Meredith Kercher

On November 2, 2007, twenty-one-year-old Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher, a British exchange student from the University of Leeds studying in Perugia, Italy, was found dead in her bedroom in the apartment she shared with American student Amanda Knox and two Italian women. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed in the throat.

Italian police initially arrested Amanda Knox, her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and Patrick Lumumba, a bar owner Knox worked for. Lumumba was released after establishing an alibi. DNA evidence and fingerprints led to the arrest of Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast-born drifter living in Perugia.

Guede was convicted of murder in a fast-track trial in 2008 and sentenced to 30 years (later reduced to 16 years on appeal). Knox and Sollecito were convicted of murder in 2009 and sentenced to 26 and 25 years respectively. Their convictions were overturned on appeal in 2011, reinstated by the Court of Cassation in 2013, and definitively overturned by Italy's highest court in 2015.

The case became an international media spectacle and raised serious questions about the Italian justice system, media influence on criminal proceedings, and the treatment of foreign suspects. Knox returned to the United States after her acquittal and became an advocate for criminal justice reform.