Meredith Kercher case

[cappuccina]

...you have lent no support to why she is innocent...

In fact, according to you, any behavior is acceptable in any situation at any time...

The last time I heard something this absurd was when I was in graduate school, and some schmuck was still obsessed with figuring out if we all truly existed or if our lives were imaginary...

[John Hacker]

...you have lent no support to why she is innocent...

In fact, according to you, any behavior is acceptable in any situation at any time...

The last time I heard something this absurd was when I was in graduate school, and some schmuck was still obsessed with figuring out if we all truly existed or if our lives were imaginary...

Oh please... Not every behavior is acceptable in any situation, but the behavior Knox has displayed is not an indication of being a murderer. The fact that the police in Perugia seem to feel that it is strongly impeaches their credibility IMO. People do not all react the same under stress and there's no master list that you can go to and look up "cartwheel" and get "murderer".

As far as guilt or innocense goes that has been extensively covered in this thread. Every piece the prosecution has brought forward has been examined and rebutted.

No one has come forward to defend the shoddy handling of the evidence. (With good reason) The bra clasp was left for 45 days and then passed around from person to person, replaced on the floor and THEN bagged. The defendents hard drives were compromised by police watching movies on them prior to handing them to an "expert" who managed to wipe the things in the course of investigating them.

No one has come up with any way to explain the fact that the Knox's prints and DNA were not found in the room where the murder occurred and Sollecito's only on the bra clasp. (Which of course due to police mishandling has no evidentiary value whatsoever) If they cleaned the scene, how did they manage to leave Guede's DNA and prints all over?

No one has addressed the fact that the knife allegedly used (which was picked out of a drawer full of knives by the police based only on "instinct"!) does not match some of the wounds and that the DNA count was too low for an accurate test and the tests were poorly conducted. According to an independent expert appointed by the court.

And most significantly, no one has come up with any crime that even vaguely parallels this one.

So basically the suggestion appears to be that not only do we have a totally unprecedented crime here, we also have to believe that 2 of the killers had some sort of magic scene cleaning eraser tuned only to their traces.... and that the local police have some sort of psychic power to spot guilt and invisible DNA on knives...

Hmmm. Nope. Just can't buy it.

I would love to hear a reasoned defense of the prosecution here. Surely if you believe so strongly in the case you can offer some insight into why?

[Archaic]

Misuse of Hare PCL-R // Interviews with Amanda's Friends

The PCL-R is administered by professionals, not by observing a behavior trait and going "Ahha!" Each of the items is scored (not checked off) based on their case history and a professionally administered interview.

Most people at one point or another in their life display most of the factor 1 traits (the first 10), the question is a matter of degree and how central these traits are to their personality and you have no information to base a rational assesment on. You're simply making unqualified assumptions based on a media portrayal of her as a killer with no apparent basis in fact.

Hi, John, I completely agree with you. The Hare PCL-R was designed for a very specific purpose: to be used by trained professionals under specific conditions in a clinical setting. A professional psychologist asks a list of carefully prepared questions during a structured one-on-one interview with the patient, and the patient's own answers are scored according to a specific scale.

The Hare PCL-R was not created to be used at a distance by amateurs. If anyone wants to look it up they will see that even its inventor, Dr. Hare, strongly warns against the dangers of its misuse.

The only reason that Amand Knox "appears" to exhibit those traits that Cappucina named is that the film footage and interviews of her that people have seen were edited and released by the Italian media.

In fact, she is an Honor Student who participated in many school activities and excelled at them. (Soccer, Foreign Languages, Drama, etc.)
She has always kept her grades up while working part-time and qualifying for the study-abroad program.
She has never been in any kind of trouble with the law, never demonstrated any kind of mental instability, and is close to her family and friends. Numerous friends have described her as an exceptionally kind and caring person.

In fact, some of her friends worked 3 jobs in order to raise the money they needed to be able to fly to Italy and visit her.
These friends have said that they don't even recognize the "evil Amanda" that is depicted in the media.

Here are a couple of short interviews with her closest friends so you can hear what they have to say about all this.

'Amanda's Friends Speak Out': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbkUW2cc7xs

Amanda's Best Friend "I Know She's Innocent" :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5rTyO_TsjA

These are just ordinary college kids speaking out on behalf of their friend,
obviously not brainwashed homicidal occult zombies in the grip of The Evil One.

Best regards, Archaic

[cappuccina]

Nathan Leopold (of Leopold & Loeb infamy) also was an honor student and excelled in many sports and activities; what's your point...Much of what you say about Amanda Knox could also be said of him:

"Nathan Leopold was an intellectual prodigy who spoke his first words at the age of four months.[citation needed] Leopold had already completed college, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and was attending law school at the University of Chicago.[2] He claimed to have studied 15 languages though he only spoke four,[4] and was an expert ornithologist. Loeb was the youngest graduate in the history of the University of Michigan[2] and planned to enter the University of Chicago Law School after taking some post-graduate courses.[2] Leopold planned to transfer to Harvard Law School in September, after taking a trip to Europe"...etc., etc., (from Wikipedia and other sources...)

Being a sociopath and an honor student and being "otherwise responsible" and socially appropriate with friends are not mutually exclusive...

[John Hacker]

Nathan Leopold (of Leopold & Loeb infamy) also was an honor student and excelled in many sports and activities; what's your point...Much of what you say about Amanda Knox could also be said of him:

"Nathan Leopold was an intellectual prodigy who spoke his first words at the age of four months.[citation needed] Leopold had already completed college, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and was attending law school at the University of Chicago.[2] He claimed to have studied 15 languages though he only spoke four,[4] and was an expert ornithologist. Loeb was the youngest graduate in the history of the University of Michigan[2] and planned to enter the University of Chicago Law School after taking some post-graduate courses.[2] Leopold planned to transfer to Harvard Law School in September, after taking a trip to Europe"...etc., etc., (from Wikipedia and other sources...)

