Meredith Kercher case

[scarletpimpernel]

Hello Archaic

No. It wasn't a flat but a cottage in the hills with two floors and there were two other female students living there with Meredith and Ms. Knox. One of these students name was Filomena and she gave testimony during Knox and Sollecito's trial. These other two students had cast-iron alibies. Where Ms. Knox didn't have an alibi. She said she spent the night at her boyfriend's place but her boyfriend Sollecito didn't corroborate her story. So that begs the question if Ms. Knox was not with her boyfriend where did she spent the night of the murder ? As Sollecito's and Knox's DNA were found at the scene of the murder we can conclude where they were.

[Archaic]

Question re: the Male Students Living Downstairs

Hi, I have a question that maybe somebody here can answer.

I remember seeing some video clip on this case where it was explained that the flat where Meredith and Amanda lived had both an upstairs and a downstairs. Several girls lived upstairs and several boys downstairs; I believe all of them college students. (I think it was 4 per floor)

I seem to recall hearing some remark being made about a "boyfriend" who lived downstairs, but I'm not clear on whose boyfriend
(or possibly ex-boyfriend) it was. Does anybody know?

I believe a total of 8 students lived in that small building. Was anybody home downstairs when Meredith was killed? Did they hear anything?
Thanks and best regards, Archaic

[John Hacker]

Based on the exhaustive tests done in the house of the crime, the investigators found bloody foot-prints that matched those of Sollecito and Knox. They found that these bloody foot-prints had been cleaned with bleach but were discovered through sominol, even though anyone can think these have been wiped out in reality is not that easy to remove blood stains. Today, there is the technology to discover blood that is not possible to see with the naked eye.

No, they discovered foot prints that they alleged to be those of Knox and Sollecito. The print identified as Knox's was on a pillow (which doesn't make the ideal printing surface clearly) and was never tied to a shoe or anything like that. The mark was so indistinct that the defense argued it wasn't even a foot print.

The print that was supposedly Sollicitos based on size, did not match in one significant sense. He had a toe deformity that somehow didn't turn up on the print. So again, kind of odd. The defense point at Guede of course.

There was no evidence whatsoever of a bleach cleanup of the scene. That's a rumor that's been repeated occasionally, but although it was tested for, it wasn't found. It's a bit hard to imagine how a whole bathroom could be cleaned with bleah and not leave a trace when they found it on the knife so easily.

Then, there was the re-arranging of the room where Meredith was found dead.
The investigators established that the body had been removed from the original place where Meredith died because substancial clotted blood was found where it first laid. The scene was staged and they explained this in every detailed how and why through DNA and through the bra. Meredith was wearing her bra normally when she died and they established this in consistency with the blood spots of the bra that later on was found somewhere else. The report has 106 pages it is detailed and it would be best to read it first rather than just talk about a detail here or there and out of context.

So the body was moved? So what?

And once again, the report has not been translated into english. A google translation does bring some interesting things to light in terms of how misguided Micheli was, but as this was GUEDE'S trial and not Knox/Sollecito's, it's not relevent to the case against them. Guede's rights were being protected, but the prosecution was able to say whatever they wanted about the others and they had no representation to contest any of what the prosecution had to say.

[John Hacker]

Ok, let's put this to bed... Ally did a good job of covering most of the points here, so I'll just touch on the highlites.

What is the evidence that one person could have held Meredith down without help and inflicted all the injuries she received before she died?

This is one of the silliest arguments I've ever seen and it's one that makes me wonder what experience that those involved have in investigating crimes. The number of wounds is what's cited by the prosecution experts in alleging multiple attackers, but it certainly isn't hard to find a case where far more are in fact inflicted by just one person. Open a newspaper every day for a week and I'd be suprised if you don't find at least one.

What were the defence team doing, if they couldn’t show reasonable doubt that three pairs of hands were involved, and at least one blade that had Meredith’s DNA on it?

They did. For some reason or another the jury chose not to believe it. But the jury was not sequestered so who knows what played into their reasoning. We'll know more on that when they submit their document.

How did Meredith’s DNA get on the blade of a knife that never left Sollecito’s flat? Was any explanation offered by Sollecito himself? Or was he relying on DNA buffs to show that the amount was too small to be identified conclusively as Meredith's? Assuming the profile didn't match Knox or Sollecito, whose was it and how did it get there?

The amount found simply was too low to be measured or identified. It could have been Knox or Sollecito's, or contamination by the wizards of evidence handling.

What I would like to know is what on earth possesed the police to pick that knife at random out of a drawer full of them. Why not take them all?

