AMANDA KNOX'S LAWYER'S THUNDERS AND MOVES

'GIVE BACK LIFE TO THIS GIRL'
A 'Red Card' to Mignini

The old and the beauty

It was a strange inquest for Luciano Ghirga, full of strange coincidences. When the Amanda-Patrick association collapsed, DNA of the victim magically appeared on a crystal clean blade. When Raffaele's footprint in the room faded away, his DNA materialized on a bra clasp.

It's their turn, now, to receive a behavioral analysis, to be attentionated. Amanda's lawyer does it and returns the treatment: he finds them suspicious.

They said they didn't know who Patrick was on the 5th. But on the 3rd Amanda told them she was working at Le Chic. And who owned Le Chic?
They proved to have done a 360° investigation. They checked all Umbrian hospitals, they went to Marche, to Puglia, to Milan, to Bergamo. And they didn't go to Le Chic?
They said they had already focused on Amanda (they had attentionated her...). Indeed they were wiretapping her not only on the phone, which is normal, but even in the environment. And they didn't check the registry to see who owned Le Chic?
And, it seems, they didn't record her interrogation. How could the prophet of psycho-somatic reactions work on them?

Doctor Giobbi says that he was locked in the director's room. And he could hear Amanda's screams from there. Amanda's screams. What was going on in that police station? It's not Guantanamo,Ghirga says, she wasn't hit, they just gave her a little slap. But the psychological coercion on a stressed girl was strong. It was enough to yield a wrong result.
Later, when she realized she said wrong things and became sure not to have been in the house she wrote...the police will not be happy for that. So that's what she did on the 5th and 6th, she made the police happy, she felt like she had to make them a gift. Can we say that the girl's mind was slightly conditioned?

The slander there is, it objectively exists in the two minutes, the body of evidence. But we have to see the subjective elements too: how that body of evidence was created. And the way it was created deserves a red card, it proves that Amanda is not punishable for slander. She has to be acquitted.

A CLASH OF WOMEN

There's a girl killed, Ghirga explains, and they think about the Seattle Group. For the Seattle Group Carlo and I are two cretins. They send me Tacopina, and the Mobile Squad was following him.
There's a girl killed and they fantasize about orgies. They should be ashamed for that, they should be ashamed to have asked Giacomo about sex. We refused to disrespect Meredith, we refused to ask about sex, we even didn't produce the minutes about it.
Amanda suffered the attack of women about the orgy, which was born within the police station.
Ghirga seemed to keep on tormenting himself about what has been going on with those women at the police station while the men, the Doctors, were in the director's room.
That's the source of all this masterpiece: a clash of women.

The sexual motive wasn't stable, since there's no biological evidence of it. So they added a bit of theft: 300 euro stolen. But where's the proof that Meredith really had the 300 €?
The sexual motive and the theft motive are not secure, so, they added a bit of hate.
The motive recipe is complete. But there wasn't hate between Amanda and Meredith. There's evidence of the contrary. They went to have fun together at the chocolate festival. Witnesses say they got along together. The SMS they exchanged show friendship (for more details see my article on Gente of this week).

Give back life to Amanda. I ask you, her family asks you --Ghirga concludes pointing at the Knox clan-- Amanda asks you.

CRUEL AMANDA

Mignini started the replies. It looked like another indictment until the President had to remind him that it had to be just a reply.

He maintained that the defense looked like another prosecution. Against Guede. For Guede there's no doubt, for Guede there's no contamination.
He tried to shed suspicion on the defendants: how do they know he killed and raped Mez?

He tried to defend the fakeness of the GPS (Getto di Pietra con Scalata) --as he calls the B&E at Filomena's room-- with word games (the nail under the window nails them) and by shedding some more suspicion: why did Sollecito's defense take care of it and not Knox's?
He found a single picture showing, maybe, glass on a single sweater which was on the bed. Some white stains which may be glass. May be. A sweater that, we should add, could have been on the bed before the B&E.

Mignini defended the late witnesses. They were not looking for publicity, they were terrified by journalists. Except, we may add, by those who went to find them.

For Mignini, a motive is not necessary. You can have a murder without motive.
But it's clear that Amanda couldn't avoid noticing that Mez was criticising her. And the rancor was mounting. Until, with the help of drug and alcohol, it became hate.

So, there's the cruelty too. After all the wonderful adjectives directed at Amanda it couldn't be missing.

THE SERENE LIFE OF AMANDA KNOX

OVERWHELMED BY A TSUNAMI
Carlo Dalla Vedova Puts Serious Doubts on the Prosecution Assertions and Asks for Acquittal

Lady in black

Amanda Knox was overwhelmed by a tsunami, for her lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova. The tsunami of the media, which reported the way they wanted to report: wrong.
He had a large choice among the absurd news that appeared in the tabloids. But he picked one for all. The Daily Mail article of January 16 2008 presenting the chilling new photographs released by Italian police today, and the full scale of the horror that confronted police when they entered the apartment in Perugia. The article, besides maintaining that the police had been distributing the photographs, suggests that the bathroom in which Amanda took the shower was in the apparent bloody conditions shown in one of those pictures (which would have been an obvious sign of guilt).

This website, on the same day, explained that the pink-red substance wasn't blood but the ester cyanoacrylate sprayed after inspection and sample collection (just to remind one of the differences in the media).

What will the prosecutor do? --Dalla Vedova asks. What will the police do? Are they going to press charges against the Daily Mail?

My law firm works for the Ministry of Interior (on which police depends) since 1954 --Dalla Vedova reveals-- We work with the Carabinieri. But I have to defend this girl and what must be said must be said. He puts serious doubts on the way this strange investigation has been run.

THOSE COMPUTERS BURNED OUT

The accusation team had been ironic about his request to shed light even on the computer accident. But maybe there was some reason to. As we know, indeed, Amanda, Raffaele and Meredith's computers were mysteriously shocked and destroyed. And, especially the last two, could contain important evidence.
Here too, some media (certainly not this website) promptly explained the event as the murderers who had done a clean-up even in their devices...
Speaking, instead, of a realistic hypothesis, the counselor can hardly accept that the Postal Police -- computer experts-- destroy hard disks as soon as they touch a laptop. The accidents must have happened somewhere else.
As we know even Filomena's laptop was burned. She collected it on November 2, still in its suitcase, but the police asked her to leave it with them. Next day they returned it: shocked. The murderers have been there, was their explanation.

THE NIGHT OF DARKNESS

On the famous night, on the original night, Amanda was waiting for Raffaele, under interrogation, at the police station. She didn't have anything to do. So she called her housemate Filomena.
She was wiretapped, and her lawyer made us hear again that phone call.
Needless to say that no clue of guilt emerged from that conversation. But what is important is the tone of that conversation, as well as the language.

Amanda's voice broke, showing that she was tired. We know why she was tired. A murder happened in her house, she couldn't go into her own house anymore, she had to go all the time to the police station to be interviewed, to inspections, etc..
Who would have remembered school in such a situation? Amanda did. She continued attending classes. In four days, split between police station and school, she didn't have much time for sleeping.

But that night it was a matter of minutes. She just had to wait for Raffaele finishing his interview and then she could finally go rest. In her dreams.
At the end of that conversation with Filomena an officer called her and, instead of her rest, instead of her dreams, her nightmare began.

They call it spontaneous declarations. Spontaneous declarations started late at night on a girl who was already tired, who had already shown documented signs of stress and sickness.
How could it end?
But the conversation with Filomena also shows another detail: the Italian Amanda Knox could speak at that time. A very basic Italian, so basic that in order to understand each other they had to switch into English.

And here the irony of Carlo Dalla Vedova explains more than anything else. He lets the others speak. He lets the officer who interrogated Amanda speak: 'I called the interpreter for pedantry'. With the Italian Amanda had, for the agent calling an interpreter was pedantry, was an excess of precision.
Then he lets the Supreme Court speak. The Supreme Court declared those spontaneous statements illegal.
Illegal, but hard to be forgotten, hard to be removed from people's minds and able to influence all subsequent investigation and accusation theory.
That night at the police station it was all a mistake, the accusation to Patrick Lumuba is all a mistake and who's responsible for that? Carlo Dalla Vedova lets the Court of of Perugia answer: the Corte d'Appello compensated Lumumba, recognizing, in this way, who's guilty for that mistake: the state. Not Amanda Knox.

That mistake is at the source of a wrong investigation, that only looked for confirmations of guilt. They looked for signs of guilt, avoiding the signs of innocence.

And what is at the source of that mistake?

'THEY ARE DANGEROUS'
Dalla Vedova recalls as doctor Giobbi, a top officer, came from Rome with his legacy of knowledge. Doctor Giobbi introduced himself as an expert of behavioral analysis based on psycho-somatic reactions. He's not a psychologist, but he does the work of the psychologist. Will he do it well?
By analyzing the psycho-somatic reactions of Amanda Knox he had an investigative intuition and decided that she must have been attenzionata. Yes, attentionated, this was the language of the Doctor. Intuitions, psycho-somatic reactions, attentionations.
So if you happen to be sick and, because of that, have a slightly strange psycho-somatic behavior you are suspected. If you happen to be tired. If you happen to be stressed. If you happen to be foreign and behave in a different way. If you happen to answer a question by looking down right rather than up left, your behavior is suspicious.

We shouldn't complain, it could have gone worse. Another high profile officer may have arrived from Milan and decide to study them through their horoscope.

Dalla Vedova complains, instead, and remarks on the dangerousness of this method.
This is dangerous, Carlo thunders in the room.
A policeman who acts like a psychologist because he maybe read a couple of books of psychology, who addresses a whole investigation against a boy and a girl from his intuition. This, for Dalla Vedova, has only one name: presumption. It's illegal conduct that will bring distortion to that night. A distortion without which the story of Amanda Knox would have been completely different.

The distortion will be the basis for the construction of clues, of which today remains none. Only the moral judgements remain. The hate, the little saint, and all imagined feelings and actions. But a prosecutor must bring proofs not moral judgements.
And even the moral judgement is wrong because the relations between Amanda and Meredith were absolutely normal.
Amanda was a perfect student, as her Perugia teacher testified. Amanda was a hard worker and employee of excellent moral qualities, as her Seattle employer referred.
She had a serene life, an ordinary life and nothing could justify the switch into hate and crime.
There are people able to live without hate. Something that some can't understand.

The scientific police had phases of great professionalism. Only thanks to the application of the spheron are we today able to say that there wasn't glass on the clothes, without which Mignini's fake break-in theory can't be maintained

EVIDENCE
Everything about the evidence was already explained. But Dalla Vedova added, or better expressed, new details.

DNA
The problems they had in understanding the DNA are explainable. The LCN DNA test was born in England. Italy is following. Only recently UK and USA understood that the Low Copy Number can't be used. The Kercher case is the first in which the problem emerged in Italy and hopefully they will follow the guidelines established last year in UK and 7 months ago by the Supreme Court of California.

Presumed murder weapon
If you want to kill, you can hardly stick a blade in to just half of its length, as we know. But here the blade went inside three times, as all experts agree. And it's impossible to go in three times with the same partial length. Just another of the many proofs that the Marietti knife is not the murder weapon.

Foot prints
If even the prosecution's experts agree that the footprints are unreadable how can they be attributed to Raffaele and Amanda?

Shoe print on the pillow
They absolutely want to see in the unreadable footprint 2 on the pillow, a female shoe. But they checked all Amanda's shoes and they didn't find a match, so it must be refused.

Time of death
There weren't mushrooms in the fridge, Knox lawyers reminds (not cooked, at least). So, where did Meredith get the mushroom she allegedly ate? Dr Lalli only said, presumed mushroom, since he didn't know she didn't eat any. It must be a slice of apple, that she ate with her friends. If the piece of apple was still in the esophagus that means that Mez was attacked early, very early.
Dalla Vedova implies that the murderer was already in the house when Meredith came back. And why nobody saw him breaking and entering? Because the few people around there either didn't even notice there was a house --as one of them testified-- or they just didn't pay attention.

WITNESSES

Gioffreda says he remembers Rudi at 99%. So he doesn't remember Rudi. Actually he doesn't remember many other things, such as the car, the owner, if the owner called him or not. What he remembers precisely --the coat Amanda was wearing-- hasn't been found nor seen by anyone. Totally unreliable.

Mignini's new theory that Capezzali woke up at 11:30 relies on the information that the drug had its effect after 2 hours. But where did he get this information?

By looking at the window of the girl who heard a scream at 11 pm we see that the window looks in a different direction in respect to the cottage. Then she says she heard a different scream than the one described by Capezzali. It's enough to understand that she lies. If then we add that she was convinced by a local newspaper after one year...

Mignini, by moving the scream at 23:30 forgot that Curatolo sees Amanda and Raffaele from 21:30 to almost midnight. Toto's testimony doesn't match with Capezzali's. Curatolo lies.

But the most interesting notation is related to Kokomani.
Kokomani's testimony is evidently made up. But are we sure he's just a mythomaniac?
As we know there's some unidentified DNA in the house, as well as 17 unattributed fingerprints.
Kokomani is in the crime environment. Are we sure he's not covering someone?

The murderer, or co-murderer, of Meredith, Dalla Vedova implies, could still be free.

Comments disabled

'AMANDA THE RIPPER'

'NO WAY' FOR SOLLECITO'S LAWYER
The Wonderful World of Amanda Knox

'Amelie of Seattle'

(Up.)

'The two cretins are talking'. 'Here is the bitch'. These are some of the comments the operators were making while wiretapping the Sollecito family, as retrieved in the immense investigation file, and exposed today, by Giulia Bongiorno.
There's animosity in these investigators, Bongiorno diplomatically notes. And how can we consider them as reliable witnesses if they have animosity?
But why does Bongiorno say that there has been animosity?

Can we maybe say that they stressed a girl who barely spoke italian by harshly interrogating her from 10 pm to 5 am without a lawyer? Can we say that they hit her? Can we say that they criticize her because she moves? Can we say that they interrogated Raffaele barefoot, all night long and without a lawyer? Can we say that they hit and insulted Patrick? Can we say that they told a girl You have aids, good night? Can we say that they've been stripping notes out of their hands? Can we say that they sued the family for having repeated what their daughter told them? Can we say that they even mistreated reporters? Can we say that in that jail some young guy died while screaming for help?

If we can't say all of these things than we have to affirm that there hasn't been animosity, there hasn't been hate, to use the undiplomatic word. Giulia Bongiorno is wrong and the investigators and guards are exactly as they appear to us in public. Human, precise, reliable.

Bongiorno recalled all phases of the investigation and of the many trials de libertade, which all expressed negative judgements for Amanda and Raffaele. The only problem is that the clues their judgements were based on have faded away.

Signorina Giulia notes how only Amanda exists in the accusation theory. She is, for the accuser team, for the media, Amanda the Ripper, who killed for pure hate. And Raffaele? What motive did he have to kill?
Bongiorno couldn't name one. Couldn't find a reason to move a quiet, normal student to suddenly ruin his life by committing a killing.

She noticed all things we know very well. They were watching Amelie. Actually, according to the prosecution, only Raffaele was watching Amelie while Amanda was talking agreements with Rudi. But could we really believe that Raffaele watches a chick's movie --like The Wonderful World of Amelie Poullain-- alone? And how can they pass from Amelie to an orgy of killing?
Impossible for the signorina Giulia.
On the contrary, Amanda is exactly like Amelie: a naive, fragile and weak girl. She has the same approach to the life, immediate, extravagant, full of imagination.
And that's why they were watching Amelie that evening and not, for instance, Reservoir Dogs or Natural Born Killers.

Giulia of Palermo

Evaluate --Bongiorno says-- don't judge.
And while evaluating she notices that everything has been read in a guilty sense, everything was carried out with a suspect-centered method. From the DNA test to the reconstruction in itself.

Bongiorno hasn't been speaking to herself or to her colleagues in law. She didn't say to the jury The president will explain this to you. No, she explained everything to the jury, to the popular judges, without saving herself. She spelt it out word by word, without articles of laws, without Supreme Court rulings, without the Bible. While using everybody's language, by speaking popular words she demolished all crazy witnesses. She cracked up The Knife theory. She trashed the bra clasp mystery. She annihilated the newly proposed late-death theory.
Not that difficult, after all, but she gave the impression to have been heard by the judges.

The call Meredith made to her family as soon as she came back home, that's the key to the event. Why did that phone call fail?
Maybe Meredith's father and sister weren't at home. Or, more probably, at that moment the murderer attacked Mez. Not after midnight. Comments disabled

RAFFAELE SOLLECITO'S LAWYER ACCUSES

'THEY WANTED HIM IN AT ALL COSTS'
Return to Life After the Three Days of the Blame

Raffaele with Luca Maori

There's an officer of high profile in Rome. He concerns himself only with important cases. And Perugia had the honor of his visit for the Meredith Kercher case, which has benefited from his supervision. You have to call him Doctor, because he knows. He's the master of behavioral analysis.