Being a sociopath and an honor student and being "otherwise responsible" and socially appropriate with friends are not mutually exclusive...

I quite understand why you're dodging the central issue here. Defending the prosecutions case is difficult at best.

But as to Leopold... What on Earth does he have to do with anything? He was never diagnosed as a sociopath so I really don't understand the relevence here. He was the submissive partner in the relationship and did not drive the killing.

But to your point, yes, he did well in school like Knox.

But then again, most of the personality traits you're arbitrarily assigning to Knox in your "diagnosis" can be attributed to pretty much any bottom feeding celebrity that appears in the tabloids (as portraryed in the tabloids at least, if you're going to do psychoanalysis based on media reports you might as well go for the gusto) are they all sociopaths? Of course they are...

[scarletpimpernel]

Meredith Kercher - A Life Cut Short

While the media focused on the accused killers, the story of a murdered young woman often and still takes second place.

A mid the madness of what will always be known as the Knox trial in Perugia, with its melodramas, its posturings one life seems to be forgotten: Meredith Kercher.

She was brought up in Coulsdon, Surrey, on the edge of the North Downs, she was bright, conscientious child who later attended the prestigious Old Palace School for Girls in Croydon. She read, wrote poetry and stories, took ballet, gymnastics and karate classes, worked at Gatwick airport to save for her studies, ran the Race for Life to raise money for cancer research. She went to Leeds University, and, from there, in her third year, to Perugia for a year's study, arriving in the autumn of 2007. One of her closest friends, Helen Power 22, was with her. She said: " You only had to meet her once to be struck by her beauty, quick wit and her infectious smile "

Close to both parents, Meredith called her father the day after the Halloween party to tell him she loved him. " I was in the bank and we spoke for two minutes" he said. It was the last time they would. Not long afterwards he heard a British student had been murdered in Perugia. He rang Meredith a dozen or more times. There was no reply. After an hour, he called his newspaper. Two hours later, they called him back with the name of the victim. It was Meredith. That was how he found out. Her mother told the court: " It's just not her death but it's the nature of it, the brutality of it, the violence of it and the great sorrow it's brought everyone. We will never, ever get over it "

I just brought out this, as the focus again, is on one selfish killer and not on the life she took away. The trial is over, the verdict is over, and the appeals will not change the lies of her killer.

[Ally]

Lordy. Now it's gotten so desperate that there are those who think they can diagnose sociopaths by remote. You have got to love it.

And trotting out Leopold. Here's where such comparison's fall short and where JOhn is saying it's an unprecedented crime. In every case where someone "snaps" and commits murder for the first time, in the very near aftermath, people are suddenly crawling all over themselves to tell you stories about the murderer and there are ALWAYS stories that indicate the motive behind the killing was plausible.

In the case of Leo and Loeb, they wanted to be supermen and considered themselves beyond the ordinary concerns and laws of men and had committed crimes PRIOR to the murder in this endeavor. In the recent case of the man who killed the Yale student Le, there were scads of reports by former friends and former colleagues of his anger issues and his control freak issues.

In the case of Amanda Knox, what do we have being reported about her by the people who actually knew her? Not that much and certainly not indicative of murder. Yes, she apparently liked to party and sleep around, but if that's indicative of murderous traits, then 3/5 of college students are murderers. She was typical. Where are the tirades against girls from her past who she suddenly got angry with for being a goody, goody? Where's the beat ups in the girls bathroom? Where's the HISTORY, that shows she was capable of becoming so enraged by this girl that she just decided, hey, let's me and my 2 week boyfriend decide to off her just because?

[caz]

I am somewhat torn. When I first heard about the case, I was pretty much convinced of her guilt based on some of the similar things you mentioned: conflicting stories, etc. When I read about the interrogation in which these conflicting stories came about however, I became less convinced of their value. If her defense is right, and she was told to think of any one that might be responsible, or to imagine a scenario that occurred in the house which led to her mentioning the bartender...I don't know. Without tapes of the actual interview which the police say don't exist, I am not sure what to believe. It would have been nice if they had recorded the interviews so we aren't relying on "she said" evidence. And again, if the alleged "murder weapon" does not in fact match the wounds, that leads one step farther away from proof of guilt, which may well open up reasonable doubt.

Hi Ally,

You wrote the above on December 3, the day before the guilty verdicts were returned. So what evidence have you seen or heard since (and where did you see or hear it) that now makes you sure - without the benefit of those non-existent interview tapes - that there is indeed reasonable doubt about the guilt of Knox and Sollecito? The trouble is that even if we had evidence of improper interviewing techniques (beyond the word of Knox herself), that in itself would not help us in the slightest with the actual question of innocence or guilt. So before we start accusing the Italian police of bullying an innocent woman into coming out with conflicting claims and highly incriminating statements about what happened and who was there, we must be sure that we are in full possession of the available facts and are not ourselves guilty of an injustice.

If Knox had firsthand experience of any such brutality or corruption at the hands of her interviewers, it would have paid her to act - if only for the cameras - a little bit like the tragic and innocent victim of sustained bullying tactics. Nobody supporting her seems to have captured her looking that way. The cameras can only catch an insolent grin if there is one to focus on. And as Stan said so eloquently:

…when you strut into court every day with your nose in the air and a smirk on your face, you're going to be convicted.

I don't know why a competent lawyer wouldn't tell his client not to do that.

