Amanda Knox Discussion-Friendly Thread

[FergusMcDuck]

Was Guede likely to move her, stage her, cover her, and lock the door? Are we to believe that initial investigators got every fact wrong? That's very hard to fathom.

It might seem hard to fathom, but that really is where the evidence takes us. For their first appearance before a judge on Nov 9th, a judge gave these reasons in addition to the coerced statements:

* That Amanda and Raffaele had lied about calling the Carabinieri before the Postal Police arrived, since the PP claimed they arrived at 12:35 and the 112 calls were logged at 12:51 and 12:54
* That shoeprints on the scene showed a clear compatability ("perfect match") with Raffaele's shoes
* Raffaele carried a flick knife that was the right size for and could be the murder weapon
* Patrick said he had opened his pub at 17-18, while the first receipt that night was made 22:29
* A witness who was a regular at Patrick's said the bar was closed at 19:00 when he passed it
* That Amanda's final text ("ci vediamo dopo") was the logical phrasing of someone having an arranged meeting later that night
* Patrick changed his mobile phone somewhere between the murder and his arrest, and refused to admit to it
* Raffaele had written in his diary a few weeks before about a desire to experience "strong sensations"

Every single one of these turned out to be false!

* During the first trial, it was clearly shown that the postal police didn't arrive until just before 13:00, with the aid of CCTV and the subsequent arrival of the Carabinieri, correlated with their simultaneous phone call. Even Massei, who convicted Amanda and Raffaele had to agree this one was wrong.
* The shoeprints were not compatible at all, but were compatible with a pair owned by Rudy Guede. Raffaele's family were the ones who actually disproved the police's claim, and after that the police and Mignini never spoke of the "perfect match" again.
* Of course, the flick knife was tested and turned out to not be the murder weapon. And while they were right that it matched the size of the wound, that turned out to be ironic when the prosecution were forced to argue a much larger kitchen knife (incompatible with the wounds) was the actual murder weapon.
* This one isn't really false, but Patrick provided an explanation - he only printed receipts after a customer's final purchase of the night. 22:29 was the earliest time one of his customers left. Mignini and the court just refused to believe this very true fact and insisted the bar had to have been closed before 22:29.
* Multiple witnesses came forward to say Patrick's bar had been open. It's unclear how or why that particular witness came to the attention of the police, but he was obviously wrong. Of course, the witnesses who did come forward later to support Patrick were subject to phone surveillance, interrogations and even blatantly false accusations of criminality.
* "Ci vediamo dopo" can indeed have the meaning the judge assigned it - an arrangement to meet up later - but it's not what Amanda wrote. Mignini falsified the text, which actually said "Ci vediamo piu tardi", a clumsy direct translation of the English phrase "see you later", unlikely to be mistaken for anything but an indeterminate future meeting.
* When the police seized Patrick's phone, they checked his IMEI - a unique designation of each physical mobile phone, as opposed to their SIM cards - and found it differed from the one in his phone records from the night of the murder. However, the sole difference was the final digit,which was a "7" on the phone and a "0" in the log. But this is because the final digit is a checksum, a digit to ensure the IMEI is a valid number. And in logs, that checksum is always given as "0". The police got a report telling them that months after Lumumba had been released, but they could have found that out by looking at any of the other phone logs and comparing them.
* Raffaele had indeed written about wanting to experience "new sensations" - but that was not a few weeks before, but over a year earlier. Mignini had just put the date in, not the year, and the judge assumed the year was 2007.

 

[Tower]

I guess I'm recalling all these facts from the Massei report as per the original investigation:
*staged point of entry and burglary
*body moved after death
*body staged to emphasize sexual attack although there had not been actual rape
*body covered with duvet, door locked indicating someone had the time and motive to do so, indicating a resident
*female shoe imprint not belonging to the victim; mixed blood of Kercher/Knox, female sized finger tip prints on victim all found
*likely restrained by multiple attackers due to lack of defensive wounds

That's an awful lot of things for investigators to get wrong. The PR firm hired may have made it seem they did, perhaps; they were being paid not to be objective.

Locking her door indicates a resident? That is simply illogical. It indicates someone has something to hide. And it worked. They couldn’t get into the door for an extended time, delaying discovery of the crime.

