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

[Grinder]

The burglary was real. The murder was staged to cover up for the broken window.

Finally someone gets it.

 

[acbytesla]

Maybe with the language difference and all, Rudy may have thought he made a date when Meredith didn't. Remember some people here have maintained that she was so drunk at 5 am that one drink equivalent remained 16 -18 hours later. Shaky testified that he had to give the british girls rides home because they couldn't walk.



And that's what Rudy would have feared. I think that Meredith could have forgotten or didn't want to mention it, because I think she was very private. She perhaps would have been embarrassed to be dating two at once or just didn't think you busybody Coulsdon girls could keep your mouths shut.

Look to me it's possible. To me it's another possible explanation for the initial police opinion and the "staged" window. It also fits with Rudy's first story in that it would explain the intruder.

Not withstanding Occam it is not always the case that the simplest explanation is the correct one. Just like Locard was wrong that something is always left behind.

You're not wrong Grinder. All of your rationale is sound. It is possible. That said, I think the weight of the available evidence points in the other direction. That this was a burglary that morphed into a sex crime. In terms of odds,

I think your theory is say 5 percent possible compared to the 95 percent probability of the burglary scenario.

 

[acbytesla]

The burglary was real. The murder was staged to cover up for the broken window.

Is it wrong for me to laugh at this comment? It's funny but it feels wrong.

 

[LondonJohn]

Did you ever read the early reports in which the police speculated it might be a person she had met at a party the night before? This was partially based on the fact that there was no sign of rape or forced sex.

Yes, but there's also another explanation as to why there were no visible signs of rape of forced sex: the sexual assault proper only started once Meredith was incapable of defending herself or resisting. And that's what I think happened: Guede initiated the sexual assault (possibly by putting his hands inside Meredith's jeans and/or starting to remove them), at which point Meredith screamed and struggled, which resulted in Guede fatally stabbing her in the neck. Once she was incapacitated in this way (and dying fast from shock and blood loss), I think Guede conducted the sexual assault proper - hence no bruising or tearing.

The fact that the british girls didn't remember her meeting anybody doesn't mean much to me.

It means something to me (I think the other girls would likely have noticed or known, one way or another), but you'd be correct to argue that it doesn't in any way constitute EVIDENCE of whether or not Meredith met Guede that night, and/or whether she arranged to meet him on the night of the 1st November. In that respect, it's moot.

He went out with the Spanish girls two nights in a row. The boys downstairs invited him over when they ran into him in town. The guy that set him up for the Skype call was his friend.

The fire and CT are less than proven.

The boy downstairs was growing pot and didn't have the appearance of a choirboy. I won't go into more detail about him except to say he made it clear they didn't have an exclusive relationship.

I suspect that Meredith was more faithful to Silenzi than Silenzi might have been to Meredith - even within the context of a "FB" or "FwB" relationship. But again, that's not evidence one way or the other....

Since when convenient Rudy's statements are believed e.g. TOD/scream, he said he made a date with her.

Ah, I take issue with this argument. This is not a case of arbitrarily choosing to accept some of Guede's statements, and "conveniently" dismissing others as lies. Each statement must instead be judged objectively (well, as objectively as possible) on its own merits, based mainly on Guede's possible motivation for telling the truth or lying in each instance.

Firstly, the statement about the scream at "9.20-9.30ish". Now, Guede was already admitting to having been inside the cottage when the murder was committed, and this would appear to be an undisputed fact. Given that fact, let's imagine two possible scenarios: 1) The murder actually took place at 10.30pm or later; 2) The murder took place at 9.20-9.30pm.

In Scenario 1, it's very hard (I'd say almost impossible) to understand why Guede would have had any motivation to lie and say that Meredith had screamed loudly - coinciding with the attack and stabbing - at 9.20-9.30pm. How could such a lie POSSIBLY be in Guede's self-interest?

