Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[bolint]

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.

You are mistaken. Your use of "suspect" in this context means only "person of interest", not a legal category in Italian law.
Legally Amanda became suspect when there was evidence that she may be involved in the crime.
Amanda's 1:45AM confession produced this evidence.
Before that she had been only a "person of interest".
For example the police intercepted also Filomena ond others, so they were somewhat suspicous of them at that time.
But they never "gained" suspect status.

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?

The impression that it was not an engineered collapse.
In the first place they did not call Amanda. Great engineering.

As I see they wanted to grill Raffaele, mostly beacuse of the intercepted phone conversation (same day afternoon) with his father in which he asked Raffaele not to walk around with the knives especially when he goes to the police. And Raffaele said "Why? These idiots will never discover it."
So they decided to teach him a lesson. And they did.

you've still signed up to a logically unsupportable position.

I don't think so.
The only reason I think they are guilty is because based on my knowledge of the case I find it more logical than the opposite.
Of course, I could be mistaken.

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

They could. It would not be the first time in police history.

 

[HumanityBlues]

You are mistaken. Your use of "suspect" in this context means only "person of interest", not a legal category in Italian law.
Legally Amanda became suspect when there was evidence that she may be involved in the crime.
Amanda's 1:45AM confession produced this evidence.
Before that she had been only a "person of interest".
For example the police intercepted also Filomena ond others, so they were somewhat suspicous of them at that time.
But they never "gained" suspect status.




The impression that it was not an engineered collapse.
In the first place they did not call Amanda. Great engineering.

As I see they wanted to grill Raffaele, mostly beacuse of the intercepted phone conversation (same day afternoon) with his father in which he asked Raffaele not to walk around with the knives especially when he goes to the police. And Raffaele said "Why? These idiots will never discover it."
So they decided to teach him a lesson. And they did.




I don't think so.
The only reason I think they are guilty is because based on my knowledge of the case I find it more logical than the opposite.
Of course, I could be mistaken.



They could. It would not be the first time in police history.

Bolint,

What do you think the most incriminating thing is that Amanda said while being bugged?

 

[Dougm]

I am inclined to agree here, but -- if we assume that AK will be acquitted of the murder -- I don't think PL's case was particularly helped by his lawyer (Pacelli) ranting about AK being a murderous witch/sorceress of doom.

What I was thinking in my previous post is that, although logic tells me that this could go either way, my gut is starting to feel like this could be an AK and RS rout. Meaning acquittal on everything, and some statement (either now or ultimately) that the case never valid to begin with.

I realize that is a wild guess on my part. And I have been much more cautious than someone like LJ in predictions. It just feels similar to before the C&V report came out -- where I thought they should totally trash the evidence, but were unlikely to do so, and then they exceeded even what I wanted.

It will be interesting to see how Amanda's lawyers do tomorrow.

 

[bolint]

One of the things that I've wondered about is the destroyed hard disks.

What's up with that? There are only two ways to make a hard disk unreadable to the point that a specialty data recovery center couldn't retrieve data that I am aware of:

1. Physically destroying the hard disk to the point that it is not technologically possible to recover data from the disks in the hard disk
2. Running a program to repeatedly overwrite the data such that the data is obliterated.

Of course lots of things can make data recovery from a disk drive difficult, but making it impossible is a different animal. So what's going on here?

Is there any information available about exactly what the police did to cause a hard disk to be destroyed? Back in the olden days, one could plug in the parallel interface cables backwards which wasn't so happy for the hard disk but I'm not so sure with serial interface hard disks.

The hard disks were eventually read without loss of data due to the "destruction", except Amanda's

On a related subject:
Was Stardust on the hard disk or was it accessed off the internet? If it was accessed off the internet isn't there a positive time stamp some place about when it was being accessed?

It was found on the hard disk.

And if it wasn't on the internet why is it that some people seem to be expecting that an internet access should have occurred when the movie was being watched/downloaded?

Raffaele claimed to have navigated the net for a couple of hours while at home alone.

 

[bolint]

What do you think the most incriminating thing is that Amanda said while being bugged?

I know very few bugged conversation of hers. Almost surely there is no smoking gun in them otherwise we would know about it.

