Amanda Knox tried for the murder of Meredith Kercher in Italy *NEW TRIAL*#4

[otto]

The argument that Amanda had disposed of the clothes she was seen wearing the night of the murder was debunked long before the trial ever started. The evidence disproving it was in the crime scene photos available to both the prosecution and defense. Since it was not an issue, there would be no testimony at trail on this matter.

It's similar to the argument about Raffaele's shoes matching the shoe print found in blood next to the victim. That claim was used by the prosecution as a reason to hold Raffaele in jail. The defense proved that the print didn't match by simply counting the rings in the patten. That a law enforcement shoe print expert made a mistake that bad is rather troubling.

Regarding the witness at 8:40 that identified what Knox was wearing ... who is that? If there is no witness, then it doesn't matter what clothes were on Knox's bed. She hadn't slept there for two weeks so the clothes have no connection to anything.

 

[otto]

Jovana Popovic.

Is there a link?

 

[dgfred]

Well, what do you make of the clothes on the bed, and no blood on them? Does not hang together with the murder theory at all....ETA: How has this been explained by others, such as TJMK?

Well, if it was me (and probably you) and I was going to do something sneaky/mean/deadly/etc...

I might have quickly changed clothes after JP saw me.

 

[SMK]

Leaving aside forensic evidence there is some compelling circumstantial evidence such as :

an attempt to delay discovery of the body:

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Knox_Attempting_to_Delay_Discovery_of_Meredith's_Body

lying about the locked door, and saying something diametrically opposed to this in the email home:

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/The_Evidence#Knox_Lying_to_the_Police_about_Meredith.27s_Door

Another thing I have always wondered (more of an intuition than anything else) is if the "prolonged scream, then nothing" heard by the witnesses, one after hearing "a man and woman arguing in Italain" , (and then hearing the noise of people running) might have been Knox herself, realizing what had occurred. If the victim was injured at that point where she had been rendered incapable of issuing a scream, then it may have been Knox herself, perhaps? Perhaps. It does seem to square with her hysterical response to seeing the silverware drawer opened (she trembled and closed her eyes and had to be escorted from the room). Just grist for the mill at this point, I suppose...

 

[SMK]

@otto:

I posted a link to an article about Jovan Popovitch's testimony which did not mention Knox's attire. In addition, Massei p 9 makes mention of her as a witness (she arrived at Sollecito's apartment around 8:40(to say her luggage had not been sent, and she would not be needing Sollecito to take her to pick it up at the station) and Amanda opened the door to her. * no mention of what clothes Knox wore - if it is there, I cannot seem to locate it.

 

[dgfred]

Doesn't seem like it was extra-friendly or time-consuming... maybe AK just poked her head out the door when she said she didn't need a ride.

 

[miley]

snipped

The theory of the crime is that there was a violent sexual assault...
The murder of Meredith Kercher was more like a gang rape. Guede admits that more than one person was involved - he has even identified his fellow culprits. This was not a "sex game", but there was a violent sexual assault. There is clearly a langauge barrier when "gang rape" translates to "sex game". Meredith was attacted by multiple assailant (Supreme Court ruling) and she suffered 43 injuries with virtually no defensive wounds. How is that possible?

The other day, jgsmith said the cottage and law office break-ins were eerily similar. (in the law office, a window was broken with a rock to gain entry, a bottom floor window grate was used to climb to the second floor, broken glass was taken into a different room and arranged in a pile, utensils lined up on a briefcase, drinks taken from the fridge...) You disagreed:

Actually, there was nothing similar about how Guede broke into the law office and the staged break-in at the cottage, unless you count "break in" as similar. In the case of the law office, Guede climbed onto the balcony and entered through the French doors. That was an option at the cottage, but that didn't happen. If the cottage break had been via the French doors on the balcony, then definitely we could say that the break in was similar. In fact, there is nothing similar about the break in at the law office and a staged break-in with a window broken with a rock. There is nothing similar between walking through a door and smashing a second story window.

