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 Kercher 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 a 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 good Day's crime.
Speaker 2: He 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. For example, we.
Speaker 2: Talked about his career and how he could have done
Speaker 2: a lot of different things, how he was on the
Speaker 2: path to becoming a Catholic priest except that this one
Speaker 2: thing happened, and then he very well could have gone
Speaker 2: into politics except that this thing happened. So we had
Speaker 2: this really fun and we actually had a lot of
Speaker 2: fun with that episode because Chris and I decided to
Speaker 2: become super nerdy and go sci fi, and we created
Speaker 2: alternate dimensions where like we talked to Catholic priest LeVar
Speaker 2: Burtons and politician LeVar Burton.
Speaker 1: He's so talented.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a sweetheart. He was so nice.
Speaker 2: But we cover a lot of ground in the in
Speaker 2: the season, and we go from anywhere from like super
Speaker 2: super dramatic stories, like we interviewed Samantha Geimer, who was
Speaker 2: the fourteen year old girl who was raped by Roman Polanski. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and how like interestingly speaking of you know, people using
Speaker 2: individual human beings like worst experiences of their lives as
Speaker 2: entertainment that they're entitled to and as a profit making machine.
Speaker 3: Like that was her story.
Speaker 2: And she didn't react the way or didn't want the
Speaker 2: things that people expected a rape victim to want, and
Speaker 2: so they vilified her because she actually wanted some kind
Speaker 2: of amicable result with Polanski, and they themselves found ambicable
Speaker 2: resolutions behind closed doors, while the rest of society was
Speaker 2: still trying to churn up this like victim and villain narrative.
Speaker 1: What's the name of the podcast Labyrinths 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 3: And I was like wow.
Speaker 2: So the fact that like I sit in this very
Speaker 2: weird position where I'm a not very usual wrongfully convicted
Speaker 2: person in what way, Well, 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 3: I mean, that's part of it.
Speaker 2: There's also a lot of biases that go into it.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of sort of hysteria around youth culture,
Speaker 2: like even just issues with like gangs. That's an issue
Speaker 2: where it's like, you know, a lot of people don't
Speaker 2: understand that kids just by virtue of living in a
Speaker 2: neighborhood are sort of associated with gangs, even if they
Speaker 2: have never committed a crime. And so suddenly you're like
Speaker 2: in a gang book and you're identifiable as a gang member.
Speaker 2: But that's only because you happen to live in that neighborhood,
Speaker 2: and you happen to associate with a number of people
Speaker 2: who also live in that neighborhood. You know, those kinds
Speaker 2: of things. But the major thing is that the criminal
Speaker 2: justice system is a system that was built by men
Speaker 2: for men, because the vast majority of people who are
Speaker 2: committing crimes are men, and for someone like me to
Speaker 2: be put through the criminal justice system as a defendant
Speaker 2: is highly unusual. I come from a middle class background,
Speaker 2: I come from an educated background. I have no history
Speaker 2: of you know, behavioral problems or anything like that. Like
Speaker 2: I'm usually what I mean, actually, usually the victims of
Speaker 2: crimes also happen to be young men of color. But generally,
Speaker 2: when you think of someone like me the media presents
Speaker 2: someone like me as a crime victim, and for me
Speaker 2: to be in a position of being able to both
Speaker 2: sympathize with what it is like to be a young
Speaker 2: woman who is victimized by a man, and to be
Speaker 2: able to sympathize with the experience of young men who
Speaker 2: are being put through this incrediblely unfair criminal justice process
Speaker 2: that puts me in a unique position to like build bridges,
Speaker 2: and I kind of view my work as bridge building
Speaker 2: as like acknowledging the complex humanity of people on both
Speaker 2: sides of the equation and being able to bring nuance
Speaker 2: back into the true crime genre, which I tend to
Speaker 2: feel has been more dominated by scandalous, salacious, black and
Speaker 2: white presentations of stories as opposed to more complicated ones.
