Links

These links provide five different ways of "sorting" the documents.
The master list is a single page list. It is a long, dense list, but it is ideal for quick searches, using the search word feature of your web browser. The other four links lead to multiple subpages that "sort" the files. The chronological organization "sorts" the documents by their original creation date. For example, if a police deposition was created on November 3, 2007, you will find it on the webpage titled November 3rd, 2007. The subject matter "sort" groups documents and files by their subject matter. All the statements, depositions, intercepts and testimonies involving Rudy Guede can be found on his page. The "sort" by type of content organizes the files by their type of content. There is a page that lists all the lawyer notices, another page that lists all the reports, another page that lists all the police notices, another page that has all the depositions, etc. The "sort" by type of file format organizes the files by their type of file format- PDF, audio, video or photos.

• Master list
  
• Documents organized chronologically
  
• Documents organized by subject matter
  
• Documents organized by type of content
  
• Documents organized by type of file format
  

What is the file library?

The documents linked to on this website constitute a part of the documentation created during the investigations and trials related to the murder of Meredith Kercher. This originally started as a small task to obtain about thirty or so critical source documents pertinent to the case. Eventually however, the task ballooned into an attempt to digitize much of the case records. The process evolved over the course of roughly two years and wound up involving many man-hours of work to document, select, digitize, transfer, sort, recuperate, catalog and organize the file library, solely for the sake of making the documentation available to the general public.

The case archives for this crime, and for any violent crime committed in Italy, come from three different sources:

• Police records created by the relevant Italian police forces. Police forces will normally include local police and local Scientific police forces. They may also include the Rome (national) Scientific police, the Carabinieri, Postal Police and Finance Police. Records created by the police normally include crime scene documentation, reports, notices of various investigative aspects and procedures, depositions, phone and room intercepts and evidence analysis.
• Prosecutor records created by the prosecutor and his or her team during the investigations and court proceedings. Prosecutor records include requests to the police, requests for approval from judges, consultant nomimations, investigative coordination, witness depositions, consultant reports, phone intercept requests, case summaries for the trial proceedings, appeals and any other juridical paperwork. The prosecutor records also contain anything sent to the prosecutor by the police.
• Court records created during the trials. These normally include court testimony, consultant reports and presentations, police reports and presentations, prosecutor and lawyer summaries and appeals, judicial ordinances and rulings, judicial motivation reports which explain the reasons for the sentences issued.

The documents on this website come from all three sources. However, I note that while our team had access to the prosecutor and court records, we did not obtain access to case archives remaining with the police forces, Only the next-of-kin and the defendants can consult the police archives. The police documentation found here is material the police gave to the prosecutor for his/her records. But the police retain their own archives of the case. We suspect the police archives contain evidence items examined, original crime scene documentation, original copies of reports, adjunct investigations or documentation that wound up not being materially relevant to the case, internal memos to document investigative procedures and proceedings. The police records found here are documents sent to the prosecutor during the investigation phase, or documents submitted by the police during court hearings and testimony. We hope to be able to access police records in the future to provide a more complete case archive.

These documents are a matter of public record. Anyone can make a request to consult the case archives, and may do so upon approval by a local judge. We were granted access to consult the records, and we were clear in our request that we intended to create a file library of the case on the internet. However the amount of paperwork generated for the murder case is quite daunting. One can get a rough idea of the amount of the material available from looking at this photo gallery. There were literally dozens of box folders of paperwork, as well as boxes of discs, evidence exhibits and more paperwork. The records for this case contain a lot of duplication, mostly because Guede and his defense team were granted the fast-track trial option. That required creating a separate set of prosecutor and court records for Guede's court proceedings, independent from the prosecutor and court records documenting the proceedings for Knox and Sollecito. But there are also duplicate copies of appeals, testimony, depositions and various police and prosecutor notices.

Despite the mountain of paperwork we had access to, key things are still missing, including: some missing discs of crime scene photos and videos; missing discs of phone logs; missing discs of crime scene surveys; missing parts of CCTV footage; missing court transcripts; missing court audio (for the Riesame hearings and for the October 18, 2008 Micheli hearing in particular.) We hope to revisit the original archives in the future to more thoroughly search for these missing items.

In any event, what is provided here is substantial. The file library provides many interesting details related not just to the murder case, but also to investigative procedures, court reasonings, and police work generally. Ultimately, we hope that the file library will show that the police and prosecutors had good reason to suspect the involvement of Guede, Knox and Sollecito in the murder of Meredith Kercher. These suspicions were based on many different types of evidence, not just two samples of DNA on a knife and bra-clasp. And more importantly, the suspicions were based on logical inferences tying the evidence together as a whole.