Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[capealadin]

Rudy also talks about Amanda sleeping in the murder house overnight. Rudy claims to have helped Meredith, yet walked out of the house without contacting any friends or emergency services, and went out dancing within a couple of hours. Rudy tells lies or distortions. Rudy is an untrustworthy source of information. Rudy is wrong about the amount of blood in the hallway and bathroom.

How do you know that Rudy is wrong about the blood? How do you know that that was a lie?

 

[capealadin]

And, where did Rudy state that Amanda slept in the cottage that night. Please provide the link to that.

ETA/ Yes, He talks about Amanda sleeping in the cottage, as in *HE WONDERS*. In the same way, that he's asking * How could Amanda shower in the bathroom, with ALL that blood. There must have been a cleanup. It wasn't a perfect clean-up, for sure. But, that's a vastly different scenario, as said by Rudy, and what was subsequently found, and photographed.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

possibly flawed

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?

lionking,

If the court fails to reexamine TOD, then it shows that there is a flaw in thei court's thinking or a flaw in the system. Do you think that a TOD past 11:30 is reasonable? If not, then would you not want to see the issue reexamined?

 

[Justinian2]

Rudy also talks about Amanda sleeping in the murder house overnight. Rudy claims to have helped Meredith, yet walked out of the house without contacting any friends or emergency services, and went out dancing within a couple of hours. Rudy tells lies or distortions. Rudy is an untrustworthy source of information. Rudy is wrong about the amount of blood in the hallway and bathroom.

Rudy's 'confession' reminds me of passages from "Crime and Punishment" in which the criminal gradually loses his mind and all contact with reality.

Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student from St. Petersburg who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. Raskolnikov argues that with the pawnbroker's money he can perform good deeds to counterbalance the crime, while ridding the world of a worthless parasite. This murder he also commits to test Raskolnikov's hypothesis that some people are naturally able to and also have the right to murder. Several times throughout the novel, Raskolnikov also justifies his actions by connecting himself mentally with Napoleon Bonaparte, believing that murder is permissible in pursuit of a higher purpose, only to find out he "... is not a Napoleon."​

 

[LondonJohn]

And, where did Rudy state that Amanda slept in the cottage that night. Please provide the link to that.

Strangely, it's in Rudy's statement just before the stuff about the shower (you even cut it out when you paraphrased Rudy's writing to talk about the huge amounts of blood he mentioned):

I am asking myself how is it possible that Amanda could have slept in all that mess, and took a shower with all that blood in the bathroom and corridor? Why Patrick? Who was that person, Raffaele? And then "AF, AF." It could be his name. And then if thieves had been there, why isn't Amanda saying a word about the missing money? And who was in the house below when I left? What has ever happened between Amanda and Meredith?

Hope that makes things a bit clearer for you.

Oh, and I'm pretty confident that Guede was lying about the amount of blood, because there's no evidence of a clean-up

 

[LondonJohn]

lionking,

If the court fails to reexamine TOD, then it shows that there is a flaw in thei court's thinking or a flaw in the system. Do you think that a TOD past 11:30 is reasonable? If not, then would you not want to see the issue reexamined?

This is part of a general misunderstanding of what Saturday's ruling was all about. The appeal court will be re-examining the ToD, amongst every other element of the case. The only thing still to be decided is whether they will allow the defence to produce additional expert witnesses to testify about ToD, or whether they will make do with the expert testimony from the first trial (which, incidentally, indicated that Meredith died before 10.30pm, with reference to the stomach/intestinal contents).

 

[Jungle Jim]

Didn't Amanda say something about being taken to the downstairs apartment by the Police and questioned about a bloody duvet on one of the beds, does anyone know what the outcome of this was? I did wonder when I read about it, but I thought the Police must have ruled it out.

IIRC there was blood found in the downstairs apartment that came from the boys' cat.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

some thoughts on the bra clasp DNA

Are you sure that Raffaele's team contend it's Raffaele's DNA on the bra-clasp. I thought they were contending it was contamination? I'm not certain of this but then I can't follow the defence argument since I've seen both propositions, both that it is not his DNA and that it is contamination, which are obviously mutually excluive. Which is the definitive position for the appeal?

SomeAlibi,

One way to prove contamination is to observe DNA in the negative controls. To the best of my knowledge, the files containing the raw data containing the negative controls were not turned over to the defense. One can also prove that collection technique was sub-optimal. I would say that this would not prove contamination, but it should be enough to exclude the evidence (as I have said before, if one does not, one gives the forensic technicians license to do poor work). In this case the existence of alleles not belonging either to Meredith or Raffaele suggests contamination to me.

The question of whether the Raffaele’s complete profile is or is not present on the clasp revolves around completely different issues, and it is not as cut-and-dried as one might like to think. Meredith’s DNA dominates the electropherogram, with most other peaks being roughly 20% or less in height. Therefore, it is not easy to say whether or not Raffaele or not anyone else also has the same allele where Meredith’s 29 peaks dominate. Meredith and Raffaele share 11 alleles in their profile.

There is another problem, which Dr. Tagliabracci addressed on pages 241-243 of the Massei report. Consider for example locus D5S818, in which there are peaks of 108 and 65 relative fluorescence units (RFU) in height. Some of the peaks in the electropherogram attributed to Raffaele appear to me to be about 200 RFU. The forensic police took the peak at 65 RFU and said it was part of Raffaele’s profile, but it would be more reasonable to take the 108 RFU peak as being from the second contributor, if I am correctly interpreting Dr. Tagliabracci’s thoughts. I have previously quoted two forensic geneticists who indicated that interpreting mixtures introduced a degree of subjectivity into the analysis.

