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Friday, April 19, 2013

Tips for The Media #4: In Fact Guede Absolutely Couldnt Have Attacked Meredith Alone

Posted by Cardiol

[Bongiorno in 2011 trying to rattle an unshakable Guede claiming Knox and Sollecito did the crime]

The convicted murderer Rudy Guede to this day claims that Meredith let him into the house, so we cut him no slack for that.

But at the same time he was no drifter or serial knife carrier, he had no police record in 2007 (unlike Knox and Sollecito), and no drug dealing or breaking-and-entering has ever been either charged or proved.

In October 2008 Judge Micheli mistrusted and sharply rebuked a witness who claimed it just might have been Guede who broke into his house.

Guede seriously discounted his role on the night of Meredith’s death, but some physical evidence (not a lot) proved he had played a part in the attack. Thereafter his shoeprints lead straight to the front door.

Neither Judge Micheli nor Judge Massei nor the Supreme Court believed he acted alone or had any part in the very obvious cleanup that had been carried out.

The Knox and Sollecito defenses failed miserably to prove he climbed in Filomena’s window, and they never even TRIED to paint him as the lone attacker. That is why in 2011 we saw two of the most bizarre defence witnesses in recent Italian legal history, the jailbirds Alessi and Aviello, take the stand

Alessi got so nervous in claiming Guede told him Guede did it with two others that he was physically sick and had to take time off from the stand.

Aviello claimed his brother and another did it (not Guede) but then claimed the Sollecito family via Giulia Bongiorno floated bribes in his prison for false testimony.

Tellingly, although Bongiorno threatened to sue Aviello, she never has. Even more tellingly, Judge Hellmann himself initiated no investigation and simply let this serious felony claim drop dead.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of 20 reasons why Rudy Guede did not act alone, and why not one scrap of evidence has ever been found for any other two other than Knox and Sollecito themselves.

1. Included in Guede’s Supreme Court’s Sentencing Report was the fact that Meredith sustained 43 wounds

This fact was omitted from the Hellmann & Zanetti [H/Z] Report, for reasons that readers can only guess. This fact was also omitted from the Massei Report, probably out of humane respect for the feelings of Meredith’s family.

Its inclusion in the Supreme Court’s Report reflects the report’s factual completeness. The PMF translation reads, in relevant part:

c) The body presented a very large number of bruising and superficial wounds – around 43 counting those caused by her falling – some due to a pointed and cutting weapon, others to strong pressure: on the limbs, the mouth, the nose, the left cheek, and some superficial grazing on the lower neck, a wound on the left hand, several superficial knife wounds or defence wounds on the palm and thumb of the right hand, bruises on the right elbow and forearm, ecchymosis on the lower limbs, on the front and inside of the left thigh, on the middle part of the right leg, and a deep knife wound which completely cut through the upper right thyroid artery fracturing the hyoid bone….

Including the number of minutes occupied by an initial verbal confrontation, the escalation of that confrontation into taunting and then the physical attack, leading to the infliction of 43 wounds, and to the fatal stabbing, how many minutes would all of this occupied?

The prosecution estimated it took fifteen.

2. Meredith had taken classes in dance and played sports (football, karate)

See the Massei Translation, p23

3. Meredith was a strong girl, both physically and in terms of temperament

See the statements by her mother and by her sister Stephanie (hearing of June 6, 2009). and description of her karate “sustained by her strong character” (Massei Translation, pp23, 164, 366, and 369).

4. Meredith must have been ‘strongly restrained’

See the Massei Translation, p371; p399, in the original

5. Meredith she remained virtually motionless throughout the attack

That was in spite of Meredith’s physical and personality characteristics [Massei Translation p369] [Massei Translation p370-371].

6. The defensive wounds were almost non-existent

See the report of Dr Lalli, pp. 33, 34, 35 with the relevant photos. Massei Translation p370.

7. One killer alone could not have inflicted the 43 wounds with so few defensive wounds.

8. There must necessarily have been two knives at the scene of the crime

See the Massei Translation p377.

9. A lone killer would have to use at least one hand/arm to restrain Meredith, and the other hand to hold one knife.

To use 2 knives a lone killer would have to place 1 knife down, leaving blood-stain[s] wherever it was placed, and then reach for the other knife. Even wiping the blades on the killer’s clothes, using the one hand, and later scrubbing of the knives would not erase all the blood, as has already been demonstrated.

10. Two killers could divide their attacks by one killer using both hands/arms to restrain Meredith

Meanwhile the other killer used one hand/arm to restrain Meredith, and the other hand to use the various knives. Could a lone killer accomplish all that?

11. The clothes that Meredith was wearing (shoes, pants and underwear) had been removed.

See the Massei Translation p.370

“It is impossible to imagine in what way a single person could have removed the clothes that Meredith was wearing (shoes, pants and underwear), and using the violence revealed by the vaginal swab, could have caused the resulting bruises and wounds recalled above, as well as removing her sweatshirt, pulling up her shirt, forcing the bra hooks before tearing and cutting the bra.” [Massei Translation p.370]

12. Meredith’s sweatshirt had been pulled up and removed.

See the [Massei Translation p.370

13. Meredith’s bra had been forcibly unhooked

See the Massei Translation p.370

14. Meredith’s bra had been torn

See the Massei Translation p.370

15. Meredith’s bra had been cut

See the Massei Translation p.370

16. Violence to Meredith was revealed by the genital swab.

See the Massei Translation p.370

.
17. In the H/Z Appellate Proceedings, not only did Sollecito’s Lawyers not allege a lone killer

They themselves brazenly introduced false testimony to the effect that there were two other killers.

18. Even H/Z did not deny the complicity of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

Even H/Z seemed to conclude they are probably guilty, but not beyond a reasonable doubt:

… in order to return a guilty verdict, it is not sufficient that the probability of the prosecution hypothesis to be greater than that of the defence hypothesis, not even when it is considerably greater, but [rather] it is necessary that every explanation other than the prosecution hypothesis not be plausible at all, according to a criterion of reasonability. In all other cases, the acquittal of the defendant is required.” [H/Z p.92]

19. Judge Micheli, in Guede’s trial, found that Guede did not act alone

And that the evidence implicated Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito as accomplices of Rudy Guede in the murder of Meredith Kercher.

20. Judge Massei’s court found that the evidence implicated Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito

He concluded they were joint perpetrators with Rudy Guede in the murder of Meredith Kercher

Overwhelming, right? Is it really reasonable to claim as Sollecito did in his book that Guede was a lone-killer? Doesn’t all this contradict the lone-killer theory beyond a reasonable doubt?

Posted by Cardiol on 04/19/13 at 04:00 AM
Archived in Officially involved, Rudy Guede, Supreme Court, Diversion efforts, Knox-Mellases, Sollecitos, Carpetbaggers, Public evidence, The timelines, DNA and luminol, Witness Aviello, Witness Alessi, The trials, Guede trial, The appeals, Guede appeals
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Thursday, September 06, 2012

Dissecting The Hellmann Report #5: Their Obfuscation of Time of Death and Of Legal Blameworthiness

Posted by Cardiol

[View down on Meredith’s very well-lit house from the apartment above witness Madame Nara Capezzali’s]

Surreal Documentary Context

We have a very surreal situation on our hands. One perhaps without legal precedent. As previously in this series the legal document being analysed here is the Hellmann-Zanetti appeal report.

1) No main media in the US or UK have put that appeal report into English or done any serious legal analysis.

2) Nor have they translated the original trial report by Judge Massei or done any serious analysis of that.

3) Nor have they translated the tough and detailed appeal to the Supreme Court by the Chief Prosecutor of Umbria, Dr Galat, which was summarised and analysed by Yummi here. The meticulous PMF translation team should complete its translation soon.

4) None of the books on the case at present bring the legal developments up to the present or get into the details of the very tough Galati appeal.

Meanwhile the Knox and Sollecito teams are racing to get out their books in the US, with media interviews being scheduled, presumably in the hope that this vacuum of hard facts described above continues and they can fill it with their own kind of PR spin.

Of course none of this impinges on pending legal events in Italy where interested Italians have a radically different and more informed view. Except only to make sure everything is done correctly and firmly to the letter.

As usual, Knox and Sollecito are coming across as if they are on a different planet. Not one good lawyer seems to be explaining things to them, or even be of top of things for that matter.

On Hellmann-Zanetti on Time of Death

In this series, my previous posts explained the distortions and illogicalities in the Hellmann-Zanetti appeal report in the passages on the calunnia (false blaming of Patrick), witness Curatolo, and witness Quintavalle, and also the seeming prejudicial language used throughout.

Vital reading in advance of this post is Considering The Sad And Sensitive But Also Crucial Subject Of Meredith’s Time Of Death by my fellow lawyer James Raper.

He explained the difficulties of being precise about Meredith’s time of death, and he commented on Hellman-Zanetti as follows.

The first point to note here is that Hellmann misinterprets the first Court’s findings. He ignores the fact that the first Court did determine a TOD between 11pm and 11.30 pm as probable based on the pathology alone, and gave reasons for this.

None of the expert testimony is rehearsed, let alone re-evaluated by Hellmann. He proceeds merely to discredit the reliability of the witnesses as to the other elements such as the scream etc.

One recalls that Nara Capezzali says that she heard a scream sometime between 11 and 11.30 pm. That there was a broken down car and the breakdown driver came and went between perhaps 11 and 11.15 pm.

As mentioned earlier his hypothesizing about the other elements leads him to a TOD of not later than 10.13 pm although this time seems a very random one based on what he presents. He talks in this section about Guede’s statement that he arrived at the cottage at 9 pm.

One suspects that if Hellmann could have fixed the time of death at 9.15 pm or 9.30 pm then he would have done so as either time would be a get out of jail free card for Knox and Sollecito. He did not, but he got them out of jail nevertheless with his hypothesizing - here and elsewhere in his report.

So perhaps not surprisingly Dr Galati in his appeal to Cassation devotes nearly 3000 words to taking apart Hellmann-Zanetti’s arguments on Time of Death, under these 4 headings:

Defect or manifest lack of logic in the sentencing report

The intercepted chat [Guede on Skype]

Meredith’s mobile phones

The testimony of the three women [Capezzali, Monacchia, and Dramis]

Hellmann-Zanetti is politely but explicitly excoriated. In Dr Galati’s summarising of his own arguments he states this:

The claimed timing of the death of Meredith Kercher demonstrates a manifest illogicality in the reasoning, contains an unfounded assessment, and is manifestly in contrast with other court documentation of the case.

The internal and external inconsistencies of Hellmann’s statements on the topic constitute [yet another] violation of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Here are some examples of H/Z’s flood of reasons-to-doubt AK/RS’s guilt listed under Time of Death and not specifically mentioned in previous Dissections [my emphases]:

Capezzalli “…was not able to pinpoint an exact time…”

“…the source of those [the scream and other] noises is not certain at all….”

“…Monacchia’s testimony does not allow the time of the scream to be pinpointed at 11:30 PM, rather than at 11 PM or even before.”

“…she heard a loud scream of a woman, of which she could not however locate the source with certainty.”

“The witness was not more accurate about the time, she could not connect it to objective data, but in her first testimony [verbale], when she presented herself to the investigators (the transcript of November 8, 2008 used for the indictment) she mentioned [aveva indicato] ʺ… at about 11 PMʺ. Monacchia’s statements therefore increase the ambiguity, as circumstantial evidence, of Capezzali’s statements instead of resolving it.”

“Dramis, in fact, said that she went to sleep at around 11‐11:30 PM, and that she woke up later (without being able, however, to specify how much later, while not excluding that it could have been 11:30 PM) due to the noise of quick footsteps, but she could not specify their direction, nor if they were produced by one or more persons, and she also noted that such events are not at all uncommon in this place….. We find ourselves, therefore, confronting a piece of circumstantial evidence (scream and footsteps) [which is] extremely weak for its ambiguity, since it cannot even be placed with certainty in time.”

On Hellmann-Zanetti on Blameworthiness of Defendants.

As an example of a possible tendency under any legal system, Canadian law has already strayed-away on this subject, over a period of about nine years, and was only recently brought-back only by an Appellate ruling. So attempts to derail Italian law on this issue may be inevitable:

Canadian criminal law aims to maintain proportionality between the stigma and punishment attached to a conviction and the moral blameworthiness of an offender, in R v. Martineau (1990) the Supreme Court of Canada held that it is a principle of fundamental justice under sections 7 and 11(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that a conviction for murder requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt of a subjective foresight of death. In so doing, the court effectively declared sections 213 and 229(a)(i) and (ii) of the Criminal Code of Canada lacking in constitutional muster.[7]

Section 213(a) provided that a conviction for murder would lie for any killing that was “objectively foreseeable as a result of the abominable nature of the predicate crimes…inter alia…coupled with intentional infliction of bodily harm”.[7] . This largely equated with a Canadian form of felony murder, though it is technically closer to constructive murder in other jurisdictions.[8] .

Nevertheless s. 229(c), which provides for a form of constructive felony murder in situations where “an accused for an unlawful object did anything knowing that it was likely [on an objective standard] to cause someone’s death” is still operative, as confirmed in a 1999 appellate court decision”

Common-Law ‘Malice’ has historically required that an accused “knew, or ought to have known that the relevant act was wrong.”

In that “ought” lies an escape hatch.

What we believe as to the blameworthiness of these three offenders is obvious - they were committing a premeditated felony-sexual-assault using means which were foreseeably lethal, and actually were lethal.

Hellmann-Zanetti have already made clear what their blameworthiness opinion would be, although they have evaded reaching the issue by arguing reasonable doubt that two of the offenders were involved in Meredith’s murder, and deserve no blame for it whatsoever.

A legal issue which may eventually need to be addressed is whether a conviction for murder requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt using a subjective foreseeability of death standard or using an objective foreseeability of death standard.

If a subjective foresight of death were ever applied to a found-guilty AK & RS, they could plead that they just didn’t foresee that pricking Meredith’s neck with those knives could kill her; it was just a prank. For example “we were only hazing her; anyway, we were either mentally-ill or drugged or just plain dumb.”

If an objective foresight of death finding were ever applied to a found-guilty AK & RS, who were obviously committing a felonious assault using foreseeably lethal means, Meredith would get True Justice.

Posted by Cardiol on 09/06/12 at 01:33 PM
Archived in Public evidence, The timelines, Other physical, The appeals, Dissecting Hellmann
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Sunday, August 19, 2012

Dissecting The Hellmann Report #4: The Contortions To Dismiss Witness Quintavalle

Posted by Cardiol

[Above: Images of Mr Quintavalle’s Conad store; he serves at far left, his cashier serves at far right]

Scroll down here for previous posts in this series.

