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

[Strozzi]

Daily Telegraph reports "Florence authorities issue arrest warrant for Machiavelli"

They're onto him! Mach, do you want an attorney? It will only make things worse for you.

See image of actual arrest warrant for Machiavelli, below:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9871527/Briton-finds-500-year-old-arrest-warrant-for-Machiavelli.html

 

[Bill Williams]

You outed yourself some time back if IIRC. I'm not interested in you at all, only your relationship to the "reporters" you defend.

My apologies to the PMers should they actually exist. I think that when the discussion is about people and their relationships with other people such as Mach and Vogt and Mignini is important to know the relationships the accuser has with the "other sides" approximate reporters.

For the record I have no such database and wouldn't waste any access time looking for your info if I did. Also, I have never had any type of communication with any of the people in question. Can you make a similar statement?

Truly all I can do, really, is read this with a chuckle. Whatever.

 

[katy_did]

The other two seem to have been made with a larger foot. They are just outside Amanda's door, side by side, with the toes oriented toward the kitchen/common area.

I'm not sure about them being made with a larger foot - I think this was just something the prosecution claimed because they knew there was an obvious explanation for the prints if they were all Amanda's. If they could persuade the jury one of them was Raffaele's, though...? Much more difficult to explain.

A long time back I took four of the pictures of the prints and reduced them all to the same scale, which showed the sizing to be not hugely different. More important, though, is that the second and fourth prints (those side by side in the corridor) are both far too blurred and distorted to tell what size they originally were, because the police over-applied the luminol. They also seem to be made up of several prints and/or from a foot sliding along the ground. The fourth print especially looks like it's definitely made up of multiple prints (e.g. there are two heel marks).

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

What is still a lingering mystery is why there are no intervening forensic traces of Rudy between Meredith's room and that bathmat.

Massei dealt with this mystery in his motivations report. Remember, this is a motivations report to justify a guilty verdict against Knox and Sollecito.

Massei said that the mystery of the "missing forensic traces", meaning the presumed missing footprints-in-blood between Meredith's room and the bathmat.....

1) must have been the result of a clean-up
2) that clean-up must have been done by Amanda and/or Raffaele​

Massei tries to resolve a mystery, pointing to - are you ready - no evidence at all.

The problem being that this is exactly the area where they found the luminol footprint they say matches Amanda.

So they cleaned up a trail of footprints that ended with the print on the mat, so thoroughly that no traces were detected even with luminol, but left the bathmat print along with the latent print of Amanda's print that showed up with luminol.

Or else maybe they did the thorough clean-up first, but left the print on the mat, and sometime after that, Amanda left the footprint that showed up with luminol.

BUT - in that case, they then cleaned up the rest of her latent footprints so thoroughly that only the one print showed up in the area between Meredith's room and the bathmat, even with luminol.

That leaves us to figure out the other luminol prints, the ones further down the hall. When were they made? When and how was the trail leading to them cleaned?

The permutations are endless. If they ever do a Primer sequel, they can get Massei to write the script. Machiavelli can provide a commentary after the film is released.

 

[Bill Williams]

Daily Telegraph reports "Florence authorities issue arrest warrant for Machiavelli"

They're onto him! Mach, do you want an attorney? It will only make things worse for you.

See image of actual arrest warrant for Machiavelli, below:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9871527/Briton-finds-500-year-old-arrest-warrant-for-Machiavelli.html

LOL!!

I have no idea who you are, Strozzi, but I like you!

 

[Dan O.]

Having a positive reaction with luminol and a negative reaction with TMB is a sticky problem. The difficulty is that these tests rely on basically the same initial reaction to release oxygen from hydrogen peroxide that then oxidizes the indicator. One difference that has bee pointed out is that if there is an oxidizing agent present it will directly cause the luminol to glow. This will be detected by a premature color change of the TMB. Unless Stef has her nomenclature reversed, the luminol footprints did not give a premature indication.

Digging in deeper, let's look at the differences between the application of the two tests. Luminol is applied to a surface to be tested. The luminol mixture already contains both the indicator and the peroxide. When the peroxide contacts the catalyst, an oxygen is released which combines with the luminol molecule and causes the release of a photon. TMB is a two part test. A swab is used to pick up part of the stain. The TMB is applied to the swab to test for oxidizing agents. Then peroxide is applied and again when the peroxide contacts the catalizing agent, oxygen is released which combines with the TMB and causes a color change.

