Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[RoseMontague]

Point of information. Can someone tell me exactly what counts A to D were? I know E was the staging of the break-in, and I'm assuming A was the actual murder, but I'm not entirely clear exactly what charges Knox and Sollecito were absolved on.

Rolfe.

A was complicity in the murder.
B was carrying the knife.
C was participation in the sexual assault, via constraint.
D was theft of the money
E was staging the burglary
F was the calumnia charge against AK

 

[Rolfe]

Ah, I thank you.

Rolfe.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

TMB test following a luminol test

It is amazing how different people can interpret the same statement. Sara Gino testified that about half the TMB tests run on positive Luminol hits come up negative. Some are taking that to mean the TMB did not detect the blood. That is simply not what she meant. What she was saying is that Luminol is so sensitive and so prone to react to other things that the TMB test does not and that those 50% negative TMB tests are actually false positive Luminol tests.

RoseMontague,

I have seen some pro-guilt posters (including Maundy Gregory) make that assumption. If the only reason that TMB gave a negative result when luminol had given a positive one were that TMB is less sensitive than luminol, then there would never be a reason to follow a luminol hit with the TMB assay. A negative result would just be a sensitivity issue, and a positive result would still not constitute a confirmatory test.

 

[Rolfe]

Jings, these guys are dim. This is analytical science 101.

Rolfe.

 

[Kaosium]

Two relevant snippets of testimony:


In my view this nonsense about the locked door was utterly demolished by the revelation that Raffaele had in fact called 112 before the Postal Police arrived. They had no reason to delay the discovery of the body.

Thank you Charlatan, I was off a little and appreciate the cite!

I agree it was probably from the prosecution effort to pretend that Raffaele had called the Carabinieri after the Postal Police arrived, which the defense chose to wait until the last days to conclusively refute with the CCTV cameras and the cellphone times, which is why none of that ponderous prosecution argument made it into Massei. This would just be a remnant of that, and in the context of the situation is damned silly but quite revealing regarding the methods and madness of Mignini.

 

[RoseMontague]

RoseMontague,

I have seen some pro-guilt posters (including Maundy Gregory) make that assumption. If the only reason that TMB gave a negative result when luminol had given a positive one were that TMB is less sensitive than luminol, then there would never be a reason to follow a luminol hit with the TMB assay. A negative result would just be a sensitivity issue, and a positive result would still not constitute a confirmatory test.

The more I think about this, the more I am convinced Stefi deliberately hid these results and also tried and did not report negative confirmatory tests for blood. You get a positive hit with Luminol, the TMB seems to me to be used to eliminate false positives. So when you get a negative TMB and you still think it is blood, then you do a third confirmatory test. This seems to me to be common sense. A reasonable conclusion is either she did do such a test and it was negative as well and she is still hiding that result or she realized after the TMB and the many negative DNA tests that she was not dealing with blood at all.

 

[RoseMontague]

I think they're not allowed to discuss what went on during the deliberations; when Hellmann gave his interview it was on condition that he wasn't asked about the discussions in the jury room (or whatever it would be termed when there are only judges instead of a jury!). Neither Hellmann nor the alternate judge spoke about that (not sure that the alternate would even have been present) but apparently that's what this woman is writing a book about. No idea what she's supposed to have said, though.

Thanks.

So you have a judge/juror that wrote a book about deliberations in the first trial and then they go on TV to promote this as well as guilt? I wonder if they still allow this person to sit on other cases?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

C-V report and confirmatory testing

The more I think about this, the more I am convinced Stefi deliberately hid these results and also tried and did not report negative confirmatory tests for blood. You get a positive hit with Luminol, the TMB seems to me to be used to eliminate false positives. So when you get a negative TMB and you still think it is blood, then you do a third confirmatory test. This seems to me to be common sense. A reasonable conclusion is either she did do such a test and it was negative as well and she is still hiding that result or she realized after the TMB and the many negative DNA tests that she was not dealing with blood at all.