Why do you think Sollecito did not take the stand? Was it because he had no believable explanation for evidence such as the victim’s DNA on that blade? Or was he more of a liability to the girlfriend he had only been with for a short time? 25 years is a mighty long time for an innocent man to regret not speaking up for himself.

At least in the US, with a case as weak as this one the defendent usually is advised not to take the stand because of the possibility of one or more jurors not liking them and having that play against them. But we don't know and will never know why he decided that. There are all sorts of possibilities, but it played out in his head.

What about the apparent staging of a lone intruder scenario and the whole clean-up process? Who was involved and why? What reason could Rudy Guede have had to stage anything if he was a lone intruder and had no witnesses? If he was the one to clean up afterwards, would he have left obvious signs of his presence, including his poo grinning up from the loo, and fatally incriminating signs of his involvement in the murder?

The rationale that the break in was staged is flimsy in the extreme. *I* could throw a 10 pound rock 13 feet through that window and I have arms like pipe cleaners. And it would be interesting for them to choose a window break in as the cover when one of the 3 had a history of just that. Why draw attention to yourself right after you killed someone in any case?

As far as the clean up goes, if there was one it was extremely selective. I don't think that whatever was done was anything more than a quick wipedown of surfaces that take fingerprints in the bathroom. No evidence was found of a cleanup with bleach or any serious cleaning even in the bathroom. The picture of the "bloody" bathroom is extremely misleading in terms of how much blood there would have actually been before a wipedown.

What are you saying about Knox’s mop and bucket story then? That it makes perfect sense to have carried them several blocks away to mop up some water spilled in Sollecito’s flat while cooking pasta the night before? Did anyone see her carrying them to and from the flat? Or did she say nothing of the sort and is it pure fabrication by some lowlife reporter? Was there no mop or bucket outside the murder house with Knox and Sollecito when the police turned up unexpectedly?

I've seen a couple of different varients on the supposed mop and bucket story. Neither was introduced at trial so I presume that it didn't lead them anywhere. Unless the police were complete idiots (and they do appear to be on the surface at least) the mop would have been tested and porous surfaces WOULD retain blood traces for testing.

I don’t know why anyone was washing Meredith’s clothes (the morning after someone had knifed her to death and left her semi-naked on her bed ). But assuming the other housemate, Filomena, was right about whose clothes were in the still warm machine when she arrived, someone was washing them at a time when Knox and Sollecito were saying they couldn’t get into Meredith’s room and when nobody was supposed to know where she was or that anything had happened to her. It doesn’t make the person doing an absent Meredith this personal favour guilty of her murder, but it would be fairly crazy not to ask certain questions and expect some credible answers. Did Knox admit to washing those clothes or did she try to deny it? Does anyone know? Was anyone else at home when the machine was switched on? It was running when the police entered and Filomena arrived later.

I've never seen anything that answered who turned it on, but I also can't imagine a reason for any guilty person to wash Kercher's clothes.

Imagine the scene: there is no sign of Meredith stirring and her room seems to be locked. No reason on earth for anyone to suspect foul play unless they know what's behind that door. So what does Knox do in this blissful but temporary state of ignorance, before all hell breaks loose around her? Domestic chores. She fannies around with a mop and bucket to clear up spilled water over at Sollicito’s place, but leaves Guede’s poo floating in the loo where she apparently took her shower that morning. She also apparently decides to do a washload for Meredith in her absence, but she can’t get into her room to fetch any dirty clothes, or ask what needs washing. So the clothes are presumably already sitting in the machine or close by, waiting to be washed. If Meredith was wearing any of those clothes when she was attacked, then the question has to be how they got from the room to the machine afterwards - given the locked door - and why. Would Guede have bothered to do that if he had no intention of using the machine himself? He'd have been better off flushing the loo!

Ally is right on the money here. There's a lot of rumor and speculation here, but it doesn't help the prosecutions case at all. Most of what you're asking here are things that we simply have no answer for, but again, no one has presented a credible scenario where the "unexplained" actions support a case for guilt.

If Knox genuinely had no idea that her housemate was lying murdered in her bed or that the killer had tried to clean up after him, she was insanely unlucky to need a mop and bucket that morning and to do that washing, unwittingly adding to the killer’s earlier efforts to clean away potential clues.

If they were using the mop and bucket to clean up the scene AND got caught with them they were more than unlucky, they were incredibly stupid. If they had been mopping up blood, the mop would have shown traces of it.

