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

[Mary_H]

I think you and others here can't see the elephant in the room. She is a lousy spokesperson for herself. Many here deny what she herself admits, such as that she could remember details of the evening and night.

He may not know diddly about the case but he still can see how her performances impact him and that is significant.

That is why I would use her as a spokesperson on the YT video campaign.

You would or you wouldn't? Why would you use her on a YT video campaign if you don't think she is a good spokesperson for herself?

 

[Grinder]

Most likely something with a transition metal ion. I think that the prints are unlikely to have been made in blood. Besides the negative TMB test and the lack of an essential confirmatory test, there is the fact that something on a boot also gave a positive result, as can be seen in an appropriate photograph. Most problematic for the prosecution's claim is that there is one shoe print in the hallway and one footprint in Amanda's room: The footprint in Amanda's room does not match her reference print at the second toe. Rinaldi was not able to match the shoe print to any shoe he had. That gives us one unidentified barefoot woman and one unidentified person wearing shoes. Given all of the information available about Amanda, Raffaele, and Rudy, it is therefore unlikely that the prints were made on the night of 1 November. If they were not made on the night of the murder, they are probably not blood.

One problem that has not received the attention that it deserves is that the luminol was applied very heavily.

Yes the pouring on of the luminol by the crack CSI team has not received enough attention.

I've given you the link before and can't find at this moment stating that blood is very hard to remove. Blood will show under luminol for years if it wasn't washed away with strong detergents. Since it was negative when tested with TMB that would mean a very dilute mixture.

Once again the situation is that the prosecution must prove that it is blood AND that the prints were left that night. They can do neither.

 

[Grinder]

You would or you wouldn't? Why would you use her on a YT video campaign if you don't think she is a good spokesperson for herself?

Thanks Mary - wouldn't. Typo

I would not use her as the main spokesperson. She could ask questions of experts to heighten interest in the video.

 

[Bill Williams]

I would like to see all of them interview Matteini, Mignini, Comodi and Massei, since the essence of every interview with Amanda seems to be, "Yes, but why were you arrested? Yes, but why were you arrested? Yes, but why were you arrested?"

Good point. Because at the end of the day this is not about Knox and it is not about Sollecito. That's the whole point of them being innocent.

Why did Giobbi say that they'd solved the crime before the forensics came in?

Why did Marco Chiacchiera recommend to Mignini and Napoleoni that the two be released after interrogation? They also could first get Chiacchiera to confirm or deny he'd ever said it.

I'd also like to hear them interview Andrea Vogt. Does Ms. Vogt go through the tortured semantics like Machiavelli does to twist "I was there" into a confession?

 

[codyjuneau]

I can't help but wonder if it is schadenfreude that drives so many of the guilters. That this insane and illogical behavior is the manifestation of individuals that enjoy other people's misfortune. They seem like the crowds that gathered at London Tower or the Roman Coliseum to fulfill their thirst.

.
One thing I am certain of, if they themselves, or their kids, were treated the way Raffaele and Amanda have been treated, they would be screaming about the unfairness of it.

I have known, and know many people, that have one set of rules for themselves, and another completely different set of rules for everybody else. In my opinion most of the guilters are like that.
.

 

[RWVBWL]

More Nara

Since Nara hearing a loud scream is 1 of the keys to the prosecution theory of a late Time of Death in The Murder of Meredith Kercher,
I'd like to add this passage from The Old Perugai Shock to the discussion, as it seems like Nara knew Meredith before...

I want to try to forget, not to remember.
This statement doesn't obviously come from the guide of the perfect witness but from Nara Capezzali. It's the comprehensible state of mind of a woman shocked by that horrific scream, which still today brings her to tears.
She confirmed her version, she hears that scream and then someone stepping on the gravel outside the cottage and on the iron stairs beneath her window. After that she's so frightened that she can't go back to sleep. She needs to make herself a chamomile.
She's not that upset, though, next day, to make a simple call to the police when she hears that a girl was killed in the cottage. Only a photographer will suggest her to. And she will do her duty after 24 guilty days.
Useless trying to squeeze more details out of Nara, the more they insisted the more she got confused.
The lady has her age and her memory is what it is: any attempt to try figure out about next day sinks in the confusion if is true that, for instance, today she was certain to have heard about the murdered girl at 9:30 of November 2, 4 hours before Meredith was discovered.

