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

[Grinder]

If we assume that there is foul play in the police department, how many people would need to be involved?
Not a big fan of far reach conspiracies.

Not that it matters what has been said in the past (Anglo) but some of us believe most of the police actions leading to the charging and the bad evidence was caused by incompetence.

They did believe Amanda was involved from the beginning. They believed they had solved the case with Patrick's arrest or whatever they call dragging him into the jail house.

I think individuals tried to make sure justice was served in every way they could, which may have included some "helping" make the evidence fit their beliefs. The one piece of evidence that looks extremely suspicious for multiple reasons is the bra clasp. Those reasons include the timing of the "discovery", the extra alleles and the fact that no other DNA of Raf's was found in the murder room specifically on the other part of the bra.

It should be noted that a number of these cops were charged with misconduct in another case involving their boss Napoleoni. In the that case they wanted to help the cause of justice by getting the court to award the children to her.

I certainly don't think that a number of the prosecution players met in a Masonic Lodge and plotted out their plans to frame the kids. I don't believe that they erased Patrick's text or placed the lamp in Meredith's room to help frame Amanda.

If they were framing from the beginning, they did a piss poor job.

 

[Sergei Walankov]

A very good comment, lamasheen, so I hope I don't come across as too adversarial in response.

Raffaele tells the police in his phone call that nothing was stolen. Why would he make this claim when there is a break-in and the reason he is calling the police is to report a break-in and he does not live there and still has not discovered MK? The correct answer for most people would have been just "I don't know" or even "how the F do I know, I don't live here and haven't taken inventory".

You rate Raffaele a "smart kid", so why would he make such an obvious tactical error during a phone call he would obviously have thought long and hard about before making? The simplest explanations to this are innocent ones. Clearly nothing much had been taken, and things being stolen was not his primary concern at the time.

Amanda's confession - yes, I understand she was allegedly hit, coerced, etc.. still very hard to swallow; 25% of innocent people make false confessions apparently. What about the other 75%? Amanda is smarter than your average bear, still find it hard to believe she can write a confession in such detail for an extremely intelligent person.

I don't get this at all. Knox was very young and had led a sheltered life, and here she was a roomful of authority figures telling her they could prove her alibi was a lie and she was looking at 30 years if she didn't tell them what she and Lumumba had really been up to that evening.

confusion about what they did that night and this constant blame on marijuana smoking as the cause. Heavy drinking and marijuana can cause memory loss for sure but perhaps only if they were about to pass out from it. They were not high enough that they were not able to read, watch a movie, eat, etc. For regulars smokers like AK and RS, highly doubt smoking a joint or 2 "impaired" their memory. If anything, they probably had a very high tolerance to it, almost like cigarette smoking for them. It "sounds" like another blame game to explain their confusion. They also blame alot of this on police coercion. How many different answers can there be for "we stayed at home all night" especially when your life is on the line. 2 smart kids with no straight answers. Raff has no excuse - he is a native Italian speaker.

I don't believe them about marijuana having impaired their memory all that much either. However, you are employing the all-too-common logic that culpability in the murder is the only possible explanation for them saying something things that might not have been strictly true (after all, look how far telling the truth had got them). The context is that they were being grilled about discrepancies picked out of many thousands of words of interrogations, phone taps and court testimony. Given the imperative to answer this question persuasively, I don't think it's any surprise that they played the dope card, given their target audience for the comment probably wasn't as experienced in the matter as you and I seem to be.

In summary, from my favourite commenter on the subject, Komponisto:

As humans, we are programmed to think that the most important kinds of facts about the world are mental and social -- facts about what humans are thinking and planning, particularly as regards to other humans. This explains why some people are capable of wondering whether the presence of (only) Rudy Guédé's DNA in and on Meredith's body should be balanced against the possibilty that Meredith may have been annoyed at Amanda for bringing home boyfriends and occasionally forgetting to flush the toilet -- that might have led to resentment on Amanda's part, you see ...

