Call Her Daddy - Amanda Knox - “I didn’t fucking do it.”

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

This week, Father Cooper sits down with Amanda Knox. The interview begins with Amanda giving a clear reminder to the world – “I didn’t fucking do it”. In 2007, while studying abroad in Italy, Amanda was wrongly accused and convicted of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher. Meredith was the victim of a brutal murder. Amanda was the victim of trial by media. Her sexuality was used against her in order to manipulate a story that she was a sex crazed murderer - and that was the story that overtook international headlines. Fourteen years later, Amanda is exhausted, and is still working to detach her name from a murder she did not commit. Tune in this week as Amanda details the events that occurred on November 2nd 2007, the interrogation process and the four years she spent in Italian prison. This captivating interview highlights Amanda’s struggle to reclaim both her name and her life. 

What is up, Daddy Gang? It is your founding father, Alex Cooper, with Call Her Daddy. Daddy Gang. Has anyone ever studied abroad? Maybe you have hopes of studying abroad. Maybe you are planning a trip to a new country with a few friends to study abroad. Picture this. You board a flight your junior year of college, excited to spend a semester in a picturesque Italian town. You find a room in a beautiful hillside home. You have three roommates who you enjoy spending time with, and to top it all off, you meet an Italian boy named Raffaele, who is head over heels for you. It's a dream come true.

After a romantic evening with your new boyfriend, you head home to shower and change, but when you get there, you discover the front door of your house is wide open. Something is wrong. The police show up and when they kick down the door to your roommate's bedroom, they find a body. How would you act? What would you say? Police are everywhere yelling in Italian and you have absolutely no idea what is going on. You are confused. Whose body is inside? Are they dead? Am I in danger? Does anyone speak English? The body inside is your murdered roommate, Meredith Kircher, and you are the prime suspect.

This is a true story. This is Amanda Knox's story. On November 2nd, 2007, Amanda's roommate, Meredith Kircher, was found brutally murdered. Amanda and Meredith were random roommates. They were friends, but had known each other for about six weeks. But the media had their own story they wanted to spin. Amanda Knox was a beautiful, blue-eyed, normal college student from Seattle. She could have been you. She could have been any of us. International tabloids exploited Amanda's good looks and manufactured a story that Amanda had murdered Meredith in a satanic sex game gone wrong. This made no sense, but it sold newspapers. A man's semen was found inside Meredith Kircher's body. His name was Rudy Gaudet. All evidence pointed to Rudy.

But imagining Amanda and Meredith involved in a sex ritual gone wrong appealed more to the media and police. And despite the fact that this made no sense, this is the story they told. And the story you probably know. Headlines plastered across the world. Sex crazed. Femme fatale. She devil. Foxy Noxy. They used Amanda's MySpace soccer nickname to sexualize and vilify her.

Daddy gang, she could have been you. She could have been you. She could have been me. 14 years later, Amanda is still trying to clear her name. And I'm honored to do my part to help her tell the true story of what happened in Italy. Here is Amanda Knox. Hi. Hi, I'm Alex. Nice to meet you. I'm so excited for you guys to be here thank you thanks for your oh my god she's beautiful thank you guys if you hear a baby i promise it's not amanda and it's not me there is a baby in the room this is the first time on call her daddy that we have had

someone below the age of like actually i thought this would be the perfect podcast to note that like my most recent episode of my podcast labyrinth is me giving birth. And oh my god, I don't know if you've ever heard audio of people giving birth, but it sounds like I'm having the biggest orgasm ever. The whole final act of the last episode is me just in labor and let me tell you going through hours of audio of me going oh god oh god oh god oh my god did you hold a microphone up to your mouth or like who was holding the mic mostly it was my husband chris who was who was taking care of all of that while i was very distracted distracted you know just like giving birth to your beautiful new baby daddy gang i am sitting with amanda knox thank you for coming we have yes amanda's husband and the surprise that amanda

brought her infant eureka muse knox robinson yes given the recognition surrounding knox surrounding Knox did you ever consider leaving it out of Eureka's name I did and that it's funny like it's the whole question of like do I embrace my identity or do I not embrace my identity and I kind of I've always been a bit stubborn about this where it's like there's nothing wrong with me like the world has sort of acted like there was something wrong with me, something wrong with my sexuality above all. And that is, that's not my problem. Like I'm pushing back and I'm trying to say, no, it's not my fault. There's nothing wrong with me. And therefore my daughter can embrace the fact that I'm her mom, even while I'm like trying to protect her from all these forces that are ultimately beyond my control. But I can manage.

Did you ever at any point consider changing your name? No. In the same way that I never remotely considered taking a plea deal. Because I didn't fucking do it. And so, no. the story of your life is unbelievable but let's start at the beginning according to the new york times your friends and your family described young amanda as naive goofy unconventional harmless trusting sheltered blunt and a little bit of a rebel. Did they get it right? Yeah, that sounds about right. Musical theater freak,

yoga lover, someone who didn't have a ton of experience in the world, someone who didn't have a ton of experience sexually. I was pretty sheltered growing up. I was very well-meaning. I tried well in school. I tried to appease people. But at the same time, I had this streak of, no, a pretty girl doesn't have to look like that. She can look like this. I had this sort of perfectly stereotypically Seattle, which is like Birkenstock granola people. And how many siblings do you have I have three younger sisters okay and then your parents divorced when you were

younger yeah when I so I have no memory of my my actual dad and my actual mom being married but I grew up with being a part of their separate households and they you know we lived within blocks of my dad okay so like I was back and forth between my mom and dad's house all the time what was your most serious relationship in high school so I didn't really have a relationship it's okay that's okay I was a late bloomer no that's okay when did you lose your virginity in college so you went to college close to your hometown you went to University of Washington what made you want to study abroad your junior year of college? So my mom actually grew up, like she was born and grew up for a certain amount of time in Germany.

And I have, so I have a kind of international family. Like I have aunts who live in Germany right now. So I was thinking I wanted to have an international experience. Actually, my Oma really wanted me to go study abroad in high school. She wanted me to go live in Germany in high school. And I think my mom was not quite ready to let me go. Yeah. So instead, it was like, everyone acknowledged and accepted that this was a part of like, our family experience, even because we didn't just grow up in one small town in America, like my mom grew up, she's an army brat baby. Got it. And so she was like Germany, Texas, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

All over. And so I was studying languages in college. I was studying German. I was studying Italian. And because I was actually better at German, I decided that I want to study in Italy. And really like what ultimately like decided it is I applied for programs in both countries and I got accepted to Italy's first. So that ultimately is what brought me to Italy. That and the fact that I didn't know Italian as

well as I knew German. Do you think about that a lot? That part of it, no. The thing that really haunts me, the thing that haunts me the most is what, if I had never met Raffaele, who was my boyfriend of five days before I was arrested, if I hadn't met him, I would have been home the night that Meredith was murdered and I could have been murdered as well. So that's the thing that haunts me in my brain. And beyond the fact that like, you know, one of the things I really love about this podcast in general is I think it's so, so important to talk about these like intimate parts of our lives and the intimate parts of my life were first of all, like blown way out of proportion and then used to utterly vilify me and so that

aspect of it like i don't even know where to like pin that down where does that impulse come from to like take a young woman's sexuality and turn her into a monster for it like that's the other part of it that i'm like hmm because i do want to get into that because it's um yes I felt sick for you watching them slut shaming you equated to somehow you murdered someone yeah and it like the spiral effect and we're gonna get to it but it was it's shocking and I I can't imagine living it and so I'm just happy you're here today. Like it's incredible. So for someone who has never been to Perugia, Italy, can you paint the picture of the town you were living in when you got there? Sure. Okay. So in some ways it's like this totally idyllic Italian, like hillside town with it's

like beautiful church and it's one main street and it's like flea market on Sunday and like, you know, tons of people just like being super Italian and having like great shoes. And like, it's like a beautiful, beautiful place. These hole in the wall, like pubs and like cafes that like are just so beautiful in the sunshine. It was like so fucking gorgeous. And the cottage that I was living in was like right on top of the hillside overlooking the valley. There were like fig trees in my garden. Like it was ridiculously beautiful.