When the police arrives she remembers to have seen Amanda and Raffaele observing the operation from the parking lot. Something that doesn't match at all the known presence of them in the garden, something that may easily be a wrong memory.
She didn't know Meredith and Amanda but she's now certain to have identified them, in the previous two months, and she could even tell that up to a certain point they were always going out together but then, lately, they would only walk separately. Another influenced memory, probably. As well as a mysterious swollen lip Meredith had, according to Nara, during her last weeks of life.

But those two details, of the scream and of the steps, look like an anchor in her memory and in this investigation.
Facts that only other details may help placing in the time since Nara is not able to, and her time can be comprised between 22:00 and 23:00.
The defenses tried in all possible ways to dismiss this witness, pointing at her confusion, measuring the water she drunk, hypothesizing that were two animals running, recalling even the labyrinths disease of which she suffers at the season change. They don't seem to understand that this witness, instead, is in favor of Amanda and Raffaele. She said two people running, she didn't see who they were. And she can be even more precise: two men running. The steps where heavy indeed, it couldn't be a girl, it couldn't be an animal, since we don't have bears here. Confused maybe, but very clear. Her testimony matches the Formica one, who saw a black man --who wasn't Rudy-- running away.

Never recall reading that Nara had seen Meredith in person before and that Mez had a swollen lip in her last weeks of life,
nor that it was 2 men, not a guy and a girl she heard running that night...

 

[CoulsdonUK]

.
One thing I am certain of, if they themselves, or their kids, were treated the way Raffaele and Amanda have been treated, they would be screaming about the unfairness of it.

I have known, and know many people, that have one set of rules for themselves, and another completely different set of rules for everybody else. In my opinion most of the guilters are like that.
.

Reading your post I can understand your sentiments. However, my thoughts always drift to the Kercher family; Meredith just like Amanda was studying abroad and just like Amanda had been in Italy only a few weeks. Yes you and others will state Guede is responsible, but for me that doesn’t change my focus on the Kercher family and their life sentence.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Suzanne Collins, Sedley Alley, and the single attcker theory

John Douglas and Mark Olshaker devote quite a bit of space to this case in their book "Law and Disorder." Ms. Collins was a marine whom Mr. Alley sexually assaulted and murdered. Alley was bigger than Guede, but Ms. Collins probably had much more extensive training in combat that Ms. Kercher, being in "fighting form." The authors wrote, "it would have been virtually impossible for her to fend him off." Like Guede, Alley was guilty not just of the crime, but of "blatant and self-serving fabrication" (p. 99) afterward. Everyone who reads this book will see that the authors care very deeply about the victims of violent crime. That is but one reason why their words should carry weight when they they talk about the victims of a miscarriage of justice. MOO.

 

[Grinder]

Reading your post I can understand your sentiments. However, my thoughts always drift to the Kercher family; Meredith just like Amanda was studying abroad and just like Amanda had been in Italy only a few weeks. Yes you and others will state Guede is responsible, but for me that doesn’t change my focus on the Kercher family and their life sentence.

If Amanda and Raf had nothing to do with Meredith's murder, it would make as much sense to drift your focus to every murdered person's family in history.

If Meredith had been a clerk in the Conad store would your thoughts drift to her in that case? What difference does it make that Meredith was studying in Italy and had only been there a few weeks.

I care about the Kerchers as much as I care about the families of all the murdered people around the world.

This idea that because people think Amanda is not guilty is somehow disrespecting the Kerchers, is ridiculous.

 

[moodstream]

That's funny!

 

[moodstream]

Machiavelli,

you may be right, we may not have complete information about Knox's 'I was there call'. Here is copy of a Candance Dempsey article that contains 'the transcript'. It is repeated on PMF, but I suspect the source is the same.

::

How old is this “new” leak? Click back to December 1, 2007, just weeks after Knox’s arrest. Police were about to extradite Rudy from Italy, where he’d fled after the murder. Yet, as we saw this week, the police managed to put Amanda in the headlines and keep her there.

“‘Tape puts Knox at Meredith murder scene,” claimed Britain’s Telegraph that first December. Indeed, the story is a festival of police lies and distortions typed up as fact. This, from Britain’s “quality press.”

Show me the document, reporters are supposed to say before they print a damning remark. They are required to put a quote into context, by displaying what came before and after it. This is Journalism 101. Crucial in a murder case where the suspects risk life behind bars. Fooled once, British reporters ignored “I was there” this time around. Same for the Italians.

The transcript supports Amanda, but reporters couldn’t see it until her pretrial in 2008. Judge Paolo Micheli accepted that she meant “I was at my boyfriend’s house.”