From an intuitive point of view, the equations of those subjects are foreign; whereas "X did Y because he/she wanted Z" is familiar. This is why it's so difficult for people to intuitively appreciate that all of the chatter about Amanda's "suspicious behavior" with various convincing-sounding narratives put forth by the prosecution is totally and utterly drowned out to oblivion by the sheer strength of the DNA signal pointing to Guédé alone.

 

[Diocletus]

I have managed to travel from Germany to Switzerland and back again without a passport, as I left it behind where i was staying in Germany. The main reason why that is is because the borders are so open, so much so at times you only know you have gone from one country to another as the road signs have changed.

I did wonder about the news of Sollecito being found near the border and his passport confiscated. He can easily drive, walk or get the train out of Italy without one and over an unmanned border crossing.

I've been across the exact border cross that rafaelle went across: Traviso to Villach. It is totally unremarkable and you need no papers of any kind. It's like going from New York to Connecticut.

 

[anglolawyer]

lamasheen,

With respect, I think you are overstating things a bit. Amanda and Raffaele don't say that they smoked so much they had amnesia, a common PG refrain. To the best of my knowledge they have never said that they were drinking heavily. They both give detailed accounts of what they did, but their times are sometimes wrong. That is not completely surprising, given that at on that date, there was no strong reason to care about exact times, and Amanda did not carry a watch and had shut off her cell phone.

If only they had had REM sleep to fall back on or some other equally convincing benchmark.

 

[Samson]

It is disappointing to see the uphill battle faced if this poll is true, imported from TJMK

"yes…I was heartened to see in a latest poll that, in the UK, only 13 out of a hundred believe AK is innocent.
(according to this poll, 51% think guilty, with the rest ‘don’t know’).

British people do not take kindly to being taken for a ride, by ‘spinning’ etc. The ordinary Brit has a strong sense of justice/injustice - it’s a kind of tradition. (“we are tolerant, but don’t push us too far”)

I think there would be fury here if extradition were to be requested and declined. It would definitely damage UK/US relations."

 

[Grinder]

3 - Amanda's confession - yes, I understand she was allegedly hit, coerced, etc.. still very hard to swallow; 25% of innocent people make false confessions apparently. What about the other 75%? Amanda is smarter than your average bear, still find it hard to believe she can write a confession in such detail for an extremely intelligent person.

You need to explain what the police chief meant when he said his men questioned Amanda until she buckled and told them what they knew to be correct. It is so obvious that she signed a statement they wrote which fingered Patrick after they channeled her in that direction.

There was no detail and I see no evidence that "she is an extremely intelligent person" not withstanding the dean's list. She may have a talent for learning languages but nothing I've seen makes me think she is as you described. Certainly she wasn't "street smart".

 

[Dan O.]

...
3 - Amanda's confession - yes, I understand she was allegedly hit, coerced, etc.. still very hard to swallow; 25% of innocent people make false confessions apparently. What about the other 75%? Amanda is smarter than your average bear, still find it hard to believe she can write a confession in such detail for an extremely intelligent person.

Do you understand the condition Amanda was in even before she entered the police station on November 5, 2007? I've been constructing a timeline of the period between the discovery of the murder through the interrogations:

Nov 2, 2007

• Amanda is still at the cottage at 14:00 according to cell phone records, by 15:30 they are connecting to the cell network near the police station
  text extracted from Amanda's email home
  after sticking around at the housr
  for a bit, the police told us to go to the station to give testimony,
  which i did. i was in a room for six hours straight after that without
  seeing anyone else, answering questions in italian for the first hour
  and then they brought in an interpreter and he helped my out with the
  details that i didnt know the words for.
• 15:30 Amanda signs the first statement
  afterward, when they were taking my fingerprints, i met two of
  merediths english friends, two girls she goes out with, including the
  lat one who saw her alive that night she was murdered.
  ...
• after that, this was around 9 at night by this
  time, i was taken into the waiting room where there was various other
  people who i all knew from varous places who all knew meredith. her
  friends from england, my roommates, even the owner of the pub she most
  frequented.
• 21:30 Amanda takes phone call from Lumumba (Dempsy)
  ...
  then i sat around in this waiting room wthout having the
  chance to leave or eat anything besides vending maschine food (whcih
  gave me a hell of a stomache ache) until 530 in the morning. during
  this time i received calls from a lot of different people, family
  mostly of course, and i also talked with the rest.
  ...
  they told me to be back in at 11am. i went home to raffael's place and
  ate something substantial, and passed out.

