Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

sifting and winnowing

Upon reading this article again something caught my eye. Both Anne Bremner in that article and Rocco Girlanda in his letter to the President of Italy refer to Martin Luther King, Jr. as Martin Luther King then write the same quote. The folks at FOA should really fact check their talking points before passing them on to their Italian colleagues.

Halides1, do you also know in this link that you gave us the author refers to Anne Bremner as a "sharpened Crudelia Demon"?

Alt+F4,
I give that comment the same weight as I do the discussion of the millon dollar PR campaign^TM, basically none. I have already made crystal clear what i do think is important. From the same site, page 8:
QUOTE
“There’s a thing called leakage,” [Steve] Moore said, “and leakage is the inability of a person with violent tendencies to control everything.” If you look into their background, “you may find fist fights, cruelty to animals, brushes with the law. There is no way for somebody to be as violent as they say Amanda was that night, without there being a clear pattern leading up to it."
ENDQUOTE

 

[LondonJohn]

OK, the steps of this dance are coming back to me now. I'd been puzzled by the 2-3/3-4 hour figure and the my memory that even the pro-innocence position had her stomach contents at the upper bound.

Given that we know she is at least in the 1/50 group, the odds of there being something a little unusual about her digestion are increased. 1/250 people who make it to 9pm make it to 10:30pm. Presumably the curve is exponential with a long tail?

I remember these figures coming up ages ago. Did Halides first find them? You don't have a link to the study this comes from do you?

As a first point, the data actually suggest that for the people who "made it" to 9pm, only 1 in 400 would make it to 10.30pm (1/(20,000/50)).

But as a general point, you're correct: it's actually a slightly de-normalised bell curve, with the median point at around 82 minutes. It's de-normalised because the side to the left of the median is slightly horizontally squeezed with relation to the right side - otherwise it has the properties of a normal curve.

It was I who first showed links to the studies, and who extrapolated the curves. A link to a study abstract is here:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-1746.2006.04449.x/abstract

It's interesting that the aim of this study was to produce reliable reference data for healthy adults, which could then be used as "control" values in comparative studies of other subjects (perhaps subjects who had various illnesses, or perhaps those who had different diets, or those who are extremely under- or overweight). The results from this study are statistically significant, and the bell curve analyses they produced can be treated as fairly robust reference data.

 

[Alt+F4]

"It is pretty difficult to hide who you really are for eight hours."

Many people do it everyday, it's called work.

The people who knew David Evans, Collin Finnerty, and Reade Seligman personally (their dorm mates, guidance counselors, coaches, etc.), knew that they could not be rapists.

I agree that they were not guilty of that rape AND none of them had exemplary behavior before their arrests. Finnerty plead guilty to assulting a man in an unrelated case. I don't get why AK and RS are always been spun in such an uber-positive way, it seems like there is something to hide.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

car occupants

Bit of a misapprehension here, perhaps.

I'm not the expert, either. But essentially the prosecution needs to push the time of death- not necessarily to 11:30pm- but past about 9:30pm in order to avoid being contradicted by documentary evidence (in this instance, computer records) regarding the whereabouts of the couple.

Anytime after 9:30 puts us in a grey area where definitive evidence of computer use which may have formerly existed has been compromised by investigators' bungled attempts at analyzing the computers.

lane99,

There is also the problem for the prosecution of the occupants of a broken down car outside the girls' flat.

 

[Rolfe]

One expert said 3-4 hours. That gives 9:30pm to 10:30pm. Where is the special pleading? She also went for a walk.

Let's have this actual reference then. My experience with carnivores suggests that 3 to 4 hours is a significant overestimate if it's meant to refer to the time frame of the start of gastric emptying. If on the other hand it's an estimate of where the upper limit of that time might lie, then it's more defensible. But it suggests that the four-hour time is exceptional, which it would have to be.

A walk is a good aid to digestion, walking wouldn't slow intestinal transit at all. Anything much beyond 9 o'clock is special pleading, because you want to twist the evidence to allow Amanda and Raffaele to be guilty. It's not what would normally happen by a very long way.

Rolfe.

