In 2007, British student Meredith Kercher was murdered in the small Italian town of Perugia. Based on DNA evidence, a man named Rudy Guede was convicted of sexually assaulting and killing her. But the Perugia police weren’t satisfied. They charged Kercher’s American roommate, Amanda Knox, and Knox’s Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, with murder as well, proposing that the killing was devil worship or a sex game gone wrong. Knox was found guilty in 2009, but the sentence was overturned two years later. Now, in a shocking twist, an Italian court will consider the case for a third time, beginning Sept. 30. Last week, British reporter Bob Graham sat down with Knox, now 26, in her hometown of Seattle. In her first interview since the latest court decision, Knox explained why she will not be returning to Italy:
I’m not going back to Italy for this new trial because my presence has always been a distraction in the courtroom. Every single movement I made, every gesture, every facial expression was the focus of scrutiny and distracted from the presentation and analysis of evidence.
It’s incredible the number of times that what I was wearing, how I did my hair or whether I smiled to my parents was discussed as opposed to the evidence in the case. So part of not returning is to avoid that circus.
There was nothing I could do that was right. What I learned was to do as little as possible, to try to be as still as possible, to make as little noise as possible, so that I could disappear and allow for a discussion to happen.
It made me feel helpless, to feel nobody actually cared about the people in this case. Nobody seemed to care whether or not Meredith had been murdered by me or by Raffaele or by Rudy Guede.
Then there’s the emotional reason. While I must continue to have faith in the Italian legal process, it doesn’t change the fact that I spent four years imprisoned for something I didn’t do. The very risk of that happening again is enough to dissuade me from making myself vulnerable by returning to the country. People can criticize me for that reason, but it is entirely based upon my experience.
If it were possible to go to the court and not have to deal with the issues of being afraid of being thrown back in prison again for an arbitrary reason, or for being able to financially afford it, absolutely I would want to be there, to face my accusers in court. I want to do everything I can to prove my innocence.
That’s another lesson, it’s not about the prosecution proving whether I’m guilty, it’s about having to prove I’m innocent. I’m the one who begins with the disadvantage in this case.
Knox talked about how she how she was portrayed during the trial — and in the media.
Perceptions that people were projecting onto me were that I am the dark lady, that I am the jealous, stinky roommate who decided that Meredith was better than me and therefore had to die. Projecting that image justifies in their minds that I would be capable of committing a crime so heinous as this and therefore validates the guilty verdict in the first trial.
At the beginning, my public image was of a young but ruthless liar, a sex fiend, a killer. That fascinated people for a while, and then it was a girl who had gone wild. There was the fantasy of how American girls are just out there and in your face.
When my trial came around, the image was developed in the courtroom and changed into me being an attention whore. Then there followed a period when people thought that I was a young girl from a good home who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and did the wrong thing just randomly.
The perception created was I was two different people: publicly a good student, then as soon as night falls I’m clubbing, I’m orgying, I’m drugging. That image had to be to match the personality being projected of me?
Over time, as my appeal came around, people really started considering my innocence and being another victim of what was taking place. Now there is a polarization: I’m either a victim or a bloodthirsty killer who got off scot free.
There will always be conspiracy theorists, there will always be haters, there will always be people who are totally convinced I’m guilty for one reason or another.
If someone can hate me, they should hate me for the right reasons. It just really digs at me that people hate me for things that have got nothing to do with me. They project their own ideas about what’s evil or inhuman onto me.
To them, I am not a human because they’re able to dismiss me and hate me without knowing the reality. I have occasionally read the stuff online, often as a reminder of what I’m up against, of the monster I’m facing.
I know that my well-being often offends certain people. I know there are people out there who are offended by whether or not I am even capable of living. It is scary, the idea that someone can feel such passionate hatred towards me and they don’t even know me or me them. There have been threats on my life, but how serious they have ever been, who knows?
From the very moment I came home, I had to think about my security every time I left the house. There were survival and self-protection lessons. I studied Krav Maga. I had to learn it because whenever I left my mom’s house I was always looking over my shoulder, wondering if I was being followed.
Knox and Sollecito both spent almost four years in Italian prisons as the painfully slow wheels of justice ground along. The legacy of that experience remains vivid and continues to affect her. She describes the daily nightmare haunting her:
I’m different than the 20-year-old I was before, and a lot of that has to do with the fact I’ve experienced trauma and I’m continuing to suffer from it. Whereas before I tended to be very laid back and cheerful, today I’m quieter, more withdrawn.
I’ve seen a counselor twice since getting back. I first went in January feeling like I was not going to get anything out of it because I kept telling myself I was fine. I’d just come back from Italy and was only doing it for my mom, who was worried I was damaged, that I was no longer happy. To this day, my mom thinks that.