Nov 3, 2007

• 
  05:30 Anamda and Raffaele returns to Raffaele's place
• 11:00 Return to police station
• 14:16 two attempted incoming cals to Raffaele's landline from father - Massei Report pg 343
  in the morning raffael drove me bck to the police station but had to
  leave me when they said they wantrd to take me back to the house for
  quesioning."
• 14:16 two attempted incoming cals to Raffaele's landline from father - Massei Report pg 343
  ...
  at the station i just had to repeat the answers that i had givne
  at the house do they could type them up and after a good 5 and a half
  hour day with the police again raffael picked me up and took me out
  for some well-deserved pizza. i was starving."[/i]
• 14:45 Amanda is interrogated (Amanda testimony)
  GM: In your preceding declarations, on Nov 2 at 15:30, on Nov 3 at 14:45, then, there was another one, Nov 4, 14:45, and then there's Nov 6, 1:45.
  (Evening) Amanda buys underwear in a Perugia shop[1]
• 23:10 3 November last year, are 23.10. In the offices of the police station being questioned at Perugia Sophie Purton [2] (it)

Nov 4 2007

• 03:24 Amanda writes long email to 25 people after having been in the Questura. (Amanda testimony)
• 14:45 Amanda Knox was questioned at 14.45 [3] (it)
  About boys brought to the house
  "Still on the day of Nov 4, you spent a lot of time in the Questura, you and Raffaele had a long conversation that was recorded. First you were in the Questura, then you went home, then you came back, and you were talking" (Amanda testimony)
  still on the 4th that you had this conversation with Laura and Filomena to talk about the house (Amanda testimony)
• 17:?? Raffaele is buying pizza. Receipt dated 4-11-2007 was found when police search Raffaele's apartment on 16-11-2007. [4]
• "we went, with the PM, head of the SCO, with the occupants in Profazio ... Via della Pergola to make the recognition of the knives in the kitchen and girls, Mezzetti, Romanelli, Knox, noting that there was not any knife" (Massei Report pg 96, testimony of Domenico Profazio Hyacinth)

