‘No DNA on Meredith suspect shoes’
PERUGIA, Italy (CNN) — No DNA from a murdered British student was found on the shoes of one of the suspects being held in the case — even though the suspect has the same size and type of shoe as one that made a bloody print on the duvet under which the young woman’s body was found, the prosecutor’s office told CNN Thursday.
Officials in the prosecutor’s office said no DNA matching Meredith Kercher was found on shoes belonging to 23-year-old Raffaele Sollecito, the boyfriend of Kercher’s American roommate, Amanda Knox, 20, who is also being held in the case.
Police say Kercher was killed late on November 1 in the villa where she lived with Knox. She was found the next day, half-naked, with a stab wound to her neck.
Kercher was an exchange student at the city’s university.
A report issued by an Italian judge last week suggested the young woman may have been sexually assaulted at knifepoint before she was killed in her bed.
However, the prosecutor’s office said Thursday it appeared she had consensual sex, and investigators are testing traces of semen found in her to see if it matches the DNA of yet another suspect, Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, who was arrested in the case this week in Germany.
Guede maintains his innocence but has said he will not fight extradition from Germany, a spokesman for the German prosecutor said Thursday.
Italian police have connected Guede to a bloody fingerprint on a pillow at the crime scene, and DNA tests have linked him to the villa through skin cells found on toilet paper there.
In the arrest warrant from an Italian judge for Guede, the judge says fears that the man may kill again are another reason he needs to be in custody, according to the prosecutor’s office in Perugia.
Italian media Thursday printed excerpts from the statement Knox gave to police November 6.
The Corriere della Sera newspaper said Knox wrote a three-and-a-half-page statement in English when she learned she was going to prison.
In the excerpts, which were published in Italian, Knox says she did not kill Kercher but finds it hard to remember the events of the night because she and Sollecito had smoked marijuana.
Knox explains her contradictory statements to police by saying she recalls various scenarios of what happened that night but can’t determine which one is correct.
Meanwhile, Sollecito’s lawyer, Luca Maori, said investigators issued their findings from an examination of his client’s computer, which Sollecito maintains he was using at home when Kercher was killed.
Maori said the Italian Postal Police concluded the computer was switched on that night but was not necessarily being used. Maori contested their findings, saying the police’s instruments weren’t sophisticated enough to make a proper finding.
Wednesday, Maori said the defense team had examined a clone of Sollecito’s hard drive that showed he was in his house and using the computer from 8:30 p.m. on November 1 to 1:33 a.m. on November 2. Police have said Kercher died between 10 p.m. and midnight on November 1. E-mail to a friend
CNN’s Diana Magnay in Berlin and Hada Messia in Perugia contributed to this report
