Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kaosium]

Did her family say this before, or after they were trying to get her off a murder charge?

Do you suppose they made it up so far in advance because they knew Treehorn (or anyone) would be trying to make the case she couldn't be bullied into an internalized false 'confession?'

Besides, we already know it was a false 'confession.' Doesn't that kinda corroborate their statement to a certain extent?

 

[Kaosium]

Aren't lie detector tests more than a little pseudo-scientific? If Amanda had failed one, would we be hearing how she was tired, she was stressed, she didn't understand the question etc. etc. etc.....? What would one prove?

I think they need to be 'interviewed' by honest cops.

I nominate Steve Moore and John Douglas.

 

[shuttlt]

Presumably at trillioniths of a gram, or pico grams, it isn't much of a mixture. It may not even be a complete cell.

Quite. If, say, one is selecting 3 cells out of a total of 10 to do a blood test on, and there are an equal number of flesh and red blood cells in the sample picked with equal probability, then the odds of chosing all flesh cells for your blood test are, I think, a little under 10%.

 

[shuttlt]

Do you suppose they made it up so far in advance because they knew Treehorn (or anyone) would be trying to make the case she couldn't be bullied into an internalized false 'confession?'

No, but they are hardly going to go around saying to people "Please believe us that Amanda is innocent, but we should point out that we always worried that she'd get involved in something like this, such a reckless, selfish creature!", now are they?

Besides, we already know it was a false 'confession.' Doesn't that kinda corroborate their statement to a certain extent?

No.

 

[Justinian2]

Presumably at trillioniths of a gram, or pico grams, it isn't much of a mixture. It may not even be a complete cell.

Anybody know what the estimated weight of the material was? I've heard that the original estimate of 100 trillionths of a gram (100 pico grams) was an exaggeration of the weight of the material. I've also seen that the weight of a human DNA molecule was calculated at 6 pico grams or 6 trillionths of a gram.

Expanding on my earlier post.

From http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/White+blood+cell

There are 10g of white blood cells per liter of blood. One liter of water weighs 1000 g and we float, so I'm estimating that one liter of blood also weighs about 1000g. 1% of that weight is the weight of the white cells - 10g.

There are ten billion white blood cells per liter (ten to the tenth). Consequently, the average white blood cell weighs a billionth of a gram or 1000 pico grams. The weight of one DNA molecule is 6 pico grams.

 

[Kaosium]

This reminds me that I saw on PMF during my recent visit to the wall of beautiful cats, that they mentioned an article that Rocco has requested that Amanda's picture be removed from that wall of shame.

Halfway there!

I can just imagine what they had to say about Rocco...

 

[shuttlt]

Except of course they found it before they arrested him, and for that matter before they knew who he was, not long afterward.

Come now! Again, everybody elses imaginations seem to suddenly fail them. Swap a sample here, open an evidence bag there.... how hard would it have been? In any case, they knew Rudy was a local with a history of burglary. Perhaps they just figured they'd frame him and get him out of their hair as well. Amanda blaming Patrick wasn't part of the plan.

We know from Frank that Rudy was responsible for all the burglaries in Perugia above the ground floor, so many the police were sick of him?

 

[Kaosium]

No, but they are hardly going to go around saying to people "Please believe us that Amanda is innocent, but we should point out that we always worried that she'd get involved in something like this, such a reckless, selfish creature!", now are they?


No.

Why not? What do you think happened in that police station that night? What do you think it means now?

 

[shuttlt]

Why not? What do you think happened in that police station that night? What do you think it means now?

She could have made a false confession/accusation for all sorts of reasons. She could be the sort of person who lies to try to get themselves out trouble, for example. Her family are hardly going to be telling people about that, are they? "Oh, Amanda! The stories we could tell about all the lies she's told to try and avoid getting the blame for things. Why, one time she took my purse and blamed it on our neighbours son. I was on the point of going next door to complain when I thought to check her room. Now where was I..... oh yes, how the police forced a false confession out of a poor honours student."

