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In late 2007, the eyes of the world were drawn to the Italian city of Perugia after the gruesome murder of a foreign exchange student and twisted tales of sex games gone wrong emerged from its country.
Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old from Surrey, England, was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death, with her 20-year-old American roommate, Amanda Knox, and Knox’s boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, emerging as primary suspects. Although all physical evidence pointed elsewhere, Italian prosecutors focused on the alleged wrongdoings of University of Washington student Knox.
Amanda Knox before the Murder
Amanda was born in July 1987, in Seattle, Washington.
Knox graduated from the Seattle Preparatory School in 2005 and then studied linguistics at the University of Washington. In 2007, she made the dean’s list at the university.
She first went to Italy when she was 15 with her family on a vacation. A book called Under the Tuscan Sun, which was given to her by her mother further spurred her interest in the country.
Knox chose Perugia for her academic study.
Knox lived in a four-bedroom, ground-floor apartment at Via della Pergola 7 with three other women. Kercher was a foreign exchange student, while the other two were Italian trainee lawyers. Kercher and Knox moved in on September 10 and 20, 2007, respectively, meeting each other for the first time. Knox worked part-time at a bar, Le Chic, which was owned by a Congolese man, Diya Patrick Lumumba.
Kercher had a friend Giacomo Silenzi who shared her interest in music.
Silenzi often frequented the apartment.
Before long, Kercher became romantically involved with Silenzi, after going to a nightclub. Also, a baseball court acquaintance of the Italians, Ruby Guede usually joined them.
On October 25, Kercher and Knox went to a concert, where Knox met Raffaele Sollecito, a 23-year-old software engineering student. Knox began spending her time at his flat, a five-minute walk from Via della Pergola 7.
Murder of Meredith Kercher and Investigation.
November 1 was a public holiday, and the Italians living in the building were away. It is said that after Kercher watched a movie she returned to the apartment alone.
On November 2, Knox called her but unlike normal, she didn’t pick the call.
Knox returned to the cottage in the late morning and she found her roommate’s door locked and an unflushed toilet in a bloody bathroom. The door was broken to discover a semi-naked Kercher under a blanket.
She had been stabbed and had died of blood loss from neck wounds.
During an initial questioning, Knox signs a confession in which she admits to being in another room of the cottage while her Le Chic boss, Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, killed her roommate. Along with the confession, Knox and Sollecito’s problems are complicated by their changing accounts of the night in question.
Knox said that she had spent the night of 1 November with Sollecito at his flat. Sollecito told police he could not remember if Knox was with him that evening or not.
Over the next days, Knox was still being interrogated.
Knox testified that prior to the trial she had spent hours maintaining her original story, that she had been with Sollecito at his flat all night and had no knowledge of the murder, but a group of police would not believe her.
Police arrested Knox, Sollecito, and Patrick Lumumba on November 6, 2007. They were taken into custody and charged with the murder.
An eighth- inch knife that had traces of Meredith’s DNA and Knox’s blood was found at Sollecito’s home.
Sollecito later writes that he had once “accidentally pricked [Kercher’s] hand” while the three of them were cooking.
On November 20,2007 Rudy Guede, a 20-year-old student in Perugia, was pulled from a train in Germany after investigators found his DNA on bloody prints at the crime scene and inside Kercher’s body. Guede says he had consensual sex with Kercher the night of the murder and that he was in the bathroom when an unidentified man entered and killed Kercher. Meanwhile, Lumumba was released from custody, though he remained a suspect.
In January 2008, nearly seven weeks after the murder, Sollecito’s DNA was reportedly found on Kercher’s bra clasp.
This bolstered the prosecution’s assertion that the suspects engaged in a dangerous sex game with Kercher, though it also supported the defense’s criticisms of a sloppy investigation and contaminated crime scene.
Trials
In October 2008, Guede was found guilty of the sexual assault and murder of Kercher, and sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment.
In January 2009, After 14 months in jail, Knox and Sollecito appeared in a Perugia court for their first murder trial.
At the conclusion of a trial that saw more than 50 hearings and dozens of witnesses called, the defendants are convicted of Kercher’s murder, with Knox sentenced to 26 years and Sollecito receiving a 25-year sentence. Additionally, the two are ordered to pay more than $7 million to Kercher’s family, and Knox was ordered to pay Lumumba around $60,000 for defamation.
Further Appeal and Second Trial
In July 2011, forensic experts testified that the knife reportedly used in the attack carried no trace of blood and that there was no DNA on the bra clasp that police used to implicate Sollecito.
Subsequently, on October 3,2011 a jury of six citizens and two judges overturned the convictions of Knox and Sollecito in Perugia.
However, in March 26,2013,Italy’s highest court, Court of Cassation reopened the case by overturning the acquittal.
On September 30, the retrial officially began.
In January 2014,a jury convicts Knox and Sollecito for a second time and the judge tacked on two-and-a-half years to Knox’s sentence. Sollecito is ordered to surrender his passport, while Knox, legally in Seattle, won’t have to worry about extradition unless the ruling is upheld.
On March 27 2015,The Court of Cassation again overturned the convictions of Knox and Sollecito. Knox released a statement describing herself as “tremendously relieved and grateful” for the outcome.
Recent Development
On January 24, 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Italy to pay compensation to Knox for violating her rights in the hours after her arrest in Perugia. Italy was ordered to pay Knox €18,400 (about US$20,800).
In June 2024, Knox returned to Italian court for a re-trial on slander charges related to her initial interrogation and signed confession falsely accusing Lumumba of the killing. She was not sentenced to additional prison time, as she had already served the length of the original slander sentence, four years, in detention following her wrongful imprisonment for Kercher’s murder.
