Speaker 1: My Interview with Amanda Knox originally aired on February six
Speaker 1: of two thousand seventeen. It's sort of almost like the
Speaker 1: anchor episode of the second season. Now Amanda is engaged
Speaker 1: to be married, and I couldn't be happier. They're just
Speaker 1: an amazing couple, she and Chris Robinson. And she's now
Speaker 1: the host of the Scarlet Letter Reports on Broadly Vice,
Speaker 1: in which she sits down with famous women to discuss
Speaker 1: the deeply personal journey of being sexualized, scrutinized, and demonized
Speaker 1: by the media, and how they've rebuilt their lives after
Speaker 1: their most personal details have been made public. There by
Speaker 1: the name of Scarlet Letter Reports. Aman is also the
Speaker 1: host of The Truth About True Crime, a Sundance AMC
Speaker 1: podcast series. Amanda's like my little sister, and I'm so
Speaker 1: happy for all the great things that are happening for her.
Speaker 1: Please listen through to the end because she drops some
Speaker 1: pearls of wisdom at the end of this episode that
Speaker 1: really will to you, as they affected me in a
Speaker 1: very profound way. I came from a beautiful neighborhood, had
Speaker 1: a beautiful life. I went to sleep because September seven
Speaker 1: was the first day of my high school year, I
Speaker 1: was gonna be a senior. At twenty two, I was
Speaker 1: set to start college. I woke up and my life
Speaker 1: was never the same again. Cops came out with guns,
Speaker 1: drone and I never saw freedom ever ever since after that.
Speaker 1: It's like roach moke tow. Once you get in, you
Speaker 1: and I getting out. This is wrongful conviction with Jason Flom.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to wrongful conviction with Jason Flam. Today's guest
Speaker 1: as Amanda Knox, I had like this year plan of
Speaker 1: studying language and study poetry in mind. Amanda Knox was
Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted of a crime that happened in Italy in
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, and a Knox verdict has just
Speaker 1: been read. Guilty here guilty. Just hours ago, twenty two
Speaker 1: year old college student Demanda Knox finally learned her fate.
Speaker 1: After eleven hours of deliberations. The verdict was read by
Speaker 1: the presiding judge. Amanda and Raphael A guilty of the
Speaker 1: murder of twenty one year old Meredith Kircher. Her name
Speaker 1: is Amanda Knox, known for the notorious murder of her
Speaker 1: British roommate marriage. She served four years in prison and
Speaker 1: went through numerous trials, and I thought for months months
Speaker 1: of imprisonment that it was just a big misunderstanding and
Speaker 1: everything would get worked out because the evidence would come
Speaker 1: back and it would prove that I was innocent before
Speaker 1: she was fully exonerated with the NA evidence in two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifteen, Amanda, welcome to the show. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. So let's go back in time as we
Speaker 1: do on the show. What possessed you to become an
Speaker 1: exchange student? Like it's sort of a it's a brave
Speaker 1: thing as a young woman. Oh man Uh. For me
Speaker 1: that it wasn't that brave because my family came from Germany,
Speaker 1: and so I was always aware that there were other
Speaker 1: worlds out there where other people were living lives with
Speaker 1: other cultures and other languages, and I was I was
Speaker 1: familiar with that. I had a knack for languages, so
Speaker 1: I was also aware of that in school, I was
Speaker 1: interested in what other people we're doing outside of my
Speaker 1: little sphere of knowledge. And I mean I spent two
Speaker 1: weeks when I was fourteen in Japan because I studied
Speaker 1: Japanese in high school. I went with my family to
Speaker 1: Germany when I was fourteen as well, Um, So, it
Speaker 1: wasn't my first time outside of the country, and it
Speaker 1: definitely wasn't unusual for me, Like my family had been
Speaker 1: talking about it foreign exchange program since I was in
Speaker 1: high school, Like my oma really wanted me to do
Speaker 1: some high school in Germany. Well you did like an
Speaker 1: access to her at the age of fourteens. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: now that I meant think about it, Yeah, it's a coincidence.
Speaker 1: But it is funny looking back on it. Um, So
Speaker 1: you were somebody who was a world traveler at a
Speaker 1: very young age and so yes, and that makes sense.
Speaker 1: And how did you settle in Italy while I was
Speaker 1: studying Italian and I was studying German, both of them
Speaker 1: in college? Um, I wanted to be a linguist, a
Speaker 1: translator and interpreter or whatever I could be that had
Speaker 1: to do with languages, because I couldn't explain a creative
Speaker 1: writing degree to my dad. I couldn't justify it. But
Speaker 1: I could justify being um a translator and UM a linguist.
Speaker 1: And I liked Italian because I studied Latin in middle
Speaker 1: school and it was just weird enough. It was poetic,
Speaker 1: and in the meantime there was a poetry program going on. Um,
Speaker 1: there's this exchange program with the University of Washington where
Speaker 1: I was studying with poetry and I that was located
Speaker 1: in Rome, and so I thought, Okay, this is this
Speaker 1: brilliant opportunity. I'll go study Italian in Parusia for nine
Speaker 1: months and then spend the summer in Rome studying poetry.
Speaker 1: And that was the plan. I had, like this year
Speaker 1: plan of studying language and studying poetry in mind. How
Speaker 1: long were you there before everything started to unravel? How
Speaker 1: long at the time of the just over a month, right, so,
Speaker 1: and and things were really looking up, right, You had
Speaker 1: just fallen in well, I don't know if you could
Speaker 1: call it love or poppy love or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: but you had a you had a romance going on. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I was in classes. I was in this city full
Speaker 1: of young people who were from all over the world.
Speaker 1: I made a friend there who was from Kazakhs Done
Speaker 1: and I had never encountered a person from Kazakhs Done before.
Speaker 1: And she would come over after class and we would
Speaker 1: play guitar together. So that was just really cool. Or
Speaker 1: I to this one dinner UM with other people who
Speaker 1: were in my class, and UM, there was this chef
Speaker 1: from Japan who was studying Italian cooking there in Rome,
Speaker 1: and PRUGEI was kind of traveling around learning how to cook,
Speaker 1: and he made a big dinner and I helped make
Speaker 1: teremy sue. It was just it was really cool that
Speaker 1: to be around so many curious young people, and to
Speaker 1: be living with curious young people. Meredith was one of those.