 

[Justinian2]

Quite. If, say, one is selecting 3 cells out of a total of 10 to do a blood test on, and there are an equal number of flesh and red blood cells in the sample picked with equal probability, then the odds of chosing all flesh cells for your blood test are, I think, a little under 10%.

Did Amanda 'borrow' a knife from Meredith's apartment to bring to Raffaele's when she needed to cook for him? Maybe Amands's only crime was to steal a knife before the murder. She wouldn't admit to even that, though.

A few controls were needed. How much DNA did the lab find on other eating instruments in the drawer? How many DNA molecules were found? Way too many variables and unknowns!

To make a long story short, the preponderence of evidence rules against the knife being the murder weapon. The knife was only one of a chain of suppositions that need to be proved to conclude that Amanda & Raf are guilty. The scientific community would NEVER conclude that Amanda & Raf are guilty.

 

[Kaosium]

Come now! Again, everybody elses imaginations seem to suddenly fail them. Swap a sample here, open an evidence bag there.... how hard would it have been? In any case, they knew Rudy was a local with a history of burglary. Perhaps they just figured they'd frame him and get him out of their hair as well. Amanda blaming Patrick wasn't part of the plan.

They were looking for Rudy because they found all that evidence of him at the scene.

Police are looking for a fourth person in addition to Knox, Sollecito and Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner and musician. The fourth person is believed to be a North African man.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,310637,00.html#ixzz19hd4y4oP

We know from Frank that Rudy was responsible for all the burglaries in Perugia above the ground floor, so many the police were sick of him?

If that were the case I imagine they would have just arrested him when he was caught red-handed a couple times previous to the murder.

Had they done so, Meredith would still be alive. I doubt they'd want to frame the man they had let go, making them in some sense partially culpable in the death of Meredith Kercher. Even if it was actually physically possible, with him having left the country and all.

Do you suppose they made a cast of his finger to make the bloody fingerprint?

 

[Fine]

Amanda reported that her two Italian roommates "smoke like chimneys," meaning they smoke cigarettes. It's doubtful Amanda was going to write about smoking pot on her Myspace page.

If you want Meredith's DNA to be on Amanda's fingers and then on Raffaele's knife, you are going to have to have Amanda not touching anything else between the time she shares the joint with Meredith and the time she gets to Raffaele's to cook. You are also going to have to have her rubbing her finger into just the right section of the knife in order to embed Meredith's DNA in the minuscule crevice. And of course, you are going to have to eliminate the washing with bleach.

___________________________

Umm, Mary, smoking cigarettes "like chimneys" makes no sense at all. Amanda was citing the multiple attractive features of her new found residence. As a non-smoker Amanda would not have found her flatmates smoking tobacco "like chimneys" appealing at all. Instead, disgusting.

And she could have touched multiple items before touching the knife, and still have had Meredith's DNA on her fingers.

///

 

[Kaosium]

She could have made a false confession/accusation for all sorts of reasons. She could be the sort of person who lies to try to get themselves out trouble, for example.

If that were the case, why did she 'lie' herself into getting arrested? That doesn't make any sense, her sinister plot was to put herself in a cage?

 

[Matthew Best]

___________________________
Umm, Mary, smoking cigarettes "like chimneys" makes no sense at all.
///

___________________

Umm, I've heard loads of people use the phrase "smoking like chimneys" to refer to people smoking cigarettes.

///

 

[shuttlt]

Did Amanda 'borrow' a knife from Meredith's apartment to bring to Raffaele's when she needed to cook for him? Maybe Amands's only crime was to steal a knife before the murder. She wouldn't admit to even that, though.

It's a pity for her that she didn't. There might afterall have been some hope that the other housemates would confirm that the knife had come from the appartment where the murder took place.

A few controls were needed. How much DNA did the lab find on other eating instruments in the drawer? How many DNA molecules were found? Way too many variables and unknowns!

I can't see a scenario where there is Meredith's DNA on the teaspoons and so on on the drawer. We keep talking about this, and I'm not sure that anyone has ever shown that it is standard procedure to take random objects along with whatever item of interest is taken into custody.

