Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kevin_Lowe]

First of all -- 10:00? Isn't that an awfully significant coincidence, now that we know the time of death was probably around 9:30?

Second -- as an American, "garden" to me does not mean "yard," it means flower beds -- it sounds from the description in Massei that the phones were found not only in the front yard, but maybe even in the driveway -- they definitely were found where the police had walked, or Mrs. Lana would not have thought one of the cops had dropped his phone there.

The question is, did Rudy or one of his associates (even another cop, located outside of Perugia) call the house where he had thrown the phones, in order to get the police to find them that night and possibly trace them and look into finding Meredith the night of the murder instead of the next morning? (My personal belief has always been that Rudy left thinking Meredith could still be saved.)

The thought that there may be more to the coincidental bomb threat leads me to wonder whether there may be more to the story that Rudy's fingerprints were found via the immigration data base. Why would he have had no fingerprints in the criminal data base? Would the Perugian police actually have been unaware of such a habitual burglar/arsonist?

These theories all depend on one thing, though -- do people in Italy care if criminals commit more serious crimes after not being adequately prosecuted for minor ones? In Seattle, the authorities totally get their butts kicked if they let somebody dangerous out of jail and he turns right around and kills somebody. Maybe in Italy, they don't.

We have to be careful not to fall into the guilters' trap of trying to make every oddity part of a unified narrative. However I will say that a bomb threat regarding the toilet of a particular home is such an extraordinary oddity that it does seem salient.

The problem is how would Rudy have gotten the phone number of the place he ditched the phones, in order to call in a bomb threat? The police can do that easily enough, but at least in Australia they do their best to make it easy to look up a person's phone number given their name but hard to look up their phone number given their address. The internet makes it easier if people happen to have a page with their phone number and address on it, so that could be it.

The story that Rudy phoned a cop buddy and said "you should check out this address" and then the cop buddy made a bomb threat so the cop buddy could go there seems a bit weird and shaky, but then again maybe that's how police and their informants roll in Perugia. I guess the police in Perugia are squirrely enough that we shouldn't rule it out.

Or it could just be an off-the-wall coincidence. We shouldn't rule that out either.

ETA: Or if Rudy did think Meredith was not fatally injured, then possibly he ditched the phones at a house whose number he knew for specifically so as soon as he was clear of the neighbourhood he could arrange for the phones to be found. If so I'd expect the "around 10:00" call to have been a bit after 10:13pm given that there was contact with one of the phones at 10:13 mid-way between their final resting place and the murder house. Then again it would take a while to determine the address of the phone's owner, so it's a bit of a Rube Goldberg way of alerting emergency services.

 

[Mary_H]

We have to be careful not to fall into the guilters' trap of trying to make every oddity part of a unified narrative. However I will say that a bomb threat regarding the toilet of a particular home is such an extraordinary oddity that it does seem salient.

The problem is how would Rudy have gotten the phone number of the place he ditched the phones, in order to call in a bomb threat? The police can do that easily enough, but at least in Australia they do their best to make it easy to look up a person's phone number given their name but hard to look up their phone number given their address. The internet makes it easier if people happen to have a page with their phone number and address on it, so that could be it.

The story that Rudy phoned a cop buddy and said "you should check out this address" and then the cop buddy made a bomb threat so the cop buddy could go there seems a bit weird and shaky, but then again maybe that's how police and their informants roll in Perugia. I guess the police in Perugia are squirrely enough that we shouldn't rule it out.

Or it could just be an off-the-wall coincidence. We shouldn't rule that out either.

ETA: Or if Rudy did think Meredith was not fatally injured, then possibly he ditched the phones at a house whose number he knew for specifically so as soon as he was clear of the neighbourhood he could arrange for the phones to be found. If so I'd expect the "around 10:00" call to have been a bit after 10:13pm given that there was contact with one of the phones at 10:13 mid-way between their final resting place and the murder house. Then again it would take a while to determine the address of the phone's owner, so it's a bit of a Rube Goldberg way of alerting emergency services.

It would be Rube Goldbergian, and, as I noted earlier on this page, we're dealing with a bunch of dunces here.

How about this -- the police are in the Lanas' house investigating the bomb threat, Rudy runs past, notices the police vehicles and impulsively throws the phones down by the police cars, hoping the police will stumble onto them as they leave. It's Rudy's lucky night -- he gets to report the crime without calling 911.

 

[Mary_H]

<snip> I will say that a bomb threat regarding the toilet of a particular home is such an extraordinary oddity that it does seem salient.<snip>

A Freudian might find a transparent connection between this scheme and the fact that Rudy actually did leave a "bomb" in a toilet that night.

