A final point to be recalled concerns the presence, noted and reported by more than one witness, of glass framents on top of objects and clothing in Romanelli's room.
This circumstance, also suggestive of staging -- albeit not decisive since nothing rules out the possibility of the imaginary thief having first broken the glass and then making a mess in the room -- has been disputed by the attorneys for the defendants on the basis of the photos which do not document the presence of glass on clothing and displaced objects in Romanelli's room, and the principle [rilievo] that the evidentiary value and precision of a photograph [il valore documentale e di cristallizzazione di una determinata situazione realizzata da foto] should prevail over statements of witnesses about their recollection [dichiarazioni testimoniali affidate al ricordo].
This is a notion which, though attractive, does not appear sustainable [accoglibile] since it does not take into account the chronological succession of events. We find Romanelli's deposition to be significant and a refutation of the supposed contrast between the documentary evidence (i.e. the photos from Romanelli's room which do not show pieces of glass on top the clothing and displaced objects) and the testimony. In the examination of 2-7-2009 itself, she recalled having left her computer in its case "upright, not lying down" (p.269) and then, when she re-entered the house she saw that the window was broken in her room and "everything was out in the open" (p.40). She checked for jewelry, saw that it was there, and looked for the comptuer which she glimpsed "from below" (p.40) and, continuing to explain, she stated that "in picking up the computer, I noticed that I was lifting pieces of glass, in the sense that the pieces of glass were on top of things" (p.41) and the circumstance was striking enough to her at that moment to the point of being the subject of a specific remark: "it was a stupid burglar; besides the fact that nothing was taken, the pieces of glass were also on top of things" (p.41). Then, in addition to this vivid memory, the witness also reported entering her room and looking to see if anything was missing, and in the process also moved objects, thereby modifying the location of the glass fragments. At that moment, of course, only the Postal Police were present, looking for the reason for which two phones were found in the garden of a house on Via Sperandio, and the broken glass of a window, merely suggested a burglary that was entirely independent of the finding of the two phones; it thus appeared entirely normal and almost automatic that one would go into the room where the window was broken, without any caution, with one's attention being focused only on seeing what was missing. The displacement of the objects and the gradual alteration of the situation in Romanelli's room with respect to the pieces of glass (which, found on top of objects, ended up falling and being shifted in the searching activity that one can imagine Romanelli performing with a certain agitation and anxiety on account of the state of concern and disturbance she found herself in) was therefore natural. The photos, however, where taken only afterward, around 3:00 pm according to what may be inferred from the statements of the forensic investigators [personale della scientifica] of the Perugia Questura, Cantagalli and Brocci, when the discovery of the lifeless body of Meredith imposed a different set of concerns [una diversa circospezione]: the necessity of preserving the situation, avoiding any alteration of the same, and of acquiring every piece of evidence that could turn out to be useful to the investigation.
The time at which the witnesses noticed the presence of glass on objects is thus distinct from the time at which every detail of the house and its surroundings was photographed and in some sense preserved.