I don’t know why anyone in their right mind would need telling. Knox isn’t twelve years old and she has no obvious learning difficulties. Her defenders have to call her a ‘kid’ because otherwise they are painting this woman as the kind of moron who didn’t realise that her whole attitude and body language in the aftermath of the crime might be used against her by a justice system that, according to her, sucks so bad that it had to pluck ‘evidence’ out of fresh air to get her convicted.

If she was not in the murder house at the time, and has no idea who killed Meredith or why, and is as horrified about the murder as anyone, then she has just learned the hardest lesson of her life about not handing out freebies to a prosecution with no case - freebies that include ‘imagining’ who killed Meredith and imagining being there herself, listening to her screaming, but failing to call for help when the killer left (presumably not helped by the fact that she and Sollecito had switched their phones off simultaneously, shortly before Meredith was attacked, turning them on again at 6am the next morning despite claiming to have slept in late).

In fact the case is awash with freebies when one starts looking deeper. And the point is not that her behaviour makes her guilty of murder - of course it doesn’t. The point is that if she wanted to go back to her parents a free woman, and save them throwing good money after bad for at least another year, if not for the rest of their lives, she could have behaved with a lot more respect and compassion for everyone concerned, instead of playing right into the hands of the supposedly corrupt prosecution.

Listen to the first 1 minute and 22 seconds of Knox’s own testimony here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7ANIg1_yBM&NR=1

She says she only deleted text messages she had received, not those she sent. Asked to explain, she says she is no “technical genius” so she only knew how to delete messages received. Who in their early twenties would need a remotely technical brain to work that one out? It doesn’t even begin to add up, and I have no idea what the advantage was in saying it, or why she thought anyone would believe it.

…I was referring specifically to a case here in the States where a man's wife went missing. He was a police officer named Drew Peterson. The wife he had while courting Stacey (the current missing wife) had died under mysterious circumstances that was ruled accidental drowning in her home bathtub after another police officer who personally knew Drew was on the coroners jury and personally assured the other jurists Drew would never kill anyone despite several domestic violence calls that had
gone uninvestigated (because of his police officer status). So the death was ruled accidental. Flash forward to Stacey. She has two young kids and after planning to leave Drew, she vanishes without a trace or without a phone call to her parents or her family she was very close to. A neighbor says that a day after Stacey was last seen, he helped Drew move a large blue barrel out of his garage and into his truck.

He'll never be convicted of murdering his Stacey (although he might be convicted of murdering Kathleen since she was disinterred and a new autopsy and a new coroner ruled it homicide instead of accidental drowning). But really, yes, I think the evidence as known is sufficient for most people to say that they "know' he did it. Which is not in anyway the same thing as saying there is PROOF he did it.

Ah, well you will understand why I was confused when you wrote previously that there was ‘no evidence whatsoever’ against this particular individual. There was sufficient evidence for most people to “know” he was guilty (just not enough for any of them to prove it ):

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ally

'I find it interesting because I was having a conversation with a lot of people recently about a case here in the states where there is also no evidence whatsoever that a particular individual is guilty, but everyone knows full well he is, and I have been posing the question to all and sundry: if you were on his jury, without any evidence, would you convict if you KNEW he'd done it.'

Quote [by caz]:
Sollecito admitted to smoking pot that night but claimed to be alone in his flat.

Well let's shoot him....dirty drug addict.

Quote [by caz]:
Not very loyal to Knox because where was she supposed to be during this time?

Or maybe he was trying to protect her from getting in trouble with the law over drugs?

I imagine she’d be better off getting into trouble over a bit of pot if it gave her an alibi for murder, but then if he was just a ‘kid’ too, he probably didn’t know any better. But again you miss the point. The pair introduced drugs to account for their rotten memories of that night and what they did and when. They were either lying about the effect of the drugs to excuse the gaps and contradictions in their stories, or they really were too stoned to know what happened and in no position to deny any involvement in the attack on Meredith.

I think they behaved with incredible dignity as well. I don't know though what that has to do with the possibility that someone was wrongfully convicted of murder. If you can't separate your feelings for the victims family from the case against the alleged killers, I can see how this wouldn't be your best subject to argue rationally.

I’m glad you agree with my observation about the surviving members of the Kercher family. But just like yours, mine was not linked in any way to the safety or otherwise of the verdicts. The fact that you saw something that wasn’t even there says more about your reasoning abilities than mine. If you check back you will see that it was a simple stand-alone observation that I wanted to make after having watched the family on Saturday morning.

....sorry, but there are certain generally accepted common psychological aberrations/hallmarks regarding not only sociopaths, but also in non-sociopathic individuals who are guilty of crimes....Knox is a sociopath, plain and simple. Certainly there is some room for variation, but your telling me that "anyone can react in any way they want about anything, including violent crime, and it's all within the possible realm of normalcy" is absurd.

Hi Capps,

Again, my point would be that while Knox was perfectly entitled to act any way she chose, if she is innocent she has just learned the hard way where her behaviour choices have left her. It’s like doing a slow dance on a pedestrian crossing, getting knocked down and ending up in a wheelchair for life, but pointing out that the motorist was still the one in the wrong and should have stopped. Well I’d say good luck in finding him and good luck with the wheelchair.

And as far as her demeanor... What you've seen of her and Raphaelle has been extremely selective, the worst of which was what? Her being consoled by her boyfriend outside the murder scene, and that they kissed? They're kids, they're affectionate! And it's not like she was beaming with delight, quite the opposite.

