Meredith Kercher murdered-Amanda Knox appeals conviction #15

[wasnt_me]

You know, as I've thought about it, I'm really starting to suspect that Mignini really was bamboozled by PLE, and has perhaps come to suspect that may be the case recently, especially given the strong statements that he has given that he wishes he had been able to use the military police for the investigation, because he feels that PLE was too unprofessional and lacked detachment...add in his equally strong statements that he was not there for the RS and AK interviews (just the statements)...seems an interesting possibility to me.

So I'm guessing you don't think Mig knows how to play "follow the leader?" because if he doesn't, he never should have been the leader of the police on this case or any other case. He was the lead investigator, the police followed his directives.

cannot feel sorry for Mig, who is out on appeal for abuse of office already. He is not a naive little Koala bear, though he might look like one.:innocent:

You heard that political phrase they coined about big businesses and banking institutes?

"Too big to fail." That's what I think is Mignini's theme for this case. He had too much riding on his reputation due to his own appeal. He wanted another big case and a chance to prove himself after his other debacle. Maybe the police were too eager to deliver it to him, too. Could be a combination of both, but Mignini's murder hype and image about AK was "too big to fail" and they had to keep trying to bail it out and bail it out. At this point, if Judge Hellman does not denounce the emperor as wearing no clothes, then there's only a fool's hope for anyone under the Italian justice system.

 

[wasnt_me]

By the way, where are the pictures that show glass ON TOP of items?

I was looking at photos on IIP and the only glass I saw on top of anything was on the blue rug and on the windowsill.

http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/PhotoGallery3.html

 

[wasnt_me]

I have answered my own question.

They moved the mattress out of the room BEFORE they found the bra claps. Because if you look at the video, look at 2:31. The mattress is not on the bed. Instead, the murder pillow is on the bed when it was originally on the floor. let's not forget that at one point, it was also in MK's closet, too.

‪Amanda Knox - "Unassailable Evidence" - Bra Clasp discovery crime scene video‬‏ - YouTube

Now, I just need to know when the luminol testing was done. It was night time when they gathered the bra clasp. We see that from the video. don't you have to also do luminol testing at night? So it's my guess that they did the luminol testing after tracking al that blood and whatever else over that hallway when they carried that mattress out. They probably kicked the bra clasp all up into the rug whie trying to get the cumbersome mattress out of there. Who knows, and who knows where they booties were before they entered the room. Who knows what was on the booties when they left with the mattress. So I really think it's a miracle that they test didn't have blood in the footprints.

ETA: I remember that Allusonz or somebody had asked what that "shower curtain" was in the videos of the cottage investigation. It was blocking the bathroom off. Colorful thing, well, if you look at the pictures on IIP, you'll see it was MK closet doors. Which, I'm sure had blood spatter on them, but they were also totted around the house. I believe Stephanoni addressed that in either RG's MOT or AK and RS's MOT by saying that removing them from the room had not caused any contamination of the bra clasp. I'd need to find her quote on that one, but yeah, so they used the cottage wrapping paper to collect evidence, and they used MK's murder closet doors to quarter off rooms??? Barney Phieff leading this thing or what?

 

[miley]

They say they don't need to prove motive, but over something as bizarre as their theory, I think they DO need to prove motive. I hate to be crass, but if RS's family does have money and AK was sleeping with him, why wouldn't she just try to pump him for money rather than steal from MK and murder MK over it? Makes no sense. Certainly makes no sense for RS to be murdering someone to "split" 300 euros take. That's absurd.

and still.. there's no proof money even existed.. the only person who said anything about money was Rudy - absurd is believing him when he said Amanda stole it.

As for the sex game gone wrong....can't even get into how absurd that is. That theory requires physical contact, and as we can see from the evidence, only RG had physical contact with the victim, so does a knife attack, right? o I'm very unclear at how such a "hands on" kind of crime wouldn't require physical evidence from RS and AK, certainly rising higher than the level of "maybe" RS floated in and tapped the bra clasp before dipping the front of his right foot in blood, floating out and mysteriously depositing his footprint on the bathmat, doing an expert clean up, but leaving his footprint on the bathmat for the world to see.
I really wish I could make up a feasibly guilty scenerio, so I could understand that insistence upon guilt.

