Claims Amanda Knox’s Confessions Resemble “False Confessions” Not Backed Up By Any Criminal Research

Comments

Reading this it becomes clear just how unlucky poor Amanda was.

Firstly to have experienced the rare phenomenon of an internalized false confession (unluckier still that it was the even rarer phenomenon of an internalized ‘partial’ confession) which placed her at the scene of a crime during the commission of a murder which forensic analysis would later confirm and for which her alibi would receive no independent verification, not even from her boyfriend.

Add to this the fact that she experienced this phenomenon in a third world country with a long and documented history of framing promiscuous females for tricky murders and for whom the concept of judicial impartiality is as foreign as the entire population of its prisons….

Yes, she was very unlucky indeed.

what i find most striking is all the in-depth analysis performed on everything amanda did and said but yet no one uses that same high powered perception to look at the most glaring fact.  there is no physical evidence tying amanda to the murder scene.  out of three suspects committing a lenghty violent assault and two of the three manage not to leave a trace of evidence behind.  how does any intelligent person rationalize that fact?

gskrptr - there is a wealth of physical evidence she and RS were there. You just choose not to see it.

Hi gskrptr. Welshy is right. The crime scene is the house not the room and there was plenty of evidence all over there.

Do you know that Rudy Guede left very little evidence for someone who has admitted been there and touching everything? Do you know that Guede left no hairs, no saliva, no sweat, no blood, and no other bodily fluid at the scene of the crime?

Do you know that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito left plenty of DNA evidence and footprints all over the crime scene? Do you know that the motivation report clearly explains, without a minimal doubt, that more than one person was present during the murder of poor Meredith?

Read Massei and Micheli. Any one of dozens of items of evidence at the crime scene would have been enough for conviction in the US courts. A majority of murders are committed where nothing links the the killer to the immediate scene. This post makes that quite clear.

Hi Peter: One witness is out, it seems. But there is still a tons of evidence, and that the Seattle PR firm conveniently just forgets:
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/113522204.html

I am still in a kind of a shock that how can be a printed media anywhere in the USA is so one- (blind)-sided?

Hi Hungarian,

It’s completely misleading of some journalists to refer to Antonio Curatolo as a key witness, star witness or super witness. Knox and Sollecito weren’t convicted on the strength of his evidence. His testimony merely provided further confirmation that Knox and Sollecito’s alibis are false and helped establish Meredith’s time of death.

I find it astonishing that Curatolo is facing trial for drug dealing 8 years after these offences allegedly took place. If there was sufficient evidence against him at the time, surely he would have been charged and convicted of this crime years ago. I wonder if the police officers and prosecutor involved in Curatolo’s case informed the authorities in Perugia of his alleged criminal activities.

It will be interesting to see what evidence there is against him. Photographs of him talking to a drug addict in Piazza Grimana will prove nothing. Why was wasn’t he stopped and searched for drugs? It seems there is no actual evidence that he was ever in possession of heroin. It needs to be established whether Curatolo was specifically targetted by the police for drug dealing or whether he was photographed when the police were carrying out survelliance on all the people who frequented Piazza Grimana.

Presumably all the people who think Curatolo testimony should be discounted because of the allegations against him feel the same way about the convicted baby killer and convicted mobster who have been called as witnesses for the defence.

@ welshy…of course there is dna traces around the rest of the house.  she lived there!  the footprints were never tested for blood nor do they now when the footprints were made and the massei report ruled out cleansing of the scene.

1/14/11

correction:  CD-Host is found at “Church Discipline” blogspot.

Hi gskrptr,

The footprints were tested for blood. Luminol was used to detect the presence of blood at the cottage and it is the most sensitive blood detection technique commonly used by forensic investigators. Luminol has been found to be five times more sensitive than TMB (Tetramethylbenzidine). This explains why the TMB tests yielded negative results.

Furthermore, forensic investigators who regularly work on crime scene can easily distinguish between the bright blue glow of a blood trace and the much fainter glow of other reactive substances.

