The Foxy Knoxy case is the long-running Italian prosecution of American student Amanda Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for the November 2007 murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher in Perugia. After eight years, four trials, and two convictions, Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation acquitted both defendants in March 2015. A third person, Rudy Guede, was separately convicted of the murder and served his sentence. Knox’s only remaining Italian conviction is for slander, tied to statements she made during a police interrogation in the days after Kercher’s body was found.
The Murder in Perugia
Meredith Kercher was twenty-one, a University of Leeds student on exchange in Perugia. She shared a cottage at Via della Pergola 7 with Amanda Knox, a twenty-year-old from the University of Washington.1Wikipedia. Murder of Meredith Kercher On the afternoon of November 2, 2007, Italian Postal Police arrived to return two mobile phones found in a nearby garden.2The Telegraph. Meredith Kercher Murder: Judges Report The front door was open. Knox and Sollecito were there and had already noticed a broken window in a roommate’s bedroom and blood in the shared bathroom.
Kercher’s bedroom door was locked from the inside. Officers forced it and found her on the floor, partially covered by a duvet, with a fatal knife wound to the throat.3BBC News. Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito Acquitted by Italy Court Within days, investigators identified bloody fingerprints belonging to Rudy Guede, an Ivorian-born man known in Perugia. They also turned their attention to Knox and Sollecito.
Where “Foxy Knoxy” Came From
Foxy Knoxy was a childhood nickname Knox had picked up on the soccer field. British and Italian tabloids stripped that context away and built a character around it: a sexually manipulative young woman capable of orchestrating a murder. The persona had little to do with the dean’s-list student from Seattle, but it sold.
Reporters read Knox’s behavior in the days after the killing through that lens. Photos of her kissing Sollecito outside the cottage or stretching at the police station ran under the nickname, with the implied argument that a grieving innocent would not act this way. Forensic psychologists have long noted there is no reliable behavioral profile for grief and that cultural differences in emotional expression are well documented, but that did not fit a headline.
Italian jurors are not sequestered and see the same coverage everyone else does. The saturation of the Foxy Knoxy narrative shaped the atmosphere around a case whose forensic foundations were, as later review would show, thin. Meredith Kercher’s sister Stephanie put it plainly during the proceedings: “Meredith has been almost forgotten in all this.”
The Interrogation and the Accusation of Patrick Lumumba
Police questioned Knox repeatedly in the five days after the murder. She gave the same account each time. That changed in the early hours of November 6. Knox had no lawyer present; she was being questioned as a witness, not a suspect, which under Italian law meant no appointed counsel at that stage. The session was not recorded.
After hours of aggressive questioning without food, water, or sleep, Knox signed two statements prepared by police placing herself at the cottage during the attack and naming her boss, Patrick Lumumba, as the killer. She wrote a handwritten note soon after questioning her own statements, saying the scenes felt more like a dream than a memory.4CNN. Amanda Knox Slander Conviction Upheld by Italys High Court Lumumba was arrested immediately, held for two weeks, and released for lack of any forensic evidence tying him to the crime. His bar, Le Chic, closed shortly after.
Years later the European Court of Human Rights would find that Italy had violated Knox’s right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, specifically over the lack of legal counsel during that interrogation. The court awarded her damages.
Why the Forensic Case Collapsed
The physical case against Knox and Sollecito rested on two items, and neither survived independent review.
The Kitchen Knife
Investigators recovered a large kitchen knife from a drawer in Sollecito’s apartment. The Italian police forensic unit reported Knox’s DNA on the handle and a trace of Kercher’s DNA on the blade. The trace measured about 5 picograms per microliter, well below the minimum recommended by commercial testing kits, and the lab’s own fluorimeter returned a reading of “too low.”5National Library of Medicine. DNA and the Law in Italy: The Experience of the Perugia Case No blood was found on the blade at all.
