"luminaled footprints, whether or not they were Amanda's and Sollecito's as claimed, proves that someone cleaned something"
No it doen't. Luminal doesn't reveal blood EXCLUSIVELY. I read somewhere, sorry, can't remember where, that it can also light up things like just sweaty/dirty footprints, no blood necessary.
You're absolutely correct. Not only that, but the Luminol footprints specifically tested NEGATIVE for the presence of blood. Every single one of them.
By far the most important evidence in a murder investigation will therefore be the evidence that is the closest to the crime itself -- evidence on and around the victim, as well as details stored in the brains of people who were present during the act.
the evidence against Guédé is such that the hypothesis of her guilt is superfluous -- not needed -- in explaining the death of Meredith Kercher
I think you’re begging the question here. Those who are convinced that K&S are guilty seem to believe that the evidence from the crime scene itself suggests that Guede could not have been the only participant – i.e. his involvement does NOT completely explain the death of Meredith Kercher. They seem to believe this for two reasons:
The various evidence at the crime scene itself of a clean up and/or staged break-in, things like the bra being cut off or the body being moved – hard to attribute to Guede because a. he wouldn’t have had time (is this true?), and b. little effort was taken to remove evidence against Guede himself, even very obvious things like flushing the toilet.
I haven’t seen any commenters mention it here, but one of the anti-Amanda sites, in quoting the Micheli report, seemed to imply that Kercher’s injuries were inconsistent with a single attacker.
Your post appears to take for granted that these are not credible arguments, but they seem like a very significant part of the prosecution’s case – and the part that I found hardest to assess without English versions of the Micheli report and other source documents. Can you explain how you reached this level of confidence?
FWIW, I'm not an Amanda-hater …my prior probability of her guilt was 30%, and I'm ready to revise it down. I’m just not sure I fully understand your argument on this point.
"little effort was taken to remove evidence against Guede himself, even very obvious things like flushing the toilet."
The assumption here is that Knox and Sollecito carefully removed their DNA, but did not remove Guede's. Isn't the more rational explanation for all of the evidence against Guede, and the lack of evidence against K&S, that Guede did it and K&S weren't even there, as they have always claimed, and as Guede claimed no less than 5 times?
Further, there's a lot of supposition about a "clean-up" floating around on the web, but no evidence of one. There's lot of talk about bleach, bleach receipts, bleach on the knife, etc., but no evidence was introduced to support any of these claims.
Another claim is no prints were found for Knox, therefore she must've wiped them down. This presumes, incorrectly as it turns out, that no unusable prints were found. In fact, lots of smeared, smudge, or partial prints were found. The prosecution's own expert witness on fingerprints, Giuseppe Privateri, testified he saw no sign of the place being wiped down for prints. There were lots of prints, just not a lot of usable ones, which is totally normal since the way we use our hands often causes the oils left behind to be smeared.
Also, to believe this theory of a clean-up, one has to believe that with Superman-like enhanced vision, Knox and Sollecito could see their fingerprints and DNA, and Guede's, and could selectively remove their without disturbing his. This seems far-fetched in the extreme.
In the bathroom, some of Kercher's blood was found mixed with Knox's DNA, probably from splashing onto a hair follicles or dead skin cell from Knox. Why didn't this happen in Kercher's room, where the orgy took place? No intermingling of sweat, saliva, or other bodily fluids- in an orgy?!?! It boggles the mind.
Last, a lamp from Knox's room, her only source of light, was found on the floor in Kercher's room, possibly put there by Guede as he tried to look for his possessions, or look for obvious signs. If Knox so carefully scrubbed Kercher's room she was able to eras every invisible spec of DNA, why would she leave her bedroom lamp behind?
Thanks for taking your time with your thoughtful and detailed response. I will go through each point in turn below. It's worth mentioning now that I don't actually mean to argue for or against the conviction specifically; rather I feel the prosecution case is significantly stronger than US media has generally reported. Also I'm neither a lawyer, phorensic scientist or logician, so I apologize in advance for any technical mistakes. I'm just trying to assess the information myself that's available on the internet and come to an informed opinion.
