The Innocentisti Presentation Critique
The following is in response to an
article published at a popular source about the case, which in turn was a 'review' of the performance of one of the participants, Steve Moore, veteran FBI agent of 25 years with experience with the Violent Crimes Unit and Anti-Terrorism. You can access the Youtube of the presentation
here with a follow-up Q&A session Steve Moore participated in as well at this
link. In the first link Steve Moore starts at almost exactly 40 minutes in and it runs about 27 minutes.
Steve Moore’s presentation in the recent Case for Innocence forum in Seattle to a small bunch of undergrads and other parties left me nearly speechless.
I consider that the number of errors in Moore’s presentation were so numerous that it was quite astonishing that this was the work of a man who claims he has been involved on this case for a year and who claims he has professional experience in law enforcement.
A big statement but it’s not one that’s hard to justify. Steve Moore will be our principal witness. He will repeat for you, if you watch the above youtube video, at least six absolute howlers of misstatement, misunderstanding and exaggeration and many other medium sized ones.
We have different views on the quality of the presentation, and it appears the significance of the errors Steve Moore made in the process of it. Overall I thought he did an excellent job, and in the final analysis was the best panelist at the forum, and I certainly don't mean to damn with faint praise. However, I must also allow that there were some factual
faux pas that I noticed as well, including one specific one which made me cringe. However, it seems to me this piece paints far too black a picture, it's almost like it missed all the
good parts and focused only on the negative.
Worst of all of these, he states a core aspect of the prosecution case (proof of the staged break-in at the cottage due to broken glass being on-top of clothes that had already been tossed on the floor) completely upside down. 180 degrees wrong and back to front… and he does it repeatedly in a way that makes it impossible to conclude anything else than he doesn’t actually understand central and important points of evidence against the person he would seek to help. For a law enforcement or legal professional, that is a serious issue.
Yes, this is the one that made me cringe, and in fact it surprises me that it took so long for certain people to notice. Paul Ciolino's 'tender' choice of terms to describe his opinion of Nora's mental capacity caused quite a ruckus straight away, whereas this went unnoticed far longer.
Let’s begin:
Steve opens by asserting he has been involved with sticking away nine people to a sentence of life without parole. Crassly, and I think he thinks it is humorous, he states that “two of them have completed that sentence” (think about it - he means they are dead and is seeking to have a laugh about it) “..and seven remain in prison.” He is met with not a single titter. Steve gets really crass by having another go at the same joke: “Actually the other two remain in prison too, they’re just not aware of it.” Deafening silence.
Remember Steve is the guy who positioned a bible, an ammo clip and a mortgage statement behind him in interview (seriously) and whose wife Michelle likes to remind people he’s a sniper? All part of the tough-god-fearing-guy image. The dead-convicts thing is part of the same swagger. I’m really impressed myself. How about you?
Gallows humor, wrong crowd. I personally thought it was funny, but then again I've learned with experience not everyone shares my sense of humor. On the whole though I thought he did a fine job mixing humor into his spiel, and got a better reception with other attempts.
In passing, shall we reflect that if you’ve been in the FBI for nearly 25 years and were a “supervisor”, nine sentences of life without parole is really rather surprisingly low?
No, that doesn't strike me as especially low, considering that certainly not every murderer in the US gets life without parole, that's a pretty extreme sentence if you think on it. Many might be able to at least plea-bargain down to something lesser than a lifetime in a cage without hope of clemency. This, along with hearing elsewhere about other 'sentences' received by criminals he was responsible in some part for putting away, suggests to me that in addition to numerous lesser crimes he also helped clear the streets of some
very dangerous people.
At 41:20 of the YouTube clip, we start to see an old line used before: “Just prior to the conviction my wife said ‘I’ve seen some things that concern me’”. Steve goes on to say that he said to Michelle “I will prove within a day that she’s guilty” but that this turned into two months of investigation where he concluded “she” *(Amanda) was not. Three issues with this:
* I don’t know a single law enforcement professional or lawyer who would ever say to you that they could prove someone was guilty or not guilty in a single day review of a capital crime case. It’s just not feasible and anyone who does this for a living knows this. The hyperbole is off the hook, as per usual.
