The Massei/Mignini Conspiracy Theory

[LondonJohn]

Amanda is intelligent but lacked common sense. As in the case that you relate, I believe she was presented with so called facts by police and instead of continuing to argue with them she decided to agree simply so she could go home. If you read the testimony she gave in court it seems clear to me that the police were suggesting to her that Patrick was the guilty party. She was also told that Raffaele had dropped her alibi. Her statement is a very vague (paraphrased) I met Patrick and we went over to Meredith's and I was in the kitchen and heard them arguing. When pressured to give more detail because the of the vagueness of her statement she added that she heard a thud and a scream. The testimony has the cops insisting she heard a scream so she says 'fine, I heard a scream' and they say then 'fine, let's write that down' (going by memory-IIRC). She gives no details of what happened next, no I saw the body, no Patrick had a knife, no saw a lot of blood or blood on Patrick's clothes, no clean up or staging of a break in, no memory at all of what happened next, just waking up in Raffaele's bed the next morning. It is simply the type of confession that is so lacking in any detail that should have made the cops concerned that it was not a true confession at all.

I can't help thinking that a major factor in the "confession/accusation" was that the police told Knox that they had solid evidence of her presence at the murder scene. Knox appears to have come from a pretty conservative background, and I suspect that she was automatically rather deferential to authority figures (I bet she's cured herself of that by now, though!).

I therefore believe that she had no reason to suspect that the police were lying to her about this "evidence", and that this was one of the main factors driving her confusion. She certainly put this matter front and centre in her subsequent written statements: she clearly states that she was unable to reconcile what the police told her about knowing she was present, with her own recollection of the evening. And she then seems to say that she almost convinced herself to go with the police's version, since the physical evidence was irrefutable.

However, even shortly after the "confession/accusation", she seems to have come back to the firm conclusion that her initial recollection is correct, and that there must be something wrong with the police's "evidence" of her presence at the murder scene.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

scared and tired

Amamda sounds psychiatrically disturbed in that note. It makes me wonder just how much of what sort of illegal substances she'd been using and for how long, to be honest. I appreciate the possibilities as regards coerced confessions, but even Stefan Kizsko was never as confused as this - he always stated he'd simply begun to say what the police seemed to want him to say so that they would be nice to him, and let him go home to his mother. He specifically said he believed at the time that when they actually investigated what he had said and found it was nonsense, then he would be in the clear. And he was not the brightest crayon in the box.

Rolfe,

No evidence exists that Amanda used any other substances besides cannabis and alcohol, and I doubt that she did. All four of the flatmates used cannabis and alcohol, and they all had boyfriends. On the other hand, her words and the testimonies of Laura and her teacher indicate that she was scared and tired in the days after the murder, and I have to wonder whether that affected the contents of the note you mention. Finally, even highly intelligent people, such as Derek Tice of the Norfolk Four, have been known to give false confessions.

 

[LondonJohn]

Rolfe,

No evidence exists that Amanda used any other substances besides cannabis and alcohol, and I doubt that she did. All four of the flatmates used cannabis and alcohol, and they all had boyfriends. On the other hand, her words and the testimonies of Laura and her teacher indicate that she was scared and tired in the days after the murder, and I have to wonder whether that affected the contents of note you mention. Finally, even highly intelligent people, such as Derek Tice of the Norfolk Four, have been known to give false confessions.

Indeed, there's no evidence at all that Knox ever used any mind-altering substances beyond alcohol and cannabis - unless of course you make up spurious (and very probably libellous) "we hear on the street" rubbish about Knox being an active coke-head. Of course, there's evidence (not least by his own and Knox's admission) that Sollecito had sampled harder drugs at some point in the past - but again there's zero proper evidence that he was using anything other than alcohol and weed around the time of the murders.

