Meredith: Blood-soaked hair in hand holds key
MEREDITH Kercher fought for her life in a last violent struggle with her killer, it was claimed yesterday.
Forensic experts in Italy are still testing bloodied hair found in the British student’s left hand, according to reports.
Italian newspaper La Stampa said the strands are evidence of her fight with the person who slashed her throat after first trying to rape her.
The body of Meredith – who was on a study year from Leeds University – was found semi-naked on November 2 in the bedroom of a flat she shared in Perugia with American suspect Amanda Knox, 20.
The newspaper said: “We know that Meredith Kercher, on the evening of November 1, fought back and tried to defend herself.” According to a leaked police statement, Knox boasted to her friends of how she found Meredith’s body.
And detectives were said to be planning to examine a computer belonging to Knox’s boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, after he claimed he was surfing the internet on the night Meredith, 21, from Coulsdon, south London, was killed.
A search of Sollecito’s flat has already unearthed violent comic books. Police also want to establish whether there is blood on the pedals of his Audi car, which has been impounded, or his size 8 Nike trainers.
Lawyers for Sollecito, 24, claim no traces of blood have yet been found.
Meredith’s friend, Robyn Butterworth, has told police how the exchange student and Knox fell out because of the American’s habit of “never flushing the toilet”.
Robyn, who is also studying at Leeds University, said she heard Knox talking about finding Meredith’s body.
She said: “She described how she had come back to the apartment at around 11am.
“She said that she had found the front door open and that she had gone into the bathroom that she and Meredith shared. She was saying how she had seen Meredith’s body in a wardrobe or reflecting in the mirror of a wardrobe.
“I just remember thinking at the time Amanda’s behaviour was very strange. It was as if she wasn’t bothered at all. Her behaviour also struck other friends who were there.
“Amanda’s behaviour was always a little strange, even before. She seemed to be the extravagant type.”
Knox, Sollecito and a third suspect, Patrick Lumumba, 37, are all being held in jail.
Yesterday it emerged that Knox has been bombarded with love letters after lurid details of her sex life were published in the Italian media.
In one letter an admirer writes: “Dear Amanda, I am thinking of you – what are you doing in jail, how are you getting on? I am hoping you will be free soon so we can meet. I cannot believe that someone that looks like you do could have done the things that are claimed.”
The Italian newspaper Corriere de la Serra said Foxy Knoxy – as Knox called herself on her internet page – had borrowed an English-Italian dictionary from the prison library to translate the letters.
