Headsup: Disney's Hulu - mafia tool?! First warning already sent to the Knox series production team about the hoaxes and mafia connections. The Daily Beast's badly duped Grace Harrington calls it "the true story of Knox’s wrongful conviction of the murder of her roommate". Harrington should google "rocco sollecito" for why Italians hesitate to talk freely.

Category: 3 No evidence hoax

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Appeal Session #10: After Defense Remarks Panel Of Judges Reaches Its Decision: BOTH GUILTY

Posted by Our Main Posters

Verdict: Both are confirmed guilty

The Massei verdict is upheld. The sentences are 25 years for Raffaerle Sollecito and 28.6 years for Amanda Knox. Sollecito is to have his passport taken away.

For Knox they could issue a worldwide Interpol Red Notice for immediate arrest around the world, even before going for extradition, to stop her dishonest self-serving blabberings. 

Take a look at our conjectures down the bottom of this post on the judges’ deliberations. Looks like we got One, Two and Four right and Knox will be named in the judges report as the prime instigator.

That will hardly help her resist extradition. And it will please Guede and Sollecito, who both always hint at that.

To CNN: yet again this is NOT double jeopardy. Read the extradition treaty. It was ONE valid trial (2009) and now ONE valid and failed appeal (2014). Not two trials.

Tweets from our main poster Machiavelli

26. All these many thanks are so warming and comforting; I’m glad my contribution was useful among the many others.

25. No measure taken for expatriation of Knox because she is a US citizen currently in her own country.

24.  Passport withdrawn for Sollecito and movement restriction within the boundaries of the state of Italy.  No restriction for Knox.

23.  Ruled that Knox’s royalties belong to Lumumba,

22.  Accessory penalties/settlements: established Knox stinks, ordered Dalla Vedova to change jobs… (!)

21.  Her calunnia sentencing has been increased from 3 years (Hellmann-Zanetti) to 3 years and 6 months.

20. To be more precise: Knox has been sentenced to 28 years and 6 months. (She has already served four years).

19. Massei sentence confirmed (25y), Knox sentence increased to 28 years because of calunnia aggravation

18. Bongiorno very agitated

17. Five minutes and a half from a verdict?

16. Judge declared the verdict will be 3D and distributed goggles [?]

15. Sollecito was in the courtroom. Appeared nervous.

14. Said because of the greatness of their power they should acknowledge reasonable doubt.

13. Ghirga emphasized discretional power of the court. Said they have big power to acquit.

12. In point of law: Ghirga said evidence must be considered as a whole in compliance with SC, but assessment should find reasonable doubt

11. Said no blood on knife because of negative TMB and blood confirmatory tests.

10. Ghirga: cited the claims about picograms, said amount is not the point, the problem is test repetition and other conditions

9. Says bruise at back of head is compatible with frotal fight against single aggerssor (disagreement with Introna on this too)

8. Ghirga: Meredith’s blue sweater was removed before fatal stabbing, as for Torre’s opinion. Admitas he disagrees with Sollecito’s defence.

7. Ghirga talked about: Meredith’s blue sweater, an echimosis at back of her head, DNA laboratories and Stefanoni’s quantization

6. Ghirga recalled a small number of details of physical evidence and autopsy.

5. Dalla Vedova asked acquittal, did not specify, whereas Ghirga instead, talking later, invoked reasonable doubt.

4. D.V. says believes there are other Supreme Court rulings in his favor.

3. D.V. emphasized the single pieces of evidence should be assessed each one in parceled out, atomized way before considering the whole

2. DV focused on evidence assessment procedure, quoted SC rulings.

1. Dalla Vedova’s talking lasted a short time, and not very orderly.

Tweets from reporter Barbie Latza Nadeau

28.  Court: Amanda Knox Is Guilty. See more in The Daily Beast.

27.  Kercher family members being briefed by lawyers and British consulate.

26.  Sollecito must surrender all documents, passports, identification,

25. Its 25 years for sollecito and 28.6 years for amanda knox

24.  Amanda Knox [2009] guilty verdict upheld,  sollecito [2009] guilty verdict upheld.

23. Judges and jury enter.22. Huge security presence ahead of verdict including riot police outside and in public area of courtroom amandaknox tense

21. meredithkercher sister stephany and brother lyle have arrived in court for verdict.

20 Prosecutor Crini has arrived in court for verdict in amandaknox appeal

19. Clerk says between 9-930 local time judges will return. Says judges want “utter silence no shouting or clapping”

18. Court clerk says verdict will be delivered between 9 and 9:30 tonight.

17. Amanda Knox “˜Afraid’ Of Today’s Court Verdict http://thebea.st/LeteHD  via @thedailybeast

16. Court clerk says at 8pm she will go back to judge to find out if and when they are ready to deliver verdict.

15. Court clerk says “presumably verdict at 8:00 but everyone come back at 7:00

15. Court clerk just announced that at 6pm local they will tell us when the verdict will be announced.

14. Mario Spezi, author of Monster of Florence, has come to court to hear amandaknox verdict.

13. Lawyers for amandaknox and sollecito, journalists already in courtroom ready for verdict that come come any time from 5pm Florence time.

12. Lunch has just been brought in to judges and lay jury deliberating amandaknox case. No wine.

11. Refreshments just delivered to jury members in amandaknox new appeal, espresso, cappucino and possibly a tea…

10. Judge in amandaknox new appeal says decision will not come before 5pm.

9. amandaknox lawyer asks court to absolve his client.

8. amandaknox lawyer says the dna on the knife attributed to meredithkercher can not be verified, can not be considered.

7. amandaknox lawyer Ghirga tells court they have to look at all the evidence to reach verdict, not value pieces here and there.

6. amandaknox lawyer says you can’t put two innocent people in jail to cover up mistakes of judicial system.

5. amandaknox lawyer tells judge: you cannot convict for murder in the name of Italy when evidence is ‘probably’ attributed to a defendant.

4. amandaknox lawyer says you can’t cancel out evidence, says Amanda’s rights were violated, she was in shock when she accused Lumumba.

3. sollecito in court by his dad who said they are all nervous for verdict over drinks with journalists at hotel bar last night.

2. amandaknox lawyer CDV says they are serene going into verdict because they believe in her innocence,

1. Court in session. One of the jurors wearing a shiny spangled skirt, rest dressed soberly.

Tweets from Freelance Reporter Andrea Vogt

13. Meredith Kercher’s brother: It was the best we could have hoped for, but amanda knox verdict not cause for celebration.

12. amanda knox guilty verdict upheld. Her lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova said he has called her. She did not cry. She was “petrified.”

11. amanda knox conviction upheld. sentenced to 28 years and six months. Sollecito to 25. Ordered passports to be taken.

10. Meredith’s sister and brother are accompanied by British consulate officials. A hush has come over the courtroom.

9. The family of meredith kercher has arrived in court to hear the verdict.

8. Even most experienced Italian court reporters not predicting what long wait for amanda knox verdict means. Could go either way

7. amanda knox verdict is expected at 9 or 9:30. Clerk reminds about the decorum expected:no applause, shouting, cheering, etc

6. Standing room only in Florence court as media, legal teams, public await amandaknox verdict (timing soon to be announced).

5. Judge and jury in amandaknox case have retreated for deliberations. Verdict not before 5 pm Italy time.

4. amandaknox Judge : we will not give a verdict before 17, after that,can come any time, but will announce with lots of advance notice.

3. Ghirga: We wait anxiously and seriously for justice for Meredith. But doing justice means doing it also for amandaknox and RS.

2. amandaknox lawyers are in court. Ghirga: “siamo fiduciosi, serene, emotionati.” (Roughly: “Trusting, calm, on edge”).

1. Verdict expected late today in amandaknox appeal….

Freelance Reporter Andrea Vogt On Website

From The Freelance Desk

Amanda Knox is expected to wait out the verdict in her appeal at her mother’s Seattle home (likely with American television news networks present) while Raffaele Sollecito was in court with his father and a friend. Sollecito made no remarks upon leaving for the courthouse in a taxi, surrounded by a pack of cameras.  Meredith Kercher’s sister, Stephanie, and brother, Lyle, are also expected in Florence today for the court’s decision, expected in the evening hours….

Conjectures on what the judges may be discussing

The panel of judges is in effect deciding now on positions that must be sustained in 2-3 months in a 100-400 page document that must be okayed by the Supreme Court.

This might be what the quite long (by Italian standards, they will have discussed the case intermittently) jury discussion today is focused upon. Here are four possible issues.


Possible issue one

As sharp Italian media are pointing out, Prosecutor Crini departed from the Massei scenario and suggested a different driver in one key respect.

Like Mignini and Micheli in 2008 he assigned the role of prime mover to Amanda Knox and not to Guede. (Nobody ever assigned it to Sollecito.)

Maybe hoping to give RS and AK a break the Massei jury (not neccessarily the judge himself) assigned to Guede the primary role in starting the attack, saying maybe he forced himself upon her.

Then maybe the other two came in from next door, and set about helping him to subdue Meredith.

They just happened to have two knives handy, and even Massei assigns the fatal blow to Knox.

Crini argued as more likely that Knox started to quarrel with Meredith over hygiene or drugs or money and the other two joined in and for 15 minutes the attack escalated.

In this Knox and not Guede is assigned the role of prime mover.

The judges may want to accept this and seek to assign Knox a harsher punishment accordingly.

(Neither court seems to have settled on a convincing reason for why the big knife was brought down from Sollecito’s house which looks to us at minimum forboding.)


Possible issue two

This relates to the scenario in the comment above. Judge Massei lopped five years off the routine sentences by conjuring up “mitigating factors”.

One such factor was the duvet placed over Meredith which Massei thought could be a sign of remorse, surely by a woman.

Many including psychologists never agreed with this. It could have been simply an aversion to all the blood, which Knox on the stand in 2009 chillingly described as “yucky”.

If so the sentences awarded could creep up beyond the durations decided on by Massei. Above 25 and 26 years.


Possible issue three

This is an alternative to One and Two above. The judges might think the crime was more like a manslaughter, an attack that ended in murder

But not intended as such and never agreed to by two of the attackers.  In which case sentences could be a lot lighter.


Possible issue four

There are financial award considerations. How much to award to whom, plus maybe ways to ensure their payment in light of Knox blatantly stiffing Patrick..

[Below: image of the judges and lay judges arriving this morning]

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Demonizations By Knox: Multiple Ways In Which Her Email To Judge Nencini Is Misleading

Posted by FinnMacCool

You can read here the email Amanda Knox sent to Judge Nencini.

It is dated 15 December 2013 and was handed to Dr Nencini by Dr Ghirga, apparently to the disdain of both of them. It contains many statements which, if she were under oath, could be considered perjury.

One telling point is that she claims “I am not present in the courtroom because I am afraid.”  Her co-defendant, Raffaele Sollecito, was not at all afraid of being at their own appeal, and he did present himself at an earlier stage of the proceedings.

He made a spontaneous statement and the judge assured him that he should feel free to intervene to make further interventions whenever he wished. So far he hasn’t wished to - he preferred to head back to the Caribbean for his holiday.

But that event and that presence by Sollecito completely undermine the credibility of Knox’s claim that she feels afraid of the court proceedings. As it is her own appeal, there would be nothing to stop her coming and going, at any stage, just as Sollecito did.

I have no doubt that my lawyers have explained and demonstrated the important facts of this case that prove my innocence and discredit the unjustified accusations of the prosecution and civil parties.

That’s what her lawyers were about to try to do. But instead they had to hand this email to the judge, showing their client’s complete contempt for the court process.

I seek not to supplant their work

She doesn’t want to supplant the work of her own lawyers? Most defendants don’t, nor do they feel the need to tell the court that using an archaic seventeenth-century grammatical construction (where modern English would have “I do not mean to…” or “I do not wish to”).

Because I am not present to take part in [my own appeal], I feel compelled to share.

As Judge Nencini said, if anyone wants to talk to a court, come to that court. Knox chose not to be present, which means that the word “because” is not a logical connector for why she feels compelled to share what she thinks. “Even though” would make more sense.

The Court has access to my previous declarations and I trust will review them…

The court has access to thousands of pages. Everybody trusts that courts will review the evidence before passing judgment - that’s how the legal process works.

I must repeat: I am innocent.

In fact, she does not have to repeat that, which is simply a reiteration of her not-guilty plea.

I am not present in the courtroom because I am afraid.

The wording is reminiscent of a previous declaration, “I am very afraid of Patrik, the African boy who…” Also the court may remember the presence of her co-defendant, who made a brief presentation to the court (and was invited to intervene again at any time he saw fit) and who afterwards flew back to his extended vacation in the Dominican Republic. It is difficult to see what the defendants have to be afraid of from the court - except perhaps the truth.

I am afraid that the prosecution’s vehemence will leave an impression on you, that their smoke and mirrors will blind you.

The prosecution’s case has already been made; this was the opportunity for the defense to make their case. It is the court’s duty to consider the evidence without being overly swayed by the vehemence of lawyers from either side - they look at the facts, and pass judgment based on that, and this happens in literally millions of cases every year. (Cassazione alone reviews more than 80 thousand cases each year.)

This is not for lack of faith in your powers of discernment, but because the prosecution has succeeded before in convincing a perfectly sound court of concerned and discerning adults to convict innocent people - Raffaele and me.

The second half of the sentence contradicts the first. The writer is explicitly stating that she doubts that the court has sufficient powers of discernment to be able to see through the prosecution’s arguments. Her justification for saying this is simply that it has happened before, with a previous court.

I’ve attentively followed this process and gleaned the following facts…

This is a delusional statement. The writer is the appellant, the initiator of the process, not an external observer to it. We can compare it with her statements following her arrest, in which she claimed still to be helping the police on an equal basis with them, despite being charged with the murder.

No physical evidence places me in Meredith’s bedroom, the scene of the crime…

The bedroom is where the murder took place, but the crime scene is much wider than that, and certainly encompasses the adjoining room where the burglary was faked, the bathroom where the killers cleaned up, and the corridor that connects those rooms. Knox’s blood, DNA, bare footprints are all found in those places. Within Meredith’s room itself, there is also a woman’s shoeprint that does not match the victim, and which Knox’s own lawyer was obliged to claim was caused by an unfortunate fold in the pillowcase.

Meredith’s murderer left ample evidence in the brutal scenario: handprints, footprints, shoe prints in Meredith’s blood, DNA in her purse, on her clothing, in her body.

The term “brutal scenario” makes no sense here, although she repeats it again a couple of lines later. Perhaps she means “crime scene” or “bedroom”. The only footprints found at the crime scene are those of Knox and Sollecito. A woman’s shoeprint in the room where the murder took place cannot be that of either Guede or the victim, and is most likely that of Knox.

The prosecution has failed to explain how I could have… been the one to fatally wound Meredith ““ without leaving any genetic trace of myself. That is because it is impossible.

