TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN:
On November 2nd 2007, police
in Perugia receive a phone call.
There's been a break-in.
When police arrive,
they discover a young woman
has been stabbed to death.
She's Meredith Kercher,
a British student,
a girl with everything to live for.
REPORTER: Amanda! Amanda!
For six years,
her American flatmate, Amanda Knox,
has been the centre of
a media and judicial storm,
one of three people
accused of Meredith's murder.
Tonight, the central evidence
for and against Amanda Knox.
And, for the first time,
the audio recording of Amanda Knox's
prison interrogation.
HER VOICE BREAKS
Convicted, jailed, acquitted
and now found guilty once more.
It's time, say the victim's family,
for the case to be resolved.
We all definitely want
some form of closure,
and then we can all start
to remember just Meredith.
I was imprisoned
as an innocent person.
This programme contains scenes some
viewers may find upsetting.
Meredith Kercher grew
up in Croydon, south London.
In August 2007, a new
university year is about to start.
Meredith, now 21,
prepares to leave for
the ancient and beautiful
hilltop city of Perugia, Italy.
She was very
excited about coming to Italy,
looking forward to learning
more about Italian culture,
seeing the city of Perugia
and making new friends.
She really fought to come here.
She really wanted to be here.
Mez, as everyone calls her,
is studying European politics
and Italian at Leeds.
Now she has an
exchange year in Italy,
a country she's been in love with
since a school trip.
But saying goodbye to her sister
Stephanie isn't easy.
We were just talking on the sofa and
having a little cuddle goodbye,
and then I just remember
her suddenly crying
and saying that she was
going to be sad to go
but she was excited to come...and
I remember being quite taken aback,
and I thought, "Don't make me sad.
"I'll miss you but
you'll go and have fun."
She leaves on September 1st,
and quickly afterwards moves into
the upstairs flat of this cottage,
with three housemates - two young
Italian trainee lawyers
and a student on exchange
from the United States,
20-year-old Amanda Knox.
Amanda has travelled almost
6,000 miles from Seattle
on the Northwest coast
to study Italian in Perugia.
Photogenic, outgoing
and describing herself as quirky,
Amanda Knox loves
the Beatles and Harry Potter.
She's been studying at university
and has worked three jobs to
pay for her Italian adventure.
She is very different from
the quiet and studious Meredith.
While housemates, there's said
to be tension over Amanda's
supposedly casual attitude
to sex, money and housework.
Within weeks,
Amanda Knox lands a job in Perugia,
working as a waitress at Le Chic,
a pub owned by a popular musician
from the Congo, Patrick Lumumba.
TRANSLATED: She gave me the
impression of a good person.
If she wasn't a good person,
she wouldn't have worked here.
That doesn't mean that her
relationship with clients
pleased me, because she
often talked to the clients
and I had to tell her
to get back to work.
On October 25th,
Amanda and Meredith go to a
classic musical concert together,
where Amanda meets
Italian student Raffaele Sollecito.
He looks like her favourite,
Harry Potter,
and the two begin
a whirlwind romance.
Described by friends as
intelligent and sensitive,
the handsome Raffaele
has come to Perugia
to study information technology.
A week later - October 31st.
It's Halloween, and in Perugia,
like every other university town,
it's party time.
It's one of Meredith's
favourite nights out
and she's dressed as a vampire.
These will turn out to be among
the last photographs of her alive.
Happy, full of life, and completely
at home with her new friends.
What happens on the night of
November 1st 2007
has been the subject
of two trials,
three appeals and
two supreme court judgments.
The story has more twists and turns
than the medieval
streets of Perugia.
Police in Italy are
searching for the killer
of a British exchange student
who was found dead
in her apartment in Perugia.
Officers discovered the body
of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher
in her bedroom
yesterday afternoon.
The story starts at nine o'clock in
the morning on 2nd November,
when a local woman finds
two mobile phones in her garden.
She takes them to the postal police,
which handles crimes involving
communication devices.
They quickly discover one of
the phones is registered to
Via della Pergola 7, a small cottage
just 500 metres away.
