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A knife, a footprint and the clip of a bra strap: the evidence at the centre of the murder trial

At 8.18pm on 1 November 2007, a young American studying at Perugia's University for Foreigners received a text message that would change her life.

Business was slow at the bar where Amanda Knox worked shifts as a waitress, and the owner, Patrick Lumumba, told her not to turn up.

A lot of people in Perugia were nursing hangovers that night, not least the students who frequented Lumumba's bar, Le Chic. The day before had been Halloween – an excuse for more partying in a city thronged with young people like the then 20-year-old Knox.

The plans laid by Knox's Italian then boyfriend changed too. Raffaele Sollecito, a bespectacled computer science student, three years older than her, had been asked by a friend to take her to the bus station at the foot of the two lofty hills on which Perugia sits.

At about 8.40, his friend called to say she no longer needed the lift. She recalled that Knox had opened the door to her.

So what did the American and Sollecito do with their unexpectedly free evening? Two judges and six jurors (technically lay judges) concluded today that they had used it to murder Knox's 21-year-old British flatmate, Meredith Kercher.

They decided that she and her boyfriend did so in league with someone Sollecito is not known ever to have met and whom Knox knew only casually – Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast-born drifter convicted of the murder after a fast-track trial last year.

Guede, who launched an appeal on 18 November, admitted being at the house but denies murdering Kercher.

He has a completely different version of events from that which led to the convictions.

This is that Knox and Sollecito linked up with Guede – when and where were never established – and accompanied him to the flat, in a house just outside the centre, that the US student shared with Kercher and two young Italian women. There, they murdered her.

The prosecution's account of how they did so changed during the trial. In the final version, Guede held the 21 year-old Leeds university student while Sollecito prodded her with one knife and Knox plunged another deep into her throat.

To cover their tracks, they faked a break-in, turning over the bedroom of one of the two Italian flatmates, Filomena Romanelli, before going outside and hurling a stone through the window.

But a tell-tale sign was left. Romanelli noticed that the glass was on top of her strewn clothes, not under them. This was crucial because it undermined the defence's case that Kercher had simply been murdered by Guede after he broke into the house.

The Italian flatmate's testimony suggested the murderer had not climbed in through the window but had entered through the front door. Knox had a key, but Guede did not.

The American student and her boyfriend acted in a way that, with hindsight, could be regarded as suspicious.

Both turned off their mobile phones on the night of the murder. Knox said that, when she returned to the flat in the morning for a shower, she saw blood in the bathroom, but did not raise the alarm until noon, after going back to Sollecito's flat for breakfast.

Sollecito claimed to have rung the carabinieri. But telephone company records indicated he made the call after, and not before, the police turned up by purest chance and found him and his girlfriend sitting outside the house.

Evidence was produced to suggest Sollecito's flat had been thoroughly cleaned, but not by his cleaning lady.

None of this, however, made up for the lack of a credible motive. The prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, first of all hinted at an occult rite. But in his final address, he laid the emphasis on Knox's supposed hatred of her flatmate, whom she allegedly regarded as an insufferable prig – something Knox fiercely denied.

What tipped the balance against her and her former boyfriend was, above all, the forensic evidence, which involved a knife, a footprint and the clip of a bra strap.

The knife, which had a 17cm blade and was found in Sollecito's kitchen, was the alleged murder weapon.

Police forensic experts testified to having found traces of Knox's DNA on the handle and of Kercher's at the tip, but the defence argued that the traces were too minute to be reliable.

An expert witness testified that the shape and size of the blade did not match the wounds on Kercher's neck.

The footprint, in a mat on the floor of the bathroom, was claimed to be Sollecito's, but a defence expert said it could not be – it included the toe next to the big toe, and orthopaedic records showed Sollecito's was permanently raised.

The most powerful evidence against him was a trace of his DNA on the clip of Kercher's bra strap.

But the clip was not bagged by police until 45 days after it was found, by which time it was in a different part of the victim's bedroom. Sollecito's lawyers argued it must have been contaminated in the interval, but were unable to show how.

So wide was the gulf between the two sides on the forensic evidence that lawyers for Knox and Sollecito joined in asking for an independent assessment by experts appointed by the court. On 9 October, the judges turned down their request.

Houston Mayor Bill White abandoned his campaign for U.S. Senate on Friday in favor of a run for Texas governor.