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

Comments

Excellent post, Cardiol, and utterly plausible.

Special kudos to you for emphasizing yet again how courageous Meredith was, and how the three killers took on a LOT more than they could handle, when they decided to pick on her.

Listening on a police wavelength one way or another on the morning after the crime could have determined whether the coast was clear for Knox to head back.

It is not clear what she was doing in the small Conad supermarket (watch this video for its location) but that is halfway back to her house and she later claimed in her alibi scramble that she was right then asleep.

Kermit’s great Powerpoints of November 2008 (they take 20-30 seconds to load) show the two routes through the city wall Raffaele, if it were he, could have used to approach the garden outside the wall into which the phones were tossed.

It was possibly a big bonus to Sollecito and Knox, if it was indeed Sollecito that tossed them, that Guede’s house was so close to the small city gate. If the phones in the garden WERE found soon, the suspicion would have descended on Rudy.

Very symmetrical with the apparent attempts to frame him for all of the crime against Meredith back in the house.

And yes the full depiction of Meredith fighting back (which we have never posted as the evidence was so graphic) and final moments took all of the last day of the prosecution’s case, and Mignini summarised it chillingly in his summation in November. It was a VERY cruel deed.

And those were very tearful days in court.

This interpretation by Cardiol is most effective & (to me) revealing.  Brutality of the crime & poignancy of Meredith’s dying.

For teaching Amanda a lesson (very likely correct) I would myself (on hypothesis) reach into the pathology latent in Amanda & Raffaele, which had so quickly found its partnership.

Hard to think of psychopathy in a healthy, good-looking American girl (woman) & a handsome Italian youth (man).  But think of Amanda behind her machine gun, laughing gaily, & this in a holocaust museum.  Or see Raffaele dressed as a surgeon & brandishing his meat cleaver.

Teaching a lesson is, to my mind, the merest cover for a planned & deliberate RAPE. Amanda has conceived this (on hypothesis), Raffaele the weakling is borne along by force of his own inner pathology.

So attractive to both (this is also pathological) is the idea of the achieved RAPE that they do not even consider the aftermath—that’s really sick & even, to a sane mind, inconceivable: but no, they do not.

On hypothesis: it is the remembered satisfaction of Rape & Murder, once committed, that Amanda continues to draw on in her complacent smiling & flirting through the publicity of the trial.

1/7/10

Yes, it’s quite possible Raffaele used a police scanner. After all, his sister was a policewoman. A lot of people listen to them. My husband has one.

Sperandio, that means “hope in God”. How fortunate for Meredith her phones weren’t lost in a tangle of woods but miraculously found fast, which led the police straight to her house before confusion occurred and evidence was further obliterated.

For the perpetrators, Murphy’s Law: (what can go wrong, will go wrong)

I would like to remember, to people from US, that, in Italy, is not allowed listening the official frequencies. If found are trouble. In fact:

Codice Penale Art. 617 bis - Installazione di apparecchiature atte ad intercettare od impedire comunicazioni o conversazioni telegrafiche o telefoniche -
Chiunque, fuori dei casi consentiti dalla legge, installa apparati, strumenti, parti di apparati o di strumenti al fine d’intercettare od impedire comunicazioni o conversazioni telegrafiche o telefoniche tra altre persone e’ punito con la reclusione da uno a quattro anni. La pena e’ della reclusione da uno a cinque anni se il fatto e’ commesso in danno di un pubblico ufficiale nell’esercizio o a causa delle sue funzioni ovvero da un pubblico ufficiale o da un incaricato di un pubblico servizio con abuso dei poteri o con violazione dei doveri inerenti alla funzione o servizio o da chi esercita anche abusivamente la professione di investigatore privato (1). (1) Articolo aggiunto dalla L. 8 agosto 1974, n. 98.

Penal Code Art 617 bis - Installation of equipment designed to intercept or impede communication or telegraph or telephone conversations -
Anyone, except for cases permitted by law, get equipment, tools, parts of equipment or instruments to prevent or intercept communications or telegraph or telephone conversations among other people is punished with imprisonment from one to four years. The punishment of imprisonment is from one to five years if the act is committed against a public officer during his/her duty, or by a public officer or an employee of a public service, by means of abuse of power or misconduct relating to function or service, or even abused by those exercising the profession of private investigator (1). (1) Article added by Law August 8, 1974, No 98.

Example: three jounalists, found owning a radio equipment tuned on frequencies of Carabinieri, convicted
Sentenza Corte Cassazione n. 40249/2008 28/10/2008
http://www.alphaice.com/giurisprudenza/?id=5593

Decreto Presidente Consiglio dei Ministri 07/06/2005 “Disposizioni in materia di rilascio del nulla osta di sicurezza personale = Provisions for the issue of security clearance personnel “

http://www.altalex.com/index.php?idstr=39&idnot=9884

Precisely Vanessa Sollecito was second lieutenant of Carabinieri and not a policewoman.

As we are getting emails amused at George Clooney falling for Doug Preston’s bizarre line on the Monster of Florence case take a look at Nicki’s tremendous and very damaging post here.

That post actually did make it to the attention of Tom Cruise - we got an equiry back. So expect George Clooney’s mugshot soon on TJMK as we open his eyes to some hard truths.

To ncountryside

“I would like to remember, to people from US, that, in Italy, is not allowed listening the official frequencies. If found are trouble….”

Yes. You are quite right. It’s also illegal in the U.S. and most other countries.

The illegality does not seem to stop the sellers or the buyers.

Thank you, Cardiol, for your very plausible explanation of the bomb hoax and phone disposal coincidence.  I don’t believe in coincidences - not one such as this which has probability of 0.000…0000000…00001 (considering mathematically the infinite number of possibilities for locations for the bomb hoax multiplied by the infinite number of possibilities for locations for the phone disposal).

This contributes to the suspicion that RS was the one who disposed of the phones since it is unlikely that RG owned such a device.  Is it possible for the police to perform an investigation to determine if RS owned such a device?  Are there a lot of places that sell these?  If not, perhaps the police could call these shops up and find out?

Cardiol, since you’re obviously very smart, I’d be interested in what you think about my theory of a double attack. 

