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

[Kaosium]

Er, hang on. When exactly do you think Meredith died? Because if they killed her at 12:34 the next day they must have had a time machine.

Now I see why you held the enviable position of '0' on Cuki's 'involvo-meter!'

You'll recall I was jealous, you didn't even consider the following scenario:

Before the postal police arrive they might have been 'involved' in cleaning up some of Rudy's mess/and or 'staging' the break-in for no conceivable reason for someone they barely met at peril of destroying their lives and future.

 

[anglolawyer]

Personally, I think that Steve Moore is going way too far in placing any alleged "Guede-as-police-informant" theory front and centre.

While I think that it certainly cannot be ruled out as a possibility, and while it certainly fits with certain key evidence regarding how Guede was treated in the days and weeks prior to the murder, there's currently no positive evidence that Guede was a Perugia police informant.

And what's much more important is the simple fact that the "Guede-as-police-informant" theory is totally unnecessary to a cogent, coherent explanation of how/why Knox and Sollecito were wrongly charged and found guilty of the murder of Meredith Kercher. In addition, there's no evidence that the police/authorities made any effort to "protect" Guede after the murder, and there's also no evidence that they even suspected Guede of involvement at the time when they arrested Knox and Sollecito.

As many of us have outlined here and elsewhere before, there's a depressingly simple explanation to what happened to Knox and Sollecito in November 2007 and thereafter: a rush to judgement, tunnel vision, confirmation bias, groupthink, deference to senior authority figures, a group "circling of the wagons", and personal/collective hubris. None of this need have anything whatsoever to do with whether or not Guede was a police informant.

I thought it emerged very recently, at dot org of all places, that Guede was charged with offences relating to the Milan school.

A simpler explanation for why Rudy Guede was not charged for his involvement in prior crimes is the dysfunctional Italian legal system. The glacial pace of trials has created a massive backlog. A simple burglary case might take years to come to trial. So the police use a different tactic. They beat up those suspected of minor crimes to teach them a lesson. The courts will look the other way if the suspect objects. It is a serious crime to claim abuse by the police and the cops know that the courts will side with them.

So the cops in Milan beat up Rudy and sent him home, threatening a worse beating if he showed up in their town again. As far as they were concerned, the problem was solved.

See above.

My God, I'm going to win after all!

Some time in the spring of 2011 I rashly bet you lot that I'd get the Lockerbie conviction holed below the waterline before Amanda and Raffaele were acquitted. I was getting ahead of myself - I thought I had found a slam-dunk counter-proof to the prosecution case. However, when the necessary witness statements and passenger movement records were procured to see if I was right, it turned out I was wrong. That was August 2011. Damn, hello square one.

Then when the Hellmann verdict was pronounced in October 2011 I threw in the towel, imagining you guys had comprehensively won. When I heard that the ISC had delivered its judgement, on my car radio while queuing for a car wash, I originally thought I'd heard that the acquittals had been confirmed, so sure was I that that was what was going to happen. I was utterly flabbergasted when it dawned on me what the announcer had actually said.

Now the tables are turned again in my favour. After the abortive 2011 red herring, I was given more evidence that hadn't been seen in public before. The case actually is holed below the waterline now, it's just that it's going to take time to get the authorities to understand what has happened.

I give it a couple of years. Five years tops. So, it's game on again.

Rolfe.

Will you kindly stop discussing Lockerbie on this thread! . Actually, a better comparator would be the Dreyfus case which divided France for 12 years. This one could outlast that one and have a similar affect.

The Supreme Court is part of the problem, but it's hardly a conspiracy (is that your favorite word? ) as they're making idiots of themselves in full public view and have proven that by writing their opinion on the subject which proved they don't have the first clue about the evidence they were adjudicating on. That's probably because they don't have the resources to do such a thing and most definitely don't have the scientific training or even aptitude.



Beware! I will bury you in a wall of text.

I do not advise anyone to ignore this threat

It is illegal to carry a knife in Italy, it is charged under art. 699 "unjustified carrying of weapon".



He was charged. As you can see from headlines:

http://www.corriere.it/cronache/09_dicembre_04/processo-perugia-accuse-amanda-raffaele_7cde8b6a-e11a-11de-b6f9-00144f02aabc.shtml

This does not mean the charge is significant, also because in cases of minor gravity it's a police fine and has a time expiration after 2 years.

Was Guede charged too? Well, it seems he was. What happened to those charges?

Did they charge Amanda with carrying a knife, too?