Actually it is perfectly possible to do this ““ for example, simply by stabbing someone to death while wearing gloves. However, in this case the prosecution has in fact explained how several traces of Knox’s DNA have been found on the handle of the knife which had the victim’s DNA on the blade. That obviously fits a scenario in which Knox stabbed Meredith Kercher with that knife.

Either I was there, or I wasn’t.

The same thing applies to the appeal court. Either the defendants are there, or they are not. In this case, the defendant is not.

The analysis of the crime scene answers this question: I wasn’t there.

Knox’s footprints, blood and DNA, sometimes mixed with that of the victim, all place her at the crime scene, and so does her DNA on the handle of the murder weapon.

My interrogation was illegal and produced a false “confession” that demonstrated my non-knowledge of the crime.

“Non-knowledge” is a curious word. Knox’s witness interview was perfectly legal ““ it was only the unexpected confession from the witness that changed the status of that interview, so that its contents could no longer be used against her. But there is no question over its legality.

The subsequent memoriali, for which I was wrongfully found guilty of slander…

This is an extraordinary aside. The defendant is here rejecting the legitimacy of the Italian Supreme Court, which has definitively found against her, and is also rejecting the findings of the Hellmann court that provisionally freed her, pending appeal. Every single court has found against her on this count.

. ...did not further accuse but rather recanted that false “confession”.

Let us reread some excerpts from this supposed recantation: “After dinner I noticed there was blood on Raffaele’s hand… I stand by my statements that I made last night about events that could have taken place in my home with Patrik… In these flashbacks I’m having, I see Patrik as the murderer…Why did I think of Patrik?... Is there any other evidence condemning Patrik or any other person?” This is not a recantation, and it does in fact contain further accusations of Patrick Lumumba while also seeking to throw suspicion both on Sollecito and an unnamed “other person”.

My behavior after the discovery of the murder indicates my innocence.

As dozens of witnesses have testified in a series of trials and appeals, Knox’s post-murder behavior indicated the exact opposite, which is why suspicion fell on her in the first place.

I did not flee Italy when I had the chance.

On page 71 of her memoir, Knox recounts the following exchange with Officer Ficarra, on the day after the murder was discovered: “My parents want me to go to Germany to stay with relatives for a couple of weeks. Is that okay?” She said, “You can’t leave Perugia. You’re an important part of the investigation.”

I stayed in Perugia and was at the police’s beck and call for over 50 hours in four days.

Chapter Ten of her memoir gives her own account of what she did on Monday, November 5th. She went to a nine o’clock grammar class, at which she refused to discuss the case with her fellow students; she spoke on the phone with her Aunt Dolly, admitting that she had not yet contacted the US embassy; she bumped into Patrick Lumumba where she refused to talk to BBC reporters; she spent the afternoon with Sollecito and then accompanied him to a friend’s house where she played the ukulele. Far from being at the police’s beck and call, she ignored their request that she stay home while they interview Sollecito separately, and turned up to the Questura regardless, although not before they had finished their evening meal.

The police coerced me into signing a false “confession””¦.

Her false accusation of Patrick Lumumba, for which she was convicted and has already served four years in prison, was not a confession and was not coerced.

. “¦one may be coerced into giving a false “confession” because of psychological torture”¦ This is a universal problem.

The US-based Innocence Project reports that there have been 244 exonerations since 2000, which is just over seventeen per year, which in turn means that currently in the USA, roughly 0.1% of cases are eventually overturned. Being wrongfully convicted might be devastating for the person concerned, but it is not a universal problem.

I did not carry around Raffaele’s kitchen knife.

The defendant has not been accused of carrying the knife around, but rather of stabbing Meredith Kercher to death with it. Forensic evidence supports that accusation, too.

I had no contact with Rudy Guede. Like many youth in Perugia, I had once crossed paths with Rudy Guede.

Very typical of Knox’s writing is this kind of self-contradiction, sometimes occurring within the same sentence, or as in this case, in consecutive sentences, seemingly with no self-awareness that any contradiction has even occurred.

If the prosecution truly had a case against me, there would be no need for these theatrics.

The prosecution is present in the court, having made its presentation in the usual way. The defense lawyers are about to do exactly the same thing. The only theatrics happening in the court at that moment is a bizarre email sent by one of the defendants, in lieu of attending her own appeal to her own murder conviction.

But because no evidence exists that proves my guilt, the prosecution would seek to deceive you with these impassioned, but completely inaccurate and unjustified pronouncements.

No further comments.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Appeal Session #7: The Day For Knox And Sollecito Attorneys To Show Where Prosecution Went Wrong

Posted by Our Main Posters

[Above and below: images from previous sessions, here till today’s crop appears]

Long Form Reports

Website of Andrea Vogt

The court hearing reserved for Knox’s appeal defense began with the reading of an email from Amanda, reported here in the Messaggero and then widely picked up in the English-language press, claiming her innocence and explaining why she was afraid to return to Italy. The email was the only “new” aspect introduced Tuesday so made all the headlines, but at the end of the day it occupied just a small fraction of the day’s arguments. 

Several Italian court observers considered the email a considerable “own goal,” having witnessed the presiding judge raise his eyebrows in obvious annoyance at having to himself read aloud an email from Knox, who requested an appeal in his courtroom, but is refusing to attend it, for reasons she detailed.  “Those who want to speak at the trial should come to the trial,” he said. He also declined to consider the letter a spontaneous declaration because, he said, he could not ascertain if she was the true author of the letter. “I’ve never seen her. I do not know her,” he said.

After the email, Knox’s Perugian lawyer Luciano Ghirga made his closing arguments, followed by Carlo Dalla Vedova of Rome.  Most of the discussion focused on two aspects of the case they felt are fundamentally lacking: motive and murder weapon. Below are short quotes/snippets translated quickly during court.  To read the Kercher family lawyer’s arguments, scroll down to yesterday’s notes.

[Report continues on The Freelance Desk with good summaries of arguments made by Ghirga and Della Vedova]

3. Tweets from La Nazione

66. Meredith process , the hearing ends. The next hearing will be on January 9 [Sollecito team]

65. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : ” Amanda Knox is shown to have worshipped [Meredith]”

64. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “There is a shortage of proof”

63. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “There is no evidence, with doubts you have to acquit Amanda Knox”

62. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “On the motive the prosecutor did the same as the Costa Concordia at Giglio”

61. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Room too small for the participation of more people in the crime”

60. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The victim was attacked from the front,  not from behind”

59. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “For Amanda and Raffaele, Rudy Guede was a stranger”

58. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The bra clasp of Meredith is not a genuine artifact”

57. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The bra clasp November 2nd was white, but 40 days after gray”

56. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Amanda knew the cut was throat because she was told by a policeman “

55. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Absurd that there are missing only traces of Amanda and Raffaele “

54.Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The alleged footprint of female shoe on the pillow: pillowcase was folded over.”

53. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The broken glass from the window shows the easiest way to enter the house “

52. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “War between consultants is like “The War of the Roses” where everyone will hate “

51. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Unable for Amanda and Raffaele to commit the crime in 50 minutes “

50. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The mother of Meredith says she and Amanda were friends “

49. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Guede never says that Amanda was in the house, even outside the interrogations”

48. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Guede never talks about Amanda “

47.Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : ” Guede in his chats after the murder told a friend that Amanda had nothing to do with it”

46. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “There are traces only of Rudy Guede at the crime scene “

45. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “The witness Curatolo either is unreliable or is our alibi. Decide for yourself “

44. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox) : “Do not trust the testimony of the witness Quintavalle “

43. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “Amanda did not call into question Lumumba to sidetrack the investigation “

42. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “The alibi of Amanda is of the same type as her roommates ”

41. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “The alibi of Amanda is accurate and unchanged in her deposition ”

40. Meredith appeal: the argument of Carlo Dalla Vedova, defender of Amanda Knox, resumes.

39. Meredith appeal: Judge orders one-hour lunch break

38. President Nencini asks if there are certificates for the AIDS tests done on Amanda, but there are none

37. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “It was said of Amanda in prison that she had AIDS, but it turned out an error ”

36. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “From the conversations in prison Amanda does not show anything, the sum of zeros ”

35. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “In 30 hours of interviews with parents in prison Amanda never was heard [incriminating herself]”

34. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “It was immediately admited, the mistake by the investigators”

33. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “The footprint of Guede on the pillow right now is the signature of the crime”

32. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “Lumumba was not to be charged, he confirmed his alibi”.

31. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “There has been judicial harassment against [my client]”

30. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “Prosecution and plaintiff leverage statements of Amanda unusable ”

29. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “The declarations of Amanda between 5 and 6 November are unusable ”

28. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “Absurd that Amanda is joining the attack on a friend ”

27. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “Changing motive is constantly an element of weakness of the prosecution ”

26. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “Add up all the clues , the sum of zero is always zero ”

25. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “Without connections between clues and evidences the value is zero ”

24. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “In this process there is no evidence ”

23. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “A murder without a motive is fallacious ”

22. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “Absurd that the knife used for the murder was brought home ”

21. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “Imaginative reconstruction of the prosecution ”

20. Lawyer Dalla Vedova: “This story has been in the headlines for months ”

19. Lawyer Dalla Vedova (Knox): “Meredith killed in this manner is a defeat for all ”

18. The closing argument of Lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova begins (Knox defense).

17. Meredith appeal: the closing argument of the Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ) ends.

16. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ) : “Amanda Knox was not present at the crime scene ”

15. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ): “The judgment of Justice is the acquittal of Amanda

14. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ): “The witness Curatolo is unreliable ”

13. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ): “We challenged from the outset the murder weapon ”

12. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ): “On the blade of the knife there is no blood and no trace of Meredith.”

11. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ): “The expertise that revealed traces of Meredith on the knife is not trusted “

10. Lawyer Ghirga (Knox ): “The knife found at Sollecito’s house is not the murder weapon “

9. The closing argument of Luciano Ghirga defender Amanda Knox begins.

8. Amanda to the court: ” I am innocent , put an end to this enormous injustice ”

7. Amanda : “I’m not the monster he has been portrayed in recent years ”

6. Amanda: ” I did not know Rudy Guede ”

5. Amanda: “I’m not a killer , the prosecution and the civil parties are wrong , they want a conviction without proof ”

4. Amanda: ” Meredith and I have always been friends , we never quarreled ”

3. Amanda: “I have been subjected to illegal interrogation , I made a false confession extorted”

2. Amanda: “I have not killed , raped , robbed , I was not at the scene of the crime”

1. The email of Amanda : “I’m innocent , but I am not in court because I’m afraid”

2. Tweets from Freelance Andrea Vogt

3. Carlo dalla Vedova to #amandaknox appeal jury: If there is no murder motive, you must acquit.

2. Carlo dalla Vedova: We know #amandaknox is innocent. As time passes we’re even more tranquil.There are many more doubts than certainties.

1. In Florence, amanda knox lawyer holds up large knife to jury: “Starch was on the knife. It was not cleaned. It was in domestic use.”

1. Email from Amanda Knox

Court of Appeals of Florence section II Assise Proc. Pen, 11113

Letter sent to attorneys Carlo Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga via email Seattle, 15 December 2013

Attn: Honorable Court of Appeals of Florence

I have no doubt that my lawyers have explained and demonstrated the important facts of this case that prove my innocence and discredit the unjustified accusations of the prosecution and civil parties. I seek not to supplant their work; rather, because I am not present to take part in this current phase of the judicial process, I feel compelled to share my own perspective as a six—year-long defendant and victim of injustice.

The Court has access to my previous declarations and I trust will review them before coming to a verdict. I must repeat: I am innocent.

I am not a murderer. I am not a rapist. I am not a thief or a plotter or an instigator. I did not kill Meredith or take part in her murder or have any prior or special knowledge of what occurred that night. I was not there and had nothing to do with it.

I am not present in the courtroom because I am afraid. I am afraid that the prosecution’s vehemence will leave an impression on you, that their smoke and mirrors will blind you. I’m afraid of the universal problem of wrongful conviction. This is not for lack of faith in your powers of discernment, but because the prosecution has succeeded before in convincing a perfectly sound court of concerned and discerning adults to convict innocent people-Rafael and me.

My life being on the line and having with others already suffered too much, I’ve attentively followed this process and gleaned the following facts that have emerged from the development of this case that I beg you not to dismiss when making your judgment:

No physical evidence places me in Meredith ‘s bedroom, the scene of the crime, because I was not there and didn’t take part in the crime.

Meredith’s murderer left ample evidence of his presence in the brutal scenario: handprints, footprints, shoe prints in Meredith’s blood; DNA in her purse, on her clothing, in her body.

No evidence places me in the same brutal scenario. The prosecution has failed to explain how I could have participated in the aggression and murder—to have been the one to fatally wound Meredith—without leaving any genetic trace of myself. That is because it is impossible. It is impossible to identify and destroy all genetic traces of myself in a crime

scene and retain all genetic traces of another individual. Either I was there, or I wasn’t. The analysis of the crime scene answers this question: I wasn’t there.

My interrogation was illegal and produced a false “confession” that demonstrated my non-knowledge of the crime- The subsequent memoriali, for which I was wrongfully found guilty of slander, did not further accuse but rather recanted that false “confession.” Just as I testified to the prosecutor in prison and to my family members in prison when our conversations were being recorded without my knowledge.

My behavior after the discovery of the murder indicates my innocence. I did not flee Italy when I had the chance. I stayed in Perugia and was at the police’s beck and call for over 50hours in four days, convinced that I could help them find the murderer. I never thought or imagined that they would have used my openness and trust to fuel their suspicions. I did not hide myself or my feelings: when I needed comfort, Rafael embraced me; when I was sad and scared, I cried; when I was angry, I swore and made insensitive remarks; when I was shocked, I paced or sat in silence; when I was trying to help, I answered questions, consoled Meredith’s friends and tried to keep a positive attitude.

Upon entering the questura I had no understanding of my legal position. Twenty—years old and alone in a foreign country, I was innocent and never expected to be suspected and subjugated to torture. I was interrogated as a suspect, but told I was a witness. I was questioned for a prolonged period in the middle of the night and in Italian, a language I barely knew. I was denied legal counsel- The Court of Cassation deemed the interrogation and the statements produced from it illegal. I was lied to, yelled at, threatened, slapped twice on the back of the head. I was told I had witnessed the murder and was suffering from amnesia. I was told that if I didn’t succeed in remembering what happened to Meredith that night I would never see my family again. I was browbeaten into confusion and despair. When you berate, intimidate, lie to, threaten, confuse, and coerce someone in believing they are wrong, you are not going to find the truth.

The police coerced me into signing a false “confession” that was without sense and should never have been considered a legitimate investigative lead. In this fragmentary and confused statement the police identified Patrick Lumumba as the murderer because we had exchanged text messages, the meaning of which the police wrongfully interpreted (‘Civediamo piu tardi. Buona serata’). The statement lacked a clear sequence of events, corroboration with any physical evidence, and fundamental information like: how and why the murder took place, if anyone else was present or involved, what happened afterward—it supplied partial, contradictory information and as the investigators would discover a little later, when Patrick Lumumba’s defense lawyer produced proof of him incontestable alibi, it was obviously inaccurate and unreliable. I simply didn’t know what they were demanding me to know. After over 50 hours of questioning over four days, I was mentally exhausted and I was confused.