The Doctor looked at Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, and he understood.
He solved the case, even before any scientific evidence showed up, and went back to Rome. With another trophy to hang on the wall. Another medal on its way to his chest.

But counselor Maori doesn't subscribe to that medal. For Raffaele's lawyer the behavioral analysis is the source of all the misunderstanding.

Resurfaced from nightmare

On November 2 they looked at Amanda and Raffaele staying aside, whispering to each other. And they started their analysis.
Then Amanda and Raffaele did their best to help, they continued the show. She, legs on his legs at the police station. He, screaming Let me in! outside the police station. She, doing cartwheels at the police station. She, banging her head as her fingerprints were taken. She, crying at the view of the knives. She, doing Voila at the crime scene.
She... she... she...

Amanda and Raffaele didn't know, but the Doctor and his pupils were studying them. And were understanding.

The biggest faux pas was done by Raffaele. He went to the police station with a knife in his pocket. And the refined scholars of behavioral analysis were just waiting for it.

They knew he had a clasp knife in his pocket. They searched him and they found it. Case closed. They had to catch a murderer, they caught a clasp knife.

By the way, he had a knife in his pocket. Would you have said So what?. They didn't. That gave them the idea of guilt. From that moment --Maori explains-- it will be all a search for confirmation of that idea.

It was an obviously wrong idea, because, as we always noted, if you stabbed someone with a knife, bringing it to the police station is exactly what you'd never do. Not even if you stabbed someone with another knife.

But they reason in another way, there. Sometimes we reason the way we want to reason. We see what we want to see.

And the first confirmations started to arrive. They seized Raffaele's shoes and they saw that he left a shoe print in Meredith's room. So Raffaele not only went to the police station with the murder weapon, he even went with the same shoes used during the crime.

Can a murderer be that stupid? Some, to this question, answered yes.

Now we know they were wrong. Now they know they were wrong. But they didn't say sorry. Nobody resigned, nobody thought to have to study some more to be called Doctor, to need to learn some more before having responsibilities in society. Nobody learned to also listen to the critics, to thank them for their interest in the case.

No, they attacked the critics too, they investigated the families too, they looked and found new evidence. They wanted at all cost to put Raffaele in the scenario, Maori maintained.

The rest of the story, for Maori, is all about the discovery of new confirmations. The confirmations lived for a while, and that's why so many judges were sure of Knox and Sollecito's guilt. Now the clues have mostly disappeared and Raffaele and Amanda have to be acquitted.

Very clear for those who have been working on this case. But, will the judges follow the detailed Maori pleading? Or they hear, better, the ones who yell, the ones who insult, the ones who humiliate?

At the end Maori pulled out the semen story on the pillow, which we know so well. Will they make the test now?

We don't know if Maori sounded clear to the jury. But at least, after the three days of the blame, after having fallen into this documentary on the inquisition, we returned to the 21st century.

Following the indictment, for the first time we saw the wind changing among the audience. Students come to the trial. You can trick them with luminol and DNA but you can't teach them what happens in a student's house. They can teach us. We should kill each other every day, some girls said after having heard the motive.

And today, after the yells, after the mud thrown on her, Amanda smiled again. Damn Amanda, she's got seven lives.

Comments disabled

AMANDA KNOX'S PARENTS ACCUSED TOO

'SLANDEROUS '

(updated)

They had just came back. They had just finished listening to the story of all the crimes their daughter did. They were in their lawyer's office, trying to have explained what was going on.
Two Carabinieri reached Curt Knox and Edda Mellas and served them a notice of completion of investigation. The Perugia Police had sued them. Amanda's parents are accused of defaming the Mobile Squad officers in an interview with the Sunday Times, in which they stated that Amanda was beaten and denied the assistance of a lawyer during her interrogation of November 5 and 6 2007.
And now even the Times trembles all over.

Comments disabled

INSULTS AND CONVICTION FOR AMANDA KNOX

'DIRTY, LUCIFER, JUDAS, TREACHEROUS'
'Typical female'

It's so nice when there is solidarity, unity, friendship. It's so nice to see them getting along so well, congratulating each other, helping each other, all joining together to accuse. Team work, the secret of success.
Everyone helps however they can. Everyone adds that little detail to polish the accusation theory and, with the help of Our Lord and of the Sacred Writings, punish the fierce murderer of Meredith, Amanda Knox, and her accomplice.

Patrick's lawyer Carlo Pacelli understood that Amanda's statements of the 5th and subsequent memoir where not imagination, were real memories (except that his client wasn't in them).

After Meredith's death Amanda didn't show any compassion, any sorrow, any interest for her. Lot's of interest, instead, for hot sex with Raffaele.

When she met Patrick outside the school she kissed him like Judas. The day after she will accuse him.

This is Amanda Knox, we shouldn't look at how she looks now, the perfect girl, water and soap, the little saint disciplined by the detention.
The real Amanda is the one of 2007. She saint and she devil.
She is Lucifer. A lost girl, all sex, alcohol and drugs (what happened to rock and roll?).
She wasn't good at hygiene in the house, as we know. Because she's dirty outside and inside. Dirty in her soul, corrupted in her spirit.

Let's memorize this detail for later: according to Pacelli when she received Patrick's message on November 1st, she misunderstood. Instead than don't come, there aren't many people, she understood that the pub was closed that night, as she will say in her spontaneous statements.

We certainly cannot put the blame on the police, who have been perfect, kind and full of attentions for Amanda. She wasn't summoned to the police station. He knows that she went there to try to control what the police were doing, since she understood they were about to figure her out.

When the name of Patrick came out from her cellphone it sounded new to the police, they didn't know who he was, there was not even his last name.

But when Amanda heard that Raffaele wasn't covering her anymore she got crazy, she needed to make up an exit strategy and she made one up instantly, as only a genius of evil can do.
She saw that name, Patrick, she remembered that he had closed the pub that evening and she grabbed the occasion. The genius of evil immediately swapped Rudy for Patrick and provided the false accusation, in order to save herself.

She said Meredith was screaming, which she couldn't know, since Capezzali will reveal it in a month. She said Meredith had sex, which she couldn't know since the doctor's report was presented after her arrest.

She not only said Patrick killed Meredith, she not only said he had sex with Meredith. She said that he was fond of her. Only a perfidious woman could say that, it's the female perfidy.

After the slander Amanda felt at fault for having accused an innocent, as she told her mother.
But it was only inside. She didn't say that to the police, she didn't say that to the judge. Neither her mother nor her lawyers did. They couldn't, because that was a strategy: accusing someone else to mislead attention from her. She would have been safe and one day they will understand that Patrick was not involved.

Unfortunately a little unexpected happened. They found her accomplice, Rudi Guede. And the strategy failed.

IN THE MUD

Another terrible day for Amanda. She had again to listen to another inquisitor throwing mud on her, convincing the world, convincing the jury, who just wait to be convinced.
Her lawyers were busy with the papers, her family wasn't there yet.

She was all alone again, with the death in her heart.

Then they all arrived: stepfather and mother, father and wife, aunt. The free people arrived and she turned around with a look that confessed all the drama she was going through. A glance from desperation, a howl in silence. The loudest howl.

Then the lawyer asked for conviction. And payment of the trial fees, of the defence expenses. He didn't ask for compensation, not yet. Because the damage to Patrick is still in progress: he's still under shrink care, destroyed forever by 14 days of jail.

He's a delicate boy. He doesn't learn from his roots, he doesn't learn from worthy African men. Fourteen days, and he's already finished. Not exactly like Nelson Mandela. But that one is another man, completely.

Patrick's lawyer is very precise, and he recalled on what the accusation to Amanda lies. She lied.
She said that she received Patrick's SMS at Raffaele's place. And instead the cell network says that she was by piazza Grimana. She's been caught lying.

Here we have to recall that this was exactly the proof against Patrick. He said that he was at the pub. But the cell network was placing him by piazza Grimana.
The cell network is a machine and, like all machines, is stupid. At the end they understood that the machine was wrong and Patrick was telling the truth.

But they already forgot. Here we are again. The same machine, the same mistake.
The same people who made the mistake of believing that machine are doing it again.
The ones who managed to save themselves from that mistake are trying to convict someone else with exactly the same wrong information.

Patrick, the believer, the one who always has God in his mouth, the one who complained that the priest didn't come to him (of course, even the priest preferred to go into Amanda's cell...).

Patrick, the good guy, as everybody always defined him, as we all defined him. Good and fast. Fast to pass from accused to accuser, from victim to hanger, from lamb to lion (to use his own language), from good to evil. This delicate African man became the symbol of mankind and its appetite for judgement. Of the others.

KERCHERS ASK 25 MILLION

Meredith's lawyers Francesco Maresca and Serena Perna also gave their precious contribution.

Maresca praised Mignini and Comodi and their impeccable reconstruction.

The scientific police has been teaching the whole world, included America, how to perform tests. The defenses have been simply a shame, asking not to just fix some details, but to remake the whole trial, when there was nothing to remake.
In America, when the innocence project asked 30 cases to be reopened, on 25 of them they couldn't find enough registered data. Why didn't the defenses complain during the tests?

Why didn't they file opposition to Micheli's jail order? Why didn't they ask freedom or house arrests of this jury? (here we have to recall that when there's the giudicato cautelare by the Supreme Court better not to ask freedom again unless something huge, like an alibi, occurs).

Then Maresca corroborates all convictions and reads everything in a guilty sense. Interesting notations.

-Amanda and Raffaele changed their plans after the crime (we have to recall that they said what plan they had, so only thanks to them we know they changed it).
-The rock couldn't be thrown before 9 because there were people outside the house. It couldn't be thrown after 9 because Meredith was in and would have heard. So it must be a simulation done late at night (we have to recall that now they are obligated to say it was late at night since Curatolo changed his version and said Amanda and Raffaele were in the square until midnight).
-The three just wanted to go to the house to have fun. But they found Mez. The wounds show that everything started with a sexual approach, which Meredith refused. They tried to obligate her until they stabbed her. Indeed, the prosecutor didn't assert premeditation (which doesn't fit with the fact that they brought The Knife).

Maresca expressed all his admiration for the elegance of the silence of Meredith's family.
So different from the endless appearances of Amanda's family and from the attempts of Raffaele's family.
Then, Maresca & Perna, asked for the conviction of Amanda & Raffaele, the payment of the trial fees, of the legal expenses, and of 25 million euro to Arlyne, John, Stephanie and brothers.

Comments disabled

REQUEST TO STOP THE KNOX SOLLECITO TRIAL

Filed Today

A request to postpone the trial has been filed today, to the Corte d'Assise of President Giancarlo Massei, by Raffaele Sollecito's attorney Giulia Bongiorno.
The Rome-based lawyer, who was absent in many of the last hearings, needs appendix surgery.
None of the lawyers have confirmed yet. But sources very close to President Massei say that he received the request, asked for a doctor note and will hear the parties as soon as possible in order to confirm the calendar.

MIGNINI'S RAGE AGAINST KNOX AND SOLLECITO

'JAIL FOR LIFE TO AMANDA AND RAFFAELE'
'They killed Meredith Fiercely and for Futile Reasons'

As it was scheduled, Manuela Comodi took care of the scientific evidence. Then a full animated reconstruction of the event was projected.
And Mignini took the stand to ask the penalties.

Yesterday he also reminded us what a despicable human being Amanda Knox is, deprived of any sensitivity, as she was shown to be when she told the English girls --who were hoping that at least Meredith didn't suffer-- that Meredith died slowly.
Mignini yesterday also recalled the proof of Amanda's guilt: when the pictures of the crime scene were shown in court she couldn't watch.

Today he quoted an expert study made by a criminologist on the handwriting of Amanda and Raffaele, another document of scientific value. The study depicted Raffaele as a submissive personality. He makes himself available to others in order to gain their approval.
Amanda --according to the study, published by the usual local newspaper and done by a consultant for Rudi Guede-- is narcissist, manipulative, theatrical, has rage, impulsiveness, tendency to transgression and to dominate others, has no concern for others and lack of empathy.
This picture, for Mignini, is fully confirmed by the facts.
In addiction to that, he personally was aware of Raffaele's coldness, who didn't show any emotion during the trial and could watch the pictures of the crime without any problem.
Same for Amanda who, besides her insensitivity, showed also contempt for authority, as the cartwheels prove.

Much better Rudi, who at least had some nice thoughts for Meredith and didn't take part in the staging of the crime scene.

Amanda and Raffaele, instead, didn't hesitate to kill a girl for futile reasons, a girl who was just about to fly back home to see her sick mother.

Not only did they commit the crime, but then Amanda also accused an innocent person in an attempt to save herself. She accused even the police and she will certainly accuse them again.

Rudy was a poor drifter. Raffaele, instead, had a family who tried to influence the investigation.
Amanda could count on a lobby from Seattle --judges, lawyers, bloggers-- who have been actually so inefficient that they are not even able to convince the majority of the people in their own town.

The futile reasons consist in the fact that they killed Meredith just because she didn't get along with Amanda. Because of the futile reasons the murder is aggravated.

The rage of Mignini, compressed in two years of harsh criticism and insults received from faraway, could finally explode. Mignini thundered while asking the penalties.

He asked the jury to convict Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for murder, sexual violence, theft, simulation of crime and, for Amanda, slander too. He asked the judges to give life in jail with nine months of daily isolation for Amanda, payment of the trial expenses and compensation of the civil parties. Life in jail with two months of daily isolation to Raffaele Sollecito, payment of the trial expenses and compensation of the civil parties.

Curt Knox told CNN: Amanda already has the ticket home.

NOBODY BELIEVES HER
A girl's Worst Nightmare

Provisional standings

While her parents sit in TV lounges releasing interviews, Amanda Knox is living the worst nightmare ever.

She sits surrounded by guards, with a thousand eyes watching her while she's forced to listen to the powerful voice of the inquisitor that tells the world how bad, how insensitive, how despicable, how corrupted, how dirty, how perverted, how thieving, how murdererous, how fierce, how ruthless, how monstrous she is. A voice that fills the room of her judgement. A voice that nobody can stop. A voice that certainly continues to echo in her mind, in her cell, in her sleepless night.
The voice is harsh, the voice is loud and keeps on accusing her while the thousand eyes study all her reactions, like a guinea pig in a cage. That voice full of hate continues to yell, ruthless, and it seems to convince everybody, it seems to convince those six strangers who stare at her, silent, the jury that will have to decide her life.

If she smiles it's wrong, if she cries it's wrong, if she moves it's wrong, if she's still it's wrong, if she watches it's wrong, if she doesn't watch it's wrong.

They say that she killed Meredith, they demonstrate that she killed Meredith, they show how she killed Meredith, in words and in images. The blame is on her, only on her, and nobody believes her. Rudi is almost a saint, who she corrupted. Raffaele was just a puppet, that she manipulated. There's only one monster here. And that monster is her, Amanda Knox.

Amanda wanted to talk yesterday but the description of how she allegedly butchered her friend and manipulated her two lovers was too tough to bear. There were other Americans in the room. Some couldn't understand what was going on. Some could understand just something. But Amanda understands italian perfectly, she knew what was going on. She's been listening to the description of her crime, still, like a frozen statue. And then she collapsed, in tears.

Yesterday's torture wasn't enough. Today they re-proposed the same story in images, like a movie, like a nightmare in the nightmare. Everyone has been watching the masterpiece. The only one who couldn't have a look at those virtual images was her. She has been waiting with patience for the show --the amusement of the others-- to finish. She's been listening to the voice of the great inquisitor.

Then she found the strength to make her voice heard.

AMANDA SCREAMS HER INNOCENCE
'MEREDITH WAS MY FRIEND'

Amanda said loud and clear she has nothing to do with this. It's all a fantasy. With Meredith, she was friends. Meredith loved her and she could never have done anything bad to her.

But nobody believes her.
Everyone yells at Amanda Knox, virtually together with the great inquisitor. Everyone judges, everyone points the finger at Amanda Knox.

For the prosecutor everything is a sign of guilt. Having reactions or not having reactions. Looking at the pictures or not looking at the pictures.
Handwriting expertise is scientific, for the prosecution, even if it was done after having apprehended all cliches and beliefs about Amanda and Raffaele. But the study can be influenced by the known facts and not the facts be a confirmation of the study.
A cell network study is truth. A doubtful DNA test is truth.

We will see in detail the wonderful reconstruction made by the awarded firm Mignini & Comodi. Now let's consider for a second the moral aspects proposed by the prosecutor.

Amanda was insensitive at the police station. And this is undoubtable. But probably two years of jail are enough for that sin. That demeanor, though, must be read psychologically, anthropologically, not morally. We should be scientific in analyzing that event, not moralists.

She accused an innocent and the police. But what is right? To blame her tout court for this? Or to shed light about the events prior to those accusations?

She did the cartwheel at the police station. Before evaluating this act we should know the reason at the source of it. And we know that reason, which certainly isn't contempt for authority. And it certainly wouldn't be professional to use that insignificant episode to understand the crime. For a tabloid, maybe. Not for a court.

