Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mama Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3: I'm under a lot of pressure because I'm still on trial.
Speaker 3: But I'm still a young person, and I'm making a
Speaker 3: lot of mistakes and they are big, like they're a
Speaker 3: big deal to make mistakes because I have to be perfect.
Speaker 3: I cannot afford to make mistakes when I am on
Speaker 3: trial for murder.
Speaker 2: For Mama Maya, you're listening to No Filter. I'm Cape
Speaker 2: lane Brook, twenty years old, living in Italy with other
Speaker 2: young people, learning Italian, falling in love with a local boy,
Speaker 2: working part time in a bar, and exploring the city
Speaker 2: and its art and culture and food with a fun
Speaker 2: and interesting group of other girls from all around the world.
Speaker 2: It sounds like heaven right, like the ultimate youthful dream,
Speaker 2: and that's exactly what it was for Amanda Knox until
Speaker 2: it turned into her worst nightmare. Amanda is thirty eight
Speaker 2: years old now, she's married to the love of her life,
Speaker 2: she's a mom of her own daughter now, and she's
Speaker 2: reflecting on the last eighteen years of her life because
Speaker 2: in two thousand and seven, Amanda Knox was wrongfully convicted
Speaker 2: of the brutal murder of her British roommate Meredith Kircher
Speaker 2: in a botched investigation that seent her to prison in
Speaker 2: Italy for nearly four years and kept her on trial
Speaker 2: for nearly eight years. Eventually, and after far too long,
Speaker 2: Meredith's real killer was caught and Amanda was fully exonerated.
Speaker 2: But that's not the end of Amanda's story, not by
Speaker 2: a long shot, because how do you even begin to
Speaker 2: reconstruct your identity, your sense of self after such a
Speaker 2: horrible thing defining you for so long. Amanda has a
Speaker 2: new book out called Free where she ruminates on that
Speaker 2: and so many other big, hard things. And what you're
Speaker 2: about to hear is one of the most generous conversations
Speaker 2: I've ever had with someone who's had so much of
Speaker 2: her story told for her about her, but not anymore.
Speaker 2: Here's Amanda Knox in her own words, Amanda Knox, Welcome
Speaker 2: to no Filter.
Speaker 1: Hi, Keate, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: You are as the world has come to know someone
Speaker 2: who really doesn't have much of a filter anyway.
Speaker 1: Is that true? Okay?
Speaker 2: Well, you know it's interesting because given the circumstances that
Speaker 2: you found yourself.
Speaker 3: In or maybe the world didn't have a filter for me.
Speaker 3: Maybe that was the problem.
Speaker 2: Interesting because also the circumstances that we're talking about, and
Speaker 2: i'd like to preface this conversation actually by acknowledging Meredith Kercher,
Speaker 2: who was murdered in Italy in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: not by you, that's right.
Speaker 3: By a person who is now under investigation for assaulting
Speaker 3: another young woman. So, yes, I studied abroad with a
Speaker 3: young woman named Meredith Kircher, and we were both there
Speaker 3: only for a few weeks before she came home one
Speaker 3: night and someone had broken into our home and he
Speaker 3: raped and murdered her, stabbing her many times, and then
Speaker 3: fled the country. And you know, as sad as and
Speaker 3: tragic as that that event was, I think one of
Speaker 3: the things that I've been shocked to realize is just
Speaker 3: how vulnerable young women are when they are abroad and traveling.
Speaker 3: And I never really thought about that when I made
Speaker 3: my decision to go study abroad. And I just feel like,
Speaker 3: of the two of us, I'm the lucky one because
Speaker 3: I got to go home.
Speaker 2: Yes, and and and given the circumstances of meritis murder,
Speaker 2: and it was in the house that you were sharing
Speaker 2: at the time. It could have been you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that does not escape me.
Speaker 3: I mean I talk about that in a chapter of
Speaker 3: my book Free, my Search for Meaining that's going to
Speaker 3: be coming out, where I talk about how she and
Speaker 3: I are Almost the way I think about her today
Speaker 3: is that we were two sides of the same coin,
Speaker 3: and fate just flipped the coin, and it just so
Speaker 3: happened that she she came home that night and not me.
Speaker 3: I had met, you know, a young boy five days earlier,
Speaker 3: and I was justo and I was just so enamored
Speaker 3: of this boy that I was spending every night with him,
Speaker 3: and so it just so happened that I didn't come
Speaker 3: home that night.
Speaker 1: But if Meredith and I hadn't gone.
Speaker 3: To that classical music concert at my school, I never
Speaker 3: would have run into him, and I never would have
Speaker 3: met him, and I would have come home, and who
Speaker 3: knows what it would have happened.
Speaker 2: You know what happened after Meredith's passing, though, And it's
Speaker 2: the knock on effect which has led you to us today. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and to the work that you're doing now in the world.
Speaker 2: And you speak in your book Free, which is such
Speaker 2: an extraordinary book about the knock on and how many
Speaker 2: victims there are. Obviously Meredith is a primary victim, but
Speaker 2: there's her family, her siblings, there's you, there's your family,
Speaker 2: there's your siblings.
Speaker 3: Rapelle his family, his siblings. Yes, and I mean I
Speaker 3: would also argue that, you know, Perusia itself was victimized
Speaker 3: because in a way it went from being this lovely
Speaker 3: town where you know, nothing of this this.
Speaker 1: Gravity was happening in this town.
Speaker 3: Yes, there was like some petty crime going on some
Speaker 3: it was a college town, so there were things like,
Speaker 3: you know, some thieving there. There was some drugs that
Speaker 3: was going around, but you weren't. You didn't expect to
Speaker 3: be murdered in Perusia, Italy, like this small college town. Really,
Speaker 3: I thought it was one of the most beautiful places
Speaker 3: and happiest places I'd ever been up until that nightmare began.
Speaker 3: So Perusia I think got a bad rap because you know,
Speaker 3: out in the world it was depicted as who knows
Speaker 3: what this like drug den of debauchery, and that's not true.
Speaker 3: You know, like just because one young man who was
Speaker 3: unhinged and spiraling broke into our home and then things
Speaker 3: escalated doesn't mean that, you know, Perusia itself is at
Speaker 3: fault for what happened.
Speaker 2: You know, how did you find yourself going to Italy?
Speaker 2: So you had you know, you came from a middle
Speaker 2: class American family. Obviously was very important in your family
Speaker 2: because you were learning Japanese as a teenage, you're already
Speaker 2: but your fantasy. How was the fantasy born for you
Speaker 2: to go study in Italy? And then how did it
Speaker 2: come to be?
Speaker 1: Great question? So I talk about this.
Speaker 3: A little bit in the book about how my mom
Speaker 3: always thought that I was going to live an extraordinary life,
Speaker 3: and I didn't really know what that meant. I knew
Speaker 3: that from a young age, I was really interested in
Speaker 3: the bigger, broader world, right Like, my mom was born
Speaker 3: in Germany and my family was a divorced family. My
Speaker 3: dad had his house, my mom had her house, and
Speaker 3: there were very different cultures in those two houses. Right Like,
Speaker 3: at my dad's house it was Hamburger's and hot dogs,
Speaker 3: and at my mom's house it was Zvechkin Knuru and
Speaker 3: you know, reladin, and so we were having like even
Speaker 3: just food wise, the accents, my Alma's accents. So like
Speaker 3: I knew that there were other ways of being out
Speaker 3: there in the world, and all of those different ways
Speaker 3: of being were valid, they were just different. And so
Speaker 3: that made me intensely curious about other cultures and other lifestyles.
Speaker 3: And when I visited Rome with my family when I
Speaker 3: was fourteen, I just fell in love with the country.
Speaker 1: I was enamored of it.
Speaker 3: And so I decided that for my junior year abroad,
Speaker 3: I was going to apply to a study abroad program
Speaker 3: in Italy, and I specifically chose a small town because
Speaker 3: I was hoping that I would have more time spent
Speaker 3: with Italian people as opposed to like hived off in
Speaker 3: a group of American students who were in Rome and
Speaker 3: just doing all of their things together. I wanted more
Speaker 3: of a small town experience.
Speaker 2: You wanted immosion.
