Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Antony]

They were not required to record it

That's because Amanda was a "witness" at this time, not a suspect.

The trouble with this view is that the police are having it both ways: Edgardo Giobbi could tell from the first day that Amanda was the killer, because of the way she "swayed her hips", and because she was eating pizza days later when she should have been paralysed with grief. And Arturo di Felice chose to describe her confession the next day as "facts we knew to be correct".

Yet we're supposed to believe that she was not under suspicion until after she was arrested, so they didn't have to record her interview, or provide her with an impartial interpreter, or permit her access to a lawyer.

and I think they had not expected a collapse and confession at that time.

It amazes me that apparently intelligent people continue to be apologists for the bandits masquerading as police officers in Perugia. Everything about the interview suggests that they engineered the "collapse and confession", having set out to do so. What is it that motivates so many people to continue parrotting the police/prosecution line in this case?

Bolint, unlike many arguing for AK and RS's guilt, you have remained polite and measured, and haven't flounced off, making bitter accusations of unfairness against those putting the currently consensus view. But you've still signed up to a logically unsupportable position.

Or they may even have recorded it.

Ah ... so you agree that they could have lied about the missing recording?

Of course, it's completely implausible that they "forgot" to record it, or decided it wasn't necessary or there was some technical deficiency. The only explanation that makes any sense is that the recording existed, but was deleted, or is being withheld - because the events shown do not suit the police story of the night.

 

[Kaosium]

Your claim is that convicted murderer Amanda Knox doesn't speak Italian? Really?

Not yet convicted, never a murderess.

At the time of the murder, Amanda had taken a semester of Italian, which she said she forgot most of over the summer, and had about two months in Italy. That was the extent of her Italian. It got her in trouble over the test message, in fact more so than 'cartwheels;' it was the prime feature of the interrogation and the note, her use of a term that implied a definite future meaning with Patrick when she signed off thinking she'd said 'see you later--goodnight.' Sadly I think Amanda's error in her nascent Italian contributed to their 'suspicions' of her in the beginning, they sure made a fuss about it--presented it in her initial court as 'evidence' of murder even!

Amanda now speaks fluent Italian, to go along with the French she picked up, and the German and English she spoke going in. She's now working on Russian and Chinese. Italian prisons are surprisingly fertile ground for language students, perhaps in part due to the high foreign-born population in Italy's prisons.

 

[katy_did]

Raffaele and Amanda walked in there at 10:15, by 10:40 the stoned Raffaele is signing his statement that he and Amanda split up at the town square the night of the murder around 9PM and he went home, and also that he'd called the carabinieri after the Postal police arrived. That suggests to me that Amanda's interrogation began right around 10:40, with those 'admissions' from Raffaele they'd want to have a conversation with her posthaste.

Do we know for sure that he said anything about the bolded bit, though? A while ago I was trying to find out what Raffaele had said about the postal police thing, and couldn't find anything where he'd commented on it specifically (just the bit in his diary where he says he "called the Carabinieri, but in the meantime the postal police arrived", which just sounds like he was saying the postal police arrived before the Carabinieri).

Frank's comment about the police faxing a memo through to Mignini's office about the 112 call is interesting - since Mignini was there overnight, wouldn't he have known that already? Makes me wonder if the 112 call evidence was a bit like the shoe print, evidence they rustled up overnight and the next day to justify the arrest.

 

[Kaosium]

Forgive me again for my newbie questions, but can you point me to this accusation? I found a hand written note of hers where she talks about an almost dreamlike scenario involving Lumumba, but when I read it it looks like a sleep deprived hypothetical she herself doesn't believe, not an accusation.

I assume I've missed an actual accusation somewhere?

Here are the two statements she signed at 1:45 AM on the 6th, and 5:45 AM on the sixth. After these she would then start her note later in the day.

 

[Rolfe]

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewto...b97b443c0509587e8c5153ac65&start=2000#p101540

Hi Stint!

Maybe you need to watch the video in the article you linked to....

