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

[LondonJohn]

This problem is of more than academic interest and, as most forensic pathologists will confirm, the distinction between bruising and pseudo bruising can sometimes be difficult if not impossible, both at necropsy and even after routine histological and immunohistochemical examination.

"sometimes" difficult.

Usually, not difficult.

Here we go again.............

 

[Diocletus]

There is no logical method here, this is total bias.

Yeah Charlie. You're biased.

 

[Samson]

There is a trail of shoeprints (one shoe only, can't offhand remember whether it was left shoe or right shoe) leading from the doorway of Meredith's room, down the hallway towards the front door. The shoeprints are very faint to start with, and fade out completely some yards before the front door (in fact, the "crack" forensic goons didn't even notice the presence of the prints for some hours, and consequently trod all over them numerous times before someone finally noticed them...).

The shoeprints belong to the shoes Guede was wearing - Nike Outbreak 2 trainers. The "crack" forensics goons initially matched the prints to Sollecito's Reebok trainers, until Sollecito's neice (IIRC) figured out that there was a different number of tread rings in the prints to those on Sollecito's Reeboks, and Sollecito's team quickly found out that the prints in fact came from Nike Outbreak 2s. Guede admitted wearing these shoes on the night of the murder, and of disposing of them on his flight to Germany (the act of an innocent bystander, anyone?).

Now, the important thing is this: the prints only prove that at some point after the murder, Guede walked out of Meredith's room, down the hallway, in the direction of the front door. They do not prove anything more than that. They certainly do not prove that he then continued out of the front door, let alone that he then continued away from the cottage for good.

It's entirely plausible (and it's my personal belief) that these prints were left when Guede stepped on (perhaps) a bloody towel in Meredith's room, then left her room and walked down the hallway (depositing the faint, fading shoeprints in the process) with the intention of leaving via the front door, but that he reached the front door to find it locked with a key*. I think he then turned around and returned to Meredith's room to retrieve the keys necessary to unlock and open the front door. Remember that there was by now no more blood on his shoe, so there would have been no bloody shoeprints leading back towards Meredith's room. I think he found Meredith's keys, and re-exited her room. This time, since he had her keys in his hand, he stopped to lock her bedroom door (probably in order to attempt to delay discovery of her body), then he headed back to the front door, unlocked it, opened it and left. Provided he hadn't re=stepped in blood the last time he re-entered Meredith's room, he would have left no further bloody shoeprints to mark his final exit down the hallway and out of the front door.

In summary, it's perfectly plausible that the bloody footprints found in the hallway were the result of Guede's penultimate trip down the hallway - the one where he found the front door locked and had to return to Meredith's room one final time to find her keys.

* The front door of the cottage would not latch shut - the only way of securing it closed was to lock it - from either inside or outside - with a key. It's therefore likely that when Meredith arrived home that night, she locked the front door behind her after she'd entered the cottage.

Thank you all for sorting this one, this is superb logic, as he had never been in the flat, and unless matters like keys being needed both sides of a front door are uniform in Italy, he would expect easy egress. Clearly the completely faded out footprints are consistent, though no doubt this is contested somewhere too.

 

[Bill Williams]

Thank you all for sorting this one, this is superb logic, as he had never been in the flat, and unless matters like keys being needed both sides of a front door are uniform in Italy, he would expect easy egress. Clearly the completely faded out footprints are consistent, though no doubt this is contested somewhere too.

LondonJohn has covered most of the points I remember from the last time this was raised. Maybe it was LondonJohn who posted this last time!

What is amazing was the fellow who (in good faith probably) insisted that the wrongly turned footfall, completely ruled out Rudy Guede as the one who locked that door, and to him it could have only been Amanda Knox who locked it - after coming into the cottage late on Nov 1 to find the carnage. His theory was that she panicked at what had happened to Meredith and proceeded (inexplicably!) to try to cover up a crime she'd not been involved with.

The compelling issue is as LJ hints at - the "cracker jack" forensic team pretty much ruined that hallway to yield anything foreniscly meaningful by their overall handling of the scene.

