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

[lamasheen]

I don't see it as callous, insensitive or selfish. Her living situation was toast and she quickly needed to take care of these details. The money was probably an issue for her. I don't see how this is in any way evidence of any kind of guilt at all. Life goes on, end of story.

No only is it not callous, it's not even relevant.

It is not a picture of someone who is traumatized, when an event like this SHOULD be. Most of Meredith's friends quit school and went home!! She is not concerned about a murder that happened to her roommate where she lived? She is not traumatized, concerned about safety with a killer on the loose? No, she is only concerned with her original motive - moving in with Raff for free rent. If my "friend" just got brutally killed, I would certainly not complain to the whole world about having to pay an extra month's rent. I am pointing out her frame of mind - it is not concerned with other people, only hers.

 

[Samson]

I don't try to figure out how he thinks. I can only guess what his intent was or what if any communication passed between him and Meredith.

I'm looking purely at his actions, as demonstrated by the crime scene and in the six years that have passed since the murder.

The crime scene shows a murder that arose from circumstances and was not planned ahead of time. But at the decisive moment, he intended to kill her. He didn't rip a two-inch gash in her throat in the hope that she would be OK later.

Nor do I see any evidence from the crime scene that he instantly regretted it and tried to help her. The pillow wasn't under her head. Her head was on the hard tile floor, in a pool of blood. The pillow was under her hips, the better for him to rape her as she lay dying. The towels weren't bunched around her throat. They were under her body, with streak marks on the floor showing where he wiped up blood so he wouldn't get it on himself when he raped her.

That is the crime scene. As for what followed, I think it's possible he would never have accused Amanda/Raffaele if his lawyer hadn't told him that was his best legal strategy. I even think it's possible he regrets it. But he walked into court in 2011, when two people he knew were innocent were fighting to get out of prison for the murder he alone committed, and he played right along with the prosecutor's BS. I'm not going to give him the benefit of the doubt on anything. I don't see why anyone should.

This sounds the most likely, and I think his no longer applying for study release represents the closest he can come to demonstrating a conscience for the ongoing persecution. He would have hoped they would be acquitted, as he can now expect incandescent fury from many who see him free and the persecuted in jail, which I agree is unlikely to actually happen.
Mignini has the most inside information. Do you think Charlie, or anyone, he still believes in their guilt? I believe he knows the truth.

 

[Mary_H]

I don't try to figure out how he thinks. I can only guess what his intent was or what if any communication passed between him and Meredith.

I'm looking purely at his actions, as demonstrated by the crime scene and in the six years that have passed since the murder.

The crime scene shows a murder that arose from circumstances and was not planned ahead of time. But at the decisive moment, he intended to kill her. He didn't rip a two-inch gash in her throat in the hope that she would be OK later.

Nor do I see any evidence from the crime scene that he instantly regretted it and tried to help her. The pillow wasn't under her head. Her head was on the hard tile floor, in a pool of blood. The pillow was under her hips, the better for him to rape her as she lay dying. The towels weren't bunched around her throat. They were under her body, with streak marks on the floor showing where he wiped up blood so he wouldn't get it on himself when he raped her.

That is the crime scene. As for what followed, I think it's possible he would never have accused Amanda/Raffaele if his lawyer hadn't told him that was his best legal strategy. I even think it's possible he regrets it. But he walked into court in 2011, when two people he knew were innocent were fighting to get out of prison for the murder he alone committed, and he played right along with the prosecutor's BS. I'm not going to give him the benefit of the doubt on anything. I don't see why anyone should.

It's purely an intellectual exercise, and always has been, because it has nothing to do with Amanda and Raffaele's involvement. What you describe as how the crime happened is more than adequate for explaining it to those who are interested as well as for establishing reasonable doubt. I have nothing invested in differing with it; that's why I have mostly avoided discussions of Rudy for five years.

If I am going to engage in an intellectual exercise, I am not going to limit my thinking to the "whats" of behavior when I can also think about the "whys."

Personally, I have zero hatred, animosity, anger or hostile feelings of any kind toward Rudy. He didn't do anything to me. He is part of what has been done to Amanda and Raffaele, but he is not responsible for that any more than Amanda was responsible for naming Patrick.

 

[kwill]

Mignini has the most inside information. Do you think Charlie, or anyone, he still believes in their guilt? I believe he knows the truth.

