Cell Phone Evidence / Time of Death
For the prosecution at the Massei Trial, a much later time of death was needed to line up with the testimony of ear witness, Nara Capezzali, who claimed to have heard a scream and their star witness, homeless heroin addict, Antonio Curatolo. This was made possible because the state pathologist, Luca Lalli, failed to record the body temperature despite being in the murder room that afternoon. It wouldn’t be until 11 hours later that he finally did. On the night of the murder, Meredith Kercher’s phone had 4 interactions making it possible to show the time of death was much earlier than the prosecution claimed, and their two witnesses weren’t credible. The times and numbers dialed were:
- 8:56pm Meredith Kercher calls home to England but does not receive an answer;
- 9:58pm the number 901, corresponding to the answering machine is dialed but the call is shut off before the end of the welcome message; after that, the phone immediately locks;
- 10:00pm a number is dialed which corresponds to a bank (Abbey, the first number on the phone book) but no one is called, also because the mandatory prefix for foreign countries has not been entered;
- 10:13pm a GPRS internet connection is recorded, lasting 9 seconds and to the Ip address 10.205.46.41, that could be related to an incoming multimedia message [MMS], which does not require human interaction, or to an access to the internet, but with a duration, 9 seconds, too short to allow the use of any service, this could be explained by an involuntary connection or by a sudden interruption.
Note – The phone logs are listed in the Time of Death section in the Hellmann Report and Massei Report page 328
What happened?
Rudy Guede stole Meredith Kercher’s phones just like he stole Paolo Brocchi’s phone two weeks earlier. He left the cottage before 10pm and most likely threw the phones into Elizabeth Lana’s garden when the MMS was received realizing they connected him to the murder. The 10.13pm MMS connected via the distant wind cell 30064 located 1800 meters away across the valley (see map below). The towers which did service the cottage as the phone records show, the Vodaphone employees testified and the experts said were Piazza Lupatelli (150 metres from the cottage), Piazza Forte Braccio and Via Dell Acquila. The MMS connecting via wind cell 30064 is strong evidence the phones had changed hands and were no longer at the cottage at a time both the prosecution and Judge Massei claimed Meredith was still alive and “probably just laying on her bed absent-mindedly playing with her phone”. Note – Meredith Kercher had borrowed a book from girlfriend Robyn Butterworth earlier in the evening which she intended to read when she returned home and have an early night.[1]
Investigation Failures
The postal police failed to acquire the phone traffic records for Meredith Kercher’s Sony Ericson from UK service provider O2 or investigate the data in the phones memory;[2]
- Failure of pathologist to record body temperature;[3]
- No evidence presented to show the towers that did service the cottage were overloaded.
- The postal police only tested signal strength within a few metres of where the phones landed and no where else.[4]
Court Rulings
Massei Report – p330
Nothing compels [us], among the circumstantial evidence available, to consider that the assault took place in the minutes between 21.58 and 22.00 of 1.11, and not rather merely moments of relaxation during which Meredith Kercher, still alone in the house and probably just lying on her own bed, was absent-mindedly playing with the mobile phone in her hand. First of all, the arrival of the MMS is a highly possible thing, as it is incontrovertible that the message was not saved in the memory of the phone. From this it can be inferred that Meredith simply deleted it without opening it, not intending to incur the charge for the Internet connection necessary to be able to view it. As for the call to ‚Abbey‛ destined to failure because of the absence of the British telephone country code, it must be recalled that in the mobile phone’s phonebook the entry ‚Abbey‛ was the first in the list; from this, as shown by experience it is easy to argue that the number could have been dialled by chance. The call to the answering service for listening to recorded messages was, in the end, interrupted before incurring any costs: all this was in line with the frugal habits of Meredith, who used the mobile phone during the [354] less expensive times and days, as was highlighted by the reconstruction of her habits concerning the use of the telephone
Hellmann Report – Time of Death section
Now, it is clear that the attempt to call home was really made by Meredith Kercher since, understandably, she desired to speak with her family at the end of the day, before going to sleep. But she had no reason to try to call the other numbers: in the case of the first, 901, probably the answering machine, it would be meaningless to close the communication before entering the service, since she might as well not have called at all; the bank number (Abbey) she had no reason to dial at that hour and especially without the mandatory prefix; the last would be even more incomprehensible if dialed in order to gain access to the internet,, but, as noted, it could also be related to an incoming MMS. But another oddity is that Meredith Kercher, if, as hypothesized in the ruling under appeal, she was attacked only an hour later, did not try to call her family again after a few minutes (had she done so, there would have been a trace in the cell phone).