It's a shame we can't post over there, but the blanket ban on dissenting opinion has been strengthened. Apparently newbies are to be banned pre-emptively before they've had a chance to post, even though the moderator professes to "hate it when someone has to be banned, it goes against every fibre of my being...."

Which of course means that people who post here can be insulted with impunity, by people without the guts to identify themselves here to take responsibility for what they post.

Rolfe.

 

[Justinian2]

Someone was kind enough to post this link on Websleuth's, so I am posting it here:

http://womanonawire.blogspot.com/2011/09/unarresting-arrested-famed-fbi-profiler.html

That was a fantastic article!

This profiler has been right 5000 times without being proved wrong. He thought Amanda's mannerisms - including the kissing - showed that she was innocent. He also thought that Guede had other unsolved crimes in his past, but he stopped just short of saying that Guede had other unsolved murders in his past.

 

[Rolfe]

From a position a long way from Perugia, so not really able to know if it's feasible or not, I also have wondered if there are other murders that might have Rudy's figurative fingerprints all over them.

Dare I say it, these murders need not be officially "unsolved".

On the other hand, he was pretty easy to track from this one, so maybe not.

Rolfe.

 

[katy_did]

Others have written that, since the DNA evidence was the only matter they elected to review, it meant that they had decided that it alone was crucial to guilt or innocence; therefore, since that review came back criticizing the work of the first DNA analysts, acquittal is a near-certainty. But, in fact, that is not the only possible interpretation of events. It may be that they decided to appoint independent experts because the failure of the first judge to allow the defense to reexamine the evidence might be considered a procedural failing that could get the case reversed by the Supreme Court, and this was just a matter of making sure the case was procedurally sound. And, although the second review was critical of the first, it is worth noting that said criticism is wildly overstated on a number of pro-innocence sites. From their account, it would seem the independent experts concluded there was no DNA evidence at all; but, in fact, all they said was that errors by the first examiners made the results, in their opinion, unreliable. It is quite possible for Hellmann and the other judges/magistrates to grant them the right to disagree, but be themselves unconvinced the original lab work was wrong.

I tend to agree with you that there are other possible interpretations for the decisions made by the Court that seem to point to an acquittal: I don't think the speed of the verdict and it being expected on Saturday is all that significant on its own, for example (though combined with the result of the experts report and the judge wanting to go to a verdict shortly afterwards, it might be).

One point about the decision to allow an independent review of the knife/bra clasp evidence, though: when the decision was announced, the judge said respect for the principle of reasonable doubt meant they couldn't endorse the decision of the first Court when it refused to allow this review. So wouldn't this imply that the reason for allowing the review wasn't just to make sure the case was procedurally sound, but because the case itself might stand or fall on these two pieces of evidence? With that comment, I can't see how it's really possible to interpret it as just a procedural decision.

On the other hand, I agree that the judges could disagree with the experts' conclusions, if the prosecution managed to cast enough doubt on them, and thus could still convict. But if they do accept what the experts said, I think they have no option but to acquit, because they've already linked these two pieces of evidence to 'reasonable doubt' (perhaps I should say 'no option based on consistency, logic and reason'!).

 

[RoseMontague]

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewto...b97b443c0509587e8c5153ac65&start=2000#p101540

Hi Stint!

Maybe you need to watch the video in the article you linked to....

It's a shame we can't post over there, but the blanket ban on dissenting opinion has been strengthened. Apparently newbies are to be banned pre-emptively before they've had a chance to post, even though the moderator professes to "hate it when someone has to be banned, it goes against every fibre of my being...."

Which of course means that people who post here can be insulted with impunity, by people without the guts to identify themselves here to take responsibility for what they post.

Rolfe.

It looks like there is one poster there that has questioned this comment from SA:

Amanda Knox looks like she has dead eyes to me. And Raffaele. I see no righteous passion at all. And I think the reason for that is clear.

This from the guy that smelled Curatolo and just new he was an honest man.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

is it now undisputed that the police were in his apartment?

