I think a number of people have stated how they got involved in following this case, but I haven’t. I’m not going to say that I believed they were guilty and changed my mind. I assumed they were guilty. What I knew about the case was via the media and so I knew that the police had found AKs bloody footprints, that there was mixed AM/MK blood in the bathroom, that they had DNA evidence on a knife that proved it was the murder weapon, that witnesses placed them at the scene of the crime, etc. To me there was no reason to assume anything else but guilt. I did poke my nose into the thread when it first appeared, but after about the first page decided that I just couldn’t be bothered, they were guilty, that was it.
It was quite some time until I came back to the case, just before the appeal was to be heard. The only reason that I came back was because the thread had grown so long that I was wondering what could possibly keep it going for so long in what I still assumed was a cut and dried case.
A little background on me. At 15 I was told by a teacher to never accept anything you don’t check out yourself. Something I have held close ever since. I have always been interested in science, and I have Physics, Chemistry, Computing, and Psychology credits in the papers I did at University. I have also always been interested in space travel, geology, and astronomy. In 2001 I watched a program on TV about how the Apollo Program was hoaxed, and it stunned me how bad the claims were and how anyone could believe it. In 2003 I joined a forum here in New Zealand and discovered that people actually did believe it. I started to debunk the myths and lies of the Hoax claimants along with another poster, who eventually recommended a few places for reading material to further my knowledge, one being Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy. I joined up and one of my first debunking efforts was Richard Hoagland’s Glass Worms on Mars. I then dived into Apollo boots and all, joining the ApolloHoax.net site I and learned a lot on the way. I even spent time at GPL fight for reason and science against Apollo Hoaxsters and Planet Xers there.
In about 2005 I came across another strange species on the net, the 9/11 Denier. After a while they were banned from Bad Astronomy, which had become the BAUT Forums by then, and so when I had a curly question I wanted an answer to in 2007 I found my way here. After an initially rather hostile reception (I never did find out the answer to my question so I still don’t know if the Seconds from Disaster program was right when it stated that parts of the wing of Flight 77 were found dug into the ground in front of the Pentagon) I ended up fighting 9/11 and Apollo Deniers here. In about 2011 I got sick of going around in circles and basically walked out of the Conspiracies threads altogether because they weren’t going anywhere.
So that is me, I have spent over 10 years dealing with people who believe conspiracy theories, I know their tactics, and their arguments well.
So what does all this have to do with the Knox/Sollecito case? As I said, I poked my head in and had a look at what was going on a little while before the appeal was heard. At the time the Time of Death was being discussed. I listened to both sides and curious, I decided to follow my old teacher’s advice, and check it out myself. After about a week of reading various sources I had to come to the conclusion that the prosecution had the time of death well off, that the science just did not allow for death to have occurred after 11:30pm as they were claiming. That was a red flag.
There have been a number of cases in New Zealand where there have apparently been miscarriages of justice. David Bain who was accused of murdering five family members, now found Not Guilty in a retrial, Peter Ellis, caught up in the witch hunt of child care sex abuse cases, released but still fighting to clear his name, Scott Watson, still in jail for a double homicide he most likely did not commit, Arthur Allen Thomas, jailed by a police officer planting evidence, pardoned nine years later, a royal inquiry finding him innocent. I had followed these, and looked into the Arthur Allen Thomas one since I was a little young at the time. Another thing that drew me to mysteries was that the wife of a family friend had been murdered, and for some time he was suspected as the killer, finally after the body was found it was written off as Suicide, even though there were classic signs of murder. The reason being that since they knew by then that the husband could not have done it (he had a strong alibi and away from the house at the time of her disappearance) he was the only one they had been after. Once that fell through they had no one so closed it as a suicide. Seeing how the police worked in these cases and what went wrong in the investigations and created holes in case lead me to have a good idea of what to look for.
So I had a red flag. This led me to looking deeper into the case. I started reading up, starting with the pages and pages of the thread here, then elsewhere. I started seeing the same hallmarks of poor police work and bad science I saw in other cases. That made me worried, was what I assumed wrong. So I started working on a time line. I followed what he PIPs were saying, Camera sightings, MK coming home, added what I could find. I tried my best to use physical evidence first and then witnesses if they existed. It took a bit, but after a while I had managed to construct a reasonable timeline for a solo killing by RG followed by a police investigation that was quick to focus onto the quirky American because of her behaviour. Things fell into place relatively easily from the murder to how the police investigation progressed and what likely caused them to go in each direction, e.g. the text message and AK meeting up with PL cementing the police’s suspicions that they were both involved.
Once I had built a reasonable and consistent timeline for innocent I started trying to build one for guilt. I couldn’t. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get a timeline that was consistent with the evidence, the science, and actually made some sort of sense. That really worried me, so I started asking for help, and ran into a brick wall. None of the PGPs I asked would help, all I got were glib remarks and claims that it had all been done before, and to go and read the Massei Report.
So I did, and that didn’t help me, if anything it made my suspicions that my initial assumptions were way off base. Nothing added up. Most of what I had accepted as true, wasn’t, even according to the Court Ruling that found them guilty. Worse most of the stuff that it did accept was in reality little more than speculation and guesswork without as lot of hard science and evidence to back it up and any chance of creating a rational believable timeline exploded. My BS buzzer was ringing loudly and I had moved from a position of assuming guilt, to a position of reasonable doubt. The journey didn’t end there though. I started looking at the crime scene photos, reading more, watching the videos, bring back questions, questions the PIPs answered quickly and easily, questions that the PGPs avoided and refused to answer. By the time of the appeal I was leaning firmly to probably Not Guilty, but certainly reasonable doubt. The M&C report nailed it for me. After reading that I moved to fully innocent, the last possible doubts of guilt gone.
After the appeal and the Hellmann Report I didn’t see much point in sticking around. The PGPs were still acting like conspiracy theorists, and the pair had been freed. I figured that rationally had won, so I was rather surprised by the Supreme Court’s ruling. As a result I’m sort of popping back in to see if I missed anything, I will be interested in seeing their reasoning.
So that is my story. I don’t know AK or RS, I don’t particularly want to mean either of them any more then I want to meet David Bain. I believe that they are innocent from nothing more than because that is what the physical evidence actually says. The prosecution’s case is built on a house of cards and each pillar it sat on has been thoroughly examined and been found wanting, and regardless of what the SC tries to do, with the H&C report out there, nothing will prevent that being part of the new Appeal. It’s been shown; the police’s collection and testing methods have been discredited, and will be shown to be so again, and without that evidence, the whole house of cards crumbles.
. You need to brush up your repertoire. As I too have said before, the trouble with jokes about lawyers is lawyers don't think they're funny and no one else thinks they're jokes. I love that one 