They are not kids, they are in their twenties. And you should take a look at the links in this post and see what you’ve been missing. If they had behaved appropriately for the circumstances, at least when the cameras were on them, it wouldn’t matter how selective the reporting was. She was sitting on his lap in the police station and was seen poking her tongue out at him when she wasn’t kissing him. Maybe she should claim a mental age of seven and be done with it.

Take a look at this:

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/C350/

‘Professor Gianaristide Norelli testified that the multiple lesions on Ms Kercher’s body were consistent with being held and attacked by more than one person. He said she died of suffocation and interpreted her stab wounds as having been inflicted as threats during a struggle. The wounds, mostly on the side of her neck, were possibly inflicted by two different knives, he said, but noted that one of the stab wounds was compatible with the alleged murder weapon.

Professor Francesca Torricelli told the court that she believed the samples of Mr Sollecito’s DNA found on Ms Kercher’s bra clasp was a significant enough amount that it was unlikely to have been left by contamination. She also sustained a previous forensic biologist’s findings that Ms Knox’s DNA was found on the handle and the victim’s on the blade.’

And this:

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/C343/

And this:

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/C297/

‘Countless forensic experts, including those who performed the autopsies on Kercher’s body, have testified that more than one person killed her based on the size and location of her injuries and the fact that she didn’t fight back—no hair or skin was found under her fingernails. The defense has confused matters more: Knox’s forensic specialist testified that Kercher had been killed by only one person from the front, but Sollecito’s expert testified that Kercher had been killed by one person from behind…

…On Nov. 5, 2007, Sollecito was called to the Perugia police station for questioning about Kercher’s murder. Knox testified last June that she did not want to be alone, so she accompanied him. During his interrogation, Sollecito admitted to police that he did not know for sure if Knox actually spent the night of the murder at his house, as she had told police earlier. Since Knox was at the police station, the head of the murder squad decided to ask her a few questions. Her interrogation started at about 11 p.m., and, by 5:45 a.m., Knox had told police that she was in the house when Kercher died—and that Patrick Lumumba, the owner of the nightclub where she worked, was the assailant. She even described Kercher’s screams. She, Sollecito, and Lumumba were arrested. The next day, Knox wrote a five-page memorandum reiterating everything she said the night before. But since there was no lawyer present during her interrogation—and so far no one has produced an audiotape of the interrogation—Knox’s attorneys were able to have her verbal confession thrown out of evidence. The five-page memorandum still holds....

…Knox maintains that she spent the night of Nov. 1, 2007, at Sollecito’s house. Sollecito did not take the stand during this trial, and his lawyer told NEWSWEEK that it was, at least in part, because he could not corroborate Knox’s alibi....

…Giacinto Profazio, who supervised the investigation, said he had to tell the suspects at one point [at the police station] that it was inappropriate for Knox to sit on Raffaele Sollecito’s lap.
The couple was kissing, making faces and acting increasingly annoyed at
investigators’ questions, said Monica Napoleoni, the head of Perugia’s homicide squad… “I took particular notice of their behavior because it seemed impossible that these two kids were there kissing when the cadaver of their friend had just been found,” Napoleoni said…

…Both Napoleoni and Marco Chiacchiera, the first investigating officer to arrive, said the crime scene didn’t jibe with the lone burglar theory put forth by the suspects. For example, the room had been messed up before the window had been broken, Chiacchiera said.
The 10-pound rock found inside the room would have been difficult to throw from the ground, more than 10 feet below, he said.
“The fact that this girl was semi-nude with a wound of that type, in a pool of blood in her own room with the door locked, and then with the rock and window like that—well, progressively, the analysis of all the investigative elements made us suspicious,” Chiacchiera said.
Investigators’ suspicions deepened once phone records arrived, he said, because there was a void of calls from 8:30 in the evening until the next morning on both their phones. In months prior, records showed phone activity until late in the night. In addition, Sollecito had told police his father had called him at 11 p.m., but phone records showed no such call…’

And this:

http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk/news/4273782.Meredith_Kercher_killed_by_more_than_one_person__expert_rules/

And this:

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/smart_lawyers_are_asking_what_on_earth_possessed_lawyer_john_q_kelly/

‘The knife sequestered from Raffaele Sollecito’s apartment is in fact compatible with the deep puncture wound on Meredith’s neck. This was a point that even the defence forensic experts conceded.
The tests on the DNA found on the blade of the knife were not inconclusive. Dr. Patrizia Stefanoni testified at the trial that the DNA on the blade of the knife has been reliably identified as Meredith’s
Both Dr. Renato Biondo, the head of the DNA Unit of the scientific police, and the Kerchers’ own DNA expert, Professor Francesca Torricelli, provided independent confirmation that this forensic finding is accurate and reliable.
The double DNA knife is far from the only piece of incriminating forensic evidence.
There were five instances of Amanda Knox’s DNA mixed with Meredith’s blood in
three different locations in the cottage, including in Filomena’s room where the break-in was staged.
Furthermore, there was a woman’s bloody shoeprint compatible with Knox’s foot size on a pillow in Meredith’s room. This bloody shoeprint was not compatible with Meredith’s own foot size.
An abundant amount of Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA was found on Meredith’s bra clasp…

…Amanda Knox’s and Raffale Sollecito’s mobile phone activity on the night of the murder point to their making an opportunity. They both turned off their mobile phones at approximately at 8.40 pm, shortly before Meredith was killed and turned them on again the following day at around 6.00 am - although they claimed they slept in late.
They both claimed conveniently that they couldn’t remember much about the period during which Meredith was killed because they claimed they were suffering from cannabis-induced amnesia (whatever that is) though what they actually did claim to remember differed wildly between the two of them…’

And this:

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/C356/

‘Six bloody footprints from bare feet were identified. One was visible to the naked eye in the bathroom and five were visible only after the police used luminol, which allows blood evidence cleaned by bleach to become visible under a special light. The luminol did reveal five bloody footprints that had been cleaned up (one shoe print was also found under Meredith’s pillow - the print is consistent with the size of Amanda’s shoe).
None of the six bloody footprints are consistent with the size of Guede’s feet. All six of these footprints are consistent with the size of Amanda and/or Sollecito’s feet…’

...why in god's name would Sollecito bring one of his own knives from home, then nicely take it all the way back there?

