A key witness in the appeal trial in Italy of Amanda Knox has told the court that the young American woman killed her British housemate Meredith Kercher.
“This splendid, marvellous girl was killed by Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox,” Rudy Guede, already convicted separately for his part in the murder, said in a letter read out by prosecutors on Monday as he sat in the witness stand.
In a fierce cross-examination by lawyers for Knox and Sollecito, her former boyfriend also convicted for the murder, Guede said: “I’ve always believed this. I’ve always said who was there in that house on that cursed night.”
Guede has admitted to being in the house Kercher and Knox shared at the time of the 2007 murder but says he did not take part in the gruesome killing, which shocked this medieval university town and has drawn international attention.
“The only time that Rudy Guede, Raffaele and I were in the same space has been in court. I’m shocked and anguished. He knows we weren’t there and have nothing to do with it,” Knox told the court after Guede’s testimony.
Sollecito also said: Guede “always talks about a shadow that could be me and a voice that could be Amanda’s.... We’ve been fighting shadows for four years. Our lives have been destroyed in a subtle and absurd way.”
The details of the killing remain highly disputed but prosecutors have said they believe Kercher was killed as part of a drug-fuelled sexual assault and that Guede, Sollecito and Knox all took part.
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