So, Ms. Bongiorno has proposed that after the attempt to call her family, some sudden event occurred which prevented her from making another call; and this event could be nothing other than the aggression to which she was subjected. Otherwise, we could have found in the cell phone the record of the number 901, dialed at 9:58 pm but not actually the one of the bank, dialed at 10:00 pm; this allows us to reasonably hypothesize that it was another person, not accustomed to that cell phone, to dial that number, more precisely to dial the first name in the contact list, to which it was associated, perhaps in an attempt to turn off the cell phone, rather than to use it. As for the last recorded traffic registration, the one at 10:13 pm, it has already been noted that it could have been an incoming MMS, not needing any human interaction, or an attempt to access the internet,, likewise done by mistake presumably by someone who, unaccustomed to that cell phone, had somehow gained possession of it.
The Corte di Assise of first level did not accord any significance to those events, explaining them all as moments of relaxation during which Meredith Kercher, alone at home and already lying on the bed, would have thoughtlessly played with her cell phone and has explained the unfinished call to the answering machine as in line with the frugality that distinguished the character of Meredith Kercher, and the same for the fact of deleting the MMS without connecting to the internet, to open it. This reasoning of the first-level Corte di Assise is, however, a sheer conjecture which is not substantiated by any objective evidence and which, in any case, does not explain why, as would have been natural, Meredith Kercher did not try to call her family again fifteen or twenty minutes after her first attempt.
But making the explanation put forth by the first-level Corte di Assise even less convincing is the consideration that that same Court in its ruling held that it was the aggressor who stripped from Meredith her trousers and her underwear, certainly her bra, which was even cut for that purpose. But is it really plausible that the young girl, having come back home with the goal of going to bed early because she was tired, having celebrated Halloween the night before, and with the thought in mind that the day after she would have had to go to class at the University (as she had said to her friend Sophie Purton), instead of undressing and going to sleep, remained clothed, maybe lying on the bed in relaxation – as maintained by the [lower] Court – but fully dressed, without undressing and going to sleep as had been her declared aim? Is it logical that, having the intention to go to sleep early, she instead remained dressed without doing anything for more than an hour, so as to be surprised in that state by the aggressor after 11 o’clock?
So it follows that it is more consistent with the intentions professed by the young woman and with the oddities of the above-mentioned phone calls, to hypothesize that actually the aggression, and hence the death shortly thereafter, occurred much before the time supposed by the Corte di Assise of first level: certainly not later than 10:13 pm.
Nencini Report
The aborted calls and incoming MMS on Meredith’s phone are not mentioned anywhere in the motivation report. Furthermore, he reverses the burden of proof and faults the defense for not offering a theory as to how they ended up in the park despite defense consultant Bruno Pellero doing just that as can be seen in the testimony below.
Testimony Excerpts
Vodaphone Employee – Luca Fioravanti, Born March 1, 1974
Question – Would you like to explain to the Court what work you do and for whom?
Answer- I work for the company Vodafone and I am responsible for the security activities for Central and Southern Italy and in this work there I have dealings with the judicial authorities and with the lawyers for investigations for the defense.p10-11
Question – You researched and reported on the transmitting stations that serve Via Della Pergola, which is the home where the crime took place?