My comments are listed under the blog entry entitled “The Timeline From The Massei Report On The Sentencing Of Amanda Knox And Raffaele Sollecito #1” posted by catnip.  Thanks!

Please scroll down: http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/the_timeline_from_the_massei_report_on_the_sentencing_of_amanda_knox_a/

annc - I don’t believe in coincidences either

Inspired by “Casablanca”:

Of all the first-time cellphone-dumps,
Of all the first-time murder-cellphone dumps,
Of all the first-time murder-cellphone-dumps near the murder site,
Of all the first-time murder-cellphone-dumps near the murder site with an unflushed Toilet,
Of all the first-time murder-cellphone-dumps near the murder site with an unflushed Toilet, on the night of the murder, and
Of all the Cell-phone Dumpers,
Of all the world,
This Cell-phone Dumpers got himself randomly to the same address as the Toilet-Bomb-Hoaxer-Call?

Just a coincidence?

We don’t think so, do we?

Wrt your Q’s :

“Is it possible for the police to perform an investigation to determine if RS owned such a device?

Are there a lot of places that sell these?

If not, perhaps the police could call these shops up and find out?”

I believe such an investigation is possible, but may not bear fruit because of the illegalities involved in the selling and the buying of such devices.

I do think there are lots of places that sell these [illegal] devices

While the devices are actually receiving it may be possible to detect them; in the UK, the authorities can detect unlicensed TV receivers.

annc, in response to your 01/07/11 at 04:19 PM | Post.

I found your comments under the blog entry entitled “The Timeline From The Massei Report On The Sentencing Of Amanda Knox And Raffaele Sollecito #1” posted by catnip.

There 3 Posts from you there:

12/01/10 at 04:08 PM , 12/01/10 at 06:07 PM, and 12/03/10 at 03:57 PM.

I will study them diligently and get back here to respond

Cardiol, also post 12/09/10 at 09:12, and post 12/15/10 at 01:34 PM.  Thanks so much!  I have always thought that the only way to fit in all of the witness accounts (at least as presented in Michael’s timeline from a year or two ago) is if there were 2 attacks.

I have a hard time, reconciling Amanda wanting to teach Meredith a lesson. There would have been consequences, because I’m sure Meredith would not have taken this kind of prank lightly. I don’t see premeditation of murder, but certainly something got out of control. How it escalated, I don’t know. But, whatever followed the confrontation, it was decided to kill, perhaps there was no turning back.

annc - I have read your Comments and am ready to respond to what I think about your theory of a double attack.

First, there is the issue of when attacking started.
“The Massei Timeline”, by catnip, stated:

“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).

Posted by catnip on 11/29/10 at 12:12 PM”

This puts the attack starting around 23:00, but does not explain as many of the facts as the 22:00 start-time does.

Meredith died from blood in her airways, with the blood loss itself being only a secondary contributing factor, her death could take many minutes - and she would still be alive when her killers fled.

The Massei Report estimated Meredith’s death to have been at around 23:30.

Meredith’s killers returned when they thought the coast was clear, by which time she probably was dead.

I think the hypothesis that the attack began at 10:00 is the better one, because it explains more of the facts.

Your double-attack hypothesis cannot be refuted, but I do not think Occam’s Razor does requires it.

Capealadin, I think you’re right that this was more of an emotional response on AK’s part for the reasons you gave (that she knew they woudln’t get away easily with such a serious prank).  If there was premeditation, then I think it would have started only hours before, right after AK received the phone call from her boss and happened to meet RG at the basketball court (perhaps she even was already walking to work when she got the phone call and was near the court). Perhaps her prank at that time was limited to leading RG to believe that Meredith was interested in him and to encourage him to go to the cottage that night. This lack of murder premeditation is yet another reason why I think the initial attack happened at around 10pm (besides witnesses, etc.).  If RS had been listening to the police radio sometime after 10pm looking for a good place to dump a cellphone PRIOR to the attack then this would point to murder premeditation. However, if he was listening to the radio AFTER the attack, then it could point that things got out of control and now he needed to get rid of the cellphone.  Actually, it would be very helpful to know the exact times that the police communicated about the bomb hoax over the police frequency, as this would add exact times to the timeline that could perhaps eliminate some of the possible scenarios.

Cardiol, thank you for looking into this!!  The only reason I think there may have been a second attack is because of the agonizing scream that witnesses said they heard around 11pm (I think Michael’s timeline even had the neighbor placing the scream at 11:30pm).  I wonder if it’s physically possible for Meredith to have had a final scream around 11-11:30pm (if she was murdered then to be silenced as a witness) if the initial attack was at 10pm?

annc - by the time that her killers first fled I believe that Meredith no longer had the physical ability to scream.

Given the malice of her attackers I have no doubt that if Meredith was still alive when they got back, after deciding the coast was clear, they would have finished her off, as you hypothesized, possibly aphyxiating her with a pillow.

Any teaching-of-a-lesson plan included the malice of sexual assault, and the use of knives, with no foresight into possible consequences to them - until first she bled onto them, and especially when she was dead.

Meredith’s Scream, foreseeable, but unforeseen by her attackers because of their blinding-malice , was the trigger-event that brought them to where they are now.

I’m going to throw this out there, but I think that Guede threw the phones. Wasn’t where they were discovered near where he lived? Perhaps he went home first to change clothes before going out to party after the crime.
I also don’t believe the premeditation planned “teach her a lesson” scenario. All of this took place in a drunken and drugged state. Totally spontaneous.
I remember something about a prank call to police. What was all that about?

I also don’t believe the premeditation planned “teach her a lesson” scenario. All of this took place in a drunken and drugged state. Totally spontaneous.

I highly doubt that. Even though we cannot possibly know what triggered the cruel attack and what was the motivation, the fact stands that they had two knives with them. While Raffaele Sollecito used to have his combat knife with him at all times, it is unusual to carry a big kitchen knife around. There is no doubt in my mind that something was planned. Probably not the murder itself, but an attack of some kind. The knives were brought to be used in the attack against Meredith Kercher, to threaten and to restrain her. Of course there was some planning involved and while the murder was “spontaneous”, the attack was obviously not.