When police arrive here, they see
two students in the driveway.
Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.
They tell the police
the front door is open...
and one room has been ransacked.
Police go into the house.
One bedroom's a mess.
Clothes are all over the floor and a
large rock is lying near the window.
Shortly after
the postal police arrive,
at 12.51, Raffaele Sollecito
calls the elite police force -
the Carabinieri.
He doesn't mention that the
postal police are already there,
and says nothing's been stolen -
details prosecutors would later
claim are significant.
TRANSLATED:
Meanwhile, Amanda says she's
worried about her friend Meredith.
Her door's locked,
she's not answering her phone.
When the door is broken down, they
discover a beige duvet on the floor.
Beneath it, the battered and
bloody body of Meredith Kercher.
Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini
arrives just after 2pm.
He finds Meredith
is partially naked,
her bra's been cut off and her
t-shirt rolled up above her breasts.
It looks like a sexual assault.
TRANSLATED: When you
start an investigation,
you don't know what happened,
you have to slowly
reconstruct the situation.
Forensics teams work inside
and outside the cottage.
Right away, they think
it's a staged break-in -
glass shards are on top rather than
underneath the scattered clothes.
The large rock seems too heavy
to be thrown from the ground
to the first floor window
and too big to go through the
small crack between the shutters.
A handbag, jewellery case,
camera and laptop computer
are lying in full view.
There's a line of bloody shoe prints
from Meredith's room
to the front door.
And in the bathroom, a bloody
bare footprint is on the bathmat.
Over four days, investigators
collect more than 400 items
from the apartment, photographing
and filming their work.
When police bag
Meredith's bra for evidence,
they notice something is missing.
Somehow, the investigators
leave without the clasp -
a critical error that will
haunt the prosecution case.
The autopsy shows
Meredith has been strangled
and stabbed on
two sides of the neck,
possibly with
two different knives.
The second fatal stab
severed her thyroid artery.
There are 40 wounds -
too many, police believe,
for one assailant
to have inflicted alone.
The prosecution's
view of what happened,
later disputed by the defence,
is shown in this reconstruction.
Meredith was trained in karate,
and must have encountered
overwhelming force.
TRANSLATED: One person couldn't,
all at the same time,
hold Meredith still
and hold back her hands -
because there are
very few defensive wounds -
inflict those wounds
with a smaller knife
and then give her the fatal blow
with the larger knife.
It is impossible.
Not even Superman could do it.
The behaviour of Amanda Knox and
her boyfriend attracts attention.
Meredith's friends tell police
that, far from appearing distraught,
Amanda and Raffaele have
been seen laughing and joking.
A vigil is held for Meredith, but
Amanda and Raffaele don't attend -
they go for dinner
at a friend's instead.
And the prosecutor recalls why he
was concerned by Amanda's behaviour.
TRANSLATED: When the girls
were brought to see the knives
that were in the kitchen,
the reaction of Amanda...
It was a reaction... She put her
hands on her ears, as if she were
trying to block out a terrible sound
she was hearing in her ears.
It was like she was having
a nervous breakdown.
And then there was this,
one of the defining images
of the case -
Amanda and Raffaele kissing
outside the cottage
where Meredith was murdered.
Her supporters say
this was only natural.
Did they comfort each other?
We've seen that famous footage of
the two of them together. They did.
What's wrong with any of that?
Nothing.
It did appear to be wrong
to some authorities.
November 5th.
Four days after the murder.
Raffaele Sollecito
is called in for questioning.
Amanda goes with him, and once again
her behaviour seems odd.
She does yoga and the splits
in the waiting room.
At this point, the couple's
alibi appears to fall apart.
Amanda had told police she'd
spent the night of the murder
at Raffaele's apartment.
They cooked, watched a film,
made love, smoked marijuana
and went to bed.
But separately,
Raffaele's story begins to change.
He's no longer sure
if Amanda was with him all night.
Amanda's called in
for more questioning.
As she is only
a witness at this stage,
an interpreter is present
but she has no legal representation.
What happens next is crucial,
and one of the most controversial
twists in the story.
