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

[Dan O.]

Can someone clarify for me the detail about the clothes in the washer? What is the evidence that Meredith loaded the machine before going out to meet her friends, so that the cycle would have been complete at the time she got home?

If I were PGP, I would explain this plausibly by saying that Meredith could have loaded the machine after coming home, so that it was running at the time of the murder, and it doesn't indicate that she had a task left unattended when she was killed.

Amanda's email

He came right after i started eating and
he made himself some pasta. as we were eating together meredith came
out of the shower and grabbed some laundry or put some laundry in, one
or the other and returned into her room after saying hi to raffael.

The PGP are going to need a whole new timeline to squeeze the laundry chores in and still fit the known time events.

• 21:20-21:30 time of Meredith's scream as recounted in Rudy's Skype call
• 21:26 Last opening of file "Naruto ep 101.avi" recorded in spotlight metadata on Raffaele's computer. (from Raffaele's appeal)
  runtime is 23 minutes watch on hulu
  the last access time recorded in the filesystem is on Nov. 6th after Raffaele is in police custody.
• 21:58 Attempt to call voice mail (from phone memory)
  Massei Report pg 350
• 22:00 Kercher's phone attempts to call Abbey Bank.
  Source Micheli Report. Call fails because 44 prefix for UK not used.
• 22:00 (aprox) Hoax bomb threat call to Elisabetta (villa where phones were recovered)
  (Massei Report pg 13)

Raffaele had to still be home to start that animie and says Amanda was there with him.

And remember, there's that digestion thing that really indicates Meredith was murdered very soon after getting home at 21:05. The events on Meredith's phones indicate that the murderer was already out of the house and trying to turn the phones off at 21:58. The phones also have to be tossed into the garden before the police respond to this bomb threat.

 

[Supernaut]

All this crap about the "difficulty of the climb to Filomena's window.

I'd like to remind everyone that humans are primates, and primates are 'arboreal' - tree-dwellers.

It's the reason we've got digits (fingers) and binocular vision. Climbing is practically innate to us, and any athletic individual with an incentive (such as Guede) could have been up that wall and inside the house in seconds. It's idiotic to argue otherwise.

The only delay would have been removing some of the glass shards from the frame (as he evidently did) and reaching in to fiddle with the latch, but he might well have got back down after doing so to check he was still unobserved.

Another idiotic 'point' someone is trying to score concerns the use of a thrown rock to break the window, rather than manually smashing it with a hammer or some-such, as if there's something unusual about it. Good grief.

And while we're on the subject, the small hammer Guede was carrying in Milan was of the type used to start a break (with a sharp point) in toughened/laminated glass for emergency escapes from vehicles (but just as useful for breaking modern, toughened-glass windows in buildings) , and entirely unsuitable for breaking plain glass such as was in Filomena's window.

 

[Supernaut]

And I wonder if she had no time to tidy her room, internationally broadcast pictures of the state of it being unforeseen, so it explains throwing Amanda under the bus for personal pride.

Yep - I've often wondered if she was saving herself the personal embarrassment of being revealed to the world as a slob.

 

[Supernaut]

I wonder why that was? Who would be responsible for filing those charges and starting an investigation? Would it be the Public Ministry of Perugia perchance? The same one that found it necessary to start investigations/file charges on Amanda and Raffaele's families, all those journalists and add charges like the calunnia one?

You know, had Rudy been convicted of burglary for that other charge it might have been more difficult to prove the break-in was staged at the cottage and convict Amanda and Raffaele for 'staging' the break-in and stealing the money despite the fact it was Rudy who left his DNA on Meredith's purse and who really needed money being jobless and facing eviction and needing to flee the country and all.

Rudy would have gotten a longer sentence if he faced more charges and had priors, instead of being eligible for work release soon....

Had Rudy been charged, he wouldn't have been convicted, let alone imprisoned by Nov 1st, but a pending court appearance might well have given him pause to re-consider his chosen "career".

And as you say, it would have made it rather difficult for people to have given the prosecution's "staged burglary" any credibility.

 

[Supernaut]

It is disturbing to find out how many cases there are like this, and even more disturbing that a large segment of the public blindly supports whatever the authorities say or do. The police zero in on a particular suspect and go all out to make a case against that person, and they find some way to dismiss or rationalize anything that gets in the way of their belief.

