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

[Supernaut]

lol, that prison guard had a good sense of humor. and one wouldn't be surprised to see Knox include yet another, eighth, sex partner on her list, this guard, when the next false positive test for HIV arrived. one thing nobody disputes, including Knox, is she liked GETTING IT ON.

How fortunate everyone reading or participating in the JREF forums must feel to be blessed with such wit and wisdom as the above.

People like you make this place what it is.

 

[Mary_H]

<snip>Dontcha remember joking about the horny guys at the police station so interested in Amanda's atheletic abilities? Caused quite a stir back in the Cartwheel's thread, the Bard created an account just to admonish you as I recall. Ivano was that police officer who went up and asked Amanda if she could do the splits.

I do remember that episode, but I thought we were joking about the cops outside the cottage -- the ones who surrounded Amanda, pressing ever closer, ever closer.... and you are correct, The Bard did make a special trip over here just to call me a Bad Girl. Sigh, a nostalgic trip down Memory Lane...

Ugh. I'm sure that 'comforted' her. Locked up with guys who had authority over her with indiscriminate and risky sexual mores...

I don't know that one, is it in her book?

Yes, it's in her book. He followed her everywhere, uttering such endearments as, "Promise me you'll have sex with me!"

 

[DrTesla]

How fortunate everyone reading or participating in the JREF forums must feel to be blessed with such wit and wisdom as the above.

People like you make this place what it is.

what's wrong with the guard comforting Knox, who is obviously concerned that she can never have sex again (and GETTING IT ON is clearly something she enjoys and she doesn't apologize for it as she asserts in her book) b/c she would be spreading HIV if she did, and the prison guard even telling her that he would risk contracting HIV to make love to her? I think it was quite a sweet thing to say, actually. it's funny, you really cannot deny that. even she laughed, I suspect.

The guard said that Knox would always introduce the topic of sex and then he would talk to her about it. are we to pretend that Knox was some innocent virgin, and no way jose that she could be talking about sex with this prison guard, who afterall, is a typical Italian man, who, we know, enjoy a bit of sexual innuendo? I suspect the vast majority of women, probably at least 95 percent, never slept with at least 7 men by age 20. most women's worse nightmare is to get pregnant with the child of some guy they don't love or even like, and many women also have moral qualms over abortion, so they abstain from sleeping around with random men and risking such a scenario.

 

[Supernaut]

what's wrong with the guard comforting Knox, who is obviously concerned that she can never have sex again b/c she would be spreading HIV if she did, and even telling her he would risk contracting HIV to make love to her? I think it was quite a sweet thing to say, actually.

The guard said that Knox would always introduce the topic of sex and then he would talk to her about it. are we to pretend that Knox was some innocent virgin, and no way jose that she could be talking about sex with this boss? I suspect the vast majority of women, probably at least 95 percent, never slept with at least 7 men by age 20.

For some reason polluting is a word that springs to mind. As in, well-poisoning.

 

[DrTesla]

For some reason polluting is a word that springs to mind. As in, well-poisoning.

well of course you are going to say that but you are a well known Knox SuperFan as is evident by your frequent posting on the Knox SuperFan website belonging to the mall clerk.

a good joke has bit of a naughty side to them, and this Italian man, being a student of humor as all Italians are, simply told a good joke, and there is no way Knox did not understand it was a joke and laughed, as she always enjoyed the company of men, and actually was much more comfortable around men than other women, in my analysis of her personality.

 

[Kaosium]

As soon as she implicated Patrick her status changed so their actions changed.

That was at 1:45 AM, they then got a 'spontaneous' declaration from her, by Mignini, who was now present indisputably--he's listed at the top of the statement--walking through' her story asking leading questions ('you didn't hear the scream? why didn't you hear the scream?'). That was how the content of the 5:45 statement was generated.

However if you read it you'll find they don't get much of anything about the crime, outside Patrick and Amanda being there and it happening sometime after the text. No description of the murder, Amanda doesn't even see it, nothing about the break-in. Almost nothing.

Read this link, and notice it's from a law enforcement site.

The absence of any specific corroboration within the confession should
be viewed suspiciously.

A confession that merely acknowledges involvement in a crime, but contains no additional details, should be viewed suspiciously. Three issues to be considered are:

1. Did the investigator fail to elicit such information?
2. Was the suspect unable to provide the information?
3. Did the subject refuse to provide the information?

In the first two instances, the statement may be what we refer to as a nonexistent confession”and appropriately may not be given much weight as evidence. In the third instance, the guilty suspect may have had second thoughts about further incriminating himself once the first admission of guilt was offered and decided to no longer cooperate with the questioning process. Under this circumstance the investigator may be able to credibly explain the absence of the corroboration, but an obvious question arises: What caused the suspect, on the one hand, to acknowledge, yes I did this and shortly thereafter refuse to further discuss his crime? Our experience
has been that if a guilty suspect can be persuaded to admit committing the
crime, then he will also discuss the details of his crime, at least to some
extent.

