Amanda Knox Verdict: Kercher's Father Calls Acquittal 'Ludicrous'
With the Amanda Knox murder conviction overturned Monday, Meredith Kercher's family is left with unanswered questions about the death of the 21-year-old exchange student.
Kercher’s bother, Lyle, told reporters that the family is perplexed as to how a decision that “was so certain two years ago has been so emphatically overturned.”
He added that if Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were not the perpetrators of the crime – the family was now back at square one, in attempting to determine who murdered his sister.
Meredith’s father, speaking from the family’s home in the U.K., told the Daily Mirror that Monday’s verdict was “ludicrous.”
“There were 47 wounds on Meredith and two knives used. Once person couldn’t possibly have done that. What happens now? Does that mean the police need to look for more killers?” he said.
Mr. Kercher added that the verdict in the appeals trial makes a mockery of the original trial in which Knox, Sollecito, and another man Rudy Guede, were all convicted of killing his daughter in a drug-fueled sex game gone wrong.
Prosecutors have said that they will appeal Monday’s decision to Italy’s highest court.
Furthermore, prosecutor Giuliano Mignini told reporters that he believes that the appeals trial, and ultimately the verdict, was done under “unacceptable media pressure.”
Knox was acquitted largely on the information provided by an independent forensics review alleging that the DNA used to convict Knox was contaminated and unreliable.
With yesterday’s verdict leaving Knox a free woman, the Kercher family has no answer as to what happened the night their beloved daughter and sister was killed.
Kercher's sister Stephanie told reporters, “What everyone needs to remember, is the brutality of what happened that night and everything that Meredith must have felt that night.”