Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Hear's the Thing
Speaker 1: from iHeart Radio. In two thousand and nine, Amanda Knox
Speaker 1: was sentenced to twenty six years in prison for a
Speaker 1: crime she didn't commit. You probably remember her case. Amanda
Speaker 1: was a foreign exchange student in Perugia, Italy in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven when her roommate Meredith Kircher was raped
Speaker 1: and murdered. Despite a lack of physical evidence linking her
Speaker 1: to the crime, Knox spent almost a decade of her
Speaker 1: life stuck in the maze of the Italian criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: Amanda Knox is thirty three now and lives in Seattle.
Speaker 1: Last year, she and her husband launched a podcast called Labyrinths.
Speaker 1: In December, they put out a special episode to mark
Speaker 1: the release from prison of Meredith Kircher's actual killer, Rudy Gaday.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for being here on this labyrinth with me.
Speaker 2: Should he have gotten the life sentence, I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I would not wish an unreasonably harsh sentence on anyone.
Speaker 2: I would wish them only true rehabilitation. Gooday's lawyers say
Speaker 2: he's well along that path. Maybe so, but I do
Speaker 2: know one thing. So long as he refuses to admit
Speaker 2: his crimes to show true regret, I will continue to
Speaker 2: unjustly bear his infamy, be held accountable for the Kircher's grief,
Speaker 2: be shamed for not showing remorse for Gooday's crime. He
Speaker 2: could end all that in a second.
Speaker 1: Amanda Knox knows what it's like to be stuck inside
Speaker 1: someone else's preconception of you.
Speaker 2: So the work that I'm doing now is I'm a podcaster.
Speaker 2: I'm a journalist. I very often, especially in my journalism
Speaker 2: and focusing on on criminal justice issues, not just wrongful
Speaker 2: conviction issues, but more broad criminal justice issues. I'm on
Speaker 2: the board of the Frederick Douglass Project, which is working
Speaker 2: to build bridges between the incarcerated population and the non
Speaker 2: incarcerated population. So I'm deeply interested in that divide. But
Speaker 2: my podcast work, and Labyrinths being the podcast that I've
Speaker 2: devoted so much energy and love into this past year,
Speaker 2: is about how people navigate being lost. We just had
Speaker 2: a twelve episode season that concluded on January first with
Speaker 2: an interview with LeVar Burton, which was super fun, and.
Speaker 1: You discussed what with him.
Speaker 2: For example, we talked about his career and how he
Speaker 2: could have done a lot of different things, how he
Speaker 2: was on the path to becoming a Catholic priest except
Speaker 2: that this one thing happened, and then he very well
Speaker 2: could have gone into politics except that this thing happened.
Speaker 2: So we had this really fun and we actually had
Speaker 2: a lot of fun with that episode because Chris and
Speaker 2: I decided to become super nerdy and go sci fi,
Speaker 2: and we created alternate dimensions where like we talked to
Speaker 2: Catholic priest LeVar Burtons and politician LeVar Burton.
Speaker 1: He's so talented.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a sweetheart. He was so nice. But we
Speaker 2: cover a lot of ground in the in the season,
Speaker 2: and we go from anywhere from like super super dramatic stories,
Speaker 2: like we interviewed Samantha Geimer, who was the fourteen year
Speaker 2: old girl who was raped by Roman Polanski. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: how like interestingly speaking of you know, people using individual
Speaker 2: human beings like worst experiences of their lives as entertainment
Speaker 2: that they're entitled to and as a profit making machine.
Speaker 2: Like that was her story, and she didn't react the
Speaker 2: way or didn't want the things that people expected a
Speaker 2: rape victim to want, and so they vilified her because
Speaker 2: she actually wanted some kind of amicable resolut with Polanski,
Speaker 2: and they themselves found ambicable resolutions behind closed doors, while
Speaker 2: the rest of society was still trying to churn up
Speaker 2: this like victim and villain narrative. What's the name of
Speaker 2: the podcast Labyrinths?
Speaker 1: Labyrinths.
Speaker 2: There's actually a really awesome comic that was drawn and
Speaker 2: came out shortly after I got out of prison, which
Speaker 2: showed me escaping the labyrinth of the Italian criminal justice system,
Speaker 2: and I felt that that was a really beautiful metaphor.
Speaker 2: And what I've found is that not only is my
Speaker 2: own case, you know, it's remarkable and unique in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways, but it's also totally not remarkable and
Speaker 2: unique in the sense that it has all the telltale
Speaker 2: signs of wrongful convictions that happen here in the United States.
Speaker 2: But also like the feeling of going through that experience
Speaker 2: of being lost and feeling like there's this overpowering force
Speaker 2: that's like you can't actually navigate and you're sort of
Speaker 2: like on this journey and you don't know how it's
Speaker 2: going to end. That's an experience that lots of people have.
Speaker 2: I remember going back to school and taking a poetry class,
Speaker 2: and there was a girl in my poetry class who
Speaker 2: was really clicking with my poetry. And I wasn't, you know,
Speaker 2: writing explicitly like I'm Amanda Knox. I was in prison
Speaker 2: for crime I didn't commit. It was more just like
Speaker 2: very emotional. And eventually one day she figured out who
Speaker 2: I was and she said, oh my god, you're Amanda Knox.
