SOLVED: Meredith Kercher

Summary

Podcast Summary: Scams, Money, & Murder

Episode: SOLVED: Meredith Kercher

Hosts: Carter Roy & Co-host/Producer
Date: June 11, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode, the first in a two-part series, dives into the story behind the 2007 murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. The hosts, Carter Roy and his co-host, untangle the events leading up to her death, her life as a study abroad student, her circle of friends and roommates, and the complicated dynamics in their shared apartment. With a focus on the people directly involved—Meredith, Amanda Knox, and Rudy Guede—the episode humanizes the central figures and questions how the search for justice was sidetracked by sensationalist media and public obsession with scandal over truth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Meredith Kercher’s Life and Personality

• Meredith was a 21-year-old British student from a lively, multicultural household in South London, with dreams of becoming a political journalist.
• Driven and independent, she studied European politics and Italian at Leeds University and earned a scholarship to study abroad in the picturesque town of Perugia.
• Described as “the kind of person who lit up a room” (06:32, Carter Roy), she quickly built a life with new friends, thrived academically, and went out of her way to immerse herself in Italian culture.

2. Life in the Farmhouse – Roommates & Social Circles

• The apartment: Four young women shared a centuries-old farmhouse with cramped bedrooms and a lively downstairs apartment occupied by four young men.
• Meredith’s roommates included Amanda Knox (American student), and two Italian women, Filomena Romanelli and Laura Mezetti.
• Amanda and Meredith’s initial bond as native English speakers “started to come apart at the seams” (10:45, Co-host/Producer).
  • Cultural differences, social habits, and personality traits gradually introduced tension.
• The downstairs roommates were regularly in party mode, drawing a wider circle of friends and acquaintances, including Rudy Guede—a figure who became increasingly odd and unstable.

3. Social Tensions, Crushes, and Awkwardness

• Early on, Amanda and Meredith were close, but Amanda’s outgoing, sometimes reckless behavior (e.g., walking around naked, casual hookups) made Meredith uncomfortable (11:38, Carter Roy).
• Both young women developed different social circles: Meredith with fellow British exchange students; Amanda gravitating towards Italians and her new boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.
• Love triangles and jealousy are highlighted:
  • Meredith started dating Giacomo, one of the downstairs roommates, leading to awkwardness when Amanda seemed interested in him too. “I like Giacomo too, but you can have him.” (24:25, Carter Roy recounting Amanda’s comment).

4. Rudy Guede’s Troubled Background

• Carter details Rudy’s unstable upbringing—neglect, foster care, a series of lies, and mounting desperation by 2007.
• By fall 2007, Rudy was “struggling to make ends meet in Perugia” (17:49, Carter Roy), increasingly engaging in petty crimes and burglaries, but remaining a social fixture due to his charismatic, easygoing demeanor.
• Odd behavioral traits included sleepwalking, emotional volatility, and, eventually, a pattern of burglaries marked by bizarre rituals such as cooking and leaving strange arrangements.

5. Events Leading Up to the Murder

• Halloween 2007 was the night before the murder. Amanda and Meredith celebrated separately due to their cooling friendship.
  • Meredith dressed as a vampire and went out with British friends.
  • Amanda, in a cat costume, worked at a local bar and later joined Raffaele.
• On November 1, both returned to the farmhouse briefly during the day, then left separately again.
• Meredith spent the evening watching movies with friends and returned home before 9:30pm. “She had two phones in her purse that night… One was her British cell... the other was a spare that Filomena had loaned her for local calls.” (30:40, Carter Roy)
• After 9pm, Meredith was the only one home. The rest of the roommates and downstairs neighbors were out of town.

6. The Discovery

• The next morning (Nov 2), Amanda returned to the farmhouse:
  • Found the front door wide open, drops of blood in the bathroom, and a mess in the house. “At first, Amanda assumed it was menstrual blood. It grossed her out. But she didn’t think much of it.” (32:27, Carter Roy)
  • Amanda and Raffaele called the police and Filomena after noticing the abnormal state of the house and Meredith’s locked door.
• The police, roommates, and friends converged. Filomena’s window was smashed, but nothing seemed stolen—“the glass from the shattered window was lying on top of the scattered clothes, not underneath them… it looked like someone had ransacked the room first, then broken the window to make it look like a burglary.” (37:38, Carter Roy)
• A friend broke down Meredith’s locked door, discovering her body—“a pile of white sheets lay crumpled on the floor, soaked through with blood. Next to them, behind the bed, a single bare foot poked out from under a blanket.” (36:45, Carter Roy)

