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

[RandyN]

The excuses for not recording the interrogations just don't wash. On any level. The Questura is a modern police department, it would be at home in just about any small city in the US. They recorded Amanda while she was in the hallway awaiting interrogation. This was a murder investigation not a shoplifting charge. The room was wired for sound. Nobody believes the "budget" excuse not even Machiavelli, who says it just isn't done in Italy. Which is extremely hard to believe regardless of what he says. Video recordings of these sessions are very often the most compelling evidence in countless prosecutions.

I can't imagine "not recording" the sessions as they avoid exactly the circumstance we have here. A "he said/she said".

What amazes me is just how brain washed the Italian population is in regards to this kind of investigations. Never mind, that this is Amanda Knox and an American, if this is what Italians expect from their police departments, than they need to demand better and more accountable practices.

The police recorded Michele Misseri during his interrogation. They recorded his confession about killing his niece Sara Scazzi. The police do record these things.

In this case it is most convenient for police to deny recording and then keep that hidden although likely long ago destroyed anyway... they would then be seen abusing Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba. Cant have that.

Here from a Scazzi story..."After a 15-hour police interrogation, Michele Misseri initially confessed to strangling Sarah after she rejected his sexual advances. He claimed he then raped the girl's dead body before throwing it in a well in the countryside near Avetrana, in the southern Puglia region, where the Scazzi and Misseri families live."

This story is as bizarre as RS/AK case btw. The uncle is now free and his daughter and wife are in jail. Same no evidence, witnesses, nothing at all except intuition. In this case the police cant figure how Misseri could move a large rock by himself therefore his wife and daughter did it...uh huh.

 

[Dan O.]

or a Bronco to a football game!

The Broncos unilaterally put the first points on the board within seconds of the opening kickoff and thereby telegraphing how the game would play out.

 

[Kaosium]

Here is a reply I just read on a news article. What if any of this is true and what is lies?

Nothing that other people did change the fact that police found the rapist couple outside of the dormitory the morning after muder with cleaning equipment. Someone cleaned Merediths blood, and assuming it was Guede is naive, because where did he get the equipment to do the cleaning and I mean careful cleaning no just few wipes. Blood is not easy to clean. And where did he hid those equipment. Isn't it more obvious that Amanda Knox and Rafaele Sollecito made the cleaning in order to destroy evidence. There was an internet search made on Sollecitos computer for blood cleaning. You can always try to go around.. but it come around eventually. She is guilty, she is person who determinated Merediths fate.

Almost none of it is true, though some of it is distorted from an actual fact. For one thing outside whatever Guede did with the towels (which he admitted to taking into the murder room in his own story to 'save Meredith') there was no clean up, no evidence of one and strong evidence there wasn't one. For example the hallway right outside the bathroom and Meredith (and Amanda's) room contained barely visible bloody shoeprints of Rudy Guede going from Meredith's room to the door in a distinct pattern, one of them overlapping where they claim they found a bloody footprint with luminol. There was no clean up in that hall, more evidence of that is the unidentified (source substance) DNA they found in numerous places in that hall as well.

Meredith's room shows evidence of whatever Rudy was doing with those towels...and nothing else. The floor is covered with more bloody shoeprints of Rudy Guede, which obviously weren't cleaned up. The bathroom has blood on the door, the light switch, the sink, the bathmat and the bidet, though it is possible Rudy did something with the towels there for more obvious traces, he obviously didn't do a very good job.

Raffaele and Amanda were not caught outside the cottage with cleaning equipment, they were awaiting the arrival of the police outside as recommended after calling them. It is true however that a pipe in Raffaele's apartment had broken the night before and when going to take a shower Amanda took back a mop from the cottage to Raffaele's, which they both told police. This coincidence may have caused suspicion but the mop was tested and not used and as Massei (original convicting judge) puts it:

She recalled as well that a mop was seized which was kept inside the closet in the hallway in front of Amanda’s room. On this mop nothing in particular was found.

The 'she' referred to is Monica Napoleoni, head of homicide for the Perugian Polizia di Stato Squadra Mobile ('Flying Squad') who incidentally was the one running the interrogation rooms during the overnight session.

There was no 'internet search' of blood cleaning on Raffaele's computer, it sounds like this very confused person is thinking of the Casey Anthony case or something. I do recall years back the bunnies claimed Raffaele had a music file on his computer regarding cleaning but I never saw evidence of that and Raffaele had a lot of music files.

One thing he is correct about: "blood is not easy to clean." What's even harder, as in impossible, is to remove all traces of some people's DNA in the murder room and leave just one person's, especially without leaving traces of it being cleaned. As in, notably clean places but somehow without any residue of cleaning materials.

