The Massei/Mignini Conspiracy Theory

[anglolawyer]

You're off by about a factor of 125 million or more.

Using a sample size of 100ng, a 1 gram cotton bud (that's for a cotton ball, the bud is smaller), 145 gram standard baseball and the mass of everest estimated at 3*10^15 kilograms

LOL Dan O. You don't do easy do you? So should I amend Mount Everest to Jupiter or The Titanic (surely not the latter).

 

[Dan O.]

Perhaps we can make Everest work. I was using mass but what we really are interested in is volume. I also used the 100ng as the upper limit on the quantity of biological material on the knife. We could instead use a few cells worth of DNA at 6pg each or if it's post PCR contamination it could be one millionth of that.


ETA: since whole cells are probably smashed by whatever process deposited the biological material and free DNA is too fragile to last long on its own, the best unit to reference would be the cell nucleus. For human cells I found this reference: (source: http://www.falstad.com/scale/)

1.7 µm 1.7x10-6 m diameter of average human cell nucleus​

The baseball by comparison is 0.075 m or about 45,000 times bigger.

The head of a cotton swab is 0.5 cm. scalled up by 45000 times gives us a ball that is about 225 kilometers in diameter or about the size of a small moon
(Opps, watch those scale factors)

Your Titanic is 259 meters in length so about the right scale.

 

[anglolawyer]

Perhaps we can make Everest work. I was using mass but what we really are interested in is volume. I also used the 100ng as the upper limit on the quantity of biological material on the knife. We could instead use a few cells worth of DNA at 6pg each or if it's post PCR contamination it could be one millionth of that.


ETA: since whole cells are probably smashed by whatever process deposited the biological material and free DNA is too fragile to last long on its own, the best unit to reference would be the cell nucleus. For human cells I found this reference: (source: http://www.falstad.com/scale/)

1.7 µm 1.7x10-6 m diameter of average human cell nucleus​

The baseball by comparison is 0.075 m or about 45,000 times bigger.

The head of a cotton swab is 0.5 cm. scalled up by 45000 times gives us a ball that is about 225 kilometers in diameter or about the size of a small moon
(Opps, watch those scale factors)

Your Titanic is 259 meters in length so about the right scale.

And that would make the scratch akin to what? A trench dug by workmen? Something the width of a bowling alley maybe? I mean, how wide and how deep? Of course, it's almost impossible to say without having the knife to look at, but could you have a stab at it (no pun intended)?

 

[Dan O.]

And that would make the scratch akin to what? A trench dug by workmen? Something the width of a bowling alley maybe? I mean, how wide and how deep? Of course, it's almost impossible to say without having the knife to look at, but could you have a stab at it (no pun intended)?

The scratch had never been photographed or otherwise measured thus leaving only the description that the scratch required special lighting to be visible. I'll take a hint from this page on glass defects that such a scratch would be a minimum of 20 µm wide. Scaling up by our standard 45,000 gives 90 cm. That's about the width of one bowling lane without the gutters.


ETA: A regulation bowling lane is 41 to 42 inches or just over 1 meter wide.

 

[anglolawyer]

The scratch had never been photographed or otherwise measured thus leaving only the description that the scratch required special lighting to be visible. I'll take a hint from this page on glass defects that such a scratch would be a minimum of 20 µm wide. Scaling up by our standard 45,000 gives 90 cm. That's about the width of one bowling lane without the gutters.


ETA: A regulation bowling lane is 41 to 42 inches or just over 1 meter wide.

Thanks. Good enough for me. Assuming a similar depth, and a very extensive length (forgot to ask you to work that out but as one cotton bud = one Titanic we must be talking a few miles) I now have a mental picture: a Titanic-sized cotton bud scraped along a trench of bowling alley width (and depth) along a length of several miles has to locate and pick up half a dozen baseballs, leaving nothing behind. I guess I would not have a problem accepting this if magnetism or something like that were at work and the properties of a cotton bud might make it more attractive to a cell nucleus than a knife blade. Even so, the blade had supposedly been washed (cleaned with bleach according to Darkness Descending) and material had still been left behind after that, allegedly. It seems funny that Stefanoni's procedure would finally remove every last trace from the knife when whatever was there had survived being washed.

 

[Dan O.]

Here is a link to someone studying what works best for DNA sampling in these conditions. This is recent research so it won't tell us what ILE was using at the time but all the materials would have been available.

http://www.forensicmag.com/article/...a-recovery-robotic-forensic-analysis?page=0,1

 

[anglolawyer]

Here is a link to someone studying what works best for DNA sampling in these conditions. This is recent research so it won't tell us what ILE was using at the time but all the materials would have been available.

http://www.forensicmag.com/article/...a-recovery-robotic-forensic-analysis?page=0,1

That was interesting. FWIW Darkness Descending says she used a cotton bud on the knife. What I am even more interested in than collection is the probabilities of something being left behind or, rather, of the sampling being so efficient as to remove everything from the blade.

 

[Dan O.]

That was interesting. FWIW Darkness Descending says she used a cotton bud on the knife. What I am even more interested in than collection is the probabilities of something being left behind or, rather, of the sampling being so efficient as to remove everything from the blade.

The cotton bud would not have been used dry. A solvent such as water or isopropyl alcohol would have been used. The solvent breaks the bonds with the surface so that the nucleus floats freely in the solution. Capillary action pulls the solution into the bud. There's another process to get the DNA out of the swab that the article discusses which can take several hours. That seems to be where they are more concerned with getting all of the sample out.