This part is also especially relevant as they repeat it several times, as noted by the opening sentence:

While this concept has been addressed frequently in this text, it is worth repeating again at no time should an investigator attempt to persuade a suspect that he is guilty of a crime he claims he does not remember committing. It is one thing to express high confidence in a suspect’s guilt (which will not cause an innocent person to confess), but it is quite another to make statements designed to convince a suspect, who claims to have no recollection of committing the crime, that he must be guilty of the offense.

 

[Supernaut]

well of course you are going to say that but you are a well known Knox SuperFan as is evident by your frequent posting on the Knox SuperFan website belonging to the mall clerk.

a good joke has bit of a naughty side to them, and this Italian man, being a student of humor as all Italians are, simply told a good joke, and there is no way Knox did not understand it was a joke and laughed, as she always enjoyed the company of men, and actually was much more comfortable around men than other women, in my analysis of her personality.

It seems that you find yourself really, REALLY amusing.

Does it irk you that no-one else does?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

one thing that always perplexed me is why Raffe and Knox, who both pride themselves as being clever people, would take the knife back to his house after they had butchered poor sweet Meredith in the slaughterhouse.

I'm thinking they had the knife with them, but wasn't used in the murder, even if they were involved directly in the murder, Raff always had pocket knives, they still could have used multiple knives, just not the big one.

 

[Supernaut]

one thing that always perplexed me is why Raffe and Knox, who both pride themselves as being clever people, would take the knife back to his house after they had butchered poor sweet Meredith in the slaughterhouse.

I'm thinking they had the knife with them, but wasn't used in the murder, even if they were involved directly in the murder, Raff always had pocket knives, they still could have used multiple knives, just not the big one.

Oh. My. Gawd.

 

[Supernaut]

one thing that always perplexed me is why Raffe and Knox, who both pride themselves as being clever people, would take the knife back to his house after they had butchered poor sweet Meredith in the slaughterhouse.

I'm thinking they had the knife with them, but wasn't used in the murder, even if they were involved directly in the murder, Raff always had pocket knives, they still could have used multiple knives, just not the big one.

Oh. My. Gawd.

ETA >> on second thoughts, no. This is not, CANNOT be serious 'commentary' - it's just static, noise-generation, well-poisoning.

 

[Briars]

Fair enough? Do you believe she had forgotten this message? According to you she either had perfect recall of everything or she's guilty.

Re: the diary pages, what was written in them? I am not just unfazed, I have no clue what you're talking about.

People often include whats on their minds or recent events in their diary. Pages from October the month proceeding the murder were ripped out. This of course led to some speculation if there was something written that was removed prior to her arrest. Bringing up a story later with a cellmate and ripped out pages seems like a strange add on. That's why I compared it to Sollecito's later email story.

 

[Kaosium]

Contamination at the Laboratory

Of the three options for an innocent explanations contamination at the laboratory is the one that on the surface would appear to be the greatest concern. Laboratories follow strict procedures and do negative tests to insure against contamination but the sample on the knife was an LCN sample and we know that at least twenty items with Meredith's DNA had been tested in the laboratory before the knife. The argument that the reason Meredith's DNA ended up on the knife was because of laboratory contamination while improbable it might be a possible criticism from scientists such as Conti and Vecchiotti who are highly suspicious of LCN DNA.

Where the argument for laboratory contamination hits a dead end is with the testing schedule. No material related to Meredith's murder was tested in Stefanoni's laboratory for the six days prior to the knife. It is one thing to argue that the testing of the bra clasp just prior to the testing of the knife led to contamination but with a six day gap contamination is not possible. It is inconceivable that Meredith's DNA would survive multiple days of cleaning protocols. Further if a source of Meredith's DNA was present and acting as a contaminate then Meredith's profile should have appeared in the testing of materials completely unrelated to her murder. This would have been an immediate sign that something was wrong and the lab would have been able to address the issue.

Conti and Vecchiotti were appointed by Judge Hellmann to be impartial independent reviewers of the DNA evidence but quite quickly it became apparent that they were biased against the prosecution and there was even allegations and evidence indicating they were working with the defence but even Carla Vecchiotti confirmed that contamination at the laboratory was not possible.[5] if there was a six day gap in the testing of materials related to this case. It seemed painful to Vecchiotti but she said ruled out contamination and as such if an expert as hostile to the prosecution as Carla Vecchiotti ruled it out so can we -- Contamination at the laboratory is excluded as a possibility.

from http://themurderofmeredithkercher.co...uble_DNA_Knife

If contamination is 'impossible' because there had been a six day gap in testing, implying the DNA would have degraded, how on earth could they have ever found any DNA on the bra clasp which had much more than six days to degrade?

