A forensic expert unravels the mystery:
What really happened to Meredith?
Ron Hendry is an engineer whose specialty is accident reconstruction, involving the same techniques police use to reconstruct a homicide. He has analyzed upwards of 2,000 cases and has interfaced with and reviewed the work of police investigators on many of them.
Ron's professional focus, for many years, has been to study photographs and other evidence and produce detailed reports that show exactly what happened. He starts by creating a precise map of the scene. Then he examines photos to trace the sequence of events that unfolded across that map.
Ron was given access to hundreds of photos and several hours of video taken at the Meredith Kercher murder scene. He analyzed them point by point over a number of weeks. He then applied his methodology to build the reconstruction summarized here.
For Ron Hendry, the evidence is clear: MEREDITH KERCHER WAS MURDERED IN A SUDDEN ATTACK BY A SINGLE PERPETRATOR.
Here is what really happened:
1. The killer is already in the cottage when Meredith arrives home. He confronts her as she is sitting on the edge of her bed, attempting to call her mother in the UK. After a brief struggle, both are upright as he positions himself behind her, with the blade of a pocketknife against the right side of her neck. He inflicts a stab wound along with other cuts, possibly while demanding money. Blood flows onto the floor and the slats of the bed (see inset). Meredith raises her hand to the wounds and leaves finger streaks on the wall.
2. The attack moves diagonally across the room as Meredith tries to break free of her assailant. Torn newspaper under the legs of the chair suggest it was slammed violently into the desk. Blood drops on the floor and under the desk, hair (see inset), and shoe streaks attest to the struggle at this location.
3. Meredith falls to her knees while still upright in front of the wardrobe, at which point the killer straddles her from behind and clamps his hand over her face, hard enough to leave bruises on both sides of her jaw. He pulls her head back and plunges his knife into her throat. He then pulls the blade upward and from left to right, creating a three-inch gaping wound.
4. Meredith collapses to the floor, then attempts to rise and crawls a short distance, holding herself up with her right arm and clutching her wounds with her left hand. She is gasping for breath, and leaves a spray of aspirated blood drops on the wardrobe door. She quickly begins to lose consciousness and collapses on her side, facing the wardrobe (with her head near police marker L).
5. With Meredith no longer struggling, the killer drags her, face down, away from the pool of blood, leaving a broad circular arc of blood. Meredith makes a last attempt to rise from the floor and leaves bloody finger streaks on the inner wardrobe wall. The killer begins to disrobe Meredith while she is still face down. He pulls her zippered jacket off and leaves it turned inside-out. He then rolls Meredith onto her back. He pulls her layered sweatshirt and tee shirt above her bra, then rotates her onto her side and pulls the bra apart with brute force. He tosses it at her feet.
6. Police find a fine spray of blood drops on the bra cups and on Meredith’s breasts, showing that she was still gasping for breath when the bra was removed.
Police altered the crime scene with sloppy procedures that led to a flawed conclusion.
1. A pair of bloody boots were found next to Meredith’s head, adjacent to the wardrobe.
2. Police shoved the boots under the bed with a jumble of other footwear.
3. A bloodstain on the floor, between the nightstand and the bed, showed that the attack began near that spot.
4. Police moved the nightstand toward the bed, covering the stain created during the initial attack on Meredith. Then they removed the boots and discovered the stain under the bed. They did not realize they had created this bloodstain themselves, so they invented a bogus theory to explain it
A BUNGLED INVESTIGATION
Who really staged this crime scene?
Below are two excerpts from the forensic report prepared by the police and submitted to the court. They realized the bag in the upper (November 3, 2007) photo could not have been in that spot when the bloodstain in the lower (December 18, 2007) photo was deposited, but they didn’t realize one of their own investigators created the stain when he shoved the bloody boots under the bed.
Instead, they concluded that the bloodstain was left during the attack, and the bag was put under the bed after Meredith was killed, as part of the alleged staging of the crime scene.
This blunder is typical of the detective work through which two innocent people have been convicted of murder.
Injustice in Perugia
a website detailing the wrongful conviction of Amanda Knox & Raffaele Sollecito
