...heh, IMHO, it clearly is. This thread has, what is it, 13,000 replies? The next highest thread on the front page is the nuclear power one, at 2500 replies, followed by a thread about light bulbs (!??!?!?), with 800 replies, then everything else averages out to between 10 and 200 replies from there.
And this is the THIRD thread on this topic. And the only result of all these postings is that those who are convinced of her guilt remain convinced of her guilt, and those who think she is innocent will continue to think of her as innocent. People are entrenched in their views. And no amount of debate from either side will change things.
I know a couple of people have changed their minds: but I mean, seriously. In the rollercoaster that these threads have become, I am but a ripple. And as I mentioned in my last post, real life intervenes.
A lot of the thread has been about the evidence, unfortunately that tends to get sidetracked by people jumping in with declarations of guilt, and when they get asked to explain why they believe that the pair are indeed guilty, they resort to hand waving, evasion, or claims of "but the court said they were guilty, so they must be."
Personally I'm still on the fence, which by default places me in the "Not Guilty" camp, because I have yet to see solid evidence that proves to me that they are guilty beyond all reasonable doubts. I don't think that the tales of Mignini, or those of Massei, are at all logical or compelling, and for me, not having a narrative and timeline of the events that actually makes sense, but rather than having to take giant leaps of faith and added wild speculation to try and make it sound actually feasible, just isn't enough to declare guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
Let's go for an example. I know Platonov hates it, but the Time of Death is the one that does keep coming back.
Three experts testified to Time of Death based on the lack of content in the Duodenum of the victim. Two, including the person who conducted the autopsy, stated that death had to have been between 2 and 3 hours after starting to eat, the third say it could be up to 4 hours after beginning to eat. That was the evidence before the court 2 to perhaps 4 hours from the start of the meal at a stretch.
The court also heard witnesses who were with Meredith when she last ate, and they put the start of the meal between 5:30pm at the earliest, and 6:30pm at the latest, two of the three agreeing that they started eating between 6pm and 6:30pm.
All three of these witnesses also agreed that they watched a movie, starting it after they had eaten the pizza and that they stopped it to prepare and eat an apple crumble about halfway through.
They also all agree that Meredith left at 8:45pm as soon as the movie finished.
These again are the facts as they were put before the court by the witnesses. To disagree with these facts means that either the experts are wrong (they aren't, their claims are consistent with the literature, more so the 2-3 hours claim than the 4, but let's leave that for now) or you have to accept that the witnesses to Meredith's last actions are all lying since they are in agreement with each other in most things (there is a minor discrepancy to the starting time of the meal but again it's not a huge thing.)
So... If the facts themselves are correct, and there is no reason to not believe them, and they are reported correctly in Massei's report, here's the stunner of a question, how can Massei claim that the time of death was 11:40pm?
Mathematically it simply can't work. Even if we accept the 4 hours max, then that would mean she couldn't have started her meal until 7:40pm, yet all three witnesses claim that they all ate before the movie. We know that the movie (The Notebook) is almost exactly two hours long. If they ate the pizza and then watched the movie and Meredith didn't start eating until 7:40pm, then she couldn't have left until at least 9:40pm, an hour after her friends all claim she left. As such, for Massei and the Experts to be correct, Meredith's friends must be lying. For Massei and Meredith's friends to be correct, the Experts and the scientific literature must be wrong.
So what if Massei is wrong?
If we take the friend's claim that the movie finished at 8:45pm and that they stopped it to make their dessert mid way through, then a movie starting time of around 6:30pm makes a lot of sense (giving them about 15 minutes to prepare and consume the apple crumble before re-starting the movie) and it would line up perfectly with their claims that the pizza was eaten between 6pm and 6:30pm with them then starting the movie right after. This all works, the friends' claims are consistent.
We know that Meredith was alive at 8:50pm when she was last seen, so we know that she was at the rare end of the time scale anyway, but let's give the 4 hour the benefit of the doubt. This would mean that 10:30pm would be the limit of when Meredith could have been alive. I know some want to claim that she was help prisoner in terror and panic for at least an hour to account for this major discrepancy, but unfortunately there is exactly zero evidence for her being so held, no ligature marks of any kind to indicate she was restrained, nothing. Such claims are pure speculation to get the timing to fit when quite blatantly doesn't.
What other evidence is there for an earlier time of death?
The sole proven witness to the murder who has given details of it says that Meredith was killed between 9:20pm and 9:30pm. True, he's a chronic lair, so why believe that part of his mostly fictional tale? Because he seems to have seeded it with the truth to account for any evidence that might be found against him. RG claims that Meredith screamed loud enough to be heard on the street, I suspect that he said this to make sure that if a witness had actually heard the scream and came forward, he'd be covered. It also seems unlikely that he'd include a time of death if it wasn't close to true as at the time he didn't know what the police had discovered.
There is also no evidence of activity by Meredith inside the cottage once she returned home. She failed to ring her mother which she always did, she didn't change, didn't even take off her jacket. The book she had borrowed was still in her bag, there was no heater on, despite it being cold that night, and the washing she put on before leaving was still in the machine. If Massei and Mignini are correct, what did Meredith do for those two and a half hours between arriving home and being killed? They claim she lounged about on her bed (without getting changed) reading a book that ended up back in her bag, and playing with her phones, though not re-ringing her ill mother like she always did. Does this make sense to you? It sure doesn't make sense to me.
So why does Mignini claim the ToD was 11:30pm and Massei claim it was 11:40pm? The simple answer is to account for two witnesses, one who claims to have seen RS and AK outside the cottage until around 11:30pm and the other who claims to have heard a scream and two pairs of running feet at about 11pm to 11:30pm.
The first of these has been re-questioned at the appeal and ended up being thoroughly discredited, stating firmly that the night he saw AK and RS people were in masks and that the Disco buses were running. He also admitted to being high on Heroin that night (quite obviously the night of Halloween, not the murder.) He had also claimed not to see anything when asked by police in the days right after the murder. The second witnesses claims are rather dodgy as well since she didn't come forward until late in the piece, she can't conclusively identify the night, the time, or who and what she actually heard, as well as tests seeming to confirm that she couldn't have heard what she claims anyway (further testing by the defence to be absolutely sure of that was denied during the first trial.)
So if both those witnesses are discredited, what's to stop an earlier time of death? Apparently nothing as the court in RG's trial determined that the time of death was before 10:30pm.
So what does it all mean?
The evidence points towards a ToD certainly before 10:30pm, most likely before 9:30pm, and yet Massei rejects the evidence of his own court and selects 11:40pm which was even later than the prosecution was arguing.
So why should anyone accept Massei's opinion over that of the evidence? Why should they believe Massei, who wasn't there, about the meal start time over Meredith's friends who were, and why should they believe Massei about the time taken for food to move into the Duodenum against the three experts who testified and all the scientific literature?
And if Massei and Mignini got the time of death so horribly wrong in spite of having all the evidence laid out for them at the trial, how can we possibly trust anything else they say?
I am also tired, got many, many issues looming in my personal life, and every minute posting to this thread means I spend less time working on my business plan, figuring out ways for me to earn a living next month, help out my friend who is having a horrible time right now, and getting my affairs in order. I've just got to much to do at the moment and not enough time. But as I said to Mary_H, don't stop fighting for what you believe in, just don't fight me. 
