Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kestrel]

Comodi did move the police arrival time up some in her closing comments (12:46 IIRC) but still kept it slightly before Raffaele's calls to 112. (No proof required in a closing argument I guess).

Common sense also seems to be missing in this argument.

Two police officers arrive at a scene where there are signs of a break in, blood stains and a missing person. Five minutes after arriving the officers allow the two people found at the scene to wander off and make an unobserved phone call.

 

[lionking]

It was pretty clear from posts after his first claim that he was referencing a video some of us hadn't seen, and became far clearer after Draca posted a link to it. That would have been fine, but AFTER that decided to make a new claim of "clearly" about the skirt, and should have probably extended the courtesy of linking that pic or some evidence of its existence

I thought you'd know by now how many posts you needed before you could post a link.

But, as I said before, anyone who posts contrary views here can expect this sort of treatment. This thread is not that different from PMF sometimes.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

common sense

Common sense also seems to be missing in this argument.

Two police officers arrive at a scene where there are signs of a break in, blood stains and a missing person. Five minutes after arriving the officers allow the two people found at the scene to wander off and make an unobserved phone call.

Let's assume for a moment that Raffaele is guilty and that he knows nothing of police ineptitude. Making a call to the Carabinieri after the Postal Police arrive is a strategy with a big downside and a small upside. The downside is that if the police were keeping accurate time, he would be found out and it would be very suspicious behavior. The upside is that he would claim that the issue of the break-in looked serious enough to him to call the police on his own initiative.

There are at least two alternatives that would be better than the one he chooses in this hypothetical, in which he calls the Carabinieri after the Postal Police arrive. One, thank the Postals and send them on their way, then call the carabinieri after manufacturing other reasons to be worried about Meredith or suspicious about a possible break-in (he could claim to have found the broken window later, for example). Two, simply say to the Postals that he was just about to call them (or the Carabinieri). Option one allows Raffaele to show initiative. Option two does not, but the failure to raise the alarm does not really look suspicious. After all, the police themselves did not want to break down the bedroom door, indicating that the information that they had at that moment was not particularly cause for concern.

 

[komponisto]

I see that the "open letter Muppet" is at it again, this time directing his ire at a small UK publication for accepting a piece from a LibDem councillor about the case.

A British politician has written about this case advocating innocence? Who is it, and is their piece online?

(As you can tell, I prefer to avoid wading into the cesspool that is PMF.)

 

[bolint]

To me, if the light area were a skirt, then when it's looked at against the light torso the person would have to have been walking in a totally unnatural fashion, leaning heavily backwards.

The figure is not leaning backwards.
There is a sign on the rail separating the road from the driveway, as one can see in daylight photos made at that time. (Today on Streetview the sign is seen moved to the right on the rail but at that time it was at the left end of the rail).
That sign masks the lower left of the figure causing the illusion of leaning backwards.

 

[bolint]

RoseMontague:
"Comodi did move the police arrival time up some in her closing comments (12:46 IIRC) but still kept it slightly before Raffaele's calls to 112."

She only said that even if it was at 12:46 it was still 5 minutes before the call.
So it was not a real admission, but I think that they have dropped this argument.
At any rate, Massei did not use it.



"I think the key to this quote is the long shoulder strap part. What you see as a skirt I see as this bag. No way to tell with certainty by the video provided."

I saw that bag, it is right to the duvet on the crime scene photos (letter H).
It is not big enough to be a skirt.

In some positions on the video you indeed see a whiter square at the middle of the figure that could be a bag like that.
But the skirt is longer.
And Amanda also had a big sized bag, which was greenish and it also could reflect light that results in a white area in the night frames of the black and white camera.

At any rate, next day Amanda was wearing a skirt that could have been the one in the video.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Nigel Scott

A British politician has written about this case advocating innocence? Who is it, and is their piece online?

(As you can tell, I prefer to avoid wading into the cesspool that is PMF.)

komponisto,

Link here.

 

[Mairanse]

Were Meredith's mobile phones tested for DNA, blood, or fingerprints?

I'm trying to make sense of the use of her phones as described in the Massei report. Massei concludes that she dialed voicemail herself and hung up because she was frugal. Is there any evidence there were voicemails to be received?

