[cherdano]

So?

[helene_t]

I miss a "wtf is Amanda Knox" option.

[el mister]

Having reviewed the weight of evidence in the court of internet opinion, I would say defo guilty of being involved in some way. Her story is bobbins and she is a lying toe-rag, which is an extra tragedy for the Kercher family to deal with.

Guilty of straight murder though? Don't see it myself. Would be a motive-less action of someone with no previous signs of mental instability.

The whole separation of Guede's fast track trial and that of Knox / Sollecito is hard to understand (for outsiders to the Italian legal system) and seems a major factor in clouding the case. It's like two separate courts were acknowledging two separate and differing accounts of reality for the same crime.

[billw55]

What is a toe-rag? Not sure about bobbins either, but I get the general feeling that it means "disorganized nonsense" or similar.

I read somewhere that DNA evidence from the scene matched Guede, but not Knox or Sollecito. Is that accurate? (edit: ah, that's quite a lot of info below)

[Cyberyeti]

billw55, on 2014-July-22, 07:01, said:

What is a toe-rag? Not sure about bobbins either, but I get the general feeling that it means "disorganized nonsense" or similar.

I read somewhere that DNA evidence from the scene matched Guede, but not Knox or Sollecito. Is that accurate?

Two Britishisms, toe-rag = scumbag/lowlife, bobbins = rubbish.

The DNA evidence was dubious, it depends how you interpret the DNA evidence where they grew it from samples first because the count was too low initially.

Also if Knox's DNA was on the knife, that would be no surprise, it was a knife from her kitchen.

[jjbrr]

2p2 has a thread with over 22,000 posts that is both an absolute dumpster fire in terms of content and also what must be one of the most comprehensive discussions of the trial anywhere. For reasons that aren't totally apparent to us, poster Henry17 has dedicated literally hundreds of hours on this case and, as some of his thousands of posts in this specific thread, summarizes much of the case against AK in a series of posts starting here. The thread also has at least two AK supporters (poster 239 and poster Ken Dine). We speculate that these are paid shills hired by the AK family to do PR work and for some reason have stayed (and only posted in the AK thread) on 2p2 to continue trying to clear her name. 239 has over 4500 posts in the thread. H17 is a lawyer from Canada. spoiler alert: the shills suck more than t..h.e h,o]g if that's possible.

I'll copy H17's summary in a series of posts below because lots of his links to pictures don't work but he rehosted them in another post.

(None of this is my own work obviously)

[jjbrr]

Link

Henry17 said:

I'm going to post the mega-post in sections today. I had hoped to have time to improve it but I don't.

It is 11 posts. Post 1 is a summary and really the only post I expect anyone to read. Posts 2-11 are the same content as Post 1 but in more detail and with sources.

I presented the evidence in a chronological order and I wish I had done it more in a order of importance but I'm too busy to do that now. I think the staged break-in should have gone first. Once someone sees the break-in was staged then Amanda automatically has to be involved.

[jjbrr]

The mega post is going to be 11 posts. Since that is a lot to read I’ve decided to preface it with a summary of what each post contains.

Post 2: The Alibi

Amanda and Raffaele’s account of what they were doing the night of the murder is contradicted by physical evidence and eye witnesses.

1) Amanda claims to have been at Raffaele’s all night on the computer but the computer shows no human interaction for the entire night. A witness saw Amanda leave Raffaele’s apartment and another witness saw them together near the cottage.

2) They claim to have slept until 10-10:30am but someone was using the computer at 5:30am for half an hour and someone turned on Raffaele’s mobile phone at 6am. Amanda was also seen outside the supermarket waiting for it to open at 7:45am

3) They changed their alibi multiple times. Raffaele was originally at a party without Amanda, then he changed that to at home with Amanda. That was revised to Amanda went out at 9pm and I stayed home and when she returned home at 1am she may have been wearing different clothing. Raffaele then changed his story to he was not certain if Amanda was with him or not. Amanda’s story changed from being at Raffaele’s to being at the cottage with Patrick and hearing Meredith screaming while Patrick raped and killed her. She changed this back to I was at Raffaele's and we did not leave the house.

The inability to give a straight answer to the very basic question of what were you doing the night of the murder as well as the fact that even after changing your answer multiple times the final answer is a lie that is contradicted both by physical evidence and by witnesses is pretty damning.

Post 3 November 2

There are several things wrong with the events of November 2 before the body was found.

1) Amanda comes home to find the door wide open, blood in the bathroom, a bloody footprint, and feces in the toilet. She also completely fails to notice the nine bloody footprints in the hall, the broken window, or her missing lamp. She goes about her day as if none of things happened.

2) There is a major inconstancy between Raffaele and Amanda’s account of what happened when Amanda returned to Raffaele’s. In Amanda’s version she calmly returns and cleans the water spill and they have breakfast. It is only when they are having coffee on the veranda that she mentions the weird things at the cottage. In Raffaele’s version she returned running in a panic and there was no breakfast.

3) Filomena asks Amanda to call Meredith. Amanda tries each phone once for 3s and 4s which is less than required for the voicemail to pick up. Amanda would later claim the phone just kept ringing and ringing. Amanda never tries to call Meredith again despite claims of panic over Meredith’s safety. Amanda made these calls just to register a call but she knew no one would answer.

4) Amanda and Raffaele called 911 20-25 minutes after the postal police have already arrived.

5) The phone call to 911 is suspicious. The 911 operator automatically realizes there is something abnormal and is suspicious of Raffaele.

6) In her email home Amanda claimed that they tried to break down the door and climb up the window to get to Meredith’s room prior to the Postal Police arriving, but when the Postal Police arrive they don’t express any concern and actually lie and say it is perfectly normal for Meredith to lock her door so there is nothing to worry about.

7) Amanda makes a phone call home to her mom at 3am Seattle time. At this point only the broken window had been discovered and according to Amanda there is nothing to be concerned about. When asked about this call Amanda denies making it. When confronted with her phone records she claims she doesn’t remember what motivated her to call home at 3am.

8) According to the police Amanda had body order and smeared makeup which is not consistent with her claim that she had taken a shower two hours prior to their arrival.

Post 4 The Confession

Despite reports of abuse there was none. The interrogation of Raffaele started at 10:40pm. Confronted with his phone records and the fact that he called 911 after the police were already at the cottage Raffaele changes his story to I was lying because Amanda asked me to. I was home alone. She went out at 9pm and returned at 1am possibly wearing different clothing.

Amanda was not supposed to be interrogated but since she was in the police station they asked her to clear up some questions. This started after 11:30pm and by 1:45am she had confessed to being in the cottage twice and her statement had been typed. We don’t know how long it took Amanda to confess but her first confession happened before Minini was present. Minini was sent for and he arrived at about 1am. That means Amanda cracked in about an hour and likely less.

Questioning stopped at 1:45am but Amanda chooses to make a spontaneous statement at 5:45am that confirmed her previous statement. The original confession would be excluded as evidence since she was a suspect before 1:45am but was treated like a witness until 1:45am when her status was changed. The spontaneous statement was allowed because that was after she had been offered a lawyer.

The confession was not the product of abuse and more importantly Amanda places herself where a witness saw her at the time the witness claims to have seen her. The confession also has minor other details that ended up being confirmed by witnesses and physical evidence. False confessions don’t end up matching the other evidence so her confession is almost certainly true with the exception that she has diminished her role and substituted Patrick for Rudy.

Post 5 Things Amanda Should Not Have Known

Amanda knew that Meredith’s throat had been slit and that she was killed by the closet even though she was in the kitchen when the door was kicked open and Meredith’s body was covered. Paola who was there when the door was opened said it was dark and you couldn’t see anything but a foot. The body and most of the floor was covered. On the stand when Amanda was asked how she knew these details she claims she heard them from people. When asked who she would not identify anyone – it was just random people that she was talking to. Only someone involved with the crime would know these details and Amanda’s refusal to identify someone who she spoke with that told her these details makes it fairly obvious she is lying about how she came to know them.

Part 6 Break-in Staged

The break-in was staged. This was immediately apparent to the postal police and Filomena, whose clothes had been tossed around the room but none of her drawers had even been opened to search for valuables. The choice of entry point was illogical and maybe impossible: There were no signs that anyone was in the backyard, there were no traces or markings of anyone scaling the wall, the glass distribution only makes sense if the window was broken from the inside with the shutters closed, and the glass was on top of the stuff that was ransacked. Further, Meredith’s blood mixed with Amanda’s DNA was found in the room which means someone was in the room after Meredith was killed but Rudy’s footprints go straight from the body to the front door.

The only advantage to staging a burglary is to throw suspicion off people who would normally have access to the building. That would be Laura, Filomena, Amanda, and the four boys from downstairs. Since everyone was out of town except Amanda she is the only person who would benefit from staging the break-in.

Part 7 Multiple Attackers

An independent medical expert from Rome as well as the local coroner testified that there were multiple attackers. Raffaele’s expert testified it was one attacker from behind. Amanda’s expert testified it was one attacker from the front.

The multiple attackers question hinges on if you believe a physically fit girl who is attacked while standing up would allow someone to inflict 47 wounds without fighting back. These wounds were from distributed evenly on the left and right side and included being hit, being stabbed, being cut both seriously and just to inflict pain, and bruising from having both her arms and her head restrained. There were no defensive wounds or anything under her nails.

Witnesses also place multiple people running from the cottage after hearing a scream. The accounts of these witnesses fit perfectly with statements from other witnesses as well as with the location of the dumped mobile phones.

Post 8 The Many Wolves Theory

Someone both cleaned the house and staged the body long after Rudy was gone. This fact in and of itself makes Rudy as a lone wolf impossible. So at a minimum it had to be Rudy plus someone else. When we consider who could have helped Rudy the only answer is Amanda and Raffaele. A normal burglar would have no reason to clean or stage the body nor would they feel comfortable spending that much time in the cottage. This, much like the staged burglary, only makes sense for a resident of the cottage or someone who would have access to it. Further, there is also no logical explanation of why an accomplice would clean everything except evidence that incriminated Rudy.

Post 9 Footprints

The footprint in blood on the bathmat is probably Raffaele’s. The head of Italy’s print identity division as well as an independent expert asked to consult by the court testified that they can exclude Rudy with certainty and that the footprint is a match for Raffaele. The defence expert testified that the other two experts did the measurements wrong.

