Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Fulcanelli]

In a not-uncommon error in your quote, the majority of it deals with the rate of emptying of the stomach. But this is not relevant in this case, since Meredith's stomach had not even started to empty yet. It would only be relevant if there was also chyme matter in her duodenum and jejenum (the first two parts of the small intestine), indicating partial emptying of the stomach, but there was none found there.

The only statistic which matters is t(lag) - lag time - the time between the ingestion of food and the start of its passage out of the stomach into the duodenum and beyond.

Your discovered t(lag) time of 2-4 hours is reasonable, but the upper limit is still unsupported by research data. Do you have a link to the paper where you found this 2-4 hour t(lag) mentioned?

And if the 2-3 hour t(lag) is taken (or, frankly, even if a 2-4 hour t(lag)) is taken), it puts the ToD at between 9pm and 9.30pm (or 9.00pm-10.30pm for the 2-4 hour t(lag)). A ToD between 9pm and 9.30pm pretty much blows the prosecution case apart, and even a ToD before 10.30 holes the prosecution case below the waterline. Either timing would pretty much nullify the earwitnesses and Curatolo. A pre-10.30 ToD actually implies a pre-10.15 ToD, since there was a broken down car outside the house between 10.30pm and around 11.35-11.40pm, whose occupants testified to no noise, light, activity or coming/going to the cottage while they were there. And given that even the prosecution concede that if this was a 3-way murder, there must have been a certain amount of pre-amble, this means that Knox and Sollecito would have had to arrive at the cottage before around 10pm at the latest. Of course, a pre-9.30pm ToD implies Knox and Sollecito arriving at the cottage by around 9.10-9.15pm. And Knox and Sollecito have increasing secure computer and eyewitness alibis from 9.40pm backwards, so moving the ToD back before 10.30pm starts to put increasingly immense strain on the whole prosecution case. If it's put back to even pre-10pm, then the case against Knox and Sollecito starts to fall apart.

Whooooa there Nelly. Where are you getting this 11:30 - 40 time from?

 

[Fulcanelli]

bobc,

I believe that the prosecutor moved the TOD back roughly an hour in his closing remarks. I speculate that the defense was caught off-guard. However, I am also baffled as to why the judge allowed him to do this. He had 11 extra months to prepare his case (two years in all), the time between their arrest and the time when they were actually charged.

What do you mean 'allowed' him? The prosecution can put forward any TOD they want.

 

[Antony]

Actually there is a good chance Mignini goes to jail. Just not for the crimes he committed against Knox and Sollecito.

ISTM that the series of suits brought by Mignini against Amanda, the Knox-Mellas family and their lawyers are very much of a piece with the actions that got him indicted. If the link isn't made when she and Raffaele are finally vindicated, then I think there will be reason to ask further questions.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

If you say so Kevin. I know what I've read and I know what they say. That makes it end of subject for me.

This isn't going to be any help to your disciples now is it?

What are they going to say when better-informed posters say to them "The stomach contents evidence demonstrates conclusively that Meredith Kercher could not have died at 23:30. Every scientific source agrees that it is medically impossible for a normal, healthy young woman who ate a small-to-moderate sized meal of pizza and apple crumble with no alcohol or stress at 18:30 to still have undigested cheese and vegetable fibres in her stomach at 23:30 and no food material whatsoever in her duodenum"?

After your disciples have been given multiple citations from peer-reviewed scientific journals that prove that the Massei TOD is pure codswallop, they can't just say "Fulcanelli said he read something that he said said different, so there!", now can they?

For someone who moderates a board where the near-constant refrain for weeks has been "Kevin Lowe isn't a pathologist, hence we can ignore the scientific literature!" there seems to me to be a bit of a problem with announcing "Fulcanelli says we can ignore the scientific literature, so we can!". Are you a pathologist now?

Either way it's still silly - it has never been about any one person's authority, and it has always been about the facts in the literature. However it just strikes me as amusingly perverse that after running with the "Kevin's not an expert, ignore the facts!" talking point for so long you've now switched to "Fulcanelli's an expert, ignore the facts!".

 

[Fulcanelli]

It's always better to go to the actual literature rather than someone's attempt to boil the literature down to a convenient number like "2-4 hours".

What you'll see if you do that is that, in this case, it is overwhelmingly likely that, given that we know that Meredith was alive until 21:05 or so, that Meredith died very shortly after that time.

There is scope for reasonable difference of opinion about whether a t(lag) of 240 minutes under normal circumstances is really incredibly unlikely but not actually impossible, or just flat out impossible. Reasonable people can disagree about whether it's 99.9% certain Meredith died before 22:00 or 100% certain Meredith died before 22:00. However we're arguing about a very small space under the very tail of the distribution.