Hang on. This may not translate over here, John. Meredith was in Italy for a year of study towards her degree at Leeds University, and no way would she have got there with minimal language skills in Italian. So what was Amanda Knox doing there exactly, and how was she doing it at all with only minimal skills in the language? But in any case, how could she be expected to respond, in a language she could barely speak, to questions she could barely understand? Italy isn't stuck in the Middle Ages, and without an interpreter she should have kept her trap shut or only spoken in English if she was struggling so badly with Italian. She seems to have had enough skill to finger her boss for the crime and describe Meredith's screams. Or was she allowed to use English just for the really incriminating bits? This is getting a tad silly now, John, and I doubt it's doing much to help her. I heard yesterday that she is becoming concerned about some of the 'support' she is getting. I'm beginning to see why she would be.

You're right Caz, this is beyond silly. Knox had been in the country for less than 3 months. Basic language skills to get by are one thing, but NOT adequate for dealing with an interrogation of 50 hours in length. An interpretor was brought in (although not immediately) to help, but try and imagine what it would be like to be interrogated for that length of time by suspicious people when you understand only a fraction of what is said. Even with a translator (translating only what is directed at her) that is going to be an incredibly stressful situation.

But you're right about one thing. She should have shut her mouth and lawyered up once it was clear what direction the police were going. Innocent or not, when the police have an agenda you're better off with the law in your court.

[Ally]

[QUOTE=caz;110058]

That's not quite true. There was no way for me to know whether I was reading and quoting ‘facts’, or a long series of lies, misinformation and conjecture. Evidence was asked for (I can't remember who asked but someone did, and it may of course have been a rhetorical question), so I tried to find out what was being claimed as evidence against the pair. Obviously I wouldn’t find much of that by looking at pro-Knox sources, would I?

Ah sorry, my mistake. I just immediately assume that if one is going out of one's way to provide an argument, unless one has stated they are playing devil's advocate, anything they put forth in that argument will be something they actually believe. Unless of course, not knowing if they were being rhetorical in their asking, you just decided to be rhetorical in your answering knowing full well most of it was BS.

Without inside knowledge we are left to judge the fairness and accuracy of each report from a variety of sources. In order to claim that something ‘simply isn’t true’ (as John H does) one must rely on the objectivity, accuracy and truthfulness of alternative sources of information. How is it possible to judge which sources are unbiased and providing us with the highest ratio of truth to BS? Even if you or John were to make a case for one source over another, how would I know you were being entirely objective in your choice or qualified to make it?

You don't. But considering we have never once said she was a sociopath based on how she looked in a media clip or that she just seemed creepy because she was kissing and taking comfort from her boyfriend after finding her roommate murdered, and we actually seem to be weighing the evidence as opposed to just reacting emotionally, I'll take my view over most of the people on this board. They cling to one thing and one thing only: she lied in interview. The fact that the interview was overly long, overnight in a language when she wasn't in the country that long (and frankly CAz, plenty of people go to study in a country all the time with rudimentary language skills--what is considered conversant for general conversation and what is capable of being understood while tired, under enormous stress in a 15 hour interrogation is not the same thing--and as for your claim she would have been given an interpreter italy not being medieval, BS. They did a long overnight interrogation with an officer who has been cited before for hitting people in interrogation, but no...of course they would have provided her with an interpreter if she was struggling... wow this is a really long run on sentence....) ....anyway the facts are they only have one actual piece of evidence: she lied in interview. And frankly that doesn't amount to much. But she's a sociopath! She bought underwear! She kissed her boyfriend. All things sociopaths and creepy evil people do.

It’s a tough call for all of us. But right now, Knox and Sollecito are the ones who need all the help they can get to undermine whatever it was that led the jury to convict them.

I think we know what it was that led the jury to convict them and it's hard to "undermine", nice leading choice of word, how about: "refute"; it's hard to refute tabloid rumor and rampant speculation on your personal character.

I’m not biased against her for grinning, or doing a cartwheel either. But it’s quite possible that the people who were there deciding her fate were. And if she really had been slapped around by the Italian authorities, you’d think she’d have been wary of giving anyone in that courtroom the slightest excuse to put the boot into her character as well.

Nah you're just biased because she got a kiss and an arm rub by her boyfriend afterward. Yes I am sure that during the entire two years of trial and court media her entire focus was on pleasing the media. I am quite sure when seeing her family or hearing someone try to cheer her up, her whole focus was on "I must not smile, they'll think I am evil".

Er, I made no attempt at reconstructing anything, Ally. I was quoting there, as I thought you would have noticed from all those neat little ‘ ’ marks throughout my post. Were you too busy trying to read my own (unexpressed) views between the lines? I would expect better from you than that.