I know! when the evidence for sexual assault turned bleak Mignini switched to a less believable scenario -- and sex game awry is suppose to take up the slack ...how?

Mignini didn't believe it either.. otherwise he wouldn't have gone back to his satanic theory in closing

 

[wasnt_me]

Now, we had discussion on this mop before. We saw pictures that there was a mop bucket with what appeared to be mops in it outside on the porch. So we don't know for sure why she was wrapping this mop, if it actually was a mop that went over to RS's house or not.

If it DID go over to RS's house, though, remember in the video, she giftwrapped it and took it in the direction of the murder room. So if it had been used in the leak clean up then, surely it had some RS DNA on it from the clean up over there. Just saying. I mean, I don't know how many mops a tiny cottage like that needs. Why would they need more than one mop? Just wondering. I mean, it's possible that it's an old mop they never got rid of, too, so I don't know. I see no timestamp on the video, so it's possible that the mop from outside was brought back in the house and "collected later" like the bra clasp.

‪Forensic Expert Patrizia Stefanoni Gift Wraps A Mop - Amanda Knox Case‬‏ - YouTube

Yes, I think before, we were assuming she giftwrapped the mop right away, possibly even November 2nd, but now that I think about it, I doubt she did that first day on the scene. she had other things to worry about that day like securing the crime scene, initial photographs of the scene, MK's body, tagging evidence and photographing it, etc. And at some point, we started to see pictures of the bucket outside on the porch without any mops in it.

So, though I'm not sure about this mop, right now I'm making it a contimination suspect. Look at the bottom of it, where the dirtiest part of it is. Unwrapped, facing the floor and on its way into the murder room. who knows what might even fall off that thing if it didn't touch the ground. Additionally, they only had to clean the house one time after RS had been in there to possibly get his DNA on the mop anyways. was the mop tested?

 

[wasnt_me]

and still.. there's no proof money even existed.. the only person who said anything about money was Rudy - absurd is believing him when he said Amanda stole it.



I know! when the evidence for sexual assault turned bleak Mignini switched to a less believable scenario -- and sex game awry is suppose to take up the slack ...how?

Mignini didn't believe it either.. otherwise he wouldn't have gone back to his satanic theory in closing

I noticed in the pictures, MK's purse looked completely empty. I find that VERY odd. was her whole wallet stolen? her lipstick, etc?

additionally, is this a bank receipt so carelessly tossed on top of MK's body? I am so disgusted by it, because it's almost like he threw money on top of her.

I'm just wondering what she carried around in her purse, why it was empty like that and where the rest of the contents went. Into RG's backpack? Maybe he just turned it over and dumped everything into his bag, and that's how he wound up with the keys, too.

Even sadder, her class schedule's there, too. That class schedule represents hope and a future. The bank receipt represents a senseless death that ended it all over money and sex.

eta: seeing the bank receipt also makes me think of how logical it was that the bank got a call, too...

Unless of course I'm completely wrong and it is not a bank receipt.

 

[miley]

I know no one likes Mr. Fisher being quoted, but he does run a major website re Knox, and I do read him. I hope his proclamations and exited utterances contained within a couple of excerpts from this lengthy July article are close to the truth of the matter.

I hope that the statements which the Roman experts released to the court will be given due consideration by Judge Hellman and by the jury:

Court appointed independent forensic experts, Stefano Conti and Carla Vecchiotti, from Rome's Sapienza University, released a scathing report detailing gross negligence on the part of lead forensic scientist, Patricia Stefanoni, regarding the key DNA evidence used to secure convictions in the first trial. The alleged murder weapon and a DNA laced bra clasp have been fully discredited leaving absolutely no credible evidence to confirm the convictions of Knox and Sollecito. The report will be presented to the court July 25, where it will be game over for the prosecution.​

The independent experts cite an egregious violation committed by Stefanoni that clearly shows she had an agenda.

The worst of all revelations is Stefanoni's failure to objectively test DNA samples. The method she used centers in on a specific suspect, a practice that is forbidden by all international standards due to the fact that it leads to biased analysis.