 

[shuttlt]

I wonder where Mrs McCann would be now if she had a false memory episode or if the McCann’s didn’t have witnesses corroborating their movements on the evening that Madelaine was taken.

Innocent people end up in prison. Sometime it's the fault of the authorities, sometimes it's stupidity, sometimes it's bad luck. If they'd said, written and signed the things that Amanda and Raffaele did they would certainly have been in a lot more trouble.

 

[Alt+F4]

“There’s a thing called leakage,” [Steve] Moore said, “and leakage is the inability of a person with violent tendencies to control everything.” If you look into their background, “you may find fist fights, cruelty to animals, brushes with the law. There is no way for somebody to be as violent as they say Amanda was that night, without there being a clear pattern leading up to it."

I know this nonsense is not coming from your but rather from super agent Steve Moore, but you posted it. After 5-10 minutes of research both you and I could come up with dozens of murder cases where the killer showed no violent tendencies before committing murder.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Peter Applebome's articles would be a good place to start

Many people do it everyday, it's called work.



I agree that they were not guilty of that rape AND none of them had exemplary behavior before their arrests. Finnerty plead guilty to assulting a man in an unrelated case. I don't get why AK and RS are always been spun in such an uber-positive way.

Alt+f4,

Allow me to assuage your ignorance. The mayor of Reade Seligmann's home town called him pretty much a role model for all of the young men around here. His high school counselor wrote words to the effect, "If I had a son, I would want him to be just like Reade. I know how that sounds, but in twenty four years I have never written that about anyone." Finnerty pled to assault (not battery) because his friends wished him to, so that they could take a plea deal. He did not land any punches but was himself the first person hit in the minor altercation to which you allude. It was not his finest hour, but the incident was blown so far out of proportion as to boggle the mind. All others who have come into contact with him describe him as gentle and jolly.

Sorry to hear about your job.

 

[LondonJohn]

Upon reading this article again something caught my eye. Both Anne Bremner in that article and Rocco Girlanda in his letter to the President of Italy refer to Martin Luther King, Jr. as Martin Luther King then write the same quote. The folks at FOA should really fact check their talking points before passing them on to their Italian colleagues.

Halides1, do you also know in this link that you gave us the author refers to Anne Bremner as a "sharpened Crudelia Demon"?

Yes, I'm sure that everyone reading the letter would have thought that the letter was referring to Atlanta Baptist minister Rev Martin Luther King Sr* (1899-1984), rather than his civil rights activist son.......

*actually born and christened "Michael King", fact fans

 

[shuttlt]

Let's have this actual reference then. My experience with carnivores suggests that 3 to 4 hours is a significant overestimate if it's meant to refer to the time frame of the start of gastric emptying. If on the other hand it's an estimate of where the upper limit of that time might lie, then it's more defensible. But it suggests that the four-hour time is exceptional, which it would have to be.

What reference do you want?

By the way, I've been doing some Google Scholaring...

based on this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420248/pdf/gut00409-0025.pdf
Her friends did it.

It's the first paper I found, and is a small study. There's not enough in it to show how how rare 2 hours is, but the longest here was 45 minutes if I'm reading it right. This was after a sugary drink which I understand slows things down.

 

[Mary_H]

As ALT notes, these are directly from the article halides sent us to
___________________
Quote:
They are emotionally and financially devastated, says Kris Johnson, who taught Amanda English at Seattle Prep, the exclusive Jesuit high school which costs about $ 20,000 a year. She is number one on Marriot’s approved list.
Quote:
Madison Paxton is the kosher friend, the one that the careful Marriot casting has approved.
___________________________
WOW, just wow !


Indeed, I also suspect the good Dr is having second thoughts about where he sent us.

How does anyone save a communications engineer or self published author successfully 'spin' the above direct quotes from the writer of the article himself, much less the incredibly incriminating later commenters.

After all, the endlessly regurgitated talking point here is that Marriott does nothing except 'schedule' a few media requests for Curt and Edda.

In reality,these are little other than US media Dog and Pony shows with obedient anchors reading from the PR provided script of questions.
But woe be to the opposition poster who leads that cheer on this fact based playing field of mobile goalposts.