Add to this that even before the horrid discovery on Nov 2, the postal police, Amanda, Raffaele, Filomena and others pretty much had full run of the place; shuttling between the bathroom with the drop of blood on the faucet, to the one with the pooh in the toilet.....

That many guilters argue that the place as recorded by a (fairly inept) Scientific Police was in pristine forensic condition to catch A and R redhanded is simply absurd.

John Douglas covers this point, as recorded in his remarks from Sept 2011. He said that for nearly all the PLE this was a career case.... whereas for someone like him this was simply a morning at the office... and his experience told him that the PLE booted this one big time.

The issue of the fading footprints and Meredith's locked door is only the tip of the iceberg.

 

[acbytesla]

I have to say that I am not comfortable at all discussing the actual murder and the autopsy evidence. That just gives me the willies. I try and read it and learn the details, but then I don't want to know those details.

 

[Supernaut]

They seem to record everything except that which they are required to record.

Because "that which they are required to record" would include a recording of their own words and behavior
These people use surveillance as a weapon, and they don't want to shoot themselves.

Have you ever seen The Conversation? Remember the very end, where the surveillance expert demolishes his own apartment?

Very succinct indeed.

It's as simple as that - they record everyone, with impunity, but never themselves!

(And a great movie, that was.)

 

[Supernaut]

Starch-type cell structures were found at various points on the knife, including the actual blade itself.

As you say though, starch binds hard to many other molecules, and it's hard to imagine any pre-existing starch not doing so after coming into contact with blood or muscle proteins.

However, it is theoretically (at least) possible for the knife to have been used in the murder, for Knox or Sollecito to have then forensically cleaned it to erase all traces of the murder, and for them then to have used the knife for cooking purposes in the days between the murder and their arrest. But (in homage to Knox's thought experiment on Sollecito having left quietly on the night of the murder, committed the murder, then crept back in, rubbed Knox's fingerprints onto the knife and settled back to sleep next to her)... "I just really doubt all of that".

Added to which, the reason given for seizing it as "evidence" in the first place was that it was "suspiciously clean" (and there was "a strong smell of bleach" - 3 days after the murder).

Well, it wasn't particularly clean, so these were lies as well (but only little ones).

 

[Grinder]

-------------
This problem is of more than academic interest and, as most forensic pathologists will confirm, the distinction between bruising and pseudo bruising can sometimes be difficult if not impossible, both at necropsy and even after routine histological and immunohistochemical examination.

In short, bruises and the effects of any post-mortem extravasation are easy to distinguish, and bruises can only be caused before death.

"sometimes" difficult.

Usually, not difficult.

Here we go again.............

Sorry I was just curious and found sources and published them without comment.

 

[HumanityBlues]

I don't think there is much to answer about Frank, actually. You may just happen to know that he is a man who does nothing for free. Taking money from people and living as a parasite has always been his distinctive trait, over his personal history. You are free to believe him as a source if you want; I've never been interested in discussing about him.

In other words, you just pulled the "Marriott was paying Frank to blog" thing out of your behind and you didn't know what you were talking about.

 

[Samson]

LondonJohn has covered most of the points I remember from the last time this was raised. Maybe it was LondonJohn who posted this last time!

What is amazing was the fellow who (in good faith probably) insisted that the wrongly turned footfall, completely ruled out Rudy Guede as the one who locked that door, and to him it could have only been Amanda Knox who locked it - after coming into the cottage late on Nov 1 to find the carnage. His theory was that she panicked at what had happened to Meredith and proceeded (inexplicably!) to try to cover up a crime she'd not been involved with.

The compelling issue is as LJ hints at - the "cracker jack" forensic team pretty much ruined that hallway to yield anything foreniscly meaningful by their overall handling of the scene.

Add to this that even before the horrid discovery on Nov 2, the postal police, Amanda, Raffaele, Filomena and others pretty much had full run of the place; shuttling between the bathroom with the drop of blood on the faucet, to the one with the pooh in the toilet.....

That many guilters argue that the place as recorded by a (fairly inept) Scientific Police was in pristine forensic condition to catch A and R redhanded is simply absurd.

