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Who left the footprint on the bathmat?
At
the trial, on May 9, Lorenzo Rinaldi, director of the print identity
department
of the Italian Police, delivered an elaborate presentation intended to
show that a
bloody
footprint found at the crime scene matches Raffaele Sollecito's foot.
It
was great material for a news story, and the media largely accepted it
at face value.
There's just one
problem: it is obviously not true. What follows is our
common sense take on this piece of
evidence. We think it is a good yardstick for measuring the overall
quality of the case against Amanda and Raffaele.
A partial footprint
was found on a mat in the
bathroom shared by Meredith and Amanda. In this picture, it is in the
lower left corner of the mat. |
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It is not certain how the footprint was made, but evidence
suggests the killer
cleaned up in the bathroom, and several
blood-soaked towels were found at the crime scene. Very likely the
killer laid a bloodied towel on
the bathroom floor so
that it covered or overlapped the mat. He removed his shoe to
rinse the blood from it. While his shoe was off, he stepped on the
towel,
transferring an imprint to the bathmat.
The
outline of the foot is
incomplete. The heel extends off the edge of the mat, and
parts
appear to be missing in the upper
right and lower left quadrants.
Under
the scenario described above, these missing elements can be explained
as
areas where the
towel was dry or where the foot extended beyond the edge of the towel.
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Below is a comparison of footprints, with Raffaele Sollecito's on the
left, and Rudy Guede's on the right.
Footprints
can be hard to identify for forensic purposes, because
people often twist or slide their foot when they take a step. The print
on the mat, however, shows the basic characteristics of the
foot
that made it. The toe is completely
different from Raffaele's, and the instep is shaped
differently than Raffaele's. But is it compatible with Rudy's
foot? Run your cursor over the
image
below and decide for yourself.
Note: The above image of the bathmat is from an
official source. They did the color enhancement. The image has been cropped and enlarged but otherwise has not been
modified for this presentation.
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