Thankfully, halides1's link did that for us.
Thanks in advance

I "spin" it by not believing everything I read.

I wonder how much the PR effort has really accomplished. If their job is just to set up interviews for Amanda's parents, isn't that where their control ends? They can't sit there like lawyers and advise Curt and Edda about how to answer questions once they're in front of the cameras.

Maybe he got them their gig on Oprah, but it was a Seattle resident who does not work for Marriott who was responsible for connecting with local reporters to get the initial interviews with Steve Moore on the air. Once he was seen by network personnel, they invited him for more interviews. It had nothing to do with Marriott.

As far as I know, Marriott had no influence over the sources of information many of us have used -- the Italian and British papers, the Massei report and the trial transcripts. Can anyone show any concrete ways he has affected our thinking?

 

[LondonJohn]

I know this nonsense is not coming from your but rather from super agent Steve Moore, but you posted it. After 5-10 minutes of research both you and I could come up with dozens of murder cases where the killer showed no violent tendencies before committing murder.

But only, I strongly suspect, in the case of "crimes passionels" or other hot-blooded murders. In the case of fights that degenerate into murders, or murders with sexual elements, or murders with any element of premeditation, I think it's right to say that there's almost always a prior indicator - whether in documented personality issues, degenerate behaviour or previous convictions for lesser offences.

 

[Alt+F4]

Allow me to assuage your ignorance. The mayor of Reade Seligmann's home town called him pretty much a role model for all of the young men around here. His high school counselor wrote words to the effect, "If I had a son, I would want him to be just like Reade. I know how that sounds, but in twenty four years I have never written that about anyone." Finnerty pled to assault (not battery) because his friends wished him to, so that they could take a plea deal. He did not land any punches but was himself the first person hit in the minor altercation to which you allude. It was not his finest hour, but the incident was blown so far out of proportion as to boggle the mind. All others who have come into contact with him describe him as gentle and jolly.

Just more spin. Always notice that those who say, "if I had a son" or "if I had a daugther" they would love to have the person in question as their child's lover-roommate-best friend when that scenario would never actually be possible.

Sorry to hear about your job.

My job is fine, it's some aspects of society that's not.

 

[shuttlt]

As a first point, the data actually suggest that for the people who "made it" to 9pm, only 1 in 400 would make it to 10.30pm (1/(20,000/50)).

It's late

But as a general point, you're correct: it's actually a slightly de-normalised bell curve, with the median point at around 82 minutes. It's de-normalised because the side to the left of the median is slightly horizontally squeezed with relation to the right side - otherwise it has the properties of a normal curve.

Surely you'll start picking up abnormal people towards the right?

It was I who first showed links to the studies, and who extrapolated the curves. A link to a study abstract is here:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-1746.2006.04449.x/abstract

kudos to you

It's interesting that the aim of this study was to produce reliable reference data for healthy adults, which could then be used as "control" values in comparative studies of other subjects (perhaps subjects who had various illnesses, or perhaps those who had different diets, or those who are extremely under- or overweight). The results from this study are statistically significant, and the bell curve analyses they produced can be treated as fairly robust reference data.

OK. I'll have a reread. Thanks.

 

[Alt+F4]

Yes, I'm sure that everyone reading the letter would have thought that the letter was referring to Atlanta Baptist minister Rev Martin Luther King Sr* (1899-1984), rather than his civil rights activist son.......

*actually born and christened "Michael King", fact fans

This coming from someone who made sure we all knew the proper word for more than one math is.......maths.

I read the Girlanda translation first and understood that English is not his first language but then when I saw the exact same error from the "sharpened Crudelia Demon" I knew he had just done a cut-and-paste job from the FOA talking points. Next time they will probably confuse Martin Luther King, Jr. with Martin Luther.

 

[Rolfe]

What reference do you want?

By the way, I've been doing some Google Scholaring...

based on this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420248/pdf/gut00409-0025.pdf
Her friends did it.

It's the first paper I found, and is a small study. There's not enough in it to show how how rare 2 hours is, but the longest here was 45 minutes if I'm reading it right. This was after a sugary drink which I understand slows things down.