There were nine Luminol hits and at least eight are footprints. Seven of these form a path from Meredith’s room to Amanda’s. Two had both Amanda and Meredith’s DNA. Two were a match to Amanda based on partial markers. One was a match to Raffaele based on partial markers. There is no reasonable explanation for these prints except that two people with feet similar to Amanda and Raffaele were walking around with Meredith’s blood on their feet that they later cleaned.

The pillow has a footprint in blood that is a size 7 female Ascis shoe. The head of Italy’s print identity division as well as an independent expert testified that it was a size 7 female shoe. The defence expert argued that it was actually a size 11 men’s shoe and that the smaller print is due to the pillow being a soft surface. It is just a coincidence that the print matches Amanda’s shoe size.
When it comes to the bloody footprints it is a simple question of do you believe the head of the print identity division and an independent expert or do you believe a defence expert that is paid to say anything?

Post 10 DNA

Meredith’s blood was found in five locations mixed with Amanda’s DNA. This included a sample in Filomena’s room where the burglary was staged. This could not be explained by Meredith’s blood coming in contact with random Amanda DNA from skin cells.

The bra clasp had Raffaele’s DNA. There were issues with the collection process of this piece of evidence but despite those issues there is still no plausible explanation of how contamination could have happened. Theoretical risks of contamination are not sufficient to exclude evidence. Raffaele’s original expert was let go because he was not willing to testify that contamination was a legitimate concern.

The knife had Meredith’s DNA. There was no risk of contamination but the defence argued that the result was unreliable because the DNA was LCN. LCN DNA is not used in the United States yet but it is used in Europe. The defence’s argument amounted to an argument against the advancement of science.

When confronted about the knife Raffaele manufactured a fake explanation for how the DNA got on the knife. In an effort to explain away evidence Raffaele actually incriminates himself since only if he knew it was possible that Meredith’s DNA was found on the knife would he have a motivation to fabricate a lie to explain the DNA.

Post 11 Small Things

The day after the murder Amanda had a scratch on her neck and a piercing hole in her ear ripped. They were not there the day before according to her roommates. Amanda claimed it was a hickey and that the ear was from a piercing attempt gone bad. The mark does not look like a hickey and the excuse for a piercing attempt gone bad makes no sense given it was her first piercing.

Amanda’s lamp—her only light source-- was in the victim’s room placed on the floor by the bed. The only explanation is that someone was using the lamp as a light source while they were looking for something on the floor -- maybe a missing earring.

Amanda has a series of freak out attacks. Amanda was perfectly fine at the police station until she was called to be fingerprinted. At the point she started freaking out and hitting her head with both her hands – she was not a suspect and all the individuals with regular access to the cottage were asked for fingerprints. This behaviour would present itself again two days later when the police asked them to come look at the knives. Amanda again freaked out and had to lie down. This happened a third time when she was confronted by the news that Raffaele was no longer corroborating her alibi.

An inmate (Aviello) testified for the defence claiming that his brother and a friend killed Meredith because they got the address wrong on a job. Aviello is followed by three inmates who claim that he bragged to them that he was being paid by the Sollecito family to make up the story as a way to confuse the jury. A month later Aviello himself admits that he was paid and that Raffaele actually told him that Amanda killed Meredith and that Raffaele was there.

link

[jjbrr]

Post 2: The Alibi

According to Amanda after she found out that she was no longer needed at work she decided to spend the night with Raffaele. They had dinner and then spent time on the computer, smoked up, had sex, and went to bed. She claims they slept until 10:30am the following day when she returned home.

Some of this is true but the rest is not. We know Amanda was at Raffaele’s until at least ~8:40pm because a witness places her there as does her mobile phone. [62, 322] We know Raffaele was at his apartment at 8:42pm because he received a phone call from his father.[319] Both Amanda and Raffaele turned off their phones shortly thereafter and they remained off until 6am.

Being home alone is a hard alibi to refute except that in this case there is a lot of evidence that they are lying.

Jovana Popovic

Claims she saw Amanda leave Raffaele’s at about 8:40pm* Jovana Popovic was a polish student who knew Raffaele. She had been to Raffaele’s twice that night — once before class to ask Raffaele for a ride to the bus station and once at about 8:40pm to tell Raffaele that she did not need the ride after all. In both cases Amanda was at the apartment although Jovana did not see Raffaele the second time but was told he was in the bathroom by Amanda.

Jovana describe Raffaele as being cold and not his usual self. He agreed to do her the favour but he seemed upset and she regretted asking him for the ride.

Computer Use

Both Amanda and Raffaele claim that they were at home and on the computer. The problem with this is that the only computer use for the whole night was that the file Amelie.avi stopping at 9:10:32pm. There is no way to determine if someone stopped the file or if the movie just ended without human interaction. The movie had originally started playing at 6:27:15pm. [304]

There was no computer activity for the rest of the night. Firefox was open but no browsing occurred. A P2P was active and there was a Quicktime connected to the Apple server port 80 for 4 seconds at 12:58am but that was just Quicktime calling home and not the product of human interaction.[305] There was absolutely no human interaction with Raffaele’s Macbook Pro for the entire night.[310] The logs of FastWeb Raffaele’s ISP were also requested and they also show no web page retrievals for the entire night. [306]

This makes the claim that they were at home on the computer a lie.

The computer would catch them in a second lie. At 5:32:09am someone attempted to use VLC to play an MP3 file. This leads to VLC crashing three times. The individual then gave up on VLC and played the MP3 file using iTunes for roughly 30 minutes. [309]

This makes the claim that they slept in until about 10:30am a lie.

Phone Use

Sollecito’s mobile phone turns on at 6:02:59am.[317] The defence would argue that it must have been Raf’s cat that turned on the phone. Again this makes it clear they are lying about sleeping in till 10:30am.

Marco Quintavalle [83 -84]

Marco testified that Amanda Knox was outside his store at 7:45am before it opened. The automatic security shutters opened and Amanda was there. He recognized her because of the early hour and because the store is near Sollecito’s apartment and Raffaele was a near daily customer and she had been to the store with Raffaele before. Marco does not know what Amanda purchased as he was not working the cash but she went to the household cleaning products section of the store.

This again contradicts the claim that they were sleeping until 10:30am.

There a lot of reports that receipts for bleach had been found at Sollecito’s apartment. This is not true and was misreported. Raffaele did have two bottles of bleach which I think is strange given what we know of him but there was no receipt.

Antonio Curatolo [79-82]

Curatolo testified that he saw Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in Piazza Grimana on the night of the murder. Piazza Grimana is the public square directly above the cottage. If one looks down from the railing the cottage is about 40 meters away and the by foot the cottage is about 100m for Piazza Grimana. Mr. Curatolo was sitting on the bench reading L’Espresso a weekly current events magazine and he first saw the couple after 9:30pm. He noticed that they looked like a couple in an argument. Occasionally they could go to the edge of the Piazza and look down on the cottage below. He is certain it was Amanda and Raffaele and had seen them before.

He did not watch Knox and Sollecito the entire time. Curatolo was reading and he would look up and they were there from after 9:30pm to about 10pm. He would see them again after 11pm entering Piazza Grimana from the direction of Via Pinturicchio. He claims that again they went to the edge and again they were looking down at the cottage. When he looked up again they were gone and Curatolo curious to what they were looking at went to the edge to look down but saw nothing interesting.

The defence questioned the reliability of Antonio Curatolo because although he is an educated man and has the ability to support himself he chooses to be homeless and lives in the park. At the original trial Curatolo was seen as credible. Despite it being eighteen months after the fact he gave a lot of details. Alessia Ceccarelli and Maurizio Rosignoli who operate the pizza kiosk in Piazza Grimana collaborated that Curatolo was on the bench reading his magazine and that he was known to them and a reliable witness.

The problem is that he does confuse a few things. Curatolo is certain that all of this happened the night before the police and the people in the white suits came (forensic police) but he also mentions people in Halloween masks. The reason the jury believed him despite the comment about masks is that we know that Sollecito never left his apartment Halloween night. He is talking to his dad 5-6 times that night from home. Amanda is working at Le Chic and then after not being able to find anything to do goes to Sollecito’s. Curatolo while not a perfect witness is believable.

Fast-forward to the appeal and Curatolo was one of the items of evidence that was reviewed. Unfortunately four years later he is not as coherent as he was at the original trial. He repeats the same story but since the original trial he has been arrested for heroin possession. When asked if he was high back on the night of the murder he says that he can’t be certain but that he is a habitual user and so it is likely. He interjects that heroin is not a hallucinogenic and that his drug use dis not interfere with what he saw.

Despite his drug use and eccentricities Curatolo is believable because he puts them in Piazza Grimana at about 9pm the night of the murder. Amanda when she confessed also put herself in Piazza Grimana at 9pm. At the time of the confession the police had not yet talked to Curatolo. To consider Curatolo unreliable you have to accept that Amanda made up a fake story and just happened to include the detail that Raffaele and her went to Piazza Grimana and then independently a witness claims to see them in that very location.

Curatolo’s testimony is further collaborated by the testimony of Nara Capezzali who heard a scream from the cottage followed by footsteps running up the metal stairwell next to the parking lot as well as running in the opposite direction down Via del Bulagaio. The phones were dumped at the location Rudy would need to leave Via del Bulagaio to turn to his home. Curatolo saw Amanda and Raffaele returning to Piazza Grimana from Via Pintuncchio at after 11pm which matches perfectly with Nara’s testimony.

Conflicting Alibis

Probably the most damaging to their alibi is that they kept changing it. Originally Sollecito told Kate Mansey of the Sunday Mirror that he was at a party the night of the murder.*

Sollecito then told the police the story that they were together at his apartment watching Amelie but the computer records show that movie stopped playing at 9:10pm and that there was no computer activity after 9:10pm and no sign that they were home at all after 8:43pm.

He maintained that story until four days after the murder. On Nov 5th he was asked to come to the police station at 10:40pm to clear up some details and he did. Confronted with his telephone records that showed he was lying Sollecito admits that everything he said before was “rubbish” and that he had lied because Amanda had asked him to lie. The truth was that he was at home alone and that Amanda had gone out at 9pm to meet some friends at Le Chic and that she was possibly wearing different clothing when she returned at 1am.

Quote

At 9pm I went home alone and Amanda said that she was going to Le Chic because she wanted to meet some friends. We said goodbye. I went home, I rolled myself a spliff and made some dinner**

To make it even more ominous he adds that in the morning she took an empty plastic bag because she had some dirty washing.