Speaker 2: And a lot of times, like a lot of people
Speaker 2: reach out to me thinking that I am going to
Speaker 2: be able to understand their humanity in a way that
Speaker 2: other people just don't or refuse to, and so a
Speaker 2: lot of the stories that I end up talking about
Speaker 2: are just people who've reached 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 some one's case,
Speaker 2: like I usually end up being the person who like
Speaker 2: directs them towards the Innocence project that is like closest
Speaker 2: to their location. What I end up doing is I
Speaker 2: try to give a voice to the people who have
Speaker 2: felt like their voice has been stolen from them. And
Speaker 2: once again, it 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 devil. And it
Speaker 2: was like, how about I'm neither. I'm just a young
Speaker 2: person who, like my roommate was murdered and I had
Speaker 2: no idea what was going on. And everyone was speaking
Speaker 2: an Italian really fast, and I had no idea what
Speaker 2: was going on, and I got scared and here I am.
Speaker 1: So how much time did you spend in the Italian
Speaker 1: prison total four years.
Speaker 2: My god, So from age twenty to twenty four, I
Speaker 2: 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 4: I mean, here you have allegedly a crime by three
Speaker 4: teens who are not professional killers, who brought, according to
Speaker 4: the prosecutor, three little boys out into the woods and
Speaker 4: slaughtered them to death in this savage beating, and yet
Speaker 4: there was no blood found at the crime scene. And
Speaker 4: then you look at the confession, and the confession is
Speaker 4: riddled with inconsistencies and problems coaching and coaching. So within
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 1: They 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 Gaudet, 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 3: We know that.
Speaker 2: Do we have a camera on the wall where we
Speaker 2: see him doing it or we're in his mind nor.
Speaker 1: He confesses, right, And the 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 going to be like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, that's a fear I would have.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's the unfortunate thing about true crime in general is
Speaker 2: there is this sort of temptation to treat it fundamentally
Speaker 2: as an entertainment product. And due to that, like the
Speaker 2: thing that is most entertaining is when people can walk
Speaker 2: away from the movie and just argue about it. You know, like,
Speaker 2: if I feel this way about the case, you feel
Speaker 2: that way about the case, and you know, now we
Speaker 2: can argue about it because it's unclear. And I think
Speaker 2: one of my big frustrations with my own case was
Speaker 2: that the prosecution, first of all, but also just people
Speaker 2: 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 followed that in
Speaker 2: the documentary, but like in Italy, the double jeopardy laws
Speaker 2: aren't the same.
Speaker 3: And so when the.
Speaker 2: Sort of whole forensic case against me came crashing down
Speaker 2: after my acquittal, I was retried again but on behavioral evidence.
Speaker 2: So basically the prosecution said, sure, we can't actually place
Speaker 2: her at the crime scene, but she just.
Speaker 3: Didn't act like an I was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, was just something like, we can't be totally wrong,
Speaker 2: so like something's got to be there. And I was
Speaker 2: reconvicted on that, like just on that sort of sense
Speaker 2: that 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 and I was on trial for eight years,
Speaker 2: and it wasn't until the court swooped in and was like,
Speaker 2: where's the evidence.
Speaker 3: 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 that they try
Speaker 1: to have you extra died it because when you were
Speaker 1: convicted again.
Speaker 3: 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 in 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 plan to how am I going to fight my
Speaker 2: case in court here in the US, to just see
Speaker 2: if I can try to serve a sentence here in
Speaker 2: the US as opposed to being trucked all the way
Speaker 2: back to Italy like that was my twenties.
Speaker 1: That doesn't exist, so you can't serve your time in
Speaker 1: the US for a crime in Italy.
Speaker 2: Can you Well, the US has discretion over whether or
Speaker 2: not it actually will fulfill that extradition treaty. It can
Speaker 2: always say, you know what, I don't really care to
Speaker 2: extradite her.
Speaker 3: She's going to stay here in the US.
Speaker 2: But because we want to appease the Italian justice system,
Speaker 2: we're going to hold her here in the US.
