Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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Maybe not, but the gastrointestinal tract contents do mean that, if I understand the alibi evidence correctly.

Rolfe.


Well there's always a chance that Knox or Sollecito started the Naruto file, then sprinted to the cottage, confronted, attacked and stabbed Meredith, then ran back to Sollecito's apartment. Of course this is vanishingly unlikely, but it is not physically impossible. As such, it's not really a cast-iron alibi. And added to that is the fact that only one person need have been in Sollecito's apartment to interact with the computer: the other person of the two could have been elsewhere for any period of time during the evening.

Now, I'm only playing Devil's Advocate here of course, just to show that one can still not say with absolute certainty that stomach contents + computer evidence = proof of innocence for both Knox and Sollecito. But again, it comes back to the fundamental asymmetry of a criminal trial: it's not required or necessary for Knox or Sollecito to prove that they are innocent (although if they can, then so much the better - but of course cases where the accused can prove his/her innocence rarely (if ever) make it to trial in the first place). It's up to the court to conclude that Knox/Sollecito definitely participated in the murder, to the exclusion of all doubt based in reason. The accuser must prove the accusation, or the accused must be considered innocent.
 
Absolutely. But the ToD argument (which is incredibly strong) also has to be considered alongside everything else in order to conclude that there's no case against Knox/Sollecito. For example, if all the ToD evidence were exactly as is, but the police had discovered clothing of Knox and Sollecito covered in Meredith's blood and hidden in Sollecito's apartment, then one would have to reason that Knox/Sollecito somehow found a way to be in the cottage between 9.00pm and 9.30pm.


Oh, indeed. Or Meredith had taken the pizza home and eaten it, instead of eating it with the other girls.

We live in a rational world, and everything that happens has a rational explanation. There's no point in saying, but suppose such clothing had been found, and maybe Sollecito's DNA inside Meredith, but they really had an unbreakable alibi right through to 11.30. It's just impossible, which is why it didn't happen.

Meredith died soon after nine. Knox and Sollecito seem to have strong alibis for that time. And sure enough, we find approximately bugger-all evidence that either of them was present when the murder happened. Hooray, the world is rational after all.

What makes the ToD evidence so strong is the fact that it fits together perfectly with everything else we know about the evidence (or lack thereof) in this case in pointing towards Knox's/Sollecito's non-involvement. What's more, it tends to strongly support a scenario of Guede's sole participation in the killing.


Indeed. I can see no particular reason to exclude his foot as regards the bathmat print. No other unexplained DNA is reported from the murder room. And one man with a knife can perfectly well terrorise a girl into immobility, until it's too late.

Dan O. was right, even though he got much stick for it at the time.

Rolfe.
 
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Well there's always a chance that Knox or Sollecito started the Naruto file, then sprinted to the cottage, confronted, attacked and stabbed Meredith, then ran back to Sollecito's apartment. Of course this is vanishingly unlikely, but it is not physically impossible. As such, it's not really a cast-iron alibi. And added to that is the fact that only one person need have been in Sollecito's apartment to interact with the computer: the other person of the two could have been elsewhere for any period of time during the evening.

Now, I'm only playing Devil's Advocate here of course, just to show that one can still not say with absolute certainty that stomach contents + computer evidence = proof of innocence for both Knox and Sollecito. But again, it comes back to the fundamental asymmetry of a criminal trial: it's not required or necessary for Knox or Sollecito to prove that they are innocent (although if they can, then so much the better - but of course cases where the accused can prove his/her innocence rarely (if ever) make it to trial in the first place). It's up to the court to conclude that Knox/Sollecito definitely participated in the murder, to the exclusion of all doubt based in reason. The accuser must prove the accusation, or the accused must be considered innocent.


Indeed. That's why I said "coherent narrative" in an earlier post. As regards timing, motivation and execution, it's about as crazy as what Sion Jenkins was convicted of doing.

And we don't even have that "fine spray of blood" on anybody's fleece to support this accusation.

Rolfe.
 
How do you tell that a smell of bleach is coming from a single knife in a drawer full of cutlery anyway?

This entire thing is beyond ridiculous.

Rolfe.


