The mystery of Meredith's murder

Dennis Murphy Correspondent • Profile

This report originally aired on Dateline on Friday, Dec. 5 at 10 p.m. ET, 9 p.m. CT.

This was a gruesome, gruesome murder. Who would commit such a crime? She's been criminalized. She was literally in shock. The girl from Seattle with the face of an angel... and ice-cold eyes.

She is flanked by Italian police guards whenever she leaves her 15 by 15-foot jail cell. Even a year later, photographers still jostle for a picture of the fresh American face at the center of Italy's most sensational murder case.

Twenty-one year-old Amanda Knox has declared again and again that she did not murder her university roommate but if her lawyers can't convince an Italian court of that, she can expect to be sentenced to more than 20 years in prison.

Here you'll see chilling, rarely-seen crime scene video ...the evidence against her she must explain. You'll meet her parents and feel the steely rage they have for a prosecutor they believe has conducted an outrageous trial by media. You'll hear Amanda in her own words: raw and emotional on leaked audio tape.

And a torrent of words from a prison diary: her dreams of someday walking free and the party she'll throw when she gets back home to Seattle- if she gets back.

The story begins here in the old fortress town of Perugia, Italy. In November 2007, two days after Halloween, the police forced open a bedroom door in a small student rental and found the naked body of a young English woman covered by a bed quilt. Her throat had been slashed, her blood thoroughly soaking the cotton shirt bunched up around her neck.

All the forensic evidence pointed to attempted rape and murder.  Three-hundred and fifty dollars in rent money the victim had withdrawn that day was missing. A broken window suggested an intruder.

The awful crime here on the via Sante Antonio would quickly have been forgotten as yet another head-shaking statistic. Sad but not all that uncommon, except for the authorities’ chilling theory of the murder.

According to an investigating judge who issued a very preliminary kind of finding, it appears that the young English woman died at the hands of her friends. That she - the victim - refused to play along in their high-voltage games of drugs and group sex and as a consequence was tortured, sexually assaulted, stabbed and then left to die.

In the days after, the violent sex crime electrified Italy as pictures of three suspects appeared in the news. But the storyline quickly fixed on the person who seemed to be the connective tissue to all the players. The American studying Italian here at the University for Foreigners.

The riddle near the center of this lurid murder story is Amanda Knox and to begin to find out who she is we have to travel almost 6000 miles west, to Perugia's sister city, Seattle, Wash.

In this coffee-mad city, Amanda was the bubbly barista - the latte and cappuccino artiste - at this busy espresso bar near the University of Washington.

Video   Get a virtual tour of Italy murder scene Watch a graphic representation of the little house in Italy shared by Amanda Knox and murder victim Meredith Kercher. It would later be known as "The House of Horrors." Dateline NBC

She was in her junior year at the U doing Dean's list level work in German and Italian studies. A delight to her former dormmates.

Dennis Murphy:  What are the kind of personality traits you're thinking about?

Alexandra: Generous, kind, genuine, optimistic, bubbly.  Pretty much all the good words that you can find in a dictionary she was.

By most accounts here, Amanda was no different than thousands of other young Seattle-ites growing into young adulthood. Outdoorsy. Tasting the first freedom of college, first jobs, first serious boyfriends. If there is a downside to her high-spiritedness, friends reflect that maybe she was naive in her judgement about the new people she was so eager to seek out. Boys. She tended to take in strays.

Male friend: She is a bit trusting and overly optimistic. It's sort of like, why shouldn't I trust this person?

To the point, her friends have said, that they had to warn her to be more careful when it came to strangers.

Amanda was known as a light drinker in her circle, tipsy after only a shot, as a now notorious cell phone video that made its way onto YouTube shows. She wasn't one to smoke a joint or take party drugs, according to her friends. The club scene was alien to her.

On Aug. 14, 2007, she was off to Europe. The first great adventure of her life. The first time she was truly on her own. She'd keep the posse back home up to speed on her journey through her webpage blog on MySpace. A final shout-out: "peace out suckers, love, Amanda."

And she was off.

In England, meanwhile, another young student- also a language major- was preparing to leave for university studies in Italy. She was 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, a recent college graduate. Meredith, like Amanda, was going to be living in Perugia, Italy, for the next school term.

Both young women had to find a place to live. Their paths would meet in a little house with a splendid view over the Umbrian valley. Two young women in Italy expecting the most exciting year of their lives.

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