Continuation Part 4: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[Dougm]

<snip>

I am trying to understand why Rudy formulated his alibi the way he did. He is of course trying to provide an innocent explanation for himself, but in a way that will be consistent with other evidence that might be discovered later on.

Why did he explain the cuts on his hand as coming from a struggle in the hallway? He could have just said that he was not cut that night. But what if the police then found his blood at the crime scene? Or he could have said that he was cut in Meredith's bedroom while trying to save her. But what if the police find evidence he was cut in the kitchen or hallway? I think Rudy knew his best bet was to stay as close to the truth as possible.

I am also attempting to explain why Rudy became so violent. He had been caught burglarizing before without any serious consequences so it is difficult for me to understand why he would kill Meredith unless something extraordinary happened.

I also recall Rudy saying something about Meredith trying to tell him something in her dying breath and he tried to write it on the wall. Was this Rudy's attempt to explain the bloody fingers streak marks that at that time had not been checked for DNA? Those streaks were later checked for DNA during the second forensics investigation but were apparently mishandled (suspiciously like so many other crucial pieces of evidence) and no persons were identified from them.
<snip>

I have always thought that there is truth to be found in trying to figure out Rudy's motive for his story -- IF we can determine where he diverts from what actually happened, and which parts he changed to try to absolve himself. I have come to different answers than you did, however.

1) I think he told police he got the cuts on his hand from an altercation in the hallway in order to both explain the cuts on his hand, and to make the claim that he was not in the room when Meredith was actually stabbed. By changing the story in that way, he introduces another perpetrator and tries to claim that he (Rudy) only went into the bedroom and got bloody after Meredith was stabbed.

2) I think you are close on why Rudy became so violent, and I have also thought this is a key to explaining what really happened that night. Rudy was certainly a burglar, and not above committing crimes, but murder, especially in such a vicious way? This was a major leap in his criminal history, at least as far as we know. I agree with your theory that Rudy went into a rage when somethng happened, but I think the thing that happened is that when Meredith discovered him in the flat, instead of being open to him, I think she screamed and said to get the hell out, and she either said or implied that she would never be with him in a thousand years, or something like that. I think Rudy had serious anger issues with women, and that probably set off a combination of fear, rage, etc. I don't think that her attacking him with a knife would be required for this, even if she did it in self defense.

3) I think that Rudy's story about Meredith trying to say something to him and him trying to write it on the wall is also a lie based on what he knows the evidence is. What seems true is that she was gasping for breath, and trying to say something (what do you say in that situation? "Save me?" "**** U.?" "Help, help?") I think that he had wiped his bloody hand on the wall, and was trying to find an explanation for that, since he thought the cops would clearly be able to match that to him. So he combined Meredith gasping with the smear on the wall in the best attempt he could muster to somehow explain why his fingerprints were smeared in blood on the wall of the bedroom of a dying girl.

If you look at Rudy's story combined with the evidence as we know it, there are some logical places where he changed the truth, and other areas where the story is probably true. It is not too hard to see which are which, although there are some that we can't know for sure.

Although your idea that Meredith defended herself with the kitchen knife is not impossible, it seems less probable to me than other scenarios. An interesting theory though.

 

[anglolawyer]

Cody

I will reply more fully to your post above hereafter but may I ask why you posit a confrontation in the kitchen at all? It's just that this is a popular view (Frank Sfarzo shares it but many others too) and, because of that, I suspect I have missed something.

Just quickly on one point, I think the blotch of blood almost directly under the wall handprint was made at the beginning of the attack, when Rudy made one of the smaller wounds to the throat. I think Meredith put her hand to her throat defensively and then transferred blood to the wall (it's her hand print imho). The struggle then moved diagonally across the room continuing to escalate.

If you are right that the handprint blood has not been analysed that is pretty amazing because you can see the scientific police sample it both on 03/11/2007 and extensively again on 18/12/2007 in the videos.