Police ask Amanda Knox about
text messages on her phone.
In particular, a message
from her boss, Patrick Lumumba.
TRANSLATED: "Don't come to work
tonight." I sent that message.
It's, like, Sunday. "Don't come
to work." I sent that message.
Amanda had texted back,
"See you later."
She says she just meant
"see you around",
but police now want to know...
had Amanda arranged to meet
Lumumba later that evening
and taken him to her house?
At 1.45 in the morning,
Amanda breaks down.
TRANSLATED: She says
she had entered the house with him
because he was attracted to Meredith
and wanted to be with Meredith,
and she stayed in the kitchen
and heard Meredith's screams,
and HE was the assassin.
That's what she said.
Police believe Amanda Knox's story.
They raid Patrick Lumumba's home
and take him in.
Within hours,
his photo flashes around the world
as one of the murder suspects.
But for the police, Amanda Knox has
now gone from witness to suspect.
If she's taken Lumumba to Meredith,
she must have been at the house.
TRANSLATED: She put herself
at the scene of the crime.
She admitted to
accompanying Lumumba
as if she were an accomplice
in his project.
She was in the room next door when
the crime happened, in her version.
This fact pushed the police
to suspend the audition
in order to protect her rights.
November 6th 2007.
Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito
are arrested.
Waiting to be taken to jail,
Amanda makes another attempt to tell
police what happened with Lumumba
by writing out an
explanation in English.
"In my mind, I saw Patrick
in flashes of blurred images.
"I saw him near the basketball court.
I saw him at my front door.
"I saw myself cowering in the kitchen
with my hands over my ears
"because, in my head,
I could hear Meredith screaming.
"But I have said this many times,
so as to make myself clear -
"these things seems unreal to me,
like a dream.
"I want to make it clear that
I am very doubtful
"of the verity of my statements
"because they were made
under the pressure
"of stress, shock
and extreme exhaustion."
But, despite her uncertainty,
she doesn't retract her accusation.
Lumumba remains in jail,
pleading his innocence.
In the city square,
members of the African community
protest against his arrest.
TRANSLATED: The black man is
always the thief and the assassin.
She wanted them to believe
what she was saying.
It was just because I was black.
At this point, another African
immigrant enters the story.
20-year-old Rudy Guede, from the
Ivory Coast, is living in Perugia.
Detectives find his bloody
thumbprint on a pillowcase
that was underneath Meredith's
dead body.
Because he's an immigrant,
they have his prints on file.
Police raid his
tiny bedsit apartment
and test his toothbrush for DNA.
It matches traces found on
Meredith's bra strap, on her body
and on the left sleeve
of her pale-blue sweatshirt.
Rudy Guede has fled the country.
He's arrested in Germany.
Perugia attorney Valter Biscotti
volunteers to defend him.
TRANSLATED: I met this
young man in this prison
in Schiffenstadt, Germany,
and he seemed to me like
a guy who was scared,
someone who was in the middle of
a story that was bigger than him.
He was surprised to see a lawyer
who arrived from Italy for him.
Extradited back to Italy,
Rudy Guede confirms to police that
he's lived in the country
since the age of five.
A keen basketball player,
he'd met Amanda and Meredith
after shooting hoops with students
who lived in the apartment
below theirs.
They partied and
smoked dope together.
Meanwhile, the case
against Patrick Lumumba,
as outlined by Amanda Knox,
collapses.
A customer at the bar has given
him an alibi and he's freed.
How did Amanda Knox come to
mention Lumumba's name to police?
For the first time,
we can hear an audio tape
of her explanation
to the prosecutor.
A transcript of this was presented
in court, but not the audio.
Accompanied by three lawyers
and an interpreter,
on December 17th 2007,
Knox is asked why she told police
Lumumba committed the crime.
So what's the extent of the police
evidence at this point?
It includes a knife found
at Raffaele Sollecito's apartment
they believe could be
the murder weapon.
But they need more,
so return to the crime scene.
46 days after the murder, they find
Meredith's bra clasp under a mat.