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, no, Like what Google rabbit
Speaker 2: hole has she gone down now? And instead she said, no, No,
Speaker 2: you don't understand. I was gang raped when I was sixteen,
Speaker 2: and the feeling of what you went through feels like
Speaker 2: what I went through when I was gang raped at sixteen.
Speaker 2: And I was like wow. So the fact that like
Speaker 2: I sit in this very weird position where I'm a
Speaker 2: not very usual wrongfully convicted person in what way, Well,
Speaker 2: I'm female, for one thing.
Speaker 1: Who's usually wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 2: People who are usually wrongfully convicted tend to be, especially
Speaker 2: in this country, tend to be young men from impoverished
Speaker 2: backgrounds and young men of color.
Speaker 1: And that's because they can't afford a good defense.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's part of it. There's also a lot
Speaker 2: of biases that go into it. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: sort of hysteria around youth culture, like even just issues
Speaker 2: with like gangs. That's an issue where it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of people don't understand that kids just by
Speaker 2: virtue of living in a neighborhood are sort of associated
Speaker 2: with gangs, even if they have never committed a crime.
Speaker 2: And so suddenly you're like in a gang book and
Speaker 2: you're identifiable as a gang member. But that's only because
Speaker 2: you happen to live in that neighborhood, and you happen
Speaker 2: to associate with a number of people who also live
Speaker 2: in that neighborhood. You know, those kinds of things. But
Speaker 2: the major thing is that the criminal justice system is
Speaker 2: a system that was built by men for men, because
Speaker 2: the vast majority of people who are committing crimes are men,
Speaker 2: and for someone like me to be put through the
Speaker 2: criminal justice system as a defendant is highly unusual. I
Speaker 2: come from a middle class background, I come from an
Speaker 2: educated background. I have no history of you know, behavioral
Speaker 2: problems or anything like that. Like I'm usually what I mean, actually,
Speaker 2: usually the victims of crimes also happen to be young
Speaker 2: men of color, but generally when you think of someone
Speaker 2: like me, the media presents someone like me as a
Speaker 2: crime victim, and for me to be in a position
Speaker 2: of being able to both sympathize with what it is
Speaker 2: like to be a young woman who is victimized by
Speaker 2: a man, and to be able to sympathize with the
Speaker 2: experience of young men who are being put through this
Speaker 2: incrediblely unfair criminal justice process, that puts me in a
Speaker 2: unique position to like build bridges, and I kind of
Speaker 2: view my work as bridge building, as like acknowledging the
Speaker 2: complex humanity of people on both sides of the equation
Speaker 2: and being able to bring nuance back into the true
Speaker 2: crime genre, which I tend to feel has been more
Speaker 2: dominated by scandalous, salacious, black and white presentations of stories
Speaker 2: as opposed to more complicated ones. And a lot of times,
Speaker 2: like a lot of people reach out to me thinking
Speaker 2: that I am going to be able to understand their
Speaker 2: humanity in a way that other people just don't or
Speaker 2: refuse to, and so a lot of the stories that
Speaker 2: I end up talking about are just people who've reached
Speaker 2: out to me.
Speaker 1: So you're not somebody who people are coming to you
Speaker 1: and going I need you to fix this for me.
Speaker 2: I mean, a lot of people reach out to me
Speaker 2: asking me to fix things for them, But the truth
Speaker 2: of the matter is, I'm not a lawyer, so like
Speaker 2: a lot of the people who would love for me
Speaker 2: to be able to do something about someone's case, like
Speaker 2: I usually end up being the person who like directs
Speaker 2: them towards the innocence project that is closest to their location.
Speaker 2: What I end up doing is I try to give
Speaker 2: a voice to the people who have felt like their
Speaker 2: voice has been stolen from them. And once again, it
Speaker 2: isn't necessarily someone who's been wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 1: Did you come out of this experience when you finally
Speaker 1: were free, did you come out of this with some
Speaker 1: divine ability to tell who's telling the truth and who isn't.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think anyone has that ability. No, they don't,
Speaker 2: absolutely not. I think that what it gave me was
Speaker 2: a perspective that I wouldn't have had otherwise, but also
Speaker 2: a sensitivity to when I view people as being scapegoated,
Speaker 2: whether they did something or not. I am very sensitive
Speaker 2: to when people become ideas of people and not actual people,
Speaker 2: and I can see that happening on a day to
Speaker 2: day basis.
Speaker 1: What was the most consistent idea that you represented the people.
Speaker 2: That Foxynoxy was a drug adult, sexually promiscuous young woman
Speaker 2: who manipulates men to do her bidding, Like there's this
Speaker 2: idea of I think there was also this sense of
Speaker 2: like female jealousy that was imbued in me. So basically
Speaker 2: everything that is stereotypically bad about being a woman was
Speaker 2: sort of put on me. I was made to be
Speaker 2: this like jealous, sexually promiscuous, manipulative, druggy woman, and I
Speaker 2: came to embody that in the minds of people. And
Speaker 2: on the other hand, I also was, you know, portrayed
Speaker 2: as this like saint like damsel in distress, and even
Speaker 2: in the courtroom, people were, you know, presenting me as like,
Speaker 2: on the one hand, she has the face of an angel,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, she's really like the devil. And
Speaker 2: it was like, how about I'm neither. I'm just a
Speaker 2: young person who, like my roommate was murdered and I
Speaker 2: had no idea what was going on. And everyone was
Speaker 2: speaking an Italian really fast, and I had no idea
Speaker 2: what was going on, and I got scared and here
Speaker 2: I am so how.
