nourishing obscurity

“Why are you not publishing my comments?!!  I wish to bring this to someone’s attention.”

Your word is my command, dear Knox supporter who wrote that.  If you care to look at the top of Page 1, you’ll see that my main concern was the tactic Cardiol also commented on – that of flooding.   At one point in the last thread, needing to go out and take care of real life issues, there were 22 comments in the queue before I could even address one of them.

I did read them – in full – and of the 22, they were all concerning three main points, two of which were addressed on Page 1.  I ran out of time with the third – the lack of DNA etc. in the blood-stained room, so that will be first cab off the rank this evening.  As for all the ad hominem – well, that was water off the duck’s back and useful in showing readers what we’re dealing with here.

………..

Why was there no DNA or any evidence in the bloodstained room?

Stated thus, it’s a good point and as the Knox press only states it that way, not dispassionately giving the answers to it equal weighting, then anyone living in the U.S. or Canada to an extent, let alone the UK, has a quite jaundiced view presented to them, unless they look at TJMK, PMF, other bloggers for Meredith or even me to an extent.   This is shown in the section on Mignini, the prosecutor [going up tomorrow].

Let’s get to specifics. The issue is the lack of DNA in places other than on the bra clasp and the knife, where there was quite an amount of it.  The K&S defences make a huge play on this and naturally, discount the evidence of cleaning, which if we get into that, the luminol etc., would take pages.

There is also the issue of where the murder actually took place – was it all in one room or in a number of rooms?   The Knox defence, for obvious reasons, wants it only in the room Meredith was found and all they have to do is then discount the knife and bra clasp and they think they’re home and hosed.

Except they’re not.   I had a regular reader come in here, not a Knoxite but supposedly dispassionate and wrote that there was NO evidence, thereby showing he’d swallowed the mantra whole.   Of course there was evidence – over 140 points of it, before even getting to the DNA and there was DNA because that is what the “independent” “experts” were arguing over at the appeal.

There are other anomalies too.  Why are there no prints in Amanda’s room?   Did she not live there?   yet the defence skips that and denies any cleaning was done.

And why would there be prints in the blood-stained room anyway if AK’s main role was to hold and shove in the knife as Micheli and Massei agreed – to the consternation of the other two.   Knoxers will say that wasn’t proved that she held the knife but neither was it proved that she didn’t and she is on the knife and he is on the clasp, no matter how little survives after four years.

The Knox defence greatly dramatises the evidence pointing to Guede in the room but that in itself raises an interesting point:

Rudy Guede admitted been there and touching everything and yet he left very little evidence – no hairs, no saliva, no sweat, no blood, and no other bodily fluid at the scene of the crime.   This can’t be just glossed over as “one of those things”.   Things have reasons.

And of course Guede headed straight out the door from there.   He didn’t take off any shoes and put his bare foot on the mat. No proof of that. And no DNA in Filomena’s room, where he was supposed to have broken in – only AK’s.   Now why would a burglar climbing through a shuttered window which he’s broken – the defence case – leave zero DNA?

It’s this stop-start DNA which is the real problem.  I’m not asking either Knox supporters or detractors to comment on this.  I’m asking anyone who genuinely has not made up his mind and who has come here to read.   The defence case was that there had been a break-in through a window which, if you looked at it, and which was subsequently shown in re-enactments, was an absurd way to get in when there was an alternative lower down.

Every witness in that room on the afternoon of the 2nd [apart form K&S], said it looked a put up job.   When the investigation began, they all said it was a put up job.  Who are the only people saying it was a real break-in?

The Knox and Sollecito people.   It was not accepted by the court, it is not accepted by anyone but them.  Hence no Guede DNA or any other evidence of him in filomena’s room.

But to repeat – there was evidence of AK in there and Meredith.   Now why?   Also, why was AK’s bedlamp in Meredith’s room?