Speaker 1: She wasn't in the same school that I was. She
Speaker 1: was studying at the University of Prusia and I was
Speaker 1: studying at the university, so the university for foreigners, because
Speaker 1: my Italian wasn't good enough yet to actually go to
Speaker 1: the regular university. Well that was just the way you
Speaker 1: said that words are transported me from yeah right, yeah.
Speaker 1: How did you end up? You and Meredith end up
Speaker 1: finding each other in order to cohabitate, Well, both of
Speaker 1: us found separately the house that we ended up living in,
Speaker 1: um so just an add in the paper, not even
Speaker 1: in the paper. Um. I was wandering around by the
Speaker 1: university to um Perstannetti and there was a woman, a
Speaker 1: young woman there. I guess she was younger than I
Speaker 1: am now crazy. She seemed so old and mature when
Speaker 1: I was twenty and she was putting up a notice
Speaker 1: like one of those you ripped the bottom off for
Speaker 1: a phone number. And she said that she was and
Speaker 1: she could speak English, and she said that she was
Speaker 1: advertising for this house that was literally right down the
Speaker 1: street from the university that I was going to go to.
Speaker 1: And I said, oh, my gosh, can I come see it.
Speaker 1: I was there with my sister to come visit the
Speaker 1: city really quickly before I actually moved there. So I
Speaker 1: visited the house before Meredith had ever arrived in Perusia,
Speaker 1: and already made like a pact with Philomena and um
Speaker 1: and Laura, who were the two Italian young women who
Speaker 1: were living there, to to move in as soon as
Speaker 1: I came back. And then by the time I moved
Speaker 1: back to the house, Meredith had already moved in. She
Speaker 1: had also found a notice somehow the same same way,
Speaker 1: seriously old school, like the little piece of paper ripping
Speaker 1: off the thing and like like that. You didn't find
Speaker 1: it on Craig's list exactly, No, no, no, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even know what that looked like in Parusia, right, So
Speaker 1: you end up living with these three other young women
Speaker 1: and things are looking great, right, I mean, what a
Speaker 1: life you have ahead of you and what a place
Speaker 1: to be. Oh, definitely. I I was like, the one
Speaker 1: thing I can say that disappointed me was I was expecting, UM,
Speaker 1: the work, the school work, to be a little bit
Speaker 1: more rigorous than it was. It was very relaxed, easy
Speaker 1: compared to what I was used to UM, and I
Speaker 1: had expected I was going to be learning the language
Speaker 1: more quickly. I'm expecting that enrollment's going to go up
Speaker 1: after your description among some slackers in the United States.
Speaker 1: But that's beside the flight. So fast forward and you
Speaker 1: are now you you meet this uh, this young man
Speaker 1: and you start this uh little romance. Yes, that's so.
Speaker 1: It's so charming how it's depicted in the movie. So
Speaker 1: charming he is. He is. He's like charming in a
Speaker 1: boyish way. Um. He's he's not intimidating in any way.
Speaker 1: He's he's very sweet and considerate, um, but also kind
Speaker 1: of just like a puppy, just you know, just bumbling along.
Speaker 1: And it's not like we ever had any deep conversations.
Speaker 1: But then again, we also didn't really speak each other's
Speaker 1: language very well, so it was very it was very sweet.
Speaker 1: It was like holding hands and walking along and him
Speaker 1: being like, oh, Italian ladies have perfume. You should have perfume,
Speaker 1: and oh, let me show you this cool market that
Speaker 1: I've I've discovered here in Tody, and you know, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. It was really it was just like so
Speaker 1: stereotypical of like the kind d of romance that you
Speaker 1: find yourself in when you're really young and you're in
Speaker 1: another country and you you come across this really cool, nice,
Speaker 1: sweet different person that who's coming from a completely different
Speaker 1: culture than you. It sounds like a high school relationship
Speaker 1: in college. Yeah, kind of um, but really really cute.
Speaker 1: So then things go completely haywire. And that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that was I found so powerful in the
Speaker 1: movie is that there's this juxtaposition right of like you're
Speaker 1: going along, you're just having this sweet, wonderful, new, foreign,
Speaker 1: beautiful experience, and then one day you show up, well
Speaker 1: you showed up at your your home, and things got
Speaker 1: a little weird. I mean, so it's sort of unravels
Speaker 1: like a horror movie actually, right, Yeah, especially especially in
Speaker 1: the sense that, like in the horror movie, you don't
Speaker 1: realize what's going on as you're walking through it, even
Speaker 1: as like the little things add up ominously right, Like
Speaker 1: that was my experience being plunked into a crime scene. Basically,
Speaker 1: I had spent the night over at Raphael's, like I
Speaker 1: was doing a lot that one week that we were together,
Speaker 1: and I came home in the morning and um to
Speaker 1: take a shower. And I came home and the front
Speaker 1: door was wide open, which was odd because to even
Speaker 1: close the door you had to lock it. And that
Speaker 1: was the habit that Meredith, Laura and Philomena and I
Speaker 1: were in. We we we opened the door with our
Speaker 1: key and when we closed it, we locked it to
Speaker 1: keep the door closed because otherwise it would just kind
Speaker 1: of open. So the door was wide open and nobody
Speaker 1: was around. I didn't see anyone. I kind of peecked.
Speaker 1: I went inside and I called out, and I go
Speaker 1: in to take a shower. And when I go in,
Speaker 1: I call out, like Laura, Filamanna, Meredith, anyone home? And
Speaker 1: no one was home. And I thought that was odd,
Speaker 1: but nothing seemed wrong, Like the the main room that
Speaker 1: I was walking into was perfectly normal. Um, Filomena's bedroom
Speaker 1: door was closed. UM. I went into my bedroom and undressed,
Speaker 1: went to the shower, and that's when I noticed spots
Speaker 1: of blood in the bathroom, but they weren't a lot.
Speaker 1: It was just eerie enough to be like, that's weird,
Speaker 1: on top of the door being open. But what was
Speaker 1: going on in my mind was, Oh, maybe someone like
Speaker 1: cut themselves and then like ran out to go get
Speaker 1: a bandage, or maybe someone I mean, it could also
Speaker 1: have been in my like it could also have been like,
Speaker 1: you know, when you brush your teeth and if you
Speaker 1: haven't flowed in a while, you'll like bleed from your
Speaker 1: mouth when you're like, you know, it wasn't a lot.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like so much that I thought something was
Speaker 1: It was in the sink, anything. I could have been anything,
Speaker 1: And I didn't immediately jumped to the conclusion that somebody
Speaker 1: had been devastatingly hurt or something bad had happened. I
Speaker 1: just thought it was weird, and so I took my shower,
Speaker 1: and I stepped out of the shower and onto the
Speaker 1: bath mat, and I noticed that there was a larger
Speaker 1: splotch of blood on the bath mat, and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's more suspicious, but I still didn't know what to
Speaker 1: make of it. I went into my room, I got dressed,
Speaker 1: I went and blew dry my hair in the other
Speaker 1: bathroom that we had because that's where the hair dryer was.
