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

[acbytesla]

European Court of Human Rights. A prisoner here got £600 as compensation for a 13 month delay to his parole hearing*

* Thanks to rocket scientist Dan O. for teaching me how to do these cool links.

600 pounds for 13 months? Wow. That works out to to almost 1 and half pounds or 2 dollars and 39 cents a day.

Isn't that a pittance?

 

[anglolawyer]

600 pounds for 13 months? Wow. That works out to to almost 1 and half pounds or 2 dollars and 39 cents a day.

Isn't that a pittance?

Indeed. I think the rate probably goes up if you get beaten up, called a dirty black, get locked up by the dozy cops and have your bar closed for months as 'a crime scene'.

 

[Kaosium]

I've read it could be hundreds of substances. Any guess is as good as the next one. The negative TMB tests confirm that it is NOT Blood, but of course I've read PGP posts that TMB isn't that reliable and that it couldn't be bleach as bleach would have dissipated by the time the luminol was applied and there were no products that contained bleach in the household.

Heh, bleach (Sodium Hypochlorite) 'decomposes' over time but the 'lab bleach' from which they derive their theory is pristine and thus won't 'clump up' and leave traces of Sodium Chlorate like most household bleach does if it sits for a month or two.

What makes you think there was no bleach in the cottage? That's not one I recall hearing, nor do I recall ever seeing an inventory of all cleaning products and such from the cottage. Even if there wasn't that doesn't preclude it being there at some point before the murder, as a matter of fact there's no reason to think those marks happened at the same time or happened at any particular time before the murder.

TMB creates a chemical reaction if blood or another like substance is present, there's no being 'unreliable' anymore than water can be 'unreliable' if it gets to 212 degrees (at normal atmosphere)--it boils.

Of course, it could be any number of more than a 100 substances, it's just that FBI agent Steve Moore--a veteran of many crime scenes--looked at it and guessed it was bleach that pools at the bottom of showers and then gets tracked around.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

ironic comment

What do you all think was the substance that produced the luminol discovered footprints in the cottage? Not the shoe-prints.

As long as we label this as speculation, I think that water with a sufficient amount of iron (rust) might set off a luminol reaction. A bit of soil (dirt) might also do the trick. It would be nice to find every cleaning product that was at the cottage (a project which Dan O. might have begun) and to test each one. Even apart from the TMB test, the lack of a confirmatory test means that one has no business concluding that it is blood. That principle is not based on any single individual's personal beliefs; it is based on the consensus opinion of forensic scientists.

 

[Grinder]

Undoubtedly blood from the victim walked around the apartment by Amanda in her bare feet - or possibly something else. What do you think the negative TMB tests suggest it was?

It suggests that the TMB test didn't prove it was blood.

Bleach, or a cleaner containing it.

By understanding is that bleach would have dissipated by the test date which was in December IIRC. I thought the same originally and then wondered if it could be a shower cleaner of some sort. I would have expected the defense to identify such a substance especially if a bottle was found in the cottage.

Or - anything but blood. Grinder? What about you?

I really don't know. Some sort of shampoo with a substance in it, but then why wasn't that brought out by the defense experts? Does anybody remember what they postulated?

I've read it could be hundreds of substances. Any guess is as good as the next one. The negative TMB tests confirm that it is NOT Blood, but of course I've read PGP posts that TMB isn't that reliable and that it couldn't be bleach as bleach would have dissipated by the time the luminol was applied and there were no products that contained bleach in the household.

Luminol chemiluminescence can also be triggered by a number of substances such as copper or copper-containing chemical compounds, and certain bleaches; and, as a result, if a crime scene is thoroughly cleaned with a bleach solution, residual cleaner will cause the entire crime scene to produce the typical blue glow, effectively camouflaging any organic evidence, such as blood.
Horseradish sauce, via the enzyme horseradish peroxidase, catalyses the oxidation of luminol, emitting light at 428 nm (blue in the visible spectrum), which may result in a false positive.
Luminol will also detect the small amounts of blood present in urine, and it can be distorted if animal blood is present in the room that is being tested.
Luminol reacts with fecal matter, causing the same glow as if it were blood.
Luminol's presence may prevent other tests from being performed on a piece of evidence. However, it has been shown that DNA can be successfully extracted from samples treated with luminol reagent.


