Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[RoseMontague]

Thank you RoseMontague for pointing this out.
"Under cross-examination the police interpreter, Anna Donnino, described her role as that of a "mediator" rather than a mere translator of words."

Mediator?!?
Gosh that's a strange term to use.
That's reminds me of the person I had to deal with before my civil rape case went to trial.

I wonder why she would consider herself a mediator?
Might it be because the police were already yelling at Amanda Knox as early as Nov. 3, 2007.
Isn't that just the day after Meredith Kercher was discovered brutally stabbed to her death?

Why would they already be yelling at her? She was not even a suspect yet!

I wonder if the cops were yelling because they just did not understand the English speaking Amanda Knox who,
unlike Meredith's other frighened English speaking friends Robyn Butterworth and Amy Frost,
did not leave town, but simply stayed in Perugia trying to hopefully help the police solve the murder of her friend and housemate.
Hmmm...
RWVBWL

It concerns me as well. You can't mediate the truth. It is what it is. I suspect it is part of the reason they got a false statement.

 

[shuttlt]

It's stretching the bounds of credibility to imagine they wouldn't scrub every inch of the knife.

If all killers always did sensible things far fewer of them would be caught and far fewer murders would be committed in the first place.

Personally I would have left the whole knife soaking in bleach for several hours. Then boil it for an hour in a big pan of water. Zero chance of anybody finding anything.

I've thought the same thing myself.

 

[quadraginta]

Katody, in your picture, is Filomena's window the one furthest from the camera under the overhanging roof?

Are you just now learning who stayed in which room in that apartment?

 

[shuttlt]

There's several litres of blood in the murder room. It would be pretty hard to avoid it. Rudy didn't.

Most of it was in a puddle on the floor, not flying about. You are quite right, of course, Rudy did not avoid it. Whether, and to what extent Amanda and Raffaele did, if they were there, is unknown.

 

[platonov]

It concerns me as well. You can't mediate the truth. It is what it is. I suspect it is part of the reason they got a false statement.

I strongly suspect you are inventing stuff AK didn't even invent.
Was the interpreter there the next morning also when the gift was composed.

 

[Machiavelli]

You are as entitled to such a view as I am to my view that your lack of meaningful comments indicate you cannot point out a flaw in my reasoning.

Evberybody is entitled to make arbitrary unproven deductions, as those of yours are. The only quetion for me is why you chose to have these arbitrary beliefs. I point out that given your rights to make arbitrary and false deductions, they will remain arbitrary and false, though.

You surely misunderstood me. I don't have to assume it and I didn't. It's you who have to assume that both
1. There must have been some tracks left.
2. ILE couldn't possibly have missed them.
(..)

I think, instead, that in my reasoning there is no need of any assumption of any absolute quantificator. None ot the assumptions needs to be sure, nor proven, nor show something as not possible.
I don't have to assume both those premises in order to may my points. I don't have to assume any of those points as absolutely certain.

Your claims that the front window is not illuminated or that the choice of entrance is logical is absurd, as well as that the climbing won't leave any trace or that sweters would normally fall under paper bags containing the rock, these are simply absurd in reality.

As I always said, I am not necessarily interested in replying with arguments to any possible position. The point of showing what the contrary points are and the reasoning behind them, could be a sufficient achievement to me and in a forum, where the readers can make their own judgement. From my point of view, your opinions on each point were lacking of any meaningful argument.
But I posted a photo at least: did you see the exposed soil?

 

[Withnail1969]

Are you just now learning who stayed in which room in that apartment?

Is this an example of asking a question to which you already know the answer?

 

[shuttlt]

Shuttit was invoking one of the many legends about this case. One that was discussed very recently in this thread. I came down hard on him because I am sick of the phony tabloid smears being repeated against Amanda.

I meant nothing by it. We know it was regular underwear do we, not that G-strings are exactly fetish gear in these enlightened times? But still, if going to by granny pants turned into what it turned into, going to buy knives would have been huge... not that they would have anticipated it.

 

[RoseMontague]

Unfortunately it's still the same vegetation and dry leaves:
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_427054d02ab2655efb.jpg[/qimg](click to enlarge)

Thanks Katody.
It appears that it could easily hide some small fragments of glass as well. And probably a virtual plethora of cigarette butts from the investigators smoking down there.