I imagine he figured he'd find evidence akin to what was found by Rudy Guede, and could come back saying something like: 'Honey, the investigation was sloppy but they found his bloody handprint at the scene, his DNA on her clothes and inside her, his shoe tracks all over the room, and he fled the country.' I would think he's probably accustomed to being able to look at the evidence once it's been collected and sum up quickly whether a mistake has been made. In fact, I suspect that this case where not even those who believe in their guilt are willing to attempt a coherent theory of the crime that actually employs
evidence in the endeavor is pretty unusual amongst crimes he's familiar with.
* Steve’s story about Michelle’s challenge and the “one day” proof doesn’t match anything he wrote on the Injustice in Perugia website where instead he said “But then I began to hear statements from the press that contradicted known facts” which led him to investigate. Which one is it? A one day challenge or a gradual accumulation of knowledge and investigation?
What's the matter with both being true? His wife alerted him to statements in the press which concerned her and he then looked into it and found more reasons to be suspicious?
* In fact, as we know, Michelle herself let slip that the Moores were “approached” by Bruce Fisher, a pseudonym for the person who runs Injustice In Perugia, and when this was pointed out on PMF.org that it flatly contradicted the previously announced statement (a wifely challenge to a husband with no prior contact), that same day, she deleted her entire “Michellesings” blog from the web – all of it – to remove what she had said in what bore a remarkable resemblance to a panicked action.
It was further underlined when Michelle subsequently re-created her blog with just a single letter difference in the title. That give away on the internet undermines the whole story of how Steve Moore, from LA, got involved in this case which he has told many times (in various versions admittedly) in public.
I remember this! I recall reading about this 'investigation' chortling with laughter, much like I did the 'proof' that Bruce Fisher was a cameraman in Seattle, LondonJohn wasn't really from England but the US somewhere (Texas?--That was
cruel! 
) and even sometimes see people hit on the right combination that explained things much more mundanely but only to be shouted down by those who were convinced they all
must be lying! They must be
guilty! 
Instead it seemed to me the most likely probability was that Steve Moore went looking for information about the case, and Bruce Fisher who also had an interest in the case and had accumulated a great deal of information about it 'heard' about it and contacted them. For those who haven't noticed there's a number of people on the internet who think poor Amanda and Raffaele were royally screwed over and who talk about it on internet forums and facebook accounts and communicate and spread information far and wide. This is called a 'grassroots campaign' in the United States, and I'm certain a FBI agent whose looking for information about the case would be of a great deal of interest to a man who has a website dedicated to the idea it was an 'injustice.'
Otherwise I wonder if it reveals the secret fear amongst some that Bruce Fisher might well be able to go to just about any FBI agent with forensic experience, show them the 'evidence' against Raffaele and Amanda and how it was 'collected' and get the same response. Personally I suspect that's the case as well.
At 43:22 Moore makes a baseless overstatement – “[Rudy Guede] was a known burglar who had 5 to 6 burglaries in the last month”. We have to stop the clock here and be very serious: this is an exaggeration which neither I nor anyone I know who has a good handling of the facts of this case has ever stated. It was once stated by a Daily Mail journalist many moons ago, the same Daily Mail the Friends of Amanda revile for other articles but *it never made it into evidence* because of course it wasn’t true. And by this time, in 2011, one needs to know the *evidence* not repeat baseless conjecture because it supports “your” case. Please reflect for a second…
This might come as a surprise to some, but there's those amongst the
innocentisti who are
not exactly convinced the trial in the first instance made all the right decisions. In fact, some think they repeatedly made errors, allowed dubious contentions, 'evidence,' and 'witnesses' and did not properly consider all the extenuating circumstances. It could be that Steve Moore believes this is one place where even a
reporter whose had articles published in the
Daily Mail is more likely to be accurate than the last Court, whose dubious decisions on a number of items are either under review or will be, befitting a
trial de novo. Now that
is damning with faint praise!
Guede is accused of being in a school without permission for which the police didn’t even bother to prosecute, so it wasn’t a burglary. Bzzt. We all know he handled a stolen laptop but there was no suggestion of a burglary related to it, as much as one can see the hypothesis.