7. The Aftermath – Police, Media, and a Burgeoning Circus

• Chief Monica Napoleoni became immediately suspicious of a staged break-in.
• As news spread, media descended rapidly, focusing attention not on Meredith, but on Amanda and Raffaele, whose behavior was deemed suspicious by police (39:02, Carter Roy).
  • Carter Roy notes: “What started as a murder investigation was about to become a media circus, a diplomatic crisis, and a legal nightmare all at once. And the truth that was about to get buried under all of it.” (39:25)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “People’s lives are like a story. There’s a beginning, middle, and an end. But you don’t always know which part you’re on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon.” (02:04, Carter Roy & Co-host)
• “By the time it was over, more than one life had been destroyed.” (01:48, Co-host/Producer)
• On Meredith: “She had this natural ease with people, warm, funny, and sharp enough to hold her own in any conversation.” (06:32, Carter Roy)
• On Amanda and Meredith: “According to Philomena, Amanda and Meredith were practically inseparable at first. But by mid-October… things started to shift.” (10:45, Co-host/Producer)
• On the dynamic with the men downstairs: “Depending on who you asked, either some of the guys or all of them had a crush on Amanda and Meredith. But none were as openly fixated as a guy named Rudy Guede.” (12:24, Carter Roy)
• “Rudy would show up out of nowhere, hang around for a few weeks, then vanish without a word… His friends woke up in the middle of the night to find him… barking like a dog or pointing at an imaginary chalkboard…” (15:24, Carter Roy)
• “At first, Amanda assumed it was menstrual blood. It grossed her out. But she didn’t think much of it. So she took a shower anyway.” (32:27, Carter Roy)
• “The farmhouse was empty, but that just meant there was no one around to hear Meredith scream.” (31:33, Co-host/Producer)
• “What started as a murder investigation was about to become a media circus, a diplomatic crisis, and a legal nightmare all at once. And the truth that was about to get buried under all of it.” (39:25, Co-host/Producer)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Meredith’s Background: 05:35–08:08
• Farmhouse Dynamics & Social Tensions: 08:19–13:00
• Rudy Guede’s Story: 13:15–20:28
• Halloween & Night of the Murder: 25:59–31:33
• Morning After Discovery: 31:51–36:45
• Police Investigation & Aftermath: 37:06–39:25

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Conclusion & Next Episode Preview

The episode ends just as the initial investigation shifts into overdrive, with Amanda and Raffaele emerging as central figures in the impending storm of media and legal drama. Carter teases a deeper dive in Part 2 into the investigation, trials, and international attention that would make the case infamous.

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For true crime fans, this detailed episode offers emotional context, nuanced character portraits, and a gripping setup for the legal, media, and psychological maelstrom still to come. Stay tuned for Part 2.

Transcript

[Carter Roy]

This is crime house. Studying abroad is supposed to be the

[Co-host/Producer]

adventure of a lifetime.

[Carter Roy]

You leave behind everything familiar, your friends, your family, your routine, and start over in a place where nobody knows you. It's exciting, it's terrifying. And for most people, it's an experience

[Co-host/Producer]

that changes them forever.

[Carter Roy]

For Meredith Kercher, it was all of that. The 21 year old British student had

[Co-host/Producer]

spent months preparing for her semester in Italy.

[Carter Roy]

She studied the language she dreamed about, the life she'd build there. And when she finally arrived in Perugia, reality exceeded the fantasy. She found new friends, had new experiences, and embraced a city that felt like

[Co-host/Producer]

it was made for her.

[Carter Roy]

But just five weeks in, Meredith's adventure

[Co-host/Producer]

was cut brutally short. On November 1, 2007, she was found murdered in her apartment.

[Carter Roy]

What followed should have been a search for justice.

[Co-host/Producer]

Instead, it became something else entirely. Because as cameras descended on Perugia, they didn't focus on Meredith.

[Carter Roy]

They focused on her roommate, a 20

[Co-host/Producer]

year old American named Amanda Knox.

[Carter Roy]

And from that moment on, the story stopped being about a young woman who was killed and became about the young woman who might have killed her. It took years to untangle the truth.

[Co-host/Producer]

And by the time it was over, more than one life had been destroyed. People's lives are like a story.

[Carter Roy]

There's a beginning, a middle, and an end.

[Co-host/Producer]

But you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon. And we don't always get to know the real ending.

[Carter Roy]

I'm Carter Roy and this is Murder True Crime Stories, a crime House original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with Friday's episodes covering the

[Co-host/Producer]

cases that deserve a deeper look. Thank you for being part of the Crime House community.

[Carter Roy]

Please rate, review and follow the show

[Co-host/Producer]

and for early ad free access to every episode. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Carter Roy]

This is the first of two episodes

[Co-host/Producer]

on the murder of Meredith Kercher, a

[Carter Roy]

21 year old British student who moved

[Co-host/Producer]

to Italy for a semester abroad and never made it back home.

[Carter Roy]

Today, I'll introduce you to Meredith, a

[Co-host/Producer]

bright and popular young woman who left

[Carter Roy]

South London for the ancient city of Perugia. I'll walk you through her first weeks in Italy, the friends she made, and

[Co-host/Producer]

what happened on the night of November 1, 2007. After a late dinner with friends, Meredith headed back to her apartment for the last time. Next time, I'll get into the investigation and the circus that followed. Meredith's killer was identified pretty quickly, but Italian authorities also turned their attention to two people nobody expected Meredith's American roommate, 20 year old Amanda Knox, and her

[Carter Roy]

Italian boyfriend, 23 year old Raphael Socialito.

[Co-host/Producer]

What came next was years of wall

[Carter Roy]

to wall media coverage, multiple trials and a legal fight that went all the

[Co-host/Producer]

way to Italy's highest court. By the time it was finally over in 2015, one thing was clear.

[Carter Roy]

The world cared a lot more about

[Co-host/Producer]

the drama than the truth. All that and more coming up.

[Carter Roy]

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[Co-host/Producer]

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[Carter Roy]

She was the youngest of four children

[Co-host/Producer]

born in south London in 1985 to

[Carter Roy]

an Indian mother and a British father. It was a lively, multilingual household, the kind of home where conversations spilled into

[Co-host/Producer]

different languages and no one sat still for long.

