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

[Strozzi]

Machiavelli, you have not addressed the time of death issue.

The court has heard evidence that someone opened a Naruto file at 21:26, by which time Meredith was almost certainly already dead, based on the eyewitness statements, autopsy reports and Rudy's own Skype conversation.

Doesn't that sink the whole prosecution case immediately? If Amanda and Raffaele were not present when Meredith Kercher was killed, they cannot have been party to her murder, surely?

That's before we add in the fact that the court has seen evidence that computer activity continued all night, showing that in fact they weren't ever at Amanda's house that night.

Machiavelli can't admit that that is correct because it would be acknowledgement that the prosecution is persecuting innocent people. That is why he has offered an unsupportable extreme interpretation of unleaven pizza crust to extensively delay the start of the transit of food from the victim's stomach to the duedenum.

 

[JREF2010]

this case seems a game of Accusations & Answers.

the prosecution tosses out crazy insane theories and fantasy's, then the defense has to provide the answer.

if the defense cannot provide the answer, then the prosecution maintains the insane fantasy theory's must be true.

 

[moodstream]

this case seems a game of Accusations & Answers.

the prosecution tosses out crazy insane theories and fantasy's, then the defense has to provide the answer.

if the defense cannot provide the answer, then the prosecution maintains the insane fantasy theory's must be true.

That seems to be the Italian way.

 

[codyjuneau]

I disagree. If we are going to figure out what they would do if guilty I say they would have gone to Gubbio. This idea that Amanda, unable to handle the 112 call, would want to be anywhere near the discovery is crazy. If she were guilty why would she think purposely delaying calling the cops wouldn't draw the exact attention you are giving it?

How often do you switch the coffee cups when served by the enemy?

The PP didn't immediately break the door down, even though they had the additional knowledge of the phones. Filomena decided with all the information to breakdown the door. Why didn't trained police immediately knock the door down?

It is clear that what had transpired wasn't obvious.

Oh and I thought Italians just don't call the cops, you know like Nara.

.
Good one! I seem to remember Machi saying something like that.

And don't forget that Italian cops would never charge Rudy for breaking into a school, making himself at home, being in possession of stolen property, stealing a knife. According to Machi it is just not done.

Also there was Migi's first excuse for not recording ANY of the interrogations: "But in a police station, at the very moment of the investigation it isn’t done".

Of course that was downright silly so a little later he changed it to an even sillier one. "Well we have significant budget problems, that’s what it is. Budget problems."

Sure Migi, sure Machi.
.

 

[Strozzi]

5. Battistelli and Marsi said they had stopped at the cottege a first time, Battistelli went out, walked around. But then they didn't park immediately; the car drove around the 'block', which means it drove down by the end of V. S. Antonio and then up from Via Del Melo, and needed another 10-15 minutes or so to do the ful circle again because of traffic. I don't know/didn't understand if the parking CCTV recorded the first or the second arrival of the car (this might be implicit from considering video analysis).

What does the above mean? That Battistelli got out of the car near the house but didn't enter the property? He walked around? Did he know he was near the house or was he confused by the change of street names and not know where the house was? Did he forget the address and have to wait for his partner to come around again to remind him? If he knew for sure where the house was why did he walk around instead of going to the front door? A and R were waiting for the police (Carbineri) by the front door. When did Battistelli actually get to the front door - not the neighborhood, not the car park, but the actual front door of the cottage? When did he see the occupants and approach them? It was almost 1 pm. Did he and his partner miss lunch? It took his partner 15 minutes to go around the block? Did he stop to pick up some food or a drink? Sounds like keystone cops to me.

 

[Kaosium]

There's only one "too low" that pertains to 36b. The rest are for other samples, the corresponding egrams of which are being hidden by stefanoni.

Indeed, you're correct and kudos for posting this. I've seen others make this mistake, in fact I myself did until I learned differently a couple years back. The list of 'too lows' is a recording of samples measured with the Qubit, what's suspicious is that one of them she deemed suitable for amplification and that was the knife blade with purportedly Meredith's DNA on it, that is if you go down to 15 RFUs to get a 'profile.'

What's suspicious about the others being withheld is it would be damned interesting to see what might be found at the 20-40 RFU level (where most of the 'peaks' are on 36b) on those samples, (and all the rest!) and utterly no reason to hide that unless there was something interesting there. As in perhaps the profiles of other lab techs, forensic technicians or other evidence of contamination in that lab like non-suspects in this case or other DNA amplified in that lab from other cases they worked on.

