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

[codyjuneau]

.
Do we know Meredith had her pants on when she was attacked, or is it just surmised?

Same for her shoes?

ETA: Never mind, I see katy_did already asked.
ETA: Well, sorta.
ETA: Never mind the never mind. The question is on again.
.

 

[katy_did]

I agree that other scenarios are less likely than the interrupted burglary-gone-wrong Charlie has described a number of times. However, I continue to hold to a theory that allows for a "kinder, gentler" Rudy, regardless of how unlikely it is.

I still don't see enough evidence showing Rudy was in Filomena's room. I also don't see why, if he were in the middle of a burglary, he would feel like he had to take out Meredith for catching him. He could just jump out the window or wait until she went to her room and closed the door. He had little to fear from getting caught -- he had gotten away with several burglaries already. The exception might be if she walked in when he was sitting at the kitchen table drinking orange juice and she justifiably freaked out.

I don't see any reason why Rudy and Meredith couldn't have just crossed paths as Meredith came home. Maybe Rudy was near the cottage or maybe he was out wandering around. He asked Meredith if he could use the bathroom and she said okay. She did know him. I think it is more likely that he drank orange juice before going to the bathroom, but that would have to mean that Meredith offered him some juice, which doesn't seem that likely. He could have poured the juice for himself after using the bathroom.

I agree, partly (I also don't fully agree with aspects of Charlie's scenario). I think Rudy's first impulse on realizing someone had come home would be to try to escape, not to sneak up to Meredith's door, run in and attack her. So it seems more likely to me that she encountered him as he was trying to leave and somehow things escalated from there. Perhaps she heard him trying to open the door and came out of her room to see what was going on.

One random scenario I've considered would explain the mysterious lamp: perhaps Meredith had gone to her room and had partly undressed for bed, when for whatever reason (and thinking she was alone in the house) she went next door to borrow Amanda's lamp. Coming out of the room she encountered Rudy looking for a way out of the cottage, screamed and ran back to her room, dropping the lamp near the door as she tried to close it. Rudy ran after her to try to keep her quiet, probably with some idea of explaining his presence there, and again things escalated from that point.

But I do agree that it's also possible they crossed paths as Meredith came home, and really not all that unlikely she might have allowed him in, knowing he was a friend of Giacomo's. As Grinder says, there does seem to be an element of needing to see Meredith as the 'good girl' in all this (inevitably making Amanda the 'bad girl' who let him in), as if letting him in would say something negative about her. In reality of course, it's the kind of gesture that happens everyday, almost always without anything bad happening.

This adds a significant twist to the possibilities for what happened. If Rudy saw Meredith in the process of undressing, that might have given him ideas. This is not helpful to my theory, though, as I doubt Meredith would start to undress if she knew Rudy was in the house.

Anyway, my "kinder, gentler" Rudy theory is that after his unsuccessful attempt at seducing her ended in a brutal attack, he took her phones and locked her door because she was still alive when he left; he assumed she was not mortally wounded and she would try to seek help, and he wanted to delay that. Due to a sudden twinge of regret, he threw the rock through the window as he left, hoping the noise would alert someone to the possibility of trouble. That's the same reason he left the phones in a place where people would find them easily, rather than disposing of them more effectively.

Yes, if Meredith was partly undressed when they ran into one another it would help explain why the assault turned sexual. Not that it can't be quite easily explained even without that, obviously. But as you say, that's only a possibility if Meredith didn't know Rudy was there.

The only flaw I can see in your broken window theory is that the shutters were found pulled together, and why would Rudy have bothered doing that from outside the house? Especially if his intention was to alert people to possible trouble.

ETA: Don't you think the towels show remorse?

I agree with you there. The alternative theory - that he carefully placed towels so he didn't get blood on himself during a post-mortem sexual assault - has always seemed unlikely to me, an attempt to simplify the crime by turning Rudy into an absolutely calculating, cold-blooded psychopath (who nonetheless stopped short of an actual rape). Since he presumably didn't enter the house intending to kill anyone, conflicting and panicked emotions afterwards seem more probable. I guess my theory falls somewhere between your 'kinder, gentler' Rudy and the 'cold-blooded psychopath' theory of Rudy which predominates...

