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

[Kevin_Lowe]

I've read a lot of columns in which people advance this silly premise that only reason people think Knox is guilty is b/c she was a sexually active female, but the reality is that the only reason people think she is innocent is they don't want to believe that a young fairly attractive female could have butchered her roommate in such a heinous act. If Knox was a guy and all the other evidence was the same, he would have been convicted a long time ago and there would be no controversy.

if it all it takes to beat a murder rap is to accuse the police of misconduct and demonize the prosecuter, you might as well just do away with the justice system. everybody is going to get in on that.

I guess one last meal for the troll won't hurt too much...

Your thesis here is just plain wrong. Maybe some people think Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are innocent for that reason, but if those people exist then they are idiots. We here think Amanda Knox is innocent because there is extremely strong evidence that she simply wasn't present at the time the murder happened, there is no decent evidence at all putting her at the scene of the crime, and the hypothesis that Meredith Kercher was killed in a once-in-history three-way snuff fantasy is a huge zebra hypothesis.

Even the prosecution acknowledge that a 23-minute video file was viewed by Sollecito and Knox in Sollecito's residence, at (from memory) 21:13pm on the night of the murder, and the forensic evidence shows indisputably that it is overwhelmingly likely that Meredith Kercher was attacked not long after 21:00pm. Even the prosecution acknowledge that there was computer activity incompatible with Knox and Sollecito being present at the correct time of death. The defence claim to be able to show that there was computer activity all night, ruling out their involvement for any time of death.

Even if they could have been there, the idea that three people with no unifying common language, no history together and no motive would decide out of the blue to gang up on and murder a room-mate is really amazingly bizarre. If it happened in this case, it's the first and only time in history any such thing has happened. Whereas sex killings by career criminals with a history of housebreaking with weapons who catch a woman home alone are, while horrible, relatively unremarkable.

It's also worth mentioning that this zebra hypothesis was arrived at stepwise by the Perugian authorities, who at first tried to fit up Lumumba for the crime. Now if Lumumba had done it, invoking Amanda as his accomplice kind of made sense, and if Amanda was his accomplice that would drag Raffaele in too. It was a pretty dumb hypothesis, but at least it hung together from the original intent to convict Lumumba. Whereas when they dumped Lumumba as a fall guy in favour of the real perpetrator, Rudy Guede, that story suddenly made no sense at all. Rudy didn't need Amanda to tie him to the crime, he didn't need Amanda to let him in to the house to explain his presence there, and he had no history with Amanda as an employer to (sort of) justify why she might help him out with a crime. The hypothesis went from "very bizarre" to "utterly nonsensical" at that point.

So it's not even as if there was a proper chain of evidence leading to the hypothesis that Guede, Knox and Sollecito did it together. With hindsight it was clearly a last-minute ass-pull from the Perugian authorities to try to save face.

That's why we think Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are innocent. That's why we'd think they were innocent absolutely regardless of their looks, race, religion, age, sex or secret Masonic membership. They just weren't there when it happened, and the prosecution narrative is transparently stupid.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Let's add David Camm as an example of the cops sticking to their first theory even when the real perp emerges from the woodwork, forcing them to construct the same kind of nonsensical theory as in the Norfolk four and Perugia cases.

Sure. We can add David Camm, Billy Wayne Cope, Jerry Hobbs, Juan Rivera, Hernandez and Cruz, and any number of others. Anything to save face and avoid copping to a mistake.

Most people don't know about these kinds of cases, so they don't recognize even the obvious ones. They believe whatever the cops tell them. They swallow the blue pill.

 

[Kestrel]

The 23 minute Naruto video file on Raffaele's computer was started at 21:26.

 

[anglolawyer]

The 23 minute Naruto video file on Raffaele's computer was started at 21:26.

Kestrel, what exactly is a Naruto video file? Is it a film of some kind? Or a piece of software or what?

 

[Kestrel]

Kestrel, what exactly is a Naruto video file? Is it a film of some kind? Or a piece of software or what?

