Continuation Part 20: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Vixen]

That's like playing chess blindfolded which I can't master no matter how hard I try.

Who's on first anyone?

It's ten times easier with visual representations of the components.

There's a .tif here, of the GSM: Perugia area.

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.c.../2009-07-17-Map-GSM-WIND-coverage-Perugia.tif

As you can see, WIND 25622 covers via della Pergola 7, Rudy's home and the Lana garden.

Raff is in the next region.

FWIW here's the Vodafone GSM .tif:

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.c...9-07-17-Map-GSM-Vodafone-coverage-Perugia.tif

 

[acbytesla]

Thanks. I am trying to determine how plausible is it that Meredith's phones were in Rudy's house at the time of the 10:13 ping from the 30064 Ponte Rio tower. I recently learned that Rudy lived in the last house on the block at the edge of the city, right next to the Sant’Angelo Park the defense expert said connected to the 30064 antenna "99 times out of 100."

My working hypothesis is that Rudy may have run out the cottage the back way, probably around ~21:30 and in the back rural area the cells lost the town center signal and picked up 30064, and kept on that tower until Rudy decided to dump them, possibly with the 22:13 incoming text reminding him how hot they were. And in the garden they may have lost the signal and later picked up the closer Piazza Lupattelli signal they pinged the next day.

The standard theory is he dumped them on the way home and the 22:13 ping was in the garden, but that puts his exit from the cottage pretty late since there was human interaction on the phones starting at 21:58.

Not plausible at all. Plausible in the park not Rudy's apartment. The reason is the park is separated from his apartment by 2 foot thick 30 foot high stone walls. There is a big metal door in those walls that they lock at 10 PM. The line of sight to the Wind tower would be totally obstructed in Rudy's apartment.

 

[acbytesla]

There's a .tif here, of the GSM: Perugia area.

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.c.../2009-07-17-Map-GSM-WIND-coverage-Perugia.tif

As you can see, WIND 25622 covers via della Pergola 7, Rudy's home and the Lana garden.

Raff is in the next region.

Not Rudy's apartment. BTW Vixen. I mapped out every single cell antenna and measured distances to each location years ago. I know the cell stuff very well.

 

[bagels]

Not plausible at all. Plausible in the park not Rudy's apartment. The reason is the park is separated from his apartment by 2 foot thick 30 foot high stone walls. There is a big metal door in those walls that they lock at 10 PM. The line of sight to the Wind tower would be totally obstructed in Rudy's apartment.

Then I wonder if it's plausible that he left the cottage through the front and went home, and dumped the phones later by ~22:13. Possibly after fooling with them from his home around 22:00. I'm averse to theories that have Rudy at the cottage much after ~21:30

 

[Grinder]

Then I wonder if it's plausible that he left the cottage through the front and went home, and dumped the phones later by ~22:13. Possibly after fooling with them from his home around 22:00. I'm averse to theories that have Rudy at the cottage much after ~21:30

After 9:27 the kids would have seen him leaving

 

[acbytesla]

Then I wonder if it's plausible that he left the cottage through the front and went home, and dumped the phones later by ~22:13. Possibly after fooling with them from his home around 22:00. I'm averse to theories that have Rudy at the cottage much after ~21:30

The park and his apartment is only a few blocks away. My guess is Rudy could run to his apartment in less than 4 minutes. I believe he ran down into the ravine and doubled back. Most of this area is covered by both the Lupatelli tower and the Wind tower so who's to say precisely where he was at....at 9:58 or 10:13. You can only give a rough geographic location and radio coverage is designed to overlap.

 

[Samzilla]

Even if it took 2 weeks the crack PLE would know that and test every week. It's not like the kids' hair wasn't available.

Bigger fact is that she and he were not snorting up hundreds of Euros worth of coke before the murder. The whole drug meme goes away. Away. Or will this be like Curatolo and she took drugs just long enough before being arrested not to show up and also just before so not long enough before to show up.

Just like the "bloody" footprints. Enough blood for luminol to test presumptively positive, but little enough for TMB to test presumptively negative. Man, Amanda and Raffaele...masterminds I tells ya!

 

[bagels]

* For clarity, this incident was that the phone received a notification of an incoming multimedia message (MMS) over GPRS (the rather primitive data communications system that operated on top of GSM at that time). Whoever was in control of the phone at that point (i.e. Guede) pressed one or more buttons on the phone in reaction to the notification alert (which probably took the form of a short noise and the lighting-up of the phone's screen, with a textual notification of an incoming MMS being available to download), but the button(s) that was/were pushed had the effect of initiating the data download itself. Similarly, the phone would have showed that the download had started, along with its progress. At that point, the person in control of the phone pressed the stop/abort button to cancel the download.