This coerced and illegitimate statement was used by the police to arrest and detain a clearly innocent man with an iron-clad alibi with whom I had a friendly professional relationship. This coerced and illegitimate statement was used to convict me of slander. The prosecution and civil parties would have you believe that this coerced and illegitimate statement is proof of my involvement in the murder. They are accusing and blaming me, a result of their own overreaching.

Experience, case studies, and the law recognize that one may be coerced into giving a false"confession” because of torture.

This is a universal problem. According to the National Registry of Exoneration, in the United States 78% of wrongful murder convictions that are eventually overturned because of exonerating forensic evidence involved false “confessions.” Almost 8 in 10 wrongfully convicted persons were coerced by police into implicating themselves and others in murder. I am not alone. And exonerating forensic evidence is often as simple as no trace of the wrongfully convicted person at the scene of the crime, but rather the genetic and forensic traces of a different guilty party—just like every piece of forensic evidence identifies not me, but Rudy Guide.

In the brief time Meredith and I were roommates and friends we never fought.

Meredith was my friend. She was kind to me, helpful, generous, fun. She never criticized me. She never gave me so much as a dirty look.

But the prosecution claims that a rift was created between Meredith and I because of cleanliness. This is a distortion of the facts. Please refer to the testimonies of my housemaster and Meredith’s British friends. None of them ever witnessed or heard about Meredith and I fighting, arguing, disliking each other. None of them ever claimed Meredith was a confrontational clean-freak, or I a confrontational slob. Laura Masotho testified that both Meredith and I only occasionally cleaned, whereas she and Filomena Romanelli were more concerned with cleanliness. Meredith’s British friends testified that Meredith had once told them that she felt a little uncomfortable about finding the right words to kindly talk tome, her new roommate, about cleanliness in the bathroom we shared. The prosecution would have you believe this is motivation for murder. But this is a terrifying distortion of the facts.

I did not carry around Rafael’s kitchen knife.

This claim by the prosecution, crucial to their theory, is uncorroborated by any physical evidence or witness testimony. I didn’t fear the streets of Perugia and didn’t need to carry around with me a large, cumbersome weapon which would have ripped my cloth book bag to shreds. My book bag showed no signs of having carried a bloody weapon. The claim that he would have insisted I carry a large chef’s knife is not just senseless, but a disturbing indication of how willing the prosecution is to defy objectivity and reason in order to sustain a mistaken and disproven theory.

It is yet another piece of invented “evidence”, another circumstance of theory fabricated to order, because having discovered nothing else, the prosecution could only invent.

I had no Contact with Rudy Guide.

Like many youth in Perugia, I had once crossed paths with Rudy Guide. He played basketball with the young men who lived in the apartment below us. Meredith and I had been introduced to him together. Perhaps I had seen him amongst the swarms of students

who crowded the Perugian streets and pubs in the evenings, but that was it. We didn’t have each other’s phone number, we didn’t meet in private, we weren’t acquaintances. I never bought drugs from Rudy Guide or anyone else. The phone records show no connection. There are no witnesses who place us together. The prosecution claims I convinced Rudy Guide to commit rape and murder, completely ignoring the fact that we didn’t even speak the same language. Once again, the prosecution is relying upon a disturbing and unacceptable pattern of distortion of the objective evidence.

I am not a psychopath.

There is no short list to the malicious and unfounded slanders I have suffered over the course of this legal process. In trial I have been called no less than:

“Conniving; manipulating; man—eater; narcissist; enchantress; duplicitous; adulterer; drug addict; an explosive mix of drugs, sex, and alcohol; dirty; witch; murderer; slanderer; demon; depraved; imposter; promiscuous; succubus; evil; dead inside; pervert; dissolute; a wolf in sheep’s clothing; rapist; thief; reeking of sex; Judas; she-devil;

I have never demonstrated anti-social, aggressive, violent, or behavior. I am not addicted to sex or drugs. Upon my arrest I was tested for drugs and the results were negative. I am not a split-personality One does not adopt behavior spontaneously.

This is a fantasy. This is uncorroborated by any objective evidence or testimony. The prosecution and civil parties created and pursued this character assassination because they have nothing else to show you. They have neither proof, nor logic, nor the facts on their side. They only have their slanders against me, their personal opinions about me. They want you to think I’m a monster because it is easy to condemn a monster. It is easy to dismiss a monster’s defense as deception. But the prosecution and civil parties are both severely mistaken and wrong. They have condemned me without proof of guilt, and they seek to convince you to condemn me without proof of guilt.

If the prosecution truly had a case against me, there would be no need for these theatrics. There would be no need for smoke and mirrors to distract you from the lack of physical evidence against me. But because no evidence exists that proves my guilt, the prosecution would seek to deceive you with these impassioned, but completely inaccurate and unjustified pronouncements. Because I am not a murderer, they would seek to mislead you into convicting me by charging your emotions, by painting me not as an innocent until proven guilty, but as a monster.

The prosecution and civil parties are committing injustices against me because they cannot bring themselves to admit, even to themselves, that they’ve made a terrible mistake.

The Court has seen that the prosecution and civil parties will not hear criticism of their mistakes. Not by the experts of the defense, nor by the experts of the Court.

The Court has seen that the prosecution jumped to conclusions at the very start of their investigation: they interrogated and arrested innocent people and claimed “Case Closed"before any evidence could be analyzed, before bothering to check alibis.

The prosecutor and investigators were under tremendous pressure to solve the mystery of what happened to Meredith as soon as possible. The local and International media was breathing down the necks of these detectives. Their reputations and careers were to be made or broken. In their haste, they made mistakes. Under pressure, they admitted to as few mistakes as possible and committed themselves to a theory founded upon mistakes.

Had they not jumped to conclusions based on nothing but their personal and highly subjective feeling, they would have discovered definitive and undeniable evidence of not Patrick Lumumba, not Rafael Sollecito, not Amanda Knox, but of Rudy Guide. We would not be here over six years later debating inconclusive and unreliable “clues.” We would have been spared the cost, anguish and suffering, not only of Raffaele’s and my family, but especially of Meredith’s family as well.

The prosecution’s accusations are unworthy of judicial or public confidence. In over six years they have failed to provide a consistent, evidence-driven, corroborated theory of the crime, but would nevertheless argue that you should take my life away. I beg you to see the facts and reason of what I say. I am innocent. Rafael is innocent. Meredith and her family deserve the truth. Please put an end to this great and prolonged injustice.

in faith,

Amanda Marie Knox

Monday, December 02, 2013

A Second Analysis Of Amanda Knox’s Email To Family And Friends Of 4 November 2007 DRAFT

Posted by Peter Quennell

I have been trawling through Knox’s infamous email that she wrote to her “friends” in the US shortly after she had cruelly murdered poor Meredith.  Here are my thoughts - apologies to all if I am covering old ground.

I have interspersed Knox’s email record, (as she had written it), with my own comments. Hope they are useful to TJMK’s fight for justice for Meredith.

Email by Amanda Knox

This is an email for everyone, because I’d like to get it all out and not have to repeat myself a hundred times like I’ve been having to do at the police station. Some of you already know some things, some of you know nothing.

This reads as if Knox is establishing an alibi and a chronology from the outset. The structure is an odd mix of quasi-formality and off the cuff anecdote.

She does not feel the need to explain why she has had to repeat herself a hundred times at the police station. After all, an innocent person would tell the truth once, with perhaps minor corrections. Only a person, like Knox, who was changing her story to the police so often, would need to repeat herself endlessly. By default, therefore, she is admitting that her story is proving unbelievable, so this email is her attempt to garner psychological support and credence from her family and friends in the US.

What I’m about to say, I can’t say to journalists or newspapers and I require that of anyone receiving this information as well.

Here and repeated further on in this email, Knox is blatantly breaching the strict advice that she remains publicly silent, particularly in relation to the media. She has no control over this email “information”, once she has sent it to her multiple recipients, because she cannot be sure that it will not leak to third parties.

This is my account of how I found my roommate, murdered, the morning of Friday, November 2nd.

Strictly formal in style, much as one would expect of a written statement to the police. Knox seeks to assuage her psychological turmoil and gain mental control because she knows she has repeatedly lied to the police and none has yet, (understandably), believed her.

The last time I saw Meredith, 22, English, beautiful, funny, was when I came home from spending the night at a friend’s house.

The insertion of “22, English, beautiful, funny” seems completely inappropriate in relation to a recently, brutally murdered Meredith. It reads as if a third-rate novelist is introducing a key character. Thus Knox reveals her email to be a self-serving, imaginary construct ““ not factual and honest, as an innocent person would write.

It was the day after Halloween, Thursday. I got home and she was still asleep, but after I had taken a shower and was fumbling around the kitchen, she emerged from her room with the blood of her costume (vampire) still dripping down her chin.

Showers, in this email, seem to be a major obsession for Knox. Could she be trying to wash away her oppressive psychological feelings of guilt?

We talked for a while in the kitchen, how the night went, what our plans were for the day, nothing out of the ordinary”¦..,

Why should Knox note, “Nothing out of the ordinary” in this routine conversation, other than she is trying to paint a benign landscape of her relationship with Meredith? (In fact, we know from independent witnesses that Meredith had become increasingly annoyed by Knox’s anti-social behaviour around the house)

“¦and I began to start eating a little, while i waited for my friend (Raffaele-at whose house i stayed over) to arrive at my house. He came right after I started eating and he made himself some pasta.

Note Knox’s truly strange attention to detail, “I began to start eating a little” and “He came right after I started eating”. Why the almost millisecond importance of eating? I believe that Knox is highlighting the timing of Sollecito’s arrival to establish that they were therefore together when Meredith was alive and that they remained so until her body would be discovered. This seeks to build an apparently highly accurate and continuous chronology for their alibi.

As we were eating together, Meredith came out of the shower and grabbed some laundry or put some laundry in, one or the other, and returned into her room after saying hi to Raffael

Knox mentions the word “grab” repeatedly throughout this email. It does not signify a factual rush to do something, but her psychological need to create a fleeting impression about recollections that she knows to be untrue.

It is also odd that Knox feels the need to highlight the “laundry”, but is immediately vague on whether or not it was before or after the wash.  This is the sort of detail that adds nothing of factual relevance, but tends to create the impression that Knox is making it up as she goes along. Repeatedly, throughout all her statements, she fluctuates between sudden accuracy about certain unimportant facts or those that support her claimed innocence, but becomes, equally suddenly, very “confused” when it relates to important facts that might establish her guilt.

After lunch, I began to play guitar with Raffael and Meredith came out of her room and went to the door. She said bye and left for the day. It was the last time I saw her alive.

This is a very laborious and therefore insincere recall. Most innocent people would simply recall that, “After lunch, Meredith said goodbye and left for the day”. Knox’s attention to detail appears necessary only because she is carefully constructing a knowingly dishonest version of events and placing herself in it, as if she were an innocent spectator.

After a little while of playing guitar, I and Raffael went to his house to watch movies and after, to eat dinner and generally spend the evening and night indoors. We didnt go out.

Once again, Knox takes great care to build a continuous, but dishonest, alibi. She seeks to reassure herself by creating a fantasy narrative, with Sollecito and her as the key actors.

How can one “generally spend the evening and night indoors”? Either they did or they didn’t do so. Period.

Why, if they did stay in, does Knox feel the need to expressly state, “We didn’t go out”?

It would appear that Knox is grappling with her inner knowledge that she is telling whopping great lies, but by repeating them, she can establish the alibi in her mind and also reassure herself, (and the FOA), that she is telling the truth.

The next morning, I woke up around 1030 and after grabbing my few things, I left Raffael’s apartment and walked the five-minute walk back to my house to, once again, take a shower and grab a change of clothes.

As above, we have two instances of “grabbing”, indicating a specific desire to skip quickly across her conscious lies. Knox again stresses a shower, a subconscious effort to cleanse her burdensome knowledge of guilt.

I also needed to grab a mop because, after dinner, Raffael had spilled a lot of water on the floor of his kitchen by accident and didnt have a mop to clean it up.

This is not the first time that Knox alludes to this water issue and therefore, the need to collect the mop from her house. Unfortunately, Sollecito’s and her versions vary between a “spillage” and a “leak” from the sink.
These descriptions mean two different things. A “spillage” indicates a human cause, whereas a leak indicates a failure in the pipes.

Judge Massei has rightly questioned the need to collect a mop from Knox’s house, when Sollecito had a janitor service at his house.

I don’t think anyone on TJFM has suggested a perhaps more likely reason for Knox “grabbing” her mop and taking it to Sollecito’s house, one that has nothing to do with leaks or spillages at the latter house.

We know that there was a concerted clean-up of the murder scene, most likely after Knox had purchased cleaning agents/bleach from the shop, early on the morning of November 2nd 2007.  It would make sense that Knox and Sollecito, bare foot, used Knox’s house mop to wash down the floors. It would be potentially very risky to leave that mop at the murder scene thereafter, (no matter how well it was rinsed), for fear that traces of Knox’s and/or Solliceto’s incriminating DNA remained for detection by forensics, mixed with Meredith’s DNA.

It was simply much safer to take the mop away, as they left the house.

It would be interesting to know if the police ever found Knox’s original mop and whether it would have yielded any incriminating DNA evidence.

So, I arrived home and the first abnormal thing I noticed was the door was wide open.

Note: Knox immediately notes that the “wide open” door was “abnormal”.

Here’s the thing about the door to our house:
It’s broken, in such a way that you have to use the keys to keep it closed.

if we dont have the door locked, it is really easy for the wind to
blow the door open and so my roommates and I always have the door
locked unless we are running really quickly to bring the garbage out
or to get something from the neighbors, who live below us.

Who “runs really quickly” to bring garbage out? Only someone like Knox, who is trying to persuade herself and the FOA that it would justify leaving an entrance door “wide open”. Most sensible tenants would have demanded that the landlord repair the door and secure the property, particularly as it housed four young women.

(Another important piece of information: for those who dont know, I inhabit a
house of two stories, of which my three roommates and I share the
second story appartment. there are four Italian guys of our age
between 22 and 26 who live below us. We are all quite good friends and we talk often. Giacomo is especially welcome because he plays guitar with me and Laura, one of my roommates and is, or was, dating Meredith.  The other three are Marco, Stefano, and Ricardo.)

Why is this information so “important”, particularly for “those who don’t know”?  The only reason seems to be an opportunity for Knox to create the illusion that she was very sociable. We know, according to independent witnesses, that Knox had distinct character quirks that made social contact uncomfortable for all who met her, (bar Solliceto).

Anyway, so the door was wide open. Strange, yes, but not so strange that I really
thought anything about it.

Note: now Knox cannot make up her mind whether the “wide-open” door is “odd/strange” or “not so strange that I really thought anything about it”. The truth is that these expressed reactions are mutually exclusive. Indeed, she goes on immediately to show that she DID think something about it”¦.

