The story of what really happened to her is horrific and
deserves to be told and absolutely matters.
And the story of what happened to me was horrific and deserves
to be told and absolutely matters.
And I I absolutely deny any idea that there is some 0 sum
relationship between the two. I've had people reach out to me
and say that my baby should be murdered so that I know what it
feels like to be Meredith's family, but I do not feel like I
or my daughter need to apologize for existing.
One thing that I do wonder is if it's because I'm a woman and
because as a woman, I'm expected to disappear.
Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World.
I'm Krishna Guru Murthy, and this is the podcast where we
talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas in their
lives and the events that have helped shape them.
My guest today is Amanda Knox, who became internationally
famous after the murder in 2007 of the British student Meredith
Kercher in Perugia, Italy. Because Amanda was accused and
convicted of Meredith's murder and then ultimately acquitted in
2015 after years of legal twists and turns, she has since written
and spoken extensively about her experience and has advocated for
others who may have been falsely imprisoned.
Her latest documentary, Mouth of the Wolf, sees her return to
Perugia, where she spent four years in prison, and confront
the prosecutor who pursued her relentlessly to try to seek
closure. She's also a podcaster now, and
her latest series is about the case of Lucy Letbe, the nurse
convicted of murdering babies in her care.
And we'll get to all of that in due course, but we'd like to
begin this podcast with a big question, which is if you could
change the world in any way, how would you change it?
I think I would change it so that we celebrated people when
they admitted that they were wrong.
Explain why. Well, I think that's just around
the world. Culturally there and socially we
people are afraid to admit when they are wrong and they are
incent like incentivized both consciously and unconsciously to
deny any kind of evidence that would suggest that anything that
they have staked like staked a claim to is they would just it's
we push away the evidence that suggests that we are wrong do.
You think that's what happened with your the prosecutor in your
case and why he didn't change his mind sooner?
Yes. And I think that that's actually
one of the one of the sources of conflict in in our world in the
broader sense is that we are. So we invest ourselves so much
in what we, what we claim about the world and we're afraid to
take any back step because we're afraid of being punished, We're
afraid of being ostracized. And so I'm imagining a world in
which instead of someone being pushed away or ostracized or
punished for admitting that they are wrong in light of new
evidence, instead a world where we embrace someone even more and
celebrate them even more and reward them for being willing to
change their mind in light of new evidence.
So, So what? What should we say about Mouth
of the Wolf, the documentary? Do you?
Do you want to explain? You know the idea if you like,
directed by your husband. Yeah, yeah, we can blame.
Him over several. Years, yes.
So the the documentary itself, Mouth of the Wolf is my
husband's doing. He documented my journeys back
to Italy. So the thing I can take credit
for is the choice to go back to Italy.
I was struggling in the aftermath of everything that
happened to me in Italy to reclaim my identity, reclaim my
reputation. But also I was struggling with
the this haunting question of why?
Like, why did this happen to me? Why did my prosecutor take one
look at me and think, oh, there's my rapist and murderer?
And when the actual evidence came to light that it was this
local burglar who had his DNA all over the crime scene, he had
a history of breaking and entering.
Why he didn't admit that he was wrong and just pursue the truth
as opposed to pursue the case that he had already pre
constructed. And so I, I was struggling with
that question because a lot of people around me were telling
me, well, it's because he's evil.
He doesn't care what the truth is.
And that always struck me as wrong that that was
oversimplify. That was a very black and white
explanation. I wanted the truth.
And so ultimately, what I did as I reached out to him to ask, and
I had this little like idea this, this crazy optimistic hope
that if I could just meet with this person outside of this
adversarial system, outside of this very judgmental culture in
a space where we could just see each other as real people, he
must realize that I'm not the person that he would he thought
he was prosecuting. But why?
Why did it matter to you so much what he thought?
Why? Why didn't you just see him as
an official who was doing his job, who was pursuing the
evidence and seeing where it took?
