The murder of Meredith Kercher occurred on the night of November 1, 2007 when the English student was stabbed to death in her bedroom at the house she shared with other students in Perugia, Italy.

Three people, two men and a woman, being held in custody in Perugia, were formally charged with murder, sexual assault and theft eight months after Kercher's death. One other suspect has been released without charge.

The case is receiving heavy publicity in Italy, Britain, and the United States.

Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher was born in February 1985 in Southwark, London, England, and lived in Coulsdon, South London. She attended the University of Leeds. She had been part of the ERASMUS student exchange programme, and had gone to Italy to complete her degree course.

Kercher was murdered on the evening of 1 November 2007, with pathologists putting her time of death between 20:30 and 23:00. A judge assigned to the case read the pathology report at a bail hearing for the suspects and ruled that Kercher's carotid artery had not been ruptured in the attack, and that she likely died a "relatively slow and agonizing death."

The following morning, the Postal Police came to investigate the discovery of two mobile phones in a nearby garden, one which was registered to Ms Kercher.When they breached the door to Kercher's room, which had been locked from the inside, they reportedly found Kercher lying beneath a duvet in her room "soaked in blood." Police have said Kercher's throat was slit with a shard of glass or a pen-knife, but have not yet located the murder weapon. Police initially believed that the killer or killers escaped through a broken window in Kercher's room, since the door was locked when they arrived,[ but now suspect the break-in was staged. The following morning, Amanda Knox was spotted by two men at a laundromat on Via Fabretti washing clothes and a pair of shoes with a "North African" man. Italian prosecutors allege that the murder was done as part of a satanic ritual that was inspired by Japanese Manga comics.

Suspects

Three of the suspects in the case are currently being held in Perugia: Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito (an Italian student and Knox's former boyfriend), and Rudy Hermann Guede, who was arrested in Germany on November 20 and extradited to Italy on 6 December.  All three suspects remain in Capanne Prison, a 10-minute drive from Perugia.

Amanda Knox

Amanda Knox, aged 21, a student from Seattle, Washington, USA, was arrested on the morning of 6 November for her alleged involvement in Kercher's murder. Knox is a student at the University of Washington and had been living with Kercher in Perugia while she was enrolled in the ERASMUS programme in Italy. According to statements published by The Times, Knox told the police that she had been in the house when the murder took place and had "heard the screams"; however, she has subsequently given several different versions of the events of the night of the murder, saying her memory was clouded by having taken drugs, and now asserts that she spent the whole evening and night with her boyfriend at his flat.

In one of her earlier statements to the police, Knox implicated Patrick Diya Lumumba in the murder saying:

“ I don't remember if my friend Meredith was already there or whether she came later. What I can say is that the two of them (Meredith and Patrick) went off together... Patrick and Meredith went off together into Meredith's room while I think I stayed in the kitchen. I can't remember how long they were in the bedroom together, I can only say that at a certain point I heard Meredith screaming and I was so frightened I put my fingers in my ears. I don't remember anything after that, my head is really confused.

I don’t remember if Meredith called out or if I heard thuds because I was upset, but I can imagine what was happening...I'm not sure whether Raffaele was there too that evening but I do remember waking up at his house in his bed and that in the morning I went back to where I lived, where I found the door open.

”

Knox appeared before a magistrate on the morning of 9 November and was ordered to be held, along with Sollecito and Lumumba, for up to one year while the police continue their investigation.In a leaked report published by The Times, Judge Claudia Matteini suggested that Knox and Sollecito had been seeking to "experience extreme sensations, intense sexual relations which break up the monotony of everyday life," and had attempted to persuade Kercher to participate in a sexual encounter.The report continued:

“ They went together to the apartment on Via della Pergola 7, to which only Amanda had the key. It was roughly at this time that both Sollecito and Knox switched off their mobile phones until the following morning. ”

According to a report of January 2008, at least one of Knox's parents had visited her twice a week for the previous three months In an interview with The Sunday Times, seven months after her arrest, they affirmed their belief in her innocence. Amanda Knox has retained prominent Seattle attorney Anne Bremner as lead counsel in her defense.[

Knox proclaimed her innocence at the closed-door hearing on October 17, 2008.

[edit] Public defense of Amanda Knox

After the initial publication of Knox's 'confession', many news media sources began to uncover information about her background online.Both Knox's Myspace profile and videos that she had previously posted to Youtube were used in some cases to support suggestions that she was unstable. The news media's investigation of events has been viewed with scrutiny by online bloggers and others.Some students at Knox's university have called the allegations "shocking," and a friend of Knox's said "This is not something she would do."

Raffaele Sollecito

Raffaele Sollecito, 24 years old, from Giovinazzo, Bari, and at the point of completing a degree at Perugia University at the time of the murder, was Knox's boyfriend. The son of a urologist from Bari, and from an affluent family, he had known Knox for two weeks.[33]

Sollecito claims that he returned to his flat and spent the evening surfing the internet on the night of the murder.[34] Detectives have said that his alibi is not substantiated by records of his internet service provider, though a private detective working for Sollecito disputes this.[35] Like Knox, he admits to having smoked marijuana on the day of the murder.[35]

Forensic investigators say that a footprint found in blood in Kercher's room is compatible with the footwear worn by Sollecito, but his legal team assert that it is not his.[36] On January 10th Italian police released a statement which says that Sollecito's DNA was found on a piece of Kercher's bra.[34]

[edit] Rudy Hermann Guede

Police arrested a fourth suspect, Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, who originates from the Ivory Coast, on November 20. The Italian police announced that Guede had been arrested in Wiesbaden, Germany in an Interpol operation that traced Guede when he logged into his Facebook account.[17] Guede came to Perugia at the age of five with his father After his father left Italy when Guede was 16, he was informally adopted by the family of a wealthy local businessman, Paolo Caporali. Caporali stated that he had been disappointed by Guede's behaviour, describing him as a "tremendous liar", skipping school and being reluctant to do any work.Guede played basketball for the local team which Caporali sponsored.

DNA tests indicate that Guede had sex with Kercher before her murder  and that faeces found in the toilet are his.

Guede's account of the evening is that he and the victim had consensual sex, after which he left the room to use the toilet where he listened to music on his iPod and thus did not hear the killer enter the house. He did, however, hear Kercher scream, and emerged to see the murderer, a dark-haired Italian man whom he didn't know, stabbing Kercher. As the man escaped, he said "You're in trouble, you black bastard". after which Guede claims to have been so frightened that he fled the scene and made his way to Germany. The Investigators stated that Guede's version of events was "a highly improbable fantasy."

Patrick Lumumba

Patrick Diya Lumumba, 37, originally from the Congo, but a long-term resident of Perugia, was the owner of a small bar, Le Chic, in the city, and employed Amanda Knox occasionally as a barmaid.

Lumumba was arrested on 6 November, having been implicated by Knox's version of events, which alleged that he had been involved in the murder. He denies any involvement in Kercher's murder and was released immediately after the arrest of Guede.

The chief prosecutor in the case, Giuseppe Mignini, has stated that there are no longer any indications linking Lumumba to the crime, although he remains under investigation.. His lawyers are pressing for his name to be cleared.

Tributes

Kercher's family travelled to Italy to commemorate her.

The funeral service for Meredith Kercher was held on 14 December 2007 at the Croydon Parish Church in Coulsdon with over 300 people in attendance