Speaker 1: And when I was in there, I noticed that the
Speaker 1: toilet hadn't been flushed. There was feces in the toilet,
Speaker 1: and that, on top of everything else, just struck me
Speaker 1: like something like I got the creepy feeling that someone
Speaker 1: was in the house with me who shouldn't be there,
Speaker 1: because Laura and Philomena were really were clean freaks and
Speaker 1: they wouldn't forget to flush the toilet, and like that
Speaker 1: on top of everything else, like maybe even if it
Speaker 1: was just that and everything else was normal, the door
Speaker 1: was closed, I wouldn't have thought creepy feeling, but that,
Speaker 1: on top of everything else, gave me a creepy feeling.
Speaker 1: And so I immediately booked it back to Raphael's. And
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure what to tell him, like that some
Speaker 1: weird things were at my house, but what what could
Speaker 1: he say? Um? But I ended up talking to him
Speaker 1: and he said, oh, you should call your roommates and
Speaker 1: see what's going on. Maybe something happened with them. And
Speaker 1: I called Laura and she was, um, I don't remember
Speaker 1: she picked up or not, but she was not even
Speaker 1: in the city. She was away in Rome. Philomena picked
Speaker 1: up and she had been at her boyfriend's and Meredith
Speaker 1: did not pick up. Her phone just rang and rang,
Speaker 1: and I tried both of her phone numbers. She had
Speaker 1: an Italian phone number and a British phone number, and
Speaker 1: it didn't answer. So I told like our mayan. Raphael's
Speaker 1: plan had been to just go, you know away for
Speaker 1: the weekend, but I wanted him to come take a
Speaker 1: look at what was going on in my house with me,
Speaker 1: because I needed to figure out what was going on.
Speaker 1: Phil Amina said she was going to come home. We
Speaker 1: were all going to take a look at it, see
Speaker 1: what was going on. She thought that maybe there had
Speaker 1: been a break in, and so I went considering that
Speaker 1: the door was open, right, And so I went back
Speaker 1: with Rafael and we took a more scrutinous look at
Speaker 1: the house. We opened up Philomena's bedroom and Philamina's bedroom
Speaker 1: was the one that had been broken into. There was
Speaker 1: her window was broken. Um there was glass all over
Speaker 1: the floor, and um there was you know, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a bit of a mess, like there was
Speaker 1: a jumble of clothing. I didn't see if there was anything,
Speaker 1: Like I looked to see if there was anything stolen
Speaker 1: of value, because if it was a break in, you'd
Speaker 1: think that there would be something stolen. But her camera
Speaker 1: was there, her computer was there, um like our stereo
Speaker 1: was still in the house, the TV was still in
Speaker 1: the house. I went to my bedroom. My computer was there,
Speaker 1: and so I thought, what the heck happened, Like, what
Speaker 1: did this person steal if they broke in? And then
Speaker 1: by that time, you know, Rafael and I sort of
Speaker 1: moved around the house some more noticed that Laura's room
Speaker 1: was totally fine, untouched, pristine, and Meredith's room was locked,
Speaker 1: which was unusual because the only time that I had
Speaker 1: ever encountered her door being locked was either she was
Speaker 1: out of town or she had just gotten out of
Speaker 1: the shower and like closed the door and locked it
Speaker 1: before she got changed and then came out again. And
Speaker 1: I asked Rafael try to break it down, because I
Speaker 1: knocked on the door and Mereth didn't answer. I knocked
Speaker 1: louder and Meredith didn't answer, and the fact that she
Speaker 1: wasn't answering her phone, like, I was worried maybe something happened.
Speaker 1: So I asked Rafael to try to break down this door,
Speaker 1: and he kicked at it, and he kicked at it,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't kick it down, so we called the cops.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, Philomina came home. She was freaking out hysterically.
Speaker 1: An Italian police showed up with this this phone that
Speaker 1: belonged to Meredith and they said that they had found
Speaker 1: this phone in a garden that was a little bit
Speaker 1: like down the road, and um, yeah, so her phone
Speaker 1: is in the middle of some yard down the road.
Speaker 1: We can't find her, her doors locked, there's like crazy
Speaker 1: things going on in the house. And so finally, um,
Speaker 1: Philomena says to the cops, like kicked down their door.
Speaker 1: And Philamine is there with her boyfriend and their two
Speaker 1: friends because they were off doing things together, and so
Speaker 1: they all came there and the police said, well, we
Speaker 1: don't have the authority to kick indoors, like we're only
Speaker 1: you know, we're not criminal. People were just we're just
Speaker 1: here to like for these phone issues. They weren't even
Speaker 1: like criminal investigator cops, right, they were just regular Joe
Speaker 1: Schmo on the block cops who were like trying to
Speaker 1: figure out who's lost phone. This was why were they
Speaker 1: even looking for that's a strange part of this. Why
Speaker 1: were they looking for her phone because it was ringing.
Speaker 1: I had been calling it and it was ringing, and
Speaker 1: the person whose yard it was found in heard the
Speaker 1: ringing and discovered the um like, found the phone in
Speaker 1: the yard and then called the cops saying, Hey, there's
Speaker 1: this phone in my yard. Can you find out who
Speaker 1: this belongs to? So it's it's pretty weird though that
Speaker 1: they show up with the phone and they don't. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now so well, And indeed, like what's interesting is
Speaker 1: they showed up and I thought they had showed up
Speaker 1: because me and Raphael had called them and was said like, hey,
Speaker 1: there there's this break in in our house. But they
Speaker 1: apparently yeah, but these cops weren't coming for that. They
Speaker 1: had no idea what we were talking about. The reason
Speaker 1: they came was because of the phone, and they knew
Speaker 1: that the phone was connected to the house because it
Speaker 1: was Meredith's phone and Meredith was convoluted. Meredith was using
Speaker 1: a SIM card that belonged to Philomena, and Philomana's name
Speaker 1: was registered with the house, so they had discovered the
Speaker 1: SIM card and traced it back to the house. So
Speaker 1: they showed up for entirely different reasons, and I had
Speaker 1: assumed they showed up because of a break in. So
Speaker 1: these two just lay cops show up with this phone,
Speaker 1: and I'm assuming that they're there because of the break in,
Speaker 1: but in fact they are not. So they say, well,
Speaker 1: we don't have the authority to kick down this door,
Speaker 1: and Philamina says, bullshit, kicked down the store, so they
Speaker 1: she and her friends kicked down this door with the cops.