You can read that document below. Remember that the Knoxes spoke in English and the police translator did an poor job of writing down the English words. For court, she translated the document into Italian. Frank Sfarzo of Perugia Shock has translated it back into English. We can never, in other words, know the exact words:

Amanda: Yes, there is a doctor. I took a medicine for a headache this morning, and now I feel better, but the reason I was crying yesterday evening is because there was this pressure on my head that wouldn’t go away because I felt horrible, this person looked at me as if I was a horrible person and I collapsed.

Edda: Like I said, the lawyers believe that they are doing it on purpose, because they have nothing at all, so they are trying to put pressure on like when they interrogated you to see if you would say something more and so you have to keep calm and do not say anything to anyone.
Amanda: Yeah, when I was in the room with him I said what? … (Laughs) and then when I returned to my room I was crying. I’m very, very worried for this thing about the knife… because there is a knife from Raffaele …
Curt: Well, here, here, here are the facts… we talked yesterday with the lawyer and asked him about the knife. Every time that they have to review an item we have an expert there that will review it with them. This is an example of… this knife of which they are talking about, they have never notified anything about the knife.
Edda: So, it’s ********!
Amanda: Is it ********?
Edda: It’s ********.
Curt: It’s complete ********. It’s a total fabrication.
Edda: That’s what they’re doing now. They are simply lying.
Curt: It’s all a fabrication…
Edda: Yes, to make someone break down.
Amanda: It’s stupid. I can’t say anything but the truth, because I know I was there. I mean, I can’t lie on this, there is no reason to do it.
Curt: Yeah, yeah, so what you have to do is not to talk about anything with anyone. Don’t write anything. You may receive letters. Have you received letters or anything else?
Amanda: I’m getting loads of letters from admirers.
Edda: Well, people in Seattle, even your friends will start to write. They been asking me for some time, they want to send you things… probably many things can’t get through, e… but…

My guess would be that the transcript read at trial is more accurate, without having been first translated into Italian and then back, but of course that's a guess.

 

[Diocletus]

Machiavelli,

you may be right, we may not have complete information about Knox's 'I was there call'. Here is copy of a Candance Dempsey article that contains 'the transcript'. It is repeated on PMF, but I suspect the source is the same.

::

How old is this “new” leak? Click back to December 1, 2007, just weeks after Knox’s arrest. Police were about to extradite Rudy from Italy, where he’d fled after the murder. Yet, as we saw this week, the police managed to put Amanda in the headlines and keep her there.

“‘Tape puts Knox at Meredith murder scene,” claimed Britain’s Telegraph that first December. Indeed, the story is a festival of police lies and distortions typed up as fact. This, from Britain’s “quality press.”

Show me the document, reporters are supposed to say before they print a damning remark. They are required to put a quote into context, by displaying what came before and after it. This is Journalism 101. Crucial in a murder case where the suspects risk life behind bars. Fooled once, British reporters ignored “I was there” this time around. Same for the Italians.

The transcript supports Amanda, but reporters couldn’t see it until her pretrial in 2008. Judge Paolo Micheli accepted that she meant “I was at my boyfriend’s house.”

You can read that document below. Remember that the Knoxes spoke in English and the police translator did an poor job of writing down the English words. For court, she translated the document into Italian. Frank Sfarzo of Perugia Shock has translated it back into English. We can never, in other words, know the exact words:

Amanda: Yes, there is a doctor. I took a medicine for a headache this morning, and now I feel better, but the reason I was crying yesterday evening is because there was this pressure on my head that wouldn’t go away because I felt horrible, this person looked at me as if I was a horrible person and I collapsed.

Edda: Like I said, the lawyers believe that they are doing it on purpose, because they have nothing at all, so they are trying to put pressure on like when they interrogated you to see if you would say something more and so you have to keep calm and do not say anything to anyone.
Amanda: Yeah, when I was in the room with him I said what? … (Laughs) and then when I returned to my room I was crying. I’m very, very worried for this thing about the knife… because there is a knife from Raffaele …
Curt: Well, here, here, here are the facts… we talked yesterday with the lawyer and asked him about the knife. Every time that they have to review an item we have an expert there that will review it with them. This is an example of… this knife of which they are talking about, they have never notified anything about the knife.
Edda: So, it’s ********!
Amanda: Is it ********?
Edda: It’s ********.
Curt: It’s complete ********. It’s a total fabrication.
Edda: That’s what they’re doing now. They are simply lying.
Curt: It’s all a fabrication…
Edda: Yes, to make someone break down.
Amanda: It’s stupid. I can’t say anything but the truth, because I know I was there. I mean, I can’t lie on this, there is no reason to do it.
Curt: Yeah, yeah, so what you have to do is not to talk about anything with anyone. Don’t write anything. You may receive letters. Have you received letters or anything else?
Amanda: I’m getting loads of letters from admirers.
Edda: Well, people in Seattle, even your friends will start to write. They been asking me for some time, they want to send you things… probably many things can’t get through, e… but…

My guess would be that the transcript read at trial is more accurate, without having been first translated into Italian and then back, but of course that's a guess.