What happens if the stain cannot be picked up by the swab? It's an invisible stain that only showed up with the aid of the Luminol so there would be no way to know if the stain was being picked up by the swab. In the case where there had been blood in the shoe print at marker #2, the blood was picked up by the swab and the TMB showed a positive result. But if the stain is very old and is chemically bound to the floor tiles, swabbing is not going to pick it up.

Can we tell what the stain is? Probably not. It could be very old blood that has degraded leaving behind the iron that subsequently formed a chemical bond with the tile. It could be iron or copper or some other metal from a cleaning or beauty product. There is practically no way to tell and it doesn't really matter since the testing has shown the important fact that the stain was not recent blood from the time of the murder.

 

[Bill Williams]

What is still a lingering mystery is why there are no intervening forensic traces of Rudy between Meredith's room and that bathmat.

Massei dealt with this mystery in his motivations report. Remember, this is a motivations report to justify a guilty verdict against Knox and Sollecito.

Massei said that the mystery of the "missing forensic traces", meaning the presumed missing footprints-in-blood between Meredith's room and the bathmat.....
1) must have been the result of a clean-up
2) that clean-up must have been done by Amanda and/or Raffaele
Massei tries to resolve a mystery, pointing to - are you ready - no evidence at all.

The problem being that this is exactly the area where they found the luminol footprint they say matches Amanda.
So they cleaned up a trail of footprints that ended with the print on the mat, so thoroughly that no traces were detected even with luminol, but left the bathmat print along with the latent print of Amanda's print that showed up with luminol.

Or else maybe they did the thorough clean-up first, but left the print on the mat, and sometime after that, Amanda left the footprint that showed up with luminol.

BUT - in that case, they then cleaned up the rest of her latent footprints so thoroughly that only the one print showed up in the area between Meredith's room and the bathmat, even with luminol.

That leaves us to figure out the other luminol prints, the ones further down the hall. When were they made? When and how was the trail leading to them cleaned?

The permutations are endless. If they ever do a Primer sequel, they can get Massei to write the script. Machiavelli can provide a commentary after the film is released.

This is what happens when someone tries to put together a comprehensive timeline of events which explain the evidence.

Something that Judge Massei (obviously) did not do. He gave it the college try, and it took 430+ pages to do it.... but in his own report lies the seeds of why neither Knox nor Sollecito can be convicted of this crime.... including the parallel charge of doing the clean-up... or whatever that "simulation" of a crime scene charge was about.

If there'd been a clean-up, Amanda's latent print would not have been there.

Why does this fact alone not set off alarm bells for Judge Massei in 2010 as he sat down to write out the reasons why Amanda and Raffaele are guilty?

I have to be off. I've just got a shipment of a suitcase of unmarked American Ben Franklin's so as to pay off immigration to get people across the border. The UPS guy said that it'd been sent by Gogerty-Marriott, but that if I repeated this to anyone else, the UPS guy would have to come and kidnap me....

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I'm not sure about them being made with a larger foot - I think this was just something the prosecution claimed because they knew there was an obvious explanation for the prints if they were all Amanda's. If they could persuade the jury one of them was Raffaele's, though...? Much more difficult to explain.

A long time back I took four of the pictures of the prints and reduced them all to the same scale, which showed the sizing to be not hugely different. More important, though, is that the second and fourth prints (those side by side in the corridor) are both far too blurred and distorted to tell what size they originally were, because the police over-applied the luminol. They also seem to be made up of several prints and/or from a foot sliding along the ground. The fourth print especially looks like it's definitely made up of multiple prints (e.g. there are two heel marks).

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=555&pictureid=4046[/qimg]

Yep, it could all be the same foot. Or not.

A number of people have pointed out that the morphology of one of the prints in Amanda's room is different from her reference print, however.

I see this as similar to shell casings found at the scene of a strangulation murder, which is the kind of thing I have read about many times. It is sometimes possible to figure out how a crime happened, and Meredith's murder is one of the cases where it is indeed possible. That doesn't mean it is possible (or necessary) to explain every trace of human activity detected at that location.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

This is what happens when someone tries to put together a comprehensive timeline of events which explain the evidence.

Something that Judge Massei (obviously) did not do. He gave it the college try, and it took 430+ pages to do it.... but in his own report lies the seeds of why neither Knox nor Sollecito can be convicted of this crime.... including the parallel charge of doing the clean-up... or whatever that "simulation" of a crime scene charge was about.