Answer – Yes, when they made this request we reffered the request to our engineering department of radio frequency which by using an algorithm that we use in order to design the network, inserted this information from which it appeared that the network cell with a higher level, the so called best server cell was the one located at Piazza Lupatelli, however Via Della Pergola is also within….
Question – Are we speaking of the Vodaphone cell?
Answer – Yes, Vodaphone, exactly. While, lets say, Via Della Pergola is also served by other cells that are at Piazza Forte Braccio, Via Dell Aquila number 5 and Via Berardi and this a client that is at Via Della Pergola had the possibility of connecting to one of these cells.
Question – Listen the same cell covers diverse zones or covers only a narrow zone, in other words what range does a cell have?
Answer – Yes, the telephone systems protection is obviously extremely influenced by the layout of the land, from where one want to make the coverage, if it is a rural area, on the highway, in the city, therefor especially in the city the range is covered by serveral cells, therefor the same geographic area is served by a varaiable number of cells which belong to various or to the same antenna.p19
Question – What cells best cover the Via Della Pergola and which best cover Via Garibaldi?
Answer – At Via Della Pergola the best server cell is that of Piazza Lupatelli and in particular the GSM11107 and the UMTS55201. For Via Garibaldi we did not analyse the situation.
Vodaphone Employee – Sonia Cieri, born at Vasto (Chieti) March 31, 1960. Electronic engineer of telecommunications, works for the Vodaphone agency based in Rome.
p30
Question – So to be clear, if I don’t get the best server because there is a crane or obstacle, I will get the closest cell station that is in a city and within the cloest hundreds of meters, is this a correct analysis?
Answer – You will connect to one of the closet cells.
Question – One of the cells, perfect. Then which of the GSM cells of Via Lupatelli covers Della Pergola and which covers Via Garibaldi, always referring to the “best server”?
President – Excuse me, you can use the document, I don’t know if you also have a…
Answer – No, I do not have a copy.
President – Go ahead.
Answer – Give it to him.
President – It is the same one that was used in the preceding testimony.
Question – Yes, on the last page there are these blessed cells.
Answer – Therefor in accordance to the relationship, the best cell serves the cell of Piazza Lupatelli GSM, that which we call 11107 and UMTS55201, this is the best cell, but…
Question – For who so that we are clear?
Answer – It is the best server for the address of Via Pergola 7, but the sufficient level in order to allow conversations for that address is offered from all six of the cells of Piazza Lupatelli and also from the two cells at Piazza Forte Braccio, of the six cells of Via Dell Acquila and from the station at via Berardi, this….
Letterio Latella – State Police
p111-114
Questioning by defense lawyer Giulia BongiornoQuestion: Yes, I had started asking questions on this famous cellular repeater 64, for the record the cellular repeater is 30064, so I had asked how many times Kercher’s telephone had used cell repeater 30064 in the period that the witness had examined.
Answer: In the period that is being examined…
Question: Is that it?
Answer: One moment while I check. From 1 October 2007 to 2 November 2007, the mobile number in question connected via cell repeater 3302030064, calculating based on 43 connections and removing all the times that the Wind operator repeats the record, [it occurred] more than once.
Question: I asked how many times.
Answer: If you give me time I will count from the log one at a time, that way…
Judge Massei: Please go ahead. So then you were saying that from 1 October 2007 to 2 November 2007…
Answer: A system with an initial calculation taking into account also of the times the operator repeats the record of the call, when it goes into voice mail, say, so which occur also if it’s a call and the operator counts two or three, it gives me 43 connections, they will certainly be less, they’ll be about twenty, eighteen, in any case more than one. If we have time I’ll look at the log and we can count them one at a time.
Question: Yes count them.
Answer: Ok fine.
Question: Those perhaps where she calls the family we can count them, then for the others each person will do their own calculations otherwise then we won’t …
Answer: Sorry what, I don’t understand?
Question: The number of times this number calls the number of the family.
Answer: Seeing as I don’t know the number of the family I will count them every time.
Question: OK. And if it helps with the calculation, if you have to include them, based on how many calls in total or are the calculations done separately?