The prosecutor accused Amanda and Raffaele of no repentance or mercy, and praised Rudi for having shown some.
But if they claim they are innocent, how could they repent? They couldn't repent not even if they wanted to. If they were repentant inside, they should absolutely hide that feeling otherwise that would be equivalent to a confession.
Rudi, instead, can have some repentance, since he claims he was guilty of having left Meredith dying (not too much different from a murder).

The prosecution knows that Amanda covered Meredith with the duvet (another scientific study says that the woman has mercy for a dead woman and covers her). But there's no praise for that sign of mercy. On the contrary, it's a sign of guilt. Even though, it's an imagined event.

The family and the town of Raffaele helped him, even in violation of the law. And what has that to do with him?

The Seattle lobby has tried to influence the trial, by criticising with bad taste and with ignorance of the case and of the law (even when they were judges and lawyers).
But, if this were true, what has it to do with Amanda?

It looks like revenge.

Comments disabled

MIGNINI ACCUSES AMANDA KNOX

'SHE'S THE KILLER!'
And Used Rudi and Raffaele for her Vendetta

ACCUSED
'Killer' in tears

(Up.)

Mignini sees. Mignini hears.

Amanda Knox brings home Rudi and Raffaele. In this order, yes. Because, for her, Rudi comes first and then, only as a second choice, Raffaele.

We don't know what is planned. She maybe just wants to go have some fun, maybe she just wants to disturb Meredith. She maybe wants to have a threesome and since there's also Meredith there, doing her homework, a foursome with the good girl. Particularly exciting. Whether she agrees or not. Actually better if she doesn't want to.
Because it's not love moving Amanda, or attraction. It's hate. It's VENDETTA.

Meredith was so nice, so beloved by everyone, so measured in everything. A girl of sane moral principles. Meredith, a sweet daughter for her family, a sweet friend for her friends, and also admired by men.

They were friends at the beginning, due to the common language. But in a very few days the relationship got spoiled and Meredith locked herself up in the close group of the other good girls, her new friends, her instant friends, her close friends: the English girls. An impenetrable group for the damned American.
Amanda wasn't disciplined at home, she wasn't cleaning, she was bringing men in all the time, and Meredith couldn't have her privacy, her peace, she couldn't concentrate on her studies.

After a few weeks of that life Meredith couldn't stand her anymore.
Meredith had also been criticizing her for having cheated on her boyfriend as soon as she arrived in Italy. Unacceptable for the girl of good moral principles. She said it to her girlfriends.
Amanda felt judged, Amanda felt refused. Amanda, the bad, --the Bad Fox, how to forget-- developed hate for that too-tame girl.

SHE-FURY

The hate is ready to explode on the evening of November 1st.

Instead of accepting Amanda's invitation to join the group Meredith criticizes again. She complains about the presence of Rudi in her house. Not only that, maybe her money had already disappeared from the drawer and she asks for explanations from Amanda.

That is too much. Amanda attacks her. She puts a hand on her face and slams her against the wall in her room. She incites Raffaele, who grabs her hair from behind. Then the shy boy, obeying the American fury, grabs Meredith by the jaw. Amanda must say something like You were acting so much the little saint, now we'll show you.
Raffaele strips her bra away, while Meredith goes down on her knees and Amanda tries to strangle her.
She doesn't manage to kill her by strangling, she maybe just breaks her hyoid bone. So she pulls out the big kitchen knife. Also Raffaele shows his own now. Poor Rudi is in the toilet but this time, hearing the screams, he doesn't put music on. He knows when to politely do his business and when to run in to help.

When Rudi comes across, Raffaele is threatening Meredith from the right side and Amanda, who is pointing her own blade on her left, incites him too. Rudi is a gentlemen, we know, but he doesn't want to disappoint the beautiful American, and immediately starts taking advantage sexually of Mez.

The two boys, indeed, don't want to cut a poor figure, neither of them wants to lose the competition Amanda obligated them to.

At one point, while Rudi is raping Meredith --but only to please Amanda-- she screams and Amanda stabs the blow.
The blood spurts, Amanda and Raffaele grab the cellphones to make sure Meredith doesn't call anyone, and flee. They run out of town, where they will toss the cellphones.

Only Rudi, the good Samaritan, remains, trying to save Meredith by dabbing the wounds with the towels. At one point he bends against the wall where he leaves some body smears.
He tried to do something but even a saint like he is, in that situation, would be scared. Even St. Peter denied Jesus, after all. And Rudi too, terrified, runs away. And that is the second run that Nara hears.


AMANDA KNOX AND RUDI GUEDE
TWO LOVERS
Plus the Amelie-boy

'Killer' in tears

But how --for Mignini-- Knox, Sollecito and Guede got to that meeting? We have to pay attention to what Amanda tries to hide. And she tried to hide her relation with Guede. A consummated relationship of which nobody knew but that didn't escape to the fine eye of the prosecutor.

One of the boys downstairs, indeed, referred that one time, while they were at home, Rudi showed up. And Amanda showed up.
At one point the two went away together. We don't know, but we can guess where Amanda and Rudi went to. One night at the discotheque, indeed, Amanda met Daniel and they ended up in bed. Daniel testified to have had, that night, one or more sexual intercourses with the American girl. That's what happens when a man meets Amanda Knox.

So Amanda and Rudi knew each other very well, in all meanings, and long before Raffaele enters the scene.

The evening of the 1st Amanda receives the sms from Patrick who frees her evening.
We've just learned: we have to pay attention to what Amanda tries to hide. And, about this event, she tries to hide that she wasn't at Raffaele's place, as she always maintained. It's not true. When she receives the sms, the cells study says, she is downtown, while Raffaele is alone at home, watching, yes: Amelie...

So she has her night suddenly free. But she knows Raffaele will be busy, he will have to go to the bus station. And what is she supposed to do now? Who can she have fun with if Raffaele will be busy for half an hour at around midnight?
Who does she invite for having some fun? Rudi, of course. The closest other lover available, who passes by there, on his way to his appointment with Meredith. And Amanda gives him an appointment with her too.

TO THE DATE WITH THE KNIFE

Amanda goes to Raffaele's place anyway, maybe to fix when they could meet, after the respective commitments. But, here it is the unexpected: Jovana Popovic shows up with news. She doesn't need the drive to the station anymore.
Good news. Embarrassing, maybe, but very good. Amanda has two lovers available now. She can have double fun. And, since Rudi has a date with Meredith, it can be triple fun.

So they go to the house. She takes The Knife, just in case.

And she has Raffaele to go with her to the appointment with Rudi. Rudi, the perfect gentlemen who puts music on so as not to listen to a ladies' conversation. The great hygienist who doesn't make love without a condom. The irresistible lover who one day conquered her with a walk. The great seducer to whose feet, just the night before, even Meredith fell, after receiving a little kiss on her cheek.
Can Raffaele leave her alone with the great lover?
Of course not. He doesn't want to risk losing her. He goes too. Not happy about that, but he goes.

The pair waits for Rudi at the basketball court. Raffaele is nervous, of course, they argue about the idea she had of inviting the great lover. They discuss and, also, every now and then he goes to the rail to check the cottage gate, just in case Rudi reached the house from another way. Also there's a tow truck in action there, so he looks down.

Will Rudi come? Of course. A gentleman doesn't make a lady (and her boyfriend) wait.
Rudi shows up, and they go to their romantic date with victim: Amanda and Rudi. And the third one, Raffaele, just taken away from an innocent, too innocent, movie.

It's not time for innocence. In this tale.

WITHOUT WORDS

What to say? There would be so many points to analyze that is impossible to do it here and now. We wouldn't know where to start.
We figured out a long time ago that Amanda and Raffaele had nothing to do with this crime. We may even be wrong but, to be frank, if this is the reconstruction, it leaves us literally without words. It really goes beyond any possible expectation.
The theory is full of interesting points but also of arbitrary assumptions.
At the first break of Mignini's speech we even congratulated him. The beginning was interesting, it was promising. But then...
If Amanda and Raffaele were involved in this crime, after hearing this imaginative reconstruction, founded on some important clues as well as on unverified hypotheses, they should be acquitted anyway.
We'll try to have a look at it soon. For the moment, enjoy yourself.

Comments disabled

Hardest Moment for Knox and Sollecito

THE TWO DAYS OF THE BLAME
'Return' to November 1

Sometimes the position of the defendants gets clarified during the trial. And the prosecution retreats and asks for acquittal.
It's not going to be the case of Mignini & Comodi, prosecution for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

Really many clues of guilt vanished since November 6 2007. But it's not enough. To have a prosecutor change his mind something more powerful is needed. A bulletproof alibi, someone else who confesses... something like that.

Manuela Comodi will be in charge of the evidence and will speak on the second day.
We figured out the value of the scientific evidence against Knox and Sollecito a long time ago, and, little by little, the rest of the world is also understanding. It's a process that needs time.
For Comodi not even the faintest doubt: All scientific evidence still stands, she kindly makes us know. Her experts, it seems, must have solved the problems advanced at the last hearings.

As we recall, indeed, it was explained at what time the postal police arrived and why it couldn't be possible that the call to 112 was next. For Comodi they simply didn't prove anything.

As we recall, a defense expert found human activity on Raffaele's computer on the night of the crime. Manuela, on that occasion, looked at her experts for something to rebut, but the experts, this time, had not the magic question to suggest.
Same for the computer activity that occurred at Raffaele's place during his interrogation, as well as the next morning.
But it seems that her experts, so harmless in the courtroom, did their homework: All problems have been solved, Comodi guarantees.

The declarations of the 5th are genuine for the prosecution. Their faithful soldiers don't trick witnesses, they don't mistreat, don't hit. Not in front of their superiors. And which Italian adult would tell a girl Stupida bugiarda? Brutta stronza maybe, but no, not Stupida bugiarda. And, Mignini recalled, Amanda, when asked, failed in saying who hit her (she may still say it tomorrow, though...).

The defendants' version, then, doesn't stand. Raffaele's phone was also switched off as the sms received in the morning proves. And his phone expert failed in the attempt to prove that it wasn't switched off.
There are too many lies. There are too many showers. Amanda's last shower, then, is the most critical one, since you can't go from your room to the bathroom and back naked, in a frozen house.

The witnesses are all valid. Even the two super witnesses, provided by a journalist in a quest for publicity. Even Kokomani. He's completely crazy, Comodi recognizes, but just because he says such impossible things they must be true.

Mignini will speak first and will provide the facts.
All the cropped elements will be inserted in his reconstruction. Everything will be explained.

Amanda, Raffaele and Rudi planned to attack Meredith on October 31.
Meredith, so pure, so innocent, was the perfect victim for Amanda, a woman --as her biography suggests-- of great perversion, who certainly needed something more exciting that making love with her boyfriend, smoking a joint, watching a chick's movie and reading Harry Potter.
Amanda was the source, the mind of everything. She easily took advantage of the shy and inexperienced Raffaele who, completely seduced, was ready to do anything for her. The quiet boy had, indeed, a violent side inside if is true that he liked knives so much, he was reading Manga, he saw a bestiality movie, he was practicing kickboxing, praising the monster of Foligno, etc.

They maybe tried on the 31st, but something went wrong, Meredith didn't come home. So they went to realize the game next evening. They went with Raffaele's car, maybe the plan was to bring Meredith somewhere, some mystical place like the Tempietto or the villa of the Cardinal.

They were too high with drugs and alcohol. The active principle in the drugs is not the same as in the 60s or in the 70s, it becomes stronger and stronger. And drugs plus alcohol can certainly stimulate aggression, it can bring you to lose control.
Meredith would have fought the aggressors, her family says, and indeed she did. But against three people and one or two blades there was nothing she could do.

While Rudi was raping her she managed to have her mouth free and she screamed. Amanda, who was holding the knife, pushed it inside.
They ran away but, while Rudi went into town to try give himself a quasi-alibi, the lovebirds remained in the area.

They stood hidden in the dark, watching the house from a secure distance and position. And noticed that nothing happened. When they were sure that no one had heard the scream they returned to the crime scene. Classical.
They found Meredith dead. They decided to stage a burglary.
They staged the break-in in Filomena's room. Raffaele stripped the bra away to give the idea of a violent action (because the bra is stripped, not cut) made by one person. They covered Meredith and started canceling their own traces, picking up all their hair with the help of the light of the two lamps. At one point they cleaned up their own traces also in Amanda's room and in the rest of the house.

When the cleaning job was over, at about 5 0'clock, they locked the room and tossed Meredith's keys. They returned to Raffaele's place, cleaned the knife with bleach and put it back into the drawer.

They relaxed themselves with some music and slept a little bit.
But Amanda was too worried about her traces and wanted to go to the house. While on her way she realized she'd need something for cleaning and waited for the store to open. So she maybe went to do some more cleaning, then she went back to Raffaele.

They maybe decided the strategy: when to make the calls to Meredith, aimed to prove that Amanda had been looking for her. When to give the alarm.

So they went back to the house to discover a strange situation and called Meredith and Filomena. But then Amanda realized that her lamp wasn't in her room and told Raffaele.
So they realized they had left it in Meredith's room. Maybe they fought about the lamp, maybe they accused each other to have left it there or to have tossed the key so early. Panicking they tried the other keys but they wouldn't work. So they tried to break the door. But, while doing that, they remembered the strategy: the others had to find the body not them. So they waived the door-braking and had another idea. Trying to enter from the window. They went out, they tried to climb, but they didn't manage. While they were in the garden, returning into the house to perform the first option, the Postal Police surprised them.

The others arrived and while they were breaking the door Amanda and Raffaele were aside, trying to make up an excuse for the lamp and, in general, fixing the details of their version.

When they came to tell them that Meredith was found dead, Amanda cried, she's good at acting.

Perfect acting. Just, while waiting to be interrogated at the police station the tension was mounting for Amanda and that's why she started to act crazy. All other times that she was facing something difficult, indeed, she would act crazy.

Etc.

The theory will work, theories always work.
Even the Ptolemaic theory was perfect. But today we know that the sun is in the middle, not the earth (actually they knew at that time as well, but...). Theories are one thing and reality may be the other.

We don't have to look at the history of crime to see how easy is to make an accusation theory that works, we don't have to look into other cases. We can consider, in the same case, the story of Patrick. For Patrick too, the reconstruction fit. The only problem with that perfect theory, fully supported by witnesses and evidence, was that it wasn't true.

I have to say that I will be disappointed if Mignini, in his reconstruction, waives the mystic side. That was the best part of his theory.

Such an event, indeed, should be as well placed into the cosmic forces that act on our instincts.
The Day of Saints. The Day of Deads. The Celtic Samhain. The Sauin of the Wiccans. The night of witches, spirits and deads everywhere. Halloween, which for the catholic church is an unconscious satanic cult...
If different human cultures produced such beliefs related to that moment of the year there must be a reason. There must have been, once upon a time, an unknown force that influenced mankind. And that force could be still alive. It could be important to consider it in order to substantiate the anomaly in the behavior of two kids, usually quite normal, but who suddenly turned into sadistic rapists and murderers.

Hope he will entertain us well. And, who knows, maybe Amanda will not stay there just listening.

Comments locked

RUDI TO MEREDITH'S FAMILY

'I DIDN'T KILL NOR RAPE HER'
And I am for safe sex

(Upd.)

At his appeal trial today, Rudy claimed himself guilty. Of not having done as much as possible for saving Meredith. No tribunal can acquit me for that, he admitted.

But for the murder of the English angel he wanted to address directly to the family: I didn't kill nor rape Meredith, it's not me who took her away from them.
And he hopes this court can, if not acquit him, at least recognize the extenuating circumstances. He recalled, indeed, the difficult life that the fates gave him.

He explained again what happened, according to him, that night. Same story he told to the first prosecutor, with just some little adjustments.

That evening, he says, he went to meet Meredith, since he gave her a little kiss the night before, asked her to meet and she, conquered at a glance, accepted.
He says he met her outside the house, they entered together and, when in her room, he says she complained about the money missing from the drawer and thought Amanda had taken it. My money, my money! --He says that she said-- I can't stand her anymore. After that moment of rage Meredith quickly relaxed, as she didn't want to miss that opportunity and, he says, they had some petting for about 15 minutes. Then he says they had to stop because they didn't have a condom.
Only safe sex, good habit.
So, he went to the toilet. While he was in the toilet he says he heard someone buzzing. Meredith went to open the door. We need to talk he says Meredith told the person, who had to be Amanda.
He, politely, avoided overhearing those private arguments, and put the iPod on.
After a while he says he heard a terribly loud scream over the music and went to see what happened. He says he saw Meredith on the floor but a male intruder came out of her room. He tried to talk to the stranger but it was a flash. He says the intruder hit him and made him fall into the living room. I was afraid, signor Giudice, I was afraid. The attacker ran away, reached the other person outside saying Let's go, there's a black one in the house.
He says he didn't have the time for following them but he looked from the window and he recognized in the other person the shape of Amanda.
So, he says, he went in to help Meredith, he hold her hand while he was trying to tell him something. At that point he says his mind went into a black out and he couldn't understand anything else.
And he found himself in Germany.
Still today, if he closes his eyes, he sees all red.

