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Case summary


Amanda arrived in Perugia, Italy, in mid-September 2007 to attend the University for Foreigners. She found a living situation in a cottage that she shared with two young Italian women and Meredith Kercher, a British student attending the University of Perugia under the Erasmus Program. In late October, Amanda met Raffaele Sollecito at a classical music concert. They commenced a relationship. Amanda began spending the night at Raffaele’s apartment.

Thursday, November 1, 2007, was the start of a long weekend in Italy, as Italians celebrate All Saints Day as a family holiday. The two Italian housemates were absent from the cottage and Amanda was staying at Raffaele's apartment. On that evening, Meredith watched a movie at the home of a friend before returning to the cottage at 9:10 pm. The authorities believe she was murdered sometime in the next few hours. 

On November 2, 2007, Amanda returned home at 10:30 am and found the front door to the cottage ajar, which she attributed to the unreliable latch on the door. The door to Meredith's room was closed, and Amanda assumed she was still sleeping. Amanda took a shower in the small bathroom she shared with Meredith and noticed a few droplets of blood. After showering, she dried her hair in the second, larger bathroom, where she noticed someone had used the toilet without flushing.

It seemed an ordinary, quiet morning, so at first Amanda was not alarmed by what she encountered at the cottage. But the more she thought about it, the more concerned she became. She returned to Raffaele’s apartment and told him about her concern. Then she called one of her Italian roommates, and she tried to call Meredith. Cellular records show that Amanda made these calls a few minutes after noon on November 2.

After a quick breakfast, she returned to the cottage with Raffaele, where they made a closer inspection. They found a broken window and evidence that someone might have broken into the cottage. They also discovered that Meredith's door was locked. Raffaele called his sister, a police officer, and she told him to call the police. Just after he did so, officers from another police division arrived on their own, because Meredith's cell phones had been found in the garden of a nearby residence and had been traced to the cottage. A few minutes later, Meredith's locked door was forced open in the presence of the police and her body was discovered. She was on the floor, under a duvet, partially disrobed, with her throat cut.

The police questioned Amanda and Raffaele repeatedly as witnesses over the next few days. Both gave the same account of their activities and whereabouts. But on the night of November 5-6, the two were pulled into separate rooms and subjected to more aggressive interrogations. Under intense pressure, they changed their accounts. Raffaele said that Amanda was gone from his apartment for a few hours, and Amanda described a dream or a vision of herself covering her ears to block out screams while the man she worked for, a bar owner named Patrick Lumumba, was in Meredith’s room.

Click here to read more about Amanda's statements to police.

Amanda signed two statements on the morning of November 6, one at 1:45 am and a second at 5:45 am. The Italian Supreme Court has ruled the second statement cannot be used as evidence because at the time she signed it, Amanda was a suspect rather than a witness.

Amanda's supporters contend that her statements were made under duress and she ended up telling the police what they wanted to hear even though it was not true. She was kept up all night, claims to have been hit, and was denied a lawyer and professional translator.

Amanda, Raffaele, and Patrick were arrested and jailed on the morning of  November 6. Patrick was released after about two weeks because he had an unshakable alibi.

Around the time Patrick was released, the authorities used forensic analysis to identify a fourth suspect, an immigrant from Ivory Coast named Rudy Guede. Guede had left a hand  print, in the victim's blood, on a pillow found underneath her corpse. In addition, his DNA was found inside her body, on her clothing, and on her handbag. DNA evidence also linked him to the unflushed toilet.

Guede fled to Germany after the murder, but police tracked him down. He was arrested and extradited back to Italy.

Following his arrest, Guede told police that he and Meredith had arranged to meet at the cottage that evening, and they had consensual contact that stopped short of intercourse. Guede claimed he suddenly needed to use the bathroom, and while he was sitting on the toilet listening to his iPod, a stranger entered the cottage and attacked Meredith. Guede said he emerged from the bathroom and grappled with the stranger, who ran off into the night after shouting "a black man found is a black man condemned." He said he then tried to comfort Meredith, but at some point he panicked and fled the scene. Witnesses saw him dancing at a local nightclub at about 2:00 am on the morning of November 2, just a few hours after the murder.

While Guede was in Germany, police monitored a phone call during which he explicitly stated that Amanda was not present when the murder took place. A few months after his arrest, however, Guede changed his story. In his revised account, the stranger with whom he grappled became Raffaele. His initial story did not implicate Amanda, but in the revised version, he claimed she was present as well, albeit outside the room.

