"On November 2, 2007, Meredith Kercher, a 21-year old British student studying in Perugia, Italy, was found dead in her apartment, in a clear case of homicide. Her housemate, American student Amanda Knox, and Knox’s Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, along with local bar owner Patrick Lumumba, were soon arrested and placed in solitary confinement for the murder based largely on an illegal interrogation and the police junk profiling the behavior of Knox and Sollecito. After the arrest of the three suspects, the police held a press conference stating that they had evidence that all three killed Meredith because she refused to participate in a sex game. They boasted that the case was solid. They were even bold enough to announce, “case closed” to the worlds media. Police Chief Arturo De Felice as quoted in the Giornale dell’Umbria on November 6, 2007. “I have to compliment our men and our women (the interpreters) that in 4 days and 4 nights, with professionalism and integrity, have resolved the case. In these days, we have felt the weight, the pressure of the people of the city, and of the mass media. Everybody wanted an immediate and certain response. It seems to me we have responded, almost immediately”. The problem was, they had barely begun to investigate and process the crime scene. And when that evidence started coming in, the police had a problem. There was substantial evidence pointing to the presence of a 4th suspect, Rudy Hermann Guede, and almost nothing pointing to Amanda, Raffaele, or Patrick. Guede left a palm print and footprints in Meredith’s blood, in the room where she was killed. His DNA was found on and inside Meredith and on her purse. His DNA was also linked to feces left in the toilet. He fled to Germany two days after the murder and while on the run told a close friend in a secretly recorded Skype conversation, “Amanda had nothing to do with it [….] because I fought with a male and she wasn’t there.” There was also another problem: Patrick Lumumba had an unshakable alibi. He had witnesses that were with him in his pub all evening. At this time the authorities, led by prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, should have realized their mistake. It wasn’t a sex game gone wrong but a burglary gone wrong. Local thief and burglar Rudy Guede had broken-in and murdered Meredith Kercher when she arrived home and found him inside her house. Meredith Kercher – A beautiful young woman who had her life stolen from her by Rudy Guede in an act of pure evil. Meredith Kercher – A beautiful young woman who had her life stolen from her by Rudy Guede in an act of pure evil. But the authorities, who had made such a big production to the media about solving the crime earlier, refused to admit their mistake. They simply pulled Patrick Lumumba out of their fantasy and plugged in Rudy Guede. The prosecution pushed forward to prove that Meredith was murdered by this “revised” trio in the course of a violent sex orgy, and amassed various pieces of evidence which (they claimed) supported this theory. Guede was soon convicted in a “fast-track” trial process in October of 2008, and sentenced to 30 years in prison which was later reduced to 16 years on appeal, making him eligible for day release after serving 6 years. The case against Knox and Sollecito continued according to a standard schedule, and in December of 2009, both were convicted of participating (along with Rudy Guede) in the murder of Meredith Kercher, and sentenced to 26 and 25 years respectively. Knox and Sollecito’s appeal process began in November 2010. The presiding Judge was Claudio Pratillo Hellmann. In October 2011, after a detailed reexamination of the case — including among other things a highly critical expert review of the DNA evidence — Knox and Sollecito were declared innocent and released immediately after nearly four years of imprisonment. (Knox remained convicted of a lesser crime, calumny, for having accused an innocent person, Patrick Lumumba, of the murder under intense police pressure; for this she was sentenced to three years in prison, less than the time she had already spent there.) In March 2013, the Italian Supreme Court annulled the Hellmann acquittal and ordered a new trial to be held in Florence. See Critical commentary on the ruling of the Supreme Court on the Knox-Sollecito trial. In January 2014, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were convicted again. The presiding Judge was Alessandro Nencini. The court released a motivation document on April 29, 2014, explaining the decision...." http://murderofmeredithkercher.com/