It would be interesting to know how exactly this phone worked to try to recreate what screens the user would have seen and what the logical explanation is for the technical evidence provided to the court.

If we reason that Meredith was dead long before the flurry of activity around 10pm, is the logical explanation that the killer(s) were fumbling around with her phone and accidentally called her voicemail and the first number in her address book?

 

[komponisto]

komponisto,

Link here.

Thanks!

 

[lane99]

It's not relevant to the case discussion either. I happen to have certain views on the state of mind of many of the pro-guilt commentators. But these views don't impact on how I approach the argument...

Have to disagree. And strongly so if you suggesting your assessment of information makes no account at all for possible biases in the source of that information. Surely that would give insufficient weight to the not unimportant issue of credibility.

The Per-woowoo File website is an oft referred to source of information about this case. And unsuspecting readers may not realize that behind its anonymous testaments to "true justice" and "objective truth" appear to lie biases which are virtually pornographic in their intensity and in their manifestation.

 

[lane99]

...There are those that believe that Rudy was merely peripherally involved, and was dragged into it by Amanda Knox. The prosecution's 'theory' was that Amanda was an irresistible mankiller who'd made virtual slaves of Raffaele and Rudy...

And do you think there's any way a reasonable person could interpret the available evidence in that way? If you do, then fine. If not, we might ask ourselves how could anyone buy into such a demented fairy tale?

Seeing the way that some have fawned over Guede, going so far at to implicitly paint him as someone one of the victims in this case, to me suggests fairly strongly that there are some sordid pre-existing biases at play here.

 

[lane99]

...I think it is Amanda.
21:03 is also a feasible time for her to be there as nothing contradicts it...

To me, the case against Knox and the boyfriend seems to rely to a suspicious extent on this kind of circular logic.

The figure in the video is Knox, not because the figure is recognizable as her, but because "who else could it be?" Knox is the murderer, after all.

I see the same theme arising in discussions of such things, to give two other examples, as the flimsy ear-witness testimony about disembodied footsteps and screams (we know the scream had to be the victim, because that's the time the victim died; and we know that's the time the victim died, because that is the time the neighbour heard the scream), and the "bloody" footprints at the residence that, though they tested negative for blood, *must* be blood because, well, what else could it be?

 

[LondonJohn]

Were Meredith's mobile phones tested for DNA, blood, or fingerprints?

I'm trying to make sense of the use of her phones as described in the Massei report. Massei concludes that she dialed voicemail herself and hung up because she was frugal. Is there any evidence there were voicemails to be received?

It would be interesting to know how exactly this phone worked to try to recreate what screens the user would have seen and what the logical explanation is for the technical evidence provided to the court.

If we reason that Meredith was dead long before the flurry of activity around 10pm, is the logical explanation that the killer(s) were fumbling around with her phone and accidentally called her voicemail and the first number in her address book?

Neither one of the calls from Meredith's UK mobile - to her UK voicemail number at 9.58pm and her UK bank (Abbey) at 10.00pm - ever actually connected to the network. The only record of these calls was on the "outgoing calls" list on Meredith's phone memory; there was no record of them on the network or billing systems. This means that the numbers were dialled but that the calls were quickly terminated (by pushing the "end call" button) before a connection had even been made.

This means that it's impossible for the voicemail call to be explained by Meredith calling quickly to check whether she had any messages. It's only explainable by suggesting that Meredith dialled her voicemail, but immediately thought better of it (for reasons of cost or something else) and terminated the call. I find this to be very unlikely, but in this regard it would be useful to know whether a) Meredith often called her UK voicemail service since she'd been in Italy, b) whether her roaming partner allowed the pass-through of voicemail alerts (e.g. a "voicemail" message on the screen, or the lighing up of the voicemail icon in the corner of the screen), and c) if anyone had indeed left her a voicemail message that she hadn't yet retrieved on the evening of November 1st.

