Amanda Knox thanks supporters, prepares to go home (Reuters)

PERUGIA, Italy (Reuters) – Amanda Knox, cleared of the murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher, on Tuesday thanked supporters who believed in her innocence as she prepared to return home to the United States after four years in jail.

“I will always be grateful for their courageous commitment … (grateful) to those who wrote to me, to those who defended me,” she said in letter to an Italian-American foundation, published by Italian news agency Ansa.

Seattle native Knox and Italian computer student Raffaele Sollecito had appealed against a 2009 verdict that found them guilty of murdering 21-year-old Kercher during what prosecutors had said was a drug-fueled sexual assault four years ago.

Knox, who broke down when she was cleared on Monday night, was waiting for a flight to London to Rome’s Fiumicino airport on Tuesday . She sat in a restaurant, separate from the rest of her family, guarded by police.

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday urged people not to forget Meredith Kercher’s parents.

“Those parents … had an explanation for what had happened to their wonderful daughter, and that explanation isn’t there … I think everyone today should be thinking about them and how they feel,” he told ITV.

The ruling was not universally welcomed. Outside the court on Monday, hundreds of people whistled, booed and shouted “shame, shame” and “bastards” at the courtroom and at U.S. TV crews.

QUESTIONS LEFT UNANSWERED

Many questions about the murder remain unanswered, and Kercher’s family sat stunned in the court long after the others had left. Meredith Kercher’s sister Stephanie was in tears.

“We respect the decision of the judges but we do not understand how the decision from the first trial could be so radically overturned,” the Kercher family said in a statement released through the British embassy.

“We still trust the Italian judicial system and hope that the truth will eventually emerge.”

The verdict, an embarrassment for the prosecutor and Italian police investigators, came after independent forensic investigators sharply criticized police scientific evidence in the original investigation, saying it was unreliable.

Kercher’s half-naked body, with more than 40 wounds and a deep gash in the throat, was found in 2007 in the apartment she shared with Knox in the Umbrian hill town of Perugia where both were studying.

Both Knox and Sollecito, 27, said they were innocent throughout the original investigation and trial. A third man, Ivorian drug dealer Rudy Guede, was imprisoned for 16 years for his role in the murder.

Sollecito, who had been held in a separate jail near Perugia, also left custody but his lawyer refused to say where he would be spending his first night of freedom.

The court upheld a conviction against Knox for slander, after she had falsely accused barman Patrick Lumumba of the murders. It sentenced her to three years in prison, a sentence which she has now already served.

The appeal trial gripped attention on both sides of the Atlantic, with an outpouring of sympathy and outrage from many in the United States who saw the American as an innocent girl trapped abroad in the clutches of a medieval justice system.

Supporters celebrated in Knox’s home town of Seattle, shouting in triumph as the verdict was carried live on television.

“I’m hugely relieved,” said John Lange, who taught Knox’s high school drama class at Seattle Preparatory School.

“When I knew her she was kind, hard-working and a team player. There was not a mean bone in her body,” he said, wiping away tears with a tissue.

DNA EVIDENCE QUESTIONED

Kercher, a Leeds University student from Coulsdon in Surrey, was on a year-long exchange program in Perugia when she was murdered, bringing a flood of unwelcome attention to the medieval town in central Italy that her family said she loved.

The murder investigation showed she was pinned down and stabbed to death and evidence suggests that Guede did not act alone, although Monday’s verdict left it unclear who might have been involved.

Prosecutors had said that Kercher resisted attempts by Knox, Sollecito and Guede to involve her in an orgy. Their case was weakened by forensic experts who dismissed police evidence that traces of DNA belonging to Knox and Kercher were found on a kitchen knife identified as the murder weapon.

The experts also said alleged traces of Sollecito’s DNA on the Briton’s bra clasp may have been contaminated.

The defense argued that no clear motive or evidence linking the defendants to the crime had emerged, and said Knox was falsely implicated in the murder by prosecutors determined to convict her regardless of the evidence.

(Writing by Philip Pullella and James Mackenzie; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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