I would expect better from you than to provide quotes for an argument that you don't know are factual or don't actually believe in. What's the point of entering into an argument if you are going to straddle a line of trying to put forth total BS and blatant falsehood but then try to hide behind saying you aren't saying you agree with it? If you know something is false, why are you putting it forth, quotes or not. Discredited information is discredited information and it's not becoming to put it forth knowing it's discredited.

Who was lying about the phones both going off before the murder and back on again at 6am? Someone was, because Knox and Sollecito claimed to have slept in late that morning.

John's answered this but people often turn on their cels, then go right back to sleep. The end.

What is the evidence that one person could have held Meredith down without help and inflicted all the injuries she received before she died?

Are you forgetting it's not up to the innocent to prove their innocence but never mind that. The "evidence" that one person held her down without help is there in the fact that there was NO other DNA found. Or are you telling me that you actually believe it's possible for someone to hold a struggling woman down and inflict mortal damage on her without leaving a DNA trace? How about the fact that MANY women throughout history have been held down and killed by a single assailant. It's entirely possible, unfortunately it happens all too often.

What is the evidence against two knives being used, including the one recovered from Sollecito’s flat?

Considering that if there were two knives used, why didn't the prosecution test ALL the knives in sollecito's flat. Why pick just this one magic knife otu of several other by "instinct' which just happened to have the magic DNA on it, and leave all those other possible murder instruments laying in the drawer untested? If they are actually claiming more than one knife was used, why pick only this one to test, based on NO rational reason?

Why do you think Sollecito did not take the stand? Was it because he had no believable explanation for evidence such as the victim’s DNA on that blade? Or was he more of a liability to the girlfriend he had only been with for a short time? 25 years is a mighty long time for an innocent man to regret not speaking up for himself.

Maybe he actually thought the evidence against him was such a joke, there was no way he would be convicted. I know in his place I would.

What about the apparent staging of a lone intruder scenario and the whole clean-up process?

Once again, what staging? Guede had entered places before by breaking a window. You are assuming it was staged, what if that's how he actually got in? You assume it was staged, if it was actually a break in, no staging needed. And what clean up process? They cleaned everything but left Guede's DNA all over the place? Somehow managing to extricate THEIR DNA from his and cleaning only that? Did the police test the mop and bucket for blood traces to PROVE that there was a cleanup? Or is the clean up just pure speculation?

What are you saying about Knox’s mop and bucket story then? That it makes perfect sense to have carried them several blocks away to mop up some water spilled in Sollecito’s flat while cooking pasta the night before? Did anyone see her carrying them to and from the flat? Or did she say nothing of the sort and is it pure fabrication by some lowlife reporter? Was there no mop or bucket outside the murder house with Knox and Sollecito when the police turned up unexpectedly?

There have been A LOT of fabrications by low life reporters. So until this one is actually proved, I am consigning it to complete BS, yes. Why, if there was such clear evidence of clean up didn't the police TEST the alleged mop and bucket?

I don’t know why anyone was washing Meredith’s clothes (the morning after someone had knifed her to death and left her semi-naked on her bed ). But assuming the other housemate, Filomena, was right about whose clothes were in the still warm machine when she arrived, someone was washing them at a time when Knox and Sollecito were saying they couldn’t get into Meredith’s room and when nobody was supposed to know where she was or that anything had happened to her.

And ....what? How does this at all point to Knox involved? Are you saying if you arrived and your roommate's door was locked, you would have checked the machine, said "oh there's warm clothes in here, she must be lying dead in her room"?

Imagine the scene: there is no sign of Meredith stirring and her room seems to be locked. No reason on earth for anyone to suspect foul play unless they know what's behind that door. So what does Knox do in this blissful but temporary state of ignorance, before all hell breaks loose around her? Domestic chores. She fannies around with a mop and bucket to clear up spilled water over at Sollicito’s place, but leaves Guede’s poo floating in the loo where she apparently took her shower that morning. She also apparently decides to do a washload for Meredith in her absence, but she can’t get into her room to fetch any dirty clothes, or ask what needs washing. So the clothes are presumably already sitting in the machine or close by, waiting to be washed. If Meredith was wearing any of those clothes when she was attacked, then the question has to be how they got from the room to the machine afterwards - given the locked door - and why. Would Guede have bothered to do that if he had no intention of using the machine himself? He'd have been better off flushing the loo!

Since most of what you are putting into your imagining of what Amanda did that day comes purely from tabloid speculation and not from any verified facts, I'll leave you to your imaginings.

