October 18, 2011 in Idaho

BSU prof on Amanda Knox case: ‘I know what happened’

Betsy Z. Russell The Spokesman-Review

Tags:Amanda KnoxGreg HampikianRudy Guede

Betsy Russell photo

BOISE - For Boise State University professor Greg Hampikian, there’s no mystery at all about what happened to 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, the woman found murdered in Italy in 2007 in Perugia, Italy.

“I know what happened,” Hampikian told an audience of about 200 at Boise State University on Monday. Kercher was sexually assaulted and murdered “by one guy,” he said — “Rudy Guede.”

Also charged in that crime, however, were Kercher’s roommate, Amanda Knox of Seattle, and two others.

Guede, a drifter from Ivory Coast, was convicted of the murder and remains in prison.

But just after the crime, he wasn’t the one arrested — a prosecutor, based on a hunch aroused by Knox’s behavior, arrested Knox, her boyfriend, and bar owner Patrick Lumumba, and theorized that three people committed the attack.

Lumumba turned out to have an airtight alibi — he was working at his bar at the time. And when the DNA evidence came back, it didn’t match any of the authorities’ three suspects — it matched Guede. He’d left a bloody handprint in the victim’s blood on her wall. His DNA was on and inside the victim, all over her room and more. “You had one guy whose DNA was all over the victim,” Hampikian said.

But rather than release Knox and her boyfriend, Raffaelle Sollecito, prosecutors went back to the crime scene 46 days later — after many people had been at the scene, including Knox and Sollecito, who were allowed to retrieve belongings — and found a bra clasp that they tested and found showed a tiny bit of Sollecito’s DNA. They also took a kitchen knife from a drawer at Sollecito’s home and found it showed a tiny bit of Knox’s DNA on the handle and a tiny trace of Kercher’s on the blade.

Hampikian said those traces, not large enough to be reliably tested, likely were the result of contamination by the testers, and that knife was not the murder weapon. The bra from which the clasp came had been collected 46 days earlier and was covered with Guede’s DNA, not Sollecito’s.

Hampikian is director of the Idaho Innocence Project, and is a professor of biology and criminal justice at Boise State. He worked on the Knox case as a volunteer consultant for the Knox family, and was present in Italy for the proceedings.

Hampikian headed his talk, “How science freed an innocent woman … and how bad science multiplied the victims of a terrible tragedy.”

He conducted an experiment in his lab at Boise State, in which researchers collected soda cans that had been used by employees of the dean’s office, and brand-new knives, still in the package from a dollar store. In collecting and tagging the cans and knives — without changing gloves between every piece of evidence, but only between every other piece — lab workers unknowingly transferred a tiny amount of one of the employee’s DNA to one of the knives, though she’d never seen or touched it. That’s what happened with the evidence in the Knox case, he said. “You can transfer DNA in this way.”

“This gut feeling is a very dangerous thing, especially in law enforcement, and it’s a very persistent force,” Hampikian said. “I have them as well. That’s the best part of being a scientist, is that you have data that tells you it’s wrong.” Standards for measuring the supposed DNA on the evidence in the Knox case were lowered so far that the tests weren’t valid at all, he said — and that’s what the court eventually found, clearing Knox and freeing her. “All of this has to do with controls,” he said, “which, if you’re in my lab, that’s all you hear about.”

35 comments on this story so far. Add yours!

