Meredith Kercher murdered in Perugia, Amanda Knox convicted #3

I think that it may also be important to remember that it has repeatedly been stated that both Amanda & Raffaele were smoking a lot of marijuana together at the time everything went down. It's what they did together. Obviously that will impact your memory.

Just saying.

This is Raffaele's statement about the morning after. According the Raffaele, Filomina's bedroom door was wide open when he arrived. If this is true, then Amanda walked past this ransacked room with broken glass on top of the laptop and clothes several times, yet she did not think this was cause for alarm of needed to be reported. Instead, she showered, went to Raffaele's place, had something to eat, and then mentioned it.

""She told me that when she went back home she found the door wide open and traces of blood in the little bathroom. She asked me if it sounded strange to me. I answered that it did and I advised her to call her housemates. She said she had called Filomena (another housemate), but that Meredith wasn't answering."

He said the two went back to the house together.

"She opened the door with her keys and I went in. I noticed that Filomena's door was wide open and there was broken glass on the floor and the room was in a mess. Amanda's door was open but it was tidy. Then I went towards Meredith's door and saw that it was locked.

"I looked to see if it was true what Amanda had told me about the blood in the bathroom and I noticed drops of blood in the sink, while on the mat there was something strange - a mixture of blood and water, while the rest of the bathroom was clean."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1568640/Suspect-statements-in-Kercher-murder-case.html

Tinsamd said:

I think that it may also be important to remember that it has repeatedly been stated that both Amanda & Raffaele were smoking a lot of marijuana together at the time everything went down. It's what they did together. Obviously that will impact your memory.

Just saying.

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I'm not a believer that pot erases memory, but in any case Amanda's knowledge that Meredith bled to death, before the coroner knew, was made a couple of hours after Meredith's body was discovered, so I don't think we can attribute that to pot and faulty memory.

Nova said:

http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/False-Confessions.php



As near as I can tell, flourish, the 25% figure refers to cases where the IP has achieved eventual exoneration, mostly through DNA testing, and where records indicate the innocent defendant either confessed or made false statements under the pressure of interrogation. It is IP's figure and does not seem to have been challenged, though it would be easy to do so since their cases are public record. (At the same site, you can find a discussion of the many states that are moving to require taping of all interrogations, precisely because of this problem.)

So the 25% figure does NOT include guilty persons who were coerced into making inadvisable statements. More importantly, it does NOT include innocent persons whose cases were never referred to IP or weren't accepted by IP because there was no DNA or the equivalent to prove their innocence.

If anything, the 25% number is low.

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Great explanation, thank you

otto said:

I'm not a believer that pot erases memory, but in any case Amanda's knowledge that Meredith bled to death, before the coroner knew, was made a couple of hours after Meredith's body was discovered, so I don't think we can attribute that to pot and faulty memory.

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Has anyone ever provided anything to back up the theory that smoking pot can cause you to forget so heartily that one might reasonably forget murdering someone? I'd believe a momentary "where'd that box of Twinkies go?" but an ongoing "did I or did I not kill someone?"...nope.

otto said:

Patrick was arrested based on testimony Amanda gave as a witness, not the voluntary statement she wrote the next day. Amanda claimed that Patrick was in the cottage, she was in the kitchen and that she heard a terrible scream.

The part of voluntary statement that is problematic is the following:

"I stand by my statements that I made last night about events that could have taken place in my home with Patrik, but I want to make very clear that these events seem more unreal to me that what I said before, that I stayed at Raffaele's house."

Much of Amanda's testimony involves references to "flashback", vague memory, or no memory. Flashback is a term that is commonly associated with drug abuse, and is considered to be a memory that is incomplete or vague. Her flashbacks are perceived to be glimpses of what happened the night Meredith was murdered.

Amanda claims that they had dinner around 11 PM, but two witnesses place the dinner at about 8:30 (Raffaele's father, the friend that dropped by to talk to Raffaele). The cell phones were turned off some time around 9, and the rest of the evening seems to be a complete blur for both Amanda and Raffaele. It is known that Amanda left Raffaele's house to go to work (cell phone tracking), but on the way to work, Patrick called and said that she didn't have to work. They claim that they slept until 10 the next morning, but cell phone and computer activity make that more like 6 AM.

