Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

Innocence project

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?

shuttlt,

I think that there was some confusion because Dr. Hampkian coauthored the the open letter, along with Elizabeth Johnson. He is affiliated with the Idaho innocence project, IIRC, but I do not think that the innocence project itself is involved in this case. At this point no one knows who will be called by the defense at the appeal. Based on the fact that Dr. Hamipkian has since referred to this as one of his cases, I would assume that he might be called. He has also noted the difficulty in obtaining documentation from ILE.

My own position on the knife is that it is clearly in the low copy number range, yet Stefanoni did not take the precautions one ordinarily does when working in this range. She did not repeat the work, as one should when doing LCN profiling, and she is not following any protocol from the literature, so far as anybody can document.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

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

I don't know any either, but I do have a book by one of the best in the world, and it discusses this very subject, as follows:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden01.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden02.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden03.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/baden04.gif

Is he oversimplifying? Perhaps. But what he says is generally accepted as a valid principle, according to the cases I have followed.

 

[shuttlt]

Thanks Halides, that is my recollection as well. Things got all tense and points scoring when it came up. I had another look at their site. They only seem to list resolved cases, so even now I'm not 100% clear. Not important though.

 

[shuttlt]

Charlie,

Aren't those links talking about whether the food is digested rather than whether they have left the stomach? Or am I looking for a more specific connection than you intended?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I should take seriously a guy who is unable to read a single written phrase on a diary, calculates a probability of 21,3% from three events that imply a 80% probability, thinks that people are members of self selected communities, thinks that logic is psychology and never sits on an armchair when he thinks rationally.
Who cares of what you take seriously. I repeat what I want.

I'm not going to engage with this kind of misleading personal attack. The awkward fact remains that the scientific literature stands totally independent of the person citing it. You could find out tomorrow that I was a convicted goat molester and do you know what that would mean for Meredith's time of death?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's based on science, not on any personal authority I do or do not possess.

One serious thing. I think you can understand that the logical starting point of my reasoning is: there is evidence. The evidence of ther involvement is already there. It is not something I am uncertain about.
An element like the Naruto file combined with an early time of death is merely suggestive. It is elements suggesting the idea of an alibi. They do not consist in evidence of an alibi. On the other plate of the scale there is evidence of involvement, that cannot be overweighted by suggestive elements. You should not think as if I just feel suspicion on the two. An alibi to counter this evidence would only be a proof that the two of the defendants stayed away from the cottage continuously over a period of time that covers all possible times of death.
So the wrong choice, a mistake from the roots, is to go betting on the time of death and on the Naruto file. The game can only be played on the evidence accusing them.

Whereas this pile of claims is based on no evidence whatsoever, just your unsupported word.

When you have made claims based on your unsupported word before, all too often we have cited sources that showed that you were lying, or were mistaken and had not checked your facts.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

My comment was:

"No? And why not? Because of Naruto episode 101?"

Yet, I didn't understand why you think Amanda and Raffaele could not possibly have been present when she started to have problems or suffering harassment at home, just based on the log of Naruto episode 101 file (if there is).

The cure for this problem is for you to read what LondonJohn and I have actually written. It sounds like this Machiavelli is just going off second-hand reports of what we wrote that you picked up on PMF, and that particular echo-chamber of wilful self-delusion is a very poor place to try to pick up true facts about anything said here at the JREF forums.

Meredith was almost certainly dead by the time the Naruto file as opened at 21:26, and there is reasonable medical certainty that she was dead by 22:00, which given that the Naruto file would have run until 21:49 and including travel time rules out any scenario where they were involved in her death, except possibly a story where she was ambushed by Rudy the moment she got home, tortured or something until 22:00 when Amanda and Raffaele could get there, and then they decided to stab her to death for no reason.

If that's your favoured hypothesis then just clearly say so and we can talk about it, but the problems with it are so obvious that I have trouble imagining that you want to do that.

A serious question: Do you accept that the Massei narrative and the Massei time of death have been satisfactorily proven to be false? Or are you currently defending the Massei narrative?

 

[shuttlt]

Not to nitpick, but assuming it is accepted that the file access of Naruto was down to human activity, this does not surely prove that they watched it.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Charlie,

Aren't those links talking about whether the food is digested rather than whether they have left the stomach? Or am I looking for a more specific connection than you intended?

Here is what Baden writes:

"Within two hours of eating, 95 percent of the food has moved out of the stomach and into the small intestine."

Meredith's dinner had not yet begun to empty from her stomach. That suggests she was killed within two hours of eating. She ate at around 6 pm, but she had dessert around 8 pm, and that presumably slowed her digestion enough so that her stomach was still full when she was killed at 9 pm. It could have been 9:30 pm, 10 pm on the very outside, but not after 11:30 pm, as Massei states. That is ridiculous, well outside the range of human physiology unless she had a serious illness, which she did not.