Why in God’s name did the same knife need to be cleaned with bleach?

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/C356/

‘Forensics don’t show either way whether bleach was used to clean up Meredith and Amanda’s apartment, though it was used in Sollecito’s apartment AND on the knife found in his apartment containing the DNA of Meredith and Amanda.

The Conad store owner reported the presence of Amanda in the household cleaners part of his store early on the morning after the murder (when Amanda and Sollecito contend they were asleep) although rumored receipts for bleach were not presented at trial…

…Let’s keep assuming Amanda was innocent. Would she have come back to her apartment with Sollecito, still not having called police, and then start a load of washing of Meredith’s clothes? (The Postal Police said the washing machine was running when they entered; Filomena, who arrived a little later, said that the washing machine was still warm and contained Meredith’s clothes.)
If Amanda was innocent, would she be outside her apartment next to a mop and bucket with Sollecito when the Postal and Communcations Police showed up unexpectedly? Amanda has testified that she got out the mop and bucket the first time she went to her apartment that day and took it back to Sollecito’s because there was water on his apartment floor from water used in cooking pasta the night before (Sollecito said, however, that the water was from a broken pipe; Sollecito’s diary written in prison talks of a dinner of stir fry mushrooms and vegetables).
Who has water spills from cooking pasta so large that the next day it is still puddled to the degree it needs to be mopped? Who voluntarily carries a mop and bucket several blocks to clean up water from cooking pasta the night before? (Especially a person who has been labeled in trial testimony as messy and unkempt in their cleaning habits).
If Amanda were innocent, wouldn’t she and Sollecito have called the police after Sollecito tried to open Meredith’s locked bedroom door and couldn’t open it?
Instead of calling the police, Amanda and Meredith went outside and stood next to the mop and bucket. Why didn’t they just put the mop and bucket back up in the apartment when they first arrived? Why leave it outside the apartment? Why then go back out and stand next to the mop?
If Amanda and Sollecito were innocent, that means that Guede (and perhaps one or two accomplices) murdered Meredith, then ran away, and then came back at some point and cleaned up the crime scene PARTIALLY (but ignoring and leaving the most damning evidence against him) and THEN GUEDE CAME BACK that morning after Amanda had showered and left - so that GUEDE could do a LOAD OF WASHING of Meredith’s clothes - presumably blood stained, all the while ignoring his feces in the toilet and his bloody hand print on the pillow under Meredith’s body - only for GUEDE to then leave again right before Amanda and Sollecito arrived (so the washing machine would still be running when the Postal Police arrived a short while later).’

So absolutely no evidence for the jury to consider then. I can’t think what they had to discuss in those 14 hours.

Love,

Caz
X

[scarletpimpernel]

Ally,

Rudy Guede implicated Ms. Knox and Sollecito in his murder trial. This is on court records. Guede has confessed to his part in the murder.

Ms. Knox telephone records show that she was in touch with Rudy Guede telephoning him before and after the murder of Meredith Kercher. Rudy Guede apart from being an accomplice to this murder, was also, Knox and Sollecito drug pusher.

Demeanour or behaviour towards others are closely observed by the police.

Ask yourself something Ally: If you had been taken to be questioned for a murder enquiry. Would you be turning wheel-carts, doing splits on the corridor, pulling faces, telling jokes and grinning away ? After a supposed friend of yours had been brutally murdered ? For instance, if this had been Suzi ? or Cappuchina ?

Or.. Would you be beside yourself with grief helping the police, everyway you could, to find who did this brutal murder ?

[Ally]

First Caz, thanks for being the first person to put forth a reasoned statement concerning the facts you believe point to her guilt. By what most of these people have argued, you can tell they haven't read a single thing on the case and therefore, shouldn't expose their limited thought processes to the degree of ridicule such lazy thinking invites.

[QUOTE=caz;109735]Hi Ally,

You wrote the above on December 3, the day before the guilty verdicts were returned. So what evidence have you seen or heard since (and where did you see or hear it) that now makes you sure - without the benefit of those non-existent interview tapes - that there is indeed reasonable doubt about the guilt of Knox and Sollecito?

The reasonable doubt occurred long before Dec 3rd PROMPTING the post that I wrote. I said when I'd first heard ..and since then, reasonable doubt has crept in. So I was wondering what others were thinking. Of course so far, this is the first post in a week to actually offer anything in so far as a worthy amount of debate.

The trouble is that even if we had evidence of improper interviewing techniques (beyond the word of Knox herself), that in itself would not help us in the slightest with the actual question of innocence or guilt.

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.

So before we start accusing the Italian police of bullying an innocent woman into coming out with conflicting claims and highly incriminating statements about what happened and who was there, we must be sure that we are in full possession of the available facts and are not ourselves guilty of an injustice.

Yeah it would be nice if people waited til we had all the available facts before lobbing accusations, but that so rarely happens in today's society, does it?

