Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Case For The Prosecution #4: Amanda Knox’s Multiple Conflicting Alibis

Posted by The Machine




The Knox Alibis: How They Conflict

The first three posts on the power of the case were on the DNA evidence, the luminol-enhanced footprint evidence, and Raffaele Sollecito’s various conflicting alibis.

Now we look at the various conflicting alibis that Amanda Knox has given for the night in question. We dont yet have full transcripts and have to rely on what was reported in the UK press.


A Summary Overview

In the case of Sollecito, when confronted with evidence that conflicted with his second alibi, he seems to have done a real u-turn and settled on the one that has him alone at his apartment for a long period on the night in question.

But his final alibi continues to give his defense problems up to this day, and they have essentially been unable to shore it up firmly.

Knox seems to be in the same boat. She also seems to have done an extreme u-turn, and the results of that u-turn have left her defense with an untidy situation that is still not noticeably shored up.

Her first alibi was to the effect that she was with Sollecito all night at his place, through to around mid-morning on 2 November. That alibi was the one she gave the police on the morning after Meredith was fatally attacked.

When Sollecito himself and the phone-record and computer-record evidence undermined that alibi, Knox gave several versions of a second alibi (not all of them heard by the court) in which she was claiming to have been present at the house while the murder of Meredith took place.

Finally, in her own testimony on the witness stand at trial, she once again settled on an alibi that has her back at Sollecito’s place all night.

This third alibi is undermined by accurate details no-one not present could have known in the several versions of her own second alibi (see below), by Sollecito’s denial that this is what happened (never amended or revoked), and by mobile-phone records, by eyewitnesses, and by the forensic evidence at Meredith’s house.

Now For Some More Detail

Police witnesses indicated that they became suspicious of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito almost from the moment when Chief Inspector Michele Battistelli and Assistant Inspector Fabio Marzi of the national communication police arrived at the cottage on Friday 2 November to explore why Meredith’s two mobile phones had been discarded the previous night in a garden a kilometer away.

  • First, Inspector Battistelli testified that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito looked “embarrassed and surprised” when the officers found them standing outside the cottage. (Knox and Sollecito told them there had been a break-in, and that they were waiting out for the police to arrive. But no prior phone call to the police has ever been proven.)

  • Second, Inspector Battistelli testified that when he inspected Filomena’s room, he immediately thought that this was a staging of a break-in and not a genuine one. There were obvious shards of glass on top of Filomena’s disarrayed clothes on the floor, and nothing appeared to have been stolen - some valuables were there in plain sight.

From the very first few minutes, the police on the scene were alert and watchful of Sollecito and Knox. And when Meredith’s body was discovered very shortly afterwards, they first began considering whether one of her housemates had been involved in Meredith’s murder.

When they soon after questioned Knox and Sollecito, they were presented with confusing statements, which did not seem to credibly account for their movements the previous night or earlier the day after.

Also, Knox and Sollecito disappeared into Knox’s bedroom and shut the door for a while - the period during which later evidence suggested they made a flurry of phone-calls to relatives while not actually mentioning that the police were already there in the house.

Rather than immediately arresting Knox and Sollecito, the police officers on the scene testified that they decided to tap Knox’s and Sollecito’s telephone calls, to record their conversations at the police station, and also to have them followed.

This surveillance continued for a three-day period, up to Monday night, where Sollecito was invited in for further questioning.

In this same period the police examined the phone records of the two. The records of Knox and Sollecito for 2 November provided some definitive proof that Knox and Sollecito had lied to them twice on 2 November.

  • First, they had claimed they had slept in at Sollecito’s until after 10am on 2 November, but their phones were proven to be operational prior to that time.

  • Second,  they had claimed they had called the police emergency 112 number before the national communication police arrived, but there was no evidence of such calls then.

The only evidence of any calls to the police was for the period right after when the national communication police were already there in the house.

Late on Monday 5 November, the police requested Sollecito to come down to the police station, to be confronted with all this, and to be given an opportunity to explain it away.

Knox chose to come with him. When Knox and Sollecito arrived at the police station, Sollecito was led away to be questioned in another room, and Knox was initially left alone after a suggestion that she go back home.

The police showed Sollecito the telephone records that proved that he and Amanda Knox had lied to them on Friday 2 November.

As described in the earlier post on his own alibis in this series, this forced a clear about-turn for him.

In my previous statement I told a load of rubbish because Amanda had convinced me of her version of the facts and I didn’t think about the inconsistencies.

Sollecito now admitted to the interrogators that he had lied to them earlier. He now put the blame on Knox, saying that she had asked him to lie.

He now claimed that she had gone out from his place on the night in question at around 9.00 pm and she had not returned before 1.00 am.

In effect, Sollecito had stopped supporting Knox’s alibi that she had been at his place all night.

Interrogators testified that Amanda Knox was told of this while working on a list of possible perps in another room.

Perugia’s chief prosecutor, Mr Mignini, was not present at the list-building session with Knox - he was only called in after Sollecito and Knox had each extensively changed their stories for the night.

Knox was informed by the investigators she was sitting with that Sollecito had just stopped providing her with an alibi, and that he had also just claimed that she asked him to lie for her.

The interrogators asked her to examine her mobile phone. They asked her if she had responded to the text message from her employer, Diya Lumumba, that she would not be required to work at his bar that night.

She claimed that she hadn’t replied, seemingly unaware that the police had her telephone records and already knew that she had replied. The investigators now showed her the telephone records that confirmed she had replied, and according to their testimonies on the stand, from this point on Knox largely seems to have lost control.

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

Police interpreter Anna Donnino stated that Knox showed extreme emotional involvement ““ she was crying and visibly shocked, saying at one point “It was him, it was him. He’s bad’”

All the police witnesses testified under oath that Amanda Knox had voluntarily accused Diya Lumumba of murdering Meredith, and that during the interrogation she had been treated well.

It would surely appear significant to the court that Knox made no attempt at all to refute Sollecito’s claim that she wasn’t at his apartment on the night.

Instead she readily admitted that she was at the cottage when Meredith was killed.

At the same time it would also appear significant that she was prepared to thrown him under the bus in her turn, claiming in one version that Sollecito was probably also at Meredith’s house on the night.

In fact, Amanda Knox stated on at least three occasions that she was present at the cottage when Meredith was murdered.

Two of the statements were ruled inadmissible for main trial by the Italian Supreme Court because Knox was not represented by a lawyer when she made those statements.

(Dr Mignini has said that court ruling was odd as Knox insisted to make both the 1.45 and 5.45 statements and he had just formally warned Knox to say no more without her lawyer being there.)

Judge Massei in the hearings ruled that another statement, a handwritten note to the police on 6 November which repeats the claim of having been present, could indeed be admitted as evidence at the trial, because she made it voluntarily. 