RoseMontague,

I am behind on other tasks right now, but this passage from the C-V report (p. 54) is interesting (highlighting mine):

"From the above tables, it is clear that the blood tests carried out on the samples indicated by the letters B-C-E-G (knife blade) were negative for the presence of blood.
The “species-specific” test was performed on the aforementioned samples, and also tested negative for the human species."

Maybe someone can follow this up.

 

[RoseMontague]

RoseMontague,

I am behind on other tasks right now, but this passage from the C-V report (p. 54) is interesting (highlighting mine):

"From the above tables, it is clear that the blood tests carried out on the samples indicated by the letters B-C-E-G (knife blade) were negative for the presence of blood.
The “species-specific” test was performed on the aforementioned samples, and also tested negative for the human species."

Maybe someone can follow this up.

What I can say immediately is that she certainly knew how to perform these tests and that a negative on the knife didn't stop her from doing these tests.
The contrasts in what she tested and how seem almost suggestive of a pro-guilt bias.

 

[RoseMontague]

Now the Rep 199, OTOH as halkides mentioned earlier, you have a positive TMB test. This was the presumed blood substance on the window (most likely from Rudy).

Recall how before she got a negative TMB on the Luminol prints and hid the results, then claimed not to have done a confirmatory test. This one she gets a positive TMB and then does a confirmatory test (which was negative-big surprise there).

 

[charlatan]

At any rate, there are so many possible misunderstandings given the language issues that it seems crazy to attribute any significance to it - especially when it makes no sense that Amanda would have wanted to delay the door being broken down anyway. As charlatan said, the 112 call being made before the postal police arrived destroys any importance the locked door question may have had.

The timing of the 112 call underpinned most of the prosecution's assertions relating to Amanda and Raffaele's 'suspicious' behavior on the morning after the murder. Mignini got a lot of mileage out of the assumption the accused were 'caught in the act' by police. Statements that definitively excluded their involvement in staging a burglary -- such as Raf pointing out that nothing of value was taken -- were misconstrued as an attempt to buy credibility with investigators.

The damning revelation that Amanda and Raf were not in fact interrupted by the arrival of LE should have undermined the prosecution's theory of a staging, which in turn should have undermined the prosecution's entire case. Apparently realizing this, Massei literally buried his concession to the defense 100 pages deep in a parenthetical aside. Indeed, if you overlook this single concession, the bulk of the Massei report gives the subtle impression Raffaele may have called 112 after the Postals arrived, and much of his 'reasoning' follows from this discredited evidence. Is it any surprise this myth is still repeated to this day?

So, following Massei's logic, the accused staged the crime scene to look like a burglary. Then they called the police. They told the responding officers nothing of value was taken and went out of their way to highlight what they found odd about the scene. This itself is another ruse, another 'staging' if you will, because the defendants were surprised by the arrival of the police they called* so they felt compelled to point out the flaws in their original staging. Does your head hurt yet?

If you ever need to disable a rogue AI with a logic bomb, just read the Massei report out loud.

ETA: (*) I'm sure someone will nitpick that they were indeed surprised that it was the Postals and not the Carabinieri who arrived first, but the point remains that they expected officers to be at the scene shortly.

 

[Kaosium]

Ha, well yes, it makes no difference at all really! The only way the footprints are incriminating is if one of them was Raffaele's, which is why the prosecution tried desperately to argue that one of them was. They knew if all of them were Amanda's they could easily be explained away (even if in dilute blood, as the prosecution claimed

Yes, this is the fun part. Let us take a look at what they claimed to be 'attributed' to Raffaele. Apparently the one on the right is supposedly Raffaele's footprint, frankly it looks more like a mermaid to me, a rather fetching one actually. Nicely formed!

The other one supposedly cannot be 'attributed' which is a rare case of honesty by the prosecution in this case.