Speaker 1: Much time did you spend in the Italian prison.
Speaker 2: Total four years. My god, So from age twenty to
Speaker 2: twenty four, I spent in a foreign prison.
Speaker 1: And everybody in there with you was Italian.
Speaker 2: Actually, the vast majority of the people who were in
Speaker 2: there were either Nigerian or Roma.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: I mean, there were plenty of Italians in there, and
Speaker 2: a lot of them were very, very poor Italian people
Speaker 2: who had ties to the drug trade and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: A lot and a lot of people in for drug offenses,
Speaker 2: whether they were drug mules or drug dealers.
Speaker 1: Amanda Knox, if you like crime drama where the defendant
Speaker 1: is falsely accused, that listened to my conversation with filmmaker
Speaker 1: Joe Berlinger. Berlinger directed the Paradise Lost series of documentaries
Speaker 1: about the trial of the West Memphis three.
Speaker 3: I mean, here you have allegedly a crime by three
Speaker 3: teens who are not professional killers, who brought, according to
Speaker 3: the prosecutor, three little boys out into the woods and
Speaker 3: slaughtered them to death in this savage beating, and yet
Speaker 3: there was no blood found at the crime scene. And
Speaker 3: then you look at the confession, and the confession is
Speaker 3: riddled with inconsistencies and problems coaching and coaching, so within
Speaker 3: months we knew that something was amiss.
Speaker 1: Hear more of my conversation with Joe Berlinger at Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing dot org. After the Break, Amanda Knox describes
Speaker 1: the toll that her long wait for justice had on
Speaker 1: her family. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing. After her release from prison, Amanda Knox wrote
Speaker 1: a memoir titled Waiting to be Heard. A few years later,
Speaker 1: Netflix released a documentary called Simply Amanda Knox. However, she's
Speaker 1: resisted offers to participate in a feature film based on
Speaker 1: her experience.
Speaker 2: I actually very much pushed back against that. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's kind of a film that's sort of a narrative
Speaker 2: version of it. It's not worth watching. It's really bad.
Speaker 2: I Mean, what I thought that the documentary did that
Speaker 2: a film couldn't do was it allowed everyone to sort
Speaker 2: of present their own thoughts in perspective about what happened.
Speaker 2: And it didn't claim to be Like, it didn't have
Speaker 2: a scene where I either kill or don't kill Meredith
Speaker 2: Kircher right, Like the problem with having a film be
Speaker 2: about it is you're making some sort of you're taking
Speaker 2: some stance about reality that is built up of a
Speaker 2: lot of claims of reality, but not necessarily reality. And
Speaker 2: in a situation where so much judgment is attached to that,
Speaker 2: I found that that was inevitably going to be flawed.
Speaker 2: Whereas a documentary that genuinely allows everyone to portray what
Speaker 2: they experienced and what they think about what they.
Speaker 1: Experienced and the facts as they know.
Speaker 2: And the facts as they know them is going to
Speaker 2: be closer to the truth and also is going to
Speaker 2: present the crux of this issue, which is that people
Speaker 2: are making claims about reality that they can't actually you know,
Speaker 2: like sustain with evidence, what do we actually know? I
Speaker 2: want to preserve this sense of like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: the person who actually committed this crime, Rudy Gadet, who
Speaker 2: no one ever talks about, is not someone and who's
Speaker 2: forthcoming with what actually happened. We have the evidence of
Speaker 2: him at the crime scene, of him interacting with Meredith's
Speaker 2: body and leaving his fingerprints and footprints in her blood.
Speaker 2: We know that. Do we have a camera on the
Speaker 2: wall where we see him doing it or we're in
Speaker 2: his mind? No?
Speaker 1: No, he confesses right, And imagine for you you want
Speaker 1: to avoid that where they're going to leave it gray
Speaker 1: whether you really killed this girl or not. You know,
Speaker 1: a feature film is always.
Speaker 2: Going to be like, well, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1: That's a fear I would have.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's the unfortunate thing about true crime in general
Speaker 2: is there is this sort of temptation to treat it
Speaker 2: fundamentally as an entertainment product. And due to that, like
Speaker 2: the thing that is most entertaining is when people can
Speaker 2: walk away from the movie and just argue about it.
Speaker 2: You know, like, if I feel this way about the case,
Speaker 2: you feel that boy about the case, and you know,
Speaker 2: now we can argue about it because it's unclear. And
Speaker 2: I think one of my big frustrations with my own
Speaker 2: case was that the prosecution, first of all, but also
Speaker 2: just people in general, always wanted to have this attitude of, well,
Speaker 2: the defense says this, and the prosecution says that, and
Speaker 2: so you know, there must be some sort of truth
Speaker 2: in between. Amanda must be guilty of something. We're not
Speaker 2: quite sure what it is, but she must be guilty
Speaker 2: of something. And that's actually like one of the major
Speaker 2: reasons why I was retried and reconvicted. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you knew that, or maybe you've followed that in
Speaker 2: the documentary. But like in Italy, the double jeopardy laws
Speaker 2: aren't the same, and so when the sort of whole
Speaker 2: forensic case against me came crashing down after my acquittal,
Speaker 2: I was retried again but on behavioral evidence. So basically
Speaker 2: the prosecution said, sure, we can't actually place her at
Speaker 2: the crime scene, but she just didn't act like I
Speaker 2: was just something like, we can't be totally wrong, so
Speaker 2: like something's got to be there. And I was reconvicted
Speaker 2: on that, like just on that sort of sense that
Speaker 2: there must be something there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't have the evidence yet, but we're going
Speaker 1: to find it. Trust me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like there's some you know, I just got a
Speaker 2: vibe and they bought that. And it wasn't until the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court. I was on trial for eight years, and
Speaker 2: it wasn't until the court swooped in and was like,
Speaker 2: where's the evidence. There's literally no evidence.