However, under Scenario 2, it's logical to suppose that it would be in Guede's self-interest to have explicitly mentioned the scream at 9.20-9.30pm. Why? Because Guede clearly thought (as per his own words) that the scream might have been heard from outside the cottage, and therefore wanted to make sure that his own self-serving version of events would tally with any potential earwitness testimony. It would, for example, have been highly damaging to Guede's version of events if he had said the murder occurred at 11pm, but then earwitnesses had turned up to say they had heard a loud woman's scream coming from inside the cottage at 9.25pm.

Therefore, a rational analysis of Guede's statement about the scream leads to the conclusion that this was probably the truth, since it almost certainly could not have been in Guede's interest to lie about the scream or its timing.

Secondly, let's conduct a similar analysis of Guede's claim to have made a date with Meredith. Now, as you say, it's possible that Guede DID make such a date with Meredith, and was mentioning it since he thought Meredith might have shared this information with her friends.

However, there's a far greater (in my opinion) motivation for Guede to have lied about this: it explains his presence in the cottage that night. Remember that Guede never denied being there (and forensic evidence proved he was there at the time of the murder), and it's hard to conceive of a legitimate reason for Guede to have been there outside of an arranged meeting with Meredith.

I suppose Guede could also have falsely claimed something like "I was passing the cottage and was desperate for the toilet" to exaplain his presence inside the cottage, but I think there's a strong extra reason for Guede to have invented a specific lie about having had a date arranged with Meredith: I think he was worried (correctly, as it turned out) about forensic evidence materialising showing intimate sexual contact between Guede and Meredith. The ONLY way of "explaining" all this - how Guede came to be in the cottage at all, and how he came to have intimate sexual contact with Meredith - is the invention of a lie about having had a date with Meredith.

 

[davefoc]

I think this is proof of a very close relationship between Mignini and Machiavelli,Mignini wrote the letter sent it to the paper and to his payed PR man Machiavelli,who translated and printed on TJMK,whoever calls the shots at the Italian paper have their finger on how the sand is shifting in Italy and decided not to print the letter from this lying framing thug Mignini,who I hope is soon to be scapegoated for the framing of two innocents,who knows maybe it was Mignini who made the phone call to Milan to the police not to charge Rudy with theft and to put him on a train back to Perugia

Is it known that the letter wasn't published before Machiavelli translated it? Is it known that Machiavelli translated it? Even if Machiavelli did translate an unpublished letter from Mignini, the possibility exists that Machiavelli just was one of many people that had access to a Mignini press release. Machiavelli is clearly the best source of information about how he got the letter that he translated. Maybe he could just tell us how he received the Italian version of the letter?

There have been several theories put forth in this thread about the nature of Machiavelli. I will admit to being curious about Machiavelli. For quite awhile I had considered Machiavelli the rough equivalent of the people that argue for conspiracy theories in the JREF forum. But his posts here are considerably more sophisticated than those of the average JREF conspiracy theory advocate, and he/she is doing it in their second language.

I have thought about writing a private note to Machiavelli and asking him about who he is and what his connection to the case is. I am curious. But, I don't know why he would be any more likely to provide me an answer than he would this forum. So I'll ask him here: Machiavelli, to the degree you are comfortable with, would you tell us who you are and what is your connection to this case and the public personalities involved with it?

It also seems like some of the people participating in this thread might have specific knowledge about who Machiavelli is. Perhaps there is a reason that they haven't shared the specifics about how they know that, but if it doesn't violate forum rules perhaps they could post what they know about Machiavelli.

If nothing else, is Machiavelli a man? I have assumed that up to now, but perhaps he/she might be willing to confirm that?

 

[Grinder]

You're not wrong Grinder. All of your rationale is sound. It is possible. That said, I think the weight of the available evidence points in the other direction. That this was a burglary that morphed into a sex crime. In terms of odds,

I think your theory is say 5 percent possible compared to the 95 percent probability of the burglary scenario.

AC you are so full of it! It's at least 6 percent possible.

British student "made date with her killer" Nov. 4, 2007

Officers think Meredith Kercher, 21, left three flatmates to go home alone after watching a film on the night she was murdered because she had arranged to see a man she had met the previous night at a Hallowe'en party.