Interestingly Massei says that the Stardust file is accessed at 2:47AM, and this internet access at exactly the same time is not mentioned at all, nor in the appeal, although contamination of the knife is a hot topic and police presence before the official search could be used.
How is it that the defence did not push this topic?

Also, the computer expert does not mention the 2:47 Stardust access.

It would be good to see how this web browsing conclusion was arrived at, it would be quite strange that they were searching a news site for the Kercher murder at 3AM at the suspect's place on his computer. Why?

What is so strange about the police looking up information on the murder that they are investigating? Are we in agreement that the police were in Raffaele's apartment?

 

[Dan O.]

Here are the two statements she signed at 1:45 AM on the 6th, and 5:45 AM on the sixth. After these she would then start her note later in the day.

"This statement which, as specified in the entry of 6 November 2007, 20:00 pm, by the Police Chief Inspector, Rita Ficarra, was drawn up, following the notification of the detention measure, by Amanda Knox, who ‚requested blank papers in order to produce a written statement to hand over‛ to the same Ficarra." (Massei [418])
​

In Amanda's testimony we learn that Amanda signed the arrest papers around midday or 1 pm setting the bounds on when this note was written and handed over.

 

[RoseMontague]

Here is SA's reply:

Ah Zachman, you prove my point about the pro-Knox camp beautifully. I illustrated, carefully, the different bases on which a jury makes its deliberations and from that how it follows the weight they give to the believability of the defendant(s) accounts. Then I gave you an end example of why, in 20 years of experience, the defendants demeanour comes across as TOTALLY wrong to me based on video and stills. It screams out to me.

Sorry SA, for me, it doesn't pass the smell test. You showed exactly how credible your evaluations of demeanor are with the heroin addicted, drug dealing, professional witness and paid liar of a homeless park bench bum.

 

[Kaosium]

Do we know for sure that he said anything about the bolded bit, though? A while ago I was trying to find out what Raffaele had said about the postal police thing, and couldn't find anything where he'd commented on it specifically (just the bit in his diary where he says he "called the Carabinieri, but in the meantime the postal police arrived", which just sounds like he was saying the postal police arrived before the Carabinieri).

Frank's comment about the police faxing a memo through to Mignini's office about the 112 call is interesting - since Mignini was there overnight, wouldn't he have known that already? Makes me wonder if the 112 call evidence was a bit like the shoe print, evidence they rustled up overnight and the next day to justify the arrest.

I can't remember where I saw it now, I thought it was in the Matteini Report, but I can't find where we analyzed those parts in the thread. I can't seem to find it in the partial translation by Catnip over at PMF, but there's an official paper which details Raffaele's statement to the cops like Matteini does, that also included his 'admitting' to that in the statement he signed. It came up again not that long ago, a few months I think, but I can't find it now.

 

[lane99]

Nobody's perfect

...This profiler has been right 5000 times without being proved wrong...

Well, certainly all but the thickest thickie should be able to see by now (if they've followed the case at all) that Knox and the boyfriend are surely innocent.

And, without having read it, I would expect the profiler's take on this particular crime to be pretty accurate. But then you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what is here a rather stereotypical crime.

But, in general, profilers are often wrong. And John Douglas is no exception. And, in the past, his mistakes have lead to at least one wrongful conviction that I'm aware of.

If he's claiming he's never been "proved wrong", that is nothing but specious marketing hype.

 

[Dougm]

When my mother died at home under hospice care, my sister and I were the only ones home. When she died my sister and I didn't cry. We were stunned. We were numb. We sat apart from each other lost in our own thoughts. My mother passed so easily, that we were scared. Could we just cease to exist also?

Amanda could have been nervous that it could have happened to her.

Amanda was effected more by fear than grief.

Only idiots would think that her actions indicated guilt.

I'm agreeing with you, by the way.

I know you are, and I was agreeing with you too!!

I don't always respond in the way that people might expect for these types of life events, either. I think I would respond very much like Amanda did, I would try to help, and might find something to distract me, so I didn't have to deal directly with the pain, and in her case, fear.