Speaker 3: I wanted immersion absolutely. I wanted to become fluent in
Speaker 3: the language. I was very you know, I had been
Speaker 3: to class, and I know, you know, I had learned
Speaker 3: words like scoyatolo, which is squirrel, or you know, I
Speaker 3: could tell you, I could ask you where the bathroom
Speaker 3: was or where the biblioteco was, but like I could,
Speaker 3: I didn't speak the language. And so I was really
Speaker 3: hoping that just by diving in, I would be immersed
Speaker 3: in both the language and the culture, and I would
Speaker 3: just absorb it.
Speaker 1: And you know, in a way I have, like I.
Speaker 3: Spent four years of my life in Italy in not
Speaker 3: the circumstances that I had hoped for, But certainly I
Speaker 3: did be careful what you wish for.
Speaker 1: I did get immersed.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, you did. And speaking of being careful what
Speaker 2: you wish for, your mum's you know prophecy to you
Speaker 2: that you will live in extraordinary life when you were
Speaker 2: just you know, you were a child, reminds me of
Speaker 2: the Chinese proverb may you live in interesting times? That
Speaker 2: is actually.
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: And what are you called to be in those interesting times?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Yes? And what do you learn about yourself in those
Speaker 2: interesting times?
Speaker 3: But you know, Seneca also said, I consider you unfortunate
Speaker 3: if you have never experienced misfortune, because you have never known,
Speaker 3: you've never been tested, not even you know who you
Speaker 3: really are and what you are capable of. And so
Speaker 3: that's a way of reframing again those like really difficult
Speaker 3: experiences that we have as something that's not just terrible
Speaker 3: but potentially valuable.
Speaker 2: And of course it's easier to take that that point
Speaker 2: of view when you're on this side of fairpoint.
Speaker 4: Fair point, yeah, yeah, But those four years in jail,
Speaker 4: did you think, Oh, I'm so lucky to be experiencing this,
Speaker 4: because this will this is my character that's been forged
Speaker 4: in the fire.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure that you didn't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, and you know I talk about this in
Speaker 3: the book. How I went through different stages, right, how
Speaker 3: they're the first two years really was in a kind
Speaker 3: of in denial of the fact that I was this
Speaker 3: was my life, right, I just I felt like I
Speaker 3: was that little kitten holding onto the branch, just hanging
Speaker 3: in there until.
Speaker 1: I could have my life back.
Speaker 3: Right. I was accidentally living someone else's life, and someday
Speaker 3: all of the adults in the room would figure out
Speaker 3: that I didn't belong here, I didn't belong in a
Speaker 3: prison cell, and they would let me go home. And
Speaker 3: then the conviction came and the twenty six year sentence came,
Speaker 3: and that little kitten dropped, and I realized that I
Speaker 3: was not living someone else's life by mistake. This was
Speaker 3: my life, and it was unfair and it was sad,
Speaker 3: but it was still mine to live and you know,
Speaker 3: I talk about this in this chapter, about having this
Speaker 3: epiphany and how it felt cold, But with that coldness
Speaker 3: came a kind of clarity, like, oh, I have been
Speaker 3: waiting to live two years of my life. I've been
Speaker 3: waiting to live because I haven't been unable to acknowledge
Speaker 3: and accept that the circumstances of my life are this.
Speaker 3: There is nothing other than this. There's no alternate reality
Speaker 3: that I should be living in, Like this is it
Speaker 3: and it's not fair and it's not fun and I
Speaker 3: shouldn't be here. But I can't focus on what I
Speaker 3: should like my life as it should be.
Speaker 1: I have to focus on my life as it is.
Speaker 3: And it was not easy, right, Like Weirdly, I think
Speaker 3: actually being trapped in a prison cell made it made
Speaker 3: it a much quicker moment of like shift in perspective
Speaker 3: for me than it might have been otherwise, because.
Speaker 1: When we're out here in the world, we all.
Speaker 3: Are trapped in circumstances that we didn't choose and that
Speaker 3: had come to that.
Speaker 1: Are external to us.
Speaker 3: But I feel like we can trick ourselves into thinking
Speaker 3: that we have control or that we get to decide,
Speaker 3: and that we are the ultimate protagonists of our own
Speaker 3: story and not just a pawn in someone else's, but
Speaker 3: like being stuck in a prison cell made it very
Speaker 3: clear to me that these were my circumstances. There was
Speaker 3: no other thing that I could and should be like
Speaker 3: here I was, So what was I going to do
Speaker 3: within the frame that I was given that was meaningful
Speaker 3: to me? And you know, like I couldn't answer that
Speaker 3: question in a grand scope of things. I couldn't answer
Speaker 3: that question in terms of twenty six years of my life,
Speaker 3: but I could ask myself, what can I do today
Speaker 3: that is worth living for?
Speaker 2: And that's it you speak in the book, And it
Speaker 2: was just a very interesting, simple example of what was
Speaker 2: going on with you that if you looked at your
Speaker 2: immediate surrounds, you were filled with despair. But if you
Speaker 2: could look a little bit out of the window and
Speaker 2: say a little chink of the landscape, it made the
Speaker 2: experience different for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's that shift in perspective or you know, so
Speaker 3: there's that one sort of shift in perspective where like
Speaker 3: you're looking at a window, do you see the bars
Speaker 3: or do you see the bunny rabbits on the other
Speaker 3: side of the window that are like frolicking in the grass.
Speaker 3: You can choose which thing to focus on, but there's
Speaker 3: also the seeing very clearly what is in front of you,
Speaker 3: Like do you look at your prison cell and see
Speaker 3: all of this time that is being wasted, or do
Speaker 3: you see all of this time that you can be
Speaker 3: doing something in that actually matters to you?
Speaker 1: And so I've found.
Speaker 3: Little things, little humble things that mattered to me that
Speaker 3: made again a day worth living for, or even an
Speaker 3: hour worth living for. Was writing a letter to my mom,
Speaker 3: out doing the number of sit ups that I could
Speaker 3: do the day before, reading a book, getting more fluent
Speaker 3: in Italian.
Speaker 1: All of those things matter to me.
Speaker 2: Making a call, making a coffee in.
Speaker 3: Your cell, or you know, I talk about the book
Speaker 3: or in the book about this concept of ekey guy,
Speaker 3: which is the intersection between what you are good at,
Speaker 3: you like to do, what the world needs, and what
Speaker 3: you can get paid for this like purpose that you have.
Speaker 3: And I came to Italy because I loved the Italian language,
Speaker 3: I loved the Italian people. I had this idea in
Speaker 3: my mind that I would be a translator and I
Speaker 3: would be a bridge between people who could not understand
Speaker 3: each other, and all of a sudden, again, careful what
Speaker 3: you wish for.
Speaker 1: I found myself immersed.
Speaker 3: In a world in the prison of people who were
Speaker 3: either illiterate, so Italian, but illiterate, so they couldn't read
Speaker 3: their letters, they couldn't read their court documents.
Speaker 1: They needed help.
Speaker 2: I could do that because a lot of them were
Speaker 2: foreign A lot of them.
Speaker 3: Are foreigners, Nigerians, Romani or they were from very very poor,
Speaker 3: poor Italian families. So people who like I did not
Speaker 3: realize that there were still, you know, people in the
Speaker 3: world who grew up never going to school because.
Speaker 1: They were just that poor.
Speaker 3: And so I was meeting this, I was coming face
Speaker 3: to face with those realities in prison, realizing that I
Speaker 3: was one of the few people in here who could
Speaker 3: read and write, and eventually who could read and write
Speaker 3: in both English and Italian. And so I became a
Speaker 3: very very valuable asset in the prison environment. And we
Speaker 3: again you know that, careful what you wish for. I
Speaker 3: became a translator. I wasn't paid, well, I guess I
Speaker 3: was paid for it in the sense that like I
Speaker 3: went from I got respect, you know, like that was.
Speaker 1: My prison hustle.
Speaker 2: You know, I talk about that which is, which is
Speaker 2: a valuable currency in prison. Exactly before this and before
Speaker 2: your epiphany, and before you're deciding to live the life
Speaker 2: that you were living rather than you know, dream yourself
Speaker 2: into a fantasy when none of this had ever happened.
Speaker 2: Tell me how you came to be living in the
Speaker 2: house with Meredith, who was also a student, and with
Speaker 2: two other Italians? Yes, how do you? How do you
Speaker 2: go to Italy and then find yourself in a share house?
Speaker 2: And what were your days like then? Oh?
Speaker 3: I mean I went and visit Perusia with my sister.
