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September 30th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
“How is it possible that the only trace of Raffaele, which naturally we
contest, was on the bra strap?”
Tiny traces of Mr Sollecito’s DNA were found on a strap torn from Miss
Kercher’s bra.
But it was only found by forensic officers 46 days after the Leeds University
student’s murder.
Defence lawyers maintain that it was inadvertently scuffed around the bedroom
and subject to so much DNA contamination that it cannot be admitted as
reliable evidence.
“We hope that this will be the last phase of this trial and we hope that it
will concentrate solely and exclusively on the reliable evidence and not on
conjecture,” Ms Bongiorno told the court.
Francesco Sollecito, the father of Raffaele, said he was “convinced” of his
son’s innocence and confident that the Florence court would find him not
guilty of the murder.
He said his son, who has been on holiday in the Dominican Republic, was “very
worried” about the trial but might attend hearings towards the end of
October.
None of the Kercher family was in court but their lawyer, Francesco Maresca,
said: “We have always maintained that they are guilty and that they were
present at the crime scene.”
Asked what he thought about the decision of the two defendants not to attend
the hearing, he said: “No comment – it’s their choice, the Italian penal
code permits it.”
Kercher, from Coulsdon, Surrey, was found stabbed to death in her bedroom, in
the house she shared with Miss Knox and two young Italian women, in Nov 2007.
Miss Knox and her ex-boyfriend were found guilty of sexual assault and murder
in 2009 but then acquitted by an appeals court in Perugia in 2011.
But earlier this year the Supreme Court in Rome ordered a retrial, saying the
appeals court judges had “underestimated” the evidence against them and made
serious errors in their review of the case.
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