Speaker 1: That's Meredith's bedroom door, and I mean Philomena screamed and
Speaker 1: um the police yelled out out. Everyone get out of
Speaker 1: the house, and there was this big just shuffle and everyone,
Speaker 1: like I had no idea what was going on. I
Speaker 1: was pushed out of the house the bedroom. No, no,
Speaker 1: you just know that pandemonium breaking out and everyone's screaming
Speaker 1: in Italian. So I'm trying to keep track of everything,
Speaker 1: and I'm asking Raphael to like tell me what everyone's saying,
Speaker 1: because you know, it's one thing to have someone speak
Speaker 1: to you slowly and calmly in Italian and another one
Speaker 1: to have them just like screaming hysterically out loud at
Speaker 1: everyone's talking over each other. And so Raphael was like
Speaker 1: slowly sort of just trying to translate for me what
Speaker 1: was going on. I was pushed out of the house
Speaker 1: and um and by then alright, then some more cops arrived.
Speaker 1: I think the the phone police guys called in for backup.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I don't even know who all these
Speaker 1: people were that were showing up to my house. All
Speaker 1: I knew was that suddenly I didn't have a house anymore.
Speaker 1: I wasn't allowed to go inside, and I was just
Speaker 1: standing outside thinking what did they see in Meredith's room?
Speaker 1: Like did they see her? Did they see someone else? Like,
Speaker 1: and you know, you can think, okay, maybe maybe I
Speaker 1: should have known that that it was obviously going to
Speaker 1: be Meredith in there, but like by the way that
Speaker 1: Philamine was screaming, like she was just saying a foot,
Speaker 1: a foot, a foot, and Pierre Pier and Pierre, and
Speaker 1: I thought that maybe there was like a severed foot
Speaker 1: in there. Like I had no idea what was going on.
Speaker 1: And then like I kept overhearing little bits and pieces
Speaker 1: something that had to do with the wardrobe, something that
Speaker 1: had to do with the blanket of her bed, and
Speaker 1: eventually what I pieced and what Raphael was able to
Speaker 1: really piece together for me was that Phil Amina, her boyfriend,
Speaker 1: and her friends and this one cop had kicked down
Speaker 1: the door and scene the crime scene, which was Meredith's
Speaker 1: body was lying on the ground, um covered in a
Speaker 1: blanket and her foot was sticking out from beneath the blanket. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there was blood everywhere. I mean there was blood
Speaker 1: on the walls, there was blood all over the floor,
Speaker 1: there was blood on the wardrobe. So there was there
Speaker 1: was and like it wasn't just like there was like
Speaker 1: splatters of blood and there was like fingerprints and blood.
Speaker 1: It was just this terrible, horrific crime scene that showed
Speaker 1: absolutely struggle and and uh so I'm really grateful that
Speaker 1: I never had to see that in person. The first
Speaker 1: time I ever did see that was pictures that my
Speaker 1: lawyer showed me um to prepare me for court when
Speaker 1: we were going to have to sit there and go
Speaker 1: through all the pictures of the crime scene and the
Speaker 1: pictures of the autopsy, and let's and let's let's go
Speaker 1: to that, but make a stop on the way at
Speaker 1: the time of the arrest, because it's odd. I mean,
Speaker 1: you there were other people who could have been targeted.
Speaker 1: There were some very obvious signs, right, there was a
Speaker 1: known burglar in the neighborhood. Had the cops been maybe
Speaker 1: let's let's give them the benefits out and say had
Speaker 1: they've been more experienced, But let's basically it's really a
Speaker 1: question of competency. Um, they're also trigger happy, I think, Um,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of like automatically there were Um,
Speaker 1: so okay, So what did they have in front of them?
Speaker 1: When let's let's put ourselves in the shoes of the
Speaker 1: police officers as they come to this place. They have
Speaker 1: they have, um, an hysterical roommate, a roommate who doesn't
Speaker 1: really understand what's going on and is talking to her
Speaker 1: boyfriend all the time in English. Um. They they have
Speaker 1: a body out of nowhere. They have some phones that
Speaker 1: were found a little bit away. It's a gruesome crime scene.
Speaker 1: It looks like a break in, and and what they had,
Speaker 1: you know, in the in the hours following was just
Speaker 1: all of us standing around outside waiting to hear what happened,
Speaker 1: and then bringing us to to the police office to
Speaker 1: ask us and question us. Basically, what they had to
Speaker 1: go on was there's this horrible thing, and all we
Speaker 1: have our people to look at because they sure they
Speaker 1: weren't analyzing the crime scene. Um they had you know,
Speaker 1: people in their their suits going in and out checking
Speaker 1: out everything. But like at that point they were playing
Speaker 1: the deta actives in terms of like, okay, let's try
Speaker 1: to solve this in forty eight hours type of thing
Speaker 1: where you just study the characters of the people who
Speaker 1: are around you. And something about me strike them as odd.
Speaker 1: They thought that my emotions didn't match up to what
Speaker 1: they should have been. Either I cried too much or
Speaker 1: I cried too little. I said the wrong thing, I
Speaker 1: was doing the wrong thing. They thought that I was weird.
Speaker 1: I was being you know, cuddled by my boyfriend who
Speaker 1: was trying to comfort me. All of it they just
Speaker 1: felt was inappropriate, and that made me suspicious. Were better
Speaker 1: equipped to make, you know, decisions about guilt and innocence.
Speaker 1: But we are also just flawed human beings who should
Speaker 1: remember that when we're drawing conclusions about people, and we
Speaker 1: shouldn't rely so heavily on initial impressions because those don't
Speaker 1: I actually tell us any relevant information. So in the
Speaker 1: meantime they come along and eventually and it doesn't take
Speaker 1: that long, right, and we see this again and again,
Speaker 1: where you have a small community, a very high profile crime,
Speaker 1: and a lot of pressure on the police to solve it.