If Knox had firsthand experience of any such brutality or corruption at the hands of her interviewers, it would have paid her to act - if only for the cameras - a little bit like the tragic and innocent victim of sustained bullying tactics. Nobody supporting her seems to have captured her looking that way. The cameras can only catch an insolent grin if there is one to focus on. And as Stan said so eloquently:

So wait...because months and months after the police interrogation, she grins in court, and therefore the police slapping her around never happened? I take back what I said about the logic and good reasoning of this post. What in the holy hell does one thing have to do with the other? She grinned in court. You read it as insolent. But that's not evidence of anything except you are biased against her and you read negative things into everything she does.

If she was not in the murder house at the time, and has no idea who killed Meredith or why, and is as horrified about the murder as anyone, then she has just learned the hardest lesson of her life about not handing out freebies to a prosecution with no case - freebies that include ‘imagining’ who killed Meredith and imagining being there herself, listening to her screaming, but failing to call for help when the killer left (presumably not helped by the fact that she and Sollecito had switched their phones off simultaneously, shortly before Meredith was attacked, turning them on again at 6am the next morning despite claiming to have slept in late).

Police actually use this interrogation technique all the time. They ask the people to imagine what happened but the idea is that the person will spill something that only the killer would have known. She didn't actually do that though. No details that couldn't have strictly been put down to pure imagination.

In fact the case is awash with freebies when one starts looking deeper. And the point is not that her behaviour makes her guilty of murder - of course it doesn’t.

And here we come back to it. Her behavior. Which is really all anyone's got so far. We don't like HER and we don't like how she acts, so she's guilty of homicide.

Listen to the first 1 minute and 22 seconds of Knox’s own testimony here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7ANIg1_yBM&NR=1

She says she only deleted text messages she had received, not those she sent. Asked to explain, she says she is no “technical genius” so she only knew how to delete messages received. Who in their early twenties would need a remotely technical brain to work that one out? It doesn’t even begin to add up, and I have no idea what the advantage was in saying it, or why she thought anyone would believe it.

Oh my god. Come on. I totally understand what she's saying. I never delete the emails I send, only the ones I receive. I know computer clearing freaks who delete their entire history and everything, but nine times out of ten, I delete the emails I receive to free up space but not the ones I send. Seriously? What is this even indicative of to you except you are trying to find EVERY LITTLE NITPICKING THING to point to her and call her a liar.

Ah, well you will understand why I was confused when you wrote previously that there was ‘no evidence whatsoever’ against this particular individual. There was sufficient evidence for most people to “know” he was guilty (just not enough for any of them to prove it ):

No, there's no evidence at all. All there is is behavior, and facts of a prior relationship, which is not necessarily evidence.

But again you miss the point. The pair introduced drugs to account for their rotten memories of that night and what they did and when. They were either lying about the effect of the drugs to excuse the gaps and contradictions in their stories, or they really were too stoned to know what happened and in no position to deny any involvement in the attack on Meredith.

And considering she has bit of a history of drinking and drugging to excess, this might actually be plausible.

They are not kids, they are in their twenties. And you should take a look at the links in this post and see what you’ve been missing. If they had behaved appropriately for the circumstances, at least when the cameras were on them, it wouldn’t matter how selective the reporting was. She was sitting on his lap in the police station and was seen poking her tongue out at him when she wasn’t kissing him. Maybe she should claim a mental age of seven and be done with it.

Or maybe she really is stupid, and at the time, like many people would, once the initial horror was passed, the death of a girl she hadn't known that long rolled off her. Maybe she found all the drama exciting and thought it was interesting to be caught up in a police drama just like on TV and maybe she wasn't really considering that she was an actual suspect and she ought to be modifying her behavior because the whole world was going to judge her guilt and innocence NOT on the evidence, but on how she flirted with her boyfriend.

‘Professor Gianaristide Norelli testified that the multiple lesions on Ms Kercher’s body were consistent with being held and attacked by more than one person. He said she died of suffocation and interpreted her stab wounds as having been inflicted as threats during a struggle. The wounds, mostly on the side of her neck, were possibly inflicted by two different knives, he said, but noted that one of the stab wounds was compatible with the alleged murder weapon.

And the independent examiner appointed by the court said that the knife wounds DIDN'T match. So we have two different examiners, one independent one not. ...Hmm who will I go with. Also, sorry I don't consider media reports to be sufficient. I wish I spoke Italian because I would have LOVED to have seen how they can conclude that multiple lesions were consistent with multiple attackers. How precisely does that follow? If you are stabbed more than once, it means multiple attackers?

Professor Francesca Torricelli told the court that she believed the samples of Mr Sollecito’s DNA found on Ms Kercher’s bra clasp was a significant enough amount that it was unlikely to have been left by contamination. She also sustained a previous forensic biologist’s findings that Ms Knox’s DNA was found on the handle and the victim’s on the blade.’

And since the collection of this bra, which was allowed to lie on the ground at the scene for 7 weeks before ever being collected is completely laughable, I am not even going to bother. Interesting they collected all the crime scene evidence, find nothing, go back 7 weeks later and THEN pick up the bra, and voila, there's the damning evidence we need.

‘Countless forensic experts, including those who performed the autopsies on Kercher’s body, have testified that more than one person killed her based on the size and location of her injuries and the fact that she didn’t fight back—no hair or skin was found under her fingernails. The defense has confused matters more: Knox’s forensic specialist testified that Kercher had been killed by only one person from the front, but Sollecito’s expert testified that Kercher had been killed by one person from behind…

Amazing isn't it. That all these people were in the room helping to restrain her and kill her and none of them left ANY DNA on her. Truly it's a miracle.

During his interrogation, Sollecito admitted to police that he did not know for sure if Knox actually spent the night of the murder at his house, as she had told police earlier...
…Knox maintains that she spent the night of Nov. 1, 2007, at Sollecito’s house. Sollecito did not take the stand during this trial, and his lawyer told NEWSWEEK that it was, at least in part, because he could not corroborate Knox’s alibi....