 

[komponisto]

Well, Rose asks the right question, which is why Rudy was not in jail. As you might know, Mark Waterbury (and others) believe Rudy had escaped prosecution because he was a police informant (there's a lot of African drug traffic in north central Italy).

Someone I know has suggested that we all may have been too quick to buy into the police's story about the anonymous bomb threat to the Lana family the night of the murder. Here is what it says in Massei:




First of all -- 10:00? Isn't that an awfully significant coincidence, now that we know the time of death was probably around 9:30?

Second -- as an American, "garden" to me does not mean "yard," it means flower beds -- it sounds from the description in Massei that the phones were found not only in the front yard, but maybe even in the driveway -- they definitely were found where the police had walked, or Mrs. Lana would not have thought one of the cops had dropped his phone there.

The question is, did Rudy or one of his associates (even another cop, located outside of Perugia) call the house where he had thrown the phones, in order to get the police to find them that night and possibly trace them and look into finding Meredith the night of the murder instead of the next morning? (My personal belief has always been that Rudy left thinking Meredith could still be saved.)

The thought that there may be more to the coincidental bomb threat leads me to wonder whether there may be more to the story that Rudy's fingerprints were found via the immigration data base. Why would he have had no fingerprints in the criminal data base? Would the Perugian police actually have been unaware of such a habitual burglar/arsonist?

These theories all depend on one thing, though -- do people in Italy care if criminals commit more serious crimes after not being adequately prosecuted for minor ones? In Seattle, the authorities totally get their butts kicked if they let somebody dangerous out of jail and he turns right around and kills somebody. Maybe in Italy, they don't.

According to the Micheli report, the bomb threat was investigated:

On the morning of November 2, 2007, at different times, the owners of the house located at Via Sperandio 5b in Perugia discovered two cellular telephones in the interior of the building's garden, and contacted the Postal Police to report the incident. (By coincidence, they had also received, in the preceding hours, a strange threatening telephone call warning of explosives in the bathroom, which was later revealed to be the result of a young boy's fantasy.)

By the way, I'll take the opportunity to plug my translation of Massei, by quoting the same passage you quoted, which falls within the so-far completed portion:

It had thus happened that on the evening of 11-1-2007 around 10:00 pm, a person had warned Elisabetta Lana not to use the toilet in the house because there was a bomb which might explode. Mrs. Lana had immediately notified the police of this call; they arrived at the scene and found nothing. Mrs. Lana and her husband were nonetheless encouraged to come to the Postal Police station the following day to report the telephone call. At around 9:00 am the next day, i.e. November 2, when they were preparing to leave to make the report, their son, Alessandro Biscarini, found a small telephone “in the garden, in the open space [spiazzo] in front of the house” (statement of Alessandro Biscarini, hearing of 2-6-2009, p. 166). Thinking that it had been left by one of the agents who had arrived the previous evening, Mrs. Lana called the police and was told to bring the telephone to the station, where she was heading anyway, and where she arrived, together with her husband, at around 10:15 am.

Dr. Bartolozzi, to whom the phone was given, traced the owner: Filomena Romanelli, resident of Via Della Pergola 7, Perugia.

Shortly afterward, when Mrs. Lana and her husband had left the offices of the Postal Police, their daughter Elisabetta Biscarini told them she had found a second cellular telephone in the same garden of the house on Via Sperandio, around 11:45 am – 12:00 pm, a short distance from where the first had been discovered.

 

[Antony]

It's funny -- the police, investigators, lawyers and magistrates all did so many underhanded and illicit things, yet none of the things they did were quite underhanded enough or illicit enough to allow them to actually get away with what they were trying to get away with. What's up with that?

Simple arrogance, and the belief that their version would not be examined in detail IMO. They were not just incompetent in the investigation, they were incompetent in the stitch-up. The way in which the first trial was conducted seemed to justify their confidence that it wouldn't make much difference - all they had to do was go through the motions of providing "evidence" and the court would reach the result they wanted.

The behaviour of the investigators in the notorious bra-clasp video is telling: they quite clearly wanted to underline how significant it would be made to be in the case, with all of the holding it for the camera, peering at it and shining a light on it - not to mention the "Look, there's the DNA where I'm pointing!" "Here, let me hold it!" "Let's get a picture of it with a 'Y' marker!"

 

[RoseMontague]

I finished The Fatal Gift of Beauty and will comment on the book as a whole later. A few interesting quotes and other information emerge including the burglary quote on Rudy and the one from Mignini I posted on the CT thread. This is the scoop on Comodi with a quote that says it all.