Samples are to be analyzed individually and then the final results are compared to see if any produce a positive match. If one begins knowing what they are looking for already, they are likely to interpret the electropherogram to match the result they are trying to achieve. Conti and Vecchiotti explain as follows:

"Statements about a profile obtained from a sample under examination, regarding the decision as to which is a true allele and which a 'drop-in', must necessarily be pronounced without knowledge of the suspect's profile; only in such a way, in fact, can a qualitatively unimpeachable and balanced approach to the interpretation of the profile emerging from the sample in question be guaranteed. An interpretation of the profile obtained from a sample, carried out with the suspect's reference profile available, indicates an imbalanced [approach], and is in total contrast with the absolutely objective nature of forensic science"
Stefanoni not only violated protocol, but also lied about it in court when she stated that she had adhered to proper procedure and analyzed all traces in an absolutely objective manner. Her boss, Dr. Renato Biondo, head of the DNA Unit at Polizia Scientifica, Rome, and consultant for the prosecution, needed positive results from Stefanoni and she was more than willing to fulfill the request.

This is not the first time Stefanoni has been dishonest with the court. Stefanoni claimed that stains detected at the crime scene using luminol (an investigative tool used to detect blood not visible to the human eye) were never tested for blood; however, in July 2009, when pressured by the defense, Stefanoni released information originally withheld confirming the stains were tested with tetramethylbenzidine, which is extremely sensitive for blood. All of the stains detected with luminol tested negative for blood. Stefanoni held this information from the court testifying instead that the stains were indeed blood. This is yet another example where Stefanoni created evidence to benefit the prosecution. http://injusticeinperugia.blogspot.com/2011/07/amanda-knox-experts-report-proves.html​

​

thanks SMK - sometimes I wonder if Stefanoni is being thrown under the bus, reading stuff like this makes it hard.

 

[emyr]

Well, I have to say I feel more confused than when I started. The problem is that my interest in this case started right when the prosecution was having all of their evidence dismissed (eyewitness testimony clearly not true, bleach story barely believable, evidence that they actively encouraged her to point the finger at Lumamba)... I think it's natural to become jaded with the prosecution when you see all those dominoes falling. However, with this new report, the intial statements seemed to be the evidence was completely false, and then after a little time, it appears that the evidence has been weakened, but there are still some serious outstanding questions about it.

That being said, I do think this new report clearly shows that Stefanoni operated with an agenda. I get the impression that she has a high work load, and operates in a sloppy, non-regimented manner, and the majority of the time this doesn't come back to haunt her (I bet the Knox case had ten times the DNA they normally procure from a crime scene). I think it's very easy for human beings to get carried away (the fact I keep posting here is a case in point... this is a huge waste of my time yet I am compelled to return for no apparently good reason).

I have said before that I don't find Knox's changing stories to be that troubling. That's true to a degree. If you tell someone that you called them right before you had dinner, and they say "but my phone shows you called at 10pm" then you would stop, think, and probably revise your story. Not because you are up to no good, but because memories aren't as reliable as we like to think they are. (see if you can remember when you made phone calls today and precisely at what time they were).

However, the Massai report had a statement from Amanda about using the bathmat to slide down the hallway. That's a weird story. I just ran across another article where they were asking to explain the "wipe marks" on the hallway. As far as I know there were no wipe marks in the hallway. The explanation was that Amanda said she didn't want to slip with her bare wet feet, so she used the bathmat to get to her room.

I would find this a highly troubling story if this was in conjunction with evidence of a clean up in the hallway. But since it is not in conjunction with any clean up, I don't know what to make of it. I find this story almost as bizarre as I found the evidence collection video by the Polizia. I find it just as bizarre as the story of the leaking sink at Sollecito's. I felt positive his father made up the story for him to make him look innocent. Then I saw the landlord corroborated the story. Then I saw no blood results from the mop. And I saw there was zero evidence of smeared blood from the luminol tests which is impossible if a clean up with a mop occurred.

This case is WEIRD.

 

[miley]

She did get 30 whether she confessed or not.

LE told her if she didn't admit Patrick murdered Meredith she would get 30 years and never see her family again.

How would Patrick get 15 if he confessed?

the same way Rudy did.

