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

[Dan O.]

It's a while since I looked but I thought the cops got in by kicking in the glass in the door. Maybe I am misremembering and it sure would be dumb to bar the windows and leave the door as an easy means of access but still I'm sure that's how the cops got in on 02 Nov.

There is a security gate on all three doors to the downstairs apartment. The gate on the door with the window was apparently not properly locked as the police had already opened that before trying to kick in the window. It took a couple of heavy kicks to break the glass and once broken they still couldn't open the door because it probably had a key lock on the inside like the door upstairs. Also, I just noticed the porch light above this door was turned on the morning of the 3rd. I'll need to review the tape from the 1st to see if it was on then.

 

[Rolfe]

you guys keep citing rudy, you know he accused both of them of the murder, right?

you have two different witnesses talk about a horrible scream in the 11 clock hour, which would mean the victim was still alive at that point. Do you want to argue that they didn't hear the scream, or the scream was from somebody else? think about the probablility of that. you are a scientist.

Doesn't matter who thought they heard what when, Meredith was dead by 9.30 on the evidence of the post mortem examination. Fact.

You can carry on devising whatever scenario you like, but it has to take that time of death into account. The greatest failing of all the lawyers involved in this case is not realising that.

It's always important to distinguish between facts which are immutable and suggestions or possibilities which are not. The fact that is immutable here is that Meredith was dead by about 9.30. Against the certainty of that, it matters nothing what someone thought they heard at eleven.

Rolfe.

 

[DrTesla]

More falsehoods. They did not release Patrick immediately after the Swiss teacher gave a statement (they questioned him for a long time); they waited about ten days to release Mr. Lumumba. Ms. Knox withdrew her accusation on 7 November in the second memoriale and again in a letter to her lawyers on or about 9 November. Moreover, the police also listened to Ms. Knox talking to her mother (sorry I don't recall the date), where she also indicated that she was at Sollecito's flat.

I think it's hilarious that you try to use Patrick as proof of how rotten the police were in your defense of Knox but he is only in jail b/c she accused him and she had every opportunity to walk it back if somehow she was originally confused or pressured into accusing him. she didn't.

again, raff retracted his alibi for Knox and said he told the police a pack of lies b/c Amanda told him too. it was this information that led the police to question Knox and she then promptly accused her boss of the murder when told her boyfriend was no longer giving her an alibi. also he claimed to be home all night on his computer but his computer usage records shows no activity after 8.30 or so, and then a brief 4 second usage around 1 am, well after the murder took place, and then he got on around 5 am for half hour or so, despite telling the police they slept in to 10 am or so.

 

[Bill Williams]

what else could they have been made in? Fruit juice? Bleach? the only plausible answer it was blood b/c there was a lot of the victim's blood in the house.

Wrong. There was not "a lot of the victim's blood in the house." The horrific scene was confined to the bedroom, which was behind a locked door. There goes the plausible answer. No one suspected murder until the door was kicked in, because of the lack of obvious sign of murder (eg. blood) in the rest of the cottage.

And given that Knox herself was not in the murder room at all, how does her footprint get into blood?

 

[DrTesla]

Doesn't matter who thought they heard what when, Meredith was dead by 9.30 on the evidence of the post mortem examination. Fact.

Rolfe.

you can be glib with the facts b/c you aren't charged with getting this right. exact time of death is debatle but given the witness testimony about screams in the 11 o clock hour a jury is going to buy the murder took place at 9.30. I'm trying to determine exsactly when meridith arrived back b/c I think it was actually later than 9.30. i'll post that shortly.

 

[anglolawyer]

I don't care who heard what when, ten is too late. Rudy said the scream was 9.20, didn't he?

I'm not a friend of Amanda. I'm a scientist. It's really quite tedious the way these lawyers don't seem able to get their brains round the simple fact of the post mortem findings and their implications.

Rolfe.

ETA: Sorry, Anglolawyer.

no probs.

Dr Tesla - goodnight. Time for my beauty sleep. That gives you a whole night to think up an answer to the Curatolo question. I look forward to seeing that in the morning, hopefully.

You and Sherlock are onto something with the lamp imho. Why oh why did Mignini forget to lead a positive case on it? Thank goodness he remembered to stick it in the film helpfully shown to the court after all the evidence was in, despite the nonsensical objections of the defence. You should major on the lamp I think.