I wish I thought that. Mignini talked publicly about being able to read in Curt Knox's face that Curt knew his daughter was guilty. His voice here on the Continuation threads (Machiavelli) is nothing but outraged over the Hellman acquittal, calling it an abomination and predicting correctly that it would be overturned.

He lives in an inverse world -- one where the least likely people randomly commit a brutal murder for no reason whatsoever and then lie to protect each other for years. What would change his mind? No evidence? No motive? No forensics? No problem!

 

[MichaelB]

I don 't believe that for a second. He inflicted a huge, savage gash in her throat, which would have taken a lot of force to execute. It's not as though the knife slipped.

There is no evidence he applied the towels to her wounds, and there would be evidence had he done so. The photos show he used towels to mop up the floor. I can only guess he did this so he could rape her without getting too much blood on himself.

What makes you think he was hoping the wound he inflicted was not fatal, or that he could have had any doubt it was fatal?

To me, everything about this crime scene screams out that it was the work of someone who utterly lacks compassion or moral inhibition. Everything about Guede's behavior since his arrest tells me he is a scheming, self-serving liar without a hint of conscience, who would be happy to have Amanda/Raffaele spend their lives in prison because of his crime.

My sequence of events is fight, hair pulling, knife, position body, undress then the towel used to suffocate her just prior to the sexual assault because she was still coughing up blood and he wanted to finish her off before he raped her. The towel was right beside her head and the autopsy has suffocation as the secondary cause of death.

There's a reason he included the towels in his story....they meant something to him. If says he tried to save her with them....it means he killed her with them.

JMO

 

[kwill]

Personally, I have zero hatred, animosity, anger or hostile feelings of any kind toward Rudy. He didn't do anything to me. He is part of what has been done to Amanda and Raffaele, but he is not responsible for that any more than Amanda was responsible for naming Patrick.

Disagree, Mary. He knows that they're innocent. He knows they went to prison. He knows they might have to go back to prison. He could describe what he did to Meredith. He could end the case tomorrow.

Amanda was manipulated and bullied into naming PL, and she tried to get them to understand that she wasn't sure within hours of signing those illegally-gotten statements. She didn't know he was innocent any more than she knew he was guilty -- all she knew was that police wanted her to say so.

 

[Poppy1016]

I don't try to figure out how he thinks. I can only guess what his intent was or what if any communication passed between him and Meredith.

I'm looking purely at his actions, as demonstrated by the crime scene and in the six years that have passed since the murder.

The crime scene shows a murder that arose from circumstances and was not planned ahead of time. But at the decisive moment, he intended to kill her. He didn't rip a two-inch gash in her throat in the hope that she would be OK later.

Nor do I see any evidence from the crime scene that he instantly regretted it and tried to help her. The pillow wasn't under her head. Her head was on the hard tile floor, in a pool of blood. The pillow was under her hips, the better for him to rape her as she lay dying. The towels weren't bunched around her throat. They were under her body, with streak marks on the floor showing where he wiped up blood so he wouldn't get it on himself when he raped her.

That is the crime scene. As for what followed, I think it's possible he would never have accused Amanda/Raffaele if his lawyer hadn't told him that was his best legal strategy. I even think it's possible he regrets it. But he walked into court in 2011, when two people he knew were innocent were fighting to get out of prison for the murder he alone committed, and he played right along with the prosecutor's BS. I'm not going to give him the benefit of the doubt on anything. I don't see why anyone should.

I agree with everything in this post. Very well stated.

 

[Poppy1016]

Delete

 

[Mary_H]

Disagree, Mary. He knows that they're innocent. He knows they went to prison. He knows they might have to go back to prison. He could describe what he did to Meredith. He could end the case tomorrow.

Amanda was manipulated and bullied into naming PL, and she tried to get them to understand that she wasn't sure within hours of signing those illegally-gotten statements. She didn't know he was innocent any more than she knew he was guilty -- all she knew was that police wanted her to say so.

It would be very embarrassing for Mignini et al for Rudy to insist Amanda and Raffaele had nothing to do with the crime. The lawyers and police obviously wanted Rudy to say A & R were guilty, too -- Rudy wouldn't even have thought of it if it hadn't been blared all over the news and then reinforced over the course of four or five months before Rudy finally accused them. It's not unbelievable that Rudy has been threatened to keep his mouth shut.

 

[MichaelB]

Rudy did have at least a bit of a conscience before the lawyers got to him; otherwise he would not have made a point of letting his friend know that Amanda was being wrongly suspected. I think if he were without a conscience, he would have committed more violent crimes before the murder.