Speaker 1: Explain to people who don't know what are the extradition
Speaker 1: arrangements between Italy and the United States. Did they try
Speaker 1: to have you extra died it? Because when you were
Speaker 1: convicted again, you didn't go back right.
Speaker 2: So the way that it worked was that there is
Speaker 2: an extradition treaty between the United States and Italy, And
Speaker 2: so while I was on trial there, I was in prison,
Speaker 2: and then I was acquitted and I was allowed to
Speaker 2: go home, but I was still on trial, like they
Speaker 2: still pursued a case against me, and I was retried
Speaker 2: in absentia, so they had a whole trial without me
Speaker 2: in Italy while I was here living in the United States.
Speaker 2: And while that was going on, I was meeting with
Speaker 2: lawyers here to see, depending on the outcome of this
Speaker 2: new trial, do I want to make a case to
Speaker 2: at least potentially serve my sentence here in the United
Speaker 2: States so it's less of a burden on my family.
Speaker 2: So here I am like trying to go to college
Speaker 2: and go to school, but also making plans to potentially
Speaker 2: turn myself into the cops in case there's a bad
Speaker 2: outcome in this case, which there was, and I'm trying
Speaker 2: to like plan to how am I going to fight
Speaker 2: my case in court here in the US, to just
Speaker 2: see if I can try to serve a sentence here
Speaker 2: in the US as opposed to being trucked all the
Speaker 2: way back to Italy. Like that was my twenties that.
Speaker 1: Doesn't exist to you can't serve your time in the
Speaker 1: US for a crime in Italy, can you.
Speaker 2: Well, the US has discretion over whether or not it
Speaker 2: actually will fulfill that extradition treaty. It can always say,
Speaker 2: you know what, I don't really care to extradite her.
Speaker 2: She's going to stay here in the US. But because
Speaker 2: we want to appease the Italian justice system, we're going
Speaker 2: to hold her here in the US. She'll serve her sentence.
Speaker 1: Really, I didn't know that. I went through a divorce
Speaker 1: in California what's been re christened the Parents' Rights movement.
Speaker 1: It was the father's rights movement. Women were favored so
Speaker 1: clearly in courts about custody and so forth. And that's
Speaker 1: slowly changing. But in an analysis that different organizations I
Speaker 1: worked with did, California was ranked at the bottom of
Speaker 1: men's rights. I mean, it was a really, really, really
Speaker 1: because and that breaks down to basically two the haves
Speaker 1: and the have nots. I was in court, and if
Speaker 1: the guy that walks in the room is a gardener
Speaker 1: and he's getting divorced from his wife, the divorce proceedings
Speaker 1: are over in fifteen or twenty minutes. There's no money
Speaker 1: for lawyers to mine and pump out of that situation.
Speaker 1: If a famous whatever, actor, writer, musician, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: government official. If somebody prominent who was presumed to have
Speaker 1: the resources comes into court, it's like this is a
Speaker 1: big business. So they say to you, Alec Baldwin, your
Speaker 1: daughter who back then she was five years old, she's
Speaker 1: on the other side of this six foot concrete wall.
Speaker 1: Here's a paper clip, start digging, and you're going to
Speaker 1: start digging because if you're a normal human being who
Speaker 1: has a child, you want to be with that child,
Speaker 1: you want to parent that child. I know many people
Speaker 1: drop out and they give up and they write it
Speaker 1: off and go, I'm going to go start another family
Speaker 1: because they're so abused by that system. And so abused
Speaker 1: was I by that that I wrote a book. So
Speaker 1: I wasn't wrongfully convicted of murder in an Italian courtroom.
Speaker 1: But I was somebody who did everything they asked me
Speaker 1: to do, and they just kept punishing me because they
Speaker 1: knew I was going to keep coming. I'm wondering in
Speaker 1: your case, was they're just this driving need for you
Speaker 1: to share with other people what I went through and
Speaker 1: the lessons of that and how you can avoid what
Speaker 1: I went through. Was there some of that?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I just want to say that
Speaker 2: I'm really sorry that you went through that. And I
Speaker 2: was going to point out, like, you know exactly what
Speaker 2: it's like to be made to be the center of
Speaker 2: a morality play that people feel like they can just
Speaker 2: you know, keep taking and like profiting from and profiting
Speaker 2: from and profiting from. And I'm sure the tabloids have
Speaker 2: their cut of the pie too, Like I get it,
Speaker 2: Like it's easy to be made the villain of a story,
Speaker 2: especially when you're on trial, especially when you're accused. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like all of the sort of prejudices and stereotypes that
Speaker 2: we associate with people, but we don't say in polite company.