Josechung on October 18 at 10:38 a.m.
Please don’t accept this professor’s view of the case. After all, he worked for the defense and has a vested interest in leading you to believe the lone killer scenario.
Please at least read Ann Coulter’s take on the Amanda Knox case, even if you hate Coulter’s guts.
Shadedmuse on October 18 at 10:55 a.m.
I guess you should not be doing Cart wheels in the police station after your room mate is killed. What was up with that? this has got to be the biggest Bone head move since Lawon on Big Brother wanted to be evicted from the house. Comming soon Amanda Knox on Big Brother.
SKent on October 18 at 11:07 a.m.
As a bit of a knee-jerk Republican, I have generally been supportive of Ann Coulter’s writing, if not quite an outright fan.
Her take on the Amanda Knox case, however, was deplorable, as were her subsequent ‘tweets’ taking shots at Amanda saying that she got off because she’s a ‘white girl’ and ‘white girls can get away with anything’.
Deplorable, and I will never be able to take anything that woman writes remotely seriously again until she openly concedes how utterly shallow and unfair her appraisal was of Amanda’s situation. In her article, she takes everything the prosecutors had to say at face value, going so far as to say that the ‘evidence was fully vetted’. This displays Ann Coulter’s shallowness much more than it does Amanda Knox’s ‘guilt’.
That right there told me that Ann was not thinking clearly, but was rather jumping to easy conclusions in the pursuit of writing a ‘clever’ article comparing Amanda Knox’s supporters with ‘crazed liberals’.
As a Republican I found that highly grating!
But by all means read Ann’s article and any others you can find. Dig as deep as you dare and come to your own conclusions.
I did, and am very happy to wish the Knox and Solecitto families all the very best. Welcome home!
terryalan on October 18 at 11:11 a.m.
I guess your behavior at the police station might be affected by whatever drugs one had been doing…
And NOTHING Ann Coulter has written should be read by anyone, at any time. That is one vile, seething, evil bag of pseudo-human hatred…
terryalan on October 18 at 11:13 a.m.
but let me tell you how I REALLY feel about Ann Coulter…
The vile crap she spewed at Elizabeth Edwards was enough for me…
SKent on October 18 at 11:14 a.m.
Shadedmuse - Don’t forget the pizza. Amanda and Rafaelle were spotted EATING PIZZA after her room-mates death. Such evil!
And then she went on to buy…UNDERWEAR!
And the KISS…heavenly mother above…What shocking, unbridled contempt for civility and all that is decent!
SATAN’S minions are clearly among us.
RELEASE THE HOUNDS and CALL THE INSPECTOR!
; )
winterymixx on October 18 at 11:51 a.m.
@Josechung This professor has no more bias towards this case than Ann Coulter. It is a ridiculous statement to say that the person defending the innocence position is biased but the person who is defending the guilty position is not. The professor did not work for the defense and was not paid in the case. He independently took this case upon himself as the director of the Idaho Innocent Project and provided FREE DNA analysis expertise to the defense. The Knox family and their defense team did not ask for this group to do this, they saw a case that appeared to be based on shaky evidence and decided to take a second look at it. Providing this free DNA analysis is not biased and providing this service is the only purpose that the Idaho Innocence Project was created for. You could even argue that Ann Coulter is even more biased since she has money invested in her book that Amanda Knox is guilty. Ann Coulter is a person who makes her money from writing controversial books to generate publicity and writes from an extremely biased point of view. Every single one of her books is about “liberals” and she even takes court cases that has nothing to do with politics and turns it into a political circus.
winterymixx on October 18 at 11:55 a.m.
@Shadedmuse so cartwheels = murderer? Sounds like you have a sound case for a guilty verdict there I mean its basically a smoking gun…please. All her doing cartwheels proves is that she is a weird girl. This is something that has no bearing on the case and can be interrupted in so many ways. You could say that her doing cartwheels is way for her to deal with stress after finding out her roomate was murdered and being interviewed by the police many days in a row in a country she barely knows the language. You could say that the cartwheels prove her innocence because a guilty person would be on their best behavior and would not be doing anything to attract unwanted attention. Or you could use the obvious interpretation and say that this just proves she likes to do cartwheels.
Shadedmuse on October 18 at 12:31 p.m.
A take and Bake Pizza place on Seattles Capitol hill had a sign that says Amanda loves thier Pizza she takes it home and slices it her self. It was on KING5.com website. you can search for the story if you want. I’m not posting the link you can go and find it your self.
SKent on October 18 at 1:11 p.m.
The cartwheels were obviously about blowing off steam and relieving the stress of the situation she was in. There is nothing strange about this given that she was a 20-y-o hippy chick from Seattle at the time. The people who think she should have worn a black veil and pretended to be utterly paralyzed with grief at the death of her room-mate are the weirdos as far as I’m concerned.
