Who Killed Meredith Kercher? 15 years on, one journalist’s first-hand account of what happened in Perugia

I interviewed Knox’s mother, Edda, and sister Deanna during her time in prison and
they spoke of their frustration that everyone had made up their minds about her; they
knew nothing they said would make any difference. Public opinion, once decided, is
virtually impossible to change.

The new documentary, which features interviews with several key figures including
Sollecito, Mignini and US forensic experts who worked on freeing Knox, explains why
they were eventually fully exonerated in 2015. The DNA evidence linking the pair to the
crime scene – a knife and a bra clasp – was proved to be worthless; improperly collected
and tested and probably contaminated.

Where it’s at its best, though, is in showing why the mystery over who killed Meredith
has lingered. Actually, it was likely a very straightforward crime. After Knox and
Sollecito were charged, police matched the vast amount of DNA at the scene – inside
Meredith’s body, in bloody handprints and in faeces in the toilet – to a man from the
Ivory Coast called Rudy Guede who, the documentary reveals, had a history of break-ins.
He had fled to Germany and changed his name following Meredith’s death.

But because Guede’s trial was fast-tracked, and he was never forced to testify in court,
his guilty verdict in 2008 attracted a fraction of the attention given to Knox and
Sollecito. People wondered, if Amanda Knox didn’t do it, who did? As the programme
shows, the answer is one man: Rudy Guede. The real scandal is that he was released
from prison in 2021 after serving just 13 years – and that he’s still never confessed to
what really happened, which would give the Kercher family the answers they deserve.

I’ve come to believe that, in the spotlight of the world’s media, the imaginations of the
Perugian police went into overdrive. I remember the informal press conference they
held the day after Meredith’s body had been found in which one British reporter
warned them to get the investigation right – ‘Don’t let her be another Madeleine
McCann.’ Three-year-old Madeleine had disappeared earlier the same year in Praia da
Luz, and it had been widely acknowledged that Portuguese police had botched the search.
I think the pressure to make an arrest made them act too quickly; later, when the real
culprit emerged, they may have felt they couldn’t back down.

Looking back, it seems obvious that the slew of stories about Knox’s sex life and vibrator
ownership were nothing but misogyny. An attractive young female murderer was a
tabloid dream – never mind that it was just that, a fantasy.

I’m not going to pretend I foresaw it all from the start, but I did feel something wasn’t
quite right. And although I know it won’t change the minds of those who’ll always
believe Amanda Knox is guilty, I’m glad that Who Killed Meredith Kercher? has finally
answered the question.

Who Killed Meredith Kercher is available on Paramount+ from August 25