Amanda Knox tried for the murder of Meredith Kercher in Italy *NEW TRIAL* #2

[Chris_Halkides]

Hello Chris, good to have you here!!
In addition to your scientific articles I found this:
http://www.theforensicinstitute.com/PDF/Continuity and contamination.pdf

Thanks. I liked two additional statements: "In summary, no clear picture has emerged that could enable a confident interpretation of the finding DNA that is not associated with any particular body fluid on an object." And "We recommend a thorough check of continuity and a check on the possibilities for contamination in many cases involving DNA. The same principle applies to all trace evidence such as hairs, paint and glass. I doubt whether it makes us many friends in the laboratories that we seek the data from..."
EDT
Here is one more link on touch DNA.

 

[otto]

Hello Chris, good to have you here!!
In addition to your scientific articles I found this:



http://www.theforensicinstitute.com/PDF/Continuity and contamination.pdf

There's an abundance of circumstantial evidence and plenty of DNA evidence, but it seems that the circumstantial evidence is swept under the carpet as "that's Amanda" and each and every piece of DNA evidence is alleged to be a result of some sort of error on behalf of the investigators.

 

[Nova]

Nova, you subconciously wrote what an innocent person would really write - unless they can prove me innocent. That is how a real innocent person would write.

Do you notice that Amanda did not say it like that? She wrote "only if they can't prove that I did or did not do it."

It's hard to describe in words exactly what is not right with that portion of her statement. It's just not how an innocent person would have phrased things and written things - IMO. MOO.

Btw I know this is not "evidence," but I don't care how right or wrong I am - that's the way I feel when I read what she wrote - that she's not innocent.

What experience do you have that makes your instincts credible here? (I'm not trying to be unkind. I know *I* have no such experience.)

How do you know how "innocent people" do or do not phrase things? How do you know how Amanda Knox phrases things?

To me, the most logical explanation for her being "happy", as she puts it, is that she knows she has an alibi and she expects to be released shortly--and NOT held in jail for a year.

 

[Nova]

So would you, an innocent person, be that okay with someone throwing you in jail while they do an investigation to see if you're guilty or not guilty? FOR UP TO A YEAR!! While they just, you know, investigate. No big deal, you know you're innocent, so maybe after as long as a year, they're gonna let you out anyway.

No, for a minute there I thought I had read it completely wrong. Then I re-read it...nope. I would NOT be okay with that if I was an innocent person. UP TO A YEAR! It did not say one day, two days, three days, maybe even five days. It said up to one year.

No one would read that and be calm and ok with it.

"Up to a year" only if they cannot prove she didn't do it. She expects they will quickly exonerate her. THAT's how an innocent person thinks.

The note actually proves the opposite of what you and otto are trying to say it proves.

 

[Nova]

You leave DNA by scrubbing off skin cells from touching a rough surface. There is no reason to leave DNA on a flat smooth knife blade unless you cut yourself. Try sneezing.

Do you have a link for that? They get fingerprints and--I believe--DNA off drinking glasses.

Regardless, there are any number of ways (you mention one) that AK's DNA could end up on a knife in a kitchen where she has been cooking.

 

[Nova]

Nova, I'm not talking about evidence that can be presented in court. I'm speaking here as a human being and member of society. "I wasn't there" is not the same thing as "I didn't have anything to do with this," in the context of how it's said and why it's said. I cannot go over each word and try to explain....it's just a feeling I got when I heard her say it with Diane Sawyer, and a feeling, maybe you can say instinct, I got when I read what she wrote.

As another poster pointed out above, since it has never been claimed that MK's murder was for hire, "I wasn't there" is EXACTLY the same as "I didn't do it".

 

[Nova]

Gotta say, way back when so many thread ago, I first began looking at this case, DNA was being discussed and discussed...
Ironic that when I come back to see what's now happening, DNA is still being bandied around.... so be it... there are so many areas that can be discussed and dissected..

What I've been thinking about lately is AK's actions on the days that followed Meredith's salvage murder...

Where did AK go to live, as LE must have sealed off the cottage... what bugs me is if I were a young woman and a flatmate had just been murdered, I'd be very scared. Not knowing who/why someone living very close me had just been murdered I'd be fearing for my own life. I would want to leave Italy and get back home to safety... even if my mother did not tell me to leave, I be calling her an planing how to leave...

She thought she was helping LE.

AND she had a strong crush on her Italian boyfriend. She went to stay with him, where she quite naturally felt safer. It's not as if she stayed in the murder apartment by herself. (Yes, I realize she didn't have the latter choice.)