It was like the perfect, everyone that envisions going abroad, everyone that's listening, you're like, I want to go abroad for my junior, my sophomore, my freshman year. Like that is like the ideal. Like you're like, whoa, I made it. And how did you even get that house so I went to um I visited Perugia shortly before I like moved in um and I was like you know traipsing around getting my bearings of like oh where's the university I'm going to be studying and trying to get a sense of the space and when I was like out front at the university just kind of like oh look here's the university I'm going to. A woman was putting up a flyer for a room to rent. And I was like, oh, is that nearby? And she

was like, yeah, you want to go check it out? And I was like, yeah. And so I just wandered over there again, like kismet, like, oh, perfect. Great. Yay. We can have coffee. Like I had coffee with them. We like ate some figs from the garden. We were like, oh yeah, let's do it. And we just made it like it was there. It was done. It was was right like two steps away from the university it was perfect too perfect too perfect what was the biggest if any culture shock moment you remember having after getting off the plane getting to Italy I was not used to this world of really, really aggressive Italian men. Honestly, I was expecting to like come into a space and it being very like under the Tuscan sun kind of romantic feeling. And instead, what I encountered was a lot of like really, really pushy.

If not, like I had this one moment where a guy offered to give me a ride home from a bar. And I was like, Oh, okay, thank goodness, because it's dark out, you have a little Vespa, like you can just drop me off at my house. And he was like, Yeah, I'd love to do that. And so he drove right past my house, went right to his house. And I was like, No, I can we go back there? And he was like, No, no, just a minute at my house and like brought me and like brought me and I got to his house and I was like, no, no, I don't wanna be here. And he was like, no, no, just come inside,

meet my friends for a bit and like brought me into his apartment. And I was like, no, no, I really need to go. And I didn't even know where I was at this point. I was like in the middle of fricking nowhere. And I was like, I need you to take me home. And he was like, just come to my bedroom for a little bit. So I like, I sat there on his bed glaring at him being like, take me home.

And he was like, just a minute, just a minute. Calm down. You want a beer? And I'm like, no. That was a moment where I was like, okay, this is different than what I'm used to. Do you feel like, because you saying that, honestly, like, do you feel like you were like a little, um, like, I don't know if the word is like uninhibited. Like, I feel like I'm, I'm constantly paranoid of um like I don't know if the word is like uninhibited like

I feel like I'm I'm constantly paranoid of like I don't trust anyone I can't and nothing has like happened to me to make me think that but like the thought of getting on the back of a man's bike I'd be like I you idiot right like I'd be like no like do you feel like you had such a um like what you just didn't it never occurred to me that someone would do that to me ever yeah like I was I was shocked and I was like no do you not hear the words that are coming out of my mouth I want to go home you said you would take me home like what are you talking so do you feel like you had a lot of trust in people back then absolutely and were you like calling your family throughout these first few weeks and gushing about how much you loved it?

Yeah. So it was a little bit difficult because I didn't like I only ever it was a 2007. So it's a little bit like I didn't have Internet in my house. So I had to go to like an Internet cafe in order to send emails and stuff like that. But I kept in touch. I told my family about how everything was just so idyllic and beautiful. Right. Let's talk about your living situation. Can you describe your roommates? Sure. So I was in a cottage that was two levels.

And in the bottom level, it was a totally separate apartment where four young guys were hanging out. They also were students. And that was their apartment. And I was upstairs with three other girls. Two of them were Italian. And they were slightly older than us. They were in their late 20s. And then there was Meredith, who was 22, and there was me, 20. Were you close at all to the two Italian girls? I mean, as close as I was to

Meredith. I had just met them when I arrived in Italy. And so I knew them for several weeks ahead of this. And we would like go out to dinner together we would go dancing together um we went and get did grocery shopping together but we were still you know getting to know each other face right you literally just met these people like um did the did they speak english so laura spoke better english than filomena and of course meredith spoke english because she's from britain right but i actually tried my best to speak Italian at home. And it was very cute. So you hung out with them in the beginning days, but you were closer to Meredith? Yeah, just because she was closer to my age.

We had more in common. We were going to school and they were like interning at law offices. Looking back, when you think about Meredith, what do you remember about her? I remember that we, she she so I got up early once to go to this there was again like these beautiful things there's this chocolate festival in Perugia and what they had were these like early in the morning they took refrigerator sized blocks of chocolate and then like a sculptor would come and like sculpt the chocolate and then people would gather like chunks of the chocolate that came off of the sculpture

and just like hand it out to people in the crowd. They're chipping away, chipping away. And then a giant chunk falls off. And the person who started collecting it grabs it and then is like scanning the crowd to see who wants it and then plops it right into my arms. It's like as big as a tombstone. And I'm carrying this like tome of chocolate home I like clunk it on the kitchen table and I'm like who wants to make cookies and so Meredith and I went

and got ingredients to make cookies and then make cookies at home so like stuff like that fun enjoyable we're abroad we're roommates let's make the best of it moment yeah yeah she was like she loved to read on the little terrace that overlooked the valley and so sometimes I would take my guitar out there and sort of play on my guitar while she was reading that kind of stuff what do you think Meredith thought about you I mean she was always really nice to me I think she she definitely went out of her way to make me feel welcome like at certain times she would come to I started like working at a local bar. Like she would like come and check in on me

and be like, hey, you know, it was like a slow bar that didn't get a lot of people coming by. So she would come by and check it out and be like, hey, how's it going? In the early days of your trip, you met an Italian boy. Yes.

Raffaele. Is it Raffaele? Raffaele. Raffaele. How did you meet him? What did you think about him? So Raffaele stood out to you meet him? What did you think about him? So Raffaele stood out to me precisely because he did not come across like all of the other Italian men that I was meeting.

He was actually quite shy. And I met him not in the context of like going clubbing or something like that. I went to a classical musical recital at the university and like I happened, me and Meredith went together and then Meredith had to leave and meet her friends at the university. And like I happened, me and Meredith went together. And then Meredith had to leave and meet her friends at intermission. And so he came and sat in her seat. And then we just sort of like, had me speaking bad Italian, him speaking bad English, like connection. That versus what you're describing as the Italian men that you were like, what the fuck is this culture? This is wild.'t expecting this yeah he had apparently it seems like more of a warmth to him he had a warmth and he felt like it's just like a safe person so week one into your new hot Italian romance which I feel

like is every single girl's dream it's like you get there and you meet him and you're like, oh my God, now we're like running around Italy together. What do you remember about November 1st, 2007? Yeah. So it was obviously the day after Halloween. I had been working like half the night and then I met up with Raffaele. I was like dressed like a, I didn't really have a costume. I sort of drew like a cat face on me and we just kind of like were hanging out outside, getting drinks and things like that. The morning, I remember that Meredith woke up late.

She liked to sleep in. So that wasn't unusual. And she had dressed up like a vampire. And she still had like a little bit of like a little fake blood dribble on her chin. And, you know, she was she was like oh i'm gonna get dressed and take a shower i'm gonna go hang out with the girls voila she had gone to like um the british girls had had their own like little halloween party together and she so she showered she changed um she was like okay i'm gonna go i'm gonna go hang out with the girls i'll chat at you

later and that was it i was just like okay bye like i vivid I'm gonna go hang out with the girls I'll chat at you later and that was it I was just like okay bye like I vividly remember her throwing a purse over her shoulder and going out the door like it was just any other day and that was the last I saw of her and that particular moment I don't feel like I've been asked about since the trial honestly because they they were very particular about wanting to know what she was wearing. I think because of the evidence that was in her bedroom, like she had been found naked. But of course, there were like clothes on her bed

or something like that. And so they wanted to know like, what color purse was she wearing? And I think it was like a tan or a peach colored purse, if I recall correctly. Anyway. So she leaves. And then what do you do the rest of the day?