Here for the purpose of clarity is a summary of each of the statements. The first and fourth were elaborated on by witnesses at the trial and subjected to cross-examination. The fifth was made on the stand. The other two - widely reported in the media records - were not presented at trial, and so not subject to cross-examination. 

Version 1 Witness statement on 2 November

Amanda Knox told the police that she spent the whole night with Raffaele Sollecito at his apartment, and she repeated this narrative in an email to family and friends on 4 November.  From the email:

...after a little while of playing guitar me and raffael went to his house to watch movies and after to eat dinner and generally spend the evening and night indoors. we didn’t go out. the next morning i woke up around 1030”

Knox indicated that she couldn’t remember much about what happened at Sollecito’s apartment that night because she was suffering from cannabis-induced amnesia. In her handwritten note to the police, she acknowledged that her inability to fully recall the events on the night of the murder did look incriminating.

“I also know that the fact that I can’t fully recall the events that I claim took place at Raffaele’s home during the time that Meredith was murdered is incriminating”.


Version 2 Witness statement 1.45 on 6 November

This was ruled inadmissible at main trial by the Supreme Court. We dont yet have the transcripts but this is how the Daily Mail reported it on 13 November 2007 which may or may not be fully correct. [Later it proved not correct - the first statement said Knox went out and did not say Sollecito was at the house.]

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

“He (Lumumba) wanted her (Meredith).

“Yes we were in the house.  We were drunk. We asked her to join us.

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

“Patrick and Meredith were in Meredith’s bedroom while I think I stayed in the kitchen.

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

“Then I don’t remember anything else. There is such a lot going on in my head.”

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

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

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

This inadmissible version of events is already markedly different to her first one. She seems to have admitted that she was at the cottage when Meredith was killed, but claimed that Sollecito was also there.

Version 3 Witness statement 5:45 on 6 November

This was also ruled inadmissible for the main trial. Below is the version The London Times reported on 7 November 2007.  In this version Amanda Knox is not sure whether Raffaele Sollecito was with her at the house or not.

She seems to have said that she met Mr Lumumba on the evening of November 1 after sending a text message in reply to his with the words “See you soon” (“Ci vediamo”).

“We met around nine o’clock at the basketball court at Piazza Grimana and we went back to my house. I don’t remember if my friend Meredith was already there or whether she came later. What I can say is that the two of them (Meredith and Patrick) went off together.”

She seems to have said she and Mr Lumumba had told Ms Kercher they wanted to “have some fun”. “Patrick wanted her (Ms Kercher),” she said.

“Patrick and Meredith went off together into Meredith’s room while I think I stayed in the kitchen. I can’t remember how long they were in the bedroom together, I can only say that at a certain point I heard Meredith screaming and I was so frightened I put my fingers in my ears. I don’t remember anything after that, my head is really confused…. I don’t remember if Meredith called out or if I heard thuds because I was upset, but I can imagine what was happening.

She claimed she had had a lot to drink and had fallen asleep.  She added:

“I’m not sure whether Raffaele was there too that evening but I do remember waking up at his house in his bed and that in the morning I went back to where I lived, where I found the door open.”


Version 4 Voluntary note to police 6 November

This was ruled acceptable for the main trial by Judge Massei. In this version, which was presented in evidence, Knox claimed that she was both at Sollecito’s apartment and at Meredith’s house on the night in question.

Also for the first time Knox raises the possibility that she might have seen and heard the events at the cottage in a vision.

In my mind I saw Patrik in flashes of blurred images. I saw him near the basketball court. I saw him at my front door. I saw myself cowering in the kitchen with my hands over my ears because in my head I could hear Meredith screaming…

And she concluded the note as follows:

Everything I have said in regards to my involvement in Meredith’s death, even though it is contrasting, are the best truth that I have been able to think.

Preliminary judge Claudia Matteini observed in a statement that the court has received that Knox’s note to the police contained significant elements of truth - in other words, verifiable details:

Finally, looking at the content of the memoir itself, we must admit that its content is very careful. It is certainly not a fantastic and imaginary delirium.”

The note seems to suggest that Knox knew Meredith had been sexually assaulted:

Patrick wanted her”¦ I don’t remember if Meredith called out or if I heard thuds because I was upset, but I can imagine what was happening.

This seems to have been the first mention ever by anyone of a sexual assault on Meredith.

It was made before the results of Dr. Lalli’s autopsy report were presented to the court on 8 November. It was testified that Knox also revealed other accurate details about Meredith’s murder before the results of the autopsy were made public.

For example she told witnesses on 2 November that Meredith had died “in slow agony”.

Mr Mignini asked Knox on 17 December 2007 in the interrogation she requested how she could possibly have known this if she was not actually there. Knox began to cry, and refused to answer the question.

Knox also claimed that she heard Meredith screaming, and screaming was reported by two of the witnesses, Nara Capezalli and Antonella Monacchia. Each testified that they heard a loud scream on the night Meredith was murdered.

Knox also claimed that she was in Piazza Grimana on the night of the murder. This claim is supported by Antonio Curatolo, who testified that he saw Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in Piazza Grimana on several occasions that night.

Knox’s lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, really had no choice but to acknowledge the fact that Knox had made conflicting statements. In remarks to the press:

All of the lawyers have imposed on Amanda the gravity of her situation, and the gravity of accusing other people. They have all told her that she needs to tell the truth because there have been differences in the statements.

“We have asked her family to persuade her in the hope that her parents will ask her to tell the truth. There have been differing statements.”


Version 5 Knox testimony June 12 & 13

Knox volunteered to testify to why she framed Patrick Lumumba. This was not part of the main trial.

Knox simply reverted to the original claim, still not supported by Sollecito, that she had been with Sollecito at his apartment all night and a part of the following morning.

This alibi is undermined by (1) the accurate details she provided in the second alibi that no-one not present could have known (see above), (2) by Sollecito’s own denial that this is what happened, (3) by mobile-phone records, (4) by eyewitness accounts, and (5) by the forensic evidence at Meredith’s house.

Assessment Of This

It now seems, from the testimony on the various alibis presented at trial, that Knox like Sollecito has no credible alibi, and no convincing scenario at all for the night of Meredith’s murder.

And it would appear likely that she has damaged her overall credibility with the court by giving three main alibis, including one on the stand, that differed so very markedly.

Comments

Poster Catnip kindly translated relevant passages from the book Meredith by Mastronardi & Castellini.  That seemingly very careful and accurate book book was released in Italy early this year.