And then we come to the Micheli point.  This was not covered by the MSM and thus you may well never have heard of it.   Micheli’s report is linked to at TJMK. They background him thus: “Judge Micheli presided over Rudy Guede’s trial and sentencing and the final hearing that committed Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox to trial.”

The investigators measured and photographed the position and state of everything, including blood, as it was in the room before anything was moved.

Amongst the items noted was a white bra. Some parts were soaked in blood, particularly the right shoulder strap and the outside of the left cup. They also noted that a portion of the backstrap with its clasp fixings was missing. Meredith herself was lying on her back midway between the wardrobe and the bed, without her jeans, a pillow under her buttocks and her top rolled up to reveal her chest.

Following this survey, Meredith’s body was then turned and moved by the investigators. This revealed the other items on which her body had lain. A tennis shoe, a white sheet from the bed and a blue zipped top, all with blood stains. Also a green bath towel and an ivory bath towel, both soaked in blood, and underneath the pillow was the missing clasp section of the bra back-strap.

Judge Micheli notes that Amanda’s defence claimed that “the small round spots of blood” apparent on Meredith’s chest indicated that she was not wearing her bra when she was killed. He agreed that it was likely that these spots fell from Meredith’s gasps for breath as she lay on her back after she had been stabbed. However, he could not agree with their conclusion that her bra had been removed before this time, as similar small round spots were also found on Meredith’s bra.

Micheli reasoned that this indicated that Meredith was still wearing her bra as she gasped for breath, but that her top was rolled up and the bra moved also. Thus indicating the sexual nature of the original attack, but also allowing the small round spots to fall on both chest and bra. Furthermore, other blood evidence involving the bra indicated that it wasn’t removed until some time after Meredith had died.

He said that Meredith’s bra was found by investigators away from other possible blood contamination on the floor, near to her feet. Photographs of Meredith’s body show clear white areas where the bra prevented blood from falling onto Merediths body. These white areas corresponded to those areas where blood was found on her bra. This was particularly true in the area of the right shoulder strap which was soaked from the wound to Meredith’s neck.

Micheli said that evidence showed that Meredith had lain on one shoulder near the wardrobe. She lay in that position long enough for the imprint of her shoulder and bra strap to remain fixed in the pool of blood after she was moved to the position in which her body was finally found. Photographs of blood on her shoulder matched the imprint by the wardrobe and her shoulder itself also showed signs that she had remained in that position for some time.

Based on all this, Judge Micheli concluded that there could be no doubt that Meredith’s body was moved away from the wardrobe and her bra removed quite some time after her death.

Neighbor Nara Capezzali had testified that people fled from the cottage within a minute of Meredith’s final scream. There was no time for any alteration of the crime scene in those very few moments.

Judge Micheli asks in his report, who could have returned later and staged the scene which was found?

Who later moved Meredith’s body and cut off her bra?

If what has just been quoted was rubbish,then why did the U.S. MSM in particular not cover it, mock it and vilify it?   Why did they avoid it?

So, we have a discounted break-in, which is not to say Guede wasn’t there – he just didn’t get in that way.    We have someone come back later, remove the bra [bloodspots show it was later] and move the body from the cupboard to its final position.

Why?   Who?   The Knox defence sometimes say it was Guede, as the witnesses to his subsequent whereabouts didn’t cover the whole time.   But stop for one moment and think it out – why on earth would he return to his crime scene to move a body?   What would have been different with the body moved, to the body being by the cupboard?   How does that alter anything?

OK, they say, he didn’t return – he did it all while he was there and witness Capezzali only heard the type of scream anyone could hear anyway, despite her fervent confirmation that she heard the scream, looked out and two people were running away.   By the way, where would the third have been?   Doing what?

And as commenter Chiara said – if he had been a drifter, which is the defence position on Guede, even though he was a regular resident of a house in Perugia which sort of undercuts that somewhat – if he had been a drifter, would he have come back?   Also, where is the evidence he came back – hair, cloth, DNA?  The DNA which is everywhere, apart from Meredith’s and Guede’s, is AK’s and RS’s, before even getting into Knox’s testimony admitting she was there and heard screams.