Speaker 2: As soon as you're accused of something and you're in court,
Speaker 2: like everyone feels comfortable bringing those stereotypes and prejudices to
Speaker 2: the table, Like it's no, it's always now we're allowed
Speaker 2: to say she's a.
Speaker 1: Whore right now? When you went to prison, what was
Speaker 1: the sentence.
Speaker 2: The first time I was convicted, I was sentenced to
Speaker 2: twenty six years, And when I was reconvicted and resentenced,
Speaker 2: I was sentenced to twenty eight and a half years.
Speaker 2: But to your point previously, I think that especially when
Speaker 2: we're talking about someone like you being in court for
Speaker 2: not you know, a murder, right, like, this is a
Speaker 2: situation where it's and I think it points to the
Speaker 2: fact that, like, this issue is not just about wrongful convictions.
Speaker 2: It's broader than that. It's about judgment. It's about mob
Speaker 2: mentality and mob profit off of an individual human being,
Speaker 2: and it's about the dehumanization of individual human beings for profit.
Speaker 2: That is something that has repercussions, not just in wrongful
Speaker 2: convictions cases where like the stakes are highest because you know,
Speaker 2: the prosecutor ultimate.
Speaker 1: Cancel culture, right, the ultimate cancelation. Yes, you're going to
Speaker 1: go to prison for twenty eight and a half years.
Speaker 2: For a crime you did not commit.
Speaker 1: Amanda Knox. If you're enjoying this conversation, don't keep it
Speaker 1: to yourself. Tell the world and be sure to subscribe
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Speaker 1: Amanda talks about returning to Italy for the first time
Speaker 1: since her release. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing When Amanda Knox was released after four
Speaker 1: years in prison, she returned to Seattle. It took time
Speaker 1: for her to rebuild her life. Last year, on February
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, she married writer Christopher Robinson.
Speaker 2: He's a novelist, he has two master's degrees in poetry.
Speaker 2: He's but you know, he's my partner.
Speaker 1: DNA expert.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 1: In fact, nothing to do with that.
Speaker 2: No, if anything, I've sort of like dragged him into
Speaker 2: this world and that he you know, didn't really have
Speaker 2: that much of a perspective on He was just like
Speaker 2: a philosophy poetry guy. But we have a really great
Speaker 2: dynamic because of that, because you know, he can bring
Speaker 2: his sort of analytical self. I bring my emotional, experiential self,
Speaker 2: and then we put that together into what we hope
Speaker 2: is a really complex, nuanced, heartfelt, you know journey that
Speaker 2: we put people on to your experience with paparazzi is
Speaker 2: something that you know, one of the things that people
Speaker 2: would tell me when I came home was they would
Speaker 2: say things like, I feel really bad for you because
Speaker 2: it's not like you're a celebrity. It's not like you
Speaker 2: asked for it. You just get you know, people chasing
Speaker 2: you down the street. Do they do that to you
Speaker 2: now today? No? But when I first came home, and
Speaker 2: for many many minu months afterwards, and actually the entire time,
Speaker 2: I was still on trial, so like I was still
Speaker 2: in I was in freedom for four years, but still
Speaker 2: on trial. Like any time something happened with the case,
Speaker 2: there would be people outside of my apartment building.
Speaker 1: But that's subsided now.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's all finished. Now the Supreme Court in Italy
Speaker 2: definitively acquitted me in twenty fifteen. So it's over. Like
Speaker 2: it's over in the sense that I was definitively acquitted.
Speaker 2: It's not over in the sense that, like my entire
Speaker 2: life and identity is now associated with a crime that
Speaker 2: I didn't commit, that is still an ongoing reality.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that way? Do you go places and
Speaker 1: do you? I mean not now? Maybe it's died down
Speaker 1: and where you live is it's home, and maybe you
Speaker 1: fitted and people are much more, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: polite toward you if you will. But I mean, I'll
Speaker 1: walk into restaurants you just see that look in people's eyes.
Speaker 1: Someone's eating with a crowd of people. They smack the
Speaker 1: person next to them. They look at you, they look
Speaker 1: at them, they talk, everyone huddles up, they lie, and
Speaker 1: then all of them look at you at the same time.
Speaker 1: Five heads go slap. Then they will come back into
Speaker 1: the home and start laughing. And you are this fodder
Speaker 1: for them in this kind of gossipy, tabloidy way.
Speaker 2: Well again, you're an idea of a person, right like
Speaker 2: they've had you as an idea of a person in
Speaker 2: their mind this whole time. And the way that I
Speaker 2: feel when I'm moving through the world is that I
Speaker 2: have this sort of doppelgang or version of me that
Speaker 2: sort of stands in front of me, and everywhere I go,
Speaker 2: I see people seeing her, and I have no idea
Speaker 2: what they're actually seeing because what the vision of me
Speaker 2: that they're actually seeing was constructed out of probably just
Speaker 2: a lot of media, but what media and who? And like,
Speaker 2: you know, what are the things that they are projecting
Speaker 2: onto the name and face Amanda Knox or Foxy Noxy.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a sense of sort of entitlement because
Speaker 2: we are not, like I don't think our brains are
Speaker 2: even really well adapted to understand that a human being
Speaker 2: that we've seen but never encountered is a real human being.