I assumed someone in the house was doing exactly what I just said, taking out the trash or talking really quickly to the neighbors downstairs. So I closed the door behind me
but I didnt lock it, assuming that the person who left the door open would like to come back in.

A lot of “thinking” here, all of it a self-serving excuse as to why Knox didn’t call the police straight away.

When I entered, I called out if anyone was there, but no one responded and I assumed that if anyone was there, they were still asleep.

This was another of Knox’s BIG assumptions, taking no care to even consider that there might have been a genuine break-in or that the culprit might be still lurking in the house.

Laura’s door was open which meant she wasn’t home, and Filomena’s door was also closed. My door was open like always and Meredith door was closed, which to me meant she was sleeping.

Knox seems to be so knowledgeable about her housemates’ whereabouts, simply by the status of their respective bedroom doors!
In fact, Knox knew that both Filomena and Laura would be away for the long weekend and that only Meredith would be in the house on 01/11/2007.

I undressed in my room and took a quick shower in one of the two
bathrooms in my house, the one that is right next to Meredith and my
bedrooms, (situated right next to one another).
It was after I stepped out of the shower and onto the mat that I noticed the blood in the
bathroom. It was on the mat I was using to dry my feet and there were
drops of blood in the sink.
At first, I thought the blood might have come from my ears, which I had pierced extensively not too long ago, but then, immediately, I know it wasn’t mine because the stains on the mat
were too big for just droplets from my ear, and when I touched the
blood in the sink it was caked on already.

Who pierces their ears “extensively”? Knox, here, is desperate to try to link bleeding from alleged tiny earlobe punctures with the volume of blood visible in the sink and on the mat.

There was also blood smeared on the faucet. Again, however, I thought it was strange
because my roommates and I are very clean and we wouldn’t leave blood
in the bathroom, but I assumed that perhaps Meredith was having
menstral issues and hadn’t cleaned up yet. Ew, but nothing to worry
about.

Again, lots of “strange” blood that Knox immediately seeks to explain away by careless and indeed ridiculous “menstral” bleeding.
More importantly, note here that Knox only considers that she and/or Meredith could be the only source of the blood. She had arrived back to a “wide-open” door, which could have allowed any bleeding person to enter the bathroom unimpeded.
In fact, Knox is grappling again with her knowledge that the blood is a mixture of Meredith’s and her own DNA. By suggesting her bleeding ear piercings and Meredith’s “menstral issues”, Knox is making a feeble attempt to put together an innocent, advance explanation for any mixture of Meredith’s and her blood that subsequent forensic examination might identify.
Still, Knox shows not the slightest concern that her house is “wide-open” and there is blood in the bathroom. An innocent person would have immediately contacted her housemates, accounted for their safety and then called the police.

I left the bathroom and got dressed in my room. After I got
dressed, I went to the other bathroom in my house, the one that
Filomena and Laura use, and used their hairdryer to obviously dry my
hair”¦

Why does Knox state “”¦.obviously to dry my hair”? Why otherwise would anyone normally use a hair dryer?

“¦ and it was after I was putting back the dryer that I noticed the
shit that was left in the toilet, something that definitely no one in
our house would do.

NOTE: Knox confirms here that she first noticed the “shit” in Filomena and Laura’s toilet and that it could not be that of any of the housemates.

I started feeling a little uncomfortable.

Only a “little”? How many indications did Knox need to conclude that something was seriously amiss? Still, she made no call to the police or her housemates.

Note again that she only “started” to feel uncomfortable ““ no more than that. She constantly seeks to express her alleged concern on one hand and simultaneously write it off on the other.

and so I grabbed the mop from out closet and left the house, closing and locking the door that no one had come back through while I was in the shower, and I returned to Raffael’s place.

This is another “grabbing” remark to skip over another deliberate untruth. It also seems to imply that her discomfort made her leave the house in a hurry, (see below).

How does Knox know whether or not anyone had come in through the open door, while she was in the shower?

After we had used the mop to clean up the kitchen, I told Raffael about what I had seen in the house over breakfast. The strange blood in the bathroom, the door wide open, the
shit left in the toilet. He suggested I call one of my roommates, so I
called Filomena.

So here we have Knox, having left her house feeling “uncomfortable” for all the reasons that she stated in this paragraph, but then goes to Sollecito’s house where she and Sollecito allegedly “cleaned up the kitchen”, (note: not “”¦.mopped up the water spillage/leak”).
They then make breakfast and it is only “over breakfast” that Knox gets round to sharing this troubling and uncomfortable information with Sollecito.
An honest person would have told Sollecito straight away, upon her return. Why was Knox so nonchalant about the “strange” things at her house? Perhaps because she and Sollecito, (as the murderers), already knew all about them and that she is now constructing this fantasy alibi to cover their guilty asses.

Filomena had been at a party the night before with her boyfriend, Marco, (not the same Marco who lives downstairs but we’ll call him Marco-f as in Filomena and the other can be Marco-n as in neighbor).
She also told me that Laura wasn’t at home and hadn’t been
because she was on business in Rome. which meant the only one who had
spent the night at our house last night was Meredith, and she was as
of yet unaccounted for.

Knox therefore confirms that she already knew that both Filomena and Laura were out of town for the long weekend. Filomena testified that she had asked Amanda, on the afternoon of 01/11/2007, to help her wrap a birthday present for the party.

Filomena seemed really worried, so I told her I’d call Meredith and then call her back.

Knox seems quite surprised at the extent of Filomena’s worried response. The real surprise is that Knox is the only one, of all the housemates and Meredith’s friends, who behaved in a totally inappropriate and cold manner, both leading up to the discovery of Meredith’s body and particularly afterwards at the police station.
The phone record shows that Knox is telling more lies here ““ she had already rung Meredith’s phones before ringing Filomena.

Judge Massei found that Knox had done so, not out of any concern about Meredith, (the calls only lasted 3 or 4 seconds), but to establish that the discarded phones had not yet been found. Having satisfied herself that the phones remained undiscovered and that no investigation could yet be underway, the coast was clear for Knox to ring Filomena and thereby set the wheels in motion of the inevitable discovery of Meredith’s body.

I called both of Meredith’s phones, the English one first and last and the Italian one between.

No, this was BEFORE Knox first called Filomena, (see above). The phone record completely destroys Knox’s alleged call chronology and proves her, without doubt, to be a liar.

The first time i called the English phone, it rang and then sounded as if
there was disturbance, but no one answered.

What kind of “disturbance”? Was Knox trying to imply that someone else had the phone at that stage?

I then called the Italian phone and it just kept ringing, no answer.
I called her English phone again and this time an English voice told me her phone was out of
service.

Oh well, Knox, never mind”¦.

Raffael and I gathered our things and went back to my house.

I unlocked the door and I’m going to tell this really slowly to get
everything right, so just have patience with me.

Revealingly, Knox had to warn herself to be careful here ““ she wouldn’t want a slip up in her alibi, would she? No innocent person would ever have the need to write such a phrase.

The living room/kitchen was fine. Looked perfectly normal. I was checking for
signs of our things missing, should there have been a burglar in our
house the night before.

Why did she not do this when she had first gone to her house earlier that morning?

Filomena’s room was closed, but when I opened the door, her room was a mess and her window was open and completely broken, but her computer was still sitting on her desk like, it always was and this confused me.

Yes, Knox, of course it did, but you bravely persevered with your search”¦

Convinced that we had been robbed, I went to Laura’s room and looked quickly in, but it was spotless, like it hadn’t even been touched. This, too, I thought was odd.

This alleged robbery becomes even more strange for Knox ““ “convincing” but at the same time, “odd”. The only explanation, (which she knew and was discovering more and more flaws in it), was that it was a “staged” break-in of Sollecito’s and her own making.

I then went into the part of the house that Meredith and I share and checked my room
for things missing, which there weren’t.

Phew, that must have been a relief! Most (innocent) people would have checked their own room first.

Then I knocked on Meredith’s room, but when she didnt respond. I knocked louder and louder until I was really banging on her door and shouting her name. No response.
Either Meredith wasn’t in, (the most likely reason) but she had not answered her phones.

Why did Knox not call the police immediately?

Panicking, I ran out onto our terrace to see if maybe I could see over the ledge into her
room from the window, but I couldn’t see in. Bad angle.

The “angle” was the same as it had always been. It was only a small house. Why did Knox allegedly try to see through Meredith’s window when it was out of the line of sight from the terrace?

I then went into the bathroom where I had dried my hair and looked really quickly
into the toilet. In my panic, I thought I hadn’t seen anything there,
which to me meant whoever was in my house had been there when I had
been there.
As it turns out, the police told me later that the toilet was full and that the shit had just fallen to the bottom of the toilet, so I didnt see it.

Why, in a state of panic, did Knox suddenly decide to inspect the toilet bowl in Filomena’s bathroom? Knox has already written, (see above, in this discussion), that she had noticed the unusual “shit” in the toilet during her first visit to the house earlier that morning.
Why would the police discuss with Knox the position of the “shit” as a means of helping her to understand why she had completely failed to notice it in her “panic”?

Knox deduces that whoever had left the shit in the bowl had been there when she was there. It turned out to be Guede’s shit, therefore Knox is admitting that she was with Guede on the night of Meredith’s murder and Guede has been convicted of the crime - one for which he is co-responsible with Knox and Sollecito.

I ran outside and down to our neighbors’ door. The lights were out, but I banged on the 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.

Knox knew that the boys downstairs were going away for the long weekend before she murdered Meredith. Why would Knox have pounded of the door of a house that she had known was empty?

In the living room, Raffael told me he wanted to see if he could break down Meredith’s door. He tried, and cracked the door, but we couldn’t open it. It was then that we decided
to call the cops.

What a wimp! The housemates’ boyfriends, when they discovered that Meredith was missing and that her door (unusually) locked, had no trouble breaking down the door and unlike Sollecito, they were not trained in kick-boxing.

Finally, they called the cops!!  Knox did so with no urgency whatsoever. She and Sollecito delayed calling the police for as long as possible, to give themselves time to construct an agreed alibi and to check that everything was in place, at the murder scene, to indicate a “lone wolf” break in and attack on Meredith.

There are two types of cops in Italy, Carabinieri, (local, dealing with traffic and domestic calls) and the police investigators.
He first called his sister for advice and then called the Carbanieri.
I then called Filomena, who said she would be on her way home immediately.

Knox is a liar here again. These remarks are unsupported by the phone record.

While we were waiting, two ununiformed police investigators came to our house. I showed them what I could and told them what I knew. Gave them phone numbers and explained a bit in broken Italian, and then Filomena arrived with her boyfriend, Marco-f
and two other friends of hers.

These uniformed police confirmed that both Knox and Sollecito looked very surprised to see them. Neither of them knew that the phones had been discovered, (ironically one had been discovered when Knox had rung it a little earlier), and that these police had arrived to investigate their loss and return them to Filomena and Meredith.
No word from Knox as to why she and Sollecito were surprised to see these police.

All together, we checked the house out, talked to the police and in a bit, they all opened Meredith’s door.
I was in the kitchen, standing aside, having really done my part for
the situation. But when they opened Meredith’s’ door and I heard
Filomena scream, “a foot! a foot!”, in Italian, I immediately tried to
get to Meredith’s room, but Raffael grabbed me and took me out of the
house.

This is a complete fabrication. Knox speaks as someone who knew that the opened bedroom door would reveal Meredith’s body. No innocent person would stand back, aloof and disinterested, when all the others were anxious to break down the door.
Which innocent person would lapse into complete disinterest because “I had already done my part for the situation”. Sounds as if Knox felt she had acted that part of the planned alibi script and was waiting to resume the act at a later stage.
Knox then tries to establish that she tried to get to Meredith’s room because Filomena had screamed “a foot”. Again, Sollecito saved the day by “grabbing”, (that word again!), her and taking her outside because Filomena had screamed out “a foot”.

It is a fact that both Knox and Sollecito obviously knew details of the murder scene, but had not been present to see into the bedroom when the door had been broken down.
Thus, Knox is trying here to establish how she knew about the disposition of Meredith’s body, without needing a line of sight on the murder scene.

The police told everyone to get out and not long afterward the
Carabinieri arrived and then soon afterward, more police
investigators. They took all of our information and asked us the same
questions over and over.

The police had not asked the same questions “over and over” of any other, (innocent), witnesses, just of Knox and Solliceto. Why? I suspect that only Knox and Sollecito needed repeated questions because only they were telling inconsistent and changing stories.
Knox simply does not understand that the police only tend to ask the same questions “over and over” if the witness is being dishonest and evasive by giving inconsistent and contradictory answers. She may as well admit that her answers were and are just that.

At the time, I had only what I was wearing and my bag, which thankfully had my passport in it and my wallet. No jacket though, and I was freezing.

Was Knox trying to cover up her nervous trembles, during her answers to difficult questions, by trying to claim here that she was “freezing”?

After sticking around at the house for a bit, the police told us to go to the station to give testimony, which I did.
I was in a room for six hours straight after that, without
seeing anyone else, answering questions in Italian for the first hour
and then they brought in an interpreter and he helped me out with the
details that I didnt know the words for..

An innocent person would never submit to an interview in a murder case, without fluency in the local language
Knox repeats here the allegations of extended questioning and sleep/food/water deprivation to try to excuse her admissions in her signed, written statements. The facts show that she had only about three hours of questioning, the remainder of the time at the police station being spent on giving long, voluntary accounts of her part in the events, at her request.
No person EVER admits to a callous murder, except perhaps under overt torture. Knox has never claimed torture during questioning.

They asked me, of course, about the morning, the last time I saw her, and because I was the closest to her, questions about her habits and her relationships.
Here, Knox is attempting to create an untruthful impression of a close and warm relationship with Meredith. Meredith’s friends consistently claim to the contrary.
Afterwards, when they were taking my fingerprints, I met two of
Meredith’s English friends, two girls she goes out with, including the
last one who saw her alive that night she was murdered. They also had
their prints taken.
After that, (this was around 9 at night by this time), I was taken into the waiting room where there was various other people who I all knew from various places, who all knew Meredith. Her friends from England, my roommates, even the owner of the pub she most
frequented.
After a while, my neighbors were taken in too, having just arrived home from a weeklong vacation in their home town, which explained why they weren’t home when I banged on their door.

Of course it did, Knox.  You knew that the neighbours had gone away for the weekend. In fact, as you knew that only Meredith would be in the house, it was a perfect opportunity to assault and murder her.

Later than that, another guy showed up and was taken in for questioning, a guy I
dont like, but whom both Meredith and I knew from different occasions, a
Moroccan guy that I only know by his nickname amongst the girls,
“shaky”.

Big, bad BLACK guy, that is, not an all-American, sweet, apple pie gal like good ole Amanda…

Then I sat around in this waiting room, without having the
chance to leave or eat anything besides vending machine food, (which
gave me a hell of a stomach ache) until 5:30 in the morning.