Amanda’s version is that she stayed at Sollecito’s all night. Originally they were on the computer but she changed that to they might have taken a shower together and the one thing she is certain of is that they ate very late – around 11pm. We know they didn’t eat late because Sollecito’s father gave a statement to police that his son told him they had finished eating and were washing up when he called to recommend the Pursuit of Happiness at 8:42pm. By the time Knox testifies dinner was at 9:30pm which is still a lie but not as much as before. That Amanda moved the time dinner to the time that the murder happened is again a small piece of evidence but unlikely to be a coincidence.

On November 5, confronted with the news that Sollecito had changed his story and was claiming that Knox had left and he stayed home alone, Knox also changes her story and this is where we get the confession and the false accusation of Patrick that we will address in the next post. Amanda tells that story three times, putting herself at the cottage the night of the murder. By the next morning Amanda has changed her story to a hybrid story where she was both at Sollecito’s and at the cottage when the murder happened.

During the taped deposition Sollecito takes the position that he doesn’t know if Knox was with him that night of November 1st.

Quote

I don’t remember if Amanda Knox went out that evening. We were at my place at 8:30 [p.m.]. I must have mixed things up because I remember that Amanda must have come home with me but I don’t remember if she went out. (Sollecito’s deposition quoted in Darkness Descending p210)

His lawyer would tell Newsweek that the reason Sollecito was not testifying at the trial is because he can not collaborate Amanda’s alibi. Sollecito would not corroborate her alibi until the final days of the latest appeal four years later.

Link

[jjbrr]

Post 3: Do the events of Nov 2 make any sense? Part 1

In this post we will walk through the events as Amanda and Raffaele describe them for the morning that the body was discovered.

According to Amanda both of them slept in until 10:00-10:30am. Someone was using the Raffaele’s computer at 5:30am for half an hour and someone turned on his phone at 6:02am. Marco Quintavalle saw Amanda at his store at 7:45am. That they are lying is not disputable unless you accept the defence theory that Raffaele’s cat turned on the phone and that Marco is wrong about who he saw. The defence as far as I know never attempted to explain the 30 minutes of computer use – I suspect the cat will have to take the fall for that as well.

According to Amanda’s story she left Raffaele’s to go have a shower at her house and to retrieve a mop and bucket because of the leak from the night before. Amanda’s packed bags were at Raffaele’s and he has a shower that, according to Amanda, they used that night but I still do not fault her for wanting to use her own bathroom and going home. So Amanda goes home.

Here is the house’s floor plan so that you can follow along.



Arriving at home Amanda finds her front door open. She finds this odd but ignores it. The lock on the door apparently was iffy. Entering the house she walked to her bedroom to get undressed. Amanda’s ceiling light does not work so her only light source is her black lamp. This lamp was not present but Amanda does not notice, claiming that the natural sunlight was sufficient for her to undress. I believe most people would instantly notice it was missing but that she didn’t is not completely unbelievable. This is Amanda’s room so you have an idea of the size.



She now goes to the bathroom to take a shower. While this was never entered as evidence it appears to be a lie. Carmignani, a seasoned crime reporter, spoke to the police and they were suspicious of Knox’s story because her body odor was not that of someone who just had a shower two hours ago, her face was puffy, and her make-up was smeared. [Nadeau 56]

Continuing with Amanda’s story after she finished showering she noticed the blood. It was in the sink and on the bathmat



At this point she dismissed the blood as being a mess from one of the girls having a menstrual issue. That is completely unbelievable coming from a girl. The quantity of blood is just too much to be from Meredith having her period and it is also in the shape of a foot. At this point Amanda has come home to find her door open, blood in the sink, and a bloody footprint on the bathmat. Despite that she remains calm and continues with her day.

Upon realizing that she was lacking a towel Amanda apparently uses the bathmat for modesty and returns to her room to get dressed. She would later explain that she used the bathmat as a magic carpet to move around and not get the floor wet. She returns the bathmat to the bathroom and goes to Filomena and Laura’s bathroom to do her hair. At this point she notices Rudy’s feces in the toilet. Amanda remarks that this is strange because the girls would never do that and she further knows that both Laura and Filomena are away for the weekend but again she dismisses it. According to Amanda she was “starting to feel a little uncomfortable”. I find her not being freaked out enough to at least do a room by room search unbelievable. That being said if we assume she still wasn’t scared then I also find her choice to not flush the toilet perplexing. She knows both of the girls who use that bathroom are away for the next 24-36 hours and the feces has been there for 12 hours at this point but she just finishes getting ready in a stinky bathroom and does not flush.

Amanda leaves the big bathroom and returns to her room. Then she leaves her room and goes out the front door grabbing the mop and bucket for Raffaele. That concludes Amanda’s time in the cottage but there is one more issue. This map shows her complete movements in the cottage.



As you can see Amanda is in the hallway several times. Rudy’s bloody footprints start from Meredith’s room quite noticeable and as they approach the kitchen they get much fainter. Looking at the kitchen footprints it is not unbelievable that she would not notice them if she was not looking for them but the footprints near Meredith’s door were easily noticeable. We have to accept that Amanda did not see these and that she also further managed to completely avoid stepping in them when returning from her shower despite them being pretty much dead center in the narrow hallway.

To recap to accept Amanda’s story we have to believe that a girl came home to find her door open, blood in the bathroom, feces in the toilet, and that she managed to not notice the bloody footprints in the hall, her missing lamp, or the broken window that she would have been directly in front of her at eye level for at least a minute of her walk.
The version of what happened next is different between Amanda and Raffaele.

According to Amanda she returned to Raffaele’s and cleaned up the mess from the leak and then they had breakfast. While they were having coffee on the veranda she told Raffaele about the strange things at the cottage and they decided to return to investigate. According to Raffaele Amanda appeared at his place mop in hand in a panic about what she had seen. I’m not sure why in his version she didn’t call him instantly and why she still brought the mop but since I don’t believe either of these scenarios actually happened so it doesn’t matter. The main point is that their story diverges in a very significant way. That means they are lying. Amanda either came rushing back in a panic or she came back and cleaned the mess and had breakfast calmly.

Returning to the cottage there are three other strong pieces of evidence that make her look guilty.

Fake Calling Meredith.

Filomena asked Amanda to call Meredith because there was concern. Amanda called both of Meredith’s phones but the calls lasted only 3s and 4s and were done just to register the phone activity. Amanda knew no one would answer.

At 12:08pm Amanda calls Filomena and tells her that she saw blood at the cottage. Amanda does not mention the locked door or the burglary. Filomena asks about Meredith and asks Amanda to call Meredith. Amanda one minute earlier at 12:07pm had called Meredith and obviously she did not answer but Amanda does not mention this to Filomena. [Massei p29, Filomena’s testimony p31, Masseip323]

At 12:11pm Amanda calls Meredith’s Italian mobile phone for 3 seconds. Amanda than calls Meredith’s English phone and the call lasts 4 second. This would be too short for either phone to go to voice mail. Meredith’s service at the time boosted that their WeAnswer service was the fastest with an average time of 5.5s. Amanda’s previous call to Merdith’s English phone was 16s which would have been the amount of time required to get the voice mail. [Massei p323].

Amanda would later claim that when she called Meredith’s Italian phone the phone just rang and rang. Obviously this is not true since the call lasted three seconds.

AKs email said:

i then calle the Italian phone and it just kept ringing, no answer.

Amanda does not attempt to call Meredith again. This is strange behavior in and of itself but becomes stranger when you consider that in Amanda’s e-mail she claims that before they called the police Sollecito attempted to force open Meredith’s door but failed.

AKs email said:

i ran outside and down to our neighbors door. the lights were out but i banged ont he door anyway. i wanted to ask them if they had heard anything the night before but no one was home. i ran back into the house. in the living room raffael told me he wanted to see if he could break down merediths door. he tried, and cracked the door, but we couldnt open it. it was then that we decided to call the cops.

You’d think she would have tried to call Meredith regardless but certainly she would have tried the phone again if any of this actually happened.

Lying about Meredith Locked Door

According to Amanda at this point they were really concerned about Meredith.

AKs email said:

i ran outside and down to our neighbors door. the lights were out but i banged ont he door anyway. i wanted to ask them if they had heard anything the night before but no one was home. i ran back into the house. in the living room raffael told me he wanted to see if he could break down merediths door. he tried, and cracked the door, but we couldnt open it. it was then that we decided to call the cops.

Sollecito tells the police something very similar.

Quote

He said he went outside “to see if I could climb up to Meredith’s window” but could not. “I tried to force the door but couldn’t, and at that point I decided to call my sister for advice because she is a Carabinieri officer. (Times 7 November 2007)

According an interview Amanda’s mom gave CNN Amanda was freaking out about Meredith.

Quote

E. MELLAS: I got the phone calls about when she came to her house and Amanda kept saying, I've gotten a hold of everybody. I can't get a hold of Meredith. She's not answering her phone. Her door is locked. And you know there was lots of concern.*

and likewise in his 112 call to the police Raffaele stress the concern over the locked door and the blood.*

When the postal police arrive though neither Raffaele nor Amanda mention this concern. If you believe their accounts the postal police arrived moments after Raffaele had tried to climb to Meredith’s window and failed to break down her door. The postal police arrive because they have located Meredith’s phone dumped in a yard. It is completely inconceivable that at this point after being in such a panic they would say nothing. For the next thirty minutes no one discusses the locked door or expresses any concern for Meredith.

Not expressing concern for Meredith is already beyond comprehension but the situation gets worse when Amanda lies about Meredith habit of locking her door. When the postal police ask about the door being locked Amanda says that is nothing to be concerned about because Meredith locks her door all the time even to take a shower. Both of the Postal Police Officers as well as Luca, and Marco testified to this and Amanda herself testified that she said it.

Luca Altieri Testimony Massei p93 said:

I believe it was one of the officers of the postal police that said there was a locked room and Amanda said however that Meredith was in the habit of locking the bedroom even to go to the shower and this reassured us

Both Filomena and Laura would testify that Meredith had never locked her door.[31] That the only time Meredith ever locked her door was when she returned to the UK. Why would Amanda lie about Meredith locking her door and even if she honestly believed this was true why would she dissuade the boys and the postal police from opening the door when just 30 minutes earlier Amanda claims that Raffaele was trying to break down the door and climb to Meredith’s window?

[jjbrr]

Part 2

The pre-dawn call to Mom

Amanda calls her mother at 12:47pm Perugia time which would normally be 3am Seattle time but in this case because of a difference in daylight savings is actually 4am. This call is omitted from Amanda’s e-mail. The police intercepted this conversation between Amanda and her mom.

