Facts still cloudy in student's death in Italy

ROME — A court-appointed expert said Saturday there was not enough evidence to conclude that a slain British student had been sexually assaulted or strangled, nor was it possible to narrow the window of time in which she was killed.

Giancarlo Umani Ronchi spoke to reporters before entering the Perugia courthouse for a hearing on evidence in the slaying of Meredith Kercher, 21.

Kercher was found dead Nov. 2 in her bedroom of a rented house in Perugia, a medieval Umbrian university town with a large foreign-student population. She had been stabbed in the neck.

Three suspects, including Kercher's roommate, 20-year-old Amanda Knox of Seattle, have been jailed for months in the case, although no charges have been filed. All three suspects deny wrongdoing.

Only one of the suspects, Italian student Raffaele Sollecito, 24, attended the closed-door hearing. Sollecito was Knox's boyfriend at the time of the slaying.

The third suspect in the case, Ivory Coast national Rudy Hermann Guede, 21, has told investigators he was in the woman's room the night she died but did not kill her.

Although prosecutors have raised the possibility that Kercher was sexually assaulted, Ronchi said he and other court-appointed experts found no evidence to confirm that.

An autopsy found that Kercher had bled heavily from the stab wound. Some news reports have said she was strangled.

"It's too much of a stretch to speak of strangulation," the Italian news agency Apcom quoted Ronchi as saying.