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CSI: PERUGIA Investigators gather at the house where Kercher was murdered

Nor were the two men who were arrested along with Amanda Knox ignored.

The Harry Potter–loving Knox's bespectacled boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, has unruly dark hair, and one widely published photograph captures him wearing a thick yellow scarf, giving him a strange resemblance to J.K. Rowling's boy wizard. Even more tantalizing is a Halloween photo of Sollecito posted on a Facebook account. He is dressed as a mad doctor, carrying a meat cleaver.

Sollecito's physician father stood up for his son from the beginning, addressing some troublesome aspects of Raffaele's lifestyle, like his penchant for collecting knives. The BBC quoted Dr. Sollecito: "[Raffaele] has a passion for knives, but nothing more. There are many forms of collections, but this doesn't imply anything."

Italian investigators believe that a knife from Sollecito's collection was used to cut Meredith's throat, and preliminary tests on a bloody shoe print found in Meredith's room match a pair of Raffaele's athletic shoes. Investigators also found DNA on the murder weapon, which matched Knox's. Raffaele Sollecito recently turned on Amanda. He said it was her fault that he was in jail at all.

KNIFE SKILLS A Halloween picture of Sollecito posted on his Facebook account

Diya told people in the past that he was the grandson of one of the Congo's most storied leaders, Patrice Lumumba. By most accounts, Diya was a nice guy: a musician, devoted father, and business owner. (Amanda Knox worked part-time at Le Chic, Patrick's bar in the town center of Perugia.) When an Italian-language video featuring Diya emerged on YouTube, it revealed a cherubic fellow who seemed to be enjoying his interview in a 2003 "man on the street" segment for the show Curiosando. A stocky man of medium height, Diya came across as easygoing and cheerful.

Sollecito and Diya were certainly part of the story—after all, police initially thought that a man's hand held the knife slicing Meredith Kercher's throat—but "Foxy Knoxy" was the real draw: a Catholic schoolgirl who speaks multiple languages and wants to be a writer, a freewheeling young woman whose behavior sometimes annoyed and unsettled her roommates. There were stories of Knox bringing strange men home soon after settling into the house on Viale Sant'Antonio. These titillating tales were accompanied by reports of heavy drinking and pot smoking. Foxy Knoxy had also uploaded a "drunk chick" video to YouTube.

Shortly after her arrest, Amanda Knox's MySpace page and blog were locked. The source code for her blog was saved before the privacy restrictions were in place and the blog was copied—"mirrored"—elsewhere.