Quote

Edda (surprised): But you called me three times.

Amanda: Oh, I don’t remember that.

Edda: Okay, you called me first to tell me about some things that had shocked you. But this happened before anything really happened in the house.

Amanda: I know I was making calls. I remember calling Filomena, but I really don’t remember calling anyone else. I just don’t remember having called you.

Edda: Why would that be? Stress, you think?

Amanda: Maybe because so many things were happening at once.

Edda: Okay, right.

After this conversation Edda changes her version of events. Originally she had told police a version of this phone call that was like the version she told CNN. Now Edda basically claims that during the phone call Amanda said exactly what her e-mail says. The call was 88 seconds and the prosecution knows the mother is lying. They make that clear to the jury by asking Edda if she is sure that is what Amanda said and then implying that it was a lot of information for 88 seconds.

Edda said:

Yes, [Amanda spoke] very quickly. I told her to call the police. She said Raf was finishing a call with his sister and then was going to call police. This was the first call

Amanda tried to pretend that this phone call never happened when on the stand because it is going to be difficult to reconcile calling her mom at 3am with the rest of her behaviour.

Amanda said:

Comodi: You said that you called your mother on the morning of Nov 2.

Amanda: Yes.

Comodi: When did you call her for the first time?

Amanda: The first time was right away after they had sent us out of the house. I was like this. I sat on the ground, and I called my mother.

Comodi: So this was when either the police or the carabinieri had already intervened.

Amanda: It was after they had broken down the door and sent us outside. I don’t know what kind of police it was, but it was the ones who arrived first. Later, many other people arrived.

Comodi: But from the records, we see that you called your mother – not only from the billing records but also from the cell phone pings – that you first called your mother at twelve. At midday. What time is it at midday? What time is it in Seattle, if in Perugia it is midday?

Amanda: In Seattle it’s morning. It’s a nine hour difference, so, ah, three in the morning.

Comodi: Three o’clock in the morning?

Amanda: Yes.

Comodi: So your mother would certainly have been sleeping.

Amanda: Yes.

Comodi: But at twelve o’clock, nothing had happened yet. That’s what your mother said…

Amanda: I told my mother…

Comodi: …during the conversation you had with her in prison. Even your mother was amazed that you called her at midday, which was three or four o’clock in the morning in Seattle, to tell her that nothing had happened.

Amanda: I didn’t know what had happened. I just called my mother to say that [the police] had sent us out of the house, and that I had heard something said about…
Comodi: But at midday nothing had happened yet in the sense that the door had not been broken down yet.

Amanda: Hm. Okay. I don’t remember that phone call. I remember that I called her to tell her what we had heard about a foot. Maybe I did call before, but I don’t remember it.

Comodi: But if you called her before, why did you do it?

Amanda: I don’t remember, but if I did it, I would have called to…

Comodi: You did it.

Amanda: Okay, that’s fine. But I don’t remember it. I don’t remember that phone call.

In the Italian system the judges can ask questions and so Massei interjects here

Massei: Excuse me. You might not remember it, but the Public Minister [prosecutor] has just pointed out to you a phone call that your mother received in the small hours.

Commodi: At three o’clock in the morning.

Massei: So, that must be true. That did happen. Were you in the habit of calling her at such an hour? Did you do this on other occasions? At midday in Italy, which corresponds in Seattle to a time when… It’s just that we don’t usually call each other in the middle of the night.

Amanda: Yes, yes, that’s true.

Massei: So either you had a particular reason on that occasion, or else it was a routine. This is what the Public Minister is referring to.

Amanda: Yes. Well, since I don’t remember this phone call, although I do remember the one I made later, ah. But. Obviously I made that phone call. So, if I made that phone call, it’s because I had, or thought that I had, something I had to tell her. Maybe I thought even then that there was something strange, because at that moment, when I’d gone to Raffaele’s place, I did think there was something strange, but I didn’t know what to think. But I really don’t remember this phone call, so I can’t say for sure why. But I suppose it was because I came home and the door was open, and so for me.

Trying to evade answering this question didn’t serve Amanda well. Her performance on the stand was very weak and left an unfavourable impression with the jury. She has never explained why she called her mother at 3am and yet expressed no concern to the postal police when they just showed up.

Calling the Police after the Postal Police had already arrived.

Raffaele makes two calls to 112 (911). The first is at 12:51pm and the second one is at 12:54pm. The postal police claim that they arrived at about 12:30pm. On March 13 2009 Police inspector Mauro Barbadori testified that the CCTV for the parking lot near the cottage captured a black Fiat Punto arriving at the 12:25pm. While this can’t be confirmed to be the postal police it is the same colour and model as their car. The Postal Police notes have them arriving at 12:30pm. At 12:43pm the postal police call Meredith’s UK phone.[315] The Postal Police at this point only had Mededith’s Italian mobile phone and that was registered to Filomena. The Postal Police only learn the phone actually belongs to Meredith and that she has a second phone after they speak to Amanda. That they called Meredith’s UK phone 12 minutes before Rafaele called 112 requires that the Postal Police have arrived sufficiently before 12:43pm to speak to Amanda and get the other phone number.

On the internet there was been some argument that the CCTV camera was 30 minutes slow but despite all attempts to find any evidence that this argument was made in court I cannot find any reference to it or to what expert testified that the CCTV camera was slow. This argument is very weak so I suspect it was never actually presented as evidence. Mauro Barbadori testified on March 13th using the CCTV video to establish Meredith arriving home at the correct time the night before and the possible capture of the Postal Police vehicle arriving. If the clock is slow argument was made someone would have needed to testify to that after March 13th and there is no record of it.

Despite the lack of evidence this was ever made I feel it is worth debunking. The argument revolves around the claim that a call to Amanda at 1:29pm was from the police that were lost. The police are then shown arriving at 1:22pm. Based on this Amanda's supporter claim that the CCTV camera had a slow clock. If we accept that the 1:29 call was from lost police how do we know the police who are recorded on the CCTV are also the police that needed directions? The call was from a landline so even if it was the police asking for directions it could have been for other officers since the cottage was soon swarming with them.

While there is no reason to believe the CCTV clock was slow there are many reasons to believe that it was accurate and that Raffaele did call the police after the police had already arrived.

1) Both Officer Battistelli and Officer Marzi remember arriving at about 12:30pm and that is what their notes say. Police officers generally have accurate records.

2) Luca and Marco claim that they arrived before 1pm and before Filomena and Paola who they claim arrived 8-10 minutes after them.

3) Filomena and Paola both claim that they arrived at about 1pm

For the clock to slow argument to be correct all six of these individuals would need to be wrong about what time they arrived at the cottage.

4) The postal police called Meredith’s UK phone at 12:43pm. The only way they could have discovered the Italian phone they had was Meredith’s and not Filomena’s was Amanda. The Postal Police came to the cottage looking for Filomena.

So to accept that the CCTV camera is slow we need to accept that the Wind mobile network is also working with a slow clock.

Further, the account of what happened when the Postal Police arrived is not in dispute by any party. The postal police arrived. Raffaele told them about the burglary and how they were waiting for the police. The postal police explained that they were there because of a hoax and the discovery of Filomena’s phone in a backyard. Amanda explained that the phone actually belonged to Meredith and that she had a second phone. The Postal Police requested that Amanda write down the phone numbers for both phones which she did. They then took a tour of the house were shown the bathroom and Filomena’s room with the staged break-in. Luca and Marco arrive and talk to the Postal Police. Filomena and Poala arrive and talk to the postal police. At this point Officer Battistelli called headquarters.

5) Officer Battistelli calls headquarters to update them on what they had learned and speaks to Officer Bartolozzi who now has Meredith’s UK phone. During this conversation Battistelli mentions Filomena’s arrival and Meredith’s UK phone is turned on. Wind records the phone as active at 1:00pm.

If we are to accept that Raffaele is telling the truth then his call to the police would have ended at 12:55pm. That means that everything described above would have needed to happen in less than 4.5 minutes.

6) Raffaele when confronted with his phone records on November 5th admitted that he called the police after the postal police had already arrived.

I think Raffaele admitting to it was more than enough evidence but I figured I would add the impossibility of getting everything done between when Raffaele ends his call to 112 and the next known timestamp of Meredith’s UK phone being turned on. The truth is that the postal police arrived at 12:30pm. They spoke to the couple outside and then took the tour of the cottage. Around 12:45pm Luca and Marco arrived which gave Amanda and Raffaele the chance to go into Amanda’s room and make a series of phone calls. Filomena and Paola arrive at 1pm and the couple comes out of the bedroom which was witnessed by both Luca and Paola.

The 122 Call

The 112 call just sounds suspicious. Raffaele hangs up when he realizes the police officer is suspicious. Raffaele shows a lot of concern for the locked door but says nothing about it to the postal police who if you believe Amanda arrive seconds after this call but in reality the postal police is actually in the cottage as this call is being made. Raffaele also says that nothing was stolen which is odd.

Quote

Corporal Daniele: "Carabinieri"

Raffaele in a feeble, almost sleepy voice: Hello, good morning. Listen someone has entered the house by smashing the window and has made a big mess, the door's closed, the street is....What's the street?

Amanda in the background: Villa dela Pergola

Raffaele Sollecito: Villa dela Pergola, number 7, in Perugia

Corporal Daniele: Does anyone live there? The name?

Raffaele Sollecito: Um. Amanda Knox. A group of students live here - one's Amanda Knox.

Corporal Daniele: This is a burglary?

Raffaele Sollecito: No, there hasn't been a burglary, they broke the glass, they made a mess....

Corporal Daniele sounding baffled: So look, you're saying someone got in and then broke a window? How do you know anyone got in anyway?"

Raffaele Sollecito: You can see from the traces they left, there are bloodstains in the bathroom.

Corporal Daniele sounding even more perplexed: They went in and.....why? Did they cut themselves when they broke the window?

Raffaele Sollecito: Um...

Corporal Daniele: Hello!?"

The line went dead.

Second Call

Corporal Daniele: Carabinieri, Perugia.

Raffaele Sollecito:Yes, hello, I called two seconds ago.

Corporal Daniele: Someone's been in the house and broke the window?

Raffaele Sollecito: Yes

Corporal Daniele: And then they went into the bathroom?

Raffaele Sollecito: I don't know. if you come here perhaps...

Corporal Daniele: What did they take?

Raffaele Sollecito: They didn't take anything,the problem is one of the doors is closed, there are bloodstains….

