Continuation Part 5: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[Charlie Wilkes]

[URL="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/04/30/amanda-knox-italy-reactions/2124693/"]USA Today[/URL] mentions this. "Meredith Kercher's sister Stephanie said in a statement Tuesday that her family is not interested in Knox's book and will not read it.

'I have no doubt that there is also a story of pain and loss and enormous mistrust on the other side,' Stephanie Kercher said, referring to Knox. 'But in the end, there is also the hope and the opportunity to live a life — something Meredith will never have and something that we will never share with her.'"

This article goes on to quote an Italian commenter. "'I want to know how Americans believe it was not her,' one commenter wrote. 'Who else would have had any interest in doing it?'" Two words: Rudy Guede.

That is so bizarre. The police find a girl naked in her bedroom in a pool of blood, and the obvious suspect is her female housemate? I sometimes wonder what planet these people are living on.

 

[yeti101]

saw her "performance" in the tv interview. Just as bad as her acting in court.

Obvious she was involved doesnt look like we will get justice

 

[anglolawyer]

Wow, that is an excellent article. WHO is that author?! I want his autograph.

While I am inclined to agree with this author (about almost anything), I must confess I haven't given this matter much research or thought in the past, so I shouldn't comment at this time, but of course I will, though briefly and not in much detail.

I haven't looked at the two "confessions" in awhile, and without looking at them right now, because I'm tired, I will say that it is my understanding that both the 1:45 and the 5:45 statements initially were used by Claudia Matteini and everybody else to reach their conclusions about Amanda and Patrick. In that sense, the 5:45 statement did not supersede the 1:45 statement, nor did it make it disappear.

For example, if Claudia wasn't looking at the 1:45 statement, then why would she state that Amanda had claimed that Patrick had told her the bar would "remain closed" that evening? I think that's the only place that claim appears. According to everything Amanda said OTHER than the 1:45 statement, Patrick didn't tell her the bar would be closed, he just told her it was slow and not to come in. And in fact, he did not close the bar, at least not until 10:00 p.m.

When the cops wrote Amanda's 1:45 statement for her, they stuck the part in there about the bar being closed because they were trying to set up the meeting between Amanda and Patrick. When Claudia talks about the discrepancy between what Amanda said and what Patrick said, she is actually talking about the discrepancy between what the 1:45 statement said and what Patrick said.

I can see why the police would have wanted to delete the message, and they very well may have, in order to make it look like Patrick closed the bar so he could go out and commit murder. But at some point, the cops' and Claudia's approaches seem to have diverged.

As I said, I'm tired, but to me, Claudia seems to be admitting that indeed the bar was open that night. She lends so much more weight to Patrick's claims than to Amanda's that it appears to be much more important to her to say that Amanda lied than to say that Patrick closed the bar.

I don't know how she went about establishing how Patrick went out and committed murder when the bar was open, but I will reread your article and look into it more later.

Well, first off, I am sure the author would appreciate your kind remarks about his article and second, I happen to know he has a well-developed back-up theory to explain all the above. It goes like this (short version):

the cops screwed up a bit with the 1.45 version so Mignini had to improve it in the second, perhaps intending that the first would not see the light of day, but then the game changed sometime between 5.45 and the Matteini hearing for reasons unclear.

The 5.45 confession implicates Raffaele and completely alters the account of the exchange of texts IMO because the first version did not fit the theory. Here they are, side by side:

Last Thursday 1st November, day on which I usually work, while I was in the apartment of my boyfriend Raffaele, at about 20.30 I received a message from Patrick on my mobile, telling me that that evening the pub would remain closed because there were no people, therefore I didn’t have to go to work.
I replied to the message saying that we would meet immediately, therefore I went out telling my boyfriend that I had to go to work

Note the lie she is supposed to have told Raffaele.

I met him in the evening of November 1st 2007, after sending him a reply message saying “I will see you”. We met soon after at about 21.00 at the basketball court of Piazza Grimana.

...

- I am not sure if Raffaele was there as well that night but I clearly remember that I woke up at my boyfriend’s home

Because they decided to play it differently and use both statements before Matteini, they majored on the tiny discrepancy between Amanda's and Lumumba's versions of his message which is mysterious because it must have occurred to the judge, or someone, to ask to see the text of these messages. My understanding is that only the 'see you later' part of Amanda's message was disclosed at this hearing and that it wasn't for a considerable time before it became known she had also said, 'have a good evening'.

Now, to those who want to think the cops and Mignini were playing it straight, a question arises about that too. Amanda's message was certainly not deleted and, so we are told, Mignini had a duty towards her too, to put the facts fairly before the judge. So why did she not get to hear the full text of Amanda's message? In a sense, part of that was 'deleted' too.