Page 19 on Amanda’s implicating Lumumba’s involvement (having pointed him out as the murderer), prosecutor Mignini summing up before the GUP on 18 October last year:

Turning now to Knox, relating to the matters declared by her on the morning of 6-November 2007, regarding the meeting with Patrick, that she went with him to the house in via della Pergola, that Patrick had had sex with Meredith, that she heard screaming and that it was Lumumba at that moment who had killed Meredith.

The prosecution notes that she was crying, that she was troubled. A lawyer, the transcript is quite clear, sought to suggest the answer to Amanda, saying, “Maybe she was stressed”. After some further, and incomprehensible, remark from her lawyer, Amanda, taking up the suggestion, replied that she had been afraid, that she was confused, that she had thought that the police were protecting her but instead no, they weren’t.

Then she continued, saying that she made those statements because the police told her to. Amanda avers to having found herself confused like never before. The Prosecutor, not satisfied with this response, pointed out to Amanda that in the memoriale [written by her – editor] before going to prison – therefore no longer under “interview” status - she wrote: “I still see this picture in front of me” and adds hearing Meredith’s scream and that she covered her ears.

To the Prosecutor’s question of why she continued to insist on what she had said earlier, Amanda replied with: “Yes, that’s [on page 20] how I imagined these things”. She adds, basically, that, owing to the Police telling her that she wasn’t recalling things well, she had tried to imagine how things might have gone. So the Prosecutor challenging her that no-one would have been able to suggest the name of Patrick – about whom not the slightest hint of suspicion was held earlier – she specified that she had imagined Patrick because of the SMS message sent to Lumumba. And only because of this.

Page 20: Mr Mignini is continuing his summing up on the subject of Amanda’s involving of Patrick:

Upon another question by the Prosecutor on why she would have imagined him, Amanda, who began to cry for about 10 minutes, replied: “Why? …Because I was under stress” and she repeats it and adds, “And they were telling me I was guilty” …

After further questions, and in particular the Prosecutor’s question about what the Police said, Amanda replied: “The Police were telling me – we know that you were in that house – and, a moment before I said Patrick’s name, someone was showing me the message that I’d sent him” …  Counsel Ghirga insisted on suspending the interview, which came to be suspended, in effect, before Knox was able to make other, embarrassing and awkward declarations.

Page 21 has more on Knox’s contradictory statements

It was put [to Amanda – editor] that on the 2nd, in the first verbale at 15.30, she had said that Raffaele had told her that Meredith’s body was in a wardrobe, covered with a sheet with a foot poking out.

She doesn’t know how to answer, but confirms that Raffaele did tell her this, because Filomena’s friends might have told him. She didn’t know how Meredith died, but in the Questura – she doesn’t remember who – someone told her that her throat had been cut. She says she doesn’t remember what time this was said. She says that in the Questura she remarked about the discovery in the wardrobe to Meredith’s friends.

She doesn’t know if she died slowly or not, but she learned the cause of death from Counsel Ghirga during the convalida session, when she found out that she had been stabbed in an artery. But she had commented on the sad death on the 2nd, 6 days earlier and 2 days before the autopsy. How was she able to say so on the 2nd? She is trying to shift the responsibility of the revelation of the cut to the throat to the interpreter, but D’Astolto has contradicted her … 

He, appertaining to the Police, only knew that the body of an English girl had been discovered and only later that she had been discovered in the house. Then Amanda says that she saw D’Astolto only in the Questura and that she never saw him in via della Pergola – therefore he did not participate in the evidence collection.

The part of the interview relating to the why Knox would have had cognisance of such particulars (that is, how Meredith was killed), concluded with another vague affirmation from Knox, attributing D’Astolto as the source of such particulars (circumstances denied by D’Astolto).

Page 21 investigators summarise what Knox said in the Questura:

Amanda let go with an extraordinary account of the events, on her say-so, occurring on the morning of 2 November and, amongst other things, added affirming having seen Meredith’s body in a wardrobe (or reflected in a wardrobe) with a blanket on her.

According to [an English friend of Meredith’s – editor] Amanda told her of also having seen Meredith’s foot after a police officer had opened the door. Now then, that’s impossible, seeing as the door was not opened by a police officer, but rather the boyfriend of one of the girls there-gathered while Amanda was to be found further back behind everybody, without [on page 22] being in a position to observe the inside, even more so given that the door remained open for only a moment… ”

Page 23 Meredith’s friends contradict Amanda. this from an interview with one of them:

Question: Did you hear whether she [that is Amanda – editor] was saying anything?

Answer: Yes, I actually heard her say lots of things.

Q: Well, tell us.

A: She was speaking out loud, on the phone, saying over and over “It was me who found her”. She continued to repeat over the phone “I found her first. It was me who was the first to find her”.

Although I didn’t think she meant to say that she was the first to see the entire body. Although, the point is, that she was saying it aloud …  and then she continued to also repeat ‘It could have been me in her place, it could have been in her place’. And also Amanda didn’t turn to face us directly, she was talking to whoever was there. I didn’t speak directly with her.

Q: Did she say, did you hear whether she was saying how Meredith died?

A: I heard her, this is what happened. At a certain point, she [one of Meredith’s English friends – editor] said: “I hope that she didn’t suffer much”, meaning Meredith, and Amanda said, “What do you think? She died from blood loss…” so I thought she meant ‘someone who dies from blood loss does what? Suffer’. Yes, so, with these words she was saying that Meredith would have suffered. And at that moment I really did not want to stay close to her because I was astonished by those words…

Page 24 has more from the prosecution:

During the course of the scene inspection, the officers there ascertaining that the door of the room being used by Meredith Kercher, the English lass resident in the apartment in question, was locked, and the decision taken, ultimately, to break down the door: the same [flatmate Filomena] Romanelli considering it strange, in fact, both that the circumstance her friend Kercher would have lost both phones, neither of which she would have ever let go of – being worried for the health of her mother (Meredith also using the phone with the SIM card belonging to the aforesaid owner) – and the fact of the door to the room being closed, regarding [on page 25] which the young English woman was not in the habit of locking.

Knox, instead, at that time and up until Romanelli’s arrival, had mentioned that it was normal that Meredith would lock herself in (she would change versions, however, in subsequent interviews). The declarations, especially by Romanelli, and also her boyfriend Zaroli, on the matter are specific and precise: it is difficult to seek an interpretation of Knox’s false assertions other than as an attempt to delay the discovery of Meredith’s body for as long as possible.

Once the door was opened (while Knox was further away, out of the corridor, therefore in the kitchen-living room area, while Sollecito was nowhere to be seen, per Zaroli), a shocking scene unfolded in which the room was found to be in disorder with bloodstains everywhere…

Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/19/09 at 05:56 AM | #

Something that still confuses me about Meredith’s room are reports of the door having been locked from the inside. Does this mean that the key was left in the lock on the room side? Would it then have been slammed shut by the fleeing attackers, in their haste? They must have believed that she was in no danger of reaching the door.