You put far more faith in a small-town investigation that obviously had massive bias from the first moments and has been proven to have exaggerations and outright lies to fit their narrative. Is your defense that police are competent and trustworthy so we should believe them? I certainly wish that were true, but this case and many others prove otherwise.

Every ethical law enforcement officer would say you collect evidence and go where it takes you. You don’t make odd declarations that even at the surface-level make no sense and upon deeper evaluation are clearly misogynistic and xenophobic. Every bit of evidence fits with a break-in with Guede’s MO from previous crimes. He had not been known to harm people before because he intended to be alone in the apartment.

By any standards, all police work in this case should be questioned because of the numerous sloppy and unprofessional errors they made. How do you know what evidence is trustworthy when it can be proven they contaminated the entire scene and drew numerous unscientific conclusions?

 

[SMK777]

Why would AK be more likely than Guede to do any of those things? You are implying much more activity than evidence would say occurred. Move her? Not far and within the scope of an attack. She was attacked and found in her own small room. Stage her? How? Evidence points to a violent sexually motivated attack, a duvet dumped on top of her after an attempt to use towels to do…something. Stop her bleeding? Clean himself? And locking a door in haste to prevent detection would take less than 1 second.

No one else was there, he had more than a few seconds to freak out and try to cover his crime. Certainly none of that implies a female was involved! Only females use duvets? Evidence and statistics would say nearly all sexually motivated knife attacks against women in their homes are the crime of a solo male.

The investigators had many biases and little experience or good sense. Instead of collecting evidence and seeing where it would lead, they decided the sl***y American roommate must have been playing s*x games, which is fanciful, ludicrous and not backed by any evidence. Then when they found male black hairs, they had to pivot and decided AK was still involved because she acted sl***y. So they decide it’s a threesome of s*x and violence and intimidated the young people into a confession. It’s all a bad movie script with no evidence. But it worked because they tried the case in the media.

It's possible. But the opposite is also possible: That they got a lot right (except for the sex game aspect, which was surely wrong) and the PR firm was able to reverse this using media and pressure. There are strong cases made for both scenarios.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

I guess I'm recalling all these facts from the Massei report as per the original investigation:
*staged point of entry and burglary

The police never did any forensic investigation regarding staging. They relied solely on the impressions of Filomena Romanelli and that of Battistelli of there being glass on top of ransacked items - and when photos were shown at trial showing no sign of said glass, the prosecution blamed Filomena for having disturbed the crime scene.

*body moved after death

It wasn't. We know that she was moved in a counterclockwise motion less than a meter, but she was still alive then. There are bloody marks from her fingers grasping at the closet halfway through, and the blood continued to flow once in her final position. She died in the position she was found, on her back, which we know because aspirated blood from her neckwound had dropped on the cups of her bra.

*body staged to emphasize sexual attack although there had not been actual rape

Her bra had been torn off while she was alive and in her final position, since there were aspirated blood both on the cups of her bra and on the skin of her breasts underneath. Rudy Guede's DNA was found inside her vagina. It takes a special kind of investigator to say there had not been "actual rape".

*body covered with duvet, door locked indicating someone had the time and motive to do so, indicating a resident

Or someone who genuinely regretted doing so, or just someone who wanted to rifle through his victim's bag (which we know Rudy did) while not looking at his victim.

*female shoe imprint not belonging to the victim; mixed blood of Kercher/Knox, female sized finger tip prints on victim all found

The female shoe print never existed, it was a partial of Rudy's shoe. That the fingermarks were female sized was never established - I don't even think the prosecution argued that at court, though it honestly wouldn't surprise me if they tried.

*likely restrained by multiple attackers due to lack of defensive wounds

Six out of seven experts at the first trial said a single attacker could have done it all on his own. And the judge sided with the odd one out because Meredith had studied karate - which of course means a lone woman can't be surprised and overpowered in her own home by an unknown and armed attacker. We don't know how much time Meredith had to react before Rudy had his knife against her throat. What was she supposed to do then? Ask Rudy if they could square up for a fair fight?

That's an awful lot of things for investigators to get wrong. The PR firm hired may have made it seem they did, perhaps; they were being paid not to be objective.

Yet got it wrong they did. This isn't even the first case Mignini and the Perugia police botched beyond belief. When he was called to the murder scene Mignini was actually recently charged with abuse of office. His fellow prosecutor Comodi was recently convicted of crimes herself, as were multiple investigators on the case, including Napoleoni and Zugarini.