The time between about 9 or 10 in the evening, and 6 the following morning is the time in question. Neither Amanda nor Raffaele have alibis for that time, as their stories about what happened are not the same. The only fact that they both report is that they were too drugged to remember what they did.

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Re PL: yes, otto, that's what I'm saying. AK was wrong to bring up PL's name in the first place, but the authorities were also wrong to imprison him based on such vague statements (both during interrogation and in the written account). IMO, obviously.

In another post, I asked how LE knows dinner was eaten before 8:30. The court report cites RS' father saying his son was doing dishes when he called around that time, but dishes may be done before, during and after cooking. Unless Mr. S said something more specific, it's a leap to conclude RS and AK must be lying about dinner.

This is the first I've heard that AK actually left the house before she got the text message from her boss. Obviously, her cell phone wasn't turned off at the time of the message.

The activities in the morning that the judge finds so significant are (1) the turning on of RS' cell phone and (2) RS playing music on his computer for half an hour. (Is this one of the computers where the hard drive was destroyed and the evidence can't be verified.) Both activities could indicate someone waking for awhile before returning to bed; yet they are used to "prove" that AK was up and about town by dawn.

It's true that AK and RS have no alibis except each other. But that's not uncommon, even among innocent people.

otto said:

Another problem for Amanda is that she knew that Meredith bled to death even though she was in the kitchen when Meredith's door was broken in. Immediately after the murder was discovered, everyone was asked to go to the police station, including Meredith's friends. Descriptions of Amanda at the police station are odd.

"Their behaviour at the police station seemed to me really inappropriate," she said. "They sat opposite each other, Amanda put her feet up on Raffaele's legs and made faces at him. Everyone cried except Amanda and Raffaele. I never saw them crying. They were kissing each other."

Robyn Butterworth, another close friend of Ms Kercher, said: "Amanda's behaviour was very strange. She didn't seem to show any emotion about what had happened."

They also testified to hearing Ms Knox say that she had seen Ms Kercher's body in the closet of her room with a blanket over it.

Ms Butterworth said: "I don't know who she was talking to. She was talking to the room. I didn't want to talk to her because I found it quite upsetting ... I was really upset that she was even mentioning these things. I removed myself, I didn't want to know. I also remember her talking on the phone, saying, 'It could have been me, how do you think I feel – I found her.' ... She kept talking about how she had found Meredith. She sounded proud that she had been the first to find her."

While in the waiting room at the police station, another of the friends, Natalie Hayward, remarked: "I hope Meredith wasn't in too much pain." Ms Frost remembered Ms Knox replying: "What do you fcking think? She fcking bled to death."

Meredith was on the floor covered with a bed cover or duvet, yet Amanda knew how she died. How could she have known that?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1569353/Merediths-flatmate-proud-to-find-body.html

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1. Given that she'd seen blood drops in the bathroom, it isn't surprising if AK assumed MK had bled to death. It would be odder if AK claimed that MK had been strangled, though, frankly, this sort of evidence never impresses me. Cops are much too quick to insist they've "withheld" info when it turns out everyone in the vicinity was blabbing away.

2. The supposedly "odd behavior" of AK and RS, if the reports are true, can just as readily be interpreted as proof of their innocence. Surely guilty people would recognize the importance of appearing shocked and grief-stricken, of behaving as much as possible like the others present so as not to stand out.

3. The Butterworth testimony strains credulity. AK told "the air" how MK's body was found? Come on. I'm not accusing Butterworth of lying, but she seems caught up in the excitement of the tragedy. And she's certainly anxious to find something suspicious in everything AK said or did that afternoon.

otto said:

This is from Amanda's witness statement to police. It is more than enough to arrest someone and detain them for two weeks, especially when Amanda's voluntary statement says that she stands by her statements about Patrick:

"She reportedly told them during interviews on Tuesday: "I want to talk about what happened because the incident has left me really upset and I am really scared of Patrick (Lumumba), the African man who owns the pub Le Chic where I work sometimes.

"I met him on the evening of November 1 after having replied to a message he sent me, with the words 'Let's meet up'.

"We met at around 9.00pm at a basketball court in Piazza Grimana and we went to my house. I don't remember if my friend Meredith was already at home or if she came in later. All I can say is that they went off together.