 

[Kaosium]

Are you sure they would have had to have thrown the rock? Couldn't they have just bashed the window with the rock? ETA: I know about the rock mark on the shutter, but I as a little surprised by that. I wasn't sure that a rock thrown from the outside wouldn't lose enough energy just from hitting the glass that it wouldn't leave a mark on the shutter unless the rock was thrown pretty hard.

There's a video of the demonstration of it online, I can dig it up if you wish. The rock hits the inner shutter and blows it open, then drops to the floor right inside the window. The trailing glass and that picked up by the vortex is what goes into the room, the rest bouncing back towards the outside and landing on the interior part and the outside sill.

I dug up that video and now looking at it closely I can't tell for sure if the rock actually impacts the inner shutter, in fact it looks more like it doesn't. Perhaps that mark wasn't from the rock, or maybe Rudy threw his harder.

Come to think of it, Massei might have had the rock used your way and then placed on the ground, ignoring the fragments that suggest it landed there harshly. I don't recall for certain offhand, but I'm sure if Platonov is reading this he's eager to remind me!

I looked this up as well, Massei does suggest here that the rock was just placed there, however in the very same passage--and throughout the rest of the chapter--he refers to it as being thrown.

This situation, like all the other glaring inconsistencies, is adequately and satisfactorily explained if one supposes that the rock was thrown from the inside of the room, with the two shutters pulled inwards so that they blocked the pieces of glass from falling to the ground below. Once the glass had been broken from inside, the rock was set down at some place in the room, and the shutters were pushed towards the outside, being thus opened from within the room.

At any rate this is the passage that defeated me, I'd looked at the pictures months before but wasn't referring to one while reading it and had never really noticed there were two sets of shutters and was entirely unfamiliar with the concept, as I was also regarding windows that pull in like that. Thus it left me totally mystified and with the vague idea he had the rock thrown towards the outside and bouncing off the outer shutter and the glass ricocheting straight back.

Here's how Massei explains the prosecution theory on the breaking of the glass:

Indeed, if one supposes that the stone was thrown from the inside with the shutters pulled closed (as they must have been according to statements cited above), but with the casement holding the pane somewhat open, with the inner shutter behind it, then here is a situation analogous to that of throwing the stone from the outside (the rock would hit the window in the same place as if it came from the outside), and under the shock of the large stone, because of the resistance of the inner shutter behind the window-pane (the shield effect as one might say), the pieces of glass would necessarily fall down on the windowsill both inside and outside (considering the casement as having being only slightly open, and thus the smashed pane positioned near to the windowsill).

The presence of the shutters pulled inwards, as described by Romanelli, would have prevented the pieces of glass from falling to the ground below, as indeed they did not, but as they surely would have had the stone been thrown from the outside. As for the presence of glass in Romanelli's room, the violence of the blow, the characteristics of the glass (which was rather thin as indicated by Romanelli and Pasquali), the large rock used, and finally the shield effect caused by the inner shutter hanging half-open behind the glass pane [41] (a position of the inner shutter which corresponds to the scratch on it visible in the photos) give an adequate explanation of the distribution of the glass.

(formatting mine)

 

[Kaosium]

I guess my theory falls somewhere between your 'kinder, gentler' Rudy and the 'cold-blooded psychopath' theory of Rudy which predominates...

I have some trouble with that myself, the towels may well have been as he said himself, to stop the bleeding having done something he regretted in the heat of the moment, perhaps from fear or anger.

But then again, there's the putative semen stain, just how did that come about and how does it fit in any scenario? If it wasn't the result of something beforehand that was consensual--and I really doubt it was--there's no way that comes out being anything but macabre. He took care to empty her purse of valuables as well; then there's the dancing afterward, some remorse.

One explanation is that Rudy was wired on something a lot stronger than hash. Thoughtful said something about her son-in-law (who knew Rudy) saying Rudy was into the harder drugs sometimes, and was something of a 'facilitator' for students as he knew how to access them.

 

[katy_did]

I have some trouble with that myself, the towels may well have been as he said himself, to stop the bleeding having done something he regretted in the heat of the moment, perhaps from fear or anger.

But then again, there's the putative semen stain, just how did that come about and how does it fit in any scenario? If it wasn't the result of something beforehand that was consensual--and I really doubt it was--there's no way that comes out being anything but macabre. He took care to empty her purse of valuables as well; then there's the dancing afterward, some remorse.