Corporal Daniele: A door's closed? Which door?

Raffaele Sollecito: A door of one of the flatmates who isn't here. We don't know where she is.

Corporal Daniele:And this girl, do you have her mobile number?

Raffaele Sollecito: Yes, yes, we tried to call her but she isn't answering.

Corporal Daniele:OK, I'll send you a patrol car now and we'll check the situation out.

Raffaele Sollecito: OK.

link to post 3

[jjbrr]

Post 4: The Confession.

Much has been reported of Amanda’s interrogation in the media. All of it is lies. The family, desperate to explain why Amanda not only confessed to being at the cottage but also implicated an innocent, slowly increased the number of hours that Amanda was interrogated for. Most of the time you hear a number in the low teens-- I believe 13 hours is the official Knox number-- but some Amanda supporters have claimed much higher numbers – 54 hours being the highest I’ve seen.

Quote

In the Sunday Times Times Online story, the couple recounted how their daughter told them she had been hit and threatened during her questioning.

In her trial a year later, Knox would present a very different account of the late-night questioning from that of police and interpreters who were present. Police have also charged Knox with slander for similar statements she made in court. *

The reality though is very different. Amanda actually confessed in less than two hours and her interrogation was at most a little more than two hours. The family needed to make the interrogation sound worse because otherwise no one would believe it was a false confession.

There were twelve police officers and an interpreter present and they all claim that Amanda was not abused. Amanda never asked for a lawyer* nor did she complain of abuse when she met with US consulate staff the day after her interrogation. Amanda has never made a formal complaint against the police for this alleged abuse.* The same cannot be said of the police. Amanda faces charges for criminal defamation for lying about the interrogation.* This trial will happen in the distant future and while it is unlikely that she will get the maximum she nevertheless is facing a maximum sentence of six years. Her parents are also facing similar charges but of a less serious nature and they are facing a maximum of three years.* In both cases the most likely outcome is a fine and less than a year. Obviously truth is a defence to criminal defamation and the police have no concerns about shining a spotlight on what happened that night because they know that Amanda is lying.

The night starts at 10:40pm. Raffaele was scheduled to come to the police station and since Amanda was living at his place she decided to come along. The police were calling Raffaele in to confront him about the inconsistencies in his phone records. Confronted with the phone records showing he had called the 911 after the police had already arrived Raffaele quickly changed his story. His new story was that Amanda had left his company at 9pm to go meet friends and that she had only returned at 1am wearing what might have been different clothing. To make it even more suspicious Raffaele added that in the morning she asked for a plastic bag because she needed it for dirty clothing.*

Amanda was in the public waiting room of the police station. She did some homework, she called Filomena and asked if the living arrangements would be maintained once all of this was over, and she did the now famous cartwheel at the police station. We don’t have exact times for these but sometime between 11:30pm and Midnight Monica Napoleoni approached Amanda as Amanda was getting something from the vending machine.

Napoleoni is the head of homicide and if she comes over and leans against the machine and asks “Who on earth could have killed her?” while your boyfriend is an hour into his interrogation that should set off alarm bells but Amanda would later tell her mom she had no idea she needed a lawyer. The decision to arrest Raffaele had been made and Napoleoni wanted to move Amanda as far away as possible from Raffaele’s room so that she wouldn’t hear him should he scream out in protest.

At this point the police knew that the couple was involved but they felt like they were protecting someone else. The police had bugged the waiting room and heard a conversation where they discussed a third person that they did not name on November 4th.

Quote

Raffaele Sollecito: What are you thinking?

Amanda Knox: I don’t want to be here. I want all of this to be over. I want to know who his friends are because he doesn’t have many friends. He didn’t leave the house much. He didn’t talk much.

Napoleoni asked Amanda about Patrick’s text message. Amanda had previously claimed that she had never responded to it but the police knew that she had. Combined with the intercepted conversation the police figured the person Amanda and Raffaele might be talking about was Patrick.

Amanda was told that Raffaele was no longer supporting her alibi. That Raffaele had said that she had left at 9pm and not returned until 1am. Amanda started to hit herself on the temples with both hands.

Quote

Officer Rita Ficarra stated on the stand that “she started crying and wrapping her hands around her head, she started shaking it” and then “she said: it was him… Patrick killed her.

This was the same behaviour she had engaged in the night of the murder when the police had fingerprinted everyone who had access to the house and again when the police had asked the girls to look at the knives to identify if any were missing. At this point Amanda told the first version of the story where Raffaele and her were at the house and Patrick killed Meredith.

This is Amanda’s story as extrapolated from the statement and reported in the Daily Mail

Quote

Amanda Knox told police that she met Lumumba at 9pm on a basketball court and they went to her house.

"I can't remember if my friend Meredith was there or if she came later. We were all separate," she said.

"He (Lumumba) wanted her (Meredith).

"Yes we were in the house. That evening we wanted to have a bit of fun. We were drunk. We asked her to join us.

"Diya wanted her. Raffaele and I went into another room and then I heard screams.

"Patrick and Meredith were in Meredith's bedroom while I think I stayed in the kitchen.

"I can't remember how long they were together in the bedroom but the only thing I can say is that at a certain point I remember hearing Meredith's screams and I covered my ears.

"Then I don't remember anything else. There is such a lot going on in my head.

"I can't remember if Meredith was screaming and if I heard thuds but I could imagine what was going on.'

"I want to tell you what has happened because it's left me really shocked and I am really scared of Patrick, the African guy who owns Le Chic where I sometimes work."

Later, she contradicts herself, saying: "I can't remember if Raffaele was there that night.

"I remember waking up in his bed at his house and that I went back to my house where I found the door open.*

Mignini was called for and he arrived around 1am. Amanda told the same story again in his presence. Her statement was typed up at 1:45am and she was informed that she was no longer a witness but would now be considered a suspect.* Mignini informed her that he would not ask her any questions until she got a lawyer but that she was free to make spontaneous declarations. Amanda declined and was taken to a cell where they gave her dinner.



At 5:45am Amanda decided she wanted to make a spontaneous statement. Again she tells the same story.



This was followed by a letter to the police where she attempts to retract some of what she said and it is very strange in that she now claims that her confession is true but also that her alibi is true even though they are mutually exclusive scenarios.

Quote

2. I also know that the fact that I can't fully recall the events that I claim took place at Raffaele's home during the time that Meredith was murdered is incriminating. And I stand by my statements that I made last night about events that could have taken place in my home with Patrik, but I want to make very clear that these events seem more unreal to me that what I said before, that I stayed at Raffaele's house.
3. I'm very confused at this time. My head is full of contrasting ideas and I know I can be frustrating to work with for this reason. But I also want to tell the truth as best I can. Everything I have said in regards to my involvement in Meredith's death, even though it is contrasting, are the best truth that I have been able to think. *

It seems to me that having had time to think she has started to regret her statements from the night before but at the same time she is not really willing to return to the alibi because Rafaele has thrown her under the bus. She includes a line that seems itself designed to be the gateway to throwing him under the bus.

Quote

After dinner I noticed there was blood on Raffaele's hand, but I was under the impression that it was blood from the fish.

The Supreme Court would eventually rule the original statements would not be admissible but that the spontaneous statement and letter would be. The Supreme Court ruled that she was a suspect before 1:45am and should have been treated as one the second Raffaele stopped collaborating her alibi. That is fine for a court but for the purpose of determining the truth we are not bound by these rules. The claim that they are false confessions holds no credibility. False confessions happen under very specific conditions that were not present here. Confessing within minutes after finding out that your accomplice is no longer collaborating your alibi is not how false confessions happen which is why her supporters fabricated the abusive interrogation.

Another strong indicator that the confession is real is that it matches the actual evidence of what happened. Knox claims they were in Piazza Grimana on the night of the murder and a witness saw them in Piazza Grimana. Knox supporters would have us believe that Amanda generated this fictional story and in doing so she picked a place where a witness would later claim to have seen them. Amanda would also say there was a single scream which was also what the witnesses would later claim. Amanda also said the Meredith was raped which the police would not know for until two days later. To believe that the confessions are a false you have to accept that Amanda’s imagination just happened to get a lot of details correct completely by coincidence.

Link

[jjbrr]

Post 5: Things Amanda Shouldn’t Have Known.

Meredith was killed by the closet but her body was moved. When Luca kicked open the door this is what they saw.



As soon as the postal police realized it was a crime scene they forced everyone down the hall and out of the house. Luca, Marco, Paola, and Filomena were in the hall and would have seen this scene for a few seconds. Paola would testify that you couldn’t see anything because it was dark and that all she saw was a foot.

Amanda hours later would tell people that Meredith had died by the closet. This turned out to be true but not even the police were aware of it at this point. This is Amanda’s attempt at explaining how she knew that Meredith had died by the closet.

AKs testimony said:

Amanda Knox's Testimony
GM: We can go backwards later. Did you see Meredith's room?

AK: No.

GM: Did you get a glimpse?

AK: No.

GM: Where were you?

AK: I was near the entrance, in the living room.

GM: Sollecito was with you?

AK: Yes.

GM: So he didn't see either.

AK: He didn't either.

GM: From what Frost, Meredith's friend, said, and the others, we heard that you,
or Sollecito, claimed to have seen the body in the closet, covered with a
sheet, and nothing could be seen but a foot. Now if you hadn't seen the room,
and Raffaele hadn't seen it either, how could you make this observation?
How could you -- I'm asking another question -- and how could this closet
contain Meredith's body? You know the closet, right? I have a black and
white photo of it here. Here. This closet.

AK: All right. Firstly, I think Frost made a little mistake, because I never
said that I saw Meredith's body in the closet. I said that I had heard people
around me saying that there was a body in the closet, that was covered, with a
foot sticking out. I too was confused by this, but that's what I heard.
But when people kept on asking me what happened, what they had found, I
answered what I had heard.

GM: Or what Raffaele told you.

AK: Raffaele, or the people he was asking for me.
….
GM: So, who were these people who said this to Raffaele?

AK: We were all asking each other, because there was Filomena's friend, who had
maybe obviously heard it from the police, but it's not like a followed
exactly where the information was coming from. Everyone was talking.
Everyone was giving explanations and versions and information, and I kept
turning to Raffaele because at least he understood the language. I didn't
even understand...

GM: Raffaele didn't tell you who told him?

AK: No, but he was explaining to me above all what I asked him: what happened,
what was in the room, those things.