So they get drugged and drunk and during interrogation her boyfriend says well I can't say she was there, I was passed out! Which kills her alibi which of course now makes her a murderer? If he was passed out because of the drugs or can't remember because of the drugs, then fine, he can't confirm her alibi. This doesn't equal she left, went on a murderous rampage without him and then returned.

The couple was kissing, making faces and acting increasingly annoyed at
investigators’ questions, said Monica Napoleoni, the head of Perugia’s homicide squad… “I took particular notice of their behavior because it seemed impossible that these two kids were there kissing when the cadaver of their friend had just been found,” Napoleoni said…

And while interesting, evidence, you know ...actual EVIDENCE is still required.

Snipping a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't actually point to anything and is just repetitive. More than one person doesn't mean diddly if there's not more than one DNA.

And this:

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/smart_lawyers_are_asking_what_on_earth_possessed_lawyer_john_q_kelly/

Caz,

Please don't take a website that is nothing but anti-knox from the get go, throw up one of their propaganda pieces and claim it as evidence of anything. You really should be better than that. Much of what that site says is just total made up BS. But that's fine. Let's look at it logically.

There were five instances of Amanda Knox’s DNA mixed with Meredith’s blood in
three different locations in the cottage, including in Filomena’s room where the break-in was staged.

First, Amanda Knox lived in the house. Her DNA is all over the house by virtue of her living in it. She went into the room and found the broken window. DNA. The fact that the vast majority of this mixing was in the BATHROOM is hardly surprising. Stuff occurs in the bathroom. Stuff that leaves DNA. It is also not surprising that her DNA would be found throughout the house as well. What IS surprising giving all the "her DNA mixes therefore she must be guilty" is that NONE OF HER DNA WAS FOUND IN THE ROOM. She restrains her, taunts her, kills her and gets bloody enough to track it throughout the house but doesn't leave a single DNA cell in the murder site? Interesting.

Furthermore, there was a woman’s bloody shoeprint compatible with Knox’s foot size on a pillow in Meredith’s room. This bloody shoeprint was not compatible with Meredith’s own foot size.

This is the only thing I find even remotely interesting in the evidence category. Except of course I have a couple of problems with it. One, they haven't matched it to any of Knox's shoes. So what during this sex game they all remained fully clothed right down to the shoes? Hardly seems like much of a sex game to me. And why haven't they matched it to any of Amanda's shoes. Seems like that would be a snap easy thing to do. Considering they didn't bother to toss the knife, you think they managed to ditch the shoes? My main question would be, considering the absolutely APPALLING crime scene procedure and deplorable lack of standards in their collection process, have they checked the feet of the female police who were tromping all over everywhere?

An abundant amount of Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA was found on Meredith’s bra clasp…

Now you are getting repetitive. And come on, you can't honestly say the bra is untainted evidence.

‘Six bloody footprints from bare feet were identified. One was visible to the naked eye in the bathroom and five were visible only after the police used luminol, which allows blood evidence cleaned by bleach to become visible under a special light. The luminol did reveal five bloody footprints that had been cleaned up (one shoe print was also found under Meredith’s pillow - the print is consistent with the size of Amanda’s shoe).

None of the six bloody footprints are consistent with the size of Guede’s feet. All six of these footprints are consistent with the size of Amanda and/or Sollecito’s feet…’

Wait so I am confused. So in this scenario with all these bloody footprints, Amanda kills Meredith and gets her shoes all bloody. So she then takes them off, not wanting to track blood through the house I guess, then goes back in and gets her feet bloody so she can track blood through the house in her bare feet?

So of course I went to find the source, could it possibly be true justice those buggery liars...cough, cough, no not liars, manipulators of the truth to get to true justice and sure enough.

One more thing of note though...the so called "bloody shoe print" apparently it's so clear and distinct that the defense argued it's nothing more than a crease in the sheet. No wonder they can't find a shoe print match.

Why in God’s name did the same knife need to be cleaned with bleach?

Uhm because some people do actually clean their utensils with bleach especially after cooking poultry. Or the knife was in the sink when bleach was poured down it? Or a hundred logical reasons why someone cleans their kitchen stuff with bleach?

The Conad store owner reported the presence of Amanda in the household cleaners part of his store early on the morning after the murder (when Amanda and Sollecito contend they were asleep) although rumored receipts for bleach were not presented at trial…

Gee...I bet he was looking for a white van the whole time. Why not? Why weren't the receipts presented at trial? Maybe because the whole story was BS?

…Let’s keep assuming Amanda was innocent. Would she have come back to her apartment with Sollecito, still not having called police, and then start a load of washing of Meredith’s clothes? (The Postal Police said the washing machine was running when they entered; Filomena, who arrived a little later, said that the washing machine was still warm and contained Meredith’s clothes.)

SO I am confused. If we are presuming she's innocent, why would she have called police before going home that morning? I mean hell presume she's guilty why would she have called police before returning home that morning?

She also testified that she didn't know right away anything was wrong. So she gets home, maybe she's out of clothes and needs to do laundry and merediths are in the way. If she was GUILTY why would she have washed Meredith's clothes? What's that do for her?

If Amanda was innocent, would she be outside her apartment next to a mop and bucket with Sollecito when the Postal and Communcations Police showed up unexpectedly?

So guilt and innocence is now being determined by what you are standing next to when the police arrive? Note to self, when Stephen is found killed, find a convenient nun to stand next to. If she were busily cleaning up a crime scene, why leave the evidence out there for the cops to see? Hey cops: cleaned up the blood with this--CHECK IT OUT RIGHT HERE.