It wasn't personal for him. It was professional, but it
seems to matter massively. Of course, of course it was
massively personal for you and it was your life.
Yeah, but but what's really interesting, I think in the
documentary is, is it seems to be so emotionally important to
you. Yeah.
What he thinks. Yeah, I mean, he in a way, he
stands in for all the people, all the people he convinced of
his story that continue to have an impact in my life.
I still feel like every day, you know, 18 years later, I'm
proving my innocence every day. And a lot of wrongfully
convicted people feel that same way, that the stigma of the
wrongful accusation still sticks to them.
But I think beyond that, it's about how do we exist in a world
where the whole world can turn against you for seemingly
nothing? And I feel like if I'm going to
exist in the world and have faith in our institutions and
have faith in our society, I personally needed to understand
how this man came to view me in this way and had such an outsize
impact on my life. When you say the world turned
against you for seemingly nothing, you mean because you
were acquitted. Yes, I mean the.
The the world turned against you because you were portrayed in
court in the media, yes, as this monster, yes.
Who was? But on the basis of wild
speculation is what I mean. But but that that's why the
world turned against you. What I mean, it wasn't, it
wasn't. For nothing, Yes, yes, but no.
Of course, obviously someone raped and murdered my roommate.
There was a very serious crime that very much was committed,
right? And so like, the pursuit of
truth in that case, however, was completely lost in the pursuit
of this scandalous story. Can you, can you talk in sort of
bigger terms then about your whole approach to your life
afterwards, which has involved a couple of documentaries now, a
drama series, your memoir? You know, you have very much
taken ownership of your own story, having had it told by the
courts and the media. Yeah.
Now a lot of people find this difficult to understand that
they say, well, what? Why don't you just get on with
your life the way you're Co accused?
Rafael, did you know, try and leave it behind?
Could you, can you explain, you know, what, what your whole
approach has been to why it's been so important to retell your
story, your way in your words and to keep doing so?
Yeah, well, it was stolen from me.
My identity, my story, my past, my present and my future was
stolen from me, and no one was handing it back.
So I had to take it back. And I think that a lot of people
who have been wronged, who have felt like they haven't had a say
in their, their legacy and, and who they are, who how they exist
amongst people in the world, like that's a devastating
existential reality. There's actually a psychological
term for it, for that crisis, that that agony.
And it's called narrative foreclosure.
The feeling that you don't, you don't, you're not even, you're
not the author of your own story.
You're not even the protagonist. You're just a villain or a
victim in someone else's tale. And I was not satisfied to let
that be my fate. Do you feel your life was ruined
by this? I was a 20 year old girl who
went from anonymous to one of the most vilified and slut
shamed people on the planet. Yes.
And, and is that still how you feel?
You know, do you still feel now there's a there's a moment in
the documentary where you talk about a part of you dying in
Perugia. The girl you were.
Yeah. The girl you might have been.
Yeah. Do you still feel now that your
life has been ruined by this? I feel that I have worked very,
very hard to make the most and the best out of a really
horrific set of cards that was placed before me in ways that I
was absolutely unprepared to handle.
And I've been really lucky to have the support of my family
and my communities, strangers who came out of the woodwork to
to support all of us as we pursued truth and justice in
this case. But it is not an easy.
And I, like I said, I still carry the stigma of someone
else's criminal actions on my own shoulders because a lot of
people out there don't even know the name of the person who
actually raped and murdered Meredith Kercher.
They associate that crime with me, something that I had nothing
to do with. I'm known for something that I
didn't do. And the prospect of being known
for something that I will do is a difficult prospect.
I don't know if I'm ever going to accomplish anything that will
come to define me more than this thing that I didn't do.
What do you say to people who who say, well, you know, you
present yourself as a victim and you, there's no doubt you were a
victim of a miscarriage of justice and it had a horrific
impact on your life. The original victim, of course,
was Meredith. I'm actually, it's, it's always
been very, very difficult for you to know how to feel about
Meredith as the victim of this crime because you, you didn't
know her that well, did you, at the time.