She was happy and perhaps a bit excited to be ‘helping’ the police. Big mistake, obviously with hindsight. She should have lawyered-up and/or left the country. She learned a very difficult lesson, but took it like a champ, and I have no doubt that more good will come from it all than bad when all is said and done.
godisgracious on October 18 at 1:28 p.m.
I read Ann Coulters article and I found it to be distasteful and rude. Who does she think she is? I couldn’t read through the whole document. Does she have any education?
If you were in the same situation as Amanda, how would you act? I mean really? Sit there, mournfully and quietly waiting for the judgement, with no way to know what’s going? Not knowing what you are about to go through? Personally, I would be nervous as hell, probably having so much anxiety, my heart would be pounding, sweating profusely, that they might have to sedate me so I wouldn’t drop dead from a heart attack. I would not be able to just sit there. I would have to get up and do something, anything to try to relieve the anxiety and panic I felt. Remember, she was in a foreign country where their rules are different then ours. Guilty or innocent, I think it would drive me crazy.
I don’t believe for one minute, that doing cartwheels proves she’s a murderer. The 14 hour interrogation, no sleep, no food, no water. She couldn’t take anymore. They refused to believe her, putting her in “no win” situation, so she finally blurted out something just to shut them up.
Put yourself in her shoes, hypothetically (sp), of course.
Al_Loysius on October 18 at 2:20 p.m.
Let us leave Ann Coulter out of this.
1.) I find it silly to argue that cops & law enforcement should not follow their hunches. Good detectives with years of experience do that every day to solve crimes.
2.) The professor is demonstrably wrong when he asserts that Guede acted alone. The wounds on Meredith Kercher were caused by an attacker in front of her and on both sides of her neck. She was a martial arts practitioner. Guede could not have been both the person restraining her from behind while causing the knife wounds in front. Likewise, it is not logical to assume she would just stand there unrestrained while Guede slashed her from the front.
3.) Amanda has claimed Meredith was “her good friend.” (in contravention to what the other roomates said). Her turning cartwheels and being all kissy face with Raffaele is in marked distinction to her roomates who were devastated and emotionally distraught at the scene. A cop would have to be an idiot to not notice her and Raffaele’s behavior. How would you act? If your “good friend” had been butchered; you sure as hell would not be laughing and kissing. Maybe a tear?
4.) The blunt fact is that Amanda falsely accused Lumumba to throw the cops off the trail and let him sit on his butt in jail for two weeks without doing anything to clear him. The false legend has been perpetuated by Amanda’s media firm that Amanda was subject to 12 hours of interrogation with no interpreter. The facts show that an interpreter (Dorina) was there for a 90 minute examination. And, Amanda wrote out the same account the next morning. She knew that if she fingered Rudy Guede, he would turn on her.
5.) To this very day, Sollecito has been careful not to back up Amanda’s alibi. He has a different alibi.
6.) Raffaele and Amanda were concerned about the knife from Raffaele’s apartment. Even before the DNA test Amanda commented to her mother that they were concerned about the knife. Raffaele came up with a phony explanation about Meredith’s blood possibly being on his knife in advance. He said that he had accidentally pricked Meredith while she was over for dinner and he was cooking. However, the evidence came out that Meredith had NEVER been to his apartment.
7.) The issue with the DNA was “low copy number” that is due to evidence that the knife had been scrubbed with a rough item and using bleach. The LCN still allowed for a perfect match with Meredith, not Joe Blow or Mary Shmoe. If there were contamination, what are the infinitesmal chances that out of 7 billion people on earth, the results came back for Meredith and not one other person?
8.) Amanda got messed up by the change from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time when she called her mom to set up an alibi.
9.) When Amanda called her mom to say “we just got home and there has been a break-in, what should we do?” (Mom said call the cops) the phone records and building security camera show that THE PHONE POLICE (sub branch of cops) WERE ALREADY THERE. They had found Meredith’s discarded cell phone and were looking for her. This upset Amanda and Raffaele’s plan since they were going to call the regular cops themselves after they had staged the scene. The phone police called the regular cops to the scene.
10.) Rudy Guede said at the appeals trial that they were there. There was no plea bargain. He had already gone to trial separately and gotten his sentence. His appeals were done. There was no deal he was going to get under Italian law since his sentence had already been affirmed.
Amanda and Raffaele are guilty as hell. Eventually Raffaele will throw her under the bus when the Italian Court of Cassation sends this back for a new trial. She may not be extradited, but her veneer of innocence will be torn away.
greenlibertarian on October 18 at 3:20 p.m.
SKent on October 18 at 11:07 a.m.
As a bit of a knee-jerk Republican, I have generally been supportive of Ann Coulter’s writing, if not quite an outright fan.
