Amanda Knox was found guilty and then not guilty of being involved with the murder of Meredith Kercher in Italy on 1st November 2007. Was she really involved or did Rudy Guede act alone. I do find it dispicable that Amanda Know implicated Patrick Lumumba, her boss though.
The murder of Meredith Kercher occurred in Perugia, Italy, on 1 November 2007. Kercher, aged 21 at the time of her death, was a British university exchange student from Coulsdon, south London. She was found dead on the floor of her bedroom with stab wounds to the throat. Some of her belongings were missing, including cash, two credit cards, two mobile phones, and her house keys.
Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast native raised in Perugia, was convicted in October 2008 of having sexually assaulted and murdered Kercher, and was sentenced to 30 years, reduced on appeal to 16 years in December 2009. Also tried were Amanda Knox, an American exchange student and flatmate of Kercher, and Knox's then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian student. Knox and Sollecito were convicted on charges of sexual assault and murder in December 2009, and sentenced to 26 and 25 years respectively. Their convictions were overturned on appeal in October 2011 by a panel of six jurors and two judges. In an official statement of their grounds for overturning the convictions the judges wrote there was a "material non-existence" of evidence to support the guilty verdicts at the trial. The appeal judges further stated that the prosecution's theory of an association between Sollecito, Knox and Guede was "not corroborated by any evidence" and "far from probable".
The murder and subsequent events, especially Knox's arrest and trial, received worldwide press coverage, often in the form of salacious tabloid reporting, particularly in Italy and England. Some observers criticized the media for not describing the case accurately and dispassionately, as they believed it could influence the court case.
In Perugia, Kercher shared a four-bedroom ground-floor apartment in a house at Via della Pergola 7, the front door lock did not have a spring latch and had to be closed with a key. The house was set on a hillside with an extensive unfenced garden and a panoramic view over the city. According to Candace Dempsey, an Italian-American journalist, locals thought of it as a bad neighborhood. Between the house and the university was Piazza Grimana, where students often gathered.
Her flatmates were Filomena and Laura, Italian women in their late twenties, and 20-year-old Seattle exchange student Amanda Knox. Kercher and Knox moved in on 10 and 20 September respectively, meeting each other for the first time. Kercher called her mother, who was unwell, at least once a day on a mobile phone she kept with her at all times, her other mobile was registered to Filomena. Knox used her own phone as a watch and did not usually turn it off. Knox was employed part time at a bar, Le Chic, which was owned by a Congolese man, Patrick Lumumba. She told flatmates and her mother that she was going to quit as Lumumba was not paying her and had suggested she drink wine while working. Lumumba said that both these assertions were untrue. Kercher's English women friends saw relatively little of Knox, as she preferred to mix with Italians.
The walk-out semi-basement of the house was rented by four young Italian men with whom both Kercher and Knox were friendly. One of the men, Giacomo, spent time in the girls' flat due to a shared interest in music. Cannabis plants were grown in the basement and Knox sometimes smoked hashish there, as did Kercher on occasion. Returning home at 2 am one night in mid October, Knox, Kercher, Giacomo and another basement resident met Rudy Guede. The Italians knew Guede from playing basketball with him. Guede, who had been served by Knox at her part-time bar job days earlier, attached himself to the group and asked about Knox. He was invited into the basement and talked about her with the Italians, they all expressed the opinion she was attractive. Knox and then Kercher joined them and smoked hashish, at 4:30 am Kercher left saying she was going to bed, Knox followed her out.
On the night of the murder, 1 November, the house was empty. Kercher's Italian flatmates were visiting family because it was a public holiday.[18] The downstairs flat was also empty because the occupants were out of town.[19]
At about 6:00 that evening, Kercher had dinner with three other English women at one of their homes, and watched a DVD, The Notebook. According to the friends, just before 9 pm, she said she felt tired and wanted to retire early; she borrowed a history book, saying she would return it by 10 am the next morning, and left to walk home with one of her friends. The two parted company on Via del Lupo at around 8:55 pm, about 500 yards (460 m) from Via della Pergola 7.At 8:56 pm, someone tried to call Kercher's mother from her mobile phone, but the call was cut off. At 10 pm, someone again used her mobile phone to call her bank in London, but the call did not go through. An April 2008 report by court-appointed experts estimated that Kercher died between 8:55pm and 12:50 am. The time of death could not be established with any precision because the police prevented the coroner from checking her temperature until midnight on the night after her death. Sollecito's lawyers argued on appeal that, because the autopsy showed no stomach contents had passed into the duodenum, the time of death could not have been after 10 pm.
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