Mr Quintavalle owns the Conad franchise at the lower end of Via Garibaldli, about halfway between Meredith’s place and Sollecito’s. Judge Massei in his trial sentencing report had stated this about Mr Quintavalle on page 83:

This Court deems that the testimony of Quintavalle is reliable. It was discovered that Inspector Volturno did not ask Quintavalle if, on the morning of November 2, he saw Amanda Knox in his shop.

He was asked – so Quintavalle recalled - about purchases made by Raffaele Sollecito. Mr. Quintavalle did not say anything about having seen Amanda Knox on the morning of November 2, 2007 in his shop because he was not questioned about this and because, as indicated by Quintavalle himself, he considered this fact to be insignificant.

This post exemplifies how the Hellmann-Zanetti web of deception uses a flood of reasons-to-doubt in its attempt to discredit Massei’s conclusion that Quintavalle was a reliable witness. Remarkably, the judges did not even recall Mr Mr Quintavalle, and mostly they work from the brief summary of his testimony in Massei’s report and little else.

Quintavalle’s testimony is key to the guilty verdicts against Knox and Sollecito, and contrary to Hellmann-Zanetti’s improper purpose; therefore they proceeded to systematically “disprove” Massei’s conclusion, stating this on page 39:

Indeed, Quintavalle asserts that she left without having purchased anything.

Verbatim from the hearing of March 21, 2009:

The Hellmann report here proceeds to selectively quote the hearing-transcript in a manner contrary to the usual and customary English-language meaning of “verbatim”. It may be that Hellmann-Zanetti meant to indicate that only the words they did quote were verbatim, and that their ellipses indicated innocent omissions. However the effect of their omissions is not innocent.

…If they had asked me…also because, I repeat, I, when the young lady came into my store, I did not see her leave with anything, because when she passed by and passed by again, when she left and I saw her, out of the corner of my eye I saw her leaving, I did not see that she had a shopping bag or anything in her hands.

PRESIDING JUDGE [PRESIDENTE]: You are speaking of the morning of November 2?

ANSWER: The morning of November 2. I don’t know if she bought anything, I don’t know. My cashier doesn’t remember if she bought anything, I am not able to say whether she bought something or not…”

If one wanted to maintain that perhaps Quintavalle is wrong, because she actually did purchase something, it would be correct to observe that if he could be wrong on this point, and also about the clothing she was wearing, then he could also be wrong about the identification of the young woman [giovane] as Amanda Knox.

Finally, the testimony of the witness Quintavalle does not seem reliable, and, in any case, represents an extremely weak piece of circumstantial evidence.”

Examples of Hellmann-/Zanetti’s flood of Reasons-to-Doubt [That AK/RS are Guilty] :

From Hellmann-Zanetti pages 39-43:

“Quintavalle

Another piece of evidence [uno degli elementi] on which the Court of first instance based its conviction of guilt is represented by the testimony of the witness Quintavalle, owner of a grocery store in Corso Garibaldi, not far from Sollecito’s house but also just a few minutes from via della Pergola: he in fact asserted that he saw, early in the morning of November 2, a young woman enter[sic] his store after having waited for it to open, whom he later recognized as Amanda Knox.

According to the prosecution (and to the Court of first instance), this circumstance proves that, contrary to the alibi she gave, she did not sleep at Sollecito’s house until late in the morning, but went very early to Quintavalle’s store, as she urgently needed to acquire a cleaning product suitable to clean the house in via della Pergola of her own traces and those of Raffaele Sollecito, before the police could intervene and take samples, since it was inevitable that sooner or later the alarm would be given because of what had happened.

In reality, even under the assumption that the circumstance is true, this would be a weak piece of circumstantial evidence, incapable in itself of proving guilt even presumptively; but in any case this Court holds that the testimony of the witness is not very reliable, in particular in what concerns the identification of the early‐morning client with Amanda Knox.”

(1) Reason-to-Doubt #1: “…INCAPABLE IN ITSELF of PROVING guilt even presumptively….”

The reader is being steered away from a level of doubt that is beyond-reasonable, and towards the territory of reasonable-doubt-that -AK/RS-are-Guilty.

“INCAPABLE IN ITSELF” improperly isolates the issue from all the other considerations which should simultaneously-be-taken-into-account.

“PROVING” improperly implies an inappropriate standard of ‘certainty’.

….this Court holds that the testimony of the witness is NOT VERY RELIABLE, in particular in what concerns the identification of the early‐morning client with Amanda Knox.

Logically “not very reliable” does not exclude “reliable” but Hellmann-Zanetti presumably don’t intend to concede that Quintavalle is reliable; this betrays Hellmann-Zanetti’s extreme bias and determination to exclude Quintavalle’s damning identification of [their client?] Knox.

Later on page 38:

In fact, he presented himself to the police only a year later, following intense urging by a young apprentice journalist…..”

This is a misleading reference to Antioca Fois; see Massei page 84:

He later spoke about having seen Amanda Knox because a young man who used to live above his shop, who he knew, Antioco Fois, had just graduated and had become a freelance reporter for the newspaper Giornale dell’Umbria. When he passed him, he would sometimes ask: “But do you know anything? Did you see something? Did you hear something?”

So one day Quintavalle told Fois that he had seen Amanda Knox on the morning of November 2; later he decided to go to the Public Prosecutor’s Office because Antioco Fois convinced him that this fact might be important.

So the “intense urging” was more like friendly exchanges with Quintavalle’s neighbour, a former lodger.

(2) Reason-to-Doubt #2: “In fact, he presented himself to the police only a year later….”

Readers are invited to mistrust Quintavalle because he belatedly told this to the police for an untrustworthy reason, steering them further away from a level of doubt [with regard to Knox/Sollecito guilt] that is beyond-reasonable, and further into territory that is reasonable-doubt of their guilt.

Later still on page 38:

Now, what actually happened more than a year before Quintavalle presented himself to the police is absolutely not irrelevant, for the purpose of evaluating the reliability of the witness, especially from the point of view of the genuineness of his memories and the exactness of the identification.

(3) Reason-to-Doubt #3: “absolutely not irrelevant, for the purpose of evaluating the reliability of the witness”

This double-negative statement further invites Readers to regard Quintavalle as unreliable because his memories are false, and his identification of Knox is too inexact. Steering Readers yet further into a level of doubt of Knox’s guilt that is reasonable-doubt.

Yet further down on page 38:

…..this was a witness who – taking into account what he himself explained – took a year to convince himself of the precision of his perception, and the exactness of the identification of Amanda Knox with the girl that he saw, although he was able to appreciate the relevance of his testimony already in the days immediately following the murder.

(4) Reason-to-Doubt #4: “..took a year to convince himself…”

From Hellmann-Zanetti page 36:

…..took a year to convince himself of the precision of his perception, and the exactness of the identification of Amanda Knox with the girl that he saw, although he was able to appreciate the relevance of his testimony already in the days immediately following the murder.

Repetition of reader-invitation to regard Quintavalle as unreliable, because his perceptions are not precise enough for Hellmann-Zanetti, and his identification of Knox was too inexact even though he knew at that time that his testimony was crucially relevant.

The reader is being steered even further away from belief that Knox and Sollecito are guilty towards the territory of reasonable-doubt-that -AK/RS-are-Guilty.
Are we there yet? Is there reasonable-doubt-that-AK/RS-are-guilty NOW?!

(5) Reason-to-Doubt #5: “Quintavalle cannot maintain that…”

Near the bottom of Hellmann-Zanetti page 38:

...from the testimony of Inspector Volturno at the hearing of March 13, 2009, it turned out that Quintavalle and his employees and other shopkeepers in the area were shown photographs of Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox, and were asked in particular to mention any possible purchases of cleaning products on the part of the couple, as this was a precise focal point of the investigation. Thus, Quintavalle cannot maintain that he did not mention what he saw on the morning of November 2 to Inspector [53] Volturno because he did not think it was a relevant circumstance.

Readers are yet further invited to mistrust Quintavalle, because his failure to “mention” everything he had seen, and his idea of “a relevant circumstance” were unacceptable to Hellmann-Zanetti.

That’s already five reasons to doubt on the first Quintavalle page alone.

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Considering The Sad And Sensitive But Also Crucial Subject Of Meredith’s Time Of Death

Posted by James Raper

The following is a discourse on the time of death (TOD) arguments in the case.

These have been summarised but not analysed in depth yet on TJMK. A discussion on the pathology is not really everyone’s cup of tea, but the issue was examined in some detail by Massei and to some extent by Hellmann with somewhat differing conclusions reached.

The topic is relevant because Judge Massei used (inter alia) the expert’s findings to corroborate a TOD being after 11pm, more toward 11.30pm, whereas Judge Hellmann argued an earlier TOD as follows: “it is more consistent….to hypothesize that in fact the attack, and hence the death shortly thereafter, occurred much earlier than the time held by the Court of first instance, certainly not later than 10.13 pm”.

In addition to what is covered by the contents of these two Motivation Reports, there is an argument which is presented by the Friends of Amanda, and in particular Chris Halkides who I understand is, or was, an Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of North Carolina. In fact he presents an argument put forward by Professor Introna (Sollecito’s expert) during the trial.

This argument is to do with the standard time for the stomach to empty from the start of a meal, and relating this to the autopsy findings and in particular that of the pathologist Dr Lalli who found that Meredith’s stomach was 500cc full but that there was no material to be found in the duodenum. Halkides’ argument is that this demonstrates conclusively that Meredith was attacked shortly after her return to the cottage at 9pm and would have died shortly thereafter. The significance of this, if correct, is apparent in that it opens up, or at least it raises a doubt as to whether there is or not a verifiable alibi for Knox and Sollecito.

Although Knox does not have an alibi from the time of Meredith’s return home at 9pm, there was human interaction, the last, on Raffaele’s computer at 9.15pm, and one might assume that they were together at that time. But no verifiable alibi until one takes into account that Curatolo says that he first saw the two on Grimana Square around 9.30pm.

My area is the law, and I have no medical or scientific expertise, so I hesitate to go up against anyone who has, but nevertheless I will endeavour to summarise and rationalise the evidence, arguments and conclusions as presented by Massei, Hellmann and Halkides.

First a word about the digestive system.

Food, already masticated, passes through the esophagus to the stomach, where it is broken down by acids, from where it then passes to the small intestine from whence the body extracts the nutrients it needs. The duodenum is that part of the small intestine right next to the stomach and it’s function is to dissolve the food “juice” further with enzymes before passing it on to the rest of the small intestine.

Judge Massei

Judge Massei considers the experts’ findings in the following areas to determine a likely time of death.

The first is temperature decrease, “taking the Henssge nomogram into account: rigor mortis; hypostatic marks” etc.

One can note that in fact rigor mortis and the hypostatic marks were not in the least bit helpful due to the 12 hour delay in the pathologist getting to examine the body.

That apart, nevertheless ……“These led Dr Lalli to conclude that death may have occurred between 21 hours 30 minutes, and 30 hours and 30 minutes, before the first measurement, and thus between approximately 8 pm on November 1st 2007, and 4am on November 2nd….The intermediate value also indicated by the mathematical reconstruction (26 hours prior to the first measurement) puts the time of death at approximately 11 pm.”

Just how one works out TOD on temperature decrease indicators, especially in the absence of a pathological examination earlier than that which took place here, is pretty technical. I will not attempt to present the data (some of which is missing i.e Meredith’s actual body weight) or explain the mathematical models (so as to calculate body weight and the rate of cooling) (the Henssge nonogram appears to be one such mathematical model in graph form) that the experts used.

Nearly all the experts, other than Professor Introna, whilst having marginal disagreements about data and formulae, were not in fundamental disagreement about the wide parameters of or even Dr Lalli’s conclusion of a TOD of approximately 11pm.

Professor Introna departed from the other experts to use an “ideal weight” and a specific formula to calculate the ideal weight, to produce a TOD of 8.20pm when of course we know that Meredith was still very much alive. Thus Massei ruled out ideal weight calculations as unreliable and used a median weight based on Dr Lalli’s guesstimates of Meredith’s weight (as used by the other experts) on first examination and at autopsy, though she was not actually weighed at all.

The second area is gastric emptying of the stomach.

It was acknowledged by all the experts that there is something like a standard period between the time that food enters the stomach and it then being processed through into the small intestine. There was, however, some disagreement as to the parameters, ranging between 2-3 hours and 3-4 hours. One could therefore say 2-4 hours. Remember this.

Most of the experts agreed though that individuals are different, and there are variables leading to wide discrepancies including the type of meal eaten. A number of the experts heard said that the state of digestion was probably the most unreliable indicator as to the TOD.

All agreed that acute stress, psychological as well as physical such as an attack, would inhibit the digestive process.

I will not rehearse Professor Introna’s argument here as this, essentially, is the argument which Chris Halkides deploys, to which I will come in a moment.

It is fairly clear that Massei found the information as to body cooling time more convincing than information as to the state of digestion. However, as I understood it, the Appeal Court was going to be asked to re-evaluate precisely that. Did it?

Judge Hellmann

The Court of Assizes of first instance has acknowledged the difficulty in precisely fixing the time of death based merely on autopsy criteria. Since not all the accurate data is available, the time span within which the death of Meredith Kercher can be placed based on such criteria remains very widely outlined: between 9pm and 9.30pm of November 1st 2007, and the early hours of November 2nd.However, in reconstructing the sequence of events the Court of first instance assessed it was able to fix the time of death based on other elements, in particular the harrowing scream….

The first point to note here is that Hellmann misinterprets the first Court’s findings. He ignores the fact that the first Court did determine a TOD between 11pm and 11.30 pm as probable based on the pathology alone, and gave reasons for this.

None of the expert testimony is rehearsed, let alone re-evaluated by Hellmann. He proceeds merely to discredit the reliability of the witnesses as to the other elements such as the scream etc.

One recalls that Nara Capezzali says that she heard a scream sometime between 11 and 11.30 pm. That there was a broken down car and the breakdown driver came and went between perhaps 11 and 11.15 pm.

As mentioned earlier his hypothesizing about the other elements leads him to a TOD of not later than 10.13 pm although this time seems a very random one based on what he presents. He talks in this section about Guede’s statement that he arrived at the cottage at 9 pm.

