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

[Bill Williams]

The interestingly new thing that has come out is that Filomena testified they used normal cleaning products to clean, including bleach. I am just wondering with all this bleach around, including two bottles at Raffaele's place, why would Amanda be at the store buying bleach. The whole thing makes no sense to me, even osmoticaly.

So, Amanda had no reason - no motive - to buy bleach that morning? To paraphrase Judge Massei, maybe it was just a "choice for clean."

Knox only feigned buying bleach. She was not sure that Curatolo had seen her the night before - even Machiavelli doubts (now) Curatolo's testimony is sufficient, given his eyesight.

Knox must have known about Curatolo's eyesight, so needed to make a second appearence - going to Quintavalle's store had a double impact - it meant she was seen, but also that the crack PLE folk would think she was buying bleach.

Yet (to anticipate Machiavelli's comments to come) Knox must have known that the use of Bleach would have been picked up by luminol, because Knox had studied advanced forensics back in Seattle before leaving for Perugia. So she purposely DIDN'T by bleach, but left the implication that she was on the hunt for cleaning products, which had been at the cottage all along, but that need not delay this analysis.

And Knox made this brief "choice for clean" (LOL) to go against type - she was trying to throw off the behavioural experts who were about to solve this case on behavioural clues only. She could see that the investigators were engaging in what profilers call, "hypervigilent behaviour", so she shifted gears... knowing she was going to be tapped as guilty in 2013 by a Florence prosecutor who found pooh in the toilet to be the key to understanding her guilt....

.... she suddenly became hypervigilently clean - enough to pull off a world-class DNA clean in Meredith's room, but leave enough of her mixed "biological material" to guarantee an all expenses paid vacation for four years in Italy.

This is the comprehensive timeline of the crime Machiavelli has been promising all along. No wait, he doesn't think a theory is necessary. All that is necessary is that innocent people get put away.

Whew, I almost lost track of what's important here.

 

[RandyN]

snip

Here's another term you can parse, Grinder....

It begs the question as to what counts as forensics in Italy? They did not take control DNA samples from Laura or Filomena, yet the basis of the quashing of acquittals is that there was multiple attackers, and they had no means of eliminating unknown DNA as belonging to the other housemates.


I mean what does it take?

Then we'd have Machiavelli arguing that it was Fiolmena who could choose not to sleep, and thus be refreshed to accomplish this deception.... at least that alternate universe would not need to have a perp who was at one time a doped-out newbie, and yet at another a world-class DNA scrubber....

One would expect that reference DNA (not control) samples were taken from all flatmates and friends. I have never heard that no swabs were taken of Filomena or Laura but that would not surprise me if true. After all they failed to take reference samples of foot prints after they found the "suspicious" luminol samples. Sure, they took RS, AK, and RG samples but I seem to recall they failed to get even a MK sample...so forget the other roommates or any friends who may have visited.

I enjoy this little back and forth with Grinder but at this point his devils advocate game is giving an undeserved legitimacy to what is and has always been the most ludicrous of cases.

Trying to separate out the tiny possible non-provable facts vs the overwhelming evidence of police mishandling and prosecutor and scientific abuse gives far too much importance to the former while creating a smoke screen that helps hide the true ridiculous absurd conditions that allow this false case to go on even after 6 years. Did anyone seriously read Massei?

His words alone describe most of missing facts in this case. Who can ignore all the "we can speculate", and "let's imagine", and "it is possible" and yet still argue that it was a fair and legitimate trial? Its absurd!

It was absurd at the first hearing in front of Claudia and it never got better. So to speak or argue that this tiny bit of assumption of innocence isn't solid or whatever is unsound and even dangerous because it distracts from the real corruption that had to be going on and it distracts from those who should be seeking the truth about that.

Mignini filed a dozen, maybe multiple dozens sub-related cases against many people in this case some including defense lawyers, family, newspapers, reporters, even Google, plus bloggers, and even a defendant herself for the crime of truthfully defending herself.

All while Migninis office refused to even run an investigation into the case of police abuse. This when the evidence was overwhelming and came from multiple sources if we are to believe RS and Diya Lumumba.