Her take on the Amanda Knox case, however, was deplorable, as were her subsequent ‘tweets’ taking shots at Amanda saying that she got off because she’s a ‘white girl’ and ‘white girls can get away with anything’.
Deplorable, and I will never be able to take anything that woman writes remotely seriously again…
Congratulations for taking the first step towards joining the Reality-Based Community. We welcome newbies.
GROLFFF on October 18 at 5:28 p.m.
@Shadedmuse
“I guess you should not be doing Cart wheels in the police station”
This was a lie that was repeated ad nauseum by the media and message boards until it found its way to you.
She was doing yoga stretches that looked, to the guards, like she was doing “the splits”. Somehow that became “cartwheels”, probably because it sounds more demented.
Anyway, it isn’t true.
alexmedwin on October 18 at 6:07 p.m.
BSU prof on Amanda Knox case: ‘I know what happened’, is an interesting concept. Anyone who has some kind of idea of the blinking obvious, could have solved this blind folded. This police blunder has hurt many people. I hope R & A and families are well.
RIP Meredith
Jstanz on October 18 at 6:12 p.m.
This professor is a well-respected member of his community. Please don’t listen to people who take their “facts” from tabloid stories - “facts” without any factual basis. They are pulling stories from tabloids published years ago, things which have been long proved incorrect, things that were presented much differently in court (which is why the appeals court exonerated Amanda and Raffaele). Please don’t listen to what other people say on blogs but do your own research and form your own opinion. I guarantee if you do not listen to journalists or bloggers and research the facts for yourself you will see why so many people have been fighting for Amanda and Raffaele - you will see why the judge found them INNOCENT.
SpokyDaBear on October 18 at 6:59 p.m.
Her fault is she stayed around. All the other roommates left town or the country. Her own mom pleaded with her to cross the border to a nephew”s house. But she didn’t leave and they decided to charge her.
Stupid Seattle girl. Anybody from Spokane would have left the country. Stupid liberals on the west side with their do-goodism.
Pat O'Leary on October 18 at 7:03 p.m.
Al O Wishes
I’m not sure who takes the prize, you or that venom spewing nut case, Ann Coulter. What a pair to draw to.
serra on October 18 at 8:02 p.m.
Isn’t this dude’s 15 minutes of fame over yet? His little science fair project wouldn’t have cut it at my middle school - we had to utilize the scientific method and minimize the influence of bias.
He’s just another parrot head repeating the knox machine lies, causing embarrassment to his employer in the process.
RazorEm on October 18 at 9:17 p.m.
This is starting to sound like a classic case of disinformation. The narrative that Ann Coulter is telling is the narrative the Knox industry does NOT want people to believe. It may or may not be what happened, but it’s a narrative that the public should only hear from a suspicious source.
This is why HLN allows Nancy Grace to exist, so it can control and shape viewers’ opinions. I don’t watch Nancy Grace, but everyone else seems to. She’s the perfect “bad mommie” who gets after you if you misbehave sexually. If people really hated Nancy Grace, though, she wouldn’t be on the air. People who “hate” Grace always tell me what she thinks, feels, and believes.
And a story can appear in a tabloid and be true. Many things that tabloids report are true. That’s why people tend to believe them. They mix a little of the truth in with a lot of spin. Sadly, the mainstream media has become like the tabloids. Ratings over morals. Narrative over fact. Spin over reality.
What disturbs me about the Knox case (and the Anthony case) is that big media outlets are now becoming overly involved in criminal cases, to the point of where they seem to be dicating the outcome. The cases with these girls seem like the reverse version of the Fattie Arbuckle case. It looks like the media is employed by the girl’s family to “save” these women. You have good guys and bad guys. Everybody chimes in.
That’s great, but you’re playing with real people. Have you ever considered that Knox may commit suicide? Her family doesn’t seem to care. A caring family would be quiet and move somewhere they restart their lives. A caring family wouldn’t shout nasty, bigoted things about an entire country based on one court case.
A caring family would not care about “sticking to the narrative.”
People seem very invested in this story, but only to make money off of it. They certainly aren’t taking a look at the way Knox looks lately. They’d stop if they did—she does not look happy.
In this respect, this entire sordid affair resembles the Jessica Lynch story. Get the girl, tell her what to say, make her into a sex symbol. Make sure she follows the narrative!
Not in the media, just an outsider looking in. Now finding the “Innocence Project” very suspect for getting involved with this case.
greenlibertarian on October 18 at 9:27 p.m.
BTW, I couldn’t care LESS about this story, just got curious because it was so popular.
GROLFFF on October 18 at 11:18 p.m.
@Al_Loysius
Hopefully, no one will take the time to read your long and senseless post. Just in case someone does, here’s a long and sensible one to set them straight.
1.) The author said himself that he has hunches. But he only follows them if they are consistent with the FACTS.