One of the safeguards against contamination is to eliminate 'peaks' from low template transfers by maintaining a relative threshold high enough to preclude them registering, such as the 100 RFU threshold Stefanoni maintained for almost all of the DNA work in this case. By 'cherry picking' the ones she wants to show data for but not allowing the entirety of the DNA work to be analyzed objectively she can claim contamination as evidence and hide the evidence of the contamination that permeates attempting to process low template samples in a lab not equipped for it.

The danger with low template samples is not just that they can be difficult to analyze, but that when you do amplify the faintest traces the ever-present 'environmental contamination' is also amplified and can be profiled more easily. If they do hundreds of samples for a case without proper safeguards it is virtually inevitable those will show up, and by ignoring (and hiding) the ones registering that 'environmental contamination' except the ones that 'help' the case then they can claim they have never have contamination, but advance contamination as evidence. They can even eliminate genuine trace transfers related to the crime and make 'absence of evidence' arguments like heard regarding Rudy Guede in the bathroom and Filomena's room.

We know Stefanoni tried to do that on the bra clasp, we know she tried to hide the TMB negatives on samples the prosecution would claim was blood. That's why there has to be full disclosure on the entirety of the DNA work, and very likely why she fought tooth and nail to ensure they'll never be seen.

 

[Kaosium]

The truth is the TMB tests were just performed, but not written down in the final report.

They tried to hide it yet still claimed the luminol hits were blood from the murder.

However, their records was made accessible when the defence requested it.

Which was when, July 30th 2009 for a trial that was nearly over and had started officially in October or so of 2008? Incidentally, last time we went at this you claimed that those records were generally not made available in Italian trials, thus when Stefanoni wrote the RTIGF, supposedly a comprehensive account of the forensic work done, and failed to mention that they tested negative for blood she would have had the expectation the TMB negatives she omitted would never see the light of day.

That is without doubt a lie of omission.

Furthermore, last time we went at this I knew I was forgetting something regarding what was said in court about the blood tests. I thought maybe it was someone else who'd claimed no other blood tests were done, instead of Stefanoni, which was why it could be claimed with a straight face she hadn't 'lied' about it in court. That wasn't it though.

It was something else, and your recent posts reminded me of it: you used to make the argument that a TMB test wasn't officially a blood test being as it wasn't a confirmatory test, thus when it was said in court that no other blood tests were done (outside the luminol which is also a presumptive and not confirmatory test) it wasn't 'technically' a lie.

Yes, that's a lie too.

 

[Bill Williams]

Machiavelli - you are mistaken. Mignini himself proves you are mistaken...

I have read it. And what you say is false. He doesn't say that to Griffin, acutlaly he doesn't say he ever attended that interrogation at all.

In fact, Mignini arrived at the police station after 2am, when he passed by Knox's interrogation room, her interrogation was already over. She was there alone and calm with just one police officer. Mignini did not visit her, he went directly at an office room together with Profazio and they discussed about everything. He was told that Knox had offered a 'confession' and the police had stopped the interrogation but they did not issue any legal paper because the prosecutor was coming.

< .... sinister deletia .... >

You go on making false claims. I don't know if you believe them. They are false anyway.

It's me who makes false claims? This is what Mignini, himself, told Drew Griffin. Who is making false claims.....?

I remember she had, like a need to. So I told her: “you can make statements to me; I will not ask questions, since if you make a spontaneous statement and I collect it, I will collect your statement as if I were in fact a notary”. She then repeated [her story] to the interpreter, who was Mrs. Donnino

It would seem strange that someone could tell someone something, without "visiting her".

I have the strange feeling there is some dietrology in our futures, implying that what Mignini said wasn't really what he said.....

 

[Planigale]

The truth is the TMB tests were just performed, but not written down in the final report. However, their records was made accessible when the defence requested it.

…..

Your reasoning seems circular. It looks like you require knowing the TOD as a pre-requisite in order to calculate the TOD. You say "how would you know that without knowing the actual TOD?". It makes no sense. The temperature measurment is the only datum (together with environmental temperature), the TOD is only a probabilistic deduction along a curve. But when you are at a distance of 12 hours or more from the probable TOD, the error is so big that it becomes useless to the effects of this case.
Meredith's body was discovered at least 12 hours after her death, and temperature could not have been taken before 16.00 - 16.30 in any event (time of arrival of scientific police). So the temperature that they would have taken at that time, we don't know what exactly that would be, but what we can deduce is that it would have been anyway too low to calculate TOD with any reliable useful margin. You could only calculate an indication over a 5-6 hours frame like something between 20.00 and 2.00.