So I ended up hanging out with Raffaele, deciding. So it was November 1st. It was right before the weekend. And we had been deciding like, oh, what do we want to do for this like holiday holiday weekend and we decided that we wanted to go to a nearby town called Gubbio which was famous for truffles and he Raffaele was like really big on like being a very good Italian host he wanted to like show me everything and get me an Italian perfume and like make me feel like a very special officially Italian lady so he was like very big into that. We went over to his place. We cooked dinner. We were hanging out. I was we were reading. We watched a movie. We smoked a little pot. We had

sex and we went to bed. It was just a really chill, chill day. The next day, November 2nd, 2007, you wake up, you get coffee. Like, what do you do that morning? The first thing that I did was I went home so I could take a shower and change my clothes. I wanted to get into a cute outfit. I got like a cute little white skirt on, even though it was a little chilly. But I wanted to look pretty because I was going on basically a date weekend with Raffaele. So I came home and I found that the front door was open. And I thought, that's odd.

The front door shouldn't be just wide open. But I also knew that the lock was a little bit broken. And so maybe someone had like not closed the door and locked the door properly. And maybe that's what happened. So like I come into my house and I'm like, Is anyone here? Like, are we okay? Like, and no one answered. So I thought, Okay, that's odd. But all right, close the door, lock the key, go in, get undressed, go to take a shower. And when I was in the bathroom, up brushing my teeth taking a shower I notice there are some speckles of blood in the sink and there is a sort of dirty splotch of blood on the bath mat

and again I'm like that's odd at first I thought when I saw the like the the speckles in the sink I was like oh my god are my gums bleeding but no it was not my or like were my ears like I just got my ears pierced I was like oh my god are my ears bleeding no no everything's fine that's odd I guess maybe someone is having like their period or something like I don't know so I get changed I get dressed I go into the other bathroom to blow dry my hair. And that's when I noticed that there was feces in the toilet. And I was like, then I got the creepy feeling of like, oh my God, is there someone in the house with me? Like no one, none of my roommates would have done that. So I immediately sort of gathered my things, went over to Raffaele's house and like started calling my roommates, basically being like, hey, is everything okay? It

looks like maybe someone left the house in a hurry. What's going on? And I didn't hear back from Meredith. I didn't hear back from Laura. And I was only ever able to get in touch with Philomena. And Philomena said, well, no, I've been out with my boyfriend all night. I don't know what happened. Meet me at the house. We're gonna like figure out what's going on. And so Raphael and I go back to the house. We do a little bit more snooping around. We noticed that Philomena's room has a broken window and has been looked like it's been ransacked. Like weirdly, the main, you know, living room area that we had, nothing looked to touch. We looked into Laura's room room spotless like the the bed was

perfectly made it was filomena's room that was all like crazily askew and we go into my room my room seems fine i don't really i didn't look search it very thoroughly but my computer was there and i was like okay if my computer wasn't stolen maybe it's okay okay. But then we go to Meredith's room and her door is locked. And we were like, huh, that's odd. Like, I wasn't sure if Meredith was in the habit of locking her door or not when she left the house. I didn't think so. So I was like, I knocked on her door and I was like, Meredith, are you in there? Meredith, Meredith. And no answer. Finally, I get concerned enough that I'm like, Raphael, can you maybe try to kick down the door? Because I don't know if maybe she's hurt in there or

something's wrong. He tries kicking the door down, doesn't succeed. So he calls the cops. And he's like, hey, there's been a break in. We don't know what's going on. But one of our roommates is not answering her cell phone and her door is locked, blah, blah, blah. While he's explaining all of this to the cops, a pair of cops actually walk up and they are here because they don't know anything about our phone call. We thought, oh, wow, that was really fast. You guys, were you just around the corner? You answer a phone call? No. They were already on their way because someone had found Meredith's cell phones just thrown into a garden, someone's random garden.

And like they had been ringing because I had been calling Meredith looking for her. And so they were ringing and ringing and ringing. And the person who lived in the house was like, what is that ringing coming from my backyard? She goes and finds these phones and then delivers them to the police. And so the police finally arrived, comes full circle, and they're like, whose phones are these? Whose phones are these? It says the SMS like card was, um, was in Philomena's name. And I was like, Oh, weird Philomena. She's, she's on her way, but I just talked to her. She has her cell phone. And then Philomena arrived and said, no, I gave, I gave a card to Meredith. Those are Meredith's phones.

And we were like, okay, but where's Meredith? why doesn't she have her phones and I'm like well her door is locked and Philomena's like her door is locked someone kicked down her door and then the police kicked down her door found the crime scene and kicked everyone out of the house so you weren't in the house when they kicked the door down? I was in the house, but I was not in the hallway. Like, it was a narrow hallway that led into her, like, to my room and then her room. I was in the kitchen area waiting. And I was, like, talking to the other, there were two police officers.

And I think I was talking with one of the other police officers while one of them went and kicked down the door with, filomena's and her boyfriend's help yeah which is also interesting later for the story to know filomena was also gone and has a boyfriend so there's like two sets of couples that had the same exact dynamic you have your boyfriend you're not home you're sleeping at your boyfriend's filomena is also at her boyfriend's and so it's like wait why you well that's a that's a good question and i actually thought about this earlier yesterday because um what day is today is today the third yeah so yesterday the second the sort of anniversary of discovering her body i was thinking about like like why why me and why not

like filomena right right and i think one of the sort of big things is they've they sort of focused on my behavior in the immediacy of the discovery of this crime scene but like the difference between me and philomena was philomena saw into meredith's room she saw meredith's body with her own eyes and I did not and so immediately coming like you know Philomena starts screaming her head off and like crying right and starts everyone starts yelling in very rapid Italian so I'm like what the fuck is going on we're ushered out of the house and I'm sort of left shell-shocked going what's going on what's going on and hearing weird scraps of things that I can sort of kind of understand and And so I'm like, I'm outside of the house going, what's going on?

What's going on? And Philomena is crying hysterically. And so immediately the cops are looking at the two roommates, Philomena and me. One of them is crying. The other one is not. That was maybe the moment things started to go very, very wrong. And for understandable reasons, because they're looking at two young women, one of them is clearly distraught and one of them is clearly confused. Right. But very different reactions. And Philomena's reaction was the expected one. Mine wasn't. And I don't think that the cops, like when they made their sort of gut intuition about me and about whether or not I was involved in this crime, I don't think that the cops, like when they made their sort of gut intuition about me and about whether or not I was involved in this crime, I don't think they actually realized that I didn't really understand what was going on. I just was like talking to Raffaele and going, wait, what are they saying?

What happened? What did they find? Like, and at first they're telling me really confusing things. Like they saw a foot and it's like a foot. Are you talking about like a severed foot? Like, what are you talking about? And meanwhile, like,

and then somebody is yelling about a wardrobe and how they found a body in a wardrobe. And I'm like, well, what body? What do you talk? Is it, where's Meredith?

Is it Meredith? Like what is going on here? Philomena understands full town is Italian. Oh yeah. And you're like, hello. So when, after you were like all escorted out of the house,

when did you know? Like's Meredith and she's dead? I think it was half an hour, an hour into this that like Raffaele was going and poking around and talking to people and going, okay, they think it's Meredith. There was a body under a sheet or like under a blanket and they think it's Meredith and that they think that her

she's been stabbed because there was blood everywhere and where the fuck is Philomena like are you two not speaking so I'm sort of like the the cops are sort of taking us all apart to like question us and so me and Raffaele were sort of apart because we had sort of discovered the crime scene together meanwhile phil and man and her boyfriend were apart answering questions to the cops and so we're just standing there and then eventually we all get taken to the police office to like answer even more questions and do that for days on end and then from that point your life changed forever there were paparazzi yes outside of

the house and I want to talk about that because they're taking photos they're taking videos you and in that moment you knew obviously something was wildly wrong but like you're saying you're like you didn't even know that Meredith was dead and if there was a body in there you still didn't know for sure that it was Meredith yeah what did the media say about how you were reacting oh what didn't they say yeah yeah to anyone that's not like familiar with the case just to summarize like derogatory term that you can come up and imagine for a woman was thrown at me over the course of these trials and this like decade of coverage of the case. But in that specific video that came out of you outside of the house. Yeah.

