrees that it took 10-15 minutes to hook up the car to the truck and so on, meaning that the broken-down car and its occupants left the scene at some time between 11.30 and 11.40pm.

 

[RWVBWL]

I'll ignore the fluff but comment on the drifter thing.

I did notice that initially - the power of language and media, perhaps. Was surprised there wasn't more of an immediate Aha !

In any case Kercher snr is entitled to call RG whatever he wishes - If you wish to follow him in this then, for the sake of consistency, be aware he also refers to AK as 'unequivocally, culpable'.

I actually use the term 'drifter' to highlight how RG is differentiated by the Foakers from the other 2 convicted of the murder.

In reality, as far as I am concerned RG is actually a convicted killer ( Murder & Sexual assault)
.

Hi once again, Platonov,
Here's some more fluff for ya:

You know, when I earlier wrote that I had always considered Rudy Guede to just be a basketball-playing, pot-selling guy who,
while unlucky with the ladies, luved to party+dance,
in many ways I can identify with him 30 years ago back when I was his age.
Seeminingly adrift in life, but enjoyin' it!

Rudy Guede played basketball alot, I surfed.
Rudy Guede didn't have a real, 9-5 type of job, nor continue to further his education while attending a local college,
nor did I, since all I wanted to do was I surf, party and try to "get lucky" with chicks...
Rudy Guede, though never "busted" for dealing drugs, whether pot, hash, acid, coke, or whatever other hard stuff, is said to have been a small-time dealer.
I too have done some minor dealin' 30 years ago, heck 1 time even bringin' an oz of Hawaiian buds back to Venice from the North Shore.
But like Rudy Guede, I was never "busted", so with no court record, was I, or Rudy Guede, really a drug dealer?

I have always wondered, how did Rudy Guede pay for his rent? His food? Where did he get the $$$ to party?
Pretty easy to figure out. A young guy with no job either has a rich family, a trust fund, a rich chick or if on the other team a "sugar daddy", or possibly even stealin' or dealin'.
Which 1 do you really think it was?

Rudy Guede has been linked to stolen propery. I had my 1st arrest due to, gosh, I don't even know what it would be called, since I never even had to appear in court.
BUT I was guilty, with a few friends, of entering an unlocked car, and then riffling thru it's contents, and so I was kicked hard, arrested, and went to jail overnight.
That made me realize that I was on the wrong path, for there was no surfing behind bars.
Too bad Rudy Guede did not, it appears, get hauled off to jail when he was busted in the kindergarten school, while in possesion of a knife and stolen property.
This AT A SCHOOL, of all places!
Maybe it would have helped Rudy Guede to realize that he too was on the wrong path and it would have done him some good!

Heck, maybe Meredith Kercher would still be alive today...
If he was there when she was killed, BUT did not participate, maybe he could have helped talk the person who did stab Meredith to her death out of doing it.
Or at the least, maybe he would have actually tried to "save her", instead of sexually assaulting her.
I wonder...

There has been speculation that since Rudy Guede did not end up in jail for the B+E at the school+possesion of stolen property, that he was a "police informant".
Very possible, in my opinion.
Why can I say that, Platonov?
Because I have been a "police informant" myself!
Years ago, a "person" approached me, befriended me over time, started eventually askin' me about "so+so",
found out I couldn't stand this person, finally told me they were undercover, asked for my help,
and over a few months I did just that, "this is so+so", "that car belongs to so+so", etc.
The person was eventually arrested and had their "business" disrupted, for a while, I heard...
You know what, Platonov, you would have never have known that I too was a "police informant".
Would you?
I doubt it...

As I have shared 3 other very personal stories with you folks here, I'll leave it up to you to decide whether to believe me or not.
So with that said, I do really, really wonder if Rudy Guede was a "police informer",
and was let go from serious charges of B+E, possesion of stolen property, etc,
after a phone call.

If so, I hope that this information does somehow come forth at the Appeals Trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito.

