THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FACTS

The investigations begin, and the first suspects fall on Amanda and Raffaele, who are questioned and indicted. During the crime scene inspection, DNA belonging to Rudy Guede, an acquaintance of Kercher who fled to Germany immediately after her murder, was found.

Rudy Guede.

On 12/16/2010, Rudy Guede was sentenced in abbreviated procedure to 16 years in prison for complicity in murder. Rudy did not release any interviews or statements until 01/21/2016, when an entire episode was dedicated to him for a well-known television broadcast. During the program, Rudy explains that that evening he was at the crime scene as he was having an affair with Kercher, and that day the two boys met for consensual sexual intercourse. Rudy would have felt stomach pain at one point in the evening and going to the bathroom, he would have started listening to music on an iPod. He goes on to say that, within a quarter of an hour, while he was still in the bathroom, the murder would have occurred.

Guede further states that he could hear Knox’s voice ardently arguing with Meredith despite the headphones. Hearing Kercher’s cries, he would have rushed out of the bathroom to go and see what had happened. At this point, Guede faces a man who cannot see his face and who will manage to escape. Rudy looks out the window and sees Knox with the boy, similar to Sollecito. After that, he finds Meredith in a lake of blood and tries to help her as he can, but taken by her shock, he abandons her and runs away.

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito

The judicial proceedings concerning Knox and Sollecito begin with the first-degree conviction of 05/12/2009 for the murder of Meredith. However, this sentence was annulled on appeal by the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia on 03/10/2011. At this point, the prosecution appealed to the Supreme Court and obtained the conviction of the two boys again on 01/30/2014. In turn, the defense in March 2015 appealed to the Supreme Court and got the definitive acquittal of Amanda and Raffaele “for not having committed the crime.”

The reasons for the Cassation for the acquittal state that: the genetic investigations were acquired in violation of the time-honored rules of international protocols; the presence of Amanda in the house that was the scene of the murder is confirmed, like her admissions (but it has not been possible to demonstrate that she was present at the time of the crime).

For Sollecito, the suspicion remains strong that he was really present in the house via Della Pergola on the night of the murder at a moment that has not been possible to determine.

Media success

Knox and Sollecito gave interviews to national and international newspapers during and after the end of the judicial proceedings documented in numerous television programs, and many writers dedicated their books to the crime in Perugia.

The story, which is said to have also reached the ears of Hilary Clinton, then US secretary of state, led the whole world to point the finger at the Italian justice system, guilty of having framed two innocent people to put an end to the matter.

The Netflix documentary

The pinnacle of this global trial against the Italian judicial system came with the release of the Netflix documentary. In an hour and a half of recording, everything concerning the crime in Perugia is retraced from the point of view of Sollecito and, obviously, of the protagonist Amanda Knox.

The video is entirely biased; neither Rudi Guede is interviewed nor given sufficient space for Meredith’s family and her lawyers. Only the forensic experts of the defense appeal are called into question, who have demonstrated the absence of Amanda’s DNA on the knife and the absence of Sollecito’s DNA on the bra clasp, but not those who had established it in the first instance the presence.

Finally, a lot of space is given to a very ambiguous character, Nick Pisa, a journalist with dubious morals who followed the story closely, gaining fame in England thanks to his scoops, which by his own admission sometimes turned out to be wrong, “I cannot control the information that I publish. Otherwise I would lose the scoop,” or he will still say about the fame acquired thanks to the crime in Perugia, “seeing your name on the front page is like having sex.”

In short, Amanda and Raffaele have been declared innocent, and they must be treated as such. However, many doubts remain about a story that is still unclear, first of all knowing whether Rudy Guede acted alone in killing Meredith Kercher.