Is that how they would describe getting caught breaking into a school and stealing a knife where some people come from? That's where they wear the funny wigs in court? Perhaps the wigs are a sign you're behind the times there, where I come from the authorities would
freak if they caught a guy roaming around unauthorized in a school with a knife. Perhaps someone could break out the video camera as they have in the past and show all of us 'groupies' that really that's no big deal where they come from and obviously those who think it a serious offense worthy of prosecution are deluded. I would hope whoever did it knew where they could find a quality defense attorney, as I've this nasty suspicion it isn't much different there than here.
That ILE didn't think that was of interest enough to prosecute would be an indictment of their performance of police, it doesn't mitigate the offense.
We know that another witness said someone like Guede was in his house but he was discounted as unreliable. I am a vociferous critic of Guede but one cannot take a law enforcement professional seriously who massively inflates evidence. “5 or 6 burglaries in a month”? NO-ONE in the case, in the official body of evidence, has ever suggested that.
Didn't Rudy Guede have a separate trial and everything? Perhaps that's why Amanda and Raffaele's lawyers didn't press this point as hard, and in his own trial for
murder they were less interested in his priors, especially being as they kinda had to leave open the probability two others were involved. Thus the prosecution on that case isn't much interested in hammering the point home, and of course the defense isn't about to bring it up.
Such a suggestion from a law enforcement professional is hugely undermining if it can’t be proven, and it can’t. Nor has it been ever suggested by Amanda or Raffaele’s own legal counsel. If this was stated in court without proof (and, again, there is none), we would all rightly expect that to destroy the credibility of that law enforcement professional. Baseless assertion is a serious issue.
He wasn't in court, he was talking about what he really thought happened, as opposed to what may or may not have been considered germane by a court whose decision it appears he has no respect for.
Moore then suggests that Meredith came home after Guede broke in. Sounds prima facie reasonable, but again, anyone who knows the evidence and is familiar with the scene knows that the green outer shutters were open and the gate and the walk up the drive faced that window. And Meredith didn’t see the broken-into window? Oh really?
Rudy Guede, a burglar standing directly in front of an open window apparently half-pulled one shutter to, but left the other open three open and himself clearly visible from the drive when “tossing” Filomena’s bedroom - without taking anything? The how about Amanda Knox, walking in day-light up to the house the next morning who claims she didn’t see the open shutters.
It is over one hundred feet from the gate to that window, and on the 2nd of November, the shutters were open on the left as we look in and marginally more shut on the right. This is consistent with the police statements at the time and it is trite to say, no, they haven’t been opened by the police.
The left hand one (right as Massei relates from a direction of looking *out* from the house) is “half-closed in the sense that fully open is with it pushed against the outside wall. The right hand one as you can see is marginally more shut.
I'm afraid I don't quite understand the significance of this. The shutters were warped and didn't close perfectly, they might have come open at times, and they might have been
left open at times as well. Not noticing whether the shutters were closed at night, when it might not have been all that unusual anyway doesn't strike me as all that relevant.
Can you really imagine a burglar who has climbed up to the shutters to open them, then climbed down and gone up to the drive to find a rock, then climbed down under the window and up again before miraculously getting in without a scratch, nick or spot of DNA would turn round inside and partially close the right hand shutter but not close the left hand one? It makes literally no-sense.
Amanda Knox asks you believe that as she walked 100+ feet up the drive she didn’t notice it either. That’s the first time. The second time she returned to the cottage she was already “panicked” about the open door, the evidence of blood and unknown faeces and was returning to the cottage. And she walked up the hundred feet again and didn’t notice… again. Nor did Raffaele who was so concerned he suggested they return notice?
I suggest to you there’s more than enough reason Amanda has her hand to her face looking at the open shutters in this picture taken on 2nd November! (Please note, this image has IBERPress logo on it. I am linking it on another website, not created by us, which is publicly available and presumably asserts fair-use, but all rights are acknowledged by this site).
You’d leave that open as a burglar would you, facing the gate and the road? Total nonsense. And no, again, it hasn’t been moved.
Actually this is all just evidence that it wasn't considered all that odd for the shutters to be open and no one noticing. Amanda revealed on her own that the door was open, that she saw blood in the bathroom and that she found that Filomena's room had been broken into, there's no reason for her to hide that another thing she noticed walking up is that the shutters were open. She's also American, around here shutters are always 'open' as they're nothing but decoration on virtually all modern houses here.