I mean, how long had you known her when the girl happened?
We had been living together for like 5 weeks.
So yeah, I didn't know her very well, but she was my roommate.
She was my friend. Like, have you ever studied
abroad? No.
OK, well, when you're when you're a young person who's in a
new place, meeting all new people all at once, those those
relationships become meaningful. Like she was, she was of the
people that I was living with, she was the one who was most
like me. She would I, you know, I was
living with three other roommates, two of whom were
Italians who were older than us, who had been friends for a long
time. And then it's me and Meredith,
the new girls in the house. And she was a year older than
me. She was also studying abroad.
She was also interested in journalism and writing.
And so we really had a lot in common.
We liked to dance. We like to eat pizza.
So we would we would hang out with each other.
So sure, I didn't know her for that long, but that doesn't mean
that what happened to her didn't greatly disturb me, didn't shock
me, or isn't something that I think about every day.
Like what happened to her could have happened to me.
And it's just a fluke that I happened to meet my boyfriend
five days before this crime occurred and that I happened to
be sleeping over at his house when it happened.
Like I, when I think about Meredith, I mean, this is a
person who had her whole life ahead of her, just like me.
And so I relate to her as this sort of like other side of the
coin. And that fate flipped a coin and
and it landed heads and tails and I just happened to land
heads and her tails and and what happened to her could have
easily happened to me. And so I mean, in many ways, I
do think of myself as the lucky one of the two of us, but that
doesn't mean that our victimhoods are in somehow
competition with each other. They're in conversation with
each other because. I mean, the way the way you
describe it, they are sort of inextorably linked, you know,
flip sides of the same coin. I mean, is there any way in
which her her death, her murder is, is a is a ghastly outrage on
its own separate to you? Yeah.
Which hasn't, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely.
The story of what really happened to her is horrific and
deserves to be told and absolutely matters.
And the story of what happened to me was horrific and deserves
to be told and absolutely matters.
And I I absolutely deny any idea that there is some 0 sum
relationship between the two. I mean, the tabloid press is
sort of an absolutely fundamental part of what
happened to you, the way you were portrayed.
And it never stops. You know, today there is another
story about how you're cashing in on this terrible thing that
happened. How, how do you deal with that?
How do you process? Do you ignore it?
Do you? What do you?
Does it still hurt? I don't like to give it oxygen
by even dating it as worthy of consideration because frankly,
you do not hear that kind of allegation towards any other
wrongly convicted person. Other wrongly convicted people
tell their stories without A at being asked to apologize for it
because again, it is not at the expense of the original victims
of the crime. It's not it's a different story
that deserves to be told in its own right.
And so I it is painful to me that people still feel like I
have to apologize for existing. I mean, it can I tell you
something a little bit personal? It a little bit relates to when
I say that it feels like not only should I apologize for
telling my story, but also it feels like people want me to
apologize for existing is when things happen in my life that
are part of just me moving on with my life, like getting
married or having children. I have people reach out to me.
The same kinds of people who say I should apologize for being
here or should apologize for telling the story.
Those same kind of people are reaching out telling me, you
know who will never get to have a family to have children,
Meredith, as if I should be ashamed of having a family,
having children. I've had people reach out to me
and say that my baby should be murdered so that I know what it
feels like to be Meredith's family and I am not confused
about how cruel and unfair and ridiculous that is.
It still hurts, but I do not feel like I or my daughter need
to apologize for existing. Nor do I feel like, again, that
me telling the story of what happened to me, the
institutional failures and the journey of coming to terms with
trauma and what it takes to reclaim your life after you have
been through something like that.
What it really takes. I've had to grow, I've had to
learn, I've had to change over the course of this terrible
thing that happened to me. I do not apologize.
