The Summations: Barbie Nadeau On Mr Mignini Setting Out The Attack Scenario

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AK’s parents were on Seattle TV News again tonight stating that there is no evidence against AK and if this had happened in the U.S., AK would never have been charged! 

It is time for tough questions to be asked of Edda including why she let a good, decent man sit in jail for 2 weeks, knowing he was innocent.  Thankfully, the police did a great job and released him as soon as they could.

Would Edda have ever come forward and tell the police that AK falsely accused him?  Or, would she have let him take the blame for the crime and rot away in prison…

I’m tired of this nonsense about “if this happened in the US”. It’s really ridiculous. Does the US not have a police force and justice system? Do accused killers walk free there?

Are Amanda’s parents in such total denial that they don’t believe the enormous amount of evidence against her - it’s been explained in quite some detail.

Hi BarbM. How very strange! There is plenty of evidence. Let them explain all the alibis and the various mixed bloodstains instead of simply saying there is none.

If there’s a guilty verdict, their island is going to shrink to very small. There are several books coming out which will be really good on the evidence - and three months after any guilty verdict there would be the voluminous judges’ report.

Edda Mellas seems to have KNOWN something was very wrong from very early on - there is a recording of her arguing with Amanda in Capanne about the happening or otherwise of the 88-second phone-call that Amanda made home from inside her room - while the police were actually right outside! - saying she didnt know what to do. Edda Mellas had told her to put the phone down - and call the police!

In that discussion in Capanne with Amanda, Edda just had to know. She realized. Finn posted really well on this. She seems to have been lying ever since. Over a year and a half now, and counting.

i look forward to the defense’s arguments.

from what i can tell of mr. mignini and ms commodi’s summations, they presented a very deliberate and methodical timeline and description of events and evidence. til now the “contaminated” DNA, the protestations of amanda and raff, the “couple very much in love” and all the bells and whistles from the defense side have done very very little to give an alibi, a different scenario, any semblance of credibility to either of their clients.

the FOA’s can only sing the same ole mantras of “if this happened in the US” or “she couldn’t have done it” because they have nothing to hang onto or point to which gives the merest scintilla of a rational explanation for their daughter’s behavior either at the time of this horrendous murder or for that matter in the courtroom. sturm und drang is all they’ve got.

Can you imagine what would their life be if she was released?

First, alleluyah, we knew it, these Italian bastards, and here is my face on TV, on People, everywhere, we are kissing and hugging, our little innocent baby is back in the safety of the US…

Then, weeks and months pass. “Who are you hanging out with?” “Did you smoke pot?” “Did you have sez with this boy too?” We do not want you to see this girl who gave you the rabid rabbit anymore” “Do not talk back to your father in law, he supported you” ‘Do not even mention Italy anymore, nor this weird looking Raffaele”

Plus all the people in their neigborhood who would know more that what they ever bargained for…

I would not bet for a happy end after all!

BarbM, it drives me batty too, when AK’s parents and FOA’s say there’s “no evidence against her.” There is such a weight of evidence against her, a string of at least a dozen or more improbabilities that, as Vincent Bugliosi might say, you have to resolve in her favor if you are to believe her innocent.

However, if I were on that jury, for me the evidence which I could not get around would be the double-DNA knife. MK’s DNA on the blade, AK’s DNA on the handle, means AK was involved at least as an accessory. That is, at the very least, she cleaned a knife used in the murder (and she probably struck the fatal blow herself). There’s just no way around it for me. One could CONCEIVABLY get around her weird behavior (maybe she’s just weird, not a murderer), her changing stories (maybe she was just stressed out by everything and was spouting nonsense), and all the other suggestive evidence (cell phones, presence at the murder scene, faked break-in, crime-scene staging, mixed DNA spots that could possibly be explained away by AK living there, bloody luminol footprints, etc.). (However, there is a large WEIGHT of evidence against her; the sheer number of improbable incriminating elements would be hard to get around for any jury.)

But that knife, that knife with the DNA the right way (victim on blade, perp on handle), that is, to me, the end of the story. There is, to me, no CONCEIVABLE WAY to get around that evidence. Case closed. End of story.