Nov 5, 2007

• Amanda and Raffaele have classes today.
• 09:00 Amanda showed up for her nine A.M. Italian class at the University for Foreigners. (page 236, Nina Burleigh's book, The Fatal Gift of Beauty)
• 13:00 After class Amanda met Patrick in front of the Universita per Stranieri.
  CP: Listen, in the statement of Nov 6 at 5:45, you declared to the police that you met Patrick in the morning of Nov 5, in front of the Universita per Stranieri. (Amanda Testimony)
• AK had two conversations with Lumumba prior to the interrogation, by phone he reached her at the Questura on Nov 2 at 7:30pm, and a street meeting at 1pm on Nov 5th. (Dempsey, MiI p146)
• 14:00 Rosa Natalia Guman Fernendez de Calle, RS' cleaning lady, cleans RS' apartment for the last time.
  Sollecito and Knox were there then.[5]
• ??:?? AK and RS are having a pizza at a friends home, police call and ask Raffaele to come to the station.
• 15:00 Raffaele picked up (according to news)
  "police picked up Rafaele Sollecito for questioning, three days after Kercher's body was discovered. Police located Sollecito at a cafe. It was three in the afternoon and Sollecito was eating a pizza. But Sollecito wasn't alone. Amanda Knox was also sharing the pizza"[6]
• ??:?? "the late afternoon of 5 November when Raffaele and Amanda went to the police station" (Massei 332)
• 17:00 Raffaele summoned to the police station. Amanda goes with him and waits in a separate room. (PMF)
• 17:00 Student Memorial for Meredith [7]
  "A picture taken on Monday night November, 5 2007 shows a tribute from Meredith Kercher's friends in Perugia who held held a candlelight vigil on the steps of the town's cathedral.The English girl was brutally murdered at her apartment late last week."
• 17:00 Sunset in Perugia [8]
• 20:00 Candlelight vigil for Meredith. (PMF)
• 21:40 "Sollecito left his computer at home and went into police headquarters 21:40 p.m. on November 5 for questioning" ([9])
• 22:00 AK and RS arrive at station. (Fiona JREF1 #440)
• 22:15 The evening of the 5th she (Monica) calls Raffaele for an interview. He finishes his dinner with Amanda and shows up at 22.15. With Amanda too. --(Perugia Shock 2009-02-27)
• 22:29 Amanda makes a 3 minute phone call to Filomena
  Amanda says she "Just arrived" and Raffaele is being questioned. The call ends with Amanda saying: "Now somebody wants to talk to me."
• 22:30 Raffaele, being questioned at this point, breaks and begins to change his story (PMF)
• 22:40 (at the earliest - Amanda is talking to Filomena about where to live at 1039) Amanda is called in for formal questioning (PMF)
• 22:40 Raffaele signs statement
  Sollecito Raffaele was interviewed again, and he changed his version of events, saying that on the evening of November 1, after Meredith left the house, he was with Knox Amanda until 1800 when they had both left the apartment to go into the centre, around 2030 to 2100.(Telegraph:Judges Report)
• 23:00 The infamous cartwheel.
  Ms Napoleone said: 'She had complained that she was feeling tired and at that stage I told her that she could go if she wanted. 'She said she wanted to stay, Sollecito was also at the station at the time and she said she wanted to wait for him. 'A few minutes later I walked past a room at the police station where she was waiting and I saw Amanda doing the splits and a cartwheel. It was around 11am on November 5th.

Nov 6, 2007

• 01:45 AK signs first statement.

Until you can wrap you head around how incredibly disruptive these past few days have been for Amanda, you'll be confused as to how an intelligent person could walk into a police station after dinner and immediately confess.

 

[anglolawyer]

snip
I don't believe that they erased Patrick's text or placed the lamp in Meredith's room to help frame Amanda.

I have made a strong case on the first and I'm sticking to it. On the second, I have not suggested the lamp was placed in the room to frame anybody. It was brought into the room, probably by Battistelli, to illuminate it. Nothing wrong with that. What was wrong and ought to make people sit up is what Mignini, not the police, did with it in the trial.

If, as you say, nothing worse than incompetence was involved up to and including the 6th then how do you explain:

1. the selection of the knife from Raf's apartment on that date and
2. (so far as we know) the non-selection of any knives from Patrick's place or Le Chic
3. Patrizia's highly suspect testing of said knife in the period 6th-13th November?

Hmmm?

Furthermore, I would point out this investigation was being run by a suspected criminal and conspirator, Monica Napoleone who, with her trusted subordinates whatever their names are, turns out to be capable (allegedly) of illegally accessing the police data base (very serious) malicious criminal damage and vandalism (pathetic and trivial but suggestive of moral degeneracy and lack of independence on the part of her subordinates) and threats and intimidation with a view to perverting the course of justice (also serious and suggestive of a certain mindset).

 

[Kestrel]

Dunno. How many people were involved in McMartin Preschool? Somebody had to get an excavation permit, permit had to be approved, had to call in backhoe operator, contact the media, interview toddlers for instructions on where to dig...

It's hard to say where an epidemic of mass stupidity leaves off, and a bona fide conspiracy begins.

The courts have the power to enforce their demands, no matter how stupid. The backhoe operator doesn't get a choice.

Italy takes this one step further, protecting court officials from those who point out that what they are doing is corrupt or stupid. Frank Sfarzo has suffered for doing that in this case as have several other journalists.