[Carter Roy]

Her dad, John, was a journalist. He had written for tabloids like the

[Co-host/Producer]

Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror and had published books on acts like Guns

[Carter Roy]

n Roses, Madonna and Wham.

[Co-host/Producer]

Growing up around that world left a mark on Meredith. She wanted to be a journalist too, though she was drawn more to politics than pop culture. Even after her parents divorced in 1997,

[Carter Roy]

when Meredith was 11 or 12, she and her dad stayed close. She and her siblings lived with their mom, but they called John every single night.

[Co-host/Producer]

Their bond never wavered. Both of her parents watched with pride as Meredith grew into the kind of person who lit up a room.

[Carter Roy]

They she had this natural ease with people, warm, funny and sharp enough to hold her own in any conversation. In school she was popular without trying too hard, the sort of student who always ended up leading the group project not because she asked to, but because

[Co-host/Producer]

everyone just looked to her. And she wasn't afraid to hustle either.

[Carter Roy]

As a teenager, she pulled shifts as a bartender and worked as a tour guide, and thanks to her dad's connections, she even landed a spot in a music video for an indie rock band when she was 19. By 2007, she was studying European politics and Italian at Leeds University, still chasing

[Co-host/Producer]

that dream of becoming a political journalist. And then, at 21, she qualified for

[Carter Roy]

a scholarship that would let her study

[Co-host/Producer]

abroad for a semester. She could go almost anywhere in Europe.

[Carter Roy]

She chose Perugia. It was a deliberate choice. Perugia is a small, picturesque town in central Italy. It's full of ancient stone buildings, cultural festivals, and some of the best chocolate in the world. Meredith figured a quieter, more rural place would keep her safe and give her

[Co-host/Producer]

the chance to really connect with the locals. She wasn't looking for the chaos of Rome or Milan. She wanted something real.

[Carter Roy]

In the months before she left, she threw herself into studying Italian. She imagined the vistas, the piazzas, the long dinners with new friends.

[Co-host/Producer]

By the time she packed her bag,

[Carter Roy]

she'd already built the whole adventure in her head.

[Co-host/Producer]

And when she got there in late

[Carter Roy]

September of 2007, it was even better

[Co-host/Producer]

than she could have imagined.

[Carter Roy]

By pure luck, she found a place to stay just a two minute walk

[Co-host/Producer]

from the university where she was studying. A large stone cottage that had been a farmhouse about 300 years earlier. From the outside it was beautiful.

[Carter Roy]

Clean white walls, pale red tiled roof, emerald green shutters that looked like something off a postcard.

[Co-host/Producer]

The inside was a different story. There were four cramped bedrooms connected by

[Carter Roy]

a hallway so narrow that two people

[Co-host/Producer]

could barely edge past each other. But Meredith didn't care, especially because she liked the people. Two Italian women were already living in the apartment when she arrived.

[Carter Roy]

They Filomena Romanelli and Laura Metzetti, who

[Co-host/Producer]

were both in their late 20s. Their English wasn't perfect, but it was solid and they were eager to practice.

[Carter Roy]

A third roommate, a 20 year old

[Co-host/Producer]

American named Amanda Knox, moved in about a week after Meredith did. And before I keep going, I want to point out that most of the

[Carter Roy]

following comes from Nina Burleigh's book the Fatal Gift of Beauty.

[Co-host/Producer]

Her work was instrumental to this episode. The foursome hit it off right away.

[Carter Roy]

As native English speakers, Meredith and Amanda

[Co-host/Producer]

seem like natural allies.

[Carter Roy]

They were close in age, both living away from home for the first time, and Both outgoing and romantic in that

[Co-host/Producer]

way young people abroad often are. At first glance, they had a lot in common.

[Carter Roy]

But there were differences, too.

[Co-host/Producer]

Meredith was there on a prestigious scholarship, while Amanda had taken a year off

[Carter Roy]

from the University of Washington to enroll

[Co-host/Producer]

in an independent study program.

[Carter Roy]

She'd paid for the whole thing herself, supplementing her savings with shifts at a local bar called Le Chic. During the first few weeks of October,

[Co-host/Producer]

the house found its rhythm.

[Carter Roy]

Meredith and Amanda both went to morning classes at the university for foreigners, came home around one o' clock for lunch, and split off Meredith to more courses,

[Co-host/Producer]

Amanda sometimes to the bar at night. They went out, though not always together.

[Carter Roy]

Meredith quickly fell in with a group of British exchange students who became her core crew. Philomena and Laura mostly kept to their own schedules.

[Co-host/Producer]

They were a few years older and had their own lives in Perugia.

[Carter Roy]

But they noticed what was happening between

[Co-host/Producer]

their two younger roommates, and what they saw was a friendship that was already starting to come apart at the seams. According to Philomena, Amanda and Meredith were practically inseparable at first.