 

[Fine]

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.

________________________

Charlie, you may find this Innocentisti scenario more plausible, as the pieces fit together better....
Rudy didn't leave his feces in the toilet the night of November 1st. That night, as an acquaintance, he'd talked his way in. His feces were left the next morning, precisely when Amanda came home to shower. Isn't it much more likely for his feces to slip down the toilet minutes after being deposited than, what?, fourteen-plus hours later?! He didn't flush so as not to alert Amanda. He'd come back to stage the burglary and remove his bloody footprints from the bathroom floor. And that's why Amanda found the front door open. When Rudy had left the prior night he'd locked the front door. When he returned the next morning Rudy still had the keys, entered, and had no reason the lock the door behind himself.

This also dissolves the contradiction between Amanda's statement and Raffaele's statement about Filomena's door. Amanda said that when she first left the cottage, at, say, 11:00 am, Filomena's door was closed. (Otherwise Amanda would have seen the disorder in Filomena's room.) But Raffaele said that when the lovebirds arrived an hour-or-so later, upon entering the cottage with Amanda, he found Filomena's door "wide open." So someone had opened it after Amanda exited the cottage and before the lovebirds returned. Now who would that be? Rudy hid in Filomena's room while Amanda showered. After Amanda exited the cottage, he left Filomena's room, leaving her door open.

And if Rudy came back to stage the burglary---as evidenced above--- there's no need for the Innocentisti to explain how someone scaled that unclimbable wall.

///

 

[Chris C]

Not to nitpick, but assuming it is accepted that the file access of Naruto was down to human activity, this does not surely prove that they watched it.

Do you think they opened the file to give themselves an alibi? I mean if I was going to give myself an alibi before committing murder, I could think of a bunch of better ways.

Since its obvious the opening of the file wasn't to give themselves an alibi, what does the file prove? It proves someone accessed the computer at 2126.

It also shows that rather than walking towards Meredith's, someone was sitting behind the computer. It also proves that Curatolo is outright lieing when he says he saw Knox/Sollecito in the park at (2128?). Add that with the defense saying they can prove the computer had more human interaction during Mignini's ToD he got from reading "Les Propheties".

 

[Mary_H]

<snip>
My own position on the knife is that it is clearly in the low copy number range, yet Stefanoni did not take the precautions one ordinarily does when working in this range. She did not repeat the work, as one should when doing LCN profiling, and she is not following any protocol from the literature, so far as anybody can document.

From an article by Andrea Vogt in today's Seattle P-I:

"The amount of Kercher's DNA found on the blade was such a trace amount it registered with a "too low" reading when analyzed.

"A top geneticist at one of Europe's top forensic labs at the University of Salzburg confirmed in an interview with seattlepi.com that it is possible to amplify such a small amount of DNA, as Stefanoni did, until DNA can be identified.

"But the expert added that it would not be allowable unless the result could be reproduced, something police biologist Stefanoni said under cross-examination could not be done."

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/431257_knox06.html

 

[Mary_H]

I love this case. It's all but impossible to find a single "fact" that there isn't some contrary bit of evidence or expert opinion that introduces doubt.

As far as I have found, no one has been able to raise any doubts about this fact:

On November 5th, before Raffaele and Amanda were interrogated, the police had no evidence whatsoever tying them to the crime.

 

[Dan O.]

And if Rudy came back to stage the burglary---as evidenced above--- there's no need for the Innocentisti to explain how someone scaled that unclimbable wall.

///

Came back to the scene of a brutal murder in broad daylight?

 

[Mary_H]

________________________

Charlie, you may find this Innocentisti scenario more plausible, as the pieces fit together better....
Rudy didn't leave his feces in the toilet the night of November 1st. That night, as an acquaintance, he'd talked his way in. His feces were left the next morning, precisely when Amanda came home to shower. Isn't it much more likely for his feces to slip down the toilet minutes after being deposited than, what?, fourteen-plus hours later?! He didn't flush so as not to alert Amanda. He'd come back to stage the burglary and remove his bloody footprints from the bathroom floor. And that's why Amanda found the front door open. When Rudy had left the prior night he'd locked the front door. When he returned the next morning Rudy still had the keys, entered, and had no reason the lock the door behind himself.

This also dissolves the contradiction between Amanda's statement and Raffaele's statement about Filomena's door. Amanda said that when she first left the cottage, at, say, 11:00 am, Filomena's door was closed. (Otherwise Amanda would have seen the disorder in Filomena's room.) But Raffaele said that when the lovebirds arrived an hour-or-so later, upon entering the cottage with Amanda, he found Filomena's door "wide open." So someone had opened it after Amanda exited the cottage and before the lovebirds returned. Now who would that be? Rudy hid in Filomena's room while Amanda showered. After Amanda exited the cottage, he left Filomena's room, leaving her door open.