GM: I'm asking you, but if you don't know, just tell me: did he say to you
"Filomena told me" or "such-and-such told me", Altieri, the tall girl,
the others that were there that saw into the room. There was no girl in
the closet. Did he tell you who told him that? That there was a girl
inside the closet?

AK: No, he didn't tell me who said that. It was the people around.

Besides knowing that Meredith had been killed by the closet Amanda also knew Meredith’s throat had been slit. Natalie Hayward expressed hope that hopefully Meredith died quickly and Amanda show back with "What do you think? She ****’en bled to death." *

AKs testimony said:

FM: You mentioned to your friends in the Questura that according to you,
Meredith died slowly.

AK: They said...

FM: How did you come to say that?

AK: I heard that her throat was cut, and from what I saw in CSI [Crime Scene
Investigation] of these things, these things are neither quick nor pleasant.
So when they said "We hope she died quickly," like I don't know, in some other
way, I said "But what are you saying, her throat was cut, good Lord, bleargh."
I had remained at that point, that brutality, this death that was really
blechh, that made a horrible impression. That was what really struck me,
that fact of having your throat cut. It seemed so gross, and I imagined that
it was a very slow and terrifying death. So when they said "We hope it was
like this," I said "No, I think it was really gross, disgusting."

I think this pretty much speaks for itself. Filomena and Paola actually saw the room and the only description they could give was that there was a foot. Amanda knows the body was moved and how Meredith died. She knows she can’t say she heard it from Filomena, Luca, Marco, or Paola because the prosecution will just put whoever she names on the stand to say it wasn’t true so she refuses to answer.

Link

[jjbrr]

Post 6: Staged Break-in

Filomena testified that when she left she closed the shutters. [48] She further testified that the wood in the shutters was swollen and that made them come in contact with the windowsill. [48] This contact made it so that it required a lot of force to both open and close the shutters.[48] The defence objected to this statement claiming that Filomena left the shutters open. The Court rejected this as Filomena was very reliable and detailed and there was no reason to doubt her testimony.[50]

To consider if the burglary was real the Court decided to consider what a hypothetical burglar would need to do [48-49]. The first task would be opening the shutters. This would require that the burglar climb 13 feet and open the shutters. The hypothetical burglar before engaging in this climb would have had to hope that the shutters were not lashed because if they were his climb would have been for nothing [49].

Spoiler

Having climbed the burglar would now have to return to the ground and throw a rock to break the window. The work choice was poor choosing a 20cm 10lb rock to throw at a window 13 feet up is more challenging than a smaller rock which would do the same job. Once the window was broken the hypothetical burglar would need to climb the 13 feet to the window and balance himself on the windowsill to unlock the window through the broken glass. The lock is above the blue arrow marked S

Spoiler

The burglar would have to do all of that without leaving any trace of himself on the building, window, or in Filomena’s room. It had rained the night before and the ground would have been wet. [50] Officer Brocci noted that after walking around in the yard her shoes were dirty and that “grass attached to the shoes.” [51] Officer Brocci investigated the ground and wall and there was no indication that anyone had been down in the yard or that anyone had climbed the wall.

Quote

We observed both the wall...underneath the window and all of the vegetation underneath the window, and we noted that there were no traces on the wall, no traces of earth, of grass, nothing, no streaks, nothing at all, and none of the vegetation underneath the window appeared to have been trampled; nothing [p. 142 declarations of Gioia Brocci Massei p50]

Furthermore, during this investigation the police noticed a nail protruding from the wall underneath the window.[51] This nail would make the climb even more difficult since the hypothetical burglar would have to accomplish the climb while avoiding the nail and it would thus prevent the hypothetical burglar from allowing his body to make contact with that portion of the wall.



According to crime reconstruction manuals for police training the first consideration in determining if a burglary was staged is the logic of the entry point. In this case the burglar would have needed to walk around the entire building passing by an easier point of entry that offered considerable concealment to instead choose the entry point that is very difficult / impossible and which is directly exposed to a main street, a parking lot, and Piazza Grimana. The most logical point of entry would have been the glass door leading on to the terrace. The L-shape of the home prevented people from the road from seeing the burglar and while the bugler would need to climb onto the terrace it was lower than Filomena’s window by over a meter and once on the terrace the burglar would have access to the second story without having to hang on to the side of the building with nothing to stand on. Rudy was familiar with the cottage so would know this.

With respect to the distribution of the broken glass there are two different findings that prove the break-in as staged. The first is the distribution of the glass on the windowsill. The glass is evenly distributed both on the inside and outside of the windowsill but does not extend beyond the point in the windowsill that made contact with the shutters. [51] There was also no glass on the ground below the window.[51] An expert testified that this would exclude the possibility that the rock was thrown from the outside.[51] Pasquali the defence expert confirmed that the glass did not advance beyond the position that the shutter’s would be in if closed. [51]



Further, to unlock the window the hypothetical burglar would have needed to balance himself on the outside of the windowsill but this windowsill was covered with glass.[51] Likewise to enter through the window the hypothetical burglar would need to stand / kneel on the windowsill and would have brushed aside the glass to prevent himself from being hurt or at least crushed it – since this did not happen no one entered through the window .[51]

The Court also heard from both Officer Battistelli, Officer Marsi, and Filomena that the glass was on top of the items that had been disturbed.[53-54] The items tossed were mostly clothing but there was also a laptop bag moved and it also had glass on top of it in the new location.[53] The obvious conclusion is that the room was ransacked prior to the window being broken. The defence objected to the quality of the photos and that the Court had to rely on witness testimony to determine this issue.[53]

Officer Battistelli testified that the room looked staged in that there was no evidence that any search for valuables was undertaken.[53] Clothing was thrown on the floor but none of the small boxes were opened. A camera, MP3 player, laptop, two designer handbags, and designer sunglasses were left untouched. Absolutely nothing was stolen [53].

The Court also put weight on Raffaele Sollecito conversation with the Carabinieri. When the officer taking the call asked Sollecito what was stolen he responded that nothing had been stolen. Sollecito says this twice. It is a strange thing for Sollecito to say since not only was it not his room but he did not even live in the house [88]. They took this to suggest that Sollecito had participating in the staging and thus knew that nothing had actually been stolen.

On a tour of the house the defense lawyer requested that he be allowed to demonstrate that it would be possible. The lawyer’s assistant attempted the climb but while he could reach the windowsill he was unable to pull himself up. This doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t but it did look bad and confirmed that if this was possible it would be hard and that to imagine someone did it without leaving any trace is unbelievable.



The last piece of evidence for the break-in being staged is that Meredith’s blood was found in the room mixed with Amanda’s DNA. [191] This will be discussed in the sections on the Mixed Blood DNA evidence but for now it proves that someone was in Filomena’s room after Meredith was killed. Rudy’s footprints in Meredith’s blood head straight out the front door. [45] There is also no reason to return to Filomena’s room after the murder since nothing was taken. The only reason would be if they were in the room with the intent of staging the burglary.

The break-in also runs into trouble when it comes to the narrative of how this could have happened. For the break-in theory to work Meredith had to come home to interrupt Rudy who was in the bathroom. We know Meredith had 0.43g/l of alcohol in her system at time of death. [112] We know based on the four girls that Meredith was with that they only consumed water at Robyn’s house so the only explanation is that Meredith had a glass of wine with her snack when she got home. That means that the narrative that Meredith came home to interrupt a burglary is wrong. The burglar doesn’t work as a narrative if Meredith is home before the hypothetical burglar breaks in because Rudy needs to be on the toilet when he gets surprised.

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Post 7: Multiple Attackers.

We know there were multiple individuals involved because someone had to move the body and clean up while Rudy was at Domus. That there were multiple attackers becomes evident when you look at the wounds on the body. Out of respect to the Kercher family a lot of the evidence related to the wounds has been kept private. In what has to be a sickening and pointless slap in the face Sollecito’s family was involved with leaking the photos of Meredith’s body. I think we can do without having to link to those.

What we know is that there were a total of 47 cuts and bruises on Meredith’s body. Meredith was punched both from the right and from the left. She had bruising on her elbows as you would expect from having her arms restrained behind her. The attacker was able to remove her jeans. [370] The first cut was from the right and 4cm that came to a stop when the knife hit her jaw bone. [371]There was also a 8cm stab from the left. Markings from the point of the knife show that the knife was held against the neck in a threatening way before being plunged in. [371] Below the big cut across her neck several light slices were inflicted. [371] The only wound that might be constructed as a defensive wound is a .6cm wound on the palm of her right hand, a .3cm cut on the tip of the first finger of the left hand, and a .6cm wound on the second finger of her left hand. [369] Meredith had nothing under her finger nails nor any defensive cuts as one would expect given the nature of the attack.

The lack of defensive wounds makes it clear that both of Meredith’s arms were restrained. No one allows someone to stab a knife 4cm into their neck without reacting. No one remains still and allows someone to cut their neck multiple times. All of this happed upright so it is not like the attacker could position himself on top of Meredith to use his body to restrain her. At most he would have one hand to restrain her with but since he switched the side he attacked her from that would require at least briefly releasing her.

As is typical in this case various experts testified. A medical examiner from Rome was asked to consult by the Court. Vincenza Liviero testified she found that “there were more than two hands” involved.* Lalli coroner that did the initial autopsy testified that positioning of the bruises on Kercher’s required multiple attackers.

Francesco Introna, a private coroner hired by Sollecito’s defense team testified that he believes only one person killed Kercher. Introna agreed that the lack of material under Meredith’s fingernails meant the attacker overpowered her so that she could not fight back but that one attacker could accomplish that.

Torre an Amanda defence expert testified that he saw no evidence that more than one person was involved in her murder. When asked about the lack of defensive wounds Torre refused to answer.

Quote

If someone has a lot of wounds on the hands, thighs and hips, it is likely there was a fight,” he said during cross-examination. “But I prefer to address the technical aspects, not the psychological side of this.*

The defence experts were not on the same page. Introna said that the attack had to happen from behind because it is impossible to slit someone’s throat while in front of them. I have to admit I have never done this I am going to disagree. Torre on the other hand argued that the attack could only have happened from the front

It is interesting to note that both Introna and Torre choose to not examine the body. Instead they worked from photographs. This is a common strategy when you want to have more wiggle room in getting to conclusions that would be ruled out if better data was known.

If you believe in single attacker or multiple attackers it comes down to the defensive wounds. Do you think a single attacker could inflict 47 wounds against a fit standing victim without the victim fighting back at all? Basically do you think Meredith just stood there and not only took it but actually stood still while the neck wounds were inflicted?