This argument provides a segue into a question I've had for a long time. If you believe all three are guilty of a violent sexual assault, a gang rape, why not include Rudy in on the clean-up and staging?
The string of break-ins associated with Rudy have undeniable similarities to the cottage. Denying this only weakens your argument. So what's the drawback?

 

[SMK]

snipped
The other day, jgsmith said the cottage and law office break-ins were eerily similar. (in the law office, a window was broken with a rock to gain entry, a bottom floor window grate was used to climb to the second floor, broken glass was taken into a different room and arranged in a pile, utensils lined up on a briefcase, drinks taken from the fridge...) You disagreed:
This argument provides a segue into a question I've had for a long time. If you believe all three are guilty of a violent sexual assault, a gang rape, why not include Rudy in on the clean-up and staging?
The string of break-ins associated with Rudy have undeniable similarities to the cottage. Denying this only weakens your argument. So what's the drawback?

IMO, there is a similarity.

 

[dgfred]

What would RG clean-up? He didn't bother with anything pointing to him.

Why would RG stage a break-in to basically point to himself?

IN MY OPINION I think AK knew a little something about RG's past troubles. I think either he or the boys downstairs told her about it. I believe that is why she decided to try to make it look somewhat similar to what she had heard.

If she would have just left the front door unlocked... there would have been no need for any staged break-in IMO.

 

[otto]

@otto:

I posted a link to an article about Jovan Popovitch's testimony which did not mention Knox's attire. In addition, Massei p 9 makes mention of her as a witness (she arrived at Sollecito's apartment around 8:40(to say her luggage had not been sent, and she would not be needing Sollecito to take her to pick it up at the station) and Amanda opened the door to her. * no mention of what clothes Knox wore - if it is there, I cannot seem to locate it.

Thanks! That makes more sense.

 

[otto]

snipped
The other day, jgsmith said the cottage and law office break-ins were eerily similar. (in the law office, a window was broken with a rock to gain entry, a bottom floor window grate was used to climb to the second floor, broken glass was taken into a different room and arranged in a pile, utensils lined up on a briefcase, drinks taken from the fridge...) You disagreed:
This argument provides a segue into a question I've had for a long time. If you believe all three are guilty of a violent sexual assault, a gang rape, why not include Rudy in on the clean-up and staging?
The string of break-ins associated with Rudy have undeniable similarities to the cottage. Denying this only weakens your argument. So what's the drawback?

If the break in was similar, then why didn't Guede use the grate on the downstairs door as a ladder, climb onto the balcony and break in that way? That's what he had done in the past.

Why would Guede care about cleaning up the scene? It was Knox that lived there and Knox that had an interest in ensuring that police suspected a black man, like Patrick. If Guede's prints had not been on file, he might have gotten away with murder - and Knox certainly didn't know that police would be able to connect Guede with the evidence.

 

[aa9511]

Actually the footprint that some think should have been so "disturbed" is the bloody footprint that would have dried on bathmat for at least several hours prior to Amanda's shower. In my experience dried blood stains on things such as towels or bathmats are not easy to "disturb" at all. The print is not perfect and I would guess that there is nothing about the print that is inconsistent with a subsequent exposure to a dripping wet person. On the other hand I wouldn't expect a dripping and shimmying Amanda to have dramatically altered a footprint left in dried blood.

For Heaven's sake haven't these people tried to clean up a blood stain?

But the dried blood would have gotten wet again! I disagree that it would have remained exactly the same had water dripped/spilled on it and someone else's wet foot trampled on it.

 

[SMK]

If the break in was similar, then why didn't Guede use the grate on the downstairs door as a ladder, climb onto the balcony and break in that way? That's what he had done in the past.

Why would Guede care about cleaning up the scene? It was Knox that lived there and Knox that had an interest in ensuring that police suspected a black man, like Patrick. If Guede's prints had not been on file, he might have gotten away with murder - and Knox certainly didn't know that police would be able to connect Guede with the evidence.