I really can't see that Rudy had enough to fear from being discovered by Meredith that it would lead him to the lengths he went to, just to prevent her from telling anyone he was in the cottage. If he had broken in and were waiting in the bathroom for her to go to her room, all he had to do was climb out the window and run away. It would have been much faster than trying to go through the door.

I think he was either on some aggression-increasing drug or got into some exchange with Meredith that infuriated him. He committed the crime but was not in his right mind.

I think he said Amanda wasn't there at the beginning not because he has a conscience but because he knew they were innocent and expected them to be released so he had to come up with a story.....some other dude did it.

 

[Poppy1016]

As I sit here tonight near the beach in Los Angeles,
I wonder about that hair strand that was found in the grasp
of Meredith Kercher's hand:
[qimg]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/443/07yz.jpg[/qimg]

Conveniently it was lost by Italian investigators.

WTF?!?

I wonder what the ramifications would be if that strand of hair belonged to Hekuran Kokomani,
whom B. Nadeau, after reading the 10,000 page Digital Archive Crime Dossier,
writes "is also believed to be a drug informant for the local police".

What color of hair is Hekuran Kokomani hiding when he appeared in court as a Super Witness?
Did ALL of the other Super Witnesses, Antonio Curatolo, Marco Quintavalle, Nara Capezzali, Antonella Monacchia, Maria Dramis or Alessaandra Formica dress like this and hide behind hats, hoodies and dark sunglasses too?

Or only downstairs neighbor Stefano Bonassi,
seen here in this Perugia Shock link from Sept. 2008:
http://web.archive.org/web/20101015182607/http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html
just to make it appear not so obviously that ILE was hiding Koko's informant status
by covering him up, so to say?

I mean who shows up to testify in court in a murder trial wearing a baseball cap,
a hoodie pulled over his head, and dark sunglasses?
I wonder...


Here's a little more info that I, and many others,
seem to have forgotten, this from page 47 of Angel Face:
An examination of her vagina revealed a hair that the police removed and put in a plastic bag.
"It's blonde", Stefanoni said, directing the collecting officer to note that the hair was not Meredith's.

From page 48+49:
Meredith's left arm was bent, and her blood smeared hand was suspend-ed in the air near her face. The tip of her long, thin index finger was soaked in blood as if she had touched her neck. But Meredith's right hand showed not even a drop of blood except for tiny cuts on the palm of her hand - it had not been near her face or neck when she was stabbed, but the detectives determined that she had extended it in self defense. The twin bruises and identical pressure points on the insides of her elbows were consistent with her arms being held back.

"It's blonde",
the scientific police officer said as he pulled a long hair from Meredith's blood-soaked hand.

Hmmmm...

There were 2 Blonde hairs retrieved.
WERE BOTH LOST?!?

Always great reading your posts. You ask great questions and have tremendous insight.

 

[Mary_H]

I think he said Amanda wasn't there at the beginning not because he has a conscience but because he knew they were innocent and expected them to be released so he had to come up with a story.....some other dude did it.

Interesting thought.

 

[RWVBWL]

It would be very embarrassing for Mignini et al for Rudy to insist Amanda and Raffaele had nothing to do with the crime. The lawyers and police obviously wanted Rudy to say A & R were guilty, too -- Rudy wouldn't even have thought of it if it hadn't been blared all over the news and then reinforced over the course of four or five months before Rudy finally accused them. It's not unbelievable that Rudy has been threatened to keep his mouth shut.

Hiya Mary H!
I speculate that Guede is dead soon after getting outtta prison,
too many need to keep the story truthfull as it's been told in court.
My opinion only...
RW


PS - Your Seahawks sure kicked arse a few weeks back in that beauty of a game,
sooo fun to watch, congrats!

 

[anglolawyer]

Ha, good point.

(That kind of makes it worse, though. If I say "It's a bit worrying I can't find my cell phone", for example, that sounds even more wrong).

Americans can't actually say 'worrying' at all. Nor 'horror' or 'Schwartz' neither. Wotsa doona, cobber? Is that the same as a dunny?

 

[anglolawyer]

Thanks for the correction, RW. I was just thinking the same thing. How come it wasn't wrong of Robyn not to panic when she still couldn't find Meredith 3 hours later?