I mean, you're, you're, you're quite right that other victims
of miscarriages of justice are treated very, very differently.
So what? Why do you think your case and
you as an individual are treated the way you are?
Is it because of the salaciousness of the original
construct in the trial? You know that the story they
concocted effectively about what had happened, which was sex and
drugs and murder and, you know. Sex and drugs and murder and
other wrongly convicted cases as well.
So I. So why?
Why was? Why is it different in your case
than in your view? Why do you think?
Well, I, I think it probably is a combination of those things in
which the, the, the whole framing of the story was part of
a culture I find really distasteful in general, which is
the whole true crime area that people love this stuff and they
love the detail detail. And you're part of that world
now, which I wanted to come on to, but, you know, but that I
think it kind of it, it, it was already set as young people, you
know, young, beautiful people in a beautiful part of the world, a
terrible crime involving, you know, some sort of weird sexual
practices and drug taking along the way.
There was so much for people to get into.
But there are a lot of cases like that.
People are unable to kind of just let go of it all.
You know, people hold, they say, well, there must some bits of
that must be right. Some bits of that must be true.
It can't all just be made-up. And so, you know, so, so they
don't forgive perhaps, or they don't, or they think, well,
there's something there that I don't know.
But I mean, what do you think? Doesn't really matter what I
think. I mean, it matters to me what
you think. I'm interested in what you
think. I mean I.
Think once, once, once. The story's been framed.
It's very, very difficult to unframe it absolutely.
The point, but the point is also that there are a lot of cases
that are highly scandalous and that even rose to the level of
like incredible coverage. Although I think the difference
in some of those cases is that it is the, the miscarriage of
justice which became the huge story.
You know, these were not necessary.
There are sometimes there was one recently who was wrongly
imprisoned for murder for many, many years, spent spent decades
in jail. That murder itself is not one
that is present in popular culture.
It is the miscarriage of justice that we now know about.
In your case, you know the the the the the the case and the
detail was reported in such detail that it is embedded in a
lot of people's memories. Well, are you familiar with the
Central Park 5 case? That might be.
So that's a case the. Donald Trump case.
Yes, the Donald Trump case, the one where he put out an ad, a
full page ad in the paper calling for the death penalty of
these teenage boys. That was a huge scandalous case
that was huge in the headlines and was covered extensively.
You don't see that same kind of treatment towards them once they
are out and telling their story. So what's the difference?
The only thing I, and again, I don't claim to have like the
solid knowledge of this, but one thing that I do wonder is if
it's because I'm a woman and because as a woman, I'm expected
to disappear. I'm expected to be graceful and
grateful and silent. And instead I stand up for
myself. And I think there is a double
standard in terms of who gets to reclaim their narrative and have
authority over their own story and who doesn't.
Have you done it yet? I think so.
You feel you have. I mean I in a.
Because I don't know what more you could do to do it.
You know, my story is continuing to evolve as I, you know, evolve
as a person and I wrap my mind around everything that's
happened over time. But in terms of like, does the
public understand what really happened or not?
That's a huge endeavor that I don't at this point feel I need
to take responsibility for. And so in, in that sense, I feel
like, you know, Beyoncé had her Lemonade album.
I've made my Limoncello album, you know, like I'm just like
I'm, I'm done explaining it to people.
I've had to do, I've had to do the hard work of like
understanding it myself. And I've shared that
understanding with people, and now it's kind of up to people
to, like, figure it out for themselves if they're still
confused, you know? Do you, do you want more than
people just to conclude that you didn't do it?
You know, do you want them to like you as a person as well?
Oh, well, I mean in in the way that we all would hope that if
we were to meet people, they would like us.
But I'm not. That's really.
Hard. That bit is really hard.
Yeah, I think for public figures.
And I suppose the reason I ask is, I suppose, you know, you you
feel not just wronged, but you feel misunderstood.