Answer: The calls, at least the number of records are 1091, records of traffic, those which the operator gave us. Here, these are all the times that that cell phone connected to that cell repeater.
Question: Because we should clarify as maybe the Court doesn’t know, I had a consultant explain it to me, if you can explain it to us, these are the records but they do not coincide with the number of calls, maybe it’s better that we explain it because I don’t know if they know this.
Answer: As we have mentioned the operator, in this case Wind, generates more than one record for each phone call.
Question: What do you mean by record of traffic, trace of traffic let’s say.
Answer: What?
Question: What do you mean by record of traffic?
Answer: Records are the organized data that the operator sends to us for each phone call, so there is the date, the time…
Question: So if now I call you there will not just be one, the records will be…
Answer: No, in this case, in the case of Wind, for this telephone which is in roaming it behaves in this way. For a telephone that is not in roaming it behaves differently.
Question: No, for this one that is in roaming.
Answer: For this phone in some cases it generates more than one record of traffic.
Question: So then the number we count here doesn’t coincide with the number of telephone calls obviously.
Answer: As I mentioned to you it tells us there were 43 in the system, and they will most certainly have been 25 – 28 more or less.
Question: So if they are…
Answer: If we have time we can count them.
Question: So in other words there will be more records than there are telephone calls, then we can count which are the actual phone calls, there are 43 [records], you say presumably the number of phone calls will be 25?
Answer: Because…
Question: Instead the number you gave me earlier?
Answer: There are one thousand records of traffic.
Question: There are one thousand and 40 records which refer to this cell repeater?
Answer: Yes, to this cell repeater.
Judge Massei: Earlier you said 1091?
Answer: Yes, 1091.
Question: How many start and finish on this cell repeater?
Answer: This no. Let’s count those which start and finish. So here is one, 1 November the one at 22:13.
Question: In other words it’s the one we’re discussing?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Given that the one at 22:13 obviously, it’s for this reason that I’m asking this question, given that the one at 22:13 is however the type of connection which starts and ends on cell repeater 64 I wanted to know how many other telephone calls had this same characterstic.
Answer: On 1 October at 16:22 there is another call which starts and ends on that cell repeater.
Question: Exactly, any others?
Answer: Ending on that cell repeater there are various, but that start…
Question: No, that start and end.
Answer: There is another that has the same behavior, in October.
Question: So with respect to the phone call under discussion at 22:13 which starts and ends on cell repeater 64 from comparing the data that we have, we can find only one identical case.
Answer: There is one other case in which it starts and ends, instead there are various cases in which it ends on that one… It starts on 521 and ends on 064.
Question: That’s what we also found, that there is only one case.
Judge Massei: The one of 12 October?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Yes, we find it on 16:22 of 12 October.
Answer: Yes.
Sollecito Defence Telecommunications Expert – Bruno Pellero
I have done a range of scientific-based studies, immediately after entry to the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Genoa I began to travel for work and I started to design mobile communications systems, in particular in Japan, in Korea and later in Finland. I’m referring to first generation cell phone devices, and later GSM cell phones. In about 1989 I was called back to Italy to assist the management of the judicial authorities in terms of design and solutions for intercepting cellular communications which I designed and made available to the judicial authorities. Later I specialized at Oxford University in the United Kingdom in GSM systems and network installations, design, operations for both the 900 network and the 1800… In the course of my professional activities my collaborations in the industry have extended from telephone manufacturers to manufacturers of wiretapping devices, for telephony companies and public administration. For a few years I was a consultant for the Cabinet of the Ministry of Justice on wiretapping, consultant for the Minister of Communications on the same subject, technical component of the Ministry for network security and safeguard of communications in the field for which I have defined the characteristics, the costs of the mandatory services that the operators provide to the judicial authorities for wiretapping and documentation of traffic. I do a lot of consultancy and above all lecturing, I work in the lecturing of forensic techniques, for the High Council of the Judiciary at the study days for the Magistrates of the judicial authorities and I’m the coordinator of the lecturers of methodological and technical subjects of the Upper University institute of Pavia and at that institute I’m a member of the Scientific Council of the centre for risks and security, lecturer in electronic surveillance systems of Intelligence of the (inc.) of Calabria, I deliver seminars in investigative technologies in 4 continents.