But was Rudy Guede a drifter,
as John from the Kercher clan, and many others say?
Rudy lived in Italy since he was 5, so I don't think so...
Was he adrift in life?
Maybe...
Peace,
RWVBWL

PS-I enjoy reading.
There is someone, posting on PMF+elsewhere,
that reminds me A LOT of my days bein' undacova...

 

[shuttlt]

I agree. The question should be then; have you reached the point of reasonable doubt?

I doubt and I don't think I'm necessarily unreasonable, or other people on the Internet are necessarily unreasonable for doubting. Equally we don't have to decide, do we? If I was on the jury my judgement wouldn't be academic and, to me at least, that would I suspect make a difference to my approach to the case, and perhaps my judgement.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

One study, employing a 225 kcal solid meal, found greater than 95% gastric emptying at 240 min., with 60% emptying at 120 min. (Tougas, G., Am. J. Gastroenterol., 2000). In addition to female sex, lower BMI also seems to extend gastric emptying, and it may be that the gastric emptying curve for slender females lies somewhat to the right of the curve for an average population.

A lag phase of four hours would be indicative of fairly severe gastroparesis, the most common causes of which are diabetic neuropathy and previous gastric surgery (60% of cases).

Thank you.

I don't think Meredith had gastroparesis. I think what happened is as follows:

- She started her meal around 6 pm
- She and her friends started their movie around 6:30 pm
- They paused it for dessert around 8 pm
- She arrived home at 8:55 pm
- She was killed at 9 pm after a brief struggle with a knife-wielding assailant.

This explains the digestive evidence, it explains why the toilet was not flushed, and it explains why she made no further effort to call her mother after the aborted 8:56 attempt. It also fits every last detail in the crime scene photos, from the splash of blood on the bed slats to the outer garment that she was still wearing when she was attacked.

 

[RWVBWL]

Just ask your doctor...

shuttit,
I have previously suggested that people ask physicians, especially surgeons and anesthesiologists, whom they know, "How long does it take for the stomach to start and to finish emptying." I did.

Greeting Halides1,
I have been patiently waiting for any of the "colpevolisti" to ask their own doctors this and then come onto here, a neutral forum, and publicly prove LondonJohn, Kevin Lowe or yourself wrong...

Come on Stilicho, Machiavelli, Fine, Treehorn, Alt-F4, Odeed, Solange305, CapeAladin, Platonov, Pilot Padron, Fulcanelli, and whomever else I have forgotten:
Just ask your doctor.

But I am still waiting for that to happen.
And I sometimes wonder why?
Hmmm...
RWVBWL

 

[billyryan]

Thank you.

I don't think Meredith had gastroparesis. I think what happened is as follows:

- She started her meal around 6 pm
- She and her friends started their movie around 6:30 pm
- They paused it for dessert around 8 pm
- She arrived home at 8:55 pm
- She was killed at 9 pm after a brief struggle with a knife-wielding assailant.

This explains the digestive evidence, it explains why the toilet was not flushed, and it explains why she made no further effort to call her mother after the aborted 8:56 attempt. It also fits every last detail in the crime scene photos, from the splash of blood on the bed slats to the outer garment that she was still wearing when she was attacked.

That is it in a nutshell Charlie,ten lines is all it takes

 

[shuttlt]

Am I the only one who doesn't know any physicians, surgeons or anesthesiologists? If I went to my GP with this I imagine he'd be annoyed with me for wasting his time, (or have me sectioned ).

Incidentally, this puts me in mind of a whole line of argument a while back. There was a lot of talk about how anybody with the least grasp of forensics could tell with absolute assurance (perhaps I'm overstating a little) that the DNA on the knife was worthless and Steffanoni's techniques flawed. The Innocence Project, or at least people associated with the Innocence Project, were involved. Here again we seem to have evidence that my GP should be able to confidently be able to make a judgement about, but this time sufficient to, in and of itself, clear Amanda and Raffaele. It should surely, under these circumstance, be easy enough to rustle up a suitably senior and impressive expert witness to come and destroy the prosecutions case? Is there any indication that this is happening?

