Kercher’s murderer released amid claims sentence was too soft
THE killer of Meredith Kercher did not serve enough time in prison, her family’s lawyer said yesterday as Rudy Guede was released early for good behaviour.
Guede, the only person convicted of the sexual assault and murder of the 21-year-old student in Italy in 2007, served 13 years of a 16-year jail sentence.
He was arrested and jailed shortly after the murder in November 2007 and then sent to trial in 2008, where he was found guilty of killing Miss Kercher, from Coulsdon in Surrey, who had just arrived in Italy for a year of study. Francesco Maresca, the lawyer who represented the Kercher family during the years-long judicial saga, said the fact that Guede’s jail time had been reduced by three years was standard practice under the Italian legal system.
But he questioned whether the sentence of 16 years in prison had been tough enough. “The sentence he served is very low with respect to the tragic nature of the event… and the gravity of the murder,” he said.
Guede has always maintained his innocence, saying he had nothing to do with the killing but he was linked to the murder by DNA evidence. “It’s the conclusive moment of a very sad affair,” said Fabrizio Ballarini, his lawyer. A magistrate in Viterbo, a town north of Rome where Guede had been in prison, granted the early release.
Guede, 34, who was born in the Ivory Coast and came to Italy as a child, was a drifter and small-time drug dealer when he was accused of sexually assaulting and murdering Miss Kercher in her rented accommodation in Perugia.
Two other people were also accused – Amanda Knox, the American undergraduate who was Miss Kercher’s flatmate at the time, and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.
In a tortuous legal process, they were convicted, then acquitted, then convicted again before having their acquittals definitively upheld by Italy’s Supreme Court in 2015.
Ms Knox, whose nickname of Foxy Knoxy fuelled hundreds of salacious tabloid headlines, returned to Seattle and recently gave birth to her first child.
Miss Kercher’s half-naked body was discovered lying in a pool of blood in the cottage she shared with Ms Knox and two Italian women. She had been stabbed multiple times and her throat had been slit.
Guede was arrested after having fled to Germany. At a fast-track trial in 2008, he was sentenced to 30 years for murder and sexual assault but it was later reduced on appeal to 16 years. Guede now wants to be “forgotten” by the world, according to one of the people who has been close to him during his time in jail.
“Unfortunately there are many media outlets and newspapers that want to interview Rudy. I say ‘unfortunately’ because Rudy is not a star and after 14 years he just wants to be forgotten,” said Claudio Mariani, a professor of criminology who was involved in Guede’s rehabilitation.
Before he was granted his full freedom, Guede had already been allowed out of prison on day release.
Recently he had worked as a volunteer for Caritas, a Catholic charity.