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

[DrTesla]

Actually it was the police who wanted Patrick arrested, being as they did it and all with nothing but two barely coherent 'witness' statements they demonstrably did not believe and which their victim, Amanda Knox, recanted in detail as soon as she had an opportunity to think straight.

lol, neither Patrick or Patrick's lawyer would agree with you that Foxy Knoxy recanted her accusation. he sat in jail 14 days b/c she never did.

they never asked her to accuse Patrick, they didn't even know who he was, they merely asked her about her text to him in which she said "See you later". she admits in the trial that they never suggested he was the killer. they were just asking her questions b/c a roommate of a murder victim is going to be asked these types of questions. she accused Patrick shortly after the cops told her "boyfriend" was no longer giving her an alibi. looks to me like she panicked and accusing her boss was her attempt to create a diversion in the investigation.

 

[DrTesla]

all I know is that in the USA, if a black guy was imprisoned for murder but the two rich white people were not, there would be riots in the streets. Knox acts like she would have been found innocent over here but there would be all kinds of political pressure to find her guilty here with this racial dynamic that doesn't appear to exist in Italy. what's funny to m e is that all of the liberals touting her innocence would think she was guilty if this happened in the states, based on the race angle alone.

 

[Dan O.]

Here is my first shot at placing print 3 outside Meredith's room. The scale and position should be correct but I'm not confident on the rotation. I'll need to create an outline of the shoe to better see the details to verify the placement and there might be some additional hints in the previous prints to help with the rotation.

 

[Kaosium]

lol, neither Patrick or Patrick's lawyer would agree with you that Foxy Knoxy recanted her accusation. he sat in jail 14 days b/c she never did.

How would Patrick know what happened?

they never asked her to accuse Patrick, they didn't even know who he was, they merely asked her about her text to him in which she said "See you later". she admits in the trial that they never suggested he was the killer.

No, she says explicitly in the trial that they suggested Patrick. They shoved the phone in her face and demanded she tell them who it was and to stop 'protecting' him.

they were just asking her questions b/c a roommate of a murder victim is going to be asked these types of questions.

From ~1 PM November 2nd to 5:45 AM November 6th Amanda Knox spent 53 of 89 hours with police, at the crime scene, Raffaele's and 40+ at the police station. Roughly 17 of those hours she spent being interviewed or interrogated, the last a seven hour overnight session. No one else was questioned to that extent.

she accused Patrick shortly after the cops told her "boyfriend" was no longer giving her an alibi. looks to me like she panicked and accusing her boss was her attempt to create a diversion in the investigation.

Then why did she write that note later in the day saying she didn't think any of it was real and that she couldn't be used as 'testimone?' When she was writing that note she didn't even know Patrick had been arrested...

 

[yimyammer]

I think that's a great movie technically with brilliant performances by a plethora of fantastic actors and he really brings to life 1963, but as for its factual accuracy it leaves a lot to be desired and the theory presented is kook-city even by JFK conspiracy standards. I can separate those two, I also understand the ones who cannot.

yeah, that case can be a black hole if you let it

Do you mean one of the shoeprints in the murder room? I haven't heard that one argued in a long time, if I recall correctly that was Monica Napoleoni's contribution to forensic science in this case, Massei basically punts, and you seem to understand why. There's no reason to think it's not Rudy's just because it's partial, and utterly no reason to think it's the only thing Amanda might have left in the murder room isolated and without context.

Yes, I haven't followed this case closely in quite a while but when I was following it at the 2+2 site mentioned earlier, there had been exhaustive back and forth to the point where its exhausting to keep up with and understand. One of the posters argued that one of those 5 prints (IIRC it was 5), the partial print was consistent with Amanda's show size.

I was just adding some info on a few things I'd seen over that board they were talking about and were dead wrong. Figured it might start a discussion if you wanted to explore them.

Gotcha, thx

Have you read the Conti-Vecchiotti Report? Credit to Katy-Did and Komponisto for the translation.

I started to and then stopped as it was too time consuming and mind numbing to try and wrap my head around so I admit to ignorance when it comes to the DNA arguments and whose makes more sense. I tried to follow the back and forth on the other thread but dont have the expertise to know who was presenting an accurate argument and since both parties in that thread seem extremely biased, I didn't feel comfortable siding with either one or trusting them implicitly. If I was on the jury, I'd put in the necessary work but I'm not so like I said it just became a huge time suck

Short version on the clasp: The autosomic STR, which is what most are usually referring to in regards to DNA matches was so partial and vague that it could have been any one of four people in the courtroom. This is the part of the DNA string that is highly variable amongst humans so they can often narrow down the possibility of different contributors to one in billions--not in this case because there so many on it and Meredith's DNA dwarfs or masks the minor contributors.