The Prosecutor Doesn't Buy the Story
'GIVE GUEDE THIRTY YEARS'

G.A. Pietro Catalani

Rudi really looks like an innocuous person.
He is a good kid, he wouldn't be able to do this, says Gabriele, son of the elementary teacher who adopted him, who showed up today in his support.
Giacomo Benedetti is away, but his mother came over, and with Rudi was all a launching of kisses.

Actually nobody would think this guy is violent or dangerous and he certainly doesn't look like a murderer.But Lombroso is dead and to be acquitted Rudi needs something more than a mild face and voice.

After his spontaneous declaration it was already time for the indictment.

Prosecutor Catalani, General Attorney of the Corte d'Appello, wasn't really convinced by what he defined a little tale.
Yes, this poor boy did have a difficult life --he reminded-- but he had as much good occasions.
And so, goodbye --for the prosecutor-- to the extenuating circumstances, which could be conceded only if Rudi were telling the truth about what happened that night.
He asked for Rudi the maximum penalty.

'HE RAPED HER'
'AND THE OTHERS DID THE REST'
No doubts for the General Attorney

Apart from the unlucky story of his life, for Catalani, Rudi's version doesn't stand.
The amount of injuries reported by the victim depict an attack prolonged in time. And, he reminded, death by throat slit implies a long agony. The victim usually walks away before dying. He knows because he comes from the countryside, and he remembers, how difficult the death of the pigs stuck in their throat was.
The judge-peasant has been picking what he liked from the experts' depositions of the pre-trial, and he's also certain of an attempt to strangle the victim. All these actions need time, and they can't be done in the space of two songs and a half.

Catalani wanted to remind to the jury that they have to judge Guede, but It's useless to hide it: there are Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito too.
Luckily, indeed, in Italy they don't condemn you with just a word --guilty or not guilty-- but the judge has then to provide a reconstruction of the facts.

And the reconstruction suggested by the General Attorney includes Rudi, Amanda and Raffaele, all entangled. Mignini conquered the Corte d'Appello too, it seems.

For Catalani the ruling of Micheli, a judge of known value and also very human, is perfect. Perfect about the decision, perfect about the role of Rudi, perfect about the role of Raffaele Sollecito, perfect about the role of Amanda Knox.

Catalani congratulated Walter Biscotti and Nicodemo Gentile for their defense and for their attempt to turn the sexual violence down. He saw in the success of that try the only possibility to take Rudi out of context. But the rape, for Catalani, remains. Just there's not the victim who can tell us, as usually happens.
The General Attorney has no doubt about what happened: Rudi raped her and the others did the rest.

Catalani brings us back to those obscure days of the judges --Mignini, Matteini, Court of Freedom, Supreme Court, Micheli-- who all saw that orgy of four people in that room. Even if they swapped one character for another. Even after having less clues at every stage (a trend that seems to show what the end result will be).

He's stuck at the Micheli stage, he seems not to know how many things have been clarified since. He doesn't know how witnesses and evidence did in Court. He doesn't know what we found out, like the fake super witnesses. He knows the papers, some papers, and the pigs. It may be enough for convicting Guede, it may be not enough for the truth.

But it's not him who Mignini will have to convince....

Comments locked

Remembering Meredith

TWO YEARS ONE LIFE

Meredith Muse of Some Say

Comments disabled

RUDI GUEDE KEEPS HIS POSITION

"I only touched Meredith"

Everything is almost ready for the appeal trial of Rudi Guede on November 18. The judges have already been appointed, with the President Giovanni Borsini, the Vice President Maria Rita Belardi and the six lay people.

Kercher's counselor Francesco Maresca met the President of Corte d'Appello to make sure that the trial, in case it lasts more than one hearing, has a calendar compatible with the remaining days of the one of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.
The appeal trial is, indeed, done electively only on the papers, it may theoretically even last just one day.

The speaking judge will summarize all points, then the prosecutor, Pietro Catalani, will take the stand. Then it will be the turn of civil party and defense. After that the judges will go straight to deliberation.

Coming from a bench trial, the process is set to be behind closed doors. But Rudi wants it public, his attorney Walter Biscotti reveals. So it's going to be public if an agreement among the parties can be reached.

Walter Biscotti has already calculated all ruling possibilities: the 30 years could be confirmed, or 16 years, 15 years, 14 years... Then he and his colleague Nicodemo Gentile will appeal to the Supreme Court, where, they have no doubt, Rudy will be acquitted.

As we know, the Supreme Court is the last stage, it doesn't judge the defendants, it judges the process. It can confirm the previous trial and its ruling, or cancel it, exonerating the defendant forever. In particular cases the Supreme Court can cancel the previous trial with rinvio, and the trial has to be done again. In case of a new conviction there's a new appeal to Supreme Court which will likely give the ultimate judgement.

Recently it became known that back in March an Albanian and a Romanian beat Rudi down to the ground in the Viterbo prison. Something that looked like one of those usual punishments among inmates, for those who don't follow their internal rules. The beating was hurtful, with hard punches and kicks everywhere, but Rudi didn't react. Or reacted in a legal way, with a lawsuit. Reportedly, the jail suggested to him not to complain, not to do anything (sometimes you don't know who's more criminal there, if the prisoners or the other ones). But Rudi, contrary to that suggestion, went legal, and sued the attackers.
Having received apologies from the two, Rudi Tuesday withdrew the lawsuit before the Viterbo Giudice di Pace (a single judge for minor crimes).

Lawsuits, apologies, withdrawals... Guede transforming a prison in a gentlemen's club is really something special. Perhaps prisoners will start slapping each other with gloves at every dispute now... At least it seems that Rudi found a real moral guide in his lawyers.

Walter Biscotti expressed himself about the semen hypothesis, which recently emerged from silence: I've been waiting for one year for them to ask for the test but they didn't. Same thing with Raffaele, I wonder why he never gave evidence. It can't be sperm on the pillow. Not from that day, not from Rudi, who just touched Meredith. Let's remember that someone has been cleaning there, so it may be a mixture of water and something else.

The body of the victim (covered in blue) lies just on the edge of the pillowcase, where the two stains were detected (see previous article).

Click to enlarge

As we know it seems that the semen dilemma will not appear in the trial of Amanda and Raffaele, we'll see if it will show up at Rudi's trial. No way his defense will propose it. It's up to Meredith's representative.

Comments disabled

Defensive Strategy for Knox and Sollecito

WHAT CAN'T BE SAID

So the judge refused the revision of the scientific results. And that surprised everyone. Particularly because of what recently happened at the Garlasco case, which runs parallel to the Perugia one since 2007. The judge of Vigevano in the short-track trial of Alberto Stasi , just when his sentence was awaited, opted, instead, for appointing new experts for everything. And those neutral experts are now doing interesting discoveries. Very interesting discoveries, which are bringing Alberto Stasi close to being exonerated.
We all thought that Massei would have availed himself of the brilliant conduction of his young colleague in Vigevano.
And instead he didn't need more advise, circumstance which was interpreted to mean that his mind was already made.

It's possible, but here we should have a look at how the status of restriction of the defendants can influence a trial.

Alberto Stasi is free. He will go to jail only when he will be convicted after a third level judgment. This allowed him to be able to continue his private life and the state could save the mountain of money necessary for the jailing, the escort and, eventually, the compensation for the unjust detention. But --which is what interests us now-- the trial doesn't have to stay within the deadlines of the pre-judgement incarceration.
The judge can keep on inquiring until everything is clear because there's not someone waiting in jail and there's not the danger that the defendant could go free by expiration of terms (he is already free).

Justice is going to be made, at its best, and no lives have been ruined.
Let's see, instead, the disasters of the pre-judgement incarceration. Only disasters and no benefits.

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, besides trying to overturn the charges, had to have a parallel fight for the freedom which resulted in the Supreme Court sentence. The so called giudicato cautelare of the highest Italian court is not only impossible to be turned down unless something striking is discovered, it also exerts a huge influence on the next courts.
It was in Amanda's interest to be present at her trials but she, instead, could even have gone home, her trials could have be run without her and, when finally convicted, she would have been arrested in America. And then Italy may even have requested the extradition.

Things went differently, instead. Knox and Sollecito are not just allowed to be around, they are obligated to. They are in jail, and the judges, rather than inquiring as long as they need, until everything is clarified --as it happens inVigevano-- have to be worried to give their rulings within the expiration terms of the pre-judgement restriction.

But anyways, let's think that Micheli last year ruled when he was fully convinced, and not because the terms were about to expire. And let's today think that Massei's mind is really clear and he's not worried for the length of the trial.

Is his mind made in a guilty or in an innocent sense?

By the questions he has been posing during all the process we could guess that he believed the accusation theory.

But lately new elements were added. The Marietti knife being the murder weapon was seriously doubted by independent experts. The window to go kill & clean got narrower thanks to the discovery of computer activity.
And we should remember that the disruptive emotions of the days in which the English girls and the police gave evidence are far away in time for the judges.
In other words we may say that if the judges are available to change their mind the last hearings gave them plenty of ground for doing so.


LAST BUT NOT LEAST
There were as well arguments that the defenses hesitated to present in the debate.
In the request day, as we have seen, Sollecito's defense intended to prove that the call to 112 was made before the arrival of Postal Police.
The strategic reason for which the argument was presented in that hearing can only be that they wanted to leave it as last, since the jury is naturally more influenced by recent facts rather than old ones.

12:48: it may be the Inspector (right) waiting for his colleague (left).
Click to enlarge

On the other hand, the judges may think that introducing that argument on a procedural hearing rather than in the real debate phase could have had the purpose to avoid the appropriate confrontation with the counterpart. By consequence the value of that proof may result weakened.

13:22 The carabinieri found the house as we can see from their car stopped in front of the gate.
It can't really be 13:22 since they asked for directions at 13:29. That means that the camera clock must be be at least 8 minutes behind. By consequence the real time in the previous picture must be 12:56, when Raffaele's call to 112 was just finished.

IMPORTANT EVIDENCE WITHHOLD
A substance between the victim legs

But it's a fact that the defense has been withholding some arguments and evidence for strategy reason. Useless to deny it by now since things are leaking: yes, on certain elements there has been a pact of silence.
But pacts are done to be broken (not by me) and today we can also talk about some important traces on the pillowcase found more than one year after the crime.

At a more attentive search on the pillowcase two stains on the side of it appeared like having a different color than blood. So experts used a crimescope, which, as we know, is a device that emits various bandwidths of light to reveal latent traces. Depending on which frequency it is used, the crimescope can show fingerprints, blood, saliva, semen, etc.
When used on the two stains, at a semen frequency, it confirmed that the two stains could be semen as we can see on the picture below, a version of which just appeared on Oggi.

Two suspicious stains on the pillowcase. The substance is not blood

But those stains have a relative importance in themselves, since they could even have been left on a previous day. The crimescope observation, though, revealed another trace, less spectacular, less visible, but more important, that we can here see for the first time.

Exclusive. The picture that proves that the substance is crime-related

As we can see in the picture above, in the middle of the pillowcase there's another of those shoeprints so familiar to us. It has the same white luminescence of the first picture, as if the shoe had touched the same substance of the two stains and then, in some way, imprinted it on the tissue. If that's true this second picture is particularly revealing, since it suggests that the substance must have been left during the crime.

The stains should be tested to know if the substance is really sperm and who belongs it to. But nobody required that test and the evidence wasn't presented in court. Why was that?

Useless asking the defenses, the reserve is total about that.
But we can understand that a contamination may have easily occurred, and if the test resulted a DNA belonging to Raffaele that would be a serious problem. Better not to take the risk, they must have thought (for not to mention that the defenses, for technical reason, maintain that there wasn't sexual violence).

Even for professor Francesco Vinci the reserve is total. But he's the wizard of all kind of traces, he's the morphologist, the number one in Italy and not only in Italy, the one who provided crucial results such the right attribution of the damning shoeprint at the beginning of the case. I managed to tear just one sentence out of him: I can only say that the stains look like having the typical luminescence of sperm.

So, it looks like the piece of evidence will not enter this trial since both defense and prosecution seem to be paralyzed by the risk that the test may result something inconvenient for them.

In conclusion, for a number of reasons, we don't know yet if that substance is really semen.
It could, for instance, be vaseline, which doesn't have DNA and could go undetected with the swabs.
The substance, then, is not were it was supposed to be. But close to it.
Looking at how the victim was found, the area of the pillow were the two stains are located may indeed be exactly between her legs. It's however difficult to understand why the substance should be only on the pillow, underneath her.
But, after having heard the opinion of professor Vinci we have to assume as concrete the probability that the substance could be semen. And we have to suspend our theories on about why the rape was interrupted. Maybe it wasn't interrupted.

And that substance may belong to Rudy or, hopefully for him, to the one who went with him.

Comments disabled

Judge Massei Doesn't Need More Science

STRAIGHT TO THE VERDICT
Request day with surprise at the Knox-Sollecito trial

They asked to restudy the DNA on the knife, the DNA on the bra clasp, the sexual violence, the time of death, the compatibility of the knife, the dynamic of the attack, the physics of the scream, the footprints, the luminol, the pillowcase, the computers. They asked everything and even more. And what did they get? Nothing.

It looked like they wanted to remake the trial. While prosecutors and civil parties were fine like this, and tried, successfully, to convince the judge to stay with the previous results.

During the 2 hour long deliberation, after the requests, Knox's lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova, sitting in a bar, was certain: He's not gonna give us anything. He has learned how to read the thoughts of the judge, it seems.
Things went exactly the way he predicted, in what turned to be a real procedural triumph for the awarded firm, Mignini & Comodi, supported by Meredith's lawyer Francesco Maresca and Patrick's lawyer Pacelli.

And actually yes, we probably have to thank President Massei. He knows how to write the script without making it boring. I was fearing like a nightmare going back again to the same subjects.

Listening for the nth time to the attempt to say what can't be said. Such as at exactly what time Meredith died (yes, this is really still possible to be determined according to signorina Giulia), if there's proof of sexual violence or not, if the knife is compatible or not, etc.

Those who didn't change their view so far were not going to change it thanks to new super gurus, torn away from their scientific conventions for coming to take the stand --under-payed and semi-informed-- on subjects that not even god could shed objective light on.

For the DNA, maybe, yes, a clear word would have been useful for any who still think those random genes can have a meaning, in one direction or another. But not even James Watson in person would have wakened up the open-eyed sleep of those, among the jurors, who's only thought seems to be What have I done for having fallen into this trouble?. Some physician could have been useful, actually, to study for them some new head-holding techniques.

The defenses did propose something new, though, just a little audio-metric expertise. Sollecito's lawyer wanted the court to order this new experiment: to measure how many decibels were needed for the scream and the noise of the steps to reach Nara's ears through her double-glass windows. This, yes, would have been amusing. But the judge must have thought that such research would be kind of complicated for an MIT department, imagine for a court appointed technician.

He did leave the defenses some hopes, though: Maybe we'll appoint new experts after the closing arguments. But nobody believes that. They know his trick-or-treats by now.

The President is in a rush. He wants to go to a verdict in less than 2 months. December 5, electively.

But, attention. It's true he refused the experts, but he admitted the production of all documents today proposed. Interesting documents.
His curiosity was particularly aroused by the record of Rudi's Skype conversation with his friend, which we heard at the beginning of the case. He didn't know about that.
So he's probably going to listen to it in the next days. Who knows what he will think while hearing Rudi saying that Amanda doesn't have anything to do with the crime. It will be ironic if no witness, or lawyer, or guru moved him from his convincement but maybe Rudi's voice is going to. And this document can be important not only for the President and the vice President Beatrice Cristiani. It could be effective for the lay persons, the popular judges, as we call them, who may have problems in understanding DNA, but Rudi's perugian voice can sound very clear to them.

LIGHT SHED ON THE ARRIVAL EVENT
Those patrols lost in an address conundrum

(Updated)

We figured out a long time ago, here, who to believe between Amanda-Raffaele and a Postal Police, not-too-heroic Inspector about his arrival time at the cottage.
Printouts, videotapes, sworn statements didn't count for anything when the logic and the geography of the place were telling us that the Postal Police had to have arrived after the call to Carabinieri. I didn't even waste my time in studying that garage video.

For some reason Raffaele's lawyer chose this hearing to explain everything about that arrival event.
The video shows a male shape seeming to walk towards the cottage gate at 12:48. Who else could it be if not Inspector Battistelli?
But a garage clock doesn't have to be the new standard sidereal clock at Greenwich Royal Observatory, and everyone figured out it could be wrong.

For the police it was 10 minutes ahead. And they never explained to us why.
For Raffaele's lawyer, Maori, it was 10 minutes behind. And today he explained to us why. The surprise of the day.

I'll try to say it in short form, just for those who already know the subject. The others can just take note of the result.