In fact, the smell of bleach was very likely due to the floor cleaning product that Sollecito's cleaner had used not long before the police search. The police simply (and mendaciously) wove it into their narrative as justification for their "incredible sleuthing skills" in identifying and collecting the knife:

"We smelled beach in the apartment, went to the kitchen drawer and saw a large knife that looked like it had been intensively scrubbed clean (a police lie, by the way). Ergo, this was one of the knives used in the murder, and the guilty couple had clearly tried to destroy the evidence of its use in the crime by scrubbing it with bleach. But they couldn't fool us clever police officers; and what's more, our crack forensic team will now show that they didn't clean it quite diligently enough by finding evidence on the knife that will condemn Knox and Sollecito".

And to nobody's surprise, Ms Stefanoni subsequently "found" Meredith's DNA on the blade, and Knox's on the handle. Even when it turned out that the knife hadn't been especially rigorously cleaned at all (least of all with bleach or a similar oxidising product) and that it didn't match one of the neck wounds or the impression left on the sheet, this didn't stop police and prosecutors from their zeal. Unfortunately Massei couldn't (or wouldn't) see through this heady mix of mendacity, bias and incompetence. But Hellmann can. And Hellmann will.
 
OK. Try and find a basis for his history of prosecuting people based on weird theories beyond what Preston says. if he's got a "history" of it, I take it it's more than one other case? If you have a view about the monster of florence I take it that's taken on trust as to how bad it makes Mignini look, he really is only a footnote in the case after all? Are people saying that Mignini has a history of this because it's true, or because they think it ought to be/might be true/would be convenient if it were true.

The ability to properly evaluate sources is a primary skill in situations like this. Do you remember this post? Do you know what it was? Evidence, of someone unable or unwilling to properly vet their source.

Note the date on that last post, she and he joined PMF within a week of the thread opening way back in the Cartwheels stage. Note that she'd been referencing TJMK since the first few days of the thread. There never was an independent JREF guilt faction that didn't get it's information from those two websites, populated by the same people, the messageboard, and the showboard. They invited the whole rabbit hole over here and then 'logic and proportion' fell 'sloppy dead' on these threads. What became important was 'discrediting' posters and sources over meaningless details to thunderous acclaim.

It was all an illusion. It was merely importing the theories of PMF and TJMK here, there never was any time 'JREF' posters made a rational coherent argument for guilt, it was the irrational incoherent theories of two incestuous boards imported here by a few people who went looking for information and found a megaton of it at a source they didn't properly evaluate. They fell for it hook, line and sinker, and to this date still hold to the same discredited theories inventing sillier and crazier theories why they might be right, and that seems to have been entirely ignored by you.

Perhaps noting the bra clasp and the knife argument hasn't been advanced much since 2009 you might consider that over 70k posts here and countless elsewhere in which the argument was made by innocentisti in the last eight months the independent review was granted, the Italian independent scientists validated the arguments made, and the court accepted them. That means the innocentisti were right! The ones saying it looked ominous for Knox and Sollecito were wrong! The ones who tried to 'rehabilitate' Curatolo by visiting him and giving him smack cash and smelling him turned out to be badly deluded--as those arguing innocence said from the beginning.

You were helpful to me in establishing the credibility of a source, as I saw you disputing a claim of the interrogation I was dubious of myself, and your efforts assisted me in divining the truth of the matter, and also it appeared you were irritating the owner of the site, but he let it continue as he had nothing to hide. That is a very good indication of whether a source is interested in factual information or is merely promoting disinformation, as the sites that don't allow dissent oftentimes polarize to the edge of lunacy, or are deliberately trying to deceive as their arguments cannot survive scrutiny. You seem to think this is not easily determined, however I think I've spotted a pattern about one site.

Since the split in spring, another 40 have been added to the honor roll. You'll have to log onto your account there to see it, for some reason they don't like people being able to link searches to their site. That ought to tell you something, I don't think IIP ever banned anyone for disagreeing, when you have the truth on your side you have nothing to hide, nor any reasons to make excuses and kooky theories to hide the fact your arguments cannot endure illumination.

So perhaps instead of accepting wholesale the smear on Douglas Preston and others and the utterly dishonest attempt to deliberately deceive people about Giuliani Mignini, why don't you just follow this google search like I did in order to establish the truth of the matter and read from as many sources as possible, instead of just believing what one site says because others just cribbed their arguments and paraphrased their posts? You can even see the kook in action for yourself, as it would just so happen, having to answer questions about that Preston interrogation. Why don't you see if he looks credible to your own eyes before dismissing those who are contemptuous of him on very dubious grounds? Even better, it looks like the transcript is available, so you can see if they deliberately cut it to make him look bad or good.
 