Knox made no official complaint about this alleged mistreatment by the police. On the contrary, she confirmed, in court, that the police had treated her well, including supplying food and drinks to her. More lies.

During this time, I received calls from a lot of different people, family
mostly of course, and I also talked with the rest, especially to find
out what exactly was in Meredith’s room when they opened it. Apparently
her body was lying under a sheet, and with her foot sticking out and
there was a lot of blood. Whoever had done this had slit her throat.

Here, Knox records another explanation of how she knew about the crime scene details, while never having been in the position to see them. These are lies, again, of course.

They told me to be back in at 11am. I went home to Raffael’s place,
ate something substantial and passed out.

Altogether, what with the murder, staged break in, intensive overnight cleanup of the murder scene, giving consistently contradictory evidence to the police and maintaining an aura of sweet innocence, I am not surprised that Know alleges that she “passed out”. She must have been knackered. Photos of the pair on the morning after the murder show both to be drawn and unkempt.

In the morning, Raffael drove me back to the police station, but had to
leave me when they said they wanted to take me back to the house for
questioning.
Before I go on, I’d like to say that I was strictly told not to speak about this, but I’m speaking with you people who are not involved and who can’t do anything bad except talk to journalists, which I hope you won’t do. I have to get this off my chest because it’s
pressing down on me and it helps to know that someone besides me knows
something and that I’m not the one who knows the most out of everyone.

Why does Knox reveal information here, about which she had been “strictly told” not to speak? This shows her unwillingness to accept any boundaries in her behaviour.
What is pressing on Knox’s chest? The guilt of having murdered Meredith or more likely, that she cannot persuade anyone, (outside the FOA), to believe her changing stories and denials of fact.
Knox inadvertently concedes here that she “”¦ knows the most out of everyone”. I would suggest that the only way to know that much is to be the murderess.
Pathetically, she is seeking to share her guilt by passing the buck of responsibility onto others, who by swallowing her stories, hook, line and sinker, can become witting or unwitting co-conspirators in her deception.

At the house, they asked me very personal questions about Meredith’s
life and also about the personalities of our neighbors. How well did I
know them? Pretty well, we are friends. Was Meredith sexually active?
Yeah, she borrowed a few of my condoms. Does she like anal? WTF? I
dont know. Does she use Vaseline for her lips? What kind of person is
Stefano? Nice guy, has a really pretty girlfriend.

I have no doubt that Knox could fill in any gaps in her knowledge here by telling her usual lies, as she always has done and continues to do.

Hmmm”¦very interesting. We’d like to show you something, and tell us if this is
out of normal.

Why would the police rely on Knox for an honest answer to ANY question?

They took me into the neighbors’ house. They had broken the door open
to get in, but they told me to ignore that.

Why would the police have broken the door down, rather than simply call the young men home and keep their part of the house sealed off until they had arrived?

The rooms were all open. Giacomo’s and Marco-n’s rooms were spotless, which made sense because the guys had thoroughly cleaned the whole house before they left on
vacation.

This is Knox reaching quick conclusions on matters about which she has no knowledge. How ironic that she cannot reach any consistent and revealing conclusion about Meredith’s murder, about which she knows so much
!
Stefano’s room however, well, his bed was stripped of linens,
which was odd, and the comforter he used was shoved up at the top of
his bed, with blood on it. I obviously told then that the blood was
definitely out of normal and also that he usually has his bed made.
They took note of it and ushered me out.

How can Knox be such an expert about Stephano’s room, his blood and his personal habits? More lies and fantasy.

When I left the house to go back to the police station, they told me to put my jacket over my head and duck down below the window, so the reporters wouldn’t try to talk to
me.
At the station, I just had to repeat the answers that I had given
at the house, so they could type them up and after a good 5 and a half
hour day with the police again, Raffael picked me up and took me out
for some well-deserved pizza. I was starving.

Again, Knox admits that she has to answer the same, repeated questions, oblivious to the fact that this must imply that her answers are inconsistent and God Forbid, dishonest.

I then bought some underwear because, as it turns out, I won’t be able to leave Italy for a
while, as well as enter my house. I only had the clothes I was wearing the day it began, so i bought some underwear and borrowed a pair of pants from Raffael.

So Knox only buys underwear because she cannot leave Italy or enter the house? Does she not need any other clothes?

Spoke with my remaining roommates that night (last night) and it was a hurricane of emotions and stress, but we needed it anyway.

I would suspect Knox, more than anybody, to be at the centre of the “hurricane”. Innocent people would be upset for Meredith’s loss, but would not experience anything like Knox’s stress, as a murderess trying to concoct a consistent alibi, without success.

What we have been discussing is basically what to do next. We are trying to keep
our heads on straight.

Knox, here, is admitting that she was exercised in keeping her concentration on the next phase of maintaining her concoction of lies.

First things first though, my roommates both work for lawyers, and they are going to try to send a request through on Monday to retrieve important documents of ours that are still in
the house.

These “documents” were obviously much more important than Meredith’s murder. Knox is such a narcissist ““ everything is all about her.

Secondly, we are going to talk to the agency that we used to find our house and obviously request to move out. It kind of sucks that we have to pay the next month’s rent, but the owner has protection within the contract.

Such a shame! Obviously Knox did not foresee that murdering Meredith might cost her a month’s extra rent.

After that, I guess I’ll go back to class on Monday, although I’m not sure what I’m going to do about people asking me questions, because I really dont want to talk again about what
happened. I’ve been talking an awful lot lately and I’m pretty tired of
it. After that, it’s like I’m trying to remember what I was doing before
all this happened. I still need to figure out who I need to talk to and what I need to do to continue studying in Perugia, because it’s what I want to do.

Yes, Knox, don’t let your murder of Meredith interrupt your study and future plans.

Anyway, that’s the update, feeling okay,

Better now for off-loading all this rubbish? Here’s a bit of advice, Knox, if you truly wish to offload your burden, tell the truth of your involvement in Meredith’s cruel murder.

Hope you all are well,
Amanda.

Yeah - right!

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Appeal Session #5: Prosecutor Alessandro Crini Concludes, Proposes 30 Years For AK And 26 For RS

Posted by Our Main Posters

Overview

This is the report on the second day of Prosecutor Crnini summarizing the entire case.

This was not attempted at such length at the 2011 Hellman appeal and that panel of judges was perhaps not ever fully in the picture. The first day of the presentation is reported on here. 

Real-Time Reporting, Bottom Up

4. Assessment by main poster SeekingUnderstanding

The case put forward by the prosecution and reported to us by Yummi is almost startling in its lucid and concise approach.

It couldn’t be more in contrast to the equivocations and disingenuousness, as well as irrelevant sentimentality that we have unfortunately become used to witnessing. The cutting use of logic was therefore refreshing, and gives grounds for optimism, albeit it tempered by unknowns.

All the issues seemed to be addressed from the base line, as if from primary considerations. And many points were simply politely dismissed as being unimportant to the true case in hand -which is the establishment of the guilt (or not) of the accused. For example, it was great to hear that the reason why the knife had been brought to the cottage need not be examined - it was enough that it was there.

It seemed that where the defence had challenged the evidence, for example suggesting contamination of DNA, it was here that Crini spared no detail, and took time in bottoming out the logic, and dispensing with their points. His arguments certainly carried conviction to me.

I was glad to see motive and behavioural dynamics looked at, as indeed Cassation had requested. It seemed good too that Crini ruled out premeditation, and reduced the dynamics to something highly plausible and believable as well as simple. There are just two points I might observe :

First, it would seem within character for Meredith to have been both open and direct in confronting issues of hygiene, drug use, infringement of privacy and noise etc., (or even theft of rent money, another possibility). I am not convinced that she would necessarily have been aggressively confrontational. Someone who is relaxed within themselves, accepting of their self, is well able to be assertive in a non-provocative manner. That is quite British too - especially old-fashioned English.

Secondly, bearing in mind the possible or probable profiles of the defendants, it would not have taken more than one small trigger of reasonable confrontation to release the consequent temper-tantrum or drug fuelled rage. I do not think we are dealing with something proportionate - and this is also why it escalated in the terrifying way it did. I don’t think it is essential to hypothesize as to what in particular Meredith raised an objection to (e.g. Rudy’s bathroom event). It is probable that Meredith’s concerns were reasonable, and then the overly defensive and angry reaction to any criticism whatsoever was unreasonable. I personally think this is enough.

I liked the way Crini said that even though a source is unreliable or not credible in some ways, that does not mean they do not (inadvertently as it were) give out information that is also true and useful. Possibly other statements from Guede might be taken into account in this way?

As a psychologist, it would seem dialogue with Rudy might yet be fruitful, but, with things the way they remain with the other two, it does not seem the time now for further words. Something else needs to happen.

3. Assessment by main poster James Raper

Crini spent about 10 hours in total addressing the court and was certainly very thorough. Maresca was so impressed that there was no need for him to add anything further.

Crini came to the prosecution case without the baggage of having presented any previous scenario or of having had his reputation sullied and slandered by the Knox PR machine. He reviewed the evidence dispassionately and found it compelling.

Clearly he also found the previous machinations of C&V and the Hellmann court objectionable and went in hard here, even discussing previous cases where Vecchiotti and Conti had goofed up. Hellmann had tried so hard to avoid that coming out during his appeal.

He was not, however, averse to taking a different tack where he thought this was appropriate. A sign of his intellectual honesty which may have impressed the court.

For instance, he thought that there was no need to nail TOD down to 11.30pm as Mignini had sought to do. He allowed for an earlier TOD.

He was of the opinion that coming up with an exact time line for a period in which there is no alibi, and when there is already evidence of involvement in murder, is of only marginal interest.

He spent well over an hour discussing the knife. He did not think it necessary to mull over how it came to be at the cottage. That is speculation that need not detain anyone if the knife is accepted as the murder weapon, and he thinks that on all the evidence it is.

He ruled out premeditation, even as to a hazing, and presented a very simple scenario as to motive and the dynamics behind and during the attack on poor Meredith. Keeping it simple makes it understandable to everyone. Elaborate further and you risk alienating someone who disagrees with the elaboration and thinks they have a better theory.

My only objection is that it is a tad ridiculous to believe that Meredith objected to poop being left in the toilet, the toilet she didn’t use. But yes, the objectionable behaviour of a trio of drunken/drugged up louts invading her space would most likely have triggered argument, unpleasantness and then a fight.

There is plenty of character evidence to support that scenario and with a little imagination, and some recollection of one’s student days, one can easily see how this might have gone. In a way, and Crini admitted to this possibility, Meredith’s own behaviour, or misreading of the situation, may also have been a trigger. Whether one agrees with this or not, it is at least a believable and honest suggestion.

So he set out base camp for the court (bearing in mind that Cassation had suggested that behavioural dynamics be given serious consideration by the appeals court) and whether the judges elaborate further (perhaps by conjecturing a possible range of equally valid motives and dynamics) is up to them.

2. Assessment by main poster Hopeful

Crini is magnificent! He’s absolutely crushing the defense. He nails Knox as having left her bloody shoeprint on the pillow under Meredith.

He accepts Novelli who found Meredith’s trace on the knife. He believes Knox left DNA on the knife. He quotes from differing experts Gill and Balding and says Sollecito’s DNA on the bra clasp stands.

He describes a small, very sharp knife that he believes was used to cut off the bra in several places. He says the knifeprint on the sheet was from the big kitchen knife.

Crini contends that the strong bruise marks around Meredith’s mouth were from restraining her and blocking the scream.

He believes this fight was caused by Meredith angrily reacting to Knox’s constant dirty ways in the cottage and Guede’s nasty toilet habit along with his and Sollecito’s unwanted presence in the cottage that night.

Crini argues a crime of rage when Knox was confronted by Meredith, citing Laura Mezetti’s remarks about the cleaning conflicts. Crini says that Meredith’s scream is what caused the fatal knife blow to silence her.

Not premeditated, the murder was the final result of the perps’ terror that they had gone too far during the raging fight. He’s asking for 30 years for Knox and asks to increase sentence for calunnia to 4 years, inclusive in the 30.

He almost laughs at Knox’s weak excuse over the drops of her blood found in the bathroom, saying she would surely have known if she bled.

He confirms the storekeeper did see Knox early in the morning after the crime. He finds no proof of Sollecito being firmly at his computer sending emails during the crime. He blasts the Knox and Sollecito alibis as being a tissue of lies.

Crini has another ex-Supreme Court justice standing with him in the Florence courtroom! (Baglione).  Crini has worked extremely hard. He has conquered this convoluted pack of lies and distortions and his diligence shows. He upturned the applecart of Conti-Vecchioti nonsense and thoroughly redeemed Stefanoni’s findings.

He has completely severed the heads of this Medusa Gorgon mess, Crini is the bomb!

1. Tweets continue from main poster Yummi

114. This means a total request of 30 years for Knox and 26 years for Sollecito

113. [Propose] 26 years for both for the murder

112. The murder is contextual, their was no premeditation, and no futile motive

111. Because of their staging and denials, they should not be given generic mitigation for murder.

110. Requests to increase the penalty for [Knox] calunnia to 4 years

109. But experience tells statements of unreliable perps do contain revelations about the truth. The ‘argument’ between girls, why such context?

108. Rudy Guede has no credibility, even if the Supreme Court is right that this cannot depend on his refusal to answer.

107. Crini cites Laura Mezzetti about the ‘annoyance’ caused by Knox on house cleaning issues.

106. Meredith was the one triggering an argument because of the ‘impolite’ invasion and behavior. She accused Knox .

105. Rudy was not sober, quite high, a bit annoying, and was acting the same disgusting way he behaved downstairs days before.

104. Meredith Kercher was sober, fully awake. The others were at least ‘smoked’, a bit high, Rudy was there in the house.

103. The motive is not futile, the motive is terror, it is the consequence of the prior aggressive action in which they were involved.

102. Nothing points to an agreed plan among the three that run out of control; the first cause was an aggression, a clash, impetus of rage

101. Crini: there is a prosecution duty to conjecture a motive.

100. The blood drop on the tap: a point is Knox does not explain, guesses, while she must be aware that she bled in the bathroom.

99. Crini believes the shoe prints on the pillowcase are from a female’s shoe as suggested by police

98. Knox’s DNA between the blade and the handle (36-i)is very significant. It’s not from sweat or contact.

97. The print on the bed sheet is compatible with the kitchen knife.

96. Crini: we don’t need to figure a reason for a kitchen knife to be carried from one apartment to the other..

95. The bra straps are cut in multiple points, not with a kitchen knife.

94. Sollecito cut her bra with a knife in multiple parts. hold bra to cut it - no Guede’s DNA in that point - used a small very sharp-edge knife

93. Rudy did not stab her, because he wad used both his hands, which were unarmed

92. Wounds indicate she was immobilized by multiple people, they killed her because failing to do so completely, were terrified by her scream.

91. Criticizes Torre’s theory that the large wound could be caused by a small knife: improbable, the wound has clear margins.

90. There were two knifes, one was small, not much fit to kill.

89. Ridiculous to think that Rudy Guede - which she knew - could intimidate Meredith totally to that point. She would react.