I think that the affect on her of the fact that the murder took place in the room next door to where she slept, and that if it happened a week earlier (before she started sleeping at Sollecito's place), it could very well have been Amanda that was slashed to death, with or without Meredith. And the fact that as far as she knew, the killer was still on the loose, and might be someone she knew. She didn't know any of these people for more than a few weeks, and I am sure that everyone looked with suspicion at each other. She pretended to be brave, but must have been a wreck inside. Plus the sleep deprivation.

 

[Steft50]

Hello, first time poster on this forum and I just wanted to voice my own opinion on this just cuz I can.

Let me start by saying I am usually, almost always, pro-prosecution if the evidence presented is convincing. Secondly, I haven't really followed this case until the last couple of months so most of my opinions are based on the appeal/verification of the verdict that has been going on recently. I've tried to keep an open mind but a few things have convinced me that Amanda and RS were not present at the time of the murder.

Watching the video of the evidence collection combined with the evaluation of that evidence and collection process by the court appointed examiners has led me to disregard all evidence collected by ILE inside the apartment. Forensic evidence of Amanda inside the apartment alone wouldn't mean anything since she lived there. Normally I would lean towards LE collection and processing and not so much what the defense pays for but this evaluation was done by court appointed experts in the field of collection, processing and interpretation of dna. They had nothing to gain or lose no matter what they found/said. So I do value what they had to say. Someone commented how on the stand one admitted that something was possible. Well, anything is possible, the question should be is it probable. It's possible a UFO could land on the Eiffle tower, but is it probable? No, at least I doubt it.

The prosecution and guilters pound on Amanda's lies. I can understand that. But when the prosecution and witnesses also lie I don't hold much weight to what they say. Kettle calling the pot black as it were. It's one reason I am almost always pro prosecution. I've never seen one that lied so much.

The knife collected at RS's doesn't match the weapon mark found at the scene, and there was no blood found on it. It was supposedly cleaned well enough to remove the blood but not well enough to remove minute dna sample of the victems dna and bread starch. Can't have it both ways, sorry.

There really is no evidence that puts either Amanda or RS at the apartment the night of the murder, and I believe Rudy committed the crime alone.

I believe ILE and the prosecutor didn't like the way Amanda behaved, they were feeling pressure from the media and the public as soon as the murder became public knowledge to solve this horrible crime Amanda and RS became they're prime suspects from the beginning. Ego and pride refused to let any of them back off that initial assumption. Evidence collection techs looked like the key stone cops in the video, I was dumbstruck watching evidence collected without changing gloves. Passing around evidence with dirty gloves, including a hair on one. If they were that sloppy when the cameras were rolling, how sloppy were they when it wasn't.

A certain amount of character assasination is expected by the prosecuters in any court case, however there is generally evidence to back it up. The levels this proscecuter (and civil attorneys) went to without any evidence to back it up tells me more about them than it does about Amanda and RS.

Something in general that bugs me is that Amanda is supposedly such a good lover that she takes a virgin and in a week turns him into a sadistic homicidal rapist. Sorry, not buying that one either.

There is also no evidence that she is a witch, practises satanism, paganism, devil worship or BDSM (the whole dominatrix thing).

So, ok, made my first post and maybe now I'll go do my profile or something and I won't get the message that I should feel free to post. LOL

 

[Rolfe]

Welcome to the forum, Steft50!



Rolfe.

 

[katy_did]

Here is SA's reply:

Sorry SA, for me, it doesn't pass the smell test. You showed exactly how credible your evaluations of demeanor are with the heroin addicted, drug dealing, professional witness and paid liar of a homeless park bench bum.

I think SA was also the one who thought the body language of Amanda, Raffaele, and Rudy would be significant when the three were in Court together - in terms of who would be able to look the other in the face, and who would avoid it. Then Barbie told him that Amanda and Raffaele looked straight at Rudy, while Rudy wouldn't meet their eyes. Haven't heard anything about that theory since.

 

[Rolfe]

Is this Kermit ever right about ANYTHING?

