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Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito have been convicted of the murder of Meredith Kercher, Amanda’s flat mate, and are currently entering a period of appeal. Much has been made of her “changing her story” which I have previously addressed in my post on coerced and false confessions (see link below). What she might or might not have said in the 53 hours of interrogation in a foreign language, however, aren’t really germane, since it was physically impossible for her to have committed the crime.
The best evidence for this is the time of death. In the Massei Report (English translation performed by this web site, and Italian version here) this important detail is glossed over and dismissed with hand waves in a way that is demonstrably false. It is known that it takes 2-3 hours for a meal to pass from the stomach into the duodenum, and the median time it takes for the meal to FIRST ARRIVE in the duodenum of 82 minutes (25%-75%, 65-102 minutes). In the case of Meredith, there was nothing in the duodenum. All three of the girls she had dinner with said that they ate at a pizza meal at about 6:00 pm Massei p 35-37, Motivazione 22-24), or 6:30 at the latest, since AFTER eating they watched a 123 minute long movie. After they left at 8:45 pm, which one of the friends is sure of since she wanted to get home to watch a TV show at 9:00 pm. It was a ten minute walk to Meredith’s house, and she was seen on CCTV near the house at about 8:55 pm. Shortly after that she made a call to her mother, which was cut off. The most probable explanation for this is that she called as soon as she got home and was attacked by Rudy Guede who had broken into her house a few minutes before (probable explanations are not favored by the Perugia court which favors the most improbable explanations, like sex game gone awry, but stick with me here). 9:00 pm was at least 150 minutes after the start of her meal, so it is medically impossible for her to have died much later than this.
Here is where the conviction breaks down. The prosecution has the homeless drug addict Antonio Curatolo placing Amanda and Raffaele in the piazza near the house at 9-11 pm. There was a stalled car near the house at 10:30 pm for about another hour, and they never heard a scream. Then there was Nara Capezzali, who claims she heard a scream that was placed at 11:30 pm. The conviction put the time of death at 11:30 pm in order to string together these somewhat dubious “facts”. Massei did some hand waving about factors that could affect digestion and made the claim that it could take up to 7 hours for the meal to pass from the stomach. But this is plain wrong, no doctor would agree with this statement in a normal person. The time of death is flat out wrong.
Add to this the problems with the witnesses, like Nara claiming she heard people running from the scene of the crime, which has been proven impossible, Curatolo’s mix up on the dates, the crumbling DNA “evidence” that is looking more like contamination as evidenced by this experiment involving lack of glove changing during evidence collection (as occurred in this case), and you are ending up with… nada.
Related Posts:
Amanda Knox Convicted on the Basis of Cartwheels and Kisses
My Thoughts on the Amanda Knox Case
More Tabloid Trash Coming Out of the UK on the Amanda Knox Case
My Rebuttal to “Angel Face” the Book about Amanda Knox
Forget Everything You Ever Knew About the Amanda Knox Case
Does Italy Have Freedom of Speech? Perugia Blocks Blogger Critical of Amanda Knox Prosecutor Mignini
Murder Abroad: Drew Griffin Reports on the Amanda Knox Case in CNN Video
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Doug,
When one adds the stomach content information to the cell phone behavior between 10 and 10:15 PM, a TOD between 9 and 10 starts looking very persuasive indeed.
Can you tell us more about the cell phone behavior?
I am not as well versed as some other commenters on the phone usage, but here goes. There were two activities around 9:58 PM; first a call to her voicemail that was interrupted, then a call to her bank without the country code. Massei suggests Meredith was playing with her cell phone, but that doesn’t make much sense. At 10:13 a MMS was sent from a different tower than normal to Meredith’s phone. Finally, it is very strange that Meredith would not attempt to call her mother after the 8:56 call was interrupted.
What about the 9:20 pm or so call by AK that supposedly linked from a differnt tower than the one near RS house? What was the evidence for that and was that ever refuted? I heard there were conflicting accounts in Massei
Doug, I am under the impression that the Massei report is inconsistent with respect to the message at 8:18 PM. Here is a link:
http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=6406053&postcount=8882
The Massei report claims in one case that the cell phone tower used for the 8:18 message does not cover Raffaele’s flat, but in another place the report says that this tower does cover his flat. There is also a typo with respect to the street names. One person that I asked did not think that Amanda’s appeal document covered this issue, but I am not certain.
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