 

[wasnt_me]

Okay, this photo indicates that he put the knife down twice. "J" and "O". (Or OJ, okay, bad joke.)

Anyways, I think "J" is facing the door. So I think he put it down on the way to the bathroom. "O" is facing the purse. So for some reason, he'd picked it up and then put it back down to pick up the purse. It's possible that he stepped on those towels right there by MK and that's how he tracked blood out the front door? Those towels look blood soaked, but like they might have water, too. Remember cause I was wondering how he got blood on his left shoe twice, since it appeared that he was stamping it in a faded pattern on the pillowcase first. That's why the print fades on the pillow case, but then is strong enough once again to go into the hallway and out the front door. going through her purse was probably his last act.

So maybe, he picked up the purse, dumpted the contents into his backpack, was about to put the knife in there, then realized he had to clean it. I'm thinking he cleaned the knife on this towel, because it is right next to J. Then he put the knife in his backpack. I don't know what order this was done in because there seems more blood on the J spot than the O spot, unless he just didnt clean the knife well enough before he put it down on the O spot.

 

[wasnt_me]

You will have to tell me where this bathmat story is. The only thing I read about the bathmat is that she said there were no towels in the bathroom, so she used the bathmat as a shield or towel to walk to her room. That's what I read. I read nothing about an electric slip and slide with a bathmat.

Then she took a shower and, getting out, not having ‚remembered the towel‛ she decided to use the bath mat to go into her own room. At that moment, she noticed the blood stain on the mat. She thought, however, that ‚maybe there was some menstrual problem that wasn’t cleaned‛ (page 81). She used the mat to go to her own room, and then she put the mat back in its place.

MOT report page 70.

I do not take that to mean she surfed on it, but she used it like a towel, or else why would she be linking her usage to a towel? You don't use a towel to slide down the hall. Everyone knows you use your socks for that (Risky Business.)

 

[wasnt_me]

I'd also like to know what this thing is on her pants.

They left it on the floor after they'd cleaned everything else up.

http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/meredithroom__32__op_608x403.jpg

Also, I found the answer to my own question. According to the site where the photos come from, PS did collect the mop on December 18th, same day the bra clasp was rediscovered, and so it's very possible that it's the same mop that went to RS's house, and that it had RS's DNA on it when it went in the murder room.

 

[miley]

Well to be fair... it only took miley stating it for you to change your 'understanding'.

and what would be so wrong with that? I'm dying to hear what you mean by this.

There are no plea bargains.

(legally) yes there are .. in this case, I wouldn't necessarily expect one was written on paper

 

[Nova]

A humble prosecutor? That's a rarity. And I don't mean that in a bad way - quite the opposite, really. The great strength and weakness of prosecutors and investigators alike is a supreme self-confidence with regards to their actions and such on the job. These are soul-draining jobs that you don't last long at if you have too much self-doubt. Alas, that can lead to an inability to admit mistakes or withstand criticism, but for most it balances out for the better. All JMO, of course.

ETA: I should also add that Italy's defamation/slander laws are built for just such abuse, and that Italy's Justice System is over-run by such cases, so it's not like what Mignini is doing is anything unusual there. This is why the EU Human Rights Court has taken such issue with the above laws - they are like anti-whistle blower, pro-corruption laws the way they are written.

You're right: "humble" was a poor choice of words. I've worked with hundreds of lawyers over the years (including a few former prosecutors) and I've yet to meet one who didn't have a healthy ego.

I guess I accused Mignini of "lack of humility" because in this case, it seems to be a recurring theme. Time and again, members of ILE insist on bending evidence to fit their theories rather than having the humility to follow the evidence.

My basic point was just that Mignini was hardly innocent in all of this.

 

[Nova]

You're funny. You remind me of myself, except I did what you are doing with crime scene scenerios. I wrote big long paragraphs about how I think the murder and burglary happened and you write long paragraphs about DNA probablities. But I like it. :crazy:


I look at it like this. The bra clasp was sitting around for 47 days. We don't know what they tracked in and out of that room with those booties. Seriously. Anyone could have gone in AK's room, then went in MK's room, and Rs's DNA fell off the booty. Hell if I know, but that's my first and number reason to rule it out.