A Japanese anime TV series.

 

[anglolawyer]

A Japanese anime TV series.

Thanks. A quick search through Massei reveals no reference to 'Naruto'. Why is this and how come we know anything about it?

ETA no reference in Honor Bound either.

 

[Kestrel]

Thanks. A quick search through Massei reveals no reference to 'Naruto'. Why is this and how come we know anything about it?

The access was recorded in the Spotlight metadata on Raffaele's Macbook Pro and noted in Raffaele's appeal.

The screensaver log on this same computer showed activity all through the night.

 

[Kaosium]

are you on the Knox PR team? you are clearly a Knox apologist. She's always the victim as you see it. the whole world is out to get her, frame her with murder. she never retracted her accusation of Patrick, this was discussed at length at the trial. Her attitude was that all she did was suggest that Patrick might have killed the victim and it was up to the cops to prove it wasn't true b/c she admitted she was confused.

No, that's not what happened. Patrick spent two weeks in jail being told he was there because Amanda 'witnessed' him killing Meredith and never knew that Amanda recanted or anything else. When he was released it was considered absolutely certain she was a murderer because they pretended they had a video of her at the scene, her DNA on the 'murder knife,' they had 'bleach receipts' to account for her not leaving evidence at the scene, that the cottage had been completely cleaned up and...I don't remember it all, I read it only in retrospect. It was all lies/mistakes by the police, here's some of it giving the state of the 'investigation' at the time. Have you ever seen what the police claimed was the 'clear cut' video of Amanda going into the cottage? Here it is, as was later determined it was probably Meredith.

Read through that article and note all the things they either got wrong or were lying about. A couple days later they'd announce the 'murder knife' which may be the most ridiculous murder knife in the modern history of crime: it didn't match the wounds, it tested negative for blood (but somehow had plenty of Amanda's DNA and perhaps some of Meredith's) it didn't match the outline left on the bed and when they tested it they found starch on it--meaning it was never vigorously scrubbed clean of blood like they pretended.

At any rate Patrick got out in the middle of this and was pissed and got 70k Euros from the Daily Mail and at least 10k euros from an Italian outlet to say nasty things about Amanda. He's also received 7k euros from the Italian state for wrongful imprisonment and had another 500k euro suit against the police at the ECHR that I read about recently for the first time in years, so I guess it's still a going concern. He sued Amanda, he has money riding on this.

It was the police who did all that to him, and they also closed his bar down for months after he was out of jail as they pretended it was a 'crime scene.' He needed money and undertook a new career in Amanda bashing, and suing people. He did two weeks in jail, and he either lied to the Daily Mail or lied in court about what happened to him in police hands, the latter to the detriment of Amanda when she was on trial.

I am the member of no 'PR team' (outside voluntary grassroots) and never joined Friends of Amanda, but having read as much as I have about her in the context of someone going through the worst time of her life I decided Amanda was a pretty nice person, she feels badly about what happened to Patrick and any part she played in it, so she doesn't defend herself much on that charge. She ought to, because it was the police who did that to him, not her. He's become little more than a gold-digging liar who's dedicated himself to sniveling about his two whole weeks in jail and hurting two nice young people who've lost eight years (total) of their lives and may lose the rest if Mignini wins.

you act like it's the police's job to just know Knox is full of it and not arrest Patrick after she accused him of the murder. what would be said about the police if Patrick was the killer and then he killed again b/c the police never arrested him and questioned him? you are not looking at this with any realism.

Read those statements. Do they look like good evidence to pursue without question or continence? Don't you suppose when they got that note where she said she she didn't think it happened, she couldn't be used as 'testimone' and that they needed to find the REAL murder (sic) that they might have reconsidered if they were playing it straight? How about the next day when she told them she was sure she hadn't left the apartment? Why did it take them two weeks to let him go despite around twenty people coming forward to alibi him?