Thus she (Patrizia Stefanoni) did a Y-haplotype test which will only show male contributors, and Stefanoni tried to pretend there was just one, and it matched Raffaele Sollecito. As noted in the first trial by Tagliabracci, there were more Y-haplotypes on the clasp, a total of four males, one of which matched Raffaele Sollecito. Unlike the autosomic STRs, the Y-Haplotype is not as variable, in fact it is shared by one's male ancestors going back many generations. That part of the string mutates (which is why all males don't have the same one) but will stay unaltered for many generations and get passed down. There are many such Y-haplotypes, but as of 2011 Raffaele's had not yet been figured in the y-Haplotype data base as they don't have them mapped for all regions, and this heavily region dependent.

Thus in the end it probably is Raffaele's DNA, but if one is going to argue that one trace means Raffaele was in the murder-room, does that mean the other three guys were with him too and they left no trace either?

I think I follow you but it still gives me pause that Rafs DNA was on a bra strap it had no business being on. If you're saying that one in every four males have the same Y-haplotypes, then I don't think it would be accurate to say its Raf's DNA. Seems that would be like saying because they found blood that was type O and Raf is type O, then its definitely Rafs blood. At best all they could claim is that it was Raf's blood type.

It was pretty clear from the video that steps to prevent contamination were not adhered to, thus making that pretty much worthless as forensic evidence. Again this is unidentified LCN/LT trace DNA as well, which is unlike what is usually used in American and British courts. There they identify an incriminating substance, such as blood, semen, or saliva which by the nature of the find, like in a bite wound, on or in the victims body, strongly suggests it is evidence of murder. This was found six weeks later in a house that sat with a broken window and on a bra clasp that somehow moved and ended up under the edge of a rug IIRC. Imagine if you took a piece of hard candy, put it in your mouth to get it nice and wet and then stuck it under the edge of your rug, do you suppose you'd want to be eating it in six weeks despite how clean everything might have looked when you put it there? Yummy!

While this may be a technical grounds for dismissing the case, in my limited understanding, it would still make me scratch my head as to why its Raf's DNA. Time and contamination doesn't automatically end up leaving Raf's DNA. I'm not trying to dismiss what you said here, I'm merely letting you know that his DNA, if in fact thats what it was, on the bra strap shouldn't be there regardless an I'm left wondering how it got there or forced to try and make the argument that the police deliberately planted it which I have no evidence to claim.

I especially like how in the Massei court Stefanoni said that to store DNA items in a plastic bag will cause them to lose their usefulness (moisture), but when it came time to re-test the clasp it turned out that Stefanoni had stored it in a plastic bag where it rusted and was no longer testable. I can dig up the cites if you wish!

No need to go find the cite, but I'm all for cites whenever possible

That knife did not match the wounds, though it could have made the one wound that could have been made by anything sharp, including the knife that made all the other wounds and highly likely made that one too. It was tested negative for blood not just once, not just twice, but several times and ONE negative is a falsifier. A knife that doesn't match the wounds and tested negative for blood is damned unlikely (as in this is really silly) to have usable DNA on it from stabbing anyone. DNA one can sanitize out with a spray bottle, blood is far more difficult to remove all traces of.

That a knife was used in a murder but had plenty of Amanda's DNA on the handle and (possibly) somewhere less than 10 pgs on the blade but no trace of blood could be found makes one wonder how the DNA got on there, not that some magic cleaning fluid managed to erase all traces of hard to remove blood but left DNA that could easily be found. If that was actually Meredith's DNA it is far more likely to be contamination or an innocent transfer as Amanda lived with Meredith and could easily get trace level DNA on her clothes and hair. Again LT/LCN DNA is much easier to transfer and contaminate than HCN (high copy number) which is what's almost always used in court, almost exclusively in the US and UK.

noted, its very suspicious in my opinion

Raffaele didn't 'lie' to anyone. He wrote that in his diary when he was told that somehow Meredith's DNA had been found on one of his kitchen knives.

Here's what he wrote:



Here's what Raffaele wrote in his book about it:




So he didn't say that in court, or to the police, he wrote it in his diary trying to figure out the inexplicable and conflated an incident which seemed to be the only possible explanation. He had no way of knowing anyone outside himself and perhaps his father and sister would ever see it.

I still find that to be a weird thing to write if its true that she never went to his apartment. Its one of the things in this case that brings suspicion on himself.

He definitely called the Carabinieri before the postal police arrived. What happened was the clock on the camera was slow by ~11 minutes but when figuring out the time of arrival the police reversed the polarity of the difference and figured the camera was 11 minutes fast so the actual time difference became 22 minutes and when they matched up the times it looked like Raffaele's call had come after the postal police had gotten there. I think this was an honest mistake on the part of the police, they wouldn't have invited the embarrassment of having the defense show with meticulous precision using the cell phone times and the garage camera how the postal police had definitely gotten there a few minutes after Raffaele called--just like he said. To see the pictures and an explanation with your own eyes you can go here.