One explanation is that Rudy was wired on something a lot stronger than hash. Thoughtful said something about her son-in-law (who knew Rudy) saying Rudy was into the harder drugs sometimes, and was something of a 'facilitator' for students as he knew how to access them.

Yeah, if the stain does turn out to be semen it would certainly change things. Even so, it would still be problematic for the post-mortem sexual assault theory, because Meredith was lying over both the stain and the shoe print which smeared it. So both of those must have arrived on the pillow at some earlier stage.

I'm not quite convinced that it is semen though - or at any rate, that it's Rudy's - mostly because if it were I think Rudy would've made something up to account for it being there, as he did with his DNA. He already claimed they were heavy petting, so it's not like he needed to change his story all that much.

I agree on the possibility of harder drugs - it would certainly make some of the more extreme of Rudy's alleged actions seem more plausible.

 

[davefoc]

...[post above]

Thanks Kaosium. I reread the sections you quoted from Massei several times and I still didn't get the logic.

The window I envision is a casement window that opens inward with external and internal shutters. The claim seems to be that it can be determined that the rock was thrown at the window from the inside because the position of the inner shutters would have prevented the glass from falling to the ground.

How do they know what the position of the interior shutters was when the rock was thrown?

I guess part of there claim is that some of the glass didn't fall to the ground because the shutters served to keep it in the frame. But in the pictures I have seen a fair amount of the window was busted out.

They claim that the rock was placed on the ground after it was thrown. Why was it necessary to place the rock on the ground, wouldn't it have just fallen down after striking the glass?

The claim didn't address the bag which is shown in one of the images that appears to have been knocked down by the trajectory of the thrown rock.

The claim also didn't mention the damage to the shutter which appears like it might have been caused by the thrown rock.

Maybe there are translation problems with what you quoted or maybe its just too late for me, but I just get what they were talking about.

 

[katy_did]

Extremely interesting that already on Nov 4 the police have seemed to understand or at least make up the exact story that Guede eventually uses...almost verbatim. Met at a party, left 3 mates to go home to date, had sex before she was killed (? why is this clue always ignored...she was fully clothed when attacked?) This should be enough to fairly accurately conclude that she did not have a date and she was not raped before she was killed! In fact as unlikely and hard for us to imagine another sequence, the evidence seems to prove that MK was sexually attacked certainly after she was mortally wounded and though not a good time stamp on any sort of penetration it seems pretty clear that this happened after or quite soon to her death. In any case well after she is unconscious, although involuntary coughing reflex may have been occurring for a very short time.

Evidence for the highlighted part, Randy? One of the defence experts (Introna, I think) argued that Meredith was in the process of undressing when Rudy attacked her: he said some of her clothes (e.g. her jeans, which were next to the bed) had been placed on the bed and then fell on the floor when the duvet was pulled off, and that her sneakers had been placed in front of the wardrobe where there was a shoe rack. There was very little blood on her jeans and socks, and while there was quite a lot on her jacket, it was lying in a pool of blood, and may have been used to wipe up blood before Rudy went for the towels.

Even leaving all that aside, I can't see how being fully-dressed when she was attacked rules out either the date scenario, or proves the assault was carried out after the stabbing.

The truth about Guede seems to be that he raped a dead or almost dead body. This bloody clothing evidence tells us that story even though no one including police or prosecutor seems to have bothered looking into that at all. Or perhaps they did in Guedes trial but since we have nothing on that we can only guess about that.

This level of depravity is something "special" and odd. Something rare like a Dahmer or Bundy or Rader. TO find this level of sick and sadistic in 3 relative strangers such as AK, RS and RG would certainly be something for the record books. Instead we have a circus of clowns trying to sell the world that this is normal in Italy I guess. All the time 3 people get together and kill someone and basically bleed them out and then in this bloody mess they rape, or play with the genitals of the deceased. And as strange as that may seem and even though the evidence backing this theory is completely missing...it is still within the realm of what in Italy? It almost has to be satanic worshipers no? It could never be a lone killer...she had only 40 or so defensive wounds. Someone must have held her...except there is zero evidence of that, meanwhile it is a simple matter to see this quick attack and stabbing incapacitate someone so quickly as to render a defense by a tiny girl impossible...but not in Italy apparently.