Speaker 3: We came down from Germany. We were staying with our
Speaker 3: family in Germany. We came down on a train just
Speaker 3: to check it out, poke around. I went and visited
Speaker 3: my university and I saw a flyer up for a
Speaker 3: room for rent that was at a little house that
Speaker 3: was right down the road. And I actually the girl
Speaker 3: who was posting that poster was right there putting it up,
Speaker 3: and I said, oh my gosh, hi, I'm looking for
Speaker 3: a room.
Speaker 1: You know, Can I check it out?
Speaker 3: And she said yeah, absolutely, And this was Lauda, one
Speaker 3: of the Italian roommates. So I followed her down the road.
Speaker 3: It was the first place that I saw. It was gorgeous,
Speaker 3: this little cottage that overlooked the valley that was just
Speaker 3: right around the corner from the university. So it seemed
Speaker 3: like an ideal situation. I had two Italian roommates. There
Speaker 3: was another room for rent. They said they were looking
Speaker 3: for another roommate, and so I signed up. I gave
Speaker 3: them my first deposit, and I went back to Germany
Speaker 3: with my sister, just like gather the rest of my
Speaker 3: things and say bye to my family, and went back
Speaker 3: down and moved in. And by the time I moved in,
Speaker 3: Meredith had also moved in. And that was that, you know,
Speaker 3: just a flyer at the university, like a lot of people.
Speaker 2: And Meredith was English yep, so she was your obviously.
Speaker 3: American, yeah, And we had a lot in common. She
Speaker 3: was just a year older than me. We were both
Speaker 3: studying abroad. We were both interested in journalism and writing.
Speaker 3: She read a lot of mystery novels, I remember, and
Speaker 3: she had also a number she had met a number
Speaker 3: of other British girls, so she had a little like
Speaker 3: British friend group that she hung out with, and then
Speaker 3: she also hung out with the friend group that we
Speaker 3: had constructed which was our house group. So me and
Speaker 3: Philomona and Lauda and Meredith we would go out to
Speaker 3: dinner or we would go out dancing, so we were
Speaker 3: like two different friend groups of hers.
Speaker 2: And what role did Patrick Lamumba's Bob in your social scene?
Speaker 3: Well, I met Patrick through Lauda. So I had suggested
Speaker 3: to Lauda that I was used to having a job.
Speaker 1: In fact, I had three.
Speaker 3: Part time jobs leading up to going to Italy, and
Speaker 3: so I told her, Hey, you know, I'm looking for
Speaker 3: a part time job while I'm there. Do you know anybody?
Speaker 3: And she said, well, yeah, I have a friend who
Speaker 3: works with at this guy's bar, so I'll put you
Speaker 3: in contact. And when I met Patrick, he said that
Speaker 3: he would love to have someone who could help put,
Speaker 3: you know, pass out flyers to other university students and
Speaker 3: then come and serve drinks at his bar. And I
Speaker 3: thought that was a good opportunity for me to meet
Speaker 3: people and practice the language. And it was very part time.
Speaker 3: I think I only worked like twice a week, so
Speaker 3: it was very very low key.
Speaker 2: But when we were talking earlier about the broad sweep
Speaker 2: yes of Meritith State and the people that it sweped
Speaker 2: up in that Patrick was one of those.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: He ended up also being falsely accused, yes, of Merediths murder.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: So in the early days of the investigation, the police
Speaker 3: made a number of false assumptions. They assumed that the
Speaker 3: break in into our home was staged. They did not
Speaker 3: believe that a burglar would have broken in through that
Speaker 3: window and the way that they did, so they automatically
Speaker 3: decided that no, this was not a break in. Someone
Speaker 3: in the house is involved with in the crime and
Speaker 3: is trying to cover it up. And of the people
Speaker 3: that they were that could potentially be that person, all
Speaker 3: of the boys who lived in the apartment downstairs from us,
Speaker 3: all of them had ironclad alibis. They were out of town.
Speaker 3: Lauda was out of town. Philomena was with her boyfriend.
Speaker 3: I was with my boyfriend. So Philamina and I were
Speaker 3: the two ones where we only had one person could
Speaker 3: identify us where we were.
Speaker 1: And at the same.
Speaker 3: Time that the police had one other lead. They located
Speaker 3: a what appeared to them to be the hair of
Speaker 3: an African person at the crime scene on Meredith's body,
Speaker 3: and so they said to themselves, Okay, we're someone in
Speaker 3: the house is involved in this. It's either Philamena or Amanda,
Speaker 3: and a black person is involved with this.
Speaker 1: So they had that in their mind.
Speaker 3: And then they looked at Philamena and me, and they
Speaker 3: noticed an important difference. Especially in the early stages of
Speaker 3: the of the discovery of the crime. Philamena had seen
Speaker 3: inside Meredith's room. She saw Meredith's body, she saw the
Speaker 3: crime scene, she saw the blood, she saw everything and
Speaker 3: was screaming and crying and losing her mind. I had not,
Speaker 3: And there's this famous clip of me that has made
Speaker 3: its way around the world. It's this clip of me
Speaker 3: standing outside of the crime scene the day that it
Speaker 3: was discovered. I'm standing there with Raphaela, looking just sort
Speaker 3: of lost, and then he kisses me to like comfort me.
Speaker 3: And that was, you know, replayed over and over in
Speaker 3: slow motion, and people look at that and say, look,
Speaker 3: she doesn't seem to even care that her roommate was murdered.
Speaker 3: And I like to point out to people that, like,
Speaker 3: I wasn't even sure what was going on in that moment,
Speaker 3: because as soon as the door was kicked down and
Speaker 3: Meredith's body was discovered, everyone started screaming in Italian and
Speaker 3: I had no idea what they were saying. I could
Speaker 3: only pick up little bits and pieces. I was trying
Speaker 3: to piece everything together. I was talking to RAPHAELI going,
Speaker 3: what did they see? Can you talk to somebody?
Speaker 1: What is going on? Do they know it's Meridith? Is
Speaker 1: it like?
Speaker 3: And so there was a moment in there where I
Speaker 3: was just sort of like in shock, trying to piece
Speaker 3: everything together, and people look at that moment as evidence
Speaker 3: of me like not caring, when really they'd understand the
Speaker 3: circumstances of that.
Speaker 2: Certainly the Italians were like, this is not how a
Speaker 2: good Italian girl would behave these circumstances.
Speaker 3: Right, And so I think they imposed some of their
Speaker 3: prejudices onto me, and already they were sort of forming
Speaker 3: this idea. And then when they discovered like they brought
Speaker 3: me in for questioning many times over the course of
Speaker 3: those days and that final interrogation, they were convinced that
Speaker 3: it was me, like I was hiding something, I was
Speaker 3: not telling the truth. So they brought in my boyfriend
Speaker 3: who was my alibi, and tried to try to get
Speaker 3: basically force him to withdraw my alibi and at the
Speaker 3: same time try to force me to say something else.
Speaker 3: To do anything else.
Speaker 2: After this short break, Amanda recalls the moment she returned
Speaker 2: to her share house and discovered that something was very,
Speaker 2: very wrong ste with us. Now all of these I'm
Speaker 2: trying to imagine how you process any of this, given
Speaker 2: that you're so young, that you've come from your boyfriend's house,
Speaker 2: you've come back to your place. Is this right for
Speaker 2: a shower in the morning? Tell me what you found
Speaker 2: at the at the apartment when you came back from
Speaker 2: Raphaela's place, thinking that it was just another morning, and
Speaker 2: I believe you were going to go off for a
Speaker 2: weekend TiAl. He wanted to take you somewhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he was going to take me to So
Speaker 3: it was a holiday weekend because Halloween and all Saints Day,
Speaker 3: all of that, it was going to be. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was so November exactly thousand and seven, and so there
Speaker 3: was no school. We were going to take the days
Speaker 3: off and go and visit this beautiful neighboring town. And
Speaker 3: that morning, my plan was simply to go back home,
Speaker 3: get changed into something pretty for a romantic weekend, and
Speaker 3: you know, take a shower, blow dry my hair, and
Speaker 3: meet back up with him. And I came home and
Speaker 3: found a number of strange things, like my door was open.
Speaker 3: The front door to the house was open, and that
Speaker 3: was odd. But at the same time, I thought to myself, well,
Speaker 3: the lock is broken on the door. We all have
Speaker 3: to lock it with the key just to make sure
Speaker 3: it doesn't blow open with the wind. Maybe someone didn't
Speaker 3: lock it and the wind blew it open. So I
Speaker 3: walk into the house and I go, hello, is anyone here?