Using rubber gloves, they pick it up
and inspect it.
It will become the most
controversial piece of evidence
in the investigation.
The defence will claim the delay
in collecting it
could have resulted in
contamination.
Investigators also,
for the first time, use luminol,
a chemical that highlights
invisible blood stains.
Three clear footprints
appear in the hallway,
plus other small bloodstains.
More new evidence,
but it will be controversial.
In Seattle, the campaign to prove
Amanda is innocent is underway.
Her family turn to a crisis
communications firm
and a group called
Friends of Amanda Knox.
It was just this kind of small
group of people that were called
"the Americans" in our offence.
I think there was one quote that
the Americans would send in
the marines to get Amanda Knox.
The campaign helps recast
Amanda as a victim,
a young American girl being
railroaded into an injustice
far away from home.
I love Italy. I've been to Italy.
And I have great respect for their
courts.
I do think we have a rogue
prosecutor.
In Italy,
if you speak against the prosecution,
you can be prosecuted,
so nobody can speak.
And it's a perfect storm of a
potentially very unfair prosecution.
The prosecutor denies this
accusation
and believes he personally has
become the focus for criticism of
the prosecution case.
TRANSLATED: I don't know why, but I
was the lightning rod in this case.
It was a personal attack.
Amanda Knox's DNA has been found
mixed together with
Meredith Kercher's in five blood
stains in the flat.
Plus, tests show the bare
footprints match the size
and shape of Amanda's
and her boyfriend's feet.
And the kitchen knife from
Raffaele's apartment
shows Amanda's DNA on the handle
and a tiny trace
of Meredith's DNA on the blade.
The clock spins forward almost one
year, to September 2008.
Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito
and Rudy Guede
appear before a judge in Perugia.
With so much publicity now
surrounding Knox,
Guede opts to be tried quickly
and separately.
TRANSLATION: I was convinced that if
he had been tried with the others,
that with all the international
media clamour and the international
pressure there would have been
surrounding this trial,
they would have dumped all the blame
on Rudy.
The prosecution's case is
a tabloid editor's dream.
They say Amanda Knox,
Raffaele Sollecito
and Rudy Guede killed Meredith
Kercher in a sex game gone wrong.
Guede denies this
and pleads not guilty.
His defence is that he wasn't in the
room when Meredith was murdered,
he was in the bathroom.
Meredith had invited him over,
he said.
When he got there,
Meredith was furious
because money was missing
and she was blaming Amanda.
He says he comforted Meredith,
and things got physical,
but they didn't have full sex.
He went to the toilet, then says
he heard Amanda enter the apartment.
TRANSLATED: He heard Amanda's
voice as she came in.
He was in the bathroom or
just about to go into the bathroom,
and then he really did put on his
headphones and listen to music,
rap I think, at full volume, and
then heard a scream. He came out
and came up against a male figure.
Rudy Guede says this man lunged at
him with a knife, cutting his hand.
He claims the attacker then yelled
"Black man found,
black man condemned,"
and ran away.
Guede found Meredith
bleeding in the other room.
He tried to stem the blood
with towels,
and left a bloody
thumbprint on the pillowcase.
But the bleeding didn't stop,
and Guede says he panicked.
He tried to help her.
He took her in his arms
and should have called help,
but he was scared and ran away,
and he feels guilty for this.
Rudy Guede is found
guilty of Meredith's murder
and sentenced to 30 years.
The judge's verdict says Rudy Guede
did not act alone.
He's led away to prison.
Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito
will now stand trial
for the murder and sexual
assault of Meredith Kercher.
January 16th 2009.
The trial begins.
The world's media is
focused on Amanda Knox.
Her face fills the front pages.
Could this attractive, bubbly,
all-American girl be
capable of murder?
As they did at Rudy Guede's trial,
the prosecution again suggests
the murder was the result of a sex
game gone wrong.
Again, this is strongly denied.
Amanda and Raffaele claim they
weren't in the house that night.
To support their case,
the prosecution produces evidence
they claim places the couple
at the scene of the murder.
First, there's the DNA
found in the bathroom.