Or was that something that could not be proven?

Let's make clear that you are not going to establish where I "am" in no way.
Actually I have two kind of sources: one is people I spoke to directly, and the second is transcripts. I was told that Mignini arrived after 2 am, the people who told me are Mignini himself and the officer who drove him. He told me it was definitely not half an hour, he was fast asleep and dreaming in REM sleep, and he told me he went to bet quite later than that. When he arrived at the police station, he just passed by Knox's room on his way to Chiachiera's office and she was alone, the interrogation was already over and it was abundantly later than 2am.
The second source is the transcripts. Giobbi's transcripts for example, just confirm what Mignini and Buratti said: it was only after Knox's 'confession', after he stopped the questioning, that he decided it was time to call the PM. This is clear if you read Giobbi's transcript: he says let's call the PM only after Knox's interrogation has been already stopped, when it was all over.

Thank you Mach. I shall now ruminate.

 

[bolint]

So you think that Meredith could have been murdered at any time during that period?

Of course not.
But that wide interval is where their whereabouts is not established.
Around 20:40 they are both at his place. Then at 21:10 there is the computer activity, but after that the next stop is around 5:30.
From 12:34 on they are definitely at the cottage waiting for Filomena.
As for Amanda we don't have anything from around 20:50 to 12:07 next day.
There is evidence that at 20:18 she was out.

 

[MichaelB]

http://news.sky.com/story/1206494/sollecito-slams-kercher-killers-release-plan

"This is absurd," he said. "Guede should have been on trial with me.

"How can I convince him to speak when he has done all he can to hide the truth?"

Ms Kercher, from Coulsdon, Surrey, was sexually assaulted and murdered in a house in the central Italian city of Perugia in 2007.

Sollecito came under suspicion when Knox blamed the killing on a local barman.

Sollecito, who has not been in touch with Knox since the verdict, said: "I was trapped in this because of her. There was nothing against me.

"I appreciate the apologies but what I need is for magistrates to accept the facts."

 

[bolint]

Is there any CCTV showing them approaching cottage that night like there is of both Rudy and Meredith.

That woman could just as well be Amanda.

 

[MichaelB]

Of course not.
But that wide interval is where their whereabouts is not established.
Around 20:40 they are both at his place. Then at 21:10 there is the computer activity, but after that the next stop is around 5:30.From 12:34 on they are definitely at the cottage waiting for Filomena.
As for Amanda we don't have anything from around 20:50 to 12:07 next day.
There is evidence that at 20:18 she was out.

Aren't you forgetting something?

Naruto 9.26pm (duration 23 mins)

 

[Matthew Best]

Actually I am the person who backs up most precisely everything I say.
For example, did you notice I cited art. 350 § 7 when answring to LJ's claim that the SC found the spontaneous statement to be improper or non spontaneous?
It happens that the TJMK folks have obtained a lot of interesting documentation including many payments to Frank Sfarzo.

This is hilarious. Mach says that he is the person who backs up everything he says. He then immediately goes on to say something and refuses to back it up.

It couldn't really be any more delicious.

 

[NancyS]

Simple question: If you were innocently convicted of murder, would you stress where you were at the moment of the crime, or just vaguely cry "injustice"?

That's the crux. Since the verdict (and well before), Knox and Sollecito have been very reluctant to state where they were in television interviews, and therefore why they are innocent. It's clear they don't want to talk about the facts of the case.

If if it was me, that's the only thing I would would want to talk about, and I would never let an opportunity pass to affirm my alibi. They don't do the most obvious thing, which makes me very suspicious.

Seriously, how do you fight this kind of armchair psychology nonsense - who really has a clue what they would do if in the same position

Judging people from how they appear on TV is just nonsense - some of the most cuddly TV personalities are awful people in their private lives. For those in the UK, Jim Davidson just won Big Brother, which really says it all regarding what an awful judge of character we are from watching the telly

 

[bolint]

Aren't you forgetting something?

Naruto 9.26pm (duration 23 mins)

That was in the appeal but was not discussed at the Hellmann trial so details are not known concerning what proves that it was a human interaction.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

That was in the appeal but was not discussed at the Hellmann trial so details are not known concerning what proves that it was a human interaction.

Don't we all have a script running that automatically plays Naruto at 21:26 each night? Perfectly ordinary. Not evidence.

 

[acbytesla]

Of course not.

There is evidence that at 20:18 she was out.