2.) Read the evidence. The girl had her face smashed in. That kind of thing makes people compliant, even “martial arts practitioners.” By the way, her father said she knew “some” self defense techniques. None of this “practitioner” nonsense that you have decided to invent.
3.) All her roommates said they got along well. The supposed “cartwheels” were the result of inaccurate reporting and media hype. There were NO cartweels. What caught the attention of the Carabinieri was the Postal Police lying about the time, making it appear that Raffaele called them after they arrived. And why shouldn’t young lovers comfort each other with a kiss. Did you ever read Romeo and Juliet?
4.) The police THEMSELVES accused Lumumba and pressured Amanda into signing her agreement, in ITALIAN. She wasn’t even sure what she had signed, but the note she wrote in the morning retracted it fully.
5.) Raffaele has ALWAYS said that he and Amanda were together all night. The only thing the police got out of him was that he couldn’t swear to anything that occurred while he was asleep.
6.A.) Amanda was concerned because the police lied to her and said they found the knife that was used to muder Meredith’s at Raffaele’s house. Whether they mentioned DNA or not hardly matters when you are facing life in prison.
6.B.) The police told Raffaele they found a knife with Meredith’s DNA on the point in his kitchen drawer. The erroneously reported diary entry was Raffaele writing what his attorneys had told him about it. He writes that they told him that the knife could not have been the murder weapon, and that any DNA from Kercher on it was there by innocent means. They told him that Amanda may have brought it to the girls’ apartment because they did not have a suitable knife themselves. They suggested that she could have handed the knife to Meredith point first and that was how her DNA got on it. Somehow, the last part got misreported, either accidentally, or most likely, deliberately. This entry was never introduced in court and the actual images of the diary pages have never been seen by the public. Note that in the correct version, Raffaele is NOT involved in the scenario, and there is NO MENTION OF “PRICKING”,
7.) The amount of MATERIAL was too low to test. Consequently, the peaks on the output chart were below the threshold for a positive identification. In other words, according to the device used, Meredith’s DNA was never found on the knife blade. It is NOT that there was too LITTLE of Meredith’s DNA. There was NONE. The independent experts who reviewed the “DNA” evidence determine the actual material to be RYE BREAD RESIDUE.
8.) I don’t even understand how Amanda calling her mom constitutes setting up an alibi. Doesn’t even make sense.
9.) The Massei report states that the Postal Police “arrived at a little after 12:30 pm, or SO IT SEEMED to the two policemen”. The reason for the strange wording is that the Postal Police dispatch log shows the car GOING OUT at 12:46. How could they ARRIVE 16 minutes BEFORE they left? Raffaele called the Carabinieri at 12:51.
10.) In his first trial, Rudy Guede said that he was in Meredith’s apartment when a lone, “shadowy” Italian man killed her. The court didn’t buy it and sentenced him to 30 years, a REDUCED sentence for opting for a “fast-track” trial. In his first appeal, he stuck to this story, conviction upheld. In his second appeal, he changed it to be Amanda and Raffaele killing Meredith. He was rewarded for this with a reduction of his sentence to 16 years.
I think Amanda and Raffaele will be fine as long as people can accept the verdict of the courts. It’s Mignini who has to worry.
barrytumwater on October 18 at 11:46 p.m.
It wasn’t the cartwheels, it was Raffaele’s shoes. This from the Massei Report:
shoes- Page 44
“At first, these prints were held to be compatible with the shoes of Raffaele Sollecito. Later tests (as we will see subsequently) finally ruled out this compatibility, showing that they were in fact actually from shoes of the same brand, type and size as a pair of shoes that might have been contained in a shoebox found in the home of Rudy Guede in via del Canerino.”