Cardiol, there are some objections to the hypothesis that one or other of the three made the bomb hoax call to Mrs Lana. these are :-

1. Did any of them know her phone number, or at least her name and address?
2. Presumably the object of the call was so that she would call the police enabling them to monitor police activity in response. However there are better means of ensuring that she would call the police than to say that there was a bomb in her toilet. I would think that nine times out of ten no one would call the police. Mrs Lana did but the fact that she did was hardly something that could have been relied on. On the other hand if the caller had said that there was an intruder in her garden carrying what looked like a weapon that would surely have invoked a response.
3. In any event if they had a police radio wave scanner surely they would just monitor police traffic without the need for the call.
4. Why would they want the police to attend Mrs Lana’s address? A diversion? Possibly. Her place was some 3-4 mins away by car but I would have thought that no police activity would be better.
5. In Darkness Descending the authors claim that the police investigated the hoax call and traced it to an unconnected juvenile prankster. Given that most of the facts in the book appear to have been well researched, checked and accurate I am assuming that this snippet of information is right.

I conclude therefore that the fact that that the phones were thrown at the same address as that to which the hoax call was made is just one of those tantalising coincidences.

Hi James. As you say the hoax call was made from Rome and the caller was identified and interrogated. 

I dont think Cardiol is saying that any of them made the call? Merely that they could have picked up on it one way or another via police talk and attempted to use it to their advantage: framing Guede or associating it with the hoax caller or simply hiding the phones in plain sight.

When I walked the area I found it distinctly odd that Mrs Lana’s garden was chosen. The phones could have been tossed down the slope (most of which is wilderness) much closer to any of the city gates nearby.

Hi Kazwell on 01/09/11 at 01:10 AM :
“I think that Guede threw the phones.
” 
That could well be true.

“All of this took place in a drunken and drugged state. Totally spontaneous.”

The systematic way

1.  They waited for the coast to clear, before returning, and

2.  then cleaned-up the crime-scene, and

3.  then rearranged the crime-scene, and

4.  then faked a break-in, and

5.  disposed of Meredith’s cell-phones.

Suggests to me that they were not in a drunken and drugged state.

Pete has already clarified the “prank-call”  issue

Hi Nell on 01/09/11 at 03:40 AM

Thanks for your supporting Post.

To clarify my “trigger-event” usage on 01/08/11 at 11:48 AM, I meant to convey the idea of the event that represented their arrival at the-point-of-no-return, and their final-common-pathway to where they are now..

Hi James on 01/09/11 at 07:23 AM,

Peter on 01/09/11 at 08:17 AM, accurately conveys what I am saying.

I am not saying that one or other of the three made the bomb hoax call to Mrs Lana.

Neither am I saying that the fact that that the phones were thrown at the same address as that to which the hoax call was made is just one of those tantalising coincidences. 

As annc pointed-out on 01/07/11 at 03:55 PM, the odds against such a coincidence are infinite.

I believe that finding the phones was Divine Providence. One can’t make this stuff up.

Off topic for a minute. We’d appreciate by email anything including his real name on someone calling himself CD Host.

He is the latest to surface in the sexual perverts and conspiracy theorists movement.  He hosts a faux Christian website called Church Discipline and he has invested in the usual fantasy doll image of Knox and set out to try to ridicule the hard evidence from there.

In one post he stated that as Meredith is now “worm-food” we should move on to ensuring that AK and RS at least have good lives. He repeatedly says that the crime was a gang rape and that Guede’s semen was found on Meredith (it wasn’t a rape and there was no semen) and that no girls like “Amanda” would ever etc etc. You get the point.

Ten days ago CD Host made a hapless venture onto on the PMF forum (start reading from here and see comments by our posters Machine, SomeAlibi, Stilicho and Skeptical Bystander directly below) with some of the most fatuous mis-statements of evidence and Italian law that PMF has seen there in a long time.

Shot down from all sides, he then disappeared.  Only to reappear ad-nauseum on Peter Hyatt’s blog about statement analysis, where he posted maybe nine out of every 10 comments on one thread, all of them containing serious mistakes.

And now he is also ad-nauseum spamming a message thread on the IMDB forum for Hayden Panettiere, the address for which is this one here. Slow him there if you can and email us on who the guy is. Much appreciated.

Cardiol writes near the beginning of his article (quote):

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:
(unquote)

This makes sense to me. He doesn’t presuppose a premeditated murder (nor do I) but the quoted statements I find acceptable & plausible.

Even raises the possibility that the KNIVES were sometime previously transferred to the knife drawer at Meredith’s—it could conceivably explain Amanda’s pronounced nervousness when being taken into the kitchen.

But one does understand that the statement quoted from the judges’ report can be read to mean: We see no reason why the [murderer] would have been in that road other than for the purpose of disposing of the phones.  Read this way, they aren’t requiring a further explanation—for which Cardiol has invented an ingenious possibility.

My hunch is that Cardiol is right: Sollecito disposed of the phones. The logical choice.

If one of them switched-off the lights when they fled, this also speaks against a drunken or drugged state of mind.

Ernest Werner, I have also always thought that RS’s kitchen knife was already at the cottage for the reason you specified (AK’s strong emotional response when someone opened the knife drawer in the cottage kitchen). 

If so, could this indicate that there was no long term premeditation?  That perhaps this knife had been previously taken to the cottage for cooking (perhaps even that same day for lunch)?  Are there other indications of long term premeditation besides this knife? 

If not, could it be that the premeditation was short term and consisted of letting RG believe that Meredith wanted him that night, perhaps because AK was angry and jealous of Meredith when she received the phone call letting her know that she was not needed at work? 

Perhaps in that same afternoon Meredith had told AK that she had been hired the day before to work there (the latter part of the sentence is a fact).  In that case, her boss’ phone call would have served to confirm to AK her suspicion that she was being replaced at work by Meredith. 

This could have made her very angry and perhaps she talked to RG then?  There’s also the matter of the possible theft of Meredith’s money that day in the afternoon by AK which I’m not sure how to place in the scenarios we are discussing.  Could this theft also be a result of AK’s anger that Meredith got her job? 

