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Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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RWVBWL said:
Hi Alt-F4,
I believe that there was a discussion about 6 months back or so regarding an Italian to English translation error here.

It should be "there are drops of blood", not "there is a lot of blood...

Apologies if I am incorrect on this.
RWVBWL
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Yes, it depends on who's Italian is best. Which is it?
 
Alt+F4 said:
No, there is no "solid theory" explaining...
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Sorry Alt+F4, but all of those talking points were debunked umpteen times already. Some of them are gross misstatements, too. But that's nice that you presented us with a list of "gotchas" just after I wrote that a coherent theory would be better :)
 
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LondonJohn said:
But I wonder how much the scene in Filomena's room was disturbed before the Sferon camera was used in there..........
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It would have been possible to back-construct the scene with a careful and recorded interview with Filomena. But this work would only be useful in excluding a theory. Once Mignini stepped in and pronounced the one true theory there wasn't a future in risking finding evidence that excluded it.
 
Katody Matrass said:
Sorry Alt+F4, but all of those talking points were debunked umpteen times already. Some of them are gross misstatements, too. But that's nice that you presented us with a list of "gotchas" just after I wrote that a coherent theory wood be better :)
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You can't debunk them, but rather just toss them off as "misstatments". Got it. :)
 
Dan O. said:
It would have been possible to back-construct the scene with a careful and recorded interview with Filomena. But this work would only be useful in excluding a theory. Once Mignini stepped in and pronounced the one true theory there wasn't a future in risking finding evidence that excluded it.
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Is Filomena being called as a witness in the appeal?
 
Mary_H said:
Why didn't you ask Alt+F4 whether Raffaele's lawyers claim to have forgotten?
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I was responding to you saying that he had forgotten, so I assumed you knew. Anybody else is welcome to chip in if you don't
 
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Alt+F4 said:
No, there is no "solid theory" explaining...

1. Amanda’s lamp being found in Meredith’s room.
2. Inconsistent and contradictory statements in regard to her alibi email, her trial testimony and his prison diary (none of which were coerced).
3. Amanda phone calls on November 2:
a) In the 48 minutes between 12:07 – 12:55 she spent a total of 23
seconds trying to phone Meredith though she stated she was
“panicked” as to her whereabouts.
b) Amanda was back at her apartment by 12:34. The Postal Police
did not show up for another 21 minutes with Meredith’s phones.
Why didn’t Amanda stand outside Meredith’s door, call her
phones and listen for rings?
c) Both Amanda’s mother and Filomena told Amanda to call the police
based on what she told them...she didn’t. Both also knew her
Italian was poor, but they told her to call the police anyway.
4. Raffaelle’s call to the police:
a) He told them that nothing was taken from Filomena’s room. He knew
that because he knew there was no break in.
b) He told the police “there is a lot of blood” when everyone at the
scene agreed there was very little visable blood. He knew there
was a lot of blood behind the locked door.
c) why would he even mention a closed door?
7. Raffaele’s lie in his prison diary regarding the knife.
8. Amanda’s behavior:
a) not flushing the un-flushed toilet
b) not looking in the murder room
9. bra clasp – it is Rafaelle’s DNA is on it.
10. evidence of a cleanup – FBI guy Steve Moore (who says he has seen all of the evidence) said no one could have left that room without blood on the bottom of their shoes.
11. Amanda knowing that Meredith's throat was slashed despite the fact that no she came in contact to before that statement would have known that.
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1. Meredith could easily have borrowed Amanda's lamp for additional lighting. IIRC, Meredith's room had no central ceiling light, since the ceiling in her room consisted of the exposed wooden beams of the roof of the cottage. If so, Meredith's only light source would have been her small desk lamp - it's therefore perfectly reasonable to suggest that if Knox were spending pretty much all her evenings and nights at Sollecito's apartment, Meredith might have borrowed her lamp to provide extra illumination.