The idea of Sollecitto later trying to force the locked door open also made me think that the room was locked in haste. Since the clasp section of her bra was cut at both ends? (only one cut would have sufficed to allow its removal, after they struggled to open it in the normal fashion) I wonder if it hadn’t been RS’s intention to remove that section, rather than the entire bra, from the scene. It disappeared under the pillow, which they probably didn’t realise.

Surely they noticed the lamp cord going under Meredith’s door?

What is the timeline on the 3 housemates being led back through the cottage by the police (resulting in AK’s freakout at the sight of the knife drawer)? And when were the computers sequestered - after RS might have had a chance to tamper with them? Was his own apartment inspected after his cleaner made her final rounds, with the bleach she claims he asked her to purchase?

As for imagining her flatmate’s body being discovered “in” the wardrobe, Knox had to know the size of the standing wardrobe, scarcely large enough to conceal a body. If she was so proud at having found the body, why not make the same boast to Mother (to whom she recounted hearing her flatmate’s cries of “a foot! a foot!”) Not that I really expect consistency…

Posted by mimi on 08/19/09 at 08:26 AM | #

The Machine,

You are an incredible writer. I truly appreciate your dedication to following this case and to offering factual information - something that is surely lacking in most coverage of this case.

There is no greater way to honor a victim than to keep their story alive and to keep truth alive. Thank you.

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito have blood on their hands. The reason for their involvement is hard to grasp but the facts stand nonetheless.

Posted by devorah on 08/20/09 at 07:37 AM | #

Another excellent post Machine. You’re a legend! This clarifies things so well. Thank you. In some strange way it helps to know you guys are on Meredith’s side and fighting her corner for her.

Posted by TT on 08/21/09 at 02:00 AM | #

“Something that still confuses me about Meredith’s room are reports of the door having been locked from the inside. Does this mean that the key was left in the lock on the room side? Would it then have been slammed shut by the fleeing attackers, in their haste? They must have believed that she was in no danger of reaching the door.” Posted by mimi.

No this is impossible mimi! Italian interior doors have a key (usually inserted in the keyhole on the interior side of the room). In order to lock Meredith’s room, someone must have extracted the key from the key hole from the interior side, then inserted in the key hole on the outside side of the room door, lock the door (with one or two rounds) and take the key (since no key was found). There is no button in the knob that one can press and lock the door behind while exiting the room. One has to use the key and the process is not something that one would do in a moment of hasty escape. Either the murder was in no haste to leave the house right away and had time to lock the door, or someone, after the initial hasty escape, went back to the house and locked the door without haste.

Posted by Commissario Montalbano on 08/21/09 at 06:32 AM | #

The Machine wrote:

“In this same period the police examined the phone records of the two. The records of Knox and Sollecito for 2 November provided some definitive proof that Knox and Sollecito had lied to them twice on 2 November.

•First, they had claimed they had slept in at Sollecito’s until after 10am on 2 November, but their phones were proven to be operational prior to that time.

•Second, they had claimed they had called the police emergency 112 number before the national communication police arrived, but there was no evidence of such calls then.”

Thanks for this thorough review, TM. According to the phone records, while RS’s phone showed activity very early in the morning of Nov 2 (whereas he claims to have slept until 10 am), AK’s first phone activity on Nov 2 is at 12:07.

Posted by Skeptical Bystander on 08/21/09 at 05:27 PM | #

Hi Skep,

Just to clarify, Amanda Knox turned on her mobile phone at around 6.00am on 2 November:

“Confronted with records showing that the cell phones of both suspects were turned off at the same moment the night before the murder and then turned on again the next morning about 6—Knox and Sollecito told police that they slept until after 10 a.m.—the two changed their story.” (Barbie Nadeau, Newsweek)

“One of the key pieces of circumstantial evidence are phone records indicating that Knox and Sollecito turned their phones off at the same time the night before the murder and turned them on the same time the morning after.” (Barbie Nadeau, The Daily Beast).

Amanda Knox made her first phone call at 12.07pm.

Posted by The Machine on 08/21/09 at 06:27 PM | #

Machine,
gotta concur with TT. you are indeed a legend. thank you for this wonderfully clear post!

Posted by mojo on 08/21/09 at 07:25 PM | #

For the sake of true reporting, however, we must also say that the issue of timing of Raffaele’s call to 112 (Carabinieri) is not at all settled. The police (postal division)claims to have arrived at the cottage at 12:38 of 2 Nov, while the carpark camera recording shows a time of 12:48. Although the police alleges that the carpark camera is 10 min. fast, however a later recording of the arrival of the Carabinieri patrol seems to indicate that the carpark camera is in fact running a few minutes behind. The same carpark camera in fact shows the carabinieri arriving at the scene at 13:22, but we know that the Carabinieri called Amanda at 13:29 asking for directions because they couldn’t find the house. Amanda actually passed the phone to Police officer Battistelli, from the postal police, who was with Amanda and Raffaele at the house, and who told the carabinieri where to find the cottage and also about the discovery of the body. That call lasted 296 seconds (until 13:34). Therefore if the carabinieri had not found the cottage at 13:29, while the camera shows them entering the driveway at 13:22, would indicate to me that the carpark camera was running at least 7-8 min. behind, not 10 minutes ahead. If that is the case, then the actual time of arrival of the postal police would not be 12:48 (like the camera shows), nor 12:38 (like the police claims), but at least 12:56 or later, therefore after Raffaele had called the 112.
The possibility that the camera clock might have been at least 7-8 minutes too slow is real and consistent with another circumstance. On Nov. 1, the camera shows a woman dressed with a white skirt entering the driveway at 20:43. Some allege that that woman was Amanda. If the camera clock had been 10 min. too fast, as the police alleges, then that woman (Amanda?) would have arrived at the house at 20:33. That however is inconsistent with the testimony of Raffaele’s Polish friend Popovic, who testified that Amanda was at Raffaele’s apartment at 20:40 when she went there to tell Raffaele that she didn’t need a lift to the station anymore. If, on the other hand, we accept that the carpark camera clock might have been at least 8 minutes too slow, then the white skirted woman’s arrival at the house could be placed at 20:51 or later (that is at least 8 min. or later after the displayed time of 20:43). In this case it would be entirely possible that the woman in white might have been in fact Amanda.