On the 'trigger' point, you might read Nina Burleigh on Rudy. He seems to have been quite strange before launching out on new paths.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

With Guede one cannot be certain

Look at Rudy's hand and you will see no cut. There is only a superficial scaring of the surface consistent with a friction burn caused by a strap being pulled through his hand. There was no blood of rudy's found anywhere. Only his DNA was found. Rudy's DNA was found on the bra. The bra was torn apart (note, it was not cut) consistent with someone grabbing it at the location where the DNA was found and pulling causing the stiching holding the top strap to the back brand to peal off all the way down to the clasp and this would also pull the stitching holding the clasp itself to the band. When the clasp is released from the band, the sudden imbalance in force on the two sides of the band being held will cause the band to pull through the hand leaving the friction burns.

Dan,

The book "Darkness Descending" is among my least favorite sources of information. Yet I am going to quote a passage or two anyway: the authors wrote on page 433, "The inability to test the towels for Guede's DNA, to prove that he had shed blood in his own defence, was shocking." One obvious problem with this passage is that even if he did shed blood, there is no way to know how he shed it by testing for its presence. One of Guede's versions (p. 299) includes this quotation: "This person tried to strike at my right hand with a knife and he wounded me." My point is that Guede claimed to be wounded. I believe this is another example of Guede's lying (he is not being truthful about how he was wounded), but trying not to deviate too far from the truth (possibly some of the blood on the towels was his).

 

[sln708]

Pardon the interruption, but why do we care if Meredith had any alcohol that evening? I don't see the relevance.

Just asking...

 

[Chris_Halkides]

more on alcohol

At this site: "The interpretation of the analytical results obtained from autopsy material has difficulties as a result of lack of homogeneity of blood samples, microbial alcohol production post mortem, alcohol diffusion from gastric residue and contaminated airways, and the lack of or unreliability of information on the clinical condition of the person immediately prior to death...A single autopsy blood alcohol level is uninterpretable without concurrent vitreous humour and urine alcohol levels, as well as information gleaned from the scene of the accident....Analysis of vitreous humour is useful to corroborate the post mortem blood alcohol and assist in assessing and extrapolating to anti-mortem intoxication from post mortem alcohol production. Vitreous alcohol can also serve as an alternative sample if a satisfactory post mortem blood sample is unavailable or contaminated. In most cases the specimen is easily obtained, and can be sampled without a full autopsy. Vitreous alcohol is also important, because studies have shown post mortem putrefaction does not contribute to the alcohol levels measured in the vitreous." I recall that this point came up in the accident that claimed the life of Princess Diana.

 

[Dan O.]

Here is the picture of Rudy's hand. I believe this is the one taken by the German police when he was arrested November 20 on a Frankfurt-bound train near Mainz after a conductor found him without a ticket.

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t189/zed0101/RudyCutHand.jpg

 

[Grinder]

Pardon the interruption, but why do we care if Meredith had any alcohol that evening? I don't see the relevance.

Just asking...

As I said earlier, it is as if not more important than the piece of mushroom. Massei and the forensic experts determined that she had about .43g/l in her system. The English girls said they consumed no alcohol. It is very unlikely she still had .43g/l in her system from the previous night.

So if she consumed one or two drinks after returning home then she wouldn't have been attacked as she entered the cottage. Also, the initial reports stated that she was killed by a pen knife or a shard of glass that some speculated might be from a broken bottle.

At this site: "The interpretation of the analytical results obtained from autopsy material has difficulties as a result of lack of homogeneity of blood samples, microbial alcohol production post mortem, alcohol diffusion from gastric residue and contaminated airways, and the lack of or unreliability of information on the clinical condition of the person immediately prior to death...A single autopsy blood alcohol level is uninterpretable without concurrent vitreous humour and urine alcohol levels, as well as information gleaned from the scene of the accident....Analysis of vitreous humour is useful to corroborate the post mortem blood alcohol and assist in assessing and extrapolating to anti-mortem intoxication from post mortem alcohol production. Vitreous alcohol can also serve as an alternative sample if a satisfactory post mortem blood sample is unavailable or contaminated. In most cases the specimen is easily obtained, and can be sampled without a full autopsy. Vitreous alcohol is also important, because studies have shown post mortem putrefaction does not contribute to the alcohol levels measured in the vitreous." I recall that this point came up in the accident that claimed the life of Princess Diana.