As far as whether the dilute blood theory can be ruled out, I'm still not sure on that one. It seems like there are a lot of variables we still don't know a lot about, in terms of how they might affect the tests (for example, if the floor was very dirty - as this one must have been - how would that affect the result of the swabbed TMB sample versus the luminol test?

This one could probably be answered by the fact they got positive TMB tests from Rudy's shoeprints right next to the others. As you can see below two of Rudy's shoeprints almost intersect. The blue ones are the luminol stains, the red ones Rudy's shoeprints in Meredith's blood:

Did they take the swabs properly? What's the difference between the diluted blood content in the swab compared to that in the footprint itself - it must be less, but how much less?). But it could just be that I haven't done enough research into it yet to be convinced, where you obviously have! The study with the pictures sounds interesting; I've only seen the table with numbers, which I looked at with a very vague semi-comprehension.

There's two with pictures that I've posted frequently, unfortunately one measures the luminosity in RFUs and the other in 'AUs.' I think of 'AU' probably like Antony, in terms of astronomical units, (distance) not as a brightness indicator. I did dig something up, but I also found it's a real pain in the ass to calculate and never did figure out how to convert them before I came to my senses. Anyone else with superior knowledge on this subject is most welcome to do further research! No one yet has volunteered, no doubt they were wiser than me and realized it didn't matter all that much.

But ultimately, as you say, it doesn't really matter: Amanda was walking around barefoot that morning, so even if we accept everything the prosecution claimed (they were hers, made in dilute blood) they're not incriminating unless they can also pin one on Raffaele. Which they tried desperately to do, but trying to say those amorphous blobs could be matched to anyone was always a nonsense.

Yes, plus realize at this point where we are. Stefanoni has already been busted for lying about the TMB test, then attempting to get out of that lie by pretending she could tell just by looking at them they are blood because of the chemiluminescence despite the negative TMB tests. Now we have revealed that was a lie because the pictures were overexposed to make them look brighter, so she didn't actually see what she pretended, and in fact if they did look like that her theory of dilution didn't hold. Plus we must remember that this trip took place at the same time they 'collected' the bra clasp and were so desperate for evidence due to the Sollecitos revealing the prosecution's mindless error with the shoeprints the day before they partied with it on camera, and it came out looking mighty suspicious.

I'd say she's pretty much busted at this point, anyone trying to pretend they are blood related to the murder has so many obstacles to overcome, not the least being a mendacious prosecution on this subject. As has also been noted, there was no confirmatory test even attempted (or reported...) which is damned curious especially in this instance as there was a wounded cat Meredith was tending downstairs. It is certainly not impossible if there were diluted blood stains they were the result of Meredith washing up after getting cat blood on her, and some got in water on the bathroom floor and got tracked around by anyone during that period.

There's no reason to think they were made at the same time, there's no reason to think they're Amanda's and Raffaele's and there's damn good reason to think they aren't blood due to the negative TMB test. There's also very good reason to think Stefanoni and Comodi lied and lied and lied about all of this themselves deeper and deeper.

The odds are so low at this point it's just an intellectual exercise, or let's call it a game. Luminol hoops! See if you can jump through them all and find one narrow possibility in which they might be blood related to the murder!

As for me, I will just have Stefanoni clapped in irons and frogmarched to the brig. Biondi too, and he gets bread and water rations for hiding behind her skirt! Huzzah!

 

[Dan O.]

I'm kidding of course, I spent hours myself trying to determine how to make that conversion and find out WTF an 'AU' even is! Then I just looked at the damn pictures from both studies, noted the change in luminosity compared to different dilution levels, and that a mere three times wouldn't seem to be anywhere close to enough, and it finally occurred to me even if it did, then I was back to where it could be any number of things and felt really stupid about it.

Did I forget to mention that all of the luminol photos were processed in photoshop the next day.

 

[Paninaro]

Underlining the dangers of contamination in DNA testing

A story from Sweden about a big mix up with Director Ingmar Bergman's DNA. Not as grave consequences as Stefanonis sloppy work in this case, but still...