 

[NancyS]

It is disappointing to see the uphill battle faced if this poll is true, imported from TJMK

"yes…I was heartened to see in a latest poll that, in the UK, only 13 out of a hundred believe AK is innocent.
(according to this poll, 51% think guilty, with the rest ‘don’t know’).

British people do not take kindly to being taken for a ride, by ‘spinning’ etc. The ordinary Brit has a strong sense of justice/injustice - it’s a kind of tradition. (“we are tolerant, but don’t push us too far”)

I think there would be fury here if extradition were to be requested and declined. It would definitely damage UK/US relations."

I don't believe this - it might be from a poll of Daily Mail readers.

Most people I know in the UK are fairly confused by the verdict and many believe they are innocent, or that at least the evidence doesn't stand up to scrutiny. There will definitely not be fury here - a number of the non-tabloid papers have been very pro-innocence.

There are two large threads currently going on mumsnet in the UK (usually quite rabid in their opinions) - and they are mostly pro-innocence

 

[Grinder]

I have made a strong case on the first and I'm sticking to it. On the second, I have not suggested the lamp was placed in the room to frame anybody. It was brought into the room, probably by Battistelli, to illuminate it. Nothing wrong with that. What was wrong and ought to make people sit up is what Mignini, not the police, did with it in the trial.

It's always about you. The text of Patrick that you have made a case for being erased by the police based on one writer that was banished to China saying that a policeman said they saw the incoming text makes no sense to me. The incoming text would make the situation look even worse for Amanda. The message "business too slow don't come in" clearly would look like a mafia code for "let's go rape and kill your roommate" and the response "see you right away" would be code for saying "game on". So it is clear they would never have erased that text! Case closed

If, as you say, nothing worse than incompetence was involved up to and including the 6th then how do you explain:

1. the selection of the knife from Raf's apartment on that date and [INCOMPETENCE]
2. (so far as we know) the non-selection of any knives from Patrick's place or Le Chic [INCOMPETENCE]
3. Patrizia's highly suspect testing of said knife in the period 6th-13th November?[INCOMPETENCE + TRYING REALLY HARD]

Hmmm?

Furthermore, I would point out this investigation was being run by a suspected criminal and conspirator, Monica Napoleone who, with her trusted subordinates whatever their names are, turns out to be capable (allegedly) of illegally accessing the police data base (very serious) malicious criminal damage and vandalism (pathetic and trivial but suggestive of moral degeneracy and lack of independence on the part of her subordinates) and threats and intimidation with a view to perverting the course of justice (also serious and suggestive of a certain mindset).

Already mentioned upstream. This behavior would be consistent with some framing activity as pointed out regarding the bra clasp.

 

[anglolawyer]

It's always about you. The text of Patrick that you have made a case for being erased by the police based on one writer that was banished to China saying that a policeman said they saw the incoming text makes no sense to me. The incoming text would make the situation look even worse for Amanda. The message "business too slow don't come in" clearly would look like a mafia code for "let's go rape and kill your roommate" and the response "see you right away" would be code for saying "game on". So it is clear they would never have erased that text! Case closed

Already mentioned upstream. This behavior would be consistent with some framing activity as pointed out regarding the bra clasp.

I really cannot be expected to deal with such cussedness.

 

[Desert Fox]

Not that it matters what has been said in the past (Anglo) but some of us believe most of the police actions leading to the charging and the bad evidence was caused by incompetence.

They did believe Amanda was involved from the beginning. They believed they had solved the case with Patrick's arrest or whatever they call dragging him into the jail house.

I think individuals tried to make sure justice was served in every way they could, which may have included some "helping" make the evidence fit their beliefs. The one piece of evidence that looks extremely suspicious for multiple reasons is the bra clasp. Those reasons include the timing of the "discovery", the extra alleles and the fact that no other DNA of Raf's was found in the murder room specifically on the other part of the bra.

It should be noted that a number of these cops were charged with misconduct in another case involving their boss Napoleoni. In the that case they wanted to help the cause of justice by getting the court to award the children to her.