Yeah. People feel people don't know
who you really are. Yeah.
And you want to believe that you're a good person and a nice
person, all those sorts of things.
Yeah. But you are still bombarded on
social media with hate and people who think, oh, well, you
know, people still think you did it and all those sorts of
things. And as you say, you know the
sort of the resentment of you speaking I.
Mean look, I don't so how much? Does that matter to you in terms
of, you know, there's a certain group of people who are just
never really going to get who you really are?
I'm not as concerned about them because I don't take that
personally per SE. I feel like that says more about
them than it does me. I'm more concerned about is the
impact that I'm having and are in the choices that I'm making
and the work that I do, is it having a positive impact?
And that's what I'm mostly concerned about at this point.
Like I, you know, I'm not trying to like prove myself to you
right now. I'm trying to have a
conversation that is valuable and and useful and I'm applying
my own experience to that. But it's ultimately to make a
point, which is the world is a lot more complicated than we
take it for granted. And a lot of times we approach
people and stories through specific lenses that we don't
even realize that have been cast in front of our eyes.
And so a little bit, I'm living to prove that point and, you
know, publicly here to prove that point.
But on the other hand, like, I'm very comfortable with myself and
my little world and my husband and my children and my friends.
Like I'm good. What we see in this documentary
though, is that actually there's a there's a lot of people
affected by these sorts of things and a lot of work that
goes on that you get involved in to some degree.
You know what what, what do you do or how?
How do you try and help other cases and other people?
Wow. Let me count the ways.
So one of the ways is by helping people tell their stories,
right? So I do investigative journalism
to examine the cases and then when I come around to an
understanding of them, I might go on to advocate for certain
cases. My podcast series that's coming
out, Doubt the Case of Lucy, Let Be is a very, very thorough
examination of this highly controversial case that was
brought to my attention that I have been working on for the
past two years in order to get it right.
Beyond that, I mean anything from people reaching out to me
who are in the midst of some kind of legal or even like
social ostracization experience. People reach out to me all the
time to say I'm feeling misunderstood, what do I do?
Or I'm in the middle of a legal crisis, what do I do?
Or I've finally gotten out and I want to tell my story.
What do I do? And because I have lived this
life that I have, it's like I've gotten APHD in whatever this is.
And so I can share those insights that I've learned the
hard way with people who are going through it now.
And that can be anything from just recommending like here are
some red flags for if a journalist reach out just to you
and says, oh, we want to do a documentary about your case.
And I say, OK, well here's some very pointed questions to ask
them to like get a vibe check like I'm I can do it, help them
people get a. Vibe.
Well, a big one is about timing. So if they tell you you have to
do it like this is your opportunity and you have to do
it now, like say yes now or you're going to lose this
chance. I say walk away because no one
should ever. Yeah, it's never true and it's a
lie. And also it's extremely
manipulative towards someone. It's doesn't someone who has
been through this kind of experience of having their story
stolen from the not only are they victimized and have their
freedom stolen from them or say they're a victim of a crime and
somebody like, you know, traumatize them.
Not only are they a person who is dealing with a trauma and
trying to like, heal through the process of telling their story,
they are potentially facing a further trauma of being taken
advantage of and exploited by unscrupulous journalists.
And I've had experience with those, and so I know how to weed
them out and to protect people who are otherwise desperately
attempting to heal through this process.
I mean, it's interesting, isn't it, what what people believe in
the criminal justice process, given we live in a world in
which trust in institutions is I.
Don't know. That's an all time low.
What? Why do you think that is that
you know, is it? Is it that people want to
believe the worst? Do you think?
I mean, I do think that certain kinds of stories hit our
amygdalas and like it's almost unconscious that there's like
certain kinds of stories, the sex, the violence, the like that
that like trigger us in a particular way so that we have
an automatic emotional response that overrides our rational
ability to to process information.
And I think that media institutions take advantage of
that in order to garner our, our attention for money as well as
like social media, like that's all part of the algorithm.