2. What are these inconsistent and contradictory statements in the alibi email, trial testimony and prison diary?

3a. Meredith's Italian phone was switched off pretty much all morning on the 2nd, and would therefore have immediately either kicked in the voicemail or would have given a "number not available" message; her UK phone was switched on but would kick into voicemail after about 8 seconds. Furthermore, the English phone was discovered at around midday on the 2nd (it was discovered because Knox was ringing it.....), and it was in the custody of the police by 12.15pm. The police turned it off and removed the SIM card to try to establish its identity. Therefore, after 12.15pm the phone would have been off.

So this "sum total of 23 seconds" is misleading. The billing records for the Italian phone would show short (1-2 seconds) connections to the voicemail, after which Knox would naturally have rung off (since it was quickly obvious that the phone was off and therefore that Meredith would not be answering it). Similarly, the UK phone billing record would only start once the connection to the voicemail service was made. I think that in the case of the UK phone, Knox waited to hear more of the voicemail service the first time she called it (since she knew that the phone was switched on, at least), but that during subsequent calls she disconnected either as soon as the voicemail message kicked in, or even after 5 or 6 seconds of ringing (in the knowledge that the phone was about to kick through to voicemail). And after 12.15pm, this phone was switched off and inactive as well.

3b. By 12.34pm, both of Meredith's phones were switched off - a fact that Knox would have known. Therefore there was nothing to be gained by standing outside Meredith's room and ringing the phones.

3c. Why is it suspicious that Knox didn't call the police as soon as Filomena advised her to do so? Why wasn't she entitled to double-check the situation and speak with her mother, before deciding to take the serious step of calling the police? She called her mother at 12.47pm. The police were called (by Sollecito, with Knox's input) by 12.55pm. Eight minutes.

4a. Isn't it entirely possible that Sollecito saw Filomena's laptop and other valuables in her room, and saw visible valuables in the other girls' rooms, and concluded that nothing had been stolen?

4b. He didn't say "lots of blood". He said "spots of blood". Check your translation.

4c. Meredith's bedroom door was locked, and Meredith couldn't be reached or accounted for. Given that Sollecito believed that a crime had been committed (the break-in) and that there was some blood present in the cottage, why shouldn't he have mentioned the locked door to the police?

7(?). Are you sure it's even a lie? Sollecito apparently cooked at the girls' cottage on at least a couple of nights.

8a. Why should Knox have flushed the unflushed toilet, especially given that a) this wasn't a toilet that she ever used, and b) flushing it might well have involved more than simply pulling a handle - some "manoeuvering" might have been necessary.

8b. Why should Knox have been at the front of the queue to look into the murder room? Presumably, if she had been, you'd be claiming that this was all part of her plan to manipulate what happened in the immediate aftermath of the discovery of the body (e.g. she might have run into the room, in order to leave her shoeprints all over the crime scene).

9. You sound very certain of this. I suggest you wait and see what the new testers have to say about it.

10. There was no clean-up, and nor is there any evidence of a clean-up. Guede's shoes became contaminated with Meredith's blood, and these (very faint) shoeprints were discovered in the hallway.

11. Keep up. Lalli, Miginini and the police officers were talking about the manner of Meredith's death in plain sight and earshot of most of the housemates and their friends/boyfriends. Lalli also helpfully used his hands to illustrate how Meredith's neck was cut. The fact that Meredith's throat was cut was demonstrably known to most of the housemates and their friends by mid-afternoon on the 2nd - they were discussing it by the time they reached the police HQ for questioning.
 
halides1 said:
komponisto,

Let me give you a short, somewhat speculative answer for now, but I may come back to this question later. First, Raffaele matched Meredith at about 11 alleles, not loci. This means that Meredith's profile, being the strongest on the clasp, would cover up a decent fraction of Raffaele's profile. I have sometimes wondered whether Dr. Tagliabracci was trying to point out that Dr. Stefanoni was using a suspect-centered method of analysis, as much or more than he was trying to dispute that the profile was Raffaele's.

I think that contamination in the lab is the most likely explanation for the knife profile, and contamination during collection is a likely explanation for the bra clasp. However, secondary transfer cannot be ruled out for either, and the police have behaved in such a way as to raise the possibility of tampering.
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The defense's case seems to be resting on the first possibility, which is that it is not Raffaele's DNA at all. Their contingency plan, that the DNA is there because of contamination, probably stems from the possibility that the independent analysis could turn out to be suspect for the same ethical reasons that Stefanoni's lab is suspect.
 
shuttlt said:
I was responding to you saying that he had forgotten, so I assumed you knew. Anybody else is welcome to chip in if you don't
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But why have you still not asked Alt+4 the same question about her post that you asked me about my post?