If there'd been a clean-up, Amanda's latent print would not have been there.

Why does this fact alone not set off alarm bells for Judge Massei in 2010 as he sat down to write out the reasons why Amanda and Raffaele are guilty?

I have to be off. I've just got a shipment of a suitcase of unmarked American Ben Franklin's so as to pay off immigration to get people across the border. The UPS guy said that it'd been sent by Gogerty-Marriott, but that if I repeated this to anyone else, the UPS guy would have to come and kidnap me....

If it's Frank, be sure you have duct tape and some strong sedatives. He's a good writer, but we have seen what happens when he is allowed to roam the countryside and frighten the peasants.

 

[Bill Williams]

If it's Frank, be sure you have duct tape and some strong sedatives. He's a good writer, but we have seen what happens when he is allowed to roam the countryside and frighten the peasants.

If it's Frank, the duct tape and sedatives will be for me!

I've discovered the hard why that it is useless to try to smuggle him across the border with a subtle, "O look! Squirrel!" It takes Ben Franklins, and none of that cheap plastic Canadian stuff.....

Yessirree Bob, Sherlock Grinder is on to something here... I'd better shut up.

 

[acbytesla]

What do you think it was? Specifically.

I don't see you questioning those that propose that the foot prints could be booty prints made by the ICSI.

It is highly unlikely that any prints were left after the murder in anything but blood. If the prints were left there before the murder, which is what I suspect, then what explanation do you have for what substance made them, how did it get only on one foot and why wasn't it washed away with a simple floor wash?

I really have no idea what they were...and I'm not sure speculating is all that productive. I think we can say what it wasn't and that is all. It could be from some substance on the bottom of the CSI's booties..but we don't know...so why even guess???

 

[katy_did]

Assuming as most of us do that Amanda's telling the truth about the shower and the bath mat (and as Grinder pointed out, she mentioned the bath mat before the police found the footprints, so can't have been covering for them) is it even possible she could have done that and not left any luminol-positive trace on the floor? I mean, I would think if you wipe your dripping wet foot on a bathmat where there are visible traces of dilute blood, and then you step on a tile floor, you're inevitably going to leave marks which would be picked up by luminol.

The only way to avoid it would be if she somehow avoided stepping on any of the blood-stained areas or didn't step off the bathmat (but she said she had one foot on it and one foot off).

That's sort of what I mean by the obvious answer. There's dilute blood on the bathmat; Amanda stepped on the bathmat; then she wandered down the corridor basically on one foot (you know what I mean). Then the police do tests and they find luminol-positive spots from a right foot in the corridor and in Amanda's room! Sure, it could be something else, but...

 

[tsig]

I don't know. What I do know is that if the Missouri state police have figured it out, and wrote it down in their manual, I would damn well have expected the head scientific lab in Rome to have it figured out.

They used to live in sod houses in Missouri.

Why would living in sod houses in Missouri help the head scientific lab figure it out?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Assuming as most of us do that Amanda's telling the truth about the shower and the bath mat (and as Grinder pointed out, she mentioned the bath mat before the police found the footprints, so can't have been covering for them) is it even possible she could have done that and not left any luminol-positive trace on the floor? I mean, I would think if you wipe your dripping wet foot on a bathmat where there are visible traces of dilute blood, and then you step on a tile floor, you're inevitably going to leave marks which would be picked up by luminol.

The only way to avoid it would be if she somehow avoided stepping on any of the blood-stained areas or didn't step off the bathmat (but she said she had one foot on it and one foot off).

That's sort of what I mean by the obvious answer. There's dilute blood on the bathmat; Amanda stepped on the bathmat; then she wandered down the corridor basically on one foot (you know what I mean). Then the police do tests and they find luminol-positive spots from a right foot in the corridor and in Amanda's room! Sure, it could be something else, but...

Excellent - good job.

 

[charlatan]

I don't know yet exactly what was said in court by the RIS. Historically Mach/Yummi has been correct in calling results over there.

Bill and other PIP have been wrong most of the time.

I hope that the RIS stated what the PIP are reporting but I just don't know yet what is correct.

I wonder why if the tweeting stopped and that proves something, why the conspirasists think he didn't just make up their testimony as it was happening.

PIP reporting? Hilarious. I had feeds from Vogt, Barbie, Mach, some pro-guilt woman, and La Nazione open that morning. Any information posted here and elsewhere came directly from these sources. Only Barbie and La Nazione offered timely updates during the proceedings. If you can't be bothered to do a little light research re something that happened a couple days ago it's best not to make claims about who is probably correct.