Speaker 3: 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 ragged 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, doesn't matter, government official,
Speaker 1: if somebody prominent who was presumed to have the resources
Speaker 1: comes into court, it's like this is a big business.
Speaker 1: So they say to you, Alec Baldwin, your daughter who
Speaker 1: back then she was five years old, she's on the
Speaker 1: other side of this six foot concrete wall. Here's a
Speaker 1: paper clip, start digging, and you're going to start digging
Speaker 1: because if you're a normal human being who has a child,
Speaker 1: you want to be with that child, you want to
Speaker 1: parent that child. I know many people drop out and
Speaker 1: they give up and they write it off and go,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go start another family because they're so
Speaker 1: abused by that system. And so abused was I by
Speaker 1: that that I wrote a book. So I wasn't wrongfully
Speaker 1: convicted of murder in an Italian courtroom. But I was
Speaker 1: somebody who did everything they asked me to do, and
Speaker 1: they just kept punishing me because they knew I was
Speaker 1: going to keep coming. I'm wondering in your case, was
Speaker 1: they're just this driving need for you to share with
Speaker 1: other people what I went through and the lessons of
Speaker 1: that and how you can avoid what I went through.
Speaker 1: 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 whore right now?
Speaker 1: When you went to prison, what was the.
Speaker 2: Sentence The first time I was convicted, I was sentenced
Speaker 2: to 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
Speaker 2: know 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 for.
Speaker 3: 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 3: He's but you know, he's my partner DNA expert. Yeah no, no, no,
Speaker 3: not at all. 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 he can
Speaker 2: bring his sort of analytical self. I bring my emotional,
Speaker 2: experiential self, and then we put that together into what
Speaker 2: we hope is a really complex, nuanced, heartfelt, you know
Speaker 2: journey that we put people on to your experience with
Speaker 2: paparazzi is something that you know, one of the things
Speaker 2: that people would tell me when I came home was
Speaker 2: they would say things like, I feel really bad for
Speaker 2: you because it's not like you're a celebrity, it's not
Speaker 2: like you asked for it. You just get you know,
Speaker 2: people chasing you down the street.
Speaker 3: Do they do that to you now today?
Speaker 2: No? But when I first came home, and for many
Speaker 2: many men months afterwards, and actually the entire time, I
Speaker 2: was still on trial, so like I was still in
Speaker 2: I was in freedom for four years, but still on trial.
Speaker 2: Like any time something happened with the case, there would
Speaker 2: be people outside of my apartment building.
Speaker 1: But that's subsided now.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's all finished.
Speaker 2: Now the Supreme Court in Italy definitively acquitted me in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: So it's over.
Speaker 2: Like 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 and you just see that look in
Speaker 1: people's eyes. Someone's eating with a crowd of people. They
Speaker 1: smack the person next to them, they look at you,
Speaker 1: they look at them, they talk, everyone huddles up, they lie,
Speaker 1: and then all of them look at you at the
Speaker 1: same time. Five heads go slap. Then they'll come back
Speaker 1: into the home and start laughing. And you are this
Speaker 1: fodder 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.
Speaker 3: And the king would be a god.
Speaker 2: And so this like idea of a person is actually
Speaker 2: something 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 I'll sit there and say, kind
Speaker 1: of only people really knew who I was. I just
Speaker 1: don't feel to think people you know what we do,
Speaker 1: and you know my wife and I what we do
Speaker 1: philanthropically and all those silly things that you wind up
Speaker 1: having to resist, the desire to point your finger that
Speaker 1: underline that when I do this, and here's.
Speaker 3: Another thing, you know, I'm a human being. Look, there
Speaker 3: are multiple sides 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 gonna do? What was that feeling like for you
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: 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 3: I was like, please save me.
Speaker 1: And what did he say?
Speaker 3: I mean, he couldn't say anything.
Speaker 2: He just started well, he started crying, and it was
Speaker 2: the first time I'd ever seen my father cry. It
Speaker 2: really really solidified for me how bad the situation was,
Speaker 2: because I had never seen my dad cry before in
Speaker 2: my entire life.