 

[anglolawyer]

The cotton bud would not have been used dry. A solvent such as water or isopropyl alcohol would have been used. The solvent breaks the bonds with the surface so that the nucleus floats freely in the solution. Capillary action pulls the solution into the bud. There's another process to get the DNA out of the swab that the article discusses which can take several hours. That seems to be where they are more concerned with getting all of the sample out.

Yes I saw that.

Conti-Vechiotti seem to discuss the blade sampling as though it would be natural for there to be something left behind. I will track down the but I mean when I have some time.

 

[Dan O.]

Yes I saw that.

Conti-Vechiotti seem to discuss the blade sampling as though it would be natural for there to be something left behind. I will track down the but I mean when I have some time.

Here is a paper that covers the issue with lots of references: http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/2041-2223-1-14.pdf

They give a collection efficiency for a single wet swab of around 50%. The wet/dry combination is expected to be much better but they offered no numbers. They imply that a comprehensive study has yet to be done.

 

[anglolawyer]

Here is a paper that covers the issue with lots of references: http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/2041-2223-1-14.pdf

They give a collection efficiency for a single wet swab of around 50%. The wet/dry combination is expected to be much better but they offered no numbers. They imply that a comprehensive study has yet to be done.

I noticed this:

Most trace samples are collected using swabs. Swabbing an area requires a moistened swab to traverse the whole target area multiple times with some pressure and rota- tion of the swab so that the full surface area of the swab can contribute to the collection. However, a moist cot- ton swab does not pick up all of the available biological material from the surface and, in many instances, it may pick up less than half the available sample [106,107]. Swabbing an area with multiple swabs, and the co- extraction of these swabs, has been advocated in order to enhance overall retrieval of DNA [65,105,108,109]. It is now common practice to perform a double swabbing technique. Some moisten the first swab but leave the second swab dry. Keeping the second swab dry, if the first one has already absorbed all the moisture it con- tributed to the sample, may not collect as much of the target as if it too was moistened prior to swabbing. In this case it is important to ensure that all its moisture is recaptured.

I wonder what technique Stefanoni used?

 

[RoseMontague]

I guess those two pages in Massei that were missing/cut off are not part of the conspiracy after all.

 

[Dan O.]

How do we know that these are the genuine missing pages?

 

[RoseMontague]

Well you can view half the original pages and compare them to these.

http://www.penalecontemporaneo.it/upload/ASSISE PERUGIA KNOX SOLLECITO.pdf

 

[RoseMontague]

Quoting from PMF dot org's translation:

The print copy of pages 288 and 304 of the original Italian document were corrupted which has led to partial translation - we would be grateful to any person who is able to supply clean versions so that they may be translated and the document updated accordingly.

Maybe when they update this document they can also fix the three errors I pointed out.

 

[anglolawyer]

Errors in Massei

Quoting from PMF dot org's translation:



Maybe when they update this document they can also fix the three errors I pointed out.

Can you remind us what they were?

 

[Dan O.]

I tried to warn people earlier. With the new pages comes a new set of page numbers for all the translated pages that follow. All the old references will point to the wrong page.


_{(behold the power behind the [402])}

 

[RoseMontague]

I tried to warn people earlier. With the new pages comes a new set of page numbers for all the translated pages that follow. All the old references will point to the wrong page.


_{(behold the power behind the [402])}

LOL, Dan O. I remember the fun with thinking some super sekrit evidence showing guilt just must be in those pages. It appears to be just more of Massei's circular and biased reasoning in action.

 

[RoseMontague]

Can you remind us what they were?

Quindi oltre al ricordo ben nitido la teste ha anche riferito di essere entrata nella propria stanza e di aver cercato se mancasse qualcosa ed in tale ricerca ha anche spostato degli oggetti modificando quindi l'ubicazione dei pezzi di vetro.

The PMF translation has it as this:

As she is usually very orderly, the witness also stated that she entered into her own room and searched around to see if anything was missing, and during that search she moved objects, thus changing the position of some pieces of glass.

Machiavelli: "The translation of the snippet of the Massei report is incorrect (I don't know who translated this bit, it was not me).

"oltre al ricordo ben nitido" means "aside to the very well-defined memory" (and not "as she is usually very orderly")"


Would you translate this as on one of these occasions or just on these occasions? Or maybe she just locked the door on one of these occasions and not on these occasions when she went to England.


Frequentando la casa di Via della Pergola 7 vi aveva visto Rudi due o tre volte e in una di queste occasioni c'erano anche Amanda e Meredith; Rudi parlava sia con l'una che con l'altra e in una occasione gli confidò che gli piaceva Amanda.


Visiting the house in Via della Pergola, he had seen Rudy there two or three times, and on these occasions Amanda and Meredith were also there; Rudy was talking to both of them and on one occasion he confided in them that he liked Amanda.

I would have to say that the meaning of this one is significant as well. It should have been one and not these.

Here is another one.

Durante lo scatto non erano stati adoperati nastrini metrici fluorescenti
(si erano utilizzate strisce metriche comuni, quando si erano scattate le foto a luce naturale, è stato spiegato), dove il riferimento metrico sarebbe servito per la successiva misurazione delle impronte fotografate.

PMF translates this as:

During the shots, fluorescent measuring tapes were used (normal measuring tapes were used when the photos taken in natural light were shot, it was explained), so that the metric reference could be used for the subsequent measuring of the photographed prints.

It should read fluorescent measuring tapes were not used.

 

[RoseMontague]

I am not sure it matters. They will probably just ignore the fact that these pages are now available.