Steve then suggests, in contravention of every banking security protocol I’ve ever heard of, that Guede, while having just murdered someone and held two towels to her neck in panic at that, then completely relaxed and phoned Meredith’s bank with her own mobile phone to try to get an ATM number *while still in the cottage* based on the mobile cell records.
Have you ever heard of a bank that will give you your pin number over the phone without substantial cross-checking of private passwords / other information that Guede couldn’t possibly know about Meredith? Moore also neglects to mention that Rudy would also have to have phoned Meredith’s voicemail two minutes before, something the call records show.
Steve Moore might have little respect for the intelligence of Rudy Guede, he's probably seen criminals do stupid stuff before, it's often how they get caught.
The reason for this suggestion is that Steve is trying to support the defence case for a time of death for Meredith that is incompatible with Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s involvement. Steve neglects to mention that Amanda and Raffaele tried to establish an alibi for a time of *11pm* for their dinner at Raffaele’s flat which was destroyed by Raffaele’s own father who stated that Raffaele mentioned matters relating to having completed dinner at around 8.30pm. No-one at this panel talk ever heard of *that*...
Why would they? Of what interest is the fact two stoned lovebirds weren't exactly paying much attention to the clock as they cuddled together and watched movies? Maybe they had the munchies and had two dinners, that wouldn't be the first time it's been know to happen to those who partake of the funny-smelling plants.
Steve and others suggest Amanda and Raffaele dated for 2 weeks. The only people who disagree with this are Amanda and Raffaele’s team, who state one week. Ho hum. Not really important. Just sloppy.
They dated a total of two weeks, however only a week before the murder. I'd say the last three sentences sum up my feelings as well.
Steve suggests that what the prosecution alleged in the trial was that Amanda and Raffaele “Decided for the first time that they are going to do a threesome” with Rudy Guede. Again, anyone with the slightest knowledge of this case knows the prosecution never alleged this “threesome”. They alleged a sexually aggravated murder of Meredith Kercher. A threesome? Where does Moore get this stuff from?
I imagine either the police, the prosecution or the tabloids reporting on this case. I as well find it absolutely
scandalous that any might think 'mistakes were made' by any of those parties in relaying the 'facts' of the case. I thought Halides1
elsewhere put together an assortment of links exposing that there's a number of people under this same misconception.
As for me, I gave up a while back trying to keep track of which silly-ass theory they finally decided was the true 'motive' for the crime. I read about a real corker where it was something to the effect of 'choosing evil' after being exposed to hashish and comic books, I don't think that one quite passed muster with the Supreme Court though. There was another involving a 'rape prank' that was at least somewhat more probable in my mind, just never having heard of a 'rape prank' before I don't know quite how to judge it.
There's also the one about seeing Meredith fighting off Rudy and deciding to take
Rudy's side which would be another almost unique moment in the known history of human behavior, and this might have tied into an orgy attempt. There's also some who think because of the date and the fact the kook prosecutor thought he saw 'ritualistic' signs that it might have been satanic in origin, I even heard that selfsame crackpot tried to re-introduce that near the end of the trial, having been initially shot down by a judge Michaeli or somesuch, and then by his own co-prosecutor who incidentally also nixed the idea of showing the graphic rape with the super-cool computer animation 'reconstructing' their theory of the crime. I wonder if he knew when he fought for that if the family of the victim was going to be in the court that day...
Again, totally undermining of his credibility. How many black marks are we up to? I’ve lost count. To be fair, Paul Ciolino the P.I. who has worked on the case and belongs to the FOA started covering his mouth during Steve’s presentation. In body language terms, that’s not terribly supportive…
It looked to me like he was just resting his chin on his palm as he turned his head rapt with attention as to what Steve Moore was saying. His fingers had to go somewhere.
On this topic of the threesome he’s invented in his head that no-one else mentioned, Steve states: “They decide to choose a burglar whom they don’t know real well – they’ve only met once. Raffaele had only met him that day. Raffaele said ‘that’s a great idea, lets bring this guy who is a burglar whom I don’t know and he can have sex with my girlfriend’”.