p106-108 questioning by defense lawyer Giulia Bongiorno
Question: Now what interests us, other than this theoretical reconstruction, which is the most important fact for us for the findings that interest the Court, is to understand: based on all these reconstructions, cell repeaters and measurements, and from your experience when did this cell phone leave Meredith’s house? Are we able to say?
Answer: I’ll refer to the summarized result and then I can explain it. On the basis of the summarized result the telephone would have been in the area for which it has was established that there wasn’t any unusual traffic, the Judicial Police did tests regarding the quantity of traffic and that is not a concern, the area in which the cell repeater 30064 is received which you find in this area and so excluding the rural area over here which is of no interest, it would be the area of Sant’Angelo Park. So where? What connection could there be? It’s not the area of Meredith and Amanda’s house, because from the measurements taken I will explain what the situation is, and so it was in any case already a distance from the house of via della Pergola. How far? Let’s imagine that at 22.13…
Question: Ok first, then later you can explain to us the slide, however just to call to the Court’s attention, because this premise is needed for this conclusion. All of this reconstruction on the basis of the documents submitted by the Judicial Police, of the measurements taken for us, they must be of use in practice and not just to know how things work in theory and it must be used to inform us when the telephone leaves. Seeing as we have a time, 22:13, with a GPRS connection, the question which I’d like you to respond to is this: given the premise that this time 22:13 exists with this connection according to your reconstruction and the following slides this connection occurred when the telephone was inside the house of via della Pergola or outside?
Answer: No, the connection for me, and I’m convinced of this, occurred here, while the telephone was inside Sant’Angelo Park, in the vicinity of the garden of via della Pergola and probably the reason why the telephone was thrown in the garden of via della Pergola, otherwise there wouldn’t be a reason to throw it there. For me it happened that the telephone received an MMS message, the telephone rang, whoever had the telephone remembered in that moment having a telephone which amongst other things was proof of a crime and decided to get rid of it and it was gotten rid of in the place where the person was. So at 22:13 the telephone was here, it was more or less here, it couldn’t have been very far, but the fact that it couldn’t be very far is a result of the compatibility of the radio-electric coverage with that cell repeater, and we’ll see it in detail later, and of the compatibility with the toss which can’t be 200 meters further there, but must be in the region of a few meters or very few tens of meters. At this point when could it have left? I can go back in time to the exit from the house within the limits of the journey that was done, I’ve done it by road, and it’s about 800 meters, it can be done on foot cutting across the field. Just to be clear and then from the photos it’s easier to understand, going via the center of Perugia, especially after such an event, hence likely to be out of breath, perhaps covered in blood and so on, whoever was carrying Meredith’s telephone and so had taken it from her in the moment or moments immediately before or after Meredith’s murder probably wouldn’t want to be noticed. At this point this person would have passed through the center, this person would have gone via the external route, and having the choice and knowing Perugia probably not along the road that is the longest route but perhaps along Sant’Angelo Park which is the shortest route. In combination with this route the cell repeater which covers much better than all the others is repeater 30064 and it is that one which corresponds with the highest value of parameter C2 which is what causes the decision for. [Italian original stops unexpectedly mid-sentence]. Along Sant’Angelo Park the reason why the person arrived here, it’s not for me to say, but in this moment something happened, the telephone which could have been abandoned in the field, in a bush in Sant’Angelo Park, is thrown down a steep bank along the road and it finished in a restricted area that is the garden. At about 22:00 when in November it is completely dark, the garden cannot be distinguished as a place in its own right, it appears just as a thicket, perhaps the biggest thicket of the steep bank which comes after via Andrea da Perugia. So probably the intent to get rid of the phone is executed through a toss which hoped to send it as far away as possible and which carried it into the trees without knowing that beyond those trees there was a garden. This is the conclusion I arrived at.
p131 questioning by defense lawyer Giulia Bongiorno
Question: But is the most likely hypothesis that the telephone had left?