The garage camera filmed a Carabinieri too, walking towards the gate at 13:22 (of its wrong clock). But it can't really be 13:22, considering the Carabinieri's call-back of 13.29 (real time).
That means that the garage camera clock must be at least 8 minutes behind and that the real arrival time of the Inspector must not be before 12:56, which means about one minute, or less, from the end of Raffaele's call to the Carabinieri.

Calculations that work. Comodi tried to doubt them today but she didn't really manage. We'll see if she'll be able to dismantle them in the closing arguments.

The trial is suspended, so the parties can prepare their speeches and the judges can enjoy video-audio tapes and other new (for them) documentation.

The prosecution will start November 20. Mignini already announced: I will surprise you all.

Comments disabled

Computer Places Knox and Sollecito at Home

SCENT OF AN ALIBI
Will a song save them?

A click to freedom?

That has always been my problem, while trying (and I really tried) to believe the accusation against Amanda and Raffaele: finding something placing them out of his place. When, for this purpose, they proposed a lunatic and a buffoon, I needed 5 minutes to unmask them.

What keep on arriving, instead, are clues that Amanda and Raffaele were at his place.
As I was saying long, long time ago, one day maybe a computer generated alibi will arrive to save Amanda and Raffaele.

Today we can say: we are almost there.

Sollecito's defense gave its belated but effective answer to the computer experts of the prosecution, who always denied any human interaction in the murder night.
There are many computer actions during that night. But, the expert admitted, they are all automatic.

Almost all. At 00:58 something different happens. An access to apple.com, for trying to open a file with iTunes, a song, probably.
The difference with all the others is that it's not self-generated: is a human interaction.
It's just 4 seconds interaction, it seems like nothing. But it's a click, a finger pressed a key: someone was there. Amanda, Raffaele, or Amanda and Raffaele, were there.
And the window to go to kill gets narrower and narrower.

It's not the first time that defense experts have tried such a move. Remember how many announcements Giulia Bongiorno was giving out? Tomorrow we'll prove the human activity, today we'll prove the human activity, today we proven the human activity. And it was never real.
This time, instead --just when signorina Giulia didn't show up-- the Postal Police --present in support of the prosecution-- didn't have anything to say. They had to shut up.
So, today it was accepted that someone was at Raffaele's place after midnight and tried to listen to a song. A song which may save the lovebirds.

Amanda and Raffaele told us that on November 1 they watched Amelie and then, more or less, Stardust. Indeed the VLC reader does show the viewing of Amelie and then of Stardust, but it doesn't give a date.
The last access to Stardust is November 6. Raffaele and Amanda were in jail, so the police, while working at the computer, opened Stardust (everyone needs a break).

The problem is that access canceled the record of the previous one. So, if really Raffaele and Amanda watched that movie, instead of, for instance, going to kill Meredith, the proof was in the computer. But the police, by mistake, canceled it.
It's not that the running of a movie can really be an alibi, it can run by itself. But, for a number of reasons, it would have been a heavy clue. It would have been.

Interesting that Raffaele --along with Amanda-- was still under interrogation and the police were already using his computer, as you probably read around.
In the morning of the 6 they weren't really working on it, they were using it to surf the web. Murder of the english girl: two have been stopped. Like this the officers were reading, from the Ansa site. And they could add: and we are using their computer.

Comments disabled

Amanda, Raffaele, DJ

BREAKFAST FOR THREE
And other stories of November 2

Ex lovebirds at a glance

What did Amanda Knox tell us? That after finding that strange situation at home, after the shower taken with Meredith dead in the house, she went back to Raffaele's place, where he was having a breakfast?
And indeed at around noon, Raffaele's computer does have some activity: someone goes online. I guess today is the day for speaking about this, since a computer session, at the trial, revealed similar, interesting details. Even more interesting than this, actually.

We'll talk about them, but now let's see this one. Let's see who was surfing the web that day.
At 12:20 someone opens Gmail and sends 1 or 2 mails. Can it be Amanda?

To clarify our doubts let's see next action.

At 12:22:16 someone opens the website facebook.com/david.johnsrud. I'm not sure it was Raffaele. Probably it was Amanda, still in touch with her ex-boyfriend DJ, who was in that moment spending his year abroad in China.

After all, the English girls have told us that Amanda --due to her new affair with Raffaele-- felt bad for DJ. An ex-boyfriend, yes, but anyways, it seems that Amanda's heart was quite busy in that moment. Should we really think that she, in those days, was desiring even a third man and, in some way, a girl?


BEFORE THE STORM
Computer expert provides Raffaele and Amanda's web surfing

Today's computer expert, instead, clarified a lot about the evening and next days.
What was Raffaele doing on the afternoon of October 30, when according to someone, he should have been elsewhere?
When you plan to make a crime, you better inform yourself before. You need to do a good job, no improvisation is allowed.
And indeed at Raffaele's place the googling was frantic since the afternoon of October 30.

Searches, though, were not exactly "how to kill a girl and not been caught". Or "how to remove my DNA and leave the one of my accomplice".

Everything started with someone communicating with someone else through Skype and Microsoft Messaging: Amanda talking to some of her friends, maybe.

YET ANOTHER MOVIE
Or just a parody of its title

(updated)

Then it was time for enjoying some music. They didn't like Ludovico Einaudi's Andare, and passed to some fun stuff.
Raffaele --likely with Amanda-- searched youtube for "balla coi lapi", a satiric song inspired by the film Balla coi Lupi, italian title for Dances With Wolves, with Kevin Kostner.
It was time to relax for Raffaele, and enjoy all songs of Gem Boy, a Puglia group that makes funny covers of famous tunes, transforming them in dirty songs for teenagers.
He was maybe showing Amanda some of this prestigious italian music.
Here it is exactly what they watched: Balla coi Lapi, Just My Imagination, Just my imagination - Trip to Munich. I don't know how well these videos work as murder training but... Great performances, especially the last one...

After a Hotmail check, it was time for Raffaele to go back to work on his thesis.
He searched for "automatically defined functions", which resulted a Columbia University page. You can enjoy it, if you wish. It wasn't really what he was looking for. He bounced from that page to make the same search, but for images. Resulting this and a few others. Then a new google search, "lisp programmazione genetica" which brought him into this Wikipedia page, and similar others.

I know what you may be thinking. No, don't even think about that: with this genetic stuff he wasn't trying to inform himself about DNA.
We are talking computer programming here, just, genetics inspired.

After that, indeed, Raffaele writes to his professor: Salve professore, ho finito di scrivere la parte centrale della tesi e ho cambiato la formattazione delle pagine... Etc.
The professor answers: Non sono quando leggerò questa parte, forse nel week-end. Ne riparliamo martedì.... etc.
The professor wanted to to talk next Tuesday about the thesis.
But things went differently.

Comments disabled

Psychiatrist and Coroner for Amanda Knox

IN THE MIND OF A GIRL
As Dr Patumi is certain: 'that knife can't be the murder weapon'

Amanda Knox stabbing an assistant lawyer in July

He was still a student in forensic science when he received a bunch of corpses to examine, all coming from the massacre of the train Italicus, 1974.
Then his lab kept being crowded with fresh cadavers: from the bomb at the Bologna station, the gang of the Uno bianca, the pyre of Todi...
When Walter Patumi --one of the most experienced coroners in Italy-- says something, we'd better listen to him.
Today he showed some pictures from another homicide he studied (it seemed to me, I recognized the recent murder of Valfabbrica, which trial was also presided over by Massei).
Cuts of 5, 10, 20 centimeters, all made with a little painter's tool, not even a knife, which blade was as wide as 4 centimeters.
The concept is simple, with a little blade you can make a long cut.
And everything in the murder of Meredith suggests that a little blade was used. Even the larger wound, since two waves are detectable on the margins of the cut, as if the offender stroked three times there.

Another simple concept was that when you want to kill, you strike a blow as strong as you can. You are not going to use just half of your blade, as the theory wants for the murder of Meredith.
There's absolutely no possibility that knife can be the murder weapon --Patumi explained-- it would have severed her neck completely.

Private Coroner Walter Patumi

I'm not a scientist, Patumi modestly says of himself.
But these are the people who are useful to this trial, people who bring concrete examples, people who speak clear concepts, avoiding giving fascinating university lessons destined to sink in the cross-examination.

Patumi showed the judges the instructions of the sequencer. They say Don't go below 50 RFU. The scientists didn't think about bringing in this little document, and it looked like a rumor that a user shouldn't go below that value. Thanks to doctor Patumi now the judges know that if you go below 50 the machine can read pieces of DNA that are not from the sample: a lab contamination may occur.
And he recalled a mysterious contamination happened to him. A machine had been reading sheep blood instead of human blood for six months. They kept cleaning and cleaning everything, but every sample kept resulting: sheep blood. They didn't know were the sheep blood was, only the machine knew, and the machine doesn't speak.
Stefanoni's sequencer as well is never going to tell us where that shred of Meredith's DNA was from, if on the knife or in the machine itself.
Only the logic can tell us. The logic is the perfect machine. It's the same since ever. It doesn't need to wait for the last discoveries of the science.

Psychiatrist Carlo Caltagirone explained how situations of particularly intense stress can produce false memories.
And everybody attacked him. Prosecutors, civil parties. They all wanted to know what could ever be this stress Amanda was suffering those days. Why should she have been more stressed than Laura, Filomena, or the English girls.
Even Patrick, after hearing, wanted to release his precious opinion: Amanda Knox premeditated the crime and tried to mislead the investigations. He risks becoming the slanderer now.

I believe the problem of Amanda Knox is quite complex (and I will treat it at the end of everything). But besides thinking that she was misleading the investigation let's also try to figure what happens in the mind of a girl who finds her girlfriend butchered, and all the rest. For information ask the English girls, who flew back home, terrified.

Tomorrow geneticist Sarah Gino will take the stand again, with brand new intuitions. Which hopefully, someone, somewhere, will understand.

Comments disabled

Neutral Expert Dismisses 'the Murder Weapon'

'ANY KNIFE COULD HAVE DONE THAT WOUND'
End of a Myth

On the news. Special appearance of The Knife

Those who work at the Meredith Kercher case know very well that mythical day when a bunch of people coming from all over Italy met in a room to grasp the elements of a mystery.
The summoned individuals were all the scientists of the case, they had to analyze the gastric content, the hyoid bone, the neck, etc.
But the most emotional exhibit of the day was a knife, the most popular knife in Italy, the cheapest possible knife, the one that you find in all stands at the marketplace: aMarietti knife. Presumed murder weapon of the case.
It was introduced in the room, it was taken out of the box with all precautions, it was shown to them like a relic. They could have a look at it from a distance, and see, or believe to have seen, the groove into which the biological material of Meredith was found.

Exclusive. Scientific view of the knife.

Click to enlarge

Long time elapsed since, and that shoddy, banal knife has enjoyed quite a career as a relic and a myth. Everybody standing today, when it was suddenly introduced in court. Even if it was just in a box people were plunging down the stairs to be in its presence. Even later, when it was shown in a tacky cellophane dress --not suitable for the star it was-- people were elbowing to have the privilege to stand for a second before the famous fetish.

And actually yes, knowing that it was the murder weapon, it may be important having a look at it, it may be useful, it may be emotionally powerful to witness a tool of evil. But if, instead, that knife was only used to slice bread, than we are all a bunch of schmucks.

Today the judges' experts -- Giancarlo Umani Ronchi, Mario Cingolani and Anna Aprile-- were heard. They are nothing new, we know by heart their position --deployed in the pre-history of the case-- about the sexual violence which can't be proven, the time of death which can't be precisely determined, and The Knife which is compatible or, to use their words, non incompatible with the fatal wound.
But hearing finally someone neutral is not only a scientific pleasure, is as well important for the trial. Reports, indeed, count up to a point, and things have to be said in court, in the debate. That's were the proof is created.

No proof was created today about the sexual violence and the time of death, status quo.
But over the famous fetish the battle has been harsh.

Professor Cingolani has been stressed by basically everyone about the relation between wounds and knife. He has been treating, even with surprising positions, all minor wounds.
Until Amanda Knox's lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova brought him to say something very clear about the main one: any single-edge knife is compatible with Meredith's larger wound.

He could have revealed it before, and maybe we wouldn't be at this stage. What to say? Nothing really new for us, but at this point believing theMarietti knife --found at its place in Raffaele's kitchen-- as the murder weapon starts to be a matter of faith. Or of obstinacy.

Comments disabled

HOME

Sollecito's Expert Questions All Certainties on the 'Damning' Prints

THE VINCI CODE
As the prosecution prepares a secret weapon

Francesco Vinci about to start his testimony

But what is this scientific evidence against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito? A bunch of insignificant genes, a couple of unreadable footprints...
Is it that difficult to turn it down?
Well, it seems that is not that easy. It seems that a young biologist and some improvised police experts are staying even with acclaimed scientists.
DNA guru Vincenzo Pascali didn't even make it to the day of his testimony. Substitute DNA guru Adriano Tagliabracci was a kind of debacle at the last hearing.

Today Franco Sollecito has been playing his last scientific card to save Raffaele: his Puglia fellow prof. Francesco Vinci.
How to remember Francesco Vinci. He was the one who, in the early months of the case, looking at what was then believed to be Raffaele's shoe print in Meredith's room, performed the simplest analysis: he counted the circles and concluded that they were too many for being Raffaele's airforce-1. That's what degrees in medicine are for.

Not even that key intuition, though, managed to take Raffaele out of troubles. The prosecution is still attached to those indecipherable genes on the little hooks and on two vague footprints, the one on the bathmat and a luminol one in the corridor.

Vinci, analyzing the one on the bathmat, noted what is obvious, that it can't be attributed to anyone, it may just be useful to exclude someone.

Raffaele in 2006 went to a podiatrist. The doctor recorded his particular footprint which characteristic was to have a hallux on a particular axis. And Vinci sees the big toe of the carpet print lying on a different axis.
Morphologically, then, Raffaele's hallux is completely different. It's like a triangle. All things we knew.
But Vinci's today's intuition for the carpet footprint is that the little extension on the right of the hallux (red circle) is the second toe. This finding would be kind of important becauseRaffaele's second toe doesn't touch the floor, while Rudi's second toe lies exactly at that height. At that height, yes, but much more distanced (see 3rd picture).

Carpet footprint

Raffaele's footprint

Rudi's footprint

According to Vinci the part of Raffaele's hallux believed to be missing (yellow circle) was added by the police experts on the carpet footprint (on the yellow line) thinking that it could be the continuation of the blood spot above (red circle). Which instead he thinks to be, as we have seen, the second toe.

The only other readable part of the carpet footprint, for Vinci, is the upper right part of the metacarpus, below the big toe. It's just a small region, but he sees it as coincident with Rudi's print. All the rest is either missing or not defined enough.

With such limited elements Vinci is only able to rule out Raffaele (or the girls) and to say that the print is compatible with Rudi. And we can only admire his honesty and consistency.

By the way, Vinci didn't manage to convince the prosecution about his second-toe theory. Prosecutor Comodi, supported by her feet consultant, offered her usual irony about that. We will come to know soon if he convinced the judges, which is what really counts.

For the luminol footprint, attributed to Raffale, Vinci was clear: the only thing we can say for sure is that is a human footprint. But it can't be attributed to anyone.
Just, his calculation gave him a slightly shorter length than the one obtained by the police, so he can rule Raffaele out. It must be an old footprint left by Meredith, Amanda, Filomena or Laura (as all other luminol footprints). He didn't explain why one of the girls should have gone around with her foot wet with blood, chlorophyll, fruit juice, detergent, bleach, or one of the other many luminol-sensitive substances.
Personally I have already explained the meaning of the luminol footprints and why you don't need to have a wet foot to leave them. Who was here knows.

For the main shoe print on the pillow as well, Vinci found something new.
He also believes that it was not a single print. He, didn't just look at the pictures, he went to take the pillowcase and studied it directly.
He doesn't speak of a possible loose shoe (as I did) but he proposes the same concept, a composition of random prints (see the picture below, in The mistery of the bloody shoeprint on the pillow). The presumed end line above is left by the same shoe border that left the clearer line below (it has, indeed, the same curve).
He adds that --beyond the border line below-- there's another line left by the same shoe in a different position. So, same shoe, three prints, which, read as a single print, gave the impression of a smaller shoe, a female shoe. Which is not. Instead, it may be a male shoe, it may be an outbreak-2, the same Nike shoe that left prints all around. Here too, it can't be proven. But, due the similarity of the pattern, forVinci that is the most reasonable hypothesis.

As for the knife prints on the bed Vinci confirms that yes, it's a knife. He just sees a shorter and narrower blade, a clasp knife.

BACK TO THE PAST?
Talking about knives, his majesty the Marietti knife remained in the box, he will show up only tomorrow before professor Umani Ronchi, whose involvement goes back to the pre-trial, were he was consultant for the preliminary judge.