If Amanda were innocent, wouldn’t she and Sollecito have called the police after Sollecito tried to open Meredith’s locked bedroom door and couldn’t open it?

Why? Really why would she? She goes to open her roommates door and can't open it. Is this actually police call worthy news?

Instead of calling the police, Amanda and Meredith went outside and stood next to the mop and bucket. Why didn’t they just put the mop and bucket back up in the apartment when they first arrived? Why leave it outside the apartment? Why then go back out and stand next to the mop?

This mop and bucket they are standing next to clearly says something to you about guilt. It says nothing to me. If I had just cleaned up a murder scene, I'd not be standing next to the evidence at all. I'd have put it away, if I were concerned about guilt and whatever. Clean up the scene, then leave the clean up tools right out in the open?

If Amanda and Sollecito were innocent, that means that Guede (and perhaps one or two accomplices) murdered Meredith, then ran away, and then came back at some point and cleaned up the crime scene PARTIALLY (but ignoring and leaving the most damning evidence against him) and THEN GUEDE CAME BACK that morning after Amanda had showered and left - so that GUEDE could do a LOAD OF WASHING of Meredith’s clothes - presumably blood stained, all the while ignoring his feces in the toilet and his bloody hand print on the pillow under Meredith’s body - only for GUEDE to then leave again right before Amanda and Sollecito arrived (so the washing machine would still be running when the Postal Police arrived a short while later).’

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Your attempt at reconstructing. Why would ANYONE who was guilty wash meredith's clothes. Blood on them isn't going to be damaging considering all the blood all over Meredith in any event.

And if Knox and Sollecito did clean up the crime scene, pray tell, how did they manage to scrub all the traces of themselves from the murder room, but conveniently leave Guede's and Guede's alone?

[Malkmus]

Ally,

Rudy Guede implicated Ms. Knox and Sollecito in his murder trial. This is on court records. Guede has confessed to his part in the murder.

Ms. Knox telephone records show that she was in touch with Rudy Guede telephoning him before and after the murder of Meredith Kercher. Rudy Guede apart from being an accomplice to this murder, was also, Knox and Sollecito drug pusher.

Care to share where you got this information? Rudy changed his story several times, the first version of which did not include Amanda and Rapahaelle. He has been found guilty and is appealing, so he most certainly has not confessed.

And where on Earth did you hear about these phone calls between Rudy and the other two? Or being their drug pusher? Because, frankly, you're the first person I've seen anywhere to ever mention this.

[John Hacker]

So absolutely no evidence for the jury to consider then. I can’t think what they had to discuss in those 14 hours.

Love,

Caz
X

I can't either honestly. It would take too long to sort of the silliness in much of what you've posted before work, but I'll try and get to it this weekend.

The problem with using truejustice as a source is that they will leap on any bit of anti Knox/Sollecito rumor they can get ahold of or the results of their own speculations on the message boards. Much (if not most) of their stated "evidence" was never introuduced at trial and some of it, like the alleged calls between Knox and Guede that Scarlet keeps going on about simply never happened.

Rumor and speculation ran rampant through the entire trial and the months leading up to it and although most of the more rediculous and blantent misinformation was kept out of the trial, the jurors were free to wallow in it by simply turning on the news or opening the tabloid of their choice.

Most of what you've posted has been gone over several times here, but the bleach question is interesting in a couple of ways, so let's touch on that briefly.

First off, Sollecito had cleaners in the apt that contained bleach. Most sink cleaners in fact do, so it's not difficult to imagine how the knife would pick up bleach.

Second, the store keeper who testified that they purchased cleaning supplies came forward MONTHS after the couple was charged, just having remembered seeing them there on that particular day. He must have an incredible memory to be able to tell who bought what on a given morning months later. (There were a number of witnesses that the prosecution brought in near the end of the trial that all miraculously turned up long after the fact with new recollections)

[Ally]

Care to share where you got this information? Rudy changed his story several times, the first version of which did not include Amanda and Rapahaelle. He has been found guilty and is appealing, so he most certainly has not confessed.

And where on Earth did you hear about these phone calls between Rudy and the other two? Or being their drug pusher? Because, frankly, you're the first person I've seen anywhere to ever mention this.

The fact that Guede only changed his story to implicate Knox after he went on appeal and its implications has been pointed out to ScarPimp before. As well as the fact that the phone calls he keeps saying happened never did.

But he is not one who lets facts get in the way of his arguments.

[John Hacker]

Care to share where you got this information? Rudy changed his story several times, the first version of which did not include Amanda and Rapahaelle. He has been found guilty and is appealing, so he most certainly has not confessed.

And where on Earth did you hear about these phone calls between Rudy and the other two? Or being their drug pusher? Because, frankly, you're the first person I've seen anywhere to ever mention this.

Guede at his trial claimed to be innocently in the bathroom while the killing occured and that there were 2 people present who fled when he came out. Recently, at appeal, he specifically named Knox.

The phone calls are off a site called "truejustice.org" that specializes in anti-Knox/Sollecito rumors. A lot of what has been cited as evidence in this thread comes from there and a lot of it simply isn't true. It's not a bad source to use as a starting point, because they do collect a lot of links. But anything seen there needs to be independently verified because they're not bothered with accuracy if it makes the defendents look bad and they wear their bias like a badge of honor.

[cappuccina]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-547048/Foxy-Knoxy-Meredith-murder-scene-says-suspect.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3629353.ece

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/rudy-guede-amanda-knox-leave-murder-scene/story?id=9117060

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5033760.ece

...and many, many more...