Could it be that the fight started that night because of the missing money as RG has testified and was not necessarily premeditated?

Peter Quennell, perhaps you could add to your program that a person’s first couple of posts are moderated.  This way the posts never make it to the page and if you find them inappropriate then you can immediately close that person’s account without any damage done and minimal waste of your time.

I forgot to mention in my post above, that perhaps Meredith also told AK that afternoon that her boss had told her (Meredith) at the Halloween party the night before that he was thinking of firing AK.  We know for a fact that Meredith was offered a job at that party, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he gossiped about AK and mentioned to Meredith that he was tired of AK and wanted Meredith to replace AK as the reason for offering her the job.  If that were the case and if Meredith told AK these things earlier that day(which would have been the first opportunity to discuss these things since the party had been the night before), then the phone call that AK received from her boss would have confirmed to AK that she was in fact being replaced by Meredith.

One last thing (!).  AK invited Meredith multiple times to spend Halloween together the night before and was snubbed by Meredith who already had plans with her own friends.  It doesn’t seem that this is consistent with long term premeditation on AK’s part.

Regarding the thoughts from annc and Ernest Werner regarding Raffaele Sollecito’s kitchen knife being already at the cottage, I would like to say that I suspect Amanda Knox was acting when the drawer in the kitchen was opened. She did the same at the police station when Patrick Lumumba was named and she screamed out that he was “bad”. In my opinion, she did that in her defence, because that is what she thought someone would expect her to do or find reasonable given the circumstances. She supposed her account of what happened that night would become more believable to the investigators and strengthen her story.

It is not plausible to me that someone like Amanda Knox who didn’t show any emotion at all when the body of Meredith Kercher was discovered, would freak out, because of a drawer. Her only concern was herself. Everything she did, she did it to deflect the blame and limit the damage.

@annc

Patrick Lumumba never mentioned that he had a conversation of that kind with Meredith Kercher, at least not to my knowledge. Even if he did, we couldn’t know if Meredith would have told Amanda Knox about it.

There is reason to believe that even without Patrick Lumumba threatening to fire Amanda directly, she could have felt being on the verge of losing her job to Meredith Kercher.

Patrick Lumumba shifted her from working in the bar to handling out flyers, maybe letting her work less hours (= less money for her), while performing a test-run with somebody else for a job she was formerly in charge of. Now that anybody can figure out for themselves even without the gossip.

AK invited Meredith multiple times to spend Halloween together the night before and was snubbed by Meredith who already had plans with her own friends.  It doesn’t seem that this is consistent with long term premeditation on AK’s part.
Posted by annc on 01/09/11 at 08:29 PM

Why is it not consistent with premeditation? Every attack or murder that results from planning is premeditated. Everything else is on impulse. The murder happened probably without premeditation, to silence Meredith Kercher, but the attack was premeditated, no doubt in my mind.

About the different phone calls you mention in your post, it has been speculated that Amanda Knox might have tried to lure Meredith Kercher to the cottage, to meet her and attack her together with her accomplices. This is of course all speculation, we will never know. Obviously the friendship between the girls had already cooled off considerably before those calls were made. This is why it is surprising that Amanda Knox was so persistent.

CD-Host made appalling comments about Meredith, even blaming her for causing herself to be murdered. He sounds like a freaked up bitter person because he was incarcerated for 3 weeks many years ago and the sting of that has never left him.

CD-Host, listen up: Meredith’s life would make a blockbuster movie compared to the nonstarter and shellgame that is Amanda. Your comments on IMDB are wretched.

I went to the sites that Peter linked to (See Peter’s comment above).

When reading about premeditation and motive, I began thinking of various scenarios and one came to mind that may or may not have been discussed so far. Perhaps the motive is similar to that of Leopold and Loeb. Please Wiki the names if not familiar-not surprising if many readers are not as it happened over 85 years ago. I have read several books about the crime and do see parallels between AK RS and L and L. Each individual most likely incapable of such a crime, but together, a deadly combination. Perhaps this was a premeditated “thrill kill” and part of the thrill was not just the murder itself, but the planning and the cover-up and the overall sense of power the two were looking to gain consciously or subconsciously by getting away with it. In the trial of LL the term divine providence was used to describe the Loeb’s glasses that were left behind which turned out the be their undoing.

Hi Peter, just checked out some of the horrifyingly offensive and illiterate drivel by CD-Host and must conclude that it would be playing into his hands to engage with him. He comes across as a dangerous freak with a pseudo-religious bent. Shouldn’t we just ignore him? Another puffed up ego shrieking for attention. He is an obscenity whom we can annoy by dismissing.

Nell, the reason that I think that AK texting Meredith multiple times to invite her to spend Halloween together is an indication that there was no long term premeditation (by long term I mean premeditation longer than a couple of hours before the murder) is the following.  AK and RS seemed to be very aware of how cell phones are used as evidence by the fact that they both turned their cellphones off the night of the murder.  So if they were planning to assault Meredith on Halloween, why would AK leave such abundant evidence behind?  Perhaps she genuinely wanted to spend time with Meredith at that point, and she only got very angry with Meredith the next day because of the job issue I mentioned before.

Nell, you wrote the following about AK’s strong emotional reaction in the cottage kitchen: “that is what she thought someone would expect her to do or find reasonable given the circumstances. She supposed her account of what happened that night would become more believable to the investigators and strengthen her story.”

Could you specify exactly what you think she would gain from this?  If anything, a strong emotional reaction from opening the knife drawer indicates guilt.  Since she’s claiming innocence in the trial, and since an absence of premeditation doesn’t seem to alter the penalty very much (she still got 26 years), why would she want to incriminate herself at all by having such a strong reaction?

We will probably never find out what happened that night so all theories are valid but I have to say I find the idea that Raffaele was listening to a police scanner on the night of the murder from 10pm to be on the outer limits of probability. Maybe, but I really doubt it. There’s no evidence of such an interest in police scanners, there’s no evidence of a purchase, no-one ever saw him use one and the timing you suggest - well he was extremely occupied and also very stoned.