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I still think the clear evidence of time of death makes it all so much simpler. Unless someone has some coherent narrative whereby Knox and Sollecito participated in a murder before about 9.30 pm.

Rolfe.
I remain hopeful that this is the case. At the moment I see little evidence though that this is going to come up in the courtroom. Just as my confidence in Halides increased greatly when many of his old concerns cropped up in court, I will feel a lot more confident about this if the lawyers are confident enough in it to bring it front an centre.
 
One of these samples turns up a tiny tiny amount of Meredith's DNA. (or no DNA at all - just starch.)

For God's sake, why do you even bother considering other ways that profile might have got there?

Rolfe.

Amen. amen, and amen. Can somebody please show this forum a finding that somebody other than Ms. Stephanoni has reliably and reproducably found any measurable amount of MK's DNA on the knife blade.

Shuttlt - This is what I mean by asking people to explain events that you can't even show actually happened in the first place. Its a little like arguing with a creationist about how dinosaurs and men stopped living together on the earth 4000 years ago after the great floods.

For the record, creationists insist that individuals with better academic credentials than Ms. Stephanoni have found evidence, albeait unreproduceable, to back up their stories.
 
You know, I feel particularly sorry for Raffaele Sollecito over all this.

The murder victim wasn't his flatmate. He'd only known Amanda for a few weeks (and I've read that she was his first real girlfriend, this for an Italian man already in his twenties). In spite of the cannabis, he said very little that was really stupid - getting confused between two consecutive evenings, but not launching into "the best truth I can remember" or dreamily imagining someone else killing Meredith while he was nearby.

And he gets sucked into this, purely because he was courting Amanda at the time. And I suspect like everywhere, men's prisons in Italy are quite a lot more unpleasant than women's.

Poor guy.

Rolfe.
 
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The ability to properly evaluate sources is a primary skill in situations like this. Do you remember this post? Do you know what it was? Evidence, of someone unable or unwilling to properly vet their source.

Note the date on that last post, she and he joined PMF within a week of the thread opening way back in the Cartwheels stage. Note that she'd been referencing TJMK since the first few days of the thread. There never was an independent JREF guilt faction that didn't get it's information from those two websites, populated by the same people, the messageboard, and the showboard. They invited the whole rabbit hole over here and then 'logic and proportion' fell 'sloppy dead' on these threads. What became important was 'discrediting' posters and sources over meaningless details to thunderous acclaim.

It was all an illusion. It was merely importing the theories of PMF and TJMK here, there never was any time 'JREF' posters made a rational coherent argument for guilt, it was the irrational incoherent theories of two incestuous boards imported here by a few people who went looking for information and found a megaton of it at a source they didn't properly evaluate. They fell for it hook, line and sinker, and to this date still hold to the same discredited theories inventing sillier and crazier theories why they might be right, and that seems to have been entirely ignored by you.
Fiona was certainly the first link that I am aware of to PMF. I don't think that that is a terrible thing in itself. FOA has been actively involved in the thread as well over the years. Does that mean that there isnt an independant pro-innocence faction? I'm sure Fiona would say much the same thing about you guys and Injustic In Perugia.

Perhaps noting the bra clasp and the knife argument hasn't been advanced much since 2009 you might consider that over 70k posts here and countless elsewhere in which the argument was made by innocentisti in the last eight months the independent review was granted, the Italian independent scientists validated the arguments made, and the court accepted them. That means the innocentisti were right! The ones saying it looked ominous for Knox and Sollecito were wrong! The ones who tried to 'rehabilitate' Curatolo by visiting him and giving him smack cash and smelling him turned out to be badly deluded--as those arguing innocence said from the beginning.
It's perfectly possible that you have "won", but lets wait to find out for sure. Maybe you've misjudged the judge and he's just as corrupt/stupid as the last one. :-)

You were helpful to me in establishing the credibility of a source, as I saw you disputing a claim of the interrogation I was dubious of myself, and your efforts assisted me in divining the truth of the matter, and also it appeared you were irritating the owner of the site, but he let it continue as he had nothing to hide. That is a very good indication of whether a source is interested in factual information or is merely promoting disinformation, as the sites that don't allow dissent oftentimes polarize to the edge of lunacy, or are deliberately trying to deceive as their arguments cannot survive scrutiny. You seem to think this is not easily determined, however I think I've spotted a pattern about one site.
Do you support the "she broke down after 57 hours of interrogation in which she was denied food, water, sleep and toilet breaks" claim? For me it was Bruce's refusal to consider changing what I considered to be the most willfully misleading statements on his site that convinced me of a lot of things as well.