“The defense has been overly dramatic about this,” she explained, arguing against the defense request to toss out the case based on the fact that the crime lab hadn’t turned over all the paperwork involved in the DNA analysis. “No defense right has been threatened. We decide if documents are necessary or not. I didn’t even look at their request of July 30 [for the superwitness]. I opened it and closed it right away. It was so useless. No law says the scientific police have to produce all that’s requested. It’s not proof, and we didn’t need it to support our case. The prosecutor’s office decides what is useful and what is distraction. You can tell me that Stefanoni has to get another degree, but telling us that not producing the documents warrants tossing out the case is like asking the postal police to explain how they found a hooker online. The important thing is that they found the hooker!”

Very interesting in light of recent appeal events.

Wow, just wow.

 

[RoseMontague]

From Burleigh's book, here is my favorite passage on Maresca:

By the end of the trial, Mignini was insisting that the last best piece of proof of the students’ guilt was the fake break-in and robbery. He and the police said that the defendants had made one little mistake in their carefully staged scene: they had tossed around Filomena’s clothing first, and then thrown a rock at the window from inside, spraying glass on top of the clothes when it should have been under them. Police had described this in trial testimony but never shown it. It was determined that the Kerchers’ civil lawyer, Francesco Maresca, was the only lawyer in the room who knew how to find the picture in his copy of the massive, unorganized digital case archive. His laptop was beamed onto the wall screen, and his motocross screensaver came up, a bike at rightangles to a spray of dirt. The dapper Florentine with the gold-embedded shark’s tooth dangling beneath his bespoke shirt collar smirked and then clicked the mouse again to bring up a picture of Filomena’s bed as it had looked on the morning of November 2, 2007. The defense lawyers insisted that what was supposed to be glass on top of a blue dress on the bed was actually a white dot pattern in the fabric. No one denied that or even bothered to explain what could have happened to the damning glass on top of the clothes in Filomena’s room. In the last minutes of the trial, it was clear that no photographic proof of “glass on top of clothes” even existed and that it didn’t matter anyway.

LOL, too funny.

 

[RoseMontague]

The whole issue of a staged or real break in is smoke and mirrors on the part of the prosecution (and Massei). They hang the proof on Filomena's testimony about the shutters and the glass on top of clothes. No pictures exist of this glass on top of clothes and Filomena testified there was also glass under the clothes. I have seen so many different quotes on various testimonies of Filomena regarding the shutters that the most certain thing I can say is she is not certain what happened, she was running late and in a rush.

 

[katy_did]

I finished A Fatal Gift of Beauty and will comment on the book as a whole later. A few interesting quotes and other information emerge including the burglary quote on Rudy and the one from Mignini I posted on the CT thread. This is the scoop on Comodi with a quote that says it all.

“The defense has been overly dramatic about this,” she explained, arguing against the defense request to toss out the case based on the fact that the crime lab hadn’t turned over all the paperwork involved in the DNA analysis. “No defense right has been threatened. We decide if documents are necessary or not. I didn’t even look at their request of July 30 [for the superwitness]. I opened it and closed it right away. It was so useless. No law says the scientific police have to produce all that’s requested. It’s not proof, and we didn’t need it to support our case. The prosecutor’s office decides what is useful and what is distraction. You can tell me that Stefanoni has to get another degree, but telling us that not producing the documents warrants tossing out the case is like asking the postal police to explain how they found a hooker online. The important thing is that they found the hooker!”

Very interesting in light of recent appeal events.

Wow, just wow.

Besides, surely what the postal police do in their own private time is no one's business but their own. Seems like an unfairly intrusive analogy.

What did you think of the book? I've only just started reading it.

 

[RoseMontague]

By the way, I'll take the opportunity to plug my translation of Massei, by quoting the same passage you quoted, which falls within the so-far completed portion:

Love it, especially your comments.

Rudy Hermann Guede

Part 05: The Ivorian drifter and burglar whose involvement is a virtual certainty; why the authors nonetheless think the apparent burglary in the house on Via Della Pergola was staged.
Scene Staged by Rudy?

Part 06: Why Rudy Guede did not stage the fake burglary, which instead has to have been the work of (you guessed it) Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito

Part 07: The inseparable young lovers, and how they found themselves free on the evening of November 1, 2007 (to commit murder, apparently).

Shortly after I received a convincement of innocence, I had thought about going through the Massei report and placing little whale footnotes at each Masseism of logic fail, and relating it to a passage from Moby Dick.
Never got to it, but your comments reminded me of it.

I'll be using you translation at every opportunity. Keep us updated.

 

[RoseMontague]

What did you think of the book? I've only just started reading it.

If Barbie had written one from a pro-innocence standpoint, this would be it. A good counter to that one, with similar issues, imo.