What you know, and this is, I'm not saying anything
revolutionary. People have recognized that
outrage is the most, the, the emotion that makes the most
money, right? The most profitable emotion is
outrage. And there are certain things,
there are certain kinds of stories and situations and
people that trigger immediate outrage.
And I think that those kinds of stories attract attention.
But you mentioned something before which I thought was
interesting, that you're, you're very like turned off by those
who are attracted to true crime. And I used to be that way too,
in a sense that like, I don't find that relatable.
I'm not a true crime person. I know it sounds weird.
Amanda Knox isn't a true crime person, but I'm not like, it's
not something that I was interested in.
I was a Harry Potter person. I was not a true crime person,
but then I became the subject of a crazy true Crime Story.
And I I at first felt very adversely like, Oh my God, why
are people just so like get their hooks into these kinds of
things? Why are people so ravenous for
these kinds of stories? That turned me off until I
started meeting and talking to people who are just avid
consumers of true crime. And I think a lot of it is one
that we like to solve puzzles like that's just like a natural
innate part of being a human is we're interested in if there's
little pieces of the puzzle and we can put them together, that's
a very satisfying exercise. But beyond that, there's also, I
think people find satisfaction in thinking that they're helping
people, right? Like but they're not.
Well, they're not, is the truth and, and, and what they're often
doing is causing great distress to the families of the victims.
Sure. And I, but I think that a lot of
people like, for example, there's a really controversial
thing in the US which is called crime con.
It's basically a true crime convention where people, true
crime enthusiasts can go and take pictures of themselves like
laying under a chalk thing on the ground.
It's like it's very sensational. It's the Disneyland of horrific
crimes. And yet a lot of victims
families go to these places because they're seeking truth
and justice and they find that the the law is not equipped for
the task. A lot of the like missing
persons cases are unsolved crimes.
And so these people, the very victims, the most vulnerable
people go to this community because that passion, that
interest that that community has may be the thing that makes or
breaks the case and reveals truth.
How do you do family members? You come to sort of balance or
decide what to do in your own case, given you desperately
wanted to tell your own story and you've explained why.
You also know that that Meredith Kerch's family really didn't
want you to. They don't want you to keep, you
know, talking about it at all. So how do you understand their
feelings and and yet do what you feel you need to do?
Well, so I want to clarify one thing is what I've heard from
Meredith Kircher's family is that they regret that the truth
of what happened to Meredith got lost in the midst of all the
scandal. I've not heard from them that
they believe that I shouldn't be able to tell my story.
And in fact, I remember very, very much during the trial, they
I remember specifically a press conference that they did where
they said we don't want the wrong people to be in prison for
this crime. Obviously they're good people,
they're decent people. I've never had the opportunity
to meet them. But I believe that about them,
the people who say that about them claim that about them is
their their attorney. And so I do not believe him, or
I do not I I refuse to take his word for it.
But even. You you reached out to your
prosecutor. Have you reached out to them?
I have reached out to them before and I've not received
response, and I also do not pursue it actively because I
feel differently about them than I do about my prosecutor and
very. Distressing for them as well.
Well, it's very distressing for them, but also they didn't
actively vilify me that that wasn't their mistake that was
made. That was my prosecutor.
He was the one who made that mistake.
He's the one responsible. And so as his victim, I felt
that I was absolutely, 100% entitled to demand his
attention. I mean, in terms of sort of the
world you're, you're in now, you mentioned the, the new podcast,
which is about Lucy Letbe. I mean, how, how did that come
about? Because this is your first trip
to Britain, Is that right? So you this is not a case that
would have been personally on your radar, I would imagine.
No, it was brought to my. So it was.
Brought to you. I mean, how how do you avoid
that sort of being exploitative? You know that somebody, somebody
puts you together with that case and obviously creates an
impression. You know that that this is.
You really hate true crime? Don't.