People were annoyed and disturbed by your reaction. Yes. So there was a specific like three second clip that kept getting over the years shown over and over and over again. Slow motion on like, you know, like in loop. Yes. And it was a three second clip of Raffaele sort of looking at me

and giving me a kiss and then like hugging me basically. And this clip was depicted as look at these two psychopaths who can't even keep their hands off of each other outside of a murder scene. What was in fact happening was I was scared and Raffaele was like, it's okay, girl. I like, I got you. That was, that was it. Do you think if you were sobbing hysterically, you would have had a much different outcome. Yes, I do. That's like the stereotypical response that people have or people expect people to have

when they hear something so incredibly traumatic, like your friend has just been murdered. But for me at the time, I feel like I almost got like deer in headlights. Like this cannot be real. Like almost like surreal, like this can't be happening. And thinking selfishly perhaps that, oh my God, I'm alive. Thank God I'm alive. Like, thank God I was at Raffaele's house. Like, oh my God. There's so many people that had an opinion on your reaction.

Who made the rules of how you're supposed to act in a traumatic situation? Like people are like, she should be sobbing. The fact that I was hungry at a certain point during my interrogations and I asked for food, they were like, if you really cared about your roommate, you wouldn't even be able to eat. And it's like, what are you talking about? Like if what this goes to show, though, is that once you like have a gut feeling about something, somebody like whatever they do, they cry, they don't cry, they eat, they don't eat. It's all through a, the lens of suspicion. So I feel like at a certain point, whenever that point happened, when these investigators had their

investigative intuition that I was somehow involved, there was nothing that I could do that was right. I agree. Because even if you were like, I'm not hungry, they're like, look, she's a psychopath. She doesn't even need food. Exactly. And then to see how it spiraled of the lack of emotion that everyone was so focused on,

where I'm like, I see a girl in shock. I was not expecting to come home and find a crime scene that day. I was expecting to take a shower and find a crime scene that day. I was expecting to take a shower, get dressed in a cute outfit and go out with my boyfriend for a fun weekend. That was what I was expecting. I never, ever, ever, ever thought like even when I was like a lot of people like, well, you saw blood in the bathroom. It's like one, it was not all that much blood. And two, even if there was blood you don't automatically i don't

live in true crime land where like you come home and to a murder scene you're not just not what i was thinking if i saw blood in my bathroom i would think is it real blood you just told me that there it was halloween no i didn't immediately be like oh there's blood on the sink someone's murdered in this house what do you think of now when you do look at that that video like is it triggering i mean it is in the sense that like i've just seen that moment of my life replayed over and over and over again in order to vilify me but i know what I was feeling in that moment. And that moment I was just like, this cannot be happening. And like, I almost feel bad for me at that time because I had no idea that I was already

sort of strapped to the tracks and there was a train that was coming and I had no idea. The power of a moment moment a 20 year old yeah having a reaction that and that defines who you are for everyone's life forever and it's like first of all a single moment and also however anyone wants to see that moment is how they're going to define you so you basically are a blank slate onto which anyone can project whatever fucked up ideas they have about you and to like go back to how sexuality became such a huge part of this like for me i can't help but feel like one i can't help but get rid of that like creepy

feeling that maybe some of these italian dude detectives had weird sort of sexy vibes towards me. And then they decided to translate that into, oh, I like this is my gut instinct that somehow I'm like, my my mind is attracted to this person. So maybe that's like what it's coming from. But also like the fact that this whole case, like the whole case that was built up, the whole case that was built up the whole story that was built up was essentially a vilification of female sexuality because we're looking at like there were two women in this case there was meredith who was made into this sort of like virginal invisible ideal victim and never talked about again and then there was the violent sexually depved, lustful whore and how like let it let's just burn her like it and like there also was evidence like there was evidence in this case that pointed to a guy who had a rap sheet and no one cared about him. It was all about taking a woman who was sexual and vilifying the shit out of her. The man that killed her.

No one even knows his fucking name. Yeah, I think I read like someone was looking at even just like maybe daily mail headlines from like a time period between like 2007 and 2011, which was when I was like on trial and then my first appeal. And they looked at the number of times, one, Meredith's name was in the headline. It was like 30 something. How many times Rudy Gaudet's name was in the headline? Zero.

How many times was Foxy Noxy in the headlines? 157 times. That goes to show like what this case ultimately came to be about it wasn't about meredith it wasn't about the person who killed her it was about vilifying a young woman's sexuality where did foxy noxy come from a soccer nickname like it was like prepubescent soccer nickname like i played you played soccer so you know top the diamond. That's that was my position. And so I like squirreled around and like stole the ball from people like a fox would like steal chicken eggs.

Right. So and it rhymes with Knox. And then it was used in a sexual way. Yes, it was like every fucking headline was like Foxy, Knoxy, etc. And it was like you were this like sex crazed woman. And a woman who like was so sex crazed, like, so basically the prosecution's depiction of events was that Meredith was a pure virginal person

who basically slut shamed me. And I decided to rape and kill her in response to being slut shamed by her. And it was just like, who imagines this? And then they find semen of Rudy inside of Meredith. And they're like, no, but still Amanda. Yeah. People really, really latched onto this idea.

They really liked. And what bothers me is that, OK, I want the authorities to be held accountable for making up a story and not allowing the evidence to guide their investigation. That's one aspect. But then there's the aspect of like, the media, the role of the media is to hold authorities accountable to the people like they are a it's a, it's an information tool that is in the service of the people. It is in the public interest. And instead of doing that, instead of holding the authorities accountable to the truth they latched on to every salacious possible made-up detail that they possibly could and then made bank and also meredith's murderer is kind of getting away with it like you know we talk about like okay yes it was fucked up for me and like I will talk all day long about how it was fucked up for me. But also one of the things that like Meredith's family has always pointed out is like, when did this become the Amanda Knox show?

Like, isn't this about justice for our daughter? And like, they make a good point. The media decided that they could make a villain narrative and it didn't matter what the truth was to them anymore. It didn't matter what happened to Meredith. What mattered was sex game, violent, foxy, noxy. Beautiful American girl. Your picture everywhere.

And also Meredith was a beautiful person. So it's like, oh, now we can like look at these two beautiful women and imagine them having like a fucked up sexual encounter. And also I like someone else pointed this out to me. I forget who it was but they were talking about like the number one like hit in porn is like like debasing and like humiliating beautiful women and so it felt like this was almost a pornographic enterprise of like oh let's just like imagine first of all this violent sexual encounter that we can feel all moralized about

like all scandalized about but at the same, like just have this like pornographic interest in Amanda Knox's like imagined and real sex life and like pitch her as this like ultimate sex villain. And like, there's this like perfect example of this. Like there was this one English like talk show where they were like saying, you know, oh, you know, this like psychopath woman. Would you? Would you do it with her? And it's like, so you all are just like you all just want to fuck and punish me.

And I'm a 20 year old girl who's like just I've had like maybe, you know, seven total sexual partners in my entire life. And I'm just like learning about who I am and what I like, what my experiences are. I've never been in an orgy in my entire life. And yet I am the stand in for everyone's like most fucked up sexual like imagine. Yeah. Why didn't you go home like right after you couldn't? So I could at any point I could have gone home. I didn't because the cops said that I was there to help them. They told me like my mom was like, come home immediately.

My aunt who is in Germany was come and stay with us until they catch the killer because we don't want you in a city where there's a killer running loose. And I was being brought in for questioning every day to like answer questions, like look at pictures, like people were bringing pictures from Halloween and like, do you recognize that person, that person, like they were telling me I'm an important witness and that I needed to stay so that they could do their investigation. And so believing them,

I stayed, I had no idea that they had tapped my phones. I had no idea that they were going to be bringing like that instead of questioning me, they were actually interrogating me. And I was never, ever, ever informed even like the, the first time I understood and was explicitly told you are a suspect in this case was in front of a judge after I'd spent three days in prison already like that was the first time that I truly had like expelled out to me this is what is happening to you how did the Italian police conduct the interrogation because I know it was a grueling process and you don't have to go crazy into detail but just giving an idea of it

yeah so um so again i was rafaele was actually called in for questioning they didn't call me in but i was staying with rafaele and i didn't want to be home alone because what just happened yeah so i followed him to the police office and i was just sitting there in like the lobby waiting for him but while i was sitting there some cops came by and they were like, what are you doing here? And I was like, well, Raffaele is being questioned. So they were like, well, if you're here, you might as well be questioned, too. And I was like, oh, all right. I was trying to do my homework, but OK.