Alt+4 wrote: "That must have been really strong weed to make him forget this important fact for almost a year."
 
Alt+F4 said:
You can't debunk them, but rather just toss them off as "misstatments". Got it. :)
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No, I'd rather say it's just so easy that it's boring :D
But since you took time to compose that handy list we can of course go through it one by one. Which of the points you consider the strongest one?


BTW, about the "defense requested the search" side issue you proposed recently, do you concede that the quote you used to infer it:

During the second search, on the suggestion of the defence’s technical consultant Professor Saverio Potenza, the large rock and two fragments found on the floor of the room were tested, but they yielded negative results.​

can be very well (much better actually) used to infer completely different meaning - that the defense consultant suggested testing the rock.

I understand that you maintain that Professor Saverio Potenza suggested a second search :D ?
 
Alt+F4 said:
No, there is no "solid theory" explaining...

3. Amanda phone calls on November 2:
a) In the 48 minutes between 12:07 – 12:55 she spent a total of 23seconds trying to phone Meredith though she stated she was“panicked” as to her whereabouts.
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Alt+F4, We've tried to teach you how the technology works. Why is is so hard for you to understand?

Amanda made 3 calls to Meredith's phones. The last two calls showed that neither of the phones were accepting calls (we know this from both Amanda's testimony and the technical findings of the postal police) so there was absolutely nothing that could be gained by continuing to call those dead lines except to run her own battery down. The network will remember that the calls were made and as soon as either of the phones is in a state that it can receive calls it will produce a notification that would alert Meredith that there were missed calls.

3a is totally busted!
 
shuttlt said:
On what basis do you say she probably didn't understand her first statement? It isn't complicated or long. There was a translator present.
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On the basis of her subsequent statements and behavior. She clearly thought that her statement was some sort of provisional investigative tool, not in any sense a definitive incrimination of Patrick Lumumba, let alone herself. In the 5 am statement she writes as if she expects the police to continue investigating the question of why she had these pseudo-memories with genuine curiosity, not realizing that they considered the case solved at that point, with herself "nailed" as a suspect. Later she writes in her diary that she "knows" that she is not a suspect in the murder!

According to her testimony, recorded in her appeal document (p.21), she only found out that she had been charged with the murder when she was taken to court and her lawyers told her!

The later documents produced that night appear to reinforce the fact that at those points she understands the contents of the 1:45am document.
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What later documents?


To you it isn't surprising and the defences argument is plausible. To others it is surprising and it isn't convincing. Might the answer of your analysis not depend on who is deciding the probabilities?
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Yes; different people have different opinions on this case! That doesn't mean all of them are equally good.

Do you find the defense's argument convincing or not? If so, let those who don't try to argue that position themselves. If not, explain why not.

Sure. But presumably the guilters over on PMF could bung in their proven facts and probabilities and prove that Amanda is guilty. What is this but a formal way of explaining your impression of the evidence in the case?
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Nothing -- that's exactly what it is. But sometimes formality helps people think more carefully and clearly. In particular, it helps with getting people to break the evidence down into pieces and examine each piece individually -- which is useful for catching errors in reasoning.

I would love to see guilters try to make a quasi-formal Bayesian argument showing that Amanda is guilty. (I even tried to solicit this in my first post here!) Unfortunately, as Kevin Lowe noted earlier (with perhaps a bit more tact than I'm about to employ), few if any of them seem to be sophisticated enough to do so.
 
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Dan O. said:
RWVBWL said:
Hi Dan O.!
As I have never heard of this, I wondered if a photograph of Laura's bedroom publicly exists that shows it, and was anything taken from this drawer, etc...
That's all.:)
RWVBWL
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(see edit to previous post)


The one thing ILE did right was to photograph the entire scene before moving anything so that an accurate picture of the crime scene could be preserved. I first noticed the mention of the sferon camera in Massei and google suggested Spheron. I asked Charlie and he checked his source and confirmed that there was a complete (double) set of 360º images for every room of the house. As it says in Massei pg 185:
Showed that all environments were included, in priority to any technical activity, with the Sferon: a device that allows a recovery like a sort of video camera that turns on itself. Thus any room had been "frozen" so that it would be possible to review the positions and the scene which was presented at the beginning.​
This is about paying attention to the details.
picture.php
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Well, here's a detail.

