Coulsdon student Meredith Kercher's murder leaves "hole in our lives" say family

Miss Kercher's family had flown to Perugia in Italy yesterday to witness the guilty verdicts delivered on Meredith's killers Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

At a press conference Meredith's sister Stephanie, 26, said: "It brings a little bit of justice for us and for her. She is still very much part of our lives and she always will be. It's never going to be the same without Mez."

Brother John, 32, said: "Meredith leaves a big hole in our lives and her presence is missed every time we meet as a family. We want to concentrate on the 21 years we did have with her."

Her brother Lyle Kercher, 30, said: "Ultimately we are pleased with the decision, pleased that we've got a decision but it's not a time for celebration. It's not a moment of triumph.

"We are all gathered here because our sister was brutally murdered and taken away from us. There are two young people who have been sentenced to a long time behind bars and that is as much as we can say about feeling happy at yesterday's verdict."

Meredith's mother Arline agreed with the guilty verdicts.

She said: "If the evidence has been presented then yes, you have to agree with that verdict. It's difficult to say, but at the end of the day you have to go on the evidence because there's nothing else."

MEREDITH KERCHER
Meredith’s family remember her as a vivacious popular girl with a mischievous sense of humour.

She went to school at Old Palace in Croydon and lived with her mother Arline and sister Stephanie in Coulsdon. She has two older brothers John and Lyle.

Lyle spoke at her funeral and said he would remember Meredith for her humour. He said: "She had a warm and bubbly personality.

"All her friends and family can look back and remember Mez for her endearing qualities such as her quick wit and fantastic sense of humour."

She was studying European politics and Italian at Leeds university and was excited to be spending a year at the university in Perugia as part of her degree.

Since the trial began, Meredith’s family have refused to speak about her in public, issuing a few statements through their lawyers.

Her father John Kercher, a journalist, is writing a book about the murder to try and recoup some of the legal costs relating to her case.

However he is not the only person writing about the case. Meredith Kercher’s murder has been discussed endlessly on blogs and opinion columns on the internet, in newspapers around the world and on TV.

A website truejustice.org tracks everything that has been written about the case and campaigns for justice for Meredith Kercher.

The murder has been the subject of a number of documentaries with at least five books being written about the case, including the one by her father.

Three of these books are already available for sale on Amazon.

AMANDA KNOX
The 22-year-old American student, from Seattle, has become a tabloid sensation during the course of the trial in Italy and across Europe.

She was educated at a strict Roman Catholic school and is the daughter of a teacher.

On social networking site Myspace, under the username foxyknoxy she wrote a number of short stories, one of which is about brothers talking about raping and drugging a girl.

She initially told the police she was in the house when the murder took place, saying she heard screams coming form Meredith’s room but later claimed to be staying with her boyfriend.

Before her trial began, extracts from her diary were leaked to the press and serialised by an Italian crime journalist in a national newspaper.

In it she describes a number of sexual exploits and about how she wanted to write a song after Meredith’s death.

In it she wrote: “'I'm angry. At the beginning I was shocked, then sad, then confused now I'm really angry. I don't know. I never saw her body and I never saw her blood so it's as if it hasn't happened.

'But it did happen, right in the room next to mine. There was blood in the bathroom where this morning I took a shower.'

In a letter to his father from prison, her ex-lover Sollecito described her a “detached from reality”.

Her divorced parents Curt Knox and Edda Mellas have gotten themselves into over $1million of debt paying for her legal fees and flying out to Italy to support her.

Her father has been very vocal in the American media giving a number of interviews, protesting her innocence.

RAFFAELE SOLLECITO
The 25-year-old had known Knox for 2 weeks at the time the murder happened. Prosecutors say the couple murdered Knox because they were searching for an extreme sexual experience.

He was one of the first people to speak out about the murder, giving an interview to an Italian journalist about how he and Knox discovered the body.

The computer studies student is the son of a wealthy Urologist Francesco Sollecito and rented his own flat in Perugia. He was known to have a knife collection and read violent Japanese Manga comics.

Police found the alleged murder weapon, a kitchen knife in his flat, along with cleaning materials they say was used to clean blood off the knife.

Shortly after the murder, pictures of Sollecito posing in a surgeon’s outfit with a meat cleaver in one hand and a container of bleach in another, emerged. They had been posted on his blog. It was not clear where or when the photos were taken.

The court heard that Sollecito’s DNA was found on Meredith Kercher’s bra clasp.

The prosecution described him as “cold, dependent and with a fear of losing the support of others”. He was described as “dominated” by his ex-girlfriend Amanda Knox.

At the beginning of the trial he said he found it “completely unreal” that he was accused of the murder. He said he would not hurt a fly and was not a violent person.

He wrote dozens of letters to a magazine in his home town protesting his innocence and also wrote extensively to his father who insists his son is completely innocent.

RUDY GUEDE
Ivory Coast drifter Rudy Guede, 22, was jailed for 30 years last October for his part in the killing. He was convicted in a fast track trial.

His bloody fingerprint was found on a cushion at the crime scene.

He was known to the police as a drug dealer and a thief. He arrived in Italy when he was 5 with his father who left him when he was 15 to return to West Africa.

Guede was taken in by multi-millionaire Paolo Caporali who had employed him to do the occasional odd-job. He told the Daily Mail his family took the teenager in when his father went home, giving him a job in a farmhouse bed and breakfast and sponsoring him in a promising basketball career.

However the 6ft “tremendous liar” never turned up for work or kept to his studies and the Caporalis were forced to sack him. They had no contact with him for a year before the murder.

He was linked to a number of burglaries in Italy at the time.

He made friends with four male students who lived in the flat below Knox and Miss Kercher and told one of the students he was infatuated with Knox.

After the murder he fled to Germany and contacted various journalists claiming he was innocent. Police tracked him to Mainz through an internet Skype conversation he had with a friend but before they could arrest him he was picked up by a train guard who noticed he did not have a ticket. After his identity was revealed he was arrested and deported back to Italy to stand trial for murder.