Certainly some of the evidence appears flawed: the bra clasp, the alleged murder weapon, the eye witness. But we do know that the Judge, and a panel of 19 legal experts, admitted these as evidence. I can't really comment on whether the blood trace on the knife, for example, is sufficient enough to admit the evidence; similarly whether the bra clasp can become contaminated. But the evidence was admitted, and strongly contested, consider and eventually accepted by the panel and the jury.
The DNA evidence: Firstly, I think the important point is that 4 blood samples from the bathroom were found with mixed Knox-Kercher DNA. From truejustice.org: " Yes, it does seem that the investigative methods were sloppy and not all samples may be reliable (I acknowledge that there are some problems with the prosecution’s case). But I have yet to read even one article where a reputable DNA expert can explain why sloppy police procedures would result in four separate mixed blood samples".
Also this site (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-24/will-dna-damn-amanda-knox-/), reporting on the Forensic biologist Patrizia Stefanoni testifying for 9 hours on the stand, notes "But perhaps more damning even than the knife was Stefanoni’s testimony that a mix of Knox’s DNA and Kercher’s blood was found on the floor in the bedroom of a third roommate, Filomena Romanelli [...] her window was broken with a large rock that prosecutors believe was used to stage a break-in. The mixed Knox-Kercher trace was found after investigators used luminol, a substance used in forensic science to bring out blood that had been cleaned up."
The bleach: The truejustice.org site has various mentions of use of bleach on the alleged murder weapon, shoes, and apartment (not crime scene), such as "A police officer who led a search of Sollecito’s apartment added weight to the prosecution’s assertion that the double DNA knife had been cleaned with bleach. He testified that he had been struck by 'the powerful smell of bleach'.". I agree this is far from damning evidence of a cleanup, and the lack of the recipe being produced at trial weakens this evidence substancially.
The Albanian witness: From the translation of the Micheli report, "Judge Micheli examines the evidence of Hekuran Kokomani and finds him far from discredited .. Hekuran Kokomani was in the vicinity of the cottage on both 31st Oct. and 1st Nov isn’t in doubt ... details which he gave of the breakdown of the car, the tow truck and the people involved weren’t known by anyone else.".
The police who found Knox and Sollecito at the crime scene were a different police force there on other business (the mobile phone/bomb hoax), so I assume at the time they didn't think much of it and so the mop wasn't detained as part of the crime scene. Sollecito said it was being used to mop up water that had come from a broken pipe under the sink; knox said it was to mop up water from the pasta spilt cooking the night before. Sollecito later sent an email saying they ate something other than pasta that night.
Your point that there were no bloody footprints that fit Knox/Sollecito doesn't match with what I'm reading from the report, including "bloody bare footprints which show up with luminol and fit Knox’s and Sollecito’s feet" by the front door, suggesting entry through that route, and "Bloody footprints made visible with luminol in Filomena’s room contain Meredith’s DNA". The source of this is all truejustice.org, but supposedly this is based on impartial translations of the freely available italian report. I have no other source to go on and don't speak Italian, do you think these are falsehoods? Are there alternative translations/summaries available?
Regarding the 'fake break-in', how did the defence respond to the claim that glass lay on top of clothes that had been disturbed during or after the attack?
Only final point, "Rudy Guede, who had committed at least three burglaries in the previous week", is there a source for this information?
Hi Nick,
Thanks for the response.
Regarding the bleach, no evidence was ever presented that anything had been bleached. This story took on a life of it's own after the phony receipts story began circulating. I believe the Judge blocked at least one officer from testifying that he smelled bleach, and was only allowed to say that Sollecito's apartment smelled "clean," because the bleach smell was not listed in the initial report, and was added later, after the false reports about the receipts.