"Patrick and Meredith went off into Meredith's room while I stayed in the kitchen. I can't remember how long they were in there together - I can only say that at one point I heard Meredith screaming and I was so frightened I blocked my ears.

"I don't remember anything after that - my head's all confused. I don't remember if Meredith screamed and I heard thuds too because I was upset, but I guessed what might have happened.

"I found Patrick this morning (Nov 5) in front of the language school and he asked me some questions. He wanted to know what the police had been asking me. I think he also asked me if I wanted to meet some journalists, maybe to find out if I know anything about Meredith's death.”

Of Sollecito, she said: "I don’t know for sure if Raffaele was there that night, but I do remember very well waking up at my boyfriend's house, in his bed, and I went back to my house in the morning where I found the door open."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1568640/Suspect-statements-in-Kercher-murder-case.html

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I agree that's a more direct accusation that anything she wrote later. But she can't recall if her boyfriend was present and she has PL asking her if she wanted to meet journalists to find out what they know even before the body was discovered. Most importantly, as always, she emphasizes that her memories are confused and she isn't sure about a lot of the events of the night.

Yes, yes, yes, this was all wrong of AK. But none of it excuses LE. At best, this statement is a reason to interrogate PL, not a basis for detaining him for 14 days.

Maybe this case attracts so many doubters not only because of American xenophobia, but because supporters of the verdicts insist on portraying Amanda Knox as some sort of evil mastermind, instead of the confused 20-year-old she was (guilty or innocent).

otto said:

What is interesting about the information provided by Amanda is that there were most likely "thuds", as there is evidence that Meredith's head hit the wall. There was also most likely a scream, as the neighbor also reported a scream. Amanda knew that Meredith bled to death immediately after the murder and well before the body had been examined. Meredith was not strangled, shot, suffocated, or anything else, she did in fact slowly bleed to death.

Amanda's vague memory fits the facts very well.

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Thuds and bleeding?! As I said above, she'd seen blood in the bathroom, so assuming MK bled out was no great stretch. "Thuds" couldn't possibly be vaguer.

Maybe AK was present, or maybe she guessed correctly.

Because once again, a suspect makes all sorts of claims: those which AREN'T true are evidence of her guilt; those which ARE true are also evidence of her guilt.

Tinsamd said:

I think that it may also be important to remember that it has repeatedly been stated that both Amanda & Raffaele were smoking a lot of marijuana together at the time everything went down. It's what they did together. Obviously that will impact your memory.

Just saying.

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The one consistency in all testimony about this case is heavy drug use. Even the victim had agreed to water her boyfriends cannabis plants (I am in no way blaming her for this, BTW).

Now some say taking drugs "explains" any and all odd and violent behavior, but to me, it merely explains why so much of the testimony is incoherent.

otto said:

This is Raffaele's statement about the morning after. According the Raffaele, Filomina's bedroom door was wide open when he arrived. If this is true, then Amanda walked past this ransacked room with broken glass on top of the laptop and clothes several times, yet she did not think this was cause for alarm of needed to be reported. Instead, she showered, went to Raffaele's place, had something to eat, and then mentioned it.

""She told me that when she went back home she found the door wide open and traces of blood in the little bathroom. She asked me if it sounded strange to me. I answered that it did and I advised her to call her housemates. She said she had called Filomena (another housemate), but that Meredith wasn't answering."

He said the two went back to the house together.

"She opened the door with her keys and I went in. I noticed that Filomena's door was wide open and there was broken glass on the floor and the room was in a mess. Amanda's door was open but it was tidy. Then I went towards Meredith's door and saw that it was locked.

"I looked to see if it was true what Amanda had told me about the blood in the bathroom and I noticed drops of blood in the sink, while on the mat there was something strange - a mixture of blood and water, while the rest of the bathroom was clean."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1568640/Suspect-statements-in-Kercher-murder-case.html

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I don't know if any of his statement is true, but the difference between RS' entry into the apartment and that of AK earlier is that by the time RS arrived, he and AK had concluded that something was wrong.

Yes, AK may have walked past Filomena's room several times without noticing the disarray. She wasn't looking for it.