What is stunning about the discovery of the phones is that there is an absolute abundance of places to through the phones in the route from the cottage to the garden where they were found. The ravine by the cottage is utterly wild (impassible) and extremely steep and deep. Anyone could throw the phones well out of earshot into the ravine by the cottage and that would be the last they would be heard of barring an epic cut through all the vegetation based on a gps location once the investigation was fully under way. There are similar places to throw into the ravine opposite the city walls as one goes round the outside.

The location of the phones is simply to do with the geography of the assailants going around the outside of the city wall through the Parco Sant’Angelo that runs around the outside and then tossing the phones across the road into what, when you’ve been there, looks like a ravine (and to that point actually has been). They weren’t to know it was actually the edge of a garden because the house is completely obscured by the wall of trees and especially at night.

I think it is no more complicated than the fact that whoever had the phones was in a deep panic and only remembered they had to get rid of them when they approached the end of the Parco Sant’Angelo and were contemplating going through the gate at the top of Via Sperandio to take them to the top end of Corso Garibaldi. This was how they intended to avoid being seen on the walk back from the cottage to either Raffaele’s or Rudy’s. There are far too many mistakes made in the staging and all the rest of this case to make it a pre-planned crime of such depth including scanners. The bomb hoax is just serendipity and it’s simply that.

@annc

Regarding Amanda Knox trying to get in contact with Meredith Kercher, you might be right with your theory, but it cannot be proven. There exists the possibility that Amanda Knox might have tried to lure Meredith to the cottage (or elsewhere). It is simply a theory and there is nothing in my eyes that speaks against it, so I won’t discard it. Both theories are valid and possible in my opinion.

I do believe what triggered the attack was Amanda being upset with Meredith for some reason. How much time she spent planning the attack/murder is not really important to me. In my books, she brought a large kitchen knife to the cottage with the intent to harm Meredith Kercher. If she thought about it for a week or only a day is not really of importance to me.

Regarding Amanda Knox’ reaction to the opening of the kitchen drawer, it is clear that she tried to convince the police that she played a minor role in the murder. At that time she had already acknowledged to be at the crime scene when Meredith Kercher was murdered. She placed herself outside Meredith’s room, in the kitchen and she placed all the blame on Patrick Lumumba. She pretended to be very frightened of him, hitting her hands against her head and crying that he was bad when asked about him at the police station.

Same scenario with the kitchen drawer. SHE FAKED to be frightened/stressed as to convince the investigators that she couldn’t have had any active role in the murder. This is the only time she appeared to be “fragile” - another reason for me not to believe it. It think it was fake.

Today we know that her claims she was afraid of Patrick Lumumba and that he was bad were a lie. After her performance at the police station, why would anybody believe her emotion to the opening of the kitchen drawer was genuine? Seems inconceivable to me.

@Cardiol

I fully agree with your former comment that there is absolutely no indication whatsoever that this crime has been committed in a drugged and drunken state of mind.

That was their first excuse to not have to answer the question from police. They claimed they couldn’t remember, because of the drugs, while at the same time they remembered certain details just fine.

@annc
AK and RS seemed to be very aware of how cell phones are used as evidence by the fact that they both turned their cellphones off the night of the murder.  So if they were planning to assault Meredith on Halloween, why would AK leave such abundant evidence behind?

While they both were aware of how cell phones worked, they forgot that they had turned them on in the early morning hours, but claimed to have been sleeping until 10 am. Nobody is perfect.

I don’t believe that leaving messages or calling someone is “abundant evidence” in this case. She wanted to hang out with her - which can be true or not. I would have to refresh my memory, I only remember Amanda Knox made various calls to Meredith’s phone which Meredith preferred not to answer. According to Giacomo and Filomena the friendship between Amanda Knox and Meredith Kercher had cooled off. I believe that even Meredith’s English friends and parents said something to this regard, which makes me wonder if Amanda really thought Meredith would hang out with her. Was she completely unaware of this development? I doubt it.

I’m not sure the sort of trembling Knox demonstrated upon being asked to inventory the cutlery can be faked. It has been described as a quaking so severe that she had to be led to a couch so that she could lie down and regain composure. My guess is that she forgot for a second that the knife had made its way back to RS’s flat, and her heart was in her throat, because she thought the police were about to twig.
I have experienced this extreme type of tremor,on several occasions, none being more memorable than another but all having to do with encountering evil behaviour. Had the detectives been tricky enough as to plant the knife in the cottage drawer, I bet she would have cracked. But then, of course, the cries would come of evidence planting.

Nell, you say “How much time she spent planning the attack/murder is not really important to me. In my books, she brought a large kitchen knife to the cottage with the intent to harm Meredith Kercher. If she thought about it for a week or only a day is not really of importance to me.”

It’s not important to me either from an ethics point of view.  I just think that if we put our heads together in reasoning we may be able to discover missing parts of the puzzle.  Unlikely but possible.  Cardiol managed to do it; his theory about the police scanner is simply brilliant!!!  A follow up of his theory may even help discover further missing pieces of the puzzle (e.g., by following up on the exact times that the police communicated over the scanner about the hoax; perhaps not though if the police communicated about this incident all night long).

annc - Police typically record their Radio-Traffic, with exact times, but may recycle their recorders by overwriting the older ones; if a case is considered important enough they may preserve the records, usually analog-tapes.

Therefore, they may have saved them in this case, but probably not. After all it was more than 3 years ago.

If they think they screwed-up, they tend to more-quickly over-write.

If the records were digital, there may be a better chance.

Hi Pensky. “Hi Peter, just checked out some of the horrifyingly offensive and illiterate drivel by CD-Host and must conclude that it would be playing into his hands to engage with him. He comes across as a dangerous freak with a pseudo-religious bent. Shouldn’t we just ignore him? Another puffed up ego shrieking for attention. He is an obscenity whom we can annoy by dismissing.”

Yes agreed. There does seem general lack of interest in our raising CD Host’s profile any further. Apparently he was locked up for three weeks a long time ago, and seems to have been acting unhinged about prosecutors ever since.

On PMF where CD Host posted for about a day around New Year (and where he suddenly claimed to be an atheist) they looked at his religious ramblings and found them dark and very odd to say the least.