Try not to forget the burned up hard drives, missing interrogation tapes, missing records of certain bugged phone calls, lying DNA scientists, insane prosecution witnessess, missing motive, incredibly suspicious double DNA knife and ridiculous TOD...and on and on for pages more easily.

This case was built over a year long period and continued...no continues to be altered and modified as the prosecutor sees fit and as the whole damn Italian legal system seems to see fit (up to and including the dolts on the ISC) even today.

But here we toy with Grinders BS nitpicking points or Yummi/Macs baseless but voluminous deceptive words... meanwhile this monstrous abuse against justice and law and fair trials gets hidden or portrayed as a case that is close and understandably could be the result of some small amount of missing evidence.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Trying to figure what is in the minds of the Italians in this case is like trying to figure out why they would charge scientists for failing to predict earthquakes or why they ignore a killers confession and instead arrest and convict two most unlikely women. Perhaps they are just stupid. At least to think they can do this while the world looks on seems to prove that beyond all doubt.

Then again the world has such a short attention span...and this is just Italy...a tiny bankrupt country who holds the record number of abuses against human rights by its courts in all the western world.

Wine and cheese? Better of both can be had from France. Less chance of having your pocket picked there as well. But good job Italy. Perhaps you could hire Gogerty-Marriott to create a rudder for your "supertanker disaster".

 

[RoseMontague]

One would expect that reference DNA (not control) samples were taken from all flatmates and friends. I have never heard that no swabs were taken of Filomena or Laura but that would not surprise me if true. After all they failed to take reference samples of foot prints after they found the "suspicious" luminol samples. Sure, they took RS, AK, and RG samples but I seem to recall they failed to get even a MK sample...so forget the other roommates or any friends who may have visited.

I enjoy this little back and forth with Grinder but at this point his devils advocate game is giving an undeserved legitimacy to what is and has always been the most ludicrous of cases.

Trying to separate out the tiny possible non-provable facts vs the overwhelming evidence of police mishandling and prosecutor and scientific abuse gives far too much importance to the former while creating a smoke screen that helps hide the true ridiculous absurd conditions that allow this false case to go on even after 6 years. Did anyone seriously read Massei?

His words alone describe most of missing facts in this case. Who can ignore all the "we can speculate", and "let's imagine", and "it is possible" and yet still argue that it was a fair and legitimate trial? Its absurd.

It was absurd at the first hearing in front of Claudia and it never got better. So to speak or argue that this tiny bit of assumption of innocence isn't solid or whatever is unsound and even dangerous because it distracts from the real corruption that had to be going on and it distracts from those who should be seeking the truth about that.

Mignini filed a dozen, maybe multiple dozens sub-related cases against many people in this case some including defense lawyers, family, newspapers, reporters, even Google, plus bloggers, and even a defendant herself for the crime of truthfully defending herself.

All while Migninis office refused to even run an investigation into the case of police abuse. This when the evidence was overwhelming and came from multiple sources if we are to believe RS and Diya Lumumba.

Try not to forget the burned up hard drives, missing interrogation tapes, missing records of certain bugged phone calls, lying DNA scientists, insane prosecution witnessess, missing motive, incredibly suspicious double DNA knife and ridiculous TOD...and on and on for pages more easily.

This case was built over a year long period and continued...no continues to be altered and modified as the prosecutor sees fit and as the whole damn Italian legal system seems to see fit (up to and including the dolts on the ISC) even today.

But here we toy with Grinders BS nitpicking points or Yummi/Macs baseless but voluminous deceptive words... meanwhile this monstrous abuse against justice and law and fair trials gets hidden or portrayed as a case that is close and understandably could be the result of some small amount of missing evidence.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Trying to figure what is in the minds of the Italians in this case is like trying to figure out why they would charge scientists for failing to predict earthquakes or why they ignore a killers confession and instead arrest and convict two most unlikely women. Perhaps they are just stupid. At least to think they can do this while the world looks on seems to prove that beyond all doubt.

Then again the world has such a short attention span...and this is just Italy...a tiny bankrupt country who holds the record number of abuses against human rights by its courts in all the western world.

