Prosecution: On the evening of 1 November Amanda Knox, an American student from Seattle, together with Raffaele Sollecito, her Italian boyfriend from Bari, studying computer science, and Rudy Guede, an immigrant from the Ivory Coast with a record of petty crime who played basketball and moved on the fringes of the student community, all arrive at the whitewashed hillside cottage which Ms Knox shared with Meredith Kercher and two female Italian students, who were away. After the revelries of Hallowe'en the night before, Ms Kercher had spent the afternoon quietly with two British female students watching a film.

However she returned home to find the other three intent on a drugs-fuelled sexual orgy in which she refused to take part. She was forced to her knees in her bedroom and held down by Mr Guede and Mr Sollecito while Ms Knox cut her throat. Mr Guede then fled to Germany while Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito attempted to clean up the cottage and smashed a window to simulate a break in.

Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito: They spent the evening and night of the crime at Mr Sollecito's flat and so could not have taken part in the murder, which was committed by a thief. Defence lawyers for Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito have indicated that the thief was Mr Guede, whose DNA was found on Ms Kercher's body, on her bloodstained pillow, on her bag and on toilet tissue. However the prosecution says Ms Knox's DNA was on the presumed murder weapon, a kitchen knife, together with the victim's, as well as in the bidet and basin, and that Mr Sollecito's DNA is on Ms Kercher's bra strap.

In a surprise twist a forensic scientist acting for the Sollecito defence team has testified that Ms Knox's and Mr Sollecito's DNA are also on the torn and bloodstained bra, while insisting that the traces are too contaminated to be useable as proof. When arrested, Ms Knox at first said she had heard Ms Kercher's screams but later withdrew this saying she had given evidence under duress and without a lawyer present. She also named Patrick Diya Lumumba, a Perugia bar owner from the Congo for whom both Ms Knox and Ms Kercher had worked, as the murderer. Mr Lumumba was arrested but later released.

Mr Guede: He says he had made a date with Ms Kercher to have sex but had not had a condom and had in any case had to go to the bathroom with stomach pains after eating a spicy kebab. In the bathroom he had iPod earphones on but eventually heard screams and on emerging found a man, who he at one point said "resembled" Ms Sollecito standing over Ms Kercher's body with a knife in his hand. The two men scuffled and Mr Guede was injured in the hand. The man then escaped together with a woman, identified by Mr Guede's defence team as Ms Knox, whom Mr Guede did not see, though he heard her voice at the door.

Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito committed the murder because Ms Knox and Ms Kercher had fallen out badly, latterly over stolen cash, Mr Guede's defence team says, and they pulled her clothes off to make it look like a sexual attack. Mr Guede tried to staunch the flow of Ms Kercher's blood but panicked and fled, first to Milan and then to Germany, because he feared he would be assumed to be the killer. He was arrested for not having a train ticket, identified and extradited to Italy.

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