Speaker 1: And then in your case, there was the added pressure
Speaker 1: of the press gets ahold of this and things get
Speaker 1: really crazy in a way that the world hadn't seen.
Speaker 1: For the press in both America and Italy, it wasn't
Speaker 1: just the story of the year, it was the story
Speaker 1: of the century. And then they have to suddenly like
Speaker 1: rise to the occasion, which is this one that they're
Speaker 1: not experienced and they're not equipped to do. You know,
Speaker 1: it was kind of like when you look back at
Speaker 1: them going through the crime scene and like looking through everything,
Speaker 1: it's it looks a little bit like kids who are
Speaker 1: playing pretend. They're pretending to be forensic experts moving through
Speaker 1: a space and like gathering evidence, but you know, trying
Speaker 1: to like job a splotch of blood, but like swabbing
Speaker 1: the whole sink to get that splotch of blood, or
Speaker 1: like passing around evidence like you know, candy. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's like they were kids pretending to be doing their job.
Speaker 1: It was, And I mean, I know that one of
Speaker 1: the issues with the criminal justice system is like the
Speaker 1: resources and lack of training. And it would be nice
Speaker 1: if when faced with those situations, when you know that
Speaker 1: you can't rise to the occasion and the way that
Speaker 1: you would, you need to you at the very least
Speaker 1: admit it or ask for help do something. In this case,
Speaker 1: the Prusia police were wanting to prove themselves to the
Speaker 1: world because suddenly the world was looking at them, and
Speaker 1: they were very proud, and they were Prussia, being a
Speaker 1: city that supported itself on tourism, they couldn't afford to
Speaker 1: have some foreign exchange student be murdered without Perugia being
Speaker 1: able to rise to the occasion and answer the call
Speaker 1: of duty. And they just weren't able to do that.
Speaker 1: They were faking it, trying to make it, and they
Speaker 1: couldn't make it. You know, an improper forensics is sadly
Speaker 1: tragically common. It's the second leading cause of wrongful convictions
Speaker 1: in the United States. So I don't want to make
Speaker 1: this sound like this was an Italian problem. This is
Speaker 1: a worldwide problem. And part of it is the training.
Speaker 1: As you just said, I mean, we need better standards
Speaker 1: for training our forensic analysts and experts. And anyone who
Speaker 1: saw making a murderer saw that as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really we want to believe that these people are
Speaker 1: scientists with fantastic backgrounds, and we'd like to believe that
Speaker 1: they're perfect, and they have principles and standards that would
Speaker 1: be good too. And there are a lot of very
Speaker 1: good forensic scientists out there, but they're the bad ones
Speaker 1: are capable of inflicting incredible amounts of damage. And we've
Speaker 1: seen some who are really bad actors who do it
Speaker 1: over and over again until they're eventually caught, and then
Speaker 1: all these cases have to be unraveled at tax pair expence.
Speaker 1: And of course, the human tragedy is that so many
Speaker 1: people get wrongfully convicted as a result. You were one
Speaker 1: of them. Although over there, but I do want to
Speaker 1: highlight the fact that it happens in America with alarming frequency.
Speaker 1: So you get arrested and thrust into this world you
Speaker 1: have no understanding of right in so many ways, including
Speaker 1: the language, barried everything else, and now what what happens?
Speaker 1: Like what's going through your mind? And how did it
Speaker 1: get to trial? And then besides, you know the whole
Speaker 1: issue of the course of interrogation that authors of false
Speaker 1: confession speeding past that because I've talked about that often.
Speaker 1: Finding myself in a prison environment was incredibly surreal and confusing. Um.
Speaker 1: I had been given the impression initially that I was
Speaker 1: there for my own protection, so they they, the police,
Speaker 1: told me that I was going to the prison because
Speaker 1: that was the safe place for me. I thought I
Speaker 1: was a witness to the case, and I had no
Speaker 1: idea what was happening to me. I didn't realize that
Speaker 1: I had been accused of her murder, you know, And
Speaker 1: it sounds so dumb, Like it sounds dumb, like I
Speaker 1: had handcuffs on me and they put me in prison.
Speaker 1: How could I not realize what was going on? But
Speaker 1: like the idea that I would be accused of a
Speaker 1: murder I didn't commit was so foreign to me that
Speaker 1: I was making every excuse in my mind to explain
Speaker 1: what was happening to me that wasn't exactly what was
Speaker 1: happening to me, which was the most absurd thing that
Speaker 1: I could possibly imagine, Like, it wasn't it wasn't in
Speaker 1: my radar to be wrongfully convicted of something that I
Speaker 1: didn't do, especially something so brutal and terrible as the
Speaker 1: murder of my roommate, like this I. I was blaming
Speaker 1: myself for like seeming confusing to people. I was under
Speaker 1: the impression that I was a witness. And then when
Speaker 1: it was finally brought to my attention that I was
Speaker 1: actually accused of murder, I thought that there was this
Speaker 1: big mistake. I asked I I asked to be interrogated
Speaker 1: again because I was like, no, I you misunderstood me.
Speaker 1: It was my fault. I'm sorry. Like I I was
Speaker 1: so young and and naive and and idealistic and manipulable,
Speaker 1: Like I thought that I was on the side of
Speaker 1: the police and there was just this big misunderstanding, and
Speaker 1: I thought, for months months of imprisonment, that it was
Speaker 1: just a big misunderstanding and everything would get worked out
Speaker 1: because the evidence would come back and it would prove
Speaker 1: that I was innocent. And like, I spent eight months
Speaker 1: like that, and um, I spent eight months hoping I
Speaker 1: was just I was going to go home and um,
Speaker 1: and that didn't happen. It it took them eight months
Speaker 1: to formally charge me and with you know, so I
Speaker 1: was the way that they do in Italy is they
Speaker 1: can arrest you and then they can continue their investigation
Speaker 1: to actually come up with charges against you, and I'm
Speaker 1: held without bail. Yes, So I was in prison for
Speaker 1: eight months without formal charges, and then finally those were
Speaker 1: laid down on me, and of course I I what's
Speaker 1: crazy is that, you know, as everything kept getting worse
Speaker 1: and worse and worse, I kept hoping, like my hopes
Speaker 1: kept rising that things would finally turn out in the end,
Speaker 1: because it couldn't keep getting this bad. It couldn't like
Speaker 1: it was just impossible. It didn't make sense why this
Speaker 1: would be happening to me, and um, and I kept
Speaker 1: thinking that it's it's gonna figure itself out in the end,
Speaker 1: even if it's not figuring itself out now, even if
Speaker 1: it's taking months and the police just don't get it,
Speaker 1: Like a jury of my reasonable peers are going to
Speaker 1: see how ridiculous this is and they're going to put
Speaker 1: a stop to it. And the closer we get to
Speaker 1: my conviction, the more I thought I was going to
Speaker 1: go home, and um, you know, it took. I was
Speaker 1: in prison for two years prior to my conviction, and
Speaker 1: then I was convicted, and that changed everything. That was
Speaker 1: when I I finally had to face my reality with
Speaker 1: with full awareness of what had happened and what was
Speaker 1: going to happen to me? And I was, um, my
Speaker 1: mom didn't like the way that I started writing letters. Um,
Speaker 1: she thought that I was depressed, and you know, it
Speaker 1: could it could be. That is true. It is true
Speaker 1: that after a while, especially post my conviction, UM, the
Speaker 1: world was just sad because you know that life isn't fair.