Police said last night there were indications that she had sex before she was stabbed in the neck. Her attacker locked the bedroom door before fleeing the house and dumping her two mobile phones in a nearby garden.

Commissioner Marco Chiacchiera, who is leading the investigation, said: "The most plausible hypothesis we have is that she met someone at the Hallowe'en party. She expressed a desire to meet him again. She had been to a friend's house on the night she was murdered but decided to make her own way home to meet him."
A forensic team from Rome is now searching the student house, which was left in disarray by the killer. Police sources have not ruled out the possibility that the murder weapon may still be at the scene.
More than 100 Italian police officers are now working on the inquiry, which they say will be "long and exhaustive".
They are checking Miss Kercher's telephone records and have begun examining hours of footage from a CCTV camera in an underground carpark very close to the house. They are also searching a nearby hillside park for the murder weapon.

I'd like to add that the PGP have long made the crazy accusation that Marriott was able to stop all friends of Amanda from telling the truth about her character. Not withstanding that, there were a few that said she had become different while in college.

In the case of Meredith I believe without a doubt that she became purer and better after death, as I hope I will because I'll need it.

 

[acbytesla]

Yes, but there's also another explanation as to why there were no visible signs of rape of forced sex: the sexual assault proper only started once Meredith was incapable of defending herself or resisting. And that's what I think happened: Guede initiated the sexual assault (possibly by putting his hands inside Meredith's jeans and/or starting to remove them), at which point Meredith screamed and struggled, which resulted in Guede fatally stabbing her in the neck. Once she was incapacitated in this way (and dying fast from shock and blood loss), I think Guede conducted the sexual assault proper - hence no bruising or tearing.



It means something to me (I think the other girls would likely have noticed or known, one way or another), but you'd be correct to argue that it doesn't in any way constitute EVIDENCE of whether or not Meredith met Guede that night, and/or whether she arranged to meet him on the night of the 1st November. In that respect, it's moot.




I suspect that Meredith was more faithful to Silenzi than Silenzi might have been to Meredith - even within the context of a "FB" or "FwB" relationship. But again, that's not evidence one way or the other....




Ah, I take issue with this argument. This is not a case of arbitrarily choosing to accept some of Guede's statements, and "conveniently" dismissing others as lies. Each statement must instead be judged objectively (well, as objectively as possible) on its own merits, based mainly on Guede's possible motivation for telling the truth or lying in each instance.

Firstly, the statement about the scream at "9.20-9.30ish". Now, Guede was already admitting to having been inside the cottage when the murder was committed, and this would appear to be an undisputed fact. Given that fact, let's imagine two possible scenarios: 1) The murder actually took place at 10.30pm or later; 2) The murder took place at 9.20-9.30pm.

In Scenario 1, it's very hard (I'd say almost impossible) to understand why Guede would have had any motivation to lie and say that Meredith had screamed loudly - coinciding with the attack and stabbing - at 9.20-9.30pm. How could such a lie POSSIBLY be in Guede's self-interest?

However, under Scenario 2, it's logical to suppose that it would be in Guede's self-interest to have explicitly mentioned the scream at 9.20-9.30pm. Why? Because Guede clearly thought (as per his own words) that the scream might have been heard from outside the cottage, and therefore wanted to make sure that his own self-serving version of events would tally with any potential earwitness testimony. It would, for example, have been highly damaging to Guede's version of events if he had said the murder occurred at 11pm, but then earwitnesses had turned up to say they had heard a loud woman's scream coming from inside the cottage at 9.25pm.

Therefore, a rational analysis of Guede's statement about the scream leads to the conclusion that this was probably the truth, since it almost certainly could not have been in Guede's interest to lie about the scream or its timing.

Secondly, let's conduct a similar analysis of Guede's claim to have made a date with Meredith. Now, as you say, it's possible that Guede DID make such a date with Meredith, and was mentioning it since he thought Meredith might have shared this information with her friends.