 

[Nova]

...We need to keep in mind that Knox and Sollecito were surprised by the arrival of the Postal police, it's not that they called police because of the broken window, blood and inability to contact Meredith....

I thought RS HAD called the carabinieri--or at least his sister who worked for that force--and he and AK were waiting for them when the postal police arrived.

No?

It is no great mystery why AK waited and had RS call the police. She didn't speak Italian well enough to make the call.

 

[Nova]

Knox's state of mind prior to the murder:

"But Knox, writing [on her myspace page] under the name Foxy Knoxy, also reveals a different side to her character with a series of short stories - one concerns a stalker and another talks about the drugging and rape of a young woman.

... Knox gave an alibi to police but in the four days after the killing, it allegedly began to crumble"

07 Nov 2007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1568639/Amanda-Knox-wrote-stories-about-rape.html

As I've told you time and again, I spent 15 years teaching playwriting to students the age of Knox. With very, very few exceptions, they ALL wrote about similar topics--because that's what they see on TV and at the movies.

BTW, to my knowledge NONE of my former students has been charged with murder or any other violent crime.

****

It's impossible to miss the irony that the roommates who immediately fled to England--investigation be damned--are held up as paragons of virtue and truth and friends of the victim, but Amanda Knox--who stayed behind to help the investigation (even if that wasn't her only motive)--is vilified for doing so.

This is but one example of the way case facts are cherry-picked here in the attempt to make a case against AK and RS. That doing so is necessary should tell us quite a bit about the case--or, rather, lack thereof--against Amanda Knox.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Do you have a link for that? They get fingerprints and--I believe--DNA off drinking glasses.

Regardless, there are any number of ways (you mention one) that AK's DNA could end up on a knife in a kitchen where she has been cooking.

Plastic (polypropylene) tubes were used in at least one experiment, an experiment that showed that the person who last touched an object did not necessarily leave the most DNA. My experience of working with plastic tubes such as these are smooth. I don't have a citation handy, but I would be happy to look it up if someone were interested. DNA actually transfers pretty easily.

 

[Footwarrior]

I thought RS HAD called the carabinieri--or at least his sister who worked for that force--and he and AK were waiting for them when the postal police arrived.

No?

It is no great mystery why AK waited and had RS call the police. She didn't speak Italian well enough to make the call.

We have phone records for both Raffaele and Amanda. Just after Amanda called her mother, Raffaele called his sister who was in the Caribieneri. His sister told him to dial 112, the Italian emergency number. Raffaele did so right after the call to his sister. The recording of Raffaele's call to 112 has been released. During that call, he asked Amanda for the street address of the cottage and she responded.

The Crabinieri were dispatched following the 112 call, but the Postal Police who came to return a cell phone registered to Filomena arrived first. Amanda and Raffaele were outside the cottage waiting for the police to arrive.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

I thought RS HAD called the carabinieri--or at least his sister who worked for that force--and he and AK were waiting for them when the postal police arrived.

No?

It is no great mystery why AK waited and had RS call the police. She didn't speak Italian well enough to make the call.

Yes, RS had called his sister (who was herself an officer in the carabinieri) then the carabinieri, before the postals showed up with Meredith's phones.

Amanda was given a writing assignment in a creative writing and according to her family (IIRC) was expected to include some shocking element. I haven't read her story in a while, but I was struck by the elder brother's disappointment in his younger brother's conduct (the younger brother committed a date rape). What is amazing is that John Follain changed the gender of the person committing the rape in his description of the short story in an article he wrote. And his book is held up to be definitive? Give me a break.

 

[sherlockh]

Hello Chris, good to have you here!!
In addition to your scientific articles I found this:

http://www.theforensicinstitute.com/PDF/Continuity and contamination.pdf

Just saying that something can happen isn't the same as that it is the most probable thing to happen. It is the same with the coerced confessions thing. It has happened in the past but it is a very rare event. Contamination is very rare, and as you showed tertiary DNA transfer never really happens. Not a single published study on it. And now we are supposed to believe that a whole series of these unlikely events happened just because for some reason people really want Knox to be innocent? Combining one rare event with another makes it only more improbable my math teacher once taught me.

 

[sherlockh]

I thought RS HAD called the carabinieri--or at least his sister who worked for that force--and he and AK were waiting for them when the postal police arrived.

No?

It is no great mystery why AK waited and had RS call the police. She didn't speak Italian well enough to make the call.