[Carter Roy]

But by mid October, barely two weeks

[Co-host/Producer]

in, things started to shift. Both of them liked going out, but some of Meredith's friends would later describe Amanda as the wilder of the two, and Meredith began pulling back. Amanda didn't seem to mind. She preferred hanging out with Italians anyway,

[Carter Roy]

trying to immerse herself in the language. She avoided the other Americans at her

[Co-host/Producer]

school and chatted up customers at the

[Carter Roy]

bar or the young men who lived

[Co-host/Producer]

downstairs in the farmhouse. Most of her new friends happened to be guys. That might have been part of the problem, at least according to Amy Frost,

[Carter Roy]

one of the British students in Meredith's scholarship group. Amy said that Meredith secretly thought Amanda was loud, a little rude, and kind of weird. She complained about Amanda's hygiene and how she walked around the apartment naked. According to Amy, Meredith was also uncomfortable

[Co-host/Producer]

with how casually Amanda brought men home for the night.

[Carter Roy]

None of this blew up into some

[Co-host/Producer]

big confrontation, but the tension was palpable,

[Carter Roy]

and the situation with the downstairs roommates

[Co-host/Producer]

might have only made things worse.

[Carter Roy]

The four women lived upstairs, while four young men, also students who were in

[Co-host/Producer]

permanent party mode, lived in the apartment on the ground floor.

[Carter Roy]

Depending on who you asked, either some of the guys or all of them

[Co-host/Producer]

had a crush on Amanda and Meredith.

[Carter Roy]

But none of them were as openly fixated as a guy named Rudy Guede, a frequent house guest who kept showing

[Co-host/Producer]

up at the downstairs apartment uninvited.

[Carter Roy]

Rudi was 20 years old. Originally from the Ivory coast, he'd lived In Italy since he was 5.

[Co-host/Producer]

His mother wasn't in the picture. His father, Roger, was a construction worker and by most accounts, not the best parent.

[Carter Roy]

As a boy, Rudy went without warm clothes. In the winter, he ate cold pasta

[Co-host/Producer]

alone while his dad was at work. When Roger wanted to discipline him, he locked Rudy out of the house. Neighbors in Perugia saw him sleeping on the streets as a little boy.

[Carter Roy]

Other nights, he curled up on the

[Co-host/Producer]

bare floor of the attic.

[Carter Roy]

Luckily, one of his teachers took pity on him. She started packing Rudy's lunches, taking him to church, and helping raise him in

[Co-host/Producer]

ways his father never did.

[Carter Roy]

By his teenage years, Rudy felt closer

[Co-host/Producer]

to her than to anyone in his own family.

[Carter Roy]

Then, in 2004, when Rudy was 17

[Co-host/Producer]

or 18, his father went back to the Ivory coast for what was supposed

[Carter Roy]

to be a short visit, But a

[Co-host/Producer]

civil war prevented him from returning for four years. Roger's common law wife was supposed to look after Rudy in the meantime. But without his father around, Rudy stopped listening completely. He quit school and left home.

[Carter Roy]

Through his elementary school teacher's connections, he landed with a wealthy local family who took him in. By all accounts, he was a polite, melancholy teenager.

[Co-host/Producer]

Shy, rarely angry.

[Carter Roy]

His new benefactors got him into a prestigious prep school, and for a while, it seemed like things might work out.

[Co-host/Producer]

But then he started to struggle, and instead of asking for help, he lied

[Carter Roy]

about his grades, about his tutoring sessions, about whether he was even going to class.

[Co-host/Producer]

It took months for his surrogate family to figure out what was really going on.

[Carter Roy]

Rudy dropped out of school in 2007

[Co-host/Producer]

at the age of 20. His foster parents found him a job as a gardener, but he couldn't even show up for that on time. Eventually, his foster parents had no choice but to cut him loose.

[Carter Roy]

He bounced around after that, staying with some relatives for a few months, then

[Co-host/Producer]

drifted back to Perugia.

[Carter Roy]

He managed to rent a studio apartment,

[Co-host/Producer]

but money was tight, and when he

[Carter Roy]

made new friends, a mix of shame

[Co-host/Producer]

about his background and hatred of his father pushed him to lie about everything. He told people his dad was a wealthy computer programmer. Nobody questioned the story, but everyone could tell something was off.

[Carter Roy]

Rudy would show up out of nowhere, hang around for a few weeks, then

[Co-host/Producer]

vanish without a word. He was evasive about where he lived.

[Carter Roy]

He skipped out on meals.

[Co-host/Producer]

Sometimes he asked to crash on someone's

[Carter Roy]

couch, and when he did, his friends woke up in the middle of the night to find him in a kind

[Co-host/Producer]

of trance, barking like. Like a dog or pointing at an

[Carter Roy]

imaginary chalkboard like a teacher, still half asleep. It was sort of like sleepwalking. But he seemed slightly more aware. Rudy told his friends he had to hide his keys when he slept at home. Otherwise he would leave the apartment and walk for miles, then suddenly wake up

[Co-host/Producer]

with no idea where he was.

[Carter Roy]

But the sleepwalking was just the thing people could see. The issues brewing under the surface were

[Co-host/Producer]

a lot more concerning.

[Carter Roy]

For years, Rudy had survived by telling

[Co-host/Producer]

people whatever they wanted to hear. A different story for every room, a

[Carter Roy]

new version of himself for every friendship. But by October 2007, the gap between who Rudy said he was and who

[Co-host/Producer]

he actually was had become a chasm. And he was about to fall right through it.

[Keith Morrison]

Such an ordinary thing to walk home from high school. Her name was Mickey Costanzo. Just 16. She didn't have far to go. Seemed perfectly safe. Until it wasn't. What happened to Mickey? Good morning, I'm Keith Morrison and this is five Miles From Home, an all new podcast from Dateline. Search five Miles From Home to start listening now.