If Knox genuinely had no idea that her housemate was lying murdered in her bed or that the killer had tried to clean up after him, she was insanely unlucky to need a mop and bucket that morning and to do that washing, unwittingly adding to the killer’s earlier efforts to clean away potential clues.

Or you know...once again, no proof out there regarding a mop and bucket considering the police didn't happen to see one worthy of TESTING. Or are you actually trying to tell me the Italian police are SO completely incompetent and idiotic that with evidence of a crime scene cleanup they didn't bother to test the bucket that was "supposedly" standing right there by their preferred suspects when they arrived?

[scarletpimpernel]

John, Ally, Cappucchina, Archaic, Ms. Knox didn't have an alibi on the night of the murder.

A) On the one hand, she said that she was there in the kitchen putting her hands over her ears whilst Mr. Lumumba was killing Meredith.

B) On her second alibi Ms. Knox says she was with Sollecito. Except that Sollecito says that he doesn't remember Ms. Knox being at his place the night of the murder. In other words he doesn't corroborate her story.

Ms. Knox changed her story twice. One placing herself at the scene of the murder with Lumumba on the second... her boyfriend doesn't corroborate her story. Sorry, John, Ally and Archaic.

[John Hacker]

Heya Caz,

Let's take your posts in reverse order as this one is a bit more straightforward than the other...

Hi Ally,

That's not quite true. There was no way for me to know whether I was reading and quoting ‘facts’, or a long series of lies, misinformation and conjecture. Evidence was asked for (I can't remember who asked but someone did, and it may of course have been a rhetorical question), so I tried to find out what was being claimed as evidence against the pair. Obviously I wouldn’t find much of that by looking at pro-Knox sources, would I?

I was the one who asked for evidence :-) And it is definately hard to sort out the case after the fact if you haven't been following it since day one. (Like me) But a good starting point is to read the posts on TJ and then use google news and focus on a particular time frame to get all the reports. You can usually get a good idea what's up.

It also helps to look at TJ's summary of the actual case that the prosecution put on and see which bits were actually not presented. Clearly the prosecution here had no compunctions about presenting shaky evidence so anything missing (IMO) is probably not merely unhelpful, but actually damaging to his case.

The thing is, both Knox and Sollecito were convicted, whether we like it or not, so the defence team failed to demonstrate reasonable doubt, or a sceptical jury ignored it. We don’t know why that was. There has been biased reporting for and against the verdicts (although the sympathy votes do seem to be concentrated on Knox, when they should go to Knox and Sollecito in equal measure, unless I’m missing something). So bias by itself can be no indicator of where the truth lies, no matter how blatant that bias is.

My sympathy goes to Knox, Sollecito and Kercher. And the bias was clearly pretty blatent. (With 6 out of 8 jurors wearing Italian flag pins as they began to deliberate)

Without inside knowledge we are left to judge the fairness and accuracy of each report from a variety of sources. In order to claim that something ‘simply isn’t true’ (as John H does) one must rely on the objectivity, accuracy and truthfulness of alternative sources of information. How is it possible to judge which sources are unbiased and providing us with the highest ratio of truth to BS? Even if you or John were to make a case for one source over another, how would I know you were being entirely objective in your choice or qualified to make it? It’s a tough call for all of us. But right now, Knox and Sollecito are the ones who need all the help they can get to undermine whatever it was that led the jury to convict them.

Well Caz, like I said, the best you can do is to look at all sources which I have been doing for 2 years. There is no good unbiased site out there. (And for the record, I don't follow any of the pro Amanda sites. If I am going to get biased info, I prefer ones that challenge my instincts. Not those that agree with them.) I

don't expect you to take my word for anything, but if visit a site with an agenda and copy and paste what they have to say, don't expect that you're finding anything worth repeating.

Er, no. I said the opposite - that her public behaviour very obviously can’t help establish her guilt. But it sure as hell isn’t going to establish her innocence, is it? And that is surely her only goal. I only ever mentioned her behaviour in the context of it doing her no favours. I didn't say it was right or fair. It's totally unfair, but it can hardly have come as any surprise to her if she had been treated unfairly from the start. I’m not biased against her for grinning, or doing a cartwheel either. But it’s quite possible that the people who were there deciding her fate were. And if she really had been slapped around by the Italian authorities, you’d think she’d have been wary of giving anyone in that courtroom the slightest excuse to put the boot into her character as well.

This is presupposing that she has the sort of personality that adjusts her behavoir and manipulates others... like the criminal mastermind she's accused of being. Frankly I can't help but think that if she'd been all tears and sadness that the same people bashing her for cartwheels would be bashing her for crocodile tears.