I hope that clears everything up.

 

[anglolawyer]

saw her "performance" in the tv interview. Just as bad as her acting in court.

Obvious she was involved doesnt look like we will get justice

Could you tell from looking in her eyes? Surely you should be confident of getting justice if her involvement is that obvious.

 

[Supernaut]

Well Grinder has mine so he might take you up on it but I won't because I think you are correct, if only gliding over the timing of the exchange of SMSs of which the cops were surely aware and suspicious, as with Patrick's call to her in the questura on the night of 02 Nov. I wonder if, as luck had it, he abstained from calling her after that and, if so, whether this was spotted by the cops and viewed darkly?

I am going through the book. Amanda got a message from Meredith on Hallowe'en which she quotes verbatim, along with the kisses. I believe that one is in the trial record somewhere. How come? Surely she would have deleted it in line with her usual policy or, per my good friend Jackie, surely it would have been overwritten by later incoming messages.

????

I, for one, tend to delete commercial and non-personal messages (such as from my mobile provider), either without reading or with a clear-out every few days.

Many of those from friends or peers I keep longer. I think you'll find many people do the same.

And I've never heard of texts being "overwritten" - might happen when the phone runs out of memory , I suppose, but I doubt that would have happened to Amanda's phone in the space of a day.

 

[Dan O.]

What I think happened to Patrick's message is the cops deleted it. What difference it would make, if so, would be to cast the integrity of the investigation in a new light, not just as an ass-covering operation after Rudy came on the scene but as a fundamentally corrupt one ab initio. If you haven't already, I recommend you read this excellent article about the deleted text.

I wouldn't put much credibility in that author. He makes a basic mistake in saying that the police discovered that Amanda's phone was turned off. The phone network makes no record when cell phones are turned off. The only indication to the network that a phone might be off is that the phone will not respond to pings such as an incomming call. I don't recall Amanda missing any calls that evening so the only way for the police to learn that Amanda's phone was off was that Amanda told them. And this apparently didn't come up until the interrogation of the 5th.

It was implied that Raffaele's phone was off because of the missed midnight text from his father. This could alternatively be interpreted as the phone being in a dead reception zone.

Note that the timing of when the police say Amanda's phone was turned off is based on her last usage that evening which was to send the reply text to Patrick. This would necessarily coorespond with Patrick's reception of the message (with some delay due to network issues) and therefore the ping to his phone.

 

[anglolawyer]

????

I, for one, tend to delete commercial and non-personal messages (such as from my mobile provider), either without reading or with a clear-out every few days.

Many of those from friends or peers I keep longer. I think you'll find many people do the same.

And I've never heard of texts being "overwritten" - might happen when the phone runs out of memory , I suppose, but I doubt that would have happened to Amanda's phone in the space of a day.

I was trying to be ironic on the overwriting thing. Jackie suggests as a possibility worthy of investigation that she deleted Lumumba's text in order to make her confession more convincing.

Funny how everyone seems to think their own personal practices have any relevance to the discussion.

 

[JREF2010]

For some reason the DIane Sawyer interview is in various parts, and then there are other questions on some sites, that were supposedly edited out.
Komonews, ABC, and 20/20 all have a different edit of the interviews.

Is there one full, unedited, version of this interview anywhere?

 

[Supernaut]

I was trying to be ironic on the overwriting thing. Jackie suggests as a possibility worthy of investigation that she deleted Lumumba's text in order to make her confession more convincing.

Funny how everyone seems to think their own personal practices have any relevance to the discussion.

Funny? In what way?

 

[Supernaut]

I was trying to be ironic on the overwriting thing. Jackie suggests as a possibility worthy of investigation that she deleted Lumumba's text in order to make her confession more convincing.

Funny how everyone seems to think their own personal practices have any relevance to the discussion.

Yeh, that's nothing less than the kind of pretzel-logic I'd expect from him.

As I've observed, "over-thinking" in this way is common to PGP-types. And a few others as well.

 

[anglolawyer]

Funny? In what way?

'Funny' in being irrelevant. We are concerned with Amanda's practise not yours or Mary's.

 

[anglolawyer]

I wouldn't put much credibility in that author. He makes a basic mistake in saying that the police discovered that Amanda's phone was turned off. The phone network makes no record when cell phones are turned off. The only indication to the network that a phone might be off is that the phone will not respond to pings such as an incomming call. I don't recall Amanda missing any calls that evening so the only way for the police to learn that Amanda's phone was off was that Amanda told them. And this apparently didn't come up until the interrogation of the 5th.

It was implied that Raffaele's phone was off because of the missed midnight text from his father. This could alternatively be interpreted as the phone being in a dead reception zone.

