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

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I'm late to the party. At the time, I totally didn't follow the whole Amanda Knox thing. I had heard the name a million and one times in the media throughout all the twists and turns and new angles, yes, but had no idea what it was all about.

I've since brought myself up to date on the whole thing and am almost 100 percent certain that neither Knox nor Sollecito had a thing to do with it. They were both victimized by the Italian justice system, which railroaded them so badly, we Americans could learn something from it. Guede is the most likely killer and he most likely acted entirely alone. It is a disgrace that this case is still being tried and re-tried after all this time, despite the fact that the person who is probably the lone murderer is already imprisoned.

The media coverage in Italy, Britain and America at the time was woeful. It wasn't journalism, it was myth-making and bathroom wall scribbling. It was absolutely sensationalistic and driven by wild speculation and innuendo. The motive offered by the prosecution and the press was pure fantasy. It's amazing anyone in a position of power took something so fantastical seriously. The media frenzy around this must have clouded their eyes cause under the cold light of day, this all easily falls apart.
 
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I'm late to the party. At the time, I totally didn't follow the whole Amanda Knox thing. I had heard the name a million and one times in the media throughout all the twists and turns and new angles, yes, but had no idea what it was all about.

I've since brought myself up to date on the whole thing and am almost 100 percent certain that neither Knox nor Sollecito had a thing to do with it. They were both victimized by the Italian justice system, which railroaded them so badly, we Americans could learn something from it. Guede is the most likely killer and he most likely acted entirely alone. It is a disgrace that this case is still being tried and re-tried after all this time, despite the fact that the person who is probably the lone murderer is already imprisoned.

The media coverage in Italy, Britain and America at the time was woeful. It wasn't journalism, it was myth-making and bathroom wall scribbling. It was absolutely sensationalistic and driven by wild speculation and innuendo. The motive offered by the prosecution and the press was pure fantasy. It's amazing anyone in a position of power took something so fantastical seriously. The media frenzy around this must have clouded their eyes cause under the cold light of day, this all easily falls apart.

Welcome to the party E-Moe. Pour yourself a cold one. Your conclusion is pretty much the same one sane people come to have after doing the necessary research.
 
How did police, prosecutors and "journalists" get such an absurd idee fixe? What drugs were they taking when they concocted this nonsense?

Their version of events sounds, frankly, not like a plausible murder scenario but like the prosecutor's wet dream about good-looking foreign college girls and their boyfriends. Where did he get this stuff about them playing drug-fueled sex games from, a movie? Some Law and Order: SVU episodes aren't as filled with urban legends and cheap luridness as the prosecutor's "theory". :mad:

The poor woman was killed in an ordinary, standard, basic bungled robbery. By a guy who had a history of robbery attempts. That's it. Period, end of the story. A basic overview of the basic facts would reveal as much. Anything about her being killed because she refused to participate in an S & M orgy is just some horny old man's imagination gone wild.

That a 20-year-old girl spent 4 years in prison in a foreign country just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and might go back for more is an appalling miscarriage of justice. It would make me afraid to let any daughter of mine out of my sight. And the poor kid. He was just 23 and spent many months in solitary confinement and then many years in a maximum security prison with serial killers, mobsters and rapists, just for barely dating a person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unimaginable. If it were my son, I would have gone insane.
 
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How did police, prosecutors and "journalists" get such an absurd idee fixe? What drugs were they taking when they concocted this nonsense?

Their version of events sounds, frankly, not like a plausible murder scenario but like the prosecutor's wet dream about good-looking foreign college girls and their boyfriends. Where did he get this stuff about them playing drug-fueled sex games from, a movie? Some Law and Order: SVU episodes aren't as filled with urban legends and cheap luridness as the prosecutor's "theory". :mad:

The poor woman was killed in an ordinary, standard, basic bungled robbery. By a guy who had a history of robbery attempts. That's it. Period, end of the story. A basic overview of the basic facts would reveal as much.

That is the 64 thousand dollar question. But in the beginning of this affair, their conclusion while still far fetched fit the evidence much better than it does right now. There was their mistake where they believed that Raffaele called the police after they arrived. There was their mistake regarding the tennis shoe prints in the murder room that they attributed to Raffaele. I think there were a few other mistakes they made wrongly connecting Amanda and Raffaele for the crime. To me, the problem wasn't the police considering Amanda and Raffaele for this crime, even though it was always far fetched. It was their failure to drop them as suspects once it became obvious that Rudy was the perpetrator.

