Meredith Kercher was a beautiful, happy, young woman who was thrust into the world news (and tabloids) due to her death and the depravity of the monsters who attacked her. It is no exaggeration to describe her as a rising star. She was mature, ambitious, loved and admired by the many people whose lives she touched. Even now Meredith’s inner light radiates so brightly that those held responsible for her demise still bask in the outer fringes of her glow, in the dim fumes of infamy.
Meredith possessed all of the qualities that her killers lacked: honesty, dignity, beauty, style, humor, wit, wisdom, charisma, generosity, grace, compassion, and intelligence. As Arlene Kercher, Meredith’s mother stated:
“I think it happened to Meredith because she was all that they weren’t.”
It has been almost ten years since Meredith left her physical form but her light shines on and affects people all over the world. Meredith Kercher was, is and will always be a shining star.
Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher
“She was clearly intelligent and worked very hard. She was always talking about her family. She was very friendly – I still have text messages from her in which she persuaded me to go out in the evenings. She was generous and open and had a very big heart. She was a very fulfilled human being. She was happy and talked about her family all the time. She had lived life to the full. That gives me a great deal of comfort.”[i] – Meredith Kercher’s friend Natalie Hayward
England
Meredith Kercher was born on December 28, 1985 and was raised in Coulsdon, England. Her father, John Kercher, wrote the book, Meredith, Our Daughter’s Murder and the Heartbreaking Quest for the Truth where he describes how the family took many vacations in Italy when Meredith was a small child.
Later on she went on school trips to Italy. When she was 14 years old she was part of an exchange program to Italy. Meredith lived in the southern town of Sessa Aurunca with an Italian family. She attended the local school, Taddeo da Sessa. Meredith’s teachers reported that she fit in very well in school and in Italy. She made a wonderful impression on everyone who fell in love with her good nature and sense of humor.
Her parents realized that Meredith’s maturity and confidence exceeded her age. So it was with their permission that she returned to Italy the following summer with friend. Meredith spent her summer holiday absorbing even more of Italian language and culture. At just 15 years of age, Meredith was traveling internationally and had adapted to life in Italy, which was now almost her second home.
A love for Italy seemed to run in the family as Meredith’s mother, Arline, lived and worked in Italy in her own youth. Arline worked on the restoration of Pompeii, the city destroyed by a volcano in AD 79 and buried under its ash. Meredith made a point of visiting there on her school trip. Meredith’s older sister Stephanie also studied Italian and speaks it fluently.
Her father recalled in his book when Meredith was in her Year Thirteen (equivalent to senior year in high school) she was part of a presentation with various students reciting Italian poetry. A classmate was scheduled to read a section of Dante’s Divine Comedy but had a panic attack at the last minute. Meredith calmly took over and read the passage in Italian flawlessly, without any preparation.
Meredith continued her Italian and Latin studies at the University of Leeds where she lived with five other girls in a house off campus. They enjoyed many good times together, cooking big meals, shopping, going out dancing and to the gym. Meredith was a hard worker and took on many jobs to help pay for school while being and honors student at Leeds, maintaining a B+ average. One of Meredith’s jobs was in school was working at Gatwick airport where she helped passengers connect with their flights. Her father recalled that Meredith had told him about an Italian passenger who was especially impressed by her fluency in Italian. Another job she obtained was acting in a music video. Kristian Leontiou was creating a video for his song ‘Some Say.’ He chose Meredith out of a long list of other attractive young women to be the star of his video.
“It was made by a group of Meredith’s friends sometime during 2007 – I think she knows the lead singer. The people on the video are friends of hers who were at Leeds University and it is unreal to see her in the video and to know that a few months later she was murdered.”
Meredith’s star quality and ease at being center stage was obvious to those who knew her. Her being chosen as the lead actress in a professional music video made it official.
Meredith worked a grueling 15-hour day in the filming of the video, and everything went well. She was happy with the results. She did not know the lead singer Kristian Leontiou personally and only met him briefly during the filming. However, after Meredith’s passing, Leontiou wrote a message of condolence. He expressed his hope that it gave some solace to her family and friends. He said the short film captured her “beauty, grace, and charm.”
Meredith did not get carried away with her newfound fame. Instead she quickly went back to her grueling work and school schedule. She worked long hours at a local bar, called Vodka Revolution, while carrying a full course load at her university. There she learned how to make various kinds of drinks like the Polish vodka mojito that she would later make for Patrick Lumumba which impressed him so much. She often returned home from working at the bar in the early morning hours, when her flatmates were just waking up. Then she would go straight to class.
Another job Meredith excelled at was as a tour guide in London. She worked on a London tour bus, informing tourists about the history of the city and entertaining them. This was during the summer before she moved to Perugia. This position required her to attend a two week intensive course to memorize the historical facts she needed to convey as well as monitoring the vacationers and keeping them safe on the open top double-decker bus. She enjoyed leading the tourists around her hometown but she wasn’t afraid to reprimand someone if they jeopardized their safety. Her boss said that she knew Meredith would be a good fit for the position with her charming and unaffected personality. She added that Meredith never called in sick, never complained and was an enthusiastic worker.