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[Carter Roy]

By the fall of 2007, 20 year old Rudy Guede was struggling to make

[Co-host/Producer]

ends meet in Peru, Italy. His friends had no idea how bad things had gotten.

[Carter Roy]

Rudy was too proud or maybe too

[Co-host/Producer]

ashamed to tell them.

[Carter Roy]

But behind the easygoing facade, he was desperate.

[Co-host/Producer]

Apparently desperate enough to start breaking into other people's homes. On the morning of September 27, sometime after 1:00am, a man matching Rudy's description tried to burglarize a stranger's house in Perugia.

[Carter Roy]

The homeowner woke up and found the

[Co-host/Producer]

intruder ransacking the place, reeking of wine. He chased the man outside but never called the police.

[Carter Roy]

Later he spotted Rudy at a local

[Co-host/Producer]

bar and recognized him as the thief. He still didn't report it. Seven days later, someone broke into a

[Carter Roy]

school in Milan, more than 250 miles away, and stole approximately 2,000 units euros. But the thief didn't just take the money. He used the kitchen to cook massive quantities of pasta, then left the whole place trashed. This time police were called. And over the next couple of weeks, two more bizarre break ins popped up. Around Perugia, the pattern was the same. The intruder either cooked food during the burglary or. Or left objects arranged in strange, almost

[Co-host/Producer]

ritualistic patterns on the floor.

[Carter Roy]

Then, on October 23, a teacher arrived at the Milan school on a Saturday to let in a plumber. She found Rudy sitting in an office, calmly plugging in his laptop.

[Co-host/Producer]

He wasn't supposed to be there, that much was obvious.

[Carter Roy]

But what was strange was how he acted. He was totally relaxed and polite, as if he'd been invited. Even as she called the authorities, he didn't flinch. When police searched his backpack.

[Co-host/Producer]

They found a gold watch, a set

[Carter Roy]

of keys, and a knife from the school kitchen. At the station, Rudy refused to explain

[Co-host/Producer]

any of it, except to say that

[Carter Roy]

he lived in Perugia. Authorities there told Milan police to send him home, so they reluctantly released him without charges.

[Co-host/Producer]

He was never tried for any of

[Carter Roy]

the burglaries, but law enforcement in both cities considered him their number one suspect. So by late October 2007, Rudy's life was in a free fall. He was broke, desperate, dodging police in two cities, and no one in his

[Co-host/Producer]

circle had any idea. Now, that's the thing about Rudy.

[Carter Roy]

He could walk into a room full of strangers and make everyone feel like they'd known him for years. He was soft spoken, relaxed, easy to be around.

[Co-host/Producer]

And that's exactly how he ended up

[Carter Roy]

in the orbit of Amanda Knox and Meredith Kercher. The guys who lived in the apartment below the women, threw parties practically every night.

[Co-host/Producer]

They had an open door policy.

[Carter Roy]

Anyone could swing by for a drink

[Co-host/Producer]

or smoke some hashtag form of marijuana, common in Europe that's made from resin. It can be stronger than other forms of the drug, but has similar effects.

[Carter Roy]

Rudy wasn't much of a smoker, but he liked to drink. And sometime in October, he just showed up.

[Co-host/Producer]

Nobody could remember actually inviting him.

[Carter Roy]

One of the roommates, Stefano, recalled seeing

[Co-host/Producer]

him for the first time at a get together. Rudy introduced himself as Baron, and after the NBA point guard Baron Davis, the

[Carter Roy]

nickname stuck, and soon the downstairs guy

[Co-host/Producer]

started calling him the Baron. Before long, the Baron was a regular fixture.

[Carter Roy]

The next time Steffano saw him, Rudy was passed out in the bathroom, slumped over a disgusting toilet.

[Co-host/Producer]

Stefano tried to kick him out, but Rudy was too far gone to move. He ended up sleeping on the couch.

[Carter Roy]

A week later, he showed up uninvited to watch a Formula one race on their tv. The roommates were annoyed, but he seemed harmless enough.

[Co-host/Producer]

He mostly just sat around, chatted and drank, so they let it slide. Eventually, Rudy met Amanda and from the moment he laid eyes on her, he was smitten. And he wasn't the only one.

[Carter Roy]

One night, while smoking with the guys

[Co-host/Producer]

downstairs, the conversation conversation turned to her.

[Carter Roy]

According to Rudy, every man in the room was talking about how beautiful Amanda was, imagining what it would be like

[Co-host/Producer]

to be with her. Then, mid conversation, Amanda appeared in the doorway. A few of the guys chuckled at

[Carter Roy]

the timing and waved her in. Later that evening, Meredith joined the circle too. Rudy was captivated by both her and Amanda. He spent the next few hours making conversation here and there, reading into every glance. He convinced himself Amanda was giving him

[Co-host/Producer]

suggestive looks, though their relationship never went beyond small talk.

[Carter Roy]

Whether Amanda was actually interested in Rudy is an open question. But if she was, he was just one name on a long list. Another was Giacomo, one of the guys

[Co-host/Producer]

from the the downstairs apartment.

[Carter Roy]

When Giacomo and a friend invited Amanda and Meredith to a nightclub, both women said yes. A long night of drinking and dancing followed. When the club closed, Giacomo went home with Meredith while Amanda paired up with his friend. For Amanda, it was a one night thing.