By the way, as a side note... what happened to the whole Innocence Project thing? Did it all fizzle out after the petition?

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

Am I the only one who doesn't know any physicians, surgeons or anesthesiologists? If I went to my GP with this I imagine he'd be annoyed with me for wasting his time, (or have me sectioned ).

Incidentally, this puts me in mind of a whole line of argument a while back. There was a lot of talk about how anybody with the least grasp of forensics could tell with absolute assurance (perhaps I'm overstating a little) that the DNA on the knife was worthless and Steffanoni's techniques flawed. The Innocence Project, or at least people associated with the Innocence Project, were involved. Here again we seem to have evidence that my GP should be able to confidently be able to make a judgement about, but this time sufficient to, in and of itself, clear Amanda and Raffaele. It should surely, under these circumstance, be easy enough to rustle up a suitably senior and impressive expert witness to come and destroy the prosecutions case? Is there any indication that this is happening?

By the way, as a side note... what happened to the whole Innocence Project thing? Did it all fizzle out after the petition?

Hi ShutLt,

I just happen to run a medical billing business in the US and we specialize in Gastroenterology. We bill for many facilities (endoscopy centers) and physicians and even dozens of anesthesiologists. That is the only reason I have people to ask. The truth of the matter is GI docs are not the ones to best answer the whole t(lag) question. Mostly they deal with diseases of the GI system and/or normal healthy colons (screening colonoscopies ). The one GI doc I asked actually asked a peer of his, a pathologist what he thought.

IMO, the best specialty to have a good grasp on stomach contents as they relate to time of death are forensic pathologists. Unfortunately I do not know any of those.

 

[shuttlt]

IMO, the best specialty to have a good grasp on stomach contents as they relate to time of death are forensic pathologists.

Yes. But again, I don't know any forensic pathologists. Where's Dr. Quincy when you need him?

 

[billyryan]

This was indeed my source. Guede's lawyers also appear to have documents related to this - which I can only assume are some sort of sworn statement to the effect that Guede's story is actually true. They tried to have the documents admitted in Guede's first appeal - more as an appeal to Guede's veracity than as an important piece of evidence in themselves, since Guede's judge decided that the murder took place by 10.30pm. But the evidence was not deemed admissible in the first appeal, evidently on the grounds that it did nothing to challenge the case established in the first trial: if the murder happened before 10.30pm, then Guede would have had ample time to get back to his apartment, change, and meet up with these friends before 11.30pm - so any evidence that he actually DID meet up with friends at that time would be somewhat irrelevant - in Guede's case.

But clearly this evidence (if it exists) has a potentially big part to play in Knox's and Sollecito's appeals. I find it pretty extraordinary in any case that the two different courts established two significantly different ToDs in their reasoning behind the respective convictions, since they were both trying to find the "truth" out about exactly the same crime, supposedly carried out by the same group of people at the same time.

And that's why I asked the question of whether Sollecito's and/or Knox's appeal lawyers might have followed up this lead - certainly to the extent of asking Guede's lawyers what they have by way of evidence. If Knox's or Sollecito's lawyers are able to put one or more people on the stand who will testify to having been with Guede at 11.30pm (and it sounds to me like this is very possible), then that will make another huge hole in the 11.30-11.45 ToD scenario upon which the convictions in the first trial were based.

Rudy Guede's lawyers appear to be one more time trying to convince the judges that Rudy had a date with Meridith,he went to use the bathroom someone entered the house fatally stabed Meridith and left,this story has already failed twice and I cannot see any reason for it to be sucessful this time

The only chance that I see for Rudy would be for his lawyers to meet Knox/Sollecito lawyers and discuss their mutual interests,the prosecuters have so far sucessfully got them fighting one another

Knox/Sollecito lawyers are representing clients who are innocent,Rudy's lawyers are representing a client who is guilty,but it is better that a guilty man walks than innocent defendents get convicted