All of this can naturally be bolstered by what the police didn't find in their investigation of Knox and Sollecito. They didn't find any traces of harder drugs, nor any drug paraphernalia, nor anyone who testified to selling them hard drugs. Nor, of course, did Knox or Sollecito test positive for any hard drugs when they were arrested five days after the crime.

 

[Rolfe]

Fair enough. I'm just trying to figure out the people involved, to some extent. I'm not really disputing the assertion that absolutely normal people can be induced to give false confessions, it's simply hard to feel it can easily happen.

Rolfe.

 

[spartacus]

I think you are were I was a few weeks back, though perhaps the difference is that I did some psychology in university, specifically about how the brain works and how it effects our behaviour. My lecturers very quickly rid me of the belief that the memory and mind are strong and unable to be manipulated to the point of creating false memories even in ordinary adults. Being interested in it, I have kept an eye on further research and so when I first looked at the circumstances of her "confessions" all the alarm bells started ringing rather loudly.

Since then I have became more and more shocked at the way this case was investigated, though part of me still isn't willing to accept that it could be handled this poorly and so I want to see more evidence to see how it would work if they were guilty so I can compare both stories, compare them to the evidence and start to make some sense of the whole thing.

This one is not actually that difficult. There is a lot of evidence that you can create memories through repeated and coercive questioning. You can find the classic study by googling "false memory punch bowl" for a classic psychology study where people are interviewed over and over about an event that happened when they were young and spilled a punch bowl at a party. After repeated questioning they forget where they heard about the punch bowl and attribute it to themselves. It is called source amnesia. Her vague description of the memory, and then the realization once she had some distance from the cops that "her" memory was more real than "theirs" followed by a retraction is consistent with this. here is the abstract of the orig9inal study.

We conducted two experiments to investigate if college students would create false memories of childhood experiences in response to misleading information and repeated interviews. In both experiments we contacted parents to obtain information about events that happened to the students during childhood. In a series of interviews we asked the students to recall the parent-reported events and one experimenter-created false event. In the second experiment we varied the age at which we claimed the false event occurred. In both experiments we found that some individuals created false memories in these circumstances and in the second experiment we found no effect of age of attempted incorporation. In the second experiment we also found that those who discussed related background knowledge during the early interviews were more likely to create a false recall. Generalizations to therapy contexts are discussed.

Here is the way they would do it. They found the African hair at the murder scene, went through her phone (remember Italian police think murderer most likely flat mate), got the ci vediamo/see you later text which they interpret as an Italian speaker would that they made a date for later, got the confusing sim card on patrick thing. Interview RS and get him to concede that it was "possible" AK sleep walked, then told AK that RS wasnt providing an alibi and that they had proof she was at the scene at the time of the murder. they say rack your brain and imagine a scene with patrick and give her some examples (12 cops, 14 hours, hit on head to help with "memory", stressed, tell us and you can go home otherwise you will never see your family again). She is naive and thinks cops are the good guys cuz she watched too much TV. She wants to cooperate (remember the Italians knowing better lawyered up but she didnt) and finally goes as far as they want, maybe remembering something they suggested as part of her "vision". They get her to sign and she goes home. Inadmissible in court. Next day she retracts. As far as I know the overnight session is the only time she definitely said she was there, right? and evidence shows she COULDNT be there so it is irrelevant isnt it?

 

[LondonJohn]

Fair enough. I'm just trying to figure out the people involved, to some extent. I'm not really disputing the assertion that absolutely normal people can be induced to give false confessions, it's simply hard to feel it can easily happen.

Rolfe.

This is true: it's probably because none of us can intuitively imagine a situation in which we ourselves would choose to confess to something we didn't do (and, in this particular instance, implicate another person who had nothing to do with it either). But we all do extraordinary things when placed in extraordinary situations: things that we would probably have thought we'd never do.