What happened was the police and prosecution found absolutely no evidence of Raffaele, Amanda or Patrick at the murder scene, so they 'theorized' it had all been cleaned up, and even claimed to have 'bleach receipts' from the day after the murder, which turned out to be pizza receipts they misrepresented to the press, including Richard Owen and Barbie Nadeau. Then they went out to the crime scene after it had been thoroughly trashed by the time the Polizia Scientifica were done with it (they weren't planning to come back) and laid down luminol in hopes of finding more evidence. They found unconnected hits in the hallway, Filomena's room and Amanda's, though they all tested negative for blood with TMB¹ which Stefanoni omitted from her technical report and lied about in court.

The only actual 'evidence' of a clean up is that they didn't find any evidence of the two other people they tried to prosecute for Rudy's crime, and there's plenty of evidence showing that no real clean up occurred.




¹ Outside the one that overlapped the real bloody shoeprint that Rudy left and the Polizia Scientifica processed and then cleaned up so they could use that hallway to stage their investigation into the other rooms without covering it.

 

[Bill Williams]

Whoops, according to Bill who knows way more, yes to the cleaning stuff. My bad.

No you were right. They were not found with any cleaning equipment as they waited. The mop and bucket were not where they were waiting outside.

Yes, my bad. Grinder is right.

 

[Dan O.]

Do people think the interviews were recorded and then destroyed?

After getting Amanda to start talking in the lobby, they moved her into the interrogation room and then had her repeat the answers to the earlier questions. Testimony is given that some of the offers were monitoring the interrogations from the "Control Room". For me, there is no question that a recording was produced. Their excuse for not recording the 5:45 statement, that in all the excitement they forgot! This is supposed to be what they do for a living. Are Italians really that dysfunctional?

As for the continued existence of the recordings, they are evidence against some which makes them valuable ammunition for others. If there were ever an inquest, the recordings could come into play. But nobody that has access wants to bring them out to help Amanda and Raffaele.


But the recordings themselves are not required. Amanda made written statements about the interrogations at a time when she had no reason not to believe that there could be recordings of those interrogations that could refute any inaccuracies in her statements. So, without the recordings, Amanda's statements are the indisputable account of what happened in the interrogation.

 

[RandyN]

Do people think the interviews were recorded and then destroyed?

Yes!

The police recorded everything else including 39 THOUSAND wire tapped phone calls between RS family members. They recorded the pair in the waiting room, in a different room where they were left alone in hopes of catching them up...etc

But during the actual interrogation they want us to believe the following...1. First Mignini claimed that they were so busy preparing papers and arrest warrants for Lumumba etc that they forgot to push record (at least four times)...sure fine. Notable they also forgot to push record for RS and PL interrogations.

2. Later in a recorded interview Mignini switches gears in the matter and now claims that due to budgetary cuts recording and transcribing interrogations is impossible...which begs the question... Then how can you afford to tap, monitor and record 39 THOUSAND phone conversations? Yes THOUSAND with a Thousand! as in 39,000 plus...oh and then there is that 187 thousand Euro cartoon???

Hard to say if the tapes are destroyed...you can bet they are safely locked away...and I would bet long ago destroyed since they would remove the she said he said speculation about the interrogations. Except that all three... AK, RS and PL told a similar story about police abuse and all three were denied lawyers, and Knox was denied an interrupter (a real interrupter) and she was denied notification to her consulate...all critical and clear human rights violations and all unquestionably at the hands of the Italian police and judiciary. This is also more that they wish to keep hidden. That plus they had Guede in custody a week or two before the murder and left him go when what they should have done is placed him in jail. For armed robbery and in possession of stolen valuable items...

But Yummi/Mach will tell you this is not illegal in Italy and so they had to let Guede go free. ??????? Sure....that is logical. Like the love thing.

Is this a pattern of lying, stupidity or what? I cant figure it out but I know I will never tempt fate with a visit to such a crazy illogical place.

 

[acbytesla]

I believe that all what happened in the interrogation room was appropriate because I have no reason to believe otherwise. But this is not the relevant point.
The point is that when I talk about Knox's lies, I am not thinking about what she said inside that interrogation room, I am thinking about what she said outside the room, before and after the interrogation and statement. I never considered knox lies as something confined inside the interrogation. This is the main point. To me, things like the hand written note and the Dec. 17. interrogations, or her Nov. 4. e-mail, are more incriminating than the spontneous statement.

Please tell me what drugs you are taking, so I can avoid them. There is NOTHING incriminating about the Nov 4 email. But nice try.

 

[Bill Williams]

Please tell me what drugs you are taking, so I can avoid them. There is NOTHING incriminating about the Nov 4 email. But nice try.

But you don't understand. Yummi/Machiavelli has asserted that Knox's Nov 4 e-mail is more incriminating.

You should accept this merely on the assertion.