Speaker 2: Like back in you know, hunter gatherer days, if you
Speaker 2: ever heard of a human being who you had never
Speaker 2: actually met before in your real life, they were a god.
Speaker 2: Like that's that's the only person that you would ever
Speaker 2: have heard of that you've never encountered on day to
Speaker 2: day life. And the king would be a god. And
Speaker 2: so this like idea of a person is actually something
Speaker 2: that is very difficult for people to like genuinely understand.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if that's you know, something that
Speaker 2: can help you process or you know, console yourself or
Speaker 2: find peace. Is like we actually, generally our brains are
Speaker 2: really really bad at understanding that a human being that
Speaker 2: we've heard of but never encountered before is a human
Speaker 2: being like I am.
Speaker 1: I always tell people the worst thing in life is
Speaker 1: to be misunderstood, Like also there and say, kind of
Speaker 1: only people really knew who I was. I just don't
Speaker 1: feel to think people you know what we do, and
Speaker 1: you know my wife and I what we do philanthropically
Speaker 1: and all those silly things that you wind up having
Speaker 1: to resist the desire to point your finger that underline that.
Speaker 1: But I do this. And here's another thing, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I'm a human being. Look, there are multiple sides
Speaker 2: of me.
Speaker 1: But that's the trap that you lunge in that way
Speaker 1: and you start to advertise, and you start to respond
Speaker 1: and say to people, well, I'm really this great guy,
Speaker 1: and you don't get me, you get deeper in the
Speaker 1: quicksand unfortunately when you do that. But my point is
Speaker 1: is that in your case, you're wrongfully convicted. But there
Speaker 1: are people who do these crimes. Someone killed Meredith Kercher.
Speaker 2: His name is Rudy Gaday. He was actually recently released
Speaker 2: from prison.
Speaker 1: He was I mean, without getting into any ugly details,
Speaker 1: can you share with us just one moment of when
Speaker 1: you really, really when you were in prison and you
Speaker 1: just hit rock bottom and you thought, what the am
Speaker 1: I going to do? What was that feeling like for
Speaker 1: you as a person who didn't belong there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a number of moments that come to mind. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: So first of all, I should describe what was the
Speaker 2: default setting. The default setting for me in prison was
Speaker 2: I had like I had been the sort of like cheerful,
Speaker 2: just like having a good life kind of person, and
Speaker 2: my new emotional default setting was reset to sad. Oh,
Speaker 2: so I woke up sad. I lived through the day sad.
Speaker 2: I went to bed sad, and that was just like
Speaker 2: my new emotional default setting.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And I just sort of like lived that and I
Speaker 2: became numb to it, even like I was just sad
Speaker 2: and that was just normal.
Speaker 1: What an amazing answer.
Speaker 2: But on top of that, like there were moments where,
Speaker 2: you know, depending on the various places that we were
Speaker 2: in the case, Like very shortly after I was convicted,
Speaker 2: two years into my imprisonment, because it took that long
Speaker 2: for the trial to go do its whole thing, my
Speaker 2: dad came in to visitation and he had just had
Speaker 2: like a conversation with the lawyers about potentially how long
Speaker 2: it was going to take for the appeals process, and
Speaker 2: you know, he had to share with me, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe it's going to be, you know, another several years.
Speaker 2: It could be five years, it could be ten years.
Speaker 2: We're not quite sure. And I at that moment, you know,
Speaker 2: during my visitations, I would very very I tried very
Speaker 2: very hard to be cheerful and to like have just
Speaker 2: like this positive moment with my family members because those
Speaker 2: moments were precious, right.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to upset my dad. I'm here, wrongfully
Speaker 1: convicted of murder, facing a twenty six year sentence in
Speaker 1: an Italian prison. But you know, I really really don't
Speaker 1: want to upset dad.
Speaker 2: I don't want to upset Dad because it's like we
Speaker 2: only have some We only have six hours a month
Speaker 2: that we get to see each other. So like, this
Speaker 2: is my one hour with my dad, and I just
Speaker 2: couldn't hold it together and I started sobbing. And then
Speaker 2: I did the thing that is like the worst thing
Speaker 2: that I did in prison, which is that I begged
Speaker 2: my dad to save me, even though I knew that
Speaker 2: he was doing everything he could already and there was
Speaker 2: nothing more that he could do.
Speaker 1: So you were saying to him, you got to get
Speaker 1: me out of here.
Speaker 2: I was like, please save me.
Speaker 1: And what did he say?
Speaker 2: I mean, he couldn't say anything. He just started, well,
Speaker 2: he started crying. And it was the first time I'd
Speaker 2: ever seen my father cry. It really really solidified for
Speaker 2: me how bad the situation was, because I had never
Speaker 2: seen my dad cry before in my entire life.
Speaker 1: Is that the point where you started to consider at
Speaker 1: least that you weren't going to.
Speaker 2: Get out of there absolutely, And you know, that was
Speaker 2: the period of time where I was writing in my
Speaker 2: journy ernals, trying to imagine what a worthwhile life would
Speaker 2: look like if it took another five years, or another
Speaker 2: ten years, or another twenty years, or if I got
Speaker 2: out as an old woman, Like what was I going
Speaker 2: to do to make my life worth living? So that
Speaker 2: was the kind of things that I was thinking about
Speaker 2: as a twenty two year old.