The sad thing is you do not understand how wrong this is. In science you cannot cherry pick your results, you need to report them all. Failing to report the TMB results having done them is bad science. It is particularly invidious when the results may be seen as favouring the defence; she only presents results favourable to the prosecution not those that may help the defence. I am not sure what is required of experts in Italy, in England they are required to be neutral and tell the 'whole' truth. One documents the results of the tests, then one's expert opinion interpreting the tests. At this point having documented both Luminol and TMB and the definitive test e.g. ELISA Stephanoni could argue that this was blood despite negative TMB due to all these samples lying in a critical dilution zone where one test is positive and the other negative. (Although the chances of them all falling in this region appears low especially since these were deposits and wiping your TMB test paper over a larger area would pick up more deposit).

Again this displays you cannot think logically. At the time the body was found the time of death was unknown. The sooner that temperature is measured after death the more precise it is. If temperature had been measured asap after discovery then useful information may have been discovered. One does not know prior to doing the test. What is certain is the longer one delays the wider the period in which ToD may have occurred.

The problem is your bias. You start all interpretations with AK is guilty therefore all actions are those of a guilty person. You argue she acted with insufficient urgency. But if innocent she would not have known a murder occurred so how urgent should she be? How urgently do people contact police in foreign countries where there language skills are poor?

Most of these arguments seem to be about saying if it is possible for AK to have been involved in the murder, then she was. The burden of proof has been switched. Once the accusation is made the defence has to prove that it was impossible for her to be involved. The alibi from her boyfriend is dealt with by including him in the conspiracy, so RS can no longer prove AK innocence.

We know RG sexually assaulted and murdered MK. The prosecution need to show that 1) there is clear evidence that others were involved (not just that it is possible, but definite evidence) 2) that those others involved were AK and RS. The truth is there has been a complete failure to show any relationship between RG and AK&RS. There is a complete absence of evidence placing AK at the crime. None of the footprints can provide identity, none can provide time. They were analysed using discredited methodology.

I previously challenged you to say what evidence you would accept as proof of AK & RS innocence. You failed to respond. I suspect you are so closed to alternatives there is no proof that could ever be provided to prove AK innocence to you. Why does it appear impossible for you to look at this case and say the quality of the forensic science was poor and should be improved. Evidence was improperly handled and stored, results of tests were incompletely presented to courts, tests were done not following laboratory SOP. Material (such as bra fastener) were not collected at the time but left lying around.

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

It is actually obvious if you know a little about the Italian system. The fact that interrogations are not recorded is verifiable, it is a fact. It is normal. Therefore, it is not suspicious. Recording all police interrogations would carry a foolish expense, because of the beaurocratic rules of the Italian system: whenever there is a verbatim recording, there will be someone who will request a transcript. Imagine if all parites could require transcripts of all investigation activities.

I have a problem with this part in particular. A transcript of a recording need only be performed one time. After that, who cares how many parties request a copy? It's not like it has to be transcribed over and over again every time a party requests a copy.

Also, no one is suggesting "all investigation activities" be recorded, only that interrogations be recorded, as they are pretty much everywhere and probably were that night in Perugia as well.

 

[LondonJohn]

I have a problem with this part in particular. A transcript of a recording need only be performed one time. After that, who cares how many parties request a copy? It's not like it has to be transcribed over and over again every time a party requests a copy.

Also, no one is suggesting "all investigation activities" be recorded, only that interrogations be recorded, as they are pretty much everywhere and probably were that night in Perugia as well.

Oh, this expense-related "argument" of Machiavelli's on the non-recording of the 5th/6th November interrogations is total and utter nonsense. For these reasons:

1) This was an extremely high-profile murder. Not a routine minor assault, vehicle theft or drunk-and-disorderly. It therefore stands to reason that the police should have treated this case differently and with a high degree of attentiveness (and expense). All witness interviews should have been recorded where reasonably possible.

2) The interrogations took place in the modern police HQ, where there would without a shadow of a doubt have been integrated recording equipment present. Furthermore, the interrogations took place in the middle of the night on a Monday/Tuesday, so it's inconceivable that there might have been any problem regarding lack of availability of the rooms/equipment.

3) It's abundantly clear, in any case, that Knox and Sollecito were far, far more than simple "witnesses" by 10pm on 5th November.

4) The police were already (since at least 3rd November) going to the vast expense of wiretapping all of Knox's and Sollecito's phone calls - which, remember, would necessarily entail someone listening to each and every one of the thousands of calls, and transcribing all those that were deemed potentially significant.


It's very unedifying and frustrating when hollow "arguments" are made for (seemingly) no other reason than to defend an overarching position - in this case, the position that Knox/Sollecito are guilty, and that the police/PM acted wholly appropriately and properly at all times. To me, it's a huge red flag signifier of a lack of critical thinking, objective reasoning, and sceptical analysis.

