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

[AmyStrange]

They made the pizza themselves.

ETA: Urk! Ninja'd by Grinder!

from scratch or frozen?

 

[JREF2010]

There were the two calls at 9:58 and 10:00 both outbound call from Meredith's phones. Massei basically blows it off that Meredith was just fiddling with her phone. Hellmann says that is likely someone other than her was in possession of the phone. Both of those calls were connected to the local tower Piazza Lupatelli. The third call was an inbound call, GPRS connecting to a distant tower.

I did a lot of work on the cell phone information. I'm convinced that the reason the distant tower connected to the cell phone was because of either the walls of Meredith's bedroom shielded much of the strength of the local tower so the stronger signal was from the more distant tower. (Sitting at Meredith's desk for example provides a perfect line of sight to the distant tower with only a single pane of glass as an obstruction. But sitting on Meredith's bed, the you have thick walls obstructing signals from both the close Piazza Lupatelli tower and the distant Strada Vincanale so the stronger signal is much more likely to come from the very close Piazza Lupatelli tower.)

Or the phone was close to where they were thrown away and the signal from the close Lupatelli tower was obstructed by the thick city walls.

Merediths calls from the cottage that morning from inside the cottage connected through a different tower as I read it.

 

[AmyStrange]

-

It must be from scratch, frozen pizza MUST be against the law in Italy? Sorry, I hope that isn't an insult of some kind,

d

-

 

[Grinder]

from scratch or frozen?

Since Mach had a theory about the mixture of the pizza dough and didn't name a commercial product, I'm going with from scratch

 

[AmyStrange]

the pizza delivery guy did it

-

Since Mach had a theory about the mixture of the pizza dough and didn't name a commercial product, I'm going with from scratch

-

Makes sense. Damn, there goes my "the pizza delivery guy" did it theory. On the TV, the delivery guy is always finding bodies and nobody ever suspects them,

d

-

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Gorgonzola

they made it themselves

The most detailed description is in Follain's book: “…with a rich topping of ham, tomato, tuna, aubergines, peppers, Gorgonzola and other kinds of cheeses…” (p. 54). They also had mozzarella balls as an appetizer.

 

[Kaosium]

Sorry to be dim, but what does this indicate? (Does it matter that the angle is different or not included in the crime scene photos?)

It suggests the photo given to the Daily Mail didn't just come from the case file, it was given to the reporter by police just as the story said:

In chilling new photographs released by Italian police today, the full scale of the horror that confronted police when they entered the apartment in Perugia becomes clear.

In one shocking image, pools of blood lie at the foot of a wardrobe on which photographs of Meredith and friends have been pinned.

The bathroom (left) and the corner of Meredith's bedroom are covered in blood

The images also show the apartment's bathroom sink and walls smeared with blood.

For years the bunnies claimed the mistake/lie here was the Daily Mail's and police had nothing to do with this story suggesting the bathroom was a bloody mess, which certainly made Amanda's story of taking a shower there and not being immediately alarmed sound like she was crazy.

Even better, Dan-O found in the crime scene videos where it shows a 'short fat perp' taking a picture of the bathroom from a low angle like the one in the Mail article.

 

[Grinder]

The most detailed description is in Follain's book: “…with a rich topping of ham, tomato, tuna, aubergines, peppers, Gorgonzola and other kinds of cheeses…” (p. 54). They also had mozzarella balls as an appetizer.

Needle, meedle - there was testimony, I don't need no stinkin Follain

He recalled the data from various testimonies, from which, as he observed, it emerged that at around 18:00-18:30 pm, Meredith began to eat a homemade pizza with various toppings (cheese, mozzarella, eggplant and perhaps also onions) and then ate apple crumble with ice cream. This meal ended at about 20:30 pm, so he considered that the mealtime lasted from 18:30 to 20:30 pm.

 

[RoseMontague]

Who translated this? It wasn't Google. This is very good. I have not seen it before.

Katy_did translation. It is excellent.

 

[yimyammer]

Thanks for asking this. I wondered about that also.

glad I'm not alone, I stared at it for 5 minutes and finally gave up and decided to ask about it

 

[Strozzi]

The most detailed description is in Follain's book: “…with a rich topping of ham, tomato, tuna, aubergines, peppers, Gorgonzola and other kinds of cheeses…” (p. 54). They also had mozzarella balls as an appetizer.

Machiavelli's recipe calls for unleaven crust. It makes the cheese, mozzarella, eggplant and perhaps also onions stick to the walls of the stomach like spackle or paste. It delays the beginning of chum transit time from the stomach to the duodenum by 4-6 hours. Sounds yummi.