 

[shuttlt]

shuttlt,

The question of whether the police claimed bleach was used was a very contentious one (BobTheDonkey and I had quite a go-around). Stefanoni said that it might have been used, IIRC. However, cleaning with bleach is not difficult. We know that various concentrations work, based on the citations I provided. The hard part is rinsing it away completely, so that when one uses a pipet the next time, the good DNA is not also damaged.

You may find mention of bleach nicking the DNA backbone. A nick is a break in the phosphodiester backbone. It would render the DNA unable to be amplified properly in PCR.

You know more about it than I do Halides. I look forward to seeing what the experts argue at the appeal. For the moment I am prepared to take your word for it, at least to the extent of believing that it is likely that cleaning with bleach would get rid of the DNA.

At the risk of moving the goalposts, given that we don't know whether bleach was used the question becomes a little wider. How much scrubbing would you need to remove blood sufficient for the remarkably sensitive test that was used to fail to detect it?

 

[shuttlt]

Do you now agree from looking at the photo I posted that there was a plethora of sharp pointy potential murder weapons at the girls' apartment?

Yes. They seem to have had a far better equipped kitchen than Raffaele.

 

[Machiavelli]

Thanks Machiavelli!

This still is somewhat blurry and falsifies the colors. But I can imagine why you chose it instead of many other much better images. I guess you think that because the vegetation look brown in that still it can be interpreted as bare mud and soil. Unfortunately it's still the same vegetation and dry leaves:
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_427054d02ab2655efb.jpg[/qimg](click to enlarge)

That photo was chosen because it is from november 2007. The photo is simply a screenshot from a video where you can see also police cars.
Even the vegetation that you show in that picture - unknown date - is still impossible to step on it leaving no traces on it.
And remember the testimonies of people who did step around the house.

 

[quadraginta]

Do you now agree from looking at the photo I posted that there was a plethora of sharp pointy potential murder weapons at the girls' apartment?

I believe we had already established this earlier, when the discussion was about Sollecito's apparent belief that the girls had none.

Might have even been the same photo.

 

[shuttlt]

It concerns me as well. You can't mediate the truth. It is what it is. I suspect it is part of the reason they got a false statement.

You get all that from the word "mediator"? When this kind of thing is done with Amanda's statements people quite rightly complain.

 

[Withnail1969]

This is where Kevin Lowe should swoop down and complain vociferously about the use of an argument from incredulity.

Oh, wait. That's only a fallacy when it is used to cast doubt on Knox's innocence.

Never mind.

Whether one believes in their innocence, or their guilt, or even has come to no sense of certainty either way there is nothing we have learned about the behavior of Knox or Sollecito which would suggest that they would do anything thoroughly.

Or well.

Yeah. I mean obviously when your freedom for the next 30 years depends on you cleaning a knife very thoroughly, you're not going to do it properly or anything. All they had to do was pour bleach on it.

 

[RoseMontague]

But I posted a photo at least: did you see the exposed soil?

Of your blurry picture and Katody's much more clear one, which do you think is more representative of reality?

 

[Withnail1969]

I believe we had already established this earlier, when the discussion was about Sollecito's apparent belief that the girls had none.

Might have even been the same photo.

The photo was posted for Shuttit who asked if such a photo was available. You don't need to respond to my posts if they are directed at others.

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

Or left them the previous night (possible, but I've no idea why).


Or did Amanda not get very bloody at all during the murder? It's not as if there is arterial spray throughout the apartment, or even the murder room.

You'd better go back and look at the pictures of the murder room.

 

[RoseMontague]

You get all that from the word "mediator"? When this kind of thing is done with Amanda's statements people quite rightly complain.

You seem like a reasonable person shuttlt. If Amanda said she didn't do it and the police said she did, what possible middle point could be the result of this mediator's efforts? Would you consider that compromise to be in any way truthful? Can you imagine any situation in her role as police interpreter in an interrogation that this type of mediator role would be an acceptable standard of professionalism or an avenue for the truth?

 

[shuttlt]

You'd better go back and look at the pictures of the murder room.

I remember them. Some parts of the killing you would clearly have gotten blood on you if you had been at all close by. We don't know who was standing where for what, or what they were wearing if they were wearing anything at all.