John Douglas covers this point, as recorded in his remarks from Sept 2011. He said that for nearly all the PLE this was a career case.... whereas for someone like him this was simply a morning at the office... and his experience told him that the PLE booted this one big time.

The issue of the fading footprints and Meredith's locked door is only the tip of the iceberg.

It is strange that the iceberg is unseen by the "guilters", maybe a trip on the Titanic would help. Since I have read the last several months of these various threads on both sides, but the history is way longer, there is another intriguing element I presume has been discussed, and that is Amanda's email in the last hours of her previous life. I read it and find it an impossible narrative, accurate as it is in the facts, to imagine being crafted by a criminal. Has it been analysed here?

 

[Bill Williams]

I don't think there is much to answer about Frank, actually. You may just happen to know that he is a man who does nothing for free. Taking money from people and living as a parasite has always been his distinctive trait, over his personal history. You are free to believe him as a source if you want; I've never been interested in discussing about him.

In other words, you just pulled the "Marriott was paying Frank to blog" thing out of your behind and you didn't know what you were talking about.

And I have it on the Q.T. that Andrea Vogt donated her "I was there" story straight from the courtroom to the Seattle paper....

..... for free.

She wouldn't want to actually make a living off this horrible event....

And for a guy not interested in "discussing about him", Mach, you sure do a lot of "discussing about him"

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Well, just a moment.There is nothing logically wrong in pointing out a medical finding. Which has implications on a scenario of post-mortem rape.

While I point out your method instead, as you recently explained it, when it comes to offer an explanation about what does not fit into your theory such as: the luminol footprints. Alleged contamination of items. The bathmat print or the trail of shoeprints (which are that of a person who walks out straight and are not consistent with someone who stops turns to lock the door). And several others which I don't recall now.
You said something like, you leave things like the luminol prints unexplained, deciding that they must be unrelated to the crime just because - your words - they don't fit a scenario (read: your scenario) of the crime.
This procedure is illogical. (It is biased)
Because omits to give weight to tha fact that the luminol footprints fit a Knox-Sollecito guilt scenario perfectly, while on the other hand, and above all, there is no explanation at all - even hypothetical - which could explain them as the consequence of a plausible, innocent event.

You point at the 'absence' of an expressed "scenario of guilt" which would sound plausible to you (or even "proven"). But you completely ignore the impossibility of having a plausible innocent scenario for pieces of evidence. Despite this absence of innocent explanation, yet you "declare" them unrelated to the murder.
But how can you infer a non-relation to the murder, while you don't have any plausible alternative explanation? It's illogical.
It means you say "they must have another origin", and at the same time you admit you don't have any logical explanation, you don't have alternative origins to chose among. As for the luminol prints you don't have an alternative substance and you don't have a dynamic (neither explanations for the analogies with the bathmat print, nor with the Knox-Meredith DNA luminol stain in Filomena's room).
On the other hand you have these very peculiar findings which fit with very peculiar events in the scenario. So in fact you are ignoring the a contrario evidence.
There is no logical method here, this is total bias.

Bah. The police found bloody tissues with the DNA of multiple unidentified people outside the cottage. I can't explain that and I doubt you can either. How does one decide if it is relevant evidence? My logical method is to construct a theory and test it. I can't come up with a theory that makes any sense, so my conclusion is that the tissues are probably irrelevant. That is the same way I conclude that the luminol is irrelevant.

If I was a cult believer, I could use a different method. I could enshrine the unexplained tissues as proof of multiple, unknown perpetrators. I wouldn't have to explain anything. I could insist that other people provide an explanation that proves me wrong. It's easy enough to be a crackpot. But it is sterile.

 

[Bill Williams]

The compelling issue is as LJ hints at - the "cracker jack" forensic team pretty much ruined that hallway to yield anything foreniscly meaningful by their overall handling of the scene.

Add to this that even before the horrid discovery on Nov 2, the postal police, Amanda, Raffaele, Filomena and others pretty much had full run of the place; shuttling between the bathroom with the drop of blood on the faucet, to the one with the pooh in the toilet.....