And if Rudy came back to stage the burglary---as evidenced above--- there's no need for the Innocentisti to explain how someone scaled that unclimbable wall.

///

That's not bad, Fine. I can find some holes, though. If Rudy were in the bathroom when Amanda got home, he would leave as soon as she got in the shower, not hide in Filomena's room waiting for her to go back out, because he would have no way of knowing she was going back out.

It's unlikely Rudy knew he had left a bloody footprint on the bathmat. If he knew it, he probably would have taken the bathmat with him when he left, not come back later for a clean-up. The whole idea of coming back is not sensible -- too dangerous.

As for staging a burglary, he could do that just as well by throwing a rock through the window from outside (there is still controversy about the so-called mess in Filomena's room).

If Amanda remembered Filomena's door as closed, and came back to find it open, she would have mentioned that in her accounts.

The fact that the toilet seems to be of a low water variety leaves open the possibility that the feces were stuck to the back of the bowl for several hours before slipping down into the water.

 

[Machiavelli]

The cure for this problem is for you to read what LondonJohn and I have actually written. It sounds like this Machiavelli is just going off second-hand reports of what we wrote that you picked up on PMF, and that particular echo-chamber of wilful self-delusion is a very poor place to try to pick up true facts about anything said here at the JREF forums.

Meredith was almost certainly dead by the time the Naruto file as opened at 21:26, and there is reasonable medical certainty that she was dead by 22:00, which given that the Naruto file would have run until 21:49 and including travel time rules out any scenario where they were involved in her death, except possibly a story where she was ambushed by Rudy the moment she got home, tortured or something until 22:00 when Amanda and Raffaele could get there, and then they decided to stab her to death for no reason.

If that's your favoured hypothesis then just clearly say so and we can talk about it, but the problems with it are so obvious that I have trouble imagining that you want to do that.

A serious question: Do you accept that the Massei narrative and the Massei time of death have been satisfactorily proven to be false? Or are you currently defending the Massei narrative?

I already said the scenario I am more favourable about sets the time of death between 22:00 and 22:30. This is the time of death I consider more likely.

I consider the 22:13 cell phone record as bearing an opposite weight than the one attributed to it by the defence. I think the logical value of it is this indicates the cottage area.

However, I consider the time of death quite unimportant to establish guilt. I consider Meredith as the possible victim of a prank that might have occurred rather early, organized by Amanda, and her killing as the consequence of the fact something got out ofhand and somebody committed a mistake, after which they decided it was necessary to finish her off.
In the place of a "prank" I consider the possibility of other situations, like something related to the downstairs apartment. Somebody did enter this apartment, wounded a cat, smeared a light interruptor with the cat's blood. The guys living there grew small cannabis plants in there, and Meredith was the only who had the keys.
Another possible initial situation could be Amanda Knox and Rudy Guede meeting alone in the cottage to have sex or other, while Sollecito was in his apartment. As we know, Sollecito had told about Amanda leaving for a while, and I see no actual reason to say this if it were not true.

So I think whatever happened is prepared by a dinamic which contains some unknown previous fact. The assumption is that something rather elaborate was the set of the event, the murder happened in a dynamic of events that span on more than one location.

I do not consider an interaction on Sollecito's computer at 21:26 as an alibi. I do not even consider Sollecito's apartment and the via della Pergola cottage as actually two separate and unrelated locations. Sollecito's apartment is only 380 meters distant from the cottage front door (I am talking of the cottage door, not the cottage gate). This means, in a very slow relaxed walk (80 meters/minute = 2.9 mph) it would take 4minutes 45 seconds to walk from one place to the other. A bit hasty walk (110 meters/minute = 4.3 mph) would take 3 minutes 25 seconds.

I do not consider the "Massei narrative" an object of interest or of debate, and I refrain from any judgement. At the time the editing of the translation was being closed, in my comments on the editing thread I expressed the warning that the Massei sentencing report was already an obsolete document. The Massei report is a step in a process. Many good points were made that will survive the appeal.
On the specific point of ToD, I don't think this is satisfactorily proven to be false. I disagree, for example, on the simplistic dismissal of Lalli's doubts about the ligatures of duodenum in autopsy and the sure claims by the defence (and yourself) that all stomach cotent was for sure still all in the stomach. I don't think you could make a definitive statement on ligatures of all handles just on heresay. I disagree on claims of no alcohol consumption. And so on, only examples of my thoughts on this point. I don't see any need to consider the Massei ToD as the correct one, but I do not see any ground to assert it was disproven, just on the basis of reading defence documents and selecting gastroenterology studies.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Hello again, Machiavelli!