Speaker 1: Is that the point where you started to consider at
Speaker 1: least that you weren't going to get.
Speaker 2: Out of there absolutely, And you know, that was the
Speaker 2: period of time where I was writing in my jour ernals,
Speaker 2: trying to imagine what a worthwhile life would look like
Speaker 2: if it took another five years, or another ten years,
Speaker 2: or another twenty years, or if I got out as
Speaker 2: an old woman, Like what was I going to do
Speaker 2: to make my life worth living? So that was the
Speaker 2: kind of things that I was thinking about as a
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: I lost it.
Speaker 2: In fact, I lost it so hard that people who
Speaker 2: were escorting me thought, like the police, thought that I
Speaker 2: had misunderstood the verdict.
Speaker 3: They were like trying to tell me, no, you got
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: And the great irony of that is that it wasn't over.
Speaker 2: And I entered into a whole new version of this
Speaker 2: labyrinth where I thought I had got out and yet
Speaker 2: here's this yet another four years of labyrinth ahead of me.
Speaker 2: And like the sort of true moment of feeling like
Speaker 2: I'm no longer being hunted anymore was after I was
Speaker 2: definitively acquitted by the Italian Supreme Court. Throughout my entire trial,
Speaker 2: when everything was just getting worse and worse and worse,
Speaker 2: I kept believing that it was inevitable that I was
Speaker 2: going to be found innocent, because I was like, there's
Speaker 2: just some horrible misunderstanding and eventually the truth is going
Speaker 2: to come out. The jury's going to see through all
Speaker 2: this bullshit that the prosecution is saying, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to be released. So I was convinced the day that
Speaker 2: I was convicted that I was going to be acquitted.
Speaker 2: And then once that happened and the world turned upside
Speaker 2: down and everything I thought was true about reality was
Speaker 2: turned upside down. I no matter how good it was
Speaker 2: getting throughout my acquittal, my appeals trial leading up to
Speaker 2: my acquittal, I was afraid to hope because I couldn't
Speaker 2: allow myself to be crushed again. And so even when
Speaker 2: there was like big news that like, you know, the
Speaker 2: independent experts are calling bullshit on all the prosecution's forensic evidence.
Speaker 2: I was afraid to hope, yeah, because I knew that,
Speaker 2: like I was innocent the first time, like what stopped
Speaker 2: them from acquitting me, you know, last time. So like
Speaker 2: for me, those are the hard moments. The sort of
Speaker 2: true moment of feeling like I'm no longer being hunted
Speaker 2: anymore was after I was definitively acquitted by the Italian
Speaker 2: Supreme Court. And honestly, one of my first true experiences
Speaker 2: was actually when I first met Chris. I was doing
Speaker 2: arts correspondence for a local newspaper. He wrote his debut novel.
Speaker 2: I reviewed it for the paper, I asked for an interview.
Speaker 2: I interviewed him and his co author. They were two
Speaker 2: best friends who wrote a novel together, and I had
Speaker 2: this great experience interviewing. We drank Scotch, we watched Star Trek,
Speaker 2: We wandered around the neighborhood into the night. And at
Speaker 2: the end of like hanging out with these two guys
Speaker 2: who I'd never met before, Gavin, his best friend and
Speaker 2: co author, gave me this big bear hug and Chris
Speaker 2: shook my hand and said we should be friends. And
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my god, I can just make
Speaker 2: friends with people again, Like I can just like meet
Speaker 2: people and make friends now, Like I don't have to hide.
Speaker 3: Anymore, have a normal life.
Speaker 2: Right, and like, you know, my life is not normal,
Speaker 2: But I was restored that that feeling that like I'm
Speaker 2: no longer being hunted, I no longer have to fear
Speaker 2: people 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 a murderer.