I WILL SURPRISE YOU ALL
In the meanwhile the time of the closing arguments approaches and the prosecution let me know that the scientific evidence doesn't count for anything. It's the second time --after the made-up case of the drug addict-- that the prosecution and I agree on something. Continuing like this we risk to become best friends by the end of the trial.
The prosecution preps its counteroffensive, convinced to have a real ace in the sleeve, a secret weapon, a key argument which will prove the lovebirds' guilt. It's so simple, the proof is not in the scientific evidence, it is in the facts. You will see, I will surprise you all!
The last time I heard about a secret weapon and a counteroffensive, it ended up in a bad way, we'll see this time.

Comments disabled

"Too Low"

THE GENES OF DISCORD
La Corte rejects claims against trial and DNA evidence

On the news. Beatles sweatshirt for Amanda

It's not that I like stories too much so I brought, to read on the beach, a recipe book. Biological recipes, signed Patrizia Stefanoni, published by Polizia Scientifica, Rome, soft cover. Let's see one of them, they are almost all the same.

Possibly make sure the lab temperature is 20-22 degrees.
Leave the test kit 15 minutes out of the fridge.
Prepare a solution mother.
For each sample 199 μL of Buffer and 1 μL of reagent.
For each standard 190 μL of solution mother and 10 μL of standard.
For each sample 199 μL of solution mother and 1 μL of sample.
Vortex 1-2 minutes the samples and incubate 2 minutes at environment temperature.

The directions were clear, but the tests results, after the 2 minutes baking, were often the same: too low.

Stefanoni's sequencer # 1 (she used this and a more modern one)

Too low, too often, even for the main item, The Marietti Knife, aka Finding 36, whose blade someone postulated to have been in Meredith's neck in that nightmare evening of November 1.
Knox and Sollecito's defenses enjoyed the same reading during the summer. They found the bunch of papers hard to use since the 300+ pages were not even numbered. But the return policy of the publisher wasn'tclear, so they kept it and passed it over to their experts.

Too lows waiting to become just low for P.S.?

The coroners found kind of strange that a too low result then becomes instead perfectly readable. Also they were not satisfied with data, which they thought were still not sufficient to justify the result. Apparently the defenses gave a big importance to this lack of data. Indeed I heard they had promised for today big issues (why nobody tells me things?).

And yes, both defenses tried to do something, they explained that without raw data, without knowing the setting of the machine we still don't know how we got to that result. And they filed a claim to the judge. A little claim, simply the annulment of Micheli's decree of trial. Which means to cancel the whole process and send everyone home, free. As a sub-claim they asked to invalidate the sole DNA results.

So, following the request the judges went to deliberate.
It was a particular feeling pretending to believe that everything could just finish today, and in one hour or so we could all go toasting at the bar with tarallucci & vino, together with Amanda and Raffaele.

One thing is dreams, another the reality. It was already amazing that, at the last hearing, Massei had allowed the suspension of the trial and the production of additional data. Maybe the coincidence with the summer break helped in that occasion. The defenses, following that successful move, were confident in another favorable decision for today.

But the time for vacations is over and Massei doesn't make gifts anymore, he doesn't feel like hearing subtleties. And came back with his ruthless verdict: the trial continues, the DNA results are fine like this. Whether we like it or not we have to trust Stefanoni. And that's it. This was, after all, his original position, which he suspended (or pretended to suspend) only for vacations...

Stop kidding, back to work, the trial resumes from the point at which it was stopped: Adriano Tagliabracci and his analysis of the DNA tests. At least, though, he is now able to use the new data.

Tagliabracci gave a fascinating lesson explaining why, on the knife, the DNA is a Low Copy Number and can't be taken into account, since we don't even know if there was actually DNA there.
Same --even if in a much more complex environment-- for the presumed Raffaele's DNA on the bra. The quantity there is perfect, but there are more profiles. Tagliabracci sees only Meredith's DNA in the proper quantity, the other profiles are, here too, Low Copy Number and according to him, can't be attributed to anyone.

The reasoning looks perfect for the knife. But for the bra, which is what he had to study specifically, he didn't really clarify things. On the contrary. He made a lot of confusion.
At one point it looked like he was talking a different scientific language than the one used in this trial. For the sex determination he pulled out a different methodology, through amelogenin (a gene of the chromosome Y). For the haplotype, Comodi-Stefanoni were reasoning on a 12 loci basis, but he was answering with a comparison on 8 loci...

Tagliabracci with Raffaele

He maintains, now, that the profile on the bra is not Raffaele's.
Even President Massei, not exactly a DNA specialist, managed to make him say that Raffaele's profile can't be ruled out and Rudy's can.
But the most unbelievable result is achieved by Kercher's lawyer Francesco Maresca, who, simply using the logic, brought Tagliabracci, the prophet of the contamination theory, to say that there's no contamination.
Which is the most obvious consequence of Tagliabracci's new position. If that profile is not Raffaele's why did you always maintain that it was Raffaele's because of the contamination?

It would have been enough saying, I changed my mind due to new data acquisition and now propose a new theory. But he seems the kind of person not really keen to admissions, so, his contradiction remains in the trial acts, and, because of that, Raffaele's DNA too. A result of which the DNA on the blade certainly can't benefit, at least from the image point of view.

What to say, it seems that Franco Sollecito has bad luck with DNA experts.
Let's see it positively, at the least the mystery, for the judges, appears like being still alive and we can enjoy some more technical readings.
And for next hearing is summoned his majesty in person, the Marietti knife.

Comments disabled

Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and

THE LONG HOT SUMMER. IN JAIL
As trial is about to resume

There's no disgrace in being arrested. Kings, prime ministers, archbishops, even barristers have stood in the dock. Remember the famous line of Sir Wilfrid (Charles Laughton), barrister, in Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution?

Kind of the position here expressed about pre-trial incarceration in the early months of the Meredith Kercher case. A position which still sounds incomprehensible to many people. Nothing strange: it's right going to jail when we are suspected of a crime. We should go to jail content, with high head, because we are helping the justice. Passively maybe, but we are doing our duty of citizens. And we should remember that our discomfort of that moment is nothing compared to the fate occurred to the victim.
But the duty of the state is to act in good faith during our stay, to reach the truth and clarify our position as soon as possible.

A duty that the state, actually, guarantees only theoretically, since it's quite common that defendants may be victim of prejudice, that investigations and trials take too long, that jails are overcrowded and often wrecked, and that basic rights of the defendants are often violated.

Even Capanne jail is overcrowded. Yes, it's newly built, it's a model jail, but it is already overcrowded. Yes, it's a jail for people waiting for judgement, but it's anyway overcrowded, even if not as much as other old penitentiaries.

As for the way defendants are treated it's amazing how everyone becomes super zealous when it's about to control someone who is in a weak position. We can remember --and I just want to stay at the known facts-- that:
Amanda and Raffaele were being walked in handcuffs, then removed only during the pre-trial.
Heroic guards have always been seizing and promptly delivering to the prosecutor or to the judge any note the two were writing.
Amanda was notified (falsely) to be HIV positive.
In the courtroom they still today are prevented to talk to relatives, have a guard constantly attached, and they are even held by the arms during the walk in and out.

Such measures don't have any justification, since the only real reason for which Amanda and Raffaele must be restricted is the flight risk, and they are no more dangerous than any one of us potentially is. They could and should be free to talk to relatives, friends and anyone they want.
They shouldn't have hands on, they should only be accompanied in the courtroom and watched from a distance during the whole hearing.
This would be a treatment consistent with the law, and with the culture, with the level of civilization that the law expresses. Such a regime, though, would be anyway inconsistent with the one granted to all other non-dangerous defendants in Italy, who are totally free, who can continue their private life while their own murder trial goes on. And I don't mean free on bail. They are free, and that's it.

We have seen, for instance, Annamaria Franzoni waiting six long years in freedom, been able even to have more babies after having been accused to have killed a previous one. The Carabinieri went to take her only after the Supreme Court confirmed her conviction.
We see Alberto Stasi continuing his student life while being tried for the murder of his girlfriend Chiara Poggi.
In Perugia we have seen judge Micheli granting freedom to the man caught almost with the knife in his hands, after having killed his tenant.
Even judge Massei ruled that Maria Gesua Rinaldi --accused to have helped the rapist and murderer of her daughter-- had to wait in freedom. He convicted her, and still left her in freedom while waiting for the appeal trial.

Alberto Stasi having fun with friends in Milan while being tried for murder in Como (Chi)

THE LAW AND THE REALITY

The principle is indeed that nobody should go to jail before he gets convicted. There are, though, laws for making exceptions and keep a defendant inside for years, even until the final trial.
Should we change these exceptional laws? They are unfortunately necessary, due the existence of dangerous criminals and psychos who would certainly offend again while waiting for their judge to make his mind.

These laws haven't been used, for instance, on a gentlemen like Luca Delfino --who was allowed to butcher another girlfriend, totally undisturbed-- and for hundreds of othermenacing criminals and freaks of nature.

Luca Delfino after having just stabbed to death Antonella Multari. (Mediaset)
They needed to find him still with blood on to finally lock him up

These laws are instead applied on Amanda Knox, because she is foreign and could fly back home as naturally as drinking a glass of water. By consequence, they had to apply them on Raffaele too, otherwise the different treatment would have appeared like a persecution on the Seattle student.

I would like to have seen Amanda Knox free on parole, without passport and with obligation of signature everyday at the police station. And if one day she wouldn't go to put that signature? And if one day someone would come with a boat from Seattle and take her back home through the ocean? At least she would be guilty of a crime for sure, guilty of escape.

In case of murder it may be our duty to go to jail, sure, but for one month, three months, six months, even one year, if necessary, and only if detention and personal treatment are fair.
Take it as a job. This is the suggestion I always sent to Amanda Knox. You do a horrible job for one year but then, at least, you'll be repaid with the interests, you'll be someone, you'll be rich, you'll be a star (and I dont' think I should explain why).
But more than one year is really a crime. No problem, of course, if the person comes to be guilty. But if the person is innocent, than no money could repay that stolen life.
Such a long detention, such a disabling sacrifice could be justified only with the person being really dangerous, certainly not with the sole flight risk.
If we want to take it from the point of view of the social cost, then, it would be even cheaper to control in some way a free Amanda Knox than keeping her in jail and shuttling her to the courthouse at the cost for the state, as it has been calculated, of more than 250 € a day. For not to mention the compensation in case of innocence.

This long detention, these super zealous, super jealous guards, this terror, these people snatching pieces of paper out of the defendants' hands, or controlling even their glances... We are in 21st century but what we are witnessing has only a name: an abuse, a barbarity. A media enhanced barbarity. An illegal barbarity.

We should know, though, that Knox and Sollecito didn't appeal against judge Micheli's decision to leave them inside, even if the law provided that possibility. And they didn't file to judge Massei request to be tried in freedom.
Those who really know the case have easily perceived that the idea of guilt in the judges is still strong, even after Amanda's testimony. This may have suggested the defenses that pleading freedom would have been not only a waste of time, but it would have been self-defeating. For not to speak about subsequent technical implications.

It has been particularly sad to see la signorina Amanda baking in a cell during this long hot summer while all people working at the case were refreshing themselves on a beach. Here too, though, we should know that the law provides the possibility that there's no summer break and the trial continues. This option was of course offered to Knox and Sollecito too, who declined. I guess it's quite normal, lawyers usually decline. Is indeed better for the defendant sacrificing another month of freedom, but having rested and tanned lawyers and judges, rather than stressed ones.

There should be, as always, much more to say, but this is in short the particular combination of events for which today in Italy a man and a woman can stay in jail before they get convicted and without having ever tried to flee. So, it's a combination of events, judgments and choices, it's not just one man's responsibility as the persisting obsession on Mignini, icon of the prosecution, suggests. Here we try not to have obsessions, not on Amanda Knox neither on Mignini. The icons are simplifications. And simplifications are the best foes of the truth. I prefer to study a problem in its complexity.

Judge Micheli --ultimate author of the present status quo-- does go to the movies.
It has been proven, it's in the trial acts: he watched The Fugitive where Harrison Ford, unjustly accused, is on the run. Maybe he watched even The 25th Hour where Ed Norton, guilty, takes the same option. So, he saw the American way, as depicted in thousands of American movies: escape.
Maybe he even remembered what an American writer did right after an interrogation with a Perugia prosecutor: he went to pack (he says that the prosecutor suggested so, the prosecutor denies). And this one is not a movie (...not yet).

This problem of the gap between what should be by law and what really is in reality would be worth a detailed essay but probably another of Sir Wilfred's famous remarks can be more enlightening.

This is England, --the suspect told him-- nobody should go to jail before he gets convicted. Something like that. Here, instead, is Italy, but Sir Wilfred's realistic answer fits anyway: We try not to make a habit of it.

Comments disabled

The Day of Rebellion for Knox and Sollecito Teams

'CANCEL THAT BODY OF EVIDENCE'
As trial adjourns for summer break

The bra fastner was shown today in court to the jury

(up.)

After the testimony of Sollecito's expert Adriano Tagliabracci, we should be here talking about bra clasp, contamination, and all biological evidence against Raffaele and Amanda. But things went differently.

Professor Tagliabracci spent a whole day trying to demolish all DNA convictions of the case. Little by little, though, that old idea constantly present among the defense rows, that procedures in the wonderlab weren't exactly followed by the book, has been mounting up, more than usually.

They always tried to doubt the correctness of Stefanoni's work but they never really had a precise argument with which to attack it. No law, indeed, obligates a lab to follow protocols, which are just private recommendations from the biological industry. By consequence, besides mer e doubts and complaints, expressed more in the media than in the trial, never a real, formal impeachment was brought against the DNA results.

But pitfalls are hidden in the debate, even when nobody puts them there, even when just the chance provides them. And by chance Stefanoni, speaking through prosecutor Comodi, made a faux pas. A little faux pas, but which could decide the case.
The problem in discussion was indeed that according to Tagliabracci the DNA on the bra clasp was not enough to have a reliable test. And Stefanoni suggested Comodi to say that instead it was the perfect quantity, being 1.4 nanograms. An ideal quantity. But that revealed a problem: why nobody else knew that measure?

Mrs Stefanoni has been kind of secretive in this trial, when she was done with the tests she just provided the mere results. The defense had to ask additional data. And the charts arrived. But still more data were missing. But the defense didn't really manage to put their finger on the problem in court --a problem we've always been dealing here, when we were reasoning that we don't know how that chart was created. Or that the compulsory presence of the parties was only formally respected, and we have to trust Stefanoni when she tells us that the result is genuine. What if she's wrong?

Amanda last Friday

But DNA is a complicated matter. Defense attorneys may have problems in explaining what else one may need after results and charts. And a judge may have problems in understanding the issue. Especially if he's one of those intellectual persons, one of those sensitive, honest gentlemen fascinated by poetry and religion, rather than impassioned by the alleles versus stutters dilemma.
Luckily the chance today provided an example of that what else: 1.4, the quantity of DNA on the bra. That number wasn't written on any document, Stefanoni just said it in court. Actually it was not the first time but today the defenses suddenly realized the significance of this information.

While Mrs Comodi was busy with her, by now, usual escape for smoking, the defenses, with the power that little number gave them, explained the judge that the wonderlab didn't provide all information about the tests, and this affects the rights of the defendant. A principle that a man of law can't ignore.
The time for the rebellion was mature. Bongiorno, immediately followed by Dalla Vedova, filed to Massei the request of immediate suspension of the trial until all missing data --quantities, registries, rough copies-- were produced, with the understanding that they will probably request that this evidence be declared invalid. The judge accepted the request. It's really true that smoking is dangerous.

Patrizia Stefanoni needs to bring more stuff in

So, no vacation for the beautiful biologist, she will have to provide a lot of data, about the activity of the lab in general and about the most important tests in particular. And when those data should be insufficient or if they shouldn't add up with the rest, the judge may erase from the trial some of the body of evidence: the DNA on the bra clasp and on the blade. Important ones?

And if the knife and the bra clasp should exit the trial what will concretely remain against Knox and Sollecito?
The two super (or super fake) witnesses? We saw how they did in court, we know who they were instructed from. So...

Mysterious December object

Comments disabled

Amanda Knox cousin:

'SHE WANTED TO HELP THE POLICE'

Dorothy Kraft, German cousin of Amanda's mother and --by consequence-- Amanda's cousin, was close to her --telephonically-- in the days after the crime. She was calling her every evening and she confirmed that Amanda was shocked by the crime, was frightened for the murderer being still around but wanted to keep staying in Perugia, in order to help the police and continue her studies. Amanda also felt so much like meeting Meredith's dad, about to be in town, to comfort him and tell him about Meredith's last days. A meeting that never happened.