They should have released Amanda and Raffale when they released Patrick Lumumba.
 
The way everything was twisted by the media to fit their theory- it was beyond appalling. All rationality was tossed out the window.

The girl had a photo of herself playfully pretending to shoot a fake gun with a "cryptic caption" (read: lame and obvious joke) underneath? It is cause she's a sadistic, savage, drug-addicted killer. It's chilling, I tell you, chilling. The boy was holding up a meat cleaver that was part of a costume in a picture? IT'S SICK!! HE'S A PSYCHOPATH!

I have a picture of myself pretending to fight someone with a fake sword.

Maybe I also helped murder Meredith in a five-some gone wrong. How come the police haven't investigated me? It's so obvious I had something to do with it! :p

Come to think of it, everyone under the age of 50 in the Western world has a "disturbing" picture on one or more social networks.

We all killed Meredith.
 
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How did police, prosecutors and "journalists" get such an absurd idee fixe? What drugs were they taking when they concocted this nonsense?

We all have theories. Mine is that the unbelievability was at that level where otherwise sane people began to think there must have been some truth to it, or else no one would have prosecuted it.

There was also a series of "perfect storm" stuff all lined up; all unbelievable, really, but with each new mistake it just gradually got worse.

There were potential exit points. Whether it is actual or not, John Follain writes that after the interrogation, a senior cop advised that A and R be released and that Lumumba not be arrested. Instead they went and beat down Lumumba's door and put A and R into jail without lawyers.

Then two weeks later the real gift was handed to them - Guede, whose fingerprints are all over this. The PLE could have fessed up to a bug mistake and THEN let the other three go, but they decided to let Lumumba go only.

Perhaps by that time they'd locked themselves into the kitchen knife....

With each new mistake.....

The tabloid frenzy helped.
 
One only has to see the incredible evidence collection videos and the finding and handling of the bra clasp to see what was going on. They were going to convict AK and RS with whatever means necessary. It was a case of total evidence manipulation to achieve their goal. Once they decided"case closed", they had to make the evidence appear to fit.
 
One only has to see the incredible evidence collection videos and the finding and handling of the bra clasp to see what was going on. They were going to convict AK and RS with whatever means necessary. It was a case of total evidence manipulation to achieve their goal. Once they decided"case closed", they had to make the evidence appear to fit.

.............. and, they thought Raffaele would turn on Amanda.

They thought wrong.
 
How did police, prosecutors and "journalists" get such an absurd idee fixe? What drugs were they taking when they concocted this nonsense?

Their version of events sounds, frankly, not like a plausible murder scenario but like the prosecutor's wet dream about good-looking foreign college girls and their boyfriends. Where did he get this stuff about them playing drug-fueled sex games from, a movie? Some Law and Order: SVU episodes aren't as filled with urban legends and cheap luridness as the prosecutor's "theory". :mad:

I think that's the key - it made for a fascinating story, and it sounded like it might be true back in 2007. Some people got caught up in it, and they cannot let go, which is why a cult of guilt persists to this day.
 
Another thing. The idea, painted in the American and Italian press, that she was some sort of a drug-fiend nymphomaniac party girl couldn't have been further from the truth in retrospect. They made her sound like a near-Satanic version of Paris Hilton.

So she smoked some weed once in a while. Got drunk a few times. And slept with three people over the course of a month and a half in Italy, including Sollecito. And with him, as they had known one another for barely a week, it was a few times at most. Wow, so shocking, coming from a 20-year-old. :rolleyes:

This is supposed to be scandalous? Compared to what some people I knew in college got up to, this is boring. She was a sheltered and rather awkward nerd kid from the suburbs who loved languages and Harry Potter. It seems as if her behavior was only "edgy" in her own mind. In comparison to other people their age, Knox and Sollecito lived like a nun and a monk. If anything, the scandal might be that she didn't party more.
 
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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.


There was one open purse on the desk. That would be easy to reach and check. The other purse was found on the bed. If the postal policeman can walk up there to Lift the corner of the duvet and see Meredith's wounds without steping in blood then why can't Rudy.



Was the key ever found?


Filomena would have grabbed that when she went back for her laptop.

Oh, Meredith's keys!? They have never been found.
 