It should also be noted that reactive substances also produce different colour spectrums. For example, it is straightforward to distinguish between blood and bleach. The luminol couldn’t have been reacting to bleach anyway because bleach dissipates after a couple of days and there will be no trace left. The luminol tests at the cottage were carried out on 18 December 2007.

You really need to get your facts straight before posting on TJMK because at the moment you’re seriously embarrassing yourself with some ignorant comments.

Judge Massei didn’t rule out that there had been a clean-up at the cottage at all. He specifically wrote about the clean-up at the cottage:

“This action of checking and cleaning was carried out, therefore, in the very early hours of the morning of 2 November.” (The Massei Report, page 386).

Your claim Knox and Sollecito didn’t leave any trace of evidence behind is complete and utter nonsense.

Sollecito left an abundant amount of his DNA on Meredith’s bra clasp. His DNA was identified by two separate DNA tests. Of the 17 loci tested in the sample, Sollecito’s profile matched 17 out of 17.

At Rudy Guede’s fast track trial in 2008, Sollecito’s lawyers claimed that their forensic expert, Professor Vinci, had found Knox’s DNA on Meredith’s bra.

The bloody footprint on the blue bathmat in the bathroom matched the precise characteristics of Sollecito’s foot, but couldn’t possibly belong to Guede.

Knox’s DNA was on the handle of the murder weapon, which was sequestered from Sollecito’s apartment. Sollecito knew that Meredith’s DNA was on the blade which is why he twice lied about accidentally pricking her hand whilst cooking.

Amanda Knox’s DNA and Meredith’s blood was found on the floor in Filomena’s room, where the break-in was staged. Rudy Guede couldn’t have staged the break-in because his bloody footprints led straight out of Meredith’s room and out of the cottage.

gskrptr - as an addition to The Machine’s concise lampooning of your ill-informed assertion. Luminol detected the presence of a substance which exhibited the precise characteristics of human blood. The substances it detected were swabbed for DNA and in a number of cases a human DNA profile was extracted - this of itself is enough to prove the existence of a human biological material, so in other words - blood. It certainly wasn’t rust or fruit juice. In several instances Knox’s DNA was mixed in with Meredith’s blood.

You really do need to gain an understanding of the fundamental elements of this case before posting on a site which is frequented by people who have actually bothered to do just that. It makes you look a bit silly if you don’t.

One question remains. Why didn’t Sollecito dispose of the murder weapon? It seems that when someone is trying to cover up a murder, this is the first thing they do. They clearly wanted to cover things up with the clean up. Not that I am questioning their guilt, I suppose it is a rhetorical question in this regard. It just seems to make little sense to me. Given all the facts we have learned so far,  I would say that AK and RS are possibly two of the biggest bumbling crime cover up artists in recent history.

Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to part with a favourite knife. He was stupid enough to go to the questura with a concealed weapon. Ironically he tried to assert that this was proof of innocence. “Why would I take a knife to the police station if I meant any harm?” By his and his father’s admission, knives held a life-long fascination for him. They had an awful lot to think about that night.

Hi Kazwell,

Of course, disposing of the murder weapon would have been on the top of my list when covering up a murder. On the other hand, there have been many killers in history who kept murder weapons and belongings from their victims as souvenir.

In this particular case, I believe Raffaele Sollecito kept the knife as a souvenir and because he was convinced he would never come under suspicion.

It would seem logical to make disposing of the knife a high priority. But if this was not a planned murder (and there is some evidence to suggest that they didn’t plan it), then suddenly, Raf and Amanda had a lot of covering up to do. Everything from removing blood from themselves and their clothes, to disposing of phones, acquiring cleaning products etc etc. For us, with cool and clear heads, deciding what to do and what the priority was, is easy, but when you are in that situation, possibly freaked out, with time pressure and trying to do things in secret, there is plenty of room for mistakes.

