Prosecutors maintained that Knox, Sollecito, and Guede had forced Kercher into a group sex game which spiraled into extreme violence. But serious doubts emerged over the evidence used to convict her, with accusations that police and forensics experts bungled the initial crime scene investigation.
None of Knox’s DNA was found in the bedroom in which Miss Kercher was stabbed to death.
The prosecution claimed that Knox’s DNA was on the handle of the presumed murder weapon, a kitchen knife, and Kercher’s genetic material on the blade, linking the American to the killing.
They also said that Sollecito’s DNA was found on a bra clasp, which had been cut or torn off the bra, proving that he took part in the attack.
But a review of the evidence by two independent experts from La Sapienza University in Rome found that the DNA traces were too low to be reliable and so small that they could not be retested.
There were also doubts over the murder weapon.
Police and prosecutors said Kercher was killed with a kitchen knife found in a drawer in Sollecito’s apartment.
But the blade of the knife did not match two out of three of the wounds to her neck. Nor did it match a bloody, knife-shaped smear on Kercher’s bedclothes.
The prosecution struggled to come up with witnesses who could place Knox and Sollecito at the scene of the crime.
But they insisted that the murder was carried out by more than one person because of the lack of injuries to Kercher’s hands – a fact which suggested that her arms had been pinned back by at least one person while another plunged the knife into her neck.
There seemed to be no convincing motive for the murder. Prosecutors initially said the crime was inspired by the occult and Halloween fantasies.
