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(CNN) — Within weeks of British student Meredith Kercher’s death in the vibrant college town of Perugia, Italy, prosecutors and police declared the case closed.

They’d seized two knives in their search for the murder weapon. They took DNA from the room where Kercher was killed. And at least one suspect had confessed to being at the murder scene. Or so they said.

Kercher had been stabbed in a sexual misadventure, officials said. And they knew the killers.

American Amanda Knox, Kercher’s roommate; Italian Raffaele Sollecito, Knox’s boyfriend; and Ivory Coast native Rudy Guede, a drifter known in the area, had their pictures splattered across the world’s media.

Knox’s photo was even hung in the police plaza alongside Italy’s most infamous mobsters and criminals.

The prosecution case seemed a sensational slam-dunk, almost too good to be true.

Knox’s supporters say that’s because it is.