However, there's a far greater (in my opinion) motivation for Guede to have lied about this: it explains his presence in the cottage that night. Remember that Guede never denied being there (and forensic evidence proved he was there at the time of the murder), and it's hard to conceive of a legitimate reason for Guede to have been there outside of an arranged meeting with Meredith.

I suppose Guede could also have falsely claimed something like "I was passing the cottage and was desperate for the toilet" to exaplain his presence inside the cottage, but I think there's a strong extra reason for Guede to have invented a specific lie about having had a date arranged with Meredith: I think he was worried (correctly, as it turned out) about forensic evidence materialising showing intimate sexual contact between Guede and Meredith. The ONLY way of "explaining" all this - how Guede came to be in the cottage at all, and how he came to have intimate sexual contact with Meredith - is the invention of a lie about having had a date with Meredith.

LJ, you absolutely articulated my reasoning about the believability of Rudy's statements and you did it ten times better than I did. Thanks.

 

[acbytesla]

AC you are so full of it! It's at least 6 percent possible.

British student "made date with her killer" Nov. 4, 2007

Officers think Meredith Kercher, 21, left three flatmates to go home alone after watching a film on the night she was murdered because she had arranged to see a man she had met the previous night at a Hallowe'en party.

Police said last night there were indications that she had sex before she was stabbed in the neck. Her attacker locked the bedroom door before fleeing the house and dumping her two mobile phones in a nearby garden.

Commissioner Marco Chiacchiera, who is leading the investigation, said: "The most plausible hypothesis we have is that she met someone at the Hallowe'en party. She expressed a desire to meet him again. She had been to a friend's house on the night she was murdered but decided to make her own way home to meet him."
A forensic team from Rome is now searching the student house, which was left in disarray by the killer. Police sources have not ruled out the possibility that the murder weapon may still be at the scene.
More than 100 Italian police officers are now working on the inquiry, which they say will be "long and exhaustive".
They are checking Miss Kercher's telephone records and have begun examining hours of footage from a CCTV camera in an underground carpark very close to the house. They are also searching a nearby hillside park for the murder weapon.

I'd like to add that the PGP have long made the crazy accusation that Marriott was able to stop all friends of Amanda from telling the truth about her character. Not withstanding that, there were a few that said she had become different while in college.

In the case of Meredith I believe without a doubt that she became purer and better after death, as I hope I will because I'll need it.

OK, 6 percent. Hey Grinder, I really think your theory was worth reviewing and it does have merits and Occam's razor doesn't always apply. I can't rule it out regardless of how much I have tried to discredit it.

 

[davefoc]

Forensic analysis of the broken window.

Why hasn't the broken window glass been submitted to forensic analysis to determine the direction that it was broken from. Perhaps this technology is not common in Italy, but at least according to various descriptions on the internet it is possible to determine the direction that glass was broken from by American forensic scientists that specialize in glass analysis.

If it was proven that the glass was broken from the outside, how would that affect the case. A lot of the prosecutions case seems to hinge on the notion that Rudy was let into the apartment by his co-conspirators. If Rudy went through the window that seems like it might come close to a stand alone piece of evidence that he didn't have co-conspirators.

 

[LondonJohn]

Chris has said something but he certainly has not disproven what the experts determined.

The same coroner that most all here rely on for contents of the duodenum is the one that first determined she had .43g/l in her blood at death. This was confirmed by a second forensic expert by testing the liver.

He stated that the results of the toxicological analyses revealed the absence of psychotropic drugs and a blood alcohol level of 0.43 grams/litre


He then went on to detail the outcome of the alcohol level test. He recalled that the level of alcohol found in Perugia at the Institute of Forensic Medicine was 0.43 grams per litre; the [level] that had been [152] detected in the blood, however, at the headquarters of the expert report commissioned for the pre-trial hearing [incidente probatorio] was 2.72 grams per litre. On the basis of such contrasting results, a check was carried out on the alcohol percentage in other regions: in the gastric content and then in the liver. A value substantially of zero had been found in the gastric content and, he stressed, ‚in the gastric content the quantity of alcohol is frighteningly greater than in the blood‛ (page 106). In the liver too a very slight quantity had been detected, equal to 0.2, which was comparable from the pharmacokinetic point of view with the 0.43 verified by Dr. Lalli at the Institute of Forensic Medicine

I would challenge anyone and Chris in particular to list all the things they accept of Lalli's and what they reject. I don't believe that I have or do doubt anything in Lalli's testimony.