88. Specific indicator: no defence wounds; means bruises are not from fight but restraint.

87. Description of bruises and lesions around her mouth, indicates extreme force to prevent from screaming. Rest of body was also immobilized.

86. She was still wearing a blue sweater which was removed subsequently.

85. Analysis of blood drop pattern and position of victim when stabbed; body moved in a different position.

84. Location of crime - space between the bed and the wardrobe - is peculiar, analysed by UACV

83. Crini says will sketch a dynamic of events of the crime.

82. Crini says - implying Vecchiotti, Pascali - some experts should be “hold where they belong”

81. Crini recall Pascali working on the Olgiata and the Claps case (2008, 2010);

80. There is no instance of transfer of Sollecito’s DNA anywhere on the scene

79. Crini cites the Olgiata case.

78. Contamination must be deduced from context of finding and collection. You must think a practical way for Sollecito’s DNA to be transferred

77. Tagliabracci defends Vecchiotti saying the RIS statistical techniques were not used at the time; Crini cites Gill and Balding

76. Guede’s Y haplotype in victim’s vagina alone was used to identify him.

75. Sollecito’s DNA is certainly on the clasp for the police; Vecchiotti doubts but considers X separately from Y haplotype

74. The bra clasp: the first objection was the interpretation of the mixed/complex trace

73. Crini says he learned a bit of genetics working on cold cases

72. Vecchiotti and Tagliabracci have a reliability problem in relation to the case, for different reasons

71. Vecchiotti said she obtained all cooperation she required. Raw data could be accessed by accessing the machine itself as Stefanoni offered.

70. Crini says he found out the negative controls were deposited, the court will find the document of deposit etc.

69. Vecchiotti omitted to note the censures/observations written by the other consultants, this procedure is incorrect

68. Vecchiotti’s approach to the I-trace (refusal to test it ) was ‘ideological’, ‘weak’, ‘insufficient’

67. Interpretation of profile is for complex result. For non-complex profiles there is actually no ‘interpretation’.

66. Crini recalls answers by the RIS, defence tried to elicit approval of CV, but RIS said multiple test only if possible, compromise for result

65. Novelli cited saying the profile of Meredith is certain.

64. Meredith’s profile came out clean on a single amplification, means the trace is clear.

63. The meaning of test repetition is its necessity when you have a ‘dirty’, uncertain sequence like Knox’s profile on the knife

62. Novelli knows very well about double and triple amplification protocols, and Stefanoni knows well too

61. Guidelines are an indication that guide your driver, but then you have to drive

60. Someone who keeps a refrigerator like the one Vecchiotti has, should be less critical about laboratory practice

59. Crini: should we toss any result in the garbage, no matter how important and clear, whenever the test is not repeated?

58. Speaks about the single amplification by Stefanoni versus guidelines.

57. The presence of human DNA in a scratch on the blade of a knife itself is not usual

56. Crini: another introduction specific on DNA; notes btw that the new RIS finding is ‘important’ because adds information

55. Crini makes an introduction about circumstantial evidence

54. Discussion on DNA and remaining evidence will start in 1h.

53. Francesco Sollecito [in interview] was shocked, said he never expected so aggressive arguments from PG [the Tuscany Prosecutor General]

52. Yesterday, Crini spent the first hour to argue about logical ‘method’: how assess evidence altogether, examples, quotes of SC sentences

Monday, November 25, 2013

Appeal Session #4: Today Lead Prosecutor Alessandro Crini Summarises The Prosecution’s Case

Posted by Our Main Posters

Overview

This is the report on the first day of Prosecutor Crnini summarizing the entire case.

This was not attempted at such length at the 2011 Hellman appeal and that panel of judges was perhaps not ever fully in the picture. The second day of the presentation is reported on here. 

Real-Time Reporting, Bottom-Up

5. Good reporting on the court today

Andrea Vogt has posted an objective report here and Barbie Nadeau an objective report here.  We will post excerpts from both and other sources after the appeal session on Tuesday is done.

5. Warning about AP’s Colleen Barry

The Associated Press’s Colleen Barry is once again filing highly biased reports from the court. This is an appeal by Knox and Sollecito AGAINST a guilty verdict (by Judge Massei) and not an appeal by the prosecution to “reinstate” a guilty verdict. Get a grip.

4. Final post from the court today

It is 5:30 pm in Italy. Judge Nencini has declared today’s session at an end and he has allowed the prosecution to resume its presentation tomorrow. Prosecutor Crini has about 1/3 of his presentation on the evidence still to come.

3. Tweets from main poster Yummi

Yummi has warned us that the wireless internet bandwidth inside and just outside the courtroom gets overloaded late in the day as the reporters get busy on their reports.  Yummi does have a way around this but it involves leaving the courtroom when key arguments might be made and walking some distance away. So there might be some slight delays.

[More pending; Dr Crini has alerted that his presentation will be in 16 chapters]

51. [Judge] Nencini suggests to interrupt and go on tomorrow with following prosecution’s points. New schedule.

50. Chapter 11. is DNA. Crini says we may have evidence enough by now anyway

49. Crini censures Hellmann-Zanetti’s reasoning about calunnia (why not indicate the real culprit?). Says H-Z committed ‘physical violence’ on trial file

48. Knox’s calunnia is a strategy protracted over time says Crini

47. Dreamlike component in Knox’s statement, fish blood, are devices needed to surround a calunnia strategy

46. Knox needed to put some additional content into the ‘calunnia’, says Crini, or wouldn’t be believed, so she puts in pieces of truth

45. Knox spoke about a scream an a sexual violence before anyone knew. Sollecito said nothing was stolen before they knew.

44. Points out Sollecito says Romanelli’s door was wide open; Knox doesn’t notice theft. Crini highlights the ‘combination’ of inconsistencies

43. Knox thinks locked door is normal; does not flush toilet when finds feces; does not notice blood before having a shower; thinks blood is ok

42. Notes Knox’s statements are inconsistent and ommisive before her interrogation.

41. Crini speaks about Knox’s declarations. Interested in the timings. Says too much was repeated to be coerced.

40. Crini speaks about chapter 9, the statements of Sollecito. His call to her sister. His alert was late but even so preceded the postals arrive

39. Bathmat print and luminol prints were chapter 7. of Crini’s argument; 8. is the staging of theft.

38. The most significant stain may be the one in Romanelli’s room, says Crini.

37. Speaking of a female’s print left in luminol, Crini sounds outraged, saying other substances is vague unsubstantiated conjecture [eg it was blood not bleach]

36. Guede’s sentencing was not well calibrated says Crini. But a Guede alone scenario is not tenable

35. Does it make sense for Guede to leave there the evidence of (putative) theft, and clean footprints?

34. The unitary sense made by elements like the bloody print, is a cleanup. Considers the lone-perp scenario: inconsistent

33. Crini: starts talking about the isolated bloody print; calls it a ‘talking element’. Why is that print alone?

32. Suspects are only ones with a ‘logistic’ capability and an interest to ‘clean’ the murder scene. They aimed at ‘diminishing’ the evidence mass

31. Knox’s lamp was the only light in her room.

30. Crini: the perp(s) organized a rather complex plan to clean up and ‘sidetrack’ at the murder scene.

29. Still to be determined if calunnia was “occasional” due to pressure, or “aggravated” [sidetracking]; Crini saya a ‘depistaggio reale’ (sidetracking) occurred

28. Crini: suspects’ statements are extremely interesting: RS’s statements; AK’s e-mail, internet statements, [Knox’s] memoriale

27. Crini: a most fertile chapter of analysis is the ‘post-factum’ actions and behaviors of defendants

26. Crini has unfolded five chapters. Says he has a total of sixteen

25. Quintavalle, details of his testimony and woman’s description are exceptional indicators of accuracy.

34. Crini: it is unlikely that Quintavalle got it wrong. Because of contextual elements.

23. It is incorrect to dismiss a witness a priori because late. But for reasons totally different. Sometimes late is symptom of reliability.

22. Wants to deal with the issue of the fact that he came forward late, urged by an acquaintance

21. Crini: fifth argument is Quintavalle. He says he is sure about his testimony. Is a different kind of witness

20. Crini accepts both alternatives on time of death, after 23.15 or before 22.30 (but seems to prefer the earlier one)

19. Crini: Do not overestimate importance of timings that are not anchored accurately or cannot be proven

18. Crini: timeline is marginal to the case. All unproven timings to be taken cautiously.

17. Crini starts fourth theme: timings. Says they are very vague, except the tow truck

16. Crini: Curatolo is no ‘super-witness’, but can contribute to helping the court to draw their scenario

15. Curatolo saw a couple discussing and this memory is very specific, peculiar

14. Curatolo did not confuse night with Halloween, because it was big party in piazza the previous night, and because it did not rain

13. Crini: the court saw Aviello, shows what top [level] of unreliability is; the SC suspected so unreliable that calunnia elements had to be assessed

12. Crini: many trials could not exist if drug addicted testimonies were dismissed

11. Crini: the H-Z court assessed Curatolo a priori based on him as a person, stemming from questions of the court itself

10. Crini about Curatolo, describes Piazza Grimana; he was an habitual presence of the piazza, proven reliable in other cases

9. Crini: computer records and alibi point to Sollecito being not at home but on murder scene

8. Crini cites the log files of Fastweb: no internet activity, only automatic connections.

7. Crini: failure of computer alibi is evidence against, not just lack of confirmation.

6. Nencini notes prosecution did not ask to interrogate Sollecito. Crini cites D’Ambrosio’s computer expert report. No interaction before 5am

5. Sollecito gave computer alibi days later, and words his statement in the singular form.

4. Crini: first theme he deals with is presence of crime scene; alibi, if it’s false it is evidence no matter why false (cite from Guede trial)

3. Crini attacks the method of logic reasoning of annulled appeal: parceling out evidence, parrots aspects of civil procedure

2. Crini: Supreme Court censure was against the foundations of appeal , all parts not just some errors; appeal was ‘razed to ground’.

1. Crini: this appeal is unusual, not because of the case but for the course followed. Usually appeals are narrow, this SC annulment is not.

2. Tweets by Andrea Vogt

3. At Crini’s side in amandaknox appeal today is veteran Florentine prosecutor Tindari Baglione. Before this, he was in Cassazione.

2. Prosecutor Crini in Florence: don’t repeat error of Perugia appeal. Consider evidence wholly, including Curatolo.

1. Will prosecutors ask life sentences in amandaknox appeal today? Will Sollecito’s presence in court benefit him? Verdict January 10.

1. Prosecution Begins

This is the prosecution’s day. Sollecito is reported as being in court but low-key.

Various reporting notes the significant presence of Dr Tindari Baglione, formerly with the Supreme Court, about whom we posted on in September as follows:

The new Prosecutor General of Tuscany (Florence’s region) Dr Tindari Baglione, the chief prosecutor of Tuscany’s appeal court, is selecting the prosecutors for the appeal. He arrived in Florence in May of this year. He is said to be formidably unbending. He recently imposed tough sentences on 27 people for the environmental damage caused by illegal work in Mugello on the high speed rail link between Florence and Bologna.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Differences Between Micheli, Massei, Hellmann and Nencini Courts Pointing To Almost Certain Outcome

Posted by Peter Quennell

What are the biggest differences? In fact the Supreme Court already pointed them out: science, scope, and balance.

Judge Micheli, Judge Massei and Judge Nencini all have a very extensive criminal-case background. All three have handled many cases of murder, many cases against the mafia, and many cases involving criminal science. All three have remarkable success records and have hardly ever been overturned on appeal. 

Judge Hellmann and his court are the extreme outliers. Until forced into early retirement by the Council of Magistrates, he had been a (quite good) business judge. His one major criminal case, years ago, had led to a farcical outcome, and he was ridiculed for this at the time.

Cassation made it very clear that he simply did not reflect a knowledge of the precise Italian law on scope and balance at the appeal level, and that he mishandled the science. In fact, as he actually said, the reason he appointed two independent DNA consultants was that he was at sea on the science.

That left Judge Hellmann’s panel of judges like a rudderless ship, bereft of the kind of good guidance from the lead judge on science, scope, and balance that comes only from many years of experience.

Which, given a level playing field, the pathbreaking Italian system enforces competently like almost no other.

Above all as the Hellmann Report makes extraordinarily plain, his court came to be swayed by the CSI Effect, with the help of two tainted consultants and probably the irresponsible Greg Hampikian in Idaho.

The CSI Effect is a phenomenon very, very unlikely to happen in Judge Nencini’s court.  First, take a look at this good explanation of what the CSI Effect is in the Fox Kansas City video.

Many crime shows such as the BBC mysteries and the Law & Order series and spinoffs show investigators solving their crimes in the old-fashioned way. Lots of witness interviews and alibi and database checking, and walking around and loose ends and lying awake at night puzzling. And often there’s a big stroke of luck. 

But if you watch the very popular CSI Las Vegas series and its spinoffs in Miami and New York, and the various clones on other networks, you will see something very different indeed.

When those shows first began airing worldwide in the late nineties, the producers explained that audiences increasingly appreciate learning something new when watching a show, and it is true, one sure can load up on the trivia.

But you will also see the US equivalent of Dr Stefanoni and her forensic team in those shows, roaming far beyond the narrow crime scene, interrogating witnesses and checking alibis and finding a lot of non-forensic evidence, and even at times drawing guns.

Most unreal is that, time and again, the forensic evidence testing is clearcut and takes just a few minutes and instantly clinches the case.

• There are several articles like this one and this one on whether the Casey Anthony jury was affected by a shortfall in the starkness of the forensics when the behavioral evidence seemed so strong.
• There are several articles like this one and this one on whether the appeal verdict outcome in Perugia might be affected in the same way.
• There are many articles like this one and this one and this one and especially this one saying there is a tough added burden on investigators and juries without a commensurate improved outcome.

With conviction rates declining in the US and Europe, professionals are taking a scientific look at whether the CSI Effect is one big cause of that decline.

At the macro level in the US this writer doubted that the CSI Effect is fatally unbalancing takes on the wider evidence. The same conclusion was reached in this first major study at the micro level.

But the belief in the CSI Effect continues. Articles like this one on an Australian site talk of a backlash against too many acquittals. Some articles like this one argue that maybe lay juries are out of their depths.

And judges and prosecutions are taking countermeasures.

In Ohio and many other states prosecutors and judges are acting against a possible CSI Effect in their selection and briefing of juries. And an NPR report came up with these findings.

Some states now allow lawyers to strike potential jurors based on their TV habits. Judges are issuing instructions that warn juries about expecting too much scientific evidence based on what they see on TV.

In the field, Shelton says death investigators sometimes run useless tests, just to show they went the extra CSI mile.

“They will perform scientific tests and present evidence of that to the jury. Even if the results don’t show guilt or innocence either way, just to show the jury that they did it.”

This is coming at a time when death investigators in America have no resources to spare. An investigation by NPR, PBS Frontline and ProPublica shows some states have already opted not to do autopsies on suicides, others don’t autopsy people who die in traffic accidents, and many don’t autopsy people who die over the age of 60.