I certainly don't think that a number of the prosecution players met in a Masonic Lodge and plotted out their plans to frame the kids. I don't believe that they erased Patrick's text or placed the lamp in Meredith's room to help frame Amanda.

If they were framing from the beginning, they did a piss poor job.

I know I am responding to a big post with what amounts to a few lines

I have trouble believing four hard drives were fried all in custody?
I have likely have had 30 hard drives or so over 20 years with only around seven dying, one due to connecting the MOLEX wrong (old power connector) but cannot do that with SATA drives. Now, 2007, you still had IDE connectors in many cases.

Second, if the DNA is planted on the knife and bra clasp, how many people would need to be involved with that?

Would the same person be able to both screw up the computers and create the DNA evidence?

Kind of also curious, in another discussion, it was argued that it is a different prosecutor in this new case and why would be still want to frame them. This is after I brought up the simple argument that people have trouble letting go of already conceived notions. Thoughts?

 

[Grinder]

I really cannot be expected to deal with such cussedness.

You could have just said that my response was otiose.

 

[anglolawyer]

You could have just said that my response was otiose.

I was quivering too much.

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

Nov 5, 2007

• Amanda and Raffaele have classes today.
• 09:00 Amanda showed up for her nine A.M. Italian class at the University for Foreigners. (page 236, Nina Burleigh's book, The Fatal Gift of Beauty)
• 13:00 After class Amanda met Patrick in front of the Universita per Stranieri.
  CP: Listen, in the statement of Nov 6 at 5:45, you declared to the police that you met Patrick in the morning of Nov 5, in front of the Universita per Stranieri. (Amanda Testimony)
• AK had two conversations with Lumumba prior to the interrogation, by phone he reached her at the Questura on Nov 2 at 7:30pm, and a street meeting at 1pm on Nov 5th. (Dempsey, MiI p146)
• 14:00 Rosa Natalia Guman Fernendez de Calle, RS' cleaning lady, cleans RS' apartment for the last time.
  Sollecito and Knox were there then.[5]
• ??:?? AK and RS are having a pizza at a friends home, police call and ask Raffaele to come to the station.
• 15:00 Raffaele picked up (according to news)
  "police picked up Rafaele Sollecito for questioning, three days after Kercher's body was discovered. Police located Sollecito at a cafe. It was three in the afternoon and Sollecito was eating a pizza. But Sollecito wasn't alone. Amanda Knox was also sharing the pizza"[6]
• ??:?? "the late afternoon of 5 November when Raffaele and Amanda went to the police station" (Massei 332)
• 17:00 Raffaele summoned to the police station. Amanda goes with him and waits in a separate room. (PMF)
• 17:00 Student Memorial for Meredith [7]
  "A picture taken on Monday night November, 5 2007 shows a tribute from Meredith Kercher's friends in Perugia who held held a candlelight vigil on the steps of the town's cathedral.The English girl was brutally murdered at her apartment late last week."
• 17:00 Sunset in Perugia [8]
• 20:00 Candlelight vigil for Meredith. (PMF)
• 21:40 "Sollecito left his computer at home and went into police headquarters 21:40 p.m. on November 5 for questioning" ([9])
• 22:00 AK and RS arrive at station. (Fiona JREF1 #440)
• 22:15 The evening of the 5th she (Monica) calls Raffaele for an interview. He finishes his dinner with Amanda and shows up at 22.15. With Amanda too. --(Perugia Shock 2009-02-27)
• 22:29 Amanda makes a 3 minute phone call to Filomena
  Amanda says she "Just arrived" and Raffaele is being questioned. The call ends with Amanda saying: "Now somebody wants to talk to me."
• 22:30 Raffaele, being questioned at this point, breaks and begins to change his story (PMF)
• 22:40 (at the earliest - Amanda is talking to Filomena about where to live at 1039) Amanda is called in for formal questioning (PMF)
• 22:40 Raffaele signs statement
  Sollecito Raffaele was interviewed again, and he changed his version of events, saying that on the evening of November 1, after Meredith left the house, he was with Knox Amanda until 1800 when they had both left the apartment to go into the centre, around 2030 to 2100.(Telegraph:Judges Report)
• 23:00 The infamous cartwheel.
  Ms Napoleone said: 'She had complained that she was feeling tired and at that stage I told her that she could go if she wanted. 'She said she wanted to stay, Sollecito was also at the station at the time and she said she wanted to wait for him. 'A few minutes later I walked past a room at the police station where she was waiting and I saw Amanda doing the splits and a cartwheel. It was around 11am on November 5th.