The prosecution says it shows
the mixed blood of Amanda Knox
and Meredith Kercher
in the bidet drain,
the sink drain
and on a cotton bud box.
There is also a large drop of
Amanda's blood on the bathroom tap.
According to the prosecutor,
this shows Amanda and Meredith were
bleeding at the same time,
strong evidence there was a fight.
TRANSLATED: The principal evidence
was mixed blood traces
from which were extracted mixed DNA
of Amanda and Meredith.
The only explanation for that mix
is that
Amanda was bleeding
and touched objects
that were covered in
Meredith's blood.
There's no other explanation.
But Amanda's lawyers say this proves
nothing - two young students
living together means it's perfectly
normal to find mixed blood
and DNA in the bathroom.
They say it's possible Amanda's DNA
isn't from her blood at all
but from her saliva.
Sarah Gino is the forensic biologist
on Amanda Knox's defence team.
TRANSLATED: In the case, the test was
done for blood.
But was the test done for saliva?
No. So we can't know if inside that
mixed trace there was blood
because it had been demonstrated,
or just saliva.
Or maybe there was blood from both
of them, but what does that mean?
Maybe someone had a bloody nose one
time and then, at a another moment,
someone cut their finger and put
it down, and their blood got mixed.
Then there was the kitchen knife
found in
Raffaele's Sollecito's flat.
This, say the prosecutors,
is the murder weapon,
which has been cleaned.
But they have found
DNA of Amanda Knox on the handle
and a minuscule amount of
Meredith Kercher's DNA on the blade.
But the words "too low" are written
on the DNA reports for the knife.
The test should never have been
carried out, say the defence,
there's not enough reliable DNA.
When questioned by journalists,
the prosecution
stands by its forensic evidence.
TRANSLATED: It is not too little.
The genetic profile is low,
but it is absolutely reliable.
In fact, we were able to get it,
which means there is no uncertainty
about the attribution
of that profile to the victim.
More DNA evidence is presented,
this time on Meredith's bra clasp.
Police says Raffaele Sollecito's
DNA is on one of the hooks.
This is the only evidence placing
him in her bedroom.
There is no DNA evidence that puts
Amanda in the room.
David Balding, a DNA statistician
at University College London,
is recognised as one of the world's
leading analysts.
In 2012, he is asked by the Italian
Forensic Association to study
Meredith Kercher's bra clasp and to
give an independent view
on whether Sollecito's DNA
is present.
His findings are not
part of the court case.
When you just look at the evidence
by eye, you can see very strongly
all of Raffaele Sollecito's
DNA types are there
and that can't be explained by any
kind of environmental contamination.
I calculate how likely is the
evidence under
the prosecution assertion that DNA is
there from Raffaele Sollecito
and again how likely it is
without him being present.
And the former is much greater
than the latter,
so that's when I say that's
extremely strong evidence.
But forensic experts representing
the defence remain adamant that
the bra clasp had been contaminated
and is unreliable.
TRANSLATED: As far as the bra clasp
is concerned, what happened?
This bra clasp was collected 46 days
after the first crime scene
inspection, and a mixture
of biological material was found.
There was a profile attributable
to the victim, which is normal,
and other material that was
attributable to Raffaele Sollecito.
There were other traces, but
they were not attributed to anyone.
The defence also uses
the crime scene video to question
the DNA evidence
presented by the prosecution.
I have looked at the crime scene...
the videos.
Bloody shoe prints, cleaned up.
Cleaned up, not saved.
A bra strap collected weeks
and weeks
and weeks after the initial
collection,
that now supposedly connects
Amanda, Raffaele and Meredith.
But the prosecution keeps producing
evidence they say connects
Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito
to the crime scene.
TRANSLATED: Amanda's footprints,
which were revealed by the luminol,
showed DNA attributed to Meredith,
which means Amanda was walking
in bare feet covered in blood.
They argue this is proof the couple
came back during the night
to clean up and stage the break-in,
leaving bloodstained footprints
in the bathroom and corridor.
The defence says there is no proof
the prints actually were
bloodstains.
