Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[capealadin]

Again this is a speculative statement posted in an authoritative tone. Do you know that Meredith locked her door during the day? It is my understanding that the other room mate Filomena said she did not.

Which is true?

Filomena stated that the ONLY time Meredith locked her door, was when she left for a couple of days.

 

[Fulcanelli]

Life's too short to play both sides of the game just to make it a challenge for myself, and you seem to be doing a good job on this point.

I think the important points about the knife are that the substance tested was not blood, the test could not be replicated, the precautions needed for safe LCN DNA testing were not in place and Stefanoni kept testing until she got the result she wanted. Under those circumstances a false positive seems like the clearly indicated conclusion, and given that the knife is no longer relevant.

I think it's a fair point that the police "verbal" that they smelled bleach in Raffaele's house was ill-chosen since if he had indeed cleaned the knife with bleach then it is nigh impossible that a picogram-sized patch of Meredith's flesh on the side of the knife would have escaped contact with the bleach solution, and there was nothing else in Raffaele's apartment that was candidate for a crime-related bleaching. However if we dismiss the bleach claim as a coincidence or a verbal, the defendants could have cleaned it without bleach.

Nobody knows 'what' the material on the knife was or wasn't, since there wasn't enough for a blood test and LCN DNA testing won't tell you what kind of cell the DNA came from. Therefore, speaking in absolutes as you are here is rather misguided and frankly, plain wrong.

 

[Fulcanelli]

This reminds me of the wonderful Proofs of P article.

"Zabludowski has insinuated that my thesis that p is false, on the basis of alleged counterexamples. But these so- called "counterexamples" depend on construing my thesis that p in a way that it was obviously not intended -- for I intended my thesis to have no counterexamples. Therefore p."

I can only respond to what you actually post, not to a different and unfalsifiable argument that you wish you posted.

In any case the point remains uncontested that the police did try to identify clothes Amanda and Raffaele might have been wearing and disposed of and failed to find any that could not be accounted for. That does not make it impossible for them to be guilty, but it's one more piece of evidence that should be there and is not.



"Special pleading" is not a term you wheel out every time that someone you are debating with differentiates between two things that are actually different. You have to establish that the other person has claimed a general rule, and then made up a special exception to that rule.

It's a slam-dunk that Rudy had time to dispose of his bloody clothes and knife - he had two weeks during which he was unaccounted for and unsought, travelling over a large distance. Those items could have been dumped in garbage bins all over Italy.

Amanda and Raffaele would have faced substantially greater problems. They were in Perugia, if they were seen disposing of clothing or knives they would have been screwed, the area around the murder scene and their houses would doubtless have been searched, their wardrobes were inventoried with a view to establishing if anything was missing, and yet absolutely no evidence has ever emerged that they disposed of a single shirt or shoe.

These two cases are substantially different. However you are free to try to state what general rule I am arguing for and what special exemption I am pleading for.



Yet again we have a pro-guilt poster who seems to think that gloves are stapled on... you are aware, are you not, that gloves are removable? And that people do remove them do do things like wipe their backsides, get clothing off an unwilling person or use a knife (depending on the glove it can be quite awkward to try to cut things with gloves on as I have discovered while camping).

There is no direct evidence that Rudy wore gloves - it's just an uncontroversial hypothesis that fits the available facts and is consistent with what burglars do.

For that matter there's no direct evidence Rudy did not wear gloves. This is why I consider the "Rudy left no DNA or fingerprints in Filomena's room, therefore the break-in was staged" particularly weak - it relies absolutely on the convenient assumption that Rudy did not wear gloves, and was completely unaware that it might be a bad idea for a housebreaker to rummage through people's stuff ungloved.

Two weeks are enough but four days aren't? How long does it take to throw clothes away in a communal rubbish bin the other side of town...five days? Six? A week? Two?