Don't really care one way or another, but I too found it curious that our leading PGP lights went dark during the meaty bits of the hearing. Vogt had a tweet up about covering the trial on BBC radio and AP TV but that tweet's since disappeared and I wasn't able to find any coverage. To answer your question, perhaps spinning in real time is more difficult than you think it is.

 

[Grinder]

Assuming as most of us do that Amanda's telling the truth about the shower and the bath mat (and as Grinder pointed out, she mentioned the bath mat before the police found the footprints, so can't have been covering for them) is it even possible she could have done that and not left any luminol-positive trace on the floor? I mean, I would think if you wipe your dripping wet foot on a bathmat where there are visible traces of dilute blood, and then you step on a tile floor, you're inevitably going to leave marks which would be picked up by luminol.

The only way to avoid it would be if she somehow avoided stepping on any of the blood-stained areas or didn't step off the bathmat (but she said she had one foot on it and one foot off).

That's sort of what I mean by the obvious answer. There's dilute blood on the bathmat; Amanda stepped on the bathmat; then she wandered down the corridor basically on one foot (you know what I mean). Then the police do tests and they find luminol-positive spots from a right foot in the corridor and in Amanda's room! Sure, it could be something else, but...

This describes what I thought from near the beginning. I added the possibility that it was very old blood after reading about how hard blood is to remove. I think that the only fly in the ointment is that they didn't get Meredith's DNA but still a very plausible scenario.

Excellent - good job.

Wow!

 

[Grinder]

PIP reporting? Hilarious. I had feeds from Vogt, Barbie, Mach, some pro-guilt woman, and La Nazione open that morning. Any information posted here and elsewhere came directly from these sources. Only Barbie and La Nazione offered timely updates during the proceedings. If you can't be bothered to do a little light research re something that happened a couple days ago it's best not to make claims about who is probably correct.

Glad you enjoyed it. Not sure you understood the reference. PIP sources have mostly been wrong about what would be ruled and what actually is happening in the court.

So since you were tuned in, exactly what did the RIS say about Stef's work?

 

[Grinder]

If it's Frank, the duct tape and sedatives will be for me!

I've discovered the hard why that it is useless to try to smuggle him across the border with a subtle, "O look! Squirrel!" It takes Ben Franklins, and none of that cheap plastic Canadian stuff.....

Whatever. Straw man on the smuggling. Simple questions for you. Did you drive Frank around in Canada? Did you lobby for his admission to the country? Was this the trip that ended with his host tossing him.

Are too embarrassed to answer? If you didn't drive him why not just say so?

Yessirree Bob, Sherlock Grinder is on to something here... I'd better shut up.

We'll see.

 

[Bill Williams]

Yessirree Bob, Sherlock Grinder is on to something here... I'd better shut up.

We'll see.

See, we are beginning to understand each other......

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Assuming as most of us do that Amanda's telling the truth about the shower and the bath mat (and as Grinder pointed out, she mentioned the bath mat before the police found the footprints, so can't have been covering for them) is it even possible she could have done that and not left any luminol-positive trace on the floor? I mean, I would think if you wipe your dripping wet foot on a bathmat where there are visible traces of dilute blood, and then you step on a tile floor, you're inevitably going to leave marks which would be picked up by luminol.

The only way to avoid it would be if she somehow avoided stepping on any of the blood-stained areas or didn't step off the bathmat (but she said she had one foot on it and one foot off).

That's sort of what I mean by the obvious answer. There's dilute blood on the bathmat; Amanda stepped on the bathmat; then she wandered down the corridor basically on one foot (you know what I mean). Then the police do tests and they find luminol-positive spots from a right foot in the corridor and in Amanda's room! Sure, it could be something else, but...

Certainly it's possible. I don't think it's a slam-dunk by any means. Police get a lot of luminol red herrings. I don't know how many of them are footprints.

ETA: My feeling has always been that if the footprints were residual blood, from the bathmat or anything, they would have seen this from the TMB, which is a whole lot better than Machiavelli claims or else they wouldn't bother with it. Also, Meredith's profile would have shown up on at least some of the DNA swabs. If it was really blood, it would have added a lot to their case. They would have taken pains to prove it was blood, which they could have done. Instead they brought it to court as "could be blood, you decide."