But I find the Nov 4 bugged conversation with Raffaele at the police very interesting and unexplained.

 

[HumanityBlues]

I know very few bugged conversation of hers. Almost surely there is no smoking gun in them otherwise we would know about it.

But I find the Nov 4 bugged conversation with Raffaele at the police very interesting and unexplained.

Yes almost surely. Personally, you'd think if they had just committed a brutal murder and all, they might actually mention this while under surveillance. Surely that has crossed your mind.

But I digress. Please elaborate on what you think is interesting, if you feel so inclined. I am genuinely curious.

 

[RoseMontague]

What you quote is not relevant as the period in question is the night of Nov5/6. There is no documented police presence at 1AM and 2:47AM Nov 6 at Raffaele's place.

So the alleged web search at that time is very interesting.
That's why it is strange that the appeal does not push it.

If it exists at all.

Before lambasting at least a minimal proof should be clearly stated that "they were playing around with the computer".

What's you point?

Do you think the defense is lying about it when they document it in the appeal?

(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.

Maybe this is an AM-PM problem, that would be 1PM on the 6th not 1AM. The point is it was not Raffaele and it was the cops playing with the computer.

 

[bolint]

Please elaborate on what you think is interesting

Here it is. What do you think of it?

"While at the police station on Nov4, RS popped out to get a pizza. The lovebirds were put in a room and their conversation was 'secretly' recorded.

4'40;

RS; What are you thinking about?

AK; That I don't want to be here. I want everything to be over because I want to know who is (sic d) his friends, because he doesn't have many friends. Now, it's like this, it's interesting. In fact, nobody is his friend now. because before when (his? ndr) house was here he doesn't have..., he didn't go out, he didn't speak to many people..., he was always focusing on his girlfriend. That's what he told me.

RS. (in bad English) You...because I've got many friends, if I tell everyone to look after you...or...this is the difference, I have good friends, not his friends.

6'30;

AK; (In Italian) I know, but he's a bit crazy when he's...(she hesitates, stumbles in Italian and continues in English) When he thinks about breaking off a relationship with a woman (incomprehensible)...strange to me. He says he trusts his girlfriend but he doesn't like it when he sees her talk to a man he doesn't know. Even if they've just split up...(incomprehensible). He looks at her and gets crazy. And...but then he (not clear, seems like 'He forced me')all the time. He's terrible. He says he doesn't mind seeing his girlfriend, even if he's talking to a man he doesn't know, but then he gets arrogant with me.

RS; (in English) This is ridiculous.

7'20;

AK; (In English) I don't like him anymore frankly. I mean; it was nice of him to find me a job and I liked it when he played the guitar with...when I went home (the missing word isn't clearly audible because of backgound voices and sounds. It could be 'with me', 'with Meredith' or something else)

RS; Hang on, are we talking about...(he hesitates) your friend from Le Chic or ...

AK; (She interrupts him) Friend from Le Chic?

RS; I'm not talking about the one that...

AK; Who?

RS; I'm mean the one that...

AK; Spiros?

RS; No. Shaky, Shaky, eh, eh (sniggering)

AK; I don't like him. He's not...I detest that man (sniggering). He tried it on with me.

RS; (after an interruption) Yes, OK, and...if he says something (?) ...with friends (?) Do you think he's...because I'm just..."

 

[katy_did]

The lamp would have been plugged into the extension cord that crosses the floor just inside Amanda's room. If anyone had wanted to use that lamp to light Meredith's room after the murder, they would have left it plugged into that cord so as to cause minimal disruption in the murder room. That the cord is not moved is indication that the lamp was moved prior to the murder and this would most likely have been done by Meredith sometime in the preceding week.

I don't see that as much of an indication of anything, Dan. Maybe whoever moved it didn't want to drag the cord across the floor, disturbing the scene, so picked it up and plugged it into the socket near the door or in the bathroom. Besides, assuming the police would have made the best decisions in order to not disturb the scene is rather a leap anyway...

 

[katy_did]

Do you think the defense is lying about it when they document it in the appeal?

Maybe this is an AM-PM problem, that would be 1PM on the 6th not 1AM. The point is it was not Raffaele and it was the cops playing with the computer.

Hmm, an interesting point - that would make more sense, wouldn't it?

