Meredith Kercher murdered-Amanda Knox appeals conviction #17

[SMK]

OK - now I see that they believe this was fabricated to explain away a bloody footprint she may have left....well, what if it is the truth, and comes to mind due to panic of being falsely accused as a discoverer of a crime scene may be??

In any case, this is just someone's own conjecture:

So why the change in story a month and a half later? The reason this story is concocted *now* is quite logical; by now Raffy and Amanda are freaking out about the DNA testing being done on the flat. The news about the knife has already landed. This has instilled panic attacks and tacychardia in Raffy who is musing in his diary about whether Meredith's DNA will be found on the rags he used to mop up the spill in his own flat (see his diary). A very odd suggestion; why would that be if they were only used to mop up a spill on the floor? There's no suggestion of contact with the knife at all is there? Why would you possibly bring up such unconnected things? Oh, I see, the "extremely clean" knife had to be dried and washed with something didn't it. Ah, the rags.

A ways away, in her own cell, Amanda has begun to fret massively about the possible DNA testing on the mat, the fact that there has been a clean up in the corridor and the fact that there may still be a footprint or more of hers in the corridor with blood on it because by now she has had weeks of consultation with her lawyers who are explaining luminol, the testing that's being conducted etc etc. As she sits in the cell, she simply doesn't know if there is or if there isn't. Given the shocking DNA result on the knife, she is very scared about the possibility. So how could she explain having been in contact with some blood and cover the *possible* discovery of such a footprint in the corridor and explain the smudging / obscuring that was done through the clean-up?

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?p=52675#p52675

 

[SMK]

Very odd, that link that Sherlock supplied to the old ruminations on PMF has led to my trawling all their theories of 2009.....They are coming from the presupposition of AK and RS being absolutely guilty, with premeditated intent. thus, all musings about the front door, the computer activity , the cell phones, aims towards the incorporation of facts which accommodate this ideation.

If only all had not been refuted, I might really fall fully under the charm of such theorizing......hmmmm.....Of course, the theories may be seductive, but in many cases the facts have at this juncture fully refuted them....

 

[Nova]

Ok, the prime purpose is to detect blood but it can certainly be used to identify foot and fingerprints. Why you say it has nothing to do with it is beyond me? It is rather obvious that they used luminol to find footprints here. Same with other cases (Michael Peterson comes to mind). Nothing unusual about it.

ETA: Michael Peterson is probably a bad example since they didn't even photograph those prints. Speaking of sloppy police investigations

It's true that luminol can detect foot-shaped areas of reaction that suggest places where someone stepped.

BTW, the foot-shaped stains detected in Perugia have never been identified as having been made with blood.

http://friendsofamanda.org/luminol.html


So, yes, those are "foot prints" in the broad sense of the term. But I'm not sure luminol can reveal "prints" in the forensic sense of the term, meaning a stain with whorls and ridges that can be identified and matched to a specific individual.

 

[SMK]

ETA: Also, as pointed out a million times before, the prints in the hallway being blood must ignore the fact they they tested negative for blood, that they mysteriously don't start in the room where the murder took place, and that they are in a pattern walking from the bathroom to her bedroom, not from the murder room to the bathroom.

Sorry, Malkmus....

 

[Nova]

Very odd, that link that Sherlock supplied to the old ruminations on PMF has led to my trawling all their theories of 2009.....They are coming from the presupposition of AK and RS being absolutely guilty, with premeditated intent. thus, all musings about the front door, the computer activity , the cell phones, aims towards the incorporation of facts which accommodate this ideation.

If only all had not been refuted, I might really fall fully under the charm of such theorizing......hmmmm.....Of course, the theories may be seductive, but in many cases the facts have at this juncture fully refuted them....

BBM: I think the same may be said of the literary/psychoanalytic speculation you cited above.

 

[Malkmus]

Sorry, Malkmus....

No need to apologize

I just think there are too many factors working against those prints being made from Amanda killing Meredith to take it seriously. For some reason we get accused of mental gymnastics to explain the evidence, but honestly I see more of that going on to validate the evidence against the pair. When you have to ignore scientific facts, and turn AK into some criminal genius to make it work I stop buying it.

 

[SMK]

BBM: I think the same may be said of the literary/psychoanalytic speculation you cited above.

I would agree. And regarding statement analysis, my belief in it has been further weakened by something I saw picked apart, where Amanda said, 'Raffale and I are 3 years in prison for a crime we never committed." They claim her speaking for both of them reveals deception, and calling it "a crime" rather than "this crime" indicates guilt. Bah :razz:

 

[SMK]

No need to apologize

I just think there are too many factors working against those prints being made from Amanda killing Meredith to take it seriously. For some reason we get accused of mental gymnastics to explain the evidence, but honestly I see more of that going on to validate the evidence against the pair. When you have to ignore scientific facts, and turn AK into some criminal genius to make it work I stop buying it.