Ask me about the Narducci case sometime.

 

[SMK777]

The police never did any forensic investigation regarding staging. They relied solely on the impressions of Filomena Romanelli and that of Battistelli of there being glass on top of ransacked items - and when photos were shown at trial showing no sign of said glass, the prosecution blamed Filomena for having disturbed the crime scene.



It wasn't. We know that she was moved in a counterclockwise motion less than a meter, but she was still alive then. There are bloody marks from her fingers grasping at the closet halfway through, and the blood continued to flow once in her final position. She died in the position she was found, on her back, which we know because aspirated blood from her neckwound had dropped on the cups of her bra.



Her bra had been torn off while she was alive and in her final position, since there were aspirated blood both on the cups of her bra and on the skin of her breasts underneath. Rudy Guede's DNA was found inside her vagina. It takes a special kind of investigator to say there had not been "actual rape".



Or someone who genuinely regretted doing so, or just someone who wanted to rifle through his victim's bag (which we know Rudy did) while not looking at his victim.



The female shoe print never existed, it was a partial of Rudy's shoe. That the fingermarks were female sized was never established - I don't even think the prosecution argued that at court, though it honestly wouldn't surprise me if they tried.



Six out of seven experts at the first trial said a single attacker could have done it all on his own. And the judge sided with the odd one out because Meredith had studied karate - which of course means a lone woman can't be surprised and overpowered in her own home by an unknown and armed attacker. We don't know how much time Meredith had to react before Rudy had his knife against her throat. What was she supposed to do then? Ask Rudy if they could square up for a fair fight?



Yet got it wrong they did. This isn't even the first case Mignini and the Perugia police botched beyond belief. When he was called to the murder scene Mignini was actually recently charged with abuse of office. His fellow prosecutor Comodi was recently convicted of crimes herself, as were multiple investigators on the case, including Napoleoni and Zugarini.

Ask me about the Narducci case sometime.

Maybe.
I read the book about the Timothy Hennis case (army barracks guy accused of raping and murdering a Captain's wife, and killing her 2 daughters ages 2 and 5.)

Every claim the initial investigators made about Hennis' guilt proved to be false. Zero hair, or prints turned out to be his. Zero blood found on his shoes, clothing or in his car. After his conviction the Supreme Court of North Carolina ordered a retrial and he was found Not Guilty by unanimous verdict.

Then years later DNA proved his guilt.

 

[Tower]

Yet got it wrong they did. This isn't even the first case Mignini and the Perugia police botched beyond belief. When he was called to the murder scene Mignini was actually recently charged with abuse of office. His fellow prosecutor Comodi was recently convicted of crimes herself, as were multiple investigators on the case, including Napoleoni and Zugarini.

RSBM That anyone could argue the investigators and prosecutors got much of anything right when multiple investigators were found criminally guilty of incompetence (in their own imo biased legal system) baffles me. This case is a trainwreck.

Even AK’s slander conviction displays outdated and unscientific dismissal of the reality of coerced confessions. Police incompetence should have easily gotten those charges dismissed, but she is still portrayed as a devious s*x kitten, despite the PR campaign. The police should be charged with slander for suggesting to her that her boss was involved.

 

[Tower]

Maybe.
I read the book about the Timothy Hennis case (army barracks guy accused of raping and murdering a Captain's wife, and killing her 2 daughters ages 2 and 5.)

Every claim the initial investigators made about Hennis' guilt proved to be false. Zero hair, or prints turned out to be his. Zero blood found on his shoes, clothing or in his car. After his conviction the Supreme Court of North Carolina ordered a retrial and he was found Not Guilty by unanimous verdict.

Then years later DNA proved his guilt.

What you are arguing is the opposite logical argument. This investigation claimed AK’s evidence was all over the scene, but it was not. Then DNA evidence pointed to Guede.

Guede’s DNA and his alone was on/in MK’s body. Any claim otherwise is easily disproved by unscientific DNA “testing” and documented photos of scene contamination.

