Everyone around the world heard about Amanda Knox back in 2007. This study abroad student from Seattle, Washington was suspected of murdering her roommate in Italy. Turns out, she spent four years in an Italian prison for a murder she did not commit. However, some are still not convinced of her innocence. With the release of the Netflix documentary and her own show in 2018, many have revisited the case.
Murder Of Meredith Kercher
Tragically, 21 year old Meredith Kercher was found murdered in the residence she was sharing with Amanda Knox in November 2007. The mystery of who killed this innocent British student consumed the world for years to come. American student, Amanda Knox, along with her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of murder. In addition, a man named Rudy Guede was convicted. Guede was a man from the Ivory Coast, who Meredith met at their neighbors’ house.
Murder Of Meredith Kercher
Brutal Scene
On November 2, 2007, the body of Meredith Kercher was found brutally murdered at her residence in Perugia, Italy. Some called the scene “a lake of blood.” Sadly, she had been sexually assaulted and stabbed, but strangely, she was then covered with a blanket. That last detail made the identity of the criminal all the more intriguing.
Brutal Scene
Nothing Alarming
All the while, roommate Amanda Knox proclaimed her innocence. She told investigators she spent the previous night with boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito. Apparently, she returned back to the house, noting that the front door was left slightly ajar. After that, she did not some dry blood in the sink of the bathroom. However, Knox shrugged it off as her roommate’s “menstrual issues.”
Nothing Alarming
Something Was Off
It was then that Amanda Knox went to shower and saw feces in the toilet. Out of fear she left the home and phoned her other roommate Filomena Romanelli, saying she believed an intruder had broken into their place. Thus, Amanda Knox and Filomena Romanelli returned together, but noticed that Meredith Kercher’s door was locked. Someone smashed Romanelli’s window in her room. Seeing this, the two called the police.
Something Was Off
Witness
Despite all the suspicion, the investigators didn’t recover admissible DNA from Knox or Sollecito at the crime scene. However, there was a witness that put the couple at the crime scene. This witness claimed he saw them out in a piazza that very night. Meanwhile, the couple claimed they were at Sollecito’s watching a film. It’s important to note that this witness was a homeless heroin addict. Thus, many did not see him as a credible source.
Witness
No Motive
Another major issue was the lack of motive for Amanda Knox. Criminal prosecutor Giuliano Mignini came up with a wild story. He claimed both Knox and Sollecito took part in a four-way sex game and killed Meredith in the end. In addition, Mignini called Knox a “she-devil,” even in court, saying she submitted herself to “lust, narcotic substances, and the consumption of alchol.” He claimed this led her to kill Meredith Kercher in that crazed state with both Sollecito and Guede. Since people saw her kissing and hugging Sollecito outside the house just when they found the body, many went along with the theory.
No Motive
Showing Regret
The lead investigators noted that the murderer showed regret and perhaps, never murdered anyone before. They concluded this because three white towels were used to staunch the victim’s bleeding. In addition, the murderer placed the bedspread over her body. Then, this criminal ran out the front door, leaving behind bloody shoe prints. However, Rudy Guede did admit to grabbing those towels to stop her bleeding when he ran into her room after hearing her screams and seeing someone slashed her throat.
Showing Regret
Not Highly Trained
When Romanelli and Knox phoned the police, they called the local carabinieri. However, the officers who arrived were postal police who typically looked into Internet fraud or minor theft. Thus, the police who came across Kercher’s body were thrown for a loop.
Not Highly Trained
Compromising The Scene
These postal police officers made catastrophic errors while at the crime scene. First, they allowed people to walk through the active crime scene! Next, they let Knox, her boyfriend, a third couple, Romanelli and also Romenlli’s friends, lead them all through the home to find more evidence and clues. Oh and they first didn’t enter Kercher’s room, out of respect for the victim’s privacy.
Compromising The Scene
Strange Behavior
The entire case only continued to become more complicated and messy. Some felt sympathy for Amanda Knox, seeing she couldn’t handle such trauma. Others claimed that her kissing her boyfriend outside of the crime scene demonstrated her lack of empathy and implied guilt. Then Knox and her boyfriend were interrogated three days after the murder. While being questioned, Amanda Knox admitted she was at the apartment during the murder and even falsely implicated her boss, Patrick Lumumba, who owned the bar where she worked. Afterwards, she retracted this confession, saying she was forced to confess after hours without even a lawyer present.