What reasonable people familiar with the literature do have to agree on is that it's 95% likely Meredith died before 21:30 as a minimum, and 100% impossible that she died at 23:30 barring outright falsification of the evidence by Dr Lalli.



That alone does not rule out Knox and Sollecito's involvement, true. However this is scarcely the only piece of relevant evidence.

There is uncontested evidence of human computer activity on Raffaele's computer at 21:10, and the defence claimed some time ago that it can show evidence of human computer activity at 21:26. More recently they have published error logs that purport to show human computer activity covering the entire possible range of times of death for Meredith even if you give Massei a free kick and allow him his utterly absurd 23:30 time of death.

Put those two together and you've demonstrated that there is no possible way that Amanda and Raffaele could have murdered Meredith because they were not physically present when Meredith died.

That's not the end of the prosecution's problems though. Their "superwitnesses" Nara and Curatolo put Amanda and Raffaele outdoors from 21:30 until 23:00 and the time of death at 23:30. Whoops! There's no way their statements can possibly be reconciled with Amanda and Raffaele leaving Raffaele's house at 21:27 and then rushing to Amanda's house to murder Meredith.

Not to mention that the only fairy story the prosecution could come up with to explain why and how two ordinary students with no history of violence ganged up to sexually molest and murder a housemate was that it occurred after a drug-fuelled sex party got out of hand. Where's the time for a drug-fuelled sex party in any modified narrative that uses the actual time of death?

I've made mocking reference to half-baked guilter theories that have Amanda and Raffaele clicking on a Naruto file at 21:26, running out the door with kitchen knife in hand leaving it to play behind them, bursting through the door of Amanda's house at 21:30, giving Rudy a high five and stabbing Meredith immediately. It's an absurd scenario but it's the only way to cram Amanda and Raffaele in to the crime if you take into account some of the computer evidence and the real time of death.

Include all the computer evidence and it's flat-out impossible.

That's not the end of the problem for the guilter community though. I mean, the fact that it proves that the couple they love to hate had nothing to do with Meredith's murder is enough of a blow, but it's not the whole problem.

This also proves that Mignini and Massei were fools and the prosecution was wrong-headed and malevolent from the beginning. The evidence proving the prosecution narrative to be wrong was there all along, right there in the Massei report. The evidence proving that Nara was a fantasist and Curatolo a nutter or a stooge was there all along, right there in the Massei report.

We've read the literature Kevin. And it doesn't say what you think it does, as we've been trying to tell you for weeks. And what it says it that stomach content should not be used to determine TOD to any exact time frame. That part of the literature you completely ignore. Stop whipping that dead horse already.

 

[lionking]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like time of death is not going to be reconsidered in the appeal. I'm only going on news reports.

If this is so, what is the point of arguments about stomach contents etc?

 

[Fulcanelli]

He did do this, but the defence should have been ready for it nonetheless. However, as you say, it's mysterious (to say the least) as to why the first court allowed the prosecutor to change such a material part of the case in closing argument - there's no way whatsoever (in my view) that such a move would have been allowed in a US or UK court.

Mind you, no UK or US court would have allowed a public prosecutor such as Mignini to say the following in his closing arguments:

"Probably she would have insulted Meredith. And she probably said, 'You are always behaving like a little saint. Now we will show you, and now we will make you have sex!'"

So I guess anything's possible...........

And I would 'guess' you don't have a clue about English and US courts. What IS your experience with them by the way?

But this is irrelevant in any case. We're in an Italian court. Deal with it.

 

[Fulcanelli]

Yes, I'd also be very interested to hear the court's statement that it "won't be reopening ToD", and its reasons why.......

The reasons why are actually quite simple. The reasons offered by the defence to have it reopened weren't good enough. A court doesn't require good reason NOT to do something, it requires good reason to do it in the first place.

 

[Mary_H]

You insist on making claims of personal attacks, placing yourself as the victim. This is a characterization which speaks less well of you than of anyone else.

Katody's post used a derogatory nickname to describe Curatolo. You got that much right in your interesting recreation of the dialogue. However, SomeAlibi's response commented upon this as disrespectful as only one part of a post which was referring to several different aspects of testimony, including, but not limited to Curatolo's.

This was Withnail's interjection into the exchange at that point.

Fulcanelli took issue with this allegation that there was any proof that mental health compromised Curatolo's testimony, and you promptly moved in to support the allegations of mental illness, specifically using a description of his appearance while in court as an example.

And then you later went on in other posts at great length to support your case concerning the relationship between homelessness and "mental illness". I'll spare you the quotes for now. I expect you are as aware of them as I am.

It is beyond disingenuous for you to try and make the claim that ... "This did not start with a question of Curatolo's credibility or the relevance of his testimony." That is nothing more than the most transparent of sophistries.

It was and is most certainly about an attack on Curatolo's credibility as a witness based solely on his status as a homeless person and the "mental illness" assumed to be debilitating to his credibility as a result.