I haven't been able to find anything on how long bleach lasts. It does seem that bleach will mask blood.

If the prints were from a common substance in the house one would think that there would be many more prints. I always wondered when the last cleaning of the floors occurred before the murder night.

 

[acbytesla]

Heh, bleach (Sodium Hypochlorite) 'decomposes' over time but the 'lab bleach' from which they derive their theory is pristine and thus won't 'clump up' and leave traces of Sodium Chlorate like most household bleach does if it sits for a month or two.

What makes you think there was no bleach in the cottage? That's not one I don't recall hearing, nor ever seeing an inventory of all cleaning products and such from the cottage. Even if there wasn't that doesn't preclude it being there at some point before the murder, as a matter of fact there's no reason to think those marks happened at the same time or happened at any particular time before the murder.

TMB creates a chemical reaction if blood or another like substance is present, there's no being 'unreliable' anymore than water can be 'unreliable' if it gets to 212 degrees (at normal atmosphere)--it boils.

Of course, it could be any number of more than a 100 substances, it's just that FBI agent Steve Moore--a veteran of many crime scenes--looked at it and guessed it was bleach that pools at the bottom of showers and then gets tracked around.

Actually Kaosium, nothing makes me believe that there wasn't any cleaning substance with bleach in it. That is just what I have "read" from various posts and comments on the Internet.

Frankly, I absolutely believe that those "luminol" bare footprints come from Amanda taking a shower at some time either from rust in the pipes or some kind of cleaning residue left on the shower pan. There is no reason to believe it was blood. But I do think it is a great, yet very misleading prosecution exhibit.

 

[Grinder]

As long as we label this as speculation, I think that water with a sufficient amount of iron (rust) might set off a luminol reaction. A bit of soil (dirt) might also do the trick. It would be nice to find every cleaning product that was at the cottage (a project which Dan O. might have begun) and to test each one. Even apart from the TMB test, the lack of a confirmatory test means that one has no business concluding that it is blood. That principle is not based on any single individual's personal beliefs; it is based on the consensus opinion of forensic scientists.

There is no doubt that the ILE did not prove it was blood. Neither the TMB test nor the DNA testing proved it.

It seems highly unlikely that the prints would have come from rust in water unless there would be a reason it only happened once, else where are the other prints.

It is possible that someone spilled some juice and stepped in it, but that would be an event that people would have remembered.

I'm guessing Anglo thinks that the PLE used a 3-D printer to make a foot similar to Amanda's (I know Rose, the second toe doesn't match) and then made the prints .

 

[Malkmus]

Heh, bleach (Sodium Hypochlorite) 'decomposes' over time but the 'lab bleach' from which they derive their theory is pristine and thus won't 'clump up' and leave traces of Sodium Chlorate like most household bleach does if it sits for a month or two.

What makes you think there was no bleach in the cottage? That's not one I recall hearing, nor do I recall ever seeing an inventory of all cleaning products and such from the cottage. Even if there wasn't that doesn't preclude it being there at some point before the murder, as a matter of fact there's no reason to think those marks happened at the same time or happened at any particular time before the murder.

TMB creates a chemical reaction if blood or another like substance is present, there's no being 'unreliable' anymore than water can be 'unreliable' if it gets to 212 degrees (at normal atmosphere)--it boils.

Of course, it could be any number of more than a 100 substances, it's just that FBI agent Steve Moore--a veteran of many crime scenes--looked at it and guessed it was bleach that pools at the bottom of showers and then gets tracked around.

A long-standing PGP talking point is that Filomena testified that there were no bleach products in the house. I have yet to see a quote from her and I believe she could have just been talking about bottles of bleach, not other cleaning products that contain it.

I appreciate Sara Gino's testimony on this:

Comodi - No I mean if the floor, for example, there were drops or traces of juice because it appears that the juice is enhanced with luminol, is produced would be defined as those footprints?

