What is your proof?

Can you please source Rudy shoe prints leading from directly in front of Meredith's door, to directly outside the cottage which proves this ridiculous theory that because no shoe prints in blood exist for him turning around and locking the door it was impossible for him to do.

And I do mean source material, please, not just your imagination.

If they feel that way about the Netflix doc guilter nutters need to make their own documentary flick on this case, umm what no one would buy it? Oh that's a shame.

It's difficult to imagine that this debate is continuing, but it is.

When I first opened the thread, I knew almost nothing about the Kercher murder and had no view at all as to whether Amanda played a part in it. After reading and studying it at some length -- although not nearly as much as others here, I suppose -- I came to a view that Knox was probably guilty.

The footsteps issue is a microcosm of the debate. Is it possible for someone to exit a door and lock it without leaving footprints in the opposite direction, i.e. back towards the door? Certainly. Is it likely? No. Is there any explanation as to why Guede would do so? No. Are the footprints evidence that Knox is guilty? Certainly. Is that conclusive evidence? Hell, no.

My recall of the ruling was the same, i.e. the court believed that Knox was present but ruled that there was not sufficient evidence to convict. I can certainly accept that, but that's a very very different statement from saying she's innocent.

The level of polarization in this thread continues to amaze me. I came to it with an open mind, and ultimately decided that many of the folks who argued against Knox's guilt were nowhere close to reasonable or honest -- 237 in particular, who as I recall it simply refused to admit there was a single piece of evidence to support a guilty verdict. He had all kinds of semantic bull**** arguments to avoid that statement.

It doesn't hurt the conversation that you're a lawyer, so I'll mention that for you.

Perhaps. I'm definitely no expert in Italian law, although I had a small piece of one civil case there many years ago. I'm generally familiar with the principles of admissibility and burden and all of that, and I'm certainly capable of trying to reconcile stacks and stacks of evidence which can be interpreted in different ways.

I think 237 had an agenda from the beginning, but I don't think that about nearly everyone who thinks Knox had nothing to do with the crime. It is really interesting, though, that the views on this are so polarized -- and I guess I'm interested intellectually in how that happens.

The internet in general seems to have a polarising effect on people's opinions and how they're expressed.

A lot of people lurk. People are drawn in to talk in various ways, and that will almost always come in the form of a polarized opinion. People who are sitting in the middle typically don't respond, because it's unnecessary. For me, it's just been typically jumping in and taking people to task for giant logic leaps that make no sense and dumb posting that shouldn't be allowed to stand unchallenged. Oski takes the latter in a lot of posts, which is why he's been the most visible figure in it since Henry and Poker Reference stopped posting.

Some people are like Steal Wheel and SK, most aren't. This thread wouldn't even be active again if it hadn't been for the unnecessary apparently biased and low information Netflix doc unleashing a bunch of simpletons out to the world again who know nothing about the subject they're talking about. For some, it's not their fault since the doc apparently did its job, but others like SK, well, SK gonna SK.

That pretty much sums it up. No piece of evidence by itself gets above say, 95% likelihood of guilt, but together, it's overwhelming:

Odds that they're guilty, given:

Confession of presence at the murder scene in record time? Way above 50%.
Multiple people thinking the burglary is staged? Above 50%
Constantly changing alibi? Above 50%
Implicating other innocent people (Sollecitor his gf, Knox her boss) in a matter of a couple of hours? Above 50%
Bathmat footprint matching Sollecito? >90%
Evidence of cleanup? > 90%
Sollecito's DNA on the bra clasp >80%
...etc...

Since each one proves guilt or at least substantial involvement, they all have to be false, which together is vanishingly small.

But on the contrary side, each can be argued against and doubt thrown on it. You can divide and conquer one by one as nothing by itself passes the threshold of sufficient certainty.
Yeah, it fascinates me too.

I think the side you take on this depends on how you view the world. If you're suspicious of police/authority and have something of a mind of your own (i.e HiJak), you hold up one piece and see it falling short, then another, and soon decide that it's all BS. You're pattern matching against "does any piece of this seem sufficiently reliable"?

If you realize that evidence doesn't magically come into existence, and that the laws of physics apply, you realize that the existence of so many improbable things being in so many improbable places requires an explanation that's not only plausible but put together in such a way as to be at least slightly probable. You're pattern matching against "which story fits the totality of the evidence best?"

I can't say which way is best in general, but I know the first way is a flawed epistemology when dealing with a string of uncertain events.

The bloody shoeprints of Guede's were barely visible and faded the further away from the door you got. It's entirely possible he went back to get her keys and lock the door. I'm not sure it was ever settled but I remember reading some discussion about the lock on the front door needing a key to unlock it from the inside and that the girls always kept it locked or the door would fly open. If that was true and I'm not sure it is true, it would explain why he went back.

Also Howard Treesong,lol.

239,

Hey man!

Wrong! Throw out this entire argument! (See bolded number)

A wild 239 has appeared!

I'm generally suspicious of authority, but that seems to me to cut both ways. The Italian police are not likely to conduct a fully competent investigation, and may have some agenda.

Multiple pieces of mildly damning evidence are very persuasive to me.

Either way, a really interesting case and an absorbing thread at times.

A+ AK supporter argument impersonation

At this time, it's an extremely bad thread, and has been bad for a long time.

It's not good now, I agree, except at the level of meta-analysis and perhaps not even then.

Yeah, for some reason I misremembered that.

You just proved 239 is actually forgettable. Don't feel bad.

Mildly damning circumstantial evidence is far less compelling when there is no motive whatsoever. And even less compelling than simply no motive when it is just unimaginable that Guede, Amanda and her 1 week boyfriend would conspire to rape and murder her roommate

You don't need to believe this was a calculated murder with a conventional motive to believe that they're guilty on the basis posted by TS and by Henry before him, ie that the likelihood of all of the pieces of evidence placing them there at the time of the killing being false is extremely close to zero.

As usual, SK cherry picks and doesn't realize that HT said he would not be able to convict after what he learned about the case, even though he thinks it's likely she was there and a part of it.

I believe OJ did it, but I think the verdict of reasonable doubt was correct, just arrived at for the wrong reasons.

the motive is stolen rent money that led to an argument which got physical. why do you even bother posting if you literally have no clue what you're talking about? not a good look.

this is so dumb that maybe now you can play ikasigh and tell us why we need conditional probability formulas to evaluate the collective strength of numerous individual pieces of evidence?

I don't fully agree with this. I've been sufficiently stoned that reality takes on a completely abstract feel to it, and that may be what Amanda was going through. Who knows what she thought she was doing? Circumstantial evidence remains as it is, and a clear motive does not add to it.

I think Knox was guilty. I still don't know if I could convict her on this record.

She, her brand new boyfriend and some random guy murdered and sexually assaulted Kercher over a few hundred dollars? You guys actually believe that, incredible.

You guys actually believe that she was nowhere near the murder when it happened? Incredible.

i gave up trying to earnestly engage the knox groupies a while back, they are a striking combination of tremendously uninformed and completely detached from reality