Rather inauspicious logic, Steve. If they didn’t know him, they would not have known he was a burglar? Yet you transplant those words into the mouth of a fictional Raffaele Sollecito to make a cheap, but ultimately beautifully self-defeating, point. Amanda, of course, says she met Rudy many times in passing, as did Rudy about Amanda. I’m very interested that Steve also stated “Raffaele had only met him that day” because of course Raffaele and Amanda never admitted that. Where does that come from? Please tell…. Bzzt, bzzt, bzzt.
It's a logical inference that since Raffaele had never seen Rudy before, if he were to supposedly have participated in this foul act with him it would be on the first day he met him. I think he's making the point that would be
really strange.
Moore then states that the prosecution case is that “Rudy goes in first and then Meredith screams. Then Amanda comes in and sides with the rapist.” Again, anyone with a perfunctory knowledge of this case knows that is not the prosecution case. This is hugely undermining because once again he is misinforming a public gathering on the case presented against Knox.
As I recall there was a difference between what Mignini presented and what Massei decided to put in his report. However as they're all about equally silly, and none of them based on anything resembling evidence, who really gives a damn? They could come up with something completely different for the appeal.
You can disagree with the case against Knox, but actually fundamentally misstating it? At this point, with so many marks on the board, I started asking myself… how is it possible that he doesn’t know all this?
And that question I still don’t have an answer to.
But it gets worse…
Now we get to one of the most egregious sections of the whole presentation and misleading of the audience: concerning the blood spattered apartment, Moore makes a major case that Perugian police released the picture of the vividly pink Phenolphthalein stained bathroom as being the *blood* stained bathroom where Amanda Knox showered.
Please watch the video and see how nakedly this is suggested. He juxtaposes the picture of the sink as it was on November the 2nd with the post-phenolphthalein shot and says that the prosecution alleged “that’s what Amanda saw, that’s it.. that’s what was really there. That’s when you start saying ‘oh my god’. Knowing that the jurors are not sequestered… they released this and said ‘that’s blood’”.
Here’s how Moore presented it:
The fact that the ACTUAL pictures of the scene *he himself uses on the left* were in the core evidence bundle in front of the jury as prime exhibits as any lawyer or serious law professional should immediately appreciate is ignored. It must be ignored because of course otherwise no-one could come up with such a patently incoherent line of logic. I’m losing count of the pieces of lack of knowledge and logic by now. How about you?
I'm afraid I don't understand the objection here, perhaps it's esoteric to those non-lawyerly? That picture comes from the
'House of Horrors' Daily Mail article of January '08. It starts with the following:
"This is the grim, blood-soaked scene inside the Italian apartment where British student Meredith Kercher was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered.
In chilling new photographs released by Italian police today, the full scale of the horror that confronted police when they entered the apartment in Perugia becomes clear.
In one shocking image, pools of blood lie at the foot of a wardrobe on which photographs of Meredith and friends have been pinned.
The bathroom (left) and the corner of Meredith's bedroom are covered in blood
The images also show the apartment's bathroom sink and walls smeared with blood.
I'd say it's pretty obvious the police released this picture and either told the reporter that it was blood, or didn't tell him it
wasn't blood, and as a result served to prejudice the public against Amanda and Raffaele with misleading--to use a euphemism--information. That photo might have made a dozen papers or TV presentations the future jury would see, and certainly would serve to damn them as undoubtedly guilty almost a year before they'd even been
charged.
In fact without a plethora of mistakes and lies like this it's possible neither would have ever been charged and would currently be happy and free because the prosecution might have known without a jury initially convinced they were absolutely guilty the waste of a case they had against them would get laughed out of court. I think Steve Moore makes an excellent point, by the time the
real picture was presented that other one had been ingrained into their 'understanding' of the case.
Re the staged break in – “one of the most incredible lies I have ever seen in a court-room outside of Iran.” Have you been involved in an Iranian court proceedings Steve? No. Mo(o)re hyperbole.
Next, a baffling and possibly funny line of reasoning if the matter wasn’t so serious. Moore proceeds to state that it was “very obvious the stone was thrown from outside and busted the shutter open.” So far so normal as an FOA meme – no issue. Except he then goes on to state more than once “The Perugian police said that a rock was thrown inside the house [to] outside the house.”
Huh? To “outside the house”? Are you perchance suggesting that the prosecution were saying the rock was thrown from “inside to outside” the house, then they went down and recovered it and replaced it in the bedroom where it was found and photographed which you would have seen if you had a sound knowledge of the case? Because no-one else has ever said that ever Steve! Not once! Huh? Outside the house? My head hurts. Does anyone have any pills?