CONSULTANT - Drops of juice I would say no, I seem easier to a person coming out of a shower where the floor has been washed with the material, with the chlorine.

Comodi - With chlorine, how long before?

CONSULTANT - How long before what?

Comodi - The floor must be washed with chlorine.

CONSULTANT - No floor in the shower, I imagine someone who washes his feet in a shower a little 'like a child in the pool and then makes the short stroll barefoot left those footprints.

 

[acbytesla]

There is no doubt that the ILE did not prove it was blood. Neither the TMB test nor the DNA testing proved it.

It seems highly unlikely that the prints would have come from rust in water unless there would be a reason it only happened once, else where are the other prints.

It is possible that someone spilled some juice and stepped in it, but that would be an event that people would have remembered.

I'm guessing Anglo thinks that the PLE used a 3-D printer to make a foot similar to Amanda's (I know Rose, the second toe doesn't match) and then made the prints .

I don't think you can "conclusively" attribute those prints to a particular person and therefore would never use them for that purpose.

I have for example looked at the bloody footprint in the bathroom that the ILE attribute to Raffaele and the defense attributes to Rudy. I've looked at it for a long time and while I do think it looks a little more like Rudy's than Raffaele's, I could never even consider using it to find someone guilty of murder.

 

[Kaosium]

It suggests that the TMB test didn't prove it was blood.

A TMB test can't actually prove it's blood, just that it isn't. The confirmation test is what proves for human blood, the TMB test can only (definitively) prove that it's not.

Mind you there are places where they'll use TMB as a 'positive' but that opens up the possibility the positive could be from another substance, so the best way to do it is with a confirmation test in the lab--that removes all doubt. Can you think of a reason why the Polizia Scientifica wouldn't want to do that confirmation test (which they did for other items--including attempts on the knife) on those footprints? Especially after they tested negative with TMB?

By understanding is that bleach would have dissipated by the test date which was in December IIRC. I thought the same originally and then wondered if it could be a shower cleaner of some sort. I would have expected the defense to identify such a substance especially if a bottle was found in the cottage.

That whole 'dissipating bleach' argument is predicated on pure sodium hypochlorite which will dissipate and as such is why they use it for lab purposes. The bleach you may have sitting in your closet has quite likely decomposed and contains tiny granules of sodium chlorate, just like any bleach that might have been in the cottage or had pooled at the bottom of the shower after cleaning.

I really don't know. Some sort of shampoo with a substance in it, but then why wasn't that brought out by the defense experts? Does anybody remember what they postulated?



Luminol chemiluminescence can also be triggered by a number of substances such as copper or copper-containing chemical compounds, and certain bleaches; and, as a result, if a crime scene is thoroughly cleaned with a bleach solution, residual cleaner will cause the entire crime scene to produce the typical blue glow, effectively camouflaging any organic evidence, such as blood.
Horseradish sauce, via the enzyme horseradish peroxidase, catalyses the oxidation of luminol, emitting light at 428 nm (blue in the visible spectrum), which may result in a false positive.
Luminol will also detect the small amounts of blood present in urine, and it can be distorted if animal blood is present in the room that is being tested.
Luminol reacts with fecal matter, causing the same glow as if it were blood.
Luminol's presence may prevent other tests from being performed on a piece of evidence. However, it has been shown that DNA can be successfully extracted from samples treated with luminol reagent.


I haven't been able to find anything on how long bleach lasts. It does seem that bleach will mask blood.

If the prints were from a common substance in the house one would think that there would be many more prints. I always wondered when the last cleaning of the floors occurred before the murder night.

If I recall correctly there was a cleaning some seven to ten days before, but I couldn't produce a reference for that, and I consider it unconfirmed as I never saw anything official on it myself.

They could pick and choose whichever prints/stains they wanted from the hall outside and the rooms, there might well have been more amorphous blobs they chose not to photograph, it's not like this part (the footprints in the hall at least) was ever taped by the Polizia Scientifica, this was from Stefanoni's return trip.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

second order kinetics of bleach decomposition

I haven't been able to find anything on how long bleach lasts. It does seem that bleach will mask blood.