That many guilters argue that the place as recorded by a (fairly inept) Scientific Police was in pristine forensic condition to catch A and R redhanded is simply absurd.

You said something like, you leave things like the luminol prints unexplained, deciding that they must be unrelated to the crime just because - your words - they don't fit a scenario (read: your scenario) of the crime.
This procedure is illogical. (It is biased)
Because omits to give weight to tha fact that the luminol footprints fit a Knox-Sollecito guilt scenario perfectly, while on the other hand, and above all, there is no explanation at all - even hypothetical - which could explain them as the consequence of a plausible, innocent event.

It is strange that the iceberg is unseen by the "guilters", maybe a trip on the Titanic would help. Since I have read the last several months of these various threads on both sides, but the history is way longer, there is another intriguing element I presume has been discussed, and that is Amanda's email in the last hours of her previous life. I read it and find it an impossible narrative, accurate as it is in the facts, to imagine being crafted by a criminal. Has it been analysed here?

........... and an example if the "narrative" that Machiavelli provides, which he doesn't provide really, on the conclusion - which above is that it is his explanation and his explanation alone which fits the evidence - which, to repeat, he never presents.

The three pillars of Machiavelli's "analysis" above is this:

1 - that the scene was essentially forensically clean at 8:30 pm on the first, so that ALL the found evidence at the scene can only be attributed to the crime:

2 - that the crime scene was kept secure and "pristine" even before Meredith's door was opened circa 1 pm Nov 2nd and they all suddenly discovered what they were dealing with

3 - that the Scientific Police collected all the meaningful forensic evidence (which they did not, witness no pictures of the ground beneath Filomena's window) and that they took all the safeguards needed so that they did not self-contaminate the scene during investigation.​

#3 is what John Douglas was interviewed about in Sept 2011, where he joined with the courtroom spectators to laugh at the Scientific Police's own video.

As far as the floor of the hallway is concerned, both #2 and #3 are obviously in play... and what's to rule out #1, that Amanda or anyone else had tracked something in that hallway days' before that was sensitive to luminol? Wuthout the confirming test for blood, what does luminol prove?

 

[Machiavelli]

Bah. The police found bloody tissues with the DNA of multiple unidentified people outside the cottage. I can't explain that and I doubt you can either. How does one decide if it is relevant evidence? My logical method is to construct a theory and test it. I can't come up with a theory that makes any sense, so my conclusion is that the tissues are probably irrelevant. That is the same way I conclude that the luminol is irrelevant.

You're kidding. You are not applying the same reasoning. The tissues and the luminol are not a finding with the same features: you can explain the bloody tissues. There could be a dozen reasons why a passer by throws bloody tissues down the road. So there is in fact a dozen reasons for why they can be considered random.
But there is not even one plausible explanation for the luminol footprints as something random (no plausible substance, no plausible dynamic).

And even if the tissues were connected to the murder (they could be theoretically, since there could be blood from an unknown in the downstairs apartment) they would be irrelevant as probative elements, because the information they carry is zero. You can't match them to a suspect and they do not "contain" information except that someone was bleeding. They carry little information beyond the biological identity of the person who left them.
But the luminol prints carry a far greater amount of information: they are directly linked to the suspects (their feet, their room), they are located in the murder house, so they have an extreme, and exclusive proximity to the murder scene (and are even close to other bloody footprints), and they have such an unusual distribution so they carry a load of information about the dynamic by which they were produced (bathmat shuffle - no "normal" walk, barefoot, no "common" substance).

Moreover they are absolutely uncommon as a finding itself, since they don't form a trail of prints and belong to two different individuals; and the analogy between them and the bathmat print can't go unnoticed.

And - you will say by coincidence - they perfectly fit in a scenario where "stagers" (the offenders) come back to the murder scene, employ bloody towels to move and walk/shuffle in the murder room (where they leave traces of dragging but no bloody footprint) and then they wash themselves in the bathroom. They are unable to wash the carpet (thus there is only one footprint left).
Look how the unusual, unexplained luminol footprints can be easilly connected both to the towels (other unusual element) and to the bloody bathmat print.

