Background
Dempsey"s ancestry is Italian on her mother"s side, and German-Irish on her father"son
Dempsey"s ancestry is Italian on her mother"s side, and German-Irish on her father"son
She attended West Valley High School in Spokane, obtained her master"s in journalism from the University of Oregon School of Journalism, and began her career in 1976 as an intern at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane.
She has written for several magazines in the United States, and is the author of Murder in Italy (2010), a study of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher and the trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. Dempsey has been interviewed about the Kercher investigation for Cable News Network, including Anderson Cooper 360, Microsoft and National Broadcasting Company, the British Broadcasting Corporation, KOMO television, and Italian television She maintains a blog about the case, "Let"s Talk About True Crime," hosted by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
The couple lived in Albany, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts, for a few years before moving to Seattle.
Dempsey has worked as an editor, writer and producer for Master of Science in Nursing, an independent travel writer, and has written for publications such as The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Phoenix, Slate and The New York Times. She became known in particular for her research into the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy.
Dempsey was present in the courtroom in Perugia in October 2011 when Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were acquitted of Kercher"s murder.