 

[Officer Dibble]

It might seem hard to fathom, but that really is where the evidence takes us. For their first appearance before a judge on Nov 9th, a judge gave these reasons in addition to the coerced statements:

* That Amanda and Raffaele had lied about calling the Carabinieri before the Postal Police arrived, since the PP claimed they arrived at 12:35 and the 112 calls were logged at 12:51 and 12:54
* That shoeprints on the scene showed a clear compatability ("perfect match") with Raffaele's shoes
* Raffaele carried a flick knife that was the right size for and could be the murder weapon
* Patrick said he had opened his pub at 17-18, while the first receipt that night was made 22:29
* A witness who was a regular at Patrick's said the bar was closed at 19:00 when he passed it
* That Amanda's final text ("ci vediamo dopo") was the logical phrasing of someone having an arranged meeting later that night
* Patrick changed his mobile phone somewhere between the murder and his arrest, and refused to admit to it
* Raffaele had written in his diary a few weeks before about a desire to experience "strong sensations"

Every single one of these turned out to be false!

* During the first trial, it was clearly shown that the postal police didn't arrive until just before 13:00, with the aid of CCTV and the subsequent arrival of the Carabinieri, correlated with their simultaneous phone call. Even Massei, who convicted Amanda and Raffaele had to agree this one was wrong.
* The shoeprints were not compatible at all, but were compatible with a pair owned by Rudy Guede. Raffaele's family were the ones who actually disproved the police's claim, and after that the police and Mignini never spoke of the "perfect match" again.
* Of course, the flick knife was tested and turned out to not be the murder weapon. And while they were right that it matched the size of the wound, that turned out to be ironic when the prosecution were forced to argue a much larger kitchen knife (incompatible with the wounds) was the actual murder weapon.
* This one isn't really false, but Patrick provided an explanation - he only printed receipts after a customer's final purchase of the night. 22:29 was the earliest time one of his customers left. Mignini and the court just refused to believe this very true fact and insisted the bar had to have been closed before 22:29.
* Multiple witnesses came forward to say Patrick's bar had been open. It's unclear how or why that particular witness came to the attention of the police, but he was obviously wrong. Of course, the witnesses who did come forward later to support Patrick were subject to phone surveillance, interrogations and even blatantly false accusations of criminality.
* "Ci vediamo dopo" can indeed have the meaning the judge assigned it - an arrangement to meet up later - but it's not what Amanda wrote. Mignini falsified the text, which actually said "Ci vediamo piu tardi", a clumsy direct translation of the English phrase "see you later", unlikely to be mistaken for anything but an indeterminate future meeting.
* When the police seized Patrick's phone, they checked his IMEI - a unique designation of each physical mobile phone, as opposed to their SIM cards - and found it differed from the one in his phone records from the night of the murder. However, the sole difference was the final digit,which was a "7" on the phone and a "0" in the log. But this is because the final digit is a checksum, a digit to ensure the IMEI is a valid number. And in logs, that checksum is always given as "0". The police got a report telling them that months after Lumumba had been released, but they could have found that out by looking at any of the other phone logs and comparing them.
* Raffaele had indeed written about wanting to experience "new sensations" - but that was not a few weeks before, but over a year earlier. Mignini had just put the date in, not the year, and the judge assumed the year was 2007.

I'm sorry but there was not a complete footprint match, only a partial one.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

I'm sorry but there was not a complete footprint match, only a partial one.

I know.

 

[Officer Dibble]

I know.

We like to deal in facts here.

 

[SMK777]

What you are arguing is the opposite logical argument. This investigation claimed AK’s evidence was all over the scene, but it was not. Then DNA evidence pointed to Guede.

Guede’s DNA and his alone was on/in MK’s body. Any claim otherwise is easily disproved by unscientific DNA “testing” and documented photos of scene contamination.

I can't believe everything listed in the Massei report was false. But let's assume it maybe was all false.

I still find Knox's email to friends and family at home to be overly defensive. I still find the presence of her and Rafael at the cottage instead of away on their day trip to be questionable. And they hung back when Meredith's door was kicked open, as if they knew what was in there.

Let's assume Guede did act alone. I've always felt that there might be a strong chance that he did. And I never believed in the 3 against 1 sex game.

I still think Amanda convinced Rafael to help with some sort of staging to point away from Guede. Why? Because she had told him Meredith would be alone, and he should rob her and maybe try his luck with her.

She may have said this after drinking and was not really serious. Most likely she didn't believe he'd really do it, and she certainly didn't believe he would kill Meredith. In this scenario the best thing would have been to call police and tell them all, but she may have feared being viewed as an accessory and didn't want her parents to know she'd ever said anything like that to Guede.