Your 'logical method' apparently consists in deleting all these apparent logical links. You fail to "test" a bathmat shuffle / staging scenario ti see if it fits the luminol prints. You overlook the "coincidence" that they produce.
While on the other hand you consider the fact that you "can't explain them" as unimportant; you falsely compare them to things which instead you can easilly explain through plausible and simple events, and which don't carry any particular information.

 

[Dan O.]

There is a trail of shoeprints (one shoe only, can't offhand remember whether it was left shoe or right shoe) leading from the doorway of Meredith's room, down the hallway towards the front door. The shoeprints are very faint to start with, and fade out completely some yards before the front door (in fact, the "crack" forensic goons didn't even notice the presence of the prints for some hours, and consequently trod all over them numerous times before someone finally noticed them...).

Where have you been John? A few months back I decided it was time that I had a look at those footprints. The prevailing theory at the time was that these prints made a line towards the front door. But if you look closely at the sequence of prints you can see that most of them are from the same blood stain pattern on the shoe that is slowly wearing off and getting smaller with each step. This realization allows two inferences to be made: the steps can be arranged in a time sequence as they get smaller. And the orientation of the shoe can be determined throuout the sequence.

This new information shows that the prints form a trail down the hall into the living room as you know. But the next step is the one at the end of the table and from there it goes to the alcove in front of the door. Then there is one more (or three) which is a cluster in the same spot in front of the couch and facing back towards Meredith's room.

One print was missed in this sequence. There is a gap between the prints marked in the hall and those in the living room. This print was missed by the visual search even using the magic blue light. And was even missed by the luminol search. But it's right there it would be expected to be at the end of the hall next to the pink bag. It's visible in some of the crime scene photos.

There are of course other missing prints in this sequence. The trail should still be visible after the couch but you would have to know what to look for as it no longer resembles a shoe print and is too faint to show up in the overview photos.

There are also two extra prints in the living room that don't fit into the main sequence.

 

[acbytesla]

You're kidding. You are not applying the same reasoning. The tissues and the luminol are not a finding with the same features: you can explain the bloody tissues. There could be a dozen reasons why a passer by throws bloody tissues down the road. So there is in fact a dozen reasons for why they can be considered random.
But there is not even one plausible explanation for the luminol footprints as something random (no plausible substance, no plausible dynamic).

So typical of you to make a blanket statement that is totally false.

No one knows what the presumptive positive Luminol test reacted to. In fact there is a far greater chance that the Luminol reacted to a substance other than blood. Virtually anything with one of the most common elements on the planet, IRON would have resulted in a positive test. What we do know is that when Stefanoni tried to determine what it reacted to, the one substance that her tests revealed WASN'T WAS BLOOD. The argument that somehow it was blood after the negative TMB test is ABSOLUTELY NOT a legitimate claim.

If Stefanoni, had performed a confirmatory test for blood, it might be reasonable to discount the negative test. But of course Stefanoni didn't do this so your speculation is pure bs.

 

[Bill Williams]

You're kidding. You are not applying the same reasoning. The tissues and the luminol are not a finding with the same features: you can explain the bloody tissues. There could be a dozen reasons why a passer by throws bloody tissues down the road. So there is in fact a dozen reasons for why they can be considered random.
But there is not even one plausible explanation for the luminol footprints as something random (no plausible substance, no plausible dynamic).

And even if the tissues were connected to the murder (they could be theoretically, since there could be blood from an unknown in the downstairs apartment) they would be irrelevant as probative elements, because the information they carry is zero. You can't match them to a suspect and they do not "contain" information except that someone was bleeding. They carry little information beyond the biological identity of the person who left them.
But the luminol prints carry a far greater amount of information: they are directly linked to the suspects (their feet, their room), they are located in the murder house, so they have an extreme, and exclusive proximity to the murder scene (and are even close to other bloody footprints), and they have such an unusual distribution so they carry a load of information about the dynamic by which they were produced (bathmat shuffle - no "normal" walk, barefoot, no "common" substance).

Moreover they are absolutely uncommon as a finding itself, since they don't form a trail of prints and belong to two different individuals; and the analogy between them and the bathmat print can't go unnoticed.