This summer it was reported that:

Ingmar Bergman may have been switched at birth. The Swedish director was not biologically related to his mother, Karin Bergman, according to tests performed by Sweden’s National Board of Forensic Medicine at the request of family members.

“I contacted the board of forensic medicine to see if it was possible to perform a DNA analysis to clarify this,” Veronica Ralston, Bergman’s niece, told Dagens Nyheter, a Swedish newspaper.

“I suggested that they could investigate stamps which Ingmar Bergman had licked and sent on letters and postcards to his parents and compare them with my DNA.”

http://www.toronto.com/article/686781

And now this just in:

The sensational result of a DNA test of stamps used by Ingmar Bergman that supported speculations that he was not the biological son of his mother Karin Bergman, was incorrect.

The DNA samples were in fact contaminated by DNA from a laboratory technician.

In May this year the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter reported that world famous director Ingmar Bergman was probably not the biological son of his mother Karin Bergman, with whom he grew up and had a close relation to.

The proof for this was a DNA test made by the Swedish National Board of Forensic Medicine, NBFM, in Linköping in the south of Sweden.

They tested DNA from two stamps that Ingmar Bergman supposedly had licked and put on his envelopes.

Now, the Swedish newspaper Ny Teknik can reveal that the test was faulty.

In fact, DNA from the technician had contaminated the extractions at the NBFM lab.

The stamps were handed over to NBFM for analysis by Veronica Ralston, niece of Ingmar Bergman.

In 2010, three years after his death, a book that claimed his mother was not his biological mother was published in Sweden.

This was news for Veronica Ralston who decided to pay the NBFM for a DNA analysis.

The test was first said to be based on mitochondrial DNA from two stamps.

A comparison with mitochondrial DNA from Veronica Ralston then showed that she and Bergman could not be related on the matrilineal side.

She also wrote her own book “The Love child and the Changeling” where she promotes the hypothesis that Ingmar Bergman’s mother Karin gave birth to a deadly sick baby and that it was switched to an other baby.

“Ny Teknik” later found out and told readers that the DNA profile actually was extracted from one stamp, from 1951, since the other stamp had not given any result.

In the early summer of 2011 Veronica Ralston, in cooperation with Ny Teknik, asked the NBFM to analyze additional stamps and also envelopes sent by the director, in order to bring clarity to the claims.

This was done, and two more DNA tests showed exactly the same DNA profile as the first analyzed stamp. The profile was called B as in Bergman. The other one from Veronica Ralston was called A.

In order to be absolutely sure, the NBFM was asked to doublecheck the results and compare them with DNA from stamps sent by the mother of Ingmar Bergman.

The following result showed this sample had been contaminated with DNA from Veronica Ralston.

Ny Teknik then asked the laboratory to check all their DNA findings and compare them with DNA profiles of the lab staff..

Last Friday NBFM came to the conclusion that the B profile, a rare one, actually belongs to one of their own technicians.

How the technician might have contaminated the samples with her own mitochondrial DNA is not known, but the NBFM is now to start a technical investigation.

Now there is nothing scientifically that contradicts that Karin Bergman is the mother of Ingmar Bergman. But his DNA profile still remains a mystery.

Would it not be extremely unlikely then that Ingmar Bergman has the same DNA profile as the technician?

—Not extremely, but unlikely, says the forensic genetics expert Gunilla Holmlund, at the NBFM.

http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/pressr...view/the-bergman-dna-test-was-incorrect-29579

Source: http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/bioteknik_lakemedel/bioteknik/article3293373.ece

 

[Machiavelli]

I was interested in point one in particular.

My understanding was that the defense had submitted new data that showed disk activity and had asked the court if it wanted and independent review of the disk analysis. The court, perhaps because the prosecution didn't challenge the defense analysis, declined to ask for an independent review. However, the defense analysis of the Sollecito's disk was accepted into evidence as I understood the situation from this thread and from links included in this thread. Was my understanding incorrect?