Meredith majored in Italian and European Politics and was accepted into the prestigious Erasmus program. It was through this exchange program that she was able to return to Italy in the Fall of 2007. Meredith attended the University of Perugia which is the oldest and most prestigious university in Italy. She was no doubt excited to be back, immersing herself in university classes with other Italian students.
Meredith was five feet four inches (164 centimeters) tall, approximately 110 lbs (50 kilos), healthy and active. She took ballet classes as a child and at age 17 began taking Karate. She was no doubt aware that her small size could make her an easy target for criminals. Her friends and co-workers even worried about her safety. When she worked late at a part-time job in a Mexican restaurant, her male co-workers would wait with her at the bus stop to make certain that she got home safely. Meredith was determined to not become a victim and she worked hard to earn her third belt in karate. She was working towards a black belt and had regularly sparred with other women and men who were twice her age in class.
It takes strength and discipline to pursue a martial art consistently as Meredith did. This carried over to her scholastic work where she earned high marks. This didn’t mean that she was all work and no fun. Her friends said that she always made an effort to enjoy entertainment with others. She was also a very good dancer. She probably learned a few moves from her boyfriend at Leeds who taught dance classes. He had proposed to her but she knew that she was too young to get married so they remained friends. Meredith continued to be very socially active while studying in Perugia. She made friends quickly and had many outings with them. However, she always kept up with her school work, cleaning up around the home she shared with three other roommates and spoke with her family every day. Meredith was especially concerned for her mother who suffered from serious health problems.
One of Meredith’s friends at Leeds University described her:
“I have never known anyone make so many friends in such a short space of time. It was quite remarkable how her personality affected such a large number of students.”[iii]
Meredith quickly made a new group of friends in her Erasmus program soon after landing in Italy in September 2007. Her classmates quickly recognized her impressive depth and understanding of Italian. They often sought to copy her notes after class as she always managed to capture everything.
Meredith aspired to become either a journalist like her father or to work at the European Parliament in Brussels. Besides being fluent in Italian, Meredith also had an excellent grasp of the French language. Meredith fully embraced the Italian way of life. She loved to shop for new clothes and wear the latest fashions. Always perfectly put together, she owned a large collection of shoes and designer clothes with which she always made the extra effort to present herself beautifully – la bella figura.
Her final days were happy ones. She was gorgeous, young, healthy, living her dream, and in love. She was enjoying delicious cuisine, the beautiful Umbrian landscape, a romantic language, new circle of friends, and a handsome new boyfriend, Giacomo Silenzi.
She was having such a wonderful whirlwind of a time that she, and her friends overlooked the dangers lurking close by. Her friend Natalie Haywood remembered a tutor in Perugia warning her and Meredith about the hidden dangers in Perugia.
“We laughed about it. We were thinking ‘What’s to worry about? This is a tiny little town and we’re from London.’ It’s horribly ironic now.
It was not only the suddenness and savagery of the attack that upset everyone but the complete unexpectedness of it. Meredith was always surrounded by friends and she was fluent in Italian. How and why did this happen? One of Meredith’s teachers said about her:
“In all of the time that I knew Meredith, I never heard her say one bad thing about anyone or anything. She never judged others and always tried to see the good side of people . . . ” (Meredith; John Kercher)
Was there someone around Meredith whom she was giving the benefit of the doubt? Someone who was a threat to her life? A killer in her midst that Meredith may have tried to help but instead put herself in harm’s way? Was there an acquaintance who turned out to be stealthy-knife-wielding-maniac? What kind of monster(s) can live with this on their conscience, lacking any shred of decency to admit their wrongdoing?
The Notebook
Meredith’s last day on earth was spent surrounded by her friends. They ate some home cooked food and watched a movie titled, The Notebook. The film is about a woman who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and has forgotten who she is. Her devoted husband reads to her every day, stories from a notebook. It is a notebook full of memories that the woman wrote in the early stages of her illness to help remember. After her husband finishes reading the notebook, the woman finally remembers who she is. She recognizes the man as her husband and for a short fleeting time she remembers who she is.
In the case of the murder of Meredith Kercher, the public has been read a notebook of lies created and spread by the murder suspects and the public relations firms they hired. The mainstream media promulgated fake news about this case. Stories that portrayed the murderers as victims. Stories to inflict the public with a collective Alzheimer’s with regards to the facts of Meredith Kercher’s murder. The memories of Meredith’s life have been overshadowed by the murder suspects lies. This is why a devoted group of volunteers have worked together and published online ‘notebooks’ at:
to help keep the memories of this wonderful, vibrant young woman and the truth alive.
True Crimes Podcast 