Reknown restaurant critic Andrea Vogt will include the unleaven crust pizza recipe in her next cookbook.

 

[Grinder]

Machiavelli's recipe calls for unleaven crust. It makes the ham, tomato, tuna, aubergines, peppers, Gorgonzola and other kinds of cheeses stick to the walls of the stomach like spackle or paste. It delays the beginning of chum transit time from the stomach to the duodenum by 4-6 hours. Sounds yummi.

Reknown restaurant critic Andrea Vogt will include the unleaven crust pizza recipe in her next cookbook.

Except that it was cheese, mozzarella, eggplant and perhaps also onions.

From court records as opposed to a crime novelist -

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

glad I'm not alone, I stared at it for 5 minutes and finally gave up and decided to ask about it

I could be wrong, but I think his point is that the photo leaked to the media was not one of the crime scene photos taken as part of the formal investigation. It was a snapshot Mignini took with a point-and-shoot camera.

 

[Strozzi]

Except that it was cheese, mozzarella, eggplant and perhaps also onions.

From court records as opposed to a crime novelist -

Thank you. I corrected the recipe in my post, above. Now I've got two pizzas in the oven.

I think Machiavelli wanted to know if the oven was gas-fired heat. How it would affect chum transit time is beyond me but I haven't seen the scientific papers that deal with unleaven bread and heat source. Maybe a gas-fired oven produces heat in Celsius and an electric oven produces heat in Fahrenheit???

Comodi has contracted with a wiretap contractor to produce some scientific studies. She has a Euro 180,000 budget. Mignini wouldn't put his name on the purchase order. He reportedly told Comodi "If you make that claim, I will resign from the case."

 

[Kaosium]

You could have fooled me. After reading your post, I felt like I was on trial myself.

I will only answer one question from your post. This is because I believe that this type of intellectual masturbation is disrespectful to the victim, and I have already crossed that imaginary boundary long ago on this forum. I understand that most people here do not share that POV and I accept that. However, my POV on this topic is equally valid. We can just agree to disagree on this point.

I think this sort of intellectual cowardice just creates new victims.

1)AK's blood in the bathroom, multiple mixed DNA (AK &MK) in bathroom, no RG DNA in the bathroom

Finding Amanda's blood from her earring adventure on the tap of her own sink is hardly surprising and an expected outcome of her decision to put another dozen or so holes in her poor little ears. As Massei pointed out, that blood was dried and morphologically different than the rest of the blood evidence, and being as Amanda was examined most thoroughly when arrested and bore no wounds there's no reason to think she was bleeding as a result of the murder. There is however reason to think she'd bled a little days earlier from her ear, and beside her pillow her sink was somewhere you'd expect that sort of evidence to be.

Do you know what they mean by that 'mixed DNA' in this sink? That they took a swab and wiped up some droplets of Meredith's blood and then with the same swab wiped far and wide around the rest of the sink, including the shelf along the rim. Doing it that way the only thing they determined is that Meredith and Amanda's DNA was found in the sink they shared. It has zero forensic value and is the equivalent of wiping something they knew had Meredith's DNA on it in Amanda's sink and then claiming it was somehow evidence of murder. If you let me wipe out your sink with Meredith's shirt I'd get that sort of 'evidence' you murdered Meredith.

How do you know Rudy's DNA was not in that bathroom? Would that be because the prosecution didn't reveal any electropherograms showing that was so? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and in this case they never did a y-str haplotype test which is what you'd use to find traces of male DNA in a bathroom used almost exclusively by females. They used that test on other samples, but for some reason not in that bathroom, nor did they go below the 100 RFU threshold to see if they could find trace DNA there, nor for that matter did they ever reveal the results of all the DNA tests they did and most especially the electronic data files on the ones they did produce electropherograms for. Without those EDFs, which the prosecution has denied discovery for to this day, no absence of evidence case can be made by the prosecution. They cherry-picked what they wanted to show and denied the defense the ability to evaluate the DNA evidence objectively.

At any rate, one use of a bathroom, especially for cleaning up, wouldn't necessarily leave traces that could be found. Interestingly enough you know Rudy had blood all over his hand due to the bloody handprint he left, he claims in his own story to have gone into the bathroom, just a couple steps from Meredith's door. Either Rudy ran out that door with blood all over his hand or he washed it up in that bathroom right next door, which do you think more likely?

2)RG footprints go out the front door, not trail into the bathroom

So what? Do you think that somehow precludes him from having gone into the bathroom before or after he got those faint blood traces on his shoes?