But Murphy, the Clark County coroner, expects things to get worse.

“You know, we’re in budget cuts right now. Everybody’s in budget cuts. Las Vegas is no different than anybody else. We’re hurting. We’re going to feel that same crunch as everybody else,” he says.

One of Zuiker’s great disappointments is that, for all its popularity, his fictional Las Vegas crime lab didn’t generate more political support to fund death investigation.

“I’ve done my job. You know, we’ve launched three shows that cater to 73.8 million people a week and is a global phenomenon and the largest television franchise in history. We hoped that the show would raise awareness and get more funding into crime labs so people felt safe in their communities. And we’re still hoping that the government will catch up.”

None of the science in Meredith’s case has ever been discredited in court. Even in Judge Hellmann’s court the agenda-driven independent consultants Conti and Vecchiotti failed - and under cross-examination admitted it.

Also remember that the Hellmann court did not get to see two very key closed-court scientific presentations (the stark recreation of the attack on Meredith, in a day of testimony, and later in a 15 minute video) which had a very big balancing effect on the Massei court. 

Right now the reputation of not one defense-campaign stooge who has attacked the science remains intact.

Greg Hampikian has headed for cover. He had widely proclaimed that he clinched the Hellmann court’s outcome, in an act which may well have been illegal. Unsurprisingly, he is now trying very hard to hide his own claimed “proof ” of shortfalls in the science, as Andrea Vogt has been showing in her Boise State University investigation, and as we will soon post more on. 

Saul Kassin is another defense-campaign stooge who falsely claimed that he clinched the Hellmann court outcome by “proving” a false confession by Knox - in an interrogation that never even took place.

Despite all of this, maybe as straw-snatching, we can again see an organized attempt to confuse American opinion on the science of the case.

Whether she did this intentionally or not, that is what the PR tool Colleen Barry of the Associated Press was doing when she omitted that the trace of Meredith on the knife is undisputed hard evidence.

Judge Micheli and Judge Massei handled the science, scope, and balance with some brilliance. In all three dimensions Judge Hellmann fell short abysmally.

What is your own bet on the outcome under the exceptionally experienced Judge Nencini?

Parts of this post were first posted in 2011 after the disputed and much examined outcome of the Casey Anthony murder trial..

Sunday, November 10, 2013

The Crime-Scene Clean-Up: How Rudy Guede’s Diary Provides Even More Proof That It Happened

Posted by pat az

This post is crossposted from my own place. Here is one of my previous crime scene analyses on TJMK.

Rudy Guede was ultimately declared convicted by the Supreme Court in 2010 of participating in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher.

The prosecution claims the two other participants are Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. Knox and Sollecito are currently appealing their conviction of the same crime.

The case against the three of them involves a suspected clean up of the hallway in the apartment after the crime. Meredith’s blood was found in the bathroom, and half a footprint in her blood was found on the bathroom mat. However, there was no visible blood between Meredith’s bedroom and the bathroom.

The only visible blood in the hallway were faint partial shoe prints that led directly out the front door of the apartment.

After the murder was discovered, the media reported almost daily on developments in the case. The day of the murder, the press reported on the blood found in the bathroom and the bedroom.

But until police used luminol at the apartment on December 18th, the media didn’t report on any significant blood found in the hallway.  Between November 2nd and December 18th, only one person stated that significant amounts of blood had been in the hallway.

Rudy Guede.

Rudy Guede actually wrote about it in his diary between Nov 20th and Dec 6th, after being captured in Germany.






The police arrived at the apartment on November 2nd. According to media reports, the blood they spotted immediately was only in the bathroom and Meredith’s bedroom.  When the scene was more closely examined, after the discovery of the body, police found visible blood patterns on the floor left by Guede’s left shoe as he left the apartment.

None of the people who arrived in the apartment on the afternoon of November 2nd reported seeing them; these footprints are not in any of the stories of the events of Nov 2nd told by Amanda Knox nor Raffaele Sollecito. So, while these prints were visible, they were not substantially obvious.

On December 18th 2007 investigators applied Luminol in the hallway and other bedrooms. This forensic chemical is used to detect blood which has been cleaned away. The Luminol revealed several footprints in the hallway between the bedrooms of Knox and Meredith. Example below. Some of these footprints were leading towards Meredith’s door.

They also discovered prints in Filomena’s room which contained Meredith’s DNA and Amanda Knox’s DNA. They also revealed a footprint in Amanda Knox’s bedroom. (The defense unsuccessfully contested the investigator’s conclusions that these prints were made with blood).

On November 19 2007, an international arrest warrant was issued for Rudy Guede. He was arrested in Germany on November 20th. Guede remained in Germany until his extradition on December 3rd.

During his stay in jail in Germany, Guede wrote a long statement that was published and translated. Guede’s writings are similar to to Knox’s jail writings in many ways - they both try to write out their own detailed version of events, while pointing blame elsewhere. 

But Guede’s comments may in fact be confirmation of a clean-up after the murder of Meredith Kercher (emphasis added):

I am asking myself how is it possible that Amanda could have slept in all that mess, and took a shower with all that blood in the bathroom and corridor? (Guede, Germany Diary, P21)

The police did not find evidence of any other blood until December 18th, AFTER Guede returned from Germany. As indicated above, the luminol revealed multiple footprints in the hallway, in Knox’s bedroom, and in Filomena’s bedroom. The image below shows these results in blue. Guede’s partial footprints are shown in red.






The conclusion is inescapable: Guede knew there would be significant evidence of blood in the hallway, before the police themselves found that evidence.

How did Guede know there would be more blood found in the hallway, before the police found that evidence on December 18th? And why wasn’t that blood there on the morning of November 2nd?

The courts believe the blood in the hallway was cleaned after the murder of Meredith Kercher. And the Micheli and Massei courts believed only one person had the motivation to hide this evidence: Amanda Knox.

Here is a summary of Judge Micheli’s October 2008 indictment finding.

In Judge Massei’s December 2009 trial finding for the original conviction of Knox and Sollecito, he also writes about the clean-up that the judges believed to have happened:

Further confirmation is constituted by the fact that, after Meredith’s murder, it is clear that some traces were definitely eliminated, a cleaning activity was certainly carried out. In fact, the bare foot which, stained with blood, left its footprint on the sky-blue mat in the bathroom, could only have reached that mat by taking steps which should have left other footprints on the floor, also marked out in blood just like (in fact, most likely, with even more [blood], since they were created before the footprint printed on the mat) the one found on the mat itself. Of such other very visible footprints of a bloody bare foot, on the contrary, there is no trace. (Massei, Dec 09; PMF translation)

In defense of Guede, Knox, and Sollecito, some might try to claim that Guede heard about blood in the hallway in the news. Rudy Guede was arrested 18 days following the murder of Meredith Kercher. During that time he had access to read the news and watch reports.

I have searched for articles in the period between November 2nd and December 18 which mention blood. All of the articles I have found so far discuss blood in the bedroom or the bathroom. One or two discuss footprints leading to the front door.

None of them discuss blood in the hallway that would justify a statement from Guede of “tutto quel sangue nel bagno e sul corridoghe” (all that blood in the bathroom and in the corridor)

Guede himself said he went between the bedroom and the bathroom, so may have tracked blood into the bathroom and therefore known blood would be found in the hallway.

Even that knowledge however confirms a clean-up, as there was not a trail of blood between the bathroom and Meredith’s room that justifies the footprint on the bathmat and blood found in the bathroom.

I have my own questions as a result of Guede’s knowledge of blood in the hallway:

Could the attack have started in the hallway? Could the first blood shed have been on the hallway tiles?

The prosecution and courts argue that Amanda Knox had a role in the attack and murder. Knox and her supporters are very adamant that there is no trace of Knox in Meredith’s bedroom. While the courts argue otherwise, could Knox’s role have been limited to the hallway?

Sadly, we may never know the full truth of what happened on the evening of November 1st, 2007.

My timeline of media reports on blood

• Nov 2nd: Meredith Kercher found. Blood found in bathroom.
• Nov 5th: Police analyzing traces of blood from apartment below.
• Nov 5th:  A “trail of blood” is on the inside handle of the door to the apartment.
• Nov 7th: reports of Amanda Knox’s statements, includes finding blood in the bathroom.
• Nov 14th: Police use of Luminol at Sollectio’s house. First reports on the knife seized by police from Sollecito’s house.
• Nov 19th: Analysis of blood in bedroom (pillow, bra, etc).
• Nov 22nd: Guede’s prints in blood.
• Nov 27th: Amanda Knox’s blood on bathroom tap.
• Nov 28th: Blood in bathroom.
• Dec 5th: Reports of Guede’s letter to father: “there was so much blood”.

My timeline of main events involving Guede

• Nov 2nd, 2am ““ 4:30 am: Guede seen by witnesses at Domus nightclub.
• Nov 3: Guede leaves Perugia for Germany
• Nov 11: Guede’s cell phone tracked in Milan (Corriere)
• Nov 12: Newspaper reports a 4th suspect.
• Nov 19: Guede identified as suspect in newspapers
• Nov 19: Guede skype conversation with friend.
• Nov 20: Patrick released from prison.
• Nov 20: Guede arrested while trying to return to italy on train in Germany.
• Nov 21: Guede interrogated by German police; Guede admits to being at apartment, blames an italian man for murder.
• Nov 20-Dec 5: Guede writes diary in German prison.
• Dec 3:  Germany grants Guede’s extradition back to Italy.
• Dec 6: Guede returns to Perugia.
• Dec 7: Guede interrogated by Magistrate.
• Dec 14: Guede ordered to remain in prison.
• Dec 17: Knox is questioned by Mignini.
• Dec 18: Police use luminol in apartment and find footprints in hallway and in Filomena’s bedroom.

Sunday, November 03, 2013

Knox Apologists Attempt To Bend Congress; But Nobody Important Turns Up

Posted by Our Main Posters

From the left: Steve Moore, John Douglas, and Michael Heavey.

In a room for hire at the Congress they made presentations of their misleading takes on the case to a near-empty room.

Senator Cantwell was apparently there briefly but took off as soon as she could. No other elected leaders were seen to be there.

There was seemingly no media coverage except for a sole post by another Knox apologist on the Infamous Ground Report.

These are hardly the most impartial or for that matter truthful and accurate observers of the case.

Click through for our numerous takedowns of the hapless Steve Moore, and John Douglas, and Michael Heavey.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Given The Abundant Facts, What Scenario Is The Nencini Court Considering? Probably Not Unlike This

Posted by Marcello

1. The “Innocence/Framing” Campaign

It is rather sad that this case, of the violent murder of Meredith Kercher, has seen a ‘hurricane’ of noise trying to cherry-pick and disprove the more salient facts, and worse, discredit those who investigated, prosecuted and ruled on the case as well as discredit those who continue to emphasize the facts.

Over the past six years there has been a concerted effort by the defendants in this case, and primarily by their families, their “˜groupies’ and their legal consultants, to mount and continue a public relations campaign to frame the defendants as innocent of the crime of murdering Meredith Kercher. This ‘innocence’ campaign has even gone so far as to tarnish the motives of the fine justice officials involved.

The defendants themselves have continuously obfuscated and lied about the more salient facts, albeit inconsistently (their multiple versions fail to match up, and do not match the available facts). Lately Ms. Knox has done a number of (typically unconvincing) interviews, and her parents still seem too intent on defending the fantasy of their daughter’s innocence, all evidence to the contrary.

Mr. Sollecito, for his part, tweets unofficial retractions about statements he made in court. Both have distastefully profited through books that are not much more than a compilation of lies (and which do not offer matching alibis). Meanwhile the legal teams for the defendants have recently leaked “˜favorable’ results from the testing of a new sample on the presumed murder weapon in order to (again) misconstrue the evidence for the general public.

2. Media Misreporting Facilitates

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of this “˜innocence campaign’ has been that far too many journalists have dishonored their professional ethics by failing to do the proper research and objectively report the facts. Journalists to this day continue to misreport the facts, leave out corroborating facts, or worse, blindly repeat the distortions or lies promoted by the campaign without proper fact-checking. By and large, journalists (mostly in the US and UK) have ‘anti-reported’ the case.

This is especially grievous given that there are multiple Court Motivations reports (a unique feature to the Italian justice system) readily available in Italian and English online, in searchable PDF format, as well as several websites like this one that have painstakingly sought to illuminate the vast amount of evidentiary facts.

Those journalists who have failed to correctly report the case, and those involved in this ‘innocence’ campaign, have repeatedly disrespected the victim, Meredith Kercher, and her family. By contrast, the Kerchers has shown great dignity throughout these years, remaining patiently quiet and consistently insisting that the truth be revealed by the Italian justice system.

The endless journalistic failures, and particularly the ‘innocence’ campaign, have also disrespected the Italian law enforcement and judicial systems. By contrast Italian law enforcement has demonstrated substantial deference to the defendants, especially when compared to the law enforcement and judicial procedures of other advanced countries. In response, numerous ‘groupies’ have exhibited pathetic jingoism by repeatedly denigrating a country of 60 million people based on rather uninformed attitudes.

And it is very likely that Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito, rather than confess the truth, will continue to obfuscate or lie as much as they can, as well as disrespect the Italian Court and the Kerchers by not being present at the appeal. Their ‘innocence’ campaigns will likely continue to distort or ignore the facts. And worse, journalists and talking-head ‘experts’ will continue to report falsehoods and misrepresentations.

3. All Will Now Be To No Avail

Fortunately, none of the fabrications, ill-conceived scenarios or numerous pieces of unprofessional, sloppy journalism will ultimately matter.

This is because the Nencini Appeals Court will not be listening to any of the noise. The Appeals Court has a very specific program to follow, mandated by the Italian Supreme Court, which has already looked at this case four times (the detainment requests for Knox and Sollecito, the conviction of Rudy Guede and the annulment of the Hellmann Appeals Court ruling). The Nencini Appeals Court program includes:

1) looking at all the case evidence noted in Judge Massei Trial Court’s Motivations report,

2) considering the Italian Supreme Court’s Motivations report for the conviction of Rudy Guede, in which Guede was convicted of having a role in Ms. Kercher’s murder, but not the key role of fatally stabbing her, and that he acted in concert with others, and

3) considering Ms. Knox’s voluntary “˜gift’ statement of November 6, 2007, in which she placed herself at the scene of the crime. (This statement follows an earlier verbal and written statement released to the police during a few hours of interrogation in the early hours of November 6th.)

4. Big Surfeit Of Evidence

The amount of evidentiary facts the Nencini Appeals Court will have absorbed is substantial. Unlike the Hellmann Appeals Court, they cannot cherry-pick the facts. Per the Supreme Court, they must consider all the available evidence as a whole, logically tied together like a mosaic. Significantly, one could even leave out the knife and bra clasp entirely as evidence points because:

1) Ms. Kercher was murdered by more than one assailant. This is evident from the wounds she suffered, from the evidence in general and has been consistently maintained by three different trial judges and four different Supreme Court reports.