Is there a tape, or are these just words written down by some police translator? If the latter, how is this evidence of anything.

Note also the comment about not having been notified about the knife testing. Interesting.

 

[RoseMontague]

Machiavelli,

you may be right, we may not have complete information about Knox's 'I was there call'. Here is copy of a Candance Dempsey article that contains 'the transcript'. It is repeated on PMF, but I suspect the source is the same.

::

How old is this “new” leak? Click back to December 1, 2007, just weeks after Knox’s arrest. Police were about to extradite Rudy from Italy, where he’d fled after the murder. Yet, as we saw this week, the police managed to put Amanda in the headlines and keep her there.

“‘Tape puts Knox at Meredith murder scene,” claimed Britain’s Telegraph that first December. Indeed, the story is a festival of police lies and distortions typed up as fact. This, from Britain’s “quality press.”

Show me the document, reporters are supposed to say before they print a damning remark. They are required to put a quote into context, by displaying what came before and after it. This is Journalism 101. Crucial in a murder case where the suspects risk life behind bars. Fooled once, British reporters ignored “I was there” this time around. Same for the Italians.

The transcript supports Amanda, but reporters couldn’t see it until her pretrial in 2008. Judge Paolo Micheli accepted that she meant “I was at my boyfriend’s house.”

You can read that document below. Remember that the Knoxes spoke in English and the police translator did an poor job of writing down the English words. For court, she translated the document into Italian. Frank Sfarzo of Perugia Shock has translated it back into English. We can never, in other words, know the exact words:

Amanda: Yes, there is a doctor. I took a medicine for a headache this morning, and now I feel better, but the reason I was crying yesterday evening is because there was this pressure on my head that wouldn’t go away because I felt horrible, this person looked at me as if I was a horrible person and I collapsed.

Edda: Like I said, the lawyers believe that they are doing it on purpose, because they have nothing at all, so they are trying to put pressure on like when they interrogated you to see if you would say something more and so you have to keep calm and do not say anything to anyone.
Amanda: Yeah, when I was in the room with him I said what? … (Laughs) and then when I returned to my room I was crying. I’m very, very worried for this thing about the knife… because there is a knife from Raffaele …
Curt: Well, here, here, here are the facts… we talked yesterday with the lawyer and asked him about the knife. Every time that they have to review an item we have an expert there that will review it with them. This is an example of… this knife of which they are talking about, they have never notified anything about the knife.
Edda: So, it’s ********!
Amanda: Is it ********?
Edda: It’s ********.
Curt: It’s complete ********. It’s a total fabrication.
Edda: That’s what they’re doing now. They are simply lying.
Curt: It’s all a fabrication…
Edda: Yes, to make someone break down.
Amanda: It’s stupid. I can’t say anything but the truth, because I know I was there. I mean, I can’t lie on this, there is no reason to do it.
Curt: Yeah, yeah, so what you have to do is not to talk about anything with anyone. Don’t write anything. You may receive letters. Have you received letters or anything else?
Amanda: I’m getting loads of letters from admirers.
Edda: Well, people in Seattle, even your friends will start to write. They been asking me for some time, they want to send you things… probably many things can’t get through, e… but…

My guess would be that the transcript read at trial is more accurate, without having been first translated into Italian and then back, but of course that's a guess.

Thanks moodstream. It's pretty obvious, is it not?

 

[Supernaut]

.
One thing I am certain of, if they themselves, or their kids, were treated the way Raffaele and Amanda have been treated, they would be screaming about the unfairness of it.

I have known, and know many people, that have one set of rules for themselves, and another completely different set of rules for everybody else. In my opinion most of the guilters are like that.

Reading your post I can understand your sentiments. However, my thoughts always drift to the Kercher family; Meredith just like Amanda was studying abroad and just like Amanda had been in Italy only a few weeks. Yes you and others will state Guede is responsible, but for me that doesn’t change my focus on the Kercher family and their life sentence.

Hmm. Not very persuasive.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

.
One thing I am certain of, if they themselves, or their kids, were treated the way Raffaele and Amanda have been treated, they would be screaming about the unfairness of it.