Speaker 1: Everyone tells you that, but you never think that you're
Speaker 1: going to be that person with that unfair story, that
Speaker 1: that you're the you're that one person and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not the only person in history who's ever had
Speaker 1: this happened to them, Like there have been horrible things
Speaker 1: throughout history that human beings have done to one another,
Speaker 1: and you just you never think that you're going to
Speaker 1: be that which who's going to be burned or you
Speaker 1: know the or sure. I mean, I think everybody can
Speaker 1: relate to that, because you know, and people have varying degrees.
Speaker 1: Everyone's had some experience where they were like, wait, why me,
Speaker 1: but yours just happens to be very extreme. And then
Speaker 1: they had a number of inconvenient issues, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: they forget for a second the fact that they were
Speaker 1: overlooking the obvious suspect who was this guy who who
Speaker 1: they knew had been burglarizing, and this was a burglary
Speaker 1: homes in the neighborhood. Ultimately, of course he was convicted
Speaker 1: and right, well, he That's that's the frustrating thing about
Speaker 1: my case, and that I think is a repetition of
Speaker 1: things that happened in wrongful convictions cases where a prosecution
Speaker 1: gets invested in a theory and they're so invested in
Speaker 1: that theory that they're willing to fudge, distort, and completely
Speaker 1: ignore truthful elements in order to sustain that theory. So
Speaker 1: in my case, the prosecutor was so invested in the
Speaker 1: police were so invested in my guilt that they let
Speaker 1: off the person who actually did it, whose blood, whose
Speaker 1: DNA was everywhere inside Merit's body, inside her purse, all
Speaker 1: over the crime scene, his fingerprints in her blood, all
Speaker 1: over the crime scene. They let him off as not
Speaker 1: guilty of the murderer. They have him guilty of raping her,
Speaker 1: and they didn't find him. That's why he got a
Speaker 1: lower sentences because it was more worth it to them
Speaker 1: to let him, the actual murderer, off, you know, on
Speaker 1: a lesser charge, so that they could sustain their theory
Speaker 1: of me. And in addition to that, to sustain that theory,
Speaker 1: they had to ignore, Like we were talking about forensic
Speaker 1: evidence and how yes, in my case there was bad
Speaker 1: forensic evidence because you know, there was contamination. That was
Speaker 1: the issue with the brack clasp. There was this knife
Speaker 1: where like they said, there was Mereth's DNA on it,
Speaker 1: but there wasn't in the end. But even more than that,
Speaker 1: like that, I understand that people are sort of fascinated
Speaker 1: by those elements because you know, maybe there's you know,
Speaker 1: smoking gun elements, but really, like the smoking gun element
Speaker 1: in this case is one that the police completely ignored,
Speaker 1: which is whose DNA was in the crime scene, may
Speaker 1: Meredith's and Rudy gadays the actual killer. That's it. It's
Speaker 1: impossible for a reasonable person, even if you don't have
Speaker 1: a background in investigations or anything else, right to rationalize
Speaker 1: the fact that your DNA wasn't there. Well, they came
Speaker 1: up with all the excuses like, oh, she was able
Speaker 1: to clean it up, which is laughable, Which is laughable.
Speaker 1: It's it's impossible. You can't just look around this room
Speaker 1: that we are in right now and I'm like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: your DNA is right there, So I'm going to leave that,
Speaker 1: and my DNA is right there, Like DNA is invisible,
Speaker 1: it's you can't identify like, oh that you know, sweat
Speaker 1: stain is from me versus this sweat stain is from you.
Speaker 1: You can't do that. It is physically impossible also to
Speaker 1: even like move around a crime scene without leaving traces
Speaker 1: of yourself unless you're in a in one of those suits.
Speaker 1: But even that, yeah, but even that, like it's no guarantee.