And - you will say by coincidence - they perfectly fit in a scenario where "stagers" (the offenders) come back to the murder scene, employ bloody towels to move and walk/shuffle in the murder room (where they leave traces of dragging but no bloody footprint) and then they wash themselves in the bathroom. They are unable to wash the carpet (thus there is only one footprint left).
Look how the unusual, unexplained luminol footprints can be easilly connected both to the towels (other unusual element) and to the bloody bathmat print.

Your 'logical method' apparently consists in deleting all these apparent logical links. You fail to "test" a bathmat shuffle / staging scenario ti see if it fits the luminol prints. You overlook the "coincidence" that they produce.
While on the other hand you consider the fact that you "can't explain them" as unimportant; you falsely compare them to things which instead you can easilly explain through plausible and simple events, and which don't carry any particular information.

This is what I meant by your faulty reasoning and faulty assumptions above.

There is NO suspicious reason why Amanda Knox's footprints would be found in that hall, even with luminol. Luminol is NOT a test for blood, that information requires a second test which was never done - by this, your "crack" group of investigators.

You assume that the hallway outside of Meredith's and Amanda's rooms was in a forensicly sterile condition at 8:30 pm, Nov 1st, so that everything found there had to have been put there at the murder time.

It is telling that Judge Massei employs both this reasoning and its opposite in his motivations report, in one of the more stupid examples from Massei.

In defending Stefanoni's neglecting to test the presumed semen stain, located under the victim's hips, on a pillow placed there during a sexual assault (!!), Judge Massei defends the non-testing of the stain thusly:

At the hearing of December 4 the Defence for Sollecito concluded the rebuttals, submitting a memorandum evidencing that on the site of the inspection of May 25, 2009, on the pillowcase of the pillow found in the victim’s room some stains had been found with the ‚crimescope‛ that could have been spermatic in nature and that these had not been the object of any genetic analysis. In relation to this contention, various questions were raised as to the necessity of testing relative to these stains.

(Stefanoni) stated that the pillow was found half under the pelvis of the body. Analysis was not done on the pillow because it was considered more useful to use it for print analysis, whether of shoeprints or handprints.

What? Analysis was not done by the "crack" Scientific Police because it was an either/or in relation to print analysis?

But wait for it.... Massei joins the ranks of the galactically stupid by defending the decision NOT to test the presumed semen stain.... why? Because it cannot be time-stamped... which is the reasoning that SHOULD be applied to the luminol out in the hall..... but wait for it, because this reasoning is a doozy... (emphasis added and not in original text)

In this regard, what has been previously observed on the subject is called to mind; with specific reference to the stains found on the pillowcase, particular mention of which was made by Sollecito’s defence *team+ during the trial and in the related illustrative memorandum, the following should be noted: even if a genetic investigation established the spermatic nature of these stains, such an investigation, as a rule, would not allow these stains to be dated and, in particular, it would not be possible to establish that they had been deposited on the night on which Meredith was killed. It having furthermore been established that Meredith had an active sexual life and at times had intercourse in her own room (cf. on this point the statements of her boyfriend Giacomo Silenzi) such an investigation, besides not being of a strictly necessary nature due to the impossibility of dating [i.e. establishing the date] (cf. what was elucidated on this aspect by the genetic experts), might also yield an entirely irrelevant outcome even for establishing the spermaticnature of those very stains and seems to be, therefore, a purely explorative activity, [which] is not permitted at this stage of the proceedings because it is lacking in the requirement for absolute necessity which was, on the contrary, requested.

"(I)t would not be possible to establish that they had been deposited on the night on which Meredith was killed."

"(I)t would not be possible to establish that they had been deposited on the night on which Meredith was killed."

"(I)t would not be possible to establish that they had been deposited on the night on which Meredith was killed."

"(I)t would not be possible to establish that they had been deposited on the night on which Meredith was killed."

Did we read that right? If it was discovered to have been Rudy's.... that is game over for Rudy. If it is discovered to have been Raffaele's (with no evidence other than the bra-clasp that even Stefanoni at testimony did not deny touching with a dirty glove!) that would be game over for Raffaele.