Amanda has some good links on her blog. She is really taking a look at this problem, and she ain't a 20 year old kid any more. She is one smart, capable woman. She has the potential to make an impact.

One of her links is a segment of This American Life that talks about Jeffrey Womack and the Marcia Trimble murder in Nashville. That led me to a new book, in which Womack has collaborated with a writer to tell his story. It is called The Suspect: A Memoir. The murder took place in 1975. They finally got the killer through a cold-case DNA match in 2007. In the interim, they made Womack's life a living hell with no evidence whatsoever, purely a theory arising from the fact that he saw the victim shortly before she disappeared. He lawyered up right away, or he'd have been railroaded for sure. The book is available as a Kindle download for the price of a Big Mac, and it's a fascinating read.

There is a tendency for people to enjoy a sense of 'elitism' and 'exclusiveness' in belonging to, well, exclusive institutions and 'clubs', like the police, the judiciary, the Masons etc', and these institutions thus attract people who are particularly inclined to it.

A doyen of the British judiciary was the late Lord Denning, who apparently regarded the Law in an entirely different way to that which most 'outsiders' might. It was entirely 'pragmatic' and predicated on maintaining 'respect' for (or would that be fear of?) the law.

He bluntly stated that he had no problem at all with convictions that he KNEW were faulty being upheld (he was referring specifically to several passed on the 'strength' of confessions obtained by out-and-out torture by police officers), regarding this as absolutely preferable to undermining the prestige of the British criminal justice system.

IOW, "the truth be damned". I don't know whether I'd describe this as immoral or amoral.

I don't think he's unusual, he was just less mealy-mouthed in declaring it than most of his peers tend to be.

 

[andreajo]

There is a tendency for people to enjoy a sense of 'elitism' and 'exclusiveness' in belonging to, well, exclusive institutions and 'clubs', like the police, the judiciary, the Masons etc', and these institutions thus attract people who are particularly inclined to it.

A doyen of the British judiciary was the late Lord Denning, who apparently regarded the Law in an entirely different way to that which most 'outsiders' might. It was entirely 'pragmatic' and predicated on maintaining 'respect' for (or would that be fear of?) the law.

He bluntly stated that he had no problem at all with convictions that he KNEW were faulty being upheld (he was referring specifically to several passed on the 'strength' of confessions obtained by out-and-out torture by police officers), regarding this as absolutely preferable to undermining the prestige of the British criminal justice system.

IOW, "the truth be damned". I don't know whether I'd describe this as immoral or amoral.

I don't think he's unusual, he was just less mealy-mouthed in declaring it than most of his peers tend to be.

Lord Denning might be less mealy-mouthed than his peers. He might also be more self-aware.

I think that you are right that many people who are motivated by a desire for power/control and prestige find their way into exclusive groups like the police and judiciary. Too many 'regular people' are willing to accept the opinions of such high and mighty folk without question because of the position they occupy regardless of whether they behave well or poorly, and regardless of whether or not what they are saying makes any sense. Having few people who will question them when they say and do stupid stuff gives them an unmerited confidence in their own abilities and general rightness. I have served on boards with judges and lawyers and have been flabbergasted by some outrageously bad behavior which seemed to pass unnoticed by other board members because of who it was that was doing it.

Fortunately, these professions also hold out lures for people who view them as positions of service attended by responsibility and guided by principle. Judge Hellmann seems to be one such person: “I want to see who will take responsibility of convicting two innocent people or at least I challenge anyone to demonstrate that there is evidence to convict them." (From Ground Report article: Judge that acquitted Amanda Knox claims Italian Supreme Court violated the law when ruling on case by Bruce Fisher. Contains links to Italian interviews)

 

[Grinder]

Grinder, my good friend. Your research skills leave me amazed. I trouble you with a small but impotrant request. Can you please see if the document says the burglar laid several pieces of broken glass side-by-side on a desk or table as if assembling them together?

I'll look but others here have much better resources. This is an important question but not something that would have made it to the kids' trial because the defense frankly wasn't as thorough as it might have been. But hopefully I'm wrong about that,

 

[Grinder]

IIRC, Mach said something to the effect that Rudy being caught at the nursery was not a crime even though he was caught red handed with money and property from the nursery. If true, I wonder how the events at the law office would be classified according to PLE, is that not a crime either?