I meant, who was this expert you were quoting, and how does he know. Why should he be preferred to others quoting a shorter time, when the shorter time is clearly empirically more plausible?

I think we're looking at hours rather than half-hours with Meredith because of the size of the meal. The study you link to is of a pretty small standardised meal - 100g hamburger plus 150ml fluid. Meredith still had 500ml stomach contents when she died. It's going to take longer to get a larger load ready to pass on, that's all.

Rolfe.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Ok, so we've got two stats about gastric emtying. One of beginning at 2-3 hours and one of 3-4 hours. By my reckoning that puts an upper bound somewhere around 10:30pm. The enemy bloggers at PMF have a time of death between 10:00 and 10:30pm, so a late time of death is by no means a universally accepted guilter "fact". There is also a scream claimed to be heard at some point between 10:30pm and 11pm. Again, from PMF.

Is the reason for the prosecution claiming a late murder time Curatolo's 11pm sighting?

I believe that reason was to accommodate various witnesses. Neither Capezzali (scream and footsteps) nor Monacchia (people arguing on the street then scream - some time after 22:00) pinpoint the time of what they heard but they provide a lower boundary of 22:00 ( There's also Dramis - heard running on the stair after 23:30).

Massei wanted to include also Curatolo (saw AK and RS on the piazza from 21:30 to just before midnight) and disarm the witnesses from the broken car in front of the cottage (around 22:30 to around 23:30 - heard nothing, saw nothing) that moves the lower boundary to 23:30 - midnight, depending on which Curatolo's version you take.
There is also some time needed for the orgy of pot and sex to develop and "go wrong". We have witnesses and records placing AK and RS at his place around 21:00. The Naruto file playback puts them there around 21:30 - 22:00 (this one conveniently dismissed by Massei as it conflicted a bit with credibilissimo Toto).

Clearly I'm relying heavily on the PMF timeline here, but could somebody point out where I've gone wrong? I don't see that a pre-11:30pm time of death shows they couldn't have done it, unless a better alibi does materialize.

I think the problem here is of different nature.
So far we have Massei basing the ToD solely on Curatolo and the 3 "scream and/or running" witnesses. Actually he's basing it mostly on Dramis ("running after 23:30") - it's in the motivation p. 98-99.

The problem is that there exist other, more substantial clues for pinpointing the ToD. The moment we drop the witnesses and concede 23:30 or later ToD is unrealistic we have to reconsider those other clues.
The phone records, empty duodenum, state of the flat and Meredith's clothing that all place the attack immediately after Meredith got home, and her death shortly after. All those clues create an upper boundary, which is incompatible with AK and RS guilt, but they also are harder to refute and give much stronger indication of ToD than what Dramis heard or what Curatolo said he saw.

 

[Rolfe]

Surely you'll start picking up abnormal people towards the right?

See, that's what I mean by special pleading. You're trying to claim Meredith had some sort of abnormality of intestinal transit, so that you can go on believing that Amanda might have killed her.

If you had overwhelming proof that Meredith was still alive at ten o'clock, you'd have to start figuring out what-the-hell on the state of the duodenum. But that's not where we are as far as I can see. You're just trying to bend over backwards to have it your way.

Rolfe.

 

[shuttlt]

I meant, who was this expert you were quoting, and how does he know. Why should he be preferred to others quoting a shorter time, when the shorter time is clearly empirically more plausible?

I'm not relying on anyone. You seemed to have knowledge relevant to the stomach contents. Nobody else seemed to be giving you a kick around, so I thought I'd have a go.

I think it was the pathologist on the case who said 2-3 hours.

 

[Mary_H]

Upon reading this article again something caught my eye. Both Anne Bremner in that article and Rocco Girlanda in his letter to the President of Italy refer to Martin Luther King, Jr. as Martin Luther King then write the same quote. The folks at FOA should really fact check their talking points before passing them on to their Italian colleagues.

Halides1, do you also know in this link that you gave us the author refers to Anne Bremner as a "sharpened Crudelia Demon"?

All innocence supporters don't have to align themselves with Anne Bremner any more than pilot has to agree with stilicho, Fiona or Fulcanelli.