Well, Guede did flee to Germany. So he was worried and part of that was that he knew his prints were on file. He had an interest in the clean-up. Yet fled. ETA: And this article on his prison diary (his prescient knowledge of blood in the hallway) is another question mark: http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/C195/

 

[aa9511]

From

Gumbel, Andrew; Sollecito, Raffaele (2012-09-18). Honor Bound (Kindle Locations 2970-2992). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

We received the sentencing report in early March 2010. I doubt an Italian court has ever published 427 pages quite this shameful, illogical, or flat-out ridiculous. It was not exactly a surprise to be ripped to shreds by Judge Massei (when he cared to remember that I existed), or to see him endorse Patrizia Stefanoni’s forensic results, or to read yet another account minimizing Rudy Guede’s actions and responsibilities. What I did not expect was to laugh out loud at the sheer absurdity of his arguments.

The biggest surprise, which my lawyers saw as a huge benefit moving toward the appeal, was that Massei did not accept Mignini’s theory of the crime. Massei had clearly paid attention to Giulia Bongiorno when she said I could not have planned a murder with Guede because I did not know him. So, instead of endorsing the premeditated crime conjured up by the prosecution, Massei imagined a spontaneous one. Amanda had not, in his telling, stoked the flames of hatred in her heart over an unflushed toilet, or otherwise marked Meredith for death over a period of days or weeks. Rather, the whole tragedy came about because Rudy Guede needed to take a **** on a cold night.

Bear with me, because the judge’s reasoning is every bit as crazy as it sounds. First, he claimed that Amanda and I spent the evening of November 1 at Via della Pergola. We were, he said, making love in Amanda’s room while Meredith was minding her own business in hers. What evidence did he have for this? Precisely none. “But,” he noted, “there is nothing to confirm that Amanda and Raffaele were anywhere else late that evening.” Massei appeared to have forgotten it is incumbent on the prosecution to prove its case, not simply to say there is no evidence to the contrary. But let’s leave that to one side for a moment; the story gets better.

Rudy Guede, in his account, was wandering the streets of Perugia when he realized he needed to go to the bathroom. Or decided he wanted to spend time with Amanda and me (even though he did not know me). Or was looking for a place to sleep (even though he had an apartment of his own just a few minutes’ walk away). Whatever the precise reason— Massei said there was no way of knowing for sure— he rings the doorbell of the girls’ apartment. And Amanda and I, even though we are busy having sex, decide we have to pause to pull on our clothes and let him in. Did we think it would be rude not to open the door to him, even though it was eleven o’clock at night and we barely knew him? Was there some reason why Meredith, whose bedroom door was still open in the judge’s account, would not answer instead? Massei’s report is entirely silent on the mechanics of this.

In any case, Rudy comes in, goes to the bathroom, and takes a dump. We, meanwhile, go back to our lovemaking. Rudy supposedly finds this a turn-on, to the point where he forgets to flush, comes out of the bathroom, and decides he wants to get it on with someone.

“Lured by the atmosphere of sexual solicitation and giving way to his own concupiscence,” Massei writes in painfully precious terminology, he barges into Meredith’s room to see if she’s willing.

She’s not. Soon, she’s fighting him off and yelling. That gets our attention. But, instead of stepping in to defend Meredith, we take Rudy’s side. We have, after all, been smoking pot— what other spur to irrational violence do two otherwise blameless college students need? Amanda produces my kitchen knife, which she just happens to be carrying around in her handbag, I pull out a pocketknife, one thing leads to another, and the next thing you know, Meredith is dead. “This Court,” Massei concludes, “can only take note of the choice made to engage in extreme evil.” That, for him, was our motivation: extreme evil. Even Mignini had tried harder than that.

What is perhaps most extraordinary about Massei’s scenario is that it was not based on anything heard in court. It was his own imagination at work, from start to finish. Nothing in the Italian justice system prevents judges from taking off on such flights of fancy, but it certainly doesn’t look good. Such sentencing reports effectively say, I don’t like the way the evidence has been presented, so I’ll come up with my own version, which I’ll pluck out of thin air if I have to. Naturally, Massei’s report begged question after question, some of which he attempted to answer, however tentatively.