They brought me into a room and they started asking me to recall everything that I could remember from the last time I had seen Meredith over again, because I'd already answered these questions again. And so I was going through it again. And basically what they did was they tried to find fault with everything that I was saying. So they were like, well, what exactly, what time exactly did you have dinner? And it's like, well, I don't know. It was like around nine, I guess, maybe. I don't remember. We had made dinner. And then we ate and then we watched a movie afterwards. And they were like, nine, I guess, maybe. I don't remember. We had made dinner. And then we ate and we watched a movie afterwards. And they were like, well, did you? Or did you read a book afterwards?

Because you said you read a book earlier and now you're watching a movie. And it's like, well, I did a little bit of both. Like, what can I say? And so they kept kind of like pushing at me like, oh, maybe what you're thinking is wrong. Like making me feel like my memories were confused. And oh, are you sure you didn't do that the night before and that wasn't this night? We really need to know. And meanwhile, Raffaele's being interrogated.

After a few hours of this, they come in and tell me, Raffaele says you weren't with him that night. And I'm like, what the fuck? Like, no, that's not true. I was with him that night. And they were like, well, your cell phone says that you made an appointment to see Patrick. Who's Patrick? Are you sure you didn't meet up with Patrick? And are you sure that Patrick didn't rape and kill Meredith? And are you sure that you were remembering everything? Because what if you're traumatized? What if you witnessed something horrible and you don't even remember it. And then meanwhile, like this one, this one police officer was saying, I was once in a car accident and it was so traumatic. Like I broke my leg or something. And I don't remember a thing. I blacked out. Do you think that that's what happened to you? Did you black out? Are you not remembering correctly? And like after hours

of this and then like yelling at me and telling me that I'm never going to see my family again and like slapping me on the back of the head, telling me, remember, remember. I finally was like, okay, maybe you're right. Maybe I totally don't remember anything. Maybe I met my boss, Patrick. Maybe, maybe. I don't know, but I'm confusedly trying to remember what you're asking me to remember.

So I signed these statements to the police right up for me. And then they finally stop yelling at me leave me alone for a second I like am allowed to close my eyes for a single moment like I'm I sort of close my eyes for a half an hour I get like some rest and then when I wake up I'm like oh no like what have I done I sign these statements I did not go out and see Patrick that night and I tell them like I can't like all of that is. Like I was just confused and scared. Like it's all wrong. And they're like, no, no, no, you'll remember, you'll remember. And so like, I'm sitting there like begging them to like, listen to me. Finally, I asked for a piece of paper. I'm like, look,

I can't, I basically recant. I write down, I'm recanting basically. I give that to them and they say, okay, well, whatever. We need to fingerprint you. We need you to strip down naked so we can take photographs of you. You're an important witness. Sorry, we have to put these handcuffs on you, but it's only a formality. We're taking you out to a holding place for your own protection. You'll see your mom soon. Mentally after you realize and you're going to, you're going into jail? Yeah, I didn't even know that I was going to jail though. That's not, they didn't tell me I was going to jail. They told me that I was going somewhere safe.

That's what they told me. And then I said I would see my mom soon. Were they speaking to you in Italian? They were speaking to me in Italian, yeah. And so again, like also a part of this was, I was feeling like all of this was my fault because maybe my Italian wasn't good enough. Maybe I wasn't understanding them. Maybe they weren't understanding me. Maybe this is all a huge misunderstanding. And I kept thinking,

I just want to talk to my mom. Like, I honestly just wanted to talk to my mom and my mom, like I had my cell phone there and they sort of confiscated my cell phone, but like they put it on the table in front of me. And my mom, who was due to arrive that day, arrived in Rome and started calling me. And my phone was buzzing and buzzing and buzzing. It was her. I knew it was her. And I was like, can I please answer the phone?

My mom is calling me and she is going to think that something bad happened to me if I don't answer the phone. And they're like, no. I was like, my mom thinks that I'm dead. I don't know what to do. And that, you know, shortly thereafter, I'm arrested. It's big headlines like case closed. The police were saying case closed.

We figured it out in just five days. We figured out who murdered Meredith. It's Amanda and her boss Patrick Lumumba and maybe Raffaele's involved case closed and my mom's like oh my god my daughter's in jail this could be anyone you're in a foreign country you don't fully understand what these people are saying to you and it's in the biggest moment of your life where there was someone murdered and you're potentially now about to be put in jail for murdering someone and you're like I don't even fully understand what the fuck you're saying can I please just talk to my mom I'm glad like I'm actually very

grateful that you put it that way because that's not the way a lot of people like to frame my experience like I've I've had the experience of people saying oh you're just this cute girl who got away with it you just decided to like implicate an innocent person because you just didn't want people to like look at you. And it's like, dude, that is not what interrogations are like. If you think I had any control over what was happening in that interrogation room, you have obviously never been in an interrogation room. And it also goes back to your reaction. Like there's people that have one never been in an interrogation room. They have never experienced the type of trauma that you walk into a house and your roommate is dead

how do they know how you're supposed to react and respond there's other cases where people literally have just admitted something in an interrogation room because it's like you are beaten down and they're almost like brainwashing you to give them an answer that they want right but a lot of people like again have decided have decided everything I do, no matter what it is, is evidence of guilt. Right. How did the interrogation end? So yeah, I'm brought into prison. Like it sounds bizarre that I didn't understand what was happening to me because it's like, okay, the handcuffs, oh, they photographed me naked. Oh, like a, a, a Italian dude has to like look at my junk and like like it's just like put his fingers inside of your vagina well like what they said they were doing was checking for

signs of rape and I'm just like what I never said anyone raped me like what are you talking like but of course at that point I'm like right I I'm like do whatever like I'll do whatever you say and so they bring me into jail and I'm put into a cell I'm wondering when I'm going to see my mom I'm given like a wool blanket and I just lay on this like cot and cry that was the end of that interrogation just like sobbing in a jail cell with nothing in a room but a cot and a wool blanket. I was scared. I was confused. I was in shock. I was in disbelief. I felt disassociated even from what was happening to me. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I just wanted my mom. Yeah. I really just, I needed somebody to not be screaming at me and,

and threatening me and telling me that I had witnessed something horrible and that like, I, I didn't know what to do. Did you ever take a lie detector test? No, they don't take those. Um,

they don't do those in Italy and I, they're not good because they don't actually, they're not reliable. What they, what a lie detector test actually detects is whether or not you're nervous. Right. And you can be nervous for lots of reasons. And also you can be a liar who's not nervous at all. Do you remember the first time that you saw your photo on the cover of a tabloid? So in those first days, I was not allowed any access to any media whatsoever. But then, you know, over the course of the investigation, once I was taken out of solitary confinement, I was sort of allowed to see at least what was on

the news. And the news was just like nonstop coverage about me about the case that three second loop on over over over again non-stop like for the first eight months of my imprisonment when i was like in isolation it was basically non-stop like super new evidence comes in like oh some super witness comes in and says that they saw amanda and rafale the night of the murder and then it's like oh well that actually never happened and that person just disappears murder. And then it's like, oh, well, that actually never happened. And that person just disappears into the ether. But it was like this nonstop sense of like, oh, what's the next thing?

And the next thing. And oh, Meredith was drunk out of her mind the night that she was killed. Oh, wait, nevermind. Actually, that's because the cops actually took all those samples of her blood and then they got spoiled because they didn't get stored properly. And so that's why they basically had fermented her blood.