One suspects that if Hellmann could have fixed the time of death at 9.15 pm or 9.30 pm then he would have done so as either time would be a get out of jail free card for Knox and Sollecito. He did not, but he got them out of jail nevertheless with his hypothesizing - here and elsewhere in his report.

I could just stop here because further discussion on the pathology itself would seem irrelevant as regards the appeal to Cassation, though it could really matter at a second appeal trial.

But here is a comment about Chris Halkides because some do say they find his conclusion convincing.

Chris Halkides

My summary of his argument.

The stomach was full (or at least had 500 cc of contents) and the duodenum had no material in it. As the duodenum had no material in it then, Halkides deduces, the stomach had not started to release any part of the meal Meredith had consumed at Robyn Butterworths’ into the small intestine at TOD. Death stops the digestive process.

The contents of the stomach observed by Dr Lalli included some of the apple crumble eaten by Meredith and what appeared to be items, in a very advanced state of acidification, thought to be pizza toppings. Meredith and Sophie had eaten pizza at Robyn Butterworths’ home, followed by the apple crumble. In addition there was a small measure of alcohol in the stomach equivalent to a glass of beer.

They had started eating at about 6pm (some accounts e.g John Follain’s have it earlier at 5.30 pm) or maybe 6.30 pm, putting on a DVD to watch a film and finishing at 8 pm or perhaps 8.30 pm. The times here are an indication if anything and are not to be treated as completely accurate.

If it was 6.30 pm that Meredith began to eat then using the standard parameters discussed by Massei we have latest TODs of 9.30 or 10.30 pm for when material from the stomach should have started to enter the duodenum. Not later and certainly not as late as 11 or 11.30 pm.

That is Halkides’ argument in a nutshell. He argues that TOD is actually about 9.30 pm. If so it would have been impossible for Knox and Sollecito who were still at the flat at 9.15 pm and who were seen in the square at 9.30 pm to have committed the murder.

He has referred me to an article in the Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology about an experiment conducted on volunteers where the mean time (for 95 individuals) for gastric emptying of solids is 127 minutes, give or take, I think, twenty minutes either side.

Using the mean, to be pedantic, this would mean that Meredith died before she got home or at the latest immediately on arrival (6.30 + 2 hours 27 minutes = 8.57 pm.)

That article, incidentally, was published in 2006. It doesn’t seem to date that the results have been peer reviewed and verified and I would have thought that the experts who testified at the trial in 2009 would have been aware of it. So the data set out here may be suspect for a given individual and does not take into account variables excluding age, sex and body mass index which the research found to have no significant correlation.

In any event Halkides is quite happy to have a latest parameter of 3 hours, but no longer. Indeed that would be what brings us to 9.30 pm.

The problem I detect with his argument is twofold.

Firstly there is the uncertainty as to when Meredith began to eat at Robyn’s home (and since it was a two course meal, when she began to eat the apple crumble) and secondly Halkides’ argument is predicated on that two course meal being her last.

If the apple crumble was eaten at 8 or 8.30 pm then (adding on the 2 hours 27 minutes from the above research) it may still have been in her stomach at 10.27 or 10,57 pm, or later indeed (which Halkides has to concede) since the digestive time from the research is only an average.

So with a parameter of 3 hours we might just as well say 11 pm or 11.30 pm.

In addition to variables we could take into account inhibitors such as Meredith suffering acute psychological stress commencing…well…we cannot be certain when, can we?.

One can play Hellmann’s game and hypothesize to our advantage a number of stress situations on that fateful evening, starting quite early. No one has to accept Massei’s hypothesis of a Meredith on her own and in relaxed mode until about 11pm. Massei’s hypothesis here is in no way crucial.

Furthermore the hypothesis that Meredith actually ate a further snack on her return to the cottage does seem to have some basis in fact in that at the autopsy the pathologist found a mushroom in her esophagus. Mushrooms specifically had not been a topping on the pizzas baked at Robyn’s home. As to the alcohol in her stomach no alcohol had been consumed at Robyn’s home, only water.

It might sound a bit flippant for me to suggest it but it might be the case that Meredith, who was passionate about pizzas, had a beer and grilled a quick meal of pizza toppings from the fridge for herself which Halkides mistakes for evidence of the pizza still in the stomach.

That Meredith might still have been hungry might be because she had not, until eating at Robyn’s, eaten for a considerable time beforehand.

She had been partying all night Halloween and had gone to bed at about 4 am, rising at about midday, and then leaving not so long afterwards to be with her friends. Whether she had anything to eat at the cottage before leaving on the afternoon of the 1st, we simply don’t know.

Knox tells us in her e-mail to Seattle that she and Raffaele cooked and ate there, but she does not mention Meredith having anything to eat, and Meredith left before they did.

For some reason John Follain thinks Meredith did eat then, Paul Russell that she did not. I do not see how either could be sure. If it had been me I might have felt up to a nibble but not much more knowing that in a few hours I would be eating a meal with my friends.

It seems to me that it is quite possible that Robyn’s pizza had passed through the stomach, duodenum, and indeed perhaps most of if not the rest of the small intestine by 11.30 pm and that the apple crumble had not even begun to enter the duodenum.

Let us assume that Meredith actually started her pizza at 5.30 pm (according to Follain) finishing at 5.40 pm. As she was already hungry the stomach acids go to work straight away and the pizza passes at the earliest to the duodenum after two hours, spending a further three and half hours (as per literature) in the small intestine before passing to the rectum . A total of five and a half hours.

Thus the small intestine had disposed of it by 11.10 pm. There would however be an unlikely gap to the consumption of the apple crumble. Yet if the apple crumble was consumed after the DVD (watching the film The Notebook circa 123 minutes) then that would be around 8 pm, entering the duodenum three and a half hours later (possible) at 11.30 pm or at least it would be doing this but for the fact that Meredith was already the subject of a vicious attack inhibiting the digestive process.

I accept that I am not using uniform digestion times in this speculation (indeed I have deployed earliest and latest parameters at will) but nevertheless they are within the parameters accepted by the experts, and even, at a push, by Halkides as well.

The point is that this is a complicated topic and there are many imprecise details that do not allow for certainty but only probablilities, or in some instances, possibilities. This Massei, and to a certain extent Hellmann recognized.

Nobody can be precisely sure and so any other timeline or alibi must stand or fall on their own.

Posted by James Raper on 05/09/12 at 11:11 AM
Archived in Officially involved, Police and CSI, Public evidence, The timelines, The trials, Prosecution's case
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Sunday, July 17, 2011

Repeat Of The Powerpoint Guides To The Relevant Locations And Events On Meredith’s Fatal Night

Posted by Kermit

Click on the two images below for the two Powerpoints which will take a few seconds to load.

First posted late in 2008. We re-post them now in response to questions we’ve received from the many new arrivals to Meredith’s cause.

Posted by Kermit on 07/17/11 at 07:33 AM
Archived in Public evidence, The timelines, The locations
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Friday, January 07, 2011

Scenario Explaining Meredith’s Cell-Phones Dumped At The Same Address As The Toilet-Bomb Hoax

Posted by Cardiol

[The cellphones were tossed down the slope into a garden from this road alongside the city wall.]

The choice of 5A Via Sperandio for disposing of the cell-phones creates a puzzle for which the Massei Jury, apparently, “cannot see any reason”: From page 385 of the Report:

[We] cannot see any reason why the author of the crime would have been in Via Sperandio…and [we] cannot see what destination a person advancing along that street could have had with any objective other than that held by this Court: to throw the telephones in a place where they would be very difficult to find.

There may be a scenario that resolves this puzzle:

Late in October, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito may have already discussed, and formulated the outline of a plan to teach-Meredith-a-lesson.

An opportunity to play-out such a plan presented itself on the evening of November 1st, 2007:

At 20:18:12 Amanda, receives an SMS text from Patrick Lumumba asking her not to come in to work that evening (page 345).

This unexpected free time, Rudy Guede’s availability, and their knowledge that the house would be empty, fitted-into “doing it” that night.

Here is the scenario. Somewhere about 2200 - 2300, Thursday, Nov 1st, 2007 the-teaching-of the-lesson began…

The next 12 hours, ending with the Police discovery of Meredith’s dead body, is a litany of the trio’s miscalculation and failure to foresee the foreseeable:

The first miscalculation was their failure to foresee that Meredith could, and would resist so effectively that even all three of them combined could hardly restrain her.

The second miscalculation was their failure to foresee Meredith’s scream, loud enough to be heard all round their little world.

The third miscalculation was their failure to foresee that their crescendo of neck-airway-stabbing, intended to shut-her-up - which it did - could, and did, also cut an artery, the Right Superior Thyroid Artery.

Cutting that artery resulted in a bright red jet of arterial-blood, which would have sprayed Meredith, Meredith’s clothes, them, their clothes, the wall, and the floor.

They fled.

Meredith then died an awful death from inhaling her own blood.

The-teaching-of-the-lesson may well have occupied no more than 15 minutes from beginning to end - maybe even less.

The remainder of the 12 hours was occupied, first by verifying the absence of a hue-and-cry, especially any police-alert; then returning to their crime-scene, finding that Meredith was dead, cleaning-up, rearranging the scene, faking a break-in, and at some point disposing of Meredith’s cell-phones “in a place where they would be very difficult to find.”

This is where the choice of 5A Via Sperandio for disposing of the cell-phones creates a puzzle for which the Massei Jury, apparently, “cannot see any reason,” but to which there may be a solution:

First, there was probably a division of labor for this cell-phone disposal; Raffaele Sollecito was more than likely presumed best to do it. He had been a student in Perugia since 2002 more than 5 years, and knew local Perugia far better than the others.

Secondly, a most efficient way to detect any police-alert is a police-scanner or police-wavelength radio.

Police scanners are hand-held instruments, fitting into a coat pocket, or on a waist-belt. They can automatically scan thousands of police-frequencies, detecting police radio traffic, alerting the user.

Police scanners are sold all over the world; almost anywhere in the world you can buy one that could be attuned to Italian police-radio traffic frequencies.

If Sollecito had a police scanner he could have picked-up, and because he was native Italian, understood any Perugia police radio traffic relating to the Via Sperandio hoax call, which was reported to the Police at around 10:00 pm on November 1st.

7 Via della Pergola is not far from 5 Via Sperandio - variously estimated to be 5-7 minutes from 7 Via della Pergola by car, or 15-30 minutes on foot.

Sollecito would have known that.

Given the multiple mis-calculations already made, Sollecito might well have outsmarted himself and, expecting the Police not to go again to 5 Via Sperandio, disposed of the cell-phones right there.

At least one was left on though, unwittingly defeating the object of the exercise, and starting the police trail that remorselessly led to him and Knox..

Posted by Cardiol on 01/07/11 at 10:05 AM
Archived in Public evidence, The timelines, The locations, Cellphone activity
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Friday, December 03, 2010

Explaining The Massei Report:: Establishing The Time When Meredith Passed On

Posted by Storm Roberts

Introduction

Perhaps the hardest parts of the Massei Report for compassionate readers to take are those concerning Meredith’s wounds and time of death.

Those passages commence early in the report and, as with our translation of much of the Micheli report, left our translators and many readers disturbed and a few of them at least in tears.

This is an abbreviated overview of how forensic medicine helped the court to establish the time of Meredith’s death.

Medical science is often called upon to help to identify a precise time of death. However, this is not possible. The only way of knowing a precise time is if the death is witnessed and a time noted - medical science can only give a “time window” during which it is likely that death occurred.

There are several ways of establishing time of death and I shall look at four, briefly: the extent of rigor mortis; the temperature of the body; hypostasis; and, the state of digestion.

Rigor Mortis

Rigor Mortis is the stiffening of muscles after death. As oxygen is no longer being provided to the tissues of the body certain chemical reactions can no longer happen and changes occur. In the muscles this leads to a state of contraction which remains until the muscle tissues start to decompose.

Rigor Mortis begins to establish approximately three hours after death and is fully established at twelve hours and remains so until 48 hours. Rigor then begins to dissipate and 80 - 90 hours after death rigor mortis will have fully dissipated.

Thus rigor mortis can be used to establish an approximate time of death based on the degree of stiffness and whether the body is going into or going out of rigor. External factors can have an impact on rigor mortis, but as the cause of rigor is a lack of oxygen preventing a chemical reaction taking place external factors have less effect than they do when considering other methods of establishing time of death.

Body Temperature

The accepted temperature of a healthy human is 37 Celcius. Upon death the body starts to cool. The body temperature, normally taken rectally, drops 1-2 Celcius in the first hour and 1 Celcius every hour for the following 8 hours, thereafter the temperature drops gradually until the body reaches ambient temperature.

Factors that can affect this process, thus complicating it’s application to the establishment of the time of death include:

- the covering of the body as this insulates and changes the rate at which the body loses heat;
- injuries sustained and blood loss; and,
- any change in the environmental temperature (if the temperature surrounding the body changes - such as a night time temperature drop or if the body is moved).

Hypostasis.

Hypostasis is the settling of red blood cells under the force of gravity - the red blood cells fill capillaries (our smallest blood vessels) giving a red coloration to the skin. Initially the red blood cells are still mobile however eventually they coagulate and the coloration becomes fixed. It is generally accepted that the coloration (stain) appears one to two hours after death and begins to fix, from the central area of the stain outwards, from around the sixth to eighth hour. Fixation is complete from 24 to 36 hours after death.

Stage of digestion.

From the time we start to eat a meal, and thus initiate the digestion process in the stomach, there is a set pattern of events within the digestive process that can allow us to determine approximately how long after the start of the last meal digestion was interrupted by death.

When we eat a meal our food is initially broken down my two main means: firstly - chemical, namely enzymes and the acid in our stomach; and, secondly - mechanical, namely chewing and the action of the stomach muscles. Once our food has achieved a liquid consistency it is able to leave the stomach and enter the first part of our intestines - the duodenum.

This emptying of the stomach normally occurs from around 3 hours after eating. However, how fast we digest a meal and the stomach empties depends on a multitude of factors, just a few of which are:

what we have eaten;
how the food was prepared;
how our body reacts to the food;
our state of mind (for example: ever had “butterflies” or an upset stomach when you were worried or excited? );
our state of health; and,
what we drank with our meal.

In reality the speed of digestion varies not only person to person but meal to meal - You could eat the same meal twice and have significant differences in the speed of digestion each time.

If our “fight or flight” mechanism - the release of adrenaline - is bought into play it is possible for the digestive process to temporarily halt as our body diverts it’s resources to deal with more pressing matters of survival. This however is not certain, everyone is different and how such things affect us is unique.