Oh, yes, people have said that the rock was thrown outside and then recovered and placed back in the room. Incidentally "my head hurts" is exactly what I was saying trying to decipher that nonsense presented in the Massei Report. I was not the only one who had trouble figuring out WTF he was talking about there, Dr. Waterbury made the same mistake, and I was informed by a smirking Platonov that Kevin_Lowe and Kestrel made the same error.
Then Steve makes a point of highlighting some embedded glass in the wooden frame of the interior shutter as evidence of a rock thrown from the outside-in, when, again, it is blindingly obvious to anyone that the broken window could have been actioned from inside with exactly the same result. He’s so carried away with himself that he doesn’t even notice. It’s not that unsurprising I guess because he hasn’t noticed the legion other mistakes he’s made so far.
Next statement “Anyone who thinks the rock was thrown from inside out is either an idiot or lying”. It’s simply not logical Steve; as anyone can see it would have been possible to smash the window from inside, whether you actually agree that happened or not. Again, baseless exaggeration. You don’t have to agree but stop with the hyperbole!
The glass pattern, the one Massei handwaves away with that cherry-picked quote from the ballistics expert, reveals that Massei's contention is nonsense. I think those concerned with the amount of laughs Steve Moore gets with his presentation should advise him he should read it again until he understands exactly how nonsensical Massei's contention is. Perhaps with satirical witticisms on this subject he could put someone in the hospital from laughing so hard. That might be one less
innocentisti for the guilt faction to worry about for a while. Let me see if I can sum it up for him:
Our two intrepid 'murderers,' supposedly stoned out of their minds and just having brutally participated in the rape and murder of Amanda's only friend in Italy, must 'stage' a break-in to 'cover' their 'participation' in the crime with a
break-in artist involved. Thus instead of just throwing a stone through the balcony window and taking stuff inside like any stoned kid would do under the 'constructive laziness' theory of intoxication, they instead come up with this 'cunning plan:'
They take a rock and then open the windows
inward. They close the outside shutters and then angle the inside one behind the window to be broken so that the glass pattern should (kind of) resemble where it might go if just thrown through the damn window from outside, like any sane break-in stager would do. The rock goes through the window pulled inside and then bounces off the inner shutter at an angle which would send it (and the glass)
away from the opening of the window and the wall.
Since the rock actually ended up against the wall in the bag, they must have decided to pick up the rock and replace it, cleverly allowing it to tip over the bag against the wall and as an especially nice touch, then put rock particles next to the rock which would seem to indicate that's where it landed originally. I suppose they could have picked up those particles one by one from where it 'really landed' in this fantasy as there were none of those found. I betcha their hand cramped from using that tweezer all night long!
56 minutes in we get to a huge howler where Moore completely misstates the prosecution case on the staged break-in and doesn’t appear to have even thought about it enough to see the obvious logical hole in what he is about to say. In my original notes to this talk I jotted down “Amazing and astounding – doesn’t understand the clothes / glass point:”.
Moore says:
They [the prosecution] say that the reason they know that this was staged is because when they got there, there was clothes on top of the glass, the broken glass in the room. Well you’d think that the glass would be on top of everything wouldn’t you? Unless a burglar came in and started throwing things on the floor after the glass was broken. If you look on the bed you’ll see a purse. You’ll see the contents of the purse all over the floor, all over the bed. You will see that he went through her clothes hamper there, her clothes cabinet there, threw everything on the floor. That is why there are clothes on top of the glass. Why is that so hard?
Steve, you’ve stated this 180 degrees completely wrong. The prosecution case is that both the police and Filomena, Amanda’s flatmate, stated there was glass on top of clothes which had been apparently tossed by a burglar (not vice versa) and on top of a laptop that was closed but which had previously been open. The point is that it shows that the room was ransacked and *then* the glass was broken, proving the staging of the burglary.
This got a cringe from me as well. Firstly for the same reason stated. Secondly because I was just imagining what kind of fuss it would kick up in certain quarters, in fact I was awfully surprised it took this long to be noticed, there must be a glitch in the 'rapid response team' in that faction. Thirdly because of the opportunity cost of not getting it right, that being the absolutely insipid case Massei makes on the break-in goes unaddressed and instead a 'point' gets scored for his ability to obfuscate it.