Edda and Dorothy

It's not that we really need to trust what Dorothy says, because soon after the crime the calls started to be wiretapped and the jury could today listen to them. The new detail that emerged is that at the end Dorothy almost convinced Amanda to go stay for a while in Germany. But the police told Amanda she couldn't leave. And Dorothy advised her to go ask for help to the US embassy. For what we know Amanda didn't even try to go to the embassy. And an embassy certainly isn't a place where murder suspects can go hide themselves. But that's probably just what the police wanted to hear in the phone conversations: the embassy, the extraterritoriality. A concept that made them fear they could have lost their prey. When they heard that Edda was coming too, they started to be a bit more insisting in the daily interrogations to Amanda. They needed to close the case before someone could put their prey on an airplane or --in their fantasy-- hide her in an embassy (a fantasy that I heard repeatedly in the rumor mill). They became more insisting, we were saying, and they got what the answers they wanted on the night of the 5th. So the day after they could declare the case closed (and I declared it opened).

The Cells

GSM's expert in help of Raffaele

After the German cousin, a funny cellphone expert, a kind of Harry Potter older and more corpulent, was called by Sollecito's defence to save Raffaele and Amanda on a GSM basis. I liked him because he's the only one who noticed what I said at the beginning of the case, that the cellphones' villa is not really in via Sperandio but in via Andrea da Perugia. Not that difficult to find out after all. Just the ones who are from Perugia didn't see that. And who knows how many other things they didn't see (or they saw wrongly) if this expert had to come from Liguria to explain them their own geography.

We had learned a lot from the communications expert of the Scientific Police, when they testified. Today, instead, they were in support of the prosecutors. They are my colleagues, I work with them all the time, today's cellphones expert modestly reveals. But then he's more precise: I often give them classes. Indeed his colleagues/students have followed him today with attention, more attention than the sleepy jurors paid him, not to mention the judges, the lawyers, and the audience. Technical Harry Potter killed everyone's attention (almost everyone's) with his dry, long testimony.
He said interesting things and doubtful things. Nothing that could be proven though: cellphone science is a statistical science. When something is true there's always a possibility that, in reality, is not true. When he says I'm certain that cellphone was exactly in that point, he always needs to add: at 99%.

For those who love technicalities this trial is a great experience, in many fields. A fascinating experience that doesn't fit in articles, I'll have to speak about all these aspects at the end of everything.

The Drug
Remember when at the beginning we were trying to figure out if joints can make you lose your memory or not? Today a toxicology expert was called by Sollecito's defence to answer this and other questions. It was another interesting lesson, this time about cannabinoid and endo-cannabinoids.
The professor's point was that it has been proven that, when the dose is enough, one of the effects people have is a disturbance of memory and attention. Indeed the right drug-test is a neuro-psychological test which basically checks memory and attention and, according to him, reveals if you are under cannabis effect better than blood/urine analysis.

The subject aroused the curiosity of Knox's defence, and Carlo Dalla Vedova's slightly interested question was if one can even remember something that didn't really happened. According to the professor indeed: when you fail to remember you can even cede to the imagination.

Especially, we may add, if there's someone piloting it with sophisticated interrogation techniques.

Forbidden to speak

Comments disabled

CARLO TORRE AND

THE MYSTERY OF THE BLOODY SHOE PRINT ON THE PILLOW

A little step for a coroner, and also a little step for the truth
Carlo Torre before treating the shoe print

On the pillow, as we know, there's Rudi's Nike Outbreak-2 print. And then there's a less readable bloody print, the print 2.
I had announced, at the time, that they thought they had a footprint attributable to Amanda on the crime scene. That's what it was, the print 2.

The print 2 shows only a little part of the middle of a presumed shoe. You see the line that signs the edge of the shoe and fragments of some of the semi-circles starting from there. It's the same pattern made of concentric circles or semi-circles of the outbreak-2. But they didn't read it as the outbreak-2 because on the opposite side there's what looks like a fragment of the other edge-line. If that fragment is really the other edge than the shoe is little, and it matches a size between 36 an 38 (italian standard). Which would be perfect because Amanda has 37.
The zealous consultants, though, couldn't find a match with any of Knox's shoes. [...] In order to avoid new fantasies better waiting that someone else studies this fragment and provides the right measurements. Then we can start reasoning what it can be.

Like this I was summarizing, on BLOODY PRINTS ON THE PILLOW, after the damning evidence against Amanda Knox's disappeared shoe was presented in court.

Did Amanda Knox participate in Meredith's murder while wearing a pair of shoes that just happened to have the same tread pattern as the outbreak-2?

The extravagance of this trial wants us to think that perhaps she did. They maybe applied a probability theory on shoe consumer statistics to discover that yes, is possible. Or maybe they could maintain that the attackers were wearing an uniform. Everything is possible.

But let's accept that a smaller shoe with a tread pattern just similar to the outbreak-2 was present.
The day arrived that we can reason about this print.

The shoe print on the pillow case

Avoiding all the measuring part, let's go straight to the point. My question was if the faint line above could be the other edge-line, and the footprint could match a narrower shoe, a ladies sneaker. Or was the line above formed in some other way? Or is it an optical effect?

Carlo Torre answered exactly this question and said the second line was caused by a crease in the pillow.

If we think about that, we indeed notice that:
1- This supposed edge-line doesn't have the right curve to be the other side of the shoe.
2- Obviously the pillow case was a very irregular surface, even more than an usual pillow, due to the many movements to which it was subjected. And it definitely shows this irregularity. Looking at the supposed edge-line we do notice creases in the fabric around it.
3- But I think there's something more. In the sites indicated by the arrows, indeed, we can see that the fading away line of the concentric circles seems to appear on both sides of the presumed edge-line.

None of the two possibilities can be proven, with such faint imagines. Certainly, though, it can't be proven the presence of a smaller shoe.

But it's not all.
4-Why is the print so faint? By stepping on a pillow I guess a much more readable print would have been left, even in absence of blood. Since the shoe was blood-wet, then, the print should definitely be more defined and complete.
This reinforces my hypothesis that the murderer may have lost a shoe in the struggle. The lost shoe may have just touched the pillow, without the weight of a person. That's why the print was so weak, and so irregular. The tread pattern may have been partially printed in this way, and the movement of the pillow on a passive shoe may have printed as well a shadowy image of the upper edge, but at a height non compatible with the actual measure of that shoe. The result was a false image.
As we have seen, then, since someone was shuttling with the toilet for going to take towels, by stepping on one of those towels --or anyway on any blood-soaked cloth, even his own-- he may have printed his bare foot on the bathmat.


HAPPINESS OF INMATES

Forbidden to watch
Stealing glances at the girls

Great party yesterday for Amanda Knox's 22 years birthday in jail.
Edda Mellas went to visit her with sisters Deanna and Ashley. She baked a cake together with her roommates, Edda explained, She brought it to us in the visiting room and we sang happy birthday and talked.
Not all that exciting --Edda adds, revealing the basic sadness of the event.
Today Umbria Jazz Festival begins in Perugia. Official opening with a Paolo Conte's concert downtown. But the Festival started just in the Capanne jail, with a concert for the inmates by the Funk Off band. It started, and its already over for them.

Comments disabled

CORONER SARAH GINO ACCUSES

WHERE IS THAT BIOLOGICAL MATTER?
Doubts Raised on Stefanoni's Wonderlab

Gino after hearing

The geneticist Sarah Gino, after one hour exposition on the DNA answered Prosecutor Comodi that she isn't a geneticist, she is a private coroner. Every so called geneticist in Italy is a coroner, she explained, they just get more informed about genetics and DNA.
And she got really informed. She started to shoot 100 scientific words per second and, in some moments, most of the people couldn't really follow her. At some points not even she could follow herself, and got blocked in the attempt of expressing too many thoughts at the same time.
Those were the moments for a glance at her mentor. But professor Torre never approves or disapproves. Maybe with his mind he was already at his next cigarette, or at his next scuba dive. Preferably not together.

For the finding 36 Gino didn't have any doubt on Amanda's DNA on the tail of the handle, for testing which, according to her, all rules have been followed.
For Meredith's DNA on the blade she pointed out that it was a Low Copy Number, that it resulted after the amplification, that it was below the 100 RFU... All things we have already seen that undermine the reliability of that result.
Due the low values and due the fact that it was an invisible trace, as she also defined it, she thinks we are allowed to assume that it resulted from a contamination from the machine. Concepts always expressed here. The electroforetic run should have been done on the substrate too. How not to agree? (She means it should have be run without the sample on the substrate. The substrate is a gel on which the electric field is applied and, in case of a stronger-than-recommended electric field, if pieces of DNA from a previous test are around, the machine may read them, as it probably happened in this case).

On the wings of the enthusiasm she just wanted to say a bit too much allowing also the DNA degradation during the storing in an envelop and then in a box. But the degradation destroys what there is, doesn't add what there isn't. So, we can forget about degradation.

But how did Stefanoni find Meredith's DNA on the blade? Gino pointed out that nobody really knows. With the diplomacy we don't go anywhere, is what I always said, better speaking out clearly, and finally someone did it.
Let's have a close look at the blade.

A documented scratch on the metal
(from the Monster of Florence trial)

A closer look at the Marietti knife
So, not really a scratch. Probably Stefanoni meant that clearer little spot. If is like this we have to trust her that in that little spot there was biological matter.

What if she's wrong?

It's normal to find blood on a kitchen knife. Chicken blood, fish blood. But here the blood test was negative. No problem, we can at least look at the picture taken with the steromicroscope , Gino explained, which will tell us the color. If it's red-brawn we could at least assume that the substance is blood, even if we don't know if is human.
But no pictures from steromicroscope have been taken, so we haven't seen the substance. And we haven't seen not even the groove.
We don't know absolutely nothing, Gino said, We don't even know if there was biological matter.
A DNA test can't be valid if it can't be repeated, she underlined. Here the whole test couldn't be repeated. Only the electroforetic run on the same sample was repeated, which could only give the same result.

"AT THE PRESENCE OF THE PARTIES"

With a little help from their scientific friend
Stefanoni ghost-interviewing Gino

Here I have to remind how is the situation for non-repeatable tests under the legal point of view, and this may be surprising.
A non-repeatable test is valid only when the parties are present. This DNA test is valid, it has been acquired, because it was done at the presence of the parties, as the law requires. But what does it mean the parties to be present? It means that the one who makes the test notifies the parties that the test will be done. Then, if they show up or not, under the legal point of view they were present anyway, because they were notified to.
The parties did send their experts for the most important tests, about crime scene stuff. But they certainly couldn't live in that lab, and they wouldn't go for stuff seized atRaffaele's place. It seems, indeed, that only a civil party consultant was actually present for that particular test. And, as we know, in this trial saying civil party is like saying prosecution.
Here we have an example of difference between actual truth and legal truth. The representatives of Knox and Sollecito weren't there. But for the trial they were there, the test was done at their presence. In this case, when the freedom of two people is into question, what would you suggest to the judge, to consider the legal truth or the actual truth?

DNA AND LUMINOL

Gino maintained wise concepts, obvious concepts, such that it's possible that on the floor there could be DNA of people residing in the house. Even of people not residing in the house (as it happened, for instance, at Raffaele's place). And just by chance in two occasion they coincided with the luminol sites. If the police had been searching on random spots on the floor, out of the luminol sites, they would have very probably find more DNA of Meredith, Amanda and the others. By consequence the DNA found on the luminol-revealed spots can't be associated to those spots.

Her theory for the presumed Amanda's footprint in hallway and room is that if you go out of the shower you can have some bleach on your feet and you can leave luminol-detectable footprints. She even didn't exclude that the footprints may have left on some fruit juice that fell there. Two possibilities, actually, quite weak.
We had an after-hearing chat and she approved my little theory of the residual sodium hypoclorite pushed into the pores of the tiles by the pressure, etc.. (see FINAL VIEW ON THE FOOTPRINTS). Too late though, next time I'll try to have a pre-hearing chat.

The pugnacious attitude Gino showed and her habit of letting the thoughts out before checking them, were, at the cross-examination, quite devastating. The interrogation turned into a scientific cat-fight between she and Mrs Comodi, instructed by Stefanoni in person, until Comodi had to rush outside to smoke a cigarette at the same frantic rhythm of that impossible dialogue. At least this trial is making the fortune of tobacco stores.

But Torre as well briefly treated the luminol footprints. He noticed, as you probably read around, that one finger is shorter, yes. But what really counts is his overview.
According to Torre there are too many variables, even the exposure of the pictures, and it's not possible to mathematize something not clearly defined. A concept extensively expressed on this website (last time on THE LUMINOL FOOTPRINTS, below) and I have to say that it's a kind of pleasure to find coincidences in these scientists.
He then asked the most obvious question, that the all of us have been asking to ourselves: why the footprints of Meredith, Laura, Filomena and other people weren't taken? A question with no answer. But which should make the judge reflect.

Like this they were straightening . Like this they were measuring

Same point for the footprint on the bath mat. You can't compare a precise footprint, even with minutiae, with a footprint left on an irregular surface and which is even not complete. At least the full footprint is required, Torre pointed out. And on the bath mat we are faraway from having a full footprint.

For the damning evidence of Amanda's shoe print on the pillow case we'll see later. There's no rush.

President Massei Fell Ill, Trial to be Postponed

'I don't feel good'
Giancarlo Massei with side judge Beatrice Cristiani after Monday hearing

The presiding judge Giancarlo Massei caught a pneumonia. If the diagnosis gets confirmed he will be substituted by the President of the Tribunal, Aldo Criscuolo, who will go this Friday presiding the Corte d'Assise probably just to announce that the trial is suspended. A suspension which may last until September.

Best wishes, Presidente, to recover soon.

Comments disabled

Professor Carlo Torre confirms

A LONE MURDERER
And a frontal attack

Carlo Torre
Cornered on his way to lunch

It was a shame they kicked us out of the courtroom Monday --due to graphic pictures (which we know by heart)-- because when Carlo Torre speaks is really a great show. He reminds me the professor of Hitchcock's Spellbound who --unlike his younger colleagues-- certainly wouldn't be fooled by what looks to be.
Torre is a great character. To solve any scientific conundrum he has always ready a quote from an old treaty in German, his favorite foreign language.
He always has ready as well his classical answer, I don't know. Maybe accompanied, as it happened yesterday, by considerations such How can I answer to such a nonsense question?.

Those who are able to say I don't know, those who are conscious of the limits of the knowledge are the best. Let's think to Socrates, let's think to Wittgenstein who's principle was, About what we can't speak we have to shut up (just another old treaty in German professor Torre may appreciate).

But about the things he knows he's pretty clear, and for him the murder of Meredith can be explained in a few-seconds-action. The murderer put Meredith down. He surmounted her. He pulled a little knife out of his pocket, and he stuck it in her throat again and again.

I catch him after the hearing, while smoking his unfailing cigarette. I smoke since I was 14, he confesses, but I'm still a scuba diver. Then he suddenly throws his cigarette away, grabs my jaw with an unbelievable strength and, simulating a knife with his forefinger, he sticks it into my throat until it impacts against the angle of my right jaw, then he sticks it again on the other side to show me how the larger wound was made. He doesn't forget to make me feel quite strongly the nail of his thumb, since he thinks that's how the large bruise under Meredith's jaw was formed. He's definitely in good health. Even after almost 60 years smoking.
After one day in court and this private demonstration he drove all the way to Turin, while his young assistant Sarah Gino, destroyed by a three hours testimony, was sleeping besides him. She doesn't smoke.

The private demonstration he gave me works more than his morning-length deposition. He should have done it to the judge.

A normal defense wound against a normal blade

Different wounds at Meredith's hands

So, Torre confirms his original version. There's not a crescendo in the offense, there's not a group of people who wanted to do something with Meredith and turned more and more aggressive at her refusal. There's an instant attack of a lonely killer who grabs Meredith at the jaw with his left hand and with the other one he stabs her. That explains the bruise at the nape, occurred when he put her down. That also explains the lack of large defense wounds since, according to the professor, Meredith didn't have the time to see the knife.
Torre said to have scanned the literature and found out that large defense wounds are normal with big blades, but when it's just --like in this case-- a pocket knife, they couldn't have occurred. Something there is, though, so he doesn't exclude that Meredith may have touched the tip of that little blade in a moment. But he also makes the hypothesis that the injures at the hands may have happened in another way still unknown. Introna thought she may have touched a piece of glass that was on the floor. Torre thinks she may have grabbed, for instance, the murderer's wrist, were a particular watch could have provoked the little injuries.

As we figured out he buys Introna's idea that the stab wound on the right impacted against the jaw. He also agrees that the blade is no more than 8 centimeters long, since that's the depth of the larger wound. He agrees as well that a hand was put on her mouth to keep her silent, before the stabs. That's the only thing he changed mind about.
At the beginning, indeed, he thought Meredith was strangled and suffocated. Then he noticed that the hyoid bone was cut, not broken, and he accepted the idea that the suffocation occurred by blood inhalation. As we can see in the picture, indeed, the hyoid bone is cut about the middle of it, by a stab reaching it left to right.
But the dynamic is completely different from Introna's. The attack, as Torre always maintained, was frontal.