The police stuffed it up and blamed her when they found out they had it wrong, perhaps convincing themselves it had to be her fault because it couldn't be theirs, and they spent so much time lying about her they came to believe it. Those sites you've mentioned and have been posting from are populated by people who read all the untrue crap in the beginning and spent years hating on Amanda and couldn't or wouldn't reconsider when it became apparent that Amanda and Raffaele had nothing to do with it. Instead they spent all day thinking of ways to twist everything and keep alive the untrue information under the guise they were fighting some massive 'PR campaign' which was really a bunch of people from all walks of life, nationality and philosophies who'd figured out Amanda and Raffaele had nothing to do with Rudy's murder and the police and prosecution was incompetent and corrupt.

I'm going to trust Mignini's account over Amanda Knox's account. one has a lot more credibility than the other, and only one accused of killing her roommate.

Mignini is a demented kook who had already been convicted for abuse of power before the Amanda Knox case, something almost unheard of in Italy for a prosecutor. (he later got it quashed by the SC) That happened because he'd filed charges on ~20 people (journalists, politicians, police and the like--they thought he was nuts and protested) for being part of or protecting a satanic cabal he thought responsible for a long-dormant serial killer. He went around digging up bodies and claiming when it didn't match his theory that the bodies had been swapped.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Thanks. A quick search through Massei reveals no reference to 'Naruto'. Why is this and how come we know anything about it?

ETA no reference in Honor Bound either.

I'm pretty sure it was from Spotlight metadata shown to the court during the appeal, which was inexplicably missed by the crack Perugian computer forensics team and hence not presented in the original trial. Probably this was fortunate, since that crack team had a habit of destroying exculpatory evidence that they did manage to find.

 

[anglolawyer]

The access was recorded in the Spotlight metadata on Raffaele's Macbook Pro and noted in Raffaele's appeal.

The screensaver log on this same computer showed activity all through the night.

Hopefully the Florence appeal will bring this out properly. When you say 'activity' do you mean something that necessarily entails human interaction?

 

[anglolawyer]

I'm pretty sure it was from Spotlight metadata shown to the court during the appeal, which was inexplicably missed by the crack Perugian computer forensics team and hence not presented in the original trial. Probably this was fortunate, since that crack team had a habit of destroying exculpatory evidence that they did manage to find.

 

[Kaosium]

are you on the Knox PR team? you are clearly a Knox apologist. She's always the victim as you see it. the whole world is out to get her,

Forgot about this part. Yeah, she is a victim, this was a witch hunt. They smeared her to the high heavens and everyone piled on. It happens, it's not the nicest facet of humanity.

She's just a college girl, there's thousands not unlike her crawling around my hometown. Take some tofu to a tie-dye down on State street and you'll have a dozen sniffing after it within the hour. Annoying sometimes, but harmless--and not capable of fooling a dozen cops in the middle of the night when they have all the power and she can barely speak the language.

 

[Antony]

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.

... which also destroys the guilter excuse for not recording Amanda's interrogation, and not providing her with legal representation. There is no way they can describe her as "a witness, not a suspect" at the same time as making the claims against her, based on knowledge they had beforehand.

 

[anglolawyer]

Did anyone notice the passage in Amanda's book where she talks about the depth of the wounds, which she says were all the same, small and large, to within a millimetre or some such. To my mind, that's quite a good forensic point. The one with the kitchen knife (Amanda I guess) is sure gonna stick it in good! Not delicately just a bit and then withdraw. But the kitchen knife is way too big, lengthwise, for the wound it supposedly made and, if what she says is right, was plunged into the victim to an improbably coincidental depth to the wounds it definitely did not make.

 

[Rolfe]

just google it, you will at least get some hits for it at true justice. probably wasn't reported elsewhere b/c the media acts like Doug preston's stenographers on the Knox case, no independent verification of one thing he asserts in that case.