No, in fact there isn't. You are talking about where Amanda was when she received the text message from Patrick not to come in to work. Massei says in his motivation that it shows Amanda was NOT at Raffaele's apartment at that time. He makes the conclusion that Amanda couldn't be there because the cell tower that relayed that message was incompatible with Raffaele's apartment.

The problem is this is TOTALLY FALSE. In fact, Raffaele's received and made calls that from his apartment that were relayed through that cell antenna. And if you read the Defense's cellular experts testimony, he found that there was a signal generating from that antenna in his apartment. This is another example of shoddy work by the police forensics experts. They only tested from the street outside Raffaele's apartment and not from Raffaele's apartment which has a window that has a direct line of sight to the antenna.

 

[MichaelB]

That was in the appeal but was not discussed at the Hellmann trial so details are not known concerning what proves that it was a human interaction.

It was part of this trial because a new computer report was entered into evidence.

This is Crini talking about it.

p90 ”che è causato dalla visione per pochi attimi di questo file che si chiama Naruto”

p66 allora certamente questo evento va collocate in una fascia oraria più anticipata, che è sicuramente compatibile con l’uscita di casa, perché si ragiona delle 21:26, insomma, così, che sarebbe il momento in cui questa visione del film è cessata, poi c’è stato il crash di Naruto, ma insomma, teniamo conto che

 

[acbytesla]

That woman could just as well be Amanda.

Not likely bolint. That was within minutes of the time that Meredith parted ways with Sophie Purton as they walked home together. Also that person is alone, not with Raffaele, not with Rudy. Alone and 15 minutes after Ms Popovich saw Amanda and Raffaele at his apartment.

 

[anglolawyer]

I ruminated

Let's make clear that you are not going to establish where I "am" in no way.
Actually I have two kind of sources: one is people I spoke to directly, and the second is transcripts. I was told that Mignini arrived after 2 am, the people who told me are Mignini himself and the officer who drove him. He told me it was definitely not half an hour, he was fast asleep and dreaming in REM sleep, and he told me he went to bet quite later than that. When he arrived at the police station, he just passed by Knox's room on his way to Chiachiera's office and she was alone, the interrogation was already over and it was abundantly later than 2am.
The second source is the transcripts. Giobbi's transcripts for example, just confirm what Mignini and Buratti said: it was only after Knox's 'confession', after he stopped the questioning, that he decided it was time to call the PM. This is clear if you read Giobbi's transcript: he says let's call the PM only after Knox's interrogation has been already stopped, when it was all over.

Thank you Mach. I shall now ruminate.

Like you, due to your theatrical experiences, I too can spot a lie at 100 paces. In my case it must be the practise of law or something. Who the hell (apart from a liar) buttresses a claim like this with a reference to the fact that they must have slept longer than half an hour because they were in REM sleep? Did Mignini attend the Nara school of embroidery or what?

I conclude Mignini, his driver (who knows which side his bread is buttered) and Giobbi (whose testimony I will now check) might all be lying. I will also check this with Follain (trust me) who will very likely have got his facts from Mignini before Mig knew what turned on it.

Is there CCTV covering the entry to the cop shop? If so, I recommend you have a word with your people and suggest they 'lose' the film for that night, assuming they have not already done so.

 

[bolint]

No, in fact there isn't. You are talking about where Amanda was when she received the text message from Patrick not to come in to work.

Yes, Im talking about that.

Massei says in his motivation that it shows Amanda was NOT at Raffaele's apartment at that time. He makes the conclusion that Amanda couldn't be there because the cell tower that relayed that message was incompatible with Raffaele's apartment.

The problem is this is TOTALLY FALSE.

Massei clearly claims wrongly that the cell is incompatible. Without any experts he contradicts himself later when he discusses calls around 12:07-12:11 from the same cell and this time accepting them as good for Raffaele's place.

In fact, Raffaele's received and made calls that from his apartment that were relayed through that cell antenna. And if you read the Defense's cellular experts testimony, he found that there was a signal generating from that antenna in his apartment. This is another example of shoddy work by the police forensics experts. They only tested from the street outside Raffaele's apartment and not from Raffaele's apartment which has a window that has a direct line of sight to the antenna.

The police expert tested and found the signals as specifically described in Massei (top p318 in the PMF first edition). So it was Massei's error.

But I don't build on Massei's claim.
As the Berardi tower was the best server for Raffaele's place, the other cells will not be selected even though they are reachable.