I can think of several reasons why Knox and Sollecito did not dispose of the murder weapon: A missing knife from Sollecito’s apartment might look suspicious. (Maybe it was part of a set?)  Also, if they disposed of the knife in a garbage bag or dumpster, there was always the chance that it might have been found and traced back to them.  Police go to great lengths to search garbage, dumpsters, and even landfills.  Knox and Sollecito thought that cleaning the knife with bleach would remove all traces of the crime, and replacing it in the drawer of Sollecito’s kitchen would make it blend in with all the other knives and utensils.  They did not realize that the bleach did not remove all DNA and that the super-shiny knife stood out immediately when the police searched the apartment.

@The Machine…I have read the Massei Report the only difference is I read it without the preconceived notion of guilt.  Page 281 begins the results of the luminol testing.  in several texts they repeat that dna was present but was negative for blood.  they also admit that it was low copy and no supportive test was done to validate the original results.  beginning on page 283 the evaluate the “cleaning”  the report admits if cleaning was done it can not determine when or by whom.  it also rules out cleaning with bleach.

Hi gskrptr,

I don’t recall the police or prosecutors ever claiming that the cottage was cleaned with bleach. Judge Massei believes that Amanda Knox was entrusted with the task of cleaning the cottage and that she did this after she had left Marco Qunitavalle’s shop.

LCN DNA testing is perfectly valid and just as reliable as any other PCR technique, if it’s performed correctly. We know that these DNA tests were performed correctly because Dr. Biondo, the head of the DNA Unit of the scientific police, confirmed that all the forensic findings were accurate and reliable.

gskrptr - No, the only difference is we’ve read Massei and understood it. If you bothered to read a little further you’ll see that a negative result for blood revealed by luminol does not necessarily indicate that no blood is there.

Indeed Amanda Knox’s own defence conceded that “that in her experience there is a probabilistic relation to the number of cases in which the blood test comes out positive or negative”, furthermore the reason why there was no repeat of the tests is because Dr Stefanoni’s decision to use most of the DNA to determine indivdual profiles and “only the remainder to attempt to determine the nature of the trace”.

Luminol detected a substance which displayed the characteristics of blood, DNA was extracted from the substance which shows that it had to be human biological material, it MUST therefore have been blood.

The reference to the bleach which you cite beginning on page 283, again if you read it properly, is Massei ruling out the possibility that these traces highlighted by Luminol were caused by bleach. Massei has never suggested that bleach was used for the clean up at the cottage.

The prosecution never suggested that bleach was used. Massei does say, quite explicitly, that a clean up must have happened, and that Knox and Sollecito instigated it.

Think of the bloody footprint on the bath mat, no doubt you dispute that it belongs to Sollecito but that’s another illogical assertion, that bloody bare footprint hasn’t simply appeared on the mat - that mat can only have been reached by taking steps which should have left other bloody footprints (bloodier footprints actually because there would naturally have been more blood present on the foot) there is no trace of these other visible bloody bare footprints at all.

You really must take more care with your researching of this case gskrptr.

Kazell

Sollecito’s kitchen stuff came, I believe, as part of his rental, and so his landlord could be assumed to know what ought to be present, specifically that knife. (I rent out a furnished flat myself, and, yes, I do notice when things go missing.)

In addition, Raphaele had had a cleaning lady for some time. That means that there were other people who knew what equipment belonged in his kitchen, and would then know if there was a great huge knife gone missing.

Since the knife might have been specifically missed if it had been disposed of, cleaning it and leaving it in place would seem to be a reasonable decision, thus not merely the keeping of a trophy.

gskrpt-

Concerning the cleaning of the knife…. You state, regarding the knife, that in the Massei report: “beginning on page 283 the[y] evaluate the “cleaning”  the report admits if cleaning was done it can not determine when or by whom.  it also rules out cleaning with bleach.”

On checking page 283 of Massei - looking for references to the knife itself - I find this passage does not refer to the cleaning of the weapon. What the report there is discussing are the bloody footprints in the cottage hallway.

That passage explains why the court ruled out the use of bleach as a possible source for the luminol reaction in the hallway.The discussion does not argue against the presence of bleach at Raphaele’s apartment. Rather the opposite.