Show me the context of Vecchiotti's quote, that site takes so many things out of context in order to deceive it's unreliable, remember their description of the November 4th e-mail? I wasn't in the mood to dig it up and provide the link at the time, but here it is.

Here's the part where she's panicking:

I then went into the part of the house that Meredith and I share and checked my room for things missing, which there weren't. Then I knocked on Meredith's room. At first I thought she was asleep so I knocked gently, but when she didn't respond I knocked louder and louder until I was really banging on her door and shouting her name. No response. Panicking, I ran out onto our terrace to see if maybe I could see over the ledge into her room from the window, but I couldn't see in. Bad angle. I then went into the bathroom where I had dried my hair and looked really quickly into the toilet. In my panic I thought I hadn't seen anything there, which to me meant whoever was in my house had been there when I had been there. As it turns out the police told me later that the toilet was full and that the **** had just fallen to the bottom of the toilet, so I didn't see it.

Here's the part later when everyone else has gotten there and the door is being broken down:

I was in the kitchen standing aside, having really done my part for the situation.

Also the prosecution would say anything in order to pretend their 'evidence' was still valid and they weren't lying to the court, consider the silliness of the trying to pretend the luminol prints were blood after it was revealed they had hidden the negative blood tests.

If the independent court experts appeared 'biased' against the prosecution, that might be because of the way Stefanoni and Comodi lied and tried to hide all the required information. They had to go to the judge to get what was required which Stefanoni only coughed up the last day of their commission, which required an additional 40 day extension so they could evaluate that data.

In other words they weren't biased, they were neutral until given copious evidence of lying and hiding data they needed to make their report.

 

[Briars]

Yes I believe she forgot the message which was the same as saying O.K bye. The message wasn't the problem the fact that she had the night off and Sollecito said she went out was.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I'm seeing the same thing. Except that I will add the multiple prints at 5, the single prints at 3, 2 and the new print at the pink bag join with F, I and Y as one continuous uninterrupted trail from Meredith's room to the front door.

But then there is "H". It is similar to Y but with 2 impressions at different angles and facing not towards the door but bact towards the bedrooms.

This morning I spotted another shoe print with the concentric circles. It was very faint and almost didn't show up in the glow of the luminol enhanced splotch that almost resembles a bare foot. They unfortunately didn't Provide an orientating overview for the luminol shots so I'm not sure where this print is or which way it is facing.

The luminol photos were not taken as a a general survey. And given the disparity between the bright splotch and the print, it's no wonder why we don't see Rudy's shoe prints returning down the hall. The one print was caught by accident simply because it was close to one of the splotches.

It seems to me the traces in the common area are closer together, and H, as you say, throws the whole sequence off. He paused for some reason, but I can only guess why.

I'll be interested when you complete your map, showing how each step is oriented.

I wonder if luminol could detect the steps of someone walking across a floor with a minute amount of almost dried blood on their shoes. It might rub off, but it wouldn't adhere the way wet blood does. The residue might show up as random specks rather than a recognizable shape. And it would be vulnerable to disturbance. Many people walked up and down that corridor many times between Nov. 2 and Dec. 18.

 

[Kaosium]

Secondary Transfer

Secondary transfer is the process when someone transfers someone else's DNA. An argument for secondary transfer is close to impossible.

Despite what television shows about forensics would have us believe DNA is not everywhere nor does it transfer easily. A study of DNA transfer during simulated manual strangulation resulted in less than 66% of participants transferring their DNA to the victim.[6] The amount of force and contact required to strangle someone greatly exceeds any conceivable contact Knox would have with the sharp-end of a knife but the study is referenced solely to show the degree of contact required for DNA transfer to occur. In a more relevant study Phipps and Petricevic discovered that when a subject handled a sterile tube 51-70% failed to transfer their DNA to the tube.[7] Given what science tells us what people interested in considering this case need to do is forget everything that television has said about DNA. Television has mislead you. Dry touch transfer of DNA is actually very hard.

The studies above though are discussing primary transfer. For Meredith's DNA to end up on the knife through innocent transfer what would need to happen is that Meredith would first transfer her DNA to Knox and then Knox would transfer the DNA to the knife. This is commonly called secondary transfer. Another study by Phipps and Petricevic found that little or no secondary transfer happens.[8] This makes intuitive sense given how difficult primary transfer is. If secondary transfer is unlikely under experimental conditions it would be even less likely under real conditions do to the added risk of the other person's DNA being destroyed in all the other interactions one typically has.