Exactly, that sort of depravity is rare. Charlie mentioned a couple of cases to me over on IIP a while ago, but when I looked into them they were quite different to this one: both involved men who set out deliberately to kill, for one thing (one of them said he did it because he "wanted to kill a woman"). If I thought Rudy entered the house because he "wanted to kill a woman", I'd have far less difficulty believing he acted in such a sadistic, cold and calculating way after doing so.

Rudy had no history of violence or sadism; no one's even come forward to say he used to kick their puppy as a kid or fried insects with a magnifying glass. What is true is that he was increasingly involved in criminal activity, and was becoming willing to put himself in situations where he might have to use violence and was prepared to use it, as his carrying a knife showed. All the same, it's a step from carrying a knife during a burglary to actually using it to kill someone (though clearly not as big a step as it would be for Amanda and Raffaele) and a further big step from there to the sort of depravity it's alleged happened here. So if there are two scenarios, one involving Rudy behaving like a cornered burglar in a situation of escalating violence, the other likening him to Jeffrey Dahmer, I'm inclined to go with the first unless there's convincing evidence for the second.

 

[Antony]

He has described himself as an academic with a background in theater, and that seems to fit the style and personality he displays here. He is an educated person, certainly, but he takes a dogmatic stance on everything and simply denies whatever facts impede his views.

I don't think he started with any connection to anyone involved in the case, although he may have established such connections by now. I suspect his interest is mainly driven by his political allegiance. He generally sees the Italian judiciary as a force against corruption and right-wing thuggery. I have a primitive understanding of where he is coming from on this. But his heroes have feet of clay, and in this case, they are simply wrong and refuse to admit it.

If you are old enough to remember the 1980s, and ever had the misfortune to engage in conversation with someone who supported the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, I think the dynamic is roughly similar. However one felt about Reagan's policy, Daniel Ortega made for a piss-poor hero. His admirers could not see that at the time.

Charlie, you won't win any friends or gain any credibility by trying to represent this as a left-wing/right-wing confrontation. "Left" and "right" in this context are in any case labels, and your apparent understanding of them seems incongruous to me, at least. Far from the Italian judiciary being "a force against right-wing thuggery", it looks to me to be a classic manifestation of the right-wing authoritarian establishment.

As for linking Machiavelli to supporters of the Sandinistas, I really don't think that's one that stands up. Let's not open that particular de-rail.

 

[Kaosium]

Thanks Kaosium. I reread the sections you quoted from Massei several times and I still didn't get the logic.

The window I envision is a casement window that opens inward with external and internal shutters. The claim seems to be that it can be determined that the rock was thrown at the window from the inside because the position of the inner shutters would have prevented the glass from falling to the ground.


How do they know what the position of the interior shutters was when the rock was thrown?

Heh, he switched to talking about the outer shutters there, he just didn't tell you that part. He's saying the purported lack of glass on the ground outside 'must' have been because the outer shutters were closed when the rock was thrown.

I guess part of there claim is that some of the glass didn't fall to the ground because the shutters served to keep it in the frame. But in the pictures I have seen a fair amount of the window was busted out.

They claim that the rock was placed on the ground after it was thrown. Why was it necessary to place the rock on the ground, wouldn't it have just fallen down after striking the glass?

The claim didn't address the bag which is shown in one of the images that appears to have been knocked down by the trajectory of the thrown rock.

The claim also didn't mention the damage to the shutter which appears like it might have been caused by the thrown rock.

Maybe there are translation problems with what you quoted or maybe its just too late for me, but I just get what they were talking about.

Good questions, I suppose it's much easier to make silly theories if you don't have to take into account all the evidence.

Incidentally, most of the pictures focus on the part of the window that's broken, however only the bottom third or so of the window was cracked. Plus odds are some of the pieces from the bottom that were missing didn't come out with the rock, but were taken out by Rudy Guede to facilitate his reaching in and unlatching the window. There's not much reason to think there was that much (or any) glass that went backward over the sill.

 

[Grinder]

Extremely interesting that already on Nov 4 the police have seemed to understand or at least make up the exact story that Guede eventually uses...almost verbatim. Met at a party, left 3 mates to go home to date, had sex before she was killed (? why is this clue always ignored...she was fully clothed when attacked?) This should be enough to fairly accurately conclude that she did not have a date and she was not raped before she was killed!

The coroner concluded that she had engaged in sexual activity but there were no signs of rape -tearing etc. I don't believe that signs of rape were ever found. Back in the middle of the last century young people would start out with clothes on and sometimes people even put their hands inside the clothes of others.

