Murdered Meredith Had Been Worried About 'Strange Men'

Murdered British student, Meredith Kercher, whose mutilated body was discovered this week in Perugia, had told friends that she was worried about the “strange men” that her American housemate brought back to their shared house.

Meredith Kercher, 21, said that Amanda Knox, 20, invited men that she had met in bars and internet cafés, including at least one “very strange type”, to the whitewashed hillside cottage that they shared with two other (Italian) women, according to witness testimony leaked to Italian newspapers.

Ms Knox, her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 24, and Patrick Diya Lumumba, 37, a Congolese bar owner, are being held by police on suspicion of killing Ms Kercher after she refused to have sex with them.

A judge is expected to rule today on whether they should be placed under formal arrest, a step towards charges being laid.

The Perugia state prosecutor’s office announced an investigation yesterday into the media leaks.

Extracts from Ms Knox’s and Mr Sollecito’s witness statements have been published by Italian newspapers and testimony from Sophie Purton, 20, a close friend of Ms Kercher, also found its way into the press. Ms Purton, who is not a suspect, was reported to have told police that her account of Ms Kercher’s anxieties might be “important”.

Ms Kercher was found partially clothed with her throat cut in her bedroom last Friday. She was in Perugia studying Italian as part of her European Studies degree at the University of Leeds. Police have said that she was blameless and “morally upright”.

Ms Knox had earlier denied being at the house when Ms Kercher died, and Mr Sollecito claimed that they had been together elsewhere.

She then changed her story, telling investigators that she had heard screaming from Ms Kercher’s bedroom while Mr Lumumba was there, but put her fingers in her ears.

She has accused Mr Lumumba of the murder and said that she does not remember if Mr Sollecito was at the house.

But last night Mr Lumumba’s lawyers attacked Ms Knox as “an absolute liar” and said that her allegations were slanderous. Mr Lumumba claimed that he had not even been in the house. His lawyers, Carlo Pacelli and Giuseppe Sereni, said that their client also had an alibi. “He was never in the house of horrors, and he can prove it,” Mr Pacelli said.

(BMcC)