Answer: 99 times out of a 100 the cell repeater 30064 would have been chosen as the repeater serving the points measured in Sant’Angelo Park, there exists a residual possibility in Meredith’s house that could be one, two or three per cent.
Question: It’s not possible to objectively say that the cell repeater 30064 is incompatible with via della Pergola, on the basis of these calculations which take into account the C2 factor, one can say that it is more likely that it was in Sant’Angelo Park, as a probability it’s about 99%?
Answer: Look the probability can be measured in these terms and what I can tell you is that at Sant’Angelo Park, the difference with the next nearest cell repeater is considerable, really considerable, so it would have used this repeater and wouldn’t have searched for another. This also because obviously I have taken into account the results of the measurements that were obtained by the Procura and this certainly permits me to exclude that the repeater 30064 was incompatible with via Sperandio, which emerged from the other side.
Question: Are there any other clarifications that you’d like to make now?
Answer: No.p166-168 questioning by prosecutor Manuela Comodi
Question: Yes, but I have to connect to the Internet.
Answer: No, the terminal is connected, it’s always ready to connect, if the Context is not open it opens automatically when an MMS is received otherwise the MMS would never be received.Question: But was the MMS found in the memory?
Answer: I wasn’t the one to carry out these tests, the Postal Police did it.
Question: Exactly, so taking for granted that the Postal Police did not alter the contents of Meredith’s cell phone…
Answer: But nothing is taken for granted, because there are 3 calls missing from the list… there are also 3 items missing of the 30 memorized last calls, nobody has doubted what they have done, then there is the log, so … we have another case, on the 2nd in the afternoon when Meredith was dead…
Question: Excuse me, so we don’t take anything for granted, because this is what interests me, we don’t take anything for granted and so it’s being suggested the Postal Police deleted the MMS, and then?
Answer: We continue to confuse the terminology, the fact that I don’t take anything for granted is because I don’t know…
Judge Massei: Excuse me, the fact?
Answer: That I can’t take for granted what had been done before, because I don’t know what the Postal Police did, this does not mean that I wish to claim that they made mistakes, it just means I can’t exclude it!
Question: On the other hand I can exclude it, so excluding the possibility that the Postal Police could have deleted some potential evidence…
Defense intervention: But who decided that?
Prosecutor Comodi: I exclude it!Judge Massei: Let’s hypothesize that this is the case, what would the question be?
Question: Hypothesizing, because I take for granted that they did not delete evidence, the absence of the MMS, other than the intentional deletion by the Postal Police, what could have caused it?
Judge Massei: Given this hypothesis that the Prosecutor says didn’t happen…
Answer: I’m a technician and so I can respond also hypothetically: given this hypothesis what could have caused a situation where a user who had it in his hand deleted it before the telephone was taken as evidence.
Judge Massei: Before the telephone was taken?
Answer: Before it was handed over as evidence.
Question: So it was deleted when thrown?
Answer: No no, let’s not confuse things, I’m responding hypothetically to the possibility that an MMS received is no longer found on the telephone, the simplest explanation is that it was deleted, I continually delete MMS advertisements.
Question: Well, certainly not the murderer then!
Judge Massei: However let’s avoid these…
Answer: I’m a technician, I can’t say more than this.p171 questioning by prosecutor Manuela Comodi
Question: To me it is, we also examined the last few days, for example the 3rd October on 6 occasions Meredith’s telephone, especially when calling abroad connects the famous cell repeater 30064, the 4th October connects one, two, three, four times, the 5th October once, but of course one would have to see what is the overall traffic, no?
Answer: In particular one needs to see where Meredith was.
Judge Massei: In particular where?