Yes I saw this link. Massei showed that additional tests of the liver were conducted and verified Lalli's .43g/l assessment as opposed to the 2.72 reading.

The conditions in the cottage being cool and not warm would also slow the production of alcohol.

 

[Fine]

Here is the picture of Rudy's hand. I believe this is the one taken by the German police when he was arrested November 20 on a Frankfurt-bound train near Mainz after a conductor found him without a ticket.

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t189/zed0101/RudyCutHand.jpg

____________________

Dan,

They look like knife cuts to me, just as Rudy said in his November 18, 2007, Skype call. Though it was Meredith--- not some unknown maniac--- who was armed with the knife. If Rudy had been defending himself from being stabbed by a male maniac trying to stab him, the wounds to his hand would be more severe.

Note that on Rudy's middle finger there are two parallel cuts, indicating that Rudy had grabbed the knife blade twice. Maybe Meredith had grabbed the kitchen knife in self-defense, but with no intent to use it. Only a very weak confrontation by Meredith would have permitted Rudy to grab it twice, the second time twisting it from Meredith's hand. Or, maybe, Rudy had grabbed and immobilized Meredith's arm first, before he grabbed the knife blade. And once Meredith's arm was immobilized it took two attempts by Rudy to wrest the knife from her hand.


///

 

[Fine]

Here is the picture of Rudy's hand. I believe this is the one taken by the German police when he was arrested November 20 on a Frankfurt-bound train near Mainz after a conductor found him without a ticket.

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t189/zed0101/RudyCutHand.jpg

__________________

Dan,

Oh, I should mention that the yellow arrow superimposed in the middle finger on this police photograph is misplaced. That arrow points to no injury. The injuries to the middle finger are underneath the arrow, mid-length along the arrow.

///

 

[Dan O.]

Those latteral cuts across the fingers do look more like recient knife cuts. Almost too recient even. One thing that bothers me about the supposed knife wounds on Rudy's hand is why there wasn't any blood found. On one hand we have direct evidence of recent injuries. On the other hand (or is it the same hand?) we have an identifiable palm print sufficient to identify the owner and so sufficient to identify the precise alignment of the hand on the cloth. There is sufficient information to identify the precise location of where the cuts would contact the cloth. Why was this location not tested for DNA?

 

[LondonJohn]

____________________

Dan,

They look like knife cuts to me, just as Rudy said in his November 18, 2007, Skype call. Though it was Meredith--- not some unknown maniac--- who was armed with the knife. If Rudy had been defending himself from being stabbed by a male maniac trying to stab him, the wounds to his hand would be more severe.

Note that on Rudy's middle finger there are two parallel cuts, indicating that Rudy had grabbed the knife blade twice. Maybe Meredith had grabbed the kitchen knife in self-defense, but with no intent to use it. Only a very weak confrontation by Meredith would have permitted Rudy to grab it twice, the second time twisting it from Meredith's hand. Or, maybe, Rudy had grabbed and immobilized Meredith's arm first, before he grabbed the knife blade. And once Meredith's arm was immobilized it took two attempts by Rudy to wrest the knife from her hand.


///

Personally, I don't think that there ever was a confrontation where Guede wrested a knife from Meredith's hand. I think it's more likely that the only knife-wielder was Guede, and that he used a knife that he had brought with him once he realised that Meredith was going to raise the alarm. I think that the wounds on Guede's hands were caused at the time of the stabbings, when Meredith would have been jostling with him briefly. If his knife did not have a large bolster (the guard between the handle and the blade, designed to protect the hand of the holder from the blade), it would have been very easy for his hand to slip down onto the blade during even a brief struggle. And as others have said, there's a lateral burn mark on his hand that's consistent with the bra strap sliding against his skin as he pulled hard at it to tear it open.

