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Old 16th April 2010, 09:49 AM   #7036
Fulcanelli
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Join Date: Dec 2009
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Just this once, because someone has posted a very poor Google translate version and because it is necessary to dismiss the BS offered by Bruce Fisher, here is the relevant section for the translated report. It has not been proofread yet, so there may be the odd typo:

Originally Posted by Judge Massei
Second half of the section 27-44 (pages 36-44):

It must be held that when Filomena Romanelli left the house in via della Pergola, she had pulled the shutters towards the interior of her room, although she did not think that she had actually closed them; furthermore, because they were old and the wood had swelled a bit, they rubbed on the windowsill, and to pull them towards the room it was necessary to use some force ("they rubbed on the windowsill"), but in this way, once they had been pulled in as Romanelli remembered doing, they remained well-closed by the pressure of the swelled wood against the windowsill. Now, for a rock to have been able to break the glass of the window without shattering the shutters, it would have been necessary to remove the obstacle of the shutters by opening them up. The consultant for the defence actually assumed that this had been done, and in his exposition, he assumed that the shutters were not present [in front of the window]. Consequently, since the shutters had been pulled to and their rubbing put pressure on the windowsill on which they rested, it would have first been necessary to effect an operation with the specific goal of completely opening these shutters. The lack of finding of any instrument suitable for obtaining such an opening (one cannot even see what type of instrument could be used to this end) leads one to assume that the wall must have been scaled a first time in order to effect the complete opening of the shutters ("if the shutters were closed, he could not have passed through, that is obvious", cf. declarations of the consultant for the defence, Mshl. Francesco Pasquali, p. 22 hearing July 3, 2009), in order to enable the thief to aim at the window and smash it by throwing a large stone - the one found in Romanelli's room. The "climber" (the window in Romanelli's room is located at a height of more than three and a half metres from the ground underneath, cf. photo 11 from the relevant dossier) would also need to rely on the fact that the shutters were not actually latched, and also that the wooden panels attached to the outer edge of the inner side of the window-frames [scuri=non-louvered shutters in interior of room] had not been fastened to the window-frame to which the broken pane was attached, since otherwise it would not have been possible to open them from the outside, and nor would it have been possible, even breaking the glass, to make a hole giving access to the house, since if these inner panels had been are closed, they would have provided an adequate obstacle to the possibility of opening the window, in spite of the broken pane.

Admitting that the climber decided to bet, in a sense, on the presence of both of these "favourable", in fact indispensable conditions, the climber would then have had to climb up once, from underneath the window of Romanelli's room, in order to open the shutters; then he would have had to get the large rock, and having selected the point where he wanted to break the window, to throw it (it seems impossible to accept that he actually made the climb while carrying the large rock, and threw it against the window at the risk of being hit by glass falling from the pane thus shattered).

He would then have to have returned underneath Romanelli's window for the second climb, and through the broken glass, open the window-frame (balanced on his knees or feet on the outside part of the windowsill, otherwise he would not have been able to reach pass his arm through the hole in the glass made by the stone and reach up to the latch that fastened the window casements, necessarily latched since otherwise, if the casements had not been latched, it would not have been necessary to throw a rock at all, but just to open the shutters and climb inside.

This scenario appears totally unlikely, given the effort involved (going twice underneath the window, going up to throw the stone, scaling the wall twice) and taking into account the uncertainty of success (having to count on the two favourable circumstances indicated above), with a repetition of movements and behaviours all of which could easily be seen by anyone who happened to be passing by on the street, or actually coming into the house.

It cannot be assumed - as the Defence Consultant did - that the shutters were left completely open, since this contradicts the declarations of Romanelli, which appear to be detailed and entirely likely, considering that she was actually leaving for the holiday and had some things of value in her room, and already she did not feel quite safe because window-frames were in wood without any grille. Also, the circumstance of the shutters being wide open does not correspond to their position when they were found and described by witnesses on November 2, and photographed (cf. photo 11 already mentioned).

But beyond these considerations, there are other elements which tend to exclude the possibility that a thief could have entered the house through the window of Romanelli's room. The double climb necessary to attain the height of three and a half metres would have left some kind of trace or imprint on the wall, especially on the points on the wall that the "climber" would have used to support his feet, all the more as both the witnesses Romanelli and Marco Zaroli gave statements that indicate that the earth, on that early November evening, must have been very wet (declarations of Marco Zaroli, hearing of February 6, 2009, p. 174, and declarations of Filomena Romanelli, hearing of July 7, 2009 p. 24; see also the document acquired at the hearing of March 28, 2009 concerning the fact that on October 30, 2007, it was raining). In fact, there are no visible signs on the wall, and furthermore, it can be observed that the nail - this was noted by this Court of Assizes [?] during the inspection - remained where it was, and it seems difficult to hypothesise that the climber, given the position of that nail and its characteristics visible in the photo 11 - did not somehow "encounter" that nail and force it, inadvertently or by using it as a foothold, causing it to fall or at least bending it. On this subject it is also useful to recall that at the hearing of April 23, 2009, the witness Gioia Brocci cited above declared that she had observed the exterior of the house, paying particular attention to the wall underneath the window with the broken pane, the window of the room then occupied by Filomena Romanelli, and she said: "I observed both the wall...underneath the window and all of the vegetation underneath the window, and I noted that there were no traces on the wall, no traces of earth, of grass, nothing, no streaks, nothing at all, and all of the vegetation underneath the window did not appear to have been trampled; nothing." (p. 142 declarations of Gioia Brocci). She also recalled the existence of a nail on that wall, which jutted out about 6cm, and added that "going around the outside of the house" her shoes became dirty with "grass attached to the shoes" (p. 145, cf. also declarations of the assistant Zugarini, hearing of Feb. 28, 2009, p. 133).