Despite the deference True Justice shows for every bit of evidence that favors Knox's guilt, Kokamani's testimony was ludicrous. He claimed that when he saw Knox, Sollecito and Guede together, that Sollecito (a meek computer nerd by all acounts), punched him in the face, and that Knox whipped out a 16 inch (!!!) knife, and said "Come here you! I'll show you!" and that he escaped by hurling olives and a cell phone at her. His testimony contradicted his original statement on many key points, and he had been arrested on drug charges before his testimony.
Regarding the footprints, my understanding is that two bloody shoe prints were found. One in Kercher's room that matched Rudy Guede, and another on the bath mat in the bathroom, that was a partial. From everything I've read, the partial print in the bathroom is a mess. It's certainly hard to tell anything from the photos. At various points, the prosecution said it was Knox's, then Guede's, then Sollecito's. The defenses expert witness made a strong case that it was Guede's, but I don't think anyone can conclusively prove anything one way or the other because it's only a partial print.
The other footprints were revealed by Luminol, but what True Justice leaves out is that every single one (except for the two I mentioned above), tested negative for the presence of blood. If the footprints weren't bloody, they don't really say anything about the crime, especially since Knox and Sollecito admit to being in the house that morning, before the body was discovered.
There are two good papers on the footprints at friendsofamandaknox dot org. Of course they're biased in Amanda's favor, but not any more so than True Justice is in the other direction.
I'm not surprised that some of Kercher's blood was mixed with Knox's DNA in the bathroom, since Knox's DNA could've come from anything. If a drop of blood splashed onto a dead skin cell of Knox's, the result would've been DNA from both women in the drop of blood. And that doesn't take into account the sloppy (by U.S. standards) forensics work done by the Italian police who could've easily, and innocently, intermingled DNA which is, often, invisible to the naked eye.
This is apparently what happened with the bra clasp which was left sitting on the floor for 47 days, was moved several times by unknown persons, and contains the DNA of at least three other people (and those people are not Kercher, Knox, Guede, or the other roommates or their boyfriends). The DNA either belongs to police who were not following procedure, or was picked up in the lab due to improper handling.
In the crime scene photos, it doesn't appear there is any glass on top of the clothes, nor did the police present photos of such a thing at trial. One of the biggest misconceptions is that the glass was on top of Kercher's clothes in her room. If this is true, the intruder could hardly have ripped Kercher's clothes off before breaking in through the window, but in fact the clothes were in Filomena's room. She testified she didn't leave any clothes out, hence the claim the break in was staged. But Filomena also could be wrong, she certainly wouldn't be the first witness to misremember something. Also, Filomena was allowed into her room no less than three times before the police finally sealed it, so it's hard to say exactly how the clothes and glass were intermingled before they were disturbed. It's possible the break-in was staged, but given Guede's past burglaries, and Occam's Razor, it seems likely that Guede broke into the house. If the break-in was staged, the prosecution did not manage to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, at least not to my mind.
Last, I posted a separate comment with the link to the Daily Mail story about Guede's other break-ins.
The truejustice link previously posted here was rather better formatted and appears to be the original source.
Everyone should be aware that there are numerous errors on truejustice, and you should double check anything on there for confirmation before treating it as reliable.
That there was murder is a given since that is the reason for the investigation and trial. The presence of Guede's DNA and his own statements makes it plausible that he is guilty.
And let's not forget that after he fled to Germany, Guede made a phone call using his Skype account and said Knox was not at the house that night (he didn't say anything about Sollecito, has he had never even met him and didn't know what he looked like). Even after police pressured Guede to put Knox at the house, he did not. Until weeks later, when he finally changed his story and said Knox was there and had argued with Kercher about money.
The percentage of murder cases that involve multiple murderers is relevant to the idea that the evidence against G "brings her probability back down to the prior," and this percentage is much higher than you think it is (i.e. it is higher than 1% of cases, and this is enough that AK's probability will definitely not go back to the prior. In fact it seems to be in 10-20% of cases),
That may be true, but many cases of wrongful conviction involve multiple innocent defendants. The Norfolk Four is a perfect example. At one point the police suspected SEVEN men of the attack, even though the coroner said there was only evidence of an attack by one person. In the end, it turned out one person, a known rapist, had committed the crime, but not before four of the innocent served over a decade in prison.