The absolute best evidence says she had a drink in her system at death. As I see it there are these possible ways; she was so drunk it was still in her system, she had more than one drink after waking up and going to the pizza party, she drank at the party and the girls didn't notice or lied or she had a drink after she returned home.

I have always thought the alcohol needs to be explained but it gets in the way of KISS and who wants to be called stupid except you know who?

I believe the blood alcohol readings were correct, and that Meredith did indeed have some alcohol in her system at death, corresponding to around 1 unit of ingested alcohol.

I further believe that this was residual blood alcohol, resulting from a very large ingestion of alcohol by Meredith the previous night (Halloween). I believe it's entirely feasible that Meredith ingested something between 25 and 30 units of alcohol on the night of 31st October/1st November, which - given known ranges of dissipation of blood alcohol over time - could easily have led to the identified level of residual blood alcohol at 9.30pm on 1st November (the time - I believe - of Meredith's death).

I believe it's factually correct to state that Meredith Kercher had a history as a heavy binge consumer of alcohol (IIRC, she had been cautioned by police in the UK for being drunk and disorderly, and there is ample anecdotal evidence of the girls' binge drinking in Italy). I say this not as any sort of value judgement, but as a pointer to the plausibility of Meredith having drunk sufficient quantities of alcohol at the Halloween party for there still to be residual alcohol in her system at her time of death. By contrast, had Meredith been known as a light drinker of alcohol, then the residual blood alcohol theory would carry far less weight.

 

[katy_did]

Maybe with the language difference and all, Rudy may have thought he made a date when Meredith didn't. Remember some people here have maintained that she was so drunk at 5 am that one drink equivalent remained 16 -18 hours later. Shaky testified that he had to give the british girls rides home because they couldn't walk.

It wouldn't even need to be a 'date' as such; theoretically, Rudy might just have had a conversation with Meredith the previous evening, mentioned to her that he'd see her at her house some time and stopped by the next evening in the hope she'd be there. He stages the burglary because he's worried she might've mentioned their conversation to someone else or that someone might have seen them talking. Or as you say, he could've read more into the conversation than was there, with the language barrier and the loud nightclub music getting in the way of the conversation...

I think it's much, much less likely than the burglary gone wrong scenario (especially with the new evidence as to how easy it would've been to break in), but it's not impossible. The strangest and most revealing thing is the prosecution's insistence that Meredith couldn't possibly have ever opened the door to Rudy herself, which I think is just part of the good/bad girl dichotomy they were going for with regard to Meredith and Amanda. She certainly could have opened the door to Rudy and either invited him in out of politeness or he could have forced his way in. This seems to be exactly what happened when Vincent Tabak murdered Jo Yeates, for example (he strangled her in her flat, so he must have got in somehow, whether because she invited him in or he forced his way in). Seems bizarre that they completely ruled out this possibility, at least after the initial stages of the investigation.

 

[Grinder]

The early reports had her dead much earlier than what it morphed into to fit the witnesses that came out later. The time she arrived home was known early on and the police theory fit with a 9:20-30 scream as it fit with Amanda's accusation. Rudy would have had to make the alleged scream fit with Meredith's and Amanda's arrivals.

By the time Rudy talked scream much had been written about the police theories and at that time earlier looked better than later.

We don't even know if she was able to get out a scream. Personally I think the sex started normally and at some point something went wrong and she was killed quickly.

 

[Grinder]

Forensic analysis of the broken window.

Why hasn't the broken window glass been submitted to forensic analysis to determine the direction that it was broken from. Perhaps this technology is not common in Italy, but at least according to various descriptions on the internet it is possible to determine the direction that glass was broken from by American forensic scientists that specialize in glass analysis.