I know some people will scream “contamination!” But contamination cannot “create DNA” where it doesn’t exist. It can lower the likelihood of finding DNA that is there by diluting it. It can muddy the waters. But DNA is like a footprint. It is either there, or it isn’t. The only way MK’s DNA could be there if the knife was NOT involved in the murder would be if it was planted there by a corrupt criminal investigative unit, or if someone actually falsified the scientific findings. (I learned about this in Bugliosi’s brilliant book “Outrage,” about the OJ Simpson trial. In this trial, the defense “Dream Team” somehow convinced 12 jurors that there was either contamination or planting of evidence. But what they really had to believe was planting because of the above. Contamination alone would NOT have put OJ’s and the victims’ blood in the incriminating places that it was found in.)

So when people cry “Contamination!”, what they are really implying is a conspiracy to either plant or falsify evidence. Since there is NO (zero, zilch) evidence of such a thing, the knife must be the murder weapon. And AK must be guilty.

Case closed. End of story.

It’s strange, we’ve got this amazing technology that shows us who committed crimes, and it seems to me, we still do not trust it. As long as there is no tampering with evidence, it is infallible. That is AK’s and MK’s DNA on there, and it was involved in the murder. And the fact that the knife was Sollecito’s and found at his apartment makes him guilty as well. As I say, case closed. End of story.

When there is no DNA evidence, of course, the jury has a much harder job. Norma Thompson’s book “Unreasonable Doubt” deals with how to judge a murder case where there is no DNA evidence, but rather strong circumstantial and eyewitness evidence. Highly recommended reading.

In this trial, PM Mignini was exactly right to emphasize the stage break-in and crime scene as the strongest circumstantial evidence. Aside from the double-DNA knife, which to me is the strongest evidence, it is the strongest evidence.

i would love for ak’s parents to be interviewed on television and asked specific questions regarding the evidence that the prosecution refers to. i would like to hear how they explain it away when given specifics.

for me, one of the most damning pieces of evidence is the fact that footprints were found WITH luminol - not seen with the naked eye- which indicates a “cleaning up” was done.  that is evidence that is in every article written about this case.  how do they explain that?  there is SO much evidence that no journalist feels compelled to question them about.  i don’t get it.  i still think when the verdict is GUILTY, then the networks will pounce on the case and maybe the truth will be revealed to all.

also wondering if/when amanda receives a guilty verdict, if rafe will realize that HE needs to tell the truth and maybe get a lighter sentence.  this is not his trial, right?

“Are Amanda’s parents in such total denial that they don’t believe the enormous amount of evidence against her - it’s been explained in quite some detail.”

yes, lilly. seems that AK’s parents—Edda, Kurt and Chris—might subscribe to the worldview that just believing something enough and saying something enough will make it true. like wanting to believe in santa claus when you’re old enough to know the xmas eve whirlwind is not possible… or like my little brother at the age of 2 or 3, who thought if he closed his eyes, no one could see him. a normal point of view for a little child (or a megalomaniac), but not exactly a mature, evolved perspective.

on the other hand, what can one expect? they’re her parents—THEY RAISED HER. and what can they say? she’s their daughter. to some degree, they created her. they are responsible for who she has become and for her “wellbeing” in these terrible circumstances. surely, surely, as many others have pointed out, at some level they do know that she is capable of getting herself involved in this horrible crime—whether or not they can acknowledge the possibility that she dealt the final fatal blow by slashing meredith’s throat.

her mother has seen the obfuscation, ie. with the phone call. her stepfather must, somewhere in his awful self, recognize and remember his own covert, or overt, brutality against Amanda. and her father knows, like nobody else I presume, how crazy Amanda’s mother is. and who would be crazy enough to stay married to her?

It’s in all the news sources in Seattle, that her parents have bought AK a plane ticket back! I know it would be devastating to have a child do something like this, but how they continue to deny all the evidence is beyond me.  They would have been better to shut up and keep a low profile and show some dignity instead of enlisting a PR campaign with so-called experts! 

Friday I called the producer of a popular radio station in Seattle after listening to one of the hosts describe the situation “as written by Anne Bremmer”.  Anyway, the producer sounded excited to learn of this website, even re-verifying it, so I am hoping this will be one of their topics soon and word of this web-site will be spread to the people who only get their news from FOA and the PR people of Edda & Curt.

The more we post comments on web-sites of news medias and mention this web-site, the better.  I found TJMK after someone posted the link for Perugia Murder Files website.

Do we know anything about Raffaele’s reaction? He is said to show none. Do we know more?

The knife was extremely compelling evidence to me also. But, because the sample was so small (even though it has been stated as absolutely certain it was Mez’s), I looked to the mixed blood dna to seal it for me. The mixed blood was all over the house, correct? Plus, I will also look forward to learning of the evidence that they did supress. I am sure there was quite a bit we never learned.
Gramjan, this is Raffaele’s trial as well. His requested sentence was life plus two month’s solitary for his part in the crime. He can only help himself now. His family cannot save him.