So I consider the fact that the Lumumba SMS was received through the Acquedotto tower a good evidence that Amanda was out at that time.

 

[bolint]

It was part of this trial because a new computer report was entered into evidence.

This is Crini talking about it.

p90 ”che è causato dalla visione per pochi attimi di questo file che si chiama Naruto”

p66 allora certamente questo evento va collocate in una fascia oraria più anticipata, che è sicuramente compatibile con l’uscita di casa, perché si ragiona delle 21:26, insomma, così, che sarebbe il momento in cui questa visione del film è cessata, poi c’è stato il crash di Naruto, ma insomma, teniamo conto che

Thank you, I did not have this document.
I'm reading it.
-------------------
Added:

Now I've read the relevant parts.
Not much details in the whole text, but it seems that at 21:26 Naruto crashed after a few moments of viewing.
So at best it may prove the last interaction at 21:26.

 

[Planigale]

Like you, due to your theatrical experiences, I too can spot a lie at 100 paces. In my case it must be the practise of law or something. Who the hell (apart from a liar) buttresses a claim like this with a reference to the fact that they must have slept longer than half an hour because they were in REM sleep? Did Mignini attend the Nara school of embroidery or what?

I conclude Mignini, his driver (who knows which side his bread is buttered) and Giobbi (whose testimony I will now check) might all be lying. I will also check this with Follain (trust me) who will very likely have got his facts from Mignini before Mig knew what turned on it.

Is there CCTV covering the entry to the cop shop? If so, I recommend you have a word with your people and suggest they 'lose' the film for that night, assuming they have not already done so.

Quite apart from who says they woke from REM sleep, I assume that Mignini woke from a dream. I agree physiologically this is REM sleep. So mean REM sleep latency in the literature is 90 min with a SD of 30 so all we can say (assuming no sleep disorder or deprivation) is that this was likely to be between 30 min and 150 min of falling asleep. So we cannot safely conclude he was asleep longer than 30 min, but it is unlikely given above caveats that it was less than 30 min.

 

[bolint]

To the recording dispute...
Is there an example where the Perugia police used recording during interrogation for other people?
I mean not bugging, but interrogation where the interrogators are also heard, as in the Mignini interrogations in the jail.

 

[toto]

I find it curious that neither Knox nor Sollecito ever state their alibis in their many interviews.

If I was innocent of a murder, I would never let an interview pass where I didn't say where I was at the alleged time of the crime.

Yet both Sollecito and Knox prefer to talk vaguely about mistreatment or injustice.

My question is why don't they just say, clearly, and on television, when the stakes are highest, what they were doing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvj_GCVTb9s

Go to 2.49 to 4.12

Here Diane Sawyer asks that very question. This was her first interview. Hope this helps.

 

[acbytesla]

Yes, Im talking about that.



Massei clearly claims wrongly that the cell is incompatible. Without any experts he contradicts himself later when he discusses calls around 12:07-12:11 from the same cell and this time accepting them as good for Raffaele's place.


The police expert tested and found the signals as specifically described in Massei (top p318 in the PMF first edition). So it was Massei's error.

But I don't build on Massei's claim.
As the Berardi tower was the best server for Raffaele's place, the other cells will not be selected even though they are reachable.

So I consider the fact that the Lumumba SMS was received through the Acquedotto tower a good evidence that Amanda was out at that time.

You are talking with a guy bolint who has worked in the data communications industry for going on 20 years. This is right in my wheel house.

Overall, the Beradi tower may have been the most likely tower to connect through but that doesn't mean that a call has to connect through it. Distance wise, the Acquedetto antenna is actually closer. I mapped out all the cell antennas with Google Earth and used the tools to measure the distances between the cell towers and points of interest including the cottage and Raffaele's apartment.

But there are other reasons that this tower didnt' connect through the Beradi antenna at 20:18 such as the possibility that the Beradi antenna was saturated with calls at that specific moment. Also given the architecture, the stone walls everywhere, few feet in any direction can effect what is the best signal. This is what cellular expert determined.

You're right there is a chance that Amanda wasn't at Raffaele's apartment at 20:18. A chance, and nothing more. It certainly isn't evidence of the fact and it would be flat out WRONG to think this is proof that Amanda wasn't at Raffaele's apartment.

I have to say. Your post is exactly what is wrong with the guilter perspective. You immediately take the guilt perspective on a piece of evidence that is incredibly inconclusive. Don't you see, that when the evidence is this suspect that you should say it has zero weight? That it means NOTHING.