Are we certain the 22:13 event required human interaction? I'm also averse to this idea, especially since it had to take place on the other side of the city wall. Sorry I'm very particular about what I need here

 

[LondonJohn]

How do we know that? I thought the 21:58 failed call never connected to a tower so it couldn't be localized?

Both the 9.58pm call (to Kercher's UK voicemail) and the 10.00pm call (to her UK bank) caused an interaction with the network, and I think I'm correct to say that the base station was the "usual" one with which Kercher's UK phone connected when she was in the cottage. In each case, the network would have seen the called number, and in both cases it would have been unable to recognise (or connect) the number, and would automatically have terminated the connection and the call.

(If you, for example, try to call a random number from your mobile phone (e.g. "823"), when you press the "connect call" button on your handset, the phone will try to initiate an outgoing call, and will alert the network via the base station with which your mobile handset is currently communicating. The network will see that you have dialled a number that it doesn't recognise (here, 823) and will disconnect the call automatically, with your own handset going back to the state it was in before you pressed the "connect call" button.)

 

[acbytesla]

Are we certain the 22:13 event required human interaction? I'm also averse to this idea, especially since it had to take place on the other side of the city wall. Sorry I'm very particular about what I need here

From what I understand it could be an incoming text or Internet access that stopped.

 

[LondonJohn]

Are we certain the 22:13 event required human interaction? I'm also averse to this idea, especially since it had to take place on the other side of the city wall. Sorry I'm very particular about what I need here

I'm pretty certain that it did. As I remember it, there had to have been an acceptance in order to initiate the download of the MMS. That's because in 2007 packet data (GPRS in this case) was expensive and a big use of network bandwidth. So if someone sent an MMS to your mobile phone, you'd get an alert saying that you'd received an MMS from such-and-such, and to press a certain button to commence downloading the MMS, and another button to cancel any download.

And in this instance, again as I remember it, the download was indeed initiated. And that would mean that there had been human interaction to initiate the download. In addition, the MMS message download was interrupted and aborted - and that would also have required human interaction with the phone (assuming that it wasn't caused by network dropout).

I'll try and check/verify this over the next couple of days (it's very late in the night here, and I'm off to bed). But I'm reasonably confident that all of the above is accurate and correct.

 

[LondonJohn]

From what I understand it could be an incoming text or Internet access that stopped.

It was a multimedia message (sent via GPRS), and it was indeed interrupted and aborted shortly after starting.

(Incidentally, it would to all intents be impossible for a GPS SMS text message to be interrupted/aborted mid-reception - an SMS is a minuscule amount of data that is transmitted/received in an ultra-fast burst lasting a fraction of a second.)

 

[bagels]

So what was Rudy doing at the apartment for 40 minutes after Meredith was dead? Or, conversely, what were Meredith and Rudy doing together at the apartment for 40 minutes before she was attacked? (I estimate the attack/attempted sexual assault, partial cleanup, etc to have taken no more than 20 minuets).

I like reality neat and tidy wrapped in a bow

 

[acbytesla]

Delete...mixed up SMS...with MMS.

 

[acbytesla]

It was a multimedia message (sent via GPRS), and it was indeed interrupted and aborted shortly after starting.

(Incidentally, it would to all intents be impossible for a GPS SMS text message to be interrupted/aborted mid-reception - an SMS is a minuscule amount of data that is transmitted/received in an ultra-fast burst lasting a fraction of a second.)

True, I was just referencing Hellman. That was his explanation. I tried to read Pellero's report but being in Italian was challenging. The tech terms are the same mostly, so it was easier for me to try and read than some of the other untranslated documents.

So it was a text with an attachment? Maybe?

 

[LondonJohn]

Not Rudy's apartment. BTW Vixen. I mapped out every single cell antenna and measured distances to each location years ago. I know the cell stuff very well.

Not to mention the fact that according to this coverage map, the Wind 25622 cell IN NO WAY COVERS (nor comes anywhere close to covering) via della Pergola 7 (the girls' cottage)

And as you and I well know, network coverage maps on a cell-by-cell basis are a) subject to wide margins of error (especially in a city such as Perugia, with narrow streets, hills, thick stone buildings etc) and b) by their very nature significantly overlapping (thereby making it actually impossible to draw hard lines demarcating the end of one cell's coverage area and the start of another cell's coverage area).

In practice, the only way to get any sort of clarity in this context is to actually physically go out with measuring equipment and measure signal strength and quality at the key locations, preferably more than once. For the purposes of this investigation, the key locations would include various parts of the girls' cottage (including, of course, Kercher's room); various points along the routes between the cottage, the square, the ravine, the road around the outside of the city wall, and the route up Corso Garibaldi; the park; Lana's garden; various locations within Sollecito's apartment; various locations within Guede's apartment. For each measuring location, it would be possible to see exactly which cells could be picked up, and with which signal strength and quality for each cell visible.