If it were not for these assertions, there would not be a case against Raffaele and Amanda. It falls under the heading of, "all the other evidence." All that stuff is simply asserted, too.

 

[Kestrel]

The idea that Amanda initiated the second statement that night is simply a guilters lie. Used as a desraction from the fact that the interrogation lasted all night long.

Soften up the suspect using sleep deprivation along with other forms of mental and physical abuse, then lie to them about the evidence against them. Suggest that their memory must be faulty and have them speculate on what happened based on your lies about the evidence. It's a classic method of generating a false confession or at least a statement that can be used to press criminal charges.

And in Italy you have a second advantage. Claiming the police abused you is a serious crime. The law presumes the police don't ever abuse suspects, but most Italians know that such abuse is routine.

 

[andreajo]

Yes!

The police recorded everything else including 39 THOUSAND wire tapped phone calls between RS family members. They recorded the pair in the waiting room, in a different room where they were left alone in hopes of catching them up...etc

But during the actual interrogation they want us to believe the following...1. First Mignini claimed that they were so busy preparing papers and arrest warrants for Lumumba etc that they forgot to push record (at least four times)...sure fine. Notable they also forgot to push record for RS and PL interrogations.

2. Later in a recorded interview Mignini switches gears in the matter and now claims that due to budgetary cuts recording and transcribing interrogations is impossible...which begs the question... Then how can you afford to tap, monitor and record 39 THOUSAND phone conversations? Yes THOUSAND with a Thousand! as in 39,000 plus...oh and then there is that 187 thousand Euro cartoon???

Hard to say if the tapes are destroyed...you can bet they are safely locked away...and I would bet long ago destroyed since they would remove the she said he said speculation about the interrogations. Except that all three... AK, RS and PL told a similar story about police abuse and all three were denied lawyers, and Knox was denied an interrupter (a real interrupter) and she was denied notification to her consulate...all critical and clear human rights violations and all unquestionably at the hands of the Italian police and judiciary. This is also more that they wish to keep hidden. That plus they had Guede in custody a week or two before the murder and left him go when what they should have done is placed him in jail. For armed robbery and in possession of stolen valuable items...

But Yummi/Mach will tell you this is not illegal in Italy and so they had to let Guede go free. ??????? Sure....that is logical. Like the love thing.

Is this a pattern of lying, stupidity or what? I cant figure it out but I know I will never tempt fate with a visit to such a crazy illogical place.

Would they be using tapes? Would they not be more likely to be digital recordings stored on a hard drive somewhere?

 

[Bill Williams]

Raffaele Sollecito will appear TONIGHT, Monday Feb. 3rd on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360. 8-9pm ET/5-6pm PT. Please share.

 

[Kaosium]

Well well well.

I see S Moore the FBI guy has gone public on US TV with the CT I addressed here.
That the Supreme court is in on the conspiracy [ & RG was a police informant ]

Forget the Pentagon Papers, Snowden, wikileaks, the Magna Carta, Lady Diana, Lord Nelson .... even Maggie Thatcher will sit up when she hears this one.
Now that the american public is appraised of the situation no way can AK be extradited.
In fact I'm surprised the missiles aren't already launched, NATO ally or not !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


This is even better than LJ's argument that Italy will have to leave the ECHR or something.

Do you have a link to the appearance or a report of it?

 

[LondonJohn]

Well well well.

I see S Moore the FBI guy has gone public on US TV with the CT I addressed here.
That the Supreme court is in on the conspiracy [ & RG was a police informant ]

Forget the Pentagon Papers, Snowden, wikileaks, the Magna Carta, Lady Diana, Lord Nelson .... even Maggie Thatcher will sit up when she hears this one.
Now that the american public is appraised of the situation no way can AK be extradited.
In fact I'm surprised the missiles aren't already launched, NATO ally or not !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


This is even better than LJ's argument that Italy will have to leave the ECHR or something.

Please take more care in future not to misrepresent my arguments, if you're going to bring them up in your own posts. It's intellectually dishonest and signifies a distinct lack of critical reasoning practices. Thank you in advance

 

[Dan O.]

Here is a reply I just read on a news article. What if any of this is true and what is lies?

Some anonymous stupid person said... <crap>

You really need to familiarize yourself with the actual evidence. Amanda and Raffaele both say that they returned the mop to the cottage and that Amanda put it away inside the cottage when they first arrived. In the December 18 video the mop is discovered where it belongs in the closet in the hall. The police then proceed to gift wrap the handle of the mop and take it on a tour of the cottage including into Meredith's room where the floor is still covered in Meredith's blood.