Police news conferenceEvidence


Under most circumstances, the arrest of Guede might have put an end to the investigation, because the evidence against him was so conclusive. In this case, however, authorities announced they had solved the crime before they even knew about Guede. On November 6, 2007, they held a news conference at which they asserted that the murder had been committed by Amanda, Raffaele, and Patrick Lumumba because Meredith refused to participate in a group sex game.

Later, when a airtight alibi forced the authorities to release Lumumba, they substituted Guede as the third participant in the alleged sex game, even though he had no known connection to either Amanda or Raffaele. It seemed the authorities had committed themselves to a specific theory, and they went to work developing evidence that would fit that theory. Following is a summary of that evidence.

1.  Statements made by the suspects

As noted above, the suspects changed their stories when interrogated from the evening of November 5 into the morning of November 6. Raffaele claimed that Amanda was out alone for some time. After an arduous interrogation, Amanda made two statements, the second of which described a dream or vision of herself covering her ears to block out screams while Lumumba was in Meredith's room.

Both Lumumba and Guede are black men. The defense believes the police who interrogated Amanda were aware, on the basis of hair they had recovered from the victim's hand, that a black person was involved in the crime, and so they steered her toward Lumumba for that reason. Amanda had exchanged text messages with Lumumba on the evening of November 1. At 8:18 pm, Lumumba sent a message telling Amanda that there wasn't much business and she didn't need to come in to work. At 8:35 pm, she confirmed receiving the message and said "See you later. Good night." Amanda claims the police insisted that her text message meant that she intended to meet Lumumba later, and they continued to press her on this point, so she finally described this dream or vision under great duress. Judge Claudia Matteini's court order of November 9, 2007, confirms that the authorities did in fact interpret the message exchange to mean that Amanda and Lumumba intended to meet later that evening. (Matteini wrote: "On the evening around 8.30pm, while Amanda found herself at the house of Raffaele, she received the message from Diya Lumumba who, rather than simply warning her to not come to work, instead confirmed the appointment that evening.")

Both Amanda and Raffaele now claim their initial statements to police were truthful and accurate.

2.  The alleged murder weapon

Police seized a large kitchen knife from Raffaele’s apartment, which they claim has Amanda’s DNA on the handle and Meredith’s DNA on the blade.

There are three critical problems with the knife as evidence:

  • The alleged match to Meredith’s DNA is highly dubious because the sample quality was so infinitesimally small (less than 100 picograms, with a picogram being a trillionth of a gram, or 0.000000000001 gram).
  • The knife does not match a knife-shaped blood stain left on the victim’s bed.
  • Experts have already testified that the knife could not have made at least two of the three wounds found on Meredith’s throat. The stain on the bed appears to have been made by a knife compatible with all the wounds.
Low Copy Number (LCN) tests, like the one performed on the knife blade, are regarded by many experts as inherently unreliable, because it is not possible to prevent biological contamination at the level of picograms. Even in well-run labs, control samples regularly show up with DNA that theoretically should not be there.


3.  Raffaele’s DNA on the victim’s bra fastener

Six weeks after the murder, police collected a bra fastener from the floor of Meredith's room. Tests revealed a microscopic trace of Raffaele's DNA on this item. But, as with the knife, there are substantial problems:

  • Tests also revealed the DNA of at least three other unidentified people on the bra fastener.
  • Investigators made a mess of Meredith's room when they went through her belongings. Police video shows that the fastener was kicked or swept to one side and eventually became mixed with a pile of clutter, which exposed it to numerous potential sources of contamination.
  • The police video shows that the item was handled extensively by two investigators before it was bagged as evidence, further increasing the risk of contamination.
Click here to read more about how police mishandled this key piece of evidence.

In the case of the bra fastener, contamination most likely took place at the crime scene rather than in the lab. Raffaele had been in the cottage on multiple occasions, and he attempted to break down the door to the room on the day after the murder, before the police arrived. His DNA would have been present on door handles and other surfaces, available to be transferred to any other object.

4.  Other physical evidence

Authorities say tests on blood stains in the bathroom show Meredith's DNA was mixed with that of Amanda. Carlo Torre, one of Italy's leading forensic scientists, is advising Amanda's defense team and has examined the lab reports. His conclusion is that the samples are Meredith's blood contaminated with Amanda's non-blood DNA, which would have been spread all over the bathroom, so these stains prove nothing in relation to the murder.

Click here to read more about these DNA samples.