In any case, I guess we'll be hearing no more claims that the knife in the drawer couldn't have possibly been the murder weapon as the little angels would have thrown it away instead, since Kevin has established for everyone they'd have needed at least two weeks and a trip to Germany to throw it away!

 

[Fulcanelli]

The test for blood was more sensitive than the test for DNA, so whatever the sample was it wasn't blood. I've seen guilters try out the hypothesis that it was a blood-free chunk of Meredith's flesh or something, but it's a bit of a reach to hypothesise that whatever it was it got there without blood also being there, if it got there when the knife was used to stab Meredith.

I think it's, to be very cautious, substantially more likely than not based on the tests that whatever Stefanoni was testing, it was not blood or flesh.



We are talking about picograms of material here. I can't imagine any scenario where DNA in it survives immersion in bleach, any more than I can imagine a picogram of sugar not dissolving in a cup of hot tea.

What? Where'd you get that from? LCN DNA testing is far more sensitive then any blood test. We are talking less then ten cells here and possibly as few as one...there's no blood test that's going to detect that low number.

DNA wasn't lying around on the knife, CELLS were on the knife. DNA is inside the cells. Therefore, whatever you apply has to break down the cells first before it can get to the DNA to destroy it. If all the cells aren't completely broken down then some DNA will remain.

 

[Fulcanelli]

It's just a fact that witnesses are very imperfect, far more so than most people who haven't studied the issue believe.

However if everything about Curatolo's evidence was kosher except for the buses I think we'd look more leniently on him. His late arrival with his evidence, his previous history of coming forward with convenient evidence for the police, the fact that his story meshes perfectly with the Massei/Mignini time of death which turned out to be a ridiculous contrivance combined with the bus issue are all significant strikes against him even before it turned out that the computer evidence looks likely to completely contradict him.

There's also a huge difference between arguing that inaccuracies in your testimony mean you are unreliable, and arguing that inaccuracies in your testimony mean that you are a murderer. Nobody's arguing that because Curatolo got the buses wrong that therefore he must be hiding something and therefore he must have murdered Meredith Kercher.

What do you mean his late arrival? Curatolo came forward right in the early days of the case. He'd have come forward earlier still had he realised what he'd seen was relevant to the crime. He had witnessed no crime or accident after all and not seen anything 'at' the cottage. All he'd seen was two kids sitting on a bench in a park. Do you rush down the police station to make a statement each time you see a couple of kids on a bench?

As for his previous history...it's amazing what people will do in front of tramps as they are considered invisible and irrelevant. After all, many of you have proven exactly that in the course of this thread. How passionately you have all argued that Curatolo should not be considered credible due to his homeless status.

Curatolo's testimony doesn't 'mesh perfectly' with the prosecution TOD. The prosecution TOD meshes perfectly with Curatolo's testimony (and that of the other witnesses). Get it the right way round.

 

[Fulcanelli]

This is a very draining post to reply to. I am talking about her interrogation. I have no clue why a girl in this day and age, we're not talking about older cases, we're not talking about someone who has no clue about the world. Her mother is on her way and they are talking about a murder.

If she as confused about the interrogation she should have stopped. As I said she's either incredibly stupid or she knows something more than she's letting on. I don't think she's necessarily guilty of killing the woman but to me accusing a man of murdering her room mate is beyond the pale. If you think about it Karma is an efficient wench. If the Bar manager didn't have a rock solid alibi he could be sitting right where she is.

It really concerns me that her story changed so much during interrogation. Of course it is going to change afterward, all criminal stories change afterward.

Oh, it's much worse then that. The interrogation WAS stopped and she was made a formal suspect. They were done with her for the night. Not content with that she then insisted on being heard again, to make a voluntary statement. It was in that second statement she went into detail...describing how she had met Patrick at the basketball court, how they had gone to the cottage together because he 'wanted' Meredith and they wanted to have some fun, how he then went into Meredith's room while she stood in the kitchen covering her ears as he raped and murdered Meredith.