Speaker 3: No one answers. I go, huh, close the door, go
Speaker 3: into my room, get undressed, go into the bathroom to
Speaker 3: take a shower, and while I'm brushing my teeth, I
Speaker 3: noticed a few specs of blood in the sink and
Speaker 3: I went huh. And at first I thought it was
Speaker 3: from my ears because I recently had pierced my ears,
Speaker 3: and I thought, oh my god, am I bleeding? But
Speaker 3: I was like, no, that's dry blood.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 3: And then I thought, huh, Well, I mean we're girls.
Speaker 3: Maybe someone's on their period.
Speaker 1: Who knows.
Speaker 3: So I take a shower, and as soon as they
Speaker 3: get out of the shower, I noticed there's more blood
Speaker 3: on the bath mat. And again I'm like, okay, weird.
Speaker 1: But also.
Speaker 3: That sort of rationalization is still happening. I'm not thinking, oh,
Speaker 3: someone's been murdered. I'm just thinking, oh, weird, someone must
Speaker 3: have maybe cut themselves.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: And then I go into my room, I get changed,
Speaker 3: I go into the separate bathroom. There's a different bathroom
Speaker 3: that has the hair dryer. I start blowing drying my hair,
Speaker 3: and I noticed that there is feces left in the toilet.
Speaker 3: And then I immediately went, oh, no, something's off because
Speaker 3: I could explain away these other things that I had
Speaker 3: seen up to that point as like, oh, maybe they
Speaker 3: just didn't lock the door. Oh you know, maybe someone
Speaker 3: is having other period, but like none of my roommates
Speaker 3: would have left feces in the toilet, And I immediately went.
Speaker 1: Oh, no, someone's has someone been here?
Speaker 3: And I got creeped out, and I immediately went back
Speaker 3: to Raphaeley's apartment and started calling my roommates asking like, hey,
Speaker 3: did something happen?
Speaker 1: What's good?
Speaker 3: Like not quite sure what to think of what I
Speaker 3: had seen, but I was calling and trying to find out,
Speaker 3: and Raphaeley said, well, you know, talk to your roommates.
Speaker 3: We'll go back together. We'll take a closer look see
Speaker 3: what's going on. So he goes back with me, and
Speaker 3: that's when we discover by poking around more, I went
Speaker 3: into other people's rooms. I went to Laura's room, Philamena's
Speaker 3: room and found that Phila Mayna's room had been clearly ransacked.
Speaker 3: The window was broken, her stuff had been gone through,
Speaker 3: but weirdly, her laptop was right there, her very expensive
Speaker 3: camera was right there. I was looking around the house
Speaker 3: going like, what kind of burglar breaks into the house
Speaker 3: and doesn't take a laptop? Like what is going on?
Speaker 3: So it wasn't making sense to me, like what was
Speaker 3: going on? But we called the police. The police came
Speaker 3: my room when of Philamena came back, and eventually, when
Speaker 3: everyone was there and talking and trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what was going on, they broke down Meredith's store and
Speaker 3: found her body.
Speaker 1: So wow, yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: It was not at all in my worst nightmares could
Speaker 3: I imagine that that's what was what we were going
Speaker 3: to find.
Speaker 1: Like I I was really.
Speaker 3: Unprepared for the reality that's set in in that moment,
Speaker 3: so much so that I think a part of me
Speaker 3: went into denial. I was like, wait, no, what, No,
Speaker 3: that's impossible, No, like what and again being very confused
Speaker 3: by a lot of very upset people speaking in very
Speaker 3: rapid Italian, and you know, like I didn't really fully
Speaker 3: fully know that it was Meredith and that she had
Speaker 3: been killed and that was her body in the room
Speaker 3: until I was at the police station and I asked
Speaker 3: a police officer specifically, like do they know that that's Meredith?
Speaker 3: And they said yes, And I said, how how did
Speaker 3: she die? Because I didn't even know? And they said
Speaker 3: that she had that someone had slit her throat, and
Speaker 3: I was just like what, Like.
Speaker 1: It was just beyond imagining.
Speaker 3: I couldn't I couldn't imagine something like that happening to her.
Speaker 2: But then of course you're thrown into an interrogation. You
Speaker 2: don't have a lawyer, you don't have an interpreter. You
Speaker 2: think that you're there in some kind of witness capacity
Speaker 2: or because you were Meredith's house man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but what was.
Speaker 2: Really going on with the with the police?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So I only found this out later that of all
Speaker 3: the people that were connected to the house or that
Speaker 3: new Meredith, any of the people that they we interviewing,
Speaker 3: the only person that they had wiretapped was me. They
Speaker 3: were listening into my phone calls They were clearly focusing
Speaker 3: their attention on me from day one, and what I
Speaker 3: was told by the police was that I was their
Speaker 3: most important witness, that I was the one who was
Speaker 3: closest to Meredith. I was the one who came home
Speaker 3: and discovered the crime scene and called the police. Therefore,
Speaker 3: I was crucial to them discovering who had killed Meredith,
Speaker 3: and they needed me to be at their disposal twenty
Speaker 3: four to seven so that we couldn't let the you know,
Speaker 3: the killer get away. And I believed them. I mean,
Speaker 3: I had zero experience with this, and I did exactly
Speaker 3: what I was told, and you know, I had good
Speaker 3: reason to. I was raised to, you know, trust police
Speaker 3: to when I was in trouble call nine one one.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know how to call nine one one
Speaker 3: in Italy. That's why I asked Raphael to call for me.
Speaker 3: And I just did exactly what they told me to do.
Speaker 3: So when they called me in at you know, or
Speaker 3: called Raphae la in at ten thirty pm, after I
Speaker 3: had already been answering their questions over and over for
Speaker 3: days already, I didn't question it.
Speaker 1: I just showed up.
Speaker 3: And when the interview started being very different, than what
Speaker 3: I was imagining it would be.
Speaker 1: I started to get scared.
Speaker 3: They you know, I actually did a big series on
Speaker 3: my podcast Labyrinths about this, about false confessions and about
Speaker 3: the methods that are used to break down a person.
Speaker 3: I didn't know at the time that I was being
Speaker 3: subjected to a methodology which is to nitpick a person,
Speaker 3: like ask a person to repeat their story over and
Speaker 3: over again so you can find inconsistencies and nitpick them.
Speaker 3: Then you start escalating things and start making accusations like
Speaker 3: you're lying and putting pressure on the person, bullying, isolation,
Speaker 3: you know, withholding of food and water, bathroom breaks. I
Speaker 3: was on my period and I needed to use the
Speaker 3: bathroom late sleep, absolutely. And then they introduced a new ideas.
Speaker 3: Once they had sort of nitpicked me and made me
Speaker 3: start questioning my own reality, they introduced an idea. They
Speaker 3: lied to me and said that they knew I was
Speaker 3: at my house when the crime occurred, and that I
Speaker 3: had witnessed something so terrible that my mind had blacked
Speaker 3: it out, but that I had to remember it or
Speaker 3: the killer would get away and I would spend thirty
Speaker 3: years in prison. And I, you know, this middle of
Speaker 3: night hours going into this, I didn't know what to think.
Speaker 1: I started. I thought I was crazy. I started to
Speaker 1: believe them.
Speaker 3: And when they located a text message that Patrick, my boss,
Speaker 3: had sent me the night of the murder, or that
Speaker 3: I had sent him actually in response to him sending
Speaker 3: me a message, they interpreted that message that I sent
Speaker 3: him as an appointment to meet with him the night
Speaker 3: of the murder.
Speaker 1: As soon as they saw that I had.
Speaker 2: Said okay us, oh yeah, so yes, n I'll see
Speaker 2: you and I.
Speaker 3: See you later, they interpreted that as not just like okay, chow.
Speaker 3: It was like, we have an appointment the night of
Speaker 3: the murder. And they said, look, you've been lying the
Speaker 3: whole time. Who's this Patrick, He's the one who did it.
Speaker 3: And they asked me to imagine what my repressed memories were.
Speaker 3: And after hours of this, I tried. I tried, and
Speaker 3: at a certain point I became convinced that I was
Speaker 3: maybe remembering the truth. But even then it was I'd
Speaker 3: never like, I never had a memory of anyone killing Meredith.