Authorities used luminol, a chemical compound that reacts with even tiny amounts of blood, to reveal latent footprints Amanda's room as well as the corridor outside the victim's room. They say these prints show that Amanda stepped in Meredith's blood and tracked it around. But DNA tests on the latent footprints flatly contradict this claim, and luminol reacts with many other substances besides blood.  And, like the mixed DNA in the bathroom, the footprints are found only in the hallway, not in the room where the murder took place.

Click here to read more about the luminol results.

5.  Witnesses

An Albanian man with drug and alcohol problems testified that he saw the three suspects together on the night of the murder. He was utterly discredited on cross-examination. A homeless man who likewise has a substance-abuse problem claims to have seen Amanda and Raffaele lurking in a public area near the cottage on the night of the murder. A woman who lives in a nearby apartment claims to have heard a scream followed by the footsteps of more than one person outside in the street. Two additional witnesses came forward more than a year after the crime. One testified that he saw Amanda in his store the morning after the murder, but his employee took the stand and flatly contradicted this assertion. The other late witness claims he saw Amanda and Raffaele with Guede before the night of the murder. The defense believes all these witnesses are either unreliable or have no testimony relevant to the case.

6.  Demeanor and character evidence

The prosecutor went to a lot of trouble and expense to bring in witnesses who made unfavorable comments about Amanda. These witnesses included a number of Meredith's friends from the UK as well as Amanda's Italian housemates. They described Amanda as being lax in housekeeping, and they said her behavior after the murder came across as insensitive. It is worth noting what was not said:

  • Nobody heard Amanda say anything negative to or about Meredith.
  • Nobody said that Amanda ever became angry or raised her voice with anyone.
  • Nobody said Amanda stole from them, lied to them, or caused them any problem whatsoever.
  • Nobody said Amanda ever intimidated anyone or that they felt intimidated by her.
In short, nobody described any behavior that could possibly be considered hostile or aggressive, much less violent. And in that crucial respect, the prosecution's character witnesses are in perfect agreement with Amanda's friends and family in Seattle.

window access7.  Evidence that the crime scene was staged

Police have asserted that the shattered window is evidence that a break-in was staged, and that only an insider — someone known to have keys to the cottage — would perform such staging, in an effort to make it look like the murder was committed by a stranger. This alleged staging is one of the crimes with which Amanda and Raffaele have been formally charged. 

There is no evidence to support this charge. Investigators have merely assumed that the window is too high off the ground to actually have been used as a point of access. A witness at the trial, however, has testified that shortly before Meredith was killed, Rudy Guede was found in possession of a property that had been stolen from an office by someone who pitched a rock through a window three meters above the ground and used that window to gain entry. This is almost identical to what appears to have happened at the cottage.

Moreover, the defense has conducted experiments showing that a man of Guede's height could easily have gotten through the broken window at the cottage. The building is perched on a steep hillside, so the window is adjacent to and within reach of a walkway. The intruder could have gone through the window by using a planter box at the edge of the walkway as a starting point. Alternatively, bars on a lower-story window could have been used like a ladder to gain access, as shown in the photo.

8.  The dispute about when police arrived at the cottage

As noted above, Meredith's cell phones were found in a garden on the day after the murder. They were turned into the Postal Police, a branch of Italian law enforcement that deals with telecommunications. The Postal Police traced the phones to the cottage where Meredith and Amanda lived, and the supervisor dispatched officers to investigate. The prosecutor and the Postal Police assert that these officers arrived at the cottage at least 15 minutes before Raffaele called the emergency number to alert a different branch of the police that an intruder had broken into the cottage. They say Raffaele told them he had already called the emergency number.

This allegation invites the question of why Raffaele did not tell the arriving officers that he was about to call the police, instead of carrying out a ruse. It is also a doubtful claim in light of the available evidence. The verbal testimony of the Postal Police, that they know they arrived at 12:35 because one of them checked his watch, contradicts a log entry made by the department supervisor at the time of the incident, which says the car was not sent out until 12:46 pm. Raffaele called the emergency number at 12:51 pm.

The Postal Police also produced a time-stamped black-and-white photo taken by a surveillance camera in a parking garage across the street from the cottage. It shows an unmarked sedan, which they claim was the one they drove that day. Given the location of the camera, however, the car in the picture would have just passed the driveway leading to the cottage and would have had to follow a circuitous route to get back to that driveway.

9.  The alleged cleanup

Before the trial, the authorities fed rumors to the media about receipts showing purchases of bleach, evidence found in a washing machine, and other indications that Amanda and Raffaele cleaned the cottage after the murder. All of these claims have turned out to be entirely false, and none of them has surfaced during the trial.

Click here to read more about the alleged cleanup.