Massei only refers to it in passing while trying to find something suspicious about Raffaele's saying there was nothing stolen, but he accepted the hard evidence the defense presented and added this additional evidence noting the Postal Police never mentioned Raffaele all of a sudden disappearing or calling anyone in front of them as the calls were not brief:

This is another one of those issues that was argued relentlessly on the other forum and just left me confused as to what the actual truth was. I came away thinking this issue was like watching a slow motion replay of a shot in a basketball game that went in as the buzzer was going off so it had to be rewound multiple times to try and see if the shot counted but the toe was so close to the line, each fan argued for or against based on his rooting interest. I still dont know what happened here and admit my mind is probably mush from all I read in the other thread.

Most of the mixed DNA amounts to Rudy cleaning up in Amanda's bathroom. They swabbed far and wide thus basically ensured anything that might have been in the sink, cotton swabs or bidet got Amanda's DNA on it too. Other 'mixed DNA' is similar, all it amounts to is Amanda and Meredith living together, and then Rudy walking around with Meredith's blood on his shoes and probably elsewhere and then Amanda, Raffaele, Filomena, the boys, and the postal police start walking all over there, then the Polizia Scientifica do much the same, tracking around that hall and going from room to room without changing booties. Then six weeks later after it's all had a chance to blow around what with the broken door and broken window they go back and start checking again when they cake that hallway with luminol and find the 'footprints' (that's a generous description of some--one looks like a mermaid to me!) and go looking for DNA again.

None of this means anything but that Amanda and Meredith lived together and also that someone walked around with traces of Meredith where Amanda lived. This is trace (LT/LCN) DNA which is easily transferred, not like the samples used in almost all cases in US & UK courts (HCN or High Copy Number) where they can divine the substance and determine whether it's incriminating, and is much less likely to spread willy-nilly. Look at it this way: Meredith and Amanda lived together for two months, they spread that kind of DNA all over the house as they shed minute skin cells, hair and other such possible sources. Naturally at some point they may end up in the same spot, perhaps walking barefoot in the same hall. If you expect these trace elements to spread in the minutes or so it took to murder Meredith and maybe an hour afterward, wouldn't you expect much more to be there from the other two months they lived together as well?

makes sense, but I would like to have seen DNA from the other flatmates as you would expect their DNA to be there as well. Why is it only Knox's?

As for the bathmat boogie, look at the floorplan you've been posting. The bathroom is just a few steps from Amanda's door, so it wasn't a very long scoot through the house, yards at most.

good point but I still don't understand why she would do this plus when I look at the picture it appears to me to show the faint impression of the heel part of whomever's foot print that was which would indicate the bathmatt wasn't moved and if it wasn't moved then she is lying about the bathmatt boogie? Why lie about this?

After he wrote that he goes on to list the reasons the prosecution made for it being more than one attacker, and which by nature of the verdict he has to use to try to support his contention. I didn't post it all at once as it would have been quite a wall of text, but this post is beyond help at this point, so I'll post it here and then address some of the more popular ones. If you find something I didn't refer to that you think of merit, bring it up!




Ah, perhaps I didn't make it clear, I meant the reasons for multiple attackers came after that and if you wanted to discuss them I or someone else could post them. Here they are if you want to see what they were reduced to: pretending a year or so of martial arts makes one competent against a knife-wielding attacker, and pretending one assailant would have trouble removing the clothes of a victim, one wonders how all the other single attackers rape their victims.
As for defensive wounds being minimal, there's evidence that Meredith was taken down hard and quite likely knocked silly (and perhaps unconscious momentarily) and may well have been approached from behind or Rudy soon got there. At any rate a man with a knife is quite a threatening visage and often times people do what they're told when someone holds one on them as they're afraid they might get stabbed if they don't! At some point Meredith started struggling desperately it appears, but at that point she might well have been stabbed already or realized just what Rudy was going to do, but he was either behind her, inside her guard, or had taken her down hard and knocked her senseless momentarily.

Remember, Steve Moore and John Douglas both flew to Italy after reviewing the forensics in this case. Whatever you may hear about Steve Moore being a helicopter pilot is true--but he also has extensive experience working violent crime investigations. Both are true, he did a lot in his 25 year career. I'm sure you probably realize John Douglas has even more extensive experience. Things like 'mixed DNA' that amounts to trace amounts outside the murder room which was collected against someone who lived there and trying to substitute inane reasons like those above for actual evidence will have that effect sometimes!

thx for the info, I'll try to read and digest when I find the time and energyKaosium putting in work! Thanks for the reply.

 

[yimyammer]

There was mixed DNA in several spots in the bathroom that Amanda and Meredith shared and also in at least two places in Filomena's room. A few general comments first. DNA has no time stamp, and in fact some examples of mixed DNA in the forensic literature had to have arisen at different times. In addition, examples of mixed DNA that might be inculpatory would be finding them on the victim's body or clothing, or finding on the alleged assailants body or clothing. Mixed DNA that was collected around the house? Pretty meaningless. The prosecution could have rendered it slightly less meaningless if they had done substrate controls. Here is a link to a Q and A on mixed DNA in general and as it pertains to this case.