[Co-host/Producer]

But for Giacomo and Meredith, it was

[Carter Roy]

the beginning of a situationship.

[Co-host/Producer]

And as you might expect, things were got awkward fast. There was a major language barrier.

[Carter Roy]

For one, Meredith spoke enough Italian to

[Co-host/Producer]

carry on a basic conversation, but Giacomo barely spoke any English.

[Carter Roy]

They could hardly even manage a phone call.

[Co-host/Producer]

That made it tough to figure out where they stood.

[Carter Roy]

Giacomo said he liked Meredith, but he claimed he wasn't the jealous type. In public, he actually went out of his way to avoid her.

[Co-host/Producer]

Maybe out of shyness or maybe because he was embarrassed about dating a foreigner.

[Carter Roy]

But one of his roommates thought he

[Co-host/Producer]

was more attached than he let on.

[Carter Roy]

Either way, Meredith felt possessive enough to

[Co-host/Producer]

notice when Amanda got too close. According to one of her friends, Meredith believed Amanda was trying to steal him. And allegedly, Amanda didn't exactly help her case.

[Carter Roy]

Meredith's friend would later testify that Amanda told Meredith, I like Giacomo too, but

[Co-host/Producer]

you can have him. That kind of remark, casual, almost dismissive,

[Carter Roy]

only deepened the rift. But by the end of the month,

[Co-host/Producer]

Amanda had moved on.

[Carter Roy]

On October 25, she spotted a 23

[Co-host/Producer]

year old Italian named Raphael Solicito at a concert.

[Carter Roy]

She locked eyes with him and smiled until he came over to sit beside her. That night, after her shift at the bar, they went back to his place,

[Co-host/Producer]

smoked a joint and slept together.

[Carter Roy]

For Raphael, it wasn't casual.

[Co-host/Producer]

He was a virgin. And from day one he was completely head over heels. Filomena described him as practically glued to Amanda's side.

[Carter Roy]

After October 25, he followed her everywhere. And while she was into him too, she was clearly the one in control. Control. Before long, Amanda stopped coming home to

[Co-host/Producer]

the farmhouse at night and stayed at Raphael's place instead.

[Carter Roy]

To the outside world, it looked like a real relationship.

[Co-host/Producer]

Almost, Amanda confided in Filomena that she

[Carter Roy]

felt a twinge of guilt. She had a boyfriend back in the States. They were technically in an open relationship, but she worried she was pushing the

[Co-host/Producer]

boundaries of their arrangement. Still, she wasn't about to push Raphael away.

[Carter Roy]

He treated her well, he made her happy.

[Co-host/Producer]

And for now, that was enough.

[Carter Roy]

By Halloween, the new couple had been together for about a week, and Amanda

[Co-host/Producer]

decided to go out that night without Raphael. He drew whiskers on her face to complete her cat costume, kissed her goodbye, and stayed in. Halloween isn't much of a holiday in Italy, so to him, it was just another evening.

[Carter Roy]

But in the UK it's just as

[Co-host/Producer]

important as it is in the us And Meredith had plans with her British friends. Plans Amanda wasn't part of. So on the night of October 31, 2007, the two roommates headed out in different directions.

[Carter Roy]

Meredith to a pub with her crew,

[Co-host/Producer]

Amanda to the bar where she worked. What happened over the next 24 hours depends on who's telling the story, but one thing is clear. On November 1, 2007, one of them wound up dead. The question that would consume investigators and the rest of the world was who saw her last?

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[Carter Roy]

By Halloween night in 2007, the Farmhouse in Perugia had become a pressure cooker. A month of crushes, hookups and quiet resentments had tangled the lives of everyone who lived there or drifted through in

[Co-host/Producer]

the fast friendship between 21 year old Meredith Kercher and 20 year old Amanda Knox. It had started to cool off.

[Carter Roy]

So instead of going out together, the two roommates split up. Meredith put on a vampire costume, fangs, a faux bloody lip, the whole thing, and headed to Merlin pub with her British crew. While she was there, she may have crossed paths with Rudy Guetti. Meredith's friends don't remember seeing him that night, but Rudi later insisted he'd flirted with her at the pub, asking if

[Co-host/Producer]

she could suck his blood if the encounter happened at all.

[Carter Roy]

It was brief.

[Co-host/Producer]

After that, Meredith and her friends left

[Carter Roy]

the pub and hit a nightclub, where

[Co-host/Producer]

they danced until five in the morning. As for Amanda, she dressed up as a cat and walked down to Le Chic, the bar where she worked part time.

[Carter Roy]

Even though she was dating Rafael Sollechido, she chose to go out alone that night, and according to the owner of the bar, he saw her cuddling up with two different men.

[Co-host/Producer]

Either way, after Lachic, Amanda bounced to a few other spots before eventually making her way back to raphael's place. Around 2am the next morning, November 1,

[Carter Roy]

she woke up early, left Raphael sleeping,

[Co-host/Producer]

and went back to the farmhouse.

[Carter Roy]

She was already there when Meredith stumbled out of her bedroom, hung over with costume blood still smeared on her lips. The two of them chatted for a bit.