Speaker 1: You have to be very if if you The reason
Speaker 1: why forensic experts have to move around in a crime
Speaker 1: scene in those suits is because it's so easy to
Speaker 1: contaminate a crime scene. And the prosecution because they were
Speaker 1: so invested in the idea of my guilt, they were
Speaker 1: so invested in it that they just had to believe
Speaker 1: that it was possible for me to have done this,
Speaker 1: to have cleaned up all trace of me connecting me
Speaker 1: to the crime, right, which would be even if you
Speaker 1: had endless amounts of time resources, the most sophisticated equipment,
Speaker 1: which of course and and and you would still have
Speaker 1: to have. Also, you'd have to be some combination of
Speaker 1: a fairy and an alien in order to float in
Speaker 1: there avoid leaving any traces, clean it up without leaving
Speaker 1: any traces as well, Right, So you would have had
Speaker 1: to either commit the murder in a hazmat suit and
Speaker 1: uh and have and and I've sort of been floating
Speaker 1: above uh and or come back with your team of
Speaker 1: experts from some laboratory who would have been able to um,
Speaker 1: you know, mad you know, scrub part I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's all too crazy. And also without leaving traces of cleaning,
Speaker 1: because of course you can't leave traces of having cleaned.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah you did it, by god, breeze in there. Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, we can laugh about it right now, but
Speaker 1: like that was legit, and like that happens all the time,
Speaker 1: the kinds of ways that bad investigators contort their minds
Speaker 1: in order to shape it around an idea instead of
Speaker 1: allowing the context of the situation of relevant information to
Speaker 1: inform them that that is a devastating factor in wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1: And it's one that's relevant in my case, it's one
Speaker 1: that's relevant in most cases where you're just either going
Speaker 1: out of your way to not find any other evidence
Speaker 1: that's relevant to the case or bury it or you're
Speaker 1: just doing incredible mental gymnastics to justify what you want
Speaker 1: to justify instead of what you can. In this this project,
Speaker 1: research has shown that many forensics techniques such as hair microscopy,
Speaker 1: bite mark comparisons, firearm tool mark analysis, and shueprint comparisons
Speaker 1: have not been subjected to sufficient scientific evaluation and have
Speaker 1: resulted time and time again in tragic errors. No, in
Speaker 1: your case has things in common with the Center Part
Speaker 1: five case as well, right, another super high profile case
Speaker 1: where the DNA evidence was available and was hidden and
Speaker 1: lied about. And that's all that story, right, Like it's
Speaker 1: all about a story or where the idea of well,
Speaker 1: I mean you saw the documentary, so you saw how
Speaker 1: Nick Pisa was all like girl on girl crime Like
Speaker 1: people were just eating up the idea of some fem
Speaker 1: fatale version of me that was able to hypnotize two
Speaker 1: guys into doing my bidding and then commit murder and
Speaker 1: then somehow criminally, mastermindedly get away with it. So you
Speaker 1: were now this crazed sex killer, except for you weren't gay,
Speaker 1: and you weren't a killer at all. You weren't a
Speaker 1: violent person whatsoever, never had any criminal problems ever, never
Speaker 1: had any behavioral problems. Ever, it was just an interesting story.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what's most scary that I've learned
Speaker 1: about the criminal justice system, at least right now, is
Speaker 1: that often enough, what compels is not the facts. What
Speaker 1: compels is the story. And if the defensive story is
Speaker 1: a story that we've heard before where there's a burglar
Speaker 1: who breaks in, take it, takes advantage of the person
Speaker 1: who was home, and then runs away from the country, that,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that that's what the evidence is pointing to,
Speaker 1: is not the story that compels. It's not the story
Speaker 1: that sells, and it's not the story that ends up
Speaker 1: being stamped with everyone's approval. And that is the scariest
Speaker 1: thing about the criminal justice system, where it's treated like
Speaker 1: in this like really morbid way, like entertainment. And what
Speaker 1: counts is what compels, what you know, stimulates our most
Speaker 1: base instincts in relation to other people. Like it's just
Speaker 1: it's so weird how we think there's this like this
Speaker 1: upstanding institution that has so many you know, safeguards against
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, against authorities taking advantage of their position,
Speaker 1: and against you know, people being found guilty for things
Speaker 1: where there's no evidence of that, Like, it still comes
Speaker 1: down to people getting riled up about something and whether
Speaker 1: or not it's fake news. And if the fake news
Speaker 1: is compelling enough, and if you hear it enough, and
Speaker 1: if it's if everyone's talking about it in this specific
Speaker 1: way enough, then that becomes the truth. And and that
Speaker 1: ends up defining my life unless I can somehow compel
Speaker 1: you otherwise, then that's crazy. I shouldn't have to compel anyone.
Speaker 1: I'm just a regular person walking around in this world
Speaker 1: and had this thing dropped on me. And the ability
Speaker 1: for an authority to drop that kind of devastation on
Speaker 1: your life should be justified, and so often it is.
Speaker 1: And and very good prosecutors won't go after someone unless
Speaker 1: they have very good reason to. But other people have
Speaker 1: other intentions, and they have other agendas, and and they're
Speaker 1: proud and they're flawed and they don't want to admit it.
Speaker 1: So back to you. You end up in prison, case
Speaker 1: gets overturned on appeal, you get reconvicted. I mean this,
Speaker 1: this is but in the meanwhile, you're just sort of
Speaker 1: languishing is probably a nice way to put it. In
Speaker 1: an Italian prison for a crime you didn't commit, and
Speaker 1: I was so touched to hear you say how you
Speaker 1: maintain this idealistic notion that if you just told the truth,
Speaker 1: eventually people would get it. They would they would want
Speaker 1: to not persecute you if you just told them the truth.
Speaker 1: I mean, so here, I'm about to break your heart.
Speaker 1: I held that belief, that idealistic belief, up until my conviction.
Speaker 1: And then I thought, oh wow, this is the type
Speaker 1: of world. Oh yeah, okay, this is the type of
Speaker 1: world where I can be innocent but still be convicted
Speaker 1: and still have my life completely redefined by something I
Speaker 1: didn't do, and that could be the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: That could be my life. I could be that person.
Speaker 1: And you know, I faced another two years in prison
Speaker 1: with the prospect of being that person, of living my
Speaker 1: the rest of my life in prison. No matter how
Speaker 1: innocent I said it was, that didn't mean that I
Speaker 1: was ever going to say fine, I did it, Like
Speaker 1: that's that was never going to come out of me,
Speaker 1: because like that was absurd and offensive, and it was
Speaker 1: offensive to Meredith's memory, and it was offensive to everything
Speaker 1: that every principle that I had in myself. But I
Speaker 1: also recognized that this world is one in which sometimes
Speaker 1: we humans make mistakes in relation to each other, and
Speaker 1: I could have been one of those who just got
Speaker 1: forgotten and I did not know if I was ever
Speaker 1: going to get out of it. I had to wrap
Speaker 1: my mind around the idea and come to peace with
Speaker 1: the idea that I was just going to live my
Speaker 1: life in prison for something that I didn't do, no
Speaker 1: matter what I said. And you know, even after everything,
Speaker 1: even after I was acquitted and I was freed, I thought, oh, well, okay, wow,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm lucky. There are plenty of people who were
Speaker 1: in my situation who never got out. And then I
Speaker 1: had to come to peace with the idea that, okay,
Speaker 1: so I am free and I do get to have
Speaker 1: my life back. It's just, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be one of those people who everyone in the world
Speaker 1: is going to think as a monster or suspect as
Speaker 1: a monster for the rest of my life, and I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna have to come to peace with that. And
Speaker 1: you know, like when the Twitter trolls just roll in
Speaker 1: every day and like reaffirm that for you, I just
Speaker 1: had to come to peace with that. And then you know,
Speaker 1: the documentary comes out and suddenly people who just like
Speaker 1: really quickly drew conclusions about me that suggested that I
Speaker 1: was guilty. As soon as they saw that and saw
Speaker 1: that the that I'm a real person, for one thing,
Speaker 1: and that the case was more complex than what they thought,
Speaker 1: suddenly they started vocalizing that they were sorry, Like people
Speaker 1: were saying sorry to me for like jumping to conclusions
Speaker 1: about me. And I never expected that to happen, Like
Speaker 1: I I had come to peace with the idea that
Speaker 1: unless you met me, you probably hated me. And as
Speaker 1: soon as I walk into a room, there's a doppleganger
Speaker 1: version of myself that's preceded me that you're all judging
Speaker 1: prior to me even entering that room, And I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to relate to that doppleganger Verton of myself
Speaker 1: before I'm ever going to be able to interact with
Speaker 1: you as a person. And I am continually finding like
Speaker 1: I'm the type of person who doesn't believe something unless
Speaker 1: I like I see it and I can and there's
Speaker 1: proof of it, And so I am finding proof. I mean,
Speaker 1: I believe that human beings are good deep down, and
Speaker 1: I think that we're smart deep down, and so I
Speaker 1: feel like as soon as we come face to face
Speaker 1: with each other. We are we're able to recognize each
Speaker 1: other humanity. Um, what I am finding with great joy
Speaker 1: is that some people don't even need to see me
Speaker 1: face to face in order to realize that I'm a
Speaker 1: human being. And that means the world to me, because
Speaker 1: I had come to peace with the idea that that
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be my reality, that was just going
Speaker 1: to be my fate to be that girl that people
Speaker 1: suspected forever and didn't really think of as a person
Speaker 1: and judged not as a person. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I hope it doesn't like break your ardor
Speaker 1: like skew your understanding of what kind of person I am.