It was not accepted. It was first submitted, but then formally rejected by Hellmann's court after a decision.

On point two, I remember reading through a technical discussion of the disk activity which I did not understand in its entirety. However the gist seemed to be that a more sophisticated disk analysis program than the prosecution had used originally showed human activity during the time in question. Was my understanding incorrect?

To me this is incorrect. The defense update only contained an analysis of screensaver related logs. They also contained a mention of the "Naruto" file, but the genuinity of this datum alone is very disputable.

Point three was an interesting diatribe. The charge against RS/AK is that they worked in concert with Guede to kill Kercher. Evidence that one of them wasn't at the crime scene would at the least undermines the prosecution theory of the case.

There is no real diatribe. Independently from the prosecution's theory, they could well be guilty even if one of them of both of them left the cottage for a while, or if one remained home for longer. It is obvious to a judge they can be guilty, assessment doesn't have to depend to any specific prosecution's theory.

It is particularly interesting diatribe in light of the fact that the police destroyed Knox's hard disk and then would not allow the manufacturer of the disk to attempt to retrieve evidence from the disk which might have provided direct evidence that Knox wasn't at the crime scene also.

This makes no sense, as far as we know AK's computer was in Via della Pergola that night.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

both a TMB and a confirmatory test were performed

What I can say immediately is that she certainly knew how to perform these tests and that a negative on the knife didn't stop her from doing these tests.
The contrasts in what she tested and how seem almost suggestive of a pro-guilt bias.

RoseMontague,

I knew of course that a TMB test had been negative, but what surprised me is that a confirmatory test had also been done (I interpret the species-specific test to mean a confirmatory test). I am not sure that the latter result was general knowledge before the Conti-Vecchiotti report, but I may be mistaken.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

mitochondrial DNA testing; Phantom of Heilbronn

A story from Sweden about a big mix up with Director Ingmar Bergman's DNA. Not as grave consequences as Stefanonis sloppy work in this case, but still...

Paninaro,

That is interesting. It reminds me a little of the Phantom of Heilbronn, a "woman without a face." She was thought to be a serial murderer, who had also committed some other crimes across a swath of Germany, Austria, and France Too bad that that this particular criminal did not exist, given the resources that were used to track her down.

I do not know a great deal about mitochondrial DNA testing, but I think that to a first approximation, it is like low template number DNA profiling in that one must take great care to avoid contamination.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Hampikian

Greg Hampikian recently made a public appearance and discussed this case.

 

[Kaosium]

Did I forget to mention that all of the luminol photos were processed in photoshop the next day.

Unfortunately I can't make the connection there, I don't know enough about picture programs to understand what you mean. Does this suggest someone was naughty?

 

[RandyN]

No, it makes perfect sense. We have no way of knowing that AK did not have her PORTABLE computer with her the night of the 1st and/or that she may have returned it to the cottage the morning of the 2nd. And it certainly is not a legitimate excuse for failing to test this computer which was one of 4 burned up by the idiots of the Perugia police department.

This same corrupt police department who “forgot” to tape AK interrogation or maybe burned up that tape that showed her being beaten about the head. I also remind you of the following…I submit that these corrupt police under the control of Mignini for this case also failed to record RS interrogation which was also done illegally without a lawyer present and finally (as if we need more proof to be convinced) there is a third instance of corrupt and illegal behavior of Mignini and company in that they also failed to produce an interrogation tape of a CERTAIN suspect named Patrick Lumumba. Who BTW was also interrogated illegally unless perhaps you can direct us to the lawyer that represented him on the morning of the 6th of Nov.?? Any names??? PL lawyer? RS lawyer? AK lawyer?

I didn’t think so….

You can choose to surround your village with Rudy Guedes… I don’t care! Our citizen is safe and sound at home and you will never get your grubby hands on her again….unless you plan on coming with the Italian Army…lol memba when one of you monkeys said that a while back to us?

Hey Mignini…extradite this ! (two fingers up and laughing)