 

[HumanityBlues]

Here it is. What do you think of it?

Well my first thought is, how did they ever converse with each other well enough to commit the "almost perfect" crime and orchestrate the almost perfect cleanup when it appears they can barely understand each other.

My second thought is, does that conversation really sound like two people who recently murdered someone?

Don't you agree? What are we all missing here?

 

[bolint]

Do you think the defense is lying about it when they document it in the appeal?

No. But there was your (and others) claim that the police "were playing around with the computer".
I would like to see a proof of it or at least a clearly stated basis of the claim.

Maybe this is an AM-PM problem, that would be 1PM on the 6th not 1AM.

The minutes differ too, so it can't be simply an AM/PM problem. And the clock was alright.

The point is it was not Raffaele and it was the cops playing with the computer.

How do you know that "they were playing with the computer"?

 

[RoseMontague]

Hmm, an interesting point - that would make more sense, wouldn't it?

Exactly. The question of the extent of the playing around before the hard disk was copied is given in the additional appeal filing on Curatolo and the computer:

PAGE 8
- severe alterations to the data occurred in the period following the seizure of computer (and before the acquisition of the hard disk) which led to the modification of the date for many files (over 520)

That is a lot of playing around. The level of incompetence demonstrated by the cops is again, astounding.

 

[Dan O.]

That's interesting. The recording equipment seems to be working just fine there. What happened to it between then and the overnight interrogations the next night?

 

[bolint]

Well my first thought is, how did they ever converse with each other well enough to commit the "almost perfect" crime and orchestrate the almost perfect cleanup when it appears they can barely understand each other.

My second thought is, does that conversation really sound like two people who recently murdered someone?

Don't you agree? What are we all missing here?

I agree. This conversation is one of the reason that I think that they did not participate in the murder together (plus Rudy).
Raffaele does not even seem to know who Amanda is talking about.

To me it rather seems that Raffaele is being fooled.

 

[bolint]

The lamp would have been plugged into the extension cord that crosses the floor just inside Amanda's room. If anyone had wanted to use that lamp to light Meredith's room after the murder, they would have left it plugged into that cord so as to cause minimal disruption in the murder room. That the cord is not moved is indication that the lamp was moved prior to the murder and this would most likely have been done by Meredith sometime in the preceding week.

There is a socket in Meredith's room by the door, right where the plug was found, so there is no need to get the current from the corridor.

 

[RoseMontague]

Another point made in the additional filing:

PAGE 5
- listening to music then repeated it: is common practice to listen the music with the so-called "playing list". In this case listening to a list remove the traces of the previously list played. In this regard it is noted that in the interactions documented through the iTunes application logs, that have not even been examined in the study of the prosecution, between 5.44am and 6.20am of the November 2, 2007 are heard just two sequences of "playing list" who deleted data from previous plays of the same, also the listening counters (indicators that measure how many times a song has been played) of some of these songs are quite high (from 2 to 26)

- listening to music directly from CD-ROM: this type of play does not leave traces of changes to files. Note that, recorded in the minutes, from the computer of Raffaele Sollecito was extracted by the Postal Police a CD of a band.

In the study of the Police Post is NEVER highlighted this inability to prove with certainty the absence of interactions in the periods in which the keyboard was active

This is the point made in the "letter". There is a log that tracks when the keyboard light comes on which happens when a key is touched. This log indicates pretty much continuous activity similar to that of the screensaver log, also ignored by the cops.

 

[HumanityBlues]

I agree. This conversation is one of the reason that I think that they did not participate in the murder together (plus Rudy).
Raffaele does not even seem to know who Amanda is talking about.

To me it rather seems that Raffaele is being fooled.

Interesting. So you think Raffaele is innocent but Amanda is guilty?

 

[HumanityBlues]

That's interesting. The recording equipment seems to be working just fine there. What happened to it between then and the overnight interrogations the next night?

I hate using the term "LOL", but it might be warranted here.

 

[bolint]

Interesting. So you think Raffaele is innocent but Amanda is guilty?

Basically yes. But Raffaele is not fully innocent. He did not participate in the murder but was involved somehow in the subsequent events.

At any rate, he also knew what was in the room before the door was broken down.