Posted by Commissario Montalbano on 08/22/09 at 02:36 AM | #

Hi Commissario Montalbano,

Raffaele Sollecito admitted that he had not called 112 before the postal police arrived at the cottage:

He said he went outside “to see if I could climb up to Meredith’s window” but could not. “I tried to force the door but couldn’t, and at that point I decided to call my sister for advice because she is a Carabinieri officer. She told me to dial 112 (the Italian emergency number) but at that moment the postal police arrived. He added: “In my former statement I told you a load of rubbish because I believed Amanda’s version of what happened and did not think about the inconsistencies.” (The Times, 7 November, 2007).

Posted by The Machine on 08/22/09 at 03:25 AM | #

Hi Commisario. Machine already gave the answer that might make this rather moot, but where are your timings from? They dont seem to tally with those from official sources we have.

Accountings like that above tend to make it look like the police were a confused lot at best, having a problem just finding the house. Nobody seems to explain the problem of why the house was so hard to find.

Via Della Pergola is actually the road that heads west and sharply downhill from the intersection and the dumpsters. At its closest, it must be a good ten meters from the drive of the house. 

The house is actually located on Via Sant’antonio, the road that goes east, more or less horizontally, until after a left curve and a right curve it starts to climb up, to one of the city gates.

I had the exact same problem with the navigation in my BMW when I looked for the house for the first time.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/22/09 at 04:04 AM | #

I wouldn’t place much store in the times on the cameras, they could be easily +/-10 minutes either way. We don’t know when the times might have been reset either. Since they don’t have accurately maintained times, they really just add an extra source of confusion.

The mobile phone records should be accurate to seconds, since they are used for billing purposes they need to be accurate.

I think it has been well established that the call to 112 was placed after the postal police arrived.

Posted by bobc on 08/22/09 at 04:52 AM | #

Dear Bobc I believe that the problem here is not when the phone call was made but whether the Poliza Postale had already arrived when Sollecito called 112.

What Commissario Montalbano wrote is very concerning and I think it should be further investigated.

Posted by mariopuzu on 08/22/09 at 11:45 AM | #

Hi Mario,

It’s quite clear that Raffaele Sollecito didn’t call 112 before the postal police arrived at the cottage.

First, Sollecito admitted that he hadn’t done so when he was confronted with the telephone records.

Second, the CCTV camera in the car park recorded the arrival of the postal police at 12.35pm. However, when the the CCTV camera was examined, it was found to be 10 minutes fast. This means the postal police actually arrived at the cottage at 12.25pm.

Third, the police recorded their arrival at the time at 12.30pm.

The most pertinent question is: why did Sollecito call 112 twice?

Posted by The Machine on 08/22/09 at 02:33 PM | #

http://lnx.giovinazzo.it/images/postale.pdf

Posted by Commissario Montalbano on 08/22/09 at 09:59 PM | #

Hi Commisario. Thanks for posting. That is possibly a genuine defence presentation that is possibly undoctored which we have briefly considered only to come to the same conclusion as bobc above.

As a timeline for a defence scenario it is undermined by (1) the fact that nobody is sure what real time events the CCTV video was capturing, and (2) the precisely-known timing of a number of people movements and mobile phone calls that flatly contradict any major timeline changes. 

Here’s a comment on PMF by timeline guru Michael which shows some of the myriad problems that presentation causes for the DEFENCE if taken too seriously.

That 13:29 time must be wrong in some way, because if not, it would mean ‘everyone’ is either lying or mistaken.

We have Filomena and friends arriving shortly before 13:00, at which point the postal police are already there. Now that call time if correct, would in effect be saying that Filomena and friends (and her boyfriend and his friend who arrived even earlier) actually arrived some time after 13:29.

The police would also be wrong in their times as they stated they arrived almost an hour ealier then that. The door being broken down time would also have to be put back almost half an hour. Even the defence don’t agree on that time since they claim the Postal Police arrived around 13:00 - 13:05.

Therefore, that call must be wrong. Either, it is actually not from the Postal Police, or it is from the Postal Police but on a different matter (a follow up call)), or is a seperate Postal Policeman, from those who already went, wanting to come to the cottage and wanting directions. It must be considered, those records show times but not the conntents of a call.

Here’s the other problem for me. How could the Postal Police have even called Amanda ‘before’ they arrived? They didn’t have her number. The number they had was Raffaele’s, as he’d made the call. Raffaele gave out an address in his call but not people’s telephone numbers. However, the Postal Police on arrival at the cottage may have taken Amanda’s number while they were there and called her at some later point for ‘some’ reason.

Our guess is that Michael was really only getting started above.

One way to go might be for someone to post a complete new scenario based on the video and phone records with all the contradictions actually resolved.

That would need to include the statement of Sollecito himself which Machine quotes which is one mother of a contradiction.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/22/09 at 10:35 PM | #

The call at 13:29 to Amanda was not from the Polizia Postale. It was from the Comando Carabinieri Perugia (Carabinieri Hqtrs). At the time the Carabinieri (CC) called the house at 1329, the postal police officers (Battistelli & Marzi) and everybody else were already at the house and the body had already been discovered. In fact it was Battistelli who talked to the carabinieri from Amanda’s phone and gave directions to the house. Battistelli stated so at the hearing. Now, how do you reconcile Battistelli giving directions to the CC on how to reach the house, when the CCTV shows them already at the house at 13:22 (or 13:12 if you assume the CCTV was 10 min fast).? I tend to trust the accuracy of the phone records more than the CCTV. If the CC arrived at 13:12 (as the prosecution contends) then it makes no sense that Battistelli gives direction to the CC 17 min. after they are already there. Also the night before the CCTV caught a woman dressed in white at 20:43 entering the house. The only way she could have been Amanda would be if the CCTV was running behind. She was seen by Polish student Popovic at RAffaele’s at 20:40 and 3 minutes are not sufficient to walk from Raffaele’s to Amanda’s house (distance is 1/4 of mile).
Regarding the photo posted by Kermit of the Fiat Punto of the CC, that is not a gazzella that would have been sent by the dispatcher after Raffaele’s call at 12:54. The gazzelle of the CC pronto intervento are almost all Alfa Romeos, and the CC car you see arrive at the house at 13:22 (CCTV time) is an Alfa Romeo (either 155 or 156). Fiat Puntos are used for ordinary business and are not “Pronto Intervento” patrol cars, therefore that Punto is definitely some CC car that arrived later during the investigation.

Posted by Commissario Montalbano on 08/23/09 at 05:05 AM | #

There is a rumor that the video is a setup. Three of us above, Machine, Kermit and myself, have remarked that the DEFENCE did not seem to take it very seriously. Commissario, be so kind as to advance some measure of authenticity? And the full scenario I had already suggested?

Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/23/09 at 08:39 AM | #

I found it in the website I posted, which is a portal based in Giovinazzo, Raffaele’s hometown. I would imagine that they would root for the the home boy, the same way as the Seattle Post Intelligencer roots for the home girl. But I have no reason to doubt its authenticity. If it’s doctored or totally forged I don’t know. But then why not everything else?
I don’t think the video exonerates AK and RS from the rest of the evidence, but, assuming it’s not forged, which I have no reason to believe it is, it adds doubts to the Prosecution’s hypothesis that Raffaele called 112 AFTER the police was already there. I would also like to reiterate that if we want to allege that the girl caught on camera arriving on Nov.1 at 20:43 is indeed Amanda, then the CCTV clock has to be necessarily a few minutes slow and not 10 min. fast. There is a witness (Popovic) placing Amanda at Raffaele’s at 20:40, therefore Amanda could not have been at the house at 20:33, and actually not even at 20:43. It’s a good 6-7 min. walk from Raffaele’s to the cottage in via della Pergola. Try it next time you’re in Perugia! I did.

Posted by Commissario Montalbano on 08/23/09 at 09:05 AM | #

However the file contains some confidential information such as the telephone numbers of all the people involved in this story..

Check out the author’s name under the file’s properties… “Sollecito”..

I agree with “der Kommissar”.. Regardless of its authenticity it does not change AK and RS positions.

Posted by mariopuzu on 08/23/09 at 01:14 PM | #

Stewarthome2000, a speaker of Italian, attended the trial on Friday, March 13, 2009 and posted the following at 11:31 pm on Perugia Murder File:

“The argument was over the system that caused the CCTV to start filming. If a person walks by on the street or a car passes by the road, the CCTV is not activated, but if they come in the garage whether it be a car or person, the CCTV begins recording and continues at least 30 seconds AFTER the car or person has left the “radar” area. Hence you will see scenes of people walking on the street and ars going by only if a car or person set the CCTV off and then left the field of vision.

There was testimony that a person with a white or light colored jacket (lt. blue for example) was captured by the CCTV and believed to be Meredith… but that could not be verified. How could they say it was Meredith?..it was agreed identity could not be confirmed.”

To me, the previous statements, as reported on the same day by someone who actually attended the court session where this was discussed and understood the language, pretty much negates the importance of the CCTV camera footage.

The person seen at 8:40+/- was not supposed to be Amanda, it was thought to be Meredith—but in the end could have been anybody—the identity could not be confirmed.

Pictures showing the cottage the day of the discovery of Meredith’s body (which can be found in Kermit’s power point on PMF “Surroundings, History and Structure of the Cottage”, slides 42 ands 48 and in a photo posted by Catnip on PMF on Friday, August 7, 2009 at 6:39 am which shows the roommates with Raffaele and Amanda cuddling ) show the cottage parking area full of dark colored, presumably police vehicles, of various types.

If the CCTV camera is only activated by activity within the entrance to the car park, not by vehicles or humans passing by on the street, there is no way of knowing whether the dark colored vehicle shown in the photos was that of the postal police or not or just some ordinary person lost in Perugia.

And while there are certainly photos of a carabinieri officer’s legs and a carabinieri vehicle, who’s to know whether this was the first car to arrive. Clearly, there were multiple arrivals of dark colored vehicles. Any police vehicle that arrived on the street when there wasn’t a car or human activity within the garage entrance wouldn’t be photographed.

The 13:29 call need not have been from the first carabinieri to arrive on the scene either. One who routinely patrolled the area would probably be familiar with the streets while one who specialized in violent crime or forensics and arrived later quite possibly would need help in finding the place.

So, all in all, I don’t think the CCTV footage is all that important. Just my opinion, of course.

Posted by beans on 08/23/09 at 07:57 PM | #

I doubt that the white figure crossing the street on Nov.1 at 20:43 (CCTV time) could have been Meredith. I think I’ve read that the English friends testified she was wearing jeans and a dark coloured jacket. Besides if she had been Meredith, then the CCTV time would be at least 17 min. behind. Meredith walked back with her friend half way (I think up to via Lupo) and separated from her at 20:55. From via Lupo to via Pergola is at least 5 min. walk, so Meredith must have arrived home around 21:00.
The ‘gazzella’ featured in the CCTV at 13:22 is almost certainly the first Carabinieri patrol on the scene. I seem to understand that at 13:29, the time the Comando CC called Amanda, only the Postal Police officers were there, and the body had just been discovered a few minutes early. If that was indeed a later ‘gazzella’, then the CCTV would be way slow, even more than the 10 minutes.
The defense didn’t gave too much weight to these circumstances probably because, in the big picture, there are many more pieces of evidence that are damning for Raffaele. Even if he had called the CC before the arrival of the Police, there is still plenty for him to explain. I agree it’s not that relevant, but these circumstances cast some doubts (at least in me) about the actual timing of arrival of the PP officers Battistelli and Marzi.

Posted by Commissario Montalbano on 08/24/09 at 02:03 AM | #

For those who might be interested, there was quite a lot of discussion of the Defense’s CCTV presentation as posted on the Giovanazzo site on the PMF site starting on Monday, August 3rd.

I rather garbled my thoughts re the CCTV camera when I stated that the carabinieri vehicle that arrived at 13:22 was not necessarily the first to arrive.  I agree that it probably was. My point was meant to be that there is no way of knowing whether the 13:29 call seeking directions to the cottage was made by the occupant of the car in the 13:22 CCTV footage (as claimed by the defense) or from a car which arrived later but was not photographed due to the lack of activity within the car park to activate the camera. It was testified in court that the camera is not activated by cars or pedestrians passing by on the street, only by human or vehicular activity within the entrance of the car park with filming continuing for 30 seconds after such activity.  Therefore, the CCTV footage provides an incomplete record of cars or people passing by on the street. Any photos of cars or people on the street are the accidental consequence of simultaneous activity within the garage. Any number of carabinieri or other police vehicles as well as other carabinieri officers or other police officers on foot could have passed by on the street without being photographed, including the one from which the 13:29 call was actually made.  I am sure that once the “break in” became a murder, any number of additional law enforcement vehicles arrived within a short period of time.

Similarly, the car/cars (without a plate number we don’t know if the two pictured are really the same one) passing by at 12:36 and 12:41 may not have been the car of the postal police which could have arrived before or between the car/cars pictured and not have been photographed due to lack of activity in the garage.

I also think that stating that a particular pair of feet and legs belonged, with certainty, to the postal police, especially given that the postal police might not have been photographed or might have driven down the driveway without being photographed, is a bit of a stretch.

Posted by beans on 08/26/09 at 03:18 AM | #

@ beans on 08/25/09 at 08:18 PM:

YOurs are valid points, however they could be easily answered only if somebody asked officer Battistelli if at 13:29 when he talked to the carabinieri over Amanda’s phone, any carabinieri had already arrived at the house. If he said that no carabinieri were in the house at that point (13:29), then we could safely assume that the ‘gazzella’ at 13:22 was the first one on the scene, and the CCTV clock was at least 7 minutes slow.