 

[Fulcanelli]

You have no clue?

Okay. I guess you missed the many, many times we have posted links to relevant documents regarding the phenomenon of internalised false statements. If you had read them you would have a clue.

If you browbeat someone for hours, particularly a naive person who trusts authority and doesn't think that innocent people need to shut the hell up and wait for their mother and lawyers to arrive, tell them that they have repressed memories, tell them that they need to recover those memories to help the police catch the bad guy, coach them on exactly what you claim really happened and keep the pressure on all night while they are sleep-deprived you get exactly what we got: A confused, incoherent statement saying exactly what the police told her and no more, fitting with the police theory at the time and incompatible with the facts as we now know them, fingering the person the police told her to say was the killer, and which she expressed grave doubts about the truth of as soon as she had some downtime to get her head together.

As I have said many times before, either Amanda knew exactly what an internalised false statement was meant to look like and faked one perfectly, or she was the victim of an internalised false statement. Her statement makes absolutely no sense either as a deliberate lie or as a real confession.

There has never been a satisfactory answer from any guilter as to this point. They'e tried denying that Amanda's statement has the qualities of an internalised false statement but that is so absurd as to not be worth responding to. They've tried spinning her statement as an evil attempt to throw the police off the scent by fingering Lumumba, but that is an irrelevant response because it does not explain why her statement has the characteristics of an internalised false confession. It's not exactly common knowledge what such a statement should look like - most guilters had no idea until we told them about them that such things even existed.

That's one of the benefits of hanging around the JREF forums. You learn all sorts of interesting things.

Could we not claim any confession to be an internalised thingamywotsit under your criteria? The thing is, you never actually really apply it, rather you brandish it about like a slogan as though simply saying its name makes it apply.

Was Raffaele's statement an internalised waddyacallitthingy too? Are they contagious?

 

[Fulcanelli]

No.

After hours of interrogation, after the police told her that they knew she was involved and that she may have repressed memories, after the police had dictated that she met Lumumba at the basketball court and went to the cottage, after she had been coerced into making statements that implicated here in Meredith's murder, after she had become a suspect under Italian law which requires that the interview be immediately stopped so that the suspect can be provided legal console, instead of following the law, they continued the interview, typed up the statement and had Amanda sign it. This is why the Italian supreme court ruled that the statements were inadmissible.

The statements themselves are lies produced by the illegal interrogation process.

Hours of interrogations? Is there another kind...interrogations that last only five minutes perhaps? Sounds like hyperbole as a plea to sympathy. There was nothing special about this, she was questioned just as any suspect in a murder enquiry is questioned.

The police dictated nothing...Amanda admitted this on the stand. Her story was all hers.

Where's the 'coercion', you've yet to lay that out? It seems to me any act of questioning someone is coercion in your book. At least, if one questions Amanda it's coercion. I mean, treating her in any other way then as a goddess is abuse right? I mean, we all know if you take her out of the universe it will implode since it all revolves around her. In fact, Kevin will be along in a moment with some astronomy literature to prove just that

As soon as Amanda incriminated herself they halted the interview and made her a suspect, even Amanda and her lawyers have never contested that fact. If you're going to claim otherwise then you need to provide some proof. They also only were required to provide her legal counsel if they wished to continue questing her. But that's redundant as the police cannot question suspects, only a judge can and they were all at home tucked up in bed, just like all the lawyers were.

 

[Fulcanelli]

What if what you recognize as exposed ground and soil in your video still is in fact the same lush flora that in my photo? How would you estimate the chances that the photos show exactly the same vegetation?
I would give it a 99,9% chance, what do you think?

Luckily this point is rather irrelevant, because, as others pointed out, Rudy didn't have to step under that window at all. It was easier to simply step down from the porch (or from the rocks below it) directly onto the metal grating.
In fact it looks like a natural way, because if he was to get under that window, the path through the porch or over the planters is the most straightforward.

That way we don't have to worry about any unsupported testimonies anymore.