Speaker 1: But I'm just practical. It would be nice if I
Speaker 1: could say, like, no, I knew in the end that
Speaker 1: it was going to work out. But the sad thing
Speaker 1: is you don't. Anyone who's wrongfully convicted doesn't know if
Speaker 1: it's going to work out for them, And it sucks,
Speaker 1: and it's sad, and your world is sad, and that's
Speaker 1: just the reality of it. And it takes people like
Speaker 1: you and people like me and people like our listeners
Speaker 1: to care about that situation enough to do something about it,
Speaker 1: because it's not just gonna work itself out. It doesn't
Speaker 1: work itself out. People undo their mistakes, and it requires
Speaker 1: people to do it, and and nobody wins. My wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction occurs because there's no favor there to the victim
Speaker 1: or the victims family, or to society, which in many
Speaker 1: cases allows the well in almost all cases allows the
Speaker 1: actual perpetrator to roam free and commit new atrocities. And
Speaker 1: of course then there's the very human toll on people
Speaker 1: like yourself. So I want to wrap up by talking
Speaker 1: about Amanda. Now. Now it's wonderful because I'm no longer
Speaker 1: being hunted down by some big, you know, crazy legal
Speaker 1: authority that's an entire country, Like, I'm no longer having
Speaker 1: to deal with that kind of pressure in my life.
Speaker 1: And I can actually look forward, as opposed to just
Speaker 1: sort of like be really present and be constantly aware
Speaker 1: of like what's coming at me. I can actually just
Speaker 1: like breathe, look forward and kind of put myself out there.
Speaker 1: And I'm writing a lot. I'm coming up with these
Speaker 1: creative projects to try to to try to, you know,
Speaker 1: share my ideas with the world. And I'm here talking
Speaker 1: to you and and I'm going out of my way
Speaker 1: to vocalize my thoughts and experiences in ways that I
Speaker 1: didn't feel like I was able to before because I
Speaker 1: wasn't in a position of safety or or ability. Even
Speaker 1: I I thought for the longest time that my life
Speaker 1: was going to be one where I had to live
Speaker 1: in the shadows and cower, and that was going to
Speaker 1: be my life And that's not what's happening to me now.
Speaker 1: And I'm so grateful for that, because I hated the
Speaker 1: idea that somehow I had to pay with my life
Speaker 1: for this thing that I didn't do, for the mistakes
Speaker 1: that the prosecution make, for the terrible crime that Rudy
Speaker 1: get A committed, Like somehow I had to pay with
Speaker 1: my life for that. And like people told me all
Speaker 1: the time, like, oh, you should just change your name
Speaker 1: so you don't have to deal with it. And eventually,
Speaker 1: you know, ten years from now, you're not going to
Speaker 1: look the same, so it's not going to be different.
Speaker 1: And it's like, you know what, No, there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with being Amanda Knox. Amanda Knox didn't do anything. I'm
Speaker 1: a I'm a good person. I'm just fine. And in fact,
Speaker 1: if you just gave me the chance to be a person.
Speaker 1: You would see that too. So I didn't like the
Speaker 1: idea of like my myself being compromised somehow by something
Speaker 1: that had nothing to do with me. And um, and instead,
Speaker 1: you know, I've I've now been able to like embrace
Speaker 1: the fact that this happened to me and that it's
Speaker 1: a part of me. But it's not, you know, the
Speaker 1: thing that defines me. The thing that defines me is
Speaker 1: how I've reacted to it, and um, and that feels
Speaker 1: wonderful and like I'm I feel recognized in a way
Speaker 1: that I never imagined that I was going to feel.
Speaker 1: And it's so I'm so grateful, Like I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: that people are like seeing me as a human being
Speaker 1: and and seeing what I went through and caring about
Speaker 1: it like no one had to do that, no one
Speaker 1: had to care about me, and and they and they
Speaker 1: do and that means the world to me. Um, and
Speaker 1: I just I just want other people to feel that.
Speaker 1: You know, well, I can tell you that it's it's
Speaker 1: quite extraordinary just being around you and soaking up the
Speaker 1: sort of energy that you put out there because it's
Speaker 1: so positive and it's so healing. And it's been, like
Speaker 1: I said, in a humbling experience for me to be
Speaker 1: able to have you on the show now twice, and
Speaker 1: I look forward to watching you continue to grow and
Speaker 1: heal and excel. And you know, and I know we'll
Speaker 1: be seeing each other again at various events and we
Speaker 1: will both continue to fight for justice because that's what
Speaker 1: we're here for. You've been listening to Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 1: Jason fla Um and our guests, the Amazing, the one
Speaker 1: and only Amanda Enough. Thanks for listening. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next week on Wrongful Conviction. Jason flam don't forget to
Speaker 1: give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: it really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in
Speaker 1: supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
Speaker 1: wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn
Speaker 1: how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank
Speaker 1: our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music
Speaker 1: on the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Speaker 1: Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for
Speaker 1: Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one will
Speaker 1: be Good.