IIRC he said that it wouldn't be a crime that would require arrest and detainment. But it could be that you recounting is better.

 

[Grinder]

I thought Rudy returned the stolen laptop?

Pretty sure the cops kept it.

 

[acbytesla]

I'll look but others here have much better resources. This is an important question but not something that would have made it to the kids' trial because the defense frankly wasn't as thorough as it might have been. But hopefully I'm wrong about that,

I can't help but think that detail is not something that was noticed by the police when they took the police report. That kind of minor burglary happens all the time. The cops notice general details like point of entry and of course what is missing so the victim can file an insurance report, but my bet is that is the limit of their investigation.

 

[Grinder]

I thought you might be a bit wrong about this. I imagined that some of the glass might not be quite broken as the projectile passed through the glass and the glass might spring back flicking bits of glass backwards.

I tried to verify my theory by looking at on-line video of glass broken by a projectile:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHk_69C90rU
http://www.videoblocks.com/videos/details/slow-motion-destroying-sheet-of-glass/
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/33704-time-warp-regular-glass-break-video.htm (with mandatory ad)

The results weren't definitive but I thought I saw broken glass ejected towards the direction of the projectile in the first.

I did find this:


http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/lab/for...ns/fsc/april2009/review/2009_04_review01.htm/

Thanks for the research. My experience with broken windows is that glass flies in both directions. Certainly at the edge of the hole glass fragments will drop down and some bounce outside.

Had they found a huge percentage outside that would have been a pointer to the rock coming from the inside. Now of course the kids could have broken it from the inside and then gone out and picked up the glass and moved it to the inside in just the right pattern.

 

[Grinder]

Well then, the burden is on us to keep asking the same questions until somebody decides to answer it. Here are my questions.

1. Why the meal Meredith ate between 6 and 6:30 pm had not even started to move into her small intestine if she was still alive at 11:30 pm? That process should have been completed during those 5 - 5.5 hours, but it hadn't even begun.

Lalli made a mistake and didn't tie off the intestines properly. It really is an issue since the digestion should have started by 8 or 8:30.

2. Why Meredith would not try to call home ever again after her first attempt failed at 8:56 pm?

Changed her mind. Too late for her mom. Who knows?

These questions are based on a pair of undisputed facts that point toward a time of death for Meredith that falls between 9 and 9:30 pm. No meal in her duodendum at autopsy. No cell phone activity for an hour, and what there was made no sense.

See Massei - just playing with phone.

I happen to believe the TOD was closer to 10 than 9. The 10:13 phone connection to me says she had been attacked.

 

[Strozzi]

The evidence strongly indicates that MK was not near the cottage at 8:55 PM. She arrived there at a corrected time of 9:04 PM. A full 9 minutes later...which happens to be how longs it takes to walk from SP house to the cottage. She may have been downstairs first and even attacked there. The police started botching that crime scene when they decided to kick the door open. Apparently no one has the skills to pick a lock.

There is blood evidence down there that IS NOT cats blood and there is missing DNA data results from down there as well. The incompetance/corruption is spread far and wide...but these clowns are not and never were seeking the truth. They only sought a crazy idea designed inside the mind of a known mad man.

Ok, Merdith Kerscher arrived home at about 9:04 pm. Rudy Guede hiding in the toilet states she screamed very loudly at about 9:20 pm - a scream that he realized could have been heard by someone else.

 

[acbytesla]

I happen to believe the TOD was closer to 10 than 9. The 10:13 phone connection to me says she had been attacked.

I'm not sure the 10:13 call says anything. I use to be convinced that it means that phone had to be in Rudy's possession. I do think the 9:58 and 10:00 calls are clues to that however. What do we know about the 10:13 call? It was from a somewhat more distant Wind tower. Which tells me the line of sight to the close Lupatelli tower was obstructed somehow while line of sight to the Wind tower was not obstructed. But this could have happened in many ways. For example Rudy could have escaped along the outside walls of the city directly below the Lupatelli tower where the line of sight to that tower would have been obstructed. There is also a ridge line to the Northwest of the cottage that could have caused problems. Then of course there is the cottage wall of the bedroom. I don't know what they are made of and how they might effect transmission.