2) Guede in all his various confessions has consistently hinted and ultimately confirmed the presence of Knox and Sollecito during the crime.

3) There is no plausible scenario for the crime that involves Guede and two or more unknown assailants.

4) All the other evidence found at the crime scene points to Sollecito and Knox being present before, during and after the crime in some fashion.

5) Knox was at the scene of the crime by her own written admission.

6) The break-in was staged and, by obvious implication, only Knox and Sollecito would have any interest in staging the break-in (see my earlier post listing all the problems with the break-in scenario).

There seems no rational way that the Nencini Appeals Court can logically acquit. And Judge Nencini has not ‘pre-announced’ a non-guilty verdict like Judge Hellmann did by claiming that the defendants “˜appear to be innocent’.

The only remaining questions are what kind of dynamics will the Nencini Appeals Court assign to the participants, and what kind of reasoning will the Italian Supreme Court provide, assuming Knox or Sollecito appeal to the Supreme Court.

Having already read the Massei Motivations report and supporting documentation for weeks, this will already be a highly informed judges’ panel. What scenario are they converging on? The following scenario is based on some of the most significant evidence, and overall seems largely unshakable.

5. Scenario Accounting For The Most Points

The Night Before: Halloween

1) Guede lied about meeting Ms. Kercher on Halloween. (No such meeting was corroborated by witnesses.)

2) Guede lied about his whereabouts in the early evening of November 1, 2007. (His claims of having appointments with friends were not corroborated.)

Evening Prior To Attack

3) Around 8:00 PM on November 1st, Knox left Sollecito’s place to go to work. She received Lumumba’s (her boss) text message around 8:15 PM that she was not needed at work. She responded at 8:35 PM while presumably walking back to Sollecito’s apartment. Then she turned off her phone at 8:35 PM. She was seen at Sollecito’s apartment by 8:40PM.

4) Sollecito received a call from his dad at 8:42 PM. (According to the defendant, they discussed the broken trap in the kitchen sink and how to clean the kitchen floor, and about going to Gubbio with Knox the next day. Significant about this is that the broken trap and clean-up likely happened later. See below.)

5) Sollecito turned off his cellphone at roughly 8:45 PM. (typically, neither Knox or Sollecito turned off their cellphones for the night)

6) Ms. Kercher was last seen by her friend Sophie Purton at roughly 9:00 PM going to her cottage.

7) There was no human interaction with Sollecito’s computer after 9:10 PM.

8) Knox and Sollecito were seen at piazza Grimana, by the cottage, at roughly 9:30 to 10:00 PM, by a homeless man who “˜resided’ at piazza Grimana.

9) Ms. Kercher’s phone made three short calls between 10:00 and 10:15 PM roughly, to check voicemail, a possible attempt to call a bank, and possibly an MMS message.

10) A car broke down near the gate of the cottage at 10:30 PM.

11) Knox and Sollecito were seen at piazza Grimana, by the cottage, at roughly 11:00 PM, again by the same homeless man. He noted they went several times to the railing of the piazza to look down beyond it. (The piazza overlooks the gate of the cottage.)

12) A tow truck came at approximately 11:00 PM to tow the car. The driver of the truck noted a dark-colored car parked in front of the gate of the cottage, which he noted was slightly open. At approximately 11:15 PM the tow truck left and the family in the broken down car departed the area with other friends in a second car. (Sollecito had a dark colored Audi.) No screams were heard and no one noticed Guede, Sollecito or Knox pass through the gate.

13) Sollecito’s dad sent Sollecito an SMS at 11:15PM. The message was not received by Sollecito’s cellphone until roughly 6:00 AM following morning.

The Attack Upon Meredith

14) Knox likely let Sollecito and Guede into the cottage after 11:15 PM, after the tow truck and car had left. Guede went to use the large bathroom and failed to flush his feces. The following is an assumed sequence:

15) Ms. Kercher was restrained in her room and her screams were muffled. (There was bruising on Ms. Kercher’s nose, mouth, lips and chin, suggesting her mouth was covered by one or more persons; only one scream was ever heard from the cottage; Ms. Kercher was familiar with martial arts maneuvers and likely vigorously tried to defend herself)

16) Ms. Kercher was choked and her head likely banged against the wall. (Bruises on Ms. Kercher’s neck suggest she was choked with small hands; Ms. Kercher had bruises to her scalp.)

17) Ms. Kercher’s jeans may have been partially removed to restrain her legs and feet. (There were few bruises to Ms. Kerchers legs and feet, including no signs of ligature. This suggests her legs were immobilized in some other fashion.)

18) Guede held Ms. Kercher’s left wrist, leaving DNA traces on Ms. Kercher’s sweatshirt.

19) Guede likely held Ms. Kercher’s left thigh, brusing it, and left his DNA traces inside her.

20) Ms. Kercher’s sweatshirt was removed and two layers of shirts she had on were rolled up to her neck.

21) Guede left DNA traces on Ms. Kercher’s bra.

22) At least three different types of shoe prints were left on the floor in Ms. Kercher’s room on postcards, papers and the pillowcase. None of these matched Ms. Kercher’s shoes found in her room.

23) A witness heard a man and woman yelling from the direction of the cottage.

24) Ms. Kercher was pricked and stabbed with a small knife in the right side of her neck.

25) Ms. Kercher likely freed her right hand and sustained small cuts. She may have punched Knox in the nose or mouth.

26) Ms. Kercher likely freed her left hand and sustained small cuts. She may have grabbed Knox’s hair, while perhaps ripping off an earring from Knox. (Crime scene photos show blonde hair strands in Ms. Kercher’s left hand)

27) Ms. Kercher was able to scream at the top of her lungs. Two witnesses heard the scream. One witness believed it was around 11:30 PM when she heard it.

28) Ms. Kercher was pricked on her neck and chin with a knife. She was stabbed on the left side of her neck with a large knife. Her neck was roughly 16” off the floor, as suggested by a blood spray pattern on the wardrobe door close to where she was found.

29) A bloody shoeprint fitting Knox’s shoe size was left on the pillowcase. Shoeprints matching Guede’s shoes were also found on the pillowcase.

Right After The Attack

30) Guede may have gone to the bathroom to get two towels to staunch the blood. Guede confessed to this, though no DNA traces of his are found on the towels. Guede’s bloody shoeprints were found around Ms. Kercher’s body, and his bloody hand print was found on the pillow.

31) At this point, Knox may have gone to the small bathroom to check a wound. Knox left traces of her blood mixed with Ms. Kercher’s blood in the bidet, edge of the sink and Q-tip box in the small bathroom. Knox left an additional blood trace on the faucet.

32) Guede handled Ms. Kercher’s purse, leaving DNA traces of himself and Ms. Kercher, likely with Ms. Kercher’s blood. (Traces of Guede’s DNA was found on the zipper of the purse. Because the trace contains blood it was likely left after Ms. Kercher started bleeding.)

33) Guede left bloody shoeprints leading straight down the corridor and out of the cottage.

34) A witness heard someone running on the metal stair of the car park shortly after she heard the scream.

35) The same witness also heard running footsteps on the cottage pebble driveway at roughly the same time.

36) The boyfriend of another witness was bumped into by someone “˜with dark skin’ running up the stone stairs, though the time is unclear.

37) Another witness heard people running in the street that wraps behind the car park.

38) Sollecito likely tossed Ms. Kercher’s cellphones from his car into a nearby garden 1 km away from the cottage at around midnight.

39) Guede was seen at the Domus night club around 2 AM.

Evidence, Manipulated Or Overlooked

Likely sometime later during the night Sollecito and Knox returned to the cottage to eliminate evidence and frame Guede for the crime. In so doing:

40) Sollecito left a partial bloody footprint on the bathmat.

41) Sollecito left his DNA on Ms. Kercher’s bra clasp after removing the bra. (Given blood patterns on the bra, the bra may have been removed after Ms. Kercher had died and certainly after she had been stabbed on the left side)

42) Sollecito left one, possibly two, bloody footprints in the corridor.

43) Knox left two bloody footprints in the corridor. One of these contained her blood as well as Ms. Kercher’s blood. (Knox likely bled during or after the assault and may have stepped in her own blood)

44) Knox left a trace of her blood mixed with Ms. Kercher’s blood on the floor in Romanelli’s room.

45) Knox likely threw Romanelli’s clothes on the floor. She likely used an inordinately large rock to break the window with the outer shutters closed. She likely placed some of the broken glass on the window sill to fake a break-in. (Romanelli and the Postal Police found glass on top of Romanelli’s clothes and laptop, suggesting the room was ransacked and then the window was broken.)

46) Knox, perhaps inadvertently, left a piece of window glass in Ms. Kercher’s room.

47) Knox left a bloody footprint in her room.

48) Knox likely left her only room lamp in Ms. Kercher’s room by accident. (The lamp was found on the floor, by Ms. Kercher’s bed, and it may have been used to exam the bloodied floor around Ms. Kercher’s body to remove evidence, such as perhaps an earring and/or hair.)

49) Knox likely wiped away all her fingerprints throughout the entire house (While a number of fingerprints were found in the cottage and verified belonging to the three other flatmates, no fingerprints were found that could be matched to Knox, not in her room or elsewhere- except for one, on a glass in the kitchen.)

50) Knox and/or Sollecito repositioned Ms. Kercher’s body and covered it with the duvet. (Crime scene photos show from the streaks of blood that Ms. Kercher’s body was moved. There were masses of long hair mixed with blood on the floor, suggesting someone had yanked Ms. Kercher by her hair.)

51) They likely took Ms. Kercher’s wallet, closed her bedroom door and locked it.

Back At Sollecito’s Place

52) Sollecito and Knox returned to Sollecito’s place to clean up. They brought back the large knife and cleaned it with steel wool, and also tried to scrape away build-up/rust by the handle. (The knife was found at Sollecito’s place, with DNA traces of Knox on the handle and by the handle/blade joint, with a DNA trace of Ms. Kercher on the blade, with scratches on the blade and pockets of cleaned stainless steel by the handle.)

53) Sollecito likely disconnected the trap of his kitchen sink, perhaps to clean it. (The trap pipe was found disconnected.)

54) Sollecito and Knox likely used bleach to clean the floor of any blood. (Police observed a strong smell of bleach when entering Sollecito’s apartment.)

55) Sollecito and Knox apparently took a shower. (Knox has recounted a number of “˜ear cleaning’ and ‘shower’ stories.)

56) Sollecito likely put blood stained clothes and shoes into one or more garbage bags and drove in the night to dump them somewhere.

57) Sollecito used his computer at around 5:30 AM and turned on his cellphone at around 6AM.

Events On The Next Morning

58) Knox was seen at a nearby store at around 7:45 AM, just as the store was opening. She was noticed going to the cleaning products section, wearing clothes that were ultimately found on her bed at the cottage.

59) Knox may have traveled back and forth from the cottage with a mop and/or garbage bags. (In her different versions, both verbal and written, she talks about ‘having to fetch a mop from the cottage’.)

60) Knox turned on her cellphone around noon.

The Police At The House

61) Knox and Sollecito were discovered at the cottage by the Postal Police at around 12:30 PM.

62) Knox told the Postal Police that Ms. Kercher sometimes kept her door closed. (This was later contradicted by Romanelli, who insisted Ms. Kercher’s door be broken down.)

63) Knox called her mother in a panic at roughly 12:45 PM. Knox would later forget this phone call in her testimony and in her book.

64) Sollecito called the Carabinieri at around 12:50 PM, confirming nothing was stolen in Romanelli’s room, though he could not have possibly known this for certain.

65) When Ms. Kercher’s door was broken down, at around 1:15 PM, Sollecito and Knox were not with the group that broke the door down, and were not able to see inside the room.

66) Knox panicked when it seemed that Guede’s feces had been flushed by accident.

Later That Same Day

67) At the police station, Knox yelled out that Ms. Kercher “˜bled to death’.

68) At the police station, Knox inveighed against “˜those bastards’ after being fingerprinted, though it’s unclear whether she meant some other killers (and if so, why the plural), or the police.

One Day Later

69) On November 3, 2007, Sollecito lied to a reporter about how the discovery of Ms. Kercher’s body happened, recounting that Knox was the first to discover the body, and that he ‘saw blood everywhere’ even though he could not have seen into the room.

Two Days Later

70) On November 4, 2007, Knox emailed a narrative of the events from her point of view.

71) During the autopsy of November 4th, the prosecutor was convinced by the number and manner of the injuries on Ms. Kercher’s body that there had to be more than one assailant.

72) On November 4, 2007, Knox broke down when police showed her and the other roommates the knives in the silverware drawer at her cottage, to determine if any knives were missing. Knox had to be escorted outside to calm down.

73) Knox would later confess to her parents her concern about the knife at Sollecito’s apartment.

Three Days Later

74) On November 5, 2007, Sollecito failed to back up Knox and changed his alibi when confronted with cellphone records. He maintained Knox left his apartment from roughly 9:00 PM to 1:00 AM.

Four Days Later

75) On November 6, 2007, following Sollecito’s interrogation, Knox blamed Lumumba for the murder, first verbally, then in one written statement, then in a second statement that she offered voluntarily without coercion.

76) Knox failed to make an official retraction of her blaming Lumumba for the murder.

And Subsequentially

77) When first contacted by his friend via Skype, Guede spoke of a man with a knife who was shorter than he, and who had chestnut colored hair (like Sollecito). He also thought Knox was arguing with Ms. Kercher.

78) When Guede was arrested, Sollecito was concerned that Guede might say strange things about him. (If Sollecito was innocent, why be concerned about Guede?)

79) In their multiple “˜confessions’, both Knox and Guede cite Ms. Kercher’s “˜terrible screams’.

80) In court, as a response for finding Ms. Kercher’s DNA on the knife, Sollecito made up a story of pricking Ms. Kercher’s hand while cooking and subsequently apologizing to her about it. But Ms. Kercher had never been to his apartment. Sollecito recently retracted this story on Twitter.

81) Guede eventually confirmed that Sollecito and Knox were with him on the night of the murder.

Some Further Considerations

Ms. Kercher was not promiscuous and had scruples about watering the marijuana plants of the boys residing on the ground floor of the cottage. She had never expressed any interest in Guede to any of her closest friends. Similarly, Guede had never expressed any interest to any of his friends or acquaintances regarding Ms. Kercher.

Some 40+ wounds were found on Ms Kercher’s body. Despite being physically active and knowing martial arts maneuvers, she had few defensive wounds, mostly on the right hand.

She had bruising on her back, her left thigh, lower right leg, both elbows and wrists, the neck, the nose and mouth. She had two significant stab wounds of differing size on opposite sides of the neck, as well as various cuts on face, neck, hands.

No ligature marks were found on her ankles or wrists. She was therefore assaulted by multiple attackers. And as the evidence and trial reports have repeatedly indicated, the attackers were Knox, Sollecito and Guede, with Guede not responsible for the fatal wound.