The other thing to remember is that the luminol work was done on 18 December, and items such as Meredith's mattress had been moved out of her room (the bra clasp was not even in the same place as it was on 2 November). As far as I am concerned every piece of evidence collected on this date or later should be taken at a deep discount to the rest of the evidence, because of the greater chances of contamination.

Thanks for the response & link, I'll try to read and digest when I find the time.

Did they find DNA of the other flatmates? Seems odd they would only find Amanda's

 

[yimyammer]

Well the first stories referred to her as a party girl. The early stories had quotes from several bar owners that knew her from frequent visits. She by all accounts went to a party without the new downstairs boyfriend and stayed until 4 or 5 am. She was a perfectly normal college aged girl and was doing what they do. The boyfriend stated that their relationship wasn't a serious one, as in long term or exclusive.

Meredith was a girl that was enjoying herself much as Amanda and the other girls were.

After about a week the stories in the paper including the police statements changed and the devil/angel contrast was begun.

Good point, don't you think its odd that she didn't mention she was meeting Rudy to the friends she was having dinner with right before? All the women I've known love to talk about guys together so I find it strange that she kept mum on this if we are expected to believe Rudy's account of events

 

[yimyammer]

I'm outside the States and I think she's half innocent, does that count?

Ha, it doesn't make a lick of difference I was just messing with Dr Tesla, I don't believe guilt or innocence is discovered via a popularity contest (I don't mean legal guilt or innocence as I guess one could say in that case it is)

I have to ask, what do you mean by half innocent? (I might be in the same camp)

 

[JREF2010]

we don't know gu-ede got through it b/c makes no sense for him to go that way and there is no evidence that anybody ever went through it.

i'm all for the defense demonstrating it can be done. I think they did have a real tall guy on their team try it but they never brought up the results in the trial which probably means it failed or it was extremely difficult.

if you are a burglar, you are going to break in at the point that is the biggest hassle for you? I don't know about you but I hate hassles.

Have you read the Micheli report? If not, Judge Micheli said it would be common, and easy for a agile/fit burglar to enter through the window. He didnt see it as impossible at all apparently.

When people apply their belief system to unknowns it becomes a closed mind.
Who can determine what makes sense for Rudy Guede?
Did it make sense he was looting the daycare just before he committed his crimes in Perugia? Did it make sense he ran off to Germany and then developed several different tales of what happened?

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Here is my first shot at placing print 3 outside Meredith's room. The scale and position should be correct but I'm not confident on the rotation. I'll need to create an outline of the shoe to better see the details to verify the placement and there might be some additional hints in the previous prints to help with the rotation.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=597&pictureid=7839[/qimg]

Interesting. I have never quite understood the lock on that door. Would he have had to turn the key after the door was closed, or could he have set the lock and then pulled it shut?

 

[DrTesla]

Source: http://wirednewyork.com/forum/printthread.php?t=22927&pp=15&page=223

GM: Yes, yes. I just wanted one concept to be clear: that in the Italian
language, "suggerire" means "indicate", someone who "suggests" a name actually
says the name and the other person adopts it. That is what "suggerimento" is,
and I...so my question is, did the police first pronounce the name of Patrick,
or was it you? And was it pronounced after having seen the message in the
phone, or just like that, before that message was seen?

Edited by Locknar: 

<SNIP>, breach of rule 4.

AK: To the person I had written to, precisely. And they told me that I knew,
and that I didn't want to tell. And that I didn't want to tell because I
didn't remember or because I was a stupid liar. Then they kept on about
this message, that they were literally shoving in my face saying "Look
what a stupid liar you are, you don't even remember this!" At first, I
didn't even remember writing that message. But there was this interpreter
next to me who kept saying "Maybe you don't remember, maybe you don't
remember, but try," and other people were saying "Try, try, try to remember
that you met someone, and I was there hearing "Remember, remember, remember,"
and then there was this person behind me who -- it's not that she actually
really physically hurt me, but she frightened me...

GCM: "Remember!" is not a suggestion. It is a strong solicitation of your
memory. Suggestion is rather...

AK: But it was always "Remember" following this same idea, that...

GCM: But they didn't literally say that it was him!

AK: No. They didn't say it was him, but they said "We know who it is, we know
who it is. You were with him, you met him."

GCM: So, these were the suggestions.

AK: Yes.

 

[DrTesla]

Have you read the Micheli report? If not, Judge Micheli said it would be common, and easy for a agile/fit burglar to enter through the window. He didnt see it as impossible at all apparently.

When people apply their belief system to unknowns it becomes a closed mind.
Who can determine what makes sense for Rudy Guede?
Did it make sense he was looting the daycare just before he committed his crimes in Perugia? Did it make sense he ran off to Germany and then developed several different tales of what happened?

a close minds continues to argue that rudy came in through a high window when there is no evidence he came in through that window PLUS it's highly illogical for him to go through that window. it makes sense to look at what a burglar would be likely to do and if one scenario is highly improbable and in fact, would be a tedious hassle for him and an easier entry point is available to him, then it's not close minded to say he didn't go that route. Again, there is no evidence of anybody accessing the room through that window. how is that posssilbe if it took place?