 

[Vixen]

So what was Rudy doing at the apartment for 40 minutes after Meredith was dead? Or, conversely, what were Meredith and Rudy doing together at the apartment for 40 minutes before she was attacked? (I estimate the attack/attempted sexual assault, partial cleanup, etc to have taken no more than 20 minuets).

I like reality neat and tidy wrapped in a bow

Professor Paoloni's report commissioned by Luca Maori has a detailed analysis from the PIP POV, which although in Italian, is still comprehensive in parts:

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.c...-25-Report-Paoloni-cellphone-usage-events.pdf

Why is it so important to establish Rudy disposed of the phones?

 

[bagels]

Professor Paolini's report commissioned by Luca Maori has a detailed analysis from the PIP POV, which although in Italian, is still comprehensive in parts:

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.c...-25-Report-Paoloni-cellphone-usage-events.pdf

Why is it so important to establish Rudy disposed of the phones?

It's not important to establish Rudy disposed of the phones. This is established self evidently by the fact that whoever killed Meredith disposed of the phones.

It is interesting that there is a 40 minute gap between the most probable time of death, and phone activity at ~22:00. I can think of no reason why Rudy wouldn't have immediately left the cottage after the attack. I always figured it was plausible the phones were at his house at that time but that appears improbable.

I wonder if Rudy left the house without the phones, then went back to the scene of the crime later for some reason and collected them then. This makes little sense, but perhaps it makes more sense than Rudy standing around for 40 minutes next to a dead body for no reason. It would also explain how he locked Meredith's door despite his bloody prints pointing away from it, because he didn't think to do that until his return trip when he'd no longer be leaving bloody prints. Maybe it was a tying up loose ends trip after the panic.

 

[acbytesla]

Not to mention the fact that according to this coverage map, the Wind 25622 cell IN NO WAY COVERS (nor comes anywhere close to covering) via della Pergola 7 (the girls' cottage)
And as you and I well know, network coverage maps on a cell-by-cell basis are a) subject to wide margins of error (especially in a city such as Perugia, with narrow streets, hills, thick stone buildings etc) and b) by their very nature significantly overlapping (thereby making it actually impossible to draw hard lines demarcating the end of one cell's coverage area and the start of another cell's coverage area).

In practice, the only way to get any sort of clarity in this context is to actually physically go out with measuring equipment and measure signal strength and quality at the key locations, preferably more than once. For the purposes of this investigation, the key locations would include various parts of the girls' cottage (including, of course, Kercher's room); various points along the routes between the cottage, the square, the ravine, the road around the outside of the city wall, and the route up Corso Garibaldi; the park; Lana's garden; various locations within Sollecito's apartment; various locations within Guede's apartment. For each measuring location, it would be possible to see exactly which cells could be picked up, and with which signal strength and quality for each cell visible.

I'm not so sure about this LJ. The direction and distance is really about the same as the park. So, it's not impossible. But I could not find a single call of Amanda's that connected to the Wind tower. I really wish I had the call antennas of all of the roommates particularly Meredith's. The very close Lupatelli and Aquila antennas seem be the logical antennas for every call.

They also have perfect lines of sight. So connecting to the Wind tower doesn't seem likely. I have thought if Meredith was sitting at her desk next to the window that it is possible at that one spot to maybe getting a stronger signal from the Wind antenna simply because the material blocking that signal was thinner and posed less an obstruction to the radio signals.

The rest is of course true. I'd also like to add the power of each antenna signal varies greatly. More urban areas have more antennas broadcasting at a lower power. Flatter less dense areas have fewer towers but they broadcast a stronger signal to cover greater distances.

 

[bagels]

Ok the recent revelations about the cell phone have forced me to come up with Vixen level theories.

Here's my current theory:

Rudy was watching the cottage and knew what nights Amanda worked at Le Chic until 1 am, especially since he had visited her at her job.

Rudy set out to rob the cottage that night knowing the boys were out of town and seeing the girls weren't home after he scouted it several times.

He broke in through the window a bit before 21:00 just like at the law office.

Meredith came around 21:00 and this caught him off guard on the toilet. He tried to escape through the front door but discovered it locked, perhaps Meredith caught him before he could try to go out the window. The attack happened, Rudy lost control and it turned into sexual violence. Meredith was dead within 10-15 minutes.

Rudy grabbed the keys he knew he needed and fled in a panic. He went home and cleaned up.

His head cleared and he remembered that Amanda would be home after 1 am. He didn't want her discovering the body that night because (insert plausible reason here)? He went back and the first thing he did was cover the unsightly bloodied body that now horrified him. Then he went through the room and collected her phones so they wouldn't be heard ringing through the door. He locked her door behind him so Amanda would assume Meredith was sleeping.

It seems like a real stretch but I would like to see someone else put Rudy in the cottage at ~22:00 in a way that makes sense.