The missing Lumumba tapes I'll give you - how any of the PGP can assimilate these facts, and still maintain a guilte position for Knox and Sollecito remains one of the only remaining mysteries.
As for the police prior knowledge of Lumumba - I still think you're wrong. The chief's remark is 20-20-hindsight bragging, that's how I view it. Like my other post - I say, "I'm going to roll 11's with a pair of dice", I roll 11's and I say, "I told you I was going to roll 11's!"
All you need do is point out to me that there's a 1/18 chance of me being right. In fact, if you have 1800 people making the same boast, 100 people are going to look like geniuses.
I have yet to hear anything that suggests anything other than that Amanda's imaginings caught them completely off guard.
Don Liddle was called in relief for the New York Giants baseball team in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series. He threw all of four pitches to Vic Wertz, who crushed the fourth pitch to deep-centre field. Willie Mays outran the ball in what has been called since, "The Catch", saving the game for the Giants.
The comparison here is that Liddle was immediately replaced on the mound by Marv Grissom, to whom Liddled quipped, "Well, I got my man."
I think Liddle is a bit like the first interrogators.... they couldn't believe where they got to.... and Mignini knew there were "spontanaety" issues to sort out, given that there had been nothing spontaneous about the first interrogation.
According to Amanda's testimony in the first trial, the cops led her to her "imaginings". For example, she says she didn't say she was in the kitchen covering her ears, not straight out.
From PMF transcript of Amanda's testimony:
CP: Signorina Amanda, listen. On the evening of November 1, 2007, did you
hear Meredith, poor Meredith, scream?
AK: No.
CP: In the interrogation of November 6, 2007, at 5:45, you declared that before she died, you heard Meredith scream. How could you know that Meredith screamed before she was killed? Who told you?
AK: So when I was with the police, they asked if I heard Meredith's scream.
I said no. They said "But if you were there, how could you not hear her
scream? If you were there?" I said "Look, I don't know, maybe I had my ears
covered." So they said "Fine, we'll write that down. Fine."
CP: [louder] But I can tell you that on November 6, the police did not know
that Meredith screamed before she died, so why would they suggest it to you?
AK: I imagine that maybe they were imagining how it might have been.
To me, based on the information we have, it is fairly obvious that the police had already decided what they thought happened that night, before they called Raffaele in for questioning (and they were 99% sure Amanda would come with him).
1) They suspected Amanda from day 1
2) They had the CCTV footage of a young woman approaching the cottage, then a black man approaching soon after
3) They knew that Amanda worked for Lumumba
4) Any competent police force would be tailing the leading suspects in such a case, and we know they were recording Amanda and Raff's calls (per Burleigh)
5) They must have seen Patrick approach Amanda outside the school earlier that day
6) The police suspected multiple killers from day 1, or at least a strong male killer, who must have had assistance to gain entry from another person or persons
All of the above is logical, to me, at the time. I would have been checking out Amanda, Raffaele, and Lumumba as well. I think that most of the time, crime investigation works this way:
* Survey the people close to the victim and or area
* Question them, and see who's story seems odd or doesn't quite add up
* Put together a theory
* Call in whoever looks like the weakest link, and hit them with a "hard" interrogation and/or offer them a deal to get them to spill the beans
This probably works, at least a good portion of the time. The problem is when they get the scenario completely wrong, like in this case.
I can understand the story they were putting together, up until they interrogated Amanda on the 5th and 6th. So they put the screws to her, but something strange happened. She denied everything (not strange), then she told a story that didn't make much sense, and said she was confused and didn't know what happened. Instead of thinking that this was an odd development, and investigating further/analyzing the forensics, they assumed Amanda's story was a lie, or actually a partial truth -- they cherry picked the parts they liked. It has never made sense to me that Mignini and guilters want to take Amanda's statement, and split out the parts as true and false so they fit perfectly their need to vilify her. By that I mean: The part about her being at the cottage is true, but the part about Patrick being there is a lie. A lie that wouldn't even help her, since she is admitting to being there herself!
But getting back to the main point, I think it is clear that the police had already decided they suspected both Amanda and Lumumba, before the interrogation started on the evening of the 5th. They may not have been sure what story she would tell, but they were convinced she was at the center of it, and they could get her to implicate Lumumba, Raffaele, or both. They had no clue that Rudy was involved at that time, and they should have.
