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Murdered Meredith’s distraught family plead:
‘Give our girl justice too’
As jubilant Amanda Knox is 'home free' in Seattle:
US: Meredith Kercher’s bewildered family vowed to pursue justice
yesterday as Amanda Knox flew home with the status of an international
star..Agony etched on their faces, they demanded to know what had `truly
happened’ to the 21-year-old British student.
Meredith’s dejected mother Arline Kercher, sister Stephanie and
brother Lyle described being `back to square one’.Lyle said: ‘We are
left looking at this again, and how a decision that was so certain two
years ago has now been so emphatically overturned.’
‘Back to square one’: Stephanie Kercher, left, has spoken of her wish
to find the killers of her sister Meredith. In stark contrast, beaming
American Knox told a press conference in Seattle early this morning that
she was looking forward to spending time with her family after four
years in an Italian jail.
Earlier she had told friends she felt as if she was `flying already’
as she prepared to leave Rome on a British Airways flight.
She was given VIP treatment when she changed flights at Heathrow,
being ushered into the Windsor Suite normally reserved for royalty and
foreign dignitaries.Freed on Monday when her conviction for murdering
Meredith was quashed, she can look forward to making millions from her
story.
Shortly after Knox’s plane took off, Italian public prosecutor
Giuliano Mignini announced his intention to take the case to a third and
final appeal, and condemned the decision to free her and her Italian
former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito as a `massive mistake’.
Cleared: Amanda Knox, pictured left arriving at Rome airport
yesterday, has been acquitted of the murder of her roommate, British
student Meredith Kercher.
The lack of a motive and errors made by forensic investigators
crucially undermined the case against Amanda Knox, one of the jurors who
freed her from Italian jail said yesterday. He told the Guardian
newspaper: ‘As a father, I have a real feeling for the Kerchers’ pain.
But you need conclusive motives to condemn, as well as conclusive
evidence.
‘There were lots of mistakes by the forensic investigators that
robbed the case of any certainty.’Mr Angeletti, 40, was one of six
jurors who, along with two professional judges, upheld the appeal by
Knox and ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito against their 26- and 25-year
sentences for the brutal sex killing of Miss Kercher in 2007.
The six jurors - five women and Mr Angeletti - were themselves
technically lay judges, and were selected using more demanding
educational criteria than those at Knox and Sollecito’s first trial.
Mr Angeletti, who said he had heard appeals in four other murder
trials, said he had focused more on documentary evidence provided to the
court than the speeches by Knox.
Exchange student Miss Kercher, from Coulsdon in Surrey, was found
semi-naked and with her throat slashed in the Perugia house she shared
with Knox in November 2007. Daily Mail |