How long and stretchy do you imagine his legs and arms are? You can't reach the grating from the porch. And even if you could, which you can't, when doing the splits and putting your left foot on the grating and you take your right foot off the floor...what keeps you in the air? You see, this is when gravity kicks in.

 

[Fulcanelli]

It would be one thing if Raffaele had made this remark spontaneously, with no instigation. For example, it would be highly suspicious if Raffaele had spontaneously written, "By the way, if the police should happen to find a knife in my kitchen drawer with Meredith's DNA on it, it's because we cooked at her house and I pricked her with it."

It is not so suspicious, though, when his lawyer tells him the knife proves nothing because the girls could have borrowed it and used it for cooking at their house, and after mulling it over for a couple of days, the power of suggestion leads Raffaele to make some speculations, out of desperation at trying to figure out HOW on earth this knife could have Meredith's DNA on it.

Come to think of it, this brings up an interesting point about the alibis. Raffaele was aware the knife was being held as evidence against Amanda, not against himself:




If Raffaele had not wanted to provide Amanda with an alibi, as has been claimed by many, why would he go to the trouble of putting the knife in his own hand in his imagined scenario about it? Why not just stick with the alarming idea "that Amanda had killed Meredith or had helped someone in the enterprise." That would have been a logical step toward getting himself off the hook.

I think he was looking for the truth, not for any kind of strategy.

But his lawyer didn't tell him that. And Raffaele didn't say that. Raffaele instead told a story that was false and in no way reflects what his lawyer told him, or for that matter what you falsely claim his lawyer told him. Raffaele never said the girls borrowed the knife and took it to the cottage. Raffaele said Meredith came to his flat and he accidentally stabbed her hand with it while cooking. How does that remotely resemble what you have written here?

The knife was being held as evidence against both of them, as Raffaele was well aware. Hence his crock of a story to try and explain it away.

 

[Fulcanelli]

Why do you suggest we have made allegations of some combination of corruption, malfeasance, incompetence or conspiracy without substantiation? I don't know any innocentisto who started out with prejudice against the major players in this situation, except for the families, and they are not posting here. Doug Preston no doubt had his suspicions, but most of us had never heard of him until months after Amanda and Raffaele were taken into custody.

There are in fact, many of the innocentisti "persuasion" who are genuine Italophiles, who resist and discourage any hint of painting the country or its citizens with the brush reserved for the bad guys. What do you think we have accused Mignini, Giobbi, Stefanoni, the Keystone Kops and the Kangaroo Kourt of, that we have not been able to provide evidence for?

Assertions and innuendo aren't evidence. They are wildly different things really.

 

[Mary_H]

Hours of interrogations? Is there another kind...interrogations that last only five minutes perhaps? Sounds like hyperbole as a plea to sympathy. There was nothing special about this, she was questioned just as any suspect in a murder enquiry is questioned.

The police dictated nothing...Amanda admitted this on the stand. Her story was all hers.

Where's the 'coercion', you've yet to lay that out? It seems to me any act of questioning someone is coercion in your book. At least, if one questions Amanda it's coercion. I mean, treating her in any other way then as a goddess is abuse right? I mean, we all know if you take her out of the universe it will implode since it all revolves around her. In fact, Kevin will be along in a moment with some astronomy literature to prove just that

As soon as Amanda incriminated herself they halted the interview and made her a suspect, even Amanda and her lawyers have never contested that fact. If you're going to claim otherwise then you need to provide some proof. They also only were required to provide her legal counsel if they wished to continue questing her. But that's redundant as the police cannot question suspects, only a judge can and they were all at home tucked up in bed, just like all the lawyers were.

The proof is that the Supreme Court threw out the second statement because Amanda had been denied her right to counsel. That counts as Amanda and her lawyers "contesting" the fact, too, since they are the ones who took it to the Supreme Court.

 

[Fulcanelli]

I can't remember what I had for dinner last night.