RS, on the other hand, was specifically there to see what was amiss.

otto said:

I'm not a believer that pot erases memory, but in any case Amanda's knowledge that Meredith bled to death, before the coroner knew, was made a couple of hours after Meredith's body was discovered, so I don't think we can attribute that to pot and faulty memory.

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It's been a number of years since I smoked any (or else I smoked and then forgot it ), but my understanding is that pot today is much stronger than what we smoked when I was the age of AK.

Moreover, the "pot" may have in fact been hashish, which is even stronger yet.

We'd need a real expert to tell us the effect on short-term memory. I wish I were that expert, but, alas, no.

flourish said:

Has anyone ever provided anything to back up the theory that smoking pot can cause you to forget so heartily that one might reasonably forget murdering someone? I'd believe a momentary "where'd that box of Twinkies go?" but an ongoing "did I or did I not kill someone?"...nope.

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As I just said, I don't have much experience with modern-day pot, which is supposedly more potent, but I tend to agree with you that murdering someone and forgetting it is unlikely. (Though it is the plot of many of film noir.)

Nova said:

Thuds and bleeding?! As I said above, she'd seen blood in the bathroom, so assuming MK bled out was no great stretch. "Thuds" couldn't possibly be vaguer.

Maybe AK was present, or maybe she guessed correctly.

Because once again, a suspect makes all sorts of claims: those which AREN'T true are evidence of her guilt; those which ARE true are also evidence of her guilt.

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The blood in the bathroom didn't alarm Amanda, and would not suggest that someone bled to death. Amanda's statement that she heard a thud, and evidence on the wall of Meredith's head bashing into it, are an unusual coincidence. Amanda knowing that Meredith bled to death when that's what happened is an unusual coincidence. We can look at all of the evidence and see unusual coincidences. Raffaele told his father that he was finishing up the dinner dishes, but we can wonder if he was merely washing dishes that were unrelated to a late dinner.

I'm seeing that you were pretty adamant that nothing Amanda said should have resulted in Patrick's arrest, so I linked information that she gave to police in her witness statement, and it becomes clear that police had good justification for arresting Patrick. No police force would ignore a witness statement like the one Amanda gave, and no police force would consider her innocent of some participation after providing such a detailed statement.

This is the case with much of the evidence. When looking only at small parts of the evidence in isolation, it's easier to look at the trial and wonder why Amanda and Raffaele were arrested and convicted. The big picture paints a very different story.

There have been a couple of books written about the case, but unfortunately the authors seem to have an agenda. I read the Barbie Nadeau book and it was more or less a commentary on the various media that were following the trial. There's another book by someone that wrote a cooking blog for the Seattle newspaper. That is slanted towards Amanda being innocent, so the selective facts are interpretted and negated ... one by one. I tried reading that book but couldn't get through it.

I too looked at isolated points and eliminated them, but eventually some evidence cannot be explained away. How do you interpret the staged breakin?

Nova said:

I don't know if any of his statement is true, but the difference between RS' entry into the apartment and that of AK earlier is that by the time RS arrived, he and AK had concluded that something was wrong.

Yes, AK may have walked past Filomena's room several times without noticing the disarray. She wasn't looking for it.

RS, on the other hand, was specifically there to see what was amiss.

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Amanda arrived home to find the front door wide open. Wouldn't that be sufficient reason to think something was amiss, and maybe look around to see if a burglar was in the cottage? It's a small cottage, and she could not have avoided seeing into Filomina's bedroom with her laptop on the floor and broken glass on top. That would not have been normal, and should have resulted in Amanda calling her roommates. She didn't.

otto said:

..."I stand by my statements that I made last night about events that could have taken place in my home with Patrik, but I want to make very clear that these events seem more unreal to me that what I said before, that I stayed at Raffaele's house."....

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otto, you bolded the wrong half of the sentence. I've fixed it.

There's no excuse for holding a man on the basis of AK's statements.

flourish said:

Has anyone ever provided anything to back up the theory that smoking pot can cause you to forget so heartily that one might reasonably forget murdering someone? I'd believe a momentary "where'd that box of Twinkies go?" but an ongoing "did I or did I not kill someone?"...nope.

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I don't know. As I've said, I've had experiences with pot and alcohol where I woke up with nothing more than fleeting images of the night before, but I never killed anybody (or did much of anything else significant) so I can't say whether I would have had special recall of a major event.