Since the split in spring, another 40 have been added to the honor roll. You'll have to log onto your account there to see it, for some reason they don't like people being able to link searches to their site. That ought to tell you something, I don't think IIP ever banned anyone for disagreeing, when you have the truth on your side you have nothing to hide, nor any reasons to make excuses and kooky theories to hide the fact your arguments cannot endure illumination.
Personally I think that to argue against the majority on this topic you have to put up with so much rudeness and agression that after a while many people stopped bothering. I'm very glad about what happened to PerugiaShock for that reason, I've never been on a more unpleasant forum full of unmoderated anonymous *********. Injustice In Perugia is certainly better, but I did not enjoy posting there. I'm perfectly well aware that pro-guilt posters can be rude as well.

[Incidentally, I don't mean to imply that I am being given a desperately hard line at the moment. Its not even about going against the majority. Back when things were more evenly divided here things were aggressive as hell.]

Perhaps the folks on PMF are wrong about everything, but on PMF they couldn't have a nice discussion about what ever nerdy detail of the case or nuance of translation they fancied if it was opened up. It would turn into a brawl.

So perhaps instead of accepting wholesale the smear on Douglas Preston and others and the utterly dishonest attempt to deliberately deceive people about Giuliani Mignini, why don't you just follow this google search like I did in order to establish the truth of the matter and read from as many sources as possible, instead of just believing what one site says because others just cribbed their arguments and paraphrased their posts?
Did I accept the smear of Preston wholesale? He is the single source fo a good part of the bad things that are said about Mignini and by his own admission the two of them have history. If you happen to know of another case where Mignini's history for trying to pin fantastical murder scenarios on people is evidenced, let me know. Otherwise, I think saying he has a history of it is an overstatement.

As for your Google search. I see some links to articles giving the most limited information, based on I know not what sources, that he was convicted at his first trial of corruption and I see another article saying that he denies it. Is there more that you wanted me to see?

You can even see the kook in action for yourself, as it would just so happen, having to answer questions about that Preston interrogation. Why don't you see if he looks credible to your own eyes before dismissing those who are contemptuous of him on very dubious grounds? Even better, it looks like the transcript is available, so you can see if they deliberately cut it to make him look bad or good.
I can not view this now, but I will take a look tomorrow. Didn't that transcript get slagged off on PMF is a pretty poor job?
 
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Perhaps the folks on PMF are wrong about everything, but on PMF they couldn't have a nice discussion about what ever nerdy detail of the case or nuance of translation they fancied if it was opened up. It would turn into a brawl.
-

You're kidding right?

I'd rather see a healthy debate from both sides than a friendly discussion where only one side is allowed.

But that's just me,

Dave
 
Fine. This is part of the case where I am a guilter.

Guilty of what? What evidence do you have to support your accusation? ( :p )


Kaosium,

This is beyond silly. Nobody but pro-innocence posters ever talks about her being asked to assert that Patrick definately wasn't involved when she supposedly couldn't possibly know. It would make no sense for her to do so whether she's guilty or innocent. I think what people who support guilt feel is that Amanda was hedging. She retracted her statement just enough that, should evidence come to light to clear Patrick, she could say "well, I told you I thought what I said might well be false", but not enough that should no such evidence come to light that she could firm up on her certainty and remember more details if it was convenient to do so. Personally I like the explanation that she didn't feel able to say "what I told you was total nonsense", but said as much she dared. Later it felt like too much of a risk to say more.

That's a theory that requires dismissing a lot of evidence to the contrary that it was the police that coerced the statements, that the statements were by themselves no reason to go parading through the streets of Perugia and announcing 'case closed' and that she 'buckled and gave and admission of facts we knew to be correct.' It also doesn't explain the evidence that they produced before Matteini two days later, and that it sure makes more sense to accumulate your evidence before you go arresting people as opposed to doing it and then finding out you have the wrong person.

What is the evidence that supports your interpretation in light of the context of the situation?

I don't think that whether or not the police would have immediately released him is really the issue.