In any court of law I have seen, if you can show a supposedly authoritative witness, who shall we not forget has been on this case for a *year*, has such a bad handle on the evidence, you can get a jury laughing and that witness completely discounted. This is, in my opinion, what Moore did to himself somewhat prior to this point, but by the end of this point, absolutely comprehensively. How is it possible to misunderstand the case so clearly? Ciolino and Waterbury both look very uncomfortable at this point.
It's been a bad year for guilt thus far, so I suppose I understand the glee this error instilled in some. However, there's another factor that has gone unsaid: Steve Moore was a professional investigator, twenty-five years in the FBI. It may very well be that he didn't get this right because it is in actuality--like he initially said--the
stupidest damn thing he's ever heard of. It doesn't make any bloody difference at that crime scene whether the glass was on top of or underneath the clothes. It was hardly 'secure' with Amanda, Filomena and the police going in there before it was sealed, and as he notes you'd
expect that the glass would be on top.
In this case however, there was
so much emphasis placed on the glass being on top the clothes it seems to become an article of faith amongst some that is of supreme importance in detecting a 'staged' crime scene. I think perhaps the former FBI agent shows, through his contempt in getting it backwards, that in reality this is an irrelevancy that proves nothing, as even if the clothes had
not been there already, then in the process of moving about the room and ruffling through other things nearby Rudy Guede could easily have kicked glass on top of the clothes lying on the floor by the wall.
Any of the other people who went into the room might have done the same as they went over there to check out the wardrobe or the window. Being as they never did get a picture of this 'crucial' piece of evidence, as I recall the claimed reason was it had been 'disturbed' before they could, I think it is of extremely little importance anyway, and it might be so damn silly to the professional investigator for the FBI he didn't even care enough to study it in detail, it not mattering a whit if there was glass beneath or on top of the clothes.
Next point: a pearly Steve quote: “When is a murder weapon not a murder weapon? When the Perugian police say it is.”
Uhhh… think about it…. That’s not actually what you meant to say, is it? What you meant is “When is a non-murder weapon, a murder weapon? When the Perugian police say it is”. Given Steve’s penchant for getting things upside down and arse-backwards, perhaps we should not be surprised, but call me a stickler for suggesting people get their arguments right. Steve compounds this 180-degree misstatement in the Q&A session by stating that the defence will try and throw a million things against the wall in the appeal and see if something will stick. The defence? Like those representing Amanda Knox, Steve? Huh? With the glass, the “murder weapon” and “defence” points, Moore appears to not be able to listen to what he himself is saying. It’s just… bizarre…
I don't see your point there, it strikes me as semantics. Just imagine the 'single quotes' around the first 'murder weapon' and it makes sense, being as I do it everytime I mention it. I also do that when referring to the 'evidence' gathered against Raffaele and Amanda.
Steve then makes a big point about the Raffaele cooking knife being the wrong shape for the mark on the bedsheet without mentioning the fact that two knives were posited in the case. Nice and misleading. Still not representing the basics of the case to those assembled.
Actually as I recall from the appeal, the prosecution 'forgot' to introduce the second knife, and Massei just cribbed it in afterward. At any rate the only reason they needed to invent a 'second knife' is that the one they pretended was the 'murder weapon' didn't match the outline, two of the wounds, bore no trace of blood
despite having both Amanda and theoretically Meredith's DNA still adhered, and the latter is a dubious contention to begin with. Personally had they found Meredith's DNA in a goldfish bowl I'd be more inclined to think the fish was involved than that knife in the murder.
As we approach the end of this car-crash, Moore makes a big point that “they say Amanda was in front of her and stabbed her like this”. He then mimics a vertical stabbing motion and makes a distinction of the lateral cut compared to vertical method of attack. But no-one ever said this definitively in court and Massei clearly states the blood spurts on the wardrobe (i.e. facing away from the attackers) are from the neck injury. Mo(o)re fabrication. How many is it now?