 

[Supernaut]

you guys keep citing rudy, you know he accused both of them of the murder, right?

you have two different witnesses talk about a horrible scream in the 11 clock hour, which would mean the victim was still alive at that point. Do you want to argue that they didn't hear the scream, or the scream was from somebody else? think about the probablility of that. you are a scientist.

Who said they heard a "scream"?

Booga booga.

 

[Bill Williams]

I think it's hilarious that you try to use Patrick as proof of how rotten the police were in your defense of Knox but he is only in jail b/c she accused him and she had every opportunity to walk it back if somehow she was originally confused or pressured into accusing him. she didn't.

again, raff retracted his alibi for Knox and said he told the police a pack of lies b/c Amanda told him too. it was this information that led the police to question Knox and she then promptly accused her boss of the murder when told her boyfriend was no longer giving her an alibi. also he claimed to be home all night on his computer but his computer usage records shows no activity after 8.30 or so, and then a brief 4 second usage around 1 am, well after the murder took place, and then he got on around 5 am for half hour or so, despite telling the police they slept in to 10 am or so.

Knox, in fact, tried to dial it back as soon as she was free from interrogation.

Also, the police were questioning Knox at the same time as Sollecito. Napoleoni came into Knox's interrogation room with the news that Raffaele was withdrawing his alibi for her. When you read Sollecito's own account of why he did that, it becomes apparent that the cops were using a classic model of playing one off against the other - controlling the information each heard from the other.

And you know that Sollecito got home at 4 am.... how? Someone else is going to have to pipe in her, because I seem to remember that activity in Raffaele's computer continued until perhaps 9:15 pm. Jovanic had seen Amanda at Raffaele's at 8:40 pm or thereabouts.

Not much time for the events you claim to have happened.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

negative TMB test

what else could they have been made in? Fruit juice? Bleach? the only plausible answer it was blood b/c there was a lot of the victim's blood in the house.

If they were blood they should have tested positive by TMB. More importantly, until and unless a confirmatory blood test is run, no one has any business saying that they must be blood. Please look at the links I provided so that you can better understand what a false positive is and how it can be made by a number of substances.

 

[Kestrel]

knox has gone out of her way to argue they ate much later then they did (which raffie's dad confirmed was not true based on his call to his son), there's no way the murder happened at 9.30. I understand why you want to make that case b/c it would point to Knox's innocence. the screams were heard much later at night. witnesses saw the two near the cottage later at night.

In the view of Italian law enforcement, heroin addicts who live on a park bench are as reliable as the word of Jesus. That may be why they called Toto as a key witness for at least two Perugia homicide cases.

They had the same high regard for little old lady who reported hearing screams in the night months after the event.

But they seemed to ignore the people who sat in a broken down car waiting for a tow truck directly across the street from the cottage. Witnesses that reported the cottage as being quiet and dark from around 10:30 pm to 11:15 pm.

An attack after that time might make sense if Meredith had gone to sleep after arriving home. The problem is that Meredith was attacked while she was still wearing her jacket. Meredith hadn't settled in for the night. She never attempted to call her mother after the failed attempt at 8:56 pm. Nor did she unload the wet clothes in the washing machine or crack open the history book she had borrowed for studying that night.

There is also the odd problem of two failed phone calls around 10 pm and a connection via a different cell phone tower a bit later. The best explanation is that the phones were no longer under Meredith's control when these things happened. She was already dead.

 

[Rolfe]

you can be glib with the facts b/c you aren't charged with getting this right. exact time of death is debatle but given the witness testimony about screams in the 11 o clock hour a jury is going to buy the murder took place at 9.30. I'm trying to determine exsactly when meridith arrived back b/c I think it was actually later than 9.30. i'll post that shortly.

Don't be silly. It's been well established that Meredith arrived back at about nine.

The exact time of death is of course debatable but it is bounded at the earliest by the time Sophie saw her alive plus the few minutes it would have taken her to get from there to where she was killed, and at the latest by about 9.30, according to the post mortem evidence.

Screams have nothing to do with this. People and animals scream quite often. I'll let others here explain to you just how reliable these ear-witnesses were, anyway. But it doesn't matter even if they did hear a scream at 11 o'clock, they can't have been hearing Meredith.

Oh, and although this case has nothing to do with me, I have been "charged" with getting very similar things right, frequently. Last time was yesterday afternoon, actually. The police don't think they'll get the guy who did it though, unfortunately.

Rolfe.