Speaker 3: I had a memory of being in my kitchen. I
Speaker 3: had a memory of seeing Patrick out, you know, out
Speaker 3: by the school. I had a memory of walking down
Speaker 3: you know, the street outside of Raphael's how but I
Speaker 3: never actually imagined anyone killing Meredith. It's just from smashing
Speaker 3: all of these pieces together that certain inferences were made.
Speaker 3: And then they they typed that all up and had
Speaker 3: me sign it, and that was it. That was enough
Speaker 3: for them to go and arrest Patrick. And what's really
Speaker 3: really sad about all of this is, you know, we're
Speaker 3: talking about Patrick as a victim of all of this.
Speaker 3: Patrick had a solid alibi, Like they went and arrested
Speaker 3: him despite the fact that he had a solid alibi.
Speaker 3: The day after he was arrested, people came forward saying,
Speaker 3: this is he's not the killer. We know where he was.
Speaker 3: He was with us all night at his bar, like
Speaker 3: we were all there, and the police did not release him.
Speaker 2: And luckily later on am I right that they produced
Speaker 2: one of the guys, who I think was from Switzerland
Speaker 2: or something, produced a physical receipt from the bar that
Speaker 2: proved that right was.
Speaker 3: You know, even by this point, right like the day
Speaker 3: after he was arrested, I had already recanted, like I
Speaker 3: had written a retraction, and still they would not release
Speaker 3: him until they had arrested a different person. And even
Speaker 3: after they released him. He spent two weeks in jail
Speaker 3: despite having an ironclad alibi. They kept his bar closed
Speaker 3: for another three months for no reason, and he lost
Speaker 3: his bar because the police would not allow it to open,
Speaker 3: and it was considered, you know, crime scene.
Speaker 2: Aside from Raphael obviously because he was there. But when
Speaker 2: you decided to phone home, who was your first phone
Speaker 2: call to Was it to you mom? And to your dad?
Speaker 3: My mom?
Speaker 2: Mad? Yeah, And what did you say in that confsation?
Speaker 3: Well, the first call that I made was when I
Speaker 3: was coming back from my house that you know, the
Speaker 3: first time I went to my house and I was
Speaker 3: going back to Raphaels and I called my mom and
Speaker 3: it was the middle of the night for her, and
Speaker 3: I said, Mom, I think something's wrong in my house.
Speaker 3: And I described to her what I had seen, and
Speaker 3: she she also didn't really know what to make of it,
Speaker 3: but she said, go back to Raphael. As she knew
Speaker 3: that I was now dating this nice guy named raffae La,
Speaker 3: So go back to rapae LA's talk to him. You know,
Speaker 3: don't go anywhere by yourself. Figure out what's going on
Speaker 3: with your roommates, like call them, you know, figure it out.
Speaker 3: She was very supportive, like in the sense of like,
Speaker 3: you know, you're not crazy, because I was calling her,
Speaker 3: going am I crazy? Like? Am I overreacting? Is this
Speaker 3: something like? And she was like, no, no, no, you're not crazy.
Speaker 3: These are red flags. You should talk to your you know,
Speaker 3: your friends. And then, you know, the next call I
Speaker 3: was able to make was in the police station, and
Speaker 3: I'm trying, you know, to tell her what's going on,
Speaker 3: and I'm trying to figure it out myself, and and
Speaker 3: really not knowing the depth of trouble that I was
Speaker 3: already in, you know, I was for days. My mom
Speaker 3: was telling me, I think you should come home, or
Speaker 3: I think you should go to your family, like we
Speaker 3: have family in Germany. You should go to Germany, just
Speaker 3: you know, get out of there. It's not safe. There's
Speaker 3: a killer on the loose, who knows. And I kept
Speaker 3: telling her, I can't leave. The police say that I'm
Speaker 3: supposed to help them, and.
Speaker 1: So I didn't leave.
Speaker 2: And you never ended up leaving.
Speaker 3: No, I never did, because you know, I was recently
Speaker 3: doing some advocating at my state legislature and I was
Speaker 3: explaining to the legislature about police deception and how it's
Speaker 3: how devastating it is, and I pointed out to them
Speaker 3: that I'm not just you know, I'm famously a wrongly
Speaker 3: convicted person, right like I'm famously a victim of the
Speaker 3: criminal justice system. You would expect me to have a
Speaker 3: negative perspective about the police. But what people failed to
Speaker 3: remember is that I was a crime victim before I
Speaker 3: was ever a victim of the criminal justice system. Someone
Speaker 3: broke into my home and raped and murdered my roommate,
Speaker 3: and I had to come home and discover a crime scene.
Speaker 3: I had to come home and ask for help from
Speaker 3: the police, and I was betrayed as a crime victim.
Speaker 3: I was failed by the police that I called for help,
Speaker 3: And I think people forget that, you know.
Speaker 1: I write in my book.
Speaker 3: About how people don't often ask me what it's like
Speaker 3: to have lost a friend.
Speaker 2: And I was struck by that reading your book. I've
Speaker 2: read both of your books, actually, your first one was
Speaker 2: actually one of the first biographies I ever read. Really, yes,
Speaker 2: but I was struck by the fact that you were
Speaker 2: never afforded the time to process this. What would be
Speaker 2: the hugest trauma in anyone else's life, to lose a friend,
Speaker 2: to lose someone that you lived with in such a
Speaker 2: vicious and violent manner because of the tsunami of legalities
Speaker 2: that ensued.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's only like.
Speaker 3: Years later now that I get I have the privilege
Speaker 3: of getting to really wrap my head around that loss
Speaker 3: and about what it means for me and what it
Speaker 3: means for me as a mother now, you know, I
Speaker 3: as soon as I became a mother, and you know,
Speaker 3: I talk about this in the book, like I can
Speaker 3: now appreciate the pain that not just my own mother felt,
Speaker 3: but also Meredith's mother.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and.
Speaker 3: How you would never you would trade places with your
Speaker 3: child in a moment.
Speaker 1: If you could.
Speaker 3: And you know, there is this ongoing sadness. I feel
Speaker 3: that Meredith's death is wrapped up in my identity through
Speaker 3: you know, the whole tsunami as you call it, that followed,
Speaker 3: and I have to I have.
Speaker 1: To hold that.
Speaker 3: And you know, talk about accepting things as they are,
Speaker 3: I have to accept that and hold that and understand
Speaker 3: that responsibility and what that and try to process what
Speaker 3: that means for me, on top of just trying to
Speaker 3: remember those good moments that I had with this lovely girl,
Speaker 3: you know, going to the grocery store, together, or going
Speaker 3: thrift shopping together, or baking cookies together, or visiting the
Speaker 3: chocolate festival in Perusia together, Like, all of those memories
Speaker 3: of her as a person are buried under a mountain
Speaker 3: of year's worth of trauma, and I have to like
Speaker 3: put aside the crime.
Speaker 1: Scene photos that I've seen and.
Speaker 3: The headlines about me that pitted us against each other,
Speaker 3: and the ongoing sort of sense that anything good in
Speaker 3: my life is an offense to her memory in the
Speaker 3: eyes of some people.
Speaker 2: Well, this is interesting because even after you served your
Speaker 2: four years and then that conviction was overturned and you
Speaker 2: stepped into freedom, which turned out to be a finite freedom, yes,
Speaker 2: because then they retried the case. But in that time,
Speaker 2: I think there's a perception that you're like like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's all over free, But you were never really free,
Speaker 2: also because you were so constrained by your inability to
Speaker 2: show joy or do things that still a normal young
Speaker 2: woman would do go out and have a drink. Because
Speaker 2: all people know about the death of Meredith Kircher is
Speaker 2: Amanda Knox.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean that's a really important difference between
Speaker 3: my first memoir and the second one. And I'm so
Speaker 3: glad that you've read both, because you can appreciate this difference.
Speaker 3: Is Waiting to be Heard was written at a specific
Speaker 3: time in the course of this story, and for a
Speaker 3: very specific reason. I had just been released from prison,
Speaker 3: but my legal troubles were not over, and there was
Speaker 3: a chorus of voices authoring my experience, saying who I
Speaker 3: was and what had happened and what had didn't happen.
Speaker 3: And I felt like I needed to respond to the
Speaker 3: accusations and the stories out there that were about me
Speaker 3: and and give sort of like my voice, just add
Speaker 3: my one voice through my book Waiting to be Heard,
Speaker 3: And it was a very reactive thing.