By the way, Happy New Year to all!

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Yes, I read the book on that case up at Harvard, but it was quite different in its details from the Kercher/Knox scenario:

http://www.amazon.com/Halfway-Heaven-Melanie-Thernstrom/dp/0385487452

Here is a case in which, if one has a certain view of Knox and takes certain liberties, parallels may be drawn:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/21/48hours/main3734408.shtml

*In fairness to those at PMF, there is also the Bernadette Protti/Kirsten Costas case ( one high school girl knifed her "rival"). Viewing the situation somewhat liberally, I must admit, it is not impossible for a female to knife a "rival", and for Knox to have been one of those females. But this is giving psychological theory supremacy over evidence.

I do not know if Knox ever "pranked" a roommate. I would assume, if I wanted to view her as guilty, that a prank would be unlikely as a motive or a catalyst: the closest scenario to my thinking would be a mix of Bernadette Protti (rebuffed by a friend, with some lesbian overtones) and the Laura Hall case (caught up with an insane boyfriend , father issues, and a female rival). So I may have spoken too soon on the unlikelihood of the female on female murder/sex murder scenario.

But this is why Hellmann was supposed to take an objective and fresh view of the evidence, isn't it?

There are cases where women kill their roommates, and there are cases where a group of adolescents kill someone they know for no reason. But the perps in those cases are always - 100 percent of the time - seriously disturbed people with a history of hostile, aggressive behavior. That may not be apparent to everyone who meets them, but it is apparent to those who know them well.

The people who know Amanda well agree that she is not disturbed or hostile, she has never been physically aggressive toward anyone under any circumstances, and there is no way she ever would be.

But, a cult group has tuned that information out completely because it is not what they want to hear. Instead, they have pieced together a caricature from tabloid stories, statements by people who knew Amanda casually for a few weeks before her arrest (none of which involve aggressive or criminal allegations), and anonymous rumors on the Internet. They elaborate this caricature on their cult website, telling each other that it is the real Amanda, and the Amanda known to her family and close friends is fictional.

Is that "woo"? Yeah, it is.

 

[Grinder]

Once again from Massei:

"He (Prof Cingolani, is that as good as a police Dr. ? )concluded on this point that that was no pharmacokinetic condition which could justify all three of these values, that is zero in the stomach, 2.72 in the blood and 0.2 in the liver. On the basis of these elements they had concluded that Meredith was not in a condition of alcoholic intoxication.
He could not indicate why the analysis of the blood had given a particularly high value, ‚close to ethylic coma,‛ (page 108) other than in terms of a simple hypothesis: the exchange of samples; a contamination with the passage of alcohol to the sample, taking place when the exhibit was in the refrigerator.He indicated the percentage of alcohol detected by Dr. Lalli and equal to 0.43 as compatible with the consumption of one beer or of one glass of wine. That there was then found to be zero in the gastric content could be explained by the fact of evaporation or by the fact of the digestion of the alcohol."

Please note that in this snippet contamination is blamed for the very high reading of alcohol in the first sample. The contamination was not proven yet I never heard a peep of complaint from the PGP.

If in fact it is true that all the readings were caused by the body producing the alcohol after death then this is another example of Massei doing a poor job. If not, then there needs to be an explanation of how, when and where to complete any scenario of how the crime night transpired.

This kind of reminds me of the stain that wasn't tested. It could be a significant detail yet it is ignored.

 

[Grinder]

____________________

Dan,

They look like knife cuts to me, just as Rudy said in his November 18, 2007, Skype call. Though it was Meredith--- not some unknown maniac--- who was armed with the knife. If Rudy had been defending himself from being stabbed by a male maniac trying to stab him, the wounds to his hand would be more severe.