I went there and talked to him about how I thought I was disappointing my family; the person they had wanted to save is not quite the person who had come home. I talked of feeling a lot of pressure to be happy, like the old Amanda. In that first therapy session, I could only handle 15 minutes before I became hysterical. I had a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe and had to leave. I did not go back for over a year.
Recently, I decided to go back to try again. I thought that on the publication of my book, I was going to feel better, but that’s not the case. The relief and the feeling of having accomplished something that was important to me was very brief, and I was brought back into the reality of having to deal with this legal issue all over again.
The post-traumatic stress disorder comes into effect as the result of the trauma I experienced, which was extensive, pervasive, something that happened over a long time, during the developmental years of my life. My adulthood has been completely consumed by this persecution, the only adulthood I know is this.
PTSD debilitates me, makes me want to flee from life itself, makes me want to curl up in a ball and never come out. I can’t live like that. I have to move forward with my life.
I have this defining, traumatic experience, and it is a part of me. I’m trying to figure out how not to make it a debilitating thing, and that is a constant struggle for me. Some days, I find myself not being able to think of anything else but my sadness and anger and helplessness. Then I just sit and cry. I can’t breathe; I can’t talk to people; I can’t do my work; I can’t read or see the words I’m reading. Everything becomes this pressure inside me that squeezes and makes it hard to breathe. I have panic attacks.
Two years ago, I thought that after my acquittal it was over. I did not think that the Supreme Court would move and decide the way that they did. I will only be able to fully confront the trauma and anxiety once this entire legal process is over.
At the moment, I’m torn between my life moving forward with school, with work, with my relationships and feeling forever being dragged back into the quagmire of incredible helplessness, because what am I facing?
People seem to feel I’ve gotten off scot free and I’ve had nothing but gain from the experience, that I was able to write a book and things. They just don’t know, or don’t wish to know the reality of what has happened to me.
Four months ago, Knox’s autobiography, “Waiting to be Heard,” was published — and immediately attracted criticism that she was “cashing in” on her experiences. She discloses the reality of the contract:
It was a $3.8 million deal. Of the $3.8 million received, I carefully dispersed it where it was due: to taxes, to my lawyers, to my family so they no longer had mortgages at stake. Part of it went in fees to my agent, part of it in fees to my collaborator. At this moment, I am negotiating the last of it with my lawyers in Italy for the latest legal fees.
When I signed the documents paying off the debts, the burden of facing that was gone and I felt total relief.
One of the things I hate — and I hated while I was in prison — was the fact that I knew I was completely dependent upon my family having to sacrifice themselves for me. And there was nothing I could do about it. I was completely dependent and helpless and trapped in this place that was sucking the life not only out of me but my family as well. There was nothing they wouldn’t have done because I have a wonderful family.
If not for the book deal, I could have been facing a lifetime of financial burden of having to pay for a defense that could still stretch for years more.
After a year, I do not know what I’m going to do. So at this very moment, I have planned and negotiated and made possible, with everything I can manage, for a year. After that I’m reliant on my parents again. Because that’s it. That’s it.
The four years in prison left an indelible scar on Knox. Here, she relates her experiences:
In prison, I was barely able to move. One of the things that was claimed about me when I was in prison was that I was a snob because I wouldn’t talk much and I wouldn’t hang out much.
There was a long time in prison where I barely spoke to anyone and would go outside into the yard every day and just walk. I tried to do my own things on my own. I would not go to the social time. People hated me for that, they didn’t like the fact that I wouldn’t align myself with others. I felt very alone and very hated.
Most the time I spent by myself . . . and silent. When I was in a cell with a number of people, I tried to spend most of the time by myself, reading or writing letters. I tried to control what interaction I had to a level that I felt comfortable with.
I could not afford to be caught in the frequent general prison drama that occurs all the time, the violence, the thieving, the arguments that can be taken out of context. I couldn’t afford to interact with people because if somebody decided that they didn’t like me and decided to do something about it, there was nothing I could do to defend myself.
The prison authorities could have done anything they wished to interpret anything I did to defend myself and there was nothing I could do. If somebody decided they were going to hit me, they could, and I would not have been able to do anything. I was never hit, although there were times when I was about to be hit and other inmates in my room stopped it.
One time, an inmate girl raised a hand to slap me and the others held her back and talked her out of it. Another girl who said she was going to flush my head in the toilet came very close to doing that when another prisoner intervened.
What I learned throughout the experience of prison was the more you can disappear, the better you’re going to be. It was very difficult for me to disappear because everybody knew who I was. But I tried desperately to disappear so nobody would feel the need to deal with me.
One of the major struggles I had in prison was the principles that were placed on a pedestal and the things that led to trouble. A simple example would be kindness, which is a weakness in prison. I was often seen as weak because I wouldn’t fight with people and wouldn’t say no when they wanted coffee or need help writing a letter.