 

[DrTesla]

Ha, it doesn't make a lick of difference I was just messing with Dr Tesla, I don't believe guilt or innocence is discovered via a popularity contest (I don't mean legal guilt or innocence as I guess one could say in that case it is)

I have to ask, what do you mean by half innocent? (I might be in the same camp)

I never implied it was a popularity contest. I've been hammering Knox on the evidence all night and you haven't been able to refute me on one thing. You can be smug all you want but you can't debate the evidence with me.

my point is that in countries outside of America, where Knox's PR machine basically writes the "news" stories on the Knox trial, people tend to think she's guilty b/c they are exposed to the evidence against her. in America, the "'news" articles are basically cut and paste of Doug Preston's nonsense.

 

[DrTesla]

Friends of Amanda,

What do you think of Amanda's written declaration? Does it sound intelligent to you? I dont' know anybody reads that and still thinks she is innocent.

 

[DrTesla]

This is to counter the argument by somebody here that the other roommates never testified that Amanda and the victim had a bad relationship:

•Filomena testified that the relationship between Amanda and Meredith started off well and they bonded immediately. “They were of the same age, they had interests in common, and both spoke English.” Then the relationship seemed to deteriorate.

 

[anglolawyer]

It was in the Book of Grinder and you should acknowledge the cite

Humble apologies. I musta forgot my manners somewhere in the course of tense exchanges with the good Doctor.

snip

the prosecution did bring up the lamp, have you read the trial transcript? they asked her about it and she said she didn't notice it was removed from her room. you can say the massei report didn't talk about it but those reports don't cover every single bit of evidence put forth to the jury. you have no explanation for the lamp being in the room, or why Guede would have put it in there prior to the murder. the simple explanation is knox used her lamp in a clean up effort after the murder.

What other bits of evidence does Massei leave out? I mean on the same level of importance as the lamp?

Giancarlo Costa, lawyer present at questioning, but not in Knox's memoir

After reading Knox’s description of the prison questioning in December 2007 (described in great detail in chapter 20 of Knox’s memoir), I went back and listened to the audio recording of that interrogation, which is part of the full case file, to see how the memoir measured up with the recording, since I recalled having talked to a Rome lawyer who had discussed with me how the questioning had been halted when Knox broke down crying. Oddly, Knox chose to leave an entire person out of a scene (her third attorney) in which she painstakingly describes all those present. The third attorney who was present (and whose name is cited on the audio of the interrogation) is Giancarlo Costa of Rome,who was one of Knox’s first lawyers and present at some of the first meetings, before leaving the case. I interviewed him once for this Seattle PI story. Why leave him out?

Proving what? Vogt is a dumb schmuck, that's what. She left him out because Costa was the fourth man, as she must have confusedly remembered during the course of the interview. She figured that if she made no reference to him in her memoir everyone else would forget about him. It nearly worked too.

I'm essentially entering the House of Lies that is Knox's defense and tossing around the furniture and you guys don't like that.

I like it just fine. I wish you would answer straight though and provide citations when asked. It's not the custom here to say 'google it' when asked to buttress your claims. The pro-innocence posters here may be wrong but they aren't fools and they are mostly reasonable and courteous. So have a good laugh by all means, but please also observe a basic minimum level of reasonableness in your conduct. And don't use humour as smoke when beating a retreat. You are a self-proclaimed master of debate so no need for such tricks.

I forgot to point out that Knox Dna was found mixed with victim's blood in Fiol's room where they staged the break in. can't try to explain that away as innocent, just a natural occurrence of two roommates living near each other.

Do you think she staged the break in in her bare feet? With all that broken glass around?

You quote a long section of evidence transcript emphasising an answer she gave about who suggested Patrick's name. It's easy to be selective about that transcript. Here's some more of her evidence.

p.10 They continued to say that I had met somebody, and they continued to put so much emphasis on this message that I had received from Patrick, and so I almost was convinced that I had met him. But I was confused.

P.32
PACELLI: On the 7th you wrote "I didn't lie when I said the murderer might be Patrick." Why did you write that in your memorandum of the 7th?
AK: Honestly, I thought, like the police had told me -- the police had told me they had already found the guilty person. And they had suggested Patrick so much that I thought maybe it really was him.

I didn't quite catch your answer re: Curatolo. Are you saying they passed through the Piazza between 9.45 and 10? That's not his evidence. Galati stressed his 'extraordinary accuracy'. Maybe he saw two other people or maybe he made some other mistake. Let's just agree with the defence and Hellman and toss him out. He's clearly not reliable.

 

[Dan O.]

Interesting. I have never quite understood the lock on that door. Would he have had to turn the key after the door was closed, or could he have set the lock and then pulled it shut?