 

[bolint]

I disagree. If we are going to figure out what they would do if guilty I say they would have gone to Gubbio.

Unless she had to go back to the cottage in the morning for whatever reason.
Going to Gubbio after that would not have been a good idea.

 

[Kaosium]

Unless she had to go back to the cottage in the morning for whatever reason.
Going to Gubbio after that would not have been a good idea.

Were she guilty she would not have revealed that she did go back to the cottage in the morning, for that matter she would probably not have gone back at all.

Hi Bolint, I missed you, nice to see you posting again. I just happened to be thinking of you recently when the CCTV camera issue came up, I think I even came across one of your old posts googling for info.

 

[bolint]

When did Battistelli actually get to the front door - not the neighborhood, not the car park, but the actual front door of the cottage? When did he see the occupants and approach them? It was almost 1 pm.

From the video frames it seems that he first appeared at the gate at around 12:51 and then went back for his colleague. I think at that time AK and RS were not in the yard otherwise he would have contacted them right then. Battistelli entered the yard at about or after 12:58, his colleague a bit later.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Unless she had to go back to the cottage in the morning for whatever reason.
Going to Gubbio after that would not have been a good idea.

"For whatever reason" is even better than "possibly, indeed probably". You can string any story together with "for whatever reason".

For whatever reason Amanda and Raffaele left Raffaele's house at 21:27 just after clicking on the Naruto cartoon, then for whatever reason they murdered Meredith then for whatever reason they staged a break-in then for whatever reason they came back the next day to "discover" it. Sounds like a theory of the crime to me!

 

[bolint]

Were she guilty she would not have revealed that she did go back to the cottage in the morning

Not to mention it would have been a huge risk.

for that matter she would probably not have gone back at all.

Of course, but when you gotta go, you gotta go.

I just happened to be thinking of you recently when the CCTV camera issue came up, I think I even came across one of your old posts googling for info. [/

Yes, it has always been one of my favourite topic.
I still remember the first trial when Barbadori and Battistelli was heard. I was disappointed by the scarce news because I expected a simple proof of the timing of the camera as I had concluded that the only time the postals could have arrived into the yard before the carabinieri call was at around 12:40 (otherwise the various phone calls could not have been made unnoticed).

But nothing came out of it. Battistelli said that he looked at his watch, it was half past noon. That means that they had spent about half an hour with the pair before Luca and Marco arrived. If however they arrived after the carabinieri call it would have been only a few minutes. Huge difference which must have been remembered without any exact clocks.

 

[Strozzi]

From the video frames it seems that he first appeared at the gate at around 12:51 and then went back for his colleague. I think at that time AK and RS were not in the yard otherwise he would have contacted them right then. Battistelli entered the yard at about or after 12:58, his colleague a bit later.

When Raffaele called his sister Vanessa, an officer of the Carabinieri in Rome, she told Raffaele to leave the house immediately and call the Carabinieri. R & A left the house and waited outside. They were outside when the Postal Police arrived.

When the Postal Police came to the neighborhood they could not find the house. They were confused by the change in street names at the 3-way intersection. Battistelli got out of the car in the vicinity of the property (and did not know where it was) and walked around the road junction trying to figure out where the address is while waiting for his colleague who drove around the long "block" (many blocks - a 15 minute trip - did he also stop to grab some food or a drink?).

I suspect that the Postal Police are counting the time they arrived in the vicinity as the time they arrived at the house, and not counting the time they actually entered the property until a moment before 1 pm and walked to the front door area where R & A were waiting. But the prosecution doesn't want to present it with that clarity. They want the court to believe that the Postal Police arrived at the house before Raffaele called the Carabinieri because it helps support the allegation that the defendants were involved in the murder.

 

[Samson]

I consider the first observations in your post as obviously devoid of merit. As for the numbered points:



1. total lack of urgency is just shown by delays, and the prior calls by Knox to Filomena without collecting information herself are something which we may also consider a form of "delay", because in fact all her calls and phone conversations with Filomena are slowing down events. They are triggering the coming back and discovery of body by Filomena, but they are also slowing it down. She calls, but she does not provide informations. She delays her own discovery, she waits to speak to Sollecito 'over breakfast' about 'strange events', search and conveying of information is blocked, everything is slowed down.

2. this observation is contorted and unintellegible (negative statement? "the absence of reliable evidence that they were 'caught' "?). I can hardly see a meaning in it. They don't need to be "caught" doing something, I don't see this as a logical requirement in any theory.