Witnesses heard multiple people.

Nara Capezzali heard a scream coming from the cottage. Shortly after the scream she heard people running in different directions. Some of the running was toward Via del Bulagaio and the other footsteps were up the metal stairway that leads to Via Pintuncchio.

Beyond the scream there is good reason to believe that these were the killers. Via del Bulagaio is a long road along the side of a hill. You can’t get off the road for a good 15 minutes and that takes you to the house where the mobile phones were found. If you turn left at the house where the phones were found you end up at Rudy’s house after a few minutes. With the other footsteps leading to Via Pintuncchio the evidence fits perfectly with what Antonio Curatolo witnessed. He claims that Amanda and Rafaele entered Piazza Grimana from Via Pintuchhio after 11pm.

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Post 8: Things That Rudy Could Not Do.

The testimony of Nara Capezzali has Rudy running soon after the scream in the direction of where the mobile phones were dumped and the couple running back towards where Antonio Curatolo would see them re-entering Piazza Grimana. It would take Rudy 15-20 minutes to reach the turn off to his house which is where the phones were dumped. It would take another 5-8 minutes from there to get home. After that Rudy re-appears at Domus club.

Clean Up

Someone cleaned up the house. Just in the bathroom we have blood in in the bidet, behind the toilet seat, on a Q-tip box, on the light switch, and in the sink.




Obviously there was a lot more blood than this at one point. The police undertook a Kastle-Meyer test and these were the results.




So someone cleaned up the bathroom. Someone also cleaned bloody footprints that were made in the hall as well as some blood that was deposited in Filomena’s room. This would have taken hours but Rudy was seen running from the house by a witness and Nara Capezzali also heard someone running away that was almost certainly Rudy given the location the mobile phones were dumped.

There is enough time for Rudy to return to the cottage. Depending on how long it took him to clean up he’d have about an hour if he was going to make it to Domus for 2am. The walk from his house to Domus would even place him minutes from the cottage but I don’t see how it would make sense for to consider Rudy cleaned. First, why would he return to the scene? The risk of doing that far exceeds the value of cleaning which is pretty much zero, he didn’t have time, and it makes no sense that he cleans all the evidence except the evidence that incriminates him.

Someone cleaned the bathroom and the hallway and the only person that would benefit from cleaning and who knew that no one was coming home is Amanda.

Who moved and staged the body?

Meredith’s body was moved. Meredith originally died by the closet on her side. She remained by the closet long enough for the blood to start to dry. The blood had reached a state where it was sufficiently dry as to preserve the impression of Meredith’s bra strap. Meredith’s bra was removed after death and the body staged to look like a rape. Further, evidence of this is that when the body was covered the duvet got covered in blood from the neck wound but blood on Meredith’s chest had dried and did not transfer.

It is impossible for Rudy to do this so again we are left asking – who would be comfortable being in a house with a murder victim except someone who knew that no one was coming home that night? We are also left asking why would a burglar want to stage the scene like a rape? There is no advantage to a burglar to do that. The only person for which staging the scene makes sense and who would also feel comfortable spending the much time in the house is Amanda Knox.

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Post 9: Footprints

The Bathmat Footprint

There is a bare footprint in blood on a bathmat in the bathroom. Lorenzo Rinaldi the director of the print –identity division of Italy’s scientific police excluded the possibility that the bloody footprint on the blue bathmat was the right size or shape to belong to Knox or Rudy instead of Sollecito:

Quote

You can see clearly that this bloody footprint on the rug does not belong to Mr. Guede, but you can see that it is compatible with Sollecito.

All the elements are compatible with Mr. Sollecito’s foot,” Rinaldi said, pointing with a red laser to a millimeter-by-millimeter analysis of Sollecito’s footprint projected onto a big-screen in the courtroom. He used similar methods to exclude that the footprint on the bath mat could possibly be Guede’s or Knox’s.

But the next witness, another print expert, again confirmed Rinaldi’s testimony, that the print, which only shows the top half of the foot, matches the precise characteristics of Sollecito’s foot. *

The reason it is Raffaele’s foot are detailed on pages 338 to 342 but are summarized in this chart.



A defence expert testified that that Rinaldi and Boemia measured wrong and the footprint actually belongs to Rudy. This is the job of a defence expert and he does the best he can but the idea that the director of the identity division as well as a second expert could both do their jobs incorrectly is just not believable. They never address the issue of how it could be Rudy’s foot given his shoe prints heads straight from the body to the front door so how would he even end up in the bathroom with no shoes on.

Footprints are not like DNA or fingerprints so it is possible that someone with feet that are exceptionally similar to Raffaele made that print but that print was certainly not made by Rudy and is a match to Raffaele.

Luminol

This is a map of where the luminol prints were found. Blue is luminol and red is in blood.



There are nine samples of blood detected by luminol. Two of these are in Filomena’s room (L1 and L2) and both of those had Meredith’s DNA and one also had Amanda’s DNA (L2). [194]

The remaining 7 luminol hits form a path from Merediths room to Amanda’s with L9 being directly in front of Meredith’s door and ending with L6 at Amanda’s door. L5, L4, and L3 are in Amanda’s room.



L8 had both Amanda and Meredith’s DNA. L3,L4,and L5 had Amanda’s DNA
Of the luminol footprints only three had enough distinguishing features to attempt to identify them. One is inside Amanda’s room and it has Amanda’s DNA and is also a match for her foot based on two toes, the metatarsus and a portion of the plantar arch. [347]
Another print that is identified is in the hallway and it is a match to Sollecito based on the big toe, the metatarsus, and the heel. [347]

The last print that could be identified was outside Meredith’s room and orientated as if someone was entering the room. It was a match for Amanda on the basis of the big toe, the width of the metatarsus, and the width of the heel.

Footprints are not like DNA or fingerprints and they are even less specific when you are working from just a few measurements but two people with feet similar to Amanda and Raffaele were walking around the cottage depositing Meredith’s blood.

Pillow

A woman’s bloody shoeprint which matched Amanda Knox’s foot size was found on a pillow under Meredith’s body.

Quote

All the bloody shoeprints in the room where Kercher was found were compatible with the size 11 Nike Outbreak 2 shoes believed to be Guede's, Rinaldi said, except for one smaller, unattributed shoeprint found on the pillow that was under Kercher's body.

Presiding Judge Giancarlo Massei asked Rinaldi what size that shoe print was, he responded "37 or 38." He then asked what size Knox wears, and Rinaldi said according to other shoes sequestered from the crime scene, she wears a 37. A second print expert later testified that he believed the shoeprint to be that of a woman's size 37.5 Asics tennis shoe. No Asics tennis shoes were among the 22 pairs sequestered by police from the three's apartments.*

The defence expert would testify that because the pillow was soft it might lead to a larger show making a small imprint. Rudy is a size 11 men’s. The shoe print is a female size 7. That is the equivalent of a men’s size 5. So to accept the defence’s argument we need to accept that Rudy’s shoe left a footprint that was 6 sizes smaller than his actual shoe size and coincidently that it was Amanda’s shoe size. Bormia testified that the dimensions of the shoe were clearly those of a female shoe.[343] so it is just not the size but the actual ratios that had to coincidently shift from men’s size 11 to female size 7.

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Post 10: DNA

The Mixed Blood DNA

There were five instances of Amanda Knox’s blood or DNA mixed with Meredith’s blood in three different locations in the cottage: the bathroom, the hallway, and Filomena’s bedroom. The defense did not dispute the mixed blood DNA. The defence’s position was that the mixed blood was a coincidence and the result of two girls living together [192]

The mixed blood DNA is very strong evidence because the RFU value of Amanda’s profile is very high. This excludes the possibility that it is just random DNA from exfoliated skin cells.(Luciano Garafano quoted in Darkness Descending p371) In theory these findings could be explained by other means than just mixed blood—Amanda could have spit on all of Meredith’s blood but that is not an acceptable scenario. Vigorous scrubbing would be compatible with these results but that does nothing to mitigate the strength of this evidence against Amanda. The only thing that matters is that these results are not compatible with Meredith’s blood just coming in contact with exfoliated skin cells.

Quote

Forensic police biologists testified about five spots where they had detected samples of “mixed blood” genetic material – spots of blood of both Knox and Kercher’s – in the bidet, on the sink, on the drain tap, on the Q-tip box in the bathroom and in a spot where prosecutors argued Knox and Sollecito staged a break-in. (Andre Vogt The Seattle Post-Intelligencer May 29 2009)

The defence argued that Amanda’s blood could have been there for weeks before Meredith’s blood landed on it but Amanda had testified that there was not blood in the bathroom.

AKs testimony said:

GM: When you saw the bathroom for the last time, were there traces of blood in
it?

AK: No.

Even if we accept that Amanda simply did not see the blood it nevertheless cannot be old since blood decays quickly and by looking at the electropherogram it is clear that has not happened. As such what the defence is asking us to accept is near impossible. To accept the defence’s position Amanda had to independently deposit her blood or saliva in five locations where Meredith’s blood would eventually also be deposited with one of these locations being the bedroom of their roommate that was the site of the staged burglary and this had to happen in the last few days.

Amanda’s blood was found without Meredith DNA in one location and Meredith blood with Amanda’s DNA was located in two locations. In every other location that Meredith’s blood was found it was mixed with Amanda’s blood. The jury was left with two choices accept that this is just a coincidence with astronomical odds or accept the logical conclusion that the blood was deposited by Amanda while cleaning up after Meredith’s murder. Given even Knox’s expert Gino admitted that coincidence was not a logical conclusion

Quote

“No, it is not logical,” she said. “But they were roommates so it is also not impossible." *

I think there is no other conclusion to draw than Amanda was involved.

The Bra Clasp (Massei pp204-211)

The bra clasp was collected on December 18th. The murder happened on November 1st and the collection of evidence happened until November 7th at which point the cottage was sealed. As such when people raise the issue that the bra clasp was not collected until 43 days later they are doing that only to mislead. The risk of contamination would not increase if we waited 43 years as long as the cottage remained sealed. The risk of contamination is the same on December 18th as it would have been on November 8th.

Much more concerning is that the bra clasp moved 1.5 meters. We don’t know how the bra clasp moved but the reality is that while this is certainly a big mistake it does not actually create a problem with the DNA. We use DNA that is discovered years after the fact even when the crime scene has not been sealed and people have access. The only criteria that matters is a consideration of how likely contamination could have happened.