Any one going on just this amount or lack of detail who can say what that means is simply spitballing. I've wanted to see the cellular reports, but I can't even find them in Italian.

According to Rudy it was in the middle. And while I think he is not credible, I have a tendency to believe this, because I can't imagine a reason to lie about this detail.

I think it was more like 9:10 at the latest. I'm convinced the Rudy was sitting on the toilet when Meredith came home. The only question I have is how long did Rudy wait in that bathroom before he came out. I can't imagine he waited on the toilet for more than 10 minutes or so...(this probably would have felt like an eternity to Rudy) The not calling home or not taking off her jacket or not taking the clothes out of the washer certainly doesn't prove anything, but they are clues that definitely lead to thinking it was early in the 9 o'clock hour.

 

[andreajo]

Lalli made a mistake and didn't tie off the intestines properly. It really is an issue since the digestion should have started by 8 or 8:30.

“video of the autopsy showed Dr. Lalli had in fact tied each end of the upper intestine, just as Umani Ronchi said he should have.”

Excerpt From: Sollecito, Raffaele. “Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox.” Gallery Books, 2012-09-18T06:00:00+00:00.

Grinder, doubtless this ground has been covered already unbeknownst to me. Is Raffaele incorrect when he says that Dr. Lalli did tie off the intestines correctly?

 

[Supernaut]

Lalli made a mistake and didn't tie off the intestines properly. It really is an issue since the digestion should have started by 8 or 8:30.

No, that's what Mignini tried to make him say in court. He refused and Mignini stopped him from giving any further testimony.

Changed her mind. Too late for her mom. Who knows?



See Massei - just playing with phone.

He got the idea from this photo. But it's a camera in her hand, not a phone.

I happen to believe the TOD was closer to 10 than 9. The 10:13 phone connection to me says she had been attacked.

Do you? Or this just more bloody-minded contrarianism?

 

[Supernaut]

BTW, Massei "theorised" specifically that Meredith might have played with her phone whilst lying on her bed (with her coat and shoes still on, presumably), which is the reason I think the photo influenced him.

 

[Supernaut]

Lalli made a mistake and didn't tie off the intestines properly. It really is an issue since the digestion should have started by 8 or 8:30..........

Her last meal was still in her stomach, some of the ingredients still indentifiable, probably in its entirety (it contained 0.5 litres, nearly a pint), so this is completely moot.

 

[Poppy1016]

No, that's what Mignini tried to make him say in court. He refused and Mignini stopped him from giving any further testimony.


He got the idea from this photo. But it's a camera in her hand, not a phone.
[qimg]http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u529/Oxford59/Meredithphone_zps8385d58c.jpg[/qimg]


Do you? Or this just more bloody-minded contrarianism?

All of this devils advocate business keeps me in a constant state of confusion.

 

[yimyammer]

This is the likely reason for the likes of Mignini and a few bad cops...crafty but not intelligent or else they would have a better story without such crazy departures from reality. What is interesting to me is the fact that no one feels the duty to point out that the prosecutor is nutty as a fruit cake and instead several judges go out of their way to climb aboard his wacky train.

As far as PGP...sure crazy people can be intelligent...I find that scary rather than interesting. I also find the Big Footers scary though...quite in the same league as the PGP. Rock solidly blind to facts, evidence and logic. Isn't that the definition of crazy?

I find it scary too, I alluded to this in another post where I tried to bring up (but thought better of it) how the vibe I get reminds me of the oppression I felt hanging in the air in the former soviet block counties I visited before the wall fell and like I imagine existed in other oppressive regimes (insert regime here_______________) of the past & current.

The hyper-sensitivity to slander & libel in Italy appears to have a silencing effect on those who might want to publicly oppose government officials, etc. Not because they fear extreme physical consequences, but the mere threat of being dragged into court and having to spend money to defend yourself, even when you're clearly innocent would make one think hard about what they say especially against those who work within the system and know how to work it to maximum effect at little cost to them except for their time (i.e. Mignini).

Now I guess people should think about what they say before they say it, but the idea of harsh consequences for any kind of speech is really foreign to me since I'm in the US. My last name was the object of ridicule growing up, I wonder if I could have made bank if I had grown up in Italy and sued all the little kiddies & their parents?