Her claim that she was scared and brutalised into accusing an innocent man and saying that she heard the victim screaming would certainly be relevant to the safety of the conviction, especially if these statements were crucial to the prosecution’s case, or it could be verified that she was forced into telling lies. No doubt it will all be brought up again at appeal stage. Let’s hope it doesn’t make things worse rather than better. Lies have a habit of coming back to bite you, regardless of what made you tell them in the first place. If she lied due to her youth and unbearable pressure put on her to make something up, it still wouldn't establish that she wasn't involved and knew nothing.

I actually agree here. It doesn't establish that she WAS involved, especially considering that her story didn't match up to facts. But implicating an innocent man was inexcusible no matter what pressures she was under or what leading questions the police used.

Who was lying about the phones both going off before the murder and back on again at 6am? Someone was, because Knox and Sollecito claimed to have slept in late that morning.

I am not sure why you think someone has to be lying here... For at least a couple of reasons.

1) If they use their cell phones as alarms (as many people do) they usually turn themselves back on to sound the alarm. You wake up, snooze it, and go back to bed.

2) If you wake up in the middle of the night or whenever, many of us who live by cellphones will check for messages. That doesn't imply that you don't go back to sleep after checking.

And to quickly address something from your earlier post regarding deletion of sent messages... most cellphones will delete outgoing messages to make space automatically. Incomming messages need to be deleted manually to make space for more. So you DO need to know how to delete the incomming ones, but the outgoing ones take care of themselves.

You've got a lot of questions, lol. So let take those in another post so we don't break the response limit...

Peace.

[Archaic]

I just want to say that I believe all of us want the same thing: Justice for Meredith.

Justice for Meredith entails justice for those accused of her murder.

I'm sure that despite our different perspectives on this case we can all agree that we want those who are truly guilty of her murder to be convicted.

I think we can also all agree that we do not want those who are not guilty of her murder to be convicted in error.

So throughout our discussions let's try to respect one another's honest opinion and bear in mind that we all want the same thing: JUSTICE.

umm... OK, end of Peace commercial.

Best regards, Archaic

[cappuccina]

....but, but, SP...Ally and JH say that none of the forensic evidence is valid, and that police transcripts indicating that Knox tried to implicate an innocent man are not valid either....and....we have to believe them, because they say so....and because they were apparently there, and everything....



(...said in the voice of "Neil" from the "Young ones" )

[scarletpimpernel]

Okay, I'm going to try and replicate my messages.

Based on the exhaustive tests done in the house of the crime, the investigators found bloody foot-prints that matched those of Sollecito and Knox. They found that these bloody foot-prints had been cleaned with bleach but were discovered through sominol, even though anyone can think these have been wiped out in reality is not that easy to remove blood stains. Today, there is the technology to discover blood that is not possible to see with the naked eye.

Then, there was the re-arranging of the room where Meredith was found dead.
The investigators established that the body had been removed from the original place where Meredith died because substancial clotted blood was found where it first laid. The scene was staged and they explained this in every detailed how and why through DNA and through the bra. Meredith was wearing her bra normally when she died and they established this in consistency with the blood spots of the bra that later on was found somewhere else. The report has 106 pages it is detailed and it would be best to read it first rather than just talk about a detail here or there and out of context.

[scarletpimpernel]

Ally,

I have been having problems in logging in. Some messages are printed others are not.

John,

There was a catalogue of mistakes that Sollecito made at the scene of the crime and I tried to post them earlier but it simply didn't come out, except that other small message above.

[John Hacker]

Malkmus,

Except that you forget that Ms. Knox had already implicated another black man, an innocent man by the name of Lumumba of being at the scene of the crime. Why did she do this ? Why did she implicated a man that she clearly knew was not with her during the murder ?

This is when the detectives started questioning her if she was protecting someone else. ( which she was, since we know who that other black man was. Also, by that time, the police through the mobile records had found out, that Lumumba's phone signals were emited from another address, from his bar, so through these records Lumumba was able to establish his innocence.

You see... her telling this tale implicated her.

No, it didn't. As Ally pointed out.

During the interrogation the police kept pushing her on Lumumba because of a text message on her phone that they interpreted as making a meeting for the evening of the killing. She just told them what they were looking to hear.

[caz]

First Caz, thanks for being the first person to put forth a reasoned statement concerning the facts you believe point to her guilt.

Hi Ally,

That's not quite true. There was no way for me to know whether I was reading and quoting ‘facts’, or a long series of lies, misinformation and conjecture. Evidence was asked for (I can't remember who asked but someone did, and it may of course have been a rhetorical question), so I tried to find out what was being claimed as evidence against the pair. Obviously I wouldn’t find much of that by looking at pro-Knox sources, would I?