From LondonJohn on the previous page:

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.

This is inconsistent with what I've considered the likeliest explanation for what happened, which is that Guede had been on the toilet when Kercher arrived home and proceeded to her bedroom, oblivious to Guede's presence. Guede then confronted Kercher in her bedroom because he needed her key to get out, and the situation promptly spiralled out of his control. I'd be interested to hear what people more familiar with the minutiae of the case think of this.
 
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.

This is all obvious and easy to understand, but it is too much for the shallow thinking of the PGP. Are they really taken in by these faulty arguments, or is it a dishonest assertion to win others around to their agenda?

There is a cloud of similarly faulty reasoning surrounding the claims of multiple attackers and a "staged" break-in, such as the idea that Meredith couldn't have been restrained by one person without clearer signs of a struggle. It's obvious BS, because an attacker holding a knife to her throat would have led to her freezing in terror, but that didn't stop it taking in the recent C5 TV programme which concluded that it would have been "much more difficult" for the attack to have been carried out by one person.
 
Although I could square that circle by hypothesising that Guede, in his overwhelmed mental state at the time, had quite forgotten about the key as he proceeded from the bathroom down the hallway on his way out of the cottage, and then had to turn back.
 
Although I could square that circle by hypothesising that Guede, in his overwhelmed mental state at the time, had quite forgotten about the key as he proceeded from the bathroom down the hallway on his way out of the cottage, and then had to turn back.

Yes, this is what I think too. I was about to respond to your previous post when I read this. I think that it's likely that - as you say - Guede made an initial attempt to escape via the front door after Meredith arrived home. I think it;s plausible that Meredith came in, locked the front door behind her, then went to her room, at which point Guede crept out of the large bathrooom and tried to exit via the front door. Given that he would almost certainly have found the door locked and unable to be opened without a key, I think he may have tried forcing the door, which in itself might well have created enough noise to alert Meredith to his presence. I think Meredith may have come into the hallway to investigate the source of the noise, at which point Guede may have advanced upon her demanding the keys. And then complex things may have evolved, with sexual arousal welling within Guede, combined with anger and fear, leading to physical altercation, control, sexual assault and murder.

And then, as you suggest, I think it's totally plausible that in the aftermath of the murder, Guede would have experienced such intense feelings of euphoria, revulsion, fear and horror that it's easy to see how he could have forgotten that a key was required to open the front door. Indeed, he may not even have got as far as re-trying the door - as he approached the door he may have suddenly remembered that he needed the key, and turned round to return to Meredith's room.

However, it's also plausible to construct a scenario where Guede didn't try the door at the outset (i.e. before confronting and attacking Meredith). Indeed, the initial confrontation may have happened as Guede was crossing the living room en route to the front door, or even in or near the large bathroom itself. Guede may have suddenly put his escape plans to one side as he realised he was alone with Meredith in the cottage: he may have realised that she knew who he was and could therefore subsequently identify him, and might have decided to try offering some sort of bogus innocent explanation for his being in the cottage. If Meredith rejected his explanation and said she was calling the police, he would probably have become enraged and a physical altercation could then have ensued.

Incidentally, some pro-guilt commentators wonder why - if Guede were indeed the sole assailant - Guede wouldn't just have left the cottage the way he came in: via Filomena's window. They seem to view this as a massive flaw in the "Guede-only" argument. However, I think they are wrong, and for two main reasons: firstly, it's actually a lot harder to exit through a first floor window than to enter via it - climbing down is more difficult and takes longer, and jumping down risks injury on landing; and secondly, Guede was now a murderer, and his main preoccupation would have been not to draw attention to himself. Given that he would have to actually leave the cottage, there was no way he could avoid the possibility of being seen doing so by any potential observers. But a person leaving a house via the front door is an entirely inconsequential event to any observer, whereas a person leaving via a broken window is obviously an unusual - and probably nefarious - occurrence, which might prompt any observer to immediately investigate, challenge Guede, or call the police.

Of course it's clear that even leaving by the front door carried high risk for Guede if he was seen doing so, in that once the murder was discovered, he could have been linked in time and place to the crime. But that was a risk Guede simply couldn't eliminate under any circumstance, given that he had to leave the cottage at some point. However, he could - and did - remove the additional significant risk of drawing immediate attention to himself if he left via Filomena's window.
 