 

[katy_did]

If Barbie had written one from a pro-innocence standpoint, this would be it. A good counter to that one, with similar issues, imo.

Hmmm, I find it near impossible to read Barbie's writing without throwing things. I'll be interested to see how this book compares, then.

 

[RoseMontague]

Hmmm, I find it near impossible to read Barbie's writing without throwing things. I'll be interested to see how this book compares, then.

With Nadeau it is the drug culture that gets a focus and with Burleigh it is sex and the culture in Italy as it relates to women.

Both seem to leave some things open for interpretation as far as guilt or innocence go and I get the impression that is to leave the author some wiggle room if the verdict doesn't go the way the book is presented.

Let's pretend we are neutral but the content is still decidedly on one side of the argument. At one point she describes the police questioning of Amanda and even says she uses one term rather than something else so not to be sued.

Maybe the authors think the book will sell better this way, beats me. I would prefer a more straightforward approach.

Mignini is a toad and here is why.
Massei is a turd and here is why.
Steffi is a tool and here is why.

AK and RS are innocent and here is why.

 

[katy_did]

With Nadeau it is the drug culture that gets a focus and with Burleigh it is sex and the culture in Italy as it relates to women.

Both seem to leave some things open for interpretation as far as guilt or innocence go and I get the impression that is to leave the author some wiggle room if the verdict doesn't go the way the book is presented.

Let's pretend we are neutral but the content is still decidedly on one side of the argument. At one point she describes the police questioning of Amanda and even says she uses one term rather than something else so not to be sued.

Maybe the authors think the book will sell better this way, beats me. I would prefer a more straightforward approach.

Mignini is a toad and here is why.
Massei is a turd and here is why.
Steffi is a tool and here is why.

AK and RS are innocent and here is why.

Looking through it, at least it seems to be quite well-written, unlike that book by will survive or whatever his name is. Seems to be a bit over-generalized in places though ("that quality that so differentiates the American from Europeans - enthusiasm"!). I'll try and withhold any (more) judgment till I've read it.

 

[Kestrel]

The behaviour of the investigators in the notorious bra-clasp video is telling: they quite clearly wanted to underline how significant it would be made to be in the case, with all of the holding it for the camera, peering at it and shining a light on it - not to mention the "Look, there's the DNA where I'm pointing!" "Here, let me hold it!" "Let's get a picture of it with a 'Y' marker!"

The bra clasp discovery video is certainly odd. The photo with the marker is supposed to show the item precisely as it was found. An inspector places makers next to items of interest, takes a photo to show the relative positions of the markers, and a close up of each item and it's marker. But in the video, we see them pick up the clasp, examine it, photograph it, pass it around, place it back on the floor in a different place, put a marker next to it and take more photos.

They seemed to know a photo next to a marker was needed, but didn't understand why.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Wow

I finished The Fatal Gift of Beauty and will comment on the book as a whole later. A few interesting quotes and other information emerge including the burglary quote on Rudy and the one from Mignini I posted on the CT thread. This is the scoop on Comodi with a quote that says it all.

"You can tell me that Stefanoni has to get another degree..."

Very interesting in light of recent appeal events.

Wow, just wow.

RoseMontague,

There is so much that is dismaying in this whole passage, but does the above mean that Stefanoni only has a bachelor's degree?

 

[RoseMontague]

RoseMontague,

There is so much that is dismaying in this whole passage, but does the above mean that Stefanoni only has a bachelor's degree?

I don't see a lot of folks calling her Dr. Steffi, but really no clue me.

Burleigh talks about how discovery in theory is a lot different from the reality of what prosecutors do.

 

[RoseMontague]

Sabrina and Mom now in the same jail cell:

http://translate.googleusercontent....sieme/&usg=ALkJrhi6qnLiZfHbhClkEmM-iU3KC6jedw

The speculation is maybe they will talk to each other about the murder.

This case is pure tee bizarro.

 

[Dan O.]

The problem is how would Rudy have gotten the phone number of the place he ditched the phones, in order to call in a bomb threat? The police can do that easily enough, but at least in Australia they do their best to make it easy to look up a person's phone number given their name but hard to look up their phone number given their address. The internet makes it easier if people happen to have a page with their phone number and address on it, so that could be it.

could be. But that would imply Rudy had access to a computer other than the one confiscated in Milan.

 

[christianahannah]

I don't see a lot of folks calling her Dr. Steffi, but really no clue me.

Burleigh talks about how discovery in theory is a lot different from the reality of what prosecutors do.

Stefanoni is addressed as Dr. in court transcripts and documents, and Italian media articles.

I don't think the title Dr. Steffi is used but rather Dr. Stefanoni.