The lock is a deadbolt so the key needs to be turned. But he could test the key in the lock while the door is open (footprint position "A") before stepping out and pulling the door closed behind him and locking it.

That footprint is quite close to the door so he's probably lifting the left foot while locking the door. For scale, I have a door width of .785m and the heal of the shoe is .110m from the closed surface of the door.

ETA: Footprint 5-A was much easier to place. It lines up with print 3 but the stride is a bit on the short side at .85 meters.

 

[DrTesla]

Humble apologies. I musta forgot my manners somewhere in the course of tense exchanges with the good Doctor.


What other bits of evidence does Massei leave out? I mean on the same level of importance as the lamp?


Proving what? Vogt is a dumb schmuck, that's what. She left him out because Costa was the fourth man, as she must have confusedly remembered during the course of the interview. She figured that if she made no reference to him in her memoir everyone else would forget about him. It nearly worked too.


I like it just fine. I wish you would answer straight though and provide citations when asked. It's not the custom here to say 'google it' when asked to buttress your claims. The pro-innocence posters here may be wrong but they aren't fools and they are mostly reasonable and courteous. So have a good laugh by all means, but please also observe a basic minimum level of reasonableness in your conduct. And don't use humour as smoke when beating a retreat. You are a self-proclaimed master of debate so no need for such tricks.



Do you think she staged the break in in her bare feet? With all that broken glass around?

You quote a long section of evidence transcript emphasising an answer she gave about who suggested Patrick's name. It's easy to be selective about that transcript. Here's some more of her evidence.



I didn't quite catch your answer re: Curatolo. Are you saying they passed through the Piazza between 9.45 and 10? That's not his evidence. Galati stressed his 'extraordinary accuracy'. Maybe he saw two other people or maybe he made some other mistake. Let's just agree with the defence and Hellman and toss him out. He's clearly not reliable.

what's funny about you is that you say that the lamp is compelling evidence against Knox but then you proceed as though it doesn't exist. I find that amazing. why don't you explain why you are so cheekily able to proceed as though Knox is innocent despite your admission the lamp points to her guilt?

Knox's "Who, me" in response to Patrick's lawyer is in the trial transcript. It's not worth it for me to prove to you everything little thing she said, especiall if you will just dismiss it as irrelevant once I dig it up for you. you are an adult so if you can locate the trial testimony and read through it and confirm for yourself if interested.

 

[DrTesla]

Humble apologies. I musta forgot my manners somewhere in the course of tense exchanges with the good Doctor.


What other bits of evidence does Massei leave out? I mean on the same level of importance as the lamp?


Proving what? Vogt is a dumb schmuck, that's what. She left him out because Costa was the fourth man, as she must have confusedly remembered during the course of the interview. She figured that if she made no reference to him in her memoir everyone else would forget about him. It nearly worked too.


I like it just fine. I wish you would answer straight though and provide citations when asked. It's not the custom here to say 'google it' when asked to buttress your claims. The pro-innocence posters here may be wrong but they aren't fools and they are mostly reasonable and courteous. So have a good laugh by all means, but please also observe a basic minimum level of reasonableness in your conduct. And don't use humour as smoke when beating a retreat. You are a self-proclaimed master of debate so no need for such tricks.



Do you think she staged the break in in her bare feet? With all that broken glass around?

You quote a long section of evidence transcript emphasising an answer she gave about who suggested Patrick's name. It's easy to be selective about that transcript. Here's some more of her evidence.



I didn't quite catch your answer re: Curatolo. Are you saying they passed through the Piazza between 9.45 and 10? That's not his evidence. Galati stressed his 'extraordinary accuracy'. Maybe he saw two other people or maybe he made some other mistake. Let's just agree with the defence and Hellman and toss him out. He's clearly not reliable.

the trial jury who saw his testimony found him reliable. I can't see any reason why he would make it up. Hellman just wanted to throw him out b/c he was a drug addict, which is stupid.

 

[Kaosium]

yeah, that case can be a black hole if you let it



Yes, I haven't followed this case closely in quite a while but where was following it was at the 2+2 site mentioned earlier and there has been exhaustive back and forth to the point where its exhausting to keep up with and understand. One of the posters argued that one of those 5 prints (IIRC it was 5), the partial print was consistent with Amanda's show size.

Yeah, but it doesn't look anything like shoes she had and did look like a partial print of Rudy's. It was the size that was similar, nothing else was.

I think I follow you but it still gives me pause that Rafs DNA was on a bra strap it had no business being on. If you're saying that one in every four males have the same Y-haplotypes, then I don't think it would be accurate to say its Raf's DNA.

Not quite, autosomal STR is what most think of when DNA analysis is mentioned in court cases, it's the test that can (sometimes) determine who the contributor is with a confidence that it was them or their identical twin. This test for the bra clasp test was based on partial data and as such could have matched one in four people in the courtroom as Conti or Vechiotti said at the appeal. Worthless, too many contributors, too small a sample, too much (almost certainly) masked.