The thing is, both Knox and Sollecito were convicted, whether we like it or not, so the defence team failed to demonstrate reasonable doubt, or a sceptical jury ignored it. We don’t know why that was. There has been biased reporting for and against the verdicts (although the sympathy votes do seem to be concentrated on Knox, when they should go to Knox and Sollecito in equal measure, unless I’m missing something). So bias by itself can be no indicator of where the truth lies, no matter how blatant that bias is.

Without inside knowledge we are left to judge the fairness and accuracy of each report from a variety of sources. In order to claim that something ‘simply isn’t true’ (as John H does) one must rely on the objectivity, accuracy and truthfulness of alternative sources of information. How is it possible to judge which sources are unbiased and providing us with the highest ratio of truth to BS? Even if you or John were to make a case for one source over another, how would I know you were being entirely objective in your choice or qualified to make it? It’s a tough call for all of us. But right now, Knox and Sollecito are the ones who need all the help they can get to undermine whatever it was that led the jury to convict them.

But of course, it's perfectly okay to discuss how she behaves and consider that helpful in establishing it? No I don't think so. If she as scared or brutalized into confessing, or accusing the bartender based on the actions of the police, that is in fact HIGHLY relevant.

Er, no. I said the opposite - that her public behaviour very obviously can’t help establish her guilt. But it sure as hell isn’t going to establish her innocence, is it? And that is surely her only goal. I only ever mentioned her behaviour in the context of it doing her no favours. I didn't say it was right or fair. It's totally unfair, but it can hardly have come as any surprise to her if she had been treated unfairly from the start. I’m not biased against her for grinning, or doing a cartwheel either. But it’s quite possible that the people who were there deciding her fate were. And if she really had been slapped around by the Italian authorities, you’d think she’d have been wary of giving anyone in that courtroom the slightest excuse to put the boot into her character as well.

Her claim that she was scared and brutalised into accusing an innocent man and saying that she heard the victim screaming would certainly be relevant to the safety of the conviction, especially if these statements were crucial to the prosecution’s case, or it could be verified that she was forced into telling lies. No doubt it will all be brought up again at appeal stage. Let’s hope it doesn’t make things worse rather than better. Lies have a habit of coming back to bite you, regardless of what made you tell them in the first place. If she lied due to her youth and unbearable pressure put on her to make something up, it still wouldn't establish that she wasn't involved and knew nothing.

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Your attempt at reconstructing.

Er, I made no attempt at reconstructing anything, Ally. I was quoting there, as I thought you would have noticed from all those neat little ‘ ’ marks throughout my post. Were you too busy trying to read my own (unexpressed) views between the lines? I would expect better from you than that.

Now for some questions:

Who was lying about the phones both going off before the murder and back on again at 6am? Someone was, because Knox and Sollecito claimed to have slept in late that morning.

What is the evidence that one person could have held Meredith down without help and inflicted all the injuries she received before she died? What is the evidence against two knives being used, including the one recovered from Sollecito’s flat? What were the defence team doing, if they couldn’t show reasonable doubt that three pairs of hands were involved, and at least one blade that had Meredith’s DNA on it? How did Meredith’s DNA get on the blade of a knife that never left Sollecito’s flat? Was any explanation offered by Sollecito himself? Or was he relying on DNA buffs to show that the amount was too small to be identified conclusively as Meredith's? Assuming the profile didn't match Knox or Sollecito, whose was it and how did it get there?

Why do you think Sollecito did not take the stand? Was it because he had no believable explanation for evidence such as the victim’s DNA on that blade? Or was he more of a liability to the girlfriend he had only been with for a short time? 25 years is a mighty long time for an innocent man to regret not speaking up for himself.

What about the apparent staging of a lone intruder scenario and the whole clean-up process? Who was involved and why? What reason could Rudy Guede have had to stage anything if he was a lone intruder and had no witnesses? If he was the one to clean up afterwards, would he have left obvious signs of his presence, including his poo grinning up from the loo, and fatally incriminating signs of his involvement in the murder?

What are you saying about Knox’s mop and bucket story then? That it makes perfect sense to have carried them several blocks away to mop up some water spilled in Sollecito’s flat while cooking pasta the night before? Did anyone see her carrying them to and from the flat? Or did she say nothing of the sort and is it pure fabrication by some lowlife reporter? Was there no mop or bucket outside the murder house with Knox and Sollecito when the police turned up unexpectedly?