I have a bit of a pet peeve about the "marijuana defense." I think the lawyers should have left it well enough alone that Amanda and Raffaele just couldn't remember something four days after it happened, without suggesting it was because they were stoned. That just opened the door for people like you-know-who to make accusations about drug abuse.

Amanda remembered quite well. It was fish...the gutting of which left blood all over Raffaele's hands apparently.

Amanda and Raffaele weren't first questioned four days later, they were questioned the day of the discovery, the day right after the murder.

And I've no doubt you can't remember whatever it was you slung in the microwave last night. But had you gone out and bought, gutted and cooked a fresh fish, you'd remember. Just as Amanda did. Raffaele didn't. Strange that.

 

[Mary_H]

But his lawyer didn't tell him that. And Raffaele didn't say that. Raffaele instead told a story that was false and in no way reflects what his lawyer told him, or for that matter what you falsely claim his lawyer told him. Raffaele never said the girls borrowed the knife and took it to the cottage. Raffaele said Meredith came to his flat and he accidentally stabbed her hand with it while cooking. How does that remotely resemble what you have written here?

According to Raffaele, Tiziano said this: "But today I saw Tiziano who calmed me down: he told me that the knife could not have been the murder weapon, according to the legal doctor, and has nothing to do with anything as Amanda could take it and and carry it from my house to her house because the girls didn't have knife so, they are making a smokescreen for nothing ..."

Raffaele said this: "The fact that there is Meredith's DNA on the kitchen is because once while cooking together, I shifted myself in the house handling the knife, I had the point on her hand, and immediately after I apologized but she had nothing done to her. So the only real explanation of the kitchen knife is this."

The knife was being held as evidence against both of them, as Raffaele was well aware. Hence his crock of a story to try and explain it away.

Can you provide documentation that Raffaele believed the knife was being held as evidence against him?

 

[Fulcanelli]

Sure but it would be nice if you presented a scenario that have some plausibility. It would be nice if it was comprehensive enough to explain Meredith's strange phone logs. Or how they cleaned their DNA and traces, yet left Rudy's visible shoeprints intact. Or why they left Rudy's feces and pointed it out to the police, only to accuse Lumumba next. As you see we cannot escape the big picture


I have already shown that it is not illuminated. In fact it is also covered by trees and facing more away from the neighbouring buildings compared to the balcony.
Yes there were break-ins through the balcony. But you forgot that
1. The squatters or burglars had comfort of knowing no one is inside to surprise them.
2. The windows, including Filomena's were sealed shut by the police.

In fact the access through the balcony wouldn't be any easier for Rudy that through the window:
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_427054d034e7392f76.jpg[/qimg]
If he would be surprised there by the tenants, his options to quickly get away were very limited.



As for your "sweater argument" I really can't see what your problem is. Filomena kept some clothing in a paper bag under the window. It was stuffed full, so she put some pieces on top of it. When the rock toppled that bag the clothing fell down, forming what is seen in the picture:
http://injusticeinperugia.org/hendry16.jpg
It's painfully obvious. And you're arguing that one sweater is a proof of "ransacking"?




That photo helped me to understand better why you have arrived at your convincements. Being unobservant had it's part in this

Filomena's windows were 'sealed' simply by being closed and some police tape put across them. Exactly the same way the kitchen window was sealed actually.

Filomena's window and the wall between it and the porch is lit from the road.

What's knowing no one is inside got to do with it? Rudy didn't know no one was inside and that didn't stop him going in through Filomena's window according to you. Why would that have stopped him going in through the kitchen window on the balcony? I'm not seeing the logic.

It's far easier and safer, to climb up to the balcony then it is to Filomena's. Just climb the grate in the window and grab the railings and pull yourself over...and Bob's your mother's brother.