1. sat on the floor too long and they did a very sloppy job protecting the crime scene.
2. They did low copy DNA testing on it. A technique her lab was not certified for.
3. She was analyzing mixed samples, something ELSE you have to take care and have certification for and she didn't.

Frankly, we can't know for certain what she found. It's all words on a page--HER page. Because it cannot be retested, we don't even know for real and seriously what the test results even were.

This comes from the lab of a woman swabbing more than one spot with the same swab, giftwrapping mops, leaving evidence laying around for 46 days, unable to tell starch is on a dirty knife, wrong about the vic's dna being on said knife, withholding TMB results, refusing to release fsa files...so do I even believe she found MK's dna on the clasp?

The ONLY reason I believe she found MK's DNA on the clasp is because it's MK's bra in MK's room, on MK's floor. Otherwise, I would not even believe Stephanoni about that. This is how much faith I DO NOT have in her work. I fear her zeal to please her boss might bite us all in the butt if RG starts rattling his own DNA cage, because if he didn't admit that it was his crap in the toilet, I MIGHT NOT believe Stephanoni on that, either.

Bottom line for me is you can't trust unrepeatable test results from an "expert" with a record like this on the SAME case.

I feel exactly the same.

 

[Nova]

Well, I have to say I feel more confused than when I started. The problem is that my interest in this case started right when the prosecution was having all of their evidence dismissed (eyewitness testimony clearly not true, bleach story barely believable, evidence that they actively encouraged her to point the finger at Lumamba)... I think it's natural to become jaded with the prosecution when you see all those dominoes falling. However, with this new report, the intial statements seemed to be the evidence was completely false, and then after a little time, it appears that the evidence has been weakened, but there are still some serious outstanding questions about it.

That being said, I do think this new report clearly shows that Stefanoni operated with an agenda. I get the impression that she has a high work load, and operates in a sloppy, non-regimented manner, and the majority of the time this doesn't come back to haunt her (I bet the Knox case had ten times the DNA they normally procure from a crime scene). I think it's very easy for human beings to get carried away (the fact I keep posting here is a case in point... this is a huge waste of my time yet I am compelled to return for no apparently good reason).

I have said before that I don't find Knox's changing stories to be that troubling. That's true to a degree. If you tell someone that you called them right before you had dinner, and they say "but my phone shows you called at 10pm" then you would stop, think, and probably revise your story. Not because you are up to no good, but because memories aren't as reliable as we like to think they are. (see if you can remember when you made phone calls today and precisely at what time they were).

However, the Massai report had a statement from Amanda about using the bathmat to slide down the hallway. That's a weird story. I just ran across another article where they were asking to explain the "wipe marks" on the hallway. As far as I know there were no wipe marks in the hallway. The explanation was that Amanda said she didn't want to slip with her bare wet feet, so she used the bathmat to get to her room.

I would find this a highly troubling story if this was in conjunction with evidence of a clean up in the hallway. But since it is not in conjunction with any clean up, I don't know what to make of it. I find this story almost as bizarre as I found the evidence collection video by the Polizia. I find it just as bizarre as the story of the leaking sink at Sollecito's. I felt positive his father made up the story for him to make him look innocent. Then I saw the landlord corroborated the story. Then I saw no blood results from the mop. And I saw there was zero evidence of smeared blood from the luminol tests which is impossible if a clean up with a mop occurred.

This case is WEIRD.

The "bathmat boogie" sounds like many of the statements by the defendants: a response to a demand that they explain "irrefutable" facts known by their interrogators.

In this case I'd be willing to bet AK was challenged to explain smears in the hallway and so she came up with the "boogie." Elsewhere, didn't she say she used the mat to cover herself because the front door was open? No sliding in that version.

Of course, somebody will be here soon to claim that any erroneous statement is proof of guilt of murder, but I think the defendants were under pressure and trying to answer claims from ILE without realizing the latter's incompetence and corruption.

 

[Nova]

and what would be so wrong with that? I'm dying to hear what you mean by this.

(legally) yes there are .. in this case, I wouldn't necessarily expect one was written on paper

I think dgfred only meant that your post wasn't sourced.

Your claim makes sense to me, but fred has a point that we often demand sources for these sorts of things.