I was seen as a pushover, and that led to more and more people taking things from me, because they could. They would take anything, from the shirt on my back to anything they saw and wanted. I had to learn how to say no.
The characteristics that made a person dominant in prison were the attitudes of manipulation, lying, selfishness, backstabbing, being able to deal with violence. If a person developed these characteristics, nobody messed with them, and if nobody messed with them, it was what they wanted.
I so often felt like a target, which is why I tried to disappear. But one thing that was really a struggle for me in prison was being able to find a balance between defending myself and not becoming the monster that prison was indoctrinating. I was constantly at odds with what was good for me in prison and what was good.
There are things I don’t want to ever forget that were difficult: I struggled to find the balance of establishing independence without having to exert dominance over other people. The usual way that people protected themselves in prison was by creating allies. But those allies were enemies to others, and what ends up happening is you get drawn into this conflict that has nothing to do with you but because you’re protected by some people who are antagonistic to others.
I was called a snob as I chose to stay out of it, and because of it, I isolated myself and made myself more vulnerable. I am now in many kinds of prisons. One prison is the continuation of this case. I’m still trapped in the role of the defendant, still having to sacrifice my emotional and financial well-being, my privacy, for the sake of defending myself against this incredible persecution.
There’s a prison of nonclosure because the way that the investigators and prosecutors conducted themselves was wrong and has never been brought to light or acknowledged. I want them held accountable for the mistakes they made. I want it understood what they have done in this case, not just because of how it affected me but because unless they are held accountable, they can do this again and again and again.
I don’t feel free. To this day, I’m in this sort of cage of judgment where I still feel, for many people, there’s nothing I can do that’s right: unknown people, making judgments about me every day, judging everything I do or say.
I hope there is a time in my life when I can interpret experiences as not just another metaphor for being trapped in prison.
Knox describes the truth of the springtime meeting she had with her Italian former lover in New York, captured by the paparazzi:
When I saw Raffaele in New York, it was really just a matter of fluke coincidence. I was there for an interview, and he was there staying with family. We just happened to both be free on that day, and we met. We hadn’t seen one another for a long time.
Raffaele and I have gone through a horrible experience together. We know more about one another now than we ever did when we were dating. So many people were willing to dismiss him as guilty, simply because he was associated with me.
One of the most extraordinary things he’s done is to turn down a deal that was offered to him (by the prosecution) to turn on me. I had no idea about this at the time. I only found out about this through his book. He didn’t tell me, and it was only when his book came out, I read it and we talked about it. That simple piece of courageous humanity blew me away because it says a lot about the person who is in that situation and able to do that.
What do you hope for from this new trial?
I hope that I will be found innocent and that no one will then question that verdict. I don’t want to live my life with this hanging over me. If this court will really investigate what happened and finds out where everything that went wrong, then there will be justice. I want people to know that I’m innocent.
The appeal court called Rudy Guede, and he got away with saying nothing. Would you like to see the Italian system pursue that further?
I deserve a chance to confront him in court. I was prepared to do that during my appeal. I was prepared to demand some humanity from him. I’m not a vengeful person. I’m not interested in making him suffer; I’m interested in him doing the right thing after what he’s done.
What is not fully understood or accepted is that Rudy Guede’s evidence is all over this case. It’s not acknowledged that, in comparison to what the prosecution claimed against Raffaele and me, the evidence against Rudy Guede was so significant and definitive.
How can there be a conspiracy of three people when one person’s evidence is clear and non-negotiable and two others’ are unclear, complicated and circumstantial? How is that possible?
How is it that one person’s evidence is not questioned or examined in an open court? Rudy Guede’s statements changed over the course of time to become more and more accusational against Raffaele and me. I should have the right to confront an accuser. I think there’s more to this and more to Rudy Guede than what the prosecution has been interested in presenting. I think that deserves to be investigated and presented in court.
It’s conspicuous how easy Rudy Guede got off, considering the evidence against him. It’s conspicuous how his versions of what happened have changed over time to divert attention and responsibility away from him and onto Raffaele and me. It’s conspicuous that despite his history of being armed and breaking into people’s houses, he was still able to walk the street without a care. How is that possible? The police knew about these incidents, yet never prosecuted him.
How is it that for the prosecution during my trial, he became “poor Rudy”? That’s how they described him. It does not correspond to the way the evidence portrays him.
And the answer to that is?
I think that there might be a connection between him and the police or the investigators in Perugia. I think he got a deal with the prosecution for a lesser sentence against him by “informing against Raffaele and I.” I think that he got off too easy. I think it would be better for everyone if we understood why and how.
Copyright Bob Graham