In fact as unlikely and hard for us to imagine another sequence, the evidence seems to prove that MK was sexually attacked certainly after she was mortally wounded and though not a good time stamp on any sort of penetration it seems pretty clear that this happened after or quite soon to her death. In any case well after she is unconscious, although involuntary coughing reflex may have been occurring for a very short time.

I don't recall the detail of what the public was told of forced sex. I know there were questions about Vasoline and anal sex.

The truth about Guede seems to be that he raped a dead or almost dead body. This bloody clothing evidence tells us that story even though no one including police or prosecutor seems to have bothered looking into that at all. Or perhaps they did in Guedes trial but since we have nothing on that we can only guess about that.

I think there is a reason the police say the scene was staged to look like a rape.

She was breathing or trying to shortly before and right after her bra was removed. This would be an remarkable and terrible sound of gasping and wheezing and coughing...not something that leads to sexual ideas for the average mind. Guede will kill again...I have little doubt of that.

When shown what I must have forgotten I will undoubtedly change my position, but I don't recall evidence of this after stabbing sex.

The point that her pants must have been off before she was seriously stabbed makes sense to me.

I still think the sex game went to a sexual attack to fit their theory of the murders not because the evidence indicated it. The police specifically stated that Meredith was caught in this sex game to no fault of her own and when she didn't play they killed her.

 

[Grinder]

Originally Posted by Grinder
.
Grinder, I am just a curious spectator on this issue, but the link you gave also states:

Quote:
It’s important to remember that BAC can continue to rise for a period of time after the last drink is consumed.

This sounds significant, since the BAC cannot decline, until it has stopped increasing, obviously.

Cody honestly I don't understand your point. The article is pointing out that when drinking the BAC will go up after a drink even while decreasing the BAC that was already in the system.

 

[acbytesla]

The truth about Guede seems to be that he raped a dead or almost dead body. This bloody clothing evidence tells us that story even though no one including police or prosecutor seems to have bothered looking into that at all. Or perhaps they did in Guedes trial but since we have nothing on that we can only guess about that.

This level of depravity is something "special" and odd. Something rare like a Dahmer or Bundy or Rader. TO find this level of sick and sadistic in 3 relative strangers such as AK, RS and RG would certainly be something for the record books. Instead we have a circus of clowns trying to sell the world that this is normal in Italy I guess. All the time 3 people get together and kill someone and basically bleed them out and then in this bloody mess they rape, or play with the genitals of the deceased. And as strange as that may seem and even though the evidence backing this theory is completely missing...it is still within the realm of what in Italy? It almost has to be satanic worshipers no? It could never be a lone killer...she had only 40 or so defensive wounds. Someone must have held her...except there is zero evidence of that, meanwhile it is a simple matter to see this quick attack and stabbing incapacitate someone so quickly as to render a defense by a tiny girl impossible...but not in Italy apparently.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I know people say that Rudy "raped" Meredith. But that isn't really true, is it? While I think it is clear that this was a sexual assault and murder, I'm not sure the evidence actually points to rape. And by that I mean penis penetration. Rudy said "he fingered Meredith" We know that Rudy's DNA was found inside her vagina, but I was under the impression that there wasn't any semen found inside Meredith.

I also know that much is made about the putative semen stain found on the pillowcase. I don't think the stain was that large. While I definitely think it should have been tested, I'm doubtful that it belonged to Rudy and was the result of Rudy's sexual assault on Meredith.

 

[acbytesla]

Charlie, you won't win any friends or gain any credibility by trying to represent this as a left-wing/right-wing confrontation. "Left" and "right" in this context are in any case labels, and your apparent understanding of them seems incongruous to me, at least. Far from the Italian judiciary being "a force against right-wing thuggery", it looks to me to be a classic manifestation of the right-wing authoritarian establishment.

As for linking Machiavelli to supporters of the Sandinistas, I really don't think that's one that stands up. Let's not open that particular de-rail.

I agree with this post 100%. This is not left vs right, libs vs conservatives, Dems vs Republicans. It has nothing to do with that ideological split. Authoritarianism takes place under many guises, both left and right. Anyone think that Franco or Pinochet were left wingers or Mao and Stalin members of the Libertarian party?