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?


The floor in Meredith's room wasn't covered in blood - it was almost all confined to the small area of the room under and around her body. There was plenty of clean (i.e. no blood) floor between the bedroom door and the bed. It's entirely likely that Guede went nowhere near Meredith's body when he re-entered the room to locate and take her keys. Her handbag (purse in USA lingo!) was on her bed, and that would be a logical first place to look. If that's what happened, Guede could easily have got in and out of the room withour re-treading in any blood.

And no, Meredith's keys (she had several keys on a keyring) were never found.
 
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).


Here are two of the pictures of the luminol hits. Let's focus on these for a minute because they are part of the pretense of being evidence of all the rest happening at the same time. They are taken from the hall outside Amanda and Meredith's rooms, so they do have a proximity to the murder scene, but nothing else is conveyed by these prints. There's no way you can pretend to match them to anyone or even be sure they're footprints. One looks like a mermaid to me.



I can't upload this one (it says it's too big) the only way I know how to do it, so I'll just link the picture that shows the hall, the two doorways at the end before the bathroom are where the luminol reacted and are Amanda and Meredith's rooms respectively.

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.

The reason for them having such an uneven distribution and not forming a trail of prints is quite likely because they weren't made as a part of the same journey; you cake a floor with luminol and stuff is going to light up, there's no way of know when they happened, or even that the same substance caused the luminol to react. It's very much like looking at a carpet and trying to tie each stain to the murder (despite the fact they test negative for blood!) and then saying because they don't form a trail and it seems more than one individual made them they then 'must' (or even 'could') be related directly to the murder and not have happened before or after as a part of the discovery, or in this case the (real) forensic investigation conducted by the Polizia Scientifica six weeks before the clowns in bunny suits came back and sprayed the floors with luminol and tried to pretend it all must be evidence from the murder itself.

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.

They don't 'perfectly fit' anything, they're stains in a hallway found six weeks after a murder where they've been walked on by literally more than a dozen people, probably a hundred or more separate times. Any one of those instances could transfer DNA or even blood particles from the bloody shoe prints, or from traces in the murder room, or trace DNA from any of the residents either from their own passage or being tracked by someone else's--perhaps someone wearing booties who didn't change them in the hall because they were done with that area.

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.

There's no coincidence in finding DNA from someone who lives there in the hall outside their rooms. There's nothing all that surprising in laying down luminol and getting hits, from this very same case there were about as many hits found at Raffaele's that had nothing to do with the murder. Spray luminol in your bathroom and hall and odds are you'll get something to light up, it doesn't mean anyone was murdered there!

My point is that you can get luminol hits without any murder, and in addition that if you have had a murder yards away from where you're spraying luminol you might well pick up trace elements if that area was accessed by numerous people having walked over blood traces left and in that area, some of which were inches or feet (Rudy's barely visible bloody shoeprints right down this hall) away. Thus even if those hits were caused by highly diluted blood it is far more likely they were the result of someone who got something on their shoes/booties and moisture than they survived all that tromping around completely intact from the murder.

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.

The bathmat boogie is itself not incriminating, but should serve as a heuristic and illustration of how those luminol hits could have been caused by any number of scenarios after the murder, and any DNA found could easily have been from before the murder. Thus even if those luminol hits were highly diluted blood there's nothing incriminating about them.
 
It's not my approach to transparency. To me, it is just an approach to the truth.
If they were offered access to evidence under all law provisions for nine months and didn't request them for two years, they can't say they were denied.
If the request was made orally in sept 2009, and if it was a judge who declared the request inadmissible, you can't say the prosecution refused to release data.
If the request was then not forwarded not even at the Supreme Court, and not even in the reasons for appeal, and not even at the Hellmann trial (where there was even another prosecution), and if even the Nencini court in Florence dropped the request (and there is another prosecution office again), you can't blame the prosecution nor Stefanoni for not releasing things.
If you think the system is not transparent enough, well this is a matter of legislation. You should forward your opinion to the parliament, not try to use it in a personal case.

I have a hard time understanding this Machiavelli. How would the defense know about something like the negative TMB tests or the numerous too lows to ask for them? If Stefi hadn't "misspoke" about the quantities involved, the defense would still not know this. Do you really consider this "an approach to the truth". Is the prosecution required to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence? If not, how is that "an approach to the truth"?
 
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