If it was proven that the glass was broken from the outside, how would that affect the case. A lot of the prosecutions case seems to hinge on the notion that Rudy was let into the apartment by his co-conspirators. If Rudy went through the window that seems like it might come close to a stand alone piece of evidence that he didn't have co-conspirators.

The window was definitely broken from the outside or lots of glass would have been outside and wouldn't have been strewn inside. The question remains who threw the rock from the outside.

 

[katy_did]

Yes, but there's also another explanation as to why there were no visible signs of rape of forced sex: the sexual assault proper only started once Meredith was incapable of defending herself or resisting. And that's what I think happened: Guede initiated the sexual assault (possibly by putting his hands inside Meredith's jeans and/or starting to remove them), at which point Meredith screamed and struggled, which resulted in Guede fatally stabbing her in the neck. Once she was incapacitated in this way (and dying fast from shock and blood loss), I think Guede conducted the sexual assault proper - hence no bruising or tearing.

If the bolded part is right, LJ, there's no particular evidence that the sexual assault continued much beyond that point anyway, since Guede's DNA would've been found inside Meredith's body in this scenario as well. I've always thought the idea that the assault went on for any length of time after the stabbing to be pretty unlikely.

 

[acbytesla]

Forensic analysis of the broken window.

Why hasn't the broken window glass been submitted to forensic analysis to determine the direction that it was broken from. Perhaps this technology is not common in Italy, but at least according to various descriptions on the internet it is possible to determine the direction that glass was broken from by American forensic scientists that specialize in glass analysis.

If it was proven that the glass was broken from the outside, how would that affect the case. A lot of the prosecutions case seems to hinge on the notion that Rudy was let into the apartment by his co-conspirators. If Rudy went through the window that seems like it might come close to a stand alone piece of evidence that he didn't have co-conspirators.

Do your really think that glass was saved?? Is any of the glass listed as a an exhibit? Lastly, do you think they are actually interested in following this line??

 

[Grinder]

It wouldn't even need to be a 'date' as such; theoretically, Rudy might just have had a conversation with Meredith the previous evening, mentioned to her that he'd see her at her house some time and stopped by the next evening in the hope she'd be there. He stages the burglary because he's worried she might've mentioned their conversation to someone else or that someone might have seen them talking. Or as you say, he could've read more into the conversation than was there, with the language barrier and the loud nightclub music getting in the way of the conversation...

I think it's much, much less likely than the burglary gone wrong scenario (especially with the new evidence as to how easy it would've been to break in), but it's not impossible. The strangest and most revealing thing is the prosecution's insistence that Meredith couldn't possibly have ever opened the door to Rudy herself, which I think is just part of the good/bad girl dichotomy they were going for with regard to Meredith and Amanda. She certainly could have opened the door to Rudy and either invited him in out of politeness or he could have forced his way in. This seems to be exactly what happened when Vincent Tabak murdered Jo Yeates, for example (he strangled her in her flat, so he must have got in somehow, whether because she invited him in or he forced his way in). Seems bizarre that they completely ruled out this possibility, at least after the initial stages of the investigation.

Thanks. I've tried to make the points that it have just been in his mind, just a meetup or a date but only for a drink. You add the that he could have just decided to drop by but had been seen talking and worried, which certainly is possible.

I originally formed this theory because I didn't think that Amanda and Raf were the only ones that possibly staged. I never believed they staged mainly because it fit so closely to Rudy's alleged MO. I always enjoyed the crazy PGP saying that the kids might of read about the lawyers' office burglary or that Rudy had told them how he broke into places. Maybe RW can find that in comments of Frank's blog.

I would not bet on this but believe that it shouldn't have dropped but once they got Amanda to "confess" they couldn't go back.

 

[acbytesla]

Thanks. I've tried to make the points that it have just been in his mind, just a meetup or a date but only for a drink. You add the that he could have just decided to drop by but had been seen talking and worried, which certainly is possible.