Speaker 1: It was a description of the case.
Speaker 3: From my perspective, this new book Free is not that
Speaker 3: it is a very very different book, because this book
Speaker 3: didn't have to exist. This is the book that I
Speaker 3: was able to write because I have been able to
Speaker 3: process and grieve and grapple with a lot of the
Speaker 3: things that we overlook when it comes to wrongful conviction stories.
Speaker 1: You know, I talk about how.
Speaker 3: When you hear the typical wrongful conviction story, what you
Speaker 3: hear is, you know, the lead up to the crime,
Speaker 3: and then you hear about the crime, and then you
Speaker 3: hear about the trial, and then you hear that the
Speaker 3: person got out of prison and they had their first hamburger.
Speaker 3: The end, and that's the call it the hamburger moment.
Speaker 5: The end.
Speaker 3: And then the curtain drops and people think that's the
Speaker 3: end of the story, and I want to say, no, no,
Speaker 3: they're not done, done, done, And it's.
Speaker 1: Like, no, no, Now.
Speaker 3: That person has to ask themselves the question now what
Speaker 3: now that I have spent like an enormous amount of
Speaker 3: my life has been devoted to proving my innocence, Who
Speaker 3: am I?
Speaker 1: And what is my place in the world?
Speaker 3: And you know, I had this weird sort of limbo
Speaker 3: space in the that I get go into depth in
Speaker 3: the book about where I'm under a lot of pressure
Speaker 3: because I'm still on trial, but I'm still a young person,
Speaker 3: and I'm making a lot of mistakes and they are big,
Speaker 3: like they're a big deal to make mistakes because I
Speaker 3: have to be perfect. I cannot afford to make mistakes
Speaker 3: when I am on trial for murder. And so it
Speaker 3: was a very scary period of time in my life,
Speaker 3: and I felt levels of shame and self blame and
Speaker 3: isolation that I was not expecting. I thought the entire
Speaker 3: time I was in prison that I was going to,
Speaker 3: like get to go back to the life I had
Speaker 3: before everything happened in Italy, and that was not the case.
Speaker 1: I didn't be the.
Speaker 2: Person and be the person that I could pick yourself
Speaker 2: up again and stick back into that scheme suit.
Speaker 3: And that that world didn't exist and that person didn't exist.
Speaker 3: And so I spent years struggling and feeling ostracized and
Speaker 3: like I didn't belong to the rest of humanity. And
Speaker 3: then over the course of time, little little things happened
Speaker 3: that started turning turning it around for me. Meeting other
Speaker 3: wrongly convicted people, meeting other women who had been vilified
Speaker 3: in the media, meeting my husband, and having the opportunity
Speaker 3: to have the family that I thought had been stolen
Speaker 3: from me when I had received that twenty six year sentence,
Speaker 3: and all of those things. I think the best description
Speaker 3: I've ever heard of grief is it's like holding a
Speaker 3: box that's just a little too big and it's a
Speaker 3: little too heavy. You can hold it, but it's awkward
Speaker 3: and it hurts, and you can only hold it a
Speaker 3: certain way for a certain time until you have to
Speaker 3: shift and I feel like I've been doing that with
Speaker 3: my grief, and you can see the evolution of this
Speaker 3: like awkward positioning that I've had to do and the
Speaker 3: strength that I've had to sort of learn in order
Speaker 3: to carry it. And finally, you know, get to a
Speaker 3: point where I don't feel like I have to that
Speaker 3: my identity, especially as it regards you know, being the
Speaker 3: girl accused of murder.
Speaker 1: That isn't just a burden. It isn't just a source
Speaker 1: of pain or grief.
Speaker 3: It's an opportunity, and it's an opportunity to care for
Speaker 3: what you wish for, build bridges between people who otherwise
Speaker 3: wouldn't understand each other.
Speaker 2: When we come back Amanda, she is the meat cute
Speaker 2: that laid her to her husband Chris, and discusses the
Speaker 2: complexities of moving forward in your life after such a
Speaker 2: life defining tragedy, and Amanda shares her message for Meredith's
Speaker 2: family if they're listening, This is very interesting the course
Speaker 2: that your life has now taken, or in fact that
Speaker 2: you have taken your life. In twofold one, you found
Speaker 2: your husband, Chris, who wanted to hold that box with you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that must have been amazing for someone who'd come from
Speaker 2: an experience where every time you thought you were in
Speaker 2: kind of a safe place, the rug got pulled from you.
Speaker 2: Were you expecting that when you met Chris for that
Speaker 2: to be the case.
Speaker 3: Now we have a really cute meet cute story, because
Speaker 3: obviously I was not on Tender or any of the websites.
Speaker 1: That was not for me.
Speaker 3: So I was a special kind of ostracized where it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: you've been accused of something horrible and nobody wants to
Speaker 3: have anything to do with you.
Speaker 1: Kind of baggage.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I did date two people after coming home, but they
Speaker 3: were people that I knew from before, you know, from
Speaker 3: my childhood, and so there were challenges in regards to
Speaker 3: that because in a way, there was this idea that
Speaker 3: I would be the.
Speaker 1: Person I was before, and I wasn't.
Speaker 3: I had clearly been changed by this, And there was
Speaker 3: also a lot of pressure. You know, people were calling
Speaker 3: my boyfriend my boy toy, and the tabloids.
Speaker 2: Because of course you were Foxy Noxie in the Maybia.
Speaker 3: Still, yes, son, any person who wanted to attach themselves
Speaker 3: to me was either my little male puppet slave or
Speaker 3: they were clearly a psychopath themselves. Because you know, they
Speaker 3: would photoshop knives into my boyfriend's hand, you know, like
Speaker 3: just horrible stuff. So only a psychopath whatever loved me,
Speaker 3: was the message. And I felt very alone. And then
Speaker 3: I started writing for a local newspaper, doing arts correspondents,
Speaker 3: and I was writing under a pseudonym, and I received
Speaker 3: an advanced copy of this novel, this debut novel of
Speaker 3: a local writer. It was called War of the Encyclopedists.
Speaker 3: And I read it and thought it was amazing and
Speaker 3: wrote a rave review and submitted it to the paper and.
Speaker 1: Thought that's that. But then the very next.
Speaker 3: Day I walked out of my apartment and in the
Speaker 3: diner window across the street was a poster for a
Speaker 3: book reading at my local bookstore that night, for that
Speaker 3: very book, And I thought, wow, that's serendipitous. And I
Speaker 3: never go out in public, but come on, it's a
Speaker 3: book reading, Like how, it's not like I'm going to
Speaker 3: a bar or something. Maybe I should just check it out. Go,
Speaker 3: you know, get out of my get out of my
Speaker 3: little self imposed cell that I've turned my apartment into,
Speaker 3: and go out and see something. So I went and
Speaker 3: I saw this book reading, and I thought it was
Speaker 3: so charming, and I asked for an interview afterwards, and
Speaker 3: that interview turned into drinking Scotch and watching Star Trek
Speaker 3: and just.
Speaker 1: Kind of hitting it off. And I thought, Wow, did
Speaker 1: I just make a friend?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Am I allowed to do that?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: This was very.
Speaker 3: Shortly after I was definitively exonerated, and I thought, oh
Speaker 3: my god, I'm I'm not running, I'm not like, I'm
Speaker 3: not afraid that some acts is going to fall and
Speaker 3: chop off my head. Like I'm I'm okay, and can
Speaker 3: I make friends?
Speaker 1: And yes? What turned out to be the answer.
Speaker 3: And like, the lovely thing about Chris was that he
Speaker 3: didn't google me, and he wasn't a true crime guy.
Speaker 1: He was a poetry guy. So like he vaguely.
Speaker 3: Knew that I was, you know, a part of some
Speaker 3: sort of true crime scandal, but he had no idea and.
Speaker 2: Had friends of He's not gone, Oh that Samanda.
Speaker 1: Oh, plenty of friends of his did.
Speaker 3: And in fact, you know, funnily enough, a very good
Speaker 3: friend of his named Steph, who's a very good friend
Speaker 3: of ours to this day. The minute she realized who
Speaker 3: I was, which was the minute she saw me, she
Speaker 3: sat me down and sort of was interrogating me about
Speaker 3: like the whole experience because she had followed it, and
Speaker 3: Chris was mortified. He was like, Steph, stop being a
Speaker 3: crazy person. Like he clearly just wanted me to feel
Speaker 3: like a normal person. And he didn't google me and
Speaker 3: was friends with me for like nine months before we
Speaker 3: started dating. And every single time any of like any
Speaker 3: person he met knew that he was friends with me,
Speaker 3: they would always ask him like, oh, is she weird?
