Angel Face Read Free

Cambridge, Leeds promised access to all. Today, there are roughly thirty thousand students on the campus, where buildings
from the 1960s are interlaced with glass walkways and structures more modern. The academic program is serious, far-reaching, and international-minded. In her two years there, studying European politics, Meredith proved herself an exceptional student with a quick grasp of languages, and she was accepted into the prestigious European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students. Known as ERASMUS, the program was established by the European Commission in 1994 to facilitate international study; its goal is to have three million students and teachers in active exchange programs in thirty-two countries by 2012. But the ERASMUS program also has a reputation for fun. At any of the participating universities, the ERASMUS parties are reputed to be the most multicultural and exciting.
    Meredith was a slender woman with pretty features that reflected her mixed heritage; her father is British, her mother an Indian born in Lahore when Pakistan was still considered part of confederated India. The young woman’s background, according to her hometown newspaper in Croydon, South London, was “solid, very proper middle-upper class.” She was a typical British girl who had her fair share of romances and who was not particularly embarrassed about being
sloppy drunk in public—she had been stopped once for public intoxication with friends in Leeds. She had three boyfriends in her two years at Leeds. Her latest beau was the most serious, but the two decided amicably to calm things down before she went to study in Perugia and he in Australia.
    Meredith’s father, John Kercher, then sixty-four, worked for the British tabloids as a sort of print paparazzo. In the 1980s, he followed celebs around town and hobnobbed backstage at concerts. At the height of his career, twenty years ago, he wrote pop culture annuals for the teen set on Michael Jackson, Madonna, Culture Club, A-Ha, and Wham. He also wrote snap biographies of Warren Beatty and Joan Collins. John worked hard, and the Kercher family lived well. Meredith and her three siblings attended an expensive and prestigious high school called Croydon Old Palace School, where Meredith was treasured for her upbeat personality. “She would come downstairs in the morning and start dancing in front of everyone and it made us all laugh,” her sister later told reporters. “She was so much fun and had a wicked sense of humor.”
    Amanda Knox, too, was both a dedicated scholar and, like most American coeds, an accomplished party
girl. Back in Seattle, she was a linguist who dreamed of being a writer. She had an insatiable appetite for reading, often simultaneously devouring the same books in multiple languages. She was reading Harry Potter in German at the time of her arrest, and her parents say she had considered becoming a journalist. She defined herself on her social networking pages as a “peaceful partier,” and her only brush with the law was a disturbing-the-peace arrest for a house party she threw. Seattle is not so different from Leeds. It is a liberal U.S. city, with a diverse demographic. The Seattle area hosts some big hitters such as Boeing, which was founded there, and Microsoft in nearby Redmond, but the area is equally well known for spawning grunge music and Starbucks coffee. The youth population prides itself on being avant-garde, but the prevailing culture is wholesome, outdoorsy, free.
    Amanda’s parents, Curt Knox, forty-nine, and Edda Mellas, forty-seven, split up when she was just a few years old, and she spent her childhood shuffling between their homes. Edda raised her, but Curt was involved in her life even as he built a new family with his second wife, Cassandra, forty-six. Curt worked as a manager at Macy’s, and Edda was an elementary-school librarian who then switched to teaching math
to boost her income. Seattle is expensive and money