Sollecito, who was also at the conference, again professed his innocence, saying, “I’m not here to change my story; only a crazy person or a criminal would do that.” 
 
 “I am neither a crazy person or a criminal, I’m an innocent person,” he added. Sollecito's new defense strategy comes as their legal teams prepare to appeal the couple's murder convictions in the death of Knox's former roommate Meredith Kercher before Italy's Supreme Court next year. Tiziana Fabi/AFP 
 
 Raffaelle Sollecito, convicted in January alongside Amanda Knox of killing British student Meredith Kercher, is unable to vouch for Knox’s whereabouts for part of the evening leading up to Kercher’s death, it was revealed during a press conference on Tuesday. (AP file) 
 
 Report: Amanda Knox's former boyfriend to abandon her alibi in final murder appeal 
 
 Amanda Knox's former boyfriend is reportedly abandoning her in his last and final appeal in the murder of Knox's roommate. Sollecito's sentence was 25 years. Knox and her former boyfriend Sollecito - originally sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison for killing Kercher - were acquitted on appeal in 2011 after four years behind bars, but then found guilty again in a shock about-turn by a Florence court in January. In her blog, she has written frequently about the injustice and lack of evidence in the case. Hide Caption 6 of 14 Photos: The Knox-Sollecito retrial Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found dead with her throat slit in an apartment she shared with Knox in Perugia, Italy, on November 2, 2007. Hide Caption 8 of 14 Photos: The Knox-Sollecito retrial Sollecito , Knox's boyfriend at the time of the murder, was convicted in December 2009 with Knox and released when their cases were overturned. "Experts agreed that my DNA was not found anywhere in Meredith's room, while the DNA of the actual murderer, Rudy Guede, was found throughout that room and on Meredith's body," she wrote in her most recent post. Hide Caption 9 of 14 Photos: The Knox-Sollecito retrial Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast native raised in Perugia, was convicted separately from Knox and Sollecito and is now serving 16 years. Maybe he's been advised to distance himself from Amanda Knox, but he can't deviate from what the truth is," Bremner says. While the Italian always claimed Knox "spent the night" with him, he never said they spent the evening together - which is when the crime took place, Bongiorno said. Asked where Knox may have been in those missing hours, Sollecito said he was concentrating only on defending himself and could not vouch for her whereabouts. His lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, said during the press conference in Rome that Sollecito “spent the night with Amanda” but was not with her during part of the evening. However, he added that he and his family have always believed, and continue to believe, in Knox’s innocence. If it upholds it, officials are expected to begin the lengthy process to extradite Knox from the United States, where she returned on her release from prison in 2011. In April, the court said in its reasoning that there was DNA proof that three people were at the murder scene: Knox, Sollecito and a third person, Ivory Coast-born drifter Rudy Guede, who is the only person still in prison for the crime.
– A major turnaround in the Amanda Knox case: For years, she and ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito have faced authorities as a pair, and both had their more than 20-year sentences upheld by an appeals court in January. But Sollecito has increasingly been distancing himself from Knox, as part of what CNN describes as a new defense strategy begun in February with an eye on his final appeal in 2015. Perhaps the boldest salvo in that about-face came at a news conference in Rome today, during which Sollecito himself called Knox's story on the morning Meredith Kercher was found "imagination and hallucination." Knox spent the night with him, but not the full evening, his lawyers now say, per the Local: "For the entire first part of the evening, they were not together. It’s this first part of the evening that’s new [to his defense]." Still, Sollecito said, "I'm not here to change my story," and added, "Amanda and I still believe she is innocent." A lawyer for the Friends of Amanda Knox responds, per mynorthwest.com: "It's stunning, because we've been hearing consistently Raffaele Sollecito had been corroborating Amanda Knox's account, essentially an alibi"—even in his memoir, Honor Bound. "Maybe he's been advised to distance himself from Amanda Knox, but he can't deviate from what the truth is."