Our main poster Stilicho who posted here decisively on conspiracy theorists (the conspiracy theorists have been freaked out by the term ever since) posted this on PMF about CD Host’s new post on Church Discipline.

************

I just read the 08 JAN 2011 entry at that blog that CDHost runs and I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone unless you don’t mind your retinas being burned out by the amazing stupidity. It begins with a long exposition on the likelihood of alien-human hybrids committing Meredith’s murder. Not that there is such a thing as an alien-human hybrid (apparently an assumption far more likely than three young people getting together and committing a crime) but that this strawman actually committed this specific murder rather than any other one.

Is your mind boggling yet?

He’s another “probability guy”. He hints at the possibility that someone other than Meredith allowed Guede inside the cottage but then suddenly explains that this probability is around 33% and then adjusts that a little later to 7.75%. Who knows what his point is?

His final point is that Massei doesn’t know the intricacies of the Mac but asserts that timestamps on the OS files are meaningless. I don’t know why he’d say that because, apparently, Sollecito’s defence team seems to think otherwise. Maybe they should have consulted with CDHost before proceeding with their appeal.

I’ve noticed that one of the key criticisms of Massei is that he weighs in with opinions on the evidence in the motivations report. Isn’t that the whole idea? Isn’t he required to outline the manner in which the court arrived at its decision? What does CDHost think judges ordinarily do when arriving at a decision? Consult chicken entrails?

Probability is a very powerful tool when it’s used correctly.  For the case in this blog, one can calculate exactly what is the probability of a bomb hoax happening in the same address as a phone dump, if these 2 events are independent.  My calculation above was an approximation to show just how unlikely this would be if it were a coincidence, but a precise calculation would be based on the number of houses with phone numbers, the number of hoax calls per year, etc.  This is exact science just like forensic evidence is exact science.  The ‘probability guy’ mentioned above is talking nonsense and calling it probability.  It would be analogous to someone making guesses based on the evidence without doing the DNA analysis, and then calling it forensic science.

annc - thanks for your explanation [on 01/11/11 at 10:35 AM ] of how the probability of a bomb hoax happening in the same address as a phone dump should be calculated, and why you had guesstimated it to be, constructively, infinitely-small; I agree with your approach.

One of our fellow-posters recently told us:

“There’s no evidence of such an interest in police scanners, there’s no evidence of a purchase, no-one ever saw him use one and the timing you suggest - well he was extremely occupied and also very stoned.”

I did not respond because I assumed that use, by the poster, of the phrase “No evidence” to mean ” No evidence of which the poster was aware”.

WRT “stoned” it seems that some of us believe this was:

1.Not enough to stop the killers from switching-off the lights as they fled, and

2.Not enough to stop the killers from sequentially undertaking the other 5 categories of cover-up precautions - that we know-of.

Getting on to the subject of Police Radio-Traffic, it is probably no more illegal in Italy to sell the monitoring devices than it is to sell knives that can be used in a murder.

It is also probably not illegal for our other fellow-poster’s husband to possess such a monitoring device.

Although I did not suggest that the trio were themselves the Toilet-Bomb hoaxers, I do not think that possibility should be excluded.

Teen-age hackers probably know how to do it, and cover their tracks, in spite of the Roman teen-ager’s apparent confession.

It is also even possible that a compulsive hacker recorded the Police Radio-Traffic for that night; perhaps our other fellow poster, whose husband has such monitoring equipment, could ask him about it.

Here’s a source about Meredith being offered a job during Halloween.  Of course we’ll never know if in fact Meredith told Amanda that afternoon that she was offered a job the previous night.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28057560/ns/dateline_nbc-crime_reports/

“Maybe after clubbing till all hours the night before, she needed a low-key recovery night. It was Halloween and she’d gone as a female vampire with blood dripping from her fangs.

She’d bumped into Patrick Lumumba, the Congolese bar owner—her American roommate’s boss—and he’d dangled an intriguing invitation before her: come DJ one night a week at the bar. It would be “Mez Night” at his hole-in-the-wall club, Le Chic.

Lumumba thought Meredith’s good looks would be a draw. She told him she’d think about it.”

And here’s another source about Amanda being jealous of Meredith:
“In interviews published Sunday with two British newspapers, the Sunday Mirror and the Daily Mail, Lumumba said Knox may have falsely accused him because she was mad that he had fired her from her job at his pub - and that he had offered a job to Kercher.

He said Knox was extremely jealous of Kercher.

“Amanda hated Meredith because people loved her more than they did Amanda,” the Mirror quoted Lumumba as saying. “She was insanely jealous that Meredith was taking over her position as Queen Bee.”

Yes they did not make the hoax call themselves but the use of a scanner to intercept police radio traffic could have given them the details of that call and Mrs Lana’s address. An ingenious thought and I missed the point completely - as I sometimes do.

Sadly a scanner which can be traced to any of the three is unlikely to turn up now. A likely user/owner might have been Raffaelle, I guess, but also Rudy for use in his constant drug deals and petty criminal activity. Maybe Raffaelle had borrowed it/was listening in on it at the basketball court. Maybe not.

Assuming the scanner scenario to be correct was that the only reason AK and RS - let us assume - set off from the cottage in the direction of Mrs Lana’s?

I don’t think so and I see that SomeAlibi has got in ahead of me with his comments above.

They would surely have wanted to avoid returning immediately to Raffaelle’s via the Grimana Square area and potentially being seen by someone who could then place them in the immediate vicinity coming from the direction of the cottage at about or just after Meredith’s scream. Worse still would it be for anybody to notice blood on them.

Rudy went that way, maybe attracting attention. Best not to do so themselves.

I assume that AK and RS were on foot and were able to follow the town wall round in the direction of Mrs Lana’s ( as per Kermit’s Dumped Cellphones Power Point Presentation), accessing and using the footpaths and open spaces of the Parco Sant’Angelo outside the town wall (and which I assume would be poorly lit if at all) rather than walking all the way round by road. At that time of night they would be unlikely to encounter anyone and if they did, avoid them. Indeed it gives them their first opportunity, after having bolted quickly, and undetected, and having distanced themselves from the cottage, to plan ahead without being heard or observed. At least I assume so.

