Four years after her brutal murder, British student Meredith Kercher has been virtually forgotten as the media spotlight shifted to Amanda Knox, her family said on Monday ahead of the verdict that acquitted the American.
"Meredith has been hugely forgotten in all of this," said her sister Stephanie at a news conference in Perugia. "It's very difficult to keep her memory alive in all of this."
Together with her mother Arline and brother Lyle, Stephanie Kercher told reporters that "without a final ending to everything it would be difficult to forgive anything."
"I think what everyone needs to remember is the brutality of what happened that night, and everything that Meredith must have felt that night," said her sister. "She didn't deserve that, no one deserves that. She had been here two months and she loved this place. It's a beautiful city. Even being here now, it's nice to be here, but it's very difficult to understand what happened."
After the verdict, the Kercher family issued a brief statement. "We respect the decision of the judges but we do not understand how the decision of the first trial could be so radically overturned," the Kerchers said. "We still trust the Italian justice system and hope that the truth will eventually emerge."
Meredith, or "Mez" to her friends, was on a year-long exchange program in the hilltop university town when her half-naked body was found in a pool of blood in the apartment she shared with American Amanda Knox. The Leeds University student was just 21.
Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were arrested and in 2009 convicted of murdering Kercher when she resisted their efforts to include her in a sex game.
Following her arrest, Knox became a household name, with a legion of supporters in the United States lobbying to free her. But Kercher, from Surrey in southeast England, was pushed into the background.
'Very difficult for us'
Meredith's family had said little publicly since the murder. Their few statements have described her as popular, well-liked with a warm and friendly personality.
"Obviously it is very difficult for us to be in the worldwide limelight," said Lyle Kercher on Monday.
Stephanie Kercher also said that she hoped the court would weigh the evidence against Knox "based purely on the information available to them" and not pay attention to the "media hype" surrounding the high profile case.
In 2009, Stephanie Kercher told the Daily Mirror newspaper that "Mez liked dancing. She would come downstairs in the morning and start dancing in front of everyone and it made us all laugh."
"She was so much fun and had a wicked sense of humor."
In an interview with Italian talk show Porta a Porta before the final stage of Knox's appeals trial began last month, Stephanie Kercher described her sister as "lovely, an intelligent, kind, caring person."
Giacomo Silenzi, an Italian who was dating Kercher before her death and lived downstairs from her apartment, has described her as "calm, sweet and shy."
Meredith was enjoying Italy, making friends among British women in town and improving her Italian, her mother has said.
In one of the last photos of her, Meredith is seen dressed up for Halloween as a vampire in a collared black cape and bright red lipstick, with her straight black hair falling across her shoulders.
Slideshow 39 photos
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"I want people to remember Meredith for the good times she had in Perugia, not just the horrible ending," Kercher's friend Natalie Hayward told the Sunday Telegraph.