SomeAlibi has finally quoted what Deanna actually said, and said something sensible about it. I don't hold out much hope that this will bring Kermit, Stint7 and the other court-room sleuths to any understanding of where they went wrong though. (Stint7, having finally figured it out, merely posts an impassioned desire for an ignore button.)

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewto...b97b443c0509587e8c5153ac65&start=2000#p101580

A couple of rubbish journalists misinterpreted what Deanna said, and that was easily understood by simply watching the actual video of what she said.

But no....

ETA: Peggy's damage limitation spin is quite cute.

I can answer one of them: the story about the graffiti has morphed since it first emerged. At first, it sounded as if Deanna was talking about this courtroom, which was encouraged by the media report, which said something like this raises the prospect that the graffiti was done by court officers or the police.

On this basis, people here looked at photos for clues. Is there something wrong with that? If so, what exactly?

No, Peggy. Someone read the Daily Mail version, which was WRONG, because these people are CRAP JOURNALISTS, and assumed it was correct without watching the original material even though it was linked to in the same post. As far as research skills go, this says it all, really.

Thoughtful, as so often, gets the right end of the stick. http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewto...b97b443c0509587e8c5153ac65&start=2000#p101601 Thoughtful, on the other hand, can't understand why we don't come clean and say that Amanda really did murder Meredith, it's just that because she has such an angelic face we think she has been punished enough, because that's what we actually believe.



I don't think the pre-emptive banning is working very well for them, by the way.

Rolfe.

 

[RoseMontague]

Interestingly Massei says that the Stardust file is accessed at 2:47AM, and this internet access at exactly the same time is not mentioned at all, nor in the appeal, although contamination of the knife is a hot topic and police presence before the official search could be used.
How is it that the defence did not push this topic?

Also, the computer expert does not mention the 2:47 Stardust access.

It would be good to see how this web browsing conclusion was arrived at, it would be quite strange that they were searching a news site for the Kercher murder at 3AM at the suspect's place on his computer. Why?

The appeal does say this:

Indeed, searching with Spotlight in version 10.4.10 was
detected at least one file "Naruto ep 101.avi" which is not present in
advice of the police post, but whose date of last opening is Thursday
1 November 2007 at 21:26 (ie in the period examined by the police
Postal: 1st November 2007 18:00 - November 2, 2007 8:00 am).
The date of their last (Tuesday, 6 November 2007 at 10:18:38) and last
editing this file (Tuesday, 6 November 2007 at 13:28:09) corresponds to a
period coinciding with the removal of the laptop from the home of Raffaele
Dunning, during which activities are detected on that laptop
witnessed by the file system logs.
In light of the circumstances, it requires further investigation
computer Raffaele Sollecito to ascertain interactions
actually occurred on his computer, between 1 and 2 November 2007, under
Article. 603, first paragraph, cppInquiry EXPERTISE ON COMPUTER AC M-P RO B OOK R AFFAELE

Activities. Playing around with it by the cops seems rather obvious, and this before they managed to fry 3 hard drives. Very professional.

What also is interesting is that the defense seemed a little suspicious of certain things regarding the computer conultant's report (the one trying to determine what happened to the computers and if they could be recovered). This quote from the defense 507 motion for further expertise (all denied, denied, denied [at that point in time]).

Prof. Bernaschi was heard at the hearing for recording evidence of 'April 8, 2008, and presented his conclusions about the electric shock that has "burned" in a manner indicating some irreversible causes that might cause such a technical style. However, he could clone the contents of the hard drive and Sollecito Kercher, while it has not been able to clone the hard drive of Knox. The contents of the aforementioned hard drives were not analyzed.

The defenders need to consider an integration of the expert examination in the light of the contradictory statements made by the texts of oral argument on the Postal Police investigations and the delivery of personal computers seized from the defendants in particular exams TROTTA Marco and Claudio trification of March 14, 2009 Mirko and Gregor. The use of the machine Logic Cube as reported by the witnesses mentioned, does not appear in the report described by Prof. Massimo Bernaschi of March 21, 2008 are not described as the activities of the witnesses during the exams at the institute of Prof. Massimo Bernaschi.