In this case we have several factors that make contamination very unlikely. The first is the lack of donor DNA. The bra clasp never left Meredith’s room. Sollecito’s DNA was not found in Meredith’s room – in fact it was found only in one place in the house and that item was collected the first day. As such it is not like there was an abundance of Sollecito’s DNA from which contamination could happen. Lacking donor DNA contamination is not possible. DNA does not spontaneously appear. That is to say I could give you the bra clasp and you could do anything to it you want and while the handling of the evidence could destroy DNA currently on it and also contaminate the evidence with your DNA and even the DNA of people you know it would never lead to Sollecito’s DNA magically appearing on it.

The second reason that contamination is not a realistic possibility is that the quantity and quality of DNA is not compatible with contamination. If the quantity of the DNA was like the knife then yes it would be possible to argue it was from contamination but there was just too much DNA on the bra clasp for it to be based on contamination. The second issue is the quality of the DNA. The bra clasp was a 16 loci match to Sollecito which again is not possible for secondary transfer without an abundant source of donor DNA. If this contamination was based on secondary transfer we would be witnessing something that has never happened before.

This is why Vincenzo Pascali quit the Sollecito defence team and was replaced by a friend of Sollecito’s father – Professor Introna. Pascali was not willing to testify that there was a reasonable chance of contamination. To make things worse there were rumors that Pascali’s report had not only confirmed Sollecito’s DNA but that the report also showed that Amanda’s DNA was on the bar clasp as well

Quote

Back in September, Pascali, who declined to comment for this story, hinted that the clasp also contained Knox’s DNA.*

Since we have Amanda’s profile and the electropherogram we could try to address these rumors but since there are so few unaccounted for alleles it would be completely meaningless.

The Knife

The knife from Raffaele’s was found to have Meredith’s DNA on the business end and Amanda’s on the handle. Amanda’s DNA is not an issue. No one disputes it was present nor is it strange to find Amanda’s DNA on a knife in a kitchen she would have used.

The issue is with Meredith’s DNA. Again no one disputes that the profile is a full match to Meredith. What they dispute is that because it was such a small sample that it shouldn’t be considered reliable.

LCN DNA is basically the same PCR process but just run for additional cycles so as to amply quantities of DNA that would normally not be detected. This is a process that is used in Europe-- especially in the United Kingdom-- but which is not yet accepted in the United States. New York State is the only state that has allowed it and only once in 2010. The fear is that since you are amplifying such a small amount of DNA that even small trace contamination that would normally register as noise shows up. This makes the risk of contamination much higher than normal.

In this case though there is no realistic chance of contamination. We know that because we can rule out all the possible ways the knife could be contaminated. The first is that the knife could have been contaminated by secondary transfer from Amanda. That Amanda’s DNA was not on the tip though makes that impossible. The second route by which the knife could have become contaminated would have been in the collection. The team that collected this knife did not participate in the collection at the cottage. The final option is contamination at the lab. Stefanoni testified that she did negative tests before testing the knife and further that no item from this case had been tested for the previous six days. That makes contamination impossible. She further explained that the lab was in the process of obtaining ISO9001 certification and as such the internal auditing and documentation was considerably more than under normal circumstance so she was able to support her claims regarding the testing.

The defence nevertheless objected. They took issue with Stefanoni only running the test once. They claim that you need to run it twice. Given the amount of DNA material available that was not an option. All the defence experts were invited to come to the lab on the day of the testing but they all declined. That was intentional since if they were present they couldn’t later argue the proper procedures were not followed. Ideally you would divide a sample into multiple samples and run the test more than once but given the sample was so small to begin with that was not an option here.

The lie about the knife

Just as damaging is that when confronted with the knife DNA results Raffaele did not deny it -- instead he made up a story to explain the presence of the DNA away innocently.

Raf said:

The fact that Meredith’s DNA is on my kitchen knife is because once, when we were all cooking together, I accidentally pricked her hand.

This was established to be a lie. The end result is that Raffaele in an attempt to explain away the evidence against him actually succeed in further implicating himself. He made up the story because he knew there was a possibility that the DNA might be on the knife. The only reason the DNA would be on the knife is if it was used in the murder.

The DNA Review

First I would like to point out that the validity of Stefanoni’s works has been confirmed by Dr. Renato Biondo, Professor Francesca Torricelli, Luciano Garofano, and Professor Giuseppe Novelli. Luciano Garofano is the most respected forensic expert in Italy. This was the reason that Massei rejected the defence request to pause the original trial and have another review. Hellmann granted a defence request for a review and this is how we end up with Stefano Conti and Carla Vecchiotti whose review is very problematic.
The first issue that will automatically stand out to anyone is the bibliography of references. Conti and Vecchiotti keep mentioning “international standards” but not once do they actually name the body that establishes these standards because no such body exists.* Instead what Conti and Vecchiotti have done is assemble a hodgepodge of standards based on such commonly quoted reference manuals as the Louisiana State Police Crime Laboratory Guide, Department of Justice of the State of Wisconsin State Criminal Laboratory Guide, North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation Evidence Guide, Criminal Justice Missouri Southern State Guide, New Jersey State Police Office of Forensic Sciences Manual, and Missouri State Highway Patrol Forensic Evidence Handbook.

There entire bibliography is composed of obscure manuals from the United States.

Quote

The experts quote numerous US police and FBI experts on the risk of low DNA results and poor evidence handling, prompting one Italian police source to claim they were being fed information by Knox's defence team.*

This is especially troubling since the United States unlike Europe does not consider LCN DNA reliable for use in court. Only New York State has so far allowed LCN DNA. As such it is not surprising that they conclude that there was insufficient DNA on the knife to test reliably. Conti and Vecchiotti don’t deny that the DNA profile is a full match to Meredith but only that because the quantity of DNA was so little it falls below the minimum according to manuals from a different jurisdiction. Had Conti and Vecchiotti used manuals from Italy or even the United Kingdom-- which is at the forefront of LCN DNA testing-- they would have reached the opposite conclusion but instead they choose to use manuals from the United States. This is really troubling since their assignment was to evaluate Stefanoni’s work in the context of the regulatory framework that applies to the jurisdiction of the court. Instead Conti and Vecchiotti choose to indite LCN DNA as a science and create their own set of standards.

The next issue I have with the DNA review is that the reviewers themselves seem incompetent. Neither Conti or Vecchiotti are ENFSI certified.* They are academics who have never actually worked in the field. This becomes evident when during the review in the presence of all the other experts Vecchiotti makes a novice mistake using the equipment.(V&C Review) How is someone supposed to review if someone else did a procedure correctly when they themselves can’t use the equipment properly?

Contamination

Vecchiotti talked a lot about the possibility of contamination and they showed the jury a presentation of protocols being broken during the collection of the evidence. This included for example a tech not wearing a hairnet and it included the use of plastic bags after the collection team ran out of paper bags. Both of these things should not have happened but they also don’t matter. Not wearing a hairnet can potentially contaminate the scene with the technician’s DNA but it can’t contaminate the scene with the suspect’s DNA. Using plastic bags increases the risk of destroying DNA but again it can’t lead to the suspect’s DNA appearing on the evidence. The purpose of this was to show that if these protocols are being broken how do we know that other more serious protocols are also not being broken? In the end Conti and Vecchiotti never established how contamination happened or even how it might have happened but instead they advanced a theory that since the collection was not perfect anything could have happened. This would likely be effective when speaking to individuals with no science background who learn about forensics from CSI but it is not a legitimate argument.

Lack of Negative Controls

Conti and Vecchiotti claim that there were no records of negative control tests. Stefanoni responded with accusations that the documentation was supplied. Records show the negative control tests were filed with the court in 2008. Hellmann also had a copy of the documentation for the negative control tests and they were admitted as evidence. It is unclear why Conti and Vecchiotti concluded that there was no record of these.

The Knife

Conti and Vecchotti don’t dispute the DNA is a match to Meredith. Their criticism is simply that because it is LCN DNA it is unreliable. The reason for that is that with LCN DNA you run the amplification process a few additional cycles so even small amounts of DNA are detected. Since we are talking about hundreds of pictograms you have to be very careful to avoid contamination.

Vecchotti decides that we have no way of knowing if Stefanoni took these precautions so we should consider the result unreliable. On the stand though Vecchiotti admitted that contamination of the knife was not a possibility because nothing related to this case had been tested in the lab for more than six days prior to the testing of the knife.*

The reality is that there is no way to explain this result as contamination. The team that collected the knife was never at the cottage so contamination was not possible during collection. The knife was tested at a lab where negative controls were done and which had not tested anything that involved this particular case in six days.

The Bra Clasp

I obviously have some issues with the bra clasp but for me to not consider it as valid evidence I need a plausible explanation of how contamination could have happened. This is a pretty low standard but one higher than Vecchiotti set which was that it is theoretically possible. Contamination is always theoretically possible. There is no way to construct a plausible theory of how contamination would occur here.

Vecchiotti also had issues with Stefanoni increasing the height threshold from 15% to 15.5% when analyzing the electropherogram. During her testimony Stefanoni explained that the normal number is 15% but that this is only a guideline and that you to go as high at 15.5%. Vecchiotti though believes this should be a strict mathematical decision and so questions the inclusion of 4 loci that were attributed to Raffaele. Vecchiotti is wrong on this but more importantly it doesn’t matter. If you remove those 4 loci you still have a 12 loci match. This reduces the odds to about a 1 in 20 billion chance that the DNA attributed to Raffaele is not his. Stefanoni also did a austosomal DNA test and got a 17 loci match to Raffaele which means that it had to be Raffaele or a close male relative.

Vecchiotti also has issues with Srefanoni classifying some small peaks that just poke above 50 RFU as noise. Vecchiotti wants to consider them real alleles. Again this is wrong and the result of analyzing an electropherogram with no real world experience. Again adopting Vecchiotti’s criticisms accomplishes nothing. Accepting these alleles as real alleles rather than just noise means that there is a third profile on the bra clasp. The third profile is very faint unlike Raffaele and Meredith’s profile so it is likely not related to the murder. There is insufficient data to identify anyone in any meaningful way by including these alleles. It does not change the fact that Raffaele’s DNA is present. So Vecchiotti’s criticism is that Stefanoni ignored alleles that have absolutely no value to the investigation.

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[blackshoe]

If there are thousands of posts on the internet regarding whether she did it or not, then clearly she must have done it. Or maybe it was O.J. Simpson.

[kenberg]

My computer, or BBO's, or something in between, is acting up. Ignore this.