[Co-host/Producer]

Then Raphael came over and they all

[Carter Roy]

had a pasta lunch together. Around 4:30 in the afternoon, Meredith left

[Co-host/Producer]

for a British friend's apartment. Half an hour later, Amanda and Raphael

[Carter Roy]

headed back to his place.

[Co-host/Producer]

They downloaded the movie.

[Carter Roy]

Amelie had a late dinner sometime between

[Co-host/Producer]

9 and 11 p pm and settled in for the night.

[Carter Roy]

Then the pipes under Raphael's sink burst. They soaked up what they could, but he didn't have a mop, so Amanda told him she'd grab one from the farmhouse in the morning.

[Co-host/Producer]

After that, the couple read for a

[Carter Roy]

while, smoked a joint, and went to bed.

[Co-host/Producer]

Meanwhile, Meredith was having a quiet evening with friends.

[Carter Roy]

She and three other exchange students watched the Notebook and Someone's apartment. They ordered pizza.

[Co-host/Producer]

Someone made an apple crumble.

[Carter Roy]

It was low key, the kind of night where nobody's in a rush to leave. But just before 9, Meredith headed out

[Co-host/Producer]

with one of the other students.

[Carter Roy]

She didn't say where she was going,

[Co-host/Producer]

but after such a long Halloween, the night before seemed pretty clear she was just heading home.

[Carter Roy]

The two of them split up a

[Co-host/Producer]

few minutes from the farmhouse. Meredith continued on alone.

[Carter Roy]

She had two phones in her purse that night. One was her British cell, the one

[Co-host/Producer]

she used to call friends and family back home.

[Carter Roy]

The other was a spare that Philomena had loaned her for local calls.

[Co-host/Producer]

At 8:56pm Her British phone dialed her mom. The call never fully connected.

[Carter Roy]

It might have been a pocket dial, or the call might have been cut

[Co-host/Producer]

off for some other reason. There's no way to know. Either way, she made it back to the farmhouse soon after.

[Carter Roy]

About an hour later, the same phone dialed her bank in the uk, Connected

[Co-host/Producer]

For a moment, then immediately hung up. By that point, Meredith should have been the only person in the building.

[Carter Roy]

Amanda was at Raphael's. Philomena and Laura were both away for the weekend. Even the four guys downstairs were gone,

[Co-host/Producer]

out of town on vacation. The farmhouse was empty, but that just meant there was no one around to hear Meredith scream. What happened next is disputed, but here's what Amanda later told police.

[Carter Roy]

She said she woke up on Nov.

[Co-host/Producer]

2 and went back to the farmhouse around 10 or 11am the front door was wide open.

[Carter Roy]

She tried calling her roommates, including Meredith, to see if one of them had

[Co-host/Producer]

left it that way on purpose.

[Carter Roy]

Nobody picked up. So Amanda figured someone had just stepped

[Co-host/Producer]

out to take out the trash and forgotten to close it behind them. She went to the bathroom she shared with Meredith.

[Carter Roy]

There were drops of blood on the

[Co-host/Producer]

floor and the bath mat. A bloody smear, maybe a partial handprint print on the sink.

[Carter Roy]

At first, Amanda assumed it was menstrual blood. It grossed her out. But she didn't think much of it.

[Co-host/Producer]

So she took a shower anyway.

[Carter Roy]

Afterwards, she went to the other bathroom,

[Co-host/Producer]

Laura and Philomena's, to dry her hair. There were feces in the toilet.

[Carter Roy]

She didn't flush it. She just grabbed a mop and some

[Co-host/Producer]

cleaning supplies and headed back to Raphael's. She guessed it was around 11:30.

[Carter Roy]

Over breakfast, she mentioned the blood to Raphael and he told her she should check on her roommates. Amanda called Philomena first. She said she was at her boyfriend's

[Co-host/Producer]

place and hadn't been home since the day before. Then Amanda tried Meredith once, twice, three times. No answer. At that point, Amanda was officially worried. So she and Raphael went back to the farmhouse and started checking rooms.

[Carter Roy]

When they got to Philomena's bedroom, they

[Co-host/Producer]

found the window smashed in. There was glass all over the floor. Amanda was terrified that someone had broken in.

[Carter Roy]

But she didn't go inside Filomena's bedroom. Instead, she looked around the den in

[Co-host/Producer]

her bedroom, trying to figure out if anyone anything was missing.

[Carter Roy]

Nothing seemed to be. But Meredith's door was locked. And according to Amanda, Meredith only locked

[Co-host/Producer]

her room when she was showering in the bathroom they shared.

[Carter Roy]

Amanda ran downstairs to see if the guys in the ground floor apartment had

[Co-host/Producer]

heard anything from Meredith. Nobody was home.

[Carter Roy]

Back upstairs, Raphael tried to kick Meredith's door down. It wouldn't budge. So he called his older sister who worked for the local police.

[Co-host/Producer]

She told him to dial the emergency number. He made the call.

[Carter Roy]

Then he and Amanda went outside to wait. What they didn't know was that a

[Co-host/Producer]

different branch of law enforcement was already on the way.

[Carter Roy]

The Postal Police, a division that mostly

[Co-host/Producer]

handles cybercrime and financial fraud, had been called hours earlier that morning.

[Carter Roy]

At around 10am a neighbor had found

[Co-host/Producer]

the phone Filomena loaned Meredith lying out in the garden.

[Carter Roy]

Around noon, a second neighbor found Meredith's

[Co-host/Producer]

British cell in the grass nearby. Both were turned over to police.