You may try to take refuge in accusations of personal animosity if you wish, but no such thing has happened. Belated attempts to reinvent the substance of a clearly documented posting history will not change that.

Well, thanks for documenting it all. I still don't see where anybody said that Curatolo's testimony was not credible because he is mentally ill.

And I didn't say Katody called him a derogatory name. I said Katody called him Toto. He may call himself that, for all I know.

If you truly believe that the posts you, s_pepys and SomeAlibi leveled toward me yesterday and today don't focus more on personal animosity than they do on your arguments.........far be it from me to disturb your bliss.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

We've read the literature Kevin. And it doesn't say what you think it does, as we've been trying to tell you for weeks. And what it says it that stomach content should not be used to determine TOD to any exact time frame. That part of the literature you completely ignore. Stop whipping that dead horse already.

Why do you keep making these claims?

Any scientifically literate person who reads those papers can discern that under unusual circumstances such as this case, where eyewitness testimony sharply restricts the earliest possible time of death, and stomach contents sharply restrict the latest possible time of death, you can indeed mark out with some precision the remaining possible times of death using this combination of methods.

Asserting otherwise is juvenile. Do you really think that food can stay in your stomach forever without being digested? Or do you really think that Meredith's friends were wrong about her being alive and well at 21:00?

Meredith died some time after she arrived home at 21:05 or so, and some time before any of the food in her stomach moved to her duodenum, and before all of the cheese and vegetable fibres in her stomach were digested. Science can tell us with certainty that this means she could not possibly have been attacked at 23:30. The most likely time of death is immediately after she arrived home, and the Massei time of death is simply not possible.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like time of death is not going to be reconsidered in the appeal. I'm only going on news reports.

If this is so, what is the point of arguments about stomach contents etc?

Based on your perspective as I understand it there is indeed no point in arguing about stomach contents. You are free, in fact, to continue not arguing about that topic.

If you cared about whether or not the accused are factually innocent or guilty it's still very important for reasons which are sufficiently obvious that I will not waste my time elaborating on them.

However you might say that I am not yet convinced that Fulcanelli's claims about the trial are accurate and complete, since the only source for Fulcanelli's claims is Fulcanelli, and in the past Fulcanelli has been wildly inaccurate with regard to matters of fact pertaining to this case.

I think it possible and even likely that the appeal will not see any new evidence with regard to the time of death, but will review Massei's reasoning and the conclusions he drew from that original evidence, and I await more reliable and better informed sources on that point.

 

[Fulcanelli]

It is up to the prosecution to disprove their alibi and Curatolo is the one the prosecution is using for the time of the murder. Unfortunately, his testimony is not likely to hold up in the appeal. As far as the "mound" goes, it is indeed a rather large mound, rather quite detailed in it's inconclusive nature, in my opinion.

Done already. Perhaps you missed the trial? It's now down to the defence to overturn that proof. That's how it works.

You need more then disco buses to overturn Curatolo's testimony. The reason for this is quite simple...it's a proven fact he was actually there on the night of the murder. Disco buses can't change that.

Innocent people don'y create mounds of evidence against them...inconclusive or not. And the 'whole' makes it very conclusive indeed. A sort of slam dunk.

 

[Fulcanelli]

At the rate the 'mountain' of circumstantial evidence is shrinking it'll be a tiny molehill by the time the independent review is finished. They'll probably be able to step right over it.

Hardly. It's quite a big mound, even without the knife and the bra clasp. What I think is odd, is that the mere fact the court has ordered a review of the knife and clasp there are some here that are of the opinion it equates to their being rejected already.

A bit like the some who think the mere fact the defence type something into an appeal document it makes it proven already.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Done already. Perhaps you missed the trial? It's now down to the defence to overturn that proof. That's how it works.

You need more then disco buses to overturn Curatolo's testimony. The reason for this is quite simple...it's a proven fact he was actually there on the night of the murder. Disco buses can't change that.

He was there on all sorts of nights. Fast footwork can't change that. It's not enough that he saw Amanda and Raffele (if you believe his story even for a minute), he has to have seen them on the night of the murder, not on any of the other nights he was there.

Innocent people don'y create mounds of evidence against them...inconclusive or not. And the 'whole' makes it very conclusive indeed. A sort of slam dunk.

We have repeatedly cited for your benefit the Stefan Kiszko case where there were indeed huge mounds of evidence against a man who was absolutely without a doubt completely innocent. Literally thousands of pages of it - much like the oft-mentioned 10 000 pages of evidence against Amanda and Raffaele, I suspect.

The accused, innocent or guilty, don't create mounds of evidence. Police and prosecutors create mounds of evidence. Sometimes it's good evidence, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes, despite the sheer volume of evidence, none of it is any good at all and a comparatively simple bit of science can demolish the entire stinking pile.