To make a long story short, the preponderence of evidence rules against the knife being the murder weapon. The knife was only one of a chain of suppositions that need to be proved to conclude that Amanda & Raf are guilty. The scientific community would NEVER conclude that Amanda & Raf are guilty.

No, the knife is not necessary for them to be guilty. This is also not a question of the scientific community concluding things. Science generally occurres in controlled environments, or experiments are repeated in order to control for the varguaries of environment. One does not necessarily have that luxory in real world situations.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Ms. Nadeau made this point some time ago

The forensics as regarding RG were, nevertheless, never disputed on this site.

On the other hand, those pertaining to the lovebirds are still being disputed; in the minds of many posters on this site, they have already been discarded.

loverofzion,

This talking point has been rebutted on this and the previous thread several times already. One, I accept the DNA evidence against Guede provisionally, not having ever seen it. If it is as poor in quality as the DNA evidence against Knox and Sollecito, then Guede’s lawyers did him no favors in failing to contest it. Two, the strongest evidence against Guede is the bloody fingerprint, followed by the bloody shoeprints. There is no evidence against Knox and Sollecito that is as correspondingly strong. Three, the forensic evidence made Guede a suspect, but the forensic evidence against Knox and Sollecito was collected after they were in custody. Therefore, investigator bias is more likely in the latter case, and I have given an example of this some time ago. Four, there is no guarantee that all evidence collected and analyzed by a given lab is necessarily of the same quality. One technician may be better than another, for example.

 

[LondonJohn]

Presumably most burglars don't end up being rapist/killers either.

But I don't think anyone was ever suggesting that Guede having (alleged) prior form as a burglar was what made him more likely to be the killer. Whereas some people are suggesting that exposure to cannabis (together with totally unsubstantiated references to use of harder drugs), coupled with a so-called knife fetish, were causal and contributory factors to Knox and Sollecito becoming the ruthless, sadistic killers of Meredith that they have to have been in order to fit the prosecution's narrative.

With Guede, things are different. His having an (alleged) history of B&E and burglary mean that he has a potential means and motive for being inside the cottage unlawfully that night. And from then on, if he were interrupted by the arrival home of Meredith, it's not a huge leap to reason that things quickly escalated into something that for Guede was new and deadly territory.

 

[shuttlt]

If that were the case, why did she 'lie' herself into getting arrested? That doesn't make any sense, her sinister plot was to put herself in a cage?

I would suggest that that was not her intention. Lies that get you off the hook with your mother, or with your teacher may not work so good with the police.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

DNA profile culled from the knife

LondonJohn,

I am well aware of the properties of blood cells you quote. We presumably can't say with any certainty that the material isn't a mixture of blood and flesh?

shuttlt,

I know of no substance that will differentially clean blood cells and leave flesh cells behind. In addition, if this knife were the murder weapon, it is difficult to imagine that some blood would not also be on the handle, and this blood would have to be cleaned. Yet, Ms. Knox's DNA was found on the handle. How did it remain?

I do not recall that you have ever replied to the pro-innocence arguments concerning contamination outside of the lab and concerning the inappropriateness of Stefanoni's DIY low template number DNA analysis.

 

[shuttlt]

But I don't think anyone was ever suggesting that Guede having (alleged) prior form as a burglar was what made him more likely to be the killer. Whereas some people are suggesting that exposure to cannabis (together with totally unsubstantiated references to use of harder drugs), coupled with a so-called knife fetish, were causal and contributory factors to Knox and Sollecito becoming the ruthless, sadistic killers of Meredith that they have to have been in order to fit the prosecution's narrative.

So, Guede is no more intrinsically given to rape/murder than anyone else, based on his history? I had thought I was countering the claim that Amanda and Raffaele were intrinsically not given to murder because they were "honours students".

With Guede, things are different. His having an (alleged) history of B&E and burglary mean that he has a potential means and motive for being inside the cottage unlawfully that night. And from then on, if he were interrupted by the arrival home of Meredith, it's not a huge leap to reason that things quickly escalated into something that for Guede was new and deadly territory.

But, if Amanda and Raffaele had been in an escalating situation? Might they not have done things that were new to them also?