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

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we can reasonably infer she knew about from exchange students accounts, since Perugia was twinned with Seattle
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I have lived for 34 of my 42 years in Perth, Western Australia. Upon consulting Wikipedia, I learn that my city is twinned with nine others around the world, four of which I've never heard of. Among these is Vasto in your own home country, which I don't doubt is a very fine town. Next time you're there, do pass on my regards.
 
kwill said:
I actually don't know of a lot of those cases. What I've often heard is that the person was quiet and kept to himself. Ted Bundy comes to mind as one who seemed more social, but all his "great guy" accolades came from people he worked with and not those who knew him better. (A woman who lived with Ted Bundy actually turned his name in to the Seattle police when he was murdering women here. They ignored her. I met her years ago at a party, believe it or not.)

My point is that after six years and not a single person close to either Amanda or Raffaele raising their hand to say they always knew something was off, you can have a much higher level of certainty that nothing was off. This is not bringing bias into a convo, it's looking at the big picture.
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Bundy was one of the most prolific killers in history outside of the military or dictators. I categorically don't think either of the kids is a Bundy.

My experience is that often the neighbors are baffled that the guy (or gal don't want to be sexist :p) committed this or that crime. Sometimes they are social sometimes they keep to themselves.

I really don't want to repeat the accusations against the kids but there are some about past behavior. The ones about Amanda I basically don't believe.

If they committed this crime, I would posit that one at least suffered a psychotic break and the other went along. Do I think that is a long long shot, yes.
 
Planigale said:
One of the things that got me angry about this is the sexist view of many posters. Women have sex, get over it. As has been said she seems no different from most college students. In my personal experience, women going off abroad on sandwich years take advantage of a certain anonymity.

I look at the comments about AK sex life, and I think swap this for a guy would anyone have said this? Secondly so what? Actually all this proves is she was singularly vanilla. At first opportunity she settled down with a sweet guy.

One of the reasons that there may be few women is that we find these discussions offensive.
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The reason I was interested in this case was because of the horribly sexist reporting and 'pearl clutching' over some fairly normal young adult/student behaviour. Nearly every young woman I know could have been portrayed in a similar (or probably far worse) way.

Being sexually active is no indication of any underlying psychopathology. It seems as if the prosecution think that if a woman is having sex outside of marriage, she must also be capable of murder - as she must be a BAD woman! It's just ridiculous. All the nonsense they spouted about how the also sexually active Meredith, part of the 'Sex and the City' generation, would have been deeply offended by Amanda's vibrator etc. etc. - and the idea that a woman would be driven to murder her flatmate because of petty cleaning issues and petty jealousy, it's so far beyond ridiculous that it makes me want to combust with rage.

And Amanda Knox was not a party girl - the party girls I knew were spangled on ecstacy and cocaine and raving it up in Ibiza (and none of them turned out to be murderers).

The whole case seems to have nothing to do with evidence and basically boils down to a woman's sexuality being so 'powerful' and so 'dangerous' that it can drive men to murder and has to be stopped - It's the ultimate in slut shaming. I am amazed at how many women are still arguing that she is guilty, based on nothing more than buying pants and kissing her boyfriend - they should be ashamed.

Planigale said:
I think the lack of action by Italian authorities to appropriately investigate issues raised by this case is scandalous. The false HIV test and leaking of sexual history should be investigated. False negative tests with HIV are incredibly rare, so this must have been a lie. The normal process is a screening test is done on the first blood test, this does have a rate of false negatives, if the first test is positive a second test would be performed on the same blood sample that is highly specific. Only if both I'tests were positive would a presumptive positive report be reported and a second blood test requested, (catches mislabelled samples). In the UK the doctor / nurse involved would almost certainly have been struck off.
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Definitely should be struck off - I've worked at a GUM clinic and results would never be given a result in this way - I've never known a false positive as the same sample would be tested again using the double test, before results are given.
 
NancyS said:
The reason I was interested in this case was because of the horribly sexist reporting and 'pearl clutching' over some fairly normal young adult/student behaviour. Nearly every young woman I know could have been portrayed in a similar (or probably far worse) way.

Being sexually active is no indication of any underlying psychopathology. It seems as if the prosecution think that if a woman is having sex outside of marriage, she must also be capable of murder - as she must be a BAD woman! It's just ridiculous. All the nonsense they spouted about how the also sexually active Meredith, part of the 'Sex and the City' generation, would have been deeply offended by Amanda's vibrator etc. etc. - and the idea that a woman would be driven to murder her flatmate because of petty cleaning issues and petty jealousy, it's so far beyond ridiculous that it makes me want to combust with rage.

And Amanda Knox was not a party girl - the party girls I knew were spangled on ecstacy and cocaine and raving it up in Ibiza (and none of them turned out to be murderers).