Even very intelligent people who play lotteries (if that's not an oxymoron!) would baulk at the idea of choosing the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6, because they "intuitively" feel that these numbers have less chance of coming up than, say, 3, 14, 23, 26, 39, 42. And many people with highly rational personalities and high intelligence can be placed in positions where they either convince themselves that they committed a crime, or where they come to believe that their "least bad option" is to make a false confession.

Incidentally, in passing, I need to (re)state that I have zero vested interest in this case. I don't know any of the protagonists, nor do I particularly care about any of them. However, I care about the proper application of justice, and it quickly appeared to me (after, it has to be said, a short initial period of believing the verdicts were correct, based on false information that I read in a book on the case) that a bad miscarriage of justice has occurred here.

However, my opinion is not set in stone, and if I were presented with evidence which met the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, I'd easily change my mind. Of course, I haven't seen such evidence yet, and nor, frankly, do I expect to. Many of us here have long predicted the demise of most of the forensic and witness evidence/testimony, and we have also noted major flaws in the first trial (on behalf of all parties: the judges, the prosecutors and the defence/defendants). I currently have a firm belief that Knox and Sollecito will be acquitted on appeal. We shall see.

 

[LondonJohn]

This one is not actually that difficult. There is a lot of evidence that you can create memories through repeated and coercive questioning. You can find the classic study by googling "false memory punch bowl" for a classic psychology study where people are interviewed over and over about an event that happened when they were young and spilled a punch bowl at a party. After repeated questioning they forget where they heard about the punch bowl and attribute it to themselves. It is called source amnesia. Her vague description of the memory, and then the realization once she had some distance from the cops that "her" memory was more real than "theirs" followed by a retraction is consistent with this. here is the abstract of the orig9inal study.

We conducted two experiments to investigate if college students would create false memories of childhood experiences in response to misleading information and repeated interviews. In both experiments we contacted parents to obtain information about events that happened to the students during childhood. In a series of interviews we asked the students to recall the parent-reported events and one experimenter-created false event. In the second experiment we varied the age at which we claimed the false event occurred. In both experiments we found that some individuals created false memories in these circumstances and in the second experiment we found no effect of age of attempted incorporation. In the second experiment we also found that those who discussed related background knowledge during the early interviews were more likely to create a false recall. Generalizations to therapy contexts are discussed.

Here is the way they would do it. They found the African hair at the murder scene, went through her phone (remember Italian police think murderer most likely flat mate), got the ci vediamo/see you later text which they interpret as an Italian speaker would that they made a date for later, got the confusing sim card on patrick thing. Interview RS and get him to concede that it was "possible" AK sleep walked, then told AK that RS wasnt providing an alibi and that they had proof she was at the scene at the time of the murder. they say rack your brain and imagine a scene with patrick and give her some examples (12 cops, 14 hours, hit on head to help with "memory", stressed, tell us and you can go home otherwise you will never see your family again). She is naive and thinks cops are the good guys cuz she watched too much TV. She wants to cooperate (remember the Italians knowing better lawyered up but she didnt) and finally goes as far as they want, maybe remembering something they suggested as part of her "vision". They get her to sign and she goes home. Inadmissible in court. Next day she retracts. As far as I know the overnight session is the only time she definitely said she was there, right? and evidence shows she COULDNT be there so it is irrelevant isnt it?

This same phenomenon has horrific ramifications in the appalling spate of false memories of childhood sexual abuse, which were incredibly hard to spot since there is also plenty of evidence of real memory repression of such activities. Many teenagers or young adults who were repeatedly subjected to suggestions that they were sexually abused subsequently went on to create very detailed false memories of such events - even when the "recalled" events were provably incorrect.

The human mind is a far more complex, complicated and potentially deceptive instrument than most people realise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory_syndrome

 

[spartacus]

That's why it's so important to carefully control the way police interrogations go. My guess is that the Perugia police/justice has been gradually sliding down a path towards being out of control for a while. There was no mention in the press in Perugia of the jailing of Frank Sfarzo and when I tweeted to people in Perugia they became very angry and defensive and said they had confidence in their justice system and to stop bothering them. It is a very real concern commercially though since they are so dependent on tourism and it is a major study away hub.