Thank you. Agreed

ETA: There is always a temptation to begin with a premise, and then deduce and make inference with that premise as the goal. I hope we who believe in their innocence have been careful not to do that, and to examine the facts; and that is what we should continue to do...I try and examine the other side's arguments to keep an open mind, but much of the theorizing before the first verdict is totally implausible in light of what we know now....

 

[Malkmus]

I would agree. And regarding statement analysis, my belief in it has been further weakened by something I saw picked apart, where Amanda said, 'Raffale and I are 3 years in prison for a crime we never committed." They claim her speaking for both of them reveals deception, and calling it "a crime" rather than "this crime" indicates guilt. Bah :razz:

If Amanda sneezes it gets turned into deception.

 

[SMK]

If Amanda sneezes it gets turned into deception.

It surely seems so. :maddening:

 

[OldSteve]

I would agree. And regarding statement analysis, my belief in it has been further weakened by something I saw picked apart, where Amanda said, 'Raffale and I are 3 years in prison for a crime we never committed." They claim her speaking for both of them reveals deception, and calling it "a crime" rather than "this crime" indicates guilt. Bah :razz:

Wow! I can't agree more with you on this!
It seems to me "a crime" is such a common way to refer to it.... I don't think I would say "this crime"...
I'm more of a believer in body language.. but seems there are often different ways interpreting things...
anyway, I'm no expert...

 

[SMK]

Wow! I can't agree more with you on this!
It seems to me "a crime" is such a common way to refer to it.... I don't think I would say "this crime"...
I'm more of a believer in body language.. but seems there are often different ways interpreting things...
anyway, I'm no expert...

Well, Steve, neither am I....but we do not need to be experts to realize this nit-picking is self-serving and ludicrous. "for a crime I never committed" is a commonly used phrase; :furious: I was also reading things where people said that Amanda's email home , where she speaks of seeing a drop of blood and says, "I thought perhaps Meredith was having menstrual issues" reveals her as the killer, as no decent woman would say that about a friend. I certainly would, we are not in the Victorian age here.........:snooty:

Furthermore, the following bit of "professional statement analysis" seems a real stretch:

"She also repeated that she is innocent of Kercher’s killing:

“I did not kill her. I will never tire of repeating this. We lived together, we were friends, I would never have harmed her. I too want to find out who killed her,” Knox told her lawyer, La Repubblica newspaper reported.

Note "would never" being conditional and that "harm" is minimizing language. Both this verb tense and minimization are often found in guilty statements."

:maddening:

And I would be seriously concerned if my own innocuous statements were to be picked apart in this manner, as there simply is no winning here, as the following will show:

One of the things I am sure that definitely happened the night on which Meredith was murdered was that Raffaele and I ate fairly late, I think around 11 in the evening, although I can't be sure because I didn't look at the clock.

The lack of commitment to the events is noted but we also see:
That which is in the negative: when someone tells us what they did not do, did not say, did not think, particularly when offered in an open sentence, it is a strong indicator of what they did do, did think, and did say. Here, she remembers that she did not look at the clock. This tells us:

She looked at the clock as time was significant.
Note that this is something that "definitely" happened, yet she then says "I think" showing the obvious contradiction. Deception noted.

 

[Malkmus]

no decent woman would say that about a friend.[/I][/B] I certainly would, we are not in the Victorian age here.........:snooty:

:floorlaugh:

 

[SMK]

:floorlaugh:

 

[sherlockh]

Sorry, I just don't see how the bathmat story can be used as any sort of deception. Following the logic of this deception we get:

Amanda steps in Meredith's blood after killing her. She then wipes the blood up before police arrive. Then, after the Luminol reveals said footprints she tries to "explain" their presence by saying she slid across the hallway with the bloody bathmat. If anything, sliding on the bathmat would explain the absence of bloody footprints, not the creations of ones. Regardless, if someone is going to argue that the bathmat is an excuse for the bloody footprints, the shuffle is completely unnecessary. Her stepping on the bloody mat as she says she did in her email home before she was ever a suspect is enough of an "excuse", but as I said that requires the "Amanda the criminal mastermind" argument.

ETA: Also, as pointed out a million times before, the prints in the hallway being blood must ignore the fact they they tested negative for blood, that they mysteriously don't start in the room where the murder took place, and that they are in a pattern walking from the bathroom to her bedroom, not from the murder room to the bathroom.