Speaker 1: And when did the sun come out again and you
Speaker 1: started to have hope that you were going to get
Speaker 1: out of the labyrinth.
Speaker 2: Well, like I said, I was afraid to hope all
Speaker 2: the way leading up to my acquittal.
Speaker 1: You were prepared for it to go the wrong way.
Speaker 2: I was prepared for it to go the wrong way.
Speaker 2: And the moment I was acquitted, I lost it. In fact,
Speaker 2: I lost it so hard that people who were escorting
Speaker 2: me thought, like the police thought that I had misunderstood
Speaker 2: the verdict. They were like trying to tell me, no,
Speaker 2: you got to quit it, and I was like, I know.
Speaker 2: And that was the moment of like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: it's over. And the great irony of that is that
Speaker 2: it wasn't over. And I entered into a whole new
Speaker 2: version of this labyrinth where I thought I had got out,
Speaker 2: and yet here's this yet another four years of labyrinth
Speaker 2: ahead of me. And like the sort of true moment
Speaker 2: of feeling like I'm no longer being hunted anymore was
Speaker 2: after I was definitively acquitted by the Italian Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: Throughout my entire trial, when everything was just getting worse
Speaker 2: and worse and worse, I kept believing that it was
Speaker 2: inevitable that I was going to be found innocent, because
Speaker 2: I was like, there's just some horrible misunderstanding and eventually
Speaker 2: the truth is going to come out. The jury's going
Speaker 2: to see through all this bullshit that the prosecution is saying,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to be released. So I was convinced
Speaker 2: the day that I was convicted that I was going
Speaker 2: to be acquitted. And then once that happened and the
Speaker 2: world turned upside down and everything I thought was true
Speaker 2: about reality was turned upside down. I no matter how
Speaker 2: good it was getting throughout my acquittal, my appeals trial
Speaker 2: leading up to my acquittal, I was afraid to hope
Speaker 2: because I couldn't allow myself to be crushed again. And
Speaker 2: so even when there was like big news that like,
Speaker 2: you know, the independent experts are calling bullshit on all
Speaker 2: the prosecution's forensic evidence. I was afraid to hope because
Speaker 2: I knew that, like I was innocent the first time,
Speaker 2: like what stopped them from acquitting me, you know, last time,
Speaker 2: So like for me, those are the hard moments. The
Speaker 2: sort of true moment of feeling like I'm no longer
Speaker 2: being hunted anymore was after I was definitively acquitted by
Speaker 2: the Italian Supreme Court. And honestly, one of my first
Speaker 2: true experiences was actually when I first met Chris. I
Speaker 2: was doing arts correspondence for a local newspaper. He wrote
Speaker 2: his debut novel. I reviewed it for the paper, I
Speaker 2: asked for an interview. I interviewed him and his co author.
Speaker 2: They were two best friends who wrote a novel together,
Speaker 2: and I had this great experience interviewing. We drank Scotch,
Speaker 2: we watched Star Trek, We wandered around the neighborhood into
Speaker 2: the night. And at the end of like hanging out
Speaker 2: with these two guys who I'd never met before, Gavin,
Speaker 2: his best friend and co author, gave me this big
Speaker 2: bear hug and Chris shook my hand and said we
Speaker 2: should be friends, and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I can just make friends with people again, Like I
Speaker 2: can just like meet people and make friends now, Like
Speaker 2: I don't have to hide anymore, have a normal life, right,
Speaker 2: and like, you know, my life is not normal. But
Speaker 2: I was restored that that feeling that like I'm no
Speaker 2: longer being hunted, I no longer have to fear people
Speaker 2: that I don't know in the same way anymore.
Speaker 1: Another thing that occurs to me about this is to
Speaker 1: have Civics classes taught to teach people about what are
Speaker 1: the things we need to do, one of which is
Speaker 1: jury participation, in jury selection. To use your story as
Speaker 1: a kind of a of a template here, Let's say
Speaker 1: that girl, let's say she slept with everybody in the
Speaker 1: Perugia phone directory. That doesn't make her.
Speaker 2: A murderer, doesn't make her a murderer. Yeah, I could
Speaker 2: have been a professional dominatrix and it shouldn't have mattered
Speaker 2: because the evidence wasn't there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's what bothers me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I actually think Civics would be really really good
Speaker 2: to teach in schools. And part of that civics course
Speaker 2: would be not just your civic responsibilities, but also your rights.
Speaker 2: So I didn't know what my rights were going into
Speaker 2: the interrogation room. I didn't know how to recognize that
Speaker 2: I was being interrogated as a suspect. They certainly didn't
Speaker 2: tell me that. They certainly refused me a lawyer costing that.
Speaker 2: So you know, like, so there are a million ways
Speaker 2: that we are set up to be ignorant in the
Speaker 2: face of these bigger societal structures that have enormous power
Speaker 2: over our individual lives. And I think that it's an
Speaker 2: atrocity that we aren't more empowered with the knowledge of
Speaker 2: how we have power over those structures and also how
Speaker 2: those structures have power over us.
Speaker 1: I'm always filled with joky versions of this, but I
Speaker 1: have this feeling like, you get out of prison, you
Speaker 1: do the four plus years in prison, and you could
Speaker 1: have been in prison for decades, and you get out.