The next fact to considered is that the pieces of glass from the broken pane were distributed in a homogeneous manner on the inside and outside parts of the windowsill, without any displacement being noted or any piece of glass being found on the ground underneath the window. This circumstance, as confirmed also by the consultant Pasquali, tends to exclude the possibility that the rock was thrown from outside the house to create an access to the house through the window after the breaking of the pane. The climber, in leaning his hands and then his feet or knees on the windowsill, would have caused at least some piece of glass to fall, or at least would have been obliged to shift some pieces of glass in order to avoid being wounded by them. Instead, no piece of glass was found under the window, and no sign of any wound was seen on the pieces of glass found in Romanelli's room.

It can moreover be observed that the presence of many pieces of glass on the outside part of the windowsill increases the probability of finding some small pieces of glass on the ground underneath, since there seems to be no reason for which so many pieces of glass would all stop just at the edge of the windowsill without any of them flying beyond the edge and falling down to the garden below. This situation, like all the other glaring inconsistencies, is adequately and satisfactorily explained if one supposes that the rock was thrown from the inside of the room, with the two shutters pulled inwards so that they blocked the pieces of glass from falling to the ground below, and once the glass had been broken from inside, the rock was set down at some place in the room, and the shutters were pushed towards the outside, being thus opened from within the room.

The consultant for the Defence, Mshl. Pasquali, maintains instead that the rock was thrown from outside the room, and outside the house. He arrives at this assumption on the basis of various elements: the presence of fragments of glass on the inner and outer parts of the windowsill, and from the "intervention of fragments of glass that fell from high up down into the interior...of the room" all the way to the blue carpet, and to the bed (p. 47 hearing July 3, 2009).

These are elements and considerations which do not appear to deserve the emphasis given to them by the consultant.

Firstly, it should be observed that Mshl. Pasquali has declared that he has never studied stone throwing apart from this case; he also supported the possibility of "making a parallel with investigations of ballistics and firearms"; the same consultant did however admit that, whereas ballistics is a science of precise data (p. 39 hearing July 3, 2009), "here we have an infinity of possible variations" (p. 40). Precisely in relation to these variations and to what has been observed above, the asertion and the explanation he offers for the stone having been thrown from outside cannot be adopted by the Court. Indeed, if one supposes that the stone was thrown from the inside with the shutters pulled closed (as they must have been according to statements cited above), but with the casement holding the pane somewhat open, with the inner shutter behind it, then here is a situation analogous to that of throwing the stone from the outside (the rock would hit the window in the same place as if it came from the outside), and under the shock of the large stone, because of the resistance of the inner shutter behind the window-pane (the shield effect as one might say), the pieces of glass would necessarily fall down on the windowsill both inside and outside (considering the casement as having being only slightly open, and thus the smashed pane positioned near to the windowsill). The presence of the shutters pulled inwards, as described by Romanelli, would have prevented the pieces of glass from falling to the ground below, as indeed they did not, but as they surely would have had the stone been thrown from the outside. As for the presence of glass in Romanelli's room, the violence of the blow, the characteristics of the glass (which was rather thin as indicated by Romanelli and Pasquali), the large rock used, and finally the shield effect caused by the inner shutter hanging half-open behind the glass pane (a position of the inner shutter which corresponds to the scratch on it visible in the photos) give an adequate explanation of the distribution of the glass.

But the fact that all this was in fact just a simulation, a staging, can be deduced from further circumstances. From the photos taken by the personnel of the Questura (photos 47 to 54 and 65 to 66) one can perceive an activity which appears to have been performed with the goal of creating a situation of obvious disorder in Romanelli's room, but does not appear to be the result of actual ransacking, true searching for the kind of valuable objects that might tempt a thief. The drawers of the little dresser next to the bed were not even opened (photo 51 and declarations of Battistelli who noted that Romanelli was the one who opened the drawers, having found them closed and with no sign of having been rifled: see p. 66 of Battistelli's declarations, hearing of Feb. 6, 2009). The objects on the shelves in photo 52 appear not to have been touched at all; piles of clothes seem to have been thrown down from the closet (photo 54) but it does not seem that there was any serious search in the closet, in which some clothes and some boxes remained in place without showing any signs of an actual search for valuable items which might have been there (photo 54). It does not appear that the boxes on the table were opened (photo 65) in a search for valuable items. And indeed, no valuable item (cf. declarations of Romanelli) was taken, or even set aside to be taken, by the - at this point we can say phantom - thief.One last aspect which must be recalled is the presence, noted and checked by several witnesses, of pieces of glass on top of the objects and clothing in Romanelli's room.This circumstance, which also reveals an activity of simulation, although it is not decisive because it does not actually exclude that that the phantom thief first broke the window and then made the mess in the room, was rejected by the Defence of the accused, which showed photographs that did not show glass on top of the clothes and objects scattered around Romanelli's room, and observed that the value of photographs in documenting and crystallising a situation should be of more account than even official testimonies on record [is this correct?].