I don't really have much to add as I think the links were pretty clear. Feel free to believe that AK shuffled naked on the bathmat after taking a shower in a bathroom with blood and an open door, and still her hair looks like a mess in the pics that morning. Maybe it was the weather? Her feet are wet, there is blood on the bathmat, and she steps on and off from the bathmat. This 'mastermind' theory came after 2 years!

There also have been a million replies <modsnip> about that blood test. The negative blood test is perfectly explained in the judges report and why they still concluded the prints were made in blood. The little blood was used by Stefanoni for DNA testing, the luminol test is 10x more sensitive than the blood test and no alternative explanation makes any sense at all.

 

[wasnt_me]

Smoking is conducive to good thinking....:great:

Well, according to RS, that would depend on what you're smoking!

 

[wasnt_me]

I know wasnt_me and others discussed this a lot, but could you give me a brief sentence on how that bathmat surfing went, according to Knox? Was it that she slid on it, or used it as a bath towel? :waitasec:

Sorry, not clear on it....

This is all I could find, posted by wasnt_me, on thread #14:

No. I was wrong about that and when I figured it out in a past thread, several others here turned out to be closet bathmat scooters! The truth was revealed. I can't remember now which posters admitted to bath towel scooting, but it was two or three of us. You don't remember that exchange? It was quite fun.

I had never in my life heard of using a bathmat like a skateboard, but people on this thread admitted to doing it, just like AK did. They used towels, but AK said there were no towels, so she had to use the bathmat.

They said they are wet and afraid to bust their butts when they get out the shower, so they lay down the towel or whatever and scoot with it to their next location. It's wild, but AK is not making up that people do that.

The problem is that there are two right footprints right next to each other, which face the kitchen, going from AK's room. There's one footprint that faces MK's room. These are in the corridor. How in hell do they, given their locations correspond to the murder?

If you make THAT much of an impression in so-called diluted blood, how can there not be more impressions? The impressions found are pretty well defined, so I don't get how you can how that well defined of prints, two right prints next to each other as if the person had two right feet and one that faces where the blood is, but no others. If they were half prints or faded ones, I could understand that the others must have been too light, but these prints do not seem to follow any logical pathway.

Additionally, there was no detection of blood. A print that WELL defined that has no blood in it? To me, it can't make sense that it's blood. So what is lighting up the ENTIRE foot like that? Are you following me? That's why I think it's something else. Something maybe from the floor of the shower. or cleaner that had been dried on the floor, but with her wet foot, she stepped on it and made it glow. But then, the same had to have happened with RG's footprints in that same hallway. So it's perplexing.

 

[wasnt_me]

Yes, her sliding story could be an attempt to deceive, or it could be part of her notorious quirky nature ....hard to determine....Thanks for posting those quotes.....and the PMF link:
So they are implying this is an added fabrication to explain the LACK of her prints?? as opposed to a clean up situation?:waitasec:

How long did it take for RG to point the finger at AK and RS? And he's apparently believed.

How long did it take the bleach man to come forward, or Nara? or the homeless man? And they are believed.

 

[wasnt_me]

There's a couple problems with this theory. The first and foremost problem, as I've pointed out is that using the bathmat itself to shuffle across the floor does not leave, nor clean up bloody footprints, and is therefore no explanation for the Luminol-revealed prints. Second problem is that Amanda writing in her email to friends and family two days after Meredith was murdered that she stepped on the bloody bathmat. This is before she had a lawyer, before the forensics results were available, before the words Luminol ever came into play. For her to write home before she was ever a suspect, and somehow have the foresight to know that somewhere down the road a product called Luminol would reveal her footprints is more of the "Amanda the criminal mastermind" that just doesn't make sense to me.

Using the bathmat in this manner might be why RG's shoeprints weren't really in that hallway, though. I keep noticing from pictures that they seem to start after AK's room. Is that true? I'll try to dig out some pictures. It's hard to tell when the <modsnip> investigators RUB them off the floor! Which might be a reason that luminol lights up around the barefootprints that remained.

These area what I found, but I can't tell where these shoe prints are located in the corridor, so...

 

[Nova]

Thank you. Agreed

ETA: There is always a temptation to begin with a premise, and then deduce and make inference with that premise as the goal. I hope we who believe in their innocence have been careful not to do that, and to examine the facts; and that is what we should continue to do...I try and examine the other side's arguments to keep an open mind, but much of the theorizing before the first verdict is totally implausible in light of what we know now....

As I've said before, I started with the premise that an Italian jury would NOT send a 20-year-old girl to prison just out of anti-American resentment. I'm still having trouble proving that premise.