I didn't claim a straight forward explanation would have resulted in Patrick's immediate release. I'm certain it wouldn't.

Then how is it of any relevance whatsoever except as a completely discredited argument by the evidence I produced? I honestly have never understood this, the idea that they were waiting for her permission, or that it mattered in the slightest, or that her lawyers would condone talking to police again under those circumstances. Should they have, and to what end?
 
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Kaosium,

This whole comment is spot-on, though I might be a tad more sympathetic to Patrick than you are. I think he channeled his anger in the wrong direction, perhaps because he could not understand the dynamics of a false confession, and to change his mind now would bring about too much cognitive dissonance.

I think you're probably right, however when Raffaele and Amanda have spent four years in jail and may never recover their reputations in certain quarters, I'd say he got off easy with two whole weeks in jail. I heard (in November) he was going to attend every court session, presumably to stare Amanda down again, but I've not heard anything about him since he refused to accept the apology.
 
Amen. amen, and amen. Can somebody please show this forum a finding that somebody other than Ms. Stephanoni has reliably and reproducably found any measurable amount of MK's DNA on the knife blade.
.


Isn't that what compelled the prosecution to ask for new tests on the blade? Not necessarily to rule out "contamination", but to confirm Stephi's finding that Meredith's DNA was actually there and was not *machine noise* or something else (as the independent experts hinted at)?

So unless someone can provide some tangible evidence that the knife contained traces of Meredith's DNA, I will continue to see the contamination arguments as pointless.
 
Pilot provided me with something I couldn't remember where to find, the close-up picture of the blood on the top. Thanks to him I can show just how the prosecution chose to present it in court, which can be compared to the other two picture below to see if it suggests something other than what it might have looked like to a person not inspecting it closely.

file.php


This is the picture the police released to the Daily Mail:
Meredith3BAR1601_468x303.jpg



For this one, at least it's an honest argument, unlike Greggy who still apparently thinks the 'mixed DNA' is of any significance whatsover. It brings to his mind Amanda hacking away, all over the apartment, which is about as silly as one can get, being as the stuff in the sink and cotton box is pretty obviously the result of Rudy washing up in Amanda's sink, which might well have already been mixed with Meredith's DNA as they both used it. The only other place they found their DNA mixed IIRC was Filomena's room, in that splotch. Which of course is far more likely to have occurred at any time during the two or so months they lived together and not the twenty or so minutes of the attack, and as it isn't blood, and as there's nothing else there to think there was any struggle there, that becomes pretty obvious, at least in my mind.

The blood on the tap at least exists:

[qimg]http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/4179/akbloodtapofsink.jpg[/qimg]

Plus this testimony of Amanda's, as reflected here in Massei:



Of course, you might notice the lighting in the picture looks awfully different than the lighting in the crime scene videos. If you wish to skip the enthralling guided tour of the bidet and toilet, the tap is shown at almost exactly 3:00, 4:00 and ~4:32.

Lots tougher to see with normal lighting isn't it? Here's a picture with normal lighting from a different angle:

[qimg]http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/sink.jpg[/qimg]

Now Amanda says it's probably from a pierced ear, which if you recall what she was attempting to do to her poor little ears shortly before the murder is quite likely to have happened, and even Massei accepted it:



So there it is, the best actual physical evidence of Amanda being involved in Meredith's death. She had a smear of blood on the tap you can barely see under the normal lighting of the room, probably from one of the dozen extra holes she drilled in her head, apparently unhappy with the seven she started life with, and perhaps the two some like to add for ornamental purposes. She wanted to be especially well ornamented I guess, and got blood on the tap in the process, and now it's the best actual evidence she was involved in the murder. There's a moral in this somewhere! :p
 
I have a feeling that the fact she made this argument, and turned out to be wrong, will haunt her in the future. People are not guilty or innocent based on a perception of the party affiliation of their supporters or detractors. Just dumb.

I don't think anything Anne Coulter says can haunt her in the future.
 
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Debators are only interested in how long they can keep the debate going. They have no interest in the truth.
 
You know, I feel particularly sorry for Raffaele Sollecito over all this.

The murder victim wasn't his flatmate. He'd only known Amanda for a few weeks (and I've read that she was his first real girlfriend, this for an Italian man already in his twenties).

Not even. He met Amanda 1 week before Meredith was killed - on October 25th.
 
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