I can answer one of your questions however. You wonder whether the call might have been made from that carabinieri car in the video, or from another patrol arriving later. The answer is none of the above. The call was from a land line, not from a cell phone. Cell phone numbers in Italy all have area codes in the 300’s (roughly 340’s for Vodafone, 320’s for Wind, etc etc depending on your cell phone provider).
The origin of the 13:29 call was from a number starting with 075, which is a land line (075 is the area code for Perugia). The number was identified by the defense as the Carabinieri station. So the call was actually from the Carabinieri station. Probably one of the patrols radioed the dispatcher they couldn’t find the house, and the dispatcher called the house for directions.

Posted by Commissario Montalbano on 08/26/09 at 04:38 AM | #

There was this little tidbit on the Giovanazzo link under the heading Perugia 13 mar., which I found interesting in the light of Amanda’s insisting that she only accused Patrick Lamumba on November 5/6 because the police pressured and hit her.

It references Mauro Barbadori who testified on March 13th about the CCTV camera in the car park on Viale Sant’Antonio, and goes on to say

”al quale fu affidato il compito di installare alcune microspie negli uffici della questura Perugia, i giorni successivi all’omicidio di Mez.

L’agente ha riferito come, intercettata durante una conversazione con Raffaele Sollecito, il 4 novembre del 2007, Amanda Knox fece riferimento ad un’altra persona, “forse ad un uomo nero”. Particolare che spinse la polizia a sviluppare l’ipotesi che potesse esserci qualcun altro nell’appartamento di Via della Pergola. Barbadori ha spiegato, quindi, che che la giovane statunitense durante la conversazione con Raffaele parlava in inglese e il tono dei due ex fidanzatini a volte si abbassav”

Which can be translated as Barbadori “was given the task of installing several concealed microphones in the offices of the Perugia police headquarters in the days after Meredith’s murder.

The officer attested how on November 4th, 2007, during a recorded conversation with Sollecito, Amanda Knox referred to another person, “perhaps a black man”. This detail persuaded the police to develop the hypothesis that there could have been someone else in the apartment at Via della Pergola. Barbadori explained then that the young American was speaking in English during the conversation with Raffaele and that the two ex-fiances at times lowered their voices. (Thanks to Tiziano for the translation.)

Posted by beans on 08/26/09 at 08:31 AM | #

Commissario M. said: “the CCTV clock has to be necessarily a few minutes slow and not 10 min. fast. There is a witness (Popovic) placing Amanda at Raffaele’s at 20:40, therefore Amanda could not have been at the house at 20:33, and actually not even at 20:43.”

Kermit said: “I wouldn’t use references to the Nov.1 evening CCTV video as proof that the clock is either slow or fast. The white object moving across the CCTV video in those night images may be a girl with a white dress, or it may be a girl or a guy with some other light coloured apparel on. Maybe the person is going to the cottage, or maybe not. All we know is that that person is walking on the other side of the road.”

Nobody was able to make a positive ID on the “lady in white”, which is why that footage was not useful in the investigation. The time stamp on the video is totally irrelevant here. In addition, I think that Popovic’s time should be taken as approximate. Conversely, we know that Knox was sending an SMS at 20:35 (17 minutes after receiving PL’s) and that Sollecito was on the phone with his father at 20:42.

Posted by Skeptical Bystander on 08/26/09 at 05:49 PM | #

@Skeptical Bystander:
We also know that Amanda turned her telephone off at 20:40, and I believe that the police can determine on which cell tower the telephone pinged at that time.
It’s true that nobody could positively identify the lady in white, but based on the video I had the impression that the lady went straight to the cottage driveway. The PDF from Giovinazzo.it itself was trying to prove that people walking in that direction in that path, are headed to the driveway. And I can’t think of anyone who would cross that street at that point, unless it’s to go to that cottage. Via S. Antonio is very narrow and has no sidewalks, there are no houses further down on that side of the road. The next one on that side of the road is a remodeled ‘casolare’ (farmhouse) that is past the Carpark exit. If that woman wanted to go there, I’m sure she would have taken via Melo and then the ramp from the parking lot, and not walked along the narrow via S.Antonio at night. In any case, after so much pubblicity and media coverage given to this video, if that woman was someone else totally unrelated to the girls at the cottage, that woman would have come forward and would have said:“No, it was actually me who was walking there a that time”. Nobody came forward because, in all likelihood, it was indeed one of the girls who was going back to the cottage. And which one could she have been? Filomena and Laura were away that night. That leaves Meredith and Amanda. But Meredith was wearing blue jeans and dark clothes according to the English girls, and she could not have reached the house before 21:00. So! Who do you think that girl in white could have been if she couldn’t be Meredith? I know! I forgot! It might have been Rudy who was wearing a white skirt that night, maybe part of his Halloween costume that he left on all day from the night before!

Posted by Commissario Montalbano on 08/27/09 at 03:43 AM | #

Walkers can be encountered on all parts of the circular route around the massif of the walled city at any time of day or night. It would be nice if it had a footpath, but it mostly doesnt, and people have to walk it anyway.

Less than 100 meters east of Meredith’s house on San Antonio, which in fact is quite wide beside the house,  there is a lot of free all-day parking on both sides of the street (where I parked). And further east off San Antonio there are residential areas where many of the students live. My guess is that walkers would pass the house and parking facility on average every 10 to 15 minutes through to close to midnight.

I’ll be able to post some shots tonight of San Antonio from Meredith’s house east, which show its width throughout and the cars parked on both sides further along. By Perugia standards it is a wide modern road, and cantilevered slightly by the house to provide more width. New railings were installed on the north or downhill side a year or two ago, and that project might have been ongoing while Meredith was still alive.

In this image posted previously (pdf) the cantilever portion of San Antonio is visible at the center and the parked cars partially visible up to the left.

By the way, at night that tower is floodlit in two tones inside and out in a quite amazing way. It’s the most beautiful tower I’ve ever seen at night.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/27/09 at 02:19 PM | #

If you study the Defense presentation of the daytime CCTV camera footage, which has better visibility, you can see that the wall of the car park blocks all but the extreme left portion of the driveway to the cottage. In the Nov. 1 evening video, the figure in white cannot be seen turning down the driveway, only walking along the street until the car park wall precludes seeing it’s further progress. So the question of whether the figure actually goes down the driveway is left unanswered by the CCTV footage.