It wasn't accepted at the Massei court either, he relied in the Y-haplotype which is not something that can identify to that degree, more like a blood test. Just how rare Raffaele's Y-haplotype is was unknown in 2011 (there's a database we checked but its incomplete) but there's enough of them that odds are that Y-haplotype suggests it was Raffaele's DNA. That doesn't mean that DNA means anything though, this is not the sort of DNA testing that is used in American and British courts.

Seems that would be like saying because they found blood that was type O and Raf is type O, then its definitely Rafs blood. At best all they could claim is that it was Raf's blood type.

Yes, kind of,though there are many more Y-haplotypes than blood types. However keep in mind even if it was one of a thousand that in Perugia there's a hundred thousand people, thus a hundred people could have also have contributed that Y-haplotype. When you consider all the people we know were in that cottage just after the murder, all the Police, technicians, the boys who were at the discovery, the prosecution, the photographers etc each and every one of them increases the chance that one might have the same Y-haplotype. It's kind of like the fact that of a class of thirty people, odds are someone will share your birthday, it's not like it becomes 30 of 365 when calculating the probability.

My guess is the odds would indicate that Y-haplotype suggests it was Raffaele's DNA, but that's off incomplete information. It's certainly neither definite or anywhere close to that, just a balance of probabilities shooting in the dark.

While this may be a technical grounds for dismissing the case, in my limited understanding, it would still make me scratch my head as to why its Raf's DNA. Time and contamination doesn't automatically end up leaving Raf's DNA. I'm not trying to dismiss what you said here, I'm merely letting you know that his DNA, if in fact thats what it was, on the bra strap shouldn't be there regardless an I'm left wondering how it got there or forced to try and make the argument that the police deliberately planted it which I have no evidence to claim.

The obvious one is contamination, it laid in a pile of dust and trash for weeks on end with stuff blowing around, that's (very probably) why there's a total of four males in the clasp. For that trace amount of Raffaele's Y-haplotype to mean anything it has to suggest he was actually the one who put it there, meaning he touched the bra clasp. That's why C&V found it unreliable, there's no reason to think Raffaele (and three other men) touched that tiny bra clasp, but under the edge of a dirty rug is an excellent place to find the sorts of things that might transmit trace and partial DNA.

Also Stefanoni's lab wasn't equipped to handle LCN/LT DNA, trace DNA transfers (and thus contaminates) much easier It's the difference between something that might adhere from me to you when the wind is blowing and me having to hock a lugie in your face to get a decent transfer. HUGE difference. Contamination with LT/LCN is not a rare occurrence, it's something that special (beyond sterile) conditions must be employed to try to prevent. C&V go into that here.

No need to go find the cite, but I'm all for cites whenever possible

she was asked to specify which elements needed to be present in order to preclude the possibility of identification of a collected biological specimen, Dr Stefanoni indicated an incorrect storage of the specimen in an environment which was not ideal, such as in warmth, or enclosed in a plastic bag where water might be present and, not being able to evaporate, it facilitates the proliferation of micro-organisms. She stressed that the consequence of a conservation carried out in an incorrect way was the deterioration of the specimen so that, when analysing it, very probably ‚no genetic result would be able to be obtained‛. She added that the circumstance for which it had been possible to attribute the specimens gathered meant that the conservation had been correct.

Lo and behold when the independent experts went to re-test the bra clasp and reproduce her results they found:

The item to be examined was observed by us to be locked inside a transparent tube with a red top, contained in turn in small sealed bag [bustina sigillata], of transparent plastic, of the State Police.

We emphasize, moreover, that — as shown photographically — multiple components of dark-red color were present, scattered throughout the inside of the tube, both at the bottom and near the closing top.

There were two clasps, both lacking grommets [senza l'occhiello di tenuta della controparte], with extended parts of red-brownish color, others of reddish color; whiteish elements were also partially in evidence.

One of the clasps was recognizable in its original form, with the characteristic square upon which the corresponding round-edged hook is sewn; the other no longer had any kind of shape, as it was so completely deformed as to have been inserted into the first [clasp], with which it was partially fused due to the presence of rust; separation of the two elements would involve the fragmentation of certain rusted components.

One rule of scientific work is reproducibility. When real scientists do tests like this there's samples left that can be retested years--or decades--later, you've probably heard of re-tests exonerating people. Neither of these pieces of evidence, hailed as the best evidence against them, could ever be re-tested,and one decayed in storage under the auspices of the one who presented such dubious work in court, and there's definite reason (like she testified to it in court!) to think she knew better.

I still find that to be a weird thing to write if its true that she never went to his apartment. Its one of the things in this case that brings suspicion on himself.