I for one do not take the prosecution's theory as fact. I actually think it did not happen like that (as described, RS and Amanda having sex, etc..). People should look at the facts themselves and come to their own conclusions, not take the prosecution's theory as fact.

In reality, we will never know the reasons. And if RS and Amanda did it, along with Rudy, we will never know why.

 

[dgfred]

I don't think the bathmat print was important to her or she didn't see it as such. It sure was for RS but he might not have known it was visable. IMO her main concern was excusing the bare footprints in the hallway she KNEW were there.
She had to be bare foot = shower
She had to be going back and forth in the hall = needs towel to be in room
The prints had to look like disappeared 'normally' = bathmat boogie

*All the other bare prints were gone. Were did they go? Where were the other prints in the bathroom? Where is the rest of that one print on the bathmat?

So a partial print on the bathmat made with a bare foot. No others in bathroom.
Luminol picks up other bare prints (male and female) in the hallway just outside the door.

Suspect makes up improbable story about a shuffle on the bathmat naked... after seeing blood in the sink and a unlocked front door.

Can you imagine the look on the questioning investigator's face???

I bet it was like on 48hrs Show = Investigator- you want to start over and tell me the truth now? We know you are lying.

 

[dgfred]

Well, Guede did flee to Germany. So he was worried and part of that was that he knew his prints were on file. He had an interest in the clean-up. Yet fled. ETA: And this article on his prison diary (his prescient knowledge of blood in the hallway) is another question mark: http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/C195/

On file with immigration. Was he worried that they would pull the prints of all people from somewhere else? I think he was more worried about getting out of there and establishing an alibi of sorts.

All the evidence points to him leaving the cottage immediately. No clean up.

If he has an interest and cleans all his mess... then he has a chance of not being caught IMO. The sexual assault part makes any attempted clean up useless tho. Only hope is to get rid of the body because of that.

 

[SMK]

I for one do not take the prosecution's theory as fact. I actually think it did not happen like that (as described, RS and Amanda having sex, etc..). People should look at the facts themselves and come to their own conclusions, not take the prosecution's theory as fact.

In reality, we will never know the reasons. And if RS and Amanda did it, along with Rudy, we will never know why.

I don't think it happened as Massei described, either. Far from it.

But actually, I do not agree with your closing words (BBM)---- in philosophy, there is something called a priori historical analysis: We can understand the why of history, by asking what thought produced it. For example, Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon. An a priori analysis would ask, What was Caesar thinking, that he crossed the Rubicon? IMO if one truly believes these defendants were involved, you have to try and get inside their minds, grasp their motives and ruling passions (some here have already gone in this direction, I know).

 

[Myvice]

Well, Guede did flee to Germany. So he was worried and part of that was that he knew his prints were on file. He had an interest in the clean-up. Yet fled.

But then again, he took the time to go to the restroom and remove his shoes and socks to wash the blood off his pants and leave a footprint on the mat. He then put them back on only to track through the blood to steal the rent money that he somehow knew about and leave shoe prints all over the scene. Did he think that someone else would be cleaning the scene because he was the only one without a valid reason for being in the house? Could someone have cleaned up only the bare foot prints? I'm not sure.

 

[SMK]

On file with immigration. Was he worried that they would pull the prints of all people from somewhere else? I think he was more worried about getting out of there and establishing an alibi of sorts.

All the evidence points to him leaving the cottage immediately. No clean up.

If he has an interest and cleans all his mess... then he has a chance of not being caught IMO. The sexual assault part makes any attempted clean up useless tho. Only hope is to get rid of the body because of that.

OK, I understand. And I had assumed he had a criminal record (prints on file) due to his drug dealing and prior breakins.

 

[dgfred]

Nope. No criminal arrest and no drug arrest.