If you say that was later shown to be part of her lie, then what can be accepted of her testimony?   And how does AK account for knowing about the body “in” the wardrobe?

Page 21 of Meredith by Mastronardi & Castellini, on Mignini:

It was put that on the 2nd, in the first verbale at 15.30, she had said that Raffaele had told her that Meredith’s body was in a wardrobe, covered with a sheet with a foot poking out.

She doesn’t know how to answer, but confirms that Raffaele did tell her this, because Filomena’s friends might have told him. She didn’t know how Meredith died, but in the Questura – she doesn’t remember who – someone told her that her throat had been cut. She says she doesn’t remember what time this was said. She says that in the Questura she remarked about the discovery in the wardrobe to Meredith’s friends.

She doesn’t know if she died slowly or not, but she learned the cause of death from Counsel Ghirga during the convalida session, when she found out that she had been stabbed in an artery. But she had commented on the sad death on the 2nd, 6 days earlier and 2 days before the autopsy. How was she able to say so on the 2nd? She is trying to shift the responsibility of the revelation of the cut to the throat to the interpreter, but D’Astolto has contradicted her …

He, appertaining to the Police, only knew that the body of an English girl had been discovered and only later that she had been discovered in the house. Then Amanda says that she saw D’Astolto only in the Questura and that she never saw him in via della Pergola – therefore he did not participate in the evidence collection.

The part of the interview relating to the why Knox would have had cognisance of such particulars (that is, how Meredith was killed), concluded with another vague affirmation from Knox, attributing D’Astolto as the source of such particulars (circumstances denied by D’Astolto).

Naturally, the Knox defence attack d’Astolto.

Then we come to the real doozy – the lone wolf versus complicity.     In the sentencing report on Guede’s final appeal [pdf]:

guedesupremecourtsentencingreport [if that fails to open, try the PMF version]

… the Supreme court notes:

… and:

Now at this point, it is vital not to put words into the mouth of the SC and say that this in itself confirms more than one involved – the SC is noting what the first appeal concluded.   The more significant point is that it did not go on to overturn this, as it did Guede’s defence on other grounds.

Further, it included this:

So that was upheld, in that it was not dismissed by the SC.   Now the SC moves on to dismissing the attempt by Guede’s defence to implicate AK & RS and the language is strong.   A key part of Guede’s defence was to implicate them and/or others but not him of course, except for the sex by Meredith’s consent.

The SC rejects these attempts:

Read that carefully.  They are saying that the issue of AK and RS is not relevant to a determination of Guede’s guilt or not – it is not germane to this 2nd appeal.  The SC rejects the attempt by the defence to involve others for what was Guede’s part in the crime.   They are not saying that others were not involved – the previous quotes show they accept the premise of others involved – but that it is not to be taken into account in this appeal of Guede’s except in the context of impacting on the guilt or otherwise of Guede.

A Knox supporter sent half of that only to me:

… and of course, with a foreshortened fragment of the quote, it changes the implication entirely – it looks like the SC is rejecting more than one assailant.   Now go back to the fuller quote and you’ll see the whole context is changed in the second half [which the Knox supporter did not send me through some oversight on his part, particularly important when taken in conjunction with the other pieces and the sentencing report as a whole.

I charge that the person who sent me that fragment out of context as a “proof” of Guede’s sole involvement was being disingenuous and relying on me saying “it’s a fair cop” instead of checking it out.   Problem was that PMF and then TJMK ran the whole report and so I was able, as you also now are, to see for yourself what the SC was on about.

Coming back to the Knox supporter who sent me the misleading fragment, he had obviously read the report, as he was able to zero in on that fragment.   Therefore he had read the rest as well.   Therefore, he was being dishonest with my readers and it took a long time to track down the real story of that report.

Now, multiply that one instance by all the times they’ve tried these things on and you’re beginning to appreciate the mammoth task of countering these untruths, couched in such rational sounding language.