Here they could have shed bloodied clothing and weapons and perhaps left them hidden somewhere for collection, sorting and/or disposal an hour or so later, once they had walked back to Raffaelle’s via Porto Sperandio, a gate in the town wall further along near to Mrs Lana’s (coming in from the opposite direction to the cottage), had quickly washed and had returned by car. Raffaelle had a car. it would be interesting to know whether the car was forensically examined though any incriminating items for disposal would no doubt have been bagged before being placed in it.

Does this sound feasible? Anyone who has walked the walk would be able to say and to tell me how they got into the park from Via Pergola which I believe they may have been able to do before coming to the arch over the road, as otherwise they would presumably have had to carry on and turn on to Via Andrea da Perugia, to access the park, which of course they might still have done.

So I don’t think they went that way just to throw the phones into Mrs Lana’s garden at 5A Via Sperandio. The phones may have been thrown on the initial foot journey, or at any time later in the night if, say, they were using the car to get about here and there quickly. Incidentally I don’t know why the address is Via Sperandio when the property is situate on Via Andrea da Perugia, but never mind. But I don’t think they intended to throw the phones inside the garden anyway.

As SomeAlibi says, if the point of throwing the phones away was for them not to be found (which on the face of it seems the most rational plan), then there were plenty of better places to throw them including into the ravine by the side of Mrs Lana’s garden. That they did not do so suggests that they did not know, or see, what it was that they were doing, and just bungled the operation. The phones were in the garden just a few yards from the edge of the ravine. The alternative was that a master plan was in operation.

However I can’t envisage what this master plan was.

If Raffaelle had in mind framing Rudy for Meredith’s murder, then it is difficult to see what part the disposal of the phones in Mrs Lana’s garden plays. The framing of Rudy consists not in the discovery of the phones but in the cleaning of the cottage to remove incriminating evidence relating to him and AK, and leaving only incriminating evidence relating to Rudy. That is it. The phones don’t need to be found. If the phones can’t be found there is no danger on that account of them being disturbed during the clean up. No danger of their fingerprints being found on them. I can’t even see it as being part of a back up plan if they don’t succeed with the clean up.

If the idea was for the phones to be discovered (but not until after the planned clean up) this does not add anything to the evidence against Rudy for murder but of course the police might initially treat the hoaxer as a murder suspect. Hardly a master plan and frankly I can’t see RS and AK using the available time to think of anything else but getting clean away, cleaning themselves up, disposing of all the incriminating evidence against them, discussing alibis and staging a break in, etc. That is what everything was all about and they made a mess of that.

I cannot see that anyone, even if under the influence of drugs or influence or delusions of infallability, would choose to throw the cell phones into someone’s yard where in all likelihood they would eventually be found just on the premise that the police had been at that address once and would not be coming back, when there are nearby areas along that road where the phones could be thrown into an overgrown ravine where it is unlikely they would ever be found.

If one didn’t want to run into anyone while returning home after committing or cleaning up after a murder, the road down behind the cottage would presumably be less traveled than the streets within the city walls, thus a preferable route to take and IMO having to travel a bit further, by foot or car since we don’t know which it was, would definitely be preferable to being seen. Someone who had spent some time in Perugia and around the cottage would probably know that there was a ravine with no easy access for searching just below that road, therefore giving them a likely place to ditch the phones.

I don’t think we have to stretch to having the twosome listening to a police scanner to find a safe place to dump the phones—whoever dumped them just screwed up when choosing the precise place along the road to give them the old heave ho and by mischance they landed not in the ravine but in somebody’s garden. I’m not much of a believer in coincidence either, but on rare occasions, things just align in a favorable fashion.

I mean, why would anyone want to dump possibly incriminating items in somebody’s garden instead of a place where they would probably never be found?

“I’m not sure the sort of trembling Knox demonstrated upon being asked to inventory the cutlery can be faked. It has been described as a quaking so severe that she had to be led to a couch so that she could lie down and regain composure. My guess is that she forgot for a second that the knife had made its way back to RS’s flat, and her heart was in her throat, because she thought the police were about to twig.”

I agree with mimi that Knox’s response was not faked, but my thoughts about the reason behind the response ran along the lines of Knox experiencing an emotional flashback—one of the few instances (perhaps since it was so close to the horrific event or because the act of having the drawer opened happened quickly and was out of her control) when her ability to control her emotions, and stay in deep denial about what happened failed her and the reality of the horror of what they had done overcame her. I thought seeing the knives set her off.

“I mean, why would anyone want to dump possibly incriminating items in somebody’s garden instead of a place where they would probably never be found?”

How about:

“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.”

Hi Beans and Cardiol. Yeah I too have no problem believing that one way or another the tossing of the phones right THERE was deliberate.

What I posted earlier: “When I walked the area I found it distinctly odd that Mrs Lana’s garden was chosen. The phones could have been tossed down the slope (most of which is wilderness) much closer to any of the city gates nearby.”

I had no problem distinguishing at night that there was a house down there. And again, the house is not right outside any city gate. It is more than 100 yards from any of them.

*****

James asked above if whoever tossed the phones could have followed the city wall round from Meredith’s house. Yeah I could see that on foot or in a car. That part of the ringroad is not very busy even in daylight hours and at night there would be few cars and no-one walking - that stretch plunges far down and then back up. 

That ringroad west (right) of the city gates you can see in Kermit’s Powerpoints becomes much busier, because cars exit from the Garibaldi and university area and head to the modern town which is about a mile and a long way down to the west. The route that Sollecito would have driven twice daily.

annc: my mere opinion is that the premeditation is focused on teaching a lesson (not murder, which is stupidly—pathologically—unforeseen.)

mimi above & wayra, also, express my belief about the violently nervous reaction in the kitchen.

And to throw in a word about coincidence: a coincidence of such deep importance & stupefying improbability (ie, toilet connection) may well qualify as a synchronicity in Jung’s own strict definition of that term.