Looking at Meredith's neck one really has the feeling that two knives were used, since the stab on the right is just a little hole while the one on the left completely opened her throat. But Torre went beyond what looks like. He noticed how absurd would be, under the logical point of view, using two weapons for gaining control of Meredith (as I also maintained). After establishing that the little blade made the larger wound as well, he pointed out that some signs left on the surface of the cut show a repeated movement of the blade in the wound. It's like if the murderer was keeping on stabbing, even when the blade was already inside. That was confirmed by the state of the internal tissues, which according to him, are quite crushed rather than just cut.

It's difficult to figure out the direction of the stabs because the neck inside has a lot void. And, since the two stabs intersected each other, then, it became a real dilemma. The direction of the large wound can be identified by cut muscles, windpipe and hyoid bone. Torre and Introna seem to agree that the stab on the right is the one that cut the carotid upper branch for then being stopped by the jaw (as I felt on my own).
The jaw was not taken the flesh off and boiled, to see if there was sign of the impact. We do it, Torre explained, for carbonized corpses and similar situations. This time they didn't feel like. An it's comprehensible. Even because until the body was available the hypotheses were different.
So, Torre couldn't proof that it happened but he's the second examiner to maintain this hypothesis, which starts to acquire an importance.

Torre doesn't see the possibility of more than one aggressor. And when in the cross-examination they wanted to make him say he couldn't exclude the presence of someone else his point was: Sure there could have been someone else, if he was just a spectator.
If we think about that, there could have been even five, seven spectators, theoretically.

Next time we'll see the footprints, also treated by Torre, and we'll also briefly see Sarah Gino's position about DNA and luminol foot prints.
But, we have an appointment. Remember when, more than one year ago, the website revealed the existence of a a shoe print on the pillow that they attributed to Amanda Knox? A news that made all lynchers happy while many Amanda's friends turned harsh at me. But I was just reporting, don't shoot the messenger. They attributed it to Amanda.
Recently the prosecution consultants, then, demonstrated that the shoe print matches Amanda's size. I promised to talk about that when someone else should have measured that print. Carlo Torre didn't really measure it but he treated it in an interesting way.

They kept us out of the courtroom even when it was about footprints. Of course, really graphic images.... But maybe tomorrow, if you keep the kids away, we'll have a look at the famous Amanda's shoe print on the pillow and try to figure it out.

Comments disabled

RAFFAELE SOLLECITO'S FRIENDS SPEAKING OUT

The Day of the Short Knives

And also Raffaele's day arrived. The day of the pleasure, when all your friends show up, one after the other, to say how great and perfect you are. SaturdayRaffaele really had fun. That's what such trials are for, after all, they definitely satisfy your ego.
Yes, the mythomaniacs who came to point the finger at you can make you nervous, especially if you don't see the judge kicking them out in a bad way. But you know they are a fake and while everybody is asking why you don't react, why you don't say anything, you already have your mind on the sweet days of the friends (for not to talk about the even sweeter days in which the presumed evidence against you will be dismantled).

Four friends of Raffaele showed up to describe him. They all agree he was such a nice boy, never violent, super studious and respectful.
In the college he would wake up the others in the morning to tell them to study, one said. While everyone was trying to prevail on the others with arrogance he would remain always calm and expressing himself with reasoning. He was very sociable but he would hardly do crazy things. Like if the others would suddenly decide to go have fun in another town than no, he wouldn't follow them. He was very sensitive in the relation with the others and with the girls as well. He wasn't interested in sex stories. On the approach with the girls his feet would become lead, on e said with an expression, he couldn't make any move towards them (just his feet turned apparently normal the day he met Amanda Knox).

He did have a girl before Amanda. A girl from Puglia also studying in Perugia. And it was clarified that yes, they had sex.
Obviously is not true that he was watching porn. The college mates don't even know about that single porn-watching episode that was witnessed by the college educator.
The schoolmates from Puglia don't remember the famous act of violence with scissor against a girl, which not even the police was able to confirm.

Knives, yes, he always had two little clasp knives, and would always wear one of them, having care that it was displaying from his pocket.
And the joints? The drug? The stupefying substances (as judge always calls them)? Was he taking them?

Raffaele's clasp knife 1

Franco Sollecito is really in love with his son, he always defined him a marvelous boy. But he was disappointed in finding out that he was smoking joints. He didn't know. He wouldn't suspect it.
The friends from Puglia yesterday confirmed that they were all smoking joints. Judge Massei had a terrified expression in hearing again about this degenerated youth all ceding to the evil. Even students of law, even students ofPerugia's Onaosi college.

Raffaele's clasp knife 2

But what does it mean taking drugs? Who are the people who consume stupefying substances?
Let's have a little survey. In the house of via della Pergola there were four women and four men. And they were all smoking joints.
The group of Raffaele's friend was about 15 people. And they were all smoking joints. The group of Amanda's friends in Seattle was very large, let's say 50 people. And, by what it was said, they were all smoking joints.
Virtually 100% of the youth this trial bumped into has been smoking joints. Should we think that we had bad luck and we picked just a few debauched folks in a sane majority, or that maybe smoking hashish and marijuana at that age is normal? Maybe this is the occasion for people of high morality to start considering that the curiosity for an altered state of mind is the most natural thing at that age. And maybe they should be worried if they have a son who doesn't have that curiosity.

To come back to the trial (and to mythomaniacs): remember when we were reasoning that the testimony of the guy who had seen Meredith, Amanda, Raffaele and Rudi coming out of the house at 5:30 pm of the 31st couldn't be true? The friends yesterday testified that Raffaele was at a degree party until about 5 pm and he certainly couldn't have come back for the parade under the eyes of that 'witness'.

Comments disabled

A Carabiniere to save Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox

MARSHALL, MY MARSHALL
The mystery of the broken window

Broken window

As we remember Sollecito's defence, in order to solve the mystery of the broken window, hired, back in January, a retired NCO officer, who was a ballistic expert when in Carabinieri, and does it now privately.
I'm not a physicist, not an engineer, the ex Carabiniere had to admit, and I never worked on a rock throw before, only on gun shots.
Marshall Francesco Pasquali clearly showed his scientific limits but he did a honest job on the enigmatic break-in.

He noticed that the impact of the rock broke the wood of the frame, removed the dye, and pushed pieces of glass into the wood of the blind. And that the fragments of glass following the explosion of the window were spread in the whole room. All elements compatible only with the speed and the direction of a rock thrown from outside.

The reconstruction
He made a reconstruction throwing a rock of the same weight on a window of which the left part had the same measures than the original one.
The reconstruction confirmed what always seemed obvious, that the glass falls inside but also on the external part of the sill, as it happened in the actual event.
The conclusion is again that the rock can have been thrown only from the outside. Exactly from the angle of the garden in front of the window. With the thrower standing outside the fence and throwing the rock with one hand.
To support this hypothesis the Marshall filmed his reconstruction with a window set on a room with inside a bed and a desk of the same dimensions.
The film showed three throws to the left side of the window from a distance equal to the presumed original (3 meters) and they all resulted a similar distribution of the glass on the floor and on the internal and external sill, as in the actual case. They also resulted fragments of glass stick into the fibers of the wood, as in the actual case.
Good job Marshall, it adds up. But there are as well some weak points.

Weak points
1- The filmed reconstruction doesn't show measurements, and it's edited. So we have to trust the Marshall when he says that the rock was 4 Kilograms and the distance was 3 meters.
2- Glass fragments should have fallen outside the house as well, but nothing was found there.
3- The reconstruction doesn't include the case of the closed shutters and, as we know, Filomena testified to have almost closed the shutters and the police found them almost closed.
4- The theory doesn't explain how there could be pieces of glass on the clothes.

SOLVING THE WEAK POINTS

'Unclimbable window'

But, apart from these observations and the scientific limits of the theory, I have to say that this time it works pretty well. We understand that, as science, it has limits because the work was done by someone who is not a scientist and who is averagely cultured. But the concept, the substance, is sound: the study reproduced what actually happened, and we can definitely exclude the rock to have been shot from the inside, unless the presumed simulators managed to place fallen rock and broken glass in a perfect way, on the sill, on the floor, in the wood, even thinking the detail that the rock could have ended its run almost all inside a plastic bag, where it was found.
The positive points of the theory exceed the weak points. Let's try to solve the above-mentioned problems, since actually the Marshall wasn't able to, and got lost in cross-examination.

1- We have already explained the first problem as a mere lack of formal exposition.

2- Yes, if pieces of glass fell on the external sill they should have fallen as well outside the house. But, instead, we should say they could have fallen outside the house. Some of the pieces of glass had little energy and they were stopped by the blind. Having, at that point, a kinetic energy equal to zero they fell vertically on the sill by gravity, without the possibility to bounce on the sill and fall outside the house.
Just for a matter of coherence (of the others) I should remind that the believers of the simulation theory have always taken the fact that there was glass on the exterior of the sill as proof of a simulation. Now that they have learned this is possible when a rock is thrown from outside, it will be funny if they'll take the opposite hypothesis and maintain the glass should have gone back beyond the sill.

3- Assuming that the witnesses are right (Filomena: I almost closed the shutters when I left. Police: We found the shutters almost closed) we can easily explain how the window can have been broken even with almost closed shutters.
The intruder(s) may have indeed climbed the wall and open the left shutter. Then they could have thrown the rock from the garden. Then entered the house. Once inside they could have replaced both shutters in the original position for not to raise suspect in someone who could have looked from outside. Indeed Meredith will enter the house without suspecting anything.

4- I should remember that the famous pieces of glass on the clothes are not documented at all, they don't appear in any police picture. So, how do we know were there?
It's just because someone said that. Giobbi and Filomena, indeed, said to have seen pieces of glass on the clothes.
BUT --assuming that is true what Filomena said, that she didn't leave clothes on the floor-- now that the elements pro-real-break-in exceed the elements pro-simulation we are allowed to think the witnesses can have been deceived by a flawed memory.
In the room, indeed, there was a lot of confusion and glass was on the carpet too. Someone must have confused the memory of the fabric of the carpet with the memory of the fabric of the clothes. People were telling each other to have seen that glass in the clothes passing and reinforcing to each other the wrong memory.
With the data in our possession today we can say that there wasn't glass on the clothes, or, if we prefer, we can't say anymore there was glass on the clothes.

By consequence --unless someone documents in some way that there was really glass on the clothes, or some new element still unknown emerges-- nothing remains in favor of the simulation theory and, at our own private trial, the simulation theory can't be maintained any longer. And we finally have the possibility of a new reading of the crime, as we will see probably soon.

In addiction to this the consultant remembered that a stain of presumed blood substance with a hair formation was found on the window, trying to suggest that the intruder injured himself against the latch. The chemical analysis didn't sort anything. For some reason Dr Patrizia/Mrs Stefanoni didn't outdo herself this time. Apparently the beautiful biologist this time didn't force the machine to take some alleles out at all costs. Just by coincidence, it was black hair.

THE BOY WITH THE BALL IN HIS HANDS

The two days of the attack to Guede
And of the sweet thoughts for Amanda Knox

Rudi Guede with Giorgio Armani

A screen-saver that didn't touch Milan police

Saturday Spyros was heard, the Greek friend of Amanda Knox. He was really a good friend, Amanda was opening her heart with him. She was going all the time to his Internet Cafe to use internet and to chat with DJ, her boyfriend, or ex boyfriend, in Seattle. Amanda told Spyros that she met Raffaele and about how she felt in fault with DJ, who explains today When she moved to Italy we broke up, we were free.
Madison Paxton, one of Amanda's closest friends in Seattle, described the sweet hearted, good student and conscientious girl she knew, also hard worker and prolific writer, who would just occasionally taste alcohol or try joints.

But Saturday was the second day of the attack to Rudi Guede brought by Sollecito's lawyer Maori who aims to prove that the Perugian boy is the lonely killer of Meredith. It wasn't really needed since the truth is emerging anyway, but, everyone has his own style.

Madison Paxton at the stand

Christian, the guy who said he surprised a guy looking like Rudi in his bedroom was not heard at the pre-trial and was not found for the trial, where Friday or Saturday he should have taken the stand. It seems that he's abroad. So what remains of him is a page and a half of spontaneous declarations to the police.
Christian told the story of a black drunk man who, at 6 am of a hot September morning he caught stealing in his house. The man tried to escape threatening him with a chair and a knife. A movement very similar to the one Christian could read in the newspapers, of the murderer running away from Meredith's room and threatening Rudi with a chair and a knife. Too similar. Also, no feedback arrived for his story. None of the 3 credit cards the thief stole at his place, for instance, were found in Rudi's possession or were used in some place where Rudi was. Besides that, Christian was not sure the thief was Rudi. For these reasons judge Micheli dismissed him as a witness against Guede, and it was an obvious decision.
Often people who are certain to have recognized someone are mistaken, as it happened in a recent case in Rome. If they are not even certain then, and there's zero feedback, better not even considering their testimony. Christian wasn't sure one year and a half ago, it couldn't be more certain now.
If we want to be fair we have to cancel, together with Micheli, Christian's story from our mind. It never happened.

The woman director of the Milan kindergarten was heard. She said she arrived in the morning at the school together with a worker and she saw Rudi in her office. She asked him for explanations in a harsh way, even screaming. But Rudi didn't attack the woman and the worker, didn't run away. He was quiet, serene and available to chat. He justified himself telling her that he had payed 50 € to a guy who showed him that place, where he could sleep. The woman called the police and when the officers arrived they found in Rudi's bag a big knife he had taken from the kitchen of the kindergarten. Also a few coins that were in a closet were missing. In Rudi's bag, as we know, they found as well computer and cellphone stolen from the lawyers office. He tried to justify himself telling to have bought the devices at the Milan train station. Maybe he still didn't have realized the cellphone wasn't working but he was quick in setting his picture with Giorgio Armani as a screen-saver of the laptop. The officers sued him for entering the kindergarten, theft, receiving stolen goods, and detention and transportation of weapon.

Certainly this is a very heavy episode for Rudi. We recognize his creative lies but we don't really see a violent person. He didn't attack the woman, the worker and another person who arrived in the meantime. He didn't try to run away and he waited for the arrival of the police. He wasn't carrying a weapon if is true that he had just stolen one.
When back in Perugia, he will show up in shorts, singlet and with a ball in his hands at the lawyers office to explain that he wasn't the author of the theft (at least, for what those lawyers have told us. Strange lawyers, actually, terrified of journalists...).

Can this coins thief, can this naif boy with a ball in his hand turn, in a few days, into the ruthless butcher of Meredith?
Hard to believe, but he was there. He was in Meredith's room and his story of the murderer arriving while he was in toilet doesn't stand.

On the other hand clues of a murder committed by more than one person still stand.
As we know a witness heard two people running after a scream. Another witness met, at 22:30, a black person, who wasn't Rudi, having the typical way of walking of someone who absolutely didn't have to be seen in his face and didn't have his voice to be heard.
Introna's reconstruction, then, as we have seen, doesn't really work and didn't prove why Meredith didn't have defense wounds.
Analyzing the B & A at the lawyers' office, then, in which Rudi is almost certainly involved, we have noticed the presence of a quasi professional thief able to disable the antitheft. The burglar located the antitheft and disabled the automatic phone calls it does, something like that. A circumstance that makes one think that the basketball player may have gone to steal there together with a more experienced thief. And the mini gang may have done the same at Meredith's place.

Every trial is a lottery, you never know how the judge will decide and Knox and Sollecito's defenses don't exclude that Presidente Massei will convict the lovebirds.
It's funny to see judge and jury discovering this case day by day.
At our own private trial, instead, the case of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito is solved since long time.
Personally I've heard the prosecution theory in 2007 and tried to believe it. Then I've been looking for something placing Amanda and Raffaele out of his place on the night of the crime, and what did I find? Only a nuts, a buffoon, a couple of jackals and the evanescence of a bunch of doubtful genes.
Little by little everyone is figuring out, everyone will try to jump on the cart of the truth. It will be funny to look at how the prosecution's footlickers will try to change foot to lick. Or how all the guilt side supporters will maybe become just neutral, for then trying to sell themselves as innocent side.
Now everyone is good at maintaining the defendants' innocence, but all of these people have missed forever the pleasure of having helped the discovery of the truth in difficult times, running --with arguments, not with feelings-- against the scientific results and against the conviction of the whole police, two prosecutors, the Gip, the Court of Freedom, the General Attorney, the Supreme Court, the Gup. An unbelievable amount of super qualified people (at least, on the paper), supported by media and public opinion, who didn't have any doubt about the guilt of the two lovebirds.

But the case of Meredith is not the case of Knox and Sollecito, and it isn't solved for anyone.
It looks like Rudi has been grabbing the occasion of Amanda and Raffaele's position for trying to blame them and save himself.
If not at this trial, though, if not at the appeal trial, one day the lovebirds will be acquitted and Rudi will lose his excuse.

Now the ball is really in his hands. And I'm not talking basketball this time. He has the chance to tell us if there was someone else at Meredith's place and who he was. If not --defense wounds or not, two people running or not-- the case of Meredith Kercher will be solved, with his only guilt.

Comments disabled