Let's continue with dissecting the break-in points you made. First of all I'd like to notice that all the arguments you proposed are of incredulity kind. We don't have any positive evidence of the staging. There is no trace of any DNA on the rock or fingerprints on the window. And e.g. Raffaele's DNA on Filomena's clothing or on the rock would be hard to explain

So all you're left with to argue is that a real break-in that would result in the given state of evidence is improbable. But such an argument goes both ways, because one can successfully argue, that the evidence is not compatible with a staging either.

But we can go further by providing a break-in scenario that incorporates all the evidence. There is such a possible and in fact probable scenario.

But for now let's deal with some misconceptions about the state of clothing in the room that you presented.

2. Crumbles of white paint from the window shutters in Filomena's room had fallen on top of clothes that were tossed on the floor.

Here you've made two strong but not supported assertions.
One is that the clothes were tossed which would indicate a purposeful action. In fact there was a pile of partially folded clothing in front of the wardrobe, but there is a good explanation for its presence that not include tossing. We'll get to it later.
Next unsupported assertion is that the powdery whitish substance is white paint from the inner window shutters. First of all it looks more like dust or cement than painted wood chips:
http://injusticeinperugia.org/160.jpg
It is entirely possible (and more probable) that it was in fact tracked on the soles of the burglar that stepped through the window.

And this tiny grains, apart from being far away from any of the white window blinds look more like they came from the rock that fell very close:
http://injusticeinperugia.org/130.jpg

Rock that shed dust and small grains for comparison:
http://injusticeinperugia.org/106.jpg



Next, let's deal with the further misconception - that the room was strewn with clothes. You stated it in two of your points:

3. The big stone was found inside a paper bag that had fallen on top of clothes.
5. The room was strewn with clothes and this is a nonsense activity for a burglar, while no valuables were taken, even if easily transportable. There is nothing useful in searching Filomena’s sweaters in her wardrobe.

Again, time to confront it with reality:
http://injusticeinperugia.org/150.jpg

Are there any clothes strewn across the room? Not exactly. There's a neat pile directly under the open wardrobe. Apart from it there's one small still folded piece (can't identify it) and the dark blue sweater, that apparently was left on top of the paper bag full of clothes^*). That bag was tipped over by the falling rock. And the piece of clothing landed on the floor, partially under that bag:
http://injusticeinperugia.org/publishImages/window~~element153.jpg

Is it a very poor staging or are there other explanations? They are many of course, but I like very much the TV cable scenario proposed by Hendry
It is well reasoned and evidenced with photos and fits the evidence extremely well. Most of all I like how it exemplifies real world unpredictability by producing a result that induces conspiracy theories, but at the same time leaves conspiracy theorists baffled and unable to shoehorn the evidence into a sensible explanation

^*) Filomena's room is really stuffed with things and she has a habit of storing them in bags and boxes all over the room.

 

[Machiavelli]

I'm not going to engage with this kind of misleading personal attack. The awkward fact remains that the scientific literature stands totally independent of the person citing it. You could find out tomorrow that I was a convicted goat molester and do you know what that would mean for Meredith's time of death?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's based on science, not on any personal authority I do or do not possess.

(..)

But you are not a convicted goat molester. You are someone who made a series of illogical points of reasoning in this very same debate. You are mistaken if you take my personal attack as an argument of authority. To me it is a point of logic. On the basis of your logical processes and your cognitive modus operandi, I consider debate with you is not an interesting goal.
On the contrary, your argument about "taking seriously" the poster (me) who doesn't "back up his claims with literature", was actually an argument of authority. What you consider skepticism, i consider it a concealed argument of authority: "I won't believe you unless you prove it, and I assert what you say is false unless you bring a literature". This is an argument about authority, although you may see it differently. You start from the premise that what I say is false.
In fact, from the first post from you directed to me - you questioned the fact I was not posting on other forums - your first argument was ad hominem and a competitive challenge directed towards the poster's credibility.
There is nothing wrong in this but I am not interested in this kind of debate, not interested in submitting my credibility to the assessment these "skepticals" and I am not interested in debating with people who are overly sure of obviously false (not just unproven) assertions.

 

[Katody Matrass]

So I think whatever happened is prepared by a dinamic which contains some unknown previous fact. The assumption is that something rather elaborate was the set of the event, the murder happened in a dynamic of events that span on more than one location.

So you must make strong unsupported assumptions to even propose your scenario. When it comes to putting it all into plausible time segments it gets even more hairy. When we put in the phone records, the broken car people, computer activity etc. it becomes quite hard to make a comprehensive and detailed scenario isn't it?
Funny that burglary gone wrong scenario doesn't suffer from such problems.

 

[Machiavelli]

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.

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:
(.. )

But I did start from a finding of 227 mm that was obviously to be corrected by increasing it due to perspective.
Don't you remember?
And, despite your belief, I did not put in any "huge blur" due to camera motion.

 

[Katody Matrass]

You are mistaken if you take my personal attack as an argument of authority.

I guess that's another great line to preserve