Note that on Rudy's middle finger there are two parallel cuts, indicating that Rudy had grabbed the knife blade twice. Maybe Meredith had grabbed the kitchen knife in self-defense, but with no intent to use it. Only a very weak confrontation by Meredith would have permitted Rudy to grab it twice, the second time twisting it from Meredith's hand. Or, maybe, Rudy had grabbed and immobilized Meredith's arm first, before he grabbed the knife blade. And once Meredith's arm was immobilized it took two attempts by Rudy to wrest the knife from her hand.
///

I think he cut himself in Germany to have a wound consistent with his story. He also could have cut himself while stabbing Meredith if his hand slipped onto the blade during the attack.

The cut doesn't look three weeks old - that's when he was caught.

 

[Grinder]

Once again there is discussion that none here can prove innocence. Is it the case that in Italy defendants are required to prove that they are innocent beyond a reasonable doubt?

As pointed out up-thread the court allowed for contamination as the reason for a bad result in the blood analysis but apparently in LCN DNA work any contamination must be proved.

How, I ask, could the kids prove that they didn't have anything to do with the crime? Being that I am one that takes the easy way out and says that the ILE didn't prove their case beyond any sort of doubt (shadow, reasonable, balance of evidence) I don't need to prove anything, as the law requires.

It brings tears of laughter to my eyes when I see the virtual cartwheels needed to be preformed to believe Curatolo and then work a scenario around his testimony which allows the kids to be involved, yet in the plaza. Nara at 11 or 11:30 (most horrific scream heard in her life but doesn't call the cops or anybody) makes it very difficult to reconcile TOD but they must or they don't have multiple perps leaving the scene.

And we come back to details like how did the three coordinate the night and why oh why didn't one of them crack and give the real details of the crime?

The PGP want the whole house to be used for any and all evidence, why not the entire neighborhood or all of Perugia? The ridiculous idea that Amanda's DNA in her bathroom means anything is only rivaled by her DNA being on the handle of a knife in the apartment she was living being important.

The fact that C&V found no DNA on the knife but rather starch which either proved that the knife hadn't been cleaned or that it had been used after the cleaning thereby explaining AK's DNA.

Lalli, the police coroner, I mean Dr. Lalli with considerable experience maybe even more than Stefanoni, stated that TOD was 2 to 4 hours after her last meal commenced. Making TOD 8:30 to 10:30 (unfortunately Stefanoni delayed his access to the body so the PS could do a first rate job of gathering evidence as we have all seen) which rules out Nara and if one wants to believe Cura then the kids are innocent.

Btw, the English girls (ever see the PGP complain about calling them girls?) could place the exact time of their pizza dinner only narrowing it down to 5:30 to 6:30 and I'll bet that one girl could remember when another girl received a call or a text. I wonder if any of them turned off their phone.

 

[smkovalinksy]

Pardon the interruption, but why do we care if Meredith had any alcohol that evening? I don't see the relevance.

Just asking...

Others will have to answer this fully, but I had assumed it was because it is odd that the alcohol levels were originally reported so high, and if she had not drank at her friends', one is left to wonder if she might have drank with Guede: Perhaps as a friend, not realizing that thigns would escalate? It raises questions about if she had let him in, perhaps because he used a ruse, and seemed friendly, and if he then misinterpreted things....It certainly is not to place any blame on the victim, to be sure...

 

[smkovalinksy]

As the Cassation appeals are due to be filed in Rome by February 15 2012, I guess we will have to wait to see if Mignini himself will file, and what it will entail....

 

[LondonJohn]

As I said earlier, it is as if not more important than the piece of mushroom. Massei and the forensic experts determined that she had about .43g/l in her system. The English girls said they consumed no alcohol. It is very unlikely she still had .43g/l in her system from the previous night.

So if she consumed one or two drinks after returning home then she wouldn't have been attacked as she entered the cottage. Also, the initial reports stated that she was killed by a pen knife or a shard of glass that some speculated might be from a broken bottle.

Yes I saw this link. Massei showed that additional tests of the liver were conducted and verified Lalli's .43g/l assessment as opposed to the 2.72 reading.