I've seen them try and do this on Fox News, particularly Ann Coulter as if Amanda is some kind of caricature of 60s hippie radical. She may have some political beliefs that don't mesh with theirs, but those beliefs have nothing to do with her innocence or guilt.

 

[Kaosium]

Yeah, if the stain does turn out to be semen it would certainly change things. Even so, it would still be problematic for the post-mortem sexual assault theory, because Meredith was lying over both the stain and the shoe print which smeared it. So both of those must have arrived on the pillow at some earlier stage.

I'm not quite convinced that it is semen though - or at any rate, that it's Rudy's - mostly because if it were I think Rudy would've made something up to account for it being there, as he did with his DNA. He already claimed they were heavy petting, so it's not like he needed to change his story all that much.

I agree on the possibility of harder drugs - it would certainly make some of the more extreme of Rudy's alleged actions seem more plausible.

That is one definite curiosity, from the very beginning when he didn't realize he was being taped by police he admitted to being there, touching her, but was adamant they never really had sex. He could have simply had claimed they'd just had sex and he was in the bathroom to clean up. He was following the news which was reporting (at first) that they'd 'ruled out rape.' It makes one wonder how he planned to explain the stain had it been analyzed.

 

[Bill Williams]

If you are old enough to remember the 1980s, and ever had the misfortune to engage in conversation with someone who supported the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, I think the dynamic is roughly similar. However one felt about Reagan's policy, Daniel Ortega made for a piss-poor hero. His admirers could not see that at the time.

Charlie, you won't win any friends or gain any credibility by trying to represent this as a left-wing/right-wing confrontation. "Left" and "right" in this context are in any case labels, and your apparent understanding of them seems incongruous to me, at least. Far from the Italian judiciary being "a force against right-wing thuggery", it looks to me to be a classic manifestation of the right-wing authoritarian establishment.

As for linking Machiavelli to supporters of the Sandinistas, I really don't think that's one that stands up. Let's not open that particular de-rail.

I did not "read" Wilkes that way. He was not so much talking about someone's placement on a political spectrum, as he was talking about someone who shares a "dynamic" - have you ever talked with an ideolog? An Ideolog is someone who will defend the tenets of a theory or practise to the death, and with twist, mangle and skew all sorts of rhetoric as long as it arrives at the destination the ideolog "knows" is right.

Mach 2 makes heavy reference to "It's obvious Knox lied", when it's not obvious at all. Mach 1 types the longest post I've ever seen on the nuanced-definition of the Italian word "riti", all to defend Mignini from the charge that he once thought this case involved a Satanic rite.

Mach 1 goes on a similar long diatribe to prove that Amanda Knox could choose not to sleep, and therefore be immune from deprivation/fatigue issues - all for the purpose of suggesting she was rested and relaxed at interrogation, so as to pull the wool over the eyes of seasoned interrogators...... which gets us back to Mac 2 who falls back on two things which to the Machs are "obvious", one of which are Knox's alleged lies.

But Wilkes post has little to do with placement on that spectrum, rather the kind of dialogue you get from people at each end of it.

 

[RWVBWL]

Fake Evidence

So I've tried to be a little pro-active in this case we discuss.

Heck, I wanna know if Patrick Lumumba was hit or not
or if ANY of the blood samples which contain Rudy Guede's DNA in them ALSO are contaminated with the DNA of 4 other males,
as that Bra Clasp apparently was.

For surely 4 different guys DID NOT remove Miss Kercher's bra,
right?


Antonia Hoyle has not responded back to me yet,
but I also wrote+posed a few different questions to Candace Dempsey(*)
the author of 'Murder in Italy', she did respond back and quoted this:
Under cross-examination, one of the court-appointed forensic experts, Carla Vecchiotti, told the court that had she done the original DNA analysis, she would not have been able to match Sollecito to any of the DNA on the bra clasp.

In Vecchiotti's opinion, none of the DNA profiles on the bra clasp matched Sollecito's. Somehow, that part of Vecchiotti's testimony failed to make it into the media coverage of the trial.

Here'a link:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_...he-fake-evidence-against-him-and-amanda-knox/


PS-Thanks Candace for your time!

 

[Diocletus]

Correct me if I'm wrong. I know people say that Rudy "raped" Meredith. But that isn't really true, is it? While I think it is clear that this was a sexual assault and murder, I'm not sure the evidence actually points to rape. And by that I mean penis penetration. Rudy said "he fingered Meredith" We know that Rudy's DNA was found inside her vagina, but I was under the impression that there wasn't any semen found inside Meredith.