[Carter Roy]

Officer Michele Baristelli was dispatched to return them. So by pure coincidence, right around 12:15:30pm Just after Rafael and Amanda had called for help, they looked up and saw a Postal Police officer walking toward them. Raphael explained the situation, and Baristelli followed them inside. Just as they were walking in, Filomena and Laura pulled up with two of their male friends. Suddenly, there were seven people crammed into the small apartment, and things only got

[Co-host/Producer]

more, more chaotic from there.

[Carter Roy]

Filomena was especially shaken.

[Co-host/Producer]

After all, her room was the one with a smashed window. She rushed in and started going through her things, trying to figure out what was taken. But here's what didn't make sense. The intruder had tossed her clothes and electronics everywhere. Yet nothing appeared to be missing. Her jewelry was all still there. That detail nagged at everyone. But right now, there was a bigger problem.

[Carter Roy]

Meredith's door was still locked, and no

[Co-host/Producer]

one had heard from her.

[Carter Roy]

The roommates begged Battistelli to break down the door, but he refused. As a Postal Police officer, he didn't

[Co-host/Producer]

have the authority to damage property without

[Carter Roy]

opening a formal investigation. And at that point, he wasn't even sure there was a crime. The window was broken, sure, but Filomena said nothing was stolen. There could have been an innocent explanation. Frustrated by the lack of progress, Filomena's friend, a large man named Luca, decided

[Co-host/Producer]

to bash the door himself at around 1:15pm it took him several spartan kicks and a hard shoulder to finally get open.

[Carter Roy]

Inside, a pile of white sheets lay

[Co-host/Producer]

crumpled on the floor, soaked through with blood. Next to them, behind the bed, a single bare foot poked out from under a blanket. The women screamed and ran into the hallway.

[Carter Roy]

Only Bottistelli and Filomena's boyfriend, Marco, stayed in the doorway. According to Marco, the officer stepped inside and lifted the blanket.

[Co-host/Producer]

But Botticelli later said he never looked at the body.

[Carter Roy]

Either way, the regular police arrived shortly after. Chief Monica Napoleoni of the Perugia murder

[Co-host/Producer]

squad was first on the scene. Accompanied by an emergency doctor and a

[Carter Roy]

nurse, Napoleoni went to Filomena's room before anything.

[Co-host/Producer]

Everything else and what she saw didn't sit right.

[Carter Roy]

The glass from the shattered window was

[Co-host/Producer]

lying on top of the scattered clothes, not underneath them. Shards were on the outside sill, too.

[Carter Roy]

To her, it looked like someone had ransacked the room first, then broken the

[Co-host/Producer]

window to make it look like a burglary.

[Carter Roy]

She hadn't even seen the body yet,

[Co-host/Producer]

and she already suspected the priority break in was staged. Next, she went to Meredith's room.

[Carter Roy]

Napoleon stayed by the door while the doctor rushed in and pulled back the blanket.

[Co-host/Producer]

Meredith was lying on the floor, partially covered. There was blood everywhere. Her throat had been cut. By the time Napoleoni stepped back outside, the press had already descended. Reporters and camera crews were gathering at

[Carter Roy]

the edge of the property. Most of the roommates and their friends

[Co-host/Producer]

were huddled together near the entrance, crying and holding each other.

[Carter Roy]

But Amanda Knox and Raphael Sollechido weren't with them. They'd stepped off to the side, away from the cameras, according to Napoleoni. She watched as they pulled each other close, then started kissing. Whether Napoleoni actually saw them making out

[Co-host/Producer]

or just got a brief moment of comfort between two people in shock would itself become contested.

[Carter Roy]

But in that moment, it was enough

[Co-host/Producer]

to put Amanda and Raphael on her radar. And it was only the beginning. In the weeks and months ahead, Amanda and Raphael's behavior would overshadow almost everything else about the case.

[Carter Roy]

What started as a murder investigation was

[Co-host/Producer]

about to become a media circus, a diplomatic crisis, and a legal nightmare all at once. And the truth that was about to get buried under all of. Foreign.

[Carter Roy]

Thanks so much for listening.

[Co-host/Producer]

I'm Carter Roy and this is Murder True Crime Stories.

[Carter Roy]

Come back next time for part two

[Co-host/Producer]

on the murder of Meredith Kercher. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime

[Carter Roy]

House original powered by Pave Studios.

[Co-host/Producer]

Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support.

[Carter Roy]

If you like what you heard today,

[Co-host/Producer]

reach out on social media, rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference and

[Carter Roy]

to enhance your Murder True Crime Stories

[Co-host/Producer]

listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode early and ad free. We'll be back on Thursday. True Crime Stories is hosted by me,

[Carter Roy]

Carter Roy and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team.

[Co-host/Producer]

Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benidon, Natalie

[Carter Roy]

Pertovsky, Lori Marinelli, Alyssa Fox, Terrell Wells,

[Co-host/Producer]

Cassidy Dillon and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening.

[Crime House Announcer]

Crime House exists because of listeners like you want to support the show and get the best listener experience. Join Crime House plus and get both parts of every serial killer's and murderous mind story dropped on Monday completely ad free. No more waiting days for Part two plus Crime House bonus episodes every month exclusive to subscribers. To join, go to crime crime house plus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts tap try free on the top of the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds show page.