You. Well, it's not that I hate true
crime, but what I'm saying is Amanda Knox doing Lucy Letbe
obviously says to people this this might also be a massive
miscarriage of justice. It might.
So, but the the pairing itself is a big statement.
Yeah. So, so you've got to be quite
careful with that, haven't you? You know the the cases that
people want to link you with or put you together with as a
presenter. Sure, I mean and.
Given you didn't know the details of that case, how did
you decide to to do it? Well, I didn't immediately
decide to do it when I was brought to my attention years
ago, initially was brought to my attention by people who said
that they hadn't seen the kind of coverage of a very like
circumstantial, controversial case of a woman with no history
of violence, no history of mental illness, no motive.
And yet she's cast as this, you know, monster serial killer,
vilified in the press. They hadn't seen that kind of
coverage since my case. And convicted.
And convicted, yeah. Same with me, yeah.
So precisely, that's what I mean.
So you can always say same. That's that.
That happened to me and I was a miscarriage of justice.
Yeah. It doesn't mean the same is true
of her, does it? Absolutely.
And this case is way more complicated than my own in the
sense that there was no confusion about there being a
crime having been committed against my roommate.
That was very clear from the beginning in this case.
Actually, Lucy's case is maps more neatly on to how women are
typically wrongly convicted, which is that, you know, over
60% of cases of women who are wrong with what in a miscarriage
of justice case is women who are accused of a crime that never
occurred in the 1st place. So in this case, we have a spike
in deaths at a hospital. These are multiple deaths.
So already it's a more complicated case because there's
multiple deaths that need to be accounted for.
But beyond that, these these are very complicated cases of very
sick babies. But do you very common point
then to sort of to, to go into it because I mean, I, I
certainly don't feel qualified to relitigate in a conversation
like this. What, what I know is, you know,
2 attempts at appeal have been rejected.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission are looking at it.
There's more evidence going into it.
Yeah, I was convicted twice too, and it was also wrong.
So I look at this. I do not approach this story as
someone who's pretending to be a medical expert or an expert
instead in statistics or even law.
I'm a person who is invested in the truth, and I understand how
narratives that form around criminal cases often blind or
bias us in our ability to discern the truth.
So as I went about investigating this process, I was not
interested in, you know, focusing on the character of
Lucy Letbe. I was focused on what is the
evidence in this case, what does it reveal and what was not
delivered as evidence to the jury when they made their
decision about her guilt. And there it turns out there's a
lot, there's a lot that the police did not take into
consideration that the medical experts that they used did not
take into consideration. And there's a lot of also biased
thinking about things that I do have some knowledge about so.
Have you, have you finished making it now?
So we're it. We're or.
Are you still doing it? So I'm actually interviewing
people tomorrow, right? There's going to, so there's.
Have you come to a conclusion? Yes, is what I'm getting asked.
But you know, do you, are you doing this because you think she
has been wrongfully committed? Convicted.
So when I said about working on this podcast, I didn't know.
And over the course of the investigating and producing this
podcast, I've not only been concerned about what I what I
have uncovered, but I've been greatly disturbed by what I've
uncovered. And I do have very strong
feelings about the case. But I also want people to listen
to what I've learned and find out for themselves how they
feel. Yes, I mean, you're, you're not
the only public figure to say things like that.
Obviously there are there are a couple of quite high profile
politicians. We've also waded into it.
I mean, did you see this now as your, as your, as your future
that you know, you, you, you will be doing this, you know,
for the foreseeable, you know, looking at cases like, you know,
which may or may not be like yours, but which may or may not
be miscarriages of justice. And that that's that is your
life now. You know, it's not, it wasn't my
dream. That's not what I ever imagined
for myself. And of course, like I, I
actually consider myself a, a creative person, somebody who,
you know, that's what I've always, I wanted to translate
Italian poetry when I went off to study abroad, right.
So I have like my creative pursuits.
