The mother of the murdered British exchange student who shared an apartment with Amanda Knox said Saturday she is "very shocked" that Italy's highest court overturned convictions against Knox and her ex-boyfriend.
Meredith Kercher's mother, Arline Kercher, told the United Kingdom's Press Association that she hadn't heard details about Friday's verdict but that she was "a bit surprised, and very shocked, but that is about it at the moment."
Kercher, 21, was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in her Perugia, Italy, bedroom in 2007. Knox and her boyfriend at the time of the killing, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted in 2009, acquitted in 2013, and then convicted again last year in a case that captivated the world with its legal twists and turns.
"They have been convicted twice, so it's a bit odd that it should change now," Arline Kercher told the Press Association. She added that "at the moment, I haven't got any plans" to take action after the ruling.
Knox, who had spent four years in an Italian jail, was in her hometown of Seattle when the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation issued its verdict.
"She was so happy, she could hardly speak," Carlo Dalla Vedova, Knox's Italian attorney, told TODAY Saturday in his first American interview since the ruling, which dismisses Knox's case once and for all. "At the end what matters is the evidence. There was no evidence."
Theodore Simon, Knox's American attorney, told TODAY it was a "remarkable and proper and just verdict" that "announces once again to the world and with absolute finality that Amanda Knox was previously wrongfully convicted."
Rudy Guede, a drug dealer, is serving a 16-year sentence for Kercher's death.
Speaking to reporters Friday night, Knox thanked her supporters.
"You saved my life, and I am so grateful. I'm so grateful that I have my life back. Thank you," she said. "That's all I can say. Right now I'm still absorbing what all of this means."