In front of the cottage, by the pillar in front of the front door, there was a crate which some might think was a bucket except that it has a crosshatch pattern of holes which make it useless for holding water. Sticking out of this crate were a couple of sticks which some might think was a mop. If this was a mop and bucket, don't you think the police would have been just a little bit interested in why it was outside the cottage? Don't you think someone would have taken a picture of it, written about it in a report, given testimony or some other contemporaneous acknowledgement of it's existence?

ETA: Attachments: photos of the front of the cottage on the morning of November 3, 2007.

 

[LondonJohn]

As I already said, police don't record summary information of informants as a praxis, for several reasons, most important for obvious financial reasons. Due to beaurocracy rules and possibility of requests, that would likely force the state to transcript many of them.

When I stop laughing, I'd like to ask you to remind all of us just how many of Knox's and Sollecito's phone calls were wiretapped before they were even interrogated on the 5th/6th November. (I'll give you a hint: your answer will involve something in the magnitude of 10 raised to the fourth power......).

Once we've established how many tens of thousands of Knox's/Sollecito's phone calls were tapped, perhaps you can tell us how these calls were dealt with: who listened to them? Who transcribed them? How much did the entire operation cost?

And once you've done that, they perhaps you can estimate how much it would have cost to record and transcribe the three to four hours of interrogations that took place on the night of the 5th/6th November.

And once you've done that, perhaps you could take your "argument" that cost was a decisive factor in not recording the 5th/6th interrogations (and let's not also forget that this was one of the most high-profile criminal investigations Umbria had seen for decades), and you can put it exactly where it deserves to be put

 

[LondonJohn]

Indeed.

I watched Bonanza in a bar last night with the sound* down but got the gist of it.
More than sufficient to deal with the groupie 'legal arguments' as put forward on this thread, I think.


*I couldnt hear a thing , I'm afraid I was very very drunk.

Ahhh, a fan of Paul Whitehouse's work from the mid-90's huh? Not so keen on his recent Aviva ads though, I hope.

 

[Bob001]

.....
It just goes to show you that if you get in trouble in a foreign country, you keep your mouth shut except to ask for a lawyer and someone from the US Consulate.

That is the core of the case: She never thought she was in trouble. She was a naive coed trying to help the nice policemen find her friend's killer. Her mother told her to go stay with an aunt in Germany, but she didn't see the need. Her Italian roommates hired lawyers, but she didn't see the need. I've never read anything that says she even called the U.S. consulate. I would imagine that when she got home to Seattle there were some intense family conversations along the lines of "How could you be so stupid?"

 

[Bill Williams]

"Terrorized by Italian courts," reads the La Stampa headline.

http://www.lastampa.it/2014/01/31/italia/cronache/la-knox-terrorizzata-dalla-giustizia-italiana-una-persecuzione-AJxEzYw1akj08EDFmWKusJ/pagina.html

Tom Wright, leader of the group of "Friends of Amanda" who have supported since the arrest, do not lose confidence, "We just put it on Amazon - he says - a book called" The Killer forgetten. " With the help of five experts, proof beyond doubt that the perpetrator of the murder of Meredith is only one: Rudy. " The problem, however, is to convince the judges, who, however, between a few hours may require the arrest of Amanda: "If that were the case - continues Wright - she is determined to continue his fight to prove the truth." Keeping away from Italy: "The extradition is not even a hypothesis. In the United States the law prohibits "double jeopardy", ie be judged twice for the same offense. Amanda is now the fourth trial, and on this basis we believe that the U.S. government has every right to refuse extradition. "

Shortly before one o'clock in the afternoon, however, a call for lawyers confirming that the nightmare begins again. Amanda comes out with his mother. A black car is waiting, but before she turns to Italy: "A wrongful conviction is horrible for the sufferer, but it's also terrible for the victim, his family and society."

 

[acbytesla]

But you don't understand. Yummi/Machiavelli has asserted that Knox's Nov 4 e-mail is more incriminating.

You should accept this merely on the assertion.

If it were not for these assertions, there would not be a case against Raffaele and Amanda. It falls under the heading of, "all the other evidence." All that stuff is simply asserted, too.

Of course not, like the poop motive the assertions come out of their backsides.

If it looks like poop and smells like poop, it probably is poop.

 

[Machiavelli]

When I stop laughing, I'd like to ask you to remind all of us just how many of Knox's and Sollecito's phone calls were wiretapped before they were even interrogated on the 5th/6th November. (I'll give you a hint: your answer will involve something in the magnitude of 10 raised to the fourth power......).

Cost is a decisive factor for the praxis of recording summary informations, wether you like it or not. Any attempt to portray this as something suspicious will crash into the fact that this praxis is just the truth. Italians don't care about what your mind decides to believe, they already know about the truth of their context.

Wiretappings and police informants transcripts: two different things. Entirely diferent magnitudes. Different authorities deciding on them (wiretappings are ordered by investigation judges) and diferent budgets (two different ministries are paying for them).