Speaker 3: Doesn't make her a murderery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could have been a professional dominatrix and it
Speaker 2: shouldn't have mattered because the evidence wasn't there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's what bothers me.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I actually think Civics would be really, really good to
Speaker 2: teach in schools. And part of that civics course would
Speaker 2: 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 it
Speaker 1: was like my joke version, as you call your mom
Speaker 1: and go, Mom, I really miss you. Can we have lunch?
Speaker 1: And she's like, I'm sorry, baby, I have tennis tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Where are you at with your parents now?
Speaker 3: I mean we've always been super super close.
Speaker 2: Can I talk about a joke though that I really
Speaker 2: appreciated that first of all, I loved you on thirty Rock,
Speaker 2: and one of the first nice jokes about me was
Speaker 2: on thirty Rock that I encountered. Oh, good God, maybe
Speaker 2: there's some nice jokes out there, But most of the
Speaker 2: time I found when I first came out, that people
Speaker 2: were making jokes at my expense, of course, And the
Speaker 2: first time that I heard a joke that was not
Speaker 2: at my expense was Kristin on thirty Rock saying it's
Speaker 2: not hard to be famous. Amanda Knox is famous for
Speaker 2: not killing someone, and that was like, Oh.
Speaker 3: You can make a joke and not at my expense.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you, Kristin Shaw. But things are good
Speaker 1: with your family, absolutely, and they appreciate you and hold
Speaker 1: you close because you could be over there right now,
Speaker 1: in an alternate universe. You could be over there now,
Speaker 1: 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 was 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 3: I have been back to Italy.
Speaker 2: So I was invited by the Italy Innocence Project, which
Speaker 2: did not exist while I was in prison, to come
Speaker 2: and speak at their first ever annual conference about trial
Speaker 2: by Media. And I felt that, like, of all of
Speaker 2: the ways to return to Italy, that was the best
Speaker 2: way possible. Like, you know, I had struggled with the
Speaker 2: idea of like how am I going to go back
Speaker 2: and see the people who supported me and thank them
Speaker 2: and like to try to do that process. And I
Speaker 2: returned and the press called it, you know, Amanda's familiar
Speaker 2: dance with the with the paparazzi, and it's like, actually,
Speaker 2: I'm being assaulted by them, like I can't move because
Speaker 2: they're throwing themselves at me and my my partner, the country.
Speaker 1: That originated the word paparazzi, by.
Speaker 2: The way, yep, Yeah, that was a crazy experience. I
Speaker 2: had many many good moments.
Speaker 1: Were you scared to go there? Were you terrified to
Speaker 1: go there?
Speaker 3: I was absolutely scared to go there.
Speaker 1: You're braver than I would never go back there 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. Yeah.
Speaker 2: 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 3: Yeah shit.
Speaker 2: I was surprised when people gave me a standing applause
Speaker 2: for my talk, and granted, these are the kind of
Speaker 2: people who are going to show up, who are interested
Speaker 2: in criminal justice issues, who are interested in the Italy
Speaker 2: Innocence Project, who are going to show up anyway, so
Speaker 2: they I was a more accommodating audience, but I was not.
Speaker 3: I was not ready for it.
Speaker 2: Like I I remember like being whisked away because I
Speaker 2: had have personal security while I was there, Like it was,
Speaker 2: it was not an easy process, and this like personal
Speaker 2: security guard sort of whisked me away down the stairs,
Speaker 2: down the hallway in underground where I had this like
Speaker 2: secret sort of underground dungeon bunker thing where I sort
Speaker 2: of lived throughout.
Speaker 3: The entire conference.
Speaker 2: And as soon as we got down the stairs, he
Speaker 2: gave me a little squeeze and said parfeto and I
Speaker 2: just started bawling. And it was a really great moment
Speaker 2: where I was like, Wow, maybe I'll be given a chance,
Speaker 2: not even a second chance, like a chance.
Speaker 3: In Italy.
Speaker 1: Journalist, public speaker and podcaster Amanda Knox, I, I'm Alec Baldwin,
Speaker 1: and this is here's the thing. We're produced by Kathleen Russo,
Speaker 1: Carrie Donahue, and Zach MacNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.