Wine and cheese? Better of both can be had from France. Less chance of having your pocket picked there as well. But good job Italy. Perhaps you could hire Gogerty-Marriott to create a rudder for your "supertanker disaster".

The reports Stefi filed indicate reference samples (DNA) from AK, RS, RG, PL, and MK.

 

[Machiavelli]

I wrote that post in January, before the court had rendered a verdict. You are wrong, yet again.

You wrote that fiction story, yes.

 

[Machiavelli]

It's pretty clear in that post I linked to who is making things up about the testimony and what the testimony actually says. I encourage people to read it.

Yes it's pretty clear: you build your theory based on answering yourself "yes", on a question to which Volturno answered "no".
You delete a "NO" answered by Volturno, you invent a "yes" to replace it, an answer created by yourself which you implicitly claim you "deduce" from another answer Volturno gives to a different question.

 

[Machiavelli]

(...)
It is clear that Quintavalle did not remember them being in the store the morning after the murder. This is, of course, what every other employee said.

It is not clear: you are just making it up.
Moreover, you are lying. Because not only you deduce (arbitrarily) that something is "clear" while it is just your interpretation (which is openly conflicting with Volturno answering "NO" to the related question), but also, you ("you" here is plural) falsely assert that Quintavalle stated that he did not remember - and the truth is that he did not state that, and he was never reported having stated that to Volturno. Independently from your "deduction", there is a factually false assertion in your claims. You claim the witnesses said things which the witnesses did not say.
A bit like when you claimed that I meant to state that Guede was a pimp, and then you went on saying you could "deduce" yourself that I "implied" it.

 

[Machiavelli]

Actually Mach, I don't think that people who have internalised (either on a cultural or an individual level) centuries or even millenia of hatred, dehumanisation and oppression are as uncommon as you think.
You only have to look at the data on how many victims of rape don't identify as such- don't feel that they have a real right not to be coerced into sex. The results of several recent studies have shown this disparity very clearly.
Female judges are not immune to the attitudes of misogyny in their communities or ( statistically speaking) their own families. Victim blaming and othr such judgments incompatible with feminist principles are common among women, and speak to the entrencged nature of misogyny in our cultures.
The Scazzi case and the Kercher case are attempts to decontextualise violence against women- a choice for evil made by women, rather than a deeply embedded, difficult to solve problem in our attitudes to women.

Let me understand: since you don't heve any evidence the two women judges are mysoginiac, and since you are unable to do any research on that to find evidence, you decide to climb on the upper store and decide that your theory is that it is the 60-million population of Italy which is mysoginiac, and the two women judges must be considered "proven" to me mysoginiac by osmosis.

It's a small detail maybe, that you did not even provide evidence of any kind of knowledge about Italian culture. But I understand why you are climbing on glass, since it looks easier to "blame" 60 million people of cultural mysoginy (it's a big target, you will find a lot of pretexts) and project a theory of how mysoginy produces decision about guilt in the Scazzi case, even without knowing a heck about culture and even less about the Sarah Scazzi case.

Italy certainly has a problem with women empowerment and equality.
But, is it so easily black-and-white as you say?
There are unfavourable statystics about women in Italy. Sure.
But do you actually know all Italian statistics?
And do you actually know comparative European or American statistics?

QUIZ:
one question - just to test your knowledge about women empowerment in Europe: What percentage of members of National Parliament are women, in the following countires/parliaments?

United States of America.....
France ....
UK ....
Italy ....
Spain ....
Germany .....
The European Parliament ....

answers:
Match the following percentages to the correct countries/parliaments:

25% - 22% - 38% - 32% - 31% - 18% - 25%

Test your intuition.

 

[Bill Williams]

It is not clear: you are just making it up.
Moreover, you are lying. Because not only you deduce (arbitrarily) that something is "clear" while it is just your interpretation (which is openly conflicting with Volturno answering "NO" to the related question), but also, you ("you" here is plural) falsely assert that Quintavalle stated that he did not remember - and the truth is that he did not state that, and he was never reported having stated that to Volturno. Independently from your "deduction", there is a factually false assertion in your claims. You claims the witnesses said things which the witnesses did not say.
A bit like when you claimed that I meant to stated that Guede was a pimp, and then you went on saying you could "deduce" yourself that I "implied" it.