The Perugian police believed that since Amanda was providing an alibi she was involved. This set the stage for the all-nighter interrogation during which Amanda falsely accused Patrik. I fault Mignini for failing to recognize that the investigation was going from a blind alley to digging a hole.. Had he not taken that statement and been involved, the idea might not have been so sticky.
Al_Loysius - Guede did do it by himself and he got her from behind. People who get in a fight to the death get defensive wounds; leave fingerprints, DNA, etc. The second court got it right. Amanda and Raffaele are innocent.
GROLFFF on October 18 at 11:55 p.m.
@barrytumwater
Wow.
Now I feel like an idiot for typing that huge post.
Thanks.
JBlim on October 19 at 6:05 a.m.
Occam’s razor.
A conspiracy of murderers, that would be very unlikely
ok_kao on October 19 at 6:09 a.m.
Simple question:
What was the knife doing at Sollicito’s house that contained a bit (as you say) of AK’s DNA ? Please let no one suggest that the prosecution planted it there…
do people in italy walk about and put in their kitchen drawers knives that are contaminated ???
The proscutor’s hunches were somewhat right…his going about proofing it was predicatably negligent.
GROLFFF on October 19 at 7:33 a.m.
@ok_kao
“Simple question:
What was the knife doing at Sollicito’s house that contained a bit (as you say) of AK’s DNA ? Please let no one suggest that the prosecution planted it there.”
Simple answer:
There was no DNA from Kercher on that knife. NONE. That is why they were acquitted.
Glad I could help you.
GROLFFF on October 19 at 9:33 a.m.
@serra
What middle school do you go to?
serra on October 19 at 4:10 p.m.
@GROLFFF
Where did you study verb tense?
So let’s see, the defense hired someone douchy enough to prove that one of his unbiased research assistants could manage to contaminate DNA during a lab session. Has this “major discovery” ever been published in a peer-reviewed journal, or is publication limited to pro-knox blogs?
GROLFFF on October 19 at 11:29 p.m.
@serra
The JUDGE appointed the DNA experts. Their conclusion: There was NO HUMAN DNA ON THE KNIFE BLADE. It was rye bread residue.
And you didn’t answer my question:
Where DO you go to middle school?
Give up, son. You’re out of your league.
ok_kao on October 20 at 2:43 p.m.
@GROLFFF
Question was “What was the knife doing in appartment of RS that did contain DNA (a bit granted) of AKnox? It waws not proofed that it didn’t have DNA of Aknox.
Why didn’t they just throw it away or hide it somewhere else.
I don’t know who this professor is and quite honestly no one cares. Since when are professors always right?
GROLFFF on October 23 at 4:58 p.m.
@ok_kao
You are confused.
The knife the police took from Raffaele’s apartment had been used by Amanda Knox for cooking. Why shouldn’t her DNA be on it?
On the other hand, there was no DNA from Meredith Kercher on the BLADE of the knife as the prosecution claimed. There was no human DNA on the blade at all.
I couldn’t care less about this professor either. The evidence is all I need. And according to the evidence, Amanda and Raffaele are innocent.
ok_kao on October 24 at 8:32 a.m.
#GROLOFF
“On the other hand, there was no DNA from Meredith Kercher on the BLADE of the knife as the prosecution claimed. There was no human DNA on the blade at all”
Are you making this up as you go along? Ok I got a bit confused regarding the knife…bt there was DNA found on the knife and at some point that DNA was claimed to have been had a bit of both AK and MK.pls look up and read reports…
she only got off on a technicality simple…\she was there she was an accessory to the murder…THAT can and was proved. Spare us the Italian methods of the police getting information on her in an unorthdox way..shouting and abusing her…yes well how else do you treat a suspect…send flowers with espresso and ask her to confess???
26 yrs heavy as a punishment..yes..but acquitted?? Don’t think so…
SpokalooKid on October 25 at 2:34 a.m.
Fact: Amanda Knox is a %#&*%# LIAR : 2nd Fact: Anyone who believes that this LIAR is absoulutely innocent is an ABSOLUTE NUT!!
drywitt99 on October 25 at 5:19 a.m.
Shouldn’t that read PROFESSOR OF BS????