I originally formed this theory because I didn't think that Amanda and Raf were the only ones that possibly staged. I never believed they staged mainly because it fit so closely to Rudy's alleged MO. I always enjoyed the crazy PGP saying that the kids might of read about the lawyers' office burglary or that Rudy had told them how he broke into places. Maybe RW can find that in comments of Frank's blog.

I would not bet on this but believe that it shouldn't have dropped but once they got Amanda to "confess" they couldn't go back.

I admit Grinder, that I haven't bought into this theory. I've never been convinced that you did either. I have seen it as another way to have the burglary being staged so both sides can save face.

The fact is that I HAVE NEVER bought into the burglary was staged by anyone meme. I have always been convinced that it was a burglary to start with. Not that Rudy had to climb through the window, just that he broke the window as part an possible to see if anyone was home. Rudy's tale of being on the toilet when all of this happened and the digestion evidence makes me believe that Rudy was in the cottage when Meredith returned home. He broke in...looked around and then made himself comfortable. He was brazen he then approached Meredith while she was in her bedroom and quickly placed the knife at her throat. She didn't resist and then started to sexaually assault her and then something happened that made him kill her.

Too simple?? Maybe, but I think it fits the evidence and the timeline and makes the most sense. Sure, it could easily be wrong.

 

[Grinder]

I admit Grinder, that I haven't bought into this theory. I've never been convinced that you did either. I have seen it as another way to have the burglary being staged so both sides can save face.

I think the defense should be able to put forward various other possibilities without having to prove any or fully believe in them themselves.

I think that the most likely scenario is that Rudy threw the rock and waited. In the meantime Meredith came home and he was let in or he forced his way in. He made his advances and she rebuffed him and he overreacted and killed her.

I also think it is possible that he had an accomplice and they were both driven there by Koko. The accomplice could be part of the Albanian drug cartel and might have been the actual murderer. The window might have been broken before or after entering the cottage.

Btw, I doubt the shutters were ever closed so a rock heaved through would not have required climbing and opening them.

 

[LondonJohn]

If the bolded part is right, LJ, there's no particular evidence that the sexual assault continued much beyond that point anyway, since Guede's DNA would've been found inside Meredith's body in this scenario as well. I've always thought the idea that the assault went on for any length of time after the stabbing to be pretty unlikely.

I'm not suggesting that any assault/rape went on for a significant period of time after the stabbing. However, I do think that it's probable that some sort of sexual contact and assault did take place after the stabbing, while Meredith lay bleeding to death.

I think that for three reasons: 1) I think it likely that Meredith would have reacted as soon as Guede made his sexual intentions clear - but before he got as far as intimate genital contact; 2) there's evidence that Meredith's jeans were removed only after she had been stabbed (she was almost certainly stabbed while she was on all fours facing the wardrobe, but her jeans were likely removed only once she was on her back); 3) there's clear evidence that Meredith's bra was removed after she had been stabbed (the aspirated blood pattern was found both on the bra cup material and on her skin underneath the area that would have been covered by the bra cup).

All of this of course comes with the caveat that only Guede really knows exactly what he did to Meredith that night, and when he did it. And it has little bearing on the judicial aspects of the case (excepting the fact that Guede should have been sentenced more severely for the sexual aspects of his crime). This is only a theory based on the known evidence, as part of a more general search for the truth of what happened in the cottage that night. It may be totally correct, partially correct, or totally incorrect.

 

[tsig]

I, for one, am willing to let go of the whole meme around Mignini calling the murder a demonic ritual. He, you or someone may be able to convince me eventually that Mignini never said anything about "satanic orgies on the occasion of Halloween for Amanda, and ritual blood sacrifices as a worship to the Devil in the Monster of Florence case…” (although I reserve the right to see the transcripts of his complaints and his arguments at trial before changing my mind).

I would rather focus on what he says here:



To hell with the devil, but NO ONE will EVER convince me that this case is not about Mignini's personal sexual obsessions preoccupations.

He put her in jail because he liked her tail?