 

[LondonJohn]

That's why it's so important to carefully control the way police interrogations go. My guess is that the Perugia police/justice has been gradually sliding down a path towards being out of control for a while. There was no mention in the press in Perugia of the jailing of Frank Sfarzo and when I tweeted to people in Perugia they became very angry and defensive and said they had confidence in their justice system and to stop bothering them. It is a very real concern commercially though since they are so dependent on tourism and it is a major study away hub.

Yes: I suspect that what they want the most is for all the controversy (and circus) to go away, and for people to forget about the whole case ASAP. Fortunately for them, if/when Knox and Sollecito are acquitted later this year, the case will soon fade into the background.

I'm also fairly confident that the mayor and the landlord of the house aren't all that happy about random crime tourists coming over to leave memorialising reminders of the crime outside the cottage on the anniversary of the murder, but there you go...

 

[platonov]

Making Belka look good

I agree with this completely. The defense has the time wrong in the appeal. The testimony along with other evidence shows that is was highly likely that Meredith was attacked as soon as she arrived home.

It's easy to be a platonov type character. They are a dime a dozen. It takes very little effort to be sarcastic. The people that actually provide credible information, now those are more difficult to come by. I find this conspiracy thread entertaining and am amazed at the patience of Rose, Draca, Halides, and others.

This is (coming close to) a personal attack again BF Nice attempt at a dodge with the 'platonov type character'.

Don't worry, I wont report it. If I wanted to bring it to the attention of the mods I could simply, by reply, refer to a certain 'OT' conspiracy theory - 'the hate that dare not speak its name'.


But TBH stuff like this does make it easy.

Indeed

 

[platonov]

More work required

Good Lord, I've just got it! The point isn't that the stomach wasn't empty, it was that the duodenum was! It's not about the time it would take for the stomach to become completely empty, it's about the time it would take for food to begin passing into the duodenum.

The finding of the empty duodenum supports a time of death around 2.5 to 3 hours postprandially, far more than it supports a time two hours later than that. This is incontrovertible, and indeed compelling.

So this Massei person is intent on muddying the waters by dementing on and on about gastric emptying, which is of course completely irrelevant to the point at issue. Massei is a judge? Presumably the muddying was started by the prosecution, encouraging experts to go on and on about emptying, in the hope that everybody would become confused.

Is Massei confused, or determinedly supporting the prosecution, right or wrong?

Is this some sort of special judge school attended by the Lockerbie judges as well?

Rolfe.

Rolfe

Not quite there yet I'm afraid - unless you also believe the defence team/experts were in on the conspiracy.

Continue your research - you may have missed something (several things actually)

However your implication that the trial of this sordid murder somehow compares to one of the more notorious political trials in W Europe in recent times doesn't inspire confidence.

The last line from this post by Rose Montague may aid you (in a roundabout way) in this regard - or perhaps not.


Suffice to say your current arguments are equivalent to me bursting into the Lockerbie threads claiming that I had cracked the case on the basis that the L & G in PFLP-GC stood for Libya & Ga-Dafffy respectively [or, not to reopen old wounds, that the IRA were obtaining munitions from Libya on a commercial basis].

 

[PhantomWolf]

Rolfe

Not quite there yet I'm afraid - unless you also believe the defence team/experts were in on the conspiracy.

Continue your research - you may have missed something (several things actually)

Then put them on the table, if you have something else, say it don't smile smuggly and speak in riddles.

The major thing pushing most of us towards innocence is the total lack of a guilty case because you and the others that believe in guilt refuse to put it forward. Come out and state what you believe so we can look at it rather than throwing our hands in the air in exasperation with the coy hints and refusal to answer questions in sensible and serious manner. This total unwillingness to actually discuss the evidence is fast leading to a conclusion that you don't actually have any to discuss at all which is why you carry on the way you do.

