Whatever Happened To The House Meredith Kercher Was Murdered In?
Normally, if a quaint Italian villa went up for sale in the gorgeous medieval town of Perugia overlooking the lush, nearby countryside, the villa would be snapped up in a flash. That wasn't the case for one Perugian house with a dark and bloody history, however. The home in question — the site of the 2007 murder of 21-year-old English student Meredith Kercher — went through several rounds of purchasing, renovation, and selling. Selling it, however, proved difficult.
Back in November 2007, Kercher was found in her bedroom on her bed, partially clothed and with her throat slashed. Her door had been closed and locked, and evidence on her body indicated sexual assault. Kercher had moved to Perugia just three months prior in August to study for a year, and was renting the house in question with three other women. One of those women, Amanda Knox, was tried for murder along with her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and local drug dealer Rudy Guede. Knox and Sollecito were eventually acquitted on appeal, but Guede received 16 years in prison before being released in 2021.
In the meantime, the site of the murder was held by authorities for two years before being released to its original owner in 2009.
Rented out to students and immigrants
When police released the Meredith Kercher murder house to its original owner — Adalia Tattanelli Marrone — in 2009, the owner went right back to renting out the house and its 10 rooms to students and immigrants. However, The Daily Beast explains that Marrone did some refurbishing first, including adding metal grates to the windows for security purposes and remodeling the interior to more or less wipe Kercher's old room from the floor plan. Those who moved into the house included "Bangladeshi street vendors" and a Moroccan family who survived carbon monoxide poisoning on the premises.
In October 2009, The Guardian reported that three individuals had moved into the house, including 22-year-old Congolese nursing student Christ Mbette, who told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, "I am not scared of ghosts. We will throw a party soon." Mbette's roommates — students from Congo and Cameroon — might have felt differently, however, as they asked him to take the space where Kercher's old room was. If the aforementioned refurbishment is correct, then said "room" might refer to a certain section in the apartment rather than the same exact space.
The Times also reports that some unknown people "ransacked" the house following the murder and left behind "four kitchen knives and some candles." This, in turn, led to cries of "Satanists" breaking into the property to "desecrate" the scene, as The Daily Mail puts it.
Bought, renovated, and sold again
By 2013, villa owner Adalia Tattanelli Marrone might have had enough of her constant cycle of renters, because she put the Meredith Kercher murder house up for sale that year. While we don't know who bought the Kercher murder house after Marrone put it up for sale, or how much she sold it for, we do know that it took two years to sell, and was snatched up only in 2015.
The new owners — whoever they were — spent a couple of years renovating the property and put it up for sale again in 2017. Per The Daily Beast, real estate agent Vincenzo Russo described how difficult it was to sell the property even after renovations. The site's online listing got "thousands of hits" — perhaps from those curious about the Kercher case — but only had a couple of showings to potential buyers. Meanwhile, Australia's News.com. reports that the listing described the property as a "villa in the countryside in the historic center" of Perugia with three bathrooms and four bedrooms. It was listed at £260,000 (almost $580,000 in 2024). Apparently, the interior was totally unrecognizable in comparison to the time of Kercher's murder.
Interestingly enough, that's the last we've heard about the Meredith Kercher murder house. Multiple sites report it going up for sale, but not a single one reports it being sold. Some detective work on Google Maps at least shows us that someone appeared to be living in the house the last time it was captured in photo form in May 2022.