(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.



"In the beginning, all of this supposed evidence was being leaked, showing what sounded like a pretty convincing case," Anne Bremner, a lawyer and former prosecutor working with the group Friends of Amanda, told CNN.



The case couldn't look more different depending on where you stand.



Knox's murder trial is entering its final stages, with closing arguments beginning November 20. The jury will begin deliberating December 4. But there is still no agreement on the key pieces of evidence that prosecutors say convict her and the defense says clear her.



Behind the Scenes: How we examined the evidence



In Knox's corner: her friends and family from Seattle, Washington.



For them, she is the victim - railroaded by an overzealous Italian prosecutor, who faces charges of prosecutorial misconduct in another case. Knox's supporters say he's tried to force the evidence to fit his theory of what happened. And with negative and often false details about the case appearing in the press - all for the jury to read - Knox supporters fear she could be convicted regardless of the facts.



On the other side: Perugia's prosecutor Giuliano Mignini. For him and his colleagues, the answer is simple - Guede, Knox and Sollecito are all responsible for leaving Kercher partially clothed, strangled and with her throat cut on November 2, 2007.



See a timeline of the case



The knife



The crime scene was gruesome. The 21-year old British student was found under a duvet on the floor by her bed, covered in blood. A bloody handprint was streaked on the wall above her.



A source close to the prosecution says Kercher was held down while she was strangled and stabbed. The source says Sollecito's 6 ½-inch kitchen knife was used to slit her throat and then taken back to his apartment.



It is perhaps the biggest piece of evidence the prosecution has presented against Knox.



Knox's DNA is on the handle and that of Kercher is on the blade, said a source close to the prosecution who did not wish to be identified discussing an ongoing case.



Kercher had never been to Sollecito's apartment and wouldn't have come in contact with the knife, he said, yet there was her DNA. Those "unmistakable facts" show the knife played a role in the murder, the source said.



Bremner and experts testifying for the defense say there is no way the knife could be the murder weapon.



Dr. Carlo Torre, a leading forensics expert in Italy, testified that the knife taken from Sollecito's apartment wouldn't have made the wounds on Kercher's body.



"It doesn't match the size or shape [of the wounds,]" Bremner told CNN. "And Sollecito's knife also doesn't match a bloody outline of a knife left on the bedding."



Bremner, who offered her legal advice pro bono to the Knox family, questioned the validity of the DNA evidence, saying the knife had been "improperly transported in a shoe box."



Watch Amanda Knox's parents discuss the case



Furthermore, Bremner said the jury heard from defense expert Sarah Gino, a geneticist and private coroner in Italy, who
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