I thought I read that too somewhere, that in a capricious fit of pique Amanda (supposedly) delivered the killing blow whilst Meredith lay helpless with Rudy and Raffaele on top of her/holding her down. Who cares all that much anyway, it's all fantasy. Massei had
nothing to go on regarding evidence of Amanda and Raffaele in the murder room outside at some point Raffaele must touch the bra-clasp to contaminate it, and that 'murder knife' must make the only cut it really could have, despite the fact it was actually sitting in Raffaele's drawer the whole time. It's imaginary, it's nonsense, and Steve Moore may be referring to what the prosecution argued in court as opposed to what Massei made up about it.
There is a chuckle-worthy moment where Moore uses the different exposures of pictures of the bra-clasp on the original investigation versus that taken on December 16th as clear evidence of “contamination”. A 2 second glance shows this is an exposure issue unsubstantiated by other pictures which again are in front of the jury
The bra clasp wandered around the room for 46 days, and was dirtier than it was originally filmed. I don't see the point here.
Unsurprisingly, he then goes on to make the standard declaration that the gathering of the bra-clasp with Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA on it on December 16th “delay” as “apparently not important” to the prosecution. He neglects to mention that it was a sealed crime scene where the passage of time can have no effect on the forensic value of evidence *if no-one is within the sealed crime-scene*. He also neglects to mention the delay was due in substantial part to the requirement to invite the defence to attend…
As far as 'sealed' crime scenes go, this one was about as secure as a screen door on a submarine. That place got
trashed simply in the process of the 'collection' and no one to my knowledge has ever figured out just how that clasp got to motivating itself about the room. There's also reason to believe the tape on the door was compromised. As for the the 'requirement' to allow the defense to attend 'delaying' them, did they give them as much 'notice' as was given for the DNA tests? I thought the desperate return to the crime scene was actually because they'd been humiliated the previous night on television by the Sollecito family which had shown conclusively the shoeprints hadn't come from Raffaele's shoes, and they'd run out of bogus 'evidence' against Raffaele.
To finish, a damp whimper after these major trumpetings of lack of knowledge and/or understanding: a statement about a pillow under Meredith’s body: “Guess what they found on there – semen and the police refused to test it”. It has been suggested but without testing, we obviously can’t know it’s semen. Again, serious legal professionals don’t make absolute statements like this about unproven evidence.
Unless a serious
investigator looks at it and decides due to its placement, the nature of the crime and what it looks like, that odds are high it's a semen stain and thus should be tested.
Amanda Knox is incarcerated for 26 years. As someone who has been involved in many defences of individuals charged with serious criminal matters, it is unacceptable to me that people willing to hold themselves out as prominent supporters of an imprisoned person who have experience in the law or law enforcement show that they don’t know, appreciate, or are able to process core aspects of the case against that person.
In my opinion, this performance was inexcusably weak and must raise serious questions about the judgement of those seeking to help Amanda. Would you want this sort of standard of knowledge held out as adequate, as representing a member of your core Home team? I sincerely hope not. Only the lack of knowledge of the case and the partisan support in the room stopped Moore from being extremely badly shown up in the Q&A session.
I have a great deal of respect for
Steve Moore, who
gave up his cushy retirement job in order to campaign on behalf of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. The idea that anyone could 'stop' him at this point, or would 'cut him loose' because he gets details wrong at the same time he illustrates just how absurd the 'investigation,' 'evidence collection' and how unpleasantly the interrogation was conducted is laughable.
There’s a meme in the supporters of Amanda camp that says that pro-prosecution commentators cost Moore his job at Pepperdine. It’s nonsense. Moore got himself removed before most of us had ever heard of him.
Neither I nor anyone else I am aware of ever wrote to his *former* employer before he was fired. Nor did I write to them afterwards either because I considered they had a simple case against him and he’d like it if we were involved. Once I did write that I wanted to take down Steve Moore, by which I meant stop him posting misleading statements about the Meredith Kercher case using his career as credentials.
But following this performance at the Case for Innocence forum, in my opinion, it is quite evident that Steve Moore has done it comprehensively and totally to himself.
I did not see anyone say they
wrote Steve Moore's Pepperdine employers after he left, offering to keep track of every misstatement and forwarding it to them, that much is true. I saw someone say something very similar, but it was not exactly that. As for whether the e-mail box of the chancellor (or whatever) at Pepperdine was bombarded with emails which led to the ultimatum, I suppose that will come out with discovery during his lawsuit and isn't my concern either.