3)Multiple mixed DNA in Filomena's room

Which tested negative for blood and there's no reason to think resulted from the murder. Why would DNA mixing (especially the way they swabbed it) outside the murder room have necessarily been the result of the murder and not months of cohabitation? You realize DNA transfers even though no one has been murdered, right?

4)Sollecito's footprint on bathmat

Take the blind test and tell me which of those you think it looks more like and whether you'd consider either of them a 'match' or if it's impossible from a partial print on an uneven surface to conclusively determine it was either one with any certainty.

5)Bra clasp (DNA does not float through the air)

Try this sometime: take a piece of hard candy and put it in your mouth. Then put it under the edge of a rug and leave it there for six weeks. When you come back to it see if you want to put it in your mouth or if it's all dirty and yucky. Somehow all that crap got on it, and this was a cottage with a window out and the door to that room broken, suggesting drafts. Dust (for instance) is generally measured in nanograms, the portion of DNA attributed to Raffaele in the sample taken from the clasp was ~150 picograms. That's just one way Raffaele's DNA could have gotten there, and he exerted himself trying to break down that door mere feet away from where the clasp was eventually found.

6)The calunnia conviction
7)Confession (large discrepancies in her interrogation experience, even given by herself)

There never should have been an arrest of Patrick Lumumba and the fact the police arrested him off those confused statements and refused to release him until two weeks later ought to cause you to wonder just who was the impetus of those arrests. Amanda cast serious doubt on the verity of the statements she signed the same day once she had a chance to sleep, and retracted them completely the next day on the seventh. However the police would go before the press on the eighth and tell them:

"Initially the American gave a version of events we knew was not correct," Perugia police chief Arturo de Felice told reporters. "She buckled and made an admission of facts we knew were correct and from that we were able to bring them all in. They all participated but had different roles."

The police admitted they got her to 'buckle' and give them what they wanted, and the reality that those 'facts they knew were correct' were entirely untrue means she just spit back what they told her she must 'remember,' but her mind had blocked it due to the trauma. She signed statements to that effect at 1:45 AM and 5:45 AM. The latest being signed the 57th of 89 hours she'd spent with police from the arrival of the postal police on the second until that point.

 

[Dan O.]

What am I supposed to notice in your side by side photos?

One is a clipp from the official crime scene photo. The other is a clip from the news. They are not the same photos. The perspective is different. The shadowing caused by the flash is different.

One is taken by this tall dashing guy with an expensive camera:

The other was taken by this short fat perp with the cheap pocket camera:

 

[Dan O.]

It would still be interesting to compare the cell phone times with the times the witnesses remember seeing him at the dance clubs.

This is what I've collected so far on sightings of Rudy at the night clubs:

Nov. 2, 2007

• 02:00-04:00 Witnesses reported seeing him dancing at a local disco. (source?)
  SZ, Kuwaiti student dee-jay, did not recall having seen Rudy at "Domus" on the evening of November 2. (Micheli)

Nov. 3, 2007

• (early morning hours) "Pietro Camplongo said Guede was dancing alone, and that people were keeping their distance from him, because he smelled "as if he hadn't washed.Pietro Camplongo said Guede was dancing alone, and that people were keeping their distance from him, because he smelled "as if he hadn't washed." [8] [9] (it)
• The night between 2 and 3 November, Rudy is seen at the "Domus" till around 04:00 (Micheli)

8: http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=7995762&page=3
9: http://www.perugianews.it/it/omicid...tra_della_villetta_fu_rotta_dall_esterno.html

Since everyone seems to accept that Rudy went dancing shortly after the murder, someone should be able to confirm it.

 

[RandyN]

Well, they said they were found but still not shown to the court. My reading (going by memory from earlier) is that C&V asked for them twice and never got them, they were not in the files provided to C&V or the defense, the prosecution claimed they had been given to the court so the court recessed and looked for them and could not find them. Comodi then present some "controls" that were not the ones they were looking for, then the prosecution claimed they had found them. At this point there were objections made as to if they were ever included in the court files, nothing shows that they were examined as far as I could tell to see if they really were the negative controls they were looking for and if they were somewhere else, they were not present in court.

I think Stefi's habit of withholding information bit her on the ass. I would love to know if the defense ever got hold of them but just like the raw data, I doubt it very much. Maybe the next transcript will show a further discussion of this.

I hope so.

I recall a story about a juror going through the days files who discovered the first control data sheets mixed into the days files but that the control sheets did not belong there since nothing of controls was presented... and upon further exam these control data sheets had mismatched numbers and dates. At this point Hellmann stopped court and gave the prosecution X amount of time to produce the proper files. They failed to accomplish this task.