No reference, then?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

No medical evidence shows that and we've had this talk before, how long did the attack last? Remember, once the attract starts, digestion stops, weren't you suppose to be a vet or something?

The medical evidence is absolutely clear. Damn all lawyers to perdition for not understanding this.

I'm a veterinary pathologist, "or something". Was that meant to be an insult? I deal with a dozen or more different species. Do you think homo sapiens is somehow uniquely different that only medics can understand it? Despite its being the best documented of all the mammalian species, and that we're all walking around inside one?

It's my job to estimate both time of death and time in captivity (a trap or a snare for example) before death. I had a snared badger the other day, where it was possible to tell how long the poor thing had been trapped before dying, based on the condition of the intestinal contents. It's not rocket science.

Meredith Kercher's murder is unusual in having very precise indicators allowing time of death to be estimated to within a narrow window, based on the medical evidence. Repeating nonsense such as digestion would stop when the attack started doesn't change anything.

Rolfe.

 

[Kaosium]

The medical evidence is absolutely clear. Damn all lawyers to perdition for not understanding this.

I'm a veterinary pathologist, "or something". Was that meant to be an insult? I deal with a dozen or more different species. Do you think homo sapiens is somehow uniquely different that only medics can understand it? Despite its being the best documented of all the mammalian species, and that we're all walking around inside one?

It's my job to estimate both time of death and time in captivity (a trap or a snare for example) before death. I had a snared badger the other day, where it was possible to tell how long the poor thing had been trapped before dying, based on the condition of the intestinal contents. It's not rocket science.

Meredith Kercher's murder is unusual in having very precise indicators allowing time of death to be estimated to within a narrow window, based on the medical evidence. Repeating nonsense such as digestion would stop when the attack started doesn't change anything.

Rolfe.

Long ago, right around the time someone PM'd you to look at this case, the theory was proposed that Mignini's time of death (he extended it to 11:30 to allow for Curatolo's testimony, Massei had to add ~15 minutes because Mignini forgot to allow time for the murder!) might be possible were Meredith to be tortured for hours. According to their sources that would slow or stop (they liked this one best) digestion due to the acute stress and thus the fact that Meredith's last meal stayed completely in her stomach and never started into the duodenum wasn't suggestive of a much earlier time of death.

Despite the fact there's no evidence of said torture, nor of the necessary restraints, and that it doesn't actually work like that, there were some who thought anyone not taking this seriously into account was a lying FOAKer who couldn't be trusted on any subject regarding the murder. Apparently there are more 'reasonable' sites where this scenario is part of the 'established wisdom' regarding the case and it falsifies the likelihood of an earlier time of death.

I kid you not.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

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)

Sure, I don't believe Amanda or Raff killed or wanted to kill anyone that night or any night, however, they are not telling the truth, they did not stay home, Toto the hobo did see them ,Amanda did most likely let Rudi into the house before she ran away, leaving the front door open, lied about any involvement and basically took a bad situation and made it a lot worse. Amanda locked Meredith's door, staged the break in and lied thru her teeth the rest of the way.

 

[yimyammer]

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.

I got your point when you wrote it but as usual, you're in too much of a frenzy to get anyone else's point.

I was bustin your balls for using hyperbole when you said "nobody outside the US..."

Come on Doc, I thought you said you were a funny guy, lighten up and live a little

 

[Dan O.]

OK, so he steps across the threshold with his left foot, pulls his right foot across the threshold, turns the key while standing roughly parallel to the door, and continues on to the exit, pausing in the kitchen where he leaves a cluster of attenuated shoe prints that are just a few inches apart.

At least, that is one possibility.

I don't get the controversy here. Is the guilter premise that he would have had to turn around and fumble with the key after he closed the door? Maybe, maybe not... certainly not if he went through the keys to find the right one before he pulled the door shut, as you suggest.

That's what it looks like. But something I didn't expect is that prints 5B and 5C appear to be facing into the room. And 5C looks like he was standing there long enough for blood to pool beside the shoe.