I also know that much is made about the putative semen stain found on the pillowcase. I don't think the stain was that large. While I definitely think it should have been tested, I'm doubtful that it belonged to Rudy and was the result of Rudy's sexual assault on Meredith.

I many jurisdictions, the crime of rape can be established if there is unwanted penentration by anything.

This is kind of an interesting issue for this case, though, because as I understand, Rudy was charged with "sexual violence." I'm questioning whether there is a different crime called "rape" under Italian law, which he could have been charged with, but the prosecutors agreed that he would be charged with a lesser crime of "sexual violence" if he did nothing to damage the group theory. Sexual violence seems to me more consistent with a group crime than does rape under these circumstances.

 

[NancyS]

Rudy had no history of violence or sadism; no one's even come forward to say he used to kick their puppy as a kid or fried insects with a magnifying glass. What is true is that he was increasingly involved in criminal activity, and was becoming willing to put himself in situations where he might have to use violence and was prepared to use it, as his carrying a knife showed. All the same, it's a step from carrying a knife during a burglary to actually using it to kill someone (though clearly not as big a step as it would be for Amanda and Raffaele) and a further big step from there to the sort of depravity it's alleged happened here. So if there are two scenarios, one involving Rudy behaving like a cornered burglar in a situation of escalating violence, the other likening him to Jeffrey Dahmer, I'm inclined to go with the first unless there's convincing evidence for the second.

Rudy's chaotic childhood and frequent change of primary carer would have put him at a high risk of an attachment disorder - and some of the main symptoms are lack of empathy and poor impulse control. I think the true Jeffrey Dahmer types have a horrible history of animal cruelty etc., before their crimes escalate and I haven't read anything like about Rudy.

It's not hard to imagine a cornered burglar controlling a young woman with a knife. He starts to undo her jeans, which causes her to panic and move away. He then cuts her with the knife, which causes more panic and trying to get away, which causes the fatal wound. Once the knife is out, the situation can so easily get out of control and become fatal - even with little fight or resistance.

Most murders are caused by a person with poor impulse control being in possession of a knife/gun - and Rudy would easily fit this picture.

Unless it was all planned in detail, I also can't imagine a situation where 3 people would cause less defensive wounds - and that really doesn't correspond to a sex game gone wrong or even an argument getting out of control. If that really was the case, you would expect something to get out of hand with one person, who then calls for help, which would likely cause a bigger fight. Are we expected to believe that Amanda, Raffaele and Rudy had planned to grab Meredith and restrain her 'on the count of three' - it's just ridiculous.

 

[acbytesla]

I many jurisdictions, the crime of rape can be established if there is unwanted penentration by anything.

This is kind of an interesting issue for this case, though, because as I understand, Rudy was charged with "sexual violence." I'm questioning whether there is a different crime called "rape" under Italian law, which he could have been charged with, but the prosecutors agreed that he would be charged with a lesser crime of "sexual violence" if he did nothing to damage the group theory. Sexual violence seems to me more consistent with a group crime than does rape under these circumstances.

Thanks, I was unaware of that. Let's go back to my original question. Thanks to you, I get that even finger penetration qualifies as rape. Is there evidence of actual penis penetration? I can't imagine having intercourse with dying bleeding human being, it literally makes me want to vomit, but I do know that some serial killers absolutely had intercourse with their victims post mortem. (I unfortunately took a class at school taught by Bob Keppel and the whole class was about serial killers and their psychology. Keppel was great, but the class gave me the heebie jeebies for years.

 

[Diocletus]

Thanks, I was unaware of that. Let's go back to my original question. Thanks to you, I get that even finger penetration qualifies as rape. Is there evidence of actual penis penetration? I can't imagine having intercourse with dying bleeding human being, it literally makes me want to vomit, but I do know that some serial killers absolutely had intercourse with their victims post mortem. (I unfortunately took a class at school taught by Bob Keppler and the whole class was about serial killers and their psychology. Keppler was great, but the class gave me the heebie jeebies for years.

My understanding is that the vaginal swab was positive for Rudy's Y DNA, but not sperm. As I understand, Stefanoni supposed that the DNA came from Rudy's skin cells.