The other thing to bear in mind here is that the UK bank number definitely did not have an international dialling code and prefix attached to it (I also suspect that the voicemail (901) was only set up to work in the UK). Meredith would definitely have known that in order to dial UK numbers from Italy she would have needed to remove the first "0" from the UK number, and insert "0044"* as a prefix ("00" being the international dialling code used in Italy, and "44" being the UK prefix). Thus the bank number stored in her memory and dialled at 10.00pm that night (0845 9724724) would actually have had to have been dialled as "0044845 9724724" in order to connect correctly. Indeed, the aborted call to her mother from 8.56pm included the correct international prefixes.

Therefore, the only feasible explanation (to me) of this activity being carried out by Meredith herself is that she was simply pressing random buttons on her phone - I can't see how she would have had the intention of actually making these calls, since she would have known full well that she needed to append the numbers to enable them to connect from Italy. In addition, there appears to have been no reason whatsoever why Meredith would have been trying to call her bank at 10pm (9pm UK time). Even though this number is for a 24-hour telephone banking service, there's no reason why Meredith would have needed to call it that night - and if she had needed to do so, there's no reason why she would have given up after realising that she needed to add the international prefixes.

So, all that having been said, I think the only logical, reasonable explanation for this phone activity is that someone other than Meredith was pressing buttons on her handset - probably trying to turn it off. I think that the two times the button presses resulted in calls being dialled, the person handling the phone quickly realised this and terminated the calls immediately.

The 10.13pm connection is also somewhat inexplicable in the context of the phone being in Meredith's hands, and far more explicable if someone else had the phone. The 10.13pm connection was an incoming multimedia message (probably a photo) sent to the phone using the GPRS protocol. The way that this message would have been received by the handset is as follows: the phone would issue an alert, to notify an incoming GPRS message, and would indicate the the message was in the process of being downloaded. The indication is that someone terminated the download before it was complete. So either Meredith had the handset, saw/heard the alert, and decided that she didn't want to receive the message, or someone else saw/heard the alert, and quickly pressed the "end call" button to terminate the download. I think that the latter explanation is far more likely, and is reasonable attributable to someone other than Meredith being startled by the "incoming message" alert and quickly taking steps to shut down any activity on the handset.

* Most mobile networks allow you to put "+" instead of a specific international dialling code (e.g. "00" in Italy) - the network will then add in the appropriate international dialling code for the country where the phone is situated at the time.

 

[LondonJohn]

Have to disagree. And strongly so if you suggesting your assessment of information makes no account at all for possible biases in the source of that information. Surely that would give insufficient weight to the not unimportant issue of credibility.

The Per-woowoo File website is an oft referred to source of information about this case. And unsuspecting readers may not realize that behind its anonymous testaments to "true justice" and "objective truth" appear to lie biases which are virtually pornographic in their intensity and in their manifestation.

Oh I agree with most of what you're saying here. I'm just saying that it's irrational and incorrect to suppose something like this: "I think that Person A is a maladjusted and bitter individual with a desperate need for group acceptance and a worrying susceptibility for groupthink behaviour*, so therefore whatever Mr A writes about the case is dismissible out-of-hand".

I merely point out that all arguments about the case should be taken on their merits (or lack of), without any ad hominem issues getting in the way. And in addition, if someone is biased in his/her view of the case, such bias should be visible within that person's posts themselves, and should be addressed from that position. To merely say "You're biased, so you're wrong" is an intellectually bankrupt approach. The person may very well be biased, but that bias should be directly identifiable and addressable through that person's own writings.

Having said that, I would agree that if a person has been shown to have made repeated attempts to consciously deceive or mislead in the past in what they have posted about the case (as opposed to honest mistakes), then this should affect the way in which that person's credibility is viewed. But that's very different from having opinions on a person's character/personality issues.

Hope that makes sense! I'm not sure I've expressed myself in an ideal way, but I guess it boil down to the old (and correct) maxim: "attack the argument and not the arguer".


*Not that I make this kind of assessment about any of the pro-guilt commentators. Absolutely not. No way.

 

[bolint]

lane99:
"To me, the case against Knox and the boyfriend seems to rely to a suspicious extent on this kind of circular logic.

The figure in the video is Knox, not because the figure is recognizable as her, but because "who else could it be?" Knox is the murderer, after all."

I, for one, don't use circular logic.
But i do think that there must be an explanation who that figure is.