What is explained in the report

Above I said that the stomach can empty after 3 hours, all of the above factors and many more can more than double that time to 6 hours or possibly more. Professor Cingolani testified that the stomach can empty after as little as one hour or take as long as 12 or more hours. Thus as stated above, the state of digestion, whether the stomach has emptied or not, is only able to provide a “time window” during which death could have occurred.

N.B. The following references to page numbers relate to the translation of the Massei Report (see link in the menu to the left of your screen) - specifically the first published version - v1.0 - dated 8th August 2010.

The Massei Report [Page 109 (full medical forensic considerations) and Page 173(specific report on the time of death.)]

The first thing the Massei Report notes on the subject of determining the time of death is that all the expert witnesses emphasised how difficult it is to determine, in part because there are “variables which are not always determinable and measurable with the necessary precision.”

The experts heard by the court on this matter were:

The Coroner, Dr. Lalli (whose evidence with regards to his observations and calculations regarding time of death are on Pages 113 to 116 of the Massei Report);
Consultant appointed by the Public Ministers (prosecution), namely Professor Mauro Bacci;
Consultants appointed by the court (the GIP - judge at a previous hearing), namely Professor Giancarlo Umani Ronchi and Professor Mario Cingolani;
Consultant for the civil party, namely Professor Gianaristide Norelli;
Consultant for the defence of Amanda Knox, namely Professor Carlo Torre; and,
Consultants for the defence of Raffaele Sollecito, namely Professor Francesco Introna and Professor Vinci.

Evidence such as the time of Meredith’s last meal (approximately 18.30 hrs) and when she was last seen by her friends (a few minutes before 21.00 hrs) was used by the court to ascertain the earliest possible time of death, i.e. 21.00 hrs was the last time Meredith was seen alive and the “time window” calculated with reference to forensic medical evidence could not start earlier than that [Page 131].

Arguments were heard with regards to how various factors would have affected calculation of time of death, these are all detailed in the Massei Report as are the different views and opinions of the various consultants noted above. The main points of contention were the effect the covering of the body had and the timing of the emptying of the stomach.

Details from the report

Dr. Lalli saw the body at around 14.40 to 15.00 hrs on 2nd November and noted that there was “cadaveric rigidity… of the ankle and toes” [Page 110]. He did not examine the body fully at that time as the scientific police were conducting their investigation and it was important to preserve the crime scene so they could do their job. He first examined the body at 00.50hrs on 3rd November 2007 - it was subject to rigor mortis. Rigor was still established at 12.00 hrs on 3rd November and was resolved by 10.00 hrs on 4th November - and thus he considered that the stages of rigor supported the time window established by the temperature of the body.

Dr. Lalli used both his experience of various factors which affect the rate of loss of heat energy from the body and also mathematical methods - namely the application of the Henssge nomogram - to establish a time window by considering the body temperature.

His calculations led to him reporting a window of between 21 and a half hours and 30 and a half hours prior to his first examination of the body (00.50 hrs 3rd November). He noted that the intermediate point of this window was 23.00 hrs on 1st November [Page 173]. Discussions centred on the weight of the body and also the effect of the cover placed over the body specifically how these would effect the application of the Henssge nomogram.

Looking at the hypostatic staining in this case did not help to narrow the time window [Page 114]. During his first examination of the body at 00.50 hrs on 3rd November Dr. Lalli noted that the stains were not fully fixed - digital pressure caused the stain to fade but not to disappear. In the following examination at 12.00 hrs on 3rd November the hypostasis was “fixed to finger pressure”.

This indicated that death occurred 24 to 36 hours earlier - however it is not known at what precise point in time between the first and second examination of the body that fixation occurred - therefore the court considered that the time of 12.00 hrs on 3rd of November was the latest possible time to count back the 24 to 36 hours.

Iin other words based on the observations and the times they were made the time window suggests death was between 24.00 hrs on 1st November and 12.00 hrs on 2nd November however full fixation of the stains occurred at a point between 00.50 hrs and 12.00 hrs on 3rd November if that point in time were known it would allow the time window to be pushed back and be more accurate. As this was not possible the court concluded that hypostasis was unable to provide information more accurate than that provided by the temperature of the body.

With regards to the state of digestion discussions covered areas included the time of the meal Meredith had shared with her friends (around 18.30 hrs), the point from which calculations should be taken, what had been eaten and the degree of digestion and how long it would take for the stomach to empty.

Also discussed was the possibility that Meredith might have had a snack when she returned to her home, a snack which might have included mushroom and a small quantity of alcohol (no more than a small glass of beer or wine) - it is not certain that she partook of such a snack but it was considered by the court [Page 179].

Dr. Lalli concluded that the time of death suggested by the state of digestion would have been between 21.00 hrs and 24.00 hrs on 1st November [Page 174] which is consistent with the time of death suggested by the temperature of the body and rigor. However other consultants, particularly those appointed by the GIP emphasised that this method has many variables and thus cannot provide an accurate time window [Page 179].

Conclusion.

The time of death can be said to be within a ten hour time window of between 18.50 hrs on 1st November and 04.50 hrs on 2nd November. The court and all the consultants and experts agreed on this time window [Page 179]. The mid point of this window is 23.50 hrs on 1st November. Meredith was last seen alive by her friends at 21.00 hrs on 1st November 2007.

However, forensic medical evidence is only one aspect of this case. Evidence with regards to biological trace evidence, telephones, computers and witness statements, for example were also introduced to the court and are detailed in the Massei Report. After careful consideration and weighing of all the facts the court concluded that Rudy Guede, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito entered the house at 7 Via della Pergola at around 23.00 hrs [Page 361] and Meredith was murdered shortly after 23.30 on 1st November 2007 [Page 382].

Posted by Storm Roberts on 12/03/10 at 12:29 AM
Archived in Vital Must-Read Posts, Public evidence, The timelines, DNA and luminol, The trials, The Massei Report
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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Explaining The Massei Report: The Timeline For Events Before, During, And After The Night #2

Posted by catnip

These two posts list all of the events precisely timed in the Massei Report. Page numbers shown in brackets are those in the original Italian version.

This timeline will be reposted over on the TJMK Massei Report summaries and highlights page as we populate that page further starting this week.

There are plenty of mentions of imprecise occasions and general time periods, such as when Rudy told Giorgio Cocciaretto about liking Amanda (p26) or when lawyer Palazzoli found out their stolen computer had been recovered in Milan (p33), but they are not listed here.

02 November 2007

00:10:31 Meredith’s English phone has a call, via cell 25622, which covers Via Sperandio but not Via della Pergola (p337, p350).

00:58 A 4-second Web connection occurs on Raffaele’s laptop, with QuickTime contacting the Apple server home page from 00:58:50 to 00:58:53: possibly an ad window listing multimedia files available from Apple opens and closes (p331, p332).

05:32–06:00 Activity on Raffaele’s MacBookPro laptop begins for the day: the VLC application attempts to open an MP3 file and crashes three times: at 05:32:09, 05:32:12, 05:32:13. iTunes successfully plays the MP3 files for the next half hour (p327).

06:02:59 Raffaele’s phone, located in Corso Garibaldi, receives an SMS from his father (p339). The SMS was sent at 23:14 the previous night (p340).

07:45 Quintavalle sees Amanda at his store (p383).

Around 9:00 As Mrs Lana and her husband are readying to leave to go to the police station to report the previous night’s menacing phone call, their son Allessandro finds a mobile phone, a Motorola, in the yard in front of the house, about 15-20 metres distant from the road above their house; thinking that one of the police officers had dropped it the night before, Mrs Lana phones the police station, and is asked to bring the mobile phone in (pp12-13).

09:24 Raffaele receives a call from his father, 248 seconds long, to see if they have left for their Gubbio excursion (p342, p383).

09:29 Raffaele receives a call, 38 seconds long (p342).

09:30 Raffaele, in Corso Garibaldi, receives a call from his father (p342).

10:00 Meredith and Robyn were intending to meet at a lecture at the University, not realizing that it was a public holiday; around this time Robyn tries calling Meredith several times without getting a response; Robyn finds out about Meredith’s murder later that afternoon at Police Headquarters, where she meets Amanda and Raffaele for the first time (p21).

Around 10:15 Mrs Lana and her husband, bringing the mobile phone their son found in their yard, arrive at the police station; the postal police officer on duty, Director Bartolozzi, takes custody of it and later in the morning will identify it as belonging to Filomena Romanelli (p13).

Around 11am Amanda, per her testimony, returns to Via della Pergola to have a shower in preparation for a planned excursion to Gubbio with Rafffaele (p347).

11:38 Director Bartolozzi establishes that the Motorola phone handed in by Mrs Lana belongs to Filomena Romanelli (p14).

Around about 11:45-12:00 A little after Mrs Lana and her husband have left the police station, their daughter Fiammetta tells them about finding a second mobile phone in the yard not far from where the first one was found; she heard it ringing; when the phone is brought inside and placed on the table, it rings, and the name “Amanda” appears on the display; Director Bartolozzi of the Postal Police is immediately informed about this and requests that the second phone also be brought in (p13).

Around 12:00 Bartolozzi at the Postal Police sends Inspector Michele Battistelli and Assistant Fabio Marzi to No 7 Via della Pergola to make enquiries; they will have some difficulty in finding the house (p14).

Around 12:00-12:10 Filomena, having borrowed her boyfriend Marco’s car, picks up her friend Paola Grande from Luca Altieri’s house, intending to visit the All Saints Fair in the Massian Fields, but before arriving there, Amanda rings saying there is something strange: she found the door open; had a shower; thought it strange that there was some blood; and that she was going to go to Raffaele’s; in response to Filomena’s question of where Meredith was, Amanda replies that she doesn’t know (pp16-17).

12:07:02 Meredith’s English phone receives a call via cell 25622, which covers Via Sperandio, where the phone was thrown away during the night (p337). The 16-second call is from Amanda, located at Raffaele’s house (p346).

12:08:44 Amanda, located at Raffaele’s, calls Filomena for 68 seconds, telling her about the disturbing things she has seen at the cottage, but, surprisingly, does not tell her that she has already tried contacting Meredith and was unsuccessful (p346, p347).

12:11:02 Meredith’s Italian phone, in cell SVSMdCs1, receives a 3-second call from Amanda Knox’s phone at Raffaele’s house; the call goes to Voicemail (p338, p346, p348).

12:12:35 Amanda, still at Raffaele’s house, receives a call from Filomena, 36 seconds (p346).

Around 12:15-12:20 Mrs Lana is at the Postal Police offices again, and hands the second mobile phone, an Ericcson, over to Inspector Bartolozzi, who is unsuccessful in identifying its owner; this makes him think that the phone’s SIM card belongs to a foreign service provider (pp13-14).

12:20:44 Amanda, still at Raffaele’s house, receives another call from Filomena, 65 seconds (p346).

Meanwhile Filomena, worried by Amanda’s phone call, tries calling her, unsuccessfully; then, on getting through, Amanda tells her about the broken window in her (Filomena’s room) and everything being turned over; Filomena, extremely worried now, calls her boyfriend to ask him to go to the cottage to find out what happened; her boyfriend Marco, because Filomena has his car, calls Luca Altieri, and together they go to the cottage, where they arrive, “almost simultaneously” with Filomena and Paola, around 13:00 (p17).

Around 12:30 Battistelli and Marzi from the Postal Police, after having driven up and down Viale Sant’Antonio twice, and Battistelli having to get out on foot, finally find the house “a little after 12:30, as it seemed to the two police officers”; there they find Amanda and Raffaele outside the cottage, seated near the end of the gated lane, just outside the wall underneath Filomena’s window, whose two Persian blinds were closed to, with the one on the right (as seen by an onlooker) being “slightly more open”; Amanda and Raffaele tell the Postal Police they are waiting for the carabinieri, who they had just called (p14).

A little after the Postal Police’s arrival at the cottage (time indeterminant) Director Bartolozzi calls Inspector Battistelli, informing him of the second phone found by Mrs Lana; it is considered that, since both phones were found near each other in terms of time and space, and one of the phones belongs to Filomena Romanelli, perhaps she will be able to shed light on the second phone as well (p15).

12:34:56 Amanda, now at Via della Pergola, receives another call from Filomena, 48 seconds (p346).

12:35 Raffaele’s phone, located at Via della Pergola, contacts his service provider for a credit topup (p342).

12:38 Vodafone sends Raffaele an SMS regarding the credit topup; he is at Via della Pergola (p342).

12:40 Raffaele, at Via della Pergola, receives a call from his father, 67 seconds (p342).

12:43 Meredith’s English phone receives a call via cell 25622, which covers Via Sperandio (p337). Subsequent calls are routed via cell 25603, which covers the Postal Police offices (p338).

12:47:43 Amanda calls the US for 88 seconds from Via della Pergola (p346).

12:50:34 Raffaele calls his sister, 39 seconds, from Via della Pergola (p342).

12:51:40 Raffaele calls the emergency number from Via della Pergola, 169 seconds, to advise the Carabinieri of an apparant burglary (p342).

12:54 Raffaele calls the emergency number from Via della Pergola for a second time, 57 seconds (p342).

Around 13:00 Filomena Romanelli and Laura Mezzetti, and separatel;y, their respective boyfriends, Marco Zaroli and Luca Altieri, arrive at the cottage (p15).

Filomena assumes the Postal Police are there because of the open front door, the broken window and the room that has been turned over; she is surprised when they show her two phone numbers, written on a piece of paper, an Italian number and an English number; Filomena explains that both numbers are in use by Meredith, the English phone for her family, and the Italian one she (Fiolmena) loaned to Meredith for use in Italy; the news about where the phones were found begins to make everyone fearful as to what might have happened, especially as Meredith would never abandon the English Erisccson phone because she was in continuous contact with her family on account of her mother’s poor health (p17)

Filomena quickly checks her room and finds nothing is missing (p18); she even tells Marzi that nothing is missing, “it’s all here” (p43); concern for Meredith increases, especially as Meredith’s door is locked; when Amanda explains that Meredith always locks her door, even when having a shower, Filomena is alarmed, because the one and only time Meredith locked her door was when she went back to England for a couple of days; the decision is made to break open Meredith’s door (p18).

A little after 13:00, around 13:15 Meredith Kercher’s body is found on the floor of her room in the upper floor apartment of a cottage at No 7, Via della Pergola, Perugia (p1, p10).