Strange Behavior
Setting Record Straight
To add fuel to the fire, reports circulated that Amanda Knox was doing cartwheels and making faces with Raffaele in the office during their interrogation. However, Amanda Knox denied these allegations. She did admit to storming out of the police office and then sitting in her boyfriend’s lap for comfort. Apparently, he did tell her jokes and make faces to cheer her up, which she claims helped. She told ABC News, “I wasn’t doing cartwheels, despite what they said…I was reacting in an upset manner. I was upset. I could have been more sensitive to the people around me. That’s what I think was the major issue – was I could’ve been more sensitive to the people around me.”
Setting Record Straight
Lead Prosecutor Under Investigation
So that lead prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini was actually charged himself previously, but we’ll get to that. Many criticized Mignini during the trial for his strange theories and methods. He introduced plenty of strange theories like that Amanda Knox was truly demonic. However, once Amanda Knox got acquitted the Italian Council of Magistrates did discipline Mignini for violating procedure.
Lead Prosecutor Under Investigation
Another Suspect
Again, the only other person charged besides Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito was the drug dealer, Rudy Guede. Guede admitted he was in the victim’s room that night, his bloody fingerprints were found on her bedding, along with his DNA inside of the victim and on her bag and bra clasp. Yet, he changed his story and added later that Knox was indeed at the apartment. Not to mention, he had fled the country after the crime out of fear, he claimed. In 2008, he was found guilt of both murder and sexual assault. Guede got sentenced to 30 years.
Another Suspect
False Positive
On top of it all, Amanda Knox got some pretty shocking false information when she was in prison. The prison authorities told her she had HIV. For Knox, the trial became centered on her sex life instead of the murder and now, she needed to write a list of her sexual partners to tell them she had HIV. In addition, an Italian newspaper ended up leaking the list and tried to portray her in a negative light.
False Positive
Acquittal
Amanda Knox got acquitted finally in 2011, but then it was rejected only two years after in 2013. All the while, Amanda Knox maintained her innocence. She appealed the conviction in 2010. Once the investigators reexamined the knife and bra clasp from the scene, they came to the conclusion that the evidence was inconclusive to implicate Sollecito or Knox. Also, court-appointed experts ruled the evidence was inadmissible since the police didn’t properly handle the evidence. Thus, Knox and Sollecito’s convictions got overturned in October 2011, and Knox went home to Seattle. However, in 2013, the high court rejected her 2011 acquittal, claiming both Knox and Sollecito needed to stand trial again. Knox refused to return, but Sollecito had to since he was a citizen. In January 2014, both were convicted of murder, with Knox’s sentence at 28 years. Knox would not return to serve the sentence.
Acquittal
Final Acquittal
Even the US State Department did not force Amanda Knox to return to Italy to serve additional prison time when re-convicted back in 2014. On March 27, 2015, Amanda Knox was cleared of all charges. Actually, the Supreme Court of Cassation released a 52 page report from judges who concluded the “stunning flaws” in the investigation prevented them from convicting the two. If the local carabinieri arrived at the crime scene before the inexperienced postal police, maybe that evidence would have been admissible.
Final Acquittal
First Discovery
Why did everything think Amanda Knox seemed so suspicious? Was she guilty? Again, to review this…Amanda Knox and roommate, Romanelli found Kercher’s door locked. Then, seeing one of Romanelli’s windows smashed, they calling the local carabinieri, Italy’s military police force. However, those who first responded happened to be from the postal police, which were technically more junior. They were the ones who broke down Kercher’s door and found the dead body.
First Discovery
Their Relationship
Raffaele Sollecito was an Italian computer science graduate. He had studied at the local school, University of Perugia. When the murder happened, he had been dating Amanda Knox for just a week. Actually, the two met on October 25th at a classical music concert. Just a week after, on November 2, the two were infamously spotted kissing just outside the home and crime scene. This detail would haunt them for years to come.
Their Relationship
False Confession
Knox’s boss, Patrick Lumumba, had been in touch with her the night of November 2. Lumumba texted Amanda Knox, saying she didn’t need to come to the bar that night. During her interrogation, Amanda Knox implicated Lumumba in the crime, but later retracted the confession. Knox claimed all the hours of threats in Italian without a lawyer pressured her. Although her murder conviction was dismissed, they did uphold the conviction against Knox of slandering Lumumba.
False Confession
Under Pressure
Years after, Knox said, “They lied to me, shouted at me, threatened me, they slapped me on the head twice. They told me that I would never again see my family if I could not remember what happened to Meredith that night.” Both Sollecito and Knox were taken into custody and alas, charged with murder in July 2008. After their very public trial, they were found guilty in December of 2009. Both got sentences of over twenty years.