And that's why it came across that it had alcohol in it. And it was like, no, no, no. She's not like drunk out of her mind. It's because you didn't store her samples well. It was a shit show. Were you one of the only like American women in the prison? For a while, I was the only American woman in the prison. I was also one of the only women who had all of her teeth. I was like, plunged into environment of

like, very, very, very poor, drug addicted, broken women who had had shit for lives, like people who were not coming from a place of like comfort and warmth and family, like I was who didn't go to school, who had been like traumatized from the moment they were born, like they were neglected coming from a place of like comfort and warmth and family like I was who didn't go to school who had been like traumatized from the moment they were born like they were neglected or abused or addicted to drugs like grew up in really bad circumstances and had nothing but bad choices ahead of them but like my first cellmate was um a woman who had um who was an incest victim at least that's what I heard. I can't, you know, for sure. But for what I heard was that she was an incest victim who had murdered her child. And

she was like, a little out of her mind. Like she was, she had this fixation with like scratching her skin until it bled. And so she was covered with like all of these sores all over her face and arms and that was my first cellie did everyone in the prison know what you were going through yeah i was the famous one so everyone had an opinion everyone wanted to talk to me about the case the way that i managed that was i always refused to talk about everything. I didn't want to get into this place of like my life and the worst experience of my life is just a part of the gossip mill. I spent a lot of my time trying to be invisible, not talking to a lot of people. And eventually, over the course of this whole experience, figuring out my hustle, which was reading and writing, because a lot of the people that I was in prison with were illiterate. So I was reading and writing their letters for them, helping them

do like commissary shopping, helping them read their court documents. Is that what people like say if you're in prison? Like, what's your hustle? I mean, everyone in prison has some hustle because you're part of well, first of all, like you're in a system that basically devalues you as a human being and so your human potential is very very limited you develop with other inmates a kind of social economy and that social economy is built up of the kinds of things that you can you can offer to the community and the thing that I could offer to the community was literacy right Right. Was there any like harassment or like abuse? I never was hurt by any of the other inmates, although I did see I did see violence between inmates. The thing that I experienced was male prison guards. There was one particular guard who was one of the higher ups at the prison, who in those first two weeks brought me into a private office with just him and interrogated me

about my sex life and made sort of suggestions that we might have sex together. And I so at first I just played dumb. I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't understand you. And then eventually, like eventually I was just like, no, no, I just want to go to my cell now. And he was like, you sure you want to go to it? Like it was bullshit. He just, he took this sort of like private interest in me and eventually cut that out because I rejected all of his advances. Other times in the prison, like I was grabbed by a male guard while I was like in the bathroom and other stuff like that. But like, again, not as bad as some of my friends' experiences. Like I know people who were raped in prison. So it's like, I was never raped in prison. I was never beaten up. I saw violence, but I largely escaped and stayed out of anything that was too

horrifically traumatic. The mental abuse though, who told you that you had HIV? That was a doctor at the prison. So I was frequently being brought in for the doctors to, you know, they were taking like DNA samples and things like that. And one time they brought me in and they told me that I had tested positive for HIV and that I needed to. Well, they didn't say that. The vice comandante, the man who was sexually harassing me, he said that I should think about all the people that I had ever had sex with to figure out who had done it, who had given it to me. And I was hysterical. I came, I went back into my cell and cried and was thinking that I, again, this is those moments where I'm like, oh, is all the suffering that I'm experiencing now, is this like somehow me catching up on all the suffering I'm ever supposed to live is like happening in one moment in my life? Am I going

to die? Like, am I never going to have a family? Am I going to be stuck in this? Like what is happening? So I write down in my diary, which they knew that I was writing in. Cause I was basically, that's all I did was sit around and like write in my diary. I wrote down the people that I, all the people I'd ever had sex with. And the very next day, my room was everything in my room that had my handwriting on it was confiscated by the police, and then leaked to the press and depicted me as

someone who in the course of like two weeks had sex with seven different people and was a sex maniac. And clearly, because I'm a sex maniac, I must be also a psychopathic murderer you had sex with seven people yeah yeah yeah but this is the thing like what are we talking about here like that's a pretty normal number by the time you're you're in college yep that sounds about right police looking at that and saying then she had to have probably also been capable of murdering someone like I'm my orgasms are so great I just have to stab someone afterwards like what is happening like this this is like and I at the time like I didn't really know how to respond to any of this kind of criticism I would like

I was also very new to my own sexuality so I didn't really have any sort of perspective or like authorship over like am I a normal person am I not a normal person and like since coming home and looking back on all of this like first of all I think it's amazing that there's a podcast like this where people can be super frank about like their experiences and like we are all sexual human beings and that's okay yes no one's a psychopath for having sex and also like i i've learned so much like i i interviewed this um dominatrix for my podcast because i was really really interested to know what the sort of kink community's response to the way that i was portrayed like the idea like i was portrayed almost like this like sex maniac dominatrix femme fatale who orchestrated very specifically a sex game that I was like organizing this sex game to rape and murder my friend. That was what was portrayed.

And so I was like, OK, what do people who actually organize like fun sex times for people think about the fact that this their their whole like lifestyle is being vilified in this moment? Right. And like this really surprising thing that I got from this, I very frankly reached out to a dominatrix and was like, what is your experience with law enforcement? Do you feel like law enforcement is just like calling people dominatrixes left and right and just like vilifying them and are you afraid of like a cop seeing you and like arresting you for a crime you don't commit and the really surprising thing was the dominatrix at least she's based in la she was like no actually i have a great relationship with law enforcement because law enforcement at least here in la recognizes the difference between kink and abuse. And in fact, what they'll do is reach out to the kink community in order to better understand when

people are falsely claiming kink in abuse cases. And so they'll like dominatrixes like her will be called in to testify in like murder trials when people are like falsely claiming that they strangled their girlfriend in a sex game and they're like no no no no you don't just start strangling your girlfriend like right nowhere wow yeah so that was like i i remember the moment when she told me this because i was like sitting with her she had invited me to a dominatrix convention so i went to this dominatrix convention with her as like her personal guest to like, get a glimpse into this kink world. And, and she was so kind. And we were sitting at lunch, and she was telling me like, it was very frankly, like, okay, the reason I'm here, I love that you're so open and welcoming towards me, that you're also being super

confidential about me even being here, because can you imagine what the press would do if they found out Amanda Knox goes to a dominatrixatrix convention so like thank you for your warm welcome i know that i'm an outsider here the real reason i'm here is because i need to know what your relationship with law enforcement is and when she told me that like they actually had a legit good understanding relationship i broke down crying because i was like I thought like I was it then just me like or are they just making up sex villains willy-nilly and was this an Italian thing with like what is like I thought maybe like she would sort of like get that experience and instead I still kind of felt alone and isolated I don't know it's to hear you still searching for answers.

Yeah. Why me? Why my sexuality? Like why, why this unwillingness to admit that you're wrong, even in the face of like overwhelming evidence to the contrary, like why? And if anything, what I've found, found um over the course of a lot of thinking and also a lot of examination of other people's cases is that it's really just human nature people are so so averse to thinking that they were wrong because it's not like we sort of

attach like values to our own identities on whether or not we're right or wrong and the idea that I'm wrong means I need to admit something about myself that I don't want to. And so I think that that's what I'm ultimately facing. And it's like, if I think about it that way, I actually feel less alone, because we all face that in our lives in some way or another. I just faced it in a really extreme fucked up way. What kept you going? Like in when you're in jail, like, was there someone you thought about day 361 in jail? Like what was keeping you going? I did 1428 days. It depended on the day, right? But like, mostly, this is the my sort of like rebel aspect of it. I did not want this thing that had nothing to do with me to control my life or to change me in ways that I didn't want to be changed.

I looked around me in this prison environment and I saw so many women who had gone through so much shit and were actually, a lot of them were like bitter and angry because of it. And I did not want that to be me. I understood that my life was fucked and I was living an unfair life. And I did not want that to be me. I understood that my life was fucked and I was living an unfair life, but I did not want that to define who I was. I still felt like the one thing that I still had control over, like if everything's stripped from you, you realize what you still have control over. And I had control over my own mind. So I spent a lot of time just talking through with myself how I was going to get through one day at a time because I couldn't think about tomorrow. I could only think about today. try to beat my record for how many sit-ups I could do at a single time.