She did not have the extra information of an open door, blood in one bathroom and **** in the other. This is a bad point IMO.

 

[Mary_H]

Hiya Mary H!
I speculate that Guede is dead soon after getting outtta prison,
too many need to keep the story truthfull as it's been told in court.
My opinion only...
RW

I agree, RW.

PS - Your Seahawks sure kicked arse a few weeks back in that beauty of a game,
sooo fun to watch, congrats!

Thank! It was a lot of fun to watch and a lot of fun to have everybody in town celebrating.

 

[Mary_H]

She did not have the extra information of an open door, blood in one bathroom and **** in the other. This is a bad point IMO.

Oh, shut up.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

It's purely an intellectual exercise, and always has been, because it has nothing to do with Amanda and Raffaele's involvement. What you describe as how the crime happened is more than adequate for explaining it to those who are interested as well as for establishing reasonable doubt. I have nothing invested in differing with it; that's why I have mostly avoided discussions of Rudy for five years.

If I am going to engage in an intellectual exercise, I am not going to limit my thinking to the "whats" of behavior when I can also think about the "whys."

Personally, I have zero hatred, animosity, anger or hostile feelings of any kind toward Rudy. He didn't do anything to me. He is part of what has been done to Amanda and Raffaele, but he is not responsible for that any more than Amanda was responsible for naming Patrick.

I agree that the authorities, rather than Guede, are responsible for the injustice to Amanda and Raffaele. I can't accept the comparison with what Amanda did in accusing Lumumba. Amanda was coerced into signing a false statement. Guede on the other hand has consistently told whatever lie serves his interest. I see that as vastly different.

I don't hate Guede either. I'm simply being realistic about what he did. This was not a petty crime that escalated to murder out of necessity. Guede went way beyond that. The crime arose from chance circumstances, yes, but it ended with savagery and sexual violence for the demented thrill of it. This guy has certified himself as a lasting menace to society and to women in particular. He might do this again if he gets a chance.

 

[Samson]

I think he said Amanda wasn't there at the beginning not because he has a conscience but because he knew they were innocent and expected them to be released so he had to come up with a story.....some other dude did it.

This meshes well with the Dec 7 interview that RWVBL posted the link to recently.

Quote, Rudy Guede's attorney, Walter Biscotti, came out of the interrogation (which lasted more than 7 hours) and said that Rudy claims to be innocent, he admits his presence, admits contacts with Meredith but he says he didn't kill her.
Biscotti specifies that "He didn't name anyone because there's no one to be named".


This is a slam dunk for the defence. Rudy knows who is in jail, and why. I have been trying to figure a likely PGP parsing of this, and have come up empty handed.

ETA
So in a 7 hour interrogation, Guede never mentions Amanda or Raffaele.
In many hours of interrogations and tracked communications they never mention Guede.
Guede can not mention them because he knows they are uninvolved and very likely to be released.
They can never mention him because they know nothing about the crime or his involvement.
It is unlikely all this makes sense to an intelligent Mignini. Maybe he is just of low intelligence. Is there any citation to show he has an independently assessed strong academic record?

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

My sequence of events is fight, hair pulling, knife, position body, undress then the towel used to suffocate her just prior to the sexual assault because she was still coughing up blood and he wanted to finish her off before he raped her. The towel was right beside her head and the autopsy has suffocation as the secondary cause of death.

There's a reason he included the towels in his story....they meant something to him. If says he tried to save her with them....it means he killed her with them.

JMO

The photos don't show quite what you describe in terms of the placement of the towels. One of them (the green one) was wadded up directly under her right hip. Part of it was under a corner of the pillow found beneath her hips.

The other (white) towel was just to the left of that, between her body and the bed at the level of her hips.

Her face was turned toward the side of her closet, but it looks as though blood also flowed in the other direction, into the area between where the body was found and the bed. He seems to have used one or both of the towels to wipe up blood in this area.

There is no indication that he used the towels to suffocate her, or that he used them to mop up blood in the area where her head lay. I doubt he needed to do anything to hasten her death once he cut her throat.

As for the struggle that preceded the towel activity, it appears to have begun in the corner of her room by her bed and nightstand, which is where the first stab wound was inflicted. She presumably tried to break free, and a struggle ensued in the area by her desk and window. This is where some of her hair was pulled out.

It ended when he forced her to her knees and cut her throat in front of the closet. Then he dragged her into the middle of the room, removed her clothing, and sexually assaulted her.