If the prints were from a common substance in the house one would think that there would be many more prints. I always wondered when the last cleaning of the floors occurred before the murder night.

The question of how long bleach lasts is a little bit more subtle than in first appears. I put some cites into one of the earlier threads, but they are not handy. The decomposition follows a second-order rate law: rate of decomposition = k[sodium hypochlorite]^2. The rate constant is traditionally given the symbol k, and chemical concentrations are typically shown with brackets. Thus if you double the concentration, the rate increases by fourfold. A bottle of bleach doesn't go bad particularly quickly in my experience (meaning that the rate constant k must not be that large), yet one paper in the forensic literature indicated that in less than two days (very rough estimate, based on memory) bleach applied to a floor no longer produces a luminol reaction (this may be from the work of Creamer and colleagues). This paradox might be resolved in a number of ways. The floor might have a chemical that catalyzes decomposition, or the evaporation of water might be constantly driving the concentration of sodium hypochlorite to high levels, speeding up the reaction because it is second order kinetically.

 

[Grinder]

The callunia conviction is a warning to the people NOT to question authority. Upholding the system so to speak. But with little effect on the individuals involved as the sentences already have been served. In addition, overturning the callunia conviction will mean that Amanda and Raffaele both would have been unjustly incarcerated. Letting every thing stand as it is, will help let the air out of the controversy.

Calunnia is not a charge that would discourage questioning authority. I think you are thinking of defamation or slander charges.

Patrick was awarded money for his false imprisonment. Can't remember the amount but it wasn't $2 a day. he was unhappy with the amount and appealed IIRC.

 

[anglolawyer]

There is no doubt that the ILE did not prove it was blood. Neither the TMB test nor the DNA testing proved it.

It seems highly unlikely that the prints would have come from rust in water unless there would be a reason it only happened once, else where are the other prints.

It is possible that someone spilled some juice and stepped in it, but that would be an event that people would have remembered.

I'm guessing Anglo thinks that the PLE used a 3-D printer to make a foot similar to Amanda's (I know Rose, the second toe doesn't match) and then made the prints .

TBH I do not know that much about the luminol evidence and may have to change my entire view of the case one day. Is there luminol in Hellman? What about Galati?

 

[Kaosium]

A long-standing PGP talking point is that Filomena testified that there were no bleach products in the house. I have yet to see a quote from her and I believe she could have just been talking about bottles of bleach, not other cleaning products that contain it.

I appreciate Sara Gino's testimony on this:

Thanks for the cite!

I don't recall running into that talking point, but you were discussing this case longer than I if I remember correctly. There's also always the chance the bunnies were mistaken or lying in my view. Perhaps they 'intuited' it from the fact that the prosecution cataloged Raffaele's bleach bottles, and perhaps that exhaustive an inventory was never released for the cottage?

Wait a minute, is this the issue where Michael insisted he had an inventory but never actually produced it to my knowledge?

 

[Grinder]

TBH I do not know that much about the luminol evidence and may have to change my entire view of the case one day. Is there luminol in Hellman? What about Galati?

I don't think so. The prints were only compatible and reference prints of others weren't taken. It was add on evidence. Galati might throw them in as part of his weaving of the fabric of the evidence into whole cloth even if the threads weren't all certain to be real. Anglo how do you like that restatement of Galati?

 

[Grinder]

Thanks for the cite!

I don't recall running into that talking point, but you were discussing this case longer than I if I remember right. There's also always the chance the bunnies were mistaken or lying in my view. Perhaps they 'intuited' it from the fact that the prosecution cataloged Raffaele's bleach bottles and I don't know if that exhaustive an inventory was ever done on the cottage.

Wait a minute, is this the issue where Michael insisted he had an inventory but never actually produced it to my knowledge?

Yes nice cite. Michael has the receipt he acquired from one of his "sources".

 

[Grinder]

A TMB test can't actually prove it's blood, just that it isn't. The confirmation test is what proves for human blood, the TMB test can only (definitively) prove that it's not.