Dietrology. You have an explanation for everything, about why you didn't actually say what you said.

Good for you!

 

[Strozzi]

Let me understand: since you don't heve any evidence the two women judges are mysoginiac, and since you are unable to do any research on that to find evidence, you decide to climb on the upper store and decide that your theory is that it is the 60-million population of Italy which is mysoginiac, and the two women judges must be considered "proven" to me mysoginiac by osmosis.

It's a small detail maybe, that you did not even provide evidence of any kind of knowledge about Italian culture. But I understand why you are climbing on glass, since it looks easier to "blame" 60 million people of cultural mysoginy (it's a big target, you will find a lot of pretexts) and project a theory of how mysoginy produces decision about guilt in the Scazzi case, even without knowing a heck about culture and even less about the Sarah Scazzi case.

Italy certainly has a problem with women empowerment and equality.
But, is it so easily black-and-white as you say?
There are unfavourable statystics about women in Italy. Sure.
But do you actually know all Italian statistics?
And do you actually know comparative European or American statistics?

QUIZ:
one question - just to test your knowledge about women empowerment in Europe: What percentage of members of National Parliament are women, in the following countires/parliaments?

United States of America.....
France ....
UK ....
Italy ....
Spain ....
Germany .....
The European Parliament ....

answers:
Match the following percentages to the correct countries/parliaments:

25% - 22% - 38% - 32% - 31% - 18% - 25%

Test your intuition.

Machiavelli, I have not been following this issue closely but appreciate seeing the data you show and commend that Italy's parliamentarians are 32% women - a high number compared to my country (U.S.) and other major European countries.

In the U.S. it is said that men tend to seek political office in order to be someone important (become a power broker), whereas women tend to seek political office because they are passionately interested in an issue.

 

[Machiavelli]

Machiavelli, I have not been following this issue closely but appreciate the data you show and commend that Italy's parliamentarians are 32% women - a high number compared to my country (US) and other major European countries.

Italy is a mix of contradictions - like almost all other countries (all: I think, or I hope).
Spain could be envisioned maybe as even more mysoginiac than Italy, and the cradle of macho-culture; though, Spain does even a better job, and they elect 38% of women in their parliament.

Sabrina and Cosima Misseri were convicted in Puglia, a Southern Italian region, which you can easilly envision as backward on many points of view, mentality, religion etc. However, the governor of Puglia is an open homosexual known for having a man as fianceé and attending nudist beaches.
The Italian parliament is also maybe the only one in Europe where a porn actress and a transexual have been elected.

I am do not intend to "defend" Italy, even less praise it by talking about these things; I only wanted to illuminate how superficial those armchair theories about culture issues may appear. I invoked "caution" before heading down into kinds of speculations, not for me but really for those who devise such speculations themselves. For their own intellectual good. Mary H said - some time ago - that she could tell about Amanda Knox because of her superior cultural-emotional knowledge about Knox's environment of origin. It is very strange to hear now, how quick the same person can be in offering the cheapest rationalizations, about unrelated things, from topics (another country, another case) she admits she has no knowledge about.

 

[kwill]

Mary H said - some time ago - that she could tell about Amanda Knox because of her superior cultural-emotional knowledge about Knox's environment of origin.

Mary H lives in Seattle, I think, so she does have superior cultural-emotional knowledge about Knox's environment of origin -- or at least superior to that of someone who has never spoken to Amanda Knox, never been in her home environment, and knows nothing firsthand of her culture. I think you once said that you know lots of girls, and even some from North America.

North America is a big place. Knowing a couple of women from New York or Texas or Florida is not exactly sufficient for being able to make the kinds of judgments you've made about Amanda Knox's personality. Your characterization of her is wildly off the mark, but I'm guessing you have no way of knowing that. If you think that someone like Peggy Ganong is normal and trustworthy, I'd have to disagree. I've lived in Seattle for more than 25 years, and Peggy comes across to me as someone with a mental illness. She's not normal. Deep skepticism should be applied when reading what she writes.