Around 13:15 Battistelli ushers everyone out of the cottage and declares a crime scene; Marco Zaroli sees the inspector enter the room, the inspector denies this (p20).

13:17:10 Meredith’s Italian phone, off or unreachable, is called by the service centre through cell SVSMdCs7 for 1 second (p338, p348).

13:24:18 Amanda, from Via della Pergola, calls the same US number as she did at 12:47, which is her mother’s, this time for 162 seconds (p346).

13:27:32 Amanda calls another US number, for 26 seconds (p347).

13:29:00 Amanda, in Via della Pergola, receives a 296 second call from a Perugia landline (p347).

Around 13:30 The murder investigation opens (p20). Public Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini is summoned and a criminal investigation into Meredith’s murder officially begins.

13:40:12 Raffaele receives an incoming call from his father, 94 seconds (p342).

13:50 Raffaele receives an incoming call from his father, 178 seconds (p342).

13:50:06 Amanda calls US xxx350 for 350 seconds from Via della Pergola (p347).

13:58:33 Amanda attempts to call her mother, 1 second (p347).

14:33 Raffaele receives an incoming call from his father, 21 seconds (p343).

14:46:14 Amanda receives a call from Germany for 102 seconds, probably her aunt Dorothy Craft (p347).

15:13:43 Meredith’s Italian phone, off or unreachable, is called by the service centre, cell not reported on the printouts (p338, p348).

15:31:50 Amanda receives an SMS from xxx078, 1 second; at this point she is at Police Headquarters; later calls go to Voicemail because the phone is unreachable (p347)

17:01 Raffaele, located at Police Headquarters, receives an incoming call from his father, 164 seconds (p343).

17:42 Raffaele, located at Police Headquarters, receives an incoming call from his father, 97 seconds (p343).

Sometime in the afternoon/evening Giacomo Silenzi, on his way back to Perugia and on the train at Porto San Giorgio with Stefano Bonassi, receives news of Meredith’s death (p25).

03 November 2007

14:16 Raffaele’s landline receives two unanswered calls from his father’s landline (p343).

06 November 2007

02:47 The “Last Modified” date is set on the multimedia file Stardust on Raffaele’s laptop (?was a password needed?), overwriting the previous last modified date. At this time, both Raffaele and Amanda were at Police Headquarters (p332).

13 November 2007

Raffaele’s portable Apple MacBookPro and 300D ASUS, Amanda’s Toshiba laptop serial number 7541811OK, Meredith’s G4 iBook, and Patrick Lumumba’s HP computer serial number 375052-001 become available (in a big box) for examination by the Postal Police (p321, p322).

Posted by catnip on 11/30/10 at 07:36 PM
Archived in Vital Must-Read Posts, Public evidence, The timelines, Crime hypotheses, Various scenarios, The trials, The Massei Report
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Monday, November 29, 2010

Explaining The Massei Report: The Timeline For Events Before, During, And After The Night #1

Posted by catnip

#1 The Masssei Timeline up to midnight of 1 November.

These two posts list all of the events precisely timed in the Massei Report. Page numbers shown in brackets are those in the original Italian version.

This timeline will be reposted over on the TJMK Massei Report summaries and highlights page as we populate that page further starting this week.

2002

Raffaele Sollecito tranfers from his home town Giovinazzo to Perugia to study Computer Science; he takes up lodgings at the ONAOSI halls until 2005; he is a taciturn and introverted student; the college masters are surprised by a bestiality porn video he has; they place him under monitor watch; his father will testify that he is in the habit of carrying a small knife around in his pocket, for carving bark and scuplting small objects (p50).

2006

Giacomo Silenzi arrives in Perugia; takes up residence in the downstairs flat at No 7, Via della Pergola (p25).

2007

August

Filomena Romanelli and Laura Mezzetti move into the cottage at Via della Pergola, occupying two rooms on the upper storey; because there is a second bathroom, and another two rooms, they start searching for flatmates to share the 1200 euro per month rent (p15).

Amanda Knox has saved up enough and departs the United States; she goes to Germany (p50).

A few months before October

Raffaele Sollecito has a brief fling, a couple of days, with a girl from Brindisi (p50).

End of August to beginning of September

Amanda arrives in Perugia with her sister; finds the cottage; after going back to Germany and returning to Perugia, she will begin studying: “a good and diligent student” says her teacher Antonella Negri (p50).

1 September

Meredith departs for Perugia to start her ERASMUS courses; she chose Perugia because it is small and easily reachable from the airport; at first she stays in a hotel (p10).

2 September 2007

Sophie Purton meets Meredith; they hit it off immediately and are soon visiting each other daily; Sophie later testifies that Meredith’s relationship with Amanda is amicable even though some of Amanda’s habits are annoying (p23).

Early September 2007

Amanda arrives and says she is interested in the cottage; she takes the room between Filomena and what will become Meredith’s room, then departs for a bit to visit an aunt in Germany (p15).

Mid September 2007

Meredith arrives at the cottage, and takes the room furthest from the front door, the one facing the countryside and next to the second bathroom (p15).

28 September 2007

Meredith returns home to get warmer clothes; she returns to Perugia on 1 October (p10).

End September – Beginning October 2007

Robyn Butterworth arrives in Perugia; takes up residence in Via Bontempi; immediately gets to know Meredith (p20).

October? 2007

Patrick Lumumba hires Amanda Knox to work in his bar, Le Chic; at first it is every day, starting at around 21:30-220:00, then it becomes twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday (p50).

Mid-October 2007

Giacomo Silenzi from the flat downstairs begins a romantic relationship with Meredith after a night out at the Red Zone club; Rudy expresses an interest in Amanda to Giacomo, Marco, and Stefano when visiting in the downstairs flat; Amanda is also there; on another occasion, Giacomo remembers Rudy, who had been drinking, asking, when they were all at a pub before going home, whether Amanda was already engaged – this was before Amanda had met Raffaele (pp25-26).

13 October 2007

Overnight, someone breaks into the law offices of Paolo Brocchi and Matteo Palazzoli by smashing a window with a big enough rock; there are pieces of glass everywhere on the floor, and their clothing has been tossed on top of the glass; initial inspection reveals a computer, a mobile phone, some USB memory keys, and a portable printer have been taken (p33).

Third Weekend of October 2007

Amy Frost goes to the Red Zone disco with Amanda (p22).

25 October 2007

Amanda and Raffaele meet for the first time. The relationship is intense; Raffaele treats and cuddles Amanda “as if she were a little girl” says his father; every day when his father called, and often multiple times during the same day, Raffaele talked about Amanda (pp50-51).

26 October 2007

Filomena meets Amanda’s boyfriend Raffaele for the first time; it is the day after Amanda and Raffaele first met (p15); it is Laura who tells her that he is a friend of Amanda’s; Filomena sees him another two or three times at the cottage; Laura remembers seeing Raffaele at the cottage around four times, and that in the coming days Amanda will often sleep at Raffaele’s: “they were continuosly hugging each other”, Laura remembers, “Raffaele was especially tender and sometimes, to me, seemed almost a bit possessive” (p51).

End October 2007

The Sunday after the Red Zone night where Giacomo and Meredith begin their relationship, Rudy drops around for a visit to the boys’ flat downstairs, univited; it is the day of the Grand Prix; that night, Giacomo and Meredith spend the night in his room; Amanda spends the night with Daniele in the upstairs flat, in Amanda’s room, according to what Daniele tells Giacomo (p26).

Stefano Bonassi, one of the four boys in the downstairs flat, who has been in Perugia for four years studying, first meets Raffaele Sollecito (p26).

27 October 2007, Saturday

Morning: Maria Antonietta Salvadori Del Prato Titone, kindergarten manager in Milan, finds Rudy at the Via Plinio kindergarten coming out of her office; there were no signs of a break-in; in Rudy’s backpack there is computer; the police, when called, ask him to empty his backpack: there is a 40cm-long kitchen knife, a set of keys, a woman’s gold watch; a little hammer like those emergency ones for breaking glass that are on the buses; the police tell her the computer was stolen from lawyers in Perugia; Rudy says he was told the kindergarten was a doss-house and paid a 50 euro fee to his informant; the kitchen knife was in the kitchen, the door to which was unlocked (pp32-33).

28 October 2007, a Sunday

22:36 The Amelie.avi media file finishes downloading via P2P onto Raffaele’s MacBookPro laptop (p326).

29 October 2007

The last day Giacomo Silenzi sees Meredith alive: before departing for the holidays, he asks Meredith to water his marijuana plants; only he and Stefano Bonassi remain in the downstairs flat because of the holidays; the other two boys in the downstairs flat have already departed (p25).

A co-worker at the Brocchi and Palazzoli law offices calls Paolo Brocchi to say that in the corridor there’s a person who says he was found with the goods in Milan, but says he purchased them legitimately; Brocchi later recognises the person as Rudy (p33).

30 October 2007

Returning home in the late afternoon after work, Filomena has a long gossip with Meredith (p15).

31 October 2007

Morning: Jovana Popovic’s mother tells her that the next day she will send a suitcase by bus so that it will arrive by midnight (p52).

Afternoon Sophie says Meredith sent her an SMS saying that she (Meredith) was on her way downstairs to the boys’ apartment to water the marijuana plants (p23).

18:27:50 Meredith’s Italian phone (the Motorola Vodaphone loaned to her by Filomena) sends an SMS to phone xx1724 through the Piazza Luppatelli sector 7 cell covering Via della Pergola and receives a reply two minutes later through the same cell at 18:29:05 (p338, p347).

22:14 Raffaele’s landline receives a call from his father, 44 seconds (p343).

Around 22:30 Marta Nieto and Carolina Martin, who live in the flat above Rudy in Via del Canerino, meet Rudy at their friend Adriana Molina’s place in Via Campo di Battaglia; there are about 30 people there; they party until around midnight, then go to another Spanish friend’s place, and then on to the Domus club; Rudy is with them all the time; the only one they see him dancing with is a girl with long blonde hair (p29).

At night: For Halloween, Meredith, Robyn, Amy, Rachel, Sophie, Nathalie, Lina and Monic dine together; then go to the Merlin and, later, the Domus, finally returning home about 4-5am; Amy remembers she and Robyn accompanied Meredith to the basktball courts in Piazza Grimana; Robyn remembers Amanda having asked Meredith to go out together (pp21-22).

01 November 2007

00:00:39 Raffaele’s phone makes an outgoing call (p341).

00:02:41 Raffaele uses his landline and calls his father for 262 seconds (p343).

00:41:49 Amanda makes an outgoing call to an unidentified person, 20 seconds (p345).

00:57 Raffaele’s phone receives an incoming SMS (p341).

00:57:20 Amanda, located somewhere in the city centre, sends an SMS to Raffaele to meet up with him at his house (p345).

01:04:48 Amanda’s phone receives an incoming call, 53 seconds, from landline xxx789.

During the day Before leaving the cottage to go to her boyfriend’s, and needing to change her clothes, Filomena asks Amanda’s help in wrapping a birthday present; Filomena is going with her boyfriend Marco to Luca Altieri’s house for his birthday party; Amanda is having breakfast and says Meredith is asleep in her room; for the rest of the day and the following night, Filomena is at her boyfriend’s (pp15-16).

Filomena remembers pulling the shutters closed on her window, as much as possible due to the swollen wood (p36).

Afternoon The film Stardust is downloaded via P2P onto Raffaele’s laptop (p331). Six files were requested; the first three downloaded were played, and the other requests were cancelled (p332).

Meredith and her mother talk on the phone for the last time; Meredith says she is planning to return home on 9 November for her mother’s birthday on the 11th (p10).

Meredith has a suitcase ready full of Perugian chocolate, intended as a gift to her sister Stephanie (pp10-11).

14:25 Raffaele’s phone has an incoming call, 58 seconds long (p341).

14:31:33 Meredith’s English phone, a Sony Ericsson, has a call via cell 25620 covering Via della Pergola; this call and the calls up until 15:55:57 also have their details recorded in the phone’s memory (p336, p349)

15:01:58 Meredith’s English phone has a call via cell 25621 covering Via della Pergola (p337)

15:48:56 Meredith’s English phone has a call via cell 25621 covering Via della Pergola (p337)

15:55:03 Meredith’s English phone has a call via cell 25621 covering Via della Pergola (p337)

15:55:57 Meredith’s English phone has a call via cell 25621 covering Via della Pergola (p337)

Around 16:00 Meredith arrives at Robyn’s place; with Amy and Sophie, they have a pizza dinner, maybe around 18:00, then look at the Halloween photos on the computer, then watch a film, halfway through the film they have an apple crumble with ice cream, and call it a night before 21:00 (p21).

16:50 Raffaele’s phone has an incoming call, from his father, 214 seconds long (p341).

16:56 Raffaele’s phone has an another incoming call from his father, 64 seconds long (p341).

Around 17:45 Jovana Popovic passes by Raffaele’s house to ask him for a lift to the bus station; Amanda opens the door and Raffaele is there (p52).

Around 18:00 The pizza dinner at Robyn’s place begins (p21).

18:27:15 The film file Amelie.avi begins playing via the VLC application on Raffaele’s MacBookPro laptop (p327).

20:18:12 Amanda, via a cell that does not cover Raffaele’s home, receives an SMS from Patrick Lumumba asking her not to come in to work that evening (p345). Amanda is located inside a phone cell which covers her route to Lumumba’s pub (p345).

20:20 Jovana Popovic’s lecture at the Three Arches ends; her mother had called to say that she was unable to send the suitcases because the driver refused to take them; Jovana starts walking to Raffaele’s to tell him she no longer needs a lift to the station (p53).

20:35:48 Amanda, located in Corso Garibaldi or environs, sends an SMS in response to Patrick’s (p345). No further activity occurs on Amanda’s phone for the rest of the day; Amanda declared during the hearings that she switched her phone off when she got back to Raffaele’s house because she was happy not to go into work and be able to spend the night with her boyfriend (p345).

Around 20:40 Jovana Popovic arrives at Raffaele’s to tell him about the lift; Amanda opens the door and tells her that Raffaele is in the bathroom (p53).

20:42:56 Raffaele’s phone has a call, and is located in Corso Garibaldi (p339). The call is from his father, who has just come out of the movie theatre and recommends the film; Raffaele mentions the leaking pipe in the kitchen to him; Amanda and Raffaele must therefore have finished dinner around this time (p341, p384). Raffaele tells his father that he is with Amanda, and will be with her the following day as well, having in fact organised a trip to Gubbio; he mentions noticing the water leak while he was washing the dishes (p52).