 

[Antony]

Yes: I suspect that what they want the most is for all the controversy (and circus) to go away, and for people to forget about the whole case ASAP. Fortunately for them, if/when Knox and Sollecito are acquitted later this year, the case will soon fade into the background.

It's profoundly to be hoped not ... although of course the parameters will change drastically. What needs to happen is a proper enquiry, with real consequences for the figures responsible for the scandal.

 

[Antony]

Is Amanda mentally or emotionally unstable, that she came out with that spurious confession? It seems a bizarre thing to say, for a totally innocent girl. Drugs, maybe?

However, I see the entire allegation as an "extraordinary claim", so no matter what actually happened, bizarre circumstances were in play.

It would be extraordinary if it wasn't something that's happened many times before in these circumstances. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - but in the case of Amanda's false confession/accusation the evidence exists in the form of the nature of her statements (compared to facts known at the time and since), and the circumstances in which they were obtained.

This is more than can be said for the extraordinary claims that AK and RS in any way participated in the crime, and afterwards altered the crime scene to conceal/fix the evidence.

 

[tsig]

It would be extraordinary if it wasn't something that's happened many times before in these circumstances. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - but in the case of Amanda's false confession/accusation the evidence exists in the form of the nature of her statements (compared to facts known at the time and since), and the circumstances in which they were obtained.

This is more than can be said for the extraordinary claims that AK and RS in any way participated in the crime, and afterwards altered the crime scene to conceal/fix the evidence.

Why didn't Patrick have an internalized false confession?

 

[Kaosium]

Why didn't Patrick have an internalized false confession?

Perhaps because he wasn't a college student who'd just had her only friend in a foreign country where she didn't speak the language well raped and murdered yards away from she slept, thus not sleeping well and who'd been talking to police for something like 53 hours in four days and then had the rug yanked out from under her by being told her new boyfriend had just 'lied' about her?

Instead he was an older business owner, probably more familiar with local police and their methods, and knew all he had to do was wait it out until he was allowed to have a lawyer present as was his legal right?

You made me think of something, though. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that Patrick was illegally interrogated. I wonder what the 'fallout' from that was, if that source (might have been the 'soulless' Daily Mail article he disavowed after being paid 70k for it) was accurate and my memory not playing tricks?

 

[Matthew Best]

Surely Patrick was officially a "suspect" at the time he was allegedly interrogated and consequently his questioning must have been recorded? After all, the police had been informed that he was the murderer (a version of events they "knew to be true"). The police don't have the excuse that recording the questioning of witnesses is not strictly necessary.

So it would be a simple matter for them to demonstrate that the Daily Mail story is inaccurate. I wonder why they don't do so?

 

[babycondor]

Was Patrick's lawyer present during his questioning?

 

[Rolfe]

Suffice to say your current arguments are equivalent to me bursting into the Lockerbie threads claiming that I had cracked the case on the basis that the L & G in PFLP-GC stood for Libya & Ga-Dafffy respectively [or, not to reopen old wounds, that the IRA were obtaining munitions from Libya on a commercial basis].

Well, if I had said that I'd cracked your obsession-case, then you might have a point. However,all said was that I understood what the meaning of the pathology evidence actually was.

As a pathologist myself, I appreciated it when the penny finally dropped.

Rolfe.

 

[LondonJohn]

Well, if I had said that I'd cracked your obsession-case, then you might have a point. However,all said was that I understood what the meaning of the pathology evidence actually was.

As a pathologist myself, I appreciated it when the penny finally dropped.

Rolfe.

Ah, that's interesting to know. It's good to see a pathologist recognising and appreciating the argument on ToD v Stomach/duodenum contents that many of us (who are not pathologists or GI specialists, but who are nonetheless scientifically literate and sufficiently analytical) have been saying for quite some time now.