I would not want to judge a young woman from Perugia (or any other place so foreign) by the standards of Seattle. Especially not for murder.

 

[RoseMontague]

Yes it's pretty clear: you build your theory based on answering yourself "yes", on a question to which Volturno answered "no".
You delete a "NO" answered by Volturno, you invent a "yes" to replace it, an answer created by yourself which you implicitly claim you "deduce" from another answer Volturno gives to a different question.

Nope. I quoted the testimony. That showed your claim to be false. You are not correct.

 

[RoseMontague]

Italy is a mix of contradictions - like almost all other countries (all: I think, or I hope).
Spain could be envisioned maybe as even more mysoginiac than Italy, and the cradle of macho-culture; though, Spain does even a better job, and they elect 38% of women in their parliament.

Sabrina and Cosima Misseri were convicted in Puglia, a Southern Italian region, which you can easilly envision as backward on many points of view, mentality, religion etc. However, the governor of Puglia is an open homosexual known for having a man as fianceé and attending nudist beaches.
The Italian parliament is also maybe the only one in Europe where a porn actress and a transexual have been elected.

I am do not intend to "defend" Italy, even less praise it by talking about these things; I only wanted to illuminate how superficial those armchair theories about culture issues may appear. I invoked "caution" before heading down into kinds of speculations, not for me but really for those who devise such speculations themselves. For their own intellectual good. Mary H said - some time ago - that she could tell about Amanda Knox because of her superior cultural-emotional knowledge about Knox's environment of origin. It is very strange to hear now, how quick the same person can be in offering the cheapest rationalizations, about unrelated things, from topics (another country, another case) she admits she has no knowledge about.

The judges showed their bias, for whatever reason, by coming to a decision that was not supported by the facts. That case is a very simple one, much like the Kercher case. For some reason the PTB decided that would not play well.

 

[Machiavelli]

Something else I noticed, about statystics and population.
I recall a picture from the Vashon Island pre-Knox reunion, in which there were about 50 people. I recall of another picture from a group at Sollecitos' book presentation at a room of the UoW, with about 60 people.

If they groups were equally representing random population from the city of Seattle, I would have expected to find some non-whites.
As for the 2010 census, 7.9% of the population of Seattle City is African American:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/53/5363000.html

This would mean 3-4 people in average in every 50 people group.
Even if they are not all from Seattle nor from the State of Washignton, still there should be a significant percentage of African-americans.

But the Knox supporters in the picture stand out for being all whites.
Moreover, I know they are mostly whites from upper-class background - the Knox supporters are not equally distributed among classes and ethnicities.

 

[RoseMontague]

You wrote that fiction story, yes.

I did not write a novel to fill the void until the Avetrana Motivation was published. You have invented yet another fantasy. Writing a book was a lifelong dream for me. I don't appreciate what you imply with this.

 

[RoseMontague]

Something else I noticed, about statystics and population.
I recall a picture from the Vashon Island pre-Knox reunion, in which there were about 50 people. I recall of another picture from a group at Sollecitos' book presentation at a room of the UoW, with about 60 people.

If they groups were equally representing random population from the city of Seattle, I would have expected to find some non-whites.
As for the 2010 census, 7.9% of the population of Seattle City is African American:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/53/5363000.html

This would mean 3-4 people in average in every 50 people group.
Even if they are not all from Seattle nor from the State of Washignton, still there should be a significant percentage of African-americans.

But the Knox supporters in the picture stand out for being all whites.
Moreover, I know they are mostly whites from upper-class background - the Knox supporters are not equally distributed among classes and ethnicities.

And where are you going with this one?

 

[moodstream]

If the Nencini court convicts (and the ISC eventually upholds it) - and convicts on the basis of Quintavalle, Curatolo, Nara, and the DNA evidence.... then the Italian judiciary has signalled that no one in the country is safe from unjust prosecution.

This is why the eyes of the world are on Italy... and Machiavelli is giving us an important view into that world.