Shortly afterwards Comodi went outside to smoke and lamented to Nick Pisa that the case was now lost because the judges were favoring the defense. Or perhaps this happened the second time she got caught. IIRC Pisa quoted her in a story...but if you need a cite then seek it from a better searcher...Hans over at IA/IIP would be my go to guy for that...he is freaking amazing at finding cites/stories!!!

Some time (a day, a week???) later, Comodi tried to introduce more control data sheets (found in a "garage" IIRC) into the record. Once again Hellmann or someone noticed irregular dates or numbers and realized someone was trying to pull a fast one. Hellmann got angry but did not toss Comodi or Stefanoni into jail (and look at the thanks he got for protecting these corrupt actors who regularly made a joke out of the Italian courts) ...he simply shouted down Comodis protests by stating that no matter....no control data could disprove contamination that could have occurred after testing....which I suppose is true although proving contamination seems to be an Italian only thing anyway....like ignoring rights to attorneys, translators, and freedoms from being beaten while questioned....etc. All also UN-investigated and unpunished, even 6 years later.

 

[davefoc]

Sorry I was slow to pick up on the significance of the photo.

There are several issues here that have been discussed before. So please ignore this post if you feel this issue has been discussed too much already. I remember trying to pin down answers to these kind of questions without a sense that I had learned anything. In the end, I think Machiavelli's view was that stuff is leaked from police investigations all the time in Italy and nobody ever does anything about it and this wasn't that unusual. (my apologies to Machiavelli if I have mischaracterized his posts on this).

1. Is it Mignini taking the pictures with the point and shoot camera? I seem to recall that Machiavelli claimed it wasn't.

2. Was the photograph leaked with an intentional effort to deceive? I don't recall this being discussed. Perhaps the consensus is that it obviously was (perhaps the consensus even included Machiavelli?).

3. Who owns the copyright on the picture? Since this picture wasn't taken by the official police photographer could it have been sold? Or could the company that claimed to hold the copyright have lied about owning the copyright and the image was not copyrightable?

4. Is anybody allowed to bring their personal camera to a crime scene in Italy and take pictures that they can sell to the press? I doubt it, which means the amateur photographer needed to be fairly far up the food chain so that even if it wasn't legal, he wasn't going to get called on it.

5. Was the defense ever provided with the photos taken by the amateur photographer? In the US, I think discovery laws would have required that but in Italy I don't know.

6. Was a retraction ever issued for the original story about this photo?

 

[Strozzi]

Sorry I was slow to pick up on the significance of the photo.

There are several issues here that have been discussed before. So please ignore this post if you feel this issue has been discussed too much already. I remember trying to pin down answers to these kind of questions without a sense that I had learned anything. In the end, I think Machiavelli's view was that stuff is leaked from police investigations all the time in Italy and nobody ever does anything about it and this wasn't that unusual. (my apologies to Machiavelli if I have mischaracterized his posts on this).

1. Is it Mignini taking the pictures with the point and shoot camera? I seem to recall that Machiavelli claimed it wasn't.

2. Was the photograph leaked with an intentional effort to deceive? I don't recall this being discussed. Perhaps the consensus is that it obviously was (perhaps the consensus even included Machiavelli?).

3. Who owns the copyright on the picture? Since this picture wasn't taken by the official police photographer could it have been sold? Or could the company that claimed to hold the copyright have lied about owning the copyright and the image was not copyrightable?

4. Is anybody allowed to bring their personal camera to a crime scene in Italy and take pictures that they can sell to the press? I doubt it, which means the amateur photographer needed to be fairly far up the food chain so that even if it wasn't legal, he wasn't going to get called on it.

5. Was the defense ever provided with the photos taken by the amateur photographer? In the US, I think discovery laws would have required that but in Italy I don't know.

6. Was a retraction ever issued for the original story about this photo?

Dave, I believe I can answer a few of your questions based on earlier posts. Machiavelli did indicate earlier that there are often police leaks in Italy - it is just the way life is in Italy. Which suggests to me that police commanders do not have effective command over their subordinates. It would be interesting to know how they discipline their subordinates and if they are disciplined for leaking info that might be detrimental to the police' or prosecution's case and not discplined them if they leak information that helps the police or prosecution's case.

I believe the police officer with his personal camera seen in the official photos is a senior officer of the Postal Police. I am curious to know why an officer of the Postal Police was participating in the forensic collection phase of the investigation if the Perugia Police had responsibility for investigating the case. I realize that the Postal Police have certain expertise such as telecommunications expertise and perhaps other technical matters such as the in handling suspects' computers.

I am sure others can provide more information as to the dissemination of the pink photos and copywrite ownership issues.