The luminol may have revealed
another substance such as bleach.
The prosecution also presents
evidence to challenge
the couple's story of what they did
that night and the next morning.
They show Raffaele's cellphone was
turned on at 6.02am,
despite the couple's claim
they slept until ten.
Then there's the telephone call
to the Carabinieri,
when Sollecito knew nothing
had been stolen,
and failed to mention the postal
police were at the scene.
They also question Raffaele
Sollecito's changing alibi and
prison eyewitnesses who contradict
Knox and Sollecito's stories.
In court, the prosecution accuses
Amanda Knox of being
the leader of a sexual
attack on Meredith.
They say this was
payback for Meredith's disapproval
of Amanda's lifestyle.
TRANSLATED: The erotic game was
always part of the case.
I think that night, Amanda wanted to
make Meredith pay for judging her,
which she found offensive.
A girl from Seattle that worked
three jobs to get to Italy
to study abroad, an honour student
from Seattle Prep,
doesn't overnight, in my experience,
turn into a depraved murderess.
Overnight.
The court's claims make difficult
hearing for the Knox family.
Obviously, listening to those
types of things were horrible.
It was an all-out attack on her
character by individuals that
have no idea who
she truly is as a person.
One of the things that we have tried
to do this entire time is obviously
support Amanda by always having
somebody over here,
somebody to visit her
and stuff like that.
And we have to stay strong in order
for her to stay strong.
Amanda Knox spends two
days on the stand telling her
version of the story.
Millions worldwide watch her
explanation of why
she put the pub owner
Patrick Lumumba in the frame.
They told me that I was trying to
protect someone...
INTERPRETER TRANSLATES INTO ITALIAN
..but I wasn't trying to
protect anyone.
They continued to put
so much emphasis...
..on this message that
I had received from Patrick...
..and so I almost was convinced that
I had met him.
Her case is this.
She was at Raffaele's house
when the murder happened,
watching a movie
and reading her e-mails.
She can't prove it because two
of their three computers were
damaged when police tried to
search the hard-drives.
Throughout the year-long trial,
Meredith's family
fly in from London to testify
and witness the key hearings.
They try to keep the focus
on Meredith
and their quest for justice.
3rd December 2009.
The eve of the verdict.
Amanda's family arrives to hear
her plea for freedom.
She knows that she's innocent
and has had nothing to do with this
and we're just very
hopeful that the court will see
and be able to see that in the
evidence that's been presented.
Amanda is now almost fluent
in Italian.
323 days since the trial started.
The verdict is
broadcast around the world.
Guilty of murder.
25 years for Raffaele Sollecito
and 26 for Amanda Knox,
the extra year for slandering
Patrick Lumumba.
The Kerchers' Italian lawyer
is satisfied.
TRANSLATED: The failed alibis,
the behaviour of Sollecito and Knox,
Knox's statements,
the slander of Patrick Lumumba.
These are all elements
that, once put together,
allowed the determination of guilt.
But Knox's family are angry.
They keep tight-lipped as they leave
the courtroom.
Push back, push back. Chris,
Chris, stop it.
And when they return to Seattle,
they immediately start
preparing her appeal.
There's not one piece of
physical evidence
to link this girl to this crime.
They draft legal, forensic, media
and political support
from the US and Italy
to strengthen the defence team.
It takes a year to get to the
appeal.
By now, Knox and Sollecito have
been in jail for three years.
This time, there's a new judge
and a new prosecutor,
Giancarlo Costagliola.
TRANSLATED: Despite the
fact that there had already
been a conviction, the deputy judge
said at the beginning of the hearing
that the only thing that was certain
was that a girl was dead.
Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito's
defence teams decide to
focus on Rudy Guede.
They call prison inmates, convicted
criminals, to testify that
Guede has confessed to them
in prison.
June 27th 2011.
Rudy Guede takes the stand.
By now, after an appeal,
his sentence has been cut
from 30 to 16 years.
He denies he made a jailhouse
confession
and is asked about a letter
he has written claiming Amanda Knox
and Raffaele Sollecito
killed Meredith.