For those who criticize Knox pointing the finger at Lumumba, again, look at the Norfolk Four case where the first suspect, innocent, wrongfully accused a friend, who then wrongfully accused several friends, who then wrongfully accused several of their friends! It might be impossible to understand the mindset that leads to something as wrong as falsely accusing someone else, but it's happened to a lot of people, and normally they are treated with far less scorn than has been poured on Knox by her critics.
Sorry, the clothes were strewn across the room innocently? By whom? For what possible reason? If the girl who lived in the room hadn't said anything about the matter I'd assume she was just messy. But that wasn't her testimony. The matter of the glass on top of the clothes depends on how much glass was found on top of the clothes. But I agree that it could have happened even if the window was broken first.
The two cell phones weren't being stolen isn't evidence that someone broke to steal them since they ended up tossed in someone's garden and not sold to someone. Something else might have been stolen but 1) the roommates and the family of the victim are probably capable of making a good accounting of Kercher's valuable possessions. Presumably this was done by the police, though their competence is definitely suspect at this point. And 2) it is improbable that someone breaking in to steal things would only happen to steal those things which belonged to the person they also killed and only those things her family and friends wouldn't notice missing.
The story that actually explains that a burglary without missing property is that the thief entered, was surprised by Kertcher, killed her (and raped her?) and then panicked and decided not to steal anything for fear it would implicate them.
And let's not forget, that many stranger-on-stranger rapes are burglaries and crimes of opportunity.
Rudy Guede, who had committed at least three burglaries in the previous week
Jeeze, how did I miss that. Do you have a link?
Edit: Also. New people! Welcome.
Sorry, my post contained an error. It was three burglaries in five weeks, not one week.
This is from an article at the Daily Mail entitled "Amanda Knox: The Troubling Doubts Over Foxy Knoxy's Role in Meredith Kercher's Murder."
Here's the link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1234298/Amanda-Knox-The-troubling-doubts-Foxy-Knoxys-role-Meredith-Kerchers-murder.html
And the pertinent text from the article:
On September 27, 2007 - five weeks before the killing - Perugia bar tender Cristian Tramantano heard a noise downstairs in his home and found Guede wandering around with a large knife. Tramantano recognised Guede from his work in a nightclub.
There was a confrontation between the two, which ended when Guede ran away. On four occasions, Tramantano went to Perugia's central police station to report the break-in, identify Guede as the culprit and to detail how the intruder was armed and threatened him.
On each occasion, he says he was ignored and the police refused to log his complaint.
The following weekend, there was a break-in at an English-speaking nursery school in Milan in which 2,000 euros and a digital camera were stolen. The school owner, Maria Antoinette Salvadori del Prato, reported it to her local police station.
Three weeks later, on Saturday, October 27 - one week before the murder - Mrs Prato arrived at the school early in the morning with a locksmith to replace the front door, only to be confronted by Guede standing in the main entrance.
Police were called and Guede questioned. A stolen laptop, digital camera and ten-inch kitchen knife were found in his backpack.
But instead of being arrested and charged, Guede was merely escorted to Milan central railway station and placed on a train back to Perugia.
In the interim, on the weekend of October 13, there had been a break-in at the office of lawyers Paolo Brocchi and Luigi Palazzoli, in which a firstfloor window was smashed - similar to the break-in at Meredith's house. A computer and other items were stolen.
They were later found in Guede's possession, but he was not arrested or charged.
I posted this in response to the Hacker News thread but i wanted to cross-post it here. I appologise for not having read all the comments here first before responding. It seems your post is largely misrepresenting the facts of the case.
Have you read the judge's summary?
http://www.zimbio.com/Amanda+Knox/articles/58/Understanding+Micheli+2+Judge+Micheli+Rejected
A few key points in the prosecutions case:
Certainly, we can ignore some of the strange behaviour of the convicted (the phone calls, the lies, her past). But the case is much stronger than what this article makes out. It's also worth pointing out that various aspects reported in the media aren't correct - such as the 14-hour interrogation and police violence.