20:56 Meredith’s English phone recorded details of an attempt for an outgoing call “home”, to her mother (p350).

Around 21:00 Meredith returns home to the cottage (p388), leaving Robyn and Amy’s place with Sophie (p21); Sophie remembers waving goodbye to Meredith at 20:55 because at 21:00 there was a program on that she had to watch (p24).

Around 21:30 – 22:00 Antonio Curatolo, a reliable witness, while reading the Espresso newspaper, notices Amanda and Raffaele in the little square in front of the University for Foreigners; he knows each of them from before, by sight; he notices them again around 23:00 (p383).

21:10:32 The film file Amelie.avi closes on Raffaele’s MacBookPro laptop, from either being stopped, or reaching the end of the file (p327). Raffaele’s computer remains connected to the Net throughout the night and only 11 files are created, at regular intervals, by either the operating system (Mac OS X) or within the Mozilla Firefox browser cache; the P2P service also remains active (p328). The logs from Raffaele’s service provider, FastWeb, show no web page retrieval requests during this time period (p330).

21:58 Meredith’s English phone recorded details of an attempt to call Voicemail; no phone traffic was generated according to the phone provider’s records, as would be expected if the caller disconnected before the welcome message finished, consistent with a parsimonious student (p350, p352, p353).

Around 22:00 Mrs Lana recieves a threatening phone call advising her not to use the toilet because there’s a bomb. She immediately notifies the police, who arrive and find nothing; the call is a hoax; Mrs Lana and her husband are asked to come to the police station the following morning to report the phone call (p12).

22:00 Meredith’s English phone composed the number for “Abbey” (an English bank), the first entry in the contacts list, but since the international prefix was left off, the call did not connect; the roaming profile provider Wind captured the details, the phone’s memory did not (p350, p353).

22:13:19 In her last call for the day, Meredith’s English phone does a 9-second GPRS connection to IP address 10.205.46.41, via cell 30064, covering Via della Pergola and which does not cover Via Sperandio (p337, p350). This might have been an MMS message from its size, 4708 bytes received, 2721 bytes sent; alternatively, it may have been a brief WAP Internet connection, but, based on the byte traffic, with no fruitful interaction occuring; alternative three, it was an unintended WAP connection with a delayed disconnection. Since the MMS was not stored in the phone’s memory, the Court inferred that Meredith simply deleted it without opening it (p351, p352, p353)

Around 23:00 Antonio Curatolo, on his park bench, again notices Amanda and Raffaele in Piazza Grimana; he sees Raffaele going to the railing and looking through it, to where the Via della Pergola driveway gate is located (p384).

Around 23:00 The circumstances point towards Amanda, with Raffaele in tow, letting inside Rudy the cottage at Via della Pergola at this time (p384, p389). It would have been immediately obvious that Meredith was home: her door unlocked as usual, probably reading or studying, and, because of the blood and traces on her clothes, and her top being rolled up, she was still dressed, and therefore awake; plus also the wounds show she wasn’t in bed when the attack occurred (p389).

23:14 Raffaele’s father sends him an SMS, which is received on Raffaele’s phone the following morning at 06:02 (p340).

To be continued in Post #2

Posted by catnip on 11/29/10 at 12:12 PM
Archived in Vital Must-Read Posts, Public evidence, The timelines, The trials, The Massei Report
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Monday, May 03, 2010

From The Book Darkness Descending: The Insights On Knox And Sollecito

Posted by Peter Quennell

This is Hamburg above. And that is Berlin and its parliament (the Bundestag) below.

Amanda Knox speaks German and she spent several months in these two cities, staying for some weeks in in Hamburg with her relatives, and several days in Berlin, before moving to Perugia to start her study period there.

Darkness Descending is the book on Meredith’s case by two British writers from which we excerpted on Meredith a few days ago.

As far as we know the writers did not visit Seattle, and their focus is more generally on Italy and to some extent the UK. But they did offer this brief take on Amanda Knox, and also one on Raffaele Sollecito.

**********

From Darkness Descending by Paul Russell and Graham Johnson (Pocket Books) pages 291 and 292

Meredith had enjoyed making the pop video with her University of Leeds friends, but Amanda’s summer job, before travelling around Europe and going to Perugia, had not been so successful.

A politically well-connected uncle in Hamburg had got her an internship to die for - a job working for a German MP at the Bundestag. Kindly Uncle Uwe also set Amanda up with a flat on the .outskirts of Berlin.

Astonishingly, two days later, his seemingly ungrateful niece walked out on the job without telling anyone, moaning that she had nothing to do and she wasn’t sure if she was getting paid. Again, money was a big feature in her thoughts.

She’d spent most of the time reading Harry Potter and showed no curiosity about how the parliament or the high-powered people in there worked. She ignored conversations about its history and architecture.

After walking out, she spent her time drinking wine in the local bars and reading more Harry Potter.

Two days later she left Berlin for Hamburg, where her uncle was waiting for her. He was furious - she had let him down.

It seems Amanda craved excitement on her terms, usually based on getting drunk and goofing around.

Her friends said she simply feared boredom like any young girl. She showed a healthy streak of youthful carelessness, they said, no worse or better than anyone else. A video posted on YouTube showed her drunkenly giggling in a friend’s kitchen after downing shots.

On campus, back in the US, Amanda had been fined for being drunk and disorderly at a party held in a fellow student’s house. During the incident she had also insulted the police.

However, her defenders gave another version, portraying a magnanimous Amanda. They said that in fact she was courageously fronting up for her underage friends, who were in no state to talk to the police; she was the only one sober enough to handle the situation.

A big plus in her character assessment, they said, possibly displaying a sense of chivalry that would later get her into deeper trouble in Perugia.

Despite her college party lifestyle, there was no denying that Amanda was clever and that she could compartmentalize her life.

She made the Dean’s List, an elite commendation of the University of Washington reserved for the institution’s brightest students, and an honour that would ultimately qualify her for a prestigious and sought-after place on the study-abroad exchange programme.

If Amanda wanted something, she would go all out to get it, no messing around.

Raffaele Sollecito’s later years were quite different: he seemed to laze around and evade responsibility.

He posted pictures of himself on the internet wrapped in blood-covered bandages, brandishing a meat cleaver, and wrote a weird story to go with the images. In a blog he expressed satisfaction at once being lodged in the same hostel as the infamous ‘Monster of Foligno’, a murderer who slaughtered two youths in the 1990s.

And yet his new-found fascination with gory horror and violent comics would have surprised the friends he left behind at Licea Scientifico Einstein secondary school at Molfetta.

They said Raffaele suffered from excessive softness - his kickboxing instructor recalled that he even hesitated when kicking out, for fear of hurting the hardened expert.

***********

A few interesting insights there, though we could use more on Sollecito. For most of it, this is a pretty good book, the weak part being the closing analysis of the evidence. Two small corrections.

The house where the notorious rock-throwing party took place was where Knox herself was living at the time. See here.

Knox was not on an official University of Washington study-abroad program, as the university has rather anxiously tried to make plain. See here.

If Knox had indeed been on a proper study-abroad program - something many caring parents actually insist upon - her behavior might have been more restrained. She may not have moved in with Sollecito for one thing.

She may not have hit the drugs so hard. And she would not have run so desperately short of money, just when Patrick was apparently about to hire Meredith to replace her. No monthly checks were arriving from Seattle.

Maybe the second correction is not such a small one.

In fact, it is a pity that no writers have really explored all of this - there is, if anything, a surfeit of motives in this case, and the writers might be able to narrow them down.

Although he went to highschool in Molfetta (bottom shot here) and the book is correct on that, Raffaele Sollecito actually comes from Giovinazzo which is ten minutes drive south along the coast.

Both are north of Bari, where his father practices medicine.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/03/10 at 03:02 PM
Archived in Officially involved, Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito, Public evidence, The timelines, Crime hypotheses, Reporting on the case, Fine reporting, On psychology
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Italians Have For A Long Time Known How Depraved And Cruel The Final Struggle Was

Posted by Peter Quennell

As you can see in the prosecutors’ scenario posted below, we did not translate and post quite everything.

Meredith’s final 15-minute struggle is not there.

Back in January of this year the Micheli Report described in great detail Meredith’s autopsy, the wounds on her body, and the horrific state of her room.

There were literally DOZENS of evidence points. And it is crystal-clear that there is no way in the world that the attack was carried out by a single person.

Those descriptions had some of our Italian translators crying when they read the passages, and several said they slept badly for days.

We decided not to post those passages, because they put out in the open things that had been described only in closed session.

Our translators had trouble translating around those passages, and our poster Brian S worked for weeks to get the tone and coverage of his series of posts just right.

What we did post were the only long excerpts of the report in the English-speaking world.

The UK and US mainstream media pretty well ignored the Micheli Report. The UK media published only brief, mild excerpts, and the US media published NONE AT ALL.

Even today, few American journalists seem to realize that the report even exists.

In very sharp contrast, long excerpts were published in Italy.

And after a while as required by Italian law the Ministry of Justice in Rome posted the entire Micheli Report on their website. Many thousands of Italian speakers have been to that website and read the report in full.

So there is not very much that Italian followers of the case dont know about Meredith’s final 15 minutes.

The timeline and the computer simulation that the prosecutors presented last Friday were put fully out in the open. The media were all there. And if there is a guilty verdict in this trial, the judges’ sentencing report must be out by early March.

This time around we will post the complete report.

If justice for Meredith is to be seen to be done, people need to read the entire thing.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 11/24/09 at 01:05 PM
Archived in Vital Must-Read Posts, Public evidence, The timelines, The trials, Prosecution's case, Reporting on the case, Fine reporting, Media news, The wider contexts
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Monday, November 23, 2009

The Summations: The Prosecutions’ Reconstruction Of The Events On The Night

Posted by Peter Quennell

[Above: Where they waited and watched? View from Piazza Grimana of gate area of Meredith’s house]

This time-line for the evening of 1 November 1 2007 was presented by the prosecutors in court on Friday afternoon.

It was accompanied by a very graphic computer simulation of all the events described except for the arrival of Rudy Guede, the timing of which is unknown but seems to have been late - maybe around 11:30 pm.

This account seems to be of a premeditated attack on Meredith, in which Knox and Sollecito may have watched Meredith’s house from this position above in the park for an hour and a half before they even entered the house.

Meredith was inside the whole time.

We have left out the depiction of the final struggle with Meredith, which is extremely sad and disturbing. In the evidence phase this was testified-to behind closed doors at her family’s request and we have never posted anything from those sessions.

However, it is made clear that Meredith put up a tremendous fight over a period of 15 minutes with three strong attackers, before she finally succumbed.

Via Ulisse Rocchi

However according to the prosecution in the wee hours of the night Knox and Sollecito returned to the scene of their crime to try and clean up some footprints and to break the window glass of Filomena’s room. The aim was to simulate a robbery that ended in murder and they are charged with this too.

The translation here, by Tiziano and our other Italian-speakers, is from Il Messagero and other Italian newspapers.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 11/23/09 at 12:45 PM
Archived in Vital Must-Read Posts, Officially involved, The prosecutors, Public evidence, The timelines, Crime hypotheses, Various scenarios, The trials, Prosecution's case
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Thursday, April 16, 2009

Our Best Shot At Making Amanda Knox’s Timeline Alibi Work

Posted by FinnMacCool

Amanda Knox’s first encounters with police and other witnesses the day after go to the very heart of her credibility.

Of her truth-telling or otherwise about events, and of her whole innocence or otherwise in the crime.

On Sunday 4 November 2007 Amanda Knox wrote an email to a student welfare officer at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Knox related what she said had happened at the house on Friday the 2nd before the communication police arrived to establish why Meredith’s two mobile phones were tossed into a garden a kilometer away.

This email was written while Amanda was alone and under no pressure.

Copies went to various relatives and friends. For many of her supporters, it represents the essential truth of what happened, before Amanda was interrogated by the police and began changing her story.

This analysis covers the period from noon to a quarter past one on the Friday, the day that Meredith Kercher’s murder was discovered.

It compares the claims in the email with cellphone records for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the period.

The contents of the email

According to the email, Amanda and Raffaele were initially at Raffaele’s apartment at noon on November 2nd. The email describes how Amanda spoke with Filomena Romanelli and then tried to reach Meredith Kercher by phone.

It then explains that Amanda and Raffaele returned to the cottage, where they found evidence of a break-in, alongside some bloodstains which Amanda had already noticed.

They also observed that Meredith’s door was locked. After they tried and failed to break down this door, they phoned the police.

After that, Amanda claims she called Filomena once again, who said she would return to the cottage.

Cellphone records do not support this story, and nor do the police.

Two police officers arrived at the cottage to investigate Meredith’s two phones, which had been found in a neighbor’s garden. The police claim they arrived at 12:25, and video evidence appears to support this.

Amanda and Raffaele dispute the video evidence. They claim that the police arrived much later, after the call to the emergency services which Raffaele made at 12:55.

Below, we look first at the scenario described by Amanda, followed by the scenario described by the police, with a view to determining what really happened in that crucial hour between noon and one.

First scenario: Amanda Knox’s email is essentially true, the police account is essentially inaccurate

If we assume that the police are basically incorrect, and that Amanda Knox’s email is basically correct, in their respective rememberings of what happened on November 2 between noon and 1315, that leaves us with several puzzling questions. Here are some of them:

1. Where was Amanda at 1208?

At 1208, Amanda calls Filomena. Amanda claims that she made this call from Raffaele’s house.

However, in his prison diary, Raffaele describes the same conversation as taking place at the cottage.

Filomena says that Amanda explained, in that conversation, that she was at the cottage, and was on her way to fetch Raffaele.

2. Why didn’t Amanda call Raffaele?

Even though Amanda claims to have walked alone to the cottage, and to have been concerned enough about the bloodstains to want to bring Raffaele to have a look at them, she never attempted to phone Raffaele at all during the whole of that morning.

3. Why did Amanda stop calling Meredith’s phones?

Amanda first tried calling Meredith’s Italian phone at 12:07. At 12:08 she calls Filomena, who advises her to try Meredith’s phones. She doesn’t tell Filomena that she tried the UK phone just a minute ago (nor does she mention this in her email).

In the email, Amanda says she called Meredith’s phones after speaking to Filomena – cellphone records support this claim. But she also says that the Italian phone “just kept ringing, no answer”.