The key focus of the appeal is on
the DNA -
Knox and Kercher's DNA on the knife,
Sollecito's on the bra clasp.
Is it enough to place the defendants
at the crime scene or not?
The court appoints independent
experts Carla Vecchiotti
and Stefano Conti from the
University of Sapienza, Rome,
to review the science.
Their report is scathing
about prosecution forensic methods.
They cite US manuals and standards,
highlighting errors made
when the evidence was collected.
They do find a new trace of DNA
on the knife from Sollecito's
kitchen that hasn't been tested.
However, they argue,
it's too small to be of use.
This report helps the judge
focus his decision on
whether there is reasonable
doubt about the DNA samples.
For Meredith's mother
and the rest of her family,
the hearings are agonising.
Everything that Meredith must've
felt that night,
everything she went through,
the fear and the terror,
and not knowing why...
And she didn't deserve that.
No-one deserves that.
Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito
await their fate
for the second time.
Not guilty.
She will be freed,
she will be going back to
Seattle, Washington, at the end
of her four-year ordeal.
There's sufficient reasonable
doubt for Amanda Knox
and Raffaele Sollecito to be
released immediately.
I'm Deanna Knox, Amanda Knox's
sister,
and I have a few words
on behalf of our family.
We are thankful that Amanda's
nightmare is over.
She has suffered for four years for
a crime that she did not commit.
TRANSLATED: It is evident that
Raffaele had nothing to do
with the murder of that poor girl,
Meredith Kercher,
who remains in our heart.
Some in the gathering crowd
becoming increasingly
agitated about the verdicts.
TRANSLATED: There were people
out on the stairs
in front of the courthouse,
and for a long time they yelled,
"Shame on you!"
SHOUTING
A dark sedan ferries Amanda Knox
away to a safe house
deep in the Italian countryside
for an emotional reunion
with relatives
after almost four years in jail...
..while Meredith's family is left
stunned and pained by the acquittal.
Meredith has been almost
forgotten in all of it.
The media photos aren't really
of her.
There is not a lot about what
actually happened in the beginning,
so it's very difficult to keep her
memory alive in all of this.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The media's photos will be of
Amanda Knox arriving home
at Seattle Airport.
I'm really overwhelmed right now.
I was looking down from the aeroplane
and it seemed like everything
wasn't real. Erm...
What's important for me to say is
just thank you to everyone who has
believed in me...
who has defended me,
who has supported my family.
Um...
Amanda finds a home in Seattle's
International District and returns
to the University of Washington
to study creative writing.
She starts writing a book
about her experience,
reportedly receiving
a 4 million advance,
although claims that all
of the money goes on legal expenses.
Back in Italy, Rudy Guede
is still in prison,
where he's been beaten
up by inmates.
He's begun studying
to build himself a future
and will soon be eligible
for parole.
His lawyer claims that Rudy Guede
has been made a scapegoat.
TRANSLATED: I am convinced
Rudy is innocent.
Rudy was lynched by the media.
He was the weakest link.
He was the weak one who had
to pay for them all.
In the sentence, it says he is not
the actual murderer.
It says he didn't handle the knife,
or anything,
but because the judge found
he took part in the group violence,
he is guilty.
For a while, this seems
like the end of the story,
but fate, or the Italian justice
system, has another twist in store.
Now it's the turn of the prosecution
to appeal,
and on 26th March 2013,
Italy's highest court, known
as the Court of Cassation,
orders a new trial,
overturning Amanda Knox and Raffaele
Sollecito's acquittals.
They say the first appeal did not
debate many of the 10,000 pages
from the first trial, focusing
too much on the DNA evidence.
TRANSLATED: The Court of Cessation
was very, very harsh.
It commented on the lack of logic,
the lack of coordination
in the reasoning. It was severe,
almost devastating, for the judges.
September 30th 2013,
the second appeal begins.
This time,
the drama switches to the birthplace
of the Renaissance - Florence.
Amanda Knox isn't in the courtroom.
She refuses to travel from America,
and defends her decision
on television.