If you don't have one, I'm still glad you mentioned your hunch. Thank you.

 

[Sonata]

The "bathmat boogie" sounds like many of the statements by the defendants: a response to a demand that they explain "irrefutable" facts known by their interrogators.

In this case I'd be willing to bet AK was challenged to explain smears in the hallway and so she came up with the "boogie." Elsewhere, didn't she say she used the mat to cover herself because the front door was open? No sliding in that version.

Of course, somebody will be here soon to claim that any erroneous statement is proof of guilt of murder, but I think the defendants were under pressure and trying to answer claims from ILE without realizing the latter's incompetence and corruption.

I totally agree with this. In the circumstances, if LE presented something to me as a fact and I could think of no reason why said fact could be, I would love to imagine that i would have the courage to stand up and speak the truth; that I did not know. However, realistically speaking, in the face of a murder charge, I almost certainly would desperately try to explain away such evidence regardless of the knowledge that I were innocent.

The strange thing is, that if AK had said that (or RS with regards to the kitchen knife 'pricking' incident) those who are convinced of their guilt would still read this as a sign of such.

It's fine to believe in the guilt of someone, but lets be honest - this is not about how they phrase things, as either way it would be taken as proof of guilt. At least, I hope this is not about phrasing, since that seems an awfully subjective and misleading premise for proof of guilt.

I am also thinking about times at work where I have been told I did something incorrectly, and I have come out with all sorts of reasoning before realising that it was my colleague who completed the task! Sometimes the need to exonerate ones self overrides an honest policy.

 

[dgfred]

LE told her if she didn't admit Patrick murdered Meredith she would get 30 years and never see her family again.

the same way Rudy did.

*So they told her she would get 30 years if she DIDN'T admit Patrick murdered Meredith... but it really was 30 years if she DID accuse Patrick of the murder AND ADMITTED SHE WAS THERE! Admitting you were at a murder scene and let the murderer in the cottage... is NOT a way out of being charged. :innocent:

RG got his sentence due to taking the FAST TRACK trial instead of a full trial.
Spinning it into a so-called 'plea bargain' is not representing the facts.

 

[emyr]

I found this in a FORUM, but it seems like it would be legitimate. If I remember correctly, this might have been in the initial period where they were deciding whether or not to go to trial? I think her story was different at trial?

GB: Do you remember how you slid with the bathmat? When you took it from the
bathroom to your room, did you have both bare feet on it or just one foot.

AK: Sometimes I...heh heh...by mistake, I put my foot on the floor like this,
but I tried -- I slid along trying to kind of make little jumps with the
bathmat, but I didn't quite succeed.

GB: But it can be said that you were pressing on the bathmat with your foot?

AK: Yes.

This is the story I find bizarre. You have four options with bizarre stories:

1) The story is true, because truth is sometimes stranger than fiction (i.e. they both had legitimate reasons to turn their cell phones off).

2) The story is false, but they think it is true. Their memory is imperfect and they are engaging in the dangerous territory of telling a story they aren't 100% positive of (i.e. what you see when someone talks about driving to work "I'm sure I went the exact speed limit, well, maybe 5 mph over, well maybe I sped... well, actually I'm on auto-pilot the whole time I don't know what happened).

3) The story is false, they know it is false. They are innocent and frightened of going to jail.

4) The story is false, they know it is false. They are guilty and telling a story to fit the evidence so they won't go to jail.

That's pretty much the options. There are several versions of 2: the mild form that most people do (I saw my friend yesterday, oh wait, the day before.) And the severe form (I saw my friend yesterday and she invited me to coffee and she punched me in the face. Oh wait, none of that happened.) I call this "the sensationalist." Then there is "the fear-induced" which is the examples we have seen with false confessions (i.e. the guy who said he murdered his son, and believed it, when he had in fact done no such thing).

The bathmat story is a fantastic story. I tend to believe it is false, but I also believed the sink was a false story, and after review it appears to be true.

So I wonder which option is the true one for the bathmat story? 1, 2, 3 or 4. I guess we'd need to know when she told the story, if she changed it, and what the story was in response to. If she told the story of hopping on one foot prior to the luminol results being known, then it is likely a true story. Otherwise... ?