Under Pressure
Mignini’s Crimes
Now, back to the chargers against lead prosecutor Giuliano Mignini. He was found guilty in 2010 for abuse of power. They charged him for wiretapping phones during the investigation of the gruesome Monster of Florence. However, the ruling was overturned. He had been charged back in 2006. Despite those former charges being dropped, many criticized his bizarre tactics during the Knox case. In 2015, the Italian Council of Magistrates disciplined him for violating proper procedure.
Mignini’s Crimes
Evidence Against Guede
The evidence against Rudy Guede wasmore substantial, as we discussed. His DNA was on and inside the victim’s body and on her things. Also he changed his story, implicating Knox later on. On November 20, 2007, they arrested Rudy Guede in Germany. However, he was tried separately from both Amanda Knox and Raffaelo Sollecito. He was in what they refer to as a “fast-track” process. In 2008, they found Rudy Guede guilty of murder and sexual assault. He’s serving a 16 year sentence since his 30 to 24 years was automatically reduced by a third when Knox and Sollecito were convicted.
Evidence Against Guede
Crime Scene DNA
While Guede’s DNA was found everywhere at the scene, they did not find Knox and Sollecito’s there. As the defense team emphasized, selectively cleaning up ones DNA but leaving someone else’s intact is virtually impossible. DNA is not even visible to the naked human eye. Thus, it’s not logical to believe Knox or Sollecito cleaned up their DNA evidence from the crime scene.
Crime Scene DNA
Maintaining Innocence
From that very first night of interrogation, Amanda Knox claimed both her and Sollecito were at his apartment the night of the crime. She said the two of them were watching Amélie and smoking pot. Yet, the two were convicted for that second time on January 30, 2014. At that point when Knox’s sentence was bumped to 28 years, she refused to return to Italy saying, they would need to “catch [her] and pull [her] back kicking and screaming.”
Maintaining Innocence
Going Home
After her first acquittal, she flew home and held a press conference at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In an emotional statement, she said, “I’m really overwhelmed right now. I was looking down from the airplane, and it seemed like everything wasn’t real. What’s important for me to say is just thank you, to everyone who has believed in me, who has defended me, who has supported my family.”
Going Home
Media Frenzy
Alas when the Supreme Court of Cassation definitively overturned the convictions of Knox and Sollecito, they explained a lot in their report. Besides the flaws in the police investigation, they added that all of the international media craze over the case “certainly didn’t help the search for substantial truth.”
Media Frenzy
New Image
Nowadays, Amanda Knox continues to occupy the spotlight. However, this time, she hopes to define her own image with a new show called The Scarlet Letter Reports. It premiered on Facebook Watch in May 2018 as a platform to women who have been “objectified” and “vilified” by the media. Knox herself was called “Foxy Knoxy” during her public trial. Despite two acquittals, she still carries the weight of this sex deviant image. Now, she hopes to speak with other female figures, such as Amber Rose and Mischa Barton, who have faced complicated relationships with the media.
New Image
Memoir
Besides her new show, Amanda Knox wrote a memoir about her experience called Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir. Within the book, she writes about considering suicide while locked up, but how Sollecito helped get her through. In addition, she speaks about how harsh the media was with her and Italian authorities. She spoke with Chris Cuomo from CNN while doing press for her memoir and said, “I find it incredible that despite an absolute lack of evidence that connects me to this murder, I am still being judged based upon unrealistic and unreasonable expectations about how a young woman would react to a horrible situation.”
Memoir
No In-Between
In the Netflix documentary, Amanda Knox says, “There are those who believe in my innocence and those who believe in my guilt. There is no in-between. If I’m guilty, I’m the ultimate figure to fear, because I’m not the obvious one. But, on the other hand, if I’m innocent, it means that everyone is vulnerable, and that is everyone’s nightmare. Either I’m a psychopath in sheep’s clothing, or I am you.”
No In-Between
One Person She Wants To See
In May of 2018, she told Megyn Kelly on TODAY that she wants to go back to Italy. She said, “My mom thinks I’m crazy, but there’s one person I still need to see, especially before he passes. I’m not a religious person, but my best friend throughout this process was the prison chaplain. He was my best friend in there.” During her four years in prison, Reverend Saulo Scarabattoli helped console Knox. THis was when she got sentenced to 26 years for murder.
One Person She Wants To See