The whole case seems to have nothing to do with evidence and basically boils down to a woman's sexuality being so 'powerful' and so 'dangerous' that it can drive men to murder and has to be stopped - It's the ultimate in slut shaming. I am amazed at how many women are still arguing that she is guilty, based on nothing more than buying pants and kissing her boyfriend - they should be ashamed.
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Thank you.

And the ugly flip side to that coin is the not-to-subtle suggestion that Raffaele is somehow to be treated with contempt because he wasn't sexually experienced.

A young woman was murdered in her own bedroom, and somehow the story that fascinates guilters to this day is about a pair of college students having sex.
 
Mary_H said:
Interesting, Dan. My main concern about dismissing the phone call as a coincidence is that there was some information (or misinformation) from the early days that got set in stone just because it was very early and nobody knew how much corruption and/or incompetence was going to be revealed in the long run. One example is the report about Meredith clutching African hair in her hand. Why was it reported at all if there wasn't something to it?

There was the meme about Mignini being dragged out of bed to come into the Questura, the meme about Edda Mellas never telling anybody that Amanda had retracted her accusation of Patrick -- all kinds of "facts" that were accepted but turned out to be false.
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Exactly. If the prosecuting team had demonstrated professional honesty and competence throughout this case, then there would be little reason to doubt their explanation of the bomb threat call.

For information potentially so important to the defense team's case, I think verifying the prosecuting team's explanation by requesting the telephone record is worth the effort. The response to the request itself, might be very enlightening, similar to the DNA records.
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Dan O. said:
Chris posted the news article about the drug dealer(s) almost 3 years ago. The names of the dealers were not released. There was no evidence presented confirming the phone calls and these would be irrelevant in the trial of the dealers years after Meredith's murder. An interesting side note is that the boys downstairs had been charged with dealing drugs. What ever became of that? Coincidence?
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IIRC the story came out right after the news that Curatolo was a drug dealer and in jail. A local (Perugia) news source released the story without even a reporter's byline. It was in turn picked up by just a few other Italian sources with little information added. As time went by the story among the pro-guilt faction became AK had a drug dealer on speed dial and had called him both immediately before and after the murder. Interesting to see how the lie grew. Both the timing and the lack of details made the story highly suspect. And nothing new has come out about it since. That is, until Machiavelli claims he knows the lawyers involved and is getting his information from them. Sorry, not buying it. It is complete BS, in my opinion.
 
andreajo said:
It would take a great deal of bravery for someone in Ms. Stefanoni's position (or even Machiavelli's position) to consider, even to themselves, that they have been mistaken in their belief in the guilt of Knox and Sollecito.

Stefanoni would have to look at her own actions in an entirely new and extremely unflattering light. The only way that she can justify her sloppiness and possible fudging is to believe with all her heart that it was done in the noble cause of convicting two murderers. To protect her belief in herself as a professional and good person, she must do whatever mental gymnastics are required to cling to the belief that Amanda and Raffaele killed Meredith.

I'd be very surprised if she could ever come to believe that RS and AK are innocent. If she did, and took steps to clear the air, I'd be prepared to accord her some measure of respect.
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Yes, so would I, and even more respect if she then used her experience to teach others the benefits of remaining uncompromisingly neutral during an investigation.
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NancyS said:
The reason I was interested in this case was because of the horribly sexist reporting and 'pearl clutching' over some fairly normal young adult/student behaviour. Nearly every young woman I know could have been portrayed in a similar (or probably far worse) way.

Being sexually active is no indication of any underlying psychopathology. It seems as if the prosecution think that if a woman is having sex outside of marriage, she must also be capable of murder - as she must be a BAD woman! It's just ridiculous. All the nonsense they spouted about how the also sexually active Meredith, part of the 'Sex and the City' generation, would have been deeply offended by Amanda's vibrator etc. etc. - and the idea that a woman would be driven to murder her flatmate because of petty cleaning issues and petty jealousy, it's so far beyond ridiculous that it makes me want to combust with rage.

And Amanda Knox was not a party girl - the party girls I knew were spangled on ecstacy and cocaine and raving it up in Ibiza (and none of them turned out to be murderers).

The whole case seems to have nothing to do with evidence and basically boils down to a woman's sexuality being so 'powerful' and so 'dangerous' that it can drive men to murder and has to be stopped - It's the ultimate in slut shaming. I am amazed at how many women are still arguing that she is guilty, based on nothing more than buying pants and kissing her boyfriend - they should be ashamed.



Definitely should be struck off - I've worked at a GUM clinic and results would never be given a result in this way - I've never known a false positive as the same sample would be tested again using the double test, before results are given.
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kwill said:
Thank you.