Charlie first mentioned the Spheron files back in early April in response to a post from Fulcanelli asking him to explain what he meant by being in possession of "a library of primary sources." ... nearly a month before your first post about a comment in the Massei report.

Originally Posted by Charlie Wilkes
Fulcanelli writes:

Were you in the court room Charlie? Do you speak Italian?

I wasn't in the courtroom and I don't speak Italian. But, I have a library of primary source information about this case.

<snip>
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Originally Posted by Fulcanelli
What?? 'What' library? What 'primary source'? You don't get away with just throwing that out there Charlie, you need to clarify exactly what you mean by that.

<snip>
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Originally Posted by Charlie Wilkes
Fulcanelli writes:

What?? 'What' library? What 'primary source'? You don't get away with just throwing that out there Charlie, you need to clarify exactly what you mean by that.

Here is a partial list:

- the DNA results
- more than 400 high-resolution photos from the crime scene
- several hours of police video
- several hundred files that constitute the output of the security camera across the street
- composite images showing the location of key evidence, like fingerprints, luminol prints, etc.
- spheron imagery (360 degree high-resolution images)- forensic reports prepared by both the prosecution and the defense

<snip>
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More details.


When questioned further on the subject (also before your startling discovery in Massei) Charlie vouchsafed that he was in possession of gigabytes of Spheron data, but the cumbersome size of the files and volume of the data precluded his sharing it with us.

It was suggested to him that someone could probably be found with the resources to host this material for him, since "gigabytes" aren't really all that much in modern terms, but he became strangely silent about the topic after that.
 
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The statement "I was there. I can't lie about this. I'm not scared of the truth" (Amanda to her mother at the prison, Nov 10 or 17) may be found in the PMF trial transcript, translation of audioclip #7.)

I see, with some trepidation, that I'm now being quoted at the "other place," and the learned commentariat invited to show that "there" in fact refers to the cottage. I would have thought that any such admission would have been pounced upon more vigorously.
 
nopoirot said:
The statement "I was there. I can't lie about this. I'm not scared of the truth" (Amanda to her mother at the prison, Nov 10 or 17) may be found in the PMF trial transcript, translation of audioclip #7.)

I see, with some trepidation, that I'm now being quoted at the "other place," and the learned commentariat invited to show that "there" in fact refers to the cottage. I would have thought that any such admission would have been pounced upon more vigorously.
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From pages 71-72 of the English version of Massei:

"Then, with regard to the intercepted conversation with her mother and father, in which she said ‚ I was there I have no interest in lying, I’m not afraid of the truth‛ and ‚It’s stupid, I can’t say anything but the truth, because I know I was there, I mean, I can’t lie there’s no reason to [62] do it," she explained that the reference to the fact that ‚she was there‛
meant that she was in Raffaele’s apartment."

I presume if the court did not accept Amanda's explanation, they would have argued against it in the motivations, but they do not.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
.....Then Stefanoni made a non-standard personal trip out to the murder house to seek additional evidence, when in the normal course of things Stefanoni would stay at home in the lab analysing what was sent to her. This trip was made at the time when the prosecution had nailed its colours to the mast by announcing that they knew Raffaele was guilty, but after their claimed footprint evidence had been humiliatingly debunked and when they had absolutely no forensic evidence at all to implicate Raffaele in the crime.

The bra clasp was found in a pile of rubbish where, as video evidence showed, it had somehow moved around after the crime scene was supposedly sealed. The bra clasp was carefully recorded as it was passed around with dirty gloves, placed on the floor again, and then picked up.....
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Do we have video evidence of the investigators actually finding the clasp, or only of them handling it after "finding" it? It is only their word that they found the clasp on the return visit to the cottage. The staging suggests they could easily have brought it with them.
 
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