Samples this small, known as low-copy-number DNA, demand strict protocols to guard against contamination and false results. The Italian forensic team did not follow them and did not repeat the amplification test, which is the standard safeguard. The electropherogram showed allele peaks below the 50 relative fluorescence unit threshold, with significant imbalance between paired alleles.5National Library of Medicine. DNA and the Law in Italy: The Experience of the Perugia Case
The Bra Clasp
A metal clasp from Kercher’s bra lay on her bedroom floor for forty-six days before investigators collected it.6BBC News. Kercher Trial: How Does DNA Contamination Occur Video of the two searches showed the clasp had moved between visits, and several people had walked through the room in the interim. Testing showed Sollecito’s DNA on the clasp along with DNA from several unidentified people, a finding the original forensic team did not disclose.5National Library of Medicine. DNA and the Law in Italy: The Experience of the Perugia Case
When independent experts appointed by the appeals court tried to re-examine the clasp, they couldn’t. The forensic police had stored it in a tube of extraction buffer, and it had rusted through. Given the collection delay, the movement of the item, and the unknown DNA profiles, the experts concluded environmental contamination could not be ruled out as the source of Sollecito’s DNA.5National Library of Medicine. DNA and the Law in Italy: The Experience of the Perugia Case
Rudy Guede: The Person Actually Convicted
While the prosecution built its case against Knox and Sollecito, the forensic evidence pointed overwhelmingly at Rudy Guede. His bloody fingerprints were on Kercher’s belongings, and his DNA was found inside her body.1Wikipedia. Murder of Meredith Kercher There was no comparable physical evidence placing Knox or Sollecito in the room where Kercher died.
Guede chose Italy’s fast-track trial procedure, which carries an automatic sentence reduction. He was convicted of murder and sexual assault in October 2008. His sentence, after appeal and the fast-track reduction, was set at sixteen years.7The Guardian. Court Cuts Rudy Guedes Sentence for Meredith Kercher Murder Guede maintained he was in the cottage that night but did not kill Kercher. He was allowed to serve the remainder through community service in December 2020 and was released from prison on November 24, 2021.
Eight Years Through the Italian Courts
Italian criminal procedure allows prosecutors to appeal acquittals. A defendant can be convicted, acquitted, reconvicted, and acquitted again as a case moves up. That is what happened here.
December 2009: Convictions
The Court of Assizes in Perugia convicted both defendants. Knox received twenty-six years, Sollecito twenty-five.8The Murder of Meredith Kercher. Sentence of the Court of Assizes of Perugia
October 2011: Acquittal
The appeals court appointed independent forensic experts, whose review dismantled the DNA case on both the knife and the bra clasp.5National Library of Medicine. DNA and the Law in Italy: The Experience of the Perugia Case Both defendants were acquitted. Knox flew home to Seattle after nearly four years in prison.
2013: Acquittal Annulled
The Supreme Court of Cassation annulled the acquittal, citing inconsistencies in the appeals court’s reasoning, and ordered a new trial.
January 2014: Reconviction
The Florence Appeals Court reinstated the convictions and increased Knox’s sentence to twenty-eight years and six months.9The Guardian. Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito Lose Meredith Kercher Murder Appeal Knox was in Seattle. Italian law could not compel her to return.
March 2015: Final Acquittal
The Supreme Court of Cassation acquitted both defendants under Article 530, paragraph 2 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure, which requires acquittal when evidence is insufficient or contradictory. The written motivation described the investigation as marked by “glaring failures” and “investigative amnesias,” and said the lower courts had used “acute speculative activity and suggestive logical argumentations” that were “merely assertive and dogmatic.”10The Murder of Meredith Kercher. Knox and Sollecito Appeal to the Supreme Court 2015 The ruling is final. Neither Knox nor Sollecito can be tried again for Meredith Kercher’s murder.
The Kercher family’s lawyer, Francesco Maresca, called the outcome “a defeat for the Italian justice system.” Meredith’s mother Arline said she was “a bit surprised, and very shocked,” pointing out that the two had been convicted twice.
The Slander Conviction Against Knox
The murder acquittal did not close every legal thread. Knox’s November 2007 statements naming Patrick Lumumba supported a separate charge of calunnia, the Italian offense of falsely accusing someone of a crime you know they did not commit. That conviction survived the 2015 murder acquittal.
In June 2024, a Florence court upheld the slander conviction at a retrial ordered by the European Court of Human Rights. Knox appeared in person and told the panel she had been “a young person in an existential crisis” when she made the accusation, and said she had not known the identity of the real killer. On January 23, 2025, Italy’s high court upheld the conviction as final.4CNN. Amanda Knox Slander Conviction Upheld by Italys High Court She faces no additional prison time; the sentence is treated as covered by the years she already served on the overturned murder conviction.