I, I'm a mother. I'm very interested in that.
But what I find time and again is that I'm called upon to help
tell these stories in a rational way, in an empathetic way, in a
way, because I guess I'm, like I said, I've just learned so much
over the course of my own wrongful conviction and public
vilification that. When someone calls me asking for
help, it's hard for me to ignore, especially when so many
people stuck their neck out for me when I was in the midst of
my, you know, horrible experience.
There was no guarantee that just because I was innocent, I was
going to get out and be freed and vindicated, you know, And to
this day, like as you mentioned, to this day, innocent as I may
be, there's still lingering feelings about it.
So this matters like people's lives get ruined.
And if I can help in some way, it's really hard for me to say
no. So I don't know.
I just I'm just trying to do the best I can.
And do you think it works that that's the thing, you know,
trying to take control of your own narrative?
I suppose what it can do is just it just kind of make keeps
perpetuating it and it grows and grows.
And especially in the world of social media now, can you ever
actually be in control? Of your own story.
I mean, no, no, that's a huge lesson.
It's more like, how do you learn to recognize what you have a say
in and what you don't? And like, really lean into where
you have a say. And I think that the biggest
thing that I've had to learn I was to not be ashamed of who I
am and what I've been through and to have confidence that what
I have to say does matter and isn't is informed and is, is a
value that those years that I lost, we're not just wasted.
And that's been my process. And that's something that I try
to help other people like. I know people in prison right
now, very likely innocent, very likely not getting out.
And my advice to them is a little bit the same.
What do you have control over? How can you make this life worth
living? That's all we can do.
You you talked in the documentary about wanting
closure and and the return to Italy being about that.
Yeah. Did you get it?
Well, that's the thing about closure, right?
Like it's this high in the sky idea and you think.
It doesn't exist either. Yeah.
I mean, I think that we just carry these things with us in
new ways over time. I think the thing that I did get
out of this journey, rather than closure, was a reclaimed sense
of agency. Like what That, like what I did
actually did matter. Because when you've been in that
experience of like utter helplessness and everything you
say and everything you do seems like it won't matter, that's,
that's a recipe for depression and suicidal ideation, frankly.
And so I put my own agency to the test, and I came away
feeling more powerful than I've ever felt in my whole life.
I mean, you still have this last conviction still hanging over
you, which is for the criminal slander, which is about a
statement you gave. You've done your homework, good
for you. Another defendant.
Now, again, you said you would fight that, Trevor.
How are you going to fight that? Are you going to fight that or
do you just have to say, you know what, that's, that's
something I can't do anything about now.
Just, I mean, the European Court of Human Rights has accepted my
appeal and they've even accepted it as an impact case because
never before has the European Court of Human Rights been asked
to revisit the same case. They already ruled in my favor.
They said that my interrogation was illegal and I never should
have been found guilty of that crime.
And I'm bringing it back to the European Court of Human Rights
to pursue justice because I never should have been
convicted. And honestly, I never would have
even been accused of murder had I not been put through an
illegal interrogation in the first place.
And so when do you think that will will happen?
We should have a verdict within the year.
Right. And is there another telling of
that process in the in the in the world?
Well, it depends. So, oh, you can ask my husband.
I don't do the telling of things.
I just do the things. Good.
And where do you think that will leave you if you win?
Well, it will leave me without a criminal record, which would be
very nice because I have a criminal record.
And recently I went to Japan with my husband hoping to
finally do that honeymoon that we didn't get to do because of
the pandemic. And I was detained at the border
and sent back home because of my criminal record.
So that would be one thing that I would love to fix.
Beyond that, I would love to be able to not have anyone out
there claiming that I'm a convicted liar, because I'm not.
Amanda Knox, thank you very much indeed.
Thank you. Thank you for joining us.
I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, you can watch all of
these interviews on the Channel 4 News YouTube channel.
Until next time, bye bye.