Rational thought takes anyone first to the conclusion that there was more than one killer. Guede left the scene soon after the murder (eye witness reports; evidence of cleaning, Guede's own statement). It is clear the crime scene was later returned to, and altered to cover evidence (faked break-in; footprints; removal of bra from the body). With all the additional evidence against Knox and Sollecito, physical and circumstantial, clear motive, and consitantly irrational behaviour, gives a very strong prosecution case.
Whether they are guilty or not isn't for me to say, nor would i think i'm qualified enough to give such probabilities. But the case appears to be largely misrepresented in your blog post.
Hi Nick, While I appreciate that you don't seem to be one of the irrational Knox haters, your comments about the evidence contain a couple of errors, and the one that don't leave out some important facts which cast doubt on almost every single claim.
-Yes, Knox's DNA was founded mingled with Kercher's, but almost all of it was in the bathroom they shared. It would've been almost impossible NOT to find a few instances of their DNA mixed in such a small place, and a place where humans shed copious amounts of hair and skin cells, and even blood (shaving cuts, etc.).
-Not one shred of Knox's DNA was found in Kercher's room. The idea that she somehow managed to remove every microscopic shred of her DNA, while leaving Rudy Guede's behind, is completely implausible. This alone casts enormous doubt on the prosecution's theory. DNA in the bathroom simply proves Knox and Kercher lived together. A total lack of DNA in Kercher's room is compelling evidence she was not at the scene of the crime.
-No traces of bleach were found at the crime scene. Numerous rumors about bleach are clogging message boards all over the internet, including false stories about receipts which showed Knox buying bleach twice the morning after the murder, but those stories did not pan out and were not presented at trial. One witness emerged, seven months AFTER the murder, to say he saw Knox buy bleach in his store, but his co-worker said he was lying. This testimony must be treated skeptically, since no traces of bleach were found at the crime scene. The crime scene was extensively examined using Luminol, and in addition to revealing blood, Luminol illuminates trace amounts of bleach.
-The Albanian witness who says he says Knox and Sollecito with Guede is the only person to allege that the three knew each other, and his testimony at the trial was contradictory and underwhelming, to say the least. Throughout his interrogation and trial, Guede denied knowing Knox or Sollecito, and denied they were at the house. He knew what Amanda looked like, as he had twice visited the downstairs neighbors to play basketball, but didn't even know what Sollecito looked like.
-Knox and Sollecito had taken the mop to Sollecito's house to mop up water that had come from a broken pipe under the sink. Was any blood or DNA found on the mop?
-Whether or not the bloody footprint on the bath mat matches Sollecito or Guede is highly debatable. Another bloody footprint, found in Kercher's room, was a definitive match for Guede. Although people have posted claims about bloody footprints revealed using Luminol, those prints were left by sweat and oil, and tested negative for any trace of blood.
Briefly, on a few other points, the prosecution's fingerprint expert said it was not unusual that he didn't find usable prints for Knox in her own bedroom. There were lots of smeared prints (fingerprints, made by a tiny amount of oil on our skin, are easily disturbed), just no USABLE prints. Lots of smeared and partial prints is evidence the room was NOT wiped down, and he testified he saw no evidence of a wipe down.
Last, the so-called "fake" break-in is highly contentious issue and neither conclusion can be viewed as beyond doubt. The prosecution tried to say it's impossible to climb the wall (ignoring photos of a 40-year old Italian detective in dress slacks and dress shoes easily scaling the bars on the window below), but Judge Micheli dismissed them, noting that anyone in reasonable shape could've easily climbed into the window. Rudy Guede, who had committed at least three burglaries in the previous week, was 20 years old, and a former semi-pro athlete.
But again, I appreciate your rational approach to the evidence, and respect your opinion. It's nice to see someone on the internet talking about the evidence, and not just Knox's immature behavior.