And the ugly flip side to that coin is the not-to-subtle suggestion that Raffaele is somehow to be treated with contempt because he wasn't sexually experienced.

A young woman was murdered in her own bedroom, and somehow the story that fascinates guilters to this day is about a pair of college students having sex.
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Nancy absolutely hit the nail on the head. Being "naughty" does not make one BAD in other ways. There is no correlation between sex and violence or sex and murder. What may be most criminal about all of this is how some people.

I have known girls that I knew got around a lot that were the sweetest people you have ever met and total prudes that were the most manipulative mean people imaginable. Kwill's point about Raffaele is also very telling and sexist. They crucify Amanda for having sex and degrade Raffaele for not??
 
codyjuneau said:
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Exactly. If the prosecuting team had demonstrated professional honesty and competence throughout this case, then there would be little reason to doubt their explanation of the bomb threat call.
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Exactly. But of course evidence of police misconduct in one place doesn't prove it happened some place else.

For information potentially so important to the defense team's case, I think verifying the prosecuting team's explanation by requesting the telephone record is worth the effort. The response to the request itself, might be very enlightening, similar to the DNA records.
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In a thread on this issue at another site, the best argument put forth that this was just a coincidence is that the defense would have made a big deal out of it if they hadn't been made aware of proof that it was a coincidence.

There were quite a few different theories put forth in that thread, most of which I don't remember the details, but one that I liked was that Guede had made the call. The idea was that he had remorse after killing Kercher and wanted a way to get the police to investigate without giving himself away so he phoned in a fake bomb threat and hoped the police would find the phones, trace them to Kercher's residence, break in and save her. Wildly unlikely I suppose, but still nicely creative. The theories that seemed most likely to me were the ones involving the police and Guede as a police informant. The police knew about suspicious activities in the Kercher apartment, wanted to investigate and phoned in a fake bomb threat to provide a reason for investigating the Kercher residence without needing to explain they were tailing Guede.
 
davefoc said:
Exactly. But of course evidence of police misconduct in one place doesn't prove it happened some place else.

In a thread on this issue at another site, the best argument put forth that this was just a coincidence is that the defense would have made a big deal out of it if they hadn't been made aware of proof that it was a coincidence.

There were quite a few different theories put forth in that thread, most of which I don't remember the details, but one that I liked was that Guede had made the call. The idea was that he had remorse after killing Kercher and wanted a way to get the police to investigate without giving himself away so he phoned in a fake bomb threat and hoped the police would find the phones, trace them to Kercher's residence, break in and save her. Wildly unlikely I suppose, but still nicely creative. The theories that seemed most likely to me were the ones involving the police and Guede as a police informant. The police knew about suspicious activities in the Kercher apartment, wanted to investigate and phoned in a fake bomb threat to provide a reason for investigating the Kercher residence without needing to explain they were tailing Guede.
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The several theories - 1) that Guede felt remorse, or 2) that the police were using Guede as a police informant, knew something was up at Kerscher's flat, wanted an excuse to investigate, and therefore called a fake toilet bomb threat - are pure #@%. The only guy in Perugia who could have thought of that is Magnini himself and even he would have had to be on LSD. (Now that could explain a lot!)

Remember, anyone following along the street who wants to call a fake toilet bomb threat to the lady of the estate as Rudy nears the property must quickly identify the owner, get her number, and make a call (presumably from an untraceable phone). "Hey, Rudy, buddy. Don't walk so fast. I got to call in a toilet bomb threat before you pass that old lady's place."
 
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yimyammer said:
no worries, my attempts at comedy malfunction often
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That's what happens when post after post after post it is serious and then we think we are clever with our little irony or sarcasm. Everyone goes right past it and both the comedian and the audience are embarrassed. :o:(
 
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A question for anyone who wants to answer it:

How likely do you think it is that the police simply presumed the boy's prank explanation for the bomb threat phone call because they could not, or did not determine who made the bomb threat phone call?
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Spent the morning getting reacquainted with Preston's, "The Monster of Florence". Focussed on Mignini and the wrongful prosecutions. This edition was released while Knox and Sollecito were in prison........

........ but I now better understand why Machiavelli fights tooth and nail against any suggestion of "Satanic rite".

It was interesting the read (now that I know better the context) the e-mail Preston reprints to him from Spezi in the courtroom, where Spezi found out that that they were speculating that he, himself, was fathered by someone else other than who Spezi thought he'd been fathered by, and that Preston was American Secret Service.

It would be funny if they were not, years later, under some sort of indictment in Italy - Spezi anyway.

At the end of the book Preston is offered a bet by a colleague that Mignini might bring hos old tricks from the Narducci prosecution, to the Kercher trial. Preston declines the bet.
 
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