3. The "no obligation" = "no failure" is a false equivalence and it's not the first time I see your side bringing it up. The question is about credibility not about obligation. There isn't an explanation for that delay. If you find out something alarming, you are asked to call the police, you agree it's alarming and say ok but then you don't call the police, it does not look a very straightforward behaviour. On the other hand, if two people are guilty, it's obvious they may have some fears and hesitation - for a hundered possible reasons - in the moments before they decide to dial the police number.

And I also think it's obvious that Knox would try to have another roommate there, to involve a co-founder of the body or seek a kind mediation, because this is what she tried to do with Filomena all the time throught her phone calls, her downplaying the loced door etc. This girl thinks that sending a letter to judges, explaining that she doesen't attend the trial because they may found her guilty and that they may be like blindfolded folks fooled by smoke and mirrors, may benefit her. It's narcissistic and megalomaniac, but a person with this perception and attitude - that is, a manipulative person - may well think that by having another roommate there her situation could be made look more favourable.

This was posted a few pages ago, but it reminds me when I was 20 years old holding a job as a hall porter in a hotel chain in Sydney. The manager's wife asked me to hail a cab, and as I was standing on the street with her, she said that is my husband's car being stolen, you should call the police. Then a cab arrived, and she climbed in and I thought nothing more of it. The next day I was called to the office, where he said my wife pointed out my car being stolen, why did you do nothing? I had no sensible answer, but this seems a strangely related syndrome. Relevant, no idea, but I never forgot the strange dislocation of declarative evidence and my cognitive failure to respond. It was her husband's car being stolen.

 

[RoseMontague]

Machiavelli - you are mistaken. Mignini himself proves you are mistaken...
It's me who makes false claims? This is what Mignini, himself, told Drew Griffin. Who is making false claims.....?

Originally Posted by Mignini
I remember she had, like a need to. So I told her: “you can make statements to me; I will not ask questions, since if you make a spontaneous statement and I collect it, I will collect your statement as if I were in fact a notary”. She then repeated [her story] to the interpreter, who was Mrs. Donnino

It would seem strange that someone could tell someone something, without "visiting her".
I have the strange feeling there is some dietrology in our futures, implying that what Mignini said wasn't really what he said.....

What bothers me most about this is he fails by his own admission to inform her of her rights. He could have told her that she was now an official suspect in the murder of Meredith Kercher and she had a right to have a lawyer present before she said anything else. He had instead told the cops to stop (supposedly). Who informed Amanda?

Amanda could not believe it when she was arrested a few hours later. They had told her having a lawyer would be worse for her.

 

[Strozzi]

This was posted a few pages ago, but it reminds me when I was 20 years old holding a job as a hall porter in a hotel chain in Sydney. The manager's wife asked me to hail a cab, and as I was standing on the street with her, she said that is my husband's car being stolen, you should call the police. Then a cab arrived, and she climbed in and I thought nothing more of it. The next day I was called to the office, where he said my wife pointed out my car being stolen, why did you do nothing? I had no sensible answer, but this seems a strangely related syndrome. Relevant, no idea, but I never forgot the strange dislocation of declarative evidence and my cognitive failure to respond. It was her husband's car being stolen.

People often sense clues that something is out of the ordinary or wrong but don't know what the clues mean. As they become more suspicious they are still reluctant to call the police. People resist thinking the worst.

I was once parking my car in a parking lot. A man was leaning at a low height against a new- model car's door watching me move past slowly. Another car passed near and he and the driver of that car seemed to make eye contact. I drove around the lane and came back again and parked. As I walked past his car he had the door open and was 2/3 in the driver's seat bending low as if doing something near the floor.

Only 20 minutes later did I realize that I had witnessed a car being stolen. He must have seen me when he was jimming the door and stopped his action while I passed by. His second position was him leaning down to hotwire ignition wires under the steering column. The other car circling was his partner who brought him to the parking lot and was serving as lookout.

20 minutes had passed before the clues I saw came together in my mind. I obviously sensed something was unusual or wrong, otherwise it would not have continued to bother me and I would not have still been mulling it over in my mind 20 minutes later. By this time, the incident had passed. They were long gone. I did not call the police.

Having seen this once and belatedly recognizing what was occurring, I am attuned to it. The next time I observe similar movements I will instantly recognize what is occurring and call the police, get a description, and photograph them with my cell phone. I'm sure police, with their experience, are very sharp at spotting this. It is an acquired skill.

The Postal Police, learning that the cottage's front door was found open, Filomena's window was broken with a rock, tiny blood specs on the bathroom sink, missing cell phones, and Meredith's door locked at 1 pm, were not sufficiently alarmed to break open Meredith's door. The Postal Police officers, with years of police service, had not yet acquired the skills to recognize something was very seriously wrong.