This assertion is not held to be acceptable, since it does not take into account the events and their succession and chronology. On the subject of the contrast between the testimony and the documents (photographs of Filomena's room that do not show pieces of glass on top of the clothes and objects scattered around), Romanelli's own declarations are significant and decisive. In her questioning of Feb. 7, 2009, she recalled having left her computer in its case "standing up, not lying down" (p. 269), and then, when she returned to the house, she saw that in her own room, the window was broken and "everything was all over the place..." (p. 40) She checked that her jewellery was there, which it was, and she looked for her computer which she saw "from underneath" (p. 40), and continuing to explain, she declared that "I picked up the computer and perceived that in lifting it, I was picking up pieces of glass, in the sense that there was actually glass on top of it" (p. 41), and she noticed this circumstance so particularly that she added the following comment: "It was really a stupid thief; not only did he not take anything, the broken glass was actually on top of the things" (p. 41). As she is usually very orderly, the witness also stated that she entered into her own room and searched around to see if anything was missing, and during that search she moved objects, thus changing the position of some pieces of glass. At that moment, however, only the Postal Police was present, and they were there to understand why two mobile phones had been found in the garden of a house in via Sperandio, and the broken pane of a window indicated a robbery which seemed entirely independent from the finding of the telephones; thus it seemed perfectly natural and almost automatic for them to enter into the room with the broken glass, without taking any particular precautions, only paying attention to finding out if anything was missing. Thus, the movement of objects was perfectly natural, as was the progressive modification of the situation in Romanelli's room with respect to the pieces of glass which, having been found and noted on top of objects, were then allowed to fall and moved around during the search which, it can be imagined, Romanelli made with a certain agitation and anxiety on account of the worry and the strong disturbance that she felt. The photos, however, were only taken later, towards 15:00 according to what can be inferred from the declarations of the personnel of the scientific section of the Questura of Perugia, Cantagalli and Brocci, when the discovery of Meredith's lifeless body was imposing the use of care and circumspection in the necessity of crystallising the situation, avoiding any modification of the scene and acquiring every element which could be useful for the investigation.

Thus, the moments at which the witnesses found glass on top of the objects and the moments in which everything in the house was photographed and thus fixed were different moments.

Consequently, the visual and tactile observations of the witnesses and the photographs of the surroundings cannot be judged in parallel, given that they represent different situations at different times. It is enough to note that inspector Battistelli told everyone to leave the house, not when he saw the broken window in Romanelli's room, but when he realised that there was a corpse in Meredith's room.

Therefore, the declarations and descriptions of the said room need not be accepted only insofar as they correspond to what is shown in the photographs, especially in regard to the presence and position of the pieces of glass. On this point, apart from Romanelli's declarations, which appear reliable because of their precision, and because the emotion of the event caused the images to be imprinted on her memory in a very lively manner (as in the comment referred to and recalled above) and which are thus valid to complete the record [?], also the declarations of the assistant Fabio Marsi should be recalled. He declared that he observed "that there were clothes and other personal items on the floor with glass on top of them and the rock which, presumably, had broken the window" (p. 127 hearing Feb. 6, 2009), and he also added that Romanelli "checked if anything was missing, and said no, but look, everything is here, everything" (p. 129 hearing Feb. 6, 2009), an activity of checking which necessarily, as has already been observed, involved the movement of objects and thus also of pieces of glass, since the room was turned upside-down, thus rendering the situation which was subsequently photographed somewhat different than the one described by the witnesses. Therefore, the presence of glass on top of the various objects scattered on the floor all over the place is considered as a proof of the testimonies which is not falsified by the photos. It is certain that the presence of pieces of glass on top of objects found out of their places cannot but suggest a simulation, since the throwing of the stone and the breaking and falling of the glass must have happened when Romanelli's room was as she left it, and in particular pieces of glass should not have been found on top of objects supposedly thrown around by the phantom thief(?) who was only supposed to have entered the room after breaking the window, so that the clothing and the objects would have actually been tossed down on top of the glass.

What has been explained up to now thus leads to the assertion that the situation of disorder in Romanelli's room and the breaking of the window pane constitute an artificial representation created in order to orient the investigations towards a person who, not having the key to the front door, was supposed to have entered through the previously broken window and then effected the violent acts on Meredith which caused her death.
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