Cheers, Matt
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Thanks for taking your time with your thoughtful and detailed response. I will go through each point in turn below. It's worth mentioning now that I don't actually mean to argue for or against the conviction specifically; rather I feel the prosecution case is significantly stronger than US media has generally reported. Also I'm neither a lawyer, phorensic scientist or logician, so I apologize in advance for any technical mistakes. I'm just trying to assess the information myself that's available on the internet and come to an informed opinion.
Certainly some of the evidence appears flawed: the bra clasp, the alleged murder weapon, the eye witness. But we do know that the Judge, and a panel of 19 legal experts, admitted these as evidence. I can't really comment on whether the blood trace on the knife, for example, is sufficient enough to admit the evidence; similarly whether the bra clasp can become contaminated. But the evidence was admitted, and strongly contested, consider and eventually accepted by the panel and the jury.
The DNA evidence: Firstly, I think the important point is that 4 blood samples from the bathroom were found with mixed Knox-Kercher DNA. From truejustice.org: " Yes, it does seem that the investigative methods were sloppy and not all samples may be reliable (I acknowledge that there are some problems with the prosecution’s case). But I have yet to read even one article where a reputable DNA expert can explain why sloppy police procedures would result in four separate mixed blood samples".
Also this site (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-24/will-dna-damn-amanda-knox-/), reporting on the Forensic biologist Patrizia Stefanoni testifying for 9 hours on the stand, notes "But perhaps more damning even than the knife was Stefanoni’s testimony that a mix of Knox’s DNA and Kercher’s blood was found on the floor in the bedroom of a third roommate, Filomena Romanelli [...] her window was broken with a large rock that prosecutors believe was used to stage a break-in. The mixed Knox-Kercher trace was found after investigators used luminol, a substance used in forensic science to bring out blood that had been cleaned up."
The bleach: The truejustice.org site has various mentions of use of bleach on the alleged murder weapon, shoes, and apartment (not crime scene), such as "A police officer who led a search of Sollecito’s apartment added weight to the prosecution’s assertion that the double DNA knife had been cleaned with bleach. He testified that he had been struck by 'the powerful smell of bleach'.". I agree this is far from damning evidence of a cleanup, and the lack of the recipe being produced at trial weakens this evidence substancially.
The Albanian witness: From the translation of the Micheli report, "Judge Micheli examines the evidence of Hekuran Kokomani and finds him far from discredited .. Hekuran Kokomani was in the vicinity of the cottage on both 31st Oct. and 1st Nov isn’t in doubt ... details which he gave of the breakdown of the car, the tow truck and the people involved weren’t known by anyone else.".
The police who found Knox and Sollecito at the crime scene were a different police force there on other business (the mobile phone/bomb hoax), so I assume at the time they didn't think much of it and so the mop wasn't detained as part of the crime scene. Sollecito said it was being used to mop up water that had come from a broken pipe under the sink; knox said it was to mop up water from the pasta spilt cooking the night before. Sollecito later sent an email saying they ate something other than pasta that night.
Your point that there were no bloody footprints that fit Knox/Sollecito doesn't match with what I'm reading from the report, including "bloody bare footprints which show up with luminol and fit Knox’s and Sollecito’s feet" by the front door, suggesting entry through that route, and "Bloody footprints made visible with luminol in Filomena’s room contain Meredith’s DNA". The source of this is all truejustice.org, but supposedly this is based on impartial translations of the freely available italian report. I have no other source to go on and don't speak Italian, do you think these are falsehoods? Are there alternative translations/summaries available?
Regarding the 'fake break-in', how did the defence respond to the claim that glass lay on top of clothes that had been disturbed during or after the attack?
Only final point, "Rudy Guede, who had committed at least three burglaries in the previous week", is there a source for this information?
Two more tidbits re: Kokomani (from annebremner.com):
To give you an example of how absurd it got, Kokomani said that when Amanda was yelling at him, he noticed a wide gap between her front teeth. So the judge asked Amanda to smile, and she did. There is no gap between her front teeth.
Nor could Kokomani have had a beer with Amanda and her Italian uncle in July of last year, as he claimed in court, because Amanda was not in Italy at that time and she does not have an Italian uncle.