 

[Fulcanelli]

5/6 Nov. It appears that she was interviewed starting around 10PM and gave her false accusation at 1:45AM. Let's go with 3 hours on this one. We have seen that she was pressed for more detail (due to the vagueness of her statement) and she gave an additional statement at 5:45. I am going to say just 1 hour on this one.

Where did you get that time from? My, that's really odd since Amanda and Raffaele didn't even arrive at the police station until 10:15 and at 10:29 Amanda was on the phone to Filomena and at 11 PM Amanda was getting told off for doing cartwheels in the waiting room. yet amazingly, she's being interrogated at 10 pm.

Although, I do understand the desperate need to make the interrogation as long as possible in order to make it fit the waterboarding/thumb screws meme.

Amanda wasn't pressed for more detail. After signing the accusation at 1:45 she requested to be heard again.

 

[Mary_H]

Amanda remembered quite well. It was fish...the gutting of which left blood all over Raffaele's hands apparently.

Amanda and Raffaele weren't first questioned four days later, they were questioned the day of the discovery, the day right after the murder.

We have discussed this before. I was going to address Truethat's three dozen or so posts that state that Amanda and Raffaele couldn't remember what happened the night before, but since you're doing it, too, I might as well just answer yours and hope Truethat reads it.

The only evidence we have of what the police asked Amanda about on the 2nd, 3rd or 4th of November is contained in her e-mail home:

http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2009/02/from-amanda-knox.html

There is no evidence in that e-mail that the police asked Amanda or Raffaele anything about themselves, or where they were or what they did on the night the murder took place. The police may have asked them about it, but we don't have any evidence of that, so we can't assume it.

If the police spent all their interview time on questions about Meredith, then it is not the least bit hard to believe that Amanda and Raffaele would have been focused on Meredith and on the day the body was discovered, rather than on what they did the night of the 1st. By the time they were interviewed about it on the 5th, it is very likely they would have forgotten many details, such as the time they ate, or what times they slept.

And I've no doubt you can't remember whatever it was you slung in the microwave last night. But had you gone out and bought, gutted and cooked a fresh fish, you'd remember. Just as Amanda did. Raffaele didn't. Strange that.

No, if I went out and bought and cooked fish, I would not remember it four days later. I haven't seen any evidence that they gutted a fresh fish. I suspect the "fish blood" remark belongs in the same category with the "pricked Meredith" remark -- made on the advice of lawyers, just in case.

 

[Fulcanelli]

I think we can imagine how that conversation went.

'It can't be Meredith's - there must be some mistake!'

'It's hers alright - You'd better think of some explanation for this or you're going to jail for 30 years!'

5 hours of shouting later - 'possibly pricked Meredith while cooking' defence emerges.

Raffaele's interrogation took place BEFORE the knife was found, as did his questioning by Judge Matteini. Raffaele was never questioned after the knife was found. On the night of the 5th, nobody knew about the knife.

I have no idea how people can be so certain about a case yet they don't even know the basic facts of it, such as these.

 

[Fulcanelli]

According to the Corriere article Patrick was in Court, so it really was an apology directly to him (ETA: actually both articles say that Patrick was there, and that she spoke directly to him).

Wonderful. It only took her three years.

 

[Mary_H]

Where did you get that time from? My, that's really odd since Amanda and Raffaele didn't even arrive at the police station until 10:15 and at 10:29 Amanda was on the phone to Filomena and at 11 PM Amanda was getting told off for doing cartwheels in the waiting room. yet amazingly, she's being interrogated at 10 pm.

Although, I do understand the desperate need to make the interrogation as long as possible in order to make it fit the waterboarding/thumb screws meme.

Amanda wasn't pressed for more detail. After signing the accusation at 1:45 she requested to be heard again.

Amanda's testimony seems to show that the only time she requested making a statement was for the memoriale she wrote the evening of the 6th -- after she had been arrested at midday on the 6th. The 1:45 a.m. and 5:45 a.m. statements were made before that. Can you provide a citation showing that Amanda asked to make a statement at 5:45 a.m.?