In this sense Knox and Sollecito are speaking truth when they say they didn't rob, they didn't rape, they didn't kill, they weren't there. All of that may be the truth.

But between corrupt Mignini and incompetent police on the one hand, and wholly innocent Knox and Sollecito on the other, this middle way to me explains everything. And my own family many decades ago had a very similar incident happen wirh a break in and assault, but thankfully no murder. Someone said something in jest to the wrong parties and it was acted on. So for me that scenario rings true. It still leaves Guede as the responsible party while explaining the strangeness of the case.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

We like to deal in facts here.

What did I say that wasn't factual?

 

[minazoe]

Do you not believe in false or coerced confessions? It is a well-documented phenomenon. People like you still cannot believe someone innocent would tell police what they think they want to hear, but it has happened many times.

I bet it's not half as many times as they say though. mOO

 

[concernedcitizen706]

That's interesting I saw this thread here, because I recently just read a couple articles on Amanda Knox that I had not really realized before. It made me rethink her role and made me more suspicious of her. And now I'm wondering if she did have some knowledge of the murder after all.

 

[minazoe]

you know, there are a lot of very freaky deaky people in this world...the truth is that it is possible this was the result of some sexual adventure, involving at least 3 of them. I mean it's possible..it doesn't seem like it but it could be. mOO

 

[Tower]

I bet it's not half as many times as they say though. mOO

I agree. As they say, everyone in prison is innocent. And of course most are not.

 

[Tower]

you know, there are a lot of very freaky deaky people in this world...the truth is that it is possible this was the result of some sexual adventure, involving at least 3 of them. I mean it's possible..it doesn't seem like it but it could be. mOO

There’s simply no evidence of that at all. The freaky parts were a fantasy by the very creative Magnini.

 

[concernedcitizen706]

This is what made me doubt Amanda Knox. Her email confession. That was not necessary, even if you buy the idea that she was harassed and felt intimidated.

This is my theory on what I think could have happened. Amanda and her boyfriend and Rudy were playing basketball earlier right outside the apartment. Rudy came over to sell them pot, or whatever, drugs, they took. They all went into Amanda's apartment. Meredith was there. Meredith was annoyed they were all in there and smoking pot and being loud. The boyfriend and Rudy harassed meredith back. And then Rudy stabbed Meredith. The boyfriend was present. I believe Amanda was in the other room like she said in her confession, hearing the screams. They left because they were scared and then amanda came back in the morning to mop up the blood. She went back to Rafael's and then they came back again and called police.

I believe the reason she falsely pointed to the bar owner Patrick playing basketball there, is because she needed a black man in the basketball court to cover and switch for Rudy there

 

[SMK777]

This is what made me doubt Amanda Knox. Her email confession. That was not necessary, even if you buy the idea that she was harassed and felt intimidated.

This is my theory on what I think could have happened. Amanda and her boyfriend and Rudy were playing basketball earlier right outside the apartment. Rudy came over to sell them pot, or whatever, drugs, they took. They all went into Amanda's apartment. Meredith was there. Meredith was annoyed they were all in there and smoking pot and being loud. The boyfriend and Rudy harassed meredith back. And then Rudy stabbed Meredith. The boyfriend was present. I believe Amanda was in the other room like she said in her confession, hearing the screams. They left because they were scared and then amanda came back in the morning to mop up the blood. She went back to Rafael's and then they came back again and called police.

I believe the reason she falsely pointed to the bar owner Patrick playing basketball there, is because she needed a black man in the basketball court to cover and switch for Rudy there

If something of this nature happened it's often occurred to me that regarding theft and drugs, Meredith may have threatened to call police and in Knox's case that would lead to deportation. That would certainly escalate an argument, in any case.

 

[concernedcitizen706]

If something of this nature happened it's often occurred to me that regarding theft and drugs, Meredith may have threatened to call police and in Knox's case that would lead to deportation. That would certainly escalate an argument, in any case.

Yes good point, I could see somebody like Amanda and even her boyfriend be very anxious about their reputation, if Meredith threatened to call the police. Maybe Meredith even tried to call the police. And Rudy and the boyfriend grabbed the phone out of her hand. And then started physically harassing her. And then maybe Rudy brought Meredith into her room and they heard the screams and left. And Rudy raped and killed Meredith after they left.