In the Kiszko case, the right question to ask was "Can this man produce sperm?". In this case, it's "Could Amanda and Raffaele have been present when Meredith was murdered?". One little question, one little bit of science, and no matter how big the mound is it can still be instantly annihilated.

Isn't science wonderful? And justice?

 

[lionking]

Based on your perspective as I understand it there is indeed no point in arguing about stomach contents. You are free, in fact, to continue not arguing about that topic.

If you cared about whether or not the accused are factually innocent or guilty it's still very important for reasons which are sufficiently obvious that I will not waste my time elaborating on them.

However you might say that I am not yet convinced that Fulcanelli's claims about the trial are accurate and complete, since the only source for Fulcanelli's claims is Fulcanelli, and in the past Fulcanelli has been wildly inaccurate with regard to matters of fact pertaining to this case.

I think it possible and even likely that the appeal will not see any new evidence with regard to the time of death, but will review Massei's reasoning
and the conclusions he drew from that original evidence, and I await more reliable and better informed sources on that point.

I wasn't basing my comments on Fulcanelli's posts but news reports. Is TOD going to be re-examined by the appeal or not? If not, your musings about this issue mean little.

 

[quadraginta]

Attacking the arguer instead of the argument is equally a waste of everybody's time, and does nothing to redeem this useless subthread you are wallowing in.

What attack are you referring to? I was quite sincerely offering you some advice which I often have found useful myself. The scroll wheel can be one of the most helpful tools we have while engaged in online conversation. It has many advantages over a killfile (i.e.; ignore list).

<snip>

It is my contention that this subthread consists primarily of you and Mary redefining each other's claims to suit yourselves then demanding evidence for your straw men. You have just done exactly this again, only to me. Please stop doing this. It is a waste of electrons and clutters up the thread. I cannot stop you wasting everyone's time this way, as it is a free forum, but by the same token you cannot stop me pointing out that this subthread is pointless.

<snip>

I have not asked you to stop doing anything. Unlike you, I have not chosen myself to be Arbiter Of Propriety in this thread.

The slurs against Curatolo and attempts to impeach his testimony on the basis of nothing other than his homeless condition have been recurrent in these discussions. I found it convenient to offer my opinion on the subject this time around, but it is certainly not the only time that such insinuations have been offered in a rather transparent effort to discredit him without evidence. I have no objection to finding fault with his testimony for straightforward, legitimate reasons, but the backdoor aspersions which have been frequently used in place of honest discussion deserve exposure to daylight. It's interesting to watch what crawls away to hide when that happens.

That is my contention. I have made only one claim on this subject. Mary_H and I are not the only ones who have offered opinions on this subject.

The most content free posts on this subject so far seem to be yours, objecting to the very existence of such a discussion. Please contemplate the "waste of electrons" from that perspective.

If you find my responses to the posts you direct at me to be less than satisfying for you then I can offer you some advice about that as well. I bet you can guess what it is.

Don't make them.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I wasn't basing my comments on Fulcanelli's posts but news reports. Is TOD going to be re-examined by the appeal or not? If not, your musings about this issue mean little.

I haven't been able to find anything definitive myself, but needless to say I don't have any problem disagreeing with the decisions of an Italian court if they happen to be provably stupid. So from a guilt/innocence perspective the court could decline to hear new evidence about Nara's magic ear, for example, and that wouldn't magically make her claims any more plausible. If they do end up deciding not to even look at the computer forensics or the time of death that just proves that the court is failing as an inquisitorial instrument, not that those issues magically become unimportant when an Italian judge says so.

 

[lionking]

Hmmm, fair enough. The appeal court is only of relevance if it examines things of importance to you. Got it.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Now now everyone. Let's have a little holiday goodwill.

The fact is, as everyone knows there are passionate fanatics on both sides of this modern-day Affaire Dreyfus.

Now where did I see that supremely apt comparison? It was quite recent. I know it's going to drive me crazy until I remember. Perhaps someone else can help me out.

Anyway, I am a card-carrying fanatical FOAKER who will never give up until the day this "modern day Affaire Dreyfus" is resolved and Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are set free.

BTW, here are some photos I sent to Amanda in a Christmas letter:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/vashon_event_11_20_10.pdf

 

[Fulcanelli]

Well, IIRC if Mignini's conviction is confirmed in its current form, his 16-month prison sentence will be suspended, so he won't actually be spending any time locked up. But it will be very interesting to see how the Italian judiciary's governing bodies might decide to handle Mignini's ongoing career if his conviction is confirmed - after all, it's a pretty serious criminal offence which is directly related to his work as a prosecutor. And I guess it might also be interesting to see if any civil actions are brought against Mignini from any of the victims of his abuse of office.

Time for bed. No more snow tonight, please.

Yeah really serious...and so criminal...a wiretap!