The conditions in the cottage being cool and not warm would also slow the production of alcohol.

The whole issue of microbial fermentation post-mortem is only really an issue after at least a few days following death. In this case, Meredith's body was moved to the mortuary around 30 hours after her death, and the autopsy was performed within 40 hours of her death. It seems fairly likely that the correlation of samples at 0.43g/l indicates that this was indeed very close to the real blood alcohol level at the time of death.

The question therefore becomes that of how and when Meredith's blood alcohol reached that level. I find it hard to believe that Meredith was either furtively drinking alcohol at her English friends' house that evening, and I can also find no reason to imagine why the English friends would testify to no alcohol being consumed if alcohol had indeed been drunk by some/all during that meal and DVD viewing. So my provisional conclusion would have to be that Meredith drank no alcohol between around 4.30 and 9.00pm. The fact that no alcohol was detected in her stomach ingesta is clear proof that she did not drink any alcohol upon her arrival home (or, indeed, at any time between the end of the meal and her death).

Therefore, there are only two possibilities left: 1) Meredith had some alcohol at home in the cottage that afternoon before setting off to the girls' house (or maybe en route at a bar); or 2) the post-mortem blood alcohol was a pure vestige of the alcohol Meredith had drunk the previous night at the Halloween party. If it were the latter, this would imply that Meredith had been extremely intoxicated the night before: we've done some basic calculations on this before, and IIRC it implies that Meredith consumed some 28 units of alcohol the previous night - the equivalent to an entire large bottle (750ml) of vodka or gin etc. The rate of blood alcohol dissipation over the following day would have left a residual blood alcohol reading of the level found post-mortem, but it would have meant that Meredith would have been drunk to the point of hardly being able to walk the previous night.

My best current guess is that Meredith had a very large amount of alcohol at the Halloween party the previous night, but not the equivalent of 28 units. I think she might have woken up the following day - November 1st - with a headache and a hangover, and might have had one or two glasses of wine at the cottage to "take the edge off" the hangover before leaving for her friends' house. Therefore, when you add together the contribution from the previous night to the "topping up" with more alcohol at, say, 3pm, it's easier to get to the post-mortem BAC level (it could, for example, be comprised of the residual alcohol from 15 units the previous night, plus 3 units at 3pm that afternoon).

 

[anglolawyer]

____________________

Dan,

They look like knife cuts to me, just as Rudy said in his November 18, 2007, Skype call. Though it was Meredith--- not some unknown maniac--- who was armed with the knife. If Rudy had been defending himself from being stabbed by a male maniac trying to stab him, the wounds to his hand would be more severe.

Note that on Rudy's middle finger there are two parallel cuts, indicating that Rudy had grabbed the knife blade twice. Maybe Meredith had grabbed the kitchen knife in self-defense, but with no intent to use it. Only a very weak confrontation by Meredith would have permitted Rudy to grab it twice, the second time twisting it from Meredith's hand. Or, maybe, Rudy had grabbed and immobilized Meredith's arm first, before he grabbed the knife blade. And once Meredith's arm was immobilized it took two attempts by Rudy to wrest the knife from her hand.


///

Or maybe these are cuts resulting from the use of a knife with no hilt, as Ron Hendry suggests.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

missing information

Alcohol passes out of the stomach relatively quickly.

The Massei report clearly indicates that there is some alcohol in her system.
SNIP
It is fascinating that wondering where, when and what she drank is somehow of a different nature than doing the same thing for the mushroom. Since the alcohol didn't show up in the stomach, that would possibly indicate that she wasn't killed right after consuming.

Grinder,

The presence of food in Meredith's stomach would slow the rate of alcohol absorption. From this same site on p. 13 comes the suggestion that the BAC should be corroborated with the urinary and vitreous levels of alcohol because of putrefaction, which I take to mean fermentation. I can find no indication in the Massei report that these numbers were obtained. Therefore, at this time I would draw no conclusions about the alcohol numbers that are given. I would also like to ask where the wine bottle is that Meredith would have drunk from.