MEREDITH KERCHER: The 21-year-old Coulsdon student was delighted to be able to defer her final year at Leeds University to travel to Perugia and study Italian. The youngest of four children, she worked at Gatwick airport to raise the money to move into her flat in Perugia in September 2007 but 8 weeks later was murdered.

AMANDA KNOX: The 24-year-old was born in Seattle, daughter of maths teacher Edda Mellas and vice president of finance at Macy’s Curt Knox. She was studying linguistics at the University of Washington and was spending her junior year in Perugia, Italy. She began dating fellow defendant Sollecito in mid-October 2007 after they met at a classical music concert in Italy. She shared a flat with Meredith Kercher, where her semi-naked dead body was found on November 2, 2007.

RAFFAELE SOLLECITO: The 25-year-old was a computer science student from Giovinazzo, near Bari on the southern Adriatic coast. He met Knox two-weeks before the murder at a concert. Sollecito’s father, a urologist, bought him a flat in Perugia. He collected Manga comics and allegedly had an obsession with knives and swords, carrying a flick-knife in his pocket always.

RUDY GUEDE: A drifter from the Ivory Coast, Guede was five when he left his home country with his father for a new life in Italy. The 24-year-old was left in the care of an adoptive family in his teens as his dad went back to west Africa. He became embroiled in drug dealing and petty crime, surviving on part-time work. He played basketball near the flat Miss Kercher lived in, and met her at a Halloween party the night before the murder.