If it had been Amanda's...... oh never mind.

But the point is.... Massei does NOT assume a forensically sterile scene when it comes to the flippin' presumed semen under the victims hips at a sexual assault!.....

But all of a sudden assumes that ANYTHING found belonging to Amanda in the very hallway she strode for a couple of weeks is suspicious...

And Machiavelli says there is no other explanation for luminol detecting Amanda in that hallway except for a suspicious reason.

Friends.... this is Massei, this is Machiavelli... this is Stefanoni and the case against Amanda and Raffaele.

Who are you going to believe: Mignini, or your lying eyes?

 

[yimyammer]

There is a trail of shoeprints (one shoe only, can't offhand remember whether it was left shoe or right shoe) leading from the doorway of Meredith's room, down the hallway towards the front door. The shoeprints are very faint to start with, and fade out completely some yards before the front door (in fact, the "crack" forensic goons didn't even notice the presence of the prints for some hours, and consequently trod all over them numerous times before someone finally noticed them...).

The shoeprints belong to the shoes Guede was wearing - Nike Outbreak 2 trainers. The "crack" forensics goons initially matched the prints to Sollecito's Reebok trainers, until Sollecito's neice (IIRC) figured out that there was a different number of tread rings in the prints to those on Sollecito's Reeboks, and Sollecito's team quickly found out that the prints in fact came from Nike Outbreak 2s. Guede admitted wearing these shoes on the night of the murder, and of disposing of them on his flight to Germany (the act of an innocent bystander, anyone?).

Now, the important thing is this: the prints only prove that at some point after the murder, Guede walked out of Meredith's room, down the hallway, in the direction of the front door. They do not prove anything more than that. They certainly do not prove that he then continued out of the front door, let alone that he then continued away from the cottage for good.

It's entirely plausible (and it's my personal belief) that these prints were left when Guede stepped on (perhaps) a bloody towel in Meredith's room, then left her room and walked down the hallway (depositing the faint, fading shoeprints in the process) with the intention of leaving via the front door, but that he reached the front door to find it locked with a key*. I think he then turned around and returned to Meredith's room to retrieve the keys necessary to unlock and open the front door. Remember that there was by now no more blood on his shoe, so there would have been no bloody shoeprints leading back towards Meredith's room. I think he found Meredith's keys, and re-exited her room. This time, since he had her keys in his hand, he stopped to lock her bedroom door (probably in order to attempt to delay discovery of her body), then he headed back to the front door, unlocked it, opened it and left. Provided he hadn't re=stepped in blood the last time he re-entered Meredith's room, he would have left no further bloody shoeprints to mark his final exit down the hallway and out of the front door.

In summary, it's perfectly plausible that the bloody footprints found in the hallway were the result of Guede's penultimate trip down the hallway - the one where he found the front door locked and had to return to Meredith's room one final time to find her keys.

* The front door of the cottage would not latch shut - the only way of securing it closed was to lock it - from either inside or outside - with a key. It's therefore likely that when Meredith arrived home that night, she locked the front door behind her after she'd entered the cottage.

Sounds plausible but If he did this, how did he avoid leaving a second set of bloody shoe prints when he exited with the key? It would seem like he couldn't avoid stepping in fresh blood when he re entered her room.

Was the key ever found?

 

[acbytesla]

There may not be a more dishonest display of Machiaveilli's arguments than this bit of nonsense about the Luminol footprints.

1. It is not intellectually honest to come to the conclusion that the reaction is due to blood because of the negative TMB tests and lack of confirmatory tests.

2. And even if the reaction was from blood from the murder there is no reason to believe that it was anything other than Amanda the next morning stepping into residue left over from Rudy.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Your 'logical method' apparently consists in deleting all these apparent logical links. You fail to "test" a bathmat shuffle / staging scenario ti see if it fits the luminol prints. You overlook the "coincidence" that they produce..

I think it is pure lunacy. Did anyone at the trial present a theory linking the luminol footprints to people shuffling around on towels? I would love to see that transcript.