Note that he's trying to figure out if Amanda had taken it, he's not trying to say it's any excuse for himself, nor does he have any reason to think anyone else will see it outside possibly his sister and father if he so chooses. At this juncture he's been writing about how he's hearing reports of Amanda hanging out with Argentianians at the laundry, and of course he can't be sure she didn't get up and murder anyone while he was sleeping. He hears about the knife in the previous entry and wonders if Amanda actually did kill Meredith, or give his knife to someone who did, and his lawyer tells him it's nothing to worry about and perhaps Amanda took the knife to the cottage as she needed it for cooking. This is a cheap common kitchen knife, 5.95 at the Italian Wal-mart, it didn't even belong to Raffaele, it came with the furnished apartment, he may never have used it, might not even been sure what it looked like. Here's the previous diary entry which I was going to post but decided not as I feared one more cite might be fatal: p)

Nov 16 2007
Last night I saw on television that the knife that I had at home (the
one from the kitchen) has traces of Meredith and Amanda (latent) ...
my heart jumped in my throat and I was in total panic because I thought that Amanda had killed Meredith or had helped someone in the
enterprise. But today I saw Tiziano who calmed me down: he told me
that the knife could not have been the murder weapon, according to the
legal doctor, and has nothing to do with anything as Amanda could take
it and and carry it from my house to her house because the girls
didn't have knife so, they are making a smokescreen for nothing ... I
live in a reality show nightmare, the 'nightmare reality show'.
Unbelievable!

I am starting to have perpetual panic attacks and palpitations due to
...in the anticipation of these scientific tests that fire shots
unsettling of this sort... Oh God, it is not their fault but of the...
who take everything that they can involve in this story.
I want to think about other things, think of my friends who are close
to me and think of fathers in these moments that will stay very badly
and will be worried and I am very sorry. I do not know what to do.
Please Jesus give me the strength and reason to deal with this
situation and I pray to support also dad who is sustaining an absurd
situation.

So he takes Tizano's assumption that Amanda could have borrowed the knife for innocent purposes and recalls a moment when he was cooking at the cottage and brushed Meredith and figures that must be the answer to why there's that DNA on the knife. He must have brushed her with that knife and if Amanda told him she borrowed it he forgot, perhaps because he was 'smoked' and it didn't register. If you go back to the last entry you'll see that's when he finally comes to the conclusion Amanda couldn't have been involved, and what he thinks is a perfectly reasonable answer to how that DNA got on the knife is what finally causes him to write:

I am convinced that she could not have killed Meredith and then return. The fact that there is Meredith's DNA on the kitchen is because once while cooking together, I shifted myself in the house handling the knife, I had the point on her hand, and immediately after I apologized but she had nothing done to her. So the only real explanation of the kitchen knife is this.

It's about Amanda and to satisfy his own worries in his own diary that there's no reason for him to think anyone else can see. If he thought the cops would seize it he probably wouldn't have talked about them so badly, nor included that bit about how he was scoping out the (police) babes in prison despite the fact he's fully self aware how that might look being in jail accused of rape-murder!


He didn't lie to anyone, he thought he came up with a reasonable explanation that satisfied him how that DNA got there and that Amanda hadn't snuck out of the house when he was sleeping to kill Meredith, just after his lawyer had told him that Amanda might have borrowed the knife anyway. Probably made sense at the time, but it turned out that knife never left his apartment.

This is another one of those issues that was argued relentlessly on the other forum and just left me confused as to what the actual truth was. I came away thinking this issue was like watching a slow motion replay of a shot in a basketball game that went in as the buzzer was going off so it had to be rewound multiple times to try and see if the shot counted but the toe was so close to the line, each fan argued for or against based on his rooting interest. I still dont know what happened here and admit my mind is probably mush from all I read in the other thread.

The reversal of the polarity makes it confusing, I know what you mean! Go through it three times slowly, it is hard evidence and it should convince you. Look at it this way, you know that Amanda and Raffaele were calling all over getting advice on what to do about the murder, they called Amanda's Mom, Filomena, Meredith and Vanessa, the latter of whom told them to call the carabinieri. When the postal police arrive Amanda and Raffaele insist they come in anyway despite the fact they are there just to return the phones.

So why on earth would Raffaele have lied about having called the caribinieri a few minutes before or after the postal police got there? They've already raised the alarm, they greet the postal police and insist they come in, just how stupid is the idea that for some reason he decides not to take his sister's advice until after the postal police get there, whom they greet and take inside. If they're guilty of something why would they want more police at the scene? Why lie about any of this? This is a relic of from before there was evidence of all the people both of them had called and the idea they were trying to delay the discovery of the scene became conclusively discredited.

I didn't realize anyone (outside Mignini) was demented enough to still push that contention, it sounds like that thread is stuck in 2008!

makes sense, but I would like to have seen DNA from the other flatmates as you would expect their DNA to be there as well. Why is it only Knox's?

Why would you expect that there'd be much information of that nature about anyone else not on trial?

good point but I still don't understand why she would do this plus when I look at the picture it appears to me to show the faint impression of the heel part of whomever's foot print that was which would indicate the bathmatt wasn't moved and if it wasn't moved then she is lying about the bathmatt boogie? Why lie about this?

I never heard that one! Which picture do you mean regarding the heel impression?