The location of the DNA makes this unlikely event even less likely. The amount of pressure and friction are major considerations in dry transfer.[9] Since Meredith's DNA was on the blade of a knife it is difficult to imagine a scenario where Knox would have been applying the necessary force and friction for transfer to occur. The location where Meredith's DNA was not discovered even without scientific considerations is extremely unlikely. Meredith's DNA was not found anywhere else in Raffaele's apartment. What is the probability that the only instance of secondary transfer would involve the blade of a knife that is compatible with the knife used to murder the person whose DNA is found?

Lastly there is the issue that the DNA profile found on the knife blade is not a mixed sample. A review of the literature of secondary transfer has failed to find a single reported case of secondary transfer occurring without simultaneous primary transfer occurring. That is to say that if Amanda was the vehicle by which Meredith's DNA was transferred to the knife then Amanda's DNA should also be present and we know that it isn't. When given the choice of accepting the possibility of this being the first observed instance of something that has never been observed before during controlled experiments or accepting that the DNA was on the knife because it was used in the murder the correct answer is obvious.

It's usually very easy to avoid many potential results from secondary transfer, don't go looking for LCN/LT DNA. Nothing those studies show is relevant to this case, the disputed (DNA) elements all being LCN/LT in which secondary and tertiary transfer is a really not an unlikely possibility. There's been like studies and everything. By scientists and stuff. Complicated, big words that I hate too, but worth learning something about if you want to discuss this case.

You really ought to read Halides1's links, and his posts more carefully. You might learn something!

 

[DrTesla]

If contamination is 'impossible' because there had been a six day gap in testing, implying the DNA would have degraded, how on earth could they have ever found any DNA on the bra clasp which had much more than six days to degrade?

lol, the point of the 6 day gap between testing is that other things were tested in the meantime and given the cleanup protocols and procedures of the lab, which would have been gone through numerous times in 6 days time, any contamination would have been removed by the time the knife was tested. the 6 day gap has nothing to do with the possibility of the DNA degrading, nobody has argued that. you are either constructing a real dumb straw man here or you misunderstand the point which I think was clear to most people of scientific expertise.


I also want to point out that Knox's DNA on the Double DNA Knife was found to be at a point consistent with stabbing a victim than with using the knife in a kitchen or table for cooking and eating purposes. the DNA was found much more to the end of the knife as you would expect a hand to grasp a knife to slit the throat of your roommate for being so conceited and full of herself.

 

[Supernaut]

Yes I believe she forgot the message which was the same as saying O.K bye. The message wasn't the problem the fact that she had the night off and Sollecito said she went out was.

Where did he ever say or write this?

 

[Kaosium]

Yes I believe she forgot the message which was the same as saying O.K bye. The message wasn't the problem the fact that she had the night off and Sollecito said she went out was.

They started yelling at Raffaele and he wasn't sure which night was which, he told them that and asked to look at a calendar and they refused, intimidating him. He ended up giving a statement that conflated afternoon of the first, and then the night of the 31st, when he and Amanda went out and then parted at the town center around 9 PM. When brought before Matteini he told her his statement was wrong and he'd been confused, thus it was eliminated and no longer had any relevance to the case. He was asked whether he could be sure Amanda hadn't gone out while he was sleeping, (which would be way after the murder time anyway) and he said he didn't think so but he couldn't be 'sure' of course, who could?

 

[Supernaut]

lol, the point of the 6 day gap between testing is that other things were tested in the meantime and given the cleanup protocols and procedures of the lab, which would have been gone through numerous times in 6 days time, any contamination would have been removed by the time the knife was tested. the 6 day gap has nothing to do with the possibility of the DNA degrading, nobody has argued that. you are either constructing a real dumb straw man here or you misunderstand the point which I think was clear to most people of scientific expertise.


I also want to point out that Knox's DNA on the Double DNA Knife was found to be at a point consistent with stabbing a victim than with using the knife in a kitchen or table for cooking and eating purposes. the DNA was found much more to the end of the knife as you would expect a hand to grasp a knife to slit the throat of your roommate for being so conceited and full of herself.

Hmmmm. Most erudiate and informative. You've taken to this "forensic DNA analysis" like a duck to water. And this in a matter of days.

A certain Greg Hampikian of Boise State University might want to pick your brains, you have insights he would find invaluable.

 

[Kaosium]

Where did he ever say or write this?

During his interrogation Raffaele said he remembered that before they went out (and would later part at the square) Amanda had gone out shopping on the 31st. That's two times on the 31st that involve leaving his apartment, since he'd not told them that before they got all excited and started in on how he was now contradicting himself and that's when everything went downhill for poor Raffaele and Amanda.