Is that supposed to be 11PM?

 

[Kestrel]

This is evidence of murder, in the minds of these network nitwits. Who reads Harry Potter in German, anyway? Case closed!

Amanda also had a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in Italian. She bought the book, but found her Italian was not yet up to reading it. It's interesting to note that the key character in this book is Sirius Black, a man falsely convicted of murder.

 

[Desert Fox]

There is no "whole pattern of injuries at all". There were numerous small marks on Meredith's body, but I'd contend that some of these most likely weren't even related to the attack/murder at all. A slight young woman, having had a large amount to drink, jostling and getting jostled in crowded bars, tends to pick up small bruises and marks.

Another old one I think should be responded to.

In school, I tried out for the ski team. At the same time, I was taking Karate.
The doctor that gave me the physical asked "why do you have bruises all over your body?"
I had somehow gotten a ton of bruises in endless bouts but never really noticed it.

 

[GWCarver]

Not that it matters what has been said in the past (Anglo) but some of us believe most of the police actions leading to the charging and the bad evidence was caused by incompetence.

They did believe Amanda was involved from the beginning. They believed they had solved the case with Patrick's arrest or whatever they call dragging him into the jail house.

I think individuals tried to make sure justice was served in every way they could, which may have included some "helping" make the evidence fit their beliefs. The one piece of evidence that looks extremely suspicious for multiple reasons is the bra clasp. Those reasons include the timing of the "discovery", the extra alleles and the fact that no other DNA of Raf's was found in the murder room specifically on the other part of the bra.

It should be noted that a number of these cops were charged with misconduct in another case involving their boss Napoleoni. In the that case they wanted to help the cause of justice by getting the court to award the children to her.

I certainly don't think that a number of the prosecution players met in a Masonic Lodge and plotted out their plans to frame the kids. I don't believe that they erased Patrick's text or placed the lamp in Meredith's room to help frame Amanda.

If they were framing from the beginning, they did a piss poor job.

I would suggest the police picking up the knife out of Raffaele's drawer because it was CLEAN (there is nothing suspicious about a clean knife in a drawer), along with the fact that none of the knives at the crime scene were tested, just screams evidence was being manufactured. One could say the fact that there was no crevice in that knife proves nothing was found in a crevice on the knife. Unless one wants to argue the "crevice" disappeared somehow, it is pretty straightforward, I think.

I have always found the "double DNA knife" to be even more suspicious than the bra clasp. The clasp was on the floor for weeks being moved around, so I wouldn't be surprised what ended up on it before it was destroyed by the best DNA specialist in Italian law enforcement.

It really doesn't take a conspiracy when everyone in the various organizations knows what needs to be done to get a conviction and just does what is necessary to accomplish it.

 

[Bob001]

....
I don't think they were involved in the killing. But they do seem to know something or are trying to hide something for sure, Amanda much more than Rafaelle. Rafalle I think is innocent for the most part, he may have just gotten involved as an innocent bystander. Amanda I think just got trapped, she panicked and just made whatever bad situation she was in worse by the second and eventually couldn't go back.
....

This seems to be a common theme. So what do you think they know, and how do they benefit from hiding it? Do you think they witnessed a murder and refused to identify the killer? Do you think they are pals with Guede and helped him leave town? Or what? And how can they prove that they aren't concealing anything: "We weren't there! We don't know anything!" "You're lying!" What can they say?

Why is it so hard to believe that two spacey college kids were at their home when Meredith surprised a burglar in her home? How does any other explanation make any sense?