Here is the discussion pages 283-4 of Massei:

“The argument concerning bleach is different: in cleaning the house, such a product might indeed have been spread about in the various rooms. But in actual fact, it was not known when and by whom such widespread and extensive cleaning, and which had involved these various rooms, had been carried out. Furthermore, no one entering the house had declared that they had noticed any smell of bleach, unlike what, on the contrary, had occurred with reference to Raffaele Sollecito’s house on the occasion of the entry there on November 6th.”

That is, no bleach at Amanda’s, but on the contrary, bleach smell present at Sollecito’s upon entry.  Concerning this smell of bleach at Sollecito’s apartment at the time of the finding of the knife, that event is also covered in Massei (p. 106):

“Armando Finzi, chief inspector of the Flying Squad of Perugia, said that on the morning of November 6 he was ordered by Dr. Profazio to perform a search of the house of Raffaele Sollecito in Corso Garibaldi (number 110). Before entering the house, they all put on gloves and shoes covers.”

“There was also the deputy chief of police Chiacchiera, Passeri, Ranauro, Camarda, Rossi and Sisani. In the house there was a strong smell of bleach. He remembered the terms following the first action that he reported at the time: “I was with my back to the door; there was the dishware drawer; I opened it. I opened the top cutlery drawer ... we had clean gloves on, new. The first thing [99] I saw was a big knife. Let me state beforehand that it was extremely clean‛.

@Welshy human biological material DOES NOT EQUAL BLOOD.  and luminol reacts the same to blood as to any other iron based material.

@lauowolf my poists have only applied to the footprints in the cottage.  i never mentioned the knife.

oh and how did they get out of meredith’s room without leaving all these so called bloody footprints.  we’ll just say they flew and i’m sure you’ll will believe that.

You can post it 4 times if you like gskrptr, it doesn’t make it any more convincing.

Luminol is a forensic technique which is used to highlight the presence of blood which is invisible to the naked eye. What other iron based material is capable of yielding a human DNA profile? Rust? Fruit juice? Turnips?

They got out of the bedroom using their feet, by walking, there are no bloody footprints because they cleaned them up. That’s what we’re saying here, that’s what Massei concludes, why are you incapable of understanding this? Do you read the first and last words of a sentence and then guess the bit in the middle? Because that’s the only reasonable explanation I can find for your continuing idiocy.

“they also admit that it was low copy and no supportive test was done to validate the original results.”

Hi gskrptr, LCN is an accepted technique in some other countries and a court in the US has accepted it as valid. The resultant charts are extremely clear and all correct steps were taken to prevent contamination.

There would be no big deal here if the defense witnesses had attended the knife DNA test on the appointed day. They chose not to and instead they opened the road to tired insinuations.and wrong facts.

Seriously, we dont need them parroted here, thanks all the same. We all began looking at the case with an open mind. You don’t seem to have done so and it is making you constantly misread Massei.

@gskrptr
“how did they get out of meredith’s room without leaving all these so called bloody footprints”

How is there a bloody footprint attributed to Raffaele in the bathroom with no footprints leading up to it or on from it?
The shoe prints attributed to Rudy lead out of Meredith’s room and straight out of the cottage.

As for DNA - Prosecutors in some US states are even employing “negative evidence witnesses” to make the point that not all crime scenes yield DNA, fingerprints or other evidence.

Welshy,

“What other iron based material is capable of yielding a human DNA profile?”

Sweat, skin cells?

DNA can be extracted from sweat. However see “The Iron Content of Sweat in Normal Adults” by Coltman and Rowe. The result of their tests was to conclude that “the iron concentration of perspiration is negligible.” So the luminol glow was not due to sweat but even if it had been that would still mean AK was walking around barefoot in Meredith’s blood.

Skin cells that are shed naturally are exfoliated cells but they are dead, or karatinized, cells that do not produce DNA.

Incidentally “blood cameras” are now in the process of being developed in the USA that will also be able to detect blood invisible to the naked eye and which will not have the disadvantage of smearing the trace which luminol spray can do.

Where next:

Or to next entry The New 80,000 Pound Gorilla In The Room Introduced By The Italian Supreme Court

Or to previous entry Scientific Statement Analysis: Amanda Knox’s Statement To The Appeal Court On 11 December