I am misreading this?

TMB

1. Swab suspected blood stain with clean filter paper or a swab, which may
be moistened if necessary with deionized water, ethanol or saline.
pdi_lab_pro_
2. Apply 1-2 drops of the TMB reagent.
3. Note any blue-green color change. A blue-green color change at this step
indicates a chemical oxidant and the test should be considered inconclusive.
If there is no color change, proceed to the next step.
4. Add 1-2 drops of 3% hydrogen peroxide.
5. Note any immediate blue-green color change
6. An immediate blue-green color change indicates a positive result. No
color change indicates a negative result. A negative result indicates that
either no blood is present or is below the limit of detection of the test.

 

[Kaosium]

I am misreading this?

TMB

1. Swab suspected blood stain with clean filter paper or a swab, which may
be moistened if necessary with deionized water, ethanol or saline.
pdi_lab_pro_
2. Apply 1-2 drops of the TMB reagent.
3. Note any blue-green color change. A blue-green color change at this step
indicates a chemical oxidant and the test should be considered inconclusive.
If there is no color change, proceed to the next step.
4. Add 1-2 drops of 3% hydrogen peroxide.
5. Note any immediate blue-green color change
6. An immediate blue-green color change indicates a positive result. No
color change indicates a negative result. A negative result indicates that
either no blood is present or is below the limit of detection of the test.

TMB gives false positives, thus a positive with TMB doesn't prove for blood. A negative means there's no blood, unless the amount present is so diluted it won't cause a reaction, and TMB is quite sensitive, down to 1:10k at minimum, and I've seen papers that have it detecting at 1:1M under lab conditions.

 

[anglolawyer]

I don't think so. The prints were only compatible and reference prints of others weren't taken. It was add on evidence. Galati might throw them in as part of his weaving of the fabric of the evidence into whole cloth even if the threads weren't all certain to be real. Anglo how do you like that restatement of Galati?

Utterly brilliant! But sadly incorrect. Hellman and Galati both wax on luminol but Galati has very little to say about the footprints revealed thereby:

As for the other bare footprints, revealed by Luminol along the hallway of the murder house, the forcing and, therefore, the illogicality, of the Appeal Court’s reasoning is evident in holding that the prints (considered by the Scientific Police as compatible with those of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito), could have been the same as those left there on earlier occasions, when it is a given of common experience that Luminol principally reveals traces of blood and, without giving the least evidence that other material, equally copious and equally sensitive to Luminol, had been poured out onto the floor, it is beyond logic to hypothesise that Ms Knox and Raffaele could have had bloodstained feet on a prior occasion and different from the murder. But here also the Court has limited itself to adhering to the undemonstrated theses of the defence.

This is all there is and two things about it are, first, that he makes no mention of TMB at all, even though Hellman very clearly wipes out the luminol evidence with it and, second, there is nothing in Hellman about Raffaele's bare prints being revealed by luminol so I don't know why Galati mentions him. This is very poor stuff and a bad point for the prosecution.

 

[acbytesla]

The question of how long bleach lasts is a little bit more subtle than in first appears. I put some cites into one of the earlier threads, but they are not handy. The decomposition follows a second-order rate law: rate of decomposition = k[sodium hypochlorite]^2. The rate constant is traditionally given the symbol k, and chemical concentrations are typically shown with brackets. Thus if you double the concentration, the rate increases by fourfold. A bottle of bleach doesn't go bad particularly quickly in my experience (meaning that the rate constant k must not be that large), yet one paper in the forensic literature indicated that in less than two days (very rough estimate, based on memory) bleach applied to a floor no longer produces a luminol reaction (this may be from the work of Creamer and colleagues). This paradox might be resolved in a number of ways. The floor might have a chemical that catalyzes decomposition, or the evaporation of water might be constantly driving the concentration of sodium hypochlorite to high levels, speeding up the reaction because it is second order kinetically.

Thanks for clearing that up. Want to try English next time?? Only joking, but seriously, could you try and explain that so those of without chemistry degrees understand it?