Answer: Where Meredith was when she made these calls.
Question: Where she was. Well, where do you think she was?
Answer: I’m not able to know, the point is this: we have to compare apples to apples and pears to pears. I can compare against objective data, measure the values, I look at the values and seeing as they automatically place themselves on a scale, I respond that it would have chosen the one with the highest value. To go on and imagine from the communications Meredith did that day using cell repeater 30064 at a certain time and at that time she was at home rather than sitting in the arena of Sant’Angelo Park, I’m not in a position to say.
Question: So your alternative is that, either she was at home, or she was in the area of Sant’Angelo Park? Sant’Angelo or sant’Antonio?
Answer: Sant’Angelo. The alternative is simpler, the cell repeaters offer coverage to an area and to the extent that is possible in areas in the immediate vicinity, the possibility depends on the factors that we discussed earlier which I won’t repeat. So it couldn’t have been in an area that is absolutely not covered by cell repeater 30064. So with it established that there is a residual probability in via della Pergola I’ve already said that I cannot exclude via della Pergola, but there also isn’t this probability clearly shown in the reading of the logs which tells me yes, it was certainly in via della Pergola at that time. That is to say, without having information that tells me that at that time it was certainly there, at this point I could evaluate a compatibility between the fact that it was certainly there and it used that cell repeater where I have already said that in via della Pergola there is a marginal probability as much as we want, but there was, there is, while at Sant’Angelo park I would say it’s a significant probability, it’s the most significant probability, in the sense that in most cases, unless there is some specific reason, it would always use that one.
Question: Good, so all the times that Meredith’s telephone used cell repeater 30064 you maintain that it is more likely that Meredith was in the park rather than at home, correct?
Answer: She could also have been at Ponte Rio, should could have been in any area covered by that cell repeater.
Question: Also at home?
Answer: With a marginal probability she could also have been at home, but marginally, that is to say the probability of being at home could have been due to the nearest cell repeaters being busy and in order of priority that we have established it could have used that one.
Summary
The best server cell towers at the cottage (Via Pergola 7) were Piazza Lupatelli GSM11107 and UMTS55201.
The best cell tower for Sant’Angelo Park where the stolen phones were recovered was wind cell 30064. It handled 99% of calls from Sant’Angelo Park and only handled 2 – 3% of calls from Via Pergola 7.
The tower which handled the 10:13 pm MMS message on the stolen phone was wind cell 30064.
This is overwhelming evidence that the phone was in Sant’Angelo Park at 10:13, not still at the murder cottage as the prosecution and Judge Massei contended. This means the murder occurred before 10:13 contradicting the prosecution’s much later TOD.
Given the fact that Meredith did not have another chance to call her mother after her 8:56 attempt and the fact she hadn’t taken her jacket off yet after returning home is strong evidence that she was attacked soon after 8:56.
Suppression of the human blood evidence found in the downstairs apartment also indicates Rudy Guede took the time to change clothes downstairs after the TOD.
Documents
Testimony: Fioravanti, Cieri, Tacconi, Latella, Sisani, Buratti – (Italian)
Testimony: Sollecito telecommunications expert Bruno Pellero – (Italian)
Sollecito Appeal 2010 phone section p194-210 – (English)
Bruno Pellero expert report on the phones and cell towers – (Italian)
Vodaphone cell tower coverage report – (Italian)
Amanda Knox Phone Records – Perugia 2007
References:
[1] Transcript February 6, 2009 p 15
Highlighting the difficulty and uncertainty of applying the same criteria, especially since it was decided to preserve the biological traces without modifying the crime scene, delaying the examination of the corpse by about 11 hours from [the time] the body was found, Dr. Lalli (in his report -‐‑ usable since it was included in the trial file -‐‑ and also in explanatory testimony) demonstrated that at 0:50 am on November 3, 2007 the rectal temperature was 22 degrees Celsius and the ambient temperature 13.
More information & maps
Park San Angelo information
View of park sign opposite Mrs Lana’s garden gate