On the night between 1st and 2nd November 2007, a 21-year-old English student called Meredith Kercher was killed in Perugia, Italy. After a long and controversial court case, the American, Amanda Knox, and the Italian, Raffaele Sollecito, after initially being found guilty, were acquitted of the crime. The only convict remains the Ivorian Rudi Guede. The case aroused unexpected media attention and international outcries. Many questions on the whole affair remain unresolved, which has contributed to adding conspiracy-like theories to standard criminological analysis. This chapter intends to provide a reconstruction of the events, highlighting the reasons that explain the case's great media attention.
TopReconstruction Of The Crime
According to what was written in the judgement of the Court of First Instance, Meredith Kercher's body was found on the morning of 2nd November 2007, shortly after 1.00 pm, covered by a quilt. The young woman was half-naked, with her T-shirt rolled up over her breasts. On the body there were signs of strangulation, suffocation and numerous bruises. The cause of death, however, was a cut to the neck, which caused blood to build up in the airways, leading to asphyxiation. Other non-fatal wounds were also present on the arms, hands, abdomen and legs. One of the vaginal swabs indicated the presence of biological material, but it was not possible, from the gynecological examination, to clearly establish whether sex was consensual or not (Court of Assizes of Perugia, 4-5/12/2009, pp. 103-111).
When Meredith's lifeless body was found, officers of the Italian postal and telecommunications police of Perugia were also present, having arrived shortly before 13.00. The presence of the police was due to having found Amanda's mobile phone, a few hours earlier, and later a second mobile phone of another roommate. Both phones were found in the garden of Elisabetta Lana's house, in Via Sperandio. The house and garden are surrounded by trees and is in the Parco S. Angelo area, a short distance from Via della Pergola 7: by car it would only take a few minutes to get there and on foot 15-20 minutes, maybe even less. Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito tell the Italian postal police that they are waiting for the Carabinieri, who they had called due to upon returning to Via della Pergola that morning, they had found the door of the house open and a broken window (Court of Assizes, pp. 12-15). The death was initially dated, by the coroner, to be between the evening of 2nd and the night of 3rd November. Subsequently, however, the time of death was set between 9.00 pm of 1st November, when the victim greets a friend near her home, and 12.10 am of 2nd November, when Meredith's mobile phone receives a call a using a phone tower located in Via Sperandio.