An old ex-minister (ordained Lutheran, then Unitarian) I go that one step further: It is a sign…

Sorry, Cardiiol, I just don’t buy it. I think it is just a complication. If Raffaele had a police scanner, I should think as a participant in murder he would have been most interested in monitoring it to discover if there was any police activity in the vicinity of the cottage, not just the night of the murder, but through the next day and that he would have been carefully monitoring it to try to follow activities involved in the investigation in the days thereafter. If that were so, how would he allow himself and Amanda to be caught flat-footed hanging about in front of the cottage by the postal police. And given his arrogance about the police being stupid, I would bet it would have been found by the police on his person or in his apartment. I think it likely that the police would be very interested in a murder witness/suspect who was monitoring their activities so I think there would have been some report if Raffaele had been found to be in possession of a police scanner.

I still think whichever of the three disposed of the phones just was unlucky in the choice of where to throw the phone.

PS
Forgive another post but I didn’t mean, above, that Amanda is not an actress.  She is a very good actress.

She is capable of many expressions, yet for the most part chooses to keep her face a mask.

Besides her nervousness in the kitchen, I put her tears down as genuine, recently. The very length of her statement brought her to psychologically unexpected moments… She weeps for herself out of fear. As well she might.

Hey,like Beans I think that it is a bit far fetched that RS and AK threw the phones on purpose into the garden of Mrs Lana (in the hope that the Police would not investigate). I think it was RG when was about re-enter the city through that gate in the city-wall. Maybe RS and AK threw the phones there, maybe on purpose in a garden of someone, because they wanted them to be found near a place where RG lived.. andt they were just discovered too early.
Of course people in Europe use police scanners, but in this case I think it didnt happen in 99,99 Percent.

“but in this case I think it didnt happen in 99,99 Percent.”

What are your reasons for the assignment of 99,99?  As I’m sure you know, this number is meaningless as stated.

Excuse me annc, it is just my opinion! And alltogether with all other coincidences in this case, 0,01 percent is pretty high! So, to some certain degree I think it could have happened like Cardiol described. But for me other reasons are more plausible that the phones were found at the place they were found!

Excuse me annc, it is just my opinion! And alltogether with all other coincidences in this case, 0,01 percent is pretty high! So, to some certain degree I think it could have happened like Cardiol described. But for me other reasons are more plausible that the phones were found at the place they were found!

This is my first post.  I’m very grateful for this informative website because from the very beginning it has been difficult to get any substantial facts about the case from the news magazines or newspapers in the U. S.  I’ve been reading this site regularly and appreciate the posts and various comments. 

On the issue of motivation, I’ve been wondering about one thing that hasn’t seemed to come up much.  That is the stolen money.  If I recall correctly, Rudy Guede is the only person to have mentioned it, but in a way that seems credible, as he apparently claimed that Meredith was arguing with Amanda over it.  It doesn’t seem likely he made that up on the spur of the moment. 

Added to other probable motivations (e.g., the desire to “teach a lesson” referred to above by Ernest Werner), being accused of theft (especially if was true) might have pushed Amanda over the edge.  If her rent money had been stolen, Meredith would likely have been very angry about it.  If she threatened to call the police, an arrest might have ensued. 

I don’t know much about Italian law, but some time ago while in Italy, I heard about the case of an American who had been arrested for the theft of a small amount of money.  Although the charge in itself was ludicrous, the individual was reportedly jailed for several weeks until the matter was cleared up.  If that could have happened, then Raffaele might well have known about the risk involved.  Could this be a possibility?

“Of course people in Europe use police scanners, but in this case I think it didnt happen in 99,99 Percent.

Posted by Teddie on 01/13/11 at 02:18 PM | #”

Teddie, “if it didn’ happen in 99.99 %”

Then according to your Post, you think it did happen in 0.001%, or 1 in 1000%, or 1/100,000.

i.e. you think that there is 1 chance in 100,000 that it was a coincidence?

I can buy that.

I can buy 1/10,000 too.

Could AK’s strong reaction to the knife drawer in the cottage indicate that the knife had already been in that drawer prior to the murder?  And if so, do you think that it indicates that it was not taken there with malicious purposes?  It just seems that if AK and RS were premeditating to use the knife as a weapon they wouldn’t leave it in the common drawer for the following 2 reasons.  If the knife had been taken that same night for malicious intent then there wouldn’t be a need to put it in the drawer at all and could instead have been left in their bag.  And if the knife had been taken before that night for malicious intent then AK and RS would have taken a huge risk of someone recognizing the weapon knife after the crime by one of the roommates and in that way point the police right at them.

I think AK and RS deserve a life prison sentence with or without premeditation, but I’ve always been curious about how this terrible crime could have come about.  This is why I’m running some of my ideas by you, to see if you think they make sense or if you think I’m missing something. Thanks.

Hi annc,

I doubt Raffaele Sollecito’s kitchen knife has ever been stored in the kitchen drawer from the cottage.

I cannot find any reasonable explanation why they would have brought the kitchen knife from Raffaele Sollecito’s flat for cooking purposes (in other words: for an innocent reason) to the cottage in the first place. Even though Raffaele Sollecito was a knife fetishist, I don’t believe the kitchen knife from his landlord meant anything special to him. Therefore I doubt he would have really cared to cook with this kitchen knife or any other kitchen knife already available at the cottage. Furthermore I believe that Laura and Filomena would have noticed another knife, not belonging to the cottage, in their kitchen drawer.

Regarding the premeditation: I believe they might not have had a particular plan in mind when they went to the cottage. Neither the rape scenario nor the murder seem to have been very elaborate. I believe Amanda used the opportunity to get Meredith alone in the cottage, while she was backed up with two boys and a knife (plus the one Sollecito had with him) to “push her buttons” and let the situation escalate. The fact alone that Amanda was inviting boys over for partying while Meredith was trying to get some sleep must have been upsetting for Meredith. The missing rent money was the final straw. That Amanda brought a knife to the cottage proves beyond any doubt that she was willing to go far right from the start.

Where next:

Or to next entry Scientific Statement Analysis: Amanda Knox’s Statement To The Appeal Court On 11 December

Or to previous entry A Belated Attempt To Do A U-Turn On The Misconceived Loser Of A PR Campaign?