Speaker 1: What do you think about the case?
Speaker 3: And he was like, look, I know that she's a
Speaker 3: really cool person, and I think you're being weird by
Speaker 3: going down the Google rabbit hole with her, like I
Speaker 3: prefer to get to know her as a person, And
Speaker 3: of course, you know, things would come up, like there's
Speaker 3: a great example of how one time he asked me
Speaker 3: if I wanted to watch the movie Wally with him,
Speaker 3: and I was like, what is Wally?
Speaker 1: And he was like, what is Wally? How did you
Speaker 1: miss Wally? Like Wally was hueah, And I was.
Speaker 3: Like, probably came out when I was in prison, and
Speaker 3: he was like, you know, like so there. It wasn't
Speaker 3: like I was hiding anything from him, but I didn't
Speaker 3: feel like I was being seen through that lens, and
Speaker 3: the idea that I could be in a room with
Speaker 3: a person who thought I was a nice person, who
Speaker 3: wasn't looking at me through the lens of girl accused
Speaker 3: of murder was such a relief and such a rare
Speaker 3: and beautiful thing, and it is a big reason why
Speaker 3: I fell in love with him. That and the fact
Speaker 3: that he loves my cats and I was like a
Speaker 3: crazy cat lady when he met me.
Speaker 1: I had four cats.
Speaker 3: I was a one woman and four cats person because
Speaker 3: I was very lonely, like I was, so I was
Speaker 3: so alone, and I didn't you know, cats and pets
Speaker 3: will love you unconditionally, and they don't know if you've
Speaker 3: been accused of murder. So here I was alone with
Speaker 3: four cats, and he was not intimidated by that.
Speaker 2: Going back to your new book, you embark on the
Speaker 2: most extraordinary quest, and it's part of your work now
Speaker 2: with people that have been unjustly accused or in prison. Indeed,
Speaker 2: but what you decide to do in the book is
Speaker 2: to find the prosecutor who made your life a misery,
Speaker 2: who lied about you, who was part of the case
Speaker 2: for convicting you without evidence or in fact evidence that
Speaker 2: should have exonerated you. Eight years Minnini made your life.
Speaker 2: I'm going to say a misery.
Speaker 1: That's a nice word.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then you decide, and it's kind of it
Speaker 2: runs parallel to your quest of kind of rediscovering yourself
Speaker 2: and who you are as your new release self. But
Speaker 2: you decide to not own to go back to Italy
Speaker 2: because I know a lot of people would be like,
Speaker 2: is she ever going to go back to Italy? I
Speaker 2: bet she never will.
Speaker 3: Yeah. A lot of people ask me that, and typically
Speaker 3: they assume no because they think I must be totally
Speaker 3: scared or they think, oh, it's a corrupt in just country.
Speaker 1: And you know, you're right that.
Speaker 3: You know, when I first came home, it wasn't sure
Speaker 3: if I would ever go back to Italy. It was
Speaker 3: this scary place that something scary had happened to me.
Speaker 3: But I didn't have the bigger perspective, right like, I
Speaker 3: had not yet met other wrongly convicted people and realized
Speaker 3: how prevalent this problem is, especially here in the United States,
Speaker 3: where we have the biggest you know, incarcerated population per
Speaker 3: capita in the world.
Speaker 1: It's insane.
Speaker 3: And so after I met other wrongly convicted people, here
Speaker 3: in the United States, and they left such an impression
Speaker 3: on me.
Speaker 1: I started asking some questions.
Speaker 3: I started poking around and trying to figure this thing out.
Speaker 3: The why question bothered me. I was plagued by this,
Speaker 3: like why did this happen? It didn't need to happen.
Speaker 3: Why did they focus me?
Speaker 2: Do you mean why did it happen to you?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: But you know, like why was there? Why did this
Speaker 3: wrongful conviction happen? I mean also I would love to
Speaker 3: know the why did this guy, you know, break into
Speaker 3: our house and murder my roommate? But that seemed like
Speaker 3: more understandable in the sense that like, here's this off,
Speaker 3: you know, unhinged guy who was clearly spiraling and was
Speaker 3: violent and towards women. Like I sort of get the
Speaker 3: guy who committed this crime, you know, like he should
Speaker 3: be in jail.
Speaker 1: He's a dangerous person the end.
Speaker 2: Sure, but he was also sentenced to less time than
Speaker 2: you were, even though his fingerprints, his bloody.
Speaker 1: Footpats in DNA. Yeah, all of.
Speaker 2: It was all over the crime scene and her body.
Speaker 2: And you were sentenced too.
Speaker 3: Was it twenty I was twenty six, Yeah, so twenty
Speaker 3: six first, and then they raised it to twenty eight
Speaker 3: and a half and he was ultimately sentenced to sixteen years,
Speaker 3: so and he only spent thirteen in prison. And like
Speaker 3: I said, he went on to then assault another young
Speaker 3: woman and he's currently on trial for that right now.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I encountered other wrongly convicted people here in
Speaker 3: the US, and like met anybody who's been hurt.
Speaker 1: You want to know why, and you want to know.
Speaker 3: If you want to know if the person who hurt
Speaker 3: you cares if they hurt you.
Speaker 1: You want to know if they're going to acknowledge it.
Speaker 3: Like acknowledgment is a huge thing that is very healing
Speaker 3: for people who have been hurt. And what I gathered
Speaker 3: from other wrongly convicted people was that prosecutors, police officers
Speaker 3: do not say that they are sorry, They do not
Speaker 3: admit that they were wrong. No, But I at the
Speaker 3: same time, I could not believe that the police officers
Speaker 3: or the prosecutor in my case were like Rudy Gade,
Speaker 3: the man who murdered Meredith, that they knew that they
Speaker 3: were doing wrong and they.
Speaker 1: Did it anyway, And.
Speaker 3: They were sort of sitting there in their offices cackling
Speaker 3: away at how they were putting innocent people in jail.
Speaker 3: I just could not believe that, and so I asked myself, well, then,
Speaker 3: how did this happen? Why did this happen? Why did
Speaker 3: they think they were doing the right thing? And I
Speaker 3: thought about it, and I thought about it and I
Speaker 3: thought about it, and then finally I asked. I told myself, well,
Speaker 3: I should just ask them, and so I reached out
Speaker 3: to him.
Speaker 2: And you kind of became pain pals for a couple
Speaker 2: of years. Yeah, which is during lockdown.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I which is the most bizarre experience.
Speaker 3: And you know, I talk about it a lot in
Speaker 3: the book because it is so interesting and bizarre and
Speaker 3: how like banal sometimes it was because like part of
Speaker 3: the way that I approached him was to say was
Speaker 3: to say not you know, you might expect me to
Speaker 3: approach him and say you were wrong and why won't
Speaker 3: you say you're sorry?
Speaker 1: And why did you do this to me? And how
Speaker 1: dare you? And that was not my approach.
Speaker 3: I knew that if I approached someone that way from
Speaker 3: this like adversarial place, that he would become defensive and
Speaker 3: obstructive like he had always been. We had been in
Speaker 3: adversarial roles this whole time, and so I tried to imagine,
Speaker 3: how do I have a relationship with him that is
Speaker 3: not adversarial. And so what I did was I tried
Speaker 3: to find common ground. And I said to him, well,
Speaker 3: this case has been huge in the media. I have
Speaker 3: been misrepresented in the press, and I bet you feel
Speaker 3: you have been misrepresented in the press as well.
Speaker 1: I think we have that in common.
Speaker 3: And I think we never actually really got to know
Speaker 3: each other because you were my prosecutor and I was
Speaker 3: your defendant, and we were always at odds with each other.
Speaker 1: And so I have no idea who you are.
Speaker 3: I have this image of you in my mind as
Speaker 3: this nightmarish figure, but I know that that can't be true.
Speaker 3: So I want to know who you really are, and
Speaker 3: I hope you want to know who I really am.