Her cellphone records show this call lasted just three seconds, and the call to the UK phone lasted just four seconds. (The WeAnswer Call service, which prides itself on how quickly it answers its customers’ calls, boasts that their average speed-of-answer is 5.5 seconds.)

Next, Amanda claims that she returns to the cottage with Raffaele.

But why doesn’t she try Meredith’s phones again? If the Italian phone was going to continually ring again – even for just three seconds – she’d now be able to hear it through the bedroom door (assuming Meredith had it with her).

But this doesn’t seem to have occurred to either Amanda or Raffaele.

4. Why didn’t Amanda call Filomena back?

In the 12:08 call, Amanda told Filomena she would try Meredith’s phones and then call her back.

In the email, Amanda claims that she called Filomena back three quarters of an hour later – after Raffaele’s finished calling the police at 12:55.

But cellphone records show that Amanda never called Filomena back at all.

On the other hand, Filomena DOES call Amanda back – at 12:12 and 12:20. It’s not clear whether Filomena receives an answer to these calls, or simply leaves a message – certainly, Amanda’s email makes no mention of having received these calls.

Then Filomena tries a third time, at 12:34, which is when Amanda tells her that Filomena’s own room has been broken into.

5. Why doesn’t Amanda mention that she called her mother in Seattle?

Her cellphone records also show that Amanda called her mother at 12:47 – but she makes no mention of this call in her email.

Edda Mellas claims that she told Amanda to hang up and call the police – but Amanda makes no mention of this advice in describing their decision to call the police.

The email describes the decision to call the police as something between herself and Raffaele, after she had tried to see through Meredith’s window, and after Raffaele had tried to break down Meredith’s door.

But in the ten minutes before Raffaele calls his sister (an officer in the carabinieri), Raffaele has received a call from his father (at 12:40:03) and Amanda has made a call to her mother (at 12:47:23) – neither of which calls is mentioned in the email.

Raffaele’s sister gives him the same advice that Edda Mellas gave Amanda: hang up and call the cops.

6. How can the tour of the cottage and the arrivals of first Marco and Luca, and then of Filomena and Paola, all take place between 12:55 and 13:00?

Raffaele makes the successful emergency call (lasting nearly a minute) at 12:54:39.

Meredith’s UK phone is activated at Police HQ at 13:00 – as part of a conversation which the postal police at the cottage are having about that phone with staff at HQ.

This conversation mentions Filomena’s arrival, and the information she’s given them about it being a UK phone.

This means that we need to fit the following activities into those five minutes, if Amanda’s email is to be believed:

The postal police arrive later than 12:55
Amanda and Raffaele give them a tour of the cottage, including the suspected break-in and the bloodstains in the bathroom
Amanda writes down Meredith’s phone numbers for them, on a post-it note which Luca Altieri notices on the kitchen table when he arrives
Marco and Luca arrive (and they see the post-it note) and have a conversation with the police about the ownership of the phones
A few minutes later, Filomena and Paola Grande arrive. Filomena explains to the police about Meredith’s phones (one lent by Filomena, and the other a UK phone)
The postal police make contact with their HQ
During this call, Meredith’s phone is activated (at 13:00)

In addition, at some point, Paola sees Raffaele and Amanda emerging from Amanda’s bedroom – but it’s not clear whether this happened before or after 13:00. It could have been after.

But even if we move this emergence from the bedroom to after 1300, there simply isn’t enough time for all those other activities to take place in a period of less than five minutes.

Second scenario: the police account is basically accurate, Amanda Knox’s email is essentially untrue

Let us take the opposite scenario, and assume that the police are basically correct, and that Amanda Knox’s email is basically incorrect.

This then provides us with answers to those puzzles above, and also fills in some of the gaps that were otherwise missing from the timeline.

We also find that this new timeline is supported by evidence from other witnesses.

1. Where was Amanda at 12:08?

Amanda was at the cottage, and so was Raffaele.

Amanda was not telling the truth when she said she was going to fetch Raffaele – since Raffaele was in the room with her when she made the call.

This matches with the versions of both Filomena and Raffaele, who both believed that the call was made from the cottage.

2. Why didn’t Amanda call Raffaele?

Amanda never called Raffaele that morning because they were with each other the whole time – just as they continued to be with each other every moment until their arrest (except when separated for interrogations).

3. Why did Amanda stop calling Meredith’s phones?

Amanda called from the cottage in the first place, so there is no longer a question of why she called Meredith only from Raffaele’s apartment.

Also, she allowed the phone to ring only for three or four seconds because she knew that Meredith would not (and could not) pick up – she knew Meredith was dead.

The purpose of making these calls was simply for them to appear on her own cellphone record, to help construct an attempted alibi.

4. Why didn’t Amanda call Filomena back?

This question can be answered if we accept the hypothesis that Amanda’s intention was for Meredith’s body to be discovered by Filomena and/or Filomena’s friends.

When the police found the couple outside the property “waiting”, they were really waiting for the one living person that they had called that morning – Filomena.

Amanda ignores the calls at 12:12 and 12:20 because she wants Filomena to arrive at the cottage and to be the one who makes the “discoveries” of the break-in, and the locked bedroom.

So that when Filomena arrived at the cottage, Amanda and Raffaele (at the front of the house) could have said, “Oh, we decided to wait for you. Let’s go in together.”

However, Amanda answers Filomena’s 12:34 call because the police are already at the cottage and have already discovered the alleged break-in.

So now Amanda needs Filomena to arrive as quickly as possible – and at this point she tells Filomena about the break-in and the locked door.

Unfortunately for Amanda, however, Filomena decides to call Marco and get himself and Luca to go there first – knowing that they will be able to reach the cottage much more quickly.

Amanda tries to delay the breaking open of the room by telling the police, and by telling Luca, that it’s normal for Meredith to lock her own door.

She does this because, when it comes to the breaking down of the door, they want the others to be the first ones on the scene - and we can see that when the door is broken down for real, Amanda and Raffaele withdraw to the kitchen.

Unfortunately for Amanda, however, she can’t resist boasting later to Meredith’s English friends that she herself was the first on the scene.

5. Why doesn’t Amanda mention that she called her mother in Seattle?

Amanda’s email is essentially fictional.

The police arrived around 12:30, which is when they said, and this is corroborated by the CCTV evidence from the car park (timed at 12:25).

So the police have been in the cottage for about a quarter of an hour when Amanda calls her mother.

Amanda is first called away from the police to answer Filomena’s 12:34 call, just as Raffaele is called away a few minutes later to answer a call from his father at 12:40.

However, it is not until the arrival of Marco and Luca that they are able to escape to the privacy of Amanda’s bedroom, where they make the phone calls first to Amanda’s mother, then to Raffaele’s sister, and then the two calls to the police.

Notice that Edda and Raffaele’s sister both give the same advice: Hang up and call the police. And that’s exactly what they do, in fact.

However, in trying to create a fictional backdrop for making the emergency calls, Amanda forgets that she’s already called her mother.

Now she tries to explain that she and Raffaele called the police because of their panic over the locked room – panic which seems not to exist when Amanda is telling Luca that Meredith usually locks her door.

(Notice that in this version, we don’t need to believe that nobody can understand what Amanda says.)

After making these calls, Amanda and Raffaele emerge from the bedroom, as described by Paola Grande.

Paola’s memory of arriving at the cottage just before one is supported by the activation of Meredith’s cellphone at 1300.

6. How can the tour of the cottage and the arrivals of first Marco and Luca, and then of Filomena and Paola, all take place between 12:55 and 13:00?

It doesn’t. The tour of the cottage takes a more realistic fifteen minutes (roughly 12:30 to 12:45).

The police spend ten minutes talking to Luca and Marco about the phones, and about the suspected break-in, and so on (roughly 12:46 to 12:55), while they await the arrival of Filomena and Paola.

The girls arrive shortly before one, as the girls said, and as the phone records support, and explain the situation of the phones to the police (roughly 12:56 to 13:00).

There follows another fifteen minute examination of the house, culminating in the breaking down of the door by Luca Altieri at 13:15.

Conclusion

This version may or may not be accurate, but at least it is supported by external evidence, not contradicted by it.

It is easy to see why Judge Micheli’s report found that the cellphone records do not support Raffaele Sollecito’s claim to have called the flying squad before the postal police arrived.

It is also easy to see why these timings undermine other stories told by the two defendants – such as Amanda’s December 2007 claim that she thought the postal police were in fact the police that Raffaele had just called.

Such a claim is absurd, given that Battistelli contacts HQ with a status report less than five minutes after Raffaele’s 112 call was made.

The bottom line is that this does not look promising for Amanda Knox.

Posted by FinnMacCool on 04/16/09 at 12:07 PM
Archived in Vital Must-Read Posts, Officially involved, Amanda Knox, Public evidence, The timelines, RS + AK alibis
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Friday, February 13, 2009

Here, Meredith Said Her Final Goodbye To A Friend

Posted by Peter Quennell

[click for a larger image]

Meredith said goodbye here to Sophie Purton, who lived nearby, and who testified today.

Up the steps and through an arch is where Meredith had had her final happy meal with her caring English friends.

Meredith’s house is about 10 minutes away, behind where this shot is taken from. From here, she headed home alone.

To prolonged depraved torture, and a slow cruel death.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 02/13/09 at 06:08 PM
Archived in Concerning Meredith, In memory, Public evidence, The timelines, The locations
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Monday, February 09, 2009

Highlights Of The Testimony On 6 February And 7 February

Posted by Peter Quennell

These seem to have been the most significant and dramatic happenings in the courtroom on Friday and Saturday.

This was the first part of the prosecution’s case to be presented, and so the first of the prosecution witnesses were testifying and were being cross-examined by the defense lawyers.

In the defense part of the trial coming up, the defense counsel will present their own witnesses to try to rebut this testimony, and then the prosecutors will cross-examine their witnesses.

So none of this can be considered cast in stone, then. But it looks quite a tough case so far. The defenses seem to have their work cut out for them.

Reports in the Italian media were considerably more detailed than in the UK media, though coverage there was good too. It looked in both countries to be pretty objective.

Americans are as usual the most ill-informed or mis-informed on this tragic case. With one or two fine exceptions, the US media continues to fall short.

Translations here from Italian to English are mostly by our own team.

Judge Massei admitted into evidence the uncoerced written admission of Amanda Knox that she was present at the scene during the murder of Meredith.

In a surprise statement to the court, Sollecito claimed that “I barely knew Meredith, I didn’t know Guede at all” and that he began a close relationship with Knox only on 24 October, days before the murder.

The communication police testified on the lines of the Micheli report on how Meredith’s two mobile phones were found in Signora Lana’s garden and retained at the police station.

Mr Bartolozzi, whose agency oversees internet activity in Italy, said an examination of Sollecito’s computer had indicated that contrary to his claim there had been no activity on it between 9.10pm and 5.32am.

The communication police seem to have found Knox and Sollecito embarrassed and surprised when they arrived, and they were apparently encountered with a bucket and a mop.

Sollecito’s claim to have already called the Carabinieri to come to the house when the communication police officers arrived seems to have been misleading.

The communication police noticed that there was a washing machine in operation and they could hear the noise of the centrifuge. Soon after, the mobile-squad police found that the machine had finished its work a few minutes earlier, and the clothes were still warm.

Filomena testified that the washing machine was still warm when she returned to the cottage and that it contained some of Meredith’s clothes.

Filomena said of Knox “She told me: ‘It’s very odd. I’ve just come back to the house and the door is open. I had a shower but there’s blood everywhere. I’m going to get Raff. Meredith is nowhere to be seen. Oh God, maybe something’s happened to her, something tragic’.”

Filomena said she replied “But Amanda. I don’t understand. Explain to me, because there’s something odd. The door’s open. You take a shower. There’s blood. But where’s Meredith?... The door’s open. I go in. There’s blood. I take a shower? I don’t know about you, but I really don’t think that that’s normal.”

To the communication police, the break-in via Filomena’s bedroom window appeared to have been faked, as there was window glass on top of some disarrayed clothes, valuable items had been left in the room, and luminol had revealed Knox-sized and Sollecito-sized footprints on the floor.
Filomena testified that her first instinct on returning to the apartment had been to go to her room. Her clothes were on the floor and her cupboard was open, but none of her jewellery was missing, nor were her designer sunglasses and handbags.

Filomena said there was glass on top of the pile of clothes. Her laptop was among the clothes.“I remember that in lifting the computer I realised that I was picking up bits of glass because there were bits of glass on top and it was all covered with glass.”

Filomena testified that the relationship between Amanda and Meredith started off well and they bonded immediately. “They were of the same age, they had interests in common, and both spoke English.” Then the relationship seemed to deteriorate.

Filomena said that Kercher was involved with a “very kind” young man, Giacomo Silenzi, who lived in an apartment downstairs and who she said “courted her very sweetly…. Meredith never brought men home – the only people who came to the house were two of her English girlfriends.”

Filomena contradicted Knox on whether Meredith was in the habit of locking herself in her bedroom, according to Filomena, Meredith never did, whether inside or outside.

Filomena testified that Knox and Sollecito just cuddled at the scene while everyone else was in tears and she said she was bewildered by Knox’s behavior. Another witness testified that Knox may have cried.

Filomena examined the knife found in Sollecito’s apartment and said she had never seen that knife in Via della Pergola. She was unaware of any dinner or lunch that Meredith had attended at Sollecito’s apartment which could explain her DNA on that knife.

Filomena said she saw Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox exchanging a note at the police station.

Luca Altieri said “With the police we decided to break into the room - I don’t know exactly where Amanda and Raffaele were at that time, but I can tell you, they were not in a position to see inside the room.”

Inspector Bastianelli described having made everyone exit the house after the door to Meredith’s room had been opened. And of then having stood for about half a minute at the door of the room, facing into the room without entering it, and concluding that Meredith was already dead.

But according to Luca Altieri, Inspector Bastianelli seemed to enter into Meredith’s room a little and incline toward Meredith on the floor [this has been modified, as Italian reports say he did not claim the inspector touched the duvet.]

Paola Grande confirmed not having seen the inspector entering the room, but hearing him subsequently confirm that the person under the bedcover was dead, that there was a lot of blood, and that the victim had struggled because there were bloodied prints on the wall.

The police were curious as to why Knox’s lamp was in Meredith’s room, especially as there was no other light source in Knox’s room.

This next Friday, Meredith’s English friends will be heard in court. And Meredith’s former boyfriend Giacomo Silenzi is expected to tell the court about his relationship with Meredith.