I just took a quick peek at the Massei logic for accepting Quintavalle's testimony, and, were it not for the consequences, it would be quite humorous. It reads like something Groucho Marx's character might read in a movie like Duck Soup.

A wider issue is that the testimony is irrelevant. It would show that certain statements by Knox were not truthful, if Quintavalle's testimony is accurate, but still not relevant to the crime. You have to delve into fantasy - she bought bleach and used it to clean the cottage - fantasies without a grain of substantiation, in order for the testimony he offerred to have value. Since we must fantasize to make this testimony count, why include Quintavalle at all?

What does any of this have to do with the question of guilt and innocence.

 

[Bill Williams]

Something else I noticed, about statystics and population.
I recall a picture from the Vashon Island pre-Knox reunion, in which there were about 50 people. I recall of another picture from a group at Sollecitos' book presentation at a room of the UoW, with about 60 people.

If they groups were equally representing random population from the city of Seattle, I would have expected to find some non-whites.
As for the 2010 census, 7.9% of the population of Seattle City is African American:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/53/5363000.html

This would mean 3-4 people in average in every 50 people group.
Even if they are not all from Seattle nor from the State of Washignton, still there should be a significant percentage of African-americans.

But the Knox supporters in the picture stand out for being all whites.
Moreover, I know they are mostly whites from upper-class background - the Knox supporters are not equally distributed among classes and ethnicities.

And where are you going with this one?

He's saying that innocence "supporters" are racists.

What I'm steeling myself for now, is his denial he said this. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Machiavelli.

 

[Machiavelli]

(...)
North America is a big place. Knowing a couple of women from New York or Texas or Florida is not exactly sufficient for being able to make the kinds of judgments you've made about Amanda Knox's personality. Your characterization of her is wildly off the mark, but I'm guessing you have no way of knowing that. (...)

Well, about Knox's personality, my judgement is limited to perceiving 1) the obvious manifestation of a narcissistic personality trait (which I most likely qualify as personality disorder, since it is pervasive), which is manifest from the outside but I cannot assess it in detail becaue obviously Knox is not a "patient" of me; 2) the pattern of lying, which is not a judgement about personality but it is a feature of her communication throughout the trial.

If you think that someone like Peggy Ganong is normal and trustworthy, I'd have to disagree. I've lived in Seattle for more than 25 years, and Peggy comes across to me as someone with a mental illness. She's not normal. Deep skepticism should be applied when reading what she writes.

To me, Peggy has always been a reliable person, and she proved herself trustworthy, and apparently very rational; I also assess her work as a translator as highly professional.
I have no clue about her socializing or emotional skills nor about her being more or less friendly to other individuals, and I am basically not interested in "normality" of individuals.

I can tell you that another moderator of PMF - Michael, on .net - did not come across to me as a completely stabile individual. I never had problems with Peggy Ganong instead, and I know I will never have. But I have no clue about their "normality" and I am not itnerested in that.

I add that I definitely don't like some members of the Knox-Mellas family, my judgement on them is very negative, and this certainly is unrelated to their "culture".
My judgement/feeling is instead positive as for her sister Deanna, I also deem Curt Knox as a basically "normal" individual (I put quotation marks on "normal", as I said because normality is a non-interesting theme and can be a worthless definition): so Curt Knox is to me an average rational person with no evident disturbs, while Deanna is a charachter which conveys to me a positive energy quite different from her sister, and those two are mambers opf the same family. They obviously share the same cultural environment, but they are very different individuals than Amanda Knox.
I also consider Madison Paxton as a sympathetic charachter, however I do not see her that much as an independent thinker (she does not come across as intellectually that bright).
But on the other hand, I do not deem Edda Mellas and Amanda Knox as normal, trustworthy or balanced individuals, and Chris Mellas neither (for other reasons).

Talking about personalities, I can perfectly see the difference between one individual and another.

 

[Machiavelli]

He's saying that innocence "supporters" are racists.

It might be a symptom. Stats make them appear as race-and-class-oriented, not evenly distributed (also on other indicators, including sex and age).
Usually there is a reason for that.