No, the postal police arrived around 12:30 and Sollecito called the emergency number just before 13:00. This has been discussed many times. There are about 6 witnesses who all indicated that they arrived before 13:00, and one of them saw Knox and Sollecito coming out Knox's bedroom just before 13:00, right after they finished making these calls.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

In addition to the unpublished study to which Suzanna Ryan alludes, there is unpubished work from Greg Hampikian's lab that demonstrates tertiary transfer involving gloves. I agree that it would be good for these studies to be published in peer-reviewed journals, yet I don't know of any DNA forensic scientist who thinks that tertiary transfer does not happen. In addition one can envision a secondary DNA transfer event to explain the presence of DNA on the knife: Meredith hugs Amanda and Amanda touches the knife, etc.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

No, the postal police arrived around 12:30 and Sollecito called the emergency number just before 13:00. This has been discussed many times.

The postals could not have arrived that early (link here). Massei is a little vague on this point, but he basically concedes that the call was prior to the arrival of the postals.

 

[otto]

As I've told you time and again, I spent 15 years teaching playwriting to students the age of Knox. With very, very few exceptions, they ALL wrote about similar topics--because that's what they see on TV and at the movies.

BTW, to my knowledge NONE of my former students has been charged with murder or any other violent crime.

****

It's impossible to miss the irony that the roommates who immediately fled to England--investigation be damned--are held up as paragons of virtue and truth and friends of the victim, but Amanda Knox--who stayed behind to help the investigation (even if that wasn't her only motive)--is vilified for doing so.

This is but one example of the way case facts are cherry-picked here in the attempt to make a case against AK and RS. That doing so is necessary should tell us quite a bit about the case--or, rather, lack thereof--against Amanda Knox.

"As I've told you time and again", we can all claim to have years of experience teaching students of whatever age, but I disagree 100% that writing a short story about the drugging and raping of a young woman/girl is common and benign, particularly when the author is accused of a similar crime shortly thereafter. In fact, if I were to generalize about the pre-occupations of people in the 18-22 age group, I would suggest that saving the world and getting filthy rich are two of the more common themes that I've observed. A pre-occupation with drugs and rape in that age group is not common and not healthy.

We should also make some effort to keep the facts straight. Some of Meredith's friends returned to England after providing truthful, factual statements to police; statements that did not fall apart under scrutiny. There in no reason to imply that they went to England without answering questions from investigators, as that did not happen. Knox, on the other hand, was unable to provide a truthful statement to police at any time between the murder and her arrest.

 

[sherlockh]

The postals could not have arrived that early (link here). Massei is a little vague on this point, but he basically concedes that the call was prior to the arrival of the postals.

The CCTV clock was checked by a tech guy and was 10 minutes fast. He checked it with the real time on the internet. This is not complicated. Further more, we have the testimony of 2 postal police officers that said they arrived around 12:30. Two more guys that arrived shortly after that, and 2 more that claimed to have arrived just before 13:00 and actually saw Sollecito and Knox coming out of Knox's bedroom right after they finished making these calls.

On the other side, we have some grainy CCTV images of a police guy who was looking around for the right address as proof that all witnesses had it wrong, and the tech guy is an idiot. The proof that it took some time for the other police to arrive is a phone call where they were asking for directions. The CCTV images don't show police arriving at the cottage.

Why do you think the defense didn't simply ask the policemen driving that car on the CCTV images, but instead introduced this 'evidence' at last minute?

 

[sherlockh]

In addition to the unpublished study to which Suzanna Ryan alludes, there is unpubished work from Greg Hampikian's lab that demonstrates tertiary transfer involving gloves. I agree that it would be good for these studies to be published in peer-reviewed journals, yet I don't know of any DNA forensic scientist who thinks that tertiary transfer does not happen. In addition one can envision a secondary DNA transfer event to explain the presence of DNA on the knife: Meredith hugs Amanda and Amanda touches the knife, etc.

Yes, there are no published studies, and we all know to which team Hampikian belongs to. The article you are linking to makes it clear that tertiary transfer is not a realistic possibility.

Unlike tertiary transfer, the very real possibility of secondary transfer does pose the potential for problems both in the lab and at the crime scene.

 

[OldSteve]

She thought she was helping LE.

AND she had a strong crush on her Italian boyfriend. She went to stay with him, where she quite naturally felt safer. It's not as if she stayed in the murder apartment by herself. (Yes, I realize she didn't have the latter choice.)

Yes I know.... remember way back when I was a big supporter of AK...

but it bugs me how a person could feel safe with someone they only recent met, cannot fluently converse with and who's fantasies as so akin to the bloody gory horror that just took place in a bedroom just so many feet from yours.