 

[Paninaro]

The fact the Postal Police never saw any of those calls being made, that it was the Postal Police who ended up giving directions to the caribinieri, that it's pretty dubious that were Raffaele and Amanda guilty they'd have wanted to bring more cops to the scene, and of course if they only wanted to deal with the carabinieri all they had to do was take the phones from the Postal Police and then just say they got suspicious when they tried to return them to Meredith--all that suggests the idea that Raffaele called them after the Postal Police arrived is insipid. They had to have a reason to come to such a counterintuitive conclusion, and I bet that's because they had already screwed up the direction of the timestamp error!

She only said that even if it was at 12:46 it was still 5 minutes before the call.
So it was not a real admission, but I think that they have dropped this argument.
At any rate, Massei did not use it.

A good time to be reminded of the fact that even Massei accepts that the 112 call from 12.54.39 to 12.55.37 was made before the arrival of the Postal Police, and for a good reason:

And then, a change of version takes place and he tells the Postal Police (who it can be held that, according [81] to what is maintained by the defendants’ defence, arrived after Raffaele Sollecito’s telephone call to 112, and this by nothing other than the fact that regarding these calls to 112, the Postal Police say nothing; in the same way that they said nothing about those that preceded them, at 12:40 pm and at 12:50 pm; each of these phone calls being of a not brief duration that, therefore, would not have escaped the attention of the two police officers) that there has been a burglary. Fabio Marsi in fact testified that they two young people told him ‚they were awaiting the arrival of the Carabinieri because there had been a burglary inside the house‛ (page 122, hearing of February 6, 2009).

(translation p.89)

 

[bolint]

Paninaro wrote:
"A good time to be reminded of the fact that even Massei accepts that the 112 call from 12.54.39 to 12.55.37 was made before the arrival of the Postal Police, and for a good reason:

... Fabio Marsi in fact testified that they two young people told him ‚they were awaiting the arrival of the Carabinieri because there had been a burglary inside the house"

Not exactly an acceptance, as the controversy itself started with the paradox of what they said and what the police believed based on their timing.
Massei simply states what they said, so nothing new here.

Later, however he doesn't use the paradox and that, indeed, suggests that he has rejected it.

 

[Paninaro]

Paninaro wrote:
"A good time to be reminded of the fact that even Massei accepts that the 112 call from 12.54.39 to 12.55.37 was made before the arrival of the Postal Police, and for a good reason:

... Fabio Marsi in fact testified that they two young people told him ‚they were awaiting the arrival of the Carabinieri because there had been a burglary inside the house"

Not exactly an acceptance, as the controversy itself started with the paradox of what they said and what the police believed based on their timing.
Massei simply states what they said, so nothing new here.

Later, however he doesn't use the paradox and that, indeed, suggests that he has rejected it.

You mean Massei is just repeating the defence argument without stating his own interpretation? To me it seems he's accepting that is not possible for three phone calls being made who all escape the attention of the Postal Police. He's certainly not arguing against it. And he does that at lot in the report elsewhere when he finds something not likely to be true. If he thought Sollecito was lying he would certainly have said so. And as I take it you are implying, if he doesn´t use this to argue Sollecito's lying about the 112 call, it's because he rejects that Sollecitos is lying about it.

But doesn't this also inevitably leads to the conclusion that Massei doesn't draw; that the Postal Police are avoiding the truth in theit testimony?

They should very well know that Sollecitos telling the truth because they have had him under observation the whole time at the cottage and they know he hadn't made any call. Despite that, they testify that they arrive before the call were made, a short time after 12.30 Were the Postal Police ever questioned about this apparent inconsistency in their testimony? They know they didn't arrive when they say they did.

Massei doesn't resolve this paradox in his report, which is supposed to be a 400 pages long logical narrative of the events surrounding the crime.

 

[Mairanse]

Thanks for the detailed response John. I agree it seems more likely someone was fumbling around with a phone they hadn't used before considering the number dialed happened to be the first number in the address book.

It would be interesting to know if there were any fingerprints or DNA evidence on the phone if they were tested.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

When did he say that they were waiting?

Did Marsi mention when Raffaele said that they were waiting for the Carabinieri? Was it right when Marsi arrived?