 

[anglolawyer]

There is a security gate on all three doors to the downstairs apartment. The gate on the door with the window was apparently not properly locked as the police had already opened that before trying to kick in the window. It took a couple of heavy kicks to break the glass and once broken they still couldn't open the door because it probably had a key lock on the inside like the door upstairs. Also, I just noticed the porch light above this door was turned on the morning of the 3rd. I'll need to review the tape from the 1st to see if it was on then.

I think Charlie covered this. I didn't know about a gate or grill, but I bet Rudy did. That settles why he didn't bother with their apartment. Thanks.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

multiple retractions

I think it's hilarious that you try to use Patrick as proof of how rotten the police were in your defense of Knox but he is only in jail b/c she accused him and she had every opportunity to walk it back if somehow she was originally confused or pressured into accusing him. she didn't.

To repeat what I just said: Ms. Knox retracted her accusation first on 7 November in the second memoriale (which PM Mignini quoted back to her during the trial of first instance) and again in a letter to her lawyers that is now publicly available.

 

[Rolfe]

Well, I'm in the same time zone as Anglolawyer, so I need to get my beauty sleep too.

Count me as another non-American who believes Knox to be innocent, by the way.

Rolfe.

 

[DrTesla]

21:10 - From this point on there is no more human interaction with Raffaele Sollecito’s computer.

21:45 - Amanda and Raffaele leave his apartment and go to the Piazza Grimana. Less than 100 meters away from the house in Via della Pergola, the two talk and watch the house and decide what to do. They show a suspicious attitude which is reported in court by the witness Curatolo


so the witness saw both of them at 9.45, meaning the earliest the murder could have taken place was in 10 o'clock hour but two witnesses heard screams in 11 clock hour and heard several people running away. there was no computer activictiy for Rafael from 9.10 pm to 1 am that night.

 

[DrTesla]

To repeat what I just said: Ms. Knox retracted her accusation first on 7 November in the second memoriale (which PM Mignini quoted back to her during the trial of first instance) and again in a letter to her lawyers that is now publicly available.

she never retracted her accusation and she even scoffed and laughed at his lawyer's accusation that he apologize to him and said "Who, me?"

 

[Rolfe]

I'm another one.

I have to be up and with-it in 8.5 hours and counting. Thank God for Waitrose "Italian-blend" coffee-beans.

I'm just so surprised that our new friend who sprang out of nowhere was so confident that he knew everything about the case, and then it turned out he didn't. Who would have guessed?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

she never retracted her accusation and she even scoffed and laughed at his lawyer's accusation that he apologize to him and said "Who, me?"

[citation needed]

Rolfe.

 

[DrTesla]

In the view of Italian law enforcement, heroin addicts who live on a park bench are as reliable as the word of Jesus. That may be why they called Toto as a key witness for at least two Perugia homicide cases.

They had the same high regard for little old lady who reported hearing screams in the night months after the event.

But they seemed to ignore the people who sat in a broken down car waiting for a tow truck directly across the street from the cottage. Witnesses that reported the cottage as being quiet and dark from around 10:30 pm to 11:15 pm.

An attack after that time might make sense if Meredith had gone to sleep after arriving home. The problem is that Meredith was attacked while she was still wearing her jacket. Meredith hadn't settled in for the night. She never attempted to call her mother after the failed attempt at 8:56 pm. Nor did she unload the wet clothes in the washing machine or crack open the history book she had borrowed for studying that night.

There is also the odd problem of two failed phone calls around 10 pm and a connection via a different cell phone tower a bit later. The best explanation is that the phones were no longer under Meredith's control when these things happened. She was already dead.

both Knox and her "boyfriend" were abusing drugs and you take their word as the word of Jesus despite the obvious fact both of them have lied constantly throughtout this trial.

 

[Rolfe]

21:10 - From this point on there is no more human interaction with Raffaele Sollecito’s computer.

21:45 - Amanda and Raffaele leave his apartment and go to the Piazza Grimana. Less than 100 meters away from the house in Via della Pergola, the two talk and watch the house and decide what to do. They show a suspicious attitude which is reported in court by the witness Curatolo


so the witness saw both of them at 9.45, meaning the earliest the murder could have taken place was in 10 o'clock hour but two witnesses heard screams in 11 clock hour and heard several people running away. there was no computer activictiy for Rafael from 9.10 pm to 1 am that night.

Do you know what "petitio principii" is? "Affirming the consequent"?

I don't care who saw them when, the post mortem evidence shows Meredith was dead by 9.30. Guede, the one person in a position to know, also said that.

Deal with it.

Rolfe.