I look at it as an admission
of innocence, to be quite honest,
because, I mean, besides the fact
that there are
so many factors that are not allowing
me to go back, financial ones,
ones where I'm going to school,
ones where I want the court to
proceed without distraction, it's...
I was imprisoned as an innocent
person, and that...
It's common sense not to go back.
Only Raffaele Sollecito
is present in court.
He makes a plea to the judge
and jury.
Unlike in the appeals court, this
judge orders a police forensics lab
in Rome to test the new trace
of DNA found on the kitchen knife.
It's a minuscule amount from
where the blade meets the handle.
The new test finds that
the DNA matches Amanda Knox.
Prosecutors say it further proves
her involvement in the murder,
but the defence says the most likely
explanation is that Amanda
used the knife when staying
at Raffaele's apartment.
Six years and two months
after Meredith Kercher's murder,
the second appeal of Amanda Knox
and Raffaele Sollecito
is coming to a close,
the judgment watched by the world.
Sollecito doesn't wait to hear
the verdict, speeding off in a taxi.
Amanda Knox stays
in the United States,
plagued by the same fears
she shared on television.
I thought about what it would be like
to live my entire life in prison,
and to lose everything, to lose what
I've been able to come back to
and rebuild. I think about it
all the time. And it's so scary.
Everything's at stake.
Shortly after 9.30pm local time,
after deliberating
for more than 12 hours,
the judge and jury enter the hall.
Within the past hour, an Italian
court of appeal has reinstated
the convictions of the American
citizen Amanda Knox and her former
Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito
for the murder of...
This time, an even longer sentence.
28 years and six months
for Amanda Knox,
25 years for Raffaele Sollecito.
The lawyers give their verdict.
TRANSLATED: This trial has been
media driven.
Everything has been amplified.
These kids were taken to prison
four days after the body was found.
They were the first suspects.
And they never lost that image.
TRANSLATED: If it was
a media-driven trial,
it's not due to the Kercher family,
who have been absolutely silent.
So, if we are talking
about a media circus,
we need to look at the behaviour
of the suspects and their followers.
In court, the victim of
Amanda Knox's original slander,
Patrick Lumumba, is relieved.
He's been awarded
40,000 euros' compensation.
Raffaele Sollecito has disappeared.
But the next day, police find him
near the Austrian border.
His lawyers say he wasn't trying
to flee the country.
He's expected to remain free
until his final appeal.
Back in Florence, Meredith's sister
and brother face the media
and are asked if they think
Amanda Knox should be
extradited from America to Italy.
If somebody's found guilty
and convicted of a murder,
if an extradition law
exists between those two countries,
then I don't see why they wouldn't.
I imagine it would set a
difficult precedent if a country
such as the US didn't choose to go
along with laws that they themselves
uphold when extraditing convicted
criminals from other countries.
It probably leaves them
in a strange position not to.
Knox and Sollecito
will appeal one last time.
Then, if the verdict is upheld,
Italy will decide
whether to request Amanda Knox's
extradition.
It's not the end of it.
It's another chapter,
moving things forward.
Anybody losing anyone close
to them is hard.
Losing somebody so young and the way
that we did is, obviously,
100 times worse.
And then on top of that,
to have all the media attention
that has gone on for so long
just makes it very,
very difficult to cope with.
Even if the guilty verdicts
are upheld on appeal,
Amanda Knox has vowed to keep
fighting to clear her name.
After her conviction, she releases
a written statement saying
she is frightened and saddened by
this unjust verdict,
followed by this photograph
which reads, "We are innocent."
I think we all definitely
want some form of closure,
even just having it almost at an end
of the Italian justice system,
and knowing that
that's the final decision,
and then we can all start
to remember just Meredith,
rather than focusing on
who did it or what happened.
Six years have passed
since the death of Meredith Kercher.
So, are Amanda Knox
and her former boyfriend
Raffaele Sollecito guilty?
On January 30th 2014,
the Italian justice system said yes.
But with another appeal
in the pipeline,
the hard reality
for Meredith's family
is that their ordeal
is still not over.