Note that the timing of when the police say Amanda's phone was turned off is based on her last usage that evening which was to send the reply text to Patrick. This would necessarily coorespond with Patrick's reception of the message (with some delay due to network issues) and therefore the ping to his phone.

I don't put much credibility in him either. But this turning off of the phones is part of the narrative, regardless how the cops arrived at the idea, which is microscopically, macroscopically and ontologically considerably less important. Clearly.

 

[Supernaut]

'Funny' in being irrelevant. We are concerned with Amanda's practise not yours or Mary's.

Irrelevent? I'm trying to make a point - that MANY people tend to keep friendly texts for some time rather than simply deleting them the instant they've read them, and Amanda Knox strikes me as that kind of person (not least because Meredith was one of her few real confidantes at that time).

IOW, the likelihood that she would have deleted the last text she received from Meredith, on the day she received it, LET ALONE in the few days following the discovery of the murder is EXTREMELY low, if not close to zero.

In. My. Opinion.

 

[Dan O.]

Anglo, we really only need to know who was handling that phone durring the interrogation to know what happened. It was Simone Tacconi from the Police Communications Service.

If he fumble fingered the phone and inadvertently deleted one of the texts, do you think he would admit entering that room? We should be thankful that the whole SIM wasn't fried along with 2 or 3 others.

The police have procedures for recovering intentionally deleted texts on phones. since they bring up the discrepancy between Patric and Amanda's memory of that text in the indictment on the 7th, why didn't they seek to recover it?

 

[anglolawyer]

Irrelevent? I'm trying to make a point - that MANY people tend to keep friendly texts for some time rather than simply deleting them the instant they've read them, and Amanda Knox strikes me as that kind of person (not least because Meredith was one of her few real confidantes at that time).

Oh yeah? How many people? Who says so? I don't FWIW (i.e. not much).

IOW, the likelihood that she would have deleted the last text she received from Meredith, on the day she received it, LET ALONE in the few days following the discovery of the murder is EXTREMELY low, if not close to zero.

In. My. Opinion.

Is this the beginning of a Bayesian discussion of probability? Pardon me if I fail to participate.

 

[anglolawyer]

Anglo, we really only need to know who was handling that phone durring the interrogation to know what happened. It was Simone Tacconi from the Police Communications Service.

If he fumble fingered the phone and inadvertently deleted one of the texts, do you think he would admit entering that room? We should be thankful that the whole SIM wasn't fried along with 2 or 3 others.

The police have procedures for recovering intentionally deleted texts on phones. since they bring up the discrepancy between Patric and Amanda's memory of that text in the indictment on the 7th, why didn't they seek to recover it?

I didn't know it was Taccone. Where'd that come from?

Well now this is the self same point that Jackie made. The message is still on the phone even if she did delete it. Or if they did. If the case had proceeded against Patrick, this issue might well have received greater focus, but just imagine the resistance of the cops to having the sim properly examined. I expect it would have wound up in the same place as the negative controls, EDFs, hard drives, CCTV footage, interrogation and telephone surveillance tapes, with Comodi airily brushing off requests for inspection with a haughty: 'you have all you need already.'

 

[Supernaut]

@Anglo; "participate"? I made my point.

Carry on.

 

[Dan O.]

Oh yeah? How many people? Who says so? I don't FWIW (i.e. not much).

I believe that it can be shown that it is common practice to keep text messages. In a similar venue such as PMs on this site, the quotas on stored PMs exist to force deletions. This is irrelavent because Amanda testified that she typically deleted incoming texts as she read them.

CP: How did you come to decide to delete Patrick's message?

AK: I had a limited amount of space in my phone, and whenever I received a message that I didn't need to remember something for, I deleted them.

CP: Why didn't you delete your own when you answered him?

AK: Umm, I'm not used to deleting those. I just delete the ones that I receive, I believe. [The interpreter does not translate the first part of this answer.]

CP: Listen, Miss...[an interruption, someone wants her to repeat the answer to the question and hear the complete translation.]

AK: I wasn't used to deleting the ones that I sent out, but just the ones that I received. ​

 

[Dan O.]

I didn't know it was Taccone. Where'd that come from?

http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=7131195&sid=76&p=5

You really should visit my wiki.

 

[Grinder]

Anglo do you know the brand and model of the phone she was using?

I don't think Jackie knows poo about phones. They were rambling on about how long carriers keep the texts which we here vetted some time ago. One would think that with the steep reduction in storage costs it was less likely in the past to store the texts and since they don't store them highly unlikely they stored them back then.

That's just a bone and not the full meal. Still not buying the early, early conspiracy.

Btw, if they could so easily recover the texts from phones or the carrier one would challenge Jackie to produce the texts they recovered from all the phones involved.