Speaker 1: How is your relationship with your parents now? Because, like
Speaker 1: my joke version, as you call your mom and go, Mom,
Speaker 1: I really miss you. Can we have lunch and she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, baby, I have tennis tomorrow. Where are you
Speaker 1: at with your parents now?
Speaker 2: I mean we've always been super super close. Can I
Speaker 2: talk about a joke though that I really appreciated that
Speaker 2: first of all, I loved you on thirty Rock, and
Speaker 2: one of the first nice jokes about me was on
Speaker 2: thirty Rock that I encountered. Oh, good God, maybe there's
Speaker 2: some nice jokes out there, But most of the time
Speaker 2: I found when I first came out, that people were
Speaker 2: making jokes at my expense, of course, And the first
Speaker 2: time that I heard a joke that was not at
Speaker 2: my expense was Kristen on thirty Rock saying it's not
Speaker 2: hard to be famous. Amanda Knox is famous for not
Speaker 2: killing someone, and that was like, Oh, you can make
Speaker 2: a joke and not at my expense, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Kristin Shaw. But things are good with your family, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and they appreciate you and hold you close because you
Speaker 1: could be over there right now, in an alternate universe.
Speaker 1: You could be over there now, just really really struggling.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And their lives all came to a stop when
Speaker 2: everything happened to me. So it's not like my life
Speaker 2: was sort of trapped in a hole and theirs went on.
Speaker 2: Like everyone in my family, their whole lives just came
Speaker 2: to a stop. And this was especially difficult on my
Speaker 2: younger sisters. I have three younger sisters and one of
Speaker 2: them was eight years old at the time has happened,
Speaker 2: another was thirteen, one was just going into college. Their
Speaker 2: lives stopped, like everything, all my entire family became about
Speaker 2: saving Amanda. Save Amanda. And it wasn't until I was
Speaker 2: able to come home that we've all been able to
Speaker 2: restart our lives. And of course we all live within
Speaker 2: walking distance of each other, and it's always been that way.
Speaker 1: Have you been back to Italy?
Speaker 2: I have been back to Italy. So I was invited
Speaker 2: by the Italy Innocence Project, which did not exist while
Speaker 2: I was in prison, to come and speak at their
Speaker 2: first ever annual conference about trial by Media. And I
Speaker 2: felt that, like, of all of the ways to return
Speaker 2: to Italy, that was the best way possible. Like, you know,
Speaker 2: I had struggled with the idea of like how am
Speaker 2: I going to go back and see the people who
Speaker 2: supported me and thank them and like to try to
Speaker 2: do that process. And I returned and the press called it,
Speaker 2: you know, Amanda's familiar dance with the with the paparazzi,
Speaker 2: and it's like, actually, I'm being assaulted by them, Like
Speaker 2: I can't move because they're throwing themselves at me and
Speaker 2: my partner, the country.
Speaker 1: That originated the word paparazzi, by the.
Speaker 2: Way, yep, Yeah, that was a crazy experience. I had
Speaker 2: many many good moments.
Speaker 1: Were you scared to go there? Were you terrified to
Speaker 1: go there?
Speaker 2: I was absolutely scared to go there.
Speaker 1: You're braver than I. I would never go back there
Speaker 1: again ever.
Speaker 2: Well, Like the crazy thing is, these things happen everywhere, right, Like,
Speaker 2: it's not like there's anywhere where you're safe from being judged,
Speaker 2: you know, like misunderstood and misjudged and mistreated.
Speaker 1: You're in as much danger here as you are in Peruja.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The one difference being that like here in the US,
Speaker 2: there's more of a nuanced sentiment towards me, whereas in
Speaker 2: Italy there's more of a She's the oj Simpson of
Speaker 2: Italy kind of thing. And I was surprised. Like the
Speaker 2: big surprise that I had was when I gave my speech,
Speaker 2: I was fully prepared to get arrested again, like to
Speaker 2: like get shanked, get booed, like all of that.
Speaker 1: Do you say shanked a prison term? You just put
Speaker 1: a chill in my back to get shanked. What a
Speaker 1: reveal that was? You really did do four years in prison.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Shit, I was surprised when people gave me a
Speaker 2: standing applause for my talk, and granted, these are the
Speaker 2: kind of people who are going to show up, who
Speaker 2: are interested in criminal justice issues, who are interested in
Speaker 2: the Italy Innocence Project, who are going to show up anyway,
Speaker 2: so they I was a more accommodating audience, but I
Speaker 2: was not. I was not ready for it. Like I
Speaker 2: I remember like being whisked away because I had have
Speaker 2: personal security while I was there, Like it was, it
Speaker 2: was not an easy process, and this like personal security
Speaker 2: guard sort of whisked me away down the stairs, down
Speaker 2: the hallway in underground where I had this like secret
Speaker 2: sort of underground dungeon bunker thing where I sort of
Speaker 2: lived throughout the entire conference. And as soon as we
Speaker 2: got down the stairs, he gave me a little squeeze
Speaker 2: and said parfeto and I just started bawling. And it
Speaker 2: was a really great moment where I was like, Wow,
Speaker 2: maybe I'll be given a chance, not even a second chance,
Speaker 2: like a chance. In Italy.
Speaker 1: Journalist, public speaker and podcaster Amanda Knox by'm Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and this is here's the thing We're produced by Kathleen Russo,
Speaker 1: Carrie Donahue, and Zach McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.