I have known, and know many people, that have one set of rules for themselves, and another completely different set of rules for everybody else. In my opinion most of the guilters are like that.
.

Reading your post I can understand your sentiments. However, my thoughts always drift to the Kercher family; Meredith just like Amanda was studying abroad and just like Amanda had been in Italy only a few weeks. Yes you and others will state Guede is responsible, but for me that doesn’t change my focus on the Kercher family and their life sentence.

If Amanda and Raf had nothing to do with Meredith's murder, it would make as much sense to drift your focus to every murdered person's family in history.

If Meredith had been a clerk in the Conad store would your thoughts drift to her in that case? What difference does it make that Meredith was studying in Italy and had only been there a few weeks.

I care about the Kerchers as much as I care about the families of all the murdered people around the world.

This idea that because people think Amanda is not guilty is somehow disrespecting the Kerchers, is ridiculous.

I have no idea what you are referring to, my post above was expressing a personal opinion in response to Codyjuneau post. However, please point out where I made any mention of disrespecting the Kercher family?

 

[moodstream]

Machiavelli,

Upthread I requested that you answer a question. Of course, you are under no obligation. The post seems long, but 3/4's of it is restating your own comments. I hope you will grace me with a reply. If not, please note that you refuse ( or should I just assume it?)

In a nutshell, I say that if 'I was there' means 'at the cottage', or if 'I was there' is understood in some other way that incriminates Knox , then conversation must be missing from the transcripts.

Your understanding of 'I was there' = 'the cottage' required you to guess about what that missing conversation could be.

You say the courts also view 'I was there' as implicative, and even the Cassazione ... points out the importance of the conversation in general and urges the Florentine Appellate judges to consider it.

The court has the actual original English transcript, the translation, and indeed the call itself. Without a doubt the court knows in full what is on the transcript, which is the call in its entirety or at least relevant entirety. So the court, esp. the Cassazione knows the truth.

My question to you Machiavelli is, because the court knows the truth, and the correct attribution for 'I was there', then, either relevant information is missing from the transcripts available to us, the public, or the court is maliciously mischaracterizing the evidence to falsely implicate Knox in a clear display of its prejudice against her - Yes or No?

What other option could there be?

 

[Supernaut]

I have no idea what you are referring to, my post above was expressing a personal opinion in response to Codyjuneau post. However, please point out where I made any mention of disrespecting the Kercher family?

Do you know what implicit means?

 

[Grinder]

I have no idea what you are referring to, my post above was expressing a personal opinion in response to Codyjuneau post. However, please point out where I made any mention of disrespecting the Kercher family?

No you didn't but that has been a theme of the PGP for years and your comment had that flavor.

Do you always think of the family of Alice Hathaway when Richard Jewell is discussed and what the system did to him?

 

[anglolawyer]

Thanks moodstream. It's pretty obvious, is it not?

Not to me. Where in the preceding exchanges is there anything to which her 'I was there' remark relates? I don't follow. If Edda, say, had said 'they're trying to pressure you to say you weren't with Raffaele' and she then said 'I was there. I cannot lie' it would be completely clear.

Still, I noted that Dempsey also confirms Amanda's account that her explanation was accepted by Micheli. The opposite construction makes absolutely no sense, that she would say, and be understood by her parents to say, she was at her place but that her parents would not react to that is ridiculous.

 

[Briars]

Thanks Dan O.

It is interesting that only Curatolo could see the kids. Costumed kids all over the place waiting for buses that weren't running, regular kiosk customers of the kiosk and the kiosk employee yet not a one saw the highly unusual couple, how strange. He saw but couldn't hear the horrific scream that penetrated through walls and double-paned windows because of the highway like traffic, but that same traffic didn't stop Nara and even the later arriving neighbor from hearing footsteps and even being able to discern gravel from pavement.

Yes, yes, the traffic was heavy and loud. No , no it wasn't heavy and loud. Depends on what is being contended by the same person.

You are bored by this topic but you keep on saying things that show you know nothing of the position of the piazza compared to the open parking lot. Comparing a passing car on a road near Nara's to four lanes converging at a major intersection near Grimana is the first area you might want to examine. Then examine the kiosk that sold mostly papers in the day.You will learn that the vendor inside the kiosk wouldn't have a side view to see the bench or more importantly the view to the gate.The Piazza is also much further from the cottage and apart from the traffic there is also a 3 story building blocking the way. So even before we talk of screams understand that the barking in the valley and the new tenants talking outside the cottage cannot be heard from Grimana but can be heard from the parking lot easily.