And now rescheduled for next Saturday are Giacomo Silenzi, Stefano Bonassi and Daniele Ceppitelli.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 02/09/09 at 08:58 AM
Archived in Officially involved, Police and CSI, Public evidence, The timelines, RS + AK alibis, Other physical, Other witnesses, The trials, RS + AK trial
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Thursday, December 11, 2008

Primary Timeline: An Hour-By-Hour Guide To The Events In Question

Posted by Michael

[Above: Where Meredith said goodbye to Sophie Purton - perhaps the last friendly face she ever saw.]

This narrative below is our present best shot at listing the events, actual and claimed, surrounding Meredith’s sad fate.

The constantly-updated master version of this primary timeline is posted here on the PMF forum I co-moderate with Skep. There are some subsidiary timelines which will also appear here soon.

The master version was first posted on the old True Crime MK Forum on Monday 14th April 2008. It built upon an original timeline by Xin, and I have frequently edited it since as the picture grows clearer.

You are really welcome to suggest edits, modifications, and additions, either in Comments below, or in a post below the master version itself.

Kermit’s excellent Powerpoint narrative of many of these same events was previously posted here.

Wednesday 31st October 2007 (Halloween)

Evening “Amanda…sent [Meredith] numerous SMS messages.” 1900 Meredith responds to her flatmate: “I have to go to a friend’s house for dinner.” The student from Seattle persisted, “What are you doing tonight? Do you want to meet up? Have you got a costume?” She then said that she was going to Le Chic and “maybe we’ll see each other.”

Thursday 1st November 2007 (Day of the Dead in Italy)

1300 AK saw MK at their apartment (per AK)

1400 -1500 MK left

1530 Sophie Purton arrives at Robyn Butterworth’s flat at Via Bontempi 22

1600 Meredith arrives at Robyn Butterworth’s flat

1700 AK, RS went to his apartment (per AK)

1800 Meredith had a meal with her girlfriends “Ms Kercher was known to have eaten an early supper of pizza and ice cream with two British women friends, both fellow students, at six o’clock on the evening of her death. But Sophie Purton, one of the friends, had testified that the meal contained no mushrooms.”

1800 AK, RS left her apartment (per RS)

1836 RS at his computer, had watched ‘Amelie’ whilst also downloading the film ‘Stardust’ to watch later, would be at his computer until 0333 - (per RS & his lawyers). “He was with AK until 1800 when they had both left RS apartment to go into the centre. RS has also said that he spent the evening on his computer working on his university coursework

2018 Patrick sends text message to AK

2030 Patrick’s friend, Swiss Professor Roman Mero had a pizza and then went straight to Le Chic. (had originally claimed he was in Le Chic from 2000)

2030 - 2100 RS “Went home, smoked; had dinner.”

2030 – 2100 (AK “left him (per RS), saying to him that she would go to Le Chic, meet friends while he returned to his house”) “… left the house telling Sollecito that she was going to work, [but she], she was at the basketball court of Piazza Grimana.”

2035 AK text message to PL

2038 RG arrives at MK’s (per RG)

2038 PL’s cellphone pings in the area of MK’s house

2040** RS’s father phones him at his apartment on RS’s landline, the call went unanswered and instead went to answer phone. RS did not respond to the message and return his father’s call that night

2040** Young woman, Popovic (Polish after all (?)), arrives at RS’s house to tell him she no longer needed a lift to the station. (She spoke to Amanda via the intercom (?) )

2040** Serbian student, Jovanovic, ‘met’ (Could do with clarification as to whether he simply passed AK, or actually engaged with her in some way). AK on Corso Garibaldi. AK and RS were at RS’s flat at this time and before (per AK/RS)

2040** AK and RS cell phones turned off

2043 AK seen on CCTV entering her house (?)

2046 Meredith arrives eight minutes after RG arrives (per RG)

2050 RS chops up button mushrooms with his knife, and he and AK stir fry them (per Mignini)

2100 AK claimed to meet PL at B-Ball courts and [return] to her house. (per the Judge)

2100 Meredith leaves friend’s house with Sophie Purton to return home, Sophie walks her halfway

2105 Sophie Purton leaves Meredith on Via Roscetto, Meredith continues home alone

2110 Click on RS’s computer, no more activity on computer until following day

2115 Around this time MK arrives home

2130 Meredith commences phone call with mother (What time did it end?)

2141 - 0532 of the night of the crime “is not any human interaction.at RS apt” (per RS’ computer)

2200 - 2230 Meredith is either dead or dying. A breakdown truck arrives for a broken down car containing a family of three, man, woman and child. The Albanian ‘superwitness’, Hekuran Kokomani, arrives by car at the rubbish bins area a short way down the road from the cottage. HK punches RS, throws a phone and olives at AK, who threatens HK with knife. HK drives further down the road encountering RG who recognises HK and offers money to hire HK’s car, first 50, then offering 250 euros. HK hears banging sounding like ‘wood on wood’ from the house. RG says there is a birthday party at the cottage. HK refuses hire his car, driving off having seen RS in his wing mirror running at him with knife. RS persues him to the lights, where a motorist asks HK for directions. HK has to reverse his car to allow the breakdown truck, which is probably just arriving, to manoeuvre. HK leaves (per HK)

2215 SMS requesting account balance sent from MK’s mobile to her bank balance

2229 First recorded receipts at Le Chic

2230 - 2300 A witness heard “a man and a woman arguing in Italian” inside the cottage “at about 10.30 or 11.00 on the night of November 1,” followed by an “agonising scream”.

2230 “Alessandra Formica, a police witness, said her partner was almost knocked over by a black man running away from scene”. The couple also witness the broken down car and breakdown truck.

2300 (circa) A dark coloured car is seen parked outside the cottage (per garage mechanic witness - Gianfranco Lombardi). “It was about 11pm on the night of November 1, 2007, and I was in the area because I had been called out to fix a broken-down car…When I got to Via Sant Antonio, close to where the house where Meredith Kercher was murdered, I saw a dark-coloured car parked outside and I noticed the gate on the drive was open…I didn’t notice anyone in the car and I didn’t notice anyone coming or going during the eight or 10 minutes it took me to load the broken-down car onto my tow truck.” “The statement is significant because Sollecito has a dark-coloured car, but claims he was not at the house.”

2300 RS reveives telephone call from his father (per RS). Now known to be untrue as the unanswered call via landline was actually made at 2040 and went to answerphone

2300 (circa) Nara Capezalli, the woman who lives opposite MK’s, hears screams coming from the house after which “at least two people” emerged and fled “in different directions.”

2300 - 2330 AK and RS are seen on the baseball court by a sixty-year-old witness, ‘Toto’ (Antonio Curatolo), cuddling, behaving erratically, and looking towards the house…” “...their position of observation on the steps near via della Pergola overlooking the house.” “I saw Amanda and Raffaele around the square in 23-23,30 Grimana the first night of November. I am sure because the next morning the carabinieri were on the streets asking questions. ” AK and RS go down in the direction of the house (possibly joined by a third person (?))

2300 - 0100 RS claims he’s on Internet at his home

Friday 2nd November 2007

0100 AK at RS’s apt (?)

0200 Witnesses report seeing Rudy dancing down the Domus nightclub. Passers-by report loud voices from AK/MK home

0333 RS comes off of his computer and goes to bed, Amanda is ‘not’ there (per RS & his lawyers)

0430 Last sighting of Rudy at the Domus nightclub by witnesses.

0532 Internet activity noted at RS’s computer, (Googling ‘Bleach’ & ‘Blood’ perhaps ?). Phones turned back on?

Dawn Mobile phones switched back on (Would be great to have the actual time for this event)

0745 Witness places AK outside supermarket

0830 Bleach receipt supplied by the market (?) - RS/AK in bed (per RS/AK)

0915 Bleach receipt supplied by the market (?) - RS/AK in bed (per RS/AK)

1000 Woke up at RS’s in morning (per RS)

1030 AK returns to her house to wash; took empty plastic bag (per RS)

1100 AK was back at her house (per AK)

1130 AK back at RS’s house; worried—door open (per RS). Back to AK’s together. AK opens door with keys; went in together. Blood in bathroom. Attempted to break down Meredith’s door (per RS)

0900 - 1200 Sig.na Lana finds two phones in her garden and notify police, who ascertain that one is registered to Filomena Romanelli at via della Pergola

1226 “Today it was confirmed that the garage video recorded the car of the postal police arriving at 12.26…” and find AK and RS outside (but within the gate), who said they were waiting for the Carabinieri.”

1235 Filomena, having spent the night away with her boyfriend Marco Zaroli, whilst parking their car (with PG and LA) at the ‘Fair of the Dead’ in Perugia, receives phonecall (first of a series of three) from AK “who told me that she had slept at Raffaele’s house and that when she had gone back to our house she had found the door open and blood in her bathroom. She told me that she’d had a shower, that she was scared and that she was going to call Raffaele Sollecito. It seemed really strange to me and I asked her to check that the house was in order and to call the police or Carabinieri.” (Michael: “Going to call” RS when AK and RS claim they came back to the cottage together at 1130?)

1235 - 1245 Second phone conversation between AK and FR

1245 Third phone conversation between AK and FR “she told me that the window in my room was broken and that my room was in a mess. At this point I asked her to call the police and she told me that she already had.”

1250 RS calls his sister in the Carabinieri

1251 RS phones the Carabinieri (for the first time)

1254 RS phones the Carabinieri again

1300 (just before) Filomena Romanelli arrives at apartment with her friends PA (Paola Grande - girlfriend of Luca) and LA (Luca Altieri). M (Marco) was present and “Amanda and Raffaele were in Amanda’s room because at a certain point they came out into the corridor and we introduced ourselves.” (Michael: Evidently, RS and AK failed to notice Meredith’s keys whilst they were hidden away in her room. Why were they in AK’s room when important actions were taking place elsewhere in the cottage, leaving non-resident Marco to deal with the Postal Police? How long were they in there for? ‘What’ were they doing whilst in there - checking it was ‘clean’?)

1305 Postal Police arrive (per RS and his lawyers)

1315 (circa) After listening to Filomena’s remarks, with Postal Police present, LA breaks down door of MK’s room

Evening PG and LA take RS and AK to Perugia police station in their car. PG and LA have stated that during the trip RS was constantly asking them questions regarding the murder and investigation of a manner that caused them to become so concerned and suspicious, they thorougly checked over the interior of the car after RS and AK got out, for ‘incriminating evidence’ they were afraid the pair may have ‘planted’ there. The ‘suspicious’ behaviour of the couple continued inside the police station, which was noted and reported by multiple witnesses

**These times must be very approximate since the 20:40 time slot is ‘very’ congested.

Posted by Michael on 12/11/08 at 09:00 AM
Archived in Public evidence, The timelines
Permalink for this post • Tell-a-Friend • Perugia MF Forum • Comments here (17)

Friday, November 07, 2008

Powerpoints #3: A Minute By Minute Visual Guide To The Events On The Night

Posted by Kermit

Click here if you have Powerpoint or the Powerpoint Viewer program loaded. If not here is the Viewer download.

This is a visual hypothesis of the events in Perugia that culminated in Meredith’s violent death.

Every media outfit covering the case might benefit enormously if they were to use such a recreation as their point of departure. Some have long been out of the starter box, of course, and some, especially in the US, have taken off in misleading directions.

But our take on the media now is that they are becoming notably more cautious in face of 10,000 pages of still-sealed evidence and Rudy Guede’s conviction.

Posted by Kermit on 11/07/08 at 07:43 AM
Archived in Vital Must-Read Posts, Public evidence, The timelines, The locations, Other physical, Crime hypotheses, Kermit Powerpoints
Permalink for this post • Tell-a-Friend • Perugia MF Forum • Comments here (3)

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All our posts on The timelines

Friday, April 19, 2013

Tips for The Media #4: In Fact Guede Absolutely Couldnt Have Attacked Meredith Alone

Posted by Cardiol

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Dissecting The Hellmann Report #5: Their Obfuscation of Time of Death and Of Legal Blameworthiness

Posted by Cardiol

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Dissecting The Hellmann Report #4: The Contortions To Dismiss Witness Quintavalle

Posted by Cardiol

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Considering The Sad And Sensitive But Also Crucial Subject Of Meredith’s Time Of Death

Posted by James Raper

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Repeat Of The Powerpoint Guides To The Relevant Locations And Events On Meredith’s Fatal Night

Posted by Kermit

Click on the two images below for the two Powerpoints which will take a few seconds to load.

Friday, January 07, 2011

Scenario Explaining Meredith’s Cell-Phones Dumped At The Same Address As The Toilet-Bomb Hoax

Posted by Cardiol

Friday, December 03, 2010

Explaining The Massei Report:: Establishing The Time When Meredith Passed On

Posted by Storm Roberts

Introduction

Rigor Mortis

Body Temperature

Hypostasis.

Stage of digestion.

What is explained in the report

Details from the report

Conclusion.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Explaining The Massei Report: The Timeline For Events Before, During, And After The Night #2

Posted by catnip

02 November 2007

03 November 2007

06 November 2007

13 November 2007

Monday, November 29, 2010

Explaining The Massei Report: The Timeline For Events Before, During, And After The Night #1

Posted by catnip

#1 The Masssei Timeline up to midnight of 1 November.

2002

2006

2007

Monday, May 03, 2010

From The Book Darkness Descending: The Insights On Knox And Sollecito

Posted by Peter Quennell

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Italians Have For A Long Time Known How Depraved And Cruel The Final Struggle Was

Posted by Peter Quennell

Monday, November 23, 2009

The Summations: The Prosecutions’ Reconstruction Of The Events On The Night

Posted by Peter Quennell

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Our Best Shot At Making Amanda Knox’s Timeline Alibi Work

Posted by FinnMacCool

The contents of the email

First scenario: Amanda Knox’s email is essentially true, the police account is essentially inaccurate

Second scenario: the police account is basically accurate, Amanda Knox’s email is essentially untrue

Conclusion

Friday, February 13, 2009

Here, Meredith Said Her Final Goodbye To A Friend

Posted by Peter Quennell

Monday, February 09, 2009

Highlights Of The Testimony On 6 February And 7 February

Posted by Peter Quennell

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Primary Timeline: An Hour-By-Hour Guide To The Events In Question

Posted by Michael

Wednesday 31st October 2007 (Halloween)

Thursday 1st November 2007 (Day of the Dead in Italy)

Friday 2nd November 2007

Friday, November 07, 2008

Powerpoints #3: A Minute By Minute Visual Guide To The Events On The Night

Posted by Kermit

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