Speaker 3: And so that became this, you know, ongoing discussion of
Speaker 3: just sharing with each other moments of our lives as
Speaker 3: we were, you know, experiencing the world. He would tell
Speaker 3: me about how he loves the rain, and he loves
Speaker 3: to listen to Wagner and read Lord of the Rings
Speaker 3: and so like little banal things like that. But then
Speaker 3: on the flip side, there were always these little like
Speaker 3: moments where we would touch on the case or we
Speaker 3: would touch upon a meta discussion about the case. There's
Speaker 3: a whole chapter in my book called Navita and Djoko,
Speaker 3: A Life on the Line, where Jiuliano asked me to
Speaker 3: watch a movie about a detective who realizes that the
Speaker 3: person that he put in prison for a murder was
Speaker 3: actually innocent and the torment of the prosecutor as he
Speaker 3: realizes his mistake. And he was like, this is how
Speaker 3: I feel about our case. And I was like, what, what?
Speaker 1: What you know?
Speaker 3: And so there were all these like indirect ways that
Speaker 3: I was meant to he was like elude new realizations
Speaker 3: about the case, but he would never expressly say them.
Speaker 3: And it got to the point where I had to
Speaker 3: ask myself, what am I doing? What am I really
Speaker 3: doing here? Am I trying to get him to say
Speaker 3: something to me that I need him to say, or
Speaker 3: do I have something that I need to say to
Speaker 3: him that I hope he will hear? And that that
Speaker 3: tension brought me to Italy to sit down with him
Speaker 3: and sit across from him and have a discussion with
Speaker 3: him about the case.
Speaker 2: Despite the advice and the instincts of every single member
Speaker 2: of your family except probably your husband.
Speaker 1: Yes, my husband was supportive.
Speaker 3: Everyone else in my family thought I was crazy and
Speaker 3: they thought it was a useless endeavor in what was
Speaker 3: I thinking? And I was just putting it myself in
Speaker 3: danger again. But I intuitively felt like I was doing
Speaker 3: something really important, that for the first time in my life,
Speaker 3: I was not just reacting to this worst experience of
Speaker 3: my life.
Speaker 1: I was being proactive.
Speaker 3: I was proving who I was by making the choice
Speaker 3: to sit down with this man who had hurt me
Speaker 3: and to tell him that I didn't hate him, and that,
Speaker 3: you know, all the other things that I talk about
Speaker 3: in the book, but ultimately it comes down to being kind.
Speaker 2: You know, you then saw Raphael Yeap, but had also
Speaker 2: been exonerated with you, but who you hadn't really maintained
Speaker 2: any relationship with over those years.
Speaker 3: Obviously, I would say that it's not that I didn't
Speaker 3: maintain a relationship with him, It's just that our relationship
Speaker 3: was fraught, right, Like, we knew each other five days
Speaker 3: before this crime completely took over our lives, and so
Speaker 3: we didn't really like our little, beautiful, little love affair
Speaker 3: was very short lived, and then we both became you know,
Speaker 3: we both became people who had survived this intense trauma,
Speaker 3: and so we sort of looked at each other and
Speaker 3: saw in each other the trauma that we had lived through,
Speaker 3: and he had his own traumas from it. Like I
Speaker 3: was the one who was big in the headlines, and
Speaker 3: that comes with its own burden and pain.
Speaker 1: But he was overlooked in the.
Speaker 3: Media and people didn't seem to care whether or not
Speaker 3: he had a motive or there was any DNA of
Speaker 3: him in the crimes, you know, like he felt like
Speaker 3: mister nobody. And when he looked at me, he saw
Speaker 3: how being willing, just being my alibi had almost ruined
Speaker 3: his life.
Speaker 2: And also you had another country to go home.
Speaker 3: Yes, and he didn't. His own country had betrayed him.
Speaker 3: And he saw in me things that he didn't have.
Speaker 3: I have a husband and children, and he wanted that
Speaker 3: for himself too, And he's had a harder time getting
Speaker 3: work and making relationships because of that stigma that is
Speaker 3: still that he still carries in Italy. And you know,
Speaker 3: when I met him, it was really remarkable because on
Speaker 3: the one hand, it was really beautiful.
Speaker 1: Right we went to Gubio finally.
Speaker 3: That place where we were supposed to have Truffle Town
Speaker 3: where we were supposed to have our little romantic weekend,
Speaker 3: but it was not the romantic weekend that we had
Speaker 3: originally planned. You know, my mom and my husband and
Speaker 3: my baby were there, and there was a certain point
Speaker 3: where he was pushing my daughter's stroller and we saw
Speaker 3: a clown who was, you know, making balloons, and the
Speaker 3: clown he pushed up, you know, my daughter up to
Speaker 3: the clown and he was making faces at her. And
Speaker 3: then the clown said to him, oh, you have such
Speaker 3: a beautiful daughter, and he had to.
Speaker 1: Say, she's not mine.
Speaker 3: And I knew because I was feeling it too, like
Speaker 3: this could have been us, like we you know, if
Speaker 3: something tragic hadn't just hit us like a train went
Speaker 3: in our youth, like maybe all of these years later,
Speaker 3: we were just coming back to Goobio to as a
Speaker 3: remembrance of this beautiful romantic vacation that really solidified our
Speaker 3: love for each other, and instead it wasn't. It was
Speaker 3: It was a in a way, a pale shadow of
Speaker 3: what our life could have been together. In another way,
Speaker 3: it was a grieving the love that could have been.
Speaker 3: And it was nice to have that moment and share
Speaker 3: that with him. I knew it meant a lot to him.
Speaker 3: And he also wanted to go and visit tomb of
Speaker 3: Saint Francis, which we had visited together before everything horrible
Speaker 3: had happened. And he told me that the first time
Speaker 3: that we went to the tomb, he had prayed to
Speaker 3: Saint Francis that we would always have good times together.
Speaker 3: And so when we went back, he went and prayed
Speaker 3: to Saint Francis and said, I don't think you understood me.
Speaker 5: And you know, like he's a very sweet and thoughtful
Speaker 5: person who also went through this horrible experience, and he
Speaker 5: is on his own path to making meaning and it's
Speaker 5: going to be different than mine.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: My final question to you, Amanda, as you navigate this
Speaker 2: new path that you have and find the grace in
Speaker 2: that and the grace in forgiveness the churches, is there
Speaker 2: a relationship there with meridiths family today?
Speaker 3: There isn't, but I always always have the hope that
Speaker 3: there will be. I would really love to visit Meredith's grave,
Speaker 3: and I would want to do that with their blessing,
Speaker 3: and so I don't want to put pressure on them.
Speaker 3: Her parents have passed so what's left is her siblings. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I hope that we can have a relationship, but I
Speaker 3: also know that they have really struggled with the fact
Speaker 3: that there Italy did not give them the closure that
Speaker 3: they deserved. I suppose if they are listening to this,
Speaker 3: I would just say I would love to have a
Speaker 3: relationship with you.
Speaker 1: I would love to talk to you. All of our
Speaker 1: lives have.
Speaker 3: Been irreparably changed by what happened, and I think maybe
Speaker 3: we could heal together.
Speaker 2: Amanda Knox, I really thank you for sharing yourself with
Speaker 2: us today.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Wow, what did I tell you? Generous?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: It really strikes me that to be open to retelling
Speaker 2: the story of the worst thing that ever happened to
Speaker 2: you so many years later is only really bearable when
Speaker 2: you're so connected to your greater purpose, which for Amanda
Speaker 2: is her advocacy for wrongfully convicted people. She has and
Speaker 2: is making meaning from a tragedy that defined her for
Speaker 2: so long and actually still continues to. I told Amanda
Speaker 2: that I had read both her memoirs, which I have.
Speaker 2: That sounds like I just told her that and I haven't,
Speaker 2: but I have read them and they're both so good.
Speaker 2: Her first one from twenty thirteen, Waiting to be Heard,
Speaker 2: is from a very different time in her life. New one,
Speaker 2: which is just out now Free, is a remarkable reflection
Speaker 2: on not just what she experienced, but where she goes from.
Speaker 2: Here will pop links in the show notes to where
Speaker 2: you can follow her work and buy her books. She
Speaker 2: also hosts her own podcast, Labyrinth with her husband, and
Speaker 2: we'll link to that too. The executive producer of No
Speaker 2: Filter Isnaima Brown. Senior producer is Grace Rufrey. Sound designed
Speaker 2: by Jacob Brown. I'm your host, Kate lane Brook Back
Speaker 2: in your ears next week.