I don’t know why anyone was washing Meredith’s clothes (the morning after someone had knifed her to death and left her semi-naked on her bed ). But assuming the other housemate, Filomena, was right about whose clothes were in the still warm machine when she arrived, someone was washing them at a time when Knox and Sollecito were saying they couldn’t get into Meredith’s room and when nobody was supposed to know where she was or that anything had happened to her. It doesn’t make the person doing an absent Meredith this personal favour guilty of her murder, but it would be fairly crazy not to ask certain questions and expect some credible answers. Did Knox admit to washing those clothes or did she try to deny it? Does anyone know? Was anyone else at home when the machine was switched on? It was running when the police entered and Filomena arrived later.

Imagine the scene: there is no sign of Meredith stirring and her room seems to be locked. No reason on earth for anyone to suspect foul play unless they know what's behind that door. So what does Knox do in this blissful but temporary state of ignorance, before all hell breaks loose around her? Domestic chores. She fannies around with a mop and bucket to clear up spilled water over at Sollicito’s place, but leaves Guede’s poo floating in the loo where she apparently took her shower that morning. She also apparently decides to do a washload for Meredith in her absence, but she can’t get into her room to fetch any dirty clothes, or ask what needs washing. So the clothes are presumably already sitting in the machine or close by, waiting to be washed. If Meredith was wearing any of those clothes when she was attacked, then the question has to be how they got from the room to the machine afterwards - given the locked door - and why. Would Guede have bothered to do that if he had no intention of using the machine himself? He'd have been better off flushing the loo!

If Knox genuinely had no idea that her housemate was lying murdered in her bed or that the killer had tried to clean up after him, she was insanely unlucky to need a mop and bucket that morning and to do that washing, unwittingly adding to the killer’s earlier efforts to clean away potential clues.

A statement given after 50 hours of questioning over a 5 day period in a foriegn country where she had minimal language skills at the time. I'm surprised it took that long for them to get to hear what they wanted to hear.

Hang on. This may not translate over here, John. Meredith was in Italy for a year of study towards her degree at Leeds University, and no way would she have got there with minimal language skills in Italian. So what was Amanda Knox doing there exactly, and how was she doing it at all with only minimal skills in the language? But in any case, how could she be expected to respond, in a language she could barely speak, to questions she could barely understand? Italy isn't stuck in the Middle Ages, and without an interpreter she should have kept her trap shut or only spoken in English if she was struggling so badly with Italian. She seems to have had enough skill to finger her boss for the crime and describe Meredith's screams. Or was she allowed to use English just for the really incriminating bits? This is getting a tad silly now, John, and I doubt it's doing much to help her. I heard yesterday that she is becoming concerned about some of the 'support' she is getting. I'm beginning to see why she would be.

Love,

Caz
X

[scarletpimpernel]

Rudy left not only a fingerprint and shoeprint, but feces in the toilet that nailed him very quickly. You have to realize that no one had implicated him until the the fingerprint and DNA evidence obviously pointed him out. Authorities would never have thought to apprehend him since his name never came up, until the fingerprint itself identified him and led to his capture weeks later (Not Amanda or Rapahelle's testimony which never mentioned him)

Malkmus,

Except that you forget that Ms. Knox had already implicated another black man, an innocent man by the name of Lumumba of being at the scene of the crime. Why did she do this ? Why did she implicated a man that she clearly knew was not with her during the murder ?

This is when the detectives started questioning her if she was protecting someone else. ( which she was, since we know who that other black man was. Also, by that time, the police through the mobile records had found out, that Lumumba's phone signals were emited from another address, from his bar, so through these records Lumumba was able to establish his innocence.

You see... her telling this tale implicated her.

[Ally]

But of course since they had already hinged their whole belief system on Knox and Sollecito, they just couldn't let it go, and rather than tossing it, they just incorporated Guede.

John, since I told Scarlet three times the phone calls were bogus, and he didn't believe a word I said, and all you had to do was say it once in your deep manly voice, I have come to the conclusion that Scarlet is just another sexist macho male who doesn't hear a word a woman says (maybe he was on the Knox jury too). So could you do me a favor and point out to him that Amanda Knox didn't mention the bartender until the police mentioned him to her, based on their phone text conversation? And that it was the POLICE who initially tried to implicate him?

He keeps making so much of the fact that the man Amanda initially implicated was black, which he says proves she knew a black man was involved, but refuses to see the plain and simple truth that the POLICE were the first people to bring the bartender into it and not Amanda herself.

Maybe he just needs the facts repeated in tenor-bass before they'll sink in.