The Google satellite map of Viale Sant’Antonio clearly shows cars parked the sides of the street from just past the exit of the car park. If a person wanted to walk facing traffic, which I would think would be the case at night on a dark street, they would walk on the left side of the street. There might have been any number of people who parked for free along Viale Sant’Antonio and didn’t return to their car until 8:40—the night is young at that hour in Italy. So, I don’t think it is obvious that the figure seen in the CCTV video is Amanda or Meredith or Rudy.

Unless a person walking along that road had a particular reason to remember being there at that very specific time—like having heard or seen something unusual—why would they tell police, “well, it might possibly have been me,” and what would it prove if they did? Everyone has agreed that the figure is unidentifiable. If Amanda can’t pinpoint specific times from that night, how can you expect someone randomly passing by on the way to their car to remember at some later date that they had been there at 8:40 or 8:43 or whatever?

In reference to the timing of the timing of the 112 calls and the arrival of the carabinieri, perhaps the defense didn’t ask Battisteli if the carabinieri had already arrived at the cottage at the time of the 13:29 call because they already knew the answer and it didn’t help their case.

Raffaele is reported to have admitted that the calls to 112 took place after the arrival of the postal police, but who can believe what he says, anyway? I assume that it was in a statement that is inadmissible which has left the defense the ability to try to cast doubt on the timing of the calls.

Posted by beans on 08/27/09 at 07:52 PM | #

If only the CCTV camera were aimed in such a position as to have captured the images of everyone approaching the cottage, we would know how many figures entered that cottage and in what order. Alas, we do not. I hope that the jury will not be as hung up on this particular issue as we seem to be.

I realise, of course, that if RS had actually phoned for help before the first car pulled up that does make him look a bit more upstanding, but then why the surprised looks—because the response to his call was so lightning fast? He still lied, lied, lied.Is this the same camera that filmed the cuddling lovebirds?

Amazing Kermit, at 8/26, 12:07 said: (Defence) Plan B is to leak the document to the Public.

Re leaks, I never understood how Knox’s intimate Prison Diary was leaked to Sarzanini (did her book actually go to press?) when it was Knox’s personal property, or how publishing its contents could possibly aid the defence? (Or was she punting for the Prosecution?)

The quote that jumped out at me was AK’s come-on to one of her “lovers”:  “I’m waiting for you. I want to see something porno with you and put it into practice with you.”

Children playact things they see on t.v., things they see other people do, occasionally with deadly consequences. Was Knox acting out an assault she had seen in a show, or, as has already been suggested, recreating vampire-vanquishing manga? Through her infinite knowledge of knifewounds to the throat, gained by watching CSI, she expected Meredith to die quickly. Maybe she really can’t distinguish between fiction and reality.

Posted by mimi on 08/28/09 at 05:09 AM | #

Hi Mimi. Yes Fiorenza Sarzanini’s book quoting the diary was published in Italian last November. Here’s a report by John Follain of the Times.

The diary was confiscated by the police. The family said publication of excerpts was unfair but the diary forms part of the 10,000-pages-plus of evidence in front of the judges and jury so it is hard to see how it is prejudicial.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/28/09 at 03:50 PM | #

Machine is like in A Few Good Men - he’s always staying watch for Meredith and making sure we all have the true facts laid on the table.  It must really piss off those FOAK’s.

How about future knox stories could feature a photo of the prison rather than that cold hearted burden on life?!

Posted by Professor Snape on 08/30/09 at 08:32 AM | #

Based on the timeline posted here by Michael, I think it is fair to deduce that RS and AK were responsible for the final and fatal knife stabbing, after RG had already run away and been seen by witnesses at least half an hour before.  Specifically, RG was spotted on the street running away at 22:00-22:30 by Alessandra Formica and Hekuran Kokomani, and a witness (unnamed in timeline) heard an argument between a man and a woman at 22:30-23:00 (RS trying to convince AK for them to kill MK?) followed by an “agonizing scream” also witnessed by Nara Capezalli circa 23:00 (RS executing the final stab while AK held MK down?).  This would also be consistent with AK freezing when asked if she had held MK down, and breaking down when she saw the drawer in the kitchen being opened. Perhaps this was the drawer from which she had fetched the kitchen knife that was later found cleaned with bleach in RS’s apartment and that matches the fatal wound.

My question is, why would AK and RS get involved in the killing of MK and subsequent arrangement and cleanup of the murder scene if their participation up to that point had been limited to just watching from the kitchen as AK testified?  If AK had wanted to punish MK (due to jealousy, etc.) by bringing RG into the house (perhaps by leading him to believe MK wanted a date with him that night) and had stayed in the kitchen while MK was attacked, then why would she want to get involved any further by killing MK? Not only would this be extremely stupid for the sake of her own self-preservation, but also psycopathic.  If instead she had called an ambulance at that point and admitted to police that yes, she had let RG in, but no, she had not expected RG to turn violent, then she might have gotten away with only a small part of the blame.  This reasoning is what leads me to believe that RS and possibly AK were involved in the violence from the beginning, together with RG.  Then the murdering of MK would be explained as RS and AK wanting to silence the victim/witness wrt their participation in the initial violence.

This would especially be true for RS, who according to the timeline may have come in later. Based on the timeline, AK may have come in at 20:43 (before MK arrived at around 21:15) and may have let RG into the house at that time (who based on the timeline may have already been waiting in front of the door for 5 minutes, having arrived at 20:38), but RS only left his apartment after 21:10 (and so probably arrived at the cottage shortly afer MK arrived).  This would be consistent with AK’s testimony of “I can’t remember if my friend Meredith was there or if she came later. We were all separate”. If RS had not participated in the initial violence and had only witnessed the attack by RG then he, even more so than AK, would probably have been able to get no blame assigned to him if he had called the police immediately after RG attacked MK, since AK was supposedly the one who planned and initiated RG’s “date” with MK (perhaps triggered by her receiving the message from Patrick saying she was not needed at work).  Someone on this board theorized that there was one sadist (clinically speaking since all 3 seem to be sadists casually speaking) in the room and that this was RS for several reasons that I will not repeat here, and based on the reasoning above I tend to agree with the poster since he of the 3 could have come out of this completely free of blame if he had not participated in the initial violence.

Posted by annc on 09/16/09 at 09:38 PM | #

♫ I can’t be your character witness ♫
♫ I can’t be your alibi ♫
♫ Doorbell rings it’s the FBI ♫
♫ We learned spy vs. spy ♫
♫ You, my friend, are guilty as can be ♫

♫ I know you called, I know you called, I know you called ♫
♫ I know you called, I know you called, I know you hung up her line ♫
♫ I know you called, I know you called, I know you called ♫
♫ I know you called, I know you called, I can’t be your alibi ♫

♫ Star 69 ♫

Posted by Aquarian_Love on 11/26/11 at 03:09 PM | #

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