Another issue is that low template DNA (it is generally agreed) should be tested at least twice. Therefore, one might argue that the minor DNA peaks should not be attributed to anyone until this is done. Finally, let us assume for argument’s sake that the DNA is not Raffaele’s profile. The DNA that is there might or might not have arrived via contamination. For all of these reasons, I think of these two arguments as being separate.

 

[LondonJohn]

IIRC there was blood found in the downstairs apartment that came from the boys' cat.

I think the cat blood was a trail of spots, and maybe also a smear on a light switch. What's being referred to here is bedding that has a significant amount of blood on it. I don't think that the blood on the bedding (if indeed this actually existed) was ever linked to the injured cat.

 

[Jungle Jim]

Rudy also talks about Amanda sleeping in the murder house overnight. Rudy claims to have helped Meredith, yet walked out of the house without contacting any friends or emergency services, and went out dancing within a couple of hours. Rudy tells lies or distortions. Rudy is an untrustworthy source of information. Rudy is wrong about the amount of blood in the hallway and bathroom.

I agree. It makes no sense to me why anyone, on either side of the debate, would try to bolster their position with the words of Rudy Guede.

 

[Justinian2]

Anyone would wonder how anyone could take a shower, with all that blood in a bathroom. Would YOU take a shower, in those conditions? And, as far as the Police being confused: Amanda apologizes to them, for confusing them.

The 'confession' is out of order time-wise. It's actually increasing the entropy (It is also a measure of the disorder present in a system) of understanding, rather than putting order into the universe.

 

[The Third Man]

I think the cat blood was a trail of spots, and maybe also a smear on a light switch. What's being referred to here is bedding that has a significant of blood on it. I don't think that the blood on the bedding (if indeed this actually existed) was ever linked to the injured cat.

Eh? Is this for real, are they linking the cat to the light switch?

 

[Jungle Jim]

I think the cat blood was a trail of spots, and maybe also a smear on a light switch. What's being referred to here is bedding that has a significant of blood on it. I don't think that the blood on the bedding (if indeed this actually existed) was ever linked to the injured cat.

Well, its nice to know the cat turned off the lights when it left the room.

 

[Dan O.]

Does anyone have a decent link to any information about the bloody bedding in the boys' apartment (if it exists!)? Thanks.

The crime scene video includes shots from downstairs starting at 16:28:46 (camera time). A couple of shots are in the Dateline NBC The Trial of Amanda Knox documentary. They spent almost 2 hours with the video down there so there should be plenty of footage. Unfortunately I don't have the right codec on this computer to open that video right now.

 

[LondonJohn]

Eh? Is this for real, are they linking the cat to the light switch?

IIRC the suggestion is that someone touched the cat's blood (either by touching the cat, or by touching one of the blood spots), then he/she touched a light switch. Also IIRC the cat was injured before the boys went away for the long weekend, so it could have been either one of the boys or Meredith who applied the cat's blood to the light switch. Either way, I don't think that there's any suggestion that the cat had learned how to turn lighting on and off

 

[Jungle Jim]

Here is an article by Andrea Vogt from September 2009 that mentions cat blood on a mattress cover from the downstairs apt.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/410137_knox14.html

He also pointed out contradictions between the results and what Stefanoni actually wrote in her technical report. Specifially, Stefanoni wrote that a mattress cover from the downstairs apartment had tested positive for cat blood and negative for human DNA, when the actual results showed a positive result for human DNA.

 

[el buscador]

Well, its nice to know the cat turned off the lights when it left the room.

Perhaps Meredith smeared the blood on the light switch when she treated the cat, if she had already done that since the boys had left on vacation.

 

[Justinian2]

Just listening to a reporter's account of the last court appearance. It said that the other prisoners gave Amanda a round of applause when she returned after the decision to review her case.

The prisoners have a better understanding of guilt or innocence than an infinite number of Migninis.

 

[capealadin]

Strangely, it's in Rudy's statement just before the stuff about the shower (you even cut it out when you paraphrased Rudy's writing to talk about the huge amounts of blood he mentioned):




Hope that makes things a bit clearer for you.

Oh, and I'm pretty confident that Guede was lying about the amount of blood, because there's no evidence of a clean-up

I did an ETA, which you must have missed. and explained that I had misread your comment.

I honestly do not understand you saying there is no evidence of a cleanup. And, why would Rudy have lied about the amount of blood in the bathroom and corridor? What would be the point? He talks also about how much blood there was in Meredith's bedroom.

 

[LondonJohn]

Here is an article by Andrea Vogt from September 2009 that mentions cat blood on a mattress cover from the downstairs apt.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/410137_knox14.html

I seem to recall that a bedsheet was mentioned as the article that had significant amounts of blood on it, but a mattress cover (which is like an additional bottom sheet) might be mistaken for a bedsheet. Plus, this article is ambiguous, since it deals with Tagliabracci's criticisms of Stefanoni, and asserts that there was human DNA on the mattress cover, whereas Stefanoni reported that the article tested negative for human DNA. Of course, even if there were human DNA, this could have come from sweat, shed skin cells or semen - the article doesn't mention whether there was a test for human blood conducted (it mentions a positive test for cat blood), let alone whether such a test came back positive or negative.