And it is widely acknowledged that pot today is much stronger than it was when I was smoking with any frequency (1970s).

To me, AK's testimony speaks more to attempts to divert suspicion from herself (whether she is guilty or innocent) than it does to short-term memory lost caused by drugs. But drug use may have helped, for all I know.

otto said:

The blood in the bathroom didn't alarm Amanda, and would not suggest that someone bled to death.

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Not by itself, but once one learned the victim was dead, of course it would suggest bleeding to death. What else would one conclude? Poison?

Amanda's statement that she heard a thud, and evidence on the wall of Meredith's head bashing into it, are an unusual coincidence.

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Coincidence maybe. Unusual? I think not. The word "thud" is too vague.

Amanda knowing that Meredith bled to death when that's what happened is an unusual coincidence.

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No, it isn't. It's the most logical conclusion given that she had seen even a small amount of blood in the bathroom.

We can look at all of the evidence and see unusual coincidences.

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We can, especially if we are bound and determined to find something suspicious in everything AK and RS said and did. Honestly, I think AK would have fewer supporters if people just stuck to the cover-up evidence and stopped trying to make something felonious out of her every remark.

Raffaele told his father that he was finishing up the dinner dishes, but we can wonder if he was merely washing dishes that were unrelated to a late dinner.

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Did RS say that? I don't know. The source you gave me merely said RS told his father he was washing dishes. The meal for which the dishes were used wasn't specified.

I'm seeing that you were pretty adamant that nothing Amanda said should have resulted in Patrick's arrest, so I linked information that she gave to police in her witness statement, and it becomes clear that police had good justification for arresting Patrick. No police force would ignore a witness statement like the one Amanda gave, and no police force would consider her innocent of some participation after providing such a detailed statement.

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No, no police force would ignore those statements. And no competent police force would lock up somebody on the basis of statements when the speaker herself kept reiterating she was unsure they were true.

Of course, LE should have questioned PL and checked out his alibi. It wasn't necessary to lock him up for 2 weeks to do so.

Yes, you're right that most police departments would be suspicious of anyone who made false and/or statements such as those of AK. NONETHELESS, it remains LE's job to corroborate those statements, because by now any qualified officer should know that people lie for a variety of reasons.

This is the case with much of the evidence. When looking only at small parts of the evidence in isolation, it's easier to look at the trial and wonder why Amanda and Raffaele were arrested and convicted. The big picture paints a very different story....

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I don't see the big picture and I'd be happy for you to show it to me. What I see whenever I look at the evidence is a rabbit hole: on the one hand, it seems likely AK was involved somehow (because of the staging that you asked about); on the other hand, I see no reason for her to be involved.

Of course, I'm taking the court's word that no one else had a reason to stage a break in. I haven't had time or resources to actually prove that to my satisfaction. But in answer to your question, i think it's the strongest evidence against AK.

otto said:

Amanda arrived home to find the front door wide open. Wouldn't that be sufficient reason to think something was amiss, and maybe look around to see if a burglar was in the cottage? It's a small cottage, and she could not have avoided seeing into Filomina's bedroom with her laptop on the floor and broken glass on top. That would not have been normal, and should have resulted in Amanda calling her roommates. She didn't.

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Not necessarily with college-age kids I've known. They are used to what are basically "communal" living arrangements (the four girls upstairs, boys downstairs); they have few possessions to steal; and they often have parents who will replace anything that goes missing.

Myself, I don't leave doors unlocked even when I'm home (used to live in NYC), but my niece and her college chums are much more casual about such things.

Nova said:

As I just said, I don't have much experience with modern-day pot, which is supposedly more potent, but I tend to agree with you that murdering someone and forgetting it is unlikely. (Though it is the plot of many of film noir.)

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did they ever say they were drinking? I am not exactly expert but once in my life I smoked weed and drank also and I could recall only blits and blurbs of the night the next day (which scared the bejesus out of me and I never would do it again) but this convo does make me wonder....if someone had ended up dead that night, I would have known nothing....absolutely nothing.... and having been only 22 myself, and knowing I shouldnt be drinking and smoking weed in a hotel room with many other people...perhaps I would have told a lot of silly stories too....trying to cover up for the drugs and for the shame of having no recollection at all..