Knox background: Lurid details of sex and drugs fuelled headlines that grabbed world’s attention

IT WAS a normal phone call from a student abroad home. Meredith Kercher told her mother she was tired after partying the night before and planned to watch a film that evening with friends, but would not stay out late as she had an essay to write and a lecture at 10am the next day.

The pair talked daily and, as it was 1 November, 2007, much of the chat was about Meredith’s return home at Christmas. But Arline never saw her 21-year-old daughter again. The next day Meredith was found dead in her room. Her throat had been cut and her semi-naked body lay covered by a duvet. Prosecutors said the murder had been “accompanied by sexual violence”.

It was a shocking death, but when Meredith’s housemate Amanda Knox, then 20, and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who was 23, were arrested on suspicion of murder, it quickly became infamous. Foxy Knoxy, as she was nicknamed – but for footballing prowess rather than anything more salacious, her family insist – became an international media obsession.

In fact, Stephanie Kercher, 21, said her big sister had been “completely forgotten” in the furore that engulfed the pair.

If one moment ignited the world’s suspicion, it was a tender embrace between Knox and Sollecito outside the large white cottage at the top of a steep wooded valley in the historic centre of Perugia, where Meredith had been killed.

Captured on camera, it came to symbolise the couple’s seemingly uncaring response to the grisly murder. If that moment planted the seed of vilification, there was no shortage of details to help it grow – particularly for Knox. The all-American from Seattle reportedly did cartwheels in her cell after being arrested on suspicion of the murder. She tried falsely to blame local bar owner Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, later claiming she was “confused”.

Meanwhile, a picture emerged of a party girl whose lifestyle was fuelled by alcohol, drugs and sex, who had slept with several men since arriving in Perugia. It emerged she had written a short story on a social networking site about a man who drugs and rapes a young girl.

Knox was sentenced to 26 years and Sollecito to 25. A third defendant, Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, from the Ivory Coast, was also found guilty of murder and sentenced to 30 years, but this was reduced to 16 on appeal.

He admitted being in Meredith’s house on the night of the murder, but said an Italian man he did not know was responsible for killing her.

Despite staying loyal to Knox, Sollecito helped build the wild child image of his ex-girlfriend in letters written from prison. “The Amanda I know… lives a carefree life,” he wrote to his father, a respected urologist in Bari, Italy. “Her only thought is the pursuit of pleasure.” However, he added: “But, even the thought that she could be a killer is impossible for me.”

For her part, it is alleged that Knox was quite prepared to blame her ex-boyfriend. “I think it is possible Raffaele went to Meredith’s house, raped her, then killed her and then when he got home, while I was sleeping, he pressed my fingerprints on the knife,” she reportedly wrote in a diary.

There is already talk of a film based on the murder, and suggestions that Knox could earn a lot of money from book, magazine and even modelling deals if she is released.

However, amid the obsession with her looks and lifestyle, cracks in the prosecution’s case emerged. Experts told the Italian court in July that forensic scientists involved made a number of glaring errors, casting doubt on DNA from the couple found on Meredith’s bra and the knife used to kill her.