I do not recall, either, Amanda’s friends testifying for her in Italy, not family or American friends. She does not seem to have made any. This is nt very normal for a girl who wants to be “popular”.

I also read today that her aunt is claiming that there were “lots” of pictures taken of Amanda and Meredith 2 days before the murder, they had gone to some chocolate festival together (because they were good friends…). But, claims the aunt, “the police distroyed them looking into her computer.”

It seems weird, she had a facebook, she used to send emails to all her friends, don’t you think that if really these pictures had existed, someone would at least have seen one?

Even if photos of the two girls would exist, they do not evidence a good relationship between the two. There have been witnesses confirming tensions between the two girls, so there is no way this can be argued away, all photos aside. If they were friends, like Amanda claims in court, in that case Meredith would have answered Amanda’s phone calls, I am sure, but she didn’t.

Good point, Patou…It is strange that she didn’t seem to have forged any strong relationships in Italy, aside from Rafaelle and a number of random men she brought home (which I would hardly call strong friendships!).  Not one new friend from Italy testifying on her behalf…didn’t really think about that before, but it is certainly odd/telling.  I realize that she was only there for 2 months, so you can’t expect to have a ton of friends by then, but I know from personal experience studying abroad, when you are alone in a new culture and there are other foreign students around going through the same thing, you tend to make some strong friendships pretty quickly - Take Meredith and Samantha Rodenhurst as an example.

These paranoid conspiracies - “the police destroyed photos” - are really beyond stupid.

The police have no reason to fix up Amanda. None. Why would they want to frame her? Why would they want to have a two year process involving hundreds of people, and goodness knows how much cost, just to frame an American student?

If the police wanted simply to “find a perpetrator” and put the case to bed, they would have stopped looking into the crime when they caught Rudy.

Instead, the fact that the Italian authorities has spent so much time, care and money to examine this case properly, means that they are professionals who care about THE TRUTH. About bringing to justice everyone who was responsible for the brutal murder of an innocent young woman.

If Amanda and Meredith were together at a festival photos would not just exist on Amanda’s computer, they would surely have been on photos taken by other people at the event with cameras, and thus be easy to find. But it would also hardly be a coincidence for two people in a small town to both be present at the same local event that attracted lots of other local people.

Can’t her family just have the grace to accept that Amanda has a case to answer? She is being defended by top lawyers, she has been given the best a defendant in a murder case can expect to have.

@Chira385 - Yes indeed! I also lived in Italy for a while, and it is impossible not to make friends, especially, as you said, with your “own” people who will give you tips, support and will be happy to meet another one “like them”. Exactly as Meredith did!

I found the link to the article I was speaking about yesterday, mentioning the chocolate festival. Read the comments also. Someone is even reminding that this chocolate festival did not happen 2 days before, but 10 ! These Amanda’s people seem to be in great need to find new lies to sound innocent ... http://www.westseattleherald.com/2009/11/23/news/amanda-knox-verdict-just-days-away

Of course, as Nell said in her answer… photos of them together would not prove they were “friends” anyway, too many testimonies show another picture!

Chira385 and Patou, you sure have it right. Italy almost forces you to have friends.

When I was in Perugia in July 2008 I rolled down the car window in the piazza by the court to ask a lady cop if I could park.  She said very loudly “impossible!!” I saw her several times after that and each time she grinned ear to ear.

Meredith mingled easily and became widely liked in her very short time in Perugia. She had excellent Italian on arrival of course, and she could interact much more freely from the start than Amanda Knox with her limited Italian - we got a report that Knox even made a big grammatical mistake last Saturday in her statement to the court, which had people in the courtroom wincing.

Meredith was apparently a lot more popular in Patrick’s bar than Amanda, who apparently kept hitting on the boys there while waitressing. And Meredith had her new Italian boyfriend, a love affair just starting that was described at trial as very sweet.

Meredith also had her seven English friends in Perugia, only one of whom, as far as we know, she knew well back in England, at Leeds. Their closeness was instant and intense, and those girls’ loyalty ever since to Meredith and her legacy has been extremely moving.

Where next:

Or to next entry Seems Sollecito Is Feeling Really Sorry - For Himself (So What’s New?)

Or to previous entry The Summations: The Italian Press Is Now Reporting Life Sentences Are Requested