Like really, really like humble fucking goals, but still ones that made me feel like it was worth living. But also we're all doing this all the time anyway. Like we all only have so much control over our own lives. And I think really embracing that, like embracing, first of all, how things could be worse throughout the entire time that I was in that jail cell. I also was very aware that I could be dead. And I was like, okay, I'm not dead. I could see someone with everything you were going through wanting to be dead. Well, I definitely imagined it. And I,

I don't like feeling trapped. Like one of the ways that I've changed in a big way is that I no longer feel comfortable in crowds. I just feel trapped. It reminds me of feeling like I there's no I need to know where the exit is. I need to know where the door is. When I was in my prison cell, I couldn't even look at the door because it was all bars and it made me feel claustrophobic. So I would always look out the window. But like when you are limited like that, it sort of forces you into either a place of insanity or of like extreme mindfulness, because the only thing you have is the present. Right. And that's the that's the only thing you ever have. Did you ever feel like you were going insane? How many more days can I fucking do this?

Like, you stop thinking that really start thinking i have now right right now is the only thing that i can deal with so you had suicidal thoughts in the jail i thought of ways that i would it was sort of my escape hatch like if it all comes down to it here's what i can do did you have suicidal thoughts once you got out? No, I did not. To be clear, being outside of prison is always, always, always way better than being inside of prison. The transition though from going from a imprisoned person

to a free person was not easy for me and it still hasn't really been easy for me because my life and my identity has been defined by an accusation of a terrible sex crime. And so like my life is associated with a terrible sex crime that I had nothing to do with. And I am perpetually viewed through that lens as if the only thing that is valuable about me as a human being is my role in people's understandings of this case and this case only. And I've found that people sort of resent me for continuing to go on.

Like I have a life outside of this and I have it thrown into my face all the time that Meredith doesn't. That I'm alive and Meredith isn't. But also people resent me for like trying to like, you know, shed light on wrongful convictions or like to like build off of my experience and grow and learn and reach out to other people who have been shamed in the media. What do they want you to do? They want me to disappear.

They want me to be grateful that I'm not dead and disappear. Well, let's talk about that because you get out of prison. And immediately right after, like, what was that like adjusting to freedom? Well, there's a I don't know if you've have you listened to any of the episodes of my podcast? Because there is a really good one describing like the day i got out of prison okay i'm gonna send and i'll send you a link because um there's this fbi agent who um basically volunteered his services to my family to help me get like safely from the prison back home oh my god like the number of people who just came out of the woodwork and were like, I can't save you, but I can help in this way.

Like an airline flight person who was like, oh, you can have my miles so that you don't have to pay as much money to like my family so they could come visit me. And this former FBI agent, he like orchestrated this whole like insane, like James Bond esque escape situation. And we had like we had a really good moment. Were there ever like death threats or anything? There were definitely death threats. And this FBI agent spent quite a lot of time setting me up with contacts that I could reach out to. I also started taking Krav Maga self defense classes, adjusting to normal life. Like was it? What was it like? Like, I assume everyone knew who you were. Like you went back to Seattle

eventually after the safe house. Yeah. Were people nice mean? So here's the crazy thing. And this is also like a really, really sweet thing. And it's a difference between what happened to me and what happened to Raffaele. And there were people like in his hometown who really rallied behind him. But mostly people treated him like shit. Like he was a murderer who got away with it. And like no one would touch him. I came home. And the minute I stepped out of the airplane, there were people holding signs that said Welcome Home, Amanda. and like the local record store had welcome home amanda like on their like big you know where they would have like nirvana vinyls like it was welcome home amanda and so like i came home to an incredibly warm welcome but at the same time

paparazzi from all over the world descended upon Seattle and camped outside of my mom's house. And like, I couldn't go anywhere without being followed for months. And then when I went back to school, I want like the thing that I wanted more than anything else was to just go back to the life I had before. I just like I had been torn away from my life, and I just wanted to go back to my life. And I discovered that my life from before didn't exist anymore, that I no longer could go to class without people taking pictures of me. I could no longer just ride my bike to school. I could no longer get a regular job. The case had become my life, and I had to find a way to process that experience and

rebuild a whole new life, basically out of scratch. How do you get through that? I'm still working on that. But I think the biggest thing is, it's given me, first of all, an appreciation for the myriad ways that we all experience this. Like there are ideas of us in other people's minds that we don't have control over, but that ultimately don't have to define us, at least to ourselves. Like, yes, it may mean that I can't get a job like a normal person, and it may mean that I can't go on a date with like a normal person like when Raffaele sweet Raffaele like he decided that he wanted to start dating again and he was having a hard time so he went on on tinder and like the second like he went on tinder a tabloid journalist like went on there and was like chatting him up as if she wanted to

date with him in order to like write a fucking article about him like it's terrible like every little no you can't trust anyone in every intimate aspect of your life because you're a public person is now in the public interest even if it has nothing to do with the crime that initially made you a public person so this is the ongoing struggle and also the idea that like oh my my gosh, is it the case that there is nothing that I could ever remotely possibly do in my entire life that will define me as much as a thing that I did not do? And like, that may very well be the reality of my life. That very well may be it. Is that something I can live with? Well, yes, because it doesn't stop me

from trying to do good works. It doesn't stop me from trying to like be the person who defines my own self. And it doesn't stop me from making choices in my own life to move on. So like, ultimately, it comes down to a sort of personal decision to persevere, despite like the mountain of an obstacle that you have in front of you. And meanwhile, like, what I've discovered is, I'm not the only one who's living with this. Like, there are lots of people who feel like they are trapped in the worst experience of their lives, victims of crime and victims in the criminal justice system. We all want to be the voice of our own story.

And so many of us are denied that opportunity. So, which is to say that it is so fucking great that you are even talking to me because you're giving me an opportunity to be the voice of my own experience. And for years, I was denied that opportunity. Years. And to this day, even like it's sort of touch and go. You know, like some people are like, totally down to listen, totally down to like, understand my experience from my perspective. And some people are like,

yeah, I'm not a real person. And I don't like fit the perfect bill like even in like the sort of world of like criminal justice reform right I don't look like the ideal person to be an advocate for that I'm this like privileged white girl I don't like represent the vast majority of people even if I've served my damn time is it hard to stay in like contact with Raphaael it's a little bit simply because like i completely understand that a big part of his trauma is that no one ever gave a shit about him so the only reason why he almost lost everything in his entire life was because he started dating me five days before meredith was murdered he barely me. And his entire life got thrown through a loop and no one cared about him. He talked about how like, in the trial, like he was bringing up like,

I don't have a history. Like I don't have a criminal history. Like I don't I had no reason to take part in like a murder game. Like what are you talking about? And they were like, Oh, no, no, you're just Amanda's bitch. So you would do whatever she said because you're a helpless like man child right who would do whatever a femme fatale would say and he's like that's not who i am that's not who i am when you tried to get back into dating how was that what ended up happening was um my first boyfriend after i got home was actually someone who i had dated before in college so someone who i knew from before who had exchanged letters with like while I was in prison. So someone I knew and trusted. And we dated for two and a half years. And then my next boyfriend after that was someone who I

knew from middle school. So like all people that I knew from before, but hadn't seen in many years, we'd grown, like learned, come to know each other um and then finally i met my future husband who um really really cute story because um again like i was saying i was writing for this local newspaper i was doing a lot of arts correspondence so like reviewing books or plays or whatever right um i was given an advanced copy of his debut novel and I reviewed it for the paper. I thought it was fantastic. It's called War of the Encyclopedists. I wrote this rave review, submitted it to the paper and then like, whatever, forget about it. Like it's done. Next assignment. Except the very next day I walked out of my apartment building and in like the diner window

across the street was like a poster for a book reading of this exact book. And I was like, huh, I never go out. Like I never, never, ever, ever go out to public things. This is a little bookstore. It's this book that I just read. I thought it was super great. I'll just like duck in. So I ducked in and I checked out this like great book reading. And at the end of it, I asked him, can I have like an interview for the paper? And he was like, sure, come over to my house. Didn't kind of sort of knew who I was because there were people whispering in the crowd,

like, oh man, that's just a man. He was like, I don't know. Like I'm a poetry guy. I don't like follow true crime, whatever. Invite me over to his house, drink scotch, watch Star Trek, hang out, go on a walk i interview him great at the end of this like interview hangout session he shakes my hand and says we should be friends and that's like a throwaway thing to say like okay yeah we should be friends sure

but for me it was like a month after i'd been fully exonerated. And it was the first time I was like, whoa, maybe I can make friends like a normal person. Maybe. And so he was one of the first friends I made after I was fully exonerated. And we were like friends for a good like nine months before we started dating. And what was what's even funnier is that when we started dating, he was playing the field. And his roommate was who ended up being the officiant at our wedding. He was like, always like, pick Amanda, pick Amanda, pick Amanda. Go for Amanda.

Wait, that is such an amazing story. Were you living with your family while when you went back to Seattle? So I started out living with my family. Then I moved in with a friend of mine that I had known for years. And then eventually I got my own apartment in like an area of downtown. What was your family's experience when you came back also to town? I mean, my family has been through the fucking ringer. Like it's one of when these things happen, they don't just happen to one person. They happen to a whole network of people.

And so I feel like unraveling the trauma, uh, that happened to everyone because everyone's lives became utterly focused on save Amanda, save Amanda. Um, that was the first priority and every other priority ended up having to become secondary.

Like that was real. But we've all like moved on. Like we've all, we all have our lives. My sister got married and had a kid. Like my mom is still working as a teacher and is super happy to be grandma now. Like everyone's like got a life. But we're still sort of unpacking how we've all been affected by this and how our family has been affected by it. You know, my youngest sister was like nine when I was arrested.

And so like she didn't really even fully understand what was happening and only sort of had to figure it out over the years. She's 22 now. Did any of them experience bullying? Yes. So my sister Deanna describes this one situation where she was with my dad and my younger sisters at the pool and Delaney my youngest sister came crying over to Deanna because she said someone had said that she was sisters with the murder girl

and um and then my sister Ashley has just um, talked about how people would purposefully call her Amanda Knox instead of Ashley Knox in order to sort of like, again, like highlight, like we all know what your sister did. How often do you think about Meredith? Um, it changes from the time of year. Like right now, this time of year is one that I think about Meredith? It changes from the time of year. Like right now, this time of year is one that I think about her a lot, obviously, because it's the, like this week was the anniversary of her murder. It's the anniversary of when I was arrested.

I think of her every time we come on to like December 4th is when I was first convicted so there are like moments in the case that like are very very vivid to me there was that feeling of like this again how our lives became intertwined and we almost became like two sides of a coin right like we're both like we're we're almost versions of each other and yet i'm like the one who lived and she she's the one who died and it's it's so bizarre and at the same time i also know that she was her totally her own person and like had her own dreams and her own life and her own family and that all got taken away right and as much as like my identity has been usurped by this like whole horrible tragedy talk about her identity like she never got a

chance to like even fight back against you know a false narrative about her because she just is gone and there's no way to get her back and so like i'm especially thinking about that now that I've had a daughter because like on the anniversary of her death for the past many, many years, 14 years, I've always sort of put myself in her shoes and thinking like, oh my God, what must it have been like? What were her last moments ever as a person? Like horrible, horrible moments thinking, oh my God, it could have been me and this year I couldn't help but put myself in her mom's shoes and thinking like oh my god if that happened to my baby what do you do you and like I can totally understand how her mom would have willingly taken her daughter's place if she could and she couldn't in the same way that like my mom every time she walked into that jail to visit me she would have taken my place if she could but every time she had to

leave me behind in a place that she knew where I was suffering and she couldn't do anything about it do you have any contact with Meredith's family? No, not yet. Not yet is my sort of position because I know that it's a complicated situation. I know that, at least in the past, it's unclear to me at this point how they feel about me, and I don't want to force a relationship onto them if it's traumatic for them. So I have sent messages to them through intermediaries telling them,

I want to have a relationship with you. I want to talk to you. Right. And I'm waiting to see if that's something that they want too. Do you, that's something you would want? Yeah. I want the same thing that they want I want to know the truth I want to know what happened to Meredith I want her to be recognized for who she was and I want their suffering to be recognized for what it is and I want them to get the closure

that they deserve I want that too and And like, that's why like, I have really complicated feelings about, you know, her killer, Rudy Gaudet, because I've spent time in prison now too. And I'm thinking, here's this young guy. I've like had this whole thing on my podcast talking about when he was released from prison, because he's out.

How do you feel about that? I know that he was a very young man when he made this colossalal horrible decision to rape and murder Meredith I don't know how he feels about that today I would hope that he regrets that he hasn't actually shown that he acknowledges what he did and he hasn't like admitted to it and and asked for forgiveness so it doesn't give me a super hopeful feeling that like he truly feels rehabilitated even but at the same time we're also looking at a system that is super adversarial that disincentivizes people from admitting fault and apologizing for things right and maybe he feels like a fucking

victim too because he like was a young guy who was abandoned by his dad brought up like foster care in Italy didn't like have a great thing going for him and he sort of spiraled out of control going from burglary to burglary to burglary until he majorly majorly fucked up what is like a word to describe how you feel towards him because essentially like i had to look up how to pronounce his freaking name nor does a lot of the world we know amanda knox and it's like the person that actually murdered raped is not at the forefront of the story like yeah his name is not the one that is affiliated with this horrible crime. Mine is. Yeah, I wish that I had a better word,

but I think if I was going to be totally honest, I'm angry. I'm angry, and I'm still angry. That doesn't mean that I can't have compassion for him, but I am angry. I don't think that my name ever should have been associated with his actions and the fact that no one seems to really care about him given that they were his actions really bugs me out and like maybe my anger is a little bit sort of misdirected at him because of all of the people not seeming to care that it was him you know i don't know i don't think that's irrational at all i think that's actually sounds like exactly what would be the appropriate response for you bearing the weight of someone else's actions and now it

has affected the rest of your life but is there anything like you do every single november 2nd like is there anything no there's not like a specific ritual there's a quietness there's a kind of um there's just like a thoughtful moment of again that like it's an expression of like acknowledgement that I'm alive and she's not in another reality it could have gone the other way or we both would be alive or we both would be dead. It's like how fragile are we all in any given moment? Do you still feel like people are judging your every move, especially on social media? Well, I know that there are certain people who are, in fact, judging my every move on social media.

Like at any moment in time, they're trying to find any fault that they can in me. And so they'll do that. And like it'll crop up. Like I'll go to like a renaissance fair where my friends are like sword fighting and people were like, oh, look, she can't get away from knives, like stuff like that. Like so there's that. And I, and I do feel like on the one hand, I, I sort of long for an existence where I don't need to social, like use social media to like interact with the world. I understand that it's sort of like inevitably the way that like a lot of us are communicating and being a part of like a digital community together. And it is important. I think it does have the negative consequence

of sort of driving us to constantly seek approval from random strangers. And I understand how much of a losing game that is. So like, I do think that the sort of mind suck, time suck of social media is not necessarily healthy unless you can have a sort of meta almost disassociative relationship with it on the other hand um without social media there are so many people who have reached out to me either you know asking for help asking for like perspective on their own lives

like oh i feel like no one understands me, but maybe you might understand me. Like those kinds of moments happen. And then also people just saying like, hey, I just want to send you some nice vibes today because I know you've been through some shit. Have you thought about how you will explain this to your child? Yes, I've thought about that a lot. The moment that I'm most sort of not looking forward to is the moment when human suffering that is, can be deep. Life really isn't fair. And if you like, it's such a throwaway thing.

Yeah. Like that we just say it all the time. But like, when you really think about it, how life isn't fair, and how bad things happen to good people for no reason. That is something that at the very least, I feel like I've been able to think really deeply about. I have a lot of perspective about that issue and it's not something that I take for granted. So when she reaches that moment of her life, when she starts understanding that things aren't fair, I'm not just going to like throw away like life isn't fair, throw a smile on your face. Like, no, that existential crisis of life isn't fair is real. And it's one of the deeper problems that we have as human beings and as a society, because we don't have great answers for that.

And that's okay. Like acknowledging that we don't have great answers for big problems is gives you a level of humility to have a lot more compassion for people, no matter who they are. And then I'm sure like, I'm going to let her guide her own understanding of my case. She'll ask questions. She'll want to know. She'll be exposed to, I have friends who have gone to prison for things I didn't do. And like they, like she's going to know from being around me that there's something about this justice system that is a little questionable. Yeah. And when she's ready, she'll ask me.

And I'm going to be totally honest. Thank you. Thank you. So much.