All of erica's Comments + Replies

erica00

What about the knife wounds?

Were the wounds consistent with different knives or not?

If they were,

and if it is true that the bathmat print was Raff's, and other prints were wiped off the floor, then:

Is it theoretically possible that Raff walked into the room and stabbed a dying woman? - that would not lead to leaving DNA only on the floor and the knife - which may have been a different knife, from the one in the flat, and was discarded and never found?

Surely, if the jury convicted on the basis of the prosecution's story then they must have gone into detail... (read more)

erica-20

I just want to say thanks for your posts, I have found them very interesting.

If the trial has been corrupted then one has to ask why the judge(s) involved would collude in such high profile corruption - that in itself seems unlikely unless there is an unsopken intention to reverse the verdict at appeal, having given the US 'a dose of it's own'. But that seems far fetched. Corruption happens for a reason and those reasons are also traceable.

Your argument that conviction was secured on the basis of a fanciful explanation but not without reason is persuasive.... (read more)

erica10

Are you sure semen was found? I've read elsewhere this was a manual rape - still leaves DNA inside but not necc. semen.

0Eliezer Yudkowsky
Nope, not sure offhand.
0wedrifid
Manual rape? I'm not familiar with that term and a meaning fitting those criteria (DNA but not semen) isn't obvious. I can only assume that 'manual' refers to, well, the last part of it. I wouldn't have expected that kind of rape if murder was going to be on the cards and I would also expect semen around somewhere, showing up with luminol. So perhaps something else is meant.
erica-40

or it could be that Knox and Sollicitos' behaviours were so irrational that it is harder to fathom what the evidence means:

  1. they both retracted statements
  2. Italy's legal system has been praised as well as criticised
  3. the footprint on the bath mat paradox
  4. the picture on S's blog
  5. K's rape story
  6. the verdict is for 'involvement' not physical action
  7. capacity to be irrational induced by drugs, hormones, a generational obssession with the supernatural, and the perennial boredom of the over-educated bourgeoisie

I reckon that whatever happened that night, K/S got ... (read more)

erica-20

The parapsychologists aren't describing it, but musicians often talk as if their compositions are somehow external and they are able to tap into them.

The prodigee I was thinking of said, in response to 'Where do you get your ideas from?', 'It's like catching a split second in time and if I catch that, all the rest (i.e. the full composition) follows'.

I asked my son, who's reading maths, if there could be a formula to explain this description and he said, 'Mum, to be honest, I don't know what you're on about.'

But there was a very good Horizon programme not long after, I think presented by a mathemetician, and he came to the conclusion that one day we will have mathematical formulae for consciousness.

1Morendil
Nitpick - it's "prodigy", plural "prodigies".
0whpearson
My brief attempt to outline one possible explanation for the phenomenon. Read if you not familiar with search algorithms/spaces the wikipedia article on it. Imagine trying to find a good piece of music, you could just create random notes and see how good they are, but that wouldn't be very interesting music. So instead you have to have an algorithm to generate interesting pieces of music. The algorithm might take a small piece of work and build upon it. I didn't say where the algorithm came from, likely we build it in some way as we get experience. This building of skills is in turn is another search problem, that of finding good specialist searches. So in answer to your question, the gifted people might be those that are lucky and find good search algorithms (at a variety of different levels).
erica-20

So, why is that individual able to catch the moment and not another? Because they have the receptor? How did they get the receptor - was it a random mutation or an hereditary bias towards reception?

0wedrifid
Pardon me. In the absence of knowing which brain state (or, possibly non existent phenomenon) the parapsychologists are describing with the 'catching a moment in time' I was going for a more literal interpretation. Referring to the human (particularly masculine) drive to capture as much space as possible for as much time as possible.
0wedrifid
Yes, it is one of humanity's favourite pastimes.
erica10

Thanks for your replies. Orientation increased to 37% :)

erica00

I'd love to know what Amanda and Raffaelle got up to that night but the lack of DNA in the room and on the body suggests that whatever they did, they weren't in the room or directly responsible for the death, and nor did they go back in the room to move the body around - that would require head to toe covering. But...

Did Amanda and Raffaelle sit in the flat egging Guede on, not realising the screams were real? Or, worse, did they laugh knowlingly when they heard screams?

What would they be guilty of? Would either scenario count as murder?

Did they feel so s... (read more)

erica00

Thanks for the Welcome. I laughed at the illustration.

  • I'm in the UK, are most other people in the US?
1erica
Thanks for your replies. Orientation increased to 37% :)
0whpearson
Most but not all. There is a small contingent of UK people, myself included. There were meet ups for a bit in London, but those have fallen by the wayside recently.
0wedrifid
Somebody posted a breakdown by country a while back. You can probably find it in the search. I think the US was the largest group by raw count. I'm from Australia by the way. Also, welcome.
erica30

I don't think I'm being ironic. First, I don't think character analysis is necessary in this case but as the prosecution and support for the verdict both rely on character analysis, I have attempted to put forward an alternative analysis that depicts Amanda as cosseted, well-educated, literary and imaginative. This is the opposite of Rosemary West, so I raise the question as to whether the two styles of writing are directly comparable.

erica110

Familiarity pretty good - I've read the Wiki page, revisited several articles from when the murder was first discovered and I watched Sky news the day of the verdict and saw/heard Prof of Criminology, feminist journalist, UK barrister and two Italian barristers. I frequently search the web, hence I found this site.

(I don't understand the up/down system.)

I find the logic of the murder disturbing - if the murder was a game gone wrong, then it was not premeditated, so unlikely gloves were worn. If bleach was used to clean, then why was Guede's DNA all over th... (read more)

-3baloney
Erica Are you being ironic?, "But...she did not study languages or develop an interest in creative writing."

And why does Meredith's mother now say that querying the verdict is making her unhappy? Would she not care if an innocent went to jail?

I've often seen that pattern. When someone is murdered and someone